10
FIND GEELONG |MAY 2021
findgeelong.com.au
How to Think Like Richard Branson (and get his results too!)
RESILIENCE COACH By Sally Higoe
One of the biggest problems that will stunt growth in your business right now is the ability to ask yourself “How can I think differently?” Because if you knew better, you’d do better, right? When approaching any challenge, if the first thing you did was to approach it with ’new’ thinking, you’d open up new possibilities in your mind, which in turn will give you new results. Branson does this all the time and that’s why he’s always a cut above the rest with new initiatives and pushing through mountainous challenges. It’s about opening up our mind to new experiences and ways of thinking that we hadn’t even thought of before (because if we did know how to think them then we’d know how to access them and thus, reach the changes we wanted, right?!). Are you sick of dealing with constant fires? Had enough of seeing your business fall short of expectations? Sick of failing with so many new ideas? Want to see positive change happen in your team? Do you want better results in a transformative way that will help you to move forward in ALL areas? Well then, it’s time to learn to know, exactly what you don’t know! Because it’s only beyond what we do know that we’re able to find what we don’t know. (Did that sentence mess with your head?... maybe re-read!) Think about it. If you knew how to have an extraordinary team that constantly produces great results, you’d have it. If you knew how to make sure that each month produced profits better than the last, you’d do it.
The transformation takes place when you’re able to go beyond what you know and in to the unknown.
•
Being self-aware of when you are using old thinking to deal with new and unfamiliar situations.
This ‘boundary condition’ thing I’m talking of is also known as called your ‘comfort zone’.
•
Asking different questions that focus less on the problem and more on what you need to learn to be able to manage it. For eg:
....And it’s just outside of that where ‘possibility’ lies!! So how do you access possibility? By stretching the circumference of your comfort zone... The only way to see a challenge, problem or idea as manageable is to expand your thinking, so that what was once outside the boundary conditions of your thinking (your comfort zone), is now inside... and now much more manageable because you’re comfortable with it. Take a look at the attached diagram. Notice that possibilities lay outside of your comfort zone? Now imagine that one of those dots represents a problem. It seems bigger and harder to tackle because it is outside of our boundary condition – we simply can’t see how to manage it.
The reason that you don’t is because it is outside of what you know. It is outside the boundary conditions of your thinking.
When we expand our areas of thinking, the way that we view a problem or situation, we stretch our comfort zone. By doing this, we’re able to move what is possible IN TO our realm of thinking – and it’s here that we can effectively tackle it.
You must go beyond these boundary conditions to create transformation in any area of your life.
Expanding our thoughts beyond the boundary conditions of our thinking is about:
“What are the possibilities here?” “How can we turn this around?” •
Learning that courage can only come through action, it does not arrive by mail or just turn up one day... you MUST ACT... and accept that ‘failing forward’ is OK too
•
Recognising that fear is normal, and that waiting for fear to disappear is waiting for the impossible... the fear is always there... but so is courage, and when we act, we feel courage.
If you’ve loved reading this and are keen to discover where (or where else) you specifically need to stretch yourself for maximum benefit, email me on sally@ team-resilience.com.au and mention this article. You’ll receive an email containing a comprehensive Gap Analysis Questionnaire that will bring awareness to the areas you’ll need to focus on for growth and strategy implementation within your team and business.
Sally Higoe Team/Leadership Coach Team Resilience Method 0490388017 sally@team-resilience.com.au