The People Builder

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.

So, last week we started the journey by talking about our personal leadership. We understand that leadership is about who I'm being. It's not a set of things that I do. Leadership is about a set of character traits of who you are, not just a set of skills that you need to learn when you're in a management position and you want to get other people to do what you want them to do.

We talked about the fact that there were three areas where we needed to make mindset and behavioural adjustments or shifts so that we could be the leader in this volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world that we now operate in.

So this week, I want to unpack three areas that we need to make, these shifts in our process leadership. A process, or depending on what area you work in, your professional area of leadership is all about getting stuff done in the time that we've got to do it with the resources that we have and in amongst everything else that we've got going on.

So, whether you are talking about this in the context of your work, your career, your business, or in your entire life, I want to make sure that you understand that these shifts are critical for everyone. Not just those who we think are the leaders. I believe that everybody's a leader, and we talked about that last week, that it starts with leading self.

So, let me take you through and help you understand what these three areas are. And then in coming weeks, we'll unpack some of these based on your feedback, and I'll give you some help as to what you can do next. The three areas of process or professional leadership that I want to talk to you about are your performance, your positioning, and your productivity.

When I think of performance, I like to think of cars. For many years I was involved with a race team. I loved cars. I started my career as an automotive engineer. I pulled my car apart on the weekend, just because I knew how it worked. And I know my mom would look at me, she'd go, "What are you doing that for?" And I go, "Well, 'cause I can." And I was just fascinated by that.

These days, as I've matured, cars are not as important to me. However, I love watching a high performance vehicle do its thing. I love to watch a high performance vehicle not only do its thing, but I love to watch pit crews. And I love to watch how the leadership of a race team can be then put into leadership as a metaphor for what it is that I teach in the VUCA leadership programs that I run.

In performance, I love thinking about a car because it helps me to realise that, just like a car, I need to have some certain things to make sure that I can perform at the highest level.

The first thing is that I need to have a well-put together car that's maintained well. I need to have great fuel in it without impurities, and I need to have great tires. I need to have a great pit crew who understand things that I don't need to about the car, and I go to when I need to get those sorts of things fixed. And I need to understand that if my car is not running to its optimum level that I'm not going to get the performance out of it that it was created to give me.

Then that in itself is a great metaphor for us to look at our own performance. If we don't put the right stuff in, if we don't get the tune-ups that we need, if we don't have a pit crew around us, we're not going to be able to perform at the level that we want to perform.

Now, the second thing I want to talk about with performance is that there's been this misunderstanding around the term "high performance". And one of my greatest coaches and mentors over the last few years, Brendon Burchard, he runs the High Performance Academy and I read a great book of his called High Performance Habits. And in that, he gave me some distinctions around performance that were in line with, aligned with how I was thinking.

Because for years, this high performance thing has become hustle and grind. "Let's get as much done as we can. Let's work from daylight until dark so that we get all this stuff done." And that's a challenge because operating a race car at that high level for long periods of time, it's going to reduce the performance and it's the same with us.

So, that's why I call myself a sustainable performance coach and performance needs to be looked at that way. How do I operate so that I not only get done what I need to get done, I can do that over the long period? And as things change in this volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous, VUCA world that we're talking about, I'm able to make those shifts without it burning me out.

So, in this area, we need to make a shift from going from low performance to high performance, but we need to be able to do it in a way that's sustainable.

The second area that we need to make shifts in in our professional, in our process leadership is in our positioning. Now, what I'm talking about here is as a leader, we need to place ourselves not always at the front, not always being the one that's got all the answers, that's doing everything, that's making all the decisions.

We need to position ourselves so that we can allow others to come along on the journey with us and position ourselves in a way that we're able to sustain that performance. I know for years I would say things that were not helping like, "Oh, look, I've just get it done myself." It's a lot easier for me to just put my head down, my tail up, and work hard and everything will fall into place, rather than looking at how I can harness the collective ideas and the collective efforts to get these things done.

