CHAPTER SIX

RESILIENCE MASTERY

Leading with Energy

While researching and writing this book, we interviewed more than 100 CEOs. The purpose of these meetings was to solicit their views on leadership and to have them challenge our viewpoints. Additionally, we conducted a survey to discover which areas of mastery leaders perceived as most relevant and which areas they viewed as the most challenging. The results of our interviews were very clear-cut: 74 percent of the CEOs saw Personal Mastery as the most relevant to their leadership effectiveness, while 67 percent saw Interpersonal Mastery as the second most relevant. However, 92 percent of them selected Resilience Mastery as the most challenging personally.

For most leaders I meet, balancing work and home life still is a lofty, rarely achieved goal. Yet the more I encounter the time-oriented, mechanistic formula of work/life balance (i.e., working a certain number of hours, exercising four times a week, spending a certain number of evenings a week with family), the less useful and relevant I find it. Although each day brings nearly impossible demands on our time, with too many meetings, obligations, and 24/7 connectivity in a global marketplace, it is our resilience and energy, not the clock, that are stressed daily. Most days begin like a sprint and then turn into a triathlon of meetings, e-mails, and presentations.

Let’s face it, time is a finite resource. We get twenty-four hours, no matter how we carve them up. However, shifting our focus from time management to energy leadership can allow us to discover our own unique formula for sustained energy and resilience to serve our most important constituencies.

When I met for the first time with Tim, a CEO succession candidate in a global industrial products company, I sensed a few cracks in his macho, results-oriented armor. I asked how he was doing, and his quick response was, “Fine, but traveling lots.” I asked how many weekends he had been home over the last six months, and he had to stop and think. “Well … let me see … four … or maybe five. It’s fine. Really. Just part of the job.” Tim’s ambition-fueled denial was getting harder and harder to dismiss. While he was racking up diamonds on his frequent flyer status, Tim was missing countless school and social events. Interestingly, his mind seemed to be handling it, but his body, spirit, and family weren’t fairing so well. It was cause for great concern because mental acuity can be very misleading, while energy and resilience levels tend to be quite telling.

Ariel, a marketing executive and mother of three children under the age of seven, told me that she handles “normal” days of work and family just fine. The worst thing for her is when she has to be on the phone at night, for hours, with customers in Asia. She doesn’t get enough sleep, and that throws everything else off kilter the next day. She is worn out, more anxious, and “loses it” easily with people at work and with the kids at home.

David, the CFO of a mid-size company and another extreme traveler, shared his wake-up call with me. Returning from a two-week business trip, he was lifting his luggage out of the trunk of his car when his four-year-old son walked into the garage from the house. Surprised by the unfamiliar sight of a man in his garage, the child ran back into the house screaming. His son actually mistook him for an intruder! In that moment, David knew it was time to reenter all parts of his life. That’s the essence of our challenge as leaders: finding enough energy, resilience, and connection to serve all our important life priorities without any one of them, or us, “running out” in a panic.

RESILIENCE IS A CONSTANT CHALLENGE

I’m no exception. My life has been a whirlwind since December 2006, when Korn Ferry acquired my firm, LeaderSource. Now, ten years into our integration, we are delighted with all the synergies and new opportunities we have been fortunate to create. We have more than 130 offices in sixty countries, more than 7,000 associates, and an unparalleled ability to expand the reach of our talent management programs around the world. Like Tim and David, I often travel the globe. The demands of life definitely challenge my mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. The sudden changes of this extraordinary period of growth definitely present constant challenges to my own mastery of resilience. Fortunately, my life experience—learning from previous growth spurts and the foundation of my practices—has helped me manage my energy through this expansion.

However, seventeen years ago, I naively thought that I had this work/life balance thing pretty well figured out. On some levels I did, as long as my life didn’t change beyond expectations. However, our leadership development and executive coaching practice took a sudden leap forward, doubling in size over a very short period. With this sudden growth spurt, my life was wonderfully out of balance. I say “wonderfully” because I loved the work. My problem was that it was too much of a good thing. I felt as if I was sitting at an incredible feast, and I was not able to push away from the table. The “indigestion” of too much work was causing harmful symptoms: strain in relationships, reduced energy level, diminished passion, and physical stress.

