LEADER VITALITY AND ROLE STRESS

Passion, vigor, facility and satisfaction (well-being) – the elements that define a leader’s vitality – are inherently dynamic; the glow of their presence dims and brightens with the rise and fall of the stressors that make our day-to-day existence both joyful and challenging. (Thomas Harvey)

Together, passion, vigor, facility and satisfaction makeup the highly desirable quality called leader vitality. During periods of time when the conditions in our personal and/or professional lives are just right, and all four elements are present and aligned, we are at our absolute best. We feel confident, energized and alive! Our awareness of the presence of this wonderful state of being reaches its height during, or just after, we experience this state sometimes called “flow”. Vital leaders relish and maximize the occurrence of this remarkable condition by making conscious efforts to monitor and maintain high levels of the important elements that make up leader vitality.

As nice as it is to imagine how great it would be to sustain high levels of vitality all the time, we think you’ll agree that it wouldn’t be a very realistic expectation. For we all know how challenging it can be to balance the personal and professional stresses of life and how tightly the vigor and confidence with which we approach our roles and responsibilities, and the frequency and duration of our feelings of satisfaction and vitality, are tied to the complex set of factors and conditions that trigger those stresses.

In the process of our creating our model, we found three forms of stress to be strongly related to the ups and downs of leader vitality – role overload, role conflict and role ambiguity. Role overload exists when we are expected to perform a wide variety of legitimate tasks that fall within the purview of our roles and responsibilities, but we don’t believe we could possibly complete them within given time constraints. We can also view role overload as a conflict of priorities. Role ambiguity exists when: 1) we lack important information necessary to perform successfully in our roles. 2) we lack clarity about what we’re expected to accomplish in our roles. have expectations about the scope and responsibilities of our jobs that are different from our own. Role conflict exists when we are torn by conflicting demands from others. We find ourselves doing things that we really don’t want to be doing or believe not to be part of our responsibilities.

Regardless of your role, personal or professional, all three forms of role stress are present at various times and in varying degrees; and regardless of form, the stress present can serve to stimulate or stifle vitality. At a manageable level, stress provides the impetus for positive action, growth and productivity, but when we allow it to become unmanageable it can lead to discouragement and stagnation. The most vital leaders continuously affirm their commitments, hone their skills and adjust their mindsets in ways that allow them remain consistently productive and satisfied.

SATISFACTION  – LEADER VITALITY ELEMENT FOUR

There are countless studies on the negative spillover of job pressures on family life, but few on how job satisfaction enhances the quality of family life. (Albert Bandura)

Bandura’s statement points to an interesting statistic; on average, 16 of every 17 scientific and scholarly studies about human psychology focus on understanding the factors that lead to human ailment and dysfunction (anxiety, depression etc.), while only one takes the more positive route and focuses on factors that lead to health and well-being (satisfaction, happiness). Curiously, something about the nature of human curiosity has led to this phenomenon of looking to the causes of problems and failures to inform solutions. The opening quote suggests that maybe job satisfaction does positively affect family life (and we’d suggest a lot more) and that maybe we should learn more about what satisfaction is and what makes people satisfied.

We strongly believe and promote the contention that discovering, developing and exhibiting your passion, vigor and facility will lead to satisfaction – the fourth and final element of our model. Satisfaction as we define it, is the pleasurable, reinforcing and positive mental and emotional state that leaders are left with after pausing to think about where they’ve been, where they are and what they’ve accomplished in life. Dr. Martin Seligman, sometimes referred to as the father of positive psychology, would call this sensation happiness; and if it were present most of the time he’d call it “enduring happiness”. Striving to attain and sustain leader vitality will lead to enduring satisfaction.

