by Julia Felton | Nov 27, 2018
No leader sets out to lead an ineffective team. In fact, many leaders invest a lot of time and energy agonising over how to create the perfect high-performance team that works effectively together and consistently delivers results.
However, there is a problem as many of the strategies leaders have adopted to improve teamwork, while well-intentioned, are not all that effective. Thompson, a professor of management and organisations at Kellogg and an expert on teamwork, clears up five popular misconceptions. In the process, she offers a roadmap for building and maintaining teams that are creative, efficient, and high-impact.
1. Get The Chemistry Right
Many leaders create teams that lack diversity and are too large. It’s human nature to hire people just like us but that just creates a team of clones and doesn’t help the team leverage the myriad of different skill sets that are out there. Plus when the team is too large it can become difficult to build trusting relationships with your peers.
Teams need to have great chemistry between the individuals. A team flourishes when each team members implicitly understand each other and everyone is clear on the role they play. Just think of a soccer team. The greatest players in the world don’t have to look up before they pass the ball. They just know where their team members will be. This certainty that your team members have your back creates a safe and comfortable environment in which to function.
2. Create The Right Rules of Engagement For The Team
A challenge for leaders when building teams is how to manage the rules of engagement. The best rules of engagement identify the goal of the team, establish the rules of operation, and define where responsibilities lie. However many leaders struggle with the dilemma of how to define these rules. Do we have no team rules so that the team can be agile, flexible and have autonomy or do we impose a set of rules and risk quashing creativity and innovation? One of the challenges with the former approach is that no-one steps up to the plate as everyone is waiting for someone else to take action which can create paralysis and so has exactly the opposite effect to that desired.
Thompson discovered that teams that developed some rules of engagement ended up being more nimble, having more proactive behaviour, and achieving their goals more than teams that didn’t bother. Plus, the process of developing the rules of engagement can improve team cohesion and effectiveness.
3. Create Trust And Be Vulnerable
In his book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni states that lack of trust is the number one reason why teams fail. So how do you build trust? By being vulnerable and sharing heartfelt stories about yourself and your experiences. This enables team members to connect emotionally to each other and is a rapid way of building trust.
As Thompson noted: “It’s somewhat unintuitive that putting out our worst moment in the last six months can actually help our team. Almost all of our intuitions are wrong.”
4. Stop Wasting Time In Meetings
Whilst meetings are a useful vehicle in the workplace to rapidly share information with a number of people, many meetings are poorly structured and rarely achieve the outcomes they were designed to achieve. Why? Because most meetings are designed to generate ideas rather than evaluate and expand on ideas.
Roughly 25% of your team is great at generating ideas, so encourage brainstorming prior to the meeting and get all the ideas on the table, then during the meetings simply focus on sifting through the ideas and enhancing and developing them.
Also, meetings tend to fill all the available time, so focus on having shorter meetings with agreed outcomes. Often four 30 minute meetings can be more effective than one two hour meeting.
5. Encourage Team Members To Challenge Each Other
Great teams challenge each other and this fuels their creativity and innovation. However, for this challenge to be productive each team member needs to feel that they have a voice and can be heard without any fear of the consequences. When this type of trust and culture exists then the team can become high performing.
If you want to get more engagement in your team why not grab a copy of our new online training course. For a limited time you can get free access using the COUPON CODE JF2 at check out. Simply register at https://www.engageandgrow.com.au/video-course
by Julia Felton | Nov 12, 2018
Small and medium-sized businesses are the life-blood of our economy, but they face specific, ever-increasing challenges. The world is in the mists of an employee engagement crisis, with serious and potentially lasting repercussions for the global economy.
Without a doubt, one of the greatest challenges SME’s currently face is the attraction and retention of talent. Intelligent, honest, hard working staff are critical to an organisation’s ongoing success, but now more than ever, good people are hard to find – and they are even harder to hold on to! To ensure employee job fulfilment, loyalty and maximum ROI, the key ingredient that is so often missing is Engagement.
