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Sticky Learning Lunches #54: The Leadership Upgrade #4
“Worried if you change you won’t know what to expect? – Part #4 of the Unique Leadership Coaching model ‘EVOC’ Create. Reflected, dreamed, seen the problems now it’s time to Create actions. In this episode of The Leadership Upgrade #4.
You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:
Nathan Simmonds:
Good afternoon, sticky learning lunches. Welcome to Monday. We are just gonna give it a minute for people to arrive. Just been having a wonderful conversation with Sarah, catching up on the weekend. And the one question I didn’t ask is if I’ve got her support completely for the whole of this session. ’cause if I haven’t, I haven’t got any of the links ready, but we’ll find out about that in a minute. Just giving it a minute. Hello, Colin. Fabian. Good to see you. Howard. Thanks for Martin. Thank you for being here as well. Tim Victoria, thanks very much. Happy Monday to you too. Yes, Sarah is with us all session to support and help.
Sarah:
Thank you all.
Nathan Simmonds:
Wanna make sure I’ve got pens handy? Now it’s a little bit of a lazy start for people today. A few people arriving. Let’s just give it 30 more seconds and then we’re gonna do the roundup. Hello, Matt Brown. Good to see you. Making sure we’re supporting ourselves, delivering the best possible results here. Good afternoon, Lana. Good to see you. And by the way, do you know what we need to make this a little bit of a routine. Everyone, you can say hello to me. It is. Okay. Good afternoon to all of you. Let’s get ready on this.
Nathan Simmonds:
On a scale of one’s 10, how are you feeling about today and this week? One being terrible, 10 being phenomenal. How are you feeling about today, this week? Where you are going, what you are up to? Positive starts, nines, tens, nine’s. Got an eight. Okay, we can work on that. Eight’s good. Last mouthful of tea. Ask me after the playoffs. Let’s dive in as people arrive. Hello V. Good to see you again. Mobile phones. Let’s do this. Light up that little airplane, zero out the distraction, a hundred percent attention on what you are about to be doing here.
Nathan Simmonds:
Also, making sure you’ve got a drink. Let’s keep you hydrated. Keep your brain lubricated. So let’s make this learning stick. Just run out of tea. This could be a problem. Third piece as always, fresh page, fresh thinking. So let’s make sure you’ve got a nice clean sheet in that notepad. At the top of that, you’re gonna write keepers. And these are the things that you want to remember, you want to remind yourself about. And when you reread it, it’s gonna reignite that thinking. It’s gonna help you keep those new ideas fresh and expanding as you start to reapply them.
Nathan Simmonds:
Good. Let’s go. Welcome to today’s Sticky Learning lunch with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM Making Business Matter, the home of Sticky Learning. We are the leadership development soft skills provider to the grocery and manufacturing industry. And the idea of these micro learnings is to help you be the best version of you in the work that you do right now. Whether that’s from home in the office, or just preparing you to return back to whatever normality is gonna look like in the next couple of weeks. What are we covering today?
Nathan Simmonds:
The fourth part of the EVOC leadership model. So we are looking at create, so we’re looking at the final stage of this model in the C for how we are creating and using and actualizing solutions to our obstacles. But before I get into that tomorrow, for the next three days after this, we’re gonna be looking at HBDI profiling. So when you look at things like the grow coaching model, when you look at the mind coaching model for mental health conversations, when you look at the leadership coaching model, the elements that I’m taking you through in here through in this
Nathan Simmonds:
Give your real clear framework of the questions to ask yourself to make those parts happen. Great. The HBDI profile is another tool that just gave, gives you a deeper view on yourself. It really works on this evaluation piece. Eve evaluation
Nathan Simmonds:
In number one, it starts to show you how you work. It starts to show you how you work with others. You start to see certain behavior patterns by doing this sort of analysis. And over the next three days, we’re gonna be going through that profiling mechanism, the Herman profiles with Andy Palmer again, and he’s gonna take us through all the quadrants in there. It’s gonna give you a really deep view on this evaluation piece. If you have not already signed up for that, the link is in the chat box below right now. Call to action, make sure you are registered for the next three sessions so you can get that deeper view. Also shows you the previous session.
