The People Builder

Do you find yourself at the mercy of a never-ending to-do list each day, or are you able to flow and be present as your calm and relaxed self? Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Speaker and Trainer of the Year and VUCA Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation around the shifts that we need to make so that we can thrive and survive in this VUCA world by talking about how to make the shift from doing to being.

We are human beings, not human doings. And to sustain a high level of performance in all areas of life, we must remember that this is an important distinction and change the way that we look at our day. For many years, I ran around the planet trying to get things done and that, coupled with my Performance Trap trying to please others, I had a long list of things not just to do for myself, but the things that I needed to do for others, because I said I would so that they would like me. And a lot of us today end up being at the mercy of a never-ending list.

We've talked about this before in my debunking the myth of time management that one of the things that we need to shift from is having a to-do list; a list that has all these things that remind us of what we're not getting done. In those old school teachings that said, "Check your list off and then look at your list at the end of the day and move the ones that you haven't got done into tomorrow." And we all agreed that that list never ever changes. It never gets smaller. So, what I've had to do is make this shift in my mindset first that changed my behaviour. And when I made that shift, it was able to then allow me to focus on my priorities, to control my environment, and to have more energy to be who I want to be in every area of my life, not just in my business, in my career, in that "getting things done mode" that I was operating in.

So, if that's something that you would like to do right now, let me unpack for you three key principles that we must take hold of before we can then employ practical strategies around being rather than doing so that we're able to escape the overwhelm and get into flow and enjoy our life way more than we were before.

The first one is to be then do then have. I remember when I did some coach training many, many years ago, it was a model that we used in our coaching to help people to understand and to get clarity around who do I need to be so that I can do the things that I need to do, to have the results that I want to have. That old-school mentality of just work out what you want to have and then put a list together of all the things you need to do to get there is the reason why most of us get frustrated and we never get down the track as far as we want to go, because the person that is doing the things so that you can get them ticked off on the list is normally the roadblock. It's normally the behaviour, the thoughts, the mindsets, the beliefs, the things that we've been talking about over the last few weeks that actually stop you from doing what it is that you need to do.

So, we recognise what we need to do. When we write a big list out, we've got a great plan and then we are frustrated by the fact that we don't see any results, and that's because of self-sabotage strategies, the ceiling we place on our self with self-doubt and all these things that come in a lack of Personal Power. One of the main reasons why I am so passionate about Emotional Intelligence is because it teaches us and helps us to become more powerful in our own identity. And we've talked about some of that stuff previously as well. So, the first thing we need to do is take that model that we've used in coaching and apply it to our life and ask ourself the question, "Okay, who do I need to be right now rather than what do I need to do?"

So for me, I have many roles in my life, just like you. I get to be a husband. I get to be a father. I get to be a coach. I get to be a business owner. I get to be a speaker, whatever it is. I get to be a friend. I get to be a learner, and there are various roles that we all have in our life. So in applying this first principle of be-do-have, what it does is it says, "Okay, who do I need to be right now when I'm being a dad? Who do I need to be right now when I'm in my business?" And to be able to then know what other skills and attributes, the thought patterns that I'm going to allow to come into that space and time, because I'm being that person right now, not just doing things.

And that allows distractions to be put aside a lot more easily, because, for example, I'm working from home and have been for a long time now and there are many distractions outside this studio where I'm talking to you now. There are many things that I could be doing. Right now, we are in a situation where my children have finished their high school certificates so they're home, and I like to spend time with them and they liked to spend time with me. So, I could quite easily just stop doing this video now and go and have a chat to them, but no, I am being someone who is teaching right now. I am being who I need to be in this moment. So, when I have finished being this, I have it planned in my calendar to be a father in a different part of my day.

Now, some people might think that's a little bit too OCD and too structured, but let me tell you, it is so freeing in being able to be okay with what needs to get done in my day. Because I know when I go to have lunch today with my children, I know that I can be fully present with them because I've already planned when I'm going to get this stuff done, when I'm being that different person when I go back to work. So, principle number one is be before you do, and then you'll have the results that you want.

Number two is to be more intentional. So, we understand now that we need to be various people in any given day, in a week, in a month, in a year. Now, I'm not talking about having different personalities and changing our behaviour and being fake and those sorts of things. What I'm clearly talking about is I need to be a certain way when I'm coaching a client that I wouldn't be like when I was having a conversation with my wife. I need to be different in my approach when I'm the learner than I am when I'm the leader. So, what I'm talking about here is being more intentional and setting a focus and a plan that allows me to be that person in that particular timeframe.

