In a previous post I mused about how developer flow (righly) gets a lot of attention, but I haven't come across anything about flow or flow states for managers/leaders.

I concluded with an open question about when, if ever, I as a manager am able to achieve a "flow state", and what I'd do with such a thing, especially with my daily reality of chained meetings and constant interruptions.

I've come up with two activities¹ that I consider essential, and can only be done when in (or approximating) a flow state:

• Setting the scene for collaborative creativity, which I need in order to make good decisions on my complicated projects.
• Thinking about other people, which - I hope it's obvious why - I need to do in order to be a good leader and colleague.

I find when I feel like I'm succeeding in either, it's because I've carved out focus time and allowed myself to reach a state of "creative flow". The opposite also seems true - when I have no time for deep thinking is unsurprisingly when I feel like I'm making weak decisions and letting down others.

To get into a "flow state", I usually do the same thing regardless of my goal: I sequester myself somewhere where I can't be disturbed, turn off notifications, and sit quietly. Obviously this is easier said than done - I have to be mindful of when I do this, and it's not always possible.

Decision-making on projects

In thinking more about creativity and flow states, I have realized that the overwhelming majority of the value I produce is borne out of active collaboration. Usually, when I meet a problem or have a creative inkling, I don't (can't) go too far with it before I need to validate or iterate on it with my colleagues.

Why is this? I hold responsibility for decisions, and experience has taught me that the best decisions come out of collaboration. Underpinning this is the complex nature of my work, wherein most issues require multiple perspectives and areas of expertise in order to elucidate and understand.

Facing a decision point, I rely heavily on discussions coupled with my intuition² and (hopefully) some data or other objective insights. Creativity holds an important place here, but I find group creativity to be more reliable and valuable than individual.

On project work, I recognize one place for individual creativity that requires me to have focus time and be in a flow state: setting the scene for a productive collaboration.

Simple issues are easy: we usually have defined roles and ways-of-working that make it easy to decide who to delegate to. But when I meet a difficult issue, I usually don't just wheel my chair around and grab the closest team members.

Usually, I find a quiet place to sit undisturbed, and I just sit and ponder the problem domain, until I can answer things like:

• Who needs to be involved in a discussion?
• What setting do we need to discuss in?
• How will I know when we've covered what we need, so I can take the problem further towards a decision?

For me, questions like these are important to get right. I want to make good use of others' time, I want to involve the right people who will feel motivated by the discussion, I want to be sure we're in a creative environment, and I want us to do just enough to be able to move forward.

In my experience, finding the time and space to consider & prepare, for example before bringing in my team to work out a problem or an idea, produces better results than just free-wheeling and risking using the wrong person's focus or burning time on an idea that wasn't considered well enough. It's challenging to make the time to get in 'flow' and think something through fully, but usually worth it.

Contemplating people

I have individual leadership responsibility for:

• The people on my project teams.
• The people that I am a personnel lead for.
• The people that I am a practice lead for.

Additionally, I have responsibility to be a good colleague for:

• My customers: tech leads, managers, stakeholders, sponsors, execs, users, etc.
• My other colleagues, whether the Jr's who need coaching or the Sr's/leaders who need creative inspiration, motivation, or peer-coaching.
• My own leaders.

I follow a different approach to thinking through issues with individuals.

Like many American children, I grew up on Fred Rogers' show "Mr. Rogers Neighborhood". As an adult I can see the genius behind these episodes for children, and deeply admire his teachings and how he managed to live what he preached. Fred Rogers lived with universal warmth & kindness, and although I'm definitely far from this myself, I do find him to be a deeply inspiring example.

One practice Fred Rogers had was to keep a journal of notes about the people in his life.³ I reckon this supported the mindfulness of others that he was famous for. Mindfulness is a practice, and so it makes sense that his practice was built on maintaining & referring to well-kept notes (data!).

Whenever I feel like I've done a good job at the responsibility I hold towards others, it's usually because I've done the same - I try to keep good notes on the people I work with, and use them to be able to get into a state of mindfulness.

This has important consequences. For one, my memory is wonky - I have abysmal recall, but stellar relational memory - so if I want to be able to remember something about someone, I usually have to write it down for reference. Reading my notes puts me in a good place to think about the other person, building out the web of information I need while simultaneously shedding my concerns for myself.

The practice of sitting down and considering another person long enough to write meaningful notes about them seems self-evidently useful: how else am I supposed to be mindful and respectful of the other person, especially in the middle of my busy workday, instead of just playing off of how I'm feeling and what I want from our interaction?

Conclusion

The purpose of these two practices differs from that of creative flow states for developers - here the goal isn't for me to funnel my creativity into producing something, it's to shed distractions and other concerns, so I can properly think about something or someone.⁴

I am not a perfect practitioner of mindfulness or getting into a flow state - far from it!!! - but there's an important set of practices here for someone with my brain to practice.

I think most often about these techniques, and think anyone could benefit from them:

• Mr. Roger's "just sit and breathe in, and breathe out" .
• Marshall Rosenberg's teachings on Nonviolent Communication.
• Eckhart Tolle's writings on Presence.
• Salvador Dali's method for creative thinking (i.e. sit in a chair, set a mental stage, and nod off)