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Better Business, Better Life Newsletter – Issue 25
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Here’s this week’s curated business tip, life hack & find of the week… And don’t forget the inspirational quote, which you can download as a wallpaper or lock screen for your phone.
As always, if you find great things that you’d like to share then feel free to email me for inclusion in one of my weekly newsletters.
BETTER BUSINESS
What game are you playing?
At the end of every EOS Meeting, whether that’s a day with your EOS Implementer or a weekly Level 10 Meeting, we ask the team to rate “how we have done as a team in this meeting?”, where 1 is terrible and 10 is awesome.
If anyone scores less than an 8 then they are asked to explain why and what could be done to improve the meeting.
I am privileged to run a lot of EOS Session Days with clients and also sit in on a lot of Level 10 meetings with clients.
If a Session Day scores low then I will take responsibility for what I could do to improve it and I also ask the participants why they didn’t insist in getting what they needed out of it. We use this a way to self-correct and improve in the next session.
It’s similar in Level 10 Meetings.
I find it fascinating to see the same people giving the same low scores every meeting and so when I see this, I will call them out on it.
You see, with EOS, we have a set of Healthy Rules for each meeting too. One of these rules, is “Participate – it’s a privilege to be here” and another is “Be Open and Honest.”
So what do these mean when it comes to meetings?
The first rule – ‘Participate’ speaks to the fact that in meetings you are taking time out of your busy day or life to be in this meeting, so it’s your responsibility to make sure that that time is used wisely.
If you leave that meeting feeling like it was a waste of time and you didn’t get out of it what you wanted, then what role did you have to play in that? Did you fully participate? Did you call out what you found to be ineffective?
As an old tennis player, I like to use a tennis analogy.
In this analogy, you are the tennis player, the person facilitating the meeting is the umpire and you may or may not have a tennis coach in the meeting too (this is your EOS Implementer).
- When you are in those meetings, are you playing your best game?
- Are you choosing to be on the centre court in Wimbledon?
- Or if you’re not up to that, are you at least playing at regional level competition?
Or is it more likely that you are playing at the local tennis court , just to pass time?
Worse still, are you actually just a spectator in the grandstand?
Or maybe you haven’t even made it into the tennis centre and you’re still out in the carpark.
Some people like to blame the umpire for the incorrect decision or the coach for not getting the results, but the reality is that if you’re not on the centre court, playing your ‘A Game’, then the only person who can change the outcome is you.
Not the umpire and not the coach.
So, if you see something that you’re not happy with, use the 2nd rule – Be Open and Honest – call it out!
It’s your personal responsibility to make sure that you get everything you want and need out of these meetings.
They should always be a 10 and if they’re not, then you need to ask what you can do to get them to a 10.
If you need help with this, or want to know more about Level 10 Meetings, then please contact me.
BETTER LIFE
Is it time for a Mental Health Day?
As I am writing this pre-amble to this article, this is the last task on my list for today, before I take tomorrow off for a Mental Health Day.
This lockdown has taken its toll & I am feeling slightly burned out – today it is raining inside & out!
- Loving working with clients but feeling too much pain in the business community.
- Loving the online connectedness with family, friends & colleagues but hating all the aggressive opinions & divide online.
- Loving the extra time for my fur family but sad about losing one of the team 😢
So today, we (Steve & the 2 dogs & I) all donned raincoats & went for a 50 minute water adventure. And tomorrow we’re taking the day off for a mental health day.
Both Steve & I are brushing up on our German, so we’ve agreed to have a German day. 🇩🇪
A Continental breakfast, followed not a cycle ride, watch some German travel documentaries, watch at least one German film munching on pretzels l, drinking beer & German wine, followed by Bratwurst, Kartoffelsalat, more 🍻 & 🍷.
Grateful that we can take the day off. Steve’s work suggested it & I talked to my boss about doing the same. She wasn’t too happy at first (just quietly, she’s a bit of a workaholic!) but she recognised that sometimes you’ve got to put the oxygen mask on.