So, how do we play that out? Well, what I do is I make sure that I have my calendar set up so that that tells me when I need to be which person, when I need to be a husband, a father. So, I've got family time. When I need to be the business owner, who's a coach and a trainer and a speaker, and I've got that blocked away. When I need to be just me and have some me time. And when I need to be the business owner who has to do the admin or the strategy and all those other things that I need to do so I then know that I need to be fully present in doing that, and it allows me to put those other distractions aside. So now that we know we need to be before we do, we need to be more intentional so that we can stay present in that particular period of time to be that person without brain-switching and thinking about things that are outside being that.

Number three is to change hats strategically. When I'm doing a training in an organisation, whether it be online or face-to-face, which I'm not doing a lot of face-to-face right now, what I like to do is instead of coming in just being a trainer, I also like to bring my coach's hat along. Then, what I do is get permission to when I see a mindset or a behaviour that's not serving that individual or the room to change my hat from being a trainer to being a coach so that I can remove that roadblock with them and everybody can go forward. So, I like to look at the metaphor of wearing a hat. I don't physically have a hat to be a father, to be a husband, to be a trainer or speaker, whatever. I have a metaphorical one. So, I know that when I leave my studio and go to be someone else, I need to make that change.

And for me, I like to use the metaphor of a hat. So to do that strategically, we need to have structures, ways of doing things so that we can then transition from being whoever we are now to who we need to be in that next period of time. I remember one of the things that I did practically years ago that I don't do now, but it really helped me because working from home is something that can create a lot of issues here, where you can, if you stop your task and go and do something else in your house or something like that. So, the other thing that I've found is that you can work really, really long hours because you're home and the commute is gone. So, what I did was made sure that I put a different lock on my office than the one that was on my house.

And when it was time to stop being the owner of the business and go home, what I did was lock up my office, went and got in my car, drove down to the post office, collected my mail from my postbox, came home and opened the door with the key to my house and allowed myself to step into being a husband and a father. So, what we need to do as we shift our hats is then set a new intention to be who it is that we need to be right now. To do that, we need to leave stuff behind. So for me, that closing that door of the office and locking it was a trigger for me, an anchor for me to go, "That's finished. It's there and I'll open that again tomorrow.", and then to go and do another activity where I can lose those thoughts and start focusing on who do I need to be next, and then come home and be that person.

I remember in my corporate career many years ago coming home one night and my little twins were then only 15 months old, they're now 18, so it's a quite a while ago, and I remember the phone was going off all the way home, and the constant need to get stuff from me, and I got home and I still was carrying all that, as you can hear it in my voice right now. And I opened the door and my twins are running towards me going, "Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!", and I went, "Can you let me get inside the door?", and their little faces just dropped. And the face that I saw on my wife was one of confusion and not understanding why I would speak to them that way, knowing how much love I had for them and what they meant for me. The reason it happened wasn't anything to do with my relationship with them. It's because I did not transition from being the corporate executive to being a dad. So, number three is to make sure that we change hats strategically, rather than just go from one to the other without setting that intention.

So when you make this shift from doing all the time to being, not only will you get more things done, the truly important things in your life, but you'll enjoy the journey a lot more as well. Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week, when we continue this conversation by helping us to understand how to remove that unhealthy dialogue that goes on in our head that stops us from doing these things that we're talking about and taking your thoughts captive. I'll see you then.

Are you holding yourself back with self-doubt and an unhealthy dialogue, or are you your own best cheerleader who inspires you to move forward and get the things that you want out of life?

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Speaker and Trainer of the Year and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation around shifting your identity by helping you to eliminate your false beliefs.

For FREE resources and coaching from one of the leading personal development experts in the world, visit: https://www.grantherbert.com

Get the FULL TRANSCRIPT here:

https://www.grantherbert.com/blog/eliminating-false-beliefs

Become A Coach and grow your influence, income, and impact here: https://www.peoplebuildersinstitute.com.au

Are you holding yourself back with self-doubt and an unhealthy dialogue, or are you your own best cheerleader who inspires you to move forward and get the things that you want out of life? Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Speaker and Trainer of the Year and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation around shifting your identity by helping you to eliminate your false beliefs.

Most of us get around on a daily basis ruminating on our past failures, focusing on the things that we got wrong and where we didn't achieve what we wanted to achieve. We believe false evidence from our experiences and what other people have said because that's comfortable and keeps us safe and stops us from moving forward in the uncharted waters. We listen to our small voice that reminds us all of our shortcomings and we listen to our critics. And to make this shift and have one of these that you want to have beyond this time right now, we need to be able to shift to do things differently.

We need to reflect on our past wins and on the things that have taught us, the lessons to get us to where we are right now. We need to challenge those false beliefs and those assumptions and look for real evidence. And we need to let our big voice, that confident inner dialogue take us forward into the new success and the new adventures that are out in front of us. For many years, I just got around focusing on what didn't work, focusing on the reasons why I couldn't move forward. I'd see people who were successful and I'd feel happy for them. However, I would compare myself to them and go, "Yeah, I can see how they can do it, but me? I certainly couldn't do that because of these reasons."

