13: How Many Times Can You Say Ok?

Welcome: 00:00

Thank you for tuning in to episode 13 Of Leaders Lift.

Intro

So how are you doing today? What do you think the most common answer is to that question? I think it's probably something like I'm fine or I'm ok. When someone responds with either of those answers, what do you start thinking? Do you start wondering what is really going on that is not good? Do you just nod and move on because you don't want to know how they are really doing?

It seems that as a society we have done what we do in a lot of areas and that is to polarize the extremes and make the middle ground off limits. If you are really doing fantastic, that’s great. If you are doing terrible, then there are resources to help you deal with that. How have we gotten to this point?

I remember way back in the day when I first head of Gallup and some of their work on engagement that I was surprised to hear them talk about focusing on those at the top first and then those in the middle. That seemed to be counterintuitive to what most people would say. As I have thought about that over time, it actually makes a lot of sense to me. You want to keep the best at their peak so you need to give them the attention they need to keep moving ahead. Then you need to make a deliberate decision about how to deal with those just not making it, those that are not a good fit. I'm not advocating you deliberately just let them do what they are going to do. That's a horrible idea because they could be the ones holding the team back from some truly extraordinary things. So either help them find success elsewhere or get them out of that bottom segment.

Those in the middle are the ones that can really make a difference. They can be influenced and your actions are most likely to push them in one direction or another. So if you focus on those that are doing ok, then you can move at least some of them up to the top and hopefully keep the rest at an ok level.

So what does that have to do with being ok in life? Well, how much deliberate effort do we put into those that are just ok? How much effort should be put in to get them to be amazing? That's the topic I'd like to explore for the next few minutes, both from a professional and life standpoint.

Stick around and be part of the discussion!

Pre-Roll

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Story Time: 01:21

This week it was tough to pick out a single story about a time in my life when things are just ok. I thought about both times I have been laid off, the Covid pandemic, times when family members have been dealing with major challenges and times when I have been sick, sick, sick.

I settled on talking about last week and how it tied into dialing it back, course correcting and today's topic.

I did struggle last week. It was full of ups and downs. There is just a lot going on. I felt like I was busy but really accomplished very little. At some points, I think I would have been thrilled to say I was ok instead of saying I was tired, worn out, frustrated or anything similar. As I work on the script for the course correction episode, I realized that I need to look for what course corrections were needed. The hard part with that was that I had been trying to identify the right course correction for some of the biggest struggles I had but hadn't been able to identify any real viable alternatives. There were things with my business and with my personal life that I wanted to have go much better or at least start to make progress. So I wasn't confident that I would find the right path, let alone be able to start executing and make progress. But I still knew I needed to keep searching for the right path.

In the meantime, I decided I really needed to do some dialing back. We already had an appointment to go the Temple on Saturday morning and I decided that was going to be the big way for me to dial it back for the weekend. I also had a bunch of chores on my list but I knew that most of them could wait. So the plan was Temple early in the morning, breakfast with my wife and then relax with the family.

While I was in the Temple, I was able to get my brain to take a breath and started getting some insights on things that I could be doing differently to try and find the right set of corrections. Some of them were small personal corrections (at some point we need to talk about how small, consistent things make more of a difference than infrequent gigantic efforts) but they almost immediately started making a difference. As the weekend progressed and I didn't tackle anything that required major thinking (mostly I sat out in my hammock and watched the grandkids play in the yard), I started to see some of the professional and personal challenges in a different light. I identified ways that I could shift my attitude so that I didn't feel so frusrated or put such a negative spin on things. I was also able to identify where some of my potential pitfalls were impacting my ability to move things forward or even to just open space in my brain for new thoughts and ideas.

So overall that was a great weekend. Sunday evening I actually started to get excited about diving in on Monday. That's not always the case.

