The Blue Pea Leader

A return to the office and the more traditional way of working is starting to happen.  Of course there are risks and rewards of doing this.  And from several conversations I’ve had with clients I know there are many preferences for the future.  I also understand that remote working has challenged our ability to stay connected in a meaningful way.

A Gartner CFO Survey showed that 74% of companies intend to shift some employees to remote work permanently. Whilst some companies have pushed their return to office date to early 2022 we’re likely to see a hybrid working model become the norm.

And what impact does this have for our leadership?

Whilst leadership wasn’t all about command and control.  There was an aspect of more immediate feedback when we were in the office and so we could respond accordingly.

Now we can’t physically sense and see one another, any kinks in the relationship and there is a tendency to overcome these by managing things, and with that people, more tightly.  Micromanagement is on the rise.  Issues of trust are on the increase.  And when you factor in the swift ways things have been changing our thinking has become more tactical than strategic.

All in all a potent recipe for demotivation.

What’s been asked of us as leaders is our ability to stay open minded, present and alert to the context we’re managing and leading at the moment.  What’s required today, this week, could very well and probably will be different the next week.  What one person needs right now could shift in 24 hours, depending on what’s happening.

We long for certainty, stability, predictability.  What we find comfortable is because it’s known.  Even if something is better for us, the team, the business, if it makes us feel uncomfortable, we look to reduce it to lessen the anxiety.

Autonomy and responsibility are something our employees have been seeking, and the last 18 months have given us a huge window to allow them to take this.

What it’s shown us is how much we perhaps spoon fed or picked up the pieces.  Or how much we smothered and never realised.

Now we really can empower our staff to make decisions.

And in the transition, we need to watch that they don’t feel abandoned.

If there is a lack of clarity, feedback and communication of expectations, then once again we’ll see motivation drop.

An opportunity in this shift in how we work is that our focus should be on agreeing outcomes, i.e results, rather than a list of activities and things to do.  Once we both know the desired result, then how we get there, the things we do and how long it takes are where our autonomy kicks in.  And by how long it takes I’m taking about a shift in mindset from 9-5, or working super long hours.  Agree a deliverable date for the result, not the number of hours you think it should take to get the result.

Of course in remote working we’re seeing a rise in isolation and fatigue.  In the office, even if you were only there 2 days a week you could notice if some one was isolating themselves or being isolated.  You could spot signs of fatigue before it became burnout.

Remote working and one that’s happened through crisis, fear and loss, means it’s far harder to spot these things early on.

Our challenge is to help people cope with the blurring of personal and work life.  What’s absolutely fine, what’s OK, what’s desirable, what’s not acceptable.

Share, humanise, give clarity.

There are some zoomies… and if you don’t have your video on, or you do and your other half walks into the room singing their head off, it really doesn’t matter.  There are other zoomies and I want to see you, bad hair day, bags under your eyes, cat walking across the desk, the lot.

Again it’s about the context rather than a set of absolutes.

It’s also about creating that relationship that allows for vulnerability.  It’s easy and tempting to always be positive when you connect.  And if in the conversations you or the other person are always positive, it’s a sign.  We open up and share how we really feel with those we trust.

This is an opportunity for you to enhance your coaching skills, your emotional intelligence, your communication flexibility to build a relationship with your team that means they’ll volunteer or share earlier how they’re really coping and handling work and life at the moment.

Then the next challenge is helping them increase their resilience.

Some people are chomping at the bit to get back into the office.  Others are dreading the day.  Some businesses will return to 100% office, others have already sold the premises.  The rest will be a blend.

Manging the mix will pose further challenges.  Vital here are honest conversations and transparency.  Be mindful here of the stories that you tell yourself.  The stories that take hold within the team.

I’ve said several times that a key component of being a great leader is your ability to be of service to those you lead.  These are extraordinary times demanding much from leadership.

Look at what your people need most from you over the coming months.  Where have you got it sorted and where are their needs asking you to grow?

And if you’d like help with developing your remote leadership skills get in touch.

The post Hybrid Working and Your Leadership appeared first on Blue Pea POD.

Sometimes we can get stuck in thinking things that happen are random, uncertain or chaotic.  And sometimes we get stuck in looking for THE reason behind every event.  Yet there is a question that can shift our mindset and unlock potential and possibility where at first we saw nothing. 

Let say we look at an event through the lens of random and chaos it can leave you exhausted, overwhelmed, and disorientated. This ultimately leaves us feeling powerless to the event. At the mercy of what is.  

What if you looked at the event through the lens of “everything happens for a reason, AND it’s designed to serve us”. 

The event is still the event, and yet viewing it through a different lens gives us different options. This particular lens invokes curiosity.  Curiosity is a powerful state and keeps us more resourceful.  When we’re more resourceful we feel more powerful.  Like we do have a fighting chance of sorting things out, or improving a situation.   

Over the years I’ve noticed that I can wear either pair of glasses (I have more pairs too, but lets keep this simple). 

The only thing about the random glasses is learning to take them off as soon as you realise they’re the ones you’re looking through. 

Now the “everything happens for a reason and it’s designed to serve you” pair – they’re a keeper.   

Here’s the secret though.  For years I’d run the whole sentence… what’s the reason this is happening.  And then, how is it designed to serve me. 

Super speedy fast track alert.  You can do the above and there is a faster way.  Just ask yourself “how is this event designed to serve me?”.  Or “what’s good about this?” Or  “where’s the opportunity here?” 

These latter questions get to the heart of the matter. 

We rarely need to know what the reason is.   

OK part of us always loves to know the reason.  And there lies the trap, because we want to know THE reason.  Like there is only ONE and until we’ve found IT then cripes alive we may not really know how the event is designed to serve us.  We might have missed something, or be off down the wrong rabbit hole.   

You see our mind likes to solve puzzles. If we think something is random our mind attempts to bring order.  If there is A reason we want to find it, and like good old Sherlock Holmes we won’t stop until we do. 

And so if you want to make the most of the everything happens for a reason, the power part lies in solving the question “how does this event serve me?” 

And when it’s an undesirable event and we’re processing our disappointment we’re perhaps going to quip back the answer “it’s not”.  And we shut down.  And feel sorry for ourselves.  Or pessimistic.  And reach for the sugar/ caffeine/ nicotine/ alcohol/ online shopping fix. 

You may have heard me say before, the quality of the question determines the quality of the answer.  And some questions don’t have instant answers.  They’re like onions, and clarity comes in layers.   

If we can stay curious long enough there is always an answer.  In some cases the full extent of how an event serves you is revealed, several layers later – often called hindsight and we have that aha moment.   

Now I’m not suggesting that instantly after every event, or even during, we ask ourselves “what’s good about this”.  An event can be a complex moment, and we should absorb the richness and complexity.  If there is grief in the event, process the grief, if there is frustration acknowledge what’s frustrating.  Skipping all of this to ask “what’s good” would be like picking up a book and only reading the first and last chapter. 

Now going a little deeper on “what’s good” – don’t expect good to equal pleasurable, happy or joy.  Let me illustrate, about 30 years ago I was in a RTA and suffered a lot of broken bones etc.  I’ll spare you all the details.  It did however take 2 years of operations and physiotherapy to get back full use of my right arm and hand.  And at the time of the accident I was a right handed analytical chemist.  Shortly afterwards I learned to be a left handed analytical chemist.  And then ambidextrous.   

Some of what was good about the 2 hour daily physio sessions was I was learning to use my hand again.  Some sessions came with tears of pain, eventually leading to sessions with tears of joy.  And the latter wouldn’t have happened if I’d quit on the pain. 

Some of what was good about the accident was re-thinking a few choices I had been making. 

And one of the things that was good about the accident was I realised just how easily I could have lost my life. ( and no that’s not me being a drama lama, both police and doctors told me how close and lucky I was).   I now had a greater appreciation for life.  I no longer saw it as a guaranteed stretched out, I’ve got the next 50+ years to make things happen, all the time in the world sort of thing.  I learned to appreciate this moment.  Stuff I’d worried about suddenly had perspective.  I really understood the saying don’t sweat the small stuff.   

30 years later there is still something good about the accident.  At the time I was told I’d never work again in any capacity, the assumption being I’d never get any use back in my right hand and arm.  Fortunately the people who said that were wrong.  So now when something happens and it looks like it’s stopping me in my tracks; That whilst I may not see a way forward and it might look a lot like my dreams are dashed and life as hoped for will be impossible.  I remind myself that 30 years ago a younger, far less wise girl was in a similar situation and look what’s happened since.   

It didn’t stop me then, it’s not stopped me since and it’s certainly not going to stop me now. 

Curiosity and determination are a powerful cocktail. 

Now if I’d thought the event was random – and fortunately in the last 30 years there have been no more RTA’s with any injuries, so it would look like a random event.  However if that’s how I’d have viewed it at the time, would I have got quite so much value from what happened.  I doubt it. 

And so as you look at what’s going on in your life, leadership, team, business now.  Are you viewing it as random / chaos? Or have you poured yourself a large glass of curiosity and determination with a chink of hope and a slice of optimism? 

So when things are looking like they could be random or there is too much chaos, pause and  ask yourself “what could be good about this?” 

Until next time 

The post The Best Way to Switch Your Mindset from Chaotic to Growth appeared first on Blue Pea POD.

Let’s talk about expectations and goal achievement and let’s be honest it’s not the most attractive subject you know it’s not it’s not a sexy subject.  I have to say that when I’m working with leaders and I say now let’s look at goal achievement their eyes roll.  And if they didn’t think I’d notice, they reach for their favourite distraction.   

We all want to achieve goals, but taking the time to set them properly, well that’s another thing.  One of the reasons people think it’s a waste of time is because they can’t do Smart or OKR’s right.  It even if you’ve got smart down brilliantly or writing OKR’s.  There are other factors to keep in mind. 

And it those I’m going to cover here. 

An overlooked factor in goal achievement is expectations. Because the size of our expectation determines what we set as a goal. 

Let’s say my goal is to get a new car, and I’d like a Mercedes-Benz but what I expect is a Nissan then whilst we may set the goal as I want to own a Mercedes-Benz, I’ll end up owning a Nissan because what we want and what we expect are different.  

Equally if I want to build a great productive team but have an expectation that building this team is going to be hard work, then as I build the team it will be hard work. I’m not saying that in building a team some effort would not be involved, but because there is an expectation that it will be hard work then I’ll experience more hard work.   

We also put these expectations onto other people. So I can be setting a goal for a team member and I have an expectation about what they can achieve or I might have an expectation about how they will go about achieving it. And my expectations may not and probably aren’t the same as the team member.   Now if I share my expectations then any differences will become obvious.  But if I don’t, well you know where that’s going to lead. 

One way expectations show up is in using the pacesetting style of leadership.  I can set the bar really high, and for some people this would be a delightful challenge, it would be motivating, it would fire them up. Yet for somebody else if the bar was that high they would think I can’t achieve that, it’s not possible, it’s unrealistic there’s no point even trying. And even worse it may have the knock-on effect of them being demotivated and thinking there’s not point even attempting any other goals.   

