No timeouts – working with conditions as they are

One of the things being a seasoned professional means is that you are not dependent on conditions being just right in order to be in a good state of mind or to perform well. This means you can see, hear, and accept what’s happening very fast, which allows you to quickly adjust and pivot. Even if you’re playing basketball barefooted, you listen and respond. You don’t wish things were different than they are (well you might for like 90 milliseconds), you try to understand how things really are.

When things do not go according to plan you can improvise and make trade-offs. Your ideas are relevant to how things actually are, not to wishful thinking, and you can course-correct and bounce back in the moment. By being present you save energy for possibilities rather than wasting it on blame, excuses or wishful thinking.

practice so you can improvise

But being in this state takes practice, reinforcement and support. It’s not like you achieve it and you’re done. It’s kind of like playing a music instrument at a high level. To perform consistently under any conditions, you need to be in good shape. Similar to top sport, you need to train constantly. You need to be focused yet flexible. And when you are in that zone, almost nothing can throw you off. You might fall into the grips of fear, like getting a wave of stage fright, but you know how to shift out of it.

When I was a student of Larry Combs, the principal clarinetist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, he once said, “A good student and I may play just as well as each other on a good day. The main difference between us is that when I’m having a bad day, maybe only my stand partner will know it, but when the amateur is having a bad day, the whole orchestra, the conductor, the audience will know it.” The professional practices so that they are able to stay totally in the moment, so that they recover very very fast from any distraction. For a professional it’s unlikely that anything throws them very far off track, but if it does, their body will produce the desired outcome and compensate almost automatically because they have practiced in a way that prepares them to do that.

prepare for things not to be optimal

as an aside, making reeds is an incredibly labor intensive, detailed process that takes about 10 hours over several days

A famous oboe teacher in the US used to make his students practice on bad reeds, to force them to be flexible and problem solve in real time. He famously said, “Anyone can sound good with a good reed.”

In a concert there are no timeouts. The performer works with the conditions as they are, other people’s fallacies, whatever feelings are there - you can’t just raise your hand and stop, explain, apologize - you must respond as best you can (and yes, sometimes results are cringeworthy, but we forgive ourselves, apologize backstage afterwards, and go on). Working under adversity means you work with yourself and the conditions as they are, so you can keep your mind steady.

keep your mind steady

Living in a pandemic is kind of like this, but amplified by the sharpness of it being about life and death, and the possibly much bigger impact. Keeping the mind steady is paramount. It is easy to be overcome by fear. The trick is to not stay there. Being present means you are in the best shape possible and ready for anything. What if we look at the current crisis as an ultimate agility test? How flexible can we be? I’m not by any means trying to suggest hospital personnel should have to work without PPE or proper supplies. What I am saying is that the ones who keep mind and body together can tell the rest of us something about how to respond. Certainly for those of you in the business world, bringing in such analogies will hopefully give you more sense of urgency and possibility of paying attention to things you might normally overlook.

Even when there is a lot of uncertainty, when you are present you will be able to improvise better with what you’ve got. You’ll be able to invent multiple possibilities, pivot to serve immediate needs, and still think longer term. You’ll get different kinds of results than if you resort to willpower, pushing, manipulating or bullying yourself or others. When this kind of oppositional mindset is your standard way to get out of fear, which is based on fighting, struggle and winning, you won’t have the same quality of results that come from flexibility. What is called for now is collaborative and collective: a collaborative way of working that leads to collective benefits.

don’t go it alone – make your resilience plan

For me, being able to have the presence of mind to see opportunities that are for collective benefit, even in these conditions, has meant getting out of my bubble and connecting with people, getting support, and doing daily practices that help my state of mind. For you it might mean going for a run, or praying. For me it means getting granular about what I’m doing. I’ve organized an accountability buddy for myself, to check in with daily. I’m using the meditation App Headspace and following the course on managing anxiety in it. I’ve gone back to Alexander Technique, my performer’s foundational body-mind work. I followed an online Bounce Back workshop in resilience given by Sharmishtha Dattagupta from Dana Coaching, and did all the practices, which are based on getting out of small, egoic mind and into big mind. I’ve been prioritizing things like getting outside everyday, not looking at the news before bed, and making sure I get enough sleep.

Most importantly, I’ve parked all messages that say I “should” be able to do this myself, that after all these years of experience I should be doing better. These critical inner voices, focused on the “I” have no place in these times. I find myself thinking much more collectively, realizing we are all going through this. It’s normal to fall down – to be less productive, to be overwhelmed, to be lost – the trick is to get back up, not by willpower and force, but by trust, connection and presence.

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Laura Carmichael is a People leader for organizations of the 21st Century that want a future-of-work where Purpose and human-centric design underpin culture, technical and business strategy.