Changing jobs? Finding your ideal job

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There’s been a bit of a theme recently amongst my coaching clients.  Come to that, there’s been a bit of a theme amongst friends, too.  People are on the move… looking for a new job.

A client has taken redundancy from his employer of some twenty years and is wondering whether to seek a similar job elsewhere and, if not, what else might beckon.

A young friend is looking for a job that matches her skills and preferences.  She’s not sure where it exists.  She’s not sure where to find it.

A friend is aware that he’s done what he came to do in his current role and wants to find his next challenge.  He can see it’s not easily available in his current organisation .

Are you looking for your next job – and struggling?

Maybe you love your current job but struggle with the quality of leadership from above.  You’d like it to change.  It’s not changing.  Slowly you’re realising that you need to put up and shut up – or pack your bags and move on.

Maybe you have done everything you came to do in your current job and can see that there isn’t an opportunity in your current organisation that matches your skills or leaves you with a glad heart and ready to go.

Maybe you feel a tension in your current role between those things that really excite you and those things that are most important to your boss.  You want to be doing work that fulfils you as well as doing a good job for your employer.

Maybe you’ve closed a door and want to open a new one.  You know you could find the same job again in another organisation.  You’re wondering if you can find something, at this stage in your life, that draws on more of who you are.

Before you start applying for jobs

Peter was disappointed at the poor response when he started to apply for jobs.  He had taken care to write a CV that he thought would appeal to potential employers.  It was clear he was a seasoned professional with a string of achievements scattered throughout his career.

Peter was also assiduous in looking for jobs, signing up to job boards, scanning papers, talking with recruitment agents in his field.  His search for his next job was starting to take so much of his time it felt like a second job.

He was getting some response and had been called to interviews.  However, despite his significant investment in applying for jobs and attending interviews, he wasn’t making the second cut.

What’s more, although he’d been to a number of interviews, he had yet to feel really excited about any of the jobs he’d applied for.

What was going wrong?  Peter was spending too much of his time trying to appeal to potential employers and not enough time thinking about what he needed in a job to make it something he could gladly sink his teeth into.

He needed to know more about his ideal job.  He needed to find out where his ideal job might exist.  Only then could he start to make his investment in applying for jobs really count.

First steps to finding the job that’s right for you

Working with clients at my coaching clinic in Harley Street, I have enjoyed helping people to identify next steps that are uniquely tailored to each person.  I thought I’d share some of them with you.  As you read, I invite you to ask yourself if any of these actions is right for you as a next step to finding the job that’s right for you:

Jaspar had a broad idea of the field he wanted to work in and also what he thought he could contribute in his chosen field. However, he didn’t know what organisations might offer the kind of job he wanted and his description of what he wanted was so vague that people were struggling to help him.  I invited him to write a single statement which crystallised – for himself and others – what he really wanted.  Initially, he asked friends for feedback about how clear his statement was.  Quite soon, he was able to use it to ask people where he might find the kind of job he most wanted.

Henry was quite clear about the kind of job she wanted and wanted to know if her CV was selling her as the right candidate for her ideal job.  I invited her to write a summary statement at the start of her CV that would make it clear to a potential employer what problems, in their organisation, she most wanted to solve.  Her revised CV started to attract more interest from headhunters and potential employers.  More than ever before, she found that she was finding her way to the right kind of conversations about opportunities which matched her ideal.

When Navim wanted to explore new directions I borrowed from a friend who had trodden the same uncertain path.  I asked Navim to write down all the the things that he most enjoyed doing – the things he would love to spend his time doing if only he could find a way to make them pay.  His list provided a basis for exploration into options that would give him financial ease and security whilst also gladdening his heart.

Under pressure – are you at risk of derailment as a leader?

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Pressure pushing down on me

Pressing down on you, no man ask for

Under pressure that burns a building down

Splits a family in two

Puts people on the streets

Queen, Under Pressure

After roughly six years of blogging I am writing today for the first time in seven weeks – so much for writing at least one blog posting per week!

It’s been an intensive period.  I hope it means that our difficult economic climate is picking up a bit.  In my business, this means “delivery” – juggling client assignments, moving from one area of activity to another (coaching, leadership assessment, executive development…), travel (Stockholm, Munich, London…)

I am reminded of the insistent beat that underpins the song by Queen, Under Pressure.  It is powerful precisely because it mimics the heart under pressure, adrenalin-laden, without pause.  It’s a song that has often been in my mind in recent weeks.

Are you feeling the pressure?

If you’re taking time to read this article, you probably aren’t, right now, “under the cosh”.  At the same time, you’re probably all too familiar with feeling under pressure.

You know, too, that when times are tough – demanding or difficult, frantic or frightening, irritating or intense – you’re probably not at your best.  Whilst some people may claim to thrive under pressure, we all face kinds of pressure that we find hard.

You may even be thinking this:  that pressure is a way of life for you rather than a temporary event.  Or perhaps the pressure has been going on for so long that you’ve stopped noticing and you’re just getting on with it.

If it is, if you are, you may well be placing your health, your well-being and your performance (yes, your performance) at work at risk.

Coming off the rails

Morguefile steam train

As it happens, one of the things that has kept me busy in recent weeks has been working with a colleague to help upwards of 60 leaders understand their personal motives, values and behaviours – including the way they behave under pressure – using the Hogan suite of psychometric tests.

The thing is, we all have our own ways of feeling the pressure.

We all have our own ways of responding to the pressures we feel.

One of the reasons Hogan has established such a strong reputation at senior leadership levels is because these tests recognise that, under pressure, some of the behaviours that fuel our success can become strengths overplayed.

Suddenly, we’re at risk of derailment.

This is valuable information for organisations at the point of recruitment.  It’s also valuable for you to know in your role as a leader.  Wouldn’t you want to know if you’re at risk of derailment as a leader?

Have you noticed how, under pressure, you have a particular way of responding?  Have you even wondered why you respond in that way?  (And why others don’t?)

We feel the pressure most when we face situations that are like those we struggled with when we were very young.  And when we do, we are most likely to use strategies, quite unconsciously, that we adopted at a very early stage in our lives.

Arthur, for example, lost his job as a senior manager because he failed to manage his own patterns of behaviour when he followed his old boss to a new organisation.  Arthur respected his boss highly and they had worked well together.  In his new organisation, though, he reported indirectly to his old boss via a new line manager whom he found difficult and for whom he had little respect.  His old boss urged him to treat his line manager with respect and to recognise his long-standing contribution to the organisation and his power – however ill-founded – within it.

Arthur’s resentment started to build.  He quietly gave priority to assignments from his old boss over the tasks delegated to him by his new line manager.  Others, including his line manager, noticed the delays.  One day, without warning, his line manager called him into the office and told him that his services were no longer required.

It didn’t have to be that way for Arthur.  It doesn’t have to be that way for you.

Bringing a mindful approach when you’re under pressure

More than anything else, two things trigger our sense of feeling under pressure.

Firstly, we feel the pressure when something we experience is at odds with our most deeply held values.

Take a moment to think about this.  When was the last time you felt deep, deep emotion – be it anger, or love, irritation, or gratitude?  What happened to trigger the emotion?  What need was met?  Or violated?

