Category Archives: Emotional Intelligence

Lost your temper with your staff? You need to express your regret

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So, you did it.  Like Maestro Papadopoulos (see Lost your temper with your staff?  You may have lost more besides), you spoke sharply with a member or members of your staff.  Time has elapsed.  You realise you made a mistake in speaking in the way you did.  You’ve taken time to process your anger.  You’ve learnt from the experience.  What next?

You may be hoping that it’s enough to show up differently next time.  If you do, you’ll be joining the legions of bosses who, having lost their temper, are “extra nice” next time round – but it’s not enough.  Why?  After all, surely your staff can tell that you’re sorry from your behaviour?  Well, yes, and still, knowing this alone is not enough.

What more do your staff want?  They want understanding for the experience they had on the receiving end of your anger.  They want to know that you understand the impact it had on them – some call this empathy.  They want to know that you’re ready to take responsibility for your actions and eager to learn to handle things differently in future.  This helps them to feel safe.  They also want judgement – discernment, acceptance:  even if (especially if) you have to deal with performance that is below par, they need to know that you can separate them – the person, the people – from their behaviour.  These needs may be hidden from your staff behind their own “righteous anger” towards you – unless they have high levels of emotional maturity they won’t forgive you until you’ve expressed your regret.

Now, I do want to differentiate between expressing your regret and saying sorry.  This isn’t about beating yourself up or putting yourself in the wrong.  Nor is it about the kind of insincere apology that London commuters make even as they push you to one side to get to where they want to go.  This is about connecting with, and expressing, your sincere regret.  For Maestro Papadopoulos, such an expression might have gone something like this:

“I said a couple of things I regretted at our rehearsal on Tuesday.  I said it wasn’t acceptable to me that members of the choir were missing from our rehearsal and I said it in a way which put those of you who’d made the effort to get here on time in the wrong.  And I also compared the children’s choir with the ‘famous London Symphony Chorus’ in a way that put your choir in a bad light.  Afterwards I felt bad about this because I realised it was my nerves talking – I wanted to offer our audience a great performance and I felt anxious about the concert.  I also realise that, as amateur singers many of you came to sing at the end of a hard days work in preparation for a concert and the last thing you needed was to be on the receiving end of my anger.  I wish I had handled the situation with more grace”.


There is at least one paradox at play here, as there often is in life.  The first is this:  that beating ourselves up (“I made a right mess of that rehearsal… I shouldn’t have said what I did…” etc.) somehow doesn’t lead us to take responsibility for our actions.  Rather, it takes courage and self compassion to really step up to the plate.  A second paradox is this:  as leaders, it is our very ability to express our sincere regret about actions which fell below our aspirations that make our staff think highly of us.  We need to accept ourselves as human, just like everybody else, before we can make the kind of expression of regret that staff can receive.


So, I have said about as much as I want to say right now on the subject of losing your temper with your staff.  I wonder, what has been your experience?  And what have you found in these postings that has enabled you to do things differently?  I’d love to hear about your experiences via the comments section of this blog.

Lost your temper with your staff? A second way to turn anger into gold

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On Monday I shared one of my favourite ways to transform anger as part of a series of postings in recent weeks.  Today I offer a second way.  The first (see Lost your temper with your staff?  Turning anger into gold) was from Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication and relies heavily on conscious intention.  This second is from the school of Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) and relies on the brain’s ability to process information in a variety of different ways.  The process is called the “meta-mirror” and I’ve written about it a couple of times before (see As a meta of fact and Thinking of all the mirrors in my bedroom).

The meta-mirror is a process I find invaluable when I am angry with someone or telling myself that I am “right” and they are “wrong”.  It’s also a process that I often teach leaders on programmes to develop their coaching skills, because it hones our ability to see things from multiple points of view – an important skill in coaching as well as when dealing with our own emotions.  Today is is the first time I’ve attempted to describe the process of the meta-mirror in detail and I do so with some hesitation:  whilst it’s easy to use with the right training, you may want to seek out a skilled NLP Practitioner to support you in translating the description below into practice.

