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Tips for banishing the burnt out bluff

Tips for banishing the burnt out bluff

by | Nov 8, 2021 | 4D Energiser, 4D Leadership Development, 4D Workplace WellBeing

Are you exhausted? Stressed? Burnt out? Beyond your capacity or just not coping?

Do you know friends and colleagues who would also say yes to these questions?

You’ve reached the end of your tether. We can all do it! We’ve all had those moments where our capacity bowl is so full that one bad bit of customer service, one smashed glass, one frustrating phone call with the electricity company or one set of unexpected roadworks can totally tip us over the edge. Until we are quite literally crying over spilt milk. I’m right with you… and it’s okay – we’re all human.

It’s one thing to recognise the symptoms of burnout or stress and to take time out to look after yourself. More and more we are seeing individuals and leaders who ignore or don’t recognise the stress signs and double down on their levels of overwhelm by putting on a public mask and working hard to make it seem they are coping fine. What we are calling the second pandemic – “the Pandemic of Pretence”. This pandemic is affecting those people and leaders who are ‘coping’ by putting on the jolly front, the positive facade, the happy face, who are feeling the necessity to act strong, motivate others, be the leader they feel they should be and push away or hide some of those very real feelings underneath.

The problem is that by putting on a front, we are actually doing ourselves far more harm than if we simply acknowledged that we are not entirely coping. The bigger the gap between how we feel we should show up in the world and how we are really feeling, the bigger our chances of even worse emotional burnout, mental fatigue and physical illness.

Not only that but in terms of your leadership skills, your performance and your creativity, you are far better off being in touch with what’s really going on for you than pretending. Pretence is neither a top performing, truly collaborative or highly creative space to be in. We are far more healthy, creative, connected and successful when we are in touch with our true selves and true talents. In other words, the real leader is the better leader.

So, if you know that you are putting on a front and inside you have a stressful or negative narrative that is a long way from that façade, then you might be contaiged by the pandemic of pretence. If you are only letting the world see your ‘turned out half or shopfront ‘ as psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott called it – then you are denying to others and to yourself what’s really going on and it might just be time to ‘get real!’ The more you close the gap between how you think you should be in the world and how you really feel the better you are serving yourself and others. So, let’s get real with some super practical tips on how to not only deal with burnout but deal with burnout bluff. Let’s say goodbye to the pandemic of pretence and get down with how we really feel – let’s get real.

Here are six tips to help you close that gap, reduce the pretence, get in touch with what’s really going on, be an even better colleague and turn up – not as a pretend leader – but as a truly Real Leader…in all 4 dimensions, all 2 contexts. The 4D2C of peak WellBeing, Leadership and Performance.

1. Physical Dimension

Slouch it! Tip one is change your posture.

Change your posture from stiff, upright and in fix, solve and ‘be brilliant’ mode to a posture that connects you more with your body and your self. Try moving from ‘solve it’ to ‘slouch it’. Lean over to your side, curl one foot under you and sit like you might sit chatting to a friend in the pub or on the sofa with a family member. Let your body tell you that you are relaxed, safe and simply connecting with your colleague or team member rather than bracing, fixing or solving all the time.

2. Emotional dimension

Open it! Take 20 seconds before your next meeting to check-in with the feeling in your belly.

Stop trying to push it away or hide from it but imagine it is a message that needs opening up and reading. Ask the challenging feeling in your belly or chest… What are you trying to tell me? What do you want right now? What are you telling me I need? The more we push our emotions away the more harm we are doing to ourselves. Emotions aren’t the problem, ignoring them is. Your emotions are simply messengers that are trying to tell you something. Is your feeling anger, sadness, frustration, or fear? If you grab that emotion and open it up – what’s the message inside? Do you need a break, do you need to call a friend, do you need some help? What’s the message inside the emotion? This is a brilliant tool for breaking the pandemic of pretence, helping you close the gap between who you think you should be and how you’re really feeling.

