Tag Archives: Books

Reasons not to be human in the workplace: reason 1

Emotional Intelligence,
Recently, I wrote a posting for Discuss HR entitled To what extent is it really OK to be human in the workplace?  My aim was to explore the extent to which we feel able to express ourselves fully and authentically in the workplace and to explore some of the reasons why we don’t.  In this posting I highlight what I’m calling “Reason 1” and expand on it. 
I found a first clue as to why we might not feel fully at ease in being human in the workplace in my experience of joining the workplace:  one thing I took from my upbringing was the idea that there was a “right” and a “wrong” answer to everything – and the idea that often I was wrong.  I entered the workplace (as much as the rest of my life) with a fear of learning that yes, I was indeed wrong.  This did not make it easy for me to share my fears and to seek the help and support I needed early in my career.  Another way of putting this is to say, if you are afraid of being wrong AND you fear that being wrong in this particular instance means there’s something wrong with you then the stakes are high when you express yourself honestly:  you risk finding out that you are indeed, fatally flawed.  (Kathryn Schulz talks about this on www.TED.com.  I wrote about her recently in a posting entitled On being right – or wrong where you will also find a link to her talk). 

One factor that contributes to this is our tendency to compare our own inner turmoil with the apparently serene exterior of others.  If you take a moment to imagine two swans gliding across the surface of life whilst frantically paddling beneath the waters, you can begin to imagine what this might be like:  one swan knows he is paddling away under the surface and yet he doesn’t imagine that his mate is doing the same because he cannot see beyond his friend’s serene appearance.  Moreover, for fear of being judged, he is also doing his best to look serene.

And yes, I’m not sure that swans think in this way – though I do know that humans do.  I remember, for example, a conversation I had with friends towards the end of our university studies when I shared how scared I’d been on arrival of not being good enough.  A number of people looked totally surprised – they’d never guessed.  One by one we shared our feelings and realised that, yes, we’d all felt that way and done our best to hide our fears.  We had been afraid to share ourselves fully.  It took many experiences for me to learn, finally, that I was not alone in putting on a brave – but not entirely authentic – face.  For a while, it seemed to me that everyone had it sussed – everyone but me, that is.  I wonder how many others would share similar experiences – if only they dared – of hiding their human face because their upbringing and education has not prepared them to show themselves fully at work.
The implications in the workplace are profound.  The very people who enter the workplace with this fear of being found out (some people call it the “imposter syndrome”) rise through the system to become our most senior leaders.  When this happens, the culture they create supports the idea that there is a right and wrong answer (and, by implication, that they are the owners of the right answer) and this in turn creates a climate of fear as well as organisations whose performance is way below their potential.  The result – if nothing serves to intervene – is a system which perpetuates the problem.
I wonder, what has been your experience in this area?

On being right – or wrong

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, ,

Once more www.TED.com has come up with a great resource in the form of a talk by Kathryn Schulz On Being Wrong.  This reached me via Stuart Reid* who commented: 


There is quite a lot in this TED talk from Kathryn Schulz that helps to explain why the ‘unilateral control model’ is so powerful.  Schulz has a view that one reason why we care so much about being wrong is that we often feel that if we are wrong there is something wrong with us – so we insist instead that we are right.  And she also makes the point well that feeling we are right is often not a reliable guide to what’s going on out there in the real world.

Leaders who are attached to always being right are easy to spot.  They rarely ask for input from those they lead in order to form a plan and even when they do it’s their own ideas that prevail.  They have people reporting to them – sometimes very senior people – who think twice before putting forward an idea for fear of the public humiliation that will follow.  They think their staff are rubbish (“they have no ideas to offer at all”) and they may overlook the fact that some very talented people come and go from their watch.  They are often disappointed with the outcomes from their staff and rarely take responsibility.  Of course, it’s not just leaders who have this kind of experience – it’s colleagues, spouses, parents and children…

I want to add that, in our culture, this is not uncommon.  Take a moment to notice when you have wanted to be right even though you knew you were wrong, when you were really hard on yourself or on someone else for the things that didn’t go to plan, when you were afraid of the consequences of a mistake or escaped into your head to think about it instead of to feel it.

