The People Builder

Are you still stuck in a COVID bubble, where you lack certainty and clarity about what's going to happen next year, or have you reflected on the past, learned from it, and now you're putting together your plan so that you know exactly where you're going in 2021?

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Speaker and Trainer of the Year and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to start a conversation with you where we take a look at how we can use a method that I'm going to teach you to get the results that we want out of 2021.

There's no doubt, this has been a very unusual year. Plans that we all had coming into the year have gone awry, and for most of us, it's been tipped upside down. We've had to learn to do all these new things like pivot, and we've developed a new normal and all those things, and it's been challenging. And along the way, we've learned a lot of stuff. We've learned some things that we can do differently. We've learned a lot about our own strength and what we've got within us to be able to handle anything that comes up ahead of us.

So now that I've helped you to get equipped and ready to move beyond COVID-19, let's take a look at how we can set ourselves up so that we get more done in the first quarter of 2021 than most people will do out of their entire year.

For many years, I just ran on the seat of my pants. Whatever came across my world, I dealt with it then. I was never a planner. I was never someone who was organised and it wasn't until I got that way that I was able to achieve the things that I've been able to achieve so far. So even though we might be more of a creative person, we need to be able to organise that creativity.

So no matter what we do, we need to have a plan. We've heard it said before. If we fail to plan, we plan to fail. The thing is today's plans need to be different to the plans that we use to do. No more can we rely on a 10 year plan where we've got everything in place, and we know that we're going to go here and then to here, we're get to achieve these things, because we live in this VUCA world that we've been talking about, volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, and the speed of change and the frequency of change is never-ending.

So, we need to look at things a little bit closer than what we did before. But, what I love to do is I love to have a vision of where I want to be three years from now, do it in a way that I'm speaking in the present as if it's already happened, and I've got that vivid picture that's out there. As I've said to you before, what I teach my clients to do is when they put those plans in concrete, they just add a little bit more water so it doesn't set too quickly, and that way we're able to, when things change, we're able to adjust our plan without throwing the baby out with the bath water. And then what I'd like to do is bring it back to a year from now and have a look at, "Well, okay. For me to be there three years down the track, where do I need to be at the end of the next year?"

So over this month, I'm going to give you a framework so that you can actually get a plan together so that going into January, you hit the ground running, not wait until February like most people do to even look at what am I going to do this year. I'm not talking about setting New Year's resolutions. We know how successful they're not. It's a proven fact that gym memberships go way up in the first week of January. For the members of those gyms, it's really hard to get on a piece of equipment because there's so many people there, but you just have to wait a couple of weeks and there's plenty of equipment because New Year's resolutions are a wishlist. They're something that I'd love to happen, but if it's not a plan that has implementation strategies, then it's probably not going to stick.

To do the planning for the entire year of 2021, I'd like to introduce you to a four-part model that I've created called the R4 Method. Now, there's a lot of science gone behind this. The reason why it's called the R4 Method is that the four words that I use all start with the letter R. So, let me walk you through them.

Let's have a look at a timeline for the next 12 months. So if we were to draw a timeline across the bottom here, that's what it's going to be, or that's going to be our path for that 12 months. Now, what we want to do is we want to have a look 12 months from now, and on that end of the timeline, we want to put the word "results". What are the results that you want 12 months from now? So at the end of 2021, when you're sitting down and you're doing your reflect, your refocus, ready to relaunch into the next year, you'll be able to tick off these things.

What are they for you? What things do you want to look different to how they look now? So, that's the first thing is work out your results. Then what we want to do so that we understand what needs to change, what we need to do is come back to this side and have a look at the next R, which is our reality. The question I asked myself, there is, "Well, that's where I want to go, but how does it look different to that now?" So in those things that you've put down as your results, whether they be around your level of development, around where you live, around your business, around your career, whatever they are, now we look at, "Well, how does that look now?" And we do a reflection, a forward-focused reflection on where we're at with those things.

So now that we've got the results that we want and the reality of how it looks now, we've got a gap and what we then can do is work out, "Well, what do I need to do to go from where I am now to where I want to go?" Now, the challenges that are along the way in the journey, there are always what I call roadblocks. So, the next thing that I do is draw a line under that and go, "What are the roadblocks that are going to get in the way that would stop me from going from where I am now to where I want to go?" And those roadblocks could be things like mindsets, beliefs, limiting or false. They could be skills that we haven't yet developed. So, I'm not talking about external roadblocks, things that we are not in control of. What I like to do here is have a look at what are the things that I'm currently doing or not doing that have stopped me from already having those results.

The next thing is we need to look at, "Well, to get from where I am now to where I want to go and actually overcome those roadblocks, what are the resources that I need to add?" Now, the resources I'm talking about here, what new beliefs do I need to have, new behaviours, new competencies, new skills? Who else do I need to get involved? Do I need a coach or a mentor? Do I need someone that gives me that and accountability? Do I need to do some more professional/personal development? Do I need to learn some more skills? Do I need to learn to either eliminate or delegate some of the things that I'm doing? So, what are the resources that are going to help you to overcome the roadblocks and go from where you are now to where you want to go.

