The Bigger and Bigger Challenge

Leaders face a constant demand to exceed performance of the previous year regardless of the environmental factors; bigger numbers, bigger teams, bigger roles…

As a leader you probably take it on and do this seamlessly based on your current skills and abilities or, cope as you grow into the challenge.

It’s easy to say that you have learned a lot from experience, and I am sure you have. However, you don’t know what you don’t know. You can actually be limited by your experience. It can also be a reactionary process, learning in the now, rather than a proactive process, thinking about what you need moving forward.

People expect skills gaps for lower level managers yet as you develop your career, and transform into a senior manager, there is an assumption that you know everything and have a full ‘toolkit’ on leadership and management!

I’m not saying this is wrong – it can however be exhausting if you constantly feel as though you are playing ‘catch-up’. You may also be unaware that you are in this place as it’s become a way of operating - and this doesn’t make you a leader in your own life.

Recognising you are in this Challenge

This may be the perfect time for you to take a moment and reflect. You are likely to be caught in this place if you are doing any one or more of these:

• Working increased hours – you’ve taken on the additional responsibilities and find that you are going in early, working late and weekends to keep up.
• Taking on increased responsibility – you’ve taken on additional responsibilities without considering what this means to how you work and utilise resources.
• Have an increased revenue target to achieve and/or a reduced budget to deliver with either no extra resources or reduced resources.
• Increased expectations that may be explicit or not – you are not really clear about what is expected of you and are working harder – just in case.

If you recognise yourself in any of the above, rather than play catch-up I’d like to encourage you to take a more proactive look at your needs.

Start by looking 3 years from now. What would you like to be doing in 3 years time? Think of the role you’d like to be doing and how you want to be operating both in work and out of work. Take some time to do this and list the skills and attributes you want to be demonstrating. Then identify the gap between where you are now and where you want to be.

• Where are you now and what would be the priorities for you?
• Are there opportunities in your current role to start developing these?
• Do you need to get some honest feedback on where you are and how you may be demonstrating these?
• Is there someone you need to ask to be your mentor?
• Is there someone you need to ask to be your coach?
• Is there someone you could shadow?
• What are the priorities and next steps?

Costs and Benefits

There will undoubtedly be costs and benefits to your choices, both hard and soft.

What would you gain by addressing these challenges and what would it cost you?

Take some time to understand if there is a broader need to be met. Sometimes there is an issue that underlies what you’ve listed and this may be the very thing that needs to be addressed. Be sure to take a holistic view and consider life outside of work. Be sure to include the cost of taking no action too!

Do the benefits out way the costs?  

If the answer is yes then all that remains is:

• To be clear about the priorities
• Take action
• Get support

‘Challenges are what make life interesting, overcoming them is what makes them meaningful.’

Joshua J. Marine

What is your Pruning Practice?

As we are now in the middle of autumn, and most of the trees have lost their leaves, I can actually ‘see the wood from the trees’ in my garden. I have a much clearer picture of what needs to be pruned back to allow more space for new growth, or where there is dead wood that is no longer serving a purpose.

Now I know that pruning in the garden doesn’t happen once a year, it really depends on the plants I have at any one time. However, autumn is the time when I can take a more strategic look at what needs attention so I can plan for next year and decide what areas I want to change and what I want to create.

Through this process my garden becomes an ever-evolving space and I’ve learned over the years which plants love their position and thrive and which positions in the garden need a certain type of plant.

It’s been more a process of trial and error than strategic planning and when I’ve neglected it it’s required a lot more work from me to get it back to be ‘fit for purpose’.

And the relevance to business is what I hear you ask?

How often do you as a leader take time out to look at your business or your team to reflect on what is no longer adding value?

Is it:

Monthly,

Quarterly,

Annually, or

Never?

Proactive Change

Many organisations and teams plan ahead. Usually this is around what activities are required to deliver your targets. Rarely is it about stopping things because they no longer add value.

