Building Better Leaders

Six years ago Clare Pooley was drinking about 90 units of alcohol a week. Fast forward to today and she’s a successful author, fulfilling her life’s dream.
We talk to Clare about how alcohol works as a drug, and how our tolerance to it builds over time, bringing with it- issues of poor sleep, reduced creativity and anxiety. We talk about Clare’s previous career as a senior leader in the booze advertising industry, and how her recklessness while drinking nearly cost her her job. We Discuss the idea of ‘sober curiosity,’ and how people interested in having time without alcohol might reassess their relationship with it.
This conversation provides thought provoking insight into a relationship many Brits have with alcohol that they’re not aware of, and how taking a more mindful approach to consuming alcohol can make you a better leader, and provide many with the opportunity to uncover their full potential. 
Tips for leaders about being more inclusive in the workplace about team bonding without the booze:

Clare’s Leadership Essentials:

1. Take a break - Ideally take a 100 days break from all alcohol to give you and your body time to decide mindfully what relationship you want to have with alcohol, rather than the relationship you have fallen into
2. Set yourself rules - once you’ve decided the relationship you’d like to have with alcohol, set strict rules and stick to them
3.  Keep an eye on it - Be mindful about why and when you are drinking. If you can’t stick to step one you might want to reconsider the benefits of quitting.

Useful Links:

You Tube: https://www.ted.com/talks/clare_pooley_making_sober_less_shameful Website & Book: https://clarepooley.com/

In this week’s podcast we reflect on what we learnt from our last 3 guests; Adrian Hawley, Melanie Weller, and Simon Town who are very in touch with the mind, body, and environment connection. 

 

We reflect on the often elusive yet alluring life purpose, and chat about how to combat the detrimental effects of modern life and our ways of working. In particular we think about what leaders can do for their employees that can have dramatic results for the organisation and its people, and doesn’t cost the earth.

 

Our Leadership Essentials:  

1. It can take years to find your life purpose – keep going, it’s really never too late 

2. The power of storytelling and meaning making on mind and body. We’re all connected mind, body and environment and our bodies reflected the archetypal stories we tell ourselves

3. Don’t get comfortable being uncomfortable. If we make some minor adjustments to our daily lives, we can massively improve our personal future health and wellbeing. 

 

In The Coaching Approach we catch up with our fictional organisation Safina has introduced George to fellow CEO Andrew Thomas at Better You and he’s keen to learn more about the benefits of offering his employees a free Vitamin D level test. John is pleased to be back in the office showing off with his new Postural exercise regime, and we find everyone in good spirits where employee wellbeing has never felt so good.

Our entire modern way of life adversely influences our postural position - where our bodies are out of balance and our muscles become both over active and under active. 

In this weeks episode Rachael & John are joined by Simon Town. After a life threatening accident at 16 Simon has endured PTSD, depression, drug and alcohol addiction, yet his remarkable story has served to become many other peoples survival guide.
His community interest company Roots of Yggdrasil helps people with their individual physical challenges and postural imbalances.
Beginning with a postural assessment, based on how you sit, where your head position is, even how you talk, you learn what your potential list of injuries might be, and how to avoid them through a tailored exercise programme.
Our whole kinetic chain is at risk of modern life, yet 10 minutes of proper corrective exercise personally tailored to the individual can prevent future injury. We make the comparison as to how coaching is very similar in helping people avoid unhelpful current and future behaviours. We discuss how leaders can help their teams by looking out for early warning signs and taking some positive action.
Rach and John run through a few simple exercises with Simon starting with hands & fingers that help with rheumatoid arthritis and carpel tunnel. We really enjoyed one of Simon’s favourite exercises which corrects forward head posture reducing risk of tension headaches and tightness in the upper chest.
Simon’s Leadership Essentials:
1. Lead by example - let your barriers down show some vulnerability
2. If someone has back issues send them for an assessment now

3. Take sometime out for yourself; get out a do something that means you are moving - even have a phone meeting in the park 

In this weeks episode we are in conversation with physical therapist and Vagus Nerve expert - Melanie Weller.

