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Susan Carroll

Are You Too Busy To Lead?

May 22, 2016 By Susan Carroll

Working with with busy executives, this is an issue which crops up more frequently than not. Too busy and not enough time to do it all.  Wishing to be more strategic and effective as a leader but the day to day business of their working lives simply takes over. The unique window of time when they first took the job and had brilliant aspirations for the role is over. It’s been replaced by constant tactical decisions, the frenzy of email and endless meetings.

How often do you plan and organise your working day or week only to have it hi-jacked? Something else that you hadn’t planned for [usually someone else’s priorities] takes over. No-one works in a vacuum of course. There are reports to be compiled, the pressure for the quarter end results, presentations to be created, complaints to be handled, financial data to review, meetings to attend. These things demand immediate attention. There’s the guilty feeling of not spending as much time thinking about strategic direction as the role demands. Or communicating more effectively with people. The office can be a stressful place. Do you recognise any of this as the pattern of your working life?

So how do you make a change? How do you break the cycle of being very busy, maxed out even? You may feel you’re not achieving your goals in a way that’s more compatible with how you’d like to lead your life.

Sometimes, we fall into a trap of thinking leadership is something we have to do in addition to our job. If we view it as an ‘extra’ and not the main event, then we risk not fulfilling our leadership potential.

“Leadership is not something you do in addition to your job. It is your job”

Ken Chenault, American Express

 

So what can you start doing straight away which will help you make that shift from ‘too busy leader’ to respected leader who makes a difference to people and results?

Here are 5 things that will bring change for you:

 

What’s your vision?

Whatever size your company, division, department or team is, having a vision is vital. The reason a vision is so important is that it gives you a magnetic draw for everything you do. It gives meaning and purpose to the work you do as there is a context, a bigger picture.

How are you communicating?

I met someone at a conference who declared that his job was to interpret communication from senior management and no, he wasn’t working in a multilingual organisation or the United Nations. His role was to listen to what management was saying, interpret it in the same language, then go out and communicate it further down the line, again in the same language. Astonishing though that sounds, in some organisations, this is normal behaviour. How in touch are you with the people who are working with you? Do you speak in a way that needs interpretation before your audience can understand it, even though you share a common language?

Have you created a team?

When a group of people work together on a compelling goal, something they all care about, they become a team. Lots of leaders talk about teamwork yet don’t invest in teams or their development.  Provide the space and time a team requires in order that it can become the architect of its own success.

Are you giving regular feedback?

Feedback? That funny, static noise musicians get when they stand too close to the amps or speakers? It’s direct, immediate and loud and clear. They adjust accordingly.  They do that immediately, not when the concert is over. Feedback is so helpful and yet many people fear it. Not surprising, as it is often given indirectly, late and in a negative way. Feedback can be your friend. It is information which gives us insight into the patterns of our behaviours. It gives us choice. Give it generously with the best of intentions and receive it back just as generously.

Do you show appreciation and recognition?

Most of us enjoy recognition … for expertise, for results, for making a difference. Even if it’s our job to do those things, it’s a human desire to be appreciated and valued. Many companies introduce complicated schemes that negate the immediacy and sincerity in saying thanks for a job well done.  Often, a simple and sincere thank you hits the mark more effectively. However you show appreciation, make it simple and sincere.

 

These are just some of the things you can do to improve your leadership impact. If you’d like to know more, we’d love to hear from you.

 

Photo credit – Brendan Welshby

Filed Under: The connected leader

Are you taking away other people’s opportunities to grow and develop?

May 22, 2016 By Susan Carroll

Are you doing everything?
As a leader, are you immersed in the tactics, the business of your work and overlooking the development of your staff?

 

Here’s what happens when you “do it all”: you take away the opportunity for your staff to learn, grow and develop.

 

When you jump in, because it’s easier and quicker for you to do it yourself, you are stifling learning, for you and for them. You may think it’s easier and quicker for you to do it, and you may be right, but not over the longer term. If you’re always busy doing instead of developing, you’re too busy missing opportunities for you as well as for others.

