That experience is the influence—the gift—of leadership. Maybe you observed a leader’s capacity to cut through complexity and provide clarity and direction or some form of skillful leadership beneath our conscious awareness. David Lapin defines leadership as “the capacity to influence others to change their attitudes, opinions, or actions, without the use of power.” We are all capable of it. Yet, we do not always lead in the moment.

What gets in the way? What is it, for you? It could be…

• Thinking, “I don’t matter” or “It won’t make a difference.”
• Assuming, “I won’t get it right or execute perfectly.”
• Judging, “I don’t really know…” or “I am not…”
• Fearing (protecting), “If I…then…might happen.”

At times, I’ve self-edited for all these reasons. In my experience, there is usually not an immediately identifiable consequence. And yet when there’s hesitation, what we can uniquely offer is restrained, instead of shared. During the past decade, as a former management consultant and after training to become a Certified Coach, I have since learned to give of myself more generously. And it is indeed a generous act, as it takes vulnerability, courage, and clarity of commitment. The gift of leadership comes from the heart.

I recently attended a virtual retreat with other thought leaders from a 10-month leadership development program we completed a few years ago. We each agreed to lead a segment of the retreat. On the first day, the morning ritual team guided everyone through some fun, practical stretches, intention setting for the day, and time in nature, followed by morning pages. In these moments I was reminded of the gift of leadership.

Given the COVID-19 pandemic, physically distancing from those we love and care about, I felt tremendous relief and comfort in allowing myself to be guided by trusted company. It was just a moment of leadership, but it moved me deeply, and it was a reminder that we need leaders to lead. And when they do, it is a gift.

As leaders, we do not need to have it all figured out or get it all right. What if we all started to take ownership of our words, our behavior, and our impact? As adrienne maree brown says in her book, Emergent Strategy, “Actions and inactions affect everyone and everything around us.” What if we took responsibility for our action and our inaction? What could be “the next most elegant step,” acknowledging what is known and unknown? People tend to be more gracious and generous in their interpretation of our behaviors than we are inclined to recognize.

But how? How do we go before we know? The answer resides inside of you. It can be found in the quiet moments of stillness, when you look inward, at your truth. To access this, leaders have ritual.

One of my personal daily practices is to meditate for 40 minutes in the morning, before anything else, and then set intentions for my day. What do I need today? What is important? How can I give generously of myself? How can I share my unique capabilities to live my purpose? Taking a moment to get clear provides discernment and direction for how I will show up the rest of the day.

The magic is in purposeful, albeit imperfect, execution. Being clear on my intention means I am de-centered less often. And when I do veer off course, I can find my way back to myself more quickly. It results in having more of the impact I intended, rather than the habitual patterns of unintended and even regretful behavior.

Establishing centering practices impacts not only ourselves, but also everyone in our sphere of influence. As Octavia Butler says, “All that you touch you change / all that you change, changes you.” These rituals give us an opportunity to reflect more skillfully on what we want—for ourselves and for others—and what is needed. This discernment is wisdom.

For us at Lapin International, wisdom means cultivating the capacity to remain open to learning. We maintain an open and curious mindset to see reality from multiple lenses, to self-regulate, and to be present. In that space, there emerges an opportunity to give of oneself, to lead in a way that only you could. David reminds us, “No one else can make the difference we were created to make.” And this takes practice. It is the practice of knowing and deliberately owning your impact.

Through ritual, presence, and wisdom, we begin to recognize that we are always practicing something. What are you practicing? And what is the legacy of your practice? What is the gift of your leadership?

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“A nation is strong when it cares for the weak. It becomes rich when it cares for the poor. It becomes invulnerable when it cares for the vulnerable. That is what makes great nations.”

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

We have been conditioned to believe that people want to know “what’s in it for me” before they will accept a new or changed situation. This is no longer always true. There are winds of change in what people want and expect. This change impacts each of us as leaders and society as a whole. It will change the way we lead and allocate resources.

Last month’s referendum in Chile is one of many indications of the titanic changes ahead in how leaders will need to behave and make decisions.

