When I ask groups how feedback should be given, there’s always someone who mentions the Hamburger Approach.
This is the theory that you should start by saying something positive (the white bread), move on to what you really want to say – apparently often negative – and then close with something a bit more positive (more refined carbs?).
But what appears to be a balanced diet is just junk food
Moyra Mackie helps leaders and teams to work with courage, compassion and creativity. She is an executive coach and consultant and the founder of Mackie Consulting.
I always worry when HR departments seize on a fashionable idea as the panacea that may not cure all ills but will certainly tick this year’s boxes.
Andy Puddicombe, the co-founder of a terrific mindfulness app called Headspace, wrote a great article on LinkedIn criticising the vogue for “Mindfulness at Work,” given that this slightly misses the point of mindfulness. As Andy says:
“Mindfulness simply means to be present, undistracted, no matter where we are or what we are doing at the time.”
Or like being barefoot, instead of wearing our comfiest footwear
Going barefoot – especially outside – brings instant awareness of our relationship to our surroundings. It uses more muscles and strengthens our ankles but it also makes us think just a little bit more about where we are treading.
Mindfulness is a practice that you never perfect
There are many ways to become more mindful; more focused, attentive and present. One of the best ways to build this ability in an increasingly distracting world is through meditation. There is a ton of evidence emerging to show the wide-range of physical and emotional benefits of regular mindfulness-meditation.
It’s not a quick fix
Indeed it’s not a fix at all, because we can never say we’ve mastered mindfulness.
If you want to know how to get started with mindfulness-meditation, this is a great little video. Instead of repeating those tips, I’d like to focus on eight simple things that I think really help to introduce more mindful moments into our everyday lives.
Although there is science to back many of them up, I’ve chosen them because they work for me.
Moyra Mackie helps leaders and teams to work with courage, compassion and creativity. She is an executive coach and consultant and the founder of Mackie Consulting.
Most have us have known that feeling when we’ve got a lot on our plates; challenging targets, multiple demands (often a combination of work and home) and tight deadlines.
Yet sometimes this just helps us focus; makes us resourceful, creative, efficient. We’re resilient in the face of pressure.
Sometimes it does the opposite. We feel stuck; as if we’re going to fail at something (possibly lots of things). The pressure overwhelms us.
The impact of Control, Choices and Competence – or lack of it
I held an interactive webinar for the Time to Think group on Facebook to find out what caused them stress and how they dealt with it. Reflecting on the experiences and wisdom, I asked myself what they all had in common.
This is when those three Cs seemed significant. Pressure is a form of stimulation, which we can use to help us, just as long as we think we have at least one (preferably two) of those elements.
I think that unconsciously we ask ourselves:
Do I feel as if I’m control?
Do I think I have choices?
Do I believe I have the skills to complete the multiple demands being thrown at me?
Notice the role of our emotions, thoughts and beliefs
Moyra Mackie helps leaders and teams to work with courage, compassion and creativity. She is an executive coach and consultant and the founder of Mackie Consulting.
“How can I get rid of low performers or poorly engaged staff?”, is a refrain I hear a lot.
Then it’s time for a bit of tough love. So I say, there are two reasons for that:
Someone hired the wrong person – who is that someone and what are you going to do about their recruiting and interviewing skills?
You hired the right person and something has changed since your hired them. What are you as a leader going to do about it?
Leaders need to think like gardeners
Gardeners don’t blame the plant when it fails to thrive. True leaders, like effective gardeners, look at themselves first and then the environment.
As a keen gardener, I’m struck by the thought that if you are a leader, you can do a lot to help those around you withstand the cold winds of shrinking budgets and increasing targets by thinking about it from a gardener’s perspective.
Gardening is about both leading and managing change. Here are three leadership lessons from successful gardeners.
Moyra Mackie helps leaders and teams to work with courage, compassion and creativity. She is an executive coach and consultant and the founder of Mackie Consulting.
Grand initiatives haven’t made a dent in the discontent and disengagement
Everyone seems aware of the problem and a whole industry has sprung up, with million dollar consultancies and business schools clamouring to fix the problem.
When we at Mackie Consulting listen to people in organisations through our Clarity Survey, and through our coaching work with teams and individuals, people tell us that they are not having the conversations they should be having. What we hear supports the Ken Blanchard Leadership company’s research that shows the extent to which conversations are avoided:
81% say their boss doesn’t listen to them
82% say their leaders don’t provide appropriate feedback
28% say they rarely or never discuss their future goals with their boss
only 34% meet with their boss once per week
While people talk a lot, they have lost the habit of having meaningful, quality conversations
In all too many organisations, meetings are long and formulaic. People come to meetings either to transmit information or receive it. Dialogue seems to have been substituted by the “let-s-read-this-presentation-together” practice.
Meaningful conversations are frequently avoided, and the more challenging conversations are saved up for those zinging e-mails or vented to the wrong person at the coffee shop or water cooler.
Moyra Mackie helps leaders and teams to work with courage, compassion and creativity. She is an executive coach and consultant and the founder of Mackie Consulting.
How many times in a week do you get asked for advice?
If you’re half-way good at your job, I’m going to guess that the answer is “frequently”. If you’re quick to offer your advice I’m going to be blunt: you’re not helping.
I’m going to argue that most people who ask for advice are really asking for clarity and for the confidence to make a decision.
And by clarity, I don’t mean clarity about knowing what you think or what you think should happen. I mean clarity in the asker’s own mind.