One of the thing about high achievers is that they set the bar high for themselves, they expect themselves to better what they could do before. Now this is great, and you also need to awareness of what’s happening around you.  I’ve said before that leadership is firstly learnt through osmosis, we observe others and think that’s what we should do.  So if you’re expecting great things of yourself and pushing the envelope constantly.  Your team will think that’s what they have to do.  And whilst you might like to see this sometimes, often leaders I talk with say that isn’t what they expect of their team all the time.  

Lockdown has been tough and you might be experiencing tiredness and fatigue.  Our ability to achieve goals at this stage isn’t the same as when we have loads of energy.  The difficulty here is that firstly we may still expect ourself to achieve the same thing.  Now we’re entering superhuman territory.   

Secondly, we may start to set out goals a lot smaller.  So we’re dumbing things down and shrinking. 

So where is the middle ground you may ask. 

Part of this is self-awareness.  Knowing you’re tired you can either extend the deadline or revisit the goal.  Lower the bar a little, not a lot.  When we don’t revisit and make fine-tuning corrections, then we keep at it, and at it, and we burn up our energy still shooting for the moon.  Then somewhat battered and bruised we set a new goal, but this has a bar too low.  

A good question to ask when setting any goal is – Are you playing to win or not to lose?  

If it’s the former you’ll fine tune with the expectation that you’ll win.  It might take 5 moves instead of the 3 that you’d hoped but you’re still going to win.  

If you’re playing not to lose you’ll set your goal and expectations so that you can’t be disappointed, so there is no fine-tuning – and neither is there any meaningful feedback.  Over time this habit will see your results shrink and drop off.   

What’s my goal – what do I want and then what is it I expect.  If there is a difference then I’ve not set a goal, I’ve set an aspiration.  My expectation is my intention. 

Am I playing to win or to lose? 

If I’m playing to win I should be picking up on feedback and making adjustments based upon keeping the desire.  Yes some tweaks and refinements might need to be made in the short term but the desired endpoint is still kept in mind. 

What expectations do I have of others and how am I communicating these, checking the validation with the other person.  The discrepancies are a great way of revealing bias. 

The post How Expectations Determine Your Success appeared first on Blue Pea POD.

Analysis is an essential leadership skill quality that produces better results, but there comes a point when overdone, we enter analysis paralysis, start over thinking everything and poor decision making follows. 

 (This an AI transcript)

Every day there are decisions to be made.  Who should be assigned to what project?  How do we manage remote working, so it benefits the company, our customers and our employees?  What’s the next product our market is searching for? Which problem should be solved next?   

From the simple through to the complex, all these choices inform our vision and plan for our product/service offerings. 

And when things are more volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous (VUCA), we have to make even more decisions, and our stress levels can get out of hand.  We can so easily get caught up in non-genuine VUCA events, that are mind goes in to overdrive and cause unproductive mental loops. 

Our mental loops cause us to go over again and again the data and information we have, interrogating it for flaws, permutations and possibilities. In our desire to make the right or best decision we sink into over analysis, and overwhelm, and tire ourselves out.  And if we’re someone who does this process by talking to others, we also tire them out. 

In this podcast I cover 5 areas to pay attention to. 

Perfectionism is striving for the almost unattainable.  Often if we look at it perfect is when we’re setting the target or output at 110%.  In analysis it’s have I covered every base, considered every response or eventuality.  There can be no room for error and read that as 0.00 room for error not 0.1.   

Of course we hear the phrase done is better than perfect because perfect never gets done. Before you begin your analysis ask yourself  – to make this decision what’s the level of quality required here? 

Notice it’s impersonal.  Not what’s the level of quality I would like here.   

Often perfection is personal.  So what you would decide is perfection probably won’t be for another.  Which of course make it even harder to attain. 

The 80:20 principle comes in to play here.  Use it to help you.  Having got 80% of the way there, pause and ascertain the risk and implication of spending 80% more of your time and resources on the remaining 20%.  Sometimes 80% is good enough to proceed, possibly more so in uncertain or developing situations.   

When I was a teenager sometimes I’d pay my 10pence and take a walk through the hall of mirrors with my friends.  Oh the hilarity as I suddenly had a 2 foot forehead or became all wobbly or superskinny and all other manner of distortion tricks.  There was always a favourite that I’d stand in front of pulling faces and poses. 

When we’re caught in those mental loops sometimes it’s like we’re walking through the hall of mirrors or we’ve got stuck standing in front of our favourite.   

Some decisions are worth exploring from a variety of angles and situations, others not so.  Writing on paper – either literally or your computer will help you get clarity the impact.   

What’s the goal or outcome.?  

What’s the impact of achieving it / not achieving it? 

What’s the consequence of this impact? 

The reason for writing these answers down is that you have them to refer back to at the end of the decision.  How accurate were your answers/predictions?  This will help you fine tune when you do this in the future. 

3. Avoid decision fatigue 

I’ve said we make hundreds of decisions a day.  And not all decisions are equal in terms of impact.  Yet each decision requires brain power.  In which case start by looking at which areas of work or life you can simplify. 

What to wear for work? – capsule wardrobes are one solution, or on a Sunday just line everything up in your wardrobe in order of wearing.  One decision job done for the week.  When I used to travel a lot for work Sunday night I’d pack my suitcase and as space was tight there was only space for a spare shirt.  It meant when I arrived I didn’t have endless decisions or choices as to what to wear.  Interestingly when I used to go on holiday and had a large suitcase I would pack 4 pairs of shoes and 2 jackets etc.  When I came back usually 50% hadn’t been worn and I’d also spent time each day staring in to the wardobe wondering what to wear.   

What to eat for breakfast or lunch? – decide in advance and it stops your decisions been driven by the moment.  Such as lack of time or emotional eating. 

Plan your days work the day before – 10 minutes planning can save 1-2 hours of wasted time.  It will also help you become aware of what distracts and derails you. 

The more you have rituals, routines and habits the more your brain power is available for the new, the different, the important.   

There are times when we shift in to over thinking and over analysis when we’re juggling many balls.   

It’s like when we have too many open programs and files on a computer – eventually it’s performance drops.  The same can be said for our mind.  In order not to drop anything we’re cycling round and round.   

There are a few things we can use to reduce this and increase our effectiveness. 

Firstly we can ask ourselves questions like: 

When over thinking becomes more of a habit it’s as if your mind has trouble switching off. In which case meditation becomes a valuable tool for re-wiring your brain, allowing you to defrag, and destress.  What’s great is you can do this in 5 minutes.  

I meditate for 5 minutes in the morning and in the evening.  And when my mind is really racing I’ll take a couple of minutes for a quick mediation to still my mind and then begin again.  The more you practice it the easier it is to do it.  And by more I mean frequency not duration. 

 I’ve also noticed that meditation helps me drawn upon my intuition easier.  Which leads me into my final point. 

We regular analyse situations using our intuition yet when we get caught up in over thinking we shut this facility out.   

Our intuition isn’t some hairy fairy thing.  It’s our brain on super processing power, sizing things up and comparing to previous events and experiences and coming up with a decision.  Usually this decision enters your head as a short sentence, like 1-4 words.  

Yes 

Pink 

Walk away 

12-15% 

It’s by acting on our intuition that we improve our intuition.  Also if you’re asking “where’s the data to support the intuitive answer?”, well sometimes that only becomes apparent when you move it to action on the intuition.  

To calm your mind and make better decisions take one of the 5 areas I’ve mentioned and work with it.  Then if you want to come back and work with another that’s fine.  Just don’t try and do all 5, you’ll only be adding to the overwhelm in your mind. 

Until next time 

Go and be the difference in leadership 

The post 5 Ways To Avoid Over Thinking appeared first on Blue Pea POD.

Hello and welcome to the blue pea leader podcast, and in this episode I’m going to be joined by Emily Foster, who is the APAC media leader for Colgate at WPP. And she’s also a diversity and inclusion leader, and that’s why I’ve invited her on the podcast today to share her thoughts, passion and her experience in the arena of diversity and inclusion. But before we get into the subject in its lovely meaty detail. Emily. Welcome.

Emily – Hello. Hello.

Thank you for welcoming me.

Ruth – So what is it that you would, like to share a little bit more about yourself and your background. I’m sure you do way more justice than I would,

Emily – Thank you so much. So, I have spent over 20 years in the advertising and media industry. And over the last 10 years at W PP and throughout my career I’ve been also very heavily involved in diversity and inclusion efforts within the organisations that I’ve worked for. And of course over the last few years, even more heavily involved as a sort of activist at a local and grassroots level but also as a leader that needs to drive through initiatives across parts of the organisation and across various different countries and regions. So, it’s a topic that I am very excited about that’s close to my heart as well. I am of a mixed race background. I was growing, I grew up in Hong Kong. And I also do not look like I am mixed race which puts me in a really interesting position as well, in terms of my self awareness. I am very white looking but I’m actually half Filipino. So, without really knowing it. I’ve sort of grown up with that heightened sense of awareness, and a kind of understanding of intersectionality, which is a big word that’s going around at the moment, in this area. So, yes, that’s me. I do loads of different things and I’m excited to talk to you about it in this session.

Ruth – So, I know that you’ve, you’ve lived in various different parts of the world and as you say it’s appropriate, the fact that you have had that pleasure. You have got a grid, and not just because of your family but you have a greater appreciation of those, the nuances and the differences in terms of what makes this so diverse. But then at times what can actually end up separating us in a way that it shouldn’t separate us.

Emily – Yes, I do have quite a lot of understanding of that by dint of not just my upbringing, but also in the environments that I work in. I’m currently based in Hong Kong. And I have worked on clients from around the world. And it’s really interesting when you work on clients that come from different places that may be communicating to global audiences in different, different markets and countries and different people, that when you, it’s really interesting to see the how your understanding of culture can drive the way that we think the way that we communicate with people, but also how we engage with each other, or not engage with each other. So yes, I do very much have a bit of an understanding of that.

Ruth – So diversity and inclusion that I mean it is. It’s a big topic. So where, where do we start it well I mean if I were gonna turn around and say, sometimes I go, some of the daftest questions are the best questions. What is diversity and inclusion?

Emily – Yeah, that’s the greatest question to ask to start. It’s so easy when we think about organisations, and the trend in diversity and inclusion as a topic right now. It’s very easy to get trapped into thinking of diversity on its own. Because many organisations are talking a lot about their policies in relation to hiring for example, in relation to how many women they might have at certain levels. In particular, so gender is a big, a big topic. And of course, the issue of representation, that’s driven in the US largely by Black Lives Matter of those of a certain race. So, those are really really important things. But in actual fact, They aren’t the only issues in relation to diversity and inclusion and the definition of diversity and inclusion are really important because if we don’t have an understanding of the difference between the two we don’t fully embrace the whole concept of it.

And so to answer or to describe what those two things are essentially in terms of best practice diversity tends to be more about what I mentioned which is policies and processes to ensure rapid rapid representation in particular groups. Often marginalised groups of people in marginalised communities.

