From the desk of Caspar
What are the unconscious levers acting on your team?
In the late 1990s, I lived in Windsor located 10 miles from Heathrow Airport.
Close enough that the sound of planes taking off interrupted your conversations.
Initially, it was really noticeable. After a while, I ceased to notice and it blended into the background sound of life.
It wasn’t long until I no longer noticed it.
I was reminded of this notion last week as I was preparing for this podcast interview.
I was in Devon at the time staying in my Dad’s old house where I’d spent a chunk of my childhood.
As I set up my Zoom, something caught my eye. It was a framed picture on the wall behind me. It was a series of framed banknotes - some old money.
I’d never actually consciously noticed it before.
I reflected on the questions: What message does this send out?
It celebrates money. It gives it an elevated status.
It influenced the mood music of the environment.
Like the noise of the planes, I’d ceased to notice it.
I only noticed it because of the jarring juxtaposition.
I was about to talk about Be More Human and the importance of putting people first.
And here was a message that put money first.
I took the picture down. When I consciously think about it, I want to have influences, the mood music that I believe are important. And that’s about people. Not about results.
Some questions for all of us to play with:
What got celebrated in your past?
What do you celebrate and pay attention to today?
What could you celebrate more of in the future?
Work Team. Home Team. Same logic. It applies equally well.
If you’re struggling to think, just look at what’s on the walls.
Is that what you want to celebrate and encourage?
These are the things that become the unconscious levers that will have a significant influence on your team.
Take the time to become conscious of what’s actually around you and what you celebrate. A little bit of reflection and introspection is almost always worthwhile: see if you can find one thing to make a conscious shift on.
The Idea Espresso Hit
Doing what you’ve always done will give you what you’ve always got.
What’s your different today?
🚀Programme Launch 🚀
If you’ve ever been to one of my talks or individual workshops on how to achieve Big Bold Goals by putting people first, you’ll have come across some of the 20 principles that I’ve found are essential to achieving audacious goals.
There’s a big difference though between having the ideas, and actually implementing and living them across an organisation.
It’s for that reason that together with Susan Armstrong, our team at Big Bold Goals have turned all 20 principles into a series of continuous leadership and teamwork development programmes for leaders and aspiring leaders.
We’re very excited and proud to be formally launching our three programmes.
Each programme lasts for 3 months and is for up to 20 people in a cohort.
You have options around how they’re delivered and the investment needed which cover:
- In Person or Virtual (available now)
- We train your team so they can deliver (launching imminently)
- The fully digital version (launching soon)
If you want to go after audacious goals and want to develop your team so they have the skills and tools needed, we can help.
At this link, you'll find details of the problems we're solving and what our clients are saying about the programmes.
https://www.bigboldgoals.com/programmes
Own your own Development
One of the most common themes we’re hearing is around self-leadership and owning your own development. Not only do we deliver talks on this subject - it’s also one of the most requested workshops for teams across our clients. Here’s Caspar and Sue debating what’s behind this rise in interest:
PS If you like this, you can subscribe to the Big Bold Goals YouTube Channel to get these tips every week rather than just every fortnight.
Thought for the day
What was the last bold action you took? What’s the next one?
“Our success at Amazon is a function of how many experiments we do per year, per month, per week. Being wrong might hurt you a bit. Being slow will kill you" Jeff Bezos.
