real

February 12, 2015 by Christine

How To Shine Your Light, Even When You Don’t Know Who You Are

Someone emailed me after last week’s article:

“I loved your post about letting your light shine. But what do you do when you haven’t found yours yet?!”

They meant it in jest, but their question talks to the heart of something I come across, particularly when I’m working with you solopreneurs whose businesses are built around your personality.

There’s this whole insidious belief that you can and should nail some specific “thing” you’re meant to be or do that will transform your work and life. Indeed, that any failure you have in achieving the results you want will come down to your own lack of clarity in this arena.

The Insidious Belief

This whole thing comes at you in two key ways:

Self-development gurus

Much of the self-development world exhorts you to discover who you are. The implication is that “you” are a constant and that, when you can define the essence of yourself, then you will be able to put yourself out there so much more clearly.

Look, I’ve been there. At a time of feeling less clear and more lost, I felt pretty pumped up reading books with titles like “reclaim your soul” or “discover your purpose”. The authors were obviously so sorted about who they were, and what they were here to do, that they were writing about it. I devoured lots of stuff like that hoping some of their certainty would spark something in me.

But in the end it all just made me feel that I was missing something, because I couldn’t get my raison d’être down to one pithy sentence that I could wrap my whole life and being around.

Business marketing advice

And there’s a ton of stuff too that comes from the small-business marketing world. Particularly from the self-appointed experts who spend most of their life online.

They talk right at all of your uncertainties about how well your business is doing – or not, as the case may be. They’ve thought about your deepest vulnerabilities and they’re smart at wrapping slick words and offerings around them that look on the face of it like they’ll give you answers about that unique thing you think you’re missing. The thing that’s going to bring it all together.

Like I’ve said before, these guys may have some smart tools and techniques to offer you, some great platforms to use or whatever. But they cannot ever give you the key to the holy grail.

Because that’s not how it works.

Misunderstandings

Stumbling as I have done myself through all of this, I’d love to offer a couple of big reflections.

First, I now don’t believe that we ever go through life with only one purpose. Or only one perfect way in which we can put ourselves at the service of the world.

I think we evolve and that how we give our gifts and talents to others can and perhaps should morph over time, dependent on a whole load of factors.

So, for me, purpose is dynamic, not static.

Then, to trust that a success strategy someone else developed or discovered will also work for you is misguided. Only because you are not them. They are not you. They have their access to wisdom. You have your own.

And if you go outside yourself time and time again for answers, you’re shutting yourself off from your own knowing, your own clarity.

So how to work inside-out?

Want to get better at listening to your own internal knowing? Here are a couple of suggestions. I offer them to you on a test, don’t trust basis. They aren’t THE answer. And your own wisdom make take you elsewhere. But if you really are unsure of what it even means for you to shine your light, start here.

You’re okay right now, exactly as you are

There’s nothing different you have to be or do in order to be okay. You’re already okay. Trust that. Go with that. Allow that its own resonance within your being.

Understand your character strengths

In the absence of being able to articulate your genius, dip your toe in the water of character strengths.

Character strengths are those enduring qualities we automatically turn to just in being ourselves. I particularly like VIA‘s take on all of this. They look at strengths across six categories: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance and transcendence. And within these they define 24 separate distinctive strengths, like creativity, courage, love, leadership, forgiveness and playfulness.

Do their questionnaire. It’ll give you feedback on how you score on all 24 of their strengths. But look at the top five or six and consider how they’re at play, not at some future point, but right now in your life.

What’s the magic thing you can already see happening when you use them in combination?

Go to work with a hypothesis

So, maybe you do all of that and you’re still not crystal clear. Like I said, that’s okay.

Just work with what you know.

Amp up that little bit of magic you’re already in touch with.

Don’t demobilize yourself thinking you must be crap because everyone else seems to be able to nail their thing and you can’t. Just see past the need to be that defined even. Stay in action with what you have some felt certainty about.

Go give your best in the way that you know how right now.

That’s all that’s required of you.

The clarity on the rest of it will follow if you just stay tuned in to what’s happening on the inside.

January 30, 2015 by Christine

What The Velveteen Rabbit Can Teach You About Leadership

Leadership is a bit of a conundrum.

