All posts by Dorothy Nesbit

Setting objectives that have punch in your business

Developing as a leader,

Sometimes, I come across something thought-provoking in an area of interest to my clients and take pleasure in sharing it here.  Today, I share from Alan Weiss’ newsletter at the Summit Consulting Group.  The article below is copyrighted and I share it with Alan’s permission.

I preface it by saying that Alan writes for those who are selling their services and you may be in a different position – perhaps you’re a manager setting objectives for your staff or perhaps you, in turn, are agreeing objectives with your boss.  As you read Alan’s article below I invite you to ponder what learning there is in his article for you.  And if you’re willing to share I’d love to read your comments.

Here’s what Alan has to say:

Gaining conceptual agreement

When you find an economic buyer—someone who can write or authorize a check for your value proposition as represented in your proposal—you must gain conceptual agreement on the objectives of the project, the measures for success (progress and/or completion), and the value that results from reaching those objectives.

An OBJECTIVE is a business outcome, never a deliverable or task or input. A strategy retreat is not an objective. But if you ask, “Why?” (do you desire a strategy retreat) the answer is usually the objective: “Because we want to expand into new markets and require a strategy to do so effectively.”

A METRIC or measure of success is an indicator of progress. It has to be recognized formally by objective analysis, or informally by someone charged to do so. A sales report on average size of sales is an objective measure, and your spouse’s determination of the comfort of the driver’s seat of a new car is an informal but also effective measure. There must be at least one metric for every objective.

VALUE is what is delivered by each objective, and there are usually several value statements per objective. If Increased profit is an objective, then the impact of achieving it (value) might include: larger bonuses, larger dividends for investors, more investment in R&D, and stronger ability to attract top talent.

Case study

Here’s how I would improve an example of each aspect of conceptual agreement:

Objective: Improve teamwork
Better: Create seamless client interfaces with no duplication of effort and with client concerns rectified on first contact.

Metric: People are more confident in dealing with clients
Better: Fewer client issues are referred to senior management and client complaints drop by at least 10 percent.

Value: Clients are happier and complain less.
Better: Client referrals create 10 percent more business than currently achieved, with zero cost of acquisition.

Frequently asked question

Q. What do I do if a buyer answers a conceptual agreement question with “I don’t know how to measure progress”?

A. Ask how the buyer knows that the current performance isn’t satisfactory, creating the need for your discussion. There must be an indicator of poor performance now that can also be used to determine improved performance.

Lost your temper with your staff? You need to express your regret

About Dorothy, Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, ,

So, you did it.  Like Maestro Papadopoulos (see Lost your temper with your staff?  You may have lost more besides), you spoke sharply with a member or members of your staff.  Time has elapsed.  You realise you made a mistake in speaking in the way you did.  You’ve taken time to process your anger.  You’ve learnt from the experience.  What next?

You may be hoping that it’s enough to show up differently next time.  If you do, you’ll be joining the legions of bosses who, having lost their temper, are “extra nice” next time round – but it’s not enough.  Why?  After all, surely your staff can tell that you’re sorry from your behaviour?  Well, yes, and still, knowing this alone is not enough.

What more do your staff want?  They want understanding for the experience they had on the receiving end of your anger.  They want to know that you understand the impact it had on them – some call this empathy.  They want to know that you’re ready to take responsibility for your actions and eager to learn to handle things differently in future.  This helps them to feel safe.  They also want judgement – discernment, acceptance:  even if (especially if) you have to deal with performance that is below par, they need to know that you can separate them – the person, the people – from their behaviour.  These needs may be hidden from your staff behind their own “righteous anger” towards you – unless they have high levels of emotional maturity they won’t forgive you until you’ve expressed your regret.

