Feedback is a great way to find the ‘gaps’ – here are my notes on this today.

The best question to ask is

‘what can i do to do better as ……..’

Feedback asking how people feel about us, what they don’t like etc. tends to be ineffective in getting anything useful + people don’t want to give it to you! (messengers get shot!)

The best response is

‘thank you’

no more or less. treat every piece of advise as a gift or compliment. make notes and go away and process. 
Its so easy to ask for help, then start arguing with the help offered with the result the person you asked doesn’t want to do offer anything more.

Finding the blind spots. A chance to move forward.

Marshall Goldsmith highlights this using a Johari window.
The 4 quadrants are: what I only know about myself (private), what I don’t know and other don’t either (not use of course), what I know and is know to others (public, probably limited) and finally what I don’t know and other do (blind spots and the information to make changes that count)

Suggestions to find the blind spots

You have to observe to see!
What do people say casually about you – make a list. So ‘can’t get in contact with you Simon’, ‘you don’t seem to have this done clearly’, ‘are you listening?’, ‘could you put the phone down please?’ may all be showing up patterns.

The listen to yourself. Are you constantly either saying how great you are, or how bad you are? Great phrases like ‘it doesn’t really matter to me but…’ = this seriously matters to me!

Do a good Physc test and share it with a significant other, and listen.
I’ve recently done a variety of different ones and would recommend HBNI and McQuaig for coaching assignments. If you are very ‘numbers and words’ then a Hogan profile.
These surveys are very accurate and come from your own answers rather than 360 group feedbacks.

As a version of this you don’t have to do a test to get some feedback from the significant other at home – but you may need a third party to ask the question (like the coach). The ‘other’ does see you as you are. When I’ve talked to my wife about being driven and dominate in my thinking (which I’d prefer to think is not me being helpful and working with people) she gently laughs and says ‘of course you’. She has 35yrs of it!

Tribal Leadership (Dave Logans best seller) has a method called ‘Daily Boxes’. You self score each day out of 5 to the areas of Exercise, Attitude, Rejuvenation, Nutrition. Simple but revealing.

Sentence completion. Pick something you want to get better. Put into into a sentence ‘if I get better at…I will…’ Don’t stop until you have gone down 10 versions. The surprise is you start to say the core truths.

Journal. Writing is a discipline that engages mind, eye and hand. Talking to yourself in this way often produces themes and ideas that are ‘core’ to you. Just notice them, don’t go back re reading areas.

Dissociate and observe, then re integrate. A little harder to do until you practice. Its important to do it from the perspective of an enquiry. Look at all these things, Notice whats strong and whats weakly trying for attention, be curious in this, what are these things saying thats helping/ thats distracting. Reintegrate with some personal love and acceptance.

Part of growth is accepting we don’t have all the answers.

Personal branding. A big area, but getting your essence in pictures and words creates a template for your empowerment and clarity. I’ve found doing this work with clients invaluable for their futures, discovering things they ‘know’ but missed.

Catalyse - creating new, by joining the dots?

This is part of my new logo – its a personal one, its ‘me’ – we call it a ‘plogo’.

Its been a interesting journey discovering, and enjoying, the fact that I AM a brand.
I took courage to start this exercise by reading Seth Godin’s book Linchpin. Here he takes the concept of a product needing to be a ‘Purple Cow’ (you may need to read this book if you haven’t as its essential) to get onto our radar even for a moment – if its not remarkable then we don’t notice it and ‘click’ we are gone! – and starts to define the future of people at work into also becoming ‘remarkable’ and ‘Linchpins’- stand outs, truly themselves, wonderfully relevant and skilful. In fact you just can’t do without them in your business!

But to do this you actually need to know who you are! You need a personal brand and that means a name that is uniquely expressive of your essence, and outputs such as a graphic design, professional story (CV) and even perhaps your music and your art. (I don’t have my music yet but I do have a couple of artists working on my art – very exciting)

This has a strong business dimension in that it defines you in your work, makes you stand out from the crowd and clarifies your value to clients.

So my plogo is Catalyse. I have always found unique possibilities, and created significant value in business, by bringing things together that others have missed. I do this now for new brands and people. With Executives I help them find themselves, their core, and move past the ingrained barriers that stop them becoming even more successful. For new products I link my aggressive, pioneering spirit with finding the essence needed to make a ‘blue ocean’ – I catalyse.

