Kitchen celebrations

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A thing of beauty is a joy forever
John Keats
Endymion

Yes, the kitchen is finished!  After three months of a world turned upside down I am now in the process of deciding what goes where, gradually moving things from the dining room into their new homes in the kitchen.  There has been much washing of builders’ dust from mugs, containers etc.

Winter has also returned and my camera is not coping well with today’s gloom so the photos above and below are already a week or two old.  Final touches have been done.  The magnificent sculptural shelves below are peopled with cook books, gardening books and a teapot or two.

I am totally in love with the kitchen.  I notice already how much more pleasure I have even in the simple act of making a cup of tea.  Edward, my nephew, is not the only person who has commented on the “country” feel of the kitchen and Gary’s sister-in-law, who teaches interior design, commented favourably when she popped by recently – this is not so much a kitchen as a room.  It’s a place to live in, for sure.

In this moment of writing – in haste and between coaching calls – I am also aware of the journey that has taken place in my house over the last three months and the enormous challenge of working in the house whilst also having such a major project done.  At times I have been giving 10-minute warnings ahead of coaching calls (and am grateful both to Gary and Wills for their flexibility and to clients for their understanding when occasionally the sound of drilling erupts in the background).

There have been conversations to be had and decisions to be made at times I would otherwise have spent working.  I have loved my close involvement in this project and saying yes to this project has also meant saying no to other things, including my work.

I reflect that one of the challenges in life is that saying yes to one thing always means saying to no to others.  I wonder, what are you saying yes to?

Learning leadership from role models

Developing as a leader, ,

Harvard Business Review’s Morning Advantage came up with another neat article recently.  What did HBR say about the article?


Do you subscribe to the notion of “born leaders?” Or do you believe that the ability to lead is derived from a set of psychological properties that can be learned? The answer to that question, says Art Markman, goes to the heart of how much you’ll be influenced by role models. Not surprisingly, the more you think that leadership skills can be acquired, the greater the positive influence of others on your behaviour. Markman’s belief is that we can all learn — at the very least, improve — our leadership skills. Thus, those of us who don’t seek and study role models are missing an important opportunity.

Click here if you’d like to read the full article which is offered by Psychology Today.

Savouring a ‘thank you’

All articles, Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, ,

I’ve had a busy start to the year.  As well as working with a portfolio of coaching and consulting clients I have been on the steep uphill curve of ‘project mobilisation’, conducting a number of assessments for a new client on behalf of my former employer, The Hay Group.  This has meant getting up to speed on a new process and report format with more tiny details than I handle with ease – details which, in any case, have been subject to adjustments along the way.

Last week, I had my final debrief (for now) with one of the people I assessed.  He thanked me for my time and gave unsolicited feedback which he subsequently shared in an e-mail with his line manager and with my colleagues at the Hay Group.  The next day, our project manager sent an e-mail saying thank you to the whole team.

In the midst of so many thank yous I have taken time to reflect on the team of which I am a member.  The central project team have liaised with me to arrange dates, manage the flow of information so that I have everything I need for each assessment and so that our clients get their reports exactly when they need them.  Members of the Hay QA team have provided an essential point of reference as we calibrate our scores across the team and between our own team and our client’s other main provider.  Members of the wider project team have liaised with the client at a high level to clarify what’s needed and provided a flow of information which has also supported the process.  I could go on…

I have also taken time to reflect on my own contribution.  There have been calls ahead of assessments to clarify the context for the assessment and ensure I am well-briefed.  There have been early-morning starts, travelling to meet with clients and conduct interviews and, afterwards the writing of reports and debriefs with assessment candidates and their line managers.  I have employed many skills I have (including interviewing, analysing, writing, coaching) and some I don’t (it’s a miracle I manage to arrive in the right place at the right time – such organisation is a learned rather than a natural skill for me).  I like to think I have done good work and I’ve certainly done it with the intention to add value to each client as well as to support an organisational (promotion) process.

