Leadership

November 14, 2019

Lessons From TV

“If you are your authentic self, you have no competition.” – Anonymous

People have an insatiable appetite to make something that ACTUALLY helps. That drive towards an ideal and a higher purpose is much of what creates the resilience and the grit that the world requires from us.

And then there is the new HBO Theranos documentary “The Inventor”. It is brutal from so many angles. The very fact that this happened and $900 million was thrown away ($300 million on legal fees) they also failed to answer the one question the interviewer asked right near the end. Does it work? In addition, there seems to be some sort of Silicon Valley underbelly which, at its worst, doesn’t just ignore the deep flaws of founders and inventors, but actually props up their pathology and supports their dysfunction.

On another level, the documentary likens the role of founder and CEO, Elizabeth Holmes, to that of Thomas Edison himself, who claimed he had invented the incandescent lightbulb and held off any accountability and demonstration of the product itself for four years while he kept the financial balls in the air. Like the early days of the Tour de France, with cocaine-laden riders competing against one another, there seems to be something in the deep, dark history of Silicon Valley that is entirely ok with the type of innovation that is devoid of the deliverable at the end. I get this isn’t true of many companies (most even) and this might be a small part of the whole. However, there comes a time when in life, business and leadership the system you’re in must be challenged if it appears to have institutionalised this kind of behaviour.

Theranos, once the blood testing darling of the tech/science/medical world is now defunct. With lawsuits following both the organisation and Holmes and the CEO and Sunny Balwani as the COO the mess promises to be, ‘getting cleaned up’ for some time coming.

As I watched this documentary I thought of one question that needed to have been asked and answered by the leadership, granted it was in the interests of Holmes and Balwani NOT to ask nor answer the question. That one question was simply ‘Does it work?”

By “it” I mean The Edison, the actual machine that claims to have miniaturised technology to the point where 250 blood tests were able to be completed from pinpricks worth of blood. Disruptive, revolutionary, and life-changing. But no, it didn’t work. The Edison Machine never worked. It was in fact, quite dangerous for its purpose and delivered less than acceptable results most of the time. It just didn’t work.

It’s not that failing is wrong either. It’s failing over and over again and that is why I succeed (Thank you Michel Jordan). When you have a dream to create something from nothing you must take a three-stage approach to leading, and communicating what’s working and what isn’t.

This means asking the question “Does it work?” and leading of the following three frames of reference:

Taking responsibility – refusing to blame.
Accepting transparency – refusing to hide.
Acting with integrity – refusing to compromise.

This triple filter test gives you and perhaps your brand a way to identify what is really going on, what the quality and status of the product are and what you should do about it now you know the reality. When you do this consistently and well you are able to build trust, confidence and quality. That is the glue that keeps the reputation and the positioning in place and the quality product that does what you promised it would do.

Horst Schultze, leader of the Ritz Carlton and much-celebrated hotelier said that people want ‘a defect-free experience.’ And when it isn’t that way your response to fixing the issue becomes more important than the issue itself. You can blame, hide and comprise all you want but The Edison Machine didn’t work. It never did.

Reminds me of that concert in the desert that didn’t happen too…

October 17, 2019

Steve Jobs

Leadership, Motivation amazon, apple, jobs, silicon valley, steve jobs 0

“Long live the pioneers
Rebels and mutineers
Go forth and have no fear” – X Ambassadors

Apple have just recently released the iPhone 11 together with a bunch load of goodies. Their relentless pursuit of excellence had me thinking of the vision of the Apple Co-Founder Steve Jobs. I listened to Walter Isaacson’s phenomenal biography on the business titan and legendary leader Steve Jobs.

He is undoubtedly one of the most genius minds that we have ever had on the planet. The reason I believe is his work ethic.

Please allow me to deconstruct 11 of the elements of the charisma and worldwide influence of the co-founder of the most valuable company on the planet:

#1. He did not accept widely approved truths

As a student at Reed College, Jobs questioned everything, as the dean later reported. Beliefs and facts that the majority blindly followed were aggressively challenged by the Apple co-founder. It was just his nature: he needed to understand everything. He was wildly curious. He was uncommonly rebellious. And he was sort of a pirate in the way that he was strong enough to think for himself.

#2. He bent reality and then believed his hallucination

Jobs could see a future few else could perceive. Even back in the days of the Mac, he saw the intersection of computing with music and the internet. A girlfriend now says he was “an enlightened being who could be cruel”. Bud Tribble at Apple called the way the founder could alter the landscape to fit his vision a “reality distortion field”. This ability served him exceptionally as he made his rise to industry dominance in seven sectors.

#3. He united technology with poetry

Apple co-founder Woz became best friends with Jobs and started the firm with him in a garage in California. In large part over their mutual love of electronics. Yet, Steve was a rare combination: a digital hacker as well as a hippie poet. He worked at HP and Nolan Bushnell’s Atari. Yet he also traveled to India to find his guru, fasted for long stretches and read poetry, while tripping on LSD.