In a recent Gallup poll, it was revealed that only 13% of the world’s employees are engaged at work, and most disengaged employees would change employers right now for as little as a 5% pay increase.
- The Engaged Employee – Does more than is expected. Works with a passion and feels a profound connection to the organisation they work for. They drive innovation and move the organisation forwards, providing maximum return on salary investment
- The Disengaged Employee – Does just what’s expected. Is essentially there in body only. They’re sleep walking through their day. Marking time, but not energy or passion, into their work. They provide minimum return on salary investment
- The Actively Disengaged Employee – Does less than expected. They aren’t happy at work; they’re busy acting out their unhappiness. Every day these workers undermine the efforts of their engaged co-workers, often providing negative return on salary investment.
Many organisations believe that strong leadership, and an exclusive focus on the development of their leaders is the key to a winning culture. They are mistaken. Leadership is not the heart of your organisation. The heart of your organisation is its people and their contribution. Without actively engaged employees, the leadership message cannot be heard..
Trained leaders today have been overloaded with leadership knowledge and theory, but too often they are not sufficiently activated. We need to turn our attention equally to our staff, getting them actively engaged regularly through new, innovative and inclusive methods, thus creating shared vision and buy in. It’s called ‘leadership living’ and all levels of the organisation participate together in the workplace. It is an all action methodology, which means all team members will live, breathe and grow together as a united force. It breeds true engagement, uncovers more leaders and builds a powerful and united culture. To ensure maximum impact and lasting change, everyone needs to be involved and everyone needs to be accountable.
So how do we engage our staff, encouraging maximum productivity, loyalty and ROI? It starts with changing habits as a collective, creating a movement. It’s about working as a unified team to change everyone’s individual and collective behaviours. The only way you can do this is through structured, strategic and regular discussions built on shared ownership, individual empowerment, and regular feedback sessions.
Also, traditional hierarchy has to go. The traditional organisational structure is not the most efficient option for businesses in the 21st century. Instead, successful companies are moving to an organisational structure that allows employees to make more of their own decisions and avoid the rigidity of traditional models. Generations X, Y and Z respond and are motivated differently to Baby Boomers. Equality creates unity, and unity will bring the truth out in your organisation. Think of truth as the splinters that need to be removed from your business. It may hurt, but we need to hear it, otherwise the pain will continue and exacerbate. We need to create an atmosphere for the truth to be tabled discussed and addressed without judgement.
If you want to get more engagement in your team why not grab a copy of our new online training course. For a limited time you can get free access using the COUPON CODE JF2 at check out. Simply register at https://www.engageandgrow.com.au/video-course
by Julia Felton | Oct 27, 2018
No-one doubts that we live in a world that is moving at lightning pace. In fact, the speed of change has never been faster. As a result, the most common theme I keep hearing my clients and colleagues say, is there are not enough hours in the day. How can I get everything done?. I need to learn to manage my time better. I need to become more productive.
Yet ironically none of us can learn to manage time. As a leader, you all have 24 hours in a day – 1,440 minutes. This is a constant which is never going to change.
What you can do however is manage your energy. Energy is the amount of effort we expend into doing something. Approach a task with high levels of energy and you can often get the task completed with superhuman speed. Approach the same task with lacklustre energy and it seems to take forever. I’m sure you can all think of a situation where this has happened for you.
So here are my five tips for managing your energy levels so that you can become as productive as possible each and every day, and so get more done in less time.
- Minimise the Number of Decisions You Have To Make Daily
Did you know that we make over 10,000 trivial decisions every day and that our decision-making ability decreases throughout the day? Therefore the smart thing to do is to focus your energy on the business critical decisions you need to make every day and minimize the number of inconsequential decisions you make. A simple activity like having a “uniform” for work can stop you wasting time on thinking about what to wear each morning. It’s no surprise that Steve Jobs wore his trademark black turtleneck and jeans, or former US President Barak Obama only wore blue or grey suits.
