WORRIED ABOUT BEING CALLED ARROGANT?

One of the most common fears I hear from my clients is that they fear being thought of or called arrogant.This is what I have normally found through working with many people on this topic.

The people who worry about being called arrogant never are. But they waste a huge amount of the talent because they fear it so much.Their fear of being judged stops them really using their talent.The people that are arrogant usually don't have the skills that the fearful people do. And most people around them can see right through them anyway no matter how much they try to bullshit everyone.

The people who are truly skillful but are arrogant actually have an issue with their self esteem and feel they need to big themselves up to feel better about themselves. This unfortunately stops them from being as effective as they could be.
Their arrogance is a symptom of a more important issue they need to deal with.

People who call others arrogant are...

1. Either right because the person they are judging is all mouth and no trousers and they can see through the nonsense.
or
2. Trying to bring you down because they themselves have a self esteem issue and don't want you to succeed.

Confidence not arrogance.

True confidence in what you can do is not arrogance, it's confidence. If you can back up what you say with evidence, it is not arrogant to say it.
If you are that good, you are simply that good.

The world needs people who can accurately and confidently communicate and demonstrate what they can do.

I work with a huge amount of people who spend too much of their time worrying about others rather than just being that good at what they do.
We like to know our problems are being handled safely and our desires are being helped along by competent people.
I like people who say they are good and can prove it. It helps me sleep at night.

Forget this stupid word, it is feared too much.
Concentrate on being good and showing people that you are.
Let your results back up what you say.

And if others call you arrogant, that's their issue. Let them keep it.

HOW BUSINESS LEADERS CAN AVOID FALLING INTO THE "WORK HARDER" TRAP

"Big money is not made by bustling about. Big money is made by thinking."
John Spedan Lewis - Founder of the John Lewis Partnership

Over 50 years ago, John Spedan Lewis was asked, in an open letter in the John Lewis weekly in-house magazine, why the haberdashery buyers did not keep regular business hours. His reply was simply that he did not pay them on their hours but on their results. A man ahead of his time.

Yet today, we still too often focus on hours worked. "We need to work harder on this!" How many times have you heard this phrase? It's safe to say that you've heard or said these words or similar for most of your life. Parents, teachers, bosses: it's the default response to the question: how can we be more successful? And it's often seen as the solution in situations where people are feeling particularly under pressure. But the question is, should it be?

The answer is definitely not. Simply working harder is a trap that leads to inefficiency and reactivity. But it can be a hard habit to break because we are so conditioned into believing it is a good thing - and we don't want to let this mindset go.

The Worker Zone

Getting out of the Worker Zone is the first step for many business leaders' career progression but, to be truly effective, we need to discipline ourselves to not step back into it when the pressure is on - or because we get a sense of achievement from doing so.

The Worker Zone is the entry point for most of us in our careers, so it is all too easy to go back into it. Consequently, we end up wasting so much of our time doing tasks that are beneath our pay grade and talents. All managers and innovators have work that only they can do and they should not be dropping below this level unless a worthwhile tangible benefit is really there.

Business leaders need to stay in their Genius Zone as much of the time as possible. You are paid to think, not to fix the coffee machine. I challenge you to add up the hours you waste, thinking you are working hard. You might be surprised by the results.

Rethinking what hard work means

The next question in the work harder trap is this: when will you be working hard enough? If you have the common belief that working hard is a good thing, then this is an important question to answer.

Most people, who are serious about their jobs, careers and businesses, have no problem putting the hours in. The UK is certainly not short of committed people with many extra hours and weekends being worked. But herein lies the trap. How many hours will be enough? How much blood sweat and tears will equal "working hard"?

The other and more useful way of thinking about this is simply: how much time are you wasting by working hard? How many new ideas, conversations and time to reflect are you missing by working hard?

Another question for you to ponder: is great thinking really work? Innovators need time to produce their best thinking. When we stay in our Genius Zone and hire others to be in theirs, things get done better and faster. Managers need time to make their systems work better and shouldn't be spending time propping up their system when it's under stress. Their role is to make sure it does not get stressed again.

Working harder frequently creates less, rather than greater productivity. Workers who are always at their maximum get burnt out and morale goes down. Mistakes get made and innovation slows. Great leaders should be making sure that their people are not maxed out. Being maxed out means there is no room to do more or, more importantly, something different.

Are you maxing yourself out by working too hard and expecting others to work as hard as you? Are you giving time, space and the environment for your most brilliant thinkers to work at their best?

Perhaps your boss still measures work as time spent in the office? I frequently meet this mindset in the businesses I work with. Being present in the office is still seen as proof of work, but I'm sure you have had great ideas driving home or on the beach when on holiday. Did you get paid overtime for this thinking?

Do you need to push back on the hours' culture? Are you still creating or sustaining this type of culture? More and more quick and agile thinking is needed to deal with the fastest changing work environment we have ever known. It's tough to be creating when you are burnt out by hours and effort.

So if I were to ask when you were truly working at your best, what would you say? 

