Joy@Work Podcast

Encourage Imagine that someone created a red pill that adds years to your life; it reduces the risk of having a heart attack or stroke; cuts your risk of Alzheimer's disease by more than fifty percent; helps you relax during the day and sleep better at night; it doubles your chances of staying drug and alcohol free after treatment; activates your natural killer cells; diminishes your inflammatory cells; increase your good cholesterol (HDL); and it repairs your DNA. What if this imaginary red pill reduced hospitalisation so much that it put a big dent in the national health crisis? Oh, and as a special bonus, it gives you better sex. The company that made that red pill would be worth gazillions right? The red pill's inventors would win Nobel Prizes and have institutes named for them. But it's not a red pill. It's purpose. And it's free. And you get side effects. More friends. Greater happiness. Deeper engagement in life. And better sex. Now imagine a blue pill that makes your work almost effortless, yet simultaneously fulfilling. Every moment at work you are in the zone. You're flowing and your performance is so good, and your productivity increases and you are more engaged with your work and with your colleagues. The company who made that blue pill would be worth even more gazillions and businesses would be clamouring for their workers to take this magnificent drug so they could profit even more and keep staff happily employed and engaged for years to come at higher wages with shorter working hours and greater productivity. Well, those blue pills would be flying off the shelves faster than a speeding bullet. But it's not a blue pill. It's leveraging your talent. And it's also free. Now, what if you take both the red pill and the blue pill? What if you were joyful at work, found deep pleasure in doing what you do and it felt effortless and your job was meaningful for you? I've worked with so many people who want this to be true for them. I'm certain that you do too. And there is a way that you can have this. But I must warn you. This is not a magic trick for instant success, nor a silver bullet that will instantly make everything bad disappear. Some things will appear to be magical but they're actually social cognitive neuroscience. Some things are going to turn your world on its head. It will take you some time and effort. So if you don't like taking on things that take time and effort you should turn back now before you get a glimpse of the potential joy you could be having at work. Develop What do you want out of life? You want to be happy right? Of course, you do. Ask anyone what they want in life and the vast majority will reply that they want to be happy. They want their partner to be happy. They want their kids to be happy. They want their entire family to be happy. Ask them if they are happy at work, and you'll be met with a kind smirk as if you had lost your marbles. Ask them if they experience joy at work and they'll laugh at the absurdity of the idea. Yet a 2015 study shows that happy staff are 12% more productive than unhappy staff. And happiness has an even greater impact on sales - raising sales by 37%! We've known this for years! Centuries even! So every organisation everywhere has implemented fantastic training and coaching to make sure that their staff are all happy. This is immediately evident as you walk into almost any workplace in any country. How everyone is smiling, laughing, being friendly, helpful, cooperating. How their so joyful its contagious you cannot help but smile and wish earnestly that you could join that organisation and get paid handsomely for having fun and enjoying every day. When you take both the red pill and the blue pill, you'll be well on your way to having deep and lasting joy @ work. We derive joy from our using our talents and strengths effectively in our work (and lives). The Blue Pill. We derive joy from doing something meaningful and significant. The Red Pill. And we derive joy f

