This weekend we hosted our son’s sixth birthday party, with a robot theme.
And I discovered that having a house full of six-year-olds is an interesting time to examine your underlying beliefs about kids and to test out your influencing skills!
I was already in a kind of “isn’t the world wonderful; how great are these little six year-old balls of energy” kind of mood. And I think that mood really helped, so that when it all started to get really loud and to go slightly off plan I was more easily able to connect with the part of me that gets six year-olds.
As an experiment, I find it fascinating how the internal mood that I’m running has such an impact on my ability to influence people.
And talking of children, another interesting thing I’m part of at the moment is the Many Hands Campaign which is raising funds to support projects in the new Manchester Children’s Hospital, including accommodation for parents to stay in and new equipment for diagnosis and treatment.
The campaign is looking for companies and organisations who want to get involved and help raise funds. It’d be great if you or your organisation could also take part. As well as the benefits of getting involved, there are also great opportunities to come to unique events to network and meet inspirational speakers, including appeal spokesperson, Theo Paphitis, of TV’s Dragon’s Den. And, if that isn’t enough, the organisation who comes up with the most innovative way of raising funds also gets to win me for a day!
Please click here for all the details.
One observation I was reminded about recently came from being forced over to the side of the road three times on consecutive days by oncoming traffic along a narrow country lane, despite already trying to drive as close to the side as I could. I wondered if I was somehow driving differently along that road this week…
I often see tall, physically powerful male clients for coaching, and it sometimes happens that they are not making the most of their “presence” - in fact, they often seem to be trying to hide it or compensate for it, perhaps having observed that being naturally big and having a loud voice can sometimes be frightening to other people.
And of course, this tendency to not fully inhabit all of what we are, because of some fear about the impact it’ll have on people, is not limited to big blokes. I’m also lucky enough, for example, to work with some very smart, driven and entrepreneurial women - and they also sometimes hide those parts of themselves that they feel others might find unnacceptable. This doesn’t help them be successful in their business and it doesn’t really help the people around them either. Their employees already know that they’re driven and demanding and scarily smart - that may even be why they took the job. Surely it’s best for all concerned to be true to who you are and then to deal with the consequences of that.
How about you - is there any part of you that gets hidden in case other people might find it frightening or unacceptable in some way?
… And as an experiment, I tried driving slightly nearer the middle of the road.
Result: oncoming drivers stopped pushing me over and began a sort of vehicular negotiation about how we could both get along the road at the same time.
By the way, I’ll be on holiday as this post is published, see you sometime later.
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