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Commissioning coaching? Some contracting essentials

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As a commissioner, you need to make sound choices about coaching
In this posting – published last week in Discuss HR, I want to offer some real basics around HR’s role in commissioning coaching.  So basic, in fact, that I feel slightly nervous about teaching my metaphorical grandmother to suck eggs.  At the same time, as a coach, I’m aware that even the fundamentals can go wrong and want to offer a few pointers.  I also welcome your views and experiences.
What on earth can go wrong?

You know the scenario.  Manager X walks down the corridor to HR and asks for coaching for Employee Y.  Perhaps you hold the budget and you need to manage it judiciously.  Perhaps Manager X holds the budget.  Either way, you are at the beginning of a conversation about coaching.
Now, speaking as a coach, I find it easy and joyful to expound the value of coaching.  In my experience, it often delivers far more than is expected of it – results that go way beyond anything the organisation hoped for when the decision was first taken to invest in coaching for Employee X or Y.  What’s more, over the years, I have found that coaching continues to deliver way after a coaching contract is completed.  Recently, for example, a former coaching client told me that he has been increasingly in demand as a mentor since we completed our work together.  It’s not hard to see how, when someone in a leadership role develops his or her skills, the benefits spread through the organisation and, indeed, continue over time.
Nonetheless, things can go wrong.  For example:
·         Is the right person getting coaching?  It can be a thin line between (i) recognising that an individual’s development needs require more (or different) help than a skilled manager can reasonably be expected to give or (ii) seeing that the manager him- or herself lacks skills in providing appropriate developmental support.  This issue can be compounded if, in HR or L&D, you don’t know how to broach the subject of where coaching will best deliver a benefit to the organisation.  Is it in coaching an employee or his or her manager?
·         Are you clear about what coaching can and can’t deliver?  Many coaches will lay out clearly what coaching can and can’t promise.  Good coaching contracts explain who is responsible for what in the coaching relationship.  This is particularly important because commissioning managers often come to coaching with unrealistic expectations.  Coaching, for example, may support an individual in fulfilling his or her potential in a job.  However, if an individual is fundamentally ill-suited to do a particular job, coaching will not change the fundamental motivation, values or skills-set of the individual.
·         Have you laid out clearly what outcomes you want of or for the coaching client?  In my time as a coach I continue to discover how difficult people find it to be open and honest about their real reasons for commissioning coaching.  I have had one manager describe a potential coaching client as “high potential” in an initial briefing, only to hear them lay out the individual’s multiple failings in an initial three-way meeting with the coaching client.  I have equally seen the reverse:  a manager who shared all sorts of correspondence about the person for whom coaching was being provided and promised – but ultimately failed – to share the “bottom line” in a three-way meeting.
·         Is coaching the right intervention – and if so, how much?  Whenever you commission coaching, you need to consider whether coaching really is the right intervention.  Commission coaching as a proxy for managing under-performing employees, for example, and you give coaching a bad name in your organisation as well as using an expensive tool which may not do the job.  Equally, depending on the needs of the client, coaching may be a poor alternative to therapy, training, mentoring or some other intervention.  Having said this, when coaching is the right tool for the job, you need to be realistic about just how much support an employee may need.  I have sometimes seen organisations hope for miracles in just three months’ of coaching with no contingency for an extension if it’s needed.  Miracles can and do happen in coaching – but not always.
·         What can you reasonably expect to hear about progress in coaching – and who from?  Despite a very clear contractual agreement with clients about confidentiality in coaching, I often field requests for feedback which, were I to give it, would be in breach of my agreement.  Of course it’s entirely reasonable for organisations to want to understand to what extent coaching is providing benefit to the person seeking coaching or addressing concerns raised by the organisation.  At the same time, many employees will feel concerned if they have any sense that a promise of confidentiality in the coaching relationship is not being honoured by their coach or employer.
Some contracting essentials for HR when commissioning coaching

