How Resilience Helps Build a High Performing Team

In today's episode our hosts Brenton Gowland and Ron Tomlian talk with their guest Kristen Raison from PeerThinc about the role resilience plays in building a high performing team.

Some of the topics covered include: 

• Dispelling the myths about resilience
• Definition of resilience
• The role resilience in building a high performing team,
• The seven areas of resilience
• How to build resilience within your team
• Tips to build resilience in your team right now
• How do we as business leaders become more resilient ourselves

Adapt_CO
Helping businesses find their new shape.

SA Business Builders
Business leaders social group based in South Australia

Borough Markets
AI driven digital transformation company that exist to level the digital marketing playing field by

Nucleus – Creative Agency
Specialising in growing business through brand, digital, video, web, print, campaigns and marketing.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

Brenton Gowland: 0:01

Today on the Business Builders podcast, we're discussing the role that resilience plays in building a high performance team with Kristen Raisen, one of the co-founders of PeerThinc Ron talks about some research that suggests getting out in to nature is almost as effective as the drugs prescribed for depression. And I share some very exciting news about the Business Builders podcast's new home. That's right, we now have a studio. Welcome to the Business Builders Podcast where each fortnight we bring you insights that will help you succeed in business. We're your hosts. I'm Brenton Gowland.

Ron Tomlian: 0:36

And I'm Ron Tomlian.

Brenton Gowland: 0:37

And, Ron, we have a home for our podcast now.

Ron Tomlian: 0:40

It's just fantastic. It's very nice little studio that you've got organised here in Flinders Street.

Brenton Gowland: 0:45

Absolutely. And our new sponsor, who will talk about a little bit later, who is Borough Markets has given a space in their offices. We've been looking for a home for the Business Builders podcast for a little while now. And that's part of the reason we haven't been as regular as we are supposed to be Ron.

Ron Tomlian: 1:00

Yes. And we promise to be more regular in the future.

Brenton Gowland: 1:03

That's right, every two weeks, we're gonna do it. It's been four weeks since the last one. And now we have an actual setup where we can have guests. And on that. Today, we're being joined by Kristen Raison. And she's another one of our hosts from the SA Business Builders network, who obviously major sponsors of this podcast. And Kristen will be talking with us today about how to build a High Performance Team by developing resilience in your business. Now Kristen is an executive coach. She's a facilitator and a global business mentor. She is passionate about supporting leaders to develop engaged and inclusive teams. She has over 25 years experience advising and operating at executive levels across government, financial services and SMEs ranging from executive management, human resources, and leadership to the national lead for people in engagement in culture. That's a lot isn't Ron.

Ron Tomlian: 1:53

It's a lot, I'd like a resume like that.

Brenton Gowland: 1:55

So would I. And that's not all Ron because Kristen is also a non executive board director for Asthma Australia and St. Andrews Hospital, and previously with the State Theatre Company SA.

Ron Tomlian: 2:07

And I've had the privilege of having Kristen join me in my executive coaching groups as a speaker. And I know you've worked with Kristen on some shared clients, Brenton. So I'm sure this is going to be a great conversation today. Not just for us, but for our listeners as well. But before we begin, I'd like to make a shout out to our sponsors. We have another new one this week.

Brenton Gowland: 2:29

That's right. And as we discussed earlier, that is Borough Markets, they've just come on board as a sponsor. Now Borough Markets are a digital transformation company that exist to level the digital marketing playing field by making enterprise level digital marketing solutions and technology affordable, accessible and usable for SMEs which is fantastic. So if you're looking to grow your business online, in what is an incredibly competitive environment, Borough Markets has an excellent track record for helping SMEs do just that in a very affordable way. And they might just be able to help be the catalyst for your growth as well. So please check out our new sponsor Borough Markets at boroughmarkets.com.au- that's spelled B-O-R-O-U-G-H Markets. There ya go.

Ron Tomlian: 3:16

Great. And we recommend the SA Business Builders networking group.