A lot of the world-class examples of what good looks like seem to be almost perfect. And yet, in my experience, the need for perfection is the very thing that all but guarantees you won’t succeed.

This theme came up in conversation with a client this week. She has just landed what some might consider a dream job, leading a major division of a big corporate. While clearly she has to keep all her stakeholders happy, she nevertheless has a high degree of autonomy around how to lead the business.

We sat the other day surveying the landscape of her new territory. The acres of stuff she has to get to grips with if she’s going to succeed.

First, having taken over from a successful predecessor, she has to ensure some kind of steady state on existing performance.

But then, she has an ambitious vision of how it can be different.

And she wonders how she can get people excited about it. “Engaged”.

At the same time as they’re running flat out to keep up with everything they’re already doing.

She has a big, demanding direct reports team. Just giving regular face time to them alone takes half her week.

Are there too many of them? Are they up to the job? Dare she deal with the performance management issues she knows are lurking there that her predecessor didn’t deal with, despite his success?

There’s the org structure too. Is it fit for purpose? Does it help or hinder business growth? How can she get the various bits of the jigsaw puzzle working better together?

Meantime she has a diary that’s running her, rather than her running it. Stuff just seems to get put in. How can she better figure what she should and shouldn’t be turning up for?

Oh yes, and there’s also life beyond work. Her children. Her desire to train for and run a marathon. Longer term desires to do some philanthropic stuff.

“Big agenda,” I said.

That took her to reflecting on how important it was for her to achieve things right across the board. To make her life matter.

“How can I be super-effective across all the important areas of my work and life?” she finally asked.

It was a genuine question. And she looked at me like I might know the answer. But I had another question:

“Can you be?” And…

“What happens if you aren’t?”

She took a deep breath at that point. Like it would be the end of the world. Like she’d somehow have monumentally failed.

Servant Leadership

Here was my client apparently wanting to be powerful and perfect across a whole range of things. And what we got to right then was the anxiety she felt under as a result. The pressure she was putting on herself to be almost super-human.

I didn’t think of The Velveteen Rabbit in the moment. Where I went instead was the concept of servant leadership, the essence of which is really simple: drop using power and authority as a way to get stuff done; instead put yourself at the service of those you serve – the board, direct reports, employees, customers.

And I’m not talking about this like it’s a neat technique.

I’m talking honest, in your bones stuff.

Come from service.

Robert Greenleaf explains it:

The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions…

And:

The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?

But coming from service as a leader requires a particular ingredient. One that many, many leaders struggle with.

See, if you want to lead from a place of service, you have to put a lot of ego away and allow some vulnerability in.

You have to get out of your own head, trying to make sure you look good, to stepping into other people’s shoes and really understanding what’s important to them.

You have to stop being mechanical. Going through all the motions that you think you *should* go through in a senior job. Let down some barriers and embrace some spontaneity.

Like we said last week, fail sometimes.

Acknowledge when you don’t have the answers.

Be honest about where you are emotionally and not like some wind up ra-ra machine.

Stop being so brittle and controlled and allow some softness.

Allow yourself to be okay to be you: imperfect and yet still enacting your vocation to lead.

In brief: you have to be real.

Vulnerability and The Velveteen Rabbit

It was only after I’d finished talking with my client, leaving her with the homework of reading Greenleaf’s book and reflecting on what she made of it in the context of her challenges, that I remembered the story of The Velveteen Rabbit.

If you haven’t read it, or not in a little while, you should have a look. It’s the tale of a toy rabbit given to a child one Christmas.

It has so many take away messages about all things work, business, life, love…

All revolving around this thing about being real.

See, the Rabbit starts off in life all self-conscious, trying to figure his role in the hierarchy of the toy cupboard, concerned about what other toys make of him.

Life in the toy cupboard certainly seems to have its politics. Certain toys thinking they’re more important than others. More real than others. And being disparaging or bullying of other toys as a result.

The mechanical toys were very superior, and looked down upon every one else; they were full of modern ideas, and pretended they were real.

He wonders what it means to be real. He begins to ask himself what the even means. By chance he finds himself under the mentorship of the Skin Horse, an old toy whose seen it all in the toy cupboard, and is unaffected by the shenanigans. Rabbit asks horse what it means to be real.

