Be Buoyant

🎹 Music for this post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOnqh7LplTs.

Thanks to Charles, Karl, Daniel, Frank, Reggie and Lori for all their input on this post along its journey. Please don’t miss the five-part thought exercise that leads to this piece.

Many decades ago when I was a boy, I found myself caught in a rip current on the Atlantic shore of Fire Island, in Robert Moses National Park.

Invisible hands softly took hold of my legs and dragged my body under. I resisted with panic energy, gaining enough control to catch a breath, only to be pulled under again. I shimmied in every productive way I could to escape the grasp. Another breath, another pull on my body, each time deeper into the churning salty olive murk. After a few cycles of this terrifying experience, a lifeguard caught hold of me and swam me to shore.

This was back at a time when we didn’t call people heroes for doing their jobs. The lifeguard accompanied my frazzled frame up the sand to reunite me with my father, who had dozed, sunning himself. As he reconnected us, I am sure there was nothing much more than a “thank you” and “you’re welcome” exchanged (I vaguely remember the word “undertow” used as part of the explanation, but we know today to use the term rip current), and all three of us went on with the day.

When recollecting this event, I find myself smiling about the lack of drama and sympathy that would accompany something like this today. More critically, though, I learned sometime afterward that my instinctual response almost killed me. Those who are better-educated than I was back then know this: when encountering a rip current, if you are a skilled and strong swimmer, you can swim parallel to shore to escape it. But if you are more of a wader, like I was, a “flip, float, follow” strategy will save your life: flip on your back, float, and follow wherever the water takes you. Even though you may wind up further away for a bit, you won’t drown, and you will save your precious energy until someone with skill can rescue you.

Float.

Always remember to float rather than fight.

Things that nearly kill us have a way of shaping our most primal principles.

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As a leader, whenever I hear people use words like “concerned” or “worried” in regard to things at work, I like to pause the conversation and note: those words should be best saved for people rather than things. We should be concerned or worried if a coworker or a customer has cancer, or if their loved one is in the hospital. We should be worried when someone is summoned to the emergency room to meet a loved one who was in a car accident.

But if a report is late or a deliverable is overdue, unless someone’s life, health or livelihood is at stake, “concerned” and “worried” should not be in our vocabulary. (If only your livelihood is at stake, but your customers livelihoods are not, that may be an sign of work-as-artifice.)

Before today, there were nine foundational values of The Progressive CIO:

• Exhibit vulnerability so that others feel more comfortable exploring their fears and weaknesses with you.
• Exhibit humility to remind others that we are all small creatures in a large universe.
• Spend as much time empathizing with those you serve so you can better understand them.
• Continually refine your skills with patience; good things take time, especially when it comes to developing people.
• Show compassion by actively stepping out of your own comfort zone to help others when they are down.
• Be truly curious; ask questions about everything, with the mind of a child.
• Endeavor to make only the commitments that you can keep; then keep them.
• You will struggle often, but develop a willingness to do the things that you know you need to do, even if you are uncomfortable doing them.
• Love is the most important thing in our lives. While co-workers might not love one another, we must do our best to honor the love that each of us has, and help one another tend to that love.

We should be vigilant about taking anything negative at work so seriously that it comes at the expense of any of the above. I call this buoyancy, and it is the tenth and final value in our arsenal.

Float.

Always remember to float rather than fight.

Buoyancy at Work

Here’s one of my favorite quotes, however dated in its “maleness”:

This is a man who understood the “game” part of life.

Here’s something I’ve seen many times throughout my career: a bunch of folks on our team have been stewing on a topic, and then eventually someone comes to me to, well, share this information in the hope I will commiserate. I say something to the effect of: “Why are you making such a big deal of this? Why does it really matter? Don’t waste your energy.” Or something like that.

That might seem dismissive, as if I don’t care (I might not, but that’s not always the case). I respect everyone’s need to have their unique feelings, yet I am incredibly sensitive to energy waste. Most of the time, I find complaining indulgent. I admit that I like to do it myself from time to time; it can feel good, and sometimes it helps us work through our fears. But I have found, more often than not, that once vocalizing our complaints has finished helping us work through those fears, excess complaining doesn’t accomplish much more than catharsis. The energy we have available to us at any given moment is limited. Doesn’t it make more sense to use that energy for things that can bring about positive change?

I hope that, after traveling this far together, you and I agree that work is not the point of life. If we do, then why do we allow our emotions about work to consume so much of our energy? Work winds up being important to most of us simply because it is the means through which we fund the rest of our lives. We understandably want to be sure that something that takes us away from the rest of our lives is not a drag. Our energy is well-spent figuring out a way to make work not a drag; stewing and complaining are not pathways to that.

This is why, when we teach leadership, we talk so much about emotional intelligence. Buoyancy is, to me, the most powerful distillate of the sap of the emotional intelligence tree. It reminds us to laugh at ourselves. It reminds us that people matter more than things. It reminds us that much of work is silly artifice, created without our input or control. It reminds us to be light of heart and to remember our shared humanity. Through buoyancy, we let go, to get to what really matters.

In that sense, buoyancy plus willingness equals agility. Which is to say: agility is when we combine an ability to flow and let go with an ability to work with our fear to try something new.

Float.

Always remember to float rather than fight.

Simply Put

There is a simple elegance to buoyancy:

• Learn to let things go, lest they drag you under.
• Try to have a sense of humor, and lighten your heart. It’s not always possible or appropriate, but with practice, you will be surprised at how often this becomes possible if you remember how much of our work is artificial.
• Keep perspective. People matter more than things and work.
• Ask yourself: what other values (Vulnerability • Humility • Empathy • Love • Patience • Compassion • Curiosity • Commitment • Willingness) can rescue you from the riptide?

Yes, the nine other foundational values we discuss here are tools to employ when your buoyancy needs a boost. But you cannot access the other nine values if you’re sinking. Buoyancy comes first.

Float.

Always remember to float rather than fight.