Rise Through a Clear Perspective: Why Sustainable Performance Starts with Safety

https://vimeo.com/1170880921

Have you ever felt stressed and burned out due to pushing harder to attain high performance? What if the key to unlocking sustainable performance wasn’t just grit and mindset but something more attainable, simpler and more profound?

In this webinar, John Cunningham, will show you that the missing piece in high performance isn't insight but rather it is safety - both physical and psychological. With over 48 years of leading teams in the industry, John is the managing director of Cunninghams and past president of REINSW and The Rise Initiative. In recognition of his contribution to the industry, he was awarded the prestigious Woodrow Weight Award in 2018, followed by the REIA President’s Award in 2019, the highest honour in Australian real estate. Driven by a long-held ambition to elevate real estate as a true profession, John continues to lead meaningful change across the industry.

Watch this insightful webinar as he’ll introduce the core principles of the RISE framework using his vast experience to reframe performance as a system, not a personality trait to help you navigate the journey to a clearer perspective.

Unlock these 7 Key Hacks:

• Watch out for protective patterns.

• Perspective collapses under pressure.

• Calmness creates clarity.

• How do we get the body to allow change?

• Regulate, allow, reframe and respond.

• Build sustainable performance.

• Leaders set the emotional tone.

  
  

The message is clear: stop trying to change the world by pushing harder. Make the decision to invest in a clearer lens by creating safety—and watch everything else follow.

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Kylie:

Hello, everyone. If you're joining us, it's the… it's the RISE Initiative's Wellness Webinar. Kylie Davis here from the RISE Initiative, together with the fabulous John Cunningham, our speaker today, and Dr. Sarah Bell from MRI. We're just going to give everyone a few minutes to jump on the call and get situated. If you're in the chat, please drop us a note and let us know where you’re dialing in from.

And like all of our webinars… our wellness webinars that happen on the first Wednesday of the month, usually, they are brought to you by MRI software APAC. So, Sarah's here today to join us, but just jump on the… jump in, get yourself organised, and please let us know where you're calling… where you're dialling in from.

We know we've got people that are coming in individually. Mildura, hello! Or if you're in a boardroom, we also know that there's a lot of groups out there that join us as a boardroom, as a team op.

And it's always fun to see how far and wide everyone stretches. Here we can see everyone jumping onto the call. Great to see. Hope everyone's well. Sarah, you good?

Sarah:

Thanks so much! It's nice to see some friendly faces in that participant list, so welcome, everyone. Before we get started, we take a moment to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the country, wherever you're joining from today, wherever we're working or gathering, we'd like to acknowledge the knowledge systems and traditional care systems that belong to First Nations people, all over the world.

Today is my pleasure to introduce to you a friend, and founder of the Rise Initiative. John Cunningham was with us, back in 2019 at Christchurch, kick-off of what's become a phenomenal machine of care in the real estate industry. And so, you know, I've known John for… I don't want to say how long, because then I feel old, but it's probably a decade. It's probably been a decade now.

I've known John to be a particularly nice man, and incredibly authentic character in this industry, and you know, and a real lighthouse of care for not only the 80 people, or over 80 people that work at Cunningham's, but for the industry much more… much more broadly through his work, at the REINSW, and of course, through the RISE Initiative. So, we're really lucky to have, I don't like the word veteran, or, like, maybe elder, so a wise elder of the industry like John sharing his knowledge with all of us today.

The topic for today is about gaining a clear perspective, and when we had a quick chat about what that topic means, it's, you know, today's webinar is about how to get it and what to be gained when you get it. And I think, you know, when I think about what a clear perspective is, it's about being aware of what's going on for you rationally, like, above the surface, and then what's going on with you emotionally below the surface. Not to discount any feelings that you have, but just to be aware of all of that information.

And weigh it accordingly, so that you're in a position to respond rather than react. So, I'm super excited about our business today, so without any further ado, let's get underway.

John:

Thank you, Sarah, very much appreciated that talk, and thanks, Kylie, as well. Today, you're not going to be staring at my face most of the time; it's going to be actually a slideshow. I just love PowerPoint, but I think it's probably more… it's probably easier for you to understand the elements that we're going to talk about, rather than me just talking.

I feel learning is just one of those things where you can visualise, you can see something, and you can write it down, or you can take screenshots, whatever you may do. It's just going to have so much more power to it. So I'm going to get straight into it, but I really appreciate MRI funding and supporting this, these webinars and also as an initiative from RISE.

We want to do more of these. We want to do so much more. And for that, we just need everyone's support. So, I think when you look at what we can achieve, what the Rise Initiative has done to change the narrative in the industry, to change the dynamics of workplace environments, we're really proud of the achievements that we've made over the last 6 years to get to this place. But there's so much more work to be done. Things aren't getting any easier for people, they're actually getting harder.

So therefore, there is a need for business owners and business people and businesses to actually support and encourage everyone to not only download the RealCare app, which we'll do at the end of the presentation, but also to support the initiative and everything that it does.

You can make donations, you can do whatever you like, but the reality is we need to be in a place where we can provide these services to help business owners, to help people in every facet of real estate achieve their best potential. So without further ado, let's get moving.

Okay, so when I say rise through a clear perspective, and why sustainable performance starts with safety, it's really important to understand what's behind that, and I think one of the first ways to do that is to actually look at what was driving performance in the past. So let's have a look at that.

We can look at what a clear perspective is first to understand what you want to actually achieve.

So, as Sarah said, you know, the view or the lens that you use that is well-defined, so that you can define it. This is what you want to do. It's understandable, and it's free from confusion. Very simple definition. The thing is that it's not just an opinion, it's not a belief, nor is it a perception. So, just because you have a belief on something, or there's a perception about something, or you have an opinion, doesn't necessarily mean that you're seeing that through a clear perspective. And therefore, you ended up in a very clouded place.

So let's have a look at what was driving performance. And I use performance as an indicator of an outcome. So performance can be so many things, and it's different for everyone. For some sales agents, for example, who are fixated on GCI, it's about that GCI. That's the performance metric that they're using. For other people, it's that they can finish the day really effectively and go home. I'm free of pain. And therefore, that's performance to them.

