“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”

Hobbits are much more concerned about the joy that comes from the basics of life (wine and song) than about gold and power and control. Bilbo was rich despite himself.

This is how great leadership works. Leaders lead well when they learn the Hobbitesque art of self-care.

Self care

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There’s a word that gets a lot of flack. Self care is about delineating time for physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, relational, and financial health and it is a critical habit of leadership. You are a whole person. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Start thinking of yourself as the most important non-renewable resource you have.

I once mentioned the importance of self care to a group of leaders I was mentoring and Ray pushed back.

He insisted this idea was connected to Millennial softness.

“Push me to perform. Push me to do better. But don’t talk to me about self care”

Like so many, Ray started out well.

He showed leadership skills early and most of his fans saw him as rock star material in the non-profit and business world. He started new projects and motivated people to get involved. He raised money. He made money. He was on a trajectory of greatness.

That trajectory was derailed along the way. His story is complicated and multi-faceted. Suffice to say, there was a massive falling out with members of his team, and a grab for power. Ray lost that grab. After a complex series of events, Ray had to start over.

From Ray’s perspective, none of this was his fault.

There is a vast difference between owning at least some of your part and taking zero responsibility.

Ray took none.

He blamed everyone but himself for his problems.

He was 100% the victim.

Things progressed downhill quickly from there.

Along with his refusal to take ownership of what he could own, Ray stopped taking care of himself completely. He took on unhealthy habits, which made him an unhealthy person at every level. His ongoing lack of concern for his own health carried over to his marriage and his work, both of which were taking major hits.

In the end, he has lost both things, and is an unhappy individual.

I tell the sad story of Ray because I don’t believe it had to be this way.

Ray considered himself a leader. He was viewed by others as a leader. But he didn’t follow one of the basic premises of leadership.

Leadership begins when you have no one to lead.

Leadership begins with you.

Self Leadership

One of the most disturbing things about Ray’s story is his utter lack of taking ownership of anything.

Self-Leadership begins with strategic ownership.

This is not about ownership of what goes well.

In fact, good leaders allow their team to own the good parts.

Own what goes poorly.

Own my own shortcomings.

None of this means taking on a weak and wimpy doormattic demeanor — but blame-shifting is not an impressive look for anyone.

Once a leader begins the act of blame-shifting, she ceases to lead altogether.

“I saw in myself a leader who was so sure of the brilliance of his own ideas that he couldn’t allow brilliance in anyone else’s; a leader who felt he was so ‘enlightened’ that he needed to see workers negatively in order to prove his enlightenment; a leader so driven to be the best that he made sure no one else could be as good as he was.”

— Leadership and Self-deception, Arbinger Institute.

(Only) Healthy Leaders Make Healthy Teams

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There are hundreds of books and thousands more coaches, trainers and therapists who can help you to get healthy and stay healthy as a human. The point here is simple: You are greater than the sum of your parts. Seeing yourself as a whole person is critical.

You are not simple meat on bones.

You are not what you bring to the table at work.

You can no longer separate work-life, home-life, and personal-life.

You are greater than the sum of your parts.

This understanding is important for leaders — because it determines how we treat others, as well as how we treat ourselves.

The people who work for you have lives outside of work.

So do you.

The people you lead will function best with 7-9 hours of sleep each night.

So will you.

The people you lead will function at a higher level if they have healthy headspace.

So will you.

When your whole person is healthy, you are healthy.

It’s critical to think about your team in the same way.

Allow people the space to be human.

Allow yourself the space to be human.

This is indeed who we are.

While you can’t control the lives of people you lead (nor should you try), you can be an assistant and not a deterrent to the health of your people.

Protect the Asset

You are your own most fundamental asset for making the biggest impact on the world around. Your brain, body, creativity, empathy, and generosity. Setting up a simple ecosystem to lead, create, and make a difference in the world.

Self-care means protecting that asset.

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The idea of “protect the asset” originates with the military and is used in the self-care space by Greg McKeown in his book Essentialism (something every leader should read and re-read).

“The best asset we have for making a contribution to the world is ourselves. If we under-invest in ourselves, and by that I mean, our minds, our bodies, and our spirits, we damage the very tool we need to make our highest contribution.”

— GREG MCKEOWN

The rest of McKoewn’s chapter emphasizes the importance of sleep — which I wholeheartedly agree with.

Protect the Asset is a bigger concept than this.

What do you do daily to make sure you are both tuning and preserving and developing the basic tools you need to do your job, the things you need to make a difference in this world, the tools you bring that make your contributions unique? I argue this is your mind, body, and spirit.

It begins with the most basic principle: leaders make their priorities. They do not allow others to make their priorities for them.

This sounds great and can be difficult. But let’s start with the basics. Do you determine your next action, or does the pinging and dinging of your phone determine your next action?

Basic question. Sometimes a complicated answer.

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I protect the asset when I prioritize my physical health over an unnecessary early morning meeting.

I protect the asset when don’t work late on a project so I can spend time with the people I love the most (for me, that’s my wife and children and their families).

I protect the asset when I put the phone down, turn the screens off, and get seven or eight (or nine or ten) hours of sleep.

Protecting the asset can feel like self-indulgence. It’s not.

Protecting the asset can look like laziness. It’s not.

We chuckle at a hobbit’s concern for second breakfast on the road to Mordor, but therein lies an important principle for us.

