All posts by Dorothy Nesbit

When our parents leave the room

About Dorothy
Nikolaj Znaider performs at the Barbican this evening
Siehe! Da weinen die Götter, es weinen die Göttinnen alle,
    Daß das Schöne vergeht, daß das Vollkommene stirbt.

From Nänie by Schiller
Written following the death of a friend

In childhood, the moments when we are out of sight of our parents offer an opportunity.  Games are played which might otherwise be off limits.  Sibling rivalries are given fuller rein.  The imagination invents things to do which were never forbidden but which may still get us into trouble when our parents return.  Later in life, there comes a time when our parents leave the room and don’t come back as they pass from life into death.  When my own father died, in 2006, I learned just how much – for those who are left behind – this opens up an experience which is both broad and deep.  Memories re-play like a film reel, laden with new insights as well as strong emotions.  We feel the sense of loss keenly for everything that is gone as well, sometimes, as grieving those things we yearned for which were not part of our relationship.  We discover just how much a relationship can continue – and continue to evolve – beyond death.

Rehearsing today for this evening’s concert, I notice how much I think of Colin – Sir Colin Davis – as a father.  Of course, he is in a very real sense a father.  I think of his children, who have lost their mother and step mother and then their father within three years of each other, watching their father’s declining health following the unexpected loss of his dearly beloved wife.  No words can be enough fully to express my deep respect for them in the heart and fire of their own grieving.  I think to of Sir Colin as a musical father, too.  This evening’s concert reflects both these roles.

As a chorus, we have been rehearsing Brahm’s Nänie, a musical setting of a poem written by Friedrich Schiller following the death of a friend.  Simon Halsey, our Music Director and Norbert, our language coach, have provided the literal translation of Schiller’s heartfelt lament which has, in addition, been deeply enriched by a member of our alto section who has explained the classical allusions which run through the text.  Its message is deeply felt by members of the chorus – that that which is beautiful passes, dying even as it reaches its moment of fulfilment.  The weekend’s rehearsals have brought us together with Nikolaj Zneider, who studied conducting with Sir Colin and with members of the London Symphony Orchestra with whom we shall be performing this piece.

The programme for our concert this evening, which was due to be conducted by Sir Colin, has been revised following his death and I can find no better words than those on the Barbican’s website which tell us:

It is with much sadness that the LSO announced the death of Sir Colin Davis on Sunday 14 April. Sir Colin specified that there should be no memorial service held for him, yet the Orchestra and many other people close to him, as well as our audiences, would like an opportunity to remember him, and to celebrate his extraordinary contribution to the LSO and wider musical life.  It is with that in mind that the closing concerts of the 2012/13 season, which Sir Colin was due to conduct, will now form a tribute to our former President, Principal Conductor and great friend.

All the music and artists have a close resonance with Sir Colin, from his support of young performers to the symphony that inspired him to be a musician. Joseph Wolfe, Sir Colin’s son, will conduct his father’s beloved Berlioz and Nikolaj Znaider has now asked to play Mozart’s Third Violin Concerto – one of Sir Colin’s favourites and a work they planned to perform together. Sir Colin was also President of the London Symphony Chorus, and they will now close the concerts with a setting of Friedrich Schiller’s poem Nänie, for full orchestra and choir, which Brahms wrote in memory of a close friend.

After we have completed our own rehearsal, I take the opportunity to sit in the auditorium for the remainder of the rehearsal.  Joseph Wolfe, in whom I immediately see the resemblance to both father and mother, conducts Berlioz and an encore by Elgar.  Tears flow as I listen to the Elgar but Wolfe is not maudlin, choosing instead to emphasise joy and celebration.  Znaider directs and plays the solo role in Mozart’s Violin Concerto number 3 and even in rehearsal I can see that this will be a ravishing performance.  Gordan Nikolich directs Beethoven’s eighth symphony from the leader’s chair.  Many times I have sat in the auditorium and watched the orchestra rehearse and still, something about this rehearsal makes me think I am enjoying the rare privilege of observing members of the orchestra in their most intimate and private place.

The programme is thoughtfully put together and stands on its own two feet.  This evening, it is also the means by which we celebrate Sir Colin’s life, mourn his loss as our father in music and observe in action the legacy he leaves behind him.

