Consider this. If a man who is stuck can cut off his arm with a penknife to get free, what could you do today to move on?
How to listen
In my business I do a lot of presenting. A lot of standing at the front of the room with my whizzy PowerPoint charts generally impressing people with my wisdom and wit. Or, that’s what I like to think in my more deluded moments – until reality kicks in (often in the form of a very sensible and unanticipated question from my audience) and I realise that I have been broadcasting and not listening.
Listening is one of the most powerful things we can do. Listening is fundamentally about connecting with people and when you do that you connect more effectively; your relationship is deeper, richer, and has more impact.
It is a far better to listen well than to speak, write, or even present ideas well. People who powerfully listen have a greater impact on the world.
So, how do I sharpen up my listening skills? By being aware that there are 3 types of listening and continually striving to be in the deepest form.
3 TYPES OF LISTENING
1. Hearing
Hearing is just letting the sounds of someones voice enter your head: it is the ability to receive sounds, not necessarily do anything with them.
Hearing is when someone is talking to you but you are just waiting for them to finish so you can make your point, or maybe you are thinking about what you did the night before and not really paying as much attention to what the other person is saying as you could.
2. Being present
At this next deeper level of listening you are focusing on what is being said. You are are paying attention, processing the information and responding accordingly. This is communication: information, opinions, facts, all sorts of data are being exchanged. You walk away from a conversation in which you were present and you feel you have connected and communicated.
Great.
For most people most of the time it doesn’t get any deeper than this. Conversations will shape their opinions and actions.
So they’ll listen to their partner telling them that they don’t communicate enough, or spend enough quality time together and they’ll try to talk more and make a mental note to do something fun at the weekend.
This is all very well and a lot better than thinking “yada yada yada, she’s just going off on one again” but there is a deeper form of listening; one we should all strive for all the time.
3. Empathising
When you empathise you put yourself as much as you can in the other person’s shoes, you imagine how it must be for them; you connect with them as deeply as you can. From this connection comes a deeper understanding of the other person, and so a more powerful relationship. Your partner will be talking about communication and spending time together but what she is really saying is “I feel vulnerable and insecure in this relationship and I need you to show me more commitment.” So how do you get to this deeper level of listening? By focusing on them and doing 3 things:
1. Suspend judgment – don’t let your opinions and beliefs get in the way. If you judge you close your mind.
2. Search out what is truly important - don’t just hear the words, feel the speaker’s emotions, and try to understand why they are saying these things.
3. Focus on the main event – take in the detail of what someone is saying but consider how it all adds up; consider what the person is saying as evidence of deeper feelings. Ask yourself “what’s the real conclusion here?”
So, that’s enough of me talking and time to listen. What are your views and experiences of powerful listening?
Advice you’d give your 20-year-old self
If you could travel back in time and give advice to your 20-year old self; what would you say?
The first thing might be “I know you’re not going to listen to a word I say but…”
I am sure this list will be pretty organic as I make more mistakes and learn new stuff but here’s my starting-point. I’d love to hear what advice you’d give your 20-year old self.
Remember everyone you’ve ever done business with and use social networking tools to keep in touch.
Be someone people can rely upon.
Always produce the best work you can, and always strive to make it better than other people’s work.
You aren’t going to “get discovered” – you’re going to have to tell the world about yourself.
Work hard, take care of your integrity and your reputation will take care of itself.
Know the rules so you know how to break them properly.
Take more risks. But remember the difference between courage and foolhardiness is, at most, only a few minutes thought.
When the fat lady does finally sing, make sure that you can hear her.
Sleep less. Get up an hour earlier for 3 weeks and you will be amazed that you can do it easily, and delighted with this extra hour all to yourself.
If you never say no; then what is your yes worth?
You can have your cake and eat it. But not all at once.
Opportunities multiply as they are seized.
Save money. It may seem boring but you’ll be the one smiling when you have a new car, deposit, holiday, cushion when you lose your job.
Cause and effect are not always closely related in time and space.
The easy way out usually leads back in.
Discipline is not a bad thing – especially when it’s self-discipline. Do you want success? Do you want results? Then have the self-discipline to make it happen.
Anticipating the pain is always worse than the pain itself. Don’t waste your time worrying about how much something you are striving for is going to hurt on the way. Whatever that pain is: A) it won’t be as bad when you’re working through it, and B) it will all be worth it when you are celebrating your success.
Yes you will make mistakes but don’t beat yourself up – just don’t do it again, and learn what didn’t work that time.
