Skills Repeat

Porridge for Leaders

Bowls of Porridge

I don’t like porridge! There, I have said it! But shhh, don’t tell my kids! So far, they are more than happy to eat it and it is a luxury to them with frozen fruit and honey all over the top.

They eat porridge a few times a week because I know how good it is for them, and I eat it too. This is something we have to do as a parent so we don’t want to influence the children to avoid a varied diet!

As business leaders, there are so many things that we may have to do that we don’t enjoy and is not natural to us; if you are a creative, maybe you don’t like being bound by plans but we KNOW that this is good practice. If you are a more controlling type of leader, you engage stakeholders because this is the good practice you have to show your team that all ideas get results. We all like diversity, we like different points of view and we know what is right! What do you have to do to ensure you are setting a good leadership example but is not natural to you? What is your porridge?

Eating Porridge to get to cake!

Nature

As shared previously, my little one loves anything to do with leaves, insects, soil, trees. Here is a photograph of her looking outside of a basketball court in the park in order to pick leaves from a nearby tree; I have learned to check her pockets before I set the laundry!

We recently needed to go and buy some things from the town centre for my eldest daughter whilst she was at school, and we haven’t been there since last year as I have been buying everything we have needed online! My little one asked me ‘Why are there no trees here?’ and I had to explain that we were in town.

I realised how much we have spent time outside in parks, in the countryside, going for walks and now I know how restrictive the town centre felt. We live in the city for all of its conveniences but I realised that I didn’t miss town. I loved buying clothes, dressing up the children, buying my own especially workwear and office wear but the casual wear to the park has been fine and I now have more trainers than shoes! We have had a lovely morning in the park whilst my eldest was at school and it is nice to see her so free!

In a Minute

In a Minute! Where do the children learn these words? Where do adults learn this concept? What happened to having the natural human instinct which says just do it now? the impulse to really do something immediately because we know it is the right thing to do? I look at my children and with the eldest, if it is a duty as she now understands, the word is in a minute…unless something will be given to her as an incentive! The little one doesn’t have in a minute… she has the natural impulsiveness to do it now!

We had just finished in the park for the morning and whilst I was putting our balls, skates and scooter in the car boot, she started picking a bouquet of dandelions! Weeds, yes, but she adores them. She didn’t notice that it wasn’t the time to do it as we were leaving the park, she did it because she saw an opportunity to gather together something she loves! How often do we see this thought process in a workplace? How often do employees think I will get to that task later as the mindset doesn’t allow us to just do it now with so many reviews, stakeholder engagement, networking, buy-in and risk assessments that we need to do when it could be something as simple as do it now and it will be 80% right!

I have noticed that now I have all of the time in the world to spend with the children, clean the house, do the shopping etc. being a stay- at home mum has meant I look at an obscure job like arranging wardrobes, deep cleaning the kitchen cupboards and I have started to say… Maybe Tuesday, Maybe Wednesday… This is exactly the in a minute culture that causes business delays and businesses to lose opportunity. The time is now! Let’s do this!

Getting your hands dirty

My children love to get their hands dirty and barefoot in the soil. It’s an earlier trip to the park today as the lovely heatewave means midday is just too hot!

As business leaders, we are encouraged to coach, mentor, give the team space to deliver but how often do we really get our hands dirty? One of my friends who is an incredible proven people manager has had her CV assessed by an agency and told that it related more to doing than to leading. So she likes getting her hands dirty and mucking in with the team… Go for it!

Anyway, it is a short one today. I better go finish off our play before the heat really hits! How odd to play with fallen leaves when it isn’t even Autumn yet!

Water Balloons

It’s another scorching hot day! It is incredible how much summer we are having! Our interest at going to the beach has peaked but the scenes on the news show way too many crowds and therefore infection risk so we will enjoy our garden! My kids love water balloons… filling them up is just as fun as throwing them at each other… and even the need to collect the empty balloons at the end to avoid birds eating them does not deter them!

How many of our work processes and outputs are so enjoyable that we don’t mind even the clean up of data or admin at the end?

How often do you get to see the beginning to end of things in your business? How much value does your business focus on specialists doing their bit or encourage everyone to understand the output that has gone to the customer? So when a customer request comes in, sometimes they hear this third hand and the value of influence diminishes and issues come back again.

There is a large focus on intrapreneurship and this should encourage the full value stream thinking.

It is important that this mindset is taught from a young age! Children who have no choice to learn, it is a second nature. Children like ours who are very fortunate take the process before it gets to them for granted so it is important to teach them this through things they enjoy at the right time! Baking cupcakes, waterballoons, do the bits that are fun and not so fun…

Grateful good or Grateful Bad

We are always taught to be grateful leaders at work. I try to treach my children to be grateful… but when does gratefulness become a bad thing for business?

There are some people in companies that are so grateful to have a job that it means they avoid any entrepreneurship activities. They keep doing the same thing as they are only a worker bee. The lack of empowerment in employees is a large risk in Covid19 where I am seeing so many lose their jobs and many others posting/ saying they are grateful to keep their job. Where will innovation come from if employees feel the need to keep their head down rather than risk shining? Why aren’t more employees entitled to shine at their jobs and feel grateful for the opportunity to innovate?

As a parent, the balance between having grateful children who are very verbal about gratefulness and entitled children at the ages mine are is difficult to achieve. Their smiles show me they are grateful and are happy- we have yet to see the stomping of ‘I must have!’ so I am extremely lucky. Just saying the words ‘children, you must be grateful…’ won’t teach them these principles. Giving them life experience does and mixing with others… I am grateful as a parent to have my children but it doesn’t mean I want anarchy… I want them to shine!

