Love thy self

On a daily basis setting boundaries of some sort comes up as a theme. Whether it is a client struggling to manage an over-powering and manipulative boss or colleague, or seeing mom-friends feeling guilty when taking time away from the family.

In my opinion the boundary challenge has a direct link to the stability of the self-esteem of the individual. However, what moms tend to do is either blame their husbands or kids for abusing them or become the martyr of some sort - with a well developed guilt-story. You know the story: "I am a working mom, I am already missing out on so much, there is no way I can use my spare time on something self indulgent..." And of course that story will have a strong link to spoiling the kids and evidence of some lack of self-care, i.e. not eating well, not going for medical check-ups, nor taking time to exercise, pamper or relax.

Being able to guard your 'self nurturing time slot' can be as tricky as guarding your sense of self at work. It is particularly evident when there is a personality or leadership style clash in management or project teams, with little tolerance of differences, and appreciation of diversity in both strengths and weaknesses.

When putting effective teams together, a critical step in building the team relationships is finding commonality in the individuals. Unfortunately when differences/conflict happens - as it should in healthy functioning relationships - these common interests and connections are easily forgotten, where it could be used as a reminder of the 'oneness'.

Another key element of healthy relationships is feeling safe enough to be vulnerable. Sadly the moment an individual feels threatened, usually due to the conflict, the possibility of healthy vulnerability disappears. I am not talking about having to (over)share gory dirty details that makes everyone cringe, I am talking about feeling safe enough to admit weaknesses, failures and ask for advice.

In closing, please allow me to quote researcher Brene Brown:

"Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves, even when we risk disappointing others."

Motto Model: http://goo.gl/cNnpy and Motto Individual Assessment: http://goo.gl/UhC7V

Like Follow

Those habits (and I counted way beyond 7…)

We have all read beautiful quotes on habit management. And we all know our own bad habits intimately. If you are in denial or oblivious to this, just ask your wife/husband/partner/colleagues/family. We all have them.

Some of us have been able to turn our bad habits into obsessions that work for us, not against us. That is the thing with bad habits, we compensate for them. Just permit me a stereotype. Have you noticed what absolutely social, awesome fun people most smokers are? And really oversized people, they are generally great fun, accommodating, loving, generous people. Put the two bad habits together - now there's a party just waiting to happen! Please, all over-indulging smokers, do not stop being this much fun (even if you do manage to change the habit!). I cannot judge, I have had my fair share of both those habits, and then some...

When you have such an addictive personality as I have, you very quickly realise when you are hooked, and then you take drastic measures to get out. No seriously, we do not have DSTV in our home! I would have loved to take the moral high road and said it is for the kids - you know, TV is really bad for them, blah blah blah. Alas, it is not so. It is to protect the mama. I will not do anything else apart from channel hopping. Really. Nothing else. My current challenge, and I have noticed most of my senior clients' challenge, is sleeping habits. Getting proper rest. Breaking the patterns.

Recently I have had a few conversations with people that are creating very healthy habits for themselves, with multiple benefits. Anything from cycling the Cape Argus to preparing for long challenging trips or races, such as the Camino de Santiago or Iron Man. It is truly remarkable. As good old Aristotle once said: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is then not an act, but a habit."

So, I guess me hitting the sack x every opportunity = excellence! Works for me…

Motto Model: http://goo.gl/cNnpy and Motto Individual Assessment: http://goo.gl/UhC7V

Like Follow

A call for courage

I know that when you look from the outside, it is far easier to be objective and see solutions and have interesting ideas on how to improve or fix a situation. Personally I think that is the one thing men find most challenging about women - that Adam has to shut up and let Eve talk (regardless of her own muddled thoughts) in order for her to reach some sort of clarity or calmness without being given 'answers'.

The other big challenge (this is now with all of us...) is that when someone does approach you with the answers, or as David Rock (neuroscience expert) calls it "certainty", people (or our brains) respond horribly wrong. We shut down, disengage, disconnect, mentally exit the conversation.

