Part 3: Running out of runway.
The third 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: wal_172619
Hello fellow Enablers,
In last week’s post, Part 2: The manager who leveraged flow, I wrote about one of my former managers.
Alan Crookes was the Regional CEO for BMW Financial Services Asia Pacific region. He brought me into his region from the UK at the start of 2007 and I stayed in his team until I resigned from BMW at the beginning of 2015.
During that time, he excelled at balancing the challenges he set me with my level of capability. In doing so he deliberately put me in the flow channel where I would deliver great results and experience growth.
He contacted me after reading last week’s post to say:
The aspect I think if possible you add into the next post is that you were achieving record results in NZ as CEO at the same time as developing your purpose.
Alan’s no longer my boss, but I find it usually serves me well to follow his advice and so there you have it, in his own words!
The journey I was on to develop my purpose was in no way at the expense of the business results. I had a great team in NZ who were more than capable and I was energised by the work I was doing to be able to handle both roles.
I left off last week by saying that between my gigs delivering Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits programme in Bangkok and Delhi came another variation. Once again, Alan found a way to increase the level of challenge.
Authentic Leadership
During this same period, my friend and colleague Dr. Peter Dry and I had created our own Authentic Leadership programme from scratch. We started delivering it to the leadership and management teams in Australia. The additional challenge for me came from the fact that we were delivering our own material and not leaning on the proven and highly polished material from Stephen Covey's organisation.
It went down well, and Alan was keen that I take it to China to help the rapid development of our business there. On my way to Munich from New Zealand in January 2014, I stopped off in Beijing and delivered a half day taster session of Authentic Leadership.
Once I arrived in Munich, the bar was raised yet again when I was asked to deliver a day long workshop to the Asia Pacific CEOs. On this occasion, it was the seniority and experience level of the audience that created the new challenge.
Running out of runway
I had my last opportunity to deliver the 7 Habits programme in BMW to colleagues in Seoul, South Korea in July 2014.
Shortly afterwards I handed in my resignation.
As Peter Dry put it, I was running out of runway. I had invested a lot of time over a period of years reflecting and even agonising about what I wanted to do with my life and what I might be here for.
It became increasingly clear to me that my future lay outside of the BMW Group.
I'd done a lot of hard work to identify my strengths and those activities that caused me to experience flow. As well as thinking, I'd taken action. With Alan’s constant encouragement I’d regularly stepped out of my comfort zone, always in the direction of my strengths.
In doing so I'd come a long way towards identifying my purpose.
Alan had skilfully increased the level of challenge to keep me engaged.
I'd have a success; he'd raise the bar. I'd be nervous again and I'd lean into practising. I'd have another success and he'd raise the bar again. Each time, my comfort zone grew a bit more.
My exposure to his style of leadership started well before the 7 Habits example that I've shared here. He did this for the eight years that I was in his region, until eventually I recognised that it was time for me to move on.
What if we develop them and they leave?
You might be thinking, “He developed you and you left the organisation, how can that be good leadership?”
If you are a member of a team I lead, let me share my paradigms about how I view our relationship.
First you are a fellow human being whom I lead and care about and second you are an employee.
Times are changing. Organisations are less able to offer jobs for life and up and coming young people are less interested in staying with one organisation for their entire career.
I accept that we will be with each other for a finite amount of time.
For the time that you are with me I want you to perform at a high level, grow your capability continuously and experience fulfilment from what you are doing so that you can be a great partner, parent and human being. You may recognise this is the definition of Fulfilling Performance!
If I enable that for you, you will contribute your best to our team.
This is already a win:win arrangement and I believe it gives me the best chance of retaining you for as long as it’s right for you to stay.
If you do move on internally, you will add value elsewhere in the organisation.
If you choose to leave the company, you don’t owe me, you gave me your best when you were with me.
Wrapping up
In summary, in this series of three posts, I wanted to talk about the psychological concept of flow, and how wonderful it is to experience and exploit.
I wanted to suggest how we can use knowledge of those activities that put us into a flow state to provide clues to our individual purpose.
I wanted to point out how purpose is one of the four fundamentals of Fulfilling Performance, and what a powerful difference it can make to our lives when we identify our own purpose.
I wanted to give you a practical example from my own experience of how Alan kept raising the bar with me, how he kept increasing the level of challenge, making me sweat without overwhelming me, keeping me engaged, not allowing me to get bored, pushing me out of my comfort zone and making sure that I was growing every year.
I'll be forever grateful for his leadership as I am for his continued mentoring and friendship.
I hope that you found some useful points to reflect on that can help you with your own journey, or that of those you lead parent and mentor.
Fulfilling Performance News
The Guiding Principles of Fulfilling Performance
Here’s a short video to support a topic I covered in an earlier post about The Guiding Principles of Fulfilling Performance.
CAREER-VIEW MIRROR
Episode 183: Chris Kirby
Chris Kirby is my guest for this week's episode of CAREER-VIEW MIRROR.
Chris co-founded Tomorrow's Journey, an Enterprise SaaS platform that enables automotive brands to launch and scale fully digital solutions, working globally with the likes of Hyundai, Jaguar and Leaseplan.
We talk about how he left school at 16 and somewhat fell into a career in the automotive industry. His career spans multiple roles including as a Strategic Advisor at Autofutura Limited, as the Automotive Director at WeCreateClarity and as the Head of Business Development at FGA Capital UK Ltd.
His father had been an entrepreneur and so he'd seen the reality of how hard that can be. Nevertheless he felt the need to step out of his corporate environment to be able to work on the significant change initiatives that he believed the industry needed.
He shares openly how, even though he went in with his eyes wide open to the likely challenges, external factors like Covid and difficult conditions for fund raising proved strong headwinds.
Chris explains his approach to navigating the ups and downs of start up life and is clear about what constitutes the right reason to become an entrepreneur.
I enjoyed and appreciated getting to know Chris better and look forward to hearing what resonates with you.
Listen to the full episode: Apple Podcasts / Buzzsprout / Spotify
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E: andy@aquilae.co.uk