March 1, 2022

Never Miss Twice – Cultivating High Performance Habits

Image created by **Bristol Artist Rachael Johnson** – Instagram @rachael.johnson20art

Building high-performance habits into your routine and working environment can serve both you and your team professionally and personally. Different leaders need and want different things from their schedules, so this post will look at how you might incorporate reflective activities into your routine to ensure greater long-term productivity.

Looking from the outside in

Dedicating time to planning your business strategy will allow you to establish productive parameters going forward. This is what we call working ‘on the business’ rather than ‘in the business. An effective way to approach this, is to make a list of the activities that you might deem ‘in the business’ which will often be delivery of services, sales and marketing, administration, and direct managerial work.

Working ‘on the business,’ however, might involve thinking about where you are going next, to ensure you are headed in the right direction and have the best tools to get you there. Assessing the processes your business runs on and thinking about streamlining them will help here.

Bringing your team in to work ‘on the business’ is a fantastic way to pool ideas, although be sure to keep your vision at the front of your mind, and to ensure your long-term plan fits with your employees’ wants and needs. This might be done by building in a regular monthly 1-1 with the team, a wonderful way to encourage inter-team communication at the same time.

Working on you

Taking time to work on self-development tactics will also benefit your productivity. A personal habit that comes up a lot in my client sessions, for example, is building in certain routines. Incorporating exercise or meditation into your day will benefit you on a personal level and begin to flow into your working productivity. Having a repeated morning routine is also likely to bring clarity to your day. Taking regular breaks through the day is important to keep your mind focused on the task at hand. Using a habit tracker can be a useful tool to make sure you carry out these activities every day, and after a while they will have become instinctive and routine. Having an accountability buddy who is either trying to cultivate the same habit or another habit but also wants to be held accountable for embedding it – you can buddy up and keep each other accountable for your progress.

Scheduling time

It is important to block time out in the diary for these reflective activities and the building of high-performance habits. It is extremely easy for tasks that are not short-term priority to be pushed behind those that produce immediately visible results. In the long-term, however, building strong routines based on habits that take a bigger picture approach, both to the business and to yourself, will be of great benefit. Establishing patterns is the most important thing here.

Joining one 20-minute yoga session or spending a lone hour thinking about your business strategy is not likely to make any difference. Practicing yoga every morning and blocking out a few hours per week to working ‘on the business,’ however, will ensure these positive activities are conducted. Of course, days are busy and adding anything more to the to-do list might seem overwhelming. But often, even small chunks of time dedicated to activities that are frequently repeated in a regular way, can make it easier for the rest of your time to fall into structured place.

A recent quote that resonated with me concerning habits was from a new book entitled High Performance – Lessons from the Best on Becoming Your Best – Jake Humphrey & Prof Damian Hughes https://amzn.to/35lgleq “Above all remember this simple motto: Never miss twice. Yes, on some days your habits might slip. But if high performers miss one day, they never miss a second.” Page 183. This quote was originally from Atomic Habits by James Clear https://amzn.to/3hw4Jr A another excellent book on this subject. Also check out The High-Performance Podcast https://bit.ly/3HBgYxo – listening to inspirational podcasts another habit to embed into your week.

January 10, 2022

Fostering A Healthy Team

As the new year begins, we are often encouraged to ‘start afresh’ and overhaul previous modus operandi. By internalising this mentality, leaders can often make their employees feel that they too must change their attitudes and approaches. This, in turn, could demoralise staff who feel may feel undervalued and unconfident just being who they are.

Instead, beginning the new year with a positive focus will support the fostering of healthy workplace cultures where staff feel inspired. A great way to do this is to develop processes which allow employees to think confidently about their unique skills and abilities.

Encourage reflection

Whilst one-to-ones are often embedded in managerial strategy for the purpose of encouraging reflection, an environment which builds employees self-worth can also be developed in other ways. Where teams are asked to reflect as a group, individuals are provided with the opportunity to consider where their skills lie and have their abilities further attested to by peers. Peer validation is an important element in the building of confidence, so consider about hosting a group feedback session to promote mutual admiration amongst colleagues and highlight individual strengths.

Think beyond binaries

Often, feedback from managers is provided within the framework of ‘what went well’ and ‘what could be improved’. The connotations of this are that employees contribute well in some ways, and less well in others. This in turn leads to an understanding that some skills are superior to others. Helping employees to think beyond the binary of ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ attributes often allows them access assets that are traditionally undervalued, and in turn improve their self-confidence at work.

