Our long term success depends on our long term social, emotional and physiological health. If we don’t consistently invest in building and maintaining these, they erode and will trip us up, sooner or later.

Even a few hours sitting at a desk affects concentration and productivity, as this limits the oxygen getting to the brain. And eventually inactivity and poor nutrition lead to major career breakdowns, caused for example by strokes and heart disease.

We all need a strong network of relationships around us, in both professional and personal life. We need friends, partners, mentors, team buddies, leaders, experts in areas that we are not, advocates, sponsors. We have to get into situations where we connect with such people. Then it takes time and will to invest in building and maintaining these relationships. Take anyone for granted and they may not be there when we need them!

And we need to have the confidence in ourselves to overcome our inner critic, to experiment and sometimes fail, to take criticism and hard knocks, and to bounce back even stronger for the experience.

Don’t put this off. Take action, and keep taking action, in all three areas.

“I work in a mercenary and male dominated environment. Despite having been with the company for almost ten years and achieving a senior management position, I still found that when I smiled and said hello to the CEO in the corridor he would just keep walking. If I raised a point in meetings, he would take no notice.

I approached Hugh in search of some clarity and a way forward having considered options for short and long term goals. I was looking for a sounding board, a guide, someone on my side in helping explore and navigate successfully through the challenges I faced.

What really blew me away were insights into people who I found challenging and had historically been resistant to dealing with me. Yes, it’s a challenging environment to be a woman at senior management level in one of the main industry player’s organisations however I am determined to prevail in this climate. Having Hugh was like having a secret weapon of understanding. I finally had a magic key to connect with and influence my colleagues. I was able to understand the game that was being played without being drawn in or having it play out on me.

Let me share some key examples.

• We considered situations where I felt ineffective and devised ways to keep my character, gender and values intact without being drawn into the game in the same way others were; and developed strategies to deal with future occasions successfully; and I developed a sense of mindfulness in really seeing what is going on.

• Getting past decisions made behind closed doors by influential key players. Hugh suggested that in this environment, there is a parallel with being a sole trader in the open market. I could market myself to the high powers in much the same way. It’s all about perception of those who have the power to be your allies, those that matter in the organisation.

• Hugh helped me to realise the need to have around seven points of contact in marketing myself within the company. This created a new situation – unlike at the start, now the CEO always goes out of his way to say hello. He clearly rates and values me. It’s important to have this sense of presence in the business.

• I learned the ‘currencies’ of the various people around me – understanding what they value, what they trade in, what provokes their interest. I thought I may have surprised the CEO. I learned that for him, going quiet indicates real interest, so I can then follow it up with confidence that he wants to know more. The CEO is an ex-man’s man who has become a family man and full of new ideas. It has become clear that he loves ideas. So giving him ideas, rather than fully fledged proposals, is crucial to that connection.

• I began getting insights into the mindsets of the other important people in the company, each with a different currency, or set of triggers and ‘what’s important to them’. This all ties in to understanding what it is to be vulnerable in a competitive environment, and the different ways that people try to cope with that.

Overall my experience with Hugh most definitely exceeded expectations. As well as fulfilling my original intentions, Hugh gave me the confidence to experiment, to “break the rules”, whether with my own fears or assumptions, or with the oppressive and seemingly suffocating convention which had crept into the company culture.

I now apply myself with new vigour and sense a great ‘breath of fresh air” from applying new approaches developed with Hugh, and looking back I consider working with Hugh as one of the best career investments I’ve ever made”.

Today’s experiment: How can you better understand the difficult people you have to work or live with? One idea is to try listing at least 10 positive things about them, and if that’s easy make it 20!  What else can you learn and apply from this client’s experience?

I was among 1,700 people who were blown away by Unity Dow and her story. Humble and funny, quiet and determined, a village girl who took on the constitution and existing national culture and won. When her American husband went back to college and became a dependent, their children were then deemed to have become non-Botswanan citizens. If it had been the other way round, that would not have been the case.

So Unity gave her government 30 days’ notice that she was going to sue them, did so, and won every stage of the legal arguments over the next 5 years.

To their great credit, the government then accepted that there was something wrong with their constitution and started a national consultation exercise. One village chief was incensed by the perceived weakness of her husband in allowing her to be the head of her family … so came down strongly in favour of allowing the constitution to be changed to give women equal status, as she had proved that this was now the reality!

Unity is now Botswana’s first female High Court judge and a living example of how to combine traditional values, respect, and citizenship with a burning sense of justice – and success in changing things permanently for the better. My hero!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXh7JR9oKVE

Thanks to Tony Arena www.bc.com.au/ for sharing this. I needed an uplift after our daughter got stuck in snow in Scotland instead of being with us in Sydney for Christmas Day!

