CS Coaching Blog

[cscoaching]

The quantity of time vs the quality of time: an invitation to give up the search for happiness

The Ancient Greek words Chronos and Kairos both represent time, but the words have very different meanings.

Chronos measures time in seconds, minutes, hours, days, years etc. It describes the quantity of time. The English word ‘chronology’ describes the arrangement of events or dates in the order of their occurrence.

The term Kairos, however, does not measure minutes but it measures moments – the Quality of time. Kairos is about the subjective experience of living within time. It is a measure of minutes, but it measures moments in the here and now.

Ancient Pythagoreans thought Kairos to be one of the most fundamental laws of the universe. Kairos was about the right moment in time: ‘now’ - the only place where the life we love can be lived.

Robert Holden talks about ‘destination addiction’ to describe our compulsive behaviour, fuelled by the belief that happiness is something that we chase, that can be attained in a future that you haven’t yet reached... but you’re trying to ‘get’ there. We don’t stop and think, we just push ahead to get to the mythical future, a better ‘now’.

‘Now’ is an invitation to give up the search for happiness. It’s not about getting there but about being here

[cscoaching]

Skills you need to make the quantum leap from manager to leader

While your technical skills may get you a foot in the door, it’s likely that the way you deal with people will determine the success of your leadership. The way you respond to people; the way you’re are being when you’re with them, your communication skills, your emotional intelligence and a whole host of other personal attributes are how you can excel as a leader.

From the outside, moving from a management role to a leadership role might seem like a logical progression, a rebadging of your current role, with a few bells on - not much to see. However, leaders are a bit like ducks on water: at first glance it looks calm and serene but there’s a lot of activity under the water that isn’t obvious.

This can lead former managers or newly appointed leaders to continue to act like a manager in the boardroom, when they need to show up differently. As a manager moving into leadership, you may have excellent knowledge about your industry or sector and the processes in your organisation but there is a big gap to be crossed. Management roles tend to be more focused on implementing process and measuring efficiency and profitability in short or medium term. Whereas leaders focus on creating long-term value for organisations, their customers and their stakeholders. They demonstrate why the organisation does what it does, rather than a management view of what is done and the way in which it is done.

Leadership requires versatility across multiple areas of business and a range of skillsets, from risk management and corporate governance, to strategic planning and human resources.

The strongest leaders are continuously learning

Possibly the most important skills that a leader can grow are self-awareness and understanding of how others experience them as a leader - and the humility to change when that feedback is not so positive.

As a leader, you need the gravitas to inspire people and inspire confidence in those who are looking to you for leadership. If you can display and demonstrate morals, values and ethics then people will be more likely to listen to you. This requires you to know what your values are – what is important to you. If you can’t get this across to those you lead, if you espouse them and do not live them out your time as a leader may be cut short. People need to know they can trust you to be who you say you are - and you need their trust.

Clear communication and interpersonal skills are critical

If you’re a leader, you’re in the relationship business. Business is about relationships. Leadership is about relationships: you’re only a leader if people will follow you. Look behind you. Are they following?

Your EQ is as important as your IQ when you are a leader, if not more so

Leaders are required to display the confidence to not ‘know’ everything, to not have all the answers; but to understand their own strengths and the strengths of those around them; they need to be able to inspire confidence in those people. Your emotional intelligence is a key skill.

There’s no point in hiring people with great skills and not allowing them to be the best at what they do. Realising that you aren’t actually the best person in the room at everything should be liberating because, when a strategic leader understands their own and their people’s strengths and weaknesses, they are then in a position to support them properly and to achieve better results than they could ever have achieved on their own. It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. Good leaders set the vision and determine what needs to be achieved but they trust the people around them to make it happen.

Great leaders look in the mirror when things go wrong and out the window when things go right

US management guru Jim Collins pointed out that, when business decisions fail, instead of blaming people, leaders need to attempt to try to understand what actually happened and not to assign blame to individuals: “The best way to do that is for the CEO to be the one to look in the mirror and to say, ‘I shoulder all of the responsibility. In the end, I am to blame. Okay, now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about what we can learn from this’. Great leaders listen. They ask questions. They want to know what you think.

Great leaders embrace diversity

Whether that’s our gender, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation or religion, great leadership recognises and appreciates what makes us different, on a personal and professional level.

A McKinsey study 'Diversity Matters' examined the financial results of 366 companies in North and Latin America and the UK, and found that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity were 15 per cent more likely to have stronger financial returns, and those in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity were 35 per cent more likely to outperform.

There’s a very clear link between diversity, innovation and creativity. Diversity brings fresh ideas and perspectives to organisations. Lack of diversity is a huge business risk when companies don’t reflect their customer base or understand the societies in which they operate. Lack of diversity is often a sign that leadership is seeking control rather than influence and that company values do not reflect the realities of the workplace, and where that is the case leaders will fail to inspire stakeholders, who will vote with their feet rather than follow you.

Take your leadership ambitions seriously

While your technical skills may get you a foot in the door, it’s likely that the way you deal with people will determine the success of your leadership. The way you respond to people; the way you’re are being when you’re with them; your communication skills; your emotional intelligence, and a whole host of other personal attributes are how you can excel as a leader. Everything is much easier when you work on these skills, yet they are unlikely to be the skills that you are offered training on – it tends to be assumed that you have these abilities. If you’re serious about leadership, make sure you have all the critical skills you need when you step into that role. Invest in yourself.

Caroline Stagg Working with CEOs & senior leaders to increase impact: developing leadership thinking for the results you really want. www.carolinestagg.co.uk

[cscoaching]

Pressure is the enemy of success – and what you can do about it

When you’re a leader, whether that’s of a multinational company or your own SME, stress caused by the pressure to be successful is rarely far from you. Striving for success, whether that’s imposed on you by external sources or it’s pressure that you put on yourself, the effects are almost never positive.

There’s a popular myth that some people perform better under pressure, or ‘rise to the occasion’ but when scrutinised the evidence isn’t there.

Pressure actually helps us to fail

In most cases, when we are under pressure we perform below our capability – most of us have experienced that it is harder to parallel park when you’re being watched, right?

