Xmas 2011

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Well, it’s Christmas shopping time again and I bet you’re as busy as everybody else trying to plan out for Christmas.

It’s Thoughts on Leadership time for the end of the year so I was thinking let’s have a review of the year and let’s also look forward to 2012.

So, end of 2011 and somebody described it to me, “it’s been a year of having to work a lot harder and run a lot faster just to stand still.”  And I suppose for many of us it may feel quite like that.  It’s been a year where it seems you put more effort into things and not really moved a lot further forward than we were a year or two ago.  But 2012 is around the corner and it’s new opportunity.  We don’t know what’s going to happen economically.  We don’t know what’s going to happen to the world at large.  But we do know that we are in control of what we are in control of.  Stop focusing on things that you’re not in control of.  Stop focusing on the things that you have got no input to and focus on what you can.

My word of advice for 2012 is going to be:  what — where do you really add value?  And I know we’ve talked about this in the past before but the value that we offer is going to be so important to our customers and to what we are doing out there in the market place.  If we really, really don’t know how to have value then we really, really are not in the position to add, to charge anything for it.

So 2012 is going to be about what do we do and how do we add value in a way that we’ve never had it before.  It’s a time to really reinvent ourselves.  What are we really good at?  Get back to defining what are we really good at, what is our expertise and work with other people in areas where it’s not our expertise, finding ways of doing things with partnerships in alliances with other organisations or other people and cut away some of the stuff that we’re not really very good at all.

2012 is going to be opportunity to differentiate yourself in some way.  It’s got to be that opportunity to really review the market altogether.  Don’t think about the customers and what they’re needing, think about what the customers need that they don’t even know they need.  There’s no point in trying to ask your customers what it is that they really want.  Customers are looking for solutions and they’re looking for new ideas, principally new ideas, better ways of doing things.

So this year ahead is going to be a chance really to reinvent yourself as a business and as a leader.  The start of leadership you’ve had – is it working for you?  Has it been effective?  Is it going to be the leadership style you need in the year ahead?  These are the questions that you really need to be asking yourself in this moment.  What type of leader am I going to be in 2012 and what do I need to do to be able to get there?  Don’t be frightened to talk to your people.  What are they looking for from you in 2012?  Those are sorts of things that you need to be asking yourself at this stage.

So in essence, don’t be frightened of 2012.  Is it going to be easy?  No, it’s not.  Is it going to be hard?  It depends on how you use the word “hard”.  It’s going to be a challenge, yes, but it can also be exciting to have that challenge.  It can also be exciting to see the opportunities and do something a little bit different.  Throw things up in the air.  Ask yourself, “If I was going to do something different, what could I do?”  What further activities could we involve in and do really, really well?  We’ve diversified in 2011 and it’s been hard work.  But the more you put your mind to it, the more effort you put into it, slowly the rewards start to come.

So don’t just think about 2012 as an end game.  Think about 2012 as the start of a new way of doing business, the start of a new approach to things that you’re going to do.  Diversify, work in partnership with alliances with other people, streamline some of what we are doing, add real value, add value that we don’t even know where – what it is yet but we’ve got to find – those are the type of things that you’ll want to look at launching in 2012 that will pay you benefits in 2015.  And that’s the mindset you’ve got to be able to have.

I hope you have a wonderful festive season.  I hope that the whole festive season and the New Year is just an opportunity for you to unwind and have some fun and spend some time with your family.  I certainly am going to do that.  And let’s get refreshed and ready for 2012.

2012 we bring out new ideas and new products and new things to help and make life more interesting, things that no one else that we know of is doing in the market place and we’re trying to reinvent ourselves.  So I challenge you, reinvent yourself in 2012 and I’ll look forward to seeing you there!

Have a great time and all the best for now.  Bye!

Technology

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These days with the technology, and what we have got available to us we can do so much, we can carry music around with us, carry books, and in fact we can now carry a load of stuff around with us.  The question that it got me thinking about is: what do we actually carry around?  Is it the stuff that we need to help us go to the next level, to be where we need to be in the future or achieve what we want to achieve in the future.  The type of music we listen to, the type of books we read, the type of articles we look at, and the sights we go looking at or feeding our mind in some way.  They are either pushing us to another level or they are holding us back.

So, I got to thinking about it and I was thinking about the work place.  What sort of literature do you provide for people to read?  Many organisations you know don’t necessarily provide anything.  I started to realise that the good organisations that I’d been to actually put literature out there that was good for the employees, that was stuff that they wanted to learn.  In fact, many of them have got libraries and people are encouraged to borrow the books from the libraries.  And they have books that would help them develop them, improve their knowledge, skills, their ability and so forth.

