This week’s episode takes a totally different format as it’s a discussion rather than an interview.   I recorded this episode with our spiritual guru, Damien Price, for another podcast called The Universal Man, a Not-For-Profit organisation dedicated to helping men operating at their best in the modern world.   You can connect with Damien on LinkedIn.   He’s also been on the podcast before; check out episode 31. Key Quotes from discussion with Damien Price   What is balance? When we are out of balance, there's a sense that you're just going around, you're spinning, you're on a treadmill. You feel a sense that you've got no particular power, and you’re just rushing, rushing, rushing, go, go, go. You’re out of balance.   Aligning balance to your life vision and life chapters We've got to look at the particular context of where we are in life; it's our vision, it's where we are at this point in time. What chapter of our lives we’re in. There is a famous story where a university professor gets out a large jar. He puts in three or four relatively large rocks and says to the class, "Is the jar full?" And the class says, "Yes." Then from under the bench, he pulls out a container of fairly large pebbles. He pours that in, shakes it up, pours more in, and again, "Is it full?" They all say, "Yes." Then he goes under the counter, pulls out a container of very fine sand, pours it in, shakes it, pours more in. "Is it full?" And they're all very, very quiet. Then finally, he goes under the bench and pulls out a pitcher of water, pours that in and it fills the gaps. Therefore, balance is about the different stages of your life ie. the chapter of your life. What are your particular rocks and the pebbles at that point?   The role of core values You don't want to be so busy in life, that it's impossible to have any flexibility. So balance comes when you become aware of the particular chapter you’re in, and then you work out your rocks, your core values, your core tasks, who you want to be, or what you want to do. You’re deliberate, and you name them all and you plan around them.   Building your life scoreboard and defining achievable success A life scoreboard has a list of all the most important things to you in life. This might be a partner, your family, your wider family, mates, your career, any volunteering contribution to the greater good, health, fitness, finances, hobbies, travel, whatever's most important to you. Give yourself a bit of a score on each and every one of those, to tell you how you're currently going in each of them. And that gives you a sense of whether you’re spending your time right, given what's most important to you right now. When you are clear in your planning and you know your achievable outcomes, you deliberately plan them, and they get energy. All of a sudden, you're getting up at 5am for that run or for the gym session or for the work, you've got into a pattern of it, you've got a discipline wrapped around it. You are ticking off a rock within your life. You've got a particular sense of balance then.   Beating guilt of not doing certain things If you're in one place and feeling like you need to be somewhere else, that's when the guilt comes in. If you have a partner, it has to be negotiated and agreed with them. You say, "I'm going to go away for a few days. I know it's a bit of an extra pressure on you. Why don't you do this? Is that okay?” And when they go away, make sure that there's that same discussion. What it means is that when you're away, you're free to be present. It’s the same with work as well. There's absolutely nothing wrong with saying to your boss you need to be at an event or that you’re picking your kids up from swimming twice a week at 4pm. But then you say what you’re going to do in exchange. Bill Gates said, "People vastly overestimate what they can do in one year, and hugely underestimate what they can do in ten years." Let alone a week. Sometimes you get to the end of the week and you feel like you've done nothing. You need to cut yourselves some slack. And one thing that I do, is on a Friday afternoon, I sit down and I say to myself, "What are all the things that I have done this week?” You may have periods when you'll be lacking a tiny bit of balance, like a business trip. But in the bigger picture, you can claim that back.   Creating your rhythm and optimising time Either on a Sunday afternoon or a Monday morning, spend a bit of time, either on your own or with your partner, to plan the week ahead. Rituals and traditions over a year are vital: my wife and I go to this local café every Saturday morning. We know we get that moment every week to reconnect with the family. Make a list of all the activities in your life that you have to do every day. Go to work, your commute to work, pick up/drop off kids, etc. And then list all the things you want to do on top of those, such as going to the gym, doing a hobby, whatever. Then write how many hours per week you have to (or want to) do them. Every single time I've done that with someone, the number of hours in a week that they want to spend on things is far more than the numbers of hours in a week. Which means their unconscious criteria for balance is impossible to achieve.   Simplifying life and buying back time Look at the number of rocks and pebbles you have got. A little process of simplification doesn't have to be a lot. But the art of saying no is so important in being able to achieve your life vision and your career goals. You cannot do it all. You have to make some hard decisions. Instead of doing that thing every week or month, go back to doing it once a quarter or year. Ritualize it; make it a tradition. We also create rocks over stuff which actually isn't. Step back and ask, “Do I really, really have to do that thing?” You might be sitting there thinking, "I just wish there were more hours in the day.” How about getting rid of social media? It's costing people hours and hours a day. How many hours were you on Facebook or Instagram today? Yet you’re so busy. Same with TV. Sleep is important, and you've got to have recovery. But if you go to sleep a little bit earlier, you can have very early mornings and therefore you've bought yourself time to work when everyone is asleep.

For more info check out www.chiefmaker.com.au/100   We’ve made it to Episode 100!!! What a cracking topic we have in store for you today.   Our High Performance Teams series now enters part 14, and we’re into the penultimate element of what drives a high performance Culture, where today we look at the power of high standards and how this drives feedback, accountability and unity across a team.   In this episode, we cover the one topic that my clients ask me about more than anything. And that is how to increase accountability in their teams and how to get people to take ownership of their work, and stop them becoming victims.   “Feedback is the breakfast of champions”. This is more than just a brilliant quote by Ken Blanchard; this is instrumental and at the core of high-performing, accountable teams. But it’s easy to get wrong when giving it out, especially if you have no leadership currency, and it can become a really draining process.   In this episode, I outline: Why living and breathing your organisation’s values is where you need to start; How you can turn the values into specific behavioural high standards across your team and how to get them to be accountable to these standards; How your team can enjoy continuous feedback in such a way that they serve the higher standards you seek to attain; How all of the above starts with you - you raising the bar, you being accountable, you improving continuously based on feedback. Stay epic, Greg  

In this episode, we have a great chat with Marty Vids, an entrepreneur, mentor and podcast host, about building rapport, empowering customers and owning your job.   Marty has had quite the eclectic career and life, having started out in his parent’s milk bar as a kid, and then moving into the comedy scene as an MC. He has a few great stories from that past life, that’s for sure!   A career change beckoned and he landed up at Westpac as a mortgage broker, before leaving that to co-found Mortgage First, which he sold in his mid-30s. But the itch to build another business didn’t go away, and he started Mortgage 500, a company he eventually sold in 2016.   These days, Marty is also a mentor, life coach, MC, and hosts his own podcast, The Marty Vids Show.   You can connect with Marty Vids on LinkedIn.   Key Quotes from Marty   On his Formative Years... My early days really were a place of work. I would go in with my dad even on a Sunday and help him collect the newspapers and I'd be serving clients probably from the age of around six or seven. From a very young age, I was developing social skills, emotional intelligence skills, but also financial skills.   On what comedy taught him about building rapport... One of the projects I did was run a comedy night because I always loved stand-up comedy. I brought that to my country town and I brought in the audience; I'd go to all the shops and say I was running it, I went on local radio. I really went into that promotion phase but I was doing too much, I didn't delegate. I was MC-ing the night, I arranged the comedians, got all the audience in, and I had my mates helping me. This guy comes on a bucks night and I was last on stage as the main act and he was just ... Their party was giving each comedian hell and I'm thinking, "What am I gonna do? I can't get on this guy's bad side because they're just gonna come up on stage and actually kill me.” I had to think on my feet, but I got him on stage, we skulled a beer together and I said, “Congratulations mate, your life is officially over as of this moment,” and I got them onside and they were the best audience after that. It didn't matter what I said. I think that's the sort of thing you go, "How do I build rapport in a situation that's very challenging?" You think about that in business negotiation, I mean that's an extreme story there, but it's like how do you build rapport when something's not going well and be able to shift direction? There's a big difference between agreement and unconscious rapport. How you can tell - and why this is important - is you can pick the body language. If they're in a similar body stance to you, like let's say you have your arms crossed and they have their arms crossed, people might misinterpret that as just two people that are cold. But what you're looking for is to get physical rapport and that will show up in the body. If someone makes a move like let's say someone moves their right hand and puts it up to their chin, you don't do it simultaneously, but you give it about 15 seconds and then you manoeuvre into that same position while you're having the discussion. What you're looking for on an unconscious and physical level is whether they break that rapport. If someone is very auditory rather than visual, you can speak to them with your body posture to the side, not facing them, because that's too impactful for them when you're right in their face. Other people are very kinesthetic where they like to be in each other's face and are more sensitive. It's not a fake thing, it's good communication and really allowing them to converse with you in a way that's comfortable for them.   On effective leadership... I found that the managers that were more light-hearted and you could engage with, you could really learn from. So you'd have the dictatorial types that you're more fearful of, but they were never as engaging and never got as good a result as the people that were structured but also had this light-heartedness, and were able to mentor and engage you beyond the transaction they wanted you to get for them and the bank. They would think through a problem and then come to me with their thoughts around it, so I could then provide additions to it or steer them in a direction that was more beneficial.   On career drifting to having an ownership mentality... Andy Meikle, who's an ironman who competed against Trevor Hendy, came in and gave a speech at Westpac. I'm not sure if I was the only one listening, but he was saying about people finishing seventh in life and floating through the corporate system, and really looking at taking your role, taking responsibility for your role as a business owner and as an owner of that role. That shifted my whole perspective on just having a job, as opposed to going, "Well, how can I be a leader within my job?" I started to come in early. I started to realise the top performers would come in early, they'd go and see clients, and in the afternoon they would leave fairly early to go and see more clients. I started to really tap into the people that were doing well and started modelling what they were doing and I was fortunate I had three job promotions within a six month period and pretty much doubled my salary in that time from someone that was floating.   On how to make the leap from employee to business owner... We kept getting pulled towards the move. We had good jobs, we were earning good incomes, we were 29 years old, going places within the bank. But this just kept calling out to us. One of the things I'd say that we did that helped us a lot, was we gave ourselves six months of income in order to make sure that when we started the business, we weren't in financial distress from day one. This was really important. Some people say, "Look you gotta jump off the cliff." And yes, that's right, you gotta jump off the cliff in your mind, but I think it's more savvy to have a parachute on the way down, because it's not going to end as badly.   On the lessons of his first business, Mortgage First... We saw an opportunity in the broking market where we could empower clients to really take control of their financial circumstances and save them money on their mortgages. When we were in the bank, we were always encouraged to really get the most profit in regards to the products we were selling. Philosophically, I struggled with that a little bit because I go, "Yes, it might have created great revenue, but here was a better product given how we could serve the client." And what I recognised by giving that better product was I would get more and more clients.   Did I stuff up? Of course, but I was always honest and said I think I've done something wrong here, wasn't intentional, how can I rectify, because I was hungry to keep learning. It's really important to have that authenticity and be humble when you don't know something and ask the question.   The rest of the market saw a broker as somewhere you go where you can't get money from the banks. We saw this as a relationship management role. We saw this as encouraging the clients to understand the system, keep it simple, empower them with choice. We came from an education-based marketing platform of giving up our time, because we could never compete with the banks on marketing. What we did was a momentum build. When we did the accountant’s loan, then guess what? He got so much benefit out of it, he would tell his clients. When we did the real estate agent's loan, they would tell anyone they dealt with. We really got ourselves out there, talking to people. We'd hand out three business cards a day. We said we never wanted to do that from a point of view of just handing out free business cards; we wanted to have conversations so people would ask us for our business card. That was always our theory. How can we provide value and connect with people so they asked us what we do. And that's how we started and we built momentum and that turned into something that we were even surprised it turned into!   On wellbeing as a business owner... What we didn't do is look after ourselves well enough. We were running so hard for so long and even in the bank, we were running really, really hard to get our careers going. We got really tired and we really should've delegated roles and done that more effectively.   On the pitfalls of selling a business... We thought we got offered the cheque of a lifetime. We had a team of about 14 people and we really developed a fantastic culture and we thought when that opportunity arrived to get that cheque, Craig and I looked at each other and went, "Well, we might never see this again in our lives." For two country boys, this was a big moment and we decided to take it because we thought it would have a real impact in our lives. But you know what? At the end of the day, money is an interesting thing, because what I love was the people in the business. I loved the clients, I loved the culture, I loved the innovation. We got the money and I went, but it felt so numb afterwards because this was our baby. Because I wasn't feeling as well as I had been and I missed the business, I made some financial decisions and invested in things I would never have invested in because of my usual structures.   On taking these lessons into a new business... The second business was a lot better because I really knew who I was within that business and the circumstances around that was all different. But it came from a place of real joy, where I think the first business still was me needing to prove my value, which comes back to not being very good at school! Our clients were our best sales force. They loved what we did and they just kept driving opportunities to us because we were looking after them.   On how to get a pay rise the right way... I would never go to my manager and say, "I want a pay rise." I would go to my manager and say, "Here's the ideas I have for my role. Here's how I'm going to generate more business. This is the value I'm going to add to the client base. This what I think I could bring to the team." I always instigated this within our own businesses. When people came in and said, "I want a pay rise." I was very quick to ask, “Why do you want a pay rise, because you're 70% of target at the moment!” “Oh, we want to start a family.” “Alright. Fantastic. Let's now work on a plan in order to enable you to achieve the results, so I can give you this pay rise.” I wanted to work with them to really instil this sense of confidence and leadership and a call to action in order to then really feel great about their pay rise. In doing that, I said, "Alright we'll increase your pay by $10,000 and work on this vision in the next six months and achieve it."   Marty’s final message of wisdom and hope... I think sometimes it's just important to listen. I think very much we want to jump in with what we know a lot of the times, but sometimes when someone says something to you when they're under challenge, just listen and when they're finished say, “Thank you,” and then you can work on a response and a solution to it. I would say as managers, that's something I've learnt over time; just being really appreciative of when people are being vulnerable.   Resources mentioned in the episode: Book recommendation: Simplified: Leadership is Simple. You Lead People, by Dave Clare.

For more info check out www.chiefmaker.com.au/98 Our High performance teams series now enters part 13, and we’re right into the High Performance Culture pillar, where today we look at how to get your team focussed on winning, and collaborating intensively.   In this episode, we cover how to get your team members to come along on the journey in pursuing excellence, but also how to simultaneously avoid becoming too internally focussed and operational.   One of the ways true chiefs get the best out of their troops is to compete externally, that is, changing the game of the industry, giving the team the energy and the tools to be the best. Sometimes the converse is true, where a bunch of individuals end up competing against one another; the result being low energy, a team that’s defensively-minded and you as the leader can’t drive your own track record and career momentum.   So how does one set up and lead a high-performing, industry-leading, best-of-the-best team that hunts and isn’t the hunted?   In this episode, I outline: How continuous learning can shift your mindset from being operational and technical to changing the game; How getting out of your own work environment will help you look at your challenges and problems with a different perspective; How to create an environment where failure and trying new things is normal, either internally or through external partnerships; and Why even the top performers have mentors and coaches as they have a hunting mindset.   Stay epic,   Greg

In this episode we meet Ted Prodromou, America’s #1 LinkedIn Coach, and talk about perception, connecting properly with purpose, and standing out online.   As you will pick up from this episode, Ted has bounced back from many setbacks, and offers up a number of immediately actionable tips for super-charging both your LinkedIn profile, but also your online presence and online etiquette in general. So get that pen and paper handy, log into your LinkedIn profile and be prepared to put your best foot forward!   A special thanks to Alex Mandossian for recommending Ted.   You can connect with Ted Prodromou on LinkedIn.   You can find Ted's books on Amazon.   Key Quotes from Ted   On the LinkedIn platform as a whole: The last three to six months, LinkedIn has been rolling out updates like crazy. And they really are pushing it as a content management platform, content distribution. So you post a video on there now, and it goes out to first, second and third-level networks. First-level is people who have accepted invitations with each other; so when we connected, your network became my second-level network. And then there’s the third-level network behind that. So now, content you post isn’t only seen by people you’re directly connected with. It’s seen by everybody, and it’s pushed out to Google and Bing now, and all the different other search engines. 83% of people will look at your LinkedIn profile now before they take a meeting with you. I’m always harping on telling people, “You need to complete your profile to make a great first impression!” What impression does that make of your company if somebody comes to your website and it's like, horrible looking? Or like a third-grader put it together or something like that? Same with your LinkedIn profile.   Profile improvements: Profile picture: They've made the images fit better, but with your cameras today, you can take a great picture. Stand in front of a blank wall and have somebody take your picture. Don't crop out a photo of you at a wedding or something or with a busy background. This is your professional image, people are out there looking at you. Say you're going to a meeting, you're trying to sell a $20,000 coaching package to a client. And they just looked at your profile and it's you half-drunk in a wedding somewhere and you got somebody cropped out and it's all blurry. And then you come in and say, "My charge is $20,000." And they go think, “Who is this guy?”   Profile improvements: Professional Headline One of the things, the professional headline they call it, is right under your name. And by default, LinkedIn takes your current job title and sticks it in there, but you can edit it to make you stand out. If you search for an executive coach on LinkedIn, there are literally millions of people with executive coach in their title. And almost all of them will have their job title, like executive coach at XYZ Company. That doesn't make you stand out. People are scrolling on their phones now, most of the time, so you have one second to get their attention. So I always use the USP, unique selling proposition. What problem do you solve and who do you solve it for? Get that into your headline and they'll click on it and learn more about you. I have the keyword phrases in there. One of my clients was a financial advisor, so I helped her create it. It said, "Would you like to retire with the same standard of living you have now or better?" That just got people's attention. Treat it like a sales letter, or an article. The headline of the article or a book. What's going make you pick up a book at the library and read it? The title. We're all in sales, whether we're working for a company or not. To get the job, you got to go in and sell yourself.   Profile improvements: Summary Tell your story. Don't put it in the third person. It's more conversational and people really get to know you and like you faster. If you're writing in the third person, it’s pretty stuffy.   Company Pages They revamped the company pages recently, they've been evolving over a year. Now they have places you can post your products. They're called showcase pages so a company like Adobe has lots of different product lines, so you can create a showcase page for each major product line and then people can go there and have conversations about what's going on with that product, like Photoshop. But the company pages show up in Google search results, so it's a good way to get your name out there.   Posting Content on LinkedIn My strategy is to post a lot of other people's content, such as other LinkedIn experts’ from their blogs. And people ask, "Why are you sharing your competitor's information?" And I reply, "Because I thought it was a good article and a great tip." I learned this from Dan Kennedy years and years ago when I was learning marketing, when I was failing as a coach, he always said, "The pie is big enough for all of us. You don't need to go after your competitors and destroy them." And one of my wife's co-workers, her husband came up to her and said, "Wow, Ted is all over the internet, man, he is just crushing it." And I'm just laughing because I wrote 20% of the content I'm sharing and 80% I'm sharing other people's. I've got it all automated through a programme called Sendible. Just pumping content out there with my name associated with it. So even if I share an article from Forbes magazine, people perceive me with Forbes magazine because they see my name with Forbes. It's all perception. But consciously, they're thinking, “Oh wow. Ted's really, he's posting 10 or 12 times a day on social media. He must be really famous and really know what he's doing.” Post as much as you can, but don't sit there and blast. Sometimes I'll connect with someone on LinkedIn and I'll see them all of a sudden, they're posting six or seven times an hour. That's too much. I do six to ten posts a day on LinkedIn throughout the day. I wrote four books now so I hired someone to go through the manuscripts and they created social media posts from excerpts from the books. And then I have those in these queues in Sendible so that they're just always going and recycling. Each post comes back about every three or four months, because I've got so many posts queued up now. But otherwise, I actually blocked out time to start writing one article a week.   Writing an engaging LinkedIn Article One really good trick, there's a site called quora.com, and people are asking questions about everything there. And I have a friend, he gets all of his LinkedIn consulting from answering questions on Quora and speaking engagements. And the articles only need to be about 500 words anyway. And don't make it all like you're perfect. I share a lot of vulnerabilities, things that have happened to me, big failures in my life. I share all that, and I send out to my email list, you wouldn't believe how many people reach out.   Accepting LinkedIn connection requests Everyone has all sorts of philosophies about accepting certain people or should they try to reach out to certain people. I kind of filter out people if their profile looks not great or they didn't even put a job title in. I won't accept them if they don't have a picture. And not to pick on certain people, but a lot are SEO experts and marketing experts, I don't accept theirs, because they're just going to try to pitch me something. I know they're trying to grow a business and stuff but they're not going to add value to my network. Just think about that. Who are all these people connected with, would their connections be valuable to my network? If it's the CEO-level or C-level, a lot of times, they don't really log into LinkedIn very often. Only 24% of LinkedIn members log in more than once a month. Now they're almost at 600 million, so that's still a lot of people that are active on LinkedIn. But with LinkedIn, if it's the CEO that you're trying to get to, you can send an InMail to them, but don't just say, "Hey, I want to connect because I want to work for you." You have to compliment them and get creative of what's going to get them to accept your invitation. Open the conversation on other social networks. I've seen a new trend on LinkedIn. I don't know if you're getting this too. We all have that experience where you connect with people and say, "Hey, thanks for connecting." And then they try to sell you something, a long sales pitch. Now they're starting to do that in the invitation to connect. Like, they're not even waiting to connect, they're already trying to sell me before I say, "Sure, I'll be your friend." I can't tell you how many times people ... at least three times a week, people send me a message. "Hey, do you need help with your LinkedIn? We are a LinkedIn lead generation firm." I'll reply and say, "Did you read my profile?" They'll say, "Yeah, I read my profile." I'll say, "What do I do for a living?"   Resources mentioned in the episode: Contribution to an article on predicted LinkedIn trends for 2019 on Digital Marketer (Ted’s piece is two-thirds down the article) Snappr, a great resource for taking a high-quality LinkedIn professional photo Book recommendation: How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie Book recommendation: Leadership and Self-Deception

