Ouch!  I’ve been surprised this week by the responses of colleagues to something I wrote on the Training Journal’s discussion forum, asking one of my colleagues if he intended his posting as self-advertising (which is against the rules of the forum).  Three members of the forum found my posting “patronising” and the person I addressed added that he found my suggestion “offensive” and “narrow”.

It would have been easy to dismiss the feedback or the people giving the feedback.  Even as I write I’m tempted to highlight some of the things I noticed about these responses – and the people who wrote them.  I could point to my in-tray and to the support I have received behind the scenes.  I could, I could, I could… but to do so would be to fall into the trap of believing I am right and failing to ask myself, “is this wise?”

Feedback – a nugget of gold

The more senior we become, the harder it becomes for those we lead to give us feedback.  Who wants to tell the man (or woman) who has the power to decide on your next performance rating, salary increase or promotion that he’s getting something wrong?  It’s possible that our peers will also respond by talking about us rather than to us.  They may think you’re impossible and still, they need you to complete the order for a major client on time and they don’t want to upset you right now or maybe, don’t want the potential drama associated with giving and receiving feedback.

And let’s be clear, your colleagues may fall short in the accuracy of their perceptions.  Perhaps they’re failing to see some positive attribute that you bring to your work – your ability to get things done quietly and invisibly, with little fuss is, by its very nature, a hidden talent.  Perhaps they are expecting something of you that you can’t possibly give – how often do your direct reports expect you to know just what support they want, for example, without ever having to make a request of you?  Perhaps your colleagues are confusing their own judgements and inferences for something that actually happened.  The list goes on…

No matter whether your colleagues’ perceptions are accurate or wholly mistaken, just or unjust, they are nonetheless perceptions.  The map may not be the territory and still, your colleagues may still be navigating using a particular map.  For this reason, I decided that, no matter how I might feel about my colleagues’ feedback or about the way in which they expressed it, I needed to pay attention.  The issue was not “am I patronising?” or even “did I intend to patronise?”  The issue for me is this – did my colleagues see me as patronising?  And what are the implications for me of this perception?

Perhaps there’s a paradox here.  For as long as I see my colleagues’ perceptions as incorrect, I am unlikely to change my behaviour.  Recognising my colleagues’ perceptions, regardless of their accuracy, opens up choices for me, based on a whole range of decisions – what impact do I want to have in a particular situation or with a particular person or people?  How do I need to adapt my style to achieve my desired outcome?  What other considerations do I want to bear in mind?  In short, as a leader, understanding the way you are seen opens up options that can make you more effective.

Asking for feedback in your leadership role

Once, as part of a team of assessors, I interviewed a number of members of a very senior team to assess their capability to handle the challenges ahead.  Their CEO, who commissioned the audit, was concerned that there might be significant gaps in the capabilities of team members – and there were.  In addition, we uncovered some serious concerns amongst team members about the behaviours of the CEO.  As a team, we were able to identify themes and to share them with the CEO, giving him an opportunity to adjust his behaviour.

Asking for feedback from those you lead can give you valuable information about how you’re perceived.  Few leaders do this proactively, however, so that many such opportunities are lost.  One reason for this is the myths associated with authenticity (being yourself) as a leader – as if you have no choice in the strategies you use to lead your team and team members must simply accept you as you are.  More often, though, it simply isn’t on a leader’s agenda to ask.

How can you ask?  In many ways.  If the levels of trust are high between you and those you lead, you have the basis for open and direct conversations about what you’re doing that team members value and what more you could do to help them succeed in their work.  The success of such an open approach probably reflects the levels of trust in your team, your levels of self confidence, and some clear and effective ground rules.

As an alternative, many psychometrics are designed to elicit feedback from others which you can also compare with your own self image.  Some are designed to help you understand your own preferred style and how this may be received by people with other preferences.  Using a psychometric test and/or channelling feedback via a skilled third party can give increased safety both for you and for others who provide feedback, as well as placing it in the context of a useful model.

Taking the learning from the feedback you receive

You may be wondering what I did with the feedback I received from my colleagues and I have to say to you, it’s still a work in progress.  One thing I did do, though, was go back to my Insights profile – Insights is a relatively new psychometric test which draws on a long tradition to identify different types of personality.  Reading through my profile, I asked myself what it could tell me about my style and approach and how it might be received by my colleagues on the forum.

