CHAPTER EIGHT
The Life Leadership Dashboard
Mae Owens of Winter Park, Florida, a suburb of Orlando, woke up to her worst nightmare. What she described as “a strange swishing noise” and then a “ploop,” Mrs. Owens watched from her window as a sycamore tree in the lot next to her house plummeted into the earth. Then went her yard, her driveway, and five cars—one of them a brand new Porsche 928—all like the sycamore tree, straight into the ground.
Not knowing what else to do, Mae Owens called the police. Imagine being on the other end of that call, “No, officer, my car wasn’t stolen. It disappeared!”
All officials could do is cordon off the area as hundreds of sightseers came to watch this void in the earth grow to 340 feet across and 100 feet deep. Ultimately it swallowed Mae Owens’s house, half of a six-lane highway, the municipal swimming pool across the street, and three local businesses.
Geologists refer to this phenomenon as a sinkhole. Sinkholes develop in times of drought, as underground caverns, usually full of groundwater, are drained dry. What are left are dangerous gaps in the earth’s ability to support anything that is aboveground. When the weight of roads, buildings, and businesses press down, the earth literally caves in. As urban sprawl makes its way through Florida and other densely populated states, sinkholes are becoming a common occurrence.
Leaders can be caught in the collapse of a sinkhole as well. When responsibility grows in our external world, the groundwater of our internal world can dry up. If nothing is done to fill this void below the surface, collapse is inevitable. A leadership sinkhole shows itself with nagging health problems, painful relationship breakdowns, a torrid affair, or long periods of unexplained ineffectiveness. All of these occur, as with physical sinkholes, at great cost to both individuals and organizations.
A BUSINESS CASE FOR LIFE AND LEADERSHIP
In their insightful book, Resonant Leadership, emotional intelligence researchers Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee refer to this as the Sacrifice Syndrome. Leaders face stress of all kinds in their external world: the responsibility of their position; the press of people problems; crises, both large and small, that occur every day. Like the heat of the desert sun, the intensity of these demands can drain our soul.
“But we are leaders!” we tell ourselves when we feel empty inside. Leaders don’t give up easily. Leaders work hard at what they do. So we throw ourselves into our work even more, like developers who keep building in dangerous terrain. After all, leaders sacrifice to get things done!
“Paradoxically, it is our effectiveness that contributes to the Sacrifice Syndrome,” Resonant Leadership explains. “It goes like this: In the process of giving of ourselves, we give too much, leading us to ultimately become ineffective. Over time and unchecked, the physical and emotional toll limits our ability to sustain high performance.” (Boyatzis and McKee, 2005, page 41)
Are you giving too much as a leader? In other words, has the structure of your external world risen to such an extent that the resources of your internal world are being drained dry? If that is the case, it is just a matter of time before a collapse occurs. Just like a sinkhole, when your groundwater dries up, there is not enough strength inside of you to support pressing demands. Here are 10 questions to ask yourself as a leader:
1. Do you have trouble falling asleep at night or wake up wide awake in the middle of the night?
2. Do you no longer talk about your problems, or anything of significance, with your spouse?
3. Do you feel that no one understands how much work you have to do, or even cares?
4. Are you working harder than ever but getting poorer results?
5. Do you have less time to do things you really enjoy? Or do you never do them any more?
6. Do you react to events with numbness? Or with over-the-top emotion?
7. Do you drink way more than you used to? Take painkillers, sleeping pills, or antacids way more than you used to?
8. Did your last truly creative idea occur years ago and you can’t remember what it was?
9. Do you no longer go to church or a place of worship for quiet meditation?
10. Do you fantasize about what it would take to escape the life you’re in?
How many yeses did you give to these questions? If more than three or four, you may be slipping into a sinkhole. What is the solution? The solution is to understand the demands that leadership places on us and instead of shrinking from them, seeking to replenish the resources of our internal world to meet those demands. As responsibilities grow in our external world, we must be attentive to the way those responsibilities affect us below the surface, within our soul. Through the regular practice of personal renewal we can avoid the tragedy of physical or emotional collapse.