Brenton Gowland: 3:19

Absoluterly we do.

Ron Tomlian: 3:20

Who we're all a part of. Now we haven't had an event for a couple of months due to the ever changing COVID rules.

Brenton Gowland: 3:26

Yep.

Ron Tomlian: 3:26

But we will be starting up again with casual events this month in September

Brenton Gowland: 3:31

Fantastic.

Ron Tomlian: 3:31

So if your business leader here in South Australia, please reach out to Brenton or myself

Brenton Gowland: 3:36

or Kristen

Ron Tomlian: 3:36

Or Kristen. And we'll be talking to you about coming along.

Brenton Gowland: 3:40

Absolutely. And we'd also like to make a shout out to Nucleus who are one of our founding sponsors, make sure you check them out at www.nucleus.com.au.

Ron Tomlian: 3:50

And finally, we'd like to recommend Adapt_CO. That's your business isn't it Brenton.

Brenton Gowland: 3:54

Absolutely you always save the best for last don't you.

Ron Tomlian: 3:56

Now Adapt_CO offers outsourced marketing solutions that give people a high end marketing power without the need to hire a chief marketing officer, which is very expensive. Brenton you're working with several clients right now to help them find and grow their sales and marketing strategies in order to grow their business.

Brenton Gowland: 4:14

Yeah, absolutely. Both to grow their business but also to better service their clients Ron

Ron Tomlian: 4:18

Now I know is a result of getting in touch with you or trying to chew incredibly busy. Do you even have room for new clients?

Brenton Gowland: 4:25

I do. I've been working with a few great clients. But I've got room for probably two more at the moment. So look, if you'd like to have a chat about your sales and marketing challenges, or you just want to contact me for a coffee for some advice or whatever. Just reach out to me on LinkedIn. And if I can help you I'd love to or I'm also happy to point you in the right direction.

Ron Tomlian: 4:41

Great and in my opinion, good business really is all about helping each other and we have a great network of business professionals who can help you with your business challenges. That's what SA Business Builders is all about. That brings us to our guest who's in the business of helping clients build resilient teams. Hello, Kristin, it's great to have you on the Business Builders podcast.

Kristen Raison: 5:05

Thanks so much for asking me along today, Ron and Brenton, it's been fantastic. I've been really looking forward to today's discussion and can't wait to get started and listen to some of the questions that you may have for me around building high performance teams and resilient people. Awesome.

Ron Tomlian: 5:18

Let me start you off, then Kristen. Your focus is on building high performance teams by helping them develop resilient leaders and resilient staff. Now, there's a word that keeps getting bandied around all the time, and I'm talking about the word resilient, it seems to be flavour of the month. Can you talk to us about what resilience is in your view? And why it's such an important aspect of building a high performance team?

Kristen Raison: 5:42

Yeah, absolutely. And thank you. Great question. And you're right, it is absolutely the buzzword at the moment. There's room myth around resilience. So we quite often hear people talk about the fact that you're either born with it or you're not. And I'd like to today dispel that myth, it really is like a muscle. So if we think about resilience, and how we need to grow that. It's really one of those things where it's more of a state than a trait or a personality trait. So what we need to be thinking about is, how do we work on building our biceps? How do we work on building our abs? It's really similar with resilience. So what we find is for people that have faced some form of, you know, challenge or adversity, it can help build that muscle up. Obviously, it can also be detrimental for people if they've suffered significant trauma. But what we find is for people that have been put through really challenging situations and times and they've come out of those in a really robust way, it actually helps strengthen the next time it happens. And we saw this a lot, actually, with the very first round of COVID. versus when we went into lockdown the second time, you think about the first time we went into lockdown, and how everybody was just beside themselves. When we went back into that next lockdown, we kind of knew what we were doing a little bit more, so we weren't as uptight or stressed about it. So it's very similar with resilience, the more we work on it and focus on it and keep it is a continual, conscious state of mind, the more we'll actually be able to build and grow.