Now, I do want to differentiate between expressing your regret and saying sorry.  This isn’t about beating yourself up or putting yourself in the wrong.  Nor is it about the kind of insincere apology that London commuters make even as they push you to one side to get to where they want to go.  This is about connecting with, and expressing, your sincere regret.  For Maestro Papadopoulos, such an expression might have gone something like this:

“I said a couple of things I regretted at our rehearsal on Tuesday.  I said it wasn’t acceptable to me that members of the choir were missing from our rehearsal and I said it in a way which put those of you who’d made the effort to get here on time in the wrong.  And I also compared the children’s choir with the ‘famous London Symphony Chorus’ in a way that put your choir in a bad light.  Afterwards I felt bad about this because I realised it was my nerves talking – I wanted to offer our audience a great performance and I felt anxious about the concert.  I also realise that, as amateur singers many of you came to sing at the end of a hard days work in preparation for a concert and the last thing you needed was to be on the receiving end of my anger.  I wish I had handled the situation with more grace”.


There is at least one paradox at play here, as there often is in life.  The first is this:  that beating ourselves up (“I made a right mess of that rehearsal… I shouldn’t have said what I did…” etc.) somehow doesn’t lead us to take responsibility for our actions.  Rather, it takes courage and self compassion to really step up to the plate.  A second paradox is this:  as leaders, it is our very ability to express our sincere regret about actions which fell below our aspirations that make our staff think highly of us.  We need to accept ourselves as human, just like everybody else, before we can make the kind of expression of regret that staff can receive.


So, I have said about as much as I want to say right now on the subject of losing your temper with your staff.  I wonder, what has been your experience?  And what have you found in these postings that has enabled you to do things differently?  I’d love to hear about your experiences via the comments section of this blog.

Lost your temper with your staff? A second way to turn anger into gold

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, ,

On Monday I shared one of my favourite ways to transform anger as part of a series of postings in recent weeks.  Today I offer a second way.  The first (see Lost your temper with your staff?  Turning anger into gold) was from Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication and relies heavily on conscious intention.  This second is from the school of Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) and relies on the brain’s ability to process information in a variety of different ways.  The process is called the “meta-mirror” and I’ve written about it a couple of times before (see As a meta of fact and Thinking of all the mirrors in my bedroom).

The meta-mirror is a process I find invaluable when I am angry with someone or telling myself that I am “right” and they are “wrong”.  It’s also a process that I often teach leaders on programmes to develop their coaching skills, because it hones our ability to see things from multiple points of view – an important skill in coaching as well as when dealing with our own emotions.  Today is is the first time I’ve attempted to describe the process of the meta-mirror in detail and I do so with some hesitation:  whilst it’s easy to use with the right training, you may want to seek out a skilled NLP Practitioner to support you in translating the description below into practice.

As a first step, think of someone or something you feel angry about.  Find a place where you have room to move around and stand on the first corner of an imaginary rectangle, facing the second corner.  You are now in “first position”.  Imagine the person you feel angry about is in front of you and say what you think – no holds barred!  In first position you are not practising what you might say in future – you are saying whatever comes to mind now.  Keep going until you feel complete.  (As long as you want to say “And another thing…”, just say it).

When you have finished, step out of first position and shake off (yes, really!  take a moment to shake your arms and body) everything that you have just experienced.  This is an important precursor to stepping into the second corner of your imaginary rectangle, facing the spot you were standing in when you were in first position.  You are now in “second position”.  Imagine yourself in the shoes of the person you were talking to in first position, receiving everything you have just said.  Notice what comes up for you – you may be surprised!  This is not about any conscious processing.  Rather, it’s about noticing what thoughts and feelings emerge.

When you have done this, repeat the process of stepping out of this position and shaking off everything you have just experienced.  Then step round the triangle to the third corner.  You are now in “third position”.  From this position, look back at first position and ask yourself “how does this me here see that me there?”  You will experience one of two things.  You may notice that the same anger you felt before is still with you – in this case step back into first position and express everything that is alive in you.  Equally, from this third position, you may be able to see yourself in a new way or have new insights about the situation that stimulated your anger in the first place.  At this point, you’re ready to move on.

Once again, shake off everything you’ve experienced in third position and move to the fourth and final corner of the rectangle.  From here you can see yourself in first position and in third position.  Ask yourself “Which me would I like to be in this situation?”  It’s likely that you will choose the you that emerged in third position – take a moment to “swap” yous – it helps to point to them both and to use your hands to swap them over.  Once again, shake off everything that you have experienced before moving on.

