Don't Look Up!

One of the mental images of leadership I hold dear is a sort of magical juggler. But what circles around and around, from hand to hand, is not tennis balls, chainsaws, or illusions, but her own talents, skills, and strategies for “how to do life.”

“Juggling everything is too difficult. All you really need to do is catch it before it hits the floor.” ~Carol Barz, Former CEO of Yahoo!

Every leader has this type of toolkit, containing every tool she owns at the moment, if not every single one she needs right now or will ever need in the future. All leaders have at their fingertips:

• Innate talents—those happy genetic patterns that emerge as one or more natural “specialties,” such as music, math, language(s), and movement.
• Skills—the abilities developed through education, practice, and feedback from others who are more skilled…at facilitating groups, analyzing a P&L sheet, designing a recruitment and screening program, or baking sourdough, for example.
• Strategies—their effective (or not so much) procedures for the “ways to get stuff done;” the internalized blueprints that inform a leader’s behavior toward others, such as the interpersonal strategies of careful listening (yes, effective), emotional reactivity / tantruming (no, not so much), asking for clarification (yes), leaping to conclusions (no), and staying open to possibility (yes).

So, here are a few confidence-building tips from the world of actual jugglers of balls and other objects, which may serve well as instruction for leadership.

• Self-awareness about which balls are glass and which are plastic allows a leader to customize the mix. She can choose to bring her least breakable talents, skills, and strategies to her leadership, rather than the most fragile ones.
• Keep centered and self-aware. Jugglers keep their elbows in, close to their hips, and try to move their hands as little as possible. A successful leader is both the center of the circle she is juggling AND the circle itself.

However, she also keeps her eyes off the circle itself. Rather, she can look through the center and see the whole of it in her peripheral vision. She remains focused on her target—the desired outcome.

Because spinning our best stuff up toward the apex of a revolving circle—where each aspect glitters in the spotlight for a moment—is not the point of leadership. What happens on the other side of these spinning elements of leadership is what really matters: the outcome produced in collaboration with others is the point.

And that is why a truly great leader never looks up at her own glittering talents, skills, and strategies, but looks through the metaphoric container, the circle they create as they spin up, around, down, and across; up, around, down…. She looks through this leadership lens—spun up from her integrated talents, skills, and strategies—to discover the same aspects of leadership in each member of her team.

Jugglers all, each associate brings her tools to this center ring of employment, in the circus called life. Staying focused doesn’t mean not having fun. Just don’t look up!