The environment you are in has either a growth mindset or a fixed mindset. A growth mindset is when you are open to challenges, see failures as opportunities for growth, and believe that abilities and intelligence can be developed over time with dedication and effort. A fixed mindset, on the other hand, is when you believe that intelligence and abilities are static traits, leading to a desire to prove oneself and a fear of failure that can hinder learning and personal development. Send me an email in confidence to let me know which mindset characterises your environment?
The humble calf
““One of the great challenges in this world is knowing enough about a subject to think you’re right, but not enough about the subject to know you’re wrong.””
The pursuit of knowledge
Nowadays, we are especially sensitive to signs of trustworthiness in our leaders, and compassion increases our willingness to trust. The smartest people in the world know they don't need to know it all, as highly intelligent people seem to be consistently engaged in the pursuit of knowledge. I think the power of paying attention to our attention is that we become aware that this other stuff is happening that isn’t related to our goal and may actually prevent us from accomplishing our goals.
““The problem is not people being uneducated. The problem is that people are educated just enough to believe what they have been taught, and not educated enough to question anything from what they have been taught.””
These are your options
Why would you recommend doing this instead of that?
When we approach this challenge, we should consider the appropriate framework, methodology, and process. People strive to improve and excel in various areas, including sales acumen, however, what truly sets someone apart is their business argument. I think the key differentiator lies in possessing situational knowledge. It may be referred to as situational awareness or experience, but I prefer to call it situational knowledge because it signifies having encountered similar situations and observed different decisions and outcomes. Therefore, your understanding of the context in which the client operates becomes the basis for providing advice.
Get lucky
Lucky people generate their own good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good. Here’s how luck will find you:
1. Work harder than expected
2. Stay teachable
3. Give without expecting a get
4. Read and write more
5. Show up on time
6. Focus on your customers
7. Develop good manners
8. Be humble
9. Be kind and generous
10. Surround yourself with smarter people
““Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.””
Our beliefs and opinions
Perception refers to our sensory experience of the world, in other words, perception is based on our viewpoint, experience, and behaviours from where we stand, and sometimes that isn’t always accurate. How we see things around us, no matter how they actually are, become what's real to us and our perception of reality is limited by our five senses; touch, sight, sound, smell, and taste. And it is through this experience that we gain information about the environment around us, and I think this shapes our beliefs and opinions.
Look forward, not backwards
Each time you choose to trust yourself and take action, you can never quite be certain how the situation will turn out. Sometimes you are victorious, and sometimes you become disillusioned. Remember that there are no mistakes if you have learned something in the process. At the end of every day, ask yourself these three questions:
What did I learn today?
How did I grow today?
What will I do differently tomorrow?
The first law
The first law of thermodynamics is that energy is neither created or destroyed, merely transformed. This means that humans are bundles of energy and transform at death, we don’t just disappear. I think with the smallest investment in the right places, you can radically transform the quality of your life. Contact me via e-mail if you don’t understand and we can have a meeting.
“There may be people that have more talent than you, but there’s no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do.”
Everyone needs a little help
via Getty Images
Managers need to find ways to empower their teams so that they can work out for themselves the most effective ways of achieving the results expected of them. Managers must increasingly provide individualised support and offer flexibility for each team member. It’s not about splitting the role between “leaders of work” and “leaders of people.” I think that when leaders support managers in the right way, they will have the confidence and experience to support their teams in the right way too, which means everyone benefits.
Goal-setting theory
The American organisational psychologist, Edwin A. Locke pioneered the goal-setting theory. The simplest and most direct explanation of why some people perform better than others is because they have different performance goals. I think that nothing intelligent has ever come from intelligence alone, and nothing reasonable has ever come from reason alone. The essence of the theory is:
Difficult specific goals lead to significantly higher performance than easy goals, no goals, or even the setting of an abstract goal such as urging people to do their best.
Holding ability constant, and given that there is goal commitment, the higher the goal the higher the performance.
Variables such as praise, feedback, or the participation of people in decision-making about the goal only influence behaviour to the extent that they lead to the setting of and subsequent commitment to a specific difficult goal.
Asking for help
When people choose between talking about the past and talking about the future, the pragmatic person will always opt for the future and forget the past. It is always best to speak pragmatically to a pragmatic person, and at the end of the day, most people are pragmatic and will rarely act against their own self-interests.
You will always find yourself in the position of asking for help from those who are more powerful than you. There is an art to asking for help and all depends on your ability to understand the person you are dealing with, and not to confuse your interests with theirs. Most people never succeed at this because they are completely trapped in their own wants and desires. They start from the assumption that the people they are appealing to have a selfless interest in helping them, they talk as though their needs matter to those people – who, couldn’t care less.