Step back into first position and begin the process again.  Having swapped your first you with your third, it’s likely that you will have different feelings about the person or situation and different things to say.  Say them – keep talking until you are done.  Shake everything off before moving on.  As you did at the beginning of the exercise, step into second position and receive everything you said in first position.  Notice what comes up.  The experience should be quite different this time round – a different response to different thoughts and feelings.  When you’re done, shake your experience off and step back into first position to receive the response of the other person.


If your work is done, you will be feeling peaceful and resourceful.  However, at any moment in this process, you may notice that you’re not done yet – that’s OK.  When you spot this, it’s a signal that you need to go back to first position and express yourself fully before continuing the process outlined above.  Especially when you first start to use this process, it helps to have the support of a skilled and certified NLP Practitioner to guide you.

You may be wondering if this process is an invitation to ignore the failings of others and the answer is no – in your role as a leader, however, you do need to bring your most resourceful self to the party when holding others to account.

And is that it?  Well, in terms of the meta-mirror, yes, it is.  If you’ve lost your temper with your staff, though, there is probably one more step to take.  This will be the subject of my next posting.

Lost your temper with your staff? Turning anger into gold

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, , ,

Recently, I wrote about how I experienced the behaviour of conductor Mario Papadopoulos in rehearsal in a posting entitled Lost your temper with your staff?  You may have lost more besides.  When we lose our temper we risk losing our authority and the respect of those we lead.  But all is not lost when we lose our temper.  The question is what to do next – and how – to turn our anger into gold.


In what way does anger become gold?  In my experience, we turn anger into gold when we take time to connect with the unmet needs that underpin our anger.  Creating this awareness opens up the opportunity to find ways to meet our needs.  We get to feel better.  And we achieve this without alienating others on whom we depend.


How can we transform anger into gold?  Here is just one of my favourite ways, from Marshall Rosenberg.  In the approach he has called Nonviolent Communication (see his book of the same name to learn more), Rosenberg encourages the use of self empathy to get beneath the surface of our anger.


How does it work?  As a first step, you might notice what has stimulated your anger and seek to make a clear observation, cutting out any “stories” you might be telling yourself or at least owning your story.  For example, your first reaction might be to think “John’s really let me down!  He’s so unreliable!  He should have let me know if there were problems meeting the deadline!” A more accurate observation might be to say: “When I asked John if he’d finished the report yet he said no.  I felt a powerful surge of anger and I notice that I was thinking ‘I told you three weeks ago that the report was due by the end of this week.  If there were problems, why the **** didn’t you tell me?'”


In this case, the observation leads us to our second step, which is to connect with our emotion (in this case, anger) and this is something that Rosenberg also encourages.  When we feel angry, there is usually another emotion – fear – lurking underneath, so it may help to make a further observation as we examine what it is we are afraid of.  Using the same example, you might notice another layer of thinking and emotion such as:  “I realised I had really messed up but I didn’t want to admit it.  I’d been so busy myself that I hadn’t checked John’s progress and with the deadline approaching there was barely time to finish the report.  I’ve been worried about how my boss has been thinking about me and I didn’t want to give him an opportunity to think less of me”.


As we begin to turn our “story” into a clear observation and connect to our feelings, we can move to the third step, which is to notice what needs were stimulated in us and – in this case – unmet.  This is about going beyond specific actions by specific people to understand the underlying needs.  In this example, it’s possible that your most fundamental need – for security – was stimulated, especially if your thoughts included thoughts about the risk of losing your job and what that would mean for your home and for your ability to pay for food and other essentials.


Once you have uncovered your underlying needs, you have the option to make a request of yourself or of someone else.  This is the final step in Rosenberg’s four-step process.  Perhaps you might start by requesting of yourself that you take time out to relax before talking to John about next steps in order to calm down.  Or you might make a request of John that he tell you just how far he’s got so that you can assess how much more need to be done to meet the deadline.


