All posts by Dorothy Nesbit

When asking for feedback fills you with fear

About Dorothy, Emotional Intelligence, ,
There’s no failure, only feedback

Recently, I found myself talking with a friend about my life as a singer.  Specifically, I was remembering a performance of Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast in which I had made a very lusty entry – in the wrong place.

In my early days as a member of the London Symphony Chorus, I would never have made such a mistake.  The fear of making a mistake made me hold back;  my singing was (largely) correct but it lacked gusto.  With time, I have learnt that a mistake is just a mistake so that when I came in (with the men, as I recall) in the wrong place in Belshazzar’s Feast I found myself celebrating it as a sign of a growing sense of ease and self acceptance.

In my work with clients, I am constantly reminded of how vulnerable people can feel in receiving feedback.  At times, charged with giving feedback to people I have assessed for jobs, I meet strong resistance and defensiveness.  One client told me a while back that he thought I’d taken a dislike to him before the interview had even begun.  Another recently asked for chapter and verse of how I’d reached my conclusions.  Coaching clients are no different.  Recently, I invited a client to seek out feedback from three people she trusts about her core strengths.  Even though she was charged with asking for positive feedback, she found herself paralysed by the fear of what people might say.

Maybe you have your own experience of wanting to know how people see you and yet, finding it challenging to ask.  Perhaps you worry that your work falls short of the mark.  You want to know how your work is seen and still, you are afraid to ask.  You want to be seen – and seen fully – and yet you fear that you may be seen as “less than”.  Perhaps “less than” relates to your job or promotion prospects;  you fear you are not performing or lack what you need to make your next career steps.  Perhaps “less than” relates – oh, so personally! – to who you are;  you fear that in some way you are fatally flawed.  You are not alone in having such fears.

Let’s be clear, these are the kind of fears that hold you back.  This is true at any number of levels.  One client, for example, was investing a great deal of energy in guessing where his colleagues might be coming from and seeking to put himself beyond reproach, until he started to test his assumptions and realised that his fears were unwarranted.  Another client kept missing out on a promotion that was easily within her reach because she was not open to hearing feedback and adjusting her approach in one key area.

It can help to realise that your behaviour is not who you are.  We are all so much more than the sum of our behaviours.  Yes, our behaviours reflect who we are – our values and intentions, our feelings and needs.  Still, there are many ways in which they don’t reflect our essential self.  Perhaps, for example, you simply lack skill in a certain area.  Perhaps you have followed a poor example or even been taught to behave in a certain way and are doing so unconsciously.

Once you start to strip away old and unhelpful beliefs or to develop new skills your behaviour comes closer to reflecting who you are and may even leave you with an enriched sense of yourself.  Once you start to understand that you are not your behaviour, asking for feedback becomes easier.  In the discipline of neuro-linguistic programming (or NLP) this is reflected in a presupposition:  there’s no failure, only feedback.

Let me return to my client – the one I asked to seek out feedback about her core strengths.  If you’re anything like her, you may be wondering what steps you can take before asking for feedback to build your sense of ease.  Here’s just one thing you can do to begin to understand what stands in the way (which I learnt from Roger Schwarz, author of The Skilled Facilitator):

Step 1:  Identify a recent conversation in which you could have asked for feedback (and may even have wanted to) but didn’t.

Step 2:  Take some paper or open a document and create two columns.  In the right hand column, capture as much as you can of the actual conversation – what you said and what the other person said.

Step 3:  Write down any additional thoughts and feelings you had during the conversation in the left hand column alongside details of the actual conversation.

Capturing your thoughts in this way offers the opportunity to reflect on what beliefs and emotions you have about receiving feedback and opens up awareness and new possibilities.

When you can’t change the others

Emotional Intelligence

Recently my niece, Dr Rebecca Nesbit, was interviewed by the BBC and quoted in an article entitled Smart approach to house spider survey.  Rebecca has been working with her colleagues at the Society of Biology to design and launch a new recording scheme to capture information about the UK’s house spider population.  I am getting used to Rebecca’s presence in the media – interviews on the radio, visits to the House of Commons and so on.  These are moments of quiet celebration for me – I love it that Rebecca is doing work which reflects her passion for all things natural and environmental…

…Except that Ella Davies and her fellow journalists at the BBC misspelt Rebecca’s name throughout the article (***sigh***).  Let me tell you, if your name is Nesbit (with one ‘t’) this is a familiar and wearisome mistake.  I try not to judge and still, isn’t the first rule of journalism that you check your facts?  It seemed to me to be a sloppy mistake.

