Over the course of our lives, we develop and adopt beliefs about ourselves and how the world works. The word “mindset” is the collective name for these beliefs.
Our mindset guides our choices, behaviours, decisions, and how we view the world. If you’ve ever walked away from a conversation thinking “How on earth could they think that?!”, chances are you were talking to someone who is operating from a completely different mindset to you.
The element of communication is one of the most significant building-blocks to your organisational culture.
We spend most of our days communicating with others. But how often do we stop to consider what we are communicating, and how we are communicating? And how do we know if what and how we are communicating are hitting the mark?
Organisational culture has been a “buzzphrase” for longer than I can remember. It’s the topic of vast numbers of books, 15 TED talks (when I last checked), and innumerable blog-posts (to which I am adding another with this!).
But what is it, exactly? And why is it so important? And how do we create a great one? Thanks for asking! Let’s dive into those questions.
Reading Time: 8 minutes Certainty is highly prized; so much of what we do and say revolves around creating certainty for ourselves, or projecting an aura of certainty for others to see. We avoid and even despise uncertainty. Part of this is because our brains are wired to prefer certainty. The problem is not uncertainty itself, but our unfamiliarity … Read more
There’s a simple truth in life that I have encountered too many times to count… If I want to be any good at anything, first of all, I have to be willing to be bad at it. Learning and skill development are processes, not instant-gratification. So, instead of giving up on something if I don’t execute it perfectly the first time I try, I’ve learned that persistance counts for far more than “natural” talent. And one of the brilliant things about we humans is that we can learn how to stick with being bad at something long enough to become good at it.
“Change is the only constant” (attributed to Heraclitus of Ephesus). How often have you heard this phrase or some variation? People use it to explain (or excuse) shifts in policy, values and decisions. But it’s not terribly inspiring! Why bother learning a new way of doing things if it’ll just change again? And worse, why learn if we won’t even get any recognition for trying?
While success in anything comes from a combination of factors, recognition is a golden opportunity to turbo-charge success. The sad thing is that many organisations overlook it entirely. But it doesn’t have to be a big, difficult, expensive thing to embed in your culture. There are simple, effective and low-cost approaches that will make your employees feel valued and engaged.
Reading Time: 7 minutes It starts with that familiar sinking feeling, as we scurry around trying to do the million things on our mental “to-do” list, and instantly think of another twenty tasks to add. Or we stare at a blank page, too stressed to know where to start writing a list of everything we have to do. Either … Read more
We live in a culture that worships talent as the path to success. Have you heard people describe someone at the top of their game as a “freak”, a “genius”, or a “natural”? Or heard their performance described as “effortless” or “magical”? We come unstuck when we believe that natural talent is the key to success; so why are we biased towards this idea, and what can we do about it?