Inclusion is where well, both are very interesting but inclusion is much more of a nuanced understanding of belonging and how we as people in organisations engaged with each other as as leaders as managers as individuals. And regardless of where people may be from and inclusion is also very much about the balance between the longing and accepting people’s uniqueness and you can’t have one or the other.

Only you have to have both. Because if you only have belonging, you have the situation where people are essentially feeling like they may need to just conform. And you can’t only have uniqueness because people may think that well you only valued me for being different, but you don’t really accept me. And so, when I describe all of that you see just how huge this topic of diversity and inclusion really is and what it really means. So I hope that answers your question. But yeah, defining the two is critical.

Ruth – Thank you. Yes it does, it kind of breaks it into components that you can start and get your head around and you realise that this isn’t something psych How do you eat an elephant, you know, not in one sitting, sort of things so Yes, it does. And I think it also highlights some of the challenges very nicely as you start talking about the belonging can make people feel like they should conform. The uniqueness can make it feel like, wow, I’m gonna phrase it a slightly different way that sometimes maybe somebody feels like I’m here for my uniqueness, but I’m just the performance, performing circus monkey. It’s not genuine Yes, yes. Now, one of the things he gave you mentioned, Black Lives Matters, a few years ago there was the me too movement. And I remember, and certainly a couple of years ago there was a little spell of conversations in courses that I was running where people were saying, you know, there is a more of awareness. Now, in this case it was around female representation. So this was the gender issue. And there was this thing of, you know, I want to be in the role because I can do the role, not because I become a D&I statistic, not because I’m. You can now tick a box. And sometimes people were getting things but on unwittingly probably by the people that were hiring them, they were making them feel like they were that statistic. What do you think leaders can do to make people genuinely feel that they are wanted, rather than just part of a. We need to be seen to be doing something. It’s trendy.

Emily – Oh, such a good question. I mean, it’s a really interesting one because when it comes to the representation part. There was a point in my life, many years ago where I didn’t believe in this concept of kind of quotas, or making a concerted effort to hire from a particular group. But as I have become more experienced and also personally experienced certain situations or shared or heard from, you know, colleagues or friends about their experiences. I really do believe that there is a need for us to do that because we have to force the issue. Without doing that, we struggle to find teams that are diverse enough to have the kinds of conversations we need to have the bring about new ideas and new innovations to drive growth which is ultimately what we want to achieve, aside from the, obviously ethical part of the whole thing in terms of what leaders can do to be genuine. I mean, it’s quite a question at the end of the day, it cannot be seen to be an opportunistic action.

And I feel that leaders, really have to have a good understanding of the concept of inclusion in general, what I had described a little bit earlier, in terms of how we engage with others in the organisation how we engage with people and how we balance the belonging and the uniqueness part of it. It has to be genuine. I also and this might be a bit controversial think that those who are in that position of being hired in to use your example should also understand that they bring to the table something unique because of who they are. So, the job itself cannot be separated from the person, completely. And sometimes it takes just that little bit of self awareness as a worker be or whatever you are to really understand that you know who you being your whole self at work is part of what you can contribute. So there is nothing wrong with feeling like with the concept in my opinion that what I bring to the table is something I bring to the table because I have, for example if you use me a mixed race background that’s brought up in Asia. I’m a woman who has a gay brother, all those things, helped me to contribute to the business and do my work well. So I think you can separate the two.

Ruth – Hmm, good food for thought there Yes, and I think maybe that’s the that’s the thing at times that we have been separating things that I can remember 20 years ago, that there was very much, you left yourself in the car park, and came into work and you were hired for your skill and  everything else was for the weekend, sort of thing. That’s shifted massively now. But I do think that’s it yes it’s realising that we talk about self awareness and I do think that is a key instrument in in so many areas not just in diversity and inclusion, but in so many areas as we think for leaders, the biggest key is self awareness. And then you can learn so many other things, but it is part of knowing what’s in the room, and how you’re filtering and processing things. And you’re often we, we may say something that can sometimes we say something that offends somebody and that wasn’t the intention, but it is through self awareness that you realise you know what I communicated that badly, or I didn’t realise I thought like that now I do. And now I can shift something. Yes. So let’s look at. Again, something else that’s come up in conversations, which is. So, I’ve had leaders turn around and say to me, you know I need to have a conversation with somebody about inappropriate behaviour. But I’ve tried to have the conversation with the person. In the past, and their response has been, that’s just who I am. And, they’ve used the companies initiatives in diversity and inclusion as almost a shield to say you can I you know if you’re telling me to change. You’re not being very, you know, diversity and inclusion oriented. And so it becomes a very difficult. Painful conversation.

Emily – I could answer this question in like a whole day workshop. But I’ll keep I’ll try to give you the short answer. Each organisation should and will have different ways of assessing its diversity, or inclusion climate.

And in addition, as companies organisations develop their, their sort of way of thinking, what should really be happening is that each organisation should have a very clear charter. In terms of that are linked to essentially inclusive values, and accompanying behaviours. And that, I think charge is a great word, actually, is it feels like something that it’s they’re not, it’s not a mandatory it’s more of a sort of ways that we live in work by, I would say something you can sign up for.

If it’s only, it’s only with something like that that a team, an organisation or group of individuals or two people who may have a disagreement or a decision that needs to be made or something important to discuss. It’s only with that that those things can truly kind of live and breathe in an inclusive way. So, with regard to your example. I think it’s a tough, ask for the person who is using the excuse and the person who is is having the difficult conversation. Because, you know, in most instances. Probably the team or organisation does not have that charter. And because they do not have that charter for how they behave with each other, you can’t really call someone out. And ultimately, in that situation if there was a charter that would then be a point in the chart that would allow you to have the conversation where you would then be able to say, Well, you know, I feel uncomfortable because someone has spoken to me in this way, let’s have a conversation with each other. Are we living up to the charter that we’ve agreed to is this part of who we are in terms of an inclusive organisation, and to have a calm conversation on what is the evidence behind whether you have lived or not live by that charter. So I think. Yeah, that’s my answer. It’s a big one. But it really for me boils down to being really clear on your inclusive values, and therefore your behaviours as a result of those values what they need to be, which everyone should sign up for. Inevitably, as I said, most organisations, don’t really have this. And so, it becomes a tricky, a really tricky conversation to have. And it becomes frankly unnecessary and sad, in a way that this happens and you know it does happen.

Ruth – like I said it’s painful for everybody. And you mentioned the values, and then there’s the behaviours, and what I see so often is the key. It’s the behaviours. So there’s a lot of companies that have their values, but then it’s left to everybody to interpret what is a behaviour that is living that value.  I do think sometimes getting people together to have that conversation of… these are the values. So how do we behave, that shows we’re living these values is a very rich rewarding experience that can actually be part of helping people connect.

Emily – Yes, absolutely. In this area, I see more progress, more examples, than I do just in terms of kind of really delivering on DNI as a whole, where there are companies who do have some great values and accompanying behaviours and are quite well known for some of them. Netflix is one Zappos would be another. And,  there are many companies where they throw a few lovely words on the wall, and nobody really knows what they mean in reality. And you also have companies that have kind of a few vague behaviours, but you’re like, well do they really need in terms of values. Yeah. So you can’t you can’t have one without the other. I feel like you’ve got to start with the values, but but you must have the behaviours otherwise it’s very hard for people to understand what it really means for how people engage with each other.

Ruth – It sounds like that is certainly something that a leader can do for their team so you know D&I we’ve established is huge. It’s a huge area. And so whilst the company maybe is working it out, a leader doesn’t have to wait until the company has maybe worked everything out because something like a team charter is totally feasible.

Emily – Absolutely, I think leaders and managers have an important job to do, in, you know, really making sure that they are thinking about this. Thinking about inclusivity, regardless of the processes that are taking place, you know, at certain levels, especially in huge organisations where things can take a very  long time to roll out. And this is quite common. And I also feel that there is some really good simple basic things for leaders to think about. The first is really going back to some basic things around leadership, which is a sense of self awareness in terms of how they are engaging with people, whether the behaviours are inclusive behaviours. And what I mean by that some examples would be, you know, do they in meetings allow everybody to have a voice in the meeting. Does everybody get a say. Do they allow for different ways of communicating within a meeting. Perhaps if there are people that have very different social styles that may be those who are less vocal than others. For example, would they create mechanisms for voting in certain topics or certain decisions. I’ve heard of some great examples where right now. Now that we’re working on teams a resume, and often on video. If there are sort of decisions to be made, there’s some great examples of leaders asking various members of the team for their vote or their perspective before the meeting starts to send them an individual email so that the lead they can then read out each of those perspectives to the whole group. And that allows people to be able to give their opinion openly without feeling like they may need to follow one or the other. And then it also shows that the leader is being inclusive, in, in the sense of, you know, reading out everybody’s opinions to then be able to come to a decision together. So there are kind of ways and behaviours that leaders can think about to improve their engagement and be more inclusive. The other thing to think about is to watch micro aggressive behaviours. So micro aggressive behaviours are things like, perhaps not giving team members important information about the business. A leader can often assume that new news that is happening at a senior level may not be of interest to the team but actually 99% of the time they are. And so being as transparent as possible, and giving that information is really part of inclusivity other basic things like just not interrupting people when they’re trying to speak, especially people have a more analytical social style, it’s so common, and I do it, I have to watch myself. I’m less likely to feel bad if I’m talking to an expressive so that’s good. But I do need to be to, you know, personally I have to work on that. So self awareness is really big and I think the second part I think in terms of what leaders can really do to help themselves in this area is understand unconscious biases. There is some amazing training and articles available online it’s not difficult to find. And it’s really important to understand where your biases are I myself have done a few different trainings. And I remember doing a test. About a year ago where I, you know, it was a really simple test but I got a pretty terrible score. And, which basically made me think I better go and start to learn a little bit more about all of this and understand where my biases are. And there is also a great website that Harvard had built, it’s actually, it’s actually a research that they’re doing on implicit biases. And you can go in there and choose from several tests, and on your to understand where your biases are, and I’ve done both the, the gender one and the LGBTQ plus one. And it will basically tell you where you sit, amongst the general population in terms of whether your bias towards the one group or another. It’s absolutely fascinating and I think just by doing it, you’re going to gain a sense of self awareness and start to ask yourselves important questions.

So that’s definitely another thing and then I think the third is around really working hard to actively challenge your own personal stereotypes. Everybody has a stereotype or has stereotypes in their minds of the people that we manage or the people that we deal with on a day to day basis. And, one has to actively challenge them as one sees them in their mind. And that’s not easy, but an example would be if you were to interview somebody, or if you were to performance manage a particular person. If in any way you are feeling uncomfortable in the conversation is more than likely that you, your unconscious biases or your stereotypes are starting to kick in. So stop and think, and give yourself time to assess that. And after the meeting, make sure that you are listing down the evidence that makes you feel that certain way, so that you can assess, just how much of it is fact versus an unconscious bias or a stereotype. And it sounds so simple but quite hard to do. And then, not, not many of us do do it, but I think those are things that are absolutely workable, regardless of what is happening in the sort of organisational level.