All this culminated in serious but manageable health issues. Unfortunately, the intensity of these symptoms had to become sufficiently painful before I paid attention. I needed to shift my focus from a time-oriented balancing act to an energy and resilience-rich process. It took a few months of focused attention to take my life back. Over time, I was able to lay an even strong foundation for dealing with future growth challenges, and it has paid off for me during this current one.

Although I feel somewhat more confident in Resilience Mastery now, I would agree with my CEO colleagues that balance or Resilience Mastery is a constant challenge. A slightly revised version of a witty and insightful E. B. White quote gives me perspective: “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” How often do you feel the tension between your desire to serve and your need to savor? It’s not always easy to choose, because both are so important.

RESILIENCE TRENDS AT THE TOP

Barry Posner, leadership professor at Santa Clara University Leavey School of Business, has observed an emerging trend in keeping with my own observations regarding CEOs today. We are both hard-pressed to name a single Fortune 500 CEO who is terribly overweight. Recent research at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) that followed 757 executives over a five-year period identified a similar trend. Top executives were healthier than the average American. They drank less alcohol, smoked less, and were much more likely to exercise regularly. CCL also found that the fitness of an executive influenced the perception of their energy level, self-discipline, and competence.

The era of the “Martini Mad Men” is gone. The superhuman demands of business require it. Arianna Huffington thought that she had it all: money and power. She learned the hard way that money and power are no substitute for something as foundational as sleep and healthy lifestyle. In 2007, working eighteen-hour days, Huffington passed out in her office and woke up in a pool of blood from a broken cheekbone and cuts over one eye. After an extensive medical examination, she was told that she was suffering from exhaustion.

Since then, Huffington has been dedicated to getting enough restful sleep. She has been on a crusade to promote a healthier work culture and lifestyle and to redefine success. Through her books, Thrive and The Sleep Revolution, as well as her website, ThriveGlobal.com, she makes her case. She argues for cutting back on working hours, as well as de-stressing and supporting well-being. She promotes the science around why we need restful sleep and ways to ensure high-quality sleep, starting with not bringing our smartphones into the bedroom. While Huffington wants us to slow down, take better care of ourselves, and get enough sleep, she also wants us to consider her metrics for success beyond money and power: “well-being, wisdom, a capacity for wonder, and giving.”

Most of the CEOs I advise have some type of energy-building, fitness, and lifestyle-support routine. These range from daily swims, Pilates, yoga, and triathlon or marathon training to meditation, massage, and preventive medicine. Most have created routines that are a combination of practices that suit them.

Brian Cornell, CEO of Target, a $70 billion retailer with 341,000 employees, is a great example of this emerging trend of fit executives. Looking at Brian, anyone can see that he is just that—fit, energetic, and ready to take on the world. Jonathan Dahl and Tierney Remick interviewed Brian recently for Korn Ferry’s Briefings magazine and asked him about his resilience-building practices and how they support his vitality:

Well, there are a few, and all have to do with energy management, much like an athlete who is preparing for competition. When I’m getting ready for a big meeting, I make sure that I get the right combination of rest and preparation time. If someone on my team tells me, “Brian, I was up until 2:00 a.m. working on this presentation and came back to the office at 7:00 a.m.,” that tells me that they might be prepared, but do I want this person to lead a big meeting or make an important decision when they are completely fatigued?

Our culture has sent a message that operating with a sleep deficit is some kind of badge of honor. I don’t agree. Also, I like to only take forty-five minutes for one-hour meetings. Why? We all need mental and personal breathers in our day. Maybe you can use that time to call home, take a short walk to recharge, or have a healthy snack. Optimal resilience and energy require small but crucial behaviors to ensure that we all are prepared to perform.

While physical fitness is an important part of resilience, Arianna Huffington and Brian Cornell make an excellent point about sleep. Studies in neuroscience show that sleep is not just rest for the body. It is during sleep, or even quiet times, that an essential process for the brain takes place. It is a sort of cleansing process, when new neurons and new synapses may develop.

When we, as leaders, authentically model fitness and resilience, we have a chance to embed it into our culture. Moving ourselves and those around us from the efficiency of time management to the more life-supporting, transformative potential of energy leadership is crucial to fueling sustained success.

MOVING FROM TIME MANAGEMENT TO ENERGY LEADERSHIP

Each new “convenience” that makes our smartphones smarter, our connections swifter, and information more accessible simultaneously delivers some convenience and ten new things to do. Is it possible that doing more and more is not the answer?