Encourage Every day you are busy. Emails fill your inbox, some of them might even matter. Your todo list gets ticked off... or not. You attend meetings, deal with clients, chat with the boss, communicate with colleagues, deal with crises, handle problems, worry about tomorrow, think about yesterday, fret over a sick child ... and the list goes on. If you are disciplined, you get to the gym or exercise at least 3 times a week and keep a wary eye on your diet, and make sure that you get enough rest at night. If you don't do these then you know that your body is more likely to break down. You know that you have to make time to look after your body and put in some effort. But do you look after your brain as well? Taking time to pause and meditate or be mindful is perhaps the most critical instrument to cultivate peak performance. You train your body to grow muscles and keep your weight in check. Well, taking time to pause, meditate or be mindful is like training your brain and taking control of the five types of brain waves so that you can be in charge of your life. Develop At the root of all your thinking, emotions and behaviours is the electrical and chemical communication between neurons inside your brain. And all that electrical activity is measured in the form of brainwaves. Brainwaves are grouped into five distinct categories, each associated with specific tasks and mental state. At our highest frequency we have gamma waves. These are associated with insight, peak focus, and expanded consciousness. If you are currently sharply concentrating on this new information, it'll be gamma waves that are helping you store this learning and associating it with existing knowledge and experience. A little slower in frequency and we have beta waves. This is the state you probably spend most of your active day especially in the urban jungle and our always-on society. Fabulously, beta waves allow us to concentrate hard on the task at hand and they are critical when we read, write and socialise but there is a cost in that beta waves can sap our energy and reduce emotional awareness and creativity. Once you get home and relax and reflect quietly your brain waves slow down to alpha waves. If you suffer from insomnia, anxiety or obsessive-compulsive symptoms you likely don't switch down to alpha and you need help. If on the other hand, you keep on socialising, watching fast-paced television or studying, you are keeping your brain in beta or even gamma state. And that's simply exhausting you. When you nod off into the world of dreaming, you experience theta waves. Interestingly, theta waves are also present when you are in that elusive, brilliant, effortless state often called being in the "flow" of peak performance. It's that autopilot type state you've been in when driving home on a familiar route, arriving home and wondering how you got there. It's in this state that many people get their flashes of insight or bursts of creativity. Lastly, we have delta waves which are associated with deep dreamless sleep. Some people can meditate themselves into this state whilst remaining alert and awake. These waves are the source of empathy, healing and regeneration - hence why deep restorative sleep is so essential to the healing process. Manipulating brainwaves The biggest issue for most people in this modern, always-on, hustle and busyness lifestyle is that we rarely make time to allow our brains to slow down. We get stressed and perhaps anxious, and the mind is whirring away at a fast pace zapping through energy and leaving the body exhausted. So how do we alter our brainwaves? Any process that changes your perception, changes your brain waves! Our brainwaves change according to what we are doing and how we are feeling. When slower brainwaves are dominant, we can feel tired, slow, sluggish or dreamy. When higher frequencies are prevalent, we feel wired, hyper or "buzzed". So, change what you are doing, and your brainwaves soon respond. It can take som

Every day you are busy.

Emails fill your inbox, some of them might even matter. Your todo list gets ticked off... or not. You attend meetings, deal with clients, chat with the boss, communicate with colleagues, deal with crises, handle problems, worry about tomorrow, think about yesterday, fret over a sick child ... and the list goes on.

If you are disciplined, you get to the gym or exercise at least 3 times a week and keep a wary eye on your diet, and make sure that you get enough rest at night. If you don't do these then you know that your body is more likely to break down.

You know that you have to make time to look after your body and put in some effort. But do you look after your brain as well?

Taking time to pause and meditate or be mindful is perhaps the most critical instrument to cultivate peak performance. You train your body to grow muscles and keep your weight in check. Well, taking time to pause, meditate or be mindful is like training your brain and taking control of the five types of brain waves so that you can be in charge of your life.