So to do that, we need to position ourselves as a leader who is not one that blends in, but one that stands out, however, stands out for the right reasons. I know in my military career, my early corporate career, most of my corporate career, I was one of those leaders that stood out, but I stood out because I wanted to prove myself. I stood out for the wrong reasons.

I stood out because I created problems all the time. I created challenges. I've created conflict. I had a low self-worth, low self-image. I therefore tried to prove myself and I worked too hard on doing that, and that created some challenges. What I'm talking about here is standing out as someone who is someone I want to follow. Standing out as someone who is vulnerable, someone who knows they don't have all the answers and they also value my input. So, the second key area is positioning.

The third area that we make our shifts in to operate in professional or process leadership in the VUCA world is in our productivity. And our productivity is not a dirty word. It's not something that only a few can get right. It's not about making lists, and it's not about all those things that we learnt last century that served us well then. It's about getting to a position of leveraged efficiency.

If we can get more out of our race car without needing to invest more in it, if we're able to drive it in a way that our fuel is going to last longer, then we need to do less pit stops, therefore we do better times, then we win the race. So, productivity is all about going from being in chaos to getting back into control.

So to do that, there are three areas that I teach. Now, firstly, before you can take advantage of these areas, you need to unlearn something that you, like me, probably learnt in 20th century leadership and that is this thing called time management. I place it up there with work-life-balance. They're things that never worked anyway, and they're definitely not going to work now.

Work-life-balance is a myth. It assumes that work and life as separate and time management assumes that we can actually control time. We can wind the clock back. We can get more than 24 hours in a day and that's not something that we're able to do. So instead, there are three things that I teach in the area of productivity, and we might unpack some of these in coming weeks, but I just want to give them to you now.

These are things that you can control when you have the right mindset and the right capabilities and the right competencies are being built. And we've been talking about lots of these over the weeks and weeks that we've been together having this conversation during this Beyond COVID-19 series that I'm doing.

So, the first area that we can control is our priority management. Now, when we have a set of clear priorities and we know what's important, by the way, important to us, important to the entire overall big picture, not important to our self-talk, our unhealthy inner dialogue that says, "Oh, look, if I get that done, they'll like me", and that approval-driven priority, but our true priorities that come out of who we are, out of our purpose.

When we manage our day, our week, our year around those priorities, then what we achieve will be aligned with what our purpose is and what it is that we're trying to achieve overall.

The second area is environment management. We live in a world of distraction. People go out to a restaurant and they're on their phone while they're eating and they're conversing with each other. And I know I'm guilty of this. I'll be watching a movie on TV with my wife, but I'm checking Facebook at the same time. This creates brain switching. The brain is not designed to multitask. So, we need to make sure that we control our environment and an untidy desk, I'm sorry to burst your bubble, is not a sign of genius. It's a sign of a lack of organisation.

Having an environment that has creative colours in it, that is clean, has a calmness about it, creating an environment that allows you to actually have some time on your own to get some stuff done and have some time that scheduled with others, rather than being reactionary all the time. And having that open door policy that says, "I'm a leader that allows my people to just come and talk to me when they need to." That doesn't help you, and it definitely doesn't help them. So, the second area is environment.

And then the third area is energy management. When we operate out of high performance in a sustainable way, when we look after our brain, our body, when we hydrate, when we'd get the sleep we need all those things. When we are working on the true priorities in a way that keeps us congruent with who we are, when our environment is such that we can find things when we need to, we are not distracted, we actually end up having enough bandwidth, as I like to call it, enough energy to sustain ourselves and get the things done that we need to get done. We also are able to do it in a way that creates greater results in the individual tasks and projects that we're doing.

So, that's the three areas that I chunked down in when I'm working on productivity. And productivity, as I said, it's not about just having lists and getting stuff done. It's about leverage efficiency. So, there are the three areas that we make shifts in our thinking and in our behaviour to be the VUCA leader who can lead a process and operate and have capabilities in their professional area.

