Recently a friend told me her story. She was reared in a ‘happy’ family of 6 children and her parents were ‘honest to God’(her words) hard working people whose main aim was to make the best life for the family. She has 2 brothers and 3 sisters who are all well and happy.

She relates a ‘happy childhood’ and gets along with everyone in the family. Her education was without drama except of course for the odd wagging during teenager years. She married and has 3 children. She is in a secure, well paid, well recognised profession where her level of expertise and skill is acknowledged and appreciated with colleagues and clients. She is ‘the’ person who lights up the room, the person who laughs with joy and cries in sorrow. My friend is a wife, mother, lover, business woman, colleague, friend, daughter, aunt, artist, creator and many more strings to her bow form her identity.

She is a woman I admire and value for her sense of compassion and honesty. She got my attention when she told me she has a dream to show her ‘true colours, to make her mark on the world, to shine” and her plan is to change her story about herself. Imagine my curiosity as she told me this.

What did she really mean? Sure she has the ‘good’ job, the ‘good’ life but this is not who she is on the inside. She went on to say that she has a niggling inside that she is more than that. Hold on, what is this? I wasn’t getting her drift; in fact I was getting a little irritated. Aren’t you happy with what you have?’ I asked and then answering my own question, ‘you have everything you could possibly want and need?” “It seems that way” she replied, “but deep down I don’t really know who I am. I need the sparkle in me; I need to change my story”.

She is changing her story about herself.

Put simply she said I need to spring clean to get the sparkle back to me. I am changing my story because my story isn’t working for me anymore, my story is outdated. I need to show my true colours, my light, I need to sparkle. It is time. “I’m with you, “I said and I saw the sparkle.

What is your story? Has your story got the sparkle? Do you need to show your true colours, your light, and your sparkle? Are you allowing your light to shine, are you showing your true colours? If not, why not? What would happen if you did?

At Amovita we have a range of products and services that are designed to support you in changing, developing or re-creating YOUR story. Visit www.amovita.com.au for detailed information on our services, programs and training presentations.

Settling in for the long night ahead

This year I set myself a challenge to do something different, something that would let me “walk a day in the shoes”, something that as a Managing Director of a company, a university lecturer, a student, a wife and a mother I wouldn’t normally do. Then I saw the words “2011 CEO Sleepout” and I rose to the challenge.

Sure, I could do this, this was going to be easy. All I do is raise some money, turn up to the sleepout, do a bit of networking and then I could tick this off my to do list…..oh, how wrong I was! The St Vinnies CEO Sleepout really challenged me. With the support of friends, family, colleagues and Amovita clients, I raised money for the sleepout, little did I know that was the EASY part.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I wanted to do the sleepout but as the days drew closer I realised that it was truly happening, I was really going to sleep out in the cold, on a sheet of cardboard, with my sleeping bag. Sleeping bag?!? There was my first problem – I didn’t have a sleeping bag. So after sourcing a sleeping bag and making a few “wish me luck” phone calls to friends and colleagues I arrived at the Suncorp Piazza in Brisbane with sleeping bag in tow.

wakey, wakey

It was a night that changed me. I was there with 56 other CEO’s from around South East Queensland. Yes, I networked. Yes, I drank my sponsored Merlo coffee. Yes, I slept on my piece of cardboard. But most importantly, yes, I got a taste of what thousands of homeless Australians do every night. However, I’m sure they do it more rough than what I did. I had a sleeping bag, coffee and cardboard and I’m sure many homeless people don’t get those “luxuries” every night.

Homelessness is a continuing problem in Australia. There is an estimated 100,000 homeless people sleeping on the streets every night. Over 1,000 of those are in Brisbane.

This annual event aims to raise both money and awareness within the community and I highly recommend this experience to all those CEO’s, Board Directors and MD’s out there to do it in 2012. It is truly an experience you will never forget and it gives you a chance to make a difference by raising money for the St Vincent de Paul Homeless program. This year across Australia we raised just over $4.1million and in Brisbane we raised just over $556,000. Pretty great effort I thought.