As a first step, think of someone or something you feel angry about.  Find a place where you have room to move around and stand on the first corner of an imaginary rectangle, facing the second corner.  You are now in “first position”.  Imagine the person you feel angry about is in front of you and say what you think – no holds barred!  In first position you are not practising what you might say in future – you are saying whatever comes to mind now.  Keep going until you feel complete.  (As long as you want to say “And another thing…”, just say it).

When you have finished, step out of first position and shake off (yes, really!  take a moment to shake your arms and body) everything that you have just experienced.  This is an important precursor to stepping into the second corner of your imaginary rectangle, facing the spot you were standing in when you were in first position.  You are now in “second position”.  Imagine yourself in the shoes of the person you were talking to in first position, receiving everything you have just said.  Notice what comes up for you – you may be surprised!  This is not about any conscious processing.  Rather, it’s about noticing what thoughts and feelings emerge.

When you have done this, repeat the process of stepping out of this position and shaking off everything you have just experienced.  Then step round the triangle to the third corner.  You are now in “third position”.  From this position, look back at first position and ask yourself “how does this me here see that me there?”  You will experience one of two things.  You may notice that the same anger you felt before is still with you – in this case step back into first position and express everything that is alive in you.  Equally, from this third position, you may be able to see yourself in a new way or have new insights about the situation that stimulated your anger in the first place.  At this point, you’re ready to move on.

Once again, shake off everything you’ve experienced in third position and move to the fourth and final corner of the rectangle.  From here you can see yourself in first position and in third position.  Ask yourself “Which me would I like to be in this situation?”  It’s likely that you will choose the you that emerged in third position – take a moment to “swap” yous – it helps to point to them both and to use your hands to swap them over.  Once again, shake off everything that you have experienced before moving on.

Step back into first position and begin the process again.  Having swapped your first you with your third, it’s likely that you will have different feelings about the person or situation and different things to say.  Say them – keep talking until you are done.  Shake everything off before moving on.  As you did at the beginning of the exercise, step into second position and receive everything you said in first position.  Notice what comes up.  The experience should be quite different this time round – a different response to different thoughts and feelings.  When you’re done, shake your experience off and step back into first position to receive the response of the other person.


If your work is done, you will be feeling peaceful and resourceful.  However, at any moment in this process, you may notice that you’re not done yet – that’s OK.  When you spot this, it’s a signal that you need to go back to first position and express yourself fully before continuing the process outlined above.  Especially when you first start to use this process, it helps to have the support of a skilled and certified NLP Practitioner to guide you.

You may be wondering if this process is an invitation to ignore the failings of others and the answer is no – in your role as a leader, however, you do need to bring your most resourceful self to the party when holding others to account.

And is that it?  Well, in terms of the meta-mirror, yes, it is.  If you’ve lost your temper with your staff, though, there is probably one more step to take.  This will be the subject of my next posting.

Lost your temper with your staff? Turning anger into gold

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Recently, I wrote about how I experienced the behaviour of conductor Mario Papadopoulos in rehearsal in a posting entitled Lost your temper with your staff?  You may have lost more besides.  When we lose our temper we risk losing our authority and the respect of those we lead.  But all is not lost when we lose our temper.  The question is what to do next – and how – to turn our anger into gold.


In what way does anger become gold?  In my experience, we turn anger into gold when we take time to connect with the unmet needs that underpin our anger.  Creating this awareness opens up the opportunity to find ways to meet our needs.  We get to feel better.  And we achieve this without alienating others on whom we depend.


How can we transform anger into gold?  Here is just one of my favourite ways, from Marshall Rosenberg.  In the approach he has called Nonviolent Communication (see his book of the same name to learn more), Rosenberg encourages the use of self empathy to get beneath the surface of our anger.


How does it work?  As a first step, you might notice what has stimulated your anger and seek to make a clear observation, cutting out any “stories” you might be telling yourself or at least owning your story.  For example, your first reaction might be to think “John’s really let me down!  He’s so unreliable!  He should have let me know if there were problems meeting the deadline!” A more accurate observation might be to say: “When I asked John if he’d finished the report yet he said no.  I felt a powerful surge of anger and I notice that I was thinking ‘I told you three weeks ago that the report was due by the end of this week.  If there were problems, why the **** didn’t you tell me?'”