So, that's the four-part process, the R4 Method, results, reality, roadblocks, and resources. Now, we're going to go more deeply into each of those over the next few weeks. And what I'm going to help you to do by the end of December is have a plan ready to go into the first quarter of 2021. So to do that, what we now do with our timeline is we break it down into four even chunks. And then we go through the same process of what are the results that I wanted the end of March in 2021. And then looking at those same things, we go through the reality, the roadblocks, the resources, and we get a plan together. But today, I just wanted to introduce you to the concept. I want you to start thinking about those things so that when we go into each of those R's, you've already got some information that you can put in there. So over the next month, you can get yourself prepared so that in the first 90 days of next year, you get more results than you've done from your entire 2020. For most people in our country take two months off for two days of holidays, you're going to be able to hit the ground running, and January is going to be the start of your best ever year. Well, that's it from me for this week. Join me again next week, where we unpack the model and we look at setting our results. I'll see you then.

Are your thoughts always hijacking your attention and holding you back from the things that you want in life, or are you able to filter them in a healthy way to produce the behaviour that you need? 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 human behaviour and Emotional Intelligence by learning with you how to take our thoughts captive.

All conscious behaviour starts with a thought. So if it's not a good thought, if it's not a positive thought, it's probably not going to produce positive behaviour. Negative thinking creates a breeding ground for negative outcomes, whereas positive thinking moves you towards the behaviour that you need to get the results that you want.

Ruminating on all the things that are wrong with your situation creates roadblocks that hold you back from the thought patterns and the behaviour patterns that you need to change your situation for the better. It's time to take back control of your thoughts before they do you harm. Negative or unresourceful thinking is like the impurities that exist in a precious metal that de-value it. We have to remove those impurities so that it can reveal its true beauty and its true value. When they heat the metal up, it brings the impurities called dross to the surface and that enables them to skim it off the top and be left with just the purity of the metal itself.

So too when things heat up in our circumstances those unresourceful thoughts rise to the surface, just like the dross in the metal. It's at this point that we need to learn how to remove them, skim them off the top so that we are left with the best version of ourself. We take them captive, call them out for the impurities that they are, and then replace them with more resourceful thoughts that's going to help us to move forward and get the results that we want. So, let me take you through a five step process to be able to not only take them captive, but to reverse the negative process and design a thought pattern and an inner dialogue that's going to help us to move forward and get the results that we need right now.

Number one is being able to recognise those unhealthy thoughts in the moment. Remember: Social and Emotional Intelligence is the ability to be aware of what's going on for us emotionally in the moment, and it's the same here. We need to be able to have space and stop and go, "Okay, I'm recognising this dross is coming to the surface." So, that's the first step. To do this, we need to be on guard to be able to hear that small voice rising up, that mini-me, those thoughts and those beliefs coming to the surface. So, we need to make sure in this step that we're always looking for thoughts that aren't going to service.

Step two is to do an audit of our thoughts. It's just like when a suspect is taken captive on your favourite crime movie and they take them in, and they sit them down, and they ask them questions, and the whole purpose is to get the real truth. The whole purpose is to uncover anything that's not really true, any inconsistencies in their story. So, this step is where we use our logical brain and we take inventory of what our thoughts are saying. So, step two is to do an audit of your thoughts.

Step three is to challenge the validity of what you uncover. So when we go back to our story of someone in a crime movie, whether they're in the police station or they're in the courthouse, they'll be giving this story and there'll be things that come up that just don't add up, or they don't fit the story that's going to give you the outcome that you want. So, what we need to do is challenge the validity of that. We need to object to it and go, "Well, hang on a minute. No, that's not true." So if I'm thinking a worst case scenario, I can bring that back to reality by going, "Well, hang on a minute. No, that's not true. That's my small voice working on my fears, working on my negative beliefs, my limiting, my false beliefs." And we can call it out and say, "No, that's not true, and I'm not going to accept that as being so."

Step four is to offer an alternative. So now that we have taken it captive, we've interrogated it, we've done an audit on what it's saying really and found the truth, we can now offer ourselves a different way of thinking. We can flip the beliefs. We can turn the thinking around. We can look at, "What do I need to think that's going to give me the energy, the impetus, the behaviour that I need to move forward and get the results that I want?" So, the next step, number four, is to offer ourselves an alternative to the negative or unresourceful thinking. 

And step five is to change the narrative. We tell our own story, we're in charge, we're in control of what we let become our truth. So now that we have taken it captive, we've done an audit, we've challenged the validity and we've said, "No, that's not going to serve me. That thinking is not true", we now move forward with a different thought pattern, with a different self-talk, a different inner dialogue, one that is scripted in the positive, one that allows us to move forward and to do what we need to do right now to change our situation for the better.

You can become the person that you need to be so that you can do what you need to do to have the results that you want in your life. You just need to take back control of your thought life.

Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week when we start a new conversation and take all that we've learned over the previous months and we prepare our 2021. We look at a process of what we need to do to write our own version of the script and to plan to have the best year that we've ever had. I'll see you then.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.