One line in my summary profile reads “She tends to appreciate tradition and is interested in maintaining established rules and procedures”.  I recognise this to be true:  whilst some members of the forum value my concern for the rules of our community, I have decided to speak out less often and trust in the wider membership of the forum to express a view on postings which seem out of line with the agreed rules of the forum.

Other aspects of my profile highlight my preference for straightforward and open communication.  This is expressed in summary in the following way:  “When she turns her highly honed critical appraisal skills on the people around her, honesty may be translated into unintended hurtfulness”.  I recognise the report’s description of me as someone who combines strong thinking skills with strong opinions and a preference for truth and high ideals.

A key area of consideration for me is what happens when these strengths are over-played.  I know my own high standards have earned me my living and, at the same time, I can find it hard to step back and accept lower standards from others.  My profile lists as weaknesses that I “don’t suffer fools gladly” and can get bogged down with tradition and the status quo.

But the most fundamental issue is this:  how can I adapt my style to communicate effectively with those members of the forum who found my posting or see me as patronising?  And do I want to?

A few months ago, I wrote a posting entitled Avoiding an office affair.  This was a response to a posting by Gretchen Rubin entitled Six Tips for Avoiding an Office Affair.  Before I wrote it, I wrote down the names of people I know who, at some stage, have had an affair at work.  The list was long and, of course, that’s only the people I know about.  Statistics suggest that a significant proportion of the UK working population meet their partners at work:  it seems we all crave love.  At the same time, outside of intimate sexual relationships, we can be a bit “buttoned up” when it comes to expressing our love of colleagues, clients, suppliers and just about anyone we meet at work.  We feel it, but we don’t know how to express it.

In recent weeks, in a discussion on the Training Journal’s on-line forum for trainers and other professionals, colleagues have said that yes, they, too, grapple with this question.  They also highlighted some of the challenges that come with it.  Some are relatively innocuous:  just what is a “friend”, for example, and how do we decide who to say yes to and who to say no to when invited to connect on Facebook or LinkedIn?  Some are designed to make you laugh – the man who, trained by wife and daughter to add a kiss (“x”) at the end of texts included a kiss by mistake in a message to a high-ranking military officer he had only just met and received by return the message that the officer hadn’t expected their relationship to move so quickly to this level of intimacy – also signed with an “x”.  Some pointed to significant challenges.  How, for example, do you transition from the friendly style of communication you use day-to-day to a conversation with someone about their ongoing under-performance?  And how do you handle misunderstandings when a colleague thinks you mean more by your friendly style than you actually do?

Why is all this important?  At one level, it’s an issue of our time – with increasing levels of informality and the use of social media it’s something we need to find our way around.  But there’s more to it than that.  Our growing understanding of how the brain works is tending to confirm something we have all long since suspected – that we show up at our best when we have some sense that we are truly seen.  In the literature of leadership, Daniel Goleman (in his article Leadership That Gets Results) shares figures which suggests that the use of an affiliative style of leadership – i.e. one which places people first – contributes to a positive climate at work, increasing motivation and leading to better work outputs.  Of course it makes sense.  Friendly interactions create emotional bonds and harmony.  What’s more, the more we feel we are seen, understood and cared for, the more we feel safe to try different ways of doing things.  This increased flexibility is often part of what makes us successful.

How then to express the love we have for members of our team?  I don’t have all the answers but offer, instead, just five “top tips” with a nod of gratitude to my colleagues on the Training Journal forum:

Tip 1:  Avoid universal friendliness
It’s not good enough in a leadership role to think your style is “just the way you are”.  As Goleman puts it (in his article Leadership That Gets Results) “many leaders mistakenly assume that leadership style is a function of personality rather than a strategic choice”.  One of the worst mistakes we can make is expressing ourselves in universally friendly ways – the same way with all people all the time.  It’s this mistake that can lead a new colleague to believe we’re interested in a different kind of relationship when we’re not or can cause offence when we sign a message about the under-performance of a member of our team with our usual “x”.

Equally, especially in a leadership role, it’s important to take care not to discriminate.  If you are always friendly with John and never friendly with Sally, both John and Sally will make meaning of your behaviour – and may even be right in their interpretations.  This is unlikely to lead to the good health of the team and of individuals within the team.

Tip 2:  Maintain rapport
You may think that you need to be friendly in order to maintain rapport but sometimes, being friendly will actually have the opposite effect, because it doesn’t sit comfortably with the person with whom you are interacting.  Perhaps your friendly approach has come too soon in the relationship, in which case your team member may feel under pressure to reciprocate or choose to back away.  Perhaps it does not sit comfortably given your team member’s background or culture.

