All posts by Dorothy Nesbit

Enjoying the kingdom of heaven on earth

All articles,
Qui cantat, bis orat
Saint Augustine

Days after two Sky News sports commentators are sacked from their jobs for sexism, I find myself wondering, as the Barbican’s staff bring out flowers for Susan Gritton and Sarah Connolly, if our culture will ever change to include equality in this tiny detail between male and female soloists.  This is the least of my thoughts, however, as I savour the experience of singing Elgar’s The Kingdom at the Barbican under the baton of Sir Mark Elder.

The path that has brought me to this moment is a long one – much longer, of course, than the flurry of rehearsals that has prepared us for this concert.  In our opening rehearsal, for example, I find myself thinking of my first experience of singing The Kingdom under the baton of Richard Hickox, with whom we recorded this work in the late ’90s.  The memory stimulates the sadness that comes with the premature loss of a man who was so passionate about his work, a sense of loss which is in itself a celebration of this great musician and champion of British music.

I think, too, of my father, for whom both music and the teachings of the Bible were a healing and spiritual balm.  I don’t know if he ever sung this piece, which is not frequently performed.  I do, though, imagine that he would have loved it, both for its grand choral sweep and for the poetry of its Biblical concerns.  Certainly, as our rehearsals proceed, I find myself thinking of the piece as an evocation of heaven on earth.  If it is not here yet it is at least possible.

As the rehearsals proceed Joseph Cullen, our Music Director, seems content – one might almost say uncharacteristically content – with our progress.  Come the concert I find myself sitting next to a colleague who has noted in her score the moment when Joseph told us we were perfectly balanced and in tune.  Joseph has been diligent in passing on direction from Sir Mark Elder ahead of our first rehearsal with him, known as the piano rehearsal.  I have not sung with Sir Mark before and I enjoy both his attention to detail and his lightness of touch (though even in the performance his instruction to pronounce the word knowledge with an “i” – as in “knowlidge” – makes me think of London’s black cab drivers).  Yes, we are working to achieve high standards and still this does not need to be – is not – dour, let alone a battle ground.

The arrival of the soloists and the London Symphony Orchestra at our tutti rehearsals is itself like the arrival of heaven on earth.  Susan Gritton stands out for her delicate and masterful singing which is showcased in Elgar’s exquisite aria, The Sun Goeth Down.  With such a beautiful voice, why is she not better known?  Sarah Connolly and Iain Paterson also sing masterfully and Stuart Skelton, struggling with a chest infection and saving what he has for the concert itself, also sings with great beauty even whilst clearly struggling.

As much as there is an audience on the day, I am here because I love to sing and I do.  Elgar himself remarked that his choral writing was much improved by the time he wrote The Kingdom and it is indeed wonderful, its dramatic intensity reflected in its dynamic range and in the various moods and colours he conjures.  If only we were sitting next to the tenors I would gladly join them in singing the passages that are written for men’s voices but we’re not so, after indulging myself in the rehearsals, I let the men do their job on the day.

I am often struck by the disproportionate response of the audience to the chorus and Sunday is no exception.  As Joseph brings us to our feet the applause increases and is reinforced by cheers.  I am glad of this and at the same time I celebrate the orchestra’s vivid and vigourous performance and think of the stamina and commitment needed not only to reach this standard of musicianship but also to maintain it.

If the response of the audience is anything to go by, the reviews of this concert will be highly supportive.  For my part I am reminded, once again, of the great privilege (or should that be “privilige”?) of singing, as an amateur, alongside some of the world’s finest musicians.

This is indeed heaven on earth.

    

Honing my niche, one word at a time

Coaching

Recently I have been working with my coach, Kathy Mallary, to craft a brief statement that sums up my niche.  This is about helping my ideal clients to find me – and to find me with ease.  This implies stepping into the place within myself in which I am most truly myself, most powerful and authentic, able both to add most value to my clients and to be most truly me.

