Library of Professional Coaching

Stop Playing Safe by Margie Warrell – A Sample Chapter

Stop Playing Safe - Your guidebook to more purpose, confidence & courage.

Introduction

Imagine yourself 20 years from now, looking back on the intervening time.What would you love to have accomplished in your career and life? What impact would you like to have made? What kind of person would you like to have become by making it?

Twenty years from now there will be people no smarter or more capable than you who will have accomplished extraordinary things across all spheres of life. While it’s impossible to know who they will be, what is certain is that they will all have made courageous choices, taken bold actions and refused to succumb to the fear that drives so many to think small and play safe.

Life is the lump sum of our choices. Too often though, our choices are driven by fear, self-doubt and insecurity rather than a clear sense of purpose, confidence and courage. Fear drives us to avoid risk, play safe and settle for the status quo, however unrewarding or miserable it is.

Sombre economic forecasts, corporate cutbacks, natural disasters, fundamentalist extremism, international conflict — look at what’s making news today and chances are at least one headline is fuelling fear and feeding insecurity.While this may not have you racing to stock up your pantry on canned tomatoes and bottled water, there’s no escaping that we live in a culture that breeds fear and drives us to play safe, avoid change and settle for less than we want.

Research shows that our brains are wired to overestimate risk, exaggerate its consequences and underestimate our ability to handle it. Confronted with ongoing economic instability and mounting global competition, fear in the workplace has grown so pervasive that playing safe and avoiding risk has

become the norm.Yet history has shown that when fear runs most rampant, courageous action reaps the greatest rewards. And nowhere is courage more needed right now than in the work we do, and the way we do it.

I wrote my first book, Find Your Courage, to help people overcome the doubts and fears that were undermining their relationships and wellbeing, and confining them to their lives of quiet desperation, immaculate mediocrity or both. Meanwhile, the world has suffered its worst economic collapse since the Great Depression, and the fear that stifled people’s personal lives has infiltrated into the corners of organisations globally.We live in a complex, competitive and fast-changing world. The actions that got you to where you are today will not be sufficient to take you to where you want to be 10 years from now. As the world has changed, so you too must change how you engage in it.

I have written this book because I have a passionate belief in the potential of human beings to create lives rich in meaning and contribution. In my work within organisations around the world, I constantly encounter people trapped inside prisons of their own making, failing to utilise their potential — people whose experience of going to work every day is marred with anxiety, resentment and resignation. Perhaps you relate.

What you do matters. How you do it matters even more. Sadly, global surveys on employee engagement tell us that many people don’t believe so.The cost to the bottom line runs into the billions.The cost to the human spirit is immeasurable. Underlying this disengagement is the fundamental fear of failing, of looking foolish, of not having enough and not being enough.

The fact is you have all the resources available to you for creating a life and a career that fulfil you so that your work not only enables you to make a good living, but also to enjoy a more rewarding everyday experience of life (rather than just weekends and holidays). Research has confirmed what my experience has shown me: when people connect to a deeper purpose in their work they’re not only more engaged and effective in their work, but also more inclined to take the risks essential for success.

There are countless business books filled with strategies for becoming a more proficient networker, strategist, salesperson, negotiator, ‘hi-po’ employee, manager and leader. There are very few that get to the heart of what holds people back from applying them. The reality is that it’s not

a lack of knowledge that prevents most people from doing more and being more—it’s a lack of clarity about what they truly want, and the courage to go and get it.

While this book is written for the individual, the principles, concepts and strategies it contains can benefit any team, group or organisation. After all, while organisations are living entities in their own right, they comprise individuals.An organisation cannot become more competitive, focused or innovative unless the people who work in it are. Indeed, the greatest competitive advantage available to any organisation is its people. But it’s not just their experience, expertise or skills that can give the competitive edge. It’s their commitment to the organisation’s mission, how openly and effectively they communicate with each other, customers and suppliers, and most of all, their willingness to ‘push the envelope’ of possibility. All of this entails a degree of risk and demands a measure of courage. If everyone in your organisation practised the principles in this book, it would propel your organisation forward in every way — from customer service to product innovation, from sales to project execution—building bottom-line outcomes as never before.

This book comprises eight chapters, the first seven of which form The Courage Key model,which you can view in the appendix. The chapters of Part I: Core Courage, form the core foundation of The Courage Key. Part II: Working Courage provides you with concepts and practical strategies to be both more courageous and effective in handling the many challenges and seizing the opportunities in your work and life.The theme of each chapter in Part II — Confront, Adapt, Leverage and Lead — create the CALL acronym and are your ‘call to action’ to stop playing safe. Part III: Take Courage is where the rubber hits the road as you step out of your comfort zone and into action in making the changes and taking the chances needed to experience the success and fulfilment that prompted you to pick up this book in the first place. Part III is focused on helping you set yourself up for success over the longer term, creating an environment that supports you in getting and staying in purposeful and courageous action, no matter what.

