Circumstances

There are three types of circumstance we can face at any time. We can influence them but we can’t really control them.

They all have their time and place. When we approach them with awareness we can handle any of them well.

Some of the greatest issues are caused when people, teams or organisations are facing one circumstance but think, feel and act as if they are facing another.

As If…

I’ve met many people, teams and businesses who are not facing actual survival circumstances, but think, feel and act as if they are. That adds significant stress and drama to themselves, the people around them and the situation they are in. An imagined survival state can rapidly turn into a real one due to stress, poor decision-making and inappropriate action.

Similarly, there are people, teams and businesses who are facing survival, but think, feel and act as if they are not. Total denial. One risk is that they get abruptly, brutally and unexpectedly blindsided - perhaps taken out of the game entirely. An even bigger risk is that the situation passes, leaving them unscathed. This just adds to their denial, leaving them at even greater risk.

Neutral states are pretty cruisey and are often a chance to catch a breather.

Abundant states, due to their rapid pace, can leave people feeling as if they are in survival. As a result, they miss the abundant opportunities around them.

What circumstances are you currently facing? What are the indicators of that? The more clearly you see what you are facing the more adaptable your response.

Sometimes It Just Doesn’t Go to Plan

Sometimes it just doesn’t go to plan. I don’t know what It’s like for you, but for me being off plan can be deeply unsettling. It's easy to get caught up in ego, fear, and blame. It's easy to get reactive. In workplaces, it can lead to crappy team dynamics, highly transactional methods of working, mistrust, misunderstanding, expense, lack of engagement, presentism, conflict, friction and tension. How we act is driven by our perception - what we believe to be true. But the map is not the territory. Our perception has huge gaps in it, created by bias, blind spots, filters and our fickle attention.

Becoming a student of how you see the world, and working to make your unconscious assumptions visible are great ways to limit the impact of our limited view. It also helps us make the most of the diversity of skill and experience in the people around us.

Hasty Decisions

I was instructing on a Survival Course when one group made a hasty decision to walk past a water hole without filling their bottles. It was understandable, the waterhole was smelly and murky and they were certain a windmill lay just ahead. But they were wandering lost for several hours. They ran out of water before they found the ‘windmill’, which turned out to be a gate. They had misread the map symbols. Dehydration compounded fatigue - sapping energy and seeding indecision. They spent a hard, dry night filled with anxiety before stumbling upon a water hole the next day. Topping up when they had the chance would have taken the pressure right off. For the rest of their walk, they paused anytime they passed a potential resource and made a conscious decision to use or bypass it. 

This is a great example of rapid feedback in survival scenarios. Similar patterns play out at work when people:

• act without all the information,

• get defensive or aggressive about their point of view,

• are not on the same page, resulting in re-doing work, wasting time, resources and energy, and/or

• think they have clearly communicated to each other, but are actually mistaking 'windmills' for 'gates'. 

When have hasty decisions not worked well for you? 

How can you build more conscious decision making into your work?

What Survival Situations and Scenarios Teach Us

When I talk about my experience as a survival instructor, the audience is split roughly three ways. One-third thinks it’s fascinating and would love to get out there and try it. One-third never want to get caught anywhere near the outback with me. The remaining third think it’s interesting, but wonder what the relevance is to their everyday world of work.

Here’s what survival situations and scenarios can teach us.

Over the years I’ve been in actual survival situations on the ocean, on yachts and in kayaks. I’ve survived being pinned underwater in a fast-flowing river. I was there again trapped on a rope while abseiling waterfalls in Vietnam. I’ve put myself and many others through survival scenarios while working as an instructor for a world-leading survival school. In those situations, you get to see people right at the edge of their capability.

Speedy Feedback

Survival situations are clear. There are straight lines between choices and results. The feedback loops are rapid and aggressive. Outcomes from a particular way of thinking or acting show up quickly. Sometimes in minutes. At most it will be a few days.

A Snap Shot

You’d think it would be different in comfortable and controlled environments - after all, there is no direct threat there. But feeling or thinking we are under threat is enough. In modern workplaces, and in life, there's more complexity and the feedback is slower. It's harder to draw clear links between how we respond to circumstances, and the results we get. Survival gives a compressed snapshot of how we behave under pressure that can be translated to the everyday circumstances we face. Any time we are under pressure ineffective patterns get magnified.

How effectively people decide, lead, resolve conflict, deal with uncertainty, handle changes, work under pressure, build rapport, deal with disappointment, handle incomplete and changing information and manage expectations under pressure is key to modern workplace performance. Some people have a great toolbox of effective behaviour. Others have patterns that just make things worse.