3. Intellectual dimension

Refocus it!

We are really good when we are stressed and burnt out at gathering further evidence that things are difficult or going to go badly. We can start worrying and our intellectual dimension goes into overdrive with overthinking. Retrain your intellect to focus on safety cues… What is working well, who is helping you, who does have your back, what is fun about this project, what are the possibilities? When you shift from looking for danger cues to seeking out safety cues you’re changing your internal chemistry and closing the gap between your negative fear and your positive pretence.

4. Intentional dimension

Shift it!

So much of our education teaches us to fix and solve, to know and to be right. When we go into conversations with colleagues or burnt-out team members, trying to fix everything is just more stressful for them – and for you. Try going into these conversations and meetings with ‘curiosity.’ Set your intention to be curious and suddenly you take the pressure off yourself to know, to be right or to fix things. All you have to do is be open and explore and be curious. Curiosity is one of the best intentions we can hold to get our nervous systems in a really good place. Now we don’t have to pretend to be positive and know everything. We can sit in the far less stressful state of simple curiosity.

Context 1: The Environment

Move it! If your office desk has become a location of stress, then change your environment.

Try taking the next meeting on a walk or in your armchair or on your sofa. Use your environment to signal to your body that you are in a relaxed, calm and safe state. Our environment has a huge impact on our state. Your physical state is the foundation of your WellBeing, Leadership and Performance. Take your next call in a different place where you feel different. Where the Netflix watching, popcorn eating, laughing, joking version of yourself can chill out and be relaxed in conversation with colleagues!

Context 2: Relationships

Slow it!

What we mean by this is take 10 seconds before your next meeting to slow your physiology down. The more we run at a crazy rate the more our nervous system goes into fight or flight. When this happens, and the more harm we are doing ourselves and the more we are stressing out other people out around us. Slow it down. Imagine a parent shouting and screaming and stressing at a baby to eat its food. Imagine what that is doing to the baby’s nervous system. When a parent slows down and self-regulates, they teach the baby to regulate itself and that the world is safe. You too can do this for your colleagues and your team members. Slow it down, regulate your own pace and you will be doing incredible, wonderful things for your colleagues’ nervous systems. The biggest gift you can give is the gift of slowing it down. Nothing gets in the way of the pandemic of pretence more than slowing things down!

We hope you enjoy your six tips to go from burnout bluff and the pandemic of pretence, to being more of the real you and the real leader that actually has far more to offer is far more creative and much more inspirational than the pretend version of you. Have the courage and take the risk to close that gap, be real with yourself and real with others so you can really be the leader and the human being you know you can be.

 

For more information, please visit the workplace wellbeing page on our newly updated website – https://www.4dhumanbeing.com/training-programmes/4d-workplace-wellbeing/

 

Before you go…

Make sure to check out our most recent podcasts on integrating life and work – episodes include – Stay Well. Stay Creative, Creative Leadership interviews with 4 Theatre Directors, WellBeing with Jessie Pavelka, Fluid Living and Going Hybrid! Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, just search ‘The 4D Human Being Podcast‘.
Video Conferencing: You’ve got the tech. Now what…

Video Conferencing: You’ve got the tech. Now what…

by | Mar 5, 2020 | 4D Confidence & Impact Training, 4D Presentation Skills, 4D Virtual Impact

The impact of the Coronavirus will be felt by all of us. Most importantly those people whose health will be affected. As an asthmatic, I watch the news with the same concern as many of you. Let us hope that the actions taken by governments and each one of us will save lives and get us back to normal soon.

There seems no doubt that the current situation will also accelerate the adoption of business tools for remote collaboration and communication. Indeed, we have seen our friends at Cisco offer free Webex licenses to help people stay connected during this challenging time.

This technology was already growing rapidly as a result of increased cost pressures, environmental concerns and the continuing improvement in what video conferencing and unified comms are capable of.

