What are the voices telling you?

Amanda’s comment on my last post “it’s easy to become so self consumed in negativity when you fail to turn it around on the spot” got me thinking about the voices we all hear giving us a commentary on how we are doing.  No you’re not crazy, it’s part of our nature.

And very often they are negative:

“Who do you think you are, thinking you could be a Partner in this firm”

“What an idiot you are – you got that wrong again”

“It’s no good applying for that job because there will be hundreds of people better qualified than me”

Where do they come from? often from people who admonished us in our early life – some even hear the actual voices of those people, for others it’s a voice of their own invention.

So what can you do?

• Remember that it takes 28 days to change a habit – that’s good news! it’s not going to take forever to change the habit of a lifetime – just 28 days of conscious focus and effort to develop a new habit of saying positive things to yourself. For example:  “OK, so I got it wrong today – next time I’ll be better able to catch myself quicker”, “I am worthy of this success”, “I’ll give it a go – because even if I don’t get it right this time I’ll have learn something and I’ll be more successful next time”

• Believe that ‘There is no failure, only feedback’.  A coachee of mine, when he realises in retrospect he’s made a duff decision, comes up with a better solution and says to himself,  “OK, I’ve had an idea about how we can do this better”.  I’m not saying never admit to making a mistake, but do think about what new possibilities there now are.  Believe also that ‘we all make the best decision at the time based on the information available to us’.  These are what’s known in NLP as ‘beliefs of excellence’

• Remember you’re in good company: Thomas Edison said  “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”. “Many of life’s failures are men who did not realise how close they were to success when they gave up.”

How have you changed the voices in your head for the better?  Do post your ideas below.

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Don’t think of a pink giraffe with blue spots

What happens when I say that to you?  yup, it’s pretty much impossible to NOT think of something that’s drawn to your attention.  That is where your focus goes.  Also your unconscious mind doesn’t hear the word ‘don’t’ and only hears the rest of the instruction.

“Don’t forget to call me”, “I want to lose weight”, “Mind the kerb”.  All of these contain embedded commands to do exactly what you don’t want.  So this may explain why people don’t do as you ask (or think you asked!), why you don’t achieve your goals and why you fell off your bike  – because your thinking and language is ‘problem focused’ or ‘away from’ rather than ‘outcome focused’ or ‘towards’.  You’re not alone – this error is made by large organisations too: ‘don’t walk on the grass’, ‘don’t forget your green bags’.

Problem focused thinking can also be hugely demotivating – I once worked for a Director who was an absolute master of it – he took us all away to a conference which I think was meant to motivate us to greater things – but by the time we’d heard about what would happen if we didn’t up our game, how the team numbers would be cut, how our budgets would be reduced, how our status would drop we were all feeling thoroughly depressed and the confidence and optimism we’d arrived with just melted away with his words.

Some organisations have a whole culture of problem thinking, constantly looking for things to stop doing eg saving costs or failing to celebrate achievements before moving on to the next thing.  Learning from mistakes is fine – but do you also learn from what went right?!

This type of thinking is so contagious – I’m finding it really hard to write this post whereas I find they normally flow very easily!  I hope you’re not finding it as difficult to read – oh no! I mean “I hope you’re finding it easy and enjoyable to read”.

So what do you do instead?

• As ever the first step to changing your thinking is to be aware of it – notice it yourself or ask a colleague or coach to draw your attention to it.  Do many of your sentences start with “I don’t want to…”

• If you have a problem to solve ask yourself  “what do I want instead”? for instance, change “I don’t want to get bogged down with this” to “I want to be really focused with this”.

• If you have a goal express it in the positive – not “I want to reduce customer complaints” but “I want 99% of our customers to be delighted with our service”

• Focus on the outcome you want and vision it  “Whatever you create in your life you must first create in your imagination” – Tycho Photiou.

What are your experiences? – please share them in the comments below.  I look forward to hearing from you.

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Are your goals boring you?

Some time ago, back in the days when I was an HR Business Partner, my boss asked me to (well,actually I think that was TOLD rather than asked!) me to run a quarterly Career Development Forum with the Board we were working with.  I was new in to the job but I guess I should have realised it was not going to be easy when he told me he’d been trying to get this off the ground for months and now wanted to hand it over to me!  To cut a long story short, it was a disaster.  They had no idea what I was talking about and I had completely failed to get on their wave length.  You can imagine how much I was looking forward to it when the next quarterly meeting approached!  I started to think of all kinds of diseases I might go down with, reasons why there wouldn’t be time to do it with, disasters and emergencies that might intervene and then ….STOP!

I suddenly realised how I was sabotaging myself and setting myself up for failure by thinking of everything negative about the meeting and all that could go wrong.   It dawned on me that to be successful what I needed to do was envision a successful meeting and me running it really well.

Visioning! such a powerful tool for all sorts of things – and especially to create exciting and motivating business and personal goals for yourself.  Of course SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time bound) has been tried and tested and is popular in many organisations.  But does it inspire you? does it make you want to get up in the morning, make you want to give your all?? exactly!  Visioning what you want to achieve and yourself being successful certainly can though.

