Leadership ConneXions - Issue 13

Welcome to Leadership ConneXions Issue 13 and welcome to all our new subscribers. 

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FISH!

Many of you may have already read the book “Fish!” by Stephen C. Lundin, Harry Paul and John Christensen.  If you haven’t, then it is highly recommended.  The subtitle gives away the intention of the book - “A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results”.

This book is a short parable that can be read in less than hour.  It aims to “help you love the work you do – even if you can’t always do the work you love.” 

There are several copies of this book floating around my organisation at the moment and the key messages are being spread like a good virus.  Signs of “infection” are popping up in many places.

If you haven’t read it (and don’t think you will get around to it in your busy life), the basic learnings from the book are:

Be there

To “be there” is to be “present” for the person or persons you are relating to at any given moment.  The impact on the other person of you being there, fully engaged with that person is astounding.  How do you feel when you know the other person is truly listening to you and giving you their undivided attention, focusing on your needs and feelings?  How does it feel when you know that the other person is “elsewhere” or more concerned about working out what they are going to say as soon as they can get a word in?

Listening skills are an important part of being there but being there is much more than that.  Being there is about empathy, putting yourself in their shoes and being fully attentive.  It is about screening out those everyday distractions of a bustling, busy and noisy workplace.  Being there means you are less likely to miss important points or not pick up on body language or other sensory clues that give you are truer meaning and understanding of the other person.  

Play

Everyone benefits from a light-hearted workplace.  That doesn’t mean the work is not taken seriously, it just means that people can and should have fun while doing their work.  Play creates energy, commitment, creativity and enthusiasm.  It helps to build relationships.

Play is about tapping into that inner child that still exists within us.  (I can retire soon but one of my favourite sayings is “I do not know what I am going to do when I grow up!”) 

Make Their Day

What a goal!  Take a peer, a boss, a staff member, a customer or a stakeholder and “make their day”!  It doesn’t have to be a big thing.  Even little things can leave another person feeling good.  It can be a present, a compliment, a pat on the back, asking (and then attentively listening) about a person’s hobby or project.  It can be as simple as saying “thank you” or “well done”.

At a deeper level, “make their day” means taking a genuine interest in the unique gifts of others.  Spontaneous or planned, when you make the effort to brighten someone’s day you receive an internal gift that makes life even more meaningful for you as well.  It is a definite win-win every single time.

Choose Your Attitude

The old saying about the glass being half full or half empty strikes at the core of “choosing your attitude”  You can chose to look at it half full just as easily as half empty, but what a difference it will make to you and those around you when you choose the more optimistic route.  Equally we can come to work and choose to immediately feel low, depressed, tied, washed out and wishing it was closer to quitting time.  You can choose to let external factors like the boring nature of the work, the boss on you back or the troubled relationships with some people get you down.  Alternatively you can chose to accept these situations and take charge of our own response.

“Choosing your attitude” is not just about putting on a smile on your face.  It is not about going through the motions of the required script when you greet a customer or answer the phone.  (How often is the greeting from the checkout operator at the supermarket really sincere?)  Nor is it about not showing actual emotions.  It is OK to be sad or angry when these emotions are called for. 

What it is about is being aware of your current attitude and understanding the impact that this attitude can have on your fellow workers and your customers. 

Awareness allows you choice – choice to adopt a different attitude.  Choice offers you control – an ability to control your attitude and not be controlled by it.  And finally control offers you greater contentment.  The situation or the external factors do not change but now you can choose to be, act or feel different.

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In the next article, Michael Neill also explores the notion of choice.  He argues that choice is an effective tool for managing stress.

Stress Less

By Michael Neill

“You are your choices.”

Seneca

I have had, for me, an extremely stress-full week.  The deadline to get the final manuscript of my book to the printers is this coming Wednesday, and I have been driving myself a bit nuts attempting to ensure that every 'i' is dotted and every 't' is crossed.  So it struck me as an excellent time to practice what I preach and put the best of what I know about living with and without stress into action.

Having done a fair bit of that in the past few days and regained the lion's share of my equanimity, the time now comes for me to preach what I have been practicing...

My mentor startled me one day when he said 'All stress is the result of feeling as though you have no choice about something.  As soon as you recognize the choices inherent in any situation, you regain a sense of being in control - and the feeling of stress will begin to disappear'.

This mirrors research done into longevity which suggests that one of the reasons orchestra conductors live such long lives is the abnormal degree of 'being in control' they experience in their jobs.  (Imagine for a moment that you are the conductor of an orchestra - as your arm moves up, one hundred people ready their instruments; the moment it moves down, a musical masterpiece begins!)

It also points to one of the less obvious reasons people prefer going to a scary movie to being mugged.  Although their physiological reactions might be nearly identical in both situations, at the movies they experience themselves at choice and in control; in a dark alleyway, they experience themselves as 'choiceless victims of circumstance'. 