Secondly, we feel the pressure when our own underlying confidence or self esteem is such that we worry about our performance.

Notice how you felt when you last made a mistake, for example, or when you feared you might make a mistake.  How did you feel, too, about the possibility, under pressure, that your staff might make mistakes?

How did you respond to your feelings?

It’s easy to buy the story you have in such moments, the thoughts that are triggered when we feel under pressure and all the feelings that come with them.  This is, after all, what Daniel Goleman has called the Amygdala hijack, when the pressure of the situation triggers all sorts of responses in one of the oldest parts of our brain.

It’s harder, much harder, to simply say hello to our thoughts and feelings… to notice what’s kicking off inside us and to give empathy to those parts of ourselves that are triggered and active at a particular moment in time.  To do this, is to begin to develop our emotional intelligence as leaders.

It’s harder still to notice how, in some situations, we are not alone in feeling the pressure.  Two people, feeling the pressure, can both behave from a place of stress rather than from a place of mindfulness.

Paying attention to how you respond when you’re under pressure and noticing what things are most likely to trigger this response opens up the possibility of managing your response, avoiding a derailment and becoming more effective in your role as a leader.

(Oh!  And yes, life becomes less stressful and more enjoyable, too.)

After the storm

Arthur, frustrated by his new line manager, confused the map with the territory.   He thought his view of his new boss was objective and indisputable and maybe he was even right.

What he failed to notice was his own pattern of thinking and his habitual responses.  What he also missed was the opportunity to choose a different – and more effective – response.

As I sit and write, I can feel huge empathy for Arthur.  Most people, at senior level, are at risk of derailment as a leader, though the form this can take varies from person to person.  What’s more, the strategies we develop in childhood, as ineffective as they are, can be hard to spot and harder still to change.

We do, though, get to choose.  Do we want to be aware?  To catch our patterns in action and begin the process of changing them?  Or to we prefer to say “It’s just who I am”?

This, though, opens up a whole new area for exploration…

Maria Miller, the “map” and the “territory”

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This posting written for Discuss HR where it was published last week.  I thought you might like to read it, too.

I don’t know about you, but Maria Miller wasn’t prominent in my thinking until the media pounced on her recent apology to the House of Commons.  I listened to her apology on the news and, without any background knowledge to guide my opinion, well… it sounded direct and sincere to me.

Others were not so easily satisfied.  Critics described it as “perfunctory”, “arrogant” and insulting”.  The gloves were off.

On the receiving end of others’ perceptions

If you’ve ever had any kind of feedback from your constituents, you’ll know it can be hard to square your own intentions with the way others see you.  This is true whether you’re a leader looking at a 360 degree feedback report, a senior executive looking at this year’s staff satisfaction survey or client feedback, an HR Director absorbing staff perceptions of your department or even someone who’s taking a pasting from the boss.

At times, for example, you just don’t recognise yourself in others’ descriptions of you.  Far from intending to (fill in the gap), your intentions were quite different from those described.  You thought you were giving clear direction to your team, for example, but they thought you were over-bearing and arrogant, failing to take account of the ideas of team members.  Or maybe you know you’ve implemented a sound response to last year’s client feedback and still there’s no change in this year’s feedback:  clients are so sure your company is taking three days to dispatch orders even though you know you’re only taking two.

It doesn’t help that so much feedback is couched in judgements, as Maria Miller has learnt.  Who gets to decide what constitutes “perfunctory”, “arrogant” and “insulting”?  It’s hard enough to know that others are unhappy with aspects of your performance.  It’s hard enough to know, even, that they have just cause.  Somehow, the use of judgement makes it all the more personal, as if somehow it’s you who are flawed.  Even if your intellect can see the difference between what you actually did and how others view it, you may still struggle emotionally under the full force of others’ feedback.

The map is not the territory

The map is not the territory
The map is not the territory

You may or may not know about the work of Alfred Korzybski, who was a Polish-American philosopher and scientist, born in 1879.  Korzybski made the case that our knowledge of the world is limited both by the human nervous system and by the limitations of language.  He saw dangers in confusing our perceptions of reality with reality itself, a concept which he neatly summarised in the phrase “the map is not the territory”.

I first came across this phrase in 2002 when I took a practitioner course in neuro-linguistic programming (also known as NLP).  Participants in the programme were introduced to this phrase as a useful presupposition and found it truly liberating.  “Oh!  I can stand back and ask myself if I’m confusing my map of the world with reality itself!”  Recognising the difference between their conclusions about colleagues or loved ones and what had actually happened helped people to clear up old misunderstandings, slights and hurts without even having to talk with the people with whom they most struggled.

Of course, recognising that the map is not the territory also freed some people from the weight of others’ perceptions of them and from a compulsion to please.  “Yes, my boss/colleagues/subordinates/parents/sibling (etc.) view me in a negative way but they’re confusing their judgements with reality itself.”  With this in mind, it seemed easier to hear others’ feedback and – at times – to dismiss it.

Over the years, I have seen many men and women in leadership roles grapple with this difference between map and territory when they have been on the receiving end of some kind of feedback.  It can soften the blow of negative feedback, for example, to realise that people’s perceptions of your leadership style may or may not be accurate.  But this is not where the story ends, as Maria M. can surely testify.

The perceptions others have of you (or of your department, or of your latest change management project) may be wholly inaccurate and still, they ARE perceptions.  In this lies both the challenge and the opportunity.  The fact that others’ perceptions are inaccurate does not mean there is no work for you to do.  No.  It simply means that the nature of your work is not to change the way you do what you do but to do something different about the way you communicate with others or even to choose to hang out somewhere new.  I’ve known talented people, for example, who have made great strides in their career after moving.  Why?  Because new colleagues form impressions based on current experiences so that their perceptions are not contaminated by history.

Managing your reputation

Is there somewhere where you need to manage your reputation or that of your department or organisation?  Is this even an idea that you feel comfortable to embrace?

One way to find out is by asking yourself, do I know how people see me (or my department, organisation or other entity)?  And do they see me the way I want them to?  If you don’t know how your key constituents perceive you it’s time to find out.  If you don’t like the way others perceive you, it’s time to get curious – what perceptions do you want others to have?  And what can you do to change others’ perceptions?

First, though, if your name is Maria or if you’ve recently been on the receiving end of more feedback than you can easily handle, you may want to balance taking action to move forward with a good dose of compassion for the position you find yourself in right now.  It is the quality of compassion, as much as the quality of courage, that is going to see you through.

Recovery takes time

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I was on my way home last Thursday evening when a headline in the Evening Standard caught my eye:  “Recovery takes time, says PM”.  A short article spoke of how the closure of two of the last three deep coal mines overshadowed a tour by Prime Minister David Cameron of the regions.  The article did not state which regions, though in present-day UK “regions” is often code for “outside London”.

The headline had a resonance for me which was probably not intended by the author at a time when I feel particularly tired.  I have been all too aware that, just as some of the challenges of recent months are over and just as it’s time to get back on track… just, even, as some juicy new opportunities are opening up, the weariness and the emotion I feel are close to the surface.

The thing is, I know I am not alone.