Ruth – there’s some really good points there in terms of how you can grow and develop, so that you and irrespective of what anybody else is doing your as leaders will often say you need to walk the talk. So you know, rather than waiting for somebody to do all of this you becoming more aware of where are you biassed Where are you, and we do we all have biases. And it’s really looking at the cost of those, in some cases, looking at the cost of the bias. You know you talk about the evidence, and the fact and taking the opportunity to write those down. And I know from either myself doing this, or from working with others. Sometimes we kind of realise we’ve written something down as if it was a fact but it’s actually also still an interpretation. And you know, it is just becoming more aware of those things and how they play out in. In each conversation and not all conversations are equal, you know, but when when you’ve got a bias and it’s a powerful it’s an important conversation that bias can have a way bigger impact than you’d ever solved.

Emily – Yes. Yes. And I think one thing I would say is that, in my experience, it does vary. Around the world in terms of how leaders feel about this particular topic or how important it might be to them. And I hope you can see that I truly believe that, not just from an ethical perspective but from a business perspective, it is important. Everywhere, to think about things this way. Because ultimately, there is research that shows that when people feel they can bring their whole selves to work. They can be more productive they are more productive and are more likely to help the company into driving growth and driving new business. So, it’s imperative regardless of what I normally see or hear as excuses. Legal issues or challenges, you know, in certain markets, of course, you have to be sensitive to that. But that doesn’t stop. Human beings from behaving in an inclusive way.

Ruth – So you talked about the fact that people bring their whole selves to work. And I do think that is very important because if the more of us that can show up, we got to, we got to be honest here, you know, it’s the good the bad and the ugly, or. It is, it is what’s great about us but also what will show up are our biases. So if we can bring more of a self to work and there is a space in which we can have powerful conversations. Then we can learn about ourselves and go, Oh, I didn’t realise that yeah okay so I’m still bringing myself to work but I’m bringing in a more aware version of myself. A more improved version of myself. Whereas if I don’t bring myself to work. If I can’t be me and I can’t be vulnerable. Then I’m not going to learn and grow in the same way. Because I’ll put some of my good stuff in a box. But I’ll also put some of my biases in a box. And they’ll still unconsciously all of this is still, there still seeping out. So, what would you say are some of the myths that are around regarding some of the common myths surrounding diversity and inclusion?

Emily – Love this one, I would say. Diversity and Inclusion at the same thing. And we talked about the challenge of making sure we define what those two words mean, and of course when you talk about it in sort of higher levels at certain levels you can use them interchangeably but you must really understand the difference between the two, they’re not the same thing.

Another myth is that diversity isn’t an issue in some countries, and often one we’re looking at rolling out plans or helping to educate across regions or markets. That is feedback that you get and that is definitely a myth.

Legal problems prohibit us from embracing diversity and inclusion. I think when we think about inclusion as we’ve mentioned before, which is more about how we engage with other people. Then the legal challenges in markets should not be prohibitive to us to leaders being better leaders basically better inclusive leaders, of course being sensitive to kind of legal challenges as well.

Another big one for this year is that diversity is about race. It is only one part of diversity, not the whole story.

And sadly we also hear things like disability can hold us or our teams back. And I think that is a very outdated but unfortunately, something that’s still here. We still hear quite regularly. It’s hard for people to understand that people with disabilities of all kinds, are actually extremely useful and helpful in our workforce.

And another one which touches on some of these issues that I talked about with regard to diversity as an inclusion as being about representation is the myth that if we are diverse in numbers. We don’t have a problem with diversity and inclusion. That is clearly not the case, if you have lots of different people that are represented. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you are an inclusive organisation. I think I talked earlier about the you know the belonging and the uniqueness. You’ve got to have the balance between the two. And you also have to think about your inclusive behaviours. So, just because you’ve got some representation does not mean that you have a problem. There are also challenges where of course, there are organisations who say well yes you know we’ve got 50% women in the workforce, but you actually find that at a more senior level they’ve got, you know, none or five. So defining diversity is also an issue. When it comes to representation.

And the other one which is one of my favourite topics is that DNI is a human resources responsibility. And this is something that is definitely a myth. It is the responsibility of everybody in an organisation to be inclusive in their behaviours and to think about the importance of diversity and inclusion and act upon the right values and behaviours in relation to any diversity and inclusion charter. It is not just the responsibility of human resources, and in many organisations, it is not at all the Human Resources responsibility. In fact, it is often separated from human resources, because the actual work and responsibility is quite different from traditional human resources. And so, in actual fact the, from what I can see, there are some pockets of success, where D&I resource or capability sits separate to human resources. Plenty of myths there.

Ruth – there are yeah, there are a lot of myths there. So, as a as an individual, then I mean I’m not even going to do this as a leader, as an individual, if I wanted to get better at this. Where could I, go to learn more to expand my horizons on the subject, you mentioned, harvard, they’ve got a test so I’ll include a link to that website in the transcript to this podcast. Any other good sources or things that you think somebody could start and do that’s going to help them not get so overwhelmed with this but feel like then they’ve got like that bite size bit of making some progress.

Emily – Yes. So there’s a lot online, which is great. But I would say a great resource would be the Harvard Business Review. There are some fantastic articles that they come up with regularly across the whole spectrum of the challenges that organisations face in diversity and inclusion so definitely go in there and take a look at the various surveys and articles that are there. That will keep any normal person busy. And I think. that’s a good starting point. There are also some great books, a personal favourite of mine in relation specifically to the LGBTQ plus challenge is a book by John Brown, who was the old CEO of BP, and he wrote a book about eight nine years ago called the glass closet. And it was it’s pretty pioneering to have a CEO of such a major company, writes about his experiences and also what companies can do in this area. So that’s definitely worth a read if it is of interest to you and even if LP LGBTQ plus pillar isn’t of an of interest, what it does do is help you understand some of the kind of broader challenges that organisations generally have anyway. So I think it’s just a great starting point in terms of understanding these challenges in companies.

In terms of other things that in the individual can do. I think that, you know, I can speak from personal experience, you know, in the grassroots work that I’ve been doing it really has started with a personal motivator. It has been because my brother is gay and therefore as an ally of the gay community. I’ve become heavily involved in driving support for that group but also in driving better ally ship across the organisation. And so, you know, having a personal motivator obviously helps. And if there is something that, you know really matters to you then don’t give up. And in, in talking to people in the organisation in seeking sponsorship from senior stakeholders that that really helps.

And create that community of people around you that would be willing to support. Along the way, and be prepared to educate that’s what I would say, because this is something that is still quite new. I think it will be new for a long time. As you can see the topic is so huge that really there’s a lot to a lot for everybody to learn. But the challenge, and fighting the good fight, is a wonderful thing. When you can, you know, to get involved in and we have seen, you know I have seen personally seen great success in the employee resource group that you know I’ve been involved in in Hong Kong and driving policy change but it has taken hard work in educating stakeholders and educating human resources. So don’t be surprised by the fact that you may, you may need to do that. And it is part of the good fight it is part of the you know the in a way that is the positive thing about this and be prepared to do it and be prepared to and be open to, to the challenges.

Ruth – So let’s also accept that as you’re doing this, you’re gonna get some things right, with the best of intention, you’re gonna get some things wrong.

Emily – Yes. Yes.

Ruth – And I think, I think, subjects like this. Occasionally we can be so afraid of what happens if I make a mistake. But most fortunate, get this wrong. So maybe sometimes it’s better not to do anything. Rather than fail, and I think that’s often the case in a lot of things we’re afraid to go through what we want. Because what happens if I fail, but I think on something like this. I think sometimes people got I don’t know quite where to start. And I don’t want to go Yeah, I just don’t want to put my foot in it.

Emily – I would say to. I would say to that, to, to not to not be afraid. That sounds very powerful. But I think, to not underplay the importance of ally ship. What I have found and through experience is that, and I’ll use the example again of the sort of LGBTQ plus work that that I’ve been doing. People in those communities have reached out and spoken to me and said, we would never have been able to do this alone. If it hadn’t been for you as an ally supporting us all the way. It would never have, it would have never have happened. So for every you know kind of hesitation that you have. Think about that one potential person that you could impact and change their life. You know, or do something that would mean so much to them. More than we could probably imagine. So, yeah, I would say. It is sometimes a bit frightening. But, but don’t underplay the power that you have as a human being.

Ruth  – I think that is a worthy reminder that we, we need to get to just that small thing could have a big difference.

What would you say would be one of your key realisations on your leadership journey. What would you say has been a really pivotal thing that’s helped you to be the leader that you are today?

Emily – I am constantly learning, and almost every day, I have realisation moments. So it’s a very hard question to ask. And 2020 has been such a transformative year for everybody I think because of all these forces that are going on at the same time, this sort of, I always see it as this battle between dark and light going on you know the one minute we have, you know, a vaccine for COVID the next minute we have, you know, a tear for lockdown for everyone in the UK and it’s, you know, all the flights are banned coming to Hong Kong so it feels like this. You know this big sort of challenge and I feel like that is as for me as a person, as a leader, it’s, it’s, it is really making me feel part of this whole transformation of the world I’m thinking about reading these things every day.

I think if I look back to my biggest realisation was about 10 years ago when I was managing a team I was very new and newly promoted. And I was going through a leadership course at the time. And I was really excited about this leadership course, and every time I would go away on this course, I would then come back and try to execute the things that I had learned in that course. And as part of that course I also received a 360 feedback, it was the most in depth, 360, I’ve ever received in my career up until that point. And I remember going back to the training with my other colleagues that were in the training and the 360s were in front of us and all of us had a discussion about the 360. And what feedback we received, and everybody was like, Oh, you know, I’m a great boss and I take them out for a gin and tonic and I’m loved and all this stuff. And then when it came to mind. I was pretty tearful because basically, I was considered a horrible boss that had no time for other people’s opinions that had. I think one one phrase was it’s her way or, or the highway. And so, I was really gutted because it was not the person that I thought I was. I felt really sad because I was so passionate as well about. I was really just discovering diversity inclusion, but I was really passionate about being an inclusive leader, and really working hard on my behaviours. But somehow, that wasn’t translating into how my team had felt. So it was a massive realisation because I guess I just had not really stopped to think and be more self aware. And that allowed me to be self aware.

But it also allowed me to think about feedback and constructive feedback, and how we engage with people in general. And over the last, you know, since then, I’ve been working really, really hard on my self awareness. And as you can see, hugely involved in a lot of diversity and inclusion efforts. So, since then my career has progressed significantly. And I’ve done some amazing work with amazing people on the other side of the world, including working on values and behaviour charters that the teams that I’ve left behind still use to this day. And it makes me really really proud to see that work, and to see how everybody is living up to those standards, and it’s just, yeah, it’s a, that’s my story really, I’m not perfect. I have my challenges. And then I’m always working on I have to constantly challenge my own stereotypes, which is you know what I was discussing earlier but but certainly the self awareness has increased. And I’m just super excited about the future. I really think that despite all the challenges this year that we have all been living through what will come through will be really positive things, and we will probably look back on 2020 and be eternally grateful for what it brought to us.

