I met a woman who had recently moved from an African nation.  She bemoaned her lack of community here in Australia.  She said – all that we do here in our new life is work to live, live to work, work work work, we have no time for community, for the things that matter.

This got me thinking - given so many of us are spending so much time at our work, could the organisations we are working in provide a sense of community? What kind of organisation?

When Harley-Davidson turned 100 in 2003 it celebrated over 14 months culminating in “a million bikers” roaring into the company’s headquarters.  Despite their diversity, Harley riders have something in common: a fanatical dedication to their Harleys.  Is this a community?

The more I have worked with and researched what a community is, I believe it comes down to 3 keys.

These keys can be applied to any community that forms around any shared focus – cultural, theme, geographical, organisational.  For an inclusive community to grow and flourish these 3 things are paramount:

{disclaimer: not a definitive list, simply a place to begin the conversation.}

Empathy

Being able to ‘walk in another’s shoes’ is basically impossible.  Knowing what it is like to be say brought up in another faith, another socio-economic group or race is nigh on impossible.  Being able to actively imagine what that must feel like, to be in a state of openness to stand under (understand) another person’s experience holds the beginning of a truly compassionate community.

Take a moment to imagine how it is for another person – whether that be the CEO, or whether you are the CEO.  I wrote about the power of imagination in empathy in a previous article HERE.

Empathy is the key to building great relationships and is the cornerstone of any community.

Communication

Stories are a key medium for communicating corporate myths. (Boleman, Deal 2008)

I wonder if you could be a fly on the wall in any conversation happening around your organisation or community; what is the theme, underlying vernacular or energy of the discussion?  What are the mythical stories of the organisation that creates the tradition, the loyalty or lack of it?

To be of value, communication by its nature needs to imply honesty.  It needs to be trusted.  It needs to be imbued with empathy as an overarching force, and it needs to be communal, shared and reciprocated. 

Here is a bit of a list of what ‘good’ story-telling might look like in a community that is an organisation:

• Communicating who you are – everyone within the community feels safe and secure to be ‘seen’ truthfully and as they really are
  
• Communicating who the company is
  
• Transmitting values – do my values match what the organisation ‘stands for’?  Can everyone in the organisation align with the values of the organisation?
  
• Fostering collaboration
  
• Stopping the gossip – when stories are actively communicated, less Chinese whispers are possible
  
• Sharing the knowledge – what works, what doesn’t, what’s been tried, what’s been successful
  

Participation

Communities are not inactive.  They require the action of participation, or active participation.  Good communication and empathy by themselves will not engage employees as members of a community. It’s probably one of the topics that have created the most rhetoric in management theory.  How do I create a culture of ownership, engagement and participation? We know that participation is a powerful tool to increase both morale and productivity…but how do we foster it? If we look at other communities we might be able to get a bit of a clue.  Effective communities are groups of people motivated around a shared passion. At work, are we motivated by the pay check or are we motivated to make a difference.  I think its got to be a combination. It is not real to think that we can foster participation by passion alone.  The reality is that most people are motivated to work to keep a roof over their heads.  (see another article here) Topics I believe work to foster active participation are things like egalitarianism, diversity, team focus, job enrichment, values alignment (real not tokenistic)…among many others I am sure….again not a definitive list but a beginning of a conversation.

How powerful it is to become aware of understanding the things that we can influence & change in our lives and working on them, and stopping wasting time on worrying and wishing about the things we don’t have influence over.  I heard Rosie Batty speak this month.  She recently lost her young son in tragic circumstances.  What is incredibly powerful to me is her attitude. Her focus is so much on what she can have influence on...not trying to wish for a different past.  She cannot change that.  What she has realised is that due to her position, she now feels able to have a broad influence on the topic of family violence and she is listened to by people in positions of influence like politicians.  She used words like: “I have nothing to lose”, “my voice is all I have”. She is one of the most proactive people in the face of adversity I have met.

Steven Covey in his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, talks about a circle of influence.  Proactive people are aware of what is inside their ‘circle of influence’ and focus on them, instead of spending time on their ‘circle of concern’ which is full of “if only’s”!

