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Web Conferencing is a great way to expedite communication and it is the responsibility of the call host to decide what type of call theirs will be and then to ensure that it is delivered using the most appropriate medium – running smoothly and to time.

The choice of platform may be driven by company policy, security, group preference or habit. Skype, Lync, WebEx, Hangout, Zoom, Qube and MS Teams, (to name but a few), will all have their champions. But the question is, which will enable you to facilitate the most effective communication?

Are you planning an event, a presentation or a conversation? Each will need to be managed differently and some will require more pre-work than others. You might consider delivering a hybrid event, containing components of each, as a way of keeping participants involved and interested.

Your session type may be influenced by who will drive or ‘own’ the agenda. Are you dictating the agenda or is the session to be participant led – allowing contributions from others? If you want participants to have ownership, then a pre-questionnaire will encourage contribution and will help you to narrow down the most appropriate content drawn from the group, the best format and appropriate duration.

Are you planning a reporting or updating session? If so, each contribution needs to be focussed and accessible. As host, do not arbitrarily limit the number of slides or screen shares – but encourage colleagues to follow best practice – the other participants will need to hear and see content that is ABC (Accurate, Brief, and Clear), leaving them better informed or well positioned to contribute to making a decision.

Is this to be a creative or problem-solving event? Either way, if input is required from everyone, then using virtual Breakout Rooms, Polling or Voting may all be really useful.

No matter the meeting, keep sessions to a maximum of 90 minutes and leave some flex in your own calendar before your next meeting begins, allowing you time to reflect or to send out a file note or summary.

Before the session starts:

• Send a meeting invitation (followed by a reminder closer to the event) to all invitees, outlining the purpose of the meeting, the agenda and any preparation that is required of them. If necessary, provide an executive summary pre-read or links, to get everyone to the same starting point.
• Make sure that the right people are invited. If decisions are to be made, decision-makers need to be present.
• Whilst the most senior person may want to chair the session, they can delegate the creation of visuals, screen sharing, exercises, activities, managing Polling, Voting and virtual Breakout Rooms to a guiding hand / technically adept colleague both before and during the meeting.
• Keep screen shares to a minimum. Avoid a return to ‘death by PowerPoint’ and keep some slides in reserve to be used as support during question time. Look for the opportunity to chunk down content, build in participant involvement and add variety of input.
• The more formal or presentation-based the session, the more practice will be needed and meeting management is key. The Chair, technical co-ordinator and any other contributors will need to run through the shared plan before hand – possibly clicking through the agenda, slides and transitions.

Technical Tips:

• Use Mute-all and Gallery View (these may need to be switched on by the host).
  For Zoom visit: their support article linked here.
• Use the Screen Share function to show PowerPoint slides, diagrams or documents that add value or clarify key points – but avoid a return to death by PowerPoint.
• Use the Chat section as a way to have ‘live’ side conversation or to park ideas sparked by the meeting, which can be revisited later.
• Use the Whiteboard function as a place to invite thoughts and to gather wider contributions.
  For Zoom visit: their support article linked here.
• Use Polling – ask voting participants to use an icon – (applause, thumbs up or down) to show their view or use icons to place themselves on a ‘temperature bar’ continuum – from cold to hot, bad to good, sick to healthy and so on.
• Use ‘Fist-5’ Voting – ask voting participants to show a fist to score zero up to 5 fingers to show their response to a question or idea.
• Use virtual Breakout Rooms as a vehicle to facilitate a brain dump in small groups, to divide a big issue down into its component parts or to enable several issues to be discussed simultaneously. This creates more engagement for more people and offers each individual air-time, before feeding back to the group.
  For Zoom visit: their support article linked here.

On camera performance – set yourself for success:

• Environment: Find a quiet location and protect yourself against interruptions. Shut down everything that is not needed on your browser, especially surplus applications and background apps in the Task bar. Have your phone off and maybe wear a headset and microphone to create your own ‘bubble’. Make sure your face is well lit – have natural light in front of you, not behind and make sure that your style of dressing, like the background, is not ‘busy’ or distracting – but is ‘business like’ and sets the right tone.
• Posture and positioning: Sit upright – with your back and bottom tucked into the back of the chair – and raise your camera lens to eye level. Frame your head and shoulders in-shot. Try to connect positively with the attendees – look into the camera and show the light behind your eyes. Remember that if your camera is ‘on’, you are ‘on screen’, so act accordingly – be present, be alive, be interested.
• Language:If you are representing a business, consider thanking people for joining ‘us’ today. Talk ‘with’ people not ‘to’ or ‘at’ them. If you are chairing, use clear directive language – things like: ‘My proposal is…’; ‘My counter proposal is…’; ‘To build on that idea…’; ‘Any objections…?’ ‘Shall we gauge opinion on that…?’
• Questions: Flag up where you are aiming a question by using the recipient’s name at the start of your sentence. Give people their moment in the sun.

Prepare the audience:

• Ask everyone to turn their camera on and mute their microphones. Remember to welcome people, recognise their time investment and contributions and thank them. Ask them to display their names. If some participants are late joining (they may never join by the way) agree with those who are on time whether / when to start or agree to postpone the call. Do not be tempted to go back over the agenda and repeat content for late comers – it rewards their behaviour and will frustrate those who arrived on time.
• Confirm the purpose and style of the meeting and ensure that everyone has the same expectations for the session duration, flow, topic, format and outcomes – including the provision for Q&A.

Deliver the plan:

• Remember clarity, energy and passion are key: you have prepared and practised – stick to the plan.
• Re-confirm your agreed meeting ground rules: i.e. no multi-tasking; phones off; be ‘present’, join in and contribute; short sharp interventions; cameras on, microphones off. Make sure that you role model professionalism and energy. Use your sessions as an opportunity to reinforce best practice.
• Be aware of international attendees and those working in second or third languages: think about your speed, diction, your choice of language and check for understanding, compliance and commitment.
• Find ways to vary the input: have more than one contributor and use screen share; find ways to involve the participants and move to facilitation and breakout sessions whenever practicable. Vary the duration and complexity of activities – perhaps start with some simple temperature checks or polling and move into longer, deeper or more demanding breakout sessions.
• Invite contributions: use Voting, Polling, Whiteboards, reaction icons and virtual Breakout rooms. Pre-warn people if you will be asking them to report, to offer a view or comments or to speak to a slide.
• Manage the discussion: log all questions as they come up and make sure that they are addressed either during the session or as a follow-up afterwards.
• Drive the next steps (who, will do what, by when?) and gain commitment.

