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On 14th March this year it’s the first LearnConnectDo event of 2019 as these events run into their 4th year now! Wow.
“These are always thought-provoking and useful sessions!”
CH, previous delegate.
Huge thanks to everyone who has attended, facilitated and helped us along the way – including PKF Cooper Parry who kindly sponsor us by letting us use their amazing workspace for every event.
Now compare that to the definition of emotional intelligence:
“the capability of individuals to recognize their own emotions and those of others, discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, and manage and/or adjust emotions to adapt to environments or achieve one’s goal(s)”
When you were in flow, to what extent were you doing any of the things in that definition?
My guess would be not very much, if at all, and certainly not consciously. Not with intellectual effort.
This is because when we’re in our natural state, we don’t need strategies and tactics. We don’t need breathing and centring, or visualisations of the best version of us, or mantras about listening to understand not to reply.
And this is because, in our natural “flow state”, we aren’t paying attention to the thinking going on in our heads. We’re not grabbing hold of thoughts and believing them. We’re not analysing why someone’s said what they said, or why we ourselves are getting frustrated by something, and crucially we’re not trying to manage ourselves out of an emotional response we think we shouldn’t be having in that moment. We’re keeping our intellectual, egoic, personal thinking out of the way and we’re accessing a much deeper space of wisdom and intuition.
Why aren’t we in flow more?
For years we’ve been teaching people (me included until recently) that we need to intellectually manage what’s going on for us emotionally. That we need to use our brain muscle to fix ourselves, that we need to practice and repeat to build new habits and new neural pathways, all so we can be better versions of ourselves more of the time because we’ve been led to believe there’s some version of us which is not good enough and not acceptable to society right now.
The trouble is, the application of our intellectual capabilities to these emotional management tasks, takes valuable energy away from our ability to generate fresh new thoughts and ideas in any moment, from our ability to listen and hear others, from our ability to connect and collaborate.
Remember that flow state? All those things just happened naturally there because you weren’t stuck, caught, or getting tangled in your thinking. And I’m not saying that in flow everything is about positivity and full agreement, with permanent grins on everyone’s faces – but you and others will have felt able to express any frustration or concerns without it seeming like a big deal. In fact the complete opposite. Any such insights will have been gratefully received and discussed, leading to an even better way forward.
So if we’re not “managing” our state through emotional intelligence tactics, how do we get to this state of flow more of the time?
We understand how our human system really works.
What we’ve been doing with emotional intelligence is explore:
the “what” – the content of our thoughts, labelling the emotions we’re feeling,
and
the “why” – what’s triggered you to get to that response. Often then examined to be re-framed or replaced with a more helpful thought.
This different approach understands the “how” of our underlying system. Think of making a car go. There is no benefit in commenting on the shape or design of the bodywork (the “what”). And there’s also no benefit in polishing the paintwork to a high shine to make it look nicer (the “why”). Neither of these approaches is going to get the car going. You must first understand “how” all the parts of the engine work and fit together to make the thing move forward.
The exact same here.
So how does our system work?
There are two areas where we can see the system working the way it always has and always will.
I was with a Board team last week who were talking about change. How it takes courage and can be hard because we’re having to lose something of us to adopt something new or move to something different.
This is true but only when we attach to our personal thoughts
When we attach to our personal thoughts it’s like putting square wheels on a racing car. We clunk along. Sometimes stopping all together, unable to move forward. Certainly not able to quickly change direction when needed. But we believe in these wheels, we created them. Even if “horrible” or “negative” there’s a familiarity about them that brings comfort. We know where we are. We’ve adapted ourselves to drive with these wheels, forgetting how things used to be before we had them.
Then we start to consider maybe this isn’t ideal. Maybe I would benefit from a smoother ride. Normally we start working hard to change the wheels. Intellectually analysing how they were fitted, what they are made of. But some of the bolts seem stuck. Or maybe there’s a square wheel we subconsciously like the look of so we find a justifiable reason not to change it.
Now we’re driving with 2 square and 2 round wheels. Better but not exactly a smooth ride. Then you meet someone who glides on round wheels. You’re fascinated & slightly freaked out by their difference. It reminds you of glimmers in your life when you’ve glided, when smooth wheels suddenly appeared and for that short while you enjoyed it! Thinking it must have been what you were doing at the time that created that feeling, you repeat the activity, repeating the external conditions to create the smooth-ride magic as often as you can.
Maybe you didn’t realise that you brushed off the truth of what was going on because it seemed so simple and we all know simple doesn’t win kudos prizes.
The truth is that round wheels are our natural state. Round wheels are what we are born with. We just acquired the square as we grew up & blindly followed the square-creating rules of the world. Once we really see the truth of how the square are created, moment-to-moment, and what they really mean, then our attachment to them drops away with a natural ease and we slip into the round. The natural place we fall back to. Our innate state of clarity, wisdom and wellbeing. From here we glide round the corners, speed along the straights and rediscover a life of richness and fulfilment. All the while connected to our innate brilliance.