Brenton Gowland: 7:10

What I'm hearing is that you got to go through some sort of challenge or adversity to build that muscle. Yes?

Kristen Raison: 7:16

Absolutely. And it's really interesting, if you look at, you know, children at school that have been, you know, dealt with bullies, and the horrendous situation sometimes at school. In fact, I have one of my son's went through tremendous bullying in year 10. And I look at him now today. And he has built so much resilience, because he's had to work through what some of those coping mechanisms were to really support him to get through those challenging times. So now, when a situation comes up, where you know, somebody may be a little bit adverse towards him, he's got that innate way of being able to draw on that inner strength, which we look at as part of his resilience.

Ron Tomlian: 7:54

I know it's difficult for a person who has so much expertise in this area not to use jargon. But if you had to try and define resilience without jargon, how would you describe it?

Kristen Raison: 8:05

Yeah, thanks. That's a really good question, Ron. So really, it's all around how we withstand and overcome adversity or unpleasant and difficult events successfully, and being able to adapt to them more easily over time. That's a really easy way of describing it. And so when we think about leaders, we need to be there to not only build our own resilience by dealing with challenging situations with the people within our businesses, and potentially key stakeholders and things. But we need to be there to support our people as well around building their own resilience in the workplace and at home.

Brenton Gowland: 8:38

At home?

Kristen Raison: 8:38

Yeah, absolutely. If you think about what happens at home, a lot of the time people bring that to work with them, you know, so we see that play out sometimes where we may have a staff member or a colleague, where we can see that something's going on with them, but we can't quite work out what it is. And more often than not, it can be something that's happening at home, whether it's an argument with one of their kids, you know, an argument with a loved one, you know, they could be illness in the family. And they're bringing that to work. And of course, that impacts their workplace, but it also impacts how they're performing as part of the team.

Brenton Gowland: 9:11

So just how broadly does resilience go in the workplace then because you're talking about also, you know, you've got the home front, which then affects the workplace, you've got situations in the workplace, which obviously then affects the team's mentality and so forth. How far does this is resilience going in so far as helping build an effective and high performing team,

Kristen Raison: 9:31

It goes right across the remit, we need to be thinking about it daily, like we use a tool 'Resilience at Work', which is a global tool that we're accredited in. It's evidence based research backed. Katherine McEwen who is from South Australia was actually the lady behind it and did all of the research on it. And the tool is for us to be able to look at the seven areas of resilience for an individual.

Brenton Gowland: 9:55

Right.

Kristen Raison: 9:56

And we can use that tool for people across their workplace, but we You can also use it for people across their personal lives. It's such an easy to implement tool that we can use it across both. And anytime,

Brenton Gowland: 10:08

What then are the seven areas of resilience then?

Kristen Raison: 10:11

Yeah, love it. Great question. So the seven areas for an individual, the first one is all around living authentically. So this is where we look at are people playing to their strengths? Are they working, and using their core values, if we if we think about core values, our core values are set and defined by the ages of three to seven. So we've all got them. So for, for me, one of my core values that I hold really taught is all around authenticity, others, you know, have integrity or honesty is one of their core values. So it's living authentically. And you'll find that if you've got a person in your business that really is working in an area where they're not playing to their strengths, so it could be they're in the wrong role for them, they might be in the right company, and it aligns to their core values, but they may actually be in the wrong role.

Brenton Gowland: 10:57

Right.

Kristen Raison: 10:57

You can see that disrupt a team, the next, the next area is around finding your calling. So this is where they feel that their personal values align with the company values.

Brenton Gowland: 11:08

Yep.

Kristen Raison: 11:08

And also they feel like they have purpose in their work. And again, if you think about any roles that we've been in, if you don't feel like you've got that purpose in your work, it can be leading to incongruent outcomes in a workplace or in a team.