Encouraging peer group reflection might also help employees to understand that skills they might undervalue within themselves are just not being deployed in the right context.

Considering how certain attributes might contribute differently to certain areas of work will allow individuals to value all parts of their performance. It also draws attention to how working with peers can help individuals to bridge gaps in employees own ways of working, which might have been hindering their contribution.

Use reflection tools

The Creative Type quiz (https://mycreativetype.com/) by Adobe is a great tool for facilitating this way of thinking. Though a set of abstract questions, this software aligns the quiz-taker with a working personality type and highlights their strengths. In addition, however, it identifies which other ‘creative type’ you might work well with to maximise your potential. Undertaking this quiz as a team, and reflecting on it together, introduces non-hierarchical ways of thinking about ability, beyond the binary of positive and negative. This activity therefore reinforces the value of employees both as individuals and as a team

Equally the VIA Strength Finder ( https://www.viacharacter.org/survey/account/register) could be used to encourage group-based reflection on what each employee brings to the team via their natural strengths, helping the collective group to leverage of the skills of each other and in turn create a positive working environment which boosts confidence and morale allowing each member to contribute in areas where they naturally excel.

Find out your top strengths using this free online tool

January 2, 2020

Its Good To Mix Things Up A Bit!

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A few weeks ago, in a regular client meeting one of the directors made a comment that has stuck in my mind since…. she said, “it’s good to mix things up a bit every so often”. We were talking about business changes that were happening, changes in personnel and a potential merger that looked likely to happen in 2020. Her reaction to all the changes that were happening impressed me because it wasn’t one of fear despite the uncertainty that was ahead regarding her own role. Some other people could have had an opposite response to the same set of circumstances. They could have been fearful and negative about all the changes and if they were vocal about their personal reaction then this could have rubbed off on other people involved who were perhaps themselves feeling uncertain about what the impact would be on them.

I think we can all get comfortable, myself included especially when things are working relatively well, and life is ticking along. When this happens to me personally I do enjoy the stability for a while and there is the reassurance that you can work or live with relatively little pressure when you know what to expect and you are doing things well within your ability levels and capacity. Don’t get me wrong having periods in our life when we operate in this way are great and in fact needed as we don’t want to always be living in a pressurised, unpredictability way as this can be very stressful.

The tricky thing I think is recognising when the time is right to “mix things up” or start doing something different or consider changing something that is working ok. They word OK is I think the key and is what I have been thinking about since hearing that phrase made by one of our clients a few weeks ago. A lot of the changes we have made to our business in the last year haven’t been triggered by things breaking or circumstances demanding we change. The changes we have made have been to things that were working OK, things that could have gone on in that way for many months or years and could have been still satisfactory. We decided to make the changes we did for a couple of reasons firstly we weren’t enjoying some projects anymore; the comfortable feeling was starting to tip into a feeling of dissatisfaction as we knew OK could have been great. The second reason was that we weren’t growing personally or professionally and when you are in the business of encouraging personal development role modelling the right behaviors is important.

In finishing this, first post of 2020 at the turn of the year and decade, one question I will leave you with is this “Is there anything that would be good to mix up a bit in your life in 2020?” Go for it, take things from OK to great.

December 17, 2018

Why Am I Not Happy In My Job?

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When someone initially approaches me to explore coaching the phrase I often hear is “I don’t like my job anymore or a version of this such as “I think I am in the wrong job can you help?”

This isn’t a good place to be, wondering whether you are on the right path or worse dreading going into work every Monday morning. I always vowed from early on in my career that if I ever got into this position I would take action to change it as life is too short to be unhappy in our work especially as we spend so many hours of our week doing this.

So if this is you thinking any of these thoughts then it’s time to set time aside to explore what is going on ,either through your own self reflection process or with the help of a mentor or coach who has no vested interest in your final decision. This is why your line manager or a relative may not be the best person to work with on this.

It is not always the case that you need to leave your job ,so the setting aside the reflection and evaluation time doesn’t necessarily mean you will end up job hunting.

Once you have found some dedicated time ask yourself the following questions and note your responses

How long have you felt unhappy… sometimes there is a specific date, event or person that it can be traced back too. If you are a feelings person (see some of my posts or listen to podcasts regarding Myers Briggs personality types ) then there may be an underlying resentment that needs to be processed through so you can move forwards. This might mean your acceptance of what happened or you being assertive enough to have a follow up discussion with those involved to understand what could have been done differently and to make others aware of the impact their actions may have had on you.

What is your ultimate career goal short and long term? Is being in your current role helping you achieve this or have you got enough from the role and need to find the next step on your journey.

