From the Desk of Caspar
The Pride Bell
You never quite know what will resonate with other people. I did a talk and Q&A today on Be more Human with an audience of leaders for the Shared Services Forum annual leadership event.
One of the things that is fascinating is seeing what people take away. At live events, I often ask what’s one thing people will do differently. It’s a bit trickier at online events. What’s interesting is what people share on social media online afterwards - its good to see what is resonating.
Jill shared that she rang the pride bell about the leadership team she is part of.
What’s the pride bell?
In my business back in the day we seldom celebrated wins. It was always a bit muted and flat. I got the ideas from Zappo’s that we should celebrate small wins.
We got an old school style bell and encouraged the sales team to give a good old thump on it every time a deal got closed. All well and good and that shifted things but the obvious critique came back which was “what about our consultants, operations, developers and marketing teams? Didn’t they have stuff to celebrate?
We changed it from sales to pride moments. Anytime someone did something they felt proud of, we encouraged them to stand on a desk and ring the bell.
Simple, powerful and just a bit of fun.
Culture is the sum total of all the small habits rituals and ways that we operate together.
Deciding to consciously make small rituals to celebrate good things is something I always try to do at work and at home.
To hear Jill say she wanted to ring the pride bell about the leadership team she is part of was music to my ears (sorry couldn’t resist the pun).
Tip: What will you ring the pride bell for this week? Who in your team has something they are proud of and want to share?
Staying Playful
As we entered our second lockdown in the UK, Nichola, my wife and I were thinking what would make a different date night. We went for a trip down memory lane and rediscovered games that we both used to play in our childhood.
We rediscovered this cracker - Mastermind. Who else remembers playing this as a kid?
In a digital world, it’s great to disconnect and even better to remember to just to play, laugh and have fun.
Big Bold Bites
When you're going after big bold goals, it's so much more helpful that they are grounded in reality rather than wishful positive thinking. It's about seeing things exactly as they are - not better than they and not worse than they are. It's about facing the hard truths - reality has a way of catching up on us if we ignore it!
PS If you like this, you can subscribe to my YouTube Channel to get these tips every week rather than just every fortnight.
Thought for the day
When I entered the working world in the 1990s, the leadership model was based on the carrot and stick approach, existing in a numbers-driven culture, defined by a win/lose finish line.
That old model is flawed in many ways and it needs to be consigned to the scrapheap. To be able to achieve our big bold goals we need a business approach that puts humanity at its core, an approach steered by leaders who create high-performance teams that thrive based on combined strengths.
In recent times, it has become so much more obvious that high-performance teams put people first and the results follow.
This is the first of the 20 principles for #bigboldgoals shared in #bemorehuman
“We had Caspar Craven speaking in our strategy event about self-leadership. Caspar and his human ideas about self-leadership were very well received by our audience of approximately 250 leaders and experts and gave them lots of food for thought in both work and personal life. As a speaker Caspar is very inspirational and human – I especially like his approach of putting people first. He also combines he’s speech with great stories. I would highly recommend Caspar as a speaker to any organisation who wants to help its employees in achieving big bold goals”