Category Archives: Your personal and professional well-being

Your personal need for integrity

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What has this tea pot got to do with integrity?

 

For me, it all began with a tea pot.

In February of this year, I bought a tea pot in my local Oxfam shop in Blackheath.

Let me tell you, I had no need of a tea pot.  But I loved this one so much – the vibrant colours, the weight and the feel of it – that I decided to buy it, along with six bowls in the same pattern.

It was a chance purchase, which opened up a whole new hobby for me…  I started to look for items to match this tea pot and discovered eBay.  I decided to make my collecting habit self-funding, selling items for which I no longer have a use and beginning to buy and sell items from Greenwich Auction House and the market at Lee Green.

This was a new habit for me, and at the same time, wholly familiar.  I have always been drawn to objects of beauty.

Owning my personal “quirks”

Such is my love of beauty and order that, sometimes, it is the object of some hilarity.

Last week, for example, I was in Germany, running a development programme with a group of colleagues.  My colleagues were quite taken aback when I realised that my outfit for Day 2 was a terrible match for the name badge I was wearing.  I was able to laugh with them at just how much it meant to me… and still, it did mean something to me.

I can’t help but tidy up the displays when I’m looking for books in shops.

If I decide to do something – learn a language, play a game, write a report, sing, whatever – I want to do it well.

In the language of Hogan’s MVPI (motives and values) questionnaire, I have a primary value, which Hogan calls aesthetics.  This is defined as “focusing on innovation, style and appearance”.  Low scorers care about functionality;  high scorers care about creative self-expression and the look and feel of their work.

Knowing this has helped me to make connections between a wide range of activities in my life… it’s the reason, for example, I’ve gravitated towards roles at work which involve quality in some shape or form… a curiosity about what it takes to be effective as a leader, a desire to embody fully my values around communicating in ways which honour everyone’s needs, a desire to help others – especially people in leadership roles – to find greater ease.  I could go on…

It also shows up all over my private life…  it’s the reason I love to take a house in disrepair and turn it into a place of beauty, or prefer to have a statement “sculptural” set of shelves in my kitchen (thank you, Gary) than yet more cupboards… even though I need the storage space.  It’s the reason for my long-standing relationship with the London Symphony Chorus.  It’s the reason why writing a blog-posting is, for me, a pleasure rather than a chore.

Not only has knowing this helped me to make sense of my past, it is also helping me to plan for my future – to move increasingly towards living my life in line with my values.

Your personal need for integrity

Whatever the pros and cons of employing people with integrity in an organisation, you may already be aware of your own deep need for integrity – a need to live your life in line with your own values.

You know when you’re living your life in integrity with your values.

When you are, you feel comfortable and at ease.  You experience moments of deep satisfaction.  Your life is peopled with activities that you enjoy.  If your values are people-based, your life is peopled by people you enjoy.

There are moments when you feel deeply uncomfortable, too.  Perhaps you are finding no joy in the life you are leading.  Maybe you are doing things in your personal and professional life which lack meaning for you, because they have no connection with your values.  Worse still, maybe you are really struggling with aspects of your life, because those aspects – activities, people, job – stand squarely in opposition to everything you hold dear.

What’s more, we do not live in isolation.

Not just a benign force – values and the amygdala hijack

As we came away from our course in Germany, my colleagues and I took time to review the feedback from participants.  One participant’s comments clearly got under the skin of one colleague – why on earth would anyone say that about the principal trainer?  How could it possibly help?

Our principal trainer was unmoved.

My colleague was expressing one of her most important values – yearning for recognition for her colleagues as much as for herself.  It was not, though, a high value for the trainer himself.

I can claim no moral high-ground when it comes to the amygdala hijack.  Only recently, I was shocked to be on the receiving end of an approach which was the antithesis of everything I aspire to in terms of leadership and communication.

Truly shocked.

And I let that person know.

The thing is, I suspect that the same person who was behaving in ways I found so unacceptable was also responding to her own amygdala hijack.  I had trodden on her toes – her values – by mistake.

It wasn’t pretty.

It’s easy to condemn the amygdala hijack.  Daniel Goleman, in his books on emotional intelligence, highlights the primitive part of the brain which is the seat of the amygdala hijack.  When we “act out” in response to such a hijack, we are likely to do things we later regret.

At the same time, the amygdala hijack tells us – loudly – that some value is not being met.  Sometimes, it’s telling us about something immediate, something about the here and now.  Equally, a clash of values can be a long, slow burner which leads us slowly towards major decisions… can you continue to work for a boss or an organisation which does X, Y or Z without thinking of the consequences?  How can you sustain a marriage with someone whose values, you discover, are so different from your own?

Moving towards greater personal integrity

If you want to move towards a life of greater personal integrity, you need to understand what’s important to you.

The Hogan MVPI is one tool I use in my work with clients.  When I first took it myself, I had been through so many psychometric tests I doubted I would learn anything new.