“Sustainable, effective leadership occurs only when the experiences of the sacrifice and stress of leadership are interchanged with those of renewal,” advises Resonant Leadership. “Turning renewal into a habit or way of life usually means waking up to the realities of our current life and deliberately engaging in intentional change and personal transformation.” (Boyatzis and McKee, 2005, page 63)
The benefits of this approach to life and leadership are huge. Not only does a person avoid the destruction of a sinkhole, she also dramatically increases her performance and productivity. Just like the dashboard of your car, whose gauges can tell you the state of your engine, they can also do much more than that. They give you valuable information on how to operate your car to its greatest potential. That is where this tool finds its greatest impact.
This is the point of Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz’s book The Power of Full Engagement. There is power in engagement, full engagement with all aspects of our lives. This engagement, like gas in our tank, drives us to great performance. Here’s how they put it: “Our first leadership challenge is to answer this question, ‘How should I spend my energy in a way that is consistent with my deepest values?’ The consequence of living our lives at warp speed is that we rarely take the time to reflect on what we value most deeply or to keep these priorities front and center. . . . Connecting to a deep set of values and creating a compelling vision fuels a uniquely high-octane source of energy for change.” (Loehr and Schwartz, 2003, pages 15, 16)
Here is the bottom line for your organization: When you address the needs of both life and leadership with your people, you will have better leaders because your leaders are better people. You will also have better business results because, at the end of the day, business is driven by people. And better people drive better business results. As Wall Street tires of merely a few good quarters of financial returns, better people also deliver long-term results because their leadership success is sustained for years, even decades at a time, unaffected by the damage of sinkholes, and fueled by the power of full engagement.
BUSINESS COACHING TOOL: THE LIFE LEADERSHIP DASHBOARD
The first step of recovery from the Sacrifice Syndrome is understanding exactly how you are related to it. Dr. Doug McKinley has developed a powerful coaching tool to help you and your clients do just that. Dr. McKinley began working with entrepreneurs and executives as a professional coach in 2000. As a psychologist, he founded McKinley Consulting Group because he wanted to work in the field of leadership development with an emphasis on corporate wellness. In 2003, he expanded McKinley Consulting Group by inviting other coaches and leadership consultants to join him in pursuing corporate wellness and leadership development opportunities. Doug and his associates use the Life Leadership Dashboard as part of a two-day, one-on-one Leadership DNA Retreat. The dashboard is both simple and profound. It overviews a client’s completion of five life tasks and asks five probing questions related to each of the five tasks.
FIVE LIFE TASKS
Renowned psychologist Alfred Adler identified five life tasks that all human beings seek to accomplish; that is, five areas hard-wired in our soul, critical to our feeling a complete sense of satisfaction and fulfillment. Some of these tasks exist in our internal world below the surface, and some of these tasks exist in our external world above the surface. Like a car firing on fewer than all of its cylinders, most of us function well in only one or two of these tasks. Sustained success, however, requires that we maximize our performance in all five of these areas. This is truly the role of a dashboard, to give us readings on our performance in critical areas related to the trip. Here are the five life tasks:
1. The Work Task.
Human beings have an intense desire to make a contribution to the world through what they do. This work task is the effort we make to discover our individual contribution and to use our unique gifts, talents, and abilities. The work task experiences its greatest fulfillment when we are able to use our unique ability to make a living. This task usually consumes the greatest amount of time in our life, but not always. It is often the place where we receive the greatest amount of recognition and reward.
2. The Love Task.
The love task is our desire to couple with another person. This desire for a significant, exclusive relationship is almost insatiable and drives us to seek intimacy and love with another human being. Regardless of the difficulties of marriage, we tend to throw ourselves into this task so that we may feel loved in a personal way. Without having success in this area of our life, we will experience a deep void.
3. The Social Task.
In addition to seeking love from a spouse, we also yearn for a sense of belonging with the people around us. The social task is our collective desire for connectedness that is only fulfilled through a network of family and friends. Despite occasional times of isolation, human beings need meaningful affiliation with others and become dysfunctional without it. We are socially embedded creatures wired to experience community.
4. The Self Task.
This task reflects the quest we have to know and care for ourselves. All aspects of personal and professional development that are important to us are encompassed in this task. This includes physical fitness, intellectual learning, outdoor recreation, and individual hobbies. The relationship we have with ourselves is as important as any other relationship we have. To enjoy a strong, satisfying life we must attend to this task in significant and meaningful ways.
