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I’ve had a number of conversations with senior leaders recently that have seemed to highlight a developing issue within organisations — the issue of leadership and leadership succession. 

I’ve worked in a number of organisations now, helping them to nurture, grow, and develop their leadership talent when it’s been identified that some senior leaders are retiring and there is no real succession plan! 

Most senior leaders we come into contact with are so busy that it’s hard to find time to develop and grow the managers who report to them, leading to a widening skills gap between strategic leaders and their operational managers. This gap means that, often, senior leaders get pulled back into the day-to-day, doing things that are actually below their pay-grade, and should, with the right steer, support and encouragement, be being done by their own senior managers. 

The senior managers themselves often end up feeling like they are stuck in a loop of reactivity, constantly putting out fires that, with a bit of foresight and planning, they know they could have prevented. They feel overwhelmed and frustrated, because they’ve got a mountain of things to do, but are also not being the leaders they’d like to be. 

This hasn’t always been the case. When Meta started some 25 years ago now, most organisations understood that investing in their people was a valuable use of time, resources, and budgets. Invest in your people and they will be more loyal and will be ever more committed to helping your organisation to grow, thrive and, yes, be more profitable! 

The death knell for leadership development (in all but the largest global corporates) was the financial crisis of 2008/9. With the tightening of budgetary belts, the streamlining of organisations and new flatter structures, training and development (even of the most talented) basically went out of the metaphorical window. Only business-critical professional training was funded, and even then, you’d often have to fight for it. 

The fact that training hasn’t happened doesn’t mean that the need for leadership development has gone away. Of course it hasn’t! In fact, I’d argue that the need now is greater than ever. 

Most people in organisations will have had two-to-three promotions in the last 10-15 years. That means that someone who was a team-lead (a first step of a management job) in 2009 may well be a head of service or senior manager by now (depending, obviously, on the size of your organisation). During that time, they will have been expected to ‘hit the ground running’ and learn ‘on the job’ — but rarely, if at all, does anyone actually sit down with them and explain exactly what the difference is now they have their promotion and are a ‘senior manager’, or a part of the ‘leadership team’. 

The difference between being a manager and being a leader is massive. It’s a BIG step up. Most organisations are full of managers, not leaders because, generally, organisations will reward your management capabilities and not your leadership skills. The problem is that when you get to a head-of or director level, you really DO need to have developed your leadership skills, otherwise you’ll find the role nigh on impossible. 

When I’m coaching new leaders, I explain the difference between management and leadership with a motoring metaphor. 

When I was growing up and learning to drive in the early 1990s, cars had four gears (yes you young ‘uns reading this… just four gears! And, by the way, most households only had terrestrial TV which was just four channels!!) 

Then car manufacturers added a fifth gear and now most cars will have six gears. Management skills enable you to get to fourth gear. Leadership requires different ways of thinking, communicating, influencing, and seeing things — it requires that extra fifth gear. Senior leadership (director level and above) requires you to upgrade your leadership skills even more, so that you can operate in fifth and sixth gear. 

You have to LEARN how to be a leader. There are certain things you can do instinctively, but other leadership skills must be learnt. As a leader, you need to think differently to how you did as  a manager — it requires different skills, and a different operating level. If you continue to try to do your job in fourth gear, you’ll find that you will struggle, just as a car today may well be able to be in fourth gear as you hit the 70mph limit. However, it won’t be happy, and it would much rather be in fifth or even sixth gear. 

If there is investment in leadership training, it generally will give you a grounding in the ‘theory of leadership’, exploring academic, theoretical models rather than the practical application of leadership skills and practice. There is a place for that, but it’s not in the busy workplace of today. You need practical leadership tools in your toolkit that you can use in the challenging fast-paced environment of most workplaces. 

The vast majority of leadership coaching I do is helping those managers seen as potential leaders of the future to develop their leadership skills, helping them to find their own fifth gear and understand how to switch from competent manager to emerging leader. On average, the leaders I’ve worked with have got between one and two promotions (in the 12-24-month period after our coaching has begun) as a result of the skills they have learned during our coaching sessions together — that’s pretty impressive! And goes to show that, with a little investment in a leader, you get a quantifiable return on your investment for them, but more importantly, for your organisation. 

For some reason, some organisations (or more accurately some more enlightened senior leaders) will fund individual leaders for leadership coaching, but organisations don’t tend to look more broadly at their leadership needs for the future until it’s too late. It’s not seen as a ‘priority’, but what greater priority is there than creating fabulous leaders that will take your organisation into the next decade and beyond?

Organisations now have much flatter structures and, as a result, there are less obvious routes to promotion which means that, often, in order to progress, you might have to either take a sideways step into another area, perhaps out of your area of expertise, or indeed leave the organisation entirely because there is no obvious ‘next role’ for you. So, organisations lose talent and lose their potential leaders of the future. 

Be clear, this is a BUSINESS-CRITICAL ISSUE — one that all organisations need to take more seriously. Think about it, how often do you have to recruit externally into your more senior roles? How long (and how expensive) is that process to recruit at the highest level? You’re unlikely to get much change from a six-figure number — did you know that, for less than that, you could train and develop (and coach!) a whole group of leaders? Enough to be a valuable leadership pool on which to draw on in the future. Now, of course, it takes time to develop talent, but once the basic leadership skills are there, the time and capacity needed to get them to the requisite level is much less. It’s easier to mentor someone who is already half the way there rather than starting from scratch. 

So many senior leaders who I work with struggle to get everything done because there is a significant skills gap with those who report to them. They haven’t got the time or the mental capacity to be training their managers and so, yes, they will delegate some tasks, but often will be doing things (e.g., tasks and meetings) they really shouldn’t be doing at their level. They WANT to develop their managers, they NEED them to be leaders and more pro-active, however, they also don’t want to overload them and lose them or have them go off with stress as a result. 

It’s a tricky situation that requires some time and some proper attention. 

It’s time, as senior leaders, to look beyond this year’s business plan and targets. It’s time to take a cold hard look at the leadership situation within your organisation. 

Let’s start at the top. Take a moment now to look at your top leadership team. How old are they? Are there some leaders who are coming up to retirement? Do you have a real succession plan? What happens when these founts of organisational knowledge and wisdom leave? What if they were sadly to become ill? Would anyone else be able to step into their shoes? Or would some vital important knowledge, skills and relationships be lost as a result? 

Now, let’s look at the other managers and leaders in your organisation. Right now, in your organisation you will have some AMAZING managers who are a real safe pair of hands, who are beyond competent and genuinely talented. Their staff love them, they work hard, they get stuff DONE — these are the emerging leaders who need your attention.

They might not be perfect, they might be ‘rough diamonds’, but the raw talent and potential is there, in your management team. These talented managers just need a little push, a little help to make that transition to be your future leaders and senior leaders. Remember, it’s not always the senior managers, sometimes it’s the young up-and-coming managers who have that drive, that passion, that energy which needs tapping into. 

Whenever I do team awaydays, it always strikes me just how much untapped potential there is in organisations today. There are so many bright, talented, young people who just want to do their best and give of their best. Imagine if that potential was realised. Imagine if you gave them the tools and skills that enabled them to help you and the organisation to thrive? 

At Meta, we have been working with organisations to help develop their leadership talent for 25 years. In fact, longer than that, as Di has been working with organisational ‘leaders of the future’ for nearly 40 years. 

Over the years, we’ve come to realise that, yes, the young leaders need to understand the distinctions between management and leadership and, yes, they need to actively develop the differentiating leadership skills that are required to be a great leader. But we’ve also come to realise that the skills they learn, the tools in their leadership toolkits, need to be fit for purpose in today’s busy, demanding workplaces. They need to practical, not theoretical — applicable even on the busiest of workdays, when you’ve 2,000 emails in your inbox and a to-do list as long as your arm. 

At Meta, we’ve developed leadership development programmes that do precisely that. More than that, we make sure that the time away from the office develops not only individual leaders’ skills but also creates a fully functional leadership team that can be utilised DURING the programme to work on valuable cost-saving, continuous improvement projects across the organisation, that they themselves have identified. A quantifiable organisational return on the investment that you have given to these bright, young (and not so young), talented leaders.

I know, you’ve got a hundred and one things on your plate right now. But you need to put one more thing on your plate, before it’s too late. It’s important that you start to nurture and develop the future leaders of your organisation. Not next year, or the year after — but now. They won’t hang around for you to get around to it, so what are you waiting for? 

It’s time to realise the potential WITHIN your organisation. Stop looking outside, start growing your own leadership talent. The seeds are there, it just requires some thought, some attention, some investment of time and resource and, YES, a small amount of budget. The investment will more than pay you back though, in engaged, motivated, passionate, and energised new leaders. 

It goes without saying (I hope) that we’d love to help you with your leaders of tomorrow, equipping them with the skills required, the tools needed to take your organisation into a brighter future. 

So, if you get inspired as a result of today’s article to start looking at your future leaders, then please DO get in touch and we’ll do what we can to help you on your leadership journeys. 

Have a great month. 

In peace and with love

Jo x

In the 25 years Meta has been in business, it has been my great honour and privilege to meet and work with some amazing leaders. As we work across all sectors, I’ve worked with everyone from big brand global corporates to manufacturers, telecoms and finance, to government agencies, city and county councils, the NHS, charities big and small, non-profits big and small. In my experience, generally speaking, almost everyone wants to do a good job. Most people turn up to work wanting to get the best out of the day and get as much as possible done for the organisations they work for. There is a great work ethic in this country, and I have seen many a leader go way beyond the call of duty to get what needs to get done, done.

Ever since the financial crisis of 2008, organisations have consistently streamlined and “made efficiencies” to their organisational structures, so that many organisations, now, are between a third and a half of their original workforce. This means that most leaders are now doing the job that was once done by two or more people. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am all for efficiency minimising waste and duplication, however, there does come a point where there’s nothing left to cut away or “streamline”. I believe we are pretty much at that point now.