What’s your toolbox like?

Thrive and Adapt – No Matter What

I spent 20 years of working in the worlds of survival instruction and organisational change. The personal factors that lead to people surviving or not, fascinate me. As I have studied and worked with people in a variety of settings - one thing stands out.

Under pressure some of us become instruments of our own demise, reacting in ways that are foolhardy and dangerous. Others survive.

Among the survivors are a group who do more than merely survive – they Thrive and Adapt.

Survival doesn’t have to be a life-threatening situation. We face tough circumstances in life and business as well. I reckon any situation that needs a rapid response to prevent it getting worse counts as Survival. The people who Thrive and Adapt show up all through life – and if you are not already one of them you can learn the skills that make it more likely that you will Thrive and Adapt – No Matter What.

How effectively we respond to the circumstances we face comes down to:

·      how we see the situation and how well we understand the limits of what we see,

·      our ability to shift our perspective and approach, especially under pressure, and

·      what we do consistently to set us up for success.

How adaptable are you?

How effectively do you see?

What motivates you?

I was recently asked what lead me to do the work I do. The answer is multi layered and it’s been a lifetime journey. This 2 minute video is part of the story. What motivates you?

Resistance to Change

Humans are actually really good at change. Our drive to make things better and easier has been one of the key success factors for our species. And yet so often there is resistance to change, even when we know it is a good thing we are trying to implement. The source of resistance is rarely explored, but if you can identify it clearly, it’s much more likely you will succeed!

The Survivor Personality - why some people beat the odds.

Research of the survivor personality highlights personal attributes that help people survive against the odds. These personality traits have been studied in a range of potentially overwhelming circumstances: 

• People lost or stranded

• Life threatening medical situations

• Accident and trauma

• Redundancy

• Prisoners of War

• Entrepreneurial failure.

One of the key traits is an optimistic mindset, but it’s not rose-coloured-glasses-blind-faith-fingers-in-the-ears optimism.

It’s optimism tempered by reality. Blind optimism may work in the short term. It’ll get you over a small hump. When pitted against massive adversity or long burn situations though, it falls over and can actually lead to despair. Imagine an optimistic view “the market will turn by the end of the week”. Each week that passes with no turn is another knock to the belief. Add enough of those together and the person may get totally overwhelmed by the circumstances they face.

Adding reality to optimism is simple - Focus on what you can control.

Here are some examples of effective optimism

What are you currently facing? How could you adjust your mindset to be more Unshakeable in the long term?

Reduce the Policy Load

Things had been dodgy to say the least. The organisation was losing money, and while it was never proven it was pretty likely that some was being internally skimmed. A new CEO was appointed and she was met with a tangled web involving people at all levels right up to the board. Had the organisation continued “as is” it would have been broke in 18 months and likely facing a number of legal ramifications. People were suspicious and guarded. It was an emotionally charged and manipulative environment. There was very little trust. The organisation was far from unshakeable and on the verge of being shaken to the core.

As the new CEO uncovered the extent of the chaos, the organisation slipped further with people running for cover behind blame. Factions began making threats in an attempt to ensure compliance or silence. Threats ranged from minor to very serious. 

In the aftermath there was very little trust. In rebuilding the organisation there was a strong swing to creating policy and procedure (P&P) for everything. It’s an understandable reaction - an attempt to lock the doors and bar the windows.  

However the higher the quantity of P&P, the lower the effectiveness:

• Higher quantities of P&P increase the likelihood  that some or all of your staff are operating outside the ‘rules’. The more there are, the less it is possible to know, understand and apply them all. In fact, time and effort will be spent finding work-arounds and short cuts.

• High volumes of P&P increase the annual workload of review and update. If the team takes the task seriously, it requires a detailed look at each document and how it is serving the organisation (or not). High volumes tend to result in a ‘tick and flick’ mentality that does nothing to contribute to the security that P&P are trying to create.

• People who will do the wrong thing will find a way, regardless of how thick the P&P file is. 

• P&P is a great killer of innovation and improvement.

• High volume P&P implies staff aren’t to be trusted and need every element of their work guided by the organisation.

• It raises the centre of gravity, by taking decisions and processes up the hierarchy. In turn, this restricts thinking and creativity at the coal face.

• High volume becomes addictive, as every little gap in P&P is hunted down and filled. It’s like  rabbits or those wire coat hangers from the dry cleaner.

Unshakable organisations are lean on Policy and Procedure, but do not leave the organisation without guidelines. Ray Dalio’s book “Principles” is a great example of detailed guidance that leaves heaps of room for flexible approaches to changing conditions.