There's so many ways of viewing performance, but performance at the end of the day is singularly growth. Growth as a human, growth as a professional, growth as whatever you want it to see. So that's what we're going to be talking about today, is to understand what performance is, how do you get to that place? Well, we're going to use perspective as a vehicle to do that.

So, the old model of performance, mindset, grit, hustle, resilience. Man, you've heard that a million times. You've got to change your mindset, you've got to have grit, you've got to hustle with everything you do, and you've got to have resilience when things aren't right. Fantastic concepts, and they are concepts. It's so hard to actually understand how they fit into everyone's life.

And in everyone's life, you know, you've been told to stay positive and push through these things, you know, you'll get there if you keep trying hard or all the rest of it, but… As a result of that, people are feeling pressured. They're stuck. They're overwhelmed, or they get burned out. Now, some people will say, that doesn't apply to me. Might not apply to you today. It may apply to you tomorrow, because it's a pressure cooker. Because the insight that you're trying to achieve isn't the missing piece. You want to come to this place where you've got insight, you really have clarity.

But, that's not the missing piece. The missing piece is safety.

Now you go, okay, well, what does that mean? Safety is a state of environment. It's a state that's inside you. It's a state that's outside you. It's the things that you feel around you that enable you to perform at your best. And that's not going to happen if you're not safe.

So, that's what we say, sustainable performance begins with safety. It's the first place where it begins. That's both physical and psychological safety. Any workplace environment doesn't have those two things in place in a way that people actually can feel it and act on it. You are talking about toxic environments. You're talking about environments where people possibly go home worse off than when they came in each day. So the concept of physical and psychological safety is the cornerstone of how humans operate, how they actually are the best they can be. That's the foundation.

So without safety, the system defaults to protection, so your internal system goes to, I'm protecting myself. The problem is, when you're constantly protecting yourself, you're never going to grow. You're never going to get to a place where you can see through that fog, of all these other factors influencing how you're feeling, and therefore you're in a protective mode all the time. You've got a… you've got a shell on you, you know, you're just making sure that that toxic person's business isn't going to have that effect on you, therefore your relationships suffer, respect goes out the window and you're in a cycle of protection environment.

And I've been into those environments, I've seen what they're like, and you feel them immediately, and it's just not healthy. So safety is the foundation that allows perspective to expand. To have perspective to expand is one of the things that I've discovered over time is one of the… is probably the most important element of growth. I know within my own team, my business partners, my sales agents, who have progressed to be outstanding performers, there's this tipping point, there's this point where they are able to see clearly what, I get it, it makes sense, the penny drops, whatever it may be. How do they get to that place? And that's what we're going to explore today to see how that works.

The thing about safety, and this is like a preface to the whole talk I'm going to have today. Safety creates so much more, and it starts with creating positivity. So, everyone tells you, be positive, you've got to be more positive, you've got to have a better, a better view of things, you've just got to switch from that negativity to that positivity. And again, theoretically fantastic concepts, but the reality is, very hard to do on a consistent basis until something changes. And nothing changes, nothing changes, and that's the reality of the world we're in. So let's look at what safety creates.

It enables high frequency and vibration, and if anyone's going, woo, woo, woo-woo, what's that all about? That's a reality that you hear more and more and more about, about how people function. The vibrations that they give out, the vibrations they take in, the frequency they operate, we are bodies made out of electricity and energy. So, we're talking about energy, our energy transfers are through frequency and vibration.

Don't underestimate it. It is absolutely crystal clear. I've been to a healer who was working on me years and years ago, and with his hands a foot away from my stomach, I could feel the heat expanding in me. That was all pure energy, frequency and vibration. It's just extraordinary when you experience it. It's real, and it is how people function. So if you want to be a high-frequency, high vibration person, which is positivity.

This is where it starts. It starts with that safety. How am I feeling about my safe environment? As a result of that, it opens choices and good decisions to be made. And I have a thing in my business about, you know, our clients. It's like, you know, our job is to make sure that we give them the choices to enable them to make good decisions. Why aren't we doing that to ourselves? Why aren't we actually putting ourselves in a position where we can open up choice so that good decisions can be made? So that fog of indecision that I know I've been in through my life, I know most people have.

You want that to be lifted. And imagine if you are in that right now, and you want to lift that. Because once that's lifted, it allows the inner work to begin. I was only talking to a young gentleman at the network event I went to last week, who's absolutely thriving, the guy's all of 32 years old. He was an electrician before he came into real estate, and he talked about that fog of indecision, that fog. He's not sure what he needs to do, and where everything shifted when his perspective shifted. And I talked to him about, well, what was it that changed that perspective? And he said, look, I've only found out recently, it was actually, I started working on myself, that inner work began. I started working internally. And I just listened to a great podcast with Jasmine from Breset Whitney, called The Oddie Potty, just this morning, and it was… it was all about that, about when's that point of shift? What's it going to take? What's it going to take? And I really read between the lines on that. It was about safety.

It was about that point where that decision can be made. So, when you get there, it releases fear, releases pain, it releases pressure. And all those things, once they're removed, head you towards a state of flow, and that state of flow, to me, is the ultimate. Whether you want to call it thriving or in flow, it's the same thing. It's that place where you are absolutely assured of yourself. Your confidence levels are absolutely high, and they're real, they're not fake, they're not just cockiness, they're real high energy confidence, because you've done both the inner work and the outer work. The outer work is learning.

On the job, learning to be the best you can be, learning from what you do, learning academically, whatever it may be, learning and applying that learning so that you can then go, great, I am the best version of myself I can be. I'm going to continue to learn. And that enables you to create a plan instead of living in a maze. That's probably one of the most important things I'm going to talk about today, is this concept of living to a plan, and plans vary, they get reviewed, all the rest of it, but most people live in a maze. They're living day to day, they're not functioning at an optimum level because it's confusing.

And a confused mind stalls, you've probably heard that, a million times. So, this is what we're going to try and unearth today, is to… how do I create a plan? How do I get out of this maze? How do I get to a place? And some people don't even know they're in a maze, that's the… the interesting thing, until, like, this young guy from Queensland I spoke to, he didn't realize he was. He was just working hard and pushing through, pushing through, and all of a sudden, the catalyst to him was when he had a child.

