Category Archives: Emotional Intelligence

Making requests as an aspect of organisational culture

Developing as a leader, Developing leadership across your organisation, Emotional Intelligence, ,

Yesterday I was working from home, as I mostly do on a Monday.  It was a busy day, but not so densely packed that I didn’t have time to take in some fresh air at lunch time.  In fact, I did something that I have recently taken to doing and wandered the length of Lewisham’s market stalls – just two minutes from home – to ask the stall holders if any of them had any waste products that could go into my compost bin.

In recent weeks I have learnt just how willingly the local stall holders give the gift of their green waste which otherwise goes into the immense bins provided by our local council for disposal elsewhere.  Yesterday I even had advice from one stall holder – let us know in the morning or the day before that you’ll be coming to collect and we’ll save it for you.
I would add that, as the recipient of this largesse I am delighted.  It’s not just that I hope, quite soon, to have the best fed worms in the whole of South East London and, in time, a steady supply of compost to improve the soil in my garden.  It’s not even because, until recently, I hadn’t thought to ask.  It’s also because, at a young age, I somehow learnt “not to put people to any trouble” by making a request.  I still have to remind myself that that was then and this is now as part of my preparation for making a request.  And yes, because it’s a request I am learning joyfully to accept a yes or a no.
I know I am not alone.  I invite you to take a moment to ask yourself how often and how openly, you – and others in your organisation – make requests.  And I do mean a request – an open question of someone who might be able to help you and with the option for the person you are asking to respond with a yes or no.  I also invite you to reflect on how willingly you and those you lead own the personal needs that sit behind the request. This is the difference, for example, between saying could we meet at 4pm so that I can get away by 5.30pm to support my partner at home and saying actually, I’m not available at 6pm or maybe even meeting your boss at 6pm and adding it as just one more example to stoke the fire of slow-burning resentment and ill health.
Because yes, there are things that people do to avoid making requests – because to make a request is often to share information about our needs and to open ourselves up to a no and to all the meanings we make of that no.  Making requests can leave us feeling oddly vulnerable, even when we have managed to persuade ourselves that it’s a perfectly acceptable thing to do.
What do we do instead?  Here are just a few examples.  They all come with a price.  Which ones are prevalent in your organisation?
  • Ask a quasi request (“Make sure you check the report before you send it off, will you?”).  The substance of the request is vague, the language is part instruction, part request.  We haven’t asked the person of whom we’re making the request if they can do what we ask;
  • Assume that any half decent member of staff will know what to do and feel angry when they don’t deliver.  (In many organisations staff think this way about their colleagues and even their boss.  In senior leadership roles, we set the tone);
  • Wrap up a request, for example by assigning the need for the request to the organisation rather than honestly reflecting on and sharing our own needs.  Especially when we are in senior roles, this can make it hard for people to say no, though it may lead to all sorts of problems – including a kind of thoughtless obedience or quiet disobedience (yes minister style);
  • Tell ourselves that someone wouldn’t cope or would do their nut (or similar) if we made a request.  This is a great get-out clause – it may be true and, even so, it may mask a more personal reason why we are not making requests.

The approach people have to making requests in your organisation is part of organisational culture and it has significant implications for your organisation’s ability to achieve its aims.  I invite you to a seven-day curiosity exercise – just take time to notice the culture in your organisation around making requests.

Please report back.

  

Developing your leadership? Bring on the compassion

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, ,

You’ve got the promotion.  You’re in your new role.  You’re putting on a brave face.  You’re maxing up the ‘positive self-talk’.  Come on, you can do it.  They wouldn’t have put me in the role if they didn’t think I was up to it.  And remember that project for Asia last year – this can’t be more difficult than that.  You know you have what it takes to succeed – intellectually, you know.  But sometimes, the intellectual knowing just isn’t enough.

It gets worse.  It gets personal.  You know that, in order to succeed, you need to make headway in developing new skills.  Perhaps you need to rely less on your technical skills (as an accountant, lawyer, doctor etc.) and cultivate skills in a whole new area – leadership, emotional intelligence, call it what you will.  Perhaps you have to let go of doing what you’ve always done best and start to deliver with and through others.  You’ve always got huge plaudits for your ability to deliver – but can you get others to deliver in the same way?

Maybe it gets even worse than that.  You know – you know – that whether it’s in this job or another there’s no turning back.  Doing everything yourself was barely working for you in your old job – you have to find new ways of working, whatever your job.  You were on your way to burn-out and you know it.  Or perhaps you’d got as far as you could go by getting angry with yourself, or your staff, and you know you’ve got to find new strategies.

