At a recent away day, a team were trying to get a date in the diary for a meeting. Everyone kept saying “I can’t do that date, I’m working.” We were going around in circles until the team’s leader said “We need to rethink our attitude to meetings – when we have a meeting, that IS work!”
Wise words indeed. So how have meetings become unmoored from work and viewed as an interruption and an irritation? Reasons like having too many, being at meetings where you’re not adding value and meetings that are all talk and no action spring to mind. If meetings no longer feel an important part of work, we need to look at why that might be – and what better time to do an early spring clean of your meetings schedule than now?
Here are 4 dark corners to delve into as part of your 2023 meetings overhaul.
One of the not so good things to come from the recent past is the impact virtual working has had on the way we communicate with each other. The pandemic paved the way for a meetings epidemic and most people’s meeting load has gone up. Despite the many gains of a more flexible approach to work, it’s harder to be spontaneous and informal and suddenly everything is a transaction aka a meeting. Let’s start to pare them down a bit. Is everything best served by a meeting? Could it be call, an email exchange or an agreement to catch up next time you’re both/all in the same location. Even if you agree to cut out one regular meeting, or find another way to get the agenda covered, it will make a difference.
It’s simple, there should be one. If meetings are work, they need to achieve something. Next time you get together, make item 1 on the list a chance to agree or renew the purpose. What are you getting together for and what will happen as a result? Actions don’t need to overwhelm everyone but there should be some. Connection and relationship development is a purpose for meeting but there probably needs a secondary reason too, for the event being in people’s diary. Renewing your meeting purpose is surprisingly energising and focusses people’s minds on why they are there and why there’s nowhere else they’d rather be. That might be pushing it a bit but you get the idea. And if no one can come up with or agree on a purpose, refer to point 1. above.
This is all about getting the right people around the table. Apparently, Jeff Bezos has a rule no meeting should be so large that two pizzas can’t feed the whole group. Clearly that depends on people’s appetites but it is often a case of the larger the meeting, the less that gets done. Everyone at your meetings should be a full participant, able to contribute and take away actions. Whilst you may get the odd guest, regular observers rarely add value. You want the meeting to be viewed as a positive part of everyone’s working day, not just useful to the person who leads it. Consider your attendee list and whether it needs revising. You may find you add rather than subtract which can bring a new energy to the proceedings. Just make sure they don’t eat more than their share of the pizza.
Were you brought up to keep your elbows off the table, chew with your mouth closed and tip your soup bowl away from you? We’re a bit more informal these days but manners still matter and we’ve forgotten some of ours at meetings. A simple rule to apply is, if you wouldn’t do it in the room, don’t do it on the screen. Agreeing some ground rules for meetings sounds a bit stern yet shows respect for everyone’s time and works well if they are agreed and decided by the group not an individual. One of our clients uses a set of meeting roles – parts that people take on to ensure the meeting runs well. As well as the meeting leader, there is a timekeeper, a scribe and a gatekeeper (makes sure everyone has their say and equal chance to input). And the roles rotate so no one gets stuck in a rut. They also review the effectiveness of the meeting with a final “how did we do?” agenda item. It’s brief but effective and it works for them. It might work for you too.
This is less about resolutions (usually fail) or revolutions (a bit full on for January) and more about making a few small changes. Maybe we should stop calling them meetings and start calling them workings.
On 4th November we were 25 years old. How did that happen?? In some ways, it seems like a few months ago that we started our consultancy but when we think about it, a lot has happened in our little world of Learning and Development (admittedly not as much as has happened in the wider world even in the last year!)
To mark our 25 years as a leadership and team development consultancy, we gave our thoughts last month, on some of the L&D trends we’ve seen since 1997 and the impact they had. In part 2 of this article, we’ll attempt a bit of crystal ball gazing, looking forward to what the next quarter century may bring to the workplace and the impact it could have on learning and development.
Here are 3 emerging trends, that we think are ones to watch.
Falling off the cliff
We live in interesting times. The concept of the “Talent Cliff” – a phenomenon where organisations lose employees at a rapid rate is not a new one but it is taking on a new meaning in 2022. The largest workforce in recent history is due to retire before the decade is out. Clearly, we didn’t get that memo. Lots of others did though and a workplace already struggling with gaps as people re-evaluate and make changes post-pandemic, is going to get gappier. The solution, we think, puts learning and development at its heart. Employers need to think about opportunities to keep people for longer and attract people to join and stay. Of course, decent pay and benefits play their part. Writer and speaker Dan Pink encourages us to: “Pay people properly and treat them with respect and you get the issue off the table, leaving them free to concentrate on what matters”. The key message here is to provide chances to grow, develop and stay interested. If you lead a team, now is a great time to think about what you can do to minimise the impact of a potential landslide.