It soon became clear to me that I was caught in a pattern of thinking that I see from time to time in my clients, especially in relation to the boss or “powers that be”.  It’s a pattern that’s stimulated when my clients, as employees, have something on their agenda and are not getting the response they hope for from their boss.  The pattern goes something like this:

*An employee wants something that is deeply personal to them and related to their work;
*The employee has an expectation and may or may not make a request of their boss with the aim of realising their hopes;
*When the boss doesn’t do what the employee expects, the employee invests time and energy in thinking about what the boss should do and how much the boss has failed them – but this doesn’t bring them any closer to realising their dreams.

I wonder, do you recognise yourself in this at all?  Perhaps you are seeking a promotion or a pay-rise and you feel frustrated that it hasn’t been forthcoming.  Perhaps you’d like your boss to take account of your preferences – to better understand how you like to work – and you are outraged by your boss’s lack of sensory acuity;  his or her complete failure to read the signals you are giving that the way you’re being treated isn’t working for you.  Perhaps there’s a key project coming up in the business and you hope you’ll be nominated to take part because you know you have the skills and it’s something to do and your boss ought to know to put your name forward.

Reflecting on the many examples I see of this pattern, I was also reminded of a colleague (let’s call him John), years ago, who wanted a promotion which was slow to materialise.  His response was the opposite of this wait-and-grumble approach.  John started by asking for a meeting with his boss, and used the meeting to express his desire for a promotion and to ask what he would need to do to be eligible for the promotion.  When he listened to everything that his boss told him he realised that the boss was essentially saying, “you need to become more like me”.  John was quiet, thoughtful, purposeful and methodical – unlikely to become the kind of outgoing, alpha male he saw in his boss.

This is the kind of meeting that can stimulate the pattern of thinking described above;  John could have fallen into the pattern of quietly grumbling about how his boss should be different.  He didn’t.  He started to gather information about the way promotions happened inside his organisation and about those people whom his boss had promoted in recent years.  This confirmed his view that he was unlikely to get his desired promotion in his current job and maybe even his current organisation.  He took the view that whilst his boss’s feedback suggested he didn’t have it in him to reach the level of seniority he aspired to, he had faith in his potential to succeed in his own way.  He set out to find an organisation which was better able to recognise his skills and he did, rising steadily in line with his aspirations.

John succeeded because he was willing to examine the realities of his employing organisation rather than to get stuck in a pattern of thinking that things ought to be different and doing nothing himself.  In doing so, he stood firmly in the energy of his own needs and allowed that his original strategy for meeting his needs might not work.  Rather than looking to his boss for the solution, he took responsibility himself.  As one of my coaching colleagues often puts it, you can’t change the others, you can only change yourself.

And in case you’re wondering, the photo of the spider is my own, from my recent stay in the beautiful Oxon Hoath.  Oh!  And I’ve just dropped a line to the BBC via their ‘contact us’ form and highlighted the spelling error in their article and asked if they would be willing to correct it.  If they change it, that’s all for the good.  If they don’t, I will leave their mistake with them – sloppy or not!

When you hesitate to show compassion in your role as a leader

Developing as a leader, ,
Do you feel comfortable to show compassion in your role as a leader?

If you’ve ever had a tough time in your career, you’ll know how much you yearn for compassion.  Perhaps you’ve had difficulties with a colleague or you’ve made a great howler of a mistake and are afraid of the consequences.  Perhaps you’ve had challenges at home – when someone you love has had an accident, been ill or died, for example, or when your marriage has been in trouble.  You’ll probably recognise times in your life when you have been in need of empathy and compassion – but did you get it from the boss?  In my experience, many people turn to their colleagues when they are in need of compassion in the workplace.
As a leader yourself, you may have hesitated to give empathy to your staff.  Sometimes, your judgement may have got in the way of your compassion (“What would make someone get upset about such a minor thing?”) or perhaps you fear the outcomes from showing compassion (“How can I show compassion for such a stupid mistake and still hold him accountable?”).  Roger Schwarz, in his recent article for the Harvard Business Review blog, entitled What Stops Leaders from Showing Compassion, outlines key reasons why leaders hold back.  Roger also shares a recent paper which tends to suggest that compassion creates positive outcomes in organisations.  The paper is entitled Compassion Revealed:  What We Know About Compassion At Work (And Where We Need To Know More) and it builds on a great deal of earlier work.
If you want to get geaky, follow up on this paper.  As much as anything, it has a long list of references including some of my own favourites (look for Boyatzis, Goleman and McKee).  But even if you don’t want to get geaky, I invite you to take a moment to reflect.  How comfortable do you feel to express your compassion for those you lead?  What supports you in expressing compassion?  And what, if anything, holds you back?  My own experience, from interviewing hundreds of men and women in leadership roles over the last twenty years, is that those who are most effective have a heart.  The respond with compassion to their staff in a wide range of situations and regardless of the rights of wrongs of a situation.  What’s more, they do so with skill.
I’d love to hear from you.  Yes, how comfortable do you feel about responding with compassion to those you lead?  But also, how confident do you feel that you have the skills you need to express your compassion in the workplace?  What support do you need to increase your ease and skill in responding with compassion to those you lead?