- Block and Tackle Your Schedule
To be more effective make sure you schedule everything in your diary. I mean everything. This means that you don’t have to wake up each morning wondering what to do, that’s already done. You know what time you have meetings, what times you are working on sales and marketing etc. Better still cluster similar activities together and plan your week so you have specific days for different tasks. At Entrepreneurs Institute Mondays is the finance day when everyone has to report on their weekly metrics and Wednesday is a creative day when people work on new projects and ideas.
- Avoid Task Switching
Nothing wastes more time and energy than multi-tasking. Start one task and stick with it for an allocated time without interruptions. That means no answering the phone, emails or jumping on social media. A study by Google revealed that when you switch tasks it takes you 20 mins to get back to the state you were in before you engaged in the interruption. That is all wasted time, as well as energy as you seek to get back into the inspired state you were previously in.
- Focus on Activities That You Enjoy
You naturally have more energy and enthusiasm for a task when you really enjoy it. So set up your team so that you have people available to work on the tasks that you least enjoy, as these will be the ones that deplete your energy. So often you are told to develop your weaknesses but I really believe that if we can focus on what we love then we will get more done.
- Eat Good Quality, Healthy Foods
You need to fuel your body with healthy foods if you are to maximise your energy levels. How about starting each day with a healthy green juice and maybe a brisk walk or some yoga stretches. This will release endorphins that will help boost your momentum for the day.
So next time you take on a task think about what the ROEE, return on energy employed is. Does the task inspire and motivate you or will it leave you feeling depleted and exhausted?. After all, you only have so much energy so use it wisely.
by Julia Felton | Sep 19, 2018
As a business owner of a growing enterprise the only way that you can sustain growth and your sanity is by leveraging the power of team. However creating a high performance team is not always plain sailing, even when you have the best support in the business.
The challenge is that many teams are made up of individuals who have different agendas and may not always have the right experience to support the owner in growing the business.
Research by UK accountant Haines Watt discovered that almost one in five senior managers (17%) are actively aware that they have a divergent vision of the business’s future to that of the owner. At the same time, over half (53%) of management teams and business partners are growing a business for the first time.
With so many senior managers working to their own agendas, combined with a lack of experience, business owners can’t be blamed for lacking trust in their teams..
In his book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team Patrick Lencioni identifies that lack of trust is the foundational cornerstone that prevents the success of a high performing team.
However trust is not the ability of team members to predict another’s behaviour because they have known each other for a long time. Rather, when it comes to teams, trust is all about vulnerability. It’s about being comfortable and open, even exposed to one another’s failures, weaknesses and fears.
Vulnerability-based trust is predicated on the simple concept that people who aren’t afraid to admit the truth about themselves are not going to engage in office politics and antics that waste everyone’s time and energy, and more importantly make the accomplishment of results highly unlikely.
However, the irony of this research is that 52% of business owners find they can’t be open and honest, masking their concerns from their teams because they are worried about exposing vulnerability. And as you know leadership starts at the top, so if the business owner is not modelling the way, displaying vulnerability-based trust then it is hardly surprising the rest of the team aren’t adopting this behaviour.
Unsurprisingly, across the board this lack of trust, honesty and communication leaves management teams siloed, uninformed and impeded from stepping up and taking more of the day to day running of the business away from the business owners. As a result, owners have less time to plan and think strategically, which in turn prevents them from reaching their growth ambitions.
The creates a vicious cycle where the business owner is stuck working in the business rather than on it and consequently often becomes exhausted as they have not mastered how to leverage their time, talent and team to help enable the change they desire.
If you’d like to learn how to leverage your time, team and talent so that you can create a more purposeful, profitable business then please book in for a complimentary consultation where you are guaranteed to walk away with at least one great idea to help you accelerate your business growth.
by Julia Felton | Sep 12, 2018
A recent study by accountants Haines Watt reveals that finding and creating a management team that are fully aligned with the business owners vision and purpose can be really challenging. Often it seems that creating such a team is far out of reach. There are two main reasons why your management team might not be aligned.
