Source: Daily Mail January 8, 2018

My sister says she isn’t a concert pianist, but what else do you call someone who plays expertly in front of hundreds of people? I don’t play the piano, but I do speak in front of hundreds of people. I know what I must do to prepare myself, and it is more than practicing the talk. I became curious about how she prepared herself for a concert. Did she practice the piece continuously until she walked out on stage or something else? When I asked her the question, she said that she begins with imagining the venue and the people in it and sets for herself an intention about how she wants them to feel as a result of her performance. Wow! That was a surprise. That’s exactly what I do when I get ready to speak — imagine the venue, think about the audience, and what my intentions are. So far, so good. When I asked her what she played to prepare in addition to the piece itself, her response was immediate. Scales! “I play them all the time,” she said. “In fact, I did them this morning just to keep up my chops.”

There it was. Whether you are a master performer or a subject matter expert or a professional , you practice the basics. Practice is never done. So, what do leaders do to keep up their chops?

Leadership is about forward movement

Source: DAXUSHEQU

has been defined as a journey in which the leader helps his or her staff achieve the leader’s goals. I find this definition limiting. While it’s important to achieve the business goals, it is important to help staff achieve their personal goals as well. When you can combine both — as I have been successfully doing for about 40 years — you have highly motivated staff. It takes much less effort to lead others when they are leading themselves, because they see that the business goals help them achieve their own goals. I won’t pretend that making that connection is easy. You have to spend time talking with staff about what they want for themselves. I have found that in virtually all staff, there is at least one personal goal that is perfectly consistent with business goals. (Okay, in 40 years there were two individuals where we couldn’t find a link.)

These conversations rarely get recorded in the formal evaluation or assessment processes of an organization. But they are real in the mind of the staff member or employee and the leader. First of all, I make that conversation one on one. This says that the conversation is important to me and worthy of their time and effort. There are never promises, rather there is a statement of commitment and intention to help. I know this works simply by observing the high performance of my units. I knew that helping someone obtain their goals was a form of leadership that allowed the staff member to motivate themselves. They became leaders of their performance. So, the idea of leaders helping staff achieve the leader’s goal is limiting. Combining both business and individual goals is much broader.

Recently, I came across a quotation from Leonard Bernstein who put words to this approach from a different perspective. “The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another inevitably…and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.” Thank you, Leonard Bernstein for offering such universality. The artist must lead his or her creative force. Employees may not be artists, but they have a creative force that can be tapped and harnessed for their own good, the good of the business, and perhaps even the world. This applies to the formal leader as well.

Leadership is a journey assuring forward movement. And the leader must be moving forward as well — constantly growing. That growth comes from pursuing new knowledge through exploring questions, and it comes from assuring you're grounded sufficiently to take risk without needing to push blame on others when things don’t go the way you thought. I’ve written before about leaders not managing time but managing choices. Making choices and decisions with the necessary to step forward even when things are ambiguous characterizes good leadership.

Preparing for ambiguity through practice

Source: Val Vesa

As I have learned, feeling confident in ambiguity demands a confidence or foundation of who you are, deep knowledge that acts as a framework or scaffolding that undergirds decision, and a desire to push the edges of that knowledge even when you find yourself in unknown territory. That is why the practices I recommend are ones that build the foundation of self-knowledge (sitting in silence or writing stories from your life — silence & story), deepen knowledge (asking questions every day — seeking), and practice making decisions that test and hone the ability to think even when uncomfortable (deciding the most important action for the day — selection).

They are practices — actions taken by choice that lead to a desired outcome. Like the pianist who always practices scales or the marathoner who always practices stretching, the practice is not for the sake of practice. It is to serve a goal.

Daniel Coyle (The Talent Code and other books) writes about a new view in which talent is determined far less by our and far more by our actions: specifically, the combination of intensive practice and that produces brain growth.

Practice motivated by a decision to grow is the key. The Phenomenal Four (silence, story, selection, and seeking) are the practices that can grow resilient leaders. Check out some of my earlier writings on these practices for more insights. Decide to become a resilient leader and keep up your chops.