Going through this process has the potential to transform feelings of fear and anger into a deep sense of connection with our needs.  In doing so, it moves us away from our primitive “fight or flight” response towards a more resourceful state in which we can clearly assess the situation and find ways to meet our needs.


There is another way I like to use to transform anger into gold.  If you’d like a second option – keep reading.

Singing the Grande Messe des Morts at St. Paul’s Cathedral

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Photo: The timp line up for tonight's Grande Messe des Morts at St Paul's Cathedral - all 10 of them. It's completely sold out tonight but still a few left for tomorrow (http://bit.ly/PbpWlZ), and it'll be live on Radio 3 tomorrow too.
Yes, I was there, singing Berlioz’ extraordinary piece – the Grande Messe des Morts.  A requiem for the dead on a grand scale.  David Jackson, percussionist extraordinaire with the London Symphony Orchestra, took this photo of the timps section during rehearsal in the afternoon.  One of the players was a dead ringer for comedian Rob Brydon which intrigued me all the way through the rehearsal.  It was a noisy affair – the piece itself alternates between passages of great richness of sound and moments of sparseness.  (With more time I would hone my language in an attempt to convey something of this amazing piece).  And of course, in rehearsal, we shared the space with visitors to the cathedral with their murmurings and occasional applause.
The performance was altogether different.  Even with a full audience the sound space belonged to the performers and – more than the performers – to Berlioz.  The off-stage brass were high in the galleries so that the Tuba Mirum was a moment of high drama with the interplay between orchestra, off-stage brass and the men who were in fine sound.  I shall leave it to the critics to say more.
Singing in St. Paul’s is always a mixed blessing.  The sound reverberates around the space so that the old jokes are always about coming back in a week’s time to hear the performance for the last time.  There were moments when our conductor, Sir Colin Davis, paused so that we could, indeed, hear the sound before it faded away.  This is a new way of experiencing the phrase “right back atcha!”  This added to the heightened experience of an already grand piece.
At the same time, it is this very soundscape that makes it a challenging venue in which to perform.  You cannot rely on listening to know if you are singing in time!  There were moments when I thought fellow performers – singers, orchestra, off-stage brass – were ahead or behind Sir Colin’s beat and still, it’s hard to know what the effect was for the audience.
For me, it was something of a marathon.  Like all marathon runners, singers need the right shoes and the truth is that, for me, no shoes is the optimum way to stand for such a long period and also strictly verboten.  Still I might try it this evening (don’t tell my voice rep).  For yes, I’ll be performing again this evening before getting up at the crack of dawn tomorrow for a coaching session in the morning.  And now, I am on my way to meet one of my clients for another coaching session.
Before I press “publish” I take a moment to savour the rich privileges of a life in which I get to earn my living doing work I love and spend my spare time doing something else that I also love.  Maybe I’ll see you there this evening.

Berlioz and a tinnitus of timps

About Dorothy

Shortly I’ll be closing down my computer to go and sing – I’m taking the afternoon off to rehearse at St. Paul’s Cathedral for a concert this evening of Berlioz’ Grande Messe des Morts.  Yesterday we rehearsed at the Barbican and I wondered, “What is the collective noun for timps?”  A herd of kettle drums?  I don’t think so… a tinnitus of timps, perhaps.  I counted thirteen – for this is a work of epic proportions.  We are also two choirs – the London Symphony Chorus and the London Philharmonic Choir.

Whilst our focus is on the concerts that lie ahead, there are memorable moments – striking in the moment – during rehearsals and yesterday was one.  We gathered at the Barbican’s concert hall for our first tutti rehearsal.  The orchestra alone filled the extended concert platform so someone came up with the idea of placing our conductor – our much loved Sir Colin Davis – at the rear of the concert platform, with the orchestra facing him and the choir singing from the stalls.  The Barbican was ours and ours alone.  The effect was to combine the grandeur of the piece with a sense of intimacy as if, somehow, this was a performance for us, and us alone.


