The five skills link well to proven, effective, day-to-day coaching leadership. In the Effectiveness Compass they paint a larger perspective for long term sanity, balance and success.
The toughest thing to foresee is success for most people. There exist a few incurable optimists who think everything will inevitably turn out right. Unfortunately many of them fail to appreciate challenges they face and are often sorely disappointed.
In truth, nearly anything is possible to any human being or organization if they pay attention to the five skill areas… and sustain balance among them… over the long haul. As a reminder of this I created the Effectiveness Compass to show the central principle of sustaining balance in two ways.
First, we must sustain balance on the way to our goals (the bold arrow), beginning from current reality, honestly appraised and understood to the best of our abilities (not always easy). We must sustain focus on moving forward. Balance must exist between the positive goals and the drag we feel from hurdles we must honestly face. How fast we try to progress must be balanced with the need to rest periodically, to keep ourselves in shape physically, mentally and spiritually to sustain the full path to success.
It’s easy to burn out, to give up, to get discouraged, to let challenges turn us back. In his book, Good to Great, promoting the idea that the best leaders are not usually charismatic, but “humble” individuals who stick steadily to the task, Jim Collins makes the point that wild-eyed optimists burn out, but realistic optimists expect set-backs and are able to work through them, for instance - a form of balance.
Second, we must sustain balance continuously among all five elements while we progress. In the Compass these are shown at the four points - honesty, positive attitude, creative thinking, trial and error habit-building, with balancing shown at the centre where the balance between these would occur. Think of a tight-rope walker, arms out to the side, one foot in front of the other on the tight-rope - focussed on moving forward while balancing in these four directions! It’s a challenge in coordination. But once you learn the coordination and balancing skill, you can walk the tight-rope at any height. So a leader can lead at any level with the same basic skills.
Each step, step by step, we must convince ourselves of the positive, resolve to face the honest hurdles, but not exaggerate them to the point of giving up and try out ideas to sort out what will and won’t work. Relaxing and sustaining the balance step by step is the secret that so many motivators and leaders attempt to convey in their work. Many miss the point, however. It’s easy to get bogged down enumerating the details along the way. Stories are interesting. They illustrate points all too well. We can get caught up analysing them one at a time and miss the bigger picture - that the underlying processes that resolve each challenge are fundamentally the same.
By recognizing and thinking about the similarities we make it easier to stay simple. We can begin to look for the same sort of solutions in different disguises depending on the details of a given situation. By practicing the same basic skills over and over and reinforcing them with each use in each new setting, we get very good at applying them to any sort of new challenge. Ultimately achieving any sort of goals becomes easier and confidence grows dramatically. That confidence and balance distinguish great leaders from merely good ones.
In presentations I do my best to bring these principles alive with interesting examples, both ones I’ve personally encountered and the audience’s, things they may be struggling with. It’s not hard to do this once you know the basic ingredients are the same each time. It becomes a matter of pointing out the four points of the compass, how they appear in the situation and how they form the basis for finding the right direction and goals and sustaining balance until reality is transformed into success.
By themselves, the five skills laid out in the format for coaching provide a basic plan anyone can use to be more effective today with themselves or others’ challenges. The Effectiveness Compass shows the underlying elements of the same five skills, but at the level of creating perspective over time. It encourages users to step back to analyze large-scale situations they encounter and ask what components are missing, momentarily overlooked or under-represented.
The Compass forms the gateway to larger discussions of life as well as work balance, of what will help one persist year after year, renewing positive attitudes and desire to overcome hurdles and consistently working with ideas and skill-building to get better and better rather than plateau and begin to give up. Seen this way work is one part of life’s larger challenges and this view allows people to bring all their resources to bear on solutions rather than working with isolated bits that won’t come together as effectively.
Great leaders lead through their entire lives, drawing together every aspect. Why should attempt to do great things without following a similar pattern? Understanding the Effectiveness Compass puts perspective on challenges that are available with no other view in quite the same way. Examples make that clear when there is a chance to share them and get a sense of something larger than simply their details alone. I hope to capture much of that in the book I’m writing.