Horizon Point Consulting

Author: Mary Ila Ward

Leaders, Pace Yourselves with 3 Tips from an Elite Runner to Do So

Week 7 Mileage: 35 miles

Long Run Distance: 16

Our training crew took part in the Hartselle Half Marathon to cover our 13-mile long run last week. It’s a quaint race through back roads of farmland. With a field of only 260 runners, cooler temps (finally!), and a volunteer crew that epitomizes southern hospitality, it was a great way to kick off a weekend.

I went into a race, much to my husband’s aggravation (he likes a game plan even more than I do), without a particular time goal or strategy. I just wanted to enjoy the run and see where it took me based on how I was feeling.

The day before the run, though, I tuned into a Marathon Training Academy podcast on my way back from a business trip and picked up a few tips that were in the back of my mind.  This show was an interview with Jared Ward, a top ten-marathon finisher in the Rio Games, a statistics professor at BYU, a father of soon to be three kids, and a self-described “running nerd”.

Jared wrote his masters thesis about optimal marathon pacing, and in the podcast, he described the lessons he learned from this research:

1.     Pace yourself. More experienced runners, and those that finish faster, tend to pace themselves, i.e., they don’t let the excitement of the race make them go out faster than they should. They started out slower and finished faster (running negative splits). Because of this, in the case of his research, the runners who did this were able to qualify for Boston. “Be conservative with your starting pace. The marathon is a long ways and it is going to beat you up throughout,” he says.

2.     Know when to surge. Those who finish faster know when to surge. They take advantage of the terrain, specifically running faster on the downhill to improve overall performance.

3.     Be consistent. His final piece of advice for those wanting to improve performance in the marathon is consistency. “Having a consistent approach is what helps,” he said, citing that one of the best runners in the world says four years of consistent training is needed to graduate into elite status.

Although I’m not striving for elite running status, I do want to get faster and I do want to lead better. I ran negative splits in the race, taking advantage of the advice to surge on a downhill which actually started my stronger pacing about mile 5.  I started out slow which was able to help me have energy to kick it at the end.

Leadership is a lot like the marathon. It takes pacing, strategy to know when to surge, and the consistency to see the plan through.

One of the things I see most in leadership coaching (and in myself as well) is that driven, type A leaders get excited about a plan and they go out too fast wanting the results too quick, and they (me) get impatient when it doesn’t happen. This leads to one of two things then happening: 1) they (me) either, move on to the next flavor of the month, never seeing anything through, or they 2) (me) end up being too exhausted to finish strong and see the plan to completion. This causes us as leaders to neglect to see the people involved in the process that are learning from our own inconsistency. We never, because of the message we send in our own behavior, teach others to appreciate the strategy of knowing when and how to pace and surge at the right times.

Although this race didn’t result in a PR, (I ran it in 2:01:23. My PR was actually in this same race two years ago at a 1:54 something.) I walked away with something much better- a new friend. She was a mom of two under the age of five, like me, trying to beat her PR of 2:02. We pushed each other through the last mile to the finish line.  I would haven’t ever have run the pace I did in the last mile without her beside me pushing me.

I’d like to think that in leadership, just like in this race, if I had been so focused on going out fast to get to the result I wanted, I would have bonked before the end. More importantly, this would have prohibited me from enjoying the race and making a new friend. Pacing, knowing when to surge, and being consistent in running and in leading focuses us for the long hall, giving us the opportunity to push each other to finish strong.

Go finish strong today!

September 23, 2016
Paid Parental Leave

Did you see where Trump announced a plan for paid family leave? Smart move Mr. Trump. Love him or hate him you’ve got to give him credit, this was a smart political move to draw the female vote, especially given that his opponent might have a leg up on the female voter pool.

The day after this announcement, I got this information from a friend (who is in fact pregnant):

The gist is this:

“The United States is at a crossroads in its policies towards the family and gender equality. Currently America provides basic support for children, fathers, and mothers in the form of unpaid parental leave, child-related tax breaks, and limited public childcare. Alternatively, the United States’ OECD peers empower families through paid parental leave and comprehensive investments in infants and children. The potential gains from strengthening these policies are enormous. Paid parental leave and subsidized childcare help get and keep more women in the workforce, contribute to economic growth, offer cognitive and health benefits to children, and extend choice for parents in finding their preferred work-life strategy. Indeed, the United States has been falling behind the rest of the OECD in many social and economic indicators by not adequately investing in children, fathers and mothers.”

I want to nod my head, but then the libertarian in me kicks in, fighting my inner mom and focus on forward thinking practices in the workplace. Do I think it is a good idea to provide paid parental leave? I most certainly do. But is it the government’s job to mandate that employers provide it? That’s where I start to get squeamish about it.

Many of the most forward thinking companies in the nation already offer paid parental leave, or some version of it. And here’s why as you see from this article back from 2015 on why Amazon was just another that announced they would expand their leave policies:

Earlier this week, Amazon announced that it would expand its leave policy for new moms and extend the policy to dads for the first time. It’s just the latest tech company to do so, as Silicon Valley realizes the best way to attract top talent is to offer flexible work schedules and ever-flashier perks. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, 75% of the workforce will be made up of millennials in just a decade, and employers are kowtowing to their work-life preferences; a recent survey by Ernst & Young found that “millennials around the world are more likely than other generations to cite paid parental leave as an important benefit.”