Nathan Simmonds:
So this is the, if this is the first time you are watching this session and you want to catch up on the other three parts of this model, you can also click on that link and it will take you and show you the older ones as well. So the first part was self-evaluation, and we’re gonna be going deeper into that in the next three sessions. The second part is then vision. Where you want to get to. Number three, obstacles, the challenges along the way to making things happen. With part four being all about creation. That we do is requiring an action to be taken. You know, it’s, you cannot meditate your way out of a tiger attack. You cannot sit and wait for a million dollar check to come through your letterbox without actually doing something to make that thing happen.
Nathan Simmonds:
So the idea of this phase when we get into the solutions is about asking the right questions so that when you understand where your obstacles are, that you can overcome them. The way this model works, and it’s the same way as how success thinking works, is quite on a simple timeline. Right at the beginning. Here is where you are doing your evaluation. Where you want to get to over here is your vision by understanding these two elements like sat nav, again, you know, you’ve gotta understand where you are in the current moment and also where you want to get to.
Nathan Simmonds:
When I then start looking to see what the obstacles, rather than me having this simplistic, naive view that the journey’s gonna be simple, straightforward, and there’s gonna be no hiccups, I have to understand that those challenges are gonna come downstream in order for me to perceive them, embrace them, mitigate them, and resolve them before they cause me any challenge. And even if they do arrive so that I enjoy the process of going through them. So rather than thinking it’s gonna be like this, it’s gonna be more like this.
Nathan Simmonds:
Put a big tree in the way there. We put another pit in there with spikes so that when we understand the journey looks like this, we can start to prepare and understand, well what are the tools I need here? What are the tools I need here? How do I climb this tree? How do I jump over the pit of, you know, nasty, um, spikes at the bottom? Because when we start to understand this and it’s not about lingering in the problem, we can then start to put the solutions in place, which is why these four stages exist. So how do we do this? We wanna create a little bit of disruptive thinking.
Nathan Simmonds:
We want to embrace all of the problems and all of the challenges that we have on a daily basis. Moham just put in here for every action there is a reaction. Absolutely. And then we have to understand, as I’ve said before, action creates traction. The moment you take one step, you are almost compelled to take the next one in whatever direction it takes or whatever direction it’s pulling you in. So when we start to see all of the problems, we can then come up with solutions. So there’s an interesting technique that you can use here. Question to you all. How many of you, and it is 10 past one now have mentally or verbally, and I mean out loud as well, as well as inside your own head, complained about something in your day, yes or no? Got me good.
Nathan Simmonds:
No good? Yes, yes, yes, yes. With an explanation mark. Good, good. Interesting technique. So is gentleman by the name of Jay’s Summit, I think, I believe it is. He wrote a book called, uh, disrupt You. And his suggestion was for 30 days, write down three problems you’ve got. So it might be anything from the person cutting you up in traffic at the traffic lights on the way to work. It might be the patch of sweat that your slicer toast left on the, on the countertop when you put it on there by accident. Um, anything, what problems have you got? Think about any challenges or problems you’ve got or things that have irritated you a day that you wish you had a solution for.
Nathan Simmonds:
Fire ’em in the question box. Anything that comes up. His suggestion is, and this is an activity for you to take away in this, okay, is you write down three challenges that you’ve got, physical challenges, things that you know have you know, really frustrated you or you know, annoyed you and then you’ve grumbled about them and then just carried on with the day. How many other people do you think have the same challenges that you have with that thing? And if you actually solve that problem in one way, shape, or form, how many people do you think would then potentially buy your service or buy your product to overcome that thing? Everyone with me? Does that make sense? Those questions.
