Decisions Archives - Smart Coaching and Training | Business Support, Consultancy, Mentoring

23/04/2020 By David Rigby & Martin Kubler

I’ve never been to me

Becoming confident enough to be yourself

‘I’ve never been to me’ is a song by Charlene which went to No 1 in the UK charts in 1982. For many it is the worst Motown Number One ever, but is pertinent to the situation (COVID-19) we find ourselves in now.

The cheesy lyrics include the lines ‘I’ve been to Nice and the Isle of Greece… but I’ve never been to me’. It is about having to always be someone else and never being allowed to even find out who you are, let alone actually be that person.

Forward to late 2019, and many in the music industry, as in many other industries, are forced to subsume themselves into industry norms and accordingly standardise their personalities. Paradoxically the most successful have not done this. Good recent British examples have been Amy Winehouse and Adele who refused to follow the norms. An outstanding American example, even subject to a BBC Radio4 Profile, is the singer Lizzo – larger than life in every category, a phenomenal singer and performer who has no need of pitch correction in her performances.

Come 2020 and COVID-19, the requirement of the performers to be who they are and deliver has never been on show quite so much as the ‘One world’ show where performers such as Lady Gaga, Sam Smith and Andrea Bocelli, and many others sang together, each performing from their own home. No lavish productions or autocorrect to prop them up. And, of course, it is significant who is not performing and the conclusions we can all come to about their skills.

How does this affect us?

Many of us are now in lock down and the only places you can go are shops to buy food or pharmacies to pick up meds – the rest of the time, you are at home, either by yourself or with some version of immediate family.

It is the perfect time to discover who you really are – a great opportunity for self-examination, and if you don’t like the ’me’ you actually are, you can set about changing it.

Many are using this period as a great opportunity to organise themselves, deal with all the filing and position themselves for the future. And then see others, via Zoom, who are in a bad way, and cannot cope with the uncertainty.

Sphere of influence

The ‘sphere of influence’ model is useful here. Issues divide into three :

Inner circle: those issues you can deal with by yourself;
Outer circle: those issues you can deal with by collaborating with others;
Outside both circles: those issues which you absolutely have no influence over.

Many of the issues thrust upon us by COVID-19 are things we have no influence over, so the first step is STOP worrying about things you can do nothing about.

Divide the things you CAN do something about into three categories:

Things which are essential to your well-being which you can do on your own. (If you don’t look after yourself then you won’t be able to look after others);
Things which are essential to your well-being, which you need to ask or influence others to attain;
Things which are essential to others’ well-being which you can deliver to them (whether or not they have asked).

These can include:

Ensuring you eat enough healthy food to stay fit but not fat, with, if you want, exercise;
Keeping your distance when out and wearing a face mask to assuage the concerns of others;
Really learn to appreciate yourself and potentially change the characteristics you don’t like;
Keep in remote contact with others and support them when they need in the best way you can;
Decide what you will do when this is all over and prepare yourself for it.

And finally: examine the way you communicate with other people:

Do you understand them well enough to understand how they prefer contact?
Do they understand you well enough to understand how you prefer contact?.

Always assuming you understand yourself well enough to know your own preferences.

This downtime is the lifetime opportunity to discover who you really are and what you really need. The chance to ‘be to me’.

For further discussion and remote coaching, contact us here, or, for Europe info@smartcoachingtraining.com +44 3335660067 and for Middle East hello@spsaffinity.com +97156 652 5970. Take a C-me colour profile to better understand your communication preferences..

Written by David Rigby and Martin Kubler

28/09/2018 By Isla Baliszewska

What will you achieve by Christmas?

Swinging from summer into autumn and already we are surrounded by messages about Christmas. Indeed it is less than 3 months away…so what will you do in that time that will make a difference? What do you most want to achieve?

For those who work in multi-level marketing and retail, this is peak time to achieve sales for the Christmas / New Year period, a time for building the relationships that will yield good contracts in 2019, for delivering what is already in the pipeline. That’s a lot! And all this needs to be done by December 14th when most of the world shuts down for 2-4 weeks – depending where you are.

For the rest of us, let’s take a lesson from those in sales and marketing and ask ourselves “How can I sell myself best to achieve what I want by Christmas?” Remember, selling is all about communicating the right way so as to build the right relationships.

With such little time to set our Christmas goals and achieve fabulous results, communicating effectively to get the right message across well is crucial.

Ask yourself:

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Who do I need to impress / get to notice my achievements/ help me to measure them?

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Do I know how these people like to be communicated with?

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Do I really know my own preferred ways to communicate?

Some people like lots of detail, others very little so giving them a lot will put them off and they’ll lose interest. If your preference is to use emotion to appeal to others, the success of your conversation will depend on whether ‘how someone feels about something’ is of interest to them. Some people just want facts, others definitely don’t. Some want a lot of information, others just the salient points. What about you?

