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

Managing your irritation

How often do you find that you are irritated at work?

More importantly what do you do to manage or mask your irritation?

Do you know how you show up when you are irritated?

Do you even care?

As a leader you are on show all of the time. People are constantly making assessments about how you are, whether you like it or not. If you are thinking one thing and saying another people pick up on this. Therefore you need to make every action and interaction count to have the exact impact that you intended.

Easy right?

WRONG!

After all you are human and we all have our idiosyncrasies. However, as a leader you set the tone for your team and organisation so you do have to model the behaviour you expect from others.

You need to be clearer than most about your intentions and mindful as to whether the impact you are creating matched those intentions. In my experience this is usually easier when things are going well than when they are not. And when they are not you have to be a master of self-management

Managing your state

Managing your own state is an art and far easier when things are going well and you are feeling fresh.

When you’re tired you’re more likely to be reactive – less considered.

When you’re in a new environment you’re likely to be hyper alert or stressed – looking for cues to ‘feel’ safe.

So what can you do to manage your state when you are irritated?

1. What happens to you physically? Notice if your head tilts in any way, what happens to your shoulders? My guess is your breathing is shallower too.
2. What’s the emotional tone? Name it and then identify what you want it to be instead. For example instead of being irritated you may want to feel calm, patient or relaxed.
3. Now, make the physical changes that will allow you to ‘take on’ that state. We all know what it feels like to be calm and you’ll notice that you take on a different physical shape to being irritated.
4. And finally, practice, practice, practice... The way to learn is through practice and one that interrupts old behavioural patterns is going to be longer lasting and sustainable.

 

Observing others

Leadership is about connection and taking others with you. You have to work at establishing good connections to create great collaboration.

Do you adapt your style to your audience?

Are you clear about what you want to achieve with the various people you work with?

Are their reactions and responses what you expected? 

If not what can you do to adapt and create a greater connection and understanding?

If your message isn’t getting across there is something you have to change to get people on board, to put it across in a way that helps them.

As a leader your job is about changing the experience of life at work - making the difficult easy and the uncomfortable comfortable, to create an engaged workforce. Being irritated doesn’t allow you to operate at your best to achieve this. So next time you feel irritated, even if it’s only a little try out what I’ve suggested and let me know what happens.

Don’t let people; places and things determine your moods. Take charge of how you feel each and every day.

Michael Barbarulo

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 

The secret to creating new habits

As humans it’s very easy for us all to stick with our normal pattern of behaviour and forget to do something new.

The way we respond to situations is often habitual.

The patterns we all have of reacting to the external world have become ingrained and automatic to us.

It’s only through conscious practice we can change this.  

Through conscious practice we’re aiming to create a new habit. We’re training our mind and body to do something different, so you’re undoing 20/30 or 40 years of an old habits.

How many times have you been on a training course or leadership programme and walked away with lots of new ‘stuff’ to put into practice?

How many times have you actually followed through with this?

In my experience many people go back into the workplace with great intentions only to find these good intentions fall by the wayside.

I have been coaching now for over 15 years and one of the many things I have learned is that you can’t bring about new ways of being with out practice.

It takes time.

Think about how you learned to ride a bike, drive a car, learned to swim or any other activity that requires your co-ordination. It took practice, and I’m sure you made some mistakes along the way AND you still learned. You made adjustments and kept practicing.

Changing anything you do is no different. This may be the way you respond to a situation, a way of thinking, or trying out something new, it takes practice and adjustments.

To build mastery as a leader, you need to be more than just our automatic self.

So now is the time for you to consider what you want to practice on a regular basis in the New Year.

I’ve put together some simple steps to help you develop this. I hope you find them useful.

There are six steps in total, so let me talk you through them: 

1. Focus on one thing: Consider one thing, and only one thing that you want to change.
2. Make it manageable: Break it down into bite size chunks. What will be enough to take you out of your comfort zone and not stress you out?
3. Practice: Determine how often you are going to practice. Do you want to practice several times a day, or once a day? Whatever you decide do it as regularly as you can.
4. Review: After each practice reflect. How is it going? What worked and what still needs practice?
5. Adapt: What do you need to adjust? What will help you get a better result? Do you need to change the frequency of your practice?
6. Celebrate: Acknowledge the progress you have made. If you forget to practice be kind to yourself. Your aiming to do something you haven’t done before so take it one step at a time. Imperfect action is better than no action at all. 

We all work better when we have someone who will support us and hold us accountable to do what we have committed to.

