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The link between curiosity and success

The link between curiosity and success

The link between curiosity and success

“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”- Albert Einstein

The curious mind is an outstanding tool for professionals and business. The strong desire to learn and understand unfolds the intellect for innovation and resourcefulness. Curious individuals make more rational decisions, more creative solutions and tend to form stronger interpersonal relationships.

How curiosity can excel your career or business or just your zest :

Improve business practices. The more knowledge you obtain about your business or industry, the higher your insight will be on methods to increase your revenue and improve customer and employee satisfaction.

Better Decisions. Curiosity guides versatile thinking. Understanding the entire picture before putting a plan to action leads to improved decision making.

It makes you more likeable. When you seek to increase your knowledge and understanding about a topic you are more confident and intelligent. When you show curiosity towards other people you will become more likable and relatable to them.

Relationships with stakeholders. Showing a genuine interest in customers, employees and other stakeholders is the foundation to a strong, satisfied, and loyal relationships.

Resolve customer difficulties. When a customer has a problem, the curious employee listens, considers why this problem has occurred and develop an innovative solution to help the customer and prevent future complications.

Learning from sales mistakes. If you aren’t making sales or your customers are not coming back and you haven’t being curious to discover why, you will never learn from the errors that have been made.

Negotiation. Curiosity for what both stakeholders want or need, helps negotiations that result in two satisfied parties. The curious mind will be interested in all perspectives.

Reduced Conflict. As above, considering the perspective of other parties and encouraging others to do the same supports collaboration and improved group achievements.

Developing products or services. The curious mind considers how things work, how they can be improved and what people want or need. This is essential to develop high demand products or services.

Encouraging Curiosity in the workplace:

Research indicates that leaders who encourage curiosity create a more wholesome work environment where employees have higher job satisfaction and performance.

Open Mind. When a suggestion is made or a question is asked, regardless of what it is… keep an open mind, branch off the idea and see if it can take you to new heights.  Choose how you respond – think about your response!

Try new things. Sometimes the reason we don’t change is because we don’t feel there is a need, but when we change, wonderful things can happen. Once a month, try something new. Go to a different restaurant, try a new sport, watch a movie from a different genre than your preferred. When you try new things you trigger curiosity within your mind.

Hire Curious Individuals. Consider the way you advertise roles. Consider the questions you ask during an interview. Listen to the question’s candidates ask. Provoke their curiosity during this process and select some naturally curious individuals for your company.

Demonstrate Curiosity. Express curiosity in the interests and opinions of your employees. Ask individuals about improvements they would make. Use their responses to develop a new way of operating. Employees will respect a leader that values and listens to them.

Ask your employees. Questions about what they would do differently or what could be improved. They will respect a leader that asks and listens. Use these responses to redevelop a new way of doing. Solutions to your problems could be sitting in the mind of your colleague.

Focus on learning not performance. To increase confidence, skills and motivation it is more effective to set and work towards learning goals than performance goals.

Encourage employees to expand their skills and knowledge. Support employees to complete further study, expand their network or experiment with new ideas or ways of doing. Leaders and companies will benefit from their knowledge and increased performance.

Arrange innovation days. Organise regular meetings with employees to brainstorm ideas for change. Ask questions such as why… what if… and how do we…? Don’t just accept things as good enough, or because it is how things have always been done. Focus on the experiences people wish to have and the why.   

An individuals curiosity tends to decrease the longer they stay in a job due to being progressive tied up in the daily workload. Try to set some time aside each day to open your mind, listen to someone else or try something new.

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence.”- Albert Einstein

Ferne Eliz King

Love Life  Love YOUR Life

About Ferne

Ferne is globally recognised and called upon for quickly accelerating complex change to achieve business strategies.  Translating strategies to actionable plans, prioritisation of those actions, engagement from the right people, bringing business architecture to life or your life plan if individual and in many cases driving the change as a program director.  The bottom line is Ferne accelerates businesses or individuals to achieve outcomes and enabling that is her passion.

What's the consequence if you take no action?

“If you do the same thing today as yesterday, your tomorrow will be the same as today”.  Ferne Eliz King

Want To Learn More?

