4 misconceptions about saying no

I have had several conversations over recent weeks with colleagues and clients who are either tired, have expressed being close to burn out last year, or overwhelmed with the volume of work.

On one hand, I completely understand this as there is an ever increasing need for organisations to achieve more with less, adapt and change with the environment they are in, whether that’s driven by the competition, customers, technology, the economy or all four!!

On the other hand, this just feels so wrong. As humans we only have a certain capacity to cope with these stresses and strains before it begins to take it’s toll. Whilst there are techniques we can utilise to build our resilience over time, what can you do in the short term?

Say No

Say no to taking on this extra responsibility

Say no to attending a meeting you have no idea what it’s about

Say no to accepting under performance

Say no to answering your emails after 7.00 pm (or whatever time you put to put around this)

It never ceases to surprise me how many people struggle with this one little word and yet it can be a lifesaver.

As a leader it’s one of the things you have to get comfortable saying – to yourself and to others.

The Misconceptions

I hear many reasons why saying ‘no’ is not appropriate:

• I don’t want to upset anyone. Saying no isn’t personal. Few people I know take a ‘no’ response personally. If they do it’s usually because of the way the message has been delivered not the message itself.  In my experience it brings great clarity on what may be required or not and people actually know where you and they stand. People like boundaries and saying ‘no’ is putting a line in the sand. In fact saying yes and not meaning it is worse as people do tend to pick up on your incongruence. And a maybe is even worse – leaving things somewhat up in the air.

• They may not like me. Leadership is not about being liked. People may not like the decision and if they happen to react badly to what you are telling them it’s because of the content of what you are saying rather than you personally. The key here is to separate the decision from the people. Often explaining the reason for your ‘no’ can clear this up. They may still not like your decision and take some time to come to terms with it but it really isn’t about you.

• My boss might think I’m being obstructive or un-ambitious. As a successful leader you have got to where you are because you can get things done… The more senior you get the trick is to work smarter not harder, which often means saying ‘no’ to people and situations which are ineffective and not aligned to the corporate goals. When you are really clear about your priorities and what is important it becomes much easier to know what to say ‘yes’ to and what to say ‘no’ to. Saying ‘no’ and explaining the reason for your response and maybe suggesting an alternative can actually demonstrate your clarity of thinking around priorities and the impact of particular actions.

• I may miss an opportunity. Opportunities are all around us. The question is which is the one that is the most appropriate right now? You have limited resources. It’s about making the best of those. Saying ‘no’ to some of the opportunities presented often allows more to be achieved with the one(s) you choose. 

Successful leaders are really clear about their priorities and great at re-prioritising when necessary. Saying ‘no’ to things that don’t fit with your priorities is a great strength.

So, if you are one of those leaders who struggles with this word, where can you start to practice? How can you say no elegantly and with clarity?

And if you need help call me. I have some great techniques that will help you become more comfortable and confident in saying no.

"It’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important."

Steve Jobs

How to Solve the Biggest Problems with Goal Setting

Goal setting and problem solving are continual tasks in any business and we often treat them separately. However, using goal setting to tackle a problem can often deliver a solution that is longer lasting.

I often hear managers say ‘how did it happen, what caused it?’ when they face a problem, large or small.

These are very valid questions and, what they cause you and others to do is look at a very specific situation and dig into it until you can answer the question.

On the other hand, taking a goal setting approach can create a very different solution that may have a more systemic result.

Here’s an example, a system goes down which results in a particular part of the business not being able to progress their work. By asking questions like, how did it happen? allows you to look only at that very specific situation to understand what happened and how you can rectify it.

If you are on the receiving end of that question it can sometimes create a defensive reaction and I’ve know this to turn into trying to find out who is responsible.

Start with the end in mind

Whereas, if you take a goal setting approach the question you ask is very different – what’s the outcome we want instead? It get’s you thinking differently. So, you start with the end in mind and you come up with the outcome – the goal you’d like to see in the future.

It is still good to use the SMART acronym to help you define the outcome you want and here it is as a reminder:

Specific – be as specific as possible. Think about the standards you want and maybe how you want it to look like so that you know what good looks like.

Measurable – How will you measure it when you’ve got it? Is there a reduction in costs, and increase in productivity, and increase in customer satisfaction? Be clear about how you’ll measure your outcome.

Achievable – think of this as being more about is what I’m looking for possible. I have seen people have debates about whether something is achievable or not and this is often driven by individual mindsets, rather than reality.

Realistic – Do you believe you can make this happen?

Timebound – set a date by which it will be achieved and if necessary set some milestones.

Once you have been through this process look at how you can bring this about and take action.

Taking this approach is more likely to identify flaws in the system or process.

So next time you have a problem ask your self what outcome do you want instead? 

A goal properly set is halfway reached.

 Abraham Lincoln

Rules for Success – How to Identify Yours in 3 Simple Steps

It’s not uncommon for people at this time of year to talk about their New Year resolutions or the goals they have set. In fact this morning I had three people ask me this very question.

I am not against this. In fact I have my own process I go through at the end of each year, which involves me looking at every area of my life and setting clear goals for the year ahead. In the last 3 years I’ve also selected a word for the coming year. If you want to know more about this latter process find more information here.

What was really interesting this morning was that one person said they had the same resolution as previous years because they never stuck to it…

It is easy to give up when faced with the first, second, or third hurdle, so I thought I’d share part of the process I go through each year. It allows me to identify my own rules for success that help me stay on track, or at the very least identify what isn’t working.

Reflection on successes

The first step is to reflect over the past year and list, and by that I mean write them down, all the things you achieved. Consider every aspect of your life and everything that was an achievement for you no matter how large or small.

