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The Power of Inspiration

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inspiration in three steps

Ever find with your clients that their inspiration has dissipated somehow? Hidden because of the busyness of their world?

What about your own inspiration? Can you get hold of it quickly whenever you need that extra oomph in your day?

The power of inspiration is phenomenal. And being able to get hold of it – whenever,wherever – is also phenomenal, and part of a personal resilience toolkit. People often seek inspiration from outside themselves as a primary method – people they admire; places that are lovely; books that lift the spirit. Or via social – stories that inspire; funny videos.

And yet there’s another way available to you, to your client. Right here, right now. Inside.

You have, at some point in your life, inspired yourself or someone else. You will have been operating near your best at that moment. And to connect with that can re-inspire you. That doesn’t mean rolling about it self-congratulation, but instead, accepting that for at least one moment in your life, you inspired!

Try it!

  1. Recall one such moment when you inspired someone else, or indeed yourself.
    Maybe it was with one of your kids. Or one of your team.Or with a friend.
    Or maybe it’s something you managed to do, to pull off.
  2. Bring it strongly into your mind.
    Who were you with? What were you doing?
    Just remember fully. The feelings, the thoughts, the pictures you may have of what was going on around you.
    Who were you in this moment?
  3. Remain in the memory a little while.
  4. Now notice how you feel.

You are likely to feel more energised. And if you have done this truthfully, a lot more energised! Your memories of when you inspire are a resource available to you, sitting inside. It’s just a matter of getting hold of them.

Go help you and your client get inspired.

 

 


Author: Jenny Campbell, CEO of The Resilience Engine

Looking for inspiration for your own practice? Join the Resilience Engine Community of Practice, a learning community whose focus is to extend our understanding of resilience. Join the next Resilience Engine programme starting the 5th February 2019. More info here! ; Academy of Executive Coaching.

If you have an internal bank of coaches interested in building an internal resilience support capability for your organisation, please get in contact directly via info@resilienceengine.com.

The brochure can be found via our website.

 

 

Unselfish Reasons to Have Boundaries

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Ten Unselfish reasons, unselfish, resilience engine, resilience engine blog, jenny campbell, alison kane, being resilient
Resilience is your capacity for change.

Among those ten unselfish reasons to have healthy boundaries, which ones attract you most?

This tool is taken from the Resilient Manager Toolkit, one of the blended learning guides and toolkits that the Resilience Engine has developed to put our ten years of resilience research in the hands of those who need it. To learn more about how the Resilience Engine can help your organisation, get in contact directly via info@resilienceengine.com or visit our website: www.resilienceengine.com. Why don’t you check out the Toolkit here?

Fire Fighting?

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Resilience is your capacity for change.

‘I think there’s a danger that we get caught up very much in the fire fighting. When we don’t have enough resilience to be able to stand back from something and put it in perspective’.
Participant of a Resilience Engine programme

Highly resilient people seek different perspectives all the time, so they don’t get trapped by any patterned ways of thinking, doing, or being. How can you create the space to get perspective?

First off the bat, connect with how to ‘be’ more. ‘Being Present’ is one of the top three enablers of your resilience. Which of these do you do already, and which do you want to do more of?

• Taking a moment out
• Counting to ten before reacting
• Going for a walk to clear your head
• Watching a sunset, or enjoying a similar beautiful moment
• Becoming kinder to yourself in the moment, no matter what your thoughts are
• Doing that hobby or sport that allows you to cut off from everything else
• Yoga, Pilates or Mindfulness

The second step is to consider the conditions that you need to get perspective. There are four key drivers:

1. Your Energy
How much energy have you got in your tank? If this is too low, forget trying to do anything else other than topping the energy up.

2. Your Curiosity
What would be most interesting for you to discover about this whole situation?

3. The Time available
Nothing will change unless you give yourself some time and space to notice for real what is going on

4. Your commitment to doing well/doing right in this situation
How much does it matter – to you? – to others?

Seeking perspective is a fab way to get out of the fire-fighting trap. Both ‘Being Present’, and creating the conditions for perspective are straightforward. Give them a go!

To discover more about how you can invest in your resilience, click here.

Author: Jenny Campbell, CEO of The Resilience Engine

Client story: Coping vs Breakthrough

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Resilience is your capacity for change.

Stories from the Resilience Engine Community of Practice: Yvette Elcock

 

Read this client’s story of resilience coaching. The Resilience coach is Yvette Elcock, one of our Accredited Practitioner from the Resilience Engine Community of Practice.

 

“Working through the difference between soldiering on or what you described as breakthrough is very powerful. The difference between soldiering on and breakthrough is significant. The unfortunate trap here is that tenacity and endurance are seen as virtues, which they are and the ability to keep going has probably served as well in the past.

However, I would suggest that just coping is a very passive way of responding to a situation and comes at considerable cost which becomes attritional.