In this case, the observation leads us to our second step, which is to connect with our emotion (in this case, anger) and this is something that Rosenberg also encourages.  When we feel angry, there is usually another emotion – fear – lurking underneath, so it may help to make a further observation as we examine what it is we are afraid of.  Using the same example, you might notice another layer of thinking and emotion such as:  “I realised I had really messed up but I didn’t want to admit it.  I’d been so busy myself that I hadn’t checked John’s progress and with the deadline approaching there was barely time to finish the report.  I’ve been worried about how my boss has been thinking about me and I didn’t want to give him an opportunity to think less of me”.


As we begin to turn our “story” into a clear observation and connect to our feelings, we can move to the third step, which is to notice what needs were stimulated in us and – in this case – unmet.  This is about going beyond specific actions by specific people to understand the underlying needs.  In this example, it’s possible that your most fundamental need – for security – was stimulated, especially if your thoughts included thoughts about the risk of losing your job and what that would mean for your home and for your ability to pay for food and other essentials.


Once you have uncovered your underlying needs, you have the option to make a request of yourself or of someone else.  This is the final step in Rosenberg’s four-step process.  Perhaps you might start by requesting of yourself that you take time out to relax before talking to John about next steps in order to calm down.  Or you might make a request of John that he tell you just how far he’s got so that you can assess how much more need to be done to meet the deadline.


Going through this process has the potential to transform feelings of fear and anger into a deep sense of connection with our needs.  In doing so, it moves us away from our primitive “fight or flight” response towards a more resourceful state in which we can clearly assess the situation and find ways to meet our needs.


There is another way I like to use to transform anger into gold.  If you’d like a second option – keep reading.

Lost your temper with your staff? Time to “own up”

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This week I have been writing about anger in a series of postings, recognising that the “amygdala hijack” – the sudden and extreme loss of temper – is one that we all have from time to time.  It’s an experience which can lead us to alienate those we lead or which, equally, can lead us to new insights.  New insights do not, however, happen by accident.  They happen because we are ready and willing to have them.  Sometimes they come years down the line.  Sometimes, days or weeks or months.

When we are angry, the immediate barrier to new insight is our own way of thinking about the stimulus to our anger.  It’s for this reason that I’ve given this posting the title “Time to own up”.  For it is our thoughts rather than any external stimulus that lead us to feel angry.  These thoughts usually include some confusion between the external stimulus to our anger (“I’m angry because you…”) and our thoughts about the external stimulus (“I’m angry because I’m thinking that you…”).  What’s more, our anger is also often accompanied by the firm belief that we are “right” to feel angry.

A first step towards owning our anger is to notice the way we are thinking and feeling and to talk about it.  Compare the following sentences:


“I told John weeks ago that he needed to contact the US and he still hasn’t done it and now they think we’re completely incompetent.  I could kill him!  He should have followed my instruction – if he had, we wouldn’t have been in this mess!”


This time, I’ve added mention of the emotions involved and used the phrases “I’m telling myself that…” and “I’m thinking that…”:

“I’m so angry!  I told John weeks ago that he needed to contact the US and he still hasn’t done it and now I’m telling myself they think we’re completely incompetent.  I could kill him!  I’m thinking that he should have followed my instruction – and that, if he had, we wouldn’t have been in this mess!”

Before we can claim our anger in this way, it helps to have compassion for ourselves and others – because when something goes wrong there is often shame involved.  Heaping our judgements on others can be a way to protect ourselves from self-judgements and from the feelings of shame that come with them.  At the same time, when we can accept the way things are (that people make mistakes, that we get angry…) we open up the opportunity to process and transform our anger.  If you’d like to know how, keep reading.  I’ll be writing about some techniques for transforming anger next week.

Lost your temper with your staff? The surprising purpose of anger

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On Monday, I published a posting under the heading Lost your temper with your staff?  You may have lost more besides.  But I don’t want to dismiss anger as a negative force.  Today, I want to say a few words about the role that anger plays in our lives – and particularly to highlight the role anger plays for those of us who find ourselves in positions of leadership.