The trouble is, you’ve acknowledged the problem – but you don’t begin to know how to address it.  You’re in one of life’s most tender spots – you’ve crossed a threshold and you don’t know where to go.  Joseph Campbell highlighted this aspect of the human journey in his research which I briefly summarised in one of the most often visited posting on this blog, entitled Joseph Campbell and the hero’s journey.  Crossing the threshold means stepping out of our comfort zone and accepting some challenge or ‘call to adventure’.  Campbell’s research – into the myths of many cultures on this subject – shows how we have to accept the call to adventure before the resources we need begin to show up.

What’s it like to stand in this most tender of spots?  Recently, a conversation with a colleague reminded me of the feelings that can – if we let them – overwhelm us in this place.  Sometimes, there is intense sadness, grief and loss as we acknowledge the impact on our lives of the choices we have made in the past.  We may be overwhelmed with compassion for our younger self who learned, for example, how to do everything personally rather than to face the ire of a parent or teacher when we asked for help.  We may be sorrowful when we realise just how much this early choice has shaped our lives, keeping us from reaching out for help.  And we may be intensely scared when we think of what we might have to do that we have never done before.

Navigating this stage of our own journeys requires a large measure of compassion, both for the way it shines a light on those areas in which we need to develop and for all the emotions that comes with this.  The language of leadership development – ‘areas for development’, weaknesses’, ‘growing edge’ marches on past this level of emotion with barely a side-glance of acknowledgement.  It helps if we are not alone in holding our emotions in this tender place – if we have a trusted coach, or mentor, or peers, or family.  All the love and support we need is available to us, though learning to receive it may be a hero’s journey in itself.

Campbell talks of the hero but we might equally talk of leaders.  Leaders are made in this place, because they are the people who constantly step across each new threshold as they meet it.  And if they can only stand close to the fire of their emotions, they are also the people who learn how to understand themselves and others – an essential quality if we are to lead others in ways which engage and inspire.

If you want to read more about Campbell’s work, I recommend his books (especially The Power of Myth) and also The Hero’s Journey by Robert Dilts and Stephen Gillighan.  For now, though, I wonder, what are the thresholds you face right now?

Savouring a ‘thank you’

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I’ve had a busy start to the year.  As well as working with a portfolio of coaching and consulting clients I have been on the steep uphill curve of ‘project mobilisation’, conducting a number of assessments for a new client on behalf of my former employer, The Hay Group.  This has meant getting up to speed on a new process and report format with more tiny details than I handle with ease – details which, in any case, have been subject to adjustments along the way.

Last week, I had my final debrief (for now) with one of the people I assessed.  He thanked me for my time and gave unsolicited feedback which he subsequently shared in an e-mail with his line manager and with my colleagues at the Hay Group.  The next day, our project manager sent an e-mail saying thank you to the whole team.

In the midst of so many thank yous I have taken time to reflect on the team of which I am a member.  The central project team have liaised with me to arrange dates, manage the flow of information so that I have everything I need for each assessment and so that our clients get their reports exactly when they need them.  Members of the Hay QA team have provided an essential point of reference as we calibrate our scores across the team and between our own team and our client’s other main provider.  Members of the wider project team have liaised with the client at a high level to clarify what’s needed and provided a flow of information which has also supported the process.  I could go on…

I have also taken time to reflect on my own contribution.  There have been calls ahead of assessments to clarify the context for the assessment and ensure I am well-briefed.  There have been early-morning starts, travelling to meet with clients and conduct interviews and, afterwards the writing of reports and debriefs with assessment candidates and their line managers.  I have employed many skills I have (including interviewing, analysing, writing, coaching) and some I don’t (it’s a miracle I manage to arrive in the right place at the right time – such organisation is a learned rather than a natural skill for me).  I like to think I have done good work and I’ve certainly done it with the intention to add value to each client as well as to support an organisational (promotion) process.

One thing I do notice is this:  that our project manager, rather than say ‘well done’, said ‘thank you’.  Oh!  How sweet this is to my ears!  Perhaps it’s only me and still, I’d much rather hear someone’s appreciation of my work and the difference it has made to them than I would hear someone’s judgement.  To me, the work I do has meaning because it makes a difference to someone or something and this is what I hear in a thank you.

Do you say ‘well done!’ or ‘thank you’ to those you lead?