Recruiting at senior level? The bit you can’t (easily) do yourself

Developing as a leader
Maybe you’re familiar with the challenges of recruiting at the most senior levels of your organisation.  You might even have faced the ultimate challenge – taking someone on in a senior role and finding, maybe from the beginning or maybe some months down the line, that they aren’t delivering.  After going to the trouble and expense of shaping a job description, placing an advertisement, drawing on the services of a recruitment agency, interviewing, short-listing and interviewing again, you are faced with a whole new set of problems.  Maybe you battle on for a while, hoping that things might sort themselves out.  Maybe you bite the bullet and embark on some kind of disciplinary process or cut straight to discussions about a compromise agreement.  As well as the initial costs of recruitment you’re now staring at the costs of months of poor performance and (*sigh*) the costs of embarking on a new recruitment campaign.  If your initial mistakes have attracted any media attention, you also face the costs of turning round perceptions in the marketplace… and you already know how much bad history can linger.
Are you on your own?  No, you’re not.  Over years of assessing candidates for senior roles, I’ve learnt that clients learn to trust my advice most when they haven’t followed it and have to take action to address a Big Mistake in their senior level recruitment.  More than that, I’ve learnt that even at the most senior levels of household name organisations mistakes are made and sometimes left to linger for months and even years.  I’ve learnt that poor design of organisational structure or job descriptions that are not clear come back to haunt organisations down the line.  I’ve learnt that recruitment agencies often have a poor understanding of jobs so that the candidates they send to my client organisations are often poorly suited to do the job.  I’ve learnt that some organisations get an awful lot right.  I’ve learnt that some organisations get an awful lot right and still end up making Big Mistakes when it comes to recruiting at senior levels.
There is one thing that organisations find hard to do using traditional interviewing methods.  They find it hard to get past their own initial impressions and hard to get beneath the surface of candidates’ CVs and their answers in interview in order accurately to assess the behavioural match – to answer the question “to what extent does this candidate have the skills, values and motivation, emotional intelligence and behaviours to deliver effectively in this role?”  There are all sorts of reasons why organisations find this difficult.  The more organisations are unclear, for example, about the role for which they’re recruiting, the harder it is to make judgements about what’s needed to succeed in the role.  Many organisations lack an understanding of the behavioural side of recruitment – they just don’t know what it takes to succeed.  In the current marketplace, some of them are even abandoning well researched descriptions of behaviour (often called “competency frameworks”) in favour of, frankly, motherhood and apple pie.  Perhaps they lack the skills to interview effectively – a behavioural- or competency-based interview requires specialist interviewing skills which many organisations don’t have.
Perhaps one reason organisations struggle to make sound judgements about senior recruits goes beyond anything that’s easy to address within your own organisation.  I say this not only because I recognise the skill involved in conducting a competency-based interview.  No.  In addition, I recognise that the success of this kind of interview depends on getting right down and dirty with candidates – gathering detailed evidence of their approach to work, which can only be given by sharing detailed examples of their work.  Not many candidates are prepared to share this level of detail with a potential future employer, even if there are people in the organisation who have the skill to conduct the interview.  Commissioning skilled outside help can make it safer for the candidates to share their experiences as well as filling a gap in your organisation’s skill-base.
Now, I realise that what I’ve written is a bit of a rant.  Actually, I’ve rather enjoyed writing a bit of rant – at speed, from the heart and based on many years’ of experience.  I don’t know you.  I don’t know your organisation.  I don’t know the capability of you or your organisation.  One thing I would say to you is this:  you need to know your capability and the capability of your organisation.  Recruiting at senior level needs to begin with a good dose of self honesty so that you know where you are strong and where you need help.  And yes, I mean where you need help to recruit the right candidate as well as what help you need from the right candidate.  Without one, oftentimes, you won’t get the other.

