The 4 Emotional Cycles Every Senior Living Leader Will Face

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Transcript

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Welcome back to another episode of the Aspire for More with Erin podcast. I appreciate your time and spending it with me. We're gonna have a very interesting conversation about what I like to call the four cycles of leadership, and I talk about this in my group program, The One Hundred Percent Leader, and in one-on-one coaching if it comes up. But it's something that I believe all of us go through, and we have to be aware of it because awareness is actually what influences performance, and, performance is what we're judged on, right? So I am in this moment right now, so I figure this might as well be a little therapy coaching session for me. So buckle up. Here we go. Do you remember your first week in leadership? New place, new community, new role. I have t- taken an interim position, as Assisted Living Association of Alabama's executive director, and that first day is really exciting. that initial thought of we're gonna turn this place around. stepping in and feeling, getting a fresh notebook for a new topic. If I was a coffee drinker, I would tell you, "Get a cup of strong coffee." Find a new energy drink. and then you walk into your community, or you walk into what the first full week is inside of a new role, and all of a sudden, this sentence of we're gonna turn this place around becomes replaced with the reality of complaints, people's opinions. If you're inside the community, call-offs that come all the time. All of a sudden your inbox is just flooded with things that you really have no idea on how to make happen, how to facilitate, who to ask it to. And then, my God, someone from a corporate needs a report that you have no idea how to pull that from. Maybe a survey walks in because you're new, and suddenly you're eating, whatever your favorite comfort food is, a Krispy Kreme donut, a thirty-two ounce Coke, string cheese. Whatever it is, you're eating that at four forty-five, five forty-five, seven forty-five in the mon- morning and wondering if leadership or this position was the biggest mistake that we ever made. I will tell you, I went to the gas station more than I could ever tell you just to relieve- The pressure. I needed spicy bubbles in the back of my throat, right? I would love to know what your comfort food is or what your vice is when things are overwhelming. Because if you've ever gone from, "I've got this," to, "What exactly have I gotten myself into?" This episode is for you. And let me tell you something, just recently during Nurse Appreciation Week was the kind of the first week that I said yes to this to this opportunity, and I found myself in some really negative patterns again. I'm swiping the card because I don't have the time to think about a meaningful and thoughtful gift for the nurses at my son's school, so I just bought a lot of things and put them in a basket. Or I just am grabbing the different things that, make me feel good in the moment when I'm eating, and it doesn't really have the long-term effect that I want. So it is this cycle, this phase, this process of, of shifting from, "I've got this," to, "Exactly what have I gotten myself into, and can I even do this?" And all these types of wild cycles, phases, thoughts that we have going on inside of our mind. So this episode is going to help both me and you stay the course, grow through the process, lead the growth, and understand and have the awareness that these are all just cycles and phases that I have to go through that will be worth the end result, right? So stay with me, 'cause we're gonna talk about what these four leadership cycles are, and I promise you, you're in one of them right now. And if you can identify it, it won't be beating you... you will not be beating you up as much, and that's important. So these cycles, these phases, they're not like your prototypical personality types. To me, you could almost compare them to weather systems or the seasons of life, right? Spring, fall, summer, winter. We all know that we're going to have them. We all know the, the discomfort, the, the beautiful nature of it. the... I love spring and fall because of the, the, obviously of the weather and the flowers and the feeling of change in the air. But summer's incredibly hot in Alabama, and winter is incredibly gloomy and dark sometimes in Alabama. Although, in Alabama, winter is not really winter, but you understand my point. so when we think about these cycles and these phases, here are some examples. You get a new role You're in a staffing crisis, a new company bought your community, and now everything's changing. You have a survey that comes in, and we all know there's lots of phases and cycles inside of a survey. You get a promotion, which is exciting. You have occupancy pressure coming in. There's family transitions that you're navigating both personally and professionally. Or maybe there's big life changes in your world. These are all triggers that will dump you into a cycle because it's new, because you don't understand exactly everything that's gonna go on, and you don't necessarily have a frame of reference, and you don't know what's going to happen. It's that uncertainty because we crave certainty. I know I do. So the goal is not avoiding the cycle. To me, the goal is knowing where you are while you're inside of the cycle. This is why awareness will create capacity. This is why performance is not always the strategy in getting the outcomes that you want. Clearly, performance is going to get