If you would like to know about Personal Branding it would be a pleasure to tell you more – +64 21 556 458

It also says to me that we need to know ourselves well to be the Differentiated Leadership that Friedman suggests. Personal branding of ourselves must be one way to be clear and there is a direct ROI for those around us and our business.

“I’m actually listening too it on my Kindle as an audiobook.

Posted via email from Simon’s posterous

Very open, clear and with a range of emotions – so deeply human!

Its about making the right choices and the right connections. Its about spending time on profitable and accessable interests rather than trying to convert near sayers (which we can do, but do we really?). Last night I watched two films. One was about William Morris, probably the best glass blower in the world (www.wmorris.com) who retired at 49 yrs old to extend himself further in life – thats a choice! when you are at the top.

The second was on the director Lasse Hallestrom (Cider House Rules) who not only is a world class ‘great’ but is very focused on what he does and why. His choices make him who he is, just as they do for William Morris. Both focus on being themselves, making true choices and comitting.

This video from www.boxofcrayonsmovies.com is worth a watch – choice, focus, comittment – its all there and the result -GREAT Work!

A colleague of mine has this quote on her email signature
- ‘it takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan‘ (Eleanor Roosevelt)
Its mildly irritating isn’t it! We know we should, and we don’t. We know that a well planned day saves energy and yet every day we run like hamsters on the wheel, and often end up unsatisfied as a result.

So I’ve nicked some tips for better days, with time saved, and more energy from Tom Cox’s website on CEO leadership tips. His sources quote these tips include tops athletes, and even bankers, showing that not only can you save burnout, but you’re going to do a better job. More sales, better meetings and in the case of the bankers- more revenue (is that good?).

Planning means focus. In coaching terms ‘focus’ means you clear you head and direct yourself in your planned direction. Guess what? Our brains like this. We function better and we literally save energy.
And in Tom’s five steps the other thing I like is the chance for ‘happiness’. Don’t scoff! There is tons of research to show that happiness is vital to our lives and performance, so it makes sense to include it in our days to get into the ‘flow’ (try The Happiness Hypothesis by J.Haidt for a superbly argued treatment).

So Tom’s tips are:

Five Steps to Energy Management

1. Create a list of the things that give you energy — anything from playing with the kids to taking a walk. These are things that we are tempted to STOP doing when we feel overwhelmed — they feel like luxuries. Keep this list visible at your desk. Make sure you are doing these every day.
2. Stop working marathon hours, and start working in “sprints.” If you’re creating a workday of back-to-back meetings, eating lunch at your desk, and having no breaks, you’re destroying your productivity.
3. After every 90-120 minute “sprint” of work, stop and do an activity from the list of energy-creating activities, to relax and recover. Like a weight lifter who does intense work and then allows time for regeneration, you can literally build your energy reserves by pushing hard and then stopping to regenerate.
4. Take this pattern of sprint, relax, sprint, relax — and turn it into an unbreakable, sacred ritual. The more you create rituals of behaviors that are good for you, the easier it is for you to do those behaviors without having to summon your will or exercise self-control. It’ll actually be easier to be virtuous than to break the ritual.
5. Do not multitask during your sprint — stay focused on one activity that demands attention. While the brain can time-split effectively across one low-focus activity (i.e. ironing shirts) while monitoring a stream of low-density information (i.e. watching a baseball game), you literally cannot focus on two demanding tasks at one time. A teacher can help a child with her reading, while scanning the classroom for trouble. However, once the trouble breaks out, that becomes the focus. (Imagine having a crucial talk with your Significant Other about the future of your relationship… and simultaneously, one of you is also working on the company’s annual budget. One or both of those tasks is going to suffer.)

Tom Cox’s blog is at http://bit.ly/iwBs3f

Try it- you can only gain.

Life is too short to worship at our own ‘personal drama’ shrine. Its time to get present, get in tune with what is happening around us and become aware of the opportunities. Try this video out as a means to ‘stop’ and watch. Listen to the music, tune in and breath.
One of the great abilities of strong decision makers is to be ‘present’ and work from the power of being in the flow.

Symmetry from Everynone on Vimeo.