Blog Posts

Go on. Pause

10/29/2017

What happens when you press the pause button on your life? Noticing the date of my last blog, im reminded that I’ve pressed pause on my writing for the past few months. Was that a deliberate decision? No. I took a holiday for a couple of weeks and then, like many people this past winter, suffered multiple colds over several months. I simply didn’t feel well enough to write. Having pressed the pause button on a lot of things while I was unwell, I can now say I have quite a different perspective as a result.

For one thing, I asked myself if it really mattered whether I wrote blogs or I didn’t. The sky didn’t fall in and I even mused about whether I actually like writing and, if so, what else I might write. Maybe I’d rather write fiction! I’m not sure I even know how to write fiction. I could certainly learn and that might be fun. Or maybe I will stop writing altogether. Perhaps instead I could relearn to play the keyboard sitting downstairs, unplayed for too long.

Then I found myself questioning if I wanted to continue to work as a coach and mentor. Am I really making a difference? My reflections ranged over a wide range of topics and aspects of my life, including how much pressure I put on myself to perform in one way or another. It’s all a construct, this life we lead and we construct it ourselves, but we forget that. My enforced pause led me to contemplate deconstructing those castle (or prison) walls and consider rebuilding them into something quite different.

I could, if I really wanted to. I can. Maybe I will. And that’s very liberating to know, because it has reminded me I have a choice. Or any number of choices.

For now, I have work commitments that I’m really happy to fulfil. And having paused and reflected on those choices, I know I am bringing fresh enthusiasm and gratitude to the opportunities I have. I’m not just doing what I do because that’s what I do. I’ve chosen afresh to continue to do what I do.

And that’s the value of pausing. Whether it’s a pause of several months to recover one’s mojo, or a pause of a few seconds to consider and choose a response rather than merely react, pausing is a grossly under-rated activity. In fact, Andrew Stevens and I call it a Master Competency in our Leading in Complexity program. The complex issues and challenges that we face these days don’t have simple answers or solutions and require different ways of thinking and different approaches. Pausing to consider multiple perspectives and options to enable us to make better choices is essential.

Nobel prizewinning author Daniel Kahneman, in his bestselling book ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’, provides vibrant examples of the workings of the two systems in the mind, System 1 operating automatically and quickly with little or no effort and System 2, mental activities requiring effort ( including complex computations) often associated with agency, choice and concentration.

We need and use both, but System 2 activities require paying attention. Pausing. One way I continue to find useful to build muscle around focusing attention without judgement is meditation or mindfulness practice. It’s a direct line to that elusive space where we can observe our own thoughts and feelings and then deliberately choose responses rather than jump to reactive assumptions or conclusions.

If you’ve been running around like a hamster on a wheel, trusting that your intuitive thinking system will keep you afloat, it probably will but try pressing the pause button. You might be surprised, as I was, in the choices you make when you actually take the time to pause and reflect.

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How do you show up?

5/31/2017

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Occasionally, the last thing we feel up to is going to work, let alone performing. Life intervenes in our best laid plans and leaves us in no state to manage work scenarios. What do you do when you have no choice but to show up and deliver, even when you are struggling with other issues? Is it possible to leave these at the door and put on some kind of mask to get through the day?

This was a question asked at a leadership workshop my colleague Andrew Stevens and I jointly presented interstate recently. We were discussing emotions and the impact of how we show up at work on ourselves, our teams, on productivity and, ultimately, on the bottom line.

Unbeknown to the group, I was facing an extreme example of this dilemma on the day of the workshop. I’d stayed the previous night at a hotel near the venue and awoken just before 2:00am to a very loud domestic dispute next door. It quickly escalated to violent language and an angry, hysterical tone and I had no doubt the woman was in danger. My heart started thudding. ‘Why don't you leave? Just leave’, I was wishing for her.

By now, the woman was crying out ‘get away from me’, and ‘don’t touch me’ followed each time by a thud and finally, when she screamed ‘put the knife down’ twice (or was it three times?) I leapt out of bed to call reception. So terrified was I that I used the torch on my phone to find the number on the desk, in case a light showing under my door might alert the perpetrator that I was the informant. A voice answered from a call centre and asked which hotel I was phoning from. I shakily whispered that there was a terrible violent altercation in the room next door and, before I could tell him about the knife, he asked for my room number, thanked me and hung up. The screaming coming from the woman next door was, by this time, bloodcurdling. Then abruptly, silence.

