Business Innovators Radio - Robin Miles: How to Get Out of Overwhelm and Achieve Breakthrough Results

Episode Date: January 9, 2024

Robin Miles is a High Performance Coach and Strategist focused on helping executives, leaders & their teams navigate complex professional, personal & performance challenges through enhanced collaborative leadership to achieve breakthrough results for both individuals and teams.Learn more at: inspiremeconsulting.com.auRebelpreneur Radio with Ralph Brogdenhttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/rebelpreneur-radio-with-ralph-brogden/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/robin-miles-how-to-get-out-of-overwhelm-and-achieve-breakthrough-results

You're Bar-B-B-B-B-Hodding. The Last station of the planet. Resistance is future. The revolution has begun. You're listening to Revelepreneur Radio, helping you break the rules

and build the business you need for the life you want. And now, broadcasting his pirate signal from somewhere beyond the status quo. Here's your host, best-selling author, Marketing and Media Strategist, Ralph Brogden.

Hello and welcome to Rebel I'm an entrepreneur radio. It's the show that helps you build the business you need so you can live the life you want. I am Ralph Brognan. Probably one of the greatest challenges facing businesses and teams today is getting your people to perform at a high level, to stay competitive, to stay ahead of the curve, to change and to evolve in the rapidly changing world of business. So how do you do that as an entrepreneur? Now, if you're listening, you may be a solopreneur, again, thinking that you don't have a team, and this doesn't apply to you. But you may have a team if you're trying to scale. You also have a team if you involve other people in your business.

If you have family members, if you have friends, if you ever hope to network or do any kind of affiliate marketing or JV partnerships with anyone, if you want to grow beyond just doing everything yourself, you have to start considering who are, the members of your team. They may not be employees necessarily, but they are people that you are associated with and people that you are networking with, people that you are in relationship with. So regardless of how you characterize it, how do we get people to perform at higher levels and how do we get ourselves and motivate ourselves to lead them effectively? Today's guest is an expert at doing that. I'm here with Robin Miles, joining us from Australia.

He is a high-performance coach and strategists focused on helping executives, leaders, and their teams to navigate complex professional, personal, and performance challenges through enhanced collaborative leadership to achieve breakthrough results for both individuals and teams. Robin, welcome to Rebelpreneur Radio. Thank you very much, Ralph. Great to be here and great context that you just set there. so many themes that I absolutely even believe in as well, so it's great to be here. Wonderful. Now, I'm someone who, believe it or not, is more of an introvert and I like to just kind of

close myself off and work by myself, but I realize that in order to be more effective and to scale and to have the influence that I want to have, there's some skills I need to learn in terms of working with people, working with teams, developing not just

myself, but developing and leading people around me. Um, So I'm really fascinated in how you do this and how you achieve these breakthrough results for people. Tell us a little bit about what got you started in this field. And what is the story behind you and your beginnings into this? Wow, we could talk about that for a very long time. But mainly because I've got a very diverse and interesting background. And I'll just briefly mention a few things because they all kind of come together.

you know, I grew up in a very poor part of London and a very rough part of London and had to learn how to handle myself there. So I'm learning for a very young age, kind of different skills, tools, or tactics of connecting with people and staying alive, for instance. But then I did aid work in Africa. And then I came back and I studied civil engineering and I trained in the Reserve Army for four years as well. So, you know, seeing how to connect with a wide range of different people and then, And even back when I was 14, I set up an organization called Teo, which means try anything once, which was about making things become a reality for people. So, you know, going way back, I've got a very, very long history in this. And then I worked in civil infrastructure, which was about delivering major multi-billion dollar infrastructure projects more collaboratively to get better outcomes.

And so later on in life, when I was an executive myself, going back 10 years ago, I had two children and both of them had disabilities. And my wife had an autoimmune disorder and couldn't get out of bed. And I said, right, I need to change and create a work life around my home life. So I've had a lot of personal kind of challenges as well. And so it's really the integration of all the things that you said at the beginning, you know, understanding from family, understanding from each of those different parts and also the personal challenges. because the one thing that I fundamentally believe is there's only one common factor in every problem that you've ever had in your life, and that's that you were there.

