What’s Your Legacy?
Sorry late this week – almost a Thoughtful Friday! After another bout of sickness on the merry go around of germs with young kids I’m back on the mend this week. I’ve pulled back a bit to focus on wellbeing so trying to practice what I preach. Still catching up on emails so apologies if you’re waiting on anything. Not having a good run! Feel free to give me a nudge if its important. I didn’t get to my long run on the weekend – all I could manage was a slow 30 min walk – but fingers crossed I’ll be back out this weekend. I’m up to 11km this week and hoping to maintain sub 6’ kms but I suspect this recent bug will set me back. Stay tuned!
This week some mentoring conversations have got me thinking about legacy. What’s your legacy? What will you leave behind? How will your colleagues remember you when you move on in your career? How is your team better by your contribution? Don’t worry I’m not getting all deep and metaphysical about our temporary human existence, but more in our roles at work. Are you acting in a way now that you will be proud of when at some stage in the future you look back? When you look back now are you proud? And if not have you taken corrective action to steer your ship back on track? I’d recommend you all have a think about the shadow you cast and the lasting impact. Have a read of this if you’re keen: https://actrua.com.au/2019/05/20/whats-your-legacy/
Some chat this week about culture. At this stage we’re making sure the investment of time isn’t wasted and we’re putting into practice the takeaway learnings to keep driving toward an even more positive and high performing culture. Whenever I think about culture I think about the old lego meme below. You could consider culture as the round wheel to make things easier, smoother, better, but if we’re too focused on ‘being busy’ we’re shutting out how good we could be. Culture isn’t fruit bowls and massages, its about everyday behaviours that we accept or don’t, that collectively total the sum of what it’s like to work here. It’s the little things. It’s the messages we send through our actions more than our words.
And this week featured one of my fav reads for the year – link below and summary of the takeaway top 5 tips:
From Learned Helplessness to Learned Hopefulness.
If we believe the individual cannot enact change, we’re done for.
Stop judging others.
Debate, Disagree, Learn.
Burst the bubble, don’t only share the bad news.
https://mwah.live/blog/2020-the-year-we-got-our-shit-together?mc_cid=3bb54048ca&mc_eid=667960cf2a
I was thinking this week back to my psych studies and the human performance curve of stimulation vs effectiveness. There are many versions of these out there and here are a couple below. Noting that everyone’s optimal stress levels will differ to deliver their best performance. Sometimes the shape of the curve differs too e.g. for some high pressure = optimal. But high pressure doesn’t always create diamonds. We can’t perform at our best when we’re overloaded but sometimes overload is temporary and unavoidable – so what do we do? We change our expectations. Don’t expect to be at your best at times when you can’t, but we can try to stay positive about it and try to influence the pressures. Likewise if we’re underperforming sometimes it’s because we’re not challenged enough or in the right way. We talk a lot about performance but seek first to understand, then we can influence the outcomes. A timely reminder to myself as well! Say no more – keep comms open with your colleagues – and discern between urgent and important.
Some more gold from Simon Sinek:
Keep well and please prioritise that which matters most! 😊