Welcome to the Sunday edition of my newsletter - ideas, mindsets, and technology to innovate your best self and unlock high performance - master yourself and a craft you love to earn rewards most vital to you.
🚀 This newsletter disseminates learnings from my experiences and work as a coach to help people reach higher performance levels and quality of life at work and beyond.
🎧 Use the Substack app to listen to the audio version of this newsletter.
🌟 I hope you find one nugget to practice this coming week.
✍️ Share your comments at the bottom of this post.
🚀 Daily Coaching From Your Personal Board of Directors
Mentors and coaches are essential to professional and personal growth. A “personal board of directors” is a well-known concept popularized by Jim Collins in the early 80s. The personal board is a group of people who can help you achieve your goals and grow by adopting their values, character and skills. A personal BOD can include relationships we interact with occasionally, such as mentors, colleagues, and family members. Still, extending it to your heroes or world-class performers in their field can become even more powerful.
I was recently reminded of this concept in the book Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish.
“You’re never alone if you have a personal board of directors. They’re always there. You can imagine them watching you make decisions and power moves. And on once you image them watching, your behavior is bound to reflect this new audience. They will help set standards that you strive to live up to, and give you a rule against which to measure yourself.”
“If you imagine your exemplars watching you, you’d then to do all things you know they’d want you to do and avoid the things you know would get in the way.”
Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish (page 86)
Here is how I used this concept to get coaching at least two times a day from my board. I used Canva to create a full-screen background image for my desk monitor with photos of each board member. I selected them for something specific I admire and seek to emulate. Each morning, when I log on to my computer, there is my personal board to greet me. I look each of them in the eye and consider how to leverage that emotional connection during the day. Some hold me accountable while others challenge me to achieve their level of skill, character, or behavior. At the end work day when I close the shop, I again check in with personal board. I have found this daily ritual a powerful and easy way to accelerate personal growth toward an identity I am seeking to grow.
Here are a few questions to consider when designing your personal board:
Who would you not want to let down?
Who will hold you to a high character?
Who exemplifies the skill, mindset, or style you want to cultivate?
Read more from Jim Collins on crafting a personal board of directors: Looking Out for Number One by Jim Collins ↗
Who is on your personal board of directors?
What visual cues can you create each day to receive their coaching?
🎾 Deliver Feedback from Your Side of the Net
Healthy relationships are essential in the workplace and personal lives, but conflict is inevitable. How we handle that conflict or don’t can dramatically influence the quality of our lives. The challenge is that many of us were never taught how to give feedback that leads to positive mutual outcomes. Early in my career, I was fortunate to work at Microsoft for ten years, and it was a culture that valued feedback to deliver business outcomes and professional growth. I got much practice giving and receiving feedback as a leader and colleague.
This week, I am reading Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends, and Colleagues, a book I bought exactly a year ago. I decided to make it a priority to learn how to better cultivate relationships in 2024. One concept I loved from Chapter 7 was the feedback model and “stay on your side of the net.” The authors explain that three realities exist when two people interact:
The first reality is a person’s intent of what he or she knows - needs, motives, emotions, and intentions
The second reality is a person’s behavior that both people see (words, tone, gestures, facial expressions, etc.)
The third reality is the impact a person’s behavior has on the other person. This is only known to the person on the receiving end.
The key point is that each person can only know two of the three realities. The authors position a tennis net as a metaphor for staying on your side of the net by focusing on the behavior and impact on you, not making statements about the other person’s motive.
How will you refine your feedback approach using the model to increase the likelihood for mutual benefit and deeping a relationship?
👤 Practice Extreme Ownership
Over the holidays, I read Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. As a leader and coach developing leadership skills in others, I related to the principle of “Extreme Ownership” and its examples through the book. It’s a simple idea but takes discipline to practice. These are excerpts from the book that describe extreme ownership:
“On any team, in any organization, all responsibility for success and failure rests on the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame. The leader must acknowledge mistakes and admit failures, take ownership of them, and develop a plan to win.”
“The best leaders don’t just take responsibility for their job. They take Extreme Ownership of everything that impacts their mission.”
“When subordinates aren’t doing what they should, leaders that exercise Extreme Ownership cannot blame the subordinates. They must first look in the mirror at themselves. The leader bears full responsibility for explaining the strategic mission, developing the tactics, and securing the training and resources to enable the team to properly and successfully execute.”
“Extreme Ownership requires leaders to look an organization’s problems through the objective lens of reality, with emotional attachments to agendas or plans. It mandates that leaders set ego aside, accept responsibility for failures, attack weaknesses, and consistently work to build a better and more effective team.”
“The best-performing SEAL units had leaders who accepted responsibility for everything.”
“At the heart of Extreme Ownership: there are no bad teams, only bad leaders.”
How will you lead your team with Extreme Ownership?
What will your change to live Extreme Onwership daily?
👀 Thanks for reading, and I would love your help sharing my work with others!
I look forward to learning from your perspectives and unique experiences in the comments section. Good luck for a prosperous and healthy 2024!
- James