I had a conversation recently with another business owner who, very casually, “and of course I put my best suit on for the meeting”.  Why it stuck in my mind I don’t know, however, I did begin to notice that many people mentioned this as part of their normal preparation for meetings.

I don’t wear suits anymore.  I spent more than 15 years going to offices where wearing a suit or formal business dress was an absolute must.  I remember ‘dress down Friday’s’ as a clothing nightmare because I had to think really hard about what to put on, which I never had to do Monday to Thursday.  I did think it was all a bit pointless anyway as there were more rules for what you couldn’t wear on Fridays which ended up being an apparel minefield.  These days I just wear what I want to wear, but then as I am self-employed I have that choice.

When in discussion with clients about who they are at work, many will say something to the effect that “I have my work personality and my home personality and my work personality comes off with my suit.”  It always strikes me as very odd that anyone would make a deliberate choice to assume two different personalities into their psyche, AND that they would associate one of them with a set of clothes.

It is clear that some areas of business where people work in offices are not holding fast to the idea that formal work wear is a necessity.  I can’t remember the last time I met someone who works in web design who wore a suit.  Whilst I imagine there have been one or two I have found on the whole there is a much more relaxed attitude to clothing.

It’s clear that the suited approach to business is one that is very deep seated in our culture and, in general, the expectation is that an important business meeting requires a suit.  During one conversation someone asked me “wouldn’t you wear a suit if you were going to an important meeting?”, the inference being that I would have no hope of sitting in front of a potential corporate client in my informal clothing and win any business.

When we look at others we make an instant judgement about them don’t we?  We make a judgement based on our own beliefs and prejudices and clothing plays a big part in our perception of others. We all know or have heard of billionaires who dress like they live on the streets and people who don’t have a bean to their name but are walking around in the latest designer gear. (My grandma always referred to them as ‘all fur coat and no underwear’.)

My skills, abilities, intelligence, dedication, determination, motivation do not change dependent upon what I wear but many of us set a great deal of store by what we see.

I would encourage all of us to take the time to look beneath the clothing (not literally obviously) and focus on who it is you are talking to, what they are saying and whether this is a person that you can connect with.

I for one will continue to dress the way I feel like dressing so if you meet me be sure and say how fab my outfit looks!

I would love to hear your views so please leave a comment below.

Lots and lots of love

Jules

x

Be More Compassionate

The next time you feel a flash of irritation at something one of your team has done incorrectly try to stop yourself from reacting and imagine that the person in question is a very dear friend or family member.  Imagine how you would deal with the issue if they were someone that you cared about deeply.  By adopting a more compassionate attitude towards them you will begin to build bridges and better relationships.

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.  If you want to be happy, practice compassion.  Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

Separate the Issue from the Emotion

When things go wrong and teams are not functioning, too much time is spent dealing with the emotional effects of a business issue that needs to be resolved.  Phone slamming, crying in the toilets, bitching about the boss (you!) are all symptomatic of underlying issues that are not being addressed.  Try asking your team members why they are behaving that way instead of telling them their behaviour is inappropriate.  Whilst it is important to acknowledge the emotion and accept that it is valid it is wasteful management spending time trying to train someone not to behave inappropriately – you are not their parent.  Understand the cause and a solution can very quickly be found.

“In the last decade or so, science has discovered a tremendous amount about the role emotions play in our lives. Researchers have found that even more than IQ, your emotional awareness and abilities to handle feelings will determine your success and happiness in all walks of life, including family relationships.” – John Gottman, Ph.D.

Empathise

Make it part of your management strategy to spend time truly understanding the stresses and strains of your teams’ work.  I’ve never believed that you should be able to do everyone’s job in your team to be a good manager but I do know that being able to empathise with their perspective will instantly make you a better manager.  Ask them how they feel about their job, their environment, their colleagues, the team as a whole and as they answer your questions imagine you’re in front of a mirror and it’s you saying it.  Spend time afterwards checking in on how you felt.

Empathy is full presence to what’s alive in the other person at this moment. John Cunningham

Be Authentic

When you are operating every day as the authentic you it allows you to show your team (and your senior managers) the best of you.  The real you will make decisions that are for the benefit of all: you, your team, your senior managment and your organisation.  If you hide the real you with  a mask of insecurity or artifice I believe that those you work with will see it, even if it’s not consciously understood, they will always have that niggling feeling that ’something isn’t right’ and will never trust you.