Book a free 15 min call and see how Ferne can help you accelerate your aspirations for you or your business.

The connection between Emotional Intelligence and Success

The connection between Emotional Intelligence and Success

The connection between Emotional Intelligence and Success.

Did you know…

  • 90% of the top performers in business have a high emotional intelligence?
  • In 70% of cases, people with average IQ’s outperform those with a higher IQ? (This is linked to the individuals emotional intelligence)
  • People with high emotional intelligence earn an average of 29k more each year
    (Source: Inc)

Your emotional intelligence is an element of your emotional strength. Your emotional intelligence involves how approachable, observant, and empathetic you are, how well you listen, the way you handle interpersonal problems or failures, and the way you lead or work in a team. Your emotional strength goes beyond that to daily behaviours and habits to continuously improve your quality of life. While your overall emotional strength is important for a healthy work ethic you need strong emotional intelligence to succeed. The great news is unlike your IQ, your emotional intelligence is like a muscle and by doing the right exercise, you can improve yours.

Exercises to Improve your emotional intelligence

Before we begin, understand that increasing your emotional intelligence involves hard work and dedication. It is hard work, but it is worthwhile.

Small beginnings

Rome wasn’t built in a day. Don’t try to change too much too fast. Focus on one or two of the below areas to begin with and as they become natural to you, move on to other areas.

  • Tomorrow is a new day. It might be a cliché but reflecting on your performance each day is one of the most effective ways to improve your emotional intelligence. Recognise what has gone well and how you have made yourself proud, but also reflect on what you could improve on. Start fresh each day knowing you will be better than yesterday.
  • Set goals for yourself. Use your daily reflections to start setting personal and professional goals for yourself. Display them visually to keep yourself on track. Having a goal means your are always working to improve.
  • Be accountable. This one is a bit confronting, when things go wrong it is human nature to find someone or something to blame. You are in charge or your life and your decisions. When something goes wrong, challenge yourself to take responsibility. When you hold yourself accountable you begin to discover why things have not gone to plan you are more likely to learn from your experience.
  • Give your Emotions Time to Process. We all have different personalities and with that comes different reactions to the same experience. Immediately reacting is not going to do you any favours. Reacting with anger can cause you to ‘shoot yourself in the foot’ long term, reacting with excitement can cause you to overcommit and does not create trust with peers. Regardless of your feelings, always stop and give your emotions time to catch up and try to consider reason before you react.
  • Handling Stress. Discover healthier mechanisms to cope with your stress. After a hard day, there are some common habits a lot for us use to relieve stress such as alcohol, devices/TV, or unhealthy eating. Find a healthy alternative that you personally enjoy. For example, light exercise, reading a book, a relaxing bath, cooking a meal, calling an old friend, spending time with the family or journaling.
  • Work on your mindset. Consciously start choosing not to let problems beyond your control affect you. Choose to push negative thoughts aside and focus on something positive or at least productive. Your mindset affects your relationships and your motivation, so make an intentional decision to improve it.
  • Increase self-discipline. Try to improve your discipline by a small amount each day. You can teach yourself to be more disciplined, but the mistake is to go too hard too fast, the only pitfall is making too many plans and only taking 1 action or minimal actions.  Make less plans and action all your plans. 
  • Decisions. Think every decision through. Challenge yourself to think from different angles, from the perspectives of others and before you make your final decisions consider the risks associated and how you will manage them. Consider consequences, consider the feeling and emotion you will experience when that decision is realised – is that feeling greater than the fear of not making the decision? 
  • Just do it. It is normal to have apprehension when trying new things. If you have an idea to progress in your business or career, don’t let that fear hold you back! If you want to start creating memes for your socials, start a newsletter or develop a new product- go for it!  Test, learn, refine .. but above all – take the first step.
  • Know your limits. Business can be challenging, know your capabilities. Don’t allow yourself to burn out because you have too much pride to admit you need help or support.
  • Take the challenge. Aim to do 1 difficult task each day. Experts claim that challenging yourself once a day will significantly increase your mental strength, resilience, knowledge and overall success.

