Joe Hart 2/6/20 Joe Hart 2/6/20

Pattern Recognition: Helpful or Harmful?

Like it or not, much of our behaviour can be explained by instincts or as Google defines it, our “natural or intuitive way of acting or thinking.” Indeed, instincts are a type of pattern that is built into us, hardcoded if you will. These include sexual desire and attraction, hunger and the assimilation of food, the dizzy feeling you have when looking over the edge of an extremely high building or cliff, and the strange sensation you get when someone doesn’t quite seem right or appears to be lying to you.

In fact, today, as I was sitting at my desk I noticed a man dressed in high vis gear while talking on his phone walking down my driveway. As soon as he spotted me sitting in my office staring back at him, he quickly turned around and walked back up the driveway. At first glance, this could be disregarded as someone that got the wrong address or a trade worker wanting to do some maintenance. The strange thing about this guy is that he did exactly the same thing last week. While it seemed strange last week I was in the middle of a client call when it happened so I couldn’t chase him down to find out who he was and what he wanted. Today, however, I was free, so I promptly followed him up the street. He continued to have what looked like quite an animated conversation while he was walking and after about 30 metres he put his phone in his pocket, he then turned around and saw me following. Without skipping a beat, he kept walking, pulled his phone back out of his pocket and picked up with the animated conversation. By this stage, I was pretty certain this guy was up to no good and wasn’t really having a conversation with anyone. Cautious but curious, I kept following him to see if he was going to get in a car or truck….assuming he was a tradie. He got to a street corner and stopped so I kept walking. He stood with his back to me continuing to ‘talk’ on his phone for about 2mins. I waited patiently maintaining 1.5 metres of a distance of course. He put his phone away and turned to me with a steely look in his eye. I asked, “ Are you alright there mate?”. Cool as a cucumber, he said that he was waiting for a delivery and needed to figure out if the truck could turn around in our driveway. This might be a plausible explanation on a country road but not for a house that’s on a six-lane, divided road Highway such is ours! Predictably, it turned out that there was no truck, just his van that is most likely full of stolen goods from other properties he managed to successfully ‘hit’. I managed to capture a pic of his van without him noticing me and promptly reported his registration details to the police.

In the above example, it’s easy to see how my interpretation of a behavioural pattern triggered an instinctual response for me to act. Noticing patterns in behaviour, allows you to appropriately take action when you see something that doesn’t quite ‘fit’. The problem with this is, now, every time I see someone in high vis gear walk down our driveway, I’ll be more vigilant in my assessment of their intentions. In some cases, like mine, it’s probably a good thing but in others - like soldiers returning from war- it can lead to issues such as anxiety, depression or PTSD.

Pattern recognition is a powerful tool to evaluate what to do next, and in many assessments used by organisations to select candidates based on their ‘fluid intelligence’, tests of abstract reasoning examine your ability to spot patterns and determine the correct response in the sequence. In this way, correctly interpreting patterns is a huge advantage for human beings both past and present….but I’m not so sure about the future. Patterns are thought to be behaviours that have evolved to help us survive and succeed in our natural environment. While this is true for the majority of the time, our environment is changing more rapidly than our natural more intuitive ways of acting or thinking and therein lies the problem. Our environment barely resembles anything ‘natural’ anymore. We are walking around with some seriously powerful hardware in our heads (talking about our brains here) with an ever-changing environment that is becoming increasingly complex year on year. Our software (patterns and instincts) is in many ways, horribly outdated. This is the equivalent to playing the first version of space invaders on a modern PC. Unless the program has been updated and adapted to the new operating system, it simply won’t work or will be compromised at the very least.

While there are our baseline instinctual patterns that are largely automatic and often, irrelevant, the future belongs to those that can begin to write their own code, design new patterns that serve as behavioural blueprints and set the example for others. We typically know these people as ‘leaders’ in modern society but I like to think of them as ‘Pattern Programmers’ or ‘Pattern Hackers’. These people have learned the art of programming their own behaviours to meet the needs of their environment. It takes effort, discipline and tonne of self-awareness but the result is a ripple that grows exponentially along with their contributions to society. A recent example is Bill Gates, who is in my opinion, one of the greatest pattern hackers of all time. He has the ability to identify patterns in behaviour and extrapolate what that means for industries, countries and in the case of COVID-19, the world. If you haven’t already watched it, have a look at Bill’s Ted Talk from 2015 where he outlines the risk of a global pandemic and the world’s inability to respond to it appropriately.

The truth is, while not everyone will learn how to ‘write their own code’ so to speak, we are all walking around with pretty much the same hardware in our heads. It’s the programming that you do that’s going to set you apart…and like anything hard, it’s something you can learn. You’re not always going to get it right, but it’s time to evolve your ability to respond to your environment proactively because our inbuilt programming is no longer sufficient. Whether you have a suspicious character wanting to rob your house or want to be the next Bill Gates, I’m certain that if you consciously work on shaping your mindset and how you interpret your environment, you’ll be better at recognising patterns that will help you succeed.

If you’re interested in exploring your own patterns more, download my pattern recognition worksheet and send me a note if you need any help with it.

Pattern Recognition Worksheet

References

Bill Gates’ Ted Talk 2015 - https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_the_next_outbreak_we_re_not_ready?language=en#t-128669

WANT TO EXPERIENCE COACHING?

Are you keen to explore coaching? Not sure if it’s right for you? Got someone in your team that you think could benefit? I know that making first contact can be tough, especially if you have doubts. Book in your obligation free first session to see if I’m the right fit for you.

Book in a free session here

NEED HELP WITH CULTURE, OR TEAM ENGAGEMENT?

As a registered Organisational Psychologist, I’ve got the skills and capability to help you master your culture and engagement challenges. I also spent 7 years working for GALLUP, a world leader in engagement, discovering the best strategies to engage your team, enhance productivity and increase profitability. Book in a call below to discuss how I can support you.

Free culture and engagement strategy session

Did you like this Article?

If you liked this article, have a look at some of my other articles here or sign-up to my list to receive my articles directly into your inbox each week. If you think someone might like to read them too, simply forward this email on to them.

Yes please, I want more articles!

CHECK-OUT WHAT ELSE I DO

I love writing articles but just in case you were wondering, it’s not all I do. Have a look at my website to discover some of my services, what my clients say about me, and some other interesting facts.

Got to my website

A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ME

I’m fascinated with people, always have been and always will be. From a very early age, I keenly observed people, I was curious about what motivated them, what made them successful and why they made certain choices. This curiosity led me to study Psychology. After graduating with my Master of Organisational Psychology, I worked for Gallup, a global leader in engagement and strengths-based development. I became a strengths-based coach, engagement expert and worked with senior leaders all over the world.

If you’re curious about how I can help you personally or with the leadership of your team/organisation get in touch via my email: joe@joehart.com.au | website: joehart.com.au | Phone: +61425 224 825

Learn more

Joe Hart 21/5/20 Joe Hart 21/5/20

What's the value of coaching? Is it really worth it?

Like any ‘new’ (relatively speaking) area of practice, executive coaching has had its fair share of scrutiny regarding the Return On Investment, the efficacy, and ultimately the value it generates. There is a growing body of evidence supporting what we already knew, effective coaching has a positive and observable impact on employee performance, engagement, wellbeing, self-regulation, goal attainment, and transformational leadership (Burt & Talati, 2017; Teebom et, at, 2014; Jones, et.al, 2016; O'Connor & Cavanagh, 2014). In other words, it works and if you’re smart, you’ll seek out coaching for yourself, your team and make it accessible to the rest of the organisation.

The ‘ROI’ of Coaching

Of course, variables such as capabilities of coach, scope and length of coaching, the willingness of the coachee to engage and the environment the coaching is happening all play a major role in coaching success. For the sake of this discussion, let’s assume 1) The capability of the coach is high 2) The coachee is willing to engage and 3) The environmental context is conducive to a successful coaching outcome. With these conditions being met, coaching becomes an opportunity to express freely, experiment with ideas, test new behaviours and develop as a person and a leader. As outlined in his research (Grant, 2012) the late Anthony Grant, founder of the first Masters of Coaching Psychology course in the world, suggested that traditional ROI calculations were misleading and ineffective in explaining the positive impact of coaching. As such, trying to put a dollar figure to a coaching engagement has often resulted in highly spurious and misleading figures. In many ways, trying to place a dollar value on the impact coaching has had on a person is like asking somebody to explain the worth, in dollars, of the relationship they have with a close friend, spouse or child. While it is possible to come up with a number, as sophisticated as the formula may be, it is likely to produce a dollar amount that doesn’t ‘feel’ right.

The value of coaching for an individual- Wellbeing & engagement

Rather than try to put a dollar value to the impact coaching has had on a person, a much better way to evaluate coaching efficacy is to measure outcomes such as wellbeing, engagement (both leader and their team), goal attainment, and transformational leadership. After all, if we can see a positive shift in a leaders behaviour, it creates a positive ripple that flows through every interaction both direct and indirect with that leader. Moreover, this positive ripple acts just like a stone dropping in the centre of a still pond. The ripples gently expand in all directions, so relationships in all areas of a leaders’ life will be enhanced through the process of coaching.

The value of coaching for organisations- The ripple effect

When I engage with organisations, usually with an intact leadership team, and sometimes with a broader cohort of leaders, I get to see how this ‘ripple effect’ contributes to enhancing organisational culture. At the core of it, culture is made of the relationships, beliefs and behaviours that are collectively shared in the organisation (I recently wrote an article on organisational culture that goes into more detail you can read here). At times I have been able to engage with employees at all levels in the hierarchy from the Managing Director, senior managers, middle managers right through to the front line staff, all in the same organisation. Being able to observe the beliefs, behaviours and relationships that perpetually reinforce the culture at all levels was astounding. The depth of insight a coach is able to access is comparable to an artist shifting from painting a figure on a canvas to sculpting in three dimensions. The result is far more accurate, observable from every angle and highly nuanced. In a study by Sean 0’Connor and Michael Cavanagh (2014), they measured the positive impact of coaching within an organisation using Social Networking analysis. They demonstrated that coaching enhanced wellbeing of coachees but also those that were closely connected to them. The authors concluded that the positive influence of leadership coaching extends beyond the individual being coached.

The value of the ‘immeasurable’

Just imagine for a moment, that you are at the top of your game, you’ve always enjoyed success and have been rewarded throughout your career for your capability. You’ve seen others struggle at times and wondered why they weren’t able to ‘work harder’ or ‘push through’ to succeed. The very next day, you get a call from your CEO explaining that you have been terminated and an envelope with a severance package was in transit to your home, you are no longer required to go to work. Regardless of the legitimacy of the reason for termination, the value of the severance package, nothing feels fair.

In another example, imagine you are at the beginning of your career and you have landed a massive opportunity to step into a leadership role. You don’t feel ready, you know you don’t have the experience or capability to be a great leader yet but somehow got the role. You feel out of your depth, anxious to succeed but not sure where to start. The day before you were to start your new role, you get a call from an old mentor who offers you sage advice, allays your fears and reinforces their belief in you. You feel an inner confidence rise, your voice takes on a new timber and a calm feeling of ‘I’ve got this’ washes over you.

Finally, I’d like you to imagine that you are a great leader, your team admires you, your organisation rewards you for your success but still, you want to be better. Like a boxer fighting with his shadow, you know you can’t get better at your craft until you have someone real to spar with. The problem is, you don’t know where to find them but you know that to continue to improve you need to be challenged.

In the above scenarios, the value placed on what each person needs is highly subjective, extremely context-specific and would be very difficult to translate into a dollar figure. However, if I was to suggest that as the terminated executive, should you not get any support, you would fall into a deep depression and never find your feet again, what value would you place on getting some help? Similarly, as the upcoming first-time leader, what if I was to tell you that without adequate mentoring and guidance you would fail and likely never want to dip your toe in leadership again. Last but not least, if you were the admired leader that never found somebody to challenge you beyond your current capability, you would lose your motivation to improve along with your far-reaching influence.

The true value of coaching

Like all the best sportspeople in the world, whether it be a team or individual sport they all have coaches. Would they still be great athletes without a coach? Absolutely. Would they achieve the same level of success without coaching? Not likely. There’s a point at which the dollar value you place on the intervention becomes less important than what it means to you. In business, it’s the same. While knowing that it will help you be more successful financially is a critical decision-making insight, the real (immeasurable) value comes with the ability to clearly articulate that which is most important to you and focus all of your effort on it. That clarity and the associated change in thought, feeling and behaviour is the true value of coaching.

References

Burt, D. & Talati, Z. (2017) The unsolved value of executive coaching: A meta-analysis of outcomes using randomised control trial studies. International Journal of Evidence-Based Coaching and Mentoring, 15(2)17-24.

Grant, A. (2012). ROI is a poor measure of coaching success: Towards a more holistic approach using a well-being and engagement framework. Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice, 5(2), 74-85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17521882.2012.672438

Jones, R. J., Woods, S. A., & Guillaume, Y. R. F. (2016). The effectiveness of workplace coaching: A meta-analysis of learning and performance outcomes from coaching. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 89(2), 249–277. https://doi.org/10.1111/joop.12119

O’connor, S. & Cavanagh, M. (2014). Research Poster. The Coaching Ripple Effect: The individual and Systemic Level Influence of Leadership Development. http://www.psywb.com/content/3/1/2.

Theeboom, T., Beersma, B., & van Vianen, A. (2014) Does coaching work? A meta-analysis on the effects of coaching on individual-level outcomes in an organizational context, The Journal of Positive Psychology, 9:1, 1-18, DOI: 10.1080/17439760.2013.837499

Joe Hart 13/5/20 Joe Hart 13/5/20

Who needs coaching anyway?

The obvious answer to this question is everyone. However, there is a bit more to it than that. First and foremost, the coachee is taking on the role of a learner, and as with any type of learning you need to be up for it. When I was completing my Higher School Certificate (HSC), I recall how disengaged I was in my English class, reluctantly reading ‘Macbeth’ and ‘The Crucible’ in what felt like some sort of punishment. Ironically, once I completed my final exams I had a stack of books beside my bed that included ‘The catcher in the rye’, ‘Crime and punishment’, ‘In the skin of a lion’ ‘Doors of perception’ and ‘A clockwork orange’. Clearly, my choice in books following the HSC rules out avoiding a challenging read. The only thing that shifted is my mindset. Specifically, it was that I got to choose what I wanted to learn.

In my last article, I explored what coaching is and how it might benefit anyone that is curious. Following on from this, I wanted to explore the question of who might need it.

Mindset Matters

When engaging with your coach, if you feel as though you are being given the ‘required reading’ it’s never going to work. You need to want to learn, engage, and be willing to experiment with your coach. I recently wrote an article entitled ‘How coachable are you?’ detailing the traits that I believe lead to a successful coaching experience when embodied by both coach and coachee. Above all else, coaching will be rewarding when grounded on openness, curiosity, and a willingness to learn. In addition, below is a list of common patterns of behaviour that I know can benefit from the value coaching has to offer. I’m not a big fan of labels, but it does help people identify and diagnose where they, or somebody they know, tends to fit. Have a look at the below descriptors and see if you can identify your patterns of behaviour.

Personality Matters

The Floater - This is somebody feeling disengaged with their work, their relationships and their life in general. They don’t feel like anything is wrong as such, but they lack purpose and conviction in what they do. They want more out of life but they’re also comfortable. Deep down they know they are missing out but struggle to conjure up the motivation to do anything about it. They often say to themselves ‘Is this it?….I expected more out of life’. With the right coach, they will re-connect with what energizes them and start contributing to their own life again.

The Self Saboteur - There are many and varied reasons why these people engage in self-sabotage, but they do. This can look like staying out late before an important meeting, presentation or interview, to speaking poorly about their friends or colleagues behind their backs. They actively jeopardise their personal relationships with risky behaviour, emotionally charged attacks and combative discussion. They know that they are ‘out of line’ but just aren’t sure how to control themselves. They often describe themselves as their own worst enemies and greatly benefit from the support and guidance offered by a coach.

The Imposter - They may or may not be suffering from what’s commonly known as ‘Imposter Syndrome’ but they definitely question their capability. They often find themselves asking ‘why me?’ if selected to lead an important project or take on a leadership role. Their humility works against them and tends to erode their confidence to the point that others take note. A coach will challenge them to lead more powerfully, doing away with any self-doubt.

The Know-it-all - These are the last people on the planet that will voluntarily seek out coaching. That is of course because they believe they have nothing to learn. They appear pompous, arrogant, aloof and are often very clever in a book smart sort of way. Vulnerability is like their Kryptonite. They don’t like being around people that show vulnerability and cringe at the idea of being vulnerable themselves. Their self-awareness is typically low so should they engage in coaching, it will likely be a challenging road ahead for both coach and coachee.