For more info check out www.chiefmaker.com.au/96 Our High performance teams series now enters part 12, and the second episode of the Culture pillar, where I talk you through how to tighten the bonds between the people in the team, and in you and the team. IN THIS EPISODE WE COVER BUILDING TRUST WITHIN THE TEAM MEMBERS AND HOW THIS CREATES NOT ONLY A SENSE OF BELONGING, BUT RESULTS IN HIGH PERFORMANCE.   There is a lot of research now that shows that the best high performance teams know each other really well. Not just the quality of skill and the individuals’ abilities, but they all say they know each other really well away from the office.   To form a team that’s really going to make an enormous difference in the world, you’ve got to have people you can trust, and so you’ve got to tighten the bonds and get to know them deeply.   In this episode, I outline: – How a personality modelling activity will help you understand others and communicate better with them; – Other fun games to find out more about colleagues’ backgrounds; – The 5 why’s method so as to peel back the onion layers and find out what makes them tick.   Stay epic

In this episode we meet Cliff Gale former Managing Director of Lite n’ Easy for over 20 years and talk about passion, respect for your people and keeping the soul alive in your business.   Cliff bought into Lite n’ Easy after he saw a two line ad in a paper in its very early days. He then led the business for over two decades and grew it into one of the most successful businesses of its type.   Key Points from Cliff: Know your business inside out Treat your people and customer with respect and recognise their efforts Keep the business emotive and build its soul Focus on the things that count and profit will come The difference between givers and takers   A special thanks to Sarah Chamberlain from The Real Estate Stylist for recommending Cliff. Key Quotes and Points from Cliff:   "You know, because we don't see it all the time, it's great when also when we see you like that, it makes you feel like you care. You care about the business, and you care about us." I said, "Well, I'm glad you said that because I do. That's it." I was so, yeah, passionate about the business. I was so focused on making the business successful. I was never focused on the profit of the business. The business was a very profitable business, but I knew that if we got all the blocks in place, that the outcome would be profit. So I never had to worry about that at all, and it was much more fun running the business by just being able to do things properly and for me to be myself there. I prided myself on the fact that I really carried myself very similarly in my workplace as I did out of my workplace. I didn't have a suit. I never wore a suit at work anyway, but I never felt like I put a suit on when I walked in the door. I never wanted to be seen like that, and I don't believe I was ever seen by that either. I was just Cliff in there. I was seen to be the driver of the business. Yeah.   Look, we had to pay people the right amount of money. That was a core ... I learned that as well. You had to make sure you're paying people a fair and reasonable amount for the role they did, but I learned, and I'd learned this emphatically, that a lot of why people continue to work for you and wanted to do the right thing by you, and I guess that was something that I always felt a lot of people really wanted to do the right thing by I me, was because I treated them with respect in the business. I ran the business morally correct. We were generous in the way we ran the business   I looked at my business very simply. If we traded people right, they would basically give it back to you. In this world, that might sound very, very simplistic but I think it's very, very underrated. I think the value of just doing the right thing by people, and of course, look, there's mentoring on the way of your staff and all that sort of thing. Yeah, there was all that stuff that was involved in the business as it kept growing. We had logistical issues. We had all sorts of production issues, but I reflected on the sense of why the business was successful, because people basically wanted to do the right thing.   We then found by just focusing on what we did and doing it very, very well ... and that was a very important part of I guess why the business was so successful. We didn't try to be all things to everybody, but we tried to do everything very, very, very well. I reflect one time and thinking about you one time, we might even get as big as Jenny Craig or one of those sorts of business. I think in the end, we're probably 10, 15 times bigger than Jenny Craig as a business. I guess that's one of the nice things I reflect on. I reflect on the success of the business. And, yeah, look, as I said earlier, success generates profit, of course, but my feeling is not about the profit. The profit was always considered to me to be an outcome.   People wanted to be ... wanted to work at Lite n' Easy. I wanted to employ what I referred to as givers rather than takers. Givers are the ones that were prepared to just hang around the end of the day till everything think was all finished and all done, and the takers were the ones that, in the interview, they started talking about their wages and when they'll be getting ... when their first review was and things like that. We're able to identify very early in our recruitment process to try to identify people that were, what I called givers.   Because I was so passionate about the business, at times, I would really micromanage into an issue, but I was really, really conscious that if I micromanage something, I only did that because it was either a serious problem or it was one that ... but I didn't want to skirt around the issue. If it was serious enough for me to get involved in, I wanted to find out all the ingredients of what created that problem for us. We would then come to ... by getting to the root of the problem, and that was really important to me, we would then come to an agreement that this ... moving forward would be done differently. That's, I guess, what it was all about for me. But I guess reflecting on what you were getting at there, Greg, micromanaging the business was in some ways a bit of a call for me, but I was very focused on not doing it unless it was really, really important. I found it was sometimes when it was extremely important, but I got out really quick.   I mean, one time, we had a particular problem. This is, I guess, with an idea of the size of the business and giving an insight into me personally. The business, this was probably in about the 12th, 15th year. The business was probably turning over 50 or $60 million a year and I had an issue. It couldn't get resolved so I spent eight hours one day in the freezer just helping manage something that I wasn't happy with. Now, that's an absolute extension of micromanaging, but it was ... it reflected the passion that I had at the time. Did I do that regularly? No, I didn't do that regularly. Did I walk home at the end of that day with frostbite, genuine frostbite on my feet? Yes, I did. Did it take me six months to get over it? Yes, it did. And was that intentional? It certainly wasn't, but it was just a ... it was really, really important to me to show everybody that this thing could be resolved. Now, that might sound a screwy story, but that was just part of my psyche to do stuff like that.   Do not underestimate the core things that ... core needs that people have in life, people being ultimately employees, people that work for you, the core needs of wanting to be appreciated in their roles, wanting to be shown respect in their roles. There's lots of media in the last year or two that's really highlighting the problems of harassments and all sorts of things like that. I was very, very, very conscious of ... as I said, I ran the business ethically correct and all that sort of thing, but I believe we've probably gone a little bit too far in the other way. There's been too much focus on profit outcomes in business rather than maybe building the process along the way through empowering people, through effective delegation.   Just, I guess getting back to basics, getting back to what made you feel good with an early boss that you dealt with? What were the things that ... What was a boss that you respected, and what did they do? What did they do themselves when you were working for them?

For more info check out www.chiefmaker.com.au/94 So , IN THIS EPISODE WE COVER THE POWER OF HIGH PERFORMANCE LIFECYCLES AND HOW TO USE THEM TO AUTOMATE THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE.   The pursuit of excellence lies at the heart of all great performers. It means mastering your craft and continually working to improve yourself. It also means leading your team to work collectively to improve itself. The long term benefits have an incredible compound effect on your ability to get results and rise above the pack.   Executive Performance Lifecycle: (P2R2) Prepare, Perform, Recover, Review   I outline: – the Prepare, Perform, Recover, Review (P2R2) Lifecycle and how to use it as an executive performance tool – How to lock this into as a system that drives performance – How to optimise each step – Some tricks to stay focused and embed the system in the real world   Stay epic

In this episode we hear from Geoff Lloyd, CEO and MD of Perpetual Limited. ABOUT GEOFF Geoff joined Perpetual in August 2010 as Group Executive of Perpetual Private and led the development and implementation of the growth strategy for this business. He took on the additional responsibility of Head of Retail Distribution in September 2011 and was appointed Managing Director and CEO in February 2012. Geoff was previously General Manager of Advice and Private Banking at BT Financial Group following the Westpac Group merger with St.George Bank. Before the merger, he led St.George’s wealth management portfolio. He held many senior positions at BT Financial Group, including Chief Legal Counsel and Head of the Customer and Business Services Division. Geoff is the Chairman of the Financial Services Council, an Advisory board member of The Big Issue and the Patron of the Financial Industry Community Aid Program.   He is a Patron of Emerge Foundation and is also Chairman of the University of Technology Sydney Law Advisory board. Key Questions and Answers from Geoff (curated for clarification and brevity): What did you learn from the police force? In the police force, I got to learn a lot about people and what I still take with me is that you don’t judge too quickly. Take the time to step back and see what else might be going on, what’s driving an outcome, because what you see is normally just the surface of a thing. When it involves people in complex environments, there’s always emotion. So that’s something I’ve tried to take with me where I don’t judge too quickly, stand back, ask questions and observe.   What did you learn from your first move interstate to Sydney with ASIC? It was the first time I learned about stretching myself out of what you might call a comfort zone, and how it can lead to just so many unforeseen, unplanned, unexpected outcomes. And so for me, that was probably the first time I’ve learned that as you actually stretch yourself and take real risk, it is not just a little bit that comes from that. It is quite amazing and you really don’t know what you can achieve until you’ve tried.   What drives you internally? You’re this,very aspirational man, you want to grow again and take your game to another level. What drives that? I’ve learned for a long time that there’s always evidence of how you can keep getting better and you just don’t know what you can achieve. And so having that mindset, of being curious…if you aren’t finding evidence and keep getting better, then you’re going to plateau. And so for me it’s about that looking forward, being curious. If I don’t have a 110 percent passion and energy for something, it becomes 50 percent and so I need to be operating at that level to truly find rewarding outcomes, whether it’s philanthropic, social, business or family.   Do you have in moments when you doubt your abilities? What do you in do in those moments to keep going? Yeah, I do. You know, if you don’t, if you can’t look in the mirror and get a bit paranoid, then you’re probably not able to really find evidence of how to keep getting better. I’ve tried to find different times in my career where I’ve hit inflection points and probably the most successful times the more paranoid I get. You’ve got to have enough confidence to know you’re going to be able to follow on to what the  next challenge is… I get energy from others. So, getting access to and making sure I’ve got the right network, that’s really important. But equally I’ve always had this philosophy that you’ve got to hire the best people you can listen to them, trust them, invest in them and then make sure you’re having some fun along the way, you know, because it’s, it’s a very serious game that we play. If you can get that sort of talent around you then your job as a leader is really about being their guide and helping guide them rather than do or carry out the activity. Great leaders are able to step back and be able to motivate people through how they give them that guidance and help set direction and boundaries.   Why did you switch from General Counsel into other more broader roles and how did that lead to CEO level roles? I actually started to think differently about my career and stretch myself beyond being tall and skinny in a career or a profession to being broad. Think about it as the goal is to grow skills and experience over the next three to five years rather than, I want this job or that job. I think if you just go off the job titles, you might never know how good you can be and how different the work that you can do will be   Did anyone give you any feedback to you personally that, that really rang true for you? That was important for the young Geoff Lloyd to hear? BT was a very driven meritocracy, with enormous amount of opportunity. So running too fast can happen and it happened for me. And so learning about not stepping on others around you, but picking others up around you is what you’re going to be judged for. And, that it takes time. Actually there’s no shortcuts to hard work. I’ve tried lots of them. it’s just about hard work. It’s actually about focus and it’s about making sure that you’re true to yourself. Don’t try to be somebody else. I’ve worked for some great leaders and I’ve picked up their characteristics and often said, ‘oh, well, if I can be like that’. And you can’t be, you can pick up those characteristics and learn from them. But then you have got to be you again. Today we would talk about authentic leadership. You just have to be, you. How was the final step to CEO different? The step was quite different because as much as I’ve worked in large organizations, ran much bigger teams in the past than at perpetual, when you become the CEO, there’s nobody else that’s coming. It’s words that we’ve used around the executive team that ‘nobody’s coming’. It’s us. You know, you run two and a half thousand people in a bank, there’s always somebody else who can ask or the decision can go to. So the big gap is…Nobody’s coming.   Does ‘Ownership Precedes Victory’ resonate with you? I think you’ve got to have courage or otherwise you’re not going to keep challenging yourself. If you don’t you’re not going to keep challenging your team, you’re not going to take the right amount of risk and you won’t see the other sides of the benefit that can come with that risk. So make sure you’ve got the courage is the key, that conviction of something you’ve started to create change. Maybe that’s the words that gravitate more with me.   How do you stay focused? I suspect that at perpetual I will be remembered for at least two words. Hopefully it’s clarity and focus. I think complexity kills businesses. I’m a big believer in that a quality businesses can’t do lots of things. What are the few things that you can do incredibly well and be the leader at. And then once you become a leader at anything, it’s very hard to stay there. Everyone’s coming after you. For us at perpetual and for me it’s about clarity on a few things. Do them really well and then move to the next few things. Try not to be distracted by a long list, we try to prioritise on what we can do and then draw a line under number three. And you know, often the team will hear me say, just tell me the top two. Actually, I’m not interested in the top three. We also had to try to focus on what we’re not going to do and write that down because a lot of businesses are good at telling you what they do, but if you can articulate what you’re not going to do, it brings more clarity to that focus around what you’re going to do   Where do leaders in the middle and senior management waste their time and effort? I think often getting too much into the detail because if you’re a leader, you’ve got to have sort of three hats. You’ve got to do work, improve your work and lead your team. And you’ve got to have, at least a third of each of those….So you’ve got to dedicate time and focus to leadership, not just doing. And I think it’s easy to go back to the doing. You know, I had somebody put it in my mind a long time ago, a phrase called ‘being a guide, not a guru’. I think as you become more of a leader and your sole job, which is mine, is leading, not doing. So the job is to guide people not to be the technical guru. It took me a long time to learn that. As a lawyer, you want to be the smartest person in the room when it comes to the topic on ‘x of the law’. And that’s not your job as even the general counsel, because my job was to hire the smartest people in the room, trust them, invest them, listen to them, guide them because it was their job to be that smart. It’s not mine. And so that stuck with me for a long time. So maybe they should be more of a guide than a guru because your job is to hire the gurus as a leader.   How important is it for young people coming through and in middle management and senior executives to have a network? I think it’s vital. You know, I also chair the Financial Services Council now, a leading industry body and one of the things we’ve reintroduced is a group called ‘the circuit’. I call it the 30 somethings and it’s actually about bringing interesting topics to a forum of 40 to 100 of all of our members staff.   What was the most important thing you learned in Harvard? How bad Australians are at negotiation. I think that was a really big part of that program and you know, just seeing our cultural norms. We are ranked in the bottom five countries in the world in negotiation!   You’ve been CEO here for six years now, and the share price has gone from $19 to just shy of 50 which is a remarkable period of growth for the company. How important is it for individuals to build a track record, perhaps not as spectacular as that, but to keep thinking about change and transformation? I’ve worked with a gentlemen named Andy Meikle who has left a couple of thoughts with me over the years and one was, you know, high performers create a track record that you can leave on the table and they can leave the room and it speaks for itself. It is important to be able to think about not the way you would tell the story, how the story would tell itself. And that doesn’t have to be about share price growth.   What is the difference between Change and Transformation? I had this view that change is what happens to you. Transformation is what you do to yourself. So with change, you react to your competitor, you’re reacting to, it puts out a new product, you react. Transformations are where you have that honest, courageous look and say we’re going to go from x to y and it’s going to be tough and we’re going to have to have clarity, courage, and control which are three woods, we used a lot. Clarity of what we would or wouldn’t do, control because the market is going to tell us what’s wrong and we also needed to keep the courage to hold the course because we couldn’t possibly plan for everything to that level of detail.   How would you define a GREAT Chief? I think it’s someone who is able to bring passion and energy to the way they communicate to people and the way they support and develop and grow everyone around them. It means you’ve able to motivate, support and nourish people in your community.   What is the final message of wisdom and hope you think is vital for the next generation of executives? I still believe that there’s no shortcuts, it’s all about hard work. But remaining really very curious, have curiosity in your life and you can define what that means and make sure you’ve got the courage.   Recommended Books by Geoff Lloyd. Repeatability : https://www.amazon.com/Repeatability-Enduring-Businesses-Constant-Change-ebook/dp/B0070YQQI4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1520487587&sr=8-1&keywords=repeatability Founders Mentality: https://www.amazon.com/Founders-Mentality-Overcome-Predictable-Crises-ebook/dp/B01BO6QMC8/ref=pd_sim_351_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=WSXZ3BEMWMND0FWN22E7

Most of us at one time or another have had a boss who seems totally disinterested in our work. They’re the opposite of micro-managers, leaving us completely to our own devices and at times in more senior regional roles can go missing for weeks at a time. Here is what you can do.