I would carry around a list, metaphorically, that I could pull out at any time and give you hundreds of reasons why it wouldn't work for me. And the reason was is that I had developed a conditioned mind with false beliefs, with limiting beliefs that I could bring up at a moment and help me to stay safe and not move into things outside my comfort zone. And then one day, I'd had enough and I thought it's time to move past these things. I don't know about you, whether you've had those defining moments in your life and I've had them, and I've let them slide, and thankfully this time there was enough pain in my life and enough reason to move forward that I got myself a coach and I worked through my roadblocks and what was holding me back. And what I want to do today is just unpack three things that I worked on and that I now get the privilege to work on with many people all around the world to shift their mindset and behaviour so that they can become who they need to be and move forward into the life that they want to create.

Number one is forward-focused reflection. When you visit the past, the key word there is visit. I know the past can be a comfortable place sometimes because we go back into the past and there's times where it was simpler and things with this and things with that. However, there's also times where you got evidence of your beliefs, where you had an experience that you put a meaning on about yourself. And when we go back into the past, if we stay there too long and we ruminate on those things, it's a negative exercise. But, it's a great thing to go back in the past so long as we do it with forward-focused thinking. It's like when we drive our car, we've got a big wind screen in front of us and we've got a little mirror up here that we look up at every now and then to see what's going on. And then we go back to looking forward because if we don't look forward, we can't see where we're going. And if we can't see where we going, we're not going to get there.

So, it's the same when you reflect on the past. It's a quick look in the mirror to go, "Hey, what went well? What did I win at? Where can I gather some evidence that will help you to move forward? And where can I gather some lessons that I can take with me so that I do different things moving forward and therefore get to where I want to go without all the stress and conflict and whatever it is for you?" So, the first thing is to learn to do forward-focused reflection.

Number two is to look for real evidence, evidence that says I can, rather than I can't. We've all seen a lawyer in the courtroom in our favourite TV show and they're presenting evidence to the jury and the judge is there and the opposing counsel's there and it's all dramatic and it's all good fun. However, whenever there is doubt about the evidence, the other side will object and appeal to the judge to have that evidence thrown out because it's just hearsay or it's circumstantial. And that's normally the evidence that we pick up, things that people have said third-hand, circumstances, experiences that we've had that we've put a meaning on. And that is all the evidence that we have to present a case to ourself of our worth.

So, number two is to look for real evidence and to do that, we need to be able to logically process that in the prefrontal cortex, not in the emotional brain. In the work that I do with Emotional Intelligence, it helps you to be able to do that and to debunk the false evidence, to object to it and go, "No, that's not true. Just because someone said it about me doesn't mean I have to make it my truth. Just because I didn't get it right once doesn't mean that I'm not able to get it right next time." So, number two is look for real evidence, not for hearsay or circumstantial evidence.

And number three is to retrain that inner dialogue, that mini-me. You've trained that inner dialogue. You've trained that small voice that's inside you, that gets in your ear and lets you know when you're going to take you outside your comfort zone, when you're going to do things that are against those false beliefs that you have, those limiting beliefs. You might decide to get up on stage and talk in front of 10,000 people, even though you fear doing that because of what you think people are going to think about you and you go, "No, I'm going to do it." Let me tell you, if that happens, your small voice, your mini-me will get your attention because you've programmed it to stop you from doing things that are going to lead you to harm.

It's like my little grandson. If he would have turned up here right now and say my name, "Grandpa! Grandpa!", and I was to then ignore him and just keep talking to you, he would get my attention. Why? Because I've taught him from the time he could speak that all he needed to do was say my name and I would drop everything else and give him my attention. And that's exactly what you've done and I've done with our internal dialogue. So, the first thing I would need to do with my grandson is acknowledge him and say, "Hey! Come here, dude. Just hang on a sec. I'm going to finish doing this, and then you and I are going to get ice cream." Now, it's a metaphor. You and I both know that if it doesn't change in 14 seconds and I'm off getting ice cream, he's going to be at me again, but you know what I mean, and it's exactly the same with your inner dialogue.

So as you take that step towards the stage or to do something different and your mini-me screams at you to get your attention, if you show it the hand and keep walking, it's going to get louder and louder until it gets your attention because you've taught it to do that. So, the first thing to do is acknowledge it and say, "Okay, I hear you. I know I taught you that. However, we're about to learn something new. So, watch, listen, and learn with me." So, the great thing about our inner dialogue is that we put it there and that means that we're in control. You are in control of changing it. So, the third thing that I learned to do was to retrain my mini-me.