Does the current role match your motivational mix ( again you may need to work out what this is) if it doesn’t there may be other projects or responsibilities you could take on to make it more enjoyable or you may indeed need the challenge of a change in role or organisation or type of employment.

Are you working for an organisation or leader that “ fits” with your value set? Do you like what they stand for and can you get behind the overall direction and what you are being asked to do in your role?

The bottom line is to find out what would need to change to make you happy in your role and is this something in your control or not?

Sandra works as an executive coach for businesses and also has a private coaching practice for career/life and business coaching. More information can be found at http://www.sandrawebbercoaching.com. She is also author of Own It – regain control and live life on your terms available from Amazon Check book out here and a recently launched series of Own It Podcasts which gives inspiration and tips for professional and personal life Own It Podcasts

May 24, 2018

Young Minds

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I have just finished watching a programme on TV where a group of celebrities undertook an experiment where they tried to reduce their physical and mental ages over a period of three weeks 100 years younger in 21 days

It was fascinating to see how the aging process was affecting them all very differently due to either current habits or prior lifestyle bad habits having taken their toll. Throughout the three-week period some individuals needed to focus on their mental capacity while others had more health and physical challenges.

The physical challenges where they were encouraged to exercise more and eat better weren’t surprising as most of us know what we should and shouldn’t eat and that we need to keep moving. What I learnt most were the changes that occurred that radically improved some of the participants mental health scores in such a short period of time.

There were dramatic improvements in mental ageing in fact reversing the effect resulting in three key activities the celebrities were made aware of

Meditation
Learning new skills
The sense of belonging that came from being part of a group

If we take each I turn there were just a few take home messages that I think are useful to us all.

Meditation doesn’t appeal to everyone and certainly in the programme the person that benefited the most initially demonstrated a lot of resistance to even the idea let alone the practice of it. It took another person in the group who had personally benefited themselves from the practice to buddy up with the individual and persist gently through the initial reservations and difficulties to the point where it started to become an enjoyable habit with huge quick positive effects that reinforced the new habit further. The correlation between the habit of regular meditation and improved sleep quality was amazing and without question a good reason to continue.

When it came to learning new skills, the key point was it doesn’t have to be a particular type of skill. Initially the group were introduced to learning a new language however if anyone struggled with this challenge then other more practical rather than cerebral activities were suggested to get a similar result. The key message here aww keep the brain active by exposing it to new challenges.

The final factor was the sense of belonging and the obvious communication involved from being part of a group or team was evident. The mutual support they gave each other at various stages of the process especially when an individual was finding part of the regime tough was an equally important bi product of the process.

So, are you continually learning?
Do you actively engage in a community/group that provides support and encouragement?
Have you explored a meditation practice? maybe just try for 5 mins a day for a couple of weeks see if you find it beneficial

Sandra works as a coach for both businesses and private clients. She is also author of the book Own It – regain control and live life on your terms. More info can be found at www.sandrawebbercoaching.com

May 17, 2018

Personal Wellbeing – Two Critical Lists

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In the last post I mentioned meeting a lot of people recently who were running on empty, in danger of becoming ill and being stopped in their tracks.

I am much more aware of recognising key signs in both others and myself now than I was in my earlier years ; this is as a result of both personal experience and watching when others have been stopped in their tracks, forced to take corrective action and start looking after themselves better.

Sometimes it is at exactly this point that potential clients pick up the phone and come and see me for the initial coaching conversation when they realise they need to do things differently and make some changes in their lives either professionally, personally or sometimes both.

There are two books that I have read that I totally recommend on this subject when it comes to either recovering from burn out or ideally preventing from happening in the first place

Adrenal Fatigue – James L Wilson
The Body doesn’t Lie – Vicky Vlachanis

Both of these take a completely holistic view and encourage us to take care of ourselves mentally and physically on an on going basis along with recognising when we are going off course as early as possible.

A practical exercise I get clients to do and I also practice myself is to generate two simple lists that we can regularly look at to ensure we are following the right one

List one – things that make me feel good
List two – things that make me feel bad

These are obviously going to be very unique to the individual and could contain things like activities that make you feel good or bad, places that make you feel good or bad, food that makes you feel fantastic or rubbish, people that make you feel downbeat and negative or make your laugh and bring your energy up.

You can start making these lists immediately however what happens is that when you get used to using them you find yourself adding things to both lists on an on going basis as you discover new people, new ways of eating, new activities, new places and to reflect changes you make in your life.