Brenton Gowland: 11:22

So how do you actually get that happening across a whole team to actually, you know, find those people having a mission? Because I would imagine, some people will discover their mission is not where they're working. So...

Kristen Raison: 11:32

Yeah, 100 percent.

Brenton Gowland: 11:32

they need to find another bus.

Kristen Raison: 11:33

Yep.

Brenton Gowland: 11:34

And some people would find that it's not the role they're in, and some people would find it this route. So what does that process look like?

Kristen Raison: 11:39

Yeah, so look, we run workshops around helping people understand where they currently sit in their seven areas of resilience, we can actually complete an individual survey, which takes about 10 minutes. And that's like a diagnostic tool that we can actually then see where they sit, whether it's sitting in an area of strength, or whether it's weak. And then from there, we can actually roll out great training sessions without individuals or our teams to really start to get underneath what that might look like. Angela, my business partner in PeerThinc does a lot of work with Return to Work. And she uses this tool a lot with people in that return to work capacity.

Brenton Gowland: 12:16

Yeah. Okay. So that's Living Authentically is one Finding You're Calling is two and then I interrupted you with questions, so what's next.

Kristen Raison: 12:22

Okay. Maintaining Perspective is another one. So maintaining perspective is all around how adaptable you are to change or challenges. And if we think about that, quite often, it links with mastering stress, which is the next one. So if you think about a person who is under a lot of stress, or is really challenged with their stress, quite often, their maintaining perspective is really low as well, which means that they're really struggling to work through problems. So they'll, they'll be able to identify all of the problems really easily. But rather than being in their frontal cortex, and thinking through how they can actually work through these problems and be really quite analytical, they're in their back brain, which is that fight flight freeze or fawn stage where they're not able to be optimistic, they're not able to problem solve. And so that's a real challenge for them. So they're quite those two areas are quite closely linked. Quite often, we see ones down the other ones down as well.

Brenton Gowland: 13:17

Yep, okay.

Kristen Raison: 13:18

And then moving on from mastering stress, which again, is all around how do you adapt to change when you're stressed? What do you do with that? The next one is Interacting, Cooperatively. Interacting Cooperatively, is a really interesting one. Because we often look at people again, who if they are stressed, and we think about that fight flight freeze and fawn area, we may see people actually retreat. And we saw again, we saw this through, you know, the last couple of years where when people are really stressed, they want to stay at home and sit on the couch and eat popcorn and watch Netflix, right. So they're not interacting cooperatively. So that area can be quite low. And then what that leads to is isolation, and then that impacts their mental health and their well being.

Brenton Gowland: 14:00

Do they do they shut down in the workplace?

Kristen Raison: 14:02

Yeah, absolutely. So you know, it could it could play out in things like you know, they don't want to be around anybody. They declined social, you know, team social events. It could be that they're quite emotional, they may be you know, quite weepy.

Brenton Gowland: 14:15

That then tends to affect the whole workplace.

Kristen Raison: 14:17

Absolutely.

Brenton Gowland: 14:18

So that that you know, combination of things and in a person's life then affects everyone else because you're in the workplace.

Ron Tomlian: 14:25

And I take it that these things are interacting with each other as well because as we're going through these I'm thinking about the the current situation where you have external stressors, like the ambiguity of lockdowns and not knowing when we're going to be in the lockdown and how long the lockdown is going to be. So maintaining perspective becomes more difficult during those times. And therefore, I'm suspecting that interacting cooperatively becomes more difficult as well.

Kristen Raison: 14:53

Absolutely. And then what that then leads to is the last one which I'll skip over one and go to the next one, which Building Networks. If you then think about Building Networks, those people that then isolate themselves aren't building networks. And so they're not surrounded by their tribe, or the people that are there to help support them.

Brenton Gowland: 15:13

So I'm assuming that building networks, that's about a support mechanism for yourself and the business networking kind of thing.

Kristen Raison: 15:19

Correct.

