Life – Maintaining Balance and Managing Commitments

Have you ever had one of those days where you know you worked really hard and didn’t feel like you achieved anything? It’s often referred to as spinning your wheels. This often happens because we over-commit and fail to make good choices or have difficult conversations in order to maintain balance in our schedule and in our lives.

I worked with a CEO who I really admired for his skill at managing commitments and knowing how to respond to multiple priorities and requests for his time. One particular incident stands out for me. We were in a strategic planning meeting and the CEO declared that he had to leave at 3:30 p.m. because his son was playing in the city finals of high school basketball. The executive team worked very diligently to finish the meeting on time. Unfortunately, the deadline arrived and we were not done.

What happened next taught me a lot about great leadership. The CEO got up and announced that he was indeed leaving as planned because attending his son’s basketball game was extremely important to him and to his son. He indicated he felt he could leave the meeting because we would no doubt come up with a good plan. We knew our work without him was going to be reviewed. As it turned out, his presence was not absolutely necessary to the completion of the outline for the strategic plan. In fact, as we continued on without the CEO in the room, there were many reflections on what his input would of been had he been there and I think we all were confident that his views were represented even in his absence.

Upon reflection, I learned several important lessons about the CEO and about leadership.

• Leaders reinforce integrity by ensuring that when they make a promise they keep it
• Leaders are clear on what is important and this leads to decisive action without a lot of wasted time going back and forth
• Leaders communicate their vision clearly so that others can support them without the leader being constantly present

In order to achieve personal leadership effectiveness, you need to find balance in all areas of your life – both personal and professional. This is achieved by taking moments throughout each day to reflect on what you are doing and see if it aligns with your priorities and your plan for the day, the week and beyond. The MERIT Profile Assessment™ enables an individual or team to measure your competence in maintaining balance and commitment. These competencies together with the ability to say “no” or “not now” are critical to leadership that is based on integrity and good character.

How are you at maintaining life balance? Do you manage your commitments effectively? I welcome your feedback. Please leave a link back to your own blog too if you have one, via the commentluv feature here on the site.

Dave

David Town, CHRP, is a facilitator and coach of leadership and management principles that enable individuals and organizations to build greater leadership competency, resulting in higher performance and higher employee engagement. David has a particular focus on effectively managing conversations involving confrontation or conflict. As well, he provides insights and assessment strategies for integrating character competencies into leadership skills resulting in increased trust and reduced risk for leaders. David is President of Your Leadership Matters Inc.