are you off your head?

Allen, author from “Getting things done” ( see earlier post) mentions in his book that things clutter your mind, your “RAM” so to speak. E.g. if you start thinking about things and the thoughts clutter your mind, you cannot focus on the task you are aiming to do.

Therefore, he suggests to get it out off your head. I said that a few years ago (when I was in primary school): every night when I could not sleep and all sort of thoughts kept me awake, I got a pen and paper and placed it next to my bed. I wrote on it all kind of things that went through my head. If I woke up at 4 am and had a thought, that is where it went. I decluttered my brain, my RAM.

And, it helps to do that in your daily work life. You write your ACTIONS down, not your thoughts. Your actions have to form some kind of to-do list that you then can transform into “products” or “results”. Or, have 2 lists, one for Actions and one for random thoughts - depends on the industry.

I keep you posted.

Have a lovely day, sunny here in London.

Volker

what makes us happy

what does make us happy - i was wondering tonight when i got an email from a dear friend, that no matter how stressed we seem, how wonderful work can be, how awful life could be…if you are touched by a friend, his/her story, his/her love - that really takes the pressure off and you feel happy.

if you have a good friend, a boy/girl friend, a partner/wife/husband, children, pets and they “touch” you, e.g they hug you or send you their love, that is what makes you happy. they send you positive energy.

real love, the purpose of life, not money or material goods make us happy!

It is the inner peace and the strengths that comes from within that makes you happy and perform. The love that radiates from your heart or your friends’ hearts into yours. That is what makes you happy and in return ready to perform the tasks you need to do.

Thank you for touching me tonight.

your friend!

Act As If

I noticed another article in my magazine, going back to NLP “acting as if” - reminds me of the Secret, acting as if you are already have something, and seek for something and really want something, putting a picture in your mind.

The article talks about people that wanted a promotion at work and started to “act if” they already got it. Changed their lifestyle, hairstyle, daily style and within weeks either got a promotion or what they wanted - down to synchronicity.

That reminds me of really wishing for something and it comes through. But also, I think that, like my NLP trainer used to say, if you for instance start thinking of something to buy in your head, you already “bought it”, even if not physically.

Where we going from there? Take little steps towards your goal. If you like to be the CEO of a company, learn how to run it and make your knowledge available to people. Show people what you can do and how you can lead them and get yourself the first position in management. From there learn about strategies and give strategic advise…and one day, you will be there. Taking small steps at a time and you will get where you want.

The 7 habits of highly effective people do the same. They talk about “starting with the end in mind”. Imagine you are already a CEO, how did you get there? And, using stepping stones that you can write down on a time line, check against your performance to see your progress.

Be who you want to be - act as if!

cb consulting - enhancing performance from within

Passion

It seems that the word “passion” follows me. I got a magazine from the Coaching Academy talking about the “Passion for Coaching”.

I noticed, that is in regards to the last entry, that there are so many help books out there. Currently I read a book about the Leadership of Colin Powell. Very interesting. But sometimes I wonder how much we can take it. How many self-help and personal development books can we read and process.

Last night I said to my partner that I just noticed recently that I am not taking any exams any more at the moment. I haven’t for the past 3 years but was not consciously aware that the pressure of exams is over and now, all I do, is working. And, did I take all the things in I learned at University?

I guess so, thinking back I remember that I experienced loads of different topics, new fields of studies, new research. Even back then I read a lot of self-development books. But today. I still read books about online-marketing or new Internet facts as they relate to my job. Or, I read about the newest developments in NLP. But the more self-development books I read the more I realize that I learn less and less from them. What I do learn is that I get so conscious about life that I do should write my own - which I surely will at some point.

Coming back to the article about the passion of coaching it talks about passion being an emotional and not intellectual response. My passion was always to learn more, to gain more from life experience and use self-help books and mentors to grow my own portfolio. And I do. But I often feel like I am stuck in terms of how I can develop due to my personal environment, my work, my life, my current life situation.

That is not negative at all but more of a mission to constantly change the situation and personal preference and performance to gain more and learn more. The day I stop learning is the day I am dying - I believe that quote is from someone famous.