The Go-Getter - Highly ambitious, these people are keen to use any advantage they can get to ensure they hit their goals. They are open to being challenged, want to know the answers and are eager to test things out. They are usually conscientious, driven, hard-working and fast-paced. Their hunger to learn is a great match for coaching as is the perspective they will gain from a skilled coach.

The Mentor - Whether they have the formal role of mentor or not, these are the people always counselling others, giving their time and energy to everyone around them. They love their role as an adviser but often describe having low levels of energy, high levels of frustration and find it difficult to ask for help. They are often more senior and have high levels of experience so their positioning in the organisation and in life makes it hard for them to seek support. A coach is critical for these people to ensure they can continue to provide their leadership to others without suffering exhaustion or burnout.

Context Matters

It addition to the behaviour patterns above, there are circumstances created by the environment that coaching can help with too. These include:

Change in job/role/career - This might be someone new to leadership, someone, that has been made redundant, someone looking to change their career or level up in their role. It can also include a leader looking to re-orient their team, engage their workforce or enhance the culture. When facing such challenges, a coach can help overcome blockers and navigate through the choppy waters.

Personal challenges - As much as some people like to believe that they can keep personal and work life separate, they can’t. This is especially true when your personal life falls apart. For most people, talking about their terminally ill parents, kids struggling with sexual identity, messy break-ups, financial problems, and overall family drama is not something to raise in the Monday morning meeting. While I’d like to think that managers out there can handle these types of conversations, many of us can present evidence to suggest otherwise. Having a coach enables people to express their challenges without feeling judged and to openly discuss what support is available to them. The difference a single conversation can make to a person can mean the difference between life and death. Unfortunately, we have a long way to go as a society in remedying this challenge.

Relationship Conflict - This largely depends on the experience of the coach, but odds are your coach has exceptional communication skills and is, therefore, able to help resolve relationship challenges. This is different to a formal mediation process initiated by Human Resources (which is, of course, the right thing to do when complaints have been raised). I’m referring to the point before the conflict is escalated so there is still hope of working through any differences. This can be between individuals or even for a whole team but certainly depends on the capability and experience of the coach.

Performance issues - This one comes with a caveat that a coach should never be used to replace the role of a manager. If however, there are known performance issues and the employee has been placed on a clear performance improvement plan, coaching is a powerful way for the organisation to demonstrate a genuine desire for them to succeed. The assumption here is that the employee acknowledges and agrees there is an issue with their performance and are committed to doing everything it takes to lift their game.

High performance - Unfortunately, when people and teams demonstrate great performance in their role or on a project, they are usually ‘rewarded’ with extra work due to their competence. They can sometimes be pushed into a leadership role before they are ready, commonly known as the ‘Peter Principle’. They get pushed and pulled around the organisation feeling pressured to maintain their reputation, slowly becoming less engaged. Too often, they are overlooked as candidates for coaching because their numbers are good, their projects are on time, and ‘you already have a plan’ for them. As a coach, what’s great about working with high performing people is they are so driven to improve. Giving them a coach is like fanning the flames of their personal growth and development.

As you can gather, coaching can be applied to a variety of personality types across a myriad of situations. What remains consistent in successful coaching engagements is the mindset of openness, curiosity and willingness to learn. If you’ve taken one thing from this article, I hope it’s strong agreement that coaching matters.

WANT TO EXPERIENCE COACHING?

Book in a free session here

NEED HELP WITH CULTURE, OR TEAM ENGAGEMENT?

Free Culture and Engagement strategy session

Did you like this Article?

Yes please, I want more articles!

CHECK-OUT WHAT ELSE I DO

Learn more

A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ME

Joe Hart 12/5/20 Joe Hart 12/5/20

What is coaching?

One of my colleagues once described coaching as "A conversation with yourself that you normally don't make time for". While I'm unsure of the source, I find it to be of the best descriptions in conveying the essence of what coaching is all about. Of course, many coaches take a more traditional 'instructional' approach to coaching which feels more like a parent barking orders at a child, or a manager telling employees what to do. While this works for some and will continue to have its place, it's not the type of coaching that I engage in.

For a moment, I'd like you to imagine being completely isolated and unable to speak with anyone. You are left with your thoughts, desires, regrets, aspirations, feelings, past failures and achievements. You have no contact with the outside world, no news, no TV, no books, no phone calls, just your thoughts accompanied by your voice inside your head, lonely and lost. After a period of isolation that feels a lot longer than it has been, you can take a walk in the park. Still, you have no contact with anybody, you are alone and quiet. As you walk through the meandering pathways, you notice the tall trees and the flame-coloured leaves falling in the Autumn breeze, feet crunching through the blanket of dry foliage already on the ground. You Notice a person sitting on a bench nearby on the other side of the park, smiling, eyes closed with their hands gently clasped over their belly, basking blissfully in the sun. You slowly approach then sit beside them hesitantly. After a few awkward moments, not knowing what to say, you shuffle in your seat, relax, then close your eyes and bask in the sun also. The warmth strokes your eyelids and feels so good, you feel safe, and at peace. You are no longer alone. When you open your eyes, the light is harsh, forcing you to squint. You glance at the seat beside you and see that they are gone "Not possible" you say to yourself "They were sitting right here beside me". You stand up hurriedly, elevated on your toes, you quickly scan the park to see where they have gone. You return to the bench, this time you slump, head in hands. While you are looking at the ground you notice the trail you left in the leaves, a clear impression made by your feet. You see no other trail or footprints, just yours. Then it suddenly dawns on you, it was you all along, you saw yourself, you sat with yourself, you enjoyed being with yourself, you led yourself, you were never alone.

I wrote the above short story in an attempt to convey the enigma of what coaching feels like, knowing that it feels a little different for everybody. It can be confusing, challenging, strange, heartwarming, enlightening, and empowering all at the same time. Above all else, coaching is unique to you. If you are willing and courageous enough to see yourself in everything that you do, you will grow. One of my colleagues once described coaching as "A conversation with yourself that you normally don't make time for". While I'm unsure of the source, I find it to be of the best descriptions in conveying the essence of what coaching is all about. Of course, many coaches take a more traditional 'instructional' approach to coaching which feels more like a parent barking orders at a child, or a manager telling employees what to do. While this works for some and will continue to have its place, it's not the type of coaching that I engage in.

I align with the philosophy of enabling people to be 'all of who they are' but first it requires 'meeting my clients where they are at'. I've recently been watching the Netflix series 'The Last Dance' which features the coaching relationship between Michael Jordan and Phil Jackson. Following his first NBA championship victory in 1991 with the Chicago Bulls, as Michael Jordan celebrates, Phil Jackson says "You did it the right way". Phil Jackson was the first coach that didn't want to give Michael Jordan the ball all the time. Understandably, Jordan was frustrated by this as he was the most talented player on the team. It took three years, but through Phil Jackson's coaching, Michael Jordan learned that by lifting the capability of his teammates and being selfless with the ball he enabled the team and his leadership to elevate. Indeed, the winning points were not scored by Michael Jordan but were scored off a pass he assisted, hence Phil Jackson's comment that "You did it the right way".

Now for the more formal definition. Coaching is a development process that involves the expert use of questions, discussion, clarification, activities, feedback and thought experiments to shift perspectives, find clarity and achieve outcomes. Coaching is typically conducted with two people, the coach and the learner, or otherwise known as the coachee. However, coaching can be done with multiple coachee's and in many cases, a coach works with an entire team. Coaching is a broad discipline and as such, anyone with expertise in their chosen field can be classified as a coach. You find coaches in Sports, the Arts (such as voice coaching, presentation skills, acting, body language etc., Business, Education, Politics, Health care, and Personal relationships (and I'm sure there are more that I haven't mentioned here).

While the application is vast, the common thread is the two-way exchange of dialogue that enables a coachee to improve or enhance their understanding, insight, capability and confidence in at least one domain of expertise. Take, for example, a young athlete that is showing early promise of becoming an Olympic runner, they will likely engage a coach to ensure that they continue to improve their skills to reach their maximum potential. Similarly, coaching can also be effective in supporting a student that is struggling with mathematics to improve their understanding so they can progress their studies. Equally, a coach may be deemed necessary in the business context to help a new manager succeed in handling the additional responsibilities thrust upon them in their leadership role. At the core of it, each of the coachees mentioned above is looking to improve. Whether that be from a baseline that is below or above average, they are all seeking support and guidance to enhance their capability. In other words, they are all seeking to become all of who they already are or reach their full potential.

WANT TO EXPERIENCE COACHING?

Book in a free session here

NEED HELP WITH CULTURE, OR TEAM ENGAGEMENT?

Free Culture and Engagement strategy session

Did you like this Article?

Yes please, I want more articles!

CHECK-OUT WHAT ELSE I DO

Learn more

A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ME

Joe Hart 5/5/20 Joe Hart 5/5/20

Leadership Lessons: Where is your focus?

To focus on the throw is to be strategic, to be consistent and to be accountable. To achieve any sort of gains in life be it putting on some muscle in the gym, winning the trust of your team as a leader or increasing your speed and power as a fighter, you need to demonstrate wisdom. That is, the wisdom to know that the work you put in today will be reflected in the result tomorrow. Too often, we get so focussed on the outcome that we forget to put in the work required to get us there. Once again, that’s what I call focussing on the catch, not the throw.

One of my top strengths, as identified by Gallup’s CliftonStrengths assessment, is Adaptability. Adaptability is a talent theme that is all about being present in the moment, embracing spontaneity, staying calm in a crisis and shifts priorities to meet the needs of valued relationships. Like all talents, there is a ‘dark side’ or ‘shadow trait’ too. The shadow traits are reactivity, a dislike for long-term goal setting, putting the needs of others before your own and a lack of discipline. These shadow traits, if not managed, can become weaknesses preventing me from succeeding.

An example of how I work hard to manage the shadow traits of Adaptability is through my dedication and practice of juggling. I have been juggling for 25 years in total with varying commitment levels over the years. For the past few years, I have made a strong commitment to mastery through having the discipline to practice daily – even if it’s just for 5mins a day. By fulfilling this commitment my long term goal of improving my ability to focus, co-ordination, mental sharpness, physical dexterity and of course, the satisfaction of mastering a complex skill.

Having stuck with this daily commitment to my practice for over two years now, I can feel how by managing my weaknesses, my talent theme of adaptability enhances my experience. I’m able to be fully present in the moment while I improvise moving from one pattern to the next. I experience ‘flow’ readily and almost on command due to the highly focussed state required to keep all of the balls in the air, moving rhythmically, sequentially but with ease. I also get to experience the spontaneity of trying new patterns, experimenting with techniques not tried before, inventing whole new patterns that I can then master before I teach them.

While many lessons have come from my observations of watching others learn, teaching others, coaching others and learning for myself, there is one that I want to share that may be useful to you.

Learning to focus

When we first learn how to juggle, we start by throwing the ball from one hand to the other aiming to get a consistent looping throw that flows from one hand to the other in an infinity like pattern. See fig 1.

Fig 1. Three ball cascade juggling pattern.

Most people can do this task easily with just one ball, but their focus is usually on the catching of the ball. While this strategy is effective when juggling one ball, it’s reactive and does not require consistency in order to be successful. Adding just one ball completely overwhelms somebody relying on this strategy because their brain is so focussed on ensuring each hand catches the ball. Even when somebody manages to juggle two balls using this strategy, they are tense, fatigue quickly and the pattern lacks flow. Add a third or fourth ball, and very quickly the catching strategy is obviously not sustainable.

An alternative strategy requires consistency of throw, and a trust that if you get the throw right, the catch will take care of itself. What comes with the adoption of this strategy is repeated failure through dropping the ball, and a willingness to stay focussed on the throw despite the temptation to ‘follow’ the catch. Most people find this strategy demoralising and incredibly difficult to adjust to. However, through discipline and a bit of hard work, this shift in focus enables people to quickly master two and three ball juggling. With some more hard work, the same principle serves as a foundation to master four, five or more ball juggling.

Application to other areas of life

While this key pattern of learning works for juggling, I’ve been applying it to other areas of my life with great success too. For example, in my work coaching managers and leaders, I first listen to where they are focussing their attention. If the discussion is largely focussed on what isn’t working, problems with individuals in the team or a broader challenge with the team’s dynamics, they are usually taking a more reactive approach to leadership. They might say things like “I’m trying to focus on moving the team forward but the team isn’t stepping up to the plate. It’s like I have to become a micromanager to ensure that things get done properly.” Similarly, when I’m listening to my kids sharing their experience at school my ears prick up when I hear them say things like “My maths teacher hates me….that’s why I got a bad mark in my exam”. Knowing that they don’t particularly like maths and that they need to work hard to achieve results I ask them “Have you completed all of your allocated homework this term?” to which I get a non-committal “yes…..I’ve done all my homework” which is shortly followed by them retreating to their room to do some homework. Another example can be seen in combat sports when you see a fighter at the top of their game start to get complacent. They don’t train as hard leading up to the fight to defend their title and inevitably get beaten. In all of the above examples, there is an element of blame, a lack of responsibility and an unwillingness to take ownership for driving their outcome. They are reactive, disappointed with the outcome and fail to see themselves as part of the problem. In other words, they are focussing on the ‘catch’ rather than the ‘throw’.

Solution: A shift in focus

1) Today, do yourself a favour, take a moment to write down an outcome you are working toward….it can be anything…just make it specific. It could be a weight loss goal, quitting smoking, skill challenge, sales target, relationship status, or even something like learning how to juggle three balls!

2) Now identify what you need to do to achieve that outcome (imagine you are observing somebody physically doing what it takes). Make this behavioural rather than a thought or belief. This is about what you can actually do. It can sometimes be tempting to overcommit at this stage so make it simple to start with. Using juggling as an example, it could be throwing a ball from hand-to-hand consistently with a near-perfect trajectory 100 times without dropping it. Alternatively, you could practice throwing the ball for 5mins a day. Both are specific, you can observe them, they contribute to your overarching outcome of being able to juggle three balls and they are achievable.

3) Managing your dialogue or ‘story’ around what you are working towards is possibly the hardest element to master. You need to control and be deliberate about what you tell yourself (I mean that voice inside your head that is always there either pumping you up or cutting you down). Using the juggling example, if I’m getting frustrated I might look at a set of juggling balls and say to myself “It’s too hard to juggle 3 balls…maybe I’m not coordinated enough for it…I can’t do it”. A better frame would be to say “Juggling is great for my body and mind, by practising a little each day I’m taking steps toward improving myself, testing my discipline and enhancing my skills….this I can control”.

Finally, take a moment to reflect on everything you’ve got going on in your life right now. Take a plain piece of paper and draw a line directly down the middle. For things that you are ‘focussing on the throw’ with, write them down in the left-hand column. For those things that you are ‘focussing on the catch’ with, write them down on the right. Hopefully, you have more things on the left than on the right. If not, you’ve got your list of ‘things’ that you need to take a closer look at. Interestingly, by adopting an approach of ‘focussing on the throw’, you’ll have more time, be able to relax more and establish confidence and trust in your capability to get things done.

A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ME

Joe Hart 27/4/20 Joe Hart 27/4/20

How coachable are you?

My coach then said to me…”That’s because you’re not coachable….how can you coach somebody when they think they already know everything?” In shock, I didn’t have a reply at the moment….my first thought was “You’re not allowed to say that…you’re my coach! Aren’t you meant to make me feel good about myself or something?”.

When I first started my career, I had a strong bias toward data. While you might think this is a good thing, it came at the expense of openness, intuition, curiosity, depth and learning. My training as a Psychologist was such that I felt that all truth was contained within the data, but I was thinking small. I had indeed convinced myself that if the data had not been captured and converted into numbers, then it was not relevant. I recall the first time that somebody coached me around my strengths.

It may shock some of you (especially my clients) but I was quite sceptical about the validity of coaching process and thought that it might be like going to see a clairvoyant or some other form of a psychic healer. I recall sitting back in my chair waiting to be ‘coached’ with an arrogance about me that I feel ashamed to reflect upon. Throughout the session, I was completely judgemental of my coach, literally rejecting all of what was being shared…and that was only the first 10mins. Very quickly, my coach realised that they weren’t getting very far with me and asked “Why are we here Joe? What do you want to get out of our time together?”. I wasn’t sure how to answer the question, other than saying something expected like “I’d like to understand how I can use my strengths more”. The session bumbled on and didn’t lead me to any insights or epiphanies.

Right at the end of the session, my coach asked me what insights I’d taken from our session. When I replied with “Not really…there wasn’t anything that came up that I didn’t already know”. My coach then said to me…”That’s because you’re not coachable….how can you coach somebody when they think they already know everything”. In shock, I didn’t have a reply at the moment….my first thought was “You’re not allowed to say that…you’re my coach! Aren’t you meant to make me feel good about myself or something?”.

