watch tHe skies

Ok I probably shouldn’t blog about some things but hey they are relatively harmless. I spend most tuesdays now in long, painful meetings on super-important stuff that I could tell you about but would then have to kill you. The result is, I have to keep myself amused for hours on end in really dull meetings. So here are a couple of my favourite mind games to keep those meetings interesting and perhaps keep them moving a little.

Shutting down a boring conversation. I’m sure you’ve heard about matching and mirroring - assuming body postures, tonality etc., to get in to rapport with someone. Well when you want them to go away or be quiet, mismatch everything, if they talk quietly, talk loud, if they sit cross legged, then open wide. Amplify this by rocking back and forth ever so slightly, and maybe even hum to yourself. Oh and the icing on the cake - in between eye to eye contact, stare at one particular point on the top of their ear. Anyone who can keep up a train of thought in such environment is probably playing mind games with you too, so bring it on!

Find a point on the ceiling, and whenever other conversations stray in to unwanted territory, subtly and regularly glance up at this point. When you get a chance to talk, be sure to glance up at that point regularly, and couple it with lots of negative words, ie, boring, pointless, dead-end etc. Most people won’t get this consciously but their unconscious minds will, and before you know it you have your own pavlovian experiment with an adverse reaction to subjects that you don’t like. Be sure to reward the doggies when they do good though.

And that’s the end of the mischief today. Have fun and remember, with great power comes great responsibility

So the other day I noticed that I had now been running this blog for over 2 years. Which is not only surprising but encouraging. Unbeknownst to me I had managed to sustain a website with regular updates for an extended time without it becoming a chore or absorbing my life. Previously I ran a movie review website for quite some time and it was proving successful, it more than paid for itself, but the demands of keeping the content updated became too much and I ditched it.

However lessons were learnt, and these lessons have been further molded and formed with the study I’ve been doing over the last year, plus a yearning to do more with the coaching skills I continue to discover, than is offered in my everyday job.

Over the weekend I suffered from an unexpected (aren’t they always) bout of sickness that left me with lots of time lying in bed with nothing else to do other than think. Not something I get much time to do nowadays. And rather than being a pain this has given me the opportunity to decide what to do with all of this stuff I can do, and continue to learn. And so the next steps are beginning to take shape. I won’t mention much more at this stage other than it seems to answer the key questions I would ask if I was coaching myself through the thought process (which of course I am). And so I’m busily researching and developing and planning the next steps. And, of course, taking action; for it is action that makes success of belief and direction. That is, if you believe in such nonsense, which I assume you must do if you take the time to read my site.

Ben is now coming up to 18months old and to date we have kept him away from TV. However now we would be grateful if he would watch something for, say 10 minutes just to give us a break. Perhaps just long enough to get a cup of tea.

This morning as I was having my breakfast, I turned over to BBC2 to find Bob the Builder, and seeing as a couple of Bob’s construction vehicles look a bit like tractors, Ben was rapt and stood, pointing and laughing as Bob built a drive-in cinema.

However it did bother me greatly that Bob was using illegal scaffolding practices. The handrail was only a single bar and there was no kickplate to prevent tools being knocked over the side where they could cause serious injury… RIDDORs are just waiting to happen.

And it’s this kind of slackmanship that keeps me from letting Ben watch television. What kind of parent would allow their child to grow up learning unsafe construction practices? I mean who knows what bad habits he can learn from Fireman Sam, let alone the haphazard driving demonstrated in Roary?

In all honesty I am very annoyed and disappointed in the BBC in this respect. I would write a letter of complaint but I hear that Postman Pat is on strike…!

Hopefully the site resembles that which it should now…

Looks like something has gone wrong with my lovely theme. So I’ve gone back to basics until I can fix it. I’m not as html savvy as I used to be, so bear with me. Remember though, just cos it looks a bit naff and generic, means that it fits perfectly with the content!

There are few things in this universe that are absolutely true. Cogito Ergo Sum I hear you say? However I could be imagining that along with everything else. I don’t know everything that is true. But I do know one thing.