5. The Spiritual Task.
This task reflects our inner awareness of a power greater than ourselves, and our connection to a deeper purpose and meaning in the world. Many people turn to religion to fulfill this task, some to social action, others to meditation. All qualify as pursuing our spiritual task. This task allows us not only to be successful in our work and relationships, but also to understand and make peace with our place in the universe.
FIVE QUESTIONS FOR EACH TASK
Having established each of the five life tasks, the Life Leadership Dashboard then asks five questions of each task for a total of 25 questions. Each of the five questions is exactly the same for each task, but may receive dramatically different responses. Here are the five questions:
QUESTION ONE: Convictions
What do you want more of in this life task? Or, what do you want less of? This question pulls at our innate desire for a better tomorrow. Each of us longs to improve in these areas in some way, or eliminate something that is inhibiting our growth. What is it? What is your vision for a preferred future in this life task?
QUESTION TWO: Capabilities
What does current reality in this area look like? What is going well, however small in size? What is your natural ability in completing a specific life task? What strengths do you bring to the table in this area? Uncovering these capabilities identifies the resources clients can leverage to affect change in a specific area.
QUESTION THREE: Constraints
What holds you back? What is getting in the way of your completing a life task? What has blocked you in the past and prevented you from making positive improvements in your life? This question is designed to identify the walls that get in the way of success and allows clients to design strategies to climb them. Working on a plan with clients without taking an honest look at obstacles that can get in the way of completing the plan does a great disservice to them. That is why the constraint question exists.
QUESTION FOUR: Community
Who is going to help you get things done in each of your life tasks? This is a critically important question. No sustained change occurs outside of relationship. It is the context of relationship—a coach, a counselor, a friend, a spouse—that provides the support and accountability needed for increased performance. Who is going to help you achieve your goals, especially when they get hard to do? How will they help you do that?
QUESTION FIVE: Conduct
What are the specific steps of action you will take to sustain change in this area of your life? This question realizes that all goals need habits—specific, repeated actions done without exception—to support them. Answering the conduct question identifies the specific behaviors that will lead to desired change.
These five questions and the five life tasks intersect in the following dashboard example:
The Life Leadership DASHBOARD
| THE WORK TASK | |
|---|---|
| Convictions | I want to be able to sell my business and do freelance work. |
| What is your preferred future? | |
| Capabilities | I have a high-value, current bid from a potential buyer. |
| What is your current reality? | |
| Constraints | It’s hard to let go of 30 years of my own blood, sweat, and tears. |
| What is holding you back? | |
| Community | My coach and a friend from college. |
| Who can help you? | |
| Conduct | Start the negotiation process ASAP. |
| What are your steps of action? | |
| THE LOVE TASK | |
| Convictions | I need to address issues in my marriage. I desire more intimacy in this relationship. |
| What is your preferred future? | |
| Capabilities | We have 27 years together and lots of history. |
| What is your current reality? | |
| Constraints | It seems that both of us have given up and don’t have romantic feelings for each other any more. |
| What is holding you back? | |
| Community | A good marriage counselor. |
| Who can help you? | |
| Conduct | Start marriage counseling and talk with my wife about my concerns. |
| What are your steps of action? | |
| THE SOCIAL TASK | |
| Convictions | I want to spend more time with my current friends and develop one close, deep friendship. |
| What is your preferred future? | |
| Capabilities | I know a lot of people, so I have lots of options. |
| What is your current reality? | |
| Constraints | I don’t really know how to get close to people, especially other guys. |
| What is holding you back? | |
| Community | Not sure. Maybe Tom L. |
| Who can help you? | |
| Conduct | Call Tom L. and spend some time together. |
| What are your steps of action? | |
| THE SELF TASK | |
| Convictions | I want to be more self-aware, less judgmental of myself, and take better care of my body. |
| What is your preferred future? | |
| Capabilities | I don’t have much to build on here. I am basically starting from scratch. |
| What is your current reality? | |
| Constraints | Self-awareness has never been something I do well! |
| What is holding you back? | |
| Community | Use a personal trainer at my athletic club. |
| Who can help you? | |
| Conduct | Get a physical exam. Begin to work out. Get started on a better eating plan. |
| What are your steps of action? | |
| THE SPIRITUAL TASK | |
| Convictions | I have no idea. I seem to be void of any life purpose and would like to develop one. |
| What is your preferred future? | |
| Capabilities | Again, I have no idea and am at a loss about this. |
| What is your current reality? | |
| Constraints | I have not done this because I could never find the time. |
| What is holding you back? | |
| Community | My coach. |
| Who can help you? | |
| Conduct | Begin working with my coach on exploring themes for my life purpose. |
| What are your steps of action? | |
Looking over the entire dashboard you may be able to see repeated themes, or threads woven throughout the entire tapestry of a person’s life and leadership. What themes do you see above? A key coaching skill is finding these threads and pulling on them. But instead of someone’s life unraveling, just the opposite occurs. It gets better! In this way, by working on one or two key themes, you can affect every aspect of a person’s life.
