Leadership AdvantEdge: Leadership | Influence | Talent | Neuroscience

Abraham Maslow proposed a sixth level in his renowned five level hierarchy of human needs, which behavioural neuroscience has since confirmed. These levels explain the essential drivers of our behaviours, actions and reactions.For leaders to be successful, they should first ensure that their own needs are met, and then understand and help their team members meet their needs. To do this, a leader needs to understand that their team members have 6 essential needs - physiological, safety and security, belonging, mattering, self-Actualisation and transcendence. Each of these needs must be fulfilled in order for an individual to reach their fullest potential. Leaders should strive to provide their teams with meaningful work, opportunities for growth, and an environment of trust, collaboration and respect.Thanks for reading Joy@Work! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Only by understanding and meeting the essential needs of their team members, a leader can develop a successful and productive team.Why you need thisYou need to be able to help your team fill their own power cell and ignite their destiny. Every team member has different needs and motivations and it's the job of the leader to understand and meet those needs through different strategies.They need to feel accepted, respected and that their ideas matter. Leaders should be mindful to include emotional intelligence in their leadership strategy. They should be cognizant of the emotional needs and psychological dynamics of their team and give team members the space to express their feelings.Leaders should use empowering language and be mindful of their team's limits. Each team member should have meaningful work and have opportunities for growth. Leaders should also be conscious of what their team members value and strive to provide them with those things.It is also the leader's job to foster a team environment where team members can collaborate, solve problems and grow together. Leaders should recognise the importance of building trust and rapport within the team, and ensure that all team members are treated fairly and equally.Finally, leading a team requires understanding the different needs of each team member. A great leader is someone who has the ability to empathise and be compassionate with each team member and see things from their perspective. By doing this, the leader can help each individual in the team realize their full potential, and maximise the collective potential of the whole team.Abraham Maslow wanted to add a sixth level to his renowned five level hierarchy of human needs. Today, with our increased understanding through behavioural neuroscience, he was right to want to include it. These 6 human needs are THE essential drivers of our every day behaviours, actions and reactions.What does this mean for you as a Leader?Every leader needs to understand:* How to fulfil their own needs, and* Their role in helping all of their team members meet their essential, human needs.Ultimately, by doing so, those leaders can fulfil their own need to help and serve others.Is Your Battery Running Low?Imagine that your needs are like a discharged battery that you are able to charge through your life activities.When the bottom cell is sufficiently filled, the next cell can be charged. All human beings have 6 essential needs, or power cells.Though, some people have faulty power packs - with a corrupted sixth cell that has been taken over by a leaky fifth cell. That is, they care less about other people because their self-esteem is so overfilled they hold others in total contempt - because they matter less than me!Beware overfilling any one cell: Gluttony and Obesity with an overfilled Cell 1, Excessive risk taking for Cell 2.And many have a leaky battery, where their own needs never get filled.What does this mean for you as a Leader?Every leader needs to understand:* Your own needs need to be met BEFORE you have enough to give others, and* Whilst things may look OK on the surface - people tend to hide their emotional needs fearing that they are the only ones who have them.By this, you'll be better able to ask the right questions and better positioned to serve others and help them fulfil their real needs.Empty Power PackIf your needs are not met, you are an empty shell. Imagine that your brain is being powered by a rechargeable power pack.The very first thing that you need when you are born is air. Soon after you need food, warmth and shelter. Sorry to tell you, but you were born needy and totally dependent upon others for your basic survival, and that is our first and primary need…What does this mean for you as a Leader?* If you're running on empty - you're not much use to anyone!* As a leader, you help your team understand what they need and how you can help them satisfy those needs.Physiological NeedsBasic Survival means that you have air to breathe, are properly fed and watered, you are in good health, have suitable shelter to stay warm and rest and your sexual needs are being met.As a responsible leader you owe a duty to yourself and your continued good health to ensure that you enjoy good rest and sleep, exercise regularly and eat healthy, nutritious food.What does this mean for you as a Leader?* If you don't look after your health, exercise, sleep and nutrition - you won't be able to achieve much.* Encourage and guide your team into a healthier lifestyle of good nutrition, suitable exercise and proper rest and sleep.Safety and Security NeedsWe all need to FEEL and be safe and secure and be free from fear.In organisations, Psychological Safety is the #1 differentiator for personal and team effectiveness!What does this mean for you as a Leader?* If you do not feel safe and secure and free from fear - then you are likely to make this even worse for your team.* As a leader, allow your team members to speak up without any negative repercussions. Protect them from other leaders. Encourage all members to speak up freely and always encourage useful conflict and opposing ideas. Encourage everyone to build on previous statements with “Yes, and…” (NOT “No…But…”)Belonging NeedsWe all need to truly belong to a tribe of people connected to us and who help us meet our needs. A tribe where we have equal value and treated as equal.What does this mean for you as a Leader?* You need a tribe too! If it's lonely at the top - you ain't leading, you're on a walk!* Treat all team members equitably - they may not be equals but they have equal value! Encourage sharing, and proactively acknowledging each other.Mattering NeedsWhen our base needs are being met, we need to be recognised that we matter and that what we do matters.What does this mean for you as a Leader?* Learn to recognise and appreciate yourself. Respect yourself and achieve mastery in your leadership walk.* Go out of your way to “Catch them doing something good!” - and deliberately recognise all team members achievements, individually and specifically. Not a catch all - “great job team!” - that's about as genuine as it seems to you. Show complete respect for others and especially your team members. Coach them for mastery in their roles and beyond.Self Actualisation NeedsWhen we are healthy and safe, we belong to a tribe and we matter: we need to pursue our God given talents, to be creative and to fulfil our destinyWhat does this mean for you as a Leader?* Leadership develops daily! Pursue excellence and keep learning how you can be and do better. Think before you speak and remember to Pause and Breathe.* Encourage, Develop, Guide and Empower your team members daily! Your task is to make them better than you. That's what will be noticed by those higher up the food chain.Transcendence NeedsWhen we are personally fulfilled, we transcend to think more about others than ourselves. We need to give and to serve and to fulfil our spiritual selves.What does this mean for you as a Leader?* You will only be truly fulfilled when you give and give some more. If you have yet to uncover your purpose in life - here's a clue that will save you many hours - “it's not about you! You were born to serve others.” How you serve them - that'll be your gifts to them.* As a Leader your job is to serve others and when your power pack is filled to bursting, you can charge them up and help them find out and practice how they too serve others.If you would like to learn how AdvantEdge Coaching can help you, your team and your organisation, then join me for a Complimentary Discovery Session by applying here.Thanks for reading Joy@Work! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.joyatwork.coach

In this AdvantEdge Guide we'll discuss how establishing Command Intent is a more specific way of setting goals than SMART goals, as it has an embedded purpose. It involves imagining a successful future in each of five areas of life (your Rocket Ship for Life), and focusing on the senses of sight, feel, smell, taste, and sound to create a captivating and rich picture. For teams, the unit in charge of military simulations for NATO recommends asking themselves "if I do nothing else tomorrow, I must ____, so that ____". AdvantEdge Coaching can help to further equip and empower individuals to reach their Command Intent goals.Why do we need a Rocket Ship for Life?The Rocket Ship for Life came about because I used to suffer from a major problem. Basically, I was easily distracted. Teachers' could rarely get, let alone keep, my attention. I'd start a new project only to quickly get bored or frustrated and move onto the next shiny object. If ADHD had been popular back then, perhaps, I could have gotten myself medicated for it!Thanks for reading Joy@Work! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.It wasn't because I lacked goals. I had much that I wanted to achieve in my career. But, for some strange reason, I was always looking for something. I couldn't get or keep focus long enough to stick with it and finish.The big issue it turned out was not lack of clear goals, not an inability to focus it was that there were gaps in what I was trying to achieve. There was no balance. What many have badly described as work/life balance - but what I prefer to call work/life integration. It's where you identify your desired intent in the five key areas of your life as the drivers of the things that you do every day, steered by your values and aligned to your overall purpose or mission in this life.If you ask most people what they want from life, they'll tell you a variation of “to be happy and successful”. What the Bible calls “Good Success”  in Joshua 1:8.Some people think that more money will make them happy. The problem is money is a great servant but a lousy master.And so what if you achieve great success at work if you spend all your time at work and neglect your family and health?As I mentioned, we have identified five key areas in life that, when attended to fully, will bring you real happiness and success as you fulfil them.What are the five key areas?These five key areas are like the engines of a rocket ship that you ride towards your life purpose. Your values are the way you steer and choose which paths you are following. The five areas that we've uncovered through our research are:1. Family and Relationships2. Health and Wellbeing3. Spiritual Fulfilment4. Personal Development5. Work and CareerAs you can imagine, like most people, I'd paid great attention to Work and Career and found it increasingly difficult to keep steering straight. I was working 80 plus hours each week (this was in the days when I was in the hotel and restaurant business) with no breaks, rarely a weekend off and scant holidays. I got away with it health wise for a good few years, but it shouldn't have surprised me when my body rebelled and finally got me to pay a lot more attention to my health and wellbeing when my heart threw a hissy fit on July 4th 2014 at 11:33!When you neglect an engine, it's always going to be much more difficult to keep going towards your purpose, and very easy to get blown off course. It's why your life and work are “off-balance.”In the many years I have been coaching, fewer than 20% have anything remotely resembling “balance”. And they've usually been coached before or have had their own health or personal life crisis.There's many a successful person in the boardroom whose family life is in shambles.Why these five areas and is one more important than the others?As you think about each one you'll realise that if you stop feeding one of these areas and consider the repercussions in your own life:If you show no ambition in your work, your career stagnates and it just becomes a routine you could do with your eyes shut. Your brain becomes inactive and you are simply marking time until one day you retire… and then what?Or you don't bother with personal development after school or college and you learn nothing new. Now everything in your life stagnates. Your brain is bored (it is a learning machine). When your brain is bored, you get depressed through lack of Serotonin and Dopamine and opt-out of everything else life has to offer.Neglect your spirtual man and there's a big hole in your life. An emptiness that you can't quite put your finger on. You'll try and fill it with all sorts of other things but nothing seems to satisfy.Neglect your health and well-being and your body will, one day, sooner or later, quit entirely. Your brain tried to keep you not dead (that is it's job) but somehow you resisted that urge until it too gave up fighting you.Neglect your family and or relationships and you will soon be alone. And humans are social animals. You have an innate desire to belong to a tribe, to matter to others.We all need all of these engines and just like a vehicle engine, you need to keep it maintained properly.The trouble is, everyone is fundamentally lazy. Or perhaps fairer  to say that your brain is fundametally lazy. If there's a “do nothing option”, your brain will take it because doing anything requires effort which burns scarce energy. So, if you do not deliberately attend to each of your engines, your brain will neglect them until something breaks.If we're going to burn fuel in these five areas, you're saying that we need to have a reason for doing so.Each engine needs a driver or motivation for the brain to switch from it's default “do nothing” to “do something” to get... whatever we intend to get.So we need to tell our brain specifically what we intend to get once we do something. Then your brain is prepared to spend precious fuel in that area.Why not set a simple Goal? Or even a SMART goal?Goals are great, and SMART goal even better. However, Command Intent is usually more suited to changing situations (which is real life) and, very importantly, has an embedded purpose. This is what turns your brain on to motivation.I've written extensively on why goal-setting matters - here for those wanting to know more.Establishing Command Intent in each area Really Matters then?Absolutely, noone climbs aboard a space rocket ready to launch into the heavens and then asks, “so where shall we go today?”And noone replies, “I don't know, let's just start her up and go from there.”No. Everytime there is a clear command intent for the mission and each and every engine has a very precise role in achieveing that intent to help the rocket ship and crew fulfil that mission.What's the difference between purpose, mission and intent?We don't have time here to delve into the difference between purpose and intent, suffice to say for now - your purpose is why you were born (it's your overall mission), your command intents are what you achieve along the journey to fulfill your purpose or mission in life.Let's get practical: How do you Establish Command Intent in each of these five Areas of Your Life?Ask most people what they intend to achieve in their career (their career goal), for example, and you'll probably get a vague answer about money, position, happiness level, and maybe a job title. Honestly, that's about as useful as telling a blind footballer that the goal is at the end of the pitch.“Which end?” you ask. And many other questions besides, not least is “how will you know when you have scored a goal?”So we change the question…Establishing a Command Intent for anything is simply a case of answering the question:What does success look like?And when I use the word “look” - I mean all your senses (look, feel, taste, smell, sound). And be as specific as you can be.And, when we're asking what does it “look like” - we mean literally what do (will) you see with your eyes in reality and in as much detail as you can.Repeat with feel (emotions AND touch), smell (the most evocative and immediate of your senses), taste and sound.And if it's not evident in your answers: “How will you know that you have acheived it?” (i.e. how will you measure your acheivements?)Ask, what will you Win or gain (and lose) when you have achieved it? (This is the embedded purpose).And lastly, “by when?”Now that you have a very rich, sensory description, you will have a captivating picture of your future.And You Do this for all Five Areas of Your Life?You'll find it helpful and inspirational to have a clear command intent in all five areas of your life: Your work and career; your family and relationships; your spiritual life; your health and your personal development. Making sure that they support each other and are congruent. Miss one area and you risk struggling to steer your life purposefully forward.You said, “by when?” - is this just for the long term future?It's best to have Command Intents for the short, medium and long term.Most clients also find it helpful to establish these command intent's in three time frames of short, medium and long term futures - whatever is short, medium or long term for you.A little aside on future time frames - most teens struggle with a long term time frame of 10 years, as do most young adults. As we get older, it becomes easier to imagine further into the future.What's next?If you lead a team, then you are responsible for identifying a worthy and compelling vision and articulating it to the team. People continually need to be shown the team's compass clearly and creatively so that their actions align, and they stay motivated with a captivating picture of their future.In their book, “Made to Stick”, Chip and Dan Heath share help from the unit in charge of military simulations for NATO, the Combat Maneuver Training Center, who recommend that officers arrive at the Commander's Intent by asking themselves this question. I've adjusted this for use with your personal intents:“If I do nothing else tomorrow, I must . . . , so that . . .Answer this question in each of your five key life areas and every day, you will have that often elusive, almost mythical: balance.Where can you go to learn more now?As an AdvantEdge Coaching client, we'll help you fine tune your Rocket Ship for Life so that you have a crystal clear picture of the future you and what your success in each of these areas of your life look like and we'll guide you on the path that will equip and empower you to achieve them. Apply for your complimentary AdvantEdge Discovery session today.Or you can take up our 6-part Rocket Launch Coaching Program which is designed to help you Establish Your Command Intent in each of the five key areas of your life, then help you identify the core values, beliefs and habits to support your mission. You'll be more equipped and empowered to achieve your purpose with a practical, systematic and proven approach to transforming your life and moving you closer to the future you. Apply for your complimentary AdvantEdge Discovery session today.Thanks for reading Joy@Work! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.joyatwork.coach

A change focused neuroscience approach for genuine results in your leadership, work and life that truly Empowers! All AdvantEdge Coaching is based on our unique and powerful AdvantEDGE leadership development process based on Neuroscience Research in how people learn, change and develop: EDGE stands for Encourage, Develop, Guide and Empower. It's based on my post-grad research into effective management learning and development methods. EDGE isn't a silver bullet or a magic pill that gets instant results but based upon the latest neuroscience and social cognitive psychology research, EDGE is like a recipe for a pragmatic change focused approach to help clients realise genuine, sustainable results in leadership, work and life. EDGE isn't only a model for coaching. You can use EDGE in any communication situation where you want to empower change or influence others. We will use the EDGE development model in all our GuidePosts, and, as well as explaining the EDGE model we'll also clarify two other critically important aspects that enable us to help you get those results: That is, 1. to clarify what coaching is (and what it is not!) and 2. how AdvantEDGE coaching truly empowers you to sustain your results.

The Purpose of this AdvantEdge Guide is to help you make better, informed decisions as you consider coaching to develop yourself or your team and organisation. There's a lot of very convincing marketing out there that coaching is a panacea for all that ails business and organisation.  Your Payoff will be you can understand for yourself, if coaching is suitable for you, and what type or style of coaching might best suit your needs. You'll also challenge some of the common assumptions that you may have been making. The truth is, coaching is not for everybody, and there are very good reasons. Here's the top 10 I hear from clients, in reverse order and coming in at number 10, but still a biggie: For the Full AdvantEdge Guide, all the links mentioned in the podcast and easy access to the (free!) resources mentioned, please go to the AdvantEdge Coaching System Website here.

It's not that there is this thing called the “Great Resignation” where an unprecedented 44% of people intend to quit their jobs this year. (58% in Singapore!)  It's not that there is a global problem for CEO's and leaders of many organisations who want their staff back in the office and are finding that impossible. Some, like Elon Musk, even after threatening to fire them all. And it's not really about greed for more money, though when you get approached and offered a 20% pay hike for crossing the street, it is a temptation. It's not even that it's your best and brightest talent who are abandoning ship first. Even though they are the first to be hunted and poached. It's a lot more systemic than the headline numbers suggest. The devil, as they say, is in the details. During covid we all learned to keep our distance from people because they might just be a tad toxic. We avoided buildings and gatherings and events and restaurants, all so we wouldn't accidentally meet someone toxic. After 2 plus years we're tired of avoiding people. And yet, there's one place many still want to avoid going, and that's their workplace. The underlying problem? It's considered a toxic workplace. And not because there's covid lurking in dark corners but because there are loud and proud managers who think that disrespecting staff is a motivational weapon, that inequity is unavoidable and diversity is a fad. They seem to think that inclusion is exclusive and ethics are a matter of political expediency. If your talent are quitting for more pay, it's because someone else is willing to pay them more and dangling a glimmer of hope that this new place won't be toxic, or at least, not as toxic as the current place. But there is something that leaders and managers can do. And if you want to plug your talent drain, you might want to listen up to this AdvantEdge guide: READ THE FULL GUIDE HERE 

The purpose of this guide is to help you align your leadership so that you use your power to most effectively and joyfully achieve what truly matters to you and your team and organisation. The power of your payoff when you put this into action will be people will look to you for leadership and direction to help them grow as (seemingly effortlessly) as you. https://My.joyatwork.coach/5qleadership 

Imagine that your needs are like a discharged battery that you are able to charge through your life activities. When the bottom cell is sufficiently filled, the next cell can be charged. All human beings have 6 essential needs, or power cells. Though, some people have faulty power packs - with a corrupted sixth cell that has been taken over by a leaky fifth cell. That is, they care less about other people because their self-esteem is so overfilled they hold others in total contempt - because they matter less than me! Beware overfilling any one cell: Gluttony and Obesity with an overfilled Cell 1, Excessive risk taking for Cell 2. And many have a leaky battery, where their own needs never get filled. What does this mean for you as a Leader? Every leader needs to understand: 1. Your own needs need to be met BEFORE you have enough to give others, and 2. Whilst things may look OK on the surface - people tend to hide their emotional needs fearing that they are the only ones who have them. By this, you'll be better able to ask the right questions and better positioned to serve others and help them fulfil their real needs.

This is Part 3 of a four part series asking the question: "Are you In Control" or "Controlling"? In this edition os the AdvantEdge Joy@Work Podcast, we're learning how wee can break free from the "Controlling" cycle and get "In Control". Stress, worry, and perfromance anxiety can be crippling your life. It's not always easy to break free of the spiral of anxiety but there is a simple solution for most people that does not involve medication or therapy. It's so shockingly simple that many people scoff at the idea. But the thing is, it works. It's how your brain works and this is a simple technique that you can employ immediately to break your brain out of the Controlling cycle and give your Frontal Lobes a chance to oput the breaks on and stop your stinkin' thinkin.  When you understand what is happening in your brain you'll see why it works, and, I absolutely guarantee, you can do this. This is not like getting your body fit by going to the gym 6 times a week or training to run a marathon. It's even easier than going to the toilet and takes about the same amount of time. In fact, you can even do this whilst doing your toilet business. In fact, that's a particularly excellent time to practice.

This is Part 2 of a four part series asking the question: Are you In Control or Controlling? In this guide, we are digging into the roots and what is happening in our brain when we enter the Controlling Cycle. We'll learn what happens inside our brain when we face a challenge and how your unconscious mind immediately reacts to this challenge as a threat - triggering your freeze, flight or fight response. We'll learn how our brain then shifts the challenge into worrying and anxiety UNLESS your frontal lobes put the brakes on and you choose to be In Control rather than attempt to fruitlessly control others or the outside world. We'll learn that EVERYONE on the planet faces the same choices every single day and we'll learn how worrying gives us the illusion of control making us feel good about worrying - as if it ever did us any good. We'll learn why the Pre Frontal Cortex struggles to intervene and shout down the worrying cycle. See the previous episode for Part 1 if you have yet to do so. And remember to subscribe on your preferred platfrom and please rate this episode, it helps others find it and learn too.

This is the first of a four part series asking the question: Are you In Control or Controlling? Listen or watch or read now to understand what triggers your stress and anxiety so that you can then learn how to be In Control and a master of your emotions. Everyone experiences stress and performance anxiety. Nobody likes it, and some people suffer terribly from it. Some stress is necessary for our survival. As cave dwellers, stress and anxiety caused by external threats were excellent drivers of survival behaviours. The trouble is, in the modern world, from your brain's perspective, there are many more perceived threats and the pace of life doesn't allow sufficient downtime between "threats" to recover perspective and get yourself back to a place of choice: whether you are going to remain in control, or be controlling of people or things in the world outside. In this four part guide we're discussing that fundamental question: Are you In Control or Controlling? This First Part we are finding the roots of everyday stress and performance anxiety according to behavioural Neuroscience. We begin with an important understanding of Locus of Control and its implications for your brain. We'll discuss why choosing to be In Control or Controlling is critical and how you respond to the many and varied challenges and obstacles you face every day

Double Blessings to you this new year. Ask what they want from the coming new year and most people are seeking to be happy and successful in the year ahead. We see the new year as a fresh start where we can put the past behind us and move ahead. Sadly, most people never achieve happiness or success and, in large part, that's down to the way we set goals and commit to new year's “resolutions”. The problem is a lack of motivation and a lack of balanced prioritisation. Resolutions tend to be negative shifts of behaviour that we “should” do for our own good. Things like: get fit, lose weight, quit smoking, quit drinking, be kind to everyone, stop complaining. All things that our flesh just screams to keep on doing because we don't like change - or at least our brain does not like change - and your brain was getting something it liked from the “bad habits” of last year. Your brain would rather “do nothing” than “do something, anything, taxing”. And those new goals, we try but they tend to throw us even more off balance than we were already. What we need is to re-consider goals across all key aspects of our life. And those goals need to have an embedded, motivational purpose - our reason for achieving them, our “why” I should put in all this effort. Without which, our brain quickly defaults back to its preference of “do nothing”! We need a crystal clear, compelling picture of our future and what success looks like in each of the key areas of life. What is called a “Command Intent” and we need one or more for each of our five key life engines. Listen, watch or read the podcast now - it's in a new format which we hope you like. It'll be 15 minutes very well spent. I hope that you enjoyed a joyful festive season and you are ready for the excellent challenges that 2022 may bring. Be blessed - and remember - let us know what you think of the new podcast format.

Welcome to the AdvantEdge Joy@Work podcast with me, Dr. John Kenworthy. In this guide to developing your five essential qualities of expert hybrid leadership: we're learning why your attitude to hope and how you communicate it, determines how your days and those for your team will unfold. Welcome to Hope and Mirrors. In this episode of the AdvantEdge Joy@Work podcast, we're looking forward to a future in hope and expectation of something new and exciting in the days ahead. And how you can choose to be the leader who inspires hope for yourself, and for others. Full episode and show transcript here: https://joyatwork.coach/hope-and-mirrors The choice is yours. I stick to my favorite verse to start every day from Psalm 118, Verse 24, in the New King James Version. This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it. All the faces in the world are mirrors. What kind of reflections do you see in the faces of the people you meet? What kind of reflections do you want to see? To learn more about AdvantEdge Coaching so that you can have Joy@Work and your team becomes United in Trust and Collaboration. Contact us through the link on the show notes and arrange a complimentary, confidential, no obligation Discovery Session. https://joyatwork.coach/apply

Welcome to the Joy at Work Podcast with me, Dr John Kenworthy. In this guide we're learning the: Four questions every leader should be asking, if they want to improve performance. Introduction Improved performance requires growth. And without growth, our career is doomed to stagnation and eventual death. Am I exaggerating? Well, stop watering your plants for a few weeks and see what happens. Organizations that don't get better, don't improve their performance year on year are stagnating too. If you has a leader, don't grow, then your career will stagnate. You may be exceptionally good at what you do, but if you want to move up the hierarchy, you need to grow into that position before you get given it because afterwards is far too late. Plus you won't have developed your team to take on your job. So how can they promote you? How, then do we raise performance easily? Purpose Our purpose and payoff being prepared to learn and change, and put in the necessary effort, is a critical step in growth and improve. And getting yourself and team members to regularly consider what's going well. And what needs work is essential. If you want to improve performance. Process To do this, I'm sharing Four simple yet, oh, so powerful neuroscience-based questions that work to stimulate personal growth and the resulting conversations will take you in just five to 15 minutes of your time. Payoff Use it once now, as I guide you and you'll immediately gain one benefit with a very clear action for next week. Use it with your team members once and you'll gain one improvement in performance next week. Use it weekly. And you'll gain 52 improvements this year. The improvements don't have to be huge. Small gains add greatly. Before I start with the four questions, grab yourself a pen and paper or a iPad with a pencil, anything to make notes and be ready to pause as we go through this. The four questions starting off with keeping the good stuff. The Four Questions If I were to ask you to tell me how was work for you this past week or so the chances are very high that you would reply along the lines of : "it was okay, good. not bad, fine, or terrible. It's dull, boring, and not at all helpful. Instead, I'll ask: " Tell me, what three specific things that you enjoyed and, or believe that you did really well at work this week? So here, I'm going to give you a few moments to consider your answer, pause the player. If you're listening and write them down. If you can. Pause the player and write down your answer to the question. If this is your first time, you are probably finding this a little challenging. If you're replying nothing, uh, stop and find something go further back in time, if you need to, but do the work here. You'll thank me later. Got three things. Fantastic. If we were in a live coaching here, I'd be probing into your answers to help you dig out the beautiful gems. For now let your magnificent mind mull on these and let's get to the easy part. What Needs Work? Identifying what needs work. Now, if you struggled some with answering that first question, you are in very good company. Pretty well, all of my clients struggle with that first question because, well, we're so used to dwelling on this next part. What needs work. Ready? Here's your question: What is the one real challenge for you that if you improved or changed would have the greatest positive impact on your performance, now? Let me repeat that. And then I'll pause. What is the one real challenge for you that if you improved or changed would have the greatest positive impact on your performance, now? Again, pause the player and write down your answer. Got one? Not two or more choose one. Is it about somebody else changing? Then think again, this is about you, your performance. Great. Awesome. If you and I were in a coaching session right now, I'd be digging in to make sure that this is the real core challenge. So I'm going to add on a quick question to help you right now. Is there anything else that is the real, real challenge for you here? Now, before you rush off and start, I have two more questions for you. Next, let's get you motivated. Finding the Drive Finding the drive. What exactly do you want to achieve? If you or somebody of whom you're asking with this is struggling. Here's another approach. That's more specific to the change. What will you achieve by changing this one thing? Pause and write down your response. Many clients find this difficult to answer, principally because we're not taught to think like this. Yet the most successful leaders do know what they want to achieve. Write down your answer. Now that you know, let's ignite the touch paper and send you on your way. True Empowerment True empowerment. How can I help you? Here's your question? How can I help you? When you were asking this of your team, this question tells them that you are here to help them succeed. And do please remember empowerment and delegation are not the same thing: you delegate authority to someone to do something. You empower someone with the, to do the thing and the authority to do it. Delegation works fine when they know what they need to know and how to do what they need to do. If they don't, then and they need the power, which is the tools, the resources, the ability, the knowledge, as well as the authority to do it. And if you need my help get in touch. How and When to use This How and when should you use this? Well, you gain one immediate benefit using this just once for yourself. Use it once with your team and you'll get one improvement next week. Use it weekly and you'll see, 52 improvements next year! Those improvements may be small, but they quickly add up and soon enough, your team will be doing this for themselves continuously and multiplying your impact and your performance. What's Happening in The Brain? Let's go and check in what's happening in the brain. See, if you've been going through this exercise, your brains, just gone on a bit of a roller coaster ride. At the beginning by considering what you have done well, you're remembering positive, affirming strengths that you have displayed and you are feeling encouraged and good about yourself. Thanks to some Serotonin and Dopamine. It also, thanks to the Dopamine, reinforces those positive things to being repeated. Then, by considering what needs work, your brain takes a bit of a dive. A little Cortisol is triggered, maybe some Adrenaline too. If it's an unpleasant memory and your motivation levels drop, you're causing a deep thinking, pause and reflection, weighing up and prioritizing changes that will have a real impact on your performance. And you're already working out how to use your strengths, that you just talked, about to really lift these weak areas. By asking what you want to achieve, we reopen your brains motivation circuits to think of the future and your uncles. You begin to feel good about this. Thanks to more Dopamine and Serotonin, maybe some Endorphins too. And then by offering your help to your team members, they'll feel great in belonging and trust from Oxytocin, and you'll be able to truly empower them so that they lift their performance, feel motivated,more Dopamine, and you'll be lifting their ability to lead themselves and others too. Multiplying the impact you're having. And all it takes is five to 15 minutes of your time. Time that you're more than recovered within a few weeks, simply because you and your team are performing better. I know, it's amazing, isn't it? Summary So here's a quick summary of those four questions. "What three specific things that you enjoyed and, or believe you did well this week?" Question two: "What is the ONE real challenge for you that if you improved or change would have the greatest impact on your performance, what would that be? " Number three: "What do you want to achieve?" And 4th: "How can I help?" How Can I Help You, Now? Let me wrap this with that same last question. How can I help? I'm really asking this time. I use this approach with every client of mine at the start of every coaching session. They prepare for it with a simple worksheet so that it takes very little time so that we can spend more time on encouraging, developing, guiding, and empowering them. Now, if you're not ready for live coaching, we have a fabulous asynchronous coaching program for this, and you can start a one month trial by filling in the registration, which is linked here. Be greatly blessed. Bye for now. I'm thrilled that you joined me here for this Joy@Work Podcast, as I guide you in the Art and Behavioral Neuroscience of Expert Leadership, so that you can have Joy At Work and your Team has Purposeful Unity of Cohesion and Effort.

Collaboration is when an effective team harnesses the best out of individuals working together and appears to be disarmingly simple: “to work with another person or group in order to achieve or do something” But everyone in the team comes with their own personality, their culture and way of doing things and their own competitiveness, their fears, their concerns and their needs. For successful and fruitful collaboration, the leader needs to help the team be actively engaged in what they are doing, and that they trust one another by setting the groundwork to build a solid foundation and then maintaining it rigorously. Many thousands of leaders have failed to create team unity, trust and engagement through team building courses and enforced jollity of casual Friday or a virtual happy hour. But the buzz from that ropes course wears thin after a few days when your brain recognises that what it wants and needs is still missing. How do we fix that? Well, before we get to that let's check in on what your brain really wants and needs: What Your Brain Wants and Needs: Fortunately, we know that every human being shares a fundamental need for three things in life: The need to feel safe The need to belong to a group or tribe, and The need to believe that they and what they do, matters Getting a team to be actively engaged, to trust each other and collaborate takes plenty of leadership time and effort - so why would you destroy it before it has a chance? Purpose In this guide we'll understand how to build and maintain the critical foundation's of Safety, Belonging and Mattering by Listening Deeply so that the team can trust each other and, with clarity of their own purpose and direction, be actively engaged and collaborate to achieve the desired results. Process We'll look Pat Lencioni's famous work on the five dysfunctions of a team and see how further research shows that Safety, Belonging and Mattering are crucial to your brain and thus to your ability to trust and collaborate. We'll then look at how listening deeply is the ONE missing ingredient that all leaders can do and use to help build the foundations and hence, ultimately, get the results they desire. Payoff When you start to listen deeply you will begin to dismantle any climate of fear or the lack of safety felt in too many organisations. Team members will learn that they can speak up and help the leader build and maintain the edifying climate to guide themselves and other team members towards effective trust and collaboration.

