Living and Leading with Intention.

Tara Middlebrooks

17 Oct, 2021

Living and Leading with Intention.

“If you have a clear vision, you will eventually attract the right strategy. If you don’t have a clear vision, no strategy will save you.”

– Michael Hyatt, Founder Michael Hyatt Company

Never-ending to do lists and priorities. Finishing a day with more tasks added to your list than crossed off. A calendar filled in reaction to “urgent” tasks disguised as “important.” That moment when you’re preparing for your annual evaluation, and you struggle to recall your goals or your progress on them. If you actually managed to write some down, you notice they are all work-related goals. Nothing about other life domains such as relationships, health, spiritual, social, or intellectual. 

Can you relate? 

If you’re anything like me, work can sometimes feel all-consuming—long days turn into weeks, weeks turn into months and then suddenly, it’s six months or a year later. While you may have crushed it at work, what else suffered? Something had to give. Afterall, for most people, you spend more time at work in an average week than at home. Your job tends to have a built in structure that provides you with clear metrics for success, regular feedback on how you’re performing, and regular milestones or key decision points–continually holding you accountable. Personally? Other than relationships with family and friends, there isn’t much holding you accountable on your personal goals. Some may think it’s purely about discipline, but I think there is more to it. Managing conflicting demands on time and where you place your effort each day is more a matter of intention. 

For what you can control: Are you making the most of it? Are you thinking through your own priorities, regularly reflecting on long-term goals? Or, are you reacting in the short-term to the newest “urgent” needs? There is a way to break this cycle. Let’s talk about it. 

How this all started. 

The past few years have been a time of serious personal reflection and evaluation of my priorities. Looking back, my Platoon Leader and Company Command time was a blur—a lot of growth professionally, but I felt I was slowly losing a sense of who I was. Allowing other priorities to come before self-care, personal hobbies—even things I was really passionate about—and sometimes even my health. Some would say it was a matter of discipline, and maybe some elements of my experience were due to that, but these last few years I’ve determined that this failure  was moreso a lack of intention. I had professional milestones I aimed to achieve—the Army career progression model makes it clear what you need to do to make those things happen. But personally, I was struggling to find my own identity; I let the Army’s priorities and expectations of who I should be and what I needed to do supersede who I was and what I wanted to do. 

At one point a few years ago, I was one of those people that required a wake-up call. A call that would force me to change. Luckily or unluckily, I had a bit of a health scare in graduate school that prompted a “tactical pause.” I suddenly was thinking: 

  • What was I doing these last few years? 
  • Where was I trying to go? 
  • If things didn’t ultimately turn out well, what would I have missed? 
  • What did I regret doing (or regret not doing)? 
  • Have I been honest with myself in what I want out of life? 

I vowed at that moment to explore more intentionally what was out there. I began looking for new career paths (breaking away from the normal career path I was on), started new hobbies, and took a class online I wouldn’t have normally made time for. I finally gave myself permission to break the cycle. 

“Your life matters. You are here for a reason. Your Job is to determine why.”

– Michael Hyatt

Fast forward. 

During my first year as an Instructor at West Point, I was provided an opportunity to participate in a “Purpose to Impact” Workshop with my coworkers, led by Nick Craig (founder of the Core Leadership Institute and author of Leading from Purpose). The intent of this workshop was to develop a deeper understanding of my own individual purpose, distill my purpose into a concrete statement, and develop a clear plan for translating that purpose into action. It was a two-day, immersive experience where we worked in small groups and shared everything from crucible experiences, leadership successes, our struggles, and some goals I had yet to share outside my family (vulnerability at its finest—there really is no other way to discover your true purpose!). 

The result? A draft of my personal purpose statement and an action plan that forced me to look at different categories of my life (the first major reflection was just figuring those out) and then creating an action plan. This plan included:

  • Specific goals for each category, with progress and actions planned for the next 30 days, three months, six months, one year, and three-to-five-years. 
  • Determining a “board of directors” (i.e. friends, coworkers, family members) that would help support me and keep me accountable.
  • Map out next steps that will build momentum to accomplish goals where you’re fulfilling your purpose.

Following the workshop, I met with my small group at least three times (over the course of three months) to check in. The obliger in me (a personality tendency developed by Gretchen Rubin) really needed that external accountability—so the group did its job in helping me keep this intentional goal momentum going. Next thing I know, I’m taking actionable steps to find a new career path, taking care of myself again, and re-engaging in relationships. I was more intentional with taking advantage of opportunities personally and professionally. Knowing my purpose, and what values and actions are required to achieve it, helped me establish a filter for what I committed to each day. If it wasn’t driving my purpose, it wasn’t a priority.  Knowing my purpose helped me filter out things that were not helping me live my purpose and choose things that were. I’m not saying progress is fast, or perfect–far from it–but progress is progress and I was intentionally making plans for what was important to me. 

What came next. 