How much compassion do you have for your own mistakes?  And for the mistakes of others?

*And yes, if you follow Stuart’s link, you’ll find all sorts of additional treasures to explore.

On my own side of the street

Emotional Intelligence,

I have been facilitating an on-line discussion amongst former colleagues in recent weeks and I notice just how hard I have been finding it to stay on my side of the street.

What do I mean when I use the term “on my side of the street”?  I have to give credit here to Anne Wilson Schaef.  It’s hard to characterise Wilson Schaef whose career has taken her through working as a therapist and dealing with women’s issues to looking more widely, looking at organisations and whole societies.  A theme that runs through her work (as I understand it) lies in her concern for wholeness and health and her belief that individuals, organisations and even whole societies are susceptible to the dysfunction of addiction.  Wilson Schaef also explores those ways of living that she sees as more natural and healthy and it was in her book Living in Process:  Basic Truths for Living the Path of the Soul that I came across and enjoyed her concept of living on your own side of the street.

What does the person do who stays on their own side of the street?  Let me illustrate this with my experience of the discussion I mentioned right at the beginning of this posting.  When I stray from my side of the street, for example, it would be easy to notice how Person A, who opted not to comment until after a decision had been made expresses his discomfort with the decision and to feel frustrated – why did he not express his views as part of the initial consultation?  Or to be horrified by the way Persons B and C are expressing their views and to feel somehow responsible.  Or to wonder if, in the light of the debate that has ensued, I got something wrong when I consulted colleagues in the first place.  To stray from my side of the street is to focus on what’s going on outside of me and to be guided by it – leading to confusion and a sense of being a victim.  It also carries with it the temptation to move from victim to perpetrator (“if you felt so strongly about it, why didn’t you express your view when you were asked?”, for example).

To stay on my side of the street, on the other hand, is to notice what’s going on in me and to take responsibility for my own experience.  It is to notice that, yes, I opened up a question and I wasn’t entirely prepared for the response – not so much the range of views but the manner in which they have been expressed.  Equally, I wasn’t quite prepared for the reality that even having consulted with colleagues the ultimate decision would sit in my hands because navigating a discussion amongst 75 members of an on-line group who have no prior agreement about how to take decisions is unlikely to lead to 75 people saying “yes, let’s go with that”.  To stay on my side of the street is also to choose my response.  I have, for example, wondered about saying, “having consulted with you and taken my decision, I’m now signing off this discussion”.  It’s an option, though for now, I have decided to hang on in there.  One reason for staying is because I want to stay abreast of the body of opinion in the group and by guided by it.  Another reason is because I know that, in so far as I am triggered by others’ behaviour or am taking it personally, it is guiding me towards valuable learning.

Wilson Schaef points out how tough it is to stay on our own side of the street precisely because we equate taking responsibility with having caused something and assign blame (as if, for example, I am somehow responsible for the fact that there are diverse views amongst the group or for the way group members have expressed their views).  At the same time, she highlights how, when we can let go of viewing human behaviour in terms of cause and effect (and assigning blame) we empower ourselves.  I would add that, by example, we offer a way for others to empower themselves.

I wonder, do you aspire to stay on your own side of the street?  And to what extent are you succeeding?

Exploring the inner game of leadership

Developing as a leader,

I confess, today I’m in book heaven.  I have been drawing together reading recommendations to supplement my own research and thinking about the inner game of leadership.  In particular, I’m exploring the key attributes, characteristics, competencies that provide the foundations for effective leadership at director level.  I’m especially interested in those characteristics that are often unseen and still essential to succeed at this level.  These characteristics are often conspicuous by their absence:  you don’t notice when someone has them but – oh boy! –  you do notice when they’re absent.