I see so many leaders in the Meta community whom we have worked with who are doing amazing jobs in very challenging organisational circumstances. I am often in awe of the leaders who I work with, in how they manage to get done what needs to get done, despite the lack of resources and budgets they have at their disposal.

This is especially true of the public sector. I am really fed up, as a business consultant, of hearing the government keep telling the UK population that the public sector is wasteful, bloated, and lazy. Are there savings to be made? Are their inefficiencies that could be improved? Of course there are! But what organisation, of the size these organisations are, would not have the same issues —no matter WHAT sector they are from?

In the last month, the government has singled out the NHS (in particular for this article, Integrated Care Boards (ICBs)) for severe cuts, cuts that have already been happening significantly and regularly even since I started working with them 11 years ago. This “administrative function” (the ICBs) found out about the cuts in the press (not from the government themselves) — 50% cuts by October this year was quoted (that’s on top of the 20-30% cuts they were already being asked to make).

You do the maths. That’s a heck of a lot of savings — an unrealistic amount if you want the organisation to function in any meaningful way.

It has been my great honour and privilege to work within the NHS, and I wanted to use this month’s Meta article to tell you why I think those leaders I’ve worked with inside the NHS are the most amazing leaders I have ever worked with.

The NHS is a confusing and baffling organisation. It has so many layers, oversight boards, regions, national bodies, local bodies, partnerships… but it has one overriding purpose: to make things better for the communities that it serves. Now, I cannot defend the WHOLE of the NHS, or its structure (much of which has come from consultations with the big business consultancies: KPMG, Deloitte, PWC, et al). All I want to do here is lay out the case for why I THINK the NHS leaders (specifically within the ICBs/NHS trusts that are being asked to make these cuts) I have worked with are brilliant, undervalued and, right now, being treated appallingly.

When I first started working within the NHS, I found it really hard to wrap my head around the structures, the governance — national, regional, localities. It was mind-bending just how many different things had to be taken into consideration as a senior leader within an ICB (they were called Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) when I started with them). I have worked with many, many, senior leaders in all sectors in my 25 years at Meta, from corporate execs in global businesses, to plant managers, strategic directors, CEOs, CFOs, and COOs. It’s fair to say that none of those roles are particularly easy, they have varying degrees of leadership requirements, but all are complex in their own ways. Almost none have impressed me as much as those I have worked with within the NHS.

In a corporate business, there is at least some budget (for the organisational operational delivery if nothing else) and an ability to take on resource in order to deliver on your targets and corporate business plans. In the NHS I have watched, year after year, budgets reduced and cut. So many new roles/posts agreed, then taken away because budgets can no longer support them. I’ve seen the struggle for leaders to employ the skilled staff they need because they cannot offer anything like the market rate for the level of manager or leader they require. I’ve seen them struggle with the turnover of staff (especially in lower entry level roles) because there is always someone else who can pay them more.

The consistent message in the NHS areas I have worked in has been, certainly in the last 5 years, do more for less. You can’t hire unless you can make the equivalent savings, don’t ask for more resource because there is none.

I have supported senior leaders and teams within the NHS whenever I can, because I have come to realise they are doing the very best they can in an almost impossible situation. Many are close to burnout and almost all are in and out of overwhelm. Why? Because there is just so much to be done, and they have not got the right level of resource to get it done.

We all remember the amazing work that the NHS did during the pandemic. Without them, where would we be? We recognise the work done by the frontline staff, the doctors, the nurses, the hospitals etc., and the government rightly protects their jobs, but we forget that the leaders and managers in ICBs (and NHS trusts) have been just as much on the frontline. Helping set up the pandemic Nightingale Hospitals (from scratch with no blueprint of how to do it), creating the supply chains to get important medical and protective equipment to the right places, setting up food banks to ensure that the most vulnerable in their communities got the basic supplies they needed, and redeploying staff across organisations to manage significant staff shortages. I was talking with many of the leaders I work with in the NHS during the pandemic, and they were consistently working 14hours+ a day 6 or 7 days a week, to do what needed to be done, without any complaints, often to the detriment of their own health.

Many are still recovering from the pandemic; their resilience has been tested to its limits and beyond. I have seen many have breakdowns, severe life-threatening illnesses and mental health episodes amongst those leaders I have worked with. Of all the people I work with, it is those in the NHS that I worry about the most. They  have given so much and do such brilliant work in almost impossible circumstances. I would challenge any senior leader within the corporate sector to try and do what these leaders do with the resource and budgets at their disposal.

They have to work in a complex system that requires every single leadership tool that I’ve ever come across. Often, they are expected to react, in moments, to a government dictate or change in policy or political direction. There is very little consistency of message or direction of travel from the powers that be, and it is a very challenging environment to work in. It’s nigh on impossible and I don’t know how they do it.

Not only do they do it, but they do so with good grace. They understand, as public servants, that things may well change next week, and they will adapt, and they will ensure that what they have is delivered is to the best of their abilities. More cuts? OK, we’ll do what we can to make that work. No matter whether they agree with them or not, they will implement them and make it work. Give them the target and leave them to it — they WILL GET IT DONE. I am astounded at how they manage to do it.

It blows my mind how resilient the leaders I work with are. They inspire me in their dedication and public service. They are TRUE public servants. They deserve our respect and gratitude, they really do. I have often offered to do my work within the NHS for free because there are “no budgets this year”, and I have many pieces of work get shelved because cuts have come out of nowhere. But I still do what I can to support them, formally and informally, because I believe in these leaders and the institution and founding principles of the NHS. And I will continue to support these amazing leaders in any way I can.

I encourage YOU reading this to do the same. I want you to know that, in my opinion, the NHS is in incredibly safe hands — those leaders I know (and yes, I am sure there are some leaders, as within any organisation, who are not as good) are AMAZING — TRULY AMAZING. I don’t know HOW they do what they do, and I wanted to celebrate them in this article. Along with reminding you that not everything a politician says is true (as if you didn’t already know that).

These public servants go way beyond the call of duty to deliver on your behalf and improve your local NHS services. They should be applauded and celebrated, not berated and told they are “lazy”. I’d like Wes Streeting and Rachael Reeves to spend a month in their shoes — I think they’d quickly understand, like me, how brilliant, talented, and amazing the NHS leaders are, and how LUCKY we are, as tax-payers and as a nation, to have them working on our behalf.

I want those leaders in the NHS who I have worked with to know that this article is for you — I am in awe of what you do. You are doing an AMAZING job in incredibly testing times, and I want to celebrate you today. What I see in you is the very best of humanity — you are humble, kind, compassionate, and you CARE. You genuinely want the best for those communities you serve and you genuinely get stuff done! I want to publicly THANK YOU for that service here today.

Whatever is to come, Meta will continue to support the NHS in any way we can. I will support you in any way I can. So please DO call on that support anytime.

I hope today’s article has given you some food for thought, and I hope that wherever you are and whatever you do, you know that Meta is here for you too.

On the topic of support, we are setting up a NEW META LEADERSHIP NETWORK  and we’d love you to be a part of it. Our first event is being held on June 3^rd and we’ll be discussing what it is like to lead and be a leader in the hybrid era. So, if you’d like to join that event (it’s FREE) and join in the conversation, contact me via email at jo@metapositive.com and I’ll send you the more detailed info.

In peace,
Jo
META CEO

We are now in year 5 of a global experiment in hybrid working. We adopted it along with the technology that goes with it out of necessity, because of the global pandemic. 

At the time we needed to ensure that our people were safe, that businesses did not completely grind to a halt, and we could, in time, begin to rebuild our businesses during the pandemic and post-pandemic. So, we sent people to work from home and then moved to a hybrid-model of working.  

At first there were real benefits to working from home: we could put a wash on and get it out, we could go out in the garden and have a cuppa and bring the laptop with us. We could get comfy, be in our scruffs as we worked, take our prescribed hour a day exercise while we dialled in to a meeting. Organisations were hugely supportive of our well-being and we seemed (despite the dystopian reality of life in the pandemic) to be living the utopian work dream. 

However, that dream, for many, quickly began to turn into a nightmare. People want to give of their best, most have a strong work ethic which means that they started to work through their breaks, and worked longer hours, working through what would have been their commute home. No more the lazy cuppa in the garden while sitting on Teams – the tide of work was coming in and fully invading peoples’ homes and lives. 

Yes, I realise that for a few demographics, for example new parents and IT programmers/coders and many in Gen Z, hybrid working has been a boon that continues to suit them, however, for most it is not. We are working much harder and longer hours than ever now we are hybrid-working. 

The data bears this out. From 2000-2019 the average work week in the UK did increase by 1.5hours from 40.5hrs to 42hrs. However, during the pandemic, a major study done in America (on 3 million workers, so no small research) found that, on average, people were working 48.5minutes more by October 2020 than they had been before the transition to working from home. That’s an extra 4 hours a week (on top of the 42hrs) – so that’s 1.5 hours in 19 years and 4 hours more in less than 10months. The empirical evidence Meta has gathered since, from our extensive leaders’ network, says that very little has changed since then. 

Technology is a great enabler and there is no doubt that, without MS Teams, Slack, Zoom, WhatsApp and other virtual working platforms, we would not have been able to make the transition to the hybrid-model so quickly. At first technology was a life-saver (quite literally) and a business saver. However, it’s not the answer to everything, despite what the big tech bosses might tell you. 

Now let’s be clear here, technology is, overall, a good thing. It has helped us to come together and work together – despite our location. This has opened up job prospects for many; no longer do you have to apply for work to organisations in a commutable distance for example, and as an organisation you can get the best candidate almost wherever they are. 

It also can be very useful to do the basics of team work-days: the check-in morning meeting, the affirming who does what meeting, the are we all on the same page meeting, the email confirmation, the emoji on Slack that tells you that one of your colleagues loved what you just said, the ability to connect with your people, your team, no matter where they are in the world – but it shouldn’t be used for everything. 