#4. He had the eyes to breed beauty

I’m realising more than ever that having the acumen to sense what is beautiful and magical is an unusual talent. Jobs had it. He was obsessed with producing products that were not only brilliantly simple but were also exceedingly beautiful. On building the iPhone he instructed his design team to make the icons on the iPhone [over one billion units sold] so attractive, users would want to lick the screen. I’d actually suggest to you that Steve Jobs was less in the computer field. And more in the beauty business.

#5. He was a fanatical perfectionist

In a marketplace suffering from what I call The Collective DeProfessionalisation of Business and in a society struggling with The Mass Mediocritisation of Humanity, we absolutely must behold the fiery passion Jobs has for perfection. One former teammate said that part of his genius was his ability to spot defects instantly. I recently heard that he told his design team everything they produced needed to be “Museum of Modern Art-level quality”. His consumer goods needed to have a legendary UX. All devices needed to function excellently. And everything they touched had to be nothing less than gasp-worthy.

#6. He was careless about the opinions of others

Steve was arrogant from the start. His parents told him he was special and he always knew he was the smartest person in the room. When he worked at Atari as a young man, he mocked the meek ideas of others and called them “bozos who suck”. I, in no way applaud this kind of behavior. I just report it to you as part of what made Steve, Steve.

#7. He was mercurial and full of fire

Passion is the instigator of exceptional feats. Jobs was angry [those close to him say he had a hole within him from being given up for adoption by his natural mother that he attempted to fill from the outside], dramatic, insensitive and callous. Genius is a dangerous sport. The titans, renegades, virtuosos and saviors of society are all complex people. And the gifts that make you great are the same ones that make you a misfit, in the eyes of the majority.

#8. He was part charmer and part dictator

Steve could charm. He was a master seducer, when it served his ambitions. He also could own the stage and steal the limelight, when he needed to. Jobs was a man of huge precision, who knew exactly what he wanted. And this alchemy of mastery came together to forge the first company in history to exceed a trillion dollars in value.

#9. He could be both generous and ruthless

When his buddy’s travelers checks were stolen on a trip, Jobs paid for his meals and train rides. He even gave him the $100 he had in his pocket. All the money he had. Yet when Apple went public, he wouldn’t give this friend — also an employee — even one share. He also told Woz that the work they did for Atari made only $700, which he then split with Wozniak, when he’d actually been paid $7500.

#10. He knew how to put on a show

Oh, those Apple product reveals. The “one more thing” signature line before Jobs would announce the iMac or the iPod or the iPad or the iPhone. He was a wizard, in a way. He took fans on a ride, enlivening their excitements, stroking their interests and fueling their hopes. He was a vivid story teller. He could capture minds.

#11. He wanted to uplift the world

Above all else, I believe, Steve Jobs was a hippie at heart. A man who wanted to release amazing things into the world. A maker who dreamed as few have and relentlessly stayed true to his ideals. Sure he was broken [aren’t we all?]. Yet, at his core, he was a human being who wanted to build a better world.

I do miss Steve. Our planet was a better place with him on it.

Who is your greatest insipiration? Share with us in the comments section.

October 10, 2019

Small Habits, Big Results

Leadership, Motivation, Productivity, self growth 0

” Most people think that they lack motivation, when what they really lack is clarity.” – James Clear

When he was a teenager, James Clear got hit in the face with a bat during a baseball game. It took surgery and nearly nine months for him to be able to work on regaining basic functions, like walking in a straight line. And even then, he could only focus on developing one tiny new habit a time. But together, these tiny habits turned out to make a difference. Big enough that, in college, he was named an Academic all-American.

Luckily for us, Clear also went on to be an expert in how tiny habits help us reach our potential. Insights he compiled in 2018 New York Times best-selling book, Atomic Habits.

“Excellence is not really about making radical changes,” he says. “It’s about accruing small improvements over time and committing to this philosophy of continuous improvement.”

Put another way, it’s about establishing a system of habits that will help us reach our goals. And this, according to Clear, happens in these four stages: cue, craving, response, reward, which he explains as follows:

• “The cue is a trigger that tells your brain to initiate a habit. It’s a prompt. You walk into the kitchen. You see the plate of cookies. That’s a visual cue that signals the habit of eating cookies.”

• “The craving is the prediction that compels you to act. It’s the way that you interpret the cue. You could imagine someone walks into a kitchen and sees a pack of cigarettes on the counter. If they’re a smoker, they interpret that as, oh, I have a smoking craving. I should pick up a cigarette and smoke it. Someone who’s not a smoker interprets that cue in a totally different way, and so that craving, the prediction that you make about what something means, is what drives you to act or not.”

