Some of you have been at this leadership business a long time. Some of you are just beginning. Some have one toe in and one toe out, skeptical about the promise you hear from executive coaches like me about what self-awareness, humanity, and honesty will give you in an oft harsh and unforgiving business climate.

I get it. I don’t have all of the answers. None of us do. Business is changing more rapidly, in more complex ways, across more diverse cultures, than ever before in human history. Our thought leaders are panting to keep up.

As we plow through the data for trends, best practices, and insights for leaders like you, here is what I can promise.

I promise that I will pass along great, powerful questions—questions that get you to think bigger, feel differently, and produce previously inaccessible results. In my experience, the questions you ask are much more important than the answers you find.

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke

As I’ve worked with hundreds of business leaders across healthcare, private equity, energy, and technology industries, a pattern has emerged in question asking that I want to share with you. That is, I’ve noticed that there are two fundamental inquiries that benefit every leader, often over and over again:

1. What do I need?
2. What am I responsible for?

The first question, “What do I need?” creates space for genuine ways of working with others. It provides the fuel for healthy collaboration. When we’re aware of what we need to feel “whole,” we can appropriately meet our needs and communicate openly with others in a way that builds strong trust. We can show up fully charged and emotionally balanced. (Read: you can save yourself from the inevitable “too emotional, too late” outburst that goes hand in hand with being sacrificial beyond your boundaries.) Consider this question, private and self-compassionate, as critical preventative maintenance. This question alone will enable and sustain your best leadership performance.

And, it allows us to give to others from a genuine place—not because we have to, not because we want to get something in return, but because we are in good enough shape to give to our colleagues/organizations. We can support others from our natural energy source without sacrificing our own wellbeing, depleting stretched resources, or resenting those who didn’t ask it of us in the first place.

Leaders, until you know what your needs are—and how to meet them—you can’t effectively serve your people.

The question “What am I responsible for?” moves us from feeling stuck and defeated to being in charge of our circumstances. When we can own our behavior, mindset, and beliefs that contribute to a difficult situation or conflict, we can take powerful action. We can respond maturely instead of reacting as a victim. This moves us into a solution (and mental freedom, or psychic autonomy) more rapidly, the very thing we’re seeking all along.

Often, asking ourselves what we might be able to take responsibility for—even beyond the obvious—empowers a shift away from blame and into intentional choice. We all want to feel in control of our destiny. This inquiry allows you to claim it.

Needs = A hierarchy of human needs to survive, then thrive, within our environments.

Responsibility = Choosing accountability for all the ways we contribute to our external circumstances, productively and unproductively, intentionally or not.

You’ll often hear me say that self-awareness is just the first step on our path to transformative leading. The next and most misunderstood step to master is self-management. Let these two questions become your mantra and they will carry you far, both in coaching and beyond.

To your greatness…

At the incredibly overwhelming pace that we run our lives and businesses, sustaining our best self is both critical and extremely hard. And, here’s what I know – from research and from direct experience – the ability to lead your team well is highly dependent on your ability to renew yourself. In other words, self-care is no longer a nice to have, but a must have.

The link between a leader’s energy, presence, and performance is clear and proven.

Renewal is built on habits of mind, body, and behavior. This skill set is relevant in any field, especially among leaders who face emotionally and physically taxing challenges every day, day after day, year after year.

In Resonant Leadership, authors Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee say, “When leaders sacrifice too much for too long – and reap too little – they can become trapped in what we call the Sacrifice Syndrome. The constant small crises, heavy responsibilities, and perpetual need to influence people can be a heavy burden, so much so that we find ourselves trapped in the Sacrifice Syndrome and slip into internal disquiet, unrest, and distress.”¹

This matches closely – too close for comfort – with my own experience of leading and working with leaders across the board. This is really hard work. Not only do you want to be great at the “what” of what you do (providing the best patient care, legal counsel, operational growth, etc.), you also give of yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and sometimes spiritually to a vision or group of people that really matters to you.

Yet even though the demands on your time are great, self-care and renewal are unfortunately not optional: they are a key responsibility of all leaders to ensure against burn out. Not only that, a leader’s ability to continually renew his/her energy, mindset, and emotional equilibrium play a critical factor in the work environment s/he creates for others.

To be clear, we are either contributing to a positive, healthy, and thriving team culture, or we are feeding a dissonant, disengaged, unhealthy one.

An organization’s culture – “the way things get done around here,” or the values, norms and behaviors an organization prizes –  is highly correlated to a leader’s ability to renew and sustain him/herself, especially in times of stress (i.e., always!).

If we’re in Sacrifice Syndrome for too long, the results are not only harmful for our own health and well being, but also for our teams. As we go into an extended Sacrifice Syndrome and a crisis occurs, we no longer have the reserves to operate from our healthiest, most emotionally intelligent state of mind. We can become ineffective or unsustainable quickly. Our cognitive and decision making abilities diminish, our creative capacity to see all solutions shrinks, our collaboration and influence skills suffer. In essence, fight or flight mode becomes real and there is little we can do about it. This is also known as the “amygdala hijack”² – it takes us clear out.

However, if we’re aware of and working to build in renewal all the time, through mindfulness, compassion, hope, and gratitude, we can generate the resonant relationships that help us lead at our best and build the positive cultures around us we all deeply want.