Its effect has been profound.

If you would like to explore options for you or for others in your organisation, please contact me.

You can though, move towards a greater understanding of your own most personal values without investing in coaching or the results of a questionnaire.

Instead, try these questions on for size and see what they tell you:

  • When have you been most happy in your life?  Your moments of greatest satisfaction tell you a lot about what’s important to you.  Take time to reflect on events and experiences that have stimulated the greatest sense of joy, contentment or meaning for you.  Notice what themes there are across these events – what is it that made you happy?  In my work with leaders, for example, I have seen how some love to develop their people and others to knock targets to smithereens.  What is it for you?
  • When have you been most angry in your life?  Say hello to the amygdala hijacks in your life – they have a lot to teach you about what’s important to you.  Notice what themes there are at times when you’ve been most angry.  Notice what themes unite the themes.

Me and my tea pot

I hope that, by now, you understand the relationship between a humble tea pot and personal integrity.  For me, the Denby arabesque tea pot speaks to my love of beauty.  Your values will certainly be different and have different manifestations even if they are the same.  But I tell you this, the more you are living your life in integrity with your values the more you will find pleasure in life.

It’s interesting, too, that when you are living life in integrity with your values you will, increasingly, take pleasure in the tiniest of things.

Coaching: when you need help to find your own way

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By the time she reached her thirty-fifth birthday, Clare had established a strong reputation as a lawyer with a top flight London law firm.  Married to someone she had met via her firm, she had laid the foundations for her home life.  Her friends thought she had it all.
Soon after her birthday, two things happened that sent Clare into something of a spin.  She was asked by her firm to take on the management of a team of lawyers.  The request came to her just two days after she discovered she was pregnant for the first time.
Even without the pregnancy, the prospect of taking on a leadership role raised plenty of questions for Clare.  She was good at what she did and felt anxious about taking on a leadership role and about the possibility she might fail to deliver.  As she looked around her for role models, she realised she was struggling to find leadership role models she could relate to – over the years she and her friends had had bruising experiences in the hands of their managers and she didn’t want to follow these managers’ examples.  At the same time, she didn’t know what she might do differently and with what consequences for her career… she was not confident that her firm was ready for a different approach.
Then there was the pregnancy.  Clare knew she would be asked to decide about the job in a matter of days.  She was under no obligation to tell her firm that she was pregnant but feared some backlash if she took on the role and then revealed in a few weeks’ time that she was pregnant.  She faced personal questions, too – did she want to handle two challenging transitions simultaneously?  And if she said no to this leadership role, how long would she have to wait until the opportunity might come again?  She wondered whether she should discuss her situation with her firm and at the same time feared that she would be seen differently as a result of her changing situation.
Two common ways of handling dilemmas… and why they don’t work
 Clare talked with her husband and close friends about her situation.
As a colleague in the firm, her husband was also concerned about the firm’s reputation of handling everything by the book (they were lawyers, right?) and at the same time gently and subtly side-lining women mothers.  At the same time, he faced his own dilemma… he wanted to protect his own career and also to know that his child would receive the care he or she needed.  He was torn between meeting his own needs and giving advice that would support his wife.  This new situation threw up a new level of challenge in their relationship and communication.
Clare’s friends were passionately supportive of her.  One friend told her that she had every right to enjoy both a new role and motherhood and that, to guard against any possible discrimination, she should keep quiet about her pregnancy until the question of her potential new role was settled.  Another friend told her that times were changing and she should speak openly with her colleagues as a way of establishing a relationship of openness and trust.  Another friend told her that taking on her new role and becoming a mother was just too much.
Clare felt she had to choose between handling decisions all by herself or doing what other people told her but neither of these options was working for her.  Listening to friends she became increasingly confused and uncomfortable.  On her own, Clare found her thoughts going round and round in circles.  She couldn’t get her friends’ contradictory arguments out of her head and found it increasingly challenging to connect with her own deepest desires.
In thinking in this way, Clare was making a classic mistake:  used to giving advice in her role as a lawyer, she thought that seeking help means taking others’ advice.
Coaching:  a third way