So, what are the areas you need to look at if you want to avoid these and other common pitfalls?  Here are some thoughts from me:
·         Get clear about the full range of help available:  The more you have clarity about the range of support available to an employee and when each one is appropriate, the better able you are to have a discussion with an individual and his or her manager about what support might best meet his or her needs.  Get clear on the full range of alternatives including coaching, therapy, mentoring, training and good, old-fashioned performance management.  Be ready to have a discussion with the person who approaches you to understand his or her desired outcomes and where he wants to get to.  This can provide the basis for discussing coaching as one of a number of alternatives and also for discussing who actually needs the coaching.
·         Select a pool of coaches with whom to work ahead of a specific coaching need:  I have found that clients who are best able to match a coach for a specific coaching assignment have a pool of coaches and know their strengths and areas of interest.  (This could be an article all by itself – so please let me know if you’d like me to write on this subject by leaving a comment below).  Equally, the International Coach Federation recommends to anyone commissioning coaching that they interview at least three coaches and most coaches are glad to meet with a potential coaching client to ensure a good match.  (I would add that, given three good coaches, clients often choose the one they’ve met most recently, so if you want to keep your coaches happy, you’ll mix up the order in which you introduce coaches to potential coaching clients).
·         Make sure you have clear contractual agreements in place – and educate people about your agreements:  A good coaching agreement is realistic about what coaching can and can’t deliver and about who is responsible for what in the coaching relationship.  In my agreements with organisations, for example, I spell out clearly that whilst it’s the organisation that funds the coaching, my client is the person seeking coaching.  I also spell out clearly what information I will and won’t share with an employer.  Equally, given my experiences over the years, I take care to let managers know that I will look to them to share any expectations they have of an employee as part of our initial three-way meeting and will not be filling in any gaps even if I am aware of things that have been left unsaid.  Increasingly I’ve learnt to spell out very clearly that it is for an individual to decide how he or she responds to expectations from his or her manager and to say that if the manager fails to share any expectations they have of the employee, this will have an impact on the potential outcomes from coaching.
·         Be clear – from the beginning – about how you will monitor progress and outcomes from coaching:  Your contractual agreements need to give clarity from the beginning about who will do what to monitor progress and outcomes from coaching.  I include progress meetings in longer contracts and always complete a coaching assignment with a three-way meeting in which I facilitate a discussion between the person seeking coaching and his or her manager about progress.  I also seek to build into an assignment an appropriate approach to feedback given the needs a client has expressed.  For example, I occasionally coach individuals who are designated “high potential” within their organisation and who also have specific development areas.  Where client organisations are willing to fund it (usually for very senior clients), I begin an assignment by gathering feedback through interview to get under the skin of a development need.  It helps to mirror this process at the end of an assignment to see how perceptions have changed.
·         Expect the unexpected:  Reading through this article, I realise there’s one important area to add.  Organisations who are used to using coaching and who use it effectively understand just how much their desired outcome can come in unexpected ways.  This, for example, is the individual who was struggling to perform in a particular role and who discovers, through coaching, just how much he or she yearns to do something quite different.  For watchers of The Voice, this is the dentist who yearns to sing or some equivalent in your organisation.  The truth is that whilst coaching may help someone to excel in a role it may, equally, provide a reality check such that an individual moves between roles or leaves an organisation.  In this case, whilst coaching is commissioned to support someone in getting up to speed in a new job, improved performance comes from recruiting someone better suited to the role.

I suspect this has been my longest article so for DiscussHR and still, I know I have barely scratched the surface of a huge topic.  I’m interested to know what you have taken from this article that’s useful to you.  Equally, I’m interested to know about your experience – what have you done that works for you?

On tour with the London Symphony Chorus

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It’s been a mad weekend.  In truth, if there’s one thing I didn’t really want to do in the midst of pre-Christmas preparations, it was to travel to Luxembourg on Friday and from Luxembourg to Paris on Saturday and back to London just in time to miss the Archers on Sunday.  Except that, well, I did…

This trip was part of my alternative career – my unpaid career – as a member of the London Symphony Chorus.  It has some similarities with my professional life.  On Friday, I was up at 6 a.m. and out of the house by seven in order to catch the Eurostar to Brussels – just as tomorrow, I shall be getting up well before dawn to travel to Edinburgh to conduct a leadership assessment for a client.  This tour also included very little down-time to explore our host cities, which is also true of many business trips.  Beyond this, the similarities give way to many differences.  Let me tell you about our trip.

