How effectively do you see?

Staying Fresh

Do you ever get into a groove? Not the helpful sort that's characterised by flow and productivity, but the sort where you feel you are getting stale. Depending on how deep and long it is you might even call it a rut. I reckon it's part of human nature to experience these times. Most people I speak to have experienced it at least once. Maybe it's a product of our search for certainty.

We are wired to manage our environment in a way that creates some certainty and predictability. Depending on personality and background, some people like more certainty than others. Some of us follow very precise and ordered sequences for almost everything we do. Going back to the same coffee shop, talking to the same people and driving the same way to work are all examples. Others will seek greater variety, sometimes going to extremes. But even then there are ways they create certainty. In the high risk sport of wing suit proximity flying for example, people spend huge amounts of time planning until they are certain enough of the outcome to make the jump. Despite appearances, they don't have a death wish.

Part of life is finding your personal balance between variety and certainty. Enough variety that you don't fall into a rut. Enough certainty that you feel comfortable.

Every year I intentionally do at least one thing that I have never done before. It keeps me fresh. I search for a challenge that will push back some boundaries and expose me to new skills. The experience should induce a bit of fear I reckon - something that puts me in a position of being a beginner with a lot to learn. For me a tandem skydive, or bungy jump would not meet the criteria. While both would be scary and definitely get me out of my comfort zone, neither requires me to learn. In both situations I'm dependant on an expert. 

This year's challenge is a stand-up comedy course that ends with a 5 minute stand-up performance to a live audience. I'm getting sweaty palms just writing about it. Some people don't believe me when I say that, after all I speak for a living, and sometimes it's humorous. But comedy is different I reckon. There's something very exposed about being on stage specifically to make people laugh. And there's nowhere to hide if it doesn't work. Humour is a pretty personal thing as well. What makes me laugh might not make you laugh. It could be a long 5 minutes!  

I recommend this kind of personal stretch at least once a year for anyone. 

• It keeps you fresh.
• It's great for brain health.
• You become more aware of yourself, and sometimes find strength and resources you didn't know you had.
• You'll probably have some fun.

I think it's especially important for leaders.

• It reminds you what it's like to be lead, especially if the leader is asking you to stretch yourself.
• It reminds you that you don't know everything.
• It awakens creativity and insight that are impossible to access from the rut.
• It makes you more aware of what it takes to create an environment where people are willing to follow.

What will you do to challenge yourself this year?

If you want to join me at the school of comedy details are here. https://www.schoolofcomedy.com.au/stand-up/

If you want some other ideas here's my article on the same subject from last year.

http://www.mikehouse.com.au/blog/2016/3/4/ixs8lzp8gpzkwgx13lilo5w4u9vej9

4 tips for leaders under pressure

I'm kicking my year off with a bang! Next week I'm working with a diverse group of forty leaders. Together they represent State Primary Schools, Oil and Gas, Health, Environmental Services, Not-For-Profits, Human Services. There's a mix of people who founded and own their business, and others who are entrusted to lead it. Some are large, publicly listed companies and some are small. 

Together we'll be looking at Leadership Under Pressure! Regardless of sector or size, leaders are facing unprecedented levels of pressure and change. Leaders are dynamic people with a passion for getting great results. Sometimes that has an impact on their own wellbeing. Here are four tips for leaders under pressure.

Breathe - It's easy to get caught up in the rapid fire transitions between all the meetings, roles and responsibilities of the modern leader. We are not well adapted to that, but it's not an option to stop either. It all has an impact - adding stress hormones to our bodies, reducing sleep, gaining weight etc. Slow rhythmic breathing sends a clear signal to your body to switch off the stress response. Unless you are a well practiced monk, it's unlikely that you'll get through a whole day focussed on how you are breathing, so just focus on the transitions. As you are going from one thing to another pause and take 3 long slow rhythmic breaths. It will help shed the stress of what you just did and focus more effectively for your next leadership challenge. It's quick, easy and effective.

