Going for Gold in 2012 - Ben Renshaw

I’ve just returned from six weeks down under in Australia and New Zealand. As my wife Veronica is from Auckland it has become an annual ritual, which I can’t live without! It gives me the time and space to recover from the year that’s been, and to set myself up for the year to come. One of the highlights on this trip was reading Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson – the exclusive biography. A gripping story which I couldn’t put it down (tough when you’ve got 3 kids!) Filled with countless pearls of wisdom, one of the points made which really rung true was the following:

One of Job's great strengths was knowing how to focus. "Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do," he said. "That's true for companies, and it's true for products."

I love this idea of focus as each year I decide on a theme, which becomes my guiding mantra over the days and weeks to come. 2011 was about freedom as I set out on my own personal inquiry to deepen my understanding and experience of such an illusive quest. I have decided that 2012 is all about enjoyment. In the year of our London Olympics I am going to challenge myself to make this year my best year yet and to enjoy everything I do, all of the time - a big stretch.

To kick-start this focus on 10th February I’m running Your Personal Best 2012 with my great friends Robert Holden and Avril Carson. It’s our annual start-the-year event and will be filled with rich and creative conversations to help you go for gold in your work, life and relationships. Love to see you there. Ben

Real Leadership by Ben Renshaw

“Leadership is not a job; it’s a wiliness to be more of who you already are.” Ben Renshaw

What’s your leadership philosophy? Do you think leadership is simply a job grade, role, or title? I find it fascinating that most people I coach in leadership positions have not stopped long enough to work out what real leadership is. Having now run leadership development programmes intensively over the last few years I have arrived at 5 key principles, which I believe are at the heart of real leadership:

1. Having a clear identity.

2. Defining an inspiring vision.

3. Building authentic relationships.

4. Creating great performance.

5. Discovering true meaning.

I recently put this into practice as a result of working with a great person who has just stepped into a dream role. They had a reputation for being a brilliant thinker, however would leave most people feeling incompetent and anxious as a result of their investigative style of working. Our initial coaching was designed to help them think about who they really are, as ‘the only way you can really lead is to be real.’ They then defined an inspirational vision, which helped them to go beyond simply ticking off their ‘to-do’ list. This has allowed them to develop far more genuine relationships, and I know in time will create better performance in their team. The icing on the cake has been their willingness to recognise that life is too short just to have a job. They now get that ‘real leadership is knowing in every moment you can make a real difference.’

Real Leadership Workshop with Ben Renshaw

October 14, 2011

CLICK HERE TO BOOK

Email: info@successintelligence.com

Real Leadership by Ben Renshaw

Our team at Success Intelligence takes a theme each year that we pay particular attention to – this year it’s about Authentic Success, in honour of my friend Robert Holden’s book with the same title coming out in May 2011. Given the fact that I spend most of my time running leadership programmes for major organisations, I’ve decided to take a look and see what’s authentic and real about leadership.

There are four key areas which I believe are at the heart of real leadership:

1. Physical Leadership. The CEO at a company I work with talks about the ‘leaders walk’. He encourages his people to be very conscious about the way they ‘show up’ and to think about how they come across. This point was highlighted to me when I was working with a high performing team and people started talking about the senior leader of their division. What transpired was this guy sat on the left hand-side of the office. Each day he would use his side of the office to walk to and from his desk to the lift, bathroom and generally get around. However, the people on the right hand side of the office felt left out. In order to really make his physical presence felt, he needed to change his ‘leaders walk’, and make sure that he included the right-hand side of the office. Real leaders recognise that a small act makes a big difference.

2. Emotional Leadership. I’ve had the privilege of running the senior leadership development programme for InterContinental Hotels Group over the last 4 years called Leading with Purpose. We always start the event by asking people, ‘Who is your most admired leader, and why?’ 98% of responses from over 400 leaders across the world describe emotional capabilities such as; the ability to be open and honest, communicating with passion, having great resilience, being humble and inspiring others to act. Research shows that once you reach a certain point of recognition in your career, the defining factor that enables you to progress is the degree to which you are able to engage with people on an emotional level. One leader I worked with demonstrated a high level of emotional sensitivity. He made a habit of when someone achieved a notable success to send a personalised ‘thank you’ card to their home address. On one occasion he did this with an Engineer who was an ex-Marine and a tough guy. Having sent the card he was confronted by this employee coming into his office in a manner that left the manager convinced he was going to be beaten up. In fact what happened was the Engineer broke down in tears and said that he had never received a personalised thank you and it had made him feel really valued.