As I start to gather together all that I need for this evening’s concert – concert dress, black handbag, music, make-up – I start to imagine the same musicians in the much larger venue of St. Paul’s Cathedral and to recognise the challenge we face.  Yesterday Sir Colin was so far away – will we be any closer today?  We need to watch him like a hawk to follow his tempi for with so many musicians we cannot rely on sound which takes time to travel.  And that’s before we factor in the pauses, the changes of tempo in the midst of movements…

I take time for one final action from my ‘to do’ list before I go and send a quick e-mail to friends and family before I go.  It reads:

Dear friends and LSC groupies


I’ll be going off to rehearse shortly for our two concerts (this evening and tomorrow) of Berlioz’ Grande Messe des Morts.  You just can’t beat the live performance of such an epic piece!


Still, in case you won’t be at the concert and would like to know what I get up to in my spare time, listen out on BBC’s Radio 3 tomorrow – for details just follow this link:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01jz3z1.  And if you’d like to book tickets you’ll find them at http://lso.co.uk/page/3090/City-of-London-Festival-2012-Berlioz-Requiem/544.


Much love


Dorothy


Memories are made of such moments as this.

Lost your temper with your staff? Time to “own up”

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, ,

This week I have been writing about anger in a series of postings, recognising that the “amygdala hijack” – the sudden and extreme loss of temper – is one that we all have from time to time.  It’s an experience which can lead us to alienate those we lead or which, equally, can lead us to new insights.  New insights do not, however, happen by accident.  They happen because we are ready and willing to have them.  Sometimes they come years down the line.  Sometimes, days or weeks or months.

When we are angry, the immediate barrier to new insight is our own way of thinking about the stimulus to our anger.  It’s for this reason that I’ve given this posting the title “Time to own up”.  For it is our thoughts rather than any external stimulus that lead us to feel angry.  These thoughts usually include some confusion between the external stimulus to our anger (“I’m angry because you…”) and our thoughts about the external stimulus (“I’m angry because I’m thinking that you…”).  What’s more, our anger is also often accompanied by the firm belief that we are “right” to feel angry.

A first step towards owning our anger is to notice the way we are thinking and feeling and to talk about it.  Compare the following sentences:


“I told John weeks ago that he needed to contact the US and he still hasn’t done it and now they think we’re completely incompetent.  I could kill him!  He should have followed my instruction – if he had, we wouldn’t have been in this mess!”


This time, I’ve added mention of the emotions involved and used the phrases “I’m telling myself that…” and “I’m thinking that…”:

“I’m so angry!  I told John weeks ago that he needed to contact the US and he still hasn’t done it and now I’m telling myself they think we’re completely incompetent.  I could kill him!  I’m thinking that he should have followed my instruction – and that, if he had, we wouldn’t have been in this mess!”

Before we can claim our anger in this way, it helps to have compassion for ourselves and others – because when something goes wrong there is often shame involved.  Heaping our judgements on others can be a way to protect ourselves from self-judgements and from the feelings of shame that come with them.  At the same time, when we can accept the way things are (that people make mistakes, that we get angry…) we open up the opportunity to process and transform our anger.  If you’d like to know how, keep reading.  I’ll be writing about some techniques for transforming anger next week.

Lost your temper with your staff? The surprising purpose of anger

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, ,

On Monday, I published a posting under the heading Lost your temper with your staff?  You may have lost more besides.  But I don’t want to dismiss anger as a negative force.  Today, I want to say a few words about the role that anger plays in our lives – and particularly to highlight the role anger plays for those of us who find ourselves in positions of leadership.

Recently, I watched as the youngest of my nephew and nieces lost his temper in the midst of a game of frisbee.  “Nobody throws the frisbee to me!” was his desperate cry.  He was so full of emotion that it was hard for him to hear anything that anyone might say – even to show they were listening and trying to understand.  This is what Goleman describes as the “amygdala hijack” in his books on emotional intelligence (such as Working with Emotional Intelligence).  This is the body’s full-blown crisis response – a primitive flight or flight response – which is accompanied by all sorts of biochemical processes, beginning with the release of a hormone known as CRF and ending with a flood of stress hormones which then stay in the body for hours.