Ruth – I think you’re right. I often say that when there’s this level of disruption chaos devastation transformation that it is disorientating to come through something as intensive, as we’ve had this year. We will look back and go wow we needed, we needed that. Because we wouldn’t be where we are today. Otherwise, maybe that’s just my eternal optimist, that kind of wants to see the brighter side of so much. Wonderful word crap.

Emily – Me too, me too.

Ruth –  I love the way you talk about the fact that you know you’ve got teams that are still using the values and behaviour the charters the things you’ve done with them. In other words, it is sort of realising the impact that we have that self awareness is key because we have an impact as a leader within the room that maybe we weren’t aware of the fact that we’re having, and we leave legacies. Sometimes we don’t think we leave legacies but sometimes we don’t leave the best, the best smell in the room. Part of that leadership growth is about going well you know what I want to I want to leave a better legacy, I want to I want to do more with my time on this planet.

Emily – And that’s where that wonderful book which you introduced to me the meaning revolution, you know really comes into play, none of us want, you know, a blank gravestone we want to, we want to drive. We want to have left something meaningful in the world.

Ruth – Emily it has been a pleasure to chat with you. I have learnt more about diversity and inclusion. So my understanding of it is expanded.  I reckon that we could, there’s more questions I could ask you, we could talk about this for years and you said you can do a one day workshop just on one of questions, but I’m going to turn around and finish here, so thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure.

Emily – Thank you so much. Thank you. Such a pleasure.

Thank you

Ruth – So I hope you all got as much out of this, as I have, in terms of your provoking some thoughts, maybe on what you can do regarding diversity and inclusion, what you can do it doesn’t necessarily matter what your organisation is doing, but maybe giving you some food for thought on what you can do, going forwards.

And until next time, go and be the difference in leadership.

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In this episode of the blue pea leader I’m going to be sharing my thoughts on self-directed learning, what it is, the benefits and how, as a leader, you can best support it.

Pre Covid, we were more inclined to have learning mapped out for us.  Course and programmes were organised and designed by the company you worked for.  And most learning interventions happened in a classroom or face to face environment.

Not so now.  There has been a rise in remote learning as well as online learning.  There has also been a rise in companies giving discretion and autonomy to their staff to choose and select their own learning.

In essence, this covid shake-up has helped us focus in on the real gaps in our ability as well as showing us what’s fundamentally important to us.

We’re all unique and so what one person needs right now isn’t the same as another.

Self-directed learners take control of their own learning and development.  Deciding what they want to learn, how they want to learn it and when they want to learn.

It’s more organic and allows the person to choose what works for them.

Here are 2 main benefits: –

Assuming you’re having conversations with each person in your team, then they’ll be aware of their strengths and weaknesses.  As well as the key outputs of their role.

In which case they’ll know what’s their priority areas to enhance.  Rather than it being cookie-cutter or formulaic, now they can seek out learning and development that they’re already bought in to.

For one person, it may be a focus on softer skills like emotional intelligence, resilience or influencing.

For another, it might be hard skills like blockchain, artificial intelligence or affiliate marketing.

The cost of some training programmes can be eye-watering, and when you factor in the impact or useability.  Cripes alive.  Even cheap programmes can be expensive when they’re poorly designed, badly delivered and unsupported back in the workplace.

Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of ineffective training.

As funds for developing your staff can be squeezed, especially at times like this then self directed learning allows the funds you do have to be used in areas that person has a high desire to improve in and will impact the business.

When we have a high desire, we’re more receptive to the input, and in applying it.  And because they choose what they learn, when and how, there is a greater level of commitment.

In fact, over the last few months, I’ve taken on clients who are investing in themselves, even though the company they work for has frozen all budgets. How’s that for self-directed learning, they’re even funding it.

And they already see fruits of their investment, such as.

Supporting the learning itself is just as important whether it’s self-directed or not.  Here are some ways to encourage learning.

Encourage them to implement something they’ve just learned.  And to repeat it a few times.

Rarely do we get it right the first time and we certainly don’t get it ‘in the muscle’.  Nerves that fire together wire together.  And so in order to get those nerves firing and wiring practice is required.

How can you encourage more practice?  This reinforces the 70:20:10 principle of learning.

Remember the hare and the tortoise.  Well in the case of learning both win, neither is better than the other.  We learn in different ways and at different speeds.

Coach the person to help them maintain momentum in their learning journey.  That way, in your coaching conversations, you’ll ascertain the pace that enables them to practice and keep confident and motivated.

Also, check that they’re carving out time and protecting it to do their learning.

Yes, self-directed learning is something which individuals take on themselves, and it shouldn’t mean you’re surplus to requirements or frozen out.

I’ve mentioned coaching them, and you may also offer to mentor them or through delegation offer them an opportunity to take their learning and practice further.

You may know of others learning a similar skill and suggest they form a group to share insights.

I know we’re back to walking your talk, being a role model.

Plus great leaders never ever stop learning.  To quote Stephen Covey, it’s about keeping your saw sharp.

Right now, I have several clients who are increasing their ability in resilience, remote leadership and coaching.

Often when things get very uncertain or chaotic, it clearly highlights to us what’s next for our improvement so we can be the best leader for our team right now.

The leadership development we do at blue pea POD is designed for your needs; it isn’t cookie cutter or theory, which is why there are a high engagement and ROI both for the person and the business.

You may remember that earlier I said I’ve taken on clients who are investing in their own learning even when the company had frozen budgets.  I’ve also had conversations with people who’ve said they couldn’t invest in their development because the company had frozen the budget.

The thing is that when life and business kick off again, and it will, these people are going to be competing against people, like my clients, who have used this time to develop themselves.

So what’s the edge for you?

Until next time

Go and be the difference in leadership

The post What Are The Benefits Of Self Directed Learning appeared first on Blue Pea POD.

In this episode of the blue pea leader podcast, I’m going to talk about the importance of developing your courage muscles.

We often dismiss our level of courage or at times feel overwhelmed and wonder if there is any point continuing with a goal. Especially now, with waves of lockdown being projected and more uncertainty for Businesses.

The thing to remember is that whilst people do follow great visions, they also follow people who are courageous.

And right now we may not be able to articulate the great vision, things maybe in too much flux.

And yet every day we can and do need to tap into our courage

When I’m running workshops on vulnerability, then courage is often mentioned because it this we need to tap into so that we can learn and grow when we know we’re going to be displaying or discovering our weaknesses.

So how do we develop or draw upon our courage muscles?

Knowing what’s clearly important to you, then you know what you’re in the game for, you know what you’re fighting for, you have a decision making compass.

To quote Roy Disney, “Once you know what your values are, it’s easy to make your decisions.”

Which is true and that doesn’t stop us sabotaging ourselves

It’s easy to take the short cut, to look for the hack, the easy route.  And if this doesn’t take you forward to your goal then you’re playing on the sidelines, looking for the magic pill, the comfortable.

Which means as a leader you’re teaching / role modeling this approach or attitude to others.

Courage is contagious.

And never underestimate the power of small.

There was a song by chumbawamba called tubthumping – one of the lines is “I get knocked down but I get up again, you’re never going to keep me down”

Now in workshops or when I’m coaching clients, and we discuss courage, there are a few myths that can show up and like balloons at a party, they are just asking to be popped.

The first is courage is when you face something big… and big is also what others would define it as too.

Yet as I said don’t underestimate the small stuff.

I wonder if you relate to any of these:-

These aren’t big things, and no not everyone would agree they require courage, but if it’s outside your normal or comfort zone, then yes it does.

There is also the myth that if you’re courageous, you have a handle on fear. Like you probably don’t feel it. Or can dismiss it.

When in fact your knees can be knocking, (which is interesting when you’re dancing), and you still do it anyway.

In any moment we get to choose what we pay most attention to… our sense of fear, and what we make it mean – whether it’s that we’ll look daft, appear stupid, or of screwing up or making a mistake.

Or do we focus on what we value and our goals and draw upon our courage.

The courage to step out, to step up, being ok with the fact that there might be a moment of looking daft or getting it wrong.

Everything that you can do easily and effortlessly now at some point you were clunky with. And yet you wanted it enough to keep going. You drew upon your courage whether you remember that now or not.

And frequently that’s an important reminder- we can sometimes forget what courage it’s taken in the past.

When I’m standing in front of 12 people training them in presentation skills with not a PowerPoint slide in sight, a comment I frequently get is I make it look so easy, and I don’t understand how nervous they are.

And I chuckle and share with them how my first presentation went – short answer, very bad.

And so I say that if I can go from being that bad to what they see today, then they can too, and in a lot less time.

I also let them into another little secret that I also still feel nervous before presenting or training – it’s just I’ve learned to harness this rather than feeding it.

The third thing I want to share with you is based on a quote from Anais Nin “life shrinks or expands in proportion to your courage”.

It relates to the statement, everything that you want, but don’t yet have is outside of your comfort zone. And courage is the vehicle that gets us out of the comfort zone.

Who knows what the rest of 2020 has in store for us or even next year. And there is one thing we can focus on that will help us and our team enormously- our courage muscles. Any time of uncertainty, chaos or crisis causes us, and calls us, to be courageous in who we are and in what we do.

And that allows us to shine our light into the world.

Until next time on the blue pea leader, have the courage to keep on keeping on.

Ruth

P.S Courage and Resilience work together.  Download our free report on how you can increase your resilience – both personal and organisational.

The post Developing The Courage To Keep Going appeared first on Blue Pea POD.

Hello and welcome to the latest blue pea leader podcast.

I was recently asked by a client for help around doing high energy remote meetings, especially on a monday morning.

Let’s face it, it’s tough when we’re used to being in the same room and now are interacting through zoom, skpe or teams.  Keeping everyone engaged and making the meetings meaningful poses it’s own challenges when we’re remote.

So I’m going to cover 3 things in this episode, firstly, how you can do high energy meetings.  Secondly, things to consider for a monday morning weekly kickoff and lastly what can you do at the end of the week that actually sets you up for the next week.

1) High Energy Meetings

BAD PRACTICE….

The thing about virtual meetings, is that any bad practice we had in physical meetings in some ways gets exacerbated or the problem becomes bigger when we are virtual.

Now when we’re doing our physical meeting there should be an agenda, which clearly includes an outcome for why you’re even having the meeting in the first place. Because if the outcomes aren’t clear, then it kind of asks that first question… which is, do I even need the meeting in the first place. But it also then allows you, because you know the outcomes, to know who it is that you need to invite, and why you want them there.

Now clarity of outcome and structure of agenda isn’t always present in office meetings. And that doesn’t stop us attending them, but we take along a notepad or our laptop. And when we’re bored or disengaged we appear to multi-task and get on with something else.

Once we’re virtual and we disengage then we do the same, except our switch to the other thing means we might as well not be in the meeting at all.  We can’t pick up on micro signals of things shifting in the room, so we don’t know when to re-engage.

If you don’t have video on for the meetings then you have very little to go on to know or guess whether people are still with you and involved.

So the thing about outcome and agenda helps you decide should you have the meeting or is there another way that you can achieve your outcome, eg Slack.

HOW LONG SHOULD IT BE?

