Do you know the #1 thing influential leaders do? Over my years as a leadership coach I hear the same complaint over and again from leaders. The complaint? "What is wrong with people, why don't they do what they're supposed to do?" When they say this it tells me the leader has failed to do one very important thing. This one thing is the foundation on which the success of the leader and the team is built.
When the leader is blaming the employees they are missing the point. They are failing as a leader. They have not taken the time to get to know their team members and build trusting relationships. Expecting others to follow your commands because of your position will not work.
Create a Family Environment
Leaders that distance themselves from others end up isolated and alienated. Their teams don't trust them. When a leader creates this kind of culture the best they can expect is for people to do the least they need to. They will do what they need to do to keep the job.
When you go to a restaurant, do you waste your time looking at meals you know you won’t order or do you go straight to the pages in which you know you’ll find the meal you want?
You look at what you want!
You order what you want!
Take that concept and use it in your work and personal life situations.
Stop looking at what you don’t want and focus on what you do want.
As humans, we tend to look for problems and threats, we make assumptions and we tell ourselves stories.
When someone pisses you off, you get all the feels. For me, my throat gets really tight and my words come out all wobbly. You may get red in the face, start to sweat, or grit your teeth.
When a stressful situation or even a happy one triggers us, signs pop up in our body.
We see someone we love and we get butterflies. We listen to fantastic music and we get goosebumps. We get reprimanded at work and our heart starts racing.
This is us feeling our emotions, yes, we feel them physically!
It's amazing to me how much of what I do is driven by habits installed in my long term memory, habits I created as a child. It's also amazing how life changing it can be when I become aware of what I'm doing and create a new more empowering habit for myself.
For example, when I was a child I was often told, if I was angry or upset, that if the wind changed I would stay looking that way.
The message I received was that crying made me ugly and I'd better look happy pretty quick!
The long term effect, if I felt angry or upset I'd better suppress those emotions.
So here I am again writing my blog and yet again I find myself going through a process before I finally sit down to write.
Does this resonate with anyone else?
I know it’s time to do something, this is something I want to do but I do this helicopter thing where I circle around thinking about it, looking at it, but just not doing it. Then I clean my desk, my office and sometimes the kitchen.
I read a lot of self-help books and I love them. Most of them make a lot of sense and many are based on evidence. A lot of these books are best sellers.
So why, if so many people are reading these books, do we still have difficulty creating what we want in our lives? How can we let our loving self shine through? Here's what happens to me.
I know what I want and know what I need to do to create it, I'm a coach I am trained in this. I follow this process;
When others help you do something and they don't get it right or don’t do it how you would do it, recognize they are showing you love. Learn to love the mess. They are trying to help you and if you show appreciation, you are returning the love and they will want to help more.
I used to go on a lot of business trips and always left detailed information for my husband. Do the laundry this way, cook this meal, make sure our son does this and that, etc. He said one day, “Trust me! Even if I don’t do things exactly the way you planned, I promise they will get done and everything will be just fine.”
He was completely right. It didn’t matter how he handled the household when I was gone. I didn’t need to worry. He had it covered! And it felt good knowing I had that support and love.
This week is International Nurses' & Midwives' Week, and perfect timing to discuss Sarah's book: The Successful Nurse Leader - the ultimate guide to transition from Nurse to Manager to Leader, its purpose, what led to Sarah putting pen to paper; and how it fits in nicely with the International Council of Nurses (ICN) theme for 2022:
Nurses: A Voice to Lead – Invest in nursing and respect rights to secure global health. Focusing on the need to protect, support, and invest in the nursing profession to strengthen health systems worldwide!
According to McKinsey.com, more than 30 percent of nurses are thinking of leaving direct patient care.
I know that many nurses are leaving to set up their businesses, and quite frankly, I don't blame them. I am one of those people. However, not every nurse wants to be a business owner.