3. Thought Leadership. One of our favourite mantras at Success Intelligence is that ‘Leaders are not paid to be busy, they are paid to think.’ Although people always agree in principle when we share this idea, it doesn’t stop them from keeping too busy. Real leaders ensure that they carve out time to think in order to address a whole variety of challenges such as defining success, strengthening relationships, prioritising workload, communicating clearly. We firmly believe that if you are too busy, you are too busy; therefore real leadership is the ability to stop unnecessary busyness and start necessary thinking.

4. Inspirational Leadership. One of the most exciting projects that Success Intelligence is currently engaged with is running the largest leadership programme in the history of Heinz UK&I called Game-Changing Leadership. Involving 1000 leaders across the business we kicked-off with a company event in which we asked people what is the number 1 quality they look for in leaders. The overwhelming answer was inspiration. However, we believe that in order to inspire others you need to be inspired. Ask yourself, ‘What inspires you?’ Real leaders make sure that they place personal inspiration at the heart of their work and lives in order to authentically inspire others.

Valentine's Day: Loving Everyone

Happy Valentine’s Day to you. Traditionally, Valentine’s Day is the day we show our love to one special person in our life. This is a lovely thing to do. That said, I feel that Valentine’s Day would be even lovelier if we made it a day to show our love to everyone in our life. Everyone must also include our self too. Maybe we could start a new tradition. Starting from today. Below is a short poem called “Loving Everyone.”

If you want to find someone
to love,
I recommend you start
loving everyone
immediately.

Love will find you if you are
being the love
that
you
are.

If you want to learn how
to love someone
with all your
heart,
I advise you to fall in love
with everyone
a little bit
more.

Loving everyone is the key
to loving
someone.

And if you want someone
to love you
more,
I urge you to get on with it,
and to start
loving yourself.

Someone has to do it.
It may as well be you.
Show us how it is done.
So that you make it easy
for us to love
you too.

The Drama of Authenticity

“When do I feel most authentic?” This is the question I have been asking myself over the last week, in preparation for a workshop I am presenting tomorrow (Feb 1st, in Central London) with Ben Renshaw and Avril Carson called Authentic Success. Each day, for the last seven days, I have set aside 15 minutes to stop, be still, and sit with the question, “When do I feel most authentic?” Each time, I found the first five minutes or so to be very difficult: my mind would go blank, my heart wouldn’t register any feelings, and my body would get fidgety. I noticed I’d try to convince myself to cut short the fifteen minutes. Maybe I could read some inspirational quotations on authenticity instead. Someone else can do this for me.

Authenticity feels so natural, so why isn’t it easy? As I continued to sit with my inquiry, I gradually made contact with myself. It’s like I’d been away from myself, but I didn’t know it, not until just now: caught up in the habits of my personality; thinking thoughts all day long; busily trying to be someone; and putting on a face for all the other faces out there. Who is the real me? Not the personality that is manufactured in the world. The real me. Not the empty self that always wants something. The real me. Not a tinned version of a soul. The real me.

I kept sitting. I did not leave myself. I wanted to know my real thoughts. I wanted to feel my heart. I wanted to breathe more deeply again. My inquiry into “When do I feel most authentic?” felt frustrating and delightful; mysterious and illuminating; healing and joyful. I have long believed that being authentic is the key to success, happiness, love and all good things; but I have also experienced the fear of authenticity and so on. Such is the drama of authenticity. Such Is our daily challenge; and our daily choice. Success is recognizing who you really are; and happiness is letting yourself be you.

I hand the inquiry over to you now. When do you feel most authentic? Don’t let anyone else do your homework for you. Take fifteen minutes to stop, be still, and make contact with yourself.

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!