Who else is feeling isolated?

Words: 762 Reading time: 2 minutes 32 seconds

Are you feeling isolated? It’s a common emotion. It’s even more common among those of us who take responsibility, or have responsibility thrust upon us.

What is it?
Isolation: it’s a sense of being marooned, of having nobody else you can turn to. The origin of the word – island – gives that same sense of being surrounded by a cold, uncaring and vast expanse of sea.

That’s not to say that we only feel isolated when we are alone; far from it. Feeling isolated on some issues in an otherwise close marriage will be familiar to some of my readers. The same sorts of feelings can arise among the partners or directors in a business. In such situations there’s a strong, shared bond while at the same, at some deeper level, there’s a ‘but’. The ‘but’ is not about the whole relationship, just one particular issue, or one particular area of concern.

If we can feel like this in a close relationship, how much more likely are such feelings when the relationships are not so close – such as a small businessman with a few employees, or a sole practitioner?

Feeling Isolated Is Not Feeling Lonely
Anyone familiar with these feelings will recognize that feeling isolated and feeling lonely are two different things. Feeling lonely is much more generalized. It’s a feeling that spreads through all the areas of our life. Being isolated, in contrast, is confined to one specific aspect, topic or area. To be isolated – by this definition – is not to be universally lonely, although it can be a part of that wider feeling.

What does it feel like?
People who feel isolated will sometimes describe a high wall, built by them, which they cannot see over. It surrounds their area of isolation. There’s a door. Only they can go through. When they feel isolated it means they have gone through, closed it behind them and are left sitting, helpless, surrounded by a featureless plain.

At other times isolation is just a small room, again, it’s featureless. It’s just us and our feelings of nagging uncertainty, disquiet and irresolution.

That nagging uncertainty, disquiet and irresolution is certainly part of feeling isolated, so too is privacy. When going through the wall, or into the room, we close the door. Nobody else can come in – obviously, otherwise it wouldn’t be isolation.

Even when we hold the feeling of isolation internally, we have an empty space within. None of the other areas where we have capacity (ability to do things) can come in. Being isolated is something we guard very closely.

Isolation has sole ownership, an exclusivity. Whatever issue or situation the isolation is built around, the individual feels sole responsibility. Others may be aware of the matter; they may even be addressing it. There could even be a whole team of folk involved. Yet isolated people feel that only they are affected in some special way and the solution – or at least the key part – must come from them.

If I’m Feeling Isolated, Can You Tell?
Spotting the people who are feeling isolated is never easy. There may be signs of strain around the eyes, or at the corners of the mouth, or in a phrase or a gesture. But such faint indicators may have other causes. And until the individual feels ready any question touching on that area is likely to be denied. The privacy condition will kick in, along with the conviction that “it’s up to me; no-one else can help.”

At best theses feelings erode self-confidence and our willingness to decide and our persistence is carrying things through. At worst such feelings can degenerate into depression. As with most things, just recognizing and acknowledging that such feelings exist is half the battle. Knowing that such feelings are so common also makes it much easier to say “me too!”

What Role Can Coaches Play?
Of course, for me to be involved with a client who tells me that they feel isolated will mean I have been invited through their door, or into their room. Already there are cracks appearing in those painfully constructed and lovingly maintained walls. The barriers are already crumbling. Even so, there’s often much work to be done by the client, although their isolated feelings are dissipating already.

Engaging with a Coach, or an NLP Practitioner, who is sensitive to these issues will help immensely, because the Coach is familiar with similar conditions, is not party to the issues and leaves you in charge of the final resolution – which is just what you wanted all along.

How are you choosing to travel?

Words: 588 Reading time: 1 minute 58 seconds

I watched as a pedal cyclist rode along the pavement, used a Pedestrian Crossing and then swung right, resuming his journey as part of the road traffic. I put my car into gear and drove on, reflecting on the transition the cyclist had just made.

Using the same vehicle he had moved from being a hazard to pedestrians to take his place as one more risk that drivers have to negotiate. That’s the sort of transition we often make in life.

Changing our transport
On any given day some of us will commute from being a forceful manager in the workplace to being the more regretful half of a failing marriage; a move from being a relatively fast-moving, potentially threatening person to being a much more vulnerable individual.

Our pedal cyclist decided to stay on his bike as he moved from the pedestrian environment into the traffic. In business and in life there are different choices, although equally significant.