In this episode I catch up with Nicky Sparshott, Global Chief Executive of T2 Tea - a global luxury retailer offering the broadest and most imaginative range of teas and teawares from around the world. Nicky also serves as Vice President on the Global Leadership Team for Unilever's Refreshment Category, playing a lead role in M&A & E-Commerce. She also has experience on the agency side as a Partner at Y&R George Patterson (WPP Group). www.t2tea.com Key Points: “Be brave, because I think the world is changing quickly. What got us here won't get us there, and the best advice I would give to people is go after the dream, but perhaps also be prepared to take the path less trodden to get there, because I think it will hold you in good stead.” Nicky’s top messages include: On what Nicky learnt from a major setback from a failed product launch: A couple of really small choices that we thought were small choices, had not been clever and we did not deep dive. These proved to be those chinks in the armour that really let us down, and it was an unmitigated disaster. Be sure to build the right stakeholder relationships outside of the business and leave no stone unturned. When someone asks, "Have you thought about X?" It might feel like an inconvenient truth, three days before you launch, but actually take the time to investigate. The importance of mentors is that you need to have a safe place where you can have those unfiltered sounding board conversations, where you can shoot the breeze, you can explore scenarios, where you're not personally judged for it. And you've got a relationship where someone can say, "Actually, that's not going work," or, "You need to hold yourself to account to a higher order". The value of those mentorships have been really, really important to me and I play a mentorship for many others, because I think you've got to pay it forward. My mindset is to aim for the moon and you might get the stars. I aim high and kind of go big or go home. You sort of play to do something extraordinary. It’s important to practice service leadership, which is really paying it forward and recognising that there is no time better spent than in nurturing capability. Especially today, technology is such that things can be replicated with such pace that you need to have an amazing group of people and a culture that is sticky. Bryce Courtenay once said to me, “if you're skating on thin ice, you may as well tap dance." That really appealed to me. To push the boundaries, be courageous and go create some magic. Sometimes you'll get it wrong, but more often than not, you won't. I've taken the path less travelled at times in my career, much to the horror of some of my mentors and some of the people around me, but it's always felt right. Ask yourself, how do you differentiate yourself against a myriad of other people in the market? Because there's some great talent out there, some exceptionally good people. How are you going craft or curate a skillset and an experience list that is different? I write myself for the month, what are the big bets. If I do nothing but what's on this list for the next 30 days, will that create the impact that I want to create in the next 30 days? If it's not on that list, will I spend my time on it? At the end of every week I do a pulse check, "Is there something that has changed that would require me to change my focus?" Every month as a leadership team, we get together and not only measure performance to date and performance to go, but that performance in the context of our three-year plan. What are the risks? Are we investing in the right areas? If we have to dynamically allocate resources, where are we prioritising? Problem shared is a problem halved. There's so many things that we work on that feel hugely challenging and sometimes insurmountable, but the reality is somebody, or a number of people, are probably experiencing exactly the same thing, or have done so before. There are some brilliant people out there, so just getting around the table with other thought leaders, or people from different industries and taking the best practise that's happening in one industry, and being able to adapt it to your own. For me right now, mindset trumps capability quite often. You can have all the best capability in the world, you can be an amazing rock-star, but if you can't bring others on that journey with you, if you can't elevate the performance of the whole team, if you can't get past your own ego to deliver the results, then it'll just be really short lived. My council to anybody that's in a senior management role and aspiring to be in a CEO role, is to get that commercial understanding solid. If it doesn't come intuitively to you, get some mentors and some support in that space and certainly recruit a team that is incredibly capable in that area, and marry that with creativity and intuition, because you need both today to be successful. On the importance of developing a track record - Success breeds success and confidence. It's having done it and experienced it and lived it, warts and all. Because when someone talks about their track record and having delivered something great at the end of it, it's very rarely been smooth sailing to get to that. It's the lessons learned that are as valuable as the success delivered. It is really important to be able to talk from a place of confidence about what you've done, and how you've done it, and how you would do it differently based on the experience that you've had. You've got to get dirty. You really got to roll up your sleeves and do it. I mean one bit of advice that I would give to anybody listening to this is, take opportunities that come up that sit outside of your natural job. Recommended Reading: Elon Musk's biography, that sort of Tesla, SpaceX ec cetera. https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-SpaceX-Fantastic-Future/dp/0062301233

Why leaders micromanage and how you can adjust your approach to improve the working relationship so that it is a. more effective and b. less soul destroying.   Before you dive in and start trash talking your overbearing boss - it is wise to seek some understanding as to why they might be micromanaging you. Take a few minutes to think deeply and through their eyes about what might be causing them to dip down.

In this episode you’ll hear from Daniel Herbert, CEO of SSKB. We are going to be covering some powerful strategies that he learnt through 67 tests for the Wallabies. He was apart of the glory era of Australian Rugby, won the RWC in 1999, the Bledisloe Cup and beat the British and Irish Lions in 2001. He Captained the QLD Reds and was world player of the year in 1999. Critically he has now gone to a successful corporate career with the commercial side of the QLD Reds and is now CEO of SSKB. We cover what executives can learn from elite sport (and what doesn’t translate), about what made him stand out from the pack and how to be indispensible to an organisation. The lessons here are vital. Subscribe on iTunes here: https://itun.es/au/87Pqkb.c Subscribe on Android: http://tunein.com/radio/The-Inner-Chief-p1004701/ http://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=141429   Key Points: “My only message to the next generation is, you have to impress. You have to still do the work, you have to still stand out from the crowd because there is a lot more people coming around, there is lots of competition, don't rest on your laurels. By in large, I think they are smarter than what we were at that age.” Daniel’s top messages include: I think you have to go through some lows to get the highs What people forget is the great era of Australian rugby came from something that wasn't so great. I think I made the most of what I had. I look back and I think, I played with numerous people who were more talented than me. I got to where I got from graft and I had to look for opportunities, take the opportunities and I had to work harder than others did to get there. So that became part of my mantra, I would work when I knew people weren't working. I would deliberately go running at midnight when I knew everyone else would be in bed. I would go on Christmas and kick some goals down the local park because I knew everyone else was sitting at the dinner table and that gave me this confidence that I know no one else is out there working today, I'm out here working, that's going to put me in a good place. Hard work will beat talent when talent doesn't work hard. I've seen a lot of people who were far better, were more talented, had natural abilities that I didn't have. And the only way I could convince myself that I had the right to actually be on the field or in the team ahead of these people was by working harder than them. There will always be weaknesses and yes, you try to improve your weaknesses but I tend to spend more time on my strengths than I do on fixing up the weaknesses, because what I would take into the business environment now is I can get people to fill in my weaknesses but, I can't necessarily get people who have better strengths than me where I think I'm particularly good. Don't be threatened by people who are really good, you've just got to get the best people around you and as long as they are not a real cultural risk to it As a CEO or a senior manager, you have to be a generalist, so you have to be across a lot of different things, but you still have to have something that you focus on, that's my unique point. I worked on the fact that, what I did as a rugby player, I love contact, I love the aggression, I love breaking a line and I love the physical side of it and that was going into the way that Rod MacQueen wanted to play the game when he came in. I knew that he wanted a line-breaking centre, somewhere and he needed someone who could bend the line, break the line. So I got in the gym, I got bigger, I worked on my footwork to get through a tackle and I thought, if I can be that guy, where he builds his game around me, or builds a certain element of his game around me, then that's a little bit unique, because I don't think anyone else necessarily has, in Australia right now, has that skill set. The chairman of the Australian Rugby Union at the time, a guy called Dick McGruther, to John O'Neil the CEO, to Rod McQueen the coach, to John Eales the captain, all four of those guys always seemed to be aligned. They got on well, you knew they got on well, they always seemed to be on the same page and in the team environment, same thing, the leadership group, which I was part of for most of the time there, were always on the same page, and when you walk out of the room, no matter whether you lost your debate or not, you lost your way, you're on the same page. And that was always, and I think, is a really important thing I see in business places where you see general mangers undermining the CEOs or general managers undermining each other because I didn't vote for that and it's always just to win a bit of favour but it's dangerous and that was something, that is one of those analogies that I would take from the sporting world into the business world. So that was probably for me, the most important and harrowing experience that I had because I now am a different person because not only do I know that you're never in control, it's just an illusion but I don't fear things. Even in this job, in my previous job, people threaten you with legal action all of the time, it's used as a bullying tactic. I now don't fear, I've been through it personally where it was a really tough thing for me to go through and for my family to go through, but I don't fear it anymore. What I enjoyed was the business of sport. And it's changing very quickly with all of the things we are seeing, tech and media and sport was starting to become a very professionalised industry and in my job, the teams job was to maximise the commerciality of that You need an opportunity but you've also got to make your opportunity. I don't think you can just sit there and wait and someone is going to come and tap you on the shoulder one day. You've got to make your own opportunity or seize it when you see it. Then you just have to make every post a winner if you can, you've got to work hard. People have to see that you're going to put the shoulder to the wheel and you're not one of these clock in, clock out people. You need to influence the right people. You're never going to please everyone and wherever I have been, I've never pleased all ends of the spectrum and I don't lose sleep about that. But the ones that I need to influence, the ones that I need to be on page with, I need to make sure I spend the time with them. I don't worry about people who are critical or small-minded who aren't going to influence anything anyway. I spend my time on those who are positive and can influence and shape the direction that we are going so they are probably the three things that come to mind immediately. They have got to have skills, but you can teach skills as long as they have got the right make up, they are honest and they are hard working and they are loyal, then that would be how I would like to be perceived by people who have been my leaders. What drives me and why I think I am here on this earth is to be a father and to provide I used to make the mistake of putting 20 things down a day, this is what I am going to get through today. And you would get to the end of the day and you've got two of them done and then you work through the night trying to get the others and it's just not sustainable because the work never goes away, it's always there, it's not going to go anywhere. So I have come to the point now where it's two or three things. And even yesterday, I wrote down two things, I didn't do either of them I also have thinking time, I need to think. I think that's one of the other things where you just become so busy that you're not actually thinking about, should we be doing this at all? I think that is the value of networking, is you have got to make sure you offer them something, there has got to be a value, there is a trade there. You bring people into your network, what are you going to give them and what are they going to give you? When it comes to hiring people, it's not always the most talented, it's not always the most educated, it might be someone who just demonstrates resilience and perseverance and grit. Recommended Books Good to Great – Jim Collins Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari  Grit – Angela-Lee Duckworth

In this episode I talk about why you should run across a desert (and love it). Huh? What I really mean is why you should do something epic. In 2007/8 I conducted a personal growth experiment by tackling the Gobi March a 250km ultra marathon across the toughest terrain in the world. This is a bit of that story and what I discovered on…and didn’t expect.

In this episode you’ll hear from Vivek Bhatia. At age 26, Vivek was a Indian migrant watching the big businessmen in their expensive suits walk around Sydney. This inspiring story is how he rose above the pack to become a CEO in just 10 years.  Vivek is now CEO and MD of iCare which delivers insurance and care services to the people of New South Wales. Whether a person is severely injured in the workplace or on the road, iCare supports their long-term care needs to improve quality of life outcomes, including helping people return to work. In 2008, Vivek was appointed CEO of Wesfarmers Insurance in Australia, where he was responsible for leading the multi-brand, multi-channel insurer through a significant transformation journey. He was also co-lead of McKinsey & Company’s Asia Pacific Restructuring & Transformation practice and has been the Chair of the former NSW Dust Diseases Board and been the NSW representative on the Board of SafeWork Australia. Key Points: Vivek outlines that “the day you stop learning is the day you stop living” and how important it is to have a commercial mind and social heart. Vivek’s top quotes throughout the podcast are: 1. “Your boss is your customer. Work with them to determine the right priorities across the business.” 2. “Get the right people reporting to you and delegate more so you have more time to work on the business. If you find yourself doing things that you would expect your team to do then that is an alarm bell.” 3. “If people haven't had set backs, my personal belief is that they haven't challenged themselves or challenged the status quo which is even worse.” 4. “If you haven't clearly articuled what you expect and then confirmed that the other person hasn't understood it in the same way then you aren't doing your job as a leader.” 5. “What I'm not looking for is someone who has been successful but there is collateral damage” 6. “People talk about networking as a means to an end, instead of an end unto itself. I believe in networking because I get to learn.” 7. “The biggest challenge that good leaders overcome is effective use of time.” 8. “Always look for what more you can do for your company (above your role description).” 9. “One thing I make sure I never do is to go into victim mentality mode” 10. “I strongly believe that individuals need to take ownership of their situation” 11. “Good leaders are very aware, they always have their antenna on. They always look for signals that are being passed overtly or covertly.” 12. “Networks don't happen by themselves” 13. “If I am not investing in myself, why would anyone else invest in me.” Nominated Charity: Vivek’s nominated charity is The Starlight Foundation and I’ve made a donation of $250 in Vivek’s name for coming on the show. https://starlight.org.au Recommended Books, Influencers and Learning: • Anything by Peter Drucker and Malcolm Gladwell • The Road to Character, David Brooks 

In this episode we talk about executing your Life Vision as part 2. If you haven’t listened to Episode 57 of building your Life Vision I’d recommend doing that first.   There is an old saying, “Vision without execution is just a dream”.  And, chief, I’ve got a confession so make this was me. I was a dreamer with all sorts of grand ideas about who or what I’d become. I always had new ideas and goals that all seemed to flow from my creative mind.  I was the line from poem “George Gray” by Edgar Lee Masters that I read in Ep 57 on building your life vision...“a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.” I was stuck in my own sheltered harbour. Not willing to do the hard work break the boundaries, to look inside myself at the things I liked about myself the least or the limiting beliefs I held and grow beyond them.  It was only when I realised that all greatness requires challenge. It will requires a thousand steps one after the other to change my game. One must have a vision and one must execute. I’ve seen too many people with only one part of the pie.  In Life Vision Part 1 we did some dreaming and created your life vision. Now we focus on execution. We take specific planned action towards our goals. 

In this episode you’ll hear from Jennifer Holland, Founder and CEO of Throat Scope.   Jennifer’s passion lies in inventing, designing and developing medical products that will revolutionise the healthcare industry. Her first invention was Throat Scope, which has had outstanding success across the globe and began as the foundation of Holland Healthcare. Throat Scope was the recipient of ‘What’s Your Big Idea Queensland?’ in 2011, which included a $50,000 prize money from the Queensland government. This allowed Jennifer to develop and patent Throat Scope and have several working prototypes made. In 2015, Jennifer and Throat Scope were featured on Shark Tank Australia. Jennifer secured investment from Steve Baxter and this exposure propelled the business. In October 2015, Throat Scope was launched into the Australian retail and healthcare markets. Throat Scope broke a retail record with a company, which saw the product signed in seven days. Jennifer has since negotiated several lucrative distribution deals with both domestic and international companies. Jennifer has been awarded several awards for her hard work and determination which include, gold product innovation winner at the Ausmumprenuer Awards 2017, Best Presenter Award at the New York Venture Summit 2017, Edison Award Winner 2017, Lake Macquarie Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2016, Sydney Design Award Winner 2015 and QLD ‘What’s the big idea’ Winner of $50,000. Jennifer also actively participates in speaking and networking events internationally. Key Points: Jennifer outlines her incredible story of the invention of Throat Scope and the struggle to get it funded and into the market. Her mantra – Believe, Act, Persist has been at the core of her undying enthusiasm to make a difference. And her advice for the next generation of leaders is Don’t Settle, get out there with enthusiasm and persistence and try a different way if the first way doesn’t work. Jennifer’s top messages include: Prepare meticulously for big opportunities - I watched 108 episodes of Shark Tank US to prepare for it. When going for a big role you have to show your passion, purpose, excitement for wanting to be apart of their business Enthusiasm is everything When hiring someone for my team experience isn't all that necessary. It’s the passion and seeing someone who is persistent. And that wins every time over education and experience in an industry It took a long time to find the right mentors and advisors My business mantra is believe, act, persist Whatever I do I know there is another way to do it. So if one doesn't work I'll walk through another door. Free yourself of the worries that aren’t real - In life you always regret the things you don't do If you're open to finding opportunities they will come Opportunities are everywhere its just a matter of whether you're open to finding them Having mentors or advisors that give you confidence will give you more passion, excitement When people say to me, “no, you can't do that”, for me that is the biggest driver. I love the saying ‘Today's no is tomorrow's yes….You tell me no, and I'll turn it into a yes Don't settle Web: www.throatscope.com

In this episode we build your own Life & Career Vision. "George Gray" I have studied many times The marble which was chiseled for me-- A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor. In truth it pictures not my destination But my life. For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment; Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid; Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances. Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life. And now I know that we must lift the sail And catch the winds of destiny Wherever they drive the boat. To put meaning in one's life may end in madness, But life without meaning is the torture Of restlessness and vague desire-- It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid. - Edgar Lee Masters, 1868 - 1950 To leave the harbour chief we must start with a destination. One that inspires us and drives us to personal greatness. In this episode we will talk through creating your own Life Vision.    The very first time I did a vision board was in 2007. It was a transformative period of my life and I was reading self-help books by the dozen. They ALL said you need a vision. Without it you simply don’t know what direction you’re going. They said it’s like when you decide you want to go away for a weekend and what you do first is imagine what the perfect weekend would be like you create a vision in your head. Then you go about finding the right region, accommodation and activities that’ll help you achieve your vision. It all starts with vision. Without the vision you don’t even leave your home in the first place.

In this episode we take an entirely new angle. I’ve been wanting to bring in some gurus on particular topics and it brings me great pleasure to start with our spiritual guru Damien Price on Spiritualism and how it fits in the corporate world.    Damien Price is a Christian Brother and has taught for over thirty years in schools throughout Australia and New Zealand. Over the past twenty years Damien has been involved in working with disadvantaged youth, homeless men and women, refugees and Asylum Seekers. Damien has Masters Degrees in Counselling and Pastoral Guidance. Damien’s Doctor of Philosophy degree focused on the sense of self that youth grew into as they engaged with homeless people over an extended period of time. He is now Regional Ministry Coordinator for PNG, Philippines and Timor Leste in a role that has him travelling and organising all over SE Asia. Some of the questions I ask Damien include:  • What is God and/or who was God and where do people get it wrong? • What is Religion and where do people get it wrong? • What is the ultimate purpose of life?  • Your often describe yourself as a monk. Why is that the most fitting description of you?  • What are the vows you take a Christian Brother? Why do you cherish them and what role do they play for you?  • You took a break from the Brothers. What drew you away and ultimately what brought you back?  • What is the most stinging feedback you’ve ever received and how did it shape you?  • What have you learned about yourself over the past five years?  • What mistakes do busy professionals make that is costing them their spirituality? • On a day to day basis what's the most powerful action someone can take to keep and develop a strong spiritual connection? • Does spirituality fit in the boardroom?

