Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: SA.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Welcome to another episode of Balancing Acts. I'm your host, Linda Hamilton. I'm a cpa, a certified exit planning advisor, and a systemologist. I've always looked at taken my perspective of business as a holistic view. And there are two things you really have to balance in business. One is passion and vision. But it's about more than passion and vision. It's also about the numbers. And when we look at everything for a business, we leads to greater success. So today we're going to talk about the softer side of business, mental fitness in particular, and how that can help you be successful. It's my pleasure to welcome Anne Elliott, the founder and president of the Brickena Company, a business coaching company that specializes in working with female executives who want to be more productive as leaders with less stress. Wouldn't we all like that? Anne uses the positive intelligence PQ methodology developed by Shirzad Shamin. It's also based on a book by the same name. And she helps her clients identify patterns of self sabotage and stop them before they derail their best intentions. These scientifically based tools of mental fitness improvements your capacity to respond to life's challenges with a positive rather than negative mindset. And Ann is also a longtime chapter chair for the Women Presidents Organization, of which I've also been a member for more than 20 years. And it is my favorite organization. Ann works with women who run multimillion dollar companies and she was acknowledged as the number one WPO facilitator worldwide in 2017 and 18. Ann, and welcome. I'm so glad to have you with us today.
[00:02:20] Speaker A: Thank you. I'm delighted to be here.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: So let's talk about first your journey with positive intelligence. What attracted you to this methodology?
[00:02:31] Speaker A: Well, I founded my company, the Burkana Company in 1993 and the people that I work with, the women business leaders, I find to often be stretched thin in trying to meet the demands of everyday business. As, as you spoke about.
And some chapter chairs with the WPO introduced me to positive intelligence and they, they raved about it and they said, you know what, What I learned is you could have productivity, higher performance with ease and flow.
I said, well, I'd like to have some of that ease and flow. Sounds good to me. So I experienced the six weeks positive intelligence mental fitness program and it had such a profound impact on me that I became certified as a coach in mental fitness. And now I incorporate that into my coaching work, as you said, using these scientifically based tools of mental fitness.
[00:03:40] Speaker B: Yes. I also took that six week program because I'm a bit of a course junkie myself, so I'm always taking new things. And I found it quite fascinating to look at maybe my behavior and how I managed my own stress.
CPA tax season can be pretty tough. So can you talk a little bit about what positive intelligence is and how it measures mental fitness?
[00:04:08] Speaker A: Well, positive intelligence is a scientifically based program that was developed, as you said, by Shahzad Shamin.
And it, in a word, it helps you deal with life's challenges in a positive way instead of a negative mindset. So, you know, stuff's going to happen in the business and in life. So if you can develop the mental fitness to deal with that in a positive way, you're really far ahead of the game. Like Linda, for example, if I said to you, I hear there's a marathon in New York, how about, let's go run that? If you weren't physically fit, it would be very challenging.
Would you agree?
[00:04:52] Speaker B: Definitely, yes. I don't think I'd be able to do that well.
[00:04:57] Speaker A: Right. So you. So developing the mental fitness to be able to meet those challenges and is.
Is really what. What mental fitness and the PQ model is all about.
And you. And you can measure it or you can know that you are dealing with a saboteur. That's a term familiar to you from mental fitness. When you're feeling any kind of stress or overwhelm, resentment, anger, any kind of negative emotion, that's an indication, a measurement that your saboteurs are at work.
[00:05:38] Speaker B: And so I think there's an assessment, isn't there, behind pause. So tell me a little bit about how that assessment work, and why is it different than others like Disc or Colby or any of those other types of behavioral assessments?
[00:05:55] Speaker A: Well, yes, you're right. There is an assessment which will give you a measurement, a score of your nine saboteurs. There are nine of them. And it will give you a ranking to indicate which is your highest saboteur, highest score in the saboteur. And that's useful because it will then allow you, when you know what to look for, you see more.
So when you, you.
And it's not. It isn't a typing. It isn't saying that you're a type of something, a person. It's just that this saboteur is actually just a mental pattern of thinking.
[00:06:39] Speaker B: So we all have these saboteurs.
Sometimes when I talk about business, you know, we'll often say we set goals and things like that, and often we just have to get out of our own way. Because, you know, we're not even getting somewhere and there's all kinds of stuff in our minds that are holding us back. Is that what you mean by saboteur?