Motivate yourself; don’t strive to have what others have. Be fired up by the internal motivations that drive YOU, not the external trappings of wealth, power, and success. If you’re any good – and that sort of thing is important to you – they’ll come the more brilliantly you shine at what you are doing.
No company will ever give you loyalty. Only people will.
Food doesn’t make you fat. Eating more calories than you burn up in the average day does.
Let your individuality shine out. What makes you unique gives you your particular edge. Don’t copy others – work on expressing the uniqueness of you – whatever it is.
Having fun is much more fun when you’ve done your work first.
Get it in writing. This is true for multiple cases of “it”.
If something cannot go on forever it will stop. No matter that you don’t want it to, and usually when you least want it to. Or expect it to.
Confront the brutal facts of your current reality – no matter how unpleasant they might be. Then take ownership of the position you find yourself; admit to yourself your role in making all of this happen. When you do this, and only when you do this, you can start creating the reality you want.
Life a life of purpose. Our unique talents and personality mean that we all have a unique contribution to the world – one that’s going to enrich the world and fulfil you. Work out what your purpose is – and start living it as much as you can, as soon as you can.
Rest and recharge often. Then you can go and work hard. And party.
If you are selling something for money; the sale is over only once you have gone to the bank.
Nobody ever gives you power. You take it. Don’t ask for permission to do something – if every fibre of your being thinks it’s right, and I mean really right and you’re not kidding yourself, then do it. Then do it again.
Standing out from the crowd and doing your own thing – being a leader – that’s a lonely gig. But better to be slightly lonely than ripped up by regret.
The secret of life? Be at peace with now – whatever that now is – because now is all you really only ever have.
The power of guiding ideas
“The fundamental problem with most businesses is that they are governed by mediocre ideas. Maximizing the return on invested capital is an example of a mediocre idea. Mediocre ideas don’t uplift people. They don’t give them something they can tell their children about. They don’t create much meaning.” - Peter Senge
Businesses and individuals are at their most creative and effective when they have guiding ideas. Guiding ideas are the ‘big ideas’ that should underpin everything the company or organisation you work for does. Everyone in the company should share an understanding of what the Guiding ideas are, and their part in making them come to life every day.
Guiding ideas answer 3 critical questions; ‘What?’ ‘Why?’ ‘How?’
* Vision is the ‘why?’
- the shared picture of the future we seek to create.
* Purpose is the ‘what?’
- the role of each individual in working every day to bring the vision to life.
* Behaviours are the ‘how?’
- the way we interact with one another, how life is on a day-to-day basis.
For example:
* “We are going to put a man on the moon before the Russians.”
* “I’m building the fuel system that propels the rocket.”
* “I’ll share our test results every day and other information to improve what we are doing.”
Vision
Visioning isn’t pinning some bland statement to the wall; it involves creating compelling images of the future; of what could be. Whilst the goal itself may be fixed, visioning involves the team creating and crystallizing what they want to create together.
Visions are not lofty statements or inspiring phrases; they’re practical tools. In its simplest sense a vision is shared image of what we are seeking to create. The power of a vision comes from its source and our ability to continually reconnect with that source; to make bringing that vision alive every day. Just as the nozzle of a hose intensifies the force of a water jet, so does a clear vision focus the purposefulness and energy of those who share it.
In modern businesses individuals operate locally, globally, reporting directly, and in a matrix environment. The company vision has to live in this context, unrestrained by politics or mediocre thinking.
“We are going to put a man on the moon before the Russians.” is as simple as it is inspiring. How clear is the vision of your company? Can everyone articulate it? Do people believe in it?
Purpose
Vision without action is meaningless. All the great ideas and visions in the world are worthless if they can’t be implemented rapidly and efficiently. The only criteria for judging vision are the actions and changes that ensue.
Purpose is what gives our job meaning; it’s the essence of our job description and objectives; it’s our unique contribution to making the vision a reality.
“I’m building the fuel system that propels the rocket.” is a clear purpose.
Behaviour
How we interact with our colleagues, clients and partners every day. How we behave at work; how we work as a high-performance team, accountable to each other, to an agreed plan, and delivering on our projects with excellence and flair.
“I’ll share our test results every day and look out for other information that can improve what we are doing.” That’s the kind of positive attitude that drives positive behaviour.
A Guiding Idea. Something you bring to life every day. Something that makes your business or organisation unique. Something you should be proud of.
Does the organisation you work for have an inspiring Guiding Idea? If not – what are you going to do about it?
What are you tolerating?
Tom Peters once wrote that, if you want to create change in your job and find out what’s right and important for you; then write down everything about your current job that you dislike. Hey presto – you’ve just written a manifesto for your next job; whatever that is.