Brenton Gowland: 15:19

So how does just out of interest because I know that there's a million questions coming into my head while you're going through these points, but how does then normal employee, you know, when we talk about high performing team, we want everyone to be doing really well, how does a normal employee whos at their desk every day, build a network that's going to help them?

Kristen Raison: 15:36

Yeah, so the network doesn't always necessarily need to be an internal staff member, it could actually be the people that are around them outside of work. So if you think about family, friends, colleagues, you know, potential past people that you know, you've had in your networks that you trust and can rely on, it's making sure that that's a really sound group of people that are really there to support you, and wrap their arms around you when you're going through these adverse situations. And you can advise people in the workspace to actually do that, and help them learn how to do that if they don't know how already. Absolutely. And you know, it's really interesting, I look at introverts quite often, when you mentioned the word networking, they seize up. And that's, you know, the last thing they want to do, they want to run for the hills. So it's giving them the tools to understand how to engage with other people by potentially picking somebody that they trust and value within their workplace that cannot almost be like their wing person, so that they can go to an event, and they feel comfortable that they've got somebody there that they can go along with the main thing is, is that they don't pick another introverted person, because we, you know, we all have seen that through SA Business Builders, where if you've got two introverts that walk into a room, quite often, they're the two standing in the corner talking to each other, and aren't meeting new people. So you want to be really targeted around who those people are in your networks. And then the last one is Staying Healthy, which generally is the first one to go to be perfectly honest, we see this a lot in the high level C suite. So we see it a lot in the CEO space where, you know, the CEOs or business owners get really, really busy and very invested in their business or their company. And so their diet goes down the toilet, they don't sleep properly, they're up, you know, burning the candle at both ends, we also see that, you know, they're not getting exercise. So they'll be sitting at a desk rather than actually getting out and getting exercise and some fresh air. And it's just amazing what can happen if you get outside and just get you know, even 15 minutes of fresh air, if you're feeling a little stressed or, you know, you're looking at your perseverance and your optimism and it's not there, put your tools down and just go for a walk.

Brenton Gowland: 17:40

Well no, we talk about that a lot it different executive coaching sessions, I guess you would hear that a lot in your TEC groups Ron.

Ron Tomlian: 17:45

I think, you know, and, and going back to what Kristen was saying, evidence base has a lot of evidence, and a lot of research to show that exercise and getting out into nature is as effective as the drugs that are prescribed for depression. So stop it now, before it before it manifests itself in all sorts of behaviours, and, and thoughts and get out there and make sure that you're healthy.

Kristen Raison: 18:11

And if you find yourself making that the first thing that you do give out when you're stressed, get yourself a body that's actually going to hold you accountable. So for me, I made sure that I teamed up with another friend of mine, and we do Pilates three times a week. And we hold each other to account. So there are days where I've had a lot on my plate, and I think oh, this is the last thing that I feel like doing. And the next minute she's driving in my driveway tooting the horn going, I'm here to pick you up, we're going and so it's actually again, and that comes through you Building Networks, right? And you're Interacting Cooperatively if you've got that person that can keep you in check. It's fantastic.

Brenton Gowland: 18:47

Yeah, and so working on those things, all these seven points, and I'll just go through because I conveniently wrote them down Living Authentically, Finding Your Calling, Maintaining Perspective, Interacting Cooperatively, Staying Healthy, and Building Networks. It kind of all works together all those things to build resilience within your team. But I would imagine as boss, as a CEO, because a lot of what we do here on the SA Business Builders podcast is talk to people about growing their teams, how do you get to a point where you can really start to build this within your team? Because of course they haven't got you in there yet. And they're wanting to make some inroads into building resilience within their team by doing you know, the things that you've spoken about here. How do they get their staff to a position where this can happen?

