If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Maya Angelou
From good to great is about emotional knowledge not IQ
“75% of careers are derailed for reasons related to emotional competencies, including inability to handle interpersonal problems; unsatisfactory team leadership during times of difficulty or conflict; or inability to adapt to change or elicit trust.” — The Center for Creative Leadership
Leadership is as much a choice as it is a job title
How well do the hierarchical leaders in your organisation allow those elsewhere in the firm to choose to be leaders? Do they encourage local teams to be well motivated, creative, responsive, to try new things, to have access to resources and a real responsibility to try and truly delight clients/customers.
As Peter Hawkins writes in Leadership Team Coaching, “a team becomes a leadership team when it focuses not just on its immediate task but also on how it can engage with its multiple stakeholder groups to co-create performance improvement for both its own outputs and outcomes, and those of its stakeholders.”
Perhaps many issues with staff engagement and retention have their root in a lack of space, permission and time for groups of people to want to choose and explore their leadership. Simply put it it may take too much time and effort to try and be heard, and you may risk be seen as challenging or demanding. To counter all of this there needs more of a focus on the development of teams and their interconnections in addition to delivery of the financials.
Leadership is as much a choice as it is a job title.
How well do the hierarchical leaders in your organisation allow those elsewhere in the firm to choose to be leaders? Do they encourage local teams to be well motivated, creative, responsive, to try new things, to have access to resources and a real responsibility to try and truly delight clients/customers.
As Peter Hawkins writes in Leadership Team Coaching, “a team becomes a leadership team when it focuses not just on its immediate task but also on how it can engage with its multiple stakeholder groups to co-create performance improvement for both its own outputs and outcomes, and those of its stakeholders.”
Perhaps many issues with staff engagement and retention have their root in a lack of space, permission and time for groups of people to want to choose and explore their leadership. Simply put it it may take too much time and effort to try and be heard, and you may risk be seen as challenging or demanding. To counter all of this there needs more of a focus on the development of teams and their interconnections in addition to delivery of the financials.
A friend of mine once informed me that “a degree of sarcasm was funny but a degree in it was not!” Where does what I heard yesterday stand? Crocks Tick! You work hard at school to go to a good university, to get a good job to get a good house to get to go to a good nursing home!
In a frenetic and noisy world nothing builds trust as well as fully listening.
The events of our life do not have to shape us, we can make it so our decisions do!
Our decisions come out of our heads but are heavily guided by our emotional and physical state. This is because emotions and experiences trigger our established patterns of responding and chemical reactions in our brain.
Our emotions are influenced by the environment and the contexts in which we perceive we are in. Success begins from getting into positive environments and contexts. A big part of this is understanding three things about our emotions: 1) We can prime our emotions rather than just accepting that our emotions automatically or ‘naturally’ show up, 2) Emotions are like muscles, exercise them and they will grow, don’t and they will atrophy (when was the last time you exercised courage, hope and gratitude? What about fear, anger and regret?) 3) Emotions are shaped by motion, so get moving! Motion can be the smallest change like moving from shallow breathing to deep breathing for two minutes. Try it and see how it shapes your physiology (it is the same as standing tall, looking slightly upward and smiling).
If you think this is just fluff please know that as we cannot simultaneously be happy and sad, or grateful and angry, or hopeful and despondent, strong people make choices knowing that to do so requires determination and discipline. Each of us at the start of everyday can make the choice to exercise and prime positive emotional muscles and see if they will grow and change how we see and live life. All it costs is time and choice.
A song that says a lot!
Something so right by Paul Simon
You’ve got the cool water
When the fever runs high
You’ve got the look of love light
In your eyes
And I was in crazy motion
‘Til you calmed me down
It took a little time
But you calmed me down
When something goes wrong
I’m the first to admit it
I’m the first to admit it
But the last one to know
When something goes right
Well it’s likely to lose me
It’s apt to confuse me
It’s such an unusual sight
I can’t get used to something so right
Something so right
They’ve got a wall in China
It’s a thousand miles long
To keep out the foreigners
They made it strong
I’ve got a wall around me
You can’t even see
It took a little time
To get to me
When something goes wrong
I’m the first to admit it
I’m the first to admit it
But the last one to know
When something goes right
Well it’s likely to lose me
It’s apt to confuse me
It’s such an unusual sight
I can’t get used to something so right
Something so right
Some people never say the words
I love you
It’s not their style
To be so bold
Some people never say those words
I love you
But like a child they’re longing
To be told
When something goes wrong
I’m the first to admit it
I’m the first to admit it
But the last one to know
When something goes right
Well it’s likely to lose me
It’s apt to confuse me
It’s such an unusual sight
I can’t get used to something so right
Something so right