The other thing to keep in mind is that whilst the duration of any meeting should actually be as short as possible to achieve the outcome, virtual meetings have a natural limit.  90 minutes being the maximum.  And in some cases, the best thing to ask yourself is, can I split it into two to keep it short, and on point. So, really, less than an hour is good because once we get past 45 minutes, we start to hit all the problems that challenge us when we’re leading the thing which is to keep the energy there and to keep the focus and participation strong.

And yes it’s a meeting, people should be participating. If they’re not, it’s more like a presentation. So, questions to ask ourselves – are we getting participation, what level and type of participation are we getting, and are people being talked over?

RULE OF ENGAGEMENT….

Now, if we’re doing virtual meetings, and it’s voice only then yes there’s a possibility that people end up talking over one another, more than when it’s video, because if we’re paying attention, we can see the cues that somebody wants to talk. And if we do start talking over somebody, we get that feedback faster than if it was over the phone / non video.

And so it helps actually if you establish some rules for being present in the meeting.  There are some meetings I have and I’m less strict on video, usually becuase I know the people very well and it’s just the 2 or 3 of us.  Once number increase or we know each other less it’s different.  I want the video on, I can see even though it’s small tiles I can still see the tiny changes to tell me what’s happening.

If people come on and then take the video off because you know it’s like, oh my hair I’m having a bad hair day or I’ve got distractions behind me or those kinds of things. Then I lose quite a bit of information.

Communication is made up of body language, voice and the words we use.

And one of the things we’re used to in actual meetings, is we get the whole lot, the whole hundred percent. And we get a little bit more besides because actually, we can also feel the person. Once we’re now behind the screen, depending on how much of the person we can see, we now have reduced body language and as soon as we turn video off, we don’t have that either. And then energy levels can drop and the possibility for misunderstandings also increases.

If you don’t want to look at yourself, take your tile out.  However sometimes it’s good to just check, am I giving the appropriate facial recognition to what’s being said.  In some remote meetings we might be on mute and so whilst we don’t want to talk over another we can register our thoughts on our face or use gestures like thumbs up.

And the other thing to remember is your energy is contagious. So if you put energy into the screen you often get energy back from people.

Now the other thing to remember is that with virtual meetings, it is actually more important to start on time. And yes, I get that sometimes there’s techie Gremlins to sort out which can delay by a minute or so. But what we tend to have as a bad habit with physical meetings is we say it starts at 10 o’clock, and you know people are still arriving with their cup of coffee and whatever about 10 minutes later.

When we go that’s okay it’s not quite so bad because we were in the room we could chat. I think when we’re virtual, it is more like okay, we start on time.

And people catch up within the first one or two minutes, because then you’re signalling. This is important. You are important. I am important we value what we’re doing together.

You also want in your meetings to try and structure it so that you have more as much interaction, as possible.

So asking questions and getting people to ask questions and telling people how they can ask questions so is it that they do raise a hand or hit the button or type in chat etc.

If you know anything about social styles. Then, bear in mind peoples social styles because now we’ve got a screen between us, that can also impact how people are so you have to bear that in mind in terms of how you are encouraging them to interact.

And the last thing is have contrast. One option if possible is to have a non-meeting day with your team. So they’re still getting on with their work but they’re not pressured into doing the meetings, be that phone calls or virtual video ones. And the other thing to say is to limit the number of back to back, video, ones that you do, because it can be more draining until you get used to it.

2) Now let’s move on to our Monday morning kickoff.

Quite often with these kinds of things we still have an agenda, but often with a kickoff on a monday morning we like to chat about what you did at the weekend.

Now depending on where you are in the world and what’s going on with variations of lockdown opening with tell me about your weekend can be a bit eek.

Sometimes that can be yeah not an awful lot happened because of what of what’s going on. Or it brings to mind, well normally on a weekend I see my family and I didn’t get to see my family, so my weekend wasn’t as great. So we kind of unwittingly start off the meeting in alow gear. and entering into a meeting with low energy. So we may or may not choose to ask about how was your weekend.

Now one thing I would definitely start a Monday morning kickoff meeting with is wins and successes, what was good about last week.

And these wins and successes, could be work context, but they could also be personal. Because this is affecting the whole of our life.

So in some cases, you know, somebody might sit there going, my work side of life last week there was some challenges that weren’t that great, but actually I solved some personal challenges and that was a win. This allows people to share more of themselves in a positive way.

And then you can move into discussing anything else that you would normally discuss in your Monday morning kickoff.

So this could be the targets for the week, the KPIs and who’s got slack or capacity and can help out.

And when people are talking about what’s going to happen in the next week. One of the things for you is to genuinely start really listen to the level of commitment, are there any underlying issues… so this is really testing your active listening skills.

WHAT TIME IS YOUR Monday Morning Kickoff?

And again, I guess this is down to flexibility. When you’re in the office it might have been a 9am meeting.  And those who wanted to catch up beforehand could.  The thing is we’re in a higher state of flux at the moment.  In which case you might want to schedule your meetings a little later in the morning to allow people to come in and respond to anything from over the weekend.  Get some headspace. I know from my perspective, first thing Monday morning my brain is gearing up for all the things I need to do, and I don’t necessarily want to be doing a meeting at nine o’clock. But 930 10 yep. I’ve covered all the bits and pieces, my headspace is there, and this is going to be great.

The other thing you can do in virtual meetings, but also in a Monday morning kickoff, is rotate the chair, give other people the opportunity to lead this.

3) Setting your meetings up for success

Now, one way that we can set a Monday morning kickoff up as high energy and motivating is influenced by how we shut down the week. So one of the things that I do, I actually do it at the end of every day, is prepare for the next day. Sure there are some days I don’t get to do it.  So at the end of the day I plan the following day.  And then when I start the day I quickly check email to ensure my plan still works and I’m off and running.

So at the end of the week, I create an outline plan for the next week to still hit my targets and deliverables.  I also take time to reflect what were my wins and successes and learning points.  Where do I need to course correct?  Now on the Monday morning I’m prepared to share them I’m not having to think about it.

I’m also clear on what or where I need help and support. So again when I’m having my conversations, either with the team or having conversations with my mentor, I am already prepared. The beauty about doing this on a Friday, is it’s kind of like a close the door on work for the weekend.

The beauty of this is that my unconscious mind now knows what it’s working on.  And then when I come in on a Monday morning, it’s like right here are the answers. And so you’re working with your brain.  If I don’t do it on Friday then there is no shut down and my weekends get quite messy with my mind randomly popping up ideas or don’t forgets.

WHATS THE FUTURE HOLD?

Remote leadership is going to be a very very valuable skill in the coming months and years, and basically I think it’s now time to get ahead of the curve. Because remote leadership really tests your active listening. It really tests your sensory awareness, what are you paying attention? And it’s going to test your conversational and coaching skills too.  I’ve been teaching remote leadership to some of my clients recently, they lovingly call this my jedi stuff. So if you want to know more do get in touch with me at bluepeapod.com.

Until the next time I hope this podcast has helped you think about what can you do to have more energetic engaged remote meetings.

The post How To Hold High Energy Remote Meetings appeared first on Blue Pea POD.

Please be aware what follows is an AI Transcript, excuse typos’ and any other slightly weird stuff but you’ll get the gist of the interview…..

Ruth: Hello and welcome to the blue pea leader podcast, and on this episode, I’m going to be joined by Sue Swanborough, who’s an expert HR director. We’re going to be actually talking about resilience and handling uncertainty at this present moment which is unprecedented in our times. Now, I met Sue I think it was about 12 years ago, would you say it was about 12 years ago we first met,

Sue: I would imagine.

Ruth: And at the time you were here HR director in General Mills for the UK and Ireland.  But we’ve known each other for a long number of years Sue and I have had some against really stimulating thought provoking conversations. But we also like things really practical. So I asked Sue if she’d like to join me to talk about resilience as I explained it’s important right now. And before we go into that Sue would you like to share a little bit more about yourself?

Sue: Great, thanks Ruth Hello, so I’m Sue Swanborough, I’m married twin daughters who are coming towards the end of a university education, along with the bulk of my career, I started as a scientist and moved cross functionally through various roles, R&D, manufacturing, supply chain and strategic roles before moving into the senior HR roles. I’ve worked within global fmcg organisations so Boots, Mars, General Mills, which is where we met, and most latterly UK based Whitworths dried fruits, nuts and seeds. And you know, I love my role as an HR director, I find this a brilliant platform to catalyse change and transform organisations while creating bonds of trust, so that people feel they can be themselves and release some of the untapped potential flaws in service business results. I love generating growth conversations in business and seeing people develop before your eyes achieving things that you’ve never thought possible. It’s really energising. So I feel very fortunate to be entrusted to enable as many organisations I’ve worked for, and also to have worked alongside people like Ruth, who have helped me in catalysing that change.

Ruth: Thank you, Sue, and I know you’ve done some really, really great stuff in those organisations. So let’s talk about resilience. I mean, it is unprecedented time so how do you see things currently

Sue: Really clearly unprecedented in challenging times for everybody, we’re adjusting some new situation, and really revamped rewriting the rulebook. The pace of trends that we’ve seen there has been truly impressive. Even the speed at which organisations have responded to. I don’t know, equipping their people to deliver their role remotely, which would have seemed impossible or applying months or years of planning, just a few short months ago.

I’m often asked when I think we’ll get back to normal. Well that’s not meant to happen, it probably isn’t even helpful to involve adjustments for us, for everybody facilities, and the ability of leaders to lead with crisis is and will continue to be sorely tested, often determining whether or not organisations will fail or survive. The best leaders are those that are wise enough to use crisis like these to strengthen their organisations for the long term. It’s in tough times that leaders have the opportunity to shine as it’s through their actions and the reputation of health organisations can be built or destroyed overnight. And we can see examples of both occurring.

Ruth: That’s very  true we can. So what would you say are the top two or three key challenges that are facing leaders today so that they can be the ones that come out of this the strongest.

Sue: Let’s look at the organisation first of all.  How do they respond to the hear and now, so showing that empathy care that people vulnerability and all those sort of foresight, in order to galvanise a team to do what was required. And in addition to that, how to define the future strategy for their business, prosper in whatever the new context is where we will be no longer able to predict market movements competitors maybe technological developments but face of massive increased pace of change, where decisions will need to be made quickly with incomplete information.

Ruth: So what would you say is called for?

Sue: While you’ve already mentioned the recession, I think you’re absolutely right. For me the priority is actually how do we build on resilience, and that’s resilience of us as leaders, or organisations and also for people.  And resilience for me is actually quite broad such falls into a number of areas, so in addition to the personal resilience, which we’ll spend most of the time talking about, I think organisations also need to consider the resilience of the enterprise. So the ability of the organisation to withstand disruption in changing conditions, we’re learning loads about that now so how do we take that forward and make that work for us in the future. There’s financial resilience so the ability to withstand find the financial impact on liquidity income assets.