So, there's just three key things that you can do right now in your own life to be able to shift your mindset and your behaviour so that you can remove that self-doubt, have self-confidence and self-approval, and move forward into whatever it is that you would like to see become your reality.

Well, that's it from me for another week. Join me again next week, as we continue this conversation around shifting our identity and becoming who we need to be so that we can have different results by unpacking a very important conversation around Being Precedes Doing. I'll see you then.

Do you constantly beat yourself up and doubt your own abilities, or are you super confident and know that you have everything within you that you need to be who you need to be in every area of your life?

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Speaker and Trainer of the Year and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation around who we need to be in the VUCA world so that we can lead ourselves, we can lead what we're doing, and we can lead others without all the stress and conflict. And I want to continue to talk around those shift areas that we unpacked over the last month.

For FREE resources and coaching from one of the leading personal development experts in the world, visit: https://www.grantherbert.com

Get the FULL TRANSCRIPT here:

https://www.grantherbert.com/blog/shifting-your-identity

Become A Coach and grow your influence, income, and impact here: https://www.peoplebuildersinstitute.com.au

Do you constantly beat yourself up and doubt your own abilities, or are you super confident and know that you have everything within you that you need to be who you need to be in every area of your life?

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Speaker and Trainer of the Year and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation around who we need to be in the VUCA world so that we can lead ourselves, we can lead what we're doing, and we can lead others without all the stress and conflict. And I want to continue to talk around those shift areas that we unpacked over the last month.

So, we've talked about the three particular areas of leadership. We've talked about personal leadership, we've talked about our professional or project leadership, and we've talked about people leadership, and we agreed that leadership is not about getting people to do what you want them to do. It's about building an internal set of characteristics of the leader that enabled you to flow in the strategies, in the competencies, in the behaviours that allow for a healthy environment and relationships. So, let's go back now to the first area, and that is the area of personal leadership. And let's go into that first area, and that's where we work on our identity.

My identity is not what I do. That's my activity. My identity is who I believe I am. I can go from doing something that I'm not happy with to it affecting how I feel about myself, unless I navigate that situation with Emotional Intelligence, unless I've built up my Personal Power and I've got a hold of my self-talk and that inner dialogue that we've talked about before. And instead of nursing and rehearsing things in a way that stirs up the emotion and reminds me of all the times that I haven't done well, I can bring it back up into the logical brain and I can look at what I could do differently moving forward. So, working on our identity is crucial to be able to lead itself, let alone lead projects or lead other people. The first question I always like to ask myself and ask the people that I work with is this, "Who are you?" The number one element of your identity is who you believe you are.

So much in our world today, we look to others to let them dictate who we are, what they say about us, whether or not they like our posts, whether or not they're friendly to us. Those things don't dictate who we are. And when we let them, then we're not in control of our own identity, and that's where the problems start. And I certainly am someone who lived that life for many, many years. I've said this before, Eleanor Roosevelt said it so well, "What other people think of you is none of your business." Yet, we make it our business all the time. We're so focused on the external validation from others, rather than validating ourselves.

So, what I want to do is I want to empower you to do the latter. To be able to go, not from a arrogant point of view of going, "I don't care what anyone else thinks. I'm me." No, from a confident space that says, "You know what? I'm not there yet, but I'm a work in progress and I'm happy with where I am right now. I know what it is that I need to continue to work on on a daily basis. And I know it's all about continuous improvement. It's not about perfection and I'm happy with what I see when I look into the mirror, and I don't just mean physically."

So to do this, the area that we need to work on is our self-awareness. It's the first quadrant of Emotional Intelligence. And if you were on our summit a couple of weeks ago, you would have had a number of speakers talk about the things that I want to bring up today, and that is being able to remove those blind spots and to have clarity around the truth, to be able to remove those false and limiting beliefs about others and get the real story, and then make a plan out of that, to improve in the areas that we need to improve.

The first point here is that we need to take responsibility for deciding who we are. We need to take responsibility for building up our own identity. It's not an external gig. It's not something that we look to others for. They will be part of the process and how we filter what they say and do will determine whether or not it positively builds us up or negatively erodes who we believe we are. So, they are part of the process. But at the end of the day, the buck stops here. I am responsible for my identity. You are responsible for your identity, and that is the first place that we need to get to.

So now that we've made that mindset shift and we've decided, "Yes, if it is to be, it's up to me", the first thing that we want to work on now is realigning ourselves with who it is that we want to be, who it is that we feel we were created to be. And to do that, we need to come back to purpose. We need to come back to our own values. We need to come back to what's most important to us. We need to come back, not just to what our family have led us into because of cultural differences or this is what we believe in this family, but getting a true revelation yourself of what's most important to you and why it is that you're on the planet, why do you exist on a daily basis.