There’s wisdom in knowing when to forgive

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, ,
There’s wisdom in knowing when to forgive
I’ve been struck recently by the way the theme of forgiveness has been popping up.  Over lunch the other day a colleague described how he had been reaching out to former colleagues some years after leaving the organisation in which they’d worked together.  Clients have been talking about difficult experiences with their colleagues – when someone had done something they’d found hard to forgive.  Rosabeth Moss Kanter has been writing on the subject recently in a blog posting for the Harvard Business Review entitled Great Leaders Know When to Forgive.  Even as I sat down to write this posting I realised there was a phone call I needed to make before I could be in integrity with myself in writing about forgiveness.
The interesting thing is that forgiveness is not a word that comes up often at senior levels – so you may be wondering what I’m talking about.  Reflecting on this topic, I wondered if – at least for now – the topic of forgiveness covers three areas.  In the first area, colleagues do something that is deeply personal – these are the small-scale actions that can be a thorn in our side.  Perhaps, for example, your colleague has taken credit in the board-room for an idea you know he or she got from you.  Perhaps he got the job you really wanted and you find it hard to let go of the conviction that, for some reason, the job was meant for you.  Perhaps you know someone has ‘bad-mouthed’ you to your colleagues at senior levels without ever coming to you to give open and honest feedback.
This first area has a ‘first cousin’ in the form of actions your colleagues may or may not have taken and which you have taken personally because you have attributed some kind of intention or drawn some kind of conclusion.  Yesterday, for example, before I wrote this posting, I decided to phone someone I’d been reaching out to for weeks – I’d sent multiple e-mails, I’d phoned and then phoned again.  I was starting to feel angry about the lack of response and also to wonder – was there something going on?  Part of me was concerned for the person I was contacting who is normally so reliable in coming back to me.  Part of me was angry about the consequences of not bringing to a conclusion some conversations we’d started earlier in the year.  And part of me was, well… a bit paranoid.  Had I done something wrong?  Was she angry with me?  I knew I needed to find out what was going on.
Sometimes, the things we struggle to forgive move beyond the personal to the organisational and beyond.  Moss Kanter, in her posting, Great Leaders Know When to Forgive, points to some of the examples that are familiar to us all.  Most striking to me is the example of Nelson Mandela, whose actions included appointing a racially diverse cabinet when some of his colleagues were clamouring for revenge against those who had oppressed black people in South Africa under apartheid.  In the kind of organisations I work with, forgiveness can range from letting go of one’s feelings about a hostile merger to forgiving those who had failed successfully to deliver an expensive IT project or letting go of angry feelings about a financial loss incurred.  These are examples of events that can cast a long shadow across an organisation unless they are forgiven.
How do you know that there’s something you need to forgive?  Your emotions – if you are attending to them with care – will give you some clues.  Do you feel angry or resentful, for example, about something someone has done or about some ongoing situation in your organisation?  Such feelings are closely linked to thoughts which are also worth noticing – when you’re telling yourself that someone has done something wrong or that such-and-such a situation is unacceptable.  This doesn’t mean it’s time – yet – to forgive.  Instead, such moments represent an opportunity to be present to your anger and to notice what it means.  Often, beneath the anger there are fears – fears that your needs (which needs?) will not be met.  You may also be assigning responsibility to someone else for your well-being.
Connecting with your thoughts and emotions in this way can lead you to insights about what you really want and open up new ways forward.  It’s not that such ways are always easy.  Perhaps your reflection will help you to realise that the things you most want to change in your organisation are not going to change and that it’s time for you to accept the status quo or move elsewhere.  Perhaps you need to recognise the incompetence of colleagues and consider what you need to do given the capabilities of your colleague(s).  Perhaps you need to look at the larger outcomes you desire for your organisation and accept that maintaining a low level feud stands in the way of your desires.
And then, it’s time to forgive.  In my experience, forgiveness becomes an option when we recognise that whatever has happened, it is the way we are thinking about our experience that makes us feel so bad.  Change our thinking and we open up the opportunity both for forgiveness and for a better experience going forward.  As a leader, your act of forgiveness may be an act of heroism on a grand scale.  It may, equally, be entirely invisible to anyone but yourself.  Either way, it releases you to move forward in a more constructive way and makes energy available to you that was previously the fuel of anger and resentment.
Forgiveness.  When have you done it?  How?  And with what outcomes?

When you’re hesitating to put yourself forward for that leadership role

Developing as a leader
When you catch a glimpse of your next leadership role…

Throughout the economic ups and downs of recent years, my business has continued to attract a steady flow of requests to conduct professional assessments of potential candidates for leadership roles.  Sometimes I interview short-listed candidates for vacant roles from within a client organisation or who want to join a client organisation.  Sometimes I’m asked to conduct an assessment to determine a candidate’s readiness for the next promotion, even before a role becomes vacant.  Sometimes I am asked to assess the leadership assets of an entire team as part of valuing an organisation which is merging with or de-merging from an organisation.

Often, I have the opportunity following an assessment to have a debrief with the person who has just been assessed and I never know what to expect.  Some candidates come full of fire and fury, doubting my professional judgement and wanting to prove me wrong.  Some candidates are amazed at the accuracy of the assessment and want to know how they can address their key development areas.  Because of the variety of needs candidates bring I always start the meeting by clarifying that this is a meeting for their benefit and asking what would best support them.

