The Flick on the Ear we All Need | Mark LeBusque - 901

and financial agreements. Test Art is in your corner, so reach out to Mark and the team at www dot test Artfamilylawyers dot com dot au. Mark Lebaska, I thought you were never coming back to the show where you've been, bro, I feel.

I reckon it took me. It was about thirteen day holiday. I reckon it took me because I'd finished in towns Well on the twenties. On the twenty first. In November twenty second, I was catching a flight back to Melbourne. Twenty third, we were flying to Sri Lanka. I don't reckon till about the twenty well. I actually yeah, later that month, i'd actually felt like I was on holidays. I think it was decompressing still, so I was running.

I was running around like a blue ass flight that stage, but disappearing at my own ass at the same time. So things feel a bit better. Then we've had a bit go on. We've had a I end up taking two months off, by the way, so I didn't go back to work till February.

and you're in Melbourne. So yeah, it's been been an interesting little ride and I have missed these and I'm looking forward to it.

a bloody coaching session. Or sometimes you'll ask some pointy questions or you'll probe a little bit, and I love it, and I love re listening just because I sometimes I perceive things differently around myself, or I come up with new questions to ask myself. What was your experience listening back?

to do that. So look, I was sort of sitting there going, yeah, this is pretty cool. I'm really happy that I'm saying these things. They may some people may think, oh, geez mate, you're supposed to be good at this stuff and you sound like you're fuck an unraveling yourself. Well, thank you. And then secondly, it's just a reinforcement, you know, when you're in when we're in these conversations, I think that I'm here and I'm present and all that, but

there's nothing better than listening back to it. And I think I've listened to it three or four times since then. It's not just like I better listen to it because you know, I want to check in on what I said, just in case I get any blowback from anywhere. It's like, no, no, no, I go back and listen to it again. In fact, i'm doing an immunity to change. Next week with someone's taking me through it, I'll have a listen to it again because I think for it's like a Seinfeld episode.

To me, I've watched Seinfeld episodes twenty times, but I always picked something new up. So it was a great look for me. It was a cognitively releasing conversation, and the more that I listened to it, the more that you feel that cognitive load reducing. But also you then look back and go, how was it helpful? Well, very much. At that time I made the decision. I was sitting on the bus to go, you're not going back to work till February, and I didn't. Don't you excellent?

was a huge shifting perspective. That's an immediate one. You get somewhere else and you're like, oh wow, I'm outside of the echo chamber of the world I lived in, and now I see and feel and understand everything very differently. And I think even as coaches, we can know things, but we're inside the things we know. And so that's and like I said, when I am in the conversations with you answering the questions, I have a different experience than when I and it could be the same day.

I could listen to it the same day or the same week and hear it differently. As an observer of the conversation when I'm not in the moment. I went back not that long ago and listened to the very first episode with doctor Bill, who's now my therapist, and when that would have been good two or three, a couple of years ago, I guess, or three years ago.

And when I listened back now to some of the really pointy parts of that conversation where he was probing, I was listening and I was just cringing, going, ah, you didn't. I didn't feel at the time like I was deliberately dodging questions. But when I listen back now, it almost makes me cringe how much it felt like I could see myself square squirming where that wasn't the experience in the moment so interesting?

You've got a bit of a lisp there, and you say you've got Bogan words but then it's like, oh, let's really get past that and get to what's actually being said rather than the way that it's coming out. So there's always that look. For me, it was it's a big thanks because you chose I think we'd had a conversation and you'd run me and you're like, you are right, and I went no, not really, and then you're right, right right, and then you went right, I'm

going to do something about that. So there's a huge thank you to you for that too, because one of the easy things for any of us to do when we get some engrossed in our own shit is to choose to look away when we notice something with someone else that we have built a relationship with. So that was a really important time for me, and I think it's leading into this immunity to change. I'm going to do with that next week. Alex is based in Perth. I said, I just sent her a message and said, look,

I need to do it. I see at the moment because I reckon, there's some shit going on that I need to dig a bit deeper into. And I think it started back in that conversation, which would have been October last year.

five least important things. And I actually shared my sheet up on the well, you know, most important, health, family connection, purposeful work, financial security, and there was something else in there moderately important, travel and some other bits and pieces least important. The toilet roll thing wasn't fucking don't just leave the fucking cardboard there. You give that to your dashounds because they love that, you know, people who don't wave to me and acknowledge me in this tiny, skinny

streets of Brunswick. When I let them through, I bought these things up. You can see the people in the room just going straight away. Fuck. Those things get me all the time. And what I you said to them in the end is these are the things that punch you in the face and like and you know about that because you're a boxer. My mess to them was, we tend to wait to get punched in the face or knocked out before we do something about that stuff. And if you don't have people around you who were

I'm going to say prepared to give you. You know, my parents used to just do a little flick on my ear every now and again. The fuck that hurt, but it was done for a reason. You mightn't have liked it at the time. But so thanks for flicking my ear, because I don't think you quite punched me in the face, but you just wake me up. And that's got me to where I am now about doing this thing next week.

