Are you resisting the hero’s journey?

Our life is one huge journey, made up of a series of smaller journeys.  The choice for all of us is whether we see ourselves as the hero or the observer.  The role we choose to take determines our success in life, and by success I mean our ability to handle life and come out on top.

The hero’s journey is a map that can guide us as we negotiate our way through life and all it’s challenges and opportunities for growth.  It is the universal story of human development and if it didn’t work so well, we wouldn’t have a film industry, tv or best selling books.  What’s more for many of us that’s the only medium through which we learn about the hero’s journey, as a passive construct, rather than understanding it in a practical and personal context.

I’ve been working with and teaching the hero’s journey for many years now and I’ve been persuaded (ok it didn’t take much), by Chris Cooper of Be More Achieve More to share more of what I know with his clients on a teleseminar on the 27th July.  So you’re also invited too.  

During the call I’ll be answering questions like:-

- What is the Heroes Journey?

- How can it help us in a personal and a business context?

- What are the signs we’re resisting taking the journey and what are the implications?

 - What resources do we have access to that can help us through our journey?

 Plus there will be time for you to ask me your questions.

I’m currently teaching several coaches to use this in their work, here’s what one of them recently sent to me after her last coaching session “Just wanted to say a huge thank you , you are simply amazing and I can’t thank you enough for the insight you have given me.” 

 I do know what a difference understanding the hero’s journey has on life and so I hope you’ll join Chris and I on the 27th July at 8pm.  To register fill in the form below

Professional Passion

No one likes robots. Sure they may be efficient and they don’t talk back or chuck a duvet day to watch the world cup, but they are just machines. All a machine can do is what it programmed for and once a better machine comes along, it will be replaced. Machines cannot improve themselves (at least not yet). Every leader needs to look at himself once in while and see if he has become a machine – one that does a great job and stops there; with no ability to develop and grow. If you, on objective analysis, find that is happening to you, something is missing in your life. And that is passion.

Let’s not confuse doing well with success. Doing well is meeting expectations. Success is growth. To grow you need a passion to go beyond what is expected of you. An executive without a passion for his job comes across as dull, no matter how efficient he may be. And this concept of being dull is reflected back to you and feeds upon itself until the dullness becomes part of your personality. This personality will impact how well you perform. And worse, it will become part of how others treat you. You do not work in isolation. How you are perceived by others is an important of how successful you are. Not only will you not receive the respect you are due from your peers, you will become an uninspiring leader. The words boring and leader cannot coexist. A manager needs to inspire others to follow and work with him. If you are not inspired yourself, how do you expect to inspire others? No matter how boring and uninspiring your work is, your passion can turn that around, and the way you do it will be an example to others, allowing them to enable their passion. And that will earn you their respect.

Every job has it boring and frustrating moments – its when these get to be a major part of the job that passion dies. Do not accept boredom. Focus on the big picture. If you know where you are going, the boredom and frustration become only hurdles to be overcome, and not the race itself. If your target is not something that inspires you, your target is too easy and you are lazy. Just like a muscle, if your ambition is not exercised and pushed to do more, it will become weak. In fact, it may become so weak that you become incapable of even doing today’s job. If you are 40 today, you will not have the energy you had when you were 20. But that’s not important if your passion for your job pushes you to keep doing better. The passion in the mind and heart will more than compensate for the slowing of the body. If you allow your passion to carry your forward, you will be respected. And once you have respect, you will have opportunities to do more. And as you do and contribute more, you so will your need to continue on this path. And that need is passion.

What do you want in life? Once you know that, focus on how you will achieve your goal. Not if, but how. The “if” will be taken care of by your passion.

Should Character or Policies Lead in the General Election

2 days to go and it’s the general election here in the UK.  This time around the character of the leaders seems to have raised prominence compared to previous years.  Now that could just be my memory; and from conversations over the last few weeks some people seem to be at odds with the fact that character leadership is playing a role as opposed to the focus being about policies.

So why is the character of the party leaders so prevalent and been commented on so much?  I think the answer can be summed up by the word Trust.

Trust – We trust people who are authentic or genuine and have the skills to do what they say they’re going to do.  In other words it’s a combination of character and competence.

Competence – The skills to carry out the task required.  Each of us will be looking at the parties and their leaders and making an assessment, do we think the leader is competent to do the job.

