Hey everyone, welcome back to a #ThoughtFULLThursday. My name is Casey Hasten. I am an Executive Recruiter, Director of Recruiting with VIP and all around #hiringguru. #ThoughtFULLThursdays are my time to share tips for building a better team with you.
Today I want to introduce you to the Hula-Hoop Philosophy and the reason we have hula-hoops at our desks. We use the hula-hoop as a visual to show you the sphere of influence you can control. One of the things that often happens when you are working in a team environment is you start paying a lot of attention to outside noise and things going on around you. What we really want to concentrate on is staying in our Hula-Hoop.
Imagine you are standing in the middle of a hula-hoop right now. Reach your arms out the to the outer edges of the hula-hoop. How far did you reach? This is your circle of control. Activities outside of this circle are not in your control. If you try to control them (for example a co-worker who comes in late all the time who you do not supervise), you will find yourself worrying about things that are none of your business. It does not matter what time your co-worker gets to work as long as you are getting to work on time. The rest of the consequences are on him or her. If you focus your attention on issues which are no business of yours, you waste precious mental power to be the best you.
My team has embraced this philosophy and it is not uncommon to hear them tell each other, “get back in your hula-hoop!” I have even seen them just hand someone a hula-hoop when the person was focusing on events outside his or her control. This quickly brings the person back to center in a gentle way and it often prompts a hula-hoop contest, again distracting the person from whatever outside noise had attracted their attention.
Be brave when people try to enter your hula-hoop who do not belong. Do not allow negative energy to come close and do not be afraid to invoke your hula-hoop. I recently had to remind myself of this philosophy. I allowed a former colleague to rent quite a bit of space in my head. I realized by doing this I was crippling my ability to focus on those activities which would drive my success and invoked my hula-hoop.
I do want to point out I am not saying do not be aware of what is going around you. If a teammate is in pain, whether personally or professionally, then it is time to get inside their hula-hoop if they will allow. I am referring to the noise which does us no good, such as office gossip or other’s behavior.
Stay inside your hula-hoop and teach your team to ignore the noise. What other people think about you is none of your business. (FYI, I borrowed the last sentence from another thought leader. )
We like to have fun in our office. This is a way we encourage our teams and helps us build better teams. We use the hula-hoop as a learning tool and everyone has one at their desk in my office. If you look at our website, you will see Hanna hula-hooping in our intro video.
I hope this was helpful for you guys today. We’ll see you next Thursday.
