By Kate James

Mindfulnesss is really just another word for focus. When you focus your attention you can markedly improve your productivity as well as your memory, your ability to think creatively and most importantly, the way you feel.

The concept of being mindful has been around for thousands of years. US researchers have recently begun to measure the changes in the brains of Buddhist monks who have been practicing mindfulness for many years. Their findings were not surprising, being focused and calm has a significantly positive impact on the activity in the brain.

The good news is that you don’t need to be a Buddhist monk to reap the benefits. The simple act of focusing your attention on whatever task you are undertaking will change your experience and improve your productivity.

Use mindfulness in the workplace to create surprising results

Notice the difference when you phone a prospective client away from your computer or any other distractions. When your only focus is listening intently to what that person is saying, you╒re likely to make them feel that the conversation is important to you. Making a genuine connection with your clients helps you build trusted business relationships by being mindful in the way you interact with your customers will have a positive impact on your business.

When we‘re mindful and attentive, our memory improves

One of the key inhibitors of good memory is being distracted. Many people tell themselves that their memory is poor without considering what makes it so. Not paying attention is one of the key reasons we find it difficult to recall information.

Next time you meet someone new, listen mindfully when they say their name. Pay proper attention to the conversation and bring your mind back when you find it wandering. You‘ll be surprised at how much you remember about that person next time you meet them and how good your overall memory becomes!

Being mindful improves your ability to be creative

When you’re calmly focused on a single task, your brainpower is multiplied. Whilst it may seem more productive to multi-task, in fact it often reduces our efficiency. Sometimes just sitting quietly and allowing yourself to observe your thoughts as they arise helps you solve problems from a more intuitive place. Some of the best business decisions I‘ve made in business have been on meditation retreats!

Mindfulness improves your sense of enjoyment

Rather than resisting a task, when we indulge ourselves completely into the activity without judgment, we often find that there’s less to dislike about it.

Paul Wilson, author of The Quiet and long term meditation teacher uses mindfulness when he does the dishes. He pays attention to the feel of the bubbles in the sink and the movement of the water; he enjoys the smell of the detergent and takes his time to make the process an enjoyable one.

He admits it takes him twice as long to wash his dishes as it does anyone else but being able to find pleasure in life is more mundane tasks can only be beneficial to our wellbeing.

Key to mindfulness is paying attention to only one thing at a time. It might be the task that you are engaged in or something more sensory, such as listening to a piece of music, really tasting the food you are eating, looking at the beauty around you or enjoying a fragrance or touch.

How often, if ever, do you experience mindfulness?

‘Kate James is a work life balance coach, writer and speaker. She works with professional people who want to enhance their quality of life by making the right career and life choices. You can find Kate at www.totalbalance.com.au.’

By Dr. Adam Fraser

Being disengaged at work can shave years off your life, lead to an early heart attack and cause you to fight with your family!

New research out of the US is showing us that workers are becoming more disengaged during the economic challenges we are experiencing. One of the reasons for this disengagement is that many are feeling angry with their company for firing their friends or cutting benefits. Their reaction is to take power into their own hands and say I will get back at them by not working as hard and being disengaged at work.

Sounds logical, but are they hurting themselves more than the company?

There are 3 types of workers:

Engaged worker – has a strong connection to their job and the company. Constantly looking to improve their performance and move the organization forward. Are enthusiastic at work and boost the culture.

Not Engaged Employee - have “checked out”, do the job but don’t have any enthusiasm, energy or passion into their work. You could say they have quit but haven’t had the decency to resign.

Actively Disengaged – not just unhappy at work but they are “busy” sharing that unhappiness with other people in the work place. They undermine the company and engaged workers.

Currently in Australia only 18% of workers are engaged, a whopping 62% workers are not engaged and 20% are actively disengaged (Gallup). This costs our economy 32 billion dollars in lost productivity alone.

Focusing on the wrong thing!

If you look at all the literature around engagement it always talks about how the company suffers if employees are disengaged.

A company that has 4 engaged employees to every actively disengaged employee, grows 2.6 times faster than an organization with 1 engaged to one actively disengaged employee. In addition companies in the top quarter of engagement out earn companies in the bottom quarter by 18%.

You can’t argue with those numbers, it is obvious that a company needs to have engaged workers.

What about the individual?

Rather than only focus on the company lets look at the impact of disengagement on the individual.

Among actively disengaged employees, 54% of them said that work stress caused them to behave poorly with family or friends (aggression, verbal abuse), while only 17% of engaged employees reported that work stress had caused them to behave poorly.