- you don’t have the right people at the management table,
- lack of clarity of the business purpose and mission caused by a lack of planning, or strategic focus.
The fact is, UK business owners are not spending enough time on their business, rather they are spending a vast majority of their time in the business. This focus on the day-to-day is preventing business owners from planning effectively. And here’s the rub. Failing to plan is planning to fail.
A properly formed strategic plan can ensure businesses grow faster and more sustainably. In fact, our study validated that business owners who are able to step back and focus predominantly on strategic planning are twice as likely to run fast growth businesses.
Developing a fully formed, strategic plan ultimately frees up more time to drive towards a common purpose and innovate along the way. Unfortunately, UK business owners are holding too tightly to the everyday functions of their companies, reluctant to let the management teams, who should be at the heart of the company, take their rightful place.
The theoretical role of the management team is a far cry from reality. The study found that nearly half of business owners are not confident that their business could survive beyond a single week if their team were left to run it. Wow, what a revelation and a telling sign of how little trust business owners put in their team. Imagine too the stress that creates for you, the business owner, when you feel that you are single handedly shouldering the responsibility for the business.
One of the most telling findings in the research was a widespread fear of exposing vulnerability, with business owners refusing to open up to their management team regarding their concerns or future plans. Without enough communication, the result is siloed working, leading to, and exacerbating, a lack of coordination within the team.While the causes of disunity can vary, the result remains the same – stagnated business growth. It is imperative that business owners make the time to identify the aspirations they hold for the business they’ve built. Once identified they can strategically look towards the future and place their management team at the centre of that vision.
If you’d like to get clarity on your purpose then let’s schedule a chat, because without a clear purpose your business will just drift along and never achieve its full potential and you will be unable to leverage the full potential of your team.
by Julia Felton | Sep 3, 2018
We often don’t think of the fact that great leaders must become great organisational gardeners, but it’s the reality. As a leader your role is to cultivate and nurture the people in your business so they can provide the best service to your clients. You need to take decisive action when required and continually tend to the business to ensure it stays on track. And this is just what great gardeners also do.
So if you think of your business as a garden, what are the six key activities that you must engage in to achieve a beautiful outcome?
- Create The Optimal Environment – as a leader you set the tone and culture of the business and this needs to be optimal to achieve the business goals. Plant the wrong plants in the wrong soil and they will never survive, as I discovered to my peril when I planted some azaleas in my clay-based garden. I loved the azaleas and assumed they would grow and thrive but the conditions just weren’t conducive for them to survive. Likewise, if you want your team members to thrive you have to plant them in the right environment. The best team members can fail in the wrong environment so as a leader you need to cultivate the right culture for business success.
- Plant the Right Seeds in The Right Place At The Right Time – one of the mots important roles you have as a leader is to in the words of Jim Collins “get the right people in the right seats on the bus”. Identify the right talent that will thrive in your business culture and then discover their strengths and how they will be able to contribute to the organisations success. Plant the wrong people in the wrong roles and all sorts of chaos can ensue especially when there is no clarity of who is responsible for what. Silo mentality can mean that there is disharmony as rather than working together all the people (plants) vie for the limited resources.
- Be Patient and Nurture – just like plants in your garden team members need nurturing and supporting. Let them have their space to grow and develop. Don’t crowd them and micro-manage them but rather empower them to get the job done. If things don’t go to plan, don’t fire the members, bur rather help them learn from their mistakes. Just like you can gently re-direct plants help team members to see the error of their ways and what they can do differently. Finally, remember it takes time for a seed to grow into a flower so make sure you don’t dig up the seeds before they have had time to get established. Oftentimes I see business owners doing just this with new products. Like the seeds, new products take time to get established in the marketplace so give them the time to get traction before you cull them.
