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How to rebound after the COVID-19 crisis, are you looking to re-energize and come out a better person?

“Amor Fati” – love of fate – Nietzche.

The period of forced confinement has offered a lot of people an opportunity to reflect on life and purpose. It comes as no surprise that this reflection can give rise to a lot of negative emotions. Research has shown that this is quite normal, negative emotions far outweigh positive one’s – rightly so! We are tilted heavily towards negative emotions, it’s a self-defense mechanism that protects us, better to be anxious than dead.

To emerge stronger from the extended period of lockdown, taking a deep-dive into “what makes us tick” – the good, the bad and the ugly in our personality will ultimately help us to emerge a happier and contented individual.

Exploring the depths of our personality helps us to understand our thoughts and behaviors of today. Every experience that we’ve had in the past had prepared us for who we have become today.

We may not be able to control what is happening around us, but we can control how we react. And the way in which we react to these situations forms the very blueprint of who we are.

Expressing gratitude to some else in the form of saying “thank you” helps you to become more optimistic in life, lower the blood pressure, and strengthen the immune system.

Those two simple words, thank you, yet they can have such a powerful impact.

Research has demonstrated that thankfulness rewires your brain for positivity, it boosts energy levels, and makes the receiving party feel fantastic.

To some people the act of saying “thank you” seems a little awkward because they underestimate how much joy it brings the other person.

Not only does expressing gratitude improve relationships between the giver and receiver it also improves team dynamics. Research in one study carried out (study) demonstrated that people who express gratitude in social situations are seen as desirable people by others in a group.

From the moment of birth we depend on social connections. Giving back to others and sharing is part of the social connections that we make.

How our hidden “dark side” personality can help us through the corona virus situation.

When asked for a list of qualities that make a good manager or good leader, you’re likely to get a laundry list of attributes – the majority of them being positive character traits. According to the Five Factor Model or “Big Five” personality inventory an effective leader demonstrates the following traits; extraversion, conscientiousness, and agreeableness.

Typically, these leaders will check in with their team on a regular basis, they are well-spoken and make the staff aware of their plans. Their focus for staff was on teamwork and getting the job done. In addition, they are not afraid to make decisions when required.

But what about the other less attractive qualities or the “dark side” traits. These have been identified as being the following six personality traits: argumentative, interpersonal sensitivity, narcissism, fear of failure, perfectionism, and impulsivity. The most hazardous three are; argumentative, interpersonal sensitivity and perfectionism. All these traits can ultimately lead to lack of employee engagement, high turnover rates, and poor performance.

In research that was carried out studying the development of 900 military leaders at the US Military Academy over a three-year period, they found that negative or “dark-side” personality traits have their place also. For instance, stubbornness is a bad-but-good trait. In work this is a good thing as you don’t let go until something is done. In relationships it would not be good.

Being uncompromising and narcissistic can also benefit leaders. You will always need a captain to steer the ship and can get the job done no matter what comes next. Sometimes you just have to be uncompromising and go for it.

In one of the episodes of the television sci-fi series Star Trek, the swashbuckling captain of the Starship Enterprise, James. T. Kirk ends up actually being two people, one that is kind, considerate and gentle and another that is brash, argumentative and stubborn. You’ve guessed it the latter gets into a lot of trouble, and the former has difficulty making decisions among other things. In the end they both realize that they need each other to function correctly as a leader. It is the combination and the way that they channel both sides of their personality that has enduring results and impact.

Just completely relying on the positive traits of personality would not give us the edge. At the same time focusing too much on the “dark side” traits would land us in trouble. Know when situation requires you to be at your best and turn the personality trait “dials” up or down accordingly until you’ve achieved the best results.

How to use success coaching to boost your health

Your health is very important to having a successful life even more so during these challenging times. The reason why it is so important is because you need to be aware of your own health in order to achieve some of your long term and short-term goals. You simply need to give yourself the time and opportunity to meet all of your goals so that you can leave the world happy and successful. Your health, weight in particular, can be a goal in itself. You can set goals in order to become healthy.

The first thing that you need to do is make a list of reasons why you feel you need to be healthier. You will want to set some type of background for your goal so that you can understand where it is that you are coming from. You need to know where you are in order to get to where you would like to be, and that is the same in this case. You need to go and weigh yourself and see where your weight issues stand and then set some goals in order to achieve success.

If you are like most people, losing weight is very touchy. You will want to work with a team of people.

Consult your doctor and see how much you can push yourself in order to meet your health goals. The are some people who are in dire need of medical advice. You may not be able to push yourself as hard as you would like to or need to. Once you have accepted your ability to attack your health goals, you then need to gain the confidence to reach your goals.
You will want to talk to a coach, friend, family member, or professional to help encourage you to reach out for a healthy goal in life. They will also work as your support system and will be there for you through the difficult times.
Lastly, you are going to need a motivator. The motivator can be anyone or anything that will get you to give all you got. It could be a simple image of yourself that could motivate you to give an extra five minutes on the treadmill.

