Morale boosting: Think local

How do you boost morale for your team when at times you too may feel like throwing in the towel and heading off to the nearest bar?   The demands on business owners are great and one of the many roles that a business owner needs to fulfill is to support and motivate their people. Often as business owners, we can be ill-equipped to do so, as is all too evident to me when I reflect back on the years I ran my business in Britain. 

Before we are able to support and motivate others, it is important to examine our own emotional state and our process for supporting and motivating ourselves.

I wanted to share a powerful process about managing our emotional states so that we can be more productive and able to support others.

Some states bring us empowerment whereas others limit our potential. It’s important to identify the triggers that cause these states and see if we can alter them. In some management training programs (which I have touched upon before), state control means an effective management of states, a journey from a present state to a desired state.

Below are some quick tips to help you identify and change your state to put you in the best possible place to support and motivate others.

Name your current emotional state. Awareness is the first step.

Identify your beliefs with regards to your current situation. We all have power over our beliefs and they are directly linked to our emotional states. Is this a belief that you want to keep? Examine? Re-assess?

Think of a time in the past that was enjoyable, a time when you felt fabulous. When you have thought of this imagine yourself there, step back into the experience. Spend a few minutes reliving the experience. While you are doing this, look around you, notice what you feel, see and hear as you relive this memory. 

Return to the present. Notice the impact that this has on your present state, right now.

Now to contrast, think back to a slightly uncomfortable past experience. Imagine yourself back in it. Do not stay in this memory for too long. Return to the present and notice the impact and compare this to how you felt when you connected with the positive earlier experience.

Change your emotional state. Now it’s time to change your state, do some type of physical activity, jump up and down, move your body and switch your attention to something completely different. Notice the physical sensations of moving and what you are sensing right now.  This is known as changing or breaking states and is a simple and effective exercise to use whenever you are feeling negative and un- resourceful.

It is very empowering to understand that we are all capable of influencing our states, rather than simply reacting to what happens around us and of course blaming others for our mood. 

Notice that as you went through this exercise in the last few minutes you have felt good, then uncomfortable, then maybe something else,  to how you feel right now.  Nothing has actually happened in the outside world; this has all been created by you.

Imagine what else you can create. And how much more effective you can be now to support and motivate others.

Pollyanna Lenkic is the founder of Perspectives Coaching, an Australian based coaching and training company. She is an experienced facilitator, certified coach and a certified practitioner of NLP. In 1990 she co-founded a specialist IT recruitment consultancy in London, which grew to employ 18 people and turnover £11 million ($27 million). This blog is about the mistakes she made and the lessons she learned building a business the first time round and how to do it better second time round. For more information go to www.perspectivescoaching.com.au

For more Second Time Around, click here.