Are You at Cause or at Effect – What it means to be responsible

People are being dictated to right now and they don’t like it!

In the world, ordinary people are being dictated to because they have allowed someone else or something else to make decisions for them. Abdicating on their right to be responsible may have occurred in the recent past or a long time ago; either way they chose not to take action when action was required.

Whichever it is, our inability to be responsible will dictate our future.

The executive or manager who doesn’t make a call on an employee who is not performing, the person who allows their credit card to get out of control, , the parent who won’t give their child boundaries, the manager who keeps doing everyone else’s work and the list goes on.

Allow me share a lesson I learned years ago and frustratingly have had to revisit a number of times. For those who know me they may shake their heads and be somewhat disbelieving. I have a reputation now for being a straight talker – only in certain circumstances! Those who know me will attest to that. I can tell you where I will make a hard call fast but oh boy – I sure don’t like admitting where I can’t, for me it is around my family I have a lot of excuses and justifications  for not saying what I need to say. Rambling here won’t change the fact that my silence has caused me and them needless pain. I am in that moment at the effect of the circumstances instead of at its cause!

The question I have for you is where is your pain right now, what have you not said what action have you not taken, what decision are you procrastinating on!

I remember this quote and I believe it is attributed to General Patton,
‘EITHER TAKE RESPONSIBILITY OR TAKE ORDERS’.

In the financial world, we are taking orders because we live with the rules of an economic game that are inherently invalid! We cannot expect to continue to get something for nothing; the reason for the establishment of stocks has been totally lost in the quest for greed and something for nothing. Check this documentary out and find out what is really happening

I am surprised at how many people don’t get what it means to be responsible.  I was with a client recently and we were discussing an incident in their business and I asked the question, ‘So, how did you cause that to happen’ – they looked at me blankly and said, ‘I have nothing to do with it!’

Oops!

They just missed it!  We are either at the cause of our lives and what happens around us or we are at the effect. After a lengthy discussion he became almost evangelical and wanted to share his epiphany with everyone. It was a tough lesson and one that has cost him, time, energy and money.

We have a saying here at Integrity and Values.Com about being responsible you may want to write this down and meditate on it, many time people say to me I don’t understand after I give it to them. I get them to read it out loud and keep reading it long after their time with us until they get it. In fact I had a young man who we were coaching ring after a few years and say ‘I GOT IT’ so are you wondering what this statement is it goes like this:

‘If I am willing to be responsible for the smallest atom in the farthest reaches of our galaxy, then what I do here and now would be different.’

Notice where your mind goes as you read that statement.

Do you start arguing with it?

Or do you get it!

In every moment of NOW we are responsible for our response to our circumstances only then do we have power over them.

When we live inside a story of blame and recriminations we are at the effect of our circumstances when we chose to ‘cause’ our occurring world we move into a place of FREEDOM and we chose our response.

I received some really good information yesterday from a friend and fellow CEO Peter Mollan. At the conclusion of our conversation I went away with some very clear advice. Which I implemented today because it made sense and will it would make a big difference to the success of my business.

As you know things come in waves and as I was talking to Angie Speteri today who is from Perth, we ended up talking about this subject. What we talked of was the phenomenon of ‘internal coaching’ and how in large organisations such as the one she worked within they called this coaching however it was actually performance management.  She found that the problem children were often put on her team so she could ‘coach’ them. Angie realised only after she had completed a coaching course that what she had been doing was performance management.

So, after those two interactions I started to ask myself – did my friend Peter coach me, mentor me or performance manage me. One he is not my boss so I can knock out performance management, he is not my coach we do not have a formal arrangement. He was mentoring me from his observations and his vast experience he gave me some very good advice, what I did with it was up to me.

So what is the difference and how do you know when you are being coached, when you are being performance managed or when what you need is a mentor someone who has been there and done that.

