Flow, purpose and growing people.
The first of three posts about the concepts of flow and purpose, how to leverage them as a manager and how to intentionally embrace them to guide our careers.
Image credit: Paul Flitter
Hello fellow Enablers,
In this series of three posts I'm going to share some concepts and experiences that have been huge to me during the last 10 years or so. I'm going to talk to you about the concepts of flow and purpose and give you an example of how a skilful leader can use them to foster engagement and grow people.
In the summer of 2022, we hired a villa on the Spanish island of Menorca, and spent a week there with our grown up kids and their partners. One day in the middle of the holiday, I sat down by the pool in the shade with my journal and started writing. I broke off for occasional chats with my family, stopped for a little while to have lunch and when I finally felt that I'd done enough writing for the day, I noticed that I passed five hours, very happily indeed. I felt a little tired, but content and fulfilled.
The state of flow
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, was a Hungarian-American psychologist who recognised and named the psychological concept of flow. Flow is a highly focused mental state, that unleashes productivity. I really hope that you're familiar with it yourself because it's absolutely wonderful. If you're not, or you want to experience it more, doing some work to identify your strengths with a tool like the Clifton 34 assessment can really help. I'll go into that in more detail another time.
When you're in a state of flow, you might not be aware of it at the time, because you'll be so focused on whatever it is you're doing, you'll most likely lose track of time. You'll emerge from the flow state and realise that a few hours have gone by when it felt like a lot less time. You may feel tired, but in a happy, contented way. And once you've had a break, you'll be more than happy to throw yourself into some more of the same activity. Because you find that activity so absorbing and can engage deeply with it, your levels of input, the time you spend doing it, will be high, and as a result, your output will be high.
That's why it's a state that unleashes productivity. If you spend lots of time doing something repeatedly, chances are high that you'll become good at whatever it is and the quality of your output will improve too. Because you find it engaging and rewarding, you'll spend time learning about it, whether it's writing, painting, fixing engines, woodworking, baking bread, coding, gardening, creating business models in Excel, bodybuilding, or whatever activity it happens to be that opens the door to this wonderful state for you.
You're most likely to maintain a state of flow when the level of challenge that you're undertaking aligns appropriately with your capability. If the challenge is too great, you'll be overwhelmed. And if your capability exceeds the level of challenge by too high a margin, there's a risk you'll be bored. To maintain a state of flow, the task needs to be hard enough to keep you engaged, but not so hard that it defeats you.
Finding and leveraging purpose
Capability is one of the four fundamental contributors to Fulfilling Performance.
When the four fundamentals are present in healthy quantities, the outcome is Fulfilling Performance.
Another of the four fundamentals is Purpose.
Purpose is the answer to the question, “Why?” or “What for?”
It could be as simple as “Why are we having this meeting?” or as deep as “Why do I exist?” or “What have I been put on this earth for?”
Whether or not they're a religious person or a spiritual person I think you'll agree that everyone benefits from having a greater sense of what they're here for on this planet or in that meeting.
Finding our personal purpose is hard. It can take a good deal of self-awareness and time invested in reflection.
One approach we can take when seeking our purpose is to view being in the state of flow as an indicator or clue that we are acting in line with our purpose.
For example, you might say, “I can't yet put my purpose into words, but I do know that I often experience being in flow when I'm engaged in the following activities...”
That combination of activities will be unique to you. If you can find a way to harness some or all of that unique combination to make your own contribution to the world, I don't think you'll be far from living your purpose.
So how does this relate to leveraging purpose and flow to lead and grow people?
In previous posts, I mentioned my journey with The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and I mentioned meeting Ed Eppley. At some point along the way, after seeing Ed in action, the penny dropped that I wanted to be a trusted adviser to CEOs and senior leaders and help them develop cohesive teams of purpose driven individuals.
This evolved into me recognising that my mission is to enable Fulfilling Performance for individuals, teams and organisations.
Whether I'm meeting with leaders to understand their challenges, coaching and mentoring individuals, designing programmes, creating content, facilitating leadership development sessions, writing up and sharing thoughts to help others on their journey, whatever it is, when I'm engaged in work related to that mission, I often experience the state of flow, and feel that I'm acting in line with my purpose.
But that didn't happen overnight. And I was fortunate to have Ed Eppley and my then boss now mentor, Alan Crookes, in my corner, helping me to develop in the right direction.
Coming up in Release the handbrake!
In next week’s post I’ll share how one manager balanced challenge with capability to grow me in the direction of my purpose.
Fulfilling Performance News
This week I had the great pleasure to visit Paul Flitter at the world’s oldest Aston Martin dealership, HWM in Walton on Thames, Surrey.
Paul, who was my guest for Episode 174 of CAREER-VIEW MIRROR, treated me to a tour of the dealership. As well as allowing me to look under the covers of some stunning examples of the marque, he shared some amazing stories of HWM’s heritage going back to the 1930s.
CAREER-VIEW MIRROR
Episode 181: HOW I EXPERIENCED FULFILLING PERFORMANCE IN MY FIRST JOB
Fulfilling Performance is an outcome.
Literally it is a level of performance that we find fulfilling.
We experience it when we get to bring as much of our available talent, intelligence, creativity, capability and resourcefulness as possible to an activity.
The more you put in, the more you get out, right?
When you operate at the level of Fulfilling Performance, you get better results, you continue to grow and you are energised by your work to be a great partner, parent and human being.
In this Side Mirror episode I use the example of my first job to illustrate how four fundamental contributing factors were present in healthy enough quantities for me to experience Fulfilling Performance, long before I knew what it was!
Listen to the full episode:
Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout | Spotify
The Aquilae Academy: Guided peer mentoring and coaching for executives, senior leaders and business owners.
Running a business or holding a senior position in an organisation can be very rewarding. At the same time it can be challenging and even lonely.
There are certain topics we are either unable or uncomfortable to discuss with colleagues no matter how self aware and open we are.
Sometimes it is just not appropriate to discuss an issue with a colleague. Maybe they are the issue!
Our partners and friends may want to listen and help but they may not have relevant experience or be completely independent.
The Aquilae Academy is for senior leaders and business owners who:
acknowledge that they can’t and don’t have to do it alone
value interdependence and
are looking to continue learning and growing with the support of a team of like minded peers
I’m currently recruiting for my next Academy teams of 6-8 business owners and senior leaders:
Team 7 (US, UK EMEA time zones) - monthly starting in October, 2024
Team 8 (UK, EMEA time zones) - monthly starting in January, 2025
If this sounds interesting, contact me and I’ll happily tell you more.
Thank you,
Andy
E: andy@aquilae.co.uk