Life Beyond The Numbers

This week I've collated some stories related to the workplace from episodes that went out between January and April 2021. 
First up is Kevin Ashley, #32 Serial Entrepreneur, who shares his secret to building a successful business
Next Gib Bulloch, #28 Breakthrough, talks about dignity at work and shares a cautionary tale
Next Megan Haupt, #25 Your Career Story, shares her unique perspective on how to overcome workplace horror stories
Next Glin Bayley, #39 H.E.A.R.T., speaks about the work environment and also how to figure out what you want to do
Then John Collins, #26 Guinness & Tea, tells us that it is possible to work somewhere that has a people, planet, profit and purpose alignment
Finally Sheila Walsh, #27 Health High Performance, shares her story about on working as part of a healthy, high performing leadership team.

Do you ever think about your breath or breathing?  Do you notice when it quickens or slows?
 
This week's episode is a little different as we share three breathing techniques kindly prepared for us by Gavin Andrews, MD of HeartMath UK. Gavin was a guest a couple of weeks ago, episode #38. There is a short bit for me first on my own awareness of breath and then I briefly introduce the three techniques. But Gavin provides an intro to each during the recording also. 
The three techniques in this episode are: 
Heart Focused Breathing - create coherence or balance. It can help shift from strongly negative or unpleasant, stressful emotions into more of a neutral emotional space.
Quick Coherence - useful technique to use before, during and after challenging or stressful events. 
Freeze Frame - a technique that proactively use the state of coherence to engage with a problem or a situation to solve it by opening up rather than narrowing our perspective.
 
"The breath is a door. It’s where you and I and everyone else began. 
It’s where all life begins. Without the breath, what is there?" 
Wim Hof
 
Connect with Gavin:
HeartMath
info@heartmath.co.uk 
 
 

"I think if we did ask each other: Does what you do make you happy? It does stop someone in their tracks to go well, why am I pursuing a certain path? Is this the right reason for me to pursue it? Because I think we're much better in delivering our gifts and talents when we're in a space of happiness and joy." Glin Bayley.
 
Glin Bayley went into accounting and finance because it was something she was really good at it. Over time she began to recognise that finance didn't feed her soul. A series of incidents, personal and professional, led her to examine her life and follow her heart. She shares what that was like and the realisation that in 17 years of striving to be a CFO nobody had ever asked her would it make her happy. She aligned her head and her heart, took risks, and now helps others to do the same. She talks us through her H.E.A.R.T. framework: Hope, Energy, Action, Resilience and Trust. We also talk about comparison being a guide to joy, vulnerability as a superpower, The Wizard of Oz, and I learn a new word: sonder (and a new swear word). 
 
Glin Bayley is a heart centred leader who has a passion for performance while being a strong advocate for wellbeing. She recognises that when leaders are doing work aligned to their desires, capabilities and vision they are happier, healthier and business performance accelerates as a result. She had a 17 year career as a senior commercial finance executive for some of the world’s leading blue-chip companies. Now as the founder of Heart of Human, she helps female leaders to consciously create a life they love and be unstoppable by being themselves at their best.
 
Connect with Glin:
On LinkedIn
Heart of Human is her website
And Unstoppable Woman her podcast
 
Resources Mentioned:
Unstoppable Woman, Glin Bayley
Healing After Heartbreak, Glin Bayley  
 

"Coherence is not relaxation. It's a state between activation and relaxation, which is optimal for your performance. So you feel calm and focused. You can do stuff. You can think, you can engage in things." Gavin Andrews. 
 
Gavin Andrews introduces us to the HeartMath system - a system that combines technology with ancient wisdom. We talk about the techniques of connecting with our own hearts to tap into the powerful information source; how to breathe in a slow, deep and balanced way and about emotional self-regulation - as Gavin says being human is about emotion and we are feeling creatures. He also introduces us to the science that validates these techniques and explains the biofeedback technology HeartMath designed. We touch on anxiety and stress, mindfulness and meditation, appreciation and compassion, flow and optimal performance and happiness. 
 