Rather than treating everyone the same way, pace each person and be ready to adjust.  Pacing involves meeting people where they are – matching the level of friendliness they show to you, for example, until you both feel comfortable.  Becoming more friendly becomes a matter of judgement and timing, taking a small step and noting any response to judge how your approach has landed.

Tip 3:  Use friendliness as one style amongst several
Any style you adopt as a leader will meet the needs of some situations but not others.  Think carefully about the needs of the situation and choose an appropriate style.  There will be times, for example, when you need to paint a picture for members of your team of where you want to get to and how you’re going to get there (I described one such time in When it’s time for the big leadership speech).  This is especially important when your team or organisation is adrift and needs direction.  In this case, your staff need to know that your care for them as individuals sits alongside a mission to which you are giving priority.  Equally, there may be times – though rarely – when it really is time to say “do it, and do it now”.  Being friendly when giving an instruction can leave people feeling confused – or able to duck out of doing something which needs, urgently, to be done.

Tip 4:  Be clear about your own motivation
If there is any motivation behind your behaviour of which you are barely or unaware your behaviour will confuse and unsettle others.  If you want to be able to express your love of your colleagues you need, first, to practise a rigorous self-honesty.  What needs are you meeting or hoping to meet by taking a member of your team out to lunch when he or she is upset?  If you’re hoping for a relationship to move beyond the professional and into the personal sphere, then notice this motivation and think about the implications of your choices before you take action.

Tip 5:  Be ready to have conversations to clarify misunderstandings
Don’t be offended when your expressions of deep concern create misunderstandings amongst members of your team.  The more you choose to express your concern, affection, love and care for members of your team or other colleagues at work, the more you risk a misunderstanding.  This need not be a problem, as long as you have the skills to handle the results.

Make sure you’re ready to have the conversations you need to have to acknowledge a misunderstanding and to create clarity for you and your team member.  Perhaps you need to share your perceptions when you think there may be a misunderstanding and to ask, “will you tell me what’s going on for you?”  Perhaps you need to share your own experience, including your own intentions.  There’s no need for blame – but every need for clarity.

Increasingly, the stiff upper lip of the British workplace is giving way to something less formal and with that informality come new challenges.  I wonder what challenges you are discovering – and how you are handling them.

Christmas is over and we are fast moving towards a new year.  Perhaps, like me, you are enjoying a break.  Perhaps, too, this is a time for reflection for you as one year draws to a close and the next, like a blank page waiting to be populated, sits before us.

One man who knows what it is to step boldly forward is David Whyte, who has carved an extraordinary place for himself in the world, bringing poetry to corporate America, where he lives with his wife and family.  I particularly enjoy his recorded talk on leadership, Life at the frontier:  leadership through courageous conversations.

Being a poet, even David’s marketing materials are a joy to read, like the one from which I have taken the extract above.  More than many people, David is willing to penetrate the surface of life to engage deeply with what lies underneath, as he did in the letter to his followers, from which this excerpt is taken.

The passage above was particularly striking because it speaks to something which can both imprison and release us – the stories we tell about ourselves.  Working as I do in coaching partnership with men and women in leadership roles I find that it is these stories, more than anything else, that create the greatest challenges we face.  These stories of the self are particularly challenging precisely because they pass under the radar, unnoticed and unquestioned.  How would we think to do something differently when we think that the actions we take spring from an immutable, unchangeable self?

Often, our stories of ourself spring from our relationship with the world and with past events which have, we believe, shaped and moulded us.  They include a large measure of familial and societal – even workplace – programming, of which we are largely unaware.  We may look to those we lead to embrace change and feel frustrated by others’ lack of flexibility even whilst being unaware of those areas in which we, too, are unwilling to flex.  And yet it is our job to flex and it is our willingness to flex – even our willingness to flex the stories we tell ourselves about who we really are – that lies at the heart of our effectiveness in the role of leader and the ease with which we fulfil our role.

So, as you reflect on the year just gone and look forward to the year ahead, I invite you to consider the questions David raises in the passage at the top of this posting and to ask yourself what one story you tell about yourself – if you were simply to change your story and live life as if something else were true – would most transform your life?

In his letter David tells readers about a change he made in his own story and how it panned out for him.  I look forward to sharing how it panned out for me and also hearing how it panned out for you, too.