Courgette fudge cake and good wishes for your well-being

Your personal and professional well-being

I love the autumn.  It’s a time of year that reminds me of nature’s principle of abundance.  The vegetables I have tended through the summer are producing in plenty.  I am keeping a close eye on my courgettes.  I have given any number away.  I have embarked on the usual search for ideas (just how many ways can you eat a courgette?).  My tomatoes are also finally ripening.  But not only those things I have tended.  The pears are falling from my old pear tree right now.  The hedgerows are laden with blackberries.

It’s easy to lose sight of this natural principle in our times of austerity, which makes it all the more pleasing when I notice those things that are still abundantly available.  Yes, courgettes are abundantly available right now – at least in my garden.  But also human fellowship is easily available, if only we can reach out and receive it.  The potential is there – for fellowship amongst those who are struggling to find work or who look at the last five years and ask themselves, “what have I achieved in the last five years?” or wonder “how can I give more fully of my gifts – how can I make a difference?”

One of the things I have learnt in recent years is just how much gardening reveals this natural fellowship amongst human beings.  Spare plants are given away at the beginning of the season.  Tips are shared.  There is a natural empathy for the joys and trials of gardening.  And on my recent trip to Oxon Hoath, there was a sharing of a recipe for a courgette cake that is more than, in the words of my friend Jane, “worthy”.  In case you, too, have a glut of courgettes in your garden, I share it with you – in time for the weekend.

Ingredients:
For the cake:
3.5 oz butter
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1.25 cups self raising flour
1/3rd cup cocoa powder
1/4 cup milk (or less if batter is runny)
1 cup finely grated courgette including skin
For the icing:
2/3rd cup of icing sugar
60g butter, softened
2tsp milk
2tbsp cocoa powder
Boiling water
To make:
1.  Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees fahrenheit (gas mark 4).  Grease and line the base of a 4×8 inch cake tin (a loaf tin is perfect).
2.  Grate courgette and place in a colander to drain.
3.  Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, then slowly beat in the eggs.
4.  Sift the flour and cocoa into the egg mixture and stir in the courgette.
5.  Add the milk a little at a time until the batter is pourable but not runny.
6.  Pour the batter in to the tin and bake for about 45 minutes or until a knife inserted into the middle comes out clean.
7.  Make the icing by dissolving the cocoa powder in 1tbsp boiling water, allow to cool, then cream it along with the remaining ingredients.  Finally, spread it onto the cooled cake.
8.  Perhaps I should add, last but not least, make tea and coffee, gather friends and family around you, and enjoy the both cake and company.

When you’re wondering about your future career

Coaching, Your personal and professional well-being
Thinking about your future?

I’ve been fielding queries this week about availability at Harley Street. It’s a nice job to have.  One query made me think about the boundary between personal and executive coaching – coaching that is sponsored by your organisation and coaching that you pay for yourself.

Perhaps you recognise something of yourself in the description below (amended for anonymity):

“This is what I’m taking from John’s e-mail [who put us in touch]… just checking my understanding. You’re gifted. You bring an appetite for improvement and you’ve been able to bring this to bear in an area which is relatively stable. As you become more senior, you may well find an increasing tension between your vision for a better future and the readiness of those around you to embrace change. This has raised questions for you about how to influence and engage others. It may even be raising questions for you about whether your future is ultimately with your current employer or elsewhere”.

Without question, coaching can be timely for someone like this, as they work through a number of key questions. “How can you navigate the relative stability of your current job and still make a difference? How can you maximise your opportunities with your current employer? When might it be time to move on (and to what?) How can you stay present to you – to your values and motivations, to your skills and so on – so that you know just how long you can make your current employment work for you and when it might be time to look beyond your current organisation?”

