Leading Lightly (No Matter What)

How can you manage stressful and difficult situations in both work and personal life more effectively with ease and clarity?

In our most recent The Inspired Workplace webinar, Jody Michael, master executive coach and best selling author of Leading Lightly: Lower Your Stress. Think with Clarity. Lead with Ease, shared some of her insights and methods on achieving “mental fitness”.

In this webinar, we learned:

• “Pain” is a taboo subject in the workplace, yet it damages leadership effectiveness, employee engagement, execution, work relationships, and financial outcomes.
• Individuals can apply six steps to rapidly stabilize and pivot out of emotional upset and regain full cognitive capacity.
• Achieving “Mental Fitness” and being flexible are some of the best personal characteristics you can develop.
• Mentally fit leaders easily sustain states of high performance, resilience and well-being, no matter what’s going on around them — and these effects ripple out to their team and the wider organization.
• The ultimate goal of becoming mentally fit is to achieve (or at least strive for) “Mind Mastery”.

What is Mental Fitness and how can we develop it in ourselves?

Jody teaches that there are 5 muscles that need to be developed to achieve strong mental fitness:

• Accurate Self-Assessment: become more aware of your moods, thoughts, and emotions. (develop your own “emotional GPS,” if you will).
  
  
• Personal Accountability: Take responsibility for your own moods and behaviors, stop blaming others for things you can control (especially the internal ones), and enough with the negative self-talk!
  
  
• Selecting Healthy Beliefs: Beliefs are not facts. Beliefs are not who we are. Beliefs are not immutable. Beliefs are a choice and can (and should) be open to change and evolution when needed/appropriate.
  
  
• Holding Multiple Perspectives: We must be open to different perspectives. Opening our hearts and minds to new and different ideas is integral to growth and success.
  
  
• Diaphragmatic Breathing: Mental fitness isn’t only about what’s going on internally. Mental fitness is psychosomatic–meaning it can be positively and negatively affected by our physical state. One of the most effective ways to center ourselves, bring clarity to our minds, and get out of a triggered state quickly, is through the simple act of deep, measured breathing.

Developing these muscles will help you to become mentally fit.

Jody calls her process for getting there “Mind Mastery” which is a bit of a “workout” or “yoga flow” for the mind (our words, not hers).

The key tenets of Mind Mastery are outlines in a simple A–B–C, S–E–E map:

• A – Assess – your moods and thoughts the moment you become triggered.
• B – Breathe – deeply, stabilize yourself and create that cognitive dissonance.
• C – Choose – to be accountable for your actions, moods, and thoughts.
  
  
• S – Spot – where have you been? Where are you looking to go/end up?
• E – Explore – be curious. Traverse your mind and surroundings for options and answers.
• E – Elect – a lens, a perspective that will allow you to perform at your best.

As you strengthen your mental fitness you will increase your emotional intelligence, discover how to respond to situations with more agility, and find that the ability to thrive in leadership and life is within your grasp.

Becoming a stronger, more effective leader will enable you to inspire and support your team to drive better engagement and reduce turnover in your organization.

If this has you intrigued and you’d like to learn more, we recommend two things: 

1. Order yourself a copy of Jody’s book, Leading Lightly: Lower Your Stress. Think with Clarity. Lead with Ease.
2. Reach out to Jody herself, she’d love to connect with you.

Thank you, Jody, we really enjoyed your presentation. And thank you to everyone who attended, we hope you can join us for our next installment!

Who is WorkProud and what is the WorkProud Platform?

WorkProud is an organization whose goal it is to make work a more enjoyable, healthier, and productive experience. The WorkProud Platform brings employee engagement, recognition, and reward into one place, along with other company programs related to performance, well-being, safety, and more.

We want to help you create and grow a workplace culture of high satisfaction, positivity, and pride.

Learn about how WorkProud has been building inspired workplaces for more than 20 years – connect with us here.