One of my favourite books on leadership is Sir Clive Woodward’s Winning!  in which he tells how, as coach to the England rugby team, he led the team to victory in the 2003 World Cup.  As an example of what leadership involves, I find it full of useful information.  It’s striking for example, how Woodward knew that it would take total commitment to translate a vision of success into World Cup glory.  I was also struck by his attention to the tiniest of details, including commissioning the redesign of the team’s rugby shirts to make it harder for opposing teams to impede team members’ progress by grabbing their shirts.
Even if you are not a follower of sports, it’s possible that your concept of coaching reflects some knowledge of the sporting world.  Perhaps you think of the coach as the person who has all the answers, who barks out instructions and who provides the motivation, discipline and accountability for his or her players.
Outside the sporting world, coaching is seen differently.
At the time of writing, for example, the International Coach Federation (ICF) describes coaching in the following way:
ICF defines coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximise their personal and professional potential.  Coaches honour the client as the expert in his or her life and work and believe every client is creative, resourceful and whole.
Coaching has the potential to help Clare and others like her precisely because it focuses on helping clients to discover what is most important to them and to find ways to move towards their desired outcomes.
How does coaching work?
Coaching can take any number of forms.  In my own business, for example, I offer face-to-face coaching in client’s organisations and at my Sunday coaching clinic in Harley Street.  I also coach clients by phone.  Most of my coaching is with individuals though some is with groups or teams.  (You can find out more about this by visiting my website).
With so much diversity, you may be wondering what these different kinds of coaching have in common.  Here are just a few things to look out for:
  • A coach works with clients based on a clear agreement:  even when an organisation sponsors coaching for an employee, for example, my client is the individual employee;
  • A coaching agreement identifies the client, focuses on their desired outcomes and on how coach and client will work together:  a key aspect of coaching is the focus on clients’ desired outcomes – helping the client to clarify his, her or their desired outcomes and agreeing how coach and client will work together to support the client in making progress;
  • The coach helps clients to find their own answers:  Coaching is about helping clients to generate new insights and self-awareness and this, in turn, opens up the possibility for the client to identify his or her strategies, solutions and next steps;
  • The coach helps to create a safe space in which to explore:  Whether the coach is working with an individual or a group, he or she plays a major role in creating a space within which clients feel safe and can, as a result, raise and explore issues, thoughts or feelings that might otherwise be overlooked;
  • The coach helps clients to be responsible and accountable for their own progress:  The coaching process is designed to help clients to focus on what they can take responsibility for and to follow through to make things happen.
Clients report a high level of satisfaction with coaching which helps them to develop the confidence and behavioural capability needed to achieve their goals.  This in turn has a significant impact on “hard” measures of work performance.  Latest research from the ICF suggests that 99% of clients report positively about their experience of coaching. 
And Clare…?
Like many clients, Clare’s experience of coaching was transformational.  Coaching helped her to identify and prioritise the key questions she was facing and then to work through them one by one.  On close inspection, what started out as an apparently simple question (“shall I accept this job?”) proved to be a series of questions which related to deeply-held values of which Clare had not been aware.  Her coach helped Clare to clarify her values and then to use them as the basis for addressing each question as it arose.
Clare was astounded by the results of her coaching.  Much clearer about what she wanted from her life as a whole, she was able to consider her job offer as one part of a larger whole and also to clarify the kind of relationship she wanted with her current and any future employer.  This gave her confidence to talk to her employer openly and without fear of the consequences – she knew that if she didn’t have her employer’s support, it would be time to think again about her forward career path.
Clare’s coach also helped her to get clear on her aspirations for her relationship with her husband and on the need to discuss with him the implications of becoming parents.  Her coach supported her as she thought about what she wanted to say to her husband and how she wanted to say it and this, in turn, led to a deepening in their relationship.
Coaching helped Clare to deal with the immediate issues she faced, yes.  Far more than this, it opened up new learning that Clare could apply in a wide range of new and as yet unforeseen situations.
You can find out more about coaching here on this blog or at the website of the International Coach Federation (ICF).  If you want to know about the services provided by me at Learning for Life (Consulting) click here or, if you’re ready to talk, please contact me.