Of course, the idea that I might get to this statement in a single once-and-for-all hit is just that – an idea.  It’s an idea that has the power to stimulate pressure and stress.  So much power for such a tiny idea.  In practice, I find myself getting closer and closer.  At this stage I have a statement which is closer than anything I have ever attempted before, though one word is still up for debate.
My first version was this:  Leadership coach, unleashing innate leadership potential through powerful, compassionate and authentic relationships.  More recently, I changed the final word to conversations.  Is it relationships?  Is it conversations?  I am still debating.
Increasingly, I have no doubts about the territory of which these words are the map.  It’s been my experience that my relationship with myself has been the foundation for my relationships with others and indeed for the quality of my life as a whole.  And my relationships – whether with myself or with others – are a function of the conversations I have, the conversations I create.  Relationship… conversation…. relationship… conversation… it doesn’t seem to matter.  What does matter to me is that my work with others, as much as my work with myself, reflects this simple truth.
This is why I do not come from the school of crack-the-whip coaching.  I don’t believe that forcing ourselves to do things we think we ought produces the best outcomes over time.  Rather, I believe that we achieve our best outcomes when we understand ourselves (and each other) more deeply, so that we can collaborate within ourselves and with each other.  From this place of inner harmony it is easier for us to identify and connect with those things we most desire in our business and personal lives.  With this clarity the actions that will move us forward offer themselves one action at a time.
For me, this is the true foundation for our quality of life.   

To blame or not to blame

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, , ,

This week I have been responding on my blog to a talk by Brene Brown at http://www.ted.com/.  Before I move on, I want to highlight and explore just one more comment from her talk:  when she suggests that the definition in the research of blame is “a way to discharge pain and discomfort”.

I confess I think of the early morning news team on Radio 4.  Do they ever report an unhappy event without asking “who’s to blame?”?  I often wonder who this serves and how.  Nor are the newscasters on Radio 4 alone.  Families blame their fellow family members for the every-day inconveniences they mete out on each other or they blame others outside the family for events – sometimes tragic events – that befall them.  Societies blame other societies (or even vague concepts, such as “terrorism”) for actions they do not enjoy.  People blame politicians.  Politicians blame each other.

I ponder the use of blame in the organisations I work with, for here, too, blame is used liberally.  Managers blame their staff for various actions and outcomes that do not meet their needs.  And because they hold the power of position they do this, at times, directly and openly and even as part of a formal process such as appraisal.  One team blames another (sales blames customer service who in turn blame accounts…).  Sometimes such blame is expressed openly and directly.  Oftentimes it is a low, ongoing grumble in the background of our interactions with each other.

Without question, our choice to blame has a positive intention – we do it for a reason.  If Brown and her colleagues in the world of scientific research are right, we do it to discharge pain and discomfort.  This raises a number of questions for me:  how effective is blame as a way to discharge pain and discomfort?  What are the side-effects?  And what are the alternatives?

Perhaps it would help to define blame in some way.  At the time of writing, Wikipedia offers the following definition of blame:  Blame is the act of censuring, holding responsible, making negative statements about an individual or group that their action or actions are socially or morally irresponsible, the opposite of praise. When someone is morally responsible for doing something wrong their action is blameworthy. By contrast, when someone is morally responsible for doing something right, we may say that his or her action is praiseworthy. There are other senses of praise and blame that are not ethically relevant. One may praise someone’s good dress sense, and blame the weather for a crop failure.

How effective is blame as a way of discharging pain and discomfort?  It seems to me that it must be effective to some degree, otherwise we would not do it.  To take one of the more extreme examples we can imagine, the relative or friend of someone who has been murdered may well find it easier to feel the anger that comes with blaming the person who has committed the murder than they do to be present to the intense feelings of grief connected with the loss of a loved one.  To give a more mundane – but nonetheless pertinent – example, the manager in the workplace may well find it easier to blame his (or her) staff for their failings than to recognise the shortcomings in the instructions he gave or to acknowledge his role in recruiting staff who lacked the necessary skills for the job.

What are the side-effects of blame?  It’s easy to see that blame has consequences that are undesirable.  If we choose to blame others, for example, we live with the ongoing feelings (of anger, resentment and so on) that go with blame.  And we do this whilst never being entirely free of the feelings we are seeking to hold at bay.  These include the grief of the mourner or the fears of the manager, and so on.  At the same time, there are consequences that go way beyond our immediate emotions.  Blame creates the culture we live in, for example, so that even when we are dealing with people who do not think in ways which produce blame we may fear blame from others because it is what we do ourselves.  In organisations, blame is often associated with a failure to get to the root cause of a problem or issue such that the problem continues.  Both the problem itself and the blame associated with it consume energy in ways which are unproductive.