Renewal for Self = Positive Culture for your Team/Organization

This isn’t about work-life balance. Instead, it’s about all those big and small choices you make to keep your energy up, like resting when you need to rest, considering the conversations that “feed” your spirit and those that drain you, reducing the amount of “doing” and spending more time “being.” It’s about becoming ever more aware of all those small moments and choices that restore you, then doing them. The path to renewal will be personal to you. Please honor it.

If renewal became part of your job, what would you do differently?

What would an escape out of Sacrifice Syndrome make possible for your life, your team, your organization?

Quick: how can you replenish yourself right now?

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Resources:

1. Boyatzis, R. & McKee, A. Resonant Leadership. Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing. 2005
2. Goleman, Daniel. Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. New York: Bantam Books. 1995

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Business minds have been talking a lot about “engagement” in the workplace lately. I’m sure each one of has brushed up against disengagement in one way of another. This is how Forbes wraps up Gallup’s latest survey findings:

Fewer than 1 in 3 (30%) of American workers are committed to the success of their organization and are engaged in their work. Over half (52%) are “disengaged”—defined as “less emotionally connected” and not willing to do any more than necessary to keep their job. Most alarming of all, nearly 1 in 5 workers are “actively disengaged”—actually against their organization, their boss or both.¹

Yikes. As a business and community leader myself, this statistic is depressing. It tells me that we have a lot of work to do to activate the potential of those we work with and serve every day. A LOT of work.

It also strikes a chord. Deep in my gut, I know what it feels like to be on the other end of this data—the one in the room that is daydreaming of working anywhere but here, the one whose passions can never seem to be contained inside of a single job description. My business ebbs and flows with the seasons like all consulting firms do: sometimes I get antsy. When it’s slow, I get bored, feel underutilized, guilty for not working my tail off, and fall into a predictable funk. I want to contribute as much as I can, to do good work, like most people do. Yet, it is a rare scenario that every single day of our working lives will be purpose-filled and electrifying. Dammit.

So, when the disengaged person in the room is YOU, what do you do?

Here’s my way out:

1.    Self-Reflect: For me, self-reflecting takes the form of journaling. When I sit down at my desk in the morning and realize I’ve got a huge “boulder” clogging my mind, I take a few minutes to write it all out, literally clearing the boulder out of my way. Sounds like a waste of precious time, but those 15 minutes are probably the most effective way to getting my head on straight and show up fully.

Self-reflection allows your struggle to express itself, even when your inclination is to struggle against it. Give it a voice on paper. Validate your experience and your needs. I promise that bringing light to what ails you will lessen its pressure considerably. Sometimes, we just need to be heard. Even if only by ourselves.

2.    Connect with Your Gurus: My inner circle freaking rocks. When I notice my energy is apathetic or even angry at work, post-writing session, I immediately reach out to my most trusted personal friends and teachers. They may not know it, but I call them my “personal board of directors.” These women and men are people with whom I can fully express myself and know I’m safe. I can show them my ugly and they’ll still love me (a miracle, I know!). They my best interests at heart. They see my bigness, my heart, and my potential. Of course, they are much wiser than me.

Find your people who can give you the same room to learn. They will be your battery source. If you don’t have anyone now, that’s perfectly okay. Start looking for people you admire and trust, then cultivate a relationship. The best ones are mutually supportive. And they don’t happen by accident. Build your tribe.

3.    Let Yourself Be Known:  Put yourself out there. Whether you will ride the wave within your current company or set your sites somewhere else, reaching out to new people brings fresh air into any situation. At one particularly stale point in my career, I decided to get involved in my community through volunteering. I’m now part of three incredible organizations that allow me to fulfill a need to contribute, while also putting me in front of a ton of strangers. These strangers, surprisingly, network for me! It’s incredibly energizing, and both my firm and I are reaping the rewards.

It all started because I put myself out there. I found something I was interested in, asked if I could help, and—surprise—I have a huge new community network that is satisfying my work and personal goals in unexpected ways. So, go surprise yourself. If there’s a nagging voice in your head to volunteer at a dog shelter, go do it! I dare you!

4.    Take Care: When we’re unhappy at work, it can be a red flag that we’re not taking care of ourselves. For me, I get my tush into yoga class multiple times a week. (You should thank me for that; I’m much less crazy when I do). I will take some deep breaths in the morning before I get out of bed, rather than obsess over my iPhone first thing. I take long walks on my lunch break. Because when it comes down to it, I know that my number one job is taking care of ME: what else is possible if I’m in poor working condition? Nothing. When I’m in good shape, so is my work.

This doesn’t mean you need to go on a radical health kick. Just restore some balance in your life. What gives you energy and joy and peace? Do more of that. If baking cookies makes you giggle like a child, please, go bake! Find your happy. You matter. Your work (and your team) needs you to be well taken care of. And it’s not their job to do it—it’s yours.

If you’re disengaged at work, your LIFE is calling. Start listening to that quiet hum inside of you. Nurture it.

Resources:

1.     Warrell, Margie. (2013). “70% Disengagement” – 3 Ways To Engage Those Who Aren’t. Forbes. Retrieved from:http://www.forbes.com/sites/margiewarrell/2013/06/07/70-disengagement-3-ways-to-engage-those-who-arent/