For a great read on leadership in difficult times, check out the current BusinessWeek article “How Four Rookie CEO’s Handled the Great Recession” 

The article highlights one of our clients’ leaders, Jim Kennedy from T. Rowe Price, and their collective success through one of the most demanding periods of recent memory.  Based on his work with Jim, Marty Seldman commented on how using many of the principles in Executive Stamina, Jim and many of the leaders at T. Rowe Price were able to strengthen their company and at the same time balance their personal live.  As many of our clients know, it is actually this balance that allows them to have success. 

Here are some excerpts from the article:

“T. Rowe Price’s Kennedy prides himself on balancing the demands of office and home. But over the second weekend of September 2008, as Lehman Brothers was crumbling to dust, he worked the phones from his Baltimore headquarters, trying to ease investor concerns about his own firm. Family, church, and gym all had to wait. “I think God might forgive me for missing Mass that one day,” says Kennedy, 56.”

“Kennedy made time for his personal life throughout the challenging months. He got married last year, for the second time, and kept up regular golf games with his new wife, Maureen. He also swam laps three times a week. Periodic checkups with his executive coach, Marty Seldman, helped Kennedy keep perspective on his life and career. “If leaders look like they are unraveling, it can create a vicious cycle of more fear and more stress in the company,” says Seldman. “Jim stayed calm and confident.”

Looking back, Kennedy sounds as grateful to have safeguarded his own health as much as his company’s. “For some CEOs, this would shorten their careers pretty dramatically,” he says. “Others will learn from this and be impacted for the rest of their lives.”

1) Will this workout or fitness plan add to the time I have available in the future, increase my energy and increase my productivity?
2) Will this workout or fitness plan give me the greatest results in the shortest amount of time needed?

In order to answer a resounding YES to these two questions, your workouts and fitness plan must consist of four components, the first of which I am covering today in this post. The following three will be included in posts later this week.

Focused on Aerobic Conditioning
The heart and lungs are what give you the energy, stamina, stress relief, and endurance you need to be effective through-out the work day. As opposed to lifting weights and other exercise which are important, by focusing your workouts on aerobic exercise you specifically gain the benefits most likely to give you what you need most. Here is a list of the benefits of aerobic exercise:

• Increased Energy and Stamina
• Better Health
• Stress Management
• Mood Elation
• Clear Thinking
• Improved Sleep
• Improved Decision-Making Capabilities
• Improved Image and Impact
• Company benefits through increased productivity with lower heath care costs and reduced absenteeism

Depending on your current level of fitness, you will receive these benefits by completing at least 3 aerobic workouts a week for 20-30 minutes each time, with the eventual goal being 5 aerobic workouts a week, each 20-30 minutes long. Since this eventual goal can take months or longer to achieve, it is essential to know that many executives begin receiving some if not all of these benefits after the first week.
In the upcoming components you will learn how to make these workouts even more powerful and effective by including key principles and tips like intervals, however right now it should be clear that the benefits to your future time, energy, and productivity listed above make these workouts a time-effective investment. This is the first of the four components that are the foundation of the principle in Executive Stamina that fitness is a key resource in the success of today’s top executives.

“Executive Stamina is a brilliant how-to book. It will help anyone maximize his or her full career potential and live a more balanced, integrated life . . . priceless.”
–Michael White, CEO, PepsiCo International, and Vice Chairman, PepsiCo

Executive Stamina By Executive Coach Marty Seldman And Fitness Expert Joshua Seldman Provides Holistic Approach To Career And Life Success

Aligning personal goals with career goals has never been more difficult than it is today. As technology shrinks the world and businesses compete on a global level, executive workloads have increased dramatically. People feel they must stay connected 24/7, making it nearly impossible to get away from the office. Although working round-the-clock may seem like the road to career success, for most people, it’s actually a recipe for career disaster and personal disappointment.

