5.15pm notes from a bar, a mountain, and a team offsite
Plus: Why peer pressure needs a rebrand
It’s one of those weeks where Friday has hurtled towards me. I find myself writing this in a Perth hotel bar on a Thursday at 5:15 PM over a Little Creatures schooner (delicious).
Before I sat down, my client asked what I was doing this evening. I told her I had to take some time out to write this note to you.
She looked at me and asked, “Doesn’t that get tedious, writing it every week? What’s it for?”
I shared that this is actually less about audience growth (even though writing has attracted some amazing gigs and readers like you), and it’s more about my love for sharing ideas, and trying to improve my writing…As well as a fierce reluctance to break the weekly streak.
So, thanks for being part of the journey.
It’s been a fast week in the best of ways, with two big highlights that both taught me something worth sharing with you.
Highlight one: Appearing on the big screen
It’s one thing to go on an epic trek. It’s a whole other thing to have it captured by a talented filmmaker and turned into a 70-minute documentary that you watch with family and friends on a big screen in Brisbane.
The film is called Get Out Of Your Way. Once the doco is up on YouTube, I’ll share the link (here’s the trailer).
My friend messaged me after the screening saying, “I don’t think you realise how big a deal this is!” She was right. I didn’t. When you’re the one doing the thing, you just accept it as your reality. It doesn’t feel special until you step back/zoom out… and rewatch the experience in a cinema (very cool).
Matt Stewart, host of our ENFP experience, shared that “You can’t explain the bond you have with others when you do something like this,” and it’s so true. It was a delight to be reunited with my trekking buddies back ‘in the real world’. They all looked so fresh!
At the screening, Tim (the MC) asked about my self-talk during the hardest parts of the trek.
I shared that usually, my baseline internal monologue is pretty happy + positive. But four days into the hike, I was the opposite of a half-glass-full person. I was physically exhausted, in a mental trap, and convinced the entire trip was a massive mistake.
Three things helped to pull me out of that spiral:
Borrow other people’s optimism. Peer pressure gets a bad reputation because we associate it with bad influences. But when you’re surrounded by positive, fit, awesome people? Peer pressure lifts you. I was super slow on the trail, but borrowing the energy of the group’s pace got me through. The same is true at work. If your immediate circle is cynical or checked out, that definitely impacts you, too. Seek out the people who make hard things feel doable.
Just hold on for one more day (thanks Wilson Phillips). When I had my breakdown on the hike, unsure if I could physically continue, the best advice I got was to avoid making rash decisions and just see how things looked tomorrow. Don’t look too far ahead. Stop looking at the mountains ahead of you. Just take the next, unsteady step forward.
Ignore your thoughts. When your thoughts spiral, get out of your head and into your body. Your brain is trying to protect you and keep you safe but sometimes it’s too good at doing that, and can limit our growth. Going on trips like this, you learn how far you CAN really push yourself. I thought I knew that threshold, but Nepal showed me there's way more to dig into.
Question for you: What’s an achievement you’ve brushed off as “just normal” that actually deserves a bit more credit?
Highlight two: Facilitating an offsite at a winery
When my client told me we were having the planned offsite at a winery in Swan Valley, Western Australia, I inwardly squealed.
Off-sites like this work so well, and what I’d encourage you to think about if you’re ever in a position to influence where your team gathers.
A mistake I see often, is that strategy sessions happen on-site, at the office. People organise side quests with other colleagues, duck out for quick meetings, and you lose the magic of focused connection time. You miss the breakfasts and dinners where great conversation and banter happens.
One thing I shared with this team that I want to pass along to you is - the medium is the message.
Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan coined this phrase back in 1964. He argued that the way we choose to send information (the medium) has a much bigger impact on people than the actual information itself (the message).
Leaders might say, “We need to bring people on the journey,” and then proceed to deliver a 90-minute Town Hall lecture where they talk at the room. The medium they chose is a heavy lecture but the message they intended was collaboration. These are incongruent.
Your delivery format/vehicle must reflect the intent of your message. A practical question to ask yourself before your next meeting or presentation is: Does the way I’m delivering this actually demonstrate the thing I’m trying to say?
Okay, signing off from the hotel bar. Hope you’ve had a great week!
🌴
Leanne “Nothing beats a Western Australian sunset” Hughes
p.s. Tap the heart 💙 button to let me know if any of these ideas hit the mark for you. That little signal helps to keep this weekly writing streak alive.
'Hold on for one more day' is possibly the most powerful yet under-rated piece of advice I've ever received. I was a newly single parent, with not even close to enough money in the bank, or coming in, to raise 2 boys in the way I wanted to and I was freaking out. And a friend said, do you have enough for today? Yes. The you're ok. Just keep taking each day as it comes. He was so right.
Love your weekly notes Leanne 🤩
What an excellent collection of reflections. It always makes my spine hurt when people are like 'urgh, why would you do that' about writing in particular, and this idea that it always has to be FOR something.
And these lessons from Nepal are great. How good (although maybe a bit awks at times) to have an experience like that played back at you, so you can see yourself in those hard moments.