Well, that's it from me for another week. Join me again next week, when we unpack the third area of shift in our VUCA shift program and that is the area of people leadership.

People leadership's not where it starts. We've now built a platform and you're ready to go to that next level. So, join me again next week, when we continue our conversation around VUCA leadership and how we can operate, not just in COVID times, beyond COVID-19 in this volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world that we now operate in. I'll see you then.

Are you always in control with what you get done in a day, in a week? Do you find that the most challenging person to lead is yourself? 

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 leadership by talking about the first area of leadership and that is Personal 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/personal-leadership

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

Are you always in control with what you get done in a day, in a week? Do you find that the most challenging person to lead is yourself?

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 leadership by talking about the first area of leadership and that is Personal Leadership.

We started last week talking about how we need to make certain shifts in the way that we lead because we're leading in a different environment to what we were 10 years ago. We now work in a VUCA world. You've heard that term before. It's about volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. It says things move really, really fast. We don't have all the answers and sometimes we've just got to make it happen with what we've got.

Leadership is not a set of skills for telling other people what to do. And unfortunately, I have experienced a change in mindset around what leadership is. I speak to people all the time and they think it's all about managing people. It's about getting people to do things. It's about achieving results by leading people. I want to challenge that again today by saying that leadership is a set of internal characteristics of the leader.

There's a great principle that I've learned when I did my coach training many years ago and it's the Be-Do-Have model. It's not all about just getting things done. It's about who do I need to be so that I then do the things that I need to do to have the results that I want.

So, the 21st century VUCA leader needs to start with the area of leadership called Personal Leadership, leading self. As I said, sometimes for me, I was the hardest person to lead. And I know that I got promoted into positions as I went through my military and my corporate career, and I thought, "Fantastic!" Had a big smile on my face and it looked good, but I was thinking, "You're kidding. I don't know how to lead myself. How am I supposed to lead other people?"

And it was then that I discovered that I needed to build a platform of my own leadership and then others would follow that. So, let me unpack what elements we work on in the area of Personal Leadership.

The first area is our identity, and we've been doing a lot of work around that over the last few months. That personal power. Who do we think we are? What limiting or false beliefs that we may have? Our level of confidence and our ability to know that we have it within us and around us everything that we need to be able to get ahead in life. A lot of people say things like, "I'm not a leader. Leaders are born and I wasn't born a leader." And beliefs like that hold them back from being who they need to be to lead themselves, to lead process, and to lead people.

The second area is the area of intelligence. IQ is not enough. Technical ability is not enough. We all need to work on our emotional intelligence, our social intelligence, and creative intelligence. It's not just about the ability to do the job. We need to be able to interact with our self. We need to interact with others. So therefore, these skills that we've been talking about over the last few months are vitally important to lay the platform so that you can be who you need to be to lead in any situation.

The third area is the area of intention. To be a great leader of self, we need to know how to set intention. We need to be purposeful and have plans put in place so that we know where we're going, whether that be for our career or our whole of life.

So, the three areas of Personal Leadership that I work on in the program is our identity, our intelligences, and our intention. And we've done a lot of work on those things over the last few months. So, if you haven't listened to those, I suggest that you do go back, refresh, go through what it is that we were talking about in the areas of personal power in particular so that you understand what it is that you need to be able to lead self.

What are the key crucial competencies of this VUCA world for you to be able to lay that platform of self leadership? We need to make shifts in our mindset and in our behaviour the volatility, the uncertainty, the complexity, and the ambiguity of the marketplace that we're working in. So, let me just finish up today by unpacking the shifts that we need to make in those three areas of Personal Leadership. Let's start with identity.

The shift that we need to make in identity is to shift from feeling like a fraud to being in flow with who we really are. It's all about authenticity. It's all about getting back to our true identity, rather than running that Performance Trap to get the approval of others. So, the first area we need tonight is in the area of our identity.