In EXECUTIVE STAMINA (Wiley, May 2008), executive coach Marty Seldman and fitness expert Joshua Seldman tackle this problem head-on, providing a holistic approach to help executives maximize their career potential, maintain their physical health, and align their actions with their core values. Focusing on fitness, nutrition, time and stress management, and building positive relationships, EXECUTIVE STAMINA is the key to increasing effectiveness at work, while enhancing personal happiness and fulfillment.

A clinical psychologist, Marty Seldman has coached executives at companies like Disney, PepsiCo, Frito-Lay, and General Electric for more than twenty years. He has carefully tracked their progress and includes case studies from his work in the book. His son Joshua Seldman, a champion endurance athlete and trainer, has contributed a scientifically based nutrition and exercise program to EXECUTIVE STAMINA to help executives stay physically fit and achieve peak performance in all areas of their lives.

The book is divided into five parts:

Work/Life Alignment – Using exercises and answering questions, readers identify what is truly important to them. They then analyze their current schedules to determine whether the way they spend their time is aligned with their top priorities and values. The authors also show readers how to identify their career “sweet spot,” the work that satisfies them the most.

Health And Wellness – In this section, readers learn to establish fitness, nutrition, and stress management systems necessary to sustain energy, enthusiasm, and focus. The authors include complete guidelines for integrating healthy practices into one’s daily life at work, at home, and on the road.

Job Performance And Business Results – This section focuses on staying in control while minimizing distractions and unnecessary stress. Readers learn how to make the best use of their time, identifying high payoff activities that maximize success.

Career Management – Career progression is not just about doing the best job possible. It’s also about understanding how the system works. What are the competencies needed for growth? Who decides which executives will get promoted? Why is networking and selfpromotion important? This section teaches key skills to maximize career progression, and includes an in-depth discussion of the most common mistakes that can derail careers.

Maintaining Positive Relationships – A successful business career can present challenges to personal relationships – and personal relationships can present challenges to a business career. Yet having strong relationships with family and friends is a key to overall happiness. This section includes practices to help executives maintain meaningful relationships, despite hectic workloads.

Combining the wisdom and methodology of the very best executive coaching with the cutting edge training techniques of world-class athletes, EXECUTIVE STAMINA will help executives at all levels and in all industries fulfill their potential at work and in life. Throughout the book, the authors emphasize “progressive change” and “improvement not perfection,” making it easy for anyone to take the first steps towards life-enhancing change.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Marty Seldman, Ph.D. is one of the world’s most experienced and successful executive coaches and is president of Seldman Executive Development Programs (www.seldman.com). He is the co-author of The Wall Street Journal bestseller Survival of the Savvy: High-Integrity Political Tactics for Career and Company Success as well as the author of Super Selling Through Self-Talk: The Ultimate Edge In Sales Success. As an organizational consultant, Dr. Seldman specializes in team building, conflict resolution, feedback systems, and skills and workshops in building and maintaining trust. He received his B.A. from Cornell University and his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Temple University.

Joshua Seldman is a highly respected cycling and fitness coach and a successful endurance athlete. During his professional athletic career, he was a twelve-hour and twentyfour- hour solo mountain bike champion. He was also a lead coach for Carmichael Training Systems and Lance Armstrong’s Tour of Hope cross-country ride. He received his B.S. in exercise physiology, specializing in sports psychology from the University of Florida.

EXECUTIVE STAMINA
How to Optimize Time, Energy, and Productivity to Achieve Peak Performance
By Marty Seldman, Ph.D. and Joshua Seldman
Publisher: Wiley
Publication Date: May 2008
Price: $24.95 / hardcover
Interview contact: lori@wesmanpr.com
ISBN: 978-0-470-22290-4

Use our best practices to strengthen your relationships with coworkers, friends and family.

Do we need ‘loved ones’ (i.e. friends and family) to be successful in business? No. There are many examples of high achievers in the corporate world who are basically loners with very low need for affiliation.