When the weariness of times past collides with opportunities to step into a new future

The recession, long and deep – biting, even – has brought with it many hardships.  We’re told the economy is looking up though you may not be convinced – yet.  You know, though, that it’s time to put your best foot forward… even at the same time as you yearn for rest.

Perhaps you’ve struggled to maintain your sense of perspective as you’ve sought to maintain a job in the midst of repeated rounds of redundancies.  As a leader, you’ve probably had to play a role in reshaping activities, designing out valued jobs and even breaking the bad news to equally valued people.  You’ve survived what looks like the last round and it’s time to prove to your bosses that you are worth keeping.  At the same time, you are physically and emotionally drained.

Maybe you’ve secured a job after a period of redundancy.  You may even have secured a job at a level to match the job you lost (though this is not guaranteed).  You’ve noticed how the people who called when you were in a job stopped calling when you lost your job (though you’ve not let that stop you from seeking out and pursuing new opportunities.)  Now you’ve succeeded and it’s time to put your best foot forward and show what you can bring.  At the same time, now you’ve got a job, your body is screaming at you – you need to rest.

Perhaps you are recovering from illness.  Maybe a short, sharp burst of something not-too-serious or a long and painful bout of something you could not ignore.  You’ve had the time off work and everyone’s waiting for you to make up for lost time.  Except that, in truth, you’re still recovering.  You still need to take things gently.

Maybe you have experienced something that is completely independent of our global economic woes.  You have lost a loved one – a parent, a partner or even a much-loved child.  You have taken compassionate leave and said goodbye to the person you loved (maybe, even, hated) so much.  The thing is, your colleagues are expecting you to get back to work but you know that you are only just beginning the process of grieving.

I wonder if you are experiencing anything similar – when the need to rest assaults you just as you feel the pressure to put your best foot forward.

Personal lessons in how not to

I can’t claim superior insight when it comes to looking after myself.

When my friend Sarah (let’s call her Sarah) was in crisis last year I did what I could to support her.  (I wrote about the experience here on my blog under the heading Preventing employee suicide.)  I have no regrets about the role I played… and still, I under-estimated the emotional and physical toll that such an experience would have on me.

When, soon after, I found myself on the receiving end of some heavy-handed action in a context I won’t name, I did what I felt was best both for me and for my colleagues in that context.  I have no regrets about making a stand for an approach in which everyone’s needs mattered… and still, it happened just as I needed to recover from my first experience and added to my physical, mental and emotional exhaustion.

At Christmas, when I needed to rest, I said yes to a few things too many and no to a few things too few.

If you’re self-employed, anything you take on away from your work can easily eat into your work.  As the year started, I was acutely aware of the need to re-focus and I’m glad of the opportunities that are opening up for me as a result.  At the same time, I notice how much I am – even now – in need of rest.

Learning some lessons from my clients in how to move towards recovery

When I trained as a coach my trainers (the wonderful Ian McDermott and Jan Elfline) counselled against seeking to be perfect before coaching others.  “Your clients”, they said, “will bring issues to work on that you will recognise as your own”.

In recent days, I’ve been reflecting on the things I can see so easily when working with clients and which have eluded me in my own situation.  These are some things I notice:

People struggle most when they resist the truth of how things are:  Lost your job and still trying to live the life you could afford as an employee?  Grieving the loss of a loved-one and yet believing you should be working at your old rate of 120%?  Whereas we struggle when we resist the bare truth of our situation, we can be infinitely adaptable once we notice and accept the way things are.  One truth that can nurture and support us is this – whatever your situation, you’re not the only one.

We are most attached to doing things in a particular way when we lack awareness of what needs we’re trying to meet:  Want to prove your worth by landing the next big job?  Want to meet your need for acceptance by bringing in the best sales results ever?  I’ve noticed how people can be most attached to the goals they have set themselves when they are least honest or aware about why they want to meet them.  Even if grabbing the monthly sales trophy does bring a measure of acceptance, your life might be less stressful when you know it’s not the only way.  Understanding why it’s important to us to achieve goals x, y and z opens up new possibilities in terms of how we achieve those outcomes we most desire.

Self-care is an essential part of recovery:  Sometimes, the body gives us clear signals that we need to rest.  We know that.  What’s more, if we don’t attend to our need for self care, the body will probably give us louder signals – or more painful.  We know that, too.  But there’s more.  What if the part of your job you enjoyed the most is the part that was designed out, for example?  What if the source of your struggle is not in the place you thought it was but somewhere you hardly dare acknowledge? Oftentimes, it’s precisely when we step away from the things we’re struggling with that we find a new perspective – a place from which we can find a way forward towards a full recovery.

We have all the resources we need:  In challenging times, we often find ourselves looking around us and longing for something to change.  Surely it’s obvious to our boss that s/he needs to adopt a more reasoned approach?  If only the business would let one reorganisation work its magic before embarking on the next one!  As long as we’re looking outside of ourselves for something to change, we can end up feeling powerless, frustrated, exhausted.  Once, though, we face the truth of our situation, we discover we have the resources we need – the inner resources as well as the outer ones – to find a way forward.

What is it we recover?

If you’ve read this far, you might want to reflect on what you want to recover.  Is your answer “the big-shot job”, “the six-figure (and some) salary” or some other external manifestation?  If it is, I invite you to ask yourself what it would do for you to achieve your goal?  Because it’s not the goal, it’s what your desired outcome would do for you that really counts.

For my part, I know there are things I want to attend to out in the world.  I’m excited about work that’s just around the corner, for example, when I shall be travelling around Europe as well as working in the City and with clients at my Sunday coaching clinic in Harley Street.  I love contributing to others’ learning and well-being as well as meeting my own need for fulfilment and self-expression.

At the same time, right now, I need time to recover.

If you don’t see or hear much from me next week, don’t be surprised.

Creating a career that fulfils you

All articles, Your personal and professional well-being

 

This picture was a favourite with participants - by Graham Ogilvie
This picture was a favourite with participants – by Graham Ogilvie

Last week I enjoyed working alongside Graham Ogilvie at a one-day event with leaders in the NHS to reflect on their learning from some of the NHS’s core leadership programmes.  Graham is someone whose career is almost bound to raise eyebrows.  (“How on earth did you come to do that?”)  Graham has made a great career out of turning the verbal into the pictorial – taking the key messages from training events, conferences and more and turning them into cartoons.  It seems unlikely that anybody ever said to him, “Son, what you need to do with your career is this…”

Always interesting to me, it happens that I’ve been reflecting on career directions quite intensely recently.  One client organisation has asked me to put together an outline programme to help members to identify next steps in their career.  Coaching clients are raising questions, from “What can I do to move towards greater fulfilment and peace of mind?” to “How can I create fulfilment in my forthcoming retirement and give something back?”  (Yes, the age-range of my clients is broad).  Another client has asked me to help create clarity for leaders across the organisation about their forward career paths.  As the French say, “Jamais deux sans trois.”

Struggling to identify next steps in your career?

Graham, and others like him, epitomises an aspiration many people have – most of us want to find fulfilment in our lives and careers.  Somehow, he’s managed to create a job for which there was no Job Description and to turn it into a career that is fun, profitable and fulfilling.  But if you’re unsure of your own next steps, you know it’s not always so easy.  Sometimes, it’s hard to see which way to go.