“So what’s your next challenge,” you ask…..well, that’s easy…..I’m going to run 10km in the Bridge to Brisbane Fun Run on 11th September!

I’d love to tell you more about it, but I’ve gotta go and get stuck into some training so I can actually make it the 10kms, so keep tuned and read about it in the next Amovita Newsletter.

Tracey

A young woman went to her mother and told her about her life, and how things were so hard for her. Things were not going well, and she wanted to give up. She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed as one problem was solved, a new one arose.

Her mother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water. In the first pot, she placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs, and the last she placed ground coffee beans. She turned on the stove to boil without saying a word. In about twenty minutes she turned off the burners. She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a mug.

Turning to her daughter, she asked, “Tell me what do you see?” “Carrots, eggs, and coffee,” the daughter replied. The mother brought her daughter closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they got soft. She then asked her to take the egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg. Finally, she asked her to smell and sip the coffee. The daughter smiled, as she smelled and tasted its rich aroma. The daughter then asked, “What’s the point, mother?” Her mother explained that each of these objects had faced the same significant adversity: boiling water. However, each reacted differently.

The carrot went in strong, hard and unrelenting. However, after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak.

The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior. But, after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became hardened.

The ground coffee beans were quite unique. After they were in the boiling water, they actually changed the water.

“Which are you?” she asked her daughter. “When trials and adversity knock on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean?”

The carrot seems strong, but with pain and adversity, wilts, becomes soft, and loses strength. The egg starts with a passive heart, but changes with the heat. It has a fluid spirit, but after a hardship, becomes hardened and stiff. The coffee bean actually changes the hot water, the very circumstance that brings the pain. When the water gets hot, it releases the fragrance and flavor.

If you are like the carrot – you weaken with adversity and are unable to stand up to the challenge.

If you are like the egg, you – you become hard inside, and lose all compassion and understanding.

If you are like the bean, when things are at their worst, you become better and change the situation around you.

Many have circulated this wonderful story, author unknown. It is certainly worth sharing.  

In reality, there are probably elements of the egg, carrot and coffee bean in all of us. I know I’ve been in situations where I was a carrot and an egg. However, since experiencing rather difficult challenges, I now see myself as a coffee bean – someone who has been able to change for the better.

Circumstances and dynamics may dictate how we respond to a particular situation. However, with freedom of choice, we can all strive to remain true to our nature and respond to any situation based on our values.

At Amovita we can support you as you, individually and as an organisation, as you go through changes, challenges or face difficult circumstances. Our Employee Counselling, Professional Supervision and Team Development Programs, coupled with our Mediation, Assertiveness and Communications 101 training programs can give you the tools and strategies you need to be the coffee bean.

Contact us today if you would like more information about these and other Amovita Services.

People around the world (you included) buy learning materials, books, audio programs, webinars, teleconferences and attend lectures and workshops every day. These learning options exist whether you want to learn about leadership, leopards, or being a lifeguard.

Companies and organisations everywhere organise and fill workshops and classes continually, because they want to invest in their employees’ and team members’ education and learning. All of these activities make sense; we want to be able to learn or do more, and our life experience says that a classroom (i.e. school) or reading (i.e. books, etc.) are the ways to learn something new.

Unfortunately a large percentage of these investments of time, money and effort in these courses, books and programs are wasted. Books don’t get opened, teleconferences aren’t attended, workshops are forgotten and much more. It isn’t really the fault of the author, instructional designer or trainer for these problems. While there are things that these people can do to improve the results gained from their products, in the end it isn’t their responsibility.

It is the learner’s responsibility. That means it is our responsibility.

And as long as we carry an “event” mindset, we won’t get the results we hope for. Because learning is a process, but all of the programs, classes and books are just events; and we don’t learn in a lasting way from an event.