Have a happy, restorative, invigorating, safe Christmas period with people you love. And no family arguments!

Keep Smiling Through,
Hugh

If you like this post and would like to get others like it, or which cover any of the following issues, go to www.toddcoaching.com.au and register. If you don’t like the posts you can unsubscribe easily anytime.

• Glass Ceilings & Sticky Floors
• Leadership
• Personal and Professional Effectiveness
• Business Networking Made Easy

Thousand Monkeys Episode 5

I was really interested in Europe’s new economic gameplan, which he has helped to shape. It starts with the usual ‘surely you don’t mean me?’ goal (20% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020), but then gets specific. All new buildings will be energy neutral or positive, so can actually feed energy back into the grid – resulting in a boom for construction, design and green technologies. Energy needs to be stored – so there’s going to be an 8 Billion Euro rollout using various technologies like hydrogen conversion. 1 Trillion Euros will be spent developing communication systems so that they will be capable of sending energy peer to peer across cyberspace and continents. And, of course, transport will become much greener.

His point is that we have two key things almost in place to help us to evolve into our next phase, following the pattern of human development over the ages. We have a new, distributive (not top down) communication system through the web; and new sources of (also distributive) energy from sunshine, wind, water and other renewable sources.

But how do we make it happen in time? Or is it already too late?

Check out his book (by clicking the image below) for yourself and make up your own mind.

Lovin’ books that make a difference,
Hugh

There are 5 factors that are common to all successful businesses and agencies. Of course, there are other issues that are specific to your situation – but these 5 are shared by everyone.

The 5 themes are:

• Vision, leadership and direction
• Managing performance
• Customers
• Teamwork
• Attitudes and motivation.

Recent research also suggests that those companies that have strong, diverse thinking at Board level (evidenced for example by having at least three women Directors) are performing significantly better than the average through the global financial crisis. So the first of these factors, concerning leadership, includes a challenge to ensure that strategy is being formed by a diverse group of people, with diverse backgrounds and opinions, and with the strength of character to challenge that old chestnut of  ‘the way we do things around here’.

I have written an article which will help you to create a very quick health check on your company: ‘The Company Success Health Check’.

In future articles I will expand on each one, and provide tips and ideas to help you to find strategies that will improve the health and likely success of your company or agency.

Today’s Action:

Go to the article and use it to rate your company’s performance in each of the 5 areas.

Then identify the things that also need to be addressed.

Next, talk to others in your company and generate ideas.

Finally, have the courage to take action! Don’t accept second best – if your company is sick, it will drag you down with it.

Your coach,

Hugh

Boosting personal, professional and company performance

That’s the conclusion reached by Australian researcher Cordelia Fine, in her upcoming book ‘Delusions of Gender’.

The psychologist suggests that men aren’t biologically hard-wired to be better at parking, any more than women are naturally better communicators or good at multi-tasking.

Instead, she reckons that parents and teachers steer us towards gender-specific skills by encouraging certain behaviours as we grow up. While there may be slight variations in the brains of women and men, any differences in personality or skills is more likely to be down to nurture rather than nature.

The publisher says:

“This is a vehement attack on the latest pseudo-scientific claims about the differences between the sexes – with the scientific evidence to back it up. Sex discrimination is supposedly a distant memory. Yet popular books, magazines and even scientific articles increasingly defend inequalities by citing immutable biological differences between the male and female brain. Why are there so few women in science and engineering, so few men in the laundry room? Well, they say, it’s our brains. Drawing on the latest research in developmental psychology, neuroscience, and social psychology, “Delusions of Gender” rebuts these claims, showing how old myths, dressed up in new scientific finery, help perpetuate the status quo. Cordelia Fine reveals the mind’s remarkable plasticity, shows the substantial influence of culture on identity, and, ultimately, exposes just how much of what we consider ‘hardwired’ is actually malleable. This startling, original and witty book shows the surprising extent to which boys and girls, men and women are made – and not born.”

Dr Lise Eliot, of Chicago Medical School agrees. “Yes, boys and girls, men and women, are different. But most of those differences are far smaller than the Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus stereotypes suggest. Every skill, attribute and personality trait is moulded by experience,” she told New Scientist.

“People ignore huge similarity between boys and girls and instead exaggerate wildly the tiny difference between them. It drives me wild,” said Professor Robert Plomin, of the Institute of Psychiatry, London.