If your super curious this will really resonate with you - perhaps providing more questions for you to reflect upon. Rachael & John take part in a couple of Melanie’s exercises as she explains the importance of the vagus nerve, how increasing our awareness of how it works can have a beneficial and dramatic impact on our physical and mental health.
We talk about how many of us ‘over-breath into our upper neck,’ what that perpetuates, and where we should concentrate our breathing thus preventing tightness. 
We learn what’s happening with our gut instinct and reactions and even consider that our business/job and our body has a closer relationship than we think.
Melanie Leadership Essentials: (1:05:00)
1. Create Physical space for your vagus nerve / yourself. Keep your internal flow going
2.  Leadership Influence - The vagus nerve is the biggest influencer of your body, and when you’re looking to amplify your influence, the better your vagus nerve functions, the more you are the thermostat, and not the thermometer. Your future has your back
3. Seeing people as their Archetypes -  Which archetype are you? It can help you as a leader to get people in their sweet spot. Helping build trust and trust in your teams, and knowing your archetype helps in trusting yourself. 
A fully functioning vagus nerve is so important to good leadership. Melanie ends on the vagus nerve compression exercise.
You can contact Melanie here: https://melanieweller.com/

Follow Melanie on Twitter @EmbodyYourStar

Ikigai is a Japanese concept the means “reason for being.” Similar to French term “raison d’etre.”  
This episode will be of interest to people who often feel as if they’re in the wrong job, but suffer from the frustration of not knowing exactly what it is, they want to do.

Free Scaffold Coaching Ikigai Planner

In this weeks podcast Rachael and John are joined by the inspirational Adrian Hawley: Head of Court of Protection at Partners In Costs, Chairman of Headway Huddersfield and Open Water Swimmer.
Adrian shares his wonderful story of how with Rachael’s coaching he has used Ikigai to organise his hectic work life balance. After working in vastly different jobs and roles, he talks about how he feels that he is living his true life purpose.
There are some wonderful leadership lessons in here; despite all of Adrian’s commitments you are left thinking that he is someone who manages to create time for everyone, that there’s value in being curious and he exudes generosity.
Adrian’s Leadership Essentials:
1. Braindump - Get things out of your head and down on paper. It will help you think more clearly.
2. Do something daring, do something different, something you’ve not done before.
3. Share your niche learnings with other colleagues. Investment in sharing your knowledge pays dividends later.

In this weeks podcast John & Rachael discuss the contributions from their last three guests Ira Wolfe at Success Performance Solutions, Tom Manning at The Pathway Academy, and Andrew Thomas at BetterYou, in the context of how organisations evaluate performance in 2021 and beyond.

How do transformational leaders approach performance management? Aimed at HR and Leaderships Teams keen to reflect on how they adapted their people function through COVID-19, and what might be next.

Be well to work well. People’s performance depends in part on their physical and mental health. How can you as leaders support and manage the well being of your most important asset?

Building a strong pathway with clear signposting for your employees. This helps everyone evaluate their performance so much better, they can see what they need to do to achieve personal and organisational success.

Adaption and transformation are not the same thing. Adaption is required in the short term. But it is largely reaction. True transformation is required in the long term taking a more holistic approach. We’ve had an age of digital transformation Are we moving into an era of people transformation? 

In The Coaching approach we meet the new HR Director Safina, who has some interesting ideas that will transform performance management, reward and the day-to-day approach and roles of the Senior Leadership Team. 

This week we celebrate World Health Day with the wonderfully knowledgeable Andy Thomas CEO and Founder of BetterYou. We talk about needing to be well, to lead well.  Our dramatically changing modern western diet and lifestyles have led to us losing a growing number of key nutrients which are essential to maintaining a balanced, healthier and fitter body. Andy talks about how a chance meeting led to him finding his true purpose; the challenges he encountered, the people and organisations that helped him, and that he is forever learning, how to help people lead healthier lives. 
We chat about his passion, learning and commitment to developing new products, and the innovation required to meet the growing needs of customers’ nutritional requirements. This was a real education for us, learning how important crucial certain minerals and vitamins are, and how they are ingested can have a real impact on their effectiveness.