As an employee, what kind and what size of company do we aim to work for, and in what position? As a business owner / director do we stay in our comfortable little puddle, or go out and compete against the big boys?

In our relationships, what kind of vehicle are we? Are we a caring parent, or an over-protective pain? Do we own our own problems, or expect somebody else to take care of us? Are we an old-fashioned romantic, or just a semi-permanent fixture?

Our Mode of Transport
And what kind of vehicle would we be if we decided to consciously manage our relationships, make them the best they could be and take care to promote the common good?

A bus: everybody on board and heading in the same direction, with frequent opportunities for people to either join or leave the vehicle.

A plane: a fast, efficient, self-contained vehicle that can get you to your destination by the shortest route possible, but needing lots of infrastructure to support it and somewhat ignorant of the lives of those not on board.

An ambulance: a simple rescue vehicle, always on call, but only for those already in serious trouble, only for the few and only having one destination in mind.

A dust-cart: a highly useful vehicle specially designed to clear away the damage and detritus from everyday living, but offering no real solutions. They’ll be round again next week.

Or a muck-spreader: smelly, often despised, but essential for providing a rich and fertile soil in which other things can grow and flourish, given that other environmental conditions are right. Used too much it can “burn” the plants it’s supposed to be helping.

And I wonder if the Inland Revenue is the Combined Harvester of life? All-encompassing, mechanistic, and unable to distinguish wheat from rye, it waits until someone else has put in all the hard work and grown a worthwhile crop. It then comes along and strips the field bare, leaving little or nothing for the rest of society. Consequently gleaning, after the crop is gathered in, is never seen today.

And who are the tractors – slowing everyone down to a crawl and getting in the way, but ultimately necessary? Is this health and safety?

Harnessing the horsepower
What sort of vehicle do you need to be to realise your life’s ambitions?

And what sort of vehicle do you need me to be, and when?

The pedal cyclist that started all this is now gone. But you can see what disturbance even one may cause, not just to fellow road users, but also to trains – of thought.

Migrating Your Business

Faced with the plans, goals, targets and objectives necessary to migrate our business, from where it is to where we want it to be, it is easy to become overwhelmed. Indeed, it is so easy to become overwhelmed that some people actually end up doing nothing at all, paralysed by those daunting challenges.

Of course, such people are not totally inactive, far from it. They give the appearance of being the busiest people in the office as they collect mounds of data and reams of analysis about all the challenges they face.

However, there is no outcome, for they never reach a conclusion. All that activity is merely a smokescreen, a security blanket, a substitute for the action they should be taking, but never get round to.

When faced with overwhelm one remedy is to take a lesson from the animal kingdom. Since autumn is approaching the goose sense used during their annual migrations is a lesson as powerful as horse sense.

When you see a flock of geese heading south for the winter, you will notice they fly in a characteristic "V" formation. That way, as each bird flaps its wings, it creates uplift for the bird immediately following. The "V" formation adds at least 71 percent greater flying range, for the flock as a whole, than if each bird flew alone.

Who else do you know that is heading in the same general direction as you? What opportunities exist to draw on their experience and leadership? How can you and your firm use their “slipstream” to help ease the hard work sometimes needed in order to make any headway? Would you really like at least 71 percent greater flying range?

However, do not expect such assistance to be entirely altruistic.

When the lead goose gets tired you can expect it to rotate back into the following flock while another goose flies point. Depending on circumstances, resources and the skills required sometimes that goose will be you. That’s because it makes sense to take turns doing demanding jobs.

You will also hear the geese behind honking to encourage those up front. Note that the honking is there for encouragement, not criticism. When you honk from behind – figuratively speaking – what is your intent? And is that intention realised?

Finally, when a goose gets sick or is wounded by gunshot, and falls out of the formation, two other geese fall out with the injured bird and follow it down to lend help and protection. They stay with the fallen goose until it is able to fly again, or until it dies; and only then do they launch out on their own, or with another formation to catch up with their own group.

How many businesses have the corporate sense to offer mutual support in the face of economic ills, market malaise and the continual sniping from Government and financial institutions? And is yours one of them?

Perhaps the humble goose is not quite so silly after all.

It Takes Two to Tango

Employee engagement, in various guises, is among the new buzzwords of recent years. To be more accurate, it’s a repackaging of old ideas by the consulting industry. Under a shiny “NEW” label the consultants have found yet another way of exploiting corporate insecurity and thereby picking its pockets.