So I was thinking about in your business, do you have that encouragement for people to learn the right things, to have access to the things they need that makes them better?  Are you actively encouraging people?  Because really we are in the day and age when people are going to be more responsible for their own learning.  The type of music that people are listening to, does it get them in the mood for the job that they do?  Is it the type of music that stimulates them?  Or is it like walking into the morgue at the beginning of the day?

Music can make a difference!

So for this month I wanted you to consider what are you providing?  Are you thinking about these little intricacies?  We can talk about décor; we could talk about a lot of things, but things like reading and music are things that are quite easy to implement and to encourage people with that can actually make a difference.

So my questions for you this month are:

• What are you doing?
• Are you doing anything at all?

What are you doing about actively ensuring the flow of knowledge into your organisation, are you are having some sort of input to it?  I’m not saying that you control it or anything like that, but you are having input into it.  For that matter with your children, you should be doing the same thing if you have got children.

So what are you doing about it and what do you need to do to get to the next level?  I am telling you now, 2012 is going to be another challenging year up ahead and if we are not feeding ourselves with the right things in the right way at the right time, then we are not going to be able to grow as individuals.  If we don’t grow as individuals, then our businesses won’t grow either.

Something to think about this month

It’s great to see you again and hope to catch up with you next month.

Have a great month!

Bye for now!

- Paul

P.S – Please check out our new venture over at Bridle Infocus. Also we have new Learning Point DVD’s coming in the New Year, which will be available through Bridle Infocus.

Dealing with Difficult People

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The other day, I got asked an interesting question: “how do you deal with people who are basically stupid?  It’s just difficult, they are just being obnoxious with you and they are being troublesome.”

I got to thinking about that.  Well, how do you deal with somebody like that?  I actually think the biggest thing is, keep your cool.

The mindset you have is going to dominate the situation, not them.  The moment they dominate the situation and your mindset, then you have got a problem.

So, here’s my suggestion, first of all, you have to come from a premise that everybody means well.  Maybe not the way I approach things, maybe not the way you approach things but it’s the way they have approached it and there is some reason for that behaviour.  If you can understand what that behaviour problem is or whatever, then you can deal with it.

So, if the person’s intention is good, but they are just handling it wrong, then the questions are going to get a lot easier.  It’s right, okay, what was driving this?  How do you now respond to it?  Is there something else that is really the issue?  Can we get around it?  Have you got all of the facts?

This person knows something that you don’t know, often I find that people who know something that you do not know or, they think you do not know and that’s why they are so desperate to make their point to you.

So, they make their point, you listen, ask the right questions and then you are left with a situation.  Is this what I have to deal with?  Can I just politely say “thank you” and move on?  Or are they part of the decision-making process in which case I have to win them over?  If they are not part of the decision making process, do not get bogged down, just move on.  Say, “thank you very much” then get out of the way from it.

But if they are part of the decision-making process, well then you have to take it to the next level.  Start looking at what you can do to get them to see it differently and start asking them questions to make them think a little bit differently about the situation.

The questions I am going to ask you this month:

What is it that you can do yourself when dealing with this situation that stops you getting angry, getting annoyed, getting worked up and giving them the ownership for the situation, because they have basically compressed your mind with the way that they behave?

What can you do about it?  I used to do exercises; I used to start taking deep breaths, or just go off and do something else just to get away from it for a while.  Whatever it takes, have you got a strategy?  What is your strategy?  And then practice it if it’s not quite the right strategy; tweak it, until you find the right one.

We are always going to have these problems; the making of us is how we deal with them.

I hope this has been helpful.

See you next month!

Bye now

Paul

Learning and Teaching

My apologises for the previous update to Thoughts on Leadership.  For some reason we posted up last months information.  Also remember our new site Bridle Infocus

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Paul

Work Out Of Your Job

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Hi and welcome to another Thoughts on Leadership.

I’ve often used the expression “Leadership is the art of working your way out of a job.” It’s one of my favourite definitions of leadership.

Leadership really is about finding a way of extracting yourself from your current job and allowing the people around you to be effective, in other words, operate without you.  If, the business depends upon you as, an individual and you solely, that is actually putting the business in a very unsafe position.

Recently, I got to think about this a little bit more than that, instead of just seeing it as leadership as in running a business, what about leading our own life?  How good are we at working our way out of our current position?  Now that doesn’t mean I am saying work your way out of your marriage or work your way out of your relationship with your children or anything of that nature.  That’s not it at all.  What I am saying is what are you doing about getting so close, and getting so close to ground that as a result, you don’t take time to step back.  You don’t take time to really look at things and move away from things.

Really thinking about: “How can I work my way away from this?”  “How do I give myself some time to just relax and enjoy and do what I do?”

So this month, what I want you to do is to think about your life.

