He didn’t know it but I was also living that meaning in that moment.
That’s what purpose is.
It’s not some off in the distance goal.
It’s who you are being in every moment.
Who you are in your relationship
How you parent
How you act with your friends
How you eat, sleep, exercise
How you lead.
It’s all pointed in that direction.
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2. You’re using hierarchy to move people.
You have become so wrapped up in urgency that you are crossing the boundaries into telling people what to do or doing things for them. This serves to make them think that they are useless and that you think you are better than them. Driving stress, poor culture, quiet quitting and high staff churn
3. You have become reliant upon short term negative consequences to cause you to act
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9. People will infer all possible meanings of the leaders communication. If the boss is being mis-interpreted it’s on them to get more skilful at communication.
10. If you interrupt people at their desk to ask for 5 minutes or for help NOW, task switching that is the culture you have chosen and it’s a stressful one to operate within.
11. When people don’t experience their own competence throughout the day their general state is anxious and overwhelmed. It’s on the leader to create that for everyone in the company.
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1. List all the stuff that prevents your from achieving your daily objectives and create a plan for dealing with each one.
2. Set realistic daily objectives.
3. List what you have a tendency to do when things get tough. (Do you distract yourself with a new shiny idea that’s fun to talk about and imagine? Write that down so you recognising it as the enemy when it walks in you’ll be far less likely to fall for its lies).
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I should be helping more at home, I should be helping my team, I should be connecting with the customers and keeping them happy, the show ends if I don’t keep the board happy, I’m getting fat, unhealthy and my sleep is suffering I should be doing more for my health!
The first step I have my clients take is to let go of the should, the must, the have to, even if just for a while.
Focusing on what’s not being done only grows the feeling of hopelessness which grows that feeling of overwhelm and exhaustion.
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They have always been people with a lot of responsibility. CxO’s, Partners, Doctors, Judges, Entrepreneurs etc
But back in my personal training days working with these folks I would be pulling my hair out trying to get them to create the habits necessary to achieve what they were paying me for.
Their lives were just so unpredictable.
They would get incredible results in 21,30 and even 60 day programs but eventually they would regress back to mean and back to the shape they were previously in.
That’s when I started exploring neuroscience and quickly discovered where I was going wrong.
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Did you fail to fulfil your commitments to put your health and energy first yesterday.
Or did you, despite the chaos, take the very steps required to energise yourself putting you in the best possible state for the day.
Did you get sucked into your phone or laptop after work.
Or did you keep your commitment to be present with your family.
Did you operate through anxiety, overwhelm or stress.
Or did you create clarity, peace and focus.
Did you get pulled into urgency, operating reactively
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👉 You know what you want to achieve, and how to achieve it but you lack the particular skill required to achieve it.
😃 You know what you want to achieve but you are unclear on the ingredients required to produce the desired outcome.
🤷🏼♂️ You know exactly what to do and you are sometimes able to do it but you are unable to carry it out consistently enough to produce the desired outcome.
Usually it’s an overlap of these but objectively this is what’s happening.
It looks terrifyingly simple mapped out like this doesn’t it?
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That’s cool and you’ll get better and better at that with practise too but when there is opportunity to refine NOW your best gets better NOW. You are literally missing an opportunity to get better every time you fail to do this (I added that last line on my second run through this).
You don’t need to wait for your 100th book to produce something you’re proud of.
This ISN’T about perfection at all.
It’s about EXCELLENCE.
Which means taking a step towards more closely fulfilling your pre-defined criteria every time the opportunity arises.
An email is not just an email, a social media post not just a social media post, a book not just a book and a conversation not just a conversation.
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Well I say must, it’s more if you want to be happy and health and have a fun life.
Answering these questions will REALLY help.
I am yet to meet a good leader who recommends chancing or hoping their way to success.
They want a predictable and repeatable process for success so that they can better predict the future while ensuring that things move smoothly in the present.
Often though I find that there are clear systems for the business but there are rarely clear system for maintain themselves as well as some of the most challenging human aspects of business and life.
This means that business often becomes the safe haven FROM life.
Those leaders who manage these things MOST skilfully have a clear answer for each of the following questions.
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He’s now in a worse position than when he started. He’s not happy with how he looks, feels and performs and on top of that he has a lower opinion of himself and his abilities at least in this area.
Fold this into a business context and you can apply these problems (and results) to both yourself as a leader but also to your team.
A goal focus leads to an unhappy process, constant stress and overwhelm, the feeling that you are always behind, that you and your staff and never quite good enough or that the client is too demanding.
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Advice from a qualified source is rarely bad. People tend to give the advice that they need to hear and if they have been or are in a similar situation to you then its likely good advice.
If it’s the advice that they need to hear though it probably means that a. It worked for them but b. They weren’t able to stick to it.
This is what neuroscience teaches us.
Most often we know what to do, we just can’t get ourselves to consistently do it.
What follows is 3 examples of Good Advice that we struggle to take and what to do about it.
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The brain is a survival machine that creates survival mechanisms to protect itself.
Many of these protection mechanisms can inadvertently cause problems inside an organisation.
The leaders must master these 8 skills to not be taken over by these mechanisms.
That is in part, what it means to lead.
To own your own emotions and behaviours in response to what is happening around you.
Which of these 8 do you most need to place your attention on?
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Contrary to popular belief this ISN’T because you are bad, wrong or because your team are.
In this video
* The belief that makes the need for motivation, willpower, urgency and control inevitable
* Why we actually struggle to achieve our goals and lead others to do the same
* The new understand that if we adopted will change everything from how you lead yourself to how you lead others
* The neuroscience understanding that will transform yours and your teams life
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My clients love this way of thinking about stress because it moves it from the abstract feeling that needs ‘managing’ to something concrete that’s both normal, not ‘bad’ and most importantly actually provides huge growth for you and the business when faced skilfully.
So putting my neuroscience hat on for a moment stress is one of two things;
It’s a lack of prediction and response in the current environment.
or
2. It’s an unskillful prediction and response in the current environment.
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1. ADDING MORE ACTIONS
2. Using FORCE and WILLPOWER
3. Expecting MOTIVATION to be enough
It doesn’t matter how much you have had enough of your, low energy, constant phone use or working into the evening, ADDING more actions to an overwhelmed system will always result in more overwhelm.
FORCING in the new actions you THINK will help will always result in dropping it when motivation is low or something more critical comes up.
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Your success as a leader will be determined by how you deal with people.
It won’t be defined by your ideas, problem solving, charisma, or brilliance but by how people feel in your organisation.
Do they love working with you and for you. Do they feel valued, inspired, fairly treated, well supported?
This is not just about your current project but will echo into your future.
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