• “Finally, there’s the habit that you perform, the actual response, and then there’s some kind of outcome, some kind of result. Usually, if a habit sticks, it’s a reward.”

So, what do you do if you want to start a good new habit or stop a bad one? Clear recommends four steps:

1. Make it obvious.

“Behaviors often lead from one to another,” Clear says. You go to the bathroom, which reminds you, I need to wash my hands. So you wash your hands, and that reminds you, I need to dry them off. You pick up the towel, and you’re like, oh, the laundry’s dirty. We’re out of laundry detergent. I need to go to the store and get some.”

Clear recommends using this fact about human behavior to implement new behaviors through intentional “habit stacking.” For example, if you want to meditate, decide that you will do so for a brief, set amount of time directly after you make your morning cup of coffee—so one familiar thing triggers a new one.

“Most people think that they lack motivation, when what they really lack is clarity. What they really lack is understanding when and where they’re going to do something. Habit stacking and implementation intentions can help you get over that,” Clear says.

2. Make it attractive.

“In the 1930s, there was a psychologist named Kurt Lewin who came up with what he calls Lewin’s Equation, which simply means behavior is a function of the person in their environment,” says Clear. “The way that I would describe this for habits is that I’ve never seen a person consistently stick to positive habits in a negative environment.”

The upshot: Design your environment to work for you instead of relying on willpower, which has been found to be far less effective. For example, if you spend too much time scrolling through your phone before getting out of bed in the morning, put your phone in another room and use a clock instead, says Clear.

3. Make it easy.

“Habits often serve as an entry point to our behavior,” says Clear. “They’re like the entrance ramp to a highway. If you can master that entrance ramp, then you often find yourself speeding in the right direction, without having to put a whole lot of more work in.”

Specifically, Clear recommends using what he calls the two-minute rule. “The basic idea is you take whatever habit you’re trying to build and scale it down until it’s just two minutes or less. ‘Read 40 books a year’ becomes ‘read one page.’ ‘Do yoga four days a week’ becomes ‘take out my yoga mat.’ The point is simply focus on what will get you started and build from there.

4. Make it satisfying.

To make a habit satisfying, Clear recommends tracking it on a calendar or through some other visual device to give you a sense of immediate satisfaction from doing it—and then, recognizing that we all will miss out on a new habit from time to time, simply commit to never miss twice.

“It’s almost never the first mistake that ruins you,” he says. “It’s the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows. If you can cut that off at the source, then you find that it doesn’t matter too much in the long run.”

What habits would you want to work on and which ones would you want to lose? Share with us your thoughts in the comments section.

September 26, 2019

Problems Are Real

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Problems as a leader are inevitable, such as: missing deadlines, managing expectations, team friction and poor communication. These certainly cause hurdles contributing to pressure and stress. Whilst some problems can be bigger than others and harder to navigate, it’s not the actual problem but the human mind-set that gets in the way. Leaders get uncomfortable when uncertainty strikes, because within problems, are gaps.

From our early careers and indeed lives, we are guided to smooth things over, fill in the gaps, cover the silences and have everything ‘just so’. Having a gap is often akin to failure. But, problems and gaps actually shape us. They help us to stretch, consider, choose, think, analyse, understand our boundaries and beliefs in order to ultimately, solve and grow. This is also called innovation.

A problem itself is really just fact, a set of non-emotive data. The emotion leaders attach to the fact can be where problems get hard. Emotions can carry people into a spiral particularly when they’ve attached the emotion to something they experienced some time ago, and then allow it to compound over time. The brain seeks to continue to prove what it sees or experiences as true, so we find ways to keep attaching our emotional version to the facts that surround us. Stacking the connections in our neural pathways over and over again, so that it all becomes so big. The good news is: the spiral can be prevented.

In his book, Creativity & Problem Solving, Brian Tracy says: ‘Everybody is inherently creative. Creativity is a tool provided by nature to man to ensure survival, and to deal with the inevitable problems and challenges of daily life.’ If we employed more principles of creativity, we will uniquely solve more problems.

Here are 3 creative principles leaders can practice to allow problems to shape them rather than limit them:

Get more comfortable with not knowing

Life doesn’t come at us in straight lines. Searching for gaps, understanding that sometimes we need to wait, or stand back, or change perspective until an answer appears, is important. Trusting that not knowing can mean gaining a totally new piece of information. It takes self-trust and patience to deal with not knowing. Have you ever had a manager or leader who demonstrated the ability to just slow it down, think and ask questions? Did you feel included, respected and appreciative that they were willing to engage, not just dictate? The answer is likely, yes.