1. What are you doing and how much of a rut are you really in?

Are you taking the time to work your way out of the situation you are currently in?  For example, if you think about your wife and your children, your partner, etc. Your relationship with them will change as the years go by, if you are going to remain the same then you are probably not going to be the most effective in your relationship whether that be as a parent, or son/daughter, or husband/wife, friend, whatever it is.  So what are you doing about adapting and moving in that relationship, in a positive way?

2. In terms of business, what are you doing about taking time out?

Just go out and take some time to think, and think differently, think beyond where you are at this moment in time.

What are you doing about that and how you actively working at it on a day-by-day basis?  Don’t let yourself get so close to the ground that you just don’t see anything outside of your world.  Take the time to step back.

I hope it’s been interesting for you all this month.

I wish you all the best and we’ll see you again next month!

Bye for now!

- Paul

P.S – Please check out our new ventures, Bridle Infocus and Quota Sales UK

Integrity

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Welcome to this month’s Thought on Leadership.  This month I am returning to one of my favourite subjects and that’s the subject of integrity, something I feel strongly about.

What do you stand for?  What are you really – what are your principles?  Those are the things that I want to really focus on.

I think it was Groucho Marx who said: “I have got principles; you don’t like those, I’ve got more.”  And that’s what I find in people, they say they have got principles, they say what they stand for, but when it actually comes to the test, you find that they are different people altogether.

As a leader we cannot afford this.  Integrity is too important.  Integrity is constantly building that relationship with people, making those deposits in their emotional bank account, building that relationship with them, so that the integrity between the two of you is strong.  This enables you to be a more effective leader.

So what are your principles?  Do you really think about it?  Because often we say: “Oh, we’ve got our principles, we know what we stand for” etc, etc, etc, but when it comes down to it we find that we give way.  In fact, I sometimes joke with people, those I hear saying “I stand by my principles” and then actually what I find is that they spend their time ‘sitting on them’.

So what I ask you to do is really think about those principles.  What do you really stand for?  And are you true to these principles?  You know how it can be – to give you a silly example if you like – you are approaching a set of traffic lights, they go from green to yellow, do you put your foot on the accelerator or do you put your foot on the brake?  Ok, if you are a person who abides by the law then you put your foot on the brake so then you stop and you wait until the traffic light turns green again.  But if you are that person who goes: “Oh no! I have good principles, but on this occasion I am in a hurry.” Is that what you’ve ended up doing?  If you have, I can tell you what’ll happen, you will be in a hurry this time and then you’ll do it again and then you’ll do it again and the next thing you’ll find is that you are doing it out of habit, and not really realising what you are doing.

So the question is; what do you stand for and are you still standing for what’s important to you?

Think back to the way you were ten, fifteen years ago – what was important to you then and is it still important to you now?  Have you allowed it to slip away from you?  If you have deliberately stepped away from it well that is a different situation.  But if you have allowed it to just slip away from you that is not good.

So questions for this month, think back, what do you stand for?

• Do you still stand for what you think that you stand for?
• What are you doing about demonstrating it?
• What are you doing about showing people because it’s alright saying “Oh I have these principles”, but if people don’t know what they are then they don’t really know the real you.

I hope this has been helpful, have a tremendous month enjoy the summer.

Look forward to seeing you next month, bye for now.

Paul

P.S – Check out our new website; Bridle Infocus

Integrity and Honesty

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Recently, I got asked the question what is the difference between honesty and integrity?  And I thought it was an interesting question so I am going to make it the thoughts for leadership this month.

You see, honesty, I look that up in the dictionary and honesty used the words here: “The quality of being honest, upright, fair, truthful, sincere, and frank.”  I think the operative word there is about “being”.  In other words, it’s about the way you behave, it’s about who you are as evidence by the way you behave.  Either you are somebody who is honest or you’re somebody who isn’t always honest and so, as such as “being” there becomes the operative word.

So what is integrity?  Well, integrity is really – it comes from the Latin word, and it’s about “soundness” – it describes it as “soundness”, I have character and so forth.  But what’s really interesting is how the word integrity has developed.  You see, we would’ve talked years ago about the integrity of the empire or we would’ve talked about the integrity of the ship’s hull or whatever it was.  In other words, we are talking about its “wholeness”, about its “soundness”, about how it keeps itself together regardless of what’s being thrown at it.  So trying to preserve the integrity of the empire, would’ve been about trying to keep the empire together.  Talking about the integrity of this ship’s hull – it was about how it keeps it together.

It’s evolved in its usage and we use it in terms of human beings.  And it’s about – integrity’s about as an individual and about how we hold ourselves together against all the adversities being thrown at us.  Which is interesting because it means the recognition of integrity actually comes from other people.   In other words, we can think we have integrity, but the test of it is how other people view us.  Do other people see us as having integrity?  Because if you are like, that’s the real stamp of approval, that’s the sign of who you are is what other people say about you.  So, do we keep ourselves together?  Are we consistent, in other words, in the way that we behave and in the way that we deal with things?  Because that consistency builds the integrity with other people.