There appears to be only circular definitions of what constitutes an engaged employee. The CIPD defines employee engagement as “a combination of commitment to the organisation and its values plus a willingness to help out colleagues (organisational citizenship). It goes beyond job satisfaction and is not simply motivation. Engagement is something the employee has to offer: it cannot be ‘required’ as part of the employment contract.”

In short, an engaged employee is any employee who is engaged. It’s a matter of attitude.

Today’s employers are encouraged to recruit for attitude; train for skill when searching for new employees. That approach saves the job of instilling an attitude seen as ‘right’ by the employer in question, but it only goes so far. Whatever attitude is exhibited during the recruitment process it will only be retain if the employee’s circumstances are conducive.

To a large extent that depends on the employer, but it can equally be affected either by changes in the employee’s private life, or by shifts in their personal beliefs and values. Over the employee’s private life and over beliefs and values the employer has little or no control. And rightly so. An employment contract is an exchange of time and skills for money and associated benefits. It is not entry into a closed religious order.

Most of the literature on this subject talks about measuring employee attitudes and conducting regular employee attitude surveys. Any organisation that needs to do that has to raise an immediate red flag in its own mind. If concern for the attitude and mindset of employees is not part of the daily interaction in the company, if senior management has actually lost touch with how employees think and feel, then there is an immediate problem.

Organisations that have a high proportion of employees who are unengaged or disengaged are offered various approaches to reverse that situation. These include:
• giving the opportunity to feed views and opinions upwards
• keeping employees informed about what is going on
• seeing that managers are committed
• having fair and just management processes for dealing with problems.

Perhaps more telling – and rarely mentioned – is the sobering process of the organisation examining its own value as expressed in its formal and informal manner of doing things. What message is the organisation really giving to its employees (and its customers)? Can people be reasonably expected to sign up enthusiastically to such a message?

This search for paragons of virtue among employees has an interesting parallel in the education sector. In England, when a pupil truants from school, we ask what is wrong with the child. In France, they ask what is wrong with the school. If you are an employer looking for greater engagement then be prepared. If it is absent then the cause may lay uncomfortably close to home.

10 Top Networking Tips

What makes a successful business? 99% of the time it is not a killer business idea. Those are as rare as hen’s teeth. 99% of the time it is determination, passion and commitment. These qualities work in any business and are quickly and easily communicated during networking.

Networking brings people together. And since people buy from people it is one of the most effective and direct ways of communicating your message.

Here are some additional tips to help you through the process:

1. 80% of life is showing up.
Woody Allen’s well-known quotation applies to networking just as much as it applies in the rest of life. Some of us find crowds oppressive and strangers intimidating so, for us, actually showing up at a network event is a real achievement. For others the network event comes at the beginning of a very full day or after hours of frustrating and exhausting toil. Do we really want extend our work-life any more?

Yes, we do, if we want to continue to build our business and ensure future orders arrive when needed. Showing up at a network event is a critical step in that process.

2. Being self-conscious is normal.
Having made the effort, now what do you say? Even if you have prepared and rehearsed that ‘elevator pitch’ (you did do that, didn’t you?) when you are face-to-face with a stranger, somehow it does not sound quite as good. This feeling gets worse as the noise levels in the room rise and your voice gets louder and louder. Fear not. Feeling awkward is normal. We’ve all been there. It’s even a place that some of us revisit from time to time as we experiment with different approaches. Remember two things:
a. Your companion has no idea what you were supposed to say, so they won’t know if you get it wrong;
b. Be yourself. If you are feeling nervous, lost for words or out of your depth – then say so. The person you are talking to will already have experienced the same thing. The only reactions you are likely to get are sympathy and support.

3. Now you’re here, you may as well have fun.
Networking is about business and it does form part of your marketing, but that is no reason to treat it as a sombre and solemn subject. You are among people with the same aims and aspirations as you have. You could learn something from them. They could even learn something from you.

It may be business, but it’s in a social setting so relax and enjoy it. Take a few deep, calming breathes and jump right in. You will come across more naturally and you will notice a lot more about other people once you overcome the initial jitters.

Forget about yourself, nobody cares anyway. They are all fully absorbed with their own worries – oh, yes they are. And you can help both of you by talking about them (it’s everyone’s favourite subject). Once you start to concentrate on what they are saying you will soon forget about yourself.

