blog Archives - Lee Jackson - Online and Offline Motivational Speaker and Presentation Coach in organisations, businesses and education.

It’s been an eventful few weeks for the Jackson’s, we kept our house in an endlessly minimalist / tidy state (with cupboards bursting full of stuff) as we tried to sell our house, and at the same time we are preparing to move house. Obviously these two things have to happen at the same time, but it would be easier if they didn’t! While trying to keep the house tidy for viewings, we got rid of 17 years worth of rubbish from our loft and cupboards. This strangely therapeutic tidying process turned up a few surprises and some great memories along the way, including old records, lost photos and my bronze ballet medal, that i sometimes talk about on stage – i was aged five and there were only three people in the competition!

But the biggest news of all, is the most trivial first world problem I’ve ever written about – our fridge-freezer stopped working! Now, this seemed like an easily solvable problem in my activist head “my fridge freezer is broken – I’ll go and buy a new one.” I thought. Oh how naïve I was! We went to Curry’s and it dawned on us very quickly that in the 12 years that we’d had the fridge freezer, the world has changed! Seriously changed. Not only have smartphones become the norm and cloud computing has revolutionised the way we do business but 12 years ago fridge freezers were white and had no nationality. Now they are black, silver and grey and are ‘American or French style’. My 45 year old brain was, as they say – flummoxed. There wasn’t a good fridge freezer that would fit into the fresh new gap that had opened up in our kitchen. So, we had a big gap in our cupboards and nowhere to keep our milk cold. Tricky.

Not only that but we are moving soon so we had to think ahead and get the right fridge freezer for our new house kitchen too. It was a conundrum worthy of Carol Vorderman. So we opted for the new house solution. We bought a Stateside-style fridge freezer ready for our new house, with one small drawback, it doesn’t fit into our current kitchen. So we’ve got a fancy new silver fridge freezer that’s stood in the middle of our kitchen. It has sadly made that strange throwback from the 80’s, our breakfast bar, unusable. It’s weird but it’s not a bar and never eaten breakfast there, anyway I digress. It’s a big old thing and its in our way, but we’ll put up with it for a few weeks until the big move happens and we move a mile up the road. But the new appliance, has had quite an impact.

(Not actual fridge contents!)

We have noticed in the last few days that this fridge freezer is cold, really cold! Yeah I know – not a great shock to you I’m sure *|FNAME|* but to us it is. The freezer is very cold -18C to be precise and the fridge is about 5C or so it says, and because we have more space now I think we have realised that 1. Having more space in the fridge keeps things cooler and 2. Our old fridge freezer has been failing for months, and we didn’t even notice. The kids have said “Dad this is really cold” at least half a dozen times now, our new silver member of the family has changed things.

Look out for culture creep

One of the things that i love about my job is that I get to go to dozens of schools, colleges, businesses and organisations and see things from ‘fresh eyes’ all the time. I get a visitors perspective on an organiations attitudes, values and culture. A view that people who have worked there for years, often don’t see anymore. I can often learn a lot just from the reception staff and seating area, as I spend a lot of time there waiting to be ‘shown through’ to the hall or training room. I did some presentation skills a few months ago for a very big organisation and I asked as I arrived if me and the people on the course could get a coffee to start the day. I was told that the only coffee available was a dodgy machine, three floors up and through four sets of double doors. In the end I paid for a Costa instead. This organisation is being turned around slowly, but hospitality obviously wasn’t a value that they hold dear, just yet. In other places I’ve been to, I’ve been treated like a king, where my clients couldn’t do enough for me. I genuinely don’t expect the red carpet treatment, far from it, thats not my style, but its funny how companies in the same sector can have such different culture and values. I’ll work with almost anyone, as I like variety, but I do remember how people treat me, as I’m sure you do. It’s only human.

Look out for culture creep

The issue we need to be aware of at work though is ‘creep’. ‘Creep’ in our personal and professional life can be dangerous. Our old fridge slowly got less efficient and we didn’t even notice, until we got the new one that actually worked! Organisations are just the same, bad values and practice can creep up on us without us even noticing. I heard a story a few weeks ago where a 15 year old had done work experience in a company and did really well, so well in fact that a few weeks later the boss sacked a member of staff because they realised how slow and inefficient they’d been in comparison. Fresh eyes, made their business better.

So, here’s a few big questions for you this week:

If you are a leader – when was the last time you had a fresh set of eyes on your workplace and culture, to find the good, the bad and the ugly? If you choose the right person, it can only help make you better.