After the session:

• Send a one or two-page post-call summary document with the key slides embedded, recommendations listed and the next steps added, in order to drive your follow-up plan forward

For further ideas, take a look at:

• ‘Best practices for hosting a digital event.‘
• ‘Zoom online event best practices‘
• ‘How to combat zoom fatigue‘

A leader that inspires performance is a leader who finds joy and deep satisfaction in developing her or his people and celebrating their successes. Such a leader is open to exploring what is truly satisfying in life. Is the accumulation of wealth and personal recognition the ultimate source of happiness, or does generous concern for others lead to fulfilment.

In the Genos six competencies model of Emotionally Intelligent Leadership the sixth and final competency is the ability to Inspire Performance. To inspire means to “To fill someone with confidence and desire to do something” (Cambridge University Dictionary). When inspire first came into use in the 14th century it had a meaning it still carries in English today: “To influence, move, or guide by divine or supernatural influence or action.” This meaning is a metaphorical extension of the word’s Latin root: inspirare means “to breathe or blow into.”

True empowerment is about many things but at root it requires the leader to not want to take credit, not be seen to be the hero, but rather relish seeing those they empower flourish and grow. Such an empowering leader is generous, trusting, and can let go of wanting to be in control all the time. “It’s not about me; it’s about my people!”

To be an inspiring leader is to be an inspired person. In the spiritual journey there is a progression from obsession with self to an awakening realisation of how much more enjoyable and fulfilling life can be if you focus on others and improve their success and well-being. Leaders who truly inspire performance are typically people who have evolved into this state of living whether consciously or not.

The Genos Model has Empowerment at one end of the Inspiring Performance spectrum and Indifference at the other. I am sure you have come across indifferent leaders! I remember coaching a global head of marketing for a finance firm in New York City who was responsible for 3,000 employees in several locations across the USA. He never visited the people in the regional offices. I conducted some interviews with people out in the “provinces” and the constant theme was “We never see him.” And “We haven’t got a clue about where he wants to take the organisation.” This executive was the epitome of Indifference. In truth I do not think he was indifferent but how he behaved, how he impacted the organisation, gave the impression that he did not care about other people but only himself. It was a salutary shock for him to hear the feedback.

You have to genuinely care about others and then show them you genuinely care by your actions.

The Chairman of that same global company headquartered in New York City worked from his plush office on the 52nd floor of a 52-story building. One day the door of a young employee on the 23d floor was open and a gentleman politely asked if he could come in for a quick chat. The gentleman stayed for ten minutes as they got acquainted. That gentleman was the Chairman. The news of this exceptional visitation spread like wildfire. Everyone loved their Chairman because he embodied all that they valued about an inspiring leader. He took time out to connect with people regardless of their status in the organisation. Certainly not indifferent.

And then there was Mr. Smith, my Latin teacher at boarding school. His energy level had flatlined and he sounded like a drone. I came 17th out of a class of 17 boys in his final year. The next year Mr. Brown arrived and from the start I joined the boys sitting in the backrow teasing and taunting the poor man. Us cynical kids obviously felt he was easy prey for being so open, nice, passionate and super enthusiastic about teaching us Latin. But despite the horrible ridicule he suffered he continued to be his authentic self and by the end of the year I was sitting in the front row and came in 1st out of 17! Mr. Brown “breathed” life into me. I came alive in his presence and went from the bottom to the top of the performance ladder.

If you want to become an inspiring leader you will want to teach, educate and coach. You will learn how to give constructive and helpful feedback. You will take pleasure in seeing others blossom and find joy in celebrating your people.

Here are some of the key leadership behaviours that constitute the Genos Model’s sixth competence – Inspiring Performance.

• Maintain a positive work environment.
• Be willing to share your purpose and help others understand their purpose and meaningful contribution to the organisation.
• Help facilitate others’ development and advance their careers by providing useful support and constructive feedback and guidance on behaviour and performance.
• Recognise and celebrate others’ hard work and achievements.

Do you inspire your people to perform?

The corporate Head of Marketing and Mr. Smith the Latin teacher were not bad people. It is just that their focus was not primarily on inspiring others to reach optimal performance. They had not developed the Emotional Intelligence skills that start with self-awareness and the awareness of others. Once these two competencies have been worked on and developed the leader can then choose the path of being a leader who empowers, is ‘other’ focused, and teaches, coaches and mentors people to become high performers.

I am sure you can think of great band leaders, sports coaches, politicians and business leaders who fit these criteria and inspire great performance. I think of Quincy Jones the great American jazz musician, Jurgen Klopp who manages Liverpool FC, the best football team in the world, Jacinda Ardern the current Prime Minister of New Zealand, and Muhammed Yunus the founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh who started the whole microcredit movement. Who do you admire and celebrate? Please let me know!

Covid 19 has hit our lives like a thunderbolt that forced us to change our routines, our ways of working, our ways of studying, how we socialize with other people, how we travel, even how we do the shopping.

The first emotional reaction to losing most of our ‘old normal’ has certainly been that of shock, followed by denial and then by anger.

At the beginning we were all taken aback. Many tried to minimise the situation. I remember the news reporting that it was just an influenza, that we should not worry all that much.

Then the seriousness of the virus hit everybody heavily. Many were outraged regarding contradictory information and looked for people and nations to blame for the situation.

THE ‘NEW NORMAL’

As you may remember from your EI training, what is described above is exactly what happens to our emotions as they move along the change curve. Even more so as we were facing an unprecedented situation that required unprecedented changes.

Now, we are gradually emerging from the darkest days and are starting experimenting new ways of managing the ‘new normal’, trying to decide what strategies to adopt.

Though we may still feel a subtle sense of sadness for what cannot be any longer as before, while we pivot and adjust to our ‘new normal’, it is important to give ourselves some time to grieve what we lost.