The dance of honesty – being honest with others

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, , , ,

It’s taken me a while to get to this posting, in which I want to explore what it takes to be honest to others.  Having written three postings on what I’m calling the dance of honesty I am aware that this is a vast subject – I shall touch it lightly today.

Let’s do this together.  Take a moment to think of something you’d like to share with someone at home or at work – something you’d like to share but hesitate to mention.  Notice what you feel when you think about sharing it.  Perhaps it’s irritation because you feel the other person “ought to know”.  Perhaps you feel concerned when you think the other person might be hurt or anxious when you think they might be offended.  It is these feelings and the thoughts that sit behind them that are holding you back.

Having checked in with your feelings, notice the thoughts that accompany them.  Often, when we hesitate to share some truth, it is because we have a sense that there’s some risk involved.  Perhaps there is a risk – you might know, for example, how critical your boss is of anyone who doesn’t share his view.  (I once worked with a leadership team who all told me how they’d stopped sharing ideas with their boss because his ideas always prevailed.  The boss thought his team had no creativity at all).  Perhaps your thoughts echo some old theme in your life, usually from childhood – you always feel anxious about sharing your feelings or expressing an alternative point of view.

This difference – between some objectively identifiable risk and some old fear is important.  If it’s the latter, it may be especially important that you start to take steps which will help you to differentiate between situations you faced way back when and what is true in the here and now.  (That’s a whole other posting in itself).  Either way, though, telling the truth depends on your willingness to face consequences that are – as yet – unknown.  So, right now, thinking about the thing you have not yet said, just notice how willing you are to face unknown outcomes.  It isn’t always easy.

It may not be wise.  Before you speak your truth, you may like to ask yourself, what outcome am I hoping for?  Let’s take the example above – your boss is pursuing a proposal you think is bad for your organisation.  At the same time, you know he’s slow to take on board the ideas of others.  You may have more influence over the outcomes if you take time to think through how best to convey your ideas so that he will hear you.  Perhaps you need to address his main concerns when you share your views – showing, for example, how another strategy may be more effective in boosting sales or reducing staffing costs.  Perhaps you need to speak quietly with others to whom he might listen more willingly – his most trusted colleagues in the business.

If you do decide to speak with him directly, you could do worse than follow some simple guidelines – which I combine from a number of sources (including Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication:  A Language for Life and Roger Schwarz’s The Skilled Facilitator):

  • Build and maintain connection – especially when you’re sharing something difficult for both parties, it’s important to remember to build and maintain rapport.  You can do this in many different ways – by checking in (“how is this landing with you?”), by gently mirroring body language and tone of voice, by seeking to understand what’s important to him or her.  Begin by holding the intention to connect and remind yourself of this intention if things get tough;
  • Focus on interests, not positions – be clear on what needs you want to meet by being honest and be open to the needs of others.  Do what you can to share your own needs and to hear and understand the needs of the other person.  Then you can explore strategies – a path of action – that meets everyone’s needs;
  • Share observations and avoid judgements – you’ll make it easier for the other person to hear you if you share relevant information in the form of observations (“when you said ‘X…'”) rather than presenting your conclusions as the truth.  This might include sharing your thoughts and feelings as observations – there’s a big difference between saying “You’re getting this completely wrong” and saying “I’m telling myself that you’re getting this completely wrong and that makes me feel anxious”;
  • Make clear requests – be clear what response you want and ask for it.  Be ready, too, to accept a “no”.  Equally, be ready to receive requests from the person you are talking with and be ready to say “yes” or “no”.
Whether you are speaking honestly at work or in your private life you may or may not get to an outcome that meets your needs well.  Being honest, though, helps you to test what’s possible.  It may open up a far better outcome than you expected – or provide information that tells your needs won’t be met in the way you hoped.  This, too, opens up the opportunity to explore alternative ways to meet your needs.
I wonder, how does this land with you?

The dance of honesty – being honest with yourself

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, , ,

In recent days I have been writing about honesty and its opposite – lying, deception, call it what you will.  I recognise in this subject a double bind:  it’s hard work to maintain a lie, it’s hard work to be honest.

Today, I thought I’d say a few words about what it takes to be honest with ourselves.  What immediately springs up for me is compassion.  The more we judge ourselves, the more likely we are to be dishonest with ourselves.  You think you have to be a fully formed Director from the minute you step into the role?  It’s going to be hard for you to be honest about areas in which you don’t yet have the skills you need.  You think you have to be good at managing people?  You may find it hard to own how hopeless you feel when you try to address performance problems in your team – the easy way out is to blame your under-performers.  You think the delays in progress towards your targets are unacceptable?  You could end up blaming all the external factors that have a bearing on results and lose sight of any power you have to make a difference.