About Cordelia Fine

Cordelia Fine is a Research Associate at Macquarie University, Australia, and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Applied Philosophy & Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She was called ‘A science writer to watch’ by Metro on publication of her previous book, A Mind of Its Own.

If something has been learned, this suggests that it can be unlearned – and that new attitudes and behaviours can also be developed. Maybe we aren’t as hard wired as we think, maybe there’s more scope for change than we usually assume.

What do you think? Please add a comment or express an opinion on this research.

Hugh

I listened to Lis speak recently and had that great experience of having what I felt to be true validated, extended and turned into a real life case study.

In a nutshell, we need people to bring positive energy to work. All too often, we experience the opposite from our colleagues. What Lis showed us is that there is now solid research to show how each of us is affected by positive and negative attitudes and emotions in people around us, and even at a distance.

Our feelings create emotions, which we now know affect the state of our DNA, which affects our energy levels. This affects our feelings – and so it continues. DNA curls up and shuts down with negative emotions, and it’s contagious! Positive emotions have the opposite effect.

So all of us need to recognise the impact we are having on those in our teams, companies, families – and take responsibility for challenging negativity.

In one under-performing team, Lis carried out an ‘energy audit’ and ran some workshops about all of this, which clearly motivated them to decide to change – urgently. She helped them to create a new vision for the future. Then a month later she updated the energy audit, and, without having done anything more than create this positive vision, everything had changed!

Everyone had got excited about managing their own energy, they were literally bringing energy buckets into the office (with fruit, water etc), and decided to have a ‘bucket meeting’ once a month to discuss energy and strategies for keeping it positive. And the team became one of the top performing ones in the company.

Today’s Challenge:

So what are you doing about your own energy?

What can you do to help uncurl your DNA?

Is it time to step up and challenge the moaners and whingers that drag you down?

How about smiling instead of snarling at someone who upsets you?

What else can you do to help create an atmosphere where you are surrounded by positive energy?

If you can do this, watch productivity soar!

For more, check out Lis Faenza’s website -

http://thebucketrevolution.com/

You cannot be serious. What is this – a circus?

No, this is a serious logistics business that has grown from nothing, using a redundancy payment of $20,000 Aussie Dollars less than 10 years ago into a company with revenues in excess of $10 million, with warehousing the equivalent size of about 5 football fields, and which recently took its 600,000th order.

How?

Well, I was one of a lucky few to sit in on an interview by Karen Miles with Alan Higgins, the owner of Markitforce, in Sydney this week and in this article I’m going to share what I learned.

Alan Higgins had a tough start. He didn’t shine at school. He wanted to be a fireman but failed the medical. He worked at anything he could to earn his keep – barista, barman, golf caddy, on the garbage trucks, as a forklift operator, stacking bricks (10,000 per day). And after a few years he was retrenched and received a redundancy payout of $20,000.

Fuelled by the confidence to keep backing himself, and with plenty of positive reinforcement from close friends and family, he decided to take the plunge and set up his business. And early on, he took the slightly mad decision to turn down a serious job offer – General Manager of another company, with security, the company car and the rest of it – when he and his wife were expecting their first child.

Alan brings energy to every day. He thinks he might have ADD. He loves the adrenalin rush of sport and activity. Having fun is his natural style: ‘It’s a serious business but we have fun doing it’. He’s not the loud, door-slammin’ type – but everyone knows when he’s quietly pissed about something. He knows his strengths, and his weaknesses, and what he likes and doesn’t like doing. So he finds people who like the things he doesn’t, and who are good at them, and creates the right role for them.

He describes himself as ‘off the scale competitive’. When I asked him about that, as he doesn’t seem like the typical win at all costs, aggressive, competitive type, he thought about it and agreed that the key driver is to be the best that he and his company can be (rather than beating others). I think he is really competing with his own standards and expectations, and would probably love it if his competitors raised their game and gave him a better run for his money … as long as he still won out, of course.

Alan loves to be in the moment, really present with the people he is with (clients, staff, family, friends, team mates) or engaged in whatever he is doing at the time.

His attitude is to say yes when his instincts tell him to, then to find ways of delivering. His staff know that no two days will be alike – he will probably spring a surprise on them at any time, with some new challenge to solve so that the company’s promises can be met.

He is action oriented – stand-up meetings, fast decisions, make things happen. He now has two general managers (both young women incidentally) who respectively are people oriented and scientific. He has other people who know how to bark, so that he doesn’t need to pretend that he’s any good at that kind of thing.

I asked him about his love of being ‘in the moment’ and whether this affected his ability to look ahead and have a future focus. Interesting. After thinking for a moment he agreed that planning and goal setting did not come naturally to him – ‘I’m not a natural planner but it seems to work when I do it!’ – nevertheless he has a massive belief in the importance and effectiveness of doing these things.

