Category Archives: Focus

challenge, Employee Engagement, Focus, Mental Models, mindset, OTM Plan For Personal Success, personal success team, Success, support, yes for success

Break-Through Mindsets and Creating What You Want – Part 1

A young female relative of mine is amazing. In her early 20s she has been challenging her mindset and creating more of the life she desires. At 22 she had been a factory worker for 6 years. So much for Gen Y not staying with an employer!

But she hated her work. Everyday the same thing. Pull this lever, push that lever. Time moved so slowly she could hear the ‘tick tock’ of the clock above the noise of the machinery!

She wanted to quick. But what to do?

We had a chat. She mentioned that she had wanted to try some office work.

“What if you went and did some formal education, maybe starting with a Certificate II in Business Administration or something like that. Maybe you could then make the move off the factory floor.”

“I’m a terrible student. I can’t study!“, was her reply.

Aaaah mindsets, they kick in very quickly when the unfamiliar is mentioned.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“To get off the factory floor and to never have to look at a machine again! But I don’t know anything else!“

“Which is why going back to some form of school will help. How else will you get away from factory work and get another type of job?” I queried.

“Maybe I should give it a go. But my employer won’t help me. They have never given me any proper training.“

“What if you were to ask them? What’s the worst they can say?”

“No!“.

She went ahead and asked about support for some training. She even shared her desire to move off the factory floor. “No!” was the response she received and she was also told that she was, “Needed on the factory floor.” Yes, after 6 years she knew a thing or two about the machines.

Can you imagine her reaction to her employer’s negativity? “I’ll never get out of here. I need the money so I can’t quit. I’m stuck.” Mindsets are hard to shift and having an employer like hers made it even harder.

“What do you want?” I prodded.

“To get off the factory floor.” was her response.

“What can you do to make that happen?” I probed.

“Go back to school outside work.” she responded.

We discovered that she could do her course online and that due to government support it was far cheaper than expected. She completed her Certificate II in Business Administration. It might not sound like much but it was a monumental effort and moment.

She asked for a trial in the office.

“No” was the response. “We need you on the factory floor.” Apparently it was an honour to be employed by this employer and she should be grateful for the job she had. No need for self improvement around here!

“See, what was the point!” she exclaimed to me. “I’ll never leave here!“

“What do you want?” I asked.

“To get off the factory floor.” she responded.

“What are you going to do now?” I probed, yet again.

“Maybe I should do another course?” she suggested.

“Maybe you should. You have now proved that you can finish a course. Why not go to the next level and see what happens?”

“Okay. I’ll give it a go.” Her mindset had shifted. The power of evidence and movement was working.

She completed her Certificate III in Business Administration. She approached her employer about doing a trial in the office. “No! We need you on the factory floor.”

She signed up with an employee agency. She got offered a job as a clerk in a small company on less money than she was earning on the factory floor.

What do you think she did?

She quit her factory job. Aaah, to have been a fly on the wall and seen the look on her employer’s face…”but, but we need you on the factory floor!”. Well, yes you probably do. But an employer – employee relationship is a two way street. If they had given her a go in the office and supported her development, she’d probably be there today. But she’s not.

Moving away from what you don’t want can be a major motivator for getting you to take action, even if it may appear to be a backward step in order to create what you do want.It also takes bravery and courage. I’m proud of my young relative (can you tell?)!

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this mindset shifting saga where I will share more of the ups and downs of this major mindset shift that has, and is occurring in my relative.

Oh, and if you think the lack of her employer’s support in the story so far is mind-boggling, wait until you read Part 2… and the even greater challenges she has had with shifting her mindset from one of being out of control of her life to being in control of her life.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Action, Focus, OTM Plan For Personal Success, Personal Success, Personal Vision, Success

You don’t ‘have’ to do anything. Period.

“I have to submit this project tomorrow.
I have an assignment I have to complete tonight.
I have to go to a dinner with my partner.
I have to attend my child’s performance.
I have to prepare for a meeting tomorrow.
I have to. I have to. I have to.”

Guess what. You don’t.

You don’t “have” to do anything.

Sure there are consequences for not doing these things. There are also consequences for doing them too.

Which brings me to my point. Think about how differently you would apply yourself to the above activities if you actively chose to do them or decided that you are doing them because you want to do them rather than you “have” to do them.

Think about all the things that you are doing because you believe that you “have” to do them. What would happen if you didn’t do them?

Maybe the consequence would be that you would miss out on something that you really want, such as your partner feeling that you really do love him/her. Or maybe you would miss out on a promotion that you really want.

What if you were to switch from the perspective of “have to or else…”, to “want to because…”?

When you understand why you are doing what you are doing in the moment and how it will help you to achieve what you really want, it is amazing how much happier you are right now when you fully apply yourself to the activity whatever it may be. This also increases the chances that you’ll also be happier in the future.