Knowing your communication preferences can help you identify which kind of people are your natural allies in achieving what you want. You can then choose who to connect with, those you best identify with, while also learning how to have successful interactions with the others.

And – the better you know yourself the easier it will be to know how to influence yourself to achieve what you want. Rather than staying stuck in old patterns, ways of behaving or attitudes that are perfect saboteurs, you can create enablers.

Here’s a strategy to follow:

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Write a statement of what you want to achieve by Christmas. Make sure it is really clear, definitely doable rather than wishful thinking, and describe what that achievement will look and feel like; if it is an intangible, what will tell you that you have achieved it?

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Write a list of those people you need on side / want recognition from / are essential to your achievement.

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]How do you think they would like to be communicated with? Note 5 ways for each person.

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Note 5 ways you prefer to communicate with others.

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Look for the ‘misfits’. Are they looking for detail when you prefer to be broad brushstroke? Are they wanting big ideas when you prefer minimalism?

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Now the fun part – create your personal achievement strategy by finding the common grounds for great communication.

And here’s an idea – C-me behavioural profiling is a brilliant tool to help you understand yourself and your communication preferences, to use these to achieve the things you want. That self knowledge enables better interactions with others, harnessing your strengths, fixing your weaknesses, allowing you to astutely pick up on the characteristics of others. The door will open to having those killer conversations to get what you want by Christmas.

David Rigby / Isla Baliszewska

01/08/2018 By Isla Baliszewska

Do we need a Nudge?

Everyone has those moments when they really wish they had made a different decision…or actually just done something they perhaps should have.

Welcome Nudge Theory, which is about making it easier for people to make decisions which are in their best interest. Thank you Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein for the book ‘Nudge’, published in 2008. And well done Richard Thaler for winning the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2017.

Most of us think of a nudge as a little prompt needed to get something done. Which it is, and those nudges can be the difference between something happening and nothing happening. Coming from behavioural economics, Nudge Theory takes this further, considering important biases in human decision-making and positing ways to help people make decisions that would benefit them.

“By knowing how people think, we can make it easier for them to choose what is best for them, their families and society.” wrote Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, authors of ‘Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness.

Simple example: on the assumption that most people want to be healthier but for many reasons (lack of willpower, lack of availability of healthy foods, sweets at the check-out), they stay unhealthy. The nudge here would be to fill the shops with only healthy products, improve food labelling to provide health information, replace the check out sweets with fruit and nuts. The objective – to encourage shoppers to make healthier choices.

Or, you want to go running every day but you can’t be bothered. Just put your trainers where your feet will hit the floor when you swing them out of bed. Your thought process is more likely to veer from procrastination to action.

Nudge Theory has become popular with politicians and policy makers as it touches on important biases in our decision-making processes. From a societal perspective, if you can encourage a whole bunch of people to engage in behaviours that improve society, that sounds like a good idea.

David Cameron’s Behavioural Insights team used the Nudge Theory concept when adding an invitation to join the organ donor register when people were renewing their car tax. This little nudge resulted in a massive increase in people joining the register. Barack Obama had Cass Sunstein as an adviser on his team with the goal of bringing the US Government “into the 21st century in a wide range of ways”. One of these was to try and increase the honesty of quarterly sales reports submitted by providers of goods and services to the Federal Government. By adding a brief prompt at the top of the online form, more accurate information was submitted leading to a reported $1.59 million increase in fees in one quarter, supposedly reflecting more honesty in sales figures. All good news for society as a whole.

But what about nudging to help us as individuals? Nudge Theory demonstrates that using quite simple prompts and techniques can bring a subtle change in our responses. It can push us into taking action rather than not doing anything. But, and here’s the interesting part, it won’t work if we think we are being told what to do. So those policy making examples needed to be suggestive and inviting rather than perjorative.

For our own personal nudges to work we need to feel ownership of them, and to find things that are easy to do. Here are our Nudging Tips:

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Make it simple – so you don’t have to think before doing

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]When setting your nudge try thinking of the pain/negative that you will be moving away from

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Don’t expect it to last forever – renew your nudges by introducing different ones

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Use reminders – pop post-it notes in the places where you want the behaviour change to happen. Or send yourself a morning email reminder.

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Give yourself a reward once you have ‘done’ the new nudged behaviour or task a set number of times.

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Share the nudge – tap into the power of peer pressure to make the nudge work for you.

To explore how to set your own nudges and what changes you want these nudges to make in your life, how about your first simple step being to get in touch with us – you’d be surprised what you might be able to do!