Chile has experienced decades of rapid economic growth, declining poverty, low inflation, and stable politics. By 2018, Chile’s growth had risen to 50 percent above Argentina’s and Mexico’s, 40 percent above Brazil’s, and 150 percent above Peru’s. Nevertheless, this year saw the eruption of civil unrest and widespread protest in Chile, leading to a significant referendum last month. The referendum was about whether to rewrite Chile’s constitution adopted in 1980, which protected basic freedoms and encouraged the development of free market economics that drove the country’s development. Why in a country that was doing so well was there such a high level of dissatisfaction and why would 78 percent of its citizens vote to rewrite the constitution?

Clearly, wealth and sustained economic growth are no longer sufficient to satisfy people’s expectations. Money alone does not assuage the anger of people who feel exploited or unfairly treated.

The issue in Chile is not the rate of its economic growth or the size of its GDP. The issue is an incongruence between its economic growth and the inequality with which that prosperity has been shared.

There is an index, developed in 1912 by Corrado Gini and used still today, that serves as an accurate measure of income inequality. The Gini coefficient ranges from 0 to 1, with 0 representing perfect equality (where everyone has the same income) and 1 representing perfect inequality (where one individual gets all the income). According to data from the World Bank and the OECD, the inequality of wealth distribution in Chile is greater than any other South American country. Its Gini coefficient of 0.46 places it in the lowest position of equality of income distribution among all 37 OECD nations, lower even than Mexico. For 10 years, Chile’s Gini coefficient has not improved despite its growing wealth.

When rapid or consistent economic growth is not accompanied by improvements in the equality of income distribution narrowing the income gap between the highest earners and the lowest, people experience the growth as unfair. The have-nots feel exploited, or at least marginalized by the haves. This feeling of unfairness applies even in the USA, whose Gini coefficient is around 0.39. This is because its Gini index has remained constant for the past 10 years, despite that America’s GDP has grown at between 2.5-3 percent almost every one of these years.

The yearning for fairness goes beyond “what’s in it for me”. Protestors are not only demanding more for themselves; they are also demanding a better and fairer society for all. And it is not only the have-nots who are demanding this fairness. With such a large majority in the Chile referendum, even the beneficiaries of Chile’s wealth want change. In the USA too, a cross-section of more than half the entire nation voted for change despite the undeniable economic achievements (until the pandemic) of the previous administration. Included in that cross section were titans of commerce and industry. Economic prosperity is no longer sufficient to woo a population. People want moral prosperity as well; they want a fairer society.

The same trend can be seen in the current evolution of corporate governance and culture. Ethical and societal issues are no longer seen as  non- or pre-financial matters but rather as integrated into a firm’s strategy, resource allocation, risk management, performance evaluation, and reporting policies and processes. Investors are looking for more than economic returns; they are also starting to demand ethical returns. In January, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink announced that his firm has made a dramatic change in investment philosophy, emphasizing Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria to all their asset allocation and valuation decisions.

All stakeholders have expanded their demands from self-interest to an expectation of broader fairness. Employees want to know that their companies are doing social good and not just making profits even when they are partial beneficiaries of those profits. Customers are rallying to more ethical companies and abandoning those perceived to display poor ethical behavior even if they need to pay a little more. Providers of capital and other resources are increasingly trying to partner with companies whose values align with their own.

As leaders, we must now focus not only on how much money we are making, but also equally on what we are doing with the money we are making. We need to allocate resources fairly, not just wisely. Investors are not the only stakeholders who take a risk on our enterprises—in different measures, all stakeholders do. We need to increase the sense of fairness that all of our stakeholders experience in the way we share our prosperity and in the leadership decisions we make.

The post Fairness is Cool appeared first on Lapin International.

Well, we can access this power in ourselves and we do have the key to unlock it in others.