Right now, I’m planning to write a paper on the subject and gathering together a number of books to read.  In case you’d like to join me in my reading, here’s my list as it stands today.  Some books I have already and know well.  Some have been landing on my doorstep in recent days.  (And of course, in case you’re like most senior leaders and only get to read a book if you’re on a plane well, then, look out for my brief paper which I’ll be publishing later this year).  Here’s the list:

Right now, I’m beginning to explore the findings in Jim Collins Book, Good to Great.  I’ll keep you posted.  Meantime, what thoughts do you have about the hidden characteristics of the most outstanding leaders at director level?  And what has it taken you to succeed at this level?

On the threshold of change

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, ,

In April 2005 I wrote an article which I subsequently published here on the blog under the heading Joseph Campbell and the hero’s journey.  It is a posting to which I return again and again in my work with leaders.  In the meantime, Robert Dilts (from whom I learnt about Campbell’s work) and Stephen Gillighan have added to the literature in this area by writing their own account of The Hero’s Journey, which I have recently added to my Amazon wishlist.

Campbell discovered a number of key steps in the hero’s journey, reflected in myths and stories from around the world.  It’s easy to wonder why these are of relevance in our modern world (who do you know, for example, who has recently slain a dragon?) until we recognise, quite quickly, the metaphorical significance of the hero’s journey.  It is, fundamentally, about our human experience and reflects the invitation that faces us all at some point in our lives to step out beyond our comfort zone in response to some kind of call to adventure.

The leaders I work with, being human, face the challenge that every other hero faces:  the challenge of being called to embark on a journey without knowing where it will take you;  the challenge of being drawn towards outcomes you don’t know how to achieve*.  This is the very nature of the hero’s journey.  Over my years of conducting research into what differentiates the most effective leaders I have found that one of the attributes of the most outstanding leaders is the ability to combine both an appetite for results with a tolerance for risk.  It is by risking failure that we are able to do things that have not been attempted before.  Such a leader is able to respond to the call to adventure (step one in the hero’s journey) and to step over the threshold (step 2).

But what if you are hearing the call to adventure and feel unable to respond?  Maybe it helps to know that you are not alone – or maybe not.  The truth is this:  life calls us repeatedly to step over the threshold and the signals it sends us get stronger and stronger.  The longer we wait the more likely they are to include those things we most fear – illness, job loss, the break up of our most intimate and valued relationships.  We may know this and still, we fear what may come on our journey every bit as much as we fear what may come if we say no to the call.  Saying no to a call to adventure comes, fundamentally, from our most heartfelt desire for safety.  This is the time when our yearning for safety competes with our desire for change.  The paradox is this:  as soon as we cross the threshold, our guardian or mentor will appear.  This is the nature of the hero’s journey.  At the same time, as long as we refuse to cross the threshold there is no guardian, no mentor.  It’s a lonely place to be.

Sometimes, as coach, I am the guardian whose student stands before me and for whom still, the time has not yet come.  I can offer many options and ideas to explore and yet… it takes a commitment to cross the threshold – it takes having crossed the threshold –  before these options carry any weight.  And you?  If you are the hero, called to a journey for which you are not yet ready, what can you do?  I wonder if a starting point is simply this:  to notice – and stay with – where you are;  to ask yourself “where am I?”, “what is true in this place?” and “how is it for me to be here?”

*Leaders also face another challenge:  that of having to decide how to respond when those they lead are saying no to their own personal call to adventure.  I say more about this on Friday.

Your MBA in entrepreneurship – in just 5 minutes

Developing as a leader,

Recently, I came across an article by Scott Adams, creator of “Dilbert”, highlighting some of the learnings he took from studying entrepreneurship at Hartwick College in Oneonta, NY.  Adams’ article reads like a short MBA and is entitled How to Get a Real Education.

The source of this link was Roger Hamilton, author of Your Life Your Legacy:  An Entrepreneur Guide To Finding Your Flow.  Hamilton’s passion is reflected in the extract he chooses to share.  His thesis is that we need more entrepreneurs if we are to generate the resources needed to address the key issues in the world and that, as individuals, we need to understand how we are designed to generate wealth.  (Stay tuned if you want to learn more about this in future postings).  The extract below, from Adams’ article, illustrates this neatly:

“There was a small business on our campus called The Coffee House. One day the managers of The Coffee House had a meeting to discuss two topics. First, our Minister of Employment was recommending that we fire a bartender, who happened to be one of my best friends. Second, we needed to choose a leader for our group. On the first question, there was a general consensus that my friend lacked both the will and the potential to master the bartending arts. I reluctantly voted with the majority to fire him.”


