OPERATION BUTTERFLY (TOP SECRET)

Posted on by Martin Murphy

When I was teaching leadership to intelligence agents in a far off land, they explained to me that although they loved the concepts they feared they would encounter resistance in the bureaucratic systems they work in.

We’ve all got to become leaders. I wrote a book ‘Mercenaries to Missionaries’ (see link in comments) which is about transforming into inspirational leaders on a mission to make the world a better place.

Leaders are ordinary people achieving the extraordinary, leading themselves & by example others, into a world which is socially just, environmentally sustainable & a fulfilling place to live & work.

People need 3 things to change:

ASPIRATIONAL: Who will I become?
INSPIRATIONAL: How will it benefit others?
MOTIVATIONAL: How will it benefit me?

I explained to the secret agents that they had to become like the imaginel cells in caterpillars. These cells act differently within the caterpillar, making small changes from within until they reach a threshold point & transform the whole system into a Butterfly

They were already secret agents, now they had to become SECRET CHANGE AGENTS; steadily influencing the outer world from the inside

WHAT’S YOUR MISSION?

Message if you want help!

What Traits Make a Good Leader

Posted on by Martin Murphy

Whilst being interviewed I was asked what traits make a good leader. It reminded of an exercise I do on the Mercenary to Missionary Leadership retreats.

Overcoming Zoom Fatigue & Enjoying Effective Online Meetings with Mission Power!

Posted on by Martin Murphy

With the desire for remote working from home increasing, then becoming a necessity due to Covid-19,

Richard Elwell and I discuss the complexity which makes online meetings an evolution in some ways but also a well-being challenge because it can be so exhausting.

We discuss the Mission Power Meeting Methodology and how this can be used to optimise the technology whilst also leveraging the potential for people to enjoy effective and rewarding online and face-to-face meetings.

THE FIVE SUPERPOWERS OF GREAT LEADERS

Posted on by Martin Murphy

Archimedes said, ‘give me a lever long enough and a strong place to stand, and I can move the world’. Well the lever is leadership and the place to stand is humility.

With humility the word leader transforms from a noun to a verb. Leading is something that ordinary people can do to leverage the potential within other people, themselves, a team or a situation. With simple rules of behaviours amongst a group of people comes synergy, where the whole becomes more effective than the sum of its parts.

The following leadership Superpowers are really simple, the challenge for most ‘so-called’ leaders today is having the humility and compassion to want to be great leaders because most are ego-centric as opposed to eco-centric. There are plenty of great leaders out there but unfortunately their results and efforts are overpowered by ego-centric power brokers who maintain the status -quo.

The world needs great leadership and effective teamwork at every level and every corner of the world right now, if we’re to tackle the enormous challenges which have come about by ego-centric leadership that has run rampant supported by delusional ideology and institutions which condones selfish behaviour.

The five leadership super powers:

Listen and clarify: This requires cognitive intelligence and it is a skill which requires the leader to engage in focussed listening, summarising and questioning to ascertain more of the details.

Recognise and reward: A lot of people complain that they’re not recognised at work and in some of their closest relationships. It is often why people may move on from one organisation in search of more rewarding pastures.

Nobody wants to be a widget in the machine, especially since the social contract which kept people subservient in the Victorian era, has been shredded. An effective leader utilises behavioural intelligence to recognises people’s efforts when they’re doing good work and rewards them for their efforts.

Enquire and empathise: This requires the use of compassion and emotional intelligence. With this you enquire how a person is or a team is and you try to intuit how they are feeling so that you can understand their situation more clearly. Often this will mean listening for what isn’t being said, understanding the whole person and what’s going on in their life outside of the organisation, so you can support them.

Challenge and champion: Leaders should be constantly looking for ways to improve the structure and challenge the status-quo. It requires the use of social intelligence to see how the team are operating, the lines of communication, the informal networks and also looking outside to learn new ideas that can be assimilated into the organisation, team or individual. It also involves creativity to come up with new modus-operandi, products and services and then champion those ideas so everybody gets to hear about them.

Knowing what to do and when: Lastly, the leader needs to exercise situational awareness. This includes being self-aware enough to understand their own skills and what they may need to practice more of, but also a leader needs to be able to determine when and which Leader Superpower to exercise to optimise the situation.

Leading in Challenging Times

Posted on by Martin Murphy
In the third in our series of weekly webinars, we spoke to special guest Martin Murphy, ex-special forces soldier and founder of Elite Leadership, on how to lead your team through a crisis.

