Welcome to the Deploy Yourself Newsletter, where I share what impactful leadership looks like to show your own power. I also share the most insightful lessons and stories I encountered in the last two weeks. You can also read this issue online.
Hey,
How to do a 3 level awareness check-in for optimal performance and wellbeing?
We casually ask each other “how are you doing” and then casually answer “fine” and “good” all the time. What a missed opportunity to increase both well-being and performance!
A few of my clients who are senior executives in organisations have started to implement a 3-level awareness check-in which has shown tremendous results. Here is what they have been doing in their 1on1 and group meetings.
Before the meeting starts, each person checks in by answering “how am I doing?” on three different levels –
- What am i thinking (rationally) right now? It could be a worry, a new idea, a nagging thought, or anything else on their mind.
- What am i feeling (emotionally) right now? It could be sadness, peace, anxiety, joy, stress, ambition, or any other emotion.
- What am I sensing (physically) right now? It could be a faster heart rate, stiffness in neck, back pain, butterflies in the stomach, goosebumps, excitement, or any other body sensation.
We all know self-awareness is important, but do we know what does self-awareness even mean? To be self-aware means to be aware of the 3 levels of awareness – thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations.
Teams who have been using the “3 level awareness check-in” have reported deeper relationships, a reduction in stress, and an increase in wellbeing and productivity at the same time. Try it out for yourself – at work or even at home – with family.
Does your team follow a similar or a different way to check-in before a meeting? Have you tried the 3-level awareness check-in? Have you created enough psychological safety in your team for people to share what they are thinking, feeling, and sensing?
Reply back and share what you discover. If you have any questions, just hit reply. I read and respond to every reply.
Articles and Stories Which Have Fascinated Me
One
How to build remote teams properly
Winning at the remote game means building your company in a way that empowers the employees, establishes self-sufficient teams that function autonomously with little supervision. Here are a few tips :
Start with implementing proper onboarding processes. This means having a standard procedure for introducing a person to the whole company and to the team where he will be working.
Have an employee handbook – all the stuff that the person might need to know – your principles, work ethic, etc. EVERYTHING needs to be in there.
Keep it personal, or at least make sure that the system is in place to make the person feel welcomed. Engage with him, guide him through his first few days.
The first thing to do is to set up a system for asynchronous and synchronous communication.
Automate and integrate everything, join your different services (HubSpot, Jira, HR Software, Monitoring Software …) into one big hub.
Keep everything transparent – the feedback, the decisions, the mistakes, the praise.
Keep track of the mental health of your employees. The line between work and life gets blurred when you’re working from home. Make sure your employees know that it’s OK to turn off notifications. It’s OK not to respond immediately.
Create timed entries in your calendar – blocks of 2-, 4-, or 6- hours where you only do the task. No emails, no meetings, no nothing. Just the task at hand – it keeps you focused, and you don’t waste time.
And more suggestions from Vadim Kravcenko in the article How to build remote teams properly
Two
I Got Promoted To Management. Three Reasons Why That Was A Bad Idea
Promoting people based on their success in their previous role fails because of three main reasons.
- Management is a different role altogether, not an extension of your current “individual contributor” role. Yet, most people are promoted or rewarded with a “management role” for succeeding in their previous role.
- New managers usually have no idea what it means to be a manager and only have bad examples to follow from their own untrained managers.
- Managers (new and old) never learn the skills required for their new role before getting promoted. Nobody shows them how to develop a leadership style that is authentic as well as results-driven.
What Should Happen Instead?
- Dangling the managerial role as a carrot result in skewed incentives. Management roles should not be handed out as a reward for good performance.
- Companies should invest in their managers by providing them with the right tools, resources, and support they need to hone their management skills and refine their strengths.
- People who want to move into management and show strength in relevant skills should get management positions. These skills are motivating people, clear communication, overcoming challenges and obstacles, fostering accountability, building strong relationships, and good decision making.
They will end up not only creating better business results, but also a growth-oriented culture and strong relationships on the way.
From an article from my desk – I Got Promoted To Management. Three Reasons Why That Was A Bad Idea
Three
Making Self-Care Tactical – and boundaries
Sometimes self-care might look like taking a bath. And sometimes self-care might look like speaking up, erecting boundaries, being assertive and holding yourself accountable.
Everyone has access to self-care. It’s not just about what you spend your money on, it’s also about how you invest your time, your effort and your energy into meaningful work. Setting up boundaries is self-care work. Full stop. Boundaries allow us to recognize what we do and don’t have control over.
Consistently saying, “Yes” when we should be saying, “No” not only impacts us by causing stress and burnout — it also enables the destructive behaviors that keep people coming back to us. Remind yourself that saying yes to something is saying no to something else.
People often think mindfulness means taking a deep breath, meditating, and then moving on. Mindfulness is learning to be rooted in the present by engaging in a specific task.
From an article on FirstRound – Making Self-Care Tactical
Four
Podcast – How to Multiply Your Impact
The #1 thing managers appreciate: when employees do things that need doing without being asked.
Upward empathy is the ability to consider what the bosses situation feels like — and what they need from you.
A job description might be a starting point, but it’s almost never the ending point.
Beware of becoming the foosball player that does hard work in one spot, but misses the bigger picture. Become a nimble midfielder who plays where they are most needed.
From an interview of Liz Wiseman on a podcast episode titled – How to Multiply Your Impact
That’s it for now. If you have any questions or feedback, or just want to introduce yourself, hit reply. I read and respond to every reply. All the best,
Sumit
(Twitter) @SumitGupta
(LinkedIn) Connect