Collaboration is when an effective team harnesses the best out of individuals working together and appears to be disarmingly simple: “to work with another person or group in order to achieve or do something” But everyone in the team comes with their own personality, their culture and way of doing things and their own competitiveness, their fears, their concerns and their needs. For successful and fruitful collaboration, the leader needs to help the team be actively engaged in what they are doing, and that they trust one another by setting the groundwork to build a solid foundation and then maintaining it rigorously. Many thousands of leaders have failed to create team unity, trust and engagement through team building courses and enforced jollity of casual Friday or a virtual happy hour. But the buzz from that ropes course wears thin after a few days when your brain recognises that what it wants and needs is still missing. How do we fix that? Well, before we get to that let's check in on what your brain really wants and needs: What Your Brain Wants and Needs: Fortunately, we know that every human being shares a fundamental need for three things in life: > > The need to feel safe > > The need to belong to a group or tribe, and > > The need to believe that they and what they do, matters Getting a team to be actively engaged, to trust each other and collaborate takes plenty of leadership time and effort - so why would you destroy it before it has a chance? Purpose In this guide we'll understand how to build and maintain the critical foundation's of Safety, Belonging and Mattering by Listening Deeply so that the team can trust each other and, with clarity of their own purpose and direction, be actively engaged and collaborate to achieve the desired results. Process We'll look Pat Lencioni's famous work on the five dysfunctions of a team and see how further research shows that Safety, Belonging and Mattering are crucial to your brain and thus to your ability to trust and collaborate. We'll then look at how listening deeply is the ONE missing ingredient that all leaders can do and use to help build the foundations and hence, ultimately, get the results they desire. Payoff When you start to listen deeply you will begin to dismantle any climate of fear or the lack of safety felt in too many organisations. Team members will learn that they can speak up and help the leader build and maintain the edifying climate to guide themselves and other team members towards effective trust and collaboration. Patrick Lencioni's Leadership Fable about the Five Dysfunctions of a Team should be on every leader's “read it" list. In it, Pat shares how an “absence of trust” feeds a “fear of conflict” (the antithesis of collaboration), which often leads to a “lack of commitment” (aka no engagement) and then “avoidance of responsibility”. Ultimately meaning that there is an “absence of results”. The Five Dysfunctions is brilliant and true. And it's also what is more visible. If Trust is so critically important to a team functioning and hence collaborating effectively, I was more interested in why there was an absence of trust in the first place? My research pointed to the less visible foundations of trust and collaboration - those of meeting the brains three fundamental cravings: Safety, Belonging, and Mattering. Without these in place, there is no trust, without trust, there are no results! And who is actively engaged if they don't believe that they belong and matter? In our Team Leadership AdvantEdge Model, Collaboration and Trust are central to the success and effectiveness of the team - made manifest as “Team Unity of Cohesion and Effort”. (It's the “How to…” for the Five Dysfunctions). Our research into successful teams and organisations over the past four decades shows that this is true only when Purpose and Values, Talent and Potential, Command Intent and Influential Communications are all aligned to achieve that success. But all of these are moot if the foundation isn't properly built and maintained. And that foundation is the sense of Safety, Belonging and Mattering. Your job as a leader is to make sure that everyone (including yourself) feels safe, that they belong to the team and that who they are and what they do, matters. Let me briefly explain that our brains have two key parts as far as we are concerned as this will help us understand what is going on. ### Inner-Child and Smart Brain What some mistakenly call our reptile or more primitive brain - the part that is concerned with the lower essential functions of our survival - what Christine Comaford, aptly calls the Critter brain, I refer to as the Inner-Child brain. And we have our adult thinking brain, or the executive brain, the Neocortex complete with the Pre-Frontal Cortex (PFC) which is not fully developed before age 23-25. Our Smart Brain if you will. Your brain (and the brains of your team members) have one single primary concern: to keep you in the “not dead” state. That is its first and foremost function. It really doesn't matter how high your potential, or talented you are when you are in the "dead" state. When the world around us becomes even a little uncertain, your brain is marvellously designed to allow your “Inner-Child Brain" to take charge of survival (a task to which it is well-suited). In a time of crisis, the “Inner-Child Brain" rules the day until you deliberately choose to intervene using your Smart Brain. On any normal day your “Inner-Child Brain" is assessing the environment asking three questions: Am I safe? Do I belong? and Do I matter? This isn't a once in a while process, it is every minute of every single day. "Am I safe?" is simply checking your surroundings for threats. An "all is well" response allows your brain to relax for a brief moment and if this extends for some time, you will physically relax and your brain waves will slow down. When "Am I safe?" gets the answer: "No" then the amygdalae are brought swiftly into the action, the stress hormone norepinephrine triggers your body to produce adrenaline ready for "freeze, flight or fight". If the threat is not judged to be imminent, the "Do I belong?" question may get out to check on the whereabouts of fellow tribe members. After all, who wants to face a ravenous wolf alone? If there is a wolf, the "Do I matter?" question probably doesn't even get a cursory glance. Every Leader needs a sign on the wall that reads “Safety First”. Because without it, nothing else will really matter. Surely, you're exaggerating, John? Not at all. It's most evident in a time of crisis: A crisis is, by definition, a time of intense difficulty or danger. Even if you experience it only through a social media feed or a news bulletin. Our safety is being threatened in a crisis. And in times of difficulty or danger, we're usually better off with our tribe on our side. At least then we might stand a chance of survival, let alone emerging triumphant and ready for the post-crisis world. A great leader knows this, listens to the concerns of the team, and pulls and energises the team together towards a clear and tangible intended goal. Even when there is no immediate crisis, Safety is the single, most important factor in determining team performance success. As Google discovered in their Project Aristotle. Psychological Safety is the #1 factor in determining a team's effectiveness! Google's “Project Aristotle” sought to find the secrets of effective teams and the surprising finding was that Psychological Safety was, by far, the most important factor that determined whether a team would be effective or not. Dependability (belonging) was #2 and Meaning and Impact (mattering) 4th and 5th respectively. Structure and Clarity was found to be the 3rd factor and that's something we discuss in our Command Intent Guide. Safety is a big deal; it's why we seek committed relationships or high-paying jobs. That's also why it's devastating when spouses leave and jobs are eliminated. Billy Graham Amy Edmondson's research on Psychological Safety bears this out. As did Edgar Schein's research all those years ago in the 1960's! And Dale Carnegie wrote THE book with the answer 100 years ago! That is. We've known for many decades that psychological safety is a critical foundation for team effectiveness, trust and collaboration and yet… Well I have a little news for you. It might be a bit of a shock. Unless you are LISTENING DEEPLY to your team members. They are not feeling safe, that they belong nor that they matter. It's possible they have enough chutzpah and self-love to deal with it and still deliver, but you're not getting as much from them as you could be. I've gotten ahead of myself so let me backtrack: Think about a leader you personally admire Preferably someone who has been a leader in your life, but if that's not possible, how about someone you know well enough, even if they're in the grave. Remember how they made you feel safe. How they made you understand that you were a valuable part of the team. Remember how they made you believe that you truly mattered. How did they do that? Here's my guess after posing this question to thousands of clients and participants: They asked you questions and they listened to you as if you were the most important person** in the room.** Do you do that for others? Do you ask questions and listen to them as if they were the most important person in the room? What about your customers or users? Do you listen to them deeply? Do they feel safe, that they belong (loyal to your brand) and that they matter (their opinions, desires, wants)? What about your bosses? Your peers? Simple, but not easy Asking question and listening deeply as if they are the most important person in the room seems simple enough, but it's not easy. Listening Deeply takes effort and most leaders, most people even, are too lazy to bother and we all have a listening villain. Learn more about your Listening Villain and Deep Listening at Oscar Trimboli's website here. “… as if they were the most important person in the room” And, of course, there is a danger here. I've met more than my fair share of smarmy politicians through life who appear to do just that. They give the impression they are keenly interested in everything that you say, they nod in all the right places, and you open up to them as if they were a real friend. Later, you meet them again and the whole ritual is repeated and you realise that they didn't take in a word. That's not what we're advocating here. Instead you act as if they are the most important person in the room, because at that moment, they are. The best and wisest leaders take on board what they hear and act on it - but that's for another day when you are ready for the whole of the Leadership AdvantEdge. But it's not my job! And true, you might say to me, but John, it's not my job to be making my boss or peers feel safe, belonging or mattering. In fact it's my boss's job to do that for me. Just remind yourself of these corporate failures: VW's emissions scandal Wells Fargo Bank account fraud scandal Nokia's Failure Columbia and Challengers Shuttle Disasters Tenerife Airport Disaster Uber's Record Breaking Scandal History Meltdown at Chernobyl Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster Enron Scandal Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Want something even more recent? Wirecard All are well documented examples of how the lack of open, candid, deep listening by senior leadership at the very top of and thropughout the organisation and created a climate of fear of speaking up - even when lives were at stake. And there are countless others, including (current) Governments and Ministries, who tread the knife edge of disaster with cover-up, sleight-of-hand and obfuscation. If you want to undermine engagement and destroy trust, collaboration and joy@work before it can even dare take root, the answer is so simple that anyone can easily do it by NOT Listening! Sadly, most leaders are already, unwittingly, following that advice. So, if you don't start listening deeply and asking questions, who will? #joyatwork #deeplistening #safety

At this point, you know what your audience Knows and what the Need to know. You've got a handle on their Opinion and remember that they need to be right, and they need to belong and you will be encouraging their positive self-image. But you recall the saying it's not what you know but who you know? In this section we'll cover: 1. Stakeholder Mapping 2. Action Types Stakeholder Mapping Stakeholder or audience mapping uses a simple 2x2 matrix with Low to high power on the vertical axis and low to high interest across the horizontal. Consider the specific individual members of your audience and place them on the grid relative to each other. Include, where appropriate, stakeholders who might not be personally present but sending a representative (aka spy). Your focus in your presentation are those individuals who are most interested in your topic and have the power to affect the change you desire. When you are preparing a sales presentation, for example, it pays to know who is the key decision maker (powerful) and the most interested. Not always the same person! I often find myself presenting to greatly interested people with little power and the person with the actual power isn't even in the room. I think of this as a gatekeeping presentation and once through the gate, I have a chance to pitch to the person with the power. When you have a clear idea about the power and interest in the room, it's time to establish how you call the four different audience types to action. Nancy Duarte says that there are four audience types, each requiring a slightly different call to action: There are: Doers, Suppliers, Influencers and Innovators. - A Doer is someone who instigates activities. You should ask them to assemble, make decisions, gather, respond or attempt. - A Supplier is a person who controls resources. Ask them to acquire, fund, support or provide resources. - Influencers change perceptions. Ask them to activate, convert, empower or promote. - Innovators generate ideas to add value to and spread your ideas. Ask them to create, discover, invent or pioneer. How do you call to action if you don't know their type? Intuitively you can see that these four audience types make sense. When you know your audience well and have experienced presenting to them before, it's relatively easy to pin them down to a particular type. But there will be times when you don't know them well enough. In such a situation, make sure to sow those key action verbs throughout your presentation noting who responds to each, usually shown through greater attentiveness, a smile, a nod or simply paying attention. Note also any of the verbs that appear to fall on deaf ears, you might not, for example, have any innovators in the room. Above all, be sure to establish the audience type for the most powerful interested stakeholder and focus on getting the right call to action to them. Of course, all of this is moot if you don't actually have a call to action Your call to action for this episode is to identify your audience, map them on a simple power/interest grid and work out, if you can, their audience type. I use post-its on a whiteboard (Here's my Blank Miro Template you can use) to help me in planning. And once I have identified the key stakeholders (high power and high interest) I take a little longer to get to find out what they know, and specifically what they need to know and take a little extra effort to understand their opinion and create a call to action that will activate them to fund the resources we need to make the change they need. On that template, you’ll also map your Trust and Respect Matrix actions.

I didn't recognise the number but I was expecting a call and thus began another 5 minute rude interruption. We all get them. We all hate them. And yet companies persist in using telemarketing and tired sales scripts. This one was especially bad. It was someone trying to sell me a meeting arrangement service using LinkedIn. Essentially, they would trawl LinkedIn for (their words) "hot" prospects and arrange a meeting with them for me. I wasn't interested and informed them. But this one was persistent and was unwilling to let me escape. On and on she talked. Didn't want to know anything at all about me, my needs, my business, my opinion on cold call telemarketing, anything about me at all. She was interested in getting through her script presumably to earn a pay check. I gave up being polite and cut the call. I have often wondered if any of such calls ever achieve their goal. I have yet to meet anyone who relishes receiving these cold calls. Purely speculative, scatter gun. And yet, so many of my clients complain of meetings and presentations that they willingly attend where the presenter is concerned only with getting through their script, in spite of the audience's wants, needs opinions and preferences. OK, perhaps "willingly" is a stretch. Grudgingly, then. In the previous sections, we discussed what your audience already Knows and what they Need to know. And how you, as the communicator, need to make sure that you identify your 10% that they really must take away. This time, we are looking at the audience's Opinion and Who they are What is their Opinion? I worked for a client a little recently where the Country manager was having problems with the local leadership team. Technically, the individuals were all brilliant and excellent, they just didn't get along together very well. There was quite a bit of power play going on and inter-department blaming and rivalry was rife. Essentially, they weren't playing well together, and like a football team that doesn't support each other well, they were getting thrashed by the competition. As is often the case in such situations, the team members thought rather negatively about "this soft, fluffy stuff" and that the problem lay with the company's processes and other departments, not their team and certainly not something any coach could fix. They weren't quite ready to instantly change their behaviour... well at least until the other party admitted that they were wrong and changed first. And sometimes it is personal. It's not your role they disagree with, it's you. In these politically correct days nobody says what they think, but they sure do think it. Maybe they prefer a female, maybe you need to be Asian to understand the local culture. Maybe you should be an engineer. Maybe the way you dress is deemed as threatening. Even with a non-hostile audience, you want to know what they think about you and your topic before deciding how to approach your presentation. What do they think of you and your topic? I was enjoying my new position installing computerised tills and stock control systems throughout the central London pub estate for Chef and Brewer. My boss was a great guy and everything was going brilliantly well until he got replaced by an arrogant, opinionated know-it-all, who, quite frankly, understood nothing about computerisation and worse, hated the idea of it. This was the late 1980's and my new boss was determined to halt the technological advance at all costs. Within a month I felt like Sisyphus. Pushing the computerisation agenda up an increasingly steep hill and soon to be crushed by the backlash. I hadn't had time to build any real influence nor win any significant political allies in the organisation and my colleagues soon joined my new boss in undermining and stalling progress. My personal credibility hadn't been established securely enough and without it, I was going to struggle to overcome the logical and emotional resistance that I was convinced were at the root of the problem. Aristotle noted that there were three key forms of resistance in an audience: Ethos, Pathos and Logos. The character or credible appeal of something or someone, the emotional appeal and the logical argument. It is often difficult to distinguish whether it is you or your topic that is causing the problem. Certainly, your personality colours your opinion about the topic. But when you are on the inside, it always feels personal. To give your case the best possible chance of success, you need to establish credibility with your audience, present your logical argument and appeal to their emotions. That is, you need to win their hearts and minds. Notice the word "win" - because in every presentation, yours is just one more voice contending to be heard and acted upon. People do resist change, and anytime that you are presenting you are instigating change. All of your audience members (and you) share 3 basic human needs: 1. To feel safe with a positive self-image 2. The need to belong 3. The need to be right - that they, and their opinions, matter. When your argument makes the audience FEEL that you are picking them out as non-compliant, wrong or simply for being different, then your argument falls on deaf ears. Communication is much more that the words that come out of your mouth! To ensure that your argument stands a chance of being accepted. You need to know what they think of you and think of your topic. And the easiest way to do that is to ask them. I didn't understand all this back in the late 1980's in London. I just bulldozed my project through as best I could. Fifteen months later, I was generously made redundant the day I installed the last pub in the estate.

Have you ever sat in a presentation and successfully listened to everything that the speaker shared, remembered what was essential and acted on the information whilst simultaneously fielding emails, carrying out a chat message and planning lunch and all before a really important client meeting. OK, now in this very short space of time, what do you remember? Not a lot huh? You just experienced cognitive overload. And that was just thinking about those 5 things happening in theory. "That went right over my head! Cognitive overload is more common than you might realise. Cognitive overload occurs when your brain is being tasked with too many things at once or you are trying to process too much information. It happens when you use too much mental effort in your brains working memory to continue effective processing. You may well feel that the words flew over your head. You stopped taking any more information in and tried to clear the backlog. It is also remarkably common. A leader does a data dump of the facts and figures for the quarterly report, a manager relates every little detail of a problem and the presenter rushes through the material either because their time has been reduced or they've taken too long over the early part. Specifically, what does your audience need to know? And I do mean need as an absolute New and Knew One way to help your audience understand is to relate something that they already do know with the new information that you are sharing. New information triggers curiosity, which is something you want to do. But if everything is new, you'll trip over the edge of curiosity into anxiety. And anxiety is something we don't want. Filling your presentation with all things new is like opening photoshop for the first time and being presented with all 300 icons on the taskbar. Or like visiting a strange city for the first time. It's overwhelming. Sure, you'll find your way around eventually, but it takes time. You see what I did there? I related the situation (new knowledge for you) to something that you know already - either you'll know about photoshop and the vast number of icons or you'll have experienced visiting a strange city. And even if not exactly aligned with your knowledge, the two examples provide adequate common experience for you to relate to, or imagine. And that's just what you need to do with new information. Align it with something your audience knows already by using examples, metaphors or analogies. And remember, you only want to include new information if it is something that your audience needs to know. It is not so that you can show how knowledgable and brilliant you are. On top of this, your audience is likely to find 90% of your presentation as forgetable. So what do you really want them to remember? Your 10% Dr Carmen Simon, author of Impossible to Ignore, a neuroscientist and expert in making your content memorable, shares some bad news that your audience typically remembers just 10% of your presentation content. Worse news is the 10% remembered by one person differs from the 10% another person remembers. The 10% that you really want them to remember needs to be identified and then you are going to take control of what they remember. You can do that by noting: - What you want your audience to remember - 3 or 4 points, and - What you want your audience to do (your Product or call to action) Now we are clear what our audience knows already, making certain that we recognise our own curse of knowledge and taking care with our assumptions. We are also clear about what they need to know, avoiding cognitive overload, aligning the new with the knew and identifying the 10% of our content that is essential. But do they care at all? We need to understand the audience's opinion. Let's wrap here for now and prepare you for the next part: Opinion. In the next section we'll talk about Opinion and then get deep into the Who of your audience. We'll consider their power and interest, how they might resist, and the four audience types you will choose specific actions or products from your presentation.

What do they Know? Let's start with asking what do your audience already know about you and your topic? There are two extreme dangers here: 1. Assumptions and 2. The Curse of Knowledge You see I carry a curse. A curse of knowledge. Just as you do: The Curse of Knowledge! I attended a networking event recently where someone was sharing about Bitcoin. "Bitcoin is a type of digital currency in which encryption techniques are used in a blockchain to regulate the generation of units of currency and verify the transfer of funds, operating independently of a central bank." Yes, but what is it? I don't fully understand Bitcoin. I don't get how you "mine" them and I don't appreciate how they can be worth more than $10,000. And I'm a geek! I feel utterly stupid when someone who does know, speaks down to me as if I really should know and it turns into a crushing sense of hopelessness.And that's not a great place for your audience to be. jill and colleagues peering into empty skull.png When someone assumes that you should know something and you just do not. They look at you as if peering into your emptyheadedness with disdain. Sure, I'm biased and think of Bitcoin as eTulips and a bubble that will hurt a lot of innocent people, but I'll come back to bias when we discuss the audience Opinion. I know quite a lot. But I don't know Bitcoin, Blockchain, Etherium and now I've heard that there's one based on organic bananas. My knowledge may be similar or utterly different to your own. You have your jargon, and I have mine. The only time we have a real problem is when my jargon makes no sense to you. When I assume that something I know is common knowledge. Tappers and Listeners Here's a terrific little experiment that you can do later today with a friend or family member to truly understand the curse of knowledge. Firstly I shall tap out a very well known song - this of course only works well if you are listening to the podcast, if you're reading this, it doesn't work :-) I'll tap out this well known song and you guess what it is.   Easy right? Wrong. If you were to ask someone to do this and estimate how quickly people would guess the song title correctly, you might guess at the commonly agreed 20 or 30 seconds. And the real answer is that roughly one person in 20 will guess correctly and that after 3 repeats. - and those are usually "lucky guesses". So, you try this with a friend or colleague. Tap out "Happy Birthday". Oh, well now, of course, you recognise the tapping. It's easy now. Because now, the tune is humming in your head AND you hear the tapping in time. Previously, you only heard tapping. The problem is that I cannot unknow what I know - it is humming along in my head as I share. I cannot remember what it is like to not know what I know. And of course, I think what I know is easy. It would have to be easy if I know it. But maybe, just maybe, it is not as easy or obvious as I think that it is. Just like Happy Birthday ain't so obvious when all you hear are tap tap tap tap tap tap. (Interesting by the way, now that you know that it is Happy Birthday, you heard it immediately!) And when someone does not know something (especially something that colleagues appear to know), they may feel intimidated and that may just shut down their attention and choose the ostrich manoeveur, or worse, they may get defensive and disrupt your presentation by heckling. To avoid making bad assumptions and the curse of knowledge, you must find out what your audience already knows. And a terrific way to do that is to ask questions.

If there's one complaint I hear about a leader’s skills from their boss or their HR, it's that they don't adjust their communication for their audience. And yet those leaders genuinely believe that they do adjust for their audience. So who is right? Well, they're both correct of course. The presenter thinks they are adjusting but they don't really KNOW their audience. What about the audience themselves? What do they think? Sadly the audience don't have an opinion because they stopped paying attention and moved onto other, more exciting things like thinking about lunch or updating Facebook. To capture their attention and motivate them to act, you have to get to KNOW your audience If you want to capture the attention of your audience and take some sort of action as a result of your Communication , you need to get to KNOW your audience and present to them as if it were tailored exclusively and entirely just for them. Because you will have done just that. Below, I share how you get to KNOW your audience so that you capture their attention and motivate them to do the things that you want them to do. You can take it one step at a time But first, let me introduce you to a oft-practiced technique that is guaranteed to do the opposite of knowing and engaging your audience: The Ostrich Manoeuvre Politicians are especially good at this manoeuvre. Be sure to look down at your notes most of the time and read the speech prepared by some flunky in a monotone. Remember to look up at any random audience member and plaster a fake smile on your face. I am really an introverted person. Maybe you don't believe that because you've seen me run a workshop or speak at a conference. But when I first started out, I was terrified that I was going to look like an idiot, that I would forget my words, lose track and generally do a terrible job. So I adopted what I call the Ostrich Manoeveur, a technique that essentially guaranteed that I would successfully look like an idiot, forget my words, lose track and do a terrible job. The Ostrich Manoeuvre is a favourite of insincere politicians and leaders, frequently seen in after-dinner speeches and boardrooms. It is very easy 2 step process and it is guaranteed to make you look really bad. 1. First, please make sure that you stand behind a podium and place your written script on it. If there is no podium available, then turn your back to the audience and read your slides instead. 2. Step 2 is read your script, preferably in a monotone and rarely, if ever, make eye contact with your audience. This works brilliantly well to show your audience that you do not know your content well enough. That you don't practice because the audience doesn't deserve your effort. And it shows the audience that you could care less who they are, what matters to them or even if you are in the right venue. You will have seen someone using the Ostrich Manoeveur as long ago as yesterday. Perhaps you used it yourself. I understand, I much preferred to read a script than dare look at the audience and witness the devastating effect my appalling presentation was having on them. The better you KNOW your audience the better you can engage them If instead, you would like to engage your audience and make an impact then it will greatly help if you KNOW your audience, that is: be able to fully answer four key questions: 1. What and how much do the Know already? 2. What do they Need to know? 3. What is their Opinion? 4. And, Who are they? You'll notice that the keywords here make up the KNOW acronym: Know, Need, Opinion and Who. Easy to remember.

“There are no such things as wrong turns, Only paths we never knew we were supposed to take.” Proverb AdvantEdge Coaching is about change “Change is the only constant” goes the refrain. There would be little need for coaching, training, mentoring, counselling or any development if people were happy to stay the same as they are now. Being coached by someone is all about being empowered, equipped and enabled to change. Coaching empowers people to find new jobs, work through transitions, enhance performance, build better relationships, make wise decisions, transform organisations and reach new spiritual levels. Coaching is about establishing a vision of the future and reaching goals. When coaching is successful, it’s about bringing and maintaining change. But coaching is more. We also help people determine what needs to stay the same in times of constant flux. We encourage our clients to stake out their core values, established strengths, basic beliefs, ethical principles and lasting relationships that remain firm and provide an anchor to their lives. Coaches are both change agents and constant agents. Coaches help people see what needs to change and what needs to remain constant.   Change is difficult!   Let’s start by recognising the obvious: change is difficult. Going on a journey with people through change can be challenging and exhausting. Bringing sustainable change is even harder. Most people resist change even when they see the need and believe it can occur. The owner of the first hotel I managed was just 40 when he suffered a heart attack. His lifestyle, booze, food and a lack of regular exercise were contributory factors but prior to the heart attack, there were no significant symptoms. Life was good, then BAM! He was on the floor in agony. He survived. His doctor told him bluntly that he had to change his diet, give up alcohol, smoking and take up regular exercise. Change or die! A stark choice. And one that many people face. Initially, my boss came out of hospital ready and eager to take this advice seriously and changed everything that was harming his health. It wasn’t easy for him, but he stuck with it and now enjoys a slim, healthy life retired and sailing around the Mediterranean. Yet, in the US alone, some 90% of heart bypass patients can’t change their lifestyles, even at the risk of dying. It’s not surprising then that changing people’s behaviour in business is a challenge.   How people face change   People respond to change typically in four different ways depending on their personalities and past experiences: - Innovators – who value change and often try to make it happen. - Embracers – who thrive on change and accept it with enthusiasm, sometimes without thinking too much about it. - Acceptors – who initially resist change but eventually go along with it because there is no alternative. - Resisters – who may not even notice the change, deliberately ignore it or be so overwhelmed that they push it out of their awareness. Some even deny any need for change and refuse to budge an inch. People usually lean towards one of these responses. There’s some excellent news, though: simply because you are reading this, you are likely to be an innovator or embracer. If you are reading this reluctantly, you’re an acceptor. And those who aren’t reading this well, they’re the resisters (but, of course, they won’t know that because they didn’t read it!). #joyatwork #trivia  

On Becoming All That You Can Be I vividly remember my school Term Report from my Art teacher: “John shows no potential whatsoever for Art.” I knew that I wasn’t any good at Art, not in any conventional sense anyway, but this hurt. I was 11 years old. I put my aspirations of being the next Andy Warhol on hold and only dared take up cartooning at the tender age of 55 when I found a great teacher. Huh! Seems that I did have some potential after all… or was it the teacher who lacked potential? Potential as a noun means “latent qualities or abilities that may be developed and lead to future success or usefulness.” As an adjective potential is: “having or showing the capacity to become or develop into something in the future.” It’s important to be clear because potential often gets confused with “Talent” and, mixed up with drive, ambition and confidence, and possibly worse, gets confused with high academic grades. Potential is much more than just knowledge or the ability to score well in exams. > ### Purpose > In this guide we’ll consider what are the components of potential so that we can distinguish between them and choose to develop those that will provide you the greatest chance of succeeding in your endeavours. > ### Process > I’ll introduce you to the components of potential so that you can #UnStuck those areas that are holding you back. > ### Payoff This will provide you a roadmap to UnStuck and develop your true potential to achieve your success in life and work. When I was growing up, like you, parents, teachers and other adults perpetuated a myth that if I did well in school that this would enable me to go to a good college or university and thus get a good job. “Doing well” in school meant getting ‘A’ Grades. Anything less, was not so good and would, inevitably, mean I was doomed for some sub-par career and less success. Personally, I wasn’t that bothered. I looked at all these adults with their ‘”successful” careers and saw how miserable they were - that wasn’t the type of “success” that I was after. I’d rather do something I enjoyed, found meaningful and was good enough to earn a decent living. These decades later and I see the myth perpetuates that good grades equals high potential. And competence and competency are often confused with confidence, drive and ambition and other qualities or capacities like confidence, connections and money are often deemed more important than abilities in determining if you are “High Potential”. The Components of Potential Your True Potential is much more than how much knowledge you have. Through our extensive research over the past 4 decades, we’ve identified six significant components of Potential that individually, and together, make a difference in your future success: KnowledgeWhat you know and ho much you know Skills and AbilitiesWhat you can do both technically (competence) and behaviourally (competency) Relationships (and connections)To whom you are connected, who you know, and who knows you. ResourcesWhat resources you have access to including money. Time, andHow well you manage your time and prioritise > #### Place Where you are in the world and what access you have to other places The importance other people place on each component determines how they perceive your true potential! There are other elements of who you are that do matter to some people that can play a critical role in their perception of your potential including your race, ethnicity, and nationality. Your gender, and your Religious affiliation. These may be prejudicial biases, however, they remain a real factor of how some people perceive others and their potential to perform and be successful. It’s not “What You Know or What You Do, its Who You Know!” I heard this first from my Godfather - who had been a Captain in the British Army. I’ve heard it many times since, and I’m sure that you’ve heard it many times. We hear it a lot because it rings true to our experience in life. It is a sad reality that there are a lot of leaders in all sectors of society who appear to lack the skills and abilities to lead or manage well. You’ve almost certainly had the pleasure of working for such an organisation. These individuals are often held out as examples of people with “high potential”, often because they managed to score very well in some school or university exams. More often because they are wealthy or connected to someone higher up in the organisation or related to someone important in society. For some, it’s because they are adept at the skill of “politicking” and choosing to build the relationships that will (and do) further their career. For others, they were simply at the right place at the right time. Is this fair? Not for anyone who hasn’t been blessed with being born into the right family in the right place with the access to those relationships, wealth and the best schools etc. But you can develop your potential in all of these areas. But the phrase isn’t quite correct: It’s not “What You Know or What You Do, OR Who You Know!” - it’s “Who Knows You!” Back in the day, it was the “Old Boys” network - if you were in, fantastic. If you were not, tough. And you might think that this is dead and buried (or should be) - not so fast young Padawan. It’s alive and well. I’ve sat in on many senior management meetings where an open position is being discussed and the question raised is rarely: “Who has the right knowledge and skills to be the best candidate for this position?” The question presented is along the lines: “Who do we know who…” If you want that position you need to be known (by the right people). If you want to be successful in that position - you will also need the knowledge, skills, abilities, resources, relationships, time and be at the right place. Before you embark on your Great Networking Goldrush It’s easier today than ever to become known - even instafamous. Though perhaps being known for being known isn't quite what we’re after - known in professional circles should be the ticket… In the early Noughties began the great networking rush. BNI had been founded by Ivan Misner back in the mid 80’s. Freemasonry began way back in 1717 but it was the launch of LinkedIn in 2003 that made networking accessible across the globe. 2004 saw the launch of FaceBook, 2006 heard the first tweet. Connections, followers or friends became king. However, having thousands of connections to virtual strangers is only useful if the right connections know you and, critically, remember you when that opportunity is presented. And more often than not, you’ve previously done something for those individuals. I call such people my “butlers” - as in the butler or cup-bearer in the story about Joseph in Genesis 40—41. I continue to be shocked when I hear from an old connection who's been out of contact for a long time busy with their successful career, ‘suddenly’ reaches out - asking for work or an introduction because they've lost their job. So here's a great tip, if you want others to help you when you may be in need, help them now while you can and keep in touch regularly. Walter Winchell: scandal master, on a life philosophy: “It pays to be nice to the people you meet on the way up, for they are the same people you meet on the way down.” Getting a job at HQ Many of my coaching clients over the years embarked on their coaching, in part, to prepare them for getting and keeping a prized role in their company headquarters. They already posses the technical knowledge, skills and abilities to get to here to their current level (they have a high TQ or Technical Quotient) - this is what got them to their current position. They often have some key MQ and LQ that helped to get them here. But to get there, they need something more. And in particular, they need to be known for what they are capable of doing now and in the future by the very people who will be determining that future. That is, they need the right people at HQ to know them and respect what they are capable of being, and to trust that they will look even better for backing this person, and that the organisation will benefit. In short, you need to be purposefully strategic in building and maintaining your relationships. The Paradox of Potential I've seen this in many organisations and governments. The “brightest and best” are identified by school or university grade score as part of the “High Potential” pool - there's some fanfare, a suite of training programs, perhaps MBAs are taken and the “HiPos” are promoted. Meanwhile, the non-high-potential morale has sunk, many have quit or actively seeking new positions, commitment has dropped and performance suffered. The HiPos, being (initially) highly driven (and very well paid), take this upon themselves and make up for the loss, working extra hard and many burning out. There follows a new initiative to regain the work-life balance and a big drive to retain High Potentials. The non-high-potentials (C grade average) meantime have found new roles in more forward thinking and egalitarian organisations - or founded a possible unicorn and look to hire good workers: People who can read well, memorise well and test well and follow process… that would be the “A” Students. The “B” Students end up in the government because the government don’t want free-thinking creative visionaries in what is essentially, an admin job. And they can’t afford the “A” students… Why “A” Students work for “C” Students and Why “B” Students work for the government wrote Robert T. Kiyosaki in his rich man's guide to education for parents. Potential is not (just) good grades! Nor is it (just) your skills and abilities. Now is it (just) relationships, nor (just) how well you manage your priorities and time, nor (just) what resources and money you have at your disposal. And nowadays, with virtual and hybrid working becoming normal’, your location matters a lot less. Your true potential are the latent qualities and abilities you have that can be developed for your future success. Your true potential is a simple case of knowing and aligning what you have now that can be developed, and what you want to be doing in your future success. Developing Your Potential Being purposefully strategic in building and maintaining your relationships is not the only area you need to focus attention. It is critical in this world, but all of it is moot if you lack the skills you need to be successful in your chosen future role. The first step is to know where you are now and where you want to be. We have some tools, assessments and techniques we use to help our clients and I’ll be sharing some of these with you in How to UnStuck Your True Potential #joyatwork #tales