The assessment and the debrief that follows it is second only to coaching in gratifying my professional curiosity.  I love it that I get paid to be nosy – and on a grand scale.  For even when the immediate question is “can this person do a good job in his or her target role?” there’s always a deeper story.  Recently, I’ve interviewed candidates in several organisations who, for one reason or another, are hesitating to put themselves forward for the next leadership role.  The assessment, whilst designed to meet the needs of the organisation – my commissioning client – also offers an opportunity for the candidate to reflect on his or her deepest desires.  The debrief, as well as offering the opportunity to clarify the conclusions outlined in the assessment report, often includes an element of coaching.

But what about those candidates who, in some way, are hesitating to take the next step towards a larger senior role?  Sometimes, the value of the debrief lies in helping them to explore their hesitations and to understand them.  It helps when the assessment includes a good psychometric around motives and values to supplement an interview (I like to use the Hogan suite of tests, for example), though this is by no means essential.  Sometimes it’s enough to start by sharing what I notice and to ask questions.   “There was some good evidence of you leading others but mostly you talked about the work you do yourself.  Which do you find most exciting?”  Where I have some kind of a hunch it’s my policy to share my hunch and see how it lands.  “So, I notice that your examples of successful events were all examples in which you were doing the work rather than examples about leading your team.  I’m wondering if you’re most engaged when you have a hands on role in the delivery of a piece of work – what do you think?”

The purpose of such questions is never to prove that “Dorothy knows best”.  Far from it.  Instead, my aim is to support candidates in discerning their own truth.  This, in turn, offers a kind of “guiding light” to candidates who may have been unsure.  Once they have greater clarity and a stronger sense of connection with their own inner wisdom, they are better equipped to discern for themselves what their next steps should be.  Over the years I have met candidates who recognise that their deep love of their specialist area is greater than their desire to lead.  Such candidates often do well as the “first amongst equals” leader of a tight specialist team.  Sometimes I have met candidates who have battled their way into leadership roles only to feel deeply unhappy and even, sometimes, angry and resentful.  For these candidates, a debrief can open up a tender and vulnerable dialogue about the reasons they pursued a particular path and open a window onto previously hidden talents and desires.  Some candidates, though, may be well-suited to a larger leadership role, if only they can face their fears and take the next step.  Sometimes they even know it themselves – the feelings of increasing frustration they bring to the debrief are a sure sign that strategies that have worked in the past are keeping them smaller than they want to be right now.

The primary aim of an assessment is to give clarity to a potential employer about a particular hiring decision.  This aim is about gaining clarity and weighing risks.  There is, though, a rich world beyond the immediate hiring decision.  This second world is about the longer-term development of talent for the organisation and about the realisation of potential and desires for the individual.  In this second world the assessment and the debrief are often not the full answer.  Rather, they help candidates to identify key questions which may need to be explored further.

I wonder, what has been your experience of such moments – moments when you have explored the question of what next?  I’d love to hear about your experiences in the comment box below.

Below the surface: the hidden obstacles to organisational success

Developing as a leader,

The long weekend seems a world away and it’s only Thursday.  It’s not about work (or perhaps, not only about work).  It’s also that three days of dry and even sunny weather quickly gave way to rain and cold.  It seems as though winter is still with us.

I had designated the weekend for gardening and was true to this promise, knowing that my planting is already late and that it will be a couple of weeks until I can do anything substantial again.  I dug borders and planted runner beans, potatoes, dwarf beans, peas and broad beans.  I mowed the lawn.  I weeded a patch in the corner which has been gradually encroaching on my strawberry plants and threatening to encroach on the montbretia I planted last year.  I weeded the patch in front of my house and planted iris bulbs in the front and back gardens.  I potted up some spares for friends and neighbours – I probably made an unusual sight in my wellies and gardening gear when I walked down the road with plants for Dan. There’s more (much more) to do and still, I felt pretty chuffed with myself.

I even tackled something which, last year, I left alone.  Weeding a particular corner of my vegetable patch I struck something hard with my spade.  I’ve been used to digging up bricks in my garden since I moved here 13 years ago but this was something larger.  Last year I left it alone, but this year I wanted to dig it out so that I could plant a small lavender plant – a birthday gift – and know it would be unhindered in its growth by this unidentified object.  In South East London you have to look out for the occasional unexploded World War II bomb but this was something far more prosaic…  a sack of cement.  No doubt the builders left it behind.  By now it was solid and extremely heavy.  It is now sitting on my patio waiting for me to move it to a more permanent home.