After quite a long spell of writing two or three blog postings a week, I have gone a whole month without publishing anything.  In truth, I have been running to catch up for months now – and something had to give.  It’s become clear to me that I want to write fewer blog postings going forward – perhaps one a week or two at most.  At the same time, I want to add depth to my postings.  You can expect them to be longer in future.

I thought I’d come back with a bit of a bang – a term I may come to regret given the topic of my posting.  I was drawn last week by a posting on LinkedIn entitled Six Tips for Avoiding an Office Affair.  If the early responses (mine was one) are anything to go by, this is a highly contentious subject.  It’s also a taboo subject – I know that I was drawn to read the posting precisely because I have seen any number of office affairs take place and yet this subject is rarely addressed in public.

Facing up to sexual attraction in the workplace

No matter what we consider to be ‘professional’, we all of us – at times – are attracted to colleagues.  The workplace is one of the key places in which people meet their life partners – a place where people see each other often and get to know each other well.

But what if you’re already in a relationship?  It doesn’t stop you feeling attracted to people and you may even spend more time with your colleagues in the workplace than you do with your partner at home.  Once you become a parent your opportunities to really connect with your partner may be even fewer.  Perhaps your work with a colleague brings you close together or maybe it’s your work colleagues who hear and understand just how challenging life is for you when your spouse is unsympathetic (or maybe the source – in your mind – of your woes).  In the heat of the moment you may find it hard to resist the temptation of embarking on one relationship (an “affair”) whilst still being committed in another.  You may even be surprised to realise that you have embarked on an affair before you even realised it – the writer of the article I mentioned above uses the term “work spouse” to describe a special friend of the attractive sex.

Perhaps you have no problem with having a workplace affair.  If so, this article is not for you.  Perhaps, though, you are feeling the heat of the attraction and struggling to know what to do.  Or maybe, right now, you have lost sight of the potential consequences of following a path that can lead to the breakdown of your marriage, to disruption in your relationships with any number of loved ones, to the loss of respect from your colleagues, to the loss of your own respect for yourself.  It’s not that relationships don’t break down – they do, and at times this is clearly for the best.  Even so, embarking on a workplace affair has a raft of consequences that you may not be ready to choose or face up to.

Avoiding an office affair – a different set of tips

Author Gretchen Rubin gives one set of tips in her article Six Tips for Avoiding an Office Affair.  I offer my own, below:

• Get clear on your values ahead of time:  It may seem obvious, but getting clear on the values you want to live by helps you to make choices in the moment with the long-term view in mind.  Take time to think about the values you want to live by in your intimate relationships so that you can make decisions in the moment in the full awareness of your highest aspirations;
• When you feel attracted to someone, talk about it:  Rather than denying that you feel attracted to someone, talk about it.  Whilst denial can stoke the flames of an attraction, talking about it can help you to acknowledge it and begin to engage with it.  It also provides the basis for making decisions.  Choose carefully who you talk to.  Perhaps you have a coach or therapist who can help you to step back from the attraction and to think things through.  Perhaps you have friends.  It may even help you to name it to your spouse or the object of your affection – though this takes maturity on your part and may not be the best place to start;
• Ask yourself why the attraction is so compelling:  Perhaps it’s meeting your needs just to feel the attraction (or to know that someone is attracted to you).  Perhaps you imagine that an affair will meet some as yet unmet needs.  Understanding what those needs are opens up the possibility of meeting those needs in different ways.  This may be about addressing needs in the context of your intimate relationship, but not always – if you find that your need is for empathy and understanding, for example, you can choose to seek support from friends and reduce the risk of an affair;
• Address issues in your intimate relationships:  Perhaps you’ll discover that you’re unhappy in your marriage or intimate relationship.  If you do, don’t ignore it.  Perhaps it’s time to address the balance in your life between work and family, or to discuss with your partner issues that are troubling you.  You may even want to seek professional help.  This is a critical moment in your marriage:  it’s a moment when you could save your marriage.  It’s also a moment when you could handle a break-up with dignity and without falling into the first pair of arms you find;
• Finish one intimate relationship before you start another:  It may seem simplistic and still, if you set yourself the rule that you won’t embark on one relationship before you’ve finished another, you will think hard before embarking on an office affair.  This could help you to realise how important your marriage is to you before it’s too late.  It could also help you handle a break-up with dignity and compassion and to enter a new relationship knowing you have honoured values of honesty and integrity.