Now, I am sure that most of you reading the title of this post immediately go to a memory of a time when you went too far, pushed too hard, ignored your personal or emotional health to get something done. Am I right? And, continuing with that same memory, you realize in the perfection of hindsight that you achieved diminishing returns. Also true? Well, that is close but not exactly where I am going with this.

‘Knowing’ here is the key word. The apperception that for a long time, maybe even years, you have been operating under some false or hidden assumption about yourself and others. And, this false assumption has forced you into patterns of behavior that cycle you through pain and relief with consistent regularity. This is what I am referring to in the title; Knowing when to quit this behavior. It requires self awareness and is often undiscovered until the time for it to be discovered arises. But, when it does; when this inward knowing occurs, acknowledge it and move on. Do not miss the opportunity to quit old behavior that may have served you in the past but has lost its usefulness.

Let me offer you a personal example. In working with executives, I often use an assessment tool called The Leadership Circle (TLC). In my opinion, this is the most advanced leadership assessment available which clearly highlights what is working, what isn’t and where the opportunities lie. In the category of what isn’t working, the tool reflects back to the executive those reactive tendencies that have strengths or gifts associated with them but with liability. For example, being driven is a requirement for getting things done. However, when the driven moves into overdrive, there is often unintended and unforeseen collateral damage. While using the TLC with a client, I saw a significant pattern of reactive behavior that I thought would crush the executive. The pattern was so strongly compliant and at odds with the clients self perception, I became very concerned about revealing this for fear that it might be too much. I felt a significant pain internally when I thought of the conversation to follow. I wondered if he could handle it. In preparation for the conversation, I spoke with a fellow consultant about my concerns. She asked me a simple question. “Whose pain is this?” In that moment, a light went off inside me. The hesitancy wasn’t about the client’s pain. It was about my own pain; my own fear of being uncovered as not who I thought I was or who I presented myself to be. The upsurge of felt pain moved me into a reactive, protective position. This protective tendency has served me in the past but is no longer appropriate. Bam! In a flash, I got that I was getting in the way of the process. I was allowing my old, learned patterns of behavior to color the conversation with the client. Who am I to judge the others possible reaction. As the consultant, I am there to facilitate, support and hold a safe place. For me, this was a ‘Knowing When To Quit’ moment. And it has freed me to be much more intuitive, effective and courageous. So, what is your ‘Knowing When To Quit’ moment? What are you holding that you can throw away? Become aware of this and you will absolutely experience greater enjoyment, achievement and freedom.

Have you ever noticed that your are really attached to something, an attachment that drives you? Attachments to a job title, an ideal relationship, a particular way of doing things? And have you also noticed that this attachment appears to move you into greater dissatisfaction and frustration when it doesn’t turn out as you expected. Well, welcome to the world of identification where the ego overpowers the felt sense that something isn’t quite right. Yet, you continue to pursue it. Isn’t this the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over with the expectation of a different result.

If you could somehow let go of this attachment or identification, how much more space would you have to move in. Let me give you an example. One of my clients is a brilliant technical visionary who had a strong desire to be the CEO of his own firm or another. This desire was so strong that it overshadowed his obvious distaste for managing people, a prerequisite for a CEO. Yet, he continued to pursue this desire at a significant cost to his physical well being, family life and work enjoyment. It is now becoming evident to him that maybe he is better suited to a role of visionary backed by another who enjoys managing. He sees how his ego attachment is holding him to standards of behavior that are unnatural to him and ultimately holding him back. As he recognizes this, there appears to him a felt sense of freedom, of a greater space to move in by living more in his strengths and less in this illusory desire superimposed by his ego and reinforced by external conventions. The movement towards visionary work frees him to enjoy and, most importantly for the business, be more effective and creative.

In this example, the ego has attached or identified itself with an illusory concept (the role of CEO) intent on creating itself as somehow more unique and powerful than others. In so doing, the natural gifts endowed to this person are subdued or ignored.