Flat is the new shape
Hierarchies have been around forever. They help us know our place in the line, shine clarity on roles and responsibilities and give us something to aspire to. They appeal to those motivated to climb the ladder and advance to the dizzy heights of senior leadership. We don’t predict leadership lines disappearing but we do think the world is going to get flatter. Organisations now are all about collaboration, consultation and breaking down the dreaded siloes. That is out of step with complicated hierarchies. Matrix systems where we all have a range of responsibilities, dotted lines and internal clients are becoming the norm. We all want autonomy – to have a say in the what/when/where/how of our day. To achieve this, we need freedom to act and make decisions for ourselves whilst feeling like what we do connects to something bigger. In decades to come we believe structures will be much flatter and freer with good process in place to ensure everyone is clear without having to check in with a manager all the time. Let’s get well prepared for it now by ensuring we feel comfortable to delegate and share responsibility with great comms in place to avoid confusion. Complex hierarchies are on the out so don’t make a mountain when a molehill will do.
Gen Z calling the shots
Disclaimer: In this section we will make a few generalisations. We find all that is written on the Generations utterly fascinating. It informs the way we work and live, how we sell to customers, gain trust with clients and has a lot to teach us about how we lead future teams and individuals. As proud Generation Xers, we know how to work hard and play hard. We embraced technology, put in long hours, socialised at work and juggled (not to mention struggled) our way up the career ladder. We hid our tattoos and our piercings. Okay, some of us did. Behind us came Generation Y (also referred to as Millennials) and some new expectations. If you fall in to that generation or you manage someone who does, you will know different things are valued. For Gen Y it is about purpose not profit, work life balance rather than bank balance and output not hours. They want to be paid properly by an employer who enables and provides opportunities for growth.
That may describe the now, but this is a blog about the future. What of the generation entering work at the moment? Generation Z. These are our future shapers and leaders so what do they want? They’re digital natives, that’s a given – and it means they expect the right tools for the job; they want to work with cutting-edge technology so consider where you make your investments. Gen Zs are in to ethics and sustainability. They choose where they work, not just based on the job and conditions. They want to know what you are doing to give back and what your policies are on how you work responsibly. Interestingly, they value both flexibility and face to face interaction. Flexibility is an expectation so ignore it at your peril, but they also want connection; to be more than suppliers of work, they want to be colleagues. Consider how you can create an environment where Gen Zs can thrive, develop and become our next generation of leaders in this ever-changing world. And what of the group coming up behind them, named Generation Alpha? Given that as of now, the oldest they can be is 12 we’ll save our views on them for a future discussion.
Don’t be concerned if you consider your characteristics, wants and needs don’t fit with the generation your birthday assigned you (as per our disclaimer, we made some generalisations). The point is, we need to continue to listen to what team members want from work and from their employer, if we are to keep and nurture talent.
So, there you have it and thank you for gazing in to the future with us. What did you think of our predications and do they match yours? In the end none of us really knows what the next 25 years will bring. How could we (unless we are Bill Gates apparently) have ever predicted what happened in just the last few years?! What we are sure of is that things change and we will need to evolve to survive and thrive in the future. And we hope to be around for many more great conversations with you where we put the world to rights and with any luck, make it a better place.
On 4th November we will be 25 years old. How did that happen?? In some ways, it seems like a few months ago that we started our consultancy but when we think about it, a lot has happened in our little world of Learning and Development (admittedly not as much as has happened in the wider world even in the last year!)
To mark our 25 years as a leadership and team development consultancy, here are our thoughts on some of the L&D trends we’ve seen since 1997 and what impact they’ve had. In part 2 of this article next month, we’ll do a bit of crystal ball gazing, looking forward to what the next quarter century may bring in training and learning.
We’ve seen quite a few comings and goings in the last 25 years. Here are 4 trends that came but didn’t go.
