Can Thinking About Power and Control Help Us Be Braver leaders?

When I started from a position of curiosity, to learn more about the suffragettes and courage, my journey found me fusing research from applied psychology, sociology, behavioural sciences and philosophy.

I discovered new ideas about courage and bravery. That the great leaders in history were courage practitioners.

I found that we are often braver than we think. You. Me. All of us.

I have evidenced, that when we understand it as superpower that is uniquely ours in how it manifests, one we can model, practice and understand – the seemingly impossible suddenly becomes very possible.

 The change we want to create, the future we want to move towards, the person we want to become. It’s all up for grabs.

I offer ‘a novel and pioneering view of leadership and life’. So my clients have described it.

A new perspective on living and leading, by brave action and courageous decision making. The Be Braver model.

A programme, practice, and pathway, where self-awareness, self-efficacy and courage transform the way we travel. Individually and collectively.

Now Be Braver is a mindset, model and a community.

As much for personal growth as for professional growth. A framework for all of us to benefit from. Young and old, experienced and exploring. For those hungry to find and develop their fullest potential, individually and collectively.

And how do we do it? Can simply thinking about COURAGE and BRAVeRY IT really help us be braver LEADERS?

Through a deeply individual, personal and exploratory process of understanding why, when and how, to take brave action and make courageous decisions. Which when teams travel together, offers a framework, language and toolkit to share. I know we can find ways to be braver. Act our way in to courage.

That are less scary and dare I say it more enjoyable?

And to be very clear, choosing courage when it demands deep self awareness at an individual and personal level, does not equate to it being self-serving.  

 Two of the many perspectives which inform the Be Braver model, are Alfred Adlers Psychology, and for similar reasons Stephen Coveys more commonly recognised Circles of Influence.

Like all the concepts in Be Braver, they ask us to look at how we experience and understand our internal and external worlds.

To situate ourselves in relation to the barriers, opportunities, solutions and ideas we find when we know where to look.

To challenge how we perceive and understand both. In offering a simple applied structure, to complex ideas, we can make meaningful change that is truly transformative.

Not simply for a workshop and a coaching space - but  for a lifetime of application and practice.

How we focus, interpret and attend to our worlds, influences the outcomes we aspire to achieving. The results we hope to create. The change we want to affect.

Alfred Adlers theories of individual psychology posit that the individual can not be divided from the world in which we are situated. We exist in relation to it and each other.

His work asks us to consider things such as: -

💡 The uniqueness of each us

💡The control we have over our goals (not being able to control our environment but we can our social connections)

💡Our creative power to shape stories and meaning

💡Using mastery and competence as the motivation and means of overcoming inferiority

💡The importance of social connections

💡The freedom we have too choose our responses

💡 The interconnectedness of an individual's thoughts, feelings, behaviours, and social context.

Similarly Stephen Covey asks us to think about where we focus our time, effort and energy

💡 Am I an individual who sees the world as something determined by my actions?

💡 Do I think powerful others are mostly determining what happens?

💡 Do I think what happens is down to luck or chance?

These ideas, and many others, underpin the model and framework, for courageous decision making and brave actions, which we find in Be Braver leaders.

Our growing community of practitioners who are living with less fear and leading courageously.

Stopping to pause, reflect and  notice.

Having the self awareness, to appreciate areas where they individually and collectively, have greater, or lesser influence control. Letting go of unnecessary mental loads. Renewed energy. Commitments to focus on areas of influence.

Focusing on brave action, courageous decisions and conversations to accelerate desirable outcomes. Be Braver leaders have the tools, motivation, clarity, confidence and connection - to focus on what matters most. The courage to make the bold decisions and take brave action.

So the question to ask is do you, and your teams, know how to choose courage and Be Braver?

Because if the answer is no, be bold and start making change today. The first step is often the hardest, but now it couldn’t be easier - hop on a call today to find out how we can give you the rest of the tools you need.