An English study followed a group of healthy men over 10 years. What they found is men who were engaged at work were 30% less likely to suffer from coronary heart disease than employees who were disengaged at work. The findings remained consistent even when the researchers controlled for age, ethnicity, marital status, educational attainment, socio-economic position, cholesterol level, obesity, hypertension, smoking, alcohol consumption, and physical activity. What this means is that work attitude was the defining variable.

Engagement is also beneficial for your mental health. When you are engaged all you are thinking about is the present moment, you are paying attention to each detail and thinking can I do this better, faster more efficiently. Research by prominent psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, found that people with chronic depression and eating disorders feel a predominance of negative emotions and negative self-talk. However when given a task to do that they are engaged in, their emotions and thoughts are indistinguishable from those of people free of these conditions.

In addition they found that the worst thing for people with depression and eating disorders is for them not to be engaged as their mind becomes occupied by depressing thoughts and their consciousness becomes scattered.

This is true for all of us, disengaged people in the work place often say that they are bored and disinterested. Pause for a moment to think what happens when you put two children in the back of a car and go for a long drives. After 15 minutes what do you hear “she hit me”, “he’s on my side of the car”, “he teased me”. A disengaged worker is similar to these children in the back of the car. When not engaged their thoughts drift and they start looking for trouble. Office gossip, turf battles and in fighting is a fall out from a lack of engagement.

Can we start to choose to be more engaged in the work place?

For most people engagement is conditional, if my team are in a good mood I will be engaged, my boss didn’t thank me for doing a good job so I wont be engaged. Obviously having a supportive and fun work environment makes it easier to be engaged. However research shows us that highly engaged people don’t necessarily work in the best work places.

Start to think about what is your lack of engagement costing you?

“Dr Adam Fraser is one of Australia’s leading educators, researchers and thought leaders in the area of human performance! In this time he has worked with elite level athletes, the armed forces and business professionals of all levels. Check out his websites www.dradamfraser.com & www.theglucoseclub.com.au.”

By Dr. Adam Fraser

Latest psychological research tells us that our emotions drive and guide our behaviour, develop or ruin relationships, guide attention and help us store memories. Put simply our emotions control our performance and quality of life. They even have a dramatic impact on our health as negative emotions lead to the release of toxic chemicals that damage our body. Intensive care units have shown that patients who are comforted by others have lower levels of stress hormones, lower blood pressure and even have lower secretion of artery clogging fatty acids.

Obviously emotions have a big impact on you, but do your emotions affect your environment?

The reality is that emotions are carried through your organisation like electricity through a cable.

Put another way your emotions are contagious. The question is are your emotions worth catching?

A closed loop system is one that regulates its self and is not influenced by the outside world. Your emotions/mood is an open loop system meaning that the environment affects them. This open loop system allows a mother to consol her distraught child, or a manager to rev up their sales team.

This means that our mood affects the mood of our team. In 2000 Caroline Bartel at New York University and Richard Saavedra at the University of Michigan found that people in meetings adopted the same mood (good and bad) within 2 hours. They also found that teams of nurses and accountants tracked the same emotions over the week, even thought they varied in terms of external stress and challenges.

Depending on what sort of emotions you bring to work you could be quite literally killing your co-workers. Pause for a moment and consider how do you affect the mood of your team? We so often only focus on the role of the leader, however we all affect the mood of our team.

Having said that the greatest influence on a team is the mood of the leader. It is so potent that many leaders should consider their primary task as the emotional leadership of their team. This is not to say that leaders cant have bad days, however research tells us that teams perform best and solid culture is built when the leader regularly has an optimistic, authentic and high energy mood.

Can we change our mood? In a word YES!. A person’s emotional state and attitude are not genetically hard wired, they can be changed. However we all have a bias towards a certain style and emotional set point.

The more we act in a certain way be it happy, cranky or sad, the more we reinforce that pattern in our brain and the more we act that way.

This is where emotional intelligence matters. An emotionally intelligent person can be self aware of their mood/emotions, change them for the better through self management, understand their impact through empathy and act so that they improve the emotional state of those around them.

Steps to improve you emotional state:

1.    Picture it up!

What emotional state do you want to be in? Picture how you want to act, be perceived, what is the mood of your team like. Get a clear understanding of how you want things to be.

2.    Take Stock!

Find out your starting point. Many leaders do not know how they affect their team and environment. I have spoken to many leaders to have them inform me of the great “vibe” in their team and how their team loves their leadership style. Only to be informed by the team that they see them as a “tyrant” and unapproachable. Park the ego and ask your team for feedback. The best way to do this in anonymously, you might also consider getting formal 360-degree feedback. In addition make it ok for your team to give you feedback on your emotional leadership.  Relax we are not as perfect as we think we are.

