There’s a few opportunities currently in the offing for me that’d be good to have some support and well-wishes on.

The first is tomorrow, a pitch to provide coaching to NHS Chief Executives and board members. As well as being an exciting opportunity for my work, this is proving a fruitful (if not entirely pleasant) reminder of some of my own ‘no-go’ areas. I’ll say more about this in a future blog, but it’s mostly around how I really don’t like giving other people the ‘power’ to judge me.

I’m also up for a number of non-executive positions in the charity sector, one of which, with the Guinness Trust, I especially want to get. This came about from a bit of soul-searching over the last year or so about just where my true life-purpose lies. Again, I’ll say more in a future blog, but I think I’ve found a good way to be true to what’s important to me, to continue to build my coaching business and to see if there is a stage beyond coaching for me.

More to come later on both of those.

When we moved up to the North West from London about 9 years ago, the wetter, colder weather took a bit of getting used to. My wife and are both fairly keen hikers and we’d be sitting indoors looking at the weather forecast and saying to each other: “See – if we were still down south it’d be dry enough tomorrow to go for a walk”.

In part, it was the unpredictability of the weather here that used to get us – would it be dry enough to go out? Would that sun last?

Of course, it’d be pretty sad to live like that (and we’re not!), so the solution was to put up a coat rack by the door and hang the wet weather gear there.

In coaching jargon, we changed our paradigm:

OLD - Will it stay dry enough to go out?
(= worrying about a conditional future)

NEW - Go out and take your wet weather gear with you
(= create your own current reality).

There’s no such thing as the wrong weather…
… only the wrong clothing!

Another thing I’ve been doing – or rather not doing recently - is I’ve got out of the habit of being very black and white about stuff, especially business opportunities.

For example, what I used to do a lot was to be very precise and clear with people about whether I was interested and would go for some work or be part of some project – and I’d tell them very early on in the process, “Yes, that’s for me”, or (and maybe this was more often my “default” mode) “No, that’s not for me”.

Partly because I thought I might need the money for my wife’s illness (I didn’t and she’s recovering) and partly because I knew it wasn’t quite working, I started to be a whole lot more ambiguous about stuff just around the turn of the year. So instead of straight away giving something either 100% commitment or zero%, now I start somewhere in the middle. I’ll up my commitment if it feels like it’s going well and start not showing up quite so much if it isn’t.

As I write this, I’m thinking that most of the world probably already knows this. And in fact, I remember getting really annoyed in the past when I’ve seen that this is going on – a sure sign that there was something in it for me to learn!

And guess what’s happening? I’m being asked to do more work and being offered a lot more opportunities than before.

And how about you?

• Where in your work and life would you benefit from some more ambiguity?
• When do you get annoyed with others for not making the same level of commitment or not having the same degree of clarity as you?

Maybe it’s just because I’m getting old, but I’ve been strangely mellow these last few months and some funny stuff seems to be happening.

Take this week. I wrote a kind of jokey, kind of serious blog entry about wearing evening suits and how much I enjoyed larking around as 007 – and then out of the blue this morning I got an invite to attend a Melbourne Cup black tie dinner. OK, it’s in Manchester, not actually Melbourne (or even Hong Kong), but it’s certainly the kind of thing James Bond would blag his way into if he were on the trail of a criminal mastermind somewhere in the North West!

[Click here for more Melbourne Cup info]

If you’re anything like me and have a natural tendency to ‘take-charge’, to push things along until you get the results you want, then it’s a strange feeling to sit back and let stuff fall in your lap. I’m not quite Baloo the bear yet and I don’t think I’d ever settle for the bear necessities, but it is fascinating to notice that being ‘ready’ or prepared to receive seems just as important as making all the running. And now I think about it, Bond never really tries too hard, except when it really matters, does he? 

These days I rarely wear a suit for work, even though I enjoy it when I do. So it was good fun last night to put on the full dinner-jacket-and-shiny-shoes for a posh business event.

