Meet the Gremlins

As a leader you have to set the tone and the standards in your environment.

When things are going well this seems easy and you make real progress. However, every once in a while we hit a bump in the road or a roadblock, and people, more often than not, create these.

It’s at times like these that you are tested. Can you keep your calm, credible persona and continue to maintain the tone and standards of behaviour you have established?

Easier said than done right? Particularly if you are under pressure to deliver something to a deadline or at a crucial part of the project when key decisions are to be made.

Dealing with these bumps and blockages (real or imagined) is about being able to step back and see the patterns rather than be sucked in to the whirlpool of emotions.

If you can see that all relationships have a pattern then you can begin to spot what is going on when relationships become a little ‘testing’.

• What role do you each take on?
• How are you stereotyping each other?
  
  
   

The Gremlins

Let me introduce you to 4 possible gremlins you may meet in these situations. These descriptions come from the work of Virginia Satir who identified 4 universal patterns of fear driven communication.

The Blamer –Gremlin number one tends to put fault on the other person and point a finger, making judgements about what is happening. This kills listening and understanding and can trigger defensive or aggressive behaviour in the receiver.

The Placator – This gremlin is likely to appease the other person to avoid anger, fear, being rejected, disliked and disagreed with. They can be seen as ‘yes men’, wanting to be everyone’s friend and won’t tell you that they disagree with you. The danger here is they could walk away and then share with others the degree to which they disagree and potentially sabotage your plans.

The Computer – The behaviour to look for here is someone hiding behind words and ignoring any threats, hoping they’ll go away. They can come across as super reasonable as they have all the data and may hide behind this insisting on being correct. After all accuracy is king!

The Distracter – These tend to hide by changing the subject and change their minds even faster, so may seem unfocused. They dramatise and can be exhausting to deal with and it may feel like you’ve been hit by a whirlwind. Keeping people confused covers up their uncertainty.

So now that you have some indicators to be able to spot these gremlins how can you begin to stop them from disrupting your path?

Leading the way

Gremlins are triggered by fear, fear of being left out, fear of being out of control, feeling unappreciated, misunderstood, not recognised…

If you can keep your head and begin to recognise these behaviours you build your flexibility and ability to influence. So, here are my suggested steps to get these relationships back on track. 

• Self-management. The moment you feel your own gremlin(s) starting to surface – STOP! Press the pause button, take a step back and focus on what is actually happening externally. It’s rarely personal so look at the situation objectively. 

• Get curious. See things for what they are and put yourself in the other person’s shoes. If you were them, what might you be thinking? What might you be fearful or uncertain about? What might be driving the behaviour you are seeing? 

• Self-reflection. Are you being clear about what you are communicating? Have you provided enough information to engage people? Have you congruently asked for what you want? What assumptions are you making? 

• Start a dialogue. Be prepared to explore the situation to understand what is happening and seeking agreement on how best too move forward. Seek feedback and create an environment that makes it easy for people to do this. 

Leadership is always work in progress and we can always learn from each other, so feel free to share your own experience of managing your own gremlins below.

"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth."

Marcus Aurelius

Attention - most scarce resource facing leaders today!

In a world of 24/7 activity where there appears to be very little, if any, time to switch off it’s no wonder that we feel overwhelmed and overloaded with information. We can find out almost anything at the press of a button.

I was recently reading an article from McKinsey claiming the scarce resource leaders have to manage today is their attention. The article goes on to lay out a set of capabilities about how to organise work to allow people to think. If you want to read more you can find the article here:

However, in this blog I’m hoping to provide you with some insight into what you can do to change this. What can you do to take control of your attention and help your team to do the same? 

Training your brain

Being overloaded with information leads to distractedness, confusion and poor decision making. We become paralysed by analysis and endless debate resulting in inefficient and sometimes ‘bad’ decisions and a feeling of standing still or worse being stuck!

Because your attention is fragmented you don’t quite know where to put your focus first. Your brain is flooded with data.

The thing is our brains are not designed to do more than one thing at once. As soon as it becomes overloaded it slows down and uses more of our energy (glucose and oxygen). Prioritising is actually one of the brains most energy hungry processes!

Your best quality thinking lasts for a limited amount of time, which is why at certain times it’s harder to concentrate, or even think straight.

So, how can you organise yourself so that you do your best quality thinking at the right time and deliver better results?

 Managing your attention

Here are my top 5 tips to help you manage your attention and as a consequence your energy.

•   Make a list

As one of my coaches used to say ‘Your brain is a thinking device not a storage device’. If you’re one of those people who prides themselves on being able to remember everything, bear in mind you are using a lot of your brains thinking capacity to do this. If you’ve things ‘to do’ write them down and get them out of your head so you can use your brain for it’s best work: planning, problem solving and communicating.

•   Breathe

Take a long deep breath (or two). Breathe from your diaphragm and loosen your jaw. You can do this as you are walking and if you do you may notice you slow down a little. This is OK! What this action initiates is a kick start for your parasympathetic nervous system. This calms you down and helps you think more clearly. There is a lot more science behind this but this will do for now.

•  Decide when your best thinking time is

I’m a morning person and I know this is when I do my best thinking, so if I have some important thinking to be done this is when I schedule it. Determine what works for you and allocate your meetings that require your best thinking, or attention rich tasks, to these times of the day. An example of this would be anything that requires new concepts or anything you haven’t experienced before - picturing something you haven’t seen before takes a lot more effort from your brain.

I know scheduling these things to your best thinking time isn’t always possible and if you know you’re out of sync you can prepare yourself in a different way.

•  Embed repetitive tasks where you can

Thinking about problems when it relates to things we have experienced before or seen is easy. So if there is anything that you can make a routine – do it! This helps it become ingrained in your brain (and your body) requiring less “thinking capacity”.

