⭕️ You will never fully convince someone they are wrong, only reality can. Support them to expose their reality

⭕️ The place you most need to go is hidden where you least want to look. Get a coach, board, mentor and give them freedom to challenge you.

⭕️ There is no evolution without skin in the game. Evolution is often dependent upon facing your fears.

Good leaders are good at grinding out those difficult weeks that come with big decisions and many business critical things outside of their control. The trouble is that the grind creates survival habits and a survival environment that serves to make these weeks more stressful and the rest of the time recovery for leader and company.

Great leaders step back and find the perspective shift required to embrace what ever comes allowing them separate their choices from their current level of certainty about the future. Whether chaos or calm, it’s chop wood carry water.

He didn’t know it but I was also living that meaning in that moment.

That’s what purpose is.

It’s not some off in the distance goal.

It’s who you are being in every moment.

Who you are in your relationship

How you parent

How you act with your friends

How you eat, sleep, exercise

How you lead.

It’s all pointed in that direction.

2. You’re using hierarchy to move people.

You have become so wrapped up in urgency that you are crossing the boundaries into telling people what to do or doing things for them. This serves to make them think that they are useless and that you think you are better than them. Driving stress, poor culture, quiet quitting and high staff churn

3. You have become reliant upon short term negative consequences to cause you to act

9. People will infer all possible meanings of the leaders communication. If the boss is being mis-interpreted it’s on them to get more skilful at communication.

10. If you interrupt people at their desk to ask for 5 minutes or for help NOW, task switching that is the culture you have chosen and it’s a stressful one to operate within.

11. When people don’t experience their own competence throughout the day their general state is anxious and overwhelmed. It’s on the leader to create that for everyone in the company.

Guilt often seems to be the thing we’re talking about when we say work life balance

When we are at home we should be at work when at work we should be at home and that’s without considering fitness and friends.

Sometimes it seems like a pursuit of being good enough. Avoiding too much conflict or criticism.

Like we live to make other people happy.

60% of first time CEOs report loneliness to the degree that it negatively impact performance.

Not surprisingly really

When polled public speaking comes out as # 1 of peoples greatest fears. That is to say, it ranks HIGHER than fear of death.

The Anterior Cingulate Cortex in the brain is on constant high alert to public failure and in particular INDIVIDUAL public failure.

Which is a thought that can make someone feel pretty alone and under the spot light.

1. List all the stuff that prevents your from achieving your daily objectives and create a plan for dealing with each one.

2. Set realistic daily objectives.

3. List what you have a tendency to do when things get tough. (Do you distract yourself with a new shiny idea that’s fun to talk about and imagine? Write that down so you recognising it as the enemy when it walks in you’ll be far less likely to fall for its lies).

More than anything else your energy is contagious.

Enthusiasm and passion are great and I’ve seen leaders carry themselves on it for incredible lengths of time.

But wired energy, nervous energy, hyper vigilant energy, afternoon energy slumps and home energy crashes take their toll on your health, ability to focus, and your significant relationships while also setting the tone for the type of energy running through the business.

The best part is, that these changes don’t require massive investments in time and energy outside of what you’re already committing to.

They just require a change in habit. The reward will be more energy, more focus, more clarity, more calm and more presence.

The potential of where those things will take you and your business are impossible to measure and limited only by your imagination

These 9 things aren’t easy. They usually come as a set. If you can’t imagine doing one it’s probably because another one is not already in place that is making it seem impossible.

But if you want to be the calm, consistent and stable leader to your team you must operate yourself in a way that creates than calmness, consistency and clarity inside of you. You cannot fake it. The body, your words and your actions give off too many clues. You are the indicator that your team responds to. They will only change when you do.

Are you ready to start spreading calmness and clarity?

Or perhaps a better question, how much longer are you willing

.1. I loved school and was always incredibly excited to go although it was mostly about the people. I really didn’t understand why school was important so when it came to the work I just did enough to get by.

I wish I had realised sooner why learning, focus and skilful communication was important.

2. I went to church every Sunday from the age of 4 which remained a source of embarrassment for me right up until I stopped at 16. Despite this review I really loved the people and the conversations and laughs we used to have

I should be helping more at home, I should be helping my team, I should be connecting with the customers and keeping them happy, the show ends if I don’t keep the board happy, I’m getting fat, unhealthy and my sleep is suffering I should be doing more for my health!

The first step I have my clients take is to let go of the should, the must, the have to, even if just for a while.

Focusing on what’s not being done only grows the feeling of hopelessness which grows that feeling of overwhelm and exhaustion.

Getting defensive

Withdrawing from some people

Explaining to people how they’re wrong

Getting agree when people cancel on me

Basically being someone other than I wanted to be with others.

I was pretty relieved when I discovered everyone has their own version of this going on.

Although probably a far less sarcastic version.

The brain is always measuring our level of safety within the tribe

Via a part of the brain called the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (mostly) it constantly scans for risk of loss or opportunity to gain hierarchy and connection.

They have always been people with a lot of responsibility. CxO’s, Partners, Doctors, Judges, Entrepreneurs etc

But back in my personal training days working with these folks I would be pulling my hair out trying to get them to create the habits necessary to achieve what they were paying me for.

Their lives were just so unpredictable.

They would get incredible results in 21,30 and even 60 day programs but eventually they would regress back to mean and back to the shape they were previously in.

That’s when I started exploring neuroscience and quickly discovered where I was going wrong.

The guest on the show he listened to was explaining something about the brain.

As a client of mine he knew that this was my area and that I had a different perspective that he’d found useful and adopted himself.

He wanted to know why I didn’t jump in

and if I found it hard to not jump in.

I’m writing this because I think the answer is useful or at least it was to me.

I used to find it REALLY hard to not “correct”.

Something about just leaving it seem unsafe.

The thought is something like,

“He’s wrong, I must speak. What if he thinks I agree with him. I MUST correct him”.

👉 You know what you want to achieve, and how to achieve it but you lack the particular skill required to achieve it.

😃 You know what you want to achieve but you are unclear on the ingredients required to produce the desired outcome.

🤷🏼‍♂️ You know exactly what to do and you are sometimes able to do it but you are unable to carry it out consistently enough to produce the desired outcome.

Usually it’s an overlap of these but objectively this is what’s happening.

It looks terrifyingly simple mapped out like this doesn’t it?

That’s cool and you’ll get better and better at that with practise too but when there is opportunity to refine NOW your best gets better NOW. You are literally missing an opportunity to get better every time you fail to do this (I added that last line on my second run through this).

You don’t need to wait for your 100th book to produce something you’re proud of.

This ISN’T about perfection at all.

It’s about EXCELLENCE.

Which means taking a step towards more closely fulfilling your pre-defined criteria every time the opportunity arises.

An email is not just an email, a social media post not just a social media post, a book not just a book and a conversation not just a conversation.

Without this skill stagnation is GUARANTEED

When you think about it, incompetence really just means a skill at which you are not yet competent.

Which is all of us at most things right?

If I put together a list of the things that I am competent at and those at which I am incompetent my incompetence list would dwarf my competence list in a very big way.

That’s normal of course, we can’t master everything like we can’t know everything.