I get maybe two or three chances a year to dress up like this and as I’m popping in the shirt studs and fastening the cuff links it always seems a shame not to do a couple of quick 007 poses around the bedroom - even though I look more like an over-dressed bouncer than the next James Bond!

I mentioned this to a couple of people at the bar last night and we agreed that:

1. wearing black tie brings out the suave, steely super-spy in most blokes
2. Sean Connery was the best Bond by a long way.

The slightly more serious message here is that pretending to step into the (shiny) shoes of an expert like James Bond is actually one of the most effective ways for people to learn new behaviours and skills. In the jargon, it’s called ‘modelling’ – “the process of understanding the thoughts and actions that enable someone to accomplish a task excellently”.

Want to have a go? Click here and look for the “30 second clip” button (note - it takes a little while to load)

… now tell me that didn’t bring out the Bond in you!

Not quite sure where this is going, but I want to say something about holding your nerve, about hanging on until the way ahead clears a little.

Clients often teach me about the current ‘themes’ of my own life and work. Take this idea of hanging in there as an example. When I get two, then three clients all trying to get something ‘big’ done or changed, all planning it right, all doing just what it takes, all being as resourceful as they need to be – and all waiting and waiting for the right result; maybe it’s time for me to get a message myself about hanging in there!

I’ve seen this before with people; that you really do absolutely all that is necessary, but you still have to wait for the result, still got to hang in there for the payoff.

I like about myself that I’m often simply too stupid to know when to give up – and I had a laugh-out-loud moment as I wrote that, remembering my favourite school playground game of “British Bulldog”.

Hanging in there must be something that gets me going, because I realised I also have a stock of quotes. The first is my favourite:

Whoever said anybody has a right to give up? 
Marian Wright Edelman

The saints are the sinners who keep going. 
Robert Louis Stevenson

Failure is the path of least persistence.
(Anon?)

Still round the corner there may wait, a new road or a secret gate. 
J. R. R. Tolkein,

Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure. 
Benjamin Disraeli

Over the last four or five months I’ve noticed that my motivation about a few things has been really up and down and all over the place. I had some business opportunities that I really didn’t pursue with anything like the vigour they deserved, other things I’ve been pointlessly chasing like mad and a whole lot of stuff I’ve just been plain avoiding!

And I had an email from a friend yesterday that reminded me that our last face-to-face conversation had included a throw-away comment about one of the more useful motivation theories – the “Expectancy Theory”. I thought I’d take a look at this again and see if it confirmed some of the suspicions and instincts I had about why my own motivation had been so up and (mostly) down just recently.

Incidentally, if you ever needed an extra reason to examine motivation, the Expectancy Theory was first developed by a guy called Victor Vroom; I can’t think about it without my right foot pressing an imaginary gas pedal, “vroom, vroom”.

This is all summarised, bowdlerised and plagiarised by me, so don’t rely on it to pass your exams or anything, but here goes:

Motivation is the force that directs your behaviour; initiates it, determines some of your behavioural choices and influences the persistence (or otherwise) of that behaviour.

According to Expectancy Theory, your motivational force is derived from three related pairs of perceptions, where you might ask yourself:

• Effort/Performance – to what extent do I believe that the effort I put into something will lead to a good performance at it?
• Performance/Outcome – to what extent do I believe that a good performance at something will lead to the outcome I want?
• Outcome/Value – to what extent do I believe that the successful outcome is of value to me?

And as I went through trying to make sense of this theory, at least one thing became clear for me about the business opportunity I so half-heartedly followed. I never believed that this would come-off, regardless of how well my end of things went. The link between performance and outcome just wasn’t there for me.

And actually, I’d have been much better served by recognising this upfront and either taking steps to increase the linkage between good performance and outcome or, and I really believe this was the case here, just passing it by altogether, putting no further effort in and finding something better instead.

How about you?

• What are you working on (or avoiding) right now, where one or more of these linkages is not in place?
• And, bigger question, what end of the chain do you start at when deciding what to do – “effort/performance” is the “I do it because I’m good at it” end, whilst “outcome/value” is the “I do it because it’s important to me” end?