Interestingly, that first coaching conversation was probably one of the best sessions I’ve ever had as it challenged me to reflect on how I was showing up. I saw myself as an open and curious thinker that valued people and insight above all else. I enjoyed intelligent discussions, being challenged and brainstorming ideas. What my coach was saying, completely contradicted everything I wanted to be and who I thought I was. What hurt the most, was that my coach was right! I wasn’t coachable and it was preventing me from experiencing everything I desired. Like most people, I didn’t like feeling vulnerable, threatened or stupid and for me admitting that I didn’t know something was the ultimate trifecta. I had this weird hang-up about not being smart enough so I spent all of my time making sure I ‘knew’ everything. Of course, knowing everything is impossible so what happens is your world becomes smaller and smaller. Your fear of being vulnerable becomes so overpowering that you create a shield of knowledge around yourself, constantly reinforcing it with the same knowledge or areas of expertise.

It’s rather ironic that my primary profession became a coaching psychologist and one of my favourite areas of discussion is about vulnerability. Researchers such as Brene Brown have invested their whole careers trying to understand vulnerability and how it works. What makes Brene Brown’s work so compelling is that she personifies it. In her my famous TED talk to date, she shared her vulnerability to communicate her research. There is no better way to demonstrate vulnerability than to be vulnerable.

How can you increase your coachability?

That first coaching experience that I had shook me up and awakened me to a truth that I needed to hear. It has also helped me identify that to get the most value from your coach you need to drop your guard and be vulnerable. The following represent some basic patterns you can introduce into your world to get the most out of coaching.

1) Be open: This might seem obvious and if you’d ask someone directly if they were open, most likely they will say ‘yes, of course, I’m open’. Your personality is likely to play a role in how open you are so if you like change, variety, and like to be challenged intellectually you will most likely be on the more ‘openminded’ end of the spectrum. If however, you are more conservative, change-averse, and prefer more pragmatic or practical discussion, you are on the more ‘closed-minded’ end of the spectrum. Regardless of your personality type, you will get more out of the coaching if you are open to being challenged, to see different perspectives, and want to continue to change/develop who you are.

2) Be curious: For coaching to work for you, you’ll need to bring a healthy dose of curiosity to the sessions. This looks like you asking questions, challenging your coach and most of all, challenging yourself. I great practice to get into is to start framing your questions (to yourself and others) with “I’m curious about…” or “I’m curious as to why…”. By increasing your curiosity you will naturally glean more insight from your coaching sessions.

3) Be willing to learn: For you to learn something, the first step is to accept that you do not already know the answer. If you already know everything, there is nothing to learn. Don’t confuse learning with fun either, sometimes the greatest lessons are delivered through the toughest challenges. As any teacher knows, the learning your student experiences are proportional to their willingness to engage.

The Coach

If your coach doesn’t appear to embody the coachability traits (Openness, Curiosity and Willingness to learn) then you might want to find another coach. Any great coach I know (and I know a lot) is a committed lifelong learner, willing to be challenged about anything…especially what they think they know. If you conversations are feeling one-sided or you aren’t getting what you need, before you throw the baby out with the bathwater, raise it with your coach so you can both work on the flow of your sessions. Like any relationship, you’ll need to find your point of connection to make it work. One final thought, there conversations that you have in everyday life that are coaching opportunities (to be coached and to coach). I’d encourage you to increase your awareness of these opportunities to speed up your progress.

A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ME

Joe Hart 20/4/20 Joe Hart 20/4/20

Learning how to learn: The infinite pattern

2020 is already becoming the most challenging year most people have ever experienced. Rather than fill your newsfeed with strategies to ‘Lead through uncertainty’ or ‘manage your team via zoom’, I wanted to share what I learned in 2005, 15 years ago. Joseph Campbell’s work on the Hero’s journey inspired me to create the infinite pattern which I’ve used to recount my experience.

1) The Call to learn (January 2005)

I’d worked my arse off to get accepted into the honours year for my bachelors in Psychology. I spent most of my first-year and second-year at university trying to figure out what I wanted to study, but by the time I found psychology, I’d already racked up a few fails on my academic transcript. By third-year, things were getting more serious and I’d decided I wanted to apply myself. I hadn’t considered doing honours but one of my mentors at the time suggested that I should at least try. The odds were stacked against me but with a bit of hard work, I slogged it out and got accepted. I’d also managed to score a place with one of the most sought after supervisors so I had a lot to be happy about. By mid-January, I was already conducting experiments on learning and memory using Rats in a Morris water maze. Things were going brilliantly for me…I finally felt like everything was falling into place. Toward the end of January, things started to go awry. Firstly, the month worth of experiments and training that I’d been doing turned out to be a dead end. I had to change direction for my honours thesis which added a bit of time pressure to what is already an intense year. To add to that pressure, my wife announced that she was pregnant!

2) Finding my mentor (March 2005)

To make ends meet, I was working two jobs at the time. I was selling laptops and printers at Officeworks by night and running experiments in a neuroscience lab for the rest of the time. I was walking around in a daze, pretending that my wife wasn’t really pregnant and that somehow there had been a mistake. By the end of March, it was official. She’d hit the 12-week mark so we were going to have this baby. For me….shit got real. I wasn’t ready to have a kid…. I was pretty much a kid myself. I’d only just figured out what I wanted to study. My first reactive thought was to defer doing my honours so I could focus on working to make enough money to support my family in a responsible way. Interestingly, none of the academics that I spoke to at university advised against this option so I made a call to defer my studies and ‘do the right thing’. When I told my boss at Officeworks what was going on and that I needed to work full-time, in the nicest possible way, he rejected my plea for help. He told me that the best thing I could do for myself and my family was push through and finish my studies. In other words, toughen the f**K up! It wasn’t what I wanted to hear but somehow, I knew he was right.

3) Crossing the threshold (May 2005)

By now, I was deep into my honours thesis and all of the rigamarole that goes with it. I was also reading the ‘bible’ for parents to be, What to expect when you’re expecting, getting more anxious about being a dad by the second. The more I knew, the more anxious I became. That was until someone told me that nobody has the perfect formula for kids and you won’t know what you need to do until you need to do it. They then added that once you think you’ve got it all figured out, it all falls apart and you have to try something different. While frustrating and annoying, this was exactly what I needed to hear. It enabled me to cross the threshold between what I know and enter the realm of the unknown. For a few months, I was focussed, supportive (so I thought), open, and felt a little bit excited about being a dad. Then, shit hit the fan.

4) Facing challenge (August 2005)

Following a routine visit to the doctor, my wife was put on bed rest due to the risk of our baby being born 2 months premature. On the 20th August, our son was born 6 weeks early and weighed about 1.6kg (that’s about half what a healthy full-term baby weighs). Needless to say, my honours thesis was an afterthought once he was born. My wife and I were visiting the hospital every day because he was too little to bring home. He was being fed through a tube, stuck inside a humid-i-crib with only short times where we were allowed to cuddle. It was one of the strangest experiences I’ve ever had. I wanted to love and protect this little human that I’d brought into the world but was completely dependent on the nurses and doctors to look after him. After two months of visiting the hospital every day, feeding him through a tube and tracking his daily growth on a chart we could finally take him home.

5) Overcoming Self (October 2005)

There wasn’t a person in the world that judged me for putting all of my focus on my son. Despite all of that, my non-existent honours thesis was gathering metaphorical dust on an imaginary shelf. The due date was looming and I was preparing myself to face the cold hard truth that I’d failed. When I spoke with the honours coordinator about options I was advised it was too late to pull out without failing but it wasn’t too late to submit my thesis. If however, I was planning on submitting my thesis, I needed to honour the faculty rule that no theses get marked until everybody (who indicates they will hand their thesis in) hands in their final thesis. I wanted to give up as I honestly thought failure was inevitable. I had more than a handful of people provide me with the ‘out’ I was looking for which entailed pulling up stumps. My wife, however, refused to accept my defeat. She shared with me exactly what she needed to share and it changed my perspective forever. In many ways, the words she used broke all the rules of diplomacy and it certainly wasn’t a message delivered with eloquence. Regardless, she gave me a proverbial kick up the arse that I needed to screw my head back on and get the job done. After one week, approximately 210 cups of tea, a minor case of deep vein thrombosis, some very generous help from my supervisor, and some mild hallucination due to lack of sleep, I handed in my thesis one week past the due date. In handing in that thesis, I’d conquered myself and all that I knew was possible.

6) Consolidate (November 2005)

After the intensity of the year that was 2005, I forgot to mention that we were also planning our wedding. With the Christmas holiday period came an opportunity to regather myself and find my groove as a dad (as awkward as I was). My memory is a bit shady, but I’m pretty certain it involved lots of nappies, sleepless nights, and the odd moment of bliss to remind me that it was all worthwhile. I went to visit my supervisor to thank him for his support through what had been a very challenging time. By that stage, I also found out that I’d received a 79 for my honour thesis which I was extremely happy about. When I boastfully commented on my mark, my supervisor agreed that is was a good result. He then said, “You got a good mark but you didn’t learn as much as you could have”. Once again, while I didn’t like what I was hearing, I knew exactly what he meant and I agreed with him. There were too many instances where I took the easy road, the popular choice or the responsible path. Too often I chose to stay stuck in the ‘known’ rather than venture into the unknown.

7) Teaching Others (January 2006)

It was a small wedding, close friends and family held in my uncle’s backyard. I think our largest expense was a rental car for the week and flights to Melbourne. Somehow, the simplicity of the day, the people and the ceremony highlighted what was most important. All my fears that came with being a new dad, our son being born early, potentially failing my honours year and toying with becoming a full-time employee at Officeworks (no disrespect to the role), were opportunities to learn how to learn.

The infinite pattern

Like that crazy year in 2005, I’ve had a few doozies since. So far, 2020 is certainly up there when it comes to rank-ordering the most challenging. Whenever I’m feeling like things are tough, or I don’t know what’s going to happen, I draw strength from that time in my life when the only way to know how to proceed was to let go of what I knew. To embrace the unknown, as paradoxical as it sounds, enabled me to face the necessary challenges to get over myself. Having since worked with thousands of people to overcome challenges I’ve recognised that this pattern isn’t unique to me. Rather, it’s a pattern we all follow when we learn how to learn through life. Some call it the school of hard knocks. Others see it as bad luck. I see it as an infinite pattern of learning we all experience over and over again. If you navigate life with an awareness of this pattern, it won’t necessarily make it easy but will make your experiences more meaningful. Ask yourself right now…Where are you in the infinite pattern? Are you stuck in the known? Have you ‘crossed the threshold’ into the unknown yet? What’s your next ‘call to learn’?

If you’re keen to learn more, contact me at Joe@joehart.com.au or visit my website at joehart.com.au

Joe Hart 13/4/20 Joe Hart 13/4/20

The Truth Hurts: Moving out of Blissful Ignorance

‘Truth’, is something that philosophers and psychologists have been debating for millennia and will most likely still be debating it for millennia to come. I too have been seduced by the concept of truth for my whole life…particularly the paradox of truth. By this I mean, how being honest or truthful often translates into the end of a relationship, conflict at work, or an identity crisis, or the uncovering of something you wish you could unlearn! If being honest or truthful carries with it the foundation of integrity, why does it lead to so much challenge? The answer, which I believe to be true (see what I did there!), lies in perspective.

For example, self-awareness is characterised as one’s ability to align actions with one’s own internal values or standards. Additionally, someone who is highly self-aware will be able to objectively evaluate themselves and correctly understand how they are perceived by others. Based on the above definition, I want you to rate yourself using the following scale. See fig 1.

Fig 1. Self Awareness Scale. Please rate yourself on a scale of 0 to 10 using the statements on either end of the scale to guide your responses. To calculate your overall Self Awareness, simply average all ratings out of 10.

Without knowing you, your aspirations, values, personality type, sexual preferences or IQ, I can confidently assume that your self-rating landed between 5 and 8 out of 10. The reason for this is due to a cognitive bias explained by the Dunning-Kruger effect. This is the tendency to overestimate our ability particularly when our ability is low. This can show up in all areas of our lives like our driving, intelligence, athleticism, and attractiveness just to name a few. Our ability to see ourselves in truth i.e. our actual ability, capability, intelligence, athleticism or awareness is masked by our cognitive biases. While having an inflated sense of your ability to sing or play tennis on the weekend comes with very little consequence for our success in life (unless you’ve chosen to be a professional singer or tennis player) there are other areas where the impact on results come at a far greater cost.

In the context of leadership, be it self-leadership, team leadership or leading an entire organisation, self-awareness is a critical ability for any leader to master. Moreover, self-awareness is arguably one of the most important skills for anyone to master regardless of their leadership level. In my work with people as an Organisational Psychologist, there are three questions I’ve spent much of my working life trying to answer. 1) What makes some people more self-aware than others? 2) Is it possible for anyone to enhance their self-awareness or become more self-aware? 3) Does increasing a person’s self-awareness translate to positive results in a business context?

The answer, thus far, to the first two questions comes down to a person’s ability to acquire, accept, and actualise feedback. While there are differences in self-awareness based on IQ and personality factors, the differences are not meaningful. Through experience, we gain or lose confidence which tends to affect our level of self-awareness. If we show up with an inflated sense of confidence, our actual ability won’t correlate (blissfully ignorant). Conversely, if we have a wealth of experience our confidence will likely be high and correlate significantly with our actual ability (Consciously masterful). See fig 2.

Fig 2. The relationship between Confidence and Actual Performance. Joe Hart 2020.

The process of maintaining or developing a supreme level of self-awareness requires the same three components. 1) To acquire feedback from those you deal with. 2) Accept the feedback as a valid perspective to be considered. 3) To put into action or Actualise the feedback you have received. While this three-part formula appears intuitive and simple, don’t be deceived. Each component requires large doses of curiosity, humility, and courage. We all like to think we are better than we are and to be honest, it’s an ego affirming state-of-mind. I’ve often had challenging conversations with leaders followed by them stating “thanks for letting me know…but I think I preferred being blissfully ignorant”. I too have personally faced the dilemma of gaining self-awareness to only create a desire to turn the clock back to revert to blissful ignorance. The reason why blissful ignorance is so appealing is that it takes no effort, it feeds on our laziness and reinforces that we don’t need to do anything. Equally, conscious mastery can only be achieved through a relentlessly iterative process of lessons learned, application of knowledge, experimentation and above all…hard work. Given the choice, most people will opt for the chronic but bearable dull ache that comes with never achieving one’s potential rather than the acutely painful experiences that equate to personal growth. What’s more interesting is if asked what’s more important, most people will acknowledge that personal growth rates higher on the life fulfilment scale than coasting through life without significant challenge. On this last point, we can begin to answer the third question; Does increasing self-awareness translate to positive results in a business context?

My answer is no, not by itself. I have numerous examples of people that I have coached that one could argue have increased their self-awareness remarkably over a relatively short period. Despite their new-found insight, they harboured no strong desire to accept nor actualise the feedback they had received. When this occurs, sadly but not surprisingly, their performance in a business context usually decreases. To understand this, I look at the concept of employee surveys usually run by Human Resources to provide a snapshot of how people are feeling. If the organisation seeks feedback (acquires) but does not accept or actualise the results. The response from employees is usually one of “why did I bother wasting my time doing that survey if they aren’t going to do anything”.

Applying this same insight to a leader seeking feedback to improve, if they do nothing with the feedback, those involved in providing their perspective will begin to wonder why they bothered or if the leader even wanted to change in the first place. Even more simply put, it takes more than just asking for feedback to improve. You need to do something with the perspective you are given.

What then is Truth?

Truth is found through the process of acquiring, accepting and actualising the perspective that others provide you. This true perspective you receive is only half the battle…it’s what you do with that perspective that leads to results. This same truth applies to improvement in every aspect of who we are and what we do. Whether it be a karate grading, writing a book, submitting a tender for a large piece of work, a final exam, an audition for the lead role, a job interview, or even receiving treatment for a life-threatening disease, these tests all carry the same truth. They are all hard work. They all require you to step outside of yourself and truly see yourself as you are. To grow, expand and achieve results, first requires you to see yourself the way the rest of the world sees you. Only from this ‘True Perspective’ are you able to lead with the truth.

Working with me
If you’d like to learn more about how I can help you, your team or somebody within your organisation with self-awareness, complete the form below and I’ll be in touch.

Name

First Name

Last Name

Phone

Subject

Message

Joe Hart 6/4/20 Joe Hart 6/4/20

Are you running on Autopilot?

Disruption causes us to re-evaluate what’s most important, like a quarterly clean-out of the fridge. There is likely some bad food in there that’s causing the whole kitchen to stink. Taking everything out enables you to consciously determine what goes back in. That’s exactly what happened with my automatic credit card payments. I gave them a good clean-out and got rid of that ‘bad smells’ so to speak.