Even the most powerful person is locked in the needs of their own. Self-interest is the lever that will move people, once you make them see how you can in some way meet their needs or advance their cause, their resistance to your requests for help will magically disappear. To see the other persons needs and interests, to get rid of the screen of your own feelings that obscure the truth.
Learning new things
Happiness is not simply the absence of despair; it’s an affirmative state in which our lives have both meaning and pleasure. Most people know what is good for them and they know what will make them feel better. Most people don’t avoid meaningful life habits because of ignorance of their value, but because they are no longer “motivated” to do them. They are waiting until they feel better and frequently this is an extremely long wait.
HAPPY PEOPLE:
· Express gratitude
· Cultivate optimism
· Avoid over thinking
· Practice kindness
· Nurture relationships
· Learn to forgive
Many experiences in life that bring happiness are in your control. The more choices you are able to exercise, and control, the happier you are likely to be. You are responsible for your own life experiences, whether you are seeking a meaningful life or a happy life. I think that virtually all the happiness-producing processes in our lives take time, usually a long time, for example, changing old behaviours, building new relationships, raising children, etc. This is why patience and determination are among life’s primary virtues. Contact me via e-mail when you ready to install acceptance, gratitude and accomplishment into yourself or organisation.
Habits change behaviours
We are all creatures of our own habits and beliefs, but we can change those habits and beliefs at any time we want. What might we achieve for ourselves if we are not at the mercy of habits, and instead we were the masters of our habits? I think small daily habits are unparalleled predictors of long-term objectives and this is true for both individuals and organisations.
We go in the direction we face, and we go in the direction we design. Direction determines our destination, we cannot change our destination overnight, but we can change our direction. It’s fascinating what a small change of direction will do. A few decisions in learning, discipline, behaviours, and habits can very quickly make all the difference to our direction.
Here are 8 habits of lucky people:
1. Work hard
2. Complain less
3. Teach others
4. Share credit
5. Be on time
6. Be kind
7. Be teachable
8. Show gratitude
New ways of working demands for new habits. Life is too short to wait for a great day to invest in better life experiences. Contact me via e-mail for a framework guidance meeting.
The currency of trust
I think the currency of trust is when you sense the other person cares as much about you as they do about themselves. Here are some simple generic questions to evaluate where you stand:
How's it going?
How is what I am doing for you helping or not helping you?
What could I do better?
Where else do you need help?
Did what I do provide value for yourselves and if so, how?
“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe.”
The path to excellence
“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.”
Perfection doesn't exist
I don’t believe in perfectionism! You need perfection in manufacturing and measurable systems, but perfection is the biggest killer of creativity. According to the Harvard Business Review: Perfectionism is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it can motivate you to perform at a high level and deliver top-quality work. On the other, it can cause you unnecessary anxiety and sometimes annoy your colleagues. Currently, the system isn’t built for discovery, it’s built for being told and when it makes no sense, I struggle and question the logic.
“One of the basic rules of the universe is that nothing is perfect. Perfection simply doesn’t exist.....Without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist.”
Functions and activities
Those of us who are not so fast with our legs have to be faster in our heads. Most of us learn how to do, unfortunately, very few of us learn how to be. Obsession is always there at the start of learning. I think becoming obsessed with something is what allows you to learn, to develop a habit, turn it into a routine. Contact me via e-mail for an evaluation of your systems and processes.
“Process saves us from the poverty of our intentions.”
Every generation is limited by what it knows
“Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you.”
Change is going to come
This week has been rather turbulent, and made me realise that some people build bridges and some people pay a toll to use the bridge. There are more questions than answers and the more that I find out, the less I know.
- Why are we not taught how to build up a conversation?
- What would you say to this or that?
- How could you misinterpret this or that?
- How can I make this clearer?
- How will what I say make the receiver feel?
Before I attend a meeting I try to understand the following:
a) Who will be in the meeting?
b) What’s the objective?
c) What’s our meeting control plan?
d) What are we trying to achieve from this meeting?
Contact me via e-mail if you would like to discuss meeting structures. The purpose of why we are here today is…
The objective for me today is…
The takeaways that I would like you to leave with are…
Inside the bear
“Inside every person there are two bears, forever locked in combat for your soul. One bear is all things good: compassion, love, trust. The other is all things evil: fear, shame and self-destruction. When asked which one wins I answer, the one I feed the most.”