Kristen Raison: 19:28

It's building trust. So it all comes back to being a really trusted leader. So if you think about any leader that you may have worked with in the past, if you've if you've built a background of trust within a team, then they're more comfortable and competent to actually talk about what is impacting them, whether it's in or outside of work, so be really open and trusting with the people around you. Conversations would be the my one of my tips is, you know, start to learn and understand them more about being people rather than staff members or employees. Getting to know what motivates them? What are their values? Because the more we understand each other as humans, the more we want to actually, you know, tell people what's going on in our lives because we feel safe.

Brenton Gowland: 20:12

Or help other people.

Kristen Raison: 20:13

Yeah, absolutely. And if you think about it, you look at a team where there's that robust trust in a team versus a team that doesn't have it, you know, a robust, trusted team generally will have the indicators of being a high performance or will be on the path to high performance, whereas a team where the trust is really eroded or has never been there, you're really going to struggle to have high performance in that team.

Brenton Gowland: 20:36

So what are the symptoms? That resilience needs to be worked on within an organisation? Because obviously, the trust part is a lot softer start than just putting through people through challenges, because trust then engenders, the ability for people to talk. So maybe this is maybe a leading question. I don't mean it to be, but what are the symptoms that leaders and business people need to look out for that they actually it's a warning sign that resilience needs to be worked on?

Kristen Raison: 21:01

Yeah, look, there's quite a few. If we think about the above the line and below the line conversations in a team. Above the line is where there is safety, people are comfortable to raise problems and come to the table and offer solutions or suggestions or, you know, you'll see a team that will innovate where all of its above the line, if it's below the line, this is your gossiping water cooler conversation, there's a lack of courageous conversations going on in a business. You know, we quite often see that with a team or a team with a leader isn't having courageous conversations with their people, quite often, it's leader lead, so the team then won't also front into those courageous conversations. So they're probably the two really big ones that we see a lot. Another one could be around sick leave, you know, if you start to see people taking time off from work, or presenteeism is another really big one where they're there. They're present, but they're not actually effective or productive.

Brenton Gowland: 21:55

So they're present but not present.

Kristen Raison: 21:57

Correct. Yeah, they're, they're warming a seat, but they're not really achieving a great deal more.

Brenton Gowland: 22:01

And that then creates jealousies and issues with other people.

Kristen Raison: 22:05

That's right.

Ron Tomlian: 22:06

So Christian, we're all about delivering practical and useful advice for business building people on this podcast, what are your top tips? What are the things that people can do themselves to actually make a difference in terms of building resilience?

Kristen Raison: 22:21

Yeah, so the first one, from a leadership point of view would be to open up conversations and start to really be authentic in your leadership style, show care and empathy for your people. You know, it's a really challenging time at the moment. And now more than ever, we need empathetic leaders. This is not the time to be really, really tough on people. Because everybody, no matter what is happening in the world, everybody's got a story. And we need to be connecting with our people more, we need to also listen to understand it, you know, we don't want them to just listen, we want the leaders to listen to understand their people to know what's going on, at home, even, that's a really big one that we see, leaders will say, Oh, I'm listening, but it's are you really listening? Are you really listening to what your people are telling you find out their values. And then what you can actually also do is think about how you're building some resourcefulness within a team. So empower people, you know, if you've got people in your team that you're empowering, they will become resourceful and a resourceful team as a productive team. Think about also introducing some self care into the team. So it might be where once a week, the team goes for a walk and grabs a coffee or they could do a you know a coffee mentoring catch up as a, you know, a sales meeting, for example. Rather than sitting in the office doing a sales meeting around a desk, the sun's out, get outside and go for a walk and actually have a walk, a walking, talking meeting. So there's just a couple of really simple things that you can be doing. And then the last one would be all around as a leader, making sure that you are sharing what their goals are, and the purpose are for the business so that everybody becomes connected and aligned. Because clear is kind where he Bernie brown talks about that in all of her podcasts and her books. Clear is kind.

Ron Tomlian: 24:05

So there's a theme coming out and all this and a lot of it revolves around communication.

Kristen Raison: 24:10

Absolutely.