But who pays?  In general terms, organisations do sponsor coaching for people at times – typically to help them to develop their career in-house, e.g. to acquire the skills they need at increasingly senior levels. When coaching is sponsored by an organisation, this is often the focus. Equally, there are times when an individual needs support away from his or her employing organisation to open up a wider question than “how do I make it work here at organisation X?”  Sometimes organisations do sponsor coaching with this agenda, because they recognise that with more clarity some individuals may choose to stay and indeed, that it can serve both individual and organisation to recognise when it’s time to leave. Equally, there are times when people like to sponsor this kind of coaching for themselves and to meet with their coach away from work.

I started the Sunday Coaching Clinic at Harley Street because I recognise that sometimes, people want to sponsor their own coaching as they explore the question of “what next?” and because I love working with clients for whom this question is timely. 

Yearning for greater ease? Time for a few behavioural stretches

All articles
It takes practice to develop your flexibility as a leader
Whether you’re looking at leaders across your organisation, developing your own leadership skills, or yearning for greater personal or professional well-being, it helps to look at how flexible you are.

As I say this, I think of a client who recently told me how much she is struggling with the demands of her organisation in crisis.  Maybe you know the kind of thing…  first, you’re expected to be outcome-focused and driving progress towards goals for growth and increased profit.  Then you’re expected to be ruthless in re-engineering organisational structures and processes in order to cut costs… maybe even to look for flaws in the performance of team members that provide a basis for low-cost dismissals.  Oh!  And yes, you’re supposed to maintain high levels of staff engagement (not to mention your own morale) in the midst of changes in fashion dictated by your organisation’s most senior levels of leadership.  This is behavioural flexibility by dictat and it has left at least one client exhausted and demoralised in recent years.

At the same time, an awful lot does depend on your ability to choose your behaviour to meet the needs of a situation.  It doesn’t work to draw on a limited and constant repertoire of behaviours in your personal and professional life.  Why?

  • Learned behaviours are often unfit-for-purpose:  Many of us have learned from role-models whose behaviours were, at times, ineffective.  The more you draw unthinkingly from learned behaviours, the less likely it is you will achieve your desired outcomes.  Instead, whether in your professional role or in your family life, you may find that situations turn out in just the way you’re trying to avoid, without even knowing that your choice of behaviour has played a role;  
  • Different situations require a different approach:  If your top sales-person refuses to come to team meetings (or your teenage son, come to that, refuses to come to the dinner table) you may be tempted to go for the “do it or else!” approach – but this has the effect of backing you and your sales-person (or teenage son) into a corner and it may not give you the outcome you most desire.  You need to draw on a broader repertoire of behaviours in order to achieve your desired outcome;
  • Choosing ineffective behaviours creates struggle:  The more you choose unconsciously and from a limited repertoire of behaviours, the less likely you are to achieve progress, momentum and favourable outcomes.  Instead, your choice of ineffective behaviours reduces ease and increases struggle for you and for those you interact with;
  • You can’t change the others… How often have you found yourself complaining about someone else’s behaviour and lamenting others’ lack of insight or unwillingness to change?  Even when you are dealing with someone who lacks every skill needed for the job in hand, the option you have is to change your own behaviour.  Developing your repertoire of behavioural skills is about equipping yourself to handle difficult people or situations because you can’t change the others, you can only change yourself.

If you don’t want to find yourself running from pillar to post in response from the dictat from above or to find yourself bumping up against barriers of your own making, what do you do instead?  And how can you increase your behavioural repertoire whilst remaining true to who you are?

  • Focus on outcomes first and consider how best to achieve them:  The more you can identify clearly what outcomes you want to achieve and then think about how best to achieve them, the more you will naturally build in behavioural flexibility;
  • Don’t confuse your behaviour with your sense of who you are:  Nothing limits you more than holding the belief that you are what you do:  it helps to keep an open mind about who you are.  When you find yourself saying “I couldn’t possibly do it any other way!” or “that’s not me!” it’s time to pause and remind yourself that you’re far more than the sum of your behaviours to date.  Be ready to try new behaviours in order to increase your personal effectiveness whilst also staying true to who you are;
  • Observe what people do that works:  In organisations, the “competency model” or “competency dictionary” is a way to capture the best of what works in particular roles or across the organisation so that people can increase their personal effectiveness in particular roles.  Equally, whether in your personal or professional life, you can observe yourself and others to see what works and use your observations to adjust your own behaviour;
  • When at first you don’t succeed, try something different:  Don’t be like the proverbial Englishman who, when not understood, speaks a bit louder.  When you do something and you don’t get the outcome you want, think about how you can adjust your approach in order to succeed.  Use all the information available to you to help you make more informed choices;
  • Seek help and support:  The yoga teacher helps the student to make tiny adjustments which lead to disproportionate improvements in results.  Don’t be afraid to seek support – from a good coach or mentor, from writers, speakers etc. – to help you make tiny adjustments that greatly improve the outcomes you are able to achieve.

