Author: paddymcdougall

The Sisyphus Trap

‘In Greek mythology was a king punished by being compelled to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this throughout eternity.’

‘In experiments that test how workers respond when the meaning of their task is diminished, the test condition is referred to as the Sisyphusian condition. The two main conclusions of the experiment are that people work harder when their work seems more meaningful, and that people underestimate the relationship between meaning and motivation’

Sometimes as individuals and leaders we fall into this trap, we tried to change things and it didn’t work, this caused us to be fearful so we resolved not to let that happen again and took the safe route. We make compromises with our values, we start saying things like ‘another day another dollar’ (or equivalent currency), ‘I wish I had a job that I enjoyed’

I wish means: wouldn’t it be nice if … If you always make the right decision, the safe decision, the one most people make, you will be the same as everyone else. Always wishing life was different. (just like Sisphus) Paul Arden

In fact our brain is hardwired to seek stability and not change as it takes more energy to build new synapsis that are required to retain new information and ways of doing things. Don’t believe me, then think back to when you had to study some new process or qualification, did you feel tired?

To start avoiding the Sisyphus Trap you need to consider

Values & Beliefs Attitude Behaviour

Your values and beliefs influence your attitude and these manifests in your behaviour to yourself and others. When you compromise these too much your attitude will become less positive and this will affect your behaviour.

So step 1 is for you to identify your values e.g. honesty, being creative, team player, recognition, autonomy etc.

Then look at how many you have given up in your current work / home environment. Then plan how you can start to overcome barriers to being ‘valued’ in your life and work. Start with small steps e.g. talking with your boss about other opportunities to be more creative or greater autonomy. When you start planning solutions on how to create links from what you do to your values, you will notice your attitude and behaviour will start to change.

If you are a leader and you notice that your teams attitude, behaviour and motivation is not where it should be then it maybe down to their values being overly compromised. Find out their individual values and help them to see links to what they do. I have run a values exercise with leadership teams many times and it is amazing what sharing values in a safe environment can do.

Summary to escape the Sisyphus Trap

  1. Re-identify your values
  2. Make a plan to connect your values to what you do and take action
  3. Bring meaning and purpose back into what you do in your life through your values
  4. Recognise and appreciate that people’s values are different
  5. Be tenacious and recognise the successes you make

Please use the comment box if you have any questions or have experience of this happening in your working world.

If you would like to talk to me about coaching or team development please contact me at mcdougallmartin@aol.com

“It’s Better to Regret What You Have Done Than What You Haven’t“

I wanted to leave you with this great Ted video

Tony Robbins discusses the “invisible forces” that motivate everyone’s actions

Adding a personal touch to stakeholder management

The key to influencing someone is to understand yourself first. When starting out on my professional career I occasionally would be frustrated with people that I worked with who had a different way of working from me and I am sure that they would equally get frustrated with my chatty, upbeat outlook and desire to get things done.

E.g. when engaging with many senior executives they would have a surprised look on their face when I would use ritual cliche when first meeting them rather than getting down to business. My friendly emails would get one word replies… fine, good. My thought process would be ‘have I done something to annoy them?’. This was down to my interpretation of the ‘facts’ with my ‘personality lenses on’. It wasn’t until I was introduced to the Bolton & Bolton model below and later MBTI step 1 & step 2 that I realised that it probably wasn’t personal and I need to flex my style to communicate with them more effectively.

I am not one for putting people in boxes or labelling and everyone has elements of each of the personality types, we just prefer to use the characteristics of some of the boxes more often; so guessing isnt always going to accurate, however it is a very useful guide.

Quick tips

Driver: Be clear, concise and to the point. Information should be fact related. Make sure you listen to them. Bring solutions not problems

Expressive: Allow time for ritual cliche, be positive and forward thinking. Allow them time to talk.

Amiable: Let them know that they are valued and you care about the people aspect of business decisions. Allow time for them to reflect

Analytical: Concentrate on facts, decision making process, track history. Allow time for reflection.

This subject is far to wide ranging for a blog post, feel free to leave comments or contact me if you would like me to run a session with your team using this framework or MBTI step 1 / step 2

Follow me and I will send you a free questionaire to identify your style

A great ted video below

In a culture where being social and outgoing are prized above all else, it can be difficult, even shameful, to be an introvert. But, as Susan Cain argues in this passionate talk, introverts bring extraordinary talents and abilities to the world, and should be encouraged and celebrated.

Is it time to give your business a spring clean

Well spring is nearly upon us and traditionally at home many of us would take stock of what needs fixed,changed or thrown out so that our home feels fresh and has a new energised enviroment.

