Get out of Your Office & Lead

The paradigm shifts we need to make as leaders sometimes can be daunting. Changes are coming so fast that whole industries crop up and die before we finish reading last month’s Forbes magazine. Well, that might be an exaggeration, but we do have to adapt to the change first, don’t we, so our charges can feel comfortable and not like the world isn’t spinning off its axis. If we panic a little, they panic a lot. So, it is in all our best interests if we get a grip when it feels like gravity is failing.

One of the best ways to do this is to get out of your office. It is hard to keep your perspective on the world, your community and your industry if you don’t take time to see what is out there. You’ll be a better leader if you do. And this isn’t just about sales, or networking, or even education opportunities, although all of these are natural outcroppings of the meetings you might choose to attend if you decide to get a fresh perspective. It’s also about seeing the industry through the eyes of others, whether in a group or just having lunch with someone who works in a different part of the business.

Leaders tend to leave themselves for last when it comes to such personal training resources. We don’t need a coach as much as others, we say. Or, we can get by with one or two educational lunches a year so that our employees can go to more. This isn’t always the best way to take care of your folks. I have used the analogy before, but it bears repeating: put your own air mask on first, and then help others around you. The flight attendants on all airlines say this for two reasons. First, you’re no help to others if you are unconscious, and you add to the burden they have to handle instead of lightening it.

Years ago,  I attended an insurance industry leadership meeting. For the first time in 14 years of attendance, I went to all three major meetings that week. It was an action-packed week. Since it was my first time attending on behalf of a new insurance company, I had a pretty unique view. Previously, I’d represented the association perspective, either as a state executive or for a technology user group. Now, I was there in the capacity of a sponsor. There were so many new concepts and ideas that it gave me the idea that putting yourself in another’s shoes even in these types of scenarios can be enlightening.

The next time you are at one of your trade association meetings, go to a committee meeting you’ve never attended before as a guest. Find your way to the meeting for new comers and first timers, and offer to be a mentor for them to see things with the excitement and promise and hope that they do. If there are any groups that focus on people new to an industry, participate or at least spectate. Sit at a new table, with people you don’t know. You probably coach your sales team to do this, but are we taking our own advice?

Suppose you are specializing in the hospitality industry, and you’re attending the national association meeting for hotel owners as an exhibitor. How often have you left the trade show hall to attend the other parts of the conference in order to experience the event as your clients do? This may mean an extra registration fee, and some parts of the event will be closed to regular (i.e. hotelier) attendees, but it’s worth the experience.

Kelly McDonald, who was a speaker for the insurance industry leadership meeting that  year, makes a great point in her books about creating a new customer experience, too. She wrote “Marketing to People Not Like You” and has some terrific insight into the various cultural differences we need to acknowledge in our clients and employees. Even if you can’t get away from the desk, reading books like that one can help you find a new, fresh viewpoint on your day or your processes. Or try Judy Hoberman’s “Selling in a Skirt,” a funny and valuable take on selling by and to women.

If you have a little more time, at least get away from your desk, and out of your office. Management by walking around is not new, but it’s still just as valuable. But now, maybe you can take that walk around with a different goal. You’ll still see the folks in your department and reap the benefits of hearing their conversations, lending a listening ear, and sharing your stories to build good relationships. Add to that your desire to see things through their eyes, and watch what happens in your own brain when you just have that new goal in mind. Go into the office at a new time of day, come in and out from a different door, or go visiting around the office at a time of day that isn’t part of your usual routine. It’s the change that matters for our exercise here.

New research (see livescience.com or luminosity.com for example) tells us that we have to exercise different parts of our brain so that we never stop creating new neural pathways, and might even avoid many dreaded diseases like Alzheimer’s. But the brighter news is that doing new things, and attempting new experiences will help make us more creative on a day to day basis, even if we are more left brained by nature. Your reaction times will get better, as well as your retention.

By this method, you’ll be the first one to try new technologies, not the last. So you’ll become a resource yourself when your staff needs you. You might even go away to a school yourself for professional or technical schools, to try something completely new like a new technology or marketing method. You get a similar result if you take up a new hobby, and the further it is from something you’re used to doing, the more positive results you’ll gain in creativity. In old school language, get out of your rut!

This brings us back to the original point: you will become a better leader if you do this. The broader your exposure, the more opportunities that you have to glean that golden tidbit which will help one of your charges in the future. You’ll have a deeper pool of resources because you will meet new people and make new connections. If you practice the habit of trying new things, being the example, and broadening your horizons, eventually that builds a whole new culture of creative thinking to your office. This in turn will benefit clients.

We’ve all heard the advice about keeping physically fit, and how that makes such a difference in our ability to handle stress, make big decisions, live longer, and react in a crisis. You are obligated by the nature of your leadership position to be as sharp as possible at all times. So why not step out of your office to find a new perspective for your brain, and sharpen that tool as well? If you do it, you’ll set the right example for those you lead. After all, what have you got to lose by becoming more creative?