Up against conflict? Graceful ways to ease your path

Emotional Intelligence
Do you really want it to come to this?

I am back now from a wonderful time at Oxon Hoath in Kent.  My break was deeply restful though I have come back to a busy time, including coaching on Sunday in Harley Street.  It is early days for the Sunday Coaching Clinic and still, I notice how I have been scanning for patterns in what my clients are bringing to our sessions.  I have been wondering what clients will bring that is different from those clients whose coaching is funded by their employing organisations and there are indeed differences as well as similarities.  One theme has popped up which spans both our personal and professional lives – conflict.

Maybe you have some experience of conflict.  It could be the kind of nitty gritty conflict that is part of the day-to-day experience of living together.  (“When will you actually get round to doing the thing you promised to do – moving the lawn/clearing the garage/fixing the shelf etc.?”).  It can be the kind of interpersonal conflict that bedevils both our intimate and our professional relationships (“I wish you’d show some appreciation for the things I do for you!”).  For one client, recently, it was the kind of conflict that can arise at work when two people who both have a role in a project have different ideas about how it should be run (“I thought you had agreed to wait until our meeting so that we could make a decision together, but you’ve gone right ahead and I think what you’ve done is a big mistake!”).

Equally, you may also recognise the roller-coaster of emotions that can come when you are in conflict rather than collaboration.  Perhaps you feel anxious about the consequences of speaking up – worried about how you might be seen, about rocking an already unsteady boat, about fuelling the fire…  Perhaps you feel frustrated by the actions of your partner or colleague – you know you’re on a short fuse and your anger is easily triggered.  Perhaps you feel resentment when you think of the role this other person has played or of the actions you have taken that just aren’t being taken into account.  There’s a risk of conflict and an unproductive conflict at that.

Over the years, I have observed people who manage conflict well and notice how many of them head off conflict a long time in advance.  Today, I thought I’d share just some of the things I have seen them do, in case for you, too, they offer some graceful ways to ease your path:

  • Focus on who wants what:  Some people talk of “needs” and others of “interests”.  This is about getting under the skin of strategies (the “how to” of getting things done) and understanding why a particular approach is important.  This is about empathy and applies as much to you as it does to the other person.  Why do you want to move faster or to slow down?  Why does your colleague want to invite views from John and Gerhardt when you would prefer to seek input from Chris and Faisal?  If you can understand your own needs and the needs of others, you can start to generate ways forward in which everyone’s needs will be met;
  • Reach clear agreements about roles and who will do what:  Conflict can arise when roles or decision-making are unclear.  It can help to agree roles, how you will work together and who will do what.  This can be true in your personal relationships as much as it is at work.  If you’re unhappy that you’re always the person who handles the household bills, for example, then you need to say so – and to make a request of your partner or spouse that would meet your needs more fully.  If you don’t like it that your colleague keeps taking unilateral actions, then it can help to discuss what decisions need to be taken jointly so that you can both feel confident about the progress of a project or initiative;
  • Explain your reasoning and test your assumptions:  It’s easy to assume that your own logic is an example of some universal truth and to assume others will naturally understand your thinking.  It’s also easy to interpret what others say based on your own way of thinking.  This is where misunderstandings occur.  Over the years, I’ve observed how explaining your reasoning and testing your understanding of others’ reasoning helps to head off misunderstandings before they’ve even happened and to smooth a path to a solution that works all round.  “Want to recruit more people like James?  I’m concerned that if we do that without any way of knowing who is bringing in most sales, we may recruit people who are not the most effective – that’s why I want to introduce more effective monitoring before using James (and others like him) as the basis for modelling the behaviours we want to recruit to”.  “When you say ‘stop badgering me’, I’m wondering if you want to know that I’m making a request rather than giving you an order.  Is that right?”
  • Tailor your approach based on what you know of the other person:  I’ve seen people’s effectiveness in influencing others and heading off conflict improve dramatically when they start to speak the language of the person they’re talking to.  You may want to secure a quality of work that will meet the goals for your process improvement but if your boss wants speed, you need to talk the language of speed.  If your colleague wants value for money… you get the gist.  This is about framing a problem or issue in language you know the other person can actually hear;
  • Influence indirectly:  If your conflict – or potential conflict – is with Graham, the answer may be to step back and look at the wider picture.  Who does Graham listen to and why?  These are people you need to get on board.  Which other stakeholders are important?  Talk to them all.  I have seen many skilful influencers go into meetings knowing precisely who thinks what and how likely it is that their proposal will be accepted.  This gives them the opportunity to shape their proposal and present it to gain maximum support.  At home, the same people think about what their spouse or partner really needs and how to engage others to support their partner in meeting their needs without placing themselves in the role of saviour;
  • Take time over important issues – and know the limitations of what’s possible:  Sometimes, you need to know what’s possible now and what might be possible later.  That way you won’t try to force an issue ahead of others’ readiness to hear you.  Equally, for as long as someone is immoveable in adopting a particular position, trying to force them along another route may exacerbate conflict and increase stress.  In this latter case, your question may be “Given that X is true, what’s the right decision for me to take right now?”  X could be anything from a statement from your partner that she’s just not willing to move so that you can take on another new job to the recognition that your boss, because he isn’t yet up to speed with social media, is not going to fund a project to increase your company’s presence in places (Twitter etc.) where your core customer base hangs out.  In this case, recognising what is frees energy up and allows you to take informed decisions.

