Breaking through your limiting beliefs

Most of us are not realizing our full potential.

And the worst part is, we know it.  We are limited by some reason why we aren’t achieving everything we strive for.  At the root of many of our excuses are deep rooted beliefs on why we are not taking powerful steps to lead a company through a restructure, enter a new market, run a marathon, or pursue a passion – you know what I am talking about.

Throughout our career, our mentors, colleagues, friends and family have told us over and over that we can do it; we have the skills, the experience and the track record to achieve great things and they believe in us.  They usually have a very impressive case – we couldn’t be where we are today if we weren’t already pretty good, could we?

So what is holding us back?  Why, despite all of the facts laid out in front of us, do we sometimes avoid the hard truth rather than take action?

Why we can’t change our limiting beliefs?

Our perception of our capabilities, value, place in the world, relationship with others – is often so integrally woven into our personality and belief system that our mind and body will work to protect and reinforce our beliefs at any turn.  The beliefs we relied on through childhood to help us build relationships and as an adult to cope with our self-imposed pressures to be successful in work and in life could actually be those that are holding us back from reaching success.

Breakthrough by creating stronger, more powerful beliefs.

Breakthrough leaders create new opportunities and capacity for success by identifying and developing new beliefs that are more powerful than the disabling one.  The new beliefs build focus and confidence and can soon superseded the previous limiting beliefs.

Developing a Legacy

I recently participated in an exercise facilitated by Carolyn Meacher, a Leadership Coach and a facilitator for Six Seconds, a leading authority on emotional intelligence.

In the exercise, we were asked to think about someone who brought out our best and to write down what it felt like to work with this person and what was it about that person that made us feel that.  As a group, we shared our attributes and Carolyn painted a picture of an aspirational, challenging, visionary, compassionate, trusting, authentic leader.

It was a great exercise on EQ but the most profound impact to me was, at the end, Carolyn asked us to consider who's list would we be on.  It was question that hit me in the gut - have I made anyone want to be a better employee?  a better person?  a better member of our global society?  Would anyone consider me one of those people that brought out the best in someone else?

Over the past few years, probably precipitated with the birth of my daughters but compounded with living abroad and starting a new enterprise, I have been thinking about personal legacies and how I want to be known.

My former employer Amanda will attest to my post-it note inspirations on the side of my monitor and I frequently added and changed words as I was inspired.  Often, they were not attributes that come easily to me but were words that I though would make me a better person and in turn, make others want to be better around me.  When I left the position, I jotted down the most recent post-its which included:

• Graceful - acting with elegancy and courtesy, kindness and politeness
• BIW (from Leading without a Title) - aspiration to be the best in all of my acts including work and leadership (Best in World c/o Robin Sharma - The Leader Who Had No Title)
• Thankful - for opportunities, learning experiences, people's time
• Positive - seeing the good in situations, the best in people, the future outlook and possibilities
• Strong - staying the course and leading the way despite changes and challenges in the way

In Kouzes and Posner's A Leader's Legacy, "The legacy you leave is the life you lead."  We are creating and leaving our legacy daily with the decisions we make, the actions we take and the people that we interact with.  Even the smallest impression we make on our environment will have a lasting impact - it is the ability to be conscious and thoughtful about what those impressions are that will make us better leaders and members of our global community.

I am working on evolving my legacy... my legacy of how I want to be remembered - by my children, my family, my friends and my colleagues.  It is very work in progress and right now, I have a good way to go.

Have you thought about how people remember you?  What is your life legacy?

A Personal Story About Expectations

Sitting in my office, I was struck by how different starting my business has been compared to what I expected.  Maybe it was how I thought my day might start, maybe it was what aspects I thought I might be in control of or how much better I would be at controlling the things I wasn't so good at before (note to self, paperwork is not my forte!)

Now, don't get me wrong, as much as there have been emotional ups and downs (expected), fear (expected) and the feeling of empowerment (hoped for), it has been great - just different. It made me think about last July (2012) when I had the opportunity to take my family to Disneyland in Hong Kong.

The Magic Kingdom

We were fortunate to have the whole family together and we took advantage of a stopover in Hong Kong to visit Disneyland on a trip from Singapore to Toronto. I was so excited to for the trip, perhaps even more so than my kids (7, 3 and almost 2 at the time), especially since this would be the first time for the younger two.

