Steve and Julianna are Singapore based entrepreneurs who built an innovative technology company in the retail sector. Prior to his partnership with Julianna, Steve had successfully raised funds for his first company before selling it to a large brand several years later. "Whilst I did well in my first company, there was a lot more effort and energy we put in that ended up going to waste or resulted in outcomes that had to be redone. Building my second company, I was determined not to repeat many of the mistakes that slowed us down."
Steve and Julianna initially completed the Being Profile assessment and debrief in the early stages of establishing their new company. Based on their experience, they knew there was a critical relationship between the leadership team's level of awareness and the success of the business. The Being Framework resonated with them because it laid out this relationship in a structured and high-resolution way. They learnt that by adopting the framework, their team would form an important link between the expression of their Unique Being with their Aspects of Being and their consequential decisions, thoughts, actions, and results. Julianna said, "I found that the default approach in a business setting is to only look at the relationship between our actions and results. It takes conscious intervention to tell people that, as a company, the results and outcomes we produce are derived from factors far deeper than only our surface-level decisions and actions. I believe that this approach needs to be initiated by the leadership team."
The Being Framework's 31 Aspects of Being are broken down into four distinct layers. By adopting the Being Framework, individuals can better understand themselves by becoming aware of how these 31 Aspects of Being are linked across the four layers and the interplay between them. One of these layers consists of the Moods, which include a person's relationship with fear and anxiety. Steve said, "The first part of the Being Framework that stood out for me was the Moods. As I looked back at how I was operating my first business, I noticed that, in some cases, days would go by where I wasn't responding to fear or anxiety in an optimal way. In fact, it would leave me not present at all with my staff. In those moments, they missed out on the leadership they needed."
By raising his awareness of his Moods, Steve was able to build a healthier relationship with them. In working with his coach to develop himself in these Aspects of Being, Steve's first breakthrough involved simply noticing when fear or anxiety would arise throughout the day. He was shocked to discover how often fear and anxiety would creep in and start to affect his decision making without being consciously aware of it. Supported by his ontological coach, Steve gradually brought more and more attention to his relationship with fear and anxiety in various situations. Six months later, he completed the Being Profile questionnaire again, and his results showed an increase in his health scores for both fear and anxiety. Although fear and anxiety would still arise, as building a business is fraught with many challenges, Steve's healthy relationship with these Moods meant that he could remain present and focused on what was required of him in the company, resulting in effective decisions.
As Steve and Julianna deepened their knowledge of the Being Framework, they could see more areas within themselves to transform. During one particular session with their ontological coach, Julianna identified how authenticity, responsibility and assertiveness were missing from a recent client meeting that had not gone well. The result? The client conversation became gridlocked, and she didn't feel like she got her true points across. At first, she required assistance from her coach to identify how these Ways of Being were showing up for her. But she gradually became familiar with the thought patterns and feelings that would arise whenever her relationship with these Ways of Being faltered. Ultimately, she was interested in producing results. By practising being aware of these Ways of Being as they arose and changing her behaviour accordingly, Julianna became more confident to speak her mind and share her feelings in meetings – an aspect of authenticity – among other beneficial changes.
Steve and Julianna continued to polish and transform their Aspects of Being, such as practising being more authentic, responsible and assertive, and began to understand how various Aspects of Being unfolded for others, particularly their team members. Over time, this led to them revolutionising how they hired, led and managed their staff. They were able to identify the situations in which their employees were stuck on certain Aspects of Being versus other times when there was a gap in their hard skills. Julianna reported that she was able to better identify the unique contribution, or Unique Being, of each person and foster it in such a way that it would positively impact the business while having employees more engaged and experiencing greater meaning in what they do. She said, "I found that the common approach in business is to focus on hard skills. However, I have seen, for myself and many other employers I know, that you can have a person with excellent hard skills but who still lacks performance. If, for example, they are not being responsible in a project, their hard skills can very quickly go to waste."
A performance and effectiveness-focused Being Framework exercise that particularly stood out for Steve was his work with their coach and their sales team. The team consisted of eight staff who had already been through a series of training programs but were still not producing the results Steve and Julianna knew they could. Each team member completed a Being Profile assessment and debrief, and a Team Profile was collated in preparation for a Being Framework group-based workshop. Their Team Profile highlighted two particular Ways of Being that were lacking: proactivity and persistence. By creating a common language and distinction around these two Aspects of Being, each team member formed a clear picture of who and how they were BEING and the subsequent actions they would take in the field. Equipped with this clarity, workshop participants were asked to identify how these two Aspects of Being correlated into specific actions and results with prospects in their pipeline. It turned out that a collective unhealthy relationship with these two Ways of Being was costing the company an estimated USD $250,000 a year in lost sales.
Steve, Julianna and their team members subsequently made a series of immediate changes. They re-established the commitment of each of the team members in the sales department and let go of a small number who were unwilling to put in the work to have the department and company succeed. Of those that remained, Steve heard stories of how they were being more proactive and assertive in the field. One team member reported that in situations where she would normally have let a prospect go the moment they seemed disinterested, she would now ask them deeper, more relevant questions. As a result, she successfully converted some of them into leads. Steve and Julianna were present to the significance of this, especially considering the costs they were paying to get a single lead. Other team members demonstrated far more persistence in their follow up. In the beginning, so many leads were being churned through with little result. Rather than implementing a new policy or procedure, the co-founders worked directly with their team to transform persistence and proactivity. As a result, their team is now initiating their own follow up with customers and turning leads that otherwise would have been lost into successful deals.
