As a part of my running battle with “oldmanitus”, I recently completed a certification as a Movement and Mobility Specialist.

In short, I learned how to restore full, pain-free, movement to the body. The model and techniques are amazing to me. I’ve learned how to add 3-5 inches of stretch or range of motion with just a few minutes of work.

I’ve learned how to remove restrictions, tightness, and pain that I had often just accepted as unavoidable.

As I’ve gotten older, this has become more and more important to me. I love staying active. I also love feeling comfortable. The two sometimes work against each other.

Many of the techniques that we use are uncomfortable. Even painful. In fact, we often hunt for points of pain and work there to improve or resolve it.

I’ve learned that the path to physically feeling comfortable requires times of intensity, pressure and sometimes significant discomfort.

Application To Leadership And Organizations

For new leaders, everything requires thought or intentionality. But experienced leaders start to fall into patterns.

These might be patterns of communication, decision making, reaction. They might be patterns of how we plan, structure our meetings or schedule our days.

Without noticing it, we start to lose our ability to be mobile. To move in a new direction without discomfort.

On the other hand, there are other times where an organization is going through intense changes, challenges or conflicts. As leaders, this can create fatigue, stress-reactions and sometimes injury – to our own confidence, to our relationships, to our teams.

Without noticing it, our leadership or our team life can start to become more rigid. Less flexible. Less able to respond as we like when we like.

Refusal to Accept Normal

Any athlete my age has refused to accept what most others assume is the inevitable consequences of aging: Inability to move, tightness, lack of endurance, loss of strength and so on. In fact, athletes many years older then I refuse to accept this.

They don’t accept what most people experience as normal.

Leaders shouldn’t either.

Where I live, we are moving towards the end of a localized recession. During this recession, the organizations that weren’t led well, managed well and didn’t offer great value to their customers have struggled and floundered.

The ones who were already led and managed well and offered great value to their customers have often grown. Some have even thrived.

This is a common dynamic in any recession.

The leaders of the organizations who have done well during tough times are all ones who haven’t accepted the ‘norms’ of doing business as their norms.

When things were good and easy – they developed habits of health.

When things became challenging – those habits have allowed them to soar above their competition.

It begins with not accepting what most of your peers tell you is normal.

Vision of Health

These leaders build a vision of health. They don’t just have a wish for a different experience. They create a vision for what they intend to build.

They relate differently to the process. When things are uncomfortable, they don’t pull back and adapt to the discomfort – allowing the avoidance of discomfort to shape culture and strategy.

Instead, they press in. They try to understand the source of the discomfort and the belief that discomfort can be faced and resolved.

Motivation to press through discomfort is possible when there is a clear vision being pursued.

Leaders, at least effective leaders, have to believe that a different kind of reality is possible.

Reality but Different

Physically, I don’t expect to move or feel like I did as a high-school athlete.

But that goes in two different ways.

Then, I put little thought into how I moved, took care of myself or tried to improve performance. I would have benefitted from it – but I didn’t need to.

Now, I have to put much more thought into it. Due to time limitations, the accumulation of injuries over the years, etc.

I’ve accepted the reality that I can’t just do whatever I want without consequences. That how I eat actually matters. That many of those injuries I accumulated when I was young actually didn’t go away.

But I don’t accept that this means I can’t move.

I’m probably not as quick as I once was. But I am stronger and much more skilled in how I move.

Every organization experiences its own unique sense of normal or interpretation of what is real.

I can talk to businesses in exactly the same market and one leader sees opportunities and the other only sees difficulties.

The ones who succeed are the ones who accept the firm realities of their situation. But they are also the ones who know which realities they can create.

Wiser Movements

As a kid, I just flung myself off of or into things. As a result, I have lots of neat stories. But I also have lingering injuries.

Now that I’m older, I’m learning to move more thoughtfully. I’ve been studying Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for about a year and a half.

One thing you learn there is that newer and younger people tend to cause and receive injuries more frequently. They don’t move with as much thought.

Older grapplers and more experienced grapplers rarely are injured. They just move better. They learn how to both move more carefully while still pursuing growth.

The leadership application is the saying that, “What got you here won’t get you there.”

Many leaders, especially experienced leaders, don’t know how to lead differently than the approaches they used to get to where they are.

They develop patterns that perhaps made a lot of sense during an entrepreneurial phase or a time of crisis or ambiguity – such as when they may have come into their position.

Those patterns were often initially reactive. But now they are, well, patterns. Set ways of doing things.

They may work. But they often don’t best serve the organization.

Examples of this include needing a sense of crisis to justify action, being directive and controlling, not addressing poor behavior or performance, a strategy of figuring it out as you go and others.

During start-ups or times of actual crisis – that “make it or break it” mentality can be helpful.

Sometimes, when there are fast moving, ambiguous situations – directive leadership serves well.

With limited staffing options, sometimes undesirable behaviors or performance might be accepted.

Early on, in small organizations, figuring it out as you go might be necessary.

It all might have gotten you where you are. But it won’t get you where you want to go.

Rest & Healing

A trait of mature athletes is a better appreciation for rest and healing. They understand that this is part of the process.

In fact, taking time to rest or heal well can allow you to come back faster and stronger than before.

Young athletes don’t do this. At least I didn’t. We just taped up sprains tighter. We worked through the pain. We pushed hard.

There was a sort of athletic machismo to who kept performing with the most injuries. Who complained the least.

We didn’t really factor rest or healing or the big picture in. It was all about the next game or meet.

Mature leaders understand that organizations or teams go through periods of fatigue or even injury. That they need to take time to help others rest, recover and heal.

They understand that just getting on to the next thing can really be a way of avoiding facing difficult realities. It looks tough, but it is often an act of fear.

Building Strength & Resilience

In no particular order, here is what I have learned from organizations that are led well, compete well and are built for longevity:

• A vision for Health: The very best organizations know not only what they want to achieve but what the want the experience of achieving that to feel like. They know what kind culture they want to create. They work hard to nurture that.
• Leadership Structures: Leadership and decision making aren’t centralized with one strong leader. It’s shared.
• Leadership Pipelines: Future leaders are being built constantly and for all levels of leadership within the organization.
• Clarity of Roles, Responsibilities, and Expectations: Organizations operate the best and achieve the greatest longevity push for clarity. They refuse to accept constant messiness and ambiguity.
• Consistent Accountability: The very best organizations have practices of accountability for everyone. This is accountability for behaviors as well as performance. For both individuals and teams. It is a kind of accountability that guides everyone to be their best.
• Management Systems: The very best organizations don’t require constant, hands-on management. Instead, systems are developed, monitored and improved. This allows for leadership energy to be focused on growth – not putting out fires.
• Address Pain points, Conflict, Difficulties Well: The best organizations learn which kind of discomfort is a natural part of the effort and which kind means something needs to change. Either way, they don’t bulldoze through or avoid issues.

Building long-term health and longevity in your organization.

What does your organization need to focus on to be in a better position for long-term success?

How should the team you work most closely with adjust for this?

As a leader, what is the single most important thing for you to do to bring this about?

Take good care,

Christian

New Resource! My new book Conflict & Leadership: How to Harness the Power of Conflict to Build Better Leaders and Thriving Teams is being published by Business Expert Press.

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