Performance (notes)

Mark McKeon
Session about your individual performance as a leader in your school – complex job, with many nodes in Don’t sweat the smal stuff; operate only in your sphere of influence.
Told the story about taking off – then the first officer did not like the sound of the engine, so went back to the airport – passengers sat for hours with no information – then they took off again – then the pilot said they changed the first officer. Mark was worried that he was not handling the pressure very wel – and that is his Simple message about how to get the best out of people.
Have a professional massage at least once a month.
Take one step at a time and focus on the important things. Graph – positive – negative and closed to open.
Top right is open and positive (believer); bottom left = closed and negative (saboteur). Top left = survivor How do you engage al those four types.
1. challenge – almost everyone likes to be chal enge, except for the real bottom left people.
2. recognition – worked together with the first one.
Recognise people by name each day – National Bank improved their culture dramatical y. People were suspicious at first, but it soon spread. People are affected by the prevailing culture. You want the believers to stay for a long time, so set up a recognition system – had to show the survivors what was in it for them.
Have to chal enge the critics – justify why it is that way and chal enge them to come up with a better way.
They are open, so you have to get them up the positive scale. Don’t let them go – work with them.
Saboteurs – either endure them (if the culture is strong enough) or purge them from the system.
The more believers there are, the more they are the custodians of the culture. You can’t do it al as the leader – too many people on the staff. The culture can become self-supporting, but only if you keep chal enging and Sometimes busy people operate in a sphere that does not help them. Need high levels of serotonin and melatonin – replenished by sunlight and sleep and green vegetables. Prozac artificial y raises those levels.
Don’t need adrenalin high – gives you better senses and power – makes it very hard to chal enge and recognise people. Alcohol soaks up adrenalin, so the first drink always feels so good. So does food.
Getting sick on a holiday is one of the healthiest things you can do – your adrenalin has dropped.
Adrenalin masks pain. So you want high adrenalin levels if you are in a war. And bleeding slows. Adrenalin clots the blood. Also sends less oxygen to the brain – so you make mistakes, etc.
If you feel cool below your col ar at the back, you have too much adrenalin. Less blood at that spot.
Time lag of about an hour plus between drop in adrenalin and raising of the serotonin. Happens after lunch usual y – need to set up a chal enge during that time of day to keep people awake.
Quiz – on the slide. About things that make you tick – that also might make it hard for you to handle people who are in your face. This is the D (ominance) I(nfluence - people involvement) S (steadiness) C (compliance; risk profile) inventory. 32 or higher is a strong bias to that area. 19 or lower is a strong bias against that area.
Slide with the 4 area characteristics.
Then he got the whole group to stand in smal er groups by their score. And re-arranged them for the four "No matter how important you think you are, the size of your funeral depends a lot on the weather
that day."
Dr: What about sex? Patient: Infrequently. Dr: Is that one word or two? Boundaries – things like budgeting for time to do other things – e.g. switch off the phone after 6pm; leave school at 4pm twice each week. If you don’t control it, it controls you. Be open about your boundaries – if you Quality time is a poor attempt at rationalizing a lack of making the effort to have quantity time.
Acceptance of reality – athletes train then recover then play then recuperate – not trying to operate at peak levels al the time. Stress is not the problem; the problem is lack of recovery time. Adrenalin helps you live longer as long as you have recovery time.
Symbolical y set the limits for each day – put a worry peg on the tree at the gate.
Self-confidence – FIGJAM is the nickname of Nathan Buckley – not arrogance. Do whatever you can to be confident. Fake it until you make it. Pretend to be more confident than you are.
Instead of thinking that you can’t fight Mike Tyson, think about trying to stop him getting to the one you love Told the story about coming home quietly and getting yel ed at vs coming home noisily and not being able to Invest in You – are three things that you used to do and like but you don’t do now. Put some times and money into yourself. Do some selfish things.
Consistency – do it al the time. And do not feel guilty. Do something that you real y, real y enjoy.
Set a boundary every day. Must have a pressure relief valve/tap.
We are always making a choice. Doing nothing is making a choice just as much as doing something.

Source: http://www.appa.asn.au/conferences/2007/mckeon-notes.pdf