How you use these lists practically is in partnership with the signs and signals you identified in the last post so for example if you find yourself going down the low energy, no patience with anything, not thriving route you look at the “things that make me feel good list” and schedule time for these things. Also take a look at the “things that make me feel bad list” and make a note of anything that you have been doing too much of on this list and stop doing it to reverse the trend.

If you feel you are heading down the “burnt out” route then check out the books above and start creating your lists based on the holistic approach , add to both lists at least monthly for the first couple of months. Keep them to hand in case you need then.

If you are feeling good at the moment create the lists anyway as a preventative measure and out of interest it should reflect the reason you are feeling good is that you are doing stuff list number one – keep doing what you are doing.

Sandra provides coaching for both Businesses and Private Clients. More information about coaching can be found at http://www.sandrawebbercoaching.com

May 10, 2018

Spot The Signs

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Over the past few months I have been struck by the number of people I have met who are running on empty! When meeting these people, they are physically exhausted and mentally drained

From my own experience I have been in such a similar position about twice in my life and both times have been fantastic learning opportunities to add tools to my own kit bag that will hopefully prevent returning to that territory. It’s a place where if you find yourself entering you need to quickly act before the feeling of exhaustion becomes your norm and then if left for long enough often results in the body saying enough is enough and stopping you in your tracks with a serious enough illness where you need to take time off to recover.

Some possible signs to watch out for in either yourself or team members are

Do you wake up and feel tired routinely?
Are you living off endless cups of coffee, sugary snacks or processed convenience food?
Loosing or putting on weight we all react differently some people emotionally eat more when feeling stressed while others forget to eat under pressure
Are you thinking about work all the time even during leisure hours?
Would you struggle to be away from your phone or email for a few hours or the weekend?
Are frequent colds or headaches now your norm?
Is it difficult to concentrate?
Have you given up any hobbies or exercise routine you previously enjoyed
Are you forgetting or missing deadlines?
Are you making mistakes?
Do you have little time or patience for those around you?
Do you feel guilty about taking time out for yourself?
Are the people who know you well worried about you or making comments that you look tired or unwell?

We will look at what corrective and preventative action you might consider in the next blog post.

Hopefully you won’t be experiencing all of these at once and you will know yourself well enough to know what your normal state of wellbeing is. It is important to recognise what do you feel like when you are thriving and completely aligned with what you are doing and what you feel like when you are moving in an unhealthy direction in need of corrective action. Learn to recognise your own personal signals.

Sandra works as a professional coach for both Businesses and Private Clients. More about coaching can be found at http://www.sandrawebbercoaching.com . She is also author of the book Own It – regain control and live life on your terms which is available from Amazon http://bit.ly/1JhAkst

April 12, 2018

The Pie Chart Model of Happiness

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If you are like me a book worm with an interest in self-development and personal growth you will have a mountain of books many of which touch on the subject of happiness, how to achieve living life full out. I even wrote one of my own! see link at tend of the article in bio if you are interested in this one.

It wasn’t until I embarked on my current positive psychology coach CPD that I had ever seen the subject of happiness broken down into a model that really resonated with me and I am sure it will be a framework worth discussing with both existing and future clients. I came across the model while reading one of books on the required reading list, The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky https://amzn.to/2q7DWql in this book the model in question suggests that 50% is genetic ie. we are genetically predisposed to either look on life with either a positive or negative view and she calls this our ‘set point’ 10% is dependent on circumstances that surround us or that we find our self in and 40% is down to actions we can choose to take which in the book she refers to as “intentional activity and habits”

I loved this model straight away as I am often challenged from mainly friends and family who ask the question ‘isn’t it easier for some people to be “Rays of Sunshine”, those positive energetic uplifting people that we like to be around. Some of these people suggest they could never be like these Rays of Sunshine because of their situation or circumstances. What this model suggests is that although they may have a point to a certain extent that action can definitely be taken by everyone to improve their overall happiness by 40% at least. The only segment we have got no control about according to this particular book is our genetic disposition.

I have always known that people who live life with a glass half full attitude the majority of the time have often done a lot of work in identifying the actions they need to take on a regular basis to maintain this outlook on life. It doesn’t come without taking action to develop good habits and choosing to do this is optional. When you see that taking time to learn how to do this and discover which are the actions that have the most positive impact on you personally then its easier to invest the time to build these into routine; habits that can contribute to the 40% intentional action segment of Sonias model.

I found this book quite encouraging to see how much is in our control if we choose to accept this. So even if genetically you are born with a glass half empty bias and your life circumstances aren’t great at the moment there is still stuff you can do to make the situation better.