A great principle for organisations who want to be unshakable is to reduce P&P as much as possible.

When reviewing documents, ask yourself “Is there any reason why this document could not be deleted or shortened?”

Lower the Centre of Gravity

The boat was skittish and unstable. Every time a small wave rolled beneath us we struggled to keep it upright. We were planning for an extended sea kayak trip and this experience told us there was work to be done. Fighting the boat for days on end, at times miles from shore was never going to work.

The solution turned out to be simple. A paddling friend suggested attaching a 1kg diving weight to the lowest point inside the boat. That small weight lowered the centre of gravity and suddenly the boat was easy and delightful to paddle.

If you want to build an unshakeable team, lowering the centre of gravity is just as important. Old world organisations relied on hierarchy and decisions being made at the top. It used to work. Now it’s way too slow, and too easy to disrupt. Lower the centre of gravity by empowering your team to make decisions close to where the action is. Here are some ways to do it. We’ll talk more about them in coming articles.

• Reduce bureaucracy. Be relentless in the pursuit of making things easier and smoother. Pay attention to where people take short cuts and either enhance the process or adopt the short cut. 

• Set clear boundaries for autonomy. If people know where they can make decisions and be backed by leadership, they’ll start doing more things, more effectively in direct response to the challenges of their work. As a leader focus on removing barriers and establishing the direction. The team will come to life.

And when disruptive situations occur your team will be more unshakeable.

Breathing for action

Last week we talked about breathing to relax. Breathing deep into the belly.

The steps were:

1. Breathe slowly and rhythmically

2. Acknowledge emotion 

3. Set your intent 

But what if you need to switch on and be ready for action?

The three steps are the same, just change how you breathe.

To be ready for action, lock down your core muscles, so your belly moves very little as you breathe. Allow your chest to expand and contract. The breathing is still slow and rhythmic, just higher up in your torso.

Breathing this way gives an almost contradictory feeling of being relaxed and ready for action.

Ideal for big moments in work and life where you need to be switched on!

Leading from where you are

"The team don't like or respect him", he said. "But I can make a difference to how the team operates, even if I'm not the leader."

It was an inspiring conversation with a young man who understood leadership. He was working in a team where the official leader was dictatorial and inconsistent. The team spent a lot of time over the 'water cooler' complaining about their boss and the direction he was taking them. 

"That just adds to the dissatisfaction and tension. When people push back they make themselves a target." 

When I asked what he did differently, here's what he shared:

• I don't buy into gossip. It doesn't help anyone. If something is factual, i share what I know, otherwise I stay out of it.

• I don't talk behind people's back, and when I hear others doing that, I pull them up. If I have feedback to give, I'll do that straight up with the person it concerns.

• I do the best job I know how, even when I don't like how the instructions are given.

• If I'm told to do something unreasonable, I respectfully  say why I think it is unreasonable.

• I maintain my own standard of work and encourage others to do the same - It's easy to let it slip when you don't like the boss, but that reflects as much on me as on him.

It's a great example of leading from wherever you are. This young man is making a contribution to his team and his workplace that adds value and quality. What he is doing makes his team more unshakeable.

How do you lead from where you are?

Stilling the whirlwind

I tossed and turned. It didn’t seem to matter what what position I lay in, I couldn’t get to sleep. My mind was a whirlwind of activity . It churned with ideas and sequences for an upcoming workshop with a new client. I tossed and turned some more, eventually falling asleep, only to spring awake almost immediately. It was as if the whirlwind had prodded me awake. After a while a thought adds to the whirlwind, “If this keeps up, I’ll be shattered tomorrow!”. It adds to the stress. The more I try, the less I sleep.

When I talk to my coaching clients, I’m not alone in finding it hard to relax and switch off sometimes. 

It seems we get the “whirlwind” from 3 categories:

• Stressful thoughts about things yet to be completed, things that make us worried or anxious, overload, tight timelines, big decisions…

• Creative thoughts like big ideas, great solutions, new directions…

• Processing thoughts like when you have learned something new and your mind is filled with it and how it fits with other things you know…

Fortunately, the Guerrilla Mindfulness tactic can be really effective in those moments.

Guerrilla Mindfulness is:

• 3 long, slow rhythmic breaths

• Acknowledge how you feel

• Clarify your intention

When I can’t sleep for the whirlwind I use it this way:

1. Focus on the rhythm of your breathing. Make the breaths in and out the same each time. Breathe into your belly. To do that, ‘lock’ the muscles of your ribs together and let your belly expand and contract with each breath. Try to keep your ribcage still as you breathe in and out. Let the belly fill and empty. Breathing this way is deeply relaxing.

