Category Archives: Developing as a leader

Essential lessons from The Apprentice

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence,
Neil Clough
Fans of the BBC’s Apprentice were glued to the television last night for the interviews.  The gears were shifted from the fun and games of various tasks (a bit like the kind of assessment days I have been involved in over the years in corporate GB) to close scrutiny of candidates and their business plans.
It soon became clear that it wasn’t looking good for the men.  It was hard to see a way out for Jordan Poulton, whose business plan, it emerged, was for a business owned by someone else with whom he had a ‘gentleman’s agreement’.  He was the first to go.  Next, it was Neil Clough, who continued to maintain that his business plan could work despite clear feedback to the contrary from Lord Sugar’s advisers.  Finally, it was Francesca MacDuff-Varley whose spirited performance could not disguise her lack of business savvy.
Of the three candidates to leave this week, none was as hard to let go as Neil Clough, who has looked like a potential winner from the beginning.  As he sometimes does, Lord Sugar expressed his regret at having to say goodbye to him.  On The Apprentice‘s sister (or should I say brother..?) programme, The Apprentice:  You’re Fired, he said that “Neil’s greatest flaw is his inability to listen to sound advice”.  In a way, it doesn’t even matter whether or not the advice was sound – Neil was unable to adjust his approach for any reason.  It could be that listening to sound advice was indeed where it was at.  Equally, it could be that recognising that the people with the power and the ear of Lord Sugar had a view which was different from his own should have been enough to have Neil thinking about how to adapt.
For me, the important issue was not that Neil was unable to listen to sound advice.  No.  The important issue was this:  why was Neil unable to listen to sound advice?  We already knew, before last night’s episode, that Neil saw the death of his father when he was just 18 years old as a defining experience – this is something he shared in an impassioned speech on the business away-day task.  What struck me last night, though, was Neil’s need to succeed in order not to let his father down – or his wife and children, come to that.  To put it another way, Neil’s personal need to succeed – linked to his experience of losing his father – was such that he couldn’t let go of his faith in his business plan, for who would he be then?  There was, simply, too much at stake.  And maybe to put it yet another way, Neil had conflated separate issues (the death of his father, his desire to live up to his father’s expectations, his success on The Apprentice and no doubt more besides).  If you can’t separate your feelings about a past event from what’s happening today you will, at times, act in ways which are not good for you or your business.
Now, please don’t get me wrong.  Our most personal experiences can be a great force for good.  How many charities are borne out of grief and loss which successfully address injustices or provide much-needed support?  How many great leaders are fuelled by the desire to right some wrong or heal some injustice?  To bring this right up to date, I think of Andy Murray’s recent Wimbledon win and its potential to heal the deep sense of loss and emotional scars of the community of Dunblane.  Perhaps the word ‘heal’ is the important word here.  The desire for healing can be a force for good both for an individual and for those whose lives they touch, within business or without.  At the same time, the failure to bring healing where it’s needed can lead to behaviours in the workplace which are dysfunctional both for the individual and for the business.  For me, more than anything else, last night’s episode of The Apprentice shone a light on Neil’s deep need for healing from the painful, early loss of his father.
Neil, in case you’re reading this, I want to express my wish for you.  I hope that you come to understand one day that, no matter what your father wished for you when he was alive, you do not have to be better than anyone else or to succeed every time in order to do your loved ones justice… nor indeed, in order to be loved.  I hope you find self-acceptance such that you can see yourself more fully, knowing that the occasional failures that will beset you take nothing away from who you are.  Indeed, I trust that by developing a deep sense of self-acceptance you will uncover the fullness of your strengths as much as you are able to see and embrace your weaknesses and your failures.
And to others who read this posting I would like to add that  if you see something of Neil in yourself I want to reach out to you, too.  Let your experiences be a force for healing for you and for others – a force for good in the world.