Nathan Simmonds:
So the idea that what we’re doing is we’re starting to activate, as I referred to it before, that solution thinking rather than looking at, oh, that’s a pain in the backside. Oh I can’t, I can’t do anything about that. Actually what I’m suggesting is you start to ask some better questions to help you start coming over, overcoming that to help you move beyond that so that actually you can kind of start coming up with more solutions.
Nathan Simmonds:
And do you know what one of the crazy things, it’s one of those solutions could actually be a viable product or service for you to sell to somebody else. How outrageous and crazy is that, you know, one of those things could be a mistake or something that, um, didn’t work. You know, this is, you know, a great analogy is the post-it note, yes or no, who knows how the, the post-it note came into existence. Yes or no? Gimme some answers.
Nathan Simmonds:
Steely science. Yes, yes, yes, A mistake. Good. The post-it note was actually created on the, on a, um, an experiment to find a super strong glue, but it didn’t work. So they put the mistake into a box over here into no previous errors. And then one of the other members whose staff who worked as a conductor in an orchestra, I believe wanted a glue that could be reused somewhere else and repeatedly used and thus the post-it note was made. So we look for challenges the same as M three did with the post-It note, we come up with solutions and then we apply those solutions.
Nathan Simmonds:
But if we’re always saying, oh, I wish someone else would do that, we are relinquishing the responsibility that we have. We are outsourcing our capability to someone else who we deem as an expert to solve that for us instead of resourcing our capability to overcome any situation that’s put in front of us. ’cause the phenomenal thing is that we are human beings, which makes us apex predators and gives us the ability to overcome any problem. Hope this is, you know, I hope this is resonating
Nathan Simmonds:
If though we apply the right attention and the right intention and the right focus onto these things in order for us to move them. So the first activity is when you go through this is understanding your obstacles. Come up with solutions, come up with ideas. Spend time creating solutions just for stuff, for anything. It doesn’t matter what it is. But spend time coming up with, you know, find three problems that you have on a daily basis for 30 days and come up with three solutions and see if those solutions are actually exist or are being applied anywhere else. And if they are great, start using them. If they’re not,
Nathan Simmonds:
Go and patent it, patent it, whatever the pronunciation is. Now, trademark it so that you can actually sell that as a product or a service. And Colin’s got it here exactly that, you know, by not doing this, we, we end up creating workarounds, but we don’t go so far as creating a permanent fix. So that activity from this 1, 4 30 days, three problems every single day that you wish there was a solution for. And then if there isn’t one, create one and use some of these questions that we’ve got up on here.
Nathan Simmonds:
Now these are some of the questions that I’ve pulled out of the coaching deck. And if you still haven’t got a packet of the coaching cards now with an absolute prime time to go and get a set still only five pound. There is also, um, a link on our webpage which will take you to a free sample of some more of these questions, which will help you to start digging into this thinking.
Nathan Simmonds:
So when you look at these questions now, what are the next steps to achieve the goal? If failure wasn’t an option, what would I do to make this happen? You know, who’s passionate about the parts of the role that I’m not? So actually in asking this question, I can find someone that really does like doing this part of the job. I can, you know, get them to be part of my team and we can work together to overcome that situation.
Nathan Simmonds:
You know, what decisions need, need to be taken, how you know, and right now to create a more positive impact. Just start thinking in different ways and using these questions to focus where we’re going. The quality of your day is dictated by the quality of the questions that you started with. And if you’re using high quality questions, you’re gonna get high quality answers and high quality outputs. What’s been useful so far before I jump into this last part and we go into questions. What’s been useful so far from what we’ve covered at this stage of the model?
Nathan Simmonds:
The questions should start with what and how with a question mark. Absolutely, absolutely. In necessity. ’cause the damage is, is we start the questions with why. You know, you know, why should I do this? Why do I think I can do this? Why me? And then we start to get into kind of the more victim mindset and we’ll hold ourselves back and we’ll start pointing the finger at other people. ’cause we’ve outsourced that capacity, that outsourced that expertise to somebody else rather than doing what it is we need to do, which is take the action to actually solve this issue for not just ourselves. For a million people, finding three challenges, very, you know, every day, good, good exercises, three problems for 30 days. You’ll be amazed what comes out the back of this thinking.
