Welcome

Hi! In module four you discovered the power of awareness and the dangers of not caring about others and devaluing yourself. You learned how to be in your element and find your niche to make and deliver promises, look for your blind spots, listen with a purpose and avoid breakdowns. In this module, you will discover practices that will enhance your conversation skills. You are also introduced to the need for courage, honesty, integrity and trust in all relationships.

This module helps you make a success of your chosen future

SEEKING GROWTH: When you grow as a human being, you are continuously practising how to be a more effective leader in your own life.  A VUCA World requires the capacity to listen carefully, reframe ideas and adapt quickly to fast changes in context and for a clear purpose.

LEARNING POINTS FOR THIS MODULE

• Expanding your innate capacities
• Being more aware of your “triggers”
• Gaining focus and clarity of mind
• Making commitments that stick
• Finding new sources of energy
• Building and rebuilding trust
• Demonstrating your integrity
• Producing a shift in your Way of Being
• Developing a coherent life strategy

THINKING TOOLS FOR THIS MODULE

 
SPIRAL DYNAMICS – Explaining the Growth of Human Capacity and Values
ACTION LOGICS – Explaining Behaviour and Effectiveness in Different Contexts
HEROES JOURNEY – Finding a Bigger Purpose to Live Your Life From

 Knowing what you value

As you have discovered from the preceding modules, taking responsibility for the production and direction of your future is like producing, directing, scriptwriting and acting in a remake of your own life movie. You need a strong storyline and good supporting actors.

You are learning to live in an existential world where you need to gain mastery over your human capacities. This means finding the good inside yourself by noticing and fully engaging in what makes you feel good in a VUCA environment. To gain an insight into your personal priorities, establish core values that are most in need of your attention at this particular point in your life. Take this Life Values Assessment Test.

You should now become more alert to what irritates you and know what triggers your negativity so you can let it go of it. You create feelings in your thinking, so different thoughts can change how you observe and interpret your experience. Your focus should be on revisiting the unhelpful experience and rehearsing a better reaction. The clearer your focus, the better you will be at managing your time.

If the future that you see emerging for yourself is not the one you want, you can learn how to make it more of what you want by creating your own reality – a new Way of Being in the world. You are living in a world full of paradox and infinite possibilities, where courage and commitment will make more sense and be more important to you than facts. Life is a story of your own creation.

This shift of focus is needed to get clarity of thought into how you want to live and lead your life in a VUCA world. There can never be one right answer that lasts forever in a fast-moving context, but you can choose what is a good life for you and how you want to live it. What things mean depends on how you make sense of them and on what basis do you decide what to do next as a result.

Your life movie is created in the present, influenced by your past and your hopes for the future. Your present-day assessments are based on what you assert is true from your “past movie” and what you declare now will be in your “future movie”.

 EXERCISE: Growing your Inside-Out Energy
WORKSHEET 15

It’s your Way of Being that shapes how you perform at any point in time. It determines where you apply your senses and how you interpret what you are observing. Four processes of languaging, emoting, presencing and relating combine to produce a coherent and unique view of reality. The diagram below identifies many states of being.  Find out more about your Way of Being here.

These complex interactions mean you are always out of balance, but continuously adapting and adjusting your being to fit the context you find yourself in and create what you then experience as reality.

There are three things you can do to focus on demonstrating your integrity. Use Worksheet 15 to tease out your observations.

1. IDENTIFY THE CHALLENGE. How do you make sense of what you experience? Question what your mind is saying (inside-out energy), what your situation is imposing on you (outside-in energy), what authority is telling you (top-down energy) and what your relationships demand of you (bottom-up energy). Which of these four sources of energy is having the biggest impact on how you interpret your experience?

2. ASSESS THE IMPACT. How do you decide on the worthwhileness of the experience? Observe and sense what your body is saying to you. Which aspects of the experience create tension, warmth, openness, sadness, connectedness, resilience, etc? Which sensations and feelings are having the biggest impact on your mind?

3. FINDING YOUR INNER RESOURCES. How do you slow down your thoughts and feelings to see which actions produce good feelings? These are the actions to practice so they can have the biggest impact on your mind and produce habits that deliver a more effective way of being to get the results you want.

