Vision is not an exclusive club

By Ben Renshaw, Director of Success Intelligence

The development of great leadership is becoming more and more of a strategic priority for organisations. In a world of sameness, i.e. similar products, services and systems, what becomes a competitive differentiator is the quality of leadership that guides an organisation towards its vision. Success Intelligence is now involved in several major leadership development programmes in a variety of sectors including hospitality, manufacturing, banking and professional service firms. This month I wanted to share one of our key ideas to provoke your thinking about leadership:

Vision is not an exclusive club. We have been recently asked to run a leadership programme for 1000 managers in a large manufacturing organisation. Part of the initial challenge to engage people on this journey is that the majority of them do not think of themselves as leaders. The consequence of this mindset includes people waiting to be told what to do, failing to take accountability for their actions, limited decision-making and a short-term focus on results. In a world of work in which there is a need for people to demonstrate greater innovation and creativity, an ability to do more with less and to build collaborative partnerships, understanding that leadership is not for the chosen few is a critical aspect of breaking down narrow parameters that prevent people from fulfilling their potential.

The recognition that vision is available to all does not mean that you have to become a Steve Jobs, or Nelson Mandela. It does mean that you have to develop the ability to see things clearly and to have a well thought through definition of success. A few weeks ago I was running a session for an executive team with Robert Holden. We asked the team who had a written definition of success. One hand went up. This person described how 25 years ago they had formulated their vision for success. When we asked what benefits they had received as a result the individual said two things; Focus and Fulfilment. They went onto say that one of the most powerful aspects of having a clear vision was that it had given them a path to follow, providing important sign posts along their journey.

It can appear overwhelming at first when you start embracing the idea of vision. A simple exercise to provoke your thinking is to ask yourself, ‘What is success today?’ In other words, ‘How would you know at the end of a day if you’ve been successful or not?’ These questions are at the heart of Success Intelligence and on a personal note have been one of the most beneficial techniques to help me become more visionary. A couple of years ago I decided to really get to grips with these questions. One thing we do, as a team at Success Intelligence is to use legendary moleskine notebooks used by thinkers and artists like Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway. These are our success journals. I committed to asking myself the question, ‘What is success today?’ every day for 365 days and writing down my answer. It got to the point that if I had forgotten to do it, by 11 o’clock I knew something was missing. I had to pull out my book and make sure that I had clarified what was most important for me that day. It had a profound effect not only on the way I felt, but also how I approached my work and life.

Here are three benefits of making vision your learning curve:
1. Making sure what’s important stays important. In a manic, busy and hyper world it’s easy to forget what really matters. The act of developing your vision brings you closer to what’s most precious in your life, work and relationships.
2. Overcoming our limitations. Most of the barriers that we have to resolve in life our self-imposed. Vision provides a context to face our fears and realise that we may be greater than we originally believed.
3. Enjoying the ride. As John Lennon famously said, ‘Life is not a dress rehearsal’. It’s easy to live so many years ahead of each day that we can fail to make the most of now.

As a result of this blog I encourage you to ask yourself, ‘What is success?’ daily for the next 30 days and allow yourself to receive the gift of vision.

My Best Year Yet 2010

By Ben Renshaw, Co-Director, Success Intelligence

On January 29th, Success Intelligence hosted a stunning public event (even though I say so myself) focused on making 2010 your best year yet. The day had been long in coming as we had put a lot of focus on it as a team to ensure that it had maximum impact both for us personally, and the 100 delegates that joined us on the day. It was a real mix of people who attended bringing together a selection of our corporate clients including Sky, Nationwide, Vodafone and Zurich with a range of other participants including entrepreneurs, teachers, coaches and health professionals.

I had the joy of co-presenting the day with the founder of Success Intelligence, Dr Robert Holden and fellow director Avril Carson. The day consisted of 4 key sessions to help make 2010 your best year yet:
1. Identity – being clear about who you are.
2. Success – understanding your definition of success.
3. Strategy – removing the blocks to success.
4. Shift – identifying your personal growth for the year ahead.