[00:07:01] Speaker A: Yeah, well, yes. And you said something really important. Leadership is an inside job. And so this work is about your own personal development, your own leadership. And when you become more fit, more mentally fit, then that expresses itself in your relationships and your performance, your productivity, your well being, it's, it. Does that answer your question?
[00:07:29] Speaker B: It does. And, and I think there's a really strong correlation between satisfaction with life, you know, our, our well being and our success in business. It's very hard to be successful in business when you're not able to take care of yourself and be it. Be at your strongest. Can you. The, the core components, maybe. Is there a main part of the positive intelligence method that would help our audience understand what we're talking about?
[00:07:58] Speaker A: Yes. So let's talk about those saboteurs. Let's define them. A saboteur is defined as a thinking pattern that we developed early in life. And at one time it served us well. But it, when it's over, it's actually an underlying strength. Your saboteur is expression of an underlying strength. And when it is used, overused, it becomes a saboteur, it becomes abusive.
And you and I talked about the judge. I think you, you, you enjoyed learning about the judge. So the judge is the master saboteur. And the judge judges three ways, judges you. It's judge of self, judge of others, and judge of circumstances. For example, have you ever been in a meeting and you made a contribution to the conversation. When you got out of there, you said, I don't, that was the dumbest thing I've ever said in my life. I don't know why I said that. And you, you just, that went over and over in your mind for hours, maybe days. Well, that's the judge judging. You're judging yourself.
Then if you take the other way, the judge likes to work is judging others.
That person that cut you off in traffic, or the friend that was late for the dinner date, or the report that didn't give you the numbers on time, that's the circumstance of judging others.
And the third way is judging circumstances. Covid is a great example of a circumstance that the judge would judge. And then here in my state, where I live, Hurricane Debbie did an awful lot of damage. So that's a circumstance we could judge.
[00:09:53] Speaker B: And so these, when you're, when you're judging, what is the, the true negative impact of. Let's say judging self, which was very high on my score. I'm very good at judging myself and I'm very easy about others. I'm very forgiving of others and want to help them.
[00:10:13] Speaker A: Yes.
So what is, ask me that question again, Linda what is the, what is.
[00:10:19] Speaker B: The what is the negative impact on us as let's say, as business leaders of having this judging ourselves so much?
[00:10:28] Speaker A: Well, you spend so much time ruminating about what you did or did not do, you can't give attention to the really important things.
It's like, let's just take for example, putting your hand on a hot stove.
Now, is that good for you? That pain that you feel putting your hand on the hot stove, is that good for you?
[00:10:53] Speaker B: Definitely not.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: Only for a split second to tell you that there's, there's something amiss here. And if you feel any kind of negative emotion, stress, anxiety, resentment, jealousy, anything that's an indication that your saboteurs are messing with you.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: So, so the, the, if you're comparing it to the stove, it's when you're feeling that emotion, it's telling you maybe you're feeling something, that something might be wrong or alerting you, but that you don't want to Dr. Dwell on it, you want to kind of handle it.
[00:11:31] Speaker A: Well, it's telling you that, that a saboteur is at work here where there's the judge of the other nine. He, he's got nine accomplices. You know, he doesn't work at this alone. And so that's, that's really can be considered a good thing in that you get that signal.
[00:11:51] Speaker B: So the signal is important. We're going to take a commercial break and then we're going to come back and talk more about how we can positive intelligence to our daily lives and in our businesses.
[00:12:02] Speaker A: Sounds good.
Foreign.
[00:12:37] Speaker B: Welcome back to Balancing Acts. We are talking with Ann Elliott, the president and founder of Berkana Company about positive intelligence and how you can improve your mental fitness and strengthen your mental fitness and how it can help you in your daily life and in business.
And let's, we were, we were just talking about saboteurs. Let's again go into you mentioned that there were nine accomplices to the main saboteur, who is the judge?
Can let's talk about some of those accomplices and how they kind of manifest themselves in your daily life.
[00:13:15] Speaker A: Okay. Well, I'll just be candid and share with you my biggest saboteur, the one I scored highest on, and that's the controller.
Now, the Strength of the controller. See if you'd like to have this kind of person on your team or leading your organization. They're confident, they're action oriented, decisive, willful and persistent.