And everything had to change, because he could not be the father he wanted to be with that. And that's often the case. It's this either personal or an external thing that changes that to make that decision. Most people don't make that decision to change. They actually push harder to do this until they realise maybe there's a better way. They don't give that option a chance. And so it is about having a plan instead of living in this… in this maze.

So, what we're going to look at today are these seven clear things to look at, to look out for, what you can change, what you can't change, so that you can actually get to a clear perspective. And going through these, hopefully. You'll look at it and say, I can see that in myself. And we're going to start with, watch out for protective patterns. And protective patterns, I talked earlier about protecting yourself. They're your shields, and they are your worst enemy.

So let's start there. On this one, you can't mindset your way past a protective pattern. This came to me from my daughter, actually. I was talking to her about doing this presentation, and she'd been through a lot of things where she had to work through this, and she discovered these protective patterns she was putting in place to stop her progressing.

And everyone's saying, you know, mindset, mindset, mindset. The reality was she couldn't get the mindset shift until she identified what those protective patterns were. And it made her to… enabled her to understand that protection's not a belief problem. It wasn't that she didn't have self-belief, or whatever it was, it was a safety response. It was a response to safety coming from an internal element, and it was also, in a big way, coming from an external safety environment: the workplace environment she was in, was the workplace… with the client she's working with, was that a safe place for her? And she found that was the core of it all. That wasn't a safe place. Was it something that had been created over time, or was it something that had been created in an environmental sense? She had to find that. So, what we find is that once a threat is perceived, the body moves into survival mode. And so the idea is, how about we remove those threats?

How about we get to a place where you are in an environment where those threats are not real, you understand that they're not real, you understand that those things are humans being humans, that's Sarah being Sarah, or whatever it may be, that's Charlie being Charlie. They're not threatening me, they're just being themselves. Moving into that environment where the body doesn't move into survival mode.

Because the threat is only a perceived threat. How do we shift that? How do we shift that? And it's not just mindset, let's keep going on. So, insight does not convert into behavior until the system feels safe. So, we can have insight once we feel safe. And insight's the key to that whole threat or perception or not, right? Once you have that insight. So, how do we get the system to feel safe? What's that gonna look like? And the reality is, it's got nothing to do with other people.

It has everything to do with you.

We make it about other people, we make it about the way people behave, we make it about the way that we see that behaviour, we make it about blaming others for how I'm feeling, rather than taking ownership of it ourselves. And I've got to tell you, that is probably singularly the biggest issue that society has, and it's the reason that 95% of people can't do this.

There's only 5% of people who can actually get to mastering this, because they haven't done that work to get to that place. 95% of people will just keep blaming everyone else for everything that happens to them. But they're not getting to that place of insight. So let's look at what else we can do to make that happen.

So I talked about the pressure cooker, right? So the perspective collapses under pressure, and this is getting into, you know, the science of it all. So your activated nervous system narrows thinking. So when you narrow your thinking, you get things that are not clear, right? The narrow thinking narrows it down to perception, belief, and that way you get opinion on it, and that opinion to yourself drives what's going on.

There may be perceptions, but not perspective. That's the big difference here. Creativity drops. Emotional reactivity rises. Now, if you put yourself right now, what we're talking about, into situations that you've been in recently, where you've seen your creativity drop, you've seen your emotional reactiv-ness rise up.

So your brain then prioritises that safety overgrowth. So you can't get out of it, because you're stuck in it. And you're not actually stuck there, you'll just believe you're stuck there. And in real estate, quite frankly, we are living in a pressure cooker environment. Or do we actually make it a pressure cooker environment? Again, on this podcast this morning, it was really interesting to the point when this young lady determined that she was actually in control of this.

That all the pressure that she was putting on herself to do what she thought she had to do was because she wasn't in control of it. She wasn't actually taking self-control in that environment to find a way to not make it a pressure cooker. Because, you know, it's a great expression, care, but don't care too much. I'll do everything I can for the client to make sure they have the best possible experience. But there's so many things that are out of your control. I can use my influence to make sure I get the best possible outcomes for my clients. 

I can use my knowledge to make sure that they have the knowledge to make the decisions that they need to make, and inform them so that they're making the best decisions to take away the grey, make sure they understand what they need to know. Clients don't know what they don't know, right? That's the reality. Our job? It is to make those things clear to them. 

How do we make those things clear to them? If they're not clear to us. If we're not clear about where we're at, if we're not clear about what we're capable of, if we're not clear about our confidence and our belief in what we can achieve in the job that we're doing, because we've constantly got this pressure cooker around us, oh my god, I can't disappoint anyone, I can't do anything.

And what's happened is there's an absence of framework for the clients, and this is the same for leaders and businesses with your team. They're your first clients, right? If you've got this situation where you're creating pressure cooker environments in your workplace. You haven't set the framework up front for everyone to understand the job they're doing, to get them to be the best they can be at their job, to create that relationship with the client where they… the client knows they're doing the best they can do, because they understand.

You think about the reality of the work we do, there are so many moving parts to real estate, whether sales, or PM or operations, or marketing, whatever it may be. There's so many moving parts. The reality of those moving parts is that they're just a big ball of confusion for most people, because people haven't compartmentalised them into the stages of what we do. They haven't put them into perspective.

And therefore, how would a client see that in perspective?

It's around getting this complexity into a simple framework for a client to understand. When you do that. Think about that from a leadership perspective and your team. Same thing. A leader puts things into a framework that's understandable. It's simple. Do these things. Learn these steps. Follow the bouncing ball, and make sure you don't have things fall through the cracks. Make sure a client understands how we get from A to Z every single step.

Right? Don't drop things off because it's convenient to do so. You must go through a process, a system. That works. So we talk about performance being a system, it's not a mindset, it's a system. You follow the system to get there. So, when we look at that pressure cooker, how do we change that? Well, safety must come before strategy, so that strategy can work and again, one of my favorite sayings in this talk is that one, safety must come before strategy, so strategy can work.