For someone that hates to be 'told' - hence the self acclaimed 'unemployable' status -  I know that the possibility of incredibly negative consequences to 'shutting down' will not stop me from doing it. As childish and self-destructive as it sounds, it happens to all of us. The 'being told' factor, in other words: 'I know and you don't' attitude, or creating 'I have certainty and clarity on the matter' perceptions - giving the ultimate answer, all of this closes the opportunity to brilliant ideas and new fresh solutions.

Apart from all of these related challenges to getting the great ideas out there, leadership in organisations also has to create a 'safe space' - be brave enough to encourage controversial difficult conversations, in spite of their own fear and possibly personal risk associated with it. The succession planning topic calls for such courageous leadership.

I often get a sense from my clients that ideally all roles should be filled with responsible people that use their own initiative, work diligently, but are completely without ambition. When we get them to how they should be performing in that role, they should just stay there. Forever.

Okay, so that's unfortunately not realistic. And that brings the struggle (and opportunity) of finding interesting solutions and trying new things.

This made me think of something my son said: "Mom, you don't understand, he is like a calculator! He can do 1+1, but not a+b..." He overheard a conversation about my frustrations around someone not thinking of different ways to approach a problem. I suppose being like a 'calculator' has its place too, it is with the really brave conversations where we have to open ourselves up to fresh formulas.

Motto Model: http://goo.gl/cNnpy and Motto Individual Assessment: http://goo.gl/UhC7V
Like Follow

Detoxing

I am wondering: "How do we let our life memories work for us, or not?"

My mom had open heart surgery recently and the recovery process completely took me by surprise. Whenever my mom would remember, and subsequently feel, anything uncomfortable/negative/painful, her heart would literally hurt. To help her recover faster we had to help her focus on all the good stuff.

Our memories are visible not only in our physical experiences, but also in our physical  appearances and the way we carry ourselves - good or bad.

A young, successful senior manager shared with me his frustration with a board member feeling threatened by him. When analysing the situation, the anxiety the older, more experienced director has, is completely irrational. But this guy clearly has got issues with what the younger person represents to him.

I personally have experienced a similar 'weirdness' when meeting a very impressive, dynamic, highly qualified person. It was palpable in the air that I personified something in this person's history/memory bank that she was not quite okay with. What to do, what to do? Look, I kept trying to connect with her, underselling myself, listening more. Yet, I cannot say that it worked. In another situation I watched an eighty four year young, phenomenal women downplaying her experience and unfathomable knowledge (memories) for the sake of the ego's in the room.

Our memories are there, whether we like them or not. What we do with them is our choice. Whether we allow them to come sit in our bodies and manifest in bad ways, or allow them to give us focus, energy and emotions we like – it is all still our choice.

The trick is to consciously make the choice, and not let the bad memories creep up on us and be toxic in our lives. Maybe we all need a bad memory detox ever so often?

Motto Model: http://goo.gl/cNnpy and Motto Individual Assessment: http://goo.gl/UhC7V 
Like Follow

We’re going on a bear hunt…

There is a school of thought that believes you have to identify an individual’s weaknesses and try to fix this. Assist the person to become a ‘complete’/perfect individual. However, research shows that if you would focus on the individual’s strengths, the overall improvement in performance would be double what it would have been focussing on the weaknesses. The obvious choice would then be to…?

Not to sound patronising, it is like the response in those banking ads. The presenter asks: “Why are you choosing this bank?”. And the response: “Are you serious?! ”

Yet, we generally still have a societal focus on weaknesses, not strengths. I am not suggesting we deny the obvious development areas, especially if there are high risks linked to it. What I am saying is, we have to find ways to overcome our limitations, not deny them.

My dad comes from the insurance industry, so I grew up with ‘risk management’ as a theme. I know that if you focus on the risks, you can easily become anxious. This is often visible in performance when someone receives criticism. If the negative feedback is not positioned in a constructive way, the performance will be worse, not better.

When people become scared to admit their weaknesses, they hide them, lie about them, and blame others. In a team this could be disastrous. I find myself doing a lot of senior management team development work - assisting in creating a ‘safe space’ where team members can talk about their own limitations, and as a collective figure out ways to move around them.