So, make the most of NOW and make sure you develop yourself and your skills every day - even if it is only little by litte.

cb consulting - enhancing performance from within

Organisational Behaviour

I had a discussion last night with a friend about organisational behaviour; also it reflects some issues I heard at another place too.

Looking at behaviour at the workplace I went back to my “handbook” - Handbook of HR Management Practice, by Michael Armstrong. I read it with ambiguity during my MBA degree. It highlights a lot of facts of characteristics of people.

Probably I could write an essay about it, possibly using my own work as an example. This I try truly to avoid. In a nut shell the chapter talks about

• individual differences - here it highlights values, expectations, self belief and goes into detail of ability, intelligence, personality, background and culture, gender and race.
• attitudes
• influences on behaviour
• attribution theory
• orientation
• roles

Lets summarize some bits we were discussing last night. If the expectations in a team differ and the personalities are really different, then how can a team work? What about building relationships at work if you are from diverse backgrounds. What about team coaching? ,-)

Also, focusing on influences on behaviour. Armstrong points out the role characteristics, job characteristics such as autonomy and challenge. The leader behaviours which have an influence on the group and their group characteristics. Ever noticed that if the boss is doing something everyone else thinks it is OK too? I will highlight the situation in regards to owner managers at some point as this is something of particular interest to me.

Roles: the part to be played by individuals in fulfilling their job requirements - is that a comprehensive summary? I am not sure to be honest. My role might be to sell but just by selling I do not fulfill my job requirements, do I? Then I would not be satisfied and happy, ergo would not fulfil my role? I might fulfil my job but not my role - is a role not self-defined as well?

Armstrong even suggests to differentiate job description and role definition. What about the psychological contract - if a team of people have different psychological contracts with their employer - how does that effect the team work, team performance? All of that comes back to performance, role modelling and expectation handling - leading to personal development, training and career management.

As you can say an almost endless topic. Highly interesting. Will surely come back to some more HR topics later on.

cb consulting - enhancing performance from within

Train your brain 1/9

Now I found the ultimate book by Dr. Harry Alder in my shelf for this blog:

Train your brain:

The ultimate 21 day mental skills programme for peak performance

The synopsis reads as:

Scientific breakthroughs in neurobiological research have identified how extraordinary feats of creativity can be achieved, and how we can all reach this inspired state. This is a discussion of what it means to operate in a state of “flow”, or peak performance, when anything and everything seems possible. Alder shows readers how to identify, achieve and “capture” this heightened state, so that they can experience peak performance at will and take the hit-and-miss element out of personal achievement. The chapters cover: the mind-body experience; right and left brain thinking; achieving a creative state of mind; developing and trusting intuition and insights; creating creativity; turning pressure into peak performance; and creative problem solving. There are also simple practical exercises and examples of what may be achieved when a person is in a state of “flow”.

I am flabbergasted. This book needs to be a guideline for the next 21 days - or as often as I can. Let me aim to get this book’s ideas across by the end of August, it will absolutely fit into the idea of NLP revisited. Dr. Harry Alder has written a lot of very interesting NLP books, surely most of the techniques are not new but show a way of using NLP. So here we go with session one (please note that my aim is not to replace the book but to discuss the chapters, you should still buy the book and other books by Harry and I will not copy any extracts here):

1 Flashes and Flow - Introduction

Flashes are described as sudden ideas or solutions to a problem that show up in your brain. Flow in the contrary are great performances, e.g. once you pass the pain barrier running a marathon, that let you do great things. This body-mind partnership can be trained and peak performance is defined as a holistic, body-mind experience. The process is unconscious but already O’Connor and Seymour state the learning process as:

1. unconscious incompetence
2. conscious incompetence
3. conscious competence
4. unconscious competence

So no exercises but a purely introduction to which I might add the following list of left and right brain “capabilities”.

Left Brain: Logical, Sequential, Rational, Analytical, Objective, Looks at parts

Right Brain: Random, Intuitive, Holistic, Synthesizing, Subjective, Looks at wholes

cb consulting - enhancing performance from within