Technology should make our work-lives easier. It should make us more productive, more efficient, and enable us to do things more quickly. And in some arenas, it does. However, I’m old enough to remember a life before emails, and before endless back-to-back virtual meetings – in many ways, technology has slowed us down and takes up more and more of our time. If you don’t believe me, today measure how many emails you send and receive and how long it takes out of your day to reply and send them. Then add to that the time you spend in virtual meetings today (and add your meeting prep time to that too) – how much time do you have left to actually DO your to-do list? Your ACTUAL day job? Answer most likely is 2-3 hours if you’re lucky?

Technology just makes us go faster and expect things faster. There was a time (and by the way this is still a myth that is being espoused by AI champions) when we were told that the implementation of technology would lead to a 4-day working week, because technology would do all the heavy lifting and we’d be able to put our feet up! Well, I think we can safely say that dream never became a reality and there is a case to be made that actually we’re doing more, not less, as a result of technological advances and that there are more demands on us now due to the technologies and software we use. 

Technology has also strongly affected the team dynamic, as has hybrid-working itself. 

Over the last 25 years Meta has been in business, we have seen the streamlining of businesses and the flattening of structures as a general trend. The flatter cross-functional structures require increased team working and collaboration in order to be efficient. However, the opposite has seemed to happen. 

It is harder to work collaboratively when you are not together in the same office. Yes, you can get on a screen and try to work things through, but it is just NOT the same or as effective as being in person. We are human beings and, as such, we feed off each other’s energy and enthusiasm when we are together in a room. When we try to do the same thing over technology, most if not all of that energy and enthusiasm is absorbed and not passed on. Technology is an energy drain – it may pass on data, but it doesn’t pass on energy – in fact it actively drains us – and now we are on our technology more than ever. Is it any wonder we feel more and more exhausted at the end of our working day?

Some of you will be thinking, ”Yes Jo, but if we want to collaborate, we can just meet up in person at the office” – and I will say to you. 1. Good luck with finding a time you can all meet up; 2. Good luck with booking a room in your old office (because most of the office space has been sold off or let go of); and 3. It’s hard to get creative and be collaborative on a schedule – i.e., at 3pm next Wednesday, because that was the only time we could book a meeting room!

Another major impact to the team dynamic is the loss of the informal off-line conversation, the informal support that comes from being in the same office as your fellow team members. If you’ve just had a challenging call with a customer, it’s useful to be able to chat it through with a colleague. Yes, you could do that via a Teams chat but it’s not the same, you don’t get the same feeling of care and support just through a text. And yes, you could set up a Teams meeting to discuss it, but that takes time and effort and most of the time it means we don’t. We don’t want to bother our colleagues, we know how busy they are, and so we end up, if we are not careful, isolating ourselves and feeling isolated. 

This feeling of isolation combined with the increased workloads and work pressures that people now face, can lead to stress, illness, and mental health issues. One could argue that the well-being of our staff is being directly affected by our new ways of working. 

The likelihood is that, over the last 5 years, you’ve had some turnover of staff in your team. You’ll have new members, and it’s really hard to build relationships virtually. It’s not easy to really get to know someone (or your whole new team) over MS Teams. You don’t get the same communication level and feedback over technology, and it leads to an increased risk that new staff members do not feel ‘part of the team’ and, in the worst case, can lead to increased staff turnover. 

There are so many communications channels now within organisations that it can feel like communication overload. Yes, you can communicate via MS Teams chat, WhatsApp, Slack, Zoom, email – but has it really improved your team’s communication, or has it just created more confusion as to which comms channel to use for what? 

As leaders, building strong relationships is one of the most important parts of leadership. Yet it’s hard to do when you’re mostly doing your leadership and partnership meetings online. It’s also incredibly hard to lead and manage your teams virtually.

As a leader, in the past you’d only need to walk into the office to get a ‘feel’ for how your team was, and how particular members of your team were that day. You learn to get a sense for where the team spirit is and who needs a bit of support or assistance that day. It becomes a bit of a sixth sense that great leaders have, because of their close proximity to their staff. However, it’s much more challenging and time consuming to do all that virtually. Yes, you can check-in each day, but it’s not easy and you won’t always pick up on the non-verbal signals of stress or unease coming from your team members.

When you were together in the office, you were visibly a team. When you were assigned a project or task you were assigned it as a team. Yes, one of you may have led on it, but it was a part of the team’s delivery plan – a joint-responsibility. However, now this responsibility, and the pressure for delivery, tends to fall more on the individual rather than the team. There is less collaboration now, as it’s just harder to collaborate effectively when working virtually. This leads to less ‘teamwork’, and more of individual team members doing their best to get what needs to get done.

Flatter structures were supposed to end silo-working in organisations, but without great cross-functional team working and collaboration, the pressure and workload is now falling on the individual rather than team. It ends up encouraging ‘solo-silo-working’ rather than team working – ironically there is more silo-working now than before. 

Now, I’m not intending to be all doom and gloom, but I do want to highlight something that is raised time and again, in the leadership and team development work we have been doing in organisations these last few years.  This is not something that is sector specific, it is an issue in all sectors and affects teams across organisations – big and small. 

It is part of our purpose to bring these “meta-issues” (quite literally issues ‘at the next level’, the ‘BIG ISSUES’) up into the spotlight, so that we start to  have the conversations that need to be had. It’s part of our job to highlight trends we are seeing, to stimulate thought, provoke response and action and help support you in reducing the impact of them. 

As leaders and as team members you can look at your own teams. Have you noticed a difference in your team dynamic over the years of hybrid working?  

There is a real thing called ‘TEAM SPIRIT’ It’s not a woo-woo thing – it’s REAL. You KNOW when you have it, when it’s GOOD, and you can sense when it’s missing or not where it should be. Spirit is energy, and so where is the energy of your team right now? Does it need a pick me up? Is it feeling a little flat? 

There are plenty of things you can do as leaders and as team members to re-invigorate team spirit and bring that sense of collaborative energy back to your team. 

1. Make sure you’re checking in on your fellow team members on a regular basis.
2. If someone’s gone a little quiet recently, make sure you give them a call or arrange a virtual cuppa. 
3. Team ‘virtual lunches’ can be a great way to re-establish the team, making sure to have those informal conversations that help build team relationships. 
4. Make sure that as a team you have your own ‘rant buddy’, someone whom you can call on for support and just to let off steam when you’ve had a challenging day. 
5. Regular team events IN PERSON: make sure that at least once a month you have an IN PERSON meet up, and combine it with a more social element too. 
6. Why not have a team technology-free day once a month – where you are in the office together and only talk and meet with each other face to face.
7. As leaders, make sure you diary in your 1-1s with each of your team. 1-1s are not just about checking work progress anymore, they are a vital way to be monitoring the well-being of your staff. 
8. As leaders, when was the last time you had a team away-day? One of the quickest, easiest, and best ways to re-invigorate team spirit is to get your team together away from the office for a team away-day. Use it as an opportunity to share your vision, set up a plan for the coming months or year ahead. You could use the day to develop and up-skill your staff on a particular topic or skill. Whatever you do, make sure that a part of the day is FUN and has a social element. 
9. As leaders, it’s time to re-visit your organisational hybrid-working experiment. What works? What frankly doesn’t? What do you need to tweak in order to make your hybrid-working experiment fit for purpose and give better outcomes for your staff and for your organisation? 
10.  As leaders, have you equipped your staff with the tools to deal with the increased stresses they now face? Do you need to look more closely at smarter working practices, to ensure you’re getting the best performance from your staff and your hybrid-working model?

These are just 10 examples of how you can ensure that hybrid-working isn’t killing your team – at Meta we have so many more ideas that we’d love to share with you. 

The reality is HYBRID-WORKING is here to stay – so it’s vital that we start having the conversations about how to make it work best for you, your team, and your organisation. It’s time to revisit the experiment in HYBRID-WORKING, to do your own 5-year review to see what you need to do to maximise-performance and get positive outcomes for all. 

Remember, you don’t have to do that alone – Meta is here to offer advice, support, and to help! So please call on our expertise in this arena. We believe there is a golden opportunity to change the way we work to a more sustainable way of working – working in a way to get the best from the technology and hybrid-models we are using; and giving leaders and their people the practical tools so that they can work smarter not harder, and not just survive in 2025 but THRIVE in 2025. 

I hope that this article has stimulated your thoughts, and I hope that you’ll get in touch and let me know how your hybrid-experiment is going and what you’re going to do to make 2025 a year where you, your people, and your organisation THRIVE. 

Have a wonderful start to your year,
In peace,
Jo, CEO of Meta

There is no doubt that, right now, the world of work is a challenging one. The mantra at the moment in organisations seems to be DO MORE WITH LESS. I cannot see how this is a recipe for success, and I don’t see how that model is sustainable, all it leads to is higher levels of stress for everyone and a greater likelihood of mistakes, failure and burnout. 

So today I’d like to make a plea to all of you reading this to be more KIND and UNDERSTANDING of those who you work with and those who work for you. We are living through incredibly stressful times. The stress and anxiety scores, as measured by the office of national statistics, have not gone down much at all since the end of the pandemic. They are remaining stubbornly high and that is absolutely born out in the stress levels I am seeing in leaders and teams I have been working with this year. 

Organisations have been consistently making cutbacks and ‘efficiency savings’ for over ten years now. Think about it, when was the last time the organisational ‘management of change’ or ‘re-structure’ ever led to MORE people in your directorate or team? You might be one of the very few who has received more resources, but when you think about it, was the ‘more resources’ because it had been so cut back previously that it was impossible to deliver without significantly affecting performance? Likelihood is that it was. 

Now, some of you reading this will quite accurately highlight that part of this will be due to automation and technological advances. This is true, but this general reduction in workforce is across all sectors and almost all organisational sizes (apart from start-ups of course), and it is leading to many feeling under-resourced and overwhelmed. 

This is compounded by the flatter structures now established within organisations, with lower headcounts, and removal of management levels. This means there is a higher stress level at a lower hierarchical level within organisations. 

I have been studying the effects of stress in organisations for over ten years now, and it’s safe to say that the levels now are higher than I have ever seen them. I ask a simple question in our ‘working smarter not harder’ workshops, it is this: 

Hands up if you feel you have both the time and capacity to get everything that you need to get done, done at the right level and at the right quality? In your normal working hours? (i.e. your contracted hours)

Not one leader has put their hand up in over ten years and, recently, people have looked at me as if I was crazy to even ask the question! 

