Canadian Government Executive - Volume 24 - Issue 07

February/March 2019 // Canadian Government Executive / 43 tion you’d like to have. You still have to act,” he notes. • Reframe your definition of what your daily contribution to the result should be. It should be about influencing others to cre- ate the result, not creating the result yourself. When faced with these new challenges, your response will like- ly be to bear down and speed up. That would be a mistake. You will need to let go of the idea of running flat until you crash. In- stead, give consideration to how to regularly renew your energy and perspective. Pace yourself with breaks. Here he is not talking of an eve- ning respite from emails. Get away from your desk or confer- ence table for five minutes every hour. Take a quick walk around the floor of building, or get a glass of water, or stretch. This fu- els what he calls your rest-and-digest system, an antidote to the fight-or-flight gas pedal that normally relentlessly drives you on. Take time to enhance your leadership perspective by “getting up on the balcony” to look at the whole picture of what is go- ing on down on the proverbial dance floor, a concept pushed by Ron Heifetz of Harvard University. You want to see the patterns occurring, not just the minutiae. So step back and define or re- define what needs to be done. If this seems vague, here are six questions that help your balcony view: • What results are expected of my team and me now? • Who defines successful results? • How is that definition different from the results we have been getting? • What are the actions that are going to drive the required re- sults? • Who should be taking these actions? • What’s the highest and best use of my time and attention now? That requires carving out time to reflect – not just do, do, do. Along with this, you need to leave time in your schedule for unexpected problems or issues. That’s what next-level leaders do – or should. He has found they actually score their poorest in his surveys on regularly taking time to step back and define what needs to be done and leaving time in the schedule for un- expected issues. You must also learn to custom-fit communications. As you rise in the organization, it becomes easier to talk to people rather than talk with people. Don’t succumb to that temptation. People will disconnect if you do. You need to contour your communica- web http://canadiangovernmentexecutive.ca/author/harveys/ tions to your audience. That means defining your desired out- come, figuring out what others would care about it, and then staying open to learning since that increases the odds the au- dience will align with your outcomes. Paying attention to your listening-to-speaking ratio will help. “Make it a point to receive more than you transmit,” he stresses. You also have to communicate with your boss. Establish a pro- cess of regular communications that makes it easy and effective for the two of you to give and receive information. He urges you to package your key issues and initiatives in “crisp, tweet-length sound bites” that outline their importance and the actions re- quires for success. At the same time, be conscious that you may be eager to impress – and figure that to speak is to impress – but the listening-to-speaking ratio applies here as well. “Slow down enough to listen to the concerns and priorities of senior execu- tives before rushing in with your opinion or plan of action,” he advises. In those meetings, create opportunities to speak for the good work of your team and, if you can, position your boss to share that information with his or her peers or boss. All that will help you to succeed at the next level. H arvey S chachter is a writer, specializing in management and business issues. He writes three weekly columns for the Globe and Mail and The Leader’s Bookshelf column for Canadian Government Executive, and a regular column and features for Kingston Life magazine. Harvey was editor of the 2004 book Memos to the Prime Minister: What Canada Can Be in the 21st Century. He was the ghostwriter on The Three Pillars of Pub- lic Management by Ole Ingstrup and Paul Crookall, and editor of Getting Clients, Keeping Clients by Dan Richards. The Leader’s Bookshelf “Being a successful executive does not require you to change who you are, but it may require you to change what you regularly do so that you are more likely to operate from the start of how you are at your best.”