Under pressure, we get numbers the wrong way around; we miss the shot in the game; misread the question on the exam paper. We miss out the critical piece of evidence in the presentation – yet remember it on the way out when the pressure’s off but it’s too late.

Pressure has us behave badly

Pressure negatively affects our thinking and it also affects our behaviour function. Under pressure we can behave unprofessionally with colleagues, saying things in a way that is not helpful, that embarrasses them (and us), or that is just blunt and rude. If we can’t control our behaviours under pressure it can actually be career threatening - or relationship threatening. It can affect the way our children see themselves, never mind how they see us as parents.

We pass on the pressure to those we really care about

How many parents query their child’s exam results and ask for a paper to be re-marked because they underperformed so astonishingly poorly and couldn’t accept the result – even when the student may have accepted it?

Many parents offer their children incentives and rewards for getting good grades, but when you look at it in this context, are those parents actually undermining their child’s performance?

So, what can we do to help ourselves?

In their book How to Perform Under Pressure Hendrie Weisinger and J.P. Pawliw-Fry write about the ingredients of reducing the impact of pressure to allow us to operate at a level that is commensurate with our ability. This involves developing our Confidence, Optimism, Tenacity and Enthusiasm. They refer to that mixture with the acronym COTE. It provides a ‘COTE of armour’ against the negative effects of pressure.

Being under pressure feels similar physically to being excited. A way to help us handle those physical symptoms is to ‘reframe’ them for ourselves as excitement. Feel excited that you’re about to be making that pitch you’ve been working on; that you’re about to ask for more money than you’ve ever asked for before; think about it as an exciting opportunity to do something you haven’t done before.

Take the significance out of it by thinking of it as a dress rehearsal, rather than the real thing. Allow yourself to be more playful and relaxed. Become more comfortable with uncertainty. 

Choose your own measure of success. For example, what if it were to be about how engaged you get these people, rather than whether they said yes to your proposal or not, and you measured it by the number of questions they asked?

Weisinger and Fry suggest focusing on controlling what you can control; then visualising things going wrong, followed by bring your focus back to how you get back on track.

Also, don’t forget to tell yourself that the worst thing you can do right then in the heat of the moment is to get stressed out about it. Will you still be worrying about it in five years’ time. No? Well there’s not much point in stressing about it now then. Keep it in perspective.

Handling stress in the moment

Try to live in the present, don’t dwell on what happened in the past or what might happen in the future

Don’t over think and let your thoughts get the better of you - get into action

Identify your triggers for stress and develop a strategy for managing them

Remember that whatever happens you will only be able to deal with it when/if it actually arises

Breathe: breathe in for 7 and out for 11 six times to get you back in control. You can do this anywhere, anytime and no one need know that’s what you’re doing.

[cscoaching]

Address the invisible reasons that you use to resist change

Why do many of us find it so hard to make changes in our work and in our lives? Nearly all of us of us have some anxiety around change, yet it’s more than just that which holds us back. Typically, we focus on the actions we think we need to take – we plan a strategy – and we overlook the internal shift — what we’re thinking and feeling — which has to occur in order to bring the change we want in our life.

Blind spots

Invisible fears and insecurities keep us locked into behaviours even when we know rationally that they don’t serve us well. Resistance arises — fixed beliefs, deeply held assumptions and blind spots; the fear and insecurity that change throws up for us. All of this rolls up into our mindset, which reflects how we see the world, what we believe and how that makes us feel.

Passive resistance

Resistance, especially when it is passive, invisible, and unconscious, can derail even the best strategy. Several factors typically hold mindset in place. Much of it gets deeply rooted early in our lives. Over time we tend to develop confirmation bias – we seek evidence that reinforces what we already believe and play down or dismiss what doesn’t agree with that.

We’re also designed to put our own safety first, and to avoid taking too much risk. The amygdala is one of the brain structures consistently associated with emotional functioning. It is the part of our brain that triggers us with a fight or flight response whenever it receives information about a threat to our safety; without this response we wouldn’t have survived to evolve into what we are now.

However, even when we know we’re not being chased by a bear, and our life is not at stake, we use our prefrontal cortex (the part of our brain that does our critical thinking, to rationalise choices that were actually driven by our emotions rather than using its capacity assess new possibilities.In this way we can pretty much immunise ourselves against change.

Self-knowledge and understanding

To transform our work-life we need to transform ourselves. We need to spend time observing and understanding our motivations, challenging our assumptions, and pushing ourselves beyond our intellectual and emotional comfort zones.

A great strategy remains a foundation for change, but successful execution of transformation also requires coming up for air and continuously addressing the invisible reasons that we resist changing, and shining a spotlight on how the way we’re working works against us.

Carolinestagg.co.uk

[cscoaching]

Why a midlife crisis could be exactly what you need

Increasing life expectancy and rising retirement ages have serious implications

If you’re reading this, maybe you’re in your 40s or 50s wondering how come the career that you longed for – and worked so hard for – just doesn’t light you up each morning when you think about what the day holds. Something’s holding you back. You know it's not a lack of skills....and you’ve got experience. But there's a feeling in the pit of your stomach - and it's certainly not excitement; more likely fear and dread at the prospect of another 20 years of what you've got now, feeling burned out, living from holiday to holiday, with just the daily grind going on in between. When you meet up with friends they ask you how you're doing and you fudge it with something like 'Oh...you know...busy...hectic...' and change the subject.

You joke about your life being like a bad remake of Groundhog Day...but actually, it’s not that far from the truth!

You’re not alone: a 2017 Gallup poll found that 85% of workers worldwide hate their jobs. Work is more often a source of frustration than fulfilment for nearly 90% of the world’s workers. Only 13% of workers feel a sense of passion for their work and spend their days driving innovation and moving their company forward. Most people are sleepwalking through their days, putting little energy into their work – with 23% actively hating their jobs. Can you imagine how much worldwide unhappiness is hidden in this? How much lost potential? How much underachievement?

After 20 or 30 years of that, small wonder that your 'get up and go' has gotten up and gone. You're a different person now; things have changed; priorities are different; the territory has changed. There was a time when you knew what you wanted to be when you grew up - thought you had it all figured out - but now it feels all up in the air again. You probably know people who have had a career change but can't really see how that would for you and feel like you've lost your potential whatever that means now.