Seeing as many of us leaders spend alot of our lives at work, then maybe it’s time to think about what we can do to freshen up our business and our customer experience. Many businesses are thinking that a fire sale is what they need by cutting prices, staff and training and development, but take a minute to think about the potential consequencies

  • Once you reduce your margins will you ever be able to put them back up?
  •  How will reducing staff affect your customer experience? Are you driving them to the competition?
  • Research has shown that companies that spend money on staff development and training on average perform better*
  • If you don’t develop and stretch your talent pool they will leave

So as part of your spring clean consider the following

  • Could we give our customers a better experience and therefore charge a premium?
  • Is our company Vision relevant to our marketplace and engaging your employees?
  • How do we engage our colleagues more?
  • What development would make a difference to our bottom line?
  • How do we retain our best people?
  • Do we effectively performance manage our employees and reward them appropriately?

Good Luck with your spring clean, if you have any ideas for business spring cleans, please comment below.

I have noted a link to a great article about Ron Johnson who revolutionised Apple retail stores and later J C Penney http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/03/08/steve_jobs_originally_envisioned_apple_stores_as_targeting_creative_professionals.html

Low cost ways to show your employees that they are valued

http://www.fastcompany.com/1822943/low-cost-ways-to-show-your-employees-they-are-highly-valued

* http://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/pm/articles/2012/02/four-in-ten-uk-line-managers-ineffective.htm?wa_src=email&wa_pub=cipd&wa_crt=news_1&wa_cmp=pmdaily_280212

A Vision of work / life balance

So it’s Friday as I write this and this has prompted me to post about work / life balance.

Are you saying ‘thank god it’s Friday’?

‘I would love to have a great weekend; however I have so much work to do’

‘I am totally stressed and shattered’

This weekend I would ask you to think about what you would like your life to be like in regards to work / life balance and formulate a vision statement for this. It should be no longer than 15 words.

This may seem very formal, however most successful companies use vision statements to motivate people and allow it to create strategy and planning. If you want to change anything in life you need to have a strategy and a plan

e.g. ‘My life is about family, friends and allowing me time to enjoy life more’

From this you can formulate strategies to help you achieve this vision

  1. Spend more quality time with my family
  2. Ensure that I stay in contact with friends
  3. Allow time for me

Make the planning part simple to start with; look at small changes.

A tool to help you is Start Stop & Continue

Write down all the things that you want to start doing, stop doing and how to continue doing the things that feels write in your life.

Be warned the bit inside you that doesn’t like change will start saying things like

  • I don’t have time for this
  • It will affect my work
  • I will have time to do this when I retire or kids leave home

As Nigel Marsh says in the attached TED video, success should not be based on who has the most money when they die.

Nobody can make these changes except you

Hope you enjoy the TED video, if you have any anecdotes or things that have helped you with work life balance please comment.

Hope you have a great weekend

Entering the matrix

 

The world of business is changing rapidly with more and more companies

  • Cutting back on travel
  • Manager’s having ‘virtual teams’
  • Training  conducted by webinar or YouTube style training video
  • The rise of teleconference and video conferencing

All of this makes sense in the tough economic times we live in; however, how often are people receiving training not only on the technical side but the behavioural side of using virtual meeting technologies?

Being competent in using the software isn’t enough e.g. PowerPoint was launched in 1990… nearly 22 years ago, how often do you see really good presentations using PowerPoint?

Running an effective meeting face to face is a skill and requires real leadership to keep people engaged, feel comfortable to speak up and share ideas, ultimately reach the objectives of the meeting and leave motivated.

So I thought I would share some tips for virtual meetings

  • Start with a small team in the company and give them the support and development to become really effective at using the software and the identifying the behavioural aspects that really work; then let it go viral in your workplace
  • Have short, concise objectives for the meeting and display these throughout so that the attendees know what’s next and how much progress you have made. Send these out before hand to allow time for preparation
  • People’s attention will waiver after slide 3 on a webinar so make it interactive with polls, questions, whiteboard etc.
  • The chairperson should be there 15 minutes before the start and know how to mute and unmute
  • Facilitate discussion by using open questions followed by people’s names
  • Be aware when some delegates are one room together and the rest are virtual e.g. the whispered side chat in the room is distracting and can create them and us mentality. If there is silence in the room full of people narrate what is going on
  • Set expectations or ground rules if its the first time everyone has got together using this medium e.g. everyone gets a chance to speak, participation,use your name when joining the discussion (webinar / teleconference)
  • Be aware of background noise
  • Stay out of emails and turn mobiles of, unless you would normally do this in a normal face to face meeting?