Once we get to accept that loss, we can look ahead. If it is true that we lost something, it is also true that we learnt to appreciate new things. Everyone will experience that in different ways of course. But if we stop and reconnect with our deeper self, we will find the energy of a new beginning. That energy is the true source to tap into to find solutions to the present challenges in our life and work.Here some practical strategies that may help us tap into our inner energy:

• Journal our experience – Writing about our feelings is extremely powerful. It is a self-awareness exercise. When labelling negative feelings, their power diminishes, and when noticing positive feelings, they expand. Starting each day by noting down what we can be grateful of will help us enhance our well-being.
• Create new routines – Having routines will restore normality. For example, we may get creative and find new ways of starting our day – meditating, doing exercise, walking in the park, taking the time for a nice breakfast with our family or alone. It is refreshing for the mind to change routines from time to time.
• Self-caring – By learning to take care of ourselves, by being kinder to ourselves, we become more present in our life and start making healthier choices for our well-being. That impacts positively on our self-esteem as we respect ourselves more. It also makes us more resistant to illnesses as our immune system boosts. And even our productivity improves, as we learn to say ‘no’ to what is not important while sharpening focus on what is important.
• Stay connected in new ways – Aren’t we lucky to live in times in which the internet and all the different platforms like Webex, Zoom, Teams allow us to stay connected? It is widely recognized that social distancing does not mean social disconnecting. It may be fun to discover new ways to meet colleagues and friends for a chat and a virtual drink together.
• Create pockets of joy – It is important to learn to celebrate what makes us happy, what makes us smile. We do not need major events for that. It may be something as simple as taking the time to savour little things fully, like a cup of tea with a friend or a good book. By focusing on moments of joy, all will add up.

As neuroscience has widely demonstrated, when we feel well, we have more energy and our positive emotions reverberate all around us impacting positively on our relations. Let’s take the responsibility of creating good vibes!

CASE STUDY – MINDFUL LEADERSHIP

The context in which leaders need to operate now is more than ever a fluctuating one with significant changes not only since the last century but most recent years.

And in 2020 and the Coronavirus emergency this trend reached its peak!

These changes apply to any sector of business, politics, economy and personal life.

This impacts in turn on the abilities that leaders are called on to develop today.

They revolve around the capacities for relating and working well with others and coping in situation where there is a reduced or even no capacity to engineer the outcomes.

According to a research carried out at Hult International Business School three are the critical capacities for leaders today:

1) The capacity to collaborate with others
This ability involves being able to co-operate and facilitate co-operation across ideas, boundaries and cultures. Diversity and inclusion being one crucial related skill to being able to collaborate with other both inside and outside the organisation.

2) The capacity for resilience
Covid19 emergency made it clear that we all need to learn to be resilient. Leaders have a double responsibility, being able to bounce back following a crisis and help their team to do the same. But resilience is not only that. The Ashridge Resilience Questionnaire considers also: emotional control, self-belief, purpose, adapting to change, awareness of others and balancing alternatives. Leaders who score high on a combination of these measures have been shown to maintain their personal and leadership resilience in the face of adversity.

3) The capacity to survive and thrive in complex contexts
To this end leaders need to develop the capacity of being agile. This is an agility of thinking, being able and willing to step outside of their perspective to see others’ perspectives (a skill also required for collaboration). Connected to agility is the capacity to be flexible in making swift decisions in the midst of distraction, to adapt preferred leadership styles according to situations and team members’ personality and interactive styles.

The research team at Hult set out to investigate whether a mindfulness training would impact these three capacities. The mindfulness training they used in the research was the 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction programme created by Kabat-Zinn. Their participants were a cross-sector group of 57 senior leaders.

The starting point: What is Mindfulness?

According to Kabat-Zinn Mindfulness is “the awareness that arises from paying attention on purpose, in the present moment and nonjudgmentally”. In other words, mindfulness is a choice, the choice to be aware of oneself, of others, and of what happens around us.

What did they find?

Approximately 3 months after the Mindfulness programme, participants were administered a Survey, aimed to discover the extent to which participants felt the programme had impacted the three key leadership capacities of resilience, collaboration and leading in complexity described above.

When asked to explain the area that they felt they had experienced most impact in as a result of the programme, 40% of respondents detailed answers relating to ‘less stress’, ‘calmness’, and ‘emotional regulation’. Popular responses also included the ability to respond rather than react (14%) and increased focus (11%).

Post programme impact:

Meta-capacities

The most important finding was regarding the meta-capacities that participants reported being enabled by the Mindfulness programme and practice.

The first of these meta-capacities was the ability they discovered to choose to observe what they were thinking and feeling. Observe is the crucial word here – observing what is happening now, in the very moment, in our thoughts, feelings, and body. This meta-capacity is fundamental in freeing us from the ‘automatic’ thinking and ruminating.

The second meta-capacity was defined as curiosity towards the present moment, what happens in the present to us, to others, around us.

And curiosity helped the third meta-capacity, the attitude of allowing, being more understanding towards self and others, especially facing stressful situations.
These meta-capacities helped to develop 5 cognitive and emotional skills:

• Emotional regulation – the ability to make a conscious choice when responding to situations rather than reacting automatically following to emotional wave of the moment
• Perspective taking – the ability of considering situations and ideas from different angles; this ability impacted on the quality of decisions
• Empathy – the ability of focusing more on others than self
• Focus – the ability to concentrate and use selective attention to enhance clarity of thought and quality of decisions
• Adaptability – the ability to adapt to changing situations and context and people

These conclusions lead to develop a theory of Mindful leadership that may represent the basis for further research and development in this area.

When a combination of the three meta-capacities of metacognition, curiosity and allowing are present a space opens in the flow of experience in which choiceful response becomes possible. This in turn impacts on the 5 cognitive and emotional skills mentioned above.

The diagramme of the theory developed from this study is shown on the right:

Conclusion

We thought important to share this research as it contributes to the understanding and evaluation of how mindfulness practice might be relevant to leaders in our century.

Though there is still surely room for exploration, the findings research are extremely valuable as they support the hypothesis that mindfulness training and practice may be helpful in equipping leaders with relevant and useful capacities for the next global challenge ahead.

For us coaches and trainers Mindfulness nowadays represents a fundamental area to grow and present to our clients to bring about a deeper level of development having a positive impact on a whole set of skill crucial to leaders and their leadership of teams in a sort of cascade fashion.

Source: ‘The Mindful Leader’ by Reitz, M, Chaskalson, M., Olivier S., Waller, L., November 2016, Hult Research

LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT

PeopleSmart has recently developed a rich catalogue of virtual workshops to support clients continue developing crucial skills and capacities in quick, practical and engaging programmes in remote. Notice that we offer virtual workshops and not traditional webinars. We really aim at providing a fruitful learning experience where participants can interact with the facilitator and participate in different type of activities.