The trick to making this model work for you is to begin focusing on the choices you have available in any given circumstance.  The more you focus on those choices, the less stress you will experience.

Here are three types of choice you can always make, regardless of what is happening around you:

1. Choosing how to be

“Fortunately in my work there's always a choice: I can choose to do it willingly or unwillingly.”

Ashleigh Brilliant

On paper, I had a very happy childhood.  My parents loved me, we had a nice home, and whatever things my parents may have found difficult to deal with in their lives were handled in a way that kept us away from any sense of external stress.  And yet, I was miserable, depressed, and at times suicidal for large periods of that time. 

My best friend had a more difficult childhood.  His parents divorced when he was still quite young, and his older brother was killed in a car crash when he was fifteen.  He lived in a 'double-wide' trailer house, and the money that had been put aside to send him to college had disappeared into the monthly expenses years before he was able to use it.  Yet he was happy, positive and cheerful throughout.

At that time, I did not yet know that how I chose to be was my choice - and consequently I felt a victim of my moods.  My friend didn't know about his power to choose - but his 'default' was inclined towards the positive.  Now, we are both aware of the power within us - and while we don't always choose to be happy, peaceful, accepting and kind, we do so enough of the time to take most of what life throws at us in our stride.

2. Choosing how to see

"The question is not what you look at but what you see."

Henry David Thoreau

While we may think we have no choice as to whether we see an event in our life as being good for us or bad for us, the reality is that the choice always rests within us alone. 

I remember when my parents dropped me off at the airport before I first moved to London at the age of 20.  I saw the trip as 'good for me' (I was off on an adventure), and was relaxed and excited about going.  My parents saw the trip as 'bad for them' (they knew they would miss me), and I will always remember both their stress leading up to the trip and their palpable sadness as they walked away from the gate, arm in arm.  To any one of the hundreds of people in the same airport, my trip was neither good nor bad - they had no opinion about it, and consequently no positive or negative feelings and no stress at all about my imminent departure.

The trip, of course, was 'charge neutral' - and therein lies the secret.  I could have focused on everything that could (and did!) go wrong, my parents could have focused on the extra time and money they would now have for themselves, and anyone of those people in the airport could have looked at us and made up their own happy or sad story about what was happening.  Because we each chose to see it in the way that we did, we gave ourselves the experiences that we had.

In today's experiment, I will share with you some simple tools for noticing and taking advantage of your power to choose your perceptions.

3. Choosing what to do (or not do)

"When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before."

Mae West

An actress client once called me in a dither, claiming she was 'stressed to the eyeballs' because she was being bossed around on set by a famously belligerent director.  I asked her why she put up with it, and she said 'I have no choice - he's the director!'

I told her the following story:

One day, Zeus was sitting atop Mount Olympus when he saw a beautiful doe being chased by an angry stag.  She was headed towards the safety of the forest, but the king of all the gods could see that the stag was too close behind her.  He immediately thought to cast a lightning bolt through the heart of the stag, but decided to wait and see how the drama would play out.  A few moments later, the stag stopped suddenly and turned away from the doe. Zeus caught sight of a huge grey wolf coming in to view at full speed.  The wolf and the stag battled for what seemed like hours, until finally the wolf slunk away, defeated.

Immediately, the doe came to the side of the stag, nuzzling his wounds and gently guiding him on towards the safety of the forest.

I then suggested she make the following three choices:

1. How she wanted to be in relation to the situation at work

2. How she wanted to 'see' the situation - i.e. as 'good for her', 'bad for her' or neutral

3. What (if anything) she wanted to do

The following week, she phoned to tell me that she had first chosen to be centred and strong on set the next day, and that she chose to see the director as 'scared' instead of 'angry'.  When he began to yell at her, she chose to neither fight back nor slink away but simply to listen to him with her full attention and then do as he asked.  At the end of the day, the director came up to her and apologized for his behaviour, something a nearby crew member claimed he had never before seen happen.

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Today's Experiment:

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1. Think of a situation you have been finding stressful.  If you knew it was up to you, how would you choose to be in relation to that situation this week?

2. Take a situation you have been finding stressful.  On a piece of paper, make a list of all the ways this situation is 'bad for you'.  On the other side of the paper, make a list of at least as many ways in which the situation could be seen as 'good for you'.  Take a look at each side of the paper in turn and notice how you feel.  Which way are you going to choose to see the situation this week?

3. When you have decided how you want to be and how you want to see, choose whether or not there is any action for you to take at this time.  If you do decide to take action, do it within the next 24 hours (if at all possible).

I can think of no better words to finish this tip than those of Viktor Frankl, who not only survived the Holocaust but chose to use his experience to make a major contribution to the well-being of the planet:

"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.  They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

Have fun, learn heaps, and happy choosing!

Michael Neill

To subscribe to the Michael Neill Coaching Tip, simply send a blank e-mail to

subscribe@geniuscatalyst.com or visit him online at http://www.geniuscatalyst.com

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