When I look at my life objectively, there are places I have influence and places I wish I had more influence and there are places I have great concern for and know I have no influence in.  I am working at growing my circle of influence, and having ‘influence’ in the areas I can – which is mostly within myself.

I’m reminded of the AA mantra ..

‘God grant me the serenity 
to accept the things I cannot change; 
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.’

This has been around for such a long time and has had such a strong positive impact on many people’s lives. 

Do we need to have tragedy in our lives to become proactive about anything?  What does it take for us to believe that we actually have a wider circle of influence than we think?

Steven Covey wrote before the advent of blogging.  With www and all that comes with the cyber space that we inhabit, there is so much more opportunity to expand our circle beyond our physical world.  My actual physical friendship circle is probably around 100, however who I can have ‘influence’ on is way smaller. My cyber circle is larger, therefore so is the potential to influence on a wider scale.  Oprah Winfrey’s circle – just on face book alone is over 10million. Not to say all these people are part of her circle of influence, but there is that potential. It is possible today to build our influence exponentially. 

My hope for the future is that more and more people who are lead by their heart expand their circle of influence into the ‘power’ circles that make decisions of law, rules and regulation in our world and with their ‘influence’ helps the world evolve into its positive loving potential. 

"You’ve been criticising yourself for years.  Try approving of yourself and see what happens." Louise Hay.

 How does behavioural change really happen?  We are so conditioned to believe that to make adjustments and grow ourselves we have to find the things that we are ‘bad’ at, or that are not working for us and do less of them…easy isn’t it?  We spend such a lot of our lives being down on ourselves, and criticising our every little action.  How’s that working out for you?  Not so great?  Are you still down on yourself, still doing those things? What if we started focusing somewhere else?

Our attention is one of our most valuable assets. Did you get that? Attention is one of our most valuable assets. Whatever we give our attention to is what will grow and flourish. So if we are focussing on what we are doing wrong, then chances are we will see more and do more of that. Hang on…wasn’t that supposed to help us do less??  I suggest not. If, on the other hand, we choose to give our attention to what is already working for us and focus on that, then chances are we will find ourselves doing more of that…and maybe even enjoying ourselves in the process!

We are all motivated to be competent and to become more competent.  A feeling of competence contributes to our well being.  But how is this best developed?

In corporatesville, there is a thing called the Pareto principle.  This basically says that 80% of my income is coming from 20% of my customers; So – If you focus your very valuable attention on the 80% of your customers that is giving you only 20% of your income and try and grow them, there is a real possibility that the 20% that are your loyal clients or customers and your real bread and butter are going to lose out.  So spending less time on focussing on what is not working, and more time on making the 20% more prosperous, could that take less effort, be more profitable and perhaps be a good strategy?…yes?

The same goes for personal development.  Let’s look at this from a public speaking perspective. I am wanting to be a great public speaker. If my valuable attention is where I perceive my downfalls are – counting how many times I say Ummmm, focussing on how nervous I am, the stain on my shirt from lunch etc,  then I will no doubt finish the presentation knowing that I said Ummm 12 times, that my hands shook and that the stain is still there.  I will walk away with that as a focus and as the relationship that I have just built with my audience; all of that attention that I could have been giving to them, not me.  

How about I change that around?  The feedback is that I know I am good at some things, like building rapport, eye contact, and storytelling.  So if I can change where I put my attention and start focussing on more of what is already working for me, then I can start to build my relationship with myself and my audience from a positive perspective.