The Gremlins in the Room: Naming and Taming Our Hidden Fears and Biases

TAMING PESKY GREMLINS

We've all heard the phrase "the elephant in the room" - that awkward or uncomfortable topic that everyone knows is there but nobody wants to talk about.

It is present in the meeting. No-one has the courage to call it out. Everyone pretends it isn’t there.

But what about the "gremlins in the room"? Those hidden fears, biases, and assumptions that we all carry with us, often without even realising it. Walking in and out of rooms, sitting on our shoulders and following us everywhere. 

When we enter a room, we bring our own unique set of experiences, beliefs, and biases with us. These gremlins can be triggered by certain people, situations, or even just the general atmosphere of the room. They can manifest in subtle ways, such as a fleeting thought or feeling, or they can take over our entire mindset, influencing the way we interact with others and view the world around us.

Some common gremlins that many people bring into a room include fear of judgment fear of failure, social anxiety, lack of self-belief, perfectionism.

Over-estimating other people’s competence and aptitude because of grand performative gestures of authority. 

RECOGNISING YOUR GREMLINS

These gremlins can affect our behaviour in any number of ways, such as causing us to hold back in conversations or take an overly defensive stance in response to to feedback. Procrastination, apathy, frustration.

The problem with gremlins is that they often go unacknowledged, which can make them even more insidious. We can also make the mistake of thinking we are the only one in the room that brought one (or several) in.

 When we're not aware of our own biases and fears, they can control us without us even realizing it. They can cause us to miss out on opportunities, damage our relationships with others, and even hold us back from the future we deserve and want to create. The outcomes we want to accomplish.

So, what can we do about these gremlins in the room?

The first step is to acknowledge that they exist. We need to be willing to take a hard look at our own biases and fears, and recognize how they might be influencing our behaviour. This requires a degree of self-awareness and vulnerability, but it's an essential step in overcoming the gremlins that hold us back.

NAMING THE LITTLE CRETINS 

I suggest to Clients to think of them as frenemies. Acting with good intent to keep you safe from harm.

Not quite up to speed with the current level of wisdom, experience, strength, competence, and ability you now have. To handle the challenging situations they want to protect you from.

They often work on outdated information and data. From days now long gone in your distant past.

Another important step is to create a safe and supportive environment for discussion with these gremlins. We need to be able to have open and honest conversations about our fears and biases without fear of judgment or reprisal.

This can involve seeking out a trusted friend, mentor, or coach who can provide us with feedback and guidance.  Creating the conditions for psychological safety to feel safe to explore.

 Finally, we need to be willing to take action to address our gremlins. This might involve seeking out new experiences that challenge our biases and fears, or actively working to overcome our lack self belief or fear of failure. It's only through taking action that we can begin to change our behavior and overcome the gremlins that hold us back. 

Take Aways:

·      Everyone carries Gremlins in the room.

·      The ones that are untamed. Unseen. They do the greatest damage.

·      Your gremlin can be tamed – it is acting up as it is wanting to keep you safe.

·      Find a safe space to get know your gremlin(s).

·      Be curious to understand what is triggering them.

·      Be prepared to listen. Then to act.

·      Once you have named and tamed yours, think of others. Remember next time you are in a space – other people’s may still be running riot.

While the elephant in the room may be the most obvious problem, it's important to recognise that there are often gremlins lurking beneath the surface. Some of which you can fix. Alone..

 These hidden fears and biases can have a powerful impact on our behaviour and mindset, and it's essential that we acknowledge them if we want to overcome them.

 By creating a safe and supportive environment for discussion, building our self-awareness, and taking action to address our gremlins, we can free ourselves from the constraints that hold us back. Live fully. Lead courageously.

Suggestions For Further Reading:

Ali, H (2021) Her Allies, Neem Tree Press

Grant, A. M. (2017). Originals: How non-conformists move the world. Viking.

Goleman, D. (2013). Focus: The hidden driver of excellence. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Macmillan.

Kahenman, D; Sibony, O; Sunstein, C.R. Noise. Wililams Collins.