I found myself comparing this hidden item with some of the obstacles that lie just out of view for individuals and organisations.  Yes, we bump up against them from time to time and still, we don’t quite know they are there.  One of the greatest organisational myths, for example, is that a healthy economy is one that is growing.  Our expectation of growth works well at certain stages of the economic cycle but leaves us poorly prepared for the moments when growth is unlikely if not impossible.  These include the moments when our local or global economy is in decline.  They also include the moments when some change in the marketplace makes a fundamental difference to our offering.  How many banks, for example, were still setting stretch targets for foreign exchange the year the Euro was introduced?  How many companies have been caught on the hop by new generations of technology and the advance of the internet?

In my work with organisations, I have noticed how there is often someone who sees beyond old paradigms to anticipate a change.  Such a person can be a great asset to the organisation, if only he (or she) can make himself heard.  Clearly, if the organisation can see such a change ahead of time, its leaders can allocate thinking time and creativity to shape a response.  I notice that my thoughts have wandered (wondered, even) to a place I did not anticipate when I started to write and I am taking time to check in with myself and to ask, “so what?”  It seems to me that the question for you, in your leadership role, is this:  how do you respond to the pessimists, the ‘nay-sayers’, the ‘black hats’ of your organisation?  And if you are yourself the pessimist, the ‘nay-sayer’, the ‘black hat’ of your organisation, how can you share your insights in ways that your colleagues can hear?

If this posting resonates with you, please share.  I’d like to hear about the times you’ve seen the hidden bag of cement and the times you haven’t.  I’d like to hear how you’ve made the case for change and with what success.  I’d like to hear what trends you see on the horizon that need to be recognised.

PS  And here’s a clue…  I haven’t read it yet and still, I was curious to hear about a book by Stephen D. King entitled When The Money Runs Out:  The End of Western Affluence.  

At the Barbican for Berlioz

About Dorothy

With concert schedules planned years in advance, nobody could have predicted that our performance of the last act of Berlioz’s The Trojans would take place so soon after the death of Berlioz’s greatest champion, Sir Colin Davis.  But… I am getting ahead of myself.

On Wednesday 22nd May, I joined my colleagues from the London Symphony Chorus for Valerie Gergiev’s  60th birthday gala concert at London’s Barbican Centre.  As a chorus, our contribution to the concert was small – the final act of The Trojans contains little by way of choral singing so that we had had just two rehearsals before our first tutti in Walthamstow.  (Perhaps making the journey to Walthamstow on a weekday evening was our greatest contribution).  The programme as a whole, though, was the kind of glittering affair you would expect on such an occasion, with virtuoso piano followed by virtuoso violin and a scheduled finish time that was well past my weekday bedtime.

In the first half of the concert I took up the option of sitting on stage and was not disappointed.  Unfamiliar with Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2, I decided to close my eyes and simply listen without any visual distraction.  Alexander Toradze had a touch on the keys of the piano that, simply, delighted.  I enjoyed the sense of playfulness in some moments and the extraordinary lightness of Toradze’s touch on the keys.  When he finished, the audience’s response was an eruption of applause and appreciation.  I would have been quite happy to go home at that point and to savour the experience just gone.

I would, though, have missed more virtuosic sparkle from Leonidas Kavakos on the violin.  The programme – Paganini, Ravel and Sarasate – was a collection of pieces which might easily have been marked ‘unplayable’, so difficult were they to perform.  Kavakos played them with the assurance of one who has practised for a lifetime, yet without show.  If he had any sense of being there to thrill the audience it was through his musicianship and technical accomplishment rather than any showmanship on his part.  I found myself imagining the boy who became the man – the classroom geek turned extraordinary muso.

The final act of The Trojans, in the concert’s second half, marks a change – from the delights of virtuoso performance to the great soul depths of Berlioz’s rendition of the story of Dido and Aeneas.  There are hard acts to follow here.  On disc, it was Dame Janet Baker who introduced me to the role of Dido, whilst as a singer, I have had the privilege and pleasure of singing under the baton of Sir Colin Davis.  So soon after his death, it proves hard to come to this piece without some undercurrent of emotion – maybe resentment, certainly sorrow – that it is Gergiev and not Davis who, this evening, conducts this piece.

