Graymatter Sunday: 2023-12-10

Clear thinking, career framework and scenario guides, performing on the stage, mental health, and books.

Welcome to the Sunday edition of my newsletter - ideas, mindsets, and technology to innovate your best self and unlock high performance. From mastering yourself to mastering a craft you love.

🚀 This newsletter disseminates learnings from my personal experiences and work as a leadership and performance coach to help people reach higher performance levels at work and beyond.

🎧 Use the Substack app to listen to the audio version of this newsletter.

🌟 I hope you find one nugget to practice this coming week.

✍️ Share your comments at the bottom of this post.

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🧠 How to Think Clearly

I finished reading Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish this week, and I highly recommend it. Clear Thinking is a strategic masterpiece and the decision-making 101 course you never had in college. Parrish distills his ideas into simple, logical concepts that are easy to implement.

The core theme of the book is:

"Ordinary moments determine your position, and your position determines your options. Clear thinking is the key to proper positioning, which is what allows you to master your circumstances rather than be mastered by them."

"When you are well positioned, there are many paths to victory."

Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish

Each day, we make hundreds of decisions - many unconsciously - that guide the direction of our path. Applying the concepts of Clear Thinking will help increase the likelihood that decisions will lead you toward your vision. A key point of the book is that the decisions in our ordinary moments deliver extraordinary results.

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📕 Career Framework and Scenario Guides

I want to re-introduce my career framework, a collection of strategies to consider when managing your career. You can think about it as the book I never wrote 😊. The framework is where I capture my strategic ideas, organized into seven core pillars that stand the test of time. I intend for these articles to be relevant to generations of Gray’s and readers in the future.

The framework consists of two major parts:

• Knowing What You Want - this is focused on getting clear about who you are, the vision for what you want, the “product” of expertise you are positioning in the market, and planning ways to reach your vision.

• Getting What You Want - this is focused on the execution of tasks to deliver what you want. If you start here, you are putting the cart before the horse and will likely not know where you are going and why.

People have shared feedback that the framework is comprehensive but can be a bit overwhelming and abstract. This led me to write my first “scenario guide” - a way to use the framework strategies for practical, common scenarios such as making a career path/job transformation. I will build a library of scenario guides so readers can leverage this virtual playbook without talking to me. Here is the first scenario guide, and I would love your feedback on what scenario guide would be helpful to you.

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👥 Know Your Personas to Perform Where and When It Counts

This week, I have been thinking a lot about how we show up in various roles we have in our lives. We are not one person but a collection of personas. You can think of a persona as a role you play. For example, I am a father, coach, and technology leader (and more). We use the term persona in product management to refer to a profile of a product’s typical customer. Psychologist Carl Jung describes a persona as the mask or appearance one presents to the world. Discovering and embracing a collection of personas can help integrate your mindset of who you are and balance the demands of each persona. A diversity of personas makes you interesting.

While it can be straightforward to identify your personas, I have experienced the need to be present and clear on how each persona must show up, when and where it counts.

What are the skills, emotions, and behaviors needed when you step onto the stage?

What is the identity that will excel in front of the audience?

What values and beliefs must be present to earn a standing ovation?

“All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.” - Shakespeare

As a teenager, I was introduced to the Shakespeare quote above, following the rock band Rush and their All the World’s a Stage tour and song “Limelight.” As a drummer growing up, I still remember how excited I got about seeing a drum kit on a stage and watching musicians perform. That included watching Rush drummer Neal Peart (the best!) from the fifth row and meeting the band after the concert. The stage still mesmerizes me. Through interviews and reading about Peart over the years, I learned he was a quiet introvert who shied away from the limelight (which led to him writing the song Limelight). He often would visit public places on the road, talking with ordinary people who did not know who he was. But on stage, he was a monster drummer and performer. I admired how Peart was modest and low-key, and at the same time, someone who could perform in front of massive audiences over 30+ years.

All the world's indeed a stage
We are merely players
Performers and portrayers
Each another's audience outside the gilded cage

Lyrics from “Limelight” by Rush

Growing up, I went down into my basement and would pretend to be on stage by turning off the lights, except for a few colored flood lights I mounted on stands as I got behind the drum kit and played to the music for hours. I don’t have a drum kit these days, but I occasionally have mini concerts in my home office, playing guitar with a cold margarita. Getting on the virtual stage is a creative form of expression, and for a brief moment, becoming someone different.

My mother was a music and theater teacher at a local high school and I remember years of watching her Broadway musicals come to life. The stage was a place for ordinary people to perform spectacularly - in many cases, they brought their alter ego voices and musical talent to wow the crowd for multiple performances on the weekend. They dressed in costumes and knew the skills and talents required for show night. And while most of us don’t perform at concerts and musicals during a typical week, we can bring our best persona to everyday and high-priority situations as professionals, parents, partners, and friends. A vivid image of the ideal persona can help bring this identity to life even if you are not fully ready. Let me share a recent example.