In this episode we build your own Life Scoreboard.   Like most successful professionals, you probably started your career with clear ideas about what you wanted to do and who you wanted to become. Then, as time progressed, you got caught up in the corporate life. Before you knew it, you were running from one meeting to the next, and what you expected of yourself started to come second to what others expected of you. Add to the equation the responsibilities that come with a family and a mortgage and it’s easy to see why so many of us fall into this trap. We look forward to time away from work, but the four weeks of leave most of us take a year don’t ever seem enough.   It just doesn’t feel like living.     Years fly by, seemingly at the speed of light, and no matter how hard you try you can’t seem to slow it down. You may even have started to feel a little lost, disconnected from our soul, and of control as the year has progressed you don’t feel as comfortable in your own skin. You’re not coming from a place of personal strength and centredness. And worst of all you know you’re not reaching your potential in any area of your life.   One of the many great lessons I’ve learnt from elite sport is their infatuation with analysis and then how they present data as useful information to athletes and coaches. One particular scoreboard really resonated with me. This was the elite athlete scoreboard at the QLD Reds for their academy players. Every player had a set of measures they needed to reach in every part of their game. It was the technical, tactical, mental, physical, social elements of their development. They had benchmarks they had to achieve every year and this was updated regularly in red, amber, green when a particular element was out of sync. Essentially they could identify when players were out of balance and how that was affecting other parts of their game. They wanted well-rounded and growing young men and women in their programs.   This gave them a baseline for taking intentional action to stay in balance.  As Michael E Gerber said: "The difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next. The difference between the two is the difference between living fully and just existing."                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       —Michael E. Gerber About 10 years ago I developed my first vision board for my life and then I added to it a Life Scoreboard. This Life Scoreboard is a pictorial representation of how I’m performing in all the most important elements of my life. Things like my relationship with my wife and kids, wider family, best friends, my career and legacy, finances, health, mastery, travel, spirit and dreams.   I use this scoreboard religiously. It gives me immediate insight into how I can improve an element or two to improve my overall life. And whenever I’m feeling down, out of whack I return to this. It normally takes about 5 mins and I’m back on track at least with some actions to take.   The thing is we’ve all met the guy or gal that is all about their fitness. They spend all their time thinking that the fitter they get the happier they’ll be while so many other elements are suffering. The same of the social butterfly who has a fear of missing out syndrome out of control but as a result never re-centres, loses their fitness or the spiritual guru who spends all their time in meditation but becomes disconnected from the world. In the end, your Life Scoreboard is about YOUR journey and what is RIGHT FOR YOU. No one else’s scoreboard is yours. We are all so beautifully unique. So treat it as a process of reconnection to WHO YOU TRULY ARE.   I want to talk you through a Four Step Process now for you to develop your own Life Scoreboard:   Define each of categories The elements of your scoreboard are totally up to you. We’ve provided an example but you need to work out what is most important to you. On each element give yourself a gut-feel score out of 10 Score yourself out of 10 On any item that you scored lower than 7 define anything you can do in the next 48 hours to boost that score Pick low hanging fruit Identify ways you can boost scores by combining pursuits and any other longer activities to get your score higher Kill two birds with one stone   Remember, this is about YOU. Think deeply as to why you’re giving certain scores. What is the root cause? How can you bring your greatest self to the table.   The Life Scoreboard is a vital tool in becoming the CHIEF of your Career and Life. Use it wisely, use it often and I guarantee you’ll find yourself coming from a play of personal centredness and power. Then and only then are you a true CHIEF.   For a detailed example and steps I’ve created a page with all those resources at www.chiefmaker.com.au/55.

Recommended Books: Leading Change, John Kotter The Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela The Service Profit Chain, Heskett and Sasser" data-userid="755298240111865856" data-orgid="755298240488501248">In this episode you'll hear from Mike Pratt. Mike is the Commissioner for Service, NSW Government, leading major service reform across the NSW Government. He is also Deputy Chancellor of Western Sydney University, Chairman of Bennelong Funds Management and a Non-Executive Director of Credit Union Australia. Mike was CEO of Consumer and SME Banking, North East Asia, with Standard Chartered Bank. He is a former President of the Australian Institute of Banking & Finance.He was also Group Executive of Westpac Business & Consumer Banking, CEO of National Australia Bank in Australia and CEO of Bank of New Zealand. He was also CEO of Bank of Melbourne. Previous directorships include Non-Executive Director of MasterCard International Inc, New York, Non-Executive Director of MasterCard, Asia Pacific, Non-Executive Director of BT Financial Services, Chairman of Shenzen Credit. Mike outlines how important it is to be well prepared, build out your network, incorporate lifelong learning, be disciplined, maintain transparency and integrity in all you do. And to never forget - its all about relationships, what matters more than anything is relationships Mike also has some great tips on getting great mentors and what you need to be on top of in the future of business. Nominated Charity: I have made a $250 donation in Mike's name to Plan International - www.plan.org.au Recommended Books: Leading Change, John Kotter The Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela The Service Profit Chain, Heskett and Sasser Recommended Books: Leading Change, John Kotter The Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela The Service Profit Chain, Heskett and Sasser" data-userid="755298240111865856" data-orgid= "755298240488501248">Copyright: (c) 2017 Greg Layton, Chief Maker URL: chiefmaker.com.au

In this episode we will be talking about another pattern that has emerged through many of the CEOs on the show and that is “Taking the Path Less Travelled”.   Have you ever found yourself boxed in to a role or industry? Ever felt stuck in your growth or feel like your network and knowledge set is limited to your profession and industry? Ever had the nagging gut feeling that you need to do something drastic to change things up but you find any number of reasons why you shouldn’t? Feel like the dream of rising to the top of just having a more meaningful career is slipping away? One pattern that has come up time and again is one where they have come to a sort of cross-roads where they feel they are potentially going to be stalled.   WHAT IS TAKING THE PATH LESS TRAVELLED? It can mean shifting industries, roles, organisations or something that expands your horizons. The key here is to aim to build wide ranging experience and knowledge that you can use to become better, smarter and more connected. Normally these kinds of shifts only happen a few times in your life. Make no mistake though, they are life and career defining and therefore should not be taken lightly. This is making a move that is often against most other people’s advice but you know in your heart, in your gut that it is the right move.   WHEN SHOUD YOU TAKE IT? There are a number of situations when taking the path less travelled could be a good move: You’re stuck or boxed in your career progression Internally your real chances of going forward are low and getting lower as more competition rises up You’ve stopped learning and growing You feel like you’ve now gone down one path of professional skill almost as far as it can go. Going further won’t add to your wisdom or experience significantly. The well so to speak is drying up and you need to fresh taste of new water to expand your mind Industry is taking a seismic shift in direction and you want to get on the front foot The profession or industry your in is wrong for you The business you’re in is wrong for you An opportunity arises that must be taken You’ve lost the energy and spark that makes work fun and is critical to leading big transformations THE BENEFITS? This is what Chiefs are looking for. Someone that is willing to do something different, take a calculated risk to get ahead. Someone that is bold and tried something. Expansion of your knowledge set, growth and wisdom Momentum in your career again New networks New opportunities Fun and renewed energy for life HOW DO YOU DO IT? For all those that have taken the path less travelled successfully there are a thousand who took it and failed. They jumped too fast without being considered or didn’t listen to their intuition. Assess the root cause of the current situation Review your life and career vision / plans Listen to your gut, what does it say? Talk to a trusted friend who brings out the best in you Assess the risk and increase the upside and decrease the downside Stay focused and go with 100% commitment

For full show notes go here: www.chiefmaker.com.au/93 This week we are joined by Isabelle Nussli. She is the former US CFO and chairperson of the NUSSLI Group, a leading international provider of portable and permanent infrastructures for sport and cultural events at exhibitions just like the Olympics. They built the iconic Bondi Beach Volleyball Stadium at the Sydney 2000 Olympics, and have been involved in FIFA World Cups. Isabelle is the author of the Amazon bestselling book "Cockfighting: Solving the Mystery of Unconscious Sabotage at the Top of the Corporate Pyramid". Drawing on the latest research and interviews with more than 70 chairpersons and CEOs, Cockfighting presents Isabelle's findings on the conscious and unconscious drivers of conflict, and provides invaluable tools for increasing self awareness, overcoming differences, and facilitating collaboration for those at the very top of the corporate world. Isabelle has an MBA from Kellogg School of Management and is currently the Chief Energising Officer for Leverage-Your-self.com, where she leads a team of experts in business, behavioural economics, and applied psychology that support business in navigating change and capitalising on their organisations' full potential. KEY POINTS & QUOTES I conducted interviews with 70 chairpersons and CEOs, which produced novel insights and led me to the writing of the book Cockfighting. What was really, really interesting was that I got a glimpse of something more profound behind the machinations of leadership that neither law nor corporate governance could explain, and this something was the human element, a part that I've always been fascinated by. So we had a strong value system in place, that I mentioned the handshake, which is something beautiful. Of course we all need contract, but it's still beautiful, still today, if you can go with a handshake. But I also learned where money came from. So while I was still in school I started to work, because I earned my bike, I was folding cardboard boxes for a potato chips producer and I was so proud that I had my first bike. During business school when my, at that time partner, now husband, asked me to follow in his footsteps. And I thought wow, quite big footsteps! So I approached the dean of my business school, former dean, and I laid out my options, and things I could have like, I thought ... It was not my plan to go back to Switzerland anytime soon. I thought maybe China or India or US. So he looked at me and said one word: "Jump." So asked him why, and he said look, you'll never be really, how much you hone your skill, whatever you do. Join the company now and then you can grow with it. That was very good advice. First of all I realise that doubts are absolutely normal. So human. So I'm not harsh at myself and you're not supposed to. So when they come up I grab them, I sit with them for a minute, but then I try to make an empowered decision. So I take these doubts, I take them seriously. But then I often realise that they have to do with patterns that are no longer productive. Or shaped in childhood or a bit later, but as an adult they are no longer productive. We all have patterns, and they're neither good nor bad, but it's a matter of getting to know them, and working with them. And the ones that are no longer productive try to overcome them. When I look back, that early in my career I did not always fill my footsteps. So I was somehow almost afraid of success, or of power, because I learned that, and again that's an unproductive pattern looking back. But something these patterns aren't conscious. So learned that I thought whoever is in power tends to misuse or abuse power, and then I realised that of course that's not the case, and that I can very well take on leadership positions that come naturally to me, often. And I realised to fill footsteps and live up to the position and to the function. So that's, for example, a pattern that I have discovered, and that I largely managed to overcome. When I asked about the meaning of power, many interviewees said oh I'm not in favour of power for the sake of power, but in order to achieve goals. And some contradicted themselves a bit later, saying I don't like to play number two, it's nice to receive applause and get the laurels. But I also realised that the level, or amount of self-reflection, level of self-awareness was also quite different when it came to the answering of that question. But again, I think in general, the relationship around power has an ambivalent tone to it Corporate governance of course is mechanisms about the processes. It's about the what of the role, what is the role? And that's what I call the rational part. But what's not talked about, or hardly ever, is how are these roles filled? What makes this a bit more tricky is that there are unconscious drivers. For example, how much our upbringing has shaped us, the worldview we have, the value system we believe in. Or for example, the definition of and relationship to power. Or, the amount of time these two spend together. And it's not just, for example, the chairperson is hardly ever full time. That's by nature, they spend less time together. But very often if they don't get along that well, or if there's a slight mistrust, they tend to spend less time together. But if you spend less time, it also means inferior quality of communication, which is likely to harm a relationship. So, time spent is also an unconscious driver. So intensifiers are just, let's say birth order. Let's say functional firstborns. So when you occupy a niche within your family, you tend to acquire certain characteristics and traits. So when you look at the unconscious intensifiers such as power, and you learn that firstborn and firstborns tend to engage in power struggles. So I think that's interesting, it almost explains part of why, and too, functional firstborn, at the very top of the corporate pyramids when exposure is there and power is involved. Why they might engage into conflicts. I call it the second part of the leadership equation, the workforce, because it cascades down. Power yes lies at the top of the corporate pyramids, but as we heard from the relationships and as we probably all know, the relationships at the top are important in the way of how the tone is set, and how, positive too by the way. Positive and less positive behaviour gets cascaded down the pyramid. So I developed this CCCC, Chairperson-CEO Collaboration Contract, which is a type of psychological contract, meaning it's not written. So, the two of them sit at the table and talk through different topics such as trust, what does trust mean to you and me? How are we going to increase our trust level? How do we go about it? Or another topic is power, what does power mean to you? How are we going to treat a division or power? For example, at the press conference who takes how much airtime? What if, what if? And all the role clarity, what does it mean, to fill the roles? So I developed this, it's the idea in it is really for the two of them to talk through, and it's important that they get to communicate. So that they spend time together, get to know each other, but also work through these topics. And ideally, this process is facilitated by an independent moderator, because if not, either one person is superior, so it's important that that person does not exercise power For me it's a balance between action and reflection. So I always, I try to find time or make time for reflection. And I'm not talking about hours. Sometimes it can be like seconds while waiting for a train or a bus. Sometimes it can be minutes, just between meetings you know? No athlete works out 12 hours, but in business you see often that meetings are scheduled back to back without time for reflection. And what I also believe, when you have an experience, maybe a not so good one, it's still on you on which part of the balance sheets do you want to place it, you know? Was it a good experience or a less good experience. And I think that's quite powerful. Because it stays with us, and we have that choice. In business you cannot play around the balance sheet. But in personal life you can. And that's great. Become aware that one day your life will flash before your eyes. So make sure it's worth watching. Which means build self awareness, and a lot will follow. We talk about qualities of future leaders, curiosity and humility, listening, but I think a lot will follow automatically if you become aware of your situation, of your environment, at work, at home. And if you increase self-awareness, it'll be very likely for you to take the right decisions coming out of it. And building the right capacity and qualities. For full show notes go here: www.chiefmaker.com.au/93