I was even more shocked by the implication of this. I sat on the bed, hardly daring to breathe, imagining the worst.

A short time later, the hotel proprietor knocked on the door next to mine, explained that there’d been phone call about a violent argument and asked what was going on. The man next door was shockingly calm and casual. “No. No problem here.” I couldn't believe my ears. The proprietor explained that the police had been called to which my neighbour inferred that it was nothing adding that the woman had ‘just cracked it’. The proprietor accepted this explanation and left.

I hastily got dressed. If the police were on their way, they'd want to talk to me. I desperately wanted to get out of here and run for my life. But I was in an unfamiliar city. Where would I go at 2:00am? And anyway, I couldn't make a phone call for fear of being heard and clearly there was no-one at reception to help me.

I don't remember ever feeling so unsafe and utterly terrified, especially when I realised that the police were not coming, after all. I spent hours wide awake, listening to the door opening and closing next door and imagining all sorts of gruesome scenarios.

Finally at 7:00am, I phoned Andrew to ask for advice. He immediately came to collect me. When we got to reception, which was by now open, I was shocked to hear that the woman next door had left the room before the proprietor had gone to find out what was going on. I mentioned the knife and the receptionist looked shocked. Apparently they had CCTV footage of both the woman and the man leaving and returning several times during the night and finally departing together.

While I was glad she was not lying dead with her throat cut, my trauma was no less real.

After debriefing, Andrew and I set off to conduct our leadership workshop. I considered telling the participants what had happened because I felt unsure if I could get through four hours without some reaction. When we arrived at the workshop venue and I looked at the expectant faces of the people arriving, I knew I couldn't tell them. Domestic violence is such a pervasive issue and my story might easily trigger trauma for our participants.

I didn't want to show up as a victim, even though I had certainly felt like one for five sleepless hours. But I wanted to choose another way to be. I thought about how I would ideally like to show up at this workshop as its co-leader. ‘Professional’ was the first word that came to mind. I pictured myself being professional, as I would be normally. I also thought of the word ‘trooper’. I knew I could choose and create a way to be that was professional and, well, a trooper.

And that’s pretty much what happened. Waves of memories flooded into my mind from time to time during the workshop, but Andrew stepped up when my voice wouldn't work or I lost my train of thought. That support made an enormous difference.

One day, I will tell the participants what happened the night before our first workshop. It is, after all, a classic example of how we can choose a different way to show up than the way we might be feeling. Its also a classic example of how we make up stories based on what we think happened and the feelings we have are based not on what actually happened but on the stories we make up.

Post Scripts:

I teach people to ask themselves sensible questions such as, “What’s another interpretation?” or “What else could be true?’ in situations like this, and yet, when the amygdala (the part of the brain that handles emotions) is triggered, it’s almost impossible to be this logical or rational. The amygdala literally highjacks the rational part of the brain. That’s why the term Amygdala Hijack was coined to describe ‘an immediate and overwhelming emotional response out of proportion to the stimulus because it has triggered a more significant emotional threat’, in this case, my own safety.

I’ve also learned how important it is to have one’s feelings validated, even if the actual turn of events are quite different from one’s imagination or interpretation. That doesn't make the experience any less real and it made a huge difference to me to have others validate my feelings and provide safety and on-going support.

My other insight relates to dealing with trauma. It helped so much to have reassurance that it would take some time to recover, to process what happened and be able to let it go. This is something I often tell others, but it’s very different being the one affected. Writing about the experience has helped, as has talking about it and listening to the wisdom of friends as well as my own sense of what I needed. I finally wrote to the hotel and shared my version of events and that helped. Yoga has also been vital, enabling me to get the story out of my head and feel healthily integrated again.

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Is there joy in work?

3/31/2017

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The word ‘joy’ is rarely heard in relation to work in my experience and I’m on a mission to change that.

By joy, I mean a feeling of great pleasure, delight or happiness, something we might associate with personal experiences, but rarely professional ones.

We use the benign word ‘enjoy’ much more commonly. While milder in connotation it is more common to say you enjoy something than it is to to actively express ‘joy’ or confess to feeling ‘joyful’ or ‘joyous’. Rarely do we actually ‘rejoice’, or use the term to show great joy or delight in the workplace, either individually or collectively.