Constructive criticism is often ‘back handed’ compliments, designed to undermine our self value.  Think about everything that happens in a sentence before a ‘but’.  I loved your presentation, but I think…..Did I really love the presentation?  What happens after the ‘but’ is going to be the thing we listen to the most.  We love to hear negative things – we have heard them all our lives and that is what we are used to.  It comes down to self-esteem.  We all seek to verify our own perceptions of ourselves, so if we have low self-esteem we will look for the criticism and be comfortable/comforted with that.  We will often not believe a compliment when it is paid; not even receive it, let alone believe it! Negative events have a greater impact on your brain than positive events do.  This is because negative events pose a chance of danger and we become hypersensitive to them at the level of instinct, the spiral is that we then have a hard time seeing, hearing or feeling positive.                                                         

We tend to focus more on what they think went wrong or what we did badly. We are very quick to criticise ourselves and need to be encouraged to see the positives first.  If we focus on the negatives first, we will have a really hard time giving ANY attention to the positives.

Powerful change can be achieved when we focus on identifying what is already working.  What are your good and great attributes?  Celebrate them and then apply them and grow them. 

Once again…in corporatesville… the phrase for this is called Appreciative Inquiry. It is about building on the strengths to transform an organisation.  According to Peter Drucker of the Drucker School of Management, change comes from an alignment of attention on strengths that makes a systems’ weaknesses irrelevant. I believe this applies in a similar way to personal change.  Elevate your strengths and your perceived weaknesses become irrelevant.  Enquire of yourself – what is already working for you? Now work to amplify that.

Your ATTENTION is POWERFUL. Choose what part of your experience you want to see more of, focus on that, and more of it will flow into your life. Guaranteed! 

It is not the horse that draws the cart, but the oats. −Russian proverb

http://youtu.be/QzW22wwh1J4  for a cute look at Appreciative Inquiry

The Happiness Wheel

I used to believe the adage: if you need something done give it to a busy person.  Actually I have changed my mind.  I want to change that to:  if you want something done give it to a happy person. 

I know it’s a cliché, but I do have to say that leaving my ‘real’ job and designing my own life has been a boon.  Not that I want to encourage anyone else to throw themselves off the fiscal cliff, I know it’s not for everyone. However, there is something to be said about taking risks – and making happiness choices.  Knowing, that I want to look back on my life proud of the risks that I took and happy to own the choices that I made.

So what is the key then?  There are a heap of ‘happiness tests’ online that you can take just to make sure you are as happy as you feel (or as sad as you suspect!).  I’ve done a few and have not really gained much insight to be honest.  There are also plenty of stats to let us know that most people rate family and relationships as the key element in their happiness levels – above everything else.  For me that is not the whole story and there has to be a balance.  I have one of the best and happiest relationships and family situations that I know of – well, in my social circle. Yet, when I was unhappy in my work, I was gut wrenchingly unhappy and that affected every aspect of my life.  So I don’t really go for the idea that if I’m happy at home I will be happy in my whole life.  Being unhappy in one thing most definitely influences happiness levels in everything, and can colour every aspect to the point where unhappiness reigns.  Unhappiness can sneak up on us unexpectedly and in any aspect of our complex lives.   Awareness is key.  Self awareness and constant assessment.

 A tool called the wheel of life is a useful thing to take a look at and can help with the assessment of the balance: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newHTE_93.htm .  It’s basically a tool that is useful to measure the elements of your life and how you feel about them.  Things like family, relationships, career, money, health, exercise.  You can map them out and take a look at how you see yourself right now and then look at how you would like to be – you at your happiest.  It’s good to see if there are niggling, bordering on unhappy aspects – and then jump on them and turn them around.  Sometimes that means doing something radical like leaving a job or a relationship, other times it might just mean taking a walk around the block, writing that letter or getting that hair cut.  Whatever it is, sometimes making the small adjustments can make all the difference.  Sometimes the bigger the unhappiness is the harder it is to see, bring to light and begin to change. How are things with your health, your relationship, your friendships, your work.  What are the aspects of your life that you value enough to be part of the wheel?  Add them in and give them a thoroughly good looking at.

One of the best tools I have found to bring real happiness in and to help move through to happiness decisions is just being present in my life.  What if nothing changed?  The grass is not always greener.  The point is that that grass is someone else’s lawn and will never be mine. Can I feel happy to love my life right here and right now, being totally present with where and who I am right now?  When I can say yes to that, then I am able to hospice what I want to let go of and midwife what I want to birth.