www.chiefmaker.com.au/92   Today we dive into High Performance Teams, Part 10. This is the final episode in the people pillar and so far we have discussed the right people, the right role, the right strategic development plans for them and the right coaching and one-to-ones. So now you've got the right people on the bus, got them all sitting in the right seats, you're developing them all in the right way over their entire career, looking to develop them and make them into the best people they can be. You're also actively coaching and giving them one-to-ones. Today wet finish the people pillar with a focus on the execution part of the job through situational delegation. As new initiatives and tasks come up on a day-to-day basis, this is different to our coaching and one-to-ones. This is when something pops up that is above and beyond business as usual like a special report, a new project and the quality of your delegation will directly impact the quality of performance of your people. Back in about 2006 I was a Project Manager leading a major programme at work across the state government, and I had a fantastic, very high performing Business Analyst that worked for me. And on a Friday afternoon I got a call from the project board chair saying that on the Monday during my project board meeting, I was going to have to present an update on a particular part of this project and my Business Analyst was leading that. So I called him and said "Hey mate, can you put together a quick report for me on how that particular part of the project is going?" It was all about the requirements we're developing and the solution he was gonna propose. And you know what happened, I had the weekend off. I had a wonderful time, came in Monday morning, and there was about a 15 page report in my inbox waiting for me and I thought "Oh my God, this is ... I just wanted one page." I went over to him and said "Hey mate, what's this? This is too big. I needed one page." And he goes "Oh man, you said you wanted a report." And you know what? It dawned on me, my delegation or the way that I described this task to him was just terrible. It was just off the cuff, I didn't put any thought into it. I thought he would just understand. But you know what? He spent most of his weekend putting this together, he was so worried about it. And it was just such poor delegation on my part, it's really, really stuck with me. Something important for all of us to remember is that if you're getting work coming back to you that isn't what you expect, the very first person you should look at is you. Just get a sense and try and recall the quality of your delegation. Because if you just put an extra 10% effort into your delegation, I guarantee, you're likely to get about a 50% return on that. Delegation is where a lot of leaders fall victim to their natural preferences. You might remember very early on in the Inner Chief we spoke about micromanagers and even the opposite, when your boss is in the clouds or a macromanager for wont of a better term. The thing is, delegation is very situational, and the biggest pitfall here is that if you have one approach to delegating in all situations, that becomes your MO or when your task comes through, you've got a way of just flicking it on to someone or just handing it over to someone without any framework or any thought into how you're going to communicate that. From time to time you will succeed, but a lot of the time, you'll get sub-par results. As an example, let's just say you had a high performer in your team, and you have a very low risk task, and you're naturally someone that is a bit of a micromanager. You're a bit stressed about the quality of work people put in, and you really want to have your finger closely on the pulse. Now if you do that with a low risk task, and you've got a high performer, you're just going to annoy the hell out of them, you really are. You're going to dip down, guide them too much, you'll have your hands on the reins the whole time and they will just be over it, and you'll wear them out. It'll be soul destroying for them. They won't feel like they've got any level of empowerment. Or let's turn that around for a minute. Imagine you've got a low performer on a high risk task... Sometimes a low performer is just a new recruit. They're not quite up to speed yet. It doesn't mean they're not good people. Sometimes they are really struggling in their role. But if you've got a mission critical task or mission critical project and someone who is new or a low performer, and then you take your hands completely off the reins and let them go to their work, then you are very likely to have failure and... you deserve it. So what we have here is an opportunity to understand and refine a solid way to delegate accurately, because when you think about this people pillar, this is the final step. If you've got the people in the right, if you have already got great developed plans, and you're coaching with good one-to-ones, this is the bit where the work gets done. And if you don't get the work done properly, then you're never gonna get that track record. You know that team is never gonna go to a new level of performance. I've develop a Situational Delegation framework called COGS. You can always remember COGS, because cog is what actually makes wheels go around, and so does delegation. The more you delegate effectively , the more the wheels turn, so that's a way of remembering COGS. COGS stands for Context, Outcome, Guidance and Support. So Context is all about starting with why. You know that's what Simon Sinek made famous, and it's about helping people understand why a particular task or project is so important, the broader context to understand the parameters, what's going on around in the other projects and things that are leading up to it and things that will suit it afterwards. And once they understand the why of what they're doing, tell them what it is you need them to do. This is the O, the Outcome. This is the outcome you want when the task is completed. Don't tell them exactly what the task is. I always start with what the outcome is. Here we want to really WOW people. We want people to think, feel and do something at the end of that particular task. So maybe if it was something related to implementing a new IT system, we would say, instead of saying "Implement an IT system," we would say "At this point, we want to make the customer experience so incredible for our new users that they'll rave about us and tell all of the other people." That's the outcome, right? If they don't know what the outcome is you want, how can they possibly deliver exactly what it is you're after. So we go straight to, the very first thing is the size of the outcome, right? How amazing will things be when you've completed. This is truly beginning with the ending line. Then we go to G, and this is Guidance, and where we get very situational. Because this is where we say "What exactly do you need someone to complete?" E.g. I need you to implement an IT system or something like that, and I need to know the quality components. I need to know if there's any key metrics or anything like that that I need to have done, and this is where we get really clear on a little system that I use to determine how much micromanagement or how much full empowerment I can give. So I want you to imagine a quick matrix, right, on the Y axis is risk, and on the X axis is skill. So up in the top left, what you're gonna have is something that is high risk and low skill. That's what we call Quadrant 1 and a high risk task with a low skilled team member and the response to someone who's in this situation is a form of micromanagement. And you might be thinking "Hold on a minute, micromanagement is out." But think carefully about this for a minute. You've got someone who's in a role, and they're really struggling and they know it. And you've just thrown them in the deep end with a really, really difficult task. What you now need to do is get on board with them and help them. Show them every step of the way. Be there to support them. Micromanagement is such a negative term, but there are moments when you can really help someone nail a big task by being right there for them all the time. Sometimes you can tell them exactly what to do next. Help them write their emails or help them write reports. You can be there for them. Don't be too over bearing on them, just remember at this point, if you take the reins off too much and get too far in the Clouds, they're going to really struggle, and they'll be looking for help, and you'll be nowhere to be seen. So top left quadrant means micromanagement but do it nicely. Top right where it's a high risk task, but they have high skill, this is where I call what we do is we partner with them. We get close to them and say "Hey this is what we're gonna do, how we're gonna do it, how can I help you, what role can I play." You don't take your hands completely off the reins, because this is a mission critical project, and you need to know what's happening along the way. And you know what? They'llg want partnerin, even when they're high performing, to have someone right beside them along the way. Not micromanaging, but just being there as a partner, as a good person who can keep them accountable along the way. In the bottom left quadrant is where we have a very low risk task and low skill. So it's a simple task but it's someone who's not really doing that well. In this case, it's just coaching them. Just giving them some guidance along the way. It doesn't matter too much if they fail anyway, it's an opportunity to learn and to grow. In the bottom right, which is quadrant four, this is something where it's a very low risk task and they have very high skill. In that case, it's complete empowerment. Now you're saying to them, "Look, you're amazing at this. All I need you to do is this particular task. Get this outcome, go for it, I don't even need to know how you're going to go about it." This framework allows you to know, at what point and what situation should you give more or less guidance. And then the last step then is now that you know, you've given the context, you've told them why, you've told them the outcome you need, you've given them the guidance on the quality and the quantity of things you want, the key targets, you've decided exactly how much guidance you'll give them, now you tell them how much support they're going to get. What, if any, budget, any resources, how often you're going to meet so you can keep track of what's going on. This is about bringing the company's and your own resources to bear t help that person do the job. It is also the point you confirm there is clear understanding of what you've said. You might even get them to paraphrase back to you, what it is you've said and so you can get really clear, particularly with someone who's maybe a little bit low of a performer and it's a higher risk task. Let me just give you a very quick example of how this would play out with the Business Analyst I was leading way back in 2006. So let's just talk through context, outcome, my guidance and any support. And remember, what I really wanted him to do was to develop a one page report for my project board which was due to meet on the Monday. So this is what I should have said to him. Context: "Now, mate, next Monday, I'm meeting with our project board. We meet every single month to discuss the progress of this project. They're a very supportive board. We've got a lot of trust from them. We have been delivering pretty well, so they're not real hard arses. They're going to be nice to us. They do have a bit of a query about some of the analysis we're doing that's in your particular area. They've got no question over your ability or anything, but they just want to know a lot more detail about it if that's all right." So that's the end of Context. Now we go to Outcome. "What I'd like to do is put their minds at ease. I want them to understand that you've absolutely got this, right? Because I know you do. They're just not 100% across that." So that's the Outcome. Really short and sharp. Now Guidance, remember this is a high performer, and this was not a low risk task, but it was medium risk. So all I needed to do was paint a pretty clear picture of the thing that I needed him to produce at this point, So this is what I should have said to him. "What I need you to produce is a one to two page report that outlines the key risks, issues, what you're currently working on, what is in the pipeline and what's going on with timeline and budget. Make it short, sharp, to the point and just make sure we demonstrate that you've absolutely got this covered." Right? That's the guidance. That's what I should have said to him, which takes us to the Support I'm able to give him. So this is what I should have said in the end. "I'm here for you whenever you need to talk. We have the rest of today which is Friday and Monday morning to produce this document. I'd like you to spend no more than two hours on it, and as soon as you've spent around 90 minutes or you feel like it's in a good first draught, let's sit down and quickly go through it. Please don't work over the weekend. If you don't get back to me this afternoon, we'll meet over a coffee at 8:00 Monday morning." So that's what I should have said to him, and if I had said that to him, he would have absolutely now that, not spent too much time, and we would have had a better outcome for me, for him and the project board. So Chief, that's a simple situational delegation model for you: Context, Outcome, Guidance and Support. www.chiefmaker.com.au/92

See more at www.chiefmaker.com.au/91   This week we are joined by Roland Frasier, CEO, War Room Mastermindand the Principal/Founder at Traffic & Conversion Summit, DigitalMarketer, Praxio, Rival Media, Plattr. He is the co-founder and/or principal of multiple Inc. Magazine fastest growing companies (e-commerce, e-learning and SaaS). Serial entrepreneur who founded, scaled or sold almost two dozen different businesses ranging from consumer products to industrial machine manufacturing companies with adjusted sales ranging from $3 million to $337 million. Through War Room Roland advises over 100 major companies on digitally centric customer acquisition, activation, referral, retention, revenue and growth strategies and plan implementation. He is a guru in the art of the deal and one of the most humble and generous chiefs you’ll ever meet. Books and Resources Recommended Nothing Down by Robert Allan The Psychology of Winning by Denis Waitley Unlimited Power by Tony Robbins The works of Milton H Erickson Measure What Matters by John Doerr High Output Management by Andy Grove The 4 Disciplines of Execution CONNECT WITH ROLAND FRASIER DigitalMarketer.com RolandFrasier.com LUNCH TIMES WITH ROLAND FRASIER PODCAST Check it our here...just launched. QUOTES AND KEY POINTS BY ROLAND FRASIER When I read Robert Allen's book on real estate, it was just amazing to me that you could buy real estate with no money down, and the first time that you do that, I always, when I talk about buying companies with no money down, so the impact for me was to ultimately I took those principles and so what if I just did that with companies, and it turns out you can. The Denis Waitley (Psychology of Winning) one for me was that I had never really, no one had before that exposed me to the thought of setting goals. And, so the biggest thing that I got out of Dennis's thing was that the people who set goals achieve them and people who don't, don't typically. That you have to have some thing that you're working towards or you're just kind of floating, and then he talked in that about visualisation and how athletes who he trained, and he sort of trained Olympic athletes and astronauts and all these amazing people and actually did studies where they would visualise themselves on the bench pushing the weight up and that, that enabled them in their minds to go and actually lift the weights that they hadn't lifted before. Roy H. Williams, who I just recently was exposed to, he's called the wizard of ads in Austin. And, he says that for ads, you have to take the mind first to the place that the body will then go. So, in your advertisements, you need to take people in their minds to the place that you want their fingers on the keyboard or their bodies or their dollars to go in the future, because if you don't paint that story and take them there, then they don't ever go. So, that was the big thing I think from Dennis. And, then Tony did a fantastic job of synthesising the work of Milton Erickson, and Richard Bandler, and John Grinder from neuro linguistic programming and hypnosis into a, especially in unlimited power into a very digestible, understandable, nonscientific layman's kind of approach or laypersons approach to that science of NLP. "Everything that you want to accomplish can be accomplished with mentoring, modelling and masterminding" HOW TO BUY FOR NO MONEY DOWN - AN EXAMPLE And, it was a gentleman who was interested in buying an eCommerce, not an eCommerce, it was actually a wholesale, I'm trying to think of how to do it without giving it away. It was a wholesale concrete business and this was the manufacturer of this kind of cool type of concrete. And, so my friend was interested in acquiring that company but didn't have the money to do it. It was doing about two and a half, $3,000,000 a year. It was profitable at about a 150 to $200,000 a year profit. So, in the neighbourhood of eight to 10% profit. And, he didn't have any money or know anything other than he'd been talking to the owner and the owner was interested in selling, and he was interested in buying, and the owner was only selling through print ads in magazines. So, like old school, old school, right? Print ads in magazines had never, and was selling direct to customers. So, had never sold directly to wholesalers and had never sold online. So, it was really kind of an interesting opportunity and had had inquiries before, but it was like, nah, I don't know how all that internet stuff works and I don't want to hassle with other people who are reselling. So, I just want to sell to the customers, and he said, "But I'm thinking I've got this other thing that I want to do. I've invented something else that I'm really interested in", now so one of the biggest, coolest things is when you find someone who's already in their mind, sold their business, like they're done, even if it's a good business, a truly creative entrepreneur frequently is tired of the business they're in, and looking to the next business that they can be in. So, that's a really positive sign. And, I said, "Well, the first thing that I always like to ask people, what are you going to do with the money?", and, he's like, why? And, he's like, "He's gonna tell me it's none of my business", I said, "No, it's actually a 100% about your business because if you can figure out what he or she is going to do with the money, then you'll find out exactly how much they actually need right now". And, he's like, okay. So, he went and asked him and the guy said, "Well, it's going to cost me about $200,000 to do the mouldings for this new thing that I've invented". I was like, great. I said, "And what are you going to do with the rest of the money?". He said, "I'll have it for working capital or investments or whatever", and I said, "Great". I said, "So, you should be able to buy that company for $200,000 down", and he said, "Okay, well how?", I said, "Because that's all the guy needs to do that. And, if you can find out what the deal is on the mouldings that he needs for this invention that he's got and you can get him those without you having to come out of pocket $200,000, you can buy that business for no money down". So, the thing that I always look for is what are they going to do with the money and then how much is it going to actually cost to do the next thing that they want to do. And, if they just want to have money for investments, chances are really good they'll carry back. So, they will finance the acquisition for you. So, great. So, now he's down to $200,000. And I said "Okay, so you need $200,000 to do this", I said, "He probably doesn't need $200,000 right now to do that". I said, "Ask him what is the process with the people that he's talking about doing the mouldings", and it turned out that he only needed like about 80 grand. I was like, great, you only need $80,000 now, because the way that you pay for the mouldings is this, and the business is actually making money. So, let's let the business pay for everything except the actual cash dollars that he needs right now today. And, he was like, great. So, we went back and talked to the guy and the guy was like, yeah, okay, I could do that. And, it's like, so you know that the money's going to come, so you transfer the business to me, I will assign you the money that the business is making until you get that $200,000 that you need and I'll secure the rest of the business with the stock and the business that I'm buying. Fantastic. Well, what we knew was that if we could get a small deferral period, then my friend could go out and go to all of the wholesalers who had already inquired about making wholesale purchases for the company and do deals with them to raise the $80,000 that he needed to put down. So, all they needed to do was have a period of time where he could do that. So, we negotiated a 60 day period where he would get to do that during the due diligence period for looking at the company. Right? And, so then he was able to raise the money, cut the deal to get advanced purchase orders from the people who were the wholesalers who had already asked and inquired, and then he went out and he did the deal with no money down. So, and that's a very abbreviated process of that, right? It's just being creative enough to find out what do they actually want, what are they going to do the money with and what are all of the pieces that are available to you right now to generate the money without having to come out of pocket? And, to me it's a game, right? I just don't, like when I have the money to buy a business, I don't want to pay anything down for it because I want the business to pay for itself. That's a fun game to play, right? ON BEING CREATIVE IN YOUR BUSINESS DEALS So, if a business deal, a marketing problem, a business problem comes to me, I'm thinking about everything that I know that I've encountered before in every situation that is not business, as much as I am business. And then it's somehow identifying not being constrained, I guess, to a formula that let's say, I'll use business acquisitions as an example because I think it's a good one, is the way you buy businesses, you pay money for it. I don't accept that, right? I don't accept that as a fact of how you buy businesses. And, so if somebody says, well, you buy a business, then you pay money for it or you trade something for it, and the way that you get money as you get money from a bank or you get money from an investment banker or you get a loan. None of that right is completely acceptable to me. And, so if you go through, the Toyota's system of the 'five why's' of if you want to get to the root of any problem in manufacturing, the machine failed. Why did the machine fail? The machine failed because the ball bearings failed. Why did the ball bearings fail? Because, they were not properly oiled and maintained. Why were they not properly hold and maintains? Because, there's no system for doing that. And, if you keep asking those questions, usually within five times of asking it deep, you get to an answer that is the true answer. And, so I like to do that with buying a business, I'll call it the 'five buys', so I can buy it for cash. Great, what if I can't buy it for cash? Oh, well then you're going to get a loan. What if I can't get a loan? Well, then you're going to need to find another way, right? And, you go through all of that and at the end, if you do that exercise with pretty much any problem that you're trying to solve, and instead of accepting the traditional ways or the ways that you could do it easily, think about what if I didn't have that? What if that wasn't possible? And, then it just really makes you think about all of the other things that you could do and you come up with a creative solution that can get you buying houses, or companies, or solving huge problems that you might not have otherwise been able to because it was too easy to do that. It's too easy to say, well, I need money to buy a business. Okay, well I can't get it, therefore I can't buy the business. No, what if you couldn't buy businesses for money? Right. Does that make sense? Somebody explained to me the other day, a medical doctor who was trying to explain how a stroke affects people, and he said, "Look, a stroke is pathways to the brain, and imagine that you always go down the interstates and you, let's say that you now you can't go down the interstate and you have to take the side streets. Could you get to that place by doing that?", and the answer is yes. And I was like, okay, well now what if I said you can't, you can go that side street way but you can't take any of the main streets on the side streets that you're used to, and that's what happens in a stroke situation with thought, that our thoughts are not allowed to go down the main way and they're not allowed to go down the side streets, but they start down the side streets and several of the main side streets that they know are missing.  And, now what are you going to do? And, that's why it's so hard to form speech or things like that when you go through something like that. And, I think that if you can simulate that a bit by removing all of the normal, easy, well travelled roads to solve a problem that you're trying to solve, then you're forcing yourself to be truly creative in how can I get to the end result? And, it might be harder, but it might be that in fact the main roads in that situation like bank financing is a perfect example, isn't available, that it's not an option because you don't have the assets, or the wherewithal or whatever to make that happen, or the business doesn't have the fundamentals or you don't want to personally guarantee it because you don't want to risk your own capital. And, so I like the creativity of challenging yourself to remove the easy ways to do things, and think about how can I accomplish this a different way? ON THE WAR ROOM MASTERMIND It's eight years old now and we have 165 people in it. We had limited it to 100 for several years and just in 2018 decided that we were going to expand it, but it's a collection of people who are, you have to be doing a minimum of a million dollars a year to be in it, but really the average is probably between five and 85 and 60 million. We have several people that are in the hundreds of millions of dollars in sales, and two members now that are over a billion dollars. Which is really cool because in that group, the goal I think of a group like that is that you have people who have been where you want to be, or are where you want to be and can reach a hand down and pull you up and tell you the things that you need, the things that are different. The things that won't work, that are working now. That kind of stuff, and so I think that's really valuable all along the spectrum of revenue. And, then the people who are at the higher levels get to see the agility of the people who are, and the scrappiness of the people who are at the lower levels so that they can say, well we shouldn't take two years to bring this thing to market. We should be able to do, so it's a really cool mix of people who have really big companies and people who have smaller companies, but all of them are taking action and doing things and sharing in a very open, giving, vulnerable, atmosphere and everyone's goal is to double their business each year that they're in the programme. And, you end up making really great friends and that leads to all these ridiculously good contacts. So, it's very exciting for me. I have a really unique perspective because I was a member for three years before I became a partner in digital marketer. I've bought into the business with Ryan and Perry. I did that with also no money down, by the way. So, hopefully they're not listening to this, because, you know? But, that perspective of being in there three years and seeing the tremendous value of the relationships that I had, but also seeing as a customer, the things that I thought were limitations of it was really helpful. So, when I became a partner and ultimately that became a business unit that I'm running, to responsible for anyway. I don't really run anything, but I was able to bring that in and say, here's some changes we should make that I think we can serve people better, and every year it changes. It's always evolving. And, so we're in our eighth year of evolution and probably still 20 years away from the perfection that we seek, if we ever can achieve that, but we learn more, I mean, I can literally say that I would pay to be in there if I didn't get to be in there because I run it. I would pay to be in there because I did pay to be in there and I did experience the growth and I did see the magic of that group. And, there aren't many, there's no group that's like that, but there are several, like the genius network from a networking standpoint, and meeting a different group of people is fantastic. And, so I belong to about five or six different groups because they radically expand my network, and the money that I pay to be in them is dwarfed constantly by the deal flow, and the learnings that I get from the folks that I would not have otherwise encountered.

This is episode 9 on our 25 part series on High Performing Teams. The first 5 episodes were about your MISSION which includes your vision, purpose, strategy, values and goals of your team. And then for the last three weeks we've been talking all about your PEOPLE.   We have already covered getting the right people on the bus, putting them in the right role, and then getting a strategic development plan together for that individual.   Today we talk all about the coaching and one-to-ones. We’ll cover four important steps in coaching:   Understanding what motivates your people Understanding their psychology in greater depth Get into a regular coaching rhythm (see Ep 33 and 88 on Strategic Development Plans) Coach each person in their own right and maintaining growth mindset   See more at www.chiefmaker.com.au/90

See more at www.chiefmaker.com.au/89   This week you and I are joined by Jonathan Rubinsztein, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) & Managing Director of Infomedia.   Infomedia (ASX:IFM) is a leading global provider of SaaS solutions to the parts and service sector of the automotive industry. Founded in 1987, Infomedia supplies online parts selling systems, sophisticated service selling systems, a range of publications, as well as data analysis and information research for automotive and lubricant industries.   Previously, Jonathan was the CEO and founding Shareholder at UXC Red Rock Consulting, the largest Oracle Consulting business in ANZ with 8 offices and 600 staff.   He also served as a founding Director of RockSolid SQL is on the Advisory board of the Missionvale charity based in Port Elizabeth, South Africa and on the Board at Humanitix, the first not-to-profit ticketing platform that redistributes profits from booking fees to fund domestic violence shelters, meals to homeless, and indigenous education   He has been a guest lecturer at the University of Sydney Business School and a regular participant at TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conferences.  And was awarded the IT Professional of the Year 2013 (AIIA award NSW).