“But when it came to discussing who should be our new leader, I pointed out that my friend—the soon-to-be-fired bartender—was tall, good-looking and so gifted at b.s. that he’d be the perfect leader. By the end of the meeting I had persuaded the group to fire the worst bartender that any of us had ever seen…and ask him if he would consider being our leader. My friend nailed the interview and became our Commissioner. He went on to do a terrific job. That was the year I learned everything I know about management.”

This brief extract nails precisely the “square peg, round hole” syndrome that affects us all.  As individuals, we struggle if we are trying to mould ourselves into a role that doesn’t suit us.  As leaders, we will certainly have to deal with the same issue as it affects our staff.

I wonder, how is this issue showing up right now in your life and career?

Seizing the initiative

Developing as a leader,

One of the attributes – or competencies – of the highly effective leader is initiative.  This manifests as the ability to spot a problem or an opportunity ahead of time and to take action to address it.  Initiative requires a measure of thinking ability (spotting the problem or opportunity) as well as the dynamism to take action.

I was reminded of this recently when reading Sir Richard Branson’s autobiography Losing My Virginity, which contains many examples of this competency.  Branson started his record business as a mail order business, for example, when he realised that students were spending a good deal of money on records and they didn’t like spending them at dreary and uncool retailers like WH Smith.  When the business was almost ruined, in 1971, by a strike by Post Office workers, Branson did not wait and hope but set about opening the company’s first record shop, cutting a deal with the owner of a shoe shop to set up shop on the first floor.

Sometimes, seizing the initiative was itself what brought Branson close to ruin.  This was true when, by accident, he discovered that he could increase his profit margins by buying records for export and selling them within the UK.  Branson was arrested and taken to prison.  His release on bail took place when his mother put up her home as security and Branson learnt an early lesson.  As he put it in his autobiography:  “I couldn’t believe it:  I had always thought that only criminals were arrested:  it hadn’t occurred to me that I had become one.  I had been stealing money from Customs and Excise”.

Branson’s early initiative also reflected his empathy for others.  At the age of just 17, he set up the Student Advisory Centre after helping a friend of his to have an abortion.  He realised that there were many issues faced by students and wanted to provide support.  Much later, the same empathy for others moved him to offer help to get blankets and supplies to foreign workers who had left Kuwait following its invasion by Saddam Hussein.  Shortly after, he was able to leverage his contacts to make it possible to fly women and children out of Baghdad who were amongst the British nationals detained in Baghdad as part of Hussein’s “human shield”.

From a business perspective, my favourite example of initiative from Branson’s autobiography occurred when, in the depths of recession in 1992, the banks refused to lend Virgin the $10 million needed to install small video screens in the back of the seats of Virgin Airways’ small fleet of aircraft.  With a little lateral thinking, Branson contacted Phil Conduit, CEO of Boeing and Jean Pierson at Airbus to ask if they could supply new aircraft with the seat-back videos already fitted at no additional cost.  Both agreed.  Branson then made some enquiries and found that it was easier to get $4 billion credit to buy eighteen new aircraft than it was to get $10 million credit to add the seat-back videos to their existing fleet of planes.

I wonder, where are you seizing the initiative?  And what are the opportunities that are yours for the taking, if only you could spot them and act on them?

   

Are you loving your work? An invitation to heed your life’s calling

Developing as a leader, ,
Don’t ask what the world needs; ask what makes you come alive then go and do it,
because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
Howard Thurman

Last week I wrote a posting For Love AND Money in response to conversations I have had recently with people who feel torn between doing what they really love and doing what they think will pay the bills.  I wrote it because I recognise that this dilemma is experienced by many people.