The differences begin in rehearsal as Gergiev gallops through the piece, barely stopping to give notes or to ensure that tricky sections are buttoned down.  At one point he tells the orchestra that their playing needs to be extraordinary and, right now, is only ordinary and I find myself wondering if such an admonition has any hope at all of producing the effect he desires.  This is not Colin – it’s just not Colin.  There is neither the feel for the opera’s story nor the meticulous preparation nor the sense of fellowship and connection with orchestra and chorus.  As one colleague puts it after the concert, Colin would act this piece – where it was playful his baton would become the instrument of flirtation, where there was tragedy, Colin would be the tragedy.  Gergiev, by contrast, conducts at extraordinary speed so that it is a challenge to articulate the words and so that, indeed, the concert finishes well ahead of its scheduled time.

Even in the somewhat rough hands of Gergiev, Berlioz is Berlioz and I find myself immersed in the drama of Dido’s final journey.  Ekaterina Semenchuk, in the role of Dido, has a magnificent alto voice throughout her range and sings both with assurance and with great depths which touch my soul.  So striking is her singing that the remainder of the cast, whilst competent, is somewhat overshadowed.  Nonetheless, it is Berlioz who is most in my heart, for who else could write so stirringly and with such depth?

As I write, I smile to myself… knowing that, in just a few weeks, I shall have my first reaudition with Simon Halsey, our Music Director since the middle of last year.  There’s every possibility that this reaudition will mark the end – or at least the beginning of the end – of my tenure (already half a lifetime and more) as a member of the London Symphony Chorus.  I hope it does not but if it does, I wonder if I shall look back and think, he wasn’t Colin and still, he wasn’t so very bad.

When it’s time to give feedback to the boss

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence,
Giving feedback to the boss?
Don’t skirt around what you have to say.

I have been following a thread of discussion on LinkedIn.  The discussion, amongst fellow coaches, was prompted by a request along the following lines:  Anyone got any suggestions for building rapport with a CEO whom the Board has asked you to coach, but who believes he’s doing a good job?  I have the opportunity to have a couple of interactions with him before the Board lets him know they’d like him to work with a coach.  Whilst the coach is at risk of tying himself in knots, most colleagues have encouraged him to establish clear boundaries with the Board.  It’s for Board members to give clear and direct feedback to the CEO about the behaviours they find difficult.  It’s for Board members to suggest that the CEO work with a coach.

The issue is common.  I leave out the word “surprisingly” because why would it surprise us that a human being who’s risen to a senior position may do things we find difficult – unless, of course, we hold the view that  organisations only recruit people into roles who are effective and well suited to the role.  We’d like this to be true but it isn’t.  Instead, we are faced with human beings in the role of the “boss”, people whose behaviours we find difficult.  “He tells us he wants us to share our ideas but when we do, he dismisses them out of hand. It’s always his ideas that prevail”.  “It’s been five years since I told her that John isn’t performing and he’s still sitting round the top table.  Yes, she’s taken work away so he can’t do any damage but she needs to face the issue straight on so we don’t have to work around him any more”.  “I’d like to actually have a boss – someone who is aware of what I do and who is able to give direction and support.  Yes, I am pretty self motivated when it comes to it and still, I’d like to know how my work is seen in this organisation”.  To these issues, I am sure you can add your own – because bosses rarely measure up and give us the support and direction we need, even though it’s in their job description to do so.

And it’s hard to give feedback.  It’s hard because we find ourselves chafing against our expectation – of which we may or may not be aware – that it’s for the boss to know how to manage us.  How come we are doing the work of managing our staff and we have to manage the boss as well?!  It’s hard because the very reason the feedback is needed is because the boss has a blind spot and he or she does not enjoy hearing about behaviours of which s/he’s unaware.  It’s hard because, at the end of the day, the boss is the boss – there is an inbuilt difference in the power he or she wields in the organisation.  So we fear our boss’s response to any feedback we might give.  Most of all it’s hard because to share our needs fully can leave us feeling vulnerable and exposed.  More vulnerable and exposed than we like to admit.

There are ways around this.  You can try to outsource the giving of feedback like the Board I mentioned right at the top of the page.  You can talk about your boss to others – to your colleagues or your loved ones – declaring heatedly that he or she ought to know better.  Hey!  You can even change jobs in the hope of finding a better boss next time.  These strategies protect you from the vulnerability of giving feedback.  Some of them leave you with the same boss and the same behaviours and the same unmet needs.  One of them may even leave you with a different boss and different behaviours and different unmet needs.