One thing I do notice is this:  that our project manager, rather than say ‘well done’, said ‘thank you’.  Oh!  How sweet this is to my ears!  Perhaps it’s only me and still, I’d much rather hear someone’s appreciation of my work and the difference it has made to them than I would hear someone’s judgement.  To me, the work I do has meaning because it makes a difference to someone or something and this is what I hear in a thank you.

Do you say ‘well done!’ or ‘thank you’ to those you lead?

The dance of honesty – being honest with others

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, , , ,

It’s taken me a while to get to this posting, in which I want to explore what it takes to be honest to others.  Having written three postings on what I’m calling the dance of honesty I am aware that this is a vast subject – I shall touch it lightly today.

Let’s do this together.  Take a moment to think of something you’d like to share with someone at home or at work – something you’d like to share but hesitate to mention.  Notice what you feel when you think about sharing it.  Perhaps it’s irritation because you feel the other person “ought to know”.  Perhaps you feel concerned when you think the other person might be hurt or anxious when you think they might be offended.  It is these feelings and the thoughts that sit behind them that are holding you back.

Having checked in with your feelings, notice the thoughts that accompany them.  Often, when we hesitate to share some truth, it is because we have a sense that there’s some risk involved.  Perhaps there is a risk – you might know, for example, how critical your boss is of anyone who doesn’t share his view.  (I once worked with a leadership team who all told me how they’d stopped sharing ideas with their boss because his ideas always prevailed.  The boss thought his team had no creativity at all).  Perhaps your thoughts echo some old theme in your life, usually from childhood – you always feel anxious about sharing your feelings or expressing an alternative point of view.

This difference – between some objectively identifiable risk and some old fear is important.  If it’s the latter, it may be especially important that you start to take steps which will help you to differentiate between situations you faced way back when and what is true in the here and now.  (That’s a whole other posting in itself).  Either way, though, telling the truth depends on your willingness to face consequences that are – as yet – unknown.  So, right now, thinking about the thing you have not yet said, just notice how willing you are to face unknown outcomes.  It isn’t always easy.

It may not be wise.  Before you speak your truth, you may like to ask yourself, what outcome am I hoping for?  Let’s take the example above – your boss is pursuing a proposal you think is bad for your organisation.  At the same time, you know he’s slow to take on board the ideas of others.  You may have more influence over the outcomes if you take time to think through how best to convey your ideas so that he will hear you.  Perhaps you need to address his main concerns when you share your views – showing, for example, how another strategy may be more effective in boosting sales or reducing staffing costs.  Perhaps you need to speak quietly with others to whom he might listen more willingly – his most trusted colleagues in the business.

If you do decide to speak with him directly, you could do worse than follow some simple guidelines – which I combine from a number of sources (including Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication:  A Language for Life and Roger Schwarz’s The Skilled Facilitator):

  • Build and maintain connection – especially when you’re sharing something difficult for both parties, it’s important to remember to build and maintain rapport.  You can do this in many different ways – by checking in (“how is this landing with you?”), by gently mirroring body language and tone of voice, by seeking to understand what’s important to him or her.  Begin by holding the intention to connect and remind yourself of this intention if things get tough;
  • Focus on interests, not positions – be clear on what needs you want to meet by being honest and be open to the needs of others.  Do what you can to share your own needs and to hear and understand the needs of the other person.  Then you can explore strategies – a path of action – that meets everyone’s needs;
  • Share observations and avoid judgements – you’ll make it easier for the other person to hear you if you share relevant information in the form of observations (“when you said ‘X…'”) rather than presenting your conclusions as the truth.  This might include sharing your thoughts and feelings as observations – there’s a big difference between saying “You’re getting this completely wrong” and saying “I’m telling myself that you’re getting this completely wrong and that makes me feel anxious”;
  • Make clear requests – be clear what response you want and ask for it.  Be ready, too, to accept a “no”.  Equally, be ready to receive requests from the person you are talking with and be ready to say “yes” or “no”.
Whether you are speaking honestly at work or in your private life you may or may not get to an outcome that meets your needs well.  Being honest, though, helps you to test what’s possible.  It may open up a far better outcome than you expected – or provide information that tells your needs won’t be met in the way you hoped.  This, too, opens up the opportunity to explore alternative ways to meet your needs.
I wonder, how does this land with you?