Television is rubbish. And having spent far too much time in front of one this week, and watching England come second in every sport that I care about. I have come to the conclusion that the only thing worth watching is Ninja Warrior on Challenge TV. Sasuke, as it is known in Japan, is pretty much the most extreme challenge I’ve ever seen on TV. In it, 100 competitors attempt to complete a 4 stage obstacle course culminating in a gruelling rope climb to press a button high above the course within the time limit.

And this course is tough. I mean most of us wouldn’t last two minutes, and even those that are clearly super-fit, rarely get past the first stage. Since its inception in 1997 only two men have completed the course in the time available, and earnt the crown of Ninja Warrior.

So what is compelling about this programme? Firstly it is the battle of wills between the competitor and the course, which gets more difficult each season. In addition it is the amazing cameraderie between competitors, many of whom compete in every competition and come back time and time again to try and get further than before. It really is amazing to watch the dedication and effort of these athletes, working tirelessly towards their goal.

 Perhaps it’s the individual feats of athleticism I enjoy, or laughing at the muppets falling awkwardly in to muddy water, or perhaps its the way these guys “keep going” and “keep succeeding, one step at a time” that makes me tune in whenever I get a chance.

Ninja Warrior - Challenge TV 6pm weeknights.

Last night I caught Sarah Beeny’s latest show, “How Toxic Are You“, which shined a light on the scary world of beauty products and the violently dangerous chemicals that are shoehorned in to even the most “natural” products such as bubble bath and toothpaste.

During the show, they took two women whose incredible beautification routines must have taken up most of the day, detecting thousands of man made chemicals in their bodies, and put them on a toxin-free regime for a month.

In the meantime we discovered the frightening levels of man-made toxins that are put in to products labelled as “natural” or “simple”, many of which have suspected links to cancer. Frankly I was shocked by what I saw. But it was okay as I’m not in to all of that lip gloss and stuff, although afterwards I glanced at the ingredients on the label of my beloved bubble bath, and the aloe vera cream I use after shaving. Heck even my toothpaste is mostly plastic, and let’s not even get started on the deodorant.

And if I wasn’t worried enough, we then saw an analysis of breast milk, of course to find that most of this crap is being passed on to our infants.

So I wonder, would I trade all these toxins in for being a little bit smellier, and a little less clean? And by clean I mean not having all of my bodily oils stripped by the same chemical used to degrease engine blocks.

It seems that yesterday before I watched this programme, the world was a much nicer place and soap smelled like, well soap.

Thanks to Giles who sent me this link to an interesting article on the BBC asking just that question. He knew that this would get me going on one of my favourite subjects so I thought I’d post it here.

Leadership is a fascinating subject and I can talk about it for hours. For me the question they ask is daft because what they are asking is thus:

Are Leaders (and by that I mean the feelings and behaviours I have anchored to that word) made or born?

I guess at the heart of it Leadership for me is the ability to take someone somewhere. You could use a geographical, experiential, emotional, financial or any other metaphor for this, though the outcome is the same. If you have taken someone from one state to another you have led them. For some people this is done inadvertently (we are led in many directions everyday, and often by inanimate objects; i saw someone canoeing down a river whilst on the train yesterday and that led me to text one of my friends who is an avid canoeist), and for others it is deliberate; your boss, your coach, an opinion expressed on a website.

Leadership to me is a direction away from where you are or a reinforcement to stay in the same spot.

So what is a leader? I think that a leader has a belief in a direction, and the conviction and drive to get there. Motivation to act. And we all have motivation to act; I may not be Richard Branson yet put me in a flaming building and see my motivation. So we all have the capacity to lead others in directions that motivate us. A good leader combines this with the ability to communicate this direction and motivate others to move in the same direction. What motivates me may not motivate you, yet a good leader manages to motivate everyone in the same direction, and that comes down to a combination of empathy, good communication and the ability to gain trust from his followers, and it is this trust that bridges the gap between what motivates the leader and what motivates the followers.