On Friday morning, we caught the 8.50 a.m. train from London St. Pancras to Brussels – about 120 singers, variously bleary-eyed and excited and more or less prepared.  From Brussels we travelled by coach to Luxembourg, leaving behind us a certain amount of cold for, well, more cold.  The closer we got to our destination, the more snow we saw on the ground, giving way to the rain and bleak, grey skies.  Perhaps it’s a sign of my age and experience that, on arrival, I opted for a cup of tea and a 30-minute sleep before preparing to go over to the concert hall for our pre-concert rehearsal.

Luxembourg’s Philharmonie Luxembourg Concert Hall is a very fine building indeed.  From the exterior, it is characterised by its surrounding of pillars which are striking even when you have your head down in an attempt to ward off the rain and cold.  Inside, it is all sloping floors and overhead walkways for the public and, behind the scenes, spacious accommodation for orchestra and chorus.  Unless you’ve travelled the artists quarters of the world’s concert halls, you could easily overlook just how welcome such spacious accommodation is.

At 5.15 p.m. heure locale the choir warmed up with our new Music Director, Simon Halsey, before we were joined by members of the London Symphony Orchestra and our conductor, Maestro Valerie Gergiev. Famous for conducting using a toothpick and with hand gestures so wobbly they are terrifying to follow, I was struck by a shift in his approach – at least in the rehearsal – towards giving clearer direction to both orchestra and chorus.  After the rehearsal, we had time to change and – because we were not on the platform in the first half of the concert – to take in refreshments and a walk around the public areas before singing Szymanowski’s 3rd Symphony, Song of the Night.

Chorus tours, even such short ones as this, are always good for their opportunity to socialise so that, after the concert, we wandered back to our hotel and made good use of the spacious bar area.  I found myself surrounded by about 10 or 12 people, some of whom I knew well and others less so.  We took time to chat, drink, laugh and drink some more.  It helped that our Saturday morning departure was at 11.15 a.m.

On Saturday, we were driven by coach to Luxembourg’s railway station and arrived with time to spare, though not quite enough time to find a cup of coffee – just enough time to sing a few carols in the spacious entrance hall before bording our train to Paris, Gare de l’Est.  I suspect that this, alone, was worth the travel and discomfort and will be one of the stories we still tell ten, twenty years down the line.

In Paris, together with my room mate, I took time to rest – again, for half an hour – before walking up to the Salle Pleyel.  Here, the accommodation is, frankly, awful.  Not only is our space small, laden with piles of chairs and without mirrors, but this time, we are sharing it with James Mallinson, recording producer and asked to be silent.  Even if we remember not to talk, it’s impossible to change in the total silence required for James to do his job.

It’s time to be flexible or to go mad with frustration and anger.  After our warm-up and with just an hour until we are required to join the orchestra, I go with friends to a nearby cafe and share a drink and escargots.  Returning to the concert hall, we are kept waiting until the very end of the rehearsal where we are on the platform for only a few minutes, singing two or three pages to set the balance and then, once more, having time but no proper space.  Together with the same friends, I return to the same cafe for our plat principal – in my case, confit de canard with haricots verts.  We return in time for the second half of the concert, listening to Brahm’s Variations on a Theme By Haydn before singing the Szymanowski again.  Afterwards, it seems only fitting to complete our meal, this time in a small restaurant near our hotel.  I enjoy poire belle Helene for dessert and then sleep for less than six hours before getting up for the return journey.

And what of the singing?  Ask members of the chorus and you’ll find as many responses as there are members – our view of how things went is always a reflection of our personal performance and experience.  For my part, I am delighted to have four performances of this piece in quick succession (in London, Luxembourg, Paris and again in London).  As I sing it with increasing confidence, I also come increasingly to love this piece. 

On Armistice Day, November 2012

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“Comrade, I did not want to kill you.
If you jumped in here again, I would not do it, if you would be sensible too.
But you were only an idea to me before,
an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth its appropriate response.
It was that abstraction I stabbed.
But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me.
I thought of your hand grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle;
now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship.
Forgive me comrade.
We always see it too late.
Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us,
that your mothers are just as anxious as ours,
and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony
– forgive me comrade;  how could you be my enemy?”

