The Business Series Podcast

Ankush Jain | Coach and Facilitator

Interviews with experts from around the world

  1. 03/09/2021

    Business Series Podcast EP.23 - How to Give Effective Feedback and Receive It with Barb Patterson

    Giving & Receiving Effective Feedback Ankush Jain interviews Barbara Patterson for Episode 23 of The Business Series podcast, in which they discussed the topic of feedback, how to give effective feedback and receive it. Barbara has over 20 years of experience coaching and working as the owner of a global coaching & consultancy company. She helps organizations, leaders and entrepreneurs access higher levels of performance, clarity and fulfilment. In this episode, they addressed: What is effective feedback and the reason why it is not so common in business. How to overcome the obstacles when giving feedback. The importance of our states of mind during feedback. How to be open to receiving feedback and deal with moments of reactivity. Contact Details: Find out more about Barbara by vising her website: https://barbarapatterson.com/ Be the first to know when new episodes of the Business Series are released – http://eepurl.com/bBN4Nf For more business-related resources, please visit: https://ankushjain.co.uk/business/ You can also listen to this podcast and all the episodes in the series via iTunes: iTunes or Stitcher: Stitcher The post Business Series Podcast EP.23 – How to Give Effective Feedback and Receive It with Barb Patterson appeared first on Ankush Jain Limited.

    19 min

  2. 24/08/2021

    Business Series Podcast Ep.22 - How to Be Confident in All Work Situations with Linda Ford

    Are you confident at work? Confidence is something that impacts everyone at work, not being confident often have us hold ourselves back and second guess our actions. When we fear criticism or negative judgment it can prevent us from showing up fully to many work situations. For this reason, I interviewed the coach Linda Ford who is also the co-author of the kindle bestseller book called Women and Confidence: The Truth About the Lies We Tell Ourselves. In this episode we discussed: Why aren’t we already confident at work across the board? Is confidence really a byproduct of certain situations? How to move from insecurity to being confident & what is the mind’s role in this. Contact Details: Be the first to know when new episodes of the Business Series are released – http://eepurl.com/bBN4Nf You can find out more about Linda Ford by vising her website: https://www.lindafordcoaching.com/ Book mentioned: https://www.amazon.com/Women-Confidence-Truth-About-Ourselves/dp/1793428794 For more business-related resources, please visit: https://ankushjain.co.uk/category/business/ You can also listen to this podcast and all the episodes in the series via iTunes: iTunes or Stitcher: Stitcher The post Business Series Podcast Ep.22 – How to Be Confident in All Work Situations with Linda Ford appeared first on Ankush Jain Limited.

    21 min

  3. 07/02/2020

    Business Series Podcast Ep.21 – Achieving Excellent Results in Business with Ken Manning

    Where do excellent business results come from? In this episode of The Business Series Podcast, Ankush Jain speaks with author and business consultant, Dr Ken Manning on how to achieve excellent results in business. Some of what they discuss include: – Why don’t more businesses achieve excellent business results? – How understanding the science of the mind is key to excellence – Why are psychological operating principles such a big deal – A case study of a client Dr Manning worked with Contact Details: To receive an email informing you of when a new episode of the Business Series is released, please click this link: SUBSCRIBE To contact Dr Manning and find out more about his work, you can reach him at https://insightprinciples.com. For more business-related resources, go to https://ankushjain.co.uk/category/business/ You can also listen to this podcast and all the episodes in the series via iTunes: iTunes or Stitcher: Stitcher The post Business Series Podcast Ep.21 – Achieving Excellent Results in Business with Ken Manning appeared first on Ankush Jain Limited.

    23 min

  4. 08/05/2019

    Business Podcast Series Ep.19 – How to Deal with Bullies in the Workplace and Not Become One Yourself