It’s easy for us to forget great things that have happened and put all our focus on what we didn’t do or should have done.

Take time to look at your list and feel good or even great about them and acknowledge all that you have achieved. I’ve known some people to then create their top 10 highlights for the year and use this instead of a Christmas card. It’s very impressive when you receive one of these too!

Reflection on what you didn’t achieve YET

This second step is important. The mindset you have when approaching this step is equally important. This isn’t about beating yourself up, criticising yourself, or getting into any analysis of what could, should or didn’t happen. It’s simply about recognising that some things, for all sorts of reasons, haven’t been achieved yet.

Again write this down – list them and then move onto the last, and for me the most important, step.

Identify YOUR Rules for Success

Now, with both lists in front of you ask yourself these two questions:

What was it I did that allowed me to succeed and achieve all that I did last year? What were the rules I had that when I follow them I succeeded?

Make a note of these.

Then, ask yourself:

What were the rules I wasn’t following, that if you had followed, would have allowed me to achieve all those things I haven’t yet?

Make a list of these.

This is about taking the learning from the previous year to ensure you make the best of the next 12 months.

From what you have written down you can now identify the important things for you to do consistently. This then gives you your own personal rules for success that you know if you follow them enable you to succeed.

Keep them somewhere accessible, so that you can refer to them if you need to. I find that if something isn’t quite working the way I’d hoped, it’s usually because one or more of my own rules are not being followed.

Here are mine for this year:

1. Stay connected – to the people I am working with, my own goals and what I care about.
2. Be consistent – in all that I do working on and in my business.
3. Believe and trust in myself – we all have times when we doubt ourselves and I am no exception.
4. Follow through on things I have committed to do for myself as well as my clients
5. Do the work required both professionally and personally – this is another way of saying practice what you preach…

I hope this has given you an approach to help keep yourself on track and it would be lovely to hear what your own rules for success are – do let me know at dawn@aurora4success.co.uk

“Success or failure in business is caused more by the mental attitude than by mental capacities.”

Sir Walter Scott

Five Leadership Benefits of Stopping and Reflecting

As a leader we are all busy and constantly bombarded with emails, meetings, requests, ideas, projects, change of plans, budget constraints…

I often hear my clients talk about how they seem to spend their day going from one meeting to the next with very little time to think. Any thinking that has to be done is either in the moment, or at either end of the day that may be on the way to and from work or at home. I know I’ve been there! 

As a coach a conversation I have with potential clients is how we do not give ourselves the space to think things through to either develop a way forward or solve or problem, or consider how we could do things differently. Having a coach actually allows you to create this space and have someone support you in your own process.

I recognise that not everyone is ready to have a coach so an alternative is to create some space for yourself on a regular basis to do your best thinking – even if it’s just fifteen minutes.

If you are wondering why here are the top 5 benefits you will gain:

Five Leadership Benefits of Reflecting:

Clarity about where you are: Taking some time out either at the end of the day, week or month gives you the opportunity to see the big picture and where you are against your goals. You can’t do this when your head is down in the ‘thick of things’.

Increased likelihood of revised action: If you are off track, taking regular reflective periods will allow you to spot this earlier and potentially save time by taking corrective actions early. Even if you are on track it allows you to spot opportunities that may save time in the future and increase your opportunities for success.

New ideas have the chance to emerge: If you a struggling with a particular situation or feel as though you are ‘stuck’ giving yourself some time to think about it will allow some space for new options and ideas to emerge.

Develop a higher level of thinking and problem solving: Think of this as a way to train your brain. By making a habit of having some reflective time your brain will get used to thinking differently – see my points later on possible questions to ask your self in this space.

You can be more effective: You can be more on the front foot and by reflecting on your own practice you can identify where you could be more effective through either adapting your approach or your style in a given situation.

Possible Reflective Questions to ask Yourself:

• What have been my successes over the last week/month?
• What are my current challenges?
• What will help me move this forward?
• What is my job in this team/company really about?
• What s getting in the way of me making progress?
• What is my most important goal right now?
• What assumptions am I making on this topic?
• What patterns do I see emerging?

These are only suggestions to get you started – feel free to come up with and share your own.

Some tips to get started

1. Find a time that works best for you. Is it daily or weekly? Is it morning, afternoon or evening? Be prepared to play with this until you find when you can commit and do your best thinking.
2. Stop any interruptions, including those you may create for yourself such as grabbing a coffee, doing this one email…
3. Find a place where you can do your best thinking. Get out of the office if necessary.
4. Identify clear actions you will take as a result, bearing in mind this may mean you stop doing something. 

If you are a leader who recognises that having a coach for a period of time will help you be even more effective email me to set up a discovery call so we can discuss your needs further: dawn@aurora4success.co.uk

“Be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.”

Henry David Thoreau

The Bigger and Bigger Challenge

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

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

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

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

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

Recognising you are in this Challenge

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

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

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

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

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

Costs and Benefits

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

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

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

Do the benefits out way the costs?  

If the answer is yes then all that remains is:

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

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

Joshua J. Marine

What is your Pruning Practice?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is it:

Monthly,

Quarterly,

Annually, or

Never?

Proactive Change

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

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

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

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

Regular review of what’s working to achieve your goals

Consider:

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

An opportunity to consider what’s missing

Ask yourself:

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

Weeding

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

A time for some self-reflection

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

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

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

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

“Today may be the enemy of your tomorrows.”

Dr. Henry Cloud

Mind the Gap

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blind spots – the biggest growth area

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

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

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

So how do you open yourself up to them?

Here are my tips to help you:

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

         What went well?

         What didn’t go so well?

         Knowing what I know now what would I do differently?

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

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

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

Celebrate!

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

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

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