That sounds pretty cool. When that is taken to an extreme or too far. They need to dominate and they can confront and they are not open to influence. They've. They've got the way things need to be done and they can be confrontational.
I, for example, decided to resign as general manager of the universe.
I just, I realized people really didn't appreciate every, all the hard work I was doing to manage everything and control everything for their benefit. So I decided, okay, you just have to do it the best you can on your own.
So it's. And if you're run, if you're leading a team, for example, and you have this saboteur that you overuse, then you, you don't do the team any favor really. You're not developing leaders because they ultimately depend on you for all the answers because I know you're going to tell them what to do anyway.
So it's important to remember that saboteurs can be very expensive.
But as we said earlier, when you know what to look for, you see more. And when you see this kind of behavior demonstrating itself, then you can take an alternate path.
[00:15:01] Speaker B: So you're talking a little bit about awareness also, right? Being aware of your own behaviors and how maybe they impact you and your team.
[00:15:13] Speaker A: Yes. Beautiful.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: And so one of my, I think I had two higher ones and it's interesting. I think we'll let you all know later how to go ahead and take this assessment, which was kind of fun. Of course I loved the concept of the judge, but I had a very high pleaser and avoider.
I think I avoid giving people bad news about their taxes and I like to please people as well. And so that cohesive. I really don't like conflict. So those are two things along with being, you know, judge of self that were kind of high there. What would you say about that?
[00:15:53] Speaker A: Well, I would say the strength of the avoider is they're, they're usually easygoing and they are very even keel, temperament wise and flexible and adaptable.
You know, that's pretty cool to be around something like that. But as you mentioned, they avoid unpleasant tasks like telling a client they've got a big, big check to write to the irs. And they don't like conflicts as, as you mentioned. And they are our procrastinators.
And I hear people with the Voyager saboteur who say, oh, I work better under pressure.
Well, that really is not the truth because when you're under pressure, you're prone to make mistakes and you tend to have to work late hours and exhaust yourself in some cases. So the avoider is, has its strengths as, as we mentioned, but they, it can be very costly and when people just put off putting their, pulling their tax materials and information together because they just don't want to do it, they think it's going to be a horrible task and then bring it to you in a shoebox or a cigar box or worse.
That, that, that makes it hard on you, the professional who's going to prepare their information.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: Yeah, and I think that adds a lot of stress. So sounds like maybe sometimes our clients are also having some avoider side to them on things they have to deal with. What about the pleaser side? I think lots of business owners have, you know, on one side you might be a controller with your team, you want to control everything. And on the other side it might be, you know, if you want to please too much and you're taking on clients or maybe letting customers dictate how your business is run. And that can kind of get in the way. I would imagine it can go both ways ways, can't it?
[00:18:00] Speaker A: Yeah, well, the pleaser is, is typically empathetic and they're loving and giving. That's, that's the strength of somebody with this saboteur. But where it gets them in, in difficulty is they're constantly helping, constantly pleasing or rescuing other people. And the, the underlying reason for that is they do that to be liked and they lose sight of their, their own needs and become resentful as a result.
You know, people say yes. Yeah, I wrote an article about it, it's on my, my website under resources about the pleaser and that it, it will. And they're prone to burnout because there's, they're not taking care of their own needs first.
And women, Linda, I don't know if you see this, but I see women typically are going to take care of everybody else first.
[00:18:59] Speaker B: I think, and that is often true. They have children, sometimes they're taking care of parents. They have employees, they have customers. And in particular our audience are many entrepreneurs or those who would like to become an entrepreneur. Maybe they're working a side hustle at night and have a full time job. So there's a lot there. So let's talk about what we can do about these things. I recall when I took the course, one of my favorite activities was actually whenever I felt this extreme stress or felt that, you know, maybe I was getting angry about something. To rub my fingers together, which I really, really still to this day try to do.
[00:19:46] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:19:47] Speaker B: To calm myself. So let's talk about what. What it is that the Positive Intelligence method teaches us about. How do we manage saboteurs and stress in our life?
[00:19:58] Speaker A: Well, that this. The power of this operating system is that it's so simple. And the first thing we've already talked about, the first step is identify the saboteurs.