Inspired by the action plan I developed with the workshop, I moved on to how I could manage my daily time to complement those goals more intentionally. You know that person that has a drawer (read: graveyard) of half-used notebooks, journals, planners, calendars? That’s me—and it’s a REALLY big drawer. I couldn’t find a product or tool that was simple AND could help me tackle all the different responsibilities and goals I was trying to achieve. Finally, I found the Full Focus Planner—yes, a planner. But it’s also a system. A system that helped me stay focused daily toward the MOST important goals and values. In brief, it provides these key elements (but you can read more about the system here):

  1. A single place to keep your annual goals front and center. 
  2. An opportunity to deep dive into your goals quarterly and provide yourself a starting point with actionable steps and tracking of your progress. 
  3. Daily pages (with room for all those meeting notes!) that allows you to visualize your day, pick three key tasks that contribute to those goals you outlined, as well as other tasks for the day. 
  4. A designated spot to review your week and reflect on what went well and what didn’t. 
  5. A designated spot to record daily rituals that help make personal and work time predictable (when they can be) and ground you in a routine. (Chances are you’re actually kind of doing this, but one they discuss in the planner is a “Work-Day Shut-Down” ritual that helps you clearly close out your work and embrace a clear transition into personal time. Learn more about it here.) 

Example of the daily page layout from the Full Focus Planner Website

Do you need the specific Full Focus planner to do this? Heck no, any notebook could do (I just like they do all the prep work in the structure). The intent of me sharing all these details is to help get you started. Help you see that it is possible (without a lot of work) to build intentional progress towards your most important tasks and goals. This process will help you reflect on what is important to you, and check in with how you’re doing. In many professions, and especially in the military, we’re planners. We’re constantly balancing the long-term plans for a year-out (often more) with the next few weeks or days—it’s normal to become reactionary and just shoot down the 5 meter targets as they pop up. This is usually where our own goals (personal or professional) start to drift. But don’t let that happen!

You can start small; either identifying your goals, or simply trying to capture what really happens each day. It took me over a year to expand beyond the daily pages and really utilize the entire system, but it’s a process and I’m still finding what works for me.  Whether it’s an app, notebook, tablet, or calendar, you can translate these ideas into your own system for managing your life—just with a little more intention than before.

How this can help you as a leader. 

We reveal our goals through our actions, but our values through our attention.”

– Adam Grant, Organizational Psychologist

Commander’s annual priorities. Leader philosophies. Personal values. Goals. Training cycles. All these things require consistent attention, but when you write it all out the tasks seem simply overwhelming. How do I live the values I want, manage—and let’s be real about this—1000 priorities that are dictated to you, decide your own priorities, and all in a way that makes you proud and satisfied? It’s a lot. 

There’s plenty we can’t control as leaders at all levels, but when we can control something, are we making the most of that opportunity? Do we really understand what drives us? In high stress or high demand moments, what is our default screening process for what is important?

The first step is keeping what drives you close by. Knowing your leadership/personal philosophy, values, purpose, your mission, or the “non-negotiables” you can’t live without. What about your organization’s goals, mission, philosophy? They are all important. But are those things visible/handy for you to review regularly? Not just posted on a bulletin board (we all know those are just for inspections) but somewhere you can reach for them when you need to. Probably not. The planner helps with that, but it could also be a note you hang near your computer, something you attach to the inside cover of your Leaderbook, or a product you hang in your personal office space. If it is an organizational level philosophy, is it somewhere everyone can see it? How are you reinforcing it daily?

The next step is using these intentional goals to inform your decision making. Do you plan opportunities to make progress towards these goals or values, even if it is atom-level-small, into your weeks? You don’t need progress on every goal, every week, but it needs to start somewhere. For example:

  • Annual Goal: Be more intentional with providing direct-report subordinates consistent feedback between rating periods.
  • Quarter Goal (nested in accomplishing your annual goal): Assess how (read: develop a plan) and where (on my calendar) can I intentionally build in time for this goal.  
  • Week #1 Goal (nested in accomplishing your monthly goal): Understand where my time is going by annotating my daily and weekly habits/tasks.  
  • Identify some actionable steps to make this Week #1 goal happen: 
    • Small Action Step #1: Figure out what medium you want to use to record this goal (electronic app, hard copy planner/notebook, or a hybrid system that combines both). 
    • Small Action Step #2 : Acquire the medium.
    • Small Action Step #3 : Experiment with your new system for a week and determine where your time is going. 
    • Small Action Step #4: Plan a reasonable next step for a Week #2 Goal (example: Determine how you want to deliver the feedback. Example: Do a weekly walk around the unit area and talk to your subordinates. Build more time into reviewing their products and tackle the feedback as the moment arises. Schedule a monthly sit down. Lots of different ways to do it! Just make sure it is realistic.)

Next thing you know, you recognize how your week is really spent, you find a time that works for you (consistently, even if it isn’t a lot), and you’re engaging more intentionally and proactively with your subordinates. Again, it may not be a dramatic change–it could be 30 min a week–but it’s likely  more than you did before! This process is a marathon, not a sprint. 

See? That wasn’t very hard!

Circling back.

If you take nothing else away from this reflection on leading and living intentionally, remember this: you have the capacity to reach the goals you desire and lead in a way that reinforces your own values. We all have the same number of hours in a day, but we all have different stories, and different circumstances. You have the ability to make the time; it’s not a lack of will or discipline that’s holding your back. It’s your ability to intentionally figure out what is important. Live and lead in a way only you can do–intentionally and unapologetically as yourself. 

Resources to check out:

Tara Middlebrooks is an active-duty Army Engineer Officer turned Strategist serving as an Assistant Professor in the Behavioral Sciences and Leadership Department at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

Citations

[1] Snook, Scott, and Nick Craig. 2014. Harvard Business Review: From Purpose to Impact. May. https://hbr.org/2014/05/from-purpose-to-impact.