The key to unlocking magical performance is trust. Trusting someone is different from relying on them. Reliability is data-driven: you rely on someone who has a track-record of delivery. Reliability is a static fact, whereas trust is a dynamic force; it is a powerful emotion, and like all emotions, it has ebbs and flows. Trust is a feeling you have about someone, even someone whose track-record might be unknown to you. You are trusting people every time you drive through a green light, arrange to meet someone, or accept a check. More importantly, you can inspire others to feel trusted.

Artists—and we are all artists—can make others feel sad, happy, excited, inspired. In the same way, one can make another person feel trusted. Other than loved, trusted is perhaps the feeling people yearn for most. When someone feels truly trusted, they access that extraordinary power within that enables them to do what they were trusted to do, no matter how difficult or challenging. Soldiers at war can do heroic things and overcome ridiculous odds when they know their commanders, subordinates, and the people back home trust them. Armies have been known to lose their courage when they have lost the trust of the people who sent them into battle.

In business, we are not very good at inspiring trust. Even though trust within organizations can increase performance by a factor of six, trust levels both of business and within business are abysmally low. The Edelman Trust Barometer in 2017 showed that 63 percent of people surveyed believed that CEOs are not at all or only somewhat credible.

Trust is different from delegating or empowering others or holding them accountable. Trust is an emotion, not an activity on a checklist. Trust means surrendering all worry and concern in the full knowledge that the other (or oneself) will deliver on the expectation. Trust is about being able to relax totally when you have delegated a task or responsibility. But more than that, inspiring trust in others requires that you convey to the other how absolutely relaxed you are. Looking over their shoulder or micromanaging them undermines the feeling of being trusted, and deprives them of the extraordinary power to perform beyond the ordinary.

Trusting yourself has the same effect. If we trust ourselves to succeed in challenging circumstances, we will access the magic within and perform in extraordinary ways. The slightest doubt in ourselves, though, dissipates the magic and we can only accomplish the ordinary.

Trust is not a guarantee against disappointment, and of course we shouldn’t trust when our intuition or instinct is warning us against it. Sometimes we trust, and things don’t work out. In these cases, simply manage the damage when it occurs without anticipating it before it occurs. The upside of trust is so much higher than the downside. I have been taken for a ride by people I have trusted, but much, much more often I have gained unanticipated benefit, value, and joy. Over my lifetime, by trusting people I have gained far more than I have lost.

Elicit magical performance from your teams, your colleagues, your children, your partner, and yourself. Make them feel trusted and trust yourself. Let go of your worry and relax as you watch the magic unfold.

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Despite all we are told about how difficult it is to manage change, the truth is that as human-beings, we are wired for change and get bored with monotony. Or, as The New York Times article, New Love: A Short Shelf Life by Professor Sonja Lyubomirsky, put it: “…although we may not realize it, we are biologically hard-wired to crave variety.”

So, if the issue with change is not the change itself, what is the problem? Most people embrace change when they are the architects of their own change. We enjoy trying different restaurants and going to various vacation destinations. We enjoy sampling new foods, seeing new movies, reading new books, and meeting new friends. Resistance to change kicks in when it is imposed upon us, especially when it is done so by people we do not trust to have our best interests at heart. When people trust the intentions of the person imposing the change, they feel comfortable even though the change is externally instituted.

Consider a boss telling a subordinate on a Friday that she is delighted with his performance and has some career changes in mind for him. The subordinate is unlikely to be severely stressed during the weekend. On the contrary, he might be energized by the prospect of positive change. This illustrates that change per se is not threatening to people. If the subordinate is deeply distrustful of his boss and her motives, he might experience a different weekend, one filled with stress and consternation. The cause of the resistance to change and the stress it triggers is not change—it’s mistrust.

The reason that so high of a percentage of organizational change initiatives fail (some studies put it as high as 70 percent) is that organizations lack the required level of trust to make change acceptable. Irrespective of the competence of change agents and change specialists, if the people affected by the change do not trust those imposing the change, they will resist and even sabotage it.