    How to Deal with Bullies in the Workplace and Not Become One Yourself In this episode, Ankush speaks with social entrepreneur, business coach and consultant Jacquie Forde. Some of what they discuss include: – Learn how to see situations more impersonally – Looking at bullying from the perspective of both the employees and the managers – A case study of a client Jacquie worked with who felt bullied by his boss You can also listen to this podcast and all the episodes in the series via iTunes: iTunes or Stitcher: Stitcher To receive an email informing you of when a new episode of the Business Series is released, please click this link: SUBSCRIBE Find more resources like this at https://www.ankushjain.co.uk/business/ To contact Jacquie and find out more about her work, you can reach her at www.JacquieForde.com. Full Transcript [00:00:01.24] Ankush: Welcome to the business series podcast. My name is Ankush Jain, and I’m a state of mind coach, working with businesses and individuals. On each episode of this series, I’ll be speaking to a coach or trainer on a different topic relevant to your career or personal development, enjoy. Welcome back to another episode of the business series podcast. Today I’m joined by Jacquie Forde who is a social entrepreneur, business coach and consultant. And we’re going to be talking about how to deal with bullies in the workplace and not become one yourself. Welcome Jacquie. [00:00:42.19] Jacquie: Hi Ankush, thank you for asking me to do this podcast, it’s a really interesting topic and I’m delighted to be here. [00:00:51.17] Ankush: Well, thank you for joining us. And as always I love to just dive straight into the topic and this might sound really obvious, but what do we mean by bullying? [00:01:04.20] Jacquie: Well, what I see in my practice Ankush, by bullying I mean people are suffering from stress, overwhelm, and anxiety and are scared to go to their work, because they feel that they’re being unfairly treated or they don’t like another person at work, or they feel as through their own work as under some kind of examination by maybe a superior at work. And if you feel they’re being treated unfairly but they don’t know what to do about it. [00:01:37.27] Ankush: So you’re talking about the person experiencing bullying over there. But what about the person doing the bullying? What about that behaviour is it something about that behaviour that constitutes bullying? [00:01:50.27] Jacquie: Absolutely, I Ankush you know hopefully what we will look into this a bit more deeply in the podcast, when someone is bullying another human being. It normally means that they’re not in a very good state of mind and end up in a lower state of mind. They can’t see things very clearly and they’re actually just trying to hurt another human being without realising the impact of it to try to feel better themselves. [00:02:19.09] Ankush: Now in our title, the second part of the title is ‘not become one yourself.’ So have you found that people who have been bullied in the workplace often become bullies themselves? [00:02:32.18] Jacquie: Absolutely Ankush you know it can become a learned behaviour in organisations, where you know new recruits and managers see their direct line management behaving in a certain way and they think that’s normal. They think that is the way they’re meant to be. So, they actually don’t see as bullying. They just think that’s part of the company culture. [00:02:55.25] Ankush: And what’s the cost to this. I mean why we should care? Why should organisations care about this? [00:03:00.22] Jacquie: Organisations should care Ankush because, it leads to employees taking time off work because they’re stressed or they’re overwhelmed or they’re anxious. It means that employees do not do their work as well as they possibly could because they’re not in a fit emotional state to do it. So it has an impact to the bottom line. [00:03:21.05] Ankush: So how do we deal with this? I guess on two levels, so, on one level if someone’s listening to this and they feel they are being bullied how they handle it? And then on the level of an organisation if I’m a leader listening to this. How do I ensure that both I’m not bullying and ensure that there’s not a culture of bullying occurring in my organisation? [00:03:48.24] Jacquie: Okay I think I’m going to go with the leader first of all here Ankush and I’m going to suggest that often organisations they talk about well-being, and when they talk about well-being they look towards the band aid kind of solution, so they’re looking at things like well-being days where they look at massage and reiki but they’re not actually looking at the deeper cause of emotional unwell-being, you know people not being well. And when we teach leaders and we teach individuals and organisations how to understand, how their human operating system works, how their minds actually