We had our review with our business advisor this week to myself, Allison mal and you know the other thing for me, we had a really really successful year last year. If you want to look at success, you know, we talk about the material things. It was the biggest year ever, like by a long way. But I said, I can't do that again. But what I haven't been able to do is say to Alison, what will be acceptable? Because I'm the financial faborite and if and a bit corporate

in the brain still even after eleven years. So you go, well, if I don't do that number again ever failed. But when I look at where financial security sits in that top five, it's number five, and my health and my connection and my family is number one and two. And I think those things both suffered last year because number five was really number one.

I love this. Allison set this up. So it's us and the kids and their partners, eight of us well this Sundays. This month's theme is retro month for a meal. So you've got to have you have starters, you have the main and accompaniments, and then you have dessert. So this is called the retro one. So what we're doing on some people might really relate to this, and others be like, what the hell are those? We're doing the main Allison and I and we're cooking what's called porcupine

meat balls. And I can remember to if you wouldn't this year two but as a kid, if we didn't have them two nights a week, which is like a bit of mints right up into a ball with a bit of rice in it and fucking tomato sauce. But my point is this, we don't keep a I don't keep a KPI. Shet on how often we get together the intangibilities of those things are more about how you feel and not what you're measuring. And I think there's a challenge that in that space for me, but for

all of us to go. You know, if I can't if I can't measure it, I can't manage it. And I'm just trying to eat my own dog food here at times and go. I talk to people a lot about the intangible stuff that then drives the tangible, and I think I think the reason why that sits with me, like you explained before, is it's easy to see. But with the intangible stuff, I think that build up over the year to get me into that November place of gone,

I'm disappearing at my own ass. I don't have a KPI sheet that said, you know, I was getting a bit burnt out, or I was getting a bit stressed, or you know. Ultimately the goal was to The goal wasn't the disappear of my own ass. It wasn't the KPI,

but but it was a feeling of a time. So I think there's something in I think there's something in that, But there was also the thing for me like this earlier this week, is just asking the question and asking for permission, and again as a financial frabic saying to Allison, well, what's the number? She goes, this is the number, and then I look at it and like, how oh, I haven't I haven't not hit that number for about the last seven years. So what the fuck am I? What

am I worried about? There? So it's it's an interesting it's a real conflict. And I think this will be part of what happens when I go through next week. Is this conflict about what am I trying to prove? What any of us trying to prove? What's acceptable? And then what are the trade offs and what are you prepared to trade off? And I know we've talked about this before. It's not about what you want to do,

it's about what you don't want to do. And I really clear I don't want to have another year like I had last year.

you should be a bit flexible there. It's like, no, you've you've you have this year having a day off here to do specific work, put your clients on specific days, and don't bend and twist every time someone needs a change, you bend over backwards to get up and make it in there. And you know, like always saying yes to things. But I've not, so I've been noticing and observing a lot more without changing or actioning things. And from a

I guess, oh, that's interesting standpoint, when it's frustrating. It's like I'll see where I might have an emotional reaction to something or a bit of conflicts come up for me, and I'm like, that's interesting, But also I'm in charge of that. I feel like that, why do I feel frustrated and angry by that? You know when really it doesn't it doesn't need to matter, no, and we won't.

in family situations. Certainly, I see it a lot when I talk to my clients, particularly those are in like volunteer community stuff like sporting clubs, and they're like, you know, all of a sudden, I'm the president of the netball football club because I couldn't say. And then I'll be putting the canteen roster together, and then I'll be working in the canteen and then I'm cooking the meals on

a Thursday night. And if you sort of got above all of that stuff, the conflict between belonging but also getting some time to yourself and being able to say, hey, what can't I do? Because I've kept saying yes to things? And usually the things that you're not doing then are the thing that things that are in that first box,

which is what's most important to you. Lost a bit of connection to myself, not not doing as much with the family, seem to come home a little bit jaded all the time, can get a bit short with the kids, whatever it might be I can kick the dog, kick the cat, whatever I do. And I think a lot of it stems from, you know, the need to be needed and to be wanted and to be accepted, to feel like I'm contributing to the fear of saying no, and what might happen to all of those things and everyone.