Unfortunately, that's true. That's really true. I can see you thinking about that. Like, what is it? What is it? My friends. But then if we, you know, so that we don't beat ourselves up, we can kind of go, there's only one common factor in every success that you've ever had. And that's that you were there.

Perfect. I love that. Yeah. that's a wonderful juxtaposition yeah i mean if you were in any business or project and there was a common factor you'd go right i need to start there and so that's why i start i kind of work with the individual and all that experience i've kind of had in you know navigating in these personal and professional kind of challenges pushing the boundaries of what's possible it all of those skills tools or tactics i've learned that's what coach, train and advise kind of in,

which is really nice to help people and kind of achieve what they want. Wonderful. So you do this for individuals as well as for teams. What would you say is the biggest challenge that your clients face? Why is it so hard for us to break through, create those shifts and get people working together towards a common goal. What is the challenge there? Yeah, I think there's two things that people kind of very commonly experience, and there's one

challenge they need to overcome, first of all, to actually help themselves. And the first two things that they experience is normally they're feeling a sense of being stuck, and from that sense of being a bit stuck, they're feeling a sense of frustration. Now that degree of frustration, you know, can be quite severe or, you know, it depends, but it's that there's a frustration of a knowing that they want to be achieving something that they're not and they're feeling a bit stuck because they don't know, you know, how to kind of break out of that. Now, that's what they're feeling.

Now, the biggest message that I want to get across to people is about the need to have a sense of humility because the reality is that we all find ourselves in those positions. The world right now is more challenging than it's ever been before. And we actually just need to be a little bit easier on ourselves. And I think that professionals like myself and the Instagram on social media are all saying how easy it is and you just need to follow my five-step rule and everything else like that. I think, I agree with them, but I also think there's an element of rubbishness to that, you know? Like I train in overcoming overwhelm.

But I use those techniques on a weekly basis because I feel a sense of overwhelm and then have to kind of use those techniques. Does it make sense? And so I feel like there's this expectation put on people that, oh, no, I should be able to do this. I should be. And what they do is they then just suffer in silence. And in actual fact, frustration is actually the seed to anger. And then when we get angry, then there's, you know, negative consequences in a professional and personal life.

And that's not good for anyone. And that's kind of what, you know, impacts the mental health epidemic that we have. So actually having that sense of you, humility is absolutely key to going, yeah, I am a bit stuck right now. And as soon as you have that acceptance, and I say this, that the speed to acceptance is directly related to the speed of change that you will see in your life. Because I also say, how long does it change to change a flat tire on a car? Some people say 20, 30 minutes, whatever. And I say it's directly related to the speed of which you acknowledge that tires flat to start with.

and are you driving around in this car in denial that you've got a flat tire and there's more and more damage happening to the vehicle and everyone else? Does that make sense? You know what? The funny thing is, my son-in-law just experienced that yesterday. He dropped my granddaughter off. He went to work and he came back like a minute later. So what's going on? He had run over a spark plug in the street and it impaled his tire.

And as soon as we pulled it out, all the air went out. But he heard that thing bang, bang, bang, bang as he's driving down the road. And he's like, well, okay, I got a flat tire. I got to deal with it. And that's what he did. So that's a great analogy that we can live in denial that you've got a tire that's going to go flat. And if you don't stop and take care of it. And that could be indicative of overwhelm, the frustration, the anger, the sense that I'm stuck and I don't know what to do.

these are all warning signs. And to your point, the faster we are humble and we recognize that, the faster we can deal with it and we can grow through it and we can embrace the change. You also made a good point about social media because all of this is marketing. You want to portray that you have the secret to making lots of money without a lot of work. work without a lot of effort. And if you buy into that as the consumer, you start thinking, wow, this should be easier. I'm having a hard time in my business, a hard time managing priorities, a hard time getting clients. I must be doing something wrong because everyone else seems to be having an easy time of it. And what I think I hear you saying is no one's having

an easy time and you've you've just bought into this unreal expectation foisted upon us by marketers that everything should be smooth sailing you know five simple steps to scale your business to seven figures in seven days and that's just not reality yeah and you know there are examples of people who do do things but it's it's it's yeah i absolutely agree with you it's um you know, and I've coached kind of really people who are out there on social media, you know, who are showing that they've got everything together and everyone's going on, they're amazing, and I've actually worked with them behind the scenes, and they're actually, their lives are unraveling behind the scenes.