“To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” – William Shakespeare

Be Straight and Honest – Always

You always know when someone is lying to you, or being nice rather than hurt your feelings.  Even if you are never 100% sure what the lie was, something in you will walk away from the conversation with a ‘feeling’ that something wasn’t quite right.  If you acknowledge this to be true then it follows that it will be the same for the people you work with.  We often fear the consequences of giving someone a piece of news that we feel would hurt or anger them.  This does not give the person you are talking to any credit for being able to deal with the absolute truth.  Practice in front of a mirror a difficult conversation you need to have without dressing it up, masking it or adding your personal view and edge to it.  Then practice it on a trusted friend who will give you feedback on how you came across.  Even if you need to deliver distressing news, human beings all deserve to be respected by giving them the truth so that they can have an opportunity to react appropriately.  To deny them this opportunity is wasteful and creates unnecessary emotional reactions which make your job twice as difficult.

Where is there dignity unless there is honesty? Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC)

Be Genuinely Kind

A genuine act of kindness will always be seen as just that.  Your ability to be genuinely kind will dramatically improve your relationships with your staff.  Perhaps one of your team would really appreciate the chance to leave 10 minutes earlier this week to help with a particular childcare problem, or perhaps you can offer a non-judgemental listening ear to someone who is having relationship problems?  Even the smallest act of kindness such as making the tea will be appreciated, even by the most cynical.  If you can do this without any expectation of compensation or return your team will be loyal to you and go the extra mile when you need them to.

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.  ~ Samuel Johnson

Challenge your perceptions

Always remember that even if you are all in the same room, everyone will have a different view of it.  We all have our own particular viewpoint on any issue presented to us but rarely take the time to check what others see or feel.  When you ask someone their perspective you can often be surprised by their take on an issue.  Remember that no-one’s view is right or wrong we all just have different perspectives on things.  Asking your team their views and, wherever possible, incorporating them into your solutions will make your team feel valued and respected.

Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view. – Obi-Wan Kenobi

Many thanks to Brian Johnson at www.philosophersnotes.com for providing a wonderful quotes resource.

Most of us are so focussed on our own lives, experiences, thoughts and feelings that our awareness of what is going on around us is not always the reality that everyone else would accept.

After you’ve watched my video, check out this You Tube video so that you can test your awareness.  (I’ve found it’s best watched full screen)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pK0BQ9CUHk&feature=fvw

I would love to hear from you – and if you’ve been brave enough to ask that person in the office what their motivation is behind making your life a misery I would love to know how that turned out.

Lots of  love

Jules

I watched an item on the BBC Breakfast News show about the latest guidance from NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) under the heading of ‘Tackle work stress, bosses told’.  You can see the webposting for the article here:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8343074.stm.

During his interview Professor Mike Kelly, Director of Public Health at NICE said “better training for line managers is critical”.  Of course as a Management Trainer I would naturally and wholeheartedly agree with him.  However, given the general state of the economy and businesses in this country at the present time I can’t help thinking that his view is somewhat naive and shortsighted.

It is widely known that one of the first things that businesses cut when times are tough is the training budget.  Training is, more often than not, seen as a luxury.  When cash flow is king and orders are down it’s very easy for a business to adopt the ‘you’re lucky you’ve got a job’ approach with employees.  Attending to staff’s mental wellbeing will be seen by many as the cherry on the icing on the cake.  That’s not to say that employers don’t care about their staff; the vast majority do but the priority for many businesses today is simply survival.

Large corporates, with budgets to support training and staff wellbeing, do much better at this.  The practices outlined in the NICE guidance are generally commonplace and, whilst no organisation is perfect, there is a tendency towards greater accessibility to the appropriate services that make a workplace a good place to be.

For me though the real difficulty with this analysis is that with almost 5 million Small & Medium Enterprises operating in the UK there are a huge number of workers who will never get close to the kind of training and support needed to support their mental wellbeing.  The finance is just not there.  And whilst some might say that there are government agencies which can and will provide partial funding for this type of support, most SME owners and managers that I meet through my work have neither the time nor the patience to wade through the bureaucracy required to get a ‘yes’ to a measly 20% contribution to the cost of training.  Their general view is that by the time funding is approved, the need for training, the member of staff or the situation that drove the initial enquiry will have moved on or changed in it’s own natural way in the way things do in business.

As someone who has managed a large numbers of people over the years it has always struck me that businesses create their own problems by repeatedly putting the wrong people in management positions in the first place.  I have seen so many excellent people promoted into management positions because they are the best technically at their job. They very quickly begin to struggle because their natural, inherent, talent actually resides in their technical skills not in their ability to motivate, support and direct the people in their team.  This will often create the kind of scenarios we are all familiar with such as poor working relationships, stress, high levels of sickness and staff turnover, not to mention poor productivity and performance.