•      Remove distractions

Distractions simply add to the information and data in your brain that will send you into overload. You need to become really good at setting boundaries and saying no, or no not now. This may seem harsh, or selfish, and people will get used to it and it is about you operating at your best, so it will be a win/win on all sides in the long run.

Next steps

If you are feeling overwhelmed and know that you are not being as attentive as you know you can be try this out for two or three weeks and let me know how you get on.

If you know, like world class athletes, that additional support helps you become more aware, effective and impactful send me an email to set up a discovery call and we can explore your needs and how I may be able to help you.

"In every day, there are 1,440 minutes. That means we have 1,440 daily opportunities to make a positive impact." 

Les Brown 

How successful are you at creating the right impact as a leader?

In my last post I talked about the first principle of having a greater impact and

leadership presence – how you show up as a leader.

Right now I want to build on that and share the second principle - purpose.

I see so many leaders simply ‘going through the motions’ – ‘doing what they have always done’ and wondering why they didn’t get the results they wanted.

This is why purpose is important.

Purpose is all about your intention in any situation – being clear about what you want to achieve.

How often do you go into a meeting with a very clear intention of what you want to achieve from it?

If your answer is less than 100%, then there is some work to be done here.

As a leader you are on show all of the time and people are always watching you.

You are judged by the impact you have on others.

We all judge others on what they say, what they do and how they act, and yet we judge ourselves by our intentions.

To be an effective leader your actions have got to match your intentions.

If you aren’t clear then the chances of the person on the receiving end understanding are pretty slim. If you are thinking one thing and saying another people pick up on this.

What is his intention?

When you are clear about your intention your mind and body are connected, how you act and what you say will be completely congruent.

Let me tell you why this is important.

Leadership is about connection, so you need to make sure you connect in some way with everyone you meet – and yes I did say everyone.

You have to take the other person into consideration to connect. Some questions you may want to ask yourself are:

• What is your current relationship with them?
• What history is there between you (or their department)?
• How do you want this relationship to develop?

So how do you want to be influencing your relationships with others?

Once you are clear on this you can then consider your intentions for the meeting you are going to have with them.

Setting an intention

Here are a few examples of things you could consider as intentions:

• Is it simply to connect and build rapport with the person – believe me that is a good intention to have  - remember presence is…what others sense and feel when they are with you.
• Is there a particular result you want from this meeting?
• Is there a system, structure or process you want to review, put in place, or agree?
• Is there something you want to learn?
• Is this a topic you simply want to understand?
• If so what is it that you want to learn/understand?
• Is there an idea you want to share and get some feedback on?

These are just some examples to consider and I’m sure you’ll come up with your own.

Being really clear about your intention helps you focus your mind and your energy.

I know you’ll have many meetings every week, so here is an exercise for you.

Here is what I’d like you to experiment with: 

1. First set an intention for every meeting you go to. Yes! Every meeting.
2. Second consider how you want to be seen.  
3. And then put this into practice.

Now, if the thought of doing this for every meeting sends you into panic – good! This is about doing things differently and consistently as consistent action gets consistent results. Force yourself to try this out and see what happens.

This is simply to raise your own awareness of how you show up as a leader, so you can have a greater impact and presence.

Send me an email to let me know how you get on.

“What you think you become.”

Buddha

When Not Influencing is the Right Influencing Style to Adopt

Have you ever been in a situation where you are trying to influence a peer or a group and nothing seems to be working? You have applied all the techniques you know from persuasion, to listening, painting a picture of the new way to assertiveness and still you seem to be making no difference.

This may be for a number of reasons. The other person is distracted, the timing isn’t right, there may be a degree of tension in them as well as you…

It’s at times like these the most effective thing to do is disengage in some way, to temporarily withdraw.

Disengaging can help you maintain focus and prevent you from being distracted by side issues. You can conserve energy for the more important issues.

Here are some of the tactics you could employ:

Postpone

• Use this tactic when you are not prepared and need time, for example, delay a meeting.
• Do not insist others meet with you if they are not ready or under stress.
• Give yourself permission to change your mind about an appointment, a decision, delay the action to think it over.
• Take as much time as you need – particularly useful if someone is trying to pressure you. 

Facilitate

This is particularly helpful if there are several people involved. 

• Try to mediate confrontations that you are not part of – be the cool one.
• When things are not going well in a meeting step back from the situation and try or change it with interventions such as “we seem to have trouble making progress. It seems we have stopped listening to each other.”

Change the subject

• In meetings where caustic comments are made or there are obvious signs of irritation, use humour or another diversion to lessen the tension or emotion. Emphasise areas of agreement.
• When energy starts to decrease or people are becoming frustrated return to an earlier point or start another line of discussion that you think will be more helpful.
• When someone becomes more familiar than you’d like keep topics focussed on business.  

Take a break

• When you feel you are being overloaded tell the other person you need a few moments alone.
• In a meeting where there are indications of fatigue or stress, or the conversation is going around in circles suggest a break.

Disengaging as an influencing technique can only work when it’s a deliberate tactic and should not be confused with avoiding where you would:

• Minimise or dismiss a difference in opinion
• Change your own position
• Withdraw to avoid conflict or confrontation
• Side step the issue suggesting bureaucratic procedures or
• Defer to others to avoid the issue

Model the behaviour you want others to use and practice:

• If you have a tendency to make sarcastic comments or get involved in arguments, employ some self-restraint
• If you get overly involved and lose efficiency, step back and give yourself room to think
• If you have a tendency to meet everyone else’s need and not your own try to obtain a balance, postpone and take more breaks

"Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye."

Samuel Johnson