Erich Maria Remarque
All Quiet on the Western Front

Today is Armistice Day, November, 2012.  It’s a long time since the armistice was first signed – on 11th November, 1918.  Few people alive today have memories of that war.
Nonetheless, many of us live in the shadow of that war.  We have family members who fought in World War I, who were injured, traumatised, perhaps even died.  These experiences are part of the story of our family and shape our own experience.  On a larger scale, and in many countries, the war also played a role in the story of the country in which we live.  Erich Maria Remarque, in his novel All Quiet on the Western Front, strips back the rhetoric of war-time ‘heroism’ to reveal the human experience of the young soldier.
The themes of war are also the themes of peace and for this reason I chose the extract above from Remarque’s novel.  It is a theme I have touched on before at this time of year.  For it seems to me that it applies as much in the office or at home as it does on the battlefield.  How often are our colleagues (in Finance, IT, Sales, whatever…) ‘an abstraction’?  How often do we take a stab at the same ‘abstraction’ when we speak to our spouses, siblings, sons and daughters from a place of anger or frustration?
On this Armistice Day, 2012, we remember those who fought in World War I and in subsequent wars.  Let us remember, too, those closer to home.  And whether our opponents in war or our colleagues or loved ones, let us take a moment to see beyond our abstractions and to connect with our ‘enemies’ from a place of recognition of our shared humanity.

Reflecting on my gardening year

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Summer is drawing to a close – and what a summer!  Predictions of a drought to knock 1976 into a cocked hat became the subject of ridicule as the rain poured and poured and, well, poured… breaking one record and then another.  Sitting in my garden recently, I found myself reflecting on my gardening year.

This is the first year I have sown anything from seed and I have had a good number of successes.  I have grown broad beans, runner beans, French beans – the runner beans from beans harvested from last year’s crop.  I have grown Swiss chard, and three different types of courgettes – green courgettes, yellow courgettes and summer squash.  I have grown butternut squash, potatoes and tomatoes.  I have grown marigolds and nasturtium.  I have grown aubergine and cucumbers, lettuce, fennel – even cauliflowers.  Recently, visiting my local farmer’s garden, I noticed how many of the vegetables I most admired were ones I have in abundance in my own garden.

It hasn’t all been plain sailing.  The tomatoes have suffered terribly in the rain and I have had to pull out and dispose of tomatoes with blight.  Of those that remain, I have only had ripe tomatoes in the last two or three weeks and even then, very few – what a wash-out!  I have discovered that some plants really do need to be in a green house – the aubergines and cucumbers in particular.  I don’t (yet) have a greenhouse, though I have started to ponder what size greenhouse I need and where I might put it in my garden which is spacious by urban standards and nonetheless modest in size.

I really celebrate my learning.  I can grow things from seed and they are naturally inclined to grow.  In this less-than-sunny year my vegetables have grown much better on one side of the garden than the other.  I’ve learnt a few more ways to reduce the number of slugs and snails in my garden.  I’ve learnt – after upwards of 40 years without eating a broad bean – that I can eat broad beans and (in some dishes at least) enjoy them.  And as I learn more about my garden I am also slowly developing a plan for it.  I know where I want to grow vegetables, taking into account the position of the garden and where the sun shines.  I know where I want to have a seating area for breakfast and another shady seating area for lunch at midday.  I have learnt that I experience an unbelievable amount of pleasure – a deep, deep joy – from sowing and tending and planting my own seeds.  I have been reminded of nature’s abundance and the joy of giving away my excess harvest.

After a while I realised that my reflections were like the annual reviews that are carried out in many organisations.  I also realised that my reflection in hindsight were rather different from my reflections at certain moments during the year, when my focus was overwhelmingly on the challenges of my garden – the blight on my tomatoes, the impossibility of staying on top of the weeds and the slugs and snails in what seemed like interminable rain.  For me, this ‘annual review’ of my gardening year, seated with a cup of tea in the midst of the harvest of my labours brought nothing but joy, pure joy.  I was able to embrace my successes and to notice areas where I still have much to learn.  I was able to look ahead and to begin to plan for the year(s) ahead without any sense of being somehow in ‘deficit’.  I was able to differentiate between gaps in my learning and the impact of circumstances beyond my control.