We're all great at creating strategy. We're all great at putting plans together. We're all great at going, this is how we work around here. But is there a safety element for that to actually happen? Is there a safety element for people to actually learn in that workplace environment? Do they feel good about themselves? Do they feel good about the environment they're working in to enable them to learn, and to apply, and to do that consistently, to have that sustainability?

We then look at what's next. I had someone describe me yesterday as calm. That's one of my main attributes. I can blow up, and I did blow up last week, for those of you who don't know about it, but anyway, that was probably a one in a 10-year thing that happened. But I had to. It was something that I had to do. And, therefore, you know, I was in a state of

High anxiety that had to then have perspective put over the top of it. So when you look at calm creates clarity, you say, okay, perspective is a high-order function. I had to move to that high-order function to create perspective around what I was involved in.

And only once I became regulated was that able to happen. So it becomes available only when the system is regulated. The system is regulated through a series of steps that we'll go through shortly but it will only happen once you regulate. Yes, we can all blow up. And I say, maybe it was 10 or 20 years ago since I actually blew up like that. And my team goes, oh, and it wasn't doing work.

It was something outside of that, but it was really interesting to look at it and go, John, what have you done there? And it lasted all of 5 minutes, and then it was regulated. But it was, my system broke. Therefore, I had to create a new perspective to get to that high-order function. We all can understand what I'm talking about here, I imagine. It's… it's… it happens to a lot of people on a daily basis. So, calm doesn't come after clarity.

Calm creates clarity. I had to calm, I had to then take the steps that were necessary to get that clarity. And it's a process. And it's a process you can do every day in every situation and the flow-on effects are phenomenal. Being calm is one of, to me, the single greatest leadership attribute in the world. And you look at the great leaders of the world.

Calmness has been at the core of all of those things. You look at Barack Obama, you look at Nelson Mandela, you look at the Canadian Prime Minister, Mr Carney, calmness. It's like, you know, okay, I've got plenty to blow up about, but right now, I have to remain calm. Calm is a thing that will create outcomes instead of disasters.

So, try to force mindset shifts without regulation adds self-judgment. So, clearly in this state, you don't want to get to a place where you're making that self-judgment. I was doing that. I was going, oh my god, you know, make the self-judgment, stop, right, regulate, get me into my regulation state, and then I can move away from self-judgment, and make some clear decisions on what the next steps are in doing that. So, until you actually get to a place of regulation.

It's just not going to work. You can't force it to happen. You've got to stop and reset to do that, to enable you to get to that clarity. Calm creates clarity. Conscious awareness of that safe environment is critical. Was I in a safe environment to do that? What was the safe environment I needed to enable me to have that calmness and to find that clarity? Think about that every time you're going through something of a stress level. Something that's anxious, something that feeling in your gut, something that you're feeling not right about, without blowing up.

Clearly, you've got to have that safe environment. If the environment is not right, go out. Walk out. Go somewhere that is. It will change everything. Nothing like a good walk, I have to tell you. So, how do we do that? How do we fund it? Well, there's all these signals that… that you've got to look for to allow change. And you would think that logic might be the answer to it. It's not. You know, I apply logic to all these things that are happening in the world, and it doesn't work. You just can't apply logic to what's happening in the world today.

But I can read the signals. I can understand what's going on through the signals and how they're affecting me in my response to it. Small, consistent safety signals restore choice. When you get something that you feel, I can see that differently now, there are small, consistent signals that enable you to get to a place where there's choice. In other words, to make decisions, you need choice. How do I get there? How do I find those things? Where are those safety signals that'll enable me to do that?

And there in the environment you're in, whether it's another person's support, whether it's something shifting, whether it's an internal thing that is giving you a signal, to go, hold on, I have to get to a place where I can restore choice as an option here, or I'm going down a path that is either a gut reaction, which can be sometimes good, sometimes bad, or it's a formulated system or response to something. So you think about what I can do, right?

The performance fundamentals include longer exhales. Take that big deep breath, take that big deep breath, and take a few of those deep breaths. Take… use the 4-4 method, or the 4-8 method, or the 4-8, whatever number you want to choose, just take those inhales, hold, and exhale to get to a place where you can be regulated, grounded posture, stick your feet in the grass, stick your feet in the sand, whatever it is, just get to a grounded posture where you can be away from those environments that are making that really hard to regulate. Slow the pace down of where you were and what you were involved in.

I talked to one of my partners the other day about this, and he was talking about every time he went to a vendor or meeting, or every time before he did an auction, he would go through this whole process to get himself into a place where he was at his optimum self. In other words, he wasn't influenced by the fact that there's a pressure cooker of a vendor meeting, or the pressure cooker of an auction. He was in control of himself, he'd removed any self-attack.

He created connection, and he created support, from that to go in and do what he had to do. He had the people on site, he had these vendors on site, he had the buyers on site, he had his colleagues on site. All those things took place before the event to create the best possible outcome, rather than the classic, I'll go in and wing it. I am underprepared, nothing worse than being underprepared going into any environment because the choices are limited.

Going into an environment you've framed, you've set up, you've got all the elements in place, enables you to absolutely thrive and be in complete flow, and everyone comes along with that energy. Talked about frequency before. All those things that lead into energy. What are those things? What's happening in you to enable things around you to work so much better? You know those people that walk to a room and they lift it, right? They lift it immediately, and you go, wow, how do they do that?

It's called inner work. They've actually done the inner work to prepare to walk into that room. You might say, oh, is that a natural thing? They could be doing it naturally. I've spoken to people who do that. They actually… I can't actually understand it. It's just how I am, and how I… how I behave. And then all of a sudden, when you start talking to them about it, they go, oh yeah, I actually do those little things. They're the things that I do to prepare, because… and some people I know who are…

We're actually quite very different on-stage persona to offstage persona. We had an anthropologist talk to us a few years ago. Up on stage, he was dynamic, and he said up on stage, hey guys, you won't even notice me when I get off this stage. I will be a wallflower. I am not a social person. I'm up here talking about things I know, and I'm at my best. But that is not… that is not me offstage, it's me. On stage, that's… that's my professional capabilities. But when I walk off the stage, that's not me.