you outcomes. You cannot have awareness without performance. But you can have performance with the awareness of what's driving me, what I'm scared of, what I'm really good at, how do I leverage what I'm good at, and how do I stay away from what I'm bad at, and who can I bring in, or just the awareness of like, "Dude, this is really gonna suck. It's really gonna suck for a little while, but it's gonna get better because I'm just gonna keep trying." Or honestly, the awareness of, "Is this actually the right place for me?" Which is a valid question. It's just not something that you want to decide in the messy middle. You just really wanna decide it when things kind of plateau. Because obviously alignment is a superpower, and that is a superpower that we want to try to achieve in every scenario that we're in. But ultimately, can it be achieved? And understanding the answer to that question in a moment where life is stable is the best time to answer that question. But we're gonna dive into that. So let's talk about what the four cycles are. Let's talk about the first cycle, which is hopeful enthusiasm, which is that sentence of, We're gonna change things around." Right? I walked into a nonprofit sixty-four apartment memory care community knowing that I had turned around as a sales director two other communities and was successful in operationally turning a community around, First as a sales director and then as the executive director. And so I was like, I'm gonna make this happen. We are gonna turn this place around. I don't go anywhere and not get to 95 to 100%," right? And I had this mindset that I'm gonna walk in, things are gonna turn around, and people are just going to fall in love with my passion and my enthusiasm and my confidence that I am 100% leader because I had that experience. I had no other experience other than being that highly successful sales and operational leader. Well, little did I understand that, compliance issues and a big old three-inch binder full of a plan of correction became the number one priority. Sales and operational excellence was not the top priority. The top priority was compliance excellence. And at that moment, compliance was not something that I was strong in. My strength was in sales and operationally, culturally changing a community. So I was quickly made aware that what I wanted to do was not at the top of the list So my ability to improve culture was constrained by the plan of correction, right? My ability to influence communication was constrained by the plan of correction. And a set of consultants that I deeply admire and respect, but their outcomes, their stress, their identity of being 100% compliant leader was what their main goal was because their identity was wrapped inside a 100% survey. They had our license, and our survey was a 57 at that point. So the only thing that mattered to them was compliance and sticking to the plan of correction. Occupancy could increase, but it had to be based on the plan of correction, right? Teamwork Culture can be increased, but everything had to be around the plan of correction. So my excitement was kind of muted there for a while until I could understand how I could do all of those things. And honestly, I had to understand that I had to master compliance first before I could influence culture and communication and occupancy. I had to master compliance because that's what was most important. So I knew that excitement and passion can create momentum, but the problem is that momentum and that excitement was squashed very quickly because they wanted my focus to be on something else. And I realized at that moment that excitement and passion is not necessarily the correct fuel for long-term success and very high pressure, compliance-driven outcomes. But a, a few months in, I... It was like this boot camp for me, of compliance. It was literally the worst six months of embracing the suck you could ever go through, but I am so thankful for the experience now. But that hopeful enthusiasm that I had walking into that door knowing that I could turn things around very quickly was squashed. But I needed to find it again, and I was able to find it again when I became aware of what I needed to be focusing on, right? So you wanna make sure that you don't over-commit to a lot of hopeful enthusiasm before you understand what your focus and the immediate outcomes that are needed. Because you really can tie excitement into the outcomes as long as everybody's aligned with what the most important outcomes are. One of the areas that I understand now, like when I look back at that time, is we can underestimate the complexity of the challenge that we're in. And so if we allow our excitement and our passion and our hopeful enthusiasm to really be the steering of the ship for us, then we may not be realistic. And we may be saying yes to a lot because we believe that we can do this, and we have all this excitement and all this passion and, like, we're gonna turn this ship around, and yet we're not even aware of how complex it is. Because there are people in your team, in the corporate office, in the families, in the residents, that have all watched somebody else do this, maybe multiple people do this, and it not work. So your hopeful enthusiasm may not feel very realistic to them. And if you see that, it's important for you to be aware of that because you may have to reassess, right? You can still have a lot of hopeful enthusiasm about growing and learning, and maybe not as much hopeful enthusiasm for concrete outcomes because each place is different, each problem has complexity, and you just have to figure