Isla Baliszewska – islab@smartcoachingtraining.co.uk

05/02/2018 By Isla Baliszewska

5 Hot Tips for Overcoming Obstacles & your Inner Critic

It’s all about mindset

What you say when you talk to yourself [Shad Helmsetter’s best-selling book]

Why you give the imposter syndrome permission control your life

Whether you are prepared to act ‘as it’ – even ‘fake it till you make it’

How much you indulge your gremlins, those inner critics.

Susan Jeffers wrote a whole book on ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway’.

FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real.

It is essentially about the choices we make. What if you choose to replace fear with another, stronger emotional driver; that of core confidence? Choosing to be controlled by your inner critic is very exhausting and destructive, as is the Imposter Syndrome. Experiment using Appreciative Inquiry’s approach, which is so simple and might need practice: appreciate what is working well and what could work even better – which circumvents anything negative.

Consider carefully when you say yes to your inner critic what it is that you are saying no to. And consider when you say no to your inner critic what is is that you are saying yes to. Ask yourself what is the pay off?

“I’d wake up in the morning before going off to a shoot and think, I can’t do this; I’m a fraud.” – Kate Winslet, Academy Award-winning actress

“I have written eleven books, but each time I think, ‘Uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.” – Maya Angelou, Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet and author

“I am always looking over my shoulder, wondering if I measure up.” – Sonia Sotomayor, first Hispanic U.S. Supreme Court Justice

What if, whenever an obstacle appears or arrives in your life, instead of getting despondent, being stopped, letting it get bigger and bigger, feeling it’s not fair or giving up you made different choices?

What if Google Translate interpreted ‘obstacle’ as a challenge to be solved? How might that approach influence your mindset? What inspired solutions might emerge?

5 Hot Tips (with thanks to Abraham)

1. Tell a better-feeling story about the things that are important to you.

2. Don’t write your story like a factual documentary, weighing all the pros and cons of your experience

3. Instead tell the uplifting, fanciful, magical story of the wonder of your own life

4. Watch what happens as you make different choices

It’ll feel like magic as your life begins to transform right before your eyes!

“Whatever you think you can you can and whatever you think you can’t you make that happen.” Henry Ford shone this spotlight on the power of your thinking to create your reality.

What will you choose?

Halina Jaroszewska Jan 2018

05/01/2018 By Isla Baliszewska

Time Management that works for you

Make this New Year of 2018 the year when you manage time rather than assuming it manages you;

make this New Year of 2018 the year during which you design and create new or different ways

of doing things better or differently.

Everyone has 24 hours x 365 days per year x number of years in one’s lifetime.

Exactly the same amount paid into each individual’s time ‘bank’ account at one nano second past midnight on January 1^st each year. How do we view that deposit? Do we even give it a thought? Does it warrant a cursory glance? Do we give a nano second’s consideration as to how we will use the time deposited? Does it even cross our minds to make one New Year’s resolution to use every nano second to the absolute max in whatever way we choose? Do we make any plans at all?

Or do we, without a scrap of consciousness, allow ourselves to be swept away on the tidal wave of time with a wild ‘wheee’ of gay abandon making it OK by thinking it’s just another year like any other. And then when 31^st December arrives as it inevitably does each year wonder in genuine puzzlement as to where that year has gone and why everything we had wanted to do is still on the list [if there was ever one in existence].

Fact is if we fail to plan we plan to fail.

Maybe we labour under the misapprehension that we have no control over time. In some ways that is correct as we humans have invented time pieces of all shapes, sizes, dimensions and mechanisms and they register the regular passing of each second so that we can keep on track throughout the world.

However the control that all of us have is how we use each of those seconds. Whether we use them consciously or let them slip away without regard. What would you prefer to be in charge of your time or let it vanish unused. Even if for example you have a boss who orders how you use your time at work; a family who absorb your time at home you still can be in control of how you approach each second you spend in either situation.

How about experimenting with a different perspective?

How about valuing each second, savouring each moment, getting total pleasure in each time slot as if it might be your last? How might that change your approach to time and enable you to discover different ways of doing the same old thing that will make the difference?

You may be started to read this article thinking ‘Yippee! I am going to get a whole list of ways to manage my time … all the hard work will be done for me’. Nice try! How I might organise / use / appreciate my time will be radically different from yours. It is for you to take a slice of time to consider all the excuses, reasons why, reasons why not that are your favourites as to why you run out of time / don’t have enough time / can’t find time etc. And to call yourself to account to ditch the old, out dated, routine ways you have used to date and surprise yourself with how inventive you can be especially regarding procrastination.

In a Youtube clip re mobile phones Simon Sinek talks about ‘in between time’ as the time when relationships are built. He advocates using time to connect rather than being distracted by those incessant pings demanding attention. Maybe that is where you could start with managing time differently, more effectively by relegating your mobile phone to the position of a useful tool rather than a demanding toddler!

For some help with ways to manage your time bank and keep control, get in touch.

Halina Jaroszewska 2018