Intuition

Intuition doesn’t always get good press. In the world of logic and reason (perhaps what we call business), you have to back up your decisions and opinions with hard data and facts supporting what you think. Interestingly, in my experience, people make the decision and form the opinion and then head off to find the hard data and facts to back up what was likely intuition.

Why to people dismiss intuition? If you are an expert in your field, your gut reaction or intuition has been honed by years of experience and knowledge. Why don’t we make a little bit more room for it?

There are obviously times when intuition and gut feeling should be ignored, the extreme example I have in my head is the gut reaction of a 4 year old for heart surgery. But taking the intuitive answer from a heart surgeon with 20 years experience?

Sometimes, it is worth trusting your gut!

If you want to read a couple of books that may help when and when not to trust your intuition try – Gut Feelings: Short Cuts to Better Decision Making by Gerd Gigerenzer or Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Ghilaine

@LadyGhilaine

What is best?

So often, we have choices and we are trying to decide what is best. Is it the biggest, cheapest, tastiest? If I take that, does it mean someone else is worse off than me, better off than me?

How we make decisions and decide what is best is a very personal issue. Take a cake sliced up to share, for example. We may want to take the biggest piece, but someone else may want more icing, others may want more chocolate sprinkles. This is where what is best for you, may not be best for someone else.

If we think about what is best based on how someone else fairs, this external validation can cause harm. If we think we won, we may end up getting upset by someone else thinking they did. If we think we were being gracious, someone else may think we were selfish. Almost, it seems we cannot win.

So when deciding on what is best, you need to use your personal criteria. After that, include others so that you remain considerate.

Ghilaine

@LadyGhilaine

Take time

Do you ever take time just to hear the quiet? Take time to smell the roses, It think someone said some time. We hear this a lot, but do we really consider how important it is to do this.

We talk ourselves out of it because we are busy; we aren’t in the right place; we can’t do it right.

Sometimes, just look out the window. Stare at a bird or a tree. Even just for seconds. Take some time. It may just focus you; relax you.

Ghilaine

@LadyGhilaine

Feeling Good

“Birds flying high you know how I feel;  Sun in the sky you know how I feel; Breeze driftin’ on by you know how I feel. It’s a new dawn; It’s a new day; It’s a new life for me yeah. It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me, ouh. And I’m feeling good” Sung by Nina Simone, written by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley. From Metro Lyrics

In the largely consumer society that we find ourselves in, we are often encouraged that we will feel good when we purchase a new thing or do a new activity. Whilst this may be true, I am reminded that we can find the feeling of goodness with nothing much: The sun in the sky, the dawn.

Nina Simone wrote some melancholic songs and, with the life she had, you could feel that it was all she should have written. But even with the hardship and prejudice she experienced through her talented life, she managed to sing these profoundly cheerful and grateful songs.

Sometimes, just remind yourself to feel good, because it feels good. It is a new dawn and a new day!

https://youtu.be/D5Y11hwjMNs

Ghilaine

@LadyGhilaine

Eye to Eye

Interestingly, on a bright sunny day, we are less likely to be kind to others and sometimes forget our common courtesies. Perhaps the answer is obvious to you, but it is because more of us are wearing sunglasses, we make less eye contact. In London, eye contact may not be that common anyway, but just imagine how much worse it gets when everyone is covering their eyes.

Catching someone’s eye is one of the surest ways to get them to see you as a human being and by extension being courteous and kind. It is sometimes good to remember if you meet someone that may not be having such a good day. Try and catch their eye, even perhaps smile. This may just calm them down or even make their bad day a little better. Perhaps the results are better than reciprocating their negativity.

Ghilaine

@LadyGhilaine

Being Yourself

I wonder about where the term ‘we get on like a house on fire’ came from. I have put it into a search engine and I am not sure the results are very trustworthy. I digress, the reason I thought of it is because it is the term that springs to mind when I think of Salma. We were introduced by Zoe Cunningham (of course!) and I was nervous before our first meeting as Zoe spoke so highly of her. There was no need to be nervous at all, Salma is thoughtful and kind. We got on like a house on fire!

Salma is one of those ladies that offers sound and practical advice. With her many years experience in the IT industry, we had a lot in common, although different sides of the same coin. Salma moved away from a 16 year career in the IT consultancy and sales sector to set up her own consultancy, Winning Demos. Her goal is to use her passion for business psychology and combine this with her knowledge of pre-sales and sales to deliver solutions that are both practical and offer clients the winning ‘x’ factor.