The second shift we need to make in our intelligences is to go from singular focus to a multifocus in our intelligences for us to be able to lead ourselves and then go on to lead process and lead others. There are many other skills that we need, and these are not the warm and fuzzies. These are not the, "They'd be nice to have, but they're not as important as the technical skills."

In my experience, the word soft skills is used incorrectly because it's a lack of these competencies that create all the challenges. So therefore, these are the harder skills. These are the tangible skills that we need to be able to navigate this thing called self-leadership. So, the second area is to make a shift in our intelligences.

The third area that we made to make a shift in is in our intention. We need to shift from being scattered and just running by the seat of our pants and we'll just see what happens tomorrow to planned and purposeful so that nothing is a surprise. Now, I know that particularly in the environment we're in right now, things happen, things change.

However, when we are a person that is well-planned and we anticipate change and we have contingencies in place, all we need to do is shift the goalposts, rather than throw the baby out with the bath water and going to overwhelm and get nothing done. So, the third area that we need to make our shifts in is the area of intention.

So, there you have Personal Leadership. It's all about our identity, our intelligences, and our intention. And it's vital for us to be able to get that area sorted out before we move into leading process, before we move into leading people.

So, if you're like I used to be and you think leadership is about getting people to do what you want them to do, consider a mindset shift to go, "No, no, leadership starts with me." Leadership starts with self and set some goals around where you can work on your Personal Leadership.

Well, that's it from me for another week. Join me again next week, where we go into the next area where we need to make these shifts in our leadership, and we look at the area of Process Leadership. I'll see you then.

Do you see leadership as a set of skills that you need to get other people to do what you want, or do you see it as a personal responsibility and a set of internal character traits?

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Speaker and Trainer of the Year and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to start talking to you and having a conversation around the area of 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/the-vuca-shift

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

Do you see leadership as a set of skills that you need to get other people to do what you want, or do you see it as a personal responsibility and a set of internal character traits? Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Speaker and Trainer of the Year and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to start talking to you and having a conversation around the area of leadership.

We live, work, and operate in what's been called a VUCA world. That is one that is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, and never has that statement been more true than it is right now. Effective leadership is a critical component of navigating the VUCA world. So, what I want to do is I want to start a journey today to unpack what I call the VUCA Shift.

In the 20th century, leadership was relegated to a set of skills that you needed to be taught, if you are in a management position, if you're in a position whereby you needed to get others to come alongside with you and to do the stuff that you had to get done. But, I want to challenge that.

For me, leadership has always been a set of internal characteristics that you would possess to be able to not only lead others, but to start by leading yourself. Not only has the definition of leadership changed and evolved, but we're in a VUCA world. We're in the 21st century. So, no longer can we rely on the teachings that we used to rely on last century.

We need to upskill ourselves so that we can learn and develop and implement the competencies that will help us to navigate that volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world that we now operate in. We could start off by talking about the distinction between management and leadership. And in my opinion, the two are totally different.

Management is about process, whereas leadership is about people. I don't know about you, but nobody wants to be managed. No one wants to be controlled and told what to do, whether that be from themselves or from others. So, the first thing, as we start this journey together this month, that I want us to get a hold of is that management does not have a place with people.

Today's world is way faster than it used to be. Things are changing so quickly and so regularly. The speed of change, coupled with the changes in technology and the way that we do things, means that we need to learn different skills. And I call it a shift from what we used to do, hence the name VUCA Shift.

A VUCA leader needs to be able to operate in a VUCA world. And what I want to do is just unpack some distinctions around how we lead in this 21st century. In the coming weeks, we will unpack some individual components of that, but today is about getting an overview so that you know that this is the journey that you need to come on with me this month. There are three key areas that I break this down into.

So, the VUCA leader needs to make shifts in these three areas. The first area is personal leadership. This is all about leading self, and this is where it starts. And we're going to talk about that next week. The second area is process leadership or project leadership, where these are skills that we need to employ to be able to lead change, to lead productivity, to lead the outcomes that we want. And then, the third one is people leadership, and it's a sequential journey.

