I posted back in February about something called Cognitive Distortions.  Basically, those pre-programmed reactions formed from previous experiences, which drive our future reactions to situations.  If you’re aware of them, you can do something about them, by re-framing the way you see/digest or internalise things.

I was reminded of how diferently we all see the world just recently whilst doing some reviews.  Taking a look back at some personality profiles that I’d had done on some key individuals showed how differently people communicate, process information and think.  Just because I can think and talk at the same time, it doesn’t mean somebody else can.  It makes them no better or worse than me, we just do things differently.

A great example of this can be seen in brainstorming sessions.  If you put a roomful of people together, don’t be surprised if some people look they are generating far more ideas than some others, it’s just how they’re wired.  Other people in the room can generate those same valid ideas, but may need a little longer, or pre-notice, or a couple additional days after to process and think.  Until you start to appreciate such matters, you may not get the full potential of your team, assuming that one communication style fits all – it doesn’t.

We use the Meyers-Briggs profiling system, of which there are sixteen characteristic profile types.  What’s amazing when you ask your team to do it, is that you get that “aha” moment, when you begin to understand why some people are highly organised, some disorganised.  Some introvert, some extrovert, some ideas people, some reflectors.  The bottom line is that there is a huge variety of personalities out there, some more common than others, and all subject to change based upon personal circumstances (personal pressure etc).

The lesson is this, you can’t to use the same style with everyone to get the same outcomes.  If you can adapt your style, by having a deeper understanding of your own personal style and the style of others, it can lead to really meaningful interactions across your team.  If you want to understand more about how you can use profiling to enhance performance, give Impact Consulting Psychologists a shout, I’ve worked with them for years and would thoroughly recommend their approach.

“Me In My Element” (MIME). What does that look like for you?  What are you passionate about?  What are the thing(s) that spark you into life?  I don’t mean family, that’s a given.  I mean the passions that you have beyond that.

For me, it’s business, writing, public speaking, road cycling and soul music.  Those five things get me excited, float my boat, are different enough to give me some diversity in life.  They are broad, allow me to meet a wide variety of different people, learn different things, plus feed mind, body and soul.

I’ve met a lot of people who live for business exclusively.  Never taking a moment to do anything else.  that’s OK – we all have choices.  We all have to work hard, particularly if you’re starting a business or trying to keep it afloat.  If however, your business is getting to a stage when you can throttle back a bit, invest your time in something outside of work, then do something you can get passionate about.

Setting your mind new challenges, keeps you fresh. Keeps those electrical connections going, keeps your brain active and keeps you at your best.  Physical activity, will reduce stress and help to promote long-term well being – a no brainer.  Most importantly, when we do those things and someone says “look at them, they’re in their element” – that’s the moment when you need to think, “I should do more of this”.

When you become passionate about something, it’s not a chore, it’s something you participate in willingly.  Passion adds some spice to life, makes you a more interesting personality, lets you engage with a wider social circle and makes you feel alive.  Go and grab it with both hands.

Has anyone ever said that to you? Or more’s the point, have you ever said it it to someone else? You know when someone just looks like they are on another level, sometimes down in the basement, sometimes up in the sky!

Leadership wise it’s a great little anecdote there.  Question.  What Planet are you on?  Answer.  Mars!  Cue the mental image of the Mars advert from the 80′s, because “A Mars a day, helps you work, rest and play.”

Knocking yourself out on the work treadmill, working every hour gods sends, never spending any time to enjoy life,  that doesn’t make you a better leader.  Quite the opposite, you’ll disappear down the plughole of mediocrity.  I’ve blogged previously about what I called “leading lessons.”  The importance of taking a load off.

Work hard, yes. Of course when you’re running a business of any size, hard work comes with the territory.  That has to be balanced however with rest and relaxation and something that brings you pleasure or joy, whether that be kids, sport, gardening or a hobby.  Having those things in some sort of balance will do you the world of good.  Time deadlines, projects, re-organisations, budgets, travelling, resource planning will all get in the way – if you let them.

So, let your leadership mantra be.  I’m on Planet Mars!  Because I work, rest and play.

Everyone has had a dent in confidence at some point in their life or career. It can be triggered by the smallest thing, person or event.   Often lack of confidence come as a by-product of some past experience.  Those experiences can lead us to have a distorted view of the world, seeing things irrationally or in an exaggerated manner – known as Cognitive Distortions.  I recently read a book about cognitive behavioural therapy, as it was a topic that interested me following a session with some business psychologists.  Cognitive distortions came up as part of that session; can you recognise any in yourself?