With the help of his coaches, he developed goals in 2001 that have, somewhat to his surprise, come true. He now updates his plans and goals regularly. He believes in having clear intentions, writing them down, telling other key people what they are, and in making himself accountable to them. So his competitive spirit won’t allow him to publicly come short of the personal best that he has targeted.

He knows exactly what the company is all about. Its culture and values have to reflect fun (of course), integrity, honesty, it’s real, it’s groovy (& they all know what they mean by that), and we are accountable – to each other and to our customers.

He asks staff to write down 101 life goals – and of course, he reads through them looking for gems and for ways that he can help them to achieve their goals. One wanted to be there when her grandchildren had their first day at school – he made it happen. Another wanted to kiss her husband at the top of the Eiffel Tower on their anniversary – he helped to make it happen.

So far so good. Then Karen Miles asked him a beauty: Do you ever stuff up, and if so how badly? And here we saw just how honest Alan Higgins is, as well as his sense of humour. He shared the fact that things go wrong all the time, and some of his examples.

As soon as mistakes are recognised, they go into solution mode and do everything possible to put it right – of course, sometimes it’s too late and this is impossible. All the same, he is honest with the client throughout and makes it good one way or another. The client who was the victim of the biggest error he could think of is still a client now, two years down the line, as a result (and because they know that even after this mistake Markitforce are better than the alternatives).

For himself, he reckons his most regular mistakes are in hiring people who talk a good game but don’t deliver. As he doesn’t micro-manage it can take a while before it becomes clear that someone is not walking their talk. So now he involves others before committing to hiring, as they sense things that he doesn’t.

How does he keep people? Not everyone likes an informal atmosphere, a fun-loving boss, unpredictability and hard work. As Alan says, some people are in the wrong seat, on the wrong bus, heading in the wrong direction. He sees their distress and ‘sets them free’! He reminds his people that he is the only one who has to be there – everyone else can walk away if it’s not for them, but he can’t:  he just has to make it better and solve the problem.

With the right people he says that the key thing is to keep them fully engaged. Everyone gets high quality performance reviews every 6 months. They are treated as equals, in partnership with Alan towards making the company successful. There are no ivory towers. He walks round the warehouse when he’s there, and meets new people personally. Induction packs have a personal message from him, and business cards with imaginative job titles – like ‘Action Man’ or ‘Rap Artist’. He texts ‘happy birthday’ messages to everyone at 6am on their birthday, including many people who are no longer with the company. He gives people challenges. And he winds people up! Like the very blokey warehouse manager who got lovey dovey, romantic messages on his anniversary, with the desired result – he got right on the phone. ‘Alan! You’re a poof!’

For someone who did no more than ‘all right’ at school it strikes me that Alan Higgins is a bright, very keen learner. He has a massive and sustained commitment to business and life coaching – not only with Shirlaws who provide everything he needs at a local level, but also from gurus in various disciplines. He is a natural networker, and is constantly being exposed to new ideas and ways of working. He is a raving fan of the ‘Entrepreneur Organisation’ with 3,000 members worldwide, and which arranges a stimulating new speaker every month.

And he is an excellent time manager. Nowadays he never works on Mondays, and only guarantees to show up at the office one day per week – he will be out meeting clients, networking, walking round the business or whatever seems more interesting and productive. He only reads emails on Thursdays. Every part of the business has stand-up meetings of 10 minutes – at odd times like 10.07 am so that it’s memorable, and people stick to it.

What are his future goals?

To walk away from this within 5 years. He aims to have a payday and – you guessed it – have some fun. He wants to be able to spend as much time as he can with his family as the kids grow up. Then he wants to pay attention to startups, new entrepreneurs, maybe some non-executive directorship work, maybe help small online businesses to become successful by providing say 40 warehouse people to manage their stock and logistics.

Oh yeah. And he’s thinking of giving everyone their day off on their birthdays. Except of course that they will be woken up at 0600 by his birthday greeetings text arriving, so they should make full use of the day!

Markitforce is based in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia. Visit http://www.markitforce.com.au

If you would like help in creating a motivating, real, productive climate in your workplace – contact me. This has always been a big theme for me. I have studied other companies who show the same kind of spirit. I have owned a company myself, and proved that these ideas work – after all, I had to pay everyone’s wages every month so if they didn’t I was in serious trouble!  And I have helped many other teams and companies to transform their working environment, the way they communicate with each other, the way they are led, and the way they deal with problems.

Don’t try to do it alone!