2. Acknowledge how you feel, without getting into the story of why. You might be stressed, anxious, frustrated, excited, or curious. Use as few words as you can to describe your feelings. Acknowledging your feelings in this way reduces the stress hormones in your system.

3. Be clear about your intent - it might be ‘I’m going to park this for now, relax and sleep.”

4. Go back to breathing into your belly - slow, deep, rhythmic. I usually find I’m asleep before I count 7 cycles. If the whirlwind interrupts your breathing, be kind to yourself. Gently notice the thoughts and return your attention to breathing. Even if you don’t sleep, your gentle focus on the breath will have you more relaxed tomorrow than a night with the whirlwind.

Sometimes you’ll wake up again during the night with the whirlwind spinning again. Rinse and repeat as often as you need to. I also find it helpful to do a quick brain dump into a notebook to get the whirlwind off my mind.

And of course, if you find yourself getting stuck in a pattern of long term sleeplessness, seek help.

Next time, we’ll talk about using Guerrilla Mindfulness when you need to be switched on and ready for action.

Surviving Christmas - Six Silly Season Survival Strategies

A few years back a team of psychologists at Coventry University did some work on Stress at Christmas time.

Rob Wilde, a psychologist at the university, reckons Christmas stress is a result of:

• extra responsibility

• a radical shift in daily patterns

• more people, alcohol, food, spending and over-excited children than we normally experience.

Rob also notes that we often pass the stress we can feel at this time of year off as tiredness or a hangover. Really Rob? There's every chance it's option D, All of the above!

How is the silly season for you? Are you heading into it with a sense of joy and relaxation, or is it more like the picture above?

I could say a whole lot about not eating and drinking too much, and making sure you stay relaxed, but like me you will probably over indulge and be charging from one thing to another.

So here's my top 6 Silly Season Survival Strategies:

Simplify - Reduce the load on you and your family by simplifying the plan. Can the load of preparing be shared? Can meals be simplified? Can travel be minimised?

Breathe - When we are under pressure we tend to breathe less. At least once a day pause and take some long, deep, conscious breaths. It's still one of the simplest and easiest ways to reduce stress and improve wellbeing.

Eat - I presume you will over indulge (I know I will!) So take every opportunity between feasting to eat fresh, healthy and light food. It will ease the load on your digestive system and help keep your immune function up.

Drink - Stay well hydrated. Water is essential to good digestion and to processing toxins like alcohol. It also helps reduce stress and keep your thinking clear.

Expect - I often talk about expectations. Whenever our expectations don't match reality we experience stress. Spend some time asking yourself what your expectations at Christmas are. Are they realistic? Can they be met? How will you react if they are not? Share your thoughts with the people around you. Just being clear about your expectations will significantly reduce the chance of heated moments. Some examples of expectations that could cause stress are light traffic, no queue at the shop, getting something other than socks this year.

Gratitude - is a powerful way to reduce stress and increase wellbeing. Take some time to express gratitude to the people around you, including the people in service roles who get run off their feet at this time of year.

Enjoy the Christmas Season. Blessings and Joy to you and your family.

Feel Like a Vending Machine - Ask More Questions.

Many leaders feel like a vending machine. Staff come to them with problems. They dispense solutions. It's exhausting and keeps leaders down in the weeds, rather than focussed on higher level thinking and work. The article I wrote about it hit a nerve and provoked some questions. Over the next few weeks, we'll explore some tips for getting out of the 'vending machine' cycle.

One of the easiest ways to break the cycle is ask more questions. Questions help you and your staff think through the issue and understand it. From your point of view, you want to be able to offer assistance (if it's genuinely needed) without bailing people out too easily. From their point of view, assisting them to think about the issue increases their understanding and ultimately their capacity. For both of you, the process builds greater trust and understanding making future issues and delegated tasks easier to tackle.

Here are some great questions to ask. You don't need all of them every time. One or two insightful questions create the space for your staff member to come up with their own solutions. They also identify what your most useful contribution to the issue, or your staffs development might be. Even if it is an issue that needs input from you, ask some questions first. It establishes an expectation that staff will think for themselves, and that you value/trust their input. The three questions in bold italics are almost always worth asking.