When we do that, whatever we operate out of from there will drive us towards our true purpose. And when we're working in our true purpose, we're being congruent. We are not rubbing against something that's false. We're not living the imposter syndrome or feeling like a fraud. We are in flow. And that's the whole idea of working on that first area of identity is to go from feeling like a fraud to please others, to get along, to make sure that people like us to feeling in flow with who I am. And these things all have a knock on effect in terms of things like our energy. When I invested days and days on trying to be who I wasn't, it was very energetically depleting.

However, when I'm in flow of just being who I am, being okay with that and operating out of that, I've got energy to burn at the end of the day. And I'm able to then come away from my business, from my practice, and I'm able to invest the energy in the other areas of my life like my family. So, the second thing after we've made that decision that it's our responsibility is to get back to purpose.

The third area to focus on is to then look at the things that we believe about ourselves and to do an audit. And I love the word audit because it's a logical brain process, to do an audit and to look for evidence as to whether or not it's actually true. If you believe that no one likes you, I guarantee that coming up into your logical brain, there would be evidence of interactions that you've had this week, where people were pleasant and friendly and got along with you and people even reached out to you. So, the logical evidence actually debunks the negative that we've been believing. So, the third thing that I want us to do now that we've made that decision, that it's our responsibility and we've got back to our purpose is to challenge and flip our limiting and false beliefs. And in future videos this month, I think I'll actually do a video just on that to help you to be able to get that done.

So, there's three things that you can do to be able to get control of your identity, to take back control of who you believe you are, and to build a foundation, to build a platform of who you are so that out of that, you can then become who you need to become so that you can do the things that you need to do in the various areas of your life.

Well, that's it from me for another week. Join me again next week, where we will continue to look at this area of identity, of Personal Power, of beliefs by looking at how to actually do that belief audit and to flip those negative and false beliefs and clear them out of the way so that you can continue to become who it is that you want to become. I'll see you then.

Do you find that what you've been taught over the years is no longer working for you, or do you keep yourself up to date with the latest benchmarks and trends?

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Speaker and Trainer of the Year and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation around leading yourself and others in a VUCA world by going a little bit deeper around one of the topics that we talked about last week, and that is removing the myths of the 20th century. 

For FREE resources and coaching from one of the leading personal development experts in the world, visit: https://www.grantherbert.com

Get the FULL TRANSCRIPT here:

https://www.grantherbert.com/blog/debunking-the-myths

Become A Coach and grow your influence, income, and impact here: https://www.peoplebuildersinstitute.com.au

Do you find that what you've been taught over the years is no longer working for you, or do you keep yourself up to date with the latest benchmarks and trends?

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Speaker and Trainer of the Year and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation around leading yourself and others in a VUCA world by going a little bit deeper around one of the topics that we talked about last week, and that is removing the myths of the 20th century.

So over the last few weeks, we've been talking about VUCA shifts. We've been talking about leading yourself, leading process, leading others in this volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous VUCA world that we now operate in. 2020 has been one of those years that will stand out in all of our lives, where it's been even more of those four things on a daily basis.

One of the challenges that we talked about last week was where people continue to navigate today's world with last century's strategies, last century's tactics. And one of those areas that really got a lot of feedback in my social media posts over the last few weeks was where I talked about work-life-balance and time management.

When we, as leaders, both of self, of staff, and of people, try to navigate that using out of date tactics, out of date strategies, it's no wonder that we are more exhausted at the end of the day. It's no wonder why we don't get as much done as we want to get done. It's no wonder that there's so much conflict and stress and things going on because what worked before, what got us to where we are, isn't going to take us to where we need to go.

And it's a pet peeve of mine when people continue to teach stuff that was from before to just continue to get their point across and to get their programs out there or whatever it may be. So, one of the things that I want to make sure that I do is always stay up to date. I'm always teachable. I believe you're either green and growing or you're ripe and rotting, and I'd rather be green and growing any day.

So, I'm continuing to make sure that I test and I measure what it is that I'm being taught. I'm looking at its validity and its relevance right now. And that's for me in my own life and my own journey. I'm a believer of just-in-time learning, rather than just-in-case learning. So, it's not about just getting heaps of information. It's about getting strategies, getting learnings, getting tips for right now that I can implement in my daily life and get results in any area of my life.

The two myths that I talked about that many people related to with are the myths of time management and work-life-balance. Work-life-balance in itself is an oxymoron, and it's no wonder no one ever achieves it.

Let me tell you, lots of books have been written about it. Lots of people have created programs around it. Lots of people who do what I do have taught you how to go after work-life-balance. And it was a number of years that I realised that that was the biggest challenge. It's something that is not achieved.