It has long occurred to me that this process is a great way to work out what concrete changes you’d like to create in your life: a manifesto for personal change. Whatever in your life that you are currently accepting as second (or even third) best is you saying “I’ll put up with this, it’s what I deserve, and it won’t change. “ Well, it can and will change if you write it down, as a first step to creating change.
What behaviours, beliefs, attitudes, conditions and circumstances – your own and those of others around you – are you putting up with, and that a little bit more every day dull your passion, energy, and focus?
Think hard. They may be really subtle, or long-standing beliefs that seem not so much as tolerations as “that’s just the way life is.”
List them. Then formulate a plan to take them down.
What are the top 10 tolerations that you can stare in the face and take on now?
Why did I write those post, and what am I tolerating? Well, I usually charge a day rate for my time. I quoted it this morning to somebody who is interested in working with me. It’s a good rate; fair for my talents and contribution, and remunerates me well, but as I closed the call I thought to myself, “So, that’s what I am tolerating about what I’m worth. Based on the impact of the change I will help create, I could charge 3 times that. How do I make that happen?”
I am tolerating that I could be earning 3 times what I am each day. Now – how do I make that increase happen?
I’d love to hear what you’re tolerating and, more importantly, what you’re going to do about it.
10 lessons I learnt last year
Last year lots of the same sorts of things kept happening to me. Events that seemed out of my control that just kept cropping up with more and more impact each time. My car got clamped because I forgot to pay a parking fine, then it happened again. My girlfriend (quite rightly) got even more irritated with me because I’d over-promised and under-delivered two weekends running. Hmmm, I though, maybe there are lessons here that I’m ignoring and because I’m doing that the same things just keeps coming back to bite me, but bigger and bigger each time. No – how could I have been so dumb for so long?
So I took myself off with my trusty Moleskine and under the title of “Lessons I’ve Learned in 2009″ wrote down what you see below.
And what a surprise (not) the series of unfortunate events related to these lessons came to an abrupt halt. And there you go, I’d learned another lesson. You get in life what you need at that exact moment, you might not see why immediately but it’ll come to you if you think about it. I nearly died because of pneumonia in 2007. So I stopped thinking I was indestructible, working and partying too hard, I recharged and relaxed more often. I’m now the fittest and healthiest I’ve been in years with all the energy I need to do everything I want. Something bad can sometimes be the greatest gift you can receive (not a recommendation for next Valentine’s Day though!).
So here are my lessons for 2010, and indeed life.
Facing Up To Things
If you don’t deal with problems when they are small, they’ll hit you when they are big.
If your head is in the sand – how can you see the stars, let alone reach for them?
Face up to the reality of the situation, however unpalatable it might be. Only then can you move on and fix it.
Making A Stand
Be who you are, be true to yourself.
Fight for what you believe in and you think is right.
Be an example to yourself
Don’t make your life through others but stand for yourself.
Everyone is a Mirror
Everyone is a mirror of you – you see yourself in how they are with you.
But everyone is also their own unique soul and should be appreciated for that.
Destiny
Believe in your own destiny.
Have absolute faith that you will prevail. But every day think and act better and smarter to get you there.
Intuition
Trust your intuition.
Stay Grounded
Stay grounded every day by connecting to nature in some way.
Sustainability
You can’t beat the laws of economics on your own.
If you can’t give something, don’t say you can, no matter how much you might want to.
You can’t be the big man and support everyone all the time. If you do people will only come to expect it and not appreciate what you give.
What you spend, time, money, emotion etc, you have to replenish.
Pleasing Others
You can’t keep everyone happy all of the time.
Things you do will upset and annoy people.
But be true to yourself and don’t try to upset people unless you have to.
The Dark Side
You have a dark side and that is source of positive power.
Sometimes you have to show that you have a dark side and that you’re not afraid to use it.
You have to stand for something and show that you will fight for what you think is right.
Love
Love means seeing someone for who they really are, and not what they do for you.
If you truly love someone, then you want them to be happy. If you aren’t doing that, you either fix it or let them be happy without you.
Don’t try to hold onto people; if they are right and you are right, it will be.
Tomorrow just do 3 things
Too often we feel overwhelmed by everything we have to do in a day. Too often we end the day with our list incomplete, feeling frustrated at our lack of achievement and downhearted because tomorrow’s list has just become even longer.
In the average day we usually try to do too much of everything and achieve too little of anything.
So stop. Cut back. Tomorrow just do 3 things. It’s really that simple.