For more information go to www.chiefmaker.com.au/88   In this episode we are going to continue our focus on the People pillar of High Performance Teams. In particular, building strategic development plans for each of your team members.   One of my great mentors, all through his books, obviously never met the man, was basketball coaching legend, John Wooden. He said, "I worry that business leaders are more interested in material gain than they are in having the patience to build up a strong organisation, and a strong organisation starts with caring for their people."   When I refer to strategic development plans, I mean now that you've got the right people in the right role, you need to strategically develop them so they can be their absolute best.   To do that, you must have to genuinely, authentically care about each and every one of them. Remember, Napoleon said, "Leaders are dealers in hope." So often we get caught up with the business commercials and the targets and the things we've got to do, and we forget that the greatest legacy we can potentially leave on the planet is the growth of the people in our team. Don't shortcut on this. It's a simple process but pays big dividends in performance, trust and legacy.   When I was working at the Queensland Reds, Super Rugby team as high performance coach in 2015 every single player in every single position had a development plan which outlined the physical,  technical and tactical capabilities the needed to be successful in their role. The coaching staff worked tirelessly to improve their skills throughout the year to build those new capabilities.   What are the skills, education and experience that each of your people need to perform their job to the absolute limit of their potential? Not just what they should be capable of, but what's the potential for them?   Remember, if you get all of your team all growing every single week, every single month, improving in their own skills the entire team performance is going to grow.   What's more than that, if you're facing some internal resistance it might be because  people are stalled in their development. They've got a fixed rather than a growth mindset. One of the best ways to shift a fixed mindset is to pour add some new skill and knowledge into the minds of your people which starts to broaden their mind and perspective. This brings new thoughts and ideas to a problem or a particular piece of their work, and the whole game changes.   Leaders are dealers in hope and key role of all leaders is coaching. All coaches develop their people and they do it with a clear strategy. This is not HR's job. HR will support you with the things they need to do, but developing your people, working out the plan is your job. It's also not the people that report to you. It's not their job either. You've employed them. You've brought them in to do a great job, now develop them. Make them amazing. Really invest the time, the effort, the energy into developing them. A strategic development plan has only a few steps. The first thing is, you need to understand their personal dreams and goals. What are they here for? What do they want in life and in their career? This won’t be their only job in their career. They'll be here for a while working for the company, and eventually they'll move on. Don't bracket them and think, "I've just got to get the ounce of sweat over them over the next few years, and then we're done." No, think about what you can do for that person for their entire life and career.   Start with learning what their big dreams and goals are, then clarify what the current role is meant to do. What it would look like if they were absolutely knocking it out of the park? What is expected of them every single day?   This is being crystal clear about that role, which we covered in the last episode.   Then do a gap analysis on where they are now, compared to where they need to be on skills, education and experience.   Then plan how they’re going to accumulate those new capabilities and regularly check in on them. That's it.   When you think about it, when we go back through the last three episodes, where you got the right person in the right role. That was absolutely vital because now everybody knows or is doing something that makes sense for them, that plays to their strengths, that's work they value, and now you're improving their performance every single week. Well, as soon as you've got those three things lined up, they are going to fly.   Chief, this might not seem like a lot, but whenever I walk into a team that wants to become high performing, this is one of the first things I look for. I look for how much they're developing their people. If there's no plan to develop each of their people, I know this is one of the very first things we need to do.   You don't have to invest a lot of money. You can create all sorts of ways and means of sharing information, podcasting, doing group book reviews in your team. You can cut corners on this develop or save money on this development at every opportunity.   So, Chief, that process again. Start with dreams and goals, then go with role definition, what is required of them. Then, do the gap analysis on their skills from where they are now to what is required to perform the job to their utmost ability. Then, work out the skills, the experience, and the knowledge, and the education you're going to give them over the next 12 months. And then, execute and get that done so every single week they're improving and growing as an individual.   If you think for a minute about maybe someone in your career who's really taken you under their wing and given you the right development and gone the extra mile, you never forget that person. That someone becomes special in your heart. We often talk about them as being mentors. Imagine the difference you can make in the world if you do this for everyone in your team. In fact, imagine if you didn't. Imagine for a minute you didn't have any development plans for any of the people in your team. What would that be doing to your performance? How much would you be leaving on the table? It's just a fantastic opportunity to get quick wins.   Spend some time and get a strategic development plan for each of your people.   That sums it up for this week. As always, remember to stay epic.

Part 7 of our series on building High Performance Teams continues to look at the second pillar - People. And in this case The Right Role for your people.    Once you’ve formed the right group of people, which we covered in Ep 86, now its about taking a step back and analysing if you have the right role for each of those people. A role that will bring out their best and get the job done for the team.    The best people can crash and burn in the wrong role and a low performer can start thriving in a role that plays to their strengths and focuses on work that they value.    Remember, an individual can outgrow a role and when that happens every day they turn up can feel like a step back. It can be soul destroying and in situations like that it’s a significant move if you can help them feel appreciated for their real potential. And  sometimes a role can be too big or the wrong shape for someone. E.g. If they’ve been in an operational line management role which plays to their technical expertise and they’ve shifted into an internal support role which is all about influencing it can be a huge leap. Particularly if they have to lead transformation on a topic or through a process that is new to them.    Of course, every role has suck factor. And mostly people understand that and can handle it to a certain point. As the leader it’s your job to make sure that the suck factor doesn’t get too much or get them down.   Here are three steps to optimising the roles of your people:    1. Start with a blank canvas and considering the targets and challenge the organisation needs of you draw up the roles that you need to do the job (without the people’s names). 2. Once you’ve worked out the roles and tasks that need doing add in your people to each of the roles.  3. Be creative about how you can make that role more interesting and challenging in a way that brings out their very best. Consider their strengths, their goals and the kind of work that they value.    Remember, a basketball coach would never put a 7-foot tall centre at point-guard and netball coach wouldn’t put a wing-defence at goal attack. They’d be doomed to failure. Think like a coach. How can you make the lives of your people better through role adjustment alone.    Now you’ve got the right people, get creative and smart so that they’re also in the right roles. Once you’ve done that, you’ll find an immediate boost to performance and energy across the team.    For more info check out www.chiefmaker.com.au/87

For more info check out www.chiefmaker.com.au/86 In our first five minisodes on leading high performance teams we built your mission and this was the vision, purpose, strategy, values and goals of your team. We’ll spend the next 5 weeks focusing on what makes it all happen - PEOPLE.  And to start off we’ll look at getting the RIGHT PEOPLE on your team. As Jim Collins said, “Get the right people on the bus and wrong people off the bus.”  In many ways, this is actually the first step. But in reality you need to keep checking in to see if you’ve got the right people. And so that is first question, if you think about your mission and the aspirational goals you’ve got, then straight up, do you have the team that can do that?  If your answer isn’t a confident yes, if there is someone who you’re unsure of that is nagging away at you then let’s look at it. Review your team and ask yourself, are we a title winning team. Who am I unsure about and is it their skill or their character?  This is something where you really have to follow your intuition. If they’re unhappy and causing trouble it’s likely their spreading their unhappiness throughout the team and everyone will be more than comfortable if you move them on. In fact, sometimes you’re doing them a huge favour…even if they don’t realise it in the moment. In the end, some people have gotten too toxic and it’s too hard for them to rescue their reputation in the time required. This takes courage and humility and resilience but all great chiefs ensure they have the right people on the bus at the beginning.  For a detailed review checkout www.chiefmaker.com.au/86

In our first four minisodes on leading high performance teams we built your vision, purpose, strategy and values. The final element in building the first major pillar of High Performance Teams is Goals. These are  the goals or metrics that will inform you on your progress and success.  Goals must be:  - Clearly defined and linked to other goals with a measure, target performance on a particular date - Must be aspirational targets with timeframes that result in a paradigm shift or significant change in performance - Relevant for those who will be working towards it...so people have a line of site from their work to the end target - You need to check for ecology to ensure that one goal isn’t likely to be sacrificed in the pursuit of another because of systems in the backend around remuneration and reward. E.g. you might talk all about measuring values but if bonuses or annual reviews don’t include a % around how they live the values then people won’t follow it. You also need to check for ecology across departments and ensure that different department goals aren’t going to cause them to battle against each other.  - Goals must be multi-dimensional and including Commercial, Operational, Business Improvement Projects Success, Customer Satisfaction, Marketing / Sales, Values & Culture Goals really do round out your Mission. It is time now to do something epic. Lead a turnaround boldly like a great chief and create an atmosphere people want to be apart of.  For more info check out www.chiefmaker.com.au/85

Our guest this week Golf Master Coach, Steve Bann on Coaching the world’s best golfers, confidence and the improvement lifecycle.   Here is what Stuart Appleby had to say about our guest. "I have worked with Steve Bann since I was 18 years old and he is my coach to this day. Steve has helped me shape my game in every aspect from the start and helped me win on the nationwide PGA tour and internationally. Steve is the most knowledgeable coach in the world and can help any golfer of any skill level achieve their goals."   Steve is a partner in BannLynchMcDade, and the team have coached their students to 29 USPGA Tour wins and multiple international amateur and professional titles. After turning professional in 1979, Steven played on the Australian PGA Tour from 1981 to 1996. Since 1996, Steve has travelled the world, coaching at over 40 Majors and five Presidents' Cups. His students, who have included, Stuart Appleby, K J Choi, Robert Allenby, and he has given lessons to many notables, including Ian Baker-Finch, Greg Norman, Vijay Singh, and Adam Scott. He is the author of Simply Golf: Back to Basics. Steve Bann, welcome to the show.   Quotes and Key Points Made by Steve Bann The one thing that we all had in common was we all loved to compete. We loved to play the game and loved to compete. We didn't have any technology. There was no high speed video cameras, and force plates, and launch monitors, and ... but we all found a way to play. The conditions of the golf courses were terrible. Some of them were dry, some of them were sloppy, so the grain on the grass ... Gravity's supposed to make the ball go that way, but the grain was so strong that it would actually go against the gravity. You just had to figure out your way of being able to score. Along the way, we learnt to deal with adversity. We learnt to find ways to get on with doing what we were trying to do, trying to do better, and were all pushing at each other, at a competitive level, and yet, we were all supporting each other. It was like a team. I think people focus on technique so much, because it's tangible. You can see it. Somebody hits a bad shot, you can say, "Oh, I hit that bad shot, because I did this. If I then work on fixing that, then I won't hit bad shots anymore." There's always something to work on. I'm too flat, I'm too upright, I'm swaying, I'm sliding, I'm spinning out. There's always something. An interesting stat is that there's more books written on golf technique than every other sport in the world combined, and yet, golfers still aren't improving. Focusing on technique, and I think you fall into that trap, which we call a reactive cycle. When something goes wrong, you're always trying to fix it. The reactive cycle is always trying not to do something, and that's not a good cycle to get on. In golfing terms, I hit a slice, I'm trying not to hit a slice. How do you fix a slice? You teach somebody to hook the ball. I was asked by the ESPN interview a few years ago, who I thought some of the great coaches in the world were, and I said I'd have to put Mike Furyk, Jim Furyk's dad, right up there, 'cause he's actually a golf coach. They said, "How could you say that?" I said, "'Cause Jim Furyk swings ... as David [inaudible 00:19:42] said, he swings like an octopus falling out of a tree." No one ever asks why the octopus was up there, but that's what it looks like. But he gets the job done. I've heard Mike Furyk say that, "Jim used to come down after school, hit some balls, I'd get him to hit some draws and fades, and highs and lows." He said, "I knew it didn't look right, but I didn't know enough about technique to try and fix anything, so I just let him go." To me, he's a great coach. He had him hitting shots, learning to play, didn't interfere and say, "You won't be able to play well until you do these things right." There's another world champion golfer for a long period of time who's done it his own way. I couldn't agree more. In golf, we bring it down to the technical, physical, tactical, and mental side, and if we use the improvement cycle model, the idea is ... Let's just say we can run one month improvement cycles. If you've got an improvement cycle going technically, physically, mentally, and strategically every month, times 12 every year, you have to be making progress. Make an assessment and ... The assessment's the important part to get right, because if we make an assessment and we come up with the incorrect conclusion, then we set ourselves on a pathway, which is going to be potentially a waste of time. But at least, at the end of that, if we reassess, we can then go, "Okay, that wasn't the right step forward." Make an assessment, set a goal, which has to be realistic, based on time and capability to be fair. There's no point setting goals that somebody probably isn't ready for and not capable of doing. Put activities in place to achieve that goal, come back and reassess. It's standard golf setting, but if you do it across one physical, one mental, one tactical … Just on that coffee and the diet, I've worked out very early on, that if I have a coffee before I play, I've got the yips on the first green. 'Cause you add the caffeine to the nervous anticipation of playing a sport, and then it's just, the whole thing is compounded. The big three in golf are hydration, caffeine, and sugar. We have to talk about confidence in a language that people understand and they get. We like to call it, knowing     I like to say that negative confidence works 100% of the time, and the unfairness of golfers' positive confidence, works between 50 and 70%. But negative works every time. Every time. The confidence is knowing, so we try to prepare to know, and the only way you can prepare to know, the difference between optimism and faith. They're closely linked. Self advocacy. All those things we need, self belief, we need all of those things to drive the confidence, but confidence is knowing, so you can't know something until you've actually experienced it, so how do we rehearse to experience it? In golf, technique. I say that technique is only 30% of confidence. You get your technique perfect and at best, you'll only be 30%. The next 30% is skills. In golf, there's 11 shot categories; driver, fairway, woods, long irons, mid irons, short irons, chipping, pitching, bunkers, and short, middle, long putts. There's 11 categories. There's about nine skills in each of those categories; high, low, normal, draw, fade, and straight. There's about eight [inaudible 00:33:58], and there's about eight different wins. There's about 6500 skills That's why getting back to the WAFWOM tour, that was ... we didn't realise what we were learning along the way, was to deal with all of these different skills and ways of, "Okay, when that happens, I do this, because last time it happened, I learnt from it," and that's what knowing is. By practising  all of the skills, so turning the technique into the skills gives us 60% of confidence. Well, hang on. Where's the next? Well, that's ... in golf, we call it testing. You've got to test something, you've got to put it into a test situation where you challenge it, and you test it, and you see whether it actually works. The biggest intimidation in golf is the boundaries. It's never the target. It's what's around the target is the intimidation, The four step routine is actually five, but the four steps is, number one, decide on the shot. You do an analysis of distance, wind, and all that sort of stuff. Number two, is prepare for the shot. When you're preparing for the shot, you're having your practise swings or you're visualising, theorising, you're preparing for the shot. Hopefully, you're repeating a swing that you know has succeeded in the past. This is just like that shot. Drawing on your memory bank. Number three, is the set up routine; grip, stance, ball, position, posture, and aim. Now you're setting up for that shot that you've decided on playing, prepared to play, set up to play. Step four in the routine, is the easiest thing to do and the hardest thing to do at the same time. The reason it is the easiest thing to do is 'cause there is no further thought required. The reason it is the hardest thing to do, is because there is no further thought required. You've got to get out of your way and trust and commit, and only you know, on every individual shot, whether you actually do that. Step four is hit it without rethinking it. I've heard Tiger Woods say in interviews after shooting over par, "Tiger, what went wrong today? You shot three over." "I was happy with my execution on every shot today." What he's talking about is he decided, he saw it, felt it, set up for it, and executed it ... it just didn't happen. It's knowing. Knowing. How do we create situations? First of all we have to imagine it and decide what we're going to do when it happens, but then prepare for it as much as possible, and have all of our contingencies in place. Then we just keep growing with that, but I think the most vital step, which these days most people understand the principles behind Everything that stays in our longterm memory is, because there was an emotional shift attached to it. We might remember a first bike, and our 12 year old birthday party, and all of those type of things. We don't know what we were doing the day before or the day after. Sometimes, we're too hard on ourselves and there's more emotion attached to our failures, negative emotions then, than there is to our successes. Eventually, in our memory bank, in that longterm memory bank, there's an imbalance. There's way more successes, but because we were prepared for that, that was going to happen anyway, we don't actually acknowledge it and anchor it as much as we I think Tiger Woods is brilliant at this. We see Tiger get angry and throw clubs, and curse, do all of those things, but we've seen, when he does something that only Tiger Woods does, gets super excited, and pumped up, and dance across the green pumping his fist. I said, "Tiger, you just holed a six foot putt. You've done that a million times." What's he doing? He's making sure that the emotional anchoring of that success outweighs the human anchor. I call it human, because we're human beings. Of course, you've got to get angry. You've got to get frustrated, because that's what drives you to get better, but if that's all we can remember, 'cause that's the only thing we have emotional shifts attached to, eventually, you just can't see yourself succeeding at anything. Learn to find out ... to simplify, to find out what works and stop doing all the stuff, all the filler around it that we think we have to do, because that's what's been done in the past. Why are we doing this stuff? How is it actually helping? So just filter out all the stuff that doesn't really help us get where we want to go. But a final message is, reframe learning to love what you do. The moment you stop loving what you do, I think that's when things start to unravel, and then we do start to react, and then motivation for doing things becomes, probably not the right motivation. If we love what we do and then we can analyse what we do and realise that so much of this stuff is just wasted time, and effort, and energy, I think they'll have a lot more fun.

