‘Sharpened the Saw’ and ready to go!
While this start of term has been impacted by the death of HM the Queen, I love the new energy and hopefulness September always brings. And while I also love my work, I’m grateful to have taken some time over the summer to re-energise, re-balance and get ready to go again! Over the hottest spell of July we spent two glorious weeks in Wales, in Pembrokeshire and then the wonderful Three Cliffs Bay on the Gower peninsula, with plenty of walking across hills and reading fiction on sun-drenched beaches. We caught up with my brother and his grown up family, my parents and lots of old friends, which was fun and laughter-filled making great memories to sustain us in the future. We then had days here and there – a weekend with my younger brother and his young family, messing about on the upper River Thames and crafting, then with a friend in Kent with the Tate and more beach walking thrown in, a morning at Windsor Castle, galleries, museums, time at the football, gardening, BBQs with more family and friends, and so on…
Two things I was especially delighted to do involved learning.
Karen and I had a day with Paul Pennant of Today’s PA learning how to more effectively use Outlook for the business – sounds a little mundane perhaps? But we found it exciting and energising learning about the possibilities for streamlining our work and saving time to be more effective elsewhere – it will mean I can spend more time on Eisenhower’s quadrant 2 😊 – that strategic thinking and work which can get pushed out by important and urgent admin.
Secondly I became accredited to use Patrick Lencioni’s Table Group ‘6 Geniuses of Work’ assessment tool to help teams work and communicate even more effectively together. The book launches on 27th September and you can book HERE to join the online launch event. It is set to be even more of a game changer than ‘The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team’, which I always recommend as reading to anyone in a leadership position. I’m looking forward to using this brilliant tool with clients I’m working with in games and education over the coming months.
As Covey says, sharpening the saw makes all the other habits [of highly effective people] possible. If we keep cutting wood with the same saw it goes blunt, and isn’t as effective, and so takes longer to do the job. We need to regularly sharpen the saw. He talks about the 4 dimensions of renewal – Physical, Spiritual, Mental and Social/Emotional – and I often reflect upon the balance of renewal in my life, not just at holiday times, but to sustain us through our regular working week. Those who know me well won’t be surprised to hear that this renewal time is coloured pink or purple in my calendar which allows me to instantly monitor the balance week on week, and to redress it when it goes awry, or at least to plan to include some points of refreshment when times are busy with other things.
So now we’re back into the routine it’s important to keep monitoring that balance. It is so easy to want to throw ourselves back into work, especially when things are more normal than they’ve been for a while, and lose sight of sustaining ourselves for the weeks and months ahead. This is something we’ll be talking about on the Senior and Middle Leaders’ Group Coaching Programmes which started this week – early bird bookings with a 10% discount are being taken now for the January cohorts if paid by 21st October. Find out more here.
I’m taking more bookings for staff CPD, in particular for bespoke programmes of work with individual companies and schools over an extended period of time, some using Emergenetics psychometric profiling to increase self-awareness, others using the Resilient Leaders Development Tool to see the growth in leadership capacity for their organisations, all powerful stuff, congruent with our mission of serving and inspiring leaders to be their best-selves so they can lead with courage, joy and compassion. Covey’s ideas feature throughout this work, and Karen will be contributing to the blog next week with her ‘start of the school year thoughts’ around remaining in the circle of influence/control when the circle of concern threatens to overwhelm us… Off we go!
Reflections:
· How do you like to ‘sharpen your saw’?
· What do you do for the 4 dimensions of renewal - Physical, Spiritual, Mental and Social/Emotional? Is your renewal balanced and is there synergy between them?
· What do you do to keep a check on your balance of renewal week on week? Or do you save it to your holidays or weekends?
· What is the next thing in your diary to look forward to? Perhaps plan something soon if the answer didn’t come too quickly…?