If you’re trying to navigate conflict right now, I invite you to reflect on these strategies and to try just one or two that might work for you in your current situation.

Please let me know how you get on.

When it’s time for a break

Developing as a leader
I’m away this week.
I haven’t gone far.  Together with my dear friend Andy, I have gone to Oxon Hoath in Kent, where we will spend the week catching up (Andy lives in Sydney now, so there’s lots of catching up to do), doing gentle yoga practice, meditating, eating the wonderful food that will be prepared for us (hopefully by chef Paul Smith – he’s a favourite of mine), listening to talks by Alistair Shearer (another favourite of mine) and walking around the beautiful countryside that surrounds the house.
I won’t be checking my e-mails (OK, maybe enough to clear out any junk and catch anything urgent).
I won’t be taking any calls.
Probably, I won’t even be thinking of my clients.
I won’t be writing any blog postings (this one has been written in advance).
I won’t be looking at ‘to do’ lists, let alone adding anything to them or ticking anything off.
I won’t be sending any invoices or chasing for payment.
I won’t be paying my suppliers.
The list goes on and on…
It’s not, though, that these things don’t matter to me.  They matter a great deal.  Instead, it’s because I know that, if I am to be present to my clients and able to support them, I need also to take care of my needs for rest, nurture, companionship and more.  It’s because my needs are met and my heart is full that I am able to give so much to others.
I hope that you, too, are taking a break some time.
   

Seven steps towards taming your inner critic (and one sure fire way not to)

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence,

Have you noticed how, just when you’re trying to muster a bit of confidence, your inner critic steps in and pulls the rug right out from under your feet?

Perhaps you’ve just started a new job – you’ve had a promotion or moved to a new company.  You’re doing your best to focus on how to succeed in the job and all the while, your inner critic is telling you that you don’t have what it takes, with full and vivid detail of the reasons you’re unlikely to succeed.

Or maybe you’ve taken on new responsibilities at work – they’re everything you’ve been campaigning for and you know you have everything you need to deliver and still, your inner critic is ready to wade in the minute you get what you want with objections and concerns.

It seems there’s no end to the situations in which your inner critic can find fault.  Some are in your professional life and some are in your personal life.  What’s worse, it seems that the closer you come to realising your goals, the more the voice of your inner critic is amplified.  At times, it’s so overwhelming that you’re paralysed with fear and you wonder if you’ve made the right decision.  Maybe you’ve already started to look for the sign marked “exit”.

One common approach to taming your inner critic… and why it doesn’t work

Over the years of dancing with my own inner critic and of working with clients, I have found that the most common approach to taming your inner critic simply doesn’t work.

What’s the approach?  Put simply, it’s to dismiss the concerns of your inner critic – and maybe your inner critic him- or herself – using every means at your disposal.  One way is to use rational persuasion (“You say I can’t do X but I did X last week and it worked really well”).  One way is to dismiss your inner critic with anger, hatred and disdain (“Why won’t you leave me alone?  I’m not listening to you!  You talk such rubbish!”*)  When I ask clients how well these strategies are working for them they tell me, without exception, that they’re not.

