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

Lee Jackson is an Award-Winning Motivational Speaker and Presentation Coach working in organisations businesses and education to help people Get Good® - his style is engaging, authentic and jargon free.

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You are here: Home / Archives for leadership

Like a cheeky bargain? Me too – just don’t do what Brian Robson from Cardiff did…

05/05/2021 By Lee

Like a Bargain?

<a href="https://www.vecteezy.com/free-photos/ornament">Ornament Stock photos by Vecteezy</a>

Most people like to find a bargain but Brian Robson (not the football one!), now, a 75-year-old from Cardiff took it to a whole new level. When he was 19 he was desperate to come home from Australia. He’d gone there with work, but he was feeling really homesick and he wanted to come home. But in 1965 the fare from Melbourne to London was £700 and the newspapers report that he only earned £40 a month.

So one night he had an idea.

He decided to send himself as a parcel!

He bought a small crate about the size of one of those hotel room mini-bar fridges, minus the whiskey. And he persuaded his new friends Paul and John (no, not one half of The Beatles!) to strap him in and pack him up along with a ‘water in’ and a ‘water out’ bottle, a pillow and his suitcase. The flight was supposed to last around 36 hours, but it ended up taking three days and unfortunately, he didn’t land in London, he only got as far as Los Angeles.

When he landed in the US, an eagle-eyed customs worker found him after thinking he was a dead body. He told the BBC that a man had “looked through a hole in a wood knot in the chest and we caught each other eye to eye”.

It was a miracle he’d survived. He’d spent a day upside down even though there was a sticker saying “THIS WAY UP” and he’d almost died of extreme heat and cold while in the plane’s hold. Once the U.S. authorities realised he wasn’t a spy he was released, found his way home and resumed his life in Wales, hobbling from sore muscles and exhaustion.

Like most Northern blokes I like to save a bit of money, but I also realise that sometimes I have to pay someone to do things.

I paid a guy to fix our lawn the other day, my Facebook friends told me I could do it myself, but I chose to use an expert instead.

Both at work and at home, when have you wished you’d hired someone to help you rather than do something on the cheap?

Remember: your time is valuable, and, whether you like it or not – you, like me, are not an expert in everything.

 

Because of strict copyright, I can’t use a good photo for this article so please go here to see them all:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-56648439 

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/crate-stowaway-who-spent-four-days-in-cargo-could-have-flown-for-free-20210409-p57hrt.html 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/14/world/australia/brian-robson-crate-australia.html 

——–

P.S. Brian is trying to track down his old friends, so Paul and John, or their relatives can contact Mr Robson at brianpms@hotmail.com

——–

Filed Under: business, education, Get Good At Work, leadership, motivation, __EVERGREEN Tagged With: advice, blog, business, education, happiness, keep on going, leadership

5 ways to really enjoy Christmas this year…

11/12/2015 By Lee

Christmas – 5 ways to really enjoy Christmas this year…

christmas banner

Things I love about Christmas:
Turkey and cranberry sauce, slightly mad Christmas lights, food, seeing my family, food, time off work, great TV specials, food and a drop of Port with good friends, oh, and, err food!

Things I hate about Christmas:
People buying stuff they don’t need or can’t afford, presents that go straight to landfill, the over-hype of “the day”, hearing of people I know being on their own at Christmas, people who say it’s just for kids, Christmas pudding!

What do you love and hate about this time of year?

Sure, there are things that I love and hate about Christmas time like most people do – but I certainly wouldn’t ban it, like some have said that they would on Martin Lewis’s new online poll.

He says: “…20,367 voted on whether they’d cancel Christmas if given the choice. Perhaps unsurprisingly, parents of school-age kids were most festive, with 64% of those mums and dads happy to celebrate. Of the rest of voters, 55% would choose to press the cancel Christmas button if they could. Bah humbug!” See the full results of the poll here: http://is.gd/jgjQ78

People who want to ban it may well be in the majority, but why is that?
Maybe they are reacting to the over-hyped season of shopping?
Maybe they have a different religion, like my old neighbour who was a Jehovah’s Witness?
Maybe they have bad memories of certain events at Christmas time?
Maybe it’s an expense that they just can’t afford?
Or maybe they are just a bit grumpy?!

But for most semi-Scrooge’s, maybe they don’t realise the power of a celebration. Christmas is good for us, in fact any good holiday or celebration is good for us. But we in our British culture often just don’t celebrate very much. And some make not celebrating an artform! It always makes me laugh that anti-Christmas type people still go to Christmas parties but they sit there with a “Bah humbug” hat on while there! Or as I saw the other day at a hotel where a works party was taking place – everyone was wearing a Christmas jumper. i never saw the party as it was behind closed doors but one by one people were popping to the loo looking very sheepish wearing a really embarrassing jumper at a 5 star hotel! Their faces were a picture as they mumbled under their breath “please don’t see me please don’t see me” in their rush for the loo! I think they’d had an email from the boss to wear a light-up Christmas jumper, none of them were doing it by choice.