It’s no wonder then, if you ask people if they experience joy at work, they look a little rattled.

Years ago, I began exploring joy in my own life through practicing meditation, studying Buddhism, daily walks and being in nature and reading about joy.

I soon discovered that joy is found within ourselves. To quote a favourite author, Eckhardt Tolle, in his book A New Earth:

“When you say, 'I enjoy doing this or that', it is really a misperception. It makes it appear that the joy comes from what you do, but that is not the case. Joy does not come from what you do, it flows into what you do and thus into this world from deep within you.”

If this is a new concept for you, you’re certainly not alone. I once coached a senior, very successful professional man who was described to me as a ‘grumblebum’ by the person who sponsored his coaching. In one of our conversations, I asked him when he experienced joy. He looked at me as though I was an alien. ‘Joy?’ he asked, incredulously. He was unable to conjure a single moment in his life when he had experienced joy and couldn't even imagine it. Another senior executive I coached had a similar reaction when I asked what he enjoyed about his role. ‘Enjoy?’ He queried, looking confused. On further questioning, he grudgingly admitted he quite liked some of the people he worked with but clearly struggled with the concept of enjoying work. Eventually he noted that his father had always experienced work as a chore, something to be endured to earn a living and my client had unconsciously adopted the same attitude. No wonder his co-workers and his CEO struggled to engage with him in any way beyond his technical expertise.

So if joy comes from within, how do we cultivate and access it? I think it’s always there for the asking - or finding - if we can get past our own barriers. These include always re-living the past or longing for the future rather than experiencing the present moment and choosing to see what happens in our lives as negative rather than seeking positive interpretations. My ‘grumblebum’ clients both had the choice to see work as hard slog OR as an opportunity to achieve success for themselves, their clients and their organisations AND enjoy what they did along the way.

We all do.

Busyness is another barrier to finding joy. Keeping ourselves so busy that we have no time to stop, reflect or literally smell the roses or marvel at the spectacular changing sky as the sun rises or sets leaves no space for accessing joy.

When clients complain to me about ‘having to’ do something unappealing, I ask questions to enable them to see ways to enjoy this aspect of their work instead of treating it as a chore. I also encourage them to actively celebrate successes, however small and to have fun, both simple ways to access joy.

If you’re interested in bringing more joy into your life and infusing your work with joy, this quote from Eckhardt Tolle’s first book ‘The Power of Now’, really awakened me to the idea of being joyful as a way of life:

‘Are you a habitual “waiter”? How much of your life do you spend waiting? What I call “small-scale waiting” is waiting in line at the post office, in a traffic jam, at the airport, or waiting for someone to arrive, to finish work, and so on. “Large-scale waiting” is waiting for the next vacation, for a better job, for the children to grow up, for a truly meaningful relationship, for success, to make money, to be important, to become enlightened. It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.

Waiting is a state of mind. Basically, it means that you want the future; you don’t want the present. You don’t want what you’ve got, and you want what you haven’t got. With every kind of waiting, you unconsciously create inner conflict between your here and now, where you don’t want to be, and the projected future, where you want to be. This greatly reduces the quality of your life by making you lose the present….

So give up waiting as a state of mind. When you catch yourself slipping into waiting . . . snap out of it. Come into the present moment. Just be, and enjoy being. If you are present, there is never any need for you to wait for anything. So next time somebody says, “Sorry to have kept you waiting,” you can reply, “That’s all right, I wasn’t waiting. I was just standing here enjoying myself — in joy in my self.”

What a refreshing change from the stress that usually arises when caught in the slow queue or held up with roadworks as time ticks away.

There’s plenty of advice in books and articles on how to find joy. I like this article about finding joy at work in the Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/2009/10/top-ten-ways-to-find-joy-at-wo.html

There’s also a book called ’Joy at Work’ by Dennis Bakke and you might find useful ideas in this story entitled ’40 ways to find joy in everyday life’ published in the Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/meimei-fox/happiness-tips_b_2405608.html

Whatever works for you, start with the intention to find joy within yourself and live a joyful life. Simply reminding yourself or writing on your TO BE list ‘Today I am joyful’ or ‘I find joy in everything’ is a surprisingly effective way to start.

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How to save the world (you're already doing it!)

2/28/2017

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I recently shared on Facebook a statement made by the Dalai Lama at the Vancouver Peace Summit in 2009:
“The world will be saved by the western woman”.