Some of the top takeaways included:

1. Good leaders look after the people first
2. Don’t stare at the fire, look for opportunities
3. Top behaviours of effective leaders: emotional intelligence; learning agility; humility; courage
4. How they lead: engage with their teams; align them around common objectives and goals; evolve if things change; practice radically open communication
5. Leaders often cannot escape the storm so they must be able to create peace and tranquillity within the storm to allow them to think clearly and make great decisions. The SOAR model is a way to slow down the reactive thinking process and induce a creative interlude in which higher order thinking is possible:
a. Suspend snap decision making
b. Observe the problem
c. Allow wisdom to percolate up
d. then Respond quickly
6. Promote positive behaviours by adopting a HERO mindset. So be: Helpful; Effective; Resilient; and Optimistic.

There were many more top tips he had to share which can can watch in this video.

 

Great Leaders are Learning to Paradigm Shift

Posted on by Martin Murphy

“The biggest paradigm shifts happening right now are ironically the increasing awareness of the existence of paradigms…”

Paradigms are a worldview shared amongst a group of people so they can experience group identity
and achieve a common purpose. Our world is governed by them very much like seas influence the
life of a fish.

Examples of paradigms include the idea of countries, money, religion.

They are a set of beliefs, values and stories which enable collaboration with greater numbers of people and even with people living different locations. It is our ability to use paradigms that enabled us  to climb to the top of the species hierarchy.

One monkey left on a deserted island might survive more ably than one person might (unless he’s Bear Grylls). But if you put one hundred people on the island, then they would organise themselves more effectively than the monkeys.
But there are a few problems with paradigms….  Read More

Imposter Syndrome~Why Bad Leaders Don’t Get it & How To Get Over It!

Posted on by Martin Murphy

I was recently invited by the crew at JCI Manchester to present a talk on Impostor Syndrome.

JCI is a global not-for-profit organisation run for members by members, which provides development opportunities for 18 – 40 year old professionals and leaders, to empower them to create positive change.

Whilst presenting my talk I pointed to a statistic which said that in a group of 3000 people aged 18-34, a whopping 86% experienced Impostor Syndrome in that year. As I had a room full of this age bracket, I used this as an opportunity to ask the room and sure enough, practically all the hands went up.

I thought I would follow this up with this article because as a leadership and team performance coach, I believe social anxiety problems like Impostor Syndrome are limiting talented people from making a positive impact.

Want to know more about Impostor Syndrome from a different perspective, read: Here

The DRIVE for Transformation

Posted on by Martin Murphy

I’ve just been speaking to some friends who’re doing some changes in the way they operate their business. Well they’re not ‘just’ changes, they’re actually transforming the structure and the way they communicate with each other and their customers.

There are five stages to pass through and seven fears to overcome when making bold moves to make your world and everybody else’s, a better place to live and work. You’d think everybody would be up for the challenge, but that’s not usually the case. That’s why Tom Collins advises leaders in his book; ‘Good to Great’, that before you decide where your business bus is going, you need to:

‘get the right people on the bus, and sat in the right places’

 

Continue Reading  Here:

SOAR to Success Thinking! Make having brilliant ideas easy

Posted on by Martin Murphy

Our normal day to day working life or even just life itself can leave us feeling mentally confused. When we find ourselves so caught up in the whirlwind we often cannot see the wood for the trees.
In this fast-moving mental state, our brains are very capable at using past experiences to make a decision. In these situations, we make decisions intuitively and mostly this works okay. The more successful experiences we have built up over time in a particular field, the better our decision making will be when we face similar challenges in the future. That’s why experience counts in business. READ MORE

How to minimise biased thinking when briefing your teams

Posted on by Martin Murphy

“Humans never communicate as effectively as they think they do” Christine Comaford

So, I am working with this group of team leaders and I notice that they are greatly biased towards a certain style of behaviour and communication. They’re very collaborative and inclusive when they are briefing their teams for a task to be carried out. The problem is that they continue to collaborate and communicate until they leave themselves little time for achieving their task.
This is because the group of leaders have grown up in a certain type of culture. Their culture drives their way of thinking and behaving. Just as an individual has a personality, an organisation or country can have its own culture. There is much to be said for being aware of such biases and overcoming them because neuroscience is finding that to have a diverse and inclusive culture creates better performance. But it’s one thing to be aware of them, that alone will not stop biased thinking and behaving. What we need is a process to overcome this when briefing teams. READ MORE