Women at the Top.....again 

We have had the 'leaning in' argument from Sheryl Sandberg, (read this for an interesting male response to her talk) and then there is Marissa Mayer telling us we can have it all.  It is all quite exhausting listening to these highly successful and powerful women telling us what we should be doing.  

Now Bea Perez, Coca-Cola's chief sustainability officer has joined the fray, saying that women entrepreneurs need to be more visible.  "Investing in women is one of the most powerful ways to spur sustainable economic growth and development" she said at Coca-Cola's webchat for their 5by20 initiative.  5by20 aims to support the economic empowerment of five million female entrepreneurs across the Coca-Cola value chain by 2010.  A noble and worthy objective and particularly as it is working with small businesses across 200 countries.  

What is nice about this initiative is that it isn't all just about women at the top of massive global organisations who can afford to open a creche facility in their company because they are the CEO, or who have an army of help at home, or whose partners are prepared to fill all the gaps left by these powerful women in their demanding working days.  It is about women at all levels and this makes the Coca-Cola initiative really interesting.  We are going to keep our eye on it!

Being Bossy

We've previously talked about the nature of a good leader.  Oliver James has now related the Dark Triad of personalities to 3 types of boss:  the psychopath, the Macchiavelli and the narcissist.

This is a little worrying.  Particularly as it seems that any one of these types will probably manifest behaviours from the other two types as well. Let's look at the first type, the psychopath.  There are going to be elements of this profile that lend themselves well to being a good leader, being cunning and charming for example, and having the ability to be detached and remorseless.  However most psychopaths are of average intelligence, are untruthful and unreliable, and display poor judgement as well as being pathologically egocentric.  Not such great leadership behaviours.

What about the narcissist?  Being conceited, argumentative and selfish don't seem to put one in the front line for promotion to leadership.  Neither does expecting constant praise and admiration or expressing disdain for those you believe to be lesser mortals than you.  And as for Macchiavelli, well the man himself got on in life through his willingness and aptitude for deceit, manipulation and exploitation to gain and maintain power. 


So why do our leaders exhibit these personality types?  What is it that allows them to 'get on' and us to support them? 

All three of these types are closely associated with charisma. Macchiavellians exercise control over close relations in order to achieve their aims and they gain popularity as a result of an ability to create a desirable image that is in fact distinct from who they are, but which appeals to others.  Psychopaths are disarming and can seem to be fearlessly heroic which attracts others to them.  David T. Lykken in his book 'The Antisocial Personalities' observed that Lyndon Baines Johnson and Winston Churchill were "daring, unconventional youngsters who began by playing by their own rules" before becoming successful leaders.   Narcissistic leaders are dominant and self-confident with a sense of entitlement.  Research done in Silicon Valley revealed that narcissistic business leaders there earned more and stayed in their jobs longer.   Being action oriented and goal focused can be an appealing trait in a boss.

Whether or not we think Bill Gates, General Petraeus and Winston Churchill are examples of any of these personality types, we might be best served to look at what elements of their personalities have served us well, how those elements might be emulated and how they can inform us to recognise and nurture better leaders in the future.  Lots of scope for innovative thinking there for leadership and management training!  Meanwhile, if you fancy doing your own Meta Profile test, get in touch.

Whatchya got?

What is this thing about ‘having stuff’?  Is it a bit to do with Hegel’s idea that a person has a natural existence partly within himself and partly of such a kind that he is related to it as to an external world.  So by virtue of owning and having things we are partly building our existence in relation to our possessions?

Do we want our possessions to do our talking for us?  Does what we have validate us? Why does it have to?  What is so particularly human about the way we want things?  Should we worry about when our possessions and the getting of them starts to control us and get in the way of our moving forward?

One of the Mahavratas (great vows) in the Yoga Sutra is the principle of Aparigraha - non-possession, that no-one possesses anything.  It doesn’t deny the existence of the concept of possession, rather it promotes the idea of only taking what one needs from the world.  Andrew Hyde personifies the modern idea of getting rid of stuff:  “When we were growing up didn’t we all have the goal of a huge house full of things?  I found a far greater quality of life by rejecting things as a gauge of success".  

Our lives are led by a consumer based notion of happiness.  Having stuff makes us feel better, bigger, more successful, grander....or at least that is a widely held belief.  For some people it works, but alarm bells should ring when amassing stuff begins to be the purpose of our lives.  Aparigraha is the idea of not desiring or taking more than we need from the world, and as humans we find it difficult to do this, as we are socially conditioned to do otherwise.  And the more we accumulate the more time and energy we have to spend on looking after all that stuff, and the more anxious we become about hanging on to it.