If you’re curious to learn more, this is what we’re going to be exploring through LearnConnctDo this year. The thread that’s going to weave through all the sessions.
We’re starting on 14th March* with an introduction to the psychological understanding that underpins this smooth-wheel place. The Eventbrite will be up very soon on this page – if you don’t want to miss it jump on the mailing list by getting in touch with me here. As last year, all ticket profits will be going to Twenty:Twenty as we continue our partnership with this wonderful charity. Thank you to PKF for continuing to host us so we can maximise how much we donate.
*3-6pm at PKF Cooper Parry’s East Mids offices (near East Mids Airport).
It really seems like that person is irritating / lazy / slow at their work / makes lots of mistakes.
Or that this other person is amazing / so capable / always on it / full of great ideas.
It really seems like this situation is upsetting, or that one is fun.
That this one will make me cry, or that one will make me laugh out loud.
It seems like these are definites.
But when you see that our minds are entirely like projectors, that definite-ness shifts.
Nothing, ever, in our whole lives, has “made” us think or feel any of those things.
All those people and experiences are 100% neutral until we experience them through our thinking. We are a projector, not a camera, and always have been.
Life is LITERALLY what we make it because we can and have always experienced life through our thoughts.
The thing that makes these experiences seem so convincingly true and makes them seem like they’re coming from outside of us is that we mostly agree about what’s upsetting or fun and what counts as irritating or amazing. We get taught these rules from the moment we enter the world so our thinking around people and situations is mostly very similar.
I witnessed it the other day in the supermarket. Someone talking to a baby.. “oh that’s better, there’s that smile” because clearly the baby not smiling wasn’t good or acceptable. Or at least that’s the message the baby – and we all – received. The thought that the baby attached its identity to.
But then you meet someone who doesn’t see things the same way as you.
A common reaction to these people is to find a way to not be with them. The greater the differences the more we’ll psychologically or intellectually fight or run away from them. Our ego likes to be right and certain and these people who remove such certainty and who challenge our right-ness are a danger – or at least our ego thinks so.
I ran some happiness workshops recently and while most people were in agreement about the stress and pressures of diaries and conflicting priorities, about the difficult people and demanding bosses, the high expectations and reducing budgets…there was one person who was different.
“You all seem to be thinking about this stuff far too much” he said.
“This is just work. You come in, do your best with the time you’ve got, you close things off well for the day, you go home and you do other things”.
Most of the group held onto their own views and saw his as strange, or dismissed this difference with “well you must have an easy job” or “you mustn’t have the pressures that I have in my job” or, I’ve no doubt some were thinking, “your work isn’t as important as mine”.
As far as I know this guy hadn’t had any special lessons in how to get the most from life but he really seemed to have a good appreciation for the nature of Thought, and that when you really see that, your thoughts naturally drop away more easily and bother you less. When you see that the feelings thoughts generate don’t need solutions life gets easier, more obvious and more fun.
Notice for yourself. Next time you find yourself confronted by a different view, see what it’s like to notice that thought and not follow it or hold onto it as if it were the truth.
This parrot led to tears and upset.
As my daughter drew it, copying from the video, she burst into tears. The tail looked all wrong, far too wide for the body. “But mummy look, the tail needs to go to under its first toe”.
Trouble is, of course, my daughter’s parrot’s toes were slightly different to the one in the video so the tail going to there did make it look a bit crazy-wide.
When we try to copy a pre-prepared plan to the letter, when we expect people to behave in a certain way that matches the movie in our heads, when we think it shouldn’t be raining today because we’ve got that outdoor event, when we think we should be earning more / achieving more….
This is where our suffering begins: when we believe every single thing we think and see it as a solid, definite truth.
Once you really see how our minds work, the more you live in the moment working with what is, instead of what you think it “should” be. The more you’re here, the more you stay fluid and flexible, adaptive and agile, adjusting and integrating, and the better you feel.
All this without having to actively “do” anything. No mind-management techniques, no practicing of new habits. Once you “get” this understanding, the flow just flows.
It’s hard work swimming upstream against the current of the world around us.
Jump in and be in the flow.
Get in touch if you want to know more.
It might just be me but I find this incredibly sad and I hear my internal voice of desperation asking “what on earth are we doing??”.
I also wonder how many people find expectations of self-care just another stress to add to the pile of other things “I’m not good enough at”.
It’s all with good intention but it’s not getting to what really needs to be got at.
Yes, look after ourselves better but not in this way.
Not when looking after our own health is a to-do list or goal.