In order for us to get value from the books, audios, classes, courses and workshops, we must take action. We must try what we learned, see what happened, tweak it, and try again. In other words we must do for learning anything new, what has always worked for us. Think about it – you didn’t learn how to ride a bicycle until you put your butt in the seat and a foot on the peddle.

At first, when you got on the bike, you made mistakes and fell down (and scraped your knee and depending on who was watching wounded your pride). Yet you got back up, tried again and learned how to ride. To learn the things you want to learn now, you must get a little dirty, expose yourself (and your image), and try it. Once you have those lessons, you can improve and adjust until you get the results you desire. Here then is the magic pill that you have been looking for ever since you grew up and forgot about the lesson of the bicycle: Make your learning a process.

Consider books, courses, audio programs all a part of your grander learning process. Commit to finding ways to practice what you are learning, and to finding ways to receive feedback (from yourself and/or others) about your progress. When you place all of these wonderful learning tools in perspective, they can have a tremendous positive impact for you and your results, but only when they are seen as a piece of your personal learning puzzle, rather than the moment in time where things will change for you.

This information is important for you as an individual, but it is important for you to remember as a leader as well. If you want to help develop those you lead, you must help them create a learning process, rather than simply signing them up for the next corporate course. Leaders can help create a process (holding them accountable, asking for their learning goals, giving them feedback, as examples), or invest in learning opportunities that include a process.

At Amovita, we deliver a range of professional development programs, targeted at everyone in your business from your Board of Directors, CEO and HR Manager through to front line, on the ground staff.

We also understand that it can be difficult to schedule training during business hours and there can be problems associated with sending staff offsite, to alleviate this, our staff come to you, at a time that suits you to deliver your professional development. Please visit the Amovita website for an overview of our training programs or contact Amovita today if you would like a customised professional development program for you and your organisation.

If your organisation does not employ an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) service, then you are not only turning a blind eye to a key employee health and wellness issue, you are also effectively saying that you don’t care about issues that impact significantly on the bottom line of your business such as productivity, absenteeism, attrition, and engagement, among others.

That’s because the personal and work-related issues that follow around your employees have a very real impact on their willingness and ability to perform their jobs.

Think about it from your own point of view. Do you perform at your peak level when you’ve got problems on the home front? What about when you’ve got a conflict with a co-worker or, worse, a boss?

What percentage of your mental focus during the day is on your work and what percentage is on the problems you’re going through?

10% to 15%…..or more?

How, exactly, does that impact on the quality of work you produce?

If you haven’t ever had the experience of going through a tough time when you just couldn’t shake the stressful, depressing, angry or otherwise negative emotions that go with it, then perhaps you can at least appreciate what it must be like for people to be going through a tough time and still have to report for work and try to do their best.

The number of people in the workforce who are affected by personal and work related issues is, by the way, quite significant. Some estimates say that 20% to 30% of working people suffer from issues such as:

• Substance abuse
• Relationship conflicts
• Financial difficulties
• Addiction
• Workplace bullying
• Job insecurity

And while an EAP service is not a remedy for everything that troubles everyone in the workforce, it can help a lot of people manage through tough times and get back to full productivity quickly. And that means that an EAP is not only good for your employees, it is also good for your bottom line.

Amovita consulting offers a variety of services that can help your business succeed. Some of our most popular services include our EAP program, training programs, team building, human resource consultancy and executive management coaching. Contact Amovita today to see how we can help you build and grow your business.

If you are a leader in any sense of the word, you must never forget the influence you have on others. As a boss, supervisor or leader, your attitude affects your employees. Your employees’ attitudes affect your customers and your customers are the lifeblood of your business. If you want to gain employee cooperation and increase teamwork, here are three things you can do hold them in high esteem, make them feel valued and increase their engagement.  