If only the workplace annual review could be a joyous event, too.  I wonder, what would this take in your organisation?

Preparing for longer working lives: time for a revolution in the way we work?

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Every few weeks I write a blog posting for Discuss HR.  The posting below will be published today:

Recently Nick Hewer and Margaret Mountford, who have both served alongside Sir Alan Sugar in the BBC’s Apprentice, explored what it might take for people to continue working into their 70s in The Town That Never Retired.  I found myself wondering to what extent the HR profession is at the vanguard of shaping a way of working in the future which reflects the life expectancy of modern British men and women.

I confess that, for purely personal reasons, I have long been interested in the question of what happens as people get older.  Not surprisingly, my interest starts at home:  I was just 18 when my parents retired, my father aged 70 and my mother aged 51.  My mother, who had always managed home and family as well as working alongside my father on the farm, continued to thrive whilst my father struggled to adapt.  Years later, when he was well into his 80s or maybe even 90s, my father continued to make references to his contribution to the family as a farmer, as if his sense of identity was still vested in his bygone work.  My mother, on the other hand, continued to bring up her children, looked after her parents in their old age and then my father in his.  She has been a church warden for many years, organised an annual concert for 25 years, still organises the bookstall in the monthly village market and even – now aged 81 – continues to cook for the “old folk” at the village lunch club.

As an amateur singer I have also had cause to be aware of just how well some people thrive well into their old age.  I sang under the baton of Leonard Bernstein until he died in 1990, aged 72.  In 1997, I was deprived of the opportunity to sing under the baton of Sir Georg Solti when he died shortly before a concert, aged 85.  I am pleased to say that Sir Colin Davis continues to delight in his 85th year.

But what about corporate Britain?  Some employers have long since cottoned on to the value of older employees.  As early as 2001 The Grocer ran an article entitled Asda and Sainsbury take a positive view of older workers.  The article highlights how, in response to the then government’s Age Positive Campaign, Sainsbury “now offers arrangements which allow older staff to reduce the hours they spend at work gradually, and a new pension plan which allows staff to contribute until they are aged 75”.  In my own local Sainsbury it was Norma, who must be about 70 years old, who served me a few months back on the day that snow had caused travel chaos and staff were still struggling to get in.  I value the older staff in my local supermarket because they have an ease in interacting with people of all ages and experience of using the products they sell – which is sometimes obviously lacking amongst the “youngsters”.

As I sit and muse I realise I do have a vision, albeit barely considered, of a way of working which takes far greater account of the needs of workers and the natural rhythms of life.  For young people there might be opportunities to work longer hours to earn that elusive mortgage deposit.  For parents there might be opportunities to work less and spend more time with children.  For older people there might be opportunities to work shorter hours whilst still making a valuable and valued contribution in the workplace (and, yes, earning a living).  Perhaps, in time, there will be a degree of choice throughout our careers which supports employees in contributing to their place of work and to their family.  To put it another way, the more we need people to work well into their 60s, 70s and 80s, the more we need to design ways of working throughout people’s careers that support health, fulfilment and longevity.  We also need to do our research – one interesting fact from The Town That Never Retired is that research shows, in a way that may be counter-intuitive, that employment prospects for young people are better when older people work longer.

As you’ve no doubt already discovered, I don’t have all the answers, but rather want to ask the questions.  My main question to you is this:  as an HR professional, how far ahead are you looking and how do you envisage the future for the older people of this country?