Personally I was in denial of a technology related limitation for a long, long time. I was exceptionally creative in finding ways around this, compensating for this in, let’s just say interesting (read ‘really stupid’), ways. It was only when a client in a meeting looked at my black book with a thousand tags and just shook his head, that the penny dropped for me. What I would call a “Development Area” was not just to wake up to technological possibilities, but to move through the fear of the unknown, maybe to struggle initially. When I now look back at this, I cannot imagine not dealing with this limitation.

I love reading Going on a bear hunt to my kids. Michael Rosen has taken an old children's rhyme, and turned it into a picture book. The repetitive line when spotting an obstruction/limitation says it all: “We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. Oh no! We’ve got to go through it!”

Motto Model: http://goo.gl/cNnpy and Motto Individual Assessment: http://goo.gl/UhC7V

Like Follow

Childlike

I am sure you will be able to share funny stories of where you really came up with interesting and very creative ways to solve a problem. As a child, a friend’s brilliant idea of drilling holes in a dry wall in their home (– to peek through when someone enters the door – obviously!) was not met with much appreciation from his dad.

Problem-solving in my view is the basis of being creative. There are lots of research out there that proves adults become worse at this, not better – which is actually ironic. As adults we are constantly faced with challenging situations – the perfect opportunity to become more and more creative – excel at problem-solving. And then (ironically) we hardly come up with new or creative ways to fix or better a situation. It is usually a ‘same old, same old’ approach.

This reminds me of one of Einstein’s (Mr. Super Creative) infamous quotes: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

So the next time I want to respond to some of my kids plans with: “You’re crazy!”, I will remember to rather say: “Please come up with a different solution.”

I heard an interesting story today (involving vuvuzelas) of a management team that found a very creative way to motivate staff in a production environment. This business had a massive backlog to catch up in a very short period of time, and the team were able to create a phenomenally successful motivation strategy to fix the problem.

Sometimes someone just have to be brave enough to share the outrageous idea. I heard another story of a unique publishing business that was established due to doors closing and markets changing. A group of impacted scientists (non-publishers) came together and out of pure passion created a thriving extraordinary publishing business – and at the same time saving their favorite publication.

I love stories like these, it restores my faith in humanity. Ordinary people coming up with extra-ordinary solutions, co-creating. What is not to celebrate?

Motto Model: http://goo.gl/cNnpy and Motto Individual Assessment: http://goo.gl/UhC7V
Like Follow

Counting sheep … sleeps!

This time of the year is usually when we have a build-up or backlog of work, and not enough time – which generally causes stress. Coupled with that, most people I encounter are exhausted and counting the sleeps to their vacation break.

With this tiredness without resting time at the front of mind, I came across interesting information on how the brain functions in such taxing times. Two main things, the first: a research study with monkeys showed that the brain literally shrinks when it is put under stress. I am sure our human brain’s functionality are not too far removed from the monkeys, and we can safely assume a similar thing would happen to us. Our brains shrink, i.e. cannot think clearly or do creative problem solving when we are stressed.

Without the monkey study I am pretty sure you knew we (humans) do not think well when stressed. Just think of exam experiences – “hitting a blank”. The moment you opened the exam paper you could not even remember your own name, let alone all the stuff you studied for the exam you were taking.

The second interesting thing was that when we are tired, we tend to be more creative in comparison with when we are fresh. So the brain filters distractions when it is not exhausted, and these distractions are often part of the creative resources. Long story short, when you are tired you are more likely to come up with creative ideas. I suppose it makes sense, when you relax in the bath or shower after a long day, ideas and solutions come very easily.

Our current challenge would then be, how do we remove the stress so our brains do not shrink, and how do we allow the brain tiredness to give us bright ideas to deal with our year-end challenges?

These are some suggestions: Try not to own the stress. Breathe. Do something you love, be it fishing, painting, cycling or whatever – the thing that will give your brain a chance to give you the good stuff.

And of course, keep counting the sleeps…

Motto Model: http://goo.gl/cNnpy and Motto Individual Assessment: http://goo.gl/UhC7V

Like Follow