Skills Repeat

It’s been a while

… Ages and Ages since I’ve done a blog post!

I’ve been taking time to enjoy my family, yes, just us, and identify more with my role as a mother, a parent and a wife.

I’ve been teaching myself to take it easy and not to try to plan all detail to the nth degree.

I’ve been training myself on not worrying what I can’t control, especially when it comes to boisterous toddlers.

I’ve been coaching myself to deal with the after effects of things rather than risk assess in advance.

It’s not necessary as life can overcome you and leave you without control.

Letting things happen takes a strength I didn’t know I needed, and needing to develop it is vital.

Hence why I’m writing this blog post, things happen and everything works out. We just have to deal with it.

Tell me about you? Do you feel this way sometimes?

Career Break

How do you balance work and home life?

If you think about work life balance in a short time frame, daily/ weekly or even monthly, it never works out.

If you consider it over a longer term, at various parts of your career, you can add the balance where you need to.

The most important thing is to give yourself time to focus, and to do it well whether it is career based activities or family.

When did this moment of balance come to your realisation? Let me know

Sacrificing my time

What sacrifices have you made in life?

I love developing myself. I put myself out there to get the learning experiences that I would otherwise have dreamed of.

I have amazing stories of how I got prestigious internships, and how I continued to succeed in whatever I did. I’m sure you have some amazing stories too!

One of the things I’ve always sought is coaching or mentoring or even just a 1-off guidance conversation. The professionals have always been willing to give it in any situation and any context- and give it freely.

I now sacrifice my time for this. Its not a sacrifice, I’m paying it forward. I’m helping others as I continue to seek help from those ahead of me. If I don’t do it, I don’t grow at either end. Let me know what you think.

Octopus

Do you feel like small children have 8 hands by the speed they grab everything they shouldn’t?

I didn’t realise this until I had my youngest.

It reminds me of being in a workplace where so many parts if a value chain are working on something, and if isn’t cohesive, then it feels chaotic and out of control.

It takes empathy and a high EQ as a leader to truly understand what is going on when transformation is needed when your team are not working in the same direction.

It’s the same with managing my little octopus. Not only does he grab things, he throws, catching toy cows from being thrown into a swimming pool during his older sister’s lessons or when he tries to release himself so he can try to jump in through pool too. As a mother, I’ve quickly understood my child as I give that my commitment and focus.

For a leader who has a multitude of things in the pipeline, and understanding the horizon they serve, its not so easy to build that understanding. Having strong leadership techniques will allow you to cross this divide, make the saves by preventing the throws, ns stopping the unnecessary grabs.

Remembering your why

Recently, we took a pause on all of our hobbies / extra-curricula activities. It gave us more time to spend together and the freedom of unstructured play.

During that time, I noticed that I was more relaxed and could see the benefits of both time in hobbies and out on our development.

However, during the last week of activity freedom, I started trying to fill our time. I was motivated in my children not missing out. I started exploring other hobbies and trying to fill our evenings.

I stopped the googling. I stopped the talks with the other mums about what their children were up to. I focused on why we chose the other hobbies in the first place and how they made my children happy. we returned to those hobbies, I returned to mine, my husband his.

The diary is more full with three children, fun time is so much more valuable too. We take advantage of the time we have together even though it may mean more work down the line.

It’s the same being a leader at work when identifying a strategy or plan to deliver. Keep your focus on your main business purpose as it is so easy, to just want to be busy, to head onto a tangent.

Celebrating Achievements

Leaders need to celebrate achievements.

This doesn’t come naturally to most of us.

We all see the never ending piles of work that we need to do. I’m using negative terminology here. To frame it positively; we all want to crunch through our work to succeed on objectives.

Leaders see more objectives than their team. It’s a privileged position. A small outcome in a Director’s eyes who sees the whole landscape of work, is a big one for someone who sees a very small part of the chain.