Hurricane Vincente

On the day of our arrival, we were advised of a pending tropical storm.  Although we had the opportunity to enter the park the first morning, all of the outside rides were closed and the rain started in earnest after lunch. Traipsing three wet kids back to the hotel, we all hoped that the weather would pass quickly.

As it turned out, we ended up in the most severe storm in the past decade with a Storm Signal Number 10 Typhoon (the highest rating by the Hong Kong Observatory) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYRDHr1fwFc.

For two and a half days, we were confined to the Disneyland Hotel.

Expectations Crushed

What I expected of our trip was smiling faces, pictures with Mickey, going on rides, swimming and lots of other great family memories. Now what? We had paid a lot of money, planned and packed, flew to Hong Kong and now we were stuck in a hotel with cranky and wet kids.  We did the only thing we could, we adjusted, adapted and created with whatever we could.

Project Rainstorm

We transformed one of our two hotel rooms into a giant tent city. We had (running, jumping, crawling) races (tag, hide and seek) in the hallways. We probably visited the hotel gift shop about three times a day, sometimes to explore, sometimes to rack up the credit card. We booked the kids into the kids club where they coloured, made crafts, climbed the castle and rowed the boat. The kids crashed pylons and bounced in the Mickey Castle that was set up, complements of the hotel. We ate breakfast with Daisy; dinner with Mickey and Goofy. My daughter got her picture taken with Sleeping Beauty (her favourite - she wears pink).

Yes, we were confined to the hotel (thank you for that last minute decision to splurge on Disneyland accommodations). No, the trip did not go to MY expectations. But, we had smiling, giggling, messy faces, we had pictures with Mickey (Goofy, Pluto, Daisy, Minnie, Princess Aurora), we went swimming (indoors) and created so many special, unique memories.  Had things not gone the way they did, we would not have experienced the trip we did. When I finally let go of the Disneyland trip of MY dreams, I realized that we actually had the Disneyland trip of my families dreams.

Adjust your Expectations, Change your Outlook

The moral of my long story - don't get caught up in the expectation of achieving a goal or an idea of what you want to be... in your job, relationship, financials, etc. Not that you shouldn't aspire and create the vision of where you want to go, just focus on getting better and being better rather than a single point of achievement. Let your expectations go and experience the joy and excitement of living in the moment. You will find more energy and peace when you are where you want to be and you can then leverage that energy and internal power for even more.

Mastering the Craft of Leadership

Why coaching?

Why I became a Leadership Coach

I became a leadership coach because I wanted to provide others the opportunity to evolve and grow their careers; to help provide the stepping stones to overcome the obstacles that can stand in the way of reaching success.

 

Over the course of the past 20 years, I have faced challenges in my career that I have blundered through (sometimes successfully, sometimes not) and realized that there may have been other ways of tackling them without being burdened by feelings of frustration, stress and often isolation.

 

I was privileged to be introduced to the practice of coaching through a couple of amazing professionals and my investment in my development has opened opportunities that I would have never considered.  After years of incorporating coaching into my corporate roles, as Four Mondays, I can now share the benefits of coaching with other business leaders.

 

Why a Leadership Coach might be right for you

How you work through opportunities and challenges is a very personal process.  Whether you reach out to a wide variety of advisors or you plunge through details on your own, a coach can help create a laser focus to your process through objectivity and insight.

 

To be effective, a coaching engagement must start with a concrete challenge.  For example, enhancing your leadership skills; addressing your EQ, building followership, inspiring your organization.  It can also be about a specific business challenge; a business crisis, a new opportunity, an organizational restructure, corporate acceleration and growth.  Or, it could be about you; a role, job or career transition, navigating organizational politics, personal motivational needs or stress management.

 

Coaching can provide you the framework to:

• clarify your vision, focus and goals
• stay on track and be held accountable to development
• rediscover your passion, energy; re-ignite your sense of urgency
• support you through challenges, objections, uncertainty
• learn new techniques and uncover approaches to working with others
• engage and motivating your organization; creating alignment and resolving conflict
• create a powerful advocate network across and outside your company
• building strong communication skills to operate in an exceedingly global and virtual environment
• understanding your leadership style and amplify your best leadership self.

 

How to select the coach that will inspire your change

Your relationship with your coach will be based on respect and trust.  Seek a coach who you feel has appropriate experience, engagement skills and approach that works with your own style and objectives.  A coaching engagement is designed to challenge you so find someone who you are willing to let push your boundaries and question your thinking but will come out on the other side with you to develop an action plan that you are passionate about.  Meet with a few coaches to understand their style and approach before you decide and don't be afraid to reframe your relationship with a coach if it is not working for you.