Next minute a wag posted “Which one?”.
I cheekily added “Me”.
She replied: “Go girl” to which Christine, another Facebook friend added; “You could do it!”.

“How?” I typed beneath her words.

“Not exactly sure but willing to talk more about this. Normally I work in what I call a micro influence area and this would be macro for sure,” she replied.

“Let’s talk”, was my response. We took our conversation off-line and arranged a time to meet three weeks later, but not before others jumped on line with offers of help.

Christine and I met last week. To be honest I couldn't remember what had triggered this entry in my diary labeled “Save the World’, but I was looking forward to seeing Christine and curious about where this conversation might go.

Christine has recently left a role running a Not for Profit organisation after ten years and we had met in a leadership development program in 2013, so we had some catching up to do. I was always impressed with her clear focus and effectiveness. I was fascinated to hear that she is currently exploring ways to tell stories that interest and inspire her. She has begun a course in writing and producing film and television and has a clear idea for a book she wants to write.

I shared with her an article by Julie M Daley about the creative opportunity for us to tell our own stories in our own voices, that confirmed she was on the right track.

Julie Daley said, in part: (her bold type, but my italics)

“When people in power speak and behave in a certain way, we can begin to believe it is the new ‘normal’ or that it is ‘true’. And then, suddenly, we have a new narrative about what is ‘real’.

Who will normalize the female experience if we do not as women? Who will normalize and make explicit one’s experience of the feminine aspects of life if those of us who are becoming conscious of them do not?

……[And by the way, I hope men do this, too. I sense the current cultural narrative of what it is to be a man is not based on many men’s experiences.]
The feminine is not only white.
The feminine is not only straight.
The feminine is not only Christian.
The feminine is not only thin.
The feminine is not only ‘beautiful’.
And, the feminine is not just female.

Who will define (and normalize) the feminine or the female experience if we do not? If we, ourselves, are not willing to be vocal about what this experience is?’

Christine’s story-telling activities were already fitting perfectly with Julie Daley’s questions.

The other thing that influenced our ‘Save the World’ meeting was feedback from a participant in a 'Finding Meaningful Work' workshop I’d offered the previous week with a colleague, Andrew Stevens, which described our work as ‘uplifting’.

As Christine and I discussed ideas about how we could save the world, it gradually dawned on us that perhaps we know how to do it, perhaps we are already doing it and it doesn't require forming more organisations, joining more committees or finding vast amounts of funding.

It's one thing to have grandiose ideas of saving the world, but surely the only way is for each of us to be individually responsible to contribute what we can. Perhaps all of us, in our own ways, are already making the world a better place - for our families, our neighbours, our friends and our various communities - just by being who we are and doing what we do with care, passion and enthusiasm.

By sharing ourselves and our ideas and experiences, by being generous with our time and with our stories, perhaps we are saving the world, one opportunity at a time. Do we really need feedback from others or can we be our own reference points to consider and value the impact we are already having?

So, while I hope I’m not just avoiding facing the harder issues that take up a lot of my head space, (domestic violence, the costs of obesity, the effects of drug and alcohol abuse and climate change, to name a few) I wonder if we just need to value what we already do to save the world, and commit to doing more of it.

And not be afraid to stand up and be counted on the issues we care about.

What do you think?

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Who are your champions?

1/11/2017

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Brunching with Terry, a former colleague, years ago, I mused that I would like to move to Sydney in the next 12 to 18 months. A few weeks later, he phoned to say his sister-in-law had taken a role as head chef at a Sydney restaurant. She requested training for all wait staff and they needed a trainer. Terry recommended me. Soon I was talking with the restaurateur and hired. After flying me to Sydney to train the staff, she recommended me to her husband who ran a different company. They then shared the costs of flying me in regularly, spread the word and within a few months I had enough clients to move to Sydney.

Terry is one of my champions. Those first two Sydney clients were also my champions. Without them and their generosity, I could never have succeeded in building a business in Sydney.

We all have champions. They are the people who support and advocate for us, who promote us and our strengths and skills to others, who recommend us and the work we do and never hesitate if asked to be a sounding board, a referee or provide a testimonial.

They are often the people we trust with our still-forming ideas and with our dreams and aspirations. They are the ones we feel comfortable asking for help or advice and sometimes they may also be the people who will hold up a mirror when necessary to help us deal with road-blocks, get back on track and to grow into the best versions of ourselves.