Mid last year, I noticed a few anomalies on my credit card statement so, with a quick call to the bank, I cancelled my card. Indeed, it turned out that I was the victim of some clever fraudsters trying to make inconsequential transactions on my card of small amounts like $26 with the detail section showing “Amazone” or “Netflixx” to make it seem legit. Given a subscribe to both services, I could have easily missed it. Once I’d gone ahead and cancelled my card I knew I had to go through the painstaking process of changing all of the automatic payments that I had set-up on the card. With all the best intentions in the world, I completely forgot about it.

Strangely, I didn’t hear anything from anyone in the first month. Somewhere in the deep recesses of my subconscious, I knew something was up but that’s when I started getting the communications. Services that I didn’t even know I was paying for, starting getting cut-off, subscriptions faulted, insurance companies ‘warned’ me of my impending doom! The most alarming thing to me was the sheer number of automatic payments that I’d accrued over the years. It turned out that the sudden disruption caused by some sneaky fraudsters was a total blessing. Their foul play alerted me to all the things I couldn’t see…the things were ticking away in the background unconsciously transacting, not delivering any value.

The beauty of disruption

The curse of habit

Habits are both our best friend and our worst enemy. In James Clear’s Atomic Habits, he describes a habit as behaviour that has been repeated enough times that it becomes automatic. The concept of not having to think about something is so incredibly seductive that when we are offered the automatic payment option, we jump at it. It ultimately appeals to our laziness which is easily justified by most people prescribing the ‘crazy busy’ label. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for learning about how to build great habits and break bad ones, I’m just a little concerned that our brains are so biased toward automaticity that it’s easier to just leave things on autopilot. This is particularly true when we hold beliefs about what we ‘should’ be doing or what ‘can’t’ be done.

Conscious vs Automatic processing

Something that I’ve learned following the whole credit card debacle is that not everything deserves to be in the automatic bucket, especially some of the smaller inconspicuous payments. Some of the bigger ticket items like a mortgage or car repayment certainly deserve to be processed automatically due to the value they create. I believe the danger lies in the many smaller ‘purchases’ we make that cumulatively, become quite costly. This doesn’t only apply to our direct debit payments but also behaviours that we perpetuate in our lives. Alcohol consumption, Smoking, diet, exercise, self-development, socialisation. All of them can play a part in our lives if we choose, my argument is to make sure you choose wisely before putting them in the automatic processing bucket.

Choosing wisely

Using the categories below, I want you to categorise all of the ‘things’ that you currently spend your time or your money on. Automatic ‘things’ can be payments, or time you spend with loved ones, or colleagues, or associates. Equally, what you deem as high value could be time by yourself or spending a huge amount of money on a luxurious holiday. It is up to you how to allocate where each of your ‘things’ fits.

Once you’ve completed the exercise, you’ll see a clear pattern concerning what you categorise as conscious vs automatic and what you see as high value vs low value. If you can see that there is one quadrant that seems a little bloated (it’s most likely going to be the Automatic Low-Value quadrant), then you know where you need to make some changes.

Don’t overthink this one, it’s not meant to be a mind-bender, but it is meant to be a quick and simple way to help you rebuild yourself and your life after some significant disruption. After all, we all have an opportunity to capitalise on the disruption we are currently facing and make conscious choices about how we rebuild our lives moving forward.

Joe Hart 31/3/20 Joe Hart 31/3/20

The Evolution of ONEself

How you respond to these questions is what defines you as a leader. Regardless of how many people report to you, the size of your empire, or your political connections your leadership is defined by you. If you’re wondering whether how you’ve answered is right, then you’ve missed the point. There is no perfect leader or characteristic, or a better way to lead. There is only the choice to commit to expressing who you are in everything that you do to align with how you want to be remembered in the world.

Three weeks ago I was engrossed in a conversation sparked by a manager who made the following comment:

Manager: “When I’m at work, I’m professional and polite. I don’t come here to make friends or build lifelong relationships. I come to work to get the job done. I can’t stand it when I see people standing around chatting about all kinds of non-work-related things. I feel like telling them to get on with their work already”

Me: “How about outside of work? What are your relationships like with people?”

Manager: “Oh…outside of work I’m a different person! I’m the life of the party. People that know me personally wouldn’t recognise me for the person I am at work. I’m completely different….and that’s the way I like it”.

Me: “So…your saying that who you are, changes depending on the situation you’re in?”

Manager: “well…yeah…it does. I want to keep clear boundaries between who I am at work vs who I am at home”.

Me: “I get that…and I respect what you’re saying. I’m also curious about if your worlds ever collide. By that I mean, when does what you are working toward in your personal life intersect what you are working towards in your professional life?”

Manager: “Mmmmm…Good question. I don’t know”.

Like many of you, my world has been turned upside down over the past few weeks. Uncertainty has become the new normal as we all manage the contrast between what ‘was’ to what ‘is’. For a large number of people, their worlds have changed due to material consequences such as losing their jobs, cars, and homes. This is indeed challenging but for the most part, not what’s most important.

For all of us, there is a far more interesting dynamic at play and that is the acute reshaping of all our identities. I call this the evolution of oneself. The conversation I recited above occurred between me and a manager before all the COVID-19 craziness took off. I dare say, if we had the conversation today, it would be a very different dialogue.

When we face challenging times, it’s the best opportunity to understand our true self…you know, the one that you are regardless of whether you are at work or home. When people create clear boundaries between who they are at home vs who they are at work things get a little funky. By funky, I mean they spend a great deal of energy maintaining an image of what they think they need to be in their work or home context. To me, this is exhausting!

Interestingly, when asked what is most important to them, or what do they care most about, or what are their values, most people must consider deeply before answering. In many cases, they can’t answer at all. To buy more time or dodge the question they will seek clarification by asking, “do you mean at work or home?”. While I understand the need to regulate behaviour based on context (some things aren’t appropriate in certain settings e.g. sharing details about your sex life in a board meeting), however, letting your environment dictate your values, the things that you care about and what is most important to you is dangerous.

When faced with significant challenges, what matters to us most is always easy to grasp. If you ask a person facing death what’s most important, they might answer family, or following your heart, or courage. Similarly, if someone has a partner suffering from a protracted illness such as cancer, they will easily answer ‘time’ ‘health’, ‘happiness’ or ‘the one you love’.

Never before in my lifetime have I witnessed so many people simultaneously walking the line where our personal and professional identities meet; our true selves. In an instant, the world has insight and true perspective on what matters. Many people are now able to see themselves. They are challenged with their identity, especially when it now appears divergent from their life that was.

Multiple selves

The evolution of oneself is recognising that there is only one true version of who we are. Anyone who believes that we adopt multiple selves in the world is an actor. Pretending to be someone they are not might be fun for a while, or demonstrate great skill but inevitably, people grow weary. This seems like a great strategy, one that I tried for many years before I woke up one day and couldn’t articulate what was most important to me. If you’re currently attempting the ‘multiple selves’ strategy take heed of my warning, eventually, you’ll slip up somewhere and your multiple selves will clash. Furthermore, if you adopt this strategy as a leader, you’ll never lead effectively because your energy will be too thinly spread. The multiple selves strategy condemns you to transactional behaviour determined by the boundaries you place around your self and others that feed the emotional needs of yourself and those around you.

Evolving ONEself

To get this right, you need to accept the following:

a) There is only one version of you….regardless of the context, challenges or person you are facing

b) You are in control, you are responsible and only you can do what it takes to progress

c) There is no end game. This is a continuous process of investing in yourself. You must relentlessly commit to your ongoing evolution.

d) You will never completely ‘know’ yourself. Self-awareness is a process, not an end state.

Now it’s time to start leading. Start by asking yourself the following questions.

1) Are you reacting or are you choosing?

2) Are you fully committed to being yourself….ONEself?

3) How do you want to be remembered?

Joe Hart 16/3/20 Joe Hart 16/3/20

Organisational Culture: Art or Science?

In every moment, you experience something which you can reflect upon. In that same moment, another person experiences you at that moment which they can reflect upon. Imagine that it’s as if we are all walking around like shards from a broken mirror, each reflecting our experience into another person’s reflection, we confirm our own beliefs through our behaviours and our relationships. Our bonds with others are solidified when they reinforce our behaviour and therefore demonstrate that they too share our beliefs. I’ll step out of metaphor for a moment just in case I lost you. Simply put, as individuals that turn up to work every day, what we believe shapes what we do and what we do shapes who we develop relationships with. Our relationships then reinforce our beliefs and so the cycle continues. These three elements are what forms culture or what I also call ‘the brand’. The culture or brand of your organisation is an expression of the shared beliefs, behaviours and bonds that exists within the organisation and externally with your suppliers, customers and marketplace. There is one overarching element that has a governing role when it comes to influencing culture. That is the environment or background that your organisation is nested in.

For those of you that are from a more mature vintage in Australia, you’ll remember cracker night. On June 7th 1986 I was five years old and it was the last cracker night before fireworks were banned in NSW, Australia. Some of my fondest memories were of cracker night, the excitement, the danger, the noise, the smell, the beauty; it was absolutely magic. One of my favourite fireworks were paratroopers. It consisted of a roman candle with some toy soldiers stuffed in the top with tissue paper parachutes to bring them back down safely following being projected into the air via a small explosion….rather ironic. Nonetheless, they fascinated me. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been curious about how things work. I loved science at school and liked to experiment beyond the confines of the school laboratory. When I was in high school, a kid in my year managed to get his hands on some fireworks. I begged him to give me some as I wanted to figure out how they worked to satisfy my curiosity that had been sparked eight years earlier. I was so desperate, I offered to pay him five dollars for a single cracker. You’ve all seen the images of thousands of small red firecrackers going off to cleanse the spirits for Chinese New Year. I bought one single cracker for five dollars! Yes, I was totally nuts. What was more extraordinary, I never even saw the firework explode. Instead, I went home sat it on a blank sheet of white A3 paper and carefully dissected it with a scalpel to reveal the raw materials used to make it. I wasn’t satisfied with simply seeing the magic unfold, I needed to understand how to make the magic happen.

After three years of lunchtimes in the library studying books, countless failed experiments at home involving coffee grinders, cardboard tubing, tissue paper and plenty of superficial burns, I performed my first fireworks display. That’s right, my very own fireworks display witnessed by about two hundred people. Let’s just say not all of them worked perfectly and I may have failed when it came to following any sort of safety protocol and thankfully nobody was injured…but they were all entertained. Somewhere in between a wayward rocket whizzing past my right ear and the deafening boom of a rogue mortar knocking the wind out of me, I realised that fireworks are a beautiful synergy of art and science. The spectacle only meaningful in the moment, witnessed by fascinated onlookers captivated by the sorcery unfolding before their eyes. This shared curiosity binds people at that moment, a shared experience to be remembered and reflected upon.

Organisational Culture

With such clarity and passion at an early age, you might wonder why I didn’t become a pyrotechnician. The truth is, that’s all I wanted to be. Following a behind the scenes tour of a prominent fireworks company I did ask if I could do an internship which was denied. The only intern they took on previously was supposedly killed in an unfortunate accident involving fireworks…there’s that irony again. With that, I meandered my way to university and eventually landed on psychology where strangely the question of art or science was still being asked. Even today, you might find people that believe Psychology belongs in the arts. Psychologists, on the other hand, do their darndest to ensure that they are taken seriously with their rats, stats and psychometric profiling. Unfortunately, we are often left with black and white perspectives on something that, just like fireworks, can only be fully appreciated when we combine both art and science.

Organisational culture must be one of the most contentious constructs ever conceptualised. Paradoxically, everyone can describe the culture of their organisation, but almost nobody agrees on exactly how it works. We all agree that it exists, but nobody has ever seen it. It’s this nebulous abstraction that behaves like a bad smell. When you first enter a room the smell hits you hard but after an hour or so, it slowly becomes normal to the point where you can’t smell anything anymore. Having tested my olfactory prowess on hundreds of organisations, and like my curiosity fuelled career as an amateur pyrotechnician, I’m on a mission to understand the science underpinning culture. I’m not the first to investigate, nor will I be the last but one thing I have observed is that much of the focus has been placed on ‘Culture Change’. To me, if the fundamental understanding of culture has not yet been agreed upon, how is anyone meant to change it. Moreover, what are you changing exactly? For anyone in this space, you don’t have to look too far to discover the overwhelming number of failed culture change programs. Furthermore, due to their scarcity, the few high-profile success stories often appear to be more like a magical culmination of perfect timing, perfect leaders, and usually a giant slush fund to ensure it all goes off without a hitch. The reality is, culture happens whether you like it or not. Like water running down a mountain following a massive downpour, the water will find it’s own path. If however you can be bothered, you can influence where that water flows. You can’t always know when it’s going to rain, nor how much it will rain but you can plan for it. The remainder of this paper explains culture through my lens…..both art and science. I define it for you, I break it down into its components then show you how to make the magic happen. All you need to do is be curious.

Culture defined

For the following definition to make sense, you need to accept the following assumptions[i]:

Assumption 1: Organisational culture is an individual phenomenon i.e. It can only ever be perceived and experienced by one person.

Assumption 2: Organisational culture is constantly changing. Like a cloud in the sky, it takes form and shape when it binds with your imagination but when you look away for a moment it changes into another form, forever evolving.

Assumption 3: Organisational culture is made up of critical ingredients that when combined in the right quantities create a ‘chemical’ reaction. Like fireworks, if you don’t have the right combination of chemicals, you will never produce the desired effect.

Assumption 4: The key ingredients and the required quantities of each keep changing based on the environment. If you’ve ever tried lighting a campfire in the rain, or strong wind or when it’s hot and dry, you’ll appreciate what I’m talking about.

Assumption 5: Culture matters. If it’s broken, so is your organisation’s future success. The bottom line is….it affects the bottom line.

With these assumptions in mind, culture can be defined as.

“Culture is a reflection of moments upon moments, shaped by what you expect and believe will happen”

In every moment, you experience something which you can reflect upon. In that same moment, another person experiences you at that moment which they can reflect upon. Imagine that it’s as if we are all walking around like shards from a broken mirror, each reflecting our experience into another person’s reflection, we confirm our own beliefs through our behaviours and our relationships. Our bonds with others are solidified when they reinforce our behaviour and therefore demonstrate that they too share our beliefs. I’ll step out of metaphor for a moment just in case I lost you. Simply put, as individuals that turn up to work every day, what we believe shapes what we do and what we do shapes who we develop relationships with. Our relationships then reinforce our beliefs and so the cycle continues. These three elements are what forms culture or what I also call ‘brand’. The culture or brand of your organisation is an expression of the shared beliefs, behaviours and bonds that exists within the organisation and externally with your suppliers, customers and marketplace. There is one overarching element that has a governing role when it comes to influencing culture. That is the environment or background that your organisation is nested in. See Fig 1. For a diagram outlining the culture model.

The importance of the environment

The environment or background is the least controllable element of culture. On a macro level, it includes that marketplace, public perceptions, the economy, industry regulations, political standing and the list goes on. At a micro level, the environment includes engagement and morale, management capability, geographic location, physical surroundings, local leadership stability etc. Taking it one step further, given one assumption about this culture model is that it is an individual phenomenon, the environment extends to each person. This includes their situation, where they live, their prior experience, and their overall physical and mental health. If you’re pursing your lips and raising your eyebrows on this last point, consider the impact the last bullying or harassment claim had on your business. What was the emotional impact? What was the financial impact? What was the impact on the relationships, behaviours and beliefs that needed to be addressed as a result?

For better or for worse, the micro and macro environment are critical factors that need to be constantly evaluated if you want to effectively build your brand in a way that aligns business success with a strong organisational brand. The environment is often what makes culture so complex, unpredictable, and difficult to alter. As I write this, the world is facing a macro-environmental challenge with the COVID -19 virus. The ripple effect that this creates for beliefs, behaviours and bonds alters everything.

Getting the balance right

When I first began learning about fireworks, I had to understand the fundamental ingredients that when mixed create gunpowder. At it turns out, there are three core ingredients:

Potassium Nitrate (Oxidizing agent) =75%
Charcoal (Fuel) = 15%
Sulphur (Catalyst or heat) = 10%

What the textbooks don’t tell you is that these ingredients come in many different forms and with varying degrees of quality. The grade of powder also has a marked impact on the result. Like most things, with a higher grade of quality and a finer grade of powder, the gunpowder burns much cleaner, faster and brighter. Another factor that the textbooks don’t teach you is that gunpowder is incredibly hygroscopic, meaning that it is prone to absorb moisture from the air. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that moisture isn’t going to be very good for fireworks. How is it possible to overcome these challenges to produce safe, beautiful and predictable fireworks? From witnessing what they did at the fireworks factory, the answer lies in experimentation. Each batch of powder created is unique and has to be modified to achieve the correct outcome. The result is consistent performance but the ingredients had to be changed for each batch to match the environmental conditions. A blind approach of mixing the ingredients without any form of iterative testing would result in disaster.