Your mind cannot tell the difference between a real event and something you have merely imagined, so by vividly imagining  yourself as having already achieved what you want you are far more likely to succeed.

How to vision?

• Find yourself somewhere to be alone and to relax – this is definitely best done in private!

• Close your eyes and imagine with all your senses that you have achieved your goal, be it winning a new client, giving an amazing presentation, getting your dream job….  Imagine what you’re seeing around you, who is there, what are they doing, the expressions on their faces.  What are you hearing? what are they saying?  and what are you feeling – excited, exhilarated, proud, confident?  think of other times you’ve felt that sensation and really remember what it’s like – where do you feel it in your body?  how strong is that sensation?

• Whenever you need re-motivating or you lose touch with what your goal really means to you repeat the process so that you’ve recreated the reality of it again

• Your unconscious mind will help you find ways to achieve your goal when you really know what you want

• Write down your goal or find a picture or object that represents it so that you can carry that with you at all times to remind you what you’re working towards.

So what are your tips for creating exciting goals for yourself and those you lead?  or how else have you used visioning? Please post your ideas below – what’s worked and what hasn’t worked for you?

Next time I’ll look at why you need to focus on what you do want, not what you don’t.  Join me then and I look forward to hearing from you in the meantime.

Photo:  Caroline Talbott.  Antarctica 2006.

How do you sabotage yourself?

The thing about sabotage of course is that it’s secret and stealthy, which means you don’t know it’s happening.  The same applies whether someone else is doing it to you or whether you are doing it to yourself!  sounds bizarre?  why would anyone sabotage themselves you may ask? well that is the difference I suppose, that at least it’s done with purpose if it’s done to someone or something else.  When you do it to yourself  it’s accidental and you don’t even realise – until a helpful coach draws your attention to it that is!

Here are a few self-sabotaging techniques I’ve seen work really well:

• self-deprecating humour which tells everyone “I’m a joke” – then wonder why no one takes you seriously or listens to your words of wisdom

• starting presentations by apologising, for instance for how boring the subject is or how little time you’ve had to prepare – ie inviting your audience be bored by you or look for mistakes or anything that’s not quite as polished as it might be

• focusing on what you don’t want to happen – like when you ride a bike and think “I mustn’t hit that kerb” – what do you do….?  Henry Ford, of Ford Motors fame,  said “whether you think you can or you think you can’t – you’re right”  (Not sure if that was before or after he said “you can have any colour you like as long as it’s black” ) In other words if you think you can do something you’ll find a way, if you think you can’t do it you’ll also find ways to fail (consciously or unconsciously!)

• failing to ‘Begin with the end in mind’[1] or to set yourself some BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals)[2] – a manager said to me only a few days ago that he needed to think through the steps before envisioning the outcome – but how can you plan what you’re going to do if you don’t know where you want to end up?!

I know these work, I’ve tried them myself!

So how to set yourself up for success rather than failure? here are some tips taking the examples above – and I know these work too, because I use them myself:

• examine your sense of humour – it’s wonderful to have a GSOH but what DO you make jokes and quips about?  if it’s about yourself and not complimentary listen to what others are witty about and see what you can learn – you don’t want to lose your sense of humour, just refocus it

• at presentations focus on your audience rather than on yourself – what are they going to gain from listening to you, how can you make it great for them?

• focus your attention on what you want and what you are capable of, not the things that can go wrong or what you don’t want to happen

• think about what you really want and envision it

More on envisioning for your success next time as this is such a powerful technique for achieving what you want.

In the meantime – how do you sabotage yourself? – or how have you stopped sabotaging yourself?  do post your thoughts below and let’s share our collective wisdom.  (What’s the worst that can happen?)  I really look forward to hearing from you.

References:

[1] Stephen Covey: The Seven Habits of Highly Successful people

[2] James C Collins and Jerry I Porras: Built to Last

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Find your best self

Like many of us maybe you know that you are different with some people or in certain situations and that they can bring out either the best or the worst in you – and quite likely you don’t really know why.  Or maybe you’ve not really noticed?  One manager I worked with was told by their boss that they were best with their team when they were relaxed – and was consequently instructed to ‘be relaxed’! – ever tried to be relaxed to order? anything that makes you more tense than being told to relax or more stressed or angry than when to told to keep calm!  The intention was good but the effect not as intended! so we set out to find that ‘relaxed self’……….

This is again something you can do on your own although it’s a lot easier to do with a coach or a trusted confidante – here are some tips/steps:

• think about when and with whom you are at your best – it may be at your best overall or maybe a particular quality or behaviour that you want to find, as mentioned above.  To help you decide this think about when you FEEL your best and when you get the best response from others, or you can ask your confidante

• then do the same with a situation/people you are not comfortable with

• talk out loud about these situations – what’s the environment, who’s there, what are they like, what are you doing and saying, how are you interacting, what thoughts and feelings are triggered when you describe all this?  what do these people have in common with you – what’s important to them and you?