Coaching first began as a profession in the 1970s (and no, we weren’t old enough to do it then) although it was referenced way back in the 1800s in university settings. It really started to gain traction in the late 80s/early 90s and many said it was a fad that wouldn’t last. Fast-forward 30+ years and it’s clear that coaching is here to stay. Organisations steeped in the “sheep-dip” mass group training approach baulked at spending money on one individual’s development – until it became clear this sort of targeted learning led to better, faster and more impactful results. Coaching can provide a unique forum for a person to learn, think things through and solve problems. John Whitmore, a leading figure in the field describes it as “unlocking people’s potential to maximise performance”. Whether you are a coach helping to unlock that potential or you’ve been coached and had a few lightbulb moments, you’ll be aware of its impact. Possibly the greatest value that coaching brings is quite simply time to think and reflect, with someone who asks powerful questions and then gets out of your way. In “Time to Think”, Nancy Kline says “A statement requires you to obey, a question requires you to think.” Long live coaching!
First of all, let’s knock the name on the head. Soft skills? They are anything but. But 25 years ago, that was what we called any non-technical training or learning relating to people skills. Back then it was seen as a luxury, an add-on. Now it is the difference that makes the difference. Whether you consider yourself a people person or someone who prefers minimal contact with other humans, certain skills are always on trend. In 1999 we invested in a relationship with a company called Insights Learning and Development and started to use their behavioural tools. 23 years on our relationship is as strong as ever and their tools have helped us help others to gain self-awareness, awareness of others and a route to better relationships with colleagues. The ability to listen actively, get your point across, engage with others, converse, share and adapt to deal with a range of different people – these things aren’t soft, they’re essential to our survival. So invest as much in them as your technical skills and you won’t go far wrong.
We set up as a training company. We ran courses and workshops. Then clients started to seek us out to steer their teams through a complex meeting, suggest ways to discuss and explore a contentious issue or hold the reins at a series of away days. Actually, there weren’t that many away days back in 1997 and we certainly hadn’t heard of “off-sites” – but we have now! The idea that the leader doesn’t have to lead everything and in fact shouldn’t chair everything is one of the reasons why using facilitators has become popular. At first some leaders were a little reluctant. Would it look like they were abdicating their role? Giving up control? But good facilitation isn’t leading and it definitely isn’t controlling. It requires an unbiased approach, sensitivity and diplomacy, a sharp sense of timing and more than a little creativity. If done right, it frees those in charge to be contributors and to fully involve themselves without having to run the room. It also gives teams exposure to innovative ways to explore, discuss and take action. The role of facilitator kept us on our toes then and still does now. It is said that a good facilitator doesn’t just guide the discussion, they also encourage the group to have the conversations that need to be had to get to a better place. PS – we still run courses. Facilitation is an “and” not an “or”.
Back in the early 90s, we had a colleague who worked in IT for a company who conducted all their training in Los Angeles. Based in the UK he would regularly jet over for weeks of courses. It was the norm then. Nowadays less so, to protect our budgets and our planet. But even 25 years ago, everything we offered as a consultancy, was delivered in a room. It’s hard to imagine now, but back then, if you didn’t get there you missed out. The word “hybrid” was only used to describe different species or varieties of plant or animal. Then saw the arrival of online learning. It was a bit clunky and dry at first but as new tools came on the market, it became a real alternative to in-room learning events. Now it is part and parcel of the way we all work and in the periods of lockdown during the Pandemic, it came in to its own. Now that we’ve been let out again, we can be more discerning. There’s nothing quite like the warm body experience for some learning. We know what works better with us physically together – including relationship-based learning and team coaching and what can work well with us apart – like general skills and knowledge updates. It’s a great addition to the world of learning and you save a fortune on work shoes – win/win.
Next month we’ll suggest some future trends for learning and development. In the meantime, feel free to enjoy (and giggle at) a picture of us in the 1990s which proves that it’s not just L&D that evolves…
Autumn is a busy old season. You’ll need all your resources to perform at the highest level over the coming months. Are you ready for everything the job throws at you or would a bit of help come in handy? Help comes in many forms: time with the boss, formal learning, coaching and nothing beats the experience you get by just doing the job, but you may feel you need something else. A helping hand from someone who’s been there.
A mentor is someone more experienced, often more senior, who has relevant wisdom to share and willingness to be generous with it. They may be in the same organisation as you and often they are not. Mentoring allows you to follow in the path of a wiser colleague who can pass on knowledge, experience and open doors to otherwise out-of-reach opportunities.
Some of our most rewarding work comes from being asked to mentor people. Our brand of wisdom is people intelligence and that is what we have to pass on. We help people to navigate their way through managing the maze of relationships, alliances, colleagues and challenges that are critical to their success at work.
When sourcing a mentor, it is important to know what you’re looking for. Here is a checklist of some of things you should expect from a mentor. They should be
And dare we say - someone who is prepared to give you a bit of tough love when you need to take action and stop procrastinating.