More recently, I came across the quote above by Howard Thurman and I thought, this is too good to miss.  I thought I’d share it with you today along with just a few reading recommendations for anyone who wants to explore what it might be like to do the work you love and to get paid – handsomely, even – to do it.

And before I share these books I want to say a few words to those people I mainly coach:   leaders in organisations.  You can spend all your life as a leader doing work you’re good at and which you enjoy – sort of.  You’ll be adding value and you’ll be paying the bills.  Equally, you can seek out the opportunity to lead in an area about which you feel passionate.  You’ll still be adding value and you’ll still be paying the bills.  At the same time, the ease and joy with which you lead will be far greater and the positive impact you’ll have on those you lead long after you have ceased to lead them will make the hours you work worthwhile.  You get to choose.

Here are just a few recommendations from my own bookshelf:

Richard N. Bolles:  What Color Is your Parachute?  A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers.  Bolles’ book, which he has updated and maintained over many years, is probably the book for anyone who wants to return to the question of calling and seek out the work they are yearning to do.

Gay Hendricks:  The Big Leap.  I’ve mentioned this book on my blog before.  It’s worth reading just to understand the difference between working in your zone of excellence and working in your zone of genius.

Richard J. Leider and David A. Shapiro:  Whistle While You Work:  Heeding Your Life’s Calling.  What do I want to be when I grow up?  What was I born to do?  These are the questions the authors set out to help you answer in this slim volume. 

M. Scott Peck:  The Road Less Travelled:  A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth.  I include this book in recognition that the journey towards finding the work we love to do is essentially a journey inwards – a journey of the spirit.

David Whyte:  The Heart Aroused:  Poetry and The Preservation of the Soul.  It may be hard to find a new copy of this book, which offers a poet’s view of what it means to work in the corporate world.  If you feel you need to reconnect with yourself or yearn to maintain connection whilst working in the corporate world this book is for you.

Nick Williams:  The Work We Were Born To Do:  Find the Work You Love, Love the Work You Do.  Williams’ book sets out to help people discover purpose, meaning and passion in their work whilst still paying the bills.  Williams offers twelve principles of the work we were born to do as well as exercises to support you in your explorations.  You can also hear Williams speak by signing up at Alternatives where you’ll be able to access recordings of past speakers.

Is this list exhaustive?  By no means.  It does, though, provide a starting point.  I wonder what this posting evokes in you:  what thoughts and feelings come up when you think of doing the work that you were born to do? 

For love AND money

Emotional Intelligence

Every now and then, I come across someone – a friend, client – who is grappling with one of life’s classic dilemmas:  how can I do what I love and meet my needs for security and safety?  I’ve had a little flurry of conversations this week in which some quite diverse people have raised this issue and decided to address this subject here today.

Let’s be clear, if you are nurturing this dilemma, you are far from alone.  As we embark on our careers at least some of us will make choices which favour earning a good living over having fun at work doing those things we most love.  Perhaps we have parents who have programmed us this way.  Perhaps we are already clear that we want to be in a position to marry and have children.  Perhaps, right now, we’re looking out of the window and recognising the economic climate that awaits us with all its challenges.  Later in life, when we have the spouse, the children and the mortgage and who knows what else we may find ourselves sitting in our offices looking out of the window thinking “if only…”, even whilst holding the conviction that we couldn’t possibly leave our well paid job to pursue our heart’s desires.

One of the challenges we face is that, as long as we hold the belief that the joy of work and financial rewards are mutually exclusive, we won’t begin to engage with the question I posed above:  how can I do what I love and meet my needs for security and safety?  Perhaps it will knock on our door every now and again only to be summarily dismissed.  The yearnings won’t go away (perhaps they’ll become louder over time or manifest as some lingering discontent or even as some physical unease) and at the same time, the voice we most sponsor within ourselves will be speaking to another agenda (think of the mortgage, think of your pension, think of your kids…).