Recently, I watched as the youngest of my nephew and nieces lost his temper in the midst of a game of frisbee.  “Nobody throws the frisbee to me!” was his desperate cry.  He was so full of emotion that it was hard for him to hear anything that anyone might say – even to show they were listening and trying to understand.  This is what Goleman describes as the “amygdala hijack” in his books on emotional intelligence (such as Working with Emotional Intelligence).  This is the body’s full-blown crisis response – a primitive flight or flight response – which is accompanied by all sorts of biochemical processes, beginning with the release of a hormone known as CRF and ending with a flood of stress hormones which then stay in the body for hours.

Adults also experience the amygdala hijack and the leader is no more immune than any other member of the population.  Goleman says of the stresses that lead to the amygdala hijack:

When stresses pile one on top of the other, they are more than additive – they seem to multiply the sense of stress, so that as we near breaking point, each additional burden seems all the more unbearable, the last straw.  This is so even for small hassles that ordinarily wouldn’t faze us but suddenly can seem overwhelming.

So, when Maestro Papadopoulos lost his temper with members of the London Symphony Chorus, it seems likely that he was feeling the burden of any number of stresses.  Whilst many conductors understand and accept the absence of a few chorus members who can’t get away from work for a 5pm rehearsal, Papadopoulos “saw red”.  For another leader it might be yet another error by a team member who is taking up disproportionate time, or the failure of another team member to meet a deadline on which a key contract depends.  No doubt you can think of your own examples.

Goleman’s description of the amygdala hijack, whilst it helps us to understand the processes involved in losing our temper, carries a risk:  by identifying the historic origins of our own or others’ responses, we may dismiss them as “merely” a primitive response – a response developed millennia ago which has now outlived its usefulness.  But there are other ways of viewing this.  One of my favourite thinkers and authors, Marshall Rosenberg (author of The Surprising Purpose of Anger, subtitled Beyond Anger Management:  Finding the Gift) sees anger as an alarm signal, signalling that we have unmet needs.  It also signals that we are disconnected from those needs – thinking about them by suppressing our feelings or blasting someone with our judgements.

When we apply Rosenberg’s thinking to our anger, we have an opportunity to really get under the skin of our  anger to understand what unmet needs we have.  I’ll be talking about ways to do this in a future posting.  First though, it helps to own our anger – and hold it with compassion.  

Lost your temper with your staff? You may have lost more besides

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Without fail, singing with the London Symphony Chorus inspires me – and often to write a blog posting.  Sometimes, the inspiration is “not in a good way”. This is the way it was last Tuesday.

It started well for me – I arrived early and listened to young pianist Benjamin Grosvenor rehearsing Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor for half an hour before rehearsal began.  He was playing some stretches and some brief extracts – repeating phrases over and over as part of his preparation.  It was a reminder of the many years of practice that lead to concert standard.  Several days later I found myself singing Grieg in my head as I went to sleep.  What a beautiful piece!

Then our 5pm tutti rehearsal started.  A touch of Grieg and onto Carmina Burana.  How quickly things went down hill!  Within minutes Maestro Papadopoulos was expressing his dissatisfaction that members of the Choir were missing and in a manner I found rather unpleasant.  I was having such thoughts as “Don’t take it out on me that some people aren’t here – I’ve made the effort to turn up!” and “If you want me to sing well for you, try treating me with respect”.  I was also having other thoughts I prefer not to share online.  Later, when the raggazi (children) rehearsed their contribution, the Maestro told them how well they’d done – better perhaps than the “famous London Symphony Chorus”.  It was clear he was angry.  So were members of the chorus – as people left the platform after rehearsal everyone’s backs were up.

We had a few minutes with Roger Sayer, in the role of Chorus Director, who was quick to acknowledge our feelings of anger – and also to remind us to sing well for the sake of the chorus if not for the Maestro himself.  Afterwards, as I ate my supper, I reflected on the fears that often lie behind anger – was the Maestro feeling nervous, perhaps?  And I took time to use a well-honed technique to let go of the anger I felt before going on stage.  It was enough to help me to focus my energies on singing well and still, I noticed that I took a little pleasure when the Maestro made a rather obvious mistake during the concert and also that I didn’t warm to those after-the-concert didn’t-you-do-well signs from the Maestro.  Not for me the cycle of punishment and reward!