Particularly in career settings, the potential for feeling overwhelmed is great. High-performing people naturally want to achieve more and more. High-performing organizations exhibit an insatiable desire to pile more and more responsibility on key people. On top of this, many companies, thinking they need to operate leaner and leaner, require fewer people to carry out more work. At precisely the time when people need to draw on greater resources of energy and drive, their reserves may be depleted. Finding ways to refresh and to revitalize ourselves has never been more crucial to our productivity and personal sustainability.

Research reported by Tony Schwartz and Catherine McCarthy in a Harvard Business Review article, “Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time,” addresses this issue. “The core problem with working longer hours is that time is a finite resource. Energy is a different story. Defined in physics as the capacity to work, energy comes from four main wellsprings in human beings: the body, emotions, mind and spirit.” This is a salient issue for individuals, teams, and the organizations we lead. Schwartz and McCarthy continue, “To effectively reenergize their workforces, organizations need to shift from getting more out of people to investing more in them, so they are motivated—and able—to bring more of themselves to work every day. To recharge themselves, individuals need to recognize the costs of energy-depleting behaviors and then take responsibility for changing them, regardless of the circumstances they’re facing.”

The research Schwartz and McCarthy described in the article has received attention because it reported the impressive, tangible results of a group of employees, called the “pilot energy management group,” over the performance of a control group. “The participants outperformed the controls on a series of financial metrics. … They also reported substantial improvements in their customer relationships, their engagement with work, and their personal satisfaction.” Take a moment to pause on the following time versus energy reflection.

Have you ever noticed how differently you feel about doing something at the end of the day that you really like and want to do—say, going for a dance lesson, attending a sporting event, working in the garden, or having a quiet dinner with friends? Contrast this with doing something that you really dislike and don’t want to do but feel obliged to do—working on a financial line-item report, attending a committee meeting, or cleaning out the garage. Let’s stop for a moment and remember how we feel in those situations. When we have to force ourselves to do something, we feel deflated, tired, bored, and anxious to find a way to put it off until the next day, when we might have more energy. But when we are faced with doing something we really enjoy, our energy is abundant.

That energy is the key—the instrument to joy, purpose, resilience, and sustained success. Let’s step out on this ledge a little further. What if we had so much of what we wanted in our life, we didn’t have time for what we didn’t want? Step back for a moment and imagine how energizing that would be.

A results-oriented yet unassuming man, Rick had a long list of achievements. However, Rick had ignored two very important constituents for quite some time: himself and his health. As a new executive in a global firm, he came to our Executive to Leader Institute program with the same determination he brought to all of his challenges. We learned that Rick really loved to be outdoors and longed for this rejuvenation. Feedback told us that people around him did not feel connected to him, and some lacked trust in him as a result. They had contact with him only at formal events, and they didn’t know him very well. Rick also told us that his doctor recommended that he lose some weight. We challenged Rick to come up with a daily practice that would build energy, health, and relationships all at once.

At first he struggled to come up with something. Then, he came to us with his commitment: he would take daily, short walks. Three times weekly he would invite employees and colleagues to join him, for no other reason than to get to know each other. Rick found that he really looked forward to the walks in all seasons. He was energized by them, and his energy was evident to all the people around him. He returned happier and more energetic. In fact, he felt buoyant. He lost weight, increased his own energy, and multiplied it with others. Leaders must access and expand energy in every way possible to sustain success.

Unfortunately, some leaders still minimize the value of resilience in enhancing leadership performance. A while ago, I met with a senior executive in a major corporation who was keenly interested in our coaching and development programs. He was extremely engaged by how we integrated Personal Mastery, Interpersonal Mastery, and Purpose Mastery in our Executive to Leader Institute. However, he was totally against including Resilience Mastery as part of his program. He strongly objected to the relevance of it. “What does having a more resilient life have to do with my leadership performance anyway?”

Because I knew this person’s reputation for blowing up at people for insignificant things, I knew he needed more resilience, and I needed to press the point. However, even after a lengthy discussion on how being more resilient directly affects how we lead, as well as our ability to cope with the endless demands of highly responsible positions, he was still resistant. Rather than press him further, I gave him some materials and suggested we get together in a few days.