Embrace gaps and increase critical thinking

Realise where emotion meets fact. Look at what is occurring from a critical standpoint. Be critical. Analyse the information in front of you. Write it down, make categories on pages, and fill in what you know to be a fact and what is an emotion. Get used to checking yourself and those around you. What are you placing importance on? Within gaps, so much more can be found if we allow ourselves to look more deeply. That’s where innovation, new ideas and connections will be made. Go a step further and encourage your peers, your board, your teams to use this method in meetings, performance reviews or meetings with importance.

Solve little problems quickly.

Leaving little problems to fester will only make them stronger. The subconscious will continue to ponder, work through, store information even when the conscious isn’t aware of it. If leaders let arguments, financial situations, negative thoughts, worry or any other nagging issues continue unsolved, it will cause the bigger problem to form a stronger foundation. Get used to listening to your thinking. Get used to checking the meaning and coming to the healthy conclusion to put the problem to bed once and for all. No need to waste your energy on what can be solved quickly. Ask the same of the people in your team. Help them to realise what a little problem is versus a small problem. Ask of them to diffuse the little problems to ensure focus is where it should be.

Workplaces deserve the best leaders who have so much impact on those around them. Get used to them, problems happen anyway. Be a problem solver, and a good one at that.

Originally published in The Educator adjusted for Principals (Head of Schools)

August 22, 2019

Own our history. Change the story.

Leadership, self growth leadership, personal growth 0

“When we deny our stories, they define us.
When we own our stories, we get to write a brave new ending.” – Brené Brown

I know this is true. I may have learned it as a researcher but I live this truth as a daughter, a partner, a leader, a sister, a mother, and a friend. When we push down hurt or pretend that struggle doesn’t exist, the hurt and struggle own us.

I’ve learned that writing a brave new ending in our personal lives means:

We can’t smooth over hurt feelings in our families. It’s too easy for stockpiled hurt to turn into rage, resentment, and isolation. We must talk about it. Even when we don’t want to. Even when we’re tired.
We can’t pretend our family histories of addiction and mental health issues don’t exist if our hope is to write a new story and pass that legacy of emotional honesty and health down to our children.
We must own our failures and mistakes so that we can learn and grow. It’s hard but I’ve seen how it becomes part of a family and organizational cultures and unleashes innovation and creativity. It doesn’t feel comfortable, but courage rarely does.

Owning our stories is standing in our truth. It’s transformative in our personal and professional lives AND it’s also critical in our community lives. But we don’t think about history as our collective story.

When we deny our stories, they define us. When we own our stories, we get to write a brave new ending. - Brené Brown Click To Tweet

Until we find a way to own our collective stories around racism in this country, our history and the stories of pain will own us.

We will not get away from the violence and heartbreak. Fear and scarcity will continue to run roughshod over our country. Yes, the violence in Charleston is also about access to guns and, more than likely, mental illness. But it’s also about race.

Our collective stories of race in the US are not easy to own. They are stories of slavery, violence, and systemic dehumanization. We will have to choose courage over comfort. We will have to feel our way through the shame and sorrow. We will have to listen. We will have challenge our resistance and our defensiveness.

We have to keep listening even when we want to scream, “I’m not that way. This isn’t my fault!”

We have to examine and own stereotypes and prejudices. Every single one of us has them. It will be tough.

We will need to sit down with our children and talk about privilege. This means honest conversations about how we were raised and what we need to work on. No blaming or shaming, but truth. It’s not productive to deny how hard we all work for what we have, but it’s not honest to deny that many of us are afforded privileges based on who we are and what we look like.

Will these conversations stop violent hate crimes? No one knows for sure, but we shouldn’t underestimate the power of love and truth-telling.

This is not bigger than us. This is us.

Yes, we need to own a million heartbreaking stories of discrimination and prejudice, and make millions of changes, and hold space for a million tough conversations. But, if each one of us owns one story and makes one change and has one honest conversation where we listen more than defend or offer false comfort – we can do this. There is a way to write a brave new ending to one of the most painful stories in our history. What remains to be seen is if we have the will and courage.

I believe we do.

***This post was originally posted here by Brené Brown. ***

July 25, 2019

Defining Your Talent.

Leadership, self growth growth, purpose, Talent 0

“Everyone has a purpose in life and a unique talent to give to others. And when we blend this unique talent with service to others, we experience the ecstasy and exultation of own spirit, which is the ultimate goal of all goals.” – Kallam Anji Reddy

The crazy thing about talent! In search of a meaningful, happy, and successful life, you find that many people seeking career changes are on a quest to discover their unique talents. However, most find themselves cracking their heads with little clues.

There are two reasons why such seemingly easy tasks are actually challenging: First, there is a vague understanding of the definition of talent and the confusing interchangeable use of its related terms, such as skills, strengths, aptitudes, and personalities.

Second, as a result, there are conflicting beliefs about where talent comes from. Many deem they are born with certain talents defined by certain genes, which are hard to decode. Others believe we are all born with very few natural talents, as any talent can be developed with great efforts.