‘Breakthrough’ is the active management of a situation where one might decide it’s appropriate to endure for a short period, or change the circumstance, but either is an active decision and strategy. This can be more demanding initially because we have to maintain a broader perspective, assessing both the situation and our own state, and consider options. One has to resist the ‘perceptual narrowing’ that pressure and stress can generate.

For me tai chi gives a very useful, physical example and analogy. The principle in tai chi is to keep contact and so remain engaged and ‘listening’ to one’s partner/opponent whilst also staying soft, moving and turning. Again for me, the warning signs are the sense of pressure and when the focus is on the very immediate, or if I am thinking’ I just need get passed that Board meeting or those dates…

Just coping is a very passive form of endurance. ‘Breakthrough’ is more skilful, and so requires an initial investment of effort; but is empowering and more sustainable”.

CEO of mid sized organisation

 

We couldn’t say it any better.

If you want to coach to create these kinds of insights and impact, please invest in your own resilience and learn to become a resilience coach with the Resilience Engine Accreditation Programme.

 

Principles 1-3 of Leading The Resilient Organisation

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Resilience Engine, top ten principles, resilient organisation, build resilience habits, good habits, being resilient

Organisational resilience is your capacity for change.

The Resilience Engine approach is based on our ten years of leading research and practice in the field. It is real-world, practical, inspiring and scalable. We have ten principles for enabling resilience, the capacity for change, in your organisation. This article gives a summary of the first three principles:

Principle 1: From tricky to straightforward.
Principle 2: Build resilience habits
Principle 3: Balance privacy and socialisation

If you are frustrated by the pace of change in your organisation, have you considered resilience in relation to your culture? Does the organisation enable adaptability at all levels? Or do you have folk in the organisation with their heads stuck in the day-to-day and you are therefore not getting a clear perspective?

Organisational resilience is your capacity for change.  Without a resilience culture, you will not adapt well. Principles 1-3 of the Resilience Engine are all about enabling this resilience culture. Talk about it. Make it transparent. Make it the norm. Make it your habit.

 

Principle 1: From tricky to straightforward.

Make resilience a part of day to day conversations. Best practice shows that resilience is fostered in teams so ensure it’s part of every team’s standing agenda.

To do that you need to make it ok to talk about. But in many organisations, resilience is an icky subject. People, especially managers, assume that if people aren’t coping it must all be personal and difficult.

The Resilience Engine research shows that one of the most common ways in which people drain their resilience and therefore fall back from high resilience to coping, is they take on too much, get overwhelmed and then end up on the hamster wheel. The reasons aren’t about deep emotional issues at all; they are about pacing, energy and perspective. All addressable in practical and easy ways.

The next most common reason is that people lose the connection to the ‘why’ of the organisation. Meaning. That’s a leadership issue – not complex to help people connect to, but taken for granted in the hustle and bustle of routine. Meaning : talk it, walk it, share it, inspire it.

Reflective Questions
    1. What can you change to lift people’s head out of their day to day and address the issues of pacing, energy and perspective?
    2. What are you doing to make alive the ‘why’ of the organisation?

 

Principle 2: Build Resilience Habits

Resilience is a practice. It doesn’t increase on the basis of a single event or intervention. Instead, a steady, bite-sized way of connecting with the ideas and concepts of resilience builds real resilience habits that stick.

Being resourceful like this needs investment in your resilience day to day. The first set of resilience habits, and the most fundamental, rely on core enablers. These are like muscles – you’ve got to spot and connect with them, you have to learn to activate them, then develop them, and to keep their elasticity and strength, keep it up. Otherwise they can go flabby pretty quickly.

All of that means habits, not one tick in the box.

Reflective Questions
   3. What are you doing to build resilience habits in your organisation?

 

Principle 3: Balance Privacy and Socialisation

The organisation needs to address both in any resilience support and development. You need to hold people to account for them taking responsibility for themselves. And you need to normalise resilience.

People need the privacy to get the time and space to see for real what is really going on for themselves. Online learning is useful for this:  people get to choose where and when they look at resilience ideas and how they connect to it, giving them the space to honestly respond. And that builds understanding and change.

People also need to know that others are in the same boat – it’s a relief, it’s a help, they get ideas of what others have found useful.

And the organisation needs to foster resilience assets – people, teams yes – but also organisational processes and values. This happens in teams. So teams become the home for resilience, and it needs to be normal to talk about it.

Getting the right balance for resilience between privacy and socialisation is critical for supporting and extending the resilience of your organisation. You need resilience for change. And that’s one of the real imperatives of performance.

Reflective Questions
    4. Are teams in your organisation encouraged to foster resilience?
    5. Are you in your team talking about your team’s resilience? Your organisation’s resilience?
    6. Are you giving people time and space to consider what they can do for their resilience day to day?

 

 

To find out more about how the Resilience Engine can help you create a resilience culture, email info@resilienceengine.com.

 

Author: Jenny Campbell, CEO of The Resilience Engine