COMMENTARY: Building leadership through balance

  • Published
  • By Lt. Col. Jason Barnes
  • 100th Air Refueling Wing Safety Office
RAF MILDENHALL, England --  Leadership is challenging the unknown and fostering the ability to adapt in ourselves and others.

Many of us like to think we understand what the future holds, but life is unpredictable and sometimes we can find ourselves feeling out of our comfort zone. For me, the real question in leadership is how we, as leaders, manage to maintain our high-performance in the face of the unknown. 

I hail from Wisconsin, which means every Sunday I bleed green and gold for the Green Bay Packers. We've had some pretty good coaches throughout the years, including the immortal Vince Lombardi, and I'm amazed how week after week, coaches prepare their players to consistently perform at a high level. In an unpredictable world, how do we prepare ourselves and others to consistently perform and achieve goals?

I try to keep two simple ideas in mind; building blocks and balance.  

To consistently perform at a top level, athletes practice and train long before they take the field. Our current actions, activities and decisions form our building blocks for future success. This is true in our professional and our personal lives, and they often intersect. Like a coach forming a training routine to shape the athletes into top performers, we can build and shape our day-to-day activities in order to achieve our future goals. 

One of our greatest challenges personally and professionally is long-term planning. Too often the crisis of the day overshadows our lasting outlook. By breaking down long-term goals into short-term objectives, we can quickly see the chain of events and actions needed for success.  This allows us to properly prioritize these tasks alongside the day-to-day fires. 
   
Balance is more than splitting time between work and home.  It's first looking at all the roles we play and finding equilibrium between those roles in our everyday lives.  Stepping back, I realize I'm not only the Chief of Safety but I'm an officer, a pilot, a husband, a father, a son and sometimes even a runner.  These multiple roles demand my time, energy and effort. However, no matter the role, top performance is derived from maintaining your wellbeing to include a healthy diet, proper rest, exercise and mental relaxation. It starts when we keep all our roles in focus and ask ourselves, "Am I spending too much time in one area?" or "Is something or someone else suffering from neglect?" 

There are other ways leaders can incorporate these concepts but for me, these two simple ideas, building blocks and balance, help me evaluate my daily actions to see if they are positively affecting my goals and values. In the end, it is about trying to achieve consistent high performance in ourselves and others.