  • Develop your staff
  • Delegate more effectively. It’s called delegating, not dumping. Teach, train, show, demonstrate and check in to encourage and see progress. You’ll learn too.
  • Divide up the work and give others the chance to learn… interesting things and not just just the things you don’t want to do
  • Declare an interest in people around you and back it up with some real development opportunities

 

When you hold on to everything and insist on doing it yourself,  you take away the opportunity for those around you to grow and develop.

 

Will they make mistakes that you could avoid by doing it yourself? Maybe. They may also come up with something even better. Either way, they’ll learn and so will you.

 

What one single step can you take today, this week, this month to develop the people in your team and in your  organisation?   Do the right thing and invest in developing your staff.

 

Photo credit – Dawn Ellner

Filed Under: The connected leader

Who would be a leader?

May 22, 2016 By Susan Carroll

Pick up most business books from the past decade or two and they’re packed with examples of organisations with great visions and heroic leaders for us to consider as role models and exemplars. As fairly recent history has revealed, some of those megastar leaders have turned out to have had feet of clay. Their organisations either no longer exist or have been exposed as espousing noble values to the world whilst privately forsaking them in the pursuit of the bottom line or the lining of their own pockets.

 

Are you a reluctant leader?

Are we expecting too much of the modern-day leader? Multiple stakeholders, matrix organisation, visionary, strategic, values led, agility, innovative, handling pressure, business changes, tough decisions, impact on people, the need for speed, customers, competitors, products & services, teamwork, the press & media, not to mention diversity, ethics and sustainability?

Frankly, who’d choose to be a leader in this networked, fast-paced, highly transparent, digital age? When there’s not just scepticism, but outright cynicism about leadership in the 21st century? In the face of this cynicism, are you a reluctant leader?

 

Leadership and employee engagement – the bleak story

According to Jim Clifton, chairman and CEO of Gallup, of America’s roughly 100 million full-time employees, 70 million (70%) are either not engaged at work or are actively disengaged. That number has remained stagnant since Gallup began tracking the U.S. working population’s engagement levels in 2000. The UK has a similar employee engagement deficit; surveys indicate that approx one third of UK workers say that they are engaged. Leadership is a critical factor in creating a culture that focuses on service to customers and service to employees and the knock on effect in engaging both employees and customers. All roads lead to culture and it’s leaders who create the culture.

 

Who amongst us, if held up to public scrutiny, would pass muster?

Who are the leaders that we can trust? Who can we depend upon to lead our organisations and connect the purpose and meaning of work to everyday activity so that people can become more engaged at an emotional level? What about all the leadership qualities that we aspire to, that we talk about, that we look for in those around us? Ask almost anyone and they’ll say there isn’t one leader who ‘has it all’. Why do we put people on pedestals only to react when we discover they are flawed?  Let’s stop looking for the superhero leaders, those mythical people who are perfect in every way. Let’s stay away from the ‘5 tips to be a great leader’ and the leader-lite ‘one size fits all’ leadership approach.

 

Who can we depend on to lead organisations?

Leaders that we can believe in earn their leadership though life experience, through sticking to their values in tough times and through displaying humility and vulnerability as well as the drive and passion you’d expect to encounter.  They build great leadership teams and invest in people’s development because they understand that it is through others that success comes. They are flawed and they recognise their flaws because they’ve looked in the mirror and seen the truth of themselves and want to continue learning and developing. They continue to lead because it’s fulfilling and they create change in the world. I am privileged, through my work, to meet passionate leaders who care about people and create thriving organisations. They are everyday heroes doing extraordinary things on a daily basis

 

Become a connected leader

Successful leadership relies on connectedness. How to you become and stay connected to your vision and purpose? To your people and clients? To innovation and results? As a leader, you must invest energy and time into all these areas. Each of them is connected to all of the others: they are the parts that form a whole leadership.

