Lead Smart

CHAPTER 2Find your balance

Every Monday morning, I partake in one-on-one training with a fantastic, but very uncompromising, personal trainer called Adrienne. I am not very good at maintaining discipline around things like regular exercise, so she is my intentionality strategy for fitness. Every Monday I know I have to go through some pain to set me up for the rest of the week, and for the rest of my life.

Every now and again, when she wants to work on my core strength, she gets me up on one leg on a balancing ball. I have to stand on a semi-circular inflatable ball on one leg for as long as possible without falling. I am terrible at this, and fall over quite quickly and regularly.

As I stand there, arms and legs flailing to try to stay balanced, Adrienne will often remind me that balance comes from the core. She will get me to engage my abdominal muscles, and focus on those. Soon enough, things usually settle down and I manage to stay balanced in a much more controlled and harmonious way.

Staying balanced in a work context is similar. My flailing arms and legs in this instance are a good analogy for the busy activity we often throw at the problem when we experience a lack of balance. We think that more activity will help us to get more done, and in turn, allow us to create some balance moving forward. But of course, it rarely does. We just end up taking on more and more, and we fill whatever space we have with more activity. And so the cycle goes.

We need to build core strength ...