I have occasionally been in situations where I have had to push to get the agreement to employ or promote staff into management roles who were definitely not the best technically at their jobs.  Often getting resistance from Directors and Senior Management it was always the hardest part of my job to persuade the decision makers and budget holders that they were the best people to employ.  It always worked out for the best not only for the newly promoted manager who was given the opportunity to shine at what they did best but also for the team that they were managing.  The team would eventually realise that to be supported and directed by someone who was interested in them as a person and cared about their ability to do a good job made a greater positive difference than someone who could technically do the job better than them.

In my opinion, people management skills are entirely transferable and good people managers should be able to move from industry to industry with relative ease.  I know of several excellent people managers that, whilst they have their specialist technical areas, would be more than capable of motivating any team and ensuring they did a good job every day.

I agree that training for all managers is critical.  However, much of the training I attended in my years as a manager was focussed on removing my personality and strangling my ability to speak naturally to anyone.  If I was your manager and I said to you “your outburst in the office today was unacceptable, unprofessional and did not demonstrate the kind of standards and behaviour we expect in our organisation” I wonder how you would feel?  If , however, as your manager I said to you “I hate to see you so upset; come and have a coffee with me and we’ll sort this out together“, I wonder how differently you might respond?

If the government is going to act on this NICE guidance then my recommendation would be that they provide national funding for training managers to be compassionate and caring alongside and in harmony with their professional responsibilities.  If that happens I will end up being a very wealthy Management Trainer.  Here’s hoping.

You can read the full guidance report from NICE by following this link: http://guidance.nice.org.uk/PH22/Guidance/pdf/English

As a trainer myself, I have been known once or twice to say “a trainer once told me about this study…” but always had it in the back of my mind that I should go and do my own research so that I can quote the facts and figures accurately.  So I did.  And lo and behold I found that the study may never have taken place!  Apart from the immediate feeling of embarrassment it generated within me it also made me wonder about the mechanics of goal setting and about what works and what doesn’t.  (I have put a link at the bottom of this post which will take you to one of the pieces of research I came across which I found very thorough and informative.)

When I read this information it immediately made me question whether writing down your goals actually makes any difference to whether you end up living the life you really want to live.

I did actually write down my goals some years ago and I achieved mostly everything that I wanted to within that particular year.  However, I have achieved a great deal since then by just mentally focussing on what I want and so far seem to be having the same level of success.  I might even go as far as saying that I have acheived more success by not writing them down.  That may be because I have been doing a great deal of personal develpment in recent years and now have a much much better understanding of what motivates me and how I personally need to get things done.

Perhaps at it’s simplest level just having goals is enough to create the momentum in you?  If writing them down works for you but not for me then surely it doesn’t make much of a difference does it?  As long as we are moving towards the things we want that will make us truly happy then it doesn’t really matter what ‘methodology’ we apply.

Perhaps sticking notes on your fridge will inspire you to focus on your goals?  Perhaps discussing them with a trusted friend will make them real for you?  Perhaps not discussing them with anyone will keep them precious to you? Or you put them in your electronic diary and set a reminder for the date you need to achieve them by? Perhaps you could Twitter them or let all of your friends on Facebook know?

I suspect the very acknowledgement that you have goals will create the desire within you to do something to take you towards them.  Ultimately the important thing will be to DO something that takes you closer to what you want.

So – what are you going to DO? When?  How? I hope you’ll let me know.

I hope that as you’ve read this you are having a wonderful day.

Jules

This is the link to the information I found:  http://sidsavara.com/personal-productivity/fact-or-fiction-the-truth-about-the-harvard-written-goal-study#comment-17263524

When I had first been employed my salary was in line with someone managing 20 staff.  As the scope of my role had changed so dramatically during the course of 2005 I attempted to address this with my manager.  Like many organisations these conversations were diverted, delayed and discussed ad nauseum without any real progress being made.

Eventually I reached the point of no return and decided to resign.  At the time it felt like the scariest thing I had ever done.  I had no job lined up, no prospect of any work and absolutely no idea what I was going to do.  The only thing I did know was that I was doing the right thing for me – even if I had no idea how I was going to pay the bills in 2006!

With just over a week to go before I left I was travelling to Scotland by train to work at another site for a few days.   I had a bit of time to kill and found myself wandering around W H Smiths in Newcastle Central Station browsing the book section.  Paul McKenna’s book Change Your Life in Seven Days practially leapt into my hands and taking into consideration how much time I had left at my job it seemed like the perfect travelling companion.  Not only that but my morale was so low at this point that I felt I had nowhere to go but up and if a book and a CD was going to help then so be it.

