Leadership Behind the Scenes

Today is part 1 of two episodes about the “Ejector Seat”. The Ejector Seat is the kind of role in an organisation, where it seems like, no matter how hard you try to find the right candidate, no one is successful. People go off on sick leave, get fired or just leave – and quickly.

There is a pattern that keeps repeating with people only staying for a short time in role and no one being truly successful.

In this part 1 episode I will explain what the Ejector Seat is and how to make sure you don’t end up in an Ejector Seat role.

There is one crucial question you must ask before taking a new role.

And if you suspect you might be in an organisational Ejector Seat right now, we talk about what you can do to break the “curse”.

For more information about Noomi Melchior Natan and Leadership Behind the Scenes go to www.noominatan.com

Sometimes a relationship at work is tricky and everyone says: just talk to them about it. But you can’t. You know that you talking to your boss or your colleague who you are having trouble with isn’t going to lead to a productive conversation and you’re so frustrated because the current situation is draining your energy.

In this episode I share 7 approaches you can take when “just talking about it” isn’t an option. The headlines are here, but listen for full instructions and explanations:

Go sideways. Strengthen the relationship before you go head first into the topic where you’re frustrated with the other person. The more appreciation that is present in a relationship, the easier it gets to have a difficult conversations.

Ask yourself: What am I holding onto? What am I afraid of? When does it remind me of?

Look for clues: What might this be about for the other person?

Tell yourself: This person is a gift to my development

Ask yourself: If there was something perfect about this situation, what would it be?

Two winners: What if it isn’t about my way or their way… What if we could both feel great about this…

Imagine the ideal scenario: How would you like it to be?

Let me know, which of these is most relevant to your situation.

For more information about Noomi Melchior Natan and Leadership Behind the Scenes go to www.noominatan.com

The higher up you get as a leader, the less time you have to build trust with people. But it’s no less crucial. Without trust you can’t get thebest out of people or build high performing teams.

This episode is about a single detail that helps you build closeness and trustquickly. There is nothing fake or difficult about it. It genuine, simple and you can start it today. It only takes a few sentences. Your newmotto will be: Go deep on 1 detail.

For more information about Noomi Melchior Natan and Leadership Behind the Scenes go to www.noominatan.com

It’s been 11 years of (almost) daily mediation for me. The first 5 years of meditating I didn’t have any children. My time was MY time… It didn’t seem that easy at the time to stick to a routine – but looking back – that was the easy days.

Then I had my first-born, and as anyone with children knows, sticking to a habit that requires you to dedicate time to yourself in the hours when your kid is awake… yeah…good luck with that… 

But meditation is so important to me, it honestly makes everything else in my life better, that I have found a way to stick to it, even now that there are two young kids that call me mum.

And this is how I cracked the code of the habit place holder.

See doing something once is not tricky, it’s making it a habit that’s the really challenging bit. So, in this episode I share, through my experience of meditating with kids, how I discovered the habit place holder, how it works and how you can combine it with Kaizen, a Japanese concept, to help you really get that thing to become a habit that sticks.

People are actually OK getting fired. Of course, no likes it. But we get that organisations change shape frequently and that means shifting of roles and responsibilities. But we’re certainly not OK with HOW the ending is conducted most of the time.

The how of an ending has massive implications for how you feel about yourself, the organisation you’re leaving and the beginning that needs to come after.

In this episode I share 6 reasons why corporate endings really matter and my top tip for what you can do, if you’re standing in front of a job ending, to make that ending as good as possible.

And if you’re the messenger, that needs to tell someone else, that they no longer have a job, I share my top tip for how you can make that experience just that little bit better.

When new leaders join an organisation they usually want to focus on the future and not get dragged down by past challenges. In their enthusiasm to move everyone on to think about what’s next, leaders often say some very well-meaning but extremely unhelpful words. Listen here for what they are and what to do instead.

Work isn’t just work. Saying “just” about work implies that we shouldn’t be feeling very much about our work, because hey “it’s just work”. But there is nothing “just” about work. Work matters on so many levels and it’s very often absolutely appropriate that we experience intense feelings about it. In this episode I dig deeper into why that is. Listen here so that you’ll never feel wrong for feeling strongly about your work again.

I also introduce the concept of Human-Friendly Leadership and I share more of what you can expect from this podcast beyond this very first episode.

Work isn’t just work. Saying “just” about work implies that we shouldn’t be feeling very much about our work, because hey “it’s just work”. But there is nothing “just” about work. Work matters on so many levels and it’s very often absolutely appropriate that we experience intense feelings about it. In this episode I dig deeper into why that is. Listen here so that you’ll never feel wrong for feeling strongly about your work again.

I also introduce the concept of Human-Friendly Leadership and I share more of what you can expect from this podcast beyond this very first episode.

As you judge your parents so your personal power suffers.

The more you want to skip this episode – the more you probably need to listen to it.

And let’s be clear! You don’t need to ever speak to your parents again, if that is what you’re worried about. You might want to – but you don’t have to, to get the benefit of what I am talking about here. It’s not as intense you might be thinking.

This episode is about how what happened in your parental dynamics, in your childhood, and in your heritage significantly influences everything and anything that is possible for you as a leader and as a business owner.

There are 5 reasons for why judging your parents is negatively influencing your ability to lead and be led:

You cut yourself off from human life force. If you walk around thinking you would rather not have had the patterns or the parents you got, it’s like cutting off your roots. And just like trees stand weak, when they don’t have roots, so do humans. You might have very good reasons for not want to be like them or to have anything to do with them (I have coached leaders who have been abused in all kinds horrific ways as children).

The important thing is to acknowledge that this is where you come from for better and for worse. You are one in the line of many – that’s how you get access to human life force, even if your childhood was a mess and your parents weren’t anywhere close to being “good parents”.

 

You are turned towards the past. When you’re judging your parents, it’s like you’re standing with your back to the future, because you’re looking towards what’s happened in the past and that makes you less powerful in the present.

 

You are out whack in the order of life. If you’re facing towards the past, you’re looking towards the generation that came before you, rather than towards the next generation. That messes with the way natured intended life to be and it minimises your chance to be supported in life and the power you have available for creation of the future.

 

You become too big for your shoes, which can make you weirdly inflated. When you’re judging your parents, you’re in a way saying: I know better than you, I am better than you, I would never have done what you did. And this might be the case. But you didn’t have their exact childhood and you don’t fully know what it was like to be them.

 

When the above sentences feel true, it’s like it’s like we are trying to scold our parents and in that sense we become our parents parents or our parents judges and that’s not who we’re meant to be. We are born to be our parents’ children and only when we can be the children are we free to look towards the future and tend to creations that are true to us. (Rather than leaking energy to proving our parents wrong or showing what failures they were.)

 

You have to keep proving that you’re good enough. If you’re judging your parents there will be a deep niggling self doubt. Because if they aren’t good enough – that means you’re made of faulty raw material and maybe that means that you’re no good too.

The mean voice inside will pop up from time to time wondering what if I am like them or at least partly like them. It’s exhausting to try and prove that you’re different from your parents.

 

So what can you do instead of staying in harsh judgement?

What helps is to see a bit more of the generational picture. With whatever snippets of information you have about the generation before you plus thinking about what happened in the world at that time of your parents childhood, it might highlight to you that your father or mother didn’t have an easy time, and neither did their parents.

Although it doesn’t excuse bad behaviour, it helps us acknowledge that there is a chain of suffering that has been passed on and that there is not one person to blame. Each generation before passed on mess to the next. And it is, what it is. And it happened.

You can also work on forgiveness. But not in the sense of sayin