- Water Regularly – plants can’t survive without water and organisations can’t survive without clear communication. As a leader you need to water your team members every day making sure they are continually appraised of what is happening. It is very important to over communicate during times of change particularly when the results are not immediate and people might be unaware of what is happening. Just like if you fail to water your plants they often die, so it is with your team members. When they feel excluded and disconnected from the purpose of the company they lose motivation and morale dwindles making them unhappy. Although team members obviously don’t physically die they can emotionally die inside as they lose their passion for their job.
- Weed Immediately – gardeners know that despite their best efforts weeds will always appear. I actually think this is the sign of a great garden, as it means that other opportunities can exist alongside what was planned. The challenge occurs when these weeds start disturbing the harmony of the flower bed. They start becoming a distraction that takes away from what everyone else is doing. In business the weeds can show up as toxic team members who start sabotaging the success of the business by diverting resources for their own agenda. In these instances a leader needs to take decisive action to stop these often silo mentality people damaging the engagement in the rest of the team.
- Know When To Prune – great gardeners know just the right time of year to prune their plants in order to get maximum growth from them. Some plants need to be cut back hard whilst others just need a light touch. Leaders however are not so good at pruning their businesses and releasing unprofitable products, systems and mindsets that just don’t serve them any longer. And yet trees know that if they are to continue to grow they need to start diverting water from lower branches so that the branches at the top of the tree can flourish. What pruning do you need to undertake in your business so that you can continue to adapt and innovative to respond to the changing market conditions?
The other thing to consider is that the gardening activities might vary depending on the season that the business is in. For example, when the business is in start up mode and just beginning to grow there will be more focus on creating the right environment (culture) and planting the right people in right roles.
As the business grows and expands the activities might move onto how to stay focused and avoid becoming overwhelmed by all the weeds (new ideas and opportunities) that could appear and distract you from your vision and purpose.
Finally, as the business matures the focus shifts to considering what products and services need to be pruned so that new opportunities can sprout to continue the growth cycle of the business.
So I’m curious what gardening lessons have you experienced from running your business?. I’d love to hear about them.
by Julia Felton | Aug 15, 2018
The bi-ennial Farnborough Airshow is one of the largest aerospace shows in the world. During the 2016 show USD124 billion of orders and commitments were placed, so this is clearly a big deal for the aerospace industry and a time during the year when they make considerable sales that drive their revenue and profits.
For the 1,500 exhibitors creating a great experience for their potential prospects is paramount if they are to secure the business, which is why so many of the major suppliers like Boeing and Lockheed Martin invest tens of thousands of pounds in corporate hospitality.
Why do they do this? A unique corporate hospitality suite enables the company to wine and dine their prospects in a luxurious environment. It provides a sanctuary for meetings away from the hustle and bustle of the show where trust and rapport can be built up. The environment relaxes the prospect and so hopefully makes them more inclined to buy.
But the aerospace company can only do so much. A key partner in their success during the show are the hospitality companies that provide catering for them during the event. If the catering company doesn’t perform, it reflects on the company, and poor service and/or a bad experience could result in the company losing the potential order.
So it was with some trepidation that I agreed to run the corporate hospitality chalet for one of the major players. Our three-story chalet stood on a prize spot on the airfield with a magnificent view of all the aircraft landing and taking off for their demonstrations. We had two restaurants in the chalet, along with a bar and an external viewing platform.
My challenge was how to develop a high performance team from 24 individuals who had not met each other before and had never worked at this venue before. And I had to do this all within 24 hours. We often read that it takes many months to create a high performance team and maybe that is true if the team has to work together day in, day out for many months. Here rather I needed to establish a high performance team within 24 hours that could provide exemplary service for six days and then be disbanded – probably never to work together again.