Trust cannot be legislated because trust is an emotion that must be cultivated. Trust does not stem from a rational analysis of data, nor does it result from consistent delivery on promises. Data and consistency can engender a feeling of reliability, but not one of trust. Trust, like love, can be felt instantaneously when two people meet for the first time, even before there is any track record of reliability or data to substantiate a reason for trust. Trust is how you feel about the intentions of others, not just about their actions. Are they looking out for themselves or for you? Are they covering their own backs or do they care about others? An airline attendant telling me that for my own safety I should keep my seat belt fastened at all times, doesn’t lead me to trust him or the airline for which he works. I know his comment is a function of the airline’s fear of liability, not its love of humanity. When an airline official goes beyond the call of duty to help me when I have missed a connection, I feel differently towards her and I heed her advice because I trust her.

Trust does not flow from people’s mindless obedience to bureaucratic procedures. Trust does not flow from command-and-control management techniques, and it cannot be elicited by people whose actions are inauthentic. Trust is a feeling that ignites between two people. You feel it when you sense that another person authentically cares about you and is willing to subordinate his or her own interests for you. Inspiring trust requires character—there are no shortcuts and it cannot be faked.

The post It’s About Trust, Not Change appeared first on Lapin International.

How do I know this? My 24 years of experience in the field affords me some perspective on effective strategies for DE&I. I also have the benefit of having access to some of the best and newest approaches in the diversity field because of my continued involvement with law enforcement. Law enforcement is the recipient of cutting-edge training approaches and tools. From a statistical standpoint, these officers work with the most diverse populations daily. Furthermore, the topic of social and legal justice has been and continues to be key for law enforcement and community. In my own professional career, I have seen the employment of verbal judo, engaging in courtesy carstops, collecting carstop data, and training in Constitutional Policing, racial profiling, and implicit bias. There have been varying degrees of success, but it is clear that we continue to have a problem with bias in both individuals and the system.

In my perspective, the strategies are not necessarily bad, and in many cases I would advocate that they are absolutely necessary, but they are not sufficient on their own because they do not address the fundamental need for connection and care. If you look at the nature of these efforts, they are procedural or tactical approaches to a relational issue.

So, where do we begin? Start building relationships by increasing capacity for empathy. Develop empathy by becoming a great listener. Elevate your empathy by increasing awareness and expanding knowledge by asking more powerful questions. Show your empathy by being genuinely curious.

These conversations are not always easy, especially in the workplace. The topics of bias, bigotry, and prejudice can be triggers for some. Spend time preparing yourself for not only what you will say, but also how you might respond if something goes awry. Consider readying yourself to be able to say with deep conviction, “I had not thought of it like that. I understand better now,” or “I should do some more research before I argue this point.” Being able to expand perspective like this takes stamina. People should not give up on their relationships simply because of a bad interaction or two. Keep at it. Do not give up.

Creating an inclusive culture, which is the ultimate goal, is built on the foundation of relationship and trust. Focus on the fundamentals first. Cultivate the environment that will be receptive to more advanced initiatives. Set yourself up for success not only in the DE&I space, but also for your whole organization.

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In the words of John Buchan, former Governor-General of Canada, “The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already.”

We all hold a lot of assumptions about leadership. What it is. And what it isn’t.

Pause for a moment. What is the image that comes to mind when you envision a leader? Is the person at the front of a room, speaking while others listen? Is the individual a high-powered decision-maker with all the answers, directing the team on immediate next steps? Do you see a person who is relatable? An individual who facilitates genuine and generative dialogue while engaging others? Or do you imagine something else?

There is a leader inside each of us. In every moment, we impact our world. And we are always creating impact, whether our impact is intended or unintended, helpful or harmful.

In the words of Nobel Peace Prize awardee Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan environmental activist who started the Greenbelt Movement and advocated for peace-making in her leadership, “…Quite often we are looking for the big things and forget that, wherever we are, we can make a contribution. Sometimes I tell myself, I may only be planting a tree here, but just imagine what’s happening if there are billions of people out there doing something. Just imagine the power of what we can do.” Maathai makes clear that our individual and collective impacts matter.

At Lapin, we draw on C. Otto Scharmer’s idea that depending on their inner places, leaders can achieve different results.