work. Then what we’re able to do Ankush is to understand that in any given moment in time employees are doing the best they possibly can given what’s actually happening to them in their life Ankush. So, I’m not just talking about my work life I’m talking about that bigger picture and it’s the same with a manager as well and a leader. When people understand how they’re creating their own moment to moment experience of life and how their state of mind can fluctuate throughout the day, they start to become clearer about whether it’s a good time to have a discussion with someone or it’s not, whether they should send an email or whether they shouldn’t. Should they hand hand in their resignation or shouldn’t they. When people understand if they’re doing something motivated by a fearful emotion or whether they’re motivated from that clearer perspective, then it becomes easier to make decisions in business and in life. When someone is being bullied Ankush, normally what happens to them is they don’t have access to that kind of intuition and wisdom about what to do and when to do it, because they’re so fearful of doing the wrong thing or being attacked or being intimidated again by the person that’s managing them or maybe even just a colleague who works alongside them. I think the first thing that is good for people who Ankush they don’t actually know, they’re being bullied they just know that they have an incredible amount of fearful thinking about what’s actually happening in their work and in their workplace. So the remedy is the same whether you’re a leader or you’re someone who’s being bullied Ankush, understanding the importance of the state of mind in business is absolutely crucial, because within that it gives people strength understanding how their minds work, understanding how another human being’s mind works and it teaches us whether to take things personally or to take them impersonally in any kind of discussion with a peer or with someone who is a colleague. [00:06:56.21] Ankush: So, are you saying that you know you could be working for someone who you know you’re trying to do your best, and let’s say they are undermining you, they’re shouting, they are displaying various behaviours, which don’t seem appropriate and you’re saying by understanding the role of the state of mind you can learn to take that very impersonally? [00:07:23.17] Jacquie: You can take it impersonally Ankush so that you can gather your resources together to do whatever it is that you’re meant to do about that situation. I’m not saying ignore it under any means whatsoever. If you are being bullied and you feel threatened at work then there are process is to go and speak with someone in your organisation hopefully. What I’m suggesting is that when you’re able to see clearly what’s happening without the emotion that often becomes attached to being bullied then you’re able to move forward, to speak to each other, to speak to another person at work, to get a different perspective on it, rather than keeping this fear inside of you, but also understanding how you’re creating your experience of whatever is happening to your Ankush, because often people misunderstand the circumstances that they have found themselves in and the replay over and over again what has happened to them and the kind of coaching that both you and I do is we point people to the source of that experience and how we can only ever create our own emotional experience of anything from inside of us it’s never to do with the other person. If someone is bullying us Ankush, say for example somebody sends you an email and you read that e-mail and you don’t like the tone of whatever it is happening. We go inside our own minds and then we start to make up stories about what that email means what that person is going to do to then. We often end up time travelling and in our heads where we enter the future and imagine ourselves losing our jobs or not being able to pay our mortgage. But really all that’s happened Ankush is in that moment you’ve received an email that you don’t particularly the tone of it and it’s making you feel insecure. [00:09:32.28] Ankush: So practically, how does someone get greater clarity around a situation? Because when someone’s feeling bullied, it can be like you said a very emotional time they can end up overthinking a lot, it can really get up into their heads and they may be listening to this thinking well Jacquie that all sounds great. I would love to have more clarity right now about this situation. I don’t. So what do I do about that? [00:10:02.09] Jacquie: What you do Ankush is you find yourself somewhere that you can gather your thoughts together somewhere in your organisation or within your own mind where you can start to get some kind of perspective. Understand that it’s normal to feel the way that you’re feeling but then start to look a bit deepe