Some examples of our programmes related to Emotional Intelligence topics:

• Resilience and Mindfulness
• Exploring Emotional Intelligence
• Motivating others
• Motivation and Neuroscience
• Understanding and leading through change
• Self-confidence and Charisma
• • GENOS New Leading with Emotional Intelligence series

Our workshops are 60’ or 90’ minutes long and are run on Zoom.

Our great team of coaches is also available to support you with Coaching sessions in remote.

Please, contact us for further information: contact@peoplesmart.fr

PEOPLESMART NEWS

We are excited to share with you our incredible new Podcast series called ‘Leadership luminaries’ created and curated by Michael Banks.

Please visit the ‘Leadership luminaries‘ by selecting the image below:

Covid 19 has hit our lives like a thunderbolt that forced us to change our routines, our ways of working, our ways of studying, how we socialize with other people, how we travel, even how we do the shopping.

The first emotional reaction to losing most of our ‘old normal’ has certainly been that of shock, followed by denial and then by anger.

At the beginning we were all taken aback. Many tried to minimise the situation. I remember somebody saying that it was just an influenza, that we should not worry all that much and to go on with our lives.

Then, the seriousness of the virus hit everybody heavily. Many were outraged regarding contradictory information and looked for people and nations to blame for the situation.

That is exactly what happens to our emotions as they move along the change curve (Kubler-Ross Model). Even more so as we were facing an unprecedented situation that required unprecedented changes.

Now, we are gradually emerging from the darkest days and are starting experimenting new ways of managing the ‘new normal’, trying to decide what strategies to adopt.

Though we may still feel a subtle sense of sadness for what cannot be any longer as before, while we pivot and adjust to our ‘new normal’, it is important to give ourselves some time to grieve what we lost.

Once we get to accept that loss, we can look ahead. If it is true that we lost something, it is also true that we learnt to appreciate new things. Everyone will experience that in different ways of course. But if we stop and reconnect with our deeper self, we will find the energy of a new beginning. That energy is the true source to tap into to find solutions to the present challenges in our life and work.

Here some practical strategies that may help us tap into our inner energy:

• Journal our experience – Writing about our feelings is extremely powerful. It is a self-awareness exercise. When labelling negative feelings, their power diminishes, and when noticing positive feelings, they expand. Starting each day by noting down what we can be grateful of will help us enhance our well-being.
• Create new routines – Having routines will restore normality. For example, we may get creative and find new ways of starting our day – meditating, doing exercise, walking in the park, taking the time for a nice breakfast with our family or alone. It is refreshing for the mind to change routines from time to time.
• Self-caring – By learning to take care of ourselves, by being kinder to ourselves, we become more present in our life and start making healthier choices for our well-being. That impacts positively on our self-esteem as we respect ourselves more. It also makes us more resistant to illnesses as our immune system boosts. And even our productivity improves, as we learn to say ‘no’ to what is not important while sharpening focus on what is important.
• Stay connected in new ways – Aren’t we lucky to live in times in which the internet and all the different platforms like Webex, Zoom, Teams allow us to stay connected? It is widely recognized that social distancing does not mean social disconnecting. It may be fun to discover new ways to meet colleagues and friends for a chat and a virtual drink together.
• Create pockets of joy – It is important to learn to celebrate what makes us happy, what makes us smile. We do not need major events for that. It may be something as simple as taking the time to savour little things fully, like a cup of tea with a friend or a good book. By focusing on moments of joy, all will add up.

As neuroscience has widely demonstrated, when we feel well, we have more energy and our positive emotions reverberate all around us impacting positively on our relations. Let’s take the responsibility of creating good vibes!

The context in which leaders need to operate now is more than ever a fluctuating one with significant changes not only since the last century but most recent years. And in 2020 and the Coronavirus emergency this trend has reached its peak!

These changes apply to any sector of business, politics, economy and personal life. This impacts in turn on the that leaders are called on to develop today. They revolve around the capacities for relating and working well with others and coping in situations where there is a reduced or even no capacity to engineer the outcomes.

According to a research carried out at Hult International Business School there are three critical capacities for leaders today:

1) The capacity to collaborate with others

This ability involves being able to co-operate and facilitate co-operation across ideas, boundaries and cultures. Diversity and inclusion being one crucial related skill to being able to collaborate with other both inside and outside the organisation.

2) The capacity for resilience

Covid19 emergency made it clear that we all need to learn to be resilient. Leaders have a double responsibility, being able to bounce back following a crisis and help their team to do the same. But resilience is not only that. The Ashridge Resilience Questionnaire considers also: emotional control, self-belief, purpose, adapting to change, awareness of others and balancing alternatives. Leaders who score high on a combination of these measures have been shown to maintain their personal and leadership resilience in the face of adversity.

3) The capacity to survive and thrive in complex contexts

To this end leaders need to develop the capacity of being agile. This is an agility of thinking, being able and willing to step outside of their perspective to see others’ perspectives (a skill also required for collaboration). Connected to agility is the capacity to be flexible in making swift decisions in the midst of distraction, to adapt preferred leadership styles according to situations and team members’ personality and interactive styles.

The research team at Hult set out to investigate whether a mindfulness training would impact these three capacities. The mindfulness training they used in the research was the 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction programme created by Kabat-Zinn. Their participants were a cross-sector group of 57 senior leaders.

The starting point: What is Mindfulness?

According to Kabat-Zinn Mindfulness is “the awareness that arises from paying attention on purpose, in the present moment and nonjudgmentally”. In other words, mindfulness is a choice, the choice to be aware of oneself, of others, and of what happens around us.

What did they find?
Approximately 3 months after the Mindfulness programme, participants were administered a Survey, aimed to discover the extent to which participants felt the programme had impacted the three key leadership capacities of resilience, collaboration and leading in complexity described above.

When asked to explain the area that they felt they had experienced most impact in as a result of the programme, 40% of respondents detailed answers relating to ‘less stress’, ‘calmness’, and ‘emotional regulation’. Popular responses also included the ability to respond rather than react (14%) and increased focus (11%).

Post programme impact:

Meta-capacities

The most important finding was regarding the meta-capacities that participants reported being enabled by the Mindfulness programme and practice.

The first of these meta-capacities was the ability they discovered to choose to observe what they were thinking and feeling. Observe is the crucial word here – observing what is happening now, in the very moment, in our thoughts, feelings, and body. This meta-capacity is fundamental in freeing us from the ‘automatic’ thinking and ruminating.