Contained within the book was a CD which I was supposed to listen to for 7 days as well as reading the book.  The book, in truth, didn’t particularly inspire me and I thought the idea of my very strong mind being ‘hypnotised’ into thinking differently seemed laughable.  However, always one to do things properly, I thought the least I could do is perservere now that I had spent my money!

Back in the Newcastle office four days later, I virtually bounced into the office with a grin on my face looking like I had won the lottery!  One of my colleagues took me to one side during a quiet moment and said “You’ve got a job haven’t you?”.  When I replied that I hadn’t his next question was; “Well what’s changed?  You seem extremely happy.”  It was only then that I realised I did actually feel extremely happy.  Looking back it had crept up on me over the last day or two and I hadn’t really noticed because I had been so busy.  With the weekend about to start I didn’t really pay the conversation a great deal of attention as I was just looking forward to two days off.

The following Monday involved another trip to Scotland but as it was my last few days in the job I didn’t really mind.  Over the weekend I had tried to do a little bit of creative thinking about how to secure some employment in the New Year.  I sent my CV to someone I had met who I could trust to tell me the truth about the content and quality of my work experience and skills and whether I could seriously consider becoming a self-employed contractor.  One of the most valuable skills I had learned as a manager was to get as much feedback as possible about any aspect of my work so I was more than happy to hear whatever my contact had to say.

To my absolute astonishment he contacted me a day or two later and offered to put my CV forward for a contractors role that he had become aware of.  A few conversations and one meeting later I had secured a very lucrative piece of work which was perfect for my skills and experience.

I will never be able to say with any real accuracy how much the book and CD made to my confidence levels or indeed whether the very act of buying the book was the point at which I realised I needed to do something significant to change my circumstances.  The fact is, seven days after I had read the book and had listened to the CD for 7 days my life changed for the better.

Can I give all of the credit to Paul McKenna and his book and CD?  Probably not.  Would I like to hug him and say a huge thank you?  Definitely.  And if I ever meet him he will have to watch out!

This book changed my life for the better.  As with many ‘personal development’ books, you will take out of it what you need but I would definitely recommend giving it a go if you are in a ’stuck situation’ and need to find a bit of momentum.

I would love to hear from you, particularly if you’ve used it and had some success – or not – either way it would just be good to hear from you.

Much love

Jules

Buy the book by clicking this link - Change Your Life in Seven Days (Book & CD)

So far, the majority of our clients have come to us either through recommendation from existing clients or because they met us face to face and instantly ‘got us.’  This is wonderfully gratifying and it means that we know that everyone we deliver to is there because they understand that they will have a moment or moments of clarity about the issues they are facing and be in a much better state of mind than when they first came to us.

In the last few weeks as we have been upping our game we have had a number of conversations between ourselves and with others where we have had to stand still and check in on what we are doing to make sure we are still on track. Given our line of work it is inevitable and right that we should do this.  I’m sure most of you out there do the same thing but I wonder how often you change direction, even by a tiny amount, based on how influenced you have been by outside forces.

Clearly there are some outside forces, such as the economy, which many of you have had no choice but to adapt to in order to survive.  However, I do wonder how much we are influenced to change direction and later regret it because we didn’t stay true to our core beliefs, what we are truly good at and what we love doing.

Jayne and I are very priviledged to have each other as business partners because we always have someone who cares about the business equally to bounce ideas off and make sure we are still doing what we intended.  Whilst I will never have a problem with change for the better I think sometimes it’s very easy to think that an idea proposed or an opinion given should be cogitated over, absorbed and implemented.  For those of you who run your businesses alone, not having someone to bounce ideas off when these new shiny things jump up and down at you can be a much greater challenge.

Jayne and I know that sometimes from the outside our work can be seen as ‘namby pamby’, ‘weird’ or just plain daft.  Added to that we tend to approach things in our own quirky, unique ways which may look unconventional but really really works for us and our clients.

We never check out ‘the competition’ because we know it would be a waste of time and energy, and whilst some businesses need to do this to survive, it will never work for us.  We don’t do suits.  I would probably lose the will to live if I had to wear a suit to win a piece of business.  We don’t do brochures because we know that the majority of them will end up in the bin and a piece of paper could never express who we are. We dare to be different.  And it makes us very happy to work this way.  And ultimately, isn’t that the point?

I am so looking forward to growing our business in the way that we have chosen to do.  And what if we fail I hear some of you cry?  Not an option.  We love what we do too much for the money not to follow.

I would love to hear from you and particularly if you have some daring ideas on how you want to run your business but think it might be a bit too ‘out there’.

I wish you much love and joy and hope that life is treating you amazingly well.

Jules