Gavin Andrews is MD of HeartMath UK and Ireland, a Resilience, Wellbeing and Stress Management business. He is also a co-founder of The Syntropy Partnership, a digital art business creating audio visual relaxation aids and breath pacers. And he is the founder of WeAddHeart, a global heart-focused meditation movement. He is passionate about helping people and businesses connect with the heart of who they REALLY are. 
 
Connect with Gavin:
HeartMath
info@heartmath.co.uk
 

"I think we are on the precipice of releasing and freeing ourselves from the shackles of conventional capitalism. I call it Life Capitalism." Paul Stephenson.
 
Paul Stephenson is a hearts and minds individual, a visionary and work-life architect. He shares his vision for the work-life transition that is unfolding from the world of being a slave to the spreadsheet where the corporate environment took you hostage to the world where we are open-hearted and open-minded and the new rich is not about money but about appreciation. Instead of following our egos we will follow our hearts and go with how we feel about things rather than how we think we need to conform. We talk about work and life coming together and being integrated by purpose. We also cover learned helplessness, destination sickness, capitalitis, choice, money and time. 
 
Paul Stephenson is the founder of two businesses, EGOstream.com and Zengility.life. Both born out of passion, with a shared purpose to help individuals maximize their true value to deliver life changing, sustainable results – but not at any price! Within EGOstream Paul helps Technology Founders and CEO’s find ways to sustainably improve performance and transform results for themselves and their team. Zengility is a WorkLife transformation business that supports Senior Execs who are looking to find their true purpose away from conventional employment and create a future on their own terms.
 
Connect with Paul:
Zengility
EgoStream

"...understand how powerful the people dimension is and how investing more time in it, more growth and development, more attention to it earlier you can up your game and you can do much more successful projects and bigger projects." Talita Ferreira.
 
Talita's passion is to change the business world one analytical professional at a time and starts us off with a story about how she learned to adapt her style for individuals and learnt to be vulnerable and trust her team and specialists. Talita has recently undertaken a global leadership hypothesis project and interviewed a diverse cohort of individuals to look for patterns or red threads. From this she has come up with three pillars we can focus on in order to thrive as a leader or as a professional - your specialism, your growth and development and growing and developing together as a team. We talk through the five archetypes of a leader she created following these interviews. We also cover psychological safety, trust, innovation and going beyond a pure profit dimension. 
 
For more than 25 years, Talita Ferreira has led and inspired either finance, back office, or “people”/HR teams, helping to transform team culture, drive and inspire change, develop new leadership paradigms for global brands and has led and implemented award-winning cultural transformation programmes in multiple industries. She is the former CFO and CHRO of BMW UK Ltd. and BMW Financial Services Ltd. and is an experienced C-Suite executive, Non-Executive Director, Chair of Audit, Chartered Director, consultant, author, leadership trainer and International speaker. She specialises in helping leaders reinvent or adapt their leadership style and team approach to be more impactful, transformational leaders and change the business world one analytical professional at a time.
 
Connect with Talita
On LinkedIn
Global Leadership Hypothesis: www.GLHYPO.com
Finance Inspired 4 Success: www.Fini4S.com  
 
Resources Mentioned:
Dr. Timothy Clark Leader Factor 
Brene Brown, 'Taken for Granted' Podcast on Armour (at work)
 

"We're into that instant gratification. Like we see what we want and we want it  now. But the reality is for things to last, it takes a bit of time to get there." Tony Pound.
 
Tony Pound takes an holistic approach to his work. As well as planning for a financially resilient future he can help people become healthier so that enjoy their health with some wealth or their wealth with their health! We talk about planning and how to create a vision for your future. Working out what you want to do is the important thing. We also cover how to form and maintain habits to support that vision. We discuss a Gallup Survey of 'a life well lived' done in 150 countries. They report on 5 areas that people need to achieve a life well lived: Community, financial health, physical health, relationships and career. Only 7% of people are happy in all those areas. Although there is so much information available these days on how to improve Tony says that doesn't mean people do it. So there's a barrier. Isn't about knowledge. It's about applying yourself to do it. 
 
Tony Pound is an Independent Financial Adviser, Health and Lifestyle Coach, Running Coach, Triathlete, Marathon Runner and father to two gorgeous girls. He worked in financial services for over 25 years and experienced all aspects of wealth management. He now combines his two passions to help people live longer, healthier and financially resilient lives. Tony also hosts a podcast The Journey Happy Podcast. 
 