Let’s tackle these fundamental questions about talent – one of the biggest pieces in your career pivot puzzle – so you can embark on your career-changing journey with more confidence and clarity.

1) “Everyone is born with certain talents” vs. “Talents are the pure results of hard work.”

According to Tom Rath, author of StrengthsFinder 2.0, talent is a natural way of thinking, feeling, or behaving. And when talent is combined with investment of time to practice, it becomes a strength.

Similarly, psychologist Dean Keith Simonton says talent is a “package of personal characteristics” that helps you acquire expertise or enhance your performance quickly. Psychologist Angela Duckworth also acknowledges the existence of natural abilities and emphasises the importance of “grit” in relation to talent, the idea that perseverance might be more critical than your natural abilities.

From my perspective, what all of these varying perspectives have in common is that talent is a set of characteristics you are naturally endowed with that gives you the aptitude for and enjoyment of certain activities. Talent, in this sense, is only the starting point. It informs that you have the potential to be great at something, and in order to be truly great at it, you need to put in hard work.

If someone says you are talented at painting, what that would mean in this instance is that you are not born immediately being great at it, but with a propensity for colours and visuals. Exposure and deliberate practice over time made you a skilled artist. Similarly, when I am said to be talented at speaking, that doesn’t mean I carry the “speaking” genes, but rather, the traits that form my speaking skill, such as connecting with and developing people.

talent is a set of characteristics you are naturally endowed with that gives you the aptitude for and enjoyment of certain activities. Click To Tweet

Therefore, to happily perform at your peak in a role of your choice, focus your time, energy, and efforts on the aspects of the job (and even opportunities beyond the job) that tap on your natural talents to strengthen your talents, thus making them your brand and unleashing the whole you.

If you are in human resources and one of your unique gifts is communication, hone on employee communication. If you are a software engineer and your talent is visual creativity, consider a related hobby such as graphic design.

2) “Talents are set” vs. “Talents evolve.”

Over time, certain aspects of your personality can change for various reasons, such as adaptability or wanting to become a more well-rounded person. Your core traits, however, are relatively stable.

For most, this can mean natural talents are quite set. That said, when you are exposed to the right environment, the other aspects of your personality could become visible. Although your innate talents might stay more or less the same, you likely won’t be able to uncover them. Unless you interact with new activities and environments that activate them.

It’s important to expose yourself to as many areas as possible to find your “hidden” talents in the first place. You may have no clue where to start, use your passions and interests to guide you.

If you have too many passions, lean on your purpose to prioritise. Suppose you like dancing, cooking, photography, and organizing parties equally, but nourishing people’s souls through meaningful messages visually make you feel more purposeful, explore photography.

One person that has managed to do this seamlessly is Stephen Curry the NBA star. Off the court, he has managed to launch, host and direct lots of successful TV shows and movies. Which have nothing to do with basketball but with all things he is passionate about.

Once you find yourself in the “flow” state, work hard on those uncovered talents until you develop your unique skills. Your skillset, rooted in your naturally defined talents, will evolve.

3) “You should focus on the talents you were born with” vs. “You can be talented at anything.”

I’ve found talents give you the double advantage of passion about certain activities and the acceleration of related skill acquisition. When you focus on areas that utilise your talents with consistent practice, you are able to become experts faster and more easily.

Those with a growth mindset believe you can be great at anything if you work on it hard enough. Even without any natural talent in it. So while you are not talented at everything. Practising and putting extra effort on a certain thing outside your talent zone will help you in that area.

In reality, there are rarely jobs that require skills solely within your natural talents. So, if possible, focus on opportunities that allow you to tap into what you are great at. If you are talented at showing empathy, connecting with people, and developing people. You can look for jobs in counselling, teaching, or coaching.

For the skills that are outside your natural talents, practice. You just need to spend a bit more time and effort on them. You can also try outsourcing, delegating, or partnering with someone talented at them.

As technology has become more present and the job market is getting more and more competitive, the best way to stay relevant and irreplaceable is to tap into your natural advantages: your talents. Be aware of them. Workaround them. And enjoy the fruits they bring to your career.

Sports personalities and creatives are the ones at risk, so absorbed in their talent they cannot see outside of it. That said I have been seeing musicians tap into their inner passions and go on to leave a mark in the world. Same with actors, look at the Nipsey Hussle’s and Denzel Washingtons of the world.

So don’t be afraid to tap into unknown spaces just because you feel you are not ”talented” in those areas. If it aligns with your purpose then give it a go.

Share with us your views in the comments section.

April 11, 2019

The Power Of Habits

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“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” – Prov. 22:6.

In my previous post, I quoted Confucius saying that the nature of men is always the same. It is their habits that separate them. This had me thinking that habits must be very powerful if they can separate our nature.