Perhaps you have an expensive education in Speciality X but are finding that jobs are scarce in your field.  Or perhaps you’ve been successful so far but don’t much like the speciality you’ve chosen.  Or you face stark choices and don’t know which way to go.

Perhaps you’ve achieved some – all, even – of the goals you set yourself a few years ago.  The trouble is, you’re not having as much fun as you thought you would.  Or you don’t know where to go next.

Maybe you’re loving what you’re doing and still, you face a choice.  Do you carry on as the “person who does” or step into the unknown territory of leadership?  Perhaps you’re already in a leadership role but something’s not working for you or you’re wondering “What next?”

Perhaps your greatest joy is on the side.  Perhaps it comes from the project you are involved in at work rather from the areas of your work that your employer is most concerned to monitor, manage and reward.  Perhaps it really is on the side – coming from a hobby that no-one pays you for.

Perhaps you’re one of the many people who have been affected by our deep global recession… young and unable to practice the profession you trained for, mid career and finding your way forward after redundancy, ambitious and wanting to catch up after setbacks.

The thing is, you know that you’re not emotionally fulfilled and you know you have more to give.  At the same time, you don’t know where to go next.

Life at Malt House Farm

You may not know that I grew up on a farm.  My father started farming in the 1920s and my mother met him when she came to Berkshire to work.  They married in 1957 and farmed until they retired in 1980.  I have a photo of my mother, at hay-making time, which hangs on my office wall.  The stray bits of hay in her hair are a reminder of a time of year we all enjoyed and I also notice a certain steely glint in my mother’s eyes which remains to this day.

I’ve noticed how many of my clients have views about their careers which reflect the views and experience of past generations of parents and grandparents.  Things like “I need to get a steady job that will provide for me and my family until I retire”, “If I don’t get on the right ladder at the beginning of my career I won’t be successful” and “I need to have clear career goals from the beginning of my career in order to make the right choices in the here and now.”  There are even some more recent concerns that can go unseen because they are so widely held.  “I need to show I can earn at least as much as my (partner, peers, parents etc.) otherwise people will think less of me”, for example, and “I am what I do – I need to do something impressive if I want people to like me or admire me.”

The thing is, these beliefs – and others like them – come from our need to feel safe and secure and yet, at the same time, they fuel the very anxieties we seek to avoid.  They make us wonder if we’re on the right ladder, and worry that if we’re not, we’ve missed our chance to have a fulfilling career.  They make us try to plan for a future which may be radically different from anything we can imagine right now – and worry when we don’t have the answers.  They make us make job choices to meet needs we can meet more easily in different ways;  which may even have been met already if we only dare to notice how much we are already loved and admired.

In writing this posting I want to bring care to the parts of us that seek security, acceptance and more.  These needs are both primal and primitive.  We are here because we have given priority to our need for safety and because we continue to do so.  What’s more, career or no career, each one of us has a need for love and acceptance.  Many people, early in their career, focus on adapting to the roles they find themselves in in order to secure a living and to achieve some measure of acceptance from their employer.

But this is only part of what we desire.

As much as we’re hard-wired to worry about our most fundamental needs for security, nourishment and more, we also have needs for fulfilment, for self-expression, to make a difference by what we do.  If we listen only to our worries, we may feel empty and unfulfilled.  Over time, our lack of fulfilment or our desire for something more motivates us to seek new avenues.

Your perfect career is about who you are

As much as we spend our education acquiring knowledge and skills, our success at work is driven by far more than any book learning.

At work, employers are often concerned with our behaviour – do we demonstrate the behaviours we need to be successful in our current job?  A great deal of research has shown that whilst our knowledge and technical skills are important, especially early in our career, there’s a great deal more that fuels our behaviour.

More fundamentally, our behaviours reflect a set of values that we hold about what’s important to us.  They reflect all sorts of hidden (and sometimes limiting) beliefs – what some thinkers call our “world view”.  They reflect our sense of who we are and what we’re here to do – our identity and purpose.

There is bad news.

Sometimes, for example, we don’t know what values we hold and this makes it hard to seek out opportunities which really meet our need for fulfilment.  Sometimes we have a sense of identity which is frozen in time and out of kilter with who we really are.  Sometimes we are held back by limiting beliefs which remain out of view.

There is good news, too.

The good news is that we are most likely to be successful in our careers by being ourselves.  The good news is that the more we understand ourselves – our underlying values, our natural strengths, our core purpose – the more we can seek out and move towards opportunities that fulfil us.  These are jobs in which, moreover, we find greater ease.

The good news is, too, that we get to explore who we are and examine old beliefs about ourselves and about the world at large and, in doing so, we increase the likelihood that we will find both career success and personal fulfilment.

Following your bliss

Joseph Campbell, author of The Power of Myth and The Hero with a Thousand Faces calls this process “following your bliss”.  I shared this phrase with Graham Ogilvie when we met last week, because it seemed to me that his description of his personal journey was a perfect example.  Graham told me that, each time he faced a choice, he chose the option that was most appealing to him at the time.

In truth, as much as many people tell their children to choose wisely, past generations are littered with people whose lives have been touched be serendipity, synchronicity and more… and it all worked out in the end.

My father, for example, became a farmer because he was told, for the sake of his health, to leave his office job and to work outside.  He was already lodging at Malt House Farm and was able to take up a job because his friend Harry, the landlady’s nephew, wanted to leave farming.  Years later my mother became a farmer because she fell in love.

Perhaps you have stories, too, of people of whom you could ask, “How did they get from there to here?”  If you do, please share them using the comment box below so that they can be an inspiration for us all.

And as I close, I want to ask you, what choices are beckoning you at this time?  And how is your heart responding?  Your head?  Your gut?

Taking disciplinary action? Don’t take the soft option

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If you think that to bring empathy to your disciplinary process is to take the soft option, I want to show just how badly a lack of empathy can get you into trouble and invite you to bring both empathy and compassion when you exercise discipline – for yourself and for those you lead.

Is your heart sinking at the prospect of addressing some employee misdemeanour or incompetence?

It’s a rare leader who looks forward to a conversation with an employee about something that’s gone wrong.

You know the kind of thing.  Rules broken.  Poor performance.  Inappropriate behaviour.  Bad BO.  The list is long.

You know that something isn’t quite working.  You’ve taken time to monitor and observe.  Maybe you’ve asked others for the feedback – or received it whether you wanted to or not.

You’re concerned about the impact of your employee’s failings.  You can see the impact on the team, on your clients, maybe even on the reputation of your organisation.

Your heart is sinking.  You know it’s your job to have the conversation and you wish it weren’t.

When leaders get into a mess in taking disciplinary action

If you talk to the HR professionals in many organisations about times when things have gone wrong when it comes to exercising discipline – oh my!  They’ll roll their eyes!

They’ll tell you about the time they spent providing emotional support both to employees and to their managers.  Tea and tissues?  It may not be what they want to do and still, getting it wrong can leave everyone involved feeling emotionally exhausted and yearning for understanding.