I think everybody goes through that at some point in time.

I said, Look, I'm just going to go and have a chat to the financial controller because I asked her what the price was and it wasn't cheap and made by a local perf sculptor, and sure enough I got the Okay. So old mate Frankie as we call him, just like the other frank He he sits in my office here. He has sat out in the lounge room for a while as a as a as a sort of a stand for pot plants. But I think he was I got the sense that he wasn't overly happy with that. So he's now in here with me. Yeah,

it's it's just one of those things people. Jeez, that's just that's that's just sort of had that happen, but you go, well, I don't know. It happens for a reason. So he's I take him every now and again if you'll come into the room in the Melbourne programs he sits in the corner and people. So he's made out of meddle, really is he. He looks big, you know, he's big.

of how much he looks like old mate on my arm. Yeah, you go, look at you observing things and we've even got what about little Jerry. There's he turns one on Tuesday.

there's a bit more to it than that. What come to mind for me at the time, one of the things were very good at all of us, whether it's personal stuff, work stuff, whatever it is. If we do ninety nine percent of the things well and one percent not so well, we interrogate failure like it's a real commission, so that one thing will you know, lessons learned. Some people call it, others call it the post review, whatever it is. But we tend not to focus on what's

gone well. And then this idea of the celebration of success versus the interrogation of success. Most of what I hear in organizational life is oh, we celebrated our success. Now that was usually in the form of a morning tea. And this is still nice because there was a coming together in an acknowledgment. Cupcakes, cup of tea, your favorite late whatever it might be. You sort of get together, you have a bit of a chat, someone says a

few words, everyone claps, and then off we go. Now, I think there's a place for that as an acknowledgment. But the interrogation of success, when I think about that, I'm thinking more of this is more forensic, this sort of stuff. So, so from some really cool words from Dave, whether I've got to now is created a little template which is for people to interrogate forensically, interrogate the success

of the work they've done. Now, what we tend to do here if we go back to the tangible and the intangible, the things we can see on a KPI sheet and the things that we feel more. The way I've breaken this up is into four columns. So the first column is what's the thing. What was the program? What was the projective work? What was it that you were doing? Goes in the first column. The second column

is interrogating this success from a technical perspective. So what were the processes, what were the procedures, how did we follow what did we do really well? Around the more technical aspects of what we're doing, because those things are really important. If you don't have processes and you don't have some of that sort of direction and some order and things, that will be chaos. But we're usually really good at capturing that stuff. And then the next column

is what were the human factors? And this is the intangible stuff and getting people to start to think about what happened between us. I love there's a great ted talk by a lady called Margaret Hefferan about chickens called It's time to Forget the pecking Order at Work, and she talks about I don't give too much away, people should will go and watch this. She talks about the difference between great teams and good teams. And one of the things she talks about in there is it's not

just about the bricks, It's also about the mortar. And the bricks are what I've talked about first the technical stuff, but to hold the bricks together, you need the mortar and the mortars of the people stuff. It's what happens

between the people. So I would encourage people, whether it be a whether it's something for them personally or it's something in their work, is starting to think about like properly forensically interrogating it so that you pick up the things that have go on well and you can replicate them. The fourth column is simply called the outcome. So what happened? What happened when we had this project? What did we

do well technically in the bricks? What did we how did we come together and create that mortar to hold the bricks together? That's people and people who are listened to this will realize that we've done some good work, but it was hard because the mortar wasn't The mortar didn't hold. It held for a bit, but then it

crumbled and then the bricks all fell fell down. So I want people to start to think about again, compliments and cutos toda David, to think about, do you spend too much time on the one to two to three percent that didn't go right interrogating failure, and not enough time on the ninety nine to ninety seven to ninety nine percent of things that went really well in interrogating success. Now,

we're not hard wired to do that. You know that we're looking for danger, we're looking for survivor, we're looking for things that might make us look bad. But there's a lot of research out there now to say if you focus on the things that have gone well, particularly the mortar things, what happens between people. You focus more on that, people will do more of it. It will become the natural thing, and then the bricks hold up. So it's a really interesting conversation to have in a

business world because we're not built that way. And also from a personal perspective, I guess as we all grew up, we very rarely we might have been said good game, good job, well done, but that's like maybe a bit of cupcaking stuff, rather than tell me good job mark as a twelve year old playing cricket because of this thing that you did, like be more specific, Am I'm making any sense to you? Yeah?

about it? Did you enjoy? Was it the information was it was it the style of conversation like it's because for me, I feel chuffed when people reach out and go that was so awesome. But I feel actually like I can get some value myself for growth and replication if I know what it is that somebody liked, or if they just or if they just want to invest in the relationship and what to be like, Hey, I

liked that. I've got no feedback, but I just felt like reaching out and connecting with you on it and like that.