A lot of leadership training goes straight to people leadership without building the foundation of personal and professional or process leadership. And this is where all the challenges come in. You get promoted to a leadership position and you think, "I can't even lead myself. And now you want me to lead others?" And this is where the challenges create abrasive leadership and create situations where leaders are not enjoying the process either.

So, by building a foundation around personal leadership, around your identity, around your intelligences, and around your intention that we've talked about in previous weeks, then you're building a platform to be able to then learn and employ the next lot of skills. And then by adding the professional skills around leading process and around your performance, around your productivity, these areas will help you to achieve personal results.

And then we move into the people leadership area where we learn to be more resilient and respectful, and we learn to have better relationships, and we learn to get results through people, rather than just from ourselves. So, all these things take a shift. A shift, firstly, in mindset, a shift in the skills that we have, a shift in our behaviours and in the way that we implement our strategies and the things that we're going to learn as we go along the journey.

So, a VUCA Shift is designed to help a leader to be empowered to lead themselves, to lead process, and to lead people in the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous marketplace that we will operate in today. And right now, in 2020, it's never been more volatile, more uncertain, more complex, or more ambiguous than any other time in my career.

So, this is why I wanted take us through this journey this month. So, come along on the ride, where I'm going to show you in each of those individual areas the shifts that we need to make and then how to make them. 21st century leadership is all about developing an internal set of characteristics to help you to navigate your journey as a leader, and to enjoy the experience way more than you do if you employ last century's strategies and teachings.

Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week, where we start unpacking this VUCA Shift by talking about the important area of personal leadership. I'll see you then.

Do you fail to prepare for the future or do you recognise the need for change, take charge of your own change initiatives, and then remove the barriers to that change?

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 all things emotional intelligence by having a conversation around creating your own change, rather than waiting for others to do it for you.

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/creating-your-own-change

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

Do you fail to prepare for the future or do you recognise the need for change, take charge of your own change initiatives, and then remove the barriers to that change?

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 all things emotional intelligence by having a conversation around creating your own change, rather than waiting for others to do it for you.

We all know that 2020 has been an environment of change on a daily basis, and it's certainly been a major change in what our normal is right now. Over the last few weeks, we've talked about having more personal agility, being more intentional, and being able to remove those resistance roadblocks that are creating anxiety around all the change that's happening in our life right now.

However, this is not just a conversation for COVID-19, this is a conversation we need to have about the rest of our life. Our future. I work with people every day who resist change overtly and covertly. And they say things like, "Well, this is the way we've always done it around here." And the fear of change is stopping them from bringing out their personal best.

Now, we've talked about the meaning that we put on change and our mindset around it and how that can either be empowering and help us to navigate change or disempowering and keep us in the status quo, fearful of being able to move forward.

And right now, I want to make sure that I'm doing what I can to keep the conversation going around being able to create the change in your own life, rather than letting it happen around you. Perhaps it's time to challenge the status quo, to stand in opposition to that fear of change, and to become a champion of change in our own life and the intrinsic effect that that will have on the lives around us.

So, what I want to do is I want to give you some tips that I've found have helped me and the people that I work with to navigate change, to take control of our own situation, and create the changes that we want to see in our world.

Number one is to challenge that status quo and rather than thinking, "Well, that's the way it's always been done.", have a mindset that says, "Just because it's always the way it's been done, is it the only way that we can do it? Is there a different way that will produce different results?"

So, the first thing that we need to do is open our mind to change. We've worked over the last few weeks about being able to make a change, something that we embrace, rather than fear, something that we look forward to, rather than resist. So, the first thing we need to do is challenge our own status quo.

Number two is to identify where and how we could do things differently. Now that we've got our brain in a state to think logically, now that we've done an audit on our thoughts, our beliefs, what we feel about change, what our status quo is, now we are in a position because of our open mind to look at things differently and go, "Hey, I could do this this way. I could do this differently."