They are always interested in what we are up to and how we are progressing.

In short, they are our fan club!

When I reflect on my champions, they have all been pivotal in shaping my career and the twists and turns it has taken (and continues to take). These people have had a huge influence in choices I have made, from changing jobs to establishing new client bases in different places, to creating new offerings and challenging me to shift my mindset. They have been unselfish in sharing their own ideas, introducing me to their contacts, their colleagues and their clients, offering me work and singing my praises both privately and publicly.

It’s easy to take these people for granted and forget how important their support and influence has been. So we need to identify who they are, these champions of ours. One way to do this is to reflect on the turning points in our lives and particularly in our careers and look for the people who were there at the time and played a role in the choices we made, either by asking the right questions, offering fresh ideas and options, shoring up our confidence or actually opening doors.

That opens up a great opportunity to think of a way, any way that feels authentic, to thank them or acknowledge the role they have played and how much we have valued their input.

Whether it’s a breakfast of champions, a bunch of flowers, a phone call or an email, do something.

It will undoubtedly make their day!

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Mother Christmas

12/20/2016

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I so love how leadership can show up in shiny and unexpected ways.

Last weekend, twenty five neighbours met for our annual Christmas get-together, this time to share stories of memorable Christmas rituals or gifts. I immediately knew I wanted to share magical memories of the Christmas Eve street parade at Riverton where I grew up, the wonder of seeing the lights on in the shops (many years before late night shopping became commonplace) and especially the part where Father Christmas arrived in a sleigh filled with gifts for all the children.

Our whole family would drive six miles (and it was ‘miles’ in those days) from our farm into town, me squashed between Mum and Dad in the front of the Ford Zephyr and my three older brothers lined up in the back. There were the shops open and brightly lit, with Peoplestores, the large two-story department store alive with last minute shoppers, happily greeting friends and neighbours as excitement mounted in the lead up to the arrival of Father Christmas.

After the parade, my parents would visit friends in the town for a Christmas drink before we drove home. This was always an anxious time for me, worrying that we wouldn't be home in time to get to sleep before Father Christmas came down the chimney with our presents.

In preparation for the telling of my story, I phoned my almost 99 year-old mother to see if she could add some details. To my astonishment, I discovered that she had actually started the Riverton Christmas Eve street party. It turns out that when she was growing up at a tiny town called Bute on South Australia’s York Peninsula, a similar Christmas Eve street party was an enchanting memory for her. So when I started kindergarten, she became President of the kindergarten and suggested Riverton do something similar. A neighbour had an old dray in his farm shed and this was modified to become the sleigh which she then painted and decorated. Friends on the kindergarten committee helped raise money to buy gifts for the town children and the rest, as they say, is history. Or herstory.

The Riverton Christmas Eve party with Father Christmas now arriving on the back of a ute, (the sleigh was stolen and never found) continues to this day, albeit held on the local oval, since increased traffic heading to Broken Hill can no longer be diverted through the side streets.

I was bowled over to realise that this wondrous event hadn't always occurred - she explained that during the war years there were total blackouts so night time street lighting and shopping was not possible - and that my mother had instigated this major, memorable and lasting initiative.

When I phoned her the day after telling my story to thank her for making my childhood Christmases so magical, she confessed surprise that I didn't know of her role. She obviously told her great grandchildren though because, collecting one from kindergarten a few years ago, she was amused to hear from the teacher that her great-granddaughter had announced to the whole kindergarten “My Nan invented Christmas”.

She certainly did!

PS That's Mother Christmas in the back row, third from the right. And that's me in the middle of the slide at the local kindergarten, with a bow in my hair.

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What's on your TO BE list?

10/20/2016

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I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel completely overwhelmed by stuff that seems outside of my control. It never is, of course, but that’s obscured when we’re overwhelmed.

Most recently it was a combination of the US presidential election, the radio blaring with daily news of domestic violence, political insults and endless replays of horror stories, the dog nudging me impatiently to play and the ever-present voice in my head nagging about all the things I had to do, fearing I’d missed an important appointment and questioning where I’d left the shopping list.

It occurred to me in a moment of panic that this is not the way I want to live my life. It certainly is not the best version of myself that shows up when I’m feeling like this. I’m anxious, short-tempered, impatient and quite sad.