I have a lot of time for you Michelle Obama (assuming she actually said these words in the quote!) but self-care can’t be attached to a “we need to” i.e. “we should”. Anything along those lines is a force, a push, a cajole, a tell, an expectation that’s being put on us from outside of us, a standard that if we fall short we’re rubbish (and then we give up).
Yes, look after ourselves better but not when we believe we have an important role to play in getting things “right” with our health and wellbeing, because the more we do this the more we get in our own way.
Layering our thinking and piling expectations into our heads only takes us further away from our innate wellbeing that we already have inside us; in all of us. It takes us away from letting our system right itself, which it does all the time if we stop meddling.
Instead, when we drop all that thinking, looking after ourselves becomes the most obvious thing to do. Anything else just looks bonkers! And we don’t need someone outside of us to tell us what to do or how to do it.
If you’d like to talk more about what this means for you just get in touch.
On 13th September Cat Hase and I ran a Street Wisdom for September’s Learn > Connect > Do event, and welcomed an inquisitive bunch of wanderers to the PKF Cooper Parry offices up here in the East Mids. You can *see some of them there in the photo 😉 (*courtesy of Cat’s creative skills and in the absence of us thinking to take photos!) Thanks to these wonderful people buying tickets to find wisdom in the streets, we’ve now upped our total donated to Twenty:Twenty to £325 so far this year – more than last year’s total already! We’re delighted!!
As well as that great news, I wanted to share about the experience of one of the delegates because it led to learning and insight for me too. This is the kind of brilliance that comes from Street Wisdom and I didn’t even wander!
Jonny, Head of Fundraising at Twenty:Twenty, brought the question – how do you create a community? Clearly an important question for his job, and for many in the world of work whatever the sector.
His first thoughts as he began his quest were “well, an airport runway, how am I going to find inspiration here?’. And of course he did, because our mind is a wonderful thing and Street Wisdom is an amazing tool to access it.
This seemingly dead-end question led to a realisation that the runway is in fact itself a creator of community. All the people who visit the airport, who work there, who transport people there, who work in the businesses that are only there because of their proximity to the airport. These people are all part of that airport community. They might all have different individual, small-group or large-group purposes to be there but they’re all connected by that central tarmac object. All part of that community.
Later that night, or the next morning, I can’t quite remember….I had a realisation too…..multiply that up. Take it bigger. Take the earth.
We might all have our individual, small-group or large-group purposes here but we are all connected. We are all together, living our purposes, connected by this shared central earth-shaped object. All part of this community. And not just humans – plants, creatures, weather, water, mountains….. All connected.
What does this change for you?
This has been a new realisation for me thanks to learning about the Three Principles with Piers Thurston and this particular realisation has helped to settle a paradox that I used to just accept I had to hold both ends of.
That paradox was that I would hear people say “you’re good enough just as you are” but then I would hear and see others doing or saying things – maybe about their own work or feeding back to me – which would suggest I “should” be doing or behaving in a different way. So…I’m good enough as I am…..except when others (or me to myself) lay down a judgement and then I’m not good enough, I’m imperfect in some way and I “should” change and do something different.
Now…..the paradox has dissolved.
Two key realisations have been part of this happening….
One is that I had a deep whole-body realisation that I’m actually, deeply, fundamentally OK. I am already a whole person. Good enough just as I am. I truly “see” that. I don’t just hear the words at an intellectual level.
Two is that I see that everything I have ever experienced has been from the inside out. So all those times when I’ve thought I “should” be doing something because of what someone else is telling me or what I’m enviously seeing others do, have been created by me. Self-imposed “should’s”.
And the result. The paradox is gone. I am deeply, fundamentally, good enough as I am and I know I have an innate capacity to be creative and resourceful which means I will keep moving forward, learning, improving and creating with the goal of making a positive difference. But not because I “should”, instead because it feels like the most natural and obvious thing to do.
[Photo credit : https://unsplash.com/@rohanmakhecha]
Everyone. Every. Single. One of us. Has hang ups, neuroses, insecurities.
They show up in different ways. Some masked by confidence, others shaking with fear, others pursuing, driving and achieving to compensate for the empty space and the belief that they’re not good enough.
But we’ve been sold hype all our lives and this is how it plays out.
Hype in the form of…
What counts as good and bad.
What counts as acceptable and unacceptable.
What will have you included and excluded.
Which boxes to tick to be counted as good.
All of which our ego attaches to and desperately works at to play the game, to be included, to be rewarded and praised.
A game we’ve been taught. A game we’ve been taught is the way to stay included, safe and OK. A game which will stop us experiencing sadness or upset. A game which we think will keep us alive.
And our ego plays its heart out because it’s desperate to be accepted, to be good enough, to fill the empty space. Keep playing the game.
And yet it still doesn’t feel OK.