Most people, most of the time, allow life to happen to them. “Life is difficult” begins M. Scott Peck in the ‘70s classic “The Road Less Travelled”. What remains most surprising, is that, for many people, this is a revelation! If you are alive, and get out of bed today, there will be a challenge for you to face. Something will happen that you will either: Choose to do something about and take action, or Find that you have to do something about and react. And your choice at this point matters a great deal. Purpose In this guide we’ll consider how critical it is to make a good choice in response to the many varied challenges we face every day. How easily we can get trapped by “Effect” and the two enemies of our mind into a spiral of anxiety and fear or be at “Cause” for ourselves and our life. Process I’ll introduce you to the two cycles of Being at Cause, and Being at Effect. We’ll examine the two enemies of our mind and debunk some brain myths about emotion that will put you, and your brain, back in a sense of control. Then we’ll consider a couple of powerful Neuroscience hacks that you can employ immediately to choose to be at Cause. Payoff At your next challenge or obstacle you face today, use one or both hacks and begin to feel that locus or sense of control. This will immediately give you an extra flush of dopamine and serotonin which will make you feel great. More importantly, you'll know that you are not at the mercy of your emotions and on the road to victorious living. Your choice in the face of every challenge matters: In the first - you choose to take action knowing that there is (or will soon be) an obstacle or challenge that you will need to overcome. You may need to experiment and keep on approaching the obstacle until you get your desired result and celebrate your victory. All the while, you are learning how to better tackle future challenges. You have chosen to be at CAUSE for your life (this part of it, anyway) and your have adopted a growth mindset. In the second - you will confront the two enemies of the mind: “What if”, and/or “If only“ “What if” is your fear of the future. What if I’m wrong? What if I make a bad decision? What if I fail? “If only” is your regret of your past. If only you had paid attention the last time/at school/to your coach. If only you had more skills/money/connections/friends/lovers. Fear of the future means that you like to avoid obstacles just in case you fail (again). Regret of the past means that you adapt to go around the obstacle because you (believe that) you lack the resources necessary to succeed. Either way - your results will be less than you desire - so you’ll probably blame yourself or someone else, be disappointed and adopt a survival vision of life because life is indeed difficult and you are at EFFECT in your life. When we are at EFFECT, it’s easy to excuse our own choices. After all, history proves our point and we are at the mercy of our feelings, and everyone knows that our primal emotions are easily triggered. Only they’re not! Time to debunk some flawed theories about emotions Since Darwin in the 1860s theorised that our human brain evolved from lizards and MacLean’s triune brain in the 1960s - the popular theory is that our emotions are triggered in the “lizard” brain (from the outside world) and this determines our actions and choice. It may be popular and compelling, but it’s wrong, and neuroscientists have known this for decades. Our emotions aren’t “triggered” in our “Lizard" brain (nor the Limbic system!) Actually, our brains make predictions (constantly and continuously) about what is going to happen based upon our personal experience in and through life. These predictions, based on concepts constructed on the fly from internal sensing networks (our interoceptive network) and from our perceptions of what is happening outside (proprioception). The groundbreaking book “How Emotions are Made” by Lisa Feldman Barret, tells the detail of Constructed Emotions and is a must read for a complete understanding of this (it's also available on my favourite book site: Scribd.) In it, you'll also have the notion that there is a universal recognition of facial expressions with specific emotions blown away. This construction of our emotions does happen extremely quickly and we are most often unaware that we are in fact constructing emotions because it is beneath our conscious perception - but we can attune ourselves to better notice and thus interrupt any rapid response with deliberate thought and choice. Having turned the conception that emotions are triggered and not under your control on its head, let’s just turn you inside out whilst we’re here :-) Barret’s book provides the detailed neuroscience behind this but it’s best summarised in Malcolm Gladwell’s truly excellent: “Talking to Strangers” (if you haven’t had a chance yet, do get the audiobook - it sets a new standard for audio books.) as the “Friends Fallacy”. If you watch an episode of Friends with the sound off, you can easily deduce what's going on and how each character feels in the scene. The actors blatantly and with exageration display the “universal” emotions on their faces and bodies. Only there are no “universal” signs and many people deliberately hide their emotions (in real life). That is Darwin's theory and more importantly for anyone arrested by the police or FBI in the USA, Paul Ekman’s theory of universal expressions of emotion, are wrong. The next time you see someone frowning or curling their lip, don’t be too hasty to jump to conclusions about their feelings. What this means is that you (and I) need to choose how to respond to situations and other people. Heck we need to choose our reactions to what happens inside of ourself. We need some control. ### A Christian thought sidebar As a born again Christian and behavioural neuroscientist these new findings fascinated me. Interestingly, Lisa Feldman Barret is culturally Jewish but a self-proclaimed atheist and in parts of her book disdains the idea that we are created in God’s image with a spirit or soul, claiming that Darwin put paid to that idea with “the evolution of man”. Meantime, the research points out that our brains have not evolved from a primate or lizard as Darwin suggests. Fabulously though, the idea that emotions are constructed and that all our thinking can be brought under control (captive to the obedience of Christ 2 Co 10:5) implies that we do have free will. Whereas the disproven theories that our brain makes a decision based on emotional triggers BEFORE we are conscious of it seriously undermined the realisation of free will. The Book of Proverbs is filled with wisdom that shows us how to make better choices in life. As does Ecclesiastes and the oldest book in the Bible, Job. And Christian’s know that we can cast all our cares and anxiety on Him (1 Pet 5:7). It seems that neuroscience is slowly catching up with the truth of the Bible :-) How can I choose if I’m not in control of the situation! There are many things in life that you are unable to control. Everything outside of you! Everything inside of you is within your control. Sure there are some things that happen inside that at this moment you cannot control - for example, I had a massive heart attack on July 4th 2014 at 11:33 in the morning. I wasn’t able to control it at the time, that is true. “If only” I had taken action earlier to prevent it: never smoked that first cigarette, eaten healthy, kept fit, maintained weight, not eat fatty foods, avoided undue stress. Choices have consequences and bad choices tend to have bad consequences. Now I make better choices. You’re not in control of your boss’s mood when you need to spend more on a project, or delay an order, or miss the monthly target. But you can choose a different approach toward them that might work. You cannot control the storm clouds spoiling your wedding day but you can choose to have a tent on standby just in case. You may think that you cannot control your stress or anger in the moment, but you can. It may take practice and it may take a moment or two, but you can. What we need is a sense of control Psychologists refer to this as a problem of your Locus of Control. This is the belief that you, as opposed to external forces (beyond your influence) have control over events in your life. Being at Cause is having an Internal Locus of Control, whilst Being at Effect, is having an External Locus of Control. Become aware of how you tend to view situations and ask people who know you well. Two quick questions for you: Do you tend to blame everyone and everything else for every misfortune or do you tend to blame yourself? Do you think that everything good is because you are brilliant (and in control) or do you attribute success to others? Be especially aware if you think everything successful is because of you and every failure is someone else’s fault. Going Beyond Resilience and Well-Being Organisations and HR teams talk a lot about improving resilience and well-being these days. The enforced virtualisation of work in 2020 and the slow emergence of the hybrid workplace is costing a lot of mental stress. Resilience gives you the capacity to deal with ongoing stress, adapt efficiently to changing situations, cope with work and ‘bounce back’ from setbacks. When you are in a state of wellbeing at work, you’re able to develop your potential, be productive and creative, build positive relationships with others, and make meaningful contributions. Choosing to be at Cause is the inflection point of these critical abilities. When you choose to be at Cause, you are choosing to use your creativity to experiment with possible solutions to overcome obstacles or challenges, improving your personal wellbeing by learning each time from success and failure and, resiliently, trying an alternative solution until you achieve the desired results. To reinforce your choice, celebrate! Even a quick fist pump, and secret nod to yourself will give you an extra dopamine spike and that will help you consolidate your learning and memory of what works well and what doesn’t work so well - further enhancing your wellbeing and resilience. Choosing to be at Effect (and it is your choice!) is the moment you have decided that either your fear of the future or some regret you have in your past has already decided your future failure. Thus you avoid obstacles or adapt until you somehow get beyond them and achieve less than desired results. Repeat this enough and your resilience melts away and your wellbeing turns into sickness and chronic disorders. As I say - it’s your choice. And the choice you make matters a great deal. OK, so how do I do it? I’m going to share two super neuroscience based brain hacks that will give you the power to choose to be at Cause - if not every time, then most of the time. They are AdvantEdge Hack #2 - The Secret Power of the Pause, and AdvantEdge Hack #3 - Who’s Your Caddy? There are five steps and, with practice, the first 2 will take you about 4-5 seconds. Steps 3-5 perhaps 3 to 5 minutes. Step 1 is to become aware that you are facing a challenge or obstacle and reacting to it. You may say, John that’s obvious… well sometimes it isn’t. You’ve seen something, heard something, felt something, tasted something or smelt it. To do Step 2 you need Hack #2 - The Secret Power of the Pause. You’ll find the details of the hack in the link (and the neuroscience behind it. So pop over there and come back when you’re ready.) Step 2: Take ONE deep breath. As deep and long as time allows. Yes, your brain may well be ahead of you already. After all, it’s busy predicting what’s going to happen next and you are already adjusting your body budget for the predicted future - adrenaline to run or fight, a dose of cortisol, some cytokines to fight pathogens, increased heart rate. That’s all OK, because all of this activity needs energy and it needs more oxygen. Simultaneously, you are exerting a little more control of your brain’s choices and thinking about them. Step 3. Choose to be at Cause for your response (even if you choose to react and avoid the obstacle, you are choosing, though please do reflect on your choice and consider if maybe, perhaps, there might have been a better way. Which leads me to Hack #3 - Who's Your Caddy? Step 4. Follow that link and learn about this tremendous tool to improve your decision making. For now. Whether you chose to take action and overcome the challenge, or you chose to react and avoid or adapt, now is the time to branch back to Cause.Reflect on the situation, reflect on your choice, consider what happened from: Your own Point of View The POV of the other party (most challenges do involve another human.) A third party who is connected to the challenge, and A fourth - external, person you consider as your mentor, wise coach or just someone you respect and admire. Learn what they advise you to do (all in your own perceptual mind this!) Step 5. Rinse and repeat Pausing alone will change your life, by the way. And yes, this is a process that others call ‘mindfulness’. Do it often. Before long you will steadily shift to being more at Cause for your life and choices and other people will begin to take notice. They may even ask you what happened to you. Teach them this and one day the world will be filled with people who take responsibility and accountability for their lives and the lives of those around them and the world will be a much better place to be living that life. You’re on your way to #JOYATWORK

I’m going to explain how performance is unleashed using the AdvantEdge Potential to Performance System model. Performance happens when three things are aligned at the same moment: Your Potential, Your Drive and a Trigger. The Model You can visualise this model has two dimensions. The Vertical axis is your level of Drive to perform an action, and it can range anywhere from high drive to no drive. The horizontal axis is your Potential to perform an action. Also a continuum. On the right side is high potential making this action easy to perform. On the left side of this axis is low Potential or hard to do. Consider a simple example. Suppose you want someone to donate money to a Stray Dog Shelter. If they have high drive and it is easy for that person to do, they will be in the upper right corner of the model. When a person is triggered here to donate, they will donate. They are in the productive zone. On the other hand, if someone has low drive to donate to the Stray Dogs, and if it’s hard for them to do, they will be in the lower-left corner. When triggered, that person will not perform the action. They are in the procrastination zone. The Action Line There is a relationship between drive and potential. This curved line is called the Action Line. If someone is anywhere above the action line when triggered, they will perform the action. They are in the Productive zone. In this example, they will donate to the Dog Shelter. However, if they are anywhere below the Action Line when triggered, they will not perform the action. They remain in the Procrastination zone. If someone is below the Action Line, we need to get them above it for the Trigger to initiate action. Either, we need an increase in Drive, or the action needs to be easier to perform, or both. In Summary This models applies to all human performance. When Drive, Potential and a Trigger come together at the same moment, that’s when performance will occur. If any of the three elements is lacking, then the performance will not happen.

Benefits of AI in Talent Acquisition   A recruitment partner based in Shanghai told me that they now typically receive 260 (new) applications for an open position in a large company. The hospitality sector garners more than others: in Manchester, UK almost 1,000 applied for a receptionist job in a single day in July 2020! You can understand why there is rising excitement from recruiters looking to use computer technologies and Artificial Intelligence to sift through those applications. Feed the AI 100 resumes and out pop the top 5 candidates. Or at least that the utopian ideal. [todayonline.com]. In theory, an AI could reduce the time to sift through applications and, without bias, identify the candidates with the right set of attributes and skills and experience and qualifications that the position requires. These candidates could be tested remotely using psychometric tools, games, activities, or simulations that demonstrate their fit for the role. And video interviews of candidates answering a series of questions could be parsed, transcribed and analysed for spoken content, nuance, body language. But will it accurately get the meaning behind the words used? Automated bots, machine learning or full-blown AI, the promise of time-saving, unbiased, more accurate recruitment is alluring for many companies. Would you use an AI to recruit talent for your team?   Will your talent pass the AI test?   What’s it like to be rejected by a computer then? Several mid-career professionals, most of whom have been retrenched thanks to COVID, others at the end of a contract or project or business collapse. All experienced, well qualified and willing to work, are finding it increasingly challenging to find suitable employment. Most have at least 100 applications “out there” and an average of 4-5% hit rate for getting an interview. Most of those get tested using a psychometric or one of the growing number of AI personality or skill tests. Then they hear crickets. Nothing. Nada. Rien. Zip. A few have been on several rounds of interviews. Then… silence. A month or two later they rediscover their letter box and the letter we all love to receive: “Dear Mr Smith, We’re sorry… We’ll keep your details on file…”  No explanation. No suggestion as to why you weren’t chosen. And if you ask and get a response, it comes on the lines of: “… a better candidate…” Yes but what was wrong with me? Enough of these and even the most zen have been known to crack. With no honest feedback, no test results, no guidance towards other, more suitable roles available. Of course, there is the occasional celebration. “We are pleased to offer…” Interestingly, most candidates don’t ask "what was right with me?? Rejection is tough to bear. Would you prefer to be rejected by a human or a computer? “Judge not, that you be not judged.” NKJV Mat 7:1 And HR is already behind the curve when it comes to the real-world application of AI. It is possible that AI could have a transformative impact on talent attraction, retention, and development according to McKinsey. And the biggest value an AI-enabled HR team can provide to a business is improving employee performance.   Recruiter or Candidate?   I have a couple of questions for you at this point: 1. Would you use an AI system for recruitment for your team? 2. Would you like to be a candidate being assessed by an AI?   Trouble in AI Paradise   The system is flawed now. Add AI to the mix and you get a flawed system run by an AI. I added one word to my LinkedIn profile recently and suddenly had a deluge of "suitable" opportunities. I had stumbled upon one of the keywords that the LinkedIn boffins included in their Qualified Applicant Artificial Intelligence model for these roles and now, it seems, the combination of skills and experience match more vacancies. So I reached out to a few LinkedIn Profile Makeover specialist to get their take on keyword stuffing on profiles (sorry, they prefer to use "optimization"). And yes, of course, you can get your profile made-over quickly and easily to better match the jobs and openings on offer. There's even a couple of AI powered software platforms that will do this automagically. But isn’t that trying to cheat the system? Well, let’s face it, many CVs are a fiction of fancy job titles, mega responsibilities and fantastical achievements. If I know or suspect that a keyword is being used by the Applicant Tracking System then I make sure to include it on my profile. (BTW If you're after a 2021 tutorial on this have a look at Daniel Lorenzo over at Let's Eat grandma. Also, tips to help your resume stand out in the age of AI from Today)   But the promise of AI is that a computer isn’t biased! Surely that’s a good thing?   Online retail giant Amazon didn't agree. In 2018 it was widely reported to have scrapped its own system, because it showed bias against female applicants. The Reuters news agency said that Amazon's AI system had "taught itself that male candidates were preferable" because they more often had greater tech industry experience on their resume. Amazon declined to comment at the time. Prof Sandra Wachter, a senior research fellow in AI at Oxford University concurs that ”So in recruitment, looking at the successful candidates of the past is the data you have. Who were the chief executives in the past, who were the Oxford professors in the past? The recruitment algorithms are going to pick out more men. Amazon's computer models were trained to vet applicants by observing patterns in resumes submitted to the company over a 10-year period. Most came from men, [todayonline.com] There are significant challenges for AI systems according to James Meachin of UK business psychology consultancy Pearn Kandola is a specialist on the recruitment sector. He says that AI systems still have a number of challenges. [bbc.com] "The first step in selecting candidates is to correctly parse what they have said or written," he says. "On this basic level, leading voice assistants from Google, Amazon and Apple still routinely fail to understand what people are saying. "If an AI system can accurately transcribe what has been said, the second - greater - challenge is to detect the meaning embedded in those words, the semantics, nuance and context. Here, AI systems can fail to understand. In contrast, a human listening to the conversation will intuitively understand what is meant." In Europe, the potential for bias with AI has come under great scrutiny, particularly since GDPR implementation. “Bias in AI is well known.” [talentguard.com] Talentguard go on to say that Bias is the Achilles heel of Talent Management solutions that employ AI in any form or fashion For a robust research paper on this, check out Why fairness cannot be automated: Bridging the gap between EU non-discrimination law and AI.pdf   Fix the system and AI can add serious value   AI is not the panacea for many of their most challenging talent management problems. It's impossible for AI to fix the flawed system it is modelled upon. When your LinkedIn profile is a true and accurate reflection of who you are, what skills you have and your experience (so, nothing like a typical CV then :-)) AND the recruiter has truthfully and accurately identified the skills and experience required of open positions, then recruitment with the help of AI could be a boon to both recruiter and recruited. According to McKinsey, when you take humans out of the hiring process and you’re using fundamental aptitude versus tacit knowledge that we’re testing for, that actual ability is very evenly distributed across society. That's a promise that AI can help remove bias throughout the employee life, from recruitment through reward, performance, promotion, development and compensation. For example: using an automated bot to better guide applicants to positions they are suitably qualified. The goal is to make sure that every candidate or employee is hired based on what they can do and their potential for learning as they pursue an aspirational role. Once you apply and give access to your (honest) profile data, the AI then matches candidates who have those skills with open positions. The biggest value an AI-enabled HR team can provide to a business is improving employee performance. AI can enable HR to apply and scale learning and support in new, highly-personalised ways, well beyond traditional training courses. Though most organizations continue to perceive workplace learning as programmatic and focus on building and delivering courses. Many of the more famous Talent Assessment companies now have an AI version of their psychometric tests. Some are true AI, many use machine learning, more are automated bots. The trend is there and the market huge. But if you eliminate candidates solely based on the results of a behavioural profile (especially with norms established 50 plus years ago on a largely Caucasian US Male base) - then your AI is going to be programmed to miss an awful lot of real talent too.   Can AI identify “Talent”   There is great potential for AI systems to identify true talent and the core values and attributes that make for your ideal team member. Tired of seeing the abuse of DISC, MBTI, Big 5 and many others, years ago, we developed our GAPPS Assessment to help identify strengths and weaknesses of someone’s Attributes, Abilities and Agility. Unlike other tools that show how you measure up to the average American, GAPPS  results are benchmarked against a subset of “successful” individuals in the same department or role, same cultural or country context and same organisational level. This enabled us to identify if someone is likely to be successful in a particular role, and if there were some gaps, how these might be bridged. Many people disliked their results at first because, if they had seen previous test results, they usually see how magnificent they are. GAPPS is honest and shows how you compare with successful people in your field. Would you rather be benchmarked against an average person or one who is successful? Critically, every person taking the GAPPS assessment receives feedback and coaching. This means that, when used in recruitment, a candidate gets feedback on their strengths, weaknesses and development priorities for a specific role. In the event they were less suitable, the system helped identify roles, cultural contexts and organisational level that may be a better fit for them. Can an AI spot those words? Great coaches and interviewers have known this for centuries - they probe without judgment when needed to uncover hidden gems buried in a candidates unconscious memories and help them to find out who the real person is behind the protective mask. We have found that talents and strengths, values and attributes can be uncovered in the stories we tell about ourselves, not in that work of fiction we call a CV. It’s the stories of significant moments in life from an early age to recent events. In our feedback coaching we help candidates uncover their stories which helps interpret their GAPPS scores in light of their experiences, their real talent and attributes. Put simply, we use discernment and wisdom gained through years of experience to help guide candidates on their best path that supports their prospective employer. Even when a candidate is rejected for a role. They speak highly of the employer because the experience of their assessment and coaching was valuable to them. Some candidates went off to gain the experience and skills they lacked, others were recontacted when more appropriate roles becomes available. Team collaborated more readily because everyone on the team knew their strengths, weaknesses, and leveraged each others true talents. Can an AI do all that? The only real stumbling block that I can see is that AI has no wisdom or discernment. Other than that, if we build on a good foundation of practices, processes and data, AI can help HR a great deal. If you build it on the current, largely flawed system evident in most organisations worldwide, you’ll have a flawed AI version of the system. Want to learn how GAPPS can help you recruit the right talent, build collaboration in your team and improve the bottom line? It’s not a true AI, but it comes with something far superior: the wisdom and discernment of Human Intelligence.

What is Talent Really, Anyway? #UnLock Your Talent Everyone wants talent, but what is it? Talent: Individuals seek to develop it. Companies want to identify and retain it. Succession planners search for it. Politicians plan for it.  The world wants it. There’s even a war for it. But what is it exactly? The word “talent” is bandied around for so many things, and we don’t always truly understand what is meant by “talent”. This is a real problem because over the centuries, the term “talent” has morphed and become a floating signifier and become a reference to something beyond real life. Something indefinite and indefinable. So when organisations, Human Resources and leaders spend large sums of money on “talent” in “talent management” or “talent development”, neither they, nor we, truly know what they mean or to what they refer. Why does this matter? What if you have a pink pill that makes your work almost effortless, yet simultaneously fulfilling. Every moment at work you are in the zone. You're flowing and your performance is so good, and your productivity increases and you are more engaged with your work and with your colleagues. The company who made that pink pill would be worth gazillions and businesses would be clamouring for their workers to take this magnificent drug, so they could profit even more and keep staff happily employed and engaged for years to come at higher wages with shorter working hours and greater productivity. Well those pink pills would be flying off the shelves faster than a speeding bullet. That’s the promise and advantedge of leveraging talent. If we’re going to be seeking it, identifying it, retaining it, planning for it and spending large sums of money on something so critically important to our future success — shouldn't we know what it is? So, to the trusty dictionary… Talent: innate mental or artistic aptitude (as opposed to acquired ability); less than genius. Terrific, and what is innate? Innate: existing in one from birth; inborn; native: innate musical talent. Now, my core business is neuroscience based coaching for behaviour change, so if talent cannot be acquired or developed … Better find a better definition… Talent: natural ability to do something well. That nasty word ‘natural’ Natural: based on the state of things in nature; constituted by nature: Growth is a natural process. The Thesaurus, always illuminating, and find ‘talent’ associated with words like ’ability’, ‘adeptness’, ‘adroitness’, ‘charisma’, ‘facility’, ‘gift’, ‘knack’, ‘wisdom’, ‘gumption’, ‘capacity’, ‘brilliance’ and ‘genius’ It seems that you are either born with a talent or not. No acquiring a talent, using it certainly, but if the foundation is not there… Companies seek ‘talent’ for succession planning, as do politicians. It is most often associated with leadership or management ‘talent’. Companies are also hooked on retaining talent. And surely that’s right, once you have talent in your organisation, you really don’t want to lose it. Many, inspired by a Mckinnsey article in 1997 “The War for Talent” took this to extreme, indulging ‘talent’ and doing everything they could to keep them engaged, satisfied, even delighted. Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, wrote an article in the New Yorker magazine in 2002 entitled “The Talent Myth”. By then the whole ‘War for talent’ was under a dark, ominous cloud called Enron. The McKinssey article had, after all, been largely based on what Enron was doing at the time and how everybody should emulate it. The trouble is that ‘talent’ is most often ascribed to the very brightest, highly motivated individuals who are very driven. And being bright (intelligent) does not, necessarily, mean talent. Being ‘driven’ is not the only criteria for success. Time for a little etymology (a fancy Greek based word for the history of a word). Talent is most often ascribed to first being used in the Bible. The Hebrew term for "talent" was kikkār, a flat, round gold or silver disk, or circular-shaped loaf. In the Greek language, the word comes from tálanton, a large monetary measurement equal to 6,000 drachmas or denarii, the Greek and Roman silver coins. (Etymonline) A person with a talent of Gold (even today) would be considered wealthy and successful. At USD60,000 per kilo in 2021 and a talent weighing around 35 kilos… that’s a couple million USD. “talent “ in the late 13th century meant "inclination, disposition, will, desire," from Old French talent (12c.), itself from Medieval Latin talenta, plural of talentum "inclination, leaning, will, desire" The Medieval Latin and common Romanic sense developed from figurative use of the word in the sense of "money." Meaning "special natural ability, aptitude, gift committed to one for use and improvement" developed by mid-15c., in part perhaps from figurative sense "wealth," but mostly from the parable of the talents in Matthew 15.14-30. It was John Calvin, according to Paul Marshall in his book A Kind of Life Imposed on Man: Vocation and Social Order from Tyndale to Locke, helped shape the modern meaning of the word talent by his revolutionary change in the interpretation of the parable of the talents. Calvin defined the talents as gifts from God in the form of a person’s calling or natural ability. For the kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country, who called his own servants and delivered his goods to them. And to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, to each according to his own ability; and immediately he went on a journey. – Matthew 25:14-15 (NJKV) If the concept of talent has its roots in measurement, power and success, then why is evaluating and measuring talent a concept business leaders struggle with? Is it simply just the idea of having the most talent that lends to creating and growing a successful company? The history behind talent and our inability to effectively measure or assess talent is irony at its finest. What if talent isn’t innate? Earlier we learnt that talent is something you are born with. There is no acquiring it or developing it. Yet, in his hugely popular book “The Talent Code”, Daniel Coyle challenges that: saying that greatness isn’t born but grown. It’s not a gift but something that you develop with deep practice, ignition and master coaching. Talent, according to Coyle, is to do with the myelin coating of the neurons in your brain. The more you practice a skill, the thinker the myelin sheath and the faster those neurons fire, making the whole process increasingly effortless. When you practice something, you repeatedly send electrical impulses along neural circuits in your brain. This triggers the development of myelin around the nerve fibres. Thicker myelin allows faster and more precise responses, until the skills seem automatic. They look like talent. I have to agree completely with Coyle (heck I am in the development business right). Many experiments in neuroscience have shown that repeated practice of specific skills increases myelin thickness, which means that the signals process through those fibres are faster and have less noise or interference - thus the good data gets through more often first time and your response is faster. It’s like the plastic coating on the electrical and communications wires in your home and office. This means less energy used by the brain, and less deliberate, conscious effort. Enough practice and (this is where I diverge from Coyle) your skill adeptness looks just like talent. So much so, that people will call what you are doing “talented”. Of course, they don’t see the years and hours of deep practice that you somehow achieved “overnight”. I like to use the Conscious Competence Learning Model to show you how this works. In this model, there are four stage of developing competence in doing something: We begin a new skill as Unconsciously Incompetent. That is, we don’t know how much we don’t know. As we learn, we become increasingly aware of how much we don’t know. We become Consciously Incompetent. We persevere through this frustrating period and practice in safe environments until that glorious day when we become Consciously Competent. We know that we know. We continue to use the knowledge and skills we know well and keep on using it until one day, we are so good at doing it that it’s completely “natural”, it feels effortless because we’ve reached Unconscious Competence. If asked how they do what they do at this point, most people reply: “I don’t know. I just do it.” This skill and it’s knowledge has become deeply ingrained and no longer requires any conscious thought or effort on our part. It looks exactly the same as a “talent”. A “talent” on the other hand is a giftedness that you have. It’s something that you do without having had to practice or learn. You will have little if no idea about how you do it. It’s what Mozart had at 4 years old when he sat before a piano for the first time. It’s a gift. It’s deep practice. Do the semantics matter? I think it matters a whole heap. It’s what happens when what looks like talent gets labelled as something it isn’t. I've seen this in many organisations. The brightest and best are identified as part of the “talent” pool – there’s some fanfare, a suite of training programs, perhaps MBAs are taken and the “talent” are promoted. Meanwhile, the “non-talent” morale has sunk, employee engagement has plummeted to new lows, many have quit or are actively updating their CV and LinkedIn Profile seeking new positions, commitment has dropped and performance suffered. The “talent”, being highly driven, take this upon themselves and try to make up for the loss, working extra hard and many burning out. There follows a new initiative to regain the work-life balance and a big drive to retain talent. Check out Billy Adamson’s 2016 paper published in Philosophy of Management for a comprehensive and rigorous debate on the vital importance of knowing what talent means. I do believe that we should identify talent because it can be the key to unstucking your true potential and unleashing your performance and sustaining it for the long term. And it is only when you are employing your real talent that you truly shine. All is well with your soul because you are using your gifts, your work is almost effortless and fulfilling. Every moment you are in your flow zone and your performance is astounding. Your productivity increases and you feel truly engaged with your work and your colleagues. You just took the pink pill. When it's the result of deep practice, master coaching and ignition. All the above may be true for a time, even a long time. But eventually, it seems that the thrall pales as the ignition moment fades in memory and you begin to wonder what it was you loved so much to make you practice so deeply for so long. Organisations spend a long time and vast sums on managing and developing and retaining “talent” and miss something critically important. Which is: Everyone Has Talent! Everyone, you, me and Bob next door, all have talent. You might not know what your talent  is yet. But I can assure you that you do have a natural giftedness for doing something. It will be something that you do exceptionally well and you, almost certainly, thoroughly enjoy doing it. Or at least, you used to enjoy doing it. The problem for most people is that they no longer have the opportunity to do what they are talented at doing because, in and of itself, it doesn’t pay the bills. After years of research in developing and evaluating competence and competency and working in the talent management and development field, teaching, training and coaching I conclude that talent is your natural giftedness to do something. You may not be using it but everyone has talent! The skills and abilities we develop through deep practice are a component of our potential. They can be developed such that they closely resemble a talent. To do that we’ll need to UnLock your talent to UnStuck your potential. Sure, there are some people who show greater abilities than others. But all three servants were given the opportunity to grow their talents according to their abilities. Maybe your natural talent is something that is valued in this world, maybe you’ve had to pivot, adapt and do something that you can do well enough but is far removed from your talent, but it pays the bills. What if I told you that you can find and use your natural giftedness by UnLocking your talent and leverage the process to your advantedge, that you can do so effortlessly and well, in a completely different field? One that you do almost effortlessly, find fulfilling and engaging and does pay the bills. How much would that advantedge be worth to you? We call it the AdvantEdge Potential to Performance System and I’m happy to share details about how it can work for you and your team.