Exercise your emotional strength each day, gradually improve your emotional intelligence celebrate the long term benefits in your career and personal relationships.  Track your progress !

Ferne Eliz King

Love Life  Love YOUR Life

About Ferne

Ferne is globally recognised and called upon for quickly accelerating complex change to achieve business strategies.  Translating strategies to actionable plans, prioritisation of those actions, engagement from the right people, bringing business architecture to life or your life plan if individual and in many cases driving the change as a program director.  The bottom line is Ferne accelerates businesses or individuals to achieve outcomes and enabling that is her passion.

What's the consequence if you take no action?

“If you do the same thing today as yesterday, your tomorrow will be the same as today”.  Ferne Eliz King

Want To Learn More?

Book a free 15 min call and see how Ferne can help you accelerate your aspirations for you or your business.

Why employee values should align with employer visions

Why employee values should align with employer visions

Why employee values should align with employer visions.

“When you do what you love and love what you do, you will have more energy at the end of the day than the beginning.” – Dr. John DeMartini

Companies need to employee people that will love what they do. When employees have passion, they will be inspired to work towards bigger goals and have increased productivity. All of this comes down to values.

Our values are the foundational to our thoughts, actions, and decisions. Everyone has a unique value system. The higher the value on our personal hierarchy, the more confident and knowledgeable we tend to be. When we engage in something high on our system of values, we become enthusiastic and extroverted. The opposite can be said for things that are lower on our value system, we tend to procrastinate, become introverted, and have less knowledge and confidence.

Aligning the value system of each employee with your company is a recipe for success. While experience and skills are important on paper, a ‘cultural fit’ is more important in practice. You will not receive the highest effort, passion or innovation from the employee that is there purely for the pay cheque. When your employee’s values align with your companies, their will be increased motivation and passion in their work, they will want to improve by setting goals and working towards them. They will have fulfilment in their role and work in collaboration with you towards a shared vision each day.

When interviewing prospective employees, ask questions to gain insight on their value system. Select employees not just on their skills and knowledge but on how well their value system aligns with your company’s vision.

For a series of questions designed to emerge the value systems of your employees, get in contact with me at [email protected]

Love Life  Love YOUR Life

Ferne Eliz King

Based on insights from Dr John DeMartini whom has been a mentor of mine for years. Amended by Ferne Eliz King.

About Ferne

Ferne is globally recognised and called upon for quickly accelerating complex change to achieve business strategies.  Translating strategies to actionable plans, prioritisation of those actions, engagement from the right people, bringing business architecture to life or your life plan if individual and in many cases driving the change as a program director.  The bottom line is Ferne accelerates businesses or individuals to achieve outcomes and enabling that is her passion.

What's the consequence if you take no action?

“If you do the same thing today as yesterday, your tomorrow will be the same as today”.  Ferne Eliz King

Want To Learn More?

Book a free 15 min call and see how Ferne can help you accelerate your aspirations for you or your business.

Finding balance Between Autonomy and Dependency

Finding balance Between Autonomy and Dependency

Finding balance Between Autonomy and Dependency

Workplace culture is fundamentally about cooperation and security. A negative workplace culture, where people don’t feel safe or have a sense of belonging is generally the cause of major resistance to strategic change. It is all too common for cultural change to be overhauled AFTER a major change initiative has failed. Learn the lesson, review your culture and the tools to inspire and engage as a precursor to change events saving precious time and resources in the process, plus realising the benefits of change earlier than later.

Addressing culture in the most practical and effective way should be a priority before you implement change.  Take the time to observe the culture, ask questions and communicate with those involved, note down the current culture, both positive and negative. Celebrate the positive cultural behaviours and use them to your advantage. Select a few critical negative behaviours, then with your employees work to improve them by agreeing on a set of values, the behaviours that will demonstrate these values.  There are lots of tools available and great advisors relating to cultural change and the time is ripe!!

When you are ready for strategic planning ask yourself the following

    1. What will those involved in the change gain? (If the only answer is save or gain money for the organisation, try again with the other stakeholders in mind as this will undo all the work you have done building and strengthening the culture)
    2. What culture is needed to succeed?
    3. Is the current culture aligned with the direction the strategic change will take us? (If not, what needs to be changed or improved?)