Why not?  The answer is simple.  Your inner critic is a guardian for you of particular needs.  The more you ignore your inner critic, the more he or she fears that your needs will not be met… and the more s/he turns up the volume to make sure s/he gets heard.

If you can’t go to battle with your inner critic and win, you may find that the only alternative you can find is a sense of inner collapse.  In this state, you wonder if you really should have taken on the job, you tell yourself you’re bound to fail, you find no way forward.

There is though, a way forward.  You simply need to take a different approach.

Seven steps towards taming your inner critic

Even when the voice of your inner critic is overwhelming, there are ways to move beyond fear to achieve an inner calm.  These are seven steps towards “taming your inner critic”:

  • Step 1, step outside and say hello:  Have you ever noticed how, when your inner critic is active, his thoughts are your thoughts?  His fears are yours?  Especially when you’re feeling overwhelmed, it can help to step out of being the inner critic.  Step out of your inner critic – stand up and shake yourself down, for example, leaving your inner critic behind on the chair.  Or hold out your hand and look at your inner critic – and take a moment to say hello.  Your hello is a way of recognising your inner critic and engaging in dialogue;
  • Step 2, get curious:  Far too often, when you do battle with your inner critic, you lose sight of an important principle – that she loves you and wants to do you good.  Your relationship with your inner critic starts to transform when you start to really understand what she wants for you, so ask her!  Keep asking (“what is it that you really want for me?”) until you get under the skin of particular strategies (“I want you to say no to the job”) to the baseline need she is trying to protect.  This is usually about safety, security… she wants to keep you safe;
  • Step 3, acknowledge your needs:  When you dismiss your inner critic, you arouse his fear that you don’t care about your needs for safety and security so that he redoubles his efforts to protect you.  It helps to let him know that you, too, want to be safe.  No ifs or buts – just let him know that for you, too, safety matters;
  • Step 4, say thank you:  Take time to thank your inner critic for her good intentions.  Thank her for being the guardian of your safety and security throughout your life.  If this sticks in your throat it may help to separate in your mind her good intentions and her ways of trying to meet your needs – there’s no harm in saying that you’ve really struggled with her way of supporting you and still, you’re beginning to understand how much she has always meant well;
  • Step 5, notice his skills:  Your inner critic brings a great deal of skill to the task of taking care of you.  When you try to dismiss him, you’re likely to dismiss his skills… his ability to think ahead and to see all the potential pitfalls, his imagination in conjuring safe alternatives.  The more you notice and acknowledge these skills, the more you can begin to see how it might be helpful to have these skills on your team and to collaborate with your inner critic;
  • Step 6, share with her your other needs:  Your inner critic may be the guardian of your safety and security but you also have other needs – the kind of needs you meet when you take on a promotion, or new responsibilities or, in your personal life, embark on a new relationship or take on a bigger mortgage.  It’s never your needs that are in conflict – only the strategies by which you seek to meet them.  So, when your inner critic has been heard, she may be ready to hear you.  Let her know what other needs you want to meet – over the years, clients have talked about freedom, autonomy, self-fulfilment, intimacy and many more;
  • Step 7, invite collaboration:  When you are confident that you have heard your inner critic’s need for security and that your inner critic has also heard your wider needs, ask him if he would be willing to collaborate so that you find ways to meet all your needs.  When you hear a yes, you have reached a point of departure – a moment where creativity begins.  At this point, you have moved from struggle into a creative embrace of “how can we collaborate to make sure all our needs are met?”

In truth, these steps are not so much about “taming your inner critic” as about building a different relationship with the guardian of your safety and security.  And it is a relationship rather than a once-and-for-all way to rid yourself of fear.  One implication is this – that the more you learn to engage in constructive dialogue with your inner critic, the more you can work with him or her to balance your need for safety with other needs.

(*And in case you’re reading this and looking over your shoulder – pretending you don’t talk to yourself in this way – well, I want to let you know that in my experience, we all do.  Healthy people have a rich inner community of parts, including their inner critic.)

When does your inner critic shout the loudest?  And what has worked best to help you to move out of overwhelm and into inner calm?

Making the transition from expert in your field to leader

Developing as a leader
Recently, I spoke with a client who is struggling to make the transition from being an expert in his field to effectively leading others.  It is a common challenge for people who, in the beginning of their careers, have invested time and effort to develop their mastery of their chosen field – the law, engineering, IT, accounting… the list of such jobs is long.