I love taking Clarity Breaks (where you take yourself away from everything with just a writing device) & I took an unplanned one this week at 1.30am on Wednesday, when I woke up & was wide awake & couldn’t’ get back to sleep. In the 4 hours, before it was reasonable to wake Steve up, I wrote & wrote & wrote… In fact I put together a whole strategy for our current & new business.
So Clarity Breaks are good but it made me realise that waking up at 1.30am & not being able to get back to sleep probably is not a good thing… And I might need to take some more serious time out.
What do you do to look after your mental health?
I found this great article which gives 9 smart tips to taking a mental health day that actually works, although the first one says see then as a regular tune up & not damage control – so I many have failed that one 😊
FIND OF THE WEEK
The difference between fear & courage
I don’t know if you can ‘find’ a person, but one of my favourite people to follow is Dan Sullivan. He has the Strategic Coach business
Here is what he had to say about fear & courage in his newsletter this week.
I was drafted into the army for the Vietnam War in 1965 when I was 21 years old. Back in the draft days, as long as you were a full-time student, they couldn’t draft you, but I had dropped out of college for a year and lost my deferment.
During basic training, I learned battlefield skills, and part of this process was practice with live hand grenades.
The sergeant who was in charge took us through the procedure the night before. Essentially, each of us would have to take a turn going down into a pit with a big mound of dirt in front of us. We would take the pin out of the grenade, which would mean it was then live. There’s a lever that keeps it from going off, but the moment you release it, there’s a five or six-second fuse and then the grenade explodes.
By that time, we were supposed to have thrown it over the mound where it would explode on the other side so none of the fragments would hit anyone.
The sergeant told us some horror stories of people dropping the grenade during the exercise. Mistakes happen in basic training, and people do get killed.
We were told that in the pit there would be a trained person who, if anything went wrong, would know what to do.
That night was a bad night for us, and I didn’t get much sleep. I was worried about what would happen if I really screwed up.
The next morning, we appeared before the sergeant and he asked, “Is anyone scared?” In a group of 50 men, I was the only one who raised my hand.
The sergeant said, “Sullivan is the only person here I trust because he’s actually telling me what’s going on. He’s actually telling the truth.”
He went on, “There’s no dishonor in saying that you’re scared. As a matter of fact, people who are scared and don’t say they’re scared are a bigger worry to me than people who admit they’re scared.”
“As a result,” he continued, “Sullivan is going to go first.”
I went down into the pit and performed according to instructions, and after the training exercise, the sergeant said: “I want to tell you the difference between fear and courage: Fear is wetting your pants. Courage is doing what you’re supposed to do with wet pants.”
I have never forgotten that.
Since then, I keep in mind that everybody experiences fear, but it’s how you respond to the fear that makes the difference. There are only two options: There’s courage and there’s courage-avoidance. You’re either courageous or you’re indulging yourself in some sort of method or activity to avoid courage, which shows up as paralysis, procrastination, or, in some cases, addiction.
If you like this, then take a look at his website – he has lots of free tools & books, such as:
- Your attention: Your property – Take back complete control of your attention for the rest of your life
- Procrastination Priority
- Scary Times success manual
- Total cash confidence
- The Game Changer
INSPIRATIONAL QUOTE
” Courage doesn’t mean you don’t get afraid. Courage means you don’t let fear stop you.” – Bethany Hamilton
You can download this a wallpaper or lock screen for your phone.
NEED HELP?
If you’d like to learn more about any of these tools or would like to find out how I can help you achieve a better life through creating a better business, then book a free Discovery Call with me.
We’ll talk about what you want to get from your business & your life & come up with a plan to do that!
Debra Chantry-Taylor
Certified EOS Implementer | Accredited Family Business Advisor | Entrepreneurial Leadership & Business Coach | Speaker & Workshop Facilitator