Good habits are not acquired simply by making good resolves, though the thought must precede the action. We develop good habits in the workshop of our daily lives. Great moments of test and trial do not build character, they simply display it. It is the often uneventful, commonplace routine of daily life that fashion the habits that direct our lives and form our character. Our habits are acquired by practice.

Good habits are not acquired simply by making good resolves, though the thought must precede the action. Click To Tweet

King Solomon taught, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” We may not always know what lies ahead, but we find strength and safety in good conduct. We need to organize our lives according to good principles and chart the right course as we journey in life.

Through life, we learn that good character-building habits mean everything. It is by such behaviour that we harness the real substance and value of life. The way we live outweigh any words we may profess to follow. Mahatma Gandhi said, “Man’s destined purpose is to conquer all habits, to overcome the evil in him and to restore good to its rightful place.” This echoes the importance or power of our habits.

Bad habits are a reflection of our thoughts and personalities, our behaviour and conduct. They are degrading to the choice qualities which are our God-given endowments of faith, honesty, integrity, and uprightness. This is where good habits begin. Someone has observed, “When a man boasts of his bad habits, you may rest assured they are the best he has.”

Habits are subject to change and improvement. Our environment and circumstances help in this process which means it is important to be in the right place. Our great challenge is to learn how to control ourselves. We must learn for ourselves and act for ourselves, being careful not to follow those doing wrong. Some may ask who sets the bar? When you engage in a bad habit, you know your habit is bad. You are just not willing to agree because you do not want to change it.

An ancient proverb states that good habits result from resisting temptation. Such resistance often takes the form of a persevering struggle. When bad habits become a part of our lives we need more than a desire to overcome them, we must ACT.
We should become so involved in acquiring good quality traits and participating in character-building activities that there is no time to engage in anything worthless or harmful. Our habits should be those that make us susceptible to growth and development.

The strengths that enable us to set aside the urge to do wrong are self-mastery, self-control, and self-discipline. It is a wonderful feeling to conquer wrong practices and to be free and unencumbered from their detrimental effects. When we have conquered our bad habits and replaced them with good ones, living as we should, then we are on our way to a fulfilled life.

Self-mastery, self-control, and self-discipline are required strengths that enable us to set aside the urge to do wrong. Click To Tweet

Ernest L. Wilkinson, speaking to the students of Brigham Young University, said: “Character … is not something to be obtained by ease and indolence or being socially agreeable. It cannot be acquired by absorption or by proxy or on the auction block. It is a reward derived from honest toil in overcoming difficulties. We grow by mastering tasks which others consider impossible.”

The right behaviour implies a strict adherence to moral principles and honesty of purpose. We need to ask ourselves, “Are my usual thoughts and present actions worthy of a good life? Am I setting my sights on positive goals and working to obtain them?” Anything short of our best isn’t good enough.

December 20, 2018

What Is Your ‘Why’?

Habits, Leadership Different, direction, growth, inspiration, leader, leaders, leadership, lifestyle, personal growth 0

“See how the mass of men worry themselves into nameless graves, while here and there a great unselfish soul forgets himself into immortality.” – Emerson

It is so easy to get caught up in the thick of thin things, to spend a career or a life just reacting to the trivialities of your daily hours rather than using your days to advance the creation of something great.

But leadership is about making things better. It’s about transcending the petty cravings of our egos and donating our lives to build something that will outlast us, a legacy of service. And when we really get this idea, we begin to experience true happiness, perhaps for the first time.
Your life is no accident. You are here for a purpose, some central mission that has the potential to make you extraordinary. Some main aim that – once focused on – breaks all chains that might have previously bound you. Your challenge is to discover your WHY.

Listen, there are no extra people on the planet. Each one of us has our own unique form of genius and authenticity within us that is aching to be accessed. The sad fact is that too many amongst us let the busyness of our lives suffocate the deeper purpose of our hearts. Rather than leading and being our best today, we lie to ourselves and say we’ll make the changes we need to make when the conditions are better. And that day never comes.

So we slowly shut down, the why becomes vague. Discouragement sets in. We start to medicate ourselves with too many petty things such as TV or technology. We smile the fake smile and coast out a life telling people that being brilliant is a fate selected for the chosen few. Rather than realising the truth: we wasted our lives.

I was in the company of a certain gentleman who at just over 60, will be graduating with a law degree in 2019. Now, like me, you are probably thinking to yourself why would he do that, he probably doesn’t have time to establish himself as a lawyer. And you are probably right, but I will tell you that his WHY gives him greater reason not to look at his age but at what needs to be achieved.

I will give you a brief insight into his story, a few years ago he and his wife got divorced and because of a legal error by his lawyer, his wife ended up with all his wealth. So he said to me ” it would take me more time to try and build my wealth all over again than it would take me to study law and represent myself in court and get what is mine.” I will let that sink in a bit.