These are the 7 lessons I learned in creating that team:
1) Share The Leadership
Within our chalet we split the leadership down between three of us. The chef took responsibility for the kitchen area, and myself and a colleague, Sarah, took a restaurant each, so effectively each of us was responsible for a floor of the unit. This also meant that each of us was managing a small team of between 8-10 people
2) Clearly Define Job Roles
Each of us took responsibility for certain roles within the chalet. The chef took responsibility for all food delivery and ordering food supplies. Sarah looked after breakfast service, the a la carte lunch service and afternoon champagne and canapé service. I took responsibility for the bistro buffet and bar and the conference rooms. Then within each team we allocated different roles to different team members. The key here was quickly identifying the skill set of the team members, as well as asking them what they wanted to do, and then making a judgement on the best role they could perform in the team.
3) Explain the Purpose of The Role
Since all of my team members were millennials I knew I needed to provide some context and purpose for them on what we were doing and why. Spending time helping them understand more about the air show and the massive importance that this event had to the client was instrumental in getting their buy in. After all as I reasoned with them, people buy with emotions and then justify with logic, so if we could help create an amazing experience for our clients prospects there was a great chance they would buy which in turn would make our client very happy
4) Pay Attention
Observing and paying attention to what my team were doing was a key role of mine as well as providing them with continual feedback on how they were doing. Once the team members knew I was noticing and caring about how they performed, they pushed themselves harder to improve even more.
5) Say Thank You
Keeping team members feeling appreciated for what they were doing was key because being fairly recognised for great performance makes it worth the effort. Typically this was just acknowledging a job well done, especially when given the sweltering weather conditions some of the activities had to take place in sauna like conditions. With many of the days stretching into 14 hours keeping morale up by being appreciative was critical.
6) Keep Asking For Feedback and Suggestions
Never assume you have all the answers. Daily check-ins with the team where we evaluated what we had done well the previous day and what we could do better yielded great ideas, many of which we were able to implement immediately. The result was that the team members felt they were contributing and able to influence events, whilst for the client it ensured they got even better service.
7) Model The Way – Lose the Ego
Demonstrate the standards you expect by the way you behave. Sometimes that meant I was washing up and taking out trash. When team members see that you don’t see an activity is above you, it immediately brings them on side and more likely to engage in that less than desirable task.
In part due to the great service and support that the team provided our client for the air show had a bumper year of sales and was delighted with the experience we created for them. Our success came from truly understanding that each of us had a role to play and that all of our roles synergistically worked together to create the whole. Everyone’s success was interdependent on someone else – just like in nature – and so when we all aligned with the same focus then amazing results were achieved in a really short period of time.
So are you using these high performance strategies in your business?. Even if you don’t employ team members you can use these strategies to engage your suppliers and customers.
by Julia Felton | Aug 4, 2018
The summer months can signal the death knell for a business unless managed properly. As leaders and business owners, we all know that it is important for us and our team members to have balanced life; but have you ever stopped to consider how the summer months can literally kill the momentum in your business?
Think about an aircraft. It uses a large proportion of its fuel to simply get off the ground. Once airborne, only a tiny amount of energy is then required to keep it flying. And it’s the same in your business, too.
Projects take time, energy and resources to get going, and then when you think everything is going swimmingly, summer kicks in — and unless managed carefully, the momentum can be lost.
It’s a bit like the plane crashing en-route to its destination. The results can be devastating because, not only is productivity lost during these summer months, but the impact lasts into the third quarter of the year — meaning that close to six months of the year can be impacted by the loss of momentum during the summer.
If you don’t believe me, then let’s look at the research by American Express that reveals during the summer months there is:
- 20% decline in workplace productivity
- 19% drop in employee attendance
- 13% increase in the time it takes to complete projects
- 2.6 times increase in the time taken for lunch
And if that wasn’t bad enough, the research also revealed that there is a:
- 200% increase in shopping during work hours
- 120% increase in employees searching for another job
Which is why the summer months can have such a negative impact on overall business performance, unless managed appropriately.
Here are five things leaders can do to help maintain momentum during the summer months
1. Schedule Employee Vacation In Advance
Make sure you get everyone’s vacation days planned in advance. This way you can best minimize the impact on the business, and you will have clarity on what is happening. Plus, team members can support each other in managing workloads prior to going on their vacation.