Right, right. You know, all the time with celebrities and everything else like that, they're the top, and then suddenly they're the kind of the bottom. And I think that one of the key things is having about more realistic expectations. of ourselves. And, you know, I think that's, yeah, that's really important for caring for ourselves and realizing what's actually important to ourselves as well. You mentioned overwhelm.

What are some things? Because I feel like that's kind of the first symptom that I'm in my business. There's all these things I want to do, all the things I want to accomplish, I'm going to grow, I want to get clients. I want to make money. I want to make a difference. But when I sit down at my desk and try to figure out what's the next step, there's so many possibilities to choose from, especially as entrepreneurs, there's a tendency to be overwhelmed by the tyranny of the urgent as opposed to the important but not urgent things. And so we get stuck in the quadrant one that Stephen Covey talks about.

of the quadrant two, where we are working on things that are really going to make a difference. So what are some ways that people can deal with that overwhelm as a first step towards getting out of that feeling of frustration that they're stuck and don't know how to move forward? Yeah. It's a great question. And for me, there's three stages of overwhelm. And there's a couple of tips that solve all three. So it's just like when do you actually hear the message that is being sent to you through your feelings that you are in overwhelming?

Because the first thing to do is you need to acknowledge that you are overwhelmed before you can solve the problem a bit like the car. So the first stage of and how do we how do we pick it quicker when we need to understand it? And this is a framework that you can use to understand overwhelm better. So the first stage of overwhelm is, oh my, look at all those tasks that need to be done. So if you ever feel that, you're in the first stage of overwhelm. Now, if you don't do the tips that I'm going to give you, you will then go into the second stage of overwhelm, which is, oh my God, I have to do all of this.

I have to, I have to, I have to, I have to, I have to, I have to. Right now you can just sense and feel like that kind of person has got their head down, just not seeing, you know, the stars for what's in front of them. and you know you might even self-identify oh yeah i can see where this has happened to me and then there's a third stage of overwhelm where you're like no i have to i have to and you're running around trying to do everything and then you suddenly wake up and go oh my god i can't do this anymore and you literally fall over now if you say that you can't then you can but you can if you if you

If you, if you want to say you can, then you can. So it's not actually true that you can't do this anymore. But what you can't do is live in that state of overwhelm without taking the steps that I'm going to suggest. So the first step to do, and it's a simple acronym called stop, which the S means stop. The T means take a breath. The O means observe what's really going on here. and then the P is plan and proceed mindfully. That's it.

And if you just do, so in that first stage of overwhelm, you're like, oh, my God, look at all these things that need to be done. Right. Let me stop. Take a breath. Right. Observe. Right. Let me list them all out.

What actually are they? Right. What's actually most critical for me to do? What is it that someone else can do? What can be deferred to next week? And it's the four Ds. What do I need to do? what can I defer what can I delegate and what can I dump you know and go right let me set

myself what we said earlier a realistic expectation of right I'm going to deliver on these things deliver on those things you then get a dopamine hit yes you said that you were going to do those things you've done them you feel good you get that positive energy to put on the others now you can keep going and not take that advice and you can get to that I can't do this anymore what shall I do? I'll go, stop. But you could have stopped in the first stage as well. So does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's really good. Yeah, I came through a similar experience recently, maybe because of the holiday here in the U.S. it was Thanksgiving. I don't know if they celebrate Thanksgiving anywhere else by the U.S., but maybe some version of it. A boxer day or something is more on the other side of the world,

the day after Christmas, I think. Yeah, that's right. But people do, you know, any reason for a party, basically, and celebration. So sometimes, especially this time of the year, you've got Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's. You've always got the birthdays, the anniversaries. You have things that come up and it gets you off schedule and you let things go. And then you come back a few days later and you look at your to-do list or you look at your trello board in my case and you see all these things that need attending to.

