Although David has been extremely busy recently with Rambutan’s growing success story he’s managed to find a bit of time to continue his involvement with NBT and write an article that was published in Connections Magazine.

If you’d like to have a look to see how cerebral David can be, (along with a fantastic trainer and facilitator of course!), have a quick peek here.

Happy reading!

If, like Sarah, you happened to see Sport Relief on BBC2 on Friday evening at about 10.20pm, you’ll have had the good fortune to see how focus, teamwork, playing to strengths and a compelling goal can come together to produce amazing results. 

The Olympian Choir, formed of Olympic and paralympic medal-winners, was transformed from a bunch of in-the-shower-only singers into a team singing a four-part harmony… Always on My Mind was what they sang, and to be fair, their performance always will be! 

We reckon there’s a lesson in there for all of us if we think about it…

A short yet real story from Sarah:

“Whilst David and I were driving from Cardiff to Market Harborough recently, we actually drove through the end of the rainbow… seriously – there it was touching the road right ahead of us and we drove straight through it!  Sadly, there was no pot of gold, so I figured that my parents had made the whole thing up to amuse me when I was little.

Until, that was, I recounted this story to a 10 year-old that I know, called Dylan.  Upon hearing my story and my disappointment at not finding the pot of gold, he calmly stated: “Well it must have been at the other end of the rainbow…”

Which has got to be one of the most refreshing ways of looking at a situation that I’ve heard this month!” 

Thanks Sarah – the story certainly made me smile!

Whilst sitting on a chairlift in the Alps recently, Sarah and David were discussing work without even realising it!

You may or may not know (depending on whether you’re a ski-nut like they both are) that ski slopes are graded by level of difficulty.  In Europe, green slopes are the easiest, then blue, red and black….

What they had observed was this:  If somebody knows they’re on a slope which is a colour that they believe is beyond their ability then their legs go to jelly and they ski well below what they’re capable of! However, if they don’t know what colour the slope is they handle it to the very best of their ability and tackle it with confidence…

They experienced this first hand when they unwittingly took a wrong turn and had to come down a red slope with a person whose belief was ‘I can only do blues’… Given what we write in the last paragraph it will come as no surprise to you that by not telling them what had happened, they handled the slope very well indeed.  And we bet you can guess what happened when the same person stood at the top of the same slope the following day and was told it was red?

This ‘barriers in the mind’ stuff happens all the time – if you’ve got any more examples we’d love to hear them.

Towards the end of last year you may remember that Craig completed a 160 mile charity cycle ride to raise money for a local school (if the details are a little hazy you can refresh your memory here!) Last week Craig was invited to attend a school assembly at Bowbridge Primary School to hand over the cash he had raised cycling like crazy!

The school assembly was packed with 5 – 7 year olds who were in full song as Craig arrived. Each assembly had a topic and this week’s topic was appreciation.

The teacher who took the assembly spoke to the children as if she was addressing another teacher or a personal friend and the children responded in the same vein (except with the odd giggle!) giving some amazing answers to questions such as: ‘what does appreciation mean?’, ‘how do you appreciate someone?’ and ‘what do you appreciate in your life right now?’

It was wonderful to hear that the answers the children gave all focussed on family, friends, heat, food, learning and even the environment! Not one little adult mentioned TV, internet, DS or mobile phones!

Then the teacher showed some quite shocking pictures of the recent earthquake in Haiti and the children then described how lucky they felt and their realisation that it must be very difficult to be in Haiti right now.

The teacher was wonderful, warm, engaging and respectful and for every answer given each little adult received personal specific praise, and if the answer was not quite on the money, the teacher thanked the little adult for having a go and asked someone to add to the previous answer.

During the assembly Craig had a refreshing moment of clarity – looking at someone and labelling them as a child, trouble maker or an adult can dictate the way you treat them. Looking at someone as an individual and with the belief they know the answers, produces wonderful results.

Whilst editing a newsletter recently, Sarah was reviewing an article that had been submitted to clear up some confusion about which phone numbers employees should use in an emergency and in a non-emergency.  Having read it, she was still confused, so called the person who’d written the article in the first place to check the details.  Imagine her surprise when the response was ‘yes, I was a bit confused myself when I wrote it and it doesn’t make sense to me really but that’s what I’ve been told the facts are…!’

Which left Sarah both bemused and staggered – what was the point in sending out a clarification that didn’t clarify; an article to clear up confusion that added to it?  Wouldn’t it be refreshing if a piece of communication actually communicated? 

Still, it got a few laughs over the dinner table, so some good came of the whole thing!

How often do you ‘hmmm and ahhhhh’ over what to do next?

Craig and Lance were delivering ‘the power of thinking differently’ course to some fantastic people from the National College for Leadership of Schools and Children’s Services (phew, that’s a long name!) last week.  Whilst trying to find different solutions to a situation a few members of the group had the pained expression of someone thinking too much and too hard about something, resulting in a thinking ‘block’.

You know the look – the ‘if I strain really hard the answer will arrive!’

The guys suddenly started talking about what was on TV the night before and momentarily lost their original train of thought until one of them said ‘oh how about….’ and the ideas suddenly started flooding and flowing – the dam was breached!

What caused the dam to break? Maybe the fact the guys relaxed, thought less about the situation facing them and allowed their heads to work on it in the background whilst they chatted about something totally random. Sometimes, the less we think about something the quicker we find the answer(s).

The moral here..?

Well if we put a complicated moral here maybe we would be thinking too hard(!), so maybe the moral is ‘create some space to allow relaxed thinking, to find the answer try thinking about something totally different’… you never know; the answers could come flooding to you also!

Mick Fletcher, one of our friends and clients, just told us that they’d spotted a chef using Rambutans on a programme called Market Kitchen… naturally, Sarah’s curiosity got the better of her and she decided to give it a try!  Her verdict: “delicious!” 

If you fancy trying your hand at flambéed mangosteen and rambutan salad then you can check it out here. 

Thanks for this top tip, Mick!