And that was fascinating to me. It was like, yeah, okay, I get that. When you have to do something you're really good at. It's like someone doing an interview, and I often say to them, if you want to do an interview, don't tell me the topic, just ask me the questions, because the interview you're going to ask me about is what I know. So I prefer to be more spontaneous in that, because I know it. I feel good about it. I feel confident in handling any situation. I'm talking about real estate, or whatever it may be.

Happy to do that because I've done that inner work, and I've done the professional work to get to the knowledge level where I can do that. So it comes in two ways. There's inner work, and there's professional work. Am I the best I can be in my role as an agent? Whatever role I have, in my role as a marketing person, in my role as a receptionist, in my role as a property manager, whatever the role is, have I positioned myself to be the best I can be at what I'm doing? And therefore, I'm in a place where I feel really good about myself.

And therefore, I can do these things in a far more effective way, and have the connection and support around me to absolutely achieve that. So here's the flow of the regulate, allow, reframe, respond elements, because the really, really critical thing, on this is to have these things in place. I suppose it’s an understanding, even if you stick… cut this one out, screenshot it, and stick it on your… on your wall, what is the thing that's going to allow me to do that? Have I got to a place where, if something's broken.

Well, something's not working. Have I taken the time to get to a place where I can, have an environment where I can repair, recover and I'll talk about this a little bit in… deeper shortly, but, taking that 2-minute reset provides the opportunity to restore access to better decisions. So, you think about that, that 2-minute… all those things I took earlier, just a 2-minute reset to do that.

So that enables you to get into a safe environment and that perspective shifts naturally as a result of that. It just happens where the mind clears. That fog of uncertainty, that fog of indecision, that fog of self… I suppose, protection of almost that reversal regulation. It's eating you up inside. So getting to a place where that safety is present and you can do that naturally, is an incredible outcome, and I would encourage everyone to just start here. Everything else will develop. It's like the liberator that enables you to shift everything when you get to this place.

You move a threat to challenge. Now, just think of that singularly, as an opportunity. Every perceived threat that you see, shift it to, okay, what's the challenge I have here? And challenge is a really important thing. The four C's of cancer survivors and people who've been through traumas are all about control. They're all about commitment, they're all about take… having challenges in your life and connection. That's the third element of that; the challenge.

Treat challenges as an opportunity. Don't see them as threats. See being in control, and having control of your life, not in an onerous way, but the self-control that you have to enable you to make the best decisions, enables you to actually have commitments to things, and those commitments enable you to have a clearer perspective as well.

You can then move from that urgency to intention. You know how everyone seems to think that everything is urgent, but no one tends to look at what's actually important. When you're in control of your life. You can determine that. What is urgent? What is important? Because otherwise, you'll keep loading, loading, loading things in the urgency bucket, because they need to be done now, when not necessarily need to be done now, because they haven't been framed correctly, they haven't been put into the right context. So people think things are urgent in the absence of understanding.

If you create with your clients, and you create with your team a level of understanding of these things, on the flow of things, people will move from the urgency to an intention, okay? I have the intention to actually deal with this. I'll move it into that space instead of from this urgency space. Think about the things that must be done today. Think about the things that have to be done soon. Think about the things that have to be done eventually.

And once you do that, you're putting things in the right boxes, in the right places at the right time, rather than living this ball of confusion with urgency. That enables you to go from, okay, I have to be in control of everything. No, you can be in control of things as you go around, but you don't have to be in control of everything. You can move from controlling everything to being in control are two entirely different things.

Right? The idea of this is to have choice, right? When you're in control of things, rather than being sorry when you are being in control rather than controlling. That opens up a choice, because you can say, okay, I need to make a decision here. What are the choices I have? Right? That's a 360-degree view of where you're at rather than a singular, narrow, could even be down to a 45 degree view of what you're seeing. Having that full 360 or full sphere view of things means that you are in control, because you have a choice to make.

When you do that, you're going to make better decisions. So, go back to the cycle. Think about that, regulate, allow, reframe, respond. The whole reactive way that most people behave puts… digs deeper holes, and you become your own worst enemy. You're just constantly digging deeper and deeper and deeper in the hole. Getting out of that? Is the essence to what sustainable success and performance is all about.

So, moving on to stable performance, let's look at what are the things that will change that. So, if you think about the concept of incremental compounding results or incremental compounding improvements, incremental compounding performance. Whatever you think about in those things, incremental compounding, right? So, repeated perspective, shifts, reprogram default responses.

Now, what does that mean?

We want to reprogram how we work, and that's done by incrementally compounding those things. You start with one thing, that liberator that changes everything. You have a perspective shift, it's the start, right? Let's have a perspective shift, that's a start on one thing. I can apply that to many of the things that I do in my life. Okay, those shifts reprogram the default responses you already have, to the point where you no longer have those responses. And that, to me, is the big win out of this.

When you find those incremental compounding improvements to what you do. The outcomes are compounded. So everyone knows what compounding is. It grows exponentially. It just keeps multiplying, because you're repeating a process, a system that you've put in place to ensure that you don't go back to reprogramming. So reprogramming is like a default mechanism, and I see it all the time in training agents.

We go through a way of doing something better, right? It might be just an incremental shift, right? And this will change everything. And they might do it for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 weeks, and all of a sudden, something happens where there's stuff hitting the fan, and things are going wrong. And what do they do? They default back to the reprogrammed methodology.

Not that they had worked, it's that they were in a fog. They went back to the fog. They went back to a place where what actually worked, they stopped doing, because they just got caught up in a fog, and they didn't use what they did originally to get themselves out of that.

Do it. We went back to default, and it's simply one of the worst things. I'll do a training program that I would have done 6 months earlier, and it's just like I've never done it before.

And I think, wow! That's amazing to think that that didn't stick and then I realized, it's… everyone needs recalibration. I used to call it a vitamin B injection, like, oh, I need my vitamin B injection, I need to get that back into place, because people need to have almost the fundamentals constantly retrained. Oh, I learned that 5 years ago. Yeah, but are you doing it?

This is the big thing about what we do in this industry. I've been here for 47 years and I use this expression, nothing's changed, but everything's changed. The fundamentals have not changed. What else has changed? It's everything around the fundamentals. It's a little bit… and I think it's, you know, people are doing things better now than they were 47 years ago, there's no doubt about it, but the fundamentals, they might have been doing it pretty bad 47 years ago, they might have been doing it better 20 years ago, they might be doing much better now, but still, a lot of people are going back to what they did 47 years ago, or what people did 47 years ago, which is, how do I make this easier for me? How do I make this quicker for me? How do I cut corners? How do I do things?