Singing the Grande Messe des Morts at St. Paul’s Cathedral

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Photo: The timp line up for tonight's Grande Messe des Morts at St Paul's Cathedral - all 10 of them. It's completely sold out tonight but still a few left for tomorrow (http://bit.ly/PbpWlZ), and it'll be live on Radio 3 tomorrow too.
Yes, I was there, singing Berlioz’ extraordinary piece – the Grande Messe des Morts.  A requiem for the dead on a grand scale.  David Jackson, percussionist extraordinaire with the London Symphony Orchestra, took this photo of the timps section during rehearsal in the afternoon.  One of the players was a dead ringer for comedian Rob Brydon which intrigued me all the way through the rehearsal.  It was a noisy affair – the piece itself alternates between passages of great richness of sound and moments of sparseness.  (With more time I would hone my language in an attempt to convey something of this amazing piece).  And of course, in rehearsal, we shared the space with visitors to the cathedral with their murmurings and occasional applause.
The performance was altogether different.  Even with a full audience the sound space belonged to the performers and – more than the performers – to Berlioz.  The off-stage brass were high in the galleries so that the Tuba Mirum was a moment of high drama with the interplay between orchestra, off-stage brass and the men who were in fine sound.  I shall leave it to the critics to say more.
Singing in St. Paul’s is always a mixed blessing.  The sound reverberates around the space so that the old jokes are always about coming back in a week’s time to hear the performance for the last time.  There were moments when our conductor, Sir Colin Davis, paused so that we could, indeed, hear the sound before it faded away.  This is a new way of experiencing the phrase “right back atcha!”  This added to the heightened experience of an already grand piece.
At the same time, it is this very soundscape that makes it a challenging venue in which to perform.  You cannot rely on listening to know if you are singing in time!  There were moments when I thought fellow performers – singers, orchestra, off-stage brass – were ahead or behind Sir Colin’s beat and still, it’s hard to know what the effect was for the audience.
For me, it was something of a marathon.  Like all marathon runners, singers need the right shoes and the truth is that, for me, no shoes is the optimum way to stand for such a long period and also strictly verboten.  Still I might try it this evening (don’t tell my voice rep).  For yes, I’ll be performing again this evening before getting up at the crack of dawn tomorrow for a coaching session in the morning.  And now, I am on my way to meet one of my clients for another coaching session.
Before I press “publish” I take a moment to savour the rich privileges of a life in which I get to earn my living doing work I love and spend my spare time doing something else that I also love.  Maybe I’ll see you there this evening.

On my birthday: note to self

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It’s your birthday today.  You’ve got a full day ahead – don’t beat yourself up about that (just take a moment to book time off on your birthday next year).

Busy or not busy, take time today to notice what you did in the last year that you would never have dreamt of doing a few years ago.  Notice the courage you’ve shown in your learning as well as the things you’ve learnt.

Stop making comparisons.  You know they only get you down or – worse still – put someone else down (even if only in your mind).  And when you do make comparisons – with your distant ideal or some younger (slimmer, fitter, faster, something-or-other-er) or older (wiser, more gracious, richer, more successful…) self, hold yourself with compassion for where you are now.

Take time to notice what’s working in your life, including (especially) the tiniest of things.  In case you need reminding, the joy is not in the lottery win or the next big contract, it’s right there in your dining room in the seed trays by the window.

Enjoy those Christmas-and-birthdays-only illicit pleasures (you know what they are) AND notice whether they do still give you joy.  Let go of the ones that don’t.

Finish your client report on time, but not at the expense of receiving – yes, really receiving – the love and best wishes of friends, family and colleagues.  Let the day be spacious and joyful as well as busy and productive.

It’s OK to be where you are – whatever you feel today, let your feelings be welcome and hold them with care.  Everything is welcome.

If you’re reading this, you’re still alive.  Everything you experience today is only possible because you are alive. (And yes, it’s OK that you may never truly realise just what a gift this is).  Being alive, being yourself – oh!  and drinking your birthday cup of coffee – who could ask for more?

Inviting you to the spiritual practice of resting

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Six days thou shalt labour, and do all thy work:  But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou.


Deuteronomy
Chapter 5, verses 13 and 14



Every now and then I have trouble sleeping, as I did on Saturday night.  I woke up at about 2 or 3am and struggled to get back to sleep.  No worrying thoughts.  Just an awareness of being tired and yet awake.  I did what I do on these occasions – got up, made myself a cuppa, enjoyed a read for a while and then went back to bed and slept like a baby.  If you read my post on Tuesday you already know that I enjoyed a good lie-in on Sunday morning.


It wasn’t enough.  On Monday, after a slightly late night and a good night’s sleep, I woke up feeling tired and yearning for more sleep.  Almost as soon as I woke up I realised that, had I taken a moment to think ahead, I would have done well to book this week for a break.  Too late – I already had appointments in my diary throughout the week.