They’ll tell you about the impact on employee morale.  Yes, there’s the morale of the two people most closely involved.  More than this, the impact of a poorly handled disciplinary process is rarely confined to the employee and his or her manager.  Team members provide emotional support.  Perhaps they get angry or upset or anxious for their own jobs.  The conversation that was designed to designed to address a particular issue stimulates all sorts of emotions for everyone involved.

Maybe the issue managers set out to address goes unresolved.  At best, the action taken just wasn’t effective.  At worst, it was so badly off kilter that the lawyers need to be brought in as well as HR to sort out the mess.  All this takes time and attention away from the broken rule, the poor performance, the inappropriate behaviour, the bad BO.   What’s more, you have a whole new set of issues to address.

What is it that goes so badly wrong?

Usually, colleagues in the HR department will point to just two things:

Firstly, they’ll tell you how they tried to give advice to the person concerned and how it wasn’t followed.  Often the advice is about an organisation’s disciplinary process.  If it’s well-designed it will help line managers both to meet legal requirements and to ensure that an employee feels that he or she has been handled fairly and even given support.

They may not say it, but behind the good advice about process there is often a second issue lurking undetected.  The issue?  A lack of empathy.

Creating a rehabilitation culture in our criminal institutions

Did I say criminal?  Yes, I did.

A few years ago, I was deeply touched when Dominic Barter told a story of some restorative justice work he had done in Brazil.  A baker, whose son had been shot and killed in the bakery, was so moved when he learnt of the killer’s experience of poverty and his intention only to steal a loaf of bread that he gave the killer a job as a way of making something good from the original crime.  This was possible because the baker was able to transcend his grief at the loss of his son and bring deep empathy and understanding for the man who had killed him.

More recently, the RSA advertised a talk by leading criminologist Professor Shadd Maruna entitled Creating a Rehabilitation Culture.  This is what they said about the talk on their website:

Numerous criminal justice observers have argued that offender rehabilitation does not come in a ‘programme’.

Although targeted treatment interventions can be helpful in promoting desistance from crime, these projects are too often undermined by an overarching punitive culture that stigmatises and labels the individuals that programmes are meant to be ‘correcting’.

In case you haven’t made the link yet, this is what – too often – goes wrong when leaders seek to address issues in the workplace.  A lack of empathy, coupled with labelling the very person from whom a leader wants change, sets the leader up for the hardest possible ride.  The downward spiral has begun.

Finding a place of empathy when taking disciplinary action

If you’re facing the prospect of holding a disciplinary conversation with a member of your staff, finding a place of empathy for him or her is an important part of your preparation.  So is finding a place of empathy for yourself.  Here two things you can do to get you started:

Firstly, take time to find a place of empathy for yourself.  Find a quiet place where you can be undisturbed.  Take a few moments to notice the thoughts and emotions you have when you think about this person and what they have done and without censoring yourself.  Pay particular attention to your emotions and get curious about what sits behind your feelings.  As a leader, you are best placed to handle a disciplinary conversation well when you are open to and accept the challenges this brings you and give time and space for your needs.

Take time, too, to find a place of empathy for the person with whom you need to talk.  Take a few moments to get curious.  What positive intentions does he or she bring, even when doing the things that aren’t working for you?  What hopes might he or she have for a conversation with you – whether or not s/he’s done something “wrong”?  (Some people ask themselves how they would like someone they love to be treated as a way of putting themselves in the shoes of their direct report).

Discipline yes – but not crime and punishment

Although targeted treatment interventions can be helpful in promoting desistance from crime, these projects are too often undermined by an overarching punitive culture that stigmatises and labels the individuals that programmes are meant to be ‘correcting’.

Targeted at the UK’s criminal justice system, I find these words from the RSA’s programme have a broader application.  How many of us are drawn to think ill of the person with whom we need to hold a disciplinary conversation – to stigmatise or label them?  And where else does this attitude show up in our life – with our spouse, perhaps, parents, children…  I’d like to say that it’s easy to avoid this place of judgement towards self or others and yet, in our culture, it isn’t.  It’s so easy to protect ourselves by putting others in the wrong.

It’s easy to start in this place of judgement and yet, it does not create ease.  Our judgement – of self and others – stimulates a great deal of resistance and this, in turn, creates conflict.  With empathy, we can put our concerns on the table freely and openly whilst building or maintaining our relationship with those we lead.  We can insist on certain standards in the workplace without putting people in the wrong.

Equally, with empathy, we can forgive ourselves – or each other – when our initial disciplinary conversation does not go according to plan.  And when we ask ourselves “where do I go from here?” empathy can help us to find a way forward which maximises the positive outcomes for everyone – yes, everyone – involved.

Office politics – a force for good

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Really?  You must be joking!

If this is your response to office politics, this posting is for you.

If you loathe office politics, you’re not alone

Listen, I have to put my hand up, too – I’m not a great fan of office politics.

You know the kind of thing…

…You watch colleagues get promoted ahead of you who are all show and no substance.  You know how they do it.  You watch them cosy up to the people who make the decisions and you can see that it works.  Maybe you even want your own (overdue) promotion… but you can’t bring yourself to follow suit.

…You’ve seen how your colleagues lay claim to successes when the credit really should go to someone else.  You know that a radical game-changing idea has come from someone who has gone without acknowledgement or someone else has taken all the credit for the hard slog it took to bring an important project to a fruitful conclusion.  And still they take the credit.

…You watch your colleagues promote an idea around the business and you know – you just know – that the real agenda is tucked away from sight.  The lack of honesty on the part of the person doing the promoting, the naivety of your most senior colleagues in not seeing through the propaganda – well, you’re finding it hard to swallow.

…Maybe you even listen to one of your colleague’s self propaganda and you wonder, “Does he really believe his description of himself or is it just the story he’s trying to sell around the business?”  You can’t believe how many people are taken in when you find it so easy to see the huge gap between the way your colleague describes himself and the way he behaves in practice.

You’re struggling with office politics, which fill you with loathing.  At the same time, you can see just how much politics plays a role in the every day life of your organisation.

A political epiphany

Over the years, and despite my own inherent suspicion of the office politicians, I’ve had the opportunity to observe how the ability to navigate office politics is an important skill as a leader in an organisation.  If you already have this skill, you probably haven’t read this far.  If you don’t have this skill, or you’re sceptical about the idea that politics can be a force for good, you probably need a bit of convincing.  For this reason, I want to share with you an example of one person’s “political epiphany” – it’s a simple story of one person who discovered that, after all, politics can be a force for good.

Sally (let’s call her Sally) was a talented graduate entrant in her company who liked to play with a straight bat.  As she rose to a junior management position, she became increasingly aware that she was working to a director who was poorly equipped for the role and she felt frustrated that her company did not seem to be addressing the issue.  She raised the issue with her colleagues in HR but got no joy and, after a while, realised that – whatever she thought of her senior management – she was beginning to get a reputation as a whinger.

Sally could have let the issue go.  However, she was particularly concerned about the impact of her director’s inadequacies on a project she felt really passionate about.  She decided to take the issue to her mentor.  Her mentor knew her preference for playing with a straight bat and asked her, “What’s most important to you?  Is it the inadequacies of your director and the failure of senior management to address them?  Or is it finding ways to make progress on your project?”  Initially, Sally found it hard to separate the two.