I'd love to say that Monday went perfectly but it didn't. We don't grow without adversity right? Well, I had some of the things actual flare up and get more difficult, at least mentally. Then Monday I started working on a new project (it's a new podcast I think you are going to like) and that whole session of work was really difficult. Looking back I can see the positive that came out of it (I figured out what I should not be doing for that podcast) but in the moment, it was a struggle.

But because of the renewal of energy from the weekend, I was able to keep pushing through. As the week went on, things really started to improve. And then over the last couple of days, puzzle pieces have started to fall into place. The whole vision of the new path is not complete, but I can see farther down the road and I feel like the full vision is fuzzy instead of missing. Now my energy from the weekend is even higher. Funny thing is that I'm still exhausted so dialing it back again tomorrow is absolutely the plan.

The lesson I'd like you to take away from this is that sometimes we have to be patient, keep on keeping on, be ok with being ok and then wait for the right path to show itself.

When I was a young kid I would wander off for hours and always made it back to the campsite in time for dinner. I have a decent sense of direction and so the key there is to figure out the direction that you think you need to go to get back to something you recognize and then just keep persevering. Eventually I'd hit the camp or a road or another landmark and be just fine. Note that I think if you are really lost, the recommendation is not keep wandering as it makes it harder for people to find you. But I digress.

That's what we have to do sometimes in life. While we may be worried we are lost or unsure if we are even headed in the right direction there are times where we have to choose the direction that seems to be the best and then start down the path. Generally what happens is that you will eventually figure out you are on the right track or realize that you are off the path and then course correct.

This ties into being ok with being ok. If you say that you are ok because you think you are headed in the right direction but not sure, there is really nothing wrong with that. There will be a lot of these times in our lives. So it's ok to be ok.

Little Lift: 06:16

Today's little lift recommendation is only tangently related to our topic today. It's called Beyond Illusions - The Magic of Positive Perception by Brad Barton. This book is full of some great stories to help you understand how your perception of a situation can change it. One of my favorite stories in the book is about his son "licking him in the eyes" (mom told him to look daddy in the eyes). It also has some more serious stories and it is well worth having in your library. The reason I included it today is that our perception of a situation can have a significant influence on how we are doing. We can look at things through rose, sun or perscription glasses. So give it a read.

Little Lift Topic: 06:59

For today's Little Lift topic, I want to get you thinking about a subject that I'm sure will require more in depth discussion in the future but that ties into our discussion today. Besides our own perception of our current situation and other perspective that can influence how we are doing is how concerned we are in living up to the expectations of others.

Very few individuals I have met were not influenced by what others expected of them. Most likely all of us have stories in our head about what others are expecting or think about us. Those stories can influence how ok we are. They can also reinforce the myth that being ok is not good enough.

As a leader in your life, think about how others expectations influence your behaviors. Remember when I talked about personality style assessments I mentioned that one of the challenges with answering the questions is to not answer them as others see you or as you believe others see you? That's what we are talking about here.

One of the main areas I see this in both professional and non-professional leaders is that there is this expectations leaders should always exhibit ideal behavior, that they can't make mistakes and that they shouldn't have emotion. For you parents out there, how much pressure do you feel to have all the answers? Remember when your kids or kids went through the twenty stages of why phase? That's the phase where they ask a question and you answer and then its why? Followed by another answer and why? It can go on forever.

As they got older, the questions became more difficult. Questions like why do bad things happen to good people? Why is this happening in the world? If you are like me, you want to have good answers to give.

In a professional environment, it's very similar. Let's say you get promoted into an amazing leadership position within the company. What are the expectations on day one? Ok. Maybe not day one, but after you have gone through all the welcome lunches and led a few meetings, what happens? Are you expected to have all the answers? Maybe. Do you feel the pressure to know all the answers and solve all the problems you were brought into solve immediately? Probably.

The problem with this is that these are all expectations (imposed by others or yourself) that are absolutely unrealistic and in reality, they are also extremely limiting and liable to make your situation impossible to manage.