This is not to suggest that we should all indulge in a mass ditching of everything we own and running off to discover ourselves in the horizon.  What we do need to do is be mindful of how we spend our time and energy and what we get out of having all that stuff.  If we are constantly harried by concerns over possessions, perhaps that energy could be better nurtured by streamlining or simplifying what we have in our lives.  And we can extend this to what beliefs and values we hold, and even to the people we have around us.  Fewer possessions require less maintenance, damaging relationships sap energy and personal resources, limiting beliefs prevent growth and consume us with anxiety. 

So a simple thought – ask yourself what you gain from holding on to the stuff you have, from holding on to the ideas and beliefs you have about yourself, from holding on to relationships that do not serve you well.  What would you miss out on if you let go of some this?  What doors would it open for you, what would it free you to do? How might you grow if you release your grip a bit?  Don't be governed by your stuff, take an objective view of what you need and what you really want and have a go at letting some of the unnecessary stuff go.

If this all seems a bit scary, and you could do with some hand holding to help you let go, we'll hold your hand and let it go when you are ready.

"I realise there's something incredibly honest about trees in winter, how they're experts at letting things go."  

Jeffrey McDaniel

The Trickle Down

How long will we be enthused by the feelgood emotions of the Olympics?  We heard today from double gold medallist Paralympian Natasha Baker that watching the Sydney Paralympics dressage team was her inspiration to one day win a gold medal herself.

The trickle-down effect is what makes you dash out and grab your tennis racket after watching Wimbledon, or dust down your running shoes after watching Mo Farah.  But how long is it before you are finding excuses for not actually making it to the tennis court or the gym?  If you are already engaged in sport an event like the Olympics will probably act as a continuing motivator, however if you are naturally not given to sport, it might not work for you.

Back in the 1970's it was suggested by John Bloomfield (the Chair of the Australian Institute of Sport) that watching amazing athletes might not actually be an inspiration at all.  Research [1] has suggested that to motivate people to maintain regular physical activity you need to supplement their enthusiasm with carefully constructed persuasive messages. It is not apparently enough to just get enthused by watching inspirational athletes, that will all fizzle out if you don't hear the right messages to keep you going.

The interesting bit is that the messages you need to hear have to be not just about what you are doing but also about why and how you should do it.   And there need to be a lot of these messages.  Natasha Baker talked about how important her mother was in her dream becoming reality. Perhaps her mother was a whizz at  delivering the right messages tailored in the right way, properly framed over a period of time and at the right times.

Elaborating on this idea to areas other than sports, it makes sense that if we want to maintain enthusiasm for something we do, discovering the 'why' and the 'how' of doing it is as important as the 'what', and ensuring that we surround ourselves with regular supportive and persuasive messages is essential to our success.  So our message to help you get the right messages ...... Get a coach!  It works

[1] http://www.ijbnpa.org/content/7/1/36

Business funding, loans and grants...how? where? what?

The Government has tried hard, very hard, to get our banks to lend to businesses.  And some banks have lent, so long as the business is robust enough and can prove a decent trading record.  These recipients are however not the businesses that really need the funding.  What about the struggling entrepreneurs with the great ideas that have started small, thought big and grown carefully?

We're not suggesting that every new business idea is going to work, in fact about 7 out of 10 new businesses survive for only 2 years (although statistics fluctuate).  Mr Cameron realises what a significant sector the small business economy is in the UK:   There are 4.5 million small businesses accounting for 99% of all the UK enterprise. constituting 58.8% of private sector employment with an estimated combined annual turnover of £1,500 billion.  Not to be sniffed at.  No wonder all the Government enthusiasm for backing entrepreneurs.

So back to the thorny question of how to get them funding when they need it.  Firstly the banking route, the Enterprise Finance Guarantee whereby the Government guarantees lenders 75% of the loan funding for borrowers who lack sufficient security to get a normal commercial loan.  This is delivered through approved lenders (mostly banks) on amounts between £1000 and £1million to enterprises with a turnover of up to £44 million.

Then there is the Funding for Lending initiative where commercial banks can exchange existing collateral for Treasury bills at an interest rate of 0.25%.  They will then be able to borrow wholesale money cheaply using these bills as backing and lend the wholesale money to homes and small firms.  Or at least that is the objective. Four out of ten small businesses were refused bank credit in the second quarter of 2012 (FSB) so it will be interesting to see how the banks go with this scheme.

If you are a young person wanting to start a business then you can apply to the  Start-up Loan Scheme where the Government has made around £80m available to help young people start out in business.  Anyone aged between 18-24 can apply and the average loan is around £2500, repayable within 5 years.