I see Organisational culture in much the same way and is made up of these three key ingredients:

Bonds/Relationships (Oxidizing agent or oxygen)
Behaviours/Actions (Fuel)
Beliefs/Values (catalyst or heat)

The overarching influence of the environment needs to be accommodated to get the outcome you’re looking for. If the balance isn’t right in response to the environment, you either get no spark at all or the whole thing will violently blow up in your face! Balancing the right proportions in response to the environmental influences enables the chain reaction to occur. What it creates is a brilliant fusion that equates to a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. Look no further than the simplicity of fire. Once you have the right mix of wood, oxygen and a spark to get it started, you establish something that is both beautiful to observe, provides warmth, heat for cooking food and boiling water, and light to be able to see. Your brand or culture is the fire you create in your team or organisation. If you leave it unchecked in a hostile environment, the fire can rage out of control and cause catastrophic consequences. In contrast, if the environment is cold and damp, the flame may be weak and go out altogether. A healthy culture has a flame that burns brightly and organically but remains carefully controlled in response to the ever-changing environmental conditions.

Creating an aligned culture strategy

Before jumping in and creating a ‘culture change’ strategy, it’s important to understand each of the elements as they are currently. The best place to start is by asking the following questions across multiple stakeholders at all levels of the business. The objective at this point is to not change anything but to simply understand how your brand interacts with the current environment (both micro and macro).

What are the current beliefs you have about your organisation? How are these beliefs helping or hindering your organisation? How do those beliefs influence the brand or culture of the organisation?
How do people interact with one another? Are they friendly and sociable, busy and frantic, individualistic and isolated or efficient and respectful? Are the behaviours of your people (Staff, clients, suppliers, partner) enhancing the brand of your organisation?
What sort of relationships do people have with one another at your organisation? Are they mutually beneficial? Are they clinical, professional and a touch cold? Are they challenging, robust and growth-oriented? Or do they feel like an annual family get-together around the Christmas table; obligatory and a tad dysfunctional?
What is the current environment (micro i.e workspace, team, engagement) you’re operating in? What are some of the broader environmental factors (Macro i.e market trends, political factors, national security, public health concerns) that are facing your organisation?

Now that you have a clear understanding of the factors underpinning your organisational brand or culture, and the environmental factors (both macro and micro) influencing it, you need to be ruthless about whether it is supporting your organisation to succeed. The point being, your brand or culture might be perfectly pleasant but if it isn’t aligned to the growth targets, customer service charter, employee value proposition, or shareholder expectations, you’re leaving your success up to chance.

Our results are good…. why do we need to bother about our brand or culture?

For those of you that are agreeing with the emboldened question above, I hope you’re not in a leadership role. If you are, read the next paragraph carefully.

Your brand and culture are what enables you to deliver excellent service, fantastic products, innovative client solutions, or world-class employee experience. Your bottom line only exists because of the nebulous cloud-like construct we have coined as ‘culture’. Countless organisations have had amazing financial success but ultimately failed due to cultural or brand challenges. See the following list of some well-known organisations and brand names that have either ceased to exist or had a catastrophic fall from grace.

Kodak
Ansett
Schwinn
Toys R Us
Dick Smith
Enron
Polaroid
Lehman Brother
Atari
Commodore Corp
Radioshack
Nokia
General Motors
Compaq

The above list is a reminder of how ephemeral success can be. Furthermore, the need to constantly innovate, challenge, rediscover and push through complacency is critical for continued success. Your brand or culture is made up of the relationships you form, the beliefs you hold, and the behaviours you reinforce. Their combination creates the flames that forge a personal and organisational legacy. How you want to be experienced in the world is directly reflected by how you interact with the world. If you are feeling somewhat underwhelmed by the culture of your organisation where you currently work, before judging, remember the definition. Culture is a reflection of moments upon moments shaped by what you believe and expect will happen. If the culture doesn’t align to you, it doesn’t make it bad or wrong. It simply means that you don’t fit. My advice, try mapping out your own beliefs, behaviours, and bonds that you want to experience at work. Do a sense check based on the current micro and macro environments then start looking for an organisation that fits what you want. If however, you choose to stay in an organisation that doesn’t work for you, your reflections on the brand and culture are a reflection of how you see yourself. In other words, everything you hate about the culture, you become. Finally, to answer the question is Organisational Culture art or Science? I say it’s both. In art, you find science and in science you find art. Your ability to create both in a consistent way that captivates others is what will set you apart.

About Me:

My name is Joe Hart and I’ve spent my life thus far seeking to understand why people do what they do. I’m an Organisational Psychologist and am also obsessed with patterns. Patterns underpin everything we do, everything we think and everything we feel. Organisational culture is like the Rubiks cube of human behaviour. It seems impossible, but there is a method to what seems like chaos. If you’d like to crack the code that’s holding you and your team back.

Contact me here:

E: joe@joehart.com.au

M: 0425 224 825

W: https://joehart.com.au/

Joe Hart 3/3/20 Joe Hart 3/3/20

What’s the difference between a Grasshopper and a performance review?

While Grasshoppers may not be scary to you, the truth is, you are definitely fearful of certain things. If not, you’d likely be dead already because it’s fear that keeps us safe. The major challenge today is that most of what we fear involves situations that are not life-threatening at all…such as, getting stuck in an elevator, being in a large crowd of people, public speaking, asking a ‘dumb question’ in a room full of senior executives, challenging your boss, losing your mobile phone, not having access to the internet or preparing for you next performance review. Before you judge, these are all real examples that I’ve discussed with my clients that evoke physiological responses similar to those that you might experience when faced with real danger. What’s worse is that common way of dealing with such fears is to avoid them completely. While this seems smart it acts to reinforce the learned fear response so if you ever get presented with a situation you can’t avoid, you’re likely to experience panic. This avoidance tactic also reinforces the notion that it’s ok to stay comfortable and not push yourself to grow, expand and develop. In other words, you get to be a bit lazy which your brain loves!

The air was thick with heat, that oppressive muggy heat that completely saps your energy. I was walking home from school, my legs flopping about beneath my body reluctantly following the orders coming from my brain. As I arrived home I made my way around the back of the house eagerly anticipating the daily ritual of a bowl of Weet-bix in front of the TV to watch cartoons. Without warning, as if I’d been struck by a poison dart that disabled all of my muscles, I couldn’t move. I was completely and utterly frozen with fear. About two metres in front of me, perched on the wall was a giant Grasshopper….yes, a Grasshopper. Before you laugh, let me explain. These grasshoppers were no ordinary insect. They were massive brown alien-looking creatures that had giant wings and could fly great distances. If you’ve never seen one, have a look at the images below.

Fig 2. Fully Mature Grasshopper, 8.5cm long

Some people refer to them as locusts and they have the capability to destroy whole crops when they swarm in large numbers. Despite all of this, I’m yet to read about anyone that has suffered severe injury or death from a grasshopper! Initially, I wasn’t scared of them at all but after repeated exposure to running the gauntlet (the pathway up the side of the house) where grasshoppers would jump unpredictably off the wall into my face and hair, I’d become fearful. In fact, I started to develop anxiety about walking up the side of the house. I dreaded that part of my daily journey home more than anything. I started questioning why I was afraid of a pesky grasshopper and thought there was something wrong with me. I tried to convince myself that there was nothing to be scared of, but the mere sight of a grasshopper was enough to make me freeze in my tracks, elevate my heart rate, and shorten my breath.

The brain at work

Years later, when studying the psychobiology of memory and motivation at university, I learned about how the brain responds to threat (perceived or actual). In my case, a bad grasshopper season had exposed me to the perils of being ‘attacked’ while walking up the pathway at the side of the house. Over time, my brain had learned to generate a fear response when I spotted a grasshopper. Before I was even consciously aware of a grasshopper, like a sixth sense, my body would activate the fight, flight or freeze response. This all kicks off in a brain structure called the Amygdala, the emotional centre of the brain. The Amygdala is fantastic at responding to life-threatening situations by making our bodies jump out of the way of an oncoming car, hide from a person that is wanting to do us harm or run like hell from a vicious dog. It does a brilliant job of keeping us safe when there is no time to think through a logical response. The problem emerges when our well-meaning Amygdala starts activating stress responses to non-life threatening situations. The outcome? Anxiety disorders, panic attacks, agoraphobia and generalised withdrawal. The function of the Amygdala and how it has benefited mammals for millions of years is now becoming a maladaptive process in modern society. As an executive coach and psychologist, anxiety is something that I come across very regularly. It’s not always extreme to the point of severe panic attacks but it’s definitely enough to have a negative impact on your quality of life, relationships and ability to be productive.

Breaking the fear

That same summer, when my fear of grasshoppers was at its height and the shame I felt about being scared of grasshoppers was starting to wear me down, something really interesting happened. We had a relief teacher, Mr Shepperd, taking our class. He was a calm and grounded teacher. He had a reassuring presence about him that I really liked. One day as the class was walking through the school toward the sports oval, Mr Shepperd was reminding us of the rules of dodge ball when I noticed one of the biggest ugliest Grasshoppers I’d ever seen attached the pole, right next to his head. One of the other kids in the class pointed at the Grasshopper to warn Mr Shepperd, who kept on talking while he casually grabbed the pest, twisted it’s head off like he would the cap of a beer then chucked it in the garden. At that moment, my admiration for Mr Shepperd experienced an exponential increase. Additionally, that single act that was so unexpected and powerfully disruptive served as a circuit breaker for my brain. It was as though my emotional triggers had been demoted and my logical brain now had a voice. From that point onward, when faced with a grasshopper all I could think about was Mr Shepperd twisting its head off. It was a brilliant example of how a learned pattern of behaviour was disrupted through unexpected and novel exposure that helped enable me to rewire my brain. If however, Mr Shepperd let out a shriek upon seeing the grasshopper and took three steps backward, my fear response would have been reinforced and consolidated further. It may have lead to fear so great that I would need clinical treatment such as medication and exposure therapy!

What’s the point of this story?

Circuit break your discomfort

When you’ve recognised that your fear response is entirely generated by you and that your brain has established a connection between a stimulus (like a grasshopper) and a physiological response (freezing and elevated heart rate), you’re able to break the pattern. Once you’ve broken or disrupted the pattern, you’re able to start training your brain to respond in a different way.

Get your body back in balance- When you’re experiencing a physiological response it can be confusing and scary. Furthermore, there’s nothing logical or rational about what is happening. The most important thing to do at this moment is to activate your parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest function). If your body’s out of whack, your mind won’t be much use. Common techniques to get this happening involve progressive muscle relaxation, deep breathing, going for a brisk walk or swim, and various mindfulness exercises to name a few. For those that know me well, I use juggling as a technique to reset the mind and body to bring it back into balance. The benefit of juggling is that it requires all of your attention so it prevents you from focussing on that which is triggering your fear response. At this point, I do want to point out that we are all a bit different, so if meditation actually frustrates you, then it’s not going to be very helpful. If you’re more of an active person, then maybe going for a run or swim is a better option. There is no rule book….so you’ll have to experiment to figure out what works best for you.
Face your fear- Once your back into balance physically, it’s time to challenge yourself by exposing yourself to the Grasshopper! As hard as it might seem, it’s the only way you are going to circuit break your fear and create a new association in your brain. If you’re lucky enough, you’ll have someone role model facing their fears for you, as Mr Shepperd did for me. You’ll likely need a bit of support and encouragement from people that have your back, but with a bit of courage, you’ll be able to make some great progress.
Don’t settle, seek growth- Part of the core issue underlying the irrational fears we develop is our tendency to retreat, withdraw and retire. All of this is about shrinking who you are as a person, settling for mediocrity and complacency. Our brains have evolved to keep our bodies fat and safe with the least amount of effort. Modern society provides the perfect opportunity to achieve both with next to no effort at all. Rather than succumb to the seduction of lazing about, take a stand to outgrow your fears by tackling them head-on. If you need support to do this, don’t hesitate to ask for help. In my experience, trying to tough it out is a mistake almost every leader I know has made. When things aren’t going well for you, use your support network shamelessly…that’s what it is for.

For those of you that have suffered from severe anxiety and/or depression, please don’t take my recommendations as judgement. There are differing degrees of severity and you need to seek support that matches your condition. For severe cases, the intervention of a clinical psychologist, GP, and Psychiatrist are essential. If however, you’re experiencing a physical response that doesn’t match the situation (such as increased heart rate, sweating, shortness of breath), have a go at getting your body back into balance first so you can challenge your fears, not run from them.

So…..What’s the difference between a Grasshopper and a performance review?

So, to answer the question in the title of this article, what’s the difference between a Grasshopper and a performance review? If they both trigger a physiological response to fight, flee or freeze, then there’s no difference at all. They both represent a learned response that doesn’t always appear to be logical from an outsider’s perspective. If you’ve never experienced some of the reactions I’ve discussed in this article, then I encourage you to empathise with the physical response a person might be having and help them get the support they need. The last thing they need is somebody to reinforce what they are already telling themselves….that they should be able to handle a bit of stress here and there. The issue with this line of thinking is that it’s logical. When your Amygdala hijacks your brain, your body has no choice but to follow commands that have kept our species thriving for millennia. It’s usually those people that have something to prove to themselves or somebody else that will bunker down for the long haul. While admirable, it’s a path to extreme suffering that leads to devastation for them and their families. If you or somebody you know appears to be struggling, show a bit of love and support by getting them some help.

If you’re not sure where to look but are wanting some information, head to https://headtohealth.gov.au/service-providers for some great resources and links to mental health providers in Australia. Many of the resources and support services are free of charge and confidential.

Joe Hart 28/1/20 Joe Hart 28/1/20

The war for attention: A challenge for future leaders

For decades organisations have been focussed on how to win the “War for talent”. This concept of attracting and retaining the best people for your organisation to beat the competition has been studied and written about extensively. Billions of dollars are invested by the largest organisations in the world every year to ensure they win this so-called “war”. Reason being, it’s hard to find talented people, and even harder to keep them. Before you tune-out and move onto the next story in your newsfeed let me hold your attention for a moment longer. If you want to win, stop focussing on trying to “win” new talent and start focussing on how you harness the attention of the talent you already have. A room full of highly talented people that are constantly distracted is far less productive than a room full of average people who are highly focussed.

Talent vs Attention

When was the last time you recall being 100% focused on the task at hand for more than 15mins without letting your thoughts wander, your motivation wane or your frustration build? For many people, it may even be a challenge to recall the last time they spent more than 5 minutes focussing on a single task. If that’s you, then your talent is being hindered by your inability to focus your attention. In doing so, you’re not working toward your potential and denying yourself the opportunity to be happy, fulfilled and successful. When I think of attention it’s like holding a magnifying glass at an angle to catch the rays of the sun so they can concentrate intensely on a single point. When you get the angle just right, the heat becomes so focussed that it can cause wood and paper to spontaneously combust (or a few ants meet a gruesome and spectacularly fiery death). At the wrong angle, the magnifying glass does nothing to increase the intensity of the sun’s rays or worse, block the sun’s rays altogether and create a shadow! In many ways, the ability to focus your own attention is how you create a critical threshold for productivity, creativity and ultimately achieve results. The rays of the sun are reflective of talent, but without the magnifying glass focussing our attention, we can never fully generate enough energy to create fire.

Attention-deficit

We’ve all experienced having the best of intentions to finish off an important project or deliverable only to get side-tracked by a multitude of competing priorities and not follow through on what we started. Sadly, the competing priorities that steal our attention are usually our email inbox or notifications on our phone. I’ve asked thousands of people to consider what’s most important to them over the years and not one of them has ever answered with “email”, “social media” or “responding to my latest text messages”. Despite this, many people still gauge their productivity, value and effectiveness on how many emails they have in their inbox. About three years ago when I was still working in corporate, I had a colleague peer over my shoulder and make comment on how few emails I had in my inbox. I personally wasn’t phased by how few emails I received. I saw this as a sign that I was communicating clearly with my clients and meeting their expectations. It meant that I was spending more time sitting with my clients and doing what I do best, rather than spend time hunched in front of my laptop. My colleague’s interpretation was that my job was on the line and I should be feeling vulnerable. My response… “thanks for your concern. I don’t get paid to have an inbox crammed full of emails, most of which are not relevant to me.” With a smug tone, they made a prediction that I wouldn’t be there much longer. About three months later, that same employee was made redundant and I continued on in my role for another 6 months before jumping ship. The point here is, where your attention goes, your energy flows. Indeed, when your attention is so thinly spread, you start to suffer from an attention deficit. This colleague was so focussed on transactional emails and other menial tasks, their role was no longer of value. They had become irrelevant.