Think about this, if you never made a mistake and everything you touched was successful without any effort, how much would you grow? How much would your team grow? Same thing with your kids. If you gave them all the answers, would they learn how to find their own answers and make their own decisions? Would your team or kids ever get the opportunity to learn from failure, which is one of the greatest teachers?

On the flip side of this, if we are human and don't hide that fact, then there are loads of positives that come from that. We set the right example. We help others realized that failure is not final. We teach and help others become self-reliant. We grow. Those around us grow.

When we struggle emotionally, we make it ok for others to do so. We can also show them how to work through these types of situations and get the help they need. We also get an amazing opportunity to help those we lead develop their own leadership skills. None of this would be possible if we lived up to those expecatations.

Finally, if we show others that sometimes it ok to just be ok, then we don't start putting pressure on them to feel like they have to live up to these same unrealistic expecations.

Does any of this make sense? The best way you can lead is by becoming the best you. You need to decide what that means. I'm happy to help you work through figuring that out because it's a key component of your own personal development. But be the leader you want and can be, not the one everyone else expects. Then allow those you lead to do the same.

Ok. Let's start talking about being ok.

Mid-Roll

Let's take a quick break before we do some heavy lifting

As the podcast continues to move forward, I really want to expand the audience. If you haven't already shared it out with someone, here's a challenge. Go to your favorite episode and hit the button that's a square with an arrow pointing out of it (most common). Then pick someone in your contacts that could really use the message in that episode and hit send. Maybe you pick episode 10 on dialing it back and send it to a family member that is really stressed out. Or you pick episode 11 and send it to a colleague that's working on their own professional development plan. If everyone listening would do that once a week, we would have a fantastic group and could start building a community that can lift and support each other.

Back to the topic at hand.

Heavy Lifting Intro: 11:56

A lot of what I have focused on in this podcast has been about wanting to help you and others get the most out of life. If that is the goal, and I hope you have your own version of what it means to get the most out of life, then there is this impression that you have to be going at full speed and everything needs to be awesome all of the time. If that's not the case, then are you really getting the most out of life?

I've also mentioned a few times how I am driven to be a perfectionist. I try to work on toning that back but it's just so ingrained that I can only had it at bay when things are going really well and smooth. So when things are ok, that drive kicks in and makes me want things to be more than ok.

In the professional world there is a myth about everyone needed to be a high potential or top performer. I believe that is a myth and I'll explain why later in the episode.

As leaders, professional or life, we deal with another myth which is that we need to meet everyone elses expectations and live up to their standards, even if that means we can't be ourselves.

Today I want to try and weave a few topics together as I believe they are related. Dialing it back, course corrections, being ok with being ok and living up to the expectations of others (which I just covered at a high level) all fit into a similar bucket. I've done deep dives on dialing it back and course corrections so I will weave in some reminders but the majority of today will be focused on understanding what it means to be ok and when it's ok to be, well ok.

Myths

Let's start off by talking about some myths. This is my list of myths around being. You may agree with some and not with others. I may have missed some. Feel free to drop me feedback on your thoughts or your list. These myths are the ones that I have seen do damage on my own and others' sense of well being.

First is the myth that we need to be going full throttle all the time. That's probably only part of the myth. The full myth would be that it's impossible to go full throttle all the time. What happens is that we believe that we need to go full throttle so when we don't, we are less than ok. Yet when we are going full throttle, we might say we are great, even if we have no idea what we are going full throttle at or if it's effective in the slightest. It's like being busy is the goal. For me, being busy is not what I want to get out of life.

The second myth is that the harder we work, know and the more skills we have, the less we will struggle in life. Ever thought that? If I could just be a little smarter or work a bit more, I wouldn't be having this challenge. Sure there are times when additional skill or knowledge will make things easier. But that doesn't mean you are immune to the challenges that just come with life.