This is one of the key success strategies when you plan and action personal success.

Try it out and let me know how you go. I’m confident that you will be positively surprised.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Focus, High Performance, Layne Beachley, Sam Stosur, Samantha Stosur, Success, Surfing, Tennis, US Open

Sam Stosur Achieves Success Through Lessons From Surfing

This article was first published in 2011. Sam Stosur has recently returned to the winner’s circle winning her first WTA tournament since her 2011 crowning. Wouldn’t it be nice if it is a sign of further good things to come!

 

Congratulations to Sam Stosur who on Monday morning (Australian time) won the US Open.

Below is a copy of an article that I published on April 3rd 2009. While almost 2 and a half years ago Stosur reveals the key lessons she learned from Layne Beachley, a seven time World Champion surfer.

Given Stosur’s US Open success the article is re-published in full to provide some insight on her journey.

My experience with listening to talkback radio is such that I rarely choose to listen to it. However I was flicking through the radio channels while driving to on my way to a meeting recently when I tuned in the start of an interview with Layne Beachley, retired 7 time World Surfing Champion from Australia. Lane is currently having a positive influence with another current Australian female athlete, Samantha Stosur. Samantha has recently entered the Top 30 list of the world’s best female tennis players and has had a string of recent victories against higher ranked players. In a recent interview Samantha named Layne Beachley as the person who has helped her most to enable her to make the most of her ability.

Which takes me back to the interview with Layne Beachley. Lane said that all she had done with Samantha was share some of the most significant lessons that she had learned throughout her highly successful surfing career. As I was listening to Layne speak, her words seemed so familiar to me. I have been teaching and practising a version of what she was saying for some time. However I would like to share Layne’s version as it is sometimes useful to explain a similar concept from someone-else’s perspective.

Layne mentioned that up until the age of 26 she had not won a world championship. When in competition, Layne recognised that she had natural surfing ability, she was a good surfer. But what she wasn’t was a natural winner. When she had to compete against the top surfers in the world, Layne would ‘self-talk’ herself down. She would compare herself against these world Top 10 athletes and think to herself, “Gee, isn’t she good. She is much better than me. I’m not as good as her.” Henry Ford once said, “If you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right either way!”

Layne had been talking herself into defeat even before she caught her first wave in competition. To compensate for her negative self-talk, Layne would then, as she describes it, “surf the wave before it came”. This meant that when the wave actually did come along to surf, while she was physically riding it, her mind was focussed on the outcome rather than staying ‘in the moment’. The result: she would lose.

Losing did not fit with Layne’s personal vision of being a World Champion. One day she recognised that she was her own worst enemy and the only thing that was stopping her from being the best she could be was herself. So decided to do to two things.

1) Layne decided that she would teach herself to speak positively to herself. She knew that she trained hard and that she did the work required to be a World Champion, so she had to believe that she really could be a World Champion. So Layne changed the focus of her self-talk to become positive. Rather than saying things like, “Gee I stuffed up that wave”, Layne would say to herself something like, “When I’m focussed my skills enable me to surf to the best of my ability. I’ve done the training!”

2) Layne also recognised that she had to train herself to become excellent at executing her skills ‘in the moment’. So, rather than surfing a wave before it came along, or being mentally ‘stuck’ on a wave that she had already surfed, Layne decided to train herself to be able to focus on her processes and what needed to be done ‘in the moment’. Through training in this way (this is an important point – Layne didn’t just use training to perfect her surfing skills, she used training to ‘perfect her mental approach’). In this way, negative self-talk at training became unacceptable. Being distracted by the wave that was yet to come or the wave that had just been surfed while she was training was also not acceptable – she could do that when she was out of the water and reviewing her session. Instead, she trained herself to execute her processes in the most focussed way possible; by ‘staying in the moment’ and surfing each wave (which, by the way, is always unique!) the best way that particular wave was demanding to be surfed. And she did this at training.

Samantha Stosur reportedly said that her capacity to play each ball for what it was, rather than worrying about the outcome for each shot, was the skill that she was developing and was the key skill that was making the biggest positive difference to her results. But, like any skill, this had to be trained.

Clearly the majority of us are not elite athletes, certainly not World Champions. But we can be the best that we can be at whatever it is that we want to be good at. I know that in my work it is critical that I ‘stay in the moment’ for my facilitating, in meetings with clients, colleagues and peers, and most importantly when I am with my family. I have my structures in place in terms of my plans etc. but it is still important that I execute those plans and listen to what is being said and don’t get ‘ahead of myself’. When I do (which I sometimes do) I can miss an opportunity that was calling out for my attention.