Being a Chicken mum

We have had a busy morning doing our usual park games, sandwiches in the park and back home by 13:00. I was flat out tired as I had spent the previous evening de-cluttering wardrobes after the girls had one to bed. My eldest asked me to run up the stairs to close her top button as she was changing clothes after the park and I just couldn’t. She asked me why we went to the park if I was so tired? Wow, this was a mature question and it’s true, prioritising health and well-being is so important so why exert myself? These are the things as adults we forget as we continuously push at work to prove that we are able to meet the 24-7 culture of working, family, activities and everything else.

I smiled at her and said, ‘I go to the park for you! because you need to have some fun!’ she laughed and laughed whilst I was looking at her on the stairs. I laughed first, but then thought something had happened because she couldn’t stop! She then called me a ‘Chicken Mum’. According to her, I am a Chicken Mum because I don’t stop- I am always walking around all day! She told me that it was a good thing, so I’ll take it!

I think I am still feeling like I am on a short holiday and trying to cram in as much as possible into our days- I need to adjust to this now being my lifestyle.

So there are tiger mums, and now there are chicken mums. I have always been ambitious in my career with a hunger to achieve experiences to gain growth, and I suppose I like to push myself every day to achieve more than I did the day before on this career break. I am tiger-ish to myself. I may become a bit tiger-ish mum when school starts again as she starts Year 4 and I want her to do well, but during the holidays I am more than happy to be a chicken mum.

Celebration or Appreciation

One of the major aspects at work and in life is recognising achievements to make people feel appreciated. The question how far do you go from recognition to celebration in order to engage your teams or your children?

Watching the children grow up, they achieve so much such as first tooth, sitting up, first steps, first drawing and so on… but how do we decide that we celebrate their birthdays rather than throwing a party or dressing them up in beautiful dresses each time they do an amazing drawing? The simple thought behind this is that celebrating too much means that the celebration option is devalued and therefore doesn’t mean anything to the child.

How does this work in the workplace to ensure that everyone feels engaged and want to support the greater purpose of the business? It’s a fine balance from just a verbal mention, to a thank you email, all the way to setting up internal business awards. Many more businesses are recruiting whilst advertising a certain number of days commitment for community investment- how amazing to do something as good with the rest of your team to build strong bonds and shared values? How long will a plaque mean something to an individual or a team now that Covid19 has taught most of us that physical items are not so necessary but time is so much more valuable?

Different people have different motivators in order to engage with the greater vision of the business, some want more recognition than others, but sometimes the smallest token is enough! With my girls, 121 time when there is only 1 of me and 2 of them is extremely valuable talking or doing something that they really enjoy as this is something they do not get every day.

The toys they have are much short lived gifts, the outdoor activity toys like bicycles or skates or tennis balls are somethings that are used over and over again as they have a collaborative aspect that we can share together outdoors.

#Diversity of Thought

So one of the words we are hearing these days from the industry is Diversity of Thought! In a family, with two children who are polar opposites, this is really true! Both my girls are absolutely different! My youngest woke me up this morning saying that she was worried as she had left her little monkey asleep on the trampoline. I thought it was a teddy but I remembered we didn’t have a monkey… and she took me out into the garden and picked an imaginary monkey off of the trampoline and handed it to me.

My eldest came out and tried to jump into my arms! My youngest cried and said ‘Nooo, poor monkey!’ and then I had to mouth to my eldest (imagination!) and she realised and paused. It took her a long time to get to the position of understanding and then she took the monkey inside for her little sister.

I think Covid19 has forced them both to accept each other’s ways! This has been a pleasure to see them get closer, close enough to love each other and close enough to argue over toys despite the age gap! It has meant that the bravery my eldest has influenced the youngest and she is now ready to try new things, whereas my little one has helped the eldest understand imaginary play and story creation. This has meant that sometimes they have produced a mess behind my back (Spreading flour in the kitchen pretending to make pizza) and sometimes they have challenged each others way of thinking. This is so needed in a business, having people from different educational, family, ethnic backgrounds is so crucial to development and success! If you encourage bold thought and intrapreneurship, success will come from those who are creative and those who aren’t supporting each other!

I did it: I communicated about my blog

I did it! I communicated about my blog on LinkedIn! My first ever post was about taking this career break and the views and feedback was MASSIVE! I was even trending on the #Covid19! However, it’s interesting how much you start to doubt yourself when you haven’t got others to affirm your skills!

A recruiter emailed me and asked if I was interested in a position in the future that would require me to negotiate supplier contract terms. He didn’t have a role right now but thought I would be a great candidate to have on his roll. I was stumped- negotiate terms? Luckily, my sister asked me to send her my CV to update hers and I had a quick look and it reminded me of all of the great, interesting things I have done and the achievements I have made.

Does your workplace have a feedback based culture? This is something that I have seen that adds a lot of value in a business. As an ambitious individual, I have always been interested in constructive feedback to allow me to grow and develop. For some, constructive feedback is too critical and therefore they are not interested in this aspect. I have been fortunate to work around great coaches and those who provide honest feedback and provide support for my development plan. I think also as an extrovert, the feedback culture is even more important. I have observed consultants that are very strong in pitching their services and you can see the most senior person making notes; and it reminds me of excellent parenthood.

What I mean by parenthood is that there is a fine line between encouragement of achievements of your children and challenging them to do better. I am always a self-critical individual so have always had to push myself to encourage the achievements of my children and I remind myself of this daily that children need appreciation to thrive! Small things like encouraging them to feed themselves using utensils and praising them for each step they make!

What do you think is the balance of this in the workplace? When does it not become cost effective to encourage and appreciate rather than to challenge and push? Also, when does it become right to provide constructive criticism despite the recipient feeling like this is a criticism? How does the feedback culture impact profitability or even something as simple as recruitment and retention?