The meeting never happened. The forty-two-year-old executive died of a massive heart attack two days later. Incorporating resilience practices into our lifestyle is not a luxury; it is a necessity. As leaders, resilience allows us first to survive and second to thrive.

WHAT HEALTHY, PRODUCTIVE 100-YEAR-OLDS CAN TEACH LEADERS

A five-year study, completed by Dr. Leonard Poon of the University of Georgia, revealed some interesting principles affecting resilience. In his study of ninety-seven active, productive people over 100 years of age, he found that they had mastered four common characteristics:

1. Optimism: They tended to have a positive view of the past and future. They were not dominated by worry or negativity.

2. Engagement: They were actively involved in life. They were not passive observers, allowing life to pass them by.

3. Mobility: They stayed active physically. One person was an aerobics instructor. Most walked or gardened daily.

4. Adaptability to Loss: They had an extraordinary ability to stay balanced by adapting to and accepting change and loss. Even though most of them had lost their families and friends, they still had a zest for learning and living.

What was their secret to healthy lifestyle? They were happy, involved, active, resilient people. They had become leaders of life.

RESILIENCE IS A DYNAMIC PROCESS

Resilience Mastery is not a static, rigid process; it is a type of centered fluidity that lets us go in any direction with ease and agility. Being resilient means we can recover our balance even in the midst of action. Separating our career, personal, family, emotional, and spiritual lives into distinct pieces and then trying to balance the parts on a scale is impossible. Managing the entire dynamic is the key. We need to identify the dynamics that run through all the pieces and then influence our resilience at that level.

Mastery of Resilience is about practicing inner and outer behaviors that keep us grounded and centered so we can deal with all the dynamics outside. As we build more resilience, we can do more with ease. Actually, when we are resilient, we can shoulder more weight with less effort, because we are strong at our very core. We have a strong foundation to handle unforeseen crises, instead of the anxiety and constant fear that one more unexpected problem will take us down. Finding ways to build that resilient foundation from the inside out is the key to Resilience Mastery.

Charlotte was hesitant and fearful about taking on another executive position. She had left her previous company and position because she was completely burned out. But because Charlotte’s husband was fully supportive of her returning to her professional career, and her teenage children were increasingly independent, she decided to get back in the game—but this time, she would be supported by coaching.

Charlotte is action-oriented, so it was important to find new behaviors that she could implement easily and that would yield results quickly. We helped her formulate a plan that addressed the four domains of resilience: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. Because Charlotte carried some extra weight, we suggested a regular routine of weight training, cardiovascular exercise, and conscious food choices, which would help her attain a healthier weight and more physical energy. She noticed an increase in her stamina, even on more sedentary days of meetings, and her stamina increased dramatically after she lost twenty pounds.

An important aspect of Charlotte’s Resilience Mastery plan was her lake cabin and boat, as well as her orientation toward inspiring visuals. Even when Charlotte couldn’t actually be at the lake for renewal, accessible photos and mental images of the lake during the various seasons were extremely helpful to her. Time with family and friends, stretches of quiet time, short breaks for walks, visualizations, and breathing practices have helped Charlotte reenter her professional life in a new, more sustainable way.

What is your plan to maintain and restore your energy to a new level? Are you aware that your Resilience Mastery needs more support? Are you seeing and feeling the signs but ignoring them? Take a few minutes to review the following: Ten Signs of Lack of Resilience Mastery and Ten Signs of Resilience Mastery. Be honest with yourself as you read them. These are a great place to begin reformulating your own energy restoration plan.

NATURE’S RESILIENCE: REST AND ACTIVITY

How do we go about finding more resilience in our lives? The best model for resilience exists in nature. All resilience in nature comes about through alternate cycles of rest and activity. The cycles of day and night and the seasonal cycles constantly balance a rest phase with an active phase. Nature expresses its vitality in the active phase and reconnects with its vitality in the rest phase. Each phase interacts in just the right combination to achieve dynamic balance. Our lives are similar, with one major difference: We get to choose the quantity and quality of activity, as well as the quantity and quality of rest. When we choose inappropriately, our life is out of whack. When we choose well, we experience vitality. Nature lets us choose freely, but she also gives us immediate feedback on how well we have chosen. As we learn to listen better, our energy and resilience increase.