But are we making the most of the investment we have made?

For five years I worked with the irrepressible Mark Grady at Google, a superb team at Tech Data, and some terrific resellers to help build a B2B channel for Google’s video conferencing platform Hangouts Meet. We were also lucky enough to spend time collaborating on G Suite, which transformed the way our team worked internally, with partners and customers.

 

It’s clear that every major technology company has recognised this space as a huge opportunity – the large platform players like Cisco, Microsoft and Google have been jockeying for position for some time with Amazon’s Chime and Facebook’s Portal, Whatsapp Video Calling and Messenger gaining traction too. And that’s before we get to the other players like Zoom, Go To Meeting and the list goes on…

The immediate challenges business is facing – trying to keep employees productive, maintaining relationships with customers and partners, whilst also protecting the health of valued colleagues – is likely to see the requirement for remote working and Video Conferencing jump up the priority list for IT Directors and other Lines of Business leads.

My Linked In timeline is certainly busy with thought leaders and technology companies offering their perspectives on how businesses can meet the challenge.

What few people are talking about however is that, when it comes to successful virtual collaboration, it’s not enough to install and understand how to use the technology – we also need to get far better at understanding how to ‘be’ on a video conference call to make it successful.

What effect do we want to have? How do we want to make people feel? How can we maximise our personal impact to connect with people over video? How can we run a successful and productive virtual team meeting where people leave the call more motivated than when they joined it?

Like everyone else who has spent any time working in large corporations I have had my fair share of soul-destroying calls – the ones with no energy, no clarity of purpose and the ones where it feels most people are answering their emails…

At 4D we have been working with leading players in the technology sector for many years delivering a wide range of coaching and training courses centred on communication between human beings. We have seen the demand for how to maximise impact and improve the effectiveness in the virtual space grow enormously in the last few years.

We are continually asked:

  • How do we ensure that our attendees are engaged?
  • How do we keep the meeting focused?
  • How do we ensure that everyone understands the meeting’s purpose?
  • How do we use the visual and audio technology to best effect?

We have developed a series of online programmes focused on exactly these problems. These provide delegates with an opportunity to think about the energy they bring to virtual communication, the atmosphere they are trying to create and how to be more conscious of the way they guide meeting attendees through a call.

Whilst the courses are very experiential, we’d love to share some of our top tips with you here:

1. Cameras On! – so much of our impact is in our facial expressions and our gestures. If you remove this you are reducing your impact by a huge amount (perhaps more than 50%). If your company, or that call, doesn’t have ‘camera on culture’ you can be the person that makes an even stronger impact!

2. Framing – once your camera is on, be aware of the framing. How much of you is visible? What height is the camera set at? Would a separate webcam be helpful? How is the lighting? Is there a pile of washing behind you…?!

3. Navigation – are you helping to guide people through the call, being clear on what they can expect to get from it? Are you providing an agenda? Are you creating a positive, engaging atmosphere? What expectations of the attendees have you communicated to ensure that they will bring something to the call and not simply be passive observers?

4. Energy – at 4D we are energy obsessed! We talk about it all the time because it’s absolutely crucial in our interactions with other human beings. One of the biggest challenges on VC is the energy gradually dropping out of the call, with a lack of interaction and a feeling that people are becoming disengaged. In a virtual meeting, the energy of the host is crucial – we often need to use more energy than we think if we want to maintain high energy on a call – it can feel strange to push more energy in when the camera is only 50cm away from you, but it can be the difference between a call that keeps people engaged and one that leaves people drifting away. We use a couple of very simple tools to help hosts maintain their energy and the energy of the attendees.

 

 

Whatever platform you are using to equip your teams with the right technology to work remotely if you’d also like to ensure that your teams are trained in the best interpersonal tools and techniques to get the most from their fellow human beings, do get in touch with the team at 4D Human Being.

Whether through face to face workshops and training or via virtual coaching and webinars, we help leaders, teams and individuals consciously communicate with impact every day.