If you present up front – when was the last time you asked someone to give you feedback? Someone you permission to really tell you the truth? I do this a lot when I’m teaching and coaching presentation skills and I’ve seen people become engaging speakers, with just the right amount of encouragement and honest feedback.

And lastly, the big one – what about your personal life? We all love friends that we can have fun with and those who comfort us too, but do we have friends who tell us the truth when we need it? It’s a tricky one, we don’t like it, but can make a real difference. I knew a guy who had a ‘donkey’, this ‘donkey’ was one of his friends who he told his wife she could call anytime if he was being a ‘donkey’. “She never called him” he said, “but she did pick up the phone a few times”. I’ll always remember that.

A couple of weeks ago, I was in the bedroom doing some weekend tidying up after a busy week speaking away from home. In a daze with the radio on, I was in a world of my own as I unpacked. In my relaxed state I heard my daughter running upstairs shouting “Dad, Dad, you’ve got to ring the fire brigade, NOW!” I thought it was a joke at first. But no, she was very serious. She told me there was a problem outside. I stumbled around half dazed as I tried to find a pair of trainers (why can you never find shoes when you need them?). In the end I just ran outside in my socks and ran up the road towards what sounded like a big bonfire. As I approached the flats at the top of our street I realised it wasn’t a bonfire or even a garage fire but it was a neighbours house – on fire. I went into emergency mode, calling 999 while keeping an eye on the conservatory and house extension as the fire took hold. The flames were as high as the two storey house, I’d never seen anything like it. The windows were blackening and melting as I watched, along with garden stuff and furniture. I stood helpless watching from over their back garden as the flames took hold. The heat was astounding. While I was on the phone the fire brigade arrived as someone else had called them before me. They went around to the front of the house to tackle the blaze head-on as I shouted to ask if there was anyone in the house, but I got no response.

I hoped for the best, I just hoped it was empty.

There was nothing I could do but watch as the the flames grew and the smoke took hold inside of the house. There was a window around the side of the house open and the black and grey smoke started pouring through there too, the house must have been taken over inside and out. I wondered at one point if the adjoining house was going to go up too as the roof of the extension was now on fire through heat transfer and the flames had already destroyed the conservatory completely like it was made of paper and twigs. Scary stuff.

I watched as the firefighters did their work, fighting the fire and dampening the roof of the adjoining house. With the fire under control I joined my other neighbours in the adjoining street to find out more about it. Apparently there was someone in the house at first, but she was alerted and she (and her dog) escaped safely.

Like most times when I’ve been in ‘emergency mode’ you feel a bit dazed afterwards and need a good old fashioned English cup of tea and a sit down. I do wonder whether the English tradition of a good cup of tea is just our way of pausing and taking stock.

I won’t pretend to be macho here, as a family man this incident shocked me. I’d never seen a house fire before and it felt very close to home, literally. I went around the house and double checked our smoke alarms the same day, but it went deeper than that.

Incidents like this put things into perspective. As I stood there watching my neighbours house go up in flames, I was thinking. As I chatted to the neighbours who had raised the alarm; we were thinking the same thing together. We didn’t start the conversation with “Oh no, his poor DVD collection” or “Ah, man his flat screen TV must be ruined”. All we thought about at first is whether or not there was anyone in the house. Was everyone ok?

As I was chatting to the neighbours – the owners of the house came back in their car, it was heartbreaking as they saw the blackened windows and the damage.

‘Things’ are nice to have, I quite like my Mac, my TV and my TIVO box but I LOVE my family.

That’s what really matters.

I know when I speak about motivation or presentation skills I’m helping people perform better, but I always have that in context. We all have work to do, but if I ever thought my work life became THE only love of my life, I’m in trouble. Let’s enjoy and succeed in our work life – but let’s not forget what is really important. If you’re a goal setting type of person, then don’t forget to set family and relationship goals too. I have found that when our relationships are at the top of our agenda, everything else seems to fall into place.

I know this all sounds a bit Jerry Maguire, maybe even a bit schmaltzy or idealistic. But imagine if we prioritised our relationships everywhere. We looked after our clients better, developed our staff properly, got on as best we could with our colleagues and made time for family as well as time for work. Like I often say sometimes things aren’t easy, but they are simple.

When I saw my neighbour running to see her house as the fire was being doused, she wasn’t asking about her DAB radio or her HD TV, she was asking where her daughter was. That’ll be something I’ll never forget.

Lookout for culture creep!

What’s really important? My neighbour found out the hard way…