3.    Bridging the Gap!

How do you start to develop your leadership? First step is to up-skill yourself. Here are some things I have seen other leaders do in the past.

a.    Simply start to research and educate yourself on this area through books and courses.

b.    Take time to reflect, some of the best leaders I have worked with spend 30 mins a day reflecting on their emotional leadership. They analyse different situations during that day and examine how they reacted and how they could have responded in a better way.

c.    Some look outside of work, they develop empathy and emotional regulation by coaching their children’s soccer team or devoting time to a local charity.

4.    Practice Makes Perfect!

Choose one emotion to work on. For example you may choose to practice more patience with your co-workers, more empathy, greater optimism or simply look at removing anger and judgement from your leadership style. The way we change our behaviour, is to do and redo the new behaviour, over and over again. This breaks old neural patterns. An added bonus is that we can fast track this with visualisation. Imagining something in vivid detail fires the same brain cells and neural pathways that are actually involved in the real life task. Before a meeting or on the way to work start to run through your head and picture how you want to lead and manage your team.

5.    Get some Help!

Find a coach or a colleague who you can debrief you activity with. I have encouraged many leaders in large corporates to form coaching groups where they discuss their challenges and how they handled them. The feedback has been that they are exceptionally beneficial.

“Dr Adam Fraser is one of Australia’s leading educators, researchers and thought leaders in the area of human performance! In this time he has worked with elite level athletes, the armed forces and business professionals of all levels. Check out his websites www.dradamfraser.com & www.theglucoseclub.com.au.”

By Andrew May

It has been another 12 hour day which is at least less hours than you worked yesterday. Your other half is upset (again) that you missed dinner - again. Your kids can’t remember what you look like. The dog barks every time you walk up the drive way. You’re exhausted and after the 1,000th time you’ve heard ‘why don’t you get support in the office?’ But now what? How do you even begin trying to figure out what someone should do? Don’t worry, it’s not as hard as you think. Below are 4 steps with specific actions to take to ensure you find the right person and get the most bang for your buck.

Paddy Reynolds, one of my mentors once told me ‘do what you do best and outsource the rest’. This is a great mantra to have when it comes to boosting productivity and output. Spend the majority of your time doing what you do and making great money.

1.  Create a job description before they start

The biggest mistake I see over and over again is business people simply hiring someone and throwing them at the problem. This is like just grabbing any plug to try and stop a leaking bath. You need to make sure the plug is the right fit. If you are not clear about what you want this person to do for you, how are they supposed to know? Your great new assistant anxiously wants to help out, but can’t because you have no clue what to ask them to do. With a little planning, you can be prepared to answer the magic question, “what should I do right now?”

Your actions

Start by creating your own job description. Make a list of everything you are currently handling. Things like writing proposals, making phone calls, sending out invoices. Once you have your complete list, circle or highlight the things that only you can do. The rest are items to add to your assistant’s job description.

Tip

It will take time to get use to delegating. You have to get over the mind set that you do everything best – you don’t! Great support staff are much better at typing, organising, filing and many other follow up duties. Invest time putting together a specific job description and you will save hours, days and months in the future.

2. Show me the skills!

Now that you have this comprehensive list of tasks and responsibilities, break it down into the skills needed to perform those tasks. For example, if you need someone who will be making lots of phone calls, you will be looking for someone with a good phone voice. Maybe someone who has telemarketing experience.

Your actions

Define what skill sets you are looking for, not just skills such as typing and budgeting, but ways of thinking, and personality traits such as honesty, integrity, creativity and being a self-starter. Write a list of opened ended interview questions and at the end of your interview look to see if the person has the skills and traits you are looking for.

3. Write an ad that sizzles!

Turn your wants and needs into an ad. You are more likely to get the kind of candidates you want if you specify what you are really looking for. An ad that reads, “Admin Assistant” is liable to get a range of results from someone looking to work full time for $50K per year to someone looking for $10 an hour part-time gig. If you are looking for someone to work 5 hours a week for $20 an hour, make sure you state that. If you don’t specify these details, I guarantee that the perfect candidate will be in your pile. But, they will want a whole lot more time and money than you can afford.

Your actions

Create a clear ad that includes what the job is, how many hours, the approximate pay, where the position is and what you are looking for. Place the ad in your local paper. You might also want to try recruiting agencies. I have found these very helpful in sourcing high level candidates with a varied skill set. But you will have to pay anywhere between 12 and 18% of annual salary as a recruiting cost (meaning if you employ a PA on a $60,000 p/a package, @ 12% you will pay the recruiting company $7,200).