Here are 4 points that make these activities different:

After doing this thinking I realised something in my own business, because I am a coach so I seem to have coaching conversations with my team. When in fact I am supposed to be performance managing them.

We would produce better results if I did my job and drove the result I truly want for my business.

So, have you got your role confused like me and muddied the water?

Clarity leads to power just doing this exercise has given me more power to act on the things I need to act on in my business.

Thank you Peter and Angie for making me think!

Last week I spoke to an amazing group of powerful women in Canberra. I told them that we were the key to the changes that need to take place in the world socially, economically and emotionally. And that to do that we need to work on ourselves and become very clear of our impact on all of our relationships.

Leaders spend much of their time directing their attention outwards. Well, that makes sense, doesn’t it? Leaders are employed to get things done. They have tasks that need doing, people who need managing, and goals to achieve. And they need to be available to people and in touch with what is happening in the organisation.

In focusing all their attention on other people and things, leaders can easily lose sight of themselves. They can get lost in the demands of people and situations and the task. When this happens, leaders lose their ability to make the unique contribution that they could be making. They simply react to circumstances, moment to moment, and act out of habit.

Acting out of habit keeps us going round in the same circle, time after time, reacting the same way, making the same mistakes, and causing the same conflicts. Nothing different will happen as long as you don’t pay attention to the way you act and react.

Have you ever found yourself in a driveway on an old address that you no longer live at! Being present and paying attention has us leading with intentionality and purpose.

The beginning of change is when you start to pay attention to your behaviour, and start to think about why you behave the way you do. What are your feelings about the person or the situation? What drives you? What do you fear? What do you long for?

In our programs we emphasise the need for leaders to be willing to work on themselves. Genuine change comes from a combination of true self-knowledge and new behaviours. And only genuine change will make a great leader of you.

What does it mean, to work on yourself? Does it mean you become self-obsessed? No, that’s not it. In fact, you will find that, as you become more aware of your own thoughts and behaviour, you will see how they get in the way of you paying real attention to others. As you become more aware of yourself, you will simultaneously become more aware of the person in front of you, and what their thoughts and feelings are.

Then the possibility of creating genuine, productive, trusting relationships opens up, and you have started to become the great leader you can be.

Throughout history the virtue of Honour has inspired legendary feats of courage and elegant literature.  Yet I don’t recall hearing the word even once in my 5 years working with Melbourne business.

Honour is the driving force behind loyalty, respect and heroic effort. Doesn’t that sound like the culture you’d want in your business?  Without Honour we have no assurance of the productive business relationships we often take for granted.

Why is Honour so important to me? I know its power.  My business and personal life sat in the gleaming reflection of Honour most of my 50 years. For many years I developed and led large hugely successful sales teams who were like volunteers.  Their drive and extraordinary results came by force of virtues not employment contracts.  I have also done brilliant mothering to my 4 children (now adults), but also know the flip side of pain and dissipation when Honour breaks down in a marriage.  Most of my grief and loss in a 10-year period came from lack of honour and dishonour , and it has been a slow, costly path creating new relationships between us.

One of life’s principles is that you have to give before you receive.  When a leader honours his or her people (including the one with unglamorous roles) it is as if they have all grown taller. Honour elevates the heart.

On a daily basis, giving Honour to your people looks like:

• Creating an environment of autonomy not compliance
• Providing opportunities where people can excel and advance in their key skills
• Treating roles as a vocation not a job
• Noticing individuals
• Treating every role as champions to the cause

In turn, receiving Honour from your team looks like:

• Loyalty, respect
• Resilience, hardiness
• Bravery, sacrifice
• Commitment, reliability

The ‘Honour cycle’ is like a ‘super-fuel’ that generates a whole new level of engagement and productivity. Honour breaks through personality barriers, and even better, its effect and payoff compounds over time.

