By Ben Renshaw, Co-Director, Success Intelligence

On January 29th, Success Intelligence hosted a stunning public event (even though I say so myself) focused on making 2010 your best year yet. The day had been long in coming as we had put a lot of focus on it as a team to ensure that it had maximum impact both for us personally, and the 100 delegates that joined us on the day. It was a real mix of people who attended bringing together a selection of our corporate clients including Sky, Nationwide, Vodafone and Zurich with a range of other participants including entrepreneurs, teachers, coaches and health professionals.

I had the joy of co-presenting the day with the founder of Success Intelligence, Dr Robert Holden and fellow director Avril Carson. The day consisted of 4 key sessions to help make 2010 your best year yet:
1. Identity – being clear about who you are.
2. Success – understanding your definition of success.
3. Strategy – removing the blocks to success.
4. Shift – identifying your personal growth for the year ahead.

I thought it would be valuable to share some of the key insights that came out of the day:

Session 1
Stop the world I want to get off…Does this plea sound familiar? We are living faster than ever. The challenge with life running by in a flash is that we can miss out on what’s most important – ourselves. At Success Intelligence we often hear our clients make comments such as, “I barely have a minute to myself.” Or, “I’m 3 days behind in my life. I just need an extra 3 days to catch up.” This manic existence is not a great way of making the most of life and needs to be addressed. It starts with getting greater clarity about our own wisdom and making sure that we live it.

Success Intelligence is based on 4 key intelligences, which are the cornerstone of our wisdom:

PQ: The Energy of Success. Intelligence is an energy. We need to create the space to get plugged into it and get recharged. When we’re connected we listen to energy. Ask yourself, ‘What energizes you?’ ‘What enthuses you?’

EQ: The Heart of Success. ‘What do you love?’ ‘What is in your heart?’ Being successful means that you have a loving relationship with your heart. So often we override the wisdom in our heart through emotions such as fear or guilt. Let your heart lead you this year.

IQ: The Psychology of Success. As Robert Holden says in his book, Success Intelligence, “Sometimes you have to stop and think!” Think time is one of the most important ingredients for being truly successful as it helps you to tune into your best thoughts.

SQ: The Spirit of Success. The first book I wrote was called Successful But Something Missing. The title captures the experience of so many – external trappings but a gap in meaning. As we strive after success we can forget what’s really important. Real success is ensuring that what’s important stays important.

Following this input, our first major exercise on the day was to ask people to conduct a Success Review for 2009. We used 3 different lenses to look at success; your most meaningful, enjoyable and valuable successes from last year. It’s powerful to make success a learning curve and recognise what you have learnt about yourself through success.

Session 2
One of the core principles of Success Intelligence is, ‘Your definition of success influences every other significant decision in your life.’ Getting clear about what is success can save years of chasing false idols and pursuing happiness. In order to help people think about success for 2010 we invited them to try some possibility thinking.

One of the gifts of exercising possibility thinking is that it challenges you to look at your habitual self. This is the part of you that lives with deeply engrained habits, some of which are not so helpful. On a personal note one of my habits, which really doesn’t support me is the temptation to become cynical. For instance, if someone dares to suggest a new idea, or a better way of doing something, my initial response is to dismiss it. Employing possibility thinking encourages us to open our minds to inspiration and help make sure that our life isn’t just a series of repeats.

The exercise we set people was to explore the question, ‘How good can this year get?’ I really recommend having a go at this if you want to get high on your own thinking!

Session 3:
Having explored how good 2010 could get, we then challenged people to reflect upon how they might fail. The purpose of doing this is that although we don’t tend to consciously set ourselves up for failure, our habitual self can easily slip into old ways of doing things that take us off track. Avril Carson quoted part of a powerful poem from GK Chesterton, ‘Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.’

We highlighted 5 particular blocks to watch out for that could derail you from your good intentions. I’m going to mention a couple of my favourite below:
1. Hyper-cynicism. As I mentioned above I’m an expert in cynicism. Essentially cynicism is a defensive mechanism we employ to prevent us from getting disappointed. The other side of cynicism is passion, so watch out when you meet new opportunities with a cynical approach.
2. The Work Ethic. This pattern is based on the idea that the key to success is hard work and then some more. There’s no doubt that working hard can be a helpful trait, however we live in a world in which most people overly work, leading to exhaustion and a lack of creativity and imagination. How can you work smarter, not harder this year?

Session 4:
Our final session was called, The Shift. The key principle we introduced was, ‘Your life will not grow if you do not grow’. The initial exercise we set was to think about how you grew in 2009, what helped you to grow and the benefits you received. This was followed up by defining how you would like to grow this year, the benefits you hope to gain and what help you will require. We provided people with a couple of tools to help them record their good intentions and commit to following through.

