Change your Mind

Have you ever wondered what is going on inside your head?

Do you ever stop and listen to what’s going on inside your head?

Have you ever wondered who those voices are inside your head?

If you have then I’m hoping this article will help, even if it’s only in a small way.

How we think affects the way we feel, which in turn affects the way we behave. 

Consider a time when you were excited or happy and notice how you felt and how you behaved. Do you remember what you were actually thinking at the time?

Now consider a time when you were frustrated or irritated and notice how you felt and acted.  How were you talking to yourself at this point?

My guess is the way you looked, the way you sat and the tone of the voices in your head were different in both cases.

• What if it was possible to begin to make sense of these voices?
• What if it was possible to even quieten these voices?

You can!

All that is required is an investment of your time and a commitment to change.

I work with two models that allow you to do just this.

The first is a Creating your Future™ process which allows you to change limiting thought patterns and beliefs and set compelling goals to achieve.

The second is using the PMAI archetypal model to understand the essence of who you are, your identity, and what motivates you. This model will also allow you to put an archetypal name to those voices in your head and allow you to make sense of them.

Each of these help you get greater clarity about what may be holding you back and what you can do to move forward quickly and effortlessly.

If you’d like to know more simply email me and I’ll set up a call to discuss the opportunities and possibilities available you.

"The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential... these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence." 

Confucius

The Good the Bad and the Ugly of Seeking Feedback

Over the years, working with hundreds of leaders in business, I have found that people are hungry for feedback and yet most people don’t ask for it.  When they do they are often not clear and ask questions like:

• How did I do?
• Can you give me some feedback?
• What can I do differently?

In this blog I have provided some tips on what you can do to get great feedback – the good, and what to avoid – the bad and the ugly….

The Good

The only way to improve and be a better leader is to receive great feedback and then put into practice what is appropriate for you to be the leader that you want to be.

Start by getting really clear what it is you want feedback on. When you know this make a very clear request in positive, concrete, action language and ask for what you actually want e.g.

” I have a request for you.” (This usually grabs people’s attention and they will stop and listen).

"I have written this presentation and I’d like you to critique it in the following way:

Does it meet the needs of the target audience?" (Be sure to tell them who the target audience is)

"What do you think the key messages are?

What if anything can I do to make it clearer in the two areas above.”

This is just one example of what a request for feedback might be and how to be clear about what you want. 

If you are working at improving the way you influence stakeholders be really clear about what it is you want feedback on; is it your voice tone, volume, the way you sit and stand, the language you use etc.

Always be prepared to ask for what the other person would suggest to make it even better ensuring you get specific actions that will help you.

Remember too you don’t always need to take it on board.

The Bad

Here are some common mistakes people make;

1. Asking in a vague and abstract way using ambiguous phrasing. The clearer you are about what you want the more likely you are to get it. 
2. Approaching the person they want feedback from in a sheepish way, making little eye contact and speaking quietly.
3. Skirting around the issue by talking generically about what you are working on and saying you would like feedback and not being clear that you want feedback from this person.
4. Being too direct so that your request comes across as a demand!

The Ugly

Here are some indicators to let you know you need some help in how you go about seeking feedback:

• You don’t actually know what you want, therefore don’t know what to ask for.
• You ask the wrong person for feedback. This may be someone who is not experienced enough on the topic you or simply not very good at giving feedback.
• You ask for what you don’t want e.g. I don’t want feedback on the content but anything else would be useful….
• You just don’t ask making the assumption no news is good news… 

If this criteria applies to you ensure you get support from someone who is really good at asking for feedback, or get a good coach.

What I do know is that people rarely say no when you take the time to seek their input. They may not be able to offer you anything right there and then, but they will generally comply if you enter into a conversation with them.

Be the leader in your life and always ask for what you want – it brings greater clarity to everyone around you.

“Making requests in clear, positive, concrete action language reveals what we really want.”

Marshall B. Rosenberg

The biggest problem with feedback and how you can fix it

When was the last time you received good quality feedback?

When was the last time gave good quality feedback to a member of your team, a peer or your boss?

As a professional coach giving feedback is an essential part of my work and from working with 100’s of clients over the years one thing I have learned is that people long for feedback. This is feedback of any nature – what they are good at and how they can improve.

So if people really want feedback how come they don’t get it?

It’s simple.

• Many people don’t know how to ask for feedback.
• Many people don’t know how to give good quality feedback.

All too often I hear generic feedback like, that was really good, you did a great job with …., I really liked the way you did …, this isn’t quite right, do this instead, I don’t think that went well….. This doesn’t help anyone know exactly what it is they did well or what hey need to improve.

 

Get Specific

If you are self aware you often know what you could do differently, and there are times when you don’t. What helps in these circumstances is getting really specific feedback. The more senior you go the more essential this is as it’s often fine-tuning that is required

The two guys who climbed El Capitan in Yosemite Park are a great example of this.

