We've all been there.

One moment we're sipping our coffee and singing along to our favorite tune as we park at work. We're calm and collected. Yet somehow by mid-day we're internally rolling our eyes at yet another ridiculous suggestion from a colleague and realize we're totally unhinged. 

How did we lose our cool so fast? 

And more importantly, how can we get it back?!

Try this 1-minute strategy:

1. Before you go into a meeting or other engagement, set your phone timer for 1 minute.

2. Give yourself permission to sit there and think:

- Who am I about to meet with and what is the purpose for our time together?

- What barriers may get in the way of us fulfilling that purpose?

- How would my best leader self show up to help eliminate barriers?

3. Write down 1-2 adjectives that describe how you want to show up on a post-it note and put it somewhere you'll see it during the meeting.

Let's try an example so you can see what I mean. It can be surprisingly tricky at first!

Let’s say you're about to meet with a team of staff and the purpose of this meeting is to make sure teachers are ready for the assessments that are coming up so they can see how much students have progressed.

What are the likely barriers to them being excited to see student progress? It’s more likely that this particular team has some anxiety around the logistics of the assessment. You can hear their questions now:

Are they printing them or is the assessment online?

How will student accommodations be handled?

Does the assessment time count as their full ELA block for that day? 

Before you mentally dismiss their concerns as trivial and remind them to GET EXCITED to see student progress (I know that’s what you want to do because that is my first instinct too! It’s ok! Work through it!), instead imagine how your best leader self would show up in the face of those concerns.

Perhaps you choose to get curious about what THEY think the best way to administer the assessments is, or what solutions THEY would come up with to manage students' accommodations. Or, maybe you want to stay patient, and give them the time they need to digest the logistical information before expecting them to be excited. Or maybe you want to show up extra helpful and offer to support them as they administer the assessments or manage accommodations.

How you choose to show up is totally your choice!

You would write CURIOUS, PATIENT, or HELPFUL on your post-it depending on which approach you chose. 

Do you see how focusing not on the outcome, but on how YOU want to show up could be powerful?

Glance at your post-it throughout the time and recenter yourself as needed.

Why does this strategy work?

It keeps us in the present by constantly bringing our minds back to the current moment and how we are showing up in it by glancing at the post-it.

 It allows us to leverage empathy by imaging the real-life humans we are about to engage with and put ourselves in their shoes BEFORE the meeting even starts.

It helps us to take ownership and responsibility for our own thoughts, words and actions which produces self-efficacy. That makes us feel in-control and confident.

Try it out and let me know how it goes in the comments!