And there’s operational resilience, which is the ability to withstand regional shocks and continue to deliver core business when say your supply chain is complete change overnight or you’ve lost your outputs. And then the last one in this category is commercial resilience, which is amazing ability to respond to changing market and consumer pressures which I sort of alluded to a bit earlier on. So each of these is driving the need for change across business. And I imagine the future will see new roles whose specific responsibility for resilience, or it might be called something slightly different but I could see that becoming a core role from equalisation.

Ruth: That’s a really useful break down into the different categories and, and I have to say it’s an interesting observation in terms of new roles regarding responsibility, because I do think you’re right, the more we’re getting into this, the pace of change isn’t going to slow down with disruption is probably going to be more normal, so I do, I do think it’s interesting, you’re saying about new roles on responsibility. So let’s dig a bit further into personal resilience, as it’s going to be needed more than ever. So what, what would you say here.

Sue: So first of all, maybe explain what I see it’s actually, it’s the ability to bend instead of breaking when you’re experiencing pressure. But more than that, for me it’s not just about survival. It’s the ability to persevere and adapt when faced with challenge and change. So it’s also about letting go of what is unhelpful, and then learning to grow and take those learnings on board, and you know I think there’s no doubt our brains are in shock.

So you know if you think about the emotions of change. You know who would have predicted the extent of COVID-19, and you know whether we key workers who face daily challenges, whether we’re working from home worried about returning to a workplace… or concerned about losing our jobs, or even out of work now looking for job. Many of us are feeling vulnerable. And we’re being challenged in the face of mastered Maslow’s hierarchy of needs or the level of safety.

It’s a personal emotional response that is immediate overwhelming and actually may be able to measure with the actual events, because it has triggered a much more emotional threat for us in this condition on reasoning, problem solving and ignore ability to hear things to be impaired, the pandemic we’re facing leads us to feel that we’re more out of control and normal, because so much in our lives has changed the way we might have said things should be have been undermined so our freedoms, our health, our livelihoods of perception of what life is like is being challenged and somehow it doesn’t seem fair.

This can make us feel despondent as though our goals projects ambitions are somewhat insignificant, or irrelevant as we operate within this context. So it’s a very powerful case of building our resilience capacity to equip us for today’s challenges, and also those of the future.

Ruth: It’s this that’s going to help us move from surviving to thriving. And it has such a huge ripple effect you know not just for the individual but also leaders the teams the organisations. So, how about we get a little bit so practical for a minute. Where would you suggest as a leader we start?

Sue: Well, I think. When I think of building personal resilience I think of five steps.

So first of all is spotting the warning signs, understanding what it is that triggers him, but also what anchors and motivates you, how you can have a positive mindset and then establish strategies to enable you to cope.

So I’ve taken each one of those in turn.

First of all the spotting the warning signs. This is about noticing how you’re feeling so early signs of weakened resilience can be physical, emotional or behavioural so physical, you might be struggling to sleep, you might be having this extreme tiredness, feeling drained or your eating or drinking habits maybe not quite as they usually would be emotionally. You might be overanxious forgetful irritable overanalyzing everything feeling overwhelmed you know when you just can’t think straight or take decisions. And you might fear criticism. You know, so things could be paralysing actions for you, confidence, certainly drops and self doubt surfaces and on a behavioural point point of view. Some people might find a mentor said micromanaging they’re less trusting others, avoiding different things, or obsessing about little things so tidy that this.

Has anyone here got very specific about how the dishwasher should be loaded or making endless lists so you may get trapped into working even longer hours to less effective outcomes. So, there are all of those signs around so I’d urge you, just to notice how you’re feeling and whether any of those things apply for you there may be different for those but just to notice when something feels a little bit out of kilter not quite right.

Ruth: So, sorry for interrupting but I like the fact that you’re pointing out that effectively we do get. It’s almost like we let little things take over. Whether it is we suddenly start to get nuts about the way the dishwasher stacked or, but we were just overanalyzing things but it’s the tiny things into that just somehow, take a bigger spot than they really really should. and we just struggle to get them back into perspective.

Sue: So once you are aware or noticing that. Notice as well what triggers you to feel this way so what are those encounters, or events conversations that most likely knock you off balance those things that promote emotional, physical reaction when you were feeling perfectly fine before and you know quite often, people will get a sense in their stomach makes them physically some butterflies or something happening and it will be different for different people when it is a trigger so you might be feeling completely overwhelmed by something out of control, that you really can’t influence.

You might get stuck with a situation or problem which you can’t seem to see your way out or sense of inadequacy letting others down real or imagined. Or maybe you feel your personal values being compromised. So that’s the secondary and then also to notice what anchors and motivates you, because while we all have things that trigger that emotional visceral response.

We also have things that actually support us in these sort of situations so it might be in an organisation, whilst you might be struggling with a lot of things we said, reminding yourself of knowing why you’re doing what you’re doing, you know, might be about your professional calling it might be a leader in leading an organisation. It could be your life purpose.

You might also find that validation from others, whether it’s periodic feedback and encouragement from friends or family or colleagues, you know, that can really help as well just to encourage and motivate people so why am I here. And what is it you know how am I doing really good.

And then the fourth area is cultivating positive mind mindset so all research shows that positive outlook helps, and that it can be learned which is great news actually. So if you’re able to teach yourself to interpret setbacks as temporary and changeable. If you’re able to look for new opportunities. There may be a hard road or have a course, but actually if you feel confident the progress is possible. And that can be really helpful. Also, noting the progress which is made will also help you feel good about that and also support your positive mindsets it’s almost like you know one step at a time, and the fear of failure or desire to control can also hold us back as we’ve already said and you know setbacks are part of life.

And we can’t always control the outcome, but we can learn from our experiences. Great example I’m sure people have heard about Thomas Edison apparently made 1000 unsuccessful attempts to invent the light bulb. When a reporter asked, How did it feel to fail 1000 times Edison replied, I didn’t fail 1000 times the light bulb was invented with 1000 steps, which is a very different paradigm and it you know it feels different lights and so almost in identifying the worst that can happen, then ask yourself, How likely is it and how would it how bad would it be if that happened, is another way of saying, Do you know what okay might happen, what would I do if it is, because then you can just deal with it. If it doesn’t, it won’t. And that will give you a positive mindset about you can actually survive or run. Or you can slide these things. I mean,

Ruth: When you were talking about Edison, actually you know you’re saying about it is to experiment. And you and I started out life as scientists, didn’t we, and it is really about if we all, if we almost saw everything that we were doing as an experiment. It would, it does help with the mindset.  You know when we were in labs, you know, doing this stuff, we would experiment and not take the outcome personally, but when we’re outside sometimes we don’t necessarily think of it in the same light way.

Sue: Completely agree and it actually, it leads me on to the fifth point very nicely so you know the fifth point is about doing exactly that, experimenting so finding strategies that work for you as an individual to build your resilience.

It’s very personal. It can be trial and error with different approaches working in different areas your life maybe requires a combination and right in the right mindset, being open to experimenting, creating a time to think and act and choosing who is a long sought by doing that we support and validate you so exams are sort of strategies might be thinking about how you’re spending your time and how you’re adding value as you’re doing, allowing space for things that restore your inspiration balance of well being.

So it might be a day you walk outside somewhere and lots of people say, actually, when the government said we’ve you know you have an hour exercise, getting out into the countryside. If people are fortunate to live near a car or a field is great and it’s becoming a really positive habit for people. It might be regular mindfulness meditation breathing exercise, anything that can regulate emotions and actually calm you down, can be massively helpful.

Ruth: These are really great strategies and things to think about. And as you say you know with the examples of walking mindfulness meditation, yoga, any cooking it’s really it’s just finding something that works for you.

Sue: And the thing about the current situation is that our use of strategies for coping, recharging, eg the gym, a meal out with friends, watching the game on Saturday, a weekend away none of those are possible. At this time, so actually for us. Having the ability to find out, what is it that works for me. So you know it’s really important now that leads us out into individuals all of us of course need a new set of strategies to stay fully charged powerful and present a set of thinking habits to really embrace what’s happening, accept it and find the courage to stay committed and thriving.

Ruth: It’s true what you mentioned about the fact that the usual ways of coping, like the gym going for meals out just aren’t available anymore. And one of the things that’s coming up in leaders that I’m working with is about anxiety.  At times, they’re feeling anxious, but also how they help people in their team, manage their anxiety. So if you’ve got any thoughts or suggestions on that

Sue: …So actually, if you’re open to discussing it people realise that funny enough you’re similar, then, then actually, that can open a very powerful conversation so inviting people to discuss the anxiety. Anxiety openly within their team, empower them to share concerns were very unfair about looking weak or negative but actually as a way to say you know I’m vulnerable, I’m human. And we’re all in this together. So first of all, discussing.

And actually, you know, the other thing is to listen don’t try to fix. We’re all caring individuals we all we all want to help support each other, but actually this is something that the individual holds and you can’t solve. So just listening, acknowledge the people’s anxieties real unreasonable help them to feel heard and understood by not jumping straight to fixing the problem just giving them the space to actually air how they’re feeling.

And then the third thing is open up, so asking questions to help one another work through and thinking and consider any possibilities that might help showing your own vulnerability as we’ve already said, can also help people open up.

Ruth: … because basically people don’t realise that what they’re feeling or experiencing is normal. And, and somehow by knowing what you’re going through is normal that also sort of lightens the load. And now, you were talking about, you know, signs of the fact that you know things are getting to you so micromanaging or command and control. And you mentioned really it’s it really is about letting go to a degree of not being so pedantic. So again, what would you suggest in terms of how people can address that.

Sue: So, we can’t control what’s happening around us. We’ve all seen that in the last few weeks, but we can control how we respond to it. So rather than focusing on what should you focus on being the best leader or person you can be by making shared reference. And then the second thing I think is understanding it’s okay to actually learn now. And do act within the context of what I do know now.

Ask yourself what can I achieve today that will make a difference. Keep your planning short term stay focused energising and have the highest impact.

Ruth: It reminds me of a phrase that I used to use, or we used to use when I worked in Unilever, best current thinking, you know there’s times when things are changing so fast that it can be difficult and it’s possible to start to feel demotivated.  Actually if you’re trying to act in the here and now then this is your best current thinking, knowing that tomorrow may bring something completely different.

Sue: And, you know, I also think right now there’s as much as it’s brought a lot of things. A lot of things that we used to do that felt normal to stop. There’s also a lot of opportunities in, in one sense in a very rapid way, which can be disorientating and. But you know what, what would you turn around and say to people around you know sort of seizing opportunities, be that they’ve, maybe been made redundant, or their roles are changing, or the markets changed.

People who have, you know, more time than normal, it might be actually you know the weekend you would normally get out and about doing things and now I should just go home so there’s a gift of time. So you know, he was saying when seeking those opportunities, and be generous with how we spend the time and thinking about you know what it is you want to do to support others but also for yourself so using downtime at work to make breakthroughs happen so what actions or initiatives have made the biggest difference your team or your business performance for our sizes and any downtime at work to make the most of this opportunity, it might be, you know, a brainstorm on a particular thing or it might be, you know, just having a virtual coffee together and having a bit of fun or quiz or whatever it might be.