4. Be among the first to get here and the last to depart.
Networking events only last so long – usually around 2 hours. Together in one room, for just a short period of time, you have a group of people who are there with the specific intent of meeting you. Make the most of it. Speak to as many of them as possible and allow yourself the time to find out a little about them. Who are they? What do they do? What are their plans? What issues are they grappling with? Where could you help? If you spend as little as 10 minutes talking with each one, just 12 people will fill those two hours easily.

Where possible, position yourself to watch the door out of the corner of your eye. Is a previous contact arriving that you want to touch base with again? Or is an interesting prospect about to leave before you have had a chance to exchange a few words? If you arrive late or leave early you will miss those opportunities and others may then get in the queue ahead of you.

5. Telling isn’t selling.
If your conversations at a networking event consist mainly of you telling the other person what you do, how you do it, the prices you charge and the guarantees you give then you will part company knowing very little about them and nothing about how you might be able to help them. Working out how your business can best meet their needs is your responsibility, not theirs.

Selling consists of learning as much as possible about the other party and finding a way of being of service to them. Initially that may not equate to a sale. It may be a piece of information, a telephone number or a contact of yours capable of meeting their current need. That’s good. That gives you a common point of reference and the opportunity to follow up later to see how things have progressed.

Taking a (genuine) interest in your prospects will rank you ahead of most of the competition and keep you ‘on the radar’. Acquiring good customers takes time; be prepared to invest it.

6. Make friends when you don’t need them.
If you wait until you need someone’s help and then befriend them in order to obtain it you are likely to be found out. Out of desperation you are also likely to find yourself in a worse bargaining position and give away more than is necessary in order to relieve an emergency. Following this approach you will be entirely dependent on goodwill, rather than fair and equal reciprocity (a favour asked for a favour done).

Making genuine friendships, built on mutual interest and warm companionship with nothing at stake, is a much better reflection of the generous person that you are. Approaching another person in an open and honest manner gives you the freedom to be yourself. You carry no hidden agenda and are less likely to provoke the instinctive, defensive reaction: “What’s this person after?”

7. It is not about the business cards you give out.
If you attend a network meeting with the sole intention of giving out as many of your business cards as possible, even to people who do not request one, you may very well succeed. Then what?
a. Those that did not request your card are likely to file it or throw it, which will amount to much the same thing.
b. Those that did ask for your card without you taking any interest in them are probably being polite. The result will be the same.
c. Those in whom you did show some interest and who asked for a card will put it down meaning to call you; lose it under a pile of paper; find it three weeks later; spill tea on it and then sweep it into the rubbish by mistake.

Relying solely on the business cards you give out cedes control to the people who have them. They have busy lives too. It is more in your interest than theirs that they use the card – after all, you are not the only fish in the sea. That leads on to…

8. It is not about the business cards you collect.
Merely scooping up business cards from everyone else in the room will just add to your large and growing collection. I am sure it is a fascinating hobby, but is it taking your own business forward? Once you have someone’s business card…you have to put it to work. Now YOU are in control, so make good use of it.

Add the contact to your database (you do have…?) and programme in a series of appropriate follow-ups. The first need be little more than a ‘nice to meet you’ and a reference to something that came up in conversation between you. Subsequent ones at decently spaced intervals need to offer slightly more, or it just becomes spam. It’s your business, I will leave you to work out what you can offer.

9. Don’t end the evening wishing you had…
…done something, or said something, or met someone that was there. Opportunities in life can be fleeting. If you have spent the money to be here and taken the time and trouble to turn up, then you owe it to yourself and your business to make the most of it.

At a networking event that usually means taking ‘people risks’. It means stepping forward and introducing yourself to total strangers. But the magical thing about that is you need only do it once. After the first time the person concerned is no longer a stranger!

The other bonus is that people who attend networking events do so with the explicit intention of meeting strangers such as you. By stepping forward with a welcome of your own you are already helping them fulfil the purpose they had in coming here. How cool is that as an opening gambit with a potential customer?
10. What would you do next, if you knew you could not fail?

Life is full of surprises. The biggest surprise to me is the limits people impose on themselves. Too often the hobgoblins inside their heads whisper, “Who do you think you are?” and “You couldn’t possibly!” At that point self-doubt creeps in and many a wonderful adventure is stillborn before it begins.We all have wild and wacky ideas, many more than we ever feel happy disclosing. If networking is about getting noticed, if your future means being memorable, then a networking meeting is just the place to spread your wings and be eager to fly!