It’s What Success Looks Like   Purpose The world is filled with fear and trepidation about the future. Staff are concerned for their jobs and what the future holds for them. World leaders have proven themselves to be uninspirational through being indecisive, divisive and destructive. So staff are looking for a leader who will inspire them and lead them forward into the future. This guide aims to help you be that leader. Process We’ll look at some of the problems and how you can inspire your team through creating a vision for the future and leading out loud. Payoff You, your family and your team will be inspired of a future aspiration. Something to hook into hope and belief and direction. At the beginning of this great remote working experiment in early 2020 it was quickly apparent that organisations were ill-prepared. Many caught up quickly and started using the video-conferencing systems they’d been toying with for years. Fortunately, a lot of us live in homes with incredible high speed fibre connections, though many more do not enjoy such luxury.  Even if the organisation had a workable plan for business continuity, staff floundered as they tried working from home for the first time and leaders struggled to lead remotely through zoom. Something was forgotten. Organisation and political leadership were ill-prepared for this experiment. Old ways of working and communicating were simply moved into a virtual environment that required something different. Many leaders have learned and improved their virtual presence tremendously well though belligerent exceptions remain numerous. Now, as we enter a new year, and a shift that brings a tiny shred of hope with approved vaccines, there remains a huge gap in leadership. There are few with a vision for the future. The vague promise of a return to “normalcy” is constantly interrupted with country after country, particularly in the west, being forced to implement yet another lockdown as another wave of infections defies the desire to enjoy a social life and political office holders desperate to cling on to the populist vote. Hopes are dashed daily and any sense of control or a future remain elusive.   The richest and wisest man to ever live told us why nearly 3,000 years ago:   Where there is no vision, the people perish. Proverbs 29:18   An unclear vision causes three things: division, indecision and destruction.   Division: An unclear vision causes division. No-one has a clear path so everyone heads in their own direction, choosing whichever path suits their personal agenda. When a country is in chaos, everybody has a plan to fix it. But it takes a leader of real understanding to straighten things out. Proverbs 28:2 (MSG) Indecision: Without a vision, you’re just drifting through life, you’re just existing and surviving. No-one makes decisions because no-one knows where they are heading. Without a vision, you have no purpose, no goal, no plan and no meaning. Life just happens to you. You waste time and miss opportunities. You’re coasting and when you’re coasting, as you know, you’re heading downhill.  Destruction: Division and indecision inevitably lead you on the path to destruction. Without clarity of vision, at some point, you’re going to hit a dead end and crash.  However, having a vision requires work. It’s why a lot of people don't have a vision. We need to take some time to reflect, meditate and think and see things clearly. Seeing with eyes of faith and not with eyes of fear. People will say when I See it then I'll believe it. When we see the world through eyes of fear and all we see around us is chaos and confusion, we’re likely to fall into four traps: Trap 1: We will tend to overemphasize the negative. Our brain is auto-tuned to look for problems and threats, and the media in all forms loves to feed those fears. Trap 2: I pay too much attention to what other people are doing and develop a scarcity mentality where the pie isn’t big enough for everybody. Trap 3: I underestimate the abilities God has given me. Seeing through fear makes me underestimate the abilities I have and I start to doubt if I am good enough. Trap 4: I spread a bad report undermining any vision. And now I want to go back to “normal” ... A prior time… when all was good and comfortable and easy... When we look with eyes of faith, the real leader will create the future they want to see in their mind's eye, they hear it, and then they speak it - they choose the future reality they want to create. Then, they go to work on it and start to lead out loud.   A vision without action is a fantasy Vision is the final quality in John C Maxwell’s The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader, and without vision, you can’t lead. He says: “You can’t buy, beg, or borrow vision. It has to come from the inside.” Your vision for the future starts as an aspiration. Something you aspire to achieve. And achievement requires action. If you procrastinate at this point then fear is taking root and beware the traps I mentioned before. Fear of failure is the most common. Fear of not being good enough, fear that you’re too late to the party and so on. Overcome that fear (and procrastination) by taking one small first step. You can use the SWING process that I shared before in the Proven Hack to Inspire Hope and See Good Days. Start by telling yourself the vision. Make sure you say what you will see in the future (with your eyes), what you will hear (with your ears), what you will smell, taste and feel. Speak it out loud and alone. Keep repeating it until you know that this is the vision, that it is clear.  Then tell one trusted friend. Ask for their help to hone your vision, make it succinct. Make it understandable to a child or a grandma. Reiterate until you both believe in your vision. Truly believe. Write it out and practice repeating your vision out loud until you know that you are fluent. Then tell your inner circle, out loud. Watch how it lands and ask for their input, revision, honing. Keep refining until you get that crystal clear, succinct, direct, sensory image that everyone gets excited about. Then say it, repeat it. And keep repeating it. Don’t ever stop repeating it.  Won’t people get bored of it? Keep repeating your vision. Won’t I get bored saying it? That’s a problem. Can you choose to not be bored? What about the HOW we will do it? That’s the job of your mission statement, it’s important and your next job. Casting Vision is about establishing and communicating Command Intent - or what success looks like. It empowers team members to strategically improvise in a dynamic and chaotic environment. Some great examples “To be the world’s most loved, most efficient, and most profitable airline.” Southwest Airlines Empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Microsoft “To create the most compelling car company of the 21st century by driving the world’s transition to electric vehicles.” Tesla “Video communications empowering people to accomplish more.” Zoom “A world where everyone has a decent place to live.” Habitat for Humanity “To provide access to the world’s information in one click.” Google "Our vision is to be earth's most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online." Amazon “delivering happiness to customers, employees, and vendors.” Zappos   A vision works best when it is filled with purpose,  Bland, awful and rubbish Vision statements "We recalibrate brands to broaden awareness, reframe global positions and re-connect with core customers. Our business is to help you form relationships and effectively engage." Edelman "Pragmatic disruption of the status quo." W2O Group “To Maximise Shareholder Value” More companies than you can count.   Casting Vision Right now, employees everywhere are concerned for their future. The pandemic has taken a toll on business and the economy everywhere, and they know that. The longer leaders keep quiet, the more the rumours spread and fear digs deeper roots.  Many leaders I work with too are concerned for their future. They don’t know what’s going to happen any more than anyone else. Everyone’s guessing right now. By the way, we were always guessing, but the future looked quite bright, and we all believed that we could impose some sort of control over the future. Now we know we have no control at all. But if you’re a leader (even if you only lead you) it falls to you to take a lead into this unknowable future. If you’re going to lead your team out into the future, you need to inspire them. It’s not enough that they have a job and should be grateful. Remember, now that almost anyone from anywhere in the world can do your job and theirs also means that they can do other jobs anywhere else too. And it won’t be the rubbish staff who leave first. Take heart that great employees are drawn to inspirational leaders, and to inspire you need to cast a vision, you need to aspire and speak it out loud. And you can do that. With your vision, your team will be inspired and empowered to strategically improvise in this chaotic and dynamic environment and create the success to which you, and they, aspire.   Learn more about our Casting Vision Module.

Trust is a fickle thing. It's been likened to a bankroll in your pocket. Each time you earn someone's trust your bankroll gets a little larger. You keep on demonstrating your trustworthiness to people and your bankroll slowly but steadily grows. When I do this in a live example in workshops, I give the volunteer the money, and they give it back to me, most often the smallest bills first. Then one moment, you breach their trust. In the live test in a workshop, immediately the volunteer demands the big bills back. And that's how trust is lost, greatly and at once. It takes a lifetime to build trust and a moment to lose it. Regaining trust after a single breach is very difficult. The other party is even more wary. Cheat me once, shame on you. "Cheat me twice, shame on me." Trust is about how we deal with uncertainty. Even when I have proven myself trustworthy to you time and time again, over many years, there is always a remnant of uncertainty. Heck you aren't even completely certain that you can trust yourself! Our ability to choose to trust another person is an emotionally driven choice. Paul Zac's neuroscience research into what makes trust in the brain clearly demonstrates that the neurochemical oxytocin is a precursor to trust by the conscious, deliberate actions. When I am uncertain whether I can trust or not (and I am always uncertain), oxytocin is stimulated in the critter brain if I recognise you and like you. If you have proven trustworthy before, there is more oxytocin produced. I am then prepared to trust. Then there is a delay, sometimes imperceptible, other times prolonged as I search my smart brain for confirmation. Dependent on our history of trusting, I will then choose to trust without certainty. Collaboration can happen now.       Two choices, to trust without certainty or to shift the burden. Which do you choose? When I am uncertain and perhaps I don't know you at all, or only a little. I might know you, but not like you. Less oxytocin is stimulated in the critter brain then I may choose not to trust you just now. I'm on the defensive, protecting myself from the consequences of action. At this point I re-define the task and shift the burden away from trust - probably blaming you at this point. There's very little chance of collaboration now. This is all quite normal and something we learn in our early childhood. Who can we trust and to what extent. Sometimes we get burned and that causes us to re-evaluate all of our relationships. Yes, the consequences of breaching someone's trust can significantly impact how that person chooses to trust anyone else in the future or not. The bigger issues arise when one party has chosen to trust the other, whilst the other party has chosen to re-define the task and protect themselves. There's almost no chance of collaboration ever again. Leaders only have to breach trust once to enjoy the unintended consequences and fallout. To lead a team to continually collaborate is living in a world of trust without certainty and always proving your trustworthiness as a leader. It requires the leader to demonstrate trust with uncertainty and do so unfailingly, every day. It's living life on the edge of uncertainty.

Purpose: Trust has flat-lined in recent months, thanks largely to the lack of physical interaction. Plus the small detail that this pandemic has massively damaged the global economy threatening jobs and business survival. And without trust, there's no chance of collaboration (in spite of all the wonderful tools to support it) even though we need to do so now more than ever if we are to rebuild our businesses, the economy and lives. In this edition, we'll consider why our brains have decided not to trust others and what leaders can do to rebuild the essential foundations that make trust, and hence collaboration, truly possible. In the next edition, we'll build on these foundations and learn how to leverage the four collaboration styles in the team. In the third of this series, we'll be asking if your technical excellence is holding you back. Payoff: By understanding what is happening in the brain, leaders can deliberately rebuild the essential foundations of safety, belonging and mattering that every human being craves unconsciously before they are able to trust others and begin the needed collaborative partnerships that will set you in the road to recovery and the ability to thrive in the future. This year has taught us a lot. We've learned that Zoom's mute button can be a best friend or worst enemy, toilet paper is more precious than gold, and no matter how independent we think we are, as Dr John C Maxwell tells us: One is too small a number to achieve greatness We need to work in teams and if we don't promote true collaboration we undermine our potential and erode the best efforts of the people with whom we work. If we want to accomplish anything significant, we must learn how to build trust and effect collaboration. Getting team members to trust each other and collaborate is difficult enough when we work in the same space together. When the team are scattered across the globe, and we communicate through the Interweb it creates an even bigger demand on team leaders to make it work. As I've shared in several recent episodes of the Leadership AdvantEdge, trust has essentially flat-lined in 2020. In large part it's because the virtual world debilitates our mirror neurons and hence our empathy takes a holiday. I miss the signals of your body language either because I can't see them or the delay makes them incongruous. This amps up the stress hormones. And your vocal inflection is flattened by the audio compression, so I can't quite tell if you were serious in what I heard as a curt response. And I cannot see your hands let alone reach out and shake yours firmly and assure your frightened unconscious Critter brain that I'm not carrying a weapon and no, I don't intend to eat you for lunch. You say, don't be daft John, of course I don't think you're going to eat me for lunch. And that's exactly the problem, you don't THINK it because it's not a conscious process, but your Critter brain is continuously verifying the data and that's simply exhausting. Working in the virtual world is more stressful, filled with massive miscommunication potential, flat, boring, frightening and exhausting. And there's more... We've all lost a sense of control, we have no idea when, or even if, this is going to end, and we can't do half the things we want to. Everyone is concerned for their job security, health, family, bill payments and the list goes on. But wait. There's some good news. And it's not the untested vaccine which may or may not have a chip inside that is going to give Bill Gates total control over your life... The good news is that leaders can rebuild the trust and collaboration needed to not just survive, but to thrive. And that leader is you. Whether you have the job title matters not a jot. Leadership is a choice you make, not a position you sit. All we have to do is fix three things to rebuild the foundations that make trust and collaboration possible. Cultural Foundations of Safety, Belonging and Mattering that make trust and collaboration possible Every human being (every single one) craves three things: We all want to feel safe, to feel that we belong to a tribe or group, and we want to know that we matter in this world. The wise leader knows that these three have to be fixed before they can expect team members to trust one another, let alone collaborate. For me to trust you in my team I have to feel safe with you, and that we're on the same team. And you need to feel safe with me, that we are together in the same team. And we both need to know that what we are doing individually and together actually matters. Remember that your brain's primary job is to keep you in the "not dead" state. You have to take care of your physiological needs, food, shelter, water, reproduction and then, your brain is free to focus on your three primal drivers: Am I safe? Do I belong? And, Do I matter? And since we crave these three things: safety, belonging and mattering. Trust and collaboration cannot happen until I know for sure that I am safe, that I belong and that I matter! Trust has been seriously eroded in the virtual world, but, as humans, we have a secret weapon - our smart brain! My feeling less than safe is because my Critter brain is getting flooded with stress chemicals, mostly cortisol and norepinephrine (adrenaline). It's a pretty constant state of low-level stress induced by the environment (the concerns about the outside world and the paucity of appropriate feedback in the virtual world). Trust in Uncertain Times describes the neuroscience of trust and how fickle trust is for the human brain. Three ways leaders can help re-build the feelings of safety, belonging and mattering is by over-communicating it. Honest and truthful communication about the future being a safe and better place. Not hiding pertinent information or glossing over real concerns — address those concerns openly and candidly always focused on what you, as a team, can and will do about it. If your future is not going to be a safe or better place, you should be candid and honest and clear about what the future holds. Everyone already knows that you don't know for sure and misleading people now will lose trust forever. But maybe, just maybe, one or more of your team might think of a pivot strategy and turn certain doom into possibility and hope. And if I can't have better and safe for sure, I'll take hope for a better future any day. Increase the sense of belonging by bringing people together and making sure that everyone, every single person, is included by name. Using names matters in the real world and more so in the virtual world. Don't know their name? Stop hemming and avoiding... ask them. Admit you were an eejit for not knowing and correct the situation. Recognising individuals (again, by name) and specifically what they have done and how that helps towards the goal and purpose, will improve their belief that they matter and what they do, matters. Don't know something specific. Observe them and make a note. If it's too late, ask them what have they specifically done that deserves recognition. It's nothing like as powerful but it will do in the interim. Remember, these are feelings or beliefs are triggered in large part by a reduction of cortisol and adrenaline, and an increase in dopamine and serotonin and oxytocin (See Trust in Uncertain Times for more details). These are influenced by your communication. If your situation is particularly fraught with anxiety, then practice (and teach) the Astonishing Power of the Pause with the deep breathing exercises to reduce cortisol. Only by rebuilding the sense of safety, belonging and mattering can you then rebuild the levels of trust and gain the synergies of collaboration that you are going to need to thrive in the future.

You're Biased! Now, before you go off in a huff and rant against my assertion do, please, let me explain. Everyone has biases. Actually, you have to or else your brain would drain all of your energy.         H2H Interface - Pride and Prejudice Purpose To highlight the top 10 cognitive biases, shortcuts and heuristics seen active in Leaders so that you are aware of the likely common unconscious bias in your own decision-making and behaviour Process Check through each of the top 10 biases and identify those that you are aware may be greatly influencing your thinking. Be ready to use the Secret Power of the Pause to reflect on every decision and thought process to make better, less biased decisions. Payoff Being aware of your own biases will also make you aware of others – not to fix them — that is NOT your job. But to be aware and make sure that you re-frame your communication and be prepared to challenge unwarranted assumption or faulty thinking – with love and kindness, of course. Prejudice is one example of cognitive bias that is most often a preconceived, unfavourable opinion about another person or group. It enables you to judge another person almost instantly based on very limited data. Which is very efficient but often seriously flawed. Yet, we all have them. Blame your parents, upbringing, society, politicians, culture, race, language, tv, Hollywood, the Interweb, FaceBook… whatever you like, you still have biases. Some are potentially helping you make better, quicker decisions, others could be, and almost certainly are, undermining your true potential. Your brain hates ambiguity and it's willing to take shortcuts to remove it from the situation. If there's insufficient information to go on you will use what is available and unconsciously fill in the blanks from your memories and beliefs until you recognise a pattern and come (jump) to an internal representation. The list of cognitive biases that have been identified is incredibly long and grows monthly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases and I've come across 10 repeatedly in my coaching with leaders that could really use your conscious attention now. In his fabulous book, Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman shows that your brain works using two different systems, 1 and 2 (yeah, terrific names ;-)). System 1 is fast thinking – mostly unconscious, prone to biases and errors and can be exploited by others to influence your responses and choices. System 2 is slower thinking but more reliable and it is supposed to monitor System 1 but often it doesn't bother when it's feeling a bit “lazy” or it's overloaded. Your brain is programmed to minimise effort and System 2 requires more effort and energy, hence, System 1 runs the show by default. And therein lies the problem. What biases, shortcuts and heuristics have you grown and developed over your years of life and experience that aren't being monitored by you. You just carry on with your day allowing your faster, unconscious System 1 to get you through today and might not even see the trail of destruction left in your wake. Over the past 30 plus years, I've worked with a lot of leaders, and the biases I've seen most in action can undermine your potential career as a leader and sabotage your success. They were all useful for you at some point along the way, but many have outlived that usefulness and could do with an overhaul and a serious upgrade. From this group of top ten biases, which do you immediately realise that you have operating in some way? Now, become consciously aware that you may be prone to making decisions using these biases, and using the secret power of the pause you can now hold onto your tongue just an extra moment or three. Is there something that you might be missing here? Is there a possible alternative viewpoint? Have I considered all the angles? And test your new decision in a different frame. How does it feel now? Oh, and please do not concern yourself that you are taking time to think and be silent. Your audience is already beginning to think that you could just be the wisest person they know, and they are about ready to listen.   My internal state and physiology, my behaviour and actions are determined by my internal representation of the external event. Consider the biases here and note those that you now notice that you hold and check your own thinking each time that you come across situations that may involve the use of this bias. Use ✋ The Secret Power of the Pause to interrupt your unconscious thought patterns and deliberately assess your thinking. Adjust your response and behaviour as needed. At the beginning, don't fret too much about your physiology, that will have already happened, but eventually, you will overcome your bias and perhaps, create new ones that serve you better. by Dr John Kenworthy Coaching for Leaders Who Want Results – developing you with the skills and confidence your need to thrive and be a better leader. Book Your Discovery Call Now

¿How can we use Neuroscience to become better leaders? (function (d) { var js, id = "genially-embed-js", ref = d.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) { return; } js = d.createElement("script"); js.id = id; js.async = true; js.src = "https://view.genial.ly/static/embed/embed.js"; ref.parentNode.insertBefore(js, ref); }(document)); Critter brain and Smart Brain Let me start my explaining that our brains have two key parts as far as we are concerned. What some call our more primitive brain - the part that is concerned with the lower essential functions of our survival - what Christine Comaford, aptly calls the Critter brain. And we have our thinking brain, or the executive brain, the neo-cortex. Our smart brain if you will. This part is the human part. It's where we think about thinking, it's what separates you and me from the apes. So how can neuroscience be used to become better leaders. There are two big problems when it comes to developing leaders: 1. Change is hard Firstly, the lack of transfer into the workplace because change is hard. We don't like to change because it is uncomfortable. Indeed, why should I change at all? I've succeeded thus far doing it my way, why should I change? We resist changing. Our defenses go up because we see anything new or different as a threat. Or at least our critter brain considers this as a potential threat - so my stress chemicals are already in production and already shutting down my choices because I'm not really thinking (consciously) with my smart, executive brain, I'm using my critter brain. I'm focused on survival. As soon as I'm out of that training or coaching, I can go back to being smart again. Make a safe place So coaches and trainers must ensure they create a safe place in their training or coaching. One that allows the critter brain to stay alert, but relaxed. Not defensive or protective. Then the smart brain inside each one of us can be engaged. And, since it's a safe place, I'll try this new behaviour out. Maybe it will be useful in the real world. 2. The world is not a safe place The second problem is lack of transfer because the real world is not a safe place without distractions and pressure. IRL the pressure is on and we default back A trainer or a coach can show a leader how to behave in a given situation. But back in the office or on the factory floor, the pressure is on and your brain's "natural" behaviours will dominate how you respond. driving My favourite example for leaders concerns a situation where even the very best people turn into monsters. Now, I'm going to say that you are a very nice person. Gentle, kind and you would be forgiving if I made a small error. If, on the other hand, I accidentally forgot to indicate and swerved my car into your lane, directly in front of you and took your space in the traffic. You might transform for the kind, gentle, forgiving person into the incredible hulk. Driving is a high pressure, dangerous situation. Your critter brain is acutely aware of this fact. Your nonchalant, I've been driving for twenty years "smart brain" is deceiving you. Anything, and anyone who dares to remind your Critter brain about the serious dangers, causes the critter brain to raise the stress level - with some people, to DefCon 7 EAT less, ATE more TEA Knowing what is happening is both a comfort - it's not me, it's my neurochemicals. And, it helps coaches and trainers understand what is actually happening inside the brain when we ask someone to change a long term habit and how to transition this new behaviour into the workplace world of high stakes and high pressure. ¿What is a Neuroscience (brain) hack? A work around to make your mark in a simple way. But simple is not always easy. #2 Astounding Power of the Pause A hack is a work-around that enables you to easily choose a specific way of responding to a given situation, or to achieve a particular solution. It is not necessarily the very best way to do something, but it is typically a quick route to the desired solution. One of the most powerful hacks I share with every client is AdvantEdge Hack #2 - The Astounding Power of the Pause. It's incredibly simple but that does not mean that it is always easy to do. Most leaders, for example, have a habit of speaking a lot, and listening a little. They might interrupt others, or they might speak their mind., The power of the pause is to STOP, breathe and think. It takes a bare second or two. Then the leader listens more deliberately. Thinks clearly and then may choose to respond with insight. What this hack does, in the main, is not change the thinking at all. It merely interrupts the self-talk, the processing that is happening inside the brain just for a brief moment to re-engage the pre-frontal cortex of the brain. The smartest part of the smart brain. ¿How would you define the Virtual Leadership Game? The Virtual leadership game is how effective you are, in a highly competitive and fractured world, at encouraging, inspiring, engaging, and challenging your people whilst you are physically separated. It's how you can win in this competitive, fractured and broken world How to Inspire, motivate, challenge, lift, encourage, engage, direct, elevate and edify yourself, your team, your business. ¿How are leaders currently playing this "Game"? No empathy or emotions Mirror neurons Am I safe? Do I belong? Do I matter? Proprioception - size and distance Stressed, exhausted, tired, uninspired, hopeless We want our Leaders to elevate hope in our lives. And they're not doing that And they communicate very poorly in the virtual world. They have no virtual presence. Talking head. The biggest problem is due to the fact that human beings are social creatures. We work best in groups or tribes. Most of our communication with others is unconscious. We feel empathy for others because we can sense that they are sad, for example, or joking, or they are serious. The words haven't changed, but the body language, tone of voice and the tiny facial expressions are different. Unless the other person is a decent actor and can deliberately express their emotions clearly and accurately, we can't read their emotions. Plus, in the virtual world I can't see you well. Even with a good high definition video - I usually don;t see all of you. And I especially often don't see your hands. And when I don;t see your hands, my critter brain is having a small panic attack. What of she has a weapon hidden there? Am I safe? Not sure. Do I belong to this person's tribe? Not sure. Am I safe? Still not sure. and so on, every moment of every conversation. And if I can't quite trust you (not to have a weapon concealed there) my stress levels are on a constant state of alert. Add onto that the fact that the size of your head indicates to my brain that you are about 4 or 5 meters away, yet, you are incredibly close to my eyes. Your head should be much larger than that. Are you near me, or far away. Do I need to shout so that you can hear me? Yes, probably, because you must be further away, so I raise my voice. And my brain is in a constant state of questioning where you are. Now my smart brain is overriding all of these concerns. Of course you don't have a weapon. And you are in fact, some 20 thousand miles away, and I know that, because I'm really a lot smarter than my critter brain. Yet still, my critter brain is awash with stress chemicals and lacks the nice cuddly feeling of some oxytocin (the neuro chemical associated with love and trust) and I have very little dopamine, (my happy chemical) because, well, my brain's NOT HAPPY! In truth. working virtually, even with the incredible technology we have available is exhausting our brains. And top that with the naive assumption that since I am not traveling to and from the office, I have a lot more time available to fill with yet more virtual meetings that exhaust me even more and achieve, for most people, far less than a live, in person meeting would. Because live and in-person - my critter brain is working for me, not against me. In short, most leaders are playing the virtual leadership game very badly. They are limping around the field, half dazed, exhausted and have 70-80% of their communications ability stolen from them. The virtual world is filled with misinterpretation, rumour, gossip and fear. ¿How can brain hacking help leaders become masters at the Virtual Leadership Game? Empathy has flatlined Mirror neurons reminder body language, nuances, subtle signs (video delay). ambiguity, lack of direction and purpose and uncertainty about who should do what. Compensate with CPR Clarity. WHAT I want, specifically. Command Intent Purpose. WHY I want it (and WiiFM) - Simon Sinek - Start with why Responsibility. WHO is responsible to achieve this (by WHEN). Because... The first thing that brain hacking can do is help people understand why they are struggling in the virtual world. It's all in the brain. Our mirror neurons don't work well in the virtual world. So I'm not feeling how you feel about something, that is I have no empathy. Now, if we know that the virtual world strips most of the emotion out of our interactions, we can choose to make up for this. If we know that the chances of being misunderstood because there is little or no empathy in the virtual world, we can deliberately do something about it. So I suggest that leaders undertake some CPR to their communications. CPR is a three part brain hack to overcome the lack of empathy in our virtual communications. If I'm not exactly sure what you want me to do, then as a leader, I need to be crystal clear about what I want from you. No ambiguity, no uncertainty. In simple language, this is what I want. Prepare a slide deck for this sales pitch. Is too vague. I want 3 PowerPoint Slides to pitch this widget to this prospect using the company template - ready uploaded into the video conference room. Email me when it's there with he link. Now that's getting close. The next thing is to tell me WHY, you want it. What is the Purpose of me doing this. When I understand the purpose, I can link this to my needs, desires, and motivations.. As Simon Sinek says in his fabulous TED talk, Start with Why. I want this BECAUSE it allows us to sell more widgets at a profit which keeps our business going, pays the bills, keeps the lights on and enables me to pay you so that you can pay your bills, and save up for that holiday you can't possibly take until all of this is over. Thirdly, R is for responsibility. Assign someONE specifically to be responsible for what needs to be done. If you;re asking a group or team to do something, assign responsibility to ONE specific , named individual to coordinate, report or lead this activity. Don't be vague, name an individual. You also want to sate WHEN you want this to be done, and again, be specific, be precise. Leave no room for doubt. by tomorrow, is too vague. 12 noon tomorrow is too vague, 11am Singapore time, 11pm Mexico time Monday 11th October 2020 - now that's precise! ¿What results have you witnessed with your clients when applying this? Biggest issue, is many leaders have never asked themselves: Specifically what they want or What the purpose is. But when they STOP, PAUSE, Think. they get better and achieve great results My clients have had terrific results from this and other hacks I share with them. The biggest issue for many in using CPR for example, is they have never bothered to be specific about what they want, and fewer have ever considered WHY they want it. They have assumed that all will be done according to their unspoken desires and are shocked when it isn't. But the smile flickered when these things don;t go well is entirely missed in the virtual world. ¿What is the most important piece of information our leaders should be left with? Make your Mark by PAUSing! A wife knows this power. You will switch your brain from EATing to taking TEA. You will make better decisions. You will be considered patient, a listener, empathetic, generous, and wise. Even a fool is thought wise if they keep silent (Proverbs 17:28) If you only take one thing away today. STOP, breathe and think. Anytime you want to be sure that you are being clear, that you have heard correctly, anytime that you want to be sure that you are in control of what you can control. STOP, breathe and think. Some worry that they will appear to be slow to speak and thus less competent. On the contrary, the person who pauses before speaking, now that person is seen as wise. And interestingly, people wait expectantly when you pause a moment longer than normal. Ask any woman who has learned the power of silence to make men sit up and take notice. The ONE thing you can do, is to pause. Stop, breathe and think. Let your smart brain take over from your critter brain and you will make better decisions, achieve more and be a better leader.

Purpose: You'll understand the three biggest mindshifts our survey respondents discovered when learning how to better lead and work from home. And some powerful neuroscience hacks to help ease transition to the new normal in working. Process: I'll share the top MindShift! results from our survey and highlight the most pertinent aspects of leading from home shifts and how virtual veterans are winning over the difficulties with some powerful hacks. Payoff: You'll quickly realise that you are far from alone with the difficulties you face and learn some hacks about how to overcome the obstacles and get better results. TL:DR - The Challenges We Had To Wrap Our Minds Around Working and Leading from home was new to many people and few organisations were prepared for the transition. We had to face the challenges of virtual working with little support and colleagues who were equally clueless. Those with kids at home found both the joy of more family time and the tremendous difficulties of more family time. We discovered that even with powerful technology at our fingertips it wasn’t equitably distributed, that there were no standards and juggling home-schooling with endless conference calls and the nerve-wrecking experience of being on camera on a cranky laptop was hardly the utopian ideal seen on the adverts. We have to establish clear boundaries between what is work and what is home, often on the same table where we eat and the kids fight for laptop time. We soon discovered that our schedules were back to back video calls on a never-ending deluge of new conference platforms, messengers and the emails kept piling in. It seemed that no-one realised just how stressed we were becoming. What perhaps you didn't realise is that working virtually is genuinely exhausting for your brain. And empathy - that unconscious understanding of the other person's intent and how they are truly feeling - well, it's almost missing because our Mirror Neurons don't work at all well in the virtual space. Empathy has flatlined in the virtual world and we need to implement CPR immediately. All of our communications need Clarity, Purpose and Responsibility. Then we discovered that it was down to ourselves to make this work. That no one was going to fix anything soon and “normal” — well “normal” had gone for good and in spite of feeling like someone had unplugged our motivation completely, we had to find it in ourselves to reach out, to be proactive, to get disciplined and determine for ourselves that we needed to take control. Even if it was just to turn the camera off every now and then and choose our priorities. We learned that we had to be at cause for something and stop being at the effect of a virus no one understands and that actually, no one else knows what they are doing either. We're learning that we're all in this same storm together, but we've realised that we're not all in the same boat. Some of us are in luxury yachts, many more are in old row boats and many are clinging onto a piece of driftwood. Visit bit.ly/LFHResults2 for more and to ask me how to do CPR on your communications to revive your influence, sales and leadership.