I have had to add in extra workshop days around resilience and stress, and even ‘how to get a good night’s sleep’ into our team and leadership development programmes because, right now, the leaders and teams I work with truly need them. 

When you research into stress (specifically its side-effects) it helps you understand a lot of what is going on within organisations. Have a quick check in with the list below – are you seeing any of these signs of stress in your leaders, your leadership team, in your team, amongst your fellow team members, in you? 

Bad decision making? Being reactive? Inability to think straight? Lack of creativity or innovation? Lack of strategic thinking? Being snappy? Emotional reactions? Being irritable? Blurting things out without thought? Feeling over-emotional? Being exhausted? Lacking motivation? Short temper? Feeling lethargic? Making impulsive decisions? Being grumpy for no reason? Over-thinking things? Isolating yourself? Being hard on yourself? 

All of these things can be directly linked to the bio-chemical symptoms of stress. They are all related to having stress-hormones in your system – yes even the ‘lack of creativity or innovation’ one! 

The truth is that we are not taking the effects of stress seriously enough within our organisations. We need to take action NOW to bring ourselves back from the brink of complete burnout. 

We have let ourselves tolerate stress for too long, and we now tolerate behaviours that before we would never had tolerated. It is time to call out unacceptable behaviour and leaders who are not living to the values of the organisation, and it is time as leaders to remember that now, more than ever, we need to be KIND and UNDERSTANDING. 

Much of what is happening in organisations is as a direct result of what I call the ‘unholy trinity’  – lack of sleep, working longer hours to get everything done, and the inevitable stress that comes as a result. SLEEP, WORKING HARDER, STRESS – when we’re caught in that vicious cycle it only ever spirals downwards and many of you reading this will recognise it in yourselves.

Now of course the most important thing is to actively equip yourself (and your team/your staff) with the tools to enable you to get a better night’s sleep, to work smarter not harder and to reduce the impact of stress in your lives. That is precisely what our ‘RESILIENCE TOOLKIT’ programme was created to help with. (If you want help defeating the unholy trinity for yourself, your team or your organisation, then just get in touch!) 

However, it’s also important to remember that everyone right now is facing significant workload pressures and, as a result, will be under elevated levels of stress. So, you know what? They might not be PERFECT, they might be upset or emotional, they might get reactive or snappy and they might occasionally exhibit behaviours that, with a little reflection, they would not be proud of. 

NOONE wants to be what I call a NEGATIVE RIPPLE. They don’t wake up in the morning and say: 

“You know what? Today I want to really be horrible to everyone I meet, I want to annoy and frustrate others, and be snappy, irritable and rude.”

NOONE wants to be that. 

So, this is a reminder that we all need to be MORE KIND and MORE UNDERSTANDING of our team, our staff and yes, even our leaders – it’s stressful times out there and that means we’re not going to be at our best all of the time – so a little kindness and understanding is what is required. 

Now I am not justifying bad behaviour here, nothing gets me angrier than bullying behaviour or use of power to undermine or denigrate our people. Be very clear, we all need to stand up to such behaviours and not tolerate them. And, by the way, by that I literally mean ‘stand up’ and ‘walk out’ if you are in a room with someone exhibiting bullying behaviours, call it out if it is not directed at you, or leave the meeting if you are on Teams. More people need to be active bystanders and call out unacceptable and abusive behaviours. 

What I AM encouraging is that, in your teams, it’s incredibly important to be kind to each other. Now more than ever. If someone is struggling to hit that deadline be a little understanding, give them help and support if you can. If someone has got a little emotional, check in with them, offer support and show them you care. If you’re interacting with a service part of the organisation, your IT or HR or Finance Teams for example, let them know that you APPRECIATE their help, don’t just go in bullishly demanding to have whatever it is sorted. Remember they are there to help you – and help them help you by being kind and by being understanding. 

As a leader, showing that you care is not a sign of weakness – it is a sign of strength. As we approach the end of the year it’s a perfect time to say thank you, to give appreciation to your team, your people, for all they have done for you this year. As leaders you will have your own stresses, your own pressures to deliver, but do take time to reflect on your own impact, your own behaviours. If you were snappy or accidentally berated one of your staff in a meeting (even if for good reason), just make sure that you check in and make it right afterwards. 

Look, it’s inevitable that from time to time you will lose it, you will let your frustrations or emotions get the better of you and THAT’S OK – you are human after all and right now you are facing tremendous stresses in your work-lives, all of you. And there is no better time than right now to CHOOSE BEING KIND AND UNDERSTANDING above all other things. 

Let’s show that we CARE, let’s give a little GRACE, and be a MORE POSITIVE RIPPLE in our teams and in our organisations. A little kindness goes a heck of a long way, and I promise you it will make the world of difference to you as well as those who you dare to be kind to. 

If you’d like to tackle stress and rebuild resilience within your organisation, if you’d like to help your people to have the tools in their toolkits to beat the unholy trinity and work smarter not harder in 2025, for the benefit of all, then why not drop me a line and we can talk about how Meta can support you to make 2025 a year where you all thrive, rather than just survive. 

As this is the last article I will be writing this year, let me finish by saying I think that you are all amazing. You’ve worked incredibly hard this year, and you know what? You have earned your time off. Enjoy your festive period, make sure you all re-fill your fuel tanks to over-flowing, so that you can start 2025 with a full fuel tank and a re-charged resilience battery. 

HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE! 

I hope that 2025 is kind and generous to you! 
In peace and with love
Jo, CEO of Meta

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO GROW AND FLOURISH IN YOUR ORGANISATION?

Today I want to talk about the big C-word. No, not THAT C-word, and NO definitely not THAT C-word! I’m talking about Culture, a word which organisations are always banging on about as important but seem to do very little to actually make it a priority or reality. 

Your people matter. You know that, I know that, but what do you do to make sure that your people KNOW they matter? What do you do to make sure that your people have the right working environment and ways of working that make them feel loyalty and love (yes LOVE) for their work (and, by extension, for your organisation?)

That’s where the BIG C-word comes in, because Culture is where it’s all at. Culture is what makes the difference, but the problem is, most organisational leaders don’t know what to do to create the right culture, and certainly in today’s busy workplaces, they don’t find they have the time to give it the attention they know, in their heart of hearts, it deserves. 

Culture is one of those big, important, but often misunderstood words in the organisational lexicon. So, what DOES it mean? 

Well, as you know, we do at Meta love us a bit of etymology (root meanings of words) and if you look it up CULTURE is taken from the Latin word ‘cultura’ – the same root of word as used in cultivate and agriculture. 

‘creating an environment to encourage things to grow and flourish’ 

The metaphor I like to use when I’m doing workshops on team culture and organisational culture is that of the humble YOGHURT pot (it’s a good one as yes, yoghurt is a live culture!)

If you take some milk, a little live bacterial culture and create the right environment for it (a nice warm place), then magic happens (with a little patience and time) and you get some tasty yoghurt. 

However, if you don’t pay attention to your yoghurt, if you leave it a little too long..

Well, we’ve all done it haven’t we? We’ve reached into the fridge for the pot of yoghurt and realised, as we peel back the lid, that to our horror, this is the OLD yoghurt pot that we forgot about! 

And what does it look like? Well, it certainly doesn’t look appetising anymore – it’s green, furry and mouldy! It’s totally gone off. 

What was a thriving culture, has gone bad. 

I know it’s not a perfect metaphor, but it usually raises a chuckle in the leadership teams I work with, because we have all had that experience. And that’s precisely what happens with our approach to organisational and team culture. We pay it a bit of attention (normally because the executive leaders at the top table have gone away for an awayday and come back with some new organisational values, or HR has decided to do some cultural work off the back of some poor staff survey results) and then, after a few focus groups, posters are put up on walls, some new lanyards are designed, mugs and screensavers are created with the values written all over them, and it’s tick box, cultural work done! 

Then, we forget about it again. We forget that, actually, the culture needs more than just a short-term fix. It needs attention, it needs tending to, it need encouraging, it needs reinforcement, it needs more than just a few people to own it to make it happen. It takes real time to ensure that we  have the RIGHT things flourishing and growing! 

Now I get it, it’s hard to justify extensive cultural development in today’s profit driven business world. But as the legendary business guru Tom Peters says in his newest (and sadly last) book – “Excellence Now: Extreme Excellence”:

“ – People’s engagement and growth really first.

• Leaders who put creating and maintaining a caring and spirited and equitable culture really first.
• Now.
• I would remind you that the data unequivocally says that ‘people first’ – concern for the organisational and community health and producing products and services that matter is far and away the most effective bottom-line business practice there is.”

Tom Peters knows his stuff. He’s been doing this for longer than I’ve been on the planet (I’m nearly 50). This apparently ‘soft stuff’ this ‘cultural stuff’ is really important, and it’s going to become more and more important as the workforce generation moves towards being a majority of Millennial and Gen Z employees. 

Gen Z, especially, are a fickle bunch, and I mean that with all the love in the world. They don’t do ‘corporate’, they don’t do ‘the big career’, they don’t care about how it’ll ‘look on their CV’, they don’t have much loyalty… UNLESS you create an environment (culture) in which they feel valued and appreciated. A culture where they feel that they’re learning, growing, and recognised. A culture where they can see that they’re making a difference somehow and, that they’re doing something worthwhile.

Almost ALL of those things can be classed under one organisational imperative – YOUR CULTURE! 

In a world where attracting the right staff and retaining the right staff is getting increasingly more difficult, in a world where there’s more long-term sickness than there has ever been, it’s vital for the future success of your organisation to start paying real attention to your ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE. 

Why? Because if you get it right – not only will your people grow and flourish but, as result, your organisation will grow and flourish too! (And yes, I mean even on the bottom-line and in hard data measurables). 

It’s not just Gen Z, it’s all your people, whatever generation they were born in. Right now, people are crying out for a little attention, a little development, and to be working in a great working environment, and to contribute to a great organisational culture. 