At the same time, compassion does not equate to zero accountability – paradoxically, I’ve often found the opposite is true.  If we can show ourselves a level of self-acceptance and compassion, we are often better able to take action.  To take an example from above, if you know you are new to the role of Director and you accept that you will have some learning to do, you will find it better to take action to identify those areas in which you need to learn and to seek out your learning.

One of the most powerful forms of self honesty is the kind of honesty that comes when we attend to our own actions and inner dialogue.  Roger Schwarz, author of The Skilled Facilitator, calls this your “left hand column”.  Here’s an example from one leader from a meeting in which he is practising for the first time attending to his left hand column:

“John puts forward his ideas and I immediately hear judgements in my head.  ‘Here we go again… we’ve been through this a million times and John still doesn’t get it!’  I can feel my temperature rising and my face is getting more red.  I notice that John  has said several things that I haven’t heard because I’m already thinking about how I want to respond.  For the first time, I take a pause before responding – letting him finish.  I feel something new – something I haven’t felt before – humble or embarrassed or something… because for the first time I recognise that I’m not listening.  I always thought the problem was with John and now I realise that I am part of the problem…”

Are you ready for this kind of self-honesty?  Are you ready to be the observer of your own inner dialogue?  Here’s an exercise for you in case you are:

  • Take time alone – thirty minutes or so – with a pen and paper or your notebook or computer;
  • Take a moment to identify a time when you were in your flow – a time when things were going well for you and you were at your best.  Spend ten minutes making notes on your inner dialogue during that time.  Try to capture as much information as you can – about your thoughts, your feelings.  One way to do this is to have separate columns on your piece of paper (a) for what you said and did, (b) for any actions by others, and (c) for your inner dialogue;
  • After ten minutes stop and take a two minute break.  After your break, do the same thing again but this time for a time when things weren’t working for you.  Go through the same process, noting everything you can remember about the event.  Stop writing after ten minutes and take a two minute break;
  • In the remaining six minutes, make notes about your inner dialogue.  Notice what parts of your inner dialogue contributed to your success.  Notice what parts of your inner dialogue contributed to any problems you experienced.  Notice any inner dialogue you have in response to your new insights;
  • Before you finish, take a moment to acknowledge yourself for the work you’ve done and for your self-honesty in the process.

  

Exploring the consequences of honesty and deception

Emotional Intelligence

How much hard work do you put into maintaining a lie?

And if you’re telling yourself “this doesn’t apply to me”, hold on!  Take a moment to notice the feelings this question evokes in you and to sit with them – is it irritation, outrage, impatience?  If it is, there may be something for you to learn – if only you’re willing.  Because if you’re honest with yourself and even if you think you always “tell it like it is”, you probably have a way to go when it comes to telling the truth.

I ask the question because telling one lie usually involves you in a number of additional lies, even in the most simple of cases.  Your friend asks you to go out and you tell him you’re busy because you don’t want to take time to explain that you prefer to stay at home.  In order to live with your lie you tell yourself that to tell him would be to hurt his feelings – something which you can only guess in advance.  And when he asks you down the line how your other thing went you have quickly to extemporise a response.  “Fine, thank you…”  already you’ve told another lie.

The workplace is no different.  Perhaps you are holding back from telling your boss you think his plan of action has some potentially disastrous consequences.  Perhaps you have decided not to let your team know about forthcoming changes in the structure of your organisation.  Perhaps you’re avoiding telling Jo that his work colleagues have been complaining about him behind his back.  Whether in work or away, the likelihood is that your attempts to withhold some truth are aimed at saving you from some unwelcome consequence… from the wrath of your boss and from having your “cards marked”, from having to manage a team that’s unsettled and losing focus or from losing staff before you’re ready to let them go, from a response you cannot predict but know might be difficult from Jo…

You’re probably not thinking about the negative consequences of withholding honesty.  You’re not thinking, for example, about how much it weighs on you – what hard work it is and the guilt you feel – to tell a lie.  You’re not thinking about the erosion of trust that accompanies your dishonesty over time.  You’re not thinking about how your current gain is your future loss as those around you uncover the truth and re-visit the way they view you.