4. Create an atmosphere of success

Now you’ve got the right person. Set them up for success. Create the behind the scenes processes you want them to follow so that you know they are completing things the way you want it done. And remember, document, document, document, (did I say document?) what they are doing. Setting aside time each week to create and sharpen systems is a habit worth getting into. I honestly save my self at least half to a full day every week by having great systems in the office.

You never know when an emergency is going to come up. Save yourself time, energy and frustration by capturing all that they do so that it is easily passed on to a replacement. You will have turn over - count on it. But it won’t be a big deal if you set yourself up for success by having documented processes and systems. This results in not having to recreate the wheel every time you bring a new person in.

Your actions

Create systemised, documented processes and procedures that can be followed and passed on should your new person not fit the bill or choose to leave. Better still have simple checklists that explain clearly what needs to be done daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly.

Before you actually start paying someone, check with accountant to make sure you are paying the person correctly. There are specific regulations regarding the difference between independent contractors and employees. Good luck and happy hiring.

Andrew May is is considered Australia’s leading expert on performance and productivity and is the author of the bestselling book, Flip the Switch. Andrew speaks at conferences across the globe, mentors CEO’s and senior managers. He is published throughout national and international media, with regular segments on 2UE radio, Mix 106.5 Body and Soul and Channel Nine’s TODAY show.

By Rob wilkins

OK. I am going to get a bit scientific this month. Recently I got together with some networking colleagues and had a discussion on trust in the workplace. Is it being eroded? Does it exist? Or does everyone have an inherent level of distrust because of their own personal values and what they are trying to achieve? I have tried to capture my thoughts based on those aspects of the discussion that resonated with me, and have drawn on some university research I did.

An Illustrative Connection Of Trust And How It Is Impacted

My reflection led me to try and “make sense” of what role I thought trust played in the context of workplace management but more importantly (for me), how the states of trust referred to by Maija-Leena Huotari and Mirja Ivonen in their book “Trust in Knowledge Management Systems in Organizations”, are impacted by the influences my fellow participants raised in the discussion. Knowledge remember, is considered power!

Figure 1 articulates this for me and I will use this as the centrepiece of my reflection.

Two theorists, Huotari and Ivonen, say that trust means different things to people but systematically contains 3 things:

• A mere mental attitude (prediction and evaluation) towards another person, a simple disposition;
• A decision to rely upon the other, i.e., an intention to delegate and trust, which makes the trustor “vulnerable”
• A behaviour, i.e., the intentional act of trusting, and the consequent relationship between the trustor and the trustee.”

These are shown across the top of figure 1 above.

I found myself questioning these three states and testing them against my current and held beliefs on trust. I formed the opinion that I fluctuated between each of these states depending on the condition or impact at the time.

If the situation was one where there was a lot of emotion involved then I could relate the volatility of the moment and the types of situations where different emotions would impact my trust of an individual. If I feel elation for instance I would have a positive mental attitude, would more than likely favour a person to with a decision to trust and the act or behaviour that would ensue would re-enforce the relationship with that person. Conversely, if I feel anger then all three would tend to be negative and the subsequent trust would be almost non-existent.

Similarly, there was an extensive amount of conversation about the validation of information from experts in order for them to be cited as a trusted source. Whilst it was argued that most of the participants needed to have some validation that the information/knowledge was from a trusted source, there was also some, myself included, that argued that knowledge from a critical mass could be trusted just by sheer weight of agreement. The need for validation however, was observed as an impact on my “states of trust” and in particular on my mental attitude or disposition towards the source as well as my decision to rely on that source.

One very strong observation I made is that context has a massive impact on each of the states of trust and influence debate and discussion consistently. As examples or “context” were given, discussion and debate would change and modify based on that context and this would help people form opinion on trust. An example was the debate between self-publishing verses publishing through a recognised authority. Whilst it incorporated the natural debate of validation it also raised questions as to what context the publishing was taking place in. If it was in a reputable Blog (or the recharge lounge) for instance then it might be considered a trusted source. If published in a WIKI then maybe not? I concluded that context will impact the states of trust consistently.

Reciprocity was an impact that seemed to hold a strong place of consideration amongst the participants. The view was generally held that in order for trust to take place reciprocity was a needed behaviour. I generally think that the impact of reciprocity is required in relationships and impacts the behavioural state of trust. But conversely, if the trust you seek is purely whether to trust a certain piece of information, then reciprocity is not required as an individual takes it upon themselves to “make sense” of whether they can trust the information or not. I therefore concluded that reciprocity was an impact only on the behavioural state of trust.

