A few weeks ago and amongst other things I needed roast potatoes and I noticed there was a bag there sat labelled wonky potatoes wonky potatoes right next to what I presume they would describe as normal ones because they were just labelled potatoes but these wonky potatoes they were cheaper so I thought I'd buy them I was quite intrigued partly because they were cheaper but mostly because I wanted to see what was the difference between normal ones and these wonky ones I wanted to make roast potatoes so that's why I wanted the potatoes but these wonky potatoes they are in a similar type bag and you get the same amount of potatoes or the same weight but they charge you less money for them so anyway I took them home and prepared them and cut them up got them ready and as I cut into the first of the wonky potatoes it fell apart and it was like that just looks like a normal potato so I looked into the bag and I could see that there was some that were sort of maybe a bit smaller than normal and some were a bit wonky and maybe just misshaped a bit but every single potato I cut open to cut up and make roast potatoes out of the inside of them they were just potatoes they were all exactly the same you know same potato same starch the same use so I was thinking are these potatoes just judged by what they look like on the outside are they just judged because they're a slightly different shape that they're slightly small or slightly bigger and it got me thinking about something entirely different from potatoes you see when I was growing up I often heard you're very practical John and this always came from my mum and she said it in her usual kind way in her usual kind voice and I now know she meant it kindly but you see the thing was I had an older brother who was seven years older than me and he was always sort of called the academic one and I can remember we lived in a three story house and he was always tucked away in his room his room was right up in the attic at the top of the house and I never really saw much of him he'd come in from school and up there and off he'd be working working working so that was my interpretation as a young child as what academic was you tucked yourself away and you worked hard and you did lots of writing and that was it so in my mind if I was practical I therefore wasn't academic and so what I heard was I was practical and therefore I'm not clever. I wasn't the clever one that was my brother because he was academic I was the practical one well I carried this label for forty years and looking back I now know it started showing up in places but I didn't know at the time what that was but for some things it stopped me going for things if you remember last week I talked about the hotel that I worked in and I didn't go for that job promotion you see somewhere in the back of my mind I was practical not academic and to raise up and rise up and progress through that hotel I needed to be clever then 15 years ago I found NLP and the map of the world and I'll talk more about the map of the world in the coming weeks but it was about the way that we think and the way that we see things is different from other people and just realizing that actually the person that was labelling me as non-academic was only myself so I discovered this by asking my mum but I was probably late forties by the time I asked her so for forty odd years I'd lived with this telling myself the same thing my mum now is in her nineties still with us still as fit as a fiddle but for forty years I only attached one word to being practical I only attached the word non academic but that one word I'd got wrong because my mum said to me well I never thought you weren't academic it's just you were very practical you see most labels aren't given to be cruel to people in the working environment they can just end up being quite casually labelled. You see no one sets out to do this deliberately and maliciously but what happens over time is this slow damage is done it's quiet and it can be by the person that's receiving it you see I call this the labelling loop when people are labelled and then start to behave that way. You see for some people at work you see the reputation the label arrives before the person does they're known as the steady one the reliable one the punctual one none of these labels are given to people to be malicious but they can hold people back it's not the label that says they're gonna go far the sky's the limit for them they need support and nurture you see these are quite different labels and what happens over time well that person that's reliable steady they've been working hard but they put a lot in but at some point or other they begin to understand and see and feel that they're not progressing it's slow but it's there and over time they start to put a little less in because they say to themselves what is the point in me putting in extra when I'm overlooked when I'm not seen when perhaps they know that they're carrying a label that they can't seem to shift then what happens is the manager looks at their team and says ah I was right I was right about that person I was right about that person. They've reached their level they probably won't be able to progress any further I was right all along you see this is known as confirmation biased people look for evidence to prove their beliefs you see but what's going on there is that we are talking about the label and not the individual we stop ourselves being able to see past that label over time opportunity and chance it's quietly not offered. When promotions come along those names aren't put forward by their managers and they don't put their own name forward either because they don't believe it's worth it. We often do this annually in companies we get round to the annual review and we have to fit everybody in our teams after the reviews into boxes you know someone for the future to be developed someone at their right level currently somebody that needs to improve these are all labels that don't necessarily serve the individual you see in these things it's not always the words that hurt people it's the meaning that people put onto those words it's the way they interpretate what has been said or what has not been said. Okay I've got a challenge for you this week think of one person on your team and pick them then back and say what's the label how would I describe that person what label do I give them then ask yourself where did that label come from? Was it just handed to me? Did I just hear someone refer to them as a steady reliable person? Did I hear someone say to me Oh they're often offten absent Did I hear someone say to me they don't really push themselves or did someone tell me that they are the people of tomorrow they are the next CEO they are the next great leader that we need to nurture Who handed you that label or did you create it yourself? And the person that handed it to you are they even still there in that organization or have they moved on? When did you last challenge that belief and test it to see whether it's even true? Maybe you believe that they have a lot of absence but have you actually checked? So this week ask that person a question that you'd ask a stranger and learn something new about them and the second thing I want you to do this week and this is much harder look at yourself and see whether you carry a label about yourself What is it that you tell yourself that stops you moving forward whether it's in work at home within the family and ask yourself those same questions Is it outdated? Does it need updating? Is it an old belief? Is it an old label that needs to go? Who gave you it? And did you ever go back and check to see if that is their belief So think about your own team and think about the person you've quietly decided has gone as far as they can go and then be honest with yourself about where that came from Did you see it? Or did someone hand it to you before you ever met them And then think about the one you're carrying about yourself because I carried mine for forty years from someone who loved me and meant it kindly and all it ever took was me to ask the question of what my mum actually meant. In the show notes below you can get hold of my free guide why the conversations keep going sideways and the one shift that will fix it. So thank you for listening to Breaking the Circle for Leaders I hope you've enjoyed this week's episode and subscribe to make sure you don't miss next week's too and as always I'm rooting for you