and you're exactly right. Stop. Take a breath, observe, and then plan and proceed mindfully, and you use that process. And realize, I've got, you know, 75 things on here. But out of that, what's really important and really needs to be done today and is really urgent, maybe three things and 10 things I'd like to get to. And the rest of it can just sit there or it can be deleted. It's not that important.

And if it sits there long enough, probably doesn't need to be done or it doesn't need to be done by me anyway. So you delete it or you dump it or you defer it or you delegate it or you do it. It sounds so simple in practice, but it sounds so simple in theory, but in practice it's not so simple, is it? And that's that humility point that I was talking about, you know, like I've dealt with like some really senior people and they've been really struggling. And I'm just like, you've just got to do this. No, no, no, it's more complicated. that I'm like, it's not. Trust me.

This thing, I will call you in 24 hours. I call them in 24 hours. How are you feeling? Oh, my, so much better. I'm like, see? And they're like, you know, I always remember a client saying to me, Robin, I'm going to be the best testimonial for you that's never going to say anything. And what he meant by that is he said, because you've been amazing what you've done,

but it's so simple. I'm embarrassed to tell anyone about it. but it is about coming back to basics and when we do that we can normally tell it and one of the other things I kind of often say to people is that you know if you weren't here tomorrow because we think everything's so important but if you weren't here tomorrow what would happen you know yes people would be upset but the world would keep spinning bills would still keep being paid you know the sun would go up and go down and everyone would move on and in the end, they'll be like, yeah, Robin, Robin, who?

You know, like, and that's the reality of it. We, we have an over sense of our importance, but then we attach to some of those tasks to make it important and we need to kind of sit back and go, like you say, is that really important? Is that, this is where we sometimes miss out. We're prioritising the wrong thing. And I remember being at my desk working from home because it was all about connecting with my family and support my family more. remember my son coming up to me wanting something.

And I said, oh, look, I'm working now. And I stopped in that moment. And I went, you idiot. What are you doing? You know, you did this and made this change of transition to give the support. And now you're saying, no, I haven't got time for you. And I just went, no, William, I will kind of do whatever you want. And we just, you just wanted to show me something for five minutes.

That's all it was. And then I came back. And I just felt so much better because it's those moments that we sometimes miss. Yeah. And that's when in the moment of truth, when you have really settled within yourself, what your principles are, what your values are. Remember why you're here. It's easy in your case than to take some time out to be with your son. In my case, to play with my granddaughter for a few minutes.

She likes to sit at my lap and tap on the keyboard like she's doing something. She's not even two years old yet, but she sees me doing it. She wants to do it. So I switch it off. It's a wireless keyboard. So I switched it off so she doesn't blow the world up or anything. But she thinks she's doing something. And then she goes and plays with her blocks.

And I go back to work. So we have all these opportunities in front of us. It will just be mindful of those opportunities. And don't let the stress and the overwhelm get to us. You work with individuals. Does this work in the same way with teams? Is it just as powerful there? Yeah.

And I think there's two. elements to, I mean, we concentrate a bit more on that, you know, overwhelm and kind of getting unblocked. But the other, the main thing is that then about taking the level of performance to the next level. And it's about helping people actually materialize their unrealized potential. And that's both within individuals and teams. Because as soon as we get kind of unstuck, then we get to the point of going, okay, and I consider people as like Swiss cheese, you know, the cheese with the big holes through it. So we're a block of cheese. but we've got these holes through us.

Now, we don't know what those holes are, and some of those holes are just skills, tools and tactics. So, for instance, for individuals and teams, we might want to lift our level of executive presence and impact. But we kind of go, oh, look, that's a bit of a gap for me, but that can't be trained. Well, it can be trained. There's things that you can learn to understand to do that.