The moment your ‘why’ is greater than your excuses, the ‘how’ becomes easier. There is no kind of distraction that will move you away from your purpose if you clearly know why you need to do what you need to do.
The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote this in his book Meditations (1 of my favourite books, highly recommend): “Do external things distract you? Then make time for yourself to learn something worthwhile; stop letting yourself be pulled in all directions. But make sure you guard against the other kind of confusion. People who labour all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time—even when hard at work.”

I want you to understand that it is important to live in your purpose not just because every day more of our life is used up and less and less of it is left, but this too: if we live longer, can we be sure our mind will still be up to understanding the world and why we are a part of it?
Without purpose, we’ll still go on breathing, go on eating, imagining things, feeling urges and so on but not getting the most out of ourselves, calculating where our duty lies, analysing what we hear and see, deciding whether it is taking us a step closer to who we are born to be.

So we need to hurry. Not just because we move daily closer to death but also because our understanding, our grasp of the world, may be gone before we get there.
There is only a few days left in 2018, define your why now and begin to move toward it.
Share with us your thoughts in the comments section.

December 13, 2018

The Evolve Or Die Manifesto

Habits, Leadership, Lifestyle chaser, development, direction, goals, growth, manifesto, resolutions 0

“They call every genius crazy” – Kanye West

The highway to the resident genius within you is a massively messy ride. The path to personal heroism and private elevation is confusing, uncomfortable and dangerous. And my loving (I really do love you) and deeply sincere suggestion to you is that, this way of living out the remainder of your life is the wisest and bravest decision you’ll ever make.

Your very legacy depends on this one choice. It does.

Not sure if I’m being super clear for you here, as I wish to be. So allow me to break it down to little bits. We live in a broken world that tries to make us conform to its brokenness:

1 –we flee our creativity and purpose through an addiction to escapism on our phones, mindless video games and following the days of people we don’t even know on the “social” media who only show you what they want you to see from their un-perfect lives; because we all have parts of our lives that are under construction.

2 –a person who fiercely protects their productivity, ferociously expresses their greatest talents and joyfully does work that serves many is considered weird or a show-off.

3 –someone who works really hard, shows up early, over-delivers on expectations, has good manners, sweats tiny details and keeps their promises is called strange.

4 –one who verbally appreciates people, smiles with radiant positivity and looks people in the eyes versus down at some device, wears their feelings on their sleeves and stands for a blinding love of humanity is considered a freak.

5 –an individual who dares to be an individual, soaks in their originality and pursues their own colourful vision of a glorious ambition is labeled an eccentric.

In a damaged world a truly high-functioning human is not only vastly misunderstood. They are seen as broken or a misfit. See, the job of society is to get you to fit in and never stand out. The main aim of our culture is to produce factory workers who think like the herd, behave like the crowd and smother the fire for outright greatness that is the natural birthright of every one of us.

“Don’t you dare think you can play at world-class”, they tell you. “You come from a 3rd world country”, they tell you. “It has never been done before in your lineage”, they tell you. Be not so foolish to believe you can do work that wows, have health that soars and a life that allows you to feel alive. And make history in your own unique way not what society tells you.

Nope, this society we are in wants you to:

1 –Stay on that phone, enslaved.

2 –Numb out those feelings.

3 –Block those brave thoughts.

4 –Stifle the big ideas that would allow you to own your industry and sphere.

5 –Dismiss your instincts to choose mastery over mediocrity of your craft.

6 –Close that heart that longs to open and connect.

7 –Miss the breezes, avoid the magical moments, starry nights, simple food beautifully prepared, children laughing in a playground, a wise book that stirs your soul, music that makes you want to jump like you were 5 again.

8 –And definitely, don’t talk to strangers.

This is the world that we are in now, where the need to fit in is greater than the need to stand out. Now I need you to understand this, I’ve never said I was a guru at this. Never. No interest in that. No need for you to applaud me, appreciate me or elevate me. I have my talents. And I have my flaws. I have my precious hopes for the future and carry the scars of my past cuts. Very imperfect. Just a man. Trying to be a light.

I love the line that says: everyone seems normal—until you get to know them. All I’m saying in this message is this, the things that make you a misfit in the eyes of the majority are the very things that make you special and great, beautiful and a standout. These are your gifts.

Maybe today, you and I will start honouring how we’re built. Celebrating what makes us who we are. And cherishing our personal wiring. George Bernard Shaw made the point so much more brilliantly than I can in this moment:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

In 2019, if you are to have what very few have you need to do what very few do. By these words I mean that to experience the rewards of the top .001% of producers on the planet, think Mandela, Gandhi, Musk, Branson, Serena, Messi, Da Vinci, Basquiat, Dangote, Masiyiwa—and that legendary Starbucks barista at the Melbourne airport named Alya who utterly models possibility, you need to get super-cool with being an outcast. And this is because every visionary is first ridiculed before they become revered.