Attention first, talent second

The reason why your results aren’t reflective of your potential isn’t that you don’t have enough talent, it’s because your talent isn’t focussed. Just as you’re beginning to make some progress your attention is shifted onto the next distraction. This tendency to follow distraction is not new but let’s just agree that the explosion of social media and the prevalence of smartphones has made being distracted a whole lot easier than it used to be. What’s worse is that the most popular apps are those such as Instagram, Tik-Tok and Snapchat that predominately use short videos to capture your attention. What’s more, is that while our ability to sustain focussed attention is getting shorter, our time spent on social media apps is increasing. Don’t get me wrong, I love the benefits that social media have introduced to the world and fully support them moving forward. My real concern is how organisations are managing this “war for attention” which will only become more relevant in the coming years as generation Z and generation alpha kids start to form a larger percentage of our workforce. I don’t care how talented somebody is, if they aren’t able to hold their focus for more than a few minutes without checking their social media feeds or texting a friend, we have a problem.

Despite me being Gen Y (or Millenial if you prefer that terminology), my kids insist that I’m a “boomer” and I’m acutely aware that this article is likely to get a similar response. Please don’t misinterpret what I’m writing here as sledging social media. I’m not. I am, however, challenging you to think about how you sustain your own attention and consider how you might focus the attention of your team when it is filled with Gen Zs and Gen Alphas over the next decade.

How to focus your attention

Cal Newport discusses strategies to reduce distraction in his book “Deep work” which I highly recommend reading. There are many ways to focus your attention but one of the best ways I know is to engage in learning. When you are learning something new (particularly if you are interested in the topic/task) you become fully engrossed, leaving little room for faulty thinking, boredom, negative thoughts or self-doubt to creep in. Motivation is arguably the biggest hurdle when engaging in new learning which is why I make conscious learning a daily practice. As most of my clients know, I’m a juggler and have been practising for 25 years now. Every day, I spend time focussing my attention completely on finessing my skills and enhancing my ability to sustain my focus. There have been times in my life where my practice has fallen off the priority list, but each time I come back to it, I recognise how important the daily ritual is to align my body with my mind. As an executive coach, being able to focus my attention is a critical skill. Without this skill, I’d be unable to hold presence with my clients which is essential for them to be able to get present in our sessions. While it’s rather serendipitous that I discovered juggling at an early age, I maintain that it is the single best activity I have come across that simultaneously engages the mind and body in complex adaptive learning but also allows you to flex between that which is easy and that which is challenging. I also attribute my ability to remain calm under fire to my years of conscious practice with juggling[1]. Additional benefits include reduced stress, reduced anxiety, improved peripheral vision, improved co-ordination, and some studies have even shown and increase in both white and grey matter in the brain as a result of continued practice.

If you’d like to give it a go and learn for yourself, check out my youtube videos here which guide you through steps you need to take to learn how to juggle.

If juggling isn’t your thing, have a go anyway! If you are resisting it because you “don’t have time” or “you already know how” or you’re “not very co-ordinated”. These are all excuses that you are using to not learn. My advice, drop your ego and stop telling yourself bullshit stories that are preventing you from learning, improving and developing. Your ability to focus your attention, be in the moment and enable others to do the same will be what sets you apart as a future leader. Nobody is born with the ability to completely focus so it takes considerable practice. While it may be hard, the payoff is well worth it.

[1] If you’d like to learn more about the research on the many benefits of juggling please email me at: joe@joehart.com.au and I’d be happy to share my resources with you

Joe Hart 3/1/20 Joe Hart 3/1/20

What’s really derailing you?

Right now, you and most of your colleagues are reflecting on 2019 and planning for 2020. Some go through a rigorous process of mapping out the year, setting goals, and create a clear execution plan. Others like to be a little gentler on themselves and make a pact with themselves about what they are going to do differently so they don’t suffer the same sort of fate that 2019 served up. This planning can involve personal, work or a combination of both priorities. While I think whatever process you use is totally fine, and the idea of readying yourself for the year to come is also an excellent mindset too often I see people thrusting themselves into inevitable failure. How do I know? I’ve done it myself…repeatedly.

For example, when I was at university, I had a tendency to spend a whole lot of time setting up structure and systems at the start of the first semester of the year to ensure that I was organised. I’d diligently study and do all my extra reading. By mid-term, my enthusiasm was waning, just when all of the important assignments were being issued. I’d put loads of work into researching and coming up with great ideas but didn’t like putting it all down on paper until it was ‘really good’. I’d rarely hand an assignment in late but would usually submit something that was more like a 2nd draft than a finished product. The result of all of this was usually a comment on my paper that it lacked polish and seemed incomplete. My pattern in this situation was to over-engineer the structure, research and content of my assignment. I feared to hand in a sub-standard paper that didn’t have any real substance or depth of thinking beneath it. When it came to finishing it off, I lacked clarity in my thinking and because I was exhausted my commitment to quality dropped off. The outcome was mediocre results, a credit at best.

Unfortunately for me, I didn’t know my pattern for at least a decade after I left university. Now, I approach assignments with much less structure or research in the beginning. I start conceptually and build it out from there. This enables me to be far more productive and less attached to one idea. I can easily pivot from one idea to the next because my focus is not to finesse my idea to perfection before I write anything. It’s more about blurting out everything onto paper and finessing it iteratively. The irony with this is my initial desire to be conscientious and quality focussed created a pattern of behaviour that caused the exact opposite. Often, what we think is the problem e.g procrastination, lack of structure, discipline, is not the issue at all. You need to look deeper than the obvious to identify the real pattern of thinking, feeling and behaving that is derailing you.

If you want to identify the underlying pattern that is hidden under the vale of well-intentioned action plans, lofty personal goals, and vague commitments to changing something read on

Warning! None of this will work if you aren’t really honest with yourself. At this point, I’m going to require you to stop the bullshit, quit pretending, and give yourself some tough love.

1) Name your Mindset: Don’t overthink this. Just give it a word such as Open, Curious, Excited, fixed, growth-oriented, never-give-up etc. For the example above regarding me at university, my mindset was best summed up at fear of failure. Remember this is not an exercise in determining what you want, it’s about identifying the pattern you carry. You may not like what you write down and that’s usually a good sign you are being honest. Awareness is what we are trying to achieve here so persevere with this task at hand

2) Know your interpretation: This one is a little trickier as it requires you to step outside yourself for a minute. I’ve previously written about perspective-taking in my article ‘ five perspectives’ if you want some more info on the topic. Ultimately, you need to see how you are interpreting what is happening around you. In relation to my university example, my interpretation was that I would fail if I didn’t have a really structured approach to my study, my assignments, my reading etc. My interpretation; structure and discipline necessary for success, both of which I felt I was incredibly deficient in. I could do it….but it was like pulling teeth, drained all of my energy, and wasn’t sustainable for the entire semester.

3) Evaluate your environment: When I speak of the environment, I am talking of both the physical and the emotional environments that you create. I would often study at home which offered certain amounts of freedom but was isolating and was easier to get distracted. Doing my work in the library or labs at university was much more focussed and efficient but usually my last choice (my interpretation of structure and discipline involved me isolating myself to avoid distraction). My emotional environment was a harsh landscape, made harsher by the self-inflicted ostracism. I’d punish myself with gruelling study sessions and force myself to relisten to lectures that I didn’t fully grasp. It was a begrudging exercise filled with resentment. This shroud of emotion was like a thick fog preventing me from seeing what was further than 10 metres in front of me. To put it bluntly, I was miserable….and I did it to myself.

Now that you’ve Named your Mindset, know your interpretation and evaluated your environment you need to understand how they are interacting to get to the story that’s driving your pattern. Here’s how you do it.

By downloading the worksheet or drawing your own, fill in the Mindset, Interpretation and Environment components. Now, your task is to name the thoughts, feelings and behaviours that are created as a result of the overlapping elements. Below is my worked example based on my time at university.

Fig 1. Worked example- Pattern Recognition

Once you complete filling out each component, you’ll be able to pin it on the wall, step back and see your pattern more clearly. I like to draw a giant diagram on the wall using flip charts stuck together to give me more space. It also enables me to stand back and see the pattern on a large scale. Here’s where it all gets very interesting. If you superimpose the pattern that you identify onto other problems, scenarios and issues that you have in your life, you’ll most likely find that it’s applicable. This is a clue that you’ve correctly identified a recurring pattern of thinking, feeling and behaving. You can use this model to understand why your relationships aren’t working out, jobs keep disappointing you or life isn’t meeting your expectations.

My advice

Before you lock in your annual plan, make sure you understand the patterns that are driving your behaviour. If you don’t, you’re likely to be setting yourself up for a catastrophic and ironical failure. Just remember, how you think affects how you behave, and how you behave affects how you feel. As this cycle continues, it’s always your fault. If you find yourself looking for a silver bullet, someone to blame or an excuse to justify what happened, take a look in the mirror.

Joe Hart 24/12/19 Joe Hart 24/12/19

Do you know your pattern?

To know your own automatic, unconscious patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving. To know your own pattern is to have what I call True perspective and it’s something you can’t achieve alone. To know your pattern is like having a map to a secret treasure that contains all the riches you’d ever need. Indeed, knowing your pattern is the greatest gift you’ll ever receive, should you be willing to receive it. Sometimes, we may think we are aware of our patterns where in fact, we are just observing the familiar outcomes associated with them. Below are a couple of frequently occurring examples of people focussing on the undesirable outcome, not the pattern that underpins how they got there.

If I was to ask you above all else, what’s the most important thing you want to know about yourself…what would you say? Take a moment right now to reflect on an answer. The truth is, most people don’t know how to answer this question and simply say “I don’t know”.

Having asked this question of hundreds of leaders I’ve observed that with a little bit of thought, it’s not hard to come up with an answer. Some of the most common answers people give are:

“to know if I’m leadership material”
“to know if I have what it takes”
“to know how people ‘really’ perceive me”
“to know why I react in certain ways to certain people or events”
“to know that I’m making a difference”
“to know that I’m not a complete idiot or waste of time”

The common thread linking the above answers is to know that which you yourself cannot see. To know your own automatic, unconscious patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving. To know your own pattern is to have what I call True perspective and it’s something you can’t achieve alone. To know your pattern is like having a map to a secret treasure that contains all the riches you’d ever need. Indeed, knowing your pattern is the greatest gift you’ll ever receive, should you be willing to receive it. Sometimes, we may think we are aware of our patterns where in fact, we are just observing the familiar outcomes associated with them. Below are a couple of frequently occurring examples of people focussing on the undesirable outcome, not the pattern that underpins how they got there.

Example 1: The leader that believes that their team is not delivering to level that they expect. Their assumption is that they have the wrong people in the team. Their pattern, however, is to not clearly articulate what they expect from their team and each member within it. Without clear expectations, the staff become confused, misaligned, and reactive. Dysfunction follows, fears sets in, team members are let-go and the cycle continues when new people come on board.

Example 2: The team member that is overworked, doesn’t have any time for themselves and is constantly annoyed by the lack of support they receive from their colleagues. Their frustration builds up over time when they see their colleagues swan in and out of work without the same level of pressure they feel. Unable to contain their frustration they experience a ‘meltdown’ resulting in a sick day, serial ‘venting’ to their partner, a trusted colleague or worse, their boss. They assume that the problem is that other people are not taking their load of responsibility resulting in the pressure they feel. In reality, they are extremely poor delegators and fear to let go of projects. Their fear is due to a pattern of feeling undervalued so they combat this fear by taking on more work to demonstrate their capability.

Example 3: The executive that ‘knows’ what’s right for the business but nobody will listen to their solutions. Their assumption is that other people are not as smart as them so they are unable to comprehend their ideas. Believing that forcing their perspective will not be beneficial, they sit back, withdraw, and watch how things unfold. Unbeknownst to them, their pattern is one of acquiescence, the tendency to simply agree with things when in fact, they are in doubt. The enter all conversations with a bias of already ‘knowing’ the answer and if somebody challenges it through ideas, opinion or analysis, they simply withdraw. They exude superiority and hold concrete views about what is right rarely offering honesty in their discussions. As a result, their relationships remain transactional and shallow.

Whether you recognise any of these patterns in yourself or people you work with is beside the point. The point I’m making here is that our first stab at understanding what’s creating the issue, outcome or result that’s getting in our way is usually wrong. In order to get to the core of the issue and change, we need help in seeing the underlying patterns of our thoughts, feelings and behaviour.

Characteristics of a pattern

If you want to create lasting and sustainable change in your behaviour, you first need to understand the characteristics of a pattern.

According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, a pattern is defined as:

“a reliable sample of traits, acts, tendencies, or other observable characteristics of a person, group, or institution”

The Oxford online Learners Dictionary defines a pattern as:

“The regular way in which something happens or is done”

Both definitions apply to patterns of behaviour, sleeping patterns, consumer spending patterns, prevailing patterns of speech, relationship patterns and the list goes on. Having spent my whole life being part of a pattern, recognising patterns and responding to them, I’d say I’m somewhat of an expert. The good news is, so are you.

Something I’m particularly interested in is what our patterns can tell us about how we learn, especially when it comes to learning about ourselves. Self-awareness, having made an appearance in pretty much every model of leadership or emotional intelligence ever conceptualised, is arguably the most important characteristic we can ever develop. The challenge, as with most important things, we can’t do it in isolation. We need feedback on how we interpret what we are learning, the mindset we adopt before, during and after we learn but also the physical and emotional environment we create to frame our learning experience.

For those that know me or have worked with me before, you’ll know that I’m a juggler and have been doing it for more than 25 years. I’m still learning and constantly challenging myself with new juggling patterns that stretch my capabilities both physically and mentally. Over the last 25 years, I’ve distilled the core characteristics of patterns (fundamental to learning how to juggle) down to the following four keys. These keys can be applied to any behavioural change you are trying to make at work or in your personal life.

1) Patterns are infinite: In a standard juggling pattern, the balls all follow a continuous flow that resembles an infinity sign. As long as you keep throwing the balls with the correct trajectory and rhythm, you will be able to juggle indefinitely. Applying this to leadership, parenting or life, our patterns (both good and bad) will continue infinitely without intervention.

2) Patterns are changeable: Following on from the first pattern, while infinitely recurring, all patterns are changeable and malleable. Using Juggling as an example, the way in which you manipulate the balls through the air is only limited by your imagination, capability and physics. Everything we do, think and feel is changeable should we have the courage, desire and tenacity to change it. The brain itself is a map of all behaviours enabling us to speak, plan, move, see and hear. If a certain part of the brain is damaged, such as that which enables us to speak, we will struggle to communicate verbally. However, due to neuroplasticity, the brain is able to change the pattern associated with speaking and use other parts of the brain to complete that task. This is an extremely simplistic example, but indeed, if our brains are able to fundamentally change how neurons are connected and organised to complete complex tasks such as speaking, we can change any behaviour.

3) Patterns are learnable: If I was to place five balls in your hand and ask you to juggle them unless you’d previously learned how to do it, you wouldn’t know where to start. You may not even be able to imagine what juggling five balls even looks like, or that it’s even possible! If however, I taught you sequentially how to juggle one, two, and three balls you’d easily understand how to juggle five balls based on the patterns you’ve already learned. You’re applying the framework from a simpler task to a more difficult one. Knowing that patterns are both changeable and learnable should provide you with the confidence and knowledge to keep developing yourself.

4) Patterns are disguised: Our patterns are so natural, so seamless, so automatic that until we are made aware, they are disguised to us. It’s very difficult to lift the vale on our patterns without any external feedback from other people that know us. Even once we are made aware, without actively working on learning new patterns or changing existing ones, we will quickly revert to our well-practised patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving. In this way, the disguise contributes to the infinite nature of our patterns. Similarly, we can wrongly attribute lost relationships, a breakdown in communication, poor performance at work, or a dysfunctional team to issues external to us, where in fact it is our own pattern creating all the issues, we just can’t see what is blindingly obvious to those around us.

For anyone wanting to test their co-ordination, stretch their brain and learn something new, check out my juggling tutorial on Youtube for some basic lessons to get you going.

Why should you understand your pattern?

When it comes to how you think, feel, and behave, your patterns are the single biggest influencing factor shaping everything you do. It, therefore, makes total sense why you should know your pattern so you can better interpret what happens, engage more effectively with your environment, and sustain a mindset that is positive and focussed.

We all know how important it is to focus on forming good habits, and I too follow this line of thinking. Having recently read James Clear’s Atomic Habits and Brendon Burchard’s High-performance Habits, it’s clear that our fascination with building good habits and breaking bad ones is here to stay. Here’s where I think it gets a little tricky. I may go through the process of establishing a really strong habit of going to the gym, which after 66 days has become part of my identity. I continue going to the gym and getting stronger, leaner, and fitter. If however, I have an overarching pattern of self-sabotage that is disguised to me, I’ll create these unconscious challenges that start to erode my ability to maintain my habit of going to the Gym. Some examples of these could be;

Creating a challenging relationship at work such that my performance is hindered, I will have to work extra hours to make up for it and don’t have time to train at the gym.
Allow myself to eat ‘whatever I want’ which has a negative impact on my health and physical performance making it difficult to keep training at the gym.
Keep pushing beyond my limits physically resulting in overtraining or injury, preventing me from training at all.
Focus all my emotional effort on everybody else’s issues (friends, family, partner etc.) leaving me with no time left to train. Because I was sacrificing myself for others people feel sorry for me and understand why I stopped training at the gym.