that out. And too much hopeful enthusiasm may slip you into the negative sides of hopeful enthusiasm, which would be the proving mode or the yes addiction because you wanna prove that you were right. And my best advice is to really, really understand the complexity of the situation because that awareness will help you create outcomes that are reasonable. when reality shows up, hopeful enthusiasm can be a weakness for you and not necessarily a strength. And so you really wanna be able to use and create hopeful enthusiasm and leverage it at the time that you need it. So this is the difference between understanding complexity and speaking realistically with hope of growing and improving versus really sticking to outcomes that you have no idea how to hit them with a realistic timeline. This is why awareness is so important, because that cycle number two is overwhelm, and if we are not aware and are, like swimming in our hopeful enthusiasm, we are going to feel, overwhelmed. Overwhelm, is... To me, overwhelm is feeling like you have so much stuff to do and you don't understand where to start, and so you're trying to do everything. This is where, leadership gets loud, and not because your thoughts are getting loud, but because everybody else's thoughts are getting loud. everybody has an opinion. They want you to know the opinion. Maybe some people's feelings got hurt, and they want you to understand why and where they come from. That context piece is so important. You have zero, zero, uninterrupted time, and you've got... Like, your brain is like this computer and have all these tabs open, and you, and it, they're just constantly refreshing, and you're struggling to go to bed Because it's like, where do I even start? To me, that's overwhelm. I am completely overwhelmed, and I will tell you, in this moment, I do feel overwhelmed. But I know that I am in a phase. I am in a cycle. I am new. I am new to this role, and there's a lot of timelines that are coming up that I have no control over, and I have to make those my top priority. So I may feel overwhelmed, and the answer to overwhelm is the prioritization. I can tell myself, "I don't believe that overwhelm automatically means that I'm failing." Sometimes overwhelm is simply my experience is stretching my capacity to get better, to be better, to see things differently. And this is where I have to train myself to understand what's important and what can kind of take a backseat. Not everything needs me. I don't have to do everything. I don't have to know everything. But I do have to understand what things have to be done, when, and why. And now I can start prioritizing my time. I heard or watched on social media here recently where if you just take blocks of time, which we know time blocking is important, but if I'm constantly interrupting myself to check an email, to reply, to look into this, I'm never gonna get a project done. And all of a sudden my hopeful enthusiasm goes down because I can't even get a project done, 'cause I'm replying to every email, from an urgency addiction. Like, "I gotta let them know I'm, I'm doing this." But that's really reactive leadership. That's a reactive way, where I... If I can time block my time, or I can really give an hour to this project or understanding this, then all of a sudden my urgency goes down, my overwhelm goes down, because I'm checking things off my list. That's when we start feeling effective and successful. And too many times, and I'm telling you, I'm feeling this right now, so I'm speaking to myself as I'm speaking to you. What I have learned as a coach, and what I have seen with my clients, is that when you take an hour to reflect on what's going on for the week, or for the month, or for the two weeks since we've last spoken, you actually can see things clearly because you're talking about it instead of it just sitting inside of your brain. And when we feel overwhelmed, we don't take the time to reflect on what we just learned. I'm literally just doing things, figuring them out in the moment, and I'm not understanding how they all connect. And if you simply take the time to prioritize what's going on, understand the timelines and what's due, understand why, you can start categorizing and prioritizing where your time needs to be spent. And if I'm spending too much time in weakness zones, I'm gonna feel overwhelmed and failing. But if I can figure out how to spend more time in my strength zones, then I'm gonna feel really good about the momentum that I'm creating, I can have some realistic hopeful enthusiasm, I can say I'm not overwhelmed, I'm just busy, and I'm busy being productive, I'm busy producing positive outcomes, right? This is when we start realizing that when I move with intention, when I make decisions based on an awareness of what is important, then my overwhelm can feel less. My capacity is stretching. when you're in a new phase in your life or in your relationships or in your work, growth is going to stretch you. Growth is capacity. We are learning how to do new things, see things differently, and solving new problems. And if overwhelm stays too long in your psyche, in your thoughts, in the stories that you tell yourself, this is where, you hit something called the dip, Seth Godin wrote a book about it, and it's called The Dip. If you allow overwhelm to rule your life and your thoughts and the stories that you tell yourself and the definitions of success and failure, you will fall into a dip, and the question becomes, can you get out of the dip? Because that dip is where a lot of people get lost. It's not necessarily burnout. If we stay there too