• from this what conclusions can you draw about when you are and are not at your best – for instance, you may be fine working with people you regard as being of lower or similar status/position/education and overawed or intimidated by those you regard as higher;  many women find they are uncomfortable working with alpha males (not to mention many men as well!) but thrive with other women or less competitive/aggressive men.

• that’s the easy bit – now what do you do about it?  well it really depends what you have discovered but here are a few ideas that I know work:

• in the case of the manager mentioned above, although they were a very senior manager they felt they were ‘just Joe from the village’ and nothing special – I told them about ‘Imposter Syndrome’ http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health/05mind.html and then they WERE able to relax knowing that they were not alone in feeling a fraud and afraid of being ‘found out’

• or visualise yourself being successful in the relationship or situation – really imagine what you want to be like when you’ve finished the meeting or whatever – this has worked brilliantly for me, for instance when I had to run a second meeting with a group of managers where the first had been a disaster!  rather than running over and over what had gone wrong and worrying that it would do so again I focused on what I wanted it to be like.  A few meetings later they actually gave me a round of applause at the end!

• or you can ‘map across’ ie analyse what you think, feel, do and say in your successful situations and aim to replicate those in other situations eg if you are good at presentations to peers but not to senior managers, what do you do in those successful scenarios?

So what are your tips for finding your best self? what’s worked for you? when are you at your best and worst? what would you like help/tips on?

Following on from the imposter syndrome – next time:  how do you sabotage yourself?

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Being the best leader you can be

As I sat down to write this post about ‘what you need to do to be the best leader you can be’ the words of a fellow coach came to mind – that many leaders think it’s about what they do; they don’t realise that it’s about who they are.  And I think that’s the key.  When you’re in a management or leadership position you are expected to produce results but you do that through your team and it’s who and how you are (your behaviours) that will motivate them to produce their very best work.  And why is it important to be able to engage your team and be a great leader? – well, the Macleod report Engaging for Success (2009) found that

–Highly engaged employees try 50% harder and perform 20% better

–Disengaged employees cost UK business a staggering £40 billion pa!

What a waste of  human potential as well as money, which is in short supply at the moment – you don’t need expensive computer systems, streamlined processes etc – you just need to make the most of the people you have!

How to be…..

So one brilliant place to start is to think about people you have worked for, or are working for, who have really brought out the best in you – or even to think about those who have demotivated and constricted you because if you turn that on its head it will tell you how you do want to be. My first simple lessons in management style were when I was a student doing temporary jobs in my holidays – I quickly saw how I did and didn’t want to be: the manager who asked rather than told and always said please and thank you motivated me far more than the one who would never even say good morning as he passed my desk on the way to his office.  In fact I got quite obsessive about how rude he was and put a lot of my time and energy into that rather than the job! Another great manager for me was one who disagreed with a decision I had made and rather than just overturning it we sat down and talked about it, discussed other options and she left the final decision to me before helping me work through how I could change it while still maintaining face.

The best thing about finding role models in others is that you can ‘pick and mix’ – because no one is perfect! the manager I mention above also set very high standards and expectations which I know helped me to achieve things I never would have thought possible.  However, she also didn’t know when to stop pushing and sometimes the stress would become too much for myself and other colleagues and we felt unable to say ‘enough!’

So think about those around you with the qualities and behaviours you admire – observe who and how they are and talk to them about their management philosophy – especially to find out the values and beliefs which drive them.  And of course the beauty of this is that it’s something you can do all through your career as you face every new challenge – think about who would be a role model in how to handle it.

Another fantastic way I’ve found of being the most excellent leader you can be is to be your best self – so more on that next time….

In the meantime what has worked for you in becoming a great leader (or what hasn’t!)?  post your comments below

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How are you infecting your team?

So what’s it like working for you?  how would you like to work for you?  Great questions to ask yourself …..and answer honestly!

There was a real light bulb moment for a manager I was working with a little while ago – they were learning to use a coaching (rather than telling) approach and while practicing the skills – sitting back, asking questions and actively listening – they had a huge revelation.

Their normal style was to rush around the office, picking up issues, providing solutions to any and every problem that floated in front of them, believing that they alone were responsible for resolving every difficulty – they suddenly realised that their rushing around was infecting all of their team with the same anxiety and stress and putting everyone on edge.  The insight immediately gave them a choice about the impact they were having and they were also developing the skills to enable them to have quite a different effect – to create an atmosphere of joint problem solving and calm thinking space, of creative energy and inspiration!

It’s amazing how many managers who, for one reason or another, know very clearly how they are performing against their targets and objectives but don’t realise the effect they are having on their team and whether they are really helping or hindering them in doing their jobs to the best of their ability.  So if you haven’t thought about it for a while, or maybe at all, now could be a good time to ask yourself those 2 questions at the start and then think how you would like to infect your team – if the two don’t match up you can then start to work out what you need to do to be more like the leader you ideally want to be.

Next time: how do you make that a reality?

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