Wherever there is resignation there is lost opportunity and lost potential

The thing is that we’re all suffering when people can’t reach their full potential because the world needs everyone to step up and do their best work. How’s it going to happen if we’re all just going through the motions, ‘getting by’ and surviving?

Perhaps you’ve been thinking about doing something for years, trying to find a way out and towards something more fulfilling and in line with who you are now but haven’t really got anywhere. If you think the stakes are high now, they’re a lot higher if you don’t do anything about it. How about another 15-25 years of feeling the way you do now about every working day? Either way, hanging on for dear life and contemplating your mortality is the wrong strategy if you’re going to set the scene for making the most of the next 40 or 50 years!

This is why I believe that a midlife career crisis is exactly what you need!

It’s the push you need to re-evaluate:

Where you are

What’s working at work and what isn’t

Who you’ve become

Who you want to be

What’s important to you now

What it is now that will bring you happiness, joy, fulfilment, contentment – whatever you call it – and how you can bring that into your life

The trouble is it's really difficult to know where to even start when you're feeling like this - and you still have to pretend you're not, and look like everything's fine and you're on top of your game. So I've put together a 7-step plan that will get you out of this frustration and confusion and get you on the path to motivation and getting clear on what it is that you do really want and how to take steps towards getting it. Click HERE to get it.

Because while life is really short, (you've likely already lost some friends to illness) you probably have another 20 years or more before you can retire! Enjoy every day, not just the holidays.

[cscoaching]

Resolving conflict by creating win-win solutions

Most of us shy away from conflict because we think it is difficult. However, there is nothing inherently difficult about this conversation in itself – it’s that we’re approaching the conversation in the wrong frame of mind and with the wrong tools.

Typically, we approach the conflict conversation in a defensive way, thinking, ‘I’m right and you're wrong; I’m going to prove to you that you’re wrong.’ Or we may even just think ‘I want to win so I need you to lose’.

But if you approach the situation with this win-lose mindset, you've already lost. Because, whoever “wins”, the other person is going to be resentful; rather than creating a victory, you’re creating a future opponent - a resentful future opponent. A resentful future opponent is not a victory, it's a poor outcome.

Conflict can only exist where there is a need for co-operation

What you need is to go into the conversation with a different perspective: to have an outcome that the other person would agree with. This might sound a bit crazy because you’re in conflict with the other person over this situation. But consider this: every conflict happens in the context of collaboration. If you didn't have a reason to cooperate or collaborate with this person, there would be no need for conflict.

Example: You and your partner have completely different views about your next holiday. You only get one holiday a year and you're at odds. But because you’re in a relationship you both want to go on holiday together, so you need to collaborate and cooperate. If you both value the relationship, then the togetherness is more important than the location or the activity. You need to find an outcome that you both agree with.

So, you could say: “What would be the best holiday we could take together?” When you do this, you approach the situation with a shared purpose. It’s a very different place to start, right?

Example: You and a colleague at work have a bitter disagreement about how to best work with a client you share. You both have a larger shared purpose, which is to achieve the mission of the company; you have different roles and perspectives but it’s a shared goal – you need to collaborate and co-operate.

You could start the conversation with: "How could we manage this client so that they get the best out of both of us?"

Every time you have a conflict with a person, it's relevant to ask yourself: what is the highest purpose or mission objective where we both need to collaborate on this issue? Let that guide you to what you should be trying to achieve.

But even then, it’s easy to want to convince the other person that you’re right isn’t it? And try to get them to do what you want? To try to get in first?

To guard against this, ask the other person to put their point of view first:

Really try to understand what they’re thinking and how they feel.

Don’t speak while they’re speaking.

Use your body language to let them know you’re paying attention and use encouraging gestures and nodding.

When they’ve finished an idea or topic and they pause, check to see if you have really understood by giving a short summary in a few phrases. Try to capture the essence of what they said, so they know you really got what’s important to them and you respect them.

Ask if you got it right; if they say ‘no’ then ask for them to tell you more so you can really get it right.

Check again. If they’re happy you’ve got it, acknowledge that it makes sense.

Now it’s your turn to put your side – but not to prove you’re right and they’re wrong! Perhaps you say: ‘This is what I think so far, and I'd like to explain it to you, so if I'm wrong you can correct me - and if I'm not wrong, then maybe it will modify your view.’

The structure is more:

"This is what I think."

"This is why I think what I think."

"This is what I propose to do about what I think."

Turn it back to the other person and ask them what they think about what you’ve said. Give them a chance to reflect back to you about it.

Hopefully you now both understand each other... although you may still disagree.

This is where the win-win comes in.

What you’re going to try to come up with together is a solution that is better than what either of you could have come up with on your own. Critically, you’re also trying to get THEM a solution that is better than they could have come up with on their own.

What can you create together that is a great result for both of you?

It’s a bit like going to the supermarket and buying a bunch of ingredients and then getting home and one of you saying they want to make roast dinner and the other saying they want to make soup. And then you collaborate to use the ingredients to make something different from anything you’ve ever cooked before. You might find your new favourite dish!

[cscoaching]

What do you get out of bed for?

Your ‘purpose’, your ‘drive’, your ‘why’, your ‘flow’. What gets you out of bed in the morning?

Often, it’s something matter of fact and ordinary rather than something extraordinary or exceptional. It’s more likely to be something that’s right in front of you that you appreciate the importance of than something elusive that you must search for. It gives you a reason to live. Perhaps it is your values, but it isn’t limited to that; it is an outlet for you, something that is achieved by action. It is purpose in action.

The Japanese call it Ikigai, a term coined by the people of the Japanese island of Okinawa, where life expectancy is unusually high, with many inhabitants living to at least 100 years old. Ikigai has become a frequently quoted buzzword lately.

‘Flow’ is another way of expressing it. Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined this expression. He said that you may be doing things very differently from other people, but for everyone that flow channel, that area of absorption will be when you are doing what you really love to do -- play the piano, be with your best friend, perhaps work, if work is what provides flow for you. In that moment, you have a focus that, once it becomes intense, leads to a natural high, a semi-trance state, a sense of clarity: you know exactly what you want to do from one moment to the other; you get immediate feedback. You know that what you need to do is possible, sense of time disappears, you forget yourself, you feel part of something larger. What you are doing becomes worth doing for its own sake. Csikszentmihalyi described this as the ultimate state to be in.