Some people even protect themselves from the vulnerability that can come from giving feedback by showering their boss with “shoulds” and “oughts” and even “good ideas”.  “Don’t you think it would be a good idea if we checked in every few weeks to make sure we know we’re on track?”  “I thought you might enjoy this article – it says that effective leaders should hold regular meetings with their teams”.  Even when the “should” is not explicit, holding the view that our boss “should” (take time for one to one meetings, understand your need for clarity, lead more effective team meetings…) in some way protects us, placing the responsibility for change with the boss.

At the same time, if you want things to change, the ball is in your court.  It’s time for self-examination:  do you want this change enough that you’re willing to speak up or is this one you want to let go?  And if you choose to speak up, it helps to be clear.  Let your boss know what it is he or she does that doesn’t work for you and what behaviours you’d like instead.  Be willing to share how these different behaviours would contribute to you so your boss can understand the significance of what you’re asking.  Be willing to listen – there may be reasons why your boss chooses not to do what you ask.  Focus on your needs and the boss’s – and explore how you can work together in ways which meet those needs.

More than anything, be prepared to learn.  This kind of conversation, without exception, yields information.  It’s not always information that’s easy to digest.  It may be information about you (that you can make requests of your boss, for example, who always wondered why you weren’t more demanding).  It may be information about your boss (that s/he knows what you say is right but may not follow through to action).  It may be information about the wider organisation.  Being better informed opens up choices.  They may not be easy choices but they are better informed because you’ve had the conversation.

I wonder, are you ready to give feedback to your boss?

Warning: don’t play with our values!

Developing as a leader, Developing leadership across your organisation,


What do your staff see when they read the Our Values statement on the walls of your organisation?  I wrote this posting for Discuss HR blog where it was published yesterday.

Recently I’ve been in the classroom, as a student.  I took my Hogan certification workshop last month with the aim of gaining accreditation to use the Hogan suite of tests and enjoyed the luxury of soaking up new information and insight.  Since then I’ve been diving deeper into the learning – exploring my results from the Hogan tests and matching them against my own experience, conducting my first feedback sessions, diving into the literature, even correlating Hogan’s research against what I know of David McClelland’s research.  It’s been a ball – albeit one with a serious purpose.

But let me get to my subject, which is not Hogan, though it was prompted by a remark by my trainer that Hogan holds the view that if you want to change organisational culture, you need to change your staff.  And I don’t mean gently invite them to change their values – to adjust the things they hold most dear in order to align their view of what’s important with the new list on the wall of their team area or executive office.  No, I’m talking about recruiting staff whose values correspond to those you want to promote around the organisation.

I was curious about this comment because I know how fashionable it has been during the course of my career for organisations to shape a values statement for a new era.  I also know how such statements can become the object of cynicism as the posters that adorn every wall gradually curl at the edges without any fundamental change.  We need to become more competitive and fleet of foot – let’s put that in a new values statement and see what changes.  If anything.

There’s also the tricky reality that people may do the same things for different reasons.  John in Risk and Control may adhere to the rules because he has strong values around acting with integrity, in line with clear principles.  His colleague Charles may also have a strong nose for risk management, which derives from his interest in making money and his understanding that, in a highly regulated industry, you have to be on the right side of the regulator to maintain your mandate to do business.  Each set of values has its advantages and disadvantages and the fact that a single department or team has diverse people with diverse values in the team also has its advantages and disadvantages as a result.

Of course, the ‘change your values, change your people idea’ can indeed play out in the long term.  Whenever I touch on the subject certain organisations spring to mind – Virgin, for example, Ben and Jerry’s or Pret a Manger.  Googling ‘Virgin values’ I came across the following statement on Virgin’s About Us page:  Virgin believes in making a difference. We stand for value for money, quality, innovation, fun and a sense of competitive challenge. We strive to achieve this by empowering our employees to continually deliver an unbeatable customer experience.  I suspect that Virgin’s values statement is, though, the cart rather than the horse – that Richard Branson has, over the years, attracted people with similar values to work with him in a growing range of subsidiary organisations.  First came the embodiment of the values and then came the attempt to capture those values explicitly.

If all your staff share the same values, there can be an ease of working together, a strong brand that naturally emerges and the potential to attract a client base that shares your values – these, for me, are the most obvious advantages of shared values across an organisation.  There can also be risks.  The altruistically motivated organisation, for example, still needs somebody with enough commercial savvy to keep a strong eye on the books though he or she may feel unwelcome and uncomfortable amongst people with different values or have to push hard to engage colleagues in the financial realities of doing good for others.

