Teams, emotional intelligence and The Fall of Constantinople.

This is a story about addressing generational differences, managing one-on-one, fostering psychological safety to speak up, debate and innovate in teams.

 A Hungarian canon maker was wandering from city to city explaining his process for a new “innovation” technology.  The cannon.

 He went to the King of Constantinople – and this man was very busy.  But with the Turkish empire threatening to invade, the canon maker was given a small stipend.  In addition, he was given what would have been a pokey, dusty workshop space down the street from this King. 

 There was very little contact between the King and this innovator, and the income was too low for this canon maker, so the craftsman packed up and went on the next place – the Ottoman empire.  This Ottoman ruler, Mehmet, was wise.  He used many traits necessary in a good hypnotherapy therapeutic relationship.  He was courteous with the Hungarian, giving him good food, shelter and listened and created dialogue with the craftsman carefully and thoughtfully. 

 In 1453 the Turkish army arrived at the walls of Constantinople and besieged the city.   Mehmet the ruler, through careful use of “soft skills” such as listening, using care and encouragement of the craftsman then won his prize, which he renamed Istanbul.  

 He didn’t let an unappreciated craftsman slip past to the next city.  The book explains that the overthrown King of Constantinople who previously gave the craftsman little in the way of emotional intelligence, was not a callous or cruel man, he was just busy.  

 Now almost six hundred years later, we still face the same challenges leading teams.

 A vast array of cultures, uncertainty in the market, the composition of teams is changing dramatically and some work full time whilst others are temporary. 

 Read on for some of the hypnotherapy type take-aways from the book for way to inspire the team and derive satisfaction and happiness.

 Flow: One of the most important and deeply satisfying states is called flow.  Losing track of time and so immersed that we lose track of where we are and of time.  This is the state that hypnosis often guides us to.  Flow creates happiness and allows us to get things done more effectively.  It’s well known that multi-tasking is not that effective.  To achieve more flow during your worktime with hypnotherapy book here.

Learn the stories of those around us:

Great team leaders see the team not just as a team but comprised of individuals whom each has their own aspirations, each wants to live their best life, each wanting to feel they can use their own skills for their own of for the better good.

An hour a day of disconnecting:

 A team manager can look after their own mental health and an hour a day of switching off the phone, emails etc just to ask a team member “how is your day, are you ok, what can we do to make your job easier” and making a connection.  In the same way that doctors and surgeons have in the last 20 years learnt that having and displaying empathy with patients is better for their own mental health, we can all use the skills of “checking in” both with ourselves and with those around us.

 Invite honesty:

 Gostick and Elton suggest a team leader takes a group of employees to lunch and without any agenda for discussion and ask for their honest feedback about how things are going in their world.  The authors suggest that if you don’t learn something new, you aren’t asking the right questions.

 So, addressing generational differences, managing one-on-one, fostering psychological safety to speak up, debate and innovate and never ever forgetting customers were the main concluding statements in the book.   Sounds like a good formula for better mental health for all of us.