Jack Groppel and Bob Andelman, authors of The Corporate Athlete: How to Achieve Maximal Performance in Business and Life, rocked the corporate world when they applied the principles of stress and recovery used in coaching world-class athletes to working with corporate leaders, teams, and organizations.

In another article on the same topic, “Stress & Recovery: Important Keys to Engagement,” James Loehr and Jack Groppel echo what we see in nature and apply it to the “corporate athlete”: “Stress is the stimulus for growth; recovery is when growth occurs. If you have no recovery, you have no growth.” To illustrate their point in athletic terms, they describe the four levels of recovery—physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual—that a professional tennis player has to shift into for recovery within seconds between points. The authors assert, “Everything they do can be accomplished by business people.” Pressing us further, they suggest asking ourselves the question, “How valuable would it be for my people to learn to recapture energy in small time intervals during their workday?” The result, they say, is “more productivity at work and ample reserves left over for home. As a result performance goes up and loyalty improves.”

Most imbalances in our society come from two major sources: We tend to overdo our activity, and we tend to underdo our recovery. The formula for fostering more resilience in our lives usually involves two things:

1. Improve the quality of activity and reduce the quantity somewhat.

2. Improve the quality and quantity of our rest and recovery.

TEN PRINCIPLES OF RESILIENCE MASTERY

What are some ways to satisfy both of the two above requirements? Although there could be many others, here are several ways to center our lives in an integrated, holistic way:

1. Be On-Purpose, but Be Aware: Of all the points of resilience, discovering our purpose is one of the most important. It is our centered position of strength. When we are on-purpose, it is difficult for others or for circumstances to knock us off balance. While we are caught up in the activity of our lives, we seldom ask ourselves, “Why?” As Thoreau reflected, “It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?” Rather than simply amassing a great pile of achievements or experiences, our lives can be about burning a passionate fire that illuminates our way. But we have to be careful. As our passionate purpose burns strongly, our devotion to it can also drain our energy. If we become so single-minded about our mission, we can begin to ignore the rest required to sustain our purpose.

2. Fostering Your Energy vs. Managing Time: Time management is a function of the clock. It is outside of us. It is the domain of management. Energy management is the domain of leadership. It comes from within and has the capacity to increase and help us optimize our potential. Therefore, doing everything possible to keep our energy level higher and more abundant than the challenges we face is the key to resilience. When energy is low, life and leadership are a drain. When our energy is strong, we can face tremendous pressure and challenge, and we can thrive despite them. If “the world belongs to the energetic,” as Emerson said, then let’s find all the practices necessary to enhance our energy levels.

What practices have you abandoned that were your energy boosters? What people in your life generate energy? What people deplete your energy? What fitness, fun, or spiritual practices give you the greatest lift? Put together an energy plan; include only the practices that you really love. These are your sustainable energy enhancers.

3. Learning to Exercise with Ease: You may be surprised to hear this from someone who formerly competed in triathlons for years, but we are killing ourselves with our unenlightened approaches to exercise. Unknowingly, most people don’t exercise; they punish themselves. The “no pain, no gain” mentality usually creates more fatigue, stress, and risk for injury than any real type of fitness. We really need to rethink exercise as a lifelong, sustainable practice.

We need to go to a deeper level and ask ourselves, “What is the purpose of exercise?” Certainly losing weight, looking good, or setting a new personal record are some superficial purposes, but they’re not the most profound, compelling ones. If you are a professional athlete, the purpose may be to express your spirit in the physical realm as no one else has done before.

Isn’t it about rejuvenating ourselves, about bringing more vitality, energy, and joy of movement into our lives? For me, the purpose of exercise is to strengthen our vehicle so it can more effectively support our overall life purpose. It’s about being present and in joy, “enjoying” the movement of body and spirit. A pretty heady framework for push-ups, dumbbells, and sweaty runs, isn’t it?

Activities you tend to enjoy bring energy and resilience. Activities you dislike create energy drain and imbalance. The joy of the activity itself is as health-giving as the aerobic effect. Besides, if you don’t enjoy it, but you force yourself to do it, you will either “succeed” in becoming disciplined and rigid, or you will quit eventually anyway. We stay with what we love. Find ways that you love to move your physical being to generate renewed energy.