We had our first family trip of the year to the beach on Saturday, visiting the National Trust beach at Formby Point, Merseyside. It really is a stunningly beautiful area with fantastic sand dunes,  great woodland walks and one of the few places where you can still see red squirrels. Other points of note are:

• somewhere on the beach are 5,000 year-old footprints (although I’ve never managed to find them) and
• like a lot of European coastal dunes, the area is also known for its tradition of growing asparagus.

I’d intended to write something this morning about how often I forget that we’re less than an hour away from this and many other amazing places, but after what I read at the National Trust site, I might also say something about growing asparagus!

As for the forgetting, isn’t it funny that I can forget I live on a relatively small island with miles and miles of stunning coastline and nature in easy reach from my front door!? I love the smell and sound of the sea and the feel of the sand under my feet - and I could be there so easily, so often.

My latest trick to distract and help me forget how much I enjoy this and how easily I could have it is to tell myself that I’ve nearly got enough money for a weekend home by the sea. I say to myself: “We’re nearly there, one more large contract, a small shift in my stocks and I can enjoy that beach”.

• Does this happen for you?
• What do you enjoy, but not have?
• What tricks – distractions, delayed promises, stories etc, does your subconscious put in the way of enjoying that right now?

And I won’t write anything about growing asparagus. Although I’m sure there are some great lessons about patience and long-term investment, they are somebody else’s; not mine. Read about them here.

With the benefit of some distance (and hindsight!) I felt like taking a look at my disastrous techie events of last week, just in case I’m ready for some more learning.

One of the things that came up for me was this idea of trust – what I realised was that I often swing between the two extremes of a rather child-like trusting of everybody (in this case, internet service providers!) and an over-protective and cynical distrust of just about everything.

I know what’s going on - and maybe this is true for you as well – that I sometimes yearn to return to that child-like state of not knowing that you can’t trust everybody and everything; like I just want to let go and have my parents sort it out. And of course, I’m aiming there for something that we just can’t return to and then I get burned and cynical and suspicious.

Here’s a distinction that sometime helps me get on a different road:

• naivety is not the same as trust
• prudence is not the same as distrust.

When I’m naïve about something I often get burned. When I distrust stuff, I never get anything done, because there’s no way to progress.

When I’m on track, I try to apply a kind of managed-trust, which I think has three components:

1. judgement – so I’m actively trying to form a sensible opinion, based on my view of the other person’s congruence, ability to deliver and their track record
2. nurturing – things change over time and I think that you need to keep nurturing the level of trust, stay with people when things get difficult, invest and be interested in their ability to deliver as they promised
3. be active – check and say thanks when something is delivered; complain when it’s not; be there to provide support; take steps to restore trust when it falls.

So now I get to apply this to internet service providers as well – let’s keep managing that and see how it goes!

One of the things I often need to re-learn is to stop charging at everything until I break through it, and just take things a little easier; back-off, take a time-out, find an alternative route that’s maybe less direct but quicker in the end. And this applies to pretty much everything I do – work, home-life, you name it.

So this morning I put this lesson into practice and took a break when stuff started to feel too much like hard work. And I read in the LandRover magazine about Your Adventure Quotient. Obviously, this is a fun ploy by LandRover to make you buy their cars, but I enjoyed it anyway – and felt there was a kind of a link between my own “Adventure Type” and the opening part of this post about the banging-my-head-on-a-brick-wall approach I often take to blockages.

If you want to find out what kind of Adventurer you are, take a visit to LandRover’s site

And if you want something only a little less fun and a lot more genuinely insightful into your personality type, take a free test at the Enneagram website

Incidentally, my LandRover test revealed this about my own Adventure type:

“You Are The Spiritual Explorer”

“Your idea of adventure is not instant gratification or quick-fix thrills. You stay focused on your greater goals and never allow your thoughts to stray far from the purpose of self-improvement and fulfilment. Your adventures are genuine – you’re not one for pretence or trying to impress others.”

Yeah - probably about right!