Two leaders in the same circumstances doing the same thing can bring about completely different outcomes, depending on the inner place from which each operates.

To illustrate this point, I share an example of a Director with whom I worked several years ago, who ordered in lunch for his team every day so that we would continue working through lunch. Essentially, he wanted to get as much out of us as he could between the hours of 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. His method for efficiency and extracting maximum output was not effective. We burned out quickly.

On the other hand, I worked with another Director who acknowledged the reality that we were going to have to work very long days to complete a deliverable for our client, who had a tight deadline. He encouraged us to take breaks; we talked about what we needed in order to maintain our sense of wellbeing during this intense period and we created agreements to support each other. The result: We got through the project, we didn’t destroy our health, and we strengthened our relationships with each other.

There are many ways to achieve the results we seek. We talk with our clients often about the importance of the inner place. That is, what are the energy and intention behind my thoughts, communication, and actions?

To answer these questions, a good place to start is to ask:

• Who am I being?
• Who do I want to be?
• What is needed from (my) leadership in this very moment?
• How will I choose to be, right now?

Are you noticing a theme here? Leadership is about our way of being and communicating the thoughts that constitute those expressive energies. Our character matters. This aspect of ourselves involves how we show up and interact with others. Our capacity to lead depends on the degree to which we are clear and resolute about our inner place. After all, it is one thing to set intentions, and it is another to enact them.

As we shared in Great Leaders Inspire Others to Greatness, leadership is found in our behaviors—what we say, what we do, and how we shape our world. When we are self-authoring in this way, we influence the people around us. In turn, they discover their own leader within and their unique capacity to lead and inspire others, including themselves. Leaders grow leaders. This is leadership scalability. This is Leading by Greatness.

This kind of leadership necessitates courage, vulnerability, and resilience. Leaders go first. Leaders go, before they know. And leaders also know when to step back, when to sit down, and when to let others lead. Leadership often is challenging and pushes us to the edge of our seat. Leadership can be uncomfortable.

Accepting this role is an invitation to experiment. Showing up as a leader challenges us to find comfort in our intrinsic stature and make peace with the discomfort of risking our external status and relationships. We must give ourselves permission to let go of, or at least to loosen the grip on, our attachment to being perfect, getting it right, and looking good.

As Joseph Goldstein from Ten Percent Happier says, “Simply begin again.” We always can begin again, make a different choice, and intentionally relate with others from our inner place.

And so, building on the questions above, I leave you with these reflection points:

• How are you showing up?
• What assumptions are you holding about the situation or people?
• What wisdom does your leader within have to offer?
• What would be different, in your work, in your life, and in your most important relationships, if you trusted yourself?
• How are you creating from the leader within?
• What would shift if you assumed you belong and what you have to say has meaning and value to others?

The post The Inner Place appeared first on Lapin International.

Next, label the right-hand column BAD BOSS, and ask yourself the same questions, then write down your answers. Now, compare the lists. What do you notice about these two different leaders?

For one thing, you may notice that most of the factors you listed have to do with the leader’s character or lack thereof. You may also notice that your list does not contain items with a technical focus and that good bosses often focus on others while bad bosses tend to be excessively self-focused. Good bosses often show up as trustworthy, visionary, secure, tough, challenging, caring, compassionate, and inspiring. They connect deeply with people and challenge them to be and do their best. Bad bosses, on the other hand, are seen as untrustworthy and mistrusting, short-sighted, insecure, bullying, defensive, uncaring, and uninspiring. They over-control and under-deliver, damaging people and relationships in the process. One way we describe the difference is that good bosses often lead from a place of inner stature, while bad bosses use (and abuse) only their status to lead. Without inner stature, bad bosses lack the ability to inspire trust and excellence in those that follow them. In contrast, good bosses balance the use of their inner stature with their external status in a way that inspires trust and superior performance.

I have done this exercise with various groups across the world—from engineers in Germany and law enforcement officers in the United States to high school students in China and bankers in South Africa —the answers from each iteration are virtually identical.

