⭕️ 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.
Read More60% 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.
Read MoreThese 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
Read MoreI 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.
Read MoreAdvice from a qualified source is rarely bad. People tend to give the advice that they need to hear and if they have been or are in a similar situation to you then its likely good advice.
If it’s the advice that they need to hear though it probably means that a. It worked for them but b. They weren’t able to stick to it.
This is what neuroscience teaches us.
Most often we know what to do, we just can’t get ourselves to consistently do it.
What follows is 3 examples of Good Advice that we struggle to take and what to do about it.
Read MoreThe brain is a survival machine that creates survival mechanisms to protect itself.
Many of these protection mechanisms can inadvertently cause problems inside an organisation.
The leaders must master these 8 skills to not be taken over by these mechanisms.
That is in part, what it means to lead.
To own your own emotions and behaviours in response to what is happening around you.
Which of these 8 do you most need to place your attention on?
Read MoreMy clients love this way of thinking about stress because it moves it from the abstract feeling that needs ‘managing’ to something concrete that’s both normal, not ‘bad’ and most importantly actually provides huge growth for you and the business when faced skilfully.
So putting my neuroscience hat on for a moment stress is one of two things;
It’s a lack of prediction and response in the current environment.
or
2. It’s an unskillful prediction and response in the current environment.
Read MoreThrow your mind back to when you first got together, you were the dream team. You loved spending time with each other. You shared values, beliefs and ideals and you were going to change the world while constructing a utopia together. Something like that anyway.
You had a mutual admiration for each other's skills and you strongly believed that together you could go further and faster than you could alone. You complemented each other in the best way imaginable.
The business that you were going to create was going to be fun and seamless, because you could almost end each other's sentences. You were so excited to get started because you knew how much fun it was going to be, and the incredible things that you could accomplish together.
Read MoreWhether you’re building to sell or building for profit or BOTH suffering your way to success is a process that has a lot of victims. You SUFFER because when you’re living a life you loath you experience the EXACT life you didn’t want for yourself along with your health, energy, mood, and relationships all suffering.
Your loved ones suffer as they get the worse of you as they get the tail end of your energy, the worst of your mood, the guilt of your suffering for them and the least of your time. Even your colleagues and the business suffer as the energy, enthusiasm and inspiration required to both operate and sell a business can’t be faked for long.
Read MoreEventually every leader realises that you can have all the success in the world. But if you don’t have good quality time and energy left to spend with the people you love then it’s all for nothing. But when it was HUSTLE and HARD WORK that got you where you are it can be hard to believe there is any other way. Yet believe you MUST if you are to start taking steps towards creating it.
Read MoreWhen you’re in leader mode you’re demonstrating the behaviours you want to see. You are looking after your health, protecting your boundaries so that you can get your work done, support others and have a life. You understand failure and support others to do their best and grow in their position.
When you’re in ‘boss mode’ you are as I teach my client, ‘out of your mind’ where you are expecting others to mind read, to sacrifice their lives for their job to help others at any time while also doing their own work and to never fail.
Business leaders tend to wear ‘hard work’ as a badge of honour. Arriving first, leaving last and then continuing to work into the evening often stay up til midnight and beyond.
They do this despite the fact that they aren’t being paid to work hard. They are being paid to keep the business in high performance mode and the best way to do that is to keep themselves in high performance mode. A tired and overwhelmed leader will soon start making decisions based on their own limited bandwidth and will quickly create a tired and overwhelm business. I help my clients to find and protect their own high performance mode so that they can better support the business to locate and maintain high performance mode.
Successful leaders seem to have more patience, more presence and more time. They never seem in a rush or to be OVERWHELMED by business and life. Ultimately the difference between the successful and the overwhelmed leaders is what they DO. In this ‘mini series’ I will highlight the 10 major differences between my SUCCESS clients and struggling leaders I speak to.
Read MoreForcing new ACTION into an already overwhelmed schedule will NEVER create, uh... whelm.
Don’t get me wrong. ADDING in the diet, the meditation, the exercise, the yoga or what ever system it might be that promises to finally create that feeling of grounded presence and energy, are all powerful strategies.
But they are NOT the first step if you find yourself in this position, they are more like the 13th or 14th step.
I get it, if you feel like you’re living reactively and constantly being pulled out of the moment it makes total sense to add in meditation that has been proven to improve attention and focus.
Read MoreMost leaders that struggle creating a balance harmonious life aren’t struggling because they aren’t intelligent knowledge people.
They are struggling being the systems and process that they currently have in place make it impossible for them to experience the harmony they desire.
They are struggling because they DON’T have simple systems are process in place that guard and protect those things that need protecting in order to move away from overwhelm and into balance and harmony.
Something that EVERY good leader knows is that it is PROCESS that leads to SUCCESS. You don’t WILLPOWER the market to want what you have.
Yet most leaders have a process that leads to overwhelm and overwork in their business and no process for success in their energy, mental and physical health and relationships.
Read MoreThere have long been stories from practitioners working in mental health clinics of anxious or depressed people carrying a particular sweet odour.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget we are animals.
Our senses are constantly on high alert for changes in the environment.
Detecting a subtle rise in testosterone in the group (smell) you are in could be the difference between a good and bad night today, years ago it might have saved a life or two I can imagine.
Read MoreCamp one is, I am, in this moment at least, an idiot and I don’t even know it. I’ve lost all perspective. I know from experience that this is a dangerous place to be. Largely because you, at the time, have no idea it’s you.
The receiver here would benefit from choosing not to be offended but rather should focus on having sympathy for someone looking for a much needed ego boost.
Try “interesting ideas John, I’ll certainly keep that in mind”.
Read MoreA big part of the process of moving to Denmark was to sell our gym and health care business in the Uk.
I had no idea how to go about it so I contacted a couple of business sellers.
They all asked to see the last few years accounts as well as have all of my equipment valued.
They each came back with the same figure.
“We believe we can get you £180,000 cash within the next 6 month Sir.”
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