The Executive's Desk
Guest Commentary
122nd year, No. 353
www.abqjournal.com
Business Outlook
Thursday,
December 19, 2002
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The Executive's Desk Guest Commentary 122nd year, No. 353 |
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www.abqjournal.com Business Outlook Thursday, December 19, 2002 |
Leadership and Joy an Uncommon Combination
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"I see joy as being crucial
to leading successfully over extended periods of time." |
By Michael H. Shenkman
Executives work hard, and often have the toys—cars,
clothes, club memberships—to show for it. But what many executives lack in
their lives is joy. In this season when we proclaim, “Joy to the world,”
let’s take a moment to think about joy in leaders’ lives.
As a leadership mentor, I work with executives who proudly tell me that they
work from 6AM until 10PM six days a week. I know I am supposed to be really
impressed with that, but instead my response is to raise a red flag. Certainly,
many executives do get joy from working. Some nearly giggle when they muse,
“I get paid for this?” Still, just like anything that is overused,
endless, ever-pressing work, can turn joy into its opposite: despair, depression.
Maybe young executives, with all their pent-up energies and enthusiasm, can
get away with that lifestyle for a while, but for more senior executives, “work-aholism”
heralds the onset of frustration, exhaustion, bad health and wrecked lives.
A good friend of mine, a former CEO, recently recalled a time when his life
was consumed by his job. “I felt cheated,” he said. “I was
asking myself, why am I doing this? When is it going to be over? My mind was
elsewhere, not on the job in front of me. That means I was cheating all the
people that were counting on me – clients, employees, my family. You can’t
lead when you’re feeling that way.”
I see joy as being crucial to leading successfully over extended periods of
time. Now “joy” isn’t just fun, or a feeling of being happy
or being distracted by entertainment. Joy is different from both “happiness”—a feeling of general satisfaction—and “fun”—an
experience that lifts the load and carries lightness and laughter for a little
while. By “joy” I mean an experience of uplifting exhilaration that
comes directly from what you are doing.
The psychologist and author Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, who is renowned for his
studies on adult human creativity, says that we experience joy when our minds
flow, experiencing excitement and concentration as we engage in challenging
activities. He emphasizes that what makes these “flow” experiences
joyful is that learning is taking place. I feel joy when I find that I can now
do something I once thought I couldn’t do. I feel joy when I gain a new
insight that makes clear what was once muddy. Joy is the psyche’s way
of saying that we are healthy when we expand, enrich, and enliven our lives
with learning.
Since learning is an integral part of joy, cultivating joy translates into more
effective leading. Joy triggers new insights into old problems. Joy brings a
smile, and so welcomes the smiles, humor and the mistakes of others. Since joy
involves learning, I am constantly in touch with my propensity to error. So,
joy keeps my ego in check and keeps humility constantly in front of me. Sometimes
those errors produce pleasant surprises that succeed even better than what I
had so meticulously and consciously planned.
What can you do to bring joy into your life? Start small,
but get started. Explore something you’ve always wanted to do. Try new
activities, experiment with new hobbies or interests; recover and renew old
ones. Then, get serious. Choose one activity that is challenging and stretches
you, but that you love: practice a musical instrument, write in a journal, walk,
jog, sing, read a book (a work of literature or science or philosophy –
not a business book), meditate, do yoga. Take an hour a day (I recommend before
you go into the office), and consistently practice that activity.
As for the evenings, be home for dinner with your family most nights. Get home
early once in a while and cook dinner for the family—or if you do the
cooking every day, don’t cook. If you don’t have a family, do enriching
activities in these evenings when you are home, like reading, or tinkering in
the yard or workshop. Sometimes, going to bed early counts as “enriching.”
If you watch TV, selectively choose programs that inform, inspire, spark conversations
and pique curiosity.
Impossible, you say?
Impractical, given your pressing schedule?
Well, I hear that all the time. And, I admit, I haven’t found a magic
formula to get executives to bring balance and joy into their lives. Unfortunately,
life-altering traumas like heart attacks, divorces, serious automobile accidents
seem to do the trick. After events like these, even the most hard-driving executive
says, “Message delivered. I’m going to change. Just for joy.”
What will it take for you to put some joy in your life?
Michael Shenkman, Ph.D., is founder and president of the Arch of Leadership (www.archofleadership.com), a leader mentoring company. This article was adapted from his new book, The Arch and The Path, the Life of Leading Greatly (Sandia Heights Media, 2005).