Preventing employee suicide

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In one of life’s strangest coincidences, Sarah spent a good chunk of the week of 8th to 14th September, 2013, in her local Accident and Emergency department.  You may or may not know that this was National Suicide Prevention week in the UK.  It was also the week that Sarah, in the grip of suicidal thinking, took a number of actions which were designed to give her relief from her unrelenting thoughts and to keep her from committing the ultimate act of self-harm.
If you’d asked me a year ago about my experience of suicide, I would have had to stop and think hard.  In recent weeks, however, I have come to understand how close to home suicide – and the risk of suicide – actually is.  My brother reported two suicides this year within a mile of his home.  One man threw himself under a train, struggling to cope with his own illness and his wife’s dementia in old age.  Another man killed himself with a sword, leaving behind his wife and young son.  Looking back, I remember the shock we experienced as a family when the son of a friend committed suicide.  I experienced the same level of shock as a member of the London Symphony Chorus when one of our members took his own life.
Let me pause here, and invite you to reflect on your own experience.  How often has your train been delayed for reasons which are unknown or, quite clearly, for a fatality?  When you survey your family tree, or your wider friendship group, is there someone – often overlooked or maybe actively pushed out of view – who committed suicide?  Have you ever known of someone in your workplace who has attempted to commit suicide?
What’s the scale of the problem?
In the UK, the Samaritans report that 1 million people across the globe die by suicide each year.  That’s one suicide every 40 seconds.  They also report that more people die by suicide each year than by murder and war combined.  They see these statistics as conservative – many suicides go unseen.  Suicides go unreported because of social stigma or because the cause of death is given as something else, such as a road traffic accident or drowning.
Suicide is the second largest source of death worldwide amongst 15-19 year-olds.  It’s not, though, only a young person’s problem.  The Samaritans report that male suicide rates are on average 3-5 times higher than female rates and say men aged 30-44 are in the group with the highest rate of suicide.  Both male and female suicide rates are increasing.  Anecdotally, I know of more men than women who have committed suicide and it does seem that men who attempt suicide use methods which ensure their success – though I struggle, in this context, with the word “success”.
Suicide and the work-place
Sarah’s recent experience made me reflect on suicide and work-related stress.  It didn’t take much research to find the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention, which highlights the workplace as one of the key environments affecting mental health and well-being:
The workplace is one of the key environments affecting mental health and well-being.   Gainful employment provides experiences that promote mental well-being through the provision of structured time, social contact, collective effort and purpose, social identity, and regular activity.  Unfortunately, the workplace can also be the source of non-productive stress leading to physical and mental health problems, including suicidal thoughts and behaviours and suicide.
It’s clear to me that if you’re a manager or working in HR, you’re in a privileged position as the first port of call for people in distress and even if you’re not, you need to know how to respond if a friend, family member or colleague comes to you for support.
Equally, if you are under stress and having thoughts of suicide or self-harm, you need to know what to do next.
If you’re in distress
If you’re in distress, you need to turn – as soon as you can – to appropriate professionals.  These professionals are likely to be outside the workplace and include your GP and local mental health services and voluntary organisations, such as the Samaritans.  Make an appointment to see your GP as soon as you start to experience suicidal thoughts or, if you’re struggling to resist the call to self-harm, go immediately to your local Accident and Emergency department.  Call the Samaritans at any time of day or night.
I want to say to you that I hear your “buts” and I know how hard it can be to reach out.  My heart goes out to you for everything that you are experiencing right now.  I don’t know what to say to you that will help you to reach out except this:  please, seek help.
Responding to someone in distress
Whether you are a line manager, working in HR or in some other role, if you want to provide support, you need to be alert to clues that an employee is in distress and to take those clues seriously.  It is not enough to encourage people to “push through” whatever difficulties they may have:  you need to know that people may come to you for help and to be ready to talk openly with them and without judgement about what they are experiencing.  People who are experiencing extreme distress may find it hard to speak openly about their experience but they do give clues and you need to follow up by asking – openly and directly – if an employee is having thoughts of self-harm.
Nor is it enough to think that you can provide the appropriate support.  Adrianna Scott, in an article for the American Society for Human Resource Management about how to deal with suicide in the workplace emphasises the limitations of the HR professional’s responsibilities and the need to seek out professional support.  She writes:
Marina London, spokeswoman for the Employee Assistance Professionals Association, based in Arlington, Va., says labelling employees as having a mental illness is on her list of HR “no-nos.”
 
“It’s not the HR person’s job to diagnose the person who is clinically depressed or bipolar,” London stressed. “The HR position should be supportive of the employee and get them to a professional.”
If you want a happy ending for employees in distress, you need to act sooner rather than later and to know your own limitations as a line manager or HR professional.  In time, you may be able to help employees to find better strategies than suicide or self-harm for handling stress.  First though, you need to support employees in distress in finding the right professional help.
Life beyond suicidal thinking
The Samaritans report that between 10 and 14% of people have suicidal thinking throughout their lifetime and approximately 5% of people attempt suicide at least once in their life.  Some people don’t make it.  Some people (including – so far – Sarah) do.
What happens once the immediate crisis is over?  I hope that, for many, therapy of various kinds can be transformative.  I have, for example, been drawn to revisit an approach called “family constellations” via a core text:  Love’s Hidden Symmetry:  What Makes Love Work in Relationships, by Bert Hellinger, Gunthard Weber and Hunter Beaumont.  I remembered that Hellinger and his co-authors had touched in this book on connections between family dynamics and suicide and I found, on re-visiting this book, a wealth of wisdom and examples in a field which is about resolution – finding ways to resolve unconscious family dynamics so that family members can embrace life fully.
Suicidal thinking is characterised by extreme black or white thinking and a lack of connection with one’s most essential needs – perhaps even a lack of permission to have needs.  For this reason, I find myself wondering how much the workplace has to contribute – way before an employee reaches crisis-point – by nurturing the emotional intelligence and thinking skills of employees.  As a line manager, for example, any investment you make in coaching members of your team can be an investment in their mental health as well as contributing to their effectiveness at work.  Equally, the skills of empathy and the ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes and to see things from their point of view can be essential for the manager dealing with an employee in distress.  The same skills can also transform a sales process or create bridges between departments which are otherwise entrenched in silo thinking.
Being a witness to Sarah at a time of extreme distress has been a humbling experience for me and still, I want to make it count.  I thank you for reading this article and reaching this point and I hope that in ways I cannot yet foresee it might make a difference to you or to someone you know at a time of crisis.
I wrote this article for Discuss HR blog where it was published on Monday 21st October, 2013.