So in answer to the original question. Can leaders be made. Yes we all have the skills necessary to lead, and we do all lead in one way or another. Some people attribute those skills to “classical” leader roles more readily than others. Yet we all have the ability to be leaders in those roles too. Good leaders? I don’t know, it would depend on your intrinsic motivations to be so.

Told you I could go on.

It had been a good day by all accounts. And in that respect it was the same as most of his days in recent memory. The business was doing well, really well, beyond expectations and certainly a lot better than his plan intended. Customers were happy, and happy customers gave him even more business as he took away from them more and more of their worries. Consequently his bank balance was looking very healthy indeed, which meant he was able to treat his wife and children to some fabulous experiences. And everything was good.

Except for one thing. Something was wrong, and it had been wrong for a while, he just didn’t know what to do about it.

Somewhere inside him, he had this feeling that he was doing the wrong thing.

Not on a moral or ethical basis, as far as he could tell. Everything was above board, carbon-neutral and as far as he could reasonably analyse, any bad (because of course every action has side-effects that can be considered harmful from some perspective, he often thought) was far outweighed by the good he and his company did.

It was simply that he was increasingly under the impression that what he was doing with his working time wasn’t really what he should be doing with himself. And this feeling seemed to be growing proportionally with his success. Back when the company was struggling, spending more on marketing and selling than it was making in sales, this wasn’t a problem. But as the order book grew, as the organisation expanded from a couple of people renting desks in an office-for hire in some generic building, to three floors of a modern, glass fronted conversion overlooking the river, this feeling of misalignment grew and grew, until today, where he had just received an order that would double the size of the business within a year and keep his team in work for another five. This uncomfortable feeling originally tucked away at the bottom of his stomach had grown and mutated in to a nauseous feeling of claustrophobia, almost as if he was locked inside someone else, someone he didn’t want to be and didn’t know how to get out.

And he didn’t know who to talk to. To his friends and family, he was busy as always, and everyone knew he was at his happiest when he was busy. So that meant he was happy, right?

And yet somewhere along the line he had got swept away by the growth of the organisation, the money pouring in, the excitement of winning big contracts and making a difference, and now he just wanted to get out and not feel the way he felt, even if it meant losing all of the perks, the money, the holidays, and the respect of his people and his family.

But he had no idea what to do about it. So many people depended upon him.

Way back when, in a former life, I spent nearly a year of it living in Windsor. A very nice place by all accounts except that for that time I was working nightshift. So my days were nights and my nights days, and the only time I got to spend in Windsor was mid-afternoon, where I would go for a walk, grab something for “breakfast” and relax before I started my shift.

One sunny afternoon I noticed that my hair was looking a bit tatty (it was usually hidden under a safety helmet) so I headed to the town centre to look for a barber. No barber to be found with a free spot, I headed in to a posh salon on spec, and was surprised to find they could do me then and there. Even more to my surprise was my hairdresser, a six foot amazonian woman in what could only be described as a belt and boob tube. Marvellous, I thought, as being on nightshift my exposure to pretty woman was mostly limited to whatever papers the contractors had bought that day.

What followed was one of the best hours of my life, as I had my hair washed and head massaged by this lovely lady, who then cut my hair precisely whilst I gawped at her in the mirror. I don’t remember whether the hair cut was any good, though I do remember paying £40 for the priviledge and being satisfied that I did indeed get value for money.

Now that was more than ten years ago, and yet that experience still stays with me, and each and every time I go in to get my hair cut, I base the experience against that memory. Indeed as I walk in, I hope to see my amazonian waiting for me in boob tube and belt, and I’m then hopelessly disappointed when reality doesn’t live up to my ideal, despite the fact that my current hairdresser is indeed very pretty. And of course yesterday I grumbled at the £30 I spent on getting my hair trimmed. Sure the hairdresser was nice to talk to, and I did indeed get a very relaxing head massage, and yet I came away thinking that £30 was expensive. I wonder whether I am setting my sights too high, and indeed whether the story I told you ever really happened like that? Still one day I hope to find another amazonian hairdresser, if indeed there ever was one.

Nightshifts do funny things to reality, you know.