long, it's burnout, because we don't see the way to get out. This is where, in my kind of format, my framework of the cycles of new leadership or new role leadership, it's called the crossroads. Seth Godin calls it the dip. And we're gonna talk about how this shows up and why people make decisions at the wrong time But to me, this is like the emotional centerpiece. This is where that reflection that I just spoke about comes in because we've got to slow down, and we've got to allow this dip, the messy middle, the really hard part of being new and growing and stretching and being-- growing in our capacity, we gotta give this room to settle. So in the book The Dip, Seth Godin talks about that place between the beginner ex-excitement, which would be our hopeful enthusiasm, and mastery. The messy middle is the place where things stop being fun, and they stop being easy, and people stop giving immediate feedback, and you're kinda just lost in this, "Am I doing this right? Does anybody... Is anybody there?" It's kind of like, um, having those car conversations where you're just feeling overwhelmed, and you're just venting at people, or you're just looking at the computer, and you don't even know what to do, or your notebook, and you don't even know what to do. pitfalls and the emotional stories that we tell ourselves in these kind of crossroad dip-type moments is maybe somebody else could do this better Nothing is going to change. Why am I gonna do this? Nothing is going to change, or what's the point? How many times have we said this to ourselves, right? These are the moments where I really wanna challenge you to dig in deeper, lean in deeper into those thoughts, because I don't believe the crossroads are where the quitting point is. I would suggest maybe this is where awareness becomes more powerful than a decision to quit or to push through. Because maybe we're not spending enough time in the areas that are actually going to cause progress. We're not working within our strengths. We're comparing ourselves to people, and we're not seeing our own identity. We've lost it. We've lost it in the proving of ourself to people, or we're trying to prove ourselves to everybody that we've lost our ability to even understand boundaries and what's needed or even how to renew our energy. And too many people allow their boundaries to disappear, and they don't understand how to renew their energy. Energy management is not a professional sports tool anymore. I really, I really think it's something for us as senior living leaders that are important. Because if we can understand how to renew our energy, to own our boundaries, and how encouragement over pressure can really influence people in doing things in ways that can see success, it's important. When we stay in the dip too long... Let me just say this. When we stay in the dip too long, we stop seeing where success actually is. And if we stop seeing it, then other people don't see it either. We're not pointing it out. We're expecting these really big outcomes, but really, it's the small outcomes that are actually going to drive the biggest impact. And if we're not aware enough to see the small i- impacts, then we're going to miss the big moments, the big success, because we're just not able to see it because we're staying in overwhelm. I really want you to think about where most people make a mistake is quitting in these moments, in these dip kind of crossroad moments. And when we think about the grow, lead, and rise framework, I would challenge you To, to take, and I will explain this, th- what Seth Godin says about really understanding when to quit would be if you're in the dip, right? You've walked up to the place, you fell into the dip, the crossroads, you are at a crossroads moment. The question that you have to ask yourself is there a way out of this dip? Do you see a way up the hill to get out of the dip, out of this crossroad section? Because the crossroads becomes... If it's a, it-- Let's talk about it from a cul-de-sac perspective. If you're constantly walking in circles and, and having the same problems and not actually looking at the root cause or trying to fix them, then you're always gonna be at this moment. Or if you've fallen off a cliff, and there's no way back up, and you're just free-falling into the ground, clearly, there's no way to make this work. But if there is a way, if reflection can help give you that awareness, where you stop trying to prove yourself to the point where you've lost your s- your identity, your purpose, protecting what's important to you, and understanding how to renew your energy. If reflection and time of just understanding and prioritizing what's important, if that can give you back your hopeful enthusiasm and find your way out of the dip, then it's not a time to quit. It's a time to lean in. And it takes awareness that you need awareness to gain the awareness of what is actually needed to be successful. Because when you can do that, something will shift, and that something is confident ownership. But confident ownership is not perfectionist ownership. It's not perfect ownership. Okay? It is literally the ability to see what's important and to make those decisions and to be confident in those decisions that you're making. You stop expecting everything to feel easy. You embrace the suck. You stop trying to control everything. You stop proving yourself, and you start just being yourself because we understand that being is the foundation of doing. inside the community and in today's world, the more authentic, the better communicator you are, the better, understanding of what people want from