Having something to live for nourishes your life - every day. It’s the reason you put up with all the things that can happen during your day that could get you down – you let it all go and look forward to that thing that makes it all worthwhile.

Learn how to prioritise and how to say ‘no’

This knowledge can also help you learn how to prioritise and how to say no. When you become aware of what really is important to you and what you want to achieve, it becomes easier for you to tilt your life towards that meaning. It gives you the confidence to put yourself in situations where you are doing things you love and are good at, and avoid situations where you must do things you dislike and are not good at.

You can never be completely certain that this thing will be there for the rest of your life. Right now, it may be your children, but children grow up and leave home; it may be your partner, but unfortunately partners can leave. If it’s your hobby, then interests can wax and wane, so be careful that you don’t pursue it at all costs and neglect other aspects of your life – causing your loved ones sadness, and possibly prompting their departure.

People discover their purpose, passions or ‘ikigai’ in many ways, perhaps when they experience positive or negative life-changing experiences, inner-reflection, decide to make a change in their life, or simply by chance.

A common theme is commitment to a role or belonging to a group and this can feel like self-realisation. It may be acknowledging something that you do naturally or that you have done or felt all your life – but now you can identify what that is. For example, the business owner who realises almost at retirement that he or she ‘provides the vision’ or perhaps they are ‘the glue’. They have been performing this role for most of their careers – sometimes it has annoyed them – and now they realise that this role is their life’s work –what they were ‘meant to do’. Often this thing is work that has a positive effect on others. Dan Buettner in his  Ted Talk ‘How to live to be 100+’ points out that the two most dangerous years in your life are the year you're born, because of infant mortality, and the year you retire – for many people, suddenly they have no purpose. 

So how can we go about uncovering what this is for ourselves?

Dan Buettner suggests listing your values, things you like to do, and things you are good at – and the things that appear on all three of those lists can guide you to your ‘Ikigai’.

You don’t need to blaze a unique trail. Another tip is to speak to people who enjoy and love the same things as you do. What have they done and achieved?  What are they doing that they enjoy? Then go out there and make it happen for yourself; find that fulfilment. Seeing someone else doing what you love can give you confidence that you can do it too.

Where would you like to see change in the world?

In a world where our value as people and our own sense of self-worth is determined largely by our success, we might feel that we need concrete achievements such as a promotion or a salary raise. But you can have a value to live by that simply provides a new level of self-understanding and self-acceptance.

There is value in the whole spectrum, wherever it connects you to the people in your world and surroundings and the actions you take that impacts both them and you.

http://carolinestagg.co.uk

[cscoaching]

Leadership and three types of mindfulness: benefits, limitations and brain science

Mindfulness is just one type of meditation. It is generally used in three forms, which I’ll outline here; it can be useful for all of us and can offer benefits to those in positions of leadership. I would argue that we are all in positions of leadership to varying degrees, whether we’re a leader for our children, in our home, for our family, our community, in our voluntary work and in our paid work.

Some people have dismissed mindfulness as a fad or a trend. It’s true there has been considerable hype with some poor research published about it. I’m not a mindfulness expert – this article is intended to demystify how it works, and what it can and can’t do for you. Dr Amishi Jha at the University of Miami has researched the brain, attention, working memory, and mindfulness-based training. She has found that where we direct our attention biases the processing of the rest of the brain. She notes that different networks in the brain cannot be activated at the same time.

In short, there is no such thing as multitasking: if you are focusing, your mind cannot be wandering and vice versa. She has looked at high stress and how mindfulness might reduce the impact of stress on the ability to retain information and focus. She has found that practising mindfulness seems to improve resilience to stress in those on active service in the military and their spouses, in workplace contexts and in students.

1. Improve your focus

The type of mindfulness that can help you improve your focus and reduce your mind wandering is quite simple:

Sit in a quiet space with no distractions you bring your attention to your breathing and keep it there.

When you notice that your mind has wandered you simply bring your attention back to your breathing. This works and strengthens the focus ‘muscle’.

Regular practice of even just 10 minutes a day has been shown to increase your ability to maintain concentration and improve test scores, for example.

This increased effectiveness is great but it won’t improve your leadership abilities.

Brain science

There are two areas of the brain that are key to the next type of mindfulness – the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. The prefrontal cortex deals with what’s known as ‘executive function’, differentiating among conflicting thoughts, good and bad, better and best, same and different, consequences of actions, and social control: suppressing urges that could lead to socially unacceptable outcomes.

The amygdala, on the other hand, allows an instantaneous, unthinking reaction in the face of a threat; an evolutionary survival response that has us fight, take flight or freeze. High stress, poor mood and threat mean our brain won’t function the way we want it to in precisely the circumstances when we most want it to (unless you’re being attacked by a bear): the amygdala will hijack the prefrontal cortex unless we step in to stop it. In a work situation, this can be career damaging – co-workers tend to remember these negative incidents, feel demoralised and negative towards people who behave like this.

2. Develop better control over thoughts, emotions & reactions

When you are triggered by someone or something, you suddenly ‘snap’. The type of mindfulness that can help us strengthen our ability to prevent this hijack in moments of stress involves using concentration to create a ‘platform’ in the mind where you notice thoughts and feelings without being swept away by them or being attached to them.

You start with type one (above) and then move into noticing what you notice as thoughts come up: ‘Oh yes there’s that thought again’, and then just letting it go - like noticing clouds in the sky that float past.

This type of mindfulness shifts the brain’s energy from the amygdala to the prefrontal cortex where you can choose how to react.

It strengthens your ability to resist getting caught up in feelings and see them as just thoughts and emotions. It can help you change habits. With practice, you become more adaptable and present to people.

This can support your leadership – as a leader people are looking to you to see what appropriate response they should have.

3. Stress reduction: understand your stress

The third type of mindfulness that I’m going to cover is mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR). This is an eight-week programme, popularised and developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn; it is used in hospitals and as part of cognitive behaviour therapy and pain therapy. It has undergone rigorous clinical trials. Jon Kabat-Zinn says: ‘Between stimulus and response there's a space, in that space lies our power to choose our response, in our response lies our growth and our freedom’.