Maintaining these connections is challenging. But becoming a Connected Leader means being an authentic and thriving leader. Without connectivity, leadership falters.

Connected leaders challenge themselves as well as others. They have a clear vision that includes and develops those around them. They understand that achieving their leadership goals depends not only on their internal desires, but on their connections with people and ideas.

 

Let the business books for the 21st century tell of a different kind of leader, so that future readers can be inspired by a more lasting legacy, but more importantly, right now, organisations need those leaders, reluctant or otherwise.

Filed Under: The connected leader

Teamwork, Innovation and Formula 1™

May 12, 2016 By Susan Carroll

“Pulling off the perfect pit stop requires remarkable teamwork and communication, as split second decisions can make or break a race.

A similar demand is placed on medical teams who have to perform complex tasks under pressure when transferring patients from theatre to intensive care. Even minor delays during the handover process can seriously affect patient recovery. ”

I read these words as part of a Formula 1™ exhibition in London and was fascinated to discover that doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital worked with Formula 1™ experts to study their teamwork techniques and apply the findings to their own hospital in a highly innovative way.

 

Innovation in action

Observing a practice in one industry and applying the learning to another is a simple innovation technique that can yield excellent results. What the doctors discovered, when observing the pit stop crew, was the value of process mapping, a process description, and the importance of working out what people’s tasks are. They also identified 4 keys to a successful pit stop:

1. Routine: The routine in the pit stop is known and taken seriously

2. Predictability: The pit stop routine and what is likely to happen is predictable so they can anticipate problems and standardise procedures accordingly

3. Practice: The pit stop crew practices those procedures until it can perform them perfectly

4. Job & leader clarity: Everyone knows their job and one person is always in charge

All of this has resulted in a streamlining of process, a reduction in errors and ultimately, safer hospital conditions. Where children’s lives are concerned, that can only be a good thing.

Whatever your business, there are 2 questions you can ask yourself right now to promote innovation:

How can I apply the 4 keys to a successful pit stop to my team or my business?

What observations can I make about another industry’s practices and apply the learning to my own business?

Filed Under: Innovation matters

The Art of Innovation

May 11, 2016 By Susan Carroll

Can you imagine an organisation without innovation? The ability to innovate is something that we must all have, and nurture, if we are to be successful as individuals and as teams. Without innovation, we fall into stagnation.

 

But even the most creative, forward-thinking of us often find it difficult to practise the art of innovation. It’s all too easy to become pre-occupied with immediate demands, and this can mean that finding the space you need to innovate becomes very difficult.

 

A space to innovate

Making space for innovation can be almost impossible when you’re at your desk. Phonecalls, emails and meetings are constant barriers, keeping you anchored in the here and now. To innovate, you must think beyond the here and now.

 

The answer is clear: take time out away from those demands, and allow yourself the freedom you need to develop your ideas and creativity. Our Art of Innovation sessions are a chance for you, your team or your organisation to do exactly that.

 

What happens on an Art of Innovation session?

You will learn how you can use innovation every day.

 

We’ll start by talking about how innovative you already are, and how you can showcase your abilities. Then, we’ll look at how we can develop your skills.

 

We’ll see how you can choose the right ideas to innovate with, and use your creativity to implement them. You’ll find out how you can develop an innovation approach that you can integrate into your work, and that of your whole organisation.

 

You’ll come away with new skills and ideas, ready to create an innovation plan or strategy for your team and your own work .

 

Here’s what people say about the session:

I learned how to order ideas and collect them in a structured way.

A very efficient way to think outside of the boundaries and generate information.

New techniques for analysing situations.

Hats off, thanks for the expertise.

Well done, very creative and innovative.

Great session, thank you for teaching me something new today.

It is worth it, you gave us a different way of thinking.

Very enjoyable and informative, I will use these techniques in my daily routine.

An excellent use of time, it re-kindled my creative thoughts.