Change is constant or as Heraclitus, Greek philosopher said "Change is the only constant."  So if it is the only constant, if that is true, why do we still find it so hard to navigate? Or even initiate? A friend of mine says that we never change until we have to or are forced to! Wouldn’t it be great to be in the driver’s seat?  In business there are numerous models that look at organisational change.  I’m wondering if using these models would help for change that is happening on a more personal and individual level.

In his 1995 book "Leading Change”, Harvard Business school professor, John P Kotter introduced his eight-step change process.  Using these 8 steps as our guide, let’s take a look and see if we can develop them into a personal 8 step guide?

Step 1: Create Urgency

From a business point of view, this helps to spark motivation to get things moving. This is done by developing scenarios about what would happen if we didn’t change, or working to really build a convincing argument that this needs to happen now.  Kotter talks here of making the connection based on values.  Connecting with the heart….strange talk for a business guru?  Not so much.  On a personal level this speaks to values alignment.  What are your values?  Is the change you are looking for aligning to your values…truly?  There are some great tools for value setting around to help.  Here’s a great values clarification exercise developed by Amanda Fleming. A perfect place to start.

Kotter suggests that for change to be successful, 75 percent of a company's management needs to "buy into" the change. Or in other words, we need to be on board and committed to our own change….lets aim for 100%. Put the work in here and the rest will follow.

Step 2: Form a Powerful Coalition

From a business perspective this is about strong leadership and visible support from key people within an organisation. Managing change isn't enough – it has to be lead.

So – on a personal level, find your tribe.  Find those people out there who believe in you 100% and get them on board.  You can find effective change leaders, mentors and helpers anywhere and often in the most unexpected places.   Don’t underestimate the value of people you don’t actually know, yet you hold a high admiration for. Who could you choose to follow on twitter or facebook?.  In this crazy age of connection, the more coalitions and networks you can tap into the better.  Who is doing what you want to do?  Who are the leaders in the field? Who do you admire, who do you align to?

Step 3: Create a Vision for Change

Businesses thrive on vision.  Clarity of the vision makes for stronger ambassadors for the change. 

I think from a personal perspective here, there is opportunity to expand on just having a vision.  This is about clarity of purpose.  What is your purpose?  What are you here to achieve? What is the change you want? Once you have this clear it can be developed into a vision.

What is your personal vision?  What are you imagining of yourself in 3 years, 5 years time?  What are you saying of yourself in 3 years, 5 years time? Practice your "vision speech" often – make sure it rolls off your tongue and that you can embody it. Putting it down in pictures can help as well.

The next step of this is to create the strategy to execute the vision. This is the step by step approach to assisting life to conspire to create the vision that you are holding.

Step 4: Communicate the Vision

In a business sense this is really important – to keep modelling the vision and walking the talk.  Not so different when thinking on a personal level.  How well the vision is held, after you create it, is the key. Watch your ‘self talk’. How often do you hear yourself boo-hooing your vision.  Your vision can be embedded in everything that you do. Here is the opportunity to stay focussed.  Keep your ‘self talk’ positive and encouraging.

Use the vision to inform your daily decisions.

It's also important to "walk the talk." The more you work and do things towards the change you imagine, the more real it becomes, the more you will believe it to be possible.

Step 5: Remove Obstacles

There are always going to be obstacles.  Obstacles can be seen as opportunities.  They can also be sign posts and reminders. Obstacles in business can be those staff  who want to derail the change process.  In life obstacles can be people as well.  Who are the people in your life that are holding you back from manifesting the change? Who are the non-believers? 

Think about this:

How many people in your life have put you down, or really pulled the rug out from under you? How many have really had a negative and lasting impression on you?

Conversely – how many people have you met that have had a positive effect on you, or people who truly believe in you, or people who simply like you?

I bet that more people believe in you than not. In fact Brendon Burchard reckons the ratio is around 1000 to 5. That is 1000 people think you’re great, 5 are yet to be convinced.  The crazy thing is we tend to give more credence to the non-believers. So here’s something to change – who are you really going to listen to?