Focussing on what is essential

Clients and testimonials, Developing as a leader, , ,
Sometimes, a question in coaching can hit the nail on the head

Over the years, working with men and women in leadership roles, I’ve often found that, beneath the surface agenda – whatever that might be – lie questions of personal and professional well-being.  The issue may not be, for example, how can you improve your performance in this job?  Instead, there may be a calling to another role which is being ignored and which, still, seeks to be acknowledged and explored.  Or perhaps, behind questions of professional excellence lie questions of personal happiness – of work/life balance, of priorities outside of work which are being ignored… you get the drift.

Sometimes, clients bring issues which are wholly practical, such as how to reflect their skills, experience and accomplishments in a CV in ways which make it more likely they will be invited to interview.  Often, even the most practical questions reveal broader and deeper questions which are waiting to be explored.  There is, after all, little benefit to be had in getting a first interview for a job to which you are wholly unsuited.  Equally, in the kind of challenging times we live in at the moment, clients risk grasping for the job they think they can easily attract at the expense of thinking through how best they contribute or what it is they really yearn to do.

The underlying question is this:  who am I?  The more we build a life which is rooted in the firm foundations of knowing who we are (and who we are becoming) the more we are able to build a life which is a gift to ourselves and to others.  This is a life in which we can feel comfortable and congruent, and which becomes the means by which we find meaning and make a difference in the world.

Last week, when I announced the beginning of a Sunday coaching clinic at the Lewis Clinic in Harley Street, it was these issues that I had in mind.  I am seeing the Lewis Clinic as a place where people can work with me who want to focus on questions of personal and professional well-being away from their place of work.  Some of them will be those I already work with – leaders who want to take the hard work out of achieving results.  Perhaps there will be others, too – people for whom questions of personal or professional well-being are uppermost.

In the few days since I first started to share news of the Sunday coaching clinic, I have been heartened by the response of a wide variety of people.  One of them is a dear friend who also commissioned a coaching session at a time when she was considering her forward path.  She responded immediately when I sent her my news – “compelled to reply” – and offered the following testimonial.  You’ll also find it on LinkedIn and on my Facebook page for the clinic:

“I met with Dorothy at a time when I was wondering about taking a sabbatical.  I was concerned that time out would ‘damage my career’.  After only one consultation, I had clarified my needs, and planned a course of action.  Six months on, I’ve not only had a wonderfully enriching sabbatical, but the type of work coming through is more fulfilling.  I can wholeheartedly recommend Dorothy for her compassion, insight and unparalleled skill in focusing on what is essential.”

Marietta
Special Occupational Therapist, London

I want to finish by saying how grateful I am to those clients who share their feedback with me in private and, on occasions like this, with others who may also benefit from an investment in coaching.

Attracting, engaging and keeping talent

Developing as a leader,
Why should anyone come and work for your company?


Paul Goring wrote an article this week about attracting, engaging and keeping talent for Discuss HR blog.

I’m not sure Paul is saying anything particularly new or going beyond common sense… but that’s not the point.  The point is that, even in these straitened times, talented people have choices – and make them – about who to work with.  In my experience as an assessor, organisations never (and I mean never) complain of having too many talented people for the roles they have available.  If you want to continue to attract talented people for jobs at every level of the organisation, you need to pay attention to the promises you make and to how you deliver on your promises when you hire people.

And there’s another point.  The way you treat people when you do hire them… well, it tends to seep out to the customer and become part of the customer experience.  In my local branch of Timpson – I’m sure I’ve written about this before – I’ve had staff go into unsolicited raptures about how the company works and how much they enjoy working there.  No surprise, then, that Timpson has a whole section on its website about awards it has won, including the Tomorrow’s People Annual Award Of Achievement, Employer Of The Year 2012 award.

Of course, there’s more to it than that.  I have been gifted so many free lattes by staff at Pret a Manger over the years that I know there must be a policy lurking somewhere.  (After all, if it were just a spontaneous act of kindness by one human being to another – a human response, for example, to the one customer who smiled today – why haven’t I also been gifted the occasional book of stamps in the Post Office, or even… well… mortgage by my bank?)

I don’t need to spell out the impact of having unhappy, demotivated staff on the customer experience (though it may be worth saying that unhappy staff can lose confidence and they don’t always leave… so don’t count on losing them.  Equally, it may be worth saying that even when they do, they may well continue to talk about their poor experience of working for your company a long way down the road).