Employers do it because it is in their best interest to do so. If they want to attract the best talent and retain them, and then seek to create an environment where they can be as productive as they possibly can, they realize the need to provide flexibility during a time in life when it is needed. Short of people deciding they aren’t going to have babies anymore (and that ain’t going to happen), if you want to recruit and retain the best, it’s in your own self-interest to offer flexibility. The industries and jobs that don’t require a leg-up in talent are becoming fewer and farther between in the U.S. and across the globe.

So what if the government could find a way not to mandate something, but be a catalyst for showing employers that it is in their best self-interest to offer this and other quality of life benefits? Love to hear from you on how this might be done.

September 20, 2016
Leaders, Do You Surprise and Delight?
Week 5

Mileage: 32 (I only ran 28- I fell down the steps on Sunday and my foot looked like this for the beginning of the week.)

Long Run Distance: 13 (Half- Marathon Race)

We ran 14 miles last Saturday, the longest distance my husband and training partner have ever run. It went fairly well, but running towards the “finish line” of this run topped it off as a memorable one. As we rounded the corner, we could see that someone had left four cold beers on the curb for us. Our neighbors had timed our return and set them out, gleefully watching through the windows to gauge our reactions. It was a fun surprise (regardless of whether or not we even wanted a beer or not) for a variety of reasons that I think leaders can learn from:
1. Pay attention. The surprise showed us that our neighbors knew enough about what we were doing and when we were doing it to time our “reward” right. They were going out of their way to pay attention, placing the beers on the curb in just enough time to not be seen but also make sure they were still cold. Do you pay attention enough as a leader to be able to catch people in a way that surprises and delights them?
2. Know your people in order to customize. They knew us well enough to customize our beer selections, and to even take it a step backwards, know that we actually drink beer. (Don’t get caught up on the beer here as the example if you’re not into alcohol or disagree with drinking. More power to you if you are, but the beer is just a metaphor for anything that is customized to your people to surprise and delight). Do you know your people well enough to customize surprise or planned rewards to be meaningful?
3. Create an experience that lasts longer than the actual reward. The surprise created an experience for us that we will remember. It was unique, funny, and our neighbors came out of the house after we reacted to our treat (Drew gulped his down, I still reached for the water) and they helped us celebrate the run. I’m sure this will become a “remember the time when story” amongst our neighbors. In the competitive marketplace for talent, employers and leaders who create experiences for their people that are memorable and unique will attract and retain talent more effectively. Are you creating experiences that last with your employees?
Go surprise and delight today!
September 16, 2016
The Job Market is Tight Again- What’s Your Strategy?
Although the great recession of 2008-2009 is still a fixture in many peoples’ minds, the job market has changed substantially since those recession years. I’m hearing more HR pros and business leaders complain about not being able to source and hire quality talent in a broader set of areas than usual. We aren’t just complaining about the need for computer programmers and skilled tradespersons anymore.

According to the latest BLS Report on job openings and labor turnover, “Job openings have trended upward since their series low in July 2009, and have surpassed the prerecession peak (April 2007). In July 2016, there were 5.9 million job openings.” If you don’t think it has happened yet, you’re wrong- job seekers, or those not so active but passive job candidates that we really want, are back in the driver’s seat.

Given this information, there are three things you can do:
1. Lower your expectations and hire to those lowered standards
2. Lure the best talent in by upping your pay rates above the competition
3. Develop your internal talent to be prepared to fill the jobs now and for the future
What I see most often happening in a talent crunch is companies looking externally instead of internally to address the problem, yet they don’t lower their expectations or raise their pay. Then we get the definition of insanity, which is doing the same thing you’ve always done and expecting different results.

Look internally to address your talent shortage woes. This puts the investment you’ve already made in hiring to better use and it should even motivate your millennials as well as others to stay with you because you are invested in their growth.

How do you keep labor market trends from causing problems for you and your organization?
September 13, 2016
Leaders, Take your Meetings on the Road

Week 5

Week 5 Mileage: 32

Long Run Distance: 14

When you are training for a marathon, you spend a lot of time with the people you are training with. Thirty-two miles for us this week equaled about three to three and half hours together on the road.

You would think we would run (no pun intended) out of things to talk about.

But we don’t.

Whether it is talking about the weather (when on earth is this heat going to let up??), talking about sports (college football kicked off last week in case you missed it), politics and culture (Colin Kaepernick not standing up for the national anthem led to a lively discussion) or talking about funny things kids did or said, I find running generates discussion that leads to problem solving and ideas generation.

Other the last week of runs, I can think of a least three good ideas that arose from our conversations. We also talked our way through solving a variety of problems for each other, or at least providing varying perspectives on them that could lead to better problem resolution.

As a leader, problem solving and idea generation is critical to innovating and therefore surviving in business. Most of this comes through cultivating an environment and mindset that allows for fluid thought to take place. And research shows that simply moving helps generate a natural flow of thinking and conversation that leads to creativity.

So the next time you need to have a meeting don’t get everyone around the conference table. Get outdoors, on the road or trail and start walking or running and talking.

Like this post? You may also want to check out:

Guide to Walking Meetings

7 Powerful Reasons to Take Your Next Meeting for a Walk

Harvard Business Review: How to do Walking Meetings Right

September 9, 2016