So what are the alternatives?  I am going to offer two of many:

  • If the aim of blame is to discharge pain and discomfort, perhaps a key area to look for alternatives is in the area of handling our emotions.  Marshall Rosenberg, author of Nonviolent Communication:  A Language for Life, invites people to transform difficult emotions by understanding the needs that underpin them.  This means connecting with our unmet needs and the feelings that go with them.  This may well help us with the second of the options I offer here;
  • If our aim is to address a problem or issue, then it helps to focus on the outcomes we want and to explore what it would take to get to our desired outcomes.  Thinking about how we or others are contributing to a problem is no longer a matter of blame but rather becomes, in this scenario, a matter of identifying barriers to progress so that we can find ways to make progress towards our desired outcomes.

Whilst we may continue to consider who is responsible, both options involve letting go of attaching blame in order to get the best outcome.  I wonder, are you ready to let go of blame?

PS  Just to let you know, as a member of Amazon Associates UK, I shall receive a referral fee for any books you buy using links in this posting.  

Numbing painful emotions: is it really good for business?

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, ,
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Kahlil Gibran
The Prophet

On Monday, I wrote about Brene Brown’s masterful exploration of empathy and connection on TED (follow this link for a reminder).  Today I want to pick up on her assertion that, by numbing pain and other difficult emotions, we also numb – in equal measure – our capacity for joy.  Is this true?  And if so, what are the implications in the workplace?

Brown highlights in her talk that we numb our emotions as a strategy to protect ourselves from our feelings of vulnerability.  How do we do this?  Brown points to the experience of her fellow Americans, saying, “We are the most in debt, obese, addicted and medicated adult cohort in US history”.  And just to be clear, the picture that accompanied the word “addicted” highlighted alcohol rather than any other substance. Some might say, isn’t this a high price to pay for a bit of emotional pain relief?  Others might say – by their actions they do say – this is a price worth paying.  After all, isn’t society structured in a way that supports this?  But it doesn’t stop there.  As Brown points out, insofar as we numb our negative emotions (she cites vulnerability, grief, shame, disappointment) we also numb our capacity to experience the positive emotions (including joy, gratitude, happiness).  This is not a new discovery as Kahlil Gibran’s passage On Joy and Sorrow from The Prophet amply demonstrates.  Even so, it seems to be a discovery which is not widely known or understood.

I want to take a moment to touch in the implications for us in the workplace.  How many of us have experience of working in places where the expression of negative emotions (maybe positive emotions, too) is – implicitly or explicitly – discouraged?  It seems to me that our wokplaces are, increasingly, emotionally sanitised, so that oftentimes the response to emotion is to get someone out of the building (on “compassionate” grounds) as quickly as possible.  If we’re feeling angry because we didn’t get the promotion we hoped for we are left to find our way through or even expected to pull ourselves together.  If we are shocked by the way a customer has spoken to us on the phone we’re expected to meet our targets by picking up the next call.  If we feel nervous in our first meeting as a member of the Board we sure ain’t going to show it.

If Brown – and Gibran – are right, the corollary of this is that we lose touch with all positive emotions.  The satisfaction of recognising a piece of work well done is lost in the midst of our fear of criticism or even our own self-criticism.  The pay rise brings a temporary boost to our emotions before, quickly, becoming a new part of our every day reality.  The passions that motivated us to join our organisation become lost in the everyday experience of surpressing our emotions.

Last week I pointed to a posting by John Hepworth on DiscussHR about employee engagement.  He begins by saying:  According to Seijits and Crim (2006), a professor lecturing on leadership amused his audience by relating the following:  “A CEO was asked by a business journalist how many people work in his company.  ‘About half of them’, the CEO responded”.  It seems to me that Brown’s research points to a fundamental truth:  if organisations are serious about engaging the full commitment and contribution of their employees they need to get real about human emotion.  We all have emotions.  When we accept this as a fact of life we can begin to explore how these emotions serve us, to learn how we can recognise these emotions and even to learn how to manage and work with these emotions.  Only then can we begin to create the kind of culture and climate in which peole thrive.  This gives us a much greater chance of achieving what some call “employee engagement”.    

Insights into empathy: a call to authenticity

Emotional Intelligence

Once again, TED has come up trumps with a talk by Brene Brown called The Power of Vulnerability.

Brene Brown studies human connection – our ability to empathise, belong, love. The website says:  “In a poignant, funny talk at TEDxHouston, she shares a deep insight from her research, one that sent her on a personal quest to know herself as well as to understand humanity.  A talk to share”.