The dance of honesty – being honest with yourself

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, , ,

In recent days I have been writing about honesty and its opposite – lying, deception, call it what you will.  I recognise in this subject a double bind:  it’s hard work to maintain a lie, it’s hard work to be honest.

Today, I thought I’d say a few words about what it takes to be honest with ourselves.  What immediately springs up for me is compassion.  The more we judge ourselves, the more likely we are to be dishonest with ourselves.  You think you have to be a fully formed Director from the minute you step into the role?  It’s going to be hard for you to be honest about areas in which you don’t yet have the skills you need.  You think you have to be good at managing people?  You may find it hard to own how hopeless you feel when you try to address performance problems in your team – the easy way out is to blame your under-performers.  You think the delays in progress towards your targets are unacceptable?  You could end up blaming all the external factors that have a bearing on results and lose sight of any power you have to make a difference.

At the same time, compassion does not equate to zero accountability – paradoxically, I’ve often found the opposite is true.  If we can show ourselves a level of self-acceptance and compassion, we are often better able to take action.  To take an example from above, if you know you are new to the role of Director and you accept that you will have some learning to do, you will find it better to take action to identify those areas in which you need to learn and to seek out your learning.

One of the most powerful forms of self honesty is the kind of honesty that comes when we attend to our own actions and inner dialogue.  Roger Schwarz, author of The Skilled Facilitator, calls this your “left hand column”.  Here’s an example from one leader from a meeting in which he is practising for the first time attending to his left hand column:

“John puts forward his ideas and I immediately hear judgements in my head.  ‘Here we go again… we’ve been through this a million times and John still doesn’t get it!’  I can feel my temperature rising and my face is getting more red.  I notice that John  has said several things that I haven’t heard because I’m already thinking about how I want to respond.  For the first time, I take a pause before responding – letting him finish.  I feel something new – something I haven’t felt before – humble or embarrassed or something… because for the first time I recognise that I’m not listening.  I always thought the problem was with John and now I realise that I am part of the problem…”

Are you ready for this kind of self-honesty?  Are you ready to be the observer of your own inner dialogue?  Here’s an exercise for you in case you are:

  • Take time alone – thirty minutes or so – with a pen and paper or your notebook or computer;
  • Take a moment to identify a time when you were in your flow – a time when things were going well for you and you were at your best.  Spend ten minutes making notes on your inner dialogue during that time.  Try to capture as much information as you can – about your thoughts, your feelings.  One way to do this is to have separate columns on your piece of paper (a) for what you said and did, (b) for any actions by others, and (c) for your inner dialogue;
  • After ten minutes stop and take a two minute break.  After your break, do the same thing again but this time for a time when things weren’t working for you.  Go through the same process, noting everything you can remember about the event.  Stop writing after ten minutes and take a two minute break;
  • In the remaining six minutes, make notes about your inner dialogue.  Notice what parts of your inner dialogue contributed to your success.  Notice what parts of your inner dialogue contributed to any problems you experienced.  Notice any inner dialogue you have in response to your new insights;
  • Before you finish, take a moment to acknowledge yourself for the work you’ve done and for your self-honesty in the process.

  

Exploring the consequences of honesty and deception

Emotional Intelligence

How much hard work do you put into maintaining a lie?

And if you’re telling yourself “this doesn’t apply to me”, hold on!  Take a moment to notice the feelings this question evokes in you and to sit with them – is it irritation, outrage, impatience?  If it is, there may be something for you to learn – if only you’re willing.  Because if you’re honest with yourself and even if you think you always “tell it like it is”, you probably have a way to go when it comes to telling the truth.