There's a lot of excitement about artificial intelligence (AI) and the potential for robots to autonomously make decisions about what gets done, how it gets done, and who does it. As the technology fast approaches the dreams of science fiction, many professionals, blue and white colour workers are beginning to fear a future where their own jobs are no more. Will you be one who is replaced, or will you be one of those who thrives? The new Luddism In a fit of rage against the machines, Ned Ludd was an apprentice textile worker who allegedly smashed two stocking frames, a mechanical knitting machine, in 1779. The act spawned the Luddite movement whose members disliked the new technological devices and the changes being brought about by the Industrial Revolution. In 1812, the Luddite movement was a small militant force, battling the British army in Middleton, Lancashire. They met at night on the moors surrounding industrial towns to practice drills and manoeuvres. The Luddites employed tactics that today we would call terrorism and they were driven by a powerful cause: to save their jobs and improve their wretched standard of living. And they blamed the new machines in large part for their suffering. Today, we face a new challenge: The rise of the robots. Technological advances in the 19th and 20th centuries mainly displaced uneducated labourers. Today, we are seeing technology increasingly threaten skilled worker's jobs as well. Today, you may well have good reason to be concerned about the rise of the robots. I realised recently, that I hadn't actually spoken to, or needed to speak to, anyone in my bank for more than two years. Financial services have been at the forefront of digital adoption and transformation and many lower-level (those less cognitvely demanding) positions have already simply disappeared. In energy and mining, AI enables companies to tap new reserves and increase extraction and production efficiency. Predictive, manual work in both industries is no longer needed and the physical skills of old, is already or will soon be redundant. In healthcare, automation and AI has already changed the interaction between patients and healthcare professionals. But the good news for carers is that demand for their services is likely to grow, but if you work the back office, it could be time to look elsewhere. Manufacturing is seeing a new wave of AI and automation further disrupting production functions in factories. Two years ago, Foxconn replaced 60,000 workers with robots in one factory. The retail sector is rapidly dying a death on the high street and jobs replaced by machines increase daily. Whether it be the self-checkout of today, or the automated RFID or similar tech of tomorrow. And who needs physical shops and humans in them anyway when Amazon can deliver later this afternoon? Real Estate Agents are unlikely to be missed by those not in the profession, but what will they do once their job is done by a 'bot? Support services in organisations are threatened too. Do you really need accountants when the rules are established? Once you have the policies and procedures in place, how many people do you need in HR? Supply chain professionals are replacing themselves rapidly**. Customer Service** has shifted to self-serve portals and voice prompts recorded once and played in evermore annoying menus of choices. True, many other jobs open up, but with completely different skill requirements. Cybersecurity seems unlikely to stop growing - indeed, half of the battle is against malevolent AI bots. Rise of the Robots (book) - Wikipedia Skill shift: Automation and the future of the workforce The good news is that we'll still need humans to manage and lead and do the more complex cognitive thinking. For now, anyway. Sure, one day AI could evolve to higher levels of quasi-cognitive functioning and make better decisions than human managers and leaders. And there are things that you can do, right now, to significantly improve your valu