Nathan Simmonds:
And the challenge is that we have, when we look at, at the mindset of when we’re doing this and we are outsourcing our own expertise primarily, where do we learn this? We learn this in school and we also learn this very much in the healthcare system as well. And what we have is, uh, there are still huge numbers of children in the UK that have challenges reading. Why? Because their parents don’t read them. This is the biggest cure all and answer to all of this, uh, to, to reading challenges.
Nathan Simmonds:
Because a lot, you know, high percentage of adults especially, you know, coming in from um, other locations and maybe English isn’t their strongest language, rather than reading to the child, what happens is they outsource that responsibility to someone else. There’s the teacher they need to teach them. So I then outsource that to somebody else.
Nathan Simmonds:
It’s their responsibility to teach the kids. I’m not the expert, I’m not qualified to teach my children, it’s them. But there’s a disconnect between what’s happening with the teacher and the parent. And the, the learning isn’t growing at the rate it needs to. We do the same thing as well with our health. There’s the doctor they know best. I won’t go and check my own health. I won’t look after me ’cause I don’t know how to, I can do what I like. I’ll go and see them. They’ll give me a tablet or give me an operation and everything goes back and I’ll carry on doing what I’m doing ’cause I’m not the expert.
Nathan Simmonds:
When actually if you just start to think about your own behaviors and how your body’s working, you’ll suddenly start to realize you’re probably one of the biggest experts on yourself and your own behavior and your own health more so than anyone else ever will be. But it’s when we take that outsourcing and we resource it, that we can then take the action because it’s us. It’s our responsibility, it is our ownership, it’s our authorship of our lives. What else do we got? Uh, often outsourcing can be viewed as abdicating. Absolutely. I don’t have to think about it. Boom. Someone else. So when we do this exercise, we only understand, again, we talk about limiting beliefs. So we’re gonna come in here and just look at the limiting beliefs is through these understandings of outsourcing and abdication.
Nathan Simmonds:
Now, when we look at whatever this is over here, you know, this big incredible, you know, phenomenal vision that we want to create from wherever we are. Yes, it can be overwhelming. Yes, it can be staggering, you know, and, and dumbfounding. ’cause maybe we thought, um, more incredibly than we we used to, but everything is Nelson Mandela said, you know, everything seems impossible until it’s done.
Nathan Simmonds:
And all it is, is a case of breaking it down into the bite-sized chunks and the small stages of the journey that help us get there, rather than sitting it as, you know, one task all in hand and asking the questions, okay, what’s the first step that I need to take that moves me closer to that? If I chop this up into 20 chunks, what’s that first chunk that I need to be working on? And who can help me to make that happen?
Nathan Simmonds:
Who else can I learn from that’s done this before that will help me to move forward? Yes, the doctor can teach you things about your health and the way your body works. Does it mean that you you can, you are not gonna take action for yourself? No. So as I said, you know, everything seems impossible until it’s done. We thought that about school before we started. We thought that about the job. You know, our first job when we were nervous as teenagers going for our interview and on our first day. And if you went back 20 years and looked at the start of your career to where you are now, you would think where you are right now is completely impossible compared to where you were.
Nathan Simmonds:
So the limiting belief is based on whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t. And as much as I, and I say this time and time ago, as much as I hate quoting Henry Ford ’cause of who he was, this is so vitally true. Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, either way you are right. It’s wherever you put your attention, it’s wherever you put your focus that’s gonna create the outcomes and desires that you want. Hope this is useful. The last part I’m gonna end on, and I’ve got the quote here.