    27 min

  5. 24/04/2019

    Business Series Podcast Ep.20 – The Invisible Factors Behind Effective Leadership with Dr. George Pransky

    The Invisible Factors Behind Effective Leadership In this episode, Ankush speaks a pioneer of taking state of mind into business, Dr George Pransky. Some of what they discuss include: – Visible vs Invisible factors behind effective leadership – How does this apply across different industries – How to tap into this hidden factor as a leader – A case study of a client Dr. Pransky worked with You can also listen to this podcast and all the episodes in the series via iTunes: iTunes or Stitcher: Stitcher To receive an email informing you of when a new episode of the Business Series is released, please click this link: SUBSCRIBE Find more resources like this at https://www.ankushjain.co.uk/business/ To contact Dr. Pransky and find out more about his work, you can reach him at pranskyandassociates.com. Full Transcript [00:00:01.23] Ankush: Welcome to the Business Series Podcast. My name is Ankush Jain, and I’m a state of mind coach, working with businesses and individuals. On each episode of this series, I’ll be speaking to a coach or trainer on a different topic relevant to your career or personal development. Enjoy. Welcome back to another episode of the Business Series Podcast. Today, I’m very excited to be joined by Dr. George Pransky. Dr. George Pransky is one of the mentors of a number of people who are on the show so I’m very excited to have him here. He was the first person alongside Dr. Roger Mills who took this understanding around the state of mind seriously and he’s been working with a significant number of businesses over the last few decades. And he’s been a pioneer in taking the state of mind understanding to business. I’m very excited to have him with us and to be talking about the invisible factors behind effective leadership. Welcome, George. [00:01:00.28] George: Well, it’s nice to do this program. I really liked what we’ve done in the past so this is a pleasure for me. [00:01:10.10] Ankush: Thank you. Well, let’s just get right into it because it’s an intriguing title the invisible factors behind effective leadership. So I’d love to kind of ask about that and what these invisible factors are behind effective leadership? What are they? [00:01:25.02] George: Well, if you don’t mind I want to talk about the so-called invisible and then it’ll be easier to talk about the visible ones so if you look at the brochure of leadership development companies, if you go on the Internet and look up leadership you’ll see a number of things: team building, you’ll see listening, giving feedback, strategic planning so you’ll have a working list of all the skills that are required for a good leader. And I’m going to suggest to you that you can’t do those skills unless your mind is right for those skills. So for example giving feedback like that’s one of the problems that people have. What are you going to do? How are you going to give feedback to people without them getting defensive? How do they want to hear your feedback, if they do get defensive, how do you avoid bad will? When I give feedback I get tense ahead of time. How do you deal with that? So the fact is that the effectiveness of feedback depends on the feeling state that you’re coming from when you give it. So if you have a dog in the fight, if you’re upset with the person if you’re impatient with the person you can count on them getting defensive and you’re going to see that feedback says it doesn’t go very well. You might say well that’s not a problem. Well, it is a problem because the reason you’re giving them the negative feedback is that they are doing something that’s hurting the bottom line. So it’s very understandable for people to be impatient or upset and then they go in and give the feedback and the person gets backed up and defensive. So the invisible factor behind effective feedback is the feeling state of the person that’s giving the feedback when they’re giving the feedback. Now if their feeling state is good and they feel warmly towards the person they’re talking to and they’re philosophical about the fact that people do need feedback and people do make mistakes and that’s part of their job you know, otherwise, they would be like a busboy complaining about dishes. I mean that’s why they get the big bucks is to give people direction. So if they have that warm feeling they set the stage differently they bring something different out of the person and the person responds, listens better, benefits more from it and leaves with goodwill. Now the same thing could be said of strategic planning. The problem with strategic planning is you have to get back enough from your business to see that big picture and that’s something that happens inside your mind, it doesn’t happen through reading, through discussion. People who have a leader who wants to have a vision for their company has to get into what we might call a reflective state, where their mind is free. And when their mind is free and they don’t have a bunch of fears and concerns and details, they can see the big picture. That’s why consultants work as consultants and their heads aren’t filled with the business and the concerns of the business and outcomes and all this, so they have, you might say a more circumspect view, now strategic planning requires a circumspect state of mind. If you don’t have it you’re not going to be able to do it. OK, another thing is the issue of managing people who are difficult and are resistant OK. And they have all kinds of courses on that. That’s the invisible factor behind that is the same as giving people feedback, is if you have a warm feeling and if you’re compassionate of people’s mistakes and their frailties you will have an ongoing good rapport with the people and with that good rapport you’ll be able to say and do what you want and you’ll be able to be as direct with them as you want and you’ll be able to listen to them and have conversations with them and get the truth out of the conversations, and it’s not because you have techniques for dealing with them but it’s because of where you’re coming from, your humanity is front and center and that’s what allows you to have a successful relationship with people. So everything that you’re trying to do behind it is the workings of the mind, what state of mind do you have. What’s going on in your mind? To simplify it, if you’re off balance everything’s difficult leadership wise and if you’re on balance everything’s easy. I’m going to give a metaphor for that I think would be very helpful. When I was in private school we would have lunch and we’d have half an hour after lunch for recreation and relaxation and a bunch of us would go to the gym and play basketball. But we were in our street shoes, so we would take our street shoes off and we would play in our socks and we didn’t have any traction so it was much harder to do anything in basketball when you’re playing in socks. Now one day this very uncoordinated not an athlete little thin frail guy, who everybody used to knock their books over came into the gym and he had his sneakers on and he was running circles around these varsity basketball players because he had this traction. Now when people are in a healthy state of mind, when they’re not insecure or upset or when they have their emotional bearings they will be like that kid with sneakers on everything they try to do leadership-wise is easy. And when they get, lose their bearings and get insecure even temporarily they are like the rest of us playing in socks with no traction. [00:08:24.07] Ankush: What would you say to people who are listening to this and say they might be thinking well that sounds very good in theory George but surely this is dependent on the industry you’re in, maybe this is just a leadership style because I know you’ve worked in lots of different industries and with lots of different leaders I’d love to hear you talk to that does this apply across the board with every kind of business, every industry, every kind of leader? [00:08:48.05] George: It applies not only to every industry and every leader but it applies to every aspect of life. This applies equally to your relationship with your wife. It applies equally to parenting, parents that lose their bearings bring out a whole different behavior in their children and parents who can keep their bearings in it and they have a warmth and an understanding feeling, find parenting would be very easy but no matter what the agency is, what the business is, whether a person is able to keep their bearings and stay in a healthy state of mind just depends on them and their understanding of how the mind works so there’s no such thing as a business or industry that’s inherently stressful. The stress has to be manufactured inside the mind of the person via their own thinking. Now ironically into the companies and the industries that objectively would have the most stress, like brain surgeons, for example, have very little stress. And if you ask them why they would say I can’t afford to lose my bearings so that every company and every employee and every company it’s up to that employee as to whether they feel tense and tight or disheartened or disappointed. So the internal mental life of a person is dependent on what goes on in their mind and that is always true. There’s no exception to that, there’s no way that what’s going on around you can affect you unless it comes into your own thinking. [00:10:48.25] Ankush: So is that the invisible factor you’re talking about. Is that state of mind? And you know how you feel the warm feeling you were talking about? [00:10:58.03] George: Yeah it is the invisible factor. It’s the foundation from which people live their lives and using that analogy, if your foundation is sneakers in traction, you live a very different life than if yo