1. All-or-nothing thinking: You see things in black and white categories.  If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.
2. Mind reading: You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you and don’t bother to check it out. You anticipate that things will turn out badly and feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact.
3. Jumping to conclusions: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.
4. Overgeneralisation: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.
5. Mental filter: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened
6. Disqualifying the positive: You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason or other. You maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.
7. Emotional reasoning: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: “I feel it, therefore it must be true.”
8. Magnification (catastrophising) or minimisation: You exaggerate the importance of things or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear insignificant.
9. Labelling and mislabelling: This is an extreme form of overgeneralisation. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: “I’m a loser.” When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to them.
10. Personalisation: You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event for which, in fact, you were not primarily responsible.

A quick analogy to share with you tonight. It was used by one of the psychologists that ran a workshop for the team today, it relates to taking time out.

Two lumberjacks were felling trees in the forest with a traditional two man saw, after a full morning, they set to fell the largest tree in the forest.  Working furiously, they struggled to get the saw moving and expdended huge effort trying to make progress through the trunk.  As the afternoon progressed they continued to work, making little progress as the night started to fall.  Another passing lumberjack, stopped for a moment, seeing the tiny progress they were making.  “Did you sharpen your saw? ” he shouted over.  The two lumberjacks ignored him and carried on, with the same intensity of effort.  He walked towards them and repeated the words, “Did you sharpen your saw?”

The moral of the story is this. Rather than continuing to work with a blade, which had become blunt, the two lumberjacks needed to stop, sharpen their saw and then get back to cutting the tree. By doing this, they would have saved a lot of effort and got the job done.

The story was used today as a metaphor for businesses that don’t take time out and take stock.  Instead, carrying on being busy, sweating processes as hard as they can  and potentially repeating failure or ignoring problems.  By stopping to “sharpen the saw,” you may be able to step back, take a different look at your problems and come up with a different solution.  The point being, it may be time neutral.  If the two lumberjacks had stopped to sharper their saw, they would have stopped working for half an hour or so, however the tree would have been felled before dark.

With a huge amount of pressure on businesses right now, it’s important to stop and think.  The stepping back/out of the business for half a day or a day can be time well invested.  Giving people a chance to talk, to re-connect away from the processes, hustle and bustle.  So my question to you is, when did you last sharpen your saw?

Do do do da da do do , do do do da da do do -under pressure.  Yes, instantly recognisable, it’s the melody from the Queen song “under pressure.”  If you didn’t know, there’s a lot of it about at the minute.  Pressure to make decisions, get results and not make mistakes. 

Speaking at a recent event I held – Sir Philip Troudsell KBE CB - recounted the role that pressure played during his life as a General in the Army.  I’ve been talking to my team a lot about this recently, particularly about recognising the signs of pressure and took the opportunity to ask Sir Philip to give his views on it.  As a former Commandant of the Military College at Sandhurst , he’s overseen leadership training for some of the Armys finest, so I was interested to hear his views.   Here are a couple of snippets from his talk: -

1. –>Press decision making down your chain of command as far as you can to dissipate it.  If everything is bubbling up to you, then that’s a sure indication that something is wrong.

–>Delegate as much as possible.  If you don’t it’s not only disloyal to your sub-ordinates but also dilutes your own energy to stay strong for the big decisions.  He described it as “devaluing your coinage.”

–>Stress can be self induced.  Poor time management, anger, frustration are all consequences of choices we make in our behaviour.  Most of these things are in our control, how we choose to react to them is down to us.

We all need pressure in our lives to perform.  There is good pressure (challenging work), bad pressure (leading to stress) or no pressure (leading to apathy).  Often situations can be forced onto you (someone elses poor time or decision making unnecessarily impacting on your performance), these situations are – in the moment – difficult to control.  However, if you let those instances carry on, then you will never break the cycle.

Continuing to stay healthy, exercise, delegate and be honest with people are great ways to relieve pressure.  It’s important that we all understand what our triggers are and keep them well under control.

A compliment goes such a long way.  It’s better when it’s spontaneous, authentic and real.  When’s the last time you really appreciated someone?  Taken time to describe why, what they do, how they do it, what impact it has?

In a world moving at one hundred miles an hour, it’s easy to e-mail, text or send someone a Tweet with a quick word of thanks.  Taking time out costs time, however if there were an ROI for a kind word it would be better than any bank return or investment you could make. 

People remember kindness and appreciation.  It sticks with them, long after you have forgotten what you may have said.  Don’t expect anything back, give generously.  You’re time will come.

Creativity.  Leadership. Innovation and Knowledge (CLIK).  That’s how I described the key things that I think are important to running a successful business at the Shared Services Forum annual conference in Manchester today.  Leading a breakout group focusing on leadership, I shared the key things that I’ve picked up over the years from books, experience and working directly with business psychologists.  It was tremendously enjoyable to talk about and – with around an hour to fill – good to go a  bit deeper than the normal 25 minute keynote.