BUSINESS IMPACT STORY: HOW THE LIFE LEADERSHIP DASHBOARD TRANSFORMED THE CAREER OF A DRIVEN EXECUTIVE
Dr. McKinley shares this story from his coaching practice:
John started coaching with me to explore opportunities to advance his career. He was the president of a company owned by a parent corporation that owned several other companies as well. He had a decade of success with this company and was restless for change. He hired me to do a Leadership DNA Retreat with him. He was extremely motivated to do this work and paid for the retreat out of his own pocket because he wasn’t sure his boss would approve dollars spent on “personal development.”
As we began our first day together, John was convinced he would be able to drive the process to a quick and effective conclusion and, frankly, “blow me away” with his impressive talent. To his surprise the process took another path. John had never sat with another person and discussed in depth the way he thought about life, work, and success. Early in the first day he began to notice he was tapping into a different kind of energy. As we moved through the day, John was making discoveries that were both encouraging and provocative. This does not always happen on the first day of a DNA retreat, but his life themes were like low-hanging fruit that someone just needed to pick and let him do the rest.
The real breakthrough, however, came on the second day when I introduced the Life Leadership Dashboard. Frankly, no one in his corporate experience had ever been interested in anything about his life outside of work. He had been very, very successful, yet his private life did not follow a similar trajectory. As we discussed the five life tasks, he began to realize how many personal resources he had neglected. It never occurred to him that his love and social task had anything to do with work performance. He had always been told to keep work life and personal life separate and followed that dictum completely. His real awakening occurred in our discussion of completing the self task and the spiritual task. John admitted that he was a fairly shallow person and, for the most part, lived to earn money and gain status. Although he knew nothing else, he was embarrassed to admit this to me.
We completed the Life Leadership Dashboard and designed action steps based on the five questions. In each task we addressed significant themes that would require intentional action. He committed to the process thoroughly. We did six months of follow-up coaching using the dashboard as the structure for our coaching agenda. The results were rapid and beyond his expectations. Here are just a few:
• John addressed explosive marital issues, sought counseling, and saved his marriage from imminent divorce to lifelong sustainability. This transformation came through very sacrificial work with both a therapist and his wife.
• John made significant changes in his leadership style at work. He began asking empathetic questions of his management team at least one time each week. Through this question-asking practice, he shifted from being a domineering leader to becoming a relational leader. This resulted in increased performance and higher levels of employee engagement.
• His boss, the owner of the parent corporation, recognized a change in John and initiated discussions about his leading another company within the organization. This company would serve as the flagship for all the others in the corporation. Within a year, John was promoted to this new role, moved across the country with his much-happier wife, and was earning significantly higher income.
• The transformation that encouraged me the most, however, was John’s personal outlook on himself and his future. He changed from being a cynical, authoritarian leader to an optimistic, relational leader. Don’t misunderstand me, he was still as tough-minded and determined as ever, but he was now able to relax and enjoy the human side of leadership as well. He became, as a result, a more confident leader and a more decent human being.
No tool makes a transformation like this happen. What is so great about the Life Leadership Dashboard, though, is that it provides a structure for all aspects of one’s life to be explored and gives clients the choice to live and lead in a more complete and satisfying way. At the end of the day, John did the hard work of change, but the dashboard got him headed in the right direction.
Doug McKinley, Psy.D. is the Founder and CEO of McKinley Consulting Group (www.mckinleygroup3.com) and Associates in Family Care, Ltd. (www.afc3.com), both located in Chicago, Illinois. Doug is Director of Corporate Coaching at The Institute for Life Coach Training.
