How does one move from overwhelmed to overjoyed?
This is a part of the human experience, especially as leaders.
How do we move through these challenges that we face with that sense, sometimes even daily, of being overwhelmed?
And then, how do we come to a place of joy consistently?
I want to identify the specific struggles leaders face and for you to be inspired again by the example we have in Christ.
I want you to learn to use stress and anxiety as a leadership gift, not just a leadership problem.
I want you to implement specific skills and disciplines and plan for your organization’s growth, recovery, and strategic direction, or at least know how to plan for them.
Sift through stress.
Not all stress is bad. Some stresses come on us that are healthy.
In our culture, we talk a lot about stress. Stress is almost always viewed as a negative and bad thing.
A lesser-known word is the concept of eustress.
Eustress is a positive form of stress that can benefit health, motivation, performance, or emotional well-being.
This is key to making that shift from overwhelmed to overjoyed.
We have an active role to play.
Another excellent word for anxiety is planning.
You’re thinking ahead. You’re imagining the possibilities. You’re looking at the budget and painting all those what-ifs.
That’s planning.
That’s what leaders do.
It can lead to this problem where we will follow emotion. We’re worried about these things. We’re fearful about these things.
We’re overwhelmed by these things. And our will, our behavior, just starts following along.
Because we’re tired, worried, scared, depressed, and overwhelmed, our behaviors follow those emotions.
This leads to shrinking back, avoiding further action, or shirking and not doing things that move us in the right direction.
Ultimately, this places us in an unhealthy avoidance cycle.
It’s not enough to identify the unhealthy stress response. What’s the healthy one? Again, interestingly enough, it starts with anxiety.
It starts with anxiety but leads to appropriate action. This action creates energy, and that energy creates endurance. You become healthier and stronger. The organization grows. The organization endures.
What does this look like practically in the life of a leader?
Anxiety can be aligned with a growth or recovery plan, a growth plan for yourself or a growth plan for the organization. A recovery plan for you or helping others develop a recovery plan leads to action, where the emotions follow the will.
I may not feel like this right now, but I will take these actions.
We see that emotions then become subject to our behavior, subject to our will. Then, we create more energy. As leaders, we’re stretching ourselves, the organization, and the people around us.
Plan to Grow.
A growth plan is where you think about yourself as a leader or even the people around you as a tree.
Growing to be a healthy tree, planted right by the water, bearing fruit in season, is a common image in scripture.
A good model I use from time to time with people is asking them to clarify their core values or personal values, strengths, and vision, as well as their weaknesses.
Who are some of their heroes, and why? What are those qualities? And then what work-related barriers do they feel they are facing? And what are the consequences of that?
Then, I ask them to select areas of focus. I will focus on a specific area or two connected to self-leadership. I will target some skills and connect the values to bring about change.
Recover intentionally.
We have seasons where we must also be recovering.
You must include recovery in your organization’s strategic plan.
Keep it simple and focused on just this year.
It helps to have a plan for the year, where you’ve clarified usually no more than three to five priorities with specific strategies under each priority. Each strategy has an apparent goal with specific tactics.
Utilize next steps.
What specific disciplines move you from being overwhelmed to being more at peace and secure, just from a responsibility standpoint as a leader?
Being overjoyed as a leader isn’t just an emotional, oh, I’m feeling so joyful today.
It isn’t just a spiritual peace of, wow, I’m feeling at peace today.
It’s also a professional state in that I have a handle on what I’m responsible for and the awareness that I need to have of it.
As a leader, living with a sense of joy, peace, security, and stability is easier if you are attentive to the right things.
Keep score.
Better scorecarding makes all the difference.
Weekly scorecard numbers, which relate to your face-to-face work, and a yearly scorecard, where you’re looking at development over the course of the year, are the two most important numbers in development.
As a leader, having a good sense of scorecarding in your current year and how it relates to previous years is excellent.
Weekly scorecarding, or comparing weeks one through fifty-two of this year to the previous year, gives you and your team an almost real-time awareness of whether you have any momentum.
Say “no.”
EB White, the writer, said, “Thanks for your letter inviting me to join the committee of the Arts and Sciences for Eisenhower. I must decline for secret reasons.”
What a clever guy—just such a simple no.
This year, I encourage you to work on how you say no. You could even write down some ways of graciously declining invitations in advance.
You must also help your organization say “No.”
To do this well, ask yourself and your team: What can we simplify?
- What can we automate via technology or a basic checklist?
- What can we multiply, as in work through others? For example, we will multiply the number of donors involved through small-group approaches. We will multiply the impact of what we do in communications by building a team, even if it includes some volunteers. Multiply almost always involves teams—building or creating teams or groups.
- What are you going to eliminate? What will you stop doing as an organization?
The longer that list is, the more overjoyed you’ll be throughout the year.
Use a functional framework.
- Model Week—A model week is when you budget your time and tell it where to go before the week rolls around.
- Six by Six—Identify and help the people around you identify the six major things they’re working on in the next six weeks that will move things forward.
Decide what to decide.
My life changed when I realized that there are a limited number of decisions that I can make as a leader.
The more I can identify on the front end the type of decision that I’m making or need to make, or maybe even tell other people around me what I need to make, the more unity and peace we’ll have in working together.
- Command. This is my decision. I’m the leader. I’m making a decision. It’s helpful to say. I need to make a command decision on this. Instead of just doing it, tell people that’s what you’re doing.
- Consensus. Let’s work together. Let’s make a decision we can all at least partly agree on, which means all of us partly disagree on it as well. That’s going to take some time. Let’s work to build consensus.
- Consultative. Okay, I’m going to make this decision. I’m doing some planning. I will decide on this, but I am seeking your input and advice before making the decision. I have yet to make my mind up.
- Delegated. Delegated isn’t just when you give somebody something to do. It’s when you give them the responsibility and say, okay, I’m giving you the responsibility of making a decision. I can give you input, but I’m delegating this decision to you.
There’s no need to be over it with systems in place for you and your team.
I look forward to hearing from you and seeing how you and your team use these tools and strategies to transform overwhelm into overjoy.
Keep moving forward!
Let’s connect via text today so that I can continue to encourage you along the way!