And that’s what one of the key aspects of leadership is, is that ability to consistently behave in a manner with people and consistently build and develop that integrity.  So let’s go back to that ship.  Keeping the ship’s hull in integrity will be about constantly looking after it.  It will have to be cared for.  It can’t just be allowed to be battered and worn away, it needed to be cared for, painted, restored, and constantly monitored.  And so are leaders.  It’s about a constant process of ensuring that we are keeping it together, ensuring that other people see us as keeping it together and being able to, no matter what the adversity coming at us is, that we are managing to hold the whole process together.

So, this month the question I want to ask you is, what about your integrity?  What are you doing in terms of feeding that integrity?  What are you doing in terms on ensuring that you are keeping it together, that you are holding it together?  Is that closeness about you which allow you to have integrity in other peoples’ eyes?  Integrity is something that you constantly working at, the way you deal with others, the way that you respond to others, the way they see.  So it is about behaviour, yes, honesty is an element of it.  But honesty is about you in one particular area.  Integrity is about your whole interaction with the individual and it’s a constant process with a leader’s case, of building that integrity — very quickly lost but very on going process of keeping it together.

So, I hope those questions are useful to you this month and I hope it gives you really something to think about.  Have a great month and I look forward to see you next month! Bye for now!

Listen to the Chatter

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You see there’s always chatter going on, there’s always conversation going on and there’s an expression that has been around for a long, long time about bad news travelling faster than good news. If there’s some gossip or something’s gone wrong in the world or there’s issues happening somewhere, people are very quick to tell everybody about it.  That’s one of the problems we probably have with the media.  They are always quick to tell us about all the bad things that are going on but not necessarily there to tell us about the good things. So, what are we looking for here?  We are looking for an organisation where people are talking the organisation up.  But in order for them to talk the organisation up, they need to have the information.  They need to be able to have something to say, to think about other than everything that’s going wrong or is bad about the organisation.  How many times have you been into a shop or a restaurant or wherever it is, and the people — you hear them talking about “Oh this is not right” and “that’s not happening.  And if you really want to challenge things ask people:  “what’s great that’s happened in the last month?”  And when they go and can’t answer you, that will tell you a little bit where they’re focused on and what information is freely available to them.

Think about the chatter that is going on in your organisation.  What is it?  And most importantly and here’s the killer question:  what are you doing about ensuring that the right chatter is getting through?  What are you doing about giving them information that they can talk up about?  Are they saying: “Did you hear about such and such happening?”  Or are they saying: “Hey, did you hear we got a new order?”  “Hey, did you hear we got this customer?”  otherwise they will be saying:  “Did you know we’ve lost this customer?”  That’ll come very quickly, you need to give them that information, they’ll find out and they’ll talk about it.  So think about in terms of what information you are sending out and how do they get hold of that information.  And what are you doing about encouraging them to talk about the stuff that’s going up.  So simple things that I’ve seen business leaders doing is going to people saying “Have you heard about X?” and letting people go: “Oh no I hadn’t!”.  And the way they do it makes the person go: “I wanted to tell somebody the good news.”  Instead of: “Oh I wanted to tell somebody the bad news because bad news is exciting.”  So what are you doing about it, how do you have systems in place to ensure the information getting out there is positive.  Don’t tell me it’s your news letter because people don’t read that anyway.  I’m talking about actively managing, getting up there and talking about these things.  I hope that gives you something to talk about this month.  Bye for now!

Confident to Deliver

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This month we are talking Confident to Deliver.  You see, we’ve got people that are working for us that we expect them to deliver a level of service.  Particularly if they are dealing with the customer, but even if they are not facing the customer themselves.  They are somewhere in the system and what they do has an impact on the customer.  Question is, do they have the confidence to deliver.  How can we get the very best out of people unless they have the confidence to be able to deliver the best? Think about some of the people that work for you.  Do you think they have the confidence to deliver what you require of them?  Because you can do all the training you like, you can do all the pushing and shoving and incentivizing you like but if they haven’t got the confidence to deliver then it all can be a waste of time.  So lets examine what the makeup of confidence is.  There are three things.  First of all the person has to have the knowledge and skills, but they have to believe that they have those knowledge and skills.  Do I have the requisite knowledge, skill, the ability to be able to do what is being asked of me.  So that’s one of the first things. Read the rest of this entry »

Leading from a Distance

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Hi, and welcome to another Thoughts on Leadership.

A lot of people are finding that they are leading a team, where the people are not based in one place.  They have to lead their people remotely, due to them being scattered around the globe, around the country, or simply, in different places/locations.

As a result, I thought I would take a few moments this month just to look at what we need to do in terms of making sure we relate well with those people and lead them effectively.

Read the rest of this entry »