Dr. McKinley and McKinley Consulting Group focus on healthcare leadership development. McKinley Consulting Group is a leadership consultancy that partners with hospitals and other healthcare organizations to leverage leadership capital into meaningful results using leadership consulting, executive coaching, and training programs. The advantage is in developing leadership teams from the inside out rather than transactional learning models.
TOP 10 WAYS TO USE THIS TOOL
1. It is important with any tool, but especially this one, to use it yourself before using it with anyone else. Take yourself on a one-day retreat or work with another coach to guide yourself through each of the life tasks and the five questions related to them. Set your steps of action and experience the “power of full engagement” in your life.
2. Consider implementing the methodology that Dr. McKinley uses with his clients as a way to initiate your coaching engagements: a one-on-one retreat. Instead of taking a few months to get to the heart of issues at hand, you will uncover them right at the start and begin immediately working on relevant goals. Better yet, hire Doug and experience the process yourself. At McKinley Consulting Group he has taken more than 100 leaders through a one-on-one Leadership DNA Retreat.
3. Consider using the Life Leadership Dashboard as an intake tool. Either in one extended session, or over the course of the first month of sessions, use the dashboard to conduct the Dialogue and Discovery Phase of the coaching flow cycle (See Chapter Eleven, “Using the 10 Tools”). Based on the answers given to the 25 questions, you can then set relevant objectives for the coaching engagement.
4. A great way to add more detail to the final question, Conduct: What are your steps of action?, is to use The SMART Goal Worksheet. (See Chapter Four, “Making Goals SMART”). This worksheet helps develop clarity on the measurable goal being pursued and the specific steps of action needed to achieve it. It also asks about possible obstacles and the solutions to overcoming those obstacles before they derail your progress. A client then would have five SMART goals they are working on, one for each area of his life.
5. The dashboard also works well in team settings, especially during a multiday retreat. As a coach, you can facilitate a small group of leaders processing these principles. Set the stage by developing the business case presented in this chapter and defining each of the five life tasks. Then ask the five questions for each life task, letting participants respond in writing for each task and sharing with team members their conclusions. Pair participants as peer coaches for follow-up to this retreat, having them hold each other accountable for goals set.
6. An overview of the five life tasks and questioning in one specific task makes for a great introduction to the process of coaching. Many coaches use a tool like this in giving a prospect a free coaching consultation. By presenting the five tasks, you get a chance to explain the philosophical foundation of your work; and by picking one task to ask the five questions, you get to demonstrate in a live setting the dynamics of coaching. Then ask, “What would it be worth to you to complete this work for every area of your life?” This is a powerful way to promote your coaching services!
7. The Weekly Planning Cycle in Chapter Three, “The One-Percent Solution” has a similar approach with specific application to daily living and strategic time management. The Weekly Planning Cycle could be adapted to fit the five life tasks of this chapter and be used as a follow-up tool to the Life Leadership Dashboard presented here.
8. For further research into life task theory, check out the work of Dr. Alfred Adler. Google “Alfred Adler life tasks” and you’ll find plenty of information. Early in his practice, he maintained that there were three life tasks—work, love, and social—but he later expanded the number to the five presented in this chapter, adding self and spiritual. A more popular treatment of the five-task theory can be found in the book Living the Life You Were Meant to Live by strategic planning consultant Tom Paterson.
9. As you can tell from the depth of this chapter, a coach could spend at least one month of coaching around each one of the life tasks, asking questions, probing, setting goals, and holding clients accountable for doing them. Or a coach could begin a coaching engagement with an intensive one-on-one retreat and provide six months of coaching follow-up. For most of us, this is a huge paradigm shift, but Tom Paterson has developed an entire coaching process around these life tasks centered on using this exact methodology. Check it out at www.summitlifestrategies.com.
10. A free online assessment you can use with your clients around the Self and Spiritual Task is available at www.lgeperformance.com. This 26-question questionnaire measures a person’s physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual energy at work and was written by the authors of The Power of Full Engagement mentioned earlier in this chapter. While not in perfect parallel with the five life tasks, it is a great tool to get discussion started around it and delivers results in a percentage format. A more complete printout and a 360-degree assessment on physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual engagement are also available for purchase.
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