There's skills that you can learn around influence mastery. For some people, those holes that they have, and gaps can be around how to effectively delegate, you know, how to coach people, how to give effective feedback, how to have difficult conversations. There's a whole range of kind of subjects in that influence and impact. And so in working with teams, it's like, first of all, he's got getting them together and getting the dynamics of the team to be working together so they can improve their emotional intelligence to understand different personalities and how to work better with them. And then also give them the skills to take.

everything to the next level. And then that's done with individuals and teams as such. Powerful. I was reading something from David Allen, the getting things done guy. Yeah. So I've taken this system. I've used it for 20 years and I've tweaked it to fit my needs. But I went back and was reading some of his material the other day. And he mentioned, because I'm a top-down person. I'm a strategist. So I like to start, begin with the end in mind, figure your purpose, and then work through your strategy and then your projects and then your next actions. It makes a good point that if the things on your desktop or in your to-do list are so out of order and so cluttered and you feel so overwhelmed, it makes sense to go from the bottom and work your way up. Because if you're in chaos, you really can't get the clarity of the strategy. of the strategy and the purpose and the skills.

And you have these blind spots that prevents you from doing work at that higher level. So that's a real useful thing to keep in mind. It may not be a real complicated skill that you're lacking. It may be something very simple that you can get some training, get some help with, get some feedback on, get some mentoring on. And just that tiny little distinction can really create those breakthrough moments for people. And there's that story about the, I'll paraphrase it, the nail that lost the war. Or have you heard of this?

No. No. It was the nail in the shoe of the horse that was, you know, not right that came out. And so the shoe of the horse came off, you know, that impacted the horse. you know, and I think like the general was on top of the horse and then that fell over. And then as a consequence of that, you know, the army didn't know what to do and then they all got killed. And because of that battle that got lost, the war got lost and the civilization of that country. And it was all because of the nail, you know.

And so, you know, like picking up on what you've said there, sometimes it is more often or not when I work with organizations that might have like a major problem, like GFC hits or whatever, you know, what the most. most organizations do, they all go back to basics. They go, right, let's stop a lot of the big kind of strategy stuff. Let's come back. Who are we? What are we about? What's the things that are absolutely must do? Let's get everyone focused on the top critical things. And those organizations that do that, sure enough, they navigate through and then they can then kind of grow from there. So there is really something about coming back to basics that I feel is quite powerful. Absolutely. Wonderful. Wonderful. Robin, tell us a little bit about what you're working on right now that's got you really excited.

Yeah, well, I think next year I'm super excited about we bringing together a whole range of things. So I've got my book, The Executive Edge. We've got a free five-day Kickstarter series. We've got a series of free webinars that are coming up next year as well. I love giving out free content to kind of help people because general advice is good and I love doing that. So there's a whole series of things next year kind of coming up. And if people are interested, they can just visit my website, which is inspireme consulting.com. com.

And you can download the book and the free, you know, Kickstarter series for there and be notified of when we're doing the free webinars, et cetera. And yeah, I love to hear people's feedback on things too. Awesome. So the website is inspiremeconsulting.com. And we will have that link on the rebelpreneur website as well. Robin, any final thoughts or words of wisdom you'd like to leave with our listeners? Oh, so many.

I think that that thing of, you know, feeling a little bit stuck is inevitable, you know, and we're all there, but staying stuck is a choice because there's always something that you can do. And if you say, there isn't, I'm totally stuck, then reach out to me. I will pick up the phone and we can talk it through and I can help you with what the next steps are. and so there's always someone there to support. Robin Miles is a high-performance coach and strategist focused on helping executives, leaders, and their teams to navigate complex,

professional, personal, and performance challenges through enhanced collaborative leadership to achieve breakthrough results for both individuals and teams. You can learn more at inspiremeconsulting.com. Robin, thank you so much for your time and your wisdom today.

I appreciate your gift and keep up the good work. Thanks. Much appreciated. You've been listening to Rebelpreneur Radio with Ralph Brogden. Download the show notes and much more at Rebelpreneur.com.