Staying Grounded: Integrating

This concludes our series on Bill George’s True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership. This post is almost 3 times longer than my normal post. Please keep reading, though, it shares really good ideas to improve your life and your leadership.

You must integrate your life if you pursue a career in leadership. Bill George and Peter Sims quote John Donahoe, the president of eBay, “Leading a satisfying life is a quest worth taking…The world will shape you if you let it. To have a sense of yourself as you live, you must make conscious choices.”

George and Sims share the following insight in their book True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership. “For authentic leaders being true to themselves by being the same person at work that they are at home is a constant test, yet personal fulfillment is their ultimate reward”. The author’s research found that staying grounded by integrating your life became the last area of self-development required to discover and maintain authentic leadership.

Having studied all the other areas, we end our examination of True North with this essential one. I acknowledge that most of this blog contains direct quotes from True North. I , again, encourage you to buy the book, download the study guides, and use them to internalize the principles if you choose a career leadership.

Fifth Area of Self-Development: Integrate Your Life

• Self-Awareness: What is my story? What are my strengths and developmental needs?
• Values: When are my most deeply held values? What principles guide my leadership?
• Motivations: What motivates me? How do I balance external and internal motivations?
• Support Team: Who are the people I can count on to guide & support me along the way?
• Integrated Life: How can I integrate all aspects of my life and find fulfillment?
  • “Integrating their lives is one of the greatest challenges leaders face. To lead an integrated life, you need to bring together the major elements of your personal life and professional life, including work, family, community, and friends so that you can be the same person in each environment.”
  • “Authentic leaders are constantly aware of the importance of staying grounded. In doing so, they avoid getting too cocky during the high points and forgetting who they are during the low points. Spending time with their families and close friends, getting physical exercise, having spiritual practices, doing community service and returning to places where they grew up are all ways they stay grounded. This grounding is essential to their effectiveness as leaders, because it enables them to preserve their authenticity.”
  • The authors found several practices that will help you integrate your life:
    • “Making Choices and Trade-Offs: Without realizing it, we make hundreds of choices every day, many of them subconscious or intuitive, and try to learn from those that turn out to be mistakes. Ultimately, our life stories become an expression of the choices we make.”
    • “The Buckets of Your Life: Many leaders think about integration in terms of bringing the major parts of their lives together: family, work, friends and community, and personal time.”
      • “Leadership can require significant sacrifices, especially during intense periods, when certain buckets get less time” You must, however, return to all four buckets eventually to remain authentic.
      • “To integrate your life, you must remain grounded in your authentic self, especially when the outside world is chaotic. Well-grounded leaders have a steady and confident presence. They do not show up as one person one day and another person the next. Integration takes discipline, particularly during stressful times when it is easy to become reactive and slip into bad habits.”
    • “Staying True to Your Root: Returning to where you came from is another important way to stay grounded…To restore themselves and their sense of perspective, many have a special place they can go with their families on weekends and vacations.”
    • “Finding Time for Yourself: To manage the stress created by our leadership roles, we need personal time to relieve the tension…meditation or yoga…solace in prayer…jogging…laughing with friends…listening to music…watching television, attending sporting events, reading, or going to movies."
      • “It does not matter what you do, as long as you establish a routine that enables you to manage the stress in your life and gives you time to think clearly about  life, work, and your personal issues. It is critical to avoid abandoning these routines when you are going through an especially busy or difficult period because that is precisely when you need your stress reduction techniques to kick in.”
    • “Spiritual and Religious Practices: Understanding our role in the world by asking questions like “What is the meaning and purpose of my life?” or “Why am I here?” is the most personal and profound area of our leadership development. Many leaders have an active religious or spiritual practice to engage these issues, either privately or with like-minded people…Authentic leaders who are religious talked about the power of prayer, being a part of church groups, and finding solace at church.
    • “Taking Sabbaticals: Taking sabbaticals is another way in which authentic leaders ground themselves.”
    • “Friends and Community: Genuine friends—those we can count on in good times and bad—are an invaluable resource in helping us stay grounded. They are always willing to provide candid feedback, constructive criticism when appropriate, and encouragement when most needed…Being in direct contact with those who are less fortunate also provides leaders with an invaluable perspective about who they are and what is happening in the world around them.”
    • “Measuring Success: Have you defined what success means for you and for your life? Unless you have thought through the answer to that question, you are at risk of letting others define success for you or trying to keep up with their definitions of success. Only when you define what is most important in your life can you set the right priorities for your life and become an integrated leader.”
    • “Living with Integrity: What does it mean to live your life with integrity? Real integrity results from integrating all aspects of your life so that you are true to yourself in all settings. Think of your life like a house, with a bedroom for your personal life, a study for your professional life, a family room for your family, and a living room to share with your friends. Can you knock down the walls between these rooms and be the same person in each of them?”

Before I conclude this post and series, I feel impelled to confirm the validity and power authentic leadership brings to life. I discovered this book while completing my master’s degree at age 57. Stresses of work and school pushed my head under the water line. This book and another exercise called Best Reflected Self (which I will share with you on Friday) restored my sanity.

I return to the concepts I learned in True North constantly. I strongly urge you to internalize them. Studying them and incorporating them into your life will provide you a foundation for peace and success.

Bill George and Peter Sims conclude this section of their book, “When you act the same in each setting, you are well on your way to living your life with genuine integrity. Living that way, you will be an authentic leaders who leads a fulfilling life.”

I hope you discover your authentic leadership and lead a fulfilling life.

Make sure you read Friday’s blog on Your Best Reflected Self