Andy’s Leadership Essentials are:
1. Try and make decisions you’re proud of, that you can substantiate; start by looking at yourself2. Be humble - Be the leader, yet have the confidence to move forward, back your own judgement3. Treat your people as fellow travellers; listen to what they think, its more fun, and they throw things in - you’d probably never thought of
You can learn more about BetterYou products by visiting betteryou.com

In this weeks episode Rachael & John chat to Tom Manning founder of The Pathway Academy about how to create high performing, emotionally intelligent teams. They talk about how laying a clear career pathway for employees to follow, is the most effective approach to attracting like minded employees.

What does it look like to be at a certain level in your organisation? Do you know what behaviours are required of you, what is the expected skill level; and how does this differ from what is required at the next level, and the level above that?

If you have the answers to all these questions, it makes it easier for you to be accountable; you know what is expected of you, producing a performance win/win.

Leadership Essentials:

The most important relationship you have is the one you have with yourself - and it heavily influences all your other relationships.

Be clear with people. We are often very unclear!

Without consequences there is no accountability (and anger isn't an effective consequence).

Being aware - Developing emotional awareness and understanding.

Being Clear - Being Clear about what is expected and what good looks like.

Being Accountable - Creating consistently accountable teams without anger.

Being Human - Giving people room to make mistakes while they learn - and to then develop a more authentic relationship with themselves.

Being Active - Being active in the development of our people - developing human character as well as competence / experience.

Being in the right place - Helping people to live their own purpose and be in the right role for them.

High Standards - The setting and upholding of high standards.

You can contact Tom here: https://thepathwayacademy.co.uk/the-pathway/

In this weeks episode Rachael & John are joined by author of ‘Recruiting in the Age of Googlization’ - Ira Wolfe. His company Success Performance Solutions, helps organisations hire smarter and faster, where people are valued for their attitude and not just their skills.

Ira talks to us about his fascination with the speed of change, the challenge of living in perpetual uncertainty and how technology disrupts how we work. Describing himself as a millennial in a baby boomer body, his passion for the future of work is at the very core of this insightful, thought leading conversation. He shares his positive switch on VUCA from Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambitious to Vision, Understanding, Courage/Confidence and Adaptability.

We talk about transformation and what is required for business leaders develop a transformational mindset. Ira shares his thoughts on how a transformational mindset is essential to adapting and leaders can achieve this by becoming more courageous and confident in their actions. While also developing their abilities with a sharp focus on his top five focuses for any leader, these being: 

In his area of expertise we lift the lid on recruitment today and what’s required in future.

1. Growing our ability to adapt: this should be perpetual, and used every day

2. Greater level of authenticity and transparency: be more comfortable with yourself by asking the relevant questions

3. Learn how to be more hopeful: have the courage to be more hopeful to truly feel optimistic, and share that hope with those you lead.

 

Eduard Spranger - Types of Men https://amzn.to/3s1QNZI

Podcast https://geeksgeezersgooglization.com

Website & Book https://www.successperformancesolutions.com

In this weeks podcast Rachael & John pull together their recent guests leadership essentials by taking a look at the Drama unfolding both sides of the water between Harry & Meghan and The Firm.

1. Never underestimate the power of a group and how much it can influence, however small in number 

2. Test your assumptions and be constantly aware of the potential for employee burnout; particularly as people often feel the need to “rescue the organisation.” 

3. Care in Leadership is about managing the difference between your intentions and their impact. We can often have the right intentions because we know what we intended, but that doesn’t stop them from having bad impact.

In the Coaching Approach they visit their fictional organisation and catch up with them during their latest team coaching session. The numbers aren’t looking good, Jackson is feeling frustrated and pointing the finger at Kim. She is looking tired and exhausted, - Janet is concerned about her and is worried that she might be in danger of burnout? John jumps to her defence.

Their Facilitator suggests they re-frame the situation by each giving their views on Harry & Meghan and The Firm as to where everyone is sitting on the Drama Triangle. On reflection everyone can start to see which seat they’ve been sitting on, and are surprised to find that they keep moving from Persecutor to Rescuer, and all feeling like they’re the Victim.