And we all know… That doesn't work. That's not a sustainable success model. And so that's that, say, that default mechanism, or that reprogramming thing. You've got to make sure that those default responses are put to bed, and you can then step out of that. So putting that thing on your wall, for example. It's one of the smartest things you can do. It will mean that that won't drop off, and when you get to these things where something goes wrong, you go, right, back to the core, back to the core of what I need to do to make sure that doesn't happen again. Because I didn't like that world I was in before, I like the world I moved to. I like the fact that I can comprehensively do these things and compound the improvements I'm doing.

So, this is an interesting concept. The fact that by doing this, it allows you to reclaim your sovereignty. Now, sovereignty is an interesting word at the moment in the world, because a lot of sovereign things are not being recognised or honoured. Your sovereignty as a human being is the number one thing that you have. It's all you have, in effect. You as a human being. To reclaim that to being the best person you can be, and the feeling that will give you, the confidence that that will give you, the self-belief that will give you, to do the best you can to be the best person you can, has a multiplier effect over all facets of your life.

Your personal life, your personal health life, your family life, your work environment, your colleagues, whatever it may be, even the respect you have for your competitors, all that changes when you actually have sovereignty. So reclaim it. Make sure you understand who you are. Do the inner work, because most people don't really know who they are. They don't know what they stand for. They don't know what their lines in the sand are. They don't get that bit.

Reclaim that, find out who you are, and actually make that work for you and so, when you get to this place, there's a great organisation called, Women's Resilience Australia. We're working with women in crisis, and it's getting them to the place where, okay, we put… we can help people get out of, say, domestic violence situations into accommodation, and we can get them into a place where they can start rebuilding their lives. Well, resilience… Women's Resilience Australia gets them into the next phase, gets them into actually living a life.

With resilience. One of their… the things they say is that you can't recover until you repair. So, when you think about repair and recovery. When something's broken or something's not working, what do you have to do? You have to fix it. You've got to find a way to repair it. So that repair won't happen. That recovery, I mean, from what you're going through won't happen until you repair it. So that's the inner work. That's the work you do just to take those steps necessary to get to that place where you can be recovered. But it's like anyone is involved with AA. It's sort of like.

Okay you know, anyone who knows someone or has been through it and says, oh, I'm an alcoholic, they're always an alcoholic. So what do they do? They have to constantly repair to recover. They're in a permanent state of recovery. And this is what this is about, too. It's not like, oh, I've learned how to do this, I'm done, I'm sorted. No. It's about sustainability, and sustainability requires maintenance. So it's not something that you just learnt and then you've done it. You have to constantly… because you will slip. Like, I slipped. I slipped.

And I had to… I had to pivot and make sure that I was in the right frame to actually come out of that the right way. So I took those steps… took those steps to actually get to a place where I was in that recovery phase. So, not pushing harder, but recovering faster. To have the tools to recover faster means you're not pushing harder. That guy I mentioned in Queensland, he always thought, oh, God, I'm a father now, I've got to push harder, I've got to push far harder. He was just fortunate that he had a great mentor that just… who had been through the same processes he had.

And I'd worked with this… with this guy and helped him sort of see a different way. And he used the same things on his protege. Let's go, okay, hey, let's… But stop. Let's take a breath, let's have a look at this in a different way. Let's see how you can actually improve your performance but do it in a way that's not putting pressure on you, and not causing you to cut corners, because you think you've got to do more, more, more and it's about working smarter, not harder in that environment.

So, pushing harder, and I think the narrative has changed significantly in the industry. I think RISE has had a massive part of that, because we're seeing trainers, we're seeing, conferences going… You know, we started the Thrive conference out in Melbourne. We're starting to see Thrive conferences, we're starting to see conferences called Flow, where we're seeing things change in an environment where, hey, there is a better way, and they're understanding there's a better way. It's not this hard-ass, hard-nosed, sort of flashy way of being a real estate agent. It's about, okay, I'm a human being, let me be a human being, let me be authentic. Because authentic's a word people love to throw around.

Very few people actually live it. So, it's… and I use this not suppressing stress understanding system, because the objective is actually not to have stress, right? And so… When you try to suppress stress and push it away and ignore it. It does not go away. It sits and festers and turns into anxiety, and turns into all kinds of… of behaviors that you just don't want to be.

So understanding the system of how stress is created. Understanding the system on how you overcome stress, and how… understanding the system to avoid stress is the key element here. It's a lot of inner work to do it but once you understand that it's a system, it's not a response thing, it's not a, a way of, you know, putting lids on things, or sorry, reaction thing, it's not a way of putting lids on things, it's actually understanding it's the system, why this is happening to me, what's triggering me, and I did a triggers thing about 6 months ago, for those of you that were on it at that time as well.

That's what it is. You could just watch out for those triggers and understand there's a system involved in doing this.

So, the last one is 7, number seven, leaders set the emotional tone. I can't stress this enough for those leaders in the room, and in fact, everyone. Everyone is a leader. They're either leading someone who might be their assistant, someone who might be their junior, someone, or they're leading themselves. I think self-leadership is a very underestimated component of what we do. We do lead ourselves, particularly in the absence of a leader that you can look up to, a leader you can follow, a leader who operates by example.

Leaders don't just set targets, they set the emotional tone of an environment that you work in. And, you know, leadership tone and leadership attributes can change from the top, they can change from the bottom, they can change upward, and they can change downward. A team can change a leader's way of being, by honesty and understanding. So, you know, the emotional tone can be set by leaders actually learning these things.

If they're willing to learn, and they're usually willing to learn when their team actually tells them they should learn it. Because their state becomes the signal to others, and it's like the behaviour you walk past is the behaviour that you condone. All those things, from a leadership perspective are signals to everyone in the team.