FACILITY  – LEADER VITALITY ELEMENT THREE

“To put away aimlessness and weakness, and to begin to think with purpose, is to enter the ranks of those strong ones who only recognize failure as one of the pathways to attainment; who make all conditions serve them, and who think strongly, attempt fearlessly, and accomplish masterfully. (James Allen)

Facility is a word derived from the Latin word facilis, which means easy, easy to do, without difficulty, effortless. The most vital leaders perform their roles and responsibilities in work and life with such facility that no challenge or circumstance is too big to handle, and they do it so masterfully that at times it appears almost effortless. They have enabled themselves to operate this way because they have learned how to blend their knowledge and technical abilities (TQ) with their emotional and social abilities (EQ) in amazing ways.

Facility then, as used in our model, includes but goes beyond just having an impressive collection of competencies and skills. It’s really about having the savvy to develop, blend and convert our mental, technical, social and emotional capacities into actions that propel us toward career-life goals and purposes.  Metaphorically, if passion were jet fuel, then vigor would be the thrust produced from jet engines and facility would be all the equipment and systems that allow an F-16 to perform in such remarkable ways. All have to work together - having passion and vigor without facility or having facility without passion and vigor leads to failure

Becoming personally and professionally facile is a life-long quest. Facility is an ability that grows and develops over time in direct proportion to your commitment. In the end, facility building requires ‘leader brand’ building, with your leader brand representing that unique set of highly developed and well understood values, beliefs, attitudes, traits, abilities, talents and styles that define who you are, what you know, and how you operate. Ultimately, your leader brand becomes how you will be perceived in the world – something over which you have a great deal of power and control, should you choose to exercise it.

Three items in your mini-assessment are used to give a quick indication of your facility. One relates to your knowledge and technical abilities; two about your emotional and social abilities.

VIGOR – LEADER VITALITY ELEMENT TWO

The chief condition on which, life, health and vigor depend, is action. It is by action that an organism develops its faculties, increases its energy, and attains the fulfillment of its destiny. (Colin Powell)

In Latin, vigere means “to be lively or vigorous; to thrive, flourish, bloom”. Vital leaders approach all aspects of their lives energetically – vigorously. Vigor like – pep, zest, drive and gusto – are words we use describe the positive energy you would associate with a person who has a ‘vital life spirit’. Vigorous energy rises as leaders pursue their career-life passions and purposes; it is liberated through the unique combination mental, physical, social and emotional processes and actions that define each leader as an individual. It’s critical to understand that in much the same way that mercury in a thermometer responds to changes in temperature, a leader’s level of vigor rises and falls in response to the joys and challenges of work and life.

The most vital leaders discipline themselves to continually monitor and regulate their energy levels; they ‘catch themselves’ when their vigor and passion get too low or too high, and then masterfully adjust their thoughts and behavior in ways that will keep them moving at an optimum level performance and ensure the maintenance of their personal and professional vitality.

Coming Home Again! – The Spring Migration of Emerging Adults (student version)
Parenting Emerging Adults – New Freedoms, New Fears. (parent version)
By Dr. Thomas Harvey, Leadership Consultant and Coach

The great migration begins again. Another semester over, maybe even a degree earned. Tens of thousands of college students and an increasing number of new graduates are emptying their dorm rooms and apartments and making another move ‘back home’. For some, the move will be just for another summer, and for others, the unemployed graduates, the disillusioned and the disenfranchised, maybe even longer. Frequent moves is one characteristic of this unstable period of life called emerging adulthood, the intense period of identity exploration and development where young people in their late teens and twenties experience the exhilaration of new freedoms and the uncertainty of new fears; also a time when the parent/child relationship changes dramatically. This article briefly explores evolution of this important phase of human development and offers a few practical tips for students and parents on how to successfully approach the key conflicts that are almost certain to arise.

REQUEST THE FULL TEXT OF THIS 2000 WORD ARTICLE. ASK FOR THE STUDENT VERSION, THE PARENT VERSION OR BOTH. GO TO THE CONTACT PAGE OF THIS WEBSITE.

Copyright 2010, Tom Harvey – Advancing Self Leadership