Interspersed through all eight chapters are case studies of numerous people—from CEOs of global organisations to trail blazing entrepreneurs—whom I’ve interviewed while writing this book for their insights and experiences of acting with courage. Finally, I have also included

Courage Keys and Courage Challenges to help you apply the concepts I discuss to the challenges and opportunities you face today. I encourage you to invest the time to do the challenges as you go along.Together, the following eight chapters will help you to rethink risk and unlock the power of courage in your life so that you can soar above the fears and beliefs that have kept you from achieving the level of success you want.

While I hope this book will equip you with practical tools for engaging in courageous conversations and taking brave actions that will elevate the trajectory of your career, my greater hope is that it will elevate the trajectory of your life. By unlocking the power of courage in your life, you’ll tap into the unbridled potential within you and enjoy the genuine satisfaction that flows from working hard at work worth doing.

I hope you’ll return to this book again and again as you navigate your way through the maze of choices, changes and challenges that are certain to unfold before you in the years ahead. May it become a trusted guide for unlocking your courage in a fearful and fast-changing world and for finding the clarity to make smart decision, not just safe ones. I hope also that you’ll be able to seize opportunity in your adversity so you can add the full quota of your contribution and enjoy the full quota of rewards and satisfaction you’ll earn by doing so.

Chapter 5

Learn, unlearn and relearn

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” ~ Charles Darwin

In 1993 about 1600 people belonged to the International Flat Earth Research Society of America. I kid you not.

Their president, Charles K. Johnson, stated publicly that he had been a proud ‘Flat Earther’ all his life: ‘When I saw the globe in grade school I didn’t accept it then and I don’t accept it now’.

Needless to say, there are people you might call ‘late adapters’!

Of course, when it comes to adapting to changes in the world around us, whether they be changes in the prevailing beliefs or changes in the actual environment in which we live, learning how to adapt to change can be difficult. For some, such as Charles K. Johnson, who died in 2001 still adamant that the moon landings had been staged, it can be more difficult than others.

While it’s easy to mock someone who maintains the world is flat hundreds of years after it’s been proven otherwise, there are many respected people who have made similar statements that, with hindsight, now seem equally short-sighted. For example, this comment made by Darryl F. Zanuck, head of 20th Century Fox, in 1946:‘Television won’t be able to hold onto any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.’

Change before you have to

To succeed in today’s world, it’s vital for you to remain open- minded about what’s changing around you and how those changes, including the almost imperceptible ones, will reshape the world we live in five or 25 years from now. Don’t walk into the future blindfolded.The more attention you pay to what’s changing around you today, the better you’ll adapt to the challenges of tomorrow, find opportunities within them and capitalise on them.

My kids can’t comprehend how I ever organised a social life back in the ancient pre-Facebook era.Their digital brains boggle even further trying to imagine how anyone ever did their job without computers, email or mobile phones.

‘We used to send smoke signals,’ I chide them.

In their world, as they sit on the couch with their iPads skyping their friends on the far side of the globe, that may as well have been how we communicated.What they don’t realise is that by the time they become parents, their children will think the technology they use today is as antiquated as the pagers so many relied on to do their job just 20 years ago.

Adult education experts estimate that up to 40 per cent of what tertiary students are learning will be obsolete a decade from now when they will be working in jobs that have yet to be created. Indeed, the top 10 most in-demand jobs today didn’t even exist 10 years ago.To say that we live in a changing world understates its pace and its vast scope.

Of course it’s not just technology that’s changing the world. Profound changes in demography and longevity have experts predicting that by 2020 there will be more people aged over 65 than under 15 in the world’s developed countries.Add to this the social changes in family structure, the globalisation of talent and continued innovation in technology, and it’s hard to imagine just what the world and its increasingly mobile workforce will look like 20 years from now.You can’t do either by playing safe and avoiding change. As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote,‘Standing still is deadly’.

Yes, the world is changing fast, and there is no sign of it slowing anytime soon. For the three-plus billion people in the workforce

it’s not just about keeping up with the rate of change and the nature of the work we do, but how we do it and where.

When anyone can work from anywhere, it changes the nature of work everywhere.Traditional boundaries disappearing and the global talent pool becoming more skilled and mobile presents challenges for people in developed countries to adapt faster in order to simply stay competitive. There’s no two ways about it: your ability to adapt to change and proactively make changes in your career is what will make a crucial difference to where you find yourself even just five years from now.

Catalysts for career change

There are many reasons why people choose to change their jobs and careers. Being able to predict the changes you’ll make one or five years from now can help you prepare for them. Look at these key reasons for considering a job or career change and think about how relevant they are to you, or how they may become more relevant in the future.

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