 

Filed Under: Innovation matters

Step back to get ahead

February 22, 2016 By Susan Carroll

Every team goes through times when it experiences levels of stress and pressure. Each team I’ve worked with this year is dealing with forces and levels of change that challenge the certainty of its effectiveness or even its existence. Lack of skilled staff, an organisational change which brings uncertainty, lack of time, unrealistic workloads, conflicting views on priorities, change saturation, a new leader, a restructure that means it’s merging with another part of the organisation, not meeting sales targets, pressure to do more whilst reducing costs… shall I go on?

Can you relate to what clients have said to me recently?

“There are conflicting views in the leadership team about what the top priorities are and we are all going in different directions to achieve them”

“I know we should step back to work it all out, but we’re just too busy to stop. There’s no time”

“We’re constantly treading water and not getting anywhere. We’re getting to the point where we almost don’t care any more, because there’s just too much change”

“We’re used to being really busy, stressed but in control. Now we’re really busy, stressed & out of control. That’s a really scary feeling”

“We’re trying to do too many things at once and not really focusing on where we’d get the best results”

For many people, this level of change and pressure is the new normal.

So just how do you step back to get ahead? What can a team do to step back? Is it possible to step back and create a different dynamic? Is it possible to step back and exert influence in the midst of change and uncertainty? The times when we are running headlong into change or in the words of a client “treading water and getting nowhere” are the times when we most benefit from stepping back. The thought of stepping back to reflect can feel impossible to achieve when you just need to “get things done”. Here are 5 ways you can step back to get ahead.

1. Schedule time to step back… it won’t happen unless you plan for it

This is valuable time for the team to reflect on what’s important. If you haven’t already done so, work out the purpose of the team, why it exists and who it serves. Invite feedback for the team, for each other, from inside and outside the team. Do this regularly. Make it part of the team culture

2. Ask yourself, ‘What is the vision for this team?’

When a team steps back to work out its vision, things start falling into place. When you achieve that clarity of direction, you start to give precedence to the activities that will drive toward the vision, not the other way round.

3. Use colleagues in the team as a support structure

The likelihood is that if one of the team is under pressure, others are too and if they’re not, they may be concerned that one of their colleagues is. Taking time to listen to each other, sharing the stories of each other’s fears & vulnerabilities and also hopes and ideas for how to work better as a team, is invaluable. Knowing that others share and understand how you’re feeling is very helpful. Use the understanding to spur each other towards solutions and offers of support. When we strip away the image of perfection and reveal that we are worried, feeling overworked, struggling to say no, what follows is often an influx of help and support. This team culture of support can only happen if team members open up in a trusted atmosphere. Otherwise, who wants to really say, “This is tough” and risk feeling exposed?

4. Create a team plan

Some of the ‘solutions’ for a team under pressure are often very obvious, but not when you are in the weeds, tangled in lack of clarity. Step back to create a team plan to address the things that are causing frustration and to match up strengths and skills with areas for development. Having a plan can build confidence and marking progress against actions can really boost the team to greater certainty in times of pressure and stress.

5. Check in on the team mindset

The collective mindset of the team can have a huge impact on progress and how it perceives the challenges ahead. Are you being too polite? Afraid to “upset” others with your views? Not voicing an opinion on the best way forward? Sometimes, unhelpful legacy behaviours exist in a team and it can be difficult to challenge them. Stepping back to review which behaviours you want to nurture as a team and which you want to abandon because they are obstructing your success as a team is a brilliant thing to do. You can create powerful mindset changes when you focus on behaviours that support the outcome

How will you step back so that you and your team can get ahead?

Filed Under: Team talk

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken

February 22, 2016 By Susan Carroll

When you hear a damn good quotation, like the title of this blog post, the likelihood is quite high of it having been written by Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde. Or Oscar Wilde. He was an Irish writer, poet and playwright and had a gift of saying the profound in a concise and witty way. But surely being yourself is as easy and natural as…. well, just being yourself?