While these may or may not be entirely applicable to you, we all have patterns that we follow. These patterns are often invisible to us and therefore dominate how we respond, think about, reflect upon and engage with our environment. Habits are transactions where are patterns represent the bank balance. Some of our patterns are good, some are bad, and some are just plain ugly. Learning how to see them and doing something to change them is what makes all the difference.

How do I see my own pattern?

It’s not easy, and you may not like what you see, but the best way I know is to ask people (about 6-8 should be enough). It can be difficult to have the conversation directly with people so you might want to ask a coach or mentor to ask on your behalf. The questions that I use are:

What are my strengths?
What are my weaknesses?
How could I improve?
What can you offer me?
What do you need from me?
What do you most want me to know?

As a starting point, these questions will give you some great insight into what your patterns might be and how they are holding you back or thrusting you forward. I’ve used this same combination of questions to provide hundreds of leaders with “True Perspective” but sadly, there are many that don’t do anything with their newfound insight. The irony is those patterns that are so well disguised that it takes a monumental shift in perspective to reveal them when we finally do see them our usual response is outright rejection.

My final word

The reason why most of us can’t answer the question “What do you most want to know about yourself?” Is because we fear seeing ourselves the way the rest of the world sees us. The truth is, that which we most fear is usually what we need the most. As we close out 2019 and welcome in 2020, take a stand to have the courage to see your own pattern, take responsibility for it, and most importantly do something to change it.

Joe Hart 15/12/19 Joe Hart 15/12/19

The Fishbowl: Real life, Real people, Real cases | Adam Camerlengo

As part of my regular posts, I’m introducing a new series called ‘The Fishbowl’ that focusses on real people and how they self-reflect, prioritise, make decisions and show up in the world. It takes courage to put yourself out there and share aspects of who you are and what you believe has shaped you and your life. However, I strongly believe (and my experiences and my clients’) suggest that when you demonstrate courage and show a bit of vulnerability, it enables you to grow and expand. For anybody reading this, take the opportunity to self-reflect and potentially see yourself in their stories and learn from their own insights and courage. You never know, you too might feel compelled to share a bit more of who you are with the world….what’s the worst that could happen?

As part of my regular posts, I’m introducing a new series call ‘The Fishbowl’ that focusses on real people and how they self-reflect, prioritise, make decisions and show up in the world. It takes courage to put yourself out there and share aspects of who you are and what you believe has shaped you and your life. However, I strongly believe (and my experiences and my clients’) suggest that when you demonstrate courage and show a bit of vulnerability, it enables you to grow and expand. For anybody reading this, take the opportunity to self-reflect and potentially see yourself in their stories and learn from their own insights and courage. You never know, you too might feel compelled to share a bit more of who you are with the world….what’s the worst that could happen?

Introducing Adam

Adam and I first met in the Karate dojo about two years ago. In that period of time, I’ve seen Adam kick some serious goals in life such as compete in a Karate tournament held in Malaysia representing Australia, obtain his black belt, further progress in completing his degree toward becoming a fully qualified Chiropractor and volunteered much of his personal time to establish himself as a loved and valued member of the Artarmon Shinkyokushin Karate Dojo.

For anybody that knows Adam, he is a fast talker and can sometimes, according to Adam, be overlooked as a bit of a ‘class clown’ so people tend not to take him seriously. Over a two hour chat armed with an iced coffee, a beautifully air-conditioned building where we could escape the thick white smoke that is currently choking Sydney, Adam (with a little bit of help from his great friend Vera) shared his story with me and ultimately answered the question “how did you end up here?”.

The conversation began with Adam launching into stream-of-consciousness type flow of verbal expression that reflected Freud’s free association technique without the couch. There was no need for me to lead with a question, Adam was already there, masking his nervousness about agreeing to ‘share his story’ with me by talking without taking a breath for the first 5mins. Once he finally did stop for breath, he asked: “so how does this work…. what are we going to do?”

The stories we tell ourselves

I asked Adam to share his story with all of us because he has recently experienced a series of significant accomplishments. It’s brilliant to see when somebody is in their flow, taking the bull by the horns and leading a fulfilled life. My intrigue with Adam and his story lies not in his accomplishments but more so in what he tells himself when nobody else is listening. Sometimes these stories are so automatic and well-rehearsed that we are no longer aware of them. On the other hand, sometimes they are so dominant that we can’t focus our attention on anything else. What is clear, whether we are aware of what we tell ourselves or not, they play a significant and profound role in how we live our life, shape our future, and interact with the world around us. They influence how we related to others, communicate our message, reflect on challenges or opportunities, experience love, hate or any other emotion. Fundamentally, what we tell ourselves has a huge impact on everything that we do.

Adam’s ‘story’

Before I even finished my sentence explaining the concept underlying the stories we tell ourselves, like any self-confessed fast talker, Adam quickly interjected with a wry smile and slightly flippant tone stating “that’s easy, my story is that I’m not good enough and I’m not working hard enough”. Indeed Adam is very self-aware of his own story and how that has contributed to shaping him to this very day. He may not have gone to the lengths of illuminating how dominant this story has been in shaping his behaviour and the outcomes he has achieved. He is, however, aware of the agitation that it creates, like an old injury that only shows up during the coldest months of the year….it’s always there but we sometimes forget how it is affecting us until it stops us from doing what we want.

Following Adam’s admission to the story that he habitually tells himself, I probed further to understand if he knew where it came from. This was where the conversation got tangential – which for a speed talker like Adam means we covered his story in a pattern that resembled a Mr squiggle drawing (apologies for those too young to understand the reference…..watch the YouTube clip!) i.e. It starts with a few dashes on a page that iteratively morphs into a comprehensive image. In short, he couldn’t articulate exactly where it came from but through verbalising his thoughts, we managed to get to the core.

The ‘drunken man’s’ stagger

Adam, like most of us, has not taken a linear path through life thus far. Very rarely does someone decide what they want to be early in life and seamlessly make it a reality. It does happen….but more often than not, our journey resembles something that looks more like a drunken man’s stagger….swaying from one side to the other, backward and forward, around in a few small circles to finally land at a destination. At that point, the drunken man sobers up and says to himself “how did I get here?”.

With surprise in his voice, Adam affirms that he was actually one of the ‘cool kids’ at school. He wasn’t quite sure how it happened but given one of the kids in his group was a budding AFL superstar (no small thing in Victoria) he was cool by association no through his own sporting prowess. He also had a gift for music that stemmed from his mother. He was encouraged to get involved in all music, art and drama at school. While his understanding of music is savant-like, his real passion emerged in Drama.

Adam has always felt underestimated, which he admits he likes. It gives him an edge over those that put him in the ‘class clown’ box. For those that did make fun of him or disrespect him, he quite simply didn’t take shit from anyone and stood up for himself. Knowing that others underestimated him, he used this as fuel to motivate him to work harder and not be predicted by inferential statistics like everyone else.

He went on to study performing arts at university with the intention of establishing himself as an actor. Following a lot of hard work, knock-backs, and part-time jobs in coffee shops and bars Adam realised he wasn’t happy. While he was battling to make himself a name in showbiz, he took an interest in mixed martial arts and inspired by George St Pierre took a few classes in Kyokushin Karate. Soon after, he started taking his training more seriously than his career. It was through a routine visit to an inspirational chiropractor that Adam had been seeing for a hip injury (most likely agitated from practising martial arts) he was persuaded to explore getting qualified as a Chiro. His first response to the suggestion “I’m not smart enough to do that”.

Right here we see a simple comparison with family members, accomplished friends, academically successful peers or authoritative professionals. The story of “I’m not good enough, smart enough, big enough, strong enough……. ENOUGH!” kicks into gear. It’s a toxic story that only through grit, pure determination, and consistency can we succeed despite the crippling distraction from our own imagined foibles. Fortunately for Adam, Karate was an anchor for him to challenge his deep-seated belief that he wasn’t good enough and wasn’t working hard enough. Shinkyokushin is well known globally to be one of the strongest forms of Karate in the world. The training is tough and unrelenting with an undertone of ‘never give up’. The philosophy of karate reinforces to never be enough and never work hard enough. Indeed there is no end game…no goal to achieve…no state in which you rest. Even when obtaining a black belt, which Adam has recently achieved, you are welcomed into what is known to be the ‘void’. Below is an excerpt from a training manual explaining the transition a Black Belt makes upon successful completion of the grading.

KU- The Void. When we are born we know nothing. Through training, we strive to achieve a different level of “nothing”. At first, the body controls the mind, then the mind controls the body. Ultimately the mind is clear and can ignore problems, anger, worry and become calm. This is the way to live a happy life.

Working hard for things you want?

There is a lot of wisdom in working hard to get results, and a truckload of evidence to support that it works. The challenge with this approach is that you can spend your whole life working really hard to obtain a trophy, car, family, house, status, job title, or belt colour (in the case of Karate) without really knowing what you want.

In the absence of knowing what you really want, you are susceptible to your own imagination which emerges in the form of bullshit stories that you tell yourself….just like Adam (and all of us for that matter) has done for his whole life. The energy and focus it takes to override such toxic stories is far greater than the effort we put into knowing what we want. Just imagine if you redirected all that energy toward your aspirations.

The trick for Adam…and all of us for that matter is to change our focus. Rather than working hard to achieve what we want, we need to work really hard to KNOW what we want. This is not a one-off tick-the-box exercise but an ongoing commitment to the most important project you’ll ever work on….YOU. The best way to do this is to ask yourself often, ‘What is most important to me right now?’ Answer it honestly, work toward aligning yourself to what is most important and your whole life will make a lot more sense.

True Perspective

Like many of you reading this, Adam is very intelligent. He is going to graduate with his second degree, has a black belt and competed in karate tournaments against top-level opponents. Despite all of that, he still tells himself that he’s not smart enough, not good enough and doesn’t know if he’s working hard enough. How is it that someone who is intelligent and achieves so much in life still believes falsities that he tells himself in stark contrast to what all the evidence suggests? One of the greatest lies we can ever tell ourselves is that how we think others perceive us is true. If you’re feeling sorry for Adam right now, don’t. Take a moment to see yourself in his story and recognise that while you might have a slightly different way of expressing it, you also have a story that rules you, that you believe to be true despite all of the evidence that suggests that it isn’t!

Once you know your story, what do you do next?

The answer lies in neuroscience and the simple truth that [1]‘neurons that wire together fire together’. Every time Adam faces a challenge or sees something like a stretch goal, his default pattern of thinking, feeling and behaving is linked back to ‘not good enough’. We build ‘evidence’ to confirm what we already ‘know’ (this is known as a self-fulfilling prophecy). The best way to break this is to introduce a roadblock, power surge or hijacking of the existing pattern. This is something that fundamentally challenges what we tell ourselves, how we see ourselves and subsequently how we behave. I call this circuit breaker True Perspective which represents the overlap of how we see ourselves with how others see and experience us. It’s more than being self-aware, it is our self-concept in action. True Perspective is seeing yourself the way the rest of the world sees you. In this case, I didn’t ask Adam’s friends, family, colleagues and clients to provide their rating of him so it isn’t a fair representation of Adam because it is only made up of Adam’s self-concept. He did, however, have his good friend Vera present and she chimed in to let me know that Adam is quite hard on himself.

Figure 2 - Adam's Self Evaluation- True Perspective

Evolution of self

For the last 15 years, I’ve been working on a framework to help facilitate personal and professional development. Too often I see people that overinvest in one element more than the other which over time, throws them out of balance. For example, this looks like working all hours to deliver on a massive project and missing out on time with family. Alternatively, it could be taking a 6 month break off work to do a trip around the world to make up for the lost time. Neither of these is wrong, but they certainly aren’t balanced. From my personal experience and the experience of my clients, the imbalance that prompts their corrective action stems from being misaligned i.e. How they want to be experienced and remembered by others is not matching their day to day behaviour. This, in psychology, is what we call cognitive dissonance.

Based on [2]Adam’s self-ratings, I’ve plotted where he sits on the evolution of self framework and as you can see it’s primarily focussed on relationship boundaries. Much of the session that Adam I and had was focussed on the relationships he has with his peers at university, with those he loves, and the relationship he has with himself. Over the coming months and years, Adam has an amazing opportunity to transcend his focus on relationship boundaries and move into the transformational elements of the framework.

When it comes to ‘self’ it’s ever-expanding, evolving concept that is constantly changing based on your interactions with the world. The more experiences you have, the more refined (and hopefully aligned) you will be.

Application

When it comes to applying this model, it can be utilised with reference to situations, such as how you perform on projects or in a particular role at work or even in a volunteer context. You may also like to apply the model in a more personal setting such as with your social circle, your immediate family, or in relation to your life partner. There is no limit to the application as the principles are the same across all contexts and with all relationships. The key is to leverage the combination of ‘True Perspective’ with the Evolution of Self Model to ensure you are continually defining, refining and progressing toward creating your legacy i.e. living in alignment with how you want to be remembered.

References

[1] Löwel, S. and Singer, W. (1992) Science 255 (published January 10, 1992) "Selection of Intrinsic Horizontal Connections in the Visual Cortex by Correlated Neuronal Activity". United States: American Association for the Advancement of Science. pp. 209–212

[2] Normally, I would interview 6-8 nominated stakeholders to obtain the ‘others’ perspective. Given this was not a full program, I kept it to a self-evaluation only.

Joe Hart 10/12/19 Joe Hart 10/12/19

Do you lead with Guilt or Shame?

As many of you right now, my calendar is full of end of year gatherings, parties, kids’ performances, presentations etc. It can be hard to juggle priorities and ensure that you give everyone the attention they deserve. In my case, with four kids, this is always a challenging time of year when it comes to getting to everything and being a supportive, loving parent whilst maintaining my sanity.

My daughter, being the youngest of four, has gotten the least amount of attention of all my kids. Not surprisingly and ironically, she is also the child that wants the most love and affection from me. For that reason, she tends to know which of my ‘guilt strings’ to pluck to get me to show up. Two weeks ago, she was ready to perform at the end-of-year dance recital. She had practised to music at home religiously for months getting the moves timed perfectly with the music. Her costume looked fantastic and, I was looking forward to seeing her express herself in a performance that she had worked so hard to perfect.

The big day finally arrived, tickets in hand and the recital was scheduled at the very end of a very busy Saturday which involved Japanese School, Karate, Basketball, and a trip to the Physiotherapist. The recital was due to start at 6:30 pm and went for two and a half hours including an interval. As you can imagine, with such a tight schedule, there was not a lot of margin for error and by now, you are rightly predicting that we faced a lot of error that day.

“The fear of what might happen is often worse than the outcome itself. I’m sure there are exceptions to this rule, and my massive generalisation of guilt vs shame culture is by no means definitive but in my experience and that of my clients, the truth is a far better option when it comes to maintaining your wellbeing both personally and at work.”

We dropped my daughter off at 5:30 pm to get her make-up and hair done prior to the performance and would not see her again until after the show. In the hour before the performance started, everything that could have gone wrong did….and predictably we were going to be late. It was only a few minutes late initially…but that soon turned into 15minutes. Exasperated and hoping that they hadn’t started yet, we rushed into the theatre and were ushered to our seats. Once seated we had an opportunity to review the program and see when my daughter’s routine was due to start. I saw my daughters dance listed second from the top and based on the performance that was currently happening….I realised that we’d already missed it. My heart sank. My wife leaned over and asked when she was due to perform…I said “We’ve missed it”. I didn’t take in much of what was going on around me after that. I was so angry at myself, disappointed, annoyed, looking to blame my son for putting his shoes on too slowly, my wife for changing her dress at the last minute and the very slow driver in the carpark that held us up for a couple of minutes. I also felt annoyed at all of the delays that had happened earlier in the day to contribute to us being late. In addition, I was now sitting through a 2.5-hour recital watching other kids perform that I had no connection with…. it was somewhat of a nightmare. To make things worse, we weren’t allowed to see our daughter until all of the performances were finished! Painfully, this gave me ample time to think about what we were going to say to her.

What would you do?

She’s 9 years old and has been working on this for months. She knows you are watching her but due to the theatre layout, we were up on the balcony so there is no chance she would have noticed our absence in the audience. We see that it is being professionally filmed so we will be able to get the recording at some point. Do we tell her that we missed it? Or do we allow her to have her moment of joy without bringing her down?

Guilt or shame….what drives you?