It has been relatively restful this week.  Realising how tired I am I have focused on those things that are time sensitive and re-scheduled anything that can wait.  I’ve slept later.  Still, it has been relatively restful but not quite rest.  I am looking forward to four days when I shall put work to one side to spend time with my family, to tend my garden and, well, to rest.


In the Christian and Jewish calendars, the seventh day is prescribed as a day of rest, in line with the commandments which are said to have been handed to Moses by God.  Rest is, in this sense, a spiritual practice and has significance alongside other key practices.  Now you may not be a Christian or a Jew.  You may have no religious faith.  Still, I invite you to pause for a moment to ask yourself:  shall I be putting aside my work this weekend and allowing myself to rest?  If the answer is no, I invite you to ask yourself why.  Perhaps your profession is such that you need, at times, to work when others are not working.  Perhaps you have a key deadline that means that this year, for once, you will be taking some time over the break to work.  Perhaps work is your haven from difficulties at home – a way to keep out of the way of your unhappy marriage or to excuse your absence from a family gathering.  Your reasons have a story to tell – if only you are listening.


I invite you, too, to ask yourself:  do I need time to rest this weekend?  In case the answer is ‘yes’, I invite you to listen.

Sustaining a long career

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On Tuesday I went with my niece, Rebecca Nesbit, to a talk on Climate Change.  The talk was by Professor Elinor Ostrom, whose extensive credentials are too long to be listed here but can be found on Wikidepia and elsewhere.  After the talk, Rebecca and I shared what we’d taken away from Ostrom’s presentation.  Rebecca presents a brief summary on her blog of what she took away, under the heading Climate change thoughts from a Nobel Laureate.

I confess that, throughout the talk, I was both listening to the content of Professor Ostrom’s talk and reflecting on Professor Ostrom herself.  Born in 1933, she is still professionally active at the age of 78 and a thoughtful and clearly highly intelligent woman.  I am used to singing under the baton of men who are still conducting at a mature age – I sang with Leonard Bernstein shortly before he died, my opportunity to sing with Georg Solti was snatched away when he died just before a concert, I have enjoyed singing under the baton of Sir Colin Davis for a number of years.  (As it happens, Sir Colin has conducted three generations of my family throughout his career).

So much for the men.  It’s largely outside my experience to meet women who are still professionally active in their late 70s and into their 80s.  I hasten to add that it’s not that they’re not active.  My mother, aged 81, is a legend throughout her local community and across my family for her full portfolio of activities, from the domestic (managing her household, tending her allotment, looking after her youngest grandson etc.) to the community and charitable activities (with long service as a church warden, running the bookstall at the village Saturday market, cooking for the old folks – yes, really! – at the village lunch club, and much more besides).  I still remember Mum’s plans to keep the bookstall books in the attic of her new home when she moved 6 years ago.  Needless to say, as a family, we were quick to discourage her.

So, Professor Ostrom was striking to me as an example of someone who maintains an active professional life well into her third age.  This is not new – there have always been people who do this.  At the same time, our context is such that – it seems to me – the significance of this has changed.  On the same day that I heard Ostrom speak I read (in the Metro I think) of predictions that one third of children born in the UK today will live to be 100 years old.  It seems to me that, with this statistic in mind,  the things we’re currently doing to adapt (changes in pensions, changes in employment legislation) may prove to be wholly inadequate.

Is it possible that we need to radically re-think our approach to work?  This is such an enormous topic that I am struggling to put my arms (or perhaps my metaphorical pen) around it.  Here are just three possible implications:

  • That we need to think much more holistically about the relationship between things we currently view as separate – work, unemployment and retirement.  We need to exercise more judgement based on accurate assessment of the facts and less judgement (as in “condemnation”) based on dogma in order to reshape the way we view the role of work in society;  
  • That we need to re-think our chief measures of success at work and what we want our work to deliver.  Perhaps we need to prioritise sustainability over profit, thinking about how our organisations can contribute to society over time rather than focusing narrowly on “shareholder value”.  (I’m guessing we would make this transition more easily if only we could develop a deeper understanding of the role of money in our lives – what is it we want money to do for us?  For money is never an end in itself and always a means to an end).  Equally, perhaps we need work to deliver people who are not only productive at work but also motivated, resourceful and healthy long after their careers have finished;
  • That we need to plan for careers that span as many as 70 years and which are adapted to our age and stage at each step along the way.  Already, levels of workplace stress and absent-from-work illness suggest we are not doing enough organise work in ways which enrich the lives of workers as much as it contributes to bottom-line profits and other business outcomes.  And the more we plan for a longer career, the more we need to sign up for enjoyment at work – it’s hard to sustain the view that we’re “saving for an enjoyable retirement” when retirement is 50, 60, even 70 years away.