The connection reaches me via a colleague and I pass it on to a colleague.  He spots an assertion he doesn’t agree with (and nor do I) along the lines that People who don’t experience shame have no capacity for human empathy or connection.  I see shame as a function of self judgement as much as it is a function of empathy – strip away the self judgment and we still have the capacity to empathise.  When we couple our empathy with others with self-empathy we are able to connect with our intentions in doing something even whilst recognising that those same actions were unhelpful.  This is the road to sadness and to deep regret – but not to shame.

Putting aside this one assertion with which I do not agree, I applaud Brown for her exploration of the topic of empathy.  It’s not just that she is witty and sharply observant in what she says.  It’s not just that she exposes the fear and vulnerability that we all feel.  It is – for me at least – that she highlights that this is as true in the workplace as it is elsewhere.  At home women feel vulnerability initiating sexual contact with their husbands.  Men feel vulnerable initiating sexual contact with their wives.  At work, we feel vulnerable when we learn we have lost our job.  We feel vulnerable telling others they have lost their job.  This vulnerability is simply part of the human condition.

Brown highlights those things we do that stand in the way of empathy and connection – with ourselves, with others.  She also offers some alternative ways of being in the world.  Keep reading if you want to share with me some of my own observations about what Brown has to say.  And whether or not you take time to keep reading, you might want to take time watch Brown’s talk and to hear what she has to say.

Is your team effective?

Developing as a leader,

Roger Schwarz, creator of The Skilled Facilitator Approach, writes a pithy newsletter (Fundamental Change) every couple of weeks which I enjoy reading.  His recent article, Is your team effective? prompted me to look for any conditions he places on reproducing his article.  Ah!  This is what he says:  Material from Fundamental Change may be reproduced in other electronic or print publications provided this copyright notice is included: “Copyright Roger Schwarz & Associates, 2010. All rights reserved.” and a link to http://www.schwarzassociates.com/ is included in the credits.

Without further ado here is the article I enjoyed so much:

How do you assess whether your team is effective? Is it that the team accomplishes its goals and meets its numbers? Those criteria are important, but alone they are a limited view of team effectiveness. To be effective your team has to meet three criteria1:

Your team meets or exceed the standards of people who receive and review their output, whether that output is decisions, services, or products. Of course, it’s important that a team meet its goals, including the numbers it has set as targets. But that is not sufficient. Ultimately, other people decide whether your team is performing acceptably. If you are not meeting the expectations of people who receive and review your team’s work, your team is not performing effectively.

Leaders often think that the performance criterion is the only criterion for effectiveness. Although that may be true in the short run, in the long run it is essential to meet two other criteria.

Your team works together in a way that improves its effectiveness over time. If your team isn’t improving the way it works over time, chances are it won’t be effective in the long run. You have probably been on a team that met its goals, but was so dysfunctional that you promised yourself you would never work with the same people again. These teams pay too high a price for their performance. Effective teams learn from their experiences and mistakes. They talk openly about how they need to do better as a team, develop and implement plans to do so, and then evaluate their progress.

Your team provides experiences through which team members can develop their skills and have a sense of well-being. Although team members can weather frustrating periods, the team experience overall has to be a satisfying one for team members. If the team experience doesn’t provide opportunities for members to develop their skills or if the team experience creates undue stress, boredom, or frustration, you might lose your best people, and those that stay may be only partway in the game.

Don’t short-change your team by ignoring the second and third criteria. The three criteria are interrelated; you need to meet all three for your team to really be effective.

One way people meet some of their needs for growth and well-being is to be on a team that performs well and that continues to improve how it works. If team members don’t find the team experience satisfying, they will not likely have the energy to meet performance standards or figure out how to work together better.

Teams are complex social systems; to get the most from them, you need to treat them that way.

Roger Schwarz


Leadership and employee engagement

Developing as a leader,

John Hepworth, writing on Discuss HR, highlights the role of employee engagement.  As a contributor to this brand-new blog, I take a moment to add comments of my own, recognising the importance of employee engagement in overall performance and the role of leadership in stimulating or undermining employee engagement:

The Hay Group (for whom I worked for a while a few years back) recently reported that employee engagement is at the top of the list of employer concerns right now. Over the years, they have also drawn heavily on research that suggests that organisational climate is the major factor in creating high levels of employee engagement and that the behaviours of leaders are the major factor in creating organisational climate.

One of the interesting things about this is that we now have masses of research that points to the role that emotional intelligence plays in our success at work and still – as John suggests – to recognise doubt and to seek help is to be seen as “weak”. Perhaps, too, leaders fear that to be open to the doubts and fears of others is also seen as weak.