Creatively responding to a changing world….

Creatively responding to a changing world….

by | Mar 4, 2020 | 4D Energiser, 4D Leadership Development, 4D Team Creativity & Collaboration, 4D Team Performance

Fear! Risk! Loss! Collapse! Danger! Concern! Alert! Threat!

 

Just some of the headline words in the papers today. It’s true we are living in an ever-changing world, full of uncertainty – whether that’s extreme weather, travel disruption, changing regulations, environmental concerns or as we are experiencing at the moment particularly – global health concern. So perhaps it is unsurprising that these are the headlines that greet us. And yet what happens to us as human beings when we are pushed into a state of fear is most likely to be a ‘defend and secure’ pattern of behaviour. Going into lockdown to secure and protect what we already have – contraction rather than expansion. And we can start to see the effects of this on ourselves and how we feel, our jobs, organisations and the global economy at large.

But is there a different approach? Is there a way to expand into uncertainty for the benefit of our own growth, security and flourishing as well as for the companies we work with? If so, how can we tap into this? Well for us at 4D Human Being it’s about responding creatively. In our 4D2C (4 dimensions 2 context) model, the environment has a much bigger impact on us than perhaps we are aware and often we allow the world (environment) to ‘happen’ to us. But how can we HAPPEN to the world? How can we create something new, exciting and positive in the face of uncertain and changing world events?

There are many models to use to delve into our business creativity and I’m going to offer three of them:


1. Traditional SWOT analysis

 

Listing out your existing Strengths and Weaknesses, and looking to the future by brainstorming the Threats and importantly the Opportunities that the market conditions are presenting could present new business streams. Recent GDPR data protection regulations may have felt to many of us as a threat due to additional costs, potentially falling foul of the complex laws etc. However, GDPR regulations opened up a huge opportunity for data protection companies and IT consultants to support and grow their customer base.

Recent floods and climate change fit many of those headlines above and are indeed global threats. However they also represent incredible business opportunities in the field of ‘Climate Adaptation’ – from flood defence systems, to agricultural solutions, to solving wifi connectivity in extreme conditions, the list goes on.

So how can we identify opportunities when we may be stuck in current patterns of working or fearful of the threats?

  1. People – make sure you have the right people in the room. Introduce new unexpected people into the brainstorm for a new perspective. Ask yourself “what would so-and-so say? Get a new perspective
  2. Place – Change the environment – take your team somewhere new, maybe a partner site, or a rural location, or even a part of the building you haven’t ever been to. Change your location, change the dynamics, change the thoughts.
  3. Plot the Strengths, Weaknesses and Threats on your SWOT analysis. How can you then build on the strengths or counter the weaknesses and threats to create something new and exciting?
  4. Play a game – at 4D we use the wonderful world of improvisation and games to open up ideas, new ways of being and new ways of thinking. As human beings we love to play… So create a game around the business problem – you may be amazed at what your team come up with!

“Same thoughts always lead to the same choices, same choices lead to the same behaviour and the same behaviours lead to same experiences and the same experiences produce the same emotions and these emotions drive the very same thoughts.”

 

– Joe Dispenza


2. The Obstacle map

 

What is the problem you face? Where would you like to be? And what is the blocker or obstacle that is stopping you from getting there? Until we set this out in black and white, it can sometimes be challenging to even understand what the problem is – let alone respond creatively! So we find ourselves trying the same solutions or behaviours over and over again, frustrated that things don’t change. Isolate the obstacle and see how you can move through or around it.

4D Tool: Draw three columns and leap the obstacle!

