I think something special happens when we let our businesses express what we believe in, what we are passionate about. I believe that is what we saw with Fred and Ger Karlsson in DoneDeal and it is what I saw when I met Attila and Levi from Mamukko recently in Kinsale.

Mamukko consists of two Hungarian brothers that make cool and trendy bags from upcycled sails and bicycle tyre tubing amongst other things. When you meet them, their genuine, warm personalities are disarming and their passion for what they are about is infectious.

When I ask Attila and Levi to describe what they do, they say they are simply doing what comes naturally to them. And if I were to sum up what comes naturally to them it would look something like this:
Master craftsmanship – Attila and Levi come from a family of master craftsmen – both mother and father are master leather workers as well as their parents before them. Their parents came to Ireland to teach them the skill of production and template making.

Art and creativity – Levi has studied art in various forms for 12 years and his natural eye for form and colour shines through in all their work.

Conscious living – Both Attila and Levi are passionate about the upcycling aspect of their work. They are not just latching onto an up and coming trend to sell their work. The upcycling ethos is present in every part of it. For example, they use old Lidl posters to cut out the reusable templates for their bags when they are designing them.  They are both DJs and love listening to music while they work. And of course, their music of choice they tell me is conscious music such as raggae, African beats and hip-hop.

Bring all the above together with Attila's natural instinct and appetite for Smart Business Development and you have a recipe for a business that speaks volumes about values, quality and creativity.

Three years ago, both Attila and Levi were unemployed. Now, they are finding it hard to keep up with the demand for their product. They have been shortlisted for the 2013 Green Start Up Award in the Green Startup of the Year category, they need to find a bigger premises and they are looking at taking on an employee.

The positive psychology movement tells us that if we are given the opportunity to use our strengths in our work (and note, in this case, our strengths are not what we are good at but rather what energises us, what we can enjoy and lose ourselves in) we will not only be happier but far more successful.

In my years of working with teams in the workplace I have seen this in evidence all the time. When a team was able to allow its individual members play to their strengths in the service of doing the job on hand, the success rate of the whole team grew. But not just that, when the team members believed in the purpose of their mission, they were happy to give that extra effort that pushed success rates up to the exceptional level. Some industry experts claim that extra effort, or discretionary effort as it is sometimes called, can give a business up to 40% more productivity!

Attila and Levi are prime examples of this. The goals that energise and motivate them are to take the craftsmanship of their parents and make it contemporary and to be part of pioneering the upcycling movement in Ireland. They couple their passion with their respective strengths and everything else is naturally flowing from there.

  When you speak with them, they are open, generous and very happy to share any knowledge they have with you. They are full of creative ideas. The only challenge for them is to find the time to act on them as they are currently working so hard to meet demand for their upcycled bags.

Everything about them just seems so "natural" to use their own words, and so right. They deserve all the success that their business will bring them because they are showing the rest of us that it is possible to marry our values with our work and find a way to make it all work for the better of the world.

Thank you Attila and Levi for letting me into your world and for reminding me that it is possible to express my own values and passions through my own work and still be successful.

Are you or your people able to express their passions, values and strengths in your organisation? To explore how you might introduce more of this into your organisation contact Miriam at [email protected].

Check out more about Mamukko here.

One could argue that organisations are just a whole series of conversations. Some conversations take the shape of meetings where critical decisions are made or ways forward negotiated, others are social conversations, held over tea breaks or at the water cooler.

Many respected thinkers and writers on the topic of organisational change such as Peter Senge and Margaret J. Wheatley write about bringing about positive change through the power of conversation (ref: The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter by Juanita Brown, David Isaacs, Corld Cafe Community, Margaret J. Wheatley, Peter Senge).

If you really want to learn what an organisation is about, what it's values are, what type of place it is to work in, wander around for a while and listen to the conversations that are taking place, on the production floor, in the board rooms, at the water coolers. If you want to bring about some positive change in an organisation, a good place to start, and some might say the only place to start, is with those conversations.

In my personal experience of working with organisations and teams to develop cultures of innovation, high performance and success, the one thing that allows individuals and teams to engage fully in their work is the feeling that what they think and do matters. And one of the simplest, most powerful ways to give them that feeling is to listen to them and to make sure that they feel heard.

So, if you want to start having some powerful, positive conversations in your organisation today, the number one most important thing you can do is start listening and ensure that everyone else starts listening too. And be careful, this type of listening is not shutting your mouth long enough to let the other person finish speaking. It is listening with the intention of truly understanding (as Stephen Covey says in his 7 Habits). It is listening hard enough to ensure that the other person is heard and feels heard. Then you will find them able to listen to you and to engage with their whole heart and mind.

What are your thoughts of the most important aspects of a powerful conversation? Have you used the power of conversation to bring about change in your workplace?

To learn more about how you can change the conversations in your workplace contact Miriam at mailto:[email protected]