Ron Tomlian: 24:11

Now, you talked about finding out what you people's values are. It's it's, that's not an easy conversation to have, and not one that comes up daily. How would you broach that subject with someone?

Kristen Raison: 24:22

Build it into your one on one conversations with your people? And if you're not having one on one conversations...

Ron Tomlian: 24:28

Start having them!

Kristen Raison: 24:28

....with your people regularly, start having them! Because how do you get to know your people? If you're not actually having one on one conversations? It sounds really simple. But the number of businesses I go into and say right, what's your operating rhythm? How are you going with your monthly one on ones? You know, where are you hearing things from your people? And they kind of look at me, like I've just turned into Shrek. And it's actually thinking through right I need to actually get an operating rhythm and start to have these really open honest conversations and listen to their people.

Ron Tomlian: 24:58

Now you've talked a lot about building teams, and building resilient teams, and this whole concept of resilience and what leaders can do, but as a leader, if you're falling apart, it's not going to do the team any good. And I'm a great fan of believing that you model the behaviours you want your team to adopt. So what can we do individually as business leaders to become more resilient, so that we can lead our teams but so that we can model that sort of behaviour too?

Kristen Raison: 25:26

Yeah, fantastic question. I agree, you can't drink from an empty cup. So you need to be making sure that you're filling your cup up. Because if your cup is empty, you can't help anyone else. So the big thing, and I'm going to give us a bit of a plug here, reach out to us, you know, we are working with leaders across every sector and industry around Australia and around the world. Angela, and I are linked in through the resilience at work team and the consortium. So we work across the UK, New Zealand, Northern America, Canada, obviously Australia. So reach out to us, it's a really easy way that we can actually survey you as an individual to see where you currently sit on your seven areas of resilience. And it's not expensive, you know, just invest that little bit of time in really starting to work on how you are looking after yourself and your well being.

Brenton Gowland: 26:14

So you work with both individuals, and then teams?

Kristen Raison: 26:17

And leaders. Yep.

Ron Tomlian: 26:19

Okay, so but practically speaking, getting back to something I can do as a result of listening to this podcast, what would you recommend?

Kristen Raison: 26:26

Reach out! Yep, absolutely reach out to Angela or myself, if you're wanting to do something today, just sit down. And just think about those seven areas that I've highlighted. And think about where you may actually rate yourself on the seven areas, and especially the the staying healthy one, you know, that's a big one, if you're finding that you're fairly stressed out, just have a bit of a look at what you're doing with your diet, your sleep and your exercise, it's a really good place to start. And as I mentioned earlier, it's the first one that generally gets pushed to the side, because we haven't got time for exercise.

Brenton Gowland: 26:57

And just to highlight how important this is, have you got any case studies without naming the businesses just ever before and after? Like what this can actually do for an organisation?

Kristen Raison: 27:06

Yes, absolutely. We work really, really closely at the moment with the Health sector. And obviously, we're seeing a lot of challenge in that space at the moment. So what we do with the people that we work with, and the teams, we actually do the survey when we first start working with them, and then six months later, we then re-survey each individual to see where they're currently sitting. And we can then measure the outputs or the outcomes of how those tools have helped them. So we can actually do that at any time. And the success has been phenomenal, you know, to the point where our work is just continually being brought in through referrals, because we've got great live examples of where it's worked really effectively. And people are starting to feel great in regards to. Angie has even had a lady who she's been working with who ended up going in after nine months of not being able to get work and in a really bad place in Victoria has now given herself a complete makeover. And honestly, she looks like she's about 20 years younger, she looks amazing. So if you get yourself into, you know, really starting to think about how you work on your own well being it can....