But amazingly it can be good for you…

5 reasons Christmas is good for you
(taken from The Mirror’s article)

1. You sing more at Christmas.
Singing is good for us, it lifts our spirits and makes us feel part of a community. Why not get to a carol service or start a sing-song at home? A study for the annual Sing for your Heart campaign by Heart Research UK found singing is a “great aerobic exercise, giving your heart and lungs a fantastic workout”.

2. You give and receive.
Studies show that when we give and receive gifts, the brain releases the ­feel-good chemical dopamine. Giving also releases the “cuddle” hormone oxytocin.

3. We spend more time together.
The average family manages just 36 minutes of quality time together a day, according to recent research, yet a separate poll reveals 95% of parents believe the key to happiness lies in spending quality family time together.

4. We make family traditions that will last.
“Whether it’s buying a new tree bauble every year, leaving a mince pie out for Santa or watching It’s A Wonderful Life, family traditions unite all generations”. We always watch National Lampoons Christmas vacation as our start to Christmas!

5. Err and lastly,
“The Christmas holidays are the most popular time to conceive, according to one US study, probably due to a combination of socialising more and the long, cold days of the Yuletide period when, for many, there isn’t the distraction of work! Condom sales also double in December, showing that sexual activity in general rises. And extra sex is good news for your health. As well as giving your heart a boost and relieving stress, its great for your ­self-esteem and wellbeing – and even makes you look younger!”


Here’s my 5 ways to really make the most of Christmas this year:

1. Take time to stop and think, reflect on the last year, write down the positives, learn from the negatives, then throw them away.

2. Don’t buy tit-for-tat presents for the sake of it, buy presents for those you want to, maybe even make a present or two yourself, a tin of homemade mince pies is much more meaningful than a bottle of talc! Or just send a text, have a Skype chat or send a card to someone you’ve lost touch with.

3. Write down a gratitude list. What are you thankful for this Christmas? It’s proven to make us feel better. Maybe also write down a task list for work too, so you can forget it and relax.

4. If you are not in the emergency services, then switch off your phone for a while (it’s so rare to do that these days) and put an autoresponder on your email too for a while, use it as your winter break.

5. And lastly, when you are at a party or get-together – be in the moment, enjoy the random conversation, games or cheesy TV, you’ll enjoy things so much more. Just go with it. Work can and should wait every now and then.

Have a great Christmas holiday, however you chose to celebrate it.

merry christmas lee jackson

Filed Under: business, education, fun, leadership, motivation, random Tagged With: business, education, keep on going, leadership, lee jackson speaker, leejackson, motivation, motivational

Lookout for culture creep!

15/09/2015 By Lee

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.

Lee Jackson motivational speakers fridge! (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.

Filed Under: business, leadership, leejackson, motivation, speaking, __EVERGREEN Tagged With: blog, business, keep on going, leadership, lee jackson speaker, motivation, motivational

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

22/04/2014 By Lee

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.

Filed Under: business, leadership, leejackson, motivation, __EVERGREEN Tagged With: blog, leadership, motivation, priorities

Why we all need to learn from the Sign Language Interpreter at the Mandela Memorial…

17/12/2013 By Lee

The Sign Language Interpreter at the Mandela Memorial… caused quite a stir. Apparently he’d been reported before many times, but they still booked him.

Many people including other speakers, say “fake it until you make it!” and “you can do anything!” and I understand why they say that, to a point (although I’ll never say that without qualification in one of my talks – I like to give evidence for my motivation).

But let’s be clear – you can’t be confident and then have no skill at all in the chosen task, it just doesn’t work. It’s not fair to anyone including yourself, and it’s a very short term view.

Will this guy ever get a gig again? I think not, certainly not in sign language interpretation.

This especially applies to presentations, don’t fool yourself into an ugly arrogance that you can do something when you can’t! Instead learn the skills and practise, practise, practise, chip away until the experience you gain kicks in. You’ll get there in the end, but it will probably take you longer than you think.

I do a lot of presentation skills training and after a day with me, people say they are more confident than before but at the end of the sessions I always say to them – volunteer for every speaking opportunity from now on, get out there and speak, the experience will build your long term confidence and with the right coaching will make you a great speaker.

Be confident, yes!

Push yourself, yes!

But, don’t be falsely confident or even so arrogant that you forget to learn the skills needed.

No one likes a fake, be your true confident self, it’s all we’ve got, and it’s enough.

Filed Under: business, education, leadership, motivation, presentationskills, speaking, __EVERGREEN Tagged With: business, leadership, motivation, powerpoint, presentationskills, speaking

What is Haiku Deck?

05/12/2013 By Lee

The nice people at @HaikuDeck are featuring my slide deck of my book on their front page! http://www.haikudeck.com/gallery/featured 

But what is Haiku Deck? In my opinion it’s Powerpoint or Keynote with the fat trimmed off to make us better speakers, as it develops this could be a game changer.