Yes, there might be extenuating circumstances with certain things, but all those things, there's… and yes, the world isn't all black and white, yes, there's a grey zone we operate in, but everyone needs to understand that, that the work of… of what leadership's about. But there are signals constantly going out to your team, about how you see things and how you understand things. Are those signals safe signals, or are those signals non-safe signals? Are those things ambiguous? Are those things confusing? Are those things questionable?

They have to be understood by leaders. Again, urgency without recovery, program protection, so we have to be conscious as leaders that this constant urgency, this is going to be done, this is how it's going to be done, bang, bang, bang. And in most cases, leaders haven't actually created this… the process or the systems for people in their environments to actually do those jobs properly. They just have an expectation without direction. An expectation without direction is a recipe for disaster.

So, it triggers protection. It triggers, and those people will never get out of that. So, again, you cannot see recovery until there is repair, as I mentioned earlier. So, that recovery won't happen in the team until you're repairing the problem. Know the problem. We're constantly looking for that. We're constantly being aware of the repairs that we have to do as leaders, because we're not infallible by any means. We're humans. We have to do the same repair as everyone else. So it's important that you've got this open environment to actually talk, from any space to a leader within your organisation. Pauses, regulation, removing shame corrects thriving cultures.

Allow mistakes to happen.

Allow mistakes to happen, because it's the only way that people actually learn. And also see your mistakes that you've made, if mistakes happen, take ownership of it. Was there something that you didn't do in that environment? Because you're moving shame from someone, right? When you remove shame from someone, you create the environment where they go, hey, okay, I actually have permission here to learn. I have permission to actually make mistakes, not intentionally but unintentionally.

Intentional mistakes are when you slack and you cut corners. That's a different story altogether. But, you want to create a thriving culture, make sure that you remove shame from any of the things that you do. Find out, hey, tell me, what did you learn from that mistake? That's the number one question you ask. What's the learning? Because once there's learning, if there's no learning, well, you've got a problem that needs to be dealt with, with that particular person. But there's always learning. Create the environment where they feel safe to share that learning.

Because they're not going to be… have the whip cracked over them. That's one of the things that we do in our induction process, in our welcome to the business, is we go through this stuff and say, this is the environment we're in. We want you to be able to speak up, we want you to be able to have a voice. We want you to be seen, and we want you to be heard, no matter what role that you have.

So, let's just have a look and reframe that performance before we finish up. Performance is a system, not a personality trait. Remember that. You're dealing with high performers, and they've got a personality, they do this and that, but the reality is they're actually following a system. You look at all the top performers in this industry, they say it, it's about the system I follow. No matter who you follow in this industry on Instagram or performers, it's a common trait.

It's a common trait. These are the things that I do, this is why I do them, and this is how I do them. That's it. It's a system. It's not their personality. I've met some incredible high-performance agents in this industry who I think have probably had a personality bypass but they've been highly successful because they follow a system, and they make connections. It's not just about personality and empathy.

When people feel safe, perspective expands. I think we've explained that, hopefully clearly to you, but I'll be asking questions at the end here, we've got a few minutes. When perspective expands, behavior changes. That's the key element. It's all about behaviour. It's all about manners and method. When you get the manner right, and have the method in place, in other words, the system, the manner is the behaviors, you get absolute high performance.

And I'm talking about any job, not just talking to sales agents, we're talking about any job in real estate is about performing the job to the best of your ability. So, sustainable change improves performance and well-being. That's that compounded, incremental change that occurs, and it becomes sustainability.

Sustainability is something that can keep going.

Right? You maintain it, it keeps going, it keeps going and growing. That's what we're after when we look at this talk. So thank you, everyone, for your attention, and I know it's death by PowerPoint, but hopefully you've got a lot out of it. The message is clear. Don't try and change the world by pushing harder. Change the lens first, the lens first by creating safety, then clarity, choice, and sustainable performance. Follow.

Now, just gonna do the RealCare app, Kylie. If you want to just… Go through this, and everyone can get the…

Kylie:

Look, I'm pretty sure that everyone on the call has.

John:

I think they're probably preaching the converted, but there it is again.

Kylie:

On your screen. But if you haven't, or if you know someone who would like some help, because so many of the tools that John's been talking about, about that ability to take a breath and to refocus and recenter, there are some fantastic tools inside the app to help you do all of the things that John's been advocating today. So, if you haven't downloaded the app yet, or if there's someone in your team who hasn't downloaded the app yet.

Please send them the link. There's actually a share with a friend button at the back of it as well, so you can actually go into the app and then send the link through the app as well. And again, we don't… we hope you never need it, but we, you know, but it is a great tool for building resilience and building some of these skills that John has been talking about today.

So it's not just for the crisis, it's for… it's for every day, once a week, whenever.

John:

It's ongoing maintenance, isn't it? That's the thing. Maintaining those things, and having that tool in your pocket. I've got, you know, people I know are using this in all many different ways. Now, are there any questions anyone's got? Anything in the… I can't open the chat for some reason. Have I got to stop sharing to do that?

Kylie:

Just share, and then, I can see there's no questions coming through yet but what I loved about it, John, is that it's tied so deeply into what we know around the different parts of our brain and how they work. And, you know, not all of our brains work through cognitive functions, that sense of safety and threat, that's really being managed all the time by our, you know, by the hormonal and the chemistry parts of our brains that just kind of respond to things, right?

So, everything you've been talking about is… and you can't think it through when they're in play, because… they shut down your… they shut down your logical part of your brain. So what you're recommending and the, and the insights from your presentation really are around going, oh, I'm having a reaction, yeah.

John:

Yeah.

Kylie:

Slow it down, right?

John:

I've seen the song. Reading the signs, seeing those signs happen is the first place to do it. But also, I think you can do that by just looking back, seeing some experiences you've had, how could we… How could I have handled that differently? And to me, the essence of it all is about saying, okay, well, if that's that situation, and rather than go, oh, I'm going to do that when that happens. How can I actually start to learn? How to actually change that now, while I'm… while I'm clear, right?

If I'm… if I'm not in a fog, how do I actually then go, right, what are those compounding, incremental things that I can change, in that environment to get sustainable success. What is… what's going to change the dial? What are the things that are going to occur? And there's a lot of stuff in there that… and we'll… will we share the slides with everyone at some stage?