Of course, this Friday snippet would not be complete without highlighting the impact of your organisation’s leadership on engaging staff and reminding you of Daniel Goleman’s article Leadership That Gets Results, which is readily downloadable.  In it Goleman, outlines in brief the findings of research about the links between different leadership styles, employee engagement and organisational results.  If you’re serious about developing a brand as an employer that you can be really proud of and which attracts the kind of staff you really want to hire, you need to get serious about recruiting and selecting the right people to leadership posts and about how you education, train, manage and… mmm… lead them when they’re in post.

Please let me know how you get on.

Just how much can you flex in the workplace and still be yourself?

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence,
Just how much can you flex in the workplace and still be yourself?

I’ve been reflecting on a challenge I observe amongst my clients – maybe it’s one with which you, too, are familiar.  Some of the most successful people I know are also those who are most flexible and able to adapt. These are people who are able to read a situation and to know what’s required in that situation in order to achieve their desired outcome.  These are people who choose their behaviours carefully in order to move towards their end goal.  These are not the people who behave, repeatedly, in particular ways and say “people can like it or lump it – it’s just who I am”.  No, these are the people who know that they are far more than the sum of their behaviours.  Confident in their sense of self, they adapt easily to change and maintain steady progress towards end goals.
At the same time, I meet people who have flexed so far that they have lost touch with who they are.  These are the people who have pursued end goals and may even have succeeded and yet, they have done so at the cost of their sense of connection with who they really are.  Perhaps they never knew who they are – busy pleasing their parents or their employer they have drifted further and further away from any sense of who they are.  Sometimes the disparity sits right under their nose, if only they were open to seeing it.  Sometimes it is so well hidden that they have no sense of it – just a vague sense of unease.
For this second group (do you belong in this group?) there is a paradox.  The more alienated we are from our true sense of self the more challenging it becomes to change and adapt at a behavioural level.  It goes like this:  I think I am what I do – so any change to what I do threatens my sense of who I am.  Maintaining behavioural habits becomes a proxy for being ourselves.  This presents many challenges.  If I am what I do, how will I experience any feedback about my behaviour?  Of course, I shall try hard to dismiss it or the person who gives it.  If I am what I do, how will I manage in situations in which old behaviours are ineffective?  It’s likely that I will chose to be ineffective over changing my behaviour because this gives me some sense of preserving my sense of identity.  If I am what I do, how will I experience failure in a particular task or even in my job as a whole?  It’s hard not to take it personally.
So just how much can you flex in the workplace and still be yourself?  I wonder if this question opens up an ongoing journey rather than a once-for-all-time answer.  It requires us to be curious – on an ongoing basis – about how much of what we think of as “me” really is me.  The newly promoted leader, for example, may find him- or herself looking over his shoulder for weeks until he realises that yes, I can do this job and it’s OK to do this job.  Sometimes it can take feedback to reinforce this new sense of workplace identity.  At the same time, part of this ongoing journey is to become increasingly aware of times when an action does not sit comfortably with essential motivations and values.  Yes, I can lead my team in a certain direction and still, every day I find myself struggling to get out of bed or simply forcing myself to do what I need to do to deliver in this job.
Often, I have found that the instinct for change – for a move towards a life which is more congruent with who we are – is barely hidden beneath the surface.  The right question will open up the need to reconnect with our sense of self and to identify, quite quickly, that the life we are leading lies outside what is normal and natural for us.  Sometimes we have the joy of discovering that we are in the right place at the right time:  learning to bring ourselves more fully to our life and career can open up much greater ease as well as higher levels of achievement.  Sometimes the realisation is that, by continuing to strive to succeed in this situation, we are flexing too far from our essential selves.
I wonder how much you are flexing in your life and career?  And with what results?

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

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

There’s wisdom in knowing when to forgive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Below the surface: the hidden obstacles to organisational success

Developing as a leader,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When it’s time to give feedback to the boss

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Warning: don’t play with our values!

Developing as a leader, Developing leadership across your organisation,


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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