 

Four Mondays - Inspire Change

You can inspire change - in your life and in the lives of others.  One small action or change in any aspect of your life can have profound impact on the quality and strength of your leadership abilities.  For more information about Four Mondays Leadership Coaching, please call Michelle Gorman at 905.466.5815 or email michelle.gorman@fourmondays.com.

Feeling technically out of date? Don't make yourself obsolete.

If you are an executive or a aspiring leader, chances are you are part of Generation X.  You grew up in an age of amazing technological change and you were at the forefront.

Perhaps you were the first to play 'Asteroids' on Atari or run 'Gridrunner' off of a tape drive hooked up to a Commodore VIC-20 (yes, it was you!).  You were the first of your friends to own a mobile phone and you have yelled at your mom for picking up the phone when you were trying to download a program over the Internet.  You were the master of the web and knew the power of search engines before people knew how to 'google it'.

So when did you lose your savvy?  When did the feeling of uncertainty start?  When did you realize that you no longer knew the latest and greatest digital and social trends.  When did you become your parents?

 

Face it.  There is a time in your career when your focus is no longer about what you know but how to manage it.  When you progress from a subject matter expert to a leader, you need to let go of the details to be an effective manager.  Today, in a time of blistering pace of change, it seems next to impossible to keep up.

If you are feeling like you are going to be found out... try these DO's and DON'T to keep up your chops:

DO - leverage your people.  I am always astounded at the energy and passion that can be created when you provide someone the opportunity to share knowledge.  Leverage your colleagues, Gen Y's, network, kids to provide you an competitive social assessment, help you figure out a new technology or present some innovative digital ideas for your business.

DON'T - assume it will go away.  Argue that Facebook and Twitter are a fad and not only will you seem like that 'old guy' but you may also limit yourself when developing new products, markets or channels.  It is possible that Facebook and Twitter may not be the hot platforms in 5 years, but there is no doubt that digital will continue to change our world, exponentially.  Funny, that internet fad just didn't go away either.

DON'T - get overwhelmed.  It is easy to feel like you are on the outside looking in when you are inundated with articles, blogs and tweets from a plethora of thought leaders.  Just remember, many of these thought leaders either:  do it for a living; have content developers; or apparently don't have a need to sleep.

DO - follow thought-leaders that are relevant to your industry.  Find a few that inspire you.  You read biographies and leadership books, now include on-line sources for inspiration and techniques.

DON'T - believe everything you hear.  Being pragmatic is important too.  Not all social and digital initiatives are right for your company and goals.  Investigate options but only commit to those that are relevant to your customers, are supportable by your organization and that you can leverage to meet your business objectives.

DO - create a presence.  Even if it is just on LinkedIn, ensure you have a professional and appropriate representation of your company and yourself on-line.  This could be a make or break point on whether your business is a place that your prospects want to do business with you or work for your company.

DON'T - think you are alone.  One of the biggest fears of leaders is that they will be 'found out'.  Most of us are not expected to be an expert but if you are open-minded and curious, finding the courage to get back your tech mojo is within your grasp.

The Origin of Four Mondays

People often ask me where Four Mondays came from.  When thinking about both myself and the inspiration I wanted to provide for people, making change with simple steps was key.

28 Days; 4 Weeks; 1 Month

There is a common theory that originated in the 1970's that it takes a month to break a habit.  Habits like smoking or starting a health program are centered around creating new habits to replace existing 'bad' habits.  Why not take a look at our daily challenges and focus on establishing behaviours for success rather than just creating tactics to manage them.

Monday

Yes, I am one of those... even as a child, I remember vividly how excited I was for the week to start.  Anticipation, opportunity, a fresh start - whatever it was, I couldn't wait for Monday so I could get to school and find out what the week ahead was going to unfold.  Though, trust me, over the course of hectic and challenging 20 year career, Monday mornings haven't always held the same spark.  This is why my company name reminds me daily that Monday should always hold that same sense of adventure that it did as a school girl.

What Four Mondays means to me

Four Mondays is my opportunity to inspire change, in myself and in others on a daily basis.  And in doing so, making each day, each challenge and each stressor an inspiration to achieve more and enjoy more.