What could a mentor do for you? Good mentors should provide a combination of support and challenge to help you improve on areas where you struggle and develop your strengths to the max. And unlike coaches, mentors are allowed to give advice. Hooray. They do it from a position of knowledge and experience and they offer it understanding that it may or may not be accepted.
We find and our clients tell us that they achieve much more in a few short mentoring sessions than they ever could going through generic training. Mentoring is powerful, because it is targeted, it gets to the root of the problem and this means solutions follow swiftly. Mentors are usually sought out – people know who they want and can be of most value to them, so trust is established quickly. You can have a mentoring session in-person or remotely so it fits with today’s world.
And the great thing is, however old and wise you are, there is always someone older and wiser for you to seek out. Chances are someone is planning to seek you out for exactly the same reason. Keep your ears open.
Hello and welcome to late summer. The days are getting a tiny bit shorter and we’re all trying to squeeze the last drops out of August before September and bursting-at-the-seams diaries are once again upon us.
This month may be a busy one for you or a chance to undo the top button and breathe a bit. Either way, it is a great time to pause and consider helpful messages to get our heads in the right place and feeling strong for the start of the autumn work term.
Holidays and work breaks are fantastic and necessary, but the effects soon wear off. So here are a few things to say to ourselves and others, useful to keep energy high and get in shape for the season ahead.
It’s great to do well, walk a smooth path and have a long run of success at work. Everyone deserves that at least once in a while – but it’s not when the learning happens. We learn the most through the gnarly, tricky times, when nothing seems to go our way. So when you hit a big fat failure, take it on the chin. Life at work has a fair bit of win and lose in it, but losers are also learners. Review what went wrong, gain the views of others, put right what you need to, then learn and move on. It doesn’t feel this way at the time but you’ll look back on this period as a time of personal and professional growth that propelled you to a better place.
It really is. Even if it is badly wrapped and seems like the present no one wants. If all we ever hear is praise, we never know what we need to do to progress to the next level. When someone praises you, thank them but also ask what you could have done even better. And ask them to be specific so you can really nail what you need to do to improve. When you’re given negative feedback, learn to value it. There will be something in the content that is of use, even if you don’t rate the delivery or the messenger. Challenge it if you need to, ask questions if lacks clarity or substance, then take it and use it in a way it will help you most. And don’t forget to thank them for the feedback – and not through gritted teeth.
Resilient people are positive. Not shiny, smiley positive but sensibly positive in the way they gain perspective and look ahead. Develop the ability to influence what you can and want to change and make choices about anything you can’t change. No one can ever take away from you the right to choose your own attitude to the situation. A positive, assertive attitude will take you a long way and tends to be associated with those high-performance people everyone wants on their team.
If like us, you were born before the 1980s, “it’s my fault” is what this means. We seem to have lost the ability to step up, take responsibility and say sorry if something was our fault and shouldn’t have happened. Just doing that when you need to, helps develop strength and accountability and you and in your work culture. It allows us to own up, explain why, put things right and try better next time. It also stops us expecting to be bailed out all the time by someone with rescuer tendencies.
And there are many more sayings that convert to practical ways to grow a bit of backbone, so if that is what you feel you need for the next few months, talk to us about how you can develop a stronger self and a more resilient team. We promise to be firm but fair.
During a recent coaching session, a senior manager, newly appointed as leader to the team they used to manage, asked for help on building credibility. They had no issue with team members in non-technical roles. The ones in more technical jobs, however, felt what made a leader credible was how much they knew about the jobs of their team and whether they could do those jobs as well. We discussed if that was relevant to leadership or not, and how, if you find yourself leading in a field you know less about, it can have its advantages. You can’t show how clever you are at the work, so you put your energy in to being a good leader and driving others to achieve great things.
Bill Gates said: “As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.” He was talking about the century we’re in and he’s right. To be a good leader, sometimes you have to stop trying to be the best at everything.
Leaders come in different shapes and sizes. Some rise up the ranks through their technical abilities. They are good at the work so that earns them promotion. Some enter through a different route. They are good at leading teams and managing projects and are able to apply those skills in a range of settings. Neither one is better; it just is what it is. You can’t help what you don’t know and you can’t unlearn what you do know, but you can make the best of either situation and avoid the inevitable traps.