Do we need close personal relationships to be happy? Most people will answer yes and research supports the association between positive relationships and reported happiness. Tim Kasser, associate professor at Lenox College, in a study on intrinsic values, found that people who focused on being connected to friends and family, exploring interests and skills and “making the world a better place” were happier than those who focused mostly on material goals. Marriage, at least for men, is also linked with higher levels of health and increased longevity. Good relationships can provide a source of support, empathy, listening, sharing, laughter, love and even meaning. In addition, family objectives are often a key motivator for an executive’s strivings.

As wonderful as this sounds, a business career can present challenges to relationships and relationships can present challenges to a business career. The first reason is time, something I talk about in each chapter. Forming and maintaining good relationships requires time. The second reason is the potential for relationships to deteriorate. Relationships are particularly prone to being impacted by vicious cycles. These cycles can eventually consume large quantities of time and energy and distract our focus from other goals and priorities.

So the irony is that, if relationships don’t receive the time, energy and focus that are needed to support them, they can become major consumers of your time, energy and focus. The flip side of those wonderful attributes (empathy, laughter, love, etc.) I described earlier is that relationships have the potential to bring out some of the worst feeling we may ever experience. Guilt, resentment, insecurity, humiliation, abandonment and abuse can be, and is, experienced in relationships.

Learn how to use organizational savvy to position yourself for success.

Organizational savvy refers to a set of skills that combines personal integrity with sound judgment regarding corporate practices and human nature. It has many applications, which include evoking influence and persuasion, maintaining high integrity organizations, and fostering effective collaboration. But here we will focus on the importance of Org Savvy in career management.

In Survival of the Savvy (Free Press, 2004), Rick Brandon and I wrote in depth about the wide variety of practices associated with being savvy. Here, we will review the basics, or fundamental behaviors that can help provide a better chance of reaping the rewards of all your hard work. Becoming savvy can take some time, and honing these skills may require you to allocate or reallocate some of your time.

Developing these savvy behaviors will fall into the ‘best use of your time’ category because they are critical career success factors. Not developing or employing them can offset years of sustained effort. Often I’m asked, how savvy to I need to be? Or, how much time do I need to devote to being savvy? We need to be as savvy as our situation demands. Below are descriptions of the savvy skills essential in getting to the highest levels of corporations and staying there. Each component of organizational savvy will be defined to highlight its importance. For a more in depth understanding of how to develop and implement these techniques refer to, Survival of the Savvy

1. Study Power
2. Networking
3. Learn the Culture
4. Effective Self-Promotion
5. Detect Deception
6. Know the Scorecard for Your Next Role
7. Create an Accurate Perception of Your Talent and Potential
8. Self Management Skills

See: Testimonials for Survival of the Savvy

Increase your energy with personalized fitness, nutrition and stress management plans.

We hope to demonstrate that staying fit will not cost you time, it will give you time. Being fit brings you closer to your place of ideal performance. You are more efficient, with the ability to think clearly and concentrate, and the energy to execute. You save hours and hours that would be spent on coping with mistakes that could have been avoided. Internally, you enjoy the physical sensations of having a fit body; externally, you exude enthusiasm and confidence. We recognize that your schedule is probably tightly packed and we have many tips to deal with reality. However, our starting premise is that it is exactly because you have so many demands and challenges that the energy-yielding, stress-fighting benefits of exercising are essential.

You will learn about the essential training principles and practices that Joshua has used to:

• Develop national championship athletes
• Help executives reach world class fitness levels
• Successfully coach cancer survivors, who were amateur cyclists, to complete the Lance Armstrong Tour of Hope cross country ride from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C.
• Turn himself into an endurance athlete who was able to beat the national champion and past Olympian, Tinker Juarez, in the 12-hour mountain bike race and win several 24-hour solo mountain bike championships

Let me emphasize that this fitness discussion is for everyone. This is about getting you to move. There are so many “improvements’ in our lives that can easily result in becoming more and more sedentary. Computers, fax machines, printers, cell phones and video conferencing allow us to do most of our work in a chair. Escalators, elevators, riding lawn mowers, and executive parking spaces eliminate steps.