    35 min

  6. 26/02/2019

    Business Series Podcast Ep.18 – How To Retain Your Talented Employees and Allow Them To Shine with Gabriela Maldonado-Montano

    How to Retain Your Talented Employees and Allow Them To Shine In this episode, Ankush speaks with an international coach and trainer, Gabriela Maldonado-Montano. Some of what they discuss include: – How to retain talented employees – How to let talented employees shine – A thought experiment on employee’s input – A case study of a client Gaby worked with and her approach You can also listen to this podcast and all the episodes in the series via iTunes: iTunes or Stitcher: Stitcher To receive an email informing you of when a new episode of the Business Series is released, please click this link: SUBSCRIBE To contact Gabriela and find out more about her work, you can email her at jjbandg@gmail.com Full Transcript [00:00:01] Ankush: Welcome to the business series podcast. My name is Ankush Jain and I’m a state of mind coach working with businesses and individuals. On each episode of this series, I’ll be speaking to a coach or trainer on a different topic relevant to your career or personal development. Enjoy. Welcome back to another episode of the business series podcast. Today I’m joined by Gabriela Maldonado Montano, who is an international coach and trainer, who has a passion for helping people shine at work. Welcome Gabby. [00:00:39.04] Gabby: Hi, Ankush. How are you? [00:00:39] Ankush: I’m good, I’m good, I’m very excited about our topic today which is, how to retain your talented employees and allow them to shine. I think this is something that’s obviously right up your street. It’s something that you’re very passionate about. I think it’s going to be very interesting and very fascinating for people to listen to this because both from a point of view of people who want to help their subordinates, people and their employees who work for them helping them to shine as well as people who are listening to this wanting to shine themselves. I’ll start off at the beginning which is, it might sound like a silly question but why is this important? Why are we discussing this of all the topics we could discuss why this one? [00:01:24.06] Gabby: Yeah, this was very personal for me. I started working, oh my gosh, a long time ago I think I entered that workforce in 1991. And what I noticed right away, is that in all the organizations that I worked, there were people that were shining, that they were really juiced at work and that there were people that were not. I wanted to be the people that shine. And then I also noticed that there were some leaders in organizations that knew about this and that helped their teams and their employees do their best and that there were other teams that seemed to struggle. And I noticed that both teams, both sets of employees, had a capacity, they have the skill, right? They had the experience but something was going on. And so, from the beginning really, I was very interested in finding out what was the difference. How come there seems to be an environment or an element where people shine and then there is another environment, that there is another factor that actually makes people most like get very very dim with their experience and the possibility to to work. And so, the reason why is because what I discovered just even in my own personal work is that when I feel engaged when I feel part of the team, my production is better but I also, I enjoy the work. You know, and it seems like I command with better ideas. From working in a team it seems like everyone in the team just performs at its best and it’s fun, you know, as a person working and so I just think today is very relevant. We spend a lot of time at work. [00:03:24.16] Ankush: And it’s really important for businesses as well, you know, I hear things, you know, phrases are banded around like the war for talent and a lot of companies whether they’re large companies or not so large companies. It’s really important to not only find good employees but really really keep good employees. And once you’ve got good employees is to get the best out of them and I know I’m not am I’m not a massive sports fan but I certainly see this in the world of sports where, you know, people are buying soccer players, for example, and you know there’s one thing getting a great player. It’s another thing getting the best other out of that player and the same thing can happen, you know, in the workplace. So, I’m looking forward to us unpacking this a little bit because I think it can be really really relevant to people listening. Let’s kind of jump in because this two parts to this so, or maybe I’ll ask you this seems like there’s two parts to this. There’s one part which is, how do you retain talented employees? And the second part is how do you get them to shine. Do you actually see them as two separate things or is it the same thing? [00:04:35.01] Gabby: That’s a great question. I think when you help your workforce, your team, to feel engaged, there is retention and a side effect is the shining. You know, and there is definitely a way to do that. Then I think you know I live in the Silicon Valley and so, what I’ve been noticing is that, there is this effect of people being in a job for like six months. You know, and then getting another job, getting another job and getting another job. And these are very talented people and they’re expensive people. Right? So it’s just very interesting because in the work of large companies retainment is an issue. People aren’t paying attention to retainment. Except that it’s done through a very superficial level, in my opinion, you know, like points and we’re not going to give you, you know, Starbucks cards if you do well and all of that. And so even though there seems to be an attention to it, it is not to the point where really people feel committed, you know? What we want is we want our workforce to develop the mentality of ownership. Like, you know, we own the business we are willing to really put our best foot forward and so that’s what we want to do. So I don’t see them as two different things. I think there almost a side effect, right? We want to retain people but we don’t want them just come to work, right? We want them to actually perform at their best. We hire people because of their skills. We hire people because of their experience. And there’s the third element. We are betting that these people are going to bring something into our companies that are going to make our companies better, right? They’re going to be putting out products, are going to be increasing sales. That it’s almost like a bet that if I hire you you’re really actually are going to increase the value of my company. And that’s the element that we want to talk about because that’s the element that companies put to lease effort on. You know, it’s like invisible element. [00:06:57.13] Ankush: That’s so interesting because, you’re right, I know, you know, I haven’t been in a corporate job for a few years but I remember when I was looking the last time I was looking for a corporate job and you’re looking around at who are good employers and what do they do. It was always things, okay, this company is a good employer because they allow flexible working because they give discounted meals at lunchtime because they’ve got, you know, good benefits in terms of maybe they give a company car or things like that. But actually if I think about even my own career, where did I feel the most engaged where did I feel the greatest sense of ownership? Where did I do my best to work? It was it was almost the opposite. It was, it was had nothing to do with that. It was really a different energy, I would say, of the team that I was working in so I can really understand where you’re coming from. Would you say that, that stuff, you know, because you talked about people bring the energy in the wrong place, would you say looking at things like, you know, flexible working, would you say that has no impact or would you say on its own you know it’s kind of really missing the key ingredient? [00:08:15.27] Gabby: I think you can have two companies with flexible time and you can see a really different performance, right? So, if you have a company that understands, that understands that their employees are valuable. And as part of that, comes with an initiative to have flexible time, right? I think that’s fantastic. But I think you’ll see companies that will have flexible time but they don’t have an understanding and their results will be different. So, I think anything that comes out from a real, a real sense of understanding the value of your employees and value of your workforce. And you know it’s very fascinating because employees understand when their companies value their work or not. And with my client it’s like the number one element of wanting to stay in the company. When an employee feels like you know what, maybe it’s a demanding job maybe I don’t have flexible work hours but I feel valued. My, and I feel like, the company really understands that the way that I contribute is important. They’re willing to stay, right? And so any idea that comes from it whether it’s, you know, giving discounted meals or, you know, we’ll do your laundry or whatever, if it has the tone of appreciation and value it’s going to work. But if you have it just a simple technique without that understanding the results are different. [00:10:05.16] Ankush: So what I’m hearing is, if it’s without the genuineness, without the feeling of you are valued and what I hear you saying is that, any one whether employees or not we know when we’re being valued or not, we know when other people feel that way about us. [00:10:21.15] Gabby: Absolutely. You know I think in preparation for this interview, you and I talked about an experiment that somebody was doing about. What is the best way to get people to work at their best? And they did an experime