 

I was speaking with a friend of mine recently who runs a restaurant business – which is likely to be hard hit by current global health concerns as people are going out less. He’s a great cook, runs a great business and loves delighting people with wonderful meals. He felt in a ‘holding pattern’ of waiting, whilst the business started to suffer. Clearly the economic impact of the current global situation may well evolve and change, however when he isolated the business ‘obstacle’ he was able to see that, for now at least, the obstacle was the willingness of the customers to physically locate themselves in a restaurant. So by brainstorming around the specific obstacle a new solution could be found – in this case the solution may be to take the food to them. Something my friend is excited to quickly explore….

 
3. The What How Why

 

Simon Sinek’s What How Why Golden Circle model so often helps pull us back to the real core of why we do what we do, which can be incredibly helpful in a crisis.

 

 

We can get lost in the What and How we do which can lead to less flexibility in the face of change. Here at 4D we have considered the impact of potentially less large gatherings and less international travel and reflected on the core of why we do what we do.

“Helping leaders, teams and individuals consciously communicate with impact every day”

 

– 4D Human Being

At 4D we have been working with global companies for many years delivering a wide range of coaching, training courses and seminars centred on impactful communication between human beings. What we are seeing right now is due to global events is an impact on WHAT we do – as we predominantly deliver workshops and seminars around the world. And of course for the time being we are seeing less travel and fewer large events as organisations and individuals take measures to protect themselves and the wider community from the spread of disease.

So, coming back to the WHY we do what we do…4D is about communication, impact, connection, leadership and growth – so starting from there, and with more people working from home we are well placed to help people learn, grow, connect and communicate with impact. It’s just about flexing the HOW. And the online and virtual space is arguably core to our WHY! We need strong connectivity, engaging communication and flexible leadership skills EVEN MORE as we migrate to virtual working.

So if you’d like to discuss high impact, engaging virtual training in communication skills, storytelling, team building, leadership or creativity – to ensure that your teams respond to the world with the best interpersonal tools and techniques – do get in touch with the team at 4D Human Being.

What’s the Story?

What’s the Story?

by | Mar 3, 2020 | 4D Business Storytelling, 4D Essential Communication Skills, 4D Team Creativity & Collaboration, 4D Team Performance

Snakes kill 220 people in one day!

 

This headline is true. It’s just not one that appears in our papers every day. And to be clear, snake bites are in no way one of the biggest threats to life we face as human beings – heart disease, diabetes, suicide to name but a few of the larger threats. And yet I can imagine that if we saw this headline every day the fear of snakes would be top of mind. Because… it’s the stories that we are told that affect what we think, do and feel. It’s the stories we hear that shape our reality.

“The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come”

 

– Steve Jobs

 

We are currently in the midst of a global health alert with the spread of the COVID-19 virus and we are all uncertain of course how this particular story will unfold. What’s clear from the media focus and breadth of coverage is that the story of the virus so far has penetrated deep into our lives. 

Story is powerful. Story creates our reality. And like a virus, stories can sweep across the world taking on a life of their own. And if we think about this in terms of our own day to day lives, the impact of our teams and the performance of our organisation, we would be foolish not to focus on the stories we are telling.

Storytelling is one of the most impactful tools at your disposal. Human beings are fundamentally wired to absorb information, buy into new ideas and trust people – through story. Studies confirm that social storytelling is responsible for more than 65% of conversations had in public. Often we either unconsciously absorb stories being fed to us by others, or we create stories of ourselves and our organisations without giving it much thought. I recently spent some time with an old friend who wasn’t feeling very motivated in his job and he casually made a flippant remark that his department was where careers came to die. We chuckled, and yet when I reflected on that comment I realised that he was creating a self-fulfilling prophecy based on the story that was being told. He was killing his own career through story!

 

Storytelling in our highly connected, online world is critical every day, but especially at times when perhaps the stories out there are impacting our business performance or team motivation. At 4D Human Being, through dynamic, practical virtual and face to face workshops and seminars, we help leaders, teams and individuals consciously communicate with impact every day. Discover the art of really engaging your team, colleagues and customers with emotionally charged stories that make you and you truly memorable, motivate your team, inspire your customers and shape the reality of your organisation.