So for leaders and managers who are experts in the work of the people in the team:
And for leaders who didn’t take the technical route:
We coach leaders and managers at all levels. Whatever route has got you to where you are now, we’ll commit to helping you use your knowledge and skill – your cleverness - to be the kind of leader people want to have around.
It has been said that competition makes us faster but collaboration makes us better.
Collaboration means everyone can contribute: you get to use all the experience in your team, not just some of it. Not only does a collaborative culture enable you to ensure opportunities and risks are more transparent and manageable, it also makes work more enjoyable and satisfying.
Yet some organisations subtly discourage collaborative working even though they talk loudly about wanting it. Individual targets, lack of cross-departmental communication and rigid decision-making processes encourage people to compete and play their cards close to their chests. When team members get territorial, only look down at their own work and never glance to the left and right to see what others are up to and how they could add value, it is death to collaboration.
The Pandemic made collaborating ever more challenging yet many of us found we put in more of an effort. We couldn’t take each other’s physical presence for granted so worked harder to build connections. Lots of our clients tell us collaboration between teams increased over the last two years and they continue to ride that wave. They do this so collaborative behaviour sticks and becomes part of their ways of working.
So, if you want a more collaborative team, you have to make changes. We know - we’ve seen teams make those changes. It doesn’t happen overnight and it does take repeated practice, but with time a collaborative spirit starts to spread. Here are some actions that make an impact.
Destroy silos. A meaningful way to do this is by agreeing unifying goals. Everyone should know how their work impacts on the overall goals but also how it impacts other teams and departments. Create a culture where everyone feels like they are an important piece of the pie and what they do matters. Banish all talk of who is more important than who. Because no one is.
Build trust. It’s the foundation for just about everything. We trust our colleagues when we believe they will deliver on what they promise, honour their commitments, be reliable and not say one thing and do another. Collaboration encourages trust and trust encourages collaboration. One way to build trust is to look at the communication style of your organisation. Is it as open and inclusive as it could be? If not, consider what you could do to make it less concealed.
Think it before you do it. Collaboration begins with a mind-set, not a list of actions. For people to do collaboration, they first have to think about it (and see its value). Encourage people to ask themselves questions like:
Questions like these get people thinking in the right way – the actions follow.
That’s not the whole story but it’s a start. We work with teams at all levels to help them develop collaborative working. It’s an art and a science, but luckily, it’s not rocket science.
We have noticed something interesting happening in the last few weeks. Human beings enjoy being in each other's company again despite the predictions of a remote workforce being the way to go during various lockdowns.
As with many of you, we have been conducting all our work online –training, facilitation, team coaching – and it's been ok. We worked hard to make it interactive and became mistresses of break outs, Jam Boards, polls, and anything else we could come up with to not replicate face to face but to create a new learning environment. And then we had human contact again and things got interesting.
Training and facilitation online have so many advantages. It's more accessible, people are more awake because they haven't got up at 5 am to catch a train and somehow it works just fine. On the other hand, team coaching is different and is the biggest winner when things get personal. Teams working through what they are here for, how they want to behave together, and generally getting to know each other is so much better when everyone can see the non-verbal language and wander to the kitchen with a colleague to get a drink.
Several teams we have worked with had started online but then made huge strides when they got in a room. Some people have never met in person. The office has been a concept, not a reality and being in the same room suddenly feels more productive. We have witnessed significant breakthroughs in understanding and valuing differences and better ways of behaving to create a high-performance team culture.
How is your team at the moment? Have you maintained communication with weekly huddles, regular one to ones and the encouragement of online coffees to welcome new team members to the crew? All that has been important, but do you now yearn for a deeper bonding, a clearing of the dust and the chance to work as a team and connect outwards more into the organisation and beyond? Maybe in-person team coaching could be just what you need. Working with us, you would create a team mission, agree on what sort of behaviours empower the team and what holds it back, think about the layer below you and how to raise their game so you can raise yours and mend, create, build those critical internal and external relationships that smooth the path to success.
We have been so impressed with the substantial effort leaders and their teams have put into maintaining morale and performance levels in challenging times. Perhaps now is the time to build on that and allow your teams a chance to breathe, reflect and reconnect with authentic, warm human beings and see what breakthroughs they can make.
The year is flying by, isn’t it? Someone stole January, February disappeared in a cloud of smoke and next week will see the start of April. Organisations like yours are juggling a busy workload with all the fun and games of adapting to new ways of working, mainly where we all work post-pandemic. Hybrid working trials have taken place and now we’re trying to bed in longer-term patterns.
