He’s now in a worse position than when he started. He’s not happy with how he looks, feels and performs and on top of that he has a lower opinion of himself and his abilities at least in this area.

Fold this into a business context and you can apply these problems (and results) to both yourself as a leader but also to your team.

A goal focus leads to an unhappy process, constant stress and overwhelm, the feeling that you are always behind, that you and your staff and never quite good enough or that the client is too demanding.

Advice 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.

The 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?

Contrary to popular belief this ISN’T because you are bad, wrong or because your team are.

In this video

* The belief that makes the need for motivation, willpower, urgency and control inevitable

* Why we actually struggle to achieve our goals and lead others to do the same

* The new understand that if we adopted will change everything from how you lead yourself to how you lead others

* The neuroscience understanding that will transform yours and your teams life

My 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;

1. 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.

1. ADDING MORE ACTIONS

2. Using FORCE and WILLPOWER

3. Expecting MOTIVATION to be enough

It doesn’t matter how much you have had enough of your, low energy, constant phone use or working into the evening, ADDING more actions to an overwhelmed system will always result in more overwhelm.

FORCING in the new actions you THINK will help will always result in dropping it when motivation is low or something more critical comes up.

Your success as a leader will be determined by how you deal with people.

It won’t be defined by your ideas, problem solving, charisma, or brilliance but by how people feel in your organisation.

Do they love working with you and for you. Do they feel valued, inspired, fairly treated, well supported?

This is not just about your current project but will echo into your future.

Throw 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.

It all started with a dream. For some that dream began at 6 years old, for others it didn’t come until college. That entrepreneurial itch. They were going to create something amazing in the world. They were going to break free from the world that was trying to define them and discover who they really are. They were going to show the world what they can do when they have the freedom to invent themselves.

It’s what Steven Pressfield calls, the hero’s journey. It’s a journey filled often with hard work, struggle, and failure as well as a whole lot of fun, fulfilment and adventure.

You’re supposed to be yourself and say what you think which is the extreme opposite of the old advice, ‘fake it til you make it’.

I speak to leaders all the time who say words to the effect of,

“I know I know my stuff, I know I know my business, why can’t I shake this impostor feeling?”

Whether 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.

The reason it is wrong is that the filter through which we must look at general health knowledge (YOUR LIFE) tends to renders what might be healthy for one unhealthy for another and ANOTHER today means most business leaders.

Long bouts of cardiovascular exercise (over 20 minutes) might be beneficial for someone but it also increases stress hormone release and reduces muscle mass.

So if you are already experiencing symptoms of stress such as constant worry, anxiety, stomach fat, low energy, alcohol dependence, excessive phone usages, poor sleep to name a few then cardiovascular exercise is likely ANOTHER coping mechanism that will ultimately if not immediately do more harm than good.

Do you find yourself making things up on the fly trying to sound like you know what you’re taking about even when you aren’t sure?

Do you find yourself avoiding new approaches even when the current approach isn’t working so well?

Do you feel like you always have to be the smartest in the room?

Do you hate having your ideas challenged?

Nobody says to themselves ‘TODAY I will overwork and negatively impact my health and relationships.’

Just like nobody saying to themselves ‘today I will under work and jeopardise the success of the business and my career.’

We all know this really.

It is BELIEF that drives action and ADVICE seldom changes belief.

So even with awareness of the particular case, actually seeing evidence of overwork or underwork the advice is ignorant at BEST.

This didn’t come to me in a moment of realisation.

I absolutely LOVE working with leaders who are inspired to build something amazing while also uniting a group of people behind that cause. The truth is that they are highly competent individuals BUT in MOST cases the skills that got them to where they are are the exact same skills that are causing their struggles in health, energy, communication and relationship.

Through my REINVENTION programme I support them to adopt the skills of understanding and embracing their brain to use it more to their advantage. Using prediction and response to create calm in themselves and others and using curiosity to give themselves and others the clarity they need to become autonomous and happy.

Eventually 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.

When 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.