I was so touched by the day that as Robert was closing, he turned to Avril and myself to invite a final comment and I was left speechless. Maybe 2010 will be a quieter year in my life. My family will thank me!

by Ben Renshaw, Co-Director of Success Intelligence

Today was a significant event as the 150 leaders of Government Council gathered together to focus on how they were going to create leadership success in an uncertain future. As a Council they are being faced with needing to make 12-20% financial cuts over the next 3 years, which they recognise means that they will have to discover new ways of leading to deliver the same quality of service with less resource.

I had been invited to stimulate their thinking and had put together 3 key leadership themes to explore:

1. Leadership inspiration.
I started off with the idea that leadership is inspiration. I cited research from the Department of Trade and Industry who conducted a national survey to find out the components of successful leadership. Top of the list with 53% of respondents was inspiration. However, when asked how inspirational employees found their leaders only 11% believed that their leaders had the ability to inspire. This was in marked contrast to the 75% of leaders who thought that they did inspire their people. I find this ‘inspiration gap’ very common. In fact I would go as far to say that it’s quite rare to find leaders who genuinely set a compelling example for their people on a regular basis.

The first challenge I set the group was to think about the kind of decisions they make in the formative part of their days. Responses included, ‘Hit snooze’, ‘Walk the dog’, ‘Get the kids up’, ‘What am I going to wear?’ Inspirational stuff from a room of senior leaders! I set out a proposition that being inspirational starts with a mindset. It is influenced by the type of decisions you make each day. Set the intention to be inspirational and it will encourage you to make it a priority. I then invited people to reflect upon what inspires them through questions such as, ‘What do I love?’ ‘What is my joy?’ ‘What is my passion?’ It was heartening to see a group move from being relatively cynical about leadership to becoming genuinely engaged with the recognition that in order to inspire others, they need to be inspired themselves.

2. Leadership style.
Great leaders have the ability to read situations well and adapt their styles accordingly. One of the most outstanding leaders I know is a CEO who has a remarkable ability to flex his style in an effortless way including fronting up to the City, communicating with shareholders, working with his executive team and inspiring his employees. However, it wasn’t always the case. When he landed the coveted job of CEO he was renowned for a highly directive style, which had certainly helped him get where he was, but was not going to help him succeed in the future. He quickly recognised that in order to engage his workforce he needed to develop a variety of styles, in particular a collaborative style that ensured others felt important through being consulted, listened to and trusted.

Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, conducted extensive research on leadership styles and identified 6 key styles, each of which has a different impact on the quality of the culture in an organisation. In his well-known Harvard Business Review article, 'Leadership That Gets Results', the most positive style that emerged was a visionary one. The ability to articulate a compelling vision with the message, ‘Come with me’ creates the necessary alignment to take a company forward. Other styles with a positive impact included a democratic and coaching approach. The most negative styles were a commanding/coercive style, which is appropriate in a crisis, but if used overtime causes high levels of disengagement, and a pace-setting approach, which certainly helps drive performance, but if overused burns people out and is not sustainable.

3. Leadership growth.
I challenged the audience to think if they have reached their leadership peak, or do they still have room to grow? One of the key principles of Success Intelligence is ‘For an organisation to grow, its leaders need to grow’. In our work we see a direct correlation between individual and organisational development. In fact the consultancy McKinsey cited important research from their seminal work, War for Talent, which showed that 53% of managers left their jobs specifically due to a lack of development, in the form of coaching, mentoring and job rotation.

Take a moment now to think about how have you grown so far in 2009, and how you intend to grow coming into 2010?

I want to leave you with the idea that leadership success is not a position, title, or role. Ultimately, it is a commitment to giving your best energy, opening your heart, sharing your thoughtful reflections and being inspired yourself.

by Ben Renshaw, Co-Director of Success Intelligence

I have recently completed the 18th Senior Leadership Program for InterContinental Hotels Group, the largest hospitality company in the world. It is a global program spanning Europe, Middle-East & Africa, Asia-Pacific and America. Over 250 of the most senior leaders in the organisation have participated on the journey during the last three years with remarkable results. The program has received a 100% rating for ‘recommend to colleagues’, and a 100% score for ‘return on investment’ from the delegates.

IHG created a core purpose for the business, ‘Great Hotels Guests Love’. The premise of the program is that for an organisation to become purpose-led its leaders need to understand their own personal purpose and place it at the heart of the way they inspire and lead their people.