Think about the Covid pandemic. Sure those that were in better health were able to better deal with the virus but that didn't make them immune to it. There were plenty of extremely health people that got very sick. And I know of folks that were much less healthy that seem to just get the sniffles.

This is not an excuse to not learn, grow, develop skills and work hard but it doesn't exempt you from tough times and from the need to just be ok at times.

The third myth I'll cover is that money solves all problems. We need money. It can solve a lot of problems. But how many people are out there just rolling in the dough and are absolutely miserable. Think about the number of famous or wealthy individuals that spend all their money on drugs or something similar in the pursuit of being ok.

The last myth is that kind of the overarching one and that is that being ok is a bad thing. That's a myth because there are times when it's ok to be ok. I'm not sure I'd want to be ok all the time, but sometimes, ok is good enough, or it's the best that I can do and that's ok. (Don't count how many times I use ok in this epsiode).

Comparisons

One of the biggest reasons that being ok can have such a negative connotation is that we tend to make how we are doing relative. Here is what I mean by that. When someone asks how we are doing, we are likely think about how we are doing compared to someone else, or another time in our life, or something similar. If you have had a rough day and you come home and someone asks how you are doing and your compare that to, say your wedding day, what is your answer going to be.

When we evaluate how we are doing, we need to be deliberate in not comparing it to the best or worst we have ever experienced but compare it to the here and now. Then if you say I'm ok because for now, you are just ok. Then that's ok.

Think about it this way. How many parents have seen these social media channels where parents are taking pictures of their angel children sitting at the breakfast bar in an immaculate kitchen. You look around you in your kitchen and there are dirty dishes in the sink, you can see fruit loops smashed into the counter and someone has stepped on a banana that fell off the counter. You look over and see your angel child dumping the bowl of fruit loops on your head.

If you compare your kitchen to the one on instagram, how are you going to feel? The problem with this is that most often social media only reflects what the poster wants you to see. We kind of naturally assume that everything in their home is just as perfect but it's more likely that the scene was set up and that you are only seeing what they want you to see.

So the problem we have when doing this kind, or really any kind of comparison, is that we are rarely fully informed or using reality in our comparison. It's easier to see the reality of the current situation but we don't know what is going on in the lives of others. Even when it comes to our own memories, we tend to only remember the things we want to (usually the good parts). Most will say that their wedding day was pretty amazing. Or maybe the day you got that giant promotion. Or even when you had that one person you had been working with that achieved a huge goal. But do you remember that it was 100 degrees out and you stood and took pictures for two hours in that heavy dress and dark tuxedo. Do you remember that before you got that promotion that someone had backed into your car. Or all the struggles and worries that went along with helping your kid achieve one of their life long dreams. Sure the memories are there, but when we do this comparison, we are only likely to remember bits and pieces.

So that caution here is that when someone asks how you are doing, be careful what you compare your current feelings to. Don't assume that you are in trouble because your life or situation doesn't appear to be perfect and everyone around you has no troubles and is living a charmed life. That's just not reality.

Professional Considerations

For just a couple of minutes I want to talk about a few things that tend to creep up in the professional world more so than other places. These are all things that contribute to the myth that being ok is not ok.

First, I already talked about being busy, but in the professional world we spend a lot of time talking about being productive. Truity, which is the service I use for personality style assessments, calls this toxic productivity. The drive to be productive (or busy in the non-professional world) can actual become toxic in our lives. It wears us out. It puts work at the top of our priority list. It pushes us to avoid dialing it back or even course correcting because it instills this believe that as long as I keep pushing forward, things will be fine.

My caution here is first to you personally to evaluate your own productivity or level of business. It should fluctuate. There will be times when you are super busy and for good reason. Then there are other times where you are super busy just because it's expected that you are super busy. That's not good and will most likely get you nowhere.

For leaders that have responsibility for metrics, be careful how you measure productivity and how much emphasis on it. Too many leaders today are using productivity as a reason to force employees back into the office or to even do layoffs without using layoffs. Don't use productivity in this way. Use it in a way that helps those you lead to move themselves, your team and the company forward.