The impact of history is something else I thought needed to be taken into account when considering the impacts on the states of trust. It would appear that the more history a relationship or piece of knowledge has, the more each state of trust is impacted. My observations centred around the research I did for the topic and what in particular I found to be trusted conversations and resources. In addition if you look at what other participants cited in their research it would seem that the longer a connection or piece of knowledge had been in place the more it appeared to be reliable and worth trusting.

I would love to hear your feedback. Take a look at how I mapped the impacts against the states of trust in Figure 1. Of course you may not agree and I would love to hear more about what you think.

Rob Wilkins is a Learning and Development professional with over 20 years experience in Corporate Learning and Development, Management and Executive Development, Learning Technologies and Organisational Performance Improvement. Currently completing his Masters in Knowledge Management and Business Information, Rob is considered a specialist in eLearning and Personal Learning Environments with a strong Knowledge Management influence guiding his research and professional development. Email: dawilkos@tpg.com.au : or more of his insights on a daily basis: Blog: http://roalp.blogspot.com

by Tony Wilson

Would you willingly put your happiness and success in the hands of someone else? Of course you wouldn’t - sounds ridiculous, right? But that is what many people do every day at work.

I am baffled by the notion of HR practitioners and managers everywhere trying to ‘keep people engaged’. Surely it can’t be up to these people - HR, our bosses, our colleagues - to make sure we are happy and successful at work. But we look for these people to keep us engaged and when they don’t, we are unhappy and unsuccessful - and it’s their fault.

So how do we stay engaged and happy at work?

It’s not our job. I spent many days with professional athletes who had, arguably, the best jobs in the world. But some of them aren’t engaged. They turn up to training and say things like, “Here we go again. Man, I don’t feel like this today.” Most people would love to have those jobs - great money, travel the world, live your dream, spend every day with your best mates………good gig, huh?

So what is it? Research has shown that a happy professional life is a precedent for a happy life in general. It’s no wonder, given that we spend about half our waking hours from Monday to Friday at work and we spend more time with our work colleagues during the week than we do with our kids.

Here are some tips for helping you ‘Love Your Work’

1) Have goals and work with them in mind

Understand what you want to get out of work and, somehow, make an effort towards that every day. Even if it’s ‘just a job’, I bet it’s a job that’s paying for your next holiday. Or giving your kids a chance at a better education. Keep these things in mind and have reminders of them close at hand to refer to when you feel like things are dragging you down.

For those who want to achieve more and more at work, the trick is to understand the things that you have to do regularly - build networks, turn in quality work, contribute at meetings - and continually execute these with the end goal in mind.

2) Do something you like doing

This doesn’t mean that you need to quit what you are doing and find another job - though in some cases it might (sorry, HR managers!). But you need to find the things you enjoy about your job and engage in these regularly. Intersperse them throughout the day so they act like a light at the end of the tunnel when you invariably have to do the things you don’t like.
I once worked with a lady who was a great sales person and then got promoted, but found out it was all admin and meetings. What she really liked was the interaction she used to have with her clients. She hated the new job until she realised that her direct reports were her new clients. Apply the things you like doing and work to your strengths whenever possible.

3) Achieve

We all like to achieve something. Even the most cynical person likes to cross the last thing off their to-do-lists - it’s about accomplishment. Try to work on things until they are finished instead of doing bits and pieces of projects all the time. If you don’t have specific targets to achieve (or they are long-term or meaningless to you), then ask your boss what he/she expects of you and what would help them most. It also helps to ‘chunk things down’ into manageable parts so you are continually finishing something.

Achievement is different for different people. For some it’s small things, for some it’s large, and for others still, achievement is more about helping others. Understand what is important for you to achieve.

4) Understand where work fits into the big picture

This is the big one. For many people, work is not the be-all and end-all. It is merely a part of their life that helps facilitate the things that are most important to them. Keep reminding yourself of what is really important, and understand that the small things that drag us down are just that……small things.

It helps when we have ‘attitude anchors’ around us. These might be pictures of family, photos of your last (or next) holiday, anything really that helps you put things in perspective. When things get out of control, take a reality check and ask yourself “in the grand scheme of things, is this really something that should make me unhappy?”

Tony Wilson is the founder of Teamcorp Australia, and has spent over a decade working with elite performers in business and in sport. His ability to help athletes reach their potential and maintain motivation has been a large factor in their success, and many corporate leaders throughout Australia now also apply Tony’s philosophies with outstanding results. Tony’s practical background, coupled with an MBA, give him a unique perspective on personal and team performance.

By Dr. Tom Buckley

Sound familiar? Do you find it impossible to take time out in your office to concentrate on finishing a task, or even have a quick ‘nothing break”, only to be constantly interrupted by the phone ringing, email alerts not to mention your colleagues’ needs? And that’s before we factor in family or friends’ interruptions as well as much needed personal breaks.