Long ago in a small, far away village, there was place known as the House of 1000 Mirrors. A small, happy little dog learned of this place and decided to visit. When he arrived, he bounced happily up the stairs to the doorway of the house. He looked through the doorway with his ears lifted high and his tail wagging as fast as it could. To his great surprise, he found himself staring at 1000 other happy little dogs with their tails wagging just as fast as his. He smiled a great smile, and was answered with 1000 great smiles just as warm and friendly. As he left the House, he thought to himself, "This is a wonderful place. I will come back and visit it often." In this same village, another little dog, who was not quite as happy as the first one, decided to visit the house. He slowly climbed the stairs and hung his head low as he looked into the door. When he saw the 1000 unfriendly looking dogs staring back at him, he growled at them and was horrified to see 1000 little dogs growling back at him. As he left, he thought to himself, "That is a horrible place, and I will never go back there again." All the faces in the world are mirrors. What kind of reflections do you see in the faces of the people you meet? Japanese Folktale

Encourage Two Mindsets When I first started training and coaching more than 30 years ago I found that there were two distinct types of client or participant: Those who were motivated and eager to learn, did so and enjoyed great results, and became more successful, and Those who believed that they didn't need to be there. They knew everything they needed and were pretty much brilliant at everything. They were unmotivated to learn and gained little, if anything, from their limited interaction and went off to be just as excellent as they always believed they had been. I blamed myself about the second group, of course. Somehow, I wasn't getting through, but try as I may, somehow I couldn't find a way to get them to learn. Then I read Carol Dweck's excellent book on Mindset and my lightening fast brain ignited with insight: In every group of people there are two base mindsets, those who have what Dweck calls a Growth mindset and those who have a predominantly Fixed Mindset. Develop Your mindset is a set of beliefs that you hold about yourself: your intelligence, your talents and your personality. And I'd like you to take a moment to pause and think here: Do you believe that these qualities are pretty well fixed traits, carved in stone by your DNA or at least by the time you reach late childhood? Or, do you believe that these qualities are things that can be developed and changed through dedication and effort? If you are more inclined to the first belief, you believe that your traits are a given. You have a certain amount of brains and talent and nothing can change that. If you are more inclined to the second belief, you see these qualities as things that can be developed through your dedication and effort. Now, I'm going out on a limb here, but I suspect that you are more inclined to the second belief. After all, why would you be reading or listening to something deliberately designed to help you learn and grow if you were of a fixed mindset? If I'm wrong, fantastic, and please let me know, because I too want to learn, understand and grow. Guide Let’s first take a look at the Growth Mindset: Individuals who hold the Growth Mindset believe that intelligence can be and is developed, that the brain is like a muscle that can be trained. With this belief is the desire to improve. To improve, firstly you embrace challenges because you know that overcoming challenges makes you stronger. No matter what you decide to do, there will be obstacles. For the Growth Mindset believer, external setbacks do not discourage you. Your self-esteem and self-image are not tied to how you look to others or your success. You see failure as the best opportunity to learn. Thus, either way, you win. You don’t see the effort as something useless to be avoided but as necessary to grow and master useful skills. No-one truly enjoys criticism or negative feedback, but the Growth Mindset individual integrates feedback that has genuine worth as an opportunity to change and learn. Negative feedback is not seen as a personal attack, but for what it is; feedback. The success of others is seen as a source of inspiration and information. To Growth Mindset individuals, success is not seen as a zero-sum game. Growth Mindset individuals will improve because of this, and this creates positive feedback loops that encourage them to keep learning, growing and improving. Fixed Mindset Let’s have a look at the Fixed Mindset side: Those who hold these beliefs think that “they are the way they are.” This doesn’t mean that they have any less desire for a positive self-image than anyone else, and they do want to perform well and look smart. But, to achieve these goals… The challenge is hard and success is not assured, so rather than risk failing and negatively impacting their self-image, they will often avoid challenges and stick to what they know they can do well. Obstacles face everyone, but the difference with the Fixed Mindset individual is that obstacles are seen as external forces that get in the way and are either avoided (leading to sub-optimal results and usually, blaming others) or are the ‘excuse’ for giving up. When effort is required, and your view is that effort is unpleasant and rarely pays dividends. What’s the point in exerting that effort? The smart thing to do then is avoid as much effort as possible. Negative feedback tends to be ignored because the Fixed Mindset leads you to believe that any criticism of your capabilities is a criticism of you. This is discouraging to the people who are giving you feedback and after a while they stop giving any negative feedback, further isolating the person from external influences that could generate some change. Other’s success is used as a benchmark with which to beat yourself. Success, in this worldview, is put down to luck or unprincipled actions. Some will go further and deride another person’s success finding juicy gossip to attach to them when their success is being lauded by anyone else. The results are that they don’t reach their full potential, and their beliefs feed on themselves: They don’t change or improve much with time, if at all, and so to them this confirms that “they are as they are.” Empower The good news – especially if you just recognized yourself as being someone who holds the Fixed Mindset worldview – is that it is possible to change from one to the other. 3 Questions to guarantee a growth mindset The important thing to remember is that the right growth mindset comes in cans, not in can'ts! Whenever you face a challenge or a setback ask yourself on, two or three questions: What's the most useful thing I can learn? What can I change? How can I add value to others from this experience? Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol S. Dweck, 2006 Random House, New York

The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. Ecc 9:11 NIV "They really should..." begins another tirade of disgust at the ineptitude of the leadership to fix the problems. "Why they can't..." interjects the thought of an easy fix that "anyone with an ounce of real experience would have known from the start". "Why doesn't somebody do something?" "Why doesn't God do something about this?" And then, if you quiet your mind for just one moment, you'll hear him say "I did. I created you!" And He gave you choice: You can react to whatever the world, your boss, the economy, a pandemic throws at you, or you can choose to take action to overcome the obstacles in front of you. It's easier to react, like a thermometer, and blame others for the tragedies that befall you. It requires a lot less energy. But you won't be happy with the results, until you choose to be like a thermostat, someone at cause for their life. Purpose Here we're going to understand why it's easy to fall into a survival thinking mode and live a less than fulfilled life and how you can break that cycle and choose to be at cause for your life and actions. Process We'll discuss the two thinking modes and how you can shift yourself from being the victim of survival mode to being at cause and creating your future. Payoff It's not that one cycle is better than another, it's realising that we have a choice and that most people, most of the time, are at effect because they don't make a deliberate choice to take charge. Are you at Cause or Effect? Life happens. "Life happens whilst you're making other plans." John Lennon. Most people, most of the time, just allow life to happen to them. They react to whatever the day brings. They are happy when their happenings are conducive to their happiness, otherwise they are unhappy. They may have a plan, but they are easily blown off course and, unless the winds of chance so happen to return them back, off course they remain. This is completely understandable behaviour for your brain. Unconsciously, your brain is always scanning the environment for threats and changes and reacting to them with little, if any, requirement for energy expensive conscious processing. If you make a deliberate choice to pre-empt environmental circumstances and choose to take action - that is conscious, executive brain processing - which is energy expensive. The downside of allowing your brain to be lazy is that you are essentially allowing other people to choose your circumstances and hence your life. Of course, this might be utterly wonderful - hopefully you had a happy and splendid childhood and everything went swimmingly. Perhaps you are blessed with an incredible boss who gently nudges you to do what is essential, pays you extravagantly well and expects little in return. You have a choice. A very simple choice: To be a thermostat or a thermometer. You can choose to create your future, or you can accept the one that you get. Every moment of every day, you make a choice. If you are in a survival mode, that is you're just trying to get by and survive, the chances are that you will react to a new situation. You will then face an obstacle in your path. And you get another choice, this time you can choose to avoid the obstacle or address it. Avoidance of obstacles leads you to adapt and change yourself thanks to the obstacle that someone else put in your way. And you will get undesired results. Which results in disappointment and reinforces your survival vision to just try and get by for another day. On the other hand, when you have a creative vision you choose to take action. Sure, the same obstacles lie in your path but this time, you are going to address the problem and experiment until you find a desired solution and get the results you want. This means that you can, and should, celebrate so as to reinforce the creative vision to take on another day with chutzpah and intention. Moving from Effect to Cause "But..." I hear you about to interrupt... there are no 'buts'. Sorry about that. Yes, it is true that other people, the world, the circumstances around you may well prevent you from achieving your goal. So what are you going to do about it? Can you cause the world do something different? There are many things that you cannot change... the weather for example, pandemics, mad dictators. So the answer is…. overcome the problem. Can you make another person do whatever is necessary? Neither you nor anyone else can directly cause them to do something, though you can influence them. "But..." I continue to hear... There are no buts. You can choose to act to overcome the obstacle. It is agonising when things or people well outside of your control, cause circumstances in your life to be difficult, even unbearable. Factories close for lack of orders, shops for lack of customers, restaurants for lack of diners. Loved ones get sick and medical bills threaten to overwhelm everything and everyone. A car accident crushes your ability to walk let alone work. Some despot thinks a war would be a good idea. In modern society we have become heavily reliant on society working in the way it is supposed to work, and we have allowed our own choices to be limited because it's easier and, most of the time, it seems to be beneficial. Hence we obey certain rules, like driving on the left (or right, for those of you in confused countries). In any given situation, we start with a choice. We can act to make something happen, or, we react to the external circumstances. Both appear to start the same way. Yet, they start a cycle that is either virtuous or destructive in the long term. Most people who are motivated towards achievement and have a growth mindset are likely to be in the creative cycle. Those of you who are more motivated away-from things that you do not want and have a more fixed mindset, will be in the survival cycle. When you are at effect, you react to something external to you (or something that you believe is outside your control). Your primary purpose is to protect yourself (or your people). Your personal values and beliefs will determine what you see as obstacles, both conscious and unconscious and these influence your choice to address or avoid the obstacles. In the survival cycle, you will try to avoid the obstacles in your path by reacting to the external 'threat'. And, as you try to avoid them, you will adapt or assimilate your reaction to do so. As a result of obstacle avoidance, your result is likely to be less than optimal. Most often the result achieved is not the desired result. This leads to disappointment and your survival vision... "I have to"..."I must..." in order to survive. On the other side, you can choose to take action. The desired end result could be considered to be exactly the same thing, and the external environmental pressures could also be exactly the same as for the person who 'reacts'. It's a mindset choice that makes the greatest difference here. In the creative cycle, your purpose is to discover potential and possibilities. You take action and come across the self-same obstacles. But instead of trying to avoid the obstacles, you address them. Experimenting and testing to find the best way to overcome the obstacles. When you find the optimal way to address the obstacle, you gain your desired result and CELEBRATE!. You have a creative vision... "I like to..."..."I want to..." Survival cycle strategies that we employ (and we all employ them at some point) are often developed early in life and were originally a creative response to a situation. It worked then and achieved the desired results then. Later in life, we continue to use the same response yet circumstances have changed. A common example of taking an early life response and applying it in later life that I come across frequently is when a child's parents use punishment as their primary means of maintaining discipline at home and as their primary means of getting the child to do certain tasks or chores. This often means that you may be choosing to be at cause, and using the creative cycle, yet those obstacles, well they turn out to be insurmountable... so you avoid them instead, adapting and assimilating, true, not getting the optimal result but, life really does happen whilst you are making other plans. Do you want to be at cause for your life, or at the effect of life happening to you? If you genuinely want the latter... read no more, you are in danger of gaining the former. Are you like a thermometer. Reacting to the external environment? Or, are you like a thermostat, changing and adapting and controlling what you can control to change the environment? In their book "The Skilled Facilitator", Schwarz et al, (2005) they describe a Life Learning Model, developed by Dr. Guillermo Cuellar, adapted in the diagram below to show the creative (cause) and survival (effect) cycles that people choose to follow. Some examples of early creative responses that later in life become survival responses: Using the template This template is a circular flow chart. Consider how you normally respond to situations that involve you personally. You already know that there will be obstacles ahead: Are you At Cause? I approach every day with a spring in my step and ready to take on the world. I relish the chance to tackle a new obstacle or problem I enjoy experimenting with new approaches and ideas to problems Failure is a great learning lesson I keep on keeping on until I get the desired results Winning is a wonderful excuse to celebrate I review what worked well and what worked less well and learn from the experience and eagerly anticipate the next challenge I plan and paint a picture of what tomorrow will bring Or At Effect? I approach each day expecting something or someone to cause me problems I'm tired of the obstacles people put in my way I'll adapt and shift to avoid the obstacle if at all possible I don't bother addressing the obstacle because I'll likely fail Someone else can fix the problems, it's not my job I rarely get the results I should get I'm not very motivated or happy with the results I get I wonder why I bother at all Cause or Effect Template Download the PDF version hereDownload VERY IMPORTANT There is no RIGHT or WRONG cycle to be in – the two exist simultaneously. A creative response to a car rushing toward you at 100 kph may not be appropriate. In our research the ONLY significant determinator of success was taking action on what was coached. If you haven’t gone through the exercise yet, go back and do it now. Remember that applying best practices with discipline and consistency, even if the actual steps seem trite or obvious, is what leads to results and ultimately, success. Thanks so much for reading this guide – if you have any feedback or comments you can reach me at johnk@leadershipadvantedge.com Don’t settle, John K by Dr John Kenworthy Coaching for Geeks and Nerds - developing you with the skills and confidence your need to thrive and be a better leader. Book Your Discovery Call Now

Purpose: To equip you with purpose to lead and inspire your staff and to manage uncertainty with command intent, to emerge powerfully, ready for the new normal. Process: I'll explain how uncertainty causes stress because our brain craves certainty, purpose, and direction and lastly how you can be a different type of leader, the sort of leader who provides the very certainty, purpose and direction that will empower you to emerge stronger. Payoff: You'll learn how to energise your staff to continue in the face of difficulties. You'll know how to communicate certainty, direction and purpose and what success on the other side of the current difficult time looks like and how you and your now continuity energised staff will achieve it. Times of crisis demand a different type of leader where the only certain thing is that there is no certainty. Dr John Kenworthy Uncertainty causes stress, and we go into our "critter state" Your brain has a single primary concern: to keep you in the "not dead" state. That is its first and foremost function. It really doesn't matter how brilliant, rich or talented you are when you are in the "dead" state. When the world around us becomes even a little uncertain, your brain is marvellously designed to allow your older "critter brain" to take charge of survival. In a time of crisis, the "critter brain" rules the day until you deliberately choose to intervene. For leaders who haven't been close to a crisis before, managing during such times can feel thrilling. Your brain triggers norepiphrene and adrenaline spikes as you make decisions and take action. You feel a sense of adding tangible value. The stress hormone, cortisol, steadily builds up in your body and pressures from the home front add to your anxiety. The longer you struggle, directionless through a crisis the more stress and anxiety builds up that could blow any second. Before long, more people look to you for decisions and direction as they begin to flounder trying to make sense of the latest information and like Sisyphus, you discover the boulder you are pushing uphill becomes less stable with each step. Leaders need to guide people towards the best possible outcome over time. Your focus is on what is likely to come next and preparing to meet it. You go beyond the immediate to anticipate the next three, four or five obstacles. At the same time you need to address the urgent needs of the business, making immediate choices and allocating resources quickly and decisively. On any normal day your "critter brain" is assessing the environment asking three questions: Am I safe? Do I belong? and Do I matter? This isn't a once in a while process, it is every minute of every single day. "Am I safe?" is simply checking your surroundings for threats. An "all is well" response allows your brain to relax for a brief moment and if this extends for some time, you will physically relax and your brain waves will slow down. When "Am I safe?" gets the answer: "No" then the amygdalae are brought swiftly into the action, the stress hormone norepinephrine production is triggered in your brain and your body produces adrenaline is ready for "freeze, flight or fight". If the threat is not judged to be imminent, the "Do I belong?" question may get out to check on the whereabouts of fellow tribe members. After all, who wants to face a ravenous wolf alone? If there is a wolf, the "Do I matter?" question probably doesn't even get a cursory glance. A crisis is, by definition, a time of intense stress, difficulty or danger. Even if you only experience it through a social media feed or a news bulletin. Our safety is being threatened in a crisis. And in times of difficulty or danger, we're usually better of with our tribe on our side. At least then we might stand a chance of survival, let alone emerging triumphant and ready for the post-crisis world. A great leader knows this and pulls and energises the team together towards a clear and tangible command intent. Your brain could use some coaching even if you think you don't. Your brain craves certainty, purpose and direction Am I safe? Do I belong? Do I matter? Every minute of every day. And your brain wants an answer that is Yes, YES and YES!!!!! James F. Parker knew this very well. He was CEO of Southwest airlines during and after the 9-11 attacks and he believes that Southwest succeeded in part because its employees work together towards the intended big-picture goal of serving customers, instead of only focusing on their own jobs. Effective leaders, Parker says, create an atmosphere where employees are proud of their jobs, they understand the mission and purpose, and want to do the right thing. “You can’t make people do the right thing, because if they don’t want to do it, there’s always going to be a way around it. But what you can do is make people want to do the right thing.” James F. Parker, CEO Southwest Airlines Your brain is also programmed to narrow focus in the face of a threat. The norepinephrine production in your brain narrows your focus and attention. An excellent survival mechanism for your cave-dwelling ancestors and somewhat useful in the modern office. The trap is that your field of vision is restricted to the immediate foreground. Leaders need to intentionally pull back and look up to manage the immediate whilst anticipating the future obstacles. Or else you react to each and every threat as it emerges, flipping from one danger and flopping through the next. To anyone watching, it looks as though you haven't a clue what you are doing and that doesn't instil a great deal of confidence or respect in your ability to get us through this crisis. Literally lifting your eyes heavenward can break the spell of immediacy crowding out your executive brain functions and enable you to engage considered thinking to the problems keeping in mind the longer term mission and purpose, the command intent and the people you lead. A great leader knows that a crisis is a crisis because it affects people. Though leaders can fall into the trap of worrying about daily metrics of share price, revenue and costs. Of course these matter, but they are the outcome of the coordinate efforts of people, the tribe to which the leader belongs. Energise your staff to continue in the face of difficult times to emerge stronger. The great leader's solution is to unite people in their efforts and goals as valued members of a cohesive team. This begins with a clearly communicated mission that infuses the work with purpose. The mission and purpose is then animated through an inclusive leadership approach where each person understands how they and their skills and talents contribute—and that their contribution is appreciated and recognised. What you need is what the army calls a "Command Intent". What is Command Intent and how do I create one? Command Intent is the definition and description of what a successful mission will look like to the commander (or CEO). You need to articulate specifically what you will see, hear, feel, smell and taste when you have achieved success. You will know exactly what you will win when you are successful and what it will cost. You will know who, what, where, when and how the people will execute the mission. Command intent is what success looks like whilst fully recognising that the situation will be chaotic, that there is a lack of complete information, that the enemy (competition, virus, laws, Government) changes the situation and anything else that may impact the situation to make the plan completely or partially obsolete when executed. Critically, Command Intent empowers subordinates to guide their improvisation and to take the initiative to adapt the plan to the changing environment. It enables the whole team to keep the clear vision of a successful conclusion whilst being agile and taking initiative to change when necessary. Why not just use SMART goals? The downside of SMART goals is their lack of purpose. SMART goals are terrific, but they don't tell me why, nor what to do should the specific result become impossible given a change in the situation... and there will be a change in the situation. A quick way to arrive at a useful Command Intent is to use one or both of the following questions as suggested by the NATO Combat Manoeuvring Training Center: “If we do nothing else during tomorrow’s mission, we must . . . , so that . . .” “The single, most important thing that we must do tomorrow is . . . , so that . . . ” But how do we plan for the unknown dynamic change? One big problem for leaders on a "normal" day is that the environment of business competition and goals are dynamic. During difficult times, that truth simply accelerates and in new and previously unseen ways. As soon as you are fully aware of the current situation, that situation has already changed. Leaders need to gain dynamic situational awareness. Gain situational Awareness Shared Situational awareness is perhaps one of the most critical skills for collaboration in a crisis. Situational awareness is the ability to create a mental model that identifies, processes, and comprehends the critical elements of information about what is happening to you and your organisation in relation to the current situation. More simply, it’s knowing what is going on around you. Shared situational awareness is have a shared perspective of the changing current situation and a shared mental image of what is happening and trust each other to act based on these shared mental models. Heavyweight boxing champion, Mike Tyson has a tremendously useful philosophy about plans: Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. To avoid the punch in the mouth, you and your team need to be empowered to strategically improvise. Everyone has a plan, until they get punched in the mouth! In every battlefield there are knowns and unknowns. All plans and intentions start with the ridiculous idea that we know everything that we need to know. We don't. And, when we are honest, we know that we don't know. And we need to get comfortable with that. No plan survives contact with the enemy Attributed to Helmuth von Moltke in the 19th century. In any crisis, leaders often under immense pressure and with compressed timelines and high stakes, must formulate a new approach to the changing situation. They then execute new responses or a combination of responses to manage the situation as they see it in light of their Command Intent. In other words, leaders must improvise in order to develop a strategic response and follow a simple 3-step process: Make a decision! Communicate Evaluate The only difficulty is that it takes a strong leader to accept that they might make a less than perfect decision. Only a strong leader accepts responsibility and holds themselves accountable in light of mistaken decisions. Only a strong leader knows that clear communication is key, and that communication is the response they get. Only a strong leader makes sure that they evaluate and when successful and they achieve the Command Intent, only a strong, great leader passes the praise and glory to the team. Only those leaders who energise their staff for continuity will thrive in difficult times. And to emerge stronger, leaders need a clear Commander's Intent, with Shared Situational Awareness and staff empowered to strategically improvise. Of course, if you want your team to lack confidence, fear failure, have endless meetings revisiting the same old things again and again and encourage second guessing then don't do this. Empower yourself today: “If I do nothing else tomorrow, I must ... so that...."

Have you ever wondered why change is so tough? Why is it, that with our very best intentions, we still find it difficult to make changes that we know would be good for us? Why is it so much more difficult to get other people to change and do the things that matter? Even when you have a crystal clear picture of what success looks like and you have tapped into the emotions, drives and values that motivate and there's still no action!!!!! How do you get started? You need the Power of the First Step. see the SWING exercise in my last episode if you don't have a clear picture of what success looks like. The Purpose You'll learn how to make change happen for yourself or for the people you lead. The Process The Power of the First Step is a purposeful leadership technique to create momentum. And just like any journey, we'll define your future desired end state and your current situation and using the most useful one of three variations of this technique that works for you, you will create momentum on your change journey. The Payoff You'll wake up in the morning and your problem is solved, or it is on its way to being solved. Way back in 1995, John P. Kotter shared: why change efforts fail in organisations. He talked about 8 distinct errors that prevent success from happening. But that was ages ago, surely we have learned and moved forward since the mid 90's? It seems not. 10 Reasons change efforts fail as described by Lee Colan in 2014. In 2017, Brent Gleeson posited that the 1 reason most change efforts fail is battle fatigue. Bill Pasmore at CCL highlights 4 reasons why you fail at change in 2016 If you have ever failed to change, you'll know all the reasons (aka excuses) why you failed. And that's perfectly OK. Unless you actually do want to change. The common factor through so much research is inertia. That is, the desire to stay the same. i.e. the desire to not change. Even if and when we are completely certain that change would result in a better situation for us. A situation we want. The truth is, we want the success without the pain. After 30 plus years of coaching and training leaders to change, I help my clients overcome their own inertia through the Power of the First Step. You can use this to get your own change started, or use it with your team to get them to start on their change journey. Often, during coaching, a client can understand and describe their future goal or outcome. They can describe their current situation. But, they struggle to know exactly what they need to do now. Sometimes, a client cannot "see" what they need to do. Others, state that they do not "know" what to do. What we are doing is scripting and directing the critical moves. to change you need a director - you be the director of your own movie There are three variations of this technique. I recommend that you start using the visual template (using pictures). If this is not working well, use the digital template (using a descriptive process). Or, you can ‘act’ this out. Imagine that you are the writer and director of a movie and you're creating a movie storyboard. Commence with the “Future” situation - the very last scene of the movie (this is a Hollywood movie with a happy ending by the way, not some Filme Noire or Pathe real life drama). This is what success looks like, and for aa detailed review on that, check out the SWING process I shared in an earlier episode here. The "Present" situation is the current situation - as with the "Future", you want specific sensory information about it. In this technique, you are creating a movie storyboard or script of the change you want from the movie’s very first scene (now) to the last scene (the future goal or outcome). You (and/or your team) is in the starring role, you are the central character of this movie. And, procrastination is the villain you are going to vanquish. The first step is the very first ‘action’ that this character takes in this movie. Making your movie the power of the first step is to start - time for ACTION!!! Grab the template (print it out) and describe the current situation. Write down as much detail as you can. What you currently see, hear, feel, smell and taste. In relation to the change you know you want to make, what specifically is the evidence of your eyes and ears that clearly demonstrate the need for change? Draw a picture of yourself (or your team) in the ‘present’ box. Draw yourself as you ‘feel’ in this situation. Stick figures are absolutely fine. Who else is in this current situation? Draw them in the box in relative position to self. Is there anyone else who should be in this situation? Is there anything else that is here? Now describe the picture – add words if these help, add more drawings as needed. What role they are playing in this scene. (A role is an adjective and a noun) Future Situation Now, let's move onto the final scene of the movie. Where are you in this picture? Who else is here? What are you doing? What are they doing? Name the Scenes Return to the ‘present’ situation and name the scene. Do likewise for the ‘future’ scene. It can be a simple as beginning and end - though that wouldn't cut muster in Hollywood, use descriptive names (again, adjectives and nouns work well) How do you feel in the present, name the feeling and write this in the box. Do the same for the future scene. First Step Ask, what is the very first step that this person (pointing to the picture of self in the present) must take to move from the present to the ‘future’ (pointing at the future ‘self’) This should be tiny step. For example: “lower hands”, “turn to face…”, “stand up”, “sit down”. Then ask what does this mean? Repeat this until you have a viable first step. And I do mean, the tiniest, most immediate very first thing the character (i.e. you) needs to take. Now that you know your first step: “How difficult is this for you?” On a scale of 1 to 3, where 1 is easy, 3 is very difficult. If 2 or 3, “Is there a smaller step that is easier for you? When you know that this first step is easy or very easy, write down the first step and what it means for you. This is the moment at the very beginning of the movie, often before the credits role that sets everything up and just begs the audience to hang around for the rest. Digital or Process Variation in scene 1 you are clinging onto the rock for dear life... So you think drawing is for kids? Oh, you are missing something powerful. And yes you can draw a stick person. Nonetheless... instead write words in the boxes. You are a scriptwriter instead of a storyboard artist. Number the boxes if it helps you. Kinaesthetic Variation If you cannot draw pictures or describe in words, "show" yourself with your own body, tables, chairs, props and anyone else you can use as extras. Grab your smartphone or tablet, set up the video and record. Now you are the producer of the movie instead of the storyboard artist or scriptwriter and you are receiving direction (from yourself). Done is better than perfect Sometimes you just need a little help and a coach to guide you Procrastination is your enemy. We don't want to take that first step because it sets us on a journey and it means we have made a choice. We've given up on the other options for now. And procrastinators hate to give up options. Perfectionism is another excuse for inaction. And yes, everybody is a perfectionist at heart, you're not really that different. You will never, ever achieve perfection. Sorry but it is true. The leaders who stand out are the leaders who get (the right) stuff done. And done is better than perfect. Even when you do get started, there are going to be obstacles (more villains) along the way. At any point along the journey you might feel like giving up. It's too hard. Or worse, the environment has changed and your change is too little or too late and no longer worth doing. Remember, that's perfectly OK. Go back to the beginning and start again. The leaders who succeed in the long term, are the leaders who persevere. They are the ones who get up again, dust themselves off and keep on keeping on. So, kill off procrastination and perfectionism. Grab hold of Perseverance, be bold and take the power of the first step. If you want some help with this, I'd be happy to arrange a complimentary breakthrough discovery session with you as a more powerful first step.

The Purpose To show you a way and give you the urge to inspire your kids, family and your work colleagues with a real and tangible hope that will lift their spirits and yours, and fill everyone with the urge to emerge stronger and ready to lead the world in the recovery so that you will see good days. The Process I'm going to share a powerful tool and neuroscience hack that you will easily use to bring absolute clarity to the future expectation of good you want to create and use to inspire others. The Payoff Your kids will want to do something creative, your family will look at you with newfound respect and admiration and your work colleagues will be eager and ready to listen, collaborate and be more productive. In times of difficulty or crisis, the trap for leaders is trying to control everything. And this applies as much to leading in your home as it does in the office. When your locus of control is hindered or even removed, when you feel even slightly that your own life is out of your control, your threat response fires up. Our favourite almond-shaped friends inside our brain, the amygdalae, take up the reins of your response with plenty of stress hormone production of cortisol and adrenaline. It's a never ending barrage of negative news and many people scoff at the notion of remaining optimistic in light of these "facts". The human brain is programmed to narrow your focus in the face of a threat. It's an in-built mechanism designed perfectly for self-protection. It means that your field of vision is restricted to what is immediately in front of you. Perfect for hunters in the Serrengeti and your cave dwelling ancestors. Pretty useful in the 21st century office and home, but unseeable threats lurking in the very air before you... not quite so useful. Leaders, whether at work or at home, need to intentionally pull back and take a broader view. Leaders need to look up and see a new future. A new future that is good and positive and filled with promise. We call it hope. And we could all use some hope right now. What we want is some real hope. Real hope is the positive expectation of good. It's not just wishful or fanciful thinking. It is something you believe will come to pass. Like everyone else, you want to have this positive expectation of good and I know it is difficult. And we all would like someone to stimulate this hope within us. We want someone, anyone to fill us with the urge or ability to feel something hopeful, something positive to rescue us from this pit of negativity and confinement and restriction. You can probably think of a small handful of leaders who truly inspire you with hope of a brighter future. Martin Luther King was pretty inspiring with his "I have a dream" speech. Winston Churchill inspired a generation to give their lives for freedom promising to "fight them on the beaches". And just recently, Queen Elizabeth 2nd ralleyed hope for an end to Covid 19 with "We will meet again." But it seems, inspirational leaders are few and far between. Yet, there's one in your household. There's an inspirational leader in your workplace. There's one who can inspire hope and rally people in your community. And that person is you. Yes, you. You have all that you need to inspire hope in others and hence for yourself. You might not believe it just yet, but give me half an hour of your time and you will. Working from home ain't what it's all cracked up to be Well, I actually think that it is, but then I've been doing this for many years. But I do recall how tough it was at the beginning. And now it's much more difficult. Now, your partner is at home also (or perhaps worse, if they are in essential services and escape every day) kids are at home too, either from school or university and even they are finding their phone and netflix is getting less exciting. We're confined in space, and there's a limited number of spaces to work, and bandwidth is a premium. Young kids especially, expect you to entertain them, educate them, feed them, nurture them, console them, and inspire them. And it's tough to keep it up when you are feeling disconnected, under pressure, fearful that maybe the business will fold. Basically, you have the odds stacked against you. Yet they (and you) crave hope and you could really use some inspiration right now. So let's get to it. To do this, you're going to need that SWING. SWING is a powerful coaching tool I use to give my clients absolute clarity with actionable steps to achieve a crystal clear future intention and the motivation and inspiration to make it happen. Let me briefly explain the key SWING steps and what you can expect, then we'll get on and do it together. I'll lead, and you fill in the blanks, pausing whenever you need to do so. The first time through this is for you, your expectations for the future. Afterwards you can do this for your kids, your partner and your work colleagues, staff, friends, neighbours... The process is on the form I share below. This includes the audio coaching for each step. You'll be able to coach yourself through this process with my help, and let me tell you what's going to happen first and a little example to get you in the right frame of mind: S stands for SPECIFIC - here you will gain absolute clarity on your intended outcome - in this case your future expectation for yourself, and then for others. This is your vision for the future and we will define it with the five senses: What you (will) see with your eyes What you (will) hear with your ears What you (will) feel and be able to get hold of, touch or know is concrete What you (will) smell and taste Fo example, you might see your office colleagues smiling and laughing, they look healthy and happy, and maybe the computer screen flickers with a chart showing income growth. You can see your kids smiling, joking, playing, helping with housework willingly, graduating, with a report card in hand and commendations. You might see a fridge filled with your favourites and a batch of spare toilet roll in the cupboard. You might hear happy chatter and laughing. Your partner whispers sweet love in your ear, your kids tell you a corny joke they heard at school, your boss praises you for a job very well done, and you hear the delicious sounds of the aircraft engines screeching as you land at your favourite foreign destination for the holiday of a lifetime. You'll feel the bump of the landing gear and your legs twitch with the anticipation of standing and climbing outside into the glorious and perfect weather. Breezing through immigration without fear and soon diving into the crystal clear waters.... I trust you are getting the picture now. Guess what I'm looking forward to. :-) You'll see the bottle of wine on the table, pop the cork and savour the fresh, crisp and fruity burst of bubbles. Taking in a big, deep noseful of the BBQ and already feel your tongue and lips moistening in anticipation... And you were wondering what this smell and taste thing have to do with it, but do you notice how you were instantly transported to smell the same thing? Smell and taste are incredible and powerful sense, if you can evoke a familiar smell with your future vision, please do. Not everyone can at first, but try to do so, it will become so very real for you and for everyone who hears you describe it. As we do this together, I want you to write down your responses as fully as you can. Keep writing, not correcting or spell checking, just write - you can edit later. Then we'll move onto W for Win. As in What do you WIN when your future vision happens? What are the payoffs, for you, for your kids, for your colleagues, for your partner, your boss, your company? The second part of win is the cost. Because yes, your future vision costs. Certainly some money, and time, and effort and... what else? I asks you if you are In control of everything that you need to be in control of to achieve this? We want to know if you have all the resources you need to overcome the roadblocks you know are present. And if you do not have them, where can you get them and how? It's tempting right now to say, no, not a chance. But that's also not true. What we want to know and understand here, is what is in your control and what is not in your control. And if you are not in control, who is. And please, don't tell me the virus is in control. It is not, we were given dominion and that included dominion over this virus. Maybe it is true that you cannot do a lot about some things, but you can do something, or you can influence someone else who can do something. N is for now. We pull all of these strings together - Specific, Win and In control and write a single cohesive passage IN THE PRESENT, ACTIVE TENSE as if this future exists already right now. This is important for your brain. It's another hack. Remember how a crisis makes you focus, well you focus on the immediate, so when we put this into the present, active tense, we are tricking our brain that this is already now. And with a splendid, powerful, positive, visceral vision now your brain will trigger dopamine - which makes you feel great, happy, joyful AND motivates you to make the dream true. This part is your INSPIRATIONAL speech. For your own goal, then it's your own inspiration. For your kids, its likely your intention for them and the family. For your team at work, it's the team rallying speech. It's what Queen Elizabeth did with "We will meet again", it's what Churchill did with "We'll fight them on the beaches...", it's what Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech so beautifully captured. G is for Guarantee. And we use cartesian logic again to hack the brain into accepting this vision and making it a reality unconsciously. We are, in effect, planting the vision into the unconscious. I will be asking you four somewhat strange questions that you simply respond with the first thing that comes to mind. Doesn't have to make sense or be logical, whatever comes to mind, write it down. And nobody can actually answer the fourth question because your brain cannot process it but goes off into a loop. Just write down whatever - most often, there's a key sub-conscious message in your answer. It takes a little work to get there, but once you have your INSPIRATIONAL sentence, paragraph, speech (however long it may be), you tell it to those who want HOPE. They get to see, hear, feel, smell and taste your vision of a positive expectation of good. You inspire your family. Your inspire your team. Your inspire your country. Sure it would be nice if someone was inspiring you and they did all the work for it, but then, they get all the glory afterwards. Pause the player if necessary and access the interactive worksheet now. Then come back here when you have 15-30 minutes to sit down with the template and fill in the blanks whilst I coach you through each step. Do share this with people you know could use some help to inspire hope in their families, for their kids, for their workplace or their country. The more hope we can get leaders to inspire at this time, the better we will all be and we will see good days sooner.   SWING Audio Coaching Now Get access to the SWING worksheet and audio coaching now  

