The Leader's Portal

 I like this discussion. Would love to introduce it to a few (only a few now) managers that I have worked with down through the years.  Cinema therapy  Mind you, we could probably all do with a reminder now and again. And yes I do cry at that scene.

My dog Paddy has reminded me and taught me so much about learning, leadership and motivation. It has been one of my best learning experiences ever. You can see him in action in the video below.

             1. Confidence from competence - Practice and repetition This is possibly the most obvious one. Usually the more practised and experienced we get at a task, skill or ability, the more our confidence in our ability develops. This can also become a virtuous cycle where our practise increases our competence, our competence increases confidence which in turn makes us feel good about practising and doing that skill or performing that task again. 2. Develop an inner guide instead of an inner critic – manage negative self-talk promote positive self-talk. The voice we here most from morning to night every day is our own. Most if not all of us are familiar with the inner critic. We don’t have to work at developing it, it usually just comes along whenever we least need it. Building an inner guide takes a little more work, but you can write your own story. Invest the time in writing it and you reap the rewards.   3. Use your memory as a d...

The roles we play in the drama triangle way.   There is a lot of media airspace given to the concept of mindfulness or presence nowadays. The idea that we become as fully aware as possible so that our moment to moment thoughts and actions become as conscious as possible. I believe this is a noble and, most likely, beneficial practice and goal. That said, a constant state of mindful presence is probably not very realistically achievable for most human beings, given that unconscious processing is an extremely efficient way of dealing with our day to day worlds; our unconscious habits are often what our brain develops so as to free up time for our conscious attention but that conscious attention can be elusive.  On the road to increased mindfulness we will probably need to learn to drop some baggage and step out of the drama that our fragile egos get caught up in.   The roles we play in the drama get formed early on and are quite likely kept going through our constant ...

Your Brain Will Thank You For Being a Musician My saviour during the Corona Pandemic has been music (although my dog has also been pretty good). In the absence of being able to meet with my musical friends for a regular session, which ticks so many boxes for me in terms of stress reduction, social connection and just downright fun, I have been playing, learning, writing and recording music like I have not done for about twenty five years. It has made the anxiety and grief that has accompanied this pandemic in which I lost my Father and nearly lost my Mother so much more tolerable and dare I say it even fun. When absorbed in music making I find I very often enter that state of “flow” that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has so often referred to, and it’s a good thing because mostly the only other times I find this experience is during training delivery and there has not been much of that going on lately. All of this said it made it all the more worth it to come acro ss the article, “Your Brai...

  Managing your shadow side. Much of what we believe, think or feel is automatic, habitual, often unidentified and undifferentiated. Feelings, beliefs and thoughts can be so automatic that we do not even notice their presence, where they come from or the impact they have on our mind and body. For years I have held tension in my neck and often get a headache from this in very stressful interpersonal situations. Carl Jung referred to this as the shadow self and we are often not conscious of our shadow’s presence. Yet it is always there, to a greater or lesser degree. I believe part of the process of growing as human beings is to learn to identify, differentiate and manage this kind of baggage or the shadow self. To some degree we do this naturally. For example, we often become aware of differences in our beliefs and thoughts to those of our parents as we grow up. Unfortunately, however, this process can seize up and stop when we come to a conclusion that we have “grown up”...

The Credibility Pyramid  In my book, Positive Influence, I wrote about a slightly adapted version of this. Here is a short video describing credibility and its many levels. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw5JdNMXyjc