But to be effective you need others to care about what you care about. Making this connection is about securing “followship” and influence as a leader.

 Finding loyal and trustworthy supporters

You will make mistakes from time to time. It’s what makes you human. Accept that you will fail to predict with any certainty what will happen next, or forget that your passionate outbursts are not always helpful in realising your intentions. It can come across as aggressive and dogmatic behaviour.

Trust is the foundation for everything we do. But what do we do when it’s broken? In an eye-opening talk, Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei gives a crash course in trust: how to build it, maintain it and rebuild it.

You need to find people who care about what you care about and will encourage you to “look in the mirror” and see yourself as others see you. Being open to this feedback will help you stay focused and motivated to do what you have promised yourself. You are then holding yourself to be trustworthy and accountable for your actions. This demonstrates your integrity and authenticity.

Listen to Brene Browne talking about the anatomy of trust

BRAVING the trust of self and others. It must have boundaries (standards), reliability, accountability,  vault (to hold in confidence), integrity, non-judgement and generosity of spirit. Without there being clarity in the agreement (boundaries) there cannot be a legitimate complaint when trust is questioned (reliability). But when we break a promise, an apology is not an assumption that we have done something wrong (generosity). It’s an acceptance that an unintentional action has caused discomfort or harm (non-judgement) to someone else and we are willing to offer to repair the situation (accountability). As long as it’s sincere, we are showing that we care about what matters to the relationship (integrity) and will hold it in confidence (vault).

I encourage you to watch this video by Siman Sinek as he explains the fundamental skills of human connection that are required in all relationships.

 EXERCISE: Trustworthy Relationships
WORKSHEET – 16 – LLCourse

1. Who will form the life support network for your journey? They could be trusted acquaintances such as your learning buddies, family or friends.

2. Who will play key roles to help turn your vision into reality? They will be knowledgeable and competent. Perhaps a professional mentor or coach you can trust.

3. Who will be your allies? They will be trusted family members or your closest friends who will give you honest feedback when you lose motivation or drift off course.

Tapping into your innate wisdom

Your innate wisdom can be found in your inner voice, your built-in ‘satnav’ that guides your choices about what matters and how to act in your best interests. It’s your conscience, your gut feeling and the source of your realisation that you can do better and be better.

 PRACTICE GUIDE: Observing your Realisations

All your experiences and feelings come from a process in the brain similar to “movie-making”. You may see a tree, hear criticism or feel angry, but they all come to your awareness via thought. The New Sciences are showing that mind, consciousness and thought work together to create your experience of reality. It’s an “inside-out” reality-creating process that draws from our observations and interpretations.

This is how life works. It means the only thing stopping you from doing anything is your mind and its natural capacity for intuition and instinct. Your default setting is clarity of mind and well-being of the body. Without it, you will not realise your full potential and avoid a default future.

Periods of quiet reflection or meditation on what really matters can stop you from wasting time reacting to your mind’s imaginings and feelings of insecurity. Spend less time stressing yourself out with mind-created fear. If you eliminate tasks that are no longer that important, you will make fewer errors, procrastinate less and act intuitively.

Start questioning your assumptions and be curious. Get engaged and energised by what you love and be grateful for the experience. Emotions come and go, so why dwell on them? When your mind becomes quiet and meditative you become aware of what you were previously blind to. So, stop trying to “be” someone you’re not.

 EXERCISE: Reflective Learning
WORKSHEET – 17 – LLCourse

The questions below will help you eliminate negative thoughts and to trust your intuition. Keep writing in your journal and review your progress regularly. Include any new realisations that come to mind as you reflect on what did and did not work out as you expected. These new distinctions will keep you on track.

As you write out your Life Strategy, keep asking yourself . . .

1. Has your assessment of what you are capable of changed since you started the course? What changes have been adopted that made a difference?

2. Have you modified the movie running in your head that reflects what your desired future will look and feel like?

3. What shifts in your Way of Being will you practice to develop a more positive attitude and proactive mood?

How do you turn up in conversations?

