Bright Life

Team Development? Safety First

Are you involved in developing a team – maybe a team you lead, or your peer group? This simple principle can make all the difference:

people and teams will develop to the degree that they feel safe.

What do I mean by safe? Oh c’mon, you know!

Are you aware, in some conversations or meetings, of suddenly feeling unsafe? Do you notice when the mood in the room shifts to a threatened, defensive environment? That’s what unsafe feels like.

When we’re working with people, sometimes we just want to push them to do better, or get the truth on the table. The tricky thing is, we’ll only be able to get better results, or the truth on the table in a productive way, to the extent that we have created a safe environment in which to do so.

Without safety, we can’t do anything.

So what creates safety?

Lots of things, and the most important of them all is rapport – your rapport with individuals and the group, and their rapport with each other.

Start with rapport, and focus on rapport as a success measure for your team. Does rapport mean always agreeing? Absolutely not. Rapport means we can disagree and stay in right relationship with each other.

Try it and see. And remember, safety first.

Leadership and Team Development – with Horses [Video]

Did you know that horses make excellent coaches for leadership style, communication strategy, and non verbal skills?

It’s true.

Horses are exquisitely sensitive to our presence, feelings, energy and non verbal skills.

They provide instant, non judgmental feedback that we can use to make useful adjustments to our communication skills.

My friends June Simmonds and Jo Simpson are doing excellent work using interaction with horses to develop teams in an unusual way.

Check out what they are up to by watching this video (it was made by my good friends at UKS&V):

Let me know what you think!

How to Have Killer Presentation Skills

I was recently sent (thanks Andy at UKSV) a link to this excellent video on Youtube.

It covers all the basics of good presenting, and is a must watch if you are looking to brush up or develop your presenting skills. Two of my favourite tips occur in the first couple of minutes of the video.

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Making Time to Celebrate

Today is a special day for me. Why? Because I’m celebrating the success of my business over the last year.

3 years ago, I made an agreement with my bank manager. I set a financial goal for my business, and we agreed that if I reached it he would buy me lunch. If I exceeded it by 25%, he’d buy me lobster for lunch.

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Steve Jobs – Doing Great Work

Well, I don’t know anybody who doesn’t get something out of Steve Jobs’ famous commencement address at Stanford University.

Watch what this remarkable man had to say about his life and work.  I love his motto ‘do great work’.  It’s the only way to be satisfied in life.

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Experience is a Key to Peak Performance

Have your heard about the 10,000 hour idea? Both Malcolm Gladwell, in Outliers, and Matthew Syed, in Bounce, advance the notion that peak performance – excellence – in anything is a product of practice.  10,000 hours of practice, to be exact.

Of course, it’s more complicated than that. Spending 10,000 hours practicing the wrong things won’t make you excellent (although you’ll probably still be pretty good by the end of it).

What interests me is the idea that practice is an end in itself. So many of us are focused on improving ourselves and our performance.  What if we just practiced, instead?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately in terms of how coaching relationships develop. As a coach, sometimes I perform well, sometimes less well, and sometimes we’re just engaged in the discipline of the coaching approach. I’ve seen continued engagement with the practice of coaching produce huge results for my clients. And for me.

So, the next time you feel anxious about your performance, remember this: some days you perform well, other days less well, and lots of days you just practice.  Focus on putting miles on the clock, logging hours of experience, as an end in itself, and watch what happens.

Over to you, let me know what you think in the comments section below.

Balancing the Inner and Outer Worlds

When you think about connecting with people, do you ever feel that you don’t have much to say?  I’m the most extroverted person I know, and yet sometimes I just don’t feel like talking.  Other times, I’m with people and I feel myself come alive.

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Want results? Get Intentional

I’ve just come back from a fantastic two weeks visiting family and friends in the US.  While we were there, we made a special detour to visit our very special friends Chuck and Diane Blakeman.

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