These guys are at the top of their game attempting a 3000 foot free climb. One of them, Kevin Jorgeson, struggled with one of the most difficult parts of the climb and attempted it 11 times over a 7-day period. 11 TIMES!! Each time he reflected on what he was doing and tried again, ripping his hands in the process. It was only when we saw footage from the cameraman (a form of feedback) that he noticed his feet were the problem not his hands. By simply adjusting his foot placement slightly he could make the next part of the climb. When he made this adjustment – he made it and then progressed to the top.

This is how specific we need to get when giving feedback.

What exactly is it your team member or colleague needs to do to be even better at their job? Do they need to change their language, change their tone, take some deep breaths when someone disagrees with them, think more specifically about their audience or their message, stand more confidently by lifting their head and standing balanced, make eye contact…

So next time you are about to give someone some feedback either spontaneously or during appraisal – what exactly is it that will help them?

Make sure they are in the right place mentally to receive it, and tell them that you have some feedback for them. If they are not ready for it they won’t hear it.

Make it count!

"All employees have an innate desire to contribute to something bigger than themselves.”

Jag Randhawa,

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

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

Being the Best that You Can be!

If you want to be the best you can be you need to regularly set yourself some challenging goals or targets and get feedback. This is what most world class athletes do and strangely enough it's what most organisations performance reviews are based on. Yet, for most people, the mere mention of this event makes their heart sink.

Why is this? We all want feedback. I haven’t come across anyone who doesn’t want feedback so how have we got ourselves into the situation where so many people do not look forward to this process?

Here are some of the common mistakes I’ve seen:

• You only have this conversation once a year at performance review time so you either bring up all the things you want to from the past year (good and bad), or can’t remember key incidents which would be of value to the employee.

• You structure the conversation based on the review forms you have to complete. The conversation is therefore a form filling exercise rather than a meaningful discussion about the individuals overall performance.

• The feedback comments are so generic they don’t have any meaning for the individual, for example ‘you did a great job’, ‘you handled that really well’, ‘that didn’t go too well’, or ‘you acted unprofessionally.’ When you are on the receiving end of this type of feedback you have no idea what you actually did well or not so well...

This is a shame, because giving and receiving feedback is one of the most important activities you can engage in with your team.

When done well it is the springboard to performance greatness.

How often do you actually give meaningful feedback to your team members?

How often do you get feedback?

If you don’t get it do you ask for it?

As a reminder and to hopefully encourage you to be even better at asking for and giving feedback I've listed some 'best practice' tips below. 
Whilst I’m sure you have heard all of this before if you are not giving regular feedback, or asking for feedback yourself then I would encourage you to read on and decide what you are going to start to do differently to enhance your own and your teams performance.

How do I give constructive and effective feedback?

The most important element in providing effective feedback is establishing an atmosphere of mutual trust and regard. When a feeling of trust has been created, it is easier both to give and to accept feedback.

• Make sure that the employee understands that you are working toward a mutual goal – their success.
• Acknowledge the employee's accomplishments and successes along with the areas in which he or she needs to improve.
• Be specific. It is much more useful to describe the specific element of work that concerns you or that you are particularly impressed by. Remember to stick to what you know first hand: You'll quickly find yourself on shaky ground if you start giving feedback based on other people's views.
• Keep the feedback simple. Decide on the area you want to cover. You don't want to create a shopping list of faults that could overwhelm and discourage the employee.
• Offer to work with your employee to develop solutions to any problems that he or she is encountering. 

How do I ask for feedback?

When I ask people whether they ask for feedback I get one of two responses:

1. I haven’t asked
2. I haven’t been specific on what I want feedback on.

• Be clear about what you want feedback on. If you are practicing your presentation skills what is it that you are working on? Is it your voice tone, your volume, how you stand or sit, the content of the presentation the flow of the presentation, your eye contact, the pace, how you handle questions…This is what I mean by be clear.

• Ask someone who you know will give you the feedback and will focus on the specifics.

• Be prepared to ask further questions for clarity when you are getting the feedback so you can walk away and know exactly what it was you did well, or what specifically you need to do differently.

So these 3 simple things are to help you be more proactive in obtaining relevant feedback for you.

What do I do while I am receiving feedback?

There is an art to receiving feedback as well as giving it and as feedback is rare  you really need to know how to make the most of it:

• Listen while your manager, colleague or stakeholder is giving feedback, and I mean really listen - don't be waiting to speak. Wait until he or she is finished before you respond.

• Make sure you understand the feedback. It's useful to paraphrase the feedback to ensure that you captured the intended meaning. Ask for clarification or for more specifics if it’s not making sense to you.

