Let’s make effective New Year’s resolutions
If you’re like most of the people, it hasn’t been the first time you defined New Year’s resolutions, and it hasn’t been the first time you failed to keep these resolutions. Why is that?
Why wait for New Year’s Eve?
Let’s have a look at one of the main “criticisms” I hear about the New Year’s resolutions: why do you wait for New Year to make resolutions? Why should New Year be a “redefinition” of yourself?
Off course you shouldn’t ONLY wait for New Year’s Eve to define goals to be a better person, but let’s face it, it’s a very special day.
New Year is starting, friends and family are all gathered to celebrate that special moment, so why can’t we use that magical moment as a motivation and inspirational source to be a better/healthier/happier person? Why is this a problem?
Aren’t you happy like you are now? Well yes, I am, but there are always things to improve. We, human, can always grow, that’s what makes it so beautiful, so interesting.
Don’t make it too general
Most of the New Year’s resolutions are too general. By defining a too general topic, you don’t explain and think about how you could achieve your resolution. Take the example of “I want to read more”. What does that mean? What is more? How do you plan to read more?
A better way therefore to define a New Year’s resolution would be to be specific and define short milestones that will provide you a quick feedback on how you are doing.
In my example, you could say: I want to read 20 books a year, starting with 1 book the first 4 months and from then on 2 books a month. You can go further and make a list of the first 5 books you want to read, and define how much “pages” you want to read per week.
By being very specific, you take the most crucial step people fail to do: you plan your resolution.
Be realistic and not too optimistic
Many of the resolutions are way too optimistic. So whatever you want, make sure it doesn’t ask too much effort from you, otherwise you will not be able to do it a year long.
If you love spending time on YouTube and hate reading, then don’t t make the resolution of reading more. Instead, think about why you want to read more: is it because you want to learn more about human psychology?
Your resolution could then be: “Viewing more instructive YouTube videos on human psychology”. The result would be the same, but you wouldn’t force yourself to do something you hate, and that’s a more realistic resolution.
Finally, if you plan your resolution, you can quickly estimate if your resolution is feasible and be less optimistic if it isn’t the case.
My take home message of this week: there’s nothing wrong to use the magical moment of New Year to define new resolutions. Make them, however, realistic and very specific, and try to already plan how you would realise them by defining short milestones (and treat yourself each time you reach your milestones! 😊).
Let’s make some time to read
In this blogpost, I will explain how I managed to evolve from one or two books to at least 15 books a year.
Make it a ritual
In today’s ultra-connected and busy life, we tend to continuously prioritize urgent tasks over important tasks. Replying to your friend’s messages on Whatsapp is maybe urgent, but often not so important. However, an important but not urgent “task”, is reading and learning. Because of the lack of urgency, we tend to forget to read.
In order to help that, I have instilled a new ritual in my life. Every evening, or at least the evenings when I’m home, before going to bed, I mute my phone and replace TV-time by reading time.
The reason why it is important to make it a ritual is that it takes in average 2 months before a new behaviour turns into a new habit (https://jamesclear.com/new-habit), and like you know, habits are powerful because we don’t need to think about them anymore, we repeat them automatically.
Commute
Whenever I’m using the public transport, I read. But because a book can sometimes be very thick, or have a clumsy format, I bought an e-reader, and that was my best buy of 2017. I just love it! Small, light and a perfect ‘paper’ lookalike.
Because reading is impossible when driving a car, I just listen to audio-books or podcasts instead. While audiobooks are nice, I do have a slight preference for podcasts as I find them more easy to digest than books. One of my favorite podcasts on Spotify is on leadership and is called “EntreLeadership” (https://www.entreleadership.com/). Great insights. I’m a strong atheist and this podcast is religious, however, the values that are shared through the interview are universal, so I don’t mind the religious background.
Blinkist: a fast way to learn
One of the greatest apps I recently found is Blinkist. The app “summaries” in a very good, useful and efficient way the most important points of tons of non-fictional books. In fifteen to twenty minutes, you can catch up with the most important aspects of a specific book. It is then up to you to evaluate if you have enough information, or if the book is worth diving into.
Here is a good and transparent review on Blinkist: https://willyoulaugh.com/blinkist-review/
My take home message is try make reading a habit. If reading is too demanding for you or if you just prefer to listen instead, audio-books and podcasts are a great way to go. Apps like Blinkist make it so easy today as they just provide you with an easily searchable library of audio-summaries to help you get a lot of value out of books in a record of time. If George W. Bush was able to free enough time to read 186 books in two years while serving as president of the United States, we can manage to read more than that one book a year, right?