In her discussion with her mentor, Sally began to realise that there were, indeed, two forces at play.  On the one hand, she found it hard to accept what looked like inaction on the part of senior management who were failing to address something that was clearly a problem.  Her own values of openness and honesty were such that she struggled to accept the possibility that senior management preferred to work their way round the problem rather than to name it honestly.  On the other hand, she also recognised that it was the impact on the project that was most frustrating for her – at least for the time being.  With the help of her mentor, she began to see that whilst she had limited scope to address the short-comings of senior management, there were things she could do to move the project forward – if only she were more willing to play the political game.

In service of a larger cause

Years later, Sally pointed to this experience as the one that made her a total convert to office politics.

Because she was passionate about her project, she started to experience a real sense of achievement each time she did something to successfully circumnavigate the limitations of her line manager.  What’s more, because she realised she had gained the reputation for whingeing, she started to look for ways forward that could cause no offence.  She didn’t want anyone to think that the progress on her project was being achieved by side-lining her boss.

One thing made it possible for Sally to put aside her loathing of office politics – her passion for her project and what she knew it could do for her organisation.  With the help of her mentor, she began to see how she could use a political approach to move the project forward.  She began to see how, sometimes, you can’t achieve the things you feel most passionate about without becoming familiar with the political landscape, accepting it – and starting to find ways round the obstacles that are in your way.

Once she had this insight, Sally became a master politician – and started to enjoy it.  Having realised that she could use her political savvy in service of those things she found most worthwhile, she started to apply her creative thinking to this area of her work.

Finding your political epiphany

If you think I’m going to tell you how to navigate the politics of your office – or family, or local Am Dram society, whatever…  well, I’m about to disappoint you.  Instead, I’m going to invite you to go make yourself a cup of tea, or coffee, find a quite corner for 5 minutes and ask yourself this:

What are the things that really matter to you?  What areas of your life do you feel most passionate about?  And which of these are so important to you that you’re willing to let go of your revulsion for office politics and your views about how things ought to be and embrace things the way they are – in order to find ways to move towards the outcomes you most desire?

You may find your motivation at work – but you may not.  Perhaps there’s something away from your work place that you’re really fired up about right now.  It doesn’t matter where your political epiphany happens.  It just matters that it does.

Why?  Your political epiphany helps you to become much more effective in achieving results with ease.  What’s more, your political epiphany helps you to realise what matters most to you.

Whether you’ve had your political epiphany years ago or haven’t had it yet I’d love to read your comments on this subject via the comment box below.

Beyond struggle: doing what works

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

It’s widely held that the English, when some hapless foreigner doesn’t understand them, speak louder.  This is the cause of merriment because, quite clearly, it’s a strategy that doesn’t work.  The person who doesn’t understand English is unlikely to understand it any better for being shouted at.

Apparently, this strategy is not the sole preserve of the English.  I was recently talking to someone who, in China, had experienced something very similar as she travelled through more remote areas of the country.

Of course, it’s easy to laugh when someone else is doggedly pursuing  a strategy that doesn’t work.  It’s even easy to see when someone else is pursuing a strategy that doesn’t work.

It’s not so easy to notice our own worst endeavours.

The clue is in the struggle

Is there something you’re struggling with right now?  Something you’ve been struggling with for a while?  If there is, you’ll know how hard it can be.

Maybe you’ve taken action to address a situation that isn’t working for you.  You feel confident that the action you’ve taken is constructive, purposeful action and yet you feel no further forward.  You couldn’t believe the response you got, for example, and you don’t quite know where to go from here.

What sort of situations are we talking about here?

Perhaps you’re managing a member of staff who isn’t responding to your clear guidance about what’s expected, to your attempts to coach, even to the formal process you have recently put in place.

Perhaps you’ve made what you see as a compelling business case to the Board for a new venture, IT programme, HR initiative… whatever.  But you’ve come away without the approval you wanted and you don’t begin to know what to do next.  How could they turn down such a clear case and with such clear benefits for the business?

Perhaps your struggle is with yourself.  You know that your sedentary work lifestyle is not working for you.  You can see how you’re piling on the pounds.  You meant to go to the gym, to walk to work, to go running.  Maybe you even set yourself some clear ‘SMART’ targets… and still, you’re snacking on burgers or chocolate, drinking too much alcohol, and failing to do what you planned.

Whatever the area of struggle, you keep trying to move it forward… without success.  In whatever way you “shout at the foreigner”, you keep shouting louder.  You’re struggling and the struggle is not moving you forward.

Groundhog Day… and why we continue to do the things that don’t work

If ever you’ve watched the film Groundhog Day, you know what it is to struggle.  In this comedy, weatherman Phil Connors is assigned to cover a small-town assignment which he positively detests… Groundhog Day.  Trapped in a blizzard he has to stay in the very place he detests so much and wakes up the next morning to discover that it’s Groundhog Day all over again… and again… and again…

Groundhog Day is a comedy with a message – if you keep doing the same thing, you’ll keep getting the same results.  But there are reasons why we continue to do the thing that’s not working.  In my work with clients, three things seem to be most common:

…We think it ought to work.  John thought the figures in his business proposal were persuasive so, when his proposal was not met with approval by the board, he gave them more figures.  What John didn’t understand was that other people don’t all think the way he does – he failed to adjust his approach to meet the needs of his audience.

…We think it’s who we are.  This is one of the most common reasons why we continue to do what doesn’t work rather than to adjust our approach in order to do what works.  Frances, for example, was renowned in her workplace for her spiky manner.  She frequently met feedback by giving feedback of her own or by making a comment that seemed irrelevant to her colleagues.  “You’re not my slave?  No.  I know that.  I never said you were!”  Whenever her colleagues requested a change in her approach, Francis was quick to say, “Why should I change?  It’s just who I am.”

(I want to add that yes, sometimes it really isn’t who we are and yet… we are all subject to programming in childhood by our parents, teachers and other figures of authority.  Examining who we really are opens up opportunities to let go of redundant ideas and to find new and more effective ways of getting things done).

…We worry about how people might respond.  Ahmed had worked for ten years for the same boss when, quite suddenly, his boss’s behaviour towards him started to change.  His boss was losing his temper unexpectedly and with little or no explanation.  Ahmed felt uneasy about this dramatic shift in their relationship.  What he didn’t know was that his boss, for the first time in their history, was unhappy with Ahmed’s work.  At the same time, he was struggling to give Ahmed feedback for fear of offending him.

Doing what works

There’s a debate that comes up again and again and which, I confess, irritates me just a little – it’s the “are leaders born or made?” debate.  Who would ask of a world class violin player “is a virtuoso violinist born or made?”  Few people, if any, achieve excellence in their field without some combination of natural talent, learning and practice.

Leaders are no different.

Smart leaders constantly ask themselves what’s working and what’s not.  They beg, borrow and steal ideas – most tell stories of people they have learnt from.  Over time they come to understand the need to choose an approach that works in a given situation.  They get smart about what works – how to influence the board, how to engage staff, how to nurture potential in their highest performers… and their lowest.  The list goes on.