Perhaps you are already familiar with this transition and all its challenges.  You’ve invested significantly in developing your skills.  You know what you need to do in a given situation in your field.  Now, though, you have staff to manage and instead of doing everything yourself, your primary role is to help members of your team to deliver.

Why is it so challenging to move from expert to leader?

I don’t want to understate the challenges that come with making this transition.

Firstly, you were so good at being an expert.  Of course you were!  You invested years in developing the skills and knowledge that made you an expert in the first place.  Now, as a leader, you recognise that you face many situations in which you don’t know what to do and in which, what’s more, the connection between what you do and what transpires seems increasingly tenuous – outside your control.  You try something – and you do try – and it doesn’t work.  You make the case for the next level of investment in your team and it gets turned down.  You delegate an important project to a member of your team and it doesn’t quite turn out.  You want to make it work and when it doesn’t your instinct is to withdraw back to the work you do so well.

And yes, there is the whole issue of standards.  It’s all very well trying to achieve results through others – delegating to your team or collaborating with your peers – but sometimes you wonder if anyone’s standards match your own.  How can you do this leadership thing without presiding over the decline of standards?  For surely, when your standards are so much higher than anyone else’s, you have to let them slide a little or drive your team to distraction with your feedback.  As you try to balance allowing people to do things to their own standards and giving feedback you sometimes wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to do things yourself.

You may not notice and still, there’s a third challenge that may be keeping you stuck.  It’s the challenge of embracing a bigger agenda.  As an expert, you were charged with things to do – projects perhaps, case files, bridges to design.  The projects got bigger, they may even have been called “programmes” and still, they were projects.  Now, as a leader, the performance of your team is your task, your project… but there is a risk that you haven’t spotted it yet.  What’s more, there’s a risk that you’ve spotted it and yet, when things get tough, you find it easier to get stuck in to the work of your team because that’s where you know you can succeed.

Making the transition – some “how tos”

How then, can you break the cycle of taking action to move forward, struggling with the results and retreating to your old ways before taking action again?  Here are just a few things that may work for you, because they’ve worked for others in your situation:

  • Remember you’re not alone:  It can feel as though you’re moving from a relatively private success into a hugely public arena of failure when you take your first steps as a leader.  When it does, it helps to stop, breathe and remember – you’re not alone.  You are not the first person to have grappled with this transition and you won’t be the last;
  • Find a reason to stay the course:  For some people, leadership is its own reward.  It comes with all sorts of bells and whistles they have longed for and finally get to play with.  For the expert, leadership can bring a sense of loss or sacrifice – unless you have a compelling reason to make the transition.  Perhaps you realise that you can no longer do everything yourself.  Perhaps there’s a vision you have that you can’t deliver alone.  Whatever your reason, it’s your reason to stay the course – so think about what you’re trying to achieve, especially when you feel the lure of your expertise;
  • Make time to lead:  Especially in your first leadership role, you may struggle to balance your technical contribution to the team with your role as leader and it could go either way.  Is it your leadership agenda that will give way to immediate projects or vice versa?  You choose.  Choose a percentage of your time that you will spend on the larger agenda of leading your team.  Think about when and how you will spend that time.  The more you have made plans to spend time and know what you want to do, the more likely you are to choose to lead;
  • Cut yourself some slack:  In your early days as a leader, it’s unlikely that you will show the same level of skill in your leadership role as you will as an expert.  Perhaps the biggest challenge you face is dancing with the voice of your inner critic.  He or she is vocal enough in your area of expertise but, hey!  s/he’s louder still when it comes to your first steps as a leader.  Learning to hear your inner critic without being overwhelmed is a skill in itself – one that’s worthy of at least one posting on this blog (look out for it during the days ahead);
  • Build a support team to help you through:  It may be that you have the best boss in the world  – or wife or husband – who can support you in making this transition.  It’s likely though, that you could do with more help.  Perhaps there are areas in which you need to develop a new kind of expertise – in how to influence others, for example, or how to get the best out of your staff.  It could be that you need new skills in self management.  Your boss, your colleagues, a mentor, a coach… make sure you have all the help you need.

If you’re in the midst of making the transition to leadership, I’d love to here from you:  what is your biggest challenge?  And if you are looking back and thinking “yes, I remember it well…” please share your experiences and especially the lessons that made it possible for you to make the transition from expert to leader.