Meditations on a butternut squash

About Dorothy, Emotional Intelligence, Your personal and professional well-being,
Photo: Just eying up my supper in the garden. ..
Yesterday I harvested this butternut squash from my garden before going to my local supermarket to buy chorizo and red pepper.
My plan was to make risotto for supper and to enjoy my “free” butternut squash (the truth is, I grew the plant from the seeds of a squash I bought a few months back) but somehow, by the time I got to the checkout, I knew I wasn’t going to make risotto.  Instead, I consigned my prize crop (in my mind at least) to the fridge for another day and ate soup.

Stretching the elastic to breaking point

Five weeks ago, my friend Sarah went to hospital and I went with her.  I went with her once.  I went with her twice.  I went with her a third time.  Finally, she was admitted.  That first week, I made it my priority to support her at a time of crisis knowing that, with her family living several hours away, I was the person who was best placed to help her.  Once she was admitted, I continued to make a priority of visiting her.

I visited Sarah because I wanted to support her and without knowing how long she would be in hospital.  It was a high priority for me and, at the same time, I knew I was stretching the elastic about as far as it would stretch and still ping back.  I kept up a regime of visiting most days until Sarah moved on Monday to receive specialist treatment some distance away…

…and I confess, that once she’d moved to get the treatment she really needed, I discovered just how exhausted I was.

Feeling exhausted?

Have you ever felt totally exhausted at the end of a project, or after handling a crisis, or simply, because you just are?  The minute your project, or crisis, is over you look at the spaces opening up in your diary and think of all the things you’ve been putting on hold.  Now you can catch up!
Somehow, though, when the time comes, your body refuses to cooperate.  At least, you could push through (isn’t that what you’ve been doing so successfully for the last few weeks, months or even years?) but only if you ignore the signals that your body is giving you… signals that are getting louder and louder and louder…
There is an alternative to “pushing through”
Janice Chapman, the distinguished Australian-born soprano and voice coach, teaches a method of breathing she calls “splat”.  The essence of the method is this:  before you take in a new breath, you need to release what remains of the breath you have just taken.  When I learnt this method, it seemed rather counter-intuitive – isn’t it more efficient to top up the breath before singing again?
Topping up the breath is a good metaphor for what we do when we push through, ignoring the body’s signals to rest before getting stuck into whatever comes next.  Releasing the breath allows us to fill up our lungs with oxygen, rather than seeking to extract the last bit of oxygen from our depleted lungs.
The same principle applies when we take a rest – be it a day or a week or even a “power nap” before we continue.  If we don’t rest and instead push through, we’re into the law of diminishing returns.  For the want of rest, we risk taking our elastic to the point at which it won’t ping back.  We start the next thing exhausted.
We need to remember this for ourselves.  We need to remember it for those we lead.
Taking a moment to check in
If you’ve read this far you may be wondering, “how should I respond to this posting?”  My message to you is…
Breathe.  Take five minutes just to breathe.  Breathe in gently and release the breath, trusting your body’s natural rhythms.
And as you breathe, notice what stage you are at in the various cycles of your life.  Where are you resting?  Where are you pushing through?  What is your body asking of you right now?  Notice, in particular, any messages you’re giving yourself about the need to push through… really?  Sometimes, it helps to recognise your need for rest and to adjust your schedule, knowing that there will be a time – but it doesn’t always need to be now – for you galvanise your energy and to get stuck in.
Everything’s working perfectly
 Yesterday, it wasn’t only that I failed to make the butternut squash and chorizo risotto.  In truth, I pretty much took the day off.  Yes, I got up with the intention of working.  I checked my e-mails.  I had my first (and only) appointment.  Soon, though, I realised that I had a choice and I decided to rest.
Sarah is in hospital now, and getting the care she needs.  I’ll be sharing more of her journey in a future posting, and I’ll be providing support when she comes back to her home nearby.  I have work to do in the meantime – lots of work, as it happens.  But it didn’t need to be done yesterday.
Yesterday I felt exhausted, torn between the need to rest and the awareness of just how much catching up I need to do.  Still, I chose rest and notice how much more energy I have today.  The morning has already been productive.  I’m looking forward to making risotto.  Everything’s working perfectly. 

Spinning your wheels in your life or career?

Emotional Intelligence, Your personal and professional well-being
Recently, I spoke with a client who told me just how much he was spinning his wheels – wanting to move forward in his career but not quite sure in what direction.

Successful in his job, he nonetheless noticed, from time to time, how little it rocked his boat.  Watching colleagues discuss a new development in his field, for example, he could see how their eyes sparkled with excitement.

His didn’t.

Maybe you understand Nick’s frustration.  You’ve worked hard to get where you are.  You’re successful in your job.  It brings you a great deal that you value – kudos, maybe, a comfortable salary, the knowledge that you’re doing something well and seen to do something well.