The second meta-capacity was defined as curiosity towards the present moment, what happens in the present to us, to others, around us.

And curiosity helped the third meta-capacity, the attitude of allowing, being more understanding towards self and others, especially facing stressful situations.
These meta-capacities helped to develop 5 cognitive and emotional skills:

• Emotional regulation – the ability to make a conscious choice when responding to situations rather than reacting automatically following to emotional wave of the moment
• Perspective taking – the ability of considering situations and ideas from different angles; this ability impacted on the quality of decisions
• Empathy – the ability of focusing more on others than self
• Focus – the ability to concentrate and use selective attention to enhance clarity of thought and quality of decisions
• Adaptability – the ability to adapt to changing situations and context and people

These conclusions lead to develop a theory of Mindful leadership that may represent the basis for further research and development in this area.

When a combination of the three meta-capacities of metacognition, curiosity and allowing are present a space opens in the flow of experience in which choiceful response becomes possible. This in turn impacts on the 5 cognitive and emotional skills mentioned above.

The diagramme of the theory developed from this study is shown on the right:

What does ‘life balance’ mean to you?

The definition of ‘life balance’ is entirely personal – it is founded on each individual’s values, experiences and relationships; shaped by their current situation, their hopes and aspirations and strengthened by their feelings of stability, confidence and optimism.

Now could be the ideal time to take stock. A great starting point is to get an understanding of what it is you hold to be fundamentally important. Once you are clear about that, you can work towards establishing firm anchor points and make some decisions about planning and implementing what you want to achieve as your journey into the future.

• On reflection, were you ‘in balance’ before the Covid-19 pandemic?
• Are you more, or less, ‘in balance’ now? What can you learn from this?
• What will being ‘in balance’ look like for you in the future?

As you begin to explore this, you will realise that there may be some tough decisions to be made, especially if you need to let go of aspects of the past in order to move forward …. and, if you decide that the pain of change is not worth the gain you may choose to adjust your plan or to do nothing. But that is healthy too! Making a positive decision to do nothing means that you can forget about the things that you are not prepared to address and move on to deal with the things that you are.

To achieve life balance, we can trust to luck, leave our destiny in the hands of others in the hope that they will have our best interests at heart, (which experience tells us is possibly not the case!) – or we can take a full part in driving the process – making it more likely that our lives will feel in control and we will feel fulfilled and stress free.

Use ‘The Life Balance Wheel’ below to score where you are under each heading at the moment. If the headings that we have selected aren’t quite right for you – change them!

What do your scores tell you?

• Are you working harder or pursuing some things to the detriment of others?
• Where and how would you most like to adjust your scores? Is that realistic?
• How can you go about doing that? What support will you need? What is the first step? When will you start?

What does ‘life balance’ mean to you?

Being ‘in balance’ is closely linked to having a sense of achievement – the feeling of somehow ‘making progress’. This can be given shape and definition by creating, and then achieving, clear goals. Why not allow yourself some time and space to think through your goals, perhaps using one of the methodologies outlined below?

Goal Setting – Method 1: Using the Life Balance Wheel

Phase 1, Step 1:	Review the scores that you gave yourself in each section of ‘The Life Balance Wheel’
Phase 1, Step 2:	Using a pack of stickies, brainstorm (one idea per sticky) what you would like to achieve under each of the section headings on the wheel. Try to get at least 3 ideas per section.
Phase 1, Step 3:	Divide a large sheet of paper in half, horizontally. Label the top half: ‘Must have goals’ and the bottom half: ‘Nice to have goals’. Transfer your stickies onto the paper, placing them either above or below the line, looking for clusters, sequences and any other links as you go. Add new stickies whenever they seem appropriate and discard those that seem to be less important to you, as you progress the exercise.
Phase 2, Step 1:	On a separate piece of paper, create a timeline stretching between 5 and 10 years ahead – (use whatever scale seems appropriate to you). Transfer your goals one at a time, so that you can see by when you would like to have achieved each one. Notice how they inter-connect and how achieving one, may help or hinder achieving another.

Apply SMART thinking to each goal

SSpecific	Make the words of your goal as specific as possible, basing it on specific actions and definite results. This will make it easier to measure your progress, to re-plan and to measure success.
MMeasurable	Ask yourself: • ‘What will be different as a result of achieving this objective?’ • ‘How will I know that I have achieved it?’ • ‘When will I know that I have achieved it?’ These three questions will enable you to achieve clarity and ensure that relevant success factors are in place.
AAction-orientated	By choosing language carefully and giving an action focus to your goal description (‘To achieve…; To deliver…’), you can also ensure that you focus on being proactive.
RRealistic	The goals that you set must be grounded in reality. They should incorporate reasonable stretch – something that is within the reach of a successful performer, but which will still pull you forward.
TTime-bound	Establish a start date, milestones, review and a finishing date. This is an essential pre-requisite to tracking progress and evaluating performance.

Use the checklist below to check that your goals are well set.

Question:

• Does this goal describe what you want in an accurate way?
• Where are you now in relation to the goal?
• When will you start working on the goal?
• What are the first steps?
• How will you know that you have achieved this goal?
• What will the outcome allow you to do?
• Is it really what you want? Is it achievable?
• What resources will you need?
• Will achieving this goal prevent you from doing anything else?
• What are the things (personal or external) that might stop you from achieving your goal?
• What do you need to do to overcome these obstacles?

Goal Setting – Method 2: Looking Back to Look Forward

The date is 5 years from today. It is June 2025 and you are about to move on from your current job, which you have been doing since 2020.

As it is your last day and as you begin to clear your workspace, think back over the last 5 years – way back to June 2020 and ask yourself:

• What has changed most about the way that I have organised myself overt the last five years?
• What have I contributed to the organisation or to my team? Where have I had most impact?
• What proactive business opportunities have I created or nurtured?
• What is the area of expertise that I am known for?
• What new skills have I learnt?
• What have I done that makes me most proud?
• Who have I worked with to the best effect?
• What are my colleagues likely to say about me when I have left? What is my reputation?
• What have I done to help my colleagues and peers to be successful?

Returning to the present day – how can you set yourself for success and make each of your answers (outlining how things will be in 2025 and which are really a list of aspirations), a reality?

