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 one thing most people forget to consider in goal setting and New Year resolutions

Are YOU ready?

The reason we don’t achieve goals is often because they aren’t important enough for us to commit to them, or because we have some pattern of behaviour that prevents us from achieving them.

So, before you ‘fall off the wagon’ with your New Year goals I thought I’d share some of the areas you may want to explore before you fall prey to some of your unconscious patterns.

Your brain is fundamentally lazy and will follow the path of least resistance and our unconscious patterns are so ingrained that they work on autopilot. We (our brain) don’t even have to think about them. However, they are usually triggered by an event or situation. Think about your morning routine you don’t really think too much about what you’re doing because your pattern (routine) is fully embodied and you are pretty much operating on autopilot.

This is just one example and there will be many more throughout your day, so I put together some questions to hopefully prevent you from sabotaging your future achievements.

Spotting potential obstacles – 5 questions to accelerate your success 

1) What is your perceptions of your goal? Do you think this will be easy of hard? Is it going to be fun? On a scale of 1 – 10 how much do you want it where 10 is high and one is low.

If you consider your goal difficult to achieve break it down so it appears more manageable. How can you make it more playful?

2) What excuse are you making about getting started, or staying on track? Some excuses might be:

• I’m not quite ready yet, I need x, y or z in place before I can make a start.
• I haven’t found the time to fit this in/make it happen.
• Someone else hasn’t given you what you need yet.

If you find you are making excuses the chances are it’s not important enough for you, or you’ve hit another obstacle. In which case read on…

3) What sabotage patterns are you running? Here are just a few examples:

• Keeping busy so you don’t have time.
• Agreeing to do things for others without considering the impact to your own commitments.
• Relying on others to make things happen for you.
• Following your ‘old’ routines/patterns…

 What is triggering this behaviour? Pay attention to what, where, when this is triggered. Is it a particular thought you have that is conflicting with where you want to get to (your goal) or how you feel at a particular moment in time, or when you are in a certain place or with a particular group of people.

Once you’ve identified the trigger, what can you do to avoid these situations or think differently about them?

It may take you some time to identify the trigger, particularly if it’s one of your unconscious patterns, and I’d encourage you to stick with it. The more aware you become of what you’re doing automatically the more you are likely to change.

4) What changes do you need to make either in your self, or your environment in order to ensure you achieve your goal in the long term? (See your answers to the questions above).

5) What support do you need to achieve your goal? We all need encouragement and support to keep going, who can you ask for support to ensure you stay accountable? Who may be able to join you? How can you make it more fun?

When we set goals, or intentions, or New Year resolutions we are aiming for a future that we don’t yet have and there will always be an internal battle between your present self and your future self.

Staying ‘on track’ requires self-discipline, a muscle that needs to be exercised regularly. It’s easy to forget what you are aiming for when your present self is here and now, which is why identifying your own self-imposed obstacles can make a difference.

"The ultimate reason for setting goals is to entice you to become the person it takes to achieve them."

Jim Rohn

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

5 Mistakes people make when thinking about personal brand

When I introduce the topic of personal branding I often get blank looks, resistance or people start talking about social media.

As the conversation progresses the following objections are often revealed:

1.    Branding is only for products.

Whether you like it or not you have a brand. It’s the reputation you have. The question for you to think about is, is that reputation aligned to how I want to be known? If it’s not then there is some work to do.

So, you can choose to own your brand and maximize it to achieve your aspirations; or let it manage you and wonder why the same things seem to happen to you!

If branding were only for products it wouldn’t be something recruiters are interested in understanding about possible candidates...

2.    Branding is inauthentic, you can’t possibly pigeon hole people!

That is correct you can’t pigeon hole people. What you can do is discover what your real assets are and how to best utilise these so you get to do the work you love. It’s more about how you stand out.

When you take the approach I do, which is to discover you from the inside out, it can only be authentic. It is being authentic to who you are that stands the test of time. This is how great brands last!