Advice doesn’t give clarity or the confidence to act
These things are not in our power to bestow on others – they come from within. Clarity and confidence come when new insights emerge, motivating the asker to act from their own conviction. read more…
Moyra Mackie helps leaders and teams to work with courage, compassion and creativity. She is an executive coach and consultant and the founder of Mackie Consulting.
I’ve been thinking a lot about gratitude this week.
Firstly Jane, a friend of mine from school, nominated me on Facebook to declare three positive things each day for five days and to pass this nomination on to three of my friends.
Now ordinarily I am not a huge fan of the “get me a million likes because I’m seriously ill” or “share this picture of a mis-treated animal to show you care” type of post that Facebook is awash with.
I believe we need to give real time and real money to the causes we care about and spend time with people we know who are suffering, rather than soothe ourselves with an instant LIKE or SHARE.
So that’s the grouchiness out of the way, let’s get back to the gratitude.
Jane’s nomination struck a chord with me
I’ve been buried in books about emotions over the last couple of weeks as the subject of my Masters dissertation is about working with emotions in coaching.
All roads to happiness and leadership start with positive emotions
“Emotion works with cognition in an integrated and seamless way to enable us to navigate the world of relationships, work and spiritual growth. When positive emotion energizes us, we are better able to concentrate, to figure out the social networks at a new job or new school, to broaden our thinking so we can creatively integrate diverse information, and to sustain our interest in a task so we can persevere.”
Moyra Mackie helps leaders and teams to work with courage, compassion and creativity. She is an executive coach and consultant and the founder of Mackie Consulting.
“I’m really trying to be more collaborative but I can see it in their eyes; they don’t trust me. They remember the old me – how can things get better if we can’t get beyond this?”
This is not the first client who has found it hard to change because others still remember the past
Which brings to mind my favourite Tony Robbins quote:
“Everybody’s got a past. The past does not equal the future unless you live there.”
It strikes me that any kind of change – whether inside you, within teams or even between whole nations – involves the ability to let go of the past. I think change requires forgiveness.
What I learnt about forgiveness by going home
It was April 1989 and I had been looking out of the airplane window, ever since we crossed the Zambezi River from Zambia into Zimbabwe. It was autumn and the bush below was losing its summer green, revealing small settlements, the occasional herd of elephant and long, straight gunmetal grey roads breaking up the red earth stretching all the way to the horizon.
As the plane bounced down onto the runway, I realised that I had been away for half my life.
But I felt that I was coming home
Walking across the tarmac I wondered what lay ahead. I was a white woman with a British passport – I potentially represented colonial white privilege.
Moyra Mackie helps leaders and teams to work with courage, compassion and creativity. She is an executive coach and consultant and the founder of Mackie Consulting.
Team work isn’t optional. Management theorists tend to over-complicate things by differentiating between groups and teams, but I like to keep it simple.
I frequently work with leaders and teams who ask me a version of this question:
“What if we’re not a great team and we don’t all really trust each other?”
Which is a necessarily honest and courageous start.
In my work I encourage my clients to consciously re-think what we mean by “teams”; to go beyond the idea that a team is only the group of people who report to one manager or one project lead.
We all belong to multiple teams
If you need other people to contribute to your output at work, then you’re part of their team. Their contribution might be time, advice, encouragement or materials and the contribution may be big or small, consistent or intermittent.
Team work is about co-operation and contribution
Great teams work well when the individuals have the mind set:
“What can I contribute?”
Not:
“What can I get out of this?” or “How can I get other people to do what I want them to do?”
I think that we have a tendency to romanticise the ideal team, when “good enough” is sometimes a lot better than average.
Instead of waiting for some magical time when trust will emerge or crossing your fingers that you’ll get some budget to hire an outside coach to help you strengthen those bonds, you could just do five things.
The real world guide to “good enough” teams
Five things any team can (and should) focus on to get great results
Moyra Mackie helps leaders and teams to work with courage, compassion and creativity. She is an executive coach and consultant and the founder of Mackie Consulting.
The other day my twenty-year old son baked a cake for the 18th birthday of his girlfriend’s sister. This was the first cake he’d made since he was little and we used to bake together – him standing on a chair, with a grown up’s apron folded over to fit him.
Suddenly, like it was yesterday, I see him learning to break eggs that are as big as his toddler hands. I can hear him laughing as he turns the electric whisk to High on purpose just to see the resulting cloud of flour and sugar.
Moments together AND the subsequent memories are great gifts
Along with kicking endless footballs and counting and categorising dinosaur and train collections, I took up baking as a way of spending quality time with my son. But as he grew out of needing a chair to stand on, he outgrew the desire to spend time doing this and I lost the chance to spend that time, just him and me.
Sometimes we mistake a gift for a burden
Whilst I can see those moments as clear and precious gifts now, I didn’t always appreciate them. I turned down moments because I was too busy, too tired and – yes sometimes – just a little bit bored.
Great gifts last for a long time
I was surprised that after more than a decade my son was choosing to go back to baking. It wasn’t an easy choice as he had to borrow everything he needed.
Instead of Google, he rather touchingly turned to me for a recipe and advice; phoning me half way through beating the cake mixture to check what it should look like. He was using a wooden spoon, so it was demanding patience and elbow grease.
What impressed me most was that this was not necessary
He could have easily bought a cake or some other gift. But he chose to give his time and his effort. In the process he pushed himself to try something outside his comfort zone.
Moyra Mackie helps leaders and teams to work with courage, compassion and creativity. She is an executive coach and consultant and the founder of Mackie Consulting.