And there’s the key – culture is not something that should be dictated from on high from the C-suite executives (no pun intended), it’s something that should be created, contributed to, nurtured, and tended to by everyone. 

An organisation is a living system, and if you want that system to be efficient, effective and productive, then you need to ensure that the environment, the culture, is one that allows those things to flourish. 

When I say your organisation is a living system; The LIVING part of your system, the most IMPORTANT part of your organisation, IS your people. 

This is where we hit up against one of the biggest BUSINESS MYTHS – that if you let your people co-create your culture, they will ask for the earth, and it will end up in anarchy and chaos. 

I’ve been working in the field of cultural excellence for over 22 years, and I can tell you, people just want basic stuff. To be able to treat others and be treated themselves as human beings. Show them you’re serious about investing in them, and the culture and the return on your investment will be loyalty, dedication, productivity, quality, creativity and innovation. 

When was the last time you asked your people (your organisation or your team – depending on what level leader you are reading this) how they wanted to work and what culture they’d like to see in your organisation or team? 

Likelihood is that if you’ve ever asked that, it was probably a while ago, so now is a perfect time to revisit it. It’s much easier than you think – I promise! 

It doesn’t take much investment, certainly far less than the last re-structure or new system rollout, or rebranding or management change, or that new operating model work you did in your organisation recently. And yes, it does take a little time, but we promise you it will transform your organisation into one that everyone LOVES, wants to come to work for, and wants to give of their best to.  

So be you a team leader, director, exec or CEO, now is the time to start getting serious about your culture. Ask yourself these questions: 

1. What do you want to grow and flourish in your team, directorate or organisation? 
2. How do you want your people to feel when they’re working for you? 
3. What environment do YOU thrive in? What environment do you think your staff might thrive in? 
4. In an ideal world, what would be the type of working culture you’d like to see in your team/directorate/organisation? 
5. If you could wave a magic wand, what would you change about the culture you currently have? 

Take some time over these questions, and don’t limit your thinking! Just because you’re not in tech or in media or design, doesn’t mean you can’t have an amazing culture. Don’t be limited by what you think is realistically possible in your organisation, think BIG, and dare to dream – that’s how the truly greatest leaders and organisations do it. 

Then, when you’ve done your thinking, why not drop me a line and have a conversation about your cultural vision and we’ll happily share a few tips with you of how to make your vision a reality and get your team, your organisation, on the road to the destination of BEST PLACE EVER TO WORK. 

That is, after all, a part of why Meta is here – to help you turn your cultural dreams into a practical reality. 

Have a great month all.

In peace,
Jo Clarkson
CEO of META
jo@metapositive.com

We were all sold a bit of a false promise with the advent of technology in the workplace, that technology would be a miraculous cure-all for almost every organisational and team-working issue. 

We were going to have a four-day working week (because computers would be doing most things), but that never quite materialised. Communication would improve with the instant communicative power of emails, but I think it’s safe to say that there are not many of us who would agree with that statement; in fact, most people we come across find emails the bane of their working lives! 

Now we’re using technology more than ever for our communications, not only at home but also in the workplace. The pandemic led to a lightning-fast rollout of new technologies that, without the pandemic, would probably have taken three-to-five years to have been implemented in as many organisations as they have been. Zoom, MS Teams, and WhatsApp are now fundamental parts of any team’s communication. 

Over the past 23 years Meta has been in business, we’ve gone from teams being in the same office (and mostly the same area of the office), to being spread over numerous offices nationally, and then to the bigger organisations over numerous offices globally. 

When you’re not in the same office, this will inevitably affect a team’s effectiveness and its ability to communicate well. Combine that with a team which is in five different time zones, and it becomes an even greater challenge. 

Communication means, etymologically, “that which we share together”– it comes from the same root of the words “common” and “commune”. Yet, nowadays, how often do we SHARE things through our communication and how often do we just say things or send things?

Communication in organisations has become very transactional – “I need this, so I will get it from you”. Which it is very easy to do (mostly via emails), but it misses a very important part of communication – the feeling! And here’s what’s important to know: without the feeling, communication is not very effective – because communication is a FEELING NOT A FACT.

We want to feel we’ve been heard; we want to feel that someone has understood us; we want to feel that someone is actually communicating with us and not just telling us something. We want to feel, in this hybrid era, that we’re part of the team, that others care about us, value us, and appreciate us. 

That all comes through how we communicate with one another.

It’s great in some ways that, now, we get to work at home. Technology has advanced so that we can be at home and do most of our work pretty effectively. There are some bonuses to working from home (although it’s a whole other question as to whether we actually USE those bonuses much now) but there are also down-sides. One of the down-sides is how it affects the team dynamic. 

It’s not as easy to collaborate with your team when you’re not in the same room. It’s not as easy to build relationships with others when you’re not in the same office. It’s not as easy to call for help or get the informal support that comes from having your team-mates next to you in an office. It can be quite isolating to work from home and, with the current pressures of work, that can lead to anxiety, increased stress, and a feeling of overwhelm in the individual team member. In the past, this might have been highlighted with the team or seen by the team before it got to that stage. 

The other fundamental issue with hybrid working and not being in the same office is that it will inevitably affect team communication. When you’re in the same office (and yes, I know, not everyone wants to be there, but go with me), then you can just check in with other team-mates during the day. You can easily access advice, support, and other team-mates’ knowledge when you’re in the office. There are also the informal conversations which build rapport, relationships, team spirit – the energy that exists when a team sits together can be palpable and helps all the team members get through those tough and challenging days. 

During the last three years, we’ve worked with numerous leadership teams and teams within organisations. One of the consistent themes that has come through from those team development journeys has been that communication has gotten worse, not better, during the hybrid era and people feel less part of the team and more isolated now they are working from home. 

In the past there were only really three main channels for communication. Face-to-face, via the phone, email/text. Now, as technology has grown, there are more. Communication has always been an issue in organisations (just refer to any staff survey you’ve had over the last 20 years, and you’ll see that, more often than not, communication is highlighted). But now, in the hybrid era, we need to consciously re-look at communication methods so that we can improve our team dynamics and team effectiveness, and make sure that everyone feels a valued part of our team. It’s time for a re-evaluation of our team communication strategy. 

Pre-pandemic we didn’t have to consciously think about team communication as much, but what I’m suggesting is that now, we really do. 

So, what can we do to improve communication in the hybrid-era? Well, the first thing is to make sure you have a clear communications strategy in your team (and by the way, if you are a director or CEO this should be done as an exercise across your directorate/organisation – so there is a common communications strategy!). 

What do I mean by a comms strategy in this case? 

Well, nowadays, there are more channels for communication. Not just face-to-face, phone, and email/text – there is video conferencing with Teams video or Zoom, there is Teams chat, there are various WhatsApp groups, and then various specialist chat or messaging platforms that your sector might use. 

The first thing is to agree as a team is: WHAT COMMS CHANNEL you use for what, and in what hierarchical order? For example, you might agree that face-to-face is still the most preferable but, if you can’t do face-to-face then what channel do you use? Put them in hierarchical order – I can bet you that, when you have this conversation, almost everyone will put emails last and, as a result, at least within your team, it should mean there are fewer emails.

You might make an agreement that, if it’s an emergency or an issue of importance, you call one another on the phone. If that is known and agreed in the whole team/directorate/org, then when you see a team colleague or leader calling you, you know to answer because it is important or, if you have a missed call, you immediately call them back. 

You might agree that, if you need to ask a quick question from someone, the easiest way is to send an MS Teams chat message. Or you might agree that the team WhatsApp group is really only for social and informal things, not for anything important that requires action. 

What you agree and what hierarchy you come up with are up to you as a team. What’s important is that you’ve all taken part in it, and you’re all in agreement.

The second thing is re-capturing that team spirit and making sure the team feels like a team. How do you ensure that you are regularly checking in with each other? Do you make sure that you have regular in-person team meetings, for example? Do you do things as a team to keep the team spirit alive and well? What about a team quiz, what about ‘worst joke of the week’ on your WhatsApp team chat? 

When was the last time you all went out for a social event or a team lunch? There are many ways to re-capture and foster the team culture and re-invigorate the team spirit. 

I’ve seen things like lunch clubs, and food shares – where team members bring in a lunch to share or have a theme for their lunches like ‘home-made soup’ or ‘food from my country or region’. These things don’t have to be done together in person, they can just as easily be done over Teams whilst at home. Also, many people no longer take their lunch breaks, so it’s a great way to improve the team culture and also to ensure everyone has a lunch break and fills their fuel tank. 

Does your team check in with one another every week, every day? Do you have a buddy system where members of the team make sure they are looking out for their colleague’s well-being? Do you have a rant buddy in your team? Or an expert who you can ask for advice and guidance on particular job-related topics? 

I’m talking primarily now to the team leaders. When was the last time you had a team away-day? I bet it was most likely quite a while ago, was it more than a year ago? Was it pre-pandemic? If so, it’s time you had an away-day with your team! 

Getting out of the office (and out of your home office) and getting together as a team to do some learning TOGETHER is so powerful and so important. Especially now, considering you are not together in an office as often. It helps to build team spirit, helps to identify and deal with the issues and problems you’re facing as a team, and gives the team an opportunity to really get to know one another, not just within work roles and as fellow team-mates, but also as human beings. You might use your team away-day to consciously look at upskilling your team on a particular topic or, feeling inspired by this article, look at developing your own team comms strategy and making sure that everyone in your team feels valued, supported, and appreciated! 

At Meta we love helping people navigate the new challenges that hybrid working gives to a team and to an organisation. So, if you’d like a fun, enjoyable, but practically useful away-day with your team this year, if you’d like some tips on how to make your team away-day a rip-roaring success, then please don’t hesitate to get in touch. We have a wealth of topics that can be used as a basis for a team away-day with purpose, which will improve your team’s effectiveness and boost your team’s spirit. 

I hope this article has made you think, and I hope it makes you revisit your own team communications strategy and reminds you of just how important your team spirit is in this hybrid-era of work.  

The world of work is changing, so let’s make those changes work for us! That’s what we’re in business at Meta to do. So, if you’d like some advice or help or support, on how to make work really WORK for you, you know where we are.

Have a wonderful month! 

In peace and with love

Jo xx

We’ve been fortunate over the last few of years to have been working with many senior leaders in all three sectors (corporate, public, and third sector). One of the consistent themes that comes through the work we do with those leaders is the complaint that they don’t have the time or headspace to lead – which is concerning, but not unusual. 

With the flattening of structures and streamlining of organisations, more responsibility now falls to the individual leader. They are rewarded for their management skills and ability to deliver, rather than their leadership skills, and with reduced headcount in almost every team or department, they have fewer people to get done what needs to be done. 

So that means the leader gets dragged back into the operational aspects, which leaves a leadership gap at the top. Who is leading? Who’s steering the ship? Who is charting the way in the chaotic seas of the current business landscape? (Or should that be seascape? :D)

From our research we have found the biggest issue that leaders have is finding/creating time for being strategic, for planning ahead. They are so tied up with back-to-back meetings, with fires that need putting out, with the urgent, that they’ve barely got time to do their actual job. In fact, we have met many claiming that it’s really only at the end of the day that they get time to do much of their own to-do lists – to do the job that they’re actually paid to do. 

There is just SO MUCH that needs to get done now, with notably lower resources (be that budgets or numbers in your team), and there’s barely enough time to think. It can be overwhelming and, certainly, the day-to-day becomes all consuming. It’s difficult to break away from the cycle of putting out fires and responding to the insatiable demands of organisational delivery, but it’s incredibly important that we do. Without leadership there is no vision, no direction, and with no-one steering the ship, you’ll end up just going around in circles and, ultimately, are likely to run aground. 

The principal problem as we see it, is “capacity”. 

Right now, we’re all struggling with the problem of capacity. In organisations now, as they have been slimmed down to the bare bones, there is just no capacity other than that which is quantifiably needed to deliver what needs to be delivered. 

There is NO spare capacity in organisations anymore. No buffer, no extra capacity or resource built in for when something unexpected happens, no spare capacity in our teams if we have more than one person off longer term. 

The simple fact is that most of you who are reading this will be admirably doing a leadership role that was originally done by two or more people. Same work-load, if not greater, but just the one leader. This means that not only is your organisation working at full capacity most of the time (if not all of the time) but you are running at full capacity too! 

• Do you struggle to work at the end of your day? (Like when you read the same line of that email over and over and over again?) 
• Do you find it hard to concentrate, absorb or retain information? (Like that big report you have to read for the board meeting tomorrow?)
• Do you find yourself stuck in the operational weeds, getting caught up in things that are way below your pay grade? Or leadership level? 
• Do you find yourself constantly fighting and putting out fires, that you know, actually, with a bit of forethought and planning, probably wouldn’t have started up in the first place? 

If the answer is yes to any of the above. You need to clear some capacity. 

You need to literally clear some brain space. 

You need to create the [brain] capacity to lead. 

Most leaders right now are working against their brains and against their bodies. At work you need to have your brain and body on-side. Work with them, and all is possible.. against them and it’s guaranteed to be a tough and challenging day ahead. 

The simple fact is that your brain and body WANT to serve you. They try their best to do what they can for you, but if you’re not helping them, it’s hard for them to help you. 

So, where do we start? 

We start by understanding that SLEEP is your greatest leadership resource of all. With a good night’s sleep, you can be your amazing brilliant best. Without sleep you’re in trouble. Now I’m not going to go into why sleep is important here (please refer to previous articles I’ve written on sleep, which are available on LinkedIn and which you can read in part one and part two) but rest assured I’ve been doing this leadership stuff now for 22years. I have come to realise that SLEEP is not a luxury, it is a necessity, and the current sleeplessness epidemic in this country is the number one cause of many of our organisational and leadership issues. 

The second thing to understand is that our brain needs FUEL to perform at its best. Over the last five years, we’ve seen a worrying trend in people not just missing or not taking lunch breaks, but not even having breakfast in the mornings! 

If you woke up and your phone or laptop was on 25% battery charge would you just leave it? Would you think that battery life would get you through your entire day? No of course you wouldn’t! That would be STUPID – you plug it into an energy source (in that case, electricity!) 

And yet, that’s what we are doing when we don’t eat breakfast, when we skip lunch. We’re expecting our brain to perform with no fuel, with no energy. When you look at it logically, is it any wonder that we struggle and find our work-days challenging? 

So those two are the first stages to creating the brain capacity to lead. 
The next is to understand that your brain needs to have regular breaks to clear capacity during the day. 

I’m not going to go into the neuroscience of this in the article (come to one of our creating the brain capacity to lead workshops if you’d like to find out the science behind what I’m talking about) – but simply put, the conscious part of your brain (the part that you use for pretty much everything that you do in your average working day as a leader) has a tiny capacity, and limited processing power. 

What this effectively means is that by lunchtime, for most leaders, these days, you’ll be feeling as if you are “full”. You haven’t got much brain space left to cram anything else in or process anything more. That’s because you are quite literally “at capacity”. 

At that point there is NO POINT in doing anything else. 

You need to stop. You need to take a small break and allow your brain a little time to clear you some capacity. It will do that IF you don’t keep trying to cram stuff in it. If you actually stop, you can clear capacity and then carry on at a decent performance level. 

We call it taking “micro-breaks” and we ask people to remember this, saying “move your body, move your mind” because it’s important during those breaks that you physically move and help your brain to clear some capacity, and free up some brain space. 

When we take these little breaks regularly through the day, when we fuel ourselves too, we are working with our brain and with our bodies, which allows them to serve us better and helps us to perform at our best more often. 

Carry on working beyond your natural limits however, and your performance dips, then nose-dives (depending on just how far you got beyond your natural limits).

All leaders we’ve come across KNOW this instinctively – they KNOW that by 2.30pm if they’ve not taken their lunch or taken a break, they are not being effective. They know that they are not able to give 100% or anywhere near that. But they feel they must plough on in order to get everything done. Work beyond their limits, beyond their contracted hours, work into the night, work through their breaks, to try to get everything done. 

During every leadership programme we run, when we are doing our “smarter working” day, I ask this simple question: 

“Hands up if you feel that you have the time and capacity to get everything that you need to get done, done at the right level and at the right quality WITHIN your normal working hours (ie: your contracted hours).”

We must have asked this question of hundreds of leaders by now. And do you know what?? 

Not ONE single leader in five years has ever put their hands up. 

Isn’t that fascinating? Isn’t that also just a tiny bit scary?? 

So that’s why it’s so important to right now be focussing on clearing and creating the brain capacity to lead in your leaders and in your leadership teams. 

When our brains are full, when they are at capacity, it means that we are unable to perform at our best. We struggle to lead because we just don’t have the brain space to lead. There is a direct link between performance and brain capacity. 

There is a direct link between quality and brain capacity too. When our brains are full we struggle to work at our normal quality level. Most leaders confess to us that, right now, with the work-pressures and time constraints they face, often 60-75% of quality has to do. Think about this for a moment. If quality is at 75%, even, that means that there is a considerable likelihood this will create extra work in the future – it will create the fires of the future, which that same leader gets caught having to try to put out. 

There is a direct link too between creativity, innovation, and brain capacity. In order to be creative, in order to innovate, this requires brain space. We all know that we’re at our most creative when we aren’t on a deadline, when we have a little space and time to properly reflect, process, think and create. 

When we are creative solutions are sustainable. Fixes are long-term, not short-term sticking plasters. When innovation thrives in our organisation, the organisation thrives. 

Leadership requires us to think at many different levels. There’s thinking strategically, there’s thinking short-term, medium-term, and longer-term, there’s thinking broadly and systemically. As a senior leader we also need to rise above the operational, to get that over-arching meta-view to see the whole organisational/business landscape and plot a pathway forward. 

Again, simply put, without capacity none of the incredibly important leadership and organisational stuff above is possible – so creating brain capacity is a no brainer! (Sorry couldn’t resist the pun.) 

So, what to do? As individual leaders we need to reconnect with our brains and our bodies – we need to be working with them, not against them. 

As organisations we need to be equipping our leaders with the tools which enable them to be at their best, we need to be helping them to create the brain capacity to lead. 

Every leader we come across wants to give of their best, they want to be the best leader they can be. Help them to do that, give them the tools they need, and your organisation WILL THRIVE. 

I hope that you’ve found this article useful. This is just a fraction of what we have on leadership and smarter working practices – if you’d like to have a conversation with us about how we can equip your leaders (and staff) with the tools they need to work smarter not harder, if you’d like to chat to us about how we can help your leaders to create the [brain] capacity to lead, then please don’t hesitate to get in touch. 

We have a number of different programmes from a full-blown nine-module leadership team development journey to a three-module smarter working programme, to a single day workshop on creating the brain capacity to lead. 

At Meta we’re passionate about sharing our research and our resources with our Meta family – so please do call on us. It’s part of our mission, our purpose to help you, your leaders, and your organisations, to thrive in the hybrid-era. 

Have a wonderful month,

In peace,

Jo xx

Now the New Year is upon us it’s a perfect time to re-assess what IS and ISN’T working in your working regime. In 2023 we spent a lot of time working in organisations from all sectors and at all levels, especially with leaders and leadership teams. It gives us a privileged insight into current working practices, especially the impact of hybrid working on people’s working patterns and habits.

During the next six months we will be exploring the themes which have directly come out of the work we have been doing in the articles we write. We want to address the issues in common and, in typical Meta style, bring you some easy-to-use, practical tools that you can use to reduce these issues’ impacts on you. 

We’ve all been involved in a global experiment in hybrid working. The pandemic brought forward the need to create a more flexible working model that allowed people to work from home, and there is no doubt that, after the initial challenges, working from home was a rip-roaring success. 

Then, as the restrictions eased, working from home became ‘hybrid-working’ and over the last couple of years, every organisation has experimented with their own model for hybrid working – to varying degrees of success and engagement from their staff. 

As far as we can tell here at Meta, most organisations have a one-four or two-three day split between office and home. Interestingly, it tends to be the larger corporates, or some bigger public sector organisations (for example the NHS), who got rid of much of their office space and have embraced greater home working percentages. 

Having worked in all three sectors in 2023, extensively around collaboration, team-communication, re-building resilience and leadership, it’s fair to say that hybrid working has truly changed the way we work, and how we interact and collaborate with colleagues. It’s not easy to have the same (important) non-work conversations, and social interaction – the informal relationship building – that happens when you’re at the office, if you’re at home. 

It’s impacting how teams work together, how they communicate, how they collaborate, and how they build and maintain relationships. It’s also impacting the individual leader or staff team member, as they no longer have that same level of informal support from sitting in an office in amongst their team. And it inevitably affects the efficiency and performance of the teams too. 

Now, many of the bigger corporate organisations have done research into productivity in their teams (are they still getting the output they need from their workforce?) and found that productivity in the hybrid working world is higher than it was pre-pandemic. BUT, and this is a big BUT, it comes at a cost to the individual worker. One of those costs is longer work hours – especially when working from home.

Not having enough time in the day to get everything that needs to get done, is one of the most consistent themes we have seen coming out of our work in recent years. Think about it now for yourself – do you have the time and the brain capacity to get everything that you need to get done, at the right quality level (in keeping with your level within the organisation), in your normal (i.e., contracted) working hours? 

If the answer is YES to that question, then CONGRATULATIONS you are the first person that I have met in the last few years that thinks they can! 

What most people choose to do (because the vast majority of people want to do a good job) is to work through their breaks and work longer hours to try and get everything done. The problem is that there are never enough hours and work is an insatiable beast – it is always hungry for more from you, and the more you give, the more it needs from you. Essentially, you’re on a hiding to nothing.

What’s fascinating to me is that our working patterns are DIFFERENT when we work in the office and when we work at home. When we’re at the office we are more likely to leave on time (or at least we don’t tend to stay as late), because we know we have to commute home, or we have to pick up the kids or take them to a club. 

When we work from home, we tend to work beyond our normal office working times and, more often than not, we will also work through the time that would be our commute home. Our own empirical research at Meta also has shown that people are less likely, now than ever, to take a lunch away from their desk – or even take lunch or eat at all! Never mind take any other breaks in the day. This is something that has absolutely changed in the last 22 years that Meta has been in business. 

So, with the new year upon us it’s important to reclaim your work-life balance, especially when you are working from home – and re-set your boundaries (what you will and will not do) in 2024. And, by the way, this is not only important for us as individuals, but also, for senior leaders reading this, it’s important for your organisation’s success too! 

The obvious benefit is the well-being, mental health, and welfare of your staff, but the less obvious benefit is that, when we are not working so hard or as long, we tend to be more efficient and get more done (yes, even in fewer hours!). The quality of what we do improves too, and the more brain capacity we have, the more innovative and creative we can be. The less stress we feel, the better decisions we make, the more strategic we can be. The less hours we work, the more work-life balance we feel, the less stressed we are – the better we sleep. The better we sleep (and that will be a topic for another article this year, as there is a sleeplessness epidemic going on right now in the UK!) the better our all-round performance and productivity. 

Now to the practical part of the article – let’s look at some simple ways to re-claim some work-life balance back.

ANALYSIS:

The first step is to do your own analysis of your working patterns. How many hours do you actually work in a week? 

It’s really important that you are honest with yourself. More and more people are now re-visiting work in the evenings, more and more people are checking emails on the weekend – every time you look at an email or reply to a text on your work phone you are WORKING, it counts towards your working hours tally. 

Is there a difference between the days you work at home? To when you work at the office? 

Do you take a lunch break? Do you eat your lunch away from your desk? Do you have any other breaks in your work-day? (We will talk another time about just how important it is to be taking your breaks!) 

Once you’ve done the analysis, it’s a case of re-setting your boundaries. 

As I have said earlier in the article, work is an insatiable beast, it always wants more from you, so it is inevitable, having been through the pandemic, that you have ended up doing things you probably wouldn’t have pre-pandemic. Perhaps it was leaving your work phone on in the evening, perhaps it was working through your previous commute-time when you were working from home. Perhaps it was checking your emails or picking up work again after the kids had gone to bed. Maybe it was agreeing to do that evening meeting or accepting meetings that stop you taking lunch. Whatever it is, now is the time, at the beginning of the year, to re-assess and re-set your boundaries. 

Be sensible, if you’re currently working an extra two hours when you work from home, then cut it back by 30minutes or an hour at most at first. If you’re working from home in the evenings now, reclaim a few days off first. If you’ve started checking emails on the weekend or on holidays, make an agreement not to from now on. When you’ve re-set your boundaries, make sure your manager is aware of them too – and your teammates! Then they can support you and you can support them to set and keep their boundaries too! 

Then let’s address the working from home, longer working hours issue. It’s time to re-visit your working from home regime. Does it really work for you? 

Only you can decide how best to work from home in a way that works for you, however, here are some tips from META’s smarter working research that could help.

1. Make sure you have set working times and keep to them.
2. Make sure you take regular breaks and cook/prepare your lunches in advance, so you definitely get to eat! Take a walk in the garden with a cuppa, take the dog for a walk around the block – get fresh air and morning light if you can (it’ll help you sleep later!).
3. Do question any meeting that you are invited to over lunchtimes – we know you can’t stop everyone, but you can at least have an agreement with your team/directorate colleagues that you don’t do meetings over lunch. 
4. At the end of your work-day spend the last 30minutes or so tying up loose ends, doing admin, preparing your priority list or to-do list for tomorrow, and downloading/writing down anything that’s playing on your mind. 
5. Re-claim your commute-home time – the commute home is actually an important part of your day, it’s an opportunity to start unwinding and de-stressing from your working day. It may sound odd but DO leave your house at the end of your working day and then, as a minimum, walk around the block and come back HOME. This will at least give you the feeling that you’ve left work. This is a good time to take your daily exercise, walk the dog, or go to the gym. 
6. Make a clear distinction between ‘work you’ and ‘home you’ – the lines have blurred now, as work has come into our home. So, at the end of your working day, change out of your work clothes (and make sure you actually have different work clothes) and have an end of workday routine – shower, freshen up, change, sit and have a cuppa. 
7. Create a restorative place to unwind at home – make sure when you’ve finished your workday and come back home, that you take 20minutes at least to download and unwind from your day. Such as a particular chair or outside seating area where you are not bothered by the kids and can escape and unwind properly. Listen to a podcast, have a glass of wine, read a book.

Follow some of these simple tips, do you own analysis, and re-set your own boundaries, and 2024 should be a more balanced work year for you. Remember, there is much more in your control than you think. If you create a working regime that works for you, then it WILL work for your team and your organisation too. If you’re happier and less-stressed, and you feel your life-work balance is more well balanced, then you will be your natural productive, creative, brilliant best more often during the day!

We hope this article has been useful, and we intend to create more of these articles in 2024. We at Meta are genuinely committed to making this experiment in hybrid-working work for all. Be that you an individual, a leader, a team, or an organisational CEO. We truly believe now is the time to change the way we work for good – to create smarter working organisations and high-performing cultures that enable everyone to thrive and excel. 

For more info on the work we can do with your people, your team, your department, your organisation – then just get in touch. We love helping organisations to get the most from their people – we’d love to help you to make your hybrid-working experiment work too! 

Have a great month and we’ll see you here again very soon! 

In peace and with love

Jo

Over the last couple of days there have been thunderstorms, dark, foreboding and epic. Rumbles of thunder interspersed with flashes of lightning, followed by a torrential downpour of rain. 

‘Good for the garden’ – said my mum, and she continued, ‘Won’t have to water the garden for, oh, I reckon three days now, brilliant!’ 

Today, the morning after the storm, it is a beautiful day. The sun is shining in a brilliant blue sky. It’s hot, it’s summery, it’s everything you’d want from an early English summer’s day. 

The combination of sunshine, heat and then the rain, has meant that everything is growing – the wildflowers in my garden beds, the lettuce and chard growing in my vegetable patch, and sadly, the grass which I definitely must cut this weekend!

While I was out today on my daily late morning walk, I noticed that nature was in full bloom, everything seemed to be delighting in the weather, not just me. There were birds busy feeding their fledgling chicks, robins and wrens singing their little hearts out, and squirrels were bouncing across the path and climbing the trees. Trees were swaying in the breeze, their flowery pollen filling the air, and the baby fish in the river were hoovering up the pollen as it landed on the surface of the water. And of course, then there were the flowers, every garden I passed seemed to be a riot of colour, small flowers, big flowers, tropical flowers, wildflowers – all radiantly, brightly coloured, and just beautiful to see.

It reminded me, as I walked, of the everyday saying, ‘Stop to smell the flowers’ – and it prompted me to do precisely that! How often do we stop to smell the flowers as we rush through our busy lives? How often do we actually stop and notice them at all? 

‘Stopping to smell the flowers’ can be taken literally (and by the way I DO encourage you all on your next walk to actually STOP AND SMELL THE FLOWERS YOU SEE, it is such a fuel-tank filler!) – or one can use it as a metaphor. 

In a metaphorical sense, it means that it’s important to stop sometimes and get perspective on what’s going on in our lives. It’s important to realise that, actually, there’s a lot to be grateful for! 

It’s only when we stop and get that perspective that we can get a sense of what is really important, and not get caught in the drama of our lives but instead appreciate all that we have. It’s easy (when we’re busy being busy) to miss or overlook or take for granted the people and things that we love, the things that really matter. 

There has been so much research which highlights that, the happiest, most positive people are those who notice the good things in their lives and take time to be thankful for what they have. 

When was the last time you stopped, I mean really stopped? 

I have to here give credit to a dear friend of mine from New York, Karen. Every day she goes to her local park on Staten Island and sits under a tree. She sits, she watches, she breathes, and she stops. She leans against the tree (with her dog companion Luca) and together they just watch the world go by. She calls her daily visits to the park her ‘tree medicine’, the place she gets her ‘vitamin tree!’. 

