Lately, I’ve been thinking about what’s best in one’s career:  To stride or to stretch? I define striding as someone who does their job with relative ease but is still able to deliver a meaningful impact. Stretching is someone who is unafraid to be uncomfortable and challenge “their” norm and discover new capabilities, skills in the process.  But to stride or to stretch — is this the right question I should be asking?

Being Uncomfortable

Looking back at my career, I have always held a high regard for those who took on opportunities and projects that boldly stretched themselves.  But I naively thought that this was the requisite to be “perceived” successful and ultimately become a success in one’s profession. As I look back at this notion, I now know that that this is not entirely correct.

Years ago, a mentor told me that “as long as I feel stretched then I can be content that I’m pushing myself to the max.” I admired that and tried to embrace that mentality early on in my own career. This was one of the reasons why I went to Asia to live and work.  A decision that has turned out to be a game-changer for me both professionally and personally. But, is this philosophy still salient for me years later mid-career?

Being Stretched Does Not Always Equal Success

As I reexamine this philosophy that being stretched equls success, I realize now that this mindset may no longer serve me well in my career as it did earlier on. Quite frankly, being stretched does not matter as one can be challenged in their job and consequently be incompetent at doing it effectively. On the flip side, someone who may be doing the same job for years and has hit a stride that makes her “almost” irreplaceable in her role. Perhaps this may be an extreme case but the point here is that we should be looking elsewhere to see how someone is doing in their role. Simply put, the question we should all be asking is are we performing well? And, if so, are we performing at the the highest level possible?

This is All that Matters to Me Now

At this stage, I try to focus on performing at a high level no matter if I’m an individual contributor or a people manager. This is not easy to do but at this stage in my career, I believe it is a requisite for me to function effectively and feel like I am creating value.

Questions that I ask myself include:

• Am I doing work that matters?
• Am I doing things that are meaningful to my job, my team, and/or my organization?
• Am I contributing to the growth of others?
• Am I thoughtfully driving results and outcomes in an efficient way?
• Am I driving things forward with a cause that people can rally behind?
• Am I challenging the norm in a constructive way?

From my perspective, these are are all examples of ways one can facilitate and nurture a high performance mindset in their day-to-day. It is not easy but with the right psychology, tactics, diet, and energy,  achieving high performance can be attainable for anyone. And one does not have to be pushed to the brim to get there. Of course, when starting a new role there will be a learning curve that will necessitate you to be uncomfortable. This is inevitable when starting a new position but once you hit your stride, focus on maintaining a high performance mindset and I’m confident that it will benefit your career and the organization.

A year ago i wrote about a quality that I believed to be the most overlooked quality in leadership. The response was humbling as many of you shared the same sentiments. It got me thinking recently about other attributes that serve well in establishing one’s true leadership. One quality that may be talked a lot about is collaboration. There is an art to effective collaboration and when mastered I believe it can be quite defining in establishing one as a great leader, colleague, and steward in an organization.

But what type of collaboration am I referring to?  Naturally, paying attention to someone in a meeting by putting your cell phone away is a requisite to collaborate. Or asking questions to show you are genuinely interested in a conversation with a colleague. These may seem common place but are not always followed-through in today’s world of never ending distractions.  But the collaboration that I reference here goes beyond this and addresses how we genuinely help, support, cooperate, and / or mentor others in our daily jobs.

Some of the reasons why collaboration is so important in business are common sensical but some may not be as transparent.  Such things as enhancing an organization’s efficiency or increasing internal awareness of what people are doing are some examples of why collaboration is important in today’s modern working environment. But these are just the beginning; here are some other reasons why I believe collaboration is a building-block to practicing effective leadership:

• Helps Challenges the Status Quo
• Helps A Business Grow Faster
• Helps to Establishes a “One Company” Culture
• Nurtures a “Can Do” Environment
• Helps to Fosters Innovation

The benefits of collaboration are substantial and because of this it is covered extensively in many books as well as thought leadership platforms. Despite this, collaboration is not always easy to do when the rubber hits the road. When was the last time you deeply collaborated with someone who was not part of your P&L or group? When was the last time we genuinely helped someone who is a peer and who may — and rightfully — be vying for a promotion? Collaboration can be hard to do for these and many other reasons but it is these hard things that great leaders find a way to thrive in through and through.

Personally, this is one area that I hope to get better at in 2019. It will not be easy but with some small wins I am sure that it will become a more natural way for me to do business. Please share your thoughts in the comments section about your own experience.

The thoughts expressed within are my own. Thanks for reading.