At the same time, you are not getting out of bed with a spring in your step.

Stuck on the M25

Nick was like a man stuck on the M25 of his career.

From time to time, he would notice how little he was enjoying his job and notice how much he yearned for greater contentment.  He would inch forward a step or two – think about changing his career, maybe even look into the requirements for one or two of his options.

Quickly, though, the wealth of traffic would bring him to a halt.  One car in front of him would say “but think of all the people who are depending on you, right now”.  Another would say, “what about all the things you have got in your career”.  Another, (quite a juggernaut, this one), would say “who are you, anyway, to expect to live a life of full contentment?”

Stopping, starting.  Stopping, starting.  And all the while, Nick was going round in circles.
It’s not that he didn’t think about changing jobs.  He did.  But he didn’t know which job would suit him and he didn’t know how to find out.

A hero’s journey

Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero With A Thousand Faces, has made a lifetime study of myth from around the world.  Apollo, the Frog King, Wotan, the Buddha… Campbell has looked at the main protagonists of both folklore and religion and discovered a remarkable similarity in the underlying structure of their stories.  He calls this structure, the “hero’s journey”.

The hero’s journey begins when the hero hears a call to adventure.  At this stage, the main protagonist faces a crisis or some calling.  His (or her) ways are no longer fitting, but the way forward has yet to appear.  Nick’s experience is typical of this stage of the hero’s journey – and perhaps yours is, too.  From time to time, he would notice his discontentment without knowing what to do about it.  His response was to wait for an answer, but the answer didn’t come.

Making the journey:  you need to commit

Campbell’s research suggests that, at the beginning of the hero’s journey, the hero hears a calling and stands on a threshold.  Responding to the calling means stepping over the threshold and embarking on the journey.  The challenge is this:  when you step over the threshold, you don’t know where the journey will take you.  What’s more, the help you need to make your journey won’t appear until you’ve actually crossed the threshold.

What does this mean for Nick?  As long as Nick sits and waits for the right answer to appear, it won’t.  He needs to commit to the what – to making his journey – and then to work out how to reach his desired destination.

There’s something else, too.  A common mistake that people make is to think their desired destination is one thing when actually, it’s another.  Nick may think his destination is “the perfect job” but actually, it’s a greater level of contentment.  For Nick, this makes the difference between “How do I plan the route to my perfect job when I don’t know what that job is?” and “How do I achieve a greater level of contentment in my life?”

How about you?

Are you, too, stuck on the M25 of your life or career?  If you are, you can begin to find a clear sense of direction by uncovering what it is you really want to achieve.  Here’s a quick way to get you started:

Step 1:  Write down what it is you want that you haven’t yet achieved.  This is probably the easy bit and it’s probably quite concrete – something like “a job I really love” or “a better relationship with my partner”.

Step 2:  Ask yourself this:  what would it do for you if you had what you want?  Keep asking yourself this question and notice your emotions and the sensations in your body.  You know you’ve got the right answer when you feel a sense of connection with an answer which just keeps coming back.  The answer that really matters will be an underlying need, with no sense of the form this might take – for example, “greater contentment in my work” or “more love and intimacy”.  When you’ve found your underlying need pause for a few moments before moving to Step 3.

Step 3:  Ask yourself if you’re ready to commit to meeting your unmet need.  Notice the answer – whatever it is.  It could be that recognising what it is you reallywant is enough for you to commit to making it happen.  Perhaps, though, you’ll meet some inner resistance.  Either way, you’re closer to identifying your next steps.

In Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice asks “Where should I go?”  The Cheshire cat responds, “That depends on where you want to end up.”  If, like Nick, you’re stuck on the M25 of your life or career, it helps to get under the surface of your aspirations to understand what it is you really want.

You also need to commit to making the journey.

Courgette fudge cake and good wishes for your well-being

Your personal and professional well-being

I love the autumn.  It’s a time of year that reminds me of nature’s principle of abundance.  The vegetables I have tended through the summer are producing in plenty.  I am keeping a close eye on my courgettes.  I have given any number away.  I have embarked on the usual search for ideas (just how many ways can you eat a courgette?).  My tomatoes are also finally ripening.  But not only those things I have tended.  The pears are falling from my old pear tree right now.  The hedgerows are laden with blackberries.

It’s easy to lose sight of this natural principle in our times of austerity, which makes it all the more pleasing when I notice those things that are still abundantly available.  Yes, courgettes are abundantly available right now – at least in my garden.  But also human fellowship is easily available, if only we can reach out and receive it.  The potential is there – for fellowship amongst those who are struggling to find work or who look at the last five years and ask themselves, “what have I achieved in the last five years?” or wonder “how can I give more fully of my gifts – how can I make a difference?”

