Friday 27 March 2015

Life as Life or death or sustainability

Moved to my new website


Alison

Alison Smith
Inspiring Change inside and out


Metaphors used in our language are a common theme to my coaching sessions with clients, with those using nature and landscaping your life also a frequent visitor. My most popular blog Making mountains out of molehills is a great example of how the metaphors we use can also provide the solution to the very challenges they're describing. 

Of course organisations have operating metaphors too.

An index of blogs written about the many different tools I use in coaching can be found here.

Thursday 26 March 2015

Build on success


Simon Heath ran a #mydoodleday session today and I couldn't help but to join in vicariously from afar.

I was looking through my NLP trainer notes - the last time I thought about drawing images to support learning - and came across this image.

A great example that pictures can really paint a thousand words, and also means this blog is so very short and sweet - yes I know for a change. Something I've noticed when blogging about the collage cards or Landscaping your life too.

How can you build on success today?

Alison 

Alison Smith
Inspiring change inside and out

I may need to go an a workshop to improve my stick men and woman! 

Tuesday 24 March 2015

EQ Summit (The leader's mind and its potential)


I attended the EQ summit in London last week and these are just my notes for future reference with links to other blogs/YouTube clips, and other references relating to the content and speakers.

I share it here for ease, and in case anyone else is interested too.

Although please note this is the conference seen through my filters - others attending may have taken something totally different away from the sessions.


So why all the fuss about EQ?

Leaders with EQ:
  • Bring out the best in others
  • Super charge the capability in the organisation and unlock 'discretionary' effort
  • Go with the human grain not against it
  • Have people working for them who are 3 times as likely to stay
  • Achieve extraordinary things as a result

The main sponsors/organisers and joint developers of the emotional capital report (ECR)
  • Roche Martin
  • Sheffield Hallam University
  • Sheffield Business School
10 elements of the emotional capital report, and therefore the building blocks of EQ are:
  • Self reliance
  • Straightforwardness 
  • Optimism 
  • Self actualisation
  • Self confidence
  • Self knowing
  • Relationship skills
  • Adaptability
  • Self Control
  • Empathy
With excellent graphic facilitation from @simonheath1 - whose website can be found here and also wrote a pre summit summary of who would be talking, and did a great job of selling the event (Simon was the only reason I found out about the event).




The Speakers

Welcome - Amy Bernstein - editor at HBR


Emotional Capital - the asset on the balance sheet you can't afford to ignore - Dr Martyn Newman - author and MD at RocheMartin
  • A great summary of a similar talk by Martyn, and a wonderfully animated video too, Emotional Capitalist - the new leaders.
  • Emotional Capitalists - the ultimate guide to developing emotional intelligence for leaders - Martyn's book on the subject
  • "We are profoundly connected to others and influenced by them"
  • He told a great story about Apple's business success over Sony - due to Apple's ability to collaborate and work together, and Sony's lack of emotional capital. Something I'm sure Sony regret to this day. 
  • Firms of endearment - a book on how world class companies profit from passion and purpose
  • Understanding values of ourselves and others is key (ie our motivators)
  • "What ever you find (when you look at yourself) you have to like"
"What lies before us and what lies behind us 
are but small matter compared to what lies within us. 
And when we bring what is within us into the world, 
miracles happen!" 


Better self, better leadership, better business
Jeremy Darroch - Sky CEO
  • "EQ potential super charges the capability we have and unlocks 'discretionary' effort"
  • CIPD article from the session - Empathy is the top leadership skill says SKY CEO 
  • "EQ delivers a high performing environment - rejects complacency and embraces the new"


Grant Thornton - leadership EQ's impact on revenue
Breakout with Anne Blackie and Jenny Kidby

Programme to introduce EQ across the business to move from technical experts offering solutions (often short term) to transformational leaders co-creating solutions (longer term too).

That is put the expert's ego to one side and bring our wholeness to work (the emotional and real person).




Motivation, performance and purpose
Dan Pink - author
  • "Reward of carrot and/or stick is outdated for the 21st century"
  • "3 main motivators - autonomy, mastery and purpose"
  • "Mastery - making progress in meaningful work" 
  • "Purpose - Making a contribution or difference"
  • "When asked 'tell me about your best boss' you never hear 'pathologically controlling' in the answer"
  • HBR article on purpose/how/why - trying to find what my notes meant on this - will come back when I know more, and if you can shed any light I'd much appreciate comments below - thank you
  • "Aim to tell people 2 less 'how's and 2 more 'why's" (links to the last comment)
  • "The profit motive can be an engine for good"
  • "You can go against the human grain, or with it"
  • Dan Pink's talk has been animated by RSA see 'Drive - the surprising truth about what motivates us', also his book on the same subject and HBR article.
  • Sukh Pabial's blog on the talk - Motivation, Dan Pink and EQ


Mindfulness for leaders
B Alan Wallace

Those that know me would expect me to already be into mindfulness and meditation. It's certainly the language I'm comfortable with. After all I've seen the Dalai Lama speak, and I even have the headspace app on my phone (even if I've hardly used it). 