So, it's not about using "better", it's not about using the word "should". We're not being judgmental here. We're not saying what we've been doing is wrong. What we're doing is identifying things that could do with a bit of a change. Right now, here in Australia, we've just gone into spring. So, there's an opportunity for us to do a spring clean on the way that we're getting things done. So, number two is to write out a list to identify things that could possibly do with the change.

Number three is to develop a plan for change, rather than just seat of the pants, "Let's just wing this and see if we can get a result here." Now that we've got a list of what needs to change or what we could change, the next step is to actually create a plan for change. So, it's something that we do intentionally, rather than something that just happens.

So, in each initiative that you come up with, an area of your life, your business, whatever it is for you, that you could change, write out a plan. Write out a plan that says what needs changing, when it needs changing, by how it needs changing, who needs to be involved, how are we going to measure the change, et cetera, and have a written plan.

We then transfer into whatever it is that keeps us on track, whether it be, for me, my calendar. I use a program called Asana. I've got my team as accountability partners and put it into that system so that you actually go from it being something that you want to do to something that gets done. So, number three is to develop your change plan.

Number four is to make sure that your change is covered in terms of the impact that it has on other people. When there's other people involved in the change, we need to make sure that we identify how they may need to change as well, or how what we're doing will affect what they're doing.

So, it's imperative to get those people involved in that change process, rather than what I've done many times over the years with my team is I just decided that was going to be a change. And then I just started changing and people are thinking, "What's going on here? This is different to the way we were doing it before." And then they wouldn't be able to support what it is that I was changing. So, number four is to make sure that you consider who else is involved in the change.

And number five is to start making the change. Everything that we do in life starts with the first step. So, now, over the last few weeks, we've learned how to be more empathetic when we're working with others. We've learned how to communicate differently. We've learned how to handle conflict. We've learned how to be more adaptable and have more agility. We've learned how to be more intentional in what it is that we're doing.

So, now we're ready to make some change that we might have been putting off in our life. There's been many times where I've been working with people who were resisting change simply because they didn't know what was the first step.

So, now that we have a plan, we can break that plan down and take the first step. And my experience is that every time we take a step, it gets a little bit more clearer. The clarity comes. We know what we're doing. And that fear and that anxiety and the things that were holding us back before dissipate because we see the benefit of the change.

So, number five is now that we've got all the planning in place and we've got the mindset where it needs to be is do something today to move towards that change.

So, change is something to be embraced. It's not something to be feared. And now that we know that, we can be the master of our own change. Sometimes people get up and they just go to work. They just do what they did yesterday, and they wait for things to change. And I know I've been in that position in certain parts of my life.

But what I'm encouraging you to do is to become a catalyst of change. And catalysing change is one of the 26 competencies that I work with in social and emotional intelligence. And it's definitely one that's getting a lot of work right now. So, let me encourage you to be the change that you want to see in the world, to have a plan, to make those changes, to put aside all your fears and your doubts as to whether or not you can do it, and get some support, get some help.

If you need to work with someone like me, if you need to do some sort of an online course that will help you to develop those skills, if you need to get other people involved, then do that and make the changes that you need to make right now. We're going to make changes anyway. Why not make them the ones that we want to make?

Well, that's it for me for another week. Make sure that you subscribe, that you go to my website grantherbert.com, you join the conversation, that you leave me some comments, that you share this on your social media. And join me again next week, when we continue the conversation around all things emotional intelligence, positive psychology, neuroscience, VUCA leadership, where we look at some key areas of personal leadership that will help us to actually be able to make the change that you're deciding to make today. I'll see you then.

Do you think and act on purpose or do you tend to run by the seat of your pants?

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Master Trainer and Sustainable Performance Coach, and this week, I want to continue our conversation around self-management, the second quadrant of emotional intelligence, by talking about the competency of intentionality.