He said, “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

Life conspires to have Rabbit promoted, however, to being the little boy’s main toy. He ends up being chucked about and loved by the boy so much that he’s no longer in perfect nick. But by then he’s no longer thinking about how pink his ears are, because he no longer cares.

He has served his purpose. He has been an important transitional object in the little boy’s whole growing up.

But the most meaningful thing that happens to Rabbit is that, when the child’s nanny dismisses him as being “just a toy”, the little boy insists that he’s not. And that he’s REAL.

Toy or Real?

And that’s the question I think it’s valuable to ask yourself if you’re in a big leadership job.

Is it just another way to turn up and play out your needs of power and perfection?

Or are you going to be real in it?

As we talked through the long list of my client’s challenges, we looped back to her wish to have everyone excited about her vision. To have them all pulling in her direction.

“If you want to get people behind your vision,” I said, “help them articulate their vision. Of course you’re going to be a co-creator in that process. You’re going to inspire and lead in the conversation. But let your people make it theirs. Then you don’t need to coerce them. And you’ve played your role full-out.”

That’s what I think being real looks like for her.

How will she go about it? Will she? I guess time will tell.

And, look, I know this talks easy and does hard. Which is why the whole Keeping It Real thing is a theme we’re weaving into our business here and will be doing and writing more about. So, for more and for further thoughts make sure you’re signed up for updates.

Meantime, jump on the comments below and let me know what lessons you take from The Velveteen Rabbit.

Picture credit: Eugenio Marongiu

December 22, 2014 by Christine

10 Business Books and Resources to Keep You Grounded in 2015

As someone who likes to think for themselves, it’s hard to find resources that you can trust to give you new ideas, while allowing you to keep your feet on the ground. Here are 10 of my current favorites that I think achieve that. I’d love to know what yours are!

Good Life Project Podcasts – Jonathan Fields

Good Life Project

Jonathan Fields is on a mission to inspire and enable others to develop businesses that align with their core and has for the past years produced some amazing interviews with people, many of whom are already in the public eye. He has a wonderful knack of getting his guests to tell the story behind the story in ways that allow a glimpse of the unique journeys people have been on in creating these standout businesses, perfomances and works of art that we can so often take for granted. Check out in particular his conversations with ultra athlete Rich Roll; master marketer Seth Godin; and vulnerability goddess Brené Brown.

The Icarus Deception – Seth Godin

The Icarus Deception

We all know the story of Icarus, whose father made him wings, but then warned him not to fly too close to the sun, lest the wax holding the feathers together melt, plunging Icarus to a certain death. In this excellent book, Godin points out for us the prevalence of the messages of that story archetype in our society: don’t try too hard; don’t be too clever; don’t be too cocky. And how many of us disguise anything that’s unique about us for fear that we may be judged as being different from the norm. He argues that, in today’s society, if we truly want to serve, and be who we are, we need to wake up to the less well known moral of the Icarus story: that flying too low may cause another kind of failure.

In talking to the creator in all of us, Godin reframaes what it means to be an “artist”. So, it’s as much a manifesto for edgy business owners and maverick corporate types as it is for writers, actors and other “makers”. Besides anything else, Godin inspires us to quit fearing success and dare to get on with standing out in our own unique way.

Fierce Conversations – Susan Scott

Fierce Conversations

According to Scott, life and business revolve around our conversations. The ones we have with ourselves as much as the ones we have with others. One of her key arguments is that, if we want to be ourselves, if we want to manifest who we are and what we’re trying to do, then what we say to others matters. We have the choice to compromise for the sake of keeping the status quo and avoiding upset, or to speak our truth whatever that happens to be. The more our words align with what we’re feeling, the clearer we can steer our path in life.

How to Fascinate – Sally Hogshead

How to Fascinate

Even if you’re clear about who you are or what you offer the world, it can sometimes be a challenge to describe it in language that doesn’t have people’s eyes glazing over. If you’re looking for inspiration in this department, check out Sally Hogshead and the fabulous work she has done, looking at how people instinctively see us, and how we can language that in ways that are clear and vibrant way and remain true of us. Do the online questionnaire, and you’ll find your fascination style described as one of forty-nine archetypes, each one a marriage of your two fascination advantages. While no personality system is ever one hundred percent, I’ve found this one provoked useful insight for several of my clients during 2014.