Goal Setting – Method 3: The First 100 Days

Many politicians and business leaders think that their first 100 days in role are really important – so what about your next 100 days at work – or if you have been furloughed, in your first 100 days when you return to work?

Is your world certain and static? Think about your key areas of responsibility and decide what you would like to achieve in each one during these 100 days. In some areas you might simply be enforcing an existing strategy or attempting to use a different style or approach, whilst in others you will have the opportunity to bring about root and branch changes.

Imagine if you took control of your own destiny, what might you be able to achieve in the next 100 days?

The 5th capability in the Genos model of Emotional Intelligence is Self-Management. And the model makes it clear that if you do this well you become Resilient and if not you can become temperamental, buffeted and rocked by circumstances, suffering extremes of emotion and negative feelings as a victim of circumstances rather than choosing to be in control of your own destiny. The opposite of Resilience in the Genos Model is Temperamental and is all about unproductive drama!

Nowadays there are many helpful articles and videos about how to stay resilient in the midst of massive discontinuity in our lives. While a healthy lifestyle, exercise, meditation and good nutrition are all important you still have to choose to actually do these things. Sometimes we are overwhelmed and paralyzed by feelings of despair, depression, sadness, anger, frustration and so on. We become a victim of these feelings and find it difficult to bounce back from adversity. On these occasions a resilient person stays calm and recognizes that they are in the driving seat and in control of how they manage their feelings and negative mindsets. The Buddhists talk about not getting too excited when things go well, and not too upset when they go badly. The way forward is to self-manage yourself with equanimity (A calm mental state, especially after a shock or disappointment or in a difficult situation – Cambridge Univ.) You self-coach yourself into a resilient state.

As an old mentor once said to me decades ago that “The greatest test of the human spirit is to have things go right.” And being resilient when things go ‘wrong’ requires an understanding of the steps to take at any time on any given day. It’s not always easy to recover from a devastating crisis of any kind. But the good news is there is ALWAYS something to be gained from every crisis!

A test of my resilience level came the day the lockdown was first announced and all my exciting engagements in great locations like Sofia, Amsterdam and Paris were cancelled. I fell into a dark despair for twenty four hours until the next day I decided to discover an alternative future scenario to the one my mind had been obsessed with the day before. Instead of only imagining doom and gloom I realized the opportunity this lockdown would afford me. I could launch my podcast series after many months of delay due to ‘other’ commitments. My purpose and vision took over and, with excitement, moved forward letting go of the previous ‘possible future’. In recent times yours might be transforming your garden, finally writing that novel learning to bake bread or spending more time with your children.

In my case I transformed my mindset and therefore my energy. I had a purpose. Through envisioning a positive outcome from a seemingly desperate situation I was able to move through my paralysis and depression.

Have you ever had an awful morning when everything seems to go wrong, nothing flows and you just cannot get into gear and be productive? Of course, you have. We all have! If you’re present to yourself and mindful of your state, maybe frustrated, stressed, cranky, even angry, you can acknowledge your thoughts and feelings and instead of focusing on yourself and your ‘stuckness’ you can direct your attention and energy outwards and move beyond your mind into action. Your state changes, you let go of the previous state and you move on to something better because of a choice you made. Of course, some people choose to remain and even wallow in their pain and misery but that’s another story!

It’s like a sports team that reaches halftime several points down after playing badly. A good manager will facilitate the players to acknowledge the truth of how they played and how they’re feeling, and then, rather than feel sorry for themselves, choose to convert the negative energies and thought forms into a positive force so that they run out at the end of halftime with a different mindset and reality and go on to win the game!

And let’s not forget relatedness as an ingredient of resilience. Others can help you get through too. I was dying in hospital years ago and my friend Joe put his face into mine and shouted “Are you going to die?”. I shouted back “No!” and didn’t! Joe helped me to be resilient by helping me choose to live!

Heroes are good at resiliency. And life itself is always presenting us with opportunities to practice resiliency on a daily basis. Small acts of heroism abound all around us. Do resiliency well and be your own hero! I look back at how I almost died several times, lost all my money and a beautiful house on the Hudson River, suffered kidney failure and countless other periods of loss and misfortune and yet I’ve always got up again and become stronger, wiser and happier by transforming those situations, finding meaning and knowledge in adversity, and having a purpose to guide me through life. That doesn’t make me anybody special. Everyone has their own stories of how they bounced back.

Here’s a collection of suggestions for managing yourself resiliently when crisis hits:

• Be mindful, check your ‘state’ and remember that “this too shall pass”
• Exercise self-compassion
• Be present and let go worrying about hypothetical futures
• Choose to change your mindset (it’s not as ‘set’ as you think!)
• Envision a positive future, fueled by an overriding purpose
• Stay open to possibilities (recognize the opportunities inherent within the crisis)
• Courageously choose to get up and go again, and again, drawing upon your emotional and spiritual fortitude
• Let go and move into action, bypassing the mind to move through the uncomfortable feelings
• Transform the energy of stress, despair, anger and fear and direct that energy outwards
• Be grateful for all that is positive in your life
• Connect with others so you can help each other through
• Feel good and proud of yourself for being so resilient!

The Covid-19 pandemic is delivering us all with a massive amount of uncertainty. Businesses are battling for survival and trying to understand and address what the ‘new normal’ will demand of them and their people. Leaders and team members alike are worried about their jobs, their families and their future.

No doubt, some products and services will be defunct, or are in the process of being usurped by more innovative alternatives. Working patterns will change, commuting and travel will be considered more carefully and many more of us will be working remotely. Finding the physical space, having the right tools, connecting with others, maintaining a balanced family life and managing our own levels of motivation and mental health are all going to be an issue.

Covid-19 has been a catalyst for change. Senior leaders will be going through a process that feels like they are trying to keep the trains running, whilst laying new tracks. It is quite a balancing act and as we all know, during times of turmoil and change what people need is some certainty.

As the world returns to work, we will all need our people to re-adjust. We will need to pave the way to help them to feel they have purpose, know what is expected of them and are able to perform at their best, in a positive environment.

There will be huge value in thinking through how you can help your people to cope with the pressures of this changing world and to have the mindset and behaviours that will build resilience or ‘bounce-back-ability’.

Maybe PeopleSmart can offer some thoughts. People need:

• Clarity – keep your people informed. If the future is difficult and uncertain – tell them so. In any case, they will need to be reassured that their leaders – the people they look to in a crisis – are actually grappling with the challenges and have a plan.
  