So if you want your next year to be different I also strongly encourage you to let go of all your excuses and make the choice that will beautifully and swiftly elevate the rest of your life according to the purpose within you. There is only one you, and only you can do things the way that you do. So go out there and be unapologetically YOU.

If this post validates the way you would really love to start living and if you feel you’re finally ready to express your gifts, declare victory over your fears, feel extraordinarily happy, strong, peaceful and rise to a way of being that’s world-class then share with us your story in the comments section. We would love to hear it and cheer you on.

November 29, 2018

Why Love Is Harder Than We Imagined

Leadership, Motivation, self growth inspiration, life, motivation, self acceptance, true 0

Love is the biggest idea on the planet. And the hardest to do well.

I had an interesting discussion today about how as people we search for and crave a happy ending all in the name of love. Even to the point of lowering or disregarding our own standards in our quest to be loved. It made me realise that Love is such a big idea. Such a bold declaration. Such a beautiful ideal. And a huge life and leadership challenge. But what really is Love?

Our world is awash with declarations of love, opinions on love, perspectives of love, commentary about love, and celebrations of being in love. It’s the most unifying ideal we can aspire to. Because love really IS love.

Because this is true then we have a perfect window to make love even more real because when it’s real it impacts people near and far and it makes tribes work better for a better world and a better world means a better future for every single one of us. Love makes us believe in a better world. Love invites us to count the cost for that better world.

Today I realised that Love has five profound dimensions. All radically transformative, deeply challenging, astonishingly costly. Equally though, these five dimensions have points of divergence that ironically can make us truly UNloving in our motives, our speech and our behaviour.

These dimensions are:

Loving ourselves.

Loving our family or team.

Loving the tribe we belong to.

Loving the movement we believe in.

Loving the planet we both occupy, share and steward.

We are connected to each of these dimensions of love by a form of glue that is then in turn endangered by particular behaviours that invite us to practice an ‘opposite’ behaviour/attitude to make love better. At one level love is the most perfectly agreeable ideal. Until we don’t agree. Then what happens to love and how do we do it well under pressure or in the face of strong, emotional and often credible divergence? Love takes work. Work that has the humility to disagree and still love. To be angry and still love. To be wise in the application of love.

Love is the best ideal on our planet and by far the hardest to do consistently well. Love starts with self. You can only love to the extent you know you are loved and you accept you are loved. This deep truth transcends any worldview and impacts every worldview. Your ability to love others is a direct reflection of your ability to love your self. Practice self-acceptance, personal formation and cultivate a circle of people dedicated to your wholeness.

Criticism, misunderstanding and unforgiveness haven’t just caused relationships, teams and families to break down, they’ve caused war, famine, poverty and destruction on immeasurable scales. The Montagues and the Capulets may well have forgotten what they were divided over but divided they stayed until love divided them and united them even more deeply.

The best antidote for selfishness is service and sacrifice. In fact, love as sacrifice is our best motif. The servant leader, the caring teammate, the courageous soldier. Tribes with deeply embedded culture must work at the behaviours that foster connectedness, empowerment, service, championing one another, celebrating success and learning from loss. Protecting who you are in order to become who you must be.

Movements are most effective when it’s leaders practice the heart and hands of humility. Realising that we are not indispensable and our role is to be both a feet washer and a hand lifter. To guide, guard, govern and serve. To believe on the mission as passionately as we believe in the people who carry the mission forward. To remind ourselves of the why and protect against any exploitation of person or resource.

At this stage, we have one planet to occupy. One to steward. One to care for. It’s the human extremes and the human indifference that may cost us our future. Plastic filling our oceans. Poverty punishing our neighbours. War cutting short the life of children. Ego running countries. Species losing their habitats. Feeling paralysed about doing anything so we do nothing. Love begins with one. Love that starts small can stand tall and make a small difference to our big planet.

Leaders that love know both the beauty AND the cost of love. They know the gift and the dangers of love, they know the capacity for love to bring a convergence and connectedness that cannot be manufactured. They equally know the dangers, the differences, the very real cost of it going wrong. In the words resounding around the world right now and creating all sorts of loving and less than loving responses, Rev Michael Curry said this… “Imagine a world where love is the way. Imagine our homes and families when love is the way. Imagine neighbourhoods where love is the way. Imagine governments and nations where love is the way. Imagine business and commerce when love is the way. Imagine this tired old world when love… sacrificial love is the way. Then no child would go to bed hungry ever again! Love is the way that poverty will become history.”

Leaders get love, even better, leaders get to do love and try as best to acknowledge the challenges of love as mere tolerance. We should aim higher than just mere tolerance.

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