Made to Stick – Chip and Dan Heath

Made to Stick

One of the toughest aspects of creating a business your way is getting yourself and it out there. Particularly if you’re shifting to something new and away from something you’ve been known for in the past. Based on their own research into businesses that have some lasting buzz around them, Chip and Dan Heath look at six features that contribute to making things standout, engage people and stick. Where many marketing books offer a painting by numbers formula, the Heaths avoid this by using entertaining examples to whet your appetite in a way that offers food for thought around how to have folks swarming around you.

Resonate – Nancy Duarte

Resonate

There can be nothing more boring in business than having to sit and listen to a presenter wade her way through a hundred plus fact-based, bullet point slides. So how not to be that person? Especially if it’s important to you – and the world – that you get your message across? In Resonate, Nancy Duarte has done a superb job of spelling out the importance of engaging audiences, and then in bringing the art of story to creating presentations and written pitches in a way that brings people with you. I particularly like how she maps Hero’s Journey story architecture (the story architecture that’s used to underpin most blockbuster films these days) onto how you can piece together your message. If you check her out online, you’ll also find some fabulous pre-formatted PowerPoint slides for you to dive into.

Quiet- Susan Cain

Quiet

Much of the business world values extroversion and all it implies: working in teams; being seen as outwardly impactful and dynamic; acting first, thinking later. Many of the extroverted cultures I’ve worked around expect their introverted talent to adapt themselves in order to “fit in”. As if introversion was a handicap. In her superb book Cain however makes the case for introverts. She allows all of us, irrespective of our extroversion/introversion preference, to understand that in devaluing introversion, we lose vital richness of depth, insight and consideration – qualities missing not just from business but from much of life in general.

Stillpower – Garrett Kramer

Stillpower

Business is about performance. With no performance, there is no business. And yet some of us find it easier than others to achieve the kind of results for which we aim. Garrett Kramer’s book, written for athletes and their coaches, but just as relevant to life and work, talks about this phenomenon. Often, if we find ourselves falling short of something, the way we know to overcome it is through use of willpower and determination, perhaps with a sprinkling of tools and techniques we can adopt from time to time to get ourselves over a hump. But, instead of piling on the effort, Kramer suggests we do the exact opposite and think less. He looks at the mental state we all know as The Zone, and at the psychological principles that underpin it. And he offers us a new understanding of how we can achieve that for ourselves more and more.

Clarity – Jamie Smart

Clarity

Talking of misunderstanding, Jamie Smart looks at some of the taken-for-granted paradigms in psychology and offers a radically different way to see and experience things. Drawing on the work of Syd Banks, and informed by new observations across a variety of disciplines, including quantum physics, Jamie enables us to understand the extent to which the world we so take for granted as being “out there” is first of all created in our mind. This extraordinary realization challenges us to consider all kinds of things, including the sources of stress and overwhelm. In a world engulfed with advice on how to cope with things in our environment, that reframe allows us immense choice over our entire experience of life.

Creating Affluence – Deepak Chopra

Creating Affluence

There’s much talk in the news these days about the distribution of wealth in our society. Look around you, compare yourself to others and it’s so easy to think that you’re not doing so well or that you are somehow less than. But what does wealth really mean? In this beautiful little book, Chopra argues that, far from being a hard-to-win state, affluence is our natural condition. He considers the related nature of everything, and offers inspiring words that enable us to shape-shift any sense of scarcity or lack we might be feeling, replace it with the knowledge that we’re already rich, and then encourage us to watch what happens when we engage with our worlds from this place.

So, what’s your current top book and/or resource, and why? I’d love to hear!

Photo attribution: Steven Durbin Photography

December 7, 2014 by Christine

How To Be Real

Two weeks ago I was at the memorial service for Ben, a friend of mine who’d died of cancer, aged 46.

I’d loved him and it was harrowing to be there.

Still, I was heartened by the sheer number of friends, colleagues and clients who’d turned up to see him off.

At the get together afterwards, we all spoke of what he’d meant to us. I’m sure if he’d been there to hear our words, he’d have cried too.

Ben knew his stuff. He worked hard. He was courageous. He was naughty. He was funny. He was caring. He was loving.

But beyond all else, in a world where so many people hide behind an invented version of themselves, he was real.