Surround yourself with believers, focus on them and the obstacles will diminish.

What are the other obstacles?  What are the personal beliefs that you are holding on to that are pot holes in your path? The feelings of: “not good enough”; too fat, too skinny, too old,  too young.  Become aware of your thoughts and beliefs, name them and notice them and work to view yourself differently.

Step 6: Create Short-term Wins

Nothing motivates more than success. Give yourself a taste of victory early. Within a short time frame (this could be a month or a year, depending on the type of change), you'll want to have results that you can see and feel. This could be as simple as actioning and completing one goal. Doing something everyday towards your vision by creating short-term targets that can help you feel like there is progress. Each small target needs to be achievable.

Celebrate your achievements, no matter how small they seem.

There is a great and easy process that really helps this along. 

Start your day by making a short list (3 can be good to start) of things you will achieve on that day.  Make sure everything on the list is absolutely doable. Make sure these short term wins are heading in the direction of the change you want to make.  Also make sure there is always something lovely that you are doing for yourself and only for yourself.  Like buying a bunch of flowers, taking a walk on the beach.  Whatever it is, once you have completed it, cross it off.  The goal is to have everything crossed off at the end of the day and then you can celebrate….and make sure you do!

Step 7: Build on the Change

There is a Japanese word and theory called kaizen that is about continuous incremental improvement. This is a great idea to put into practice here.   It is about the art of making great and lasting change through small, steady increments, which is so often  used in business settings. A great resource here is One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way by Robert Maurer, who proposes that kaizen can be also be a powerful personal change development tool.  It champions the idea of starting small to create lasting change.  Start with one less mouthful, with one more minute.  Big discoveries are in the detail, and the detail is small.  So, starting to do the ‘small win’, wins.  Crossing off achievements every day, wins.  Each of these successes provides an opportunity to build on what felt right and identify where you can improve.

Step 8: Anchor the Changes in Corporate Culture

Kotter talks here of corporate culture needing the change so it becomes part of the core of  the organizational culture. Our opportunity here is to see our lives as our culture and the change we are striving for as a reflection of that culture.  How we operate in the world, will by definition, need to change to achieve the shifts we are after.

Make continuous efforts to ensure that the change is seen in every aspect of your life. This will help give that change a solid place in your life’s culture.

Things that help this process are telling your story.  Be proud of the changes you have implemented and tell your success story, loudly and often.  Make sure you listen out for and hear the compliments and positive strokes that are coming your way about the changes you are making.

...

Remember that stepping out of your comfort zone is where learning and change happens.  It isn't always easy, but it's always worth it!

MT

So fresh from an Essentially Speaking weekend, I thought we could take a bit of a look at why Mind Mapping works so well as a tool for content creation.

I’m a big fan.  I do love thinking in a non-linear way.  I use it in so many ways where some clearer thinking can help overcome all sorts of issues or perceived obstacles.

It is certainly invaluable when creating content for a presentation, a book, an article or even a blog.

A couple of questions came up on the weekend about the why’s of certain pointers that Tony Buzan, the creator of Mind Mapping.

A good resource is here…straight from the horse’s mouth.   The why’s of using colour, using curvy lines and thick to thinner lines all comes down to keeping your brain engaged. Using images is a good stimulator as well.  Given Buzan designed this concept in the 60’s it is wonderful to find that he has brought the tool into the 21st Century with a new book – Modern Mind Mapping for Smarter Thinking Amanda Fleming in her book I Can Speak Clearly Now the Pain Has Gone also describes using sticky notes as a ‘data dumping’ tool.  Writing one idea on each note and then they can be moved around later.  She says: “Let the silliest, really really unworthy ideas come forth.  You never know when they will come in handy even as an example of how silly the ideas can be when it comes to unleashing creative energy!  There simply are no rules when it comes to creativity – that’s the whole point so let yourself fly a little when you data dump.”

Practise using Mind Mapping and sticky note data dumping every day on any topic to stimulate your imagination and creativity.