Either way, a key question that the organisational values programme can overlook is this:  how malleable are people’s basic values and motivations?  To the extent that they are largely stable in most adults, investing in a new set of organisational values to meet the challenges of different times whilst keeping the same staff may well be costly and ineffective.  And if it is, how then can organisations drive those behaviours that are needed in a given era.

Most of all I wonder, what has been your experience in practice?

Good Communication that Blocks Learning

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, ,


Twenty-first-century corporations will find it hard to survive,
let alone flourish, unless they get better work from their employees.
This does not necessarily mean harder work or more work
What it does necessarily mean is employees who’ve learned
to take active responsibility for their own behavior,
develop and share first-rate information about their jobs,
and make good use of genuine empowerment
to shape lasting solutions to fundamental problems.


Chris Argyris


Whilst not directly aware of the work of Chris Argyris, I have nonetheless been aware of his work via the work of Roger Schwarz.  I was interested recently to come across an article by Chris on the Harvard Business Review blog, entitled Good Communication That Blocks Learning.  The quote above is the opening paragraph to Chris’s article, positioning it within the challenging economic times we live in.

Chris’s article took me back to the early days of my career, when Total Quality Management was all the rage  and everyone was reading Tom Peters’ In Search of Excellence.  This was an era that emphasised making many small improvements based on listening to members of the workforce in order to create a quality product or service and to design out flaws and wastage – at least, this is my memory of Total Quality Management approaching 30 years later.

I don’t remember ever hearing anyone criticise the logic of TQM and still, there are reasons why, all these years later, we still talk about the need to empower – without actually empowering.  Argyris’s article scratches the surface to uncover the unconscious behaviours that run counter to our leadership aspirations, preventing us from ‘walking our talk’.

It’s long and it’s also worthwhile – so make yourself a cuppa and close the office door before you read it.

How much do you recognise the behaviours Argyris describes – in yourself?  In others?

The not-so-positive “positive sandwich technique”

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, ,
If you’re using the ‘positive sandwich technique’
to convey negative feedback, you may
be treading on thin ice 

In 2007, it was my privilege to participate in an Intensive International Training in Nonviolent Communication with Marshall Rosenberg, author of Nonviolent Communication:  a Language of Life.  Regular readers will know that this book is a favourite of mine and gets a regular mention on my blog.  I went with a friend of mine and we decided to join some of our fellow participants in the dormitory accommodation a short walk from the main building.  It was only on day two of the training that I realised that one of our companions in the dorm, surrounded by women old enough to be his mother, was a young man.

The training was a rich experience for me which I continue to treasure.  A few people touched me in particular, including the young man in the dorm.  As our time together was drawing towards its completion, I asked him (and a few others) if I could have some time with him before we said goodbye.  I wanted to express my gratitude and appreciation ahead of our final goodbyes.

Sitting in a quiet corner, I shared, one by one, the things he had done that I most appreciated and how they had contributed to my well-being and enjoyment of the course.  It’s been my experience that sharing appreciation in this way can create moments of connection, both with the pleasures of giving and receiving and with each other.  On this occasion, though, I noticed that my colleague was becoming increasingly tense – I watched as his body stiffened and asked him what was going on for him.

He told me he was waiting for the real feedback and when I asked him what he meant, he said he was waiting for the negative feedback which must surely follow.  I told him there was no negative feedback – I wanted to talk with him precisely because I wanted to share my joy at meeting him and how much I appreciated the time we had spent together.  For a moment he seemed to doubt this until he realised that, yes, I really meant what I said.  We laughed about the misunderstanding and went on to have the real conversation, celebrating together the times we had enjoyed.

I was reminded of this experience recently when I received notification from Roger Schwarz of the publication of a blog posting he wrote, entitled The “Sandwich Approach” Undermines Your Feedback, published recently by the Harvard Business Review.  This approach has been taught to managers over time as a way to soften the blow of giving negative feedback, making it easier to give and easier to receive… or so the theory goes.  In practice, as my own experience illustrates, this approach can make people wary of receiving positive feedback because they assume it’s a precursor to some kind of corrective feedback.  If you’ve ever tried the “positive sandwich technique” to giving feedback and wondered why it doesn’t work or even tried it and come away believing that it did work, it’s worth reading Roger’s article for a different point of view.

Please let me know know how you get on.