I ask the question because telling one lie usually involves you in a number of additional lies, even in the most simple of cases.  Your friend asks you to go out and you tell him you’re busy because you don’t want to take time to explain that you prefer to stay at home.  In order to live with your lie you tell yourself that to tell him would be to hurt his feelings – something which you can only guess in advance.  And when he asks you down the line how your other thing went you have quickly to extemporise a response.  “Fine, thank you…”  already you’ve told another lie.

The workplace is no different.  Perhaps you are holding back from telling your boss you think his plan of action has some potentially disastrous consequences.  Perhaps you have decided not to let your team know about forthcoming changes in the structure of your organisation.  Perhaps you’re avoiding telling Jo that his work colleagues have been complaining about him behind his back.  Whether in work or away, the likelihood is that your attempts to withhold some truth are aimed at saving you from some unwelcome consequence… from the wrath of your boss and from having your “cards marked”, from having to manage a team that’s unsettled and losing focus or from losing staff before you’re ready to let them go, from a response you cannot predict but know might be difficult from Jo…

You’re probably not thinking about the negative consequences of withholding honesty.  You’re not thinking, for example, about how much it weighs on you – what hard work it is and the guilt you feel – to tell a lie.  You’re not thinking about the erosion of trust that accompanies your dishonesty over time.  You’re not thinking about how your current gain is your future loss as those around you uncover the truth and re-visit the way they view you.

You probably don’t know just what’s possible when you embrace and commit to honesty – to a step-by-step journey towards more honest relationships and communication.  How would it be for you, for example, to discover that the response you have most feared from your boss or employing organisation just isn’t going to happen?  Or to discover that it is and to be able to decide how best to respond?  How would it be over time to build relationships in which you can be honest and be accepted at the same time?  How would it be to put down the burden of maintaining some kind of lie – an image of yourself that matches your idea of what you should be as a leader, a parent, an employee, a spouse – and to feel the lightness that comes with being yourself?

I begin to wax lyrical.  I wonder, what is your perception of the consequences of honesty… and deception?

The dance of honesty

Emotional Intelligence,

Harriet Goldhor Lerner wrote a number of books whose titles begin with the phrase “The Dance” – The Dance of Intimacy, The Dance of Anger, The Dance of Deception…  I haven’t read them all though I did recently read The Dance of Deception as one of a number of books about lying and deception.  Daniel Goleman’s Vital Lies, Simple Truths is another and so is Dorothy Rowe’s Why We Lie:  The Source of our Disasters.

Each book is quite different.  Goleman talks of the science of lying – how it works in the brain.  Lerner writes specifically for women (her book is subtitled Pretending and Truth-telling in Women’s Lives).  Rowe draws on an extraordinary array of contemporary examples to illustrate her thesis.  After I read her book, for example, I was moved to read about the children of prominent Nazis in Stephan Lebert’s book on the subject, My Father’s Keeper and then The Himmler Brothers by Heinrich Himmler’s great niece Katrin Himmler.  Rowe dedicates a whole chapter to Lying for Your Government in which she suggests that whilst the CIA, for example, exists to tell the truth to American presidents, CIA chiefs soon learn that it’s not in their interest to tell the president what he doesn’t want to hear.

Reflected in these books are a number of truths about honesty and lying.  We all lie, for example, and we all lie about lying.  We all lie with good intentions, and we often lie to ourselves about what those good intentions are.  (If you doubt me on this one, just think about a time when you’ve told what often gets called a “white lie” in order “to save someone’s feelings” and try on for size the idea of going ahead and telling the truth.  You’ll mostly find that you were saving yourself from a difficult experience at the same time).

The truth is also that telling the truth can be hard work at times which is why, today, I am appropriating Lerner’s use of the phrase “the dance” and applying it to honesty.  Telling the truth involves a commitment to honesty, a willingness to hear how others respond and – in the longer term – a readiness to live with the unpredictable consequences.