Read More From Liz Blake Click Here

Have you noticed that there is a smooth surface in organisations. What you see are people being polite to each other in meetings and the corridors. What is really going on? How come so much of the time organizations fall short of the goals they have set themselves. Why is this? Is incompetence that widespread, or are companies just deluded about the goals they set?

Could the explanation for this situation lie in an understanding of what men and women in the workplace are thinking and feeling below the polite surface. A lot of this has to do with how men think and how women think – about other people of the same sex, and about the opposite sex.

For men, there are fundamental games that they have been playing out for tens of thousands of years. They might all be dressed up in suits now, but the game goes on. We have attempted to change the game by changing the rules with anti-discrimination laws and Fair Work legislation, but the game continues. And what is the game?

The game is primal: kill or be killed. This ancient drive to survive and conquer is still a significant influence in how men operate and relate in the workplace. It is often masked, and that too can be part of the war game, because if the real aim of your conduct is seen, you can be the one who is annihilated.

For women, there is also a primal game. It is about winning, and it is often about winning against other women. Women often express surprise that a successful woman was not willing to help them to achieve success; they think that women want to support other women. But in the primal game, other women are the opposition, not the comrades.

When you put men and women and these primal games together, the results can be explosive. Both men and women find it difficult to bring these games to the surface and acknowledge them, because we all need to maintain the polite pretence that all is well. (And we need to avoid anti-discrimination claims.)
There is an alternative. This is not the only way to play at work. These primal games are based on the belief that if someone wins, someone has to lose. So if you don’t want to lose, you have to beat someone. It’s personal. The alternative is essentially human. It is the power we have as humans to choose how we will act and respond in the world.

The new game is win/win. The problem is few people truly know how to play the win/win game. For years we have been told to play win/win and I agree however it’s easy to say and extremely hard to do without unwavering commitment. If we work on the basis that the other person can get what they want without stopping me from getting what I want, a new way of relating in the workplace can arise. We can play constructive games where we can be honest with each other, we can care about others, and magically, we may find that our organisations start to achieve their goals.

Win/win is a hard game to play and is the most rewarding when everyone joins in. Use the comment section to share a when your commitment to win/win has improved your life or someone else’s life.

Organisations are being pressured to put men and women together in teams. It’s a great idea the issue is we seem to be oblivious to the impact of our differences I think it’s the main reason this great idea has not got much traction. I have heard and believe that the strength of great teams is in the differences not the sameness. A platitude touted everywhere the question how do we translate that into the real world.

Here is one small difference – Harvard neuro-psychiatrist Louann Brizendine found that it takes just one-fifth of a second for males to decide if a woman is attractive. And it takes women a lot longer, several meetings and a lot of interaction, to decide if a man is trustworthy. And it is no accident that the two different measures of attraction and trustworthiness are chosen to characterise males and females.

Males and females’ brains are wired to work differently, and if we put males and females together in teams, we have to look beyond a purely rational model of behaviour. It’s not enough to say we’ve got the right skills and knowledge on the team. We have to see how males and females tend to be motivated differently, and make the best use of those differences.

For example, in a team, males will tend to focus on the task, and not worry much about what is happening in the relationships in the team. They just want to get the job done, and it may not register that their manner of operating is upsetting others (even other males).

In contrast, females tend to make sure that the task will be done in a way that assures good relationships are preserved. To the male brain, this can look merely like a distraction from the task.

So should we keep males and females separate from each other? No! The differences between males and females are strength. Putting men and women together on teams gives us a holistic view of the situation, and provides us with all the resources we need to carry out projects successfully. We just have to learn that males and females have their natural differences, and we have to learn how to respect each others’ strengths.

We don’t do this by to denying our maleness or our femaleness; we do it by seeing that our strengths can also be our weaknesses. If there is too much focus on task, for example, and not enough on relationships, the job may get done (this time) and the relationships could be vulnerable to damage. If there is too much focus on relationships, and not enough on task, then we might cultivate short-term harmony at the cost of our goals, and then the harmony won’t last.
As Brizendine says, it helps us to work more effectively, both men and women, if we seek to understand the reality that others experience.