Peters, S (2012) The Chimp Paradox. Random House.

Seighart, M.A (2021). The Authority Gap. Random House. 

Is The Courageous Decision To Quit Or Grit?

“The truth is that changing often is the more courageous thing to do?

Just because you could persevere with a toxic relationship, job, religious faith or political allegiance doesn’t necessarily mean you have to’

When to quit and when to grit.

You might also want to check out what Susan David has to say on the matter.

This piece in the Guardian however jumped out as me as it is a topic of discussion in many of the Be Braver spaces I exist in

Be it conversations with clients, team or groups about projects, relationships, roles, hires, customers. Increasingly people even discussing when to grit or quite with where they choose to reside. A sign of the times perhaps.

Truth time. It’s also a regular feature of my own internal dialogues. Life is hard.

Keller asks the question

‘how do people manage to quit successfully, make that decision their own and not one based on somebody else’s idea of what constitutes a brave and meaningful life?’

How do we answer this in Be Braver?

By having the self knowledge and a model to help you understanding how you are able to consciously make decisions that are right for YOU. Exactly what the Be Braver mindset is designed to do.

To make doing the difficult things, that move you forwards towards the person you are becoming and the future you want to create, that bit easier and clearer to do. Our coaching, programmes and courses do just that

Unpopular but true: difficult decisions need courage because they aren’t easy.

That’s the point. The outcomes aren’t certain. There is a risk and of course you want to minimise regret.

If it were certain and easy. You’d not need courage.

I commend Keller for noticing that :

‘People who are successful in this life, with private jets and multiple homes and fancy cars suggest that they have worked harder and been more gritty and we have not, serves the people in power, it doesn’t serve the people in the middle or at the lower end’

We all need to be reminded to beware the Gurus?

Life is unequal. Chance and opportunity isn’t distributed fairly. We don’t all have good choices. There are authority gaps. We have the reality of the economic climate, social mobility, discrimination. Some sectors fair better than others. Responsibilities. Nepotism. I could go on.

Beware the success stories that influence the decisions you make. People will only ever tell you a version of a story that they want to be heard. This isn’t to be bleak. But its to ensure you frame your situation in an appropriate manner to the conditions and environment around you.

As much as we don’t want to be cowards, we don’t want to make reckless decisions either. Courage is the sweet spot.

The questions that have not been answered are the ones you want to ask. Not every quit leads to something better.

Sometimes the greatest changes can be found in how we choose to relate to the environment around us.

The best thing to do, is figure out how YOU make the best of the circumstances, experience, knowledge and opportunities life has afford you. The timing matters too.

We don’t all get the same choices, but we do all have the freedom to make our own decisions. To choose what we value, where we spend our time, whom we invest it in and who we want to become.

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How Can I Be Braver?

How Do You Become Braver?

You’ve been brave before. You know you can Be Braver again. 

But you are stuck.

Procrastinating. Avoiding the questions that hold the answers you need.

You don’t want to feel uncomfortable. Go through the messy bit to get to the good bit. 

Feel alone. A bit embarrassed or ashamed perhaps that you think or feel like this. Haven’t wanted to share it.

So you keep your head down. Hope someone or something comes along out there and it all sorts itself out. Wait for the universe to present a solution or hope for circumstances to change.

Well we all know there are no heroes in most of our lives. That if you want to stand a chance of meeting one you are going to have to #beyourownhero.

Which also means as you get to design your own costume which can be a lot of fun.

Most of the things we want to make happen in life do so because of a decision or a choice that we made. Not someone else.

Our circumstances might not have been our own design. But where we go next very much is.

You have never been stronger than where you are today. You might not feel it. But it is true.

Today you have the most amount of knowledge, experience and wisdom to draw upon than you have had at any other point in your life. You are in the best position you have ever been.

Your struggles are your strengths.

Today is the best day to Be Braver.

You need to do 4 things to Be Braver.

Be Clear.

Be Confident.

Be Connected.