And things go “wrong” and then it definitely doesn’t feel OK because it was taught that sadness and tears were things to be avoided.
And it remembers – in body and mind – the times it’s been told it’s not good enough. That it’s not OK. And the hurt. So it denies and ignores those feelings and memories and tries to be positive and look on the bright side and to work hard to get the stuff that it’s been told will make it happy.
So it works (really hard through struggle and stress)
to be successful (because it’s been told this makes you happy because you can buy the stuff of happiness)
and it gets there and is happy for a while with the glow of the stuff.
And the glow fades and the emptiness returns and the cycle begins again.
Because without a true belief that it’s good enough, it can never truly be kind to itself. That deep disbelief that it really is worth love or happiness or contentment just can’t be worked or bought or drunk or eaten or friend-ed away.
And so sadness and suffering prevail and the masking behaviours come back because that’s all it knows.
Isn’t it crazy then to discover this game of life doesn’t matter.
That playing the game isn’t the thing that keeps us alive, or not.
We can still play it, we can still enjoy it, we can still “do well” at it – whatever your measure of “doing well” is. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t determine your good-enoughness or your OK-ness.
We’re all OK just as we are. We always have been. But we forgot.
Maybe we’ve all been believing the hype?
[Image source : https://rogerluethy.wordpress.com/2015/02/10/dont-believe-the-hype-efficiency-matters/]
Employee Experience is a new concept in the world of work so if you want to be ahead of the game and learn more: read on and book on!
Over to Lara…
In preparation for this month’s Learn > Connect > Do session, it came to light that whilst there’s lots of information out there on Employee Experience, it’s often quite theoretical and not practical. In our session, we will run an interactive workshop where we’ll consider the employee experience, map out journeys, create personas and run a design-thinking exercise to find solutions to some of the pain points in your workplaces. So ahead of this, we thought we’d share some thoughts on how to understand employee experience better through mapping journeys.
Firstly, before we approach employee experience its important to point out that this should not be viewed in isolation. Systems thinking is an approach to ‘seeing’ things in a holistic way to understand how everything is connected and interdependent on each other within a system. If we view an organisation as a system, then we start to become interested in the various components that make up that system – the stakeholders, processes, technology etc. It makes us think differently. A useful model in this respect is the Service Profit Chain Model:
https://hbr.org/2008/07/putting-the-service-profit-chain-to-work
This annotated version of the chain highlights both employee and customer satisfaction as the focus areas of both Employee and Customer Experience because these are the points where an emotional response is experienced and so these are critical components in the chain. Their connection and interdependency with each other means they mustn’t be designed in isolation or without consideration of how they impact each other.
If you fundamentally believe in this chain as a route to success then you’re off to a strong start when it comes to Employee Experience.
Employee Experience is often confused with employee engagement or as an extension of the employee lifecycle but Employee Experience has User Experience at its core and, with the influence of Customer Experience which established itself first, we can define Employee Experience as the emotional connection between employees and the organisation from the first touchpoint with an organisation – before even thinking of applying for a role – through to the post-employment relationship. Employee Engagement on the other hand is a symptom of what your Employee Experience is like.
So, how do you go about understanding the Employee Experience in your organisation? There are various methods ranging from mapping journeys to developing personas through to analysing the emotional connection at every interaction. This includes human, digital, environmental, cultural and structural interactions where ‘moments of truth’ may occur or ‘pain points’ are highlighted that allow for deeper understanding of how someone feels at that point given their critical nature.
Here is an example of a Customer Experience journey which represents a useful way of documenting the various touchpoints, how the user thinks and feels at that point through to ideas for improvement.
https://www.visual-paradigm.com/guide/customer-experience/what-is-customer-journey-mapping/
This example is useful because it doesn’t just map out the touchpoints, it also includes how people think and feel which can be understood through feedback surveys but also through behavioural analytics. This insight then then forms the basis for idea generation – best done through collaboration from various departments and stakeholders to create potential solutions.
It can be helpful to map out the full employee journey at a high-level and it is also important to break this down into specific activities / transactions such as recruitment, onboarding, training etc so you can analyse the emotional responses of users as they go through these experiences. That specific activity must then be viewed within the context of the whole experience – and then within the wider system so you can consider how it might impact the Customer Experience. Constantly diving down into the detail and coming back up to the macro view to test the interdependencies and connections.
Developing personas (creating a fictional character of a ‘type’ of user) is a valuable tool in appreciating the various perspectives of an experience and to differentiate or personalise the experience for different users.
With the theory and context from this post as a backdrop, we’re looking forward to getting into the practical realities of the Employee Experiences of the Learn > Connect > Do delegates’ workplaces, using these mapping exercises and running a mini-hack to create innovative solutions. we can’t wait!
If you’ve not already, book here! And we look forward to seeing you there!!.