We do this exercise to make an important point: most people know exactly what good leadership looks like as well as what it feels like. However, we often don’t trust our own experience and instead rely on a faulty assumption that leadership excellence is primarily about technical knowledge or simply working harder and faster. These ideas are both common and understandable as most leaders were exceptional individual contributors; that is why they were often promoted. However, to lead effectively, they will need to shift this perspective.

There are other points to consider when examining the results of this exercise. For example, it is rare for workshop participants to characterize good bosses simply as “nice”, even when probed. Rather, good bosses are often described as demanding, while also fair and supportive; results-driven while also caring about people. Interestingly, while bad bosses are often described as incompetent, the opposite is not true—competency is rarely listed as a characteristic of good bosses. Why might this be the case?

For good bosses, managerial competency is often a given: it is the table stakes necessary to play in the game. These bosses know how to analyze data, make decisions, run meetings, think strategically, set goals, etc. If they do not have these competencies, good bosses have both the humility and the security to hire and trust others to fill in their own gaps.

Yet, companies spend valuable resources building and measuring lists of these types of competencies. In our experience, these lists are not particularly different across different companies or economic sectors. Further, because these common competencies stress sameness and standardization among leaders, organizations inadvertently diminish the inclusion and diversity, differentiation, and uniqueness that individual leaders bring. This strategic error is a lost opportunity for organizations thinking about distinction, differentiation, and competitive advantage. As one of our clients once remarked, “We hire really good people and then tell them what to do.”

In order to leverage the diversity of thought and uniqueness of experience of individual leaders, CHROs, and CTOs should spend more time supporting leaders to develop their inner character and practice value-centered leadership.  As previously discussed, the difference between good bosses and bad bosses is not one of competence only—it is, more importantly, one of character. For us here at Lapin International, leadership character is not a set of skills or competencies. Rather, it is a way of being, an inner stance of how we see and make sense of the world and what we value. As illustrated through the Good Boss/Bad Boss exercise, when leaders develop their inner character, their actions are then experienced more positively by those they lead, giving them a greater capacity to influence others and inspire them.

This type of inner development and transformation demands that we rethink the way we currently develop and promote leaders within organizations. The business environment of today, and the challenges that leaders will face tomorrow, are vastly different from those of the past. We need to be as innovative in the ways we develop leaders as we expect them to be in the results they will drive. Despite the challenges inherent in developing leadership character, it is highly rewarding for both the individual leader and the organization he/she serves, for it is only leaders of great character who can inspire others to greatness. Whether you are a leader of people or one responsible for developing leaders, be sure that when others are asked about you in the future, you will be placed in the Good Boss column.

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Apology is a vital leadership practice, but asking for forgiveness is a big leap beyond apologizing. When you forgive someone, you are at the center of the interaction; you hold the power; it is you who feels aggrieved, and you are the victim. Meanwhile, the other is the wrongdoer. You are the judge, the jury, and potentially the executioner. And you, benevolently, have decided to forgive the other of the wrongdoing you judge them to have done to you. That’s quite a powerful position to be in.

But this is not the case when you ask for forgiveness. When you ask for forgiveness, the other person is at the center of the interaction—you are handing power to them by allowing them the option to forgive you or not. In doing so, you have put yourself in their hands and you are certainly not in a comfortable space while displaying immense vulnerability and humility. Asking for forgiveness is a much more noble place to be than when you are the one doing the forgiving. When you ask for forgiveness, you are exposing yourself and pleading for benevolence from another.

Asking for forgiveness takes some reflection. We need to clearly articulate what it is we did and in what ways it might have harmed or undermined the other. This reflection itself is such an important developmental process as we probe not only what we did and what the consequences of our actions were, but also why we did it. As we become accustomed to this process, the idea of consequence becomes embedded in our inner beings so that we are more permanently aware of consequence, even in the very moments of our actions.

In this digital age, we often act and react quickly, and we move on so quickly from our actions and reactions that we rarely contemplate consequence and seldom consider asking for forgiveness from people we might damage or hurt. Many people are so thoughtless in their impulsive social media reactions that they often damage themselves, never mind others.