Purpose: Sharing neuroscience hacks to help you win the battle in your soul during this time of lockdowns, social distancing and a strange lack of toilet paper. Payoff: You'll regain control to and be able to encourage others so we can all emerge better, stronger and ready to reinvigorate our lives and the world. Encourage We're 3 months into this virus spreading its fear and anxiety across the globe. Different people in different places are in various stages of grief. We all started in full denial and several went into isolation immediately. Information was scare as no-one accepted responsibility and no-one wanted to be accountable. Experts were dumbfounded - only this time they actually admitted that they were dumbfounded. Some closed borders, others said it was premature. Some stopped flights, others continue to this day. Some said it is airborne and we all need masks, others said it was droplets and we needed to wash our hands. That period seemed to last forever, some would suggest that there's a couple of world leaders still there, which rather helped many tip over into the anger phase. The promises of no shortages triggered the exact opposite effect - after all, no sensible person trusts a politician at the best of times, and suddenly they were talking about the worst of times, but everything else was carrying on as usual? Toilet paper was the first surprising victim. Now, everything is in diminished supply. Some leaders started bargaining with the virus only to discover that it didn't come to negotiate but to infiltrate. It came to spread and reproduce and take out the weaker members - which unsurprisingly led many back into anger. Self-isolation measures began to take root and social distancing was no longer about focusing only on your phones and choosing to ignore others, now we were encouraged to avoid others. Churches shut their doors, Mosques and temples too. The misery continued as depression kicked in. The massive deaths in Italy made us all question what was really happening. Holidays cancelled - many with little prospect of a refund and , naturally, the insurance companies would claim exceptional circumstances. Slowly acceptance of quarantine, isolation, stay at home, the lost holidays, the lost income, the lost job, and yes, the lost toilet paper. We're all grieving. Grieving for a life that was, just a few short weeks ago, looking so promising. A new decade was dawning and there was hope in the very air. Well now the air is clean and clear. At least until China's factories ramp up to full production and poison our scarred lungs. Hope has faded for many, a few hold on tightly to the promises of God, who is, by the way, still on His throne. If we haven't personally lost someone dear to us, why are we grieving? We're grieving the loss of agency and control. Develop The little girl coughed as we descended in the lift. A deep, dry and loud cough. She didn't cover her mouth. I flinched. It was instinctual, my heart rate shot up and my body and brain flooded with adrenaline. I stopped breathing. I left the lift as the doors opened and realised I had stopped breathing. The fresh sun-soaked air was my welcome refuge. Humans everywhere are deeply concerned for their safety. We cannot not be. It's the Critter part of our brain. The part that houses and runs our emotions. A place where chemistry rules the roost and floods our brains and blood stream with chemical messengers to be afraid, to be very very afraid. Don't know what it is? Be afraid. Don't know what to do? Be afraid. Don't know what's happening? Be afraid. And this isn't a conscious "knowing". We have no experience or memory that helps guide us on the better course of action. We can quickly be so overwhelmed with emotions of fear and anxiety that we forget all else and forget to engage our thinking mind. It is going to help you to better understand how our body and soul - our mind, will and emotions operate and thus we feel as though we have no agency or control. Then you can do something to change that. To simplify this, I like to consider the soul as three parts: The Mind, the Will and the Emotions. The soul itself being a part of our triune being of the Spirit, Soul and Body. The three parts of our soul, the mind, the will and the emotions are pretty much in a battle. During this crisis, they certainly are. The Mind is you thinking, conscious executive brain. The Will is in the Frontal Lobe and is what drives you to do what you do, your desires and values. The Emotions, well there the things that make you feel and make you act. Mostly in your Hypothalamus and Amygdala - the Critter brain. When something is noticed by any of the five senses of your body the Critter brain responds fastest. "Am I safe?" It's a yes or no answer. Something new, unknown, novel, in any doubt? Not safe. Adrenaline and Cortisol triggered and the body responds with freeze, flight or fight. Emotional memories are quickly accessed, "Have we seen this before?" - Oh yes, that's just the flu, had it, seen it, done it, got the t-shirt. No??!!?? OK, let's hide/get outta here/kill it! Only then, once the chemicals are already in production and coursing through your body does your mind, the executive brain, kick into high gear. It's milliseconds later, but a lot can happen in your brain in that time. You think. Unlike our animal friends, you think. Your Mind checks in with your Will. What drives you personally, the values you hold dear, what desires you have. Your mind also checks it's memory banks, searching for experience, knowledge, solutions. You know what you SHOULD do - that's your mind. But what do you WANT to do - that's your will. Meantime, your body is already responding to the chemical response from your emotions. You now have a choice. What I should do, what I want to do or what I am 'feeling'. The winner of this battle determines your chosen response. The problem with this current Covid 19 is less the virus itself. It's the fear it (with the assistance of politicians, leaders, mainstream media and especially social media) induces and the seeming reduction of your agency or control to choose for yourself. Guide Now we know what's happening and the key questions in the battle in your soul. Winning the battle is about resuming agency or control as best you can. No-one likes to be told that they cannot leave their house. The moment you tell someone that they cannot do something, they want to do it. Warnings become invitations! Don't smoke! Who are they to be telling me not to smoke? If I want o smoke I'll smoke. It's my life, if I want to take the risk, that's up to me. If I want to go to a club and dance till dawn with all my friends and I get infected, so be it. I'll survive, after all, it doesn't kill many... The flesh screams for agency and control. It wants to do the will of your soul. The mind is more rational, more logical, more obedient. If so many "experts" say this is for the best then that's what I will do. I don't like it, but I choose to follow advice. And if everybody followed the advice it would all be better for everyone and sooner. Back and forth, back and forth it goes. Your Will is screaming, your mind says let's be sensible and calm down, your emotions want relief from fear and stress and worry. Your brain is in Beta Wave mode, fast and busy and keeping you focussed... but its not getting the downtime it needs to relax let alone heal and repair. So how do you win the battle? You need to choose to let your mind assume control by letting go of control! Yes, it is an oxymoron. And you'll soon agree that's it is not as easy as it sounds, but it is possible with a little neuroscience hack. Empower The spread of Covid across the world has demonstrated how utterly unready we all were, and remain, for a disastrous pandemic. There are plenty of people who will chorus that this pandemic isn't nearly as bad as seasonal flu, or not as deadly as Ebola, and nothing compared to the Bubonic Plague. But there is a major difference this time round. this time, we have social media and everyone is a journalist. And read or watch any news and it will be stoking your fear and anxiety. So my number #1 recommendation for everyone is to stop reading or watching the news. You are feeding yourself with the knowledge of good and evil, with a massive emphasis on the latter. Do yourself a huge favour and stop trolling through Facebook, even LinkedIn, and definitely avoid Twitter. Don't turn on the TV and catch the headlines. Don't worry, if you need to know something that's going on, someone will tell you, and if they don't, then you don't get to worry about it. Of course I realise that this is nigh impossible these days, but the less you see and hear negative information, the lower the levels of the stress hormones, cortisol and adrenaline course through your body. Instead, make a really tight fist with your hand. Hold it and keep squeezing it tight. Tighter still, as if you were trying to control everything in the entire world right now and fix it. And then let your fingers loose and relax and let the blood flow and release all that tension. Let go of control. Cast your cares. Have a quick look around you and check to make sure that the world hasn't fallen apart without you being in charge and then do it again. Take back control with a really tight fist, build the tension, take on all those burdens and then let them all go again. Flex your fingers, and breathe a huge big sigh. And just like washing your hands these days - do this as often as your mind touches on trying to send you into another round of panic, stress and worry asking "what if...?" "if only..." Use your fist tension to take control of your mind, win the battle of your soul and then let go to gain control. Yes, you are tricking your will and emotions with your body to let your mind take control and then you are back at a place of choice and agency and you can let it go. He who dwells [sits] in the secret place of the Most high. Will remain secure and rest in the shadow of the Almighty. #Psalm91

My hands clammy, my shirt beginning to soak with perspiration in the air-conditioned room. I walked to the front of the meeting room past my muttering colleagues and got blinded momentarily by the projector; I faced my audience. Their faces raptly attentive as they waited for the first words to come.   The Purpose This AdvantEdge Guide hacks the neuro-psychology of influence to uncover the chemistry and maths used by our critter and executive brains respectively and learn how to leverage and use this understanding to yield the fruit of motivating people to do the things that matter. You'll be a better influencer and thus a better leader. The Process First, get your own EDGE by listening or reading to the guide and then ponder privately or with your buddy coach on the Empowering questions at the end of the guide. Every guide uses the EDGE development process: Encourage - trying something new or different is uncomfortable and challenging so what's in it for you? That'll be the Payoff below! Develop - your understanding and knowledge of the neuro-psychology research that supports this leadership hack. Guide - Specific actions for you to consider to put this into practice. Empower - One specific action for you to take away, together with templates when needed. Second, buddy up Take this guide further by buddying up with someone else. Use this as a mentoring tool that takes all the guesswork and myths out of a leadership development conversation. The Payoff You'll grow as a leader and influencer, they'll grow as a leader and together you'll achieve better results. If you're in sales, you'll sell more, more easily. If you're in tech or engineering, you'll get the support you need from colleagues and motivate those marketing and finance types to collaborate. This was my most important performance ever, and I was about to go down in flames... I noticed my boss as he glanced at his watch. A phone buzzed in silent mode on the table and all eyes were drawn toward it. Someone muttered an apology as he picked up the errant phone and read the message. I had spent weeks preparing for this meeting. We were about to introduce a new computer system across the entire business and everyone in the room would be affected. The only problem was that nobody wanted the new system. If only they would realise how beneficial it was going to be... I stumbled through my slides, gave them all the facts in laborious detail and outlined the plan. Still, nobody wanted the new system. I had failed to influence my colleagues to support the project So why had my long-prepared presentation failed to achieve the intended result? When we link the required resources to the goal through personal benefit - the fruit is motivation to change. That is, we influence the person to change.  Develop The answer lies in the Triangle of Influence   We are influenced EMOTIONALLY in our critter brain first. This has a lot to do with brain chemistry. Aristotle called this "Pathos". Then we are influenced RATIONALLY in our executive brain which essentially relies on maths. Aristotle referred to this as "Logos". When we are influenced to do something, we connect three things inside the brain: The goal (Command Intent) we will achieve The resources (Talents, Skills, Time and Money) achieving the goal costs, and The personal benefits (fulfilling Purpose and Values) that we get out of achieving the goal. The Critter Brain and The Chemistry of Motivation and Influence Any perception of cost in using my talents, my skills, my money or my time triggers a fear response. I might get protective (fight it), pretend I didn't hear it (freeze) or stop hearing anything else (flee). In large part it triggers the production of norepiphrene (better known as adrenaline). This is not good news for motivation.   But that doesn't mean that you can or should avoid being open about the cost of doing something. If you don't tell me, it's highly probable that my emotional memory will tag on a previous memory of cost. A memory that might be worse than this new situation.   Talk of achieving goals get's me into achievement mode, largely serotonin which is associated with pride. Also some testosterone which can help me feel determined and stronger.   When I perceive I am getting a real benefit that is valuable to me - well that's a happy thing and I get a dopamine buzz.   Too much cost, I've probably shut down anyway. Too little achievement, and I'm a little anxious. Too little genuine, personal benefit - well, sure I'd like it but isn't the cost a little high?   Now, while the chemistry is doing its work on my mood and feelings towards your suggestion, my executive brain wants to jump in with a little logic. The Executive Brain and The Logic of Motivation and Influence When I believe that I gain more value in the benefit than the cost, then I will be motivated to act on achieving the goal.   But if we believe that the cost outweighs the benefit, we will not be motivated to act.   Or at least we like to think that the executive brain is in charge.   Neuroscience research is pointing us to understand that the critter brain (our emotional centre) has already made the decision and our executive brain merely gets to rubber stamp its choice.   If I feel strongly in favour of doing something, then I am likely to find reasons for agreeing with myself. I am biased. So are you by the way. We seek arguments and confirmation, that the emotional decision we have already made, is the right choice. It's called confirmation bias.   It is possible to overturn your emotional decisions, but you need to be mindful and strong willed. We call it being objective, or being "reasonable".   When influencing someone, it's quickest and best to get the chemistry right first (talk to the critter brain) the math will follow. You ever wonder why advertising is so powerful? Effective advertising speaks to the critter brain first!   Why do (your preferred) politicians win you over? They talk to your critter brain first! Guide Everyone has influence! We all have the power to affect another person. The very definition of influence. But do you have the necessary power to affect the people you need to influence? When I was presenting to my colleagues in an attempt to influence them to support my project I neglected a few critical points. In particular: They were already biased against the project and I didn't do enough to allay their fears of the extra costs in their concerns of being able to use the new system (and not look dim) nor in the changes it would make to entrenched working practices. The objective of the project was not as clear for them as it needed to be, nor was it a result that would make them feel proud. I focussed on saving monetary costs for the company and neglected the cost in them feeling competent and capable of working in this new way. I focussed on what was in it for the organisation, not for them personally. So they could not see any real personal benefit. Not surprising then that they weren't motivated to action. I take heart that I'm not alone in such an endeavour. How many new projects have you witness fail in your working lifetime? People are influenced to act (or change) when they feel that it is the right choice to make, and then they justify it with reason and logic. It is critical that we realise that people are influenced when THEY make the link. Influence to act = PERSONAL Benefits > PERSONAL costs Remembering that they too are biased, and their bias is not the same as yours. Surely it cannot be this simple? Well, it can. But importantly, simple does not mean easy. If we wish to influence another person to undertake a particular action, to be certain that we motivate them to action, we need to know: What they PERCEIVE to be the personal benefits What value they place on those benefits What they perceive to be the costs to them and The value they place on those costs. And, bear in mind, that even if we are to know this today, by tomorrow these may have changed. So we apply our own perception of what WE think are the benefits and costs for the other person. The greater our empathy, the more likely we are to understand the other person well enough to influence them easily. Take a child's perspective… As you approach the checkout in the supermarket, little Johnny grabs a fistful of chocolate. (Goal = eat chocolate, Benefits = pleasure, sugar buzz, flavour, Cost = zero)   As a parent, you know that the cost is considerably higher, certainly in terms of cash, but also there are future long-term implications such as weight gain, a sense of entitlement that pleasure doesn’t have to be paid for.   As a parent, you want to take the chocolate back off Johnny. At which point, little Johnny increases the cost to the parent of doing so. Crying, screaming, and being generally badly behaved. Why? Because such behaviour has worked in the past.   The cost to the parent could be that feeling of shame. We've all felt the eyes of those behind us in the queue. We can feel their disapproval of our parenting. There's those who think we should simply give in and get out of their way and those who think you are a terrible parent for having such an ill-disciplined child.   Who influences whom? Well, that depends on the perception of the value of each of the associated costs. Either way, children learn the secret power they possess and which buttons to press to get what they want.   As we grow older and wiser, most of us lose this natural ability to get our own way. It is no longer seemly to 'lose one's temper' even if it still works.   A child's toolkit is limited and plays on your emotions. Take a politician's perspective... Whilst some notable politicians appear to assume a child's perspective, truly successful politicians are very adept at influencing people emotionally and rationally (please do note that successful does not necessarily mean "good" and I am not endorsing any party or approach.) Particularly in recent years where the most successful have learned from advertising, TV and social media. Remember to look beyond the politics itself here and focus on the tools and techniques the successful ones use effectively.   In short, politicians and advertisers alike most often use four universal appeals: They encourage your dreams and/or They allay your fears and/or They justify your failings, and/or They help you throw rocks at a (common) enemy. In other words, they promise to help you get what you want, promise it won't hurt you or cost you more than you can afford, whilst letting you know that it's not your fault that you previously chose their competitor because everyone else got fooled too and they'll often create a new enemy for everyone to focus their dislike toward and thus generate a sense of unity (or social proof that you are not alone).   For advertisers think cars, shampoo, new financial products and dental plaque respectively. These are emotional persuaders! Who cares about numbers, logic or proof once you've been emotionally hijacked? The principles of influence though, remain the same. The art and neuroscience of how you influence to motivate someone to do something hasn't changed in more than 2,000 years since the days of Aristotle.   If I ask you to do something, you'll want to know the cost for you and what's in it for you that is, you will rationalise a choice. Only when the benefits for you outweigh your costs will you be motivated to act. Unless I've hit you hard enough with an emotional persuader. When you influence (more easily) with emotional appeals first, the logical argument might not even matter.   However, I can also influence you by manipulating your perception, or I could force or coerce you to do something. When does influence cross the line? Are the four universal appeals a legitimate tool of influence and motivation or have we crossed the line into manipulation? Your action step You will want to motivate someone today or tomorrow. Perhaps your kids to study, your partner to help out, your staff to take on more responsibility.   Consider what is the most powerful emotional appeal you can make to them: encouraging their dreams, allaying their fears, justifying their failures or do you need to identify a common enemy? Perhaps you've tried them all and nothing works, can you increase the cost of non-compliance and learn from your toddler self? Get a notebook and write it down now, alongside their name. Add any and all your logical support to the note. Now go motivate them to do the things that matter.   And do let me know how well you get on.

I just returned from a long and exciting trip to Israel where I was reminded that even the very best of us face rejection and are criticised. Encourage It seems that it does not matter whether your intentions are to help and serve others. It doesn't matter if you are the kindest, gentlest, most loving and caring person the world has ever seen. You will face rejection. And you will probably face rejection by those you truly would think should be the tribe you can most trust, your own family, your own people. In fact, oftentimes, it's those closest to you whose rejection hurts the most. The chance of being rejected by someone used to be limited to our social and work circle and our dating pool. Nowadays, thanks largely to social media and technology, our posts, chats, profiles, pictures can all be easily ignored, disliked or flamed by a multitude of vague acquaintances. And rejection hurts deeply. Its wounds pierce our very soul and hit the core of our being. It has happened to you and it will happen again in the future, so how can we equip ourselves now to overcome rejection and soothe the sting of rejection? Develop it will greatly help to understand why rejection hurts and what is happening inside the brain. Before we dive into ways we can soothe our rejection, it will greatly help to understand why it hurts and what is happening inside the brain. When researchers placed volunteers in functional MRI machines asking them to recall a recent rejection, they found something astounding. When we experience rejection, the area that lights up on the fMRI is the same area activated when we experience physical pain. But social rejection is worse than stubbing your toe or even being punched in the face because physical pain diminishes over a short period of time. Research shows that even being rejected by a total stranger can simultaneously make you feel sad and angry. Indeed, your brain doesn't distinguish who or what is rejecting you, the same response applies. Whether it's someone in your own group or someone you don't relate to at all. Whether it's a human being or a computer rejecting you, being ostracised stings! Sadly, the greatest damage of rejection is self-inflicted. For most people, the natural response to being dumped by a dating partner or being the last person picked for a team is not to lick our wounds and get back on form but to become incredibly self-critical. We feel disgusted with ourselves, call ourselves names, lament how we are truly not worthy, and dwell on our shortcomings. This means that just at the moment when our self-esteem has taken a beating, we lay it on the ground and give it a good kicking ourselves. It's when that self-damaging refrain learned from a very young age that "I am not good enough" repeats it's toxic mantra. In the days of our long-ago ancestors, rejection served a vital function. Being ostracised from our tribe in our hunter/gatherer past was akin to a death sentence, as you would be unlikely to survive long alone. The same area (the anterior cingulate cortex) of the brain that is constantly on the watch for danger or change in the environment is the same place scanning for the social clues that might point towards a future rejection. It was so vitally important to continue to belong to a tribe that mimicking intense physical pain is a terrific way to get our attention. Those who paid attention early were more likely to correct their behaviour and remain in the tribe. It's all happening in the primitive part of our "critter" brain. As modern evolved human beings we did not, unfortunately, evolve a more reasoned response that would negate the need to gain our vivid attention. Rejection still has a way of destroying a person's life in a way that few other things can. And the number of people affected by rejection is staggering. Why do people face rejection or being ostracised by others? Few people who have rejected someone else can readily explain their reasoning and that's because it has little to do with "reason". Take a moment to test yourself for the last time that you rejected someone. Of course, you can justify it to your own satisfaction but what were the underlying causes? For some, it's the behaviour of the other person. Something they did (or did not) do that you considered to be unacceptable. For others, it's because they don't share your values, beliefs, personality type or your societal conventions. Or they failed to meet your expectations of them. Behaving Badly Your behaviour could be adding fuel to the fire and causing your rejection Sometimes people reject us because of our "bad" [unacceptable, wrong, ugly, contrary, different] behaviour in our interactions with them in such a way that makes them uncomfortable or upset. That is, their brain registers our actions as something that they wish to avoid as it is deemed (by their critter brain) to be some sort of threat to the sanctity of the tribe. The chances are very high that we do not realise nor recognise anything wrong with our behaviour. But then we judge ourselves by our intentions, whilst we judge others by their actions. We don't intend to make other people uncomfortable, and probably don't consider anything about our behaviour as a reasonable cause of their reaction. Yet, there it is. Our behaviour upsets them which means that they are not rejecting us (the human being), they're rejecting our behaviour. And we can choose to change our behaviour. Clashing of the Titans People sometimes simply reject anyone whose values, beliefs or personality traits are incompatible with their own. The world is filled with people who have a different opinion on certain topics to our own. If you support "the other party" or you pray to a different god, or pray to the same god but in a different way, or support the "wrong" football team and so many more labels that we might use to describe ourselves, even the colour of one's skin, your gender or any choice you make. Some people hold their beliefs, values and life choices so tightly that they will instantly reject anyone who is not completely aligned. Others may simply choose not to trust you and hence, partially reject us. Great Expectations Unrealistic expectations can create an environment ripe for rejection When we don't live up to someone's expectations we may be rejected. Even if, in your opinion, those expectations are unknown to you or unrealistic for anyone else to expect. There are many parents who have rejected their child because they didn't get the right grades or follow the parents preferred career path. There are ex-partners who expected you to stay young and fit as they grew old and round or you became too "clingy" or too "distant", too "argumentative" or too "compromising". There are ex-friends who waited for you too many times or disliked it when you paid attention to someone else or you changed your religion. Guide Whatever the "reason" for rejection, it hurts. Because "reason" is drowned out by the forward hitting emotion. That is, your brain chemicals have done their work in your critter brain before you can consciously choose whether to override the feelings using your executive brain. Knowing How to Respond to Rejection Your first reaction is likely to be a combination of sadness and anger. It's not unusual to lash out at someone close to you (both physically and emotionally). In fact, that maybe your first noticeable sign that you are feeling rejected. Teenagers screech at their parents, husbands shout at wives, wives sob in the bathroom - as often as not, they're feeling rejected and may not even know it. Recognise that something is wrong and stop a moment to recall the trigger. If it's a feeling of rejection (that special cocktail of sadness and anger where you feel less loved [oxytocin] and more tense, ready to fight or run away [adrenaline]) then establish whether the trigger could have been your "bad" behaviour, a clash of beliefs or values, or your failure to live up to others expectations. But why should I have to do this? Isn't it their fault? Remember, most of the damage rejection causes is self-inflicted after the event. Those rejecting you are probably not even aware and almost certainly don't care what you are going through and they ain't going to change, but you can help you now. It is tempting to let our sadness and anger run its course. Maybe you'll feel better eventually, maybe you'll tip over the edge and do something regrettable and irreversible. Fortunately, there are healthier and better ways to respond to rejection, things that we can do to soothe our emotional pain, rebuild self-worth and curb unhealthy responses. Here are three plus one more: Empower Kill your inner critic! Kill your inner critic In the aftermath of rejection, it's tempting to recite all of your faults and beat yourself up for whatever you did "wrong"- stop it! Please do review what happened, as factually and objectively as you can, and consider alternatives for the future. Labelling yourself with derogatory terms, such as "I'm such a loser", "I'm an idiot" are not helpful. Thinking "I should probably avoid talking about my political opinions at work," is fine. And please remember, most rejection is due to "fit" and circumstance - not personal. Unearthing all of your own deficiencies in an effort to understand why it didn't work out is unnecessary and likely to be misleading. Revive your self-esteem Yes, your self-worth has taken a big hit and it's important to remember what you have to offer. Remind yourself of all the attributes of yourself that are valuable, things that make you a good teammate, partner, friend, employee. List five positive qualities about yourself that are important and matter and write them out (by hand preferably). And if you're struggling to find them, have a look at this list:  This is emotional first aid and will lift levels of oxytocin and serotonin in your brain which will soften those feelings of rejection and replace them with acceptance and pride. Enhance your feelings of social connection Remember, the other(s) may not actually have rejected you, you just think they have! You are a social creature, we all need to feel wanted and valued by the social groups to which we belong (or would like to belong). Rejection destabilizes this need, leaving us feeling unsettled and untethered. We need to remind ourselves that whilst one group or individual may have rejected us, we are valuable and matter to others. If your own team didn't invite you to lunch today, grab a coffee with your exercise buddies instead. When your partner ignores your texts, call your mum for a chat and remind yourself of the joy of hearing your voice brings to others. When your child gets rejected by the playground football pick, make a plan to hook them up with a different friend as soon as possible. Dust off your feet Plus one more... When all is said and done, there are some people in this world who are simply not going to like you. And that's OK. It's their loss. Sometimes, there's a group of people where you want to be. The "cool kids", the elite clubs, the trendy set. The trouble is, they don't want you. Maybe it's your behaviour, maybe it's your beliefs, maybe you make them feel bad about themselves, maybe you're not rich enough, cool enough, pretty enough, talented enough... and it really is all OK. The simple truth is that they are not worthy of you and that's their bad. Even the Lord Jesus was rejected and He advised His disciples that Whoever does not welcome you, nor listen to your message, as you leave that house or city, shake the dust off your feet [breaking all ties with them]. Mat 10:14, Mar 6:11, Luk 9:5 Don't waste your weight, your honour, your glory, your respect [Kavod] on those who are unaccepting. For everyone else "Accept one another" [Rom 15:7] and edify and include them.

Encourage  Are you tired of wasting time dealing with workplace drama and politiks? Perhaps you are crippled by toxic leaders and uninspired cultures and you know that there is a better way. In this episode we're going to introduce you to the triggers of exemplary workplace behaviour at the neurological level. And we'll tap into four of these triggers that will #UnLock performance and #UnLeash Team Power. By implementing these four you'll see higher productivity, well-being, retention and accountability. You'll see reduced absenteeism, less drama, the end of corrosive gossip and fewer accidents. Develop In Leading Difficult People, I shared with you about our deep seated human need for safety, belonging and mattering. The first two of those, safety and belonging are so primal to our personal engagement at work (or in life) that this time, I'm digging in a little more to the neuroscience that will allow us to create the ideal conditions for our teams to thrive. Human beings are social animals, we need some degree of social acceptance in our lives, and without it, we shrivel and die. Our limbic system is the mid part of our brain and is responsible for overseeing our emotional lives and is important in what we learn and commit to memory. You'll know about the amygdala, for example, the primary control centre for our freeze, fight , flight mode. That's housed in the Limbic system. Dr Jim Coan of the Virginia Affective Neuroscience Laboratory suggests that the limbic brain spends the entire day asking two questions: What's next? and How am I doing? And whilst these are broad generalisations, it's an incredibly helpful way for leaders who seek actionable models to improve engagement at work. How safe do you feel when you do not know what's coming next compared to how you feel when you do know what's coming next? Like most people, you'd probably feel less safe. When leaders become more predictable, consistent and transparent they become clear on what will happen next. When a leader seeks closer alignment around shared values, purpose and command intent - they are creating a consistent and predictable and participatory culture with immediate benefits to the limbic system. Our biological need to belong to a group or tribe drives the question: "How am I doing?" Our survival depends on the social resources of the group and so our limbic system is constantly assessing our membership status. "Am I in?" it asks. "Am I worthy? Do they see the value I add?" The limbic system doesn't ask this question once in a while; it asks every minute of every day! When a leader validates and recognises a team member, when they are acknowledged or appreciated, that isn't just some silly social gesture. It's a deeply important message direct to the recipients limbic system: "You have been noticed. You are seen and valued. You are safe. You are in." "And here's some useful feedback to help you stay safe and remain in the tribe." Don Rheem, author of Thrive by Design, says that answering these questions are behaving in a consistent and predictable manner and offering validation, recognition, and feedback. This makes team members (and others) feel safe and that they belong. He goes on to share four ways that leaders should focus their efforts to help their team members feel wanted, trusted and supported which in turn will improve retention, engagement and profits. Guide Neuroscience points us towards creating the ideal conditions that allow the brain to thrive and perform much closer to their potential. These conditions will help team members be more engaged, productive, healthier and happier in their work and workplace. Encourage trusted relationships and collaboration We thrive in a culture of trust, caring and collaboration. When our work tribe trusts each other and shares resources to support each other and the overall command intent, team members feel safer, feel that they belong and that what they do matters to the rest of their work tribe and the organisation. Leaders who promote a pro-social workplace can reap these benefits. This helps satisfy our hunger for social connection that feels safe. Help employees find meaning and purpose Gone are the days when job security and a wage are enough to make employees show up every day. If a leader wants to retain talented staff (whilst reducing the massive cost of replacing them) they should strive to create and maintain a deeper connection for team members to their work, their colleagues and to the command intent of the organisation. Create challenging work High performers, the bedrock of great organisations, need a positive challenge in their workplace ecosystem. Not just a challenge, but also the recognition and celebration that comes with successfully beating the challenge. Leaders need to set goals that are within reach and recognising victory before rushing into the next challenge. Give employees authority to innovate and take risks Hierarchies predicated on fear and distrust stifle innovation and focus the mind on daily workplace survival. Highly politikal organisations or those with key players who talk the talk but do not walk the walk kill off performance excellence. Whilst a workplace grounded in trust and team member empowerment, set the foundation for team members to take risks and make mistakes without the fear of punitive backlash. Innovation and risk-taking may not motivate everyone, but the fact that management respect and has confidence in team members supports a culture where high performers will stretch and challenge themselves. Leaders who create and support these four conditions in the workplace give team members more reason to feel wanted, trusted and supported. They will feel safer, that they belong to an important group and that what they do matters. This will, in turn, positively impact team member engagement, retention, morale and profits. Empower How can you make this happen when you are leading from the middle of the organisation? So you're not the big boss and you agree with all of the above but isn't it the CEO's job to make this happen? But you can make it happen. Maybe not for the entire organisation, but you can do something for your team, your small part of the whole. I liken this to starting a camp-fire. Camp-fires attract attention - not least because they provide light in the darkness and warmth, but they attract people to them because other people are there. Start in your small part of the workplace world, and slowly, but surely, other people will notice that there's something different with your tribe. Something they like. Something they want. You can share what you are doing like lending someone a lit branch to start their own fire. Before long, the whole organisation is lit with many small camp-fires and eventually, even the dullest CEO will come to the fire.