Ron Tomlian: 28:13

Yeah, and I think you know, one of the things you mentioned in there, one of the seven points is maintaining perspective. And I think right at the moment, that's hard to do when you're being bombarded by news, newsprint, radio, television, how bad things are here, how bad things are overseas. I think one of the things about maintaining perspective is realising the whole world is not about COVID at the moment, and maybe switching off from some of those continual bad news stories. And and realising that, you know, the sun's still shining, there's still people who care about you around you, there's still business to be done. And so detaching yourself from the continual news feed that's coming in is a way of getting some perspective and maintaining a reasonable a balanced perspective, rather than letting it all heap upon you as a leader.

Kristen Raison: 29:03

Absolutely. And we actually recommend that as part of what we talk about is absolutely shutting down the news, you know, if you have to have the news on put on once and then turn it off, you don't need to be watching all of that negativity play out. The other thing that we talk about a lot is looking at the circles. So looking at your circle of control and circle of influence, and actually staying in those spaces. Rather than looking at the circle that's outside of your control or areas of concern, you know, look at the area that you can control pick that first, pick a couple of things and knock them off because what we're also seeing a lot of at the moment is change fatigue, where businesses are having to constantly be nimble and adapt and that's impacting their people and they are getting changed fatigue. So by giving them some really simple tools around just focus on the things that you can control for now and tick them off and then come next to the the areas of influence and that just helps the gain that little bit of perspective and optimism.

Brenton Gowland: 30:02

So there's some really great things there and look, just capping off again, those seven things that Kristen was talking about Living Authentically, Finding Your Calling, Maintaining Perspective, Interacting Cooperatively, Staying Healthy and Building Networks. Now, Kristen, if people want to contact you, what's the best way for them to reach out to you at PeerThinc?

Kristen Raison: 30:21

Yep, so contact at PeerThinc, which is peerthinc.com, or on my mobile, which is 0488 440 500.

Brenton Gowland: 30:33

No worries at all. Kristen, thank you very much for your time today. It's a very insightful conversation and very timely, of course, with everything that's going on in the world at the moment. And now as Ron mentioned earlier, I've been working with Kristen on some shared clients and have seen firsthand the difference that her assistance makes at a practical level to the businesses that she works with. So if you need help to work on your team, and to improve their performance, or even if you just need to help yourself, I'd highly recommend having a discussion with Kristen.

Ron Tomlian: 31:02

Fantastic. So if you're enjoying the Business Builders podcast and you're finding it useful, please let us know we'd love your thoughts. And we'd love to know about any topics you'd like us to talk about in the future. You can reach us on LinkedIn by contacting Brenton Gowland, or Ron Tomlian. We'd love to chat. We'd also love you to bring us a review on Apple podcasts or your favourite podcasting platform.

Brenton Gowland: 31:25

Absolutely. And please remember to check out our sponsors. So SA Business Builders, of course, if you want to come along to our next event, contact Ron, myself or Kristen Raison on LinkedIn. Please visit our new sponsor, Borough Markets at our boroughmarkets.com.au or visit nucleus at www.nucleus.com.au. Or of course, if you'd like my help improving the sales and marketing your business through Adapt_CO just reach out to me via LinkedIn and I'd love to catch up for a coffee.

Ron Tomlian: 31:53

And I hear you have a website coming.

Brenton Gowland: 31:55

Yes, indeed. But I'm focusing on my clients first. So give me a few more weeks.

Ron Tomlian: 31:59

Yeah, that those clients are important. So I'll have to wait for the update at our next podcast.

Brenton Gowland: 32:05

Absolutely. And until then it's goodbye from me.

Ron Tomlian: 32:08

And goodbye from me and Kristen, we'll see you at the next SA Business Builders event.

Kristen Raison: 32:13

Thank you so much for having me along. I've really enjoyed today. It's been fabulous. Yeah great, our pleasure Kristen. And to our listeners. We look forward to speaking with you again on our next podcast which will be in two weeks, Ron!

Ron Tomlian: 32:23

Yes it will.

Brenton Gowland: 32:24

We now have a home.

Ron Tomlian: 32:25

Yes, see you next time and bye for now.

Brenton Gowland: 32:27

Bye for now.