Book 289 - A Year of Magical Learning

Reflection Title: The Art of Running Uphill???

Book – Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t by Simon Sinek (Part 2/2)

Book Description:

In his work with organizations around the world, Simon Sinek noticed that some teams trust each other so deeply that they would literally put their lives on the line for each other. Other teams, no matter what incentives are offered, are doomed to infighting, fragmentation, and failure. Why?

The answer became clear during a conversation with a Marine Corps general. "Officers eat last," he said. Sinek watched as the most junior Marines ate first while the most senior Marines took their place at the back of the line. What's symbolic in the chow hall is deadly serious on the battlefield: Great leaders sacrifice their own comfort - even their own survival - for the good of those in their care.

Too many workplaces are driven by cynicism, paranoia, and self-interest. But the best ones foster trust and cooperation because their leaders build what Sinek calls a "Circle of Safety" that separates the security inside the team from the challenges outside.

Reflection:

I don’t know if this statistic is true or not, but this statistic I found in Leaders Eat Last certainly was alarming.

The author stated (paraphrasing), that logically one would think that the higher an executive moves up in a company, the more responsibility they shoulder, the more elevated stress and unhealthy lifestyle that will follow. The idea of the overstressed, unbalanced, and unhealthy business executive is one that we can all imagine and have seen in many a movie or TV show. However, studies have proven to show the exact opposite to be true surprisingly. It is actually the people in the lowest levels of an organization that are 4x more likely to die from complications arising from burdens of excessive stress in their lives.

Our jobs are literally killing us in some scenarios…let that sink in for a minute!

So why would someone at the lowest levels of an organization have more stress than the top executives?

The lower you are on the totem pull in your organization, the less say you have in crafting the environment around you to find the balance you seek. Makes sense, the environment you work in wasn’t created by you and didn’t have your mission, purpose, or values in mind when it was initially dreamed up out of the mind of some executive. You're shit out of luck and your only option is to suck it up and deal with it or leave.

Most of us suck it up and stay.

We talked about the art of running downhill in previous reflections, but I’ll place a reminder here as it is important to the discussion. The art of running downhill is finding activities and environments that naturally and effortlessly align to your values and make life feel like beautiful feeling of running downhill and seemingly picking up speed without even trying. It takes intentional thought, design, and daily action to make it possible.

Sadly, most of us have perfected the opposite in our lives. We are masters of the art of running uphill. We are world class at enduring shit that we don’t want to endure and simply finding a way through. It may feel awful, we may be tired, and we may be running ourselves into an early grave, but dammit…we will make it up that hill. This is why I love humans; we can endure almost anything and keep pushing forward no matter what.

While enduring is admirable and one of my core values, we should only deploy our endurance superpower on things that truly matter to us in this world in my opinion. That crappy job that doesn’t align to your life is not one of them.

Let’s change that!

As the author states, less control = more stress.

It is time to take back control of your actions and the environments you choose to partake in by aligning them with your values and purpose. If you do, you will magically find that art of running uphill flipped around and you will be enjoying the wind in your hair as you glide through your new life stress free, balanced, and healthy.

Question: Are you spending your energy running uphill or downhill in the environments you produce your meaningful work in each day? How can you change that?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Coming Soon

YOML Bookstore - Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek