It’s child’s play!

Just how many times have we been embarrassed by our children, when they say something really inappropriate at the wrong time? It usually happens somewhere very public, like the Supermarket queue and you are caught unawares. For example, “Daddy – why is that woman wearing THAT red hat?” The entire supermarket queue then looks at you, the woman with the red hat and your child. Whilst you are desperately trying to think of a suitable answer, you can feel yourself going the colour to match the hat, and your tongue sticks to the roof of your mouth. Your ability to give a witty or sensible response has long since disappeared. The rest of the queue are of course giggling thinking “thank goodness that is not me!” Been there? Most of us have in some way, many times!

However, there is something fantastic about children’s ability to observe and comment on some wonderful things that we as adults, no longer see or experience, or no longer allow ourselves to do so. How much are we missing out, both in terms of fun, but more importantly, missing some critical information for running our businesses?

Let’s start with the fun bit! Please answer the following questions very honestly:
• When did you last giggle in the back of some meeting or forum?
• When did you allow yourself to dream about the most ridiculous things?
• When was the last time that you had a big public tantrum?
• Have you had an urge to give someone a sweet or hug just because you liked them?
• When did you let yourself abandon what you were doing, as you suddenly want to go and do something else, leaving the last thing strewn across the floor or desk?

So – how did you do on the ‘Child behaviour’ scale?
Umm – depressing isn’t it? Although this may seem a little trite, answering such questions made me realise just how serious and ‘correct’ a way of life we choose to live and work. Not for a moment am I suggesting that you have a tantrum in the next meeting, (unless you really want to!) but I am suggesting that it may be worth reviewing how much we take fun out of what we do – and that may not be necessary all the time. There is plenty of research that tell us that enjoying our work and having fun makes us much more effective – we have just forgotten how! We all work such long hours these days, why not enjoy your morning’s commute tomorrow thinking up ways to make your day more fun. What would you do if you were still 10? – that may help!

The other ‘child’ factor to think about is filtering. As we age, our brains very cleverly learn to filter information that no longer seems be necessary to acknowledge in our conscious brain. For example, it would be hard work to still have to think consciously about how to tie our shoelaces, get dressed, drive, spell etc., all of which we just do without thinking (well – unless it was a very late night?!). This frees up room in our head to do much more complicated thinking – such as run our business, answer emails, texts and play with our blackberry simultaneously. But have we filtered out too much in some circumstances? Are there some things that we no longer see or acknowledge?

I have a dear friend, who is a correspondent for a world wide media company. One of the things that I treasure about him, and probably makes him excel in his profession, is his ability to look at the world in an almost naive manner. His ability to ask questions which sound almost child-like, enable him to get to the bottom of many issues much more quickly than others. He has not hesitation in asking ‘So – why are you doing that?’ – when it would seem obvious why. Let me give you a small example. He was in my house, when I was answering some emails from clients a couple of weeks back. He came over and said that exact question “Why are you doing that?” – to which I must have looked slightly irritated and said “Well – they sent me an email and so I am responding and want to get back to them immediately”. He then said “But I thought your business was about building rapport – so why are you answering them on email?” He meant it completely innocently, and smiled and walked away. I then sat and thought for a moment – I had made a whole mass of assumptions that they would want me to reply on email, although it is so true that a phone call would be much better choice of medium. I duly picked up the phone and had a much more fruitful and rewarding conversation with my client, which we both acknowledged.

How much of our daily behaviour is driven subconsciously, and enable us to miss out on some really obvious opportunities?

So – Can I recommend you take five minutes out of your day, and think:
• How many of my repeated actions I could do differently?
• When was the last time I stopped and asked myself ‘Why do I do things this way?’
• What assumptions am I making about my meetings today?
• How do I know that they are real assumptions?
• What ‘rules’ do we have in the organisation, that are there for history sake rather than logic?
• Who is the newest member of the team? Have I asked them for their observations of how we do business?
• If I had a ten year old in my office, what would they notice?

So enjoy looking for the obvious, pretending to be young and naïve again – you may get some surprising results!

Until next week!

Kate Tojeiro is and Executive Performance Coach at www.the-x-fusion.co.uk