Find your career sweet spot and increase your energy, stamina and productivity.

I had the experience of finding a “sweet spot” before I had ever heard the term. It was 50 years ago, in Marine Park, Brooklyn, when I was 13 and was playing baseball with a hard ball for the first time. I swung at a low pitch and thought I hit the ball but I hesitated because I didn’t feel any contact. Then I heard my dad screaming for me to run. I looked up and saw the second most beautiful sight of my life to that point: the ball was soaring into the distance, way past the right fielder. (The most beautiful was Bobby Thompson’s home run in 1951 to win the pennant for the Giants. Yes, I grew up a Giants fan in Brooklyn.)

In spite of the fact that there were no fences and the ball rolled and rolled, my late start and lack of speed prevented me from getting all the way home. But after 50 years, I can still remember the bat, the ball and the result. (One reason I can remember it is it didn’t happen too often after that.)

Perhaps you’ve hit a baseball, tennis ball or golf ball in this way and can relate to the sentiment I’m describing. A physicist could probably explain to us why a certain swing at a certain point will lead to this maximum transfer of energy and power. Hitting the “sweet spot” yields an optimal result, with minimal stress or wasted energy, and feels great. That sounds pretty good to me and that’s why I want to focus on finding your career “sweet spot”.

Get the tools you need to measure  your success and stay on track.

Learn how to implement two very important systems – MINIMUMS and SHIFTS/DRIFTS. These systems will help you create a plan to live in alignment with your priorities. It will be designed by you and customized to your specific circumstances and goals. Even better, as changes occur in your career or personal life, the plan also shifts. This allows you to regularly re-prioritize and make appropriate and targeted choices about future commitments. Used in tandem, these systems have proven to be very effective in helping people make sustained changes in their behavior. That is because they are grounded in what is realistic and practical for you, at this moment in time.

What is a MINIMUM?
A MINIMUM is an activity that you commit to doing in any important area (core value, commitment, current priority, long tem goal) where you perceive gap or a risk. It is small step in the right direction that demonstrates to you and those around you that your priorities and actions are consistent. It is not what you wish you could do if there were more hours in the day, but it does move forward and demonstrate your commitment.

The SHIFTS/DRIFTS Tracking System

The SHIFTS/DRIFTS Tracking System is designed to make you aware of change and the implications of change in your career and personal life and then to help you use this awareness as a springboard to take timely action: reprioritizing your time and shifting your focus to maximize opportunities and deal effectively with threats. It also is a simple, yet very effective mechanism for overcoming the Law of Gradual Change. The system should be used at least once a month but more often if necessary. Before I explain the system and how you can begin to use it I want to highlight hazards and difficulties regarding change.

SHIFTS
Some of changes that business faces are discrete, visible and easily recognized if we are looking for them. I will refer to them as SHIFTS. There are two kinds of SHIFTS. Positive SHIFTS are opportunities that open up that should be capitalized on quickly.

Negative SHIFTS are changes outside or inside our organizations or in our personal lives that pose immediate or potential threats. We may notice the shift but we not always think about the implications. What actions do I need to take? What skills do I need to acquire? How do I need to shift my priorities?

DRIFTS
While SHIFTS are immediate and easily recognized, their counterpart, DRIFTS are gradual changes that often go unnoticed. You are already familiar with the many performance, career, health and relationship examples I used in the Introduction. The Law of Gradual Change tells us that it is very likely that we will not notice small changes and trends in our life. Sometimes we don’t notice how much we need a vacation until we go on one. This was probably obvious to others but not us. Like the executive who bragged to his friend, “I haven’t had a vacation for three years.” His friend replied, “I could tell.”

Is your schedule aligned with your priorities?