One of the things I have learnt in recent years is just how much gardening reveals this natural fellowship amongst human beings.  Spare plants are given away at the beginning of the season.  Tips are shared.  There is a natural empathy for the joys and trials of gardening.  And on my recent trip to Oxon Hoath, there was a sharing of a recipe for a courgette cake that is more than, in the words of my friend Jane, “worthy”.  In case you, too, have a glut of courgettes in your garden, I share it with you – in time for the weekend.

Ingredients:
For the cake:
3.5 oz butter
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1.25 cups self raising flour
1/3rd cup cocoa powder
1/4 cup milk (or less if batter is runny)
1 cup finely grated courgette including skin
For the icing:
2/3rd cup of icing sugar
60g butter, softened
2tsp milk
2tbsp cocoa powder
Boiling water
To make:
1.  Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees fahrenheit (gas mark 4).  Grease and line the base of a 4×8 inch cake tin (a loaf tin is perfect).
2.  Grate courgette and place in a colander to drain.
3.  Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, then slowly beat in the eggs.
4.  Sift the flour and cocoa into the egg mixture and stir in the courgette.
5.  Add the milk a little at a time until the batter is pourable but not runny.
6.  Pour the batter in to the tin and bake for about 45 minutes or until a knife inserted into the middle comes out clean.
7.  Make the icing by dissolving the cocoa powder in 1tbsp boiling water, allow to cool, then cream it along with the remaining ingredients.  Finally, spread it onto the cooled cake.
8.  Perhaps I should add, last but not least, make tea and coffee, gather friends and family around you, and enjoy the both cake and company.

When you’re wondering about your future career

Coaching, Your personal and professional well-being
Thinking about your future?

I’ve been fielding queries this week about availability at Harley Street. It’s a nice job to have.  One query made me think about the boundary between personal and executive coaching – coaching that is sponsored by your organisation and coaching that you pay for yourself.

Perhaps you recognise something of yourself in the description below (amended for anonymity):

“This is what I’m taking from John’s e-mail [who put us in touch]… just checking my understanding. You’re gifted. You bring an appetite for improvement and you’ve been able to bring this to bear in an area which is relatively stable. As you become more senior, you may well find an increasing tension between your vision for a better future and the readiness of those around you to embrace change. This has raised questions for you about how to influence and engage others. It may even be raising questions for you about whether your future is ultimately with your current employer or elsewhere”.

Without question, coaching can be timely for someone like this, as they work through a number of key questions. “How can you navigate the relative stability of your current job and still make a difference? How can you maximise your opportunities with your current employer? When might it be time to move on (and to what?) How can you stay present to you – to your values and motivations, to your skills and so on – so that you know just how long you can make your current employment work for you and when it might be time to look beyond your current organisation?”

But who pays?  In general terms, organisations do sponsor coaching for people at times – typically to help them to develop their career in-house, e.g. to acquire the skills they need at increasingly senior levels. When coaching is sponsored by an organisation, this is often the focus. Equally, there are times when an individual needs support away from his or her employing organisation to open up a wider question than “how do I make it work here at organisation X?”  Sometimes organisations do sponsor coaching with this agenda, because they recognise that with more clarity some individuals may choose to stay and indeed, that it can serve both individual and organisation to recognise when it’s time to leave. Equally, there are times when people like to sponsor this kind of coaching for themselves and to meet with their coach away from work.

I started the Sunday Coaching Clinic at Harley Street because I recognise that sometimes, people want to sponsor their own coaching as they explore the question of “what next?” and because I love working with clients for whom this question is timely. 

Being at choice

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

The kitchen is finally moving towards completion.  Gary has put together his “Schindler” of all the things that need to be done before we can say it’s finished.  I am looking forward to populating the cupboards which need to be painted inside before I can finally move in (meantime, Gary and Wills have been making liberal use of them for tools and other items of their trade).

Wills was full of cold at the beginning of last week and I, too, succumbed so that on Friday I caught myself reflecting on all the reasons why I might have caught the cold – catching it from Wills, the impact of the long hard slog of accommodating work in the kitchen, the cold weather…

…and then I caught myself in the act of thinking that somehow the cold had “happened to me”.  To a degree it had of course.  Henry Dreher, in his book The Immune Power Personality (which I’ve mentioned before on this blog), talks of breakthroughs in 19th century science, when “the researches of German physician Robert Koch and French physician Louis Pasteur led to the theory of specific etiology – the idea that diseases were caused by a single microorganism and could be eradicated by a single strategy for destroying the invader”.

Dreher also talks, though, of the work of Claude Bernard, the mid-19th-century French physiologist.  To quote briefly from Dreher’s already much abbreviated description of Bernard’s work, “Health was predicated on balance, and disease was a by-product of imbalance in the interior environment”.  Germs were not so much omnipotent as ready to to take root when the conditions were right.  Reflecting on my own health at this time brought home the tiny deteriorations in my normal health regimes in recent months – drinking far less of my usual “Supergreens“, overlooking my usual vitamin supplements, a diet that isn’t quite up to par, less walking… I knew I was reaping the results of small changes I was already aware of.  I have been telling myself that I’ll get back on track when the kitchen is done.  This is true – and still, the accumulation of small changes is also the sum of my own decisions in recent weeks.