What to do?

Well, of course, I can turn the radio off, refuse to watch the news, take the dog for a walk and make a To Do list, to capture all things that need to be done so they don't fall through the cracks.

Then I wonder, ‘Is this the best question?’

I know that To Do lists usually leave me feeling even more overwhelmed.

So if I don't want to be sad, frustrated, grumpy and out of control, how do I want to be?

Aha! I can make a TO BE list.

Immediately, I feel relieved and calmer. A sense of having control of my state of mind seeps in. In calm moments, I know that, when all’s said and done, that’s all any of us really do have control over - how we choose to see or make sense of the world and what happens in our lives.

I can consider how I would like ‘to be’ today. Calm, serene, intentional come to mind. I write them down. (This is a tip that works for me - unless I write down important words or ideas, they just float around in my already cluttered brain with all the other great ideas that waft in and out). As I focus on being calm, I immediately start to calm down. The mere idea of being serene makes me smile. I’m sure my heart rate is dropping already. Being intentional focuses my mind on what has to be done in a way that feeling panicked most certainly does not.

Some days I choose to be joyful and lighthearted. Somehow even difficult things take on a completely different complexion on those days. There are other days when I might need to be feisty and fierce, or at least firm. I automatically gird my loins, prepared to take a stand.

In other words, deliberately choosing how we would like ‘to be’ results in behaviours and actions aligned with this way of being.

The good news is we can choose how ‘to be’ at any moment.

A client recently admitted to being so busy ‘always running’ that it took a trip to a conservation park in the US for her to stop, breathe, hear the birds singing and the trees rustling to calm down and experience some moments of peace and joy.

Try a To Be list. It’s every bit as effective and a lot more convenient than traveling to Wyoming.

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Are you a multipotentialite, too?

8/29/2016

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Someone has finally come up with a name for people like me and I’m thrilled. Anyone else wonder what you want to do when you grow up? Join the tribe!

Multipotentialites, that’s what we’re called. People who change direction a number of times, often get bored when they’ve mastered something or learned /achieved as much as they want to and start looking for the next thing.

I’ve been thinking about this because my brother Robert is having a major exhibition of his life’s work at the Art Gallery of South Australia. I’m bursting with pride and admiration for his artistic achievements and his sheer perseverance, practicing daily a calling he’s had since early childhood to make sense of the world through his art.

I’ve also been reflecting on how, as kids, we sat together at the kitchen table drawing and colouring in for hours on end, even winning prizes in the Sunday Mail Possums Pages colouring competitions.

While he remained faithful to this calling, honing his skills all over his school books and on any other available surface, I discovered that I also liked writing and playing the piano. Then I learned to cook and knit and crochet and design and sew my own clothes, play guitar and, later, flute. In other words, I was drawn to diverse interests and creative pursuits and he was rightfully labeled ‘the artist'’.

So, while he has devoted his life to his art, I’ve evolved through a series of careers and roles including teacher, driving instructor, nanny, advertising salesperson, television producer, entrepreneur, tour guide, PR consultant, writer, management consultant, board director, art therapist, executive coach and mentor. In retrospect, establishing and running businesses has been by far the most creative thing I’ve done (so far) but I also love taking photographs, making mosaics, cooking, embroidery, playing with plasticine and colouring in (again).

At times, I've felt confused and little embarrassed about this apparent lack of clear focus even though I can honestly say that I’ve enjoyed (and learned an enormous amount from) every single role I've had. However, now that I’ve found the tribe of multipotentialites, I’m feeling elated about what’s possible in the future.

The wonderful Emilie Wapnick has a website www.puttylike.com where you can find out more about multipotentialites. You can actually join up to receive reassurance and ideas for how to optimise your creativity and integrate all your disparate talents. Yippee!

Wapnick offers this definition:

" A multipotentialite is a person who has many different interests and creative pursuits in life.
Multipotentialites have no “one true calling” the way specialists do. Being a multipotentialite is our destiny. We have many paths and we pursue all of them, either sequentially or simultaneously (or both).
Multipotentialites thrive on learning, exploring, and mastering new skills. We are excellent at bringing disparate ideas together in creative ways. This makes us incredible innovators and problem solvers.
When it comes to new interests that emerge, our insatiable curiosity leads us to absorb everything we can get our hands on. As a result, we pick up new skills fast and tend to be a wealth of information".