Adults also experience the amygdala hijack and the leader is no more immune than any other member of the population.  Goleman says of the stresses that lead to the amygdala hijack:

When stresses pile one on top of the other, they are more than additive – they seem to multiply the sense of stress, so that as we near breaking point, each additional burden seems all the more unbearable, the last straw.  This is so even for small hassles that ordinarily wouldn’t faze us but suddenly can seem overwhelming.

So, when Maestro Papadopoulos lost his temper with members of the London Symphony Chorus, it seems likely that he was feeling the burden of any number of stresses.  Whilst many conductors understand and accept the absence of a few chorus members who can’t get away from work for a 5pm rehearsal, Papadopoulos “saw red”.  For another leader it might be yet another error by a team member who is taking up disproportionate time, or the failure of another team member to meet a deadline on which a key contract depends.  No doubt you can think of your own examples.

Goleman’s description of the amygdala hijack, whilst it helps us to understand the processes involved in losing our temper, carries a risk:  by identifying the historic origins of our own or others’ responses, we may dismiss them as “merely” a primitive response – a response developed millennia ago which has now outlived its usefulness.  But there are other ways of viewing this.  One of my favourite thinkers and authors, Marshall Rosenberg (author of The Surprising Purpose of Anger, subtitled Beyond Anger Management:  Finding the Gift) sees anger as an alarm signal, signalling that we have unmet needs.  It also signals that we are disconnected from those needs – thinking about them by suppressing our feelings or blasting someone with our judgements.

When we apply Rosenberg’s thinking to our anger, we have an opportunity to really get under the skin of our  anger to understand what unmet needs we have.  I’ll be talking about ways to do this in a future posting.  First though, it helps to own our anger – and hold it with compassion.  

Lost your temper with your staff? You may have lost more besides

About Dorothy, Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, ,

Without fail, singing with the London Symphony Chorus inspires me – and often to write a blog posting.  Sometimes, the inspiration is “not in a good way”. This is the way it was last Tuesday.

It started well for me – I arrived early and listened to young pianist Benjamin Grosvenor rehearsing Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor for half an hour before rehearsal began.  He was playing some stretches and some brief extracts – repeating phrases over and over as part of his preparation.  It was a reminder of the many years of practice that lead to concert standard.  Several days later I found myself singing Grieg in my head as I went to sleep.  What a beautiful piece!

Then our 5pm tutti rehearsal started.  A touch of Grieg and onto Carmina Burana.  How quickly things went down hill!  Within minutes Maestro Papadopoulos was expressing his dissatisfaction that members of the Choir were missing and in a manner I found rather unpleasant.  I was having such thoughts as “Don’t take it out on me that some people aren’t here – I’ve made the effort to turn up!” and “If you want me to sing well for you, try treating me with respect”.  I was also having other thoughts I prefer not to share online.  Later, when the raggazi (children) rehearsed their contribution, the Maestro told them how well they’d done – better perhaps than the “famous London Symphony Chorus”.  It was clear he was angry.  So were members of the chorus – as people left the platform after rehearsal everyone’s backs were up.

We had a few minutes with Roger Sayer, in the role of Chorus Director, who was quick to acknowledge our feelings of anger – and also to remind us to sing well for the sake of the chorus if not for the Maestro himself.  Afterwards, as I ate my supper, I reflected on the fears that often lie behind anger – was the Maestro feeling nervous, perhaps?  And I took time to use a well-honed technique to let go of the anger I felt before going on stage.  It was enough to help me to focus my energies on singing well and still, I noticed that I took a little pleasure when the Maestro made a rather obvious mistake during the concert and also that I didn’t warm to those after-the-concert didn’t-you-do-well signs from the Maestro.  Not for me the cycle of punishment and reward!