If you know someone who will play this role ask them to check in with you regularly and celebrate with them.

If you know you want to create some change in 2016 and you are ready to move to the next level email me at Dawn @aurora4success.co.uk. I would be more than happy to explore with you how you can become and even better version of yourself.

Let me be the one to hold you accountable for your practices!

In the meantime good luck and have fun becoming the leader you were born to be.

Have lots of success.

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit." 

Aristotle 

What are you paying attention to as a leader?

My latest posts have been built around my model Stepping up and Standing out – how to harness the invisible power behind leadership presence and impact. There are 4 principles and so far I’ve covered how you show up as a leader and your intentions – what outcomes do you want in a given situation.

The third principle feels particularly pertinent as we ‘run’ into Christmas and this is about being present.

How present you are in any interaction you have?

Think of being present as where you put your attention.

I am sure you have been with someone and thought that they were not really with you their mind was somewhere else. When someone seems distracted in a meeting, I’m sure you notice that too.

So here’s the question:

How often are you really present with the person in front of you?

How often are you waiting to speak rather than actually listening with an intention to understand what the other person is saying?

How often do you find you are thinking about something else rather than what someone is actually saying in a meeting?

If leadership presence is what others’ sense and feel when they are with you and reflected in the quality of the relationships you build, then you have to be attentive. That means that you are here right now, in this moment.

It is NOT about:

1. Thinking about the next meeting, or what you are going to have for supper tonight.
2. Thinking about the meeting you’ve just had and how it went, or that email that’s just landed in your in box, or your ‘to do list’
3. Wondering who has just called you as your phone goes off in the middle of the conversation.
4. Figuring out when will be the best time to get your point of view across.

Leadership is about connection and the people around you know AND remember when you are paying attention to them.

So as we move into the season where we’re usually aiming to finish things off for the Christmas break and prepare to spend time with the family and socialise I’m going to ask you to experiment with this principle.

Experiment

I thought we’d have a little bit of fun with this, so we’re going to play a game called resisting temptation, and you’ll be pleased to know that this is not about resisting food.

Technology invades our space and we’re always reaching for the phone, the i-pad, the laptop, to check emails, texts, Facebook or whatever else you have as a distraction on your ‘device’. Paying attention to these stops us being present with the people around us.

You get to choose where you play this game. You may choose to play it at home rather than at work, or you may choose to play it in every meeting you have. It’s entirely up to you. My only request is that you play it at least once a day. So here’s how to play; 

• You put all of your attention on the person or task you are working on at that time and be fully present in the moment.
• If it’s a task that is on your laptop/computer, turn off your email and phone. 
• If it’s a meeting you do the same, and focus on every person as they speak.
• If you are playing this at home do exactly the same.
• If you are having a conversation with someone put all of your attention on that person and the conversation. Close your laptop or move away from your computer, phone, ipad…

The essence of this game is to remove all distractions and put all of your attention on the person or task in hand.

I can’t wait to hear how you get on with this. Email me to let me know what you discover.

Remember, this is a game so have some fun with it.

“You don’t build a bond without being present.”

James Earl Jones

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

Stuck in a Rut?

Are you and your team stuck in a rut?

As a team leader you may be blind to the fact that you a sliding down a slippery path that will adversely impact your results because your team is ‘stuck’ in some way.

Because you are in amongst ‘the soup’ – the daily activities and energy of your team and work life you may not easily spot some of the clues, so here are some tips on what to look out for.

Hopefully they will help you spot the ‘rot’ and take action before it’s too late.

Lack of Energy

You may notice a lack of enthusiasm or lethargy a in the team or in certain individuals; or hear phrases like:

• ‘There’s nothing anyone can do… ‘
• ‘What a waste of time…’
• ‘Is it really worth it’

Energy is contagious. If you allow this to continue it will very soon be the overriding energy and mood of the team and not the most productive energy to deliver results!!

Cynicism

Cynicism and mistrust may be harder to spot. It could be you that isn’t trusted and therefore not so visible.

Look at how team meetings are working. Is the agenda is more important than the outcome?  Is it all show and tell for the boss? Are there unconstructive and one-sided discussions without candour – nobody wants to talk about what is really going on?

Another tell tale sign could be an apathy in the way challenges or obstacles are viewed in that they are owned by one individual rather than a team approach:

‘I knew this teamwork stuff was a load of @*@*’

Blame

You can pick this up by the comments people make either in meetings or in corridor chats and can come across as a lack of personal responsibility… it’s always someone else’s fault or, down to someone else to take action. 