Mark Tayler, Director at B2B Consultancy Services, agrees with me: “Working with Salma was a joy! She is extremely professional and competent and helped greatly in developing my new management team utilising a number of different techniques that she has perfected over the years. I look forward to working with her again sometime in the future.”

As well as training technical people to present technical demonstrations that sell and turning support staff into trust advisors for their clients, Salma coaches those in leadership positions to create a positive management style and lead with authenticity and those going through transition or change. Salma is fully aware how much you need to be yourself in business, recognising her talent, values and purpose have been crucial to her surviving the tough times and attracting people who want what she does in the way that she does it.

She unapologetically works in the way that suits and works for her and has been successful doing it. She is a great person to pass on that knowledge and advice to those that feel they are not being themselves when they walk into work.

Salma is regularly training at techUK, so if you get the opportunity or want to brush up on your demonstration skills, you should check out one of her courses. Check them out here. If you do, let her know we passed you along!

Here’s to a winning week!

Ghilaine

@LadyGhilaine

Be Kind, Always

“Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always” Unknown

I have this quote close to me, always. I try and remember this every day. We need to remember that the world doesn’t revolve around us. Everyone is having a life that you cannot understand. However much you want to walk in someone’s shoes, all that you end up with is their shoes (I thank my brother, Kester Wynyard, for that quote). But that doesn’t stop us being able to appreciate that things in their life are not going according to their plan. If we get angry, frustrated or annoyed by their behaviour towards us, does that help anyone.

How about just giving them the benefit of the doubt that they are struggling with something and offer them kindness in return. We cannot all be happy every single minute, but we can offer kindness.

It cost nothing, but the return on investment is amazing!

Ghilaine

@LadyGhilaine

Communities of quality not quantity

Do you think about how all these digital offerings get created? We see the founders promoting their products, giving interviews and being the front of a great company. What we don’t often see is the people working hard to make it so.

Nitesh Thadani is one of those people. He is a hard person to discover. Building great products, setting up the strategy for digital businesses. Most of all he is delivering the products and leading technical teams.

Roger Willmott, CTO at OneHydra found just that: “Nitesh was instrumental in re-building a dysfunctional development team and non-working development environment into a fully production environment in 4 months. Delivery went quickly from 2 releases/year to 1 major release per month, and then fully agile with 2 week iterations. Nitesh demonstrated great motivational and people management skills.”

He is the man behind the woman at Treniq. From her ten-year reign in the marketing industry to her current position behind Treniq, Sheetal Sachdev is an authority on bespoke furniture.

Treniq is the manifestation of the love for unique products, shared by two people: Her and her long-time friend, Nitesh. He, a technology evangelist who worked as a Vice President in a leading UK bank as well as co-founding a profitable venture in the past. They combined their expertise in marketing and technology to bring you Treniq – an amalgamation of trendy and unique – exploring new territories in both design and practice. Showcased within the luxuriously eye-catching, user-friendly walls of the online shop is a collection of handcrafted unique furniture and home accessories, created by designer-makers from around the world.

They are just getting started. They have big plans and their customers are at the heart of them. They want to build a community around the love of fine furniture and craftsmanship. They are promoting quality, not quantity and re-igniting the desire for bespoke furniture, bringing the designers closer to the customers.

Being the man behind the woman and behind a lot of stable digital programs, you may not see much of Nitesh in the limelight, whilst he is busy keeping his reputation is tact. But if you do get a chance to meet him, you will have a great chat over a coffee.

Here’s to a productive good quality week!

Ghilaine

@LadyGhilaine

Trusting the wrong person

I am sure there is someone in your life (or perhaps well out of it) that you trust(ed) and they took advantage of that trust and let you down.

There are so many reasons we trust people. I for one like to start with trust and then have it removed rather than the other way round. Many people like to wait and build trust, waiting for proof.

Either way, once you have established trust, you feel that you know the person, they are someone you invest a lot of time, emotion and effort in. In one second, that can all be in ruins. It can feel like something has died. Stages of grief are discussed. That is exactly what is happening. Trust is like love, once it has gone it leaves a hole that cannot be filled. You have to give yourself time to get through it, analyse it, work through it.

Like love, if you have trusted once, it makes it easier to trust again. It is always a shame that it may make you less open to trusting someone else, but with time and a positive outlook, you can come out wiser and stronger, but no less trusting.

Ghilaine

@LadyGhilaine

What is the opposite of Giving?

How have you answered the question? Did you use the word take or receive? 

Receive: To be given or presented with

Take: Capture or gain possession of

Which answer would you prefer? How you answer probably says a lot about how you perceive the act of giving.

From http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/

Ghilaine

@LadyGhilaine