The trouble is this:  that anger begets anger.  Not anger per se but the expression of our angry thoughts as if they are some inviolable and objective truth. (They’re not).  As a leader we lose our authority and the respect of those we lead when we express our anger in this way.  We also risk losing the best contribution of those we lead:  people need to know that you’re working with them – on the same side – to feel safe to acknowledge their mistakes as well as to risk their best performance.  Far better to play it safe if you expect a rollocking every time the boss is not happy.

I want to be clear:  we’re all angry at times.  So a key challenge for us as leaders – as well as partners, parents, children, human beings… – is to know how to respond when we’re angry.  One of the worst things we can do is to hold on to the idea that somehow we were “right”.  This opens up a widening gulf between ourselves and those we lead.  And in case you’re wondering “what else can I do?” keep reading – I’ll be offering some thoughts during the days ahead with all the humility of someone who, like you, gets angry at times.

Feeling grumpy about an extra day’s holiday?

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Learning to kitesurf on Perranporth beach, Cornwall

Picture this, in the midst of your busiest period, your staff – anti-royalists all – are about to benefit from two UK holidays to celebrate Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee.  You don’t know how you’re going to meet your deadlines and you don’t feel good about what lies ahead.  The last thing you need right now is an extra day’s holiday.  It could even be that, looking ahead, you’re already cursing the London Olympics – everyone’s clamouring for time off and, what’s more, you are dreading the disruption to travel in the capital and all the knock-on effects that might bring.

Perhaps, though, it’s precisely this thinking that gives you a clue to your need for time off.  Some thinkers might add that you need to get out and play.  The Harvard Business Review’s Morning Advantage recently highlighted a blog posting by Psychology Today about the power of play.  Strikingly, the posting highlights research that suggests that play makes an important contribution to our mental creativity, health and happiness.  The writer says:

There is evidence that play […] may in fact be the highest expression of our humanity, both imitating and advancing the evolutionary process.  Play appears to allow our brains to exercise their very flexibility, to maintain and even perhaps renew neural connections that embody our human potential to adapt, to meet any possible set of environmental conditions.

Overall, the article’s evocation of play reminded me of the rhythm of life during my childhood, when my parents were farmers – a distinctly pre-industrial way of living.  Yes, there were certain things that needed to be done and hours to be kept – milking cows twice a day no matter what.  But there was also time between chores to take a cup of tea or to welcome visitors.  Sunday lunch was always a time for family and friends, for example.  In short, rest, respite and play (including my father’s legendary practical jokes) were woven into life – including working life – in a way that is rare in the modern corporation.

So if you’re at full stretch and feeling stressed in the run up to the Diamond Jubilee perhaps it’s time to step back and notice – how much time do you make for play in your life?  How much do you encourage your staff to take time to play?  Equally, perhaps it’s time to down tools for four days, including your PC and mobile, and just get out there and play.

Managing relationships as a key to success

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Once again, Harvard Business Review’s Morning Advantage has come up with a gem in the form of the article below, with links to further articles:

Debunking the “Proven Winner” Myth

If you were the new owner of a middling National Hockey League franchise, and were looking to bring on a new head coach, you’d probably hire a proven winner, right? Well, according to Glenn Rowe in the Ivy Business Journal, hiring a winner may not be the best option. In fact, there’s a good chance your team will get worse — really.

Data shows that it’s extremely rare for a Stanley Cup-winning coach to replicate his success with a new team — and the same goes for professional baseball and football coaches too. Perhaps one reason is proven winners can’t leverage the “complex relationships” they developed within their old organizations. More bad news: this isn’t just a sports problem. Rowe cites this HBR article by Boris Groysberg, who found that the performance of star stock analysts fell as much as 20 percent when they jumped to a new firm. So what are companies to do? When looking for stars, look within your own organization. Train and mentor them. Work like hell to retain them.


Now you may not know much about the Stanley Cup – I certainly don’t – and still, I’m guessing you get the point.  I notice, too, how there’s advice tucked away for those people who want to be winners.  Kevin Evers, who put this brief article together, doesn’t dwell on it and still – the point is there.  Building and managing relationships is a significant aspect of what makes people successful.