Encourage Even in the direst circumstances, people seek out their purpose in life: Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning 1 Human beings have a deep, innate desire to find meaning in their lives. We want to matter. For some, it is to leave a legacy, to put a ding in the universe, or to enjoy the satisfaction of a job well done. For others, it is about success, reputation or recognition. For many who have found their true meaning, they know it's about others and less about self. And yet for many many more, it is an unknown, idealised and unrealistic dream. Researchers have shown that meaningfulness is more important to employees than pay and rewards, promotions or even working conditions. 2 Work that is meaningful can be highly motivational, performance enhancing, satisfying and leads to greater commitment. 3 Yet, recently I was running a workshop with a group of millennials and I was unsurprised that not one of them had a clear purpose for their life, not even a career plan or really a semblance of any idea what they wanted let alone why they might have been put on this earth. My surprise was that this time, not one of them has put thought into it. Usually, one or two will tentatively raise their hands that they have some sort of idea or plan for their own future. And yet we hear so many stories that Millennials seek more from jobs than a salary. They are , apparently, greatly concerned about environmental issues, climate change, social injustice. And they want to be engaged at work- yet less than 30% are. And they seek personal life balance int heir work. So not so very different from Gen X'ers, Baby Boomers and Founding fathers. Develop I was given some pretty poor advice when I was young to pursue my passion in life. "Do what you love and you won't work another day in your life." Which is all well and good until you change your mind about what you are passionate about. Passion is self-serving, egotistical and selfish. It's for you alone. And it changes. For some people it changes over years, for others it changes in minutes. Most often, your passion tends to be associated with something you are good at doing. You love doing this. You enjoy it. I've met many an accountant who went into it in part due to parental expectations and bias, in other part that they were good at maths and liked earning and counting money. A few years later, the glisten of accounting can wear off and the feeling of something missing looms larger and larger. The dictionary can help us out here: Passion: a strong or powerful emotion This is not the same as being engaged with work: Engaged: to occupy the attention or efforts of (a person or persons): Though you could argue that your attention would be occupied by doing something that you are passionate about. Passion is good to put fire in your belly but as Ryan Holiday points out in his book, “Ego is the Enemy, ”Passion is for the amateurs" he says, and continues with, “passion is seen in those who can tell you in great detail who they intend to become and what their success will be like.” Though they haven’t gotten there, and might not even be on the right track. Ouch! If passion is the fire, then purpose is the fuel. It is "Why" you do what you do. It's "Why" you were born, "Why" you have the gifts and talents you have. Purpose: The object toward which one strives or for which something exists; an aim or goal: the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists As you search to make your work meaningful, it aligns with your purpose (and if you are truly blessed, aligns with your passion as well.) Research at MITSloan Management Review found five qualities of Meaningful work: Self-transcendent (it's not about you!) - your work aligns with your purpose or even is your purpose. We find meaning in work when our work matters more to others than to just ourselves. Abraham Maslow's original hierarchy had "Self-transcendence" at the apex Poignant (meaning doesn't always come wrapped in euphoria) i.e. it's not passion! People often find their work to be full of meaning at moments associated with mixed, uncomfortable or even painful thoughts and feelings. It's not just when they feel happy or full of joy, but often the poignant moments of deep sadness, incredible challenge and yet having achieved something special, and usually, for others. Episodic (not sustained) Meaningfulness at work is not consistent or sustained every day. It is those moments that remind us that the work we do has purpose, matters to someone else and has an impact. We accept that there are hours, days, weeks and maybe months of what can feel like drudgery, but in the end, oh in the end we get a glimpse of the joy on someone's face or see the finished work. For me, those reminds are what i call the "a-ha moments" I see or hear in a clients voice as they get it for themselves. Reflective Meaningfulness comes to life when we reflect on it, discuss it, share with our conscious selves or others. Sure, there are feelings in the moment but meaningfulness comes to mind when we step back and reflect on the work done andd see the purpose fulfilled. Personal (work and life integration) Meaningful work is not just about work but also in the wider context of personal life experiences. It is especially powerful when meaningful work is seen by others who matter and recognised for the amazing work it is. Meaningless work is much much easier to attain:  Here are seven ways that you can effectively make anyone's work meaningless or futile: Disconnect people from their values: Most easily achieved through an organisational focus on the bottom line and the individual's focus on professionalism and quality of work. Essentially, holding profit as more important over people and service. Take your employees for granted: Don't recognise or acknowledge someones hard work and don't appreciate staff for, well, anything. Give people pointless work to do: Please do fill as much time as possible with bureaucratic, administrative tasks. Especially those not directly related to their core purpose and lots of copy and paste of numbers into multitudinous reports and slides - focusing as much as possible on reports that don;t matter and don;t get read or acted upon. Treat people unfairly: Hype up the meritocracy you believe in and then make sure you give the best perks to relatives, friends, and those noticeably less qualified. Pay more to some people you like, and less to others. Or generally be unpleasant, lie and remove perks randomly. Override people's better judgment: If someone has a good idea, ignore it. If someone has years of experience and questions a procedure, be sure to enforce them to do it your way, or else. Increase a sense of urgency at all times and encourage corner-cutting. People love it when their opinions and experience don't count. Disconnect people from supportive relationships: Isolate people when possible and discourage sharing, camaraderie or any relationships. Marginalise or deliberately ostracise individuals when possible. Put people at risk of physical or emotional harm: Many jobs entail physical or emotional risks and those who do them accept those risks. Unnecessary exposure to risks though can make staff feel vulnerable, exposed or terrified. The growing requirement for physical Safety and Health at Work has reduced this somewhat in recent years, so managers can turn to the more subtle emotional harm through bullying for example. Doing the opposite of these in your organisation or team doesn't in itself provide meaningful work (though this could be your own purpose?). But avoiding them will protect others from losing meaning in their work which for many, would be an incredible first step. So, how do you find meaningful work? Guide I, like many others, have written extensively on finding your purpose or your meaning, or as Simon Sinek puts it: "Finding Your Why" and much of it is very good stuff. But it takes so very long. Over the years I have found that it's better to be as simple as possible. Firstly remember the five qualities of meaningful work: It's not about you It's poignant (it may not be wrapped in euphoria) It will be episodic - there will be moments that remind you of your purpose and make you feel good about it. Meaning comes through reflection on your activities, and it will be Personal - it will be something that integrates your life and work. The first key to finding meaningful work is finding, or clarifying your purpose. Your purpose is a beautiful combination. It's the thing that you are designed and gifted and experienced to do so that someone else gets something that helps them. That is, you have gifts, talents and experience that mean that you are equipped to solve some problem for someone. You have a SOLUTION to some PROBLEM for a TARGET. It could be a huge purpose. Maybe you are here to solve the global warming problem. It could be more local and you are here to help build a bookshelf for your neighbour. Or maybe you are here to cure cancer. Or maybe you are here to visit cancer patients in hospital and tell them some jokes. I find that most of my clients discover their "problem" is something that really bugs and annoys them. I mean, majorly so. If there's a pet topic that riles you up and makes you say "someone should do something about this". That someone could be you. Now are you equipped, experienced or skilled to so anything about that problem? Who does it help? Now just try that on for size: I could [ use these skills/experience/gifts of... ] to help fix PROBLEM for TARGET. Empower Play with it. Talk to people who know you well about it. Discuss and share your thinking with a coach or mentor. Refine it, change it. add to it, subtract from it until you have a simple statement along these lines: I [do this solution]... so that [problem is fixed]... for [this target]. I hack the art and neuroscience of expert leadership so that you UnStuck Your True Potential in Life and Work. Yes I cheated, I put solution-target-problem - you can too :-) That's it. You have the gifts and talents that equip you to solve something that really matters to you for others who matter to you. Make a list if it helps you, of those things that annoy and anger you in this world. Think on who suffers because of this and do you genuinely care about them? Make a list of your gifts and talents. To help you here, consider tasks or activities that you do easily AND that you enjoy. Book a complimentary Discovery Session with me and we'll dig a little deeper when you are ready. 1.V.E. Frankl, “Man’s Search For Meaning” (Boston: Beacon Press, 1959). 2.W.F. Cascio, “Changes in Workers, Work, and Organizations,” vol. 12, chap. 16 in “Handbook of Psychology,” ed. W. Borman, R. Klimoski, and D. Ilgen (New York: Wiley, 2003). 3. M.G. Pratt and B.E. Ashforth, “Fostering Meaningfulness in Working and at Work,” in “Positive Organizational Scholarship,” ed. K.S. Cameron, J.E. Dutton, and R.E. Quinn (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2003).

What if you could feel truly appreciated and deeply satisfied every single day? What if you could experience a more joyful, appreciative and considerate workplace and it only costs you seven minutes of a day? In an earlier podcast I shared about the seven most important minutes of your day. Well, here's another hack for your Joyous delight and satisfaction that could be an additional 7 minutes, or instead. It's up to you just how much joy you want in your life. Well you can. Encourage I'm going to take a wild guess here that your work and your life has become more demanding. Furthermore, I can be pretty certain that you feel under-valued. I'll even dare to suggest that your pay is not the main issue in feeling under-valued, rather it's because it seems that no-one truly appreciates the value you deliver. Something deep inside our pysche screams out to be appreciated. When we're not appreciated, then our satisfaction with life, with our job, with ourselves, is diminished. You might have quit a job to take another with more salary in the belief that you would feel better. And for a while, that might have worked well enough. But after the honeymoon was over and the realities of everyday started to take their toll, even the extra money began to seem insufficient. The offer of a higher salary felt good because it aroused your anticipation of pleasure (increased dopamine in your brain making the offer attractive). But dopamine is short-lived in making us feel good - so we seek another dose, then another and another and then some more (not necessarily a good thing!). Sadly, the extra cash doesn't (ever) deliver the anticipated long-term happiness. What we're really after is some oxytocin and a dose of serotonin - we want to feel loved (or at least a sense of belonging to a trusted tribe) from the oxytocin and a sense of delighted satisfaction with the serotonin. And what better way to feel valued than someone else to appreciate you for your contribution? You feel more loved (appreciated) thanks to the oxytocin, and you'll feel more satisfied thanks to the serotonin produced when you are appreciated by someone else. So how do you get your boss, colleague, staff, partner, kids, parents, customer to appreciate you for well, anything at all? You could be giving the very best possible service, providing the very best of you and yet still it seems to go unnoticed. You could yell and scream and beg them to appreciate you. Throw a hissy fit and stomp off telling them that they don't deserve you. You could just suck it up and think that life is like that and people are unappreciative. You could try and stop being so wonderful and find out of they even notice. Or you could try something radical that actually works. Develop So, you've tried one or more of the tactics everyone uses at some point in their life to get the appreciation you so richly deserve to no avail. Or was it? It is possible that they did try to show you their appreciation. They just used the wrong language. And by language, I mean your language of appreciation. Dr Gary Chapman and Paul E. White wrote a wonderful book called the "5 Love Languages" that has impacted millions worldwide with their love and marriages. And they've written a version for work (because it seems that "love" is a bit too squishy and personal for the workplace) called the "5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace" on how to effectively communicate appreciation at work using the 5 languages that matter to people. Essentially, each of us feels appreciated in different ways. That is, we have different "languages of appreciation". Typically, we will use the language of appreciation that matters to ourself. If you have a different language of appreciation, my appreciation of you goes unnoticed. It's as if I am speaking perfect French and you only understand Chinese. Most, if not all that I speak will just be non-sense to you. Similarly, you speaking Chinese will make no sense to me. The five languages of appreciation are: Words of Affirmation - using words to communicate a positive message e.g. praise for accomplishments, speaking or writing to affirm someone's character. (Writing a note of appreciation (by hand!) is powerful. Heck, sending a real, physical birthday card would be fantastic these days.) Quality Time - giving someone undivided time and attention e.g. having a quality conversation with someone, shared experiences (retreats) or small group dialogues. Acts of Service - pitching in to help and get things done (though always ask first in case your service is unwanted!) e.g. helping someone carry resources into a meeting room, arranging food for the team when they are working late on a project. Tangible Gifts - offering thoughtful, non-monetary gifts e.g. tickets to a concert, a special treat from another country you just visited (not from the airport store though!) Physical Touch - using encouraging touch in appropriate ways - perhaps less valued in the workplace and certainly very sensitive form of appreciation but can still be relevant e.g. shaking hands, high fives. Take a moment to reflect and identify your primary and secondary languages of appreciation. Like most people, you'll "speak"all five languages, but two will likely resonate the most with you. If you're stuck, ask your life partner or best friend. Also, identify the one that is least important to you. this one will be pretty meaningless to you when given. My own least important language is physical touch - just doesn't do it for me in the work environment, I'd much rather someone wrote me a note or pass over a bottle of nice whisky they grabbed at the duty-free (and please do take these at hints!) When someone writes me an email to tell me they liked something I wrote or that they enjoyed the workshop - I am on cloud 9. Pass me a bottle of decent Chianti and I feel really appreciated. How about you? What makes you feel best appreciated? You can also take an assessment to find out at the appreciationatwork.com website. I'm not affiliated by the way, just sharing - it's a small act of service :-) Beware your bias! Because I like words of affirmation and tangible gifts I might assume that this is true for everyone. And because I am not a great fan of physical touch to show appreciation, again, I might assume that this is true for you. I could be wrong. We often find in the workplace, that someone who feels greatly under-appreciated by their boss has primary and secondary languages not shared with the boss. For example, one client I worked with recently wants to "hear" their boss appreciate them in public. Their boss is a quality time and gifts person, and shows her appreciation through spending time with people and giving them little trinkets from her travels. Works very well for some, but not this particular client - he doesn't even notice and was convinced that his boss never ever showed him any appreciation. How to get people to appreciate you You may well be thinking by now that "this is all well and good, but how does me knowing this get other people to appreciate me?" When I was first starting out in my career do my job. It seems that I was mistaken about that. So, all I had to do was something beyond my job. It seems I was also wrong about that. Eventually I came to the conclusion that, in order to be appreciated, I just had to go out of my way to be especially awesome and incredibly helpful to my boss and then he would appreciate me. Erm... also wrong. Unless you have been especially blessed with a particularly unusual creature as your boss, that you have discovered the same to be true. And it is also not a case that they are really appreciating you but with a different language, then you knowing this does not, of itself, get you appreciated. But we can, as I mentioned earlier, do something truly radical that will simulate appreciation and you will feel fantastically awesome. And that's what we're going to learn next. Guide Remember I shared with you about oxytocin making you feel loved, trusted and appreciated? Remember that serotonin helps you feel a sense of delighted satisfaction. And that feeling of euphoric happiness is down to a dose of dopamine. Well, those three chemicals are triggered when we are appreciated (in our preferred language.) What neuroscience also tells us is that these three chemicals are similarly triggered when we appreciate others. That is, giving appreciation to others makes you feel loved, trusted and appreciated. Giving others appreciation makes you feel a sense of delighted satisfaction. And appreciating others deliberately as a regular behavioural goal gives us a feeling of euphoric happiness. You can't make others appreciate you but you sure can appreciate others and you get the benefit. Of course, they get the benefit of being appreciated too so this is actually even more powerful than simply being appreciated by someone else. Yes. You give them appreciation and you get the benefit too. Mind blowing huh? Don't believe me? Is it worth just 7 minutes of your day, each day for just one week? If this is true, John, then surely everyone would be doing this! I appreciate others and they get the benefit and I get the benefit too! Yes, you get to give others appreciation to selfishly make yourself feel great joy and satisfaction. The trouble is that most people seem to be wired to remain miserable, dissatisfied and are waiting cynically expectant that someone, anyone, will one day notice them and appreciate them. And since nobody does that, they're determined not to do so for anyone else and make the first move because, lets face it, they don't deserve it. Which I say is a terrific starting point because you ain't doing it for them. You're doing it for you. That they happen to benefit merely makes the world a tad better place. Wow, imagine if everyone caught this selfish appreciation bug and everyone was appreciative of everyone else. What a sickly happy world of joyous people it would be. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. If you would like to take the challenge and prove to yourself that giving just ONE person appreciation for something real in their preferred language each day for just ONE week will lift your own feelings of satisfaction, trust, appreciation and happiness then give me just 7 minutes of each day for this next week and I guarantee joyous results for you. Here's what you'll be doing: Make a list of seven people randomly chosen from your work, after-work and home environments. Identify for each person, their preferred languages. Observe or recall ONE specific real thing that you can genuinely appreciate about them. Add notes to your list. Share your appreciation with them in their preferred language. Add this to your list. Tick off their name from your list. Hey I've even created a simple list template that you can use here: Random Acts of Appreciation Template.pdf Empower Start by making a list. Choose ONE person at random from your work or non-work or home life - someone who you see or work with on a regular basis. And write their name on your list. Now, identify for that person, their preferred language. You can do so by observing them informally in three areas: Behaviours Three quarters of people express appreciation in the way that they themselves would like to be appreciated. By observing your target individual's behaviour (e.g. do they praise others, or the meal they enjoyed. Do they buy gifts, put a hand on someone's shoulder as affirmation, or offer to help), you can guess their likely primary appreciation language. Requests of others Observe how they make requests to others (e..g do they invite others to their place for dinner, request help with projects, take time to ensure that they understand you) as these give clues about what matters to them. Complaints We tend to complain about what hurts us most (e.g. "my boss has no time to discuss anything", "no one notices what I do", "no one tells me anything good") Write your guess for their most likely language on your list beside their name. Next, observe or recall just ONE SPECIFIC behaviour, activity, task, thing that they have done that you GENUINELY can appreciate. It does not have to be mega-fantastic. It can be incredibly mundane, but it is something that you can genuinely appreciate. It could be the way they closed a deal, or how they just greeted a co-worker, or the structure of a report, or that they made good eye contact with everyone when making that last presentation. Add a note of this specific thing to your list now. It is now time to turn the world upside down and inside out. Not get appreciation, but GIVE it. Choose a suitable moment today and share your appreciation for that thing they did in their preferred language. Write an affirming note on a post it and stick it on their computer screen, use words of affirmation or offer to (and follow through) help them with something, arrange time to sit down and chat (and by that I mean ask and listen), get and give them something tangible that they would like and give it to them or maybe give them a high five - all while telling them why you appreciate them. Tick their name off your list. It's completely selfish because giving appreciation randomly to others will make you feel better - you'll generate dopamine (target), serotonin (pride) oxytocin (giving love). Identify them, observe them and offer genuine, specific appreciation for ONE thing in their language. ONE person each day for ONE week, for ONE thing. That's it. Should I do this to my boss? Sure, why not - I'll bet they could use a lift too. Partner? For certain. In ONE week, tell me (an email would be terrific) how awesome you feel. If you've never done this before, those individuals may well begin regarding you with suspicion about your intention, state of mind and may even ask if you have a life-threatening condition. Don't fret about that, once you've experienced the personal benefits to your own joy, health and wellbeing, you'll be keeping this going and maybe you'll share your secret with others and they too can selfishly be more joyous and satisfied whilst appreciating others and making them feel appreciated and satisfied. Good grief, imagine a world where everyone was appreciative of others - how weird would that be?

Encourage We've all had to deal with them. Perhaps you still are dealing with them? Difficult People. They come in all shapes and sizes. All races, all genders, and all backgrounds. They only share two things in common, but I'll come back to that in a little while. As a professional executive coach I occasionally get asked by organisation leaders if I can help them "fix" one of their more "difficult" or "problematic" team members. They see potential in this person but there's a problem in their style or approach that needs developing. Some of them are like Debbie Downer from Saturday Night Live: Always ready with a depressing take on everything being discussed. Some people only seem to be happy when they're unhappy and bringing everyone else down with them to the pit of despair. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfE93xON8jk Other jerks seem to get a kick out of creating problems for everyone else and pushing people's buttons. Needling away on their pet topic and with a keen eye for any signs of weakness in others. Then we have the bullies. Instead of pushing people's metaphorical buttons, they seem to get off on literally pushing people around, shouting the loudest, forcing others to do things they don't want to and worse. At least with the downers, the jerks and the bullies everyone knows who they are. But some of the most difficult people to lead are the timid and frightened. They can be so fearful of confrontation and conflict that they hide and disappear just when you need them. Or perhaps you have someone on your team who is so disorganised and yet desperate to succeed and never seems to make any headway? And then we have the cynics and scoffers who undermine everything with their often sarcastic wit and pointed barbs. Or perhaps your most difficult person is the gossip who spread rumours, half-truths and juicy tid-bits in hushed tones over "team lunches" turning everyone against you whilst to your face, oh they're as sweet as honey and in front of the boss... well you have to admire their front and acting skills. Yes, they come in all shapes and sizes, races, genders and from all backgrounds and they share two things in common: The first important thing they all have in common is that they are all "people". We are dealing here with human beings. And we know from neuroscience that human beings share very much more in common in what drives them and causes these behaviours. The second thing they have in common is you. If you're reading or listening to this, then you have one or more people in your life whom you find difficult, and you want to know how to lead them or simply deal with them. It's OK, you are in the right place. Before we head into the "how", we need a few moments to understand what is happening with these people. And for that we'll be turning to a little neuroscience. Develop I recently read a terrific book by Christine Comaford: ""Power Your Tribe". She also writes for Forbes and has built on Abram Maslow's hierarchy of needs showing the neurological drivers all humans share. And it's primal. Your brain knows two states that matter: Dead and not-dead. Your brain's primary job is to keep you in the "not dead" state. And you really don't care about leading difficult people when you are "dead". To keep you in the "not dead" state, your brain guides your body to satisfy your physiological needs first and foremost. You have to eat, drink, find shelter, and stay warm (or cool). If any of that is threatened by anyone or anything, your brain will guide you to protect it before "not dead" becomes "dead". Now that you are in the "not dead" state we have three more primal drivers of our behaviours: Safety, Belonging and Mattering. Only when these three are also satisfied to our brain's content do we consider "self-actualization" and doing things beyond the norm for ourselves. And we crave these three things: Safety, Belonging and Mattering. Some people may crave more of one than the others, but we all crave all three to a certain extent. Do I feel safe? Can I take risks, is it OK for me to try certain things? Will I be fired if I make a mistake (thus threatening my physiological needs)? If I try something new, is that OK? If I speak up, will I be cut down? Am I free from fear, worry and anxiety? Do I belong? Are these people my people? Are we all going in the same direction? Are we equal (or at least equitable)? Do these people care for me? Will they look out for me and watch my back? Do I care for them? Will I go the extra mile for anyone of them? Do we love each other? Do we work across boundaries freely and equitably? Do silos exist? Do some people hold information or power as a means of control? Am I part of a tribe? Do I matter? Does what I do matter in the team? In the world? In life? Do I know that I matter? Do people tell me that I matter, or what I do matters? Does my contribution count and does it count as much as others contributions? Am I recognised for what I do? Have I mastered what i need to master to achieve what I am supposed to achieve? Am I able to do this? Am I respected for my achievements? https://view.genial.ly/5d3fef15adf1b53511a81bc4 And all of these needs and questions begin unconsciously. That is, any threats to them are perceived by your brain (often through your Anterior Cingulate Cortex which is always on the lookout for anything unknown or new). Once a threat is perceived, a particular mix of electro-chemical signals are fired off and your body responds. Christine Comaford calls this your "Critter State". There was a trigger and you have responded to that trigger. You might not even know that you have responded to a trigger. Other people will know it, but you may be completely oblivious to it. https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinecomaford/2012/10/21/hijack-how-your-brain-blocks-performance/#7feae1102b7b One senior leader I was asked to coach would criticise team members publically and regularly. The slightest delay or mistake with a task would result in her berating the individual loudly and with unflattering language. Her team were terrified of making a mistake or failing to deliver on time - and even when they did everything right, they received a barrage of sarcastic comments. The team, unsurprisingly, was not performing well and her boss asked me in to "fix the problem". As it turned out, this leader considered herself to be a perfectionist and hated "sloppy work" and sure it was something evolved from her family background but more important, she felt "unrespected" and was "deeply concerned that she would not achieve her KPIs because the team was sloppy". Her self-esteem was taking a hit and she believed that if she was nicer to the team, more respectful and more supportive that they would take advantage of her and she didn't matter enough to the senior leaders to keep and support. She essentially believed that she didn't matter enough and her critter state response was to lash out at anyone and everyone who happened to raise their head above the parapet. There are times when I lose my temper. I know, shocking revelation, but there it is, I too am flawed. My voice raises towards a shout, I get agitated and I may say things that I really regret later. Most often it's when I am interrupted when I am in a flow state. For example, I could be writing this, in a flow, the words just tumbling out and my thoughts racing ahead, and my wife interrupts me to asks me for help with something. At first I ignore her request, rushing to close the sentence or thought or make enough notes so that I don't lose track of where I was heading. Knowing full well, that any second now, I will be interrupted again with the same request. Only this time it's more urgent. Though it's not urgent in real terms and what I am doing is much, much more important and can't it wait. I snap back. One more request and I snap again. My hackles rise, my blood pressure heads upward, my heart beat too. I shove my stool backwards and stomp through to the other room. Sometimes, I catch myself and breathe a moment and choose to calm my critter and deliberately welcome the interruption and lovingly address my beloved and willingly, pleasantly tender my assistance. Other times, I fail to catch myself and my beloved gets my critter glare and my critter comments. My Safety and Mattering were momentarily compromised. Of course, you are a far better human being than I am and never ever show your critter state. Your need to feel safe, to belong and to matter differ from mine. My triggers and yours are probably different, though many things we will share because we do already have some tribal connection. We all want safety, belonging and mattering. And those "difficult" people. They're just showing you something of their "critter" state. Their behaviour is the result of the hijack of their emotions caused by a trigger that they perceived and they are responding in the only way they know how to protect what is important for them: their safety, their belonging and/ or their mattering. And that threat to them is perceived which makes it real for them. Although it is almost certainly unconscious. That is, they are not consciously aware that they are responding to a trigger. One very common trigger that causes many (otherwise sweet, kind and gentle people) people to respond less than maturely (aka like a total mad angry thing) is whilst driving and someone cuts you in a traffic jam, or suddenly turns without indicating. You perceived that your safety was compromised and somehow, leaning on the horn, accelerating, and many far worse responses were deemed appropriate by your inner critter. Remember that our brains are continuously on the lookout for any perceived threats. Once perceived, the electrochemical response has been fired. Will this response hijack the brain's resources and all but shut-down the executive conscious brain? Or will you have enough resources available to pause the near automatic response and choose a better alternate response? Now that we understand that we all need our balance of Safety, Belonging and Mattering as fundamental, how do you deal with those "difficult" people? Especially when one of them is your boss! Guide If you have several "difficult people" you probably have a systemic, leadership or organisation-wide cultural issue that needs to be addressed. This is where you create a genuinely safe environment in the workplace, you'll draw everyone together with an engaging mission and command intent, have cultural rituals that demonstrate your values and have absolute transparency and accountability structures. For now, we'll focus here with the key one or two "difficult" individuals. Before you address the "difficult" person, you'll find it helpful to wear the right power attitude. Because, the truth is, there are no "difficult people", only people whom you have some difficulty dealing with their behaviour(s). I'd recommend that you wear the attitude: "People are not their behaviours" as if it were true. Take some time to listen and observe what is happening and consider which one is triggering the unwanted behaviour: Talk about "us versus them" suggests a lack of belonging. If complaining that they are not recognised, appreciated or act like victims (blaming others) - they likely crave mattering. Perhaps there is an undertone of fear when in supervisor-staff interactions - they need to feel safe. Your task then is to address the person, help them feel safe, reassure them that they belong and they matter and alter the behaviour. Empower When you want to deal with the "difficult behaviour" you'll first need to help them feel safe enough to shift from their critter state. As a coach, when I'm asked to deal with people in this situation I find it immensely helpful to find a safe environment to meet (a separate office or secure, private video-conference) and then begin with breathing. Like you, I don't actually like dealing with someone who is exhibiting unwanted behaviour. I get anxious and I want to reduce the cortisol flowing through my veins. To do that, breathe in deeply through the nose into the belly, and out through the mouth. Do this three times and cortisol levels drop. You're tricking your brain that everything is safe. Do this in front of someone, and most people will, unconsciously, mirror you. Now you can use one of these influencing phrases: "What if... " This immediately takes ego out and reduces emotions. You are curious, not forcing a position (which raises defences) and encouraging the brainstorm of ideas and thoughts to flow more easily. "I would appreciate your help." This switches roles because the dominant person uses it inviting the subordinate person to rise up to the challenge. Especially useful for team members who are capable of taking on more responsibility but their current behaviour is self-sabotaging. "Would it help if..." When they appear to be stuck in critter state and unable to move forwards, this opens to offering a solution or possible course of action that may lead to a positive outcome. See how each of these phrases reinforce safety, belonging, mattering? Everyone, especially those "difficult people", craves to feel safe to belong and to matter. Even your boss! When you identify what matters most to them and help them achieve it, they will be happier, more engaged and more successful. And remember, those "difficult people" were simply drawing your attention to something they believed was lacking for them. All your other team members need to feel safe, to belong and to matter as well. Take care of them too. And your kids, your wife, your friends, the bus driver, the street cleaner, the toilet attendant... even your boss craves to feel safe, to belong and to matter.

  Coaching a colleague, a team member or anyone you know well is a challenging situation. For example, a manager usually conducts the performance review for their staff focusing on their performance in the job and team which may lead to a recommendation about salary or promotions. A coach is focussed on developing the person in their job and life but does not normally, recommend salary or promotions. As a friend, you would be interested in the other persons well-being and their feelings. You might not push them hard or challenge them in fear of breaking the relationship. As a coach, you may be pushing your client hard, challenging them deeply to improve their performance. How to Be An Effective Buddy Coach By far the best way to find a great accountability partner is to be one for each other. Below are a few tips to help you in getting the most of out of your Success Journey: 1. Get off on the right foot When you first sit down with your buddy, we recommend that you mention a couple of things up front: Reiterate the fact that you’ll be taking a lot of notes throughout the process. Recognizing the awkwardness of having an intimate conversation while writing notes up front can help the process move forward smoothly. Remind them that the reason you’re taking notes is to be able to record key themes and ideas that are necessary for helping them forge success.   Take a few minutes to discuss confidentiality. As we mentioned, a lot of the information you hear may be very personal. Reassure the participant that the information they share with you will be confidential. 2. Leave your personal bias aside We often perceive people differently than they perceive themselves. The Success Journey belongs to the participant. They must be allowed to discover who they are, not who you think they are. The most effective buddies are able to gather and process information objectively, without adding personal bias. Avoid leading questions that will validate your perceptions. The participant should be doing the majority of the talking. Certain exercises may prompt your input or participation, which will aid in the process. However, for the most part do your best to simply collect, clarify and organize the information you receive so you can help identify the patterns and themes that lead to their own discovery. The most effective buddies don’t inflate their own ego (or yours) 3. Listen Listening is an active process. Maximize the retention of the information you hear by being engaged in the process and by taking notes, recording the process or even both. Don’t rely on your memory alone to recall the information you’ll need. To be an effective buddy, it’s important for you to understand the three different types of listening: Everyday listening is usually subjective, meaning that the listener is hearing things as it relates to him/her. The listener is generally thinking of what they are going to say next and often times can’t even remember what was said to them when asked to recall it just moments later. This is not the type of listening you’ll want to use throughout the Forging Success Journey. Listening is an active process. Like a good doctor, you’re listening for the underlying heartbeat. When you are completely focused on what the other person is saying, you are listening objectively. There are no thoughts about how any of the information relates personally or professionally to you. Objective listening is much more effective than subjective listening for this process because it allows you to focus your attention on the participant. As human beings, we naturally relate what people are saying to ourselves and have the desire to interject our own experiences and ideas in order to relate or connect. Try to avoid that urge. If you feel these thoughts come up, do your best to dismiss them and focus on what the participant is sharing. While staying objective, active listening means you’re also listening to all the sensory components. You’re reading between the lines and really paying attention to tone of voice, energy levels and feelings around certain topics. This is the type of listening you’ll want to use as you buddy through the Forging Success Journey. Be curious and trust your gut to lead you to the next question. Dig deeper and find the answers behind the answers. 4. Watch As you’re listening to the participant, it’s also important to watch for visual cues that can help you determine what inspires or energizes them. Not everyone will get choked up when they feel an emotional connection to a story or event. They may talk in a more animated tone, smile more, use their hands or sit on the edge of their seat. When you notice these things, take note. They are good indications that the story you’re hearing has significance. Remember, the details of the story are not as important as the feelings and emotions that the story brings out. 5. Tame your Advice Monster We all have an advice monster inside of us, ready to leap out at a moment's notice and fill the silence as your buddy searches for an answer. Silence is a big part of everyone's Success Journey. As your buddy shares how they felt during the stories they share with you, they may get a little tongue-tied or go quiet for a moment because feelings come from the part of the brain that doesn’t control language. It’s important to allow that silence to take place and to allow them to come up with their own words. Avoid the natural urge to let out your advice monster and help fill in the blank or finish the sentence for them. When they have finished their thought or come to a natural pause, that’s your cue to dig deeper and ask some clarifying questions. Tame your inner Advice Monster and allow your buddy as much silence as they need. 6. Ask clarifying questions As a buddy, ask questions that will help the participant think more deeply about the stories they’re telling you and the feelings that are associated with those stories. Your outside perspective is valuable because you may think of questions the participant has not thought to ask themselves. Use questions like the examples below to find out what moves and inspires the participant. Go beyond the initial answer by asking them what a specific feeling means to them or what else they would like to say about the topic. You’ll notice that the examples below use open ended questions, meaning they can’t be answered with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’. It’s important to get the participant talking about their feelings and emotions as much as possible and open ended questions are the best way to do that.   The single, most powerful thing you can do as a buddy, is ask questions. Seek clarification. Most of the time it isn’t for you… it’s for them to clarify things for themselves. It’s also important to clarify the definition of the emotions or the emotional words the participant uses. Don’t assume that their definition is the same as yours. Because the part of our brain that controls emotions doesn’t control language, a feeling might mean something a little different to them than it means to you. For example: You told a story about when you felt successful. What does success mean to you? What is it that makes you feel successful? You said that you were inspired by your English teacher. Talk more about that. What does it take for you to be inspired? When you said you loved working on that project, what does that mean? Tell me more about what it takes for you to love something versus just liking it? Here’s an example of digging deeper to find the meaning behind the answers: That experience really made me feel complete. What do you mean by the word complete? Describe that for me in a little more detail. I guess I mean that I felt as though I was engaged and fully involved not only physically, but emotionally and mentally as well. I was all there and I was making a difference because of who I was. Tell me more about what that felt like. I felt like I could do anything. I had a confidence I hadn’t had for a long time and I just felt like I could really make a difference to a lot of people if I could have that kind of confidence more often. You’re now ready to meet with the participant, eager to hear and record their stories using your active listening skills. The course will guide the two of you through the rest of the participant’s Success Journey once you complete the sharing exercise. Thank you again for your willingness to help in this process!