This includes type one and two above and includes a mental ‘body scan’ where you notice the sensations you are feeling in your body.

Leading on from noticing and letting go of any passing thoughts, you are invited to pick one of the thoughts and focus on it mindfully. This supports you to become more aware of your habitual reactions and responses and consider alternative responses: you create your own ‘learning plan’. Many people support this by working with a coach.

MBSR has been shown to change brain function in highly stressed employees over several weeks.

Limitations

Mindfulness can support leaders in their work and life but there are many key leadership skills that it doesn’t help with, such as:

Relationship management: conflict, teamwork, inspiring others.

Organisational awareness and systems management.

Skill building.

Motivation.

Influence.

These and many other leadership qualities involve developing self-awareness and emotional intelligence, which need to be worked on specifically, and there is no evidence that 'mindfulness' can develop these.

carolinestagg.co.uk #leadership #mindfulness #stress #focus

[cscoaching]

Whose truth is the true truth?

I was watching a recent CCTV video that captured a man jogging along Putney Bridge appearing to barge into a woman and push her into the path of an oncoming bus.

When I watched the video, I saw what the BBC news headline told me: ‘Jogger appears to knock woman into path of London bus’. Then I started reading the comments. 

Some people were commenting how awful it was of the man to behave that way – he should be tried for attempted murder. Some people were saying that they thought the woman stuck her leg out towards to oncoming jogger and had brought it on herself ‘#karma’. Others were horrified and said they could not see that at all. A few commented that the woman ‘couldn't be bothered to get out of his way’ so she got pushed. Again, others were horrified at that suggestion. A few other people thought they saw that words being exchanged between the two and that they must have known each other... ‘There MUST be some history there’. 

This all got me thinking about how much of what we think we see comes from our own preconceptions. It reminded me of the saying “We do not see the world as it is. We see the world as we are”,  which summarises the idea that truth, or what you recognise as truth, is personal and can be wrong.

So, what is real? Does this mean that there is no real ‘truth’?

The comments that accompanied the video of the jogger shoving the woman showed several viewpoints that each person who commented strongly felt was the ‘truth’:

She was innocent, it was an unprovoked attack

She started it – it was a provoked attack

They must have known each other – or there was an exchange of words that was ongoing in some way.

So at least three ‘truths’ that people were prepared to defend – and yet none of us were there at the incident, none of us witnessed it! All we had was a grainy video.

Philosopher Henry David Thoreau said: “The question is not what you look at, but what you see.” So perhaps events only have the meaning that we give them. We make them subjective by interpreting them through the lens of perception. I which case, our “truth” is merely a product of our perceptions,which are coloured by our experiences, which are filtered through our state of mind at any given time. So, everyone's experience of the world is a bit different--we all have different life experiences, background beliefs, personalities, ways of thinking, and even genetics that shape our view of the world.

Positive psychologist Shawn Achor, who has made many studies of people’s happiness has found that 90% of your long-term happiness is predicted not by the external world, but by the way your brain processes the world.” He is finding that it's not necessarily reality that shapes you, but rather that the lens through which your brain views the world is what shapes your reality. 

And Shawn Achor argues that we can change the lens, and that when we do that we not only change our happiness, we can change every single outcome or result that we have at the same time.

Mark Twain once quipped: “I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”

When we become aware that we are the creators of the story, making the meaning of events that shape the meaning of our lives, we can step back from what we think is the truth, to actually consider the thought process that brought us to that conclusion and we can challenge the filter that we see the world through.

We can ask ourselves in a more unbiased way what evidence we have that we are right. In a way, perhaps not believing your truth will set you free.

[cscoaching]

What can improving my ‘personal intelligence’ do for me?

Some of us are talented at perceiving what makes our friends, family and colleagues tick; some of us less so. There’s a lot of variation in our ability to read other people; to accurately weigh the choices we are presented with in relationships, work, and family life; and to judge whether our personal life goals conflict with each other or go together in a way that benefits us – and those around us.

While there are many ways to be successful without personal intelligence, people who are good at using it enjoy certain advantages over people who are less good at it, other things being equal. These people tend to make better decisions about themselves and other people. Fortunately, it’s something that we can all learn and develop.

Abilities that go with high personal intelligence

People who display high personal intelligence understand themselves and know who they are; they are better able to acknowledge their own limitations. They get the measure of other people more accurately and are more able to make allowances for the quirks and idiosyncrasies of others. Those who are talented in this area are better able to:

predict how people are likely to behave

predict what people are likely to be good at or find challenging

understand how their colleagues, friends and acquaintances perceive them — they know the reputation that they have

understand when to re-evaluate their perceptions of people around them in response to new information.

Many of us possess these abilities in certain amounts – there is wide variation – but when we develop our capacity to solve problems in these areas, it marks us out as being skilled in some crucial ways.

Areas of problem solving

Problem solving about personality is a common human anxiety and we are naturally curious about the motivations and mindsets of those around us. What makes this colleague procrastinate about making that urgent client call? What makes your closest friend so abrupt sometimes – don’t they realise how rude they seem?

Some of us are able to identify and synthesise information about personality; we can read clues from behaviour and expression and know to interpret it. These people can put this into a ‘model’ which allows them to identify motives and recognise defences.

More effective collaboration

So, personal intelligence is partly about relating to other people with agility and finesse and understanding them and their behaviour better. It gives us better and more effective relationships and working environments.

Critically, it helps us collaborate more effectively. It marks us out as:

someone that people want to work with

someone that it’s great to have on a project team

a crucial player who anticipates situations and outcomes and puts contingencies in place.

High personal intelligence enables you to close gaps in communication and create more productive environments; you will be listening at a different level, which allows you to gain a deeper understanding, engaging and generating connections as you do so. It can help you:

maximise your potential for income by providing clearer definitions of your services that provide a better fit for what your clients are seeking

define roles and responsibilities to improve decision-making processes

seek and respond to feedback so that you deepen client relationships and demonstrate your confidence in your value and your adaptability.

The trust this generates in those around you gives you an edge that leads to improved results.