If you seek to be more effective, influential and powerful, learn to give yourself a simple litmus test. Does the considered action or desire feel right or is there some pain or feeling of contraction around it. If the intuitive sense is it feels right, go for it. You’ll find you are moving in a bigger sense of freedom and space. If there is some contraction, then it is safe to say that there may be an ego attachment that could cloud or diminish the results or achievement. Examine this. Ask yourself, “Who am I trying to be?” Don’t try to answer the question. Just see what arises from it. You may be surprised at what emerges or falls away.

This is not to say that one should not aspire to great heights or achievements. It suggests that you listen to the quiet voice inside that is a truer measure of how you best fit in the corporate story. Trusting our intuitive sense allows you to hold a bigger space for yourself, your peers and business associates, friends and family. It ultimately ensures your internal satisfaction and success regardless of outcomes. Being present to your naturally occurring strengths effortlessly holds you to the highest of standards.

Managing with developing awareness is the topic of Bob’s last post. In that post he speaks of the arising nature of vision in an executive’s management path. Ultimately Bob surmises that vision is the essence that arises conjointly with the management exercise at hand. The mature executive simply selects the correct seat assignment and let’s the vision unfold. His individual role is simply to be the symbol that his team can follow. So when defined in words, vision is simply a encapsulation on the part of the executive for those who surround him.

Now, ask yourself how likely is it that you share all the opinions with your best friends. Not likely, yet there is a bond that unites you as friends. This bond is felt yet unexpressed. It is a sense, an alignment, a unspoken energy that exists midst agreements, disagreements, diners together, etc. It is this energy that brings you together and just shows up with no doing on your part. Quantum Physics observes that we do not exist in isolation, that there are intricate, intersecting fields of energy. When we walk into a room, we feel the nature and quality of those who came before us. If there has been an argument, you feel tension. If there has been a celebration, you may feel up or joy. We walk in energy fields. When there is resonance, there is a sense of sharing. So, although we can not expect our business peers to feel exactly as we do, we can set forth a platform for them to find there own resonance. In so doing, we facilitate a connectedness with this energetic field. The fields just show up. We become aware of it through the concepts of Vision. When the concepts resonate with us personally, we can say that we share a vision. So, it is very important for the leader to share their vision. Not as a means to force compliance but as a setting up of a field for each team member to find some personal resonance that supports the whole.

There is an accepted wisdom in business that a clear Vision is a prerequisite to achieving great results.  It is further proposed that vision with a purpose and/or mission and a set of core values creates a kind of Meta guiding principle for all strategy and action. Intuitively, it makes sense that if one has a clear sense of where they are going and what they want to achieve, they are more likely to get there. But, how does Vision arise? What is less clear is if Vision is a contrived act or an awareness of a preexisting condition. Is Vision the expression of an executive’s personal agenda or is it a spontaneous reflection of that executive’s primal make up designed to move in a particular way. Is Vision only the individual’s identity or the reflection of something more powerful that all can tap into? How is it that some are able to communicate this Vision as a living, breathing reality versus just a bunch of concepts and words cleverly strung together with no real resonance for the team.

To answer these questions, it is helpful to reconsider our conversation about being present. The true visionary acts spontaneously on a self arising vision from within. In plain terms, the executive shows up as they are without much thought about it. They may say that they have thought about, developed and tweaked their Vision. But in truth, the concept has just been massaged. The Vision itself predated the details of it. Physics tells us that the impulses of thought occur in advance of the quality and content assigned to them. So, the impulse arises in the executive who then identifies it by giving it depth, color and context. It could be said they are present to an arising from within that is translated into a Vision.