It is possible to do the important work of fighting dragons and destroying magic rings, while also caring about yourself and others.

Protecting the asset doesn’t mean a daily spa date and making sure you never miss your mani/pedi appointment. It means getting enough sleep. Exercise your mind and your body. Do what you must. Maintain mental health. Place boundaries around toxic people and activities.

Keep your priorities straight. Protect the asset.

There’s no other way to make a significant impact on the world.

Of all the ways to “protect the asset” — there are two areas that, when leveraged, make all the difference in the health of a leader. We’ll take a moment to highlight them here.

Sleep and white space.

Sleep Matters

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Certain things are more essential than others. Perhaps most essential thing is the human need for sleep.

In my younger years, I foolishly insisted I could get by on very little sleep. Burn the candle at both ends and sleep when you’re dead.

That was a lie I told myself.

A lie because it’s scientifically untrue. Lack of sleep costs us dollars and years of our lives.

According to a study done in Australia last year, inadequate sleep will cost you money personally and affect the entire national GDP - to the tune of billions of dollars.

(This study may use Australian dollars, but you get the idea. It’s a lot. Read it for yourself.)

A major factor behind heart and artery disease, brain disease, diabetes, and depression is lack of sleep. Not to mention workplace injury and car crashes because we try to do things while excessively tired.

Sleep is not optional. But sleep can be optimized, and every hobbit-leader should make every attempt to do so.

Do the math.

Basics. If you don’t plan a good night’s sleep, it won’t happen. If the alarm needs to go off at 6:00 AM to get to work on time, that means the night time wind down should begin early enough to get into sleep mode by 10:00 PM. 11:00 PM at the latest, for an optimal 7-8 hours.

Delete stimuli.

There’ve been a lot of studies about screens that keep us awake, so definitely cut screen time for an hour before your predetermined bedtime. But drop other stimuli like caffeine, excessive exercise, and novels (for some). Definitely stay away from thorny work problems. You won’t solve them while sleep deprived. Do what it takes to calm down and unwind.

Darken the room.

It’s all about circadian rhythms. Too much light at night, not enough light in the day (for most of us), and we’re all out of whack. Some argue we have been since the invention of electricity. (Thank you, Thomas Edison. Well, actually - Humphrey Davy. But if Edison stole credit for the good of the technology, shouldn’t he bear responsibility for the bad, as well?) Light is relentless. All night. The human body slept in the dark, and even though there are those who insist they sleep better with the light on, science can ’t back it. We sleep more soundly in the dark.

Sound sleep will not only make a difference in your productivity, decision-making capacity, overall job performance, and leadership - sound sleep is necessary for life. Don’t skimp on this one.

Sleep is far more important than you may have previously thought.

White Space

Yard sales are the bane of my existence.

And that would be okay if it were not because my wonderful wife absolutely loves yard sales. She enjoys going to them. She enjoys having them.

We cleaned out the attic for a yard sale a few weeks ago and it was my personal week of hell on earth. I’m pretty sure it was a terrible week for my wife as well — not because of the yard sale itself, but for all of my grunting, sulking, and complaining.

The result was a clean attic. Something that’s needed doing for several years now.

The problem with a clean attic is that we now have a clean attic. There’s room to put things. Clutter creep happens. Things that fail to “spark joy” don’t get Kondo-ized. They end up in the attic, because it’s clean.

Until the clean space gets full and it’s time for another yard sale, much to my chagrin and Renee’s joy.

Space always fills with something. A lack of intention usually means the space is filled with garbage. (How many empty cardboard boxes do I actually need in my attic?)

Time works pretty much the same as my attic. There is a tendency for activities to expand to the point of filling every crack and corner until there is no room for margin, error, or addition.

Leaders: protect the asset — guard your white space.

I recognize that each of us has very different internal wiring.

Some need constant activity.

Some prefer long periods of solitude and silence.

Whatever your wiring, every leader needs white space in their lives. Time to process and problem solve is a key to hobbit-leadership.

Take a walk

Do something that removes input. In his recent book, Chris Baily spends a great deal of page space talking about the Yin to the Yang of Hyper Focus: Scatter focus. This is when the brain may wander at will. Sometimes our minds need a good wander around the countryside, to smell the hollyhocks, and to look for elves. Remove all artificial input and let birds and trees and bumblebees take over. An unfettered mind can make astounding connections.

My regular scatter focus practice is a walk.

Sometimes a long shower will do the trick.

Try doing something physically demanding but mentally light and see where your mind takes you.

Make a proper schedule

I had a boss once who would often do back-to-back meetings all day. This is a terrible way to work. A hobbit-leader schedules downtime after every meeting. We need time to process what just happened (are there tasks or takeaways from this meeting?) and time to prepare.

White space will not magically appear in your calendar. Schedule it. If you know it’s a busy week, schedule a full down day. Most of us have way more autonomy in our schedules than we think. Plan for the busy seasons. Put in the space you need to be healthy.

Ray believed that “self.-care” is the product of pampered Millennials.

Hobbit leaders take the opposite view.

Self-care might feel indulgent to those wired like Ray.

But trust me when I say it’s not.

Protecting the asset is how we set ourselves up for long-term leadership and impact.

Perhaps, second breakfast is a much more important meal than we previously considered.