"Where do you see yourself in five years time?" This insidious little question invites the interviewee to begin a little game that finishes as a belief built on sand. You guess what your prospective employer wants to hear, and then you give it to them. It's almost as bad as your Aunt's favourite: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" The myriad branching possibilities when you are 12 or 13 years old seem to lead in opposite directions, and all equally tempting. By the time you hit the renowned "mid-life crisis" when you are, theoretically, equipped to make better choices. In reality, your 20s and 30s wide-eyed optimism has usually been replaced by a more cynical outlook on jobs and the workplace. And that mid-life crisis seems to be happening earlier and earlier. In this episode, I'm going to take a look at some of the many "buts" that prevent people from career planning for themselves and then I shall propose an alternative to career planning that will help you get started pursuing what you really want to do. Fair warning: there's a lot of "buts" in here. I wasn't surprised that no hands went up at this workshop. A couple of Gen Xers and the rest millennials, not a single one had a career plan. In most workshops, I'll see maybe two hands tentatively raised when I ask who has a personal career plan. It seems that most people like to leave their future career in the hands of others, their whims and fancies rather than do something as arduous as think about what they would like to be doing in a few years time. It's hardly surprising that Gallup's State of the Global Workplace Report in 2017 finds that 85% of employees are disengaged. Why would you be engaged in your work if you felt as if you were going nowhere you really wanted to go? So they shared their "buts" with me as to why they didn't have a career plan. Maybe you have these "buts" too. But there's no point in planning when the world is changing so quickly! Of course, there are problems in career planning. It's difficult enough to think about 20 or 30 years ahead. Interestingly, I find that the older you are, the easier it is, but that is not so critical. The problem is that we struggle to plan into a future that we anticipate is going to be very, utterly, completely different from today. Go back just 10 years and I suspect that not a single person had an actual career plan that included social media, either as a tool, or as a job itself, let alone being an App developer, Uber driver, YouTube sensation, drone operator, data scientist, genetic counsellor or cybersecurity chief. That the world will be different in 10 years time is not an excuse not to plan, rather, it's a reality to consider and allow yourself to change your plans and remain agile with the ever-changing world outside. But isn't it HRs job to plan my career? Sure, why not. And whilst you're letting them do that for you, how about they choose your life partner. You'll be spending less time with them than at your job, but it's still a pretty major decision. Best to abdicate that to someone who cares deeply about your personal well-being, happiness and sense of meaning... But it's so difficult to know what I will want to be doing in the future. In ‘the road less travelled’, M. Scott Peck starts: “Life is difficult”. What is most surprising, is that, for many people, this is a revelation! Go to any business networking event, or meet a potential client or recruiter – especially during the current economic situation and they will be moaning incessantly about the enormity of their problems, burdens or difficulties as if life should be easy. When I was a teenager I dreamed of being a top chef. I imagined being a chef until I happily died, probably drunk in the kitchen having slipped and broken my fall on the corner of a stove with my head. In my early twenties, I was already happily shifting my thoughts to management and a (slightly) easier life. By my late 20's I was writing computer code and planning on

We all want an inspirational leader. Someone to look up to, to give us hope and direction. A leader who engages us as individuals and treats us well, but most of all makes us want to be better. But what if that leader is you? And today you're feeling a bit blah. Everything's sort of "meh" and you'd like to just hang in there for the time being and let Future Self take responsibility for that. We all go through phases in life when our mood is uplifting, positive, dynamic and we feel like we could conquer the world. And then there's that "meh" moment, when everything is a little bland, and what would be really really nice is if someone else would just take charge and be the one to inspire and engage and buck us up. To choose to switch your drive and motivation on so that you can inspire others, we're going to delve into the neuroscience of how your brain works, learn what drives you (and everybody else) and then we're going to take charge of the chemistry cocktail bar inside your brain. The Neuroscience of your Get Up and Go (aka your MOJO) Your brain is not your best friend when it comes to feeling positive, enthusiastic and inspired. In fact, neuroscientific evidence shows that our brains are hard-wired to make us feel mentally crappy most of the time. Let me geek out with some acronyms for a moment - it's interesting stuff. Briefly, your brain is survival focussed and it is controlled by the Sympathetic Nervous System (the SNS) and the Hypothalmic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis (HPPA). Both the SNS and HPAA are reactive systems. That is, they register any (and every) possible threat and fire you up chemically to respond. This is fantastically useful in keeping you safe but it has the rather unpleasant side effect of making you feel anxious, stressed, disappointed and generally low spirited. Today's living environment for most of us, especially in urban areas means that both your SNS and HPAA are fired up much of the time in response to the daily challenges you face on your daily commute, in noisy, crowded offices, surrounded by beeping devices and with a boss imposing impossible deadlines... Modern life is taking a large toll on your peace of mind. Yet, you have another system available to you called the ParaSympathetic Nervous System (PSNS). And when your PSNS takes charge you feel great: calm, relaxed, chill, tranquil, clear-headed, and well, happy. Yes, the name of the Sympathetic Nervous System is a little misleading in our modern understanding of the word "sympathetic", but it is the system that makes you feel stressed or basically, crappy. OK, so a quick summary, your brain automagically, or rather, unconsciously, reacts to environmental stimuli through your Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) and/or your Hypothalmic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis (HPAA) to prepare you to deal with any threats. Once the threat passes, or you choose to consciously engage it, your ParaSympathetic System (PSNS) switches on to calm you down and get back to other important stuff like digesting your food, maintaining homeostasis, slowing your heart rate and so on. Just make a note that you can choose to consciously trigger the PSNS. I'll be back to this at the end. Before that though, let's study what actually drives you. i.e. what gets you getting up and going? We all have four basic human needs that are at the heart of practical neuroscience. Of course, your brain is an incredibly complex organ and variations of human behaviour are an endless ocean of subtle differences. But we can identify four neuro-scientifically founded basic needs of human beings and how these influence our motivational behaviours and how we interact with the world around us. As human beings, we have developed to use the environment to its best and allow for reproduction and the furtherment of our species - our survival and growth. Our physiological needs that drive our physical survival: hunger, thirst and sleep, are well understood. Here, we focus on our psychological needs for our