I advocate that it is critical to have goals and to have plans (processes) that you need to execute to enable your goals to be realised. It is important that you believe that you can achieve the goals that you set for yourself. I had to believe that I actually could complete the first marathon that I ran. I had to believe that I could facilitate the first workshop that I facilitated on my own. I had to believe that the service areas that we operated could become National Award winning teams. I had to believe that if we provided good people with the right support they could take the organisation we were in to become nationally recognised for its service excellence. So goals and self-belief are critical. But, when you are executing your plans, and you are in the process of ‘doing them’, ‘staying in the moment’ and getting the best out of that moment while you are executing your plans is the level of focus that can bring everything that you are working towards into reality.

As a final note, Layne Beachley mentioned that when she started to perfect her focus she failed many, many times. She failed at training, and she failed in competition. But she never lost the faith that, through practice and continuous learning, she could improve her focus and achieve her dream. Over time, as her ‘focus’ skill developed, Layne’s results started to look after themselves and the rest, as they say, is history. Surfers themselves have commented upon Layne Beachley’s capacity to handle pressure. It is now clear why she is able to handle pressure. She had trained herself to focus.

I’m interested in hearing from you about your experiences of self talk, goals, focus and ‘staying in the moment’ and how you might see such a skill being applied throughout your career?

Gary Ryan enables talented professionals, their teams and organisations to Move Beyond Being Good.
View a Tedx Talk by Gary Ryan here.
Focus, Leaders, Leadership, Strategy, Team

What leaders can do to maintain focus on organisational objectives

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For many years I have been leadership development programs for graduate students who have a minimum of five years work experience. The focus of the program is to enhance the capacity of the participants (even if only in a small way) to successfully perform in a mid to senior leadership role. The participants in the programs come from a broad range of cultural and work experience back-grounds, which is one of the many reasons that I enjoy facilitating the program. As part of the program I ask the participants to generate questions, that if answered would help them to better perform their role as a mid to senior leadership role.

A recent question that I was asked was, “What is the most important thing that you have to do as a manager to keep your team focused on organisational objectives?”.

There are many factors that relate to answering this question. In this blog I will provide one approach that a leader can use to enhance the capacity of the team that they lead to stay focused on (and achieve) organisational objectives and goals.

Gary Ryan, Organisations That Matter, leaders, leadership, Yes For success, visionStep 1.
Does your team know the organisational objectives to which it is contributing? This may seem like a silly question but my experience has taught me that it isn’t. Too many managers aren’t able to clearly and quickly articulate the organisational objectives to which the performance of their team is contributing. If you are in this situation then it is your responsibility to find out. The answer can usually be found in the organisation’s Strategic Plan or Annual Plan. These documents will exist but all too often their implementation seems remote from a mid-management perspective because a gap often exists between planning and operational activities.

Step 2.
Once you have identified the objectives outlined in your Strategic Plan, the next challenge for you is to communicate how that plan relates directly to your team members. A simple and effective tool, irrespective of the level of the people who report to you, is to use the One Page Strategy Map invented by Kaplan and Norton. An example of such a map can be found here.

Many organisations use the Balanced Scorecard methodology for their Strategic Planning and even if a different methodology is used, the high level strategies can often be focused and presented on a single page.

Step 3.
Literally sit down with each member of the team that you lead and, with a highlighter in hand, highlight each aspect of the Strategy Map to which their work directly relates. On many levels the act of highlighting different aspects of the content on the Strategy Map is far less important than the conversation that you will be having with each member of the team as you go through this process. These conversations will create a clear and specific level of understanding about what each person does and how that contributes to the achievement of organisational objectives.

Step 4.
At the conclusion of your conversation ask your team member if they have identified any work that they are doing that doesn’t seem to fit anywhere on the map. The answer to this question will not automatically mean that they are doing something that they shouldn’t be doing, but it certainly should indicate that further inquiry into this work should be considered.

Step 5.
Ultimately any work performed by the members of the team that you lead should be able to be explained in the context of how it contributes to the strategies outlined in the Strategy Map. Any other activities may be a waste of time and may indicate a loss of focus from the real work that should be performed. If possible, conduct a whole team conversation to enable each team member to clearly and concisely articulate their contribution (and collectively your team’s contribution) to the achievement of organisational objectives.

If you follow the five steps above and regularly talk about the progress that your team is making toward the achievement of the objectives outlined on your organisation’s One Page Strategy Map you will have an enhanced capacity to help your team members maintain focus on the work that they should be doing.

What is your experience with using Strategy Maps or similar tools to enhance the focus of your team? Or, if this blog has encouraged you to try this approach for the first time, please let us know how you go.

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Gary Ryan enables talented professionals, their teams and organisations to Move Beyond Being Good.
View a TedX Talk by Gary here.