If you are having trouble finding time to keep active, remember, Thomas Jefferson believed in getting two hours of exercise every day. If someone who wrote the U.S. Declaration of Independence, became president, and was secretary of state could find two hours a day, you can find twenty or thirty minutes a few times a week! Try two twenty-minute walks per day. Use them as your breaks. Or, like the new breed of executive, take outdoor walking meetings sometimes, as opposed to feeling that you are confined to an office or conference room. Clear your mind and get some cardio at the same time. Check with a physician before you begin any exercise program.

4. Deal with Life-Damaging Habits: Poor lifestyle choices account for more misery, suffering, death, and imbalance in our society than any other single cause. The choice to smoke cigarettes, for instance, is the cause of more than 480,000 deaths each year in the United States and 6,000,000 globally. This represents only one lifestyle choice! What about the abuse of alcohol and drugs, as well as poor choices in the areas of food, relationships, and exercise? It has been estimated that more than 70 percent of all disease has a basis in poor lifestyle decisions. It may sound dramatic, but lifestyle decisions can lead you in one of two directions—life or death.

It’s hard to fathom how much imbalance life-damaging habits cause. Most of us don’t engage in behaviors to harm ourselves. The problem is that we have mistaken certain habits for happiness. We unknowingly exchange a short-term fix for long-term damage. How do we retreat from behaviors we know are hurting us? Mark Twain captured the challenge of moving away from certain behaviors when he said, “Habit is habit, and not to be flung out the window, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.” Here are some steps for coaxing them downstairs:

• Admit that the habit is damaging to you and possibly to others. Go deeply into all the negative effects this habit is having on you. Until you acknowledge the problem, you won’t have any genuine motivation to change.

• Get professional and peer support to help you. It’s unlikely you can do it on your own, or you would have done it already.

• Continually repeat the first two steps if the habits take hold again or new ones appear.

5. Avoid Taking Yourself So Seriously: Humor and lightheartedness energize mind, body, and spirit. The more rigid and self-centered we are, the more out of balance we become. Imagine yourself in your most secure, strong moments. Aren’t these the times you can laugh at yourself and observe life in a playful manner? Letting go of our own rigid, external mask brings joy and energy into our life. Harriet Rochlin wrote in The Reformer’s Apprentice, “Laughter can be more satisfying than honor; more precious than money; more heart-cleansing than prayer.”

In A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink writes about Madan Kataria, a physician in Mumbai, India, who started laughter clubs, believing that laughter can be like a “benevolent virus—that can infect individuals, communities, even nations.” With the proliferation of laughter clubs, Dr. Kataria hopes to inculcate an epidemic that will “improve our health, increase our profits, and maybe even bring world peace.” Pink also wrote, “Play is emerging from the shadows of frivolousness and assuming a place in the spotlight. … Play is becoming an important part of work, business, and personal well-being.” I love to watch our Golden Retriever, Leo, let loose on an open field, his pure joy and exhilaration evident in the way he prances, stretches his boundaries, and immerses in his freedom. It’s wonderful to witness. Maybe it’s time to set your seriousness aside and take a joyous run into your open field!

Treat life like a play. Be concerned about the plot, your fellow actors, and the needs of others. But don’t take yourself too seriously. In the broader scheme of things, it’s just a role in the cosmic play. Transformative leaders have clear perspective: they are serious about mission, strategy, execution, and serving people, but not about their role, image, or themselves.

6. Develop Mind-Body Awareness: Most of us are stuck in our heads. We need to pay more attention to our body’s messages. Our body reflects everything that’s going on in our lives. It is our primary feedback mechanism to reveal the positive or negative impact of our thoughts, emotions, or choices. Start listening to the wisdom of the body. It speaks through energy: Do more of that! It talks through fatigue: Cut down on that, and give me more rest! It sends painful messages: I’ve been warning you gently, but because you ignored me, I will talk a lot louder. Stop doing that! Developing awareness of how the mind affects the body and how the body affects the mind is a crucial skill. Fostering mind-body awareness can be one of our most healing and energizing inside out leadership skills.

7. Manage Stress More Effectively: Stress is primarily a subjective reality. If two people are stressed the same way, one may collapse and the other may thrive on the challenging opportunity. Stress is determined by how we process our world. I recently experienced this firsthand while on a consulting trip to London. I arrived at the airport late for the flight and got onto the plane as the doors were being sealed. To collect myself, I went to the restroom; it was occupied, so I stood outside, took a deep breath, and paused.