The thing with the health goals is that you need to keep your expectations away from super-stardom. You are never going to be as thin or built as nice as some of the celebrities that you see on T. V. Not saying you can't achieve this type of success, but celebrities tend to work out all day and eat at danger levels. You can't push yourself through that much without having a professional with you at all times. Most people can't afford to have a nutritionist and a coach and a motivator and a team of plastic surgeons. Accept with what you can do on your own and accept the consequences of healthy diet and excise.

Finally, you have to learn to make goals that influence good health, but you will also need to set goals that will help you to feel better about yourself. Even if you don't hit your health goal, you need to be able to look at yourself and say to yourself that this is acceptable.

Trying is just part of the goal. When it comes to health-related goals your ultimate goal is to accept yourself. Can you accept yourself, as is? This is a goal that many people spend their entire lives trying to achieve. It's not hard to accept yourself, especially your flaws, but it is something that everyone needs to do in order to find success and happiness.

The Secret Life of Successful Teams

Just recently The New York Times published a very interesting article on how Google was using data driven methodologies to predict how to compose the best teams in terms of performance output - http://nyti.ms/20WG1yY

The project, code-named – Project Aristotle, kicked- off in 2012 and began studying hundreds of Google’s teams so that they could try and find the “magic formula” that would accurately predict team success or failure. After a lot of number crunching they came to the conclusion that it was not easy to just use data as a reliable predictor of team performance. In fact, they discovered that other aspects of team dynamics can have a major impact. They found that group norms, and just being “nice” to each other had a significant impact on the way the team members worked together and thus how the team performed as a whole.

Group norms have been studied many years by social psychologists. It is the instinct that humans have to conform when in a group setting. A great example of this is in a fun experiment that was carried out in the 1970’s. A hidden camera filmed people as they entered the elevator. An actor joined in, and on purpose, instead of facing the front of the elevator as everyone else, he turned and faced the rear. This had the effect of casting some doubts on the new people entering the elevator and eventually they also turned and faced the rear https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgRoiTWkBHU .

The Google study also revealed how high levels of Emotional Intelligence or “EQ” also had an impact on the team dynamics and ultimately led to higher levels of performance. Letting all the members in the team take turns at talking proved to also be highly effective. This distribution of conversation gave the team members a “psychologically safe” environment in which to operate. This helps to provide emotionally stable bonds amongst team members.

I’ve worked with many executive leadership teams over the years. One aspect that I’ve always been able to correlate with high team performance is the diversity in terms of gender and culture. In a series of leadership development programs over a 3-year period I had the chance to facilitate managers that spent a week together learning to become more effective leaders. One of the team exercises that they had was to work in small groups on a business simulation game. Each group was tasked with achieving a goal in a constrained time frame and budget. At the end of the simulation each group’s performance was recorded. Time and time again the group with the highest diversity – male, female, cultural mix obtained the best results compared to low diversity and monoculture.

To Perform or Not to Perform, That is The Question.

The way any organisation has managed its results, good or bad, is by putting in place a Performance Management Process (PMP). Typically a company will have a strategy and defined priorities; these are then cascaded down the hierarchy until they reach the front-line. At all levels in the organisation objectives are set at the beginning of the period and reviewed on regular basis until the end of the period occurs – typically 12 months in duration. As a result of this process, people get rewarded, promoted, demoted, or fired.

In a previous management era, things were simpler… Managing performance was followed according to the ‘command and control’ principle. If employees were not up to scratch on objectives they were given a good dose of K.I.T.A (Kick In The A*@!) to help them along.

Of course, these days the situation has evolved, thankfully. Senior executives are often proud to spell out the mantra: “people are our greatest assets.” This always amuses me, especially when you ask the question, “where are people on your annual reports, on the asset or liability side of the balance sheet”? This question generates some embarrassment on the part of the senior executive. To be fair, the notion of human capital needs to be viewed like any other capital as an investment and not as an expense. In the VUCA world (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) that we are currently exposed to, the way we invest in human capital has to reflect this new business context.

Faced with this evolving VUCA business climate, some organizations decided to bravely ditch their PMP (http://www.strategy-business.com/article/00275?gko=c442b). Notable examples of this include, General Electric, Deloitte, Google, Facebook, etc. etc. At least 30 of the Fortune 500 companies had decided to do away with traditional PMP’s. The new trend is to move towards giving feedback in real-time. An excellent approach, the only snag is that is takes a lot of skills to give performance related feedback (good or bad). Today leaders are badly equipped with these skills.

In a recent survey (https://www.cebglobal.com/blogs/corporate-hr-removing-performance-ratings-is-unlikely-to-improve-performance/ ) of 9000 managers and employees, the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) reported not having PMP is a worse situation. The managers in these companies often judged the performance conversations 14% more negatively than the managers in companies that still used PMP. Further research has shown that over 33% of feedback conversations actually decreased performance instead of increasing it. Worse, employee engagement decreases by 6%

We have reached a critical point in the evolution away from PMP, towards a new normal where leaders will need to focus more on having regular quality conversations they have with their people and equally pay attention to matching goals with competencies. These conversations need to shift from past-focus to future-focused outcomes.