• Ask for strategies to resolve the issues and work together to develop solutions if you are not sure how to proceed.

• Finally, whether you agree with the feedback or not, thank the person for his or her time and for being helpful to you. 

What if I get feedback that I don't agree with?

We don’t have to take on board all the feedback we get. We always have a choice. So if you don’t agree with what you are hearing:

• Step back. It's useful to consider the feedback calmly and to think about it in the overall context of moving forward in your career.

• Ask a trusted peer for his or her point of view or talk with a mentor.

• If you decide not to use the feedback, let your manager know and tell her or him your reasons. They may want to give you additional feedback. Listen to it and enter into a dialogue about it. If you decide not to use the feedback at this time, keep the feedback in mind, since it may make more sense to you down the road.

If you really believe in people being the best that they can be, or  better still, see that you have more potential, make feedback a habit – both giving and asking for it!

"Be proactive. Proactive people work on the things they can do something about."

Stephen Covey

Truth or Fiction?

“ We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” Anais Nin

What does this phrase mean to you?

For me I interpret it as how we see the world is based on our own experiences and beliefs we've developed over our life time. It therefore means that our own view of a situation will not always be the same as someone else's.

When we come up against this it can cause conflict either with others or, within ourselves, and these can often be uncomfortable experiences.

Our perceptions, how we view the world, become our reality and we can make lots of assumptions which are often untrue. 

When working with coaching clients this will often arise as a difference of opinion. If unexplored it can become an obstacle to progress.

If you are faced with this scenario it's worth looking at what you actually know as fact. 

• What has actually happened? 
• What has actually been said? 

Ask yourself; 

• What assumptions are you making? This may be about the other person, the situation or yourself.
• What stories are you making up about the situation?
• Knowing this what if anything do you need to do to move things forward?

Leaving situations to fester can make a mountain out of a mole hill, so make a habit of asking yourself these questions whenever you begin to feel uncomfortable or think a misunderstanding in brewing. 

The Growth Cycle

How often do you stop and think about the process of personal growth?

If you are like I was when I was in a corporate role probably never! You’re way to busy and just get on with what you have to do. Your development actions become part of your task list and you may do some reflection on the way home.

 If you follow any process you use Kolb’s learning cycle. Whilst this is a great process to get your head around learning it doesn’t quite address some of the deeper things you need to consider as a leader if you want to grow. So, I thought I’d share this process that I have taken from the work I do with archetypes.

There are basically 3 stages:

·       Preparation

·       Learning and Growth

·       Application and Celebration

Preparation

Here you get clarity on what it is you want to learn or how you want to develop. You may set a goal, an intention or outcomes and identify any tools or support you need on the way. This includes your own mental preparation and readiness to start.

Learning and Growth

This is almost a cycle on it’s own with four parts to it:

1. Exploration: To experiment, study, understand, and discover the topic you set out to achieve.
2.  Commitment: Determine what it is you will commit to. What will you do differently?
3. Let Go: Having made the commitment let go of anything that no longer serves you. This may be an old habit, a belief, people or tools and techniques. There may also be more than one thing!
4. Create: Start doing, being and or thinking differently.

You may go around this several times before you move on to the last stage.

Application and Celebration

The final stage is to practice and practice and practice and celebrate your achievements. This may sound easy and it’s the one most people do less consciously or give up if something doesn’t work.

To get good at something we have to continually fine tune and we may also need to adapt for differing situations. So always recognise your progress and celebrate!

“The voyage of discovery is not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

Marcel Proust

Calling all Leaders in Pursuit of Excellence

Some things are not new. They are as old as the hills.

So, rather than share my own thoughts, on this occasion I thought I’d share one from my collection of quotes from Epictetus.

Epictetus was a Greek philosopher (55 – 135 AD). His view was all external events are determined by fate and therefore, we have no control over them. We should accept whatever happens calmly and dispassionately……. sometimes easier said than done!!

However, individuals are responsible for their own action, which they can examine and control through rigorous self-discipline. Here are some questions and thoughts for you to consider from his perspective:

 

“Who exactly do you want to be?

What kind of person do you want to be?

What are your personal ideals?

Whom do you admire?

What are their special traits that you would make your own?

It's time to stop being vague.

If you wish to be an extraordinary person, if you wish to become wise, then you should explicitly identify the kind of person you aspire to become.

If you have a daybook, write down who you're trying to be, so that you can refer to this self-determination.

Precisely describe the demeanor you want to adopt so that you may preserve it when you are by yourself or with other people."

If you do not have a personal development plan in place yet why not use this as s simple way to get started. Identify what you want your first step to be and take it.

Then on a daily or weekly basis review how you are doing. Ask yourself these questions:

1.    What is working for you?

2.    What could you do a little better?

3.    What is your next step/action to continually improve?

Have fun with it and celebrate your progress!