Be Courageous.

Have all 4 of these attended to, connecting and working together - and you will have everything you need to create change, live fear-lessly and lead courageously.

In a way that feels purposeful, meaningful and motivating.

Learning to Be Braver is a pathway to learning to live fear-lessly and lead courageously.

Be Clear. Find Clarity. 

Identify and understand your values and vision. Essential for moving forward authentically. The lenses to make sense of difficult moral and ethical decisions. The motivators for creating change.

Be Confident. Know Confidence

Examining your own experiences and competences to build confidence, and to keep building on it. Be able to appropriately appraise your abilities, limitations and strengths. Separate out your beliefs about your competencies and skills from the reality.

Be Connected. Create Connection.

Understand how you connect to and read the environment around you. With your emotions, with others, with networks and communities. There is an abundance of resources and information to strengthen your confidence and sharpen your clarity. Question what you see and where you are.

Be Courageous. Choose Courage.

Understand your relationship with risk. Personally and professionally. Know what your version of resilience looks like in the face of adversity and failure. Be ready to take values-aligned action. Fear-lessly. To know when it is right to choose courage. So that when called upon. You will be able to. Over and over again. With less fear.

Choosing to Be Braver doesn’t guarantee success any more than avoiding it guarantees doom and gloom. But your chances are undoubtably far greater - courage always rewards in unexpected ways.

It does guarantee that you will be stronger, more courageous, authentic for it. You will be who you are becoming. That you will have pride in your actions and decisions.

That you don’t regret the things you didn’t do, but are proud of things you did.

So as you think about who you want to be. Who you are becoming. Are maybe frustrated because you feel stuck, think you are your own worst enemy.

Remember. You have been brave before, you can be braver again. That in becoming the person you want to be, the only hero you will ever need is the one that you will be.

The Risk Of Choosing To Not Be Braver

Be Curious. To Be Braver.

Be Curious. To Be Braver.

As this Meta-analysis suggests programmes, like the Be Braver Practitioner programme that seek to raise curiosity can have the effect of increases in #creativity, #innovation, life satisfaction, life meaning, #performance and job satisfaction.

In Be Braver - we start with curiosity to explore how we gain the #clarity pertaining to our role, vision, values and ambitions so we can apply this to both personal and professional contexts.

Driven by this unique blueprint, we seek to critically appraise what this shows us in respect to our confidence as a leader, our skills, competences and beliefs about the self and others.

Creating #connection comes from a place of curiosity about the world, environments and emotional connections with have to the abundance of resources and relationships available to us.

To build on our vision, to support making values aligned decisions. To grow confidence.

Clarity, confidence, and connection fuel our commitment in the moments where we need to choose courage - it is our curiosity to see what we find on the others side of our courageous values- aligned decisions that can make all the difference as to whether we listen to the risks of avoiding or the risks of taking action.

Stay curious.

Ask yourself the difficult questions.

Choose courage.

Be Braver.

If you really want to ask your self the questions that can make the biggest difference - try our Be Brave questionnaire

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12144-022-03107-w.pdf

The Perfect Conditions for Stress and Burnout

As challenging personal situations create mental struggles and fear, individuals in the workplace are overcompensating and responding with unsustainable work effort, creating the perfect conditions for stress and burnout. Leaders need to respond.

Being an independent pair of eyes and ears in a business, means being in the privileged position of knowing the absolute raw truth of how people are thinking and feeling in their organisation.

Creating spaces of psychological safety, whether in a cohort or one to one, means people opening up fearlessly about their experiences.

Right now, quite honestly it’s pretty heart breaking.

Bright, inspiring and yes, often too senior leaders, expressing overwhelm, exhaustion and anxiety. Productivity may be increasing for some, thriving in the peace and quiet of working from home, but certainly not for everyone.

As the work environment becomes inextricably linked to the home, for some there is seemingly no escape, no differentiation and no switching off.

