We have a choice as to how to be executive leaders and VIM Executive Coaching understands they are two, entirely different paths. The choice is clear: do we wish to mark the years or do we wish to mark time?
The Clock
The clock, digital, mechanical, electric or atomic, advances. Though we would all wish to stop or even reverse time, given our current level of technology, time will keep moving forward for the foreseeable future (we suppose there are quips and puns to even that statement, but quantum physics was not offered as part of our business school program!).
In any event we are given the opportunity to mark each year of our lives with great care, especially in regard to our work lives – a finite span within a finite number of years, or we can mark time. “Marking time” in our definition, is the executive obsessed with crossing out days “on the calendar,” whether that calendar is digital, papyrus or imaginary. The executive who marks time divides weeks into a series of days “to endure” until the weekend, or months until vacation or years until retirement.
While marking time certainly has some meaning e.g., five days until my child’s birthday or booking a month in advance to save 15 percent on a river cruise through the Amazon, marking time as a way to “kill days,” or weeks is to completely ignore the inner journey. It is not the “X” we strike through a day in our work histories that is the problem, but in never taking the time to note the richness of that day, and what it brought to us.
If the “X’s” through March 11 and March 12 of any given year in our work histories revealed nothing, then what is it we learned, or accomplished or even dreamed on those days?
This is not a plea for you to keep a diary or journal (though such is quite a useful pursuit), however, if we were to take any March 11th or March 12th of any year in our work lives, we might find important projects, workplace opportunities and challenges, leadership dilemmas, successes or failures.
What might have happened had we fully noted that month and year rather than pushed ourselves through those dates in anticipation of the weekend or vacation?
Marking the Years
Marking the years, in our definition, is far more important than putting an “X” on a calendar with a felt-tipped pen.
Marking the years demands an intention and along with that, being mindful about where we are going, what we have accomplished, where we are failing or succeeding. Marking the years is a purposely mindful act. Strangely, mindfulness enables us to slow down. Mindfulness, springing from mindfulness meditation allows us, even if it is for ten minutes a day, gives each of us the luxury of being calm, reflective and aware in the moments of our work lives.
Crossing out days on a calendar is the opposite of awareness. It is the opposite of reminding ourselves of accomplishments; of acts of compassion or purpose or activities. In getting through days to arrive at some mythological destination, we never have the ability to enjoy the journey in real time. If we simply cross out days, without intention, then we are enduring our careers without meaning.
Unfortunately, when an executive leader who “marks time” changes jobs, he or she often reverts to the same “getting though it” unauthentic pattern that led to failure in the prior position. Going from a marking the time attitude to one of carefully and mindfully marking the years is an intentional shift that pays incredible rewards.
At VIM Executive Coaching we nurture executives into understand that each day is precious and filled with possibility. The ride may not always be enjoyable, we would never suggest that, but at least we are aware that the bumps and turns are sometimes necessary to get to a more intentional destination.