Nature - There's piles of research showing that even small amounts of time in nature rejuvenate us in all kinds of ways. Creativity, problem solving and mental clarity all improve, as do wellbeing and resilience. There's lots of other benefits too. See if you can get a small slice of nature every day. Lunch in a park, walk, meet by the riverside, sit under a tree (also a great place for a meeting) watch a flock of birds.

Clarity - A leaders role can sometimes feel like an endless repeat of the same messages. That's a good thing. Investing time making sure people understand vision, direction and expectations is rarely wasted. It's easy to get caught up in endless frenetic doing which can result in a lack of clarity. In turn that breeds confusion and inefficiency. I see so many teams doing work over because of lack of clarity. It sucks energy, motivation and resources. Make it a priority to build clarity. Even if it takes you away from your immediate task list, the result will be more progress in the long run.

Progress - For many of the things we work on, it's hard to feel a sense of progress. Take time each day to acknowledge the achievements of the team. Creating a sense of progress is a great way to inject energy and maintain motivation.

I'd love to hear from you about what sustains you under pressure.

Wishing you a 2017 filled with great leadership moments!

Curiosity and Awareness

Curiosity and Awareness temper our need to be right!

Over the last 2 weeks we have explored the power of expectations. While it is undoubtedly true that our expectations create our reality, at least in part, it's also true that sometimes our expectations are not met, or something really unexpected happens. It's way too simplistic to say all you need is a good set of expectations and everything will go well for you. 

Curiosity and Awareness are key tools to ensure that we are able to deal with unexpected events, or unexpected results.

Research in areas as diverse as business, survival, sport, military, and neuroscience has highlighted and clearly documented the human ability to create mental models. If you would like to know more about this some great books on the topic are Deep Survival, Iconoclast, 5th Discipline and Blink.

Mental models present a two edged sword.

On the upside, they are one of the most amazing functions of the human mind. They transform us from a purely reactive entity responding to opportunities and threats at a primal level. Mental models give us the ability to rapidly assimilate and generalise information across a range of settings and contexts.

Mental models help us learn, make judgments, develop wisdom, create new ideas and transfer learning between seemingly unrelated areas and events in our lives.

On the down side they lull us into a sense of certainty about "the way things are", often creating unconscious or inflexible expectations. These are precisely the type of expectations that lead to the problems discussed in the first article of this series.

A mental model at its worst becomes like a giant set of blinkers, creating a myopic view of the world. In this condition we are only able to perceive the things that confirm our mental model, even if there is ample evidence that it may be flawed.

In business this can result in decisions being made, and then a dogged determination to see it through despite ample evidence that the decision was an ineffective one. The same can be true in our personal lives as well - You may have even experienced it yourself.

When we look back with the 20:20 vision of hindsight we can often see these patterns clearly, but it takes discipline to pick up on them "in the moment".

Once the brain picks a mental model, it expends less and less energy, increasingly assuming the model to be true, and only paying attention to information that confirms this assumption.

Enter Curiosity and Awareness. They are the most powerful tools of the survivalist mind and the only remedy to falling into the trap of inflexible mental models. 

Awareness is a discipline. It is a commitment to scan widely for new or different information. There are a range of skills and tools that can be learnt and mastered to increase awareness.

Curiosity has a lightness and wondering about it, not taking itself too seriously.  Curiosity will notice small inconsistencies and ask "now why is that?" Curiosity will seek the novel, even in the mundane and familiar. Curiosity wonders at the links and relationships between all things. Again there are skills and tools that can be learnt to enhance curiosity and its effectiveness. 

Cultivate these 2 gems!!

What can survival situations and scenarios teach us?

Many people are fascinated by survival and the two most common questions I get asked are:

"How did you get into teaching survival?" closely followed by, "Well that’s interesting Mike, but what’s it got to do with the real challenges and issues I face in my everyday life?"

Lets face it, it’s unlikely that most of us will face a genuine survival situation, where actual life of limb are at threat anytime soon. 

Over the years I’ve observed myself and many others in survival scenarios, and actual, life threatening situations. They are a great observation platform for human behaviour.