So if the cap fits, wear it with pride!

* * * * * *

It's not just multipotentialites who are unsure about their career options, future direction or simply what to do next. It's one of the most vexing questions that many of us face at some point in our careers.

So, as our contribution to making people's working lives more fulfilling, Andrew Stevens of Uncharted Leadership and I are offering a FREE half day event “Finding Meaningful Work” on 27th September from 9:00am - 12:00pm.

If you or anyone you know would find this helpful, register now at http://findingmeaningfulwork.eventbrite.com.au.

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Leading in Complexity

7/20/2016

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If you're noticing how much more complex the issues we face daily are becoming, you're certainly not alone.

A recent study by IBM of 1500 global CEO's highlighted 'the escalation of complexity' as the single biggest challenge confronting them.

The US army describes this operating environment as VUCA - Volatile (change occurs at a fast pace and on a large scale) Uncertain (difficult to predict the future) Complex (challenges are complicated by multiple, interdependent and often unknown factors) and Ambiguous (events can have multiple interpretations with little indication which is true).

VUCA is very evident in attempting to understand and deal with global issues like climate change, terrorism and the refugee crisis. In our own organisations, VUCA may not always be quite so obvious but the same issues are still there, if on a smaller scale.

So how are we to respond?

Clearly, mastery of traditional management knowledge and technical skills no longer guarantees today's leaders either personal or organisational success. What's required is both a new way to act and a new way to think. And these have to be learned and practiced.

Andrew Stevens and award-winning author Diana Renner formed the Uncharted Leadership Institute earlier this year to help leaders and organisations operate more effectively in complex environments. They believe great leadership is about successfully navigating the uncharted waters beyond the edge of current competence.

I agree. As a newly appointed Associate of the Uncharted Leadership Institute, I am excited to be offering, with Andrew Stevens, a three month program 'Leading in Complexity' to introduce leaders to a this new way of thinking and acting.

We've designed 'Leading in Complexity' in bite-sized chunks which are highly engaging, practical and experiential in format. Three half day workshops (one per month) will cover the three key aspects of foundational understanding, advanced skills development and real-world application, including tools and techniques to make progress on complex challenges. Insights, understanding and new approaches will be further explored in three half-day group coaching sessions, conducted between workshops. Group coaching embeds learning, tests assumptions and builds connection, and trust and respect for self and others.

The first of these programs starts in Adelaide on 27 July. You'll find details of session dates and registration fees under Programs on this website www.kayhannaford.com

If you, or anyone you know is interested in finding out more or joining us on this program (or a future one) please email me on [email protected]. You can find out more about Uncharted Leadership at www.unchartedleadership.com.au

It would be great to explore and navigate those uncharted waters with you.

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An occasional address

5/8/2016

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Listening to my husband’s address at a University graduation Ceremony last week, I was struck by how powerful a driver it is to have a strong sense of purpose from an early age.

I was shocked the first time he told me that he’d always wanted to ‘do something significant’ with his life. I couldn't imagine even daring to think like that. To be honest, such was the intensity of my family’s focus on my brothers’ sporting prowess when I was growing up, the most significant thing I could have imagined doing with my life would have been to marry a Port Adelaide footballer.

When I asked Bob how he came to think of his life in such a consequential way, he put it down to growing up in post-war Britain, where there was so much to do to create a future and people were impatient for change. He wanted to be a part of making things happen.

So I’ve decided to bring you his story. This is the Occasional Address delivered by Professor Robert (Bob) Seamark on the occasion of receiving a Doctor of the University degree (Honoris Causa) from the University of Adelaide. I hope you find it interesting:

“To receive this recognition from a University that has played such an important part in my life is a special honour. It was this University that 62 years ago offered me, an under-qualified,17 year old ten-pound Pom living in a migrant camp, the chance of a tertiary education.

My ambition was to do medicine but medical students were then required to have their own microscope. These cost a 100 or so pounds - well beyond my means at the time. So I enrolled in Agricultural Science, a course with similar first year subjects allowing me the possibility to transfer to medicine in year 2 - if I could save some money.

What I didn’t anticipate was one of the lectures during that year transforming my thinking and radically altering the course of my life. The lecture by the Professor of Agriculture, Colin Donald, was on the Malthusian Theory of Population Growth. This theory, posed in 1798 by an English scholar, the Reverent T R Malthus, predicted that the world population, if left unchecked, would outgrow its resources, with disastrous consequences.