We sure will, yep, if you're comfortable with that, we always do, yep. There's chunks in there that… that just really go, oh, okay, and seeing it again, you might get a little bit more out of it, because it is not going to happen overnight, as they say. It's going to be, what's the liberator thing that's going to change everything for me? What's the one thing I can do immediately?

So that I can go on this journey of compounding incremental improvements. Yeah, yeah. The outcomes are enormous, but I know a lot of people who are in fogs find it really hard to just get out of that fog. So if you are in a fog of any form. Try… try the steps, and… and just… just take a different view, which will clear your lens.

Kylie:

Yeah, and I think the important thing to note, too, is that that fog isn't the fault of anything, like, you haven't… like, there's nothing… like, that's… that's the chem… that's almost like your hormonal chemical reaction going on in your brain that's slowing you, that's just… that's taking the energy away from your ability to think clearly. So, you.

John:

Who creates this…

Kylie:

There's nothing… that's completely normal. Brain… you know, response to… to being in a fear state. But, I think so… The other thing too is that, yeah, like you said, these things take time, practice, and observing behaviour, observing how you're responding, or how you're feeling like you have to respond, is often just the first step in practice. Practice just doing one tiny thing differently until you sort of build that muscle a bit. Sarah, did you want to add in?

Sarah:

Oh, I was just coming back to say goodbye.

Kylie:

Okay.

Sarah:

On behalf of MRI, but I love that last point. You know, I think quite often, you know, when we do experience strong emotional responses that come from, you know, that irrational part of ourselves. There's a feeling of, like, loss of control, or even guilt or shame about having that response, that you… that that's not okay, when in actual fact, that response is kind of our 50,000 year old, you know, kind of internal navigation system telling us that something's wrong, but what John's talking about is kind of…

Taking the signal that something's wrong from those feelings, not disregarding them, not ignoring them, but just, you know, understanding that as a signal that something wrong… something is wrong, but then using, you know, those other parts of our brains, like the frontal lobe, to understand why there's something wrong, and make sure that our response and our feeling is proportionate to what's wrong, because, that's the part that, you know, kind of –

Kylie:

That's usually where it goes wild.

Sarah:

Our lizard brain kind of… it doesn't… doesn't necessarily understand proportionate… proportionality, and… and that's why… that's why we have evolved other parts of our brain. So I love that, you know, don't discount emotions, you know, the right mode, success mode here doesn't look like a robot, which coming from me, is hilarious, but, you know, that's actually failure mode, is, like, suppression and denying your emotions. So the success mode here is, you know, recognising that's a signal that matters, but, like, like John said through this, like, working with that signal to look at what's driving that, and kind of…

React rather than respond, and that's when… that's when we do feel like we're in control.

Kylie:

Yeah, and I think, look, something… just to personally share something, something that has worked with… for me, with… when I'm surrounded by people who know me really well, and I'm… it's often just the language that we use to explain what's going on to the people around us, and sometimes I'll just say to people, I'm having a big response to this, I just need a… I just need a... Can you let me take a breath?

Sarah:

Feelings. That's what we say… that's what Bluey says. Culture, I'm having big feelings, yeah. Doesn't mean they're wrong.

Kylie:

Getting noticed.

John:

Well, I mean, that, again, gives context before, before reacting, because it's like, when you go into a protective mode, and that's, you know, you've obviously found a way of actually being able to articulate that, rather than, you know, reaction, that people usually have problems with people, right? That's where all the problems occur, mostly to do with people. So, you go, how am I going to navigate that?

Whilst I'm in this, like, they're in my bad basket, I've judged the whole person on 5% rather than their 95%, so they're in that bad basket, and they're going to stay there forever, no matter what they do, because I've made the judgment, and I haven't, you know, I've made a muddy judgment, you know, it's this reactionary judgment, until coming to a place where I am in a state where I can actually go, okay, as I said, that's Sarah or that's Charlie being Charlie. I'm not going to change, necessarily, Charlie or Sarah's behaviour.

The only thing I can change is my response or reaction to that behaviour. And the way that I can justify my feelings is by saying, that's about me. They're making that about me. They're making this situation about me. When we know 95% of the time it's actually not about you, it's their own problem that is coming out of the fall.

And I think I learned many years ago that, hey, that's Sarah being Sarah. Sarah's not changing no matter what you do. It's like, how are you going to, accept that that's Sarah, and how are you going to live with Sarah? Particularly if she's your sister, or your… whatever it may be. That enables you to go, okay, I understand the parameters, I'm working here, and I'm not personalising this to a place.

So, that's great when you can have clarity but it's getting to that clarity place. And I think that's mainly what I was trying to hopefully get across, is it's moving from that fog to, oh, I've got some clarity, so now I can have a perspective instead of a judgment.

Sarah:

Yep.

John:

Perfect. And that, to me, is like, you don't have to go there, but look back at some examples that you've been through, and go, what would have happened if I'd done that? And what's the relationship that I could have if I did it that way? And that's… that's that whole liberator thing. It's like getting to that one thing that changes everything.

Kylie:

Fantastic.

Sarah:

I think, yeah, you're right, most of our problems do come from people, and the rest are probably from Microsoft Excel, but that would… that's… that's what you know.

John:

Or AML. We'll wait and see what happens.

Sarah:

Alright, gang, that's me signing off. Over to you, Kylie.

John:

Yeah. Alright, thanks everyone.

Kylie:

Thank you, everybody, so much. Our next webinar, a big thanks to MRI Software for, making our wellness webinars possible every month. Our next one is on the 1st of April. It is Steve Hodgson, and we are talking about Beyond The Noise, getting beyond the noise. So, kind of following up some of the themes that John's been talking about today, I'm sure. We're looking forward to…

Steve is one of our big influences, and we are really looking forward to having him on the call. It's just before Easter, so I know it's going to be a busy time, but please sign up, and we will also be sending out a recording of this… this one from John, and then next month from Steve after every month.

So thank you, everybody, for joining us today. Thank you so much, John. Thank you, Sarah, for joining us as well. Have a fantastic day, everyone, and yeah, and see you next month at the Wellness Webinar for the RISE Initiative, sponsored by MRI Software.

John:

Thank you.