Here’s Adam their CEO explaining all on Huff Post…

#powerpointsurgery

Filed Under: business, leadership, powerpoint, presentationskills, slides, speaking Tagged With: business, leadership, powerpoint, presentationskills, schools colleges, speaking

Marriage makes people happier than six figure salaries and religion – via Telegraph

11/07/2013 By Lee

Fascinating and challenging article from The Telegraph. People are often seeking to earn more money, but maybe we should seek to have good marriages instead, it makes us happier(!)…

Link: Marriage makes people happier than six figure salaries and religion – Telegraph.

The ONS has found that being married is 20 times more important to a person’s well-being than their earnings, and 13 times more important than owning a home.

The figures also indicate that having children has almost no impact on a person’s day-to-day happiness, although it does make them feel life is more “worthwhile”.

The ONS analysis was based on an survey of 165,000 people, in which they were asked to rate their life in four areas: their satisfaction with life, how worthwhile they thought their life was, how happy and how anxious they felt.

For the first time, the ONS has been able to use the data to rank the factors which contribute to happiness and well-being. Health and employment are the two most important factors, with marriage or civil partnerships coming third.

On a scale of 0 to 10, married people were on average 0.14 points happier than co-habiting couples, 0.3 points happier than single people and 0.4 points happier than those who were divorced or separated.

Dawn Snape, one of the authors of the report, said: “It [marriage] gives people a sense of stability, and a greater sense that their life is worthwhile.

“I think that the issue with children is that we probably all recognise the saying ‘you are only as happy as your unhappiest child’. Parents have a responsibility and that in itself can add to the perceived burden.

“People are happiest in their youth and when they are older. Middle-aged people are the least happy because they have the most responsibility.”

The researchers said they made some unexpected findings. They found that people with degrees were significantly more anxious than those who had not been to university, while the top 10% of Britain’s earners were more anxious than those who earned less.

Those who described themselves as being in very bad health put their life satisfaction rating some 2.4 points lower than those in good health, with their happiness scores 2.6 points behind those who are well.

Unemployed people have significantly lower levels of satisfaction with their life, happiness, and feeling that their life is worthwhile, than those in employment, the ONS found.

They are also more likely to be anxious. People who are in work but looking for another job also recorded lower well-being scores than those happy with their position, according to the analysis.

Overall, personal well-being is the highest for young and older adults, with those in middle age recording lower scores, the ONS found.

An ONS spokesman said: “Gaining an understanding of what influences personal well-being is an important aspect of national well-being, but is only part of a broader picture that draws on a range of economic, social and environmental statistics to show how the country is doing.”

Approximately 160,000 people from across Great Britain were surveyed from between April 2011 and March 2012 for the study.

Filed Under: business, leadership, motivation, __EVERGREEN Tagged With: happiness, leadership, marriage, motivation

When a motivational speaker has a bad day at work.

07/06/2013 By Lee

 Motivational speaker having a bad day

fast cash loan

Being a speaker is a strange job. One week you are really busy and the next week it's quieter. Thats life, that's business. I can handle that. This week has been a quieter week and to be honest it hasn't been the best week, the other day was simply not a good day. Amongst the admin and marketing there were a couple of lighter moments, but not many.

But, there were also three really annoying moments.

Another speaker caused me some hassle, a good client surprisingly let me down, and after rearranging a few things and driving to an appointment, a big coaching client just didn't show up.

I'd had it.

Three days of office work culminating in three big hassles just about finished me off. I was truly fed up.

Yes, you heard me right. I was fed up, ready for a break, and ready, at one point, for a new career!

Thankfully I'm not the kind of speaker who pretends they 'never have a bad day', my friend Paul McGee taught me that, in fact he reminded me just the other day. Handy.

You see having a not so good day is quite normal.  It's what we do with it that counts. 

So I went home grumpily, ate my tea grumpily, and then grumpily went into my man cave for an hour or so.

Then when I was ready, I  decided to do some thing about it. I was ready to change 'my state' as NLP people would say. I put on some good loud music while I emptied and stacked the dishwasher, and then I simply went up to my whiteboard, grabbed a pen and wrote down in columns – the three problems, the gig i have tomorrow, my main to-do item, and a list of things I was grateful for. I then thought about the problems and asked one of the most powerful questions – was it my fault? And, did I try my best? All three problems weren't my fault and there's nothing more I could do to sort them out, so I crossed them out and concentrated on tomorrow and also on the good stuff in my life. I'd tried my best, it wasn't my fault, so I'm not going to dwell on the issues. 

Not an easy task, but a simple one.

In all the years I've been researching real success in education and the workplace I've come to this conclusion. The difference between people who make it and those that don't, is this: it's what they do on their not so good days. It's what they put into practice when they don't feel like it – thats what really counts. When have you had a day like this? How did you move on as my mate Paul McGee would say?

The world is complex enough without us making it harder for ourselves.

Find the strategy that works for you, and put it into practice – often.

I do. 

LeeJackson.biz

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Filed Under: business, education, leadership, leejackson, motivation, speaking Tagged With: business, leadership, leejackson, motivation, speaking

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