Following on from the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) is the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS).    Investors can commit £100,000 in any tax year and spread their investment over a number of companies, receiving up to 50% tax relief in the relevant investment year.  Businesses eligible for loans under this scheme must be no more than 2 years old, have assets less than £200,000 and fewer than 25 employees.

If all the above is just too confusing or complicated, the alternatives include organisations which match lenders to borrowers.  Thincats target loans between £50k and £1m, Seedrs specialises in lending up to £150k seed capital to entrepreneurs, Iwoca offers capital to on-line market retailers and Funding Circle offers low cost loans as well as asset-based loans.

This week Prince Charles called small businesses 'the bedrock of any economy'.  The Princes Trust Enterprise Scheme has helped 78,000 young people into a new venture so there's another option if you are a young person looking to create a new business.  Or there is the Fredericks Foundation which offers microloans up to £10,000 to people in the South of England for businesses who have been unsuccessful in raising bank funding.

And we haven't event started yet on other forms of business funding - invoice factoring, angel investors, asset funding, leadership and management funding, high growth funding, local grants or specialist industry focused grants.  It's a wonderful gallop through the tulips getting the right money for your business.  Get in touch if you want some more tips!

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Checking the Choke

Think about the last time you were in the flow of achievement and then you stalled.  What happened?  What did you suddenly become aware of?  In all likelihood, you started to 'think' about what you were doing while you were doing it.

Matthew Syed in his book Bounce talks about the 'choke' that sportsmen and women experience for no apparent reason that results in their performance diving.  These are high achieving elite athletes with years of practice and experience in their field and yet they suffer apparently inexplicable and seriously big performance failures.

Huge chunks of what we do in our lives is learned unconscious action - the obvious is the stopping at a red light behaviour.  If you break down all the individual learnings that constitute these unconscious behaviours you'd probably disintegrate into a jibbering wreck of processes and would not be able to function because of the protracted time it would take you to follow all the instructions that make up each action or behaviour.   So it seems that we do stuff well because we're not really thinking about it.

That's not to say we can all just be good at everything.  As Matthew Syed emphasises, we need to practice, a lot, over and over, in order to achieve excellence.  Once we do that, the behaviour becomes set in our unconscious and we can perform.  We still need to practice and we still need to be aware, but we are dealing now on a higher plane where the practice and awareness relate to the 'getting better' bit of our performance.  The process is one where you learn the behaviour to the point where t is unconscious  - so, you don't think about what you are doing when you are driving for instance, as this has become an implicit memory.  Choking happens when  our anxiety is such that we feel we need to take conscious control over something that should be done automatically from implicit memory.

This is the point when we perhaps we need to draw on other skills and techniques to prevent the choke.  Stepping out of the moment, concentrating on the breath, taking the time-out to make a break in the pattern of your behaviour.  Find out how some performance coaching can help you gain perspective.Take the pressure off by thinking that this is about more practice, there are other opportunities out there and this is one on the way to that, not the biggest and best and only win of your life.

Holiday Freedom?

How many times have you wanted to unleash unspeakable violence on your holiday partner’s Blackberry/iPhone/Android/ while trying to relax on a tranquil beach enjoying your holiday?  Or maybe it is you sitting/lying there with your fingers welded to the keypad, your ear finely tuned to the gentle insistent ringing of your mobile, not able to chill as you need to be on alert in case  ‘the office’ should call.

Heard of the Workcation?  Some of the 72% of business owners that can’t take time off without leaving their work behind are now taking these, just so they can keep an eye on their businesses.  Goodness, what are we becoming? Addicted to ‘noise’, constantly in ‘plugged in’ mode, making up things to think about in case we catch ourselves not thinking about things to think about?

Mindfulness is trendy now.  In a business context it has been shown that increases in mindfulness are associated with increased creativity and decreased burnout and an increase in productivity. [1] [2] In the education field studies presented in The Power of Mindful Learning [3] show that increasing mindfulness in learning, be it academic subjects, sport or music, encouraged  participants to use objects more creatively  and move away from mindsets that hamper competence in learning.  One study demonstrated that telling people to mindfully notice new stimuli improved attention and memory.

Let’s reframe the way we are when we are supposedly ‘on holiday’.  Freeing our minds, finding that freedom and personal space we used to have years ago before the digital age forced us to be constantly accessible to everyone 24/7. Let’s learn to stop, disengage and chill.  Replace the digital with daydreaming, the internet with introspection, texting with taking time out,  emailing with easing off , messaging with mindfulness.  Not only will we find ourselves being much more energised and creative when we return to work, we will be a far nicer person to be with on holiday! 

[1] (e.g., Langer, Heffernan, & Kiester, 1988) [2] (Park, 1990) [3] (Langer, 1997)