 

Yet, how often do we behave in incongruous ways? To please someone else, to prove we are smart, to get a result, to be seen to say ‘the right thing’, to be seen to do ‘the right thing’, to avoid criticism, to fit in, to follow the crowd.

Like the donkey in the lion’s skin from Aesop’s fables, are we at times pretending to be someone or something we are not?

 

What’s it like to not be yourself? Well, it can mean saying yes when we really want to say no. Or saying no when we really want to say yes. It can mean behaving in a way which conflicts with our values.  It can drive low self-esteem and that can make us feel miserable.

 

So what’s it like to be yourself?  Only you know the answer to that! But let me tell you about a client who took on a role as a leader reporting into a boss with a fearsome reputation. This position had seen a fairly frequent rate of turnover as the boss operated a culture of fear based on failure and firing.

 

Before her first meeting with him, we spent time discussing potential scenarios, to find an approach that allowed her to act in a way that was true to herself.  At the meeting, her boss flew into a rage at the sales figures and demanded that she account for herself and her part of the business. How did she react? Like so many before her, did she explain, apologise, justify, promise to do better, to change? Did she try to appease? No, she responded firmly and politely, but mostly firmly. She challenged back and told him what she needed, what she wanted, in order to meet the goals. She asked for support, time and resources. She also established some principles of behaviour between them and stressed how she’d like them to work together. In being refreshingly honest with him, something he’d rarely, if ever, experienced before, she totally avoided behaviours that would enable him to revert to angry type. She got everything she needed, including respect. That she was not desperate to impress freed her, in her mind. It freed her up to be herself.

 

Here’s 5 things to consider if you’d like to ‘Be Yourself’ more often:

Value your value:

Cut out or replace the self-sabotaging self-talk or beliefs that can dominate when you try something different or something new. Listen to the ones that help you instead. Known as those ‘voices in our head’, they are the beliefs we hold about ourselves. Our beliefs are powerful. They are what help us to be good at what we do and who we are. Thing like we believe we can learn, be successful, have an interesting job, be a good friend, a compassionate leader. Our beliefs can also trip us up. They hold us back, make us afraid, and afraid to overcome the feeling of being afraid. Believe in your own value and value it. Value yourself.

 

 Find your Flow:

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the Hungarian psychology professor is known as the person behind the concept of ‘flow’.  By that, he meant the mental state we achieve when we’re performing an activity and immersed in a feeling of focus, full involvement, and enjoyment and ease in whatever it is we are doing. That has always existed; he was the one to study it and label it.

 

To experience joy and ease, the opposite of misery and low self-esteem, is not to be sniffed at, right? If you want to truly ‘be yourself’, find out what creates flow for you and create even more opportunities to experience it. In this way, you’ll increase those moments of focus, full involvement, joy and ease.

 

 Trust in trust:

Listen to yourself more often. Listen to your intuition. Bear Grylls has described the time how he’d had a niggling feeling about the ropes and the equipment during a climbing expedition. He didn’t listen carefully to his intuition, didn’t act on it and was injured by falling equipment: “I learned another valuable lesson that night: listen to the quiet voice inside. Intuition is the noise of the mind.” Trust yourself in other ways too: doubt and fear can sabotage our efforts before we even start. Trust yourself to know, to act, to achieve and to be…

 

Deepen your development:

Find out more about yourself. Explore your strengths and change beliefs and behaviours that hold you back from being yourself. If you shake off the shackles of who you think you’re meant to be, more of ‘you’ will emerge. So what if that’s the way you think you’re meant to be or do things? So what if that’s what was expected of you yesterday, last month, 10 years ago, a lifetime ago? When you are learning, growing and developing, you are open to change and finding out who you are and just who you can be

 

Connect with courage:

Sometimes when you become more yourself, others around you may react. They may not like this development, this change in you. Whilst we may have a responsibility towards others to understand, with empathy, how our behaviour influences them, we are not in charge of or responsible for others’ reactions. So go ahead and do what’s right for you without doing harm to others. The more likely reaction is one of receptiveness and encouragement. We’re attracted to people who are genuine and ‘being themselves’. And by the way, most people won’t even notice. There’s not a massive audience out there taking notes on all your behaviours. They’re a bit busy getting on with their lives and being themselves.