Tomorrow do one thing:
* to move a current project on
* just for you
* to contribute to a significant relationship
Anything else you achieve that day is a bonus.
Let me know how you get on!
You create your own reality
You have created the reality that you find yourself in; what you tolerate in life, the beliefs you have that limit you, your attitudes, these and other of your influences have all created your reality. The sooner you accept this, the sooner you take responsibility for your current situation, the sooner you can take responsibility for changing it for the better. We may not always have direct control of the world around us but we are always free to choose how we think and feel. It’s not what happens that makes the biggest difference but how you deal with what happens. No one can take this inner freedom, this inner power, unless we choose to give it away.
Sound too simple? Well let’s look at how attitudes are formed.
Attitude is an emotion that all people get when they have other emotions. As Wikipedia says “Attitudes are positive, negative or neutral views of an “attitude object”: i.e. a person, behaviour or event. People can also be “ambivalent” towards a target, meaning that they simultaneously possess a positive and a negative bias towards the attitude in question. Attitudes come from judgments. Attitudes develop on the ABC model (affect, behavioral change and cognition). The affective response is a physiological response that expresses an individual’s preference for an entity. The behavioural intention is a verbal indication of the intention of an individual. The cognitive response is a cognitive evaluation of the entity to form an attitude. Most attitudes in individuals are a result of observational learning from their environment.”
There is a simple conclusion to this: a positive reality comes from positive emotions about a person, behaviour, or event. Re-frame your emotional response to a positive one and your attitude will be a positive one. Sound too simple? Well ask yourself if you are really seeing the true picture. When a Japanese person nods we assume that he means “yes” but he is actually saying “I hear you and I acknowledge that you said that”. Do not confuse data with assumptions. The problem is that most people treat interpretations, attributions and generalisations as data or facts, rather than assumptions.
As Peter Senge says in his book “The Fifth Discipline”: “We do not describe the world that we see; we see the world we can describe.”
The greatest thing that any of us will ever choose in life is our attitude towards it. And that is how you have created the reality you find yourself in now. If you believe that you will live the fullest life you can, you will.
Just do something
Just do something. ANYTHING. Action is usually the ultimate solution to any dilemma. It makes things happen and it makes you feel better because you are taking ownership of the situation and making progress to move it on.
“But my situation is unique,” I hear you say “there’s just this particular set of circumstances that mean I can’t get on to it until…”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Repeat after me – “Procrastination is unsexy, doesn’t make my life or the lives of the people around me any better, and means that I never quite live up to my potential.”
You do know what you need to do in a situation most of the time, you do have a hunch, or a rough idea of the action you need to take. So take action on this hunch or rough idea and do what feels to be right.
- Find an hour today that you can totally dedicate to the situation you want to address and take some action – any action – to move it on.
- At the end of that hour write down your next steps and commit to a time to have achieved them by.
You mean you can’t find an hour; are you seriously telling yourself it’s not that important?
It really is that simple.
And the best bit about this exercise?
- Reward yourself at the end of the day with whatever floats your boat.
You deserve it because you made something happen you action hero you.
How to deal with uncertain times
So, we’re worried about the future right? Worried about keeping our jobs, the value of our properties, and what the next shocking economic news might be. Best to keep our heads down, don’t rock the boat, just keep carrying on.
Wrong.
The best way to deal with uncertain times is to be more creative, take more action. Anything else is giving away your power.
For giving away our power is what we are doing. We’re giving it away to our boss, or the company we work for, to the media that’s scaring us about the economy, and to the politicians who tell us they have the answers. And that’s just not good enough.
The only person who is in charge of your destiny is you. Sure, bad things happen but “bad” is only one way of looking at it. Look for the lesson – “bad” things always have something to teach us. You could be a victim who lets thing happen to them, or you could be a person who knows that in turbulent times people are drawn to quality, creativity and positive action.
i.e. the you who fully embraces your power.
Let’s be clear what I mean by your power. It’s not control over people, or money, or sex appeal, or having more than others. Your power is:
- knowing yourself
- believing in yourself
- having the courage to speak up for what you know to be right
- and to do what is the right, if not necessarily the easiest, thing
How to deal with these uncertain times?
Stand on the courage of your convictions. Believe in yourself and what you do, no matter what others do or say.
But don’t fool yourself; be honest about the situation you find yourself in because from this place of honesty and integrity you can creatively think of ways to thrive.
Easy words to say yes. I’m trying to live them every day and I know it’s hard. But maintain your power; what makes your contribution unique and amazing – because now more than ever:
If you stand for nothing you will fail at everything.