At one level, I’m talking about a common cold.  At another level, I’m also talking about the wider question of what mindset we bring to our lives.  When something goes wrong, do you focus on what has happened to you?  Perhaps wish things were different that are beyond your control?  Or do you focus on your own contribution – what you have done that has made a contribution and what you can do to move forward?

There is a phrase used by some coaches (and no doubt others, too) – “being at choice”.  We are at choice when we focus on our own choices rather than seeing ourselves as the helpless victim of circumstance.  Others use the term “in your own power”.  Over the years I have seen how successful leaders have mastered the art of being at choice.  These are the leaders who use their power of choice to achieve outcomes they desire.  They are often optimistic and resilient in the most difficult of circumstances.  Rather than expend energy in wishing (fruitlessly) that things were different, they harness their creativity to the question “what can I do?”

And lest you are beating yourself up right now or yearning to do things differently and not knowing how, I hasten to add that this isn’t an “either/or” scenario.  Most of us have moments when we are at choice (standing in our power) and others when we are not.  Moving to a more powerful position is something we do one step at a time.  For me, in recent days, just noticing that I am not at choice has opened up possibilities to make different choices.  

Giving up on coffee – one year down the line

Your personal and professional well-being, ,

Sometimes readers of my blog have long memories and sometimes they find something that goes back a while simply by browsing. So I don’t know why it surprised me when a colleague recently reminded me of my pledge, made in August last year, to stop drinking coffee for at least a year. How did I get on?

It’s worth saying that, even though I was only drinking a mug a day (OK, a single small cafetiere’s worth of high quality, strong coffee) giving up included some unpleasant withdrawal symptoms. In particular, though I rarely suffer from headaches, I experienced a few in the days and weeks immediately following my decision to stop drinking coffee.

Then there were more subtle forms of addiction. These were the moments when I thought – as a matter of habit – “ooh! I’d enjoy a cup of coffee right now!” Setting a target to give up for a year worked well for me in relation to these habitual responses. I found that saying no in the moment whilst knowing it might not be for ever was easier than saying no for ever.

Over time, these bonds of habit have loosened so that I rarely have those “ooh! Wouldn’t it be nice…” moments. I’ve been happy to keep coffee in the house for visitors and I now know that’s what it’s there for. Meantime, I have discovered that all those herbal teas that used to smell divine and taste like cardboard now smell and taste divine.

August was an interesting month as the year’s anniversary approached. Let’s be clear, I knew I want to continue to live my life without coffee. Still, the thought that I might celebrate the year anniversary by enjoying a cup of coffee before giving it up – well, it did cross my mind. In the end though, I realised both that I didn’t want to risk rediscovering my love of coffee and that I am enjoying myself just as much without.

On a path to living an enjoyable and healthy life, giving up coffee has been just one small step. Still, it’s a step I celebrate.

Stepping softly into the New Year

Coaching, Your personal and professional well-being, , , ,

Most years I like to take a few days out over Christmas to reflect on the year just gone and to look forward to the year ahead.

This year was slightly different! Three weeks after I first wondered if I was going to go down with a cold Christmas came and so did my cold, a drawn-out weary affair which was certainly not flu though it came close. After Christmas with family (as it happens, a time to bring our diverse winter germs together and compare notes) I holed up in my London home for a few days to recover. Having listened to my body’s feedback I postponed my time to reflect and took time to relax. It was good to have these few days with absolutely no agenda other than to listen to my inner guidance and to ‘hole up’. Donny Osmond was the perfect companion.

So I have been grateful this week for a relatively gentle start. My coaching appointments have all been over the phone and I have yet to have any early starts. I have been able to send out invoices to those clients who pay me a monthly fee. (I always do this with joy and gratitude, for this exchange is what makes it possible for me to meet my needs whilst also supporting my clients). I have had time to meditate with ease – though not to meditate and to write on my blog (until today). All this has given me time to return to my aims for the year ahead and to begin to shape the two page document which will guide me through 2009.

I confess that for a few days, this experience has knocked me off my ‘smug healthy’ pedestal, reminding me that I am not omnipotent. As Dr. Christiane Northrup so often puts it (in her wonderful books on women’s health), “sooner or later, the body presents the bill”. My diet has played a huge part in keeping me healthy in 2008. Still, I know that I am currently in the midst of a challenging personal decision and that this is taking time and energy. I wonder how much the widespread germs and colds we have been sharing so generously reflect a time of concern – about the economy, about world events. I don’t know.

Still, here it is. 2009. As I step softly into the New Year I do not know what will happen in the world around me. Still, I know where my direction lies. This latter is enough for me.