Extraordinary Productivity

I recently attended a Franklin Covey workshop on extraordinary productivity, which, I thought was excellent.  It got me thinking..... what does it mean to be extraordinarily productive? Does it mean being able to do one hundred and one things before breakfast? or use the early hours of the night in which to write your Christmas newsletter? (I must confess to actually doing the latter, but I am not claiming that this makes me extraordinarily productive, just an insomniac who probably needs to get a life!)

What I wonder is the golden key?

I have come to the conclusion that the answer is deceptively simple.  KNOW THYSELF.  What do I mean?

1. Understand your personality, and make peace with it.  Are you energised by being with people or time alone, do you love the detail of what you do or prefer to paint with a broad brush, do you make logical analytical decisions or impulsive intuitive ones?  Are you a structured, planned and ordered sort of person or do you prefer to be spontaneous with a tendency for last minute creativity?  We can always add skills to our fundamental personality, yet there is something about the core of who we are that is, well, just "us"- there is something fundamentally liberating about accepting oneself and celebrating who we actually are (rather than striving to be someone we really aren't)

2. Know your values and connect with them daily.  What is really important to you?  Justice? Freedom? Peace? Integrity? Joy? Family? how do you connect with your values and how do they find expression in your daily activities? The more we  connect with what is important on a daily basis, the more "grounded" and congruent we become

3. Realise your strengths.  When do you feel you are "in the zone" functioning at your very best?  What would you do even if you weren't paid? What kinds of things make you feel "really you"?  What things make you feel most energised?  What do you excel at doing? Let's agree to call these things something, let's call them your strengths. The more we play to them on a daily basis, the more energised we feel and the more we are capable of achieving.

So, the key to extraordinary productivity? Be yourself, connect with your values and play to your strengths and realise afresh how fundamentally awesome you actually are!

WILD WOMEN ROAR!

What an inspirational day at Paignton Zoo yesterday!  I am genuinely humbled by the sheer energy, passion,vision, talent  and creativity that the women who attended the WILD workshop had and this prompted me to communicate in this blog, what WILD is all about.

Women In Leadership Development (WILD) has been designed by three women: Diane Lowe, Tiffany Macedo-Dine and myself- three completely different women with different life and professional experiences but with a common vision to see women released from the things that hold them back in their personal and professional lives and into the freedom of their untapped potential.

In the words of Mary Wollancroft we are not in any way interested in women having power over men, but only in them having power over themselves.  WILD was born as we began to dream about what it would be like if instead of holding back women began to hold out - hold out for what they knew they could achieve.

What do we mean by achievement?  It could include promotion, or setting up in business, or running a marathon, creating an art exhibition, becoming an Internationally renown speaker, ..... whatever it is that creates passion and excitement and that somewhere inside we have a longing to do.  It is about exercising choice about who we are and who we become and being the fullest and best expression of ourselves.

And that is what it means to really roar- put simply it is about being your best self and in our experience being your best self is a gift not only to yourself, but also to the rest of the world!  So as we say on the programme why would you continue to PURR when you have the awesome capability to ROAR?

The value of values

In the book newly published by Kevin Murray (The language of leaders: How top CEO's communicate to inspire, influence and achieve results) knowing your true values emerges as  an integral part of providing inspirational leadership.  Quite simply when we speak in alignment with our own values our communication is more believable.  But I wonder how many people are actually in touch with what their core values are?

One way to uncover what really matters to you is to ask yourself the question: why?  This is something we instinctively knew how to do when we were toddlers learning about the world, but then as we grew up we presumed we knew and so didn't ask quite so much!

I am passionate about releasing potential.  Why is this important to me?  Because I believe that everyone has something special and unique to offer and when they get to bring it they experience greater fulfilment.  Why is this important?  Because living a fulfilled life brings a sense of personal freedom.  Why is this important? Because freedom to be and to choose and to become is probably the most important freedom of all.  So what is the value that undergirds my passion to release potential?

FREEDOM! How does this core value get expressed in my leadership? It is the drive behind being self-employed, It is the motivator behind eliciting the strategies that leaders use to achieve unwanted outcomes, it is the energy behind the WILD women in leadership development programme, it is the vision behind the Kairos Leadership Foundation, a charity being set up to support educational and micro enterprise initiatives in developing countries, it is the rationale for honest debate and exploration of matters of faith and it is the bedrock of my own understanding of what it means to be a Christian.

When we are deeply aware of our "why" we not only become more convincing communicators and more authentic leaders, but more centred and grounded human beings.  So, Kevin I think you are right, but a word of caution; operating out of a connected and conscious understanding of our core values cannot be applied as some sort of "management" tool to enhance our believability.  Why?  because it would lack credibility and congruence.  Why is that important?  because our core values need to be genuine.  Why is that important? Because otherwise we would lack integrity.  Why is that important? Because INTEGRITY matters!