This subject is so vast that I wonder where to start and feel sure I shall return to it.  Perhaps a good place to start is by sending out an invitation to you.  My invitation to you is this:

  • Ask yourself how committed you are to honesty and to telling the truth – a mark out of ten is one way of answering this question;
  • Commit to noticing for a week how honest you are in practice, especially at times when honesty is challenging for you.  Notice the times when you decided to be honest even though you were putting something at risk. Notice the times when you chose to avoid honesty in some way – be it with yourself or with some other person;
  • After a week, return to your mark out of ten and check how accurate it was.
Do let me know how you get on…

Being at choice

Developing as a leader, Your personal and professional well-being, , , ,

The kitchen is finally moving towards completion.  Gary has put together his “Schindler” of all the things that need to be done before we can say it’s finished.  I am looking forward to populating the cupboards which need to be painted inside before I can finally move in (meantime, Gary and Wills have been making liberal use of them for tools and other items of their trade).

Wills was full of cold at the beginning of last week and I, too, succumbed so that on Friday I caught myself reflecting on all the reasons why I might have caught the cold – catching it from Wills, the impact of the long hard slog of accommodating work in the kitchen, the cold weather…

…and then I caught myself in the act of thinking that somehow the cold had “happened to me”.  To a degree it had of course.  Henry Dreher, in his book The Immune Power Personality (which I’ve mentioned before on this blog), talks of breakthroughs in 19th century science, when “the researches of German physician Robert Koch and French physician Louis Pasteur led to the theory of specific etiology – the idea that diseases were caused by a single microorganism and could be eradicated by a single strategy for destroying the invader”.

Dreher also talks, though, of the work of Claude Bernard, the mid-19th-century French physiologist.  To quote briefly from Dreher’s already much abbreviated description of Bernard’s work, “Health was predicated on balance, and disease was a by-product of imbalance in the interior environment”.  Germs were not so much omnipotent as ready to to take root when the conditions were right.  Reflecting on my own health at this time brought home the tiny deteriorations in my normal health regimes in recent months – drinking far less of my usual “Supergreens“, overlooking my usual vitamin supplements, a diet that isn’t quite up to par, less walking… I knew I was reaping the results of small changes I was already aware of.  I have been telling myself that I’ll get back on track when the kitchen is done.  This is true – and still, the accumulation of small changes is also the sum of my own decisions in recent weeks.

At one level, I’m talking about a common cold.  At another level, I’m also talking about the wider question of what mindset we bring to our lives.  When something goes wrong, do you focus on what has happened to you?  Perhaps wish things were different that are beyond your control?  Or do you focus on your own contribution – what you have done that has made a contribution and what you can do to move forward?

There is a phrase used by some coaches (and no doubt others, too) – “being at choice”.  We are at choice when we focus on our own choices rather than seeing ourselves as the helpless victim of circumstance.  Others use the term “in your own power”.  Over the years I have seen how successful leaders have mastered the art of being at choice.  These are the leaders who use their power of choice to achieve outcomes they desire.  They are often optimistic and resilient in the most difficult of circumstances.  Rather than expend energy in wishing (fruitlessly) that things were different, they harness their creativity to the question “what can I do?”

And lest you are beating yourself up right now or yearning to do things differently and not knowing how, I hasten to add that this isn’t an “either/or” scenario.  Most of us have moments when we are at choice (standing in our power) and others when we are not.  Moving to a more powerful position is something we do one step at a time.  For me, in recent days, just noticing that I am not at choice has opened up possibilities to make different choices.  

The leader’s new clothes

Developing as a leader,


On Friday, a late cancellation afforded me the opportunity to have a late breakfast, watching Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic at the beginning of the men’s singles semi-finals in the Australian Open.  After finishing an assessment report I returned over lunch to watch the end of the match.  It was tantalisingly close.  At times Djokovic – currently world number 1 – was clearly the better player.  Even so, there were moments when Murray’s performance had me thinking it might be possible, just possible, that he might steal the match.