2. Insist Employees Unplug When They Are on Vacation
It is essential that team members take vacation so they can recharge, and in today’s world it is important to ensure that your team members really do dis-connect and unplug from the business. Way too many people go on vacation but stay connected to the office by technology, meaning they never really switch off. To operate at high performance, employees need to rest and relax so they can replenish their energy sources. Ensure team members put out-of-office notifications on their emails so they don’t feel compelled to respond to email whilst they are away.
3. Create Focus By Having Clearly Defined Projects/Activities
Focus gives team members clarity and certainty, so make sure that the team has some fun goals to achieve over the summer. Maybe even consider setting some challenges for the team to keep them engaged, and give out prizes or incentives for those team members who complete the challenges.
4. Be Flexible With The Hours Worked
As a leader, we all know that it is not the hours worked that is important but rather the outputs delivered. Allowing team members to leave early, once certain milestones are met, will help keep the team focused and working at a high level. It will also encourage cooperation as the team pulls together to achieve the objectives, and everyone wins.
5. Model The Way
As a leader, your team looks to you to create a positive example for them. So model the way and set yourself higher goals for the summer. It’s often easier to get meetings during the summer because others are in the mentality of slowing down, so leverage this to your best advantage. Arrange meetings, attend events, and stay positive. Your team will see your drive and excitement and feed off this, thereby maintaining their own personal momentum.
Implement these five strategies if you want your business to grow over the summer; and remember, your momentum becomes your team’s momentum. So lead your team towards a productive summer.
by Julia Felton | Jul 31, 2018
Many traditional corporate organisations are struggling to adapt to the demands of the new world rapidly changing around them. They are clinging to the same ideas, talent management models, and ways of working with leaders who are either oblivious to the current mindset or too frightened to instigate change.
Research by the GC Index indicates that there are individuals who have the potential to initiate change and drive transformation, but they are rarely able to make their mark in the corporate world. They are often viewed as disruptive since they challenge the status quo. Exactly what is required for change? Within the GC Index, these individuals are called Game Changers.
Game-changing is different than innovation.
Innovators build on what has been done before — for example, the pursuit of excellence through continuous improvement and incremental change. It’s Game Changers who can trigger and drive transformational change; however, the reality is that many organisations are driving their vision through the need for innovation. Often this is delivered in quite a controlled way, by investing in innovation hubs, labs, processes, and programmes.
Game Changers have the potential to really motivate and inspire others, while displaying an incredible work ethic and dedication, but only when others understand them and what they can contribute. To thrive they need to be set free in a culture where it is “safe to fail.” Where leaders value game-changing ideas rather than innovation.
Unless understood, there are five ways that Change Makers can be seen to be disruptive in organisations.
1) Game Changers are driven by Hierarchy and Stifled by Rules
The stronger the Game Changer inclination, the more they will feel constrained by arbitrary rules and only conform to rules that make sense to them. Since Game Changers are not bothered about status or climbing the corporate ladder, it can be challenging for leaders to retain them within the traditional organisational structures.
2) Game Changers Alienate People
Naturally obsessive, Change Makers are often seen by others as being difficult. Tenacious and persistent, they are repeatedly challenging how things are done and seeking for ways to transform the future.
3) Game Changers See Things Differently
Game Changers are unafraid of failure because they seem to have an inherent belief in their ability to survive. They take on projects that others would view as risky, since their level of risk assessment is very different from many organisational norms. As a result they are often described as disruptive, yet ironically, they are the very people who can instigate change.
4) Game Changers Are Obsessive
When a Game Changer decides to do something, they do not give up on it. This obsessive compulsion can frustrate colleagues, especially when others feel they are driving through change just for the sake of it. For organisations to leverage the strength of Game Changers, they need to allow them a platform to share their ideas and then the freedom to fail. Only through failure will success ultimately ensue.