Respect
I remember when I was a casual employee in a large supermarket chain and I had a boss who did not show much respect. I recall setting a meeting with him because I was so frustrated about how hard we had worked only to feel defeated by the mechanical problems. When I expressed my frustration, what I really wanted was a pat on the back, someone to say, “I know you care a lot about your job and it must be frustrating to work so hard for nothing.” Or I wanted him to ask me what ideas I might have for making some changes. What I got instead was, “Hey, I didn’t ask you to work here. If you don’t like it, find another place to work.”

Now that I’m on the other side of the fence and no longer in that position, I do understand that leaders get tired of employee complaints and I know how drama in the workplace hampers productivity. However, as a leader, you must set the tone of how complaints are registered and you must develop the wisdom to respond appropriately instead of reacting to an employee’s negativity. You would be surprised at how you can shift an employee’s attitude simply by using good listening skills.

Listen
“It’s no big deal” or, “No one else is complaining” or, “it’s my decision and I’ve decided”.  The worst thing you can do when an employee comes to you with a problem is to criticise or discount. Second to discounting is pretending to listen. Even if you hear what is being said, when you are distracted by checking e-mail, or looking at a message on your Blackberry, you are unintentionally communicating that the person in front of you is not important enough to give full attention.

To show you are listening, stop what you are doing and look the person in the eye. Then acknowledge what they just said. This does not mean you agree with what was said; just that you heard what was being communicated. A simple statement like, “Hannah, it sounds like you are frustrated,” will let Hannah know you heard the essence of what she was trying to communicate. If you feel distracted, or otherwise unavailable, the solution is to set an appointment for a time later in the day when you can be free of distractions.

Engage Them
It’s true you can get employees to do their job, but if you want real engagement you have to find a way to make them part of the process. There is a difference between commitment and compliance: Compliant employees do what is required and no more. Committed and engaged employees become part of a team, looking for ways to benefit the company with their expertise, their ideas and their energy.

Employees buy in to what they help to create. Once you have built the trust with them and if your company is considered a good place to work, you can go to the next level and get their active participation. The way to make this happen is to keep them in the loop about what is happening in the company. Tell them the reasons for the decisions that are being made. When possible ask for their input, opinions, ideas and feedback and publicly acknowledge employee ideas and contributions.  When I was studying, as part of an assignment, I asked employees the question, what could your boss do to become a better boss? Unequivocally two answers overshadowed every other answer: show respect and listen. A good way to know if you are successful as a manager is not only by employee performance, but by their engagement.

At Amovita, we can help you set the tone for your workplace with our Executive Management Coaching and Team Development Programs; we can also assist in making your workplace a productive and harmonious one through our Supervision, Assertiveness and Mediation training programs.

“It is amazing how much you can accomplish when it doesn’t matter who gets the credit” Unknown

For most of us, asking for what we want is the hardest thing that we can ever do in our professional lives. I hate to disappoint one of the most followed bands of all times, The Rolling Stones, but I don’t believe the song lyrics You Can’t Always Get What You Want, because I believe I can get exactly what I want. Yes, it may take time, hard work and sacrifice, but I can get it.

It seems that in our personal lives we have no problem at all asking for what we want, most of us know what we want our birthday and Christmas presents to look like, we know we want to go on a holiday and we know we want a new car and we generally know what we want in our professional lives, but do you verbalise this in the same way that you verbalise your personal wants?

How often do we say “I wish the boss noticed all the overtime I do?”, “I wish I had more time.”, “I wish I had more responsibility at work.”, “I wish I could get my team to do what I ask them to do” “More, More, More”…. yet without making any real changes to the present structures of our professional lives.

With Easter fast approaching, my mailbox (both the one on my computer and on my street) are filling up with letters from organisations and individuals wanting me to help them out over the Easter period… all with their very glossy images of happy families and people or confronting images of what poverty, disability, or homelessness does to an individual and a family. These letters have been thought about very carefully, every detail – the style of font, the content of the letter and even the part where you fill out your credit card details. A very clever thing that most letters have is the highest amount as their first tick box, indicating to me that I really should be giving them $1000 instead of $20; an Easter basket with all the trimmings instead of just the small bag of home brand chocolate eggs; or buying a teacher for a village instead of just the chicken.