Phrases or behaviour you may hear or see are:

•  ‘We have no clue as to what this is about…’
• Meetings in which interpersonal attacks made behind peoples backs and to outsiders – ‘x has never pulled his own weight and never will’
• A sense of helplessness and lots of finger pointing at top management and/or the rest of the organisation – ‘if this effort is so important why don’t they give us more resources.’
• ‘We can’t make this happen on our own and no-one else is interested’ 

Possible solutions to becoming unstuck

It’s never too late to do something about a ‘stuck team’, although the longer you leave it the more challenging it may be to reverse the trend.

Here are some things you can do:

1. Revisit the basics. Is each team member clear about the purpose, vision, goals and ground rules for the team?
2. If there is a lot to be achieved over a long time frame go for small wins – one step at a time. Help everyone recognise how far they have come rather than how much is left to do!
3. Inject new information relevant to the work they are doing e.g. feedback from other teams on the work they are doing, benchmarks to show how much progress has been made or, to inspire a new level of thinking and action case studies and best practices.
4. Change the leadership or team membership. Sometimes you have to change the people in the team to create the energy you need to move forward.
5. Invest time and energy yourself and hire a facilitator/coach who can help with different approaches. This way you can be part of the team and solution. It can be hard as a leader to try and facilitate the team and be part of it.

What ideas do you have?

Have you ever been in a stuck/underperforming team?

What worked for you?

I’d love to hear about your ideas and experiences, simply leave a message below.

“Teams do not go physically flat, they go mentally stale.”

Vincent Lombardi

3 areas to focus when leading teams

As a leader you have to take people with you to deliver your vision, goals and objectives.

The individuals who will help you achieve this the most is your team. Yet how much training or development have you had to lead a team?

True teams are dynamic, constantly evolving and adapting to their environment.  Developing a team to this level takes time and attention, and the truth is no one teaches us how to build and develop teams. We’re magically supposed to know what to do when you are given a team.

I recently delivered a module of a leadership programme on leading teams and I shared one of the first models of team leadership I came across and found really useful.

It’s simple – which is why I like it, although like all things simple they aren’t always easy to apply. However I think this is an exception!

The model I’m referring to is John Adair’s Action Centred Leadership model.

There are 3 elements for this model and according to Adair each require attention in any leadership situation:

Task

Team

Individual

The degree to which they need attention will depend on what’s going on in each area along side any external influences. It is the role of the leader to balance the needs of all three areas.

Task

This may be the completion of something practical and tangible or something less tangible.

• What is the task in hand?
• What is the goal or outcome you are trying to achieve?
• What is your strategy to accomplish this?
• Is everyone in the team clear about this?

Team

The task can only be achieved if all the team are working together with the same aim in mind. Therefore, the team as an entity needs to be understood in it’s own right.

• What are the working relationships like in the team?
• How are people relating to each other?
• Are they playing to each other’s strengths?
• Do they support and challenge each other?
• Are they clear about each other’s roles and responsibilities?

Individual

Whilst the team will develop it’s own form the individuals in the team also need to be understood.  Their needs must continue to be met if their motivation and team performance is to be maintained.

• Do you know what motivates each individual?
• What is important to them about the work they do?
• What are their aspirations and strengths?
• Where is their next growth edge?

Bringing it to life

The question for you to consider right now is; where do you spend most of your time?

AND I wouldn’t be surprised if you said task. In my experience it’s where most people spend their time!

As a leader your role is to set direction and take people with you so the 2 most important areas of this model are the team and the individuals. If you harness these two, the team will take care of the task and your job is then to monitor all three areas and support, redirect ‘get stuck in’ where needed to keep things moving forward. 

It needs constant tweaking and adjusting to stay on track  - think of it as you steering a sailing boat.  You constantly have to keep an eye on where you are going and pay attention to what is going on in your environment.

• Are you being blown off track by the elements – what adjustment do you need to make?
• Do you have to pull into harbour and take stock, refuel?
• Do you need to be patient until the right conditions appear to make the journey as efficient as possible?
• Are the crew fully occupied and playing to their strengths?
• Do you notice someone who is de-motivated? 

If you have any tips on effectively leading teams I’d love to hear them - leave a comment below.

“Only three things happen naturally in organizations: friction, confusion and underperformance. Everything else requires leadership.”

Peter Drucker