    21 min

  7. 08/01/2019

    Business Series Podcast Ep.17 – How To Stay Relevant in Business with Rich Habets

    How to Stay Relevant in Business In this episode, Ankush speaks with leadership consultant Rich Habets. Some of what they discuss include: – How do we stay relevant in such a fast-paced business world? – Slowing down internally to get more done – How can we slow down right now? – A case study of a client Rich worked with and his approach You can also listen to this podcast and all the episodes in the series via iTunes: iTunes or Stitcher: Stitcher To receive an email informing you of when a new episode of the Business Series is released, please click this link: SUBSCRIBE Find more resources like this at https://www.ankushjain.co.uk/business/ To contact Richard and find out more about his work, you can email him at richard@richardhabets.com Full Transcript [00:00:00.00] Ankush: Welcome to the business series podcast. My name is Ankush Jain and I am a state of mind coach working with businesses and individuals. On each episode of this series, I’ll be speaking to a coach or trainer on a different topic relevant to your career and your personal development. Enjoy. Welcome back to another episode of the business series podcast. Today I’m joined by Rich Habets who is a management consultant who works with a range of organisations both large and small. He’s had a varied career working both in functions and as a consultant and done a number of different jobs and I’m really excited to have him with us today. Welcome Rich.   [00:00:50.18] Rich: Morning Kush, good to be here.   [00:00:51.10] Ankush: Good to have you. Good to have you. Today we’re talking about how to stay relevant in business and this topic really comes about because I know that you do a lot of work with leaders around change and we seem to be in a world right now where there is so much change happening and it’s going faster than ever. So my question to you just to start off with is how do we stay relevant in such a fast-paced world right now?   [00:01:24.00] Rich: It’s an interesting question. Well, first of all, it depends of course how you define relevant. But the way I describe “relevant” is the way normal leaders would think about, so how do stay with the ball? How do people hear what I am saying? How do I make sure that my vision is out there and people actually function in the way that I see them function right. Let’s see that as relevant. What I see is indeed that like what you see that change is, it’s still an enormous space with the invention of I.T. systems somewhere in the 1970s. And the first microchip was produced, it’s become everyday. I see organizations who go from you know they buy another company and then they have to integrate the system then they buy another company they have to integrate the systems and they go through organizational change they rearrange the processes and people are just overwhelmed by the amount of change. So they’re doing their normal job and then they also have to participate in the process reengineering job for instance. So there is a lot of change going on and I think that most people that I meet are happy with getting the things done they need to do in a day and I’m not talking about the strategical or the tactical stuff I’m thinking about the very operational stuff. So they have to do lists and at the end of the day they have the to-do list but nothing more and I see a lot of frustration with people because they’re just running in their little hamster wheel and they don’t have time to even step back and think there’s the right wheel at all? And it frustrates people and it frustrates leadership and is really hard to get out. And so you’re right I think change is, I think it’s the number one thing right now in companies and it’s really hard to handle that in a very healthy way. One of the things I’ve learned in this and it’s work that I do is that the outside world is going faster it’s going from 200 to 250 kilometres an hour, the best way to handle that is to go slower inside. But unfortunately, most people don’t do that. Most people think that if the outside world goes faster they go from 200 to 250, I speed up to and it’s very hard to see in that mental speed if you’re relevant. What’s relevant? What has priority? What’s strategic? What’s operational? Does that answer your question?   [00:03:57.02] Ankush: Well tell me more about slowing down internally because that sounds very counterintuitive.   [00:04:01.16] Rich: It does. Now it is actually very counterintuitive. You know you wouldn’t know the amount of people that when I get into a room and I tell them OK so what we’re going to do to handle the business we’re going to slow down. Most people think that means they have to talk slower, and if they walk slower actually take a longer lunches and all that stuff than even though that’s nice, what I’m talking about is if there’s a thousand things to do and you think you have to do all thousand of them before you go home but you don’t do them at the end then you feel unsatisfied. Right. But it’s the thinking about the thousand things that’s actually the problem, I’ll give you a very concrete example. I had a guy in one of my rooms and he said every day I have 300 e-mails waiting for me in the morning. He works for a global company so they work 24/7. You know he gets emails in the evening and night all the time. And he says I’m getting heart problems because of the 300 e-mails, I’m having heart problems. So the guy was serious so people started laughing in a room like are you serious and he was serious you could see it was, his face was very serious. So he said sometimes the only thing I can do is to delete all the 300 e-mails and people started laughing. Like what are you doing why are you deleting 300 e-mails? But you could see that for him, that was the only way to get rid of the stress. To slow down. Right. And then a woman at the other side of the room said, you know it’s funny I have a thousand unopened emails in my email box and I don’t have any of those problems, and the guy was like yeah but you know lucky you. She said well I don’t know, what do you think. Why do you have those problems and he says well because it’s 300 e-mails. She said I don’t think so, she went through more programs already, so she knew a little bit. And so the guy eventually came to the conclusion after like half an hour that it’s not the 300 e-mails actually it’s the level of perfection that he was asking from himself. So he thought that if he didn’t do the 300 emails that would mean that he was doing a lousy job. Now I think everybody who would have that kind of belief that if I don’t finish the 300 e-mails before the end of the job I’m doing a lousy job. If you have actually believed that you would actually mentally speed up too if you have only 100 mails done and it’s 12 o’clock already you would start to feel stress. And you would start to speed up and you would start to make more mistakes. Well you don’t read the e-mail as well as you could, you make misinterpretations you assume a lot, so the quality of your work goes actually down and then you answer somebody. It’s not the best answer and then you get an email back. Because of the answer that you did your answer was because you didn’t read the e-mail very well you get an answer back of somebody who is a little bit agitated because of the way you react. So you create your own work that way. And at that speeds people up mentally and I don’t know if we could go into why people slow down or speed up, I don’t think that’s the purpose of this podcast. But I think it’s the number one thing that people don’t see in business. Is that the way our minds really work if we see it or if we don’t see it if we don’t see it, it creates a lot of problems, creates a lot of inproductivity, creates a lot of stress and at the end the bottom line suffers. And if we start to see how it really works we become much more one with ourselves. We understand how it works, we start to work with the system instead of against it. And that’s what I really mean by slowing down, slowing down actually means that you start to see it for what it is and not for what it not is. You become much more productive as a leader and as you may be in general.   [00:07:51.03] Ankush: I remember reading somewhere or I don’t know if it’s conventional wisdom that if you want to be really successful in life you know do the opposite of what most people are doing, and I think that’s in true in investing in business in so many things and I really heard that from what you just said that most people are speeding up and the opposite of that is really to slow down. And because it’s so the opposite of what most people are doing, it really works.   [00:08:25.21] Rich: It absolutely does. And it’s not only slow down to slow down, slow down in order to speed up but that’s so counterintuitive for most people to see, they think I don’t have time to slow down because there’s all is work that needs to be done but once people get their own realization once they start to see that, wait a minute. When I slow down and have a fresh perspective I have fresh ideas on stuff that actually speaks up because I make less mistakes, I have better observation I set priorities better have more connection with people. So I also involve them in the way I make decisions and that actually speed stuff up. But it has to become a realization for them personally. I think that’s the biggest challenge in the work I do, the biggest challenge is to get people to see that for themselves, because as a theory it sounds beautiful, slow down to speed up it sounds beautiful, but it doesn’t mean anything as long as it is theory. It only starts to become of value if people start to see for themselves waw I slow down this project here, I slowed down I took the time, I saw and I mental