I didn’t want to face the reality that I’d have to break my daughter’s heart so, like a coward, I turned to my wife in the hope that she would resort to her cultural heritage to decide. My wife is Japanese so as a generalisation Japanese culture along with most Asian cultures adopt what is known as a ‘shame culture’[1]. Basically, this means that if you’ve done something that you aren’t proud of (like miss your daughter’s dance recital) then there would be no point in sharing that with her or anybody else. By sharing, it would bring on a feeling of shame that would tarnish your personal brand. In Japanese culture and many Asian cultures, shame is a feeling to be avoided at all costs. Much to my surprise, my wife has become more Australianised than I thought and quickly stated “it’s up to you…but I think we should tell her”. All I could hear at that moment was the plucking of my ‘guilt strings’ even louder. As an Australian, I belong to what is known as a ‘guilt culture’ that has derived from a society dominated by Christian values. In simple terms, if I’ve done something I’m not proud of then it eats me up inside until I come clean. It was clear what I needed to do….confess!

Confession time

Like most difficult conversations, what I think is going to unfold is much worse than the reality. This conversation was no different. I picked her up from the stage door told her she looked beautiful (which she did in her sparkly costume and make-up) then asked her how she felt. She then asked me “Did you see me Papa?” which I could tell was a rhetorical question. I paused very briefly before I gently said: “I’m sorry Keira….we were a little late so I didn’t get to see your performance”. She took about ten seconds of silence while she looked down at the pathway then looked up at me and said, now you have to buy the DVD (with a surprisingly evil grin), to which I responded: “of course”. She then said “Can I perform my dance to music when we get home?” to which I responded, “of course you can….I’d love that”.

While guilt still plagues me and shame is something I have felt, the alternative to both of those is the truth. If you ever find yourself wanting to ‘protect’ somebody from the truth I’d challenge you to consider if you’re coming from a place of guilt or shame…or potentially both. Rather than avoid either of these, challenge yourself to share the truth. The fear of what might happen is often worse than the outcome itself. I’m sure there are exceptions to this rule, and my massive generalisation of guilt vs shame culture is by no means definitive but in my experience and that of my clients, the truth is a far better option when it comes to maintaining your wellbeing both personally and at work

[1] For a discussion on the topic of giult vs shame culture, please see the following article. Revisiting Shame and Guilt Cultures: A Forty-Year Pilgrimage: Ethos, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Sep., 1990), pp. 279-307 (29 pages)

Joe Hart 2/12/19 Joe Hart 2/12/19

How Physically intelligent are you?

Most of us have wrestled the question of our own intelligence based on performance at school, the complexity of jobs we have performed or scores on formal intelligence tests. Similarly, we may have questioned our emotional intelligence based on our ability to read others emotions, influence others, and maintain a strong social circle. I wonder how many of you have ever questioned how physically intelligent you are?

In the book Physical Intelligence, Claire Dale and Patricia Peyton describe physical intelligence as that which underpins both cognitive and emotional performance. It’s the degree of mastery we have over our own bodies to ensure we maintain a healthy balance of essential chemicals such as dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, acetylcholine, testosterone, adrenaline, DHEA and cortisol. After all, if our bodies aren’t working properly, or we have a chemical imbalance, it’s difficult to think or feel with any degree of sophistication. Back to the question of how physically intelligent you are, consider this:

Right now, are you aware of your posture? How you are sitting? Are you are experiencing any tension?
Do you notice your breath? Is it fast and shallow? Or are you breathing deeply into your diaphragm?
What about your muscles? Can you switch them on and off at will? Are you able to quickly activate them to perform both fine motor and gross motor tasks? Or are they unresponsive and sluggish?

These are just some of the cues that you can notice in yourself right now to help you evaluate your level of awareness about what is going on in your body. While it might seem a bit hippy woo woo or the sort of thing you might talk about in a yoga class, we all need to be aware of what’s going on in our bodies if we are at all interested in performing at our best in whatever it is that we choose to do.

As a kid, I was always very good at sports and athletics. I was also very co-ordinated so it enabled me to excel in complex tasks such as juggling. In hindsight, however, I wasn’t very physically intelligent. I was barely aware of what was going on in my body and how it translated to my performance on and off the field. I just ‘showed up’ or ‘pushed through’ like everyone else. If I was in pain, I got the ‘you’ll be right mate’ type response. At 12 years old I remember my very first job required me to lift cartons of beer, two at a time, from the storage room to the beer fridge. Not wanting to appear weak, I would carry hundreds of cartons with poor posture following the advice of my overweight 26-year-old boss who used to say, ‘put your back into mate’.

Fast forward a quarter of a century and I’m a whole lot more physically intelligent nowadays but I learned the hard way. I recently experienced the excruciating pain associated with a ruptured disc in my lower spine…. commonly known as a slipped disc. I’ve had a sore back before and it usually goes away after a couple of days or at most, a week. This, however, had me barely able to walk, unable to drive, sit, or do anything really. I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t exercise, couldn’t even read a book without discomfort. For the first time in my life, I understood what prolonged chronic pain can do to your cognitive and emotional performance. Simply put, I was emotionally fried, cognitively impaired, and physically disabled. The energy required to process the pain left me exhausted, and depressed. I also didn’t feel like connecting with friends or family because I was feeling miserable and a whole lot sorry for myself. I didn’t go to Karate because I couldn’t do the moves and I skipped yoga because I felt annoyed that I wouldn’t be able to do it properly. For about two months I was at home, hobbling around trying to do the rehab exercises that I learned from my Physio. My emotional state and cognitive ability were being hijacked by my physical state. The only solution was to get my physical state right but for what felt like an eternity, it seemed to be getting a whole lot worse.

While I’m well and truly on the road to recovery now, I’m still not fully recovered and probably won’t be for another three months until I’ve completed all my rehabilitation. While many of you have experienced much more significant injuries than I sustained, I wanted to capture what I’ve learned to help anyone going through something similar. Obviously I’m not a physician so please follow the advice of your doctor or physical therapist first and foremost. What I’m putting forward are psychosocial factors that I now recognise were significantly influencing my recovery time.

Coping with Chronic pain and physical injury

1) Take the meds. I initially thought that if I could ‘tough it out’, I would get better quicker. This was a massive mistake and only made my recovery time slower. The pain messed with my sleep, affected my mood, and made it very difficult to concentrate. If you’ve got medication, take it as there is no point trying to be a hero. Pain is debilitating for mind, body and soul.

2) Let your body inform you about what to do next. I spent a great deal of time worrying about what might happen if I didn’t get the feeling back in my foot or if the pain got worse, or if I wasn’t able to drive anymore. None of these thoughts were helpful and mostly got in the way of me resting or focussing on my rehabilitation program. When your body is broken, keep your mind out of it.

3) Keep doing what you normally do. One of the biggest factors influencing my recovery time has been social contact through my normal activities. Before my back injury, I would attend Karate twice a week and yoga at least once a week. I would also work-out at least twice a week at the gym. While it makes sense to not attend any of these classes or activities while injured, I now know how important these activities are in maintaining my physical and emotional state. Oxytocin is a powerful hormone that is released when connecting and bonding with friends or family. By not attending these activities I was missing out on a regular dose of oxytocin to keep me connected and happy. In the future, if I sustain an injury, the moment I’m able to walk or stand, I’ll be back to my usual activities. Even if I can only stand in the corner attempting the moves, this will restore emotional connecting while speeding up recovery time.

4) Prevention is the best medicine. It’s ancient wisdom, but I now fully appreciate how important it is to master the very basics of posture, breathing, strength, and flexibility. I now know what it feels like to have no other option than to focus on my breath. Being able to masterfully influence, restore, and rebalance your body is the most effective way to unlock your cognitive and emotional capability.

5) Keep moving. This is true of both body and mind. Stillness in the body is in fact, not very still at all. While you may not be moving your body with large gestures, simply breathing represents a constant expansion and contraction in your body. When you experience nerve pain, simply breathing can hurt quite a lot. I became very much aware of how much we are moving when we aren’t really moving at all. Stillness in the mind is quite similar. There are always thoughts popping into your head however your ability to simply observe them and not follow them is what stillness is all about. Unfortunately for me, rather than focus my practice on keeping a still mind, I let my mind stagnate which is another way of saying that I got fixated on my injury and ruminated over all the possible negative outcomes. This threw me into a depressive state that was very difficult to break out of.

Joe Hart 15/9/19 Joe Hart 15/9/19

A new haircut or a bad hair day? -: How to articulate what everyone else is thinking

A few weeks ago, I looked in the mirror and knew it was time to get my hair cut. I went to my usual barber which is one of those places that’s probably meant for people in their twenties, but when it comes to a haircut, I’m a creature of habit. I’m not fussy about who cuts my hair, so I waited patiently for my turn. I was in a bit of a hurry that day so I’d ever so gently asked how long it would be. I got an apologetic response from one of the staff who indicated that there were a few people that had called in sick. Next thing I know, a very muscular guy (in a freaky steroid type way) emerges from a ‘staff only’ room out the back still chewing on his lunch to ask what was ‘up’. As I watched him flex his way toward me, I meekly replied “nothing….just checking in on how long the wait is” and quickly retreated to my seat fearing that I’d not only interrupted this guys lunch but also triggered his extremely low threshold for wanting to fight somebody! I sighed in relief as he asserted his dominance over me and manoeuvred his muscle-bound body back to the feeding trough…. I mean lunchroom. Not more than 5 minutes later, it was my turn. It was about the speediest haircut I’d ever had. It suited me perfectly! There was no offer of hair wax at the end or even a mirror held up to enable me to see the back of my head. In hindsight, it seems suspicious, but I didn’t think much of it and carried on with my day. Since I was wearing a cap all day, I hadn’t had any feedback on my haircut, nor did I feel the need to seek it. I’ve had hundreds of haircuts at the same barber and it always looks pretty much the same.

The next morning I was due to take my son to a physiotherapy appointment so jumped out of bed, got the kids sorted for school and hopped in the car. Bleary-eyed and still waking up, I heard some giggling coming from the back seat of the car. My 12-year-old son then bluntly said to me “What’s wrong with your head?” Sensing the amusement with what would normally be a case of ‘bed hair’ I simply said, “my hair looks fine from the front…what’s up with it?”. My son then said “I think they stuffed your haircut….there’s a big patch of hair on the back of your head that doesn’t look right….I think they broke your haircut”. My two son’s and daughter found this hilarious and cracked into rapturous laughter. My mind quickly reverted to the gentle pressure I had applied in getting my hair attended to quickly….and this was the result.

We arrived at the physio appointment and halfway through the session while the physio was explaining the exercises my son had to do to build his strength, my daughter abruptly said to me “What happened to the back of your head?”. Not surprisingly, the physio then arced his head around to look for himself and said, “yeah….looks like it needs a bit of work”. I thanked my daughter for her brutal honesty and congratulated her on throwing me under the bus of socially awkward moments.

The ‘Truth’

I’ve always been a fan of truth and for those of you that have worked with me past or present, this forms a core part of my purpose. When I was younger, I probably took my need for truth a little too far – like my lovely daughter- and delivered some brutally honest messages as a result. Having experienced the impact of such honesty (as light-hearted as the situation was) it got me thinking about how often we need to deliver a message, potentially a difficult one, to our key stakeholders. Like the layers of an onion, there are levels of feedback surrounding the core message that needs to be delivered.

The cold hard truth

This is the easiest to access and is visible to everyone but rarely delivers an outcome that works for both the messenger and recipient. When it comes to emotional intelligence, the cold hard truth is a blunt instrument that usually delivers a debilitating blow…sometimes even causing death! My daughter managed to use this weapon quite effectively to see how I would react when placed in an embarrassing and compromised situation socially. While it was harmless when speaking about my hair, if it were a colleague in the workplace regarding a difficult relationship that I sought some advice on, it could have been incredibly challenging or even career-ending.

What you want to hear

Peeling back the cold hard truth, we usually identify a more palatable layer that’s both easier to deliver and much easier to hear. In the case of my haircut, it would have been “great haircut…it looks really good”. Given the offending patch was on the back of my head, I would never have known to carry on blissfully ignorant to why people were giving me funny looks. While telling someone what they want to hear is easier in-the-moment, it doesn’t help them long term and erodes any trust you had with that person when they do eventually discover the truth. As far as emotional intelligence goes, this one strikes out as bad as the cold hard truth.

What you need to hear

Peeling back the next layer, we enter into more useful feedback…. what you need to hear. This is where most people get stuck and either overindulge to make it brutally honest or deliver what is known as the ‘shit sandwich’. It might sound like “Your haircut looks good……but there’s a bit at the back that’s not quite sitting right……apart from that it’s really good”. This is most common at work when we have performance feedback to deliver or you need to let a new employee know that how they are behaving doesn’t quite work in the culture you’ve created. The ‘shit sandwich’ is a common technique but can be sniffed out well before it’s visible and doesn’t do much to build trust. It’s logical and is an acceptable approach to most but from an emotionally intelligent perspective….it’s pretty lazy.

How do you deliver the right message?

In my experience, none of the above methods of delivering feedback is aligned with authenticity….they all leave either the messenger, the recipient or both feeling a little bit grubby. To align your desire to be authentic, honest, and build trust with the recipient of your message you need to:

1) See the feedback from your perspective first rather than step inside their shoes. This sounds counterintuitive to all the empathy-driven advice you’ve ever received but it works. In the case of my bad haircut, it could have sounded something like “Did your hairdresser show you what it looks like from the back? It looks to me like they’ve missed a patch…I’d want to get it fixed up if I were you”. While it doesn’t seem like much of a difference, the emphasis is on the perspective of the messenger, not the recipient. It’s only once the issue has been raised that the perspective is then transferred back to the recipient.

2) Reserve Judgement as we can never know how self-aware somebody is. Without knowing the full context, we can easily create defensiveness and come across as judgemental. By asking the question first, we are curious and allow the recipient to clarify their level of awareness before we provide our feedback. There’s nothing worse than getting feedback on something that you are well aware of and in the process of fixing – like a stray tuft of hair on the back of your head- or not something that you see as a problem at all (in the case where I’d potentially requested to have a strange tuft of hair sticking out the back of my head to make some sort of statement about my individuality).

3) Share how it makes you feel so there you can establish an emotional connection and demonstrate how much you care. Delivering your message with empathy is to show your own emotion, not try to anticipate what they are feeling first and filter your message accordingly. Doing this creates an authentic message that’s enveloped in love and honesty.

To sum it all up, rather than deliver the cold hard truth, the message you think they want to hear or the message you think they need to hear…simply deliver the message you need to share. This makes the message all about you and takes any blame or responsibility away from the recipient. Rarely, if ever, is a message delivered objectively so embrace the fact that you are human and share what you need to say…..it’s honest, it’s real and above all it builds trust.

Joe Hart 14/9/19 Joe Hart 14/9/19

Emotional Intelligence in the real world: Keep it simple….keep it real

I delivered a presentation on emotional intelligence to a group of psychologists yesterday in what was a rich and interesting blend of models, measurement and application. Ironically I learned the most valuable lesson in emotional intelligence today….one that will change my application of emotional intelligence forever.

Here’s what happened

I was having trouble falling asleep last night, not feeling anxious but contemplating how long it would be before my grandmother finally passed away. She’d been unconscious for a couple of days, not eating or drinking – the end was near.

I awoke with a startle…my phone was ringing but just missed the call. I saw a message from my mum letting me know that my grandmother had passed away at 2 am this morning….she had finally let go. After speaking with my mum and discussing practicalities, there I was lying in my bed reminiscing the legacy that my Grandmother had created. She was a strong, positive, mischievous, and incredibly warm person. Tears streaming down my face and completely overwhelmed with emotion, my lovely daughter came into my room to say good morning. I couldn’t speak but I somehow managed to communicate that her Great Grandma had died. She didn’t say much but stayed with me for a couple of minutes while I pulled myself together.

Saturday is our busiest day typically, and today was no different. I bundled everyone into the car and put on my taxi driver’s hat for the day (all the parents out there know exactly what I’m talking about here).

Later on, in the afternoon my daughter delivered the most beautiful note along with a half-consumed bottle of ice tea and a candy that prompted a few more tears for the day. Here is the note:

Heartwarming note written by my 8 year old daughter

Her note was so beautifully simple that it made me realise that the amount of complexity that we place around trying to explain, measure, predict and develop emotional intelligence is taking us further away from that which an 8 year-old-girl so effortlessly articulates. Her note is filled with empathy, understanding, compassion, and love. What’s more impressive is that she’s even enticed me with something to look forward to in the form of sugar!

Next time you’re struggling to articulate yourself when it comes to a deeply emotional or challenging topic, step back and simplify your message. As shown by my daughter through her choice of words, the most frequently used word in her note was LOVE. Emotional Intelligence is the application of love….no need to complicate things.