My key point was that being an effective leader is more about knowing yourself, in order to understand others (EQ or Emotional Intelligence). Deeper understanding of “self” allows you to really unlock what makes you tick in order that you can improve.  It’s a continum of up days and down days,  highs and lows, sometimes reverting to type, other times not.  It’s a bit of a journey too, there’s no magic switch, everyone is different, no magic formula, it’s about finding what works for you (just be prepared to be out of your comfort zone at times).  Managing people can be more complicated than rocket science and the root cause of most cultural chaos can generally be breadcrumb traced back to the leader(s) in the business.

Passing on my top 10 Leadership Lessons with practical examples, I supplemented them with a further five things I’ve been thinking about recently: -

1. Sleep more (give yourself an extra hour at night to allow your brain to make all the right connections whilst you sleep).
2. Exercise more (to relieve the build up of stress).
3. Pursue happiness (the happier you are, the easier this all becomes).
4. Forgive yourself (when you make mistakes, don’t beat yourself up, admit them early and forgive yourself for them).
5. Work at being the real YOU (that is the person that you are at home, in the workplace.  If you are two people, home you and office you, then you’re not being authentic.  Life is easier and far more enjoyable when you can just be you, with everyone, regardless).

Best book I’ve ever read if you fancy going on a bit of a journey yourself is The Human Element, by Will Schutz, it’s a book I read every year without fail to remind myself of what makes me tick and lots of practical, implementable things you can do, which is why I think it’s so good.  It’s surprising how much I’ve changed over the years, I’m not the finished article by any means, however I am sure that lifelong learning of “self” puts you in the best possible position to excel at leading your team.

It’s often said nowadays that “EQ is the new IQ”.  That is, Emotional Intelligence is the new competency to get you on in business.  Rocket Scientists and Chemists may not agree, outside of the sciences however, there’s a pretty good case for it.

Having worked with business psychologists for a number of years (initially with Steven Sylvester and most recently with Impact Consulting), I’ve seen the power in understanding “self” and others.  Humans are complicated folk. In fact, I often recount the saying that “people are more complicated than rocket science” (that comment was made by an ex-rocket scientist that went into HR).  Unravelling the complexity of how we act, what makes us us, how to mine top performance and teamworking is a big job.  There are tools to help of course, books, courses, consultatncy, basic leadership skills like honesty, fairness and consistency, aswell as psychometric tests.

I’ve used them for a number of years.  I find them useful to profile candidates for interviews and to identify how teams can best work together in the business.  I see a lot of value in them. Like anything, they need to be used as an interpretation tool, to back up other data or evidence that you may have.   When you get to this level of understanding of yourself and your team, it’s easy to spot why things can go wrong, why some relationships work better than others, why some people want meetings agendas weeks in advance and why some creativity workshops work better than others.

Much depends – like a good tea – on the blend.  What mix of personalities you put in the room or into teams, to get the results you need.  What is evident is that you need a blend.  If you put too many similar types into a room, you risk losing a balanced view and ending up with a one-dimensional view of the world.  However, I can recommend that you try it.  Seeing the results from your first psychometric test can be a little unnerving, primarily as they can be quite pointed and point out those things that you would prefer not to be pointed out, in time, you will see that it can unlock you, your team and your understanding of those around you.

Stop!

Sit down, catch your breath, stick the blackberry to one side, turn the TV off, put the laptop down and concentrate for a second.  When did you last do that?  I had cause to do this today for two reasons (stop that is, can I just say I don’t have a TV in my office – yet).

1) I was writing the directors comments for our statutory accounts and having to reflect on the year gone by.  Without going in to detail, it was really good to just drift back over the last twelve months and write down all the things that the business has achieved.  Life moves so quickly nowadays that it’s really easy to bypass your achievements, as you move on so quickly to the next challenge that the business presents to you.

2) Someone had very generously nominated me for entry into an awards run by the IoD for their NW Director of the Year (thank you whoever that was).  As a result, you get an e-mail where you have to go into further detail about some of the things you’ve done in the business, your vision for the future and so on.  It was quite timely given that I’d been working on the Directors statement during the day and further reason for a good old think.

Some time ago I read this book where it suggested that you sit down in total peace and quiet every morning, shortly after rising and spend two to three minutes in total silence, collecting your thoughts about the day ahead.  I did it for about three days, then just jumped back in the same routine of checking the blackberry, kicking the dog out, making my son his breakfast.  Sitting in silence it quite difficult nowadays, there’s almost a voice inside you that says “you should be doing something.”  I carry a notebook with me at all times, I also have one beside my bed and one in the car.  Thoughts often come to me in random moments nowadays, so it’s important to keep collecting these.  However, today was a good reminder to – every now and then – just stop for a minute and take stock.