The power of communicating openly and transparently
Last week, I realised how glad and lucky I am to have a team that communicates openly and transparently on a daily basis, as it proved to me how effective it can be.
Core values
A lot of companies have core values printed on paper somewhere in an office. Very few of them, however, are actually creating a company culture built around these core values. Writing them is one step, but applying them is the most difficult step and is therefore often neglected.
When we jumped on this Transformactive adventure almost a year ago, one of the first thing we worked on were the core values of Transformactive which are built around trust. Our first aim was to make sure we respected and followed these values daily. It took several months to define them all, and it took additional months to apply them, and one of the first which we defined was the ‘open and transparent communication’ core value.
When open communication helps to uncover a fear
Last week, we had some important meetings about matters that will have an impact on our long-term vision and we weren’t all aligned. That’s ok, that’s even good, because it leads to debate that enriches the discussion. However, debating was not working. Arguments were used that weren’t making sense, which doesn’t happen often in our team.
That’s when I decided that we had to dig further, and to change the discussion from the meeting’s topic to something broader: We shared our current (global or specific) impressions, feelings and eventual fears. I realised that there was indeed a fear, and some global misunderstanding that led – without any causal relation – to the misalignment on the meeting’s topic. Talking openly and transparently about these aspects helped us in managing the fear, and removing the misunderstandings.
If the team had not clearly communicated their feelings, the misunderstandings would have stayed and a sense of “unfairness” would have grown in the persons’ mind. If not handled well, it could have led to frustrations and therefore to a loss of motivation, efficiency and trust.
Communicate to understand someone else’s point of view
Everyone has his or her own glasses that he or she is using to look at and interpret the reality. However, without sharing the specifics of the glasses you are using, the reality can be interpreted completely differently by someone else. It is thus very important to dare to be open and transparent, even if we think that it could hurt someone, because at the end, if you do it constructively, the person will only respect you more.
My message for the week is to work on communication. That’s a very important aspect in every relation, professional or personal. Sometimes, communicating openly and transparently seems not the right thing to do, or just too difficult to do, but at the end, it’s for everyone’s best interest. The more difficult it is for you to communicate, the more the other person will appreciate your effort. That’s the power of communication.
Let them do the scoring
In his great book “Good to Great”, Jim Collins uses a metaphor that says leaders should get the right people in the right seats on the bus. Personally, I prefer the metaphor of a team sport instead of a bus, because in a bus, the seat that you choose doesn’t really matter (except if you’re the driver). I’m playing basketball since that I’m 12, so let me use that as an example.
The point guard (PG) leads the game
In basketball, the PG’s job is to run the team’s offence by making sure that the players are in their right position. He/she should distribute the ball to his/her teammates at the right time so that THEY can score. Sometimes, the PG scores too, but it’s mainly the teammates that should score while he/she is giving the assists.
That’s exactly your job as a leader. You must find the right teammates, put them in the positions where they excel and give them enough opportunities to score. Let them do the scoring. It’s not about you, it’s about your team.
The players trust each other completely
The opponent is winning 79-78, you have the ball and you look at the timer: 5 seconds left! You dribble, the defence is tight, but you could go through. However, on the other side is Fred, and he stands free! You don’t think twice about your choice: you pass the ball; Fred scores and your team wins the game.
Well that’s trust. You trust your teammates completely and that’s what makes your team better than other teams. So why don’t we trust when it’s about business? Why do we want to keep the merits for ourselves? Let’s have the same faith in our colleagues as we have in our teammates.
Individuals are needed to have a team
Even if it’s a team sport, when Quentin has the ball, he keeps calm and doesn’t pass the ball immediately back to “the team”, he takes responsibilities. If he misses his shot, he also doesn’t blame the team. He takes responsibilities and defends two times better to take the ball back.
Taking your responsibilities and being pro-active is very important in business, because hiding behind the excuse of the “team” doesn’t help anyone.
At the end, it’s for fun
Even if you are playing to win, at the end, you play for fun. If Jason doesn’t like to play in our team, he will quit playing and leave the team. The only reason for him to stay is because he loves the team spirit, and that’s what makes a team strong.
You need to love what you do and share the same core-values with your colleagues, otherwise you will not be able to unlock the potential of your business.
Remembering all of this, the key to be a good leader is not to score but to help others score. And if you can add the fun part to it, you are running your business as a team sport, building a great foundation for a successful business.