Waking up at night, worrying, heart pounding?

If you've been waking in the middle of the night, worrying, heart pounding, you may find value in the following story. It comes from one of our Organization Workshop trainers.

One of the managers I'd been coaching came to me this morning and said, "Thank you for your coaching this morning, I found it incredibly valuable."  I looked at him really puzzled since this was the first person I had spoken with all morning. He said it would take a few minutes over breakfast for him to explain himself, which he did.
 
“I was working with the team yesterday and I’m excited and stretched with this new charter we've been given. I spent all day until 11:00 pm in intense conversations with people and, given that I'm an introvert, it was emotionally draining.  I went home exhausted and fell fast asleep. At 1:30  my eyes popped wide open and I couldn’t sleep for several hours as I kept thinking of the work to be done. I woke up this morning completely exhausted and realized that I can’t sustain this.”

At this point, as his ex-coach, I’m already starting to think of several questions I want to ask,  but he continues…. “And I thought I should ask my coach about how to sustain this. Then I thought, OK if I did ask my coach, what would she say? And I realized, this was a new experience for me. I haven’t before been in the role of a senior leader, so now I WAS TOP!. And as a top, I had predictably sucked up all the responsibility. So then the solution was simple – what is the leadership stand for a top? And now I know how to sustain my work on the charter while sleeping well at night.”
 
I was amazed and impressed by the work he had done. I opened my mouth to add something and he looked at me and said, “I don’t really need anything from you, you already contributed vastly to me this morning”…. 

So, dear reader, are you Top? And, if so, how well are you sleeping lately?

Our job as Tops is not to suck responsibility up to ourselves and away from others. Notice how when we do that, we increase our own burden, we gradually disable others, we limit the brain power that can be brought to bear on issues, we diminish the effectiveness of our contribution to our system. So why would we do that? There may be no good reason other than blind reflex. A more productive stand for us as Tops is to do what we can to create a system that is responsible for itself.

How much longer can we go on blaming Middles ?

Just today I heard it again. Big global billion dollar corporation. The same story I've been hearing for over thirty years! It's about those Middles and how they are screwing up all our wonderful plans. What is it about those Middles? Is this a genetic disorder? Is this a problem with human resources that they continue to hire weak, ineffective people into those middle positions? Are you a Middle? Are you feeling like you are weak, confused? Are you concerned that maybe you're not as competent as you used to be? This has got to stop. Middles, this is not a personal disorder. This is not about you. This is about all of us - especially those who keep fingering you -not understanding what that middle position is all about. Just today I gave someone a copy of In The Middle. It blew him away. When will this end? Once again, we are waiting for homo systemicus.