Maximising 2019

As we enter the New Year and think about the resolutions we have made ( and broken) and the aspirations we have for the New Year it is useful to reflect on some guidelines to maximising 2019, whether in our personal or professional lives

It’s Important to be Ruthless  
It is not just important to be ruthless, it is vital. Of course, when I talk about ruthlessness I do not mean heartlessness or the desire to hurt someone else or put them at a disadvantage.

I am referring to discernment and judgment and importantly the will to exercise that discernment and judgement.

Managing one’s life is not a soft, cuddly endeavour. It is respectful, supportive and often a good laugh but it should also be challenging. It should challenge you to take action to compassionately, forensically and ruthlessly understand what is not serving you and how to deal with that.

It is constant; good coaching and good management are a continual process of improvement, movement and change.

Be both Supportive and Demanding
It is demanding; we should be looking to improve continually whether in how we manage our time, write a report, or in how with engage with others and make them feel.

It is intolerant; not of failure. It embraces, celebrates and learns from failure but it is intolerant of a wish not to learn and develop. It may understand a reluctance to change and empathise with that reluctance but it does not support and enable that reluctance.

It allows for and demands time out and away from our daily routine. It recognises the need for rest, for time away from our concerns and challenges to allow us to get a perspective on those very challenges. It takes us out of ourselves to recognise our patterns, biases and impact on others. It enables us to see the cause and impact of our behaviours.

Create Space
We need to create space and time to reflect objectively on where we are and how we got here; to consider what works well for us and what holds us back; to look at the patterns in our lives and what consistent themes we see emerging.

This is a balance of active engagement in reviewing these issues and also creating time “sleeping on it” to allow the answers present themselves to us.

Create Time
I have had countless conversations with friends and clients where they outline what they are going to do in the New Year. They wax lyrical about exercise, time with the family, supporting staff more, developing people and lots of other worthy aspirations.

When I ask the simple question “What will you give up?” I tend to be greeted with more silence.

At this time we should focus on what we should give up. What TV programmes will we stop watching to create time to exercise more; what work activity will we stop doing to create time to coach and motivate our staff? This is the starting point for two reasons.

Clearly to take up an activity we need to have time to do it; time we currently spend doing something else. It is this something else we must give up.

At a deeper level as we look to what to give up we start to identify patterns of behaviour, the comfort zone or natural inclination that we all have.. We tend to laziness or we like TV! Or we tend to be interested in facts and figures than people. We must recognise this part of us before we commit to engage more with staff otherwise we are destined to fail.

Start with Giving up
Don’t worry about what you want to do; focus on what you won’t do. See what observation you draw from that exercise about yourself, what it says about you and your natural inclinations and the pathways it shows you to doing the things you wish to do whether activity or attitudes

As always I would be delighted to hear how you get on. Please let me know at [email protected]