  What are you doing about the organisation’s, teams’ and individuals’ short, medium and long-term goals? Can you offer a sense of direction, made up of achievable objectives for everyone – with a clear game plan, setting out the tactics to be used?
• Focus – as they return to work, or as the business landscape becomes clearer, your people will need a constant reminder of current key activities and outcomes. A mix of the short-term / urgent and the long-term / proactive, which will need to be reviewed and refined regularly. You may want them to have several areas of focus: getting back to work in a safe environment; re-connecting with customers and suppliers, re-building or creating new relationships, supporting colleagues, having a can do / will do attitude…
  
  What are the things that it is most important for you to focus them on?
• Encouragement – now is the time for some focused 1:1 Mentoring and Coaching. Encourage all managers to take a proactive lead and to be ‘on-message’. Now, more than ever, they need to get close to their reports and to the wider team. This means more than ‘going through the figures’ or ‘having a chat’ as they may have done previously. It demands care, understanding and real problem-solving skills – helping people to be on-board and ready to contribute to a proactive action plan for change.
  
  Who are you talking with about your business imperatives? How are you getting things straight in your own mind?
• Find some support – now, more than ever, it would be smart for you to find a mentor, a coach or a trusted advisor that you can work with. Who can you talk to? Where and how can you build your network right now?

Learning from sport – a winner mentality

Even in the world of sport, there are reports of athletes losing focus, their sense of self-worth and confidence whilst they cannot do their ‘job’ and are operating in isolation. However, they should know from experience that winners work hard to protect and pace themselves and engage in thorough preparation for what comes next.

• They build robust self-belief, based on their ability to analyse success and to learn from failure, so that they can continually push the margins.
• They give thought and effort to building their support structures (their ‘Team You’ – see over the page), a resource that they can draw upon as support and nourishment through difficult times.
• They take time for real recovery and right now as sports prepare to return to competition, athletes are being encouraged to prepare themselves by working on their levels of physical and mental match fitness.

Self-preservation
There are many great examples of how sports’ people protect themselves – ranging from the Olympic Athletes who take their own food stuffs to major competitions; the rugby players who travel with their own pillows and duvet to ensure a good night sleep and the boxers who live on ‘competition time’ in the days before an important bout in a different time zone. All of these performers are focused on detailed preparation, in a way that most of the rest of us are not.

What can you do to challenge historical or cultural norms and help to give your team an ‘edge’, so that they can ‘hit the ground running’?

Creating ‘bounce-backability’

Building your own ‘Team You’ – allowing others to build theirs

The ‘new normal’ will demand that people have a real work / life balance – taking each part of their life and combining in such a way that it becomes a component of a healthy eco-system, that energises, refreshes and allows them to grow. ‘Team You’ can help with this. It is made up of all those people who have the potential to be able and willing to influence and support your success – your boss, mentor, network, colleagues, community, family and friends. Getting them ‘on side’ and letting them help whenever and wherever they can is seriously smart.

Right now, many of us will be realising just how important a support network actually is. Some of us may even have come to understand that personally, we should have invested more time in it before the pandemic hit. As managers, we might also ask whether previously we have respected our colleagues’ time and space and their need to re-new sufficiently – or have we allowed ‘the needs of the business’ to put them under pressure to the detriment of their ability to build or maintain those support structures which are so important to carry them through this difficult period?

What more can you do now and in the future to build your potential ‘Team You’ and get it to want to bother to support you during your difficult times? How can you help others to build and nurture their own ‘Team You’?

Learn from the past. Live in the present. Plan for the future.

It is a mistake to think that around the world, as lockdown ends and social distancing restrictions are eased, we will simply go back to the way things were before. Up until now many businesses, individuals and organisations have used their historical success as an excuse not to change what they do or how they do it. In times such as these, their arrogance and complacency are likely to be found out. As some fall by the wayside, many businesses will be seen to have been successful historically, in spite of the way that they have been run in the good times – not because of it!

Top Tips:

• Encourage your people to understand the importance of building their personal resilience.
• As they return to work, encourage them to take breaks and exercise. Encourage them to think about exercise, their diet and rehydration, the ways they can support their colleagues, their work-life balance and how they can develop their own ‘Team You.’
• Encourage (and reward) positivity. Help colleagues to understand how they can add energy and build a success culture in your business by becoming a ‘zapper’ rather than a ‘sapper’ of energy.
• Take your own medicine and role model the behaviours that will lead to success.

The fourth dimension in the six dimensional Genos model of Emotional Intelligence is Emotional Reasoning.

We are making decisions every moment of every day in our personal and business lives. And some of those decisions are massively significant and affect many other people. So it’s obvious that we need to be wise about what elements we use in our decision making. Especially now when it’s more vital than ever that we understand how decisions affect peoples’ feelings.

Emotions, feelings and body sensations, are data from our bodies. This data is valuable information that needs to be taken into account if we want to make good decisions.

Reasoning on its own is a purely mental activity and tends to be logical, rational, and based on facts and beliefs, judgments and opinions. But using only reason in decision making without the emotional data can be dangerous.

For example, right now business leaders are facing tough decisions. Some are reacting out of pure survival, fear and panic and they’re making knee jerk reactive decisions and laying off people without carefully thinking through the consequences.

Others are sitting down with their colleagues and figuring out ways to keep their staff on board and their businesses running. I posted a Times article on LinkedIn the other day about Simon Rogan, the owner of Michelin starred L’Enclume restaurant in the Lake District of England. He is continuing to pay his lowest paid workers in full while he and his senior colleagues are taking zero income. That’s generous and brave and undoubtedly he will be remembered by the local community in the future as a kind, caring man who looked after people in a time of crisis. That will be good for his brand and, when you think about it, is also logically the best way forward to preserve his business and maintain his loyal staff.

Conversely we hear about business leaders who give open communication short shrift and peremptorily dismiss their staff without fully explaining the rationale or showing them empathy as they are thrown into the despair of impecunity. These leaders will also be remembered for that and their brands will suffer.

So Emotional Reasoning is about thinking about the impact your decision will have on peoples’ feelings before taking action. Of course logic must play a part too; the best decisions are made with both reason and feelings considered.

In the current environment, people are often defaulting to reaction versus response. This is where Emotional Reasoning has an inner aspect as well as an outer application. When we’re scared and panicked we can make quick decisions that aren’t necessarily the right ones. This is where Self Awareness and Self Management is needed. For example, the emotional data tells you that you’re scared but ideally you can stop yourself being impulsive and bring in some reason to provide a balanced action or decision. This is responding versus reacting.