Celebrate the wins and successes of your team. If you don’t, they will feel on a never-ending treadmill and won’t feel appreciated. When you do this, the team will appreciate and recognise each other’s hard work and results too. There won’t be a competitive edge to the team, it will become a collaborative environment where different styles can be at their best.

Appreciation comes from the small things. They could just be mentioning someone’s name during a monthly operational review, or asking someone to present their work to a steering committee when they normally wouldn’t have access to it, sharing their project and piece of work on a company wide town hall, or even a small token of appreciation through gift vouchers.

What do you do to appreciate and celebrate your team?

Pop goes the weasel

With leadership, we always advise to look at your individual team members and their own thoughts and perspectives. Despite all this, we have more similarities than differences.

We are all drawn to natural light no matter how bright everything is around us. Even small children have this natural instinct.

We have a natural magnetism to be drawn to each other. Just because someone is more introverted in nature, doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy the company of others. In fact, they do! It’s just they are seeking more of a one-to-one dialogue rather than a one-to many.

We all like to talk and interact as much as we love natural light. Despite the pandemic being over in the UK, we still have to fight the feeling of being locked in where some are lonely and desperate to talk, we feel it is an intrusion in the day to day activities we need to make in the supermarket or the post office.

Be welcoming, make the small talk, smile, many will interact but it won’t cost you much of your day. You will have brightened someone else’s day.

Sweet and Bitter

The good times will just be normal if they happen all the time. The same with the bad times.

A leader is someone who understands that they can’t make their team happy all of the time, neither can they deliver on time to spec all of the time too, neither can you celebrate at every turn. The balance is so important to highlight the achievements of your team so that it becomes a valuable feeling.

Also, you can’t berate your team. In the working world, we are all adults and as humans we make mistakes. If you berate your team, they will be on tenterhooks, afraid to try something new and to fail fast. They will avoid telling you the truth, focusing on the good to appease you instead of bringing you real leadership challenges that you can empower your team to resolve. Where this becomes the constant, it doesn’t make for an easy feeling in any business as there is always a worry that bubbles below the surface.

Everything needs a bit of salt and a bit of sugar in life. If we don’t accept that there are low points as well as high points, the constant will bore us or give us a nagging worry. It will result in low team morale and low delivery. Let me know about your experiences,

Cool mornings

With three children, rarely is it a quiet morning getting ready. They all have differing needs and wants. Some are morning people and others are not.

It’s the same as leading a team. The larger your team gets, the more you need to have consideration for.

The main difference is having children means you know them deeply and all of their circumstances, leading a team means that you need to take time to get to know them. Therefore, putting all the pieces together can be challenging.

It’s really important as a leader to get to know your team by their strengths. This gives you a positive start to any working relationship and allows your team to shine. If you start with weaknesses, they will forever be in the back of your mind to fix.

Leaders are routinely under pressure about this. I’ve moved into teams where handover from the previous manager has put down how challenging an individual is and a list of failures. How can I manage a team with failures rather than their passions and capability? As a leader, this is a skill that is not taught; to recognise the doom and gloom and move away from it.

Yes, everyone has a development plan and not everyone is perfect, let’s allow them to bring their brilliant skills as a team and to collaborate for success.

Have you had any experience of this? Let me know what you did about it.

Compare and Contrast

As much as we say we don’t, we are business leaders and we spend time ranking and comparing our team members to see who comes out at the top. This is something that really contradicts what we say we do- appreciate diversity in all of its forms.

Comparing will exclude diversity, but let’s consider whether the word contrast does. What are the differences in each individual?

When we start using the word contrast in a positive way, we realise that it highlights each team members unique aspects in a positive way too.

I have three children and they are all different. Different skills, perspectives and approaches of looking at things. If I compare, the younger ones clearly cannot compete with the elder, but if I contrast, I can see the light!

What is the value that each child brings to show up in their own space? It’s the same for work.

Look for the differences, this will help you to excel as a leader. Welcome these differences too, in fact, highlight them for everyone to see as this is the only way the team can succeed.