Nathan Simmonds:
If you always put limits on everything you do physically or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits, there are only plateaus and you must not stay there. You must move beyond them. Hope that makes sense. There are no limits. If anyone tells you there is a limitation, there isn’t. There are very few laws that are, you know, accepted and absolute. The majority of them are questionable and malleable. They’re only plateaus and you have to go beyond them. So wherever you find yourself right now and whatever you find your deepest vision to be of where you want to get to and what you want to create, and the magnificent manifestation of what it is that you know is your soul’s calling, there is between here and there. There is mess. There is meant to be.
Nathan Simmonds:
This is called the education. This is called the necessity, or sorry, the necessary learning, the necessary experience that’s gonna enable you to go to the high levels of learning and understanding. And the only thing that will stop you from making that happen is a limiting belief because you’ve outsourced your capabilities to somebody else and your expertise to somebody else and abdicated yourself or abdicated from yourself. And all you require is a set of new questions that’s gonna make that happen. Hope that’s useful. What has resonated today? What’s been valuable? And what questions have you got? Just as a roundup for the EVOC coaching model. What questions have you got for me right now?
Nathan Simmonds:
Steely silence. And Colin, by the way, in answer to your response on Thursday, yes, I’m comfortable in the shirts, but I need to get a little bit more bold and a little bit more daring in the color ranges and the patterns that I’m wearing. Martin’s come in with a statement here. I like it. Creation is the fun part of leadership, absolutely is, um, has come in. I think the parents play a vital role in limiting in the capabilities of their children. Absolutely do. And it’s no different if you haven’t got children by of, of your own yet, or your people are planning on.
Nathan Simmonds:
Your outer voice becomes their inner voice. And as I’ve said before, time and time again, parenting and leadership are not two sides of the same coin. They’re one in the same journey. So as leaders, when we’re talking to people in our care, in our charge, in our gift, how we explain the world to them and how they, and how we teach them about leadership, that outer leadership voice that we deliver to them will become their inner voice.
Nathan Simmonds:
So when we have children, when we have teams, when we have people that we are looking after, the words that we choose will dictate the actions that they will use. It will help them to either expand or contract in their capabilities. And in doing so, in working in this sort of space and limiting people’s viewpoint. So rather than letting them see the whole world and the whole horizon in their career trajectory, and we try and compartmentalize ’em and get ’em to focus on maybe one step or just taking the, the lateral steps, I think it is, you know, from here to leader to do da, da, da da. Maybe that’s not their journey, but by forcing them down that single track that may not be their track, you’re actually encouraging things like workplace anxiety and workplace depression.
Nathan Simmonds:
Hope that helps. Does design thinking help here? Yes, it does. And we can go down that road just a little bit. Design thinking at its core, at its absolute core is about looking at patterns and the best place to look at patterns. Einstein was right, bill Mollison was right. Countless thinkers are right is in nature. If you look at the solutions that are being provided by nature on a daily basis, you will be surprised what you find.
Nathan Simmonds:
Where do you think you think cat’s eyes on roads come from? Where do where does the invention of the hypodermic needle come from? It’s actually from a mosquito. Um, so if you look at the, the, the, the, I’m not sure the right term for it on a mosquito is exactly the same as a hypodermic needle. Where does the little red strip on an envelope come from? You know, the one where you rip it off to open your envelope from Amazon
Nathan Simmonds:
Actually comes out of a pea shell. So when you go and pick peas from your garden, when you grab one end and tear it off, you’ll see there’s a little string of of fiber comes off. This is where that invention came from. Velcro is another prime one. So design thinking is actually about more about paying attention. I watched a recent video from, uh, about the Koji, uh, indigenous populations in Columbia. And a statement in there rang so true that thinking is about listening. It’s about picking out the right ideas. It’s about observing what’s going on inside of you and outside of you so you can come up with some new ideas. So when you actually come up with a problem or you come up with actually, well, how does nature solve this?