I know of few organisations that change proactively, and as a consequence there is a mismatch between what is happening internally and the pace of change externally. The result is that when something does need to change it requires some form of change programme that takes more time, more resources and often a degree of pain.

Consider for a moment how different this would be if somehow we’d manage to evolve with the environment? What if we had a regular pruning practice?

Here are the benefits I see and the action you can take

Regular review of what’s working to achieve your goals

Consider:

• What is thriving and what do you need to do to maintain this? Does it need feeding? Regular pruning?
• What needs support to grow and flourish? Do you need to add some structure or additional resource to help it on its way?
• What needs digging up or pruning to allow space for something of greater value to grow?

An opportunity to consider what’s missing

Ask yourself:

• Where are you lacking creativity?
• Where is there under performance?
• Is there a clear path laid out?
• Do you have the right skill set available?

Weeding

A weed is anything that you no longer want. From an organisational perspective what behaviours are you noticing that do not support the culture you are wanting? What systems or processes are no longer delivering what you need? What teams or individuals are no longer performing?

A time for some self-reflection

Having considered all of the above some questions you may want to ask yourself are:

• What am I doing that is supporting this?
• What am I creating?
• What am I tolerating?
• What do I want to be new/different?

As a leader what action do you need to take to start a regular pruning practice?

I love to hear your thoughts so feel free to email me at: dawn@aurora4success.co.uk.

“Today may be the enemy of your tomorrows.”

Dr. Henry Cloud

Mind the Gap

If you are anything like me you are a bit of a learning ‘junkie’. Always looking for the next thing to learn, or ways of getting new insights whether that be a course, a webinar, a conference, a seminar, reading a book or hiring your own coach.

We are always setting targets or goals and then when we get there set new ones, often without celebrating how far we have come. We focus on filling the gap between where we are and where we want to be.

I have spent part of this week with my mastermind group reviewing my business and how I operate and identifying what I need to do in the next quarter. An additional element was a day looking at how you communicate to create a powerful partnership.

It’s easy to think you have learned a topic and there is no need to revisit it. WRONG!

Just the way the concepts and exercises were presented allowed me to look at what I do differently.

What I took away was some ideas for coaching. More importantly it allowed me to identify a blind spot I have around my own expectations when communicating with others and how I can improve on a particular communication skill.

Blind spots – the biggest growth area

Our blind spots are the things we don’t know we are doing or the things we don’t know we don’t know – and neither to do others. So, when they are revealed to us, no matter how small, they help us make progress and grow in areas we never imagined.

The very reason that you don’t know what you don’t know makes identifying your blind spots difficult and the only person getting in the way of them is you! You can see the conundrum…..

And it’s worth saying that blind spots can be talents as well as development areas.

So how do you open yourself up to them?

Here are my tips to help you:

• Be prepared to revisit topics, tools you’ve used before to review how they are working for you. If you know someone who is really good at these things, go and talk to them. Find out their approach, how they think, what they do that is different to you.
• Be honest with yourself. We can be our own worst enemy and skirt over situations and topics that we are uncomfortable with. Give yourself some space to really explore what might be going on for you.
• Conduct a review after meetings and events. Ask your self:

         What went well?

         What didn’t go so well?

         Knowing what I know now what would I do differently?

         What action will I now take to do things differently moving forward?

     It can often help to involve others in this to get some different perspectives.

• Take 100% responsibility for every situation. If you are not getting what you want, what can you do differently to make it clear what you want? This may mean that you still don’t get what you want and you may learn something about yourself in the process.
• Get a great coach to support and challenge you. They will see things in you that you and those close to you don’t, or aren’t prepared to tell you about.

Celebrate!

Continuous learning and growth is a bit like peeling an onion. The first few layers come off really easy and the closer you get to the centre the more patient you need to be and the shifts are more subtle.

Be kind to yourself - recognise your progress and celebrate. Focus on how far you have come as well as where you want to get to and own your success.

‘Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.’
Winston Churchill