You might be thinking “does that mean I should stay where I am?” or even “but I’ve been here for years and I’m just rubbish at building relationships!”  The point is, once you recognise you need to manage key relationships in your current or future employing organisation, you can start to think about what that means in practice.  Here are a few tips:

  • If you want to build a relationship with others, you need to develop a relationship with yourself.  The more you understand your own drivers and motivations, the more you’ll be able to show insight into the drivers and motivations of others;  the more you are able to be authentic with yourself, the more you’ll be able to be authentic with others;
  • Which relationships?  There are people towards whom you naturally gravitate and these may well become key friends and allies at work.  There are also any number of people who, because of their roles, are important to your success at work – often called “key stakeholders”.  Taking time to understand who you need to be in touch with is a great start in a new job;
  • Don’t just wait until you need someone.  From the beginning you need to establish a relationship.  Make time for coffee.  Let people know you’ve arrived.  Get clear ahead of time about the kind of relationship you’d like to build – on which more below;
  • Every now and then you’ll meet someone – a key stakeholder – and wonder what on earth they’re doing in the job.  And still, they are a stakeholder.  The more your emotions are stimulated when you think about that person, the more that’s a reflection on you.  Learn to build relationships of mutual respect even with the people you think least deserve it.  They have things to teach you as much as you have things to teach them.

I could write more but first, I’d love to know what challenges you face or what you aspire to do in your workplace relationships that you haven’t mastered – yet.  Please leave a comment to share your experience.

  

Finding the Challenge in What’s Hard

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You may have noticed that I’ve been away from my blog for a whole ten days – this is a significant departure from my aim to write two or three blog postings a week.  The truth is, I’ve fallen in to an old pattern – of booking an awful lot into my diary and trusting what looks feasible without trying it on for size.  When I feel my way into the commitments I’m making I have a very different experience of what’s possible.

One of these commitments was a three day “virtual retreat” with Mark Silver and his team at the Heart of Business.  I’ve been working with the Heart of Business for the best part of a year now to explore how best to market my business so that those people who are looking for my help can actually find me.  I’ve been holding the aspiration to create an approach to sales and marketing that feels as fully authentic and nourishing for me and my clients as the work I do – helping leaders in the private sector who want to take the hard work out of achieving results.

I was interested to read a posting by Mark which referenced the virtual retreat, entitled Finding the Challenge in What’s Hard.  Two things in particular struck me.  The first is this:  that early in his posting, Mark related how many people cried on the retreat, saying:

The three days were filled with many insights.  A lot of people cried, including me.  And yes, I’ll go on record as saying that I don’t think it’s a successful event without at least half the participants crying at least once.

As I sit here and think of the people I work with, I notice how many of my clients have been known to shed a tear in our sessions together – male, female, senior and even more senior, tough on the outside… you get the picture.  These are people who live and work in a world peopled by judgements – by an etiquette that discourages emotion (yes, emotion, let alone displays of emotion) – and who have learned to live by the rules of that world.  And still, given permission to be present to their most heartfelt thoughts and feelings – yes, they cry.  I wonder what the world of corporate Britain would be like if there was permission for people to touch base with their deepest emotions.

And there was something else that struck me in Mark’s posting.  He wrote:

I don’t know if it will make you cry, but here’s one deceptively simple and profound insight that will turn your relationship with business around if you take it on.


Ready?  In every place of “hard” in your business, there’s a challenge waiting for you.  If you take it on it will make everything in your business easier and more effective.

  • A challenge to trust, learn and grow.
  • A challenge to let go of beliefs and opinions based on illusion.
  • A challenge to take time to care for yourself with health food, exercise, and spiritual practice.
  • A challenge to choose love over anything that isn’t.

Mark’s clients are different to my own and still, my clients also face challenges.  For instance?

It’s hard to receive the feedback that you’re not ready for a longed for promotion and to receive the feedback as a gift – and harder still to get the promotion and to realise that all the things you used to do are not what you need to do in your new job.

It’s hard to manage the day to day minutiae and still find time to step back and look at the bigger picture.

It’s hard to find space to create your own agenda when so many people are knocking on your door asking you to respond to theirs.

It’s hard to give up doing things yourself and learn to do things with and through others.

It’s specially hard to notice how polished everyone else seems to be when, inside, you’re wondering am I good enough?

Healing the hard and finding the challenge

Here again I borrow from Mark (with delight in his permission to do so – thank you, Mark*):

Take a moment right now and identify a hard place in your business.  Take a gentle breath.  Another.  Now take third one – I promise it won’t kill you.