Are you a controlling leader or are you controlled in how you lead?

Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Mike Tyson's excellent response to a reporters question before his fight with Evander Holyfield. And isn't that just true about all of the best laid plans we make? No plan survives contact with the enemy Attributed to Helmuth von Moltke in the 19th century. All such quotes ring true because you know that it concurs with your own experience. On June 6th 1944 the long planned sea and airborne invasion of France began and the months of practice and detailed planning unravelled as parachute forces dropped into unmarked landing spots, gliders landed in wrong areas and thousands of soldiers from many different units found themselves mixed together during the night. A military disaster appeared to be in the making yet just hours later, the original objectives were being accomplished by ad-hoc units who faced much fiercer than expected German resistance. Leaders and soldiers at all levels understood that no matter where they found themselves on landing and no matter who with, they had to form into units, seize bridges and key terrain. The plan had vanished, but good Commander's Intent and superior training allowed leaders and soldiers to improvise and take the initiative to save the mission. What happens in your team at work when a plan changes? Does everyone know what to do next or is there confusion, prevarication and people standing around waiting for direction? Planning is time-consuming and difficult, whether you're planning a military operation, a product launch or planning your career. The military most often uses a concept known as "Commander's Intent" as a key concept to help a plan remain relevant and applicable during chaos in a dynamic ever-changing and resource-constrained environment. That is, they use it for real-life application. In the military, Commander's Intent is the definition and description of what a successful mission will look like to the commander (or CEO). Again, in the military, a Mission Statement describes Who, What, Where, When and Why (the 5W's) of How a mission will be executed. Thus, Commander's Intent describes the vision of the battlefield (or market, for example) at the accomplishment of the mission. Commander's Intent is what success looks like whilst fully recognising that the situation will be chaotic, that there is a lack of complete information, that the enemy changes the situation and anything else that may impact the situation to make the plan completely or partially obsolete when executed. Commander's Intent empowers subordinates to guide their improvisation and to take the initiative to adapt the plan to the changing battlefield environment. It enables the whole team to keep the clear vision of a successful conclusion whilst being agile and taking initiative to change when necessary. Why not just use SMART goals. SMART goals are what we are supposed to be setting, right? The downside of SMART goals is their lack of purpose Goal setting is essential, but even SMART goals are not enough in a rapidly changing, dynamic and shifting environment. SMART goals are terrific, but they don't tell me why, nor what to do should the specific result become impossible given the change in the environment... and there will be a change in the environment. When you take a SMART goal and turn it into an intention reduces the risk of the plan to achieve the goal being rendered useless in the event of unforeseen circumstances. To reduce the risk of becoming unusable, the Commander’s Intent is purposely ambiguous. Regardless of your seniority, any team member can improvise and align their behaviour without jeopardising the mission; and if need be, specify for clarification and without the need for instruction from their leaders. Simplistically, an intent takes a great SMART goal and adds a "so that" to it. For example, Score twice tonight so that we win the match. If the other team score three times, your goal remains achieved yet your mission is stuffe