You probably don’t know just what’s possible when you embrace and commit to honesty – to a step-by-step journey towards more honest relationships and communication.  How would it be for you, for example, to discover that the response you have most feared from your boss or employing organisation just isn’t going to happen?  Or to discover that it is and to be able to decide how best to respond?  How would it be over time to build relationships in which you can be honest and be accepted at the same time?  How would it be to put down the burden of maintaining some kind of lie – an image of yourself that matches your idea of what you should be as a leader, a parent, an employee, a spouse – and to feel the lightness that comes with being yourself?

I begin to wax lyrical.  I wonder, what is your perception of the consequences of honesty… and deception?

The dance of honesty

Emotional Intelligence,

Harriet Goldhor Lerner wrote a number of books whose titles begin with the phrase “The Dance” – The Dance of Intimacy, The Dance of Anger, The Dance of Deception…  I haven’t read them all though I did recently read The Dance of Deception as one of a number of books about lying and deception.  Daniel Goleman’s Vital Lies, Simple Truths is another and so is Dorothy Rowe’s Why We Lie:  The Source of our Disasters.

Each book is quite different.  Goleman talks of the science of lying – how it works in the brain.  Lerner writes specifically for women (her book is subtitled Pretending and Truth-telling in Women’s Lives).  Rowe draws on an extraordinary array of contemporary examples to illustrate her thesis.  After I read her book, for example, I was moved to read about the children of prominent Nazis in Stephan Lebert’s book on the subject, My Father’s Keeper and then The Himmler Brothers by Heinrich Himmler’s great niece Katrin Himmler.  Rowe dedicates a whole chapter to Lying for Your Government in which she suggests that whilst the CIA, for example, exists to tell the truth to American presidents, CIA chiefs soon learn that it’s not in their interest to tell the president what he doesn’t want to hear.

Reflected in these books are a number of truths about honesty and lying.  We all lie, for example, and we all lie about lying.  We all lie with good intentions, and we often lie to ourselves about what those good intentions are.  (If you doubt me on this one, just think about a time when you’ve told what often gets called a “white lie” in order “to save someone’s feelings” and try on for size the idea of going ahead and telling the truth.  You’ll mostly find that you were saving yourself from a difficult experience at the same time).

The truth is also that telling the truth can be hard work at times which is why, today, I am appropriating Lerner’s use of the phrase “the dance” and applying it to honesty.  Telling the truth involves a commitment to honesty, a willingness to hear how others respond and – in the longer term – a readiness to live with the unpredictable consequences.

This subject is so vast that I wonder where to start and feel sure I shall return to it.  Perhaps a good place to start is by sending out an invitation to you.  My invitation to you is this:

  • Ask yourself how committed you are to honesty and to telling the truth – a mark out of ten is one way of answering this question;
  • Commit to noticing for a week how honest you are in practice, especially at times when honesty is challenging for you.  Notice the times when you decided to be honest even though you were putting something at risk. Notice the times when you chose to avoid honesty in some way – be it with yourself or with some other person;
  • After a week, return to your mark out of ten and check how accurate it was.
Do let me know how you get on…

Is a need to please hurting your business?

Emotional Intelligence

Mashable.com recently published an interesting blog on the need to please:  Is a need to please hurting your business?  You can read it here.

If you click through to the article, you’ll find it speaks for itself.  In case you’re hesitating, here are three questions you might ask yourself to see if this article might be of interest to you:

  • Do you ever say yes when really, you want to say no – and end up feeling angry and resentful afterwards?
  • Do you ever say yes and then do no – hoping that the yes will be enough to keep someone (your boss, clients, spouse etc.) happy?
  • Do you ever find yourself feeling stretched and overworked because you haven’t found a way to negotiate limits to your total workload?
And of course, you might also ask yourself if you’re managing anyone who displays these patterns.  If you’re managing a whole team that act this way – well, that’s also a sign to pause and reflect.

Kitchen confessions

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I know, I know… it’s time I gave an update on the progress of my kitchen.  Is it finished yet?  In fact, Jeannie Morrison, my friend and fellow member of the London Symphony Chorus, was kind enough to e-mail before Christmas and to express her hope that I would be enjoying my brand new kitchen at Christmas.  Sorry, Jeannie,  I’m not there yet.

An old Chinese cupboard before its kitchen transformation

The amount of preparation has been prodigious.  The walls have been stripped.  The chimney breast has also been stripped back to the brick work along with a section alongside it.  And because the bricks were in such a poor state, Wills rebuilt part of the chimney breast.  The old sink has been moved round so that the window at the end of the room can be taken out to make way for a door.  And now the new door is in, Wills has started the process of converting the old doorway to a window.  I could carry on – but you get the idea.