In the Jewish calendar, this is the season for asking for forgiveness—not just from G-d but also from others and from oneself. It’s hard enough to ask forgiveness from a peer, partner, or boss. Sometimes, though, we have to ask forgiveness from our subordinates, our teams, or even our children. This can be very uncomfortable but immensely valuable. It might help to journal a list of people whose forgiveness one needs to ask and the reasons for it—then, being courageous, choosing one person, and asking them for forgiveness. Notice how much closer you are to that person after that interaction than perhaps you ever were before. Forgiveness—both asking for it and granting it—builds trust and reinforces connection, creating stronger bonds and deeper intimacy than ever.

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Consider an empty glass of water. You can rest it for as long as you will, but rest won’t replenish its contents. Similarly, your body and mind are just containers. Your emotions, your intellect, and your spirit are the contents. You can only give emotional, intellectual, and spiritual output when your container is overflowing with content. This means you always need more emotional, intellectual, and spiritual input than output. If you continually draw from your content, you quickly become depleted. People with this overflow are the people we find energized and energizing. On the other hand, depleted people who need others to fill them are often the individuals who drain us!

But here’s the problem: Because fatigue and depletion can feel the same, we often misdiagnose our condition. We think we are fatigued, so we rest. But in fact, we might be depleted, in which case no amount of rest will restore our inner resources. When we are depleted, we need restoration rather than rest or relaxation.

Leaders are currently suffering more from depletion than from fatigue, but few recognize this. Some took summer leave and came back as exhausted as before, because rest and relaxation alone don’t restore depleted inner resources. This is why I think we are in the toughest phase of the pandemic, because we aren’t just exhausted—we are depleted. We are depleted because our usual channels of restoration are not readily available to us anymore. We are normally restored by human contact through the exchange of energy and discourse, even in the form of passing interactions with other travelers at airports, servers at restaurants, or attendants in stores. Virtual meetings keep us going, but they don’t restore our inner energy. Moreover, on a Zoom call, we’re interfacing with a screen, not a person.

So how do you know if you are fatigued or depleted, and how do you treat depletion?

Fatigue generally applies to your body and your mind. Depletion generally applies to your emotions, your intellect, and your spirit. Depletion can give you the feeling of physical or mental exhaustion. But you know it’s not fatigue you’re suffering when rest and relaxation don’t replenish you.

The way to treat depletion is with restoration, not with relaxation. While relaxation is a passive state of “not-doing”, restoration is a deliberate, active choice of activities different from your routine activities, which add energy instead of consume energy.

Here are some examples of restorative activities: regular prayer or meditation; walking in nature and pausing to notice all the sounds, sights, and textures around you; reading something beautiful or inspiring rather than useful; physically meeting and spending quality time with loved ones for nothing more than connecting and sharing; listening attentively to music that is harmoniously complex and rich in sounds and themes; applying your mind to a challenge totally unrelated to work; regular journaling.

Check in with yourself, your partner, and your team. Are they fatigued, or are they depleted? Explain the differences to them and help them diagnose their state correctly by asking them guiding questions. Even just a conversation about depletion can help restoration.

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Now is the present.

Now is a present…a gift.

Now is the pinnacle of your past. Everything you have ever done and experienced has led you to now. Yet now is not limited by your past. Nor is your past limited; it is not cast in stone. You can mold your past by the choices you make now. By elevating now to an even higher place of being, you give more meaning and purpose to the past that brought you to this moment of now. In a single moment, heroes change the meaning of their lives and transform them from mundanity to distinction, from anonymity to renown. The choice to act heroically in the now gives meaning to the past.

Heroic action does not need to be glamorous. Heroic action is simply putting the needs of others or a cause higher than yourself, before your own needs. Love is heroic. Idealism is heroic. Service and leadership are both heroic too.

Now is the foundation of your future…a future that you build from countless now moments; one after the other.

Seize the moment of now with all your passion, energy, and might, for now is all you have. And now is all you will ever need.

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