The trouble is this:  that anger begets anger.  Not anger per se but the expression of our angry thoughts as if they are some inviolable and objective truth. (They’re not).  As a leader we lose our authority and the respect of those we lead when we express our anger in this way.  We also risk losing the best contribution of those we lead:  people need to know that you’re working with them – on the same side – to feel safe to acknowledge their mistakes as well as to risk their best performance.  Far better to play it safe if you expect a rollocking every time the boss is not happy.

I want to be clear:  we’re all angry at times.  So a key challenge for us as leaders – as well as partners, parents, children, human beings… – is to know how to respond when we’re angry.  One of the worst things we can do is to hold on to the idea that somehow we were “right”.  This opens up a widening gulf between ourselves and those we lead.  And in case you’re wondering “what else can I do?” keep reading – I’ll be offering some thoughts during the days ahead with all the humility of someone who, like you, gets angry at times.

When you’re the boss – becoming the grown-up in your team

About Dorothy, Developing as a leader, ,

As I sit, I’m keeping one eye on the clock – I’ll be dashing out of the door in 40 minutes or so to sing Carmina Burana at the Barbican concert hall in London this evening.

I have fond memories of this piece from my early days with the London Symphony Chorus.  Back then it was a staple in our schedule – Richard Hickox used to start the year with this crowd puller, which has been used by any number of advertisers over the years for its great tunes.  Popularity didn’t stand in the way of high standards – Richard was famous for rehearsing relentlessly.  I remember rehearsing the semi chorus sections until the pianissimi were unfeasibly quiet as well as tutti rehearsals that ran to the last minute of our allocated rehearsal time – if not a little longer.  In those days, Richard would also give us a final ‘pep talk’ before the concert to remind us of the spirit of the piece and encourage us to sing well.  We were told this was a great piece, and we believed it.  We were prepared to make it a great performance, and we did.

Now, given that I joined the chorus in 1986 (or was it 1987?) you could certainly accuse me of a touch of nostalgia.  Those were the days.  But something else is also on my mind.  Recently, I was struck when a client of mine told me how disconcerting it had been for her to discover just how much weight members of her team placed on all sorts of comments she made.  The implication for her was this:  she was setting the tone for her team without even realising it.  If she expressed frustration about her boss’s latest initiative within earshot of her team she was sending the signal that it wasn’t something to be taken seriously.  If she responded to a mistake by one of her team members before she processed her initial emotions – well, the rebuke she made might cut deep for her team member and the effect would stay long after she’d dealt with the issues arising and got over her initial concerns.  It came as a shock to her to realise the impact of her comments.

My client was discovering the symbolic importance of her role as a leader.  The fact that she held this role, rather than anything about her in particular, meant that people looked to her for – well, a lead.  Effectively, she had become for her team members a kind of ‘parent at work’.  Her team members were projecting onto her all kind of expectations of what such a ‘parent’ should be.  One of their expectations was that she would know best so they took her views seriously.  (And in case you find this idea rather fanciful or my client’s experience an exception, you might like to dive into the research which shows that a leader has a significant impact on the climate in a team and that this, in turn, affects performance.  Try Goleman’s The New Leaders for an easily accessible read or Litwin and Stringer’s Motivation and Organizational Climate to dive deeper into the statistics).

What implications does all this have for my client?  Already she had become conscious of the impact of her comments.  She knew she had to choose her comments more carefully.  This is what is called ‘framing’ in the field of NLP (or neuro-linguistic programming) and it does exactly what it says on the tin – it’s about the frame you put around something you talk about.  The boss’s new initiative?  Well, it could be ‘just one more mad idea from the boss to keep us from our day jobs’ or it could be ‘a way to accelerate our progress towards our sales target’.  And if you can’t see the benefit of an initiative from the boss – well, you might want to thrash that out with your boss before you start talking to your team or at least to process your emotions.  In a sense, it’s this processing that makes you the ‘parent’ or the ‘grown-up’ in the team.

And Carmina Burana?  ‘That tired old piece’ or ‘a piece that continues to stimulate the senses and capture the imagination’.  In case you’d like to decide for yourself, click here to listen to an extract.  Meantime, I’m off to sing.