Real.

And that stayed with me beyond Ben’s Do and into the past days.

Legacy: what do you want to leave behind when you die?

You’ve probably read the same stuff I have about legacy. Maybe it’s something that’s come up for you in some of the courses, or weekend workshops you’ve attended.

What do you want your life to have been about? What is it you want to leave behind when you die?

Often the emphasis is on tangible things. Money, a business, a novel, a work of art, a movement. I must admit that’s how I used to see it.

But I’ve begun to reframe it since Ben died.

I’ve begun to feel that, like Ben, the biggest thing I could leave to others is the sense that I’d been real. That, for good or bad, I’d lived a life, true to myself and my values. And that, in the process, I’d given others implicit permission to do the same.

The big job opportunity and the myths of self-employment

Maybe I already had a sense of that emerging earlier this year when I said no to an opportunity to take my work in a different direction.

A group of friends and former colleagues are setting up a new consulting company, and I was involved in some exploratory conversations. They are great guys, and from time to time we hook up to do some great facilitation and coaching work. I got really excited about the opportunity that emerged for me, which was to lead part of the business.

If you’re a regular reader here, it might surprise you to know I’d been tempted by what was, after all, a job.

But, you know, there’s a whole lot of mythology out there about how easy it is to work for yourself. How it’s an escape from the drudgery of corporate life. How you can make up your own rules and create your own game and it’s light and happiness all the way.

You absolutely can create your own life.

But that has its own set of challenges. You have to turn up for yourself every day. You have to be very disciplined about what you will and won’t give focus to in order that you stay viable, profitable, and not working all the hours God sends.

You have to decide for yourself the bigger sense of purpose and direction you’ll follow – there’s no big organization, or brand, other than the one you create.

Sometimes that requires you to dig into yourself and to confront and challenge yourself in ways you’d really rather not.

Even if you are successful today, there’s a whole stream of tomorrow’s success you have to enable. After all, there’s no-one other than you putting a salary in your bank account every month, or whenever you decide to pay yourself.

It’s also tough sometimes to stand outside the norm and to be the person who is playing a different game.

To be the one who challenges the status quo, says things that no-one else will and trust you’ll still be profitable.

Sometimes I just ache to fit in. To be part of something bigger.

I think that consulting group caught me at a moment of questioning all that. Of believing that maybe I’d got it wrong.

I was ready to buy some new power suits, get behind a brand that was bigger than mine, and go sell it.

But I began to have doubts.

I began to look past my self-criticism and see what I’d actually created.

The truth? I’ve created a life on my terms. I do wonderful work – a mixture of corporate and individual coaching. I tend to do no more than three paid days a week. Last year I had twelve weeks holiday, traveled to six different long haul destinations, and still earned well.

Last summer I moved house and love where I’ve ended up. A city style house in a friendly village, and within easy reach of a few nice towns.

Perhaps most important of all, I have a fabulous relationship with a man I love and whose company I adore.

And I began to see the value in having created all of that.

For me. For my clients. For the world.

Yes, this takes work. Yes, I want to achieve even more and different. Yes, this takes me back to myself time and time again.

But, for me, it’s real.

Because, being real is about being who you are.

Sure, a former me could do power suits and all that stuff. And part of me still does. But she’s not all of me. And so I really saw that I couldn’t shut the creative, maverick, different kind of me out.

I took courage in both hands and spoke to my friends. I had some concern that, in deciding to be real, I’d lose their love and friendship. I’m sure that fear’s not uncommon. In fact I know it’s what often keeps people trapped.

Still, I told them that as much as I’d love to work with them, a “job” wasn’t me.

To my surprise, if anything, I think they’ve ended up respecting me even more.

What’s really worth it in the end?

I don’t know about you, but when I die, I won’t be thinking about power suits or corporate identity or whether I was an ace at this job or that. I’ll be asking myself whether the people I love knew it beyond any doubt. Beyond that, was I happy? Had I lived well? Was I true to myself? Did I do the things I wanted in life? Go to the places I wanted. Spend time with the people I wanted to spend time with?

These are the things that to me are worth living and working for.

These are the things that are real.

What about you? Where do you allow yourself to be real? Where is it more difficult? Share your thoughts in the comments and let’s talk about it some more there.