Professor Donald’s data showed the Malthus prediction was alarmingly on track. Demand for food was rapidly outgrowing supply. A crisis point, where demand exceeded supply, would be reached within my lifetime. To a young man with ambitions to do something significant with his life, what greater challenge could there be than to sign on to a field of science that focused on addressing such a critical issue.

So I continued in Agricultural Science and on graduating was awarded the Barr Smith Travelling Scholarship in Agriculture to do my PhD in Cambridge. Following an exciting Post Doc year in Germany at the height of the Berlin siege crisis, I returned to the University of Adelaide as a lecturer in the newly established Department of Animal Physiology at the Waite Institute.

The timing was perfect. The Australian economy was still riding on the sheep’s back and the government and livestock industry were investing heavily in research to enhance livestock reproduction, my area of expertise.

My research group at the Waite flourished

Five years on, to the surprise of many, I transferred to the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in the medical school.

I was enticed there by a visionary head of department named Lloyd Cox. He wanted O&G to move from being somewhere where, to use his words, ‘failed surgeons came to practice”. He wanted O&G to be a world-leading science-based discipline. To achieve this, he needed the focus and energy being shown in our livestock research applied to human reproduction. I was to be the conduit between the disciplines that would allow this to happen.

I quickly realized the new position would allow me to both continue my research on food production and address the other Malthusian issue: human fertility regulation. How could I not be enticed?

Bridging disciplines proved to be a brilliant initiative by Lloyd Cox. The two-way exchange of information and innovation that followed triggered an explosion in research activity. The result was a wealth of new knowledge of the reproductive process; knowledge that allowed the development of advanced reproductive technologies, so commonplace today, such as IVF, cloning and trans-genesis. These technologies have transformed our society and, pleasingly to me, contribute globally to further delay the still-pending Malthusian crisis

From the beginning, we were fully aware that the realization of Lloyd Cox’s vision required the Department to attract quality staff and students. We accepted, even back then, that funding from Government sources alone would never suffice. Our growth would only be possible by translating our research into goods and services of commercial value. In short, we needed to engage with the commercial world - an almost unthinkable proposition for academics at the time.

Notwithstanding our naivety and lack of business acumen, we did engage and when I left the Department in1995, I counted 16 successful commercial enterprises stemming from our ventures. Together these thriving businesses were contributing over 85% of the funding needed to support the, by now, world-leading scientific enterprise Lloyd Cox had envisioned. Clearly, academics can translate ideas into useful goods and services without loss of credibility, reputation or respect.

I suppose I surprised everybody again when, after three happy and productive decades in O&G, I moved to CSIRO in Canberra to become Director of the Pest Animal Control Cooperative Research Centre. I was drawn to this by an idea formulated by the previous director, Hugh Tyndale-Biscoe.

He, like me, was concerned about the devastating impact that introduced pest animals, such as the European rabbit and fox, were having on Australia’s unique flora and fauna. His novel idea was to reduce their impact through a new generation of humane, biological control agents that worked through fertility control rather than killing. He proposed doing this using genetically modified viruses as self-propagating contraceptive vaccines that could be tailored to each species. A brilliant academic idea but could it be translated into product? That was my challenge!

It took 7 years, but we were finally able to show that such viruses could be created and Hugh’s concept was feasible. However, given the public’s suspicion of both viruses and genetic modification, his futuristic approach has yet to attract the national support it needs to allow release.

I returned to Adelaide to take up a part time role as Director of the Flinders Medical Research Institute. This allowed me time to continue to act as scientific advisor to several exciting start-up biotechnology companies working on stem cells and ground breaking cancer treatments. It also allowed me the opportunity to tutor Year 1 medical students at Flinders University. Yes, Year 1 - the very year I failed to complete.

To the graduates gathered here, my sincere congratulations on successfully completing this stage of your life’s journey.
Beware the trap of thinking you now know where life is leading you. Don’t let your degree define the path you take. Underpin? Yes. Define? No.

As a newly minted graduate, sitting where you now sit, I could never have imagined the amazing, fun-filled journey that awaited me or where it would lead. Like you, I had yet to discover, that the true excitement of life is to be found not in the world you know but in worlds that you don’t even know exist.

Bon voyage and enjoy.”

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An occasional address

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