How to overcome your Lazy Brain

Your brain is fundamentally lazy – it is always looking for short cuts or the path of least effort.  This can lead to a limited view of the world based on your own perspective.  How are you overcoming it?

Are you using stress to achieve?

How much stress is good for you?  We all have our own particular sweet-spot with just the right amount of pressure that stimulates, motivates and inspires us to greatness.  If it’s too much or too little our performance deteriorates and when it’s out of balance it harms our health.

The surprising truth about rewards

When was the last time you had an unpleasant surprise?  How did you feel?  What did you learn from it? Neuroscientists are now uncovering some very interesting research about how our expectations influence our behaviour, memory and even our motivation to learn.

What is better logic or intuition?

How effective is your decision making?  Do you have a preference for logic and working out the rationale or do you prefer to use your intuition and your gut feeling?  There is now a lot of research that shows the limitations of both these approaches and it is interesting to identify our natural preference so we can compensate for and avoid the imbalance of relying too much on one or the other.

Raising Accountability

Raising Accountability 

There is no hiding place in small and medium sized businesses. Everyone plays a critical role and needs to pull their weight, yet I regularly hear Directors and Business Owners complain about a lack of accountability. So who is responsible for holding people to account? 

How well are you controlling your life?

After the indulgences of the festive period it is worth considering the findings from a 60 year study into what makes us happy and healthy or sick and sad.  It shows that we have a lot more influence over our long term health and well-being than previously thought....Your life and happiness are in your hands.

Are you making your people feel disgusted?

Actions speak louder than words.  Many businesses have a set of values but they are often seen as irrelevant and even a source of disgust by staff.  This is because they don’t see the connection between the stated Values and behaviour of senior management.  For example; I know of one business where ‘Professionalism’ and ‘Respect’ were Values that the MD wanted people to live up to and yet he would sometimes demand that certain staff were to be ‘got rid of’ because he didn’t like them or felt they weren’t any good.  When staff realised he was saying things like this, often dependent on his mood, it not only created fear it also created a deep sense of unfairness.