There was a great businessman, Ramesh Balsekar, the former head of the Bank of India, who was also a great philosopher. He looked deeply into the mind of the executive and discovered two aspects of the mind: The Working Mind and the Thinking Mind. The working mind is the aspect of mind that works automatically without thoughts. It is the mind that operates the physiology, manages all the neural networks, generates the impulses of action and creativity. The Thinking Mind is effectively the ego which identifies and personalizes as everything being self generated. “I did this.” “I did that.” One might say that the Working Mind is grounded in the natural impulses managing the creation. The Thinking Mind is grounded in a much smaller resource, the personal ego.  So, when a Vision arises, its power will be directly proportionate to the generative base; power of nature or limited power of ego. A powerful vision is expressed best when the executive allows it to arise naturally and uses the discerning capabilities of intellect to carry out the Vision. The Vision is diminished by the degree that ego identifies it as its own.

If the power of a Vision is best expressed as a naturally arising impulse, then by extension, adoption and buy in of a Vision by a team must allow for what ever is in each team member to arise. I would argue that real Vision is not something to create but more something to recognize is already present. The Vision may be clearly reflected in the top executive, but it is not the property of that executive. It emanates from a more universal basis that each team member can tap into for themselves through their own personal vision that is ever present with in them. When the team identifies with the Vision in this way, it is alive and becomes a true navigator for action and achievement.

Haven’t we all had the experience of doing our daily management chores as though we weren’t making one decision. It’s as though we are dancing and knew all the steps. The famous dancer Nijinsky once proclaimed that he danced best when “he wasn’t there”. What possibly could he mean? When it comes to the ripening of action in humans it is apparent actions over time simply can match up to the issue at hand faster than the mind can process. When this begins to happen we could say that the manager is being ‘lived ‘ rather than living/thinking his way through any situation. When we see this from afar we praise such action as intuitive and consider such a manager as superlative. When we see the same action as a result of thinking first we experience it as uneven and even turbulent. The question soon asks itself, “Can the intuitive be cultivated”

Sometimes it feels like one is the actor in some kind of divine comedy where you realize that no matter what you do or think, the director is always one step ahead misdirecting you into unforeseeable outcomes. You think and act the same way as usual but through no fault of your own, it just doesn’t work. Here is an example. This past week started out as any other week might. My wife, who works in the afternoon and evenings, scheduled time to get her license renewed at the DMV (That’s Department of Motor Vehicles for those lucky enough not to know). As anyone who has ever gotten a drivers license or registered a car knows, DMV equals hours of waiting time. So, early Monday morning, she goes off to the DMV only to discover that they are no longer open on Mondays. Slight set back. On Tuesday, she goes again. After waiting an hour and a half, she was still two hours away before her turn and had to leave for work. Amid protestations that she was tired, not getting enough sleep and generally annoyed with me just for being there, she planned to try again on Wednesday morning. Come 6 AM Wednesday morning, I have a major allergy attack and she has to drive me to the ER so scratch Wed. And to add insult to injury, our hot water heater died. Now, it’s Thursday morning, still no hot water, and I get a call from her. All the DMV computers are down so she’ll have to wait until Monday because they are closed on Friday as well. Thank you CA budget deficit. Oh, the hot water heater; it took until Saturday to fix.

This whole scenario got me thinking. That is after my wife settled down and began to laugh about it. How often in our business lives do we experience sudden unexpected set backs or interruptions that take us off plan. No matter how well we structure our plans, budgets, strategies, things happen. Life is lived in the moment and we really have no control over the final outcome. All we can do is be present to what is and make the best of it. I find that this tends to take the edge off all the deliverable and deadlines. Business is an active, dynamic and organic environment that at times has a life of its own. If we identify solely with the outcome, we are doomed. If we can identify with the present moment, we empower ourselves to make the very best of every situation. Sometimes everything goes according to plan. Other times nothing does. This is just the nature of business. As a leader, how we hold ourselves in the midst of chaos and unexpected events says much more about us than when things are going well.

Being Present here again arises as a key component to effective leadership. Hot water or not, we show up every day with the best intentions and manage to the current conditions.