Filed Under: The connected leader

Are you too busy for Christmas?

January 13, 2016 By Susan Carroll

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, it’s nearly Christmas. I’m willing to bet you’re spending these last weeks of the year busy with work demands while also trying to make sure everything’s in place for a magical Christmas at home.

Taking a break, it seems, is not always relaxing. Those tantalising two weeks away from the office, indulging in food, fun and time with the family, seemed very real and exciting in November. By December, it’s disappearing in a haze of must-dos on two fronts. Before we’ve had time to breathe, it’s January.

Why does this happen? And what can we do to make sure that Christmas doesn’t become just another time-consuming to-do list?

 

A story of Christmas stillness

In the lead up to one Christmas, I was heavily pregnant with my second son, due on 19th December. There was nothing that could be done but wait for his arrival, and adapt our Christmas to it as best we could.

Every day started with anticipation, and ended with uncertainty. The 19th came and went, and so did the 25th. He eventually arrived on 27th December, and we called him Gabriel.

He was, of course, the perfect Christmas gift. We had no choice but to wait patiently for him, to simply live in and enjoy the moments as they came and went.

 

Making a choice to be busy

That Christmas, I wasn’t able to be busy. I had no choice but to wait until Gabriel came. When there is a choice to be made, it’s very easy to decide to be busy. We do this without realising it, because it doesn’t feel as if we have a choice.

As much as we crave relaxation, we fear idleness. We want time to do nothing, but when the opportunity arises to have it, we fill that time with tasks. At Christmas, we call these tasks ‘traditions’. Some of these are universal, like putting up a tree or cooking a turkey. Others are personal, like visiting relatives or taking a country walk on Boxing day (or St Stephen’s Day as the 26th is always to me).

Traditions can be magical, the foundations of precious memories. They can also weigh us down with expectation, and if they don’t happen, guilt. A list of Christmas traditions quickly becomes just another to-do list.

 

What do you really value?

The value of any tradition comes in its meaning. The value of a Christmas tree lies not in the tree itself, but in the focal point it provides. It is somewhere to gather around, somewhere to keep and open presents, and something to enjoy decorating.

Buying and decorating a tree can be a chore, something else to take away from valuable relaxation time. Unless you choose to see it as relaxation in itself, an experience to be shared rather than work to be done. Or you could simply decide not to bother with a tree at all, if it doesn’t suit you to have one.

 

Take a break

Of course, it’s not always that simple. Deciding not to have a tree might be pretty much impossible if you have a house full of expectant children (and perhaps expectant adults). Likewise, choosing not to visit relatives can be tough, especially if it means others are upset. But you can almost certainly choose not to go to every party you’re invited to. You can choose to buy the Christmas foods you really want to eat, rather than the ones you think you should have.

Identify what matters to you about Christmas. With everything you plan to do, ask yourself how it contributes to the things that matter. If something doesn’t contribute, find a way to change it or scrap it. We don’t need to do nothing to relax. But we do need to make wise choices about the things we do.

 

Simple pleasures

What matters to me at Christmas is the simple pleasure to be had in enjoying time with family & friends. Patrick Kavanagh, a poet from Co Monaghan, seems to capture this best in his poem, A Childhood Christmas. He was a master of making the ordinary extraordinary through the sparse medium of poetry.

My favourite verses are:

My child poet picked out the letters
On the grey stone,
In silver the wonder of a Christmas townland,
The winking glitter of a frosty dawn.

 Cassiopeia was over
Cassidy’s hanging hill,

I looked and three whin bushes rode across
The horizon — the Three Wise Kings.