A survey of researchers conducted by Cardiff University found 81% reported experiencing stress since this COVID pandemic and 60% are facing mental health difficulties.

Fear surrounding job insecurity, uncertainty, a concern about the mental impact of their own personal situation creates the perfect conditions for stress and burnout. Individuals start to overcompensate, to the detriment of everyone, in hours and effort.

Those with kids or living alone. Those with mental health problems or concerns for sick and elderly family members. In dysfunctional relationships, carrying the financial burden, business owners, living in unsuitable home working environments, overseas away from family. There is simply no ideal situation. Some may well thrive, but increasing numbers are finding it getting harder and harder.

We may all be in the same storm but we travel in very different boats being the popular analogy floating around about this.

Findings by the Fawcett Society show six out of ten women are finding it hard to stay positive day to day and just under half of men.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and University College London (UCL) interviewed 3,500 families and found that mums were only able to do one hour of uninterrupted work, for every three hours done by dads.

Those feeling vulnerable in the work place right now need psychological support. Organisations must give clear messages around the importance of acceptable work hours, taking breaks, getting out, sharing concerns and switching off. Leaders need to lead by example.

 In the same way A Stay Home, then Stay Alert message from leaders won’t work if they don’t follow the advise. Neither will teams prioritising their mental health when you are having calls with the CEO over lunch and getting emails from all hours of the day/night.

Data from NordVPN suggests those working from home in the UK are working an additional 2 hours a day, more in the US. Commuting time is now just additional screen time.

In the comms world, I see my Clients working 12+ hours a day, no fresh air, back to back Zooms. Day in day out.

Those with children are working until the early hours to catch up when the kids have gone to bed to stay present on the pitch team. This is not sustainable.

So what messages do leaders need to be communicating and be put in to practice too?

Establish a Routine – help differentiate work time from personal time

Create and Keep Boundaries – mitigate the always on endless hours creep

Take Short and Long Breaks – schedule them in your diary if needs be. Brains in overwhelm are unproductive and loose creativity and problem solving abilities.

Prioritise Your Mental health – keeping yourself in good working order in the same way you would your computer. If the battery starts underperforming and processing takes too long, it needs a reboot. Your brain is the same.

Set A Good Example – advocate for these and be the change you want to see in others. End meetings early to give everyone a break. Propose alternative times for meetings to accommodate a break. Encourage others to take a break or respond tomorrow.

Advocate for Your Team – do not tolerate heavy workload because of fear. Advocate for your team, project, Client in the context of goals, quality of work, productivity and creativity.

Show Compassion – table the unusual circumstances everyone is in. Check in. Show vulnerability. Acknowledge burnout can happen, Isn’t a failing but you want to avoid it.

Make it Personal - support the needs of everyone individually, know what it’s realistic for them, find solutions and help them avoid burnout.

Do watch out for the people that don’t turn up to the team quiz or the virtual drinks at your online town hall meeting. Continue to pay real attention to the vulnerable groups

Don’t assume this is getting easier for anyone. Especially the quiet ones.

With clarity, confidence, courage and connection leaders can mitigate the impact and ensure their teams are able to offer the best ideas, solutions and creativity through healthy and engaged hearts and minds.

Whilst it might be heart breaking to see talented individuals struggling, it is a privilege to be able to demonstrably help and support in the ways we do.

Seemingly simple solutions, tools and mindset shifts can have transformative results. It can take courage, bravery and perseverance to put the changes in to practice. Always for a worthy outcome.

Whether it be offering bitesize training programmes to support mental strength and resilience, facilitating support groups, drop in sessions or working one to one with individuals. We can help.

Our solutions are the most valuable gift I think any organisation can offer to the people that matter most to it. A space to speak freely, fearlessly. A place to find the courage to continue with purpose, motivation, creativity and drive.

 Be Braver was established for the very purpose of helping individuals to psychologically navigate change and uncertainty in pursuit of innovation, growth and creativity. Never more so than now has this been relevant. Our approach, tools and interventions offer create impact, deliver results and change lives.