Many nurses want to continue their careers within the healthcare system, but there is a challenge in nursing that makes nurses' jobs more stressful and exhausting than ever.
Have you seen all of the posts on Social Media about nurses leaving in droves? Might you be one of them?
There are many reasons for this, including a never-ending list of things to do, short-staffed, Covid-19, vaccination requirements, etc., and let's face it, nurses have struggled with stress and burnout for years.
Have you ever wondered why some Nurse Managers seem to have a healthy work-life balance (WLB) while others continuously work late and into their weekends off?
Those with a good WLB attend family events, go on vacation, and their departments continue to run well in their absence.
Yet others seem to have a never-ending list of things to do. Their families are frustrated because they miss out on important events, or when they do attend they are constantly distracted by phone calls and messages from work. They might even choose not to take well-earned PTO because they’re afraid of the workload and emails that will be waiting for them when they get back.
Years ago I was babysitting for a friend. It started out great. The kids were quietly playing together behind the sofa and I was watching TV. When my show ended I decided to check on the kids and see if they needed anything. If you’re a parent you probably know what a big mistake it is to assume kids playing quietly is good, I know that now.
As a nurse, you probably know that the work is never done. There is always someone or something that must be taken care of. Patient care activities, talking to relatives, rounding with doctors, charting, and more. It can be difficult to know when to stop and call it day. Just one more thing and then you'll leave but then a patient wants something and everyone looks busy so you go ahead take of that and while you're doing so a doctor writes a new prescription that needs immediate attention. Ughh what about you? Who's taking care of you?
Are you currently struggling with how to improve your leadership skills? Where do you think is the problem coming from? Do you feel that you’ve already exerted everything but nothing happened?
Taking responsibility is something that comes easily to nurses!
In fact, in my previous position in a large healthcare organization, we implemented a Strength Finders assessment for all of the nurse managers in our division. And the number one strength by far was responsibility.
I always thought that a Ninja was an expert in Martial Arts until I looked up the definition. Indeed, it is a person trained in ancient Japanese martial arts, but it is also a word used to describe someone who excels in a particular skill or activity. This got me thinking, and I realized that I have worked with some Ninja Nurse Leaders throughout my career.
In my work as a transformation coach for ambitious women I take my clients through a 5 step process call "Make It Happen 360". The "It" I am referring to is a happy balanced life. I know, through experience, it's absolutely possible to have a successful career and have a happy, healthy and fulfilling life.
The first step in the process is called "See It". There are 2 parts to this step, first you need to be clear on what you want, what a happy balanced life looks for you and what that would feel like if you had it. Because, as Dr Seuss says, "If you don't know where you're going any road can take you there."
I don't know about you but I sometimes get tired of seeing all the law of attraction quotes on social media, they always make creating what you want sound so easy. Quotes like, "Change Your Thoughts and Change Your World." Have you ever tried to simply change your thoughts, it really isn't as easy as that, though it is true. When you change your thoughts you will change how you feel and this will prompt you to take different actions and you will get different results.
Changing your thoughts can be a challenge, this is because your unconscious mind likes to bring up reasons why the new thought you have created is not true or possible. It is important to brainstorm several new ways of looking at your situation so that you can come up with a new thought that feels authentic and true to you, it also needs to be aligned with your desired outcome.
There are certain things in life that trigger me but none more than when someone crosses one of my boundaries. To my amazement sometimes it's not until a boundary has been crossed that I realized I even needed to establish one.
"Personal boundaries are guidelines, rules or limits that a person creates to identify reasonable, safe and permissible ways for other people to behave towards them and how they will respond when someone passes those limits." - Wikipedia
I have different boundaries for all the different roles in my life. What might be an acceptable way for my husband to talk to me might not be acceptable for my son or my colleagues? However all of my boundaries are grounded in something deeper than how I want to be treated, it’s why I want to be treated that way that's important and the why is connected to my personal core values. For example, if I value honesty and someone tells me a lie I am very likely to get triggered.
