Lysa Morrison: Preparation + Opportunity = Luck

Lysa Morrison of the Shining Light Academy talks about her own bumpy road to success and explains how she now uses her many skills and experiences to help others shine.

You gave an address entitled ‘The Emotionally Intelligent Project Manager’ at the recent Project Management Conference. What was it about?

Have you ever felt as if your life is like a scene from a movie or that there’s a hidden camera crew following you about because you’re being pranked? Well, I certainly did when I arrived at the conference after a disastrous journey from the UK, with more twists and turns than Tom Cruise’s ‘Mission Impossible’! My talk was all about resilience, managing uncertainty and how developing your emotional intelligence skills can help you be your best and overcome any challenge or uncertainty you are faced with. I had no idea when I wrote that talk, that I would standing onstage as a living and breathing example of how to apply these skills in real life! The key messages from my experience and my talk were that you need to develop your emotional intelligence skills – or, as they are now often called, your ‘power’ skills – as these competencies will help you go far in your personal and professional lives.

Tell us something about your business, the Shining Light Academy.

The Shining Light Academy aims to shine a light on your potential, no matter how deep it may be hidden inside you. We are an association of experts, academics and even Olympians, whose only goal is to help people be their best and live their best lives. We work with individuals, teams, Boards and whole organisations to help fuel success by combining our wealth of experience in business strategy and psychology to help people achieve more than they ever imagined possible, no matter what challenges they may face. Our key areas of expertise include leadership and development, employee engagement, business strategy and management, emotional intelligence, team development and peak performance. As a business, your goals are our goals. It’s a simple as that.

What are some of the main emerging trends in HR and project management?

Since the pandemic, we have seen rapid changes in the world of work, including the “Great Resignation” and global talent shortages. According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report, 50% of all employees will need reskilling by 2025, as the adoption of technology increases; critical thinking and problem-solving top the list of skills that employers believe will grow in prominence in the next five years; and newly emerging this year are skills in self-management, such as active learning, resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility. The secret to making this work will be to ensure that employees at all levels have high emotional intelligence in order to be agile and adaptive and have the capacity to respond to challenges with a positive mindset.

You have a wealth of experience in a number of areas and are known for practising what you preach to your clients. Can you tell us more?

People often tell me that I am lucky to have a job that I genuinely love but I always say that luck is “preparation plus opportunity.” I’d always known what types of things I would love to do, and I always believed that one day I would do them. I just didn’t always know how I would get there. In every job, I would take every opportunity to do three things: (1) spend as much time as possible doing tasks that helped me get better at my strengths; (2) learn as much as I could about the next thing I wanted to do, and (3) get to know the people who were already doing it. It paid off every time. I started work at British Airways in 1992. I loved helping people improve and be at their best, so I moved into training, and I was hooked. In 2004, after having my first two children, I changed careers and moved into working with disadvantaged families, then homeless young people. I discovered I was good at what I did so I soon started training others too. I loved the strategy side of things, so I took on non-executive Board appointments outside of my day job to learn more. In 2007 I set up my first business part-time alongside my day job, doing therapy, coaching and teaching psychology and neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). I left to do this full time in 2012 but by then I was working in the strategy and policy team so I ended up with this mix of business strategy and psychology/coaching skills. I was being offered big opportunities but at the time I was so worried about what people would think if they found out I didn’t have any qualifications in business, I turned them down.

And you decided to do something about it!

Yes. I realised this was dumb, so I started to study part-time again. In 2014, I did an MBA at Newcastle University which asked me to stay on and I began lecturing part-time in Managing Change, Strategy and Leadership, and Personal Development. In 2017 everything changed: I went through a divorce and unexpectedly found myself a single parent of three children. My work involved a lot of travel and, as I have no family, I decided to close the business and work as Head of Transformation for one of my local clients. A couple of years later, however, that firm was taken over and the whole Board was made redundant, so I found myself back at square one. As I was still giving lots of talks all over Europe, I decided to set up my business again and, by the beginning of 2020, I had invitations to speak in 22 different countries. You can guess what happened next – I became self-employed and the COVID-19 pandemic arrived. The next two years were tough – but fantastic. I did a bit of online stuff, took some time off, became a partner in Geordie Gin, but mainly I immersed myself in study and research so that I would be prepared for when the world opened again and here I am – back doing what I love!

Tell us about your professional plans.

I want to continue with what I’m doing because I love it but I can only be in one place at any time, so to solve my waiting-list issues. I have an online programme in production that takes my 25 years’ worth of experience and research and turns it into your own personal coaching system to help you overcome any obstacle and achieve any goal. It’s all online and it includes all of the tools and resources you need so you can go at your own pace without paying for a coach or expensive training. It covers every topic under the sun in three key areas: “Loving what you do,” “Financial Autonomy” and “Feeling Great.” There is a section for leaders and organisations, too. Unfortunately, it won’t be ready until the end of 2023 but, in the meantime, if you want to improve your mental fitness and emotional intelligence skills so as to thrive in challenging times, you can sign up to one of the options – “Positive Intelligence Training” – which is available now. You can e-mail me at lysa@lysamorrison.com and there’s a 70% discount for members of PMI Cyprus and readers of GOLD!

Visit www.positiveintelligence.com for more information.

This interview first appeared in the March issue of GOLD magazine. Click here to view it.