And you?  I invite you to check in with yourself – to what extent are you making choices based on your understanding of what actually works?  You can do this, for example, by giving yourself a mark out of ten against the following:

O equals “I don’t think at all about how well my approach is actually working and when I don’t get the response I want I get frustrated with people and wish they would change.”

5 equals “Sometimes I think about how best to approach a situation and sometimes I forget and just do what I’ve always done.”

10 equals “I make a habit of thinking about what works and what doesn’t.  When I don’t get the response I want I get excited – I like to think about what I can do differently based on the response I get from others.”

From the school of doing what works

In case you’re wondering what this looks like in practice, two stories have fallen into my lap recently from the school of doing what works.

One friend, frustrated by her teenage son’s refusal to put his socks into the wash, stopped picking them up.  He was quick to admonish her – “It takes no time at all to pick them up.”  She let the message sink in… if you want clean socks, you put them in the laundry basket.

Another friend became aware that a member of his team thought him lazy, because he always left promptly at the end of the day.  The same staff member was completely unaware that, most days, he arrived in the office at least an hour before any of  his colleagues.  Rather than face the issue head on, he started to make a habit of assigning her work as soon as he arrived in the morning.  He would drop an e-mail to her at 6.30 am saying “I’ll catch you when you reach the office but first, I want to give you the heads up…”  He would ask her to get things done by midday.  He asked one of his peers to keep her ears open – quite quickly, this particular team member stopped complaining about how lazy her manager was.

These friends both let go of what ought to be true and asked themselves what might just work in practice.

What strategies have you found that work?  I’d love to hear your stories.

 

Bringing care to times of conflict

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In recent months I have found myself in the midst of a disagreement – a rather long, drawn out affair which started just when I was recovering from the experience of supporting a friend in crisis.

The experience has reminded me just how hard it can be to navigate conflict in the workplace, so that I’m going to try to talk about conflict today.

It all started with…

Have you ever found yourself, quite unexpectedly, in a situation of conflict at work?

Perhaps you did something, in good faith, which stimulated anxiety or anger in one of your colleagues.  If you’re lucky, the colleague is someone you know or someone who is skilled in handling his or her emotions constructively.  Perhaps, though, your colleague is someone you don’t know, so that you don’t have a track record of mutual respect to fall back on.  Or maybe he or she has a different track record – as someone who is prone to unexpected explosions, to trying to put people “in their place”, to… you get to write the list.

There are any number of things about your colleague’s behaviour that make the situation worse.  Firstly, in the midst of an explosion – maybe a full on amygdala hijack – your colleague absolutely believes his or her own story.  It’s not just that he or she is concerned that something might happen as a result of what you’ve done.  No.  The action you’ve taken is bound to lead to x, y, z…  If you’re not careful you, too, are at risk of getting swept up in a line of thinking which has not yet been closely examined.  Maybe, too, your colleague lacks the sense of perspective, after the fact, to examine his or her own thinking…  the case against you is proven before the facts have been gathered.  He or she may even do his very best to make sure that facts are obscured or kept out of view.

If you’re deeply unlucky, you may find that the person who is treating you in this way has a long history of similar outbursts which have, over time, been unchallenged.  Unless your organisation has a firm anti-bullying policy or a culture which is quick to address these behaviours in general or the behaviour of your particular colleague, they will continue.  What’s more, your colleague’s sense of righteousness will grow and, with it, the post-toddler temper tantrums.  In the mind of your colleague, you deserve to be treated in this way  – he or she is right, after all.

Hey, in really tough cases, your colleague may even be the boss.  Your boss.  Or the ultimate boss – the boss of all bosses, the CEO.

What’s more, whilst your colleague may not be skilled in handling his or her skills constructively, he does have other skills…

…He’s highly skilled in making unilateral decisions with no thought whatsoever for the impact on you…

…She’s hard to pin down.  When you ask a clear question or make a clear request, she has a way of ignoring them as if you had never asked…

…He’s highly selective when it comes to the facts, ignoring some, putting others forward repeatedly and vociferously, withholding some… hey!  Even distorting a few…

…She’s really strong on holding you to account for any mistakes (real or imagined) whilst being, of course, totally blameless…

What makes it hard?  Well, you, too, are human and may struggle with the emotional roller coaster that your conversations or correspondence stimulates in you – from fear to rage, anger to anxiety.  You may, even, have your own sense of self righteousness.  And if your colleague is also the boss, maybe even the ultimate boss, you may fear that your only options are to roll over and take the punches or to leave your job.

Tempting strategies that don’t hit the mark

Reflecting on my own experience in recent weeks, I’ve noticed that it’s tempting to follow certain routes.  They’re tempting – they really are tempting!

Outrage, disbelief and feeling hard done by.  Did that really just happen?!  I can’t believe that anyone would do that!  Don’t get me wrong, you feel what you feel.  The person did what they did.  It may well have been a crazy thing to do… in your map of the world.  However, nothing changes as a result of you feeling the outrage or knowing that every rule in the book has been broken – whether the real book of your organisation’s rules and procedures or the metaphorical book of what people do who are emotionally intelligent and effective in their roles.

Trying to prove you’re right.  When your sense of injustice is strong, the desire to put your case can be strong, as can your yearning to be heard and understood.  There is, though, no guarantee that you will be.  In the midst of panic or blind rage, your colleague is not in possession of the facts.  No, he or she can only relate to his own fears – the inner story of his or her imagination.  After the blind rage is over, he may still stick to the story he created when this whole thing kicked off.  Holding out for a fair hearing?  It may never happen.

Relying on policy or procedure.  You have a procedure in place that covers this kind of thing?  Maybe a grievance procedure or an anti-bullying procedure.  By all means use it and still, it may not work.  Especially if your colleague has a role in carrying out the procedure, there’s a risk that it may not be followed or that it will be followed in ways which simply confirm your colleague’s view of you.

Relying on senior management.  I’m sorry to disappoint you.  It’s possible that bringing the matter to the attention of the very people who ought to be managing your colleague will help.  It’s possible, too, that your colleagues are as ground down as you are in the battle to uphold company policy, dignity (yours, theirs), good sense and whatever else you’re longing for.

Jumping ship.  It’s possible to just walk.  To find another job.  To move.  To say “Fuck you!”  Possible. Tempting.  There is, though, the risk that you are the loser when you choose to walk away.  It was your job – and you lost it.  How unjust was that!

Resorting to anger and hatred.  Don’t get me wrong, this strategy can be as juicy as they come.  You may even find all sorts of people lining up to join in.  Think his behaviour is outrageous?  So do I!  Wonder if she’s got issues from childhood?  What other explanation can there be?!  Think he ought to know better at his level of seniority?  For sure!  But this, though it may give you some relief, will not, ultimately help you to find peace.

Care changes everything

These strategies do not work and yet, in a way, they do… provided you can bring the quality of care to your situation as it unfolds.

In my own experience, I noticed how, from the beginning, I was able to notice my needs… a longing to be heard and understood, a longing for courtesy and consideration, a deep desire for the kind of collaborative approach which might address real concerns whilst leaving everybody’s dignity intact.  What I noticed – what I notice – is how, over time, touching base with my needs has brought a sense of peace, even when they are far from being met.  Even as I write, the very act of naming my needs is bringing a quality of tenderness to my heart.