Studies show that only 10% of patients that have received a heart bypass have made long term diet and lifestyle changes. My point being, change is hard, even when your life depends on it, even when you know it’s needed. Don’t make it harder by underestimating how much of your strategies success relies on cultural alignment.

This blog has been centred around my experiences and insights from The Human Science of Strategy : What works and what doesn’t by Dr Bob Murray and Dr Alicia Fortinberry. Executives and Leaders of change- Check this book out, it is gold!  

Best of luck to you as you endeavour to unlock your life’s purpose and your businesses goals. Check in with yourself and hold yourself accountable regularly. The future you deserve is there for the taking. If you wish any extra support or guidance on this journey, please get in contact with me at [email protected].

 

Love Life, Love YOUR Life

 

Ferne Eliz King

About Ferne

Ferne is globally recognised and called upon for quickly accelerating complex change to achieve business strategies.  Translating strategies to actionable plans, prioritisation of those actions, engagement from the right people, bringing business architecture to life or your life plan if individual and in many cases driving the change as a program director.  The bottom line is Ferne accelerates businesses or individuals to achieve outcomes and enabling that is her passion.

What's the consequence if you take no action?

“If you do the same thing today as yesterday, your tomorrow will be the same as today”.  Ferne Eliz King

Want To Learn More?

Book a free 15 min call and see how Ferne can help you accelerate your aspirations for you or your business.

Gaining Trust

Gaining Trust

Gaining Trust, what % are you in?

 

Only 30-40% of employees trust their upper management, it’s often a result of prejudice from previous bad experiences but at times it can be directly related to the management style within your organisation. The good news is regardless if the trust was lost or never existed, it can be built up. Turning it around require time and effort but it should be a priority because without trust there is no commitment causing you strategic initiatives to fail.

Concentrating on the 5 C’s of trust is a great starting point to establish and repair relationships with your employees. Trust is built on relationships. Also try this with your family, friends, colleagues, community or any person you engage with!  Build it into your values!!

    1. Commonality – Find something you have in common with individuals. It will be a great conversation point and showing an interest in them will strengthen your relationships with them.
    2. Consistency – Be predictable and grounded. Follow through with your commitments.
    3. Competence – Be exceptional in your role. Be knowledgeable, have expertise and make good judgement calls.
    4. Care for other persons – Be empathetic and flexible, put yourself out for other people.
    5. Communication – Have regular and honest communication in person. Remember to listen and understand, communication is not just about speaking.

In addition to this don’t forget to praise your employee, your family member, your neighbour, people in your community or circle of reference.  Notice and recognise their achievements and success. Humans want to feel important, and they desire positive attention because it makes them feel safe and secure.

If you enable your employees (and all people you interact with) to feel safe, supported, valued, and accepted you will be making great progressing in gaining their trust.

This blog has been created from my experience and findings from reading The Human Science of Strategy: What works and what doesn’t by Dr Bob Murray and Dr Alicia Fortinberry. Executives and Leaders of change- Check this book out, it is gold!  

Best of luck to you as you endeavour to unlock your life’s purpose and businesses goals. Check in with yourself and hold yourself accountable regularly. The future you deserve is there for the taking. If you wish for extra support or guidance on this journey, please get in contact with me at [email protected].

 

Love Life, Love YOUR Life

 

Ferne Eliz King

About Ferne

Ferne is globally recognised and called upon for quickly accelerating complex change to achieve business strategies.  Translating strategies to actionable plans, prioritisation of those actions, engagement from the right people, bringing business architecture to life or your life plan if individual and in many cases driving the change as a program director.  The bottom line is Ferne accelerates businesses or individuals to achieve outcomes and enabling that is her passion.

What's the consequence if you take no action?

“If you do the same thing today as yesterday, your tomorrow will be the same as today”.  Ferne Eliz King

Want To Learn More?

Book a free 15 min call and see how Ferne can help you accelerate your aspirations for you or your business.