And then secondly to ask your future self, what you’d wish you’ve done. So if you imagine yourself when the whole pandemic is over, whenever that will be certainly would all constraints are lifted. What would you most wish you’d have spent more time doing, what would you have made, what would make the most difference for you. And what story, would you want to tell, and then do it. I think the other thing just to build on that is there’s lots of great stuff that people are doing at the moment so I’d almost say recognise that and be grateful for what you’re doing now and how you’re using that gift of time to see those opportunities, and then think what else could you do.

Ruth: I think it’s very powerful when you’re saying, you know, looking, it’s almost like you’re looking back and you know what would you most wish you’d spend your time doing what’s the story you want to be able to tell so it’s, it is about, about in one sense it’s about writing the next chapter of how you would like it to be. And then using that as a resource.

So, if somebody wanted to know more about resilience, or, or become, I mean, become more resilient there’s you’ve given us a lot of really great practical advice. Is there a particular resource that you would also suggest.?

Sue: It’s interesting to duck this question. So there’s a lot written on this topic, a massive range of sources so from the US military through sports men and women to individuals, and there are a mix of self help evidence based and research analysis and techniques testimonials definition, you name it, actually, it’s out there so I would suggest that if people want to find out more, they actually just do a bit of googling thinking about, which area it is that they’re most interested in understanding more about what would be the most value. I mean, for me personally, I enjoy Brene Brown, Rising Strong This is fabulously inspiring. And then at the other side. Maybe Mickey Webb has done some very practical suggestions for approaches that you can take which either urge people again to to Google that and look up and other than that, it can be a good coach. You can hold up the mirror and ask questions to capitalise those insights for you.

Ruth: It’s true,  you can make it through the journey at various speeds. But the advantage of a coach is that they can help you through the rough. Ideally as fast as it is possible for you to healthily navigate the rough.

Sue: Yes. Whatever works for you is massively powerful it’s a real treat and a luxury whenever I’ve been coached often in my, my career and life, it’s been fabulous experience.

Ruth: So on your leadership journey. Then, what, words of wisdom, would you like to share. When we talk about you know if your future self what you wish you’d done during this particular situation but it’s kind of like if you look back on your leadership journey if you were gonna share some words of wisdom to anybody else embarking on their leadership journey, or wherever they are in their leadership journey, what would you is your primary realisations.

Sue: Great question.

So for me, it’s all about learning and growing so if I think, you know, life’s journey things I guess so. The first news around self awareness so, you know, and that is a self as long going journey so building your resilience will enable you in increasing your self awareness as you understand and start to notice what is going on for you in any situation. you’re then able to be in a position to separate your personal feelings. And so, in a better place to empathise Listen, and really understand the others perspective which is critical for leaders, your stuff doesn’t get in the way of the conversation to really be able to put yourself in the other shoes.

And then second thing for me is the importance of trust and by trust I mean confidence in a personal thing. So, you know, my personal reflections being, you know I start with a propensity to trust, both myself and others. And if I don’t trust myself or others understand why it is so, is it the integrity doesn’t feel right or sort of walking the talk and doesn’t seem to be aligned. Whether you know it’s the intention is pure. What is the person’s capability and track record. And once you know that identify that you can do something about it; so I say self awareness and trust.

Ruth: Brilliant. Thank you Sue. I think we’ve covered, well, I’m saying we, you have given us a lot of rich points of view and some real practical things that we can do to manage our resilience now. To manage our state of mind now, but also set us up for success so that we can thrive in the future.

And I knew you would. Because of all the really great conversations we’ve had in the past. So thank you very much.

And I hope having listened to this you have got as much out of it as I have, I’m hoping it’s, again, giving you maybe some immediate things that you can apply right now, but also giving you some broader food for thought in terms of what resilience and handling uncertainty can mean for you and for your team going forward in the future.

If you do want to know a little more about resilience, then if you go to blue pea pod.com and head over towards resources we have a white paper, which also contains some practical information on building your resilience, and as Sue said having a coach is also a really great strategy. So if that’s something that you would also wish to consider, then do get in touch with us, and until the next time. Go be the difference in leadership.

The post Interview with Sue Swanborough on Increasing Your Resilience appeared first on Blue Pea POD.

The following is an AI transcript, so please ignore any errors.

Hello and welcome to this episode of the blue pea leader. And I want to share with you how you can navigate uncertainty, with style. Well, at least with a resource that will ensure you come through this stronger.

Because in high uncertainty. People are looking to be led by you, by the media, by the government and emotions are running high.

There’s still a lot of anxiety and fear. And this leads to your thoughts being all over the place. Which, to be fair isn’t all that helpful, especially if it’s happening to you, and at the same time you’re trying to lead or comfort, your team, who are experiencing the same.

But there is a secret to navigating uncertainty, and it’s counter to what we’ve been trained to do. Because at the end of the day, it’s never about the obstacles. What it is is about how you respond to them.

Now, I recently asked some of my clients question, which is, who do you want to be as you come through, what we’re going through.

And when they thought about answering the question. Basically, it’s, it’s not the easiest question to answer you don’t get that instant Oh, here we go. It’s what I call a quality question a quality question will bring up a quality answer. And in essence by pondering this question. It’s in your deciding who you want to be when you come through this and that, actually shapes your future.

Now, if you’re just trying to get through this. Like, just try to sort of get through this. Then you’re going to come out the other side smaller, feeling battered bruised, with not an awful lot to show for it. And your thoughts and your feelings will be all over the place.

There’s something that I remember a mentor of mine said many years ago. So the exact words were Ruth, you can’t lead people through territory you’ve never been through.

And over time, I actually realised the merit in what was said. In fact, I was chatting to a client, the other day who said to me you know how on earth you’re managing stay so positive I’m energised talking to you.

And of course, you know, the short answer would be, I’ve been here before. And I don’t mean a pandemic because I haven’t. But I’ve had my world turned upside down, and inside out on several occasions. And I’ve been sat there, looking backwards, pining, and looking forwards going blankety blank. And in the middle of it going what on earth.

So, firstly, let’s look at emotions. The number one, being anxiety.  Now anxiety, is your imagination in action. But it’s in action badly. Now imagination is great, but you just have to learn to use it properly and anxiety is you imagining that something bad is going to happen in the future. So, I guess this is a bit of tough love.  It’s when you’re imagining things not working out. And I don’t mean from a risk assessment point of view, you’re effectively saying you’ve lost confidence.

As a leader. It is totally okay to say, I’ve got no idea what the future is going to look like. Exactly. and it will be bumpy as we get there. But you also need to convey that you’re confident, and that you and the team will make it, and that the future will be good because it will be.

Now our brains are wired to react more to threats than rewards. So what we have to do as leaders is minimise the threats as best we can, and maximise the rewards.

And let’s face it, if we look. Some of these threats are actually imaginary. We need to identify those and put them in perspective, or get rid of them. We’ve entered a global change with no apparent future. And we kind of view, a change as a threat something like this, which is huge, is understandably disorientated.

And there are things we can do, which actually help the brain operate more effectively and make some small results for the resilience. And when we do this for our team. It has the same effect for them.

Now firstly we like certainty. The more variables that there are, the more our brain goes into a kind of process overdrive. And then we start to hesitate and procrastinate, and eventually give up. Now certainty is also linked confidence. If I’m not sure about how to do something. But I’m confident that I will be able to do it and come through this. Then I’ll move forward. But if I’m not sure how to do something and I don’t actually believe that it’s possible for me to do it. Then I’m going to give up.

So ask yourself where in your life, can you increase certainty, or make things more predictable?

And I’m going to give you a couple of areas that you might want to consider. Because routine actually is a great asset, you know, if we know that we’re getting up at the same time if we know it. Sometimes when it’s, so flux, know that little bit of routine that little bit of certainty, can be a great asset.

So routine of any nature is a great asset, but also keeping our promises both to ourselves and to other people. Again, if we keep our promise. We are. And there is a certainty in that. And there is, and then ultimately there’s a predictability in it. And that will increase the connections you have with others, and also build trust.

Now, the second thing your brain likes is freedom. And the more uncertain things are then sometimes our desire or our way of having freedom actually shifts. So what can help here is to have clear boundaries and clear expectations, because these actually help us feel safe. You know, as long as I operate within the boundary, I have the freedom as to how to do it so there is some freedom. But I have a clarity within which I can then move around. If I have too much freedom without any of this, then I can become disorientated and paralysed.

Now, every one of us has their, what you might call freedom quota. And at the beginning of this year. You may have liked a lot, you may have liked you will have had the amount that you wanted and the same for the people in your team you will know the people who want lots of freedom, you’ll know the people who naturally want a little less freedom.

But here’s the thing, right now, even those people at the beginning of the year who wanted lots of freedom. They may actually appreciate being given more guidance, or even instruction. And of course, the only way you’re going to know this is to ask.

Because when we’re anxious and we’re overwhelmed, it actually blocks our creativity and creativity is key.

Right. So what feedback can you give to your team members that rewards that efforts and increases their self confidence.?

Now, at the beginning, I posed the question. Who do you want to be at the other side of this, well how does that question help us. Well, it helps for your certainty your confidence and freedom but it does this at a much deeper level, your brain actually loves this question, it is resourceful.

And notice the question is Who do you want to be. Not what do you want to do that will come later.

So, make a decision as to who you want to be. Be bold, be brave, because then it makes the journey that you’re on worthwhile. If you’re playing it small playing it safe. The game is basically gonna get beat up for nothing. So, when you got your answer. Now you can use external events correctly, as fuel.

I said earlier, it’s never about the obstacles, it’s about how you will overcome them. And when you don’t know who you are, you actually feel at the mercy of events. But when you’ve decided who you will become more of, then you’re inspired.

See the fact is, you are always in charge of who you are being in any given moment. And that is true freedom. It’s also certainty, because who you are being in any given moment is shaping your future one brick at a time.

Now, very soon. We’re going to be asked to create visions for the future and the plan to do it. So who am I being. And who am I, becoming of the foundations of the success of any vision you come up with. Without this, it’s going to be rockier than it actually needs to be. You’ll possibly also struggle with your motivation and staying resilient.

I have to say that if ever there was a good time to have a coach and a mentor. This is it. Because the return on investment will be huge, and lasts a lifetime fact, I’ve got clients that have come on board with me in the last few months. And, you know, they are, they are already seeing massive rewards benefits from their investment in themselves, their ability to handle this, their ability to to navigate it compared to some of the other leaders that are around them. So if it is something that you’re thinking about, then please get in touch, and we can have a chat and see if it’s, see how we can help you.

I want to leave you with something that’s also helped me on many occasions. It’s a saying, I don’t know who the author is, but like I say it’s helped me.

“When you come to the end of all that, you know, you must believe in one of two things. There will be Earth, upon which to stand, or you will be given wings.”

And I just think that is such a beautiful quote that reminds me about transformation, not about change but about transformation. “there will be Earth upon which to stand or you will be given wings”. In other words, when I come out of this transformation, whether it’s earth or wings, or whatever, but it’s believing that I’m going to come out of the transformation equipped to handle the future.

So until next time on the blue pea leader podcast, go and be the difference in leadership.

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