Do you find that you are often disturbed twice or three times in your day in order for someone to ensure you go their message? Well you’re not alone and recent research suggests that for workers, getting more than there minute’s sustained work without interruptions has become mission impossible in our technologically driven work environments.

Researchers at the University of California shadowed a dozen information workers for three days and found that in their office areas they were interrupted on average every three minutes by phone calls, text messages or people popping in to see what’s wrong when they didn’t answer emails or phone messages instantly. Such interruptions take up over two hours of the working day and only 77% of interrupted work is resumed the same day. 77%!

Other research from the Institute of Psychiatry in London that reported being bombarded by emails and phone calls has a greater detrimental effect on IQ to smoking marijuana. You can only abuse the brain for so long eh!

Rosalind Pickard from MIT Boston suggests some really useful tips for surfing the wave of interruptions. These are my favourites:

1.    Get a bigger monitor – apparently helps people work up to 44% faster – works – I’ve done it

2.    Put up a “do not disturb” sign and enforce it

3.    Rearrange your office furniture so that you desk faces away from the flow of people – bad karma I hear you say but your there to get the job done

4.    Stand up to talk to people who interrupt you  - so that they can see that they are doing – also good for you physical well being

5.    Put a big clock in your office in view of visitors and keep an eye on it while you are talking – be careful with this one!

6.    Be prepared for interruptions and factor it into your to-do list - perhaps make it known the good times for interruptions. I have colleague who puts a picture of a shark on her door when she does not want to be interrupted – I don’t walk in then so it works

7.    Keep a note pad and write down what you are doing before you were interrupted – this definitely works for me

8.    and finally…..cutting 2 centimeters off the front legs of a visitors chair makes it just enough to keep visitors visits short!

Tom Buckley a University lecturer and researcher in the field or Health Sciences whose doctoral studies focused on physiological responses to stress. Author of several peer reviewed publications and supporting author of Flip the Switch, his current research interests are in human factors related to performance and wellbeing

By John Buchanan

In my recent book, “If Better is Possible”, I suggest that all of us play a coaching role in some form or other. Some have the formal title attached, that is, coach of a certain sporting team or one of the growth occupations of the 21st century, ‘life or personal coach’. Others have less visible acknowledgment of their coaching role, or at least part of their job function, such occupations as a teacher, a manager, a minister of the church, a parent, journalist. All of these people actively engage in the very special role of coaching.

So then what is coaching? And what can be done to help you coach?

As you can see, I differentiate very little between coaching, teaching, parenting, educating, managing.  I think there are a number of key principles to coaching which we all deliver -  dependent upon life experiences, personality, clientele, and situations. I will touch on some of the key principles, and suggest what we can do for the remainder of the season….

1.RELATIONSHIPS and the WHOLE PERSON

Before I can coach someone effectively, there must be a relationship established between us. Some relationships grow quickly due to the ‘chemistry’, the ease with which I can interact with someone and therefore the honesty of that relationship. Other relationships may never really develop because of that lack of ‘chemistry’ – each of us lack some commonality (of background, of interests, of friends, etc) which means the relationship will always be distant.

Nevertheless this latter relationship is still a relationship. It means the coach in this case is allowed only a minimal insight into the life of the person with whom they are coaching.

The trick then is to find another way into understanding the individual. Generally, the approach is through friends, contemporaries and sometimes partners so that the coach is aware of what can continue to build what is existing, and what can destroy the tenuous links.

So as coach seek to know the WHOLE PERSON – not just the athlete, the student, the staffer, the Sunday church goer. Who is this person? What makes them tick? What and who are important in their lives? What goals are they striving for? How can I best help this person?

The message here is that everyone is different, and as coaches we need to invest time in getting to know all our ‘flock’ as best we can, and as much as the individual wants to let the coach into their life. I have found that when I am most satisfied with what I am doing as a coach, it means I am putting in time with all those around me – I feel I am ‘in touch’ with my players and staff. As a consequence, I believe I am in a position to best help them, should it be required. Isn’t this the same as a parent?

I think business and its managers today do not invest sufficient time in their greatest asset and resource – its people. We are all too busy, caught up in self directed needs, communicating through impersonal medium and using surrogate means to superficially deal with a world of self made complexity.

2. Make yourself REDUNDANT

As with any relationship, the longer it lasts, the more change that occurs. The coach needs to keep pulling back, no longer be the directive guide, but become more the safety net – allow the individual/athlete/child to grow. It does mean they will fall down many times, but rather than rushing in to pick them up, the coach assesses their ability to pick themselves up, get back on the bike again, and continue to grow.

