‘You’re too soft’ (I know but..)

‘You need to make a decision and stop procrastinating’ (I know but…)

‘You need to sort it out’ (I know but…)

‘You need to have more self-belief’ (I know but…)

‘You need to just do it’ (I know but…)

‘You need to cut him/her out of your life’ (I know but…)

‘You need to stop making excuses’ (I know but…)

‘You need to leave – it’s making you ill’ (I know but….)

Does this sound familiar?

This is your voice inside your head speaking. 

But that conflict between genuinely wanting to do something (not because someone else thinks you ‘SHOULD’ do it) and actually making a start can keep us going round in circles for weeks, months – and dare I say it - even years.

And the excuse you’ll be making to yourself is often ‘it’s not the right time.’

But be honest...

Carl Jung famously said that  that ‘everything that irritates us about others can lead to an understanding of ourselves’.

So next time we talk about a ‘difficult’ team member, colleague or ‘friend’ – what might it teach us about ourselves?

Loud people who talk non-stop annoy me intensely. The ones that never shut up.

So somewhere inside me is probably a louder person trying to get out.  To be heard.

Which is a helpful piece of self-awareness for today!

P.S. It can feel tough when you're leading in lockdown and trying to figure out what to do for the best, manage your own resilience and care for your team. My Effortless Leader Facebook community is a great place for sharing, support and resources. Come and join us if you're not already there.

Would you be offended if anyone asked you that question – or even thought it?

It’s rare that people ask you outright but they’re thinking it.

Have you got my back? Will you do what you say you will? If I tell you something will I suffer as a result? Can I make a mistake and not have to cover it up through fear of the consequences? Can I admit I don’t know how to do something? Can I be vulnerable and still be okay? 

I guess we’d all like to think we are 100% trustworthy.

We all believe we do the right thing.

And we have integrity.

But despite our good intentions (which nobody can see) we often don’t create the environment of trust that we’d like to think we do.

We’re not bad people, we just have a blind spot somewhere!

We can all build greater trust (and psychological safety, while I’m at it) from the ground up - or whatever our starting point is.

It’s not rocket science.

But it’s crucial to our success as...

I’m not naturally great at scheduling and planning in a structured way.

But I’ve had to learn those ‘discipline’ skills and practise them over the years with varying amounts of success. 

Otherwise my days are unfocused and it’s easy to jump onto LinkedIn or Facebook for a 5-minute check-in – which frighteningly then lasts an hour. And don’t even get me started on the Daily Mail sidebar of shame (my guilty secret when I’m in full procrastination mode).

My best purchase recently was one of those quarterly organisers. (Luddite, I know). And it’s a gorgeous shade of blue which I love looking at. (Stationery fans will understand exactly what I mean!). And then one of my clients suggested different coloured pens……. 

Heaven!

The point of this?

It’s worth learning a new habit if it makes you happier, more successful, more fulfilled or more productive (or whatever else you want more of!). And if there’s...

I love seeing people turn wishful thinking into reality and this happens like magic on my Implementation afternoons.

Quickly.

Things they’ve been avoiding for weeks or even months get done.

Important things.

The thing is, action leads to confidence not the other way round. And when you’ve got someone to support you and keep you accountable – even better!

P.S. If you’re ready to turn wishful thinking into reality, get in touch. The best time for change is always now.

I am sometimes a bit cynical about corporate values (there, I said it!). Not because they are not good things to have – in theory they are - but because so often they are words created to sound good, written by the senior team, a ‘project group’ or a bunch of consultants who then think ‘job done’. But everyone else thinks they are being ‘done to’.

No-one in the business really understands them or remembers them and even if they do, they don’t necessarily see those values being lived or breathed on a daily basis. 

And we all know that actions speak louder than words.

There’s also the belief that some values can be unhelpful to organisational performance or a way of avoiding doing ‘the tough stuff.’ (Years ago I worked with a CEO who wanted everyone to be ‘happy’ – he shut down any conversation whatsoever that wasn’t about ‘happy’ – you can imagine how that worked...

When I work with teams, I often observe a team meeting (sometimes facilitating but often observing and giving feedback afterwards – I’m like the fly on the wall!)

My role is to ‘make the unspoken spoken’ and help the team see the patterns of behaviour that are working or not working for them. They sometimes know, on some level or other, but don’t quite know how to change things. And sometimes they’re completely oblivious or just accepting of things because ‘it’s always been like that’.

We can all learn to tune our antennae and notice much more than we do now – which means we can start to change things.

Here’s an experiment to help you make a start.

It’s best done in a small meeting that you are not chairing. Ideally it would be a meeting that you attend regularly.

Your role in this meeting is to watch and observe AND as we coaches like to say a lot… ‘to be curious without judgement’...

'I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me' (Bronnie Ware, the Top Five Regrets of the Dying)

Whatever else is going on around us, we almost always have choices. We can choose how to think about things, choose what to believe, choose what to do. 

We can choose to say something or to say nothing.

We can choose whether to do what we've always done or do something different.

So, the man I spoke to recently who said he 'had no choice' but to stay in his 'toxic organisation' because he had to pay the mortgage was unable to see he had choices. 

That made me sad and it would be easy for me to collude with his powerlessness.

But not very empowering.

The problem is he was operating in survival mode - which is never a good place to do our best thinking and it’s hard to see choices when we’re overwhelmed with cortisol. (Apart from the choice to fight or flee).

Seeing things in either/or thinking ('I can stay or I can walk out the...

Yesterday started well when I woke up to this personal message: 

Two important points:

One - Appreciation is gold and we don’t do enough of it.

It certainly made my heart sing.

Two - I’m doing what I was put on this earth to do – helping leaders believe in themselves so they can follow their heart, stop procrastinating – and do what they were put on this earth to do too.

We can all make a positive difference in this world.

I hope you are living your best life and making the difference you truly want to make.

The world needs all of us to step up right now.

As you know I run paid coaching and leadership programmes. You may not know that I also provide a huge amount of free resources to my community of leaders and managers.

You’ll find most of these resources in my members’ only Facebook Group The Effortless Leader Revolution.

Resources on time management, beating overwhelm and everything that helps you with all of that. (My Beat Overwhelm in 20 minutes a day checklist has been particularly popular!)

Resources on managing your boundaries, on motivation and impostor syndrome

Resources on confidence and leading in times of uncertainty.

I’m adding new materials every week.

I’ve got over 1500 inspiring people in the community and growing.

If you’re a leader or manager and you’d like to join us you’d be most welcome.

Here’s that link again.

I allow no spamming or self promotion in the group. I set it up as a confidential place for managers and leaders to ask questions, share ideas and support...