Sandra works as a coach for both Businesses and Private Clients largely based in Bristol/London or Palma Majorca find out more at http://www.sandrawebbercoaching.com or her book can be found on amazon Own It – regain control and live life on your terms http://amzn.to/2m3l8Vl

January 11, 2018

Wellbeing 2018

So, following on from my last post I had cause to review my own health and wellbeing at the end of 2017. During my enforced rest and relaxation period I couldn’t help but take stock and ask myself, in classic end of the year review mode, whether I need to make any additional changes to my own health and wellbeing practices this year.

I have never been unhealthy in my lifestyle, but I am a great believer that as we age we do have to continually tweak our habits further to keep as vibrant as possible both mentally and physically.

In recent years I have drastically reduced my reliance on sugary and processed food. I have replaced intense competitive exercise with equally physically challenging but kinder on the body and soul yoga. Each year I have challenged myself to “learn to like “certain nutritious foods that previously I had avoided e.g. eggs, yogurt and avocado as examples. Majority of time I eat sough dough bread and don’t enjoy normal bred now.

On the more cosmetic side I have broken my reliance on hair straighteners that were ruining my hair and acrylic nails that were ruining my nails (the nail addiction was only broken in 2017) which as well as being healthier choices have freed up an incredible amount of time.

So, what next in 2018, what other changes could I make?

I love my morning coffee, but I would benefit from reducing my daily caffeine intake via reducing the number of cups of tea and replace this with herbal teas from midday.
I have no desire to go vegetarian at all however I could ensure more of my meals are fish or poultry based with more vegetables and less carbohydrates.
I need to ensure when out on the road at business clients I don’t eat processed rubbish, this means planning and taking healthy food with me.
I am going to keep learning Spanish as intellectually this is good for me and very challenging.

My daily Ashtanga Yoga practice is a well-established habit however I have lost my way with my regular meditation habit which used to be good. 10 mins a day would be a fab discipline to get back into.

So you see there are always things that can be improved. No matter where you are starting from what few shifts can you make to take things up to a new level to aid your health and wellbeing in 2018?

January 4, 2018

Make Plans Then Accept Changes

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I am writing this sat in a cafe in Palma in the final few hours of 2017. When I originally planned a few days away over the new year period I had many ideas of how I would spend my time away. Last year we did a similar thing and spent a very pleasant few days based near the marina in Palma mooching between shops and cafes in spring like conditions with scheduled yoga practice and triathlon training punctuating our days. My original plans this year was much the same however with the intention this time of exploring the island more by using the local buses rather than hire care. In my normal goal orientated way, I had a mental list of the places I wanted us to visit and I planned on visiting my Yoga shala here at least twice.

Well the universe had other ideas, I started feeling unwell on Christmas Day and by the time the plane had landed on Boxing Day I was experiencing the familiar signs I had witnessed in others over the last few weeks of work to illustrate the winter lurgy had finally got me in earnest.

The first part of the planned adventures worked ok, and we managed to find the right bus at the airport to reach our hotel and when we got to the hotel it was a nice one (thank goodness as earlier in the year we ended up staying in a really grotty place for a week, that as not good). Again, in my normal driven way I tried to carry on as normal for the first few hours however this is when my learnings since catching glandular fever four years ago did kick in and I am thankful for that. It became obvious after these initial few hours that this lurgy was a nasty one, it wasn’t just a cold it was rendering me completely exhausted. I needed to accept my plans needed to change and I would be foolish to push on in a bloody minded way through and this. My old self would have tried to fight it for longer and probably made it worse. This is what happened in 2013 I didn’t listen to my body or read the signs of illness. In that year the moment I thought I was getting better I started to recommence my triathlon and sometimes even crazily enter a race! Then I would have a relapse and be back where I started ill again, and this went on from February to September in a cyclic way until I was diagnosed with Glandular fever and the penny finally dropped.

So rather than months for the penny to drop it now takes a couple of days. that’s what I call progress. It doesn’t mean it’s any less frustrating, but I am better with the acceptance and adaptation phases than I used to be. Although I am disappointed to have missed out in my daily yoga over here in Palma and we haven’t managed to see as many new parts of the island as I planned too does it really matter in the whole scale of things? I have taken much more rest over here in a hotel environment than I would have done at home where I would have been tempted to muddle through domestic chores as a minimum. Hours spent lying under blankets in a hotel room is new territory for me but that is obviously how I was meant to spend the end of 2017 resting physically and mentally.

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