So, personal intelligence has a lot to do with reading others and adapting your behaviour to get the best out of any given situation. But there is another critical way that it serves you: it helps you make the right choices, plans and goals.

Who you are... and who you want to be

Personal intelligence is about how well you know yourself but it is also about how well you can connect what you are today with the person you want to be in the future.

The more skilled we are at personal intelligence, the better we understand our own values and our own inner compass. We can become aware of our own personal interests and motivations, and understand the skills and competencies that we employ to follow these interests. We see ourselves as we are now and also as the person we want to become.

The more we are able to see ourselves in the future, the more we can paint a realistic picture. Happiness and contentment are not just about doing what feels good right now – in the long term it hinges on maintaining consistent values and acting in accordance with them. If your actions don’t move you towards your goal then it has little foundation in reality. You need to be able to understand which actions will take you in the right direction to produce results and what will motivate you to stay on track.

Ultimately that increases your chances of making better life decisions, achieving greater success and enhanced enjoyment of life.

To find out more about how developing your personal intelligence can help you, go to: www.carolinestagg.co.uk

or email me: [email protected]

[cscoaching]

Leadership starts with values

The top three areas on my Leaders Control Panel programme are Values, Vision and Mission. We start with these because these three things underpin everything you do as a leader, wherever it is that you lead – whether it’s your family, your community, your team, your company, your sector or your country.

Who are you a leader for?

YOUR CORE VALUES

Your core values are what’s important to you. They are your natural motivation, they’re what you focus on and what drives your choices and decisions. That’s important stuff. And yet most of us drift along never being consciously aware of what our values are. This means that all our decisions and choices happen unconsciously, without our awareness of why we decided or chose this way. It’s scary to think that we might be asking people to follow when we don’t even know why we’re asking them to do it!

When you set a personal or professional goal, the number one thing you need to make sure of is that it is in alignment with your values - why it is important for you to achieve it, or it is unlikely that you ever will.

Values can play tricks on you if you’re not aware of them, because some are things that you are drawn towards and others are things that you want to avoid. For example, if you have a core value of freedom and a core value of avoiding poverty, you could encounter conflict when designing your business or lifestyle. 

If you have a ‘pull-towards’ value of success and an ‘avoid’ value of rejection, you’re likely to encounter some difficulty and procrastination as you try to become successful without facing any rejection. Awareness of this conflict is key if you are to achieve what you want in your life.

It’s important to see how your personal values align with the values for your business or organisation, to see where there’s alignment and where some mental reconciliation is required.

 YOUR VISION

If you’re clear on your values, then your vision is like your personal or corporate North Star - a mental picture of what you want to achieve over time. It guides you and inspires you in what you do every day. You can use it to decide what you want to spend your time on or whether you should go in a different direction.

The vision is critical to any business because where individual leaders may change over time, the vision helps employees continue with what is important and helps explain alignment of resources and so on. Your vision should be expressed in as few words as possible so that it is highly memorable.

 YOUR MISSION

Your mission statement clearly defines:

What you do

Who you do it for

How you do it

This helps everyone understand why they come into work every day, what their role is and  how they play a part. It is also vital for attracting, engaging and retaining talent as well as building organisational culture and increasing productivity.

Values, Vision and Mission may well change over time. The key is to be conscious about what has changed and how what it is changing to aligns across those three areas. My clients get clear on their Values, Vision and Mission for themselves and for their role/area of responsibility in their organisation or business. This gives them confidence to move forward every day.

If you’d like a PDF of my Leaders Control Panel, or help writing your own Values, Vision and Mission, please get in touch via my website: www.carolinestagg.co.uk

[cscoaching]

Why your most important audience is your employees

Consumers are becoming more and more sceptical. Whether you’re a government, a business, a non-governmental organisation or you’re in the media, whatever you’re ‘selling’, your potential ‘buyer’ is no longer prepared to believe your advertising or your hype.

They’re becoming more interested in your reviews and what the people that work for you say. Now it’s not just your sales team or your PR that potentially sells your corporate image or your product – every employee in your company is an advocate for your organisation...or a detractor.

A recent research report from Edelman Intelligence on employee engagement (The Edelman Trust Barometer 2016) found that the most trusted spokesperson on how businesses perform, operate, manage crises and treat their people is the employees themselves.

It's a trust thing

Employees who trust their leaders will be more likely to say good things about their employer - and consumers will believe them. Similarly, employees who don’t trust their leaders will be less likely to say good things about their employer - and they will also be believed by consumers.

The reason why leaders and managers should be worried by this is highlighted by a link found that Edelman researchers found between the behaviours of leaders and the willingness of employees to advocate for their company. Many leaders still believe that employees will parrot what they say, and that hierarchical, non-democratic organisational structures result in obedient employees who toe the party line and automatically extol the virtues of their employer.

This employee is an ex-parrot.

The research showed a disconnect between authority and influence. Leaders have lost control over the dissemination of information about their organisation; and when employees don’t trust their employers, employers can’t trust what their employees say. The Trust Barometer shows that one-in-three employees doesn’t trust their own company. Consumers feel that a trustworthy company is one that treats its people well. As the main touch point for customers in most organisations, employees are vital in making customers feel they have a voice.

The ways that senior leaders present themselves to their employees has huge implications for workforce relations. Displaying ethical behaviours, being transparent and open, taking responsible actions to address crises, demonstrating a social conscience...Why is the leadership we need not the leadership we get?

Malcolm Higgs, Professor of Human Resource Management and Organisation Behaviour at Southampton Business School, highlights the significance of authenticity as a major aspect of effective sustainable leadership and building employee engagement. His work has entailed interviews with 66 senior leaders from 53 organisations. He believes leaders need to develop their own self-awareness and tune in to their own emotional states so that they can manage their own feelings and become aware of what approach they need to take to gain employee trust and be authentic.

These skills do not involve ‘doing’ leadership tasks so much as they require incumbents to ‘be’ leaders. Cultivating skills such as purpose, self-awareness, empathy, and acutely paying attention to what is going on in your head and making conscious decisions about your behaviour – your ‘inner game’ – is at the heart of developing who you are as a leader. It comes before you can work out what it is you need to ‘do’.