Now I get outside every day, I walk most often up and down the River Severn near me, but what Karen made me realise is, although it’s great to get out into nature and have that exercise and light – I was never actually STOPPING. 

So, one day I took a leaf out of her book and found myself a nice big old tree to sit under and stopped. I have to say it was pretty revelatory! The old oak tree must have been a couple of hundred years old and, as I leant into it, I could feel its age, it’s wisdom. It calmed me down, from the inside, and I felt myself totally relax as I watched the other people whizzing by. Now I know, that probably sounds like woo-woo to some of you, but all I’m gonna say is give it a go! I’m totally hooked now, and when I’m feeling a bit flat, flustered, or stressed, I go get me some vitamin tree! 

It reminded me of one of my teachers who told me that meditation wasn’t sitting cross-legged, bolt upright, breathing deeply. Meditation could be sitting under a tree or lying on the ground watching the clouds as they crossed the infinite sky… it’s definitely meditative and it’s definitely a fuel tank filler! 

So, whether it’s to stop and smell the flowers, or whether it’s stopping to watch the world go by as you’re sitting under a tree – can I recommend that this month (especially now as it’s so summery and beautiful), you do find time to stop, and be grateful for the abundance that is all around you, and be thankful for the beautiful people and things that are in your life. 

And finally, on my way home, after having had the thought and inspiration to write this Meta article, and with the title ‘Stopping to Smell the Flowers’ buzzing around my head, I literally was stopped in my tracks by the smell of these incredible big bunches of lilies on a flower stall in Worcester town centre…

… and guess what? They were reduced to half-price, two bunches for £10! – how’s that for serendipitous!?

So of course, I had to buy them as a treat and a reminder to myself of how important it is to stop and smell the flowers! Don’t you just love how life is sometimes? 

Wishing you all a wonderful month, 

With love

Jo xxx

Just before Christmas, whilst on holiday in Holland with my daughter, I got a call on my phone from one of my Meta family friends.  

I could hear from his voice that something major was up. He was so quiet, solemn, I could feel the weight of the message he was going to have to give me:  ‘There’s no way to say this Jo, so I’m just going to say it – Marty’s gone, Marty’s died’. I was in stunned silence for what felt like an eternity. ‘What??’ I couldn’t believe it. 

I have strong spiritual beliefs that have helped me to come to terms with death over the years. I don’t fear death and I don’t believe that the essence of us dies, I think that love cannot die and lives on, the essence of those we love lives on in us. 

However, I have to confess that Marty’s passing has been particularly challenging to those beliefs. He was just 40 years young, in the prime of his life – It just didn’t make any sense. 

Just a few weeks earlier, I’d been at Marty’s wedding to the love of his life, Rachel and there he’d told me he was the happiest he’d ever been. I feel so fortunate to have been there that night as he told me how much I meant to him and we shared some very close intimate moments together. He was talking animatedly about his upcoming honeymoon to Disneyworld (SOO Marty!) and he promised he’d send me a photo of him with Winnie the Pooh when he found him (those of you who are older Meta family members will understand the reference as we used to read Winnie the Pooh stories at our workshops). He told me he was living his best life and he wanted to thank me for being a part of that life – he hugged me and told me he loved me. It meant the world to me as I was having my own personal issues at the time. 

After returning from his honeymoon (and yes, I did get that photo of Winnie the Pooh!), he went to sleep one night and never woke up. 

Last Friday was Marty’s funeral and the outpouring of love for this man was palpable. So many people came to pay their respects that the chapel overflowed and they had to open the second chapel at the crematorium to get everyone in. It’s the mark of a life well lived, of a man beloved that so many had come. 

What does it mean to ‘Be more Marty?’

Marty was the life and soul of the party. I don’t mean that in a clichéd sense, I mean that if you were with Marty you were bathed in the light, laughter and joy that flowed from him. He was the living embodiment of ‘joie de vivre.’ He lived life to the full, and everything he did, he did with enthusiasm and passion. 

During the beautiful service his best friend Ben and Rupert his brother urged us all to ‘Be more Marty’. It was a phrase that stuck with me, and it inspired me to write this Meta blog in honour of my friend – Marty. 

Don’t worry this isn’t a sad blog, it’s an uplifting one. My friend Marty touched so many people in his life, and the more I reflect the more I realise why he came into my life and what teachings he has for us all – that’s what this blog will be about. His life was his message – and how he was in his life is an inspiring lesson for us all. In order to understand this, I’m going to need to tell you a bit about Marty. 

At Meta we talk about the Meta family. It’s not a gimmick, it’s just that real people who have been our customers often become friends and we are so blessed to have so many (like you reading this!) whom we consider a part of our Meta family. 

Marty was part of our family, an important part and over the years he became a dear friend and brother. 

Marty came on our Journey to Mastery programme in 2018. Some people just instinctively pick up the NLP tools and techniques, and as with everything in his life, Marty gave the programme 100% and got so much in return. He was such a valued member of the group, always quick to help others in the group, so compassionate, so kind and so FUNNY! He also wasn’t afraid to share his own experiences good and bad. Marty was determined to use what he’d learnt in his life and get the most from life. I’d say that in the end he embodied what NLP really is, he was excellence in action.  

Over the years we’ve bonded over DJing (we both were DJs), American Football (Not his fault he was a Patriots fan, I never held it against him :D) and beer. Marty was one of those people who has lots of friends. Everywhere he went he brought the FUN – the laughter, the joy. Everyone loved Marty, everyone loved to be around him and with him. 

He was so much in demand because he was such a lovely guy. Everyone wanted a piece of Marty and Marty made sure that we all felt special when we were with him. He made you feel special, he made you feel great whenever you saw him or heard from him. It felt like for those moments, he was just with you – that’s a rare quality in a person. 

Marty wasn’t afraid to express his emotions, he wasn’t afraid to tell you he loved you and give you one of his big bear hugs! That’s unusual in a man, but Marty was that kind of man, he was kind, generous and loving. 

Marty seemed to manage to cram so much into his life. He was a loving son, brother, uncle and family man. Loving husband, and doggie dad (to Dolly the dog). He was a runner (so proud when he did the Berlin marathon), bon vivant (never willingly without a pint in his hand, including just after his marathons!), great friend and DJ. He worked a full-time job at TSB bank’s HQ, watched every NFL game (well it seemed like he did) and he loved all kind of sports. He was a regular at his local pub ‘The Bottle of Sauce’ in Cheltenham, where he also DJ’d and shared his passion for uplifting dance music! 

At the aforementioned ‘Bottle of Sauce’ pub on Friday at his wake, I reflected with his best friend Ben and we both said that, although we were deeply saddened and struggling to understand why, we couldn’t say that he had not LIVED his life to the full. He crammed so much into the short time he was with us, and it was almost as though he had a different relationship with time because he just got so much into this life. 

I want to honour Marty’s memory, I want to honour his life and his very way of being. I think Marty can be an example to us all, and at the beginning of the year perhaps we all need to: 

BE MORE MARTY.

10 REASONS WE ALL NEED TO BE MORE MARTY

‘Being more Marty’ is about reflecting and looking at your life with a fresh perspective. It’s about grabbing life by the balls and going for it. It’s about not carrying on life as it has been, it’s about asking yourself how you can bring in more joy, more fun, more laughter into your life, and touch more people along the way. 

So what are the lessons I take from Marty? – what will be his legacy to me? I want to be more Marty in my life, and I suspect that you may too, that’s why I’m sharing these 10 reasons we all need to BE MORE MARTY:

1. Marty was the embodiment of fun: I want to be more fun, do more fun things, live life to the fullest. 
2. Marty was spontaneous: I want to do things for the heck of it, and just be spontaneous. Do new things and love every experience. 
3. Marty was joyful: You can’t be half-joyful, and when you were with Marty it was a real joy. I’d like to bring that joy to whatever situation I’m in and bring that sense of joy back into my life. 
4. Marty always gave 100%: Whatever I do, I want to give it my all – be it my work, my job, or something in my life – Marty always gave 100% no matter what it was and always found a way to enjoy it. 
5. Marty was passionate about life and pretty much everything:  Marty had lots of passions in his life from Star Wars, to Disney, to family and loved ones, to NFL, to DJing, to running. When we have passion in our life we just get more out of life, Marty understood that and showed us that a life lived in passion is a wonderful life.
6. Marty was quick to laugh even when things got tough: I want to laugh more, I want to enjoy life to the fullest. Sometimes life gets far too serious and that’s when we all need to be more Marty and lighten things up. 
7. Marty was kind, generous and compassionate to all: Be it a work colleague with an IT issue, a friend in need, a homeless person or the charities that he supported in his many runs. Marty was always looking out for everyone else, if you were in need, Marty was there. How can we be of service to others? Be more kind, generous and compassionate? 
8. Marty was a loving man and not afraid to express that love: Marty  would tell you he loved you, and when you were with him, you knew you were loved. We all need to tell people we love them more often. 
9. Marty was such a great friend, he always made you feel special when you were with him: We all need a Marty in our corner. He was there for me on many occasions as he was for so many. We could all be a bit more Marty and reach out more to our friends. 
10. Marty lived his life to the full: The term ‘joie de vivre’ encapsulates Marty’s life. We all need to re-assess what we want from life and where the joy and spirit is in our lives. It’s what Marty would have wanted. 

I know that Marty came here for a reason, and I am so grateful that Marty chose to be in my life. He was a true gift. I think he will live on in all of us who knew him, if we just choose to ‘be more Marty’. 

Now we don’t have to do everything at once, but I think we’d all agree that to be a ‘bit more Marty’ is something that we can all aspire to be in our lives. And I think we can all agree that these principles are ones that we can all subscribe to. 

I want to thank Marty, for all that he brought into my life. I miss him dearly and I know everyone who knew him and whose life he touched will be missing him dearly too – but I know that his example will live on, through us and with us. 

May we all be more Marty, I certainly intend to be. 

In peace and love
Jo xxx