When you know what to look for, you see more. And the second thing is what exactly what you're talking about. And we call those PQ reps. And these just the simple act of paying exquisite attention to the sensations of rubbing your two fingers together.
Or. And you can do this in a meeting, might want to do it under the table. Breathing, you know, paying attention to the. The. Your breath that. The temperature of the air as it enters your nostrils and the temperature as it leaves and just calm yourself. And that engages the sage brain. And the third part of the operating system is to activate the sage powers or know what those five say.
[00:20:59] Speaker B: I was just going to ask you about the sage power. So we've only talked about saboteurs and judges, so where are we going with the sage powers?
[00:21:08] Speaker A: Okay, the. The first one is empathy, and you're talking about self care. And the pleaser empathy is compassion for yourself and other people. That's really the foundation. And the second one is to explore, to be exquisitely curious about what's going on without blame. We don't want the judge in the picture just to be, how are other people experiencing this? What can we notice about that? And the second one is innovation, the sage power of innovation, which is finding a creative way to something you may never have thought of before to address an issue.
And the third is. Is the sage power of navigate. And that is to reflect back. Maybe ask your wiser elder self what's really important here.
Sometimes it'll be the relationship is more important than the goal.
And then the last power, which I just love, is the activate power. And that is get into Focus Jedi action and ask. You can ask yourself what needs to be done right now.
What small step can I take?
If you've got a huge garage that's a mess, for example, you can't even pull your car in. That's just what you can't put your car in.
And you just think, oh my, this I'll never get this clean. What small action can you take now? And the answer could be pick up the rake and hang it on the wall.
Then you can celebrate an action.
[00:23:01] Speaker B: That's very interesting. So the sage powers, would you call that positive mindset? I mean, in part, we were talking about mindset when we first started, negative mindset and positive mindset. So how does this translate into our mindset and comparing the two?
[00:23:19] Speaker A: Well, those saboteurs live in the left side of your brain.
And so when you do these PQ reps you. You mentioned, and thank you for doing that, then you switch to the right part of your brain where all these sage powers live.
And. And be clear, we all have them. We all have them. That's the beauty of this whole thing. That's. That's the essence of us.
We just forget they're there because they're covered up with these patterns of thinking that we've adopted over the years to keep us safe and to manage life.
[00:23:57] Speaker B: You know, it's interesting because I took the positive intelligence course and read the book, I don't know, 2018 or 2019, and I remembered clearly the saboteurs and the judge, and I didn't quite remember the. The. The sage powers. Although now that you're talking about, it is coming back to me that I am truly an empath. And maybe it's all these years of protecting business owners from, you know, harm, whether financial harm or just being their sounding board, talking them off the ledge about understanding taxes and, you know, so feeling empathetic towards the situations they felt. And I do recall that when the, The, The. The. The process of rubbing your, you know, giving yourself that cue, that. That rubbing your two fingers together when you were feeling anger was to kind of switch on my empath power.
[00:24:59] Speaker A: Oh, that example. Yeah. Perfect. Yeah.
[00:25:04] Speaker B: And so that. That is how it can be. It can make you more aware of what you're feeling. And everything's about relationships in business, right? We have relationships with our employees, we have relationships with customers. And then we haven't even talked about personal. How can this work in your personal life?
[00:25:24] Speaker A: Well, that's the beauty of this whole operating system. It can be applied to anything.
For example, if you. If you simply ask the question. If I were to ask one of my. One of my prospective clients, and I wrote that question down because it was so, so important is, what are you unhappy about in your life now? What's not going well in your life now?
And you can track it. And when they clearly identify that, you can track that back to saboteurs.
And when you know what the saboteurs are, you can get into your Sage brain and choose another way, another way that builds relationships.
[00:26:16] Speaker B: So is that an, you know, in part. And, and we'll talk go more into this in our next segment or what are some of the immediate results a business owner or leader and business owners are leaders within their company.
What immediate results can they get from practicing this method? You know, some things take years to change your habits, right?
[00:26:40] Speaker A: Yes. Well, that's an interesting. I'm going to tell you about a friend of mine, actually a fellow coach who had some health issues. He was in a lot of pain and he, and he went to the emergency room, the hospital. He was in such, such pain. And when he got there, his blood pressure was sky high and the doc says, oh my goodness. So he begins to do this and his blood pressure went down.
So that's the most amazing story I've ever heard.