Simon Sinek recently tweeted Leadership is not about the crown you wear. Leadership is about the person you are. What matters in real leadership (as opposed to management or authority) are the emotional connections that are hardwired into the human condition. People like to feel part of a tribe. How good is your company at creating that culture for your employees?

Companies commonly experience struggle with moving forward when their values and strategy are unclear or lack direction. There may conflicting priorities, when leaders don’t work as a team, haven’t committed to a new direction or acknowledged necessary changes in their own behaviour. There may be is a ‘top-down’ leadership style that prevents honest conversation about problems; there may be a lack of coordination across departments or functions, or insufficient leadership attention given to HR issues. Employees may be afraid to tell the leadership about obstacles to the organisation’s effectiveness.

So, start thinking about your employees and your customers in the same way. Give the quality of the ways you engage your own people as high a priority as the ways you engage your customers and potential customers.

Work at engaging employees and building trust. Describe to employees the ways in which the company delivers something truly worthwhile to the world that is more than just profit. Evidence this and show your employees how they are the heroes of this work.

Give them shareable content and encourage them to share it with pride.

Ask for their feedback on your leadership – value what they say and act on it in the same way as you would if they were your customers.

Develop your structures to make this easy to happen and you’ll be leveraging the trusted advocacy status of employees who are ‘people like me’ for your customers.

Find out more at: http://carolinestagg.co.uk

[cscoaching]

The way you engage with employee 'wellbeing' impacts everything

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) argues that organisations need to strengthen the ability of line managers to promote employee wellbeing, in particular by developing supportive management practices and leadership styles.

Wellbeing at work is not just a matter of not causing harm to employees, it requires organisations to actively assist and enable people to maximise their physical and mental health. The resulting wellbeing brings benefits for people at all levels inside and outside the workplace. Moreover, it makes the workplace a more productive and attractive place to work, with higher levels of engagement and retention.

You could talk to most managers and you wouldn't get any argument. However, there's not much in the way of consistent and comprehensive action on the part of many employers. While there is some evidence of forward-thinking practice, there remains an implementation gap.

True wellbeing in the workplace isn't simply shorthand for 'work-life balance'. It's also about leadership and management strategy and the capabilities managers need to lead, develop and support people. It requires people who work together to be able to communicate effectively and pleasantly with each other, and to have integrity; for people to be self-aware and have emotional intelligence.

Yet how much workplace training is offered in these vital skills? Internal communications are the poor cousin of external communications but that thread of excellent communication must run right through your organisation if it's going to impact your clients.

The way we respond and speak to each other matters. It's not going to happen by telepathy. Organisations must train for it. Leaders must demonstrate it. It's a matter of corporate culture - and culture eats strategy for breakfast.

In a healthy and ethical organisation, involvement and empowerment are central - people are encouraged to take ownership and responsibility by being involved in decision-making, and are given relevant information. Continuous improvements are made to the way the health of the organisation is managed and developed. This means career development, coaching and mentoring. It means conflict and change are handled well, with respect and stakeholder engagement, where difference is valued; there is support available to enable people to grow and find the best way to improve their own performance.

Traditionally, articulating the business case for managing people’s health and wellbeing has focused on quantifying the overall annual median cost of absence per employee (£554 in 2015). However, this figure doesn't capture the full impact of employee absence, such as lost productivity, impaired customer service and lower employee morale, as these less tangible (but no less real) effects are very difficult to quantify. In these terms, a ‘business case’ will be persuasive only if it is relevant and based on the unique needs and desired outcomes for the employer in question.

However, there is another perspective apart from legal compliance on why employers should take action to improve the health and wellbeing of their workforce, aside from the mutually beneficial impact it could have for employees and the business, which is that it’s the right thing to do. The World Health Organization refers to creating a healthy workplace framework aside from the ‘hard, cold facts of economics and money’, and links the argument to business ethics, integrity, and the moral imperative.

This doesn't mean just doing good things and being nice to people - it means constantly evaluating initiatives and trying new things to create your own unique environment where employees flourish and achieve their full potential for the benefit of themselves and your organisation.

It's just the right thing to do.

7 communication blunders that affect your business and how to fix them

[cscoaching]

Employees expect you to help develop them

In the war for talent, organisations need to be able to demonstrate that they are committed to continuing professional development (CPD) if they want to stand a chance of winning.

There has been a significant shift in people’s expectations of what an organisation is going to do for them. It’s no longer just about the ‘compensation’ package (salary, holidays, health insurance and so on). While that will never stop being important, people now also want to know about how the organisation is going to develop them as a person and as a professional. ‘What type of professional development do you offer?’ is a question that recruitment teams are hearing more and more.

Economic, commercial and social environments are changing, as are the skills needed to compete in these new contexts. Organisations need to acknowledge that employees will not be staying with them for life, and part of valuing your employees – and ensuring they feel valued - is investing them and their employability skills to help them move about more freely in the economy.

If you want to grow your company by 10% next year, you need to make a similar size investment in your people, so that they are more capable of doing their jobs better. In the dynamic environment we exist in now, organisations that aren’t investing in their people, will lose competitive advantage and fall behind. Supporting the development of these skills is now something that organisations can drive through CPD. Productivity and excellence can be supported by creating a culture and mindset where your people are constantly working on themselves. Carol Dweck’s work on ‘growth mindset’ has taken the world of education by storm, and the business world has a great deal that it can also take from her. Dan Pink’s work has shown us some surprising truths about motivation and purpose. When people feel a valued part of a successful company, when they feel proud of themselves and the organisation they work for, turnover of staff is greatly reduced.

New world of professional development

The world of CPD is changing. CPD is evolving into something that is far more useful than perhaps a lot of organisations have really understood. We now know that the quality of improvement of learning depends more on whether that suits the way that you learn. So actually learning about yourself and doing personal development can really accelerate your career development.

Organisations are increasingly shifting their emphasis to a more informal, personalised and flexible approach. Professionals are often well aware what they need to update themselves on to ensure that they perform their role to the best of their ability and don’t rely on the organisation to do that for them. A lot of the professional development they want to do is something they recognise themselves – it’s their choice. It isn’t technical and it often isn’t delivered by their organisation. Managers are often promoted into management or leadership positions on the strength of their subject-specific work, with no specific management training. Many get by, but support to develop these skills and their own style is not usually available, meaning that they are less effective for longer - possibly for ever. Some colleagues may cover another’s medium to long-term absence with little support provided, meaning a loss in productivity or team focus.

