From the desk of Caspar:
When it comes to Big Bold Goals, whether you believe you can or whether you believe you can’t, you are right.
I used to think that belief appeared as if by magic - everything changed when I realised that you can create that belief deliberately, specifically and consciously.
Back in my corporate life I’d be sitting in the audience and at some point, the speaker, usually someone who’d been successful in either the sporting or business world, would say the words “You’ve just got to have belief”.
It would sound so simple, so powerful and just so blindingly obvious. I’d scribble down in my notebook: ‘have belief’. Sitting there, in the energised environment and immersed fully in the flow of the story, I suddenly had all the answers – and it started with belief.
Roll forward several days to when normality had returned. Many emails, to-do lists, and meetings had come and gone, and I’d flick back through my notes and find the words ‘have belief’. In the cold light of day, I’d ask myself “How exactly do I have belief?”. Is it some magically anointed thing that just appears? Am I broken because I don’t have that belief? Where is the mental switch that I need to have belief? I’d get frustrated because the simple advice had come without an instruction manual.
What I have come to discover on my journey is that you can create and manufacture your own belief. This led me to the notion that belief is a skill – that belief is like a muscle that needs to be trained, developed, honed and strengthened and that it is built over time.
It comes from the combination of many small things - ingraining the story you want to create of the future in your sub conscious mind, doing hard things, celebrating small wins, locking in winning feelings together as a team, relentlessly studying the traits and patterns of people who’ve achieved goals similar to yours and the cultivation of practices and habits that move you forward each and every day.
Tip: It won’t happen by accident and its not always easy, but it is doable and achievable. Think of Belief as a core skill set you need to develop for yourself and coach your team on how they can develop it.
Keep Calm and ….
What do you do when you need calm and peace of mind?
For me, it’s to find the closest bit of water and to get connected with nature. It’s been half term so the perfect time to spend time with the kids and escape to the coast for some fishing and water time.
UPM Raflatac
It was a pleasure to speak to hundreds of leaders globally for the very impressive UPM Raflatac this week on how to lead yourself in times of uncertainty and change, and as always delightful that the ideas resonated with feedback like this.
Big Bold Bites
Do you seek out people who agree with you or disagree with you? Here's one simple idea on how to improve your teams performance and move you closer to achieving your Big Bold Goals with Episode 6 of Big Bold Bites.
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
It’s way too easy to get frustrated when things don’t work out the way you want them with people in your team,
Frustration is the message to tell us that what has happened is something other than what we wanted to happen.
What sits behind this is a set of expectations. An expectation that things were meant to play out a certain way.
The team member was meant to complete the task/ project.
The wife/ husband / partner was meant to do something.
It’s way too easy to fall into the frustration trap.
It’s much more insightful to get curious. Remember that every single behaviour someone shows is a communication.
The message may be simply be:
- I didn’t really understand what you meant and I was too fearful to ask
- I had something more important to do
- I didn’t realise it was that important to you
- I didn’t know what to do
Investing the time to get curious and go behind the scenes almost always pays dividends to creating an effective high-performance team rather than hair-triggering off at the first sign of frustration.
By addressing the underlying challenge rather than the surface level, you’ll build trust and confidence.
““A privilege to have you at BAE and an excellent example of how an ‘ordinary’ person can achieve the ‘extraordinary’ through thinking ‘big and bold’!”
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