These are only a selection of tips, please feel free to add any amusing anecdotes, pet peeves or tips in the comment section

Potential 37% increase in productivity by being happy

Not something new that if people are happy in their work then they will potentially be more productive.

So ask yourself

What was the last thing you, your boss or department did something to increase morale?

What is regularly being done in your workplace to increase / maintain positivity?

Remember that fad celebrating success at work….when was the last time you did this?

Some replies to this are ‘we don’t have a budget, we’re too busy…..’

If you have 12 minutes today and want to hear, something motivational, funny and with concrete ideas that cost nothing then I would recommend the ted video below.

‘We believe that we should work to be happy, but could that be backwards? In this fast-moving and entertaining talk from TEDxBloomington, psychologist Shawn Achor argues that actually happiness inspires productivity.’

If you enjoyed that video you can learn more here http://www.shawnachor.com/

Give your emails the STAR treatment

Emails are a massive part of our business lives and they can be immensely useful, however, they can cause real headaches when they are not constructed well.

Ask yourself:

  • How many times have you received a chain email from colleagues and do not know what it is really about until you read through all the attached emails?
  • Ever read a long winded email from someone and you are not sure what the person is asking you to do?
  • An email that assumes that the recipient has a great network
  • Why am I being asked to do this?

It wastes time and is frustrating

It’s time to give you and your team’s emails the STAR treatment.

Subject – Be specific about what the email is about not some generic heading

Tasks – List everything you want them to do

Additional Support – let the recipient know who may be able to help them or who will definitely be able to help them or whether they should come back to you if they have questions

Results – What does success look like? What, by when, who etc. also what is in it for them / the team / department etc.? Where it fits in the big picture.

If you find the above structure is taking too long, then maybe it is an indication you should just call the person. It always surprises me the amount of emails being sent back and forward when a 5 minute chat sorts things out.

It may not work for every email but it’s a great tool when you want to keep emails clear, concise and to the point

Listen your way to success

You are probably thinking that I have lost my marbles with the title of this post, however stay with me.

We put so much emphasis on clever pitches, presentations and influencing people (all important) in meetings or waxing lyrical to our partners and family about our day that we tend not to consider our listening skills.

Are we truly listening or are we just waiting for our chance to put across our point of view that matches our agenda / objective, maybe even satisfying our ego?

Test yourself; do you do any of these in

Important meetings

  • Think about the amount of work you have already on your desk
  • Think about the previous meeting that didn’t go so well
  • Check your blackberry etc.?
  • Concentrate solely on what you want or your ideas
  • On telephone conferences put yourself on mute and work your way through emails
  • Take copious amounts of notes

At home

  • Talk about your day in front of the telly, computer or whilst doing something else

If you have mentally ticked yes to any of these then you may not be ‘living in the moment’ and truly listening and have the potential to miss important chances to communicate or influence someone in the most effective way. You may be treating symptoms not the root cause and so they are less likely to see the merits in your solution. Switch off any ‘interference’ that can affect your listening.

‘I have so much work and so many meetings that I need to multi-task’ is a common objection to this, however this is more about saying yes rather than no which I will cover in future post.

Listening effectively will help time management as you will not have to cover the same ground again; you have closed the sale or articulated your point or feelings in a persuasive way.

Stephen covey said ‘seek to understand before being understood’ – 7 Habits of Highly Effective people. https://www.stephencovey.com/ (his new 8th habit is great too)

He talks about listening with your ears, eyes and heart

5 levels of listening

5. Empathetic – as active however, you are putting yourself in their shoes, noting body language, tone, pace and volume of speech

4. Active – Verbal and non-verbal nods, asking pertinent questions, recapping offering relevant insights or challenges

3. Selective – Hearing what you want to hear

2. Pretending – Nodding dog syndrome

1. Ignoring – off in your own wee world – lights are on but nobody is home

Ok so sometimes I am in the zones of 1 – 3 (clothes shopping springs to mind!) I am not perfect. It does take hard work and effort to listen well

If you have an important meeting then you need to be in zone 5 as sometimes… what is not being said is as important as what is.

Ever heard someone say ‘I dont need solutions or help I just want someone to listen’

So my challenge is to practice empathetic listening at least once a day and record how you get on. You might want to start with family members or friends, remove any distractions TV etc. sit down and ask them about their day and stay in zone 5!

