As Holly Ransom explains, you’re not ready to lead others if you’re not ready to lead yourself, but help is at hand.
Yes, they’re all respected American figures and leaders in their field, but there’s something else that sets them apart.
“The most overwhelming thing when you meet these people, when you ask them questions and you start to get an understanding of them, is that they’ve worked on themselves first and they continue to do the work on themselves,” said renowned author of The Leading Edge, Holly Ransom, who has interviewed them all.
She continued: “You can’t actually lead others until you can lead yourself, and you can’t sustain your venture with others unless you’re continuing to challenge the way that you’re leading yourself.”
Ransom was speaking at the Leaders Sport Performance Summit in Melbourne in February where she identified the reason why the Obama approach is easier said than done.
“One thing that’s quite striking is we’re very good at doing the knowing, absorbing, the taking in – and we’re saturated by it. We get constant pings on our phone, we’ve got emails coming in at all hours, we subscribe to all these sorts of channels, people [are] sending us the latest research. Very rarely do we actually pause to go ‘what might that mean for me?’ ‘I’ve just read that really interesting article. What am I going to do with it?’”
It has led, she said, to a gap between leaders’ awareness and application. “Most of us know that there are elements that we could change, that we might want to challenge [but] there’s often a gap with the ‘doing’.”
To underline the point she asked the Leaders Performance Institute members in attendance to join small groups to discuss a time when they changed an opinion or belief in the last 12 months. Most found it difficult to identify an example and one even said the exercise felt “weird”.
Yet here was a room of people whose roles are rooted in leading change (from processes to performance) inadvertently admitting how difficult it is for them to adapt themselves.
For Ransom, who also serves as a Director of Port Adelaide Football Club, the solution lies in establishing good habits. She encouraged the audience to ask themselves: “are my habits still serving me? Are they serving my life? Are they serving my leadership?”
Even if the answer is ‘no’, there are still steps that all leaders can take to re-establish healthy habits.
Manage your energy, not your time
One potential consequence of failing to take care of oneself is burnout, with Ransom revealing that Australia and New Zealand have some of the highest rates of burnout in the world.
She challenged the notion of life as a ‘marathon’ or, if it is, then “it’s a marathon of F45s”. “I think we need to change the way that we’re thinking,” she said. “We need to challenge ourselves to be thinking about managing energy and not thinking about managing time.”
Ransom raised another famous aphorism, that we have the same amount of hours as high achievers such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Pablo Picasso or Thomas Edison and therefore others should be capable of similar feats in their own field. “I think the modern version is that we’ve got as many hours as Beyoncé.”
But it doesn’t work like that. As Ransom pointed out, there is a body of research that revealed that the major difference in sports between the world No 1, No 15 and N 105 was not time spent in the gym or in training (that was roughly equal across the board). Instead, “what was really different was how they manage their energy and specifically how they manage their energy to peak at key performance moments”.
Perform an ‘energy audit’
Ransom suggested that everyone in the room conduct a personal ‘energy audit’, which she rooted in three questions:
Ransom believes people should tackle their most important tasks when their energy is at its highest so that they “get the return on energy they deserve”.
She said: “What can you block that out for? What should that be allocated for? Even experimenting with that alone can fundamentally help you change your results and outcomes.” It provides the basis for good habits, whether you’re a morning person or a night owl (most people in the room were morning people).
On the flip side, numerous people (particularly men) report that their lowest energy levels are between 8am and 10am on Monday, which is often when organisations hold team meetings.
“It doesn’t mean you change it, but it does mean that maybe that time can best be used to manage energy,” she added. “The most powerful thing that you could actually do for that group of people that you lead is think about how we influence that energy in that moment so we don’t get the contagion of that negative energy running through more of the day or more of the week.”
With a little help from your friends
If you can self-reflect with help from your peers, all the better. “One of the things I’ve noticed is that people who do this well have certain people in their corner or in their ‘personal cabinet’,” said Ransom, who then outlined ‘four Ss’ for consideration:
What protects your energy during the day?
Ransom asked the room to think of things that make them happy, that add value to their life. Whatever the answer for each individual, life invariably prevents people doing those things, particularly in high performance where up regulation is usually the order of the day.
“What I’m saying and challenging around this is do not let ‘perfect’ be the end of the world,” she said, explaining that finding three minutes to deregulate is better than holding on for half an hour.
Instead, she recommended “microbreaks” throughout the day. Her idea was that you may not have time to dance or sing along to your favourite song (if such an idea makes you happy or lowers your heartrate), but you can incorporate desired elements into your day.
“What’s the version, the smallest edible snackable version of the thing that you know will add value to your life?” This can be incorporated into your morning coffee or on your way to grab your lunch.
“It’s an easy way of bringing it into the routine and the rhythm of your life.”
‘Chief role model’
Ransom encouraged Leaders Performance Institute members to view themselves as a ‘chief role model’ for their team. As a starting point, she asked everyone to consider one thing they could try doing for the first time – something that it would be good for people to see from their leaders.
She cited examples that leaders often raise: “‘I’ve not been great at practising self-care. I could do with being a little bit more deliberate about showing that to my team’” and “‘I’m not really good at asking for feedback I could do with getting more critical feedback and having a challenger in my network’.”
It is critical to keep doing the things of which you are proud; the things that you role model well because “you know it makes a difference to the environment you’re in [and] it makes a difference to you”.