If you are going to work hard, do it in your Genius Zone, where you get the best returns for your hard work.

Stephen Bates is the founder of Certain Change Ltd - helping business leaders, entrepreneurs and high achievers deal with disruption; to be confident and highly adaptable to make certain change when it is needed most. 

Over the last 30 years, Stephen's experiences have led to the innovation of high impact techniques, brought together in programmes that cover a unique combination of mind-set and skill-set development for executives, entrepreneurs and high achievers – for them to play and influence others to operate in their Genius Zone.

His goal is to teach people how to understand how they and others make decisions, how to make better ones and, put simply, to get out of their own way to achieve far better results. 

This article was first published on the BIE website http://www.bie-executive.com/expert-exchange

BUSINESS DECISION-MAKING UNDER PRESSURE - POLARISED THINKING

BUSINESS DECISION-MAKING UNDER PRESSURE - POLARISED THINKING

When working with leaders and managers, I frequently ask the question: "What is in the middle of black and white?" Very quickly and invariably the answer comes back: "Grey."

We are trained to think that grey is the answer. Of course, it's not, but this demonstrates an important point around polarised thinking. Under stress, we tend to polarise our thinking into two options: this or that; either or; black or white.

The default state of the brain is to search for and use well-established, tested decisions and behaviours. But when something new is required it will still try to default back to what it has used before. In our ever and faster changing business world, this is a big and often stressful problem.

The need to adapt

Our brain has an extraordinary ability to remember complex processes from our past experiences and to deliver them to us to use in an instant. We don't hesitate to pick up the phone or push off from the side of the pool - we just turn the process on in our heads and the behaviour happens.

But this amazing system does bring with it a big downside. It is the natural enemy of adaption and change. While it can cope with small changes, like driving a different car from the one you learned in, it does not handle big changes well.

We know we need to respond quickly to new ideas but we keep taking ourselves back to what we know. This is even more exacerbated when we have made mistakes in the past and have become more risk adverse. The bigger we perceive the danger to be, the more we tend to hold off from making risky decisions. Painful experience tells us to not do it again.

Think carefully for a moment of all the things you do every day with very little thought. There are thousands of them, aren't there? Now, imagine a world where you had to relearn each one every time you needed to do them. For instance, you had to relearn how to swim every time you got in the pool – or how to drive every time you got in your car.  It would be impossible to function effectively.

The need to be innovative and agile in an increasingly disrupted business world goes against our brain's preferred state. This is why organisations like the army spend so much time training their people, especially officers, to be able to think clearly and come up with more than two options when under huge stress.

Embracing discomfort in a disrupted world

The other big reason why we tend to default to what we know is because it has worked in the past. You remember and use what has worked for you because it reduces risk.

It is easier and safer -  two very big motivators.

But in a disruptive environment, we don't have the luxury to rely on past experience. Competition, changes in technology and economics are conspiring against the traditional safe pair of hands thinking that was so useful in the past.

The uncomfortable fact is that experience can be a liability as well as being useful. Our desire to not make mistakes and reduce stress by using what we know is becoming increasingly a problem because it stops us from seeing alternative options when we need them most.

For example, the "think outside of the box" mindset has itself become another box. When I surprise my clients by saying the word "triangle" at the end of the well-known phrase, they are forced to try to work out what that looks like and what that means. This is what the disrupters in your sector are doing to you - and you will be on the back foot unless you are also doing the disrupting.

Business leaders need to be ever more comfortable with balancing their past experience with the willingness to innovate and take risks. This skill has always been prized in business and the name we use for these people is entrepreneur. The interesting thing is that most people in business don't associate themselves with this word. They think of people like Richard Branson and say: "I'm not like him." Don’t worry, you don't need to be. I prefer the word innovator - someone who enjoys creating new ideas and new ways of doing things.

The innovator enjoys creating new solutions more than they default back to past experience.

Innovators are becoming more and more important to business. Natural innovators will be highly prized, but the good news is that you can learn to be more innovative - you can overcome your natural desire to default back to the past and you can overcome the mechanism that reduces the options you can see.

This is what the army does with their officers. They train them to see options under enormous stress because they know with certainty that their battle plans will be disrupted the moment the enemy shows up. Luckily, you don't have to go through army training to learn this.

Real control comes from the ability to see many options and to act on them - the very opposite of our brain's evolutionary training. Innovators with experience, who allow themselves to see beyond what they know, will be the most effective leaders in the future.

Stephen Bates is the founder of Certain Change Ltd - helping business leaders, entrepreneurs and high achievers deal with disruption; to be confident and highly adaptable to make certain change when it is needed most. 

Over the last 30 years, Stephen's experiences have led to the innovation of high impact techniques, brought together in programmes that cover a unique combination of mind-set and skill-set development for executives, entrepreneurs and high achievers – for them to play and influence others to operate in their Genius Zone.

His goal is to teach people how to understand how they and others make decisions, how to make better ones and, put simply, to get out of their own way to achieve far better results. 

This article was first published on the BIE website http://www.bie-executive.com/expert-exchange