It’s a very different reality at times and i am sure you have experianced it as i have over the years.

In my opinion this poem is one of the most powerful and impactful I have ever learned.

Every time I am thinking about making a decision I am reminded of this poem and the magic that comes from my commitment. Most time there is no real evidence that a decision or a commitment will work and yet that is exactly what commitment is all about.

Commitment by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy the chance to draw back always ineffectiveness.

Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans.

The moment one definitely commits oneself then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred.

A whole stream of events issues from the decision raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.

Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

Begin it now. –

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

When you take the time to learn it your life and your capacity to make decisions will be transformed.

Leadership is always important and yet not urgent until there is a crisis.

This article was inspired by an article in Human Capital Magazine
Inspired by an article – Leaders are drowning, not waving:
In The Human Capital Magazine

We have a huge convergence crisis on us at the moment. Developing leadership skills has been neglected by the majority of business to date and now that we are in a financial crisis we find there is no one who really knows what to do.

The leadership crisis we are facing today has been riding what has become known as the tidal wave of the GFC. Now it is too little and to late for many companies and leaders to survive the disaster. What is required right now is clear decisive leadership from truly inspirational and well put together individuals.

The problem is that leadership is a function of character and not a prerogative of position or a birth right. For far to long businesses have neglected the training of their up and coming leaders and developed their essential leadership skills. The development of true leaders is done over time with clear intentional practise.

If leaders and managers are over stressed and generally out of their depth right now then a two day retreat on stress handling or “assertive recession strategies” is not going to work. What is required as a matter of urgency is a commitment to a well thought out leadership program where the participants are coached and hand held through the current crisis for over 12 months.

Leadership has just made it into the urgent and important quadrant.

Developing leaders requires a significant investment of both time and money. Personal engagement of the individual leaders is critical and yet it is common for business owners and CEO’s to be heard complaining and blaming their people instead of looking at their own leadership first.

What is required is the personal engagement of the CEO and business owner first. When they personally to developing their own leadership skills we are able to truly address the leadership issues across the entire organisation and definitely not before.

Leadership programs tailored to assist the leader to deal with the “stuff” on the table today. Redundancies, moral boosting and productivity increases in a shrinking and retreating market are the function of the true leader. Leaders must also at this time have the courage and skills to deal with the “smelly stuff” under the table and seeping out the doors of the executive board room.

We all know that when the going gets tough the tough get going and dealing with performance issues and the stress of declining profits quickly and efficiently is the name of the game. We can all welcome the extreme challenge we are facing right now as the pressure and stress of the downturn is giving many of us a much needed wake up call.

The wake up is that leadership is a function of character and to be a great leader we must first be a great human being.

This article was inspired by an article in Human Capital Magazine

Written by Jennifer Elliott CEO of Integrity and Values.Com with a team of licensees delivering Leadership in Action.

The Only Cultural Transformation Program That I have Ever Seen Work.

Last Monday I had the great pleasure of sitting down with two committed and powerful women representing a large international company in their Sydney office. My wonderful PA Melinda took their call two weeks earlier and arranged the appointment. She said, “I think you should go and see these people, they asked for you by name and they sound really good.”

So off I went, full of enthusiasm and expectation to the appointment. Now this is a really serious company with multiple levels of security at the front door, wiz bang scanning and appointment checking, all the stuff that truly big business has.

As I am going up in the lift I am wondering about how we got the appointment. Who in the world has recommended me so that the doors of this big company are opening for me. Well we shook hands and sat down in one of those glass bowl meeting rooms. We did the card exchange ritual and I couldn’t wait.

Bursting with expectation and wondering what had been said about me and my work I seized the moment and asked…

“So before I start, who has said what about me and my work that has you want to see me?” What happened next was one of those magic moments in business we all wait for. One of the women said,

“We have a guy working here in one of our senior roles and he said that you had run the only cultural transformation program that he has ever seen work.”