• Who is involved in this issue? Who does the issue impact the most? Who would benefit from a solution? Are there any people this impacts who may not be aware of it yet? Who raised the issue? Who do we need to communicate with as we work on a solution?
• When did you become aware of this? Are there any significant or critical timeframes we need to consider?
• Where are the resources you need? Do you have access to them?
• How would you solve the problem? 
• Why is this important to you/us/the company/our stakeholders? Why do you need my assistance?
• What is the impact if it isn't solved? What would it take to solve it? What resources/connections/networks would help? What attempts have you made to solve the issue? What do you think would be the most effective solution? What barriers (if any) are there to you doing that?

Go on - Unplug that vending machine!

Leading like a Vending Machine

Do your staff keep expecting you to have all the answers and solve all the problems? Do you wish they would show a bit more initiative and try to solve their own problems? Does the constant flow of requests from your team add to your daily pressure and work load? If you answered yes to any of those questions, perhaps you are leading like a vending machine. Over the years I have  coached many leaders who experience this issue. I coined the phrase "Vending Machine Manager". 

Staff come to the Vending Machine Manager and punch in a request "B4". The machine shakes and rattles a bit. There's a couple of clunking sounds. Out of the flap pops the perfect answer or solution to their problem. It's cool and it's sweet. Next time they have a problem, they remember how easy it was. How cool and sweet it was. Back they come. They punch in "A9", and walk away satisfied. Before long, the Vending Machine Manager has a constant flow of traffic wearing out the floor in front of their work station. "D7", Clunk, WooHoo. "F2" Clunk, WooHoo. "B6"Clunk, WooHoo. On and on it goes - and your workload continues to grow.

From a survival point of view, humans are designed to find the easiest return for energy expended. The Vending Machine Manager plays straight into the hands of that design. To change the dynamic you need to move from dispensing answers to building capacity. Work with your team to build their own knowledge and skill. Make them experts in their own right. If you keep vending, they'll keep coming. Change the game!

The Engine Room

I love working with Small to Medium Enterprise. Talk about adaptable. This segment of the business world is filled with people who see opportunities and move. In many ways they are the engine room of the Australian economy. So many businesses which translate to jobs and opportunities of all shapes and sizes.

The entrepreneurial mind is exciting. People who take risks to bring ideas and people together have many of the same attributes of those who survive against the odds in survival situations.

And despite being many, many people across the country, they often work in relative isolation - whenever I can, I like to support their work.

On the 21st September I’m teaming up with the Growth Box in Malaga to present “Thrive and Adapt – tools for success”

If you are a business owner or leader who would like to network with others over breakfast and come away inspired, come and join us.

The short video is an interview I did with Clive Haddow, CEO at the Growth Box about the event. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGt-rn-yJFc

and tickets can be booked via this link.

https://www.trybooking.com/book/event?eid=304399

By the way, I’m doing this event free of charge to support the work of Growth Box and all the great SME’s out there. I hope to see you on 21st September for brekky.

Buildings, Births and The Beat

100 years. Depending on how you look at it, it's either a long time or a short one. In cosmic terms it's less than blink of an eye. In lifespans it's either one really long one or around 1.3 average length ones. In career terms, it's about 3 working lifetimes (unless you are a professional sports person in which case it's a lot more).

So much has changed in 100 years. Back in 1917 The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower. More than 95% of births happened at home. There was no such thing as Mother's Day. Pneumonia was still the leading cause of death.  The average life span was around 50! Perth wan't even connected to the national phone system until 1930.

In 1917 Helen Dugdale (L) and Laura Chipper (R) made history. They were the first women in WA's Police Service. I'm privileged to present tomorrow among some other awesome speakers to mark the 100 year anniversary of Women in Policing in our state. As I have prepared for the event, I'm humbled by the number of "firsts" that continue to happen as pioneering women stand up and tackle roles that are traditionally male.

“The day before something is a breakthrough, it’s just another crazy idea”

— Peter Diamandis

Firsts take effort. You have to make your own road. There's no chance to follow or learn from others, only to do the best you can with what you have got. Often there's a lack of resources and active opposition. We've got a lot of pioneers in this state. It's a line from well before colonial times right up to the moment. I'm honoured to be asked to celebrate Women in Policing, and it makes me grateful for all the incredible changes made by courageous people who built their own road.

A Reason to Celebrate?

Today is the winter solstice for us southern hemispherians.  From today the days gradually get a little lighter. I have written before about the power of gratitude to shift how we see the world. It contributes to mental and physical wellbeing, creativity, ability to solve problems, get along with others and a host of other benefits. Mid winter is a time for celebration and gratitude in many cultures - why not pause today and reflect on what you are grateful for.

As I write this the sun is coming up and there is a cacophony of birds chorusing outside. I'm grateful for their song and the opportunities this day brings.