Nathan Simmonds:
Also, I think the surrounding is important as well. You need to surround yourself by positive people. Yes you do surround yourself with the right people as well. Surround yourself with creative people. Start. And if you haven’t got those people around you, you’ve got LinkedIn, you’ve got Facebook, you’ve got whatever. Go and start a virtual conversation, whether it’s watching someone else going through the process on a video or whether it’s actually finding a LinkedIn group of creative thinkers, design thinkers, and spending time having conversations with these people. And in doing that, it’ll inspire you to think differently. It will change the, the frequency of thought that you have and new ideas will come in hope. This is getting people thinking in a different way.
Nathan Simmonds:
What are question for you? Open question. What is your top problem right now that you would like to solve? What’s the one problem that’s stopping you getting from where you want to be, that you need to solve? And it could be part of your mindset, it might be a limiting belief. It might be, um, a lack of a perceived lack of resources on a certain thing. It might be that you are missing the skillset and from a team member. So right now, 30 seconds, what is your biggest problem right now that you need to find a solution for in the question box? Good, good self-doubt. Yep. Missing a skillset. Absolutely.
Nathan Simmonds:
And then there are questions that you can go off in different directions. The best part though is asking questions that move you forward. We can spend all the time in the world waiting around in our own problems and our own quagmire, our own thinking, what do I need to do to change it? Where do I need to be to maximize this? Where do I get that skillset from? Maybe the client’s getting back to normal isn’t a thing. Maybe there is no normal. What do I need to do to actually come up with a solution that if that happens, still supports it? But if that doesn’t happen, still moves me forward. Now what questions can I ask my own personal self-doubt, yes or no?
Nathan Simmonds:
Does everyone’s, anyone here who got self-doubt me? I have it all the time. Does it have its own voice? When your self, self-doubt chimes in is who who’s talking to you? Yes. Yes, myself. Good. Ever thought about asking yourself, asking yourself doubt a question? Your self-doubt is there to help you stay safe and keep you alive. That’s all it’s doing. It’s a construct of your primordial brain that keeps you alive and stops you, uh, from getting killed so that the species can continue on. That’s all it’s there for. It’s an evolutionary safety valve.
Nathan Simmonds:
But what it doesn’t understand is it doesn’t understand the difference between a saber-tooth tiger or a job interview. It can’t differentiate. All good. Victoria, I’m gonna wrap up now. So when you do this, when your self-doubt kicks in, all you have to do is go. Thanks very much for the information, thanks very much for looking after me. Thanks very much for trying to keep me safe. What would you suggest I do right now to help make this thing that you are casting doubt on successful and we just redirect the thinking so the voice of the critic becomes the voice of the champion. Because actually you are raising the self-esteem of your own self-doubt. So it’s actually working and operating from a different level of thinking and is helping you to progress forward rather than holding you back so you don’t get hurt. 1 32
Nathan Simmonds:
Everyone. I just want to say huge thanks for being here, Hugh. Thanks for taking part in the fourth day. Thanks very much for your engagement. Mohamed, Victoria, Matt, everyone coming in on there on the questions. Martin, thank you very much. Really appreciate this. I just wanna say I’m looking forward to tomorrow with Andy delivery on HBDI. We’re gonna start breaking that down for you this week. Next week we’re gonna be looking at feedback models and to support people and how to deliver feedback, how to receive feedback, and how to make it really work. Looking forward to seeing tomorrow. If you have not already signed up, links down below. If you have not bought a copy of the leadership deck that are there. We have got the orders in. Yes, we’ve still got some challenges getting ’em out from the um, um, from the print up.
Nathan Simmonds:
They are on their way. Can you say the name of the book again? Disrupt You, I believe is a book by gentleman by the name of Jay Summit, S-U-M-I-T summit or Sumit. If also it would support you and your business. If you are watching this and a conversation with me or one of the other, um, team at MBM to support the development of your leadership team to support the development of soft skills or, um, you know, key niche areas such as category management. Now is the time. Click on the links.
Nathan Simmonds:
Can I map in the chat box in just a moment for the virtual classrooms? Make sure that you are getting involved and starting that conversation with us so that we can get involved with you and help your business do what it needs to do. Thank you very much. Look forward to seeing you soon.