I thought it would be valuable to share some of the key insights that came out of the day:

Session 1
Stop the world I want to get off…Does this plea sound familiar? We are living faster than ever. The challenge with life running by in a flash is that we can miss out on what’s most important – ourselves. At Success Intelligence we often hear our clients make comments such as, “I barely have a minute to myself.” Or, “I’m 3 days behind in my life. I just need an extra 3 days to catch up.” This manic existence is not a great way of making the most of life and needs to be addressed. It starts with getting greater clarity about our own wisdom and making sure that we live it.

Success Intelligence is based on 4 key intelligences, which are the cornerstone of our wisdom:

PQ: The Energy of Success. Intelligence is an energy. We need to create the space to get plugged into it and get recharged. When we’re connected we listen to energy. Ask yourself, ‘What energizes you?’ ‘What enthuses you?’

EQ: The Heart of Success. ‘What do you love?’ ‘What is in your heart?’ Being successful means that you have a loving relationship with your heart. So often we override the wisdom in our heart through emotions such as fear or guilt. Let your heart lead you this year.

IQ: The Psychology of Success. As Robert Holden says in his book, Success Intelligence, “Sometimes you have to stop and think!” Think time is one of the most important ingredients for being truly successful as it helps you to tune into your best thoughts.

SQ: The Spirit of Success. The first book I wrote was called Successful But Something Missing. The title captures the experience of so many – external trappings but a gap in meaning. As we strive after success we can forget what’s really important. Real success is ensuring that what’s important stays important.

Following this input, our first major exercise on the day was to ask people to conduct a Success Review for 2009. We used 3 different lenses to look at success; your most meaningful, enjoyable and valuable successes from last year. It’s powerful to make success a learning curve and recognise what you have learnt about yourself through success.

Session 2
One of the core principles of Success Intelligence is, ‘Your definition of success influences every other significant decision in your life.’ Getting clear about what is success can save years of chasing false idols and pursuing happiness. In order to help people think about success for 2010 we invited them to try some possibility thinking.

One of the gifts of exercising possibility thinking is that it challenges you to look at your habitual self. This is the part of you that lives with deeply engrained habits, some of which are not so helpful. On a personal note one of my habits, which really doesn’t support me is the temptation to become cynical. For instance, if someone dares to suggest a new idea, or a better way of doing something, my initial response is to dismiss it. Employing possibility thinking encourages us to open our minds to inspiration and help make sure that our life isn’t just a series of repeats.

The exercise we set people was to explore the question, ‘How good can this year get?’ I really recommend having a go at this if you want to get high on your own thinking!

Session 3:
Having explored how good 2010 could get, we then challenged people to reflect upon how they might fail. The purpose of doing this is that although we don’t tend to consciously set ourselves up for failure, our habitual self can easily slip into old ways of doing things that take us off track. Avril Carson quoted part of a powerful poem from GK Chesterton, ‘Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.’

We highlighted 5 particular blocks to watch out for that could derail you from your good intentions. I’m going to mention a couple of my favourite below:
1. Hyper-cynicism. As I mentioned above I’m an expert in cynicism. Essentially cynicism is a defensive mechanism we employ to prevent us from getting disappointed. The other side of cynicism is passion, so watch out when you meet new opportunities with a cynical approach.
2. The Work Ethic. This pattern is based on the idea that the key to success is hard work and then some more. There’s no doubt that working hard can be a helpful trait, however we live in a world in which most people overly work, leading to exhaustion and a lack of creativity and imagination. How can you work smarter, not harder this year?

Session 4:
Our final session was called, The Shift. The key principle we introduced was, ‘Your life will not grow if you do not grow’. The initial exercise we set was to think about how you grew in 2009, what helped you to grow and the benefits you received. This was followed up by defining how you would like to grow this year, the benefits you hope to gain and what help you will require. We provided people with a couple of tools to help them record their good intentions and commit to following through.

I was so touched by the day that as Robert was closing, he turned to Avril and myself to invite a final comment and I was left speechless. Maybe 2010 will be a quieter year in my life. My family will thank me!