A survival situation is cleaner, clearer and less complex than the lives we typically live. There are straight, uncluttered lines between what people do, and the results of their actions. And, the feedback loops are rapid and aggressive. It’s possible to observe the outcome of a particular way of thinking or acting a short time after it has been used. Sometimes you get to see whether what you did was effective or ineffective in a matter of minutes or hours. At most it will be a few days. 

This combination of simplicity and rapid feedback make it possible to directly observe your habitual patterns of behaviour. How the survivalist makes decisions, leads, resolves conflict, deals with uncertainty, handles changes to plan, works under pressure, builds rapport, deals with disappointment, manages expectations, and their other patterns of behaviour are thrown into sharp relief against the backdrop of rapid feedback. Some patterns are more effective than others. Some people have a great toolbox of effective patterns. They handle uncertainty and difficulty with seeming ease. Others have patterns that make it more likely that things won’t go well for them, or the people around them.

Over the years I have seen the same patterns of behaviour I observe in the field show up in workplaces. They are present all the time, and get magnified when people are under pressure. In contrast to survival, work situations are much more complex. The feedback loops can be slow and indirect. At work, and in our relationships, it may be weeks, years, or even decades before we recognise the results of particular patterns. Even then, they may be so clouded in the complexity of projects, the patterns of other people, and the passage of time, that we may never gaze directly and clearly at the link between our patterns and our results.

Survival situations have much to teach us about the hard wired, ancient survival mechanisms we all have. They give great insights into the advantages and disadvantages of this incredible entity called a human being.

Having straddled the worlds of survival and organisational change for 20 years, I'm interested in giving people a bit of a user manual, helping them get the best out of themselves and the people around them when the pressure is on and the chips are down. 

Effective Expectations

Expectations are powerful. They are uniquely human. As I work with individuals and businesses engaged in change, I often hear people say “Change is hard” or “people are not good at change”. I reckon this is a recent and not particularly useful myth. Humans have always been great at change. It’s the main reason we have achieved so much as a species. Stop for a moment and consider the incredible advances in every area of human endeavour. What we are capable of verges on miraculous sometimes. If we were not good at change we would still be living in caves. 

From the dawn of humanity we have been driven by 3 things that mean we are constantly looking to improve and evolve. We want to make things easier. We want to achieve more with less. We want to make things better. Da Vinci's inventions are great examples. He could see possibilities long before the technology existed to bring them to life.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him. The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself. All progress therefore depends on the unreasonable man”

— George Bernard Shaw

We create an (often unreasonable) expectation that things can be better than their current state, and then we use those expectations to bend reality to meet us. For expectations to bend reality, they have to be crystal clear.

Action: Invest some regular time in clarifying your expectations. If others are involved communicate your expectations clearly to them. Allow time for exploration. Don’t expect people to automatically understand your expectations. 

That’s the powerful up-side to expectations. The down side comes when we hold them too tightly. Expectations cause us problems when:

• Reality is sending a clear message that what we expect is not currently possible.
• We persist with an unrealistic expectation.
• We hold them too tightly, causing blindspots, frustration, judgemental attitudes, defensiveness, conflict and anxiety.

Expectations held too tightly are the root cause of death in every survival situation. Nobody leaves town for a trip expecting to die. They expect to arrive at their destination. When they become lost or stranded, they still do not expect to die - they leave the vehicle expecting to walk to help. It is neither the expectation, nor the circumstance that is at fault; it is the fact that the expectation becomes immovable in the face of evidence that suggest a different tack.

Pursuing an expectation when reality dictates a change is a short road to frustration at best, and heavy losses at worst. These three elements are all present in Shackleton's expedition.

Action: Take regular opportunities for feedback about your expectations from the environment, circumstances your face, yourself and the people around you. Be prepared to modify or discard expectations if they are not serving you.

Expectations - Friction, Tension, and Conflict

Expectations and assumptions are the root cause of most tension, friction and conflict in all areas of human relationship. Both at work and at home. Part of the challenge of human performance and effectiveness is to articulate expectations and arrive at a shared understanding of what is important. It's a collective and individual process.