you And how you can provide that to them in unique and sustainable ways, that's how you're gonna be influencing success in your life and in your community. Confident ownership is about understanding your strengths and how to use them appropriately, not to underuse them and not to overuse them, but to use them at its optimal level. Understanding what deserves my energy and when, and how to get more of it. The delegation of, "I wanna work in the areas that I am required to work in and the areas that give me the biggest return on my efforts, and I want to delegate to other people areas that I'm not that great in," because that's how success is gonna come much quicker. And finding your identity and your leadership voice is important, because when you know what's important and what's gonna lead to success and outcomes, you... Then you can start being able to use your voice in a positive way, to respond to things instead of react to things. We don't wanna be in this overwhelmed setting where we're constantly reacting to things when we should be reflecting and responding. And that is where a lot of people get lost, is in that sentence right there. Confident ownership is not a calm, less overwhelming place because all of a sudden life got easier. Although, if you got better at solving problems, then that works, right? It's calm because your awareness got stronger, not because you got better at performing. It's because you became more aware of what you needed to do to perform better. Oprah made a comment about her success, and it has stuck with me, and I have heard other people on social media talk about it, and it... I've been studying this, um, and talking about this topic to the 100% Leader group. And she said, "Most people aren't successful because they don't know what they want." They're not aware. They're not aware of what's important to them, they're not aware of what's worth protecting, they're not aware of why they're protecting it. They're not aware of what needs to be done in order to walk towards the success they want. She knew what she wanted, and she would always reassess when things came up and needed to reassess and define success. And I have taken that thought, and I have made it my own, and I wanted to define success for me... In every aspect of my life. If I'm gonna take my kids to the store, what does success look like, kids, in the store? If I wanna take my kids somewhere else, I'm gonna define to them what does success look like. I have to say, it works. If five people listen to this episode, that's okay for me because one is enough for me. That's what success looks like. So when I can define success on my own terms, and I tell a story of why that's successful on my own terms, then nobody else can tell me otherwise, because I have defined what success means to me, and that's the most influential component of success, sustainable success inside of your professional and personal career. This is literally why I teach growth, leadership awareness, and communication presence, and problem-solving. Because if you can make those a priority, success is inevitable, but you have to do it from a very authentic and influential way. So as we close this out, I really want to remind you that leadership can weather lots of changes. The leadership weather brings lots of changes. But you are in c- c- you can be in control of the weather, of your weather, and that is literally the way that you can control that is by just being aware of the story that you're telling yourself. The overwhelm that you feel is gonna require you to be strategic and to prioritize what's important and when and why. And that these cycles, hopeful enthusiasm, the reality check, the crossroads, and the confident ownership, is something that you are gonna go through constantly anytime there's change. So if you know that they're coming, and you know what phase or cycle you're in, then you can weather that storm a lot better. The strongest leaders are not the ones who avoid the weather, but they're the ones who learn to recognize it. Hopeful enthusiasm means I'm ready. Overwhelm is this is harder than I thought. Crossroads, can I keep doing this? And confident ownership says, "I know how I lead through this." It's important for you to realize that. I'm ready. Woo! This is a lot harder than I thought it was gonna be. Can I keep doing this? Yes, I can. Here's how I can do this. better so I can have the full picture of do I want this. And now that I've been through those three phases, those three cycles, I now know how to lead through it and my capacity has grown. And the number one problem inside senior living is the capacity of our leaders because most of us are trying to do it all and doing it all is not what's required. knowing what to do, when to do it, who needs to do it, and why is how you're going to walk through those cycles in a way that serves everyone. So if this episode felt painfully familiar to you, good news. You're not alone. I am actually in it right now. So thank you for listening and allowing me this opportunity to reflect and become aware of all the changes and prioritizations that I need, to be implementing for me. And if you want to support building that awareness, it's exactly the work that I do in my one-on-one coaching, in my 100% leader group program, and what I hope to be bringing to the Assisted Living Association of Alabama, moving forward. So thank you so much for your time. I would love to hear your feedback. You can leave me a message on the website of this podcast and always you can find me on LinkedIn. aspire for more for you, knowing that you are already enough.