 You create a reality in relationships through conversations and stories. You use them to build loving relationships, create learning environments, get commitments from others to important things done and design possibilities for your future. Every conversation has the power to impact positively or negatively on your performance and your Way of Being. It’s a lever for change. Read this article by Birgit Ohlin on Active Listening: The Art of Empathetic Conversation

Having conversations to get connected with others, try and stick to what you hear them say and build empathy by sharing the feelings it generates. To get a commitment,  share a need and listen for a shared concern, you can then make a request for help or listen for help that you could give and make an offer to achieve a goal you both care about. In this way, you are creating a shared future based on shared care and concerns. To explore different types of conversations CLICK HERE.

Your impact depends on how you relate in the conversations you have. It’s important to have good working relationships with people that you don’t naturally take to. Take a few minutes to reflect on how best to connect, maintain and develop all your relationships as you never know when they will need you and you will need them. You will then be seen as a person with integrity who is interested in them as a person.

 PRACTICE GUIDE: Establishing Rapport

Much depends on what you listen for. Being aware of your intention can either make or break your rapport. Your default listening state is to find evidence that makes your views right. When you don’t like what you hear, the flow of the conversation is broken. When you want to understand you listen for facts and if you want to connect, then you listen for what they are paying attention to and the possibility of working together.

If you trust the people you work with, you can be open and honest in your thoughts and actions, not having to waste time and energy “watching your back.” When you respect the people who you work with, you value their input and ideas and they value yours. Working together, you can develop solutions based on your collective insights, wisdom and creativity. When you listen to what people say, don’t let negative emotions impact your relationship with them. Listen with a purpose. Read this article by Andy Crissinger on Different Ways of Listening.

Discover more about the importance of being authentic, clarifying your goals and values to build strong relationships as “serving is the new selling”.

Think about what could happen if you were open to the possibility that there is nothing to fear when you have clarity and peace of mind. because you know who you are, what you value and what you want to do with your life.

 PRACTICE GUIDE: Components of a Conversation

 PRACTICE GUIDE: Conversations for Coordinating Action

 EXERCISE: Managing your Mood
WORKSHEET – 18 – LLCourse

When you are strongly opposed to something you live in a mood of resentment, unable to find peace of mind as you are stuck in your assessment and cannot see any alternatives. You have resigned yourself to a situation you can do nothing about. The uncertainty of what to do next builds anxiety. But if you can accept there is no point dwelling on things, you open your mind to learning something new, and new possibilities are considered. Your mood becomes more compassionate and optimistic when you declare your acceptance.

 PRACTICE GUIDE: Recognising Moods in the Body

 PRACTICE GUIDE: Using your Body’s Felt Senses

What would you expect others see, hear and sense from your mood, self-talk, emotional state, body posture and conversations if you were . . .

1. In a negative mood where you are feeling anxious, insecure, sceptical or vulnerable?

2. In a positive mood where you are feeling confident, curious and optimistic?

3. Which of these moods do you think would give you the best chance of living the future you want? Why?

4. What actions could you take to trigger a Way of Being that served your ability to perform better in any situation you find yourself in?

 Creating possibility space

Now is the time to start mapping out the territory you have covered to get a clearer picture of new possibilities for your journey ahead. You should never decide on one solution until you have reflected on other possibilities. Your enemy at this point is any impatience for a quick fix. Read this article by James Clear on How to Unlock Your Hidden Creative Genius

 EXERCISE: Mapping the Territory

In this exercise, you are asked to think creatively by producing a Mind Map so you can home-in on a structured plan in the form of a Storyboard.

1. Get a large piece of paper and lay out as many ideas from previous exercises as you can think of on a Mind Map. Be as creative as you want. Let your ideas flourish on all the main elements of your Life Leadership Strategy.

2. Now produce a Storyboard of coherent verb-noun action statements to firm up “how” and “why” you will do what you envisage. Start by putting these action statements on Post-it Notes and arranging them under the key topics identified on your Mind Map. You can then place them on your Storyboard. The sequence of activities must make logical sense, to which you can easily allocate any cost and time implications.

Here’s an example of coherent thinking. They are phrased as verb-noun statements that give coherence to your plans.