Suddenly, inside the tiny restroom, I heard a tremendous commotion going on, with crashes and pounding noises. My first thought was that someone was having a seizure or heart attack. Just as I was about to get some help, the door flew open. A man, severely physically disabled and with crutches attached to his arms, stood before me. Because his legs were paralyzed, they swung around following the movement of his contorted upper body. In the midst of his noisy struggle to exit the cramped quarters, he looked at me with a knowing smile and said, “I’m just a butterfly freeing myself from my cocoon!” It was a wonderful moment that I will never forget. If only we all could “process our world” with similar dignity, heart, and resilience.

Each time you face a stressful situation or event, achieve balance by asking yourself, “What can I control in this situation? What can I do to influence this situation? What do I have to accept here?” Distress is usually the by-product of wasting energy by trying to control things we can only influence or accept, or accepting things we could influence or control. Take action on what you can control or influence, and more clearly face what you have to accept.

8. Nurture Your Close Relationships: Few things in life can instantaneously balance us as quickly as love or connection with a close friend. A difficult, stressful day can quickly be put in perspective by the innocence and pure love of a child. Few people can help us sort out a difficult situation as well as a supportive spouse or friend. Close relationships can be our anchors in the sea of change. In fact, according to Robert Waldinger, director of the seventy-five-year

Harvard Study of Adult Development, the most important factor in having a fulfilling, happy, healthy life is the quality and depth of our relationships.

A CEO was given this advice by his wife, to better understand the value of life’s most essential relationships: “A few years after you leave your career, most people will forget you, but your family will always remember you.”

Past Chairman and CEO of Novartis, Dr. Daniel Vasella, gave this advice to business school graduates: “Be yourself, and don’t try to play a role. Tough days never last forever and after follow good days. Your family and friends will support you in difficult times. Therefore, understand and respect also their needs and strike the right balance for yourself and for them.”

9. Take Real Vacations: How often have we gone on a vacation only to return more tired and worn out then when we left? As fun as it is to expand our boundaries by experiencing new places, does it provide us with the restorative energy we need? Instead of “emptying our bucket,” we fill it up with even more stimulation and activity. Why not try a real vacation next time? Why not get some real rest to provide some life perspective? These are some of the best examples of real vacations:

• Go to a health spa. Taking a few days for good food, massage, and rest can turn you around. If you can’t actually travel to a spa, consider creating your own spa by unplugging the TV, getting more rest, taking a long walk, getting a massage, reading, or journaling your latest aspiration.

• Go on a retreat. Transform your perspective via the gentle, quiet routine of a spiritual or personal retreat. Don’t go on a retreat that fills up your day with activities. To advance, you may need to step back first.

• Go on a vacation by yourself. If your spouse or significant other is secure enough to let you go, it can be a great way to reconnect with yourself.

• Stay at home for a week. Some of my best, most refreshing vacations have been staying at home. If you travel a lot, this can be the most luxurious way to get away.

• Do a “digital fast.” Consider taking a break from all things digital for a few days. Turn off, tune out, and give up your smartphone, computer, tablet, e-mail, social media, texting, apps, and videos for a few days. If the thought of a digital fast provokes anxiety, then it may be just the remedy needed to refresh you.

10. Integrate More Reflection and Introspection into Your Lifestyle: As leaders, how often do we take time to reflect? In spite of the fact that we are the strategic thinkers behind our organizations, how often do we really step back to rethink ourselves, our lives, and our organizations? On this subject, Larry Perlman, former Chairman and CEO of Ceridian, explained,

“I would rather have a senior executive go on a weekend of personal reflection than go to another leadership seminar. Leadership is not about learning theory. It’s about finding out how you are going to bring yourself into your work and into your life to make a contribution.”

If we aspire to do more, then we must be more. Taking time to reflect—taking time to be—is crucial to leaders. It is the still point that everything else revolves around. The more dynamic and effective we want to be in our outer life, the more still and composed we need to be within. The more dynamic the system in nature, the more silent the interior. The eye of the hurricane is silent and still—the center of all the energy.

The ancient Bhagavad-Gita captures the essence of resilience: “Established in Being, perform service.” This is what real balance and real purpose are all about. Consider integrating meditation, reflection, prayer, reading, writing, music, nature, and any other process that brings energy to your dynamic life.