Coming on the back of so many assessments – interviewing men and women on their path to greater seniority at work – I found myself wondering about Murray’s self image at this stage in his career.  Because – as W. Timothy Gallwey pointed out in his book The Inner Game of Tennis, winning at tennis depends significantly on what is going on in the player’s head.  The same is true for the leader, so that perhaps it should come as no surprise that Gallwey’s book has been an enduring hit with men and women in business since it was first published in 1974.

What do I mean by “self image”?  The following comments are adapted from Wikipedia:

A person’s self image is a mental picture, generally of a kind that is quite resistant to change, that depicts not only details that are potentially available to objective investigation by others (height, weight, hair colour etc.) but also items that have been learned by the person about him or herself, either from personal experiences or by internalising the judgements of others.  A more technical term for self image is self-schema.  Like any schemas, self-schemas store information and influence the way we think and remember.  For example, research indicates that information which refers to the self is preferentially encoded and recalled in memory tests.

Thinking of Andy Murray I wonder, does he think of himself as a world number 1 in the making?  This is important because it will influence many choices that he makes both off the court and on:  choices that, in time, may lead him towards – or block his path to – his first Grand Slam title.

Men and women in leadership roles face the same issue.  Each new promotion brings with it a new set of responsibilities which may challenge their self image.  Perhaps the newly promoted leader asks “am I really up to this?” or “is this really me?”  Perhaps s/he seeks to play down the change by imagining that no promotion or other change makes any difference because “I am who I am”.

A successful transition includes the integration into the leader’s self image of beliefs which support success and which also have a basis in reality.  Such a belief might be “I can engage others in a common vision and work with and through others to achieve our goals”.  Of course, the newly promoted leader needs to show that this is actually true – hence my phrase “a basis in reality”.  And there may need to be some interim belief such as “I can learn to engage others in a common vision and to work with and through others to achieve our goals”.

Paradoxically, individuals who are confident in themselves are often better able to integrate new concepts, precisely because they have a strong self image and are not afraid of losing themselves in the midst of changes and adjustments.  Of course, it also helps if they have a clear understanding of what’s needed in their new role, so that the adjustments they make support their success.  In some ways, as we adjust our self image we are like scientists, observing ourselves and identifying what is working for us and what is not as well as studying the differences between our previous role and the new role we have taken on or to which we aspire.

And of course, the need to adjust and adapt our self image is a constant through life as we meet many changes – moving from adolescence to adulthood, from being single to being married, to being a parent, to being old.  These and many other changes demand that we revisit our self image.

LinkedIn and the on-line network

Coaching

In August 2009 I wrote a posting entitled, LinkedIn:  growing my connections.  At the time I had 49 connections on LinkedIn.

I tend to be a bit of a slow starter when it comes to new technology and I’m still not sure when and why to LinkIn.  I’m delighted to be connected with people I’ve met along the way and with whom I’ve enjoyed working or playing.  Some people ask to connect whom I don’t know and I’m currently pursuing a policy of saying yes and seeing what this leads to.  Only last week, I asked someone who’d asked me to connect if he would kindly stop sending me generalised marketing e-mails via Linkedin to support me in managing my time.  He said yes – consider it done.  Had he said no, or ignored my e-mail and continued sending, I could have broken the link.

I’ve only broken the link once.  It was a link to someone who writes on a forum that I, too, have been writing on for a number of years.  He wrote something about me on the forum I didn’t enjoy and I invited him to dialogue around it.  He never responded.  Two other members of the forum also followed up by telling me all the things they most dislike about me and I took time with them – again, to invite dialogue with the aim of building a better mutual understanding.  I thought about his original posting and his absence of response when I followed up and asked myself, is this someone who is wanting to build a mutually rewarding relationship?  And was it working for me?  When I decided that, no, it wasn’t working for me, I knew it was time to sever the connection on LinkedIn and to let him know that I was up for connecting again – after reaching a better understanding.

Anyway, all this is leading to saying that when I wrote in 2009 I made a note to check how many connections I have a year down the line.  I’ve been a little slow to check the numbers, which today stand at 379.  I am more interested in the quality of those connections than I am in the numbers, so I continue to experiment and explore.