Your Personal Productivity Platform – 2. Principles
Yesterday I was leading a teleclass on team conversations for the Institute for Generative Leadership’s Coaching Excellence in Organizations (CEO) program. I had several participants on the call and we were talking about important issues related to coaching leaders in business settings. I offered two distinctions that are part of the program about the responsibilities of the leader:
(1) the leader brings the weather; and
(2) the leader assures that all the conversations needed to do good work happen and happen well.
Consider these two statements as illustrations of principles, guidelines that provide structure and direction about right action with implied values. They offer a grounded perspective about the world and its meaningful regularities, how it works and how to navigate it well.
Better Practice, the consulting firm of my colleague/friend Joe Slatter, relies on similar building blocks. His tools for developing the capability for effective collaborative work include a psychologically safe context, three key concepts, ten guiding principles and a patented performance improvement (training) device. Of interest to us are guiding principles like “the truth is enough” and “manage what matters”. Taken together, they inform us and guide the choices we make about how we show up and what we do. In an organization and when adopted, they can express or undergird values and culture, ‘how we do things around here’. And their enactment makes things better.
What makes principles work?
In my opinion, personal awareness, responsibility and choice. Our ability to be actively (versus reactively) involved in the direction of our life through our engagement and application of said principles. We become, in the words of Donald Schön, “reflective practitioners” in the practice of our own lives. We can exercise agency, with guidance, about the actions that matter, where discernment makes a difference. Different than “dumb” habits, our principle-informed choices can enable our nuanced responses, designed to be more effective and better fitted to our current circumstances and commitments.
Can you take a step back and identify some of the key principles by which you guide and live your life? Can you assess whether they are still serviceable and effective? Where might you choose to do some spring cleaning on your principles, reaffirming some and upgrading others? How is your public identity related to your principles? What is the relationship between acting consistent with your principles and your character?
Do you have people you can talk to about this, who will listen well, be nonjudgmental and talk straight? I believe you want those kinds of people in your life, responding to your invitation, providing data to help you align your performance with your purpose. A little to the left, please.
What do you think? How are you taking charge of your life through actively operating consistent with your principles? Care to share?
#selfleadership #designyourlife #principles