The program is spread over a 3-day period. Day one explores the modern context in which leaders have to operate today. It is a picture that captures the complex, fast paced and uncertain times in which we live and requires a new mindset, which embraces a quantum perspective that thrives on ambiguity, welcomes the unknown, capitalises on instinct and recognises that there is not just one answer to the myriad of challenges we face. We then go on to look at the various leadership styles required to inspire, engage and align people in today’s modern age such as being visionary, directive and performance focused. The end of the day gives people the space to start to reflect upon what they stand for as a leader and identifies their own personal purpose. We use a lifeline exercise, which invites people to reflect upon the key experiences of their life to date, draw conclusions from these events in terms of their impact and identify their deepest values as a consequence. They are then asked to draw a graph that represents when they have been most fulfilled to explore their core purpose. Using questions such as, ‘When are you at your best?’ ‘What is your joy?’ ‘What do you love?’ ‘What do you want to contribute?’ ‘What difference do you want to make?’ people begin to clarify their “raison d’etre.”

On day 2 we have the opportunity for participants to share their ‘leadership story’. This is always the highlight as we listen to riveting accounts of what has shaped people’s experience and what they stand for today. Encouraging feedback is given following each presentation in order to accelerate learning and development. The afternoon is a coaching intensive in which we apply non-directive coaching skills on real business issues. We are fortunate that in the evening the President of each region joins us for an informal dialogue over dinner in which they recount their own leadership story and listen to where delegates have come.

Our final day is devoted to building more leadership skills such as engaging people and giving accurate feedback. The last assignment is that participants create their own compelling vision of how they want to be as a leader in the future. Finally people are challenged to make some specific commitments to changing their behaviour, without which the sustainability of the program will be compromised as it’s all too easy to revert back to old habits.

I believe that the program is a sign of the times. Money is not enough to satisfy our wishes. Job security although welcome does not provide sufficient meaning. Ultimately we need to discover our core purpose, our real calling in order to enjoy authentic success.

by Ben Renshaw, Co-Director of Success Intelligence

A key principle of Success Intelligence coaching is, ‘Some people go through life, whilst others grow through life’. The choice is yours. However, in today’s climate of unpredictable change, the difference between success and failure can lie in how you prioritise your own personal development.

Every organisation I work with, such as BAA, the world’s leading airport company, or Premier Foods, the UK’s largest food provider, is investing more time, energy and resource into developing their greatest asset – their people. The cynicism that used to accompany leadership and management development programs is a thing of the past. In fact the tide has turned so much that development is now seen as a competitive advantage, including having a personal coach.

So how do you prioritise your personal development when you’ve got an overflowing inbox, a multitude of deadlines and challenging customers to serve? Well, here are 3 ideas to support your learning and development:

1. Vision for success. John is director of retail for a leading high street brand. I was invited to coach him in taking his next step. When I asked John how he had reached his current position, he responded by saying, ‘long hours’. However, he recognised that this was not sustainable going forward as he had a young family, and a recent 360 feedback exercise had pointed to the fact that people were looking to him for greater imagination and creativity, not more graft. We started our coaching program with the question, ‘What is success in your work, life and relationships?’ John was flawed. He realised that although he had worked hard to be successful, he hadn’t worked out what real success was for him. Before you get busy doing lots of stuff, stop and work out what success is for you. Ask yourself, ‘What is my definition of success?’ ‘What difference do I want to make in my work, life and relationships?’ What is most important to me?’ What do I really enjoy?’

2. Commit to your priorities. Once you have greater clarity about success you can then focus on what will help you to be truly successful. One of the biggest blocks I hear from my clients is that they are unable to prioritise what's most important due to a lack of time. We forget that we cannot manage time, we manage priorities. As we know there are only 24 hours in a day, therefore your time has to be influenced by what’s going to be most valuable. I remember a lawyer telling me that the most challenging time in his life was weaning himself off his long hours (when you’re billing in 6 minute units this is really tough). His fellow partners thought he’d lost the plot when he took 2 weeks to step back from his practice and re-evaluate how he was going to work going forward. When he did come back he discovered a renewed passion and vitality for his work, he deepened his relationships with clients and colleagues and most importantly, his family got to know him again. Ask yourself, ‘What are my key priorities to help me be successful?’

3. Ask for support. I have just returned to work following the birth of my third child. After completing my first meeting with my team members at Success Intelligence, I realised that I could feel the heat was on with the amount of work I had in the pipeline and the increased challenges at home. I couldn’t just keep doing what I had been doing prior to this change. So I asked the team for help. Specifically I requested that they give me feedback about how they see me respond to pressure and how I can be more effective. The response blew me away. The team spontaneously reached out to me and offered me great insight that will make a big difference to how I perform going forward. My friend, Robert Holden created a great motto for our sister project on happiness (www.behappy.net) ‘If you are alive you need help’. Don’t be too proud to reach out to your family, friends and colleagues and ask them to give you the support that will support your success.