As much as I have been making a stand for my own needs to be met, I know this is not enough.  At times, throughout this process, I have taken time to put myself in the shoes of everyone else involved.  I may think that my colleague has taken a hammer to crack a nut (and, what’s more, a nut that was already open).  Still, I recognise how much this has added to his or her workload and at a time when he or she is at full stretch.  I may think that a wider group of people should feel uncomfortable and step up in the role each one has taken on and, still, I can see how hard it is to address the very behaviours with which I, too, struggle.

With care, I have found a sense of peace and liberation.  It’s not that things have gone the way I hoped – not at all.  Still, at each point in the process, I have learnt more about the personalities involved.  That step didn’t give me the information I asked for, even though, clearly, I’ve made a legitimate request.  Still, I’ve taken action to care for my needs.  I’ve taken care to acknowledge the needs of others.  Over time, I’ve come to understand the issues.  I’ve come to know what’s mine – and what’s not mine.

And what are friends for?

I could not finish this posting without adding that friends, too, have played an important role.  In the moments when I’ve thought “has this really happened?”and “am I mad?” I have called on an inner circle of supportive friends.  They have brought humour to the situation.  They have confirmed that, yes, this is way off piste.  They have helped me to keep things simple as I work out each step of the way.  Above all, they have brought care.

It is this care that has made things all right, no matter which way things go.

 

Who’s managing who? Setting clear boundaries with your staff

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In the classic way of London buses, I have been enjoying a flurry of clients recently who are grappling with the same issue.  In their relationship with their direct reports, who’s managing who?

Recently, for example, I found myself talking with a young manager about a member of his team.  Much older than him and more experienced in managing others, this particular member of staff would flare up with irritation from time to time.  Her young and inexperienced manager would watch this mini amygdala hijack unfold before his eyes and wonder quite how to respond.  How could he manage her in a way which left her feeling happy and which, at the same time, ensured she got the job done?

The thing is, over time, he realised that he had gone so far out of his way in his attempts to make her feel comfortable that his own needs of her, as a member of his team, were not being met.  His growing concern was this – have I let her become my boss?

When the tail starts wagging the dog

This young manager is not alone.  Maybe you have your own experience of managing someone who is not easily pleased.

Let’s be clear.  You know that you’re responsible for this thing called staff engagement.  Maybe you even have the annual survey to prove it.  You really get the message – your staff have a vital contribution to make to the success of your organisation and the way you choose to manage team members has a significant impact on their well-being and the quality of their contribution.  This is something you whole-heartedly buy into and endorse.

With luck, experience, skill and even the results of a few psychometric tests, you know that different members of your team have different styles and preferences.  You also recognise that each member of your team has a different level of experience in his or her job and maybe different aspirations.  You recognise you need to tailor your approach to get the best out of each member of your team.

Somewhere along the line, though, you’ve lost sight of the boundary between managing members of your team and letting them dictate to you.  Probably it happened slowly, subtly.  You look back and think, when did I agree to a slight change in John’s working hours?  I didn’t.  How did I let Mia define her role and responsibilities in ways which don’t work for me?  I didn’t.  When did I choose to make it my job to save Gina from herself – from the difficult emotions she experiences when she realises that her career didn’t turn out the way she hoped?  I don’t even know.

chez Nesbit

Over the years, I’ve had people live with me – in my flat in Lee High Road and, more recently, here in Albion Way.  First, I bought the flat with my friend Jenny and we lived together as co-owners of the home.  Cousin James lived with me for a while when he first came to London.  Cousin Mat lived with me when she did an internship for a while.  Then Nancy joined me… the list goes on.  Perhaps the briefest of stays was by a lovely German man and his son when they wanted to visit London.  They were introduced to me in the “friend of a friend” way that sometimes happens in life.  The longest stay was by a member of the family who lived with me for almost three and a half years before moving out just recently.  There’s nothing like living together to teach you a bit about boundaries.

I laugh when I think of my time sharing with Jenny as two young women early in our careers.  How could we be less suited?  I say this because Jenny has always had a personal temperature gauge which is permanently on “high” – I have photos of her in Norway in the snow in a summer skirt and with bare legs.  When Jenny moved out, the first thing I did was to install central heating.  Notwithstanding, I remember our time together as easy and comfortable and lots of fun.

Over time, welcoming people into my home has taught me a few things about what matters to me in my home.  It’s also taught me that what matters to me is not always important to others who live in the house.  Want to leave plates around for days on end?  This isn’t the home for you.  Not worried about how clean the bathroom is?  That doesn’t really work for me.

In truth, I’ve had to learn a few things about my own personal quirks – and own that, in my own home, I need to find people who can accommodate them.  Perhaps it is a bit OTT (OCD, even) but it matters to me that the soup spoons and dessert spoons are put away in their separate spaces in the top drawer in the kitchen.  And (please, don’t tell) I often reorganise the contents of the dishwasher in a way which meets my need for order as much as my desire to get as much in as possible.

The fundamental rule of the house

Over time, I’ve developed an agreement which sets out the terms on which lodgers live in the house.  Every time someone leaves I ask myself “what have I learnt that I want to incorporate into the agreement?”  Yes, there are “house rules”.  The most fundamental rule in the house, though, is that living together has to work for everyone.  My agreement says:

Successful sharing of the house will reflect our sensitivity to each others’ needs and our ability to speak openly about our needs and to find ways to meet them which work for every member of the household.  As part of your tenancy agreement, you agree to make time to talk about what’s working and what adjustments might be needed.

Now, I must concede, that in the early days of welcoming visitors, I knew this and yet… I didn’t.  I was like the young manager bending myself in knots trying to meet the needs of people living with me… at the expense of my own.

It’s taken time for me to realise that, as the home owner, I am the one constant in this house.  I need to be clear in my own heart about what does and doesn’t work for me because, ultimately, I need to find people who can feel comfortable living under my house rules so that I, too, can be comfortable.

A leader’s “house rules”

In truth, a leader is not so very different from a landlady.  In your role as a leader, you need to know what your own house rules are – and why.

To work out your own house rules is not so much a “once in a lifetime” thing as an ongoing dance of self enquiry.  Perhaps, for example, you are managing someone who doesn’t like the level of supervision you want to give.  Perhaps, on close examination, you’ll find you are under-estimating his or her experience and capability in the role.  Perhaps you’ll find that your own need for detail is such that you are breathing down the necks of even the most competent of your staff members.  Over time, though, you need to work out what level of information you need from your staff to retain accountability for their work.  This is just one area in which you need to develop your own house rules.

If you’re struggling with boundaries with your staff, why not take a few minutes now to ask yourself what you expect of members of your team – no matter what?  And if you find that you’re struggling to maintain clear boundaries be gentle with yourself.  Just notice what you want to move towards – what rules you want to have in place – and let go of any judgements you may have about the fact that you have allowed something to go on for so long which, so clearly, isn’t working for you or the business.

 

It can be hard to say to a tenant, “if that’s what you want, this is no longer the house for you.”  It can be just as hard to say to a member of your team, “if this is what you want, you need to start thinking about finding another job.”

But you can’t begin to have the conversation if you don’t have clarity in your own mind about your own house rules.