Encourage Your aptitude (your "natural" ability to do something) is thought by many people to be the main driver of their success. We raise people with those noticeable talents onto pedestals in a form of worship. Imagine yourself as a star soccer player, or the lead singer in your favourite band, an actor in an awesome movie. There are even some people who are simply famous at being famous. But everyday life for the vast majority of people isn't a movie. Our giftedness is a little less flashy and a little more humdrum. And almost every day we come across challenges and difficulties and it is how we face those challenges that sets us apart. Indeed, since Daniel Goleman's research for his landmark book, "Emotional Intelligence", others have gone on to reinforce that the "how" you approach challenges is far more important than what you actually do to resolve them, about 80/20. How you approach something is determined by your chosen attitude to the situation. And what matters here is that you can choose your attitude in spite of your initial feelings. And choosing a good attitude will improve your outcome and sets you above in the eyes of others. As Zig Ziglar originally shared, Your Altitude is determined more by your Attitude than your Aptitude. Develop: 5 Power Attitudes My own research shows that those who are most successful over the long term share three questions they ask themselves and five power attitudes they adopt, as if they were real, to face daily challenges successfully. In your brain, the process we are going to reframe whatever the problem, challenge or situation you observe. Like me and everyone else, when you come across a problem or challenging situation, your brain notes two key things: What is perceived to be happening or what is involved - the Content, and What is the setting in which this is happening - the Context. Both of which rely on your personal judgement and perception, which is influenced by your prior experience and memory and all of your personal, cognitive biases - which inform and shape your attitude to the situation. Successful and admired leaders pause a moment before judging the situation and consider different angles and approaches to help find the optimum solution, they deliberately adopt one or more of five power attitudes: Respect the OTHER person’s model of the world The meaning of your communication is the RESPONSE you get back People are NOT their behaviours People CAN change anything There is NO failure, only feedback 1. Respect the OTHER person's model of the world The way you and I view the world is different. Everyone looks at the world through a lens shaped by memory, experience, upbringing, values, beliefs, parents, exposure to media and etc. In the USA, political party affiliations are known to shape how someone interprets the same news about a speech by a presidential candidate. Religious beliefs often determine how one person views a situation compared with someone seeing exactly the same thing, but with a different belief. I'm not suggesting that they are right and you are wrong, nor am I daring to suggest that you should change your beliefs or affiliations. I am simply asking you to respect that they have their views and you have yours. They are as entitled to their perspective as you are to yours. I'm not even asking you to wear their shoes and imagine what the situation may look like if you shared their belief, their experiences. I am suggesting that you simply have due regard for their feelings, wishes, beliefs or rights. When you look at the situation now, you may find a better way to approach the challenge that may have greater chance of success for all concerned. Wear the attitude as if it were true and see how your greater empathy build more trust. 2. The meaning of your communication is the RESPONSE you get back "I just don't get it" she said to me. That was my fault. It wasn't that she was insufficiently able to make it happen, it wasn't that she hadn't listened to every word. It was my failure to communicate what I was explaining in a way that she understood and "got". That was my problem. When I was much younger, I would have blamed her. Maybe she was too dense, too inexperienced, not paying attention, unmotivated... anything of a myriad reasons why she didn't understand. Not once would I have questions my communication skills. What's far worse for many leaders, is that the other party doesn't use words in response. Many leaders I have coached complain that, in spite of their (incredible, wonderful, timely, on-point, and brilliant) communication, their staff are not following through. No-one said anything of course. Their response was to not do what was expected, for whatever reason. What is the response you are getting? You are facing a challenge and you know that you have communicated, but did they get it? I mean really get it? The response you are getting (non-compliance, lack of action, no promotion) is the meaning of your communication. Own the problem and choose another, better way of communicating. Wear the attitude as if it were true and use the response you get as feedback to better communicate. 3. People are NOT their behaviours When someone behaves badly (in your view) this does not define them as a person. We all love to label people based on their behaviour (as we see it!) Just this morning I walked passed people who were behaving, angry, frustrated, miserable, sad, tired, exhausted, rushed, harassed, concerned, troubled, rude, friendly, happy, smug and self-satisfied. All of those labels are judgements. Sure, there is some evidence in their behaviour that makes those labels true for me, this morning. But these labels are NOT the person. We are often too quick to notice one behaviour, label it, generalise it for that person and then pin that label on them. The angry man, the rude woman, the troubled youth, the tired old man. And the moment we do that we change our behaviour towards them. And we do so knowing full well how we dislike being labelled by others. You know that is not "you" all the time. You may well be upset in certain circumstances and display anger, but you know that that does not make you an angry person. I was once asked at a conference how we should deal with "difficult" people. As I reminded the questioner, there are no "difficult" people, only people whom we find it difficult to interact. What we want to do is deal with or change the behaviour whilst loving the person. Wear this attitude as if it were true and address the behaviour while loving the person. 4. People CAN change anything  "I can't do anything..." How many times have you heard others say that? How often have you said it yourself? It's possibly the most disempowering thing that someone can say. It's when you are frustrated with a situation or a person and feel that you have tried so many ways to fix it and feel powerless. Heck, you may even be genuinely powerless to change the situation or the person... but you can change you. When you feel as though you can't, remember Joe Strummer's (Lead vocalist of The Clash) quote: "People can change anything they want to, and that means everything in the world." Wear this attitude as if it were true and you too can change the world. 5. There is NO failure, only feedback Thomas Edison famously said: "I haven't failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Often, we try to change something in life and discover that the world has got other ideas. If you think of it as failure, you focus on failing and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead view any lack of success as feedback that this way was not working and seek another way. This is not to say that you persevere against all odds and keep on until the blood drips from your fingers, or your head splits from banging against the wall. Be wise and know that sometimes, the feedback means stopping and moving on to the next better thing. Wear this attitude as if it were true. And if you fail to do that, then there's some feedback for you to try wearing it another way :-) Guide Using the any of the five power attitudes creates a momentary cognitive dissonance (that's that uncomfortable mental feeling you get when you try to hold two or more contradictory ideas or beliefs simultaneously) When you experience this discomfort, your brain needs a resolution to the dissonance and you seek a solution to the problem in question. You may struggle with this because your brain is trying to use or create a new neural pathway, reconciling old memories and even re-evaluating them in light of this new belief. And because the five power attitudes that you wear as if true are positive beliefs, this will lead to happy thoughts, improves your ability to analyse and think, increases your attentiveness, stimulates the growth of new nerve connections and leads to more happy thoughts. You'll be more creative, solve problems faster and tend to be more alert. In short, your ability to deliberately choose a specific positive attitude towards any problem will enhance your aptitude and make you more successful. Empower You want to take a fairly disciplined approach to this process, it will help you embed it and quickly establish this deliberate attitudinal change as a normal part of pausing a moment before finding solutions to problems. I use post-it notes to help steer my thinking. Write on six post-it notes(or paper) the phrases: The Problem Respect the OTHER person’s model of the world The meaning of your communication is the RESPONSE you get back People are NOT their behaviours People CAN change anything There is NO failure, only feedback Place them on a desk or a wall in front of you and focus on the problem. Describe the problem using the following questions: What is the problem? What are the consequences of the problem for me? What are the implications for others around me? How does the problem make me feel? How do I experience that feeling? Can I describe it to me? What impact does the problem have on my performance? Now, which of the 5 “Power Attitudes” would best assist in solving this problem? Focus on the most appropriate “Power Attitude” note and considers the problem from that new attitude. Consider the problem ACTING AS IF this power attitude were true. “Looking at the problem from this power attitude what options do you have?” “What will the pay-offs be for adopting this new power attitude?” Now you have a new approach to the problem. Test the problem with each of the five power attitudes, always acting as if this attitude were true. One or more of these attitudes will offer a possible solution. We have yet to come across a problem that does not change after genuinely reframing the problem using one or more of these five attitudes. Actually, there are exceptions: problems that do not involve people in any way, which isn’t many. Our normal world view tends to view problems as, well, problems. We have our view and often get caught up in the emotion of doing something about the problem (ignoring the problem is still doing something about it). Take time with each and every problem you come across. Deliberately choose one of these power attitudes. I recommend deliberately shifting your body to take a different view. ACT as if the power attitude is true. Consider the problem in just the same manner as this exercise.

Encourage One thing that separates the calm and joyful person from the stressed and depressed is a useful balance something known as the locus of control. Someone with an internal locus of control believes that he or she can influence events and their outcomes, while someone with an external locus of control blames outside forces for everything. In general terms, if you believe that everything is beyond or outside your control, then you are likely to be more anxious, highly stressed and quick to blame others for all failings. And normally, a high internal locus of control means that you accept responsibility that your abilities and effort determine your outcomes. An internal locus of control is going to bring you more benefits in the long-term as you choose to be at cause for your life. But let's be clear, it's a belief that you can influence events and their outcomes, not always control them. What we need is an appropriate balance of being in control. Indeed oftentimes we need to let go to gain control. You may feel stressed because you believe that everything depends entirely (and exclusively) on you and your efforts, or you may be feeling stressed because you believe that nothing at all is within your control. Develop What helps distinguish between being stressed out and effective is about control and, quite literally, how "hands-on" you are. If you have ever learned to play the game of golf, you'll know that at the beginning of learning to play that you grip the club tightly. After all this is basically holding onto a stick that you will swing through the air and hit a ball. Allowing the club to "follow-through' - if you don't hold on tight, the club might just go as far as the ball. I appreciate that you may have never played golf, but you can liken this also to the tight grip of the reins of a horse to controlling your dog on a very short leash to holding on tight to your child's hand New golfers have to learn how to 'let go' - to relax their grip. If a tight grip is a ten on a scale, we want a 4 out of 10. The same is true of leadership and the way we hold on to our people. Hold on too tight (micromanage) and people have little freedom to use their own skills and strength. Hold on too tight to the club, and it is the golfer doing all the work. So the question is: "who should be doing the work?" The manager or leader or the member of staff, or someone else more capable or who has more time to spare? A golf club is weighted for a reason. If you allow the club to do the work, the swing and striking of the ball, becomes almost effortless. Relax your grip on your team and allow them to excel at what they do, and the work becomes almost effortless. Once you know, as a golfer, that the club is designed to do the job of striking the ball, and your job is simply to swing and allow physics do to its job, you can relax. Maintain just enough control to ensure alignment, direction and distance and the ball will fly according to the club used, and the size of the swing. If you want a long distance, you use a long club and a full swing. A short distance off the fairway onto the green requires a shorter distance club and a smaller swing. The power to achieve the distance lies in the tool being employed and the chosen swing - the rest is pure physics. Guide So what can we learn as a leader? To hit your target, at some point you have to let go Isn't it the same? Make sure that you are using the right tool(s) - the person needs the right skill set (and/or mindset) and time to do the required job. The leader's job is to have a little control to ensure that the skills are employed in the right direction for the right distance - that's about judging how far it is to the goal and translating that into the swing itself - in the case of people, the swing is influence and motivation... let the staff do the rest. And just like that golf ball landing exactly where you both planned and wanted it to be for the next shot. You celebrate. Unlike golf, though, praise your club and thank them for their effort. After all, they did all the work! When we use this metaphor on our golf leadership workshops, the feedback is instant. Hold tight onto the club and the golfer has to use a great deal of effort and the ball often ends up being pulled, pushed, sliced or hooked - going two-thirds of the required distance. Relax the grip maintaining directional control and the ball flies straight to the full distance of the club and swing used. (For non-golfers... try this with a horse, hold tight, the horse will slow down even when you whip it! Keep your dog on a short leash stays by your side while it is pulling your arm out of its socket! Your child dangles from your hand as you cross the road. And, of course, your team members await your next specific instruction on what they should do next.) When the going gets tough, leaders in control let go! Yet, new golfers, in particular, find their grip tightening in more difficult situations. The very moment when they need to be most at ease, most truly controlling, fear envelops them, pressure builds, the grip tightens, and the ball goes astray. If you have to keep a tight grip on something, keep everyone tightly focused on the goal and direction The same is true of business leaders under pressure. Listen to the media hype about the doom and gloom of the current economic situation and fear can easily creep into the mind. Many leaders respond by tightening their grip on their people and their business, believing that the more tightly they hold, the more control they have and the more likely they are to survive and pull through. Albeit, they expend huge amounts of effort, feel incredibly stressed, and more likely to explode a blood vessel! Tough times in business are better served by leaders keeping a clear head, a loose grip, maintain direction and let your people do what they do best. Let's face the truth here, even a behemoth the size of Apple, Microsoft or ExxonMobil can't control the market, what makes you think that you can? Empower My advice, ignore the noise (media doom and gloom), look for the opportunities and focus on the goal and it's direction, choose the right club, loosen your grip and let your club do the work. Loosen your grip and you'll have more control. Believe and accept that you have responsibility for your own abilities and effort. You are in control of you, the choices you make, the skills you develop and use and the effort that you choose to put in. You are not (directly) in control of other people, but you can develop the abilities to influence them by learning what makes them tick and motivating them to do the things that matter. You are not in control of the world economy, the weather, natural disasters. But you can adjust your actions based on what appears to be happening and accept responsibility for the assumptions you make.

Encourage Every day you are busy. Emails fill your inbox, some of them might even matter. Your todo list gets ticked off... or not. You attend meetings, deal with clients, chat with the boss, communicate with colleagues, deal with crises, handle problems, worry about tomorrow, think about yesterday, fret over a sick child ... and the list goes on. If you are disciplined, you get to the gym or exercise at least 3 times a week and keep a wary eye on your diet, and make sure that you get enough rest at night. If you don't do these then you know that your body is more likely to break down. You know that you have to make time to look after your body and put in some effort. But do you look after your brain as well? Taking time to pause and meditate or be mindful is perhaps the most critical instrument to cultivate peak performance. You train your body to grow muscles and keep your weight in check. Well, taking time to pause, meditate or be mindful is like training your brain and taking control of the five types of brain waves so that you can be in charge of your life. Develop At the root of all your thinking, emotions and behaviours is the electrical and chemical communication between neurons inside your brain. And all that electrical activity is measured in the form of brainwaves. Brainwaves are grouped into five distinct categories, each associated with specific tasks and mental state. At our highest frequency we have gamma waves. These are associated with insight, peak focus, and expanded consciousness. If you are currently sharply concentrating on this new information, it'll be gamma waves that are helping you store this learning and associating it with existing knowledge and experience. A little slower in frequency and we have beta waves. This is the state you probably spend most of your active day especially in the urban jungle and our always-on society. Fabulously, beta waves allow us to concentrate hard on the task at hand and they are critical when we read, write and socialise but there is a cost in that beta waves can sap our energy and reduce emotional awareness and creativity. Once you get home and relax and reflect quietly your brain waves slow down to alpha waves. If you suffer from insomnia, anxiety or obsessive-compulsive symptoms you likely don't switch down to alpha and you need help. If on the other hand, you keep on socialising, watching fast-paced television or studying, you are keeping your brain in beta or even gamma state. And that's simply exhausting you. When you nod off into the world of dreaming, you experience theta waves. Interestingly, theta waves are also present when you are in that elusive, brilliant, effortless state often called being in the "flow" of peak performance. It's that autopilot type state you've been in when driving home on a familiar route, arriving home and wondering how you got there. It's in this state that many people get their flashes of insight or bursts of creativity. Lastly, we have delta waves which are associated with deep dreamless sleep. Some people can meditate themselves into this state whilst remaining alert and awake. These waves are the source of empathy, healing and regeneration - hence why deep restorative sleep is so essential to the healing process. Manipulating brainwaves The biggest issue for most people in this modern, always-on, hustle and busyness lifestyle is that we rarely make time to allow our brains to slow down. We get stressed and perhaps anxious, and the mind is whirring away at a fast pace zapping through energy and leaving the body exhausted. So how do we alter our brainwaves? Any process that changes your perception, changes your brain waves! Our brainwaves change according to what we are doing and how we are feeling. When slower brainwaves are dominant, we can feel tired, slow, sluggish or dreamy. When higher frequencies are prevalent, we feel wired, hyper or "buzzed". So, change what you are doing, and your brainwaves soon respond. It can take some degree of effort to force yourself to jog when you are feeling sluggish, but it will do the trick. Of course, chemical interventions such as medications or recreational drugs are the most common methods to alter brain function. Beta-blockers, for example, commonly used by people like me with serious heart conditions, slow the heart rate, reduce blood pressure and block crucial chemicals like norepiphrine or adrenaline (terrifically useful in the flight or fight response and memory consolidation). This makes it difficult to lift brainwaves into the high beta frequencies and tougher still getting to gamma waves. ONE thing that everyone can do is choose to control their brainwaves to a greater extent. Since most people spend most of their waking time in beta state, what is truly needed is to biohack their brain and slow down their brain waves. Though you can, biohack to get into gamma state. And you have two simple choices to start gaining control of your brain and hence, your life. Both of which, by the way, you've been doing since day zero. The first is "The Easy Way", and the second is "The Easier Way". https://brainworksneurotherapy.com/what-are-brainwaveshttps://www.wellandgood.com/good-advice/brainwaves-biohack-sleep-health-focus/slide/4/ This Is How Meditation Actually Works Guide The Easy Way Take One deep breath. Bring your full completely focussed attention to your breathing for two minutes. Just two to start. You'll get up to seven within a week. Become aware that you are breathing and then pay attention to the process of breathing. Anytime your attention wanders, just bring it back to your breathing. The Easier Way Just Pause Find a quiet spot (or plug in your earphones and tune in to relaxing, restful meditative music played softly). Sit without agenda for two minutes. Stare into space, or close your eyes. Just remain awake but completely relaxed. Any moment your attention wanders just wipe it away and go back to nothingness. And you can switch between the easy and easier way anytime you wish. Empower Hold on John, you said the most powerful seven minutes. This is just two. True. Research tells us that seven minutes is the sweetspot for habitually choosing to take control and biohack our brainwaves. Two minutes is just your easy starting point. You can either extend your practice of this by, say, one minute each day until the end of the week. Or, if you find more time just too difficult right now, then do three or four two minute breaks throughout the day. Cannot do a full two minutes, you say? Then just take ONE MINDFUL DEEP BREATH. Just one. If you can, take another. Every time you are waiting for something or someone. Waiting at the traffic light. Waiting for your computer to start. Waiting for a webpage to load. Waiting in a queue. Just take ONE mindful, deep breath and practice. Want to have some help? If you want to delve more deeply into meditation or mindfulness there are a whole bunch of resources out there. Search Inside Yourself by Chade-Meng Tan is by the Singaporean-born Google Engineer is one I can recommend. There are a bunch of apps out there that come recommended. My personal recommendation for binaural beats is brain.fm For Christian guided meditation, I like Abide.co Others Ive tried and found to be good, "Calm", "Headspace", "Stop, Breathe and Think" and the Singaporean made "MindFi". There are also wearables to assist with your successful bio-hacking. As at writing, I have not yet tried any. Most appear to be aimed at reducing stress or helping you sleep better. The Muse headband looks particularly interesting.

Encourage When you ask someone what they want from life, most people will tell you that they want to be happy. Push a little bit more and they will tell you they want to do something useful or meaningful, make a difference, leave a legacy, or fulfil a calling. We call that succeeding. That is, the activities we undertake every day provide us with personal happiness or satisfaction and have long term benefits for yourself and/or other people. Some people are happy because they do something that helps others long term, even short term. Others do so out of some form of obligation or guilt and do not derive happiness from it. Many people find each day something of a chore, that is neither satisfying nor brings long term benefits. And an increasing number of people fill their days with fun activities that provide little benefit to anyone. Develop Look across the room to your fellow diners and it's highly likely that the next table are all staring at their phones. A passenger in the car next to you is playing a game. Kids sit glued to their tablet. We carry devices around with us that link us instantly to a world of entertainment and distraction. Then there's work. Which, in comparison can seem to be a lot less stimulating, but you gotta do what you gotta do. Then the blessed relief of a beep means an interesting and exciting message has been pushed through to your device and a shot of dopamine spikes through your brain bringing the promise of untold pleasure and fun. You open your inbox and see message after message demanding attention but you want to ignore because they're not the fun type of message. In fact, they cause a jolt of cortisol to flush through your brain and a little norepinephrine that triggers your fight or flight travel centre to divert energy from your stomach to your arms and legs. Every day you are faced with choices about what to do when. It's tempting to take the short term happiness generators, or maybe you're the sort of person who buckles down and does the most unpleasant task first saving the fun stuff for later? It's going to help you know what you spend your time on now and evaluating using this chart. ` This chart has two dimensions and five different modes of behaviour that we use to characterise our relationship to any activity. You simply ask two questions about an activity you undertake: Does this activity make me happy (or provide a degree of short-term satisfaction)? Are the results achieved from this activity worth my effort in giving a long-term positive impact on my life? There are no “right” answers to these questions, and your rating score is entirely down to you (by all means keep changing it until you work out what is really a 10, and what is really a 1) In an ideal perfect world, we would find great short-term happiness in everything we do, and each reaps the long-term benefit. In reality, we all do things that run short of the perfect score for us, but the more we can get the balance and the higher, the better. For high performance, you do those things that bring the greatest long-term benefit in the shortest time. For most fun you do those things that bring the greatest happiness over the longest period of time. In the end, it’s your choice but the better the overall balance, the more likely you are to enjoy each and every day. You can then plot your regular activities on a chart like the one above. Which activities are Surviving, which stimulating, sacrificing succeeding or are they sustaining? Guide Stimulating activities feed your short-term satisfaction but do little for long-term benefit. Watching an amusing YouTube video, most television programming, an alcoholic drink or three, smoking a cigarette or taking drugs may provide a quick "high" but long-term could even be harmful. It's increasingly easy to fritter your life away on fun but meaningless activities and many of these activities are addictive in part because of the ease of stimulating dopamine spikes in the brain. Sacrificing activities are low in short-term satisfaction but high in long-term benefit. Doing work that you hate because you "have to" to achieve a larger goal, for instance, or working out at the gym (when you don’t feel like it) to improve your long-term health. A life spent solely on sacrificing activities would be the life of a martyr—lots of achievement, but not much joy. Activities we do in the surviving area score low on both short-term satisfaction and on long-term benefit. These tend to be things we do because we believe that we have to do them, or that lovely word "should". Even though we have little to show for our efforts. Some people seem to fill their days with such martyr-like activities, perhaps awaiting someone to recognise just how wonderful they are for doing so. A life spent solely on surviving activities is a hard one indeed. In the middle of them all, sustaining activities produce moderate amounts of short-term satisfaction and lead to moderate long-term benefits. Typically for many, the daily answering of e-mails is a sustaining activity. It is occasionally interesting (rarely thrilling) and usually produces moderate long-term but hardly life-changing benefit. Many of our day-to-day routines of shopping, cooking, and cleaning may be viewed as sustaining. A life spent solely on sustaining activities would be “okay”. Of course, the activities we know that we want to spend our time doing are those in the succeeding area, scoring high on short-term satisfaction and high on long-term benefit. These are the things that we love to do and get great benefit from doing. At work, people who spend a lot of time in the succeeding box love what they are doing and believe that it is producing long-term benefit at the same time. At home, a parent may be spending hours with a child time that the parent greatly enjoys while valuing the long-term benefit that will come to the child. A life spent in succeeding is a life that is filled with both joy and accomplishment. Empower Consider your current job (or whatever you are doing now) and take a typical day (a week if you change what you do each day) and record what you do, for how long and what score out of ten you give that activity against the two questions. Does this activity make me happy (or provide a degree of short-term satisfaction)? Your 10-point scale goes from "this makes me miserable" to "I love to do this". Are the results achieved from this activity worth my effort in giving a long-term positive impact on my life? Your scale here goes from no benefit whatsoever for my effort to this matters so much and is really important to my future. For example, you may spend 3 hours in meetings, 1 hour traveling to and from work, 90 minutes on emails, 30 minutes surfing the net searching for information, 30 minutes in the coffee-room, an hour for lunch, 2 hours preparing a presentation, 30 minutes for phone calls to clients. Remember, this is just an example, you can break it down further and of course, you will have more distinct activities in your day. The benefit of doing this is that you quickly identify the activities that you enjoy doing the most and those that bring you the most benefit. Searching the Internet, for example, can be very satisfactory in the short-term, especially if you are searching for something in your area of interest. But half an hour can disappear with little to show in actual useful long-term results. Once you have your scores, review your activities with how much time you spend doing them in a typical week. Tot up the number of hours that you spend in each of the five zones: Succeeding, Stimulating, Surviving, Sacrificing and Sustaining. Do you like where you are now?

President Harry S. Truman had a famous sign on his desk that read: "The Buck Stops Here." A clear indicator that he accepted accountability for all the decisions of his administration. There are leaders like Truman in politics and organisations today, though not many. Accountability starts with honesty. Being able to set aside personal pride and admit your own mistakes and being honest first with yourself, and then to all of those you serve as a leader. It shows that you can be trusted as a leader and that even you can be fallible. I'm sorry if this is going to hurt your pride a little, but you are not perfect in everything you say and do. It's OK, I'm not either, and nor is anybody else. That doesn't mean that we hide behind the excuse that "I'm not perfect" but it does mean being open to correction and improvement in a very public way. I was running one of our Golf Leadership programmes for a local company owned and run by a very traditional, senior Asian businessman known by his initials "CS". He happened to be teamed up with his female PA who had, until this day, never picked up a golf club. He was an old hand at the game with a very respectable handicap. They were on the 5th and final tee for our game. A narrow fairway with tress on the left, water on the right and the green and hole just 220m in a dead straight line. It was a warm day with cloud cover and little wind. The PA took her spot at the tee, put everything she had learned into practice from the morning and calmly sent the ball flying, straight as an arrow to land 160m in the middle of the fairway. It was a beautiful thing to watch for a newcomer and she was thrilled. The boss took his place, a grudging nod of appreciation to his PA and lined up for his shot. He'd skipped out on much of the morning session for "more vital and important things than training" and hooked his drive into the trees. A few choice dialect cusses and a spare ball magically appears on the tee. He lines up the shot, tests the weight of his custom clubs, a few practice swings and shuffles his feet and then swings with a beautiful, magnificent example of how to slice the ball into the water. The faintest snort behind him, or was it a giggle? And the custom club comes crunching onto the big green ball beneath our feet accompanied by a stream of cusses. The boss collects himself, turns to my camera guy and demands the footage be erased. Money is proffered and refused. Threats are offered and similar rebuffed. A while later I persuade the CS to allow us to show the video to all the team. He was so fearful of losing face in front of his staff and concerned that they would now know that he could lose his temper quite so violently. I assured CS this was not going to be a moment of revelation to his staff. Rather, it was a moment of relief for them. Now, nobody had to tell him about the issue and risk that very temper. We showed the video to the team and a lengthy discussion followed beginning with CS offering the whole team an apology for his behaviour and a request for their support going forward. When we are honest with ourselves and with others, we are taking responsibility for our behaviours and actions and then we can hold ourselves accountable for the results. 2. Accountable leaders are honest and voluntarily say "I'm sorry" when something goes wrong and they bear some or all the responsibility for the wrongdoing. When the wrongdoing is by someone who works for them, accountable leaders accept their part in their responsibility for the decisions or instructions that may have been a party to the wronghappening. Too often we hear leaders shifting the focus of attention for the blame onto someone, or something else. Whether it's a politician "spinning" bad news and shifting the blame to anyone who is less able to defend themself, or the CEO of a multi-national desperately trying to escape responsibility for a major disaster. "This was not our accident …" said Tony Hayward, Chief Executive of BP started his defence in light os the worst oil spill in US history as the Deepwater Horizon spewed oil into the Gulf of Mexico. To give Tony Hayward some credit, he has provided us with an abject example of failed leadership accountability. https://hbr.org/2010/06/bps-tony-hayward-and-the-failu.html I am beginning to wonder if he has a new position teaching and training world politicians on how to avoid accountability and shift the blame on others. Accountable leaders say "I'm sorry" BEFORE they get caught with their trousers down! 3. Accountable leaders do not avoid responsibility and they do not procrastinate, neither under nor over committing. Before you take on something new you review your schedules and your strengths and talents to know whether you have the time and the capability to complete the work on time to the quality expected. We have some obvious examples with the whole Brexit debacle. Political leaders who championed the leave campaign and once they won, buggered off and declared "my work is done". Other leaders who assumed that the remain vote was secure and took a 50/50 gamble on something as trivial as an economic and trading union. Once they lost, disappeared into the backroom, hiding from the unpleasant task of fixing something that was horribly and catastrophically misjudged. After all, who cares if a few million poor people will struggle, at least I'm alright. Once you do accept the responsibility for a task, you follow through and deliver. Not make excuses and leave it to others to pick up the pieces. 4. Accountable leaders seek input form others. You know that one of the most powerful ways to develop and improve yourself is to talk it out with others, to seek advice from trusted and respected friends, bosses, colleagues, coaches or mentors. It's the recognition that they aren't as omnipotent as their ego might like and that I, even I, can be better and, critically, want to work on being better. I met with a business leader recently to discuss their development needs and plans for the coming year. It was all terrific stuff but I noted that there was no mention of how he was planning to develop his leadership. Of course, this was a daft question on my part as it was obvious that it wasn't his leadership that needed developing, but everyone else's, though he did concede that his bosses could do with training too. It must be tough, I said, being the only perfect leader in the company... Our problem with self-awareness is simple: We judge ourselves by our intentions. We judge others by their actions. "I meant to make the right decision based on the information and the time I had available. I am very busy and have a lot on my plate right now. It's not my fault that I made a bad decision..." Accountable leaders look for ways to do things differently and better in the future and take responsibility to initiate and instigate suitable changes to how they do things and what they do. Accountable leaders are good for business (and for society). In the weeks and months that followed the golf leadership programme, "CS" became a changed man and the business flourished. Engagement amongst the staff soared. Staff turnover slowed to a trickle. Sales increased and costs went down. And even his wife was happy (after she'd made a phone call to us at the office to check that he was telling the truth about events and I wasn't some teenage floozy trying to steal her husband away.) Developing accountability is a challenge for most leaders yet it is well wroth it for personal and business benefits. Accountability increases trust within teams and builds respect between staff and leadership whilst promoting a sense of fairness that increases engagement in the workforce. Accountability is not about the times you win, it's the times you almost win. It's about striving to be better, the promise of achieving goals and the continuous self-refinement. Accountability is a leaders commitment to excellence - raising their game, always improving and always lifting others up. Accountability is why being a leader is so tough and it's why there are so few truly good leaders. Are your leaders accountable? Are you? What examples of good leadership and accountability have you seen? What's worked best for you in developing leadership accountability in your organisation?