 

3.    It’s all about your online presence.

True. There is an element of this that will link to any online presence you have. The trick is to be consistent in how you come across both online and off line.

If you appear one way online and when people meet you you’re different they will be confused and potentially suspicious.

4.    I’m too busy and it’s not important now.

Well you may be busy and it may not seem important right now, AND you are communicating a brand already! You could be doing this inconsistently so people don’t really understand the value you bring to the work place.

Spending time on your brand will help you focus your efforts more effectively and be noticed for what you want to be known for.

This IS important.

5.    This is far too difficult and I don’t have the time or money to invest in hiring a Marketing consultant.

This doesn’t require an awful lot of investment and in the process you’ll get some really great and valuable feedback that reinforces all the good that you do.

It doesn’t require a Marketing consultant either.

I have a process that will allow you to get to the heart of your brand within 3 to 4 hours. Having achieved that you’ll be motivated to do more and find it VERY easy.

So… if you are ready to own your brand and stand out send me an email. We can set up a complimentary discovery call to assess how best you can move forward and be the leader you were born to be.

"Be yourself - not your idea of what you think somebody else's idea of yourself should be."  

Henry David Thoreau 

Who do you think you are?

What story are you living?

Many of you will be familiar with the BBC programme of the same title, where a celebrity traces part of their family tree to reveal part of their history.

Whilst I admit to ‘stealing’ their title I’m not about to encourage you to do the same. However, I do want you to think about what your story is.

• Are you living your own story or how someone else is telling you should be?
• Do you have one persona at work and another at home?
• Do you feel you are being true to yourself?

If your answer to any of these questions indicates that you are not being yourself 100% who you are, then now is the time to do something about it.

Why? I hear you cry.

As human beings we are very good at picking up when someone is not being genuine. So if you are not ‘being yourself’ you can be sure someone is sensing this.

They may not be able to put their finger on it but they will have a sense that you are not being 100% congruent, 100% YOU, 100% truthful!

This could mean that you are not taken seriously, that people don’t know what they can rely on you for and that they don’t listen to you.

It’s also draining trying to be someone you are not, which could take its toll on your well being.

Whether you like it or not you have a reputation. A brand.

It’s what people say about you when you are not in the room.

The more you progress in your career the clearer you need to be about your brand and what you bring to the team and the organisation and to be able to articulate this clearly.

The question for you to consider is does what people are saying about me align with who I really am?

Is this what I want my reputation to be?

Defining your Brand

If you’re sitting scratching your head and wondering what your brand/reputation is, it’s time to get some feedback.

Start by identifying what you are good at. What are you the ‘go to’ person for?

You may have your own thoughts on this and it’s also useful to hear from others. They will either reinforce your thinking or provide you with some new insights. After all we all have blind spots…

Personal branding is defining what makes you unique so that you stand out from the crowd. Tom Peters first coined this as ‘The brand called YOU’ in 1997.

“Regardless of age, position or the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEO’s of our own companies:Me Inc.”

My approach is about understanding WHO you are from the inside out. Does what people see on the outside reflect what’s going on on the inside?

This means I work with you to understand who you really are:

·       What drives you?

·       What motivates you?

·       What is limiting you?

·       How do you play to your strengths more of the time?

How do you get there?

There are 5 steps to go through:

1.    Identify what you are good at and how you operate which often means gathering some robust feedback

2.    Define your values

3.    Develop your Vision

4.    Develop your Mission

5.    Develop your message so you can clearly articulate the value you provide

Each will take some time and then it’s a process of constant refinement, based on your own self-awareness and feedback.

Feedback and self-awareness are a constant for me in this process. It’s not a one and done process! As I mentioned earlier we all have blind spots those things that we do that we are, quite literally, blind to. We need others to point them out to us. That is why we actually need feedback.

So… if you are ready to stop living someone else’s story and not yet ready to go out and ask for feedback, send me an email. We can set up a complimentary discovery call to assess how best you can move forward and live the life you want to live and define your uniqueness.

“Do something today that your future self will thank you for."

 Author Unknown