Author: Thomas Dimmick

Reflection: The overlooked & underrated tool for growth

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Self-reflection is a process that is often avoided for fear of having to ‘dwell’ on unfavourable or unbecoming situations in the past.  However, I have come to understand that act of reflection is an overlooked and underrated tool for both personal and business growth.

Of late, I have heard the phrase ‘hustle culture’ time and time again and I have consciously observed the aspects of this ‘hustle culture’.  Essentially, ‘hustle culture’ promotes the idea of working long hours and sacrificing other aspects of personal life in order to succeed, with the embedded promise that if you give work all your time and attention, you can achieve anything and everything.

As a business owner or people leader, it is easy to unintentionally subscribe to the ‘hustle culture’ because you’re trying to do it all for the benefit of the business.  I for one have unintentionally subscribed to this culture for longer than I realised because I like to just ‘get stuff done’ – as I’m sure many  business owners and people leaders do.  The danger of the hustle culture is that we give our time and energy to the wrong parts of the business.  We do what we need to do, to get it all done however, we are blind to the bigger picture.

The process of reflection can assist you in taking stock of how your time has been spent and what proportion of your time in the past month or past quarter was spent providing non-revenue generating support, generating revenue or creating growth and future revenue i.e. the bigger picture!

Now, reflecting on some of my busiest periods (in a former life), I can very clearly see that at times (actually most of the time), I only focussed on getting through the revenue of today with no consideration for the growth or revenue of tomorrow.  In hindsight, had I implemented a process or set time per month or per quarter to reflect on each period, I may have identified that next to none of my time was actively spent working on future growth and then rectified this.

Taking the time to reflect on the business and recognise where time and energy is spent will allow you to reset and identify what is lacking in the business and where time and energy is needed.

As business coaches, we work with clients to ensure the business is fully functional by taking time to stop, reflect and then map out the business workflows and allocate these to the costs, the revenue of today and the revenue of the future (or as we categorise them – the ‘Red’, ‘Blue’ and ‘Black’ of the business).

What Beckon Business loves about this –  we get a front row seat to witnessing our clients unlock growth in their business.

~ Stephanie Toutountzis

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Creating Certainty in an Uncertain World

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Increasingly, coaching conversations with our clients turn to introspection on ‘what can I do about the issues we encounter in the workplace?’ As business coaches working in many different businesses and organisational structures, we pick up trends and flows on the ‘issues’ discussed, and in the post Covid environment, leaders’ uncertainty about how to go about creating a connected workplace seems to be trending high.

In one way, this is not much different to pre-2019 coaching work. Leadership have always been aware of the role they play in connecting teams and engaging the workforce and keen to build on this. Our ‘most in-demand’ workshop is creating an environment for high performance, where teams are willing to have the difficult conversations and commit to one another. So why the uncertainty in leaders now?

Workplaces have a new level of complexity for leadership to contend with. There are additional layers, to how organisations and teams work together:

  • WFH: ‘working-from-home’ for 2 of 5 days, has become a normal part of the working week, which creates a disconnect, both systemically and intra-team – the hybrid workplace, as we now know it.
  • All-change: There is also a significant movement of staff – from one company to another, and/or one team or cohort to another which started when the Covid lockdowns and mandates were introduced but has continued to increase as we return to ‘normal’.
  • Uncertainty: With a changing and unpredictable workplace, the focus has moved to efficiency and covering the gaps – trying to ‘read-the-tea-leaves’ whilst building for tomorrow and keeping a streamlined organisation together.

How leaders manage this is not a simple, one-size fits all answer. There is however a common coaching technique we apply, when the answer isn’t clear or certain – it is called ‘the overview effect’. My business partner Ak Sabbagh introduced me to this concept a while ago. He explains it this way:

“It is about stepping back and taking an unfamiliar perspective. In many ways the role of a business coach is to help business owners and leadership teams gain ‘the overview effect’.  We regularly get comments like “I’ve never seen my business from this angle before.” “It’s like the fog’s been cleared…”

How do we do this? We use a coaching style to help our clients sit above it all and consider the context of their situation – rather than sitting in the situation itself.  We use proven frameworks and tools to engage in discussions that elevate our client’s perspective of their ‘fixed workplace’, or the limitations of the team, to look at processes, leadership and communication styles, people, goals and aspirations.  We are always innovating new approaches to help our clients get the “overview effect”, to see a solution that was there, but they couldn’t see it because they were standing too close to see it.

Why do we do this? Because, regardless of the size or style of their business, we love working with leadership to build resilient relationships and innovative workplaces, that retain staff, get the right people in the right job and connect the passion of the individual to the purpose of the organisation.

~ Margaret Armitage

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An Aha Moment on Winning

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Over the last month or so I have been listening to and discussing what the hidden depth of high performance is and what part winning plays in that. A part of me rejects the desire to grade performance and yet another part recognizes the true value in measuring something to give it meaning. This is the ‘aha’ moment for me – that to feel I have performed well, to get that ‘winning well’ kind of feeling, I need to experience a light bulb moment of clarity about why or how I performed well.

It is a topic that intrigues me – I am curious, in a scientific kind of way, about what other elements and machanitions are there that move us into high performance and create that ‘winning’ feeling, especially in this ‘brave new world’ of post-pandemic business-life.