This next one I'll talk about in a professional environment but it applies everywhere. This is the concept that everyone needs to be the best at everything. Well just look at that statement. There can only be one best so is that statement even realistic? My son has been a good example of this to me. I certainly felt this level of pressure in school. I'd do extra credit and wanted to be at the top. He realized a few years ago that school was just not that important to him. Now, he's a teenager so there are times he takes this a bit too far and slacks off, but for the most part he has found a good balance. He has taken all of the required classes and even a few college level courses. He gets good grades. But for his senior year he set things up so that he could work outside of school and get credit and still play soccer and be on track for graduation. I would never have done that. In fact I didn't. When there weren't any classes left for me to take in certain subjects, I found other courses. He just has a better vision of what's most important for him. He is content and doing well and on track for his goals (which would have shocked high school version of me - even current version of me still has a hard time comprehending his schedule). When he comes home and I ask how school was, most often it was ok or fine. Which for him is just fine. If you have to be the best at everything you do, you will never be ok.

Another thing to think about in a professional environment is what would your team be like if every one of them was a high potential, ambitious top performer. Are you saying to yourself that would be we good problem to have? It's not. I thought that way at one point. But in the call center I realized that I wanted only about 10% of our agents to fall into that category. I wanted to largest segment of our employees to be ok doing their best, meeting all of their targets, sometimes doing a little better but being content and ok right where they were. That was a much better dynamic. If 90% were driving to be at the top all you ended up with was a lot of disappointed folks that were absolutely not ok. You wanted enough to keep pressure on each other but then you wanted that core group of folks that just kept the machine running and were very happy with doing so.

The last piece here, and I talked about this in my course correction episode is that it's not ok to take a step backward. I'm won't deep dive into that but I can tell you I have done that deliberately multiple times in my life. And that's been more than ok because each time it has helped me to move forward. So don't be afraid to do that when it will make things better, make things ok or help you start moving past ok.

How to Really Be Ok

Let's wrap up talking about being ok itself. Everything so far has been more around the myths and hopefully helping you realize that ok is ok. But let's talk about how to really be ok.

First, you need to get to know yourself. Know your default behaviors. Know what your triggers are. Know the signs of when you might be moving from great to ok or from ok to something less than that.

Knowing yourself will help you define what it means to you personally to be ok. Each of us should have our own definition of what it means to be ok. You ought to know if ok for you means there are struggles but I'm managing. Or if it means that I'm super busy and spinning my wheels but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Or does it mean that I have chosen to deliberately dial it back and just be ok for a bit so that I can move forward in the future.

Another thing you want to understand about yourself is how to tell when you are getting complacent. It's easy to get too comfortable being ok. In a lot of cases, it doesn't take much energy to be ok. Not really trying to make things better and just doing enough so that things don't get worse. The problem with this approach is that you may not notice if your personal bar for being ok keeps getting lower and lower.

At one of my jobs, I spent over a year trying to find ways to stay busy. We were in the middle of being acquired by a competitor and because of the size of the merger it was taking a long time to get government approval. During that time, all of the major initiatives I had been a part of were put on hold. There were a few minor projects that would take a couple of hours a week but beyond that, I really only had major initiative. For that initiative, we had already hit the deadlines so everything that was left were self improvements. I'd talk to my boss about this and he basically told me to try and find things to do and put in as many hours as I could. I did a lot of that. There are a lot of offices and departments that wanted to improve how they were using the tool so I worked with them. Basically I went were I was wanted. The problem was that in the times that I didn't have another group to be helping, there just wasn’t much to do. When I was working with other departments I was doing great. When I had a lull, I was ok. And the problem was that I didn't realize that those lulls were getting lower and lower. I still thought I was doing ok. I wasn't. So beware of complacency. And it if its kicking in, go through the course correction steps and figure out how to raise the bar on being ok.