[00:27:16] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, it is. So let's take a commercial break and come back and talk more about positive intelligence and, and actually men fitness and kind of high stakes decisions which we often have to make in business.
[00:27:29] Speaker A: Let's do foreign.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: Welcome back to Balancing Acts. We're talking to Anne Elliot, the president and founder of Brana Company about the positive intelligence method and how it can help our mental fitness. And we've been talking a lot about saboteurs and about positive, positive mindset in the form of sage powers. Can you give us an example of how a business leader maybe has used this method or can in a high stakes decision?
[00:28:29] Speaker A: Yes. Business owners do a lot of hiring people. They have people. That's a high stakes decision. One of my clients had an employee who was not meeting the requirements of the position and the owner was stressed about it. The employee was likable but others were impacted in the organization by her poor performance and the, the CEO just avoided, she had an avoid a sapper tour as you might guess. She avoided releasing that employee. She didn't know the impact or she was afraid the impact it would have on the others in the, in the business.
But she realized that, she realized you talk about awareness. She became aware I'm not doing myself or this organization any, any favors by not addressing this. So she released that staff member and the whole chemistry in the organization changed.
And, and so that, that was a high stakes decision that had a great benefit from addressing that and it sounds.
[00:29:41] Speaker B: Like it was a difficult decision for her for her to make.
So she had to use some of her own tools. Right. To, to get past this avoider instinct that she had.
[00:29:57] Speaker A: She had to dig deep into to her, her sage powers to do it with empathy. To be, to explore what, what I think she even explored how she could help this person find another job. But she was very efficient about it. Once she made the decision, she took the action.
[00:30:22] Speaker B: That's a great story and one probably that so many of us do deal with because right, we hire people. It could be independent contractors, it could be employees. But that is a very common challenge that we have to deal with both the hiring decision and often letting people go. So you mentioned, you know, the team and the impact it had on the team. Do you recommend having your team maybe all take the assessment how could this help maybe for team collaboration or understanding each other more.
[00:30:57] Speaker A: Well, that I love that idea. What I recommend is that the leader of the team experience a six week program first, then she knows what the impact can be and then we can, can yes, help her take the next step to working with her team.
[00:31:19] Speaker B: And what is, what is part of the six week program? Is it just a course? What are you actually doing during the six weeks?
[00:31:26] Speaker A: Well, you, you are this. The beauty of it is it's all guided by an app on your phone.
And so there are. Shahzad Shamin, the founder provides a video the first of the week and sets up your practice for the week. And you begin by identifying the saboteurs, identifying the PQ reps. You do those every day. And the, and then engaging this, the sage powers.
And It's. And in 15 minutes a day to commit, 15 minutes a day, you can change your life.
[00:32:08] Speaker B: So and that I think is I had heard him talk about the, the power of neuroscience and that you can actually rewire your brain over a period of time by doing this practice. Do you want to comment on that?
[00:32:24] Speaker A: Well, it doesn't, it doesn't take long. Yes, it's, this is based on neuroscience and it doesn't take long for an MRI to show the difference in the way your brain fires up or works when you use this method.
[00:32:42] Speaker B: And I recall from the PQ gym and I don't always like to go to the physical fitness gym either, but trying to get myself to commit to doing these exercises. There were many. The one I just talked about, the rubbing your fingers together was a very short one and that you could practice. But there were other things he shared, you know, maybe that were longer or maybe when you, you, you were not able to do that or you needed some other tools to reduce your stress. Is there another example you can use that a business owner maybe uses regularly, maybe even during negotiations with, with the business client?
[00:33:22] Speaker A: Yes, yes. Before you go into a negotiation, you do a long PQ session and like five, at least five minutes, maybe 12 minutes or before you're going to make a big speech. And that puts you in, in that calm state where you can access that right side of your brain where the sage lives.
[00:33:48] Speaker B: So, and the sages, you know, we talked about empath.
What's an example of if. Which one of those sage areas would work for a negotiation? Is it activation? What is it? I don't think you want to be too empathetic with who you're negotiating with.
[00:34:05] Speaker A: And give away the store. For sure, you want to have boundaries, but you want to explore what's possible and be open to what you discover and be willing to hear what the other side has to say.
And, and, and I think you have to ask yourself which is more important here is for me to win this deal or to maintain this relationship with this client.
[00:34:37] Speaker B: So you coach your clients and I, I assume you use some of this with your, you know, emphasis facilitation with WPO members who are leading very, you know, significant businesses that have, you know, tons of challenges and opportunities. So what would you say about opportunities and how positive intelligence can help you capitalize? Maybe, or, you know, Jim Collins once said, you know, what's your return on luck?
[00:35:07] Speaker A: Luck happens. Good luck and bad luck. I can give you two examples.
When Covid happened, that was an opportunity to judge circumstances. But one of my clients used that as a gift to pull together as a team and to do things they didn't think possible to serve their clients at a higher level.
Another example is when a client had a key employee leave.
And that's a good opportunity to judge somebody else, judge that employee. But what they discovered were lapses in their systems and processes that they thought were being taken care of by this key employee. And the gift was they improved internal operations of the company to position them even stronger going forward as a firm.
So leadership is an inside job.
[00:36:05] Speaker B: And so I remember that the gift, it's negative things happen, bad luck happens. And that these. You want to turn how you're looking at that, instead of focusing on the negative, you want to turn it into something positive, which is a gift.
And that, that is what I recall from. Is that what you're referring to?
[00:36:29] Speaker A: Yes. There is always a gift. Always a gift. In any circumstance, it might, you might not be able to see it immediately, but it is there.
[00:36:40] Speaker B: And that's. So we want to, as we face challenges in business.
And sometimes really, I often describe it as like pushing A boulder uphill at times when you're trying to grow your business and so you want to look for the gifts that are there along your way and be able to take advantage of those opportunities and also making sure that you're protecting your own well being and your stress. We're going to take a commercial break and we're going to come back for one more segment and we're going to talk about some of the long term impact and next steps that people can do if they want to learn more.
[00:37:19] Speaker A: Sounds good.
[00:37:52] Speaker B: Welcome back to Balancing Acts where we're talking about positive intelligence with Anne Elliott, the founder of Berkana Company and let's talk about, let's continue.
We've been talking a lot about our negative mindset, positive mindset.
Let's talk about how this can have a long term impact on us. How can we improve and control negative emotions? Running a business itself, I often say it's not for the faint of heart. It can be very challenging and it can be very exhilarating.
What would you, what do you tell your own clients who are operating very successful businesses?
[00:38:34] Speaker A: That success is an inside job.
And as, as Jim Collins, as you alluded to, says, luck happens. So when you, when you have bad luck, if you have your systems in place, you have the right people in the right places and you know what your profitability picture is and bad luck happens, you're better able to deal with it. The same thing is if good luck happens, if you have all those things in place and you get an opportunity to buy another company or do something that's really good luck, you're positioned to take advantage of that opportunity.
So I chose the name of my company, Burkana B E R K A N A Purposefully. It's a name that means growth and rebirth and that is what I help my clients do individually as well as company wide.
So as far as the mental fitness program, it is, it's really a life. You said you were a lifelong learner. I am too. It is really a lifelong pursuit.
You just, you just do it a little bit, you just do a little bit along and, and you create magnificent changes in, in your life.
[00:40:03] Speaker B: And you know, you talked, you just talked about and, and made me think of systems and processes, profitability, operations. You are a chapter chair and facilitate and lead a group of multimillion dollar business owners in the WPO and. Right. So that is a lot of those things that come up and business is not a straight path. Right.
There's a lot of ups and downs and hills. So let's talk for a minute about the strength we need to maybe make sure systems and processes are in place because I don't think everybody has all of that immed immediately down. Right. So that's something they also are going to have to work on. Is what coaching tools or you know, just exercises do you use to help people identify where their problems might be in their business?
[00:41:01] Speaker A: Well, I'll tell you one resource I found extraordinarily helpful is I believe the author is Karen Martin and it's the organizational handbook or the, the organization and, and she lays out in, it's just a great resource. Four, four focuses and, and one of them is systems and processes and that sort of.
[00:41:28] Speaker B: So I'm a, I'm a systemologist and so the reason, one of the reasons I asked is I help business owners capture what they're doing now without trying to reinvent the wheel.
Because when you capture your systems and processes you're able to see them visually, to be able to diagnose them. And oftentimes you might think you have problems with your team. Maybe you're negative, maybe negative emotions are getting in the way. But also it's often a broken process. It's often that something's not quite right and that you want to be able to diagnose what the problem is. You also want to be able to diagnose whether you are getting in your own way and preventing change as well. So can you.
Is this something that comes up when you're across wpo? We have chapters across the United States and internationally.
[00:42:22] Speaker A: One thing I found very useful with my chapter is to first identify what is going well.
You know, we have an issue that we want the genius of the group on. So let's just talk about what is going well in this circumstance. Circumstance.
And then what would you like to change about this?
And it gives you a place to, you start from the positive because in any circumstance, in any conversation, at least 10% is workable or a value.
[00:42:56] Speaker B: Right? Right.
[00:42:57] Speaker A: And you can make it stronger if you build on what is working to start with.
[00:43:02] Speaker B: And so do you think the positive intelligence method is something that has long term value to a business or is this something like, you know, a six week program that you take once and you're aware of some of these issues but don't necessarily incorporate it into your business? How can you make that leap?
[00:43:22] Speaker A: Well, I think it is decidedly one of the best tools to live a fulfilling life with, with ease and flow to, to, to improve your relationships. It's just the best thing I have found, because it is so darn simple. And you can do it anywhere. You can do it anywhere. You just learn the principles in the first six weeks. You learn how it works and then you apply it until the rest of your life on anything, projects, hiring processes, leadership, the whole thing. It can apply to anything.
[00:44:13] Speaker B: And that is the principle behind our show, balancing acts. Because there are so many things you do have to balance in business that includes both your personal life and your business life. You want it to be fulfilling. But I think I said at the beginning, when we first started talking, I think there's a strong correlation between our personal satisfaction, our personal happiness even, and business success. I just wanted to mention I read an article on Harvard Business Review which was titled Positive Intelligence, but it was actually written by Sean Anker, who is the author of the Happiness Advantage, who we heard speak about years ago at a WPO conference. And he just talked about burnt bees global expansion. And Global expansion to 19 countries can be incredibly stressful. And instead of making his team feel that stress, he called out people by email every day and he acknowledged their contributions. And so everything about this expansion was keeping a positive mindset so that stress really didn't get you down. And I think that's what I'm really getting at is both, you know, we haven't talked about happiness, but, but that helps. And, and not letting stress get the best of you when business is difficult, whether that's for your employees or the business owner herself, is why I think you need positive intelligence in your toolkit. Can you talk a little bit about, as we wrap up, maybe happiness or satisfaction in our teams?
[00:45:57] Speaker A: Yes. Well, you know, this program is based on neuroscience and you've probably been in a room with a couple that were, if they weren't saying anything, there was a lot of negative energy going on there and you could feel it.
And so that happiness quotient that you, you speak about, you can feel that and your brain will pick up what's going on with the people around you. So it's contagious. So you, so you, if you want to create the mental fitness of your team, you increase your own mental well being and your positive outlook.
And does that answer your question?
[00:46:43] Speaker B: It does. And I think that's a really great place to leave our audience.
Let's tell them where they can find some resources. I like to say, you know, are there free resources they can do? The assessment itself is free. You have a tremendous amount on your website. How can they find you?
[00:47:00] Speaker A: Well, they can find me on LinkedIn Ann Elliot on LinkedIn. And they can also, as you say, go to my website berkanacompany.com and there are a lot of resources there. You can subscribe.
There you go. There it is. You can subscribe to my newsletter and if you would like there there are the articles. Perfect.
And you can I'd be happy to do a discovery session for somebody in your audience if they book a call with me and I will help them get the assessment after we have a call scheduled and then I'll explore with them how they can what their saboteurs are and more importantly, how they can take action, become more mentally fit.
[00:47:51] Speaker B: Thank you so much, Ann, for sharing your time with us and your expertise and just, you know, really a lively conversation about positive intelligence and what it can do for us.
I'm just going to close by saying my summary of today is Positive intelligence is a very valuable exercise tool and practice that helps those of us who run businesses be mentally fit as well as physically fit. I hope you will check out Ann's website and I hope you will also check out the book Positive Intelligence. I found it a great read. It's even easy on Audible. And come back next week for another episode of Balancing Acts.
[00:48:37] Speaker A: This has been a NOW Media Network's feature presentation. All rights reserved.