Connect with Tony:
Website: https://www.journeyhappyfp.com/about
On LinkedIn
On Instagram @journeyhappyfit
 
Resources Mentioned:
Atomic Habits, James Clear

"If you think about staff engagement, staff satisfaction. Well, if those people aren't happy, they're going to leave. Same with your customers. People are not going to hang around, so they're not financial indicators, but they do have financial impact eventually." Rebecca McCaffry.
 
Rebecca and I talk about people and money being the lifeblood of business with a focus on the people side. The language of accounting can be austere and finance people might be seen as unhelpful if they are unbiased, unemotional and unflappable. But that is changing and many are seen as navigators, co-pilots and business partners - they've combined technical skills with people skills and built strong working relationships, are creating value and seeing the long-term impact of what they do. CIMA have a focus on producing the accountant of the future - a well-rounded individual. We talk about the difficulty with teaching people skills, Key Performance Questions, Pre-Financial Data, Maths Anxiety, Automation, Data and more. 
 
Rebecca McCaffry, FCMA, CGMA, CPFA is Associate Technical Director – Management Accounting at the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants (AICPA&CIMA). As part of the Research and Development team, her work explores public sector management accounting, talent management and finance transformation. Rebecca is a member of Accountancy Europe’s public sector expert group and a Teaching Fellow at the University of Greenwich.
 
Connect with Rebecca 
On LinkedIn
 

"All your problems come with a head and two arms and two legs. Then you have two people coming together and you have four people coming together and you can square the number of problems and challenges because you've different personalities, you have different attitudes and you have different backgrounds." Billy O'Connor.
 
Billy explains to me why he sees himself as a 'why merchant' and as someone who makes it easy for people to effect a change in their business. We cover Herzberg's motivating factors and how Hewlett Packard's discovered five common traits of their high performing teams. Billy paints colourful pictures of work-life for us with his stories but also explains how he loves to use visuals and colour in his facilitation. We discuss the benefits of psychometric testing and Billy shares his own 2143 methodology. Billy's introduces me to BingBong and how his mission in life is to raise financial acumen in schools and colleges. 
 
Billy O'Connor is MD of The Discovery Partnership Ltd. He qualified as a Chartered Accountant with KPMG and, in a career spanning over 30 years, has been working within a wide range of business sectors including senior executive roles in financial services and banking to the mid-90s. Billy is an experienced facilitator and trainer specialising in partnering with SME owner-managers. He is the author of 2143 coaching methodology that since 2001 helped transform hundreds of organizations and professionals across Ireland and America.
 
Connect with Billy:
On LinkedIn
https://www.thediscoverypartnership.ie 
https://www.bingbong.ie 
 
Resources Mentioned:
Herzberg's Two Factor Theory of Motivation

"From a business point of view, you need to have the willingness to continuously learn and remain open and then be willing to pivot. And this is where I see a lot of people fail so often as they fixate on a framework of what success looks like to them. And when they come up to a blocking point they don't know how to just pivot and change". Kevin Ashley.
 
Kevin Ashley is one of the founders of Java House, an East African coffee house and diner. We talk about the early days of Java House and the first ten branches in the first 10 years. We also cover the further growth and diversification to eventual buy-outs by private equity firms. Kevin says that building Java House was really a HR story - one about purpose and dignity at work - while a lot of people think work is about showing up at Java they instilled in staff that while they were at work they were actually there to serve a bigger thing than themselves. Kevin believes that dignity of work and a sense of purpose is the key for the future of humanity to have a functioning society.
 
Kevin Ashley is a serial entrepreneur. His early career was as a humanitarian worker with World Food Program and Christian Aid. In the 90s he co-founded an aviation business, 748, and then  a coffee house Java House. Java House, commonly referred to as ‘Nairobi Java’, opened its first store in 1999 at Adam’s Arcade in Nairobi with the aim of introducing gourmet coffee drinking culture in Kenya. The brand evolved to an American diner style restaurant. There are also two sister brands Planet Yoghurt and 360 Degrees Pizza. 
 
https://www.javahouseafrica.com