Clients and Testimonials

“This person really upsets me!” is a very common expression; the anger emotion arises when something or someone gets us off balance. This change from our “not angry” or relaxed state to an “angry” state, is almost unnoticeable. Of course, we know when we are angry or very angry, but when we are aware, we are already beyond the transition point from relaxed to angry. The anger energy is so strong that when it happens, we don’t realize it,. It is like a shock in which we gain awareness once we are well into the anger and in the strongest cases not even in that moment but after it goes away.

For the last 20 years I have been an avid meditator, skipping a few days here and there but mostly sticking to give myself the gift of 30 minutes of relaxing calm every morning training my brain. When I learned to meditate, I remember in one of the instructions from a guided meditation the phrase: “total attention voluntary, continued and concentrated in the object of your attention that is your breathing”.  

Remote leadership is not a new thing but working from home, hybrid work and teams combining different working environments is still in constant evolution. Did you know that 1 out of 4 employees are already preparing to look for a new employment opportunity? And that almost half of the workers globally are considering leaving their current employers by the end of the year? (Source: McKinsey “It’s time for leaders to get real about hybrid” July 2021)  

From the board room table to the dining room table, it’s what I tell most of my clients, the behaviors they are working hard to demonstrate as leaders carry over to their team at home. The team’s faces, activities and expectations are different, but we need to show up in even more important ways, we need to prioritize how we spend our time with the team at home the way we do with the team at work. How are you prioritizing your time? Are you making sure you are being mindful with how you are spending your time?

With constant changes around us, we've had to embrace our own adaptation skills for our daily routines. Being contained in a place that transformed itself from a cozy home to office, gym, online shopping plaza and movie theater, has not been an easy process and at some times feels like we cannot take it anymore. Technology has helped to stay working and “in touch” with loved ones and friends but the challenges of this type of connection are big.

I think of all the times we are asked to share ideas, to help solve problems, to brainstorm new ideas, how many of those times do we hold ourselves back? How many of those times do we question our ideas?  In a conversation with a friend, I asked her to describe a leader she really admired that was inspiring and supportive. She told me that she considered herself lucky because she did have an example for me.  This leader would often sit with the team to brainstorm, and ask many questions to get her team to engage and just say whatever was on their mind.  She would bring a blank canvas to a meeting and challenge her team to fill it.  The idea was meant to inspire them and to challenge them to think outside of the box, but also to trust that she was listening. They would come up with the most amazing ideas that they could. The sky was the limit.  And in our conversation my friend and I talked about the importance of encouraging and engaging our teams to want to share their ideas, their thoughts, to question processes and investigate possibilities.  What would you do if you were given a blank canvas? How would you fill the space? What would you be willing to share? Express?