Feel free to post results in the comments box. Hope you are having a great week

Positivity – the number 1 free development solution

Well, it’s Monday morning as I write this, and the old cliche got me to thinking about positivity.

How does attitude affect us in the workplace and not just on Mondays?

Are any of the following phrases familiar?

  • Nothing changes here
  • I sick of the way I am treated
  • No one listens to my idea’s
  • No one motivates me
  • I hate my job but I have to pay the bills
  • Same S*** different day

Feel free to add in the comment boxes any you regularly hear…please keep it U rated!

Have you ever worked with people that even though you’re just back from an amazing holiday and feel energised and positive to be back, they manage to make you feel like it was a distant memory by 10am?

I think everybody at some point has fallen into this trap.

A few potential solutions are straightforward, however, at first not easy

  • Science says opposites attract, so when faced with a negative situation, look for the positive no matter how hard. Don’t ignore the negative, use it to get the root cause of the matter so you can find a solution
  • Our ‘inner critic’ will always find ways for not doing something, as it wants to reduce the risk to ourselves. To realise our goals or dreams we always have to take risks. Ask yourself ‘What is the worst that can happen?’
  • Every day on your way home from work, remind yourself of the positives of the day. You would probably never dream of giving someone totally negative feedback so why do that to yourself.
  • Catch yourself when you are moaning about work. Stop. Think about what the impact is on you and those around you. How you can change things and/or ask for help?
  • Actively build a support network e.g. mentor, subject matter experts, people with experience inside and outside your field of business, family & friends
  • Apart from material rewards at work e.g. pay, holidays, company car, what motivates you? Are these motivations being met in your current role and if not, what can you do to change this?
  • Don’t sweat the small stuff
  • Everyday day do something to take your life forward

If your are still unconvinced

or

Have a look at the 11 benefits of being positive ihttp://www.jongordon.com/blog/2009/01/18/11-benefits-of-being-positive/

Finally, who do you prefer to be around at work and in your personal life… positive or negative people?

If you have any suggestions or questions around personal / team development drop it into the comment box and I will look to include it in future blogs. I hope you have an amazing week.

Important Numbers in Life – the clock is ticking

 

29500 Average life span in days of a woman in the western world

26500 Average life span in days of a man in the western world

100,000 estimated hours you will work in your lifetime

Now some people will argue with my math, however, in this instance my grasp of figures doesn’t need to be perfect, so whats my point?

29500 & 26500 where are you on that scale? life is short and the only certainities in life are death and taxes as Daniel Defoe eluded to.

So what are your goals? Life & work? the clock is ticking… right down 3 that you haven’t achieved and want to.

Now pick the most important to you.

Now your probably saying yes, but… I can do that when I retire, I have a family to support etc

Have a look at this article about top 5 regrets taken from Bronnie Ware who worked in palitive care http://www.inspirationandchai.com/Regrets-of-the-Dying.html

Makes you think…

You don’t have time for regrets, we have all made the best decisions we could, at the time, either that or we wouldn’t have made that decision. Let go and move on

What I am not saying is give everything up this instant, what I am asking is for you to consider is how you can make changes in your life to help you achieve your goals.

So ask yourself; what is the reality of your situation, opportunities,challenges, current skills, desire to attain these goals?

How do you enchance the pro’s and mitigate the con’s?

So what can you do about it? what are your options for taking things forward? Which is best for you now?

Ok, what are you going to do first, how can you plan the steps you need to take, to stop it being overwhelming? How do you know your getting there? What is it going to feel like when you reach each step and ultimately you end goal?

Be honest with yourself, whats stopping you?

Finally, thinking about 100,000, its a hell a long time to do something that you hate doing but it will go in the blink of an eye if you enjoy or do I say it love your job!

Congratulations… (not just for reading as far as this in my blog!)… If you have answerred the questions above, then you have had a short coaching session with yourself. If you would be interested in knowing more about coaching please contact me at mcdougallmartin@aol.com

I know January is nearly finished and so will many resolutions, however if you read through this article and you want to tackle your career here is 5 things you might want to think abouthttp://www.linkedin.com/share?viewLink=&sid=s842636350&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eforbes%2Ecom%2Fsites%2Fdanschawbel%2F2012%2F01%2F23%2F89-of-new-hires-fail-because-of-their-attitude%2F&urlhash=Cb_j&pk=nprofile-view-success&pp=1&poster=54966038&uid=5567707556568104960&trk=NUS_UNIU_SHARE-title

photo credit <p><a href=”http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=1526″>Image: Paul / FreeDigitalPhotos.net</a></p>