If performance is a measured thing to make it high or low, then it should be simply a matter of putting all the skills and competencies in the right place and letting them distill into high performance. However, we know it is not as simple as this.There is another side to the high performance coin that comes from the energy and commitment. So one side of high performance could be skills and competencies (tools of the trade) and the other side could be the energy and commitment (inner purpose) we are feeling. What I have noticed when working with teams and high performing indiviudals is that they balance these elements around their closely held values. I am still left wondering what else there is in the formula that turns a performance into a feeling of ‘winning well’.

When I reflect on this, what stands out to me is that it is our feelings that inspires us and our feelings that we use to measure how well we have performed. Whether it is a ‘ho-hum’ performance or quite fulfilling, our feelings are the guide! Hence, my curiosiness has lead me to conclude that as high performers we are searching for an immeasurable measure to confirm our high performance, to give us that ‘winning well’ feeling.

As a leadership coach, I have discovered that a feeling of ‘winning well’ is a very individual thing because the ‘well’ part of the phrase comes from the measure of the individual or the team I am working with. It’s not something that can be arbitrarily applied or externally measured to claim the ‘winning well’ title.

On a personal level, I need to experience an ‘aha moment’ to give me the ‘winnng well’ feeling. My ‘aha moment’ is when there is a sudden understanding of what is behind a knarly issue or the different perspective I can take to unlock the next steps for me or my client. So this is my measure of ‘winning well’. No matter what anyone else tells me or explains to me, unless I experience an ‘aha moment’ I feel like an underperformer.

In William B Irvine’s book Aha!: The Moments of Insight that Shape Our World, he explores the many varieties of ‘aha moments’ that have resulted in significant wins for humankind and the world we live in. The ‘aha moment’ could be a moral revelation or a scientific revelation or simply a small trigger that changes the way we approach something. They don’t all have to change the entire world, but they do have to result in new insight and will make an impact on us. Something we easily remember and recall over and over.

My insight or ‘aha moment’ when pondering on ‘winning well’ and high performance, is that a key element of the formula is to discover something and share it. It can be to reveal a truth that hasn’t seemed relevant, or it can be a new perspective on an old issue, or it can be an awareness of why everything worked well and knowing how we can repeat it.

So the fundamental nature of ‘winning well’ for me is in the sharing of the win to make high performance sustainable – it’s in my response to the experience. What is it for you?  I would love to hear your thoughts.

~ Margaret Armitage

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A Reason to Win

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Recently a conversation came about with a few colleagues regarding winning. I used the word winning as a metaphor to achieve something, gaining something we aspired to and for a deeper meaning to one’s purpose. Without explaining this first I felt a little push back when I kept using the word. At first, I couldn’t understand why. It became apparent that winning was my metaphor or an easy way to explain what brings me purpose or fulfillment, but not everyone aligned with this. The word ‘winning’ has a different meaning for each of us, created by our different experiences and associations with the word. 

 This then took me on a journey over the past couple of weeks and brought me to asking the question, “can you win without competing?” Depends on how you define winning right? After asking this question to people from sport, business, friends, and colleagues, one gem of a comment that took me deeper was “winning is a data point, no less or no more important than other data points.” This makes sense, picking up data or information based on the processes we are undertaking. 

 To me, seeing it as a data point takes emotion out of it. It gives me the result of a process without the attachment and gives information to plan my next move. So why can we get so attached to certain results if it is “simply a data point, no more no less”? Are we attached to the work that goes into the process to get to a desired outcome (the blood, sweat and tears)? Maybe even loved ones or others are involved. Is the attachment to another, deeper meaning we value? If we get the desired outcome to a certain process, is that a win? If so, did we have to compete in some way, shape or form to put ourselves in the best possible position to get the desired result? 

 I don’t know. However, I feel knowing when to win and knowing when to fall back and not become overly attached allows for clearer thinking, better decision making and to put energy where needed to allow me to be in the best possible position to win. It may also allow us to make better decisions by not becoming overly attached to those data points and allowing emotion to take over. 

 Taking it a step further, does this mean there are personalized data points and depersonalized data points? Data points, no more no less (depersonalized) and data points attached with a desired want of a result or preconceived outcome (personalized). If that preconceived result is along the lines of gain, obtain, achieve something by effort can you get it without competing? And if it doesn’t mean enough, is it winning? Sure, you can gain something by not competing. For instance, if someone knocks on your door and gifts you $1000 you could say that’s a win. But if we are talking in the context of preconceived gain, obtain or achieve something by effort, is it winning? Not in that context (being gifted $1000) as you applied no effort and had no preconceived expectation. But yes, in the context of a depersonalized, non-emotional data point you could say it is a win. 

 At the end of the day, I have put more questions on the table than answers. For me the most important question is what is your reason to win? Does it align with your purpose? Your values? And if so to what extent before it becomes toxic, is winning unhealthy? And if winning becomes unhealthy, is it really winning? I believe the question “what is your reason to win?”, holds the answer for each of us. If winning becomes unhealthy to your values and purpose and driven by ego, is it really winning? We all define winning differently, taking small losses in the grand scheme of your purpose and vision could be winning, it’s the awareness around these data points and the decisions we make from them which allow us to move forward. 

 So, what’s your reason to win? Do you have a reason to win? 

~ Tom Wickham

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