CPD accreditation gives quality assurance

Increasingly, organisations are making great use of coaches to work with their employees. Working with a professional coach who has accreditation from the CPD standards office gives organisations confidence in the quality of the coaching they are offering employees and also means that CPD certificates can be issued by the coach to the employee, building their CPD points, to demonstrate their development in a more formal way.

Working with the coach allows employees to identify areas for development in confidence with a trusted professional. The coach will challenge current attitudes and working practices and help them set appropriate objectives. The coaching relationship supports the employee’s autonomy in developing discipline to ensure they keep on top of their plan, in spite of day-to-day pressures from work.

Professional development can be about widening their range of transferable skills such as:

leadership, resilience and dealing with ambiguity

developing confidence or judgement

develop communication, influencing, persuading skills and emotional intelligence

dealing with relationships at work and ‘political’ issues

developing ‘presence’ and personal brand

team building and maintaining team spirit

personal organisation.

Development can mean progression from a basic know-how to a more advanced, mature or complex understanding.  It can be a documented process, self-directed and driven by the individual rather than the employer. Time can be given to reviewing and reflecting on learning from experience, leading to new goals and objectives that might involve further formal and informal learning. Coaching can help you to deal with situations as they arise, helping you to build capability as you work.

Business is not only about achieving financial results, it is about valuing and developing human resources and improving the collective offer of your organisation. Coaching isn’t just for managers: every position in your company adds value for your customers and clients. Career paths are dynamic rather than simply linear. Many employees may turn out to be valuable to your succession plans.

Find out how career development CPD can benefit you or your employees here

[cscoaching]

The secret to success

There’s a widely accepted ‘wisdom’ that, when you have a goal or a plan to do something, you should tell others about it to make it more likely that you will follow through with it. Your friends will support you, the theory goes, and it’s good to let your business contacts know that you’re working on upcoming projects.

The ‘law of attraction’, made popular by books like The Secret  and celebrities such as Jim Carrey, tell us that we can attract whatever we want if we draw it to us, and recommends openly stating our intentions to others.

However, there’s actually quite a lot of research stretching as far back as the 1920s which shows that people who talk about their ambitions may actually be less likely to achieve them.

What seems to happen is that, when you tell someone your plan and they acknowledge you in some way, for example saying ’oh that’s really great, well done for doing that/making the effort’. This tricks your mind into thinking that you’ve already done it. Making it a ‘social reality’ and getting some satisfying feedback means you are actually less motivated than you were previously to do work that you need to do to achieve your goal.

Social psychologist Kurt Lewin called it ‘substitution’ (1926). Vera Mahler (1933) found the mind turned this social acknowledgement into ‘reality’. In 2009, Peter Gollwitzer did controlled tests where a group of people wrote down their goal; then half the group read out their goal to the room and half didn’t. The group that read out their goal reported feeling much closer to reaching their goal than those that didn’t but were more likely to give up working towards the goal much earlier.

Just the act of telling others about your goal seems to create an illusion that you’re nearer to success than you think you are and you stop putting in so much effort.

So, it might seem counterintuitive to keep your plans to yourself but it’s definitely something to consider. At least be aware of the potential for sharing to make you subconsciously complacent.

[cscoaching]

“So what actually is coaching?”

When I tell people what I do, a lot of people ask: “So what actually is coaching?”  I’m going to try to answer that here.

Coaching is a tool that lots of people make use of at different times in their life when they want to change things. This might be a specific thing like losing weight or getting a new job, or something a little more general like being more effective at work or communicating better with their partner, or it might be that they want to develop new skills.

Coaching comes from the perspective that people are naturally capable, creative and resourceful and have the potential to change their lives. But when you have to live your life at the same time as changing it, good intentions can just make a deeper and deeper rut. It’s difficult to do everything you need to do and yet make time focus on what else you need to do to take action on your plan or dream, and make life-changing choices.

Coaching gives you space to find your own answers by looking in detail at what is going on for you and what you really want. Your coach will listen to what is said and what is unsaid. You can rely on your coach to tell you the truth and you will both remain curious as you look into all the corners. Your coach will hold you to account to follow through with what you choose to change, keeping you moving forward towards what you want.

Coaching can pay attention to your whole life, because any issue that you are working on is woven into your whole life. But you can still choose to limit the coaching conversation to a very specific aspect of your life if that’s what you want.

However, your coach can ask powerful questions to break through your old defences and, if you choose to engage at a deeper level, you can get to a deeper understanding of yourself and how you engage with other people and the world. This can make the difference between “Aaah” and “aHaa”.

[cscoaching]

Other people are annoying

Strengths and weaknesses are like two sides of the same coin. And the trouble with people’s strengths is that we tend to completely lose sight of them when they are reflecting the other side of that strength coin, and their weaknesses are all too apparent.

In the workplace we may prize the team member who is motivated by winning, competition and success and who prioritises accepting challenge, taking action and achieving immediate results. But when they’re under stress all we see is how impatient and insensitive they are and how they can come across as verbally quite aggressive: ‘Rude’

And then there’s that other colleague who is convincing, magnetic, enthusiastic, warm, trusting and optimistic; they collaborate and are popular with colleagues…right up to the point where it transpires they didn’t research all the facts, and they got bored and didn’t follow through completely and it was almost impossible to get a straight answer out of them: ‘Annoying’.

Yes, other people are annoying. They think you’re annoying too. Each strength brings a weakness – that’s true for everyone, including you. If teams bring together a union of different strengths in order to make the team effective, then they also bring together a union of compensations for all the weaknesses that accompany those strengths.

We can’t solve other people being annoying but we can accommodate it. When we understand what makes our colleagues great, we can also understand what makes them fallible too. Rather than wrestle with the difficulties and frustrations of working with our colleagues, rather than letting them fail, encouraging them to leave or getting rid of them, we can actually use the collective compensations within the group to retain them for the qualities they bring – and for the compensations that they bring to our own weaknesses.

Instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, we might develop trust.

  ��