There are paradoxes of course.  Richard Branson (as you know, I have recently been reading his autobiography, Losing My Virginity) did not set out to become rich, nor did he worry about his pension.  He set out to have fun and got rich in the process.  Stephen King (author of Carrie and many other best selling books) was not always wealthy.  He pursued a talent for and a love of writing, and he did it in his own way despite feedback from his teachers (in On Writing:  A Memoir of the Craft he describes how he sold a story he’d written to his fellow pupils at school and was summoned to the principal’s office, where he was told he couldn’t turn the school into a marketplace.  ‘What I don’t understand, Stevie’, his teacher said, ‘is why you’d write junk like this in the first place.  You’re talented. Why do you want to waste your abilities?’).  Along the paths to many extraordinary successes lie periods of poverty, feedback that discourages and the sheer surprise of doing something you love and finding, suddenly, you’ve become an ‘overnight’ success.

I could mention some of the resources available for people who are grappling with this dilemma.  Perhaps I will, though not today.  For now, it simply occurs to me to say that one of the reasons we experience it as a dilemma – as an either/or – is that, within ourselves, our yearning to do work we love and our longing for safety are sponsored by different parts of us so that we imagine that what we carry within ourselves is also true out in the world.

Check this out:  is it true for you?  Do you find that the part of you that yearns to get paid to do work you love is at odds with that part of you that is fearful and longs for security?  If it is, you might like to read a posting I wrote a while back, called welcoming your parts to the party.  This, in turn, will lead you to a couple more postings which touch on the subject of our inner dialogue and its effect on our lives.

PS  And to those of you with whom I had conversations this week on this subject:  I dedicate this posting to you.  You know who you are.

On the fear of being “found out” at work

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, , ,

How many of us fear being “found out” in the workplace?  I am not thinking of our fear that any fraudulent activities might be uncovered.  No.  I’m referring to the fear that many of us have that we are not good enough to be doing the job we are doing.  I have heard some people call this the “imposter syndrome”.

If Dr Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull are right, it’s likely that the further we travel up the organisational hierarchy the more likely we are to be poorly equipped to do our jobs.  Peter and Hull are the authors of the book The Peter Principle.  Why Things Always Go Wrong.  Their hypothesis – that people rise to their level of incompetence in organisations – has passed into the vernacular and their book, first published more than thirty years ago, is still widely available.

With or without their hypothesis, the fear exists.  As long as we feel this fear it’s hard for us to be authentic in our dealings with others.  Our energies go into wearing a mask which protects us from being “found out”.  Paradoxically, the mask we wear to secure our personal sense of safety inspires fear in others.  The more senior we are, the more this fear spreads throughout the organisations we lead.

I am reminded of Carl Rogers, whose work has been so influential in the world of learning – especially in the field of therapy and coaching.  Perhaps this extract from an article by Rachel Naomi Remen gives insight into the alternatives available to us:

Years ago, I was invited to a seminar given by Carl Rogers.  I had never read his work, but I knew that the seminar, attended by a group of therapists, was about ‘unconditional positive regard’.  At the time I was highly sceptical about this idea, but I attended the seminar anyway.  I left it transformed.


Roger’s theories arose out of his practice, and his practice was intuitive and natural to him.  In the seminar, he tried to analyse what he was doing for us as he did it.  He wanted to give a demonstration of unconditional positive regard in a therapeutic session.  One of the therapists volunteered to serve as the subject.  As Rogers turned to the volunteer and was about to start the session, he suddenly pulled himself up, turned back to us, and said, ‘I realise there’s something I do before I start a session.  I let myself know that I am enough.  Not perfect.  Perfect wouldn’t be enough.  But I am human, and that is enough.  There is nothing this man can say or do that I can’t feel in myself.  I can be with him.  I am enough’.


I was stunned by this.  It felt as if some old wound in me, some fear of not being good enough, had come to an end.  I knew, inside myself, that what he had said was absolutely true:  I am not perfect, but I am enough.

Rachel Naomi Remen, The Search for Healing
in R. Carlson & B. Shield ed. (1989)
Healers on Healing, Los Angeles:  Tarcher, p. 93

I offer you this thought:  that whether you are a man or woman in therapy or CEO of some international corporation you are, like Rogers, human and enough.
I wonder, how does this thought land with you?