So the balance between the head and the heart is ideal but also beware of the danger of erring too much on the side of feelings and emotions in your decision making.

Years ago I formed a business partnership with a lovely, professorial guy on the basis of liking each other’s company! The first year we went gangbusters and at the end of the second year we gave it all up. In retrospect feeling good about being in each other’s company was NOT a good enough reason to become business partners! What we failed to factor in from the outset was that we were both Fs on the Myers Briggs scale of T and F – Thinking and Feeling. To make it work we should have had a third partner who made decisions based more on logic and reason. Sadly we found this out too late and to our great (literal) cost!

In summary, in the language of the GenosModel, expansive decisions combine feelings and facts. Limited decisions are ones that are based purely on the facts and logic. Your decisions will either create teamwork, connection and community or they will alienate depending upon the degree to which you incorporate feeling data.

Ultimately feelings come from the heart, thoughts and ideas from the head. What we need at this time especially, are leaders whose decisions, in addition to facts, figures and logic, incorporate compassion, empathy and love.

PeopleSmart provides innovative learning solutions to organizations in many countries, cultures and languages, focusing on leadership and people development in the context of digital transformation, change management, culture change and the increasing need for Emotional Intelligence.

Common language can be very revealing under closer scrutiny. For example the ancient Greek word ‘krisis’ means a choice point. It’s a moment when one can go one way or another. And, in the context of the state of the world now, it’s an opportunity to grow or recede.

At times like these we can easily default to survival mode, focusing only on ourselves and how we can ‘get through’ this. May I suggest we all should be striving to ‘give through’ this harrowing experience? Getting is all about getting enough provisions in to hunker down comfortably, about making sure our jobs and income are maintained. Fair enough, and an understandable reaction to the current crisis. Giving may not come so easily. Giving can defy logic when your back is against the wall. The last thing you want to do is be over? generous when you’re up against it.

Leaders everywhere now are faced with this choice. More than ever we all need each other and the organizations that will fare better are those whose leadership boldly encourages a culture of giving in which the leadership gives as much as takes from their employees. Strong human relationships and connections are the ‘invisible Superglue’ that are essential to weather storms as well as be successful. So it’s the leaders’ responsibility to exercise their emotional and social skills to reach out to their people and maintain connectivity. This outreach must be prioritized.

When you’re sitting in your home office spending all day on Zoom calls with your CFO trying to figure out how to cut costs are you also cognizant of the need, sooner rather than later, to reach out to your direct report who’s struggling mightily with her supply chain issues in another remote part of the world? You probably are but it’s all too easy to put off making that five minute call that will help her feel connected and supported.

This is where a high degree of Emotional Intelligence can give you the edge.

Emotional Intelligence is about caring. It stems from the heart and how you feel. The more you care about other people and are in service to others, rather than service to yourself, the more likely it is that you will want this heart driven impulse to inform your daily behavior.

So going back to the leader’s choice. The choice is to either give yourself generously to your team despite your understandable fears and self-concerns. Whether you’re more cerebrally oriented than feeling based, or you’re naturally introverted rather than gregarious and outgoing, it’s your choice to communicate in ways that support others and build esprit de corps. Or not.

In the Genos Model of Emotional Intelligence the first and sine qua non dimension is Self-Awareness. When you’re sitting in your ‘office’ be conscious of those that need you. If necessary, wrench yourself away from the work you’re doing and make a supreme effort to schedule a Zoom call or simply in the moment get on the phone to find out how your team member in Spain is doing. Be aware of when you’re avoiding doing this and the thoughts and feelings that comprise your resistance to communicating. And then do it anyway!

The second dimension of the EI model is Awareness of Others: at the extremes Empathy as opposed to Insensitivity. Empathy is obviously a crucial tool in the leader’s toolkit. The current pain of change and loss (apply to loved ones, business, money, jobs as appropriate) can create a softening of the heart, a vulnerability and an openness that can trigger you to be more empathetic and compassionate. These are qualities that are vital to keep teams, organizations and colleagues united to better deal with the challenges we face.

The third in the Genos Model is Authenticity. As a leader being authentic engenders trust. Trust gives people a sense of security and comfort knowing that it’s OK to be real too, to be open about your feelings, to know you’re not alone and you’re all in it together. When you are on a call with your team be willing to share yourself as a person not just as an executive or business person. In the last few weeks, my Zoom conversations with other business people all over Europe have been more personal and energizing because the stiff barriers that often hold people in place in the corporate world seem to fall and the conversations become much more authentic and satisfying.

Years ago I formed a business partnership with a lovely, professorial guy on the basis of liking each other’s company! The first year we went gangbusters and at the end of the second year we gave it all up. In retrospect feeling good about being in each other’s company was NOT a good enough reason to become business partners! What we failed to factor in from the outset was that we were both Fs on the Myers Briggs scale of T and F – Thinking and Feeling. To make it work we should have had a third partner who made decisions based more on logic and reason. Sadly we found this out too late and to our great (literal) cost!

Tips and reminders:

• Be self-aware. Check you’re looking out with a wide angle lens and not tunnel vision
• Be aware of others. Have a mindset of “What can I give my colleagues” and What help might they need right now?”
• Ask questions that involve and include them which show you genuinely care
• Stay calm and do more listening than talking
• Be sure to respond not react and, without being fake, choose to communicate skillfully with appropriate tones of voice, facial demeanors, and energy levels
• Keep a list of people to hand to remind yourself to stay in touch with them

If you’re not already doing this already, schedule regular weekly virtual gatherings with your colleagues to share stories, lessons learned, fun and humour!

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SUMMARY

An old friend of mine, who is either Chairman or Board Member of a number of companies, the other day told a mutual friend that he’s noticed a split between half ‘his’ companies responding brilliantly to the current emergency, being generous with how they deal with staff and their salaries, planning director pay cuts and other concessions, and the other half are simply reacting without the EI wisdom and context I’ve been talking about in this article. They will be remembered for that and it will hurt them in the long run. Half of these companies are good examples of a ‘giving culture’ and the other half are not.

As a Leader you always have a choice about how you respond in any given moment, in any given day, in any given ‘krisis’. What choices are you going to make? Where are you on the spectrum from service to self to service to others?