Are you a great leader? How might you know if you are a great leader? There are a number of different attributes, signs and signals that can enable us to determine whether or not we are truly a great leader or not. Being a coach: How much we might actively be like a coach? A coach believes in empowering people, removing obstacles and helping them to be successful in what they do and who they are. Understanding our weaknesses: Being a great leader is to understand our own weaknesses, focus on our own strengths. Great leaders realise they have strengths and weaknesses, and by understanding our own weaknesses we can show others it’s okay to embrace and work on these and be a great leader. Embracing our vulnerabilities: Being able to embrace our vulnerabilities sends out a positive message as a great leader to others. We are showing them we
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I read a quote recently which read: “The time to relax is when you don't have time for it”. Sydney J Harris which led me to putting this week’s Wednesday Wake-Up! together. I’m not sure how many times I’ve heard people say, I’ve not got time to sit around, I’m just too busy. Or others will feel that relaxing is just a waste of time, and perhaps have a degree of guilt because they feel they will be perceived as being a time-waster and not pulling their weight. For some, it’s been the ‘message’ they’ve been given since childhood about not being lazy and keeping going no matter what. We should all have time ‘out’ to relax, chill, reflect, rest, play, read, meditate or many more pastimes I could list, but do we? We usually put ourselves last, feel we are having to get things done for others and don’t want
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Whether we are in business as a single-person enterprise or running a large business; whether we are part of a team large or small we are still part of a team somewhere. Even in families, we are often a team. Teams are either functional or non-functional due to various personalities and how we manage the roles we play and the emotions that affect our behaviour. Usually the only time we are asked how good a team player we are, or what type of team player we are is at an interview. For some people they’ve already thought about the answer whereas for others they haven’t. Of course, it’s easy to just say that it depends on the day, the team, what type of mood we’re in. But we really should all be clear in what way we are a team player and determine exactly what makes a good team player,
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Did I really use the word creative and goals in the heading for this week’s Wednesday Wake-Up!? I did, and it was intentional. We can be great goal planners and be creative about what we set, when for, how we do it as well as being mindful of challenges along the way. I use a great template called The Great Goal Planner, which is among many templates I use for and with clients to help determine obstacles and identify or consider solutions to tackle or fix these. The more we really dig deep to ensure we aren’t just making a wish list which isn’t SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timebound). What should a great goal planner consider when setting goals? We should first start using the creative side of our brain and our thinking so we are thinking outside the square or outside the box, otherwise we won’t grow
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I saw a great graphic recently called ‘be like a tree’ and really loved the metaphor of how being more like a tree can help us in so many ways. Whilst we are all trying to reinvent ourselves, be better than others, we often don’t consider how we could look after ourselves and either forget, don’t have time, put ourselves last or some other reason. To be ‘like a tree’, we can learn so much without having to reinvent ourselves, just learn from nature. Below are the six areas to be like a tree which I hope you will provide you with some takeaways. The first thing it talked about was staying grounded. How important is that? Particularly at times of feeling stressed or overwhelmed we can and often are all over the place when at these times in particular, staying grounded would stand us in good stead. The second
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I’ve recently finished listening to a book called The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris. One of the chapters focuses on acts of self-kindness, along with kind words and actions and self-kind talk. As I always do when I read or listen to books, I takeaway some gold nuggets which I can use either personally or professionally for my business to pass onto clients. This one was a great one for me because, in my experience personally and working with so many clients over a lot of years, I hear mostly self-flagellation, being over self-critical and dwelling on the negative or what’s gone wrong or not so well rather than the opposite. Whilst pretty much we know and understand this appears to be a common default system built into us which originally was meant to be something that would protect us and make us more aware to deal with the ‘cave
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I’ve been listening to a book which talked about what success is and how we might get it. This led me to thinking more about what success really is, and that this is so different for us all. Success might be monetary, or status, fitness or career. So how do we go about achieving success when it is so hard to define, particularly when what we do determine as being successful either isn’t achievable or when we get it, that wasn’t it! I read a book ages ago about a man whose definition of success was to have $1m in the bank. He worked so hard doing every job possible to earn the money he missed out on lots of things. However, many years later he achieved his success, he had his $1m in the bank. Did he feel successful? Did he feel he had accomplished his dream and aim
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As some of you will know, last year, I had a major health event (Vestibular Neuritis) in October, which stopped me in my tracks literally. Also earlier on last year I also had a knee issue called Chondrocalcinosis which also made an impact on my ability to keep up my fitness. The reason I am sharing this is not to make this all about me, but to share the thoughts that I had when I did the Pegasus parkrun on Saturday, the first time for nearly a year. I was a late start to running and hated it, and eventually began to enjoy it by applying positive mindset and thinking about the end result and the goal. When Chondrocalcinosis was diagnosed, the only thing I wasn't able to do was high impact sports which meant no more running. Because of this, I never returned to the Pegasus parkrun even although
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Haven't you ever thought about the things that make your life beautiful? I read something very recently that had four different things to look at. The first one was to look back, the second one, look forward, the third one look around and the fourth one to look within. When I go through these, they tell me something. It's a good thing to look back because when we do, we can look back on what we've done. Whether this was a positive experience or a negative experience, whether it helped us or not, whether it’s become baggage or whether it's taught us a really good lesson that's helped us to build strategies to help us going forward. Looking back can be a really positive thing. But it can also be a negative thing. So if we do look back, let's use our experience as a learning. We are learning every
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What have you got planned to start doing in 2023? Did you set goals or resolutions for the year and are they written down? Do you have any idea what goals or resolutions you want to set, or are you stuck? Are you ‘over’ setting goals or making resolutions because it’s never been successful so far? Whether it’s any of the above or not there are things we can start doing to help ourselves in 2023 or any year for that matter, but at the beginning of the year at least it can start us off on the right foot. Starting from a place of feeling grateful for what we have, where we are, job or business we have, family and friends, health etc. If we use this as a starting point of gratitude rather than starting from a place of wanting or needing more or being dissatisfied with what
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