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/being-more-intentional

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

Do you think and act on purpose or do you tend to run by the seat of your pants? Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Master Trainer and Sustainable Performance Coach, and this week, I want to continue our conversation around self-management, the second quadrant of emotional intelligence, by talking about the competency of intentionality.

Some people take control and make things happen where others just sort of look back and go, "Wow, what happened?" Working in the daily grind where the same old thing happens every day and it's just in a bit of a rut. And you just get up and just run the same patterns and do the same thing and then, at the end of the day, not quite sure what you really got done.

Continually reacting to other people pushing buttons for you, or for crisis situations, being totally out of balance in the things that you focus on. And the end result is comparison and regret and feeling guilty about the lack of effort that you've put in, or the lack of forward movement that you've got on your goals.

Comparing yourself with others is one of the biggest dream stealers. And we have so many opportunities out there to see on social media, on television, wherever it is, others who are showing you what they're doing. So, therefore, because we're not acting on purpose, we've focused on what others are achieving and we regret not being there ourselves.

But when we work on our intentionality, we get different results. We go from a daily grind to a daily flow where things happen as they're supposed to happen, where we're operating, not from the seat of our pants, but on the front foot.

That's a cricket analogy whereby when a bowler bowls a ball, particularly a spin bowler, we're not quite sure what's going to happen when it hits the pitch. So, if the batsman takes a step forward and gets on the front foot, ready to take the ball, it takes out that ambiguity because he meets the ball where it pitches and that's what we can do as well when we set intention.

And instead of being out of balance, we build our own perfect balance where we're prioritising things that are most important to us, and we feel proud, and we feel fulfilled by whatever it is that we've achieved in our day, in our week, in our month, whatever it is.

And to have these results, we need to develop the competency of intentionality. Intentionality is thinking and acting on purpose. Taking control of your life, taking control of your day, and making sure that you decide where it is that you put your energy. So, therefore, you are in control of your destiny. So, let me take you through five key ideas that will help you to be able to lay this platform that you need to be more intentional.

Number one is to know your purpose. When we have that bigger picture idea of what we're on the planet for, when we know what our purpose is, we're able then to make sure that whatever we give our time, our energy, our bandwidth to is actually related to and linked to that purpose. When we lack purpose, we can just do anything. We can just go about our day, seat of the pants mentality, and just look busy.

But when we ask ourselves the question, "For what purpose?", we then give that particular activity that we may or may not want to do a priority. If it's working towards the purpose, then, "Hey, it's something that I need to do." "If it's something that's going to detract from my purpose, then it's something I need to discard." "If there are things that I can decide between, the one that's the highest priority will be the one that moves me in my purpose."

The second one are our horizons of focus. A lot of times when we get trapped in this rut, this day to day, this grind, it's because we are just looking at what's in front of us. However, when we have a purpose, we can then look at that purpose and, indeed, our life from a higher perspective.

It's like taking a satellite view of the earth. So, we're looking down on the entire situation and seeing the whole picture, not just this thing that's come across my desk or across my day that I need to decide whether or not it's urgent based on normally other people's requests.

So, the horizons of focus that we need to look at are up there in the atmosphere, then down, just as we're going up through the clouds and the runway, what's right in front of us that needs to be looked at now. How are we going to get this journey started?

So, start by having a big picture view. What is it that your overall purpose is achieving? What is it that you want to get done this year, this quarter?

So, have a look at it from a macro-level and then bring it back to what I need to do this week, this month, then bring it back and have a look at, well, what do I need to do this week, today, right now so that when I put those steps together, it will achieve that weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly goal, whatever it is. So, make sure that we understand the horizons of focus.

Number three is plan your journey. There's been many times, and I think I talked about this one of the other weeks, there's many times where I just would jump in the car with the family. We say, "Let's go somewhere." And we would not, and when I say "we", I meant me, we would not book a hotel or those sorts of things. We just run by the seat of our pants because that was exciting and the variety was great.