You may spot part of the old cupboard as well as
getting a rough idea of the design of the new kitchen

Gary, who spotted a 19th Century Chinese cupboard (rather worse for wear) and saw its potential, has been working miracles with it in the kitchen, creating a cupboard as planned with the central section of the original piece and another wall-to-ceiling cupboard to house the boiler.  If only he’d consent to having his picture taken I might have caught his boyish delight this morning when we discussed just what a success this is proving to be.  And yes, the picture above also gives you some idea of the state of my kitchen at Christmas.  Fortunately, my nephew Edward, who lives with me, was away and – when I was not with friends and family – it was just me at home.  Oh!  Me and the mouse that is!  Seen once but not since.

New appliances are multiplying in the lounge   

Over time, various appliances have been delivered and some of them are biding their time in the lounge.  The new sink has been with me for a while, and now the dishwasher, a new radiator and (I confess) the first proper kitchen bin I have ever owned, are all ready and waiting.  It feels so grown up!

I’m smiling as I write, recognising that I, too, share a good deal of Gary’s childlike glee.  I’m also smiling because I recognise just how many of my friends see this kind of experience as the ultimate nightmare.  I think of Roger Hamilton’s book Your Life, Your Legacy:  An Entrepreneur Guide to Finding Your Flow which I’ve mentioned before on this blog.  Hamilton highlights different ways in which entrepreneurs generate wealth and I know that my own signature approach to generating wealth is primarily creative.  I am loving the creative process of designing the new kitchen.  Even in our private lives our key strengths and preferences show up.  

Finding the points of leverage in your life

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence,

Last year, several times, I mentioned Richard Rumelt’s book Good Strategy Bad Strategy as part of a series of postings on developing your strategic thinking.  I feel drawn to his book as the New Year begins.

In particular, I feel drawn to return to the concept of leverage.  Rumelt defines this in various ways, pointing to what he calls the “pivot point” that will magnify the effects of focused energy and resources.  His examples include President Ronald Reagan’s speech on 12th June, 1987, at the Brandenburg Gates in West Berlin.  Reagan – knowing of the gap between Mikhail Gorbachev’s claim that the Soviet Union was liberalising and the facts on the ground – took the opportunity to say:  “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalisation:  Come here to this gate!  Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate!  Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”  His speech had the effect of highlighting to Western Europeans the imbalance that existed between a system that allowed free movement of people and one that had to restrain its citizens with barbed wire and concrete.  This in turn gave political leverage to Reagan.

In my own life, I am often delighted by small acts which have a disproportionate effect.  In 2007, for example,  I was contacted by a former colleague who had been asked to join a project team as a coach.  She wasn’t available to say yes but she thought of me and passed on my name.  I worked extensively with the team’s client that year and one of the people I coached has often referred potential clients to me since.  This simple act on the part of my former colleague continues to make a big difference in my life.  In similar fashion, I have written before on this blog about the ease of giving vouchers from my local supermarket – incentives to spend more money in exchange for extra reward points – to people who are already spending that amount of money at the till.  Sometimes this small incentive clearly makes a big difference to someone for whom money is tight.  Always it brightens the day both of the giver and the receiver.

It’s not that I want to focus in this posting on giving and receiving.  Rather, if you are wanting to take some of the hard work out of achieving results – to achieve more and with greater ease – looking for and acting on the points of leverage in your life can yield a bonus prize of easy results.  Perhaps you are spending a disproportionate amount of your time and energy on managing someone who you know, in your heart of hearts, is in the wrong job.  Tackling the issue head on takes time and energy and still, in the longer term, you know it will benefit you and the person concerned.  Perhaps in your own work you are holding on to a task you really hate when actually, delegating it to a member of your team could support their development and free your time to leverage your natural strengths.  Perhaps as a parent you are constantly trying to steer (control?) the activities of your teenage child when actually it’s time to loosen the rein a little, saying your piece and being ready to support whilst recognising you cannot protect them from all the dangers of the world.

I wonder if this idea of leverage has any resonance for you, right now.  Are there areas in which you find yourself expending time and effort with little by way of return?  Are there opportunities you’re currently missing to take some small action that will make a disproportionate impact in your life or the lives of others?  As you enter the New Year I invite you to take five minutes to identify five fruitless activities you need to let go of and five easy wins you have yet to harvest.  Please share them here.

Happy New Year.