    24 min

  8. 13/11/2018

    Business Series Podcast Ep.16 – The Leadership Equation – How to Bring out The Best in Your Business, Yourself, And the World with Mara Gleason Olsen

    The Leadership Equation – How to Bring out The Best in Your Business, Yourself, And the World In this episode, Ankush speaks with Mara Gleason Olsen about leadership. Some of what they discuss include: – What do we mean by “bringing out the best” – Leadership being very simple – How to bring out the best in others – A couple of case studies to demonstrate how simple leadership can be You can also listen to this podcast and all the episodes in the series via iTunes: iTunes or Stitcher: Stitcher To receive an email informing you of when a new episode of the Business Series is released, please click this link: SUBSCRIBE To contact Mara and find out more about her work, you can email her at: mara@onesolutionglobal.org Full Transcript   [00:00:03.01] Ankush: Welcome to the business series podcast. My name is Ankush Jain, and I’m a state of mind coach, working with businesses and individuals. On each episode of this series, I’ll be speaking to a coach or trainer on a different topic relevant to your career or personal development. Enjoy.   [00:00:24.27] Ankush: Welcome back to another episode of the Business Series Podcast, today I’m joined by Mara Gleeson Olsen, who is the co-founder of One Solution, a global non-profit dedicated to solving the world’s problems at its source. And today we’re going to be talking about the leadership equation, how to bring out the best in your business, yourself and the world. Welcome Mara.   [00:00:45.17] Mara: Hi, thanks for having me, it’s a pleasure to be here.   [00:00:49.27] Ankush: Yeah, I mean you have got a very big remit with your non-profit, solving the world’s problems, so hopefully this podcast should be nice and easy and a lot more focussed.   [00:00:59.23] Mara: Sounds good, keep it easy on the soft Friday morning, we’re heading into the weekend, don’t want to stress ourselves out.   [00:01:08.08] Ankush: Absolutely. So with this podcast I always just like to jump into the title, because it’s an intriguing title we’ve come up with, “The Leadership Equation.” So what do you mean by “bringing out the best,” because it’s quite, again it’s quite a broad topic, we’ve covered business yourself and the world, I’m assuming you mean that they’re all related?   [00:01:27.12] Mara: Yes, it would be an ambitious half hour we’re going to have otherwise. Yeah, I think it kind of occured to me, I spent the last 12 years of my career working heavily with, not solely, but heavily with leadership teams, and it was actually my work with leadership teams that inspired me to want to do the global change work that we do now, because I do see that it is all really one thing, and what occurred to me is that it was way simpler than it appeared, leadership and really leadership on a business level, but also just in our personal lives and how we are as humanity in the world, and what we’re creating in the world, and, the reason I say it was simpler, is that it started to look really basic to me, is that if you could bring out the best in other people, that was the most powerful thing you could do in an organization. But then it occurred to me that that’s kind of true for anything, if you’re running a county, or if you’re a participant in your community, or if you’re a religious leader, or if you’re running a Fortune-500 company, it’s all the same thing, it’s how can you, as a leader, really lead, to bring out the best in others, because if you can bring out the best in others, then you’ll be successful. You can’t do it alone, we as human beings collectively on this planet can’t do it alone. We are interconnected, we are working together and when I worked in business for 12 years, it looked really clear to me, okay, all you gotta do is know how to bring out the best in others, and it turns out in order to bring out the best in others, you just have to know how to bring out the best in yourself, and so that’s really what we focussed on and that’s kind of the source that I’m talking about, when we talk about one solution is our solving the world’s problems, it’s really what can any human being, individually or collectively group of human beings, understand about themselves, to bring out the best in themselves, because it makes total sense just between you and I Ankush that if I can bring out the best in myself, then I can see that much more clearly and effortlessly how to draw out the best in you, but if I’m suffering, if I’m stressed, I’m going to be all of those things that we see in those leaders that we don’t like that much and that we don’t admire, the ones that are stressed out, distracted, like a chicken with their head cut off, just have that kind of burdened by life, and when humans are burdened by life they can’t help, innocently, naturally, be looking after themselves more. You know, you can’t really bring out the best in others, when you’re just trying to get through the day yourself. So it looks really simple, and therefore really hopeful and therefore really inspiring to me when it occurred to me that it’s kind of a very basic equation to leadership, as it’s bringing out the best in others by bringing out the best in yourself, and so how, what can we illuminate for people about their own mind that allows them to consistently and unconditionally bring out more in the best of themselves.   [00:04:43.12] Ankush: You made some really big statements there, so a couple of big statements you said was, 1) leadership is really simple, and I guarantee you it doesn’t look that way to many many people, 2) you said well it’s really simple because we just need to bring out the best in others, and again that’s a very bold statements because I’m sure a lot of people don’t see that as the easiest thing to do, so, given those two bold statements and for anyone listening to this show, who’s thinking, that sounds great, but how do I do that, could you talk a little bit about what that might look like?   [00:05:16.02] Mara: Yeah, I mean I say it’s simple not in that it doesn’t have it’s fair share of challenges, but if you know what really underlies it, what’s really at the foundation of it, then that gives you a constant home base to come back to, that’s the simple part, it’s knowing where to look no matter what, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have all of the normal challenges that occur, but if you look, like if I just look at myself for example like, I have started and run two organizations now myself, and it’s not that I have all the answers, but I know that when I’m clear, when I have the ability to bring out the best in myself first and foremost, like if that’s the number one thing on my to do list, it’s my own clarity of mind, my own ability to bring out the best in myself, all the other business challenges just get sorted out from there, so if I’m clear for example, I know how to set someone up in our organization that might be struggling with something or not doing something, I know how to do that, pretty, I don’t want to say effortlessly, that’s too dramatic, but it’s not hard to see how to do it when I’m clear, and so it’s not to say you won’t have the things that you’ve got to deal with in business, like potentially a struggling employee or a project that you launched that just isn’t going well or, all the different things, budgets, blah, blah, blah, but, we all know, or I guess that’s what I’m trying to say in this interview, is if we all knew that your mind when it’s clear is unbelievably capable of dealing with that stuff, it really is, and it’s not as complicated as it looks, the problem is is when we forget that that best of ourselves, that clarity of mind ourselves is the key, that is the source of it all when we forget that, we start focussing too externally, we start looking at, oh well maybe I don’t have the right processes in place, or maybe I’m not hiring the right people, or maybe I’m not, and the truth is maybe you do need better processes, maybe you do need to hire differently, but, if you forget your own clarity of mind-peace the further and further external from yourself you go, the more and more challenging it is, the less trash in you have. So, the simplicity I’m referring to, the simplicity of leadership is not that it’s easy all the time, it’s knowing where to look for your leverage, and that is really your own mind, your own clarity of mind, and how you can have more of that unconditionally, I think that’s the piece that is often very illuminating for people that we work with, is we’re trying to show them how the mind works, all by itself, before your business, before your employees, if you can see how your mind works, and that you’re really just thinking dictates what’s going on each day, then the more people see that that is not negatively affected by other people, externals, numbers, things like that, then we can help people see how they can have more clarity of mind, more consistently, they can bring out the best in themselves, and then the rest of the equation falls into place from there, can’t really do the rest of the equation until you’ve seen your own clarity of mind-peace first.   [00:08:38.07] Ankush: How long does that take, is it something that, again it sounds very simple for people who maybe have not come across this before, so how long does it take for someone just to see the clarity of their own mind, is this something that is, takes a second, takes a day, is this a long training that people need to do?   [00:08:56.15] Mara: It’s shorter than people think, but it’s ultimately a mystery to me, because in my years of doing this work, I’ve seen in anywhere from 10 minutes to 4-5 days. But usually people see it quicker than you think, and the it that I’m referring to is just being able to point people in the dire

    32 min
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About

Interviews with experts from around the world

Information

  • Creator
    Ankush Jain | Coach and Facilitator
  • Years Active
    2018 - 2021
  • Episodes
    23
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Ankush Jain Ltd. 2018
  • Show Website
    The Business Series Podcast