Lifting the veil of one’s self generated limitations through greater awareness and self inquiry must pave the way for clearer vision and greater leadership effectiveness. One thing has been statistically verified; there is a direct, positive correlation between leadership effectiveness and profitability. In a study by Zenger and Folkman, poor leaders lost money for the company. Good leaders were profitable and great leaders doubled the profits of good leaders. So, there is a profit incentive as well as personal incentive to be more effective.

If one accepts the premise, as I do, that awareness is the key to leadership effectiveness; that greater awareness transforms oneself, one’s environment and one’s leadership, how do we become more aware; see within both the creative strengths and self limiting tendencies? How do we move from the painful need to be noticed to the ease of just being present with life as it presents itself? The answer is remarkably simple: Be Present. To the degree we are present to what presents itself, we inhibit these limitations and free our creativity and effectiveness. Being present means being 100% with what is right in front of you without attachment to stories about past or future. If you are truly present, nothing will distract you. You stay calm in the midst of apparent chaos. You are centered and optimally effective.

I am reminded of a favorite quote mentioned in a previous post which of all places comes from the movie Kung Fu Panda.

“The past is a history; the future is a mystery; and now is a gift. That is why they call it the Present.”

How we become present; how we tap our inner store of awareness is fodder for future conversation.

Most managers and entrepreneurs spend the first and largest segment of their career learning how to do the basics. The next phase is to learn how to manage by both doing less at the right time and doing nothing at all. What is the driver from the ‘I do it all, all the time’ stage and the ‘I know when to apply some or none’ stage. I would maintain that the main driver is awareness.

The leadership challenge today, as it has always been, is how to lead effectively producing the desired ROI. What has changed is how to be effective in a constantly changing and unstable corporate and financial climate. The famous line from Wall Street, “Greed is Good”, is Gone. And thank God for that! The public and private tolerance of greedy executives receiving inordinate salaries under the guise of delivering stock holder equity and profits is crashing against a wave of deceit, lies, manipulations, abuse and questionable tactics. The public trust has been mishandled and mistreated. And, no one is really to blame. The system was solely focused on producing results. The executives did what they were trained to do. The public, albeit naively, accepted this. And the government was powerless to make any changes as the system that produced corporate profits was the same system that kept the politicians in office. This is not to say that there are not great leaders and companies doing well and contributing to the society at large. But, the overall system has been imbalanced leaving the economy to stumble as it did so drastically last fall.

The only way for the system to change is for external conditions to force internal change. We see growing, real concerns about the environment, about universal health care, about public trust, about a stable economy, about properly education our youth, and so on. These prevailing concerns are only going to grow in importance and impact. If managers are to lead effectively, they must give greater weight to the rapid changes in the cultural ecosystem. They can’t just go along with business as usual. It is no longer just about the bottom line, but also how we get there. Witness Walmart. So often heralded as the destroyer of local, small business. Now, they are taking the lead in propagating green business practices. Somewhere they got the message that they had to Be different in the way they operated. They may not like it but clearly they realize the benefits.

So, when the status quo no longer suffices, what does a leader do? The first thing is take time to assess themselves. Investigate what they are about. What is their vision? What is their passion? How does that get expressed? What are the patterns of behavior that get in the way of effective leadership? A dose of self inquiry can go a long way in revitalizing one’s energy and inspiring one’s team. Then, require the top management to engage in their own self inquiry. As a team, recognize that they no longer have the luxury of just delivering a result. They must begin to consider the greater good produced by their product or service. What is the environmental impact? What is the cultural impact? How do we serve our employees and clients in the highest possible way? What do we need to do differently to continue to achieve our objectives and be a good corporate citizen?

The job of the leader is to inspire, motivate,  implement and create sustainable results. This has not changed. What is emerging is a requirement to fulfill this role in tune with the prevailing winds of change; To embrace more life affirming methods that serve the company and the public in a positive and productive manner.