In our first three minisodes on leading high performance teams we built your vision and purpose and then turned that into a strategy.  See more at www.chiefmaker.com.au/83 So your team now knows where they should be in two to three years and also why (your purpose) and how you’re getting there. Now the next question is “Who are we and what do we stand for? How will we be remembered?”  And this starts with shared values.  What are values?  Values are principles or standards of behaviour; one's judgement of what is important in life.In a team sense they grow from your shared spirit...the aspiration or shared principles you have for life and work. Often we forget that there are unwritten standards of behaviour that already exist. You have a culture based on the values already at work in your team. It can be seen the behaviours and actions of people everyday. It can be seen in the stories they tell, the rituals and traditions, the way they greet each other, how they respond when things go wrong and how they celebrate.    We cover:  - Where leaders get them wrong - What can happen if you get them right - How to bring them to life in your team in a simple 3 step process - Some examples of incredible values based leadership See more at www.chiefmaker.com.au/8

In a moment you and I will be joined by Peter Finn. Peter is the CEO and founder of Face Contracting who provide a range of quality, cost-effective solutions in mining, construction & manufacturing.   After starting out in mining, he has spent time as publican in regional Australia,   Now Finny is a true Aussie larrikin. A top bloke that I met at a podcasting conference last year. He also hosts ‘Full Production’ THE podcast for the mining industry.   We are going to cover everything from self-development to leading a growing company with presence around the world.   See more at www.chiefmaker.com.au/82  

In our first two minisodes on leading high performance teams we built your vision and purpose. So your team now knows where they should be in two to three years and also why (your purpose).   The next logical question is how? And this means pulling the right levers to make the biggest and most effective impact in your area.     For more info check out www.chiefmaker.com.au/81   Many executives make a critical error at the outset of leading a transformation. They don’t stand back and clearly assess the current situation, relying instead on a partial understanding of the environment in which they’re operating. This error costs them time and money, and it raises stress and resistance throughout the process.   Chiefs spend significant time precisely mapping the territory before they start. Rather than launching projects randomly, they apply deep understanding to the problem.   This mapping gives them an in-depth understanding of the economics, culture, and their team’s capabilities. They understand how the departments work together, the legal and market conditions, the technology in play, the finances, the service, and the operational numbers. They understand that they operate in a living and breathing system. Changes within this system have ripple effects that spread throughout the business. Thanks to broad and deep understanding of the operating environment, it is substantially more likely that, at the end of the transformation process, they end up with a smoothly operating system.   Remember, most of the time you’re not setting the whole company strategy. The CEO, executive team and board will most often lead that process which focuses heavily on how your organisation differentiates itself from competitors, which parts of the value chain you will optimise over others to maximise profit and how the organisation will leverage branding, pricing, market entry and exit etc.   What you’re leading is a critical department transformation that will ensure the success of the company and department vision. And there are generally four big levers to pull that will transform your department’s performance:   Talent – The right people with the right skills in the right jobs doing the right work (Refer back to the Entourage Chapter for more details) Culture – The operating rhythm, team work and trust, behavioural standards, quality of feedback, mindset for innovation, commitment to stakeholders and customers that drives flow and performance in the team Tools and Systems – The technology, processes, data and other tools that your people have which let’s them do their job to their full potential. Service / Operational Improvements – The list and design of services your department provides or operations it delivers and the economics (including pricing or cost), efficiency and quality control of those services or operations.   Stand back and assess your current department and ask yourself, “which of these is currently my biggest problem to achieve the department and organisational vision?”   Now that you have a clear understanding of the levers you want to pull they need to be turned into initiatives that will drive change. This should be fairly logical with a clear line of sight between a project and a performance lift. The most common pitfall here for leaders is not getting the sub-projects right, it’s doing too many.   This is the crux of the issue. This is why so many attempts to lead transformation fail right at the beginning. Overload. They create so much busy-ness and activity that its impossible to do it all and none of them succeed.   Chiefs courageously cut through conflicting interests to set clear priorities. Those destined to spend their entire careers struggling ineffectually in management positions let everything happen at once. It’s a recipe for certain failure.     Laser focus is necessary to make change powerful and lasting. Tackle one issue at a time. This doesn’t mean combining a number of projects so that it feels or looks like you’re only pulling one lever when, in fact, you’re pulling many of them. When you’re trying to spin too many plates, there are consequences. Everything comes crashing down. Quality suffers, innovation dries up, there’s poor stakeholder management, stress, missed deadlines and budget blowouts. Projects get cancelled each time you switch strategic direction, and those in your department are left weary and wary of more change.   Have patience and sequence different levers after each other. This way, each new initiative leverages off the improvements of the previous ones. There are often unexpected consequences (some good, some bad) that come in change’s wake. These developments might make the next change in line inappropriate or ineffective. At the end of each change initiative, reset as a team and (when necessary) reprioritise. New benefits might be leveraged in powerful ways. There might be quick and easy wins that you’re leaving on the table if you move too quickly from one initiative to the next.   Remember as well to underpin the whole change process with sound project management and a governance rhythm to ensure everyone maintains alignment and the focus on driving the results continues. It says a lot about a person if they can focus on driving highly complex change processes (and stay focused in the midst of them). It tells those above you that you’re smart, that you’re willing to make tough calls when necessary, and that you understand how to turn theory into practice. It is one of the skills that Chiefs possess.   Time to weave it all together. The All Blacks and Football Federation Australia have both created beautiful examples of vision, purpose and strategy all integrated and working brilliantly in the real world.   For more info check out www.chiefmaker.com.au/81

In today’s episode we meet Ronsley Vaz.   Ronsley is a speaker, author and marketer. He is the author of the book AMPLIFY – How to raise your voice, boost your brand and grow your business. His podcast, ‘Bond Appetit’, is Australia’s #1 food podcast on iTunes and receives between eight and twelve thousand listeners a day. Ronsley is also the founder of content marketing agency Amplify, which has grown from zero to twelve staff in just ten months.   Ronsley sits on the board for freetoshine.org, an organisation that prevents sex trafficking. He has an MBA in Psychology and Leadership and a Master's in Software Engineering as well as a Diploma in Financial Services. Ronsley’s journey has seen him specialise in a variety of different industries. Before killing it as an entrepreneur, he worked as a DJ, software engineer, financial adviser, restaurateur and chef.   His newest venture, Amplify, is all about converting audio into a content-marketing echo chamber. He and his team help clients create content and turn it into genuine assets that allow their businesses to grow.   We cover: The labels we carry and boxes we put ourselves in that stop us growing How to find your inner voice and execute The future of the audio world Knowing your impact on your team maintain empathy Dropping entitlement syndrome   See more at  www.chiefmaker.com.au/80

Last minisode we spoke about Vision which is the what you’re going to achieve. The destination. Purpose is all about your why, your spirit, serving the greater good.   Simon Sinek, author of “Start with Why” says, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”   And that goes for people buying your products and people buying into your business or team plans.   If you don’t put purpose at the heart of what you do you’ll never know what it’s like to have someone in your team go the extra mile for the team.   You can find our more at www.chiefmaker.com.au/79   How Does purpose give us energy and make us kick out of bed in the morning?     Purpose unleashes oxytocin, serotonin and dopamine because when we do something significant that is for the benefit of others and the world these so called Happy Chemicals release into the body making us feel great and improve our bodies immune system and flow.   Every time I’ve had a huge week and it gets to Friday and I need to record a minisode I picture someone listening in their car and on the train and that they get just one thing from it that changes their approach and then it ripples. This get my juices flowing...and sparks me with energy.   No purpose and all business leads to a stail existence. One where stress and overwhelm thrive. This is the land of Cortisol a stress hormone that is more like the unhappy drug.   When we live with purpose everyone around us starts to the thrive and feel happy. You see when we see other people doing good things for others it triggers the happy chemicals too. Not only that but when we do it as a team the ripple effect of our work can change the world.   Get your team together and ask: How can we make the world a better place because of our work? What are all the things we do or can be doing to? What are the causes we are passionate about? Who can we serve and make their life better? Sometimes it can help to flip it on its head and ask yourselves what annoys you? What articles do you read that fire you up?   The next step is then connect this with your Vision. If you can align your Vision and Purpose then mountains can be moved.   Let’s remember the NASA Story, President John F Kennedy set the vision and goals, “We chose to the go to the moon. To send mankind to the moon and bring them safely back to earth again within the decade.”   Then he incorporated the purpose. “We mean to be a part of it--we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.”   Without purpose your life and work will feel heartless, soulless and all business. The running around will not make sense. You’ll constantly feel like your just in the rat-race and search for an out. But put it in your life and it’ll all feel worthwhile. You’ll be more resilient, more focused and just more happy and everyone will see it. They’ll always remember that you had values and character and cared more about the planet and others than yourself and profit.   This is the way of GREAT chiefs.   You can find our more at www.chiefmaker.com.au/79

This week you and I are joined by Siobhan Hayden, the COO and Board Advisor of HashChing a progressive and innovative fintech start-up. HashChing is Australia’s first online marketplace for customers to access verified mortgage brokers.   Siobhan is also a Director of Running for Premature Babies and former CEO of The Mortgage & Finance Association of Australia (MFAA) the peak industry body providing service and representation to more than 12,500 Professional Finance Brokers.   We cover: How she rose from bluecollar roots to lead one of the most exciting fin-tech businesses What she learnt from becoming a black belt in multiple martial arts forms How to stop being a victim and accelerate your career How to look at the person in the mirror and like what you see Full show notes at chiefmaker.com.au/78

Leading HP Teams - Part 1 - Vision www.chiefmaker.com.au/77 Over the next 25 weeks I’m going to share the 25 elements that form the Chief Maker HP Teams - Tx Model. The aim is that every Monday we’ll introduce one element so you can spend the week focusing on improving it even just 5 or 10%. After 25 weeks you should have made real world progress and have a measurably higher performing team. These 25 elements fall under the 5 pillars of the Chief Maker HP Teams model are: Mission People Culture Tools Execution A MISSION A clear vision and goals steeped in a bigger purpose with a clear strategy & metrics to align the group PEOPLE We have the right people with the right capability in the right roles CULTURE Our team is united,constantly improving in a challenging and enjoyable environment. TOOLS My people have the systems, processes and hardware to perform their role with excellence EXECUTION We have strong governance of our transformation to keep the clock ticking To kick things off over the next 5 weeks we’ll focus on your team Mission which has 5 critical elements. Vision (What) Purpose (Why) Strategy & Tactical Plan (How) Values & Identity (Who) Goals (Proof)   CRAFTING YOUR VISION All teams must have a vision. It must be crystal clear. Imagine for a minute you’re building a house and you have some workers turn up. You wouldn’t just say, "we are build a art-deco modern house, now let’s go to it.”   No, you’d givem them a detailed set of drawings, with descriptions of fittings and everything so they know exactly what they have to do with their time. A vision isn’t just a strap line. It should be co-developed into a colourful picture of the future, full of symbols and written stories of where you will be when the vision is achieved. It is proudly shared and hung on the walls throughout the work spaces and anyone can describe what you aim to achieve over the next 2 - 5 years. It captures your true spirit and aspirations as a team and leaves a legacy that everyone is proud of Cameron Herold, COO Alliance, NY Times Bestselling Author advocatess developing a Vivid Vision. It’s a detailed, three to four page document that lays out a clear, logical vision of what your company will look like in three years. When completed, it’s meant to be woven into your company’s or team’s culture, guiding your employees decision making and giving all involved clear goals to strive for. Usually, creating a Vivid Vision is a very involved process that can take quite some time to get right. For a large business that should be as long as six months to get right for smaller teams with less complex challenges it can be shorter. He offers these tips when developing your vision: It’s important not to get caught up in the ‘how’ of things. Instead, dream big and worry about the ‘how’ later You’ll need to be free of the day-to-day worries of running your business. You need freedom to visualize your future Get out of your office and go somewhere inspiring where you can let your mind wander Turn off your computer. No matter how much willpower you have, the temptation of email or web surfing will be a distraction Get out of your comfort zone, think out side the box—choose whatever cliché works for you. Just be creative, even outlandish. You’ll be amazed at what you can come up with. It’s a sure fire way to create a fun, dynamic vision you and your team will love to strive for. Your focus for this week is as step one in building a high performance team is look at your teams vision.  - How crystal clear is it? - Is it aspirational enough that is challenges the group to be better? - Has everyone bought into it and is across it? - Does is it align to the wider business? Your vision becomes a vital filter for all decision-making and strategy development. So give it the time, energy and investment required. All GREAT chiefs spend a lot of time here and get very good at vision development.

In this week’s Chief interview we meet CEO of WTRI, Dr. Lia DiBello.   Lia is a global leader in accelerated learning and business expertise. She leads her team to build cutting edge cognitive science into products that can improve performance in business while at the same time advancing research.   We cover: What is accelerated learning How can we cut the 10,000 hour rule to 16 hours The number one mistake most leaders make in their learning that is costing them How anyone can rapidly increase their rate of learning and improve business outcomes   See more at www.chiefmaker.com.au/76   More about Dr Lia DiBello   Lia is best known for the development of a particular kind of activity-based “strategic rehearsal” approach that has been shown to greatly accelerate learning through cognitive reorganization. Studies of over 7000 people at all levels exposed to DiBello’s methods indicate that learning was accelerated by several months in all cases. Other studies indicate that unprecedented performance improvements and significant competitive advantages were achieved by companies using DiBello’s methods. The method is now used globally in four continents in industries as diverse as mining, transportation, financial services, IT implementation, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals as well as others. Numerous articles and books have been published on its business benefits and theoretical significance in cognitive science.   She is also the innovator behind the FutureView™ Profiler, which has been recognized as a theoretical and methodological breakthrough in knowledge elicitation and executive intelligence.   Since she started directing the research at WTRI, she has been the recipient of 17 basic research funding awards from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and The Russell Sage Foundation.  

Today, we will cover 7 vital steps that leaders often get wrong in leading transformation but when they get them right it accelerates change and makes it far less stressful.   For full summary go to: www.chiefmaker.com.au/75   A very trusted friend of our family is the COO of a national law firm. In the first paragraph of his profile he outlines his expertise in professional services firm leadership. He details how, as COO, he led a company from $3M turnover to over $100M in 8 years. Those are some seriously impressive numbers. They demand attention and they give him immediate credibility when he walks in the room. Few executives ever rise to the top without leaving behind them a clear record of transformation. CEOs are looking for leaders who can demonstrate how they’ve innovated, led significant change and succeeded without leaving a trail of destruction. Everything up to this point has been preparing you to make a standout impression when your target CEO is reviewing candidates for an executive position. A track record of transformation makes you pop off the page at the resume stage and gives you the real-world stories of transformation you can describe in interviews—ones you can back up with hard numbers. A track record of success is the rocket fuel of any upward career trajectory. It builds unrivalled credibility and magnetically attracts exciting new opportunities. It shows you can unite people to a cause and smash politicking and bureaucracy. It does much more than make a jump to the executive team achievable—it makes it inevitable. But in reality if you’re doing it just for your career you’re in it for the wrong reasons. In the words of Jack London, ““I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.” —Jack London All great Chiefs are dissatisfied with the status quo. They want to be one turn ahead of their competitors, so they apply a critical lens to everything, even what is currently working tolerably well. They know that present success guarantees nothing. There’s no such thing as a future-proof strategy. Standing still is the same thing as lying down and waiting to be buried. Most managers know that they have to lead transformation to make that next big leap in their careers, but making the change happen in the real world is a complex task riddled with pitfalls. Whole books have been written on Leading and navigating change and the work of John Kotter and others is a solid base that all leaders should know.    Today, we will cover 7 vital steps that leaders often get wrong in leading transformation but when they get them right it accelerates change and makes it far less stressful.   I’ve been in the trenches and coached teams from losing to making millions. I’ve done it in multiple industries and continents. I’ve seen first hand where it goes wrong...and how the incredible strain on those leading the change. The teams and chiefs I’ve worked with that got it right are some of the most inspiring people I’ve met. It has been truly a privilege to play a support role to their enormous efforts. The reason I have picked these is because in the trenches of significant change this is where most leaders really struggle or make a critical mistake that costs them victory or delays it for long periods.     They are:  Assess the current situation first Set a vision and strategy that unites the leadership team the keep checking in Be courageous and bold Deeply engage stakeholders Raise the bar on standards Set a clear and right sized tactical plan Make it fun and a rich human experience For full summary go to: www.chiefmaker.com.au/75

Out guest this week is Sara Chamberlain, who along with her sister Amy created Australia’s premier property styling company, The Real Estate Stylist, in under 4 years. The business has grown from effectively a one sofa enterprise to now employing 15 staff with a multi million dollar turnover and a list of discerning property owners and A-listers including Rebecca Judd, Zoe Foster Blake and the Australia’s elite. Launching yet another two businesses under this umbrella since 2013 the group now includes The Artwork Stylist and The Apartment Stylist.   The Real Estate Stylist is considered the property styling experts in Australia regularly called upon for collaborations and comment with Real Estate.com, Domain, and The Collective.   A serial entrepreneur, Sara has being in business for 15 years, launching her first internationally stocked homewares range at just 21. Sara has bought and sold businesses, worked on the world’s largest advertising accounts in London, (including Coke-a-Cola, Cadbury and Pizza Hut) doubled the turnover of a retail store in under 18 months, launched a business coaching seminar series, published a small business strategy guide and trained as an executive coach.   Full details at www.chiefmaker.com.au/74   We cover: How the stories we tell us reflect the life we live How she built resilience through brutally tough health issues as a child The importance of knowing your business and not making your hobby your business Knowing your customer and ensuring it is a human to human experience Being curious and not knowing it all Being a thoroughbred and unemployable How she grew her business by knowing the numbers and strategy   Key Quotes and Points by Sara   We are always in our own mind, and what we tell ourselves is what we believe, and what we believe is what we manifest   My entire mindset was driven by my mother's resounding, compelling belief that her daughter was absolutely fine, and I'll pick her up and I'll take her back to Wagga, and she will be 100% normal and she will miss all of year three at primary school, and she'll just pick up and walk into year four again. That's exactly what happened. I've never ever really wanted to follow the doctor's orders anyway. I'm a complete rebel by definition. Doctor's would say come and see us again in 12 months, and I would just delete their number.   Look, I just don't like playing by the rules. I think you really have to be able to listen to your body, listen to your intuition, listen to your instinct, and then go and show them what you're made of. Do whatever you want to do. Look, I've always felt like I was in a rush to run the world. That's been like a fire within me for a very long time.   I always set it up with the intention of not needing me to run it, that an investor couple could've just come in and sweep it up no matter what the writing on the wall was around the financial economy.   It's not in my makeup, and you can't do that. I mean I think that comes back to that inner child rebel in me that was like if you told me that I couldn't do something, or I wasn't capable of doing something, then it was like a double dare   I am pretty adamant about the fact that I'm a business person first and a stylist at the moment, second.   "Don't go outside of your area of expertise, and don't make your business your hobby." Sorry, "Don't make your hobby your business." Apologies.   "It would be remiss of us to encourage you in any way, shape or form, to consider a career change or an opportunity if we didn't understand what ... and if you didn't understand what your personal definition of happiness and success looks like, what your goals are, what your risk assessment is, how your family will support you, what skills you can draw upon to bring this into fruition. This is not a game guys. This is your actual life. This is your family, this is your mortgage, this is your children's future and your financial security. This is probably one of the most serious conversations you're going to have. If you think you're here to learn about cushion, you've got another thing coming."   "It's not about starting up, it's about staying up."   From a strategy perspective, I think that any business is really only as good as its data. I think you really need to have an understanding of your numbers and what is your important points. So for us we've spent a long time getting a handle on what the figures look like for us. I'm not talking figures in P&L sense. I'm talking figures in if you pull this lever, how does that impact on our overall ability to deliver a product?   I don't think there's really a bum on seat in any job that doesn't necessarily think that technology could maybe come along in some way, shape or form, and improve how they operate.   We spend too much time comparing ourself to others. So the questions that they need to ask themselves is, who are they and what is it that make them happy in their life already?   The way that you overcome boredom is start setting yourself some goals again. Start looking at some of the things that you actually enjoy. When you're not at work, what are some things that get you interested? Are you listening to podcasts around a particular subject? Is there something in a meeting at work that comes up that makes you think, "I'd like to know a little bit more about that?" Is there somebody in another sector in your business that is doing something that you actually end up talking about in the pub?   I think we become complacent that technology is a tool that will replace the human relationships in the sales space, and by sending something through to somebody and making the assumption that that has been received, read and understood, you're doing yourself a really big disservice.   The only way you're really going to make cut through, is committing yourself to an ongoing personal relationship, and driving a sense of understanding around what that consumer needs. So we say in your team often, "People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care." The first time you ask them, "What's in this for you? How can we help you meet your target?" Because everyone else has got somebody else on their back, and every single person has a deadline to meet and a budget to hit and a criteria that they have to do, in order for their performance to be what it needs to be for them within their company structure.   So I say to my team, if somebody can't hit that budget, it's not because they don't want to spend the money, it's because they don't have either the authority or we haven't hit the criteria in that proposal. So you need to understand what that is. Well, when did we foster a culture where everybody believe that they have to pretend they know everything? What happened to asking the question of, "I don't know?" And if you can sit there in a meeting and you can drop that guard and say, "I actually don't know that. Can you explain that to me? Can you give me some more insight, how does that work? I'm curious about that." Am I looking forward to coming into work, and am I looking forward to going home?   I think we have to appreciate that what you're doing with your time and how many hours you are committing to your work environment, you really want to be enjoying that. You really want to be able to say that you didn't just go through the motions for 40 years. I think we're moving away from the early days where everyone just had to get a job and they stuck to that job.   I mean my poor father would be an example of that, he hates being a liquidator, but he had graciously done that to support his family in the way that he has. There are opportunities these days to create your own journey, and to ask a lot more questions around what makes you happy in order for you to have some fulfilment at work, because it's going to be important in your overall healthiness and health. I think that's really important.