Now, ask your heart, ask yourself to be shown, with a willingness to be surprised, what challenge is waiting for you within that heard place that will bring ease, joy and effectiveness?


Can you find the “Yes” in your heart to let go of the hard and take on this challenge?


Now, don’t keep it a secret.  Share with us what you got.  What challenge did you find?  Did you find a yes?  What are your first one to three steps for taking it on?  Tell me about it in the comments.


PS  Needing some help?


Perhaps you’ve found a way forward by connecting with the challenge in the thing you’re finding hard.  Or maybe going through this exercise has highlighted to you just how much you’re longing for some tailored support – a place away from work to talk things through, a focus on you and your agenda as well as what’s right for the business, a balance of challenge and support, somewhere you can talk freely and in confidence.

I’ve worked for years with leaders in business.  I’m steeped in leadership theory – I know what it takes to succeed.  More than that, I’ve been a support to my clients as they work out how to succeed in leadership roles – and in ways which work for them as well as the business.

If you’d like to learn more, take a look at my profile on LinkedIn or contact me (details on LinkedIn) to arrange a meeting.

* And just to do the formal bit – extracts in italics are from an article by Mark Silver ©2012, all rights reserved. Reprinted with permission. In case you’re interested, you’ll find this article and hundreds of others, along with other free resources are available at http://www.heartofbusiness.com

When being on the right side of the argument isn’t enough

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence,
Azhar Siddique

It’s Wednesday as I write and I am enjoying the prospect of watching this week’s Apprentice this evening.  It’s a kind of guilty pleasure – how is it that people willingly subject themselves to such a harsh experience?  And that’s before you even think about the possibility that one of them will go into business with the man who has fired all their rivals.

Last week I was out when Azhar Siddique caught the bullet, though I caught up with the programme a few days later and my nephew honoured the unwritten house code – not to share the results before we’d both seen the programme.  Then it was time for the debrief.  Goodness, it was a close one – how did his project manager not get fired?

My nephew, like one of the panellists on the after show, picked up on the fact that Siddique was on the right side of the argument.  Several times he’d raised the question of strategy with his project manager and some of his suggestions, which were ignored at the time he made them, turned out to be perfectly sensible.  One of them was for team members to drop off unsold stock with their fellow team mates before going to the warehouse to restock.  Instead, it went with them to the warehouse and spent time, unsold, in a traffic jam on the way.  But being on the right side of the argument wasn’t enough to stop him being fired.  Why?  Because Lord Sugar recognised that he didn’t want to go into business to someone who – no matter the quality of his insights – could not command the attention of his colleagues.

In his role as founder and managing director of a catering and refrigeration company, Siddique’s style does not seem to be holding him back.  It’s easy to imagine him setting the strategy for his company and following it through.  It’s easy to imagine that some people climb on board in response to the strength of his argument – or decide his business is not the place for him and move on.  At the same time, it has clear limitations.  Even in an organisation’s most senior role we fail – at least a little – both when we imagine we are always right and when we convey our arguments without holding our colleagues in our hearts with dignity and respect.  The risk here is that the ideas stop flowing because even the brightest and best of our staff stop sharing them for fear of our response.

In my view it helps to hold colleagues in our hearts with dignity and respect even when we are on the right side of the argument.  In the short term, it makes it more likely that we will find a way to share our message which others will enjoy hearing – a way which makes it safe for our colleagues to accept that maybe they’re wrong.  In the long term it builds relationships of safety and trust, in which the question is no longer who is right but what.  With this level of safety people feel able to bring their best ideas to the table and to find out there are better ideas – because they still feel good about themselves at the end of the discussion.  What business doesn’t want the benefit of the best ideas of its staff?

And in case you need just one more argument to convince you, it may be worth remembering that even if it’s the boss who’s wrong, especially when it’s the boss who’s wrong, there are times when your fate lies in someone else’s hands.  Standing up for what’s right can be a powerful and positive choice when you’re at your limits and ready to move on.  As long as you want to stay, it can be highly ineffectual as a way to make things happen in complex structures of people and power.  At best, it can limit your contribution.  At worst, it can lead you to hear the words “you’re fired”.