It's a myth. So, I'm going to do what I can to help you to unlearn that teaching from the past so that you can draw a line in the sand and be ready to be able to go forward with what you need to learn to navigate your life right now.

Work and life are not separate. Work is something that is a part of life. Work is something that you do for a particular part of your life. And I know for a lot of us, that's a big chunk. However, it's not in competition with life. It's actually a part of it. So when we're trying to balance two things that are in essence are one, they're together, no wonder we're not able to do it.

For me, being able to look at my life as the overarching thing, and then to look at the different elements of my life, whether that be with my own self-care, my family, my friendships, my career, my work, whatever it is, it's being able to integrate those in my life with each other.

It's about being able to make sure that I have my priorities in place, like we talked about a few weeks ago. My true priorities, not my priorities that are performance-based lead, making sure that I'm giving enough energy to my priorities, not trying to get it all perfect. Years ago, I read a book called Perfect Balance, and I thought, "This is fantastic. This is what we're looking for." And then I realised that the challenge with that as well is the word "perfect".

When we're trying to take something that's fluid and we're trying to put it into a particular container in a perfect way, we're not going to get the results we want. In fact, it's going to be quite frustrating. Taking a different look at it, having a shift in mindset to realise that it's not work-life-balance we're looking for, it's not perfect balance we're looking for, where we've got one of those wheels that we used to use years ago, and we broke it up into the various parts of our life and we made sure that we had an equal amount of time and energy went into each of those.

No, that doesn't work, and it never really did. When we have that shift and realise that what we've got to do is look at the fact that balance for me is probably different than what balance looks like for you.  Even the word "balance", let's shake that up a little bit. Balance is like, "Whoa, I'm on the edge. And I'm trying to hold on here. I'm trying to balance. I'm riding on a one wheel unicycle instead of having a tricycle that's going to keep me on the ground." No.

So, it's not about juggling, it's not about balancing. Language is so important. What it's really about is allocation of energy to priorities. And the work that I do around productivity, and we'll talk about time management in a moment, we're going to dispel that myth as well.

But, the area I do in productivity is all about having enough energy, having enough bandwidth, as I like to call it, to get done and be who I need to be in every area of my life. So, the first myth that we want to really leave behind today is the myth of work-life-balance.

So, the second myth, as we've talked about, is this thing called time management. Managing time is not something that is our responsibility or within our control. I don't know whether you've ever tried to turn your clock back an hour and then have the world fall into place with your schedule. It doesn't work.

It's bad enough when we have daylight savings change here in Australia or other places of the world. And it throws everything out into pandemonium and people turn up on calls an hour late or an hour early or whatever. So, it's not about being able to manage time and manipulate time.

And the three areas that I introduced you to a couple of weeks ago that you can control, that you have some sort of control over, and that you can strategically move towards it is your priority management, your environment management, and your energy management. And I believe that the way that you manage your priorities and your environment affects your energy.

So, let's stop trying to manage time and let's see what we can do to get our priorities in the right place, to get our environment conducive to be able to shift when we need to. So, I'm not talking about an environment that is a utopia. Everything's clean, everything's perfect. I've got my calendar all set out and I can just run that and I know it's going to work. No, because things happen.

What I'm talking about is having an environment that allows us to flow and change without it being a big disruption, to be able to have things set in concrete. I call them my non-negotiables that say, "I need to get these done. I'm going to prioritise these before I do anything else. Because if I get those done, they are moving me towards my bigger picture. Then, I can do other things." So, the second myth that we want to dispel and replace and shift our mindset from is the myth of time management.

So, how do we do this? Let me just give you a few little tips that I've learned from great mentors, from people who I've listened to over the years who I've then gone and implemented what they taught me and has allowed me to get my level of productivity to get my energy management a little bit closer to where I'd like it to be.

And I want us to understand that too that I'm not all it here. I don't have it all together. I'm a work in progress. And I believe that that is one of the keys is we need to realise that things will shift. Things will change. So, it's continuous improvement, not perfection, that I seek.

So, the first area that we want to look at which affects both the whole work-life-balance thing that we want to shift and time management is our priorities. Going back and having a look at, "Okay, what's my purpose? What's my bigger picture? What is it that I'm really wanting to achieve here? What is it that's most important to me and the future direction that I have?"

And then getting clear on that, getting clear on, as I said, from a self-care perspective, not a Performance Trap perspective of pleasing others, what's most important to me? What fits my values? What fits my ethics? What is my overall purpose in life? Why am I here? Why am I on the planet? What was I created for? Getting that big picture in place first, before we learn any skills.