Life in the chaos of the modern business world can be crushingly difficult. Many of those caught in the machine describe the daily grind as “soul destroying”. They work hard all day, every day on an endless list of tasks at work and home. It might be politics, red tape and antiquated systems frustrating them, or they might just sense that there has to be more to life than this. Many of them feel like they need to escape, but escape isn’t the answer. They know the solution is a purposeful and impactful career and a life of significance that doesn’t come at the cost of one’s soul. Many of them see Chiefs who are living this life. They want the same thing, so they strive to be Chiefs themselves (or at least their dream role). They drive for that title which will give them the authority to make big change. The life of a Chief can look glamorous. Not only do they have the powerful roles, they are also honoured guests at the best events, they are connected to powerful and influential people, and they have the power to make wide-ranging changes with the stroke of a pen. Great Chiefs haven’t just walked into these roles, though. Their lives have been anything but a walk in the park. The best have embraced a tough journey that has pushed their mental toughness and adaptability to their limits. The best have been forged in the fires of hard-won, tough-fought lessons. And this is what strikes you when you spend time with the great Chiefs: there is a different essence at their core. They aren’t interested in playing political games. Instead, they take a scalpel to bureaucracy and generate profits through purpose. Their ability to get results combines with dignity and humility, which gives them a calming presence. When this presence is united with their vision, well…that is when the magic happens. It’s so easy to think that Chiefs are smarter, better connected or more engaging than you, but their intelligence and relationships, while undeniably important, are only a part of their success. Chiefs become Chiefs not because they are lucky with intelligence or networks, but because they have taken to heart a powerful philosophy: ownership precedes victory. They own the outcomes of every challenge they face, relationship they enter, and business they lead. Whether the outcome is success or failure, they are accountable. They demand responsibility for it and they will not share the blame with others. The qualities and habits that make one a Chief are not innate. They are learned. The method I’ll share today is a what I covered in my book which is now an Amazon bestseller in careers. It teaches you how to become a Chief. It contains a blueprint for personal and professional mastery in the corporate world. By following the blueprint, you’ll learn to make a noticeable impact, and this will help you rise above your competition and earn a seat on the executive team. You’ll rise above the politics and overload rampant in the corporate world. You’ll learn how to become a master of yourself and your profession. It isn’t a quick fix, it will take serious hard work and lots of soul searching. But this will make your victory all the sweeter. The 5-Step Chief Maker GREAT Method drills down on the issues that so many of those in senior management roles are dealing with. These are the issues your peers talk about time and again: • You have no time. You’re overloaded with commitments at work and home. You don’t feel as though you’re controlling your destiny. • You’re tired of fighting for respect, tired of trying to prove your point. • You don’t feel connected. You don’t have friends in high places. • Your team is predominantly made up of average performers. You and a small handful of strong performers on your team carry the load and fix others’ mistakes. • You can’t escape the bureaucracy and career-killing politics. • You can’t find the time for personal growth. Since you’re not mastering your craft, career growth has stalled. • Your personal and professional lives are out of balance, which is impacting your family and your physical and mental health. • You feel like you’re drifting, as though your career trajectory is entirely out of your hands. • You’re no longer sure if you even want a C-Level role. It looks like it requires more sacrifice than you can afford. Deep down, you’re only half-heartedly committed to becoming a Chief. If any of these issues resonate with you, this framework is for you. Over the past 15 years I’ve searched the planet for the most powerful, results-driving performance strategies. I’ve coached CEOs of multi-billion dollar listed companies around the globe. I’ve helped sporting legends like Martina Natratilova to coach top tennis players and Super Rugby teams reach peak performance levels. I’ve taught the world’s best coaches how to get the absolute best out of their athletes, and I’ve helped doctors and emergency response teams become better lifesavers. After a decade of coaching at all levels of business and at the top of elite sport, I was able to distil the most effective peak-performance strategies into a small set of repeatable behaviours. These are the behaviours that separate the career middle managers from the Chiefs. In business, in sport and in life, Chiefs do something different, and these behaviours can be learned. That observation is what drove me to write my book and share a 5 step process that I call the GREAT method to help anyone accelerate their career. I’ve tested these five steps over more than a decade at the top of business and elite sport, and they get the desired results time and again. Whether it was in the world of business or in sport, whenever an elite performer came to me wanting a competitive edge, these were the five steps we went back to just about every time. This is a system that produces game-changing results: 1. Game Plan 2. Routine 3. Entourage 4. Assets 5. Track Record   www.chiefmaker.com.au/73

In this episode we talk with CEO of SalesITV Dean Mannix on overcoming your limitations to live a bigger life and selling like the best in the world   Full details at www.chiefmaker.com.au/72   ABOUT DEAN He is the author of Australia’s largest library of video sales and service training and has delivered sales performance projects in over 25 countries. Dean is recognised as one of Australia’s leading sales performance coaches with 30 years of legal, finance, sales and management experience. He advises, coaches and trains senior executives from many of the world’s leading corporations. He has also been the CEO of a leading property development and childcare management company which he built to a team of 140 employees. He then developed and led a highly successful sales team in the technology space and simultaneously grew his consulting business. Dean has an Executive MBA from the AGSM and he is also a qualified Yoga teacher.   He is now the CEO of SalesITV. We cover: - How we coped with the murder of his father at 15 - How we built a multi-million dollar childcare business and then lost it all by 26 - How we has become the trusted sales coach of the world's biggest companies - Resilience and living a better life - The most important steps to sell like the best in the world   Full details at www.chiefmaker.com.au/72

In this episode we talk about : • why your boss is your #1 customer • What happens when they’re not • How to make them your biggest ambassador  www.chiefmaker.com.au/71 This starts with a simple question: Who is your customer?  When I asked one of my clients this question, he said, “My team. My job is to make their jobs as easy as possible.”  “Do they approve your salary and bonuses?” I asked. “Well, no”, he said, hesitating. “My boss approves that.” “Who is your true customer then?” The revelation stopped him in his tracks because it runs counter to contemporary management fads to think of your boss as your true customer. We’ve been taught that we should think of our team members as our customers, but this is looking at it the wrong way around. Your team is the vendor. Your boss is your customer. Turning your thinking around like this will help you see who you need to serve better (i.e., your boss) and who you can expect more from (i.e., your vendors). When we look at our team as though they were our customers (rather than service providers to both you and the company), we accept poor performance from them far too readily. Of course, this doesn’t mean you should stop developing them and providing them with a high-performance work environment, but by serving them instead of your boss as your customers, you are doing yourself (and your career) a disservice.  Start viewing your boss as your customer and you’ll do everything you can to make sure they are a raving fan. This is what will move you to the top of the list when you are being considered for promotion.  In a career sense, it pays to start approaching your boss as though they were your customer for three main reasons:  • You’ll grow with them. In other words, if they’re successful in their role and future roles, not only are they going demand more of you, but when they get a promotion they’re going to lift you up the corporate ladder with them.  • The better you make your boss look, the more likely it is that those in the position to promote you will want to see you in positions that can make them look good. • A happy boss can make the daily grind feel downright pleasant.  • If you’re effectively serving your boss and effectively serving the company in perfect alignment  Let’s be honest, if your customer isn’t happy, how much of an impact are you going to have? If your customer isn’t happy, how happy can you possibly be?  One my clients, Rob, was having credibility issues with his boss, the COO. “She is difficult to connect with”, he told me one day. “I never know where I stand. I just don’t think she sees the value in me.”  The deeper truth that Rob was missing was that he was solving the wrong problems. He was focused on his problems which he thought the COO should be focusing on rather than listening and gaining deeper understanding of what the COO felt the biggest problems in the business were.   The moment he started to look at the COO as though she were his customer, his whole approach to messaging changed. He wrote a detailed profile on the COO. What were her real problems? What was keeping her up at night? What were the CEO, shareholders and the market demanding of her?  Rob worked out that the three biggest pain points for the COO were safety, unstable operations, and difficulty in keeping other team members on track. The last of these was a major issue. Team members were constantly drifting off into non-mission critical activities and not working together.  Rob immediately started framing his messages around solving these problems. Whereas before he would say, “We’re implementing a new governance system for our projects to ensure they are kept to scope, time and budget and our new operational standards are being rolled out”,  now he would say,  “Our new operational standards are being implemented with a focus on their relationship to safety and stabilising production. We have initiated a fortnightly managers meeting to keep everyone focused on the most valuable work. We have also announced that we are pausing or cancelling several non-critical projects.”  Rob’s work focus changed only marginally, but by turning his messaging on its head, he was demonstrating to his customer that he understood her problems.  At an executive team meeting less than three weeks later, the COO told Rob (and everybody else in the room) that he was doing a brilliant job and that there were other opportunities they were going to send his way. This was a big change for Rob. He was definitely not being positioned like this previously.  Best of all, by solving his boss’s problems, Rob solved the company’s problems at an even higher level. The COO and the executive team had their own set of daily challenges, and by addressing one of them, Rob’s changes had company-wide impact.  By thinking about the role above his, Rob was able to connect with her boss and solve his problems, and as these positive effects rippled outward, word quickly spread among the executive team. Rob had developed a reputation as a leader worth considering for promotion.  The most effective way to do this is to develop an in-depth understanding of the problems that your boss faces daily.  • What are their biggest day-to-day issues at work and home?  • What are their biggest fears about their work and career?  • What are the consequences if they don't get the results they're after?  • What do you need to change to really get on track in serving them?  The more clarity you have in terms of your customers’ wants and needs, the more likely it will become that you’ll be able to address these issues. They key elements of this customer profile are as follow: You don’t need to be a psychic to get accurate answers to these questions. You just need to talk to your customer. Buy them lunch, take them for a drink after work, or take them for a coffee early in the day. The more you know about them, the more likely it is that you’ll be able to get inside their head (and this is where you have to be if you are going to make the most of this exercise). Ask them about their work, and listen carefully to their answers. What is the subtext of what they’re saying? Pay particularly close attention to complaints or other signs of frustration.  If your first profile doesn’t work, you might have missed a core customer problem, or you might not be making it obvious to them that you are solving or have solved their problem. Like we learned from Rob, a change in messaging can have powerful knock on effects.  The final step here is that once you know what your boss’ biggest challenges are then go the extra mile and exceed their expectations. I mean make them your biggest ambassador. This doesn’t mean being a suck-up. No one likes that. It is easy to see. Just do such an incredibly good job they can’t help but be impressed by you.  Recently I helped two leaders land their first ever executive team roles. They both came to me with similar problems...they weren't in the hunt for the role. But we turned the tide around by immediately getting inside identifying the key members of the interview panel and then getting inside their heads. We did a detailed profile on the CEO and looked at the way they could pitch for the role. And now they are both in the C-Suite. Huge moves. Talk about fist pumping moments for them.  The most beautiful thing i’ve found about this process is that it shifts your whole emotional experience from back foot to front foot. It goes from negative to positive. Now you’re focused on delivering, being great and you get your head in the game. That’ll flow with a better vitality and energy in your work.  I know that this shift has been huge game changer for countless people I’ve coached. 

In this episode we talk with Know How Group Founder and CEO Bushy Martin on success, playing the long game and living like every day will be your last.     Full details at www.chiefmaker.com.au/70 SPONSOR: This episode is brought to you by The Build a Better Agency Podcast with Drew McLellan. The podcast has a new episode every week that helps small to mid-sized agency owners and leaders ensure that their agency is future proofed, scalable and more profitable than ever before. Search Build a Better Agency podcast on your podcast player or google   ABOUT BUSHY Bushy is the founder of the Know How Group. His team helps time poor professionals that don't know who to trust or where to start to replace their income through property. But, much more than that, Bushy is the author of Freedom Formula, a killer book I read cover to cover, the host of Get Invested Podcast, and avid property investor, and just an all around top bloke. In this episode we'll talk about his journey from being completely broke to being financially free in 15 years, how he wrestled crocodiles in Papua New Guinea, how he started and built a successful business, and a life full of interesting stories.   QUESTIONS I ASK BUSHY MARTIN: Tell us about your time in Papua New Guinea working with crocodile farmers and living wild What did you learn about yourself when your marriage broke up and your father died? What is the freedom formula? How can people build additional wealth without investing or creating new revenue streams?   CONNECT WITH BUSHY MARTIN: www.khgroup.com.au Call Bushy and his on on +61-8-8383-6990 Email [email protected] Listen to the Get Invested Podcast here. Buy Bushy’s book here.   Connect with the KH Group

In this episode we talk about how to create clarity everyday and how that will help you with confidence, beating imposter syndrome and making smart decisions. www.chiefmaker.com.au/69   The speed and complexity of the modern world is not a natural environment for our brains. It can too easily lead to overwhelm and feeling like you’re a little lost at sea. Our brains are designed for singular focus and by pouring a constant stream of emails, social media, news onto our normal busy lives it is a recipe for confusion and a scattergun approach to our work. We simply lose focus. There are three important methods for creating clarity in your life and career. Having this clarity in your mind is comforting. Is helps keep you composed and when key decisions or events come along your response is more effective and inspiring.   The three methods are:   Diagnostics The world is full of diagnostics that help people and teams analyse complex systems. The medical profession, personality models, culture surveys and manufacturing plant diagnostics help us rise above the detail and see how things are performing in relation to each other and a benchmark. It’s the higher level view this creates which is so important. It helps us understand, have clarity and know what to do next. In every coaching engagement I enter into we start with a diagnostic be it a High Performance Team survey, 360 feedback or Chief Maker Scorecard. All these provide immediate information to help with a better coaching outcome and rapidly reduces the time to understand a situation. It also gives everyone something to talk too, get on the same page and benchmark performance so you can see how the action you take improves the overall outcome.   Frameworks and Mental Models The second key elements are the analytical frameworks or mental models you use to understand and respond to the world. When tricky or complex scenarios at work arise having these frameworks at  your disposal allows you to quickly and effectively respond using a proven pathway. They foster calm and ask people to consider all the angles of a given issue or initiative. This might be simple models like SWOT or a PESTLE analysis or more details approach like a full Project Management Lifecycle or Six Sigma Analysis.   The more of these you have stored away in your mental arsenal the better you are able to respond in the real world. Of course, as you rise up the corporate ladder the types of models you need to apply shift more towards strategy development, vision, values, culture change models, coaching models and financial analysis. The whole game shifts from the technical models that you used early in your career. So you need to re-educate yourself to thrive at the higher levels.   Mindmaps & Systems Diagrams The final tool I use religiously are mindmaps and system diagrams. In the words of business guru Edwards Deming, “If you can’t describe what you’re doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.”   Mindmaps, process maps and more detailed system diagrams allow you to accurately represent a complex system visually so you can stand back and look at the bottlenecks or pain points. Any personal mindmap, business plan-on-a-page or system diagram will immediately allow everyone to have greater clarity and to focus in on the most important pain points for them and the business as a whole.   When these three key methods are combined you’ll grow in comfort in your own ability and that you’re leading a team along the right path. Without these tools you’ll spend valuable time and energy guessing your next move and that can cost you confidence and bring imposter syndrome back to the table.   Stay epic Greg

In this episode, we explore the three powerful techniques to recenter the soul and mind.   It is also part 2 of how to overcome imposter syndrome which we discussed in Ep 65 Imposter Syndrome.   Full notes here: www.chiefmaker.com.au/67   The soul can easily get lost as sea in the modern business world. With the incredible pace of business and life it is easy to lose connection to yourself. When you lose this it rattles your confidence and belief that you should be in the position you’re in. So it plays a key role in beating imposter syndrome. It is also vital to get right if you want to feel composed, present and have that sense of gravitas so many of us find elusive.   There are three major ways to recenter the soul and mind: Regular Focus Session Once or twice per week set aside an hour and give yourself the opportunity to deeply reconnect to your soul, purpose, vision and strategy.   This is best done in a few key steps: 20 mins of meditating and calming the mind 20 mins of reviewing your purpose, vision and strategy 20 mins of planning and rehearsing for the week ahead   This is much like a ship’s Captain who regulularly takes their bearings, heads down to their quarters and plots their progress. They take time to take stock, review the impact of the weather, tides and performance of their crew.   At the end of this session, you’re seeking absolutely clarity on the week ahead and also a sense that you’re reconnected to your purpose and soul.   Mini Resets Throughout the day when things get really busy use these three powerful and simle tools to reset the mind.   Rhythm Using the speed of your footsteps, slow down and speed up your rhythm as required. Perhaps as you are walking towards a key meeting slow the steps down, demonstrate composure and calmness. Breathing Going hand-in-hand with rhythm is your rate of breathing. Taking small moments throughout the day to reset your breathing resets the mind and your state. Try a perfectly even breathing rate of 2 seconds in, 1 second pause, 2 seconds out, 1 second pause and repeat just 5 ties. You’ll find that in 30 seconds you’re entire state has shifted. Posture The final link in this chain is your posture. You’ll find that by adopting a very well grounded and centred posture you’ll experience and associated shift in state.   Mindsets and Mantras Put a few of your favourite quotes and mantras into your back pocket so that you can whip them out when appropriate. Some that I love are: Slow is smooth, smooth is fast I keep putting money into the global bank and it keeps paying me back with interest A problem shared is a problem halved Start with why   In truth, I have dozens that I use. Would love to hear yours.   The key here is to create a regular rhythm. Without the rhythm you lose the fitness and like a captain not checking their bearings will drift right off course far from your destination and purpose.