There is no science to this process, but it does stem from the coach-person relationship. Knowing the individual will make a big difference in providing the best learning environment and the best way to manage redundancy!

3. CONTINUAL IMPROVEMENT

There should be no coach who does not want his or her ‘athlete’ to grow, to improve. The only blocker to this approach will be if the individual being coached has made the choice not to.

Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Adam Gilchrist, Ricky Ponting and all the greats in their respective fields follow this mantra. Greats in literature, ballet, sport, music, politics are only accorded such status because of their longevity and their ability to produce consistently highly skilled performances. There is little doubt that their individual skills are at the peak of their respective fields; but what has kept them there is their desire to continue to be the best – an ongoing process of not being satisfied with where they were yesterday and are today.

Now while we are not all so lucky to have our ranks filled with greats of the game, the principle of Never Being Satisfied, or Continual Improvement holds true for everyone.

Our job as coach is to make sure that we do everything in our work, home or social  environment that encourages individuals to explore their potential, to venture outside their comfort zones, to learn more about themselves and in so doing expand their horizons as people.

There are other key coaching principles such as VISION, LEARNING ENVIRONMENT, CULTURE, PLANNING which I will visit next time. However, I think it is very important not to underestimate the role we can all play as ‘coach’. If we do see and think of ourselves as ‘coach’ and understand that we have the capacity to influence the lives of others both positively and negatively, then I believe we can create a very powerful method for the teams that we coach – families, organizations, communities, countries!

Best of luck for the next part of your season.

John Buchanan is the former coach of the Australian Cricket Team. He is in demand as a speaker, corporate coach and sports coach. John Buchanan is available to share his philosophy for success expanding the benefits well beyond the cricket team and into any area. www.buchanancoaching.com

By Fiona Cosgrove

Goal-setting has been a buzz word in the corporate world for some years now.  Like all popular ideas, it can be enormously helpful but when overdone, produce the opposite result. Some people now cringe when the word “goal” is mentioned.  Goals have to be measurable (amongst other things), but in measuring we assume success or failure.  When we fail to reach goals, the end result is disappointment and undermined confidence.

So what is the purpose of setting goals?

Firstly, to use the well-worn expression – without a map we don’t know where we’re going and we certainly won’t know when we’ve got there.  Lily Tomlin once said “I always wanted to be someone, I just wish I’d been more precise” which is a strong argument in favour of describing accurately what it is you want.  There is a mass of literature expounding the benefits of goals and describing how they should be written.  Again, too much can overwhelm people and produce the opposite result.

If you feel you need more direction in your life, then setting a few goals, or creating an “action plan” will be useful but guidelines are a good idea.

The following tips may help:

Make your goals your goals, not someone elses.

Why? So you have ownership.  A common problem is that the majority of work goals have been set by someone else.  Ask yourself, “What do you really want?”  Don’t fall into the habit of judging your success or failure by either media driven expectations or someone elses agenda.  Come up with your own definition of success.

Make your goals meaningful and exciting

The only way you will get commitment to your goals is if they have meaning and importance to you.  Try and imagine what it would be like when you have achieved those goals.  If that doesn’t get you excited, try thinking what it would be like if the alternative continues.  Is that what you want?  What will not achieving the goal do to your life?  How will goal achievement affect other areas of your life?  Create a vision of the future.

A fun exercise to do is to write a list of 50 things to do before I die.  You may be surprised by what comes up.  Make sure the list is about enjoyment, not duty.

Make your goals specific and measurable

“Ours is a world where people don’t know what they want and are willing to go through hell to get it”.  Don Marquis, 1878-1937.

Getting fitter” or “being financially independent” are not specific goals.  How do you know when you have achieved them?  Describe what fitness means to you.  How will you know when you are fitter?  What will you be able to do?  What does financial independence mean?  How much do you need to allow this to happen?

Write your goal around what you will be doing, not just what you will get

Goals often suggest that our life will change when we achieve them.  This is possibly true.  An outcome goal describes an end result.  A process goal describes something that will continue to happen after the goal has been achieved. For example – losing 5kg is an outcome goal.  Eating breakfast and planning meals that are low in fat and nutritionally balanced is a way of living.  When you write your goals, make a process goal tie in with the outcome goal.  To go back to “financial independence” – an outcome goal.  “I will be living on the interest from my investments” – process goal.

Make your goals well-balanced

It is tempting to set goals in our professional lives and let our personal lives “evolve”.  We forget that to live life to the full we occasionally have to create change in our personal lives and place as much importance on it as our working hours.  Make sure that you have as many personal as professional goals.