I like to make sure that anything that I put together with my team, for our clients, for the people that we serve, starts at a foundation level. And that's the foundation of who do I need to be. So, who do I need to be in my work today? Who do I need to be at home today? Who do I need to be in my business today? So, getting those things like our priorities, our values, what's most important to us, our "why", however you language it, getting that together first is the most important thing.

And the second thing is then to shift to that next level, and that is the skills. So, learning skills around productivity, leveraging efficiency, whatever it is that you're wanting to increase your capacity in now that we've got the foundation built. And some of those skills that I have been able to learn are contrary to what I'd learned in the past.

Now years ago, for productivity, we would do things like write out long lists. And then what we would do is we would look at that list and go, "Okay, what are the A priorities? What are the B's and what are the C's?" And then we'd go back to the A's and we'd go, "Okay, what's the most important A? Is that I want?"

And then we'd put a two and put a three, and then we systematically go through that list. And before we went to bed that night, we would get that list and we would take the things that we didn't get done, and we'd moved them onto the list for tomorrow. And the next morning we would go through that same process again.

Now, whilst that may have worked back then, the volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous world that we live in right now does not allow that to be a strategy that works anymore because to go through that process in that much detail, something's probably already shifted while you're doing that.

So for me, it's just about having a clear understanding first at a bigger picture level as to who do I need to be to get the things done today that I need to get done so that I can have the results that I want to have.

That whole be-do-have model, which still works today, and then working on those areas of my identity, working on my personal power, making sure that I've got my energy management in place and working on the self-care and those things, rather than tactics for writing out lists or putting things in calendars or those sorts of things, because it's that energy management which is going to help to get more things done.

That's all I wanted to do this week, because a few of you had really related to that post and said, "Hey, I can totally understand that." And I'm really glad that you've done that shift in mindset.

So, what we're going to continue to do moving forward is, now that we've done those shifts in our mindset, we are going to get into some practical strategies around how to navigate the VUCA world, how to get more productive, how to position ourselves for the win, how to have relationships that are collaborative, rather than cause conflict. And those areas in our personal, our project or professional, and our people leadership.

By the way, last week, we finished our Emotional Intelligence Online Summit. It was amazing. We had people from all around the world and if that was you and you were there, I'd really love you to get in touch. Tell us what it was that you learned from that. What decisions did you make at that summit? What shifts did you make in your mindset that's going to change you and allow you to navigate beyond COVID-19?

Those videos are still up for a couple of days. So if you haven't come along or you didn't register for the event and you would love to hear some about that, please go to www.emotionalintelligencesummit.online, and you can get the recordings there. So, I just wanted to say thank you to all the speakers and to our team for making that happen. It was an amazing event.

Well, that's it from me for this week. Join me again next week, where we go deeper and look at more strategies to be able to make the VUCA shift and become the leader that we need to be in this volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world that we're working in. I'll see you then.

Are you a great technical manager or an inspirational people leader? Do you find it really, really effortless to be able to get people to come along on the journey with you, or do you have to sometimes drag them, kicking, and screaming?

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, VUCA Leadership and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation around the shifts that we need to make to be a leader in the 21st century VUCA environment by talking about the area of people leadership.

For FREE resources and coaching from one of the leading personal development experts in the world, visit: https://www.grantherbert.com

Get the FULL TRANSCRIPT here:

https://www.grantherbert.com/blog/people-leadership

Become A Coach and grow your influence, income, and impact here: https://www.peoplebuildersinstitute.com.au

Are you a great technical manager or an inspirational people leader? Do you find it really, really effortless to be able to get people to come along on the journey with you, or do you have to sometimes drag them, kicking, and screaming?

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, VUCA Leadership and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation around the shifts that we need to make to be a leader in the 21st century VUCA environment by talking about the area of people leadership.

So over the last few weeks, we've unpacked already two of the elements of VUCA Leadership that, firstly, being our personal leadership, leading self, and that's the foundation of all leadership. We talked about the fact that leadership is not something that you do. Leadership is about who you are. Leadership is a set of internal characteristics that help you to inspire yourself and others, that help you to operate out of integrity, to have empathy, to communicate well. All the skills come out of who we are, not out of what we do.

We also had talked about the fact that, unfortunately, a lot of people think that leadership is all about getting people to do what I want them to do. So, organisations will want trainers to come in and train these soft skills, as they call them, rather than working on the areas that we've already worked on of building a foundation around the leader through self-leadership.

Then, we moved into last week talking about the professional leadership or process leadership, those practical capabilities and skills that we need to have so that we can get stuff done. We talked about the three shifts that we needed to make in that area, around our performance, around our positioning, and our productivity. So now that we've built that foundational platform, we are now ready to be able to move into that third area, which is people leadership.