Another way to get ok with being ok is learning to slow down when you experience adversity and to get comfortable being ok in those circumstances. Think about the trees analogy I shared. When they are in the middle of a drought, the rings are closer together because they stopped focused on growing and just focused on survival. They would probably say they were just ok. That's good because they were alive and there was some minor growth. And then when the rains returned they were able to go right back to growth. If they had kept trying to grow without the resources, they would not have survived.

You also need to learn to adjust your balance depending on the situation. I don't believe that our lives are always perfectly in balance. Our priorities always need to be adjusted and that means that in some areas we might be struggling and in other areas we might just be ok.

I know there is this myth out there that says you need to keep your personal and professional lives separate, but what happens in one absolutely impacts the other. If you are under a tremendous amount of pressure to hit a deadline at work, you might only be able to be ok in stuff outside of work. When I traveled overseas to launch our outsource partner, that was not convenient. Being gone from your family for a long period of time is not good. So my personal stuff at the time was only ok.

Then there have been other times when there is so much going on at home that I can only be ok at work. I feel like that right now. I'm not sure how I would balance everything going on if I had a large leadership position at a corporation. It’s the kind of work I'm doing right now that allows me to manage the personal and professional priorities and work on being more than ok.

Hopefully we don't spend all of our time trying to be ok in every aspect of our lives. There may be periods of time where everything is so much that all you can be is ok. But what you want to work towards is identifying ways or areas where you can begin to move forward. Now I say that, but that doesn't mean you have to do it immediately. Like the trees returning to growth mode, or like me waiting for the right path to appear, sometimes your just going to be ok for a while because you have to wait for the right time to move forward.

Lastly, I want you to think about giving yourself permission to be ok, at least for a while (until the rains come back). When you are going through a tough time in one or more areas of your life, the last thing you want to do is put more pressure on yourself to get out of the ok funk you are in. That's not healthy, productive or necessary. So like we talked about in dialing it back, give yourself permission to be ok until you get to the point where you can start moving forward again. The timing on that and how you move forward is up to you to determine. Just beware of complancency so you don't wait too long to start moving.

This one is something I struggle with because even when I recognize that I need to dial it back and not focus on growth, I struggling being ok with doing so. I know I am influenced by the toxic productivity I mentioned earlier. I need to be doing something or I just don't believe I'm ok. So for me, I need to try and find other things that I can do that combine dialing it back with me moving forward. That's why camping, biking, reading and tech gagets are such a part of my life. Those things allow me to do something without having it be all consuming or energy draining.

So find what works for you. It may take some trial and error but if you can find ways to be ok when you need to be, and know when to move on, you are going to be ok.

Wrap Up: 29:53

I’m not sure how this episode is going to come across. I think the key message I would share is that sometimes being ok is the absolute best we can do. During those times we should not put pressure on ourselves to be better than ok. We shouldn't compare our current situation to anyone or anything around us. We can give ourselves permission to just be ok and not be focused on being extraordinary. Now that comes with the caution on how easy it is to replace being ok with complancency. That's when we can get ourselves into trouble. If we find ourselves doing it, we need to find a way to kick it in gear to get back to a good point.

In the example I shared above, I had to get laid off to realize that I had gotten way too complacent and that I had been steadily lowering bar as far as what it meant to be ok. If you find yourself in that position, that's a pretty good time to work on a course correction.

Post Roll

Thanks for making it clear through to the end of this episode. I hope you'll subscribe, follow and share the podcast. You can also follow me on Instagram and Twitter at ldrslft. You can also see video shorts and the occasional long form video on YouTube. Just search for Leaders Lift. If you are looking for other ways to support the show, you can check out some options in the show notes including Patreon.

Until next week, find someone to lift, maybe someone that’s ready to move from ok to extraordinary. Make a difference in their life and see what a difference it makes in yours.