I think of Anne Wilson Schaef, author of numerous books including The Addictive Organisation, who puts forward the idea that the malaises we observe in organisations are simply the reflection (projection?) of our own symptoms.

Which makes me wonder, what does it take to stand up and be counted as a fearful, doubting and emotional human being? And who has the courage to go first?

Choosing words that heal

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, ,

Sarah Palin has been sharply criticised in recent days for her insensitivity, even as she tries to look presidential.  Peter Stanford, writing in the Belfast Telegraph, highlights how Palin placed a rifle target over Arizona during the 2010 election to designate that Gabrielle Giffords was a politician she wanted out of the way, leading to accusations that she is personally responsible for Gifford’s shooting last week by Jared Loughner.  Whilst we all wonder what the outcome will be for Gifford and for others who were wounded, six people have already died.

Stanford’s article highlights the power of words, focussing in particular on Palin’s use of the phrase “blood libel” which he examines in depth, laying out the history of its use and its association with acts of terrible violence perpetrated on Jewish people throughout the ages.  Sarah Palin is playing with fire, he says. She has been one of the most effective practitioners of the use of words-as-weapons, damning Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms, for instance, as “death laws”. But just as such poisonous oratory can get the crowds cheering, it can also lay you low. Perhaps the real choice that faces Palin now is whether she wants to join the ranks of politicians whose gaffes and casual ignorance of history make them a joke, or step up into the responsible mainstream.

Obama, without question an orator of great skill, eschews tit-for-tat in favour of a different kind of discourse.  Speaking at a memorial service for the victims of the shooting in Tucson, Arizona, Obama seems to be addressing politicians of all persuasions when he says, But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized – at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do – it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.

Saying yes to examining the reasons for the shooting so that steps can be taken to reduce the likelihood of similar events in future, Obama nonetheless cautions, But what we can’t do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.

The openly Christian rhetoric of American politicians sits uncomfortably at times amongst the British, so that some may choose to ignore his words (which you can read in full by following this link).  Yet more people may wonder what this has to do with us.  I see in Obama’s speech an act of leadership of the highest order, for he addresses not only the sense of grief and loss experienced by those affected by this tragedy, not only the political issues of the day, but also the manner in which we choose to live our lives.  His is a rare and welcome choice:  to rise above the opportunity to gain political capital in order to invite men and women on every side of the debate to act in ways which honour the dead and give hope for the future.

As I close, I feel a deep sense of gratitude for a man who is consistent in choosing the language of empathy and compassion over the language of conflict and discord.  For his choice reminds us that we, too, get to choose.  We may not get to choose the events of our lives or the behaviours of those we deal with and still, we get to choose whether to speak to the best of who we are or to the worst.  I thank Obama for choosing words that heal.

More on the “are leaders born or made?” debate

Developing as a leader

After writing on the LinkedIn Leadership Think Tank on this question, I found myself coming back to it and adding…

And is there another question – what type of “leader”? The CEO of a major corporation has – in many cases – fundamentally different qualities to the kind of person who might be thought of as a thought-leader (the latter from Gandhi to Oprah Winfrey and many more besides). Commanding an army is quite unlike being Prime Minister.

So, here’s another question: do we all have the innate potential to become a leader? And if so, is there a particular kind of leader we have the potential to become, given the right commitment, dedication, learning and action (leverage)?

That old leadership chestnut: are leaders born or made?

Developing as a leader

LinkedIn has an enormous discussion group in the shape of the Leadership Think Tank.  In truth, I feel frustration when I read the number of abstract discussions about leadership and I have come close in recent weeks to signing out of the group.  I’d love to see more concrete discussion about the day-today concerns and challenges of real leaders.  And, as theory goes, I’d love to see a more robust set of discussions, rooted in deep thinking and observation of what’s actually true rather than – well, off with the fairies!

Notwithstanding my frustrations I am still a member of the group and, today, I chose to respond to the age-old question:  Are leadership qualities something you are born with?  Or can they be learnt?  There are many things to be said about this but for today, I chose to focus on the question itself.  This is what I wrote:

Is there a false dichotomy here – EITHER you are born with leadership qualities OR you learn them? What I observe is that people are born with certain qualities and yet they may not be aware of them and develop them. One reason for this is because they conclude they need to develop other qualities (as a result of family influence, education etc.). So, one thing that makes a great leader is a recognition of the qualities one has and then the development of skills, competencies etc. which support those qualities. Another way of putting this is to say that people become (“great”) leaders when they recognise, develop and leverage the leadership qualities they already possess.