There are three key areas that we need to make shifts as the VUCA leader. The first area in our people leadership is around our resilience. And our resilience is a word that we hear a lot. And right now we are needing to develop resilience more than we ever have before. That speed of change and the environment that we operate in means that if we are not building up skills of resilience, we are setting ourselves up for burnout.

How do I know that? Because I've been there, I've done that. I operated that way before. One of the key areas in our leadership that creates an environment for burnout can be in our people leadership. When we feel less than capable of leading ourselves, let alone leading others, we can operate in a way that is not sustainable. And we talked about that last week as well.

So, this shift is about going from being stressed to being strong. It's about employing mindsets and capabilities that allow us to operate as one of the leaders in our organisation that operate as part of a team, operate with people that are wanting to work with us. So, resilience is vital if we're able to be a sustainable leader in the VUCA world.

The second area, and this certainly has an impact on our resilience as well, is our relationships. Relationships are the key to leadership. How we operate with others, our interpersonal relational skills, are definitely a crucial component of the vocal leader. It's about being able to go from conflict to collaboration. It's about being able to communicate in a way that people want to listen and that they hear and they get the message and they get the vision.

It's about being able to go beyond putting out fires to creating an environment where people want to work together, where people like working with each other because they look at each other's strengths, where they're being led by someone who cares about them, who shows them empathy, but keeps them accountable as well.

So, the second area, and I do a lot of work in this area for myself and my team and the people that come to me for this type of training, is in the area of relationships. And that certainly is something that we can do some more work on. I just wanted to unpack that with you today.

And the third area in people leadership is how we now get our results. So last week, we talked about in our own professional, our own process leadership, how we can be more productive, how we can sustain our performance, how we can have skills and strategies to be able to get more done.

As a leader, we need to be able to not only get our own stuff done, we need to be able to get stuff done by inspiring and leading others to get it done for us. In fact, a better way of saying that would be to get it done alongside us. And then, the collective efforts of everybody creates the result that we want. This is about having a shift in our mindset, firstly, and then in our behaviour to go from someone who gets our results by doing to getting out results through the people that we lead.

Now, obviously, to do that, we need to be able to have a lot of capabilities and a lot of competencies around emotional intelligence. And that's why this is part of our conversation. When people feel valued and we've got our relational skills working well, when we are demonstrating and we are advocating resilience and strategies to make sure that we can bounce forward from adversity challenges that we face, that we're able to lead others through that by our own example, then we are in a much better position to lead people, to get the results that they want.

Leadership is a process. Leadership is about taking individual gifts and talents and being able to put those together to create an outcome. And one of the key areas that I'll leave you with on this one is to make sure that when we are inspiring others, inspire them with their "why", not with our own.

I remember as a corporate leader, I would go to the meeting, we would find out what it is that we had to do. And then, I would come back and go, "This is what we need to do, and this is why we need to do it." And that "why" was coupled to the organisation. And I wondered why people weren't as excited about that.

What I learned to do over the years, through some great leadership and mentorship from others, was to focus on their "why" and be able to take what it is that we had to do and break it down to each individual person in the team and go, "Well, what's in it for them when they do what their part is in this process? What will they get out of that?"

And motivating and inspiring them around that meant that, I was then able to get the results that I wanted through them, rather than dragging them, kicking, and screaming.

So over the last few weeks, we've talked about what it takes to be a VUCA leader. A leader that operates in an environment that's constantly changing, that's volatile, it's uncertain, it's complex, and it's ambiguous. And we've broken that down into the three key areas of leadership and the shifts that we need to make in each, around our personal or self leadership, around our process or professional leadership, and around our people leadership.

And I know for me that this is a constant journey where I'm continually learning and keeping up to date. And it's about making sure that we do just that. Right now, we're leading in an environment that we've never perhaps needed to lead in before.

I know in my career, in my lifetime, I've never led a team in such uncertainty. So, adapting and making shifts in my mindset and my behaviour is critical if I'm able to get people over the line at this time.

Well, that's it from me for another week. Join me again next week, when we start to unpack some of these different elements of those nine shift areas for the VUCA leader, and we go a little bit deeper and get a little bit more succinct on some of the behaviours and mindsets that we need to change. I'll see you then.

Do you feel like you're always operating out of chaos, running around, trying to get stuff done all the time in your daily life, or do you tend to lead yourself well through the processes that you need to do and therefore feel like you're in control? 

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, VUCA Leadership and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation around the shifts that we need to make to operate as a leader in the VUCA world by unpacking the second area of our VUCA shift, and that is in our process or our professional leadership.

For FREE resources and coaching from one of the leading personal development experts in the world, visit: https://www.grantherbert.com

Get the FULL TRANSCRIPT here:

https://www.grantherbert.com/blog/process-leadership

Become A Coach and grow your influence, income, and impact here: https://www.peoplebuildersinstitute.com.au