Your goals need to be flexible

Life is full of changes.  Our priorities change and challenges arise.  You may move quicker than you thought in one direction or struggle with unforeseen obstacles.  Be prepared to amend your goals to fit in with changing circumstances.

Avoid life being a goal

Goals make us look towards the future.  Which is a good thing.   But never forget that the most important thing is what’s going on right now.  If we forget to notice or enjoy the present, we live our lives in constant anticipation of “when this happens, life will get better”.   Cultivate mindfulness of the present and let the future unfold, with a bit of help from you, but knowing that not everything is under our control.

Fiona Cosgrove has over 20 years experience in the wellness & fitness industry - owning and managing clubs in Australia and Asia, including No 1 Martin Place, NSW Fitness Centre of the Year, 2006. Fiona is the author of Coach Yourself to Wellness and she regularly runs corporate seminars and workshops in the areas of healthy lifestyle, motivation and wellness.

by Andrew May

Our modern way of living teaches us that faster is better. Speed is the new king with our lives measured in bits and bytes, and dissected into micro-detail. Is it any wonder our health, performance and relationships begin to suffer?

We are not designed to go flat out around the clock. Life is meant to be a series of sprints interspersed with periods of rest and recovery. Our culture has conditioned us to think that slow is the enemy of achievement, yet as the Slow Movement is showing us, nothing could be further from the truth.

The Slow Movement

The Slow Movement is about slowing down and taking time to enjoy the things that give us pleasure. It’s about reconnecting with food, people and places, but it’s not anti-work or even anti-capitalist. In fact as Carl Honoré says in his book, In Praise of Slow, “The secret is balance. Instead of doing everything faster, do everything at the right speed. Sometimes fast. Sometimes slow. Sometimes somewhere in between”.

Founded by Carlo Petrini, the movement started in the late 80’s as a foodie fight back against the opening of a McDonald’s restaurant on Rome’s Spanish Steps. Slow Food gave birth to Slow Cities, or Cittaslow in Italian. Adhering to the Cittaslow Manifesto, these towns of 50,000 or less embody a way of life that supports slow living; where traditions and conventional ways of doing things are valued.

In Australia, the town of Goolwa was recently named our first Cittaslow, while Bloodwood Vineyard in Orange is now making slow wines. Annually, Canberra also hosts the Slow Festival in celebration of all things, well, slow.

Lessons in slow from Kenya

When I was a middle distance runner in the 90’s, every year we’d get the opportunity to train with Kenyan athletes who would come out to Australia. Each year a different group of athletes would come, and amazingly each year a new champion would emerge from their ranks: the talent pool seemed endless. What did they know that we didn’t?

There’s a phrase in Swahili that sums it up, ‘hapa hapa’. It means slowly, slowly, and that’s exactly the way these high speed Kenyans took things. They listened to their bodies, training when they felt good and taking time off when they needed rest, often for weeks at a time. Looking back on my running career, I really believe I would have run much faster if I’d taken more notice of the Kenyans and trained hard and recovered even harder!

Eight go slow tips

Here are some great ways to apply the slow philosophy:

1. Slow stretching
Try doing a gentle 5 to 10 minute stretching routine before going to bed. Slow your breathing and your heart rate.

2. Slow walking
Emulate my dog, Cougar. Stop and sniff absolutely everything!

3. Slow weekends
Don’t race around trying to see and please everyone. Try shifting back a few gears and getting rid of the weekend to-do list.

4. Slow mini-breaks
Get away for a three day mini-break, but avoid scheduling every waking hour with sightseeing.

5. Slow food
Copy the Italians with a three to five course meal that takes a few hours to get through, washed down with a couple of glasses of hearty vino.

6. Slow gardening
Just stop and smell the roses! Potter in the garden and take stock of the beautiful smells and plants.

7. Slow sex
Tantric sex is not just for hippies and rock stars like Sting. This 5,000 year old discipline advocates slow sex as a way to increase awareness.

8. Slow thinking
Stretch out on the grass and stare up at the clouds. It’s amazing how often the biggest breakthroughs come when you turn off the conscious chatter.

Like to know more?

For more on Slow Movement practise, try Carl Honore’s book, In Praise of Slow – How a worldwide movement is challenging the cult of speed, or my latest book, Flip the Switch – Why performance increases when you play hard and recover even harder.

Andrew May is is considered Australia’s leading expert on performance and productivity and is the author of the bestselling book, Flip the Switch. Andrew speaks at conferences across the globe, mentors CEO’s and senior managers. He is published throughout national and international media, with regular segments on 2UE radio, Mix 106.5 Body and Soul and Channel Nine’s TODAY show.