In October, I visited the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, to present at a 500+-student event. Sometimes, I can get nervous before an event. An hour before the event, I could not find and connect with a staff member who would greet me and help me get organized. I could feel my mind racing. I decided to find my way and arrived five minutes before show time. The staff member introduced me, and as I took hold of the microphone, my alter ego, Coach James Gray, took over. It was an out-of-body experience. Although I used my deck for scaffolding, most of what I spoke about was unplanned. I navigated the crowd and used their facial expression as signs of curiosity to engage them in the conversation. It was my alter ego that performed that day.

Another example is a coaching client who designed a persona to embody the “next version” of themselves after plateauing in a role. A persona akin to the next major software product release - something like “Katie 5.0.” It would be Katie 5.0 who would show up at the right time to expand her network and exhibit the confidence, skills, and mindsets to reach the next level of her craft. We also identified the stage appearances when Katie 5.0 did not show up, perpetuating the status quo. This reinforces the point that these personas must show when and where we need them to deliver the desired outcomes.

Adopting the attributes of a fictional character can also help you perform when and where it counts. In 2013, I remembered a team-building exercise at Microsoft where we were asked to select one card from a large collection of cards that lay face down and displayed three adjectives of the person we wanted to show up at work. I selected a card with the words Genius, Energetic, and Resourceful. We were then asked to turn the card over to discover our superhero. My card was Ironman, and this character would become a visual cue for me. I have worn an Ironman “zipper pull” on my vest and jacket for over ten years. My home office includes a small Ironman character and a picture at the top of my bookshelf looking down on me. Ironman is a source of superpower I often tap into when times get hard.

I sketched this visual to encapsulate my thinking of how to apply this idea of knowing your personas. I plan to write a full article that will be included in my career framework soon. But you can get started applying this idea right now.

Each persona is designed from the ingredients you can discover about your best self (from CSF Strategy 1) to perform on a chosen stage.

• What values must the persona honor?

• What does the persona need to believe to perform on stage when it counts?

• How does the persona align with your core purpose?

• What goals does this persona contribute to?

• How do you describe the identity?

• What are the principles by which this persona operates?

• What behaviors does the persona demonstrate?

• What emotions must be present to act and perform on stage?

• What boundaries does this persona enforce?

• What things must the persona let go of to earn the right to perform?

• What are the combination of skills required?

This week, think about a stage on which you want to perform your best and why it’s important. Design a persona that is compelling and capable of captivating the audience. Maybe you want to become a better parent. Maybe you want to pursue your calling but the resistance is holding you back. Maybe you want to be a better partner. Whatever your desire is, designing and living a persona is within your control.

These ideas resonate with a book I started reading this week, The Alter Ego Effect: The Power of Secret Identities to Transform Your Life by Todd Herman. The basic idea is adopting an alter ego to reach higher performance levels, similar to Kobe's “The Black Mamba.”

Who is a persona, and how do they perform on your most important stage?

❤️ Mental Health and Toxic Environments

I have had multiple experiences in my career where the toxic work culture impacted my performance and overall well-being. Outside of work, the later years of a narcissistic marriage negatively impacted my well-being. I also work with clients who have shared the need to recover and heal from toxic work environments. Acknowledging that mental health is a fundamental factor in personal and professional success and fulfillment is an important first step toward improving it. Here are a few resources and rituals that I have used:

• Meditation - listening to guided meditations on the Calm and Headspace apps. Renowned meditation teacher, psychologist, and author Tara Brach shares free meditations to watch and listen to on tarabrach.com.

• Music - listening to soothing and calm sounds.

• People - distancing or disconnecting from people with negative, manipulative behaviors and mindsets. Spending time with people with a strong character, values, and compassion for others. This may require changes to your work environment or personal relationships.

• Journaling - It’s easy to forget how you feel daily unless you capture your thoughts in a journal. I recently read a journal post from a year ago and relived how a toxic culture impacted my well-being. Consciously recording your mental state can give you clues about the reality of your mental state and the required changes. A year later, through intentional work and transformation, I am a different person who is much happier in my work and personal life.

• Walking - relaxing and letting your mind wander as you curiously observe the environment you travel.

• Read books - following my divorce years ago, my mental state was impaired and weak and I could not afford a professional therapist. After trying a few, I gave up. I then turned to learning concepts and healing myself by reading books. Books often explained the mysteries I did not understand and provided a passage to a new place. The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene is a book that gave me new perspectives and catalyzed my transformation. I hope you find a book that does that for you.

How will you strengthen your mental health during the holiday season?

📚 Book Collection

I love books and often integrate concepts from books into articles I write. Many people ask me for book recommendations, and my book collection is posted on this site. Some book postings also include notes that are the yellow highlights from the book. Different books resonate with people at different times of their lives. I hope you find books that change your life like I have!

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👀 Thanks for reading, and I would love your help sharing my work with others!

I look forward to you sharing perspectives in the comments on what I missed in this post and your unique experiences that can help others.

- James

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