Gordon Brown has had a chance to demonstrate his leadership skills as a prime minister, David Cameron and Nick Clegg have both yet to prove themselves.

Which leaves us with character.  This is the personality of the leader, but it’s also their values and beliefs.  What does this person stand for?  We don’t have to like them, this isn’t about looking for a new friend.  Rather it’s whether or not I believe that this person’s values, beliefs and traits are the right ones to lead and represent our country’s needs in conversations with other PM’s and Presidents.  The final check is and do I believe they will walk this talk, be authentic and act with integrity in the face of danger and war.  Or are they going to have a personality transplant depending on who they’re with and what’s going on, and whether they’re miked up, or not.

Each party has had the traditional marketing campaign:-

-         Why you should choose me to represent you for the next 4 years.

-         Why I’m trustworthy enough to be responsible for something as immense as a country.

-         What improvements do we commit to make over those 4 years.

-         How do we plan do make these improvements happen.

And depending on what you’re looking for you’ll get to decide just how credible they’ve been in getting this message across.

This year I suspect that rather than the nuances of who’s committing to do exactly what with the NHS, National debt, etc.  it’s going to be about who do we trust to do the right thing.  We live in ever increasing change,  they could promise one thing today and then something happens the other side of the world and it’s all change.  We wouldn’t expect them to keep going with a promise if it was now the clear path to fiscal suicide (or what ever).  We’re looking for the leader with the character to be fearlessly authentic and lead with integrity.  Why is this so important, because we’ve witnessed several experiences where the values of a leader have been at odds with how they were portrayed or what we expected, and we as a nation have paid a price.  The banks, and the Iraq war are two significant experiences.  As an aside, recently in the sporting arena we have Tiger Woods and John Terry.  The backlash isn’t so much about their infidelity rather these people were seen as role models.  Being the captain of the England squad is a high profile and responsible position, it isn’t just about football, the football is the competence aspect of the trust equation, it’s also about their character.   Of course there also still ripples from various ministers and their expense claims.

We could ignore the past, we could ignore the impact of character, but I think that would be to the detriment of our country.  So then who do you think is the UK’s equivalent of Obama, our hope for the future of the UK?

Building Trust in the Workplace – Authentic Leadership Master Class

Trust is a critical component to the success and performance of leaders and of a business.

There is a very simple equation:-

High Trust = High Speed + Low Cost

Low Trust = Slow Speed + High Costs

Look at the performance of your business, team, a specific relationship. Do things happen quickly or is everyone second guessing, double checking, re-doing and in the worst case preparing to cover and protect themselves should something go wrong?

Trust is a multiplier effect.  High trust people get the significant projects; you wouldn’t leave your child with someone you didn’t trust and a business makes no different decisions.

• High trust people get promoted and receive more of the company’s resources.
• Collaboration, engagement, innovation, job fulfilment all increase when there is trust.
• The ability to attract and retain talent increases where there is trust.
• Revenue, customer loyalty and referrals also increase if there is trust.

In fact research shows that high trust organisations out perform low trust ones by 278%

On April 15th at 4pm I’ll be interviewing Sue Swanborough, HR Director at General Mills UK, a company that yearly features in the Fortune Top 100 companies to work for.  Sue is an expert in trust and its impact and application throughout the business, from board level to shop floor.  The results of this have been evident in the business results achieved.

In the past Sue, a science graduate has worked in a number of fmcg businesses including Boots, Mars and most recently General Mills. She has moved cross functionally through R&D, supply chain, logistics and manufacturing before joining HR. She has held a number of generalist and specialist roles covering the full spectrum of HR. Her passion and expertise lies in cultural and leadership development through building trust to deliver excellent business results.

On this 75 minute tele conference call we’ll be discussing:-

• The impact trust has on the performance of a business
• What leaders need to pay attention to
• The top 3 mistakes leaders make and how this endangers the levels of trust they have
• Key strategies to build trust – whatever the size of your business
• Plus we’ll open the lines so you can ask your questions direct, as well as giving you the opportunity to send in your questions beforehand.

To secure your place and get a hard copy of the call, including transcript, follow this link – building trust

Are you a Bat Leader or a Frog Leader

To cope and thrive in today’s business environment are you resilient enough.  Here’s Ruth giving us a quick introduction to resilience and whether your leadership is helping you or hindering you.

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