So after looking through the multitude of letters and emails, I started to think…..we as individuals could really learn a thing from these organisations that fill up our inbox and our letterboxes. “WHY?” I hear you ask in a ‘here we go again’ tone….well, because the organisation has thought about what they needed, thought about how this could change the person’s life, thought about the increase to their bottom line and thought about who they should target to get to their goal.

In essence, we can really learn alot from these letters and emails – after all, they have the fine art down pat of really thinking about what they want and then putting an action plan in place of achieving their goal. So instead of putting all of your energy into wondering when you are going to get that promotion or when you are going to schedule that team building strategy meeting, why not simply just think about what you want to achieve, start to put an action plan together and start asking those you need to help you achieve your ‘I want’ list.

At Amovita, we have a range of services that can assist you to ask what you want, from Executive Management Coaching and Team Development to learning positive ways to participate in professional supervision in your workplace, our team of positive professionals can work with you, so you can get exactly what you want.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” Steve Jobs

STRESS!! It’s one of the prime factors that the urban population is dealing with. With our fast paced lifestyles that seem to constantly revolve around all the things that we must do. You know the things I’m talking about – from juggling work, family, friends to creating culinary healthy masterpieces each week for our family, to attempting to manage our diary to fit in that car service, hairdresser appointment, mowing the lawn….and the list could go on!

Stress can be very damaging to your body as well as to your overall well-being. When we are stressed, we create a “fight or flight” reaction to our surroundings. Adrenaline is released causing an increased heartbeat, at the expense of other areas of our body and emotional reactions to prolonged stress could include anxiety and depression. High stress levels have also been linked to cardiovascular disease, musculoskeletal problems, lowered immune system and even cancer.

Stress can affect every aspect of your life, so understanding how stress occurs and the impact it has on your body, mind and functioning is very important. Sometimes stress can be avoided, but when it cannot be, the proper management of stress is essential. The biggest challenge when dealing with stress is learning how to manage it. Without the proper stress relief management your mental and physical health can be affected.

You may find that your stress relief comes from exercising every day to boost your endorphins, booking a family holiday, having a regular massage, meditating, going to yoga or, if you are like most of us and are time poor but would like great results, perhaps you could consider some simple exercises that you can do at work, in the car or at home.

There are different types of stress relief management and you need to decide for yourself which is the best type for you. Last week I stumbled across this article in the online version of Time magazine, the article focuses on how to manage stress and avoid burnout and is called “The Brain: 6 Lessons for Handling Stress”, although I already knew most of this information, it was good to reflect upon.

So before you find yourself in a fight of flight situation, I encourage you to explore different types of activities and techniques that could help you to reduce your stress and enable you to continue happily juggling the list of “must do’s”.

“Two rules for stress management:

Rule one: Don’t sweat the small stuff.

Rule two: It’s all small stuff.” Robert Elliot

Enlist a coach, mentor or professional supervisor who you can talk to, debrief. Enlist in a gym membership or make time to move every day as part of relieving stress. Recognise what relieves the stress for you.

Feel free to call us at Amovita to discuss with you ways to decrease the stress in your life, you only have ONE so please make it the best you can.

When I ask leaders what they do on a daily basis I receive various different responses. Leaders can spend their day responding to a constant stream of emails, attending PR activities, dealing with the demands of employees, balancing the budget, writing reports or having round table discussions with management teams and consultants, and then more meetings!  

Whilst all of these things are important when leading an organisation, I wonder, with all this going on, how are you being a positive leader, promoting inclusion and cohesion in your workplace?

Being a leader is important and it’s more than just being the ‘face’ of the organisation or the person that has the responsibility of signing the pay checks at the end of each week. As a leader there is an opportunity to achieve, succeed, create change, bring about a positive mindset for high performance whilst balancing the budget.

