Blog
Keep Practising and Improving (WT783)
I don’t know about you, but this week I’ve been resitting a training course I attended about 12 months ago and it’s like I never attended. As we went through the exercises, I kept thinking, “I don’t remember this. I can’t recall doing that before.” I’m guessing this has happened to you. How come? Because this week I presented the final session for a 6 month internal customised training program for a client and as we revised what we had learned over the period, it was clear that some of the participants, like me with my course, hadn’t fully taken in the information when first presented. As I...
Make A Procedure (WT782)
Before we get into this week’s thought, Ross and I were debating about the correct way to write the title. Should it be “Write a Procedure” or “Make a Procedure”? Before screen-capture tools like Loom.com or transcription services like Otter.ai or AI in general, the only way to capture a procedure was to write it, hence “Write a Procedure”. Today though, there are many ways to capture a procedure, hence “Make a Procedure”. So, whichever one you think is correct, use that. To get us started, I have a question for you. Have you ever been employed in a role and been asked to complete a task but...
You Can Be Too Pigheaded (WT781)
My 87 year old uncle lives alone. A few years back he was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome in which he experienced muscle weakness of the legs. Over time, his legs became more painful and his mobility was severely restricted. Unsteady on his feet, when he fell, he was unable to get himself up. Despite having a special alarm that would summon the ambulance or other help within an hour if he fell, he refused to carry it. Hence the “pigheaded” description. No amount of pleading, arguing, bribing etc. would get him to use the alarm. And this week he ended up in the hospital after having...
Fifteen Years (WT780)
Oh my golly goodness! Today marks our 15th anniversary of Weekly Thoughts and I haven’t missed one single week in all that time. This is something I am very proud of – my commitment to you. I don’t want to miss a week because I don’t want to let you down. How about you? What or who are you committed to? Let’s take a minute to reflect on the past fifteen years. What’s happened in your life? Where has your journey taken you? Ross and I travelled Australia and lived in a motorhome over Covid. We lived in the USA for 7 months. We lived on the Gold Coast for a year. Like gypsies, we’ve bought and...
Just Do Your Job (WT779)
Every now and again we have a conversation with someone and something they say gives us goosebumps and chills all over. I call these “truth bumps” because they indicate to us that what we are hearing is the truth. This week my body tingled with truth bumps. I was talking with a colleague about making sales calls. Prospecting is something that a lot of people resist. We were discussing how important it is to include a request for introductions or referrals. My colleague even encouraged me to reach out to past Leading Yourself and Leading Others Graduates to check in with them and also invite...
The Cycle of Change (WT778)
Are you thinking about changing something or are you wanting prospective clients to purchase a product of service? If so, you might be interested to know a little bit about the process we go through when we want to change something in our lives. In the late 1970s, James Prochaska, a psychologist interested in psychotherapy outcomes, noticed a disconnect in treatment approaches—particularly around behaviour change (e.g., quitting smoking, substance use). Traditional models assumed that people were ready to change, and that all they needed was the right intervention. But many clients weren’t...
Into The Label Maker We Go (WT777)
This week I’m sharing a conversation I had with a good friend and colleague. We’ll call him Andrew. Andrew was telling me about one of his team members. The team member was bemoaning his clients. “Rather than being grateful for the work or understanding of the needs of his clients”, Andrew said, “Into The Label Maker We Go”. He went on to explain. The team member would mention the client’s name, throw them in the label maker and then spit out any number of disparaging judgements and labels to describe his clients. Now, this shouldn’t be funny and yet I found myself laughing heartily at the...
The Law of Commitment (WT776)
When you say you’re committed to (fill in the blank), have you ever wondered how your body knows you are committed? This week I’ve been studying with Benjamin J. Harvey and he gave a mind-blowing explanation of the Law of Commitment. In fact, we are biologically designed to succeed if we follow the Law of Commitment. In your body, you have cells called Astrocytes. Astrocytes respond to two things. They respond to what's called increased impulse traffic where the impulses are travelling down the same neural networks over and over again as well as taking urgent action. With a couple of...
There’s A Better Way To Say It (WT775)
You know that one of my passions is communication. I’ve spent decades studying communication and am an accredited instructor for Thomas Gordon’s Leader Effectiveness Training and overall Effectiveness Training, both of which place a heavy emphasis on developing communication skills. So this week I cringed when a colleague shared with me, her dismay at receiving some feedback. These days I’m also cautious about using the word “feedback” because for most of us, it means something negative is coming or a criticism of some sort. Anyhoo, we’ll call her Jasmine. In a public forum, one of Jasmine’s...
Just Jump In (WT774)
You know animals can teach us a lot about life. It was Good Friday and Ross and I were relaxing in the loungeroom when we noticed three kookaburras sitting on the railing on the front verandah. They weren’t there long before they were joined by magpies, a currawong and a butcher bird. Now, ordinarily Ross and I would not feed birds because we recalled a sign in a Queensland national park when we were travelling that said, “A fed bird is a dead bird”. So generally, we won’t feed birds. For some reason, on this day, Ross had some left over meat and so he threw it on the verandah. The...