I’d welcome your thoughts and ideas.  What are you doing to adapt to a longer career for you and your staff?

Making the case for child labour

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Last week it was my turn to offer a post for the HRUK group on Linkedin, which is also published at http://discusshr.blogspot.com/.  The postings are designed to stimulate discussion amongst professionals in the world of Learning and Development and human Resources.  Here it is:

Sometimes, it takes personal experience to bring home the challenges that we face in society at large.  So it is that, in recent months, a number of personal experiences have brought home to me the plight of young people in our current times.
About 18 months ago a young friend, newly graduated, took up a teaching job in China.  He is one of a generation of young people who are at a loss to find suitable work despite doing everything they were told to do (“work hard, get a good education”) to succeed.  His experience was reinforced more recently when I spoke to a family friend, mother of two graduates – one of whom has subsequently trained as a barrister – who have both been unemployed for three years since leaving education.  Even the local supermarkets have said no to employing them because they are “over-qualified” for the jobs available.
And yes, last years’ riots (which I mentioned in my December posting) also brought home the challenges young people face.  I wrote on the day of the riots about an encounter with two young people who were lingering outside my front door after the rioters had left.  I asked them if they’d been involved:
“No, not us, we’re good boys.  We’re just covering up our faces because we don’t want to risk losing our jobs if we’re seen.  But they” – pointing to the police – “they’ve got to understand that if they keep taking our jobs away, we’re going to do something – they’ve got to understand”.
I look back on my own formative years and realise how much I have to be grateful for.  From a young age I had opportunities to earn money.  I contributed half the cost of my first trip abroad (aged 14) from those earnings, which came from babysitting, from selling mushrooms which I picked on my parents’ farm before going to school, and from other work I did around the farm.
Later, aged 16 or so, I had a Saturday job at a department store some ten miles away, catching the bus to and from work.  During my university years I spent holidays working at an old peoples’ home as Deputy Manager (something that, in retrospect, I can hardly believe) and, one year, doing the grape harvest in France.  I was an au pair in Austria before I started my degree course and taught English in a French school for a year as part of my degree.  In Austria I also taught English to one of my neighbour’s children.  In France I tutored the son of an English family due to return to the UK as he prepared to take GCSEs.
From an early age there was unpaid work, too – what often get called “chores”.  At home these included such things as laying the table and washing up after meals.  In my last year at school I undertook to turn on the oven that warmed the plates for lunch at the beginning of each school day.  At secondary school the prefects system conferred responsibility.  By the time I left home I had at least some awareness of what it takes to manage my finances and to maintain a home.  I’ve often thought of myself as particularly naive about the world of work during my formative years – I know now of many career paths which I could have taken then and of which I was just not aware at the time.  Still, by the time I left full-time education I had experienced a variety of work.
Of course, the world has moved on since my childhood.  And still, I wonder what messages we need to take from these experiences that might still apply today.  Here are my first thoughts:
  • I see a need for humility amongst the adults whose responsibility it is to contribute to children and young adults as they prepare for adult life and the world of work.  The world today is different from the world we grew up in and tomorrow’s world will be different again.  Imagining we know the answers for our children may go some way towards assuaging our fears and still, in the end, our role is to help young people find their own way in this ever-changing world;
  • We all have a desire – a need, even – to contribute to others.  Letting children play a role in the house from an early age supports them in meeting this need, builds self esteem and prepares them for their life as independent adults;
  • Success in adult life takes many forms, not all of which depend on our exam results.  Introducing children to both paid and unpaid work from an early age supports them in meeting immediate needs, in developing skills of living and in exploring possible avenues for a future career;
  • In a world in which not everyone can find a job at all times, we – the adults – need to remember that, with or without a job, we are all, fundamentally, OK.