And there've been occasions where we've had to drive a lot further before we could get into a hotel using that analogy or that methodology. And it's the same with our life, our week, our day, we need to make sure that it's planned. We need to make sure that we know where we're going, we know how we're going to get there, and we know what the milestones are along the way.

If you're like me and planning is not a natural thing, it's something that you really need to get good at. Those who fail to plan, plan to fail. You've heard it before. And I used to think that was some cliche thing that people used to say, and let me tell you, I now know that they were so right.

Because when we've got things planned, things happen because we want them to, not because they just turn up. We're expecting them. They're part of the journey. The other thing about planning the journey and having those milestones is we can measure where we've been. We can measure how far we've come. So, number three, plan your journey.

Number four is take action. Let the green light go. It doesn't matter if everything's not perfect. Every journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. So, just get started. Do something today towards that goal. Do something that's going to take you one step closer from where you are now to where you want to go.

A lot of times we want to get it a hundred percent ready. We want to make sure everything's right, that everything's perfect, and it's never going to be that way. So, the fourth big idea, when we want to make sure that we achieve things through intentionality is hit the start button, take action.

And number five is to reflect to refocus. So, on the journey, we need to make sure whether it's a day, a week, or whatever, that we have milestones where we stop and go, "How far have we got?" It's like on the car journey where we stop, we need to fill the car back up. We need to go to the bathroom, get something to eat, whatever it is.

We need to make sure that we've got these stops planned in along the journey. And what we do with that is we reflect on where we've been. And when we do this, we do it in a special way. We do it with forward-focused reflection, not looking back and then beating ourselves up with what we haven't got done.

And to help me remember this, I like to think of driving a car. I like to think of the windscreen, that big piece of glass in front of us, that also has this little rear-vision mirror that's there so that we can have a look every now and then and see what's happening behind. And when we reflect, we need to do it in the same proportion. We need to make sure that most of our focus is still on where we're going, just checking in and doing two things.

One, to have a look and identify what we got right. What was a win? What worked? And then number two is to be able to recognise what still needs doing, what we didn't quite get the result with that we wanted. So, we then are able to refocus our energy and our efforts on the things moving forward. So, number five is to make sure that we reflect and refocus.

So, there's five big ideas, key principles that we need to employ so that we can get more done, so that we can be more intentional. So, what I want you to do at the end of this episode is just pause for a moment and ask yourself that first question, "For what purpose? What is it that you are on the planet for? What is it that you are wanting to achieve?"

And get some clarity around that so that you can then operate your day days with purpose and making sure that you set the right intention of where you put your time, your energy, your finances, whatever it is that you need to be able to be the best steward of.

Running by the seat your pants is not as romantic as it sounds. It creates a lot of disharmony and a lack of results. Setting intention, working on your intentionality, that critical competency of self-management in the spectrum of emotional intelligence, is going to allow you to get more done in a day than most people get done in a week. So, a lot of us right now are in a situation where things have changed, where this COVID-19 has totally changed the way we operate.

And I know myself that there were times when I was just starting to go through the motions, doing the same old stuff every single day, and I was getting into one of those ruts that I talked about before. Intentionality will bring us out of that rut, and I just want to encourage you that if you're feeling like you're getting nowhere, that you're just like a hamster on a wheel, then take what I've taught you today, set that intention, and enjoy the results moving forward.

Well, that's it for me for another week. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, that you share this with your friends, and join me again next week where we continue this conversation around the self-management competencies of emotional intelligence by empowering you to be the creator of change in your life. I'll see you then.

Do you always expect the worst during setbacks, see them as insurmountable and out of your depth, or do you see them as temporary and have the confidence to be able to navigate your way through them?

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Master Trainer and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation around emotional intelligence self-management strategies by talking about the very important topic right now of realistic optimism.

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https://www.grantherbert.com/blog/maintaining-realistic-optimism

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