5) Game Changers See Round Corners
Game Changers always ask “why not” and are prepared to challenge the status quo. They don’t use the past to predict the future, but rather think laterally and very creatively. They don’t necessarily value the tried and tested, but rather seek out solutions that others would instantly believe not possible. Leaders need to be clear about the Game Changer’s talents and leverage these to best effect.
The GC Index research helps explain the irony that exists for Game Changers, as they often find it difficult to survive and thrive in traditional “controlling” corporate structures that don’t value creativity, and so the very organisations that they could help struggle to retain them or realise their full potential.
As one Game Changer noted:
“I lost heart and felt claustrophobic. . . . there was too much red tape, too many barriers and too many people ready to dismiss my ideas without listening to them.”
So if you’re a leader, I urge you to reflect on who the Game Changers are in your team. What can you do to support their success, and ultimately, that of the organisation?
Not sure who your Game Changers are, then why not take the Change Maker Assessment to discover what type of Change Maker you are. There are five by the way. Simply get in touch with me at julia@businesshorsepower.com.
by Julia Felton | Jun 24, 2018
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them” – Albert Einstein
When was the last time you experienced true flow? This would have been when you were doing something you loved and time just flew by. You were acting from your strengths and doing something that you were TRUSTed in delivering. How would it be if you had a process to tap into your floe whenever you wanted? Then great, tread on as getting into a flow state does not need to be by accident.
In his book, The Rise of Superman, Steven Kotler, a super-expert on flow describes how elite athletes and extreme sport-people get into flow, and what we can learn from them. Stephen has teamed up with many of the leading action and adventure athletes along with top scientists to decipher what these athletes are doing to harness flow.
What does this mean to you and your business? How can flow improve your results? Steven calls flow “the source code for our intrinsic motivation” and he cites many studies from McKinsey to the US Army, that have found that people who harness their flow state can increase productivity and results by 200% to 500%”
As the McKinsey Quarterly states: “The opportunity cost….is enormous….Most report that they and their employees are in the zone at work less than 10% of the time. (But) if employees….are five times more productive in flow than they are on average, consider what even a modest 20-percentage-point increase in flow time would yield in the overall workplace productivity- it would almost double”.
Here are the four stages that Steven explains that we go through in order to get into flow:
Stage One – STRUGGLE
The first stage of the four stage flow cycle seems like the opposite of flow. This is when you’re working hard, pushing to train, research, brainstorm – when you’re overloading the brain with information until it feels like your head is about to explode. Most people never push past this first stage far enough, why is why they constantly miss the doorway to the flow experience.
Stage Two – RELAXATION
This is when you take your mind off the problem entirely, taking a break, going for a walk or doing something physical. Thsi isn’t the same as watching TV or some other distraction that keeps the brain busy. It’s about relaxing the brain so the conscious mind lets the subconscious mind take over. Many people miss this break and as a result are constantly in overload and burnout missing flow altogether.
Stage Three – FLOW
This is the superman experience when inspiration takes over and where your preparation and relaxing express themselves almost magically. You come up with the best ideas, you achieve results almost effortlessly, and you often surprise yourself by your own performance. It’s almost an out-of-body experience whether it’s a mastery of a physical, emotions or mental activity.
Stage Four – CONSOLIDATION
The final stage is where learning and memory is amplified dramatically, consolidating the experience of flow into your unconscious. There’s also a downside, where you come off the high of the feel-good neuro-chemicals released during the flow state. You go on a down which often leads to self-sabotage or an emotional reaction to try and regain the flow state. The key here is not to let this stress block the learning or reverse the results of being in flow, but to move smoothly back to the next phase or struggle and repeat the cycle.
Most people aren’t aware of the four stage cycle and so we end up either not getting into flow, or we mess things up when we get there. Knowing the cycle exists gives you a mp to know where you are, and what to do at each stage.
What challenge or task do you have where it would really help to step into your flow to conquer it? Use these four steps to get going today and please let me know what happens.