I said “Wow, did he really say that!”

So then I asked his name and recognised it immediately. Ten years ago David was a junior executive working with a large IT company in North Sydney. I can’t wait to catch up on the past 10 years of our lives and thank him sincerely for the referral.

Just filling in the past ten years will be fun. We will be sharing funny stories about what happened then and also about how the work we did has changed both of us.

Now let me tell you what the point is of telling you this other than to brag about my 10 year’s on referral.

Do the work you love and love your work. This will enable you to build a business that stands the test of time. Right from 1989 to the present day my life’s work has been dedicated to changing people in business, one conversation and one business at a time.

David’s referral this week reminded of the importance of finding my passion and sticking to it. I’m looking forward to hearing his story of how the work I do has transformed his life.

From the outside looking in it may seem easy and that I am lucky in having built a training business that I am immensely proud of.
Let me assure you the opposite is true. Just like you and the thousands of people I have worked with over the years. It has been very tough at times to meet my mortgage payments, find the money for my staff pay roll and hold onto my commitment.

My message for you today is…

Live long in the “David” moments of joy and recognition for a job well done.
Stay true to your vision even though it is not easy.
Because you and I have the courage to stand the world is a better place for us all.

Jennifer Elliott

Committed to creating extraordinary leaders in
business one conversation, one business at a time.

www.integrityandleadership.com

Clarity Leads To Power

Driving along in the car a few days ago I was abruptly stopped by an absolute emergency. Not a car crash, a police road block or even a tree across the road. In fact there was no one and nothing on the road in front of me at the time and yet this was an absolute emergency.

The emergency was “an emergency of my own mind and creation.” I was listening to James O’Loghlin, one of my favorite ABC Radio personalities, I just love the man. I have never met him of course and yet I feel like he is one of my very best friends.

What my friend James does, and he does it so well, is that he lives his passion. Here is a man who truly loves what he is doing and he shares his gift as an ABC radio and TV personality with all of us. I’m sure James has a long list of fans just like me who’s lives are enriched and made better every day through what he loves doing.

He reminds me of me, of course. Now that may sound a bit much and even over the top and yet those of you who know the truth, know what we love in others is what we love in ourselves. I like to dream that I too am a TV and Radio celebrity and James you are truly my hero.

So let me get back to the point here …

James is having a wonderful time interviewing a man who has written award winning movies and plays. In response to a question where he is asked about the difficulties of being so clever and skillful in his craft, as he has to have a complex and detailed knowledge of human behaviour and then incorporate this knowledge into the script and still tell a story that appeals to everyone.

Wow what a gift, the gift of the truly masterful script writer who can take all the ingredients complexities of the behaviour of parents, children, drunks, inspirational leaders, political thugs, villains and saints then tell a story that is heartfelt and moving which changes the way we all think. 

Now that is truly a great gift and that is what James was talking to him about. So what is the secret to great success and ability to get across such a powerful message?

This is what caused my emergency and pulled me to a screeching halt. I went into a panicked frenzy, desperately searching around for my note pad so I could scribble down these words of wisdom quickly before I forgot what he said.

So here it is…

The greatest level of teaching is to bring clarity to people through your work.

There are so many university professors and academics in the world with such awfully complex models and ideas about human behaviour that they are the only ones who understand what they are saying.

My job is to bring clarity to you, my students and my audience thorough stories, exercises and activities. What I do is take the complex and make it simple.

My job is to give you the power that clarity brings. In other words Clarity leads to power.

So thank you to James O’Loghlin and thank you to your famous script write for reminding me that my greatest gift in working with executives in leadership across Australia is to give them the power that clarity brings.

CLARITY LEADS TO POWER.

Jennifer Elliott – Committed to creating extraordinary leaders in business one conversation, one business at a time
http://www.integrityandleadership.com/