Category: Beyond Leadership

Week 12 Mileage: 42-51 miles  (depending on how well you stick with the true plan)

Long Run Distance:  22 miles

 

I’m gearing up to run the longest run of the marathon training plan tomorrow, and I have to go it alone. This peak week of training happens to correspond with an out of town business trip.

And I am DREADING it.

Whereas a 3-4 mile run alone can be a refreshing experience, running 22 miles solo is just downright terrible in my opinion.  Who wants to do that alone?  There is not enough music and not enough podcasts to possibly get you through it.

All runners, and leaders, especially those out for the long hall, need a wingman, or four as in my case with our training group.  The more the merrier.

In an episode of The Runner’s World Show, Kirstin Armstrong describes the power of a “wingman” when it comes to running. It so worth the listen, and her words and the concept is very powerful indeed.

My wingwoman sent me this just a second ago as I prep for this solo run:

“You made it ok? Find a place to eat salmon tonight?  (Note from me: This the food we’ve decided sets the stage for a good long run based on much trial and error.  I did not eat salmon; I pigged out in a fit of hunger on something else).  If you get bored on the run, call me and we’ll chat! You got headphones? I’ll be working at home so you can call me anytime!”

Leader, do you have a wing(wo)man? Someone you can call at anytime, even when you know they are in the heat of work, and they give you permission ahead of time to interrupt them?  If not, get you one.  It makes the journey so much easier and way more enjoyable.

Here’s some food for thought on gaining some wing strength:

1. Join a leadership or professional group outside of your office (or a running group).   What professional association or local leadership group- check with your Chamber of Commerce- can you join to discuss topics and challenges so you aren’t out on your own?  Meet in person regularly and form relationships that allow you to pick up the phone and call someone when you need advice or support.
2. Get tapped in virtually through the same relevant groups online through LinkedIn or another platform.  You may not have ever meet these folks, but you can still reach out for advice and gain practical insights in a virtual setting.
3. Start a group on your own.  What leaders do you need to meet with regularly that will help keep you accountable and foster your growth and development?  And might a recommend that this group be cross-generational?   I can’t tell you how much valuable insight I’ve gained from two of our running group being two generations ahead of me and several steps wiser.

 

Who is at your wing?

 

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Week 11 Mileage: 35 miles

Long Run Distance:  15 miles

 

This week (tomorrow) we drop down to a 15-mile run for the long run. Our weekday runs also have dropped back too, with what has been a typical 9-10 mile Thursday run decreasing to seven this week.

We’re following a training plan from Runner’s World which gives us this “easy” week before next week, which is what I like to call “peak week” – a 22 mile long run, which pushes the weekly mileage close to 50 miles, before the taper three weeks before the marathon.

As I think about the need for this constraint on holding back this week, I’m reminded of the concept of the 20 Mile March in Jim Collin’s Great by Choice.

In Collin’s research on how companies thrive in the midst of a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world) a key driver he finds is “fanatic discipline” described through the concept of the 20 Mile March:

A good 20 Mile March uses performance markers that delineate a lower bound of acceptable achievement.  These create productive discomfort, much like hard physical training or rigorous mental development, and must be challenging (but not impossible) to achieve in difficult times.

A good 20 Mile March has self-imposed constraints. This creates an upper bound for how far you’ll march when facing robust opportunity and exceptionally good conditions. These constraints should also produce discomfort in the fact of pressures and fears that you should be going faster and doing more.

As I sit here writing, quite honestly, I want to be running. I feel like I haven’t done enough this week. I’m itching to get outside and go.

But like Collins describes with powerful research, those people and companies who push too hard and grow too fast end up, well, getting hurt.  This leads to setbacks far greater than if they followed the plan and resisted the urge to “overdue it”, as my dad is so famous for stating.

Discipline requires us to not only push forward towards challenge, but to hold back for the sake of longer lasting results.

 

Where do you need to hold yourself back in order to avoid injury?

 

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Long Run Distance:  18

People who are and strive to be leaders tend to take ownership of the situation, the actions, and the results that are derived from effort.   We will take the blame, because we also want to take the credit.   Rarely do you see a strong leader citing the environment as the problem, and if they do, you feel like they are playing the blame game.  Buck up and own it you want to say!

But running in this heat has led me to question if sometimes we do as leaders need to pay more attention to our environment.  When it is almost October and you are running 16 miles before 9 am and the temperature reaches 90 before you finish, you begin to question just how strong your performance can be in such suffocating conditions.

I’ve also had clients past and present on both in the leadership coaching and career coaching side of the house struggling with performance issues. And on some occasions, what would really help improve their performance is related directly to their satisfaction with work that has root in them simply being in the wrong place.

Taking some cues from running aliments in the heat, here’s how to know if you need to consider a change in environment in order to up your leadership game:

1. Are you chafing? Chafing occurs when there is a constant rubbing of clothing to skin or skin on skin.  It leaves you raw.  It is usually has something to do with the heat and the distance you are running.  More heat, longer distance, more chafing.  And it hurts.

Do you spend time at work and leave each day feeling raw? Is the constant friction causing pain with no remedy- short of a major Vaseline intervention- in sight? You may need to get out of the heat and find a better environment for you to thrive.

2. Are you hangry? Hangry is a play on words we runners (and mothers) use to describe the state of anger resulting from hunger.  I’ve been hangry lately, which at first glance seems to be just about the up in mileage, but in considering it, I think it also has a lot to do with the fact that I’m constantly thirsty because running in the heat is totally depleting my fluid levels and making me loose more calories which makes me even hungrier and angrier because the hunger never seems to subside.

Is your environment causing you to be both angry and hungry?  Are you hungry for more satisfaction in your work and angry that you aren’t getting it?  Has the anger extended outside of work to where you are taking it out on family and friends?  If so, time to consider a change in environment.

3. Have you bonked? In other words, is your performance in the pits? Eleven miles in on Saturday after running about a mile in a completely unshaded area and direct heat caused me to bonk.  My pace slowed from about a 9:30-9:45 pace to, at the end, a 12-minute mile pace. I might as well have been walking. The distance contributed to this, but the heat made it ten times worse.

Have you hit a wall at work? Is there is no way in sight for your performance to improve given the distain you have for your environment? You may not have it in you to improve or you may not even want to.  If so, its time for a change.

Our run this morning was a 50-degree Godsend.  Eight miles didn’t feel like eight miles, or at least the type of eight milers we’ve been doing over the last month at 70+ temps when it is still dark outside. No chafing, no hangry (so far today) and no wall.  Satisfaction through an environment change.  Do you need one?

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!

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.

 

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