This isn’t working out as well as everyone hoped. It is really difficult to keep all of us happy on the subject of location. Some were and still are champing at the bit to get back in to a shared working space. Others are less keen, preferring working remotely. Business needs must be met but no one wants an unhappy team.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again. We are great proponents of remote working. And we should know – we’ve done it for 3 plus decades. You get more done in less time without hours and money spent getting to and fro. When it is combined with the kind of job that involves some out and about activity and no lockdowns, it’s a recipe for a happy work and life. And it is how we are positioning the out and about element we may be getting wrong right now.
We keep talking about location – where that should be, keep the office, lose the office, convert to a shared work space. Two days a week in, weekly ratios of 3:2, everyone in on Wednesdays, no more than two teams in at the same time and so on. It’s an emotive discussion and understandably, hard to get people to agree.
So, let’s change the narrative and start talking about why - not where we want to meet up. We want to meet up for connection. We don’t need to be together to plug in and sit silently side by side doing our individual work. We can do that anywhere that has the necessary resources.
We do want to be together for connection. This might include any or all of the following:
When you look at it like that, it’s less about rules and more about reasons. We aren’t “coming into the office”, we’re meeting to discuss, relate, learn and get better. And whilst that may involve an office or agreed meeting place, we’re doing it because it makes sense, not because the policy says you have to be in X days a week.
We are meeting to do what is better done in person. Over the last two years, that was stolen from us and whilst we all coped admirably, there was a cost. Not to work output but to – and here’s the word again – connection.
So, the key message here is – stop talking location and start talking connection. It will help you work out when it makes good sense to bring people to a shared space and when it doesn’t. Involve others in that conversation because you aren’t talking about the where, you’re talking about the why. People always react better when they feel listened to and are encouraged to input to something that makes sense to them. This makes sense. And with any luck, cooperation will follow.
As we emerge into 2022, bleary-eyed, hoping this will finally be the year of steady state (trying to avoid "new normal"), how are you feeling? Many of our clients’ report feeling weather-worn, buffeting by the effort of steering through Covid and all its storms and gales.
Your energy may be low, but maybe your heart is lifted and optimistic about the future if only you could gather yourself up and power on.
In times of turbulence, we often stretch to behaviours and skills that are not natural. This is tiring and takes concentration and is maybe why we feel our reserves are low. As a result, some of us may be tempted to move on from our current roles to feel like we are breaking the habits and renewing ourselves, gaining a sense of doing something different.
One way to reinvent ourselves is a little closer to home, though. Resilience has been at an all-time high in the past few years. It has brought invention, creativity, tenacity and let's not forget pivoting. So maybe a way to rejuvenate ourselves is to step back and do a good old-fashioned review of our resilience and what it has done for us.
We have been coaching individuals and teams around resilience for many years and one of the crucial things to realise is that it isn't about gritting teeth, never moaning or not owning up to finding times tough. It is quite the opposite, in fact. Resilience teaches us to speak up if we need help, actively seek out people that know more than us and purposefully rest and recover.
Have a go at thinking through three of the six resilience factors and how you have benefited from using them.
Determination – the ability to dig deep and welcome challenges. How many times have you done this recently? Have you delayed instant gratification and instead dug in and produced your best work? What satisfaction did you get from that and what have you learned about yourself? Did you have a mantra for tough times that you can still use today? For example, "If a job is worth doing, it's worth doing well", "head down, keep walking", "5 o'clock will come". Using mantras can keep our spirits up and team mantras are potent. For example, one of our clients used to work for Cadburys in the IT team. After a tough week of transforming and developing, the team would say, "now let's go make great chocolate". Love this. It reminds them why they have done their best that week and that it was for the good of the whole organisation and themselves. Oh, and for all of us who love chocolate!
A sense of purpose – how much has the last year moved you towards where you want to be in life. It may even have fast-forwarded it. We always knew we should embrace digital online learning but kept putting it off. Several lockdowns later and we feel like we have been doing it forever – have you done something like that? Have you gained experience in one year that might have taken you four if there hadn't been a crisis?
Connections – who have you networked with recently? How many online coffees have you had with colleagues across your organisation that would never have happened in the office? What have you learned from them that helps you now and in the future? Have you gained a broader understanding of your organisation from all those pub quizzes you attended, humanising colleagues from all functions?
Those are just three resilience areas. Use them to reframe last year as rejuvenating, stretching, challenging rather than tiring.
Last year could have been 100% tiring or 100% inspiring!
Get in touch if you want to know more about building resilience for yourself and your teams