Even when we choose to have explicit conversations about expectations, the territory can be muddy. We frequently use language that in itself is laden with expectations and underlying assumptions. Words like 'respect', 'integrity' and 'accountability' usually draw easy agreement. There are few of us who would argue that these are not important. But the detail of what we mean by a term like respect can be difficult to articulate for ourselves and discover in others.

This morning at 4am, I joined a lecture at the University of North Dakota, Space Studies Program. I didn't even have to leave home. The lecture was delivered by Dr Sheryl Bishop who has spent the last 25 years researching human performance and team dynamics in isolated and hostile environments. She has spent time at the poles, deep cave diving, and simulation of space habitats. She also conducted some research in conjunction with Bob Cooper on one of his Advanced Survival Exercises in the Pilbara.

Dr Bishop made an interesting point about how challenging it is to get people to even acknowledge that there is an underlying expectation or assumption at play.

She showed this photo of the crew dining table on the old Skylab Space Station. When it is not in use, the table folds down, leaving just the central pillar. Crew were moving through this room all day, and the Earth based control team noticed that they all pulled themselves around the pillar. It was so much more effort than simply flying over the top. 

When asked, the crew were unable to explain why they did it, especially when there were such obviously easier ways. After a few days of reflection they came back with this explanation. "It just doesn't seem right or polite to fly right over the top of our dining table." The crew had unanimously adopted a practice that took more effort and was based on expectations. They had never discussed it, and even when asked directly about it, took a while to identify why.

Dr Bishop's quote of the day for me was, "Often our expectations and assumptions are completely invisible, even to ourselves."

Had there been a crew member onboard who took the direct, and easier route through the dining room, this would have been a source of possible friction or conflict for the crew. In situations like that people often say things like, "He doesn't respect us." They are not even consciously aware of what the person is specifically doing to create the friction.

As leaders, subtle friction or tension is an early indicator that there are unmet expectations in play. Time spent exploring, and clarifying your expectations and those around you is never wasted. Greater clarity results in better performance, cohesion and dynamics, all of which are better for business.

Finding the Right Focus

Each year I like to try at least one thing I have never done before. I find that it helps to keep my mind sharp. I'm exposed to an area of knowledge I haven't been exposed to before, and the new practice forces me out of my well worn, and habitual grooves. From a leadership point of view, it also reminds me what it feels like to be in unfamiliar territory. We often ask others to step up, but if we continually operate within known territory ourselves, we can forget how unsettling a new space can be to the people around us. 

This year, I've been doing some work with Bradley Hunter at The Shed Functional Fitness. Brad is a master of kettle bells, and a seriously good personal trainer. The end of last year for me was hectic, and I found myself adding kilos and stress. I needed a new physical routine.

I've found myself in possession of a couple of shiny new kettle bells. They don't yet have the knocks and scrapes of Brad's set. Aside from the physical benefits, the bells quickly schooled me in being present, paying attention, and finding the right focus. It's worth finding at least one thing in your life that demands being present in the here and now. 

Kettle bells work in part because they force you into dynamic and unstable movements which switch on core and stabilising muscles. If you are not mentally switched on as well, they bite! Safety is a big part of the training, and Brad had briefed me really clearly on how to safely enter and exit each move.

During my first workout at home, I dropped my focus for less than a second. As I rolled over to complete the sequence, I forgot to focus on the bell. It literally took off. A quick but awkward roll managed to get the thing back on the ground without it doing damage to me, or turning into a wrecking ball. All up it was a better outcome than what could have been.

After that initial wakeup call, I find myself instantly present as soon as I touch a kettle bell now. It's almost like meditation!

I like to find activities that demand that kind of presence. It's what I strive to bring to all aspects of my life and work. When I manage that level of presence, I deliver better results, listen more, learn more, and both my business and personal relationships flourish.

Now the heady days of New Years resolutions are well behind us, if you were going to try one new thing this year - something fun, motivating and beneficial - what would that something be? The menu is endless. Will you choose a one off experience like diving with sharks or visiting a new country? Perhaps a course to develop a new skill set? Maybe a dance class? Build a new habit? Join a book club? Or try something new in business like a partnership or new offering? 

What will you do this year that's new and different? What will that new space teach you?