Surviving Christmas Emotions

Three strategies to deal with the emotions wrapped up in Christmas time.

How much pressure does it take to incite the evil twin?

Your emotional resilience is evident only when you feel pressure.

Your business relies on you making a series of decisions, some major and considered, most made moment by moment as you implement the strategies associated with the big decisions. No matter the size or type of decision, the quality of your decisions determines the quality of your output and subsequently your results. Add pressure and the game is on!

Of course, pressure is perceived, but when you feel it upon you, it is very real in it’s impact on your behaviour and your results.

Pressure is a necessary part of challenge and engagement, allowing an environment where you are your best self and can enjoy the game. No pressure and entropy seeps in. However, too much pressure and you may become your not so good other self, metaphorically like an evil twin (a technical term!).

I often think that a drive in the car is a good way to check whether my good self or my evil twin is in charge. You know… when someone cuts me off in the traffic, do I say to myself “Wow! That person is already having a bad day!” Or “What! You idiot…” as I feel my temperature rise. Or perhaps that is just me?

My work centres on helping you to discover how you make decisions under normal circumstances and especially under pressure. My fascination with people and their decision-making is a win for my clients because this is the pointy end of how my expertise helps produce improved results, which; not so incidentally; you enjoy working toward even more.

So… do you also have a metaphorical evil twin? How has your pressure level been throughout the day? Has anyone pushed your evil twin button? If so, how did this affect your behaviour and your results?

Until next time, be emotionally resilient and enjoy the pressure!

Step out of the Overwhelm Shadow and into the Light

Moving from complexity to clear focus is easy once you understand the dynamics.

Can you be understood if you don’t understand?

Adopt an emotionally resilient attitude to make it happen.

Blocks in business usually involve conflict. This can be conflict within, manifesting as cognitive dissonance, as well as conflict with others.

Resolution can be found by considering what is ultimately important to both parties, or to use jargon, “values”.

Unfortunately when terms like “values” seep into corporate life they can rapidly lose lustre and become a part of a bland landscape. Use the term too often and people roll their eyes or worse, feign interest. The term has been used and, some say, abused at a macro level in vision and mission statements and at a micro level within change programs.

Fundamentally “values” are a representation of what is ultimately important to you. Anything attached to importance conjures up emotion. Emotions are representations of feelings. If you are human you have them!

Conflict is emotional and where emotion resides rational thinking races away. Do you feel it? When someone offends, you often feel it before you even think it. It is most likely a clash of values.

A crucial aspect of emotional resilience is about owning your emotions and about being able to direct your responses.

This means having a strategy to immediately get that you are reacting emotionally, being able to own it and know that the other person is also doing so, and being able to find a position of wisdom and influence to resolve the situation.

Your values are “right” for you, not simply “right” in the broader sense. As soon as you begin to be curious about the other person’s values, what is important to them in this context, you begin understand. This sets you on a path to resolution, wisdom and being understood.

How wisely do you behave? And… How quickly does the wisdom kick in - before you respond or somewhere in the midst of an ongoing conflict when someone must take a stand to resolve it?

Please let me know what you think, I would love your stories and feedback…
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Meaning In Communication

A Considered Perspective On Meaning In Communication.
Convert conversations from nonsense through common sense to heightened sense, when you take a considered perspective on meaning.

What are you waiting for to change?

How can you make it happen?

You can lament the state of the world at large, the world immediately around you and your own personal internal world. You can easily feel offended, hurt, frustrated and annoyed and it may seem that the perpetrator/s have set out to get to you.

In my experience, the great majority of people are doing their own lamenting and their real focus is on themselves, especially when they are feeling pressure. They often act out from emotion as an unconscious act of survival and always have a positive intention for the situation “as they see, hear or feel it”.

This is as valid at a personal level as it is in the world of political instability. This is a crucial aspect of potential leadership in action!

Often it may seem to be too hard, to fruitless, or too time consuming to make an effort to make a difference. After all it’s their fault, it is they who are acting inappropriately! All would be fine if only they did/did not…

If you truly want to positively impact people and situations, reacting from intense emotion is futile and can perpetrate more complexity and misunderstanding.

To ensure you really connect you must equate the emotional with the rational. Take a step back and consider what is important to the other person, what is it that they may be thinking from their perspective. At some high level point you will each have the same intention, best consider that and begin the dialogue there… but do begin… if you genuinely want to make a difference.

In being considerate, you take on a wiser perspective and you watch your world change from the inside out.

What’s happening in your busy world right now to allow you to be different and act differently?

Who’s the Block to Achieving Your Results?

A common theme is emerging in my conversations with business leaders, that although you may have autonomy to manage your team or business to achieve your results, there’s someone within your circle of influence who seems to block you at every turn. All too often this may be one of your peers, an internal supplier or even your boss!

How are you getting in your own way today?

What would happen if you created a miracle and the block disappeared?

What would be different?

Experience shows me that people can be extremely obstinate at holding on to the things that hold them back. A block may be real or perceived. Either way it is a block. It may be that they don’t consciously know they have a block, but, even if they do know at an intellectual level, and know what to do about it… they often don’t!

Once a person identifies there is a block, they can decide to dissolve it now... or wait a lifetime. The first step is simply to know you have a block and to know what it is. Sometimes naming it is enough to remove it.

Do you have a block? Do you know what it is? Are you ready to do something about it? “Surely it is not that simple”, you say.

Let me know what you think, let’s discuss…

Making Certain Decisions

You make decisions in every moment of every day; some are consciously considered decisions, which require learned rationale and the input of others, while others are unconscious and in the moment. Either way, the decisions you make every moment create your life in business and in general. I’ve developed a technique I call “Success Strategy”, a tool to help to make clear and certain decisions.