However this is the first time I have EVER understood the benefit of mindfulness practices!  

The premise is - mindfulness helps focus attention at the same time as retaining a sense of ease. Which means after achieving this state of mindfulness we don't get stressed or strained when we do what we do afterwards. How wonderful is that!!

Or put another way - all our busyness, over attention or even boredom will stress our mind and body and therefore mean we're less effective - its also unsustainable for any period.


The alchemy of empathy - transforming stress into meaning
Eve Ekman
  • "There's a correlation between a lack of feeling of emotion in our body and lack of empathy with others"
  • "It's about emotional regulation"
  • Here's a video of a similar talk by Eve at the Mind and it's potential conference - cultivating emotional balance at work

Why the future begins - using EQ to optimise the future
Magnus Lindkvist

Sorry the last train north (and yes I mean very much north of Watford) was calling so I didn't hear Magnus speak. Tweets suggested he finished the day very humorously but I couldn't find any blogs or vlogs to link to - any suggestions most welcome.


As I made links to the content and my own passions I tweeted links to a few of my blogs:

Hope you found this helpful - I know I'll be back when I'm trying to recall what someone said, or to find that YouTube vlog.

Alison

Alison Smith
Inspiring change inside and out

I  did suggest on twitter half way through the session that this collage depicts life without EQ - ie without our humanness!



Wednesday 18 March 2015

Decision Making: mind or heart?

I read with interest Tanveer Naseer's guest blog by Dianna Booher entitled 'Speak to the heart to lead change'. It certainly aligns with a previous post of mine entitled 'winning hearts and minds'.

The premise of both blogs is: we shouldn't leave our heart and humanity at the front door of our office - we need to take it in with us and use it. Particularly when motivating others - ie it is our values that determine what we will and wont do, and they are determined by our heart and emotions - not our mind and thoughts. If we want to motivate and engage someone therefore, we have to engage their heart to do that, and ours too.

However the assumption I made in my blog was the decision had been made logically (ie with our mind), and therefore to get support for it we now needed to use our heart/emotions.

During an exchange on twitter about the blogs with Ian Berry I was asked to consider making decisions from the heart (for those not twitter literate the conversation runs from the bottom up).


This blog is an exploration of that challenge.

When making decisions for myself I often rely on intuition/emotions to help me - for example:
  • Do I accept this or that piece of work, 
  • Do I go on this/or that holiday 
  • Which restaurant shall I go to
  • What dress(es) shall I buy :-)
  • Determining which question to ask coaching clients, and when to push forward, and when to pull back and so on.
  • To decide which house to buy. Although I did follow a more logical process to develop the possible options 10 years ago. So yes for me logic certainly seems to play more of a part in bigger decisions - even if the final decision was made on 'does it feel right'.
Use of my heart to make decisions therefore is something I'm very familiar with - but these are decisions I make on my own.

When I make decisions with others it feels like I need the logic to back up the intuition/emotion. I wrote a blog entitled strategies need evidence to suggest the same.

As a purchasing consultant I'm often faced with stakeholders using their heart and emotions to tell me why the current supplier is the best choice. If left to hearts alone we'd get nowhere fast - with everyone involved often preferring to stay with what they're already doing, and purchasing pushing for potentially new and shiney suppliers :-).

Often my role therefore is to help stakeholders understand why their heart's choice might not be the only option. This is achieved by uncovering the reasons (business requirements) their heart wants to stay with the current supplier, and demonstrating that alternative suppliers/options are also able to meet these business needs. (Although yes of course - sometimes it's about staying with the current supplier too).

That is Procurement follow a logical process to pull together the relevant facts and data. This in turn enables us to develop a strategy that meets the business requirements and also releases value to the organisation.

There are certainly times when heart may play a part in the decision making - with criteria for selecting options, and certainly selecting suppliers, often including - do we trust them, cultural fit etc.

Decisions are also checked against what our hearts feel. With our hearts' reservations being addressed by asking more questions and gathering more data. Because unless I can provide the evidence to support a decision how will I be able to convince the senior management of the efficacy of our strategy.

In summary our intuition and emotions can play a big part in decision making. It's generally used however to guide us to find more data to support our beliefs - in those instances where these beliefs are still counter to the current facts and data. (NB the more thorough your research and analysis the less likely you are to find a mismatch at the strategy development stage - ie all the hearts concerns and reasons are out on the table and have been addressed in the analysis undertaken)

I would love to hear your thoughts on this subject - in business can you easily use heart alone or does logic also play a part?

Alison

Alison Smith
Inspiring change inside and out - when what you're doing isn't working