This Should Be Social

The best things in life include other people; not everyone agrees. I am a naturally social person, sometimes referred to as an extrovert, so I know that my propensity for personal interaction is not always shared. However, I think there are things that everyone can agree on when it comes to certain activities being made better through the inclusion of other people: drinking (should have friends), gaming (when it isn't solitaire), and blogging (needs readers).

But I feel this way about more and more things since the pandemic threw my extroverted way of life into sharp contrast with safety. Everything can and maybe should be more social in my mind. Reading a good book, talk about it; learning something new, share it; it is what the creation of this site was predicated on and the reason why social media—for all of its terrible issues—works.

I will admit, I am not great at writing for this site, though. There is an initiation piece, a first step, to these social circumstances. Because so much happens in my day-to-day that I come to Friday and I am lacking the will to put it all down on paper. However, I came to a realization today: sometimes, you have to share what you do. Nash calls it documenting, not creating.

I am on a leadership journey with a technology-focused program. And our leadership journeys should be social as well, because nothing happens in a vacuum. We are all affected by each other and my learning can lead to your growth and vice versa if we let it.

So know this, our brains are hardwired to be doers because of the more frequent gratification that comes with the completion of tasks, the ability to see outcomes of work. But there is a common misconception that leaders shouldn’t be doers. What I realized today though is that in smaller organizations, doing is on everyone's leadership journey, even when they are in positions of power, perhaps especially so. When there is no one else to do the doing, one must show leadership by stepping in to do it themselves.

So I have decided to make specific time in each day of the week to "do". That is the way to compartmentalize so it doesn't become the default, which at the end of the day is an organizational leader’s biggest concern: letting task-based daily minutiae become our default, defensive, reactive position. If I take charge of the time in which I am handling tasks that must be done, I am still being intentional about the time I am spending there, what I am doing during that time, and all the other leadership skills the weekly reflections are attempting to pull out of our subconscious.

I can’t say for sure that this will lead to more writing here, but I can say that it led me to write something at all, and all journeys must have an first step.