Take a moment to read the full poem here.

I hope you enjoy it too. I grew up a stone’s throw from ‘Cassidy’s hanging hill” and feel a deep sense of connection with the words and their sense of place and childhood. It makes me think about my own childhood Christmases and those of my children, and of people no longer here to enjoy Christmas with.

If we can recreate that feeling, those connections, in our own homes this Christmas, we may reach January content, satisfied with the time that’s gone and optimistic for the year to come.

When we’re back at our desks, perhaps we will have learned something about how to identify what is important to ourselves and others, a lesson we can use in leadership as much as we can at home.

 

Instead of sending Christmas cards to clients and colleagues  Scala Advance has donated to 2 charities which work with homeless people:

Focus Ireland, which believes that everyone has a right to a place they can call home and which campaigns to address the causes of homelessness

https://www.focusireland.ie/

and

Brighton Housing Trust/First Base Urgent Christmas Appeal 2016. First Base is the only project for homeless men and women in the City to remain open over the Christmas and New Year Period

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Brighton-Housing-Trust5

 

 

Filed Under: The connected leader

Lead yourself to lead others

November 22, 2015 By Susan Carroll

Are you feeling a certain amount of overwhelm in your life? Are you working long hours? Saying yes to everything, yet wishing you could say no at times? Did you miss lunch… again… because the report you’re working on needs rework and there’s a deadline? Are there just not enough hours in the day, in the week to work, play, sleep and breathe?

Meet TOMM © as TOMM© can help you. Let me tell you how I met TOMM© and introduce you too. Like you, I lead a busy life, balancing family, work, friends, study, writing, speaking and all the fulfilling things I choose to do. A few months ago, I was simply doing too much… of everything. Typically the balance in my life works reasonably well. Not this time. I had a massive ‘diary fail’ when I was on 8 flights within 3 weeks. I had ‘forgotten’ how to say ‘no’ and ‘not right now’.

 

If you travel, you’ll probably be familiar with the safety instructions at the start of each flight… yes, the part where most people keep reading their work documents, book or inflight magazine. Not this time though; on one of the flights, the safety instructions shouted to me: “Please ensure you put on your own oxygen mask first, before helping anyone else with theirs.”  I thought: “Are you talking to me?!” It seemed they had a message for me and I was listening…

 

How can you help or motivate others if you’re not helping or motivated yourself?

I thought about how counter-intuitive that is and know that, were I to be travelling with my family, I’d instinctively help my children with their masks first. I also thought how useless that could be if I ran out of oxygen whilst doing it. For the first time I connected how in those over-scheduled weeks, I was helping others put their oxygen masks on each day and neglecting my own. I connected this to the behaviour of leaders I meet who want to motivate their people and teams in challenging and sometimes very difficult times, taking on too much strain. They, too, are helping others with their masks whilst neglecting their own.

 

The Oxygen Mask Metaphor

Here’s where TOMM ©comes in: The Oxygen Mask Metaphor. I thought about what it would mean for me to put my own mask on first. I struggled for a while, thinking about how could I do that? What would it really mean?  Would it be selfish? What would I have to let go of? To what would I have to say no?  What would I change or add to my life in order to breathe more easily and therefore help others by being the very example of the change they seek also? A change had to happen so I went ahead and ‘put my own mask on first’ and that made me take action. I got through the schedule, made some simple and obvious changes, significantly reducing the feeling of overwhelm. Turned out they were pretty simple changes and involved decision-making, prioritisation and communication.

 

3 Questions

If you’re in a position of leading, motivating, communicating, influencing others, ask yourself these 3 questions:

  • What would it mean for me to put on my own mask first?
  • What changes do I choose to make so that I can do that?
  • What are my next steps?

 

Put on your own mask first before reaching to help others with theirs. You’ll do a much better job with TOMM©.

 

Photo credit – Grace Sansom

Filed Under: The connected leader

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