But I think we've got to open ourselves up, because it's great to be told that I really like your work, but I actually think it's incumbent upon people like us to go back and challenge those people to go will tell me a bit more about that because sometimes not Sometimes it can be just like yeah, I just want to say that because you know, I want to feel like I can build that relationship. I think there needs to be in order to build a good strong, thick

line or another person like build strong relationships. My view is this is that you've got to be prepared to share a little bit more. You've also got to be prepared to be curious enough if you haven't shared more, if you're the receiver of the feedback to ask the question, tell me more. I like those three words, tell me more.

Talk about you continue to coach for strengths, help someone with their career, kill that something's going to stuff their career, but you'll see that they'll get it. You'll get like a twenty five percent uplift in their effort and productivity if you continue to focus in on the things they

do well. And as you said before about you, we never end we incrementally improve at that thing, but knowing that we're going to be acknowledged and appreciated for it, it keeps it front of mind for us as well.

what do I enjoy? Like there's so many and maybe I've landed in this place because of all of the conversations and curiosity and hunger I have for understanding people in the world and the outcomes and what And sometimes it almost makes my head explode because they go, well, there's so many aspects to everything, correlation and causation of everything that it's and answer doesn't exist and I often find these days my mind goes straight to all of

the tiny little nuances that might exist outside of the realm of what someone's presenting. And now I've lost my completely lost my train of thought of exactly what I was going to say about that, so.

I was like, I'll do this. I don't know how what it is or how people do it, but it seems like, you know, I love communication, conversation and connection and this will give me all of that and experience. So started this course, and what I really enjoy about it it is picking apart my own thoughts and ideas and getting and understanding well, actually, like who am I as a speaker? Slash content maker or provider, like what

what are people? Where do I land? What is my philosophy that people connect with both their perspective of mine And some of the little activities we did just brought so much clarity and it was like, oh, it's really

nice to have a framework that's just me. Like there was they went across like speaker archetypes, which I always think that these questionnaires of personality profiles and everything, so it can be I'm like, oh, you just answer questions and then you're this, and sometimes it's I just think

it's hard to maybe trust. But this we got these speaker archetypes and then it kind of talked about and it just landed and I went, oh, that's really nice to know you have this central platform of going oh, I'm so I don't have to be like that or them or what this person says or how they say it or do it. And it was nice.

He's a high see and you don't underst and why things are going on now, And all of a sudden we're in a.

But it sounds like they've been able to help you make some sense about why you're doing that activity, which which goes deeper than the laziness of what I think happens in a lot of these programs that we go to. It's like just get them in the room, get their money, and do the work. Now, let me ask you this question. So, how many candles on your birthday cake? Now?

This is a new thing for me, and I sort of kicked off my speech, said, look, one of the reasons I was going down this I was so frigging emotionally rollercoasting that day out playing golf with the boys in the morning, felt oh good, every now and again I'll have this like, how the fuck am I going

to be this afternoon? I spent about an hour and a half to if in between everyone leaving to go to the wedding and me hanging out where the girls were to than be in the car listening to a lot of Bob Dylan, but also contemplating stupid things like how many days old am I when I'm going to do a very new thing today? And I asked the question at the wedding like I wanted people to think about when was the last time you did something brand new?

As I said, I'm now twenty thousand and five hundred and something days old and today I'm doing a brand new thing. And the brand new thing I was doing, I said, I get to walk my beautiful daughter down the aisle on one of the happiest days of her life. I don't think we think about this enough. Just get people to think about it out like what stops you from doing something new whatever it might be. But and it doesn't have to be new at work or whatever.

But I just want people to think about that. TIF. I think it's now you've started something new? Yeah, ever done it before? I think there's a level of excitement that comes with that. There's absolutely I said, I was excitedly terrified on the day because you know, you're sort of like, oh, am I going to cry and I'm not well. In the end, I cried and I walked it down the aisle with Allison. But who cares, Like it doesn't really matter, does it?

sake of it, just to feel your soul? And then we go into the science of fun and the fact that it's very bloody selfish and to not have fun because then you're a shitty version of yourself taking that

shitty version into interactions with other people. Like it's just such a simple thing, but just the question, the look on people face is when I first asked that question, is always oh oh fu a why are we talking about fun in this kind of in this course about you know, mindset and getting better and optimization and blah blah blah. What do you mean fun? There's no time for that. I'm busy trying to get better and.