BUT, as a leader, you also face challenges of creating a positive work environment, increasing productivity when staff morale and satisfaction is low and ultimately being responsible for the success or the demise of your organisation (scary thought isn’t it!).

So what’s the number one way to increase the success of your organisation? If you answered happy, motivated and positive staff you would be correct.

What is the number one way to have happy, motivated and positive staff you ask? Well, it’s not just one quality, trait or thought process, it’s a combination of all of these things and more!

There have been so many studies, articles, newsletters and ideas written about being a motivated and positive leader, but recently I found an article written by Joe Folkman entitled ‘Top 9 Leadership Behaviours that Drive Employee Commitment” that captivated me and I wanted to share it with you.

The article talks about how leaders influence their teams and how they can inspire staff, increase productivity and has points about being self aware of your own leadership style, at the end of the article, it has some practical questions that you can ask yourself about your leadership style. Click here to read the article  

There are numerous techniques, attributes and skills that leaders can use to generate positivity in others and in turn, success in their organisation. I have come to the conclusion that we first have to reflect on our own leadership style, what behaviours we display to others, how our mindset operates in the workplace and how much time we invest in changing the things that we need to change, only then can we be positive leaders and bring out the best in our workplaces.

 “Leaders must be close enough to relate to others; but far enough ahead to motivate them.” John Maxwell.

Until next time,
Tracey

Sometimes it takes a difficult situation to make you grateful for what you have in life. Recently, many homeowners have lost their homes to the floods and Tropical Cyclone Yasi and don’t know what do next and now we are hearing of those struggling people facing financial ruin because of insurance companies. Children have lost their toys and many other priceless memories kept in keepsakes are gone. Yet these people are still living and trying to face life one day at a time, making new memories, rising above their devastating situations and trying to see the brighter side of situations.

It is hard to even imagine some of these things in the little bubble I live in. When things do happen it doesn’t seem real because I wasn’t directly affected by it. This time this disaster has hit my community and although my home was not affected I still see the difference the flood and Cyclone Yasi has made to attitudes and people’s daily lives.

Through all of this, I’ve been reminded that life isn’t all about what you have, it’s about facing life after struggles and surviving. It seems that both physical and mental resilience can be achieved through a healthy amount of adversity. When we face hard times, we adapt and build a callous that helps us take on future challenges.

Resilience is often considered a process that occurs in spite of adversity, but we might want to instead think of it as a phenomenon that appears because of adversity.  Indeed, we can become even more physically and mentally capable as a result of our misfortunes.

Here are some quotes resilience, struggling and surviving for you to ponder over this week:

1. I have learned there is a gift wrapped inside of every adversity and if you have faith and hope, you can lose everything and still survive. Sandi Bachom
2. There are times in everyone’s life when something constructive is born out of adversity….when things seem so bad that you’ve got to grab your fate by the shoulders and shake it. Author Unknown
3. You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best you have to give. Eleanor Roosevelt
4. Rock bottom is good solid ground and a dead end street is just a place to turn around. Buddy Buie and J R Cobb, from the song ‘Rock bottom’
5. We have no right to ask when a sorrow comes “Why did this happen to me?’, unless we ask the same question for every joy that comes our way. Philip E Bernstein.

Amovita can also support you and your family through your time of need through our personal and family counselling programs. Counselling assists you to understand and confront the issue in a way that will bring about positive change. Seeking out a trained professional counsellor can make a huge difference in your ability to cope and deal with any personal issues you may be facing.

At Amovita we believe that you need to be confident that your counsellor has the appropriate skills and training to provide you with what you need. That’s why your first session is free! Yes absolutely free. We would like you to come to your first session and ask questions that ensure you are getting a counsellor that you feel confident with.

Contact Amovita today via phone on 0420 234 638, email: info@amovita.com.au or complete our online booking form.

Until next time
Tracey