For a moment, imagine you have a friend who said to you that, for her, maintaining her health is a very high priority because she is the main wage earner in her family. You believe her but notice that she doesn’t exercise, skips breakfast but eats donuts at 11:00 am and says she is to busy to go to the doctor for regular check-ups. If you cared about her and had an honest relationship, you might point out the inconsistency between her words and her behavior. Let’s say that you do that and she agrees with you and says that indeed this is a priority and she will devote more time and attention to healthy practices. You believe her again and think she is sincere but how much time would have to transpire, with no significant change in her behavior, before you might be tempted to have a “tough love” conversation: “Being healthy is not a top priority for you. Judging by how you spend your time, other things are more important to you.” In my view, if you had this difficult conversation with her you would be acting like a true friend, willing to hold her accountable for her own best interests.

We should consider ourselves very fortunate if we have friends, family members, business colleagues or members of our religious organization who will do this for us. I am not saying they should impose their values on you. Rather, they are just holding you accountable for the values and priorities that you espouse. I do know that not that many people have the combination of insight, skill and courage to have this kind of chat with us.
As I am writing this I can think of three conversations similar to this with friends who held a mirror up to me. They were crucial at specific junctures in my life and I am grateful for each one. Since I can’t know if someone in your life is doing this for you on a regular basis, I want to show you how to do this for yourself; to hold yourself accountable but, even more, to eventually align your time, energy and focus with what is most important for you to maintain or achieve.

To do this, follow this three-step process.
1. The first step is to identify where the current gaps are between your values, commitments, current priorities, long term goals and the actual time you devote to them.

2. The second step, if you see a lack of alignment, is to identify the reasons the gap has persisted.

In my experience, it is usually a result of one of four reasons:

1. a) It may be that this is really not a deeply embedded value or priority.
2. b) You may have a problem with procrastination.
3. c) You are over committed.
4. d) Unintentionally, and often without awareness, you may be spending too much time on low payoff, low priority activities.

3. The third step is what I have just mentioned.

After identifying the gaps and analyzing the reason(s) they exist, the final part of the process is to learn the skills and adopt the systems that will bring you into alignment. The methods you will learn have the additional advantage of letting you know, early on, if you are drifting in key areas.

Align your goals with your actions so that you get the important things done.

Occasionally I am asked, “From a coach’s perspective, what is the most important practice that executives neglect to make time for? I always answer, “Reflection.” This is not only the answer I give. I have asked other coaches and management consultants the same question and get a similar response.

While there are many methods to prepare you for thoughtful reflection, I have found this series of exercises in which you will reflect on your core values, commitments, current priorities and long term goals most effective. It is very important focus specifically on each of these areas while also focusing on the “big picture” by considering both perspectives at the same time. These exercises will become the foundation of your Executive Stamina system and will help you in three crucial ways:

1. What is already “on my plate”?
In order to avoid passing the point of diminishing returns, first we need to have a realistic idea of what we are already committed to in our lives. By understanding the current demands on our time and not underestimating the effort that certain activities require we can make better decisions about what to say “yes” or “no” to. Only when you fully understand your current situation can you make smart decisions about taking on additional responsibilities that may present themselves.

2. What is precious?
The reflective exercises will highlight for you what is precious to you; the values, priorities, goals and relationships that are the most meaningful to you and the most important to maintain.
These activities will help you answer questions like “What is the best use of my time?” In addition by insuring that what is most important is at the top of our list you will be taking an important step to counter the Law of Gradual Change. You will be able to view future commitments and revisit current ones with a keener eye towards their impact on these vital areas.

3. Am I living my stated priorities?
This exercise puts your stated values, priorities, goals, etc. to an acid test. Match your actual schedule, the reality of how you really spend your time, against your avowed business, career and personal priorities. This, for most of us, including the authors, is a very difficult thing to do because often there are at least some key areas of life where our time and energy is not in alignment with something we state is very important