How do we find our purpose to listen to wisdom to rightly choose when to be agile and change and when we should keep on the same track? Wisdom Tenacity and Agility I was at my wits end. Burned out and utterly lost in a quagmire of my own making. I'm uncertain as to what came first. Was I burning out and thus started to get stressed and failing to close business or was my failure to close business causing the stress that made me burn out? Whatever, the upshot was that times were tough, the economy was in the doldrums and it didn't look as if there was a recovery happening anytime soon. You'd think that after 15 odd years of this rollercoaster life we loving call entrepreneurship that I would know better than to allow myself to become exhausted but then many of my coaching clients experience very similar situations. Perhaps that was it! Burnout is a contagious disease!! A mind virus that constantly reminds you there but for the grace of God go I. And boy did I jump down the rabbit hole. When I asked close friends, mentors and fellow coaches, most of them advised me to "keep on keeping on" - that I was "on the right track", not to "get distracted". Others suggested I flip and change. Take off and do something different. The latter seemed easier - after all, the grass always does seem greener... Stupid, stupid mistake! Oh well, that was an eighteen month error. The grass wasn't just not greener, it was an arid, dust-filled desert of disappointment and regret. When would you dig your heels in and stay the course and when should you switch and change? A couple of weeks ago, I was participating in a webinar of fellow entrepreneurs and the discussion moved to the idea of following one's passion. For a long while I was keeping quiet and listening in to folk enthusiastic and new to running their own business and several soon to be corporate refugees along with some old hands at this game. You could hear the passion in people's voices, their wanton desire to impact lives and make a difference and it was delightful to hear. But after a while I began to become concerned that many were confusing passion for purpose and that an obstacle such as I had faced just ten years ago could so easily derail them. On the other hand, their passion and excitement was vivid - something I rarely sense with my clients in the corporate world. And I'm thinking that passion is that fuel that keeps us keeping on when times are tough and each day seems more like a battle than an enjoyable journey. So, do we change with agility when trouble looms or keep on keeping on? I plan on discussing a lot in this episode of the Leadership AdvantEdge. So hold onto your hats as I try to distinguish between passion and purpose because these appear to drive what we choose to do in our lives (even if we're uncertain what they are). And how passion and purpose can help us wisely decide between being agile or being tenacious. Does Passion fuel Purpose or are they the same thing? I believe that passion and purpose are not the same thing. For me, purpose is your reason for being, it’s the what you were born to do or achieve in this life. Passion is the drive, the desire, love, aching want to do or achieve something. Passion is turned into energy to act, while purpose is your reason to act. Passion without purpose can quickly become dead works. For example, I can be wildly enthusiastic to pursue a particular course of action but will likely run out of steam when I find there is no reason or motive for doing so. The fuel of desire runs out. Purpose is something that pulls you along, it’s what brings meaning to life and actions. Perhaps simplistically? Passion is the emotion, whilst purpose is the reason. Purpose is your key to life! Does this matter? It seems that yes, this matters a great deal. I have met so many people who love what they do. They are, without doubt, passionate about their work. Of course, I've met many more who don't enjoy what they are doing one little bit. You w

Part 5 of our series on Being an Exceptional presenter takes us into the OW of KNOWing your Audience. Blame the 'O' for millions of people being fearful of presenting at all. And blame the 'W' for most presenters failing. It's also why most telemarketing sucks. Both to receive and to do. To give your case the best possible chance of success, you need to establish credibility with your audience, present your logical argument and appeal to their emotions. That is, you need to win their hearts and minds. Notice the word "win" - because in every presentation, yours is just one more voice contending to be heard and acted upon. People do resist change, and anytime that you are presenting you are instigating change. All of your audience members (and you) share 3 basic human needs: To have a positive self-image The need to belong The need to be right When your argument makes the audience FEEL that you are picking them out as non-compliant, wrong or simply for being different, then your argument falls on deaf ears.   Image already added