Tag Archives: Books

Losing My Virginity

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, ,
Throughout the entire dirty-tricks episode I had been accused of being ‘naive’:  naive to believe that British Airways could behave in such a manner, naive to think that British Airways would ever stop behaving in such a manner, naive to believe that I would ever be able to bring Bristish Airways to court, naive to think for a moment that I could win a court case.  The word ‘naive’ echoed round and round in my head and at some points had almost undermined my resolve to go on.  Sir Michael Angus told Sir Colin Southgate that I was naive to take on British Airways ‘as if it was a Boy’s Own story’;  Jeannie Davis told my parents that ‘Ricky should learn to take the rough with the smooth’;  and even people like Sir John Egan of BAA told me ‘not to shake the money tree’.  Perhaps I was naive in fighting for the justice I wanted;  or perhaps I was just plain stubborn.  But I knew that British Airways’ activities were unlawful and I wanted compensation.  I was determined to make all those people who had dismissed my stance as ‘naive’ eat their words.
Sir Richard Branson
Losing My Virginity 

Lest you’re reeling with horror at the propect of some intimate and personal revelations, let me tell you from the off that I have been reading Sir Richard Branson’s autobiography.  The revelations are his, rather than mine.

Over the years, I have conducted many, many interviews of leaders at senior levels in organisations – for research purposes, to assess people for jobs – and reading Branson’s autobiography reminds me of these interviews.  Why?  Because it’s been my experience that when I interview (or read an interview by a colleague) with someone who is outstanding in what they do, my heart gladdens and some of the individual’s magic rubs off on me.  That’s what I experienced in reading Losing My Virginity.

Branson demonstrates many of the attributes – the competencies – of the successful entrepreneurial leader.  This should come as no surprise, for that’s just what he is.  One passage in the book stood out for me, in which Branson highlights the response of many people around him as he became aware that British Airways were undertaking a whole series of actions to undermine Virgin Airways and took action to bring this “dirty tricks campaign” to a halt.

With the benefit of hindsight and a legal victory in the bag, it’s easy to imagine that Branson’s decisions – the actions he took to invite BA to cease their campaign, his decision, David and Goliath style, to take them to court – were without risk.  Reading Losing My Virginity, however, it’s abundantly clear that this was not true.  Branson showed confidence and conviction in the face of higher and higher levels of risk to his business.  It is also interesting to note that he was driven not only by business imperatives but also by his strong values and on behalf of all the airlines who had also suffered at the hands of this particular Goliath and lost.  Along the way, Branson sought the counsel of some and received the unsolicited counsel of others but in the end, he knew he had to make the best decision he could and live with the consequences. 

The passage at the beginning of this posting captures this for me.  I wonder, what do you notice when you read it?  And when have you acted in line with your values, even when the risks were high?

Real conversations: creating ground rules for effective communication

All articles, , ,

Recently, I wrote a posting for Discuss HR on communication, identifying a number of elements which, together, comprise our approach to communication.  In this posting I expand on what I wrote for Discuss HR, writing about some of the areas in which we can set ground rules for communication.

The more you can translate your aspirations into ground rules for effective communication, the more you can implement an approach in line with your chosen paradigm. A number of disciplines and approaches have chosen to do this and some of them have in common areas in which they set ground rules.

One of these areas, for example, is building and maintaining connection – rapport.  Ian McDermott, author and co-author of many books on NLP, including Way of NLP, sees rapport as one of the four pillars of success.  For him, rapport (with ourselves, with others) is not just about communication, it’s also about our success in the broadest sense.  Marshall Rosenberg, in the field of nonviolent communication (NVC) emphasises maintaining connection as a priority in communication.  Rosenberg’s invitation to connect first and only then to correct, reminds us that it’s hard for others to hear what we have to say if they do not, first, feel a sense of connection with us.  By adopting this as a rule, you remind yourself (and others) that communication is about building and maintaining relationships first. Any other outcomes depend on your relationship with others in the moment.

Another rule which is reflected in a number of different approaches to communication is, in the words of Roger Schwarz (author of The Skilled Facilitator Approach) to focus on interests, not positions.  Marshall Rosenberg puts the same point another way, inviting people to see beyond the immediate message to the needs that underpin the message.  This rule is at the core of approaches to negotiation and mediation.  It also has value in our every day communication – with ourselves, as well as with each other.

It seems to me that any additional rules are in support of these two rules and that these two rules imply a particular paradigm – one in which the emphasis is on a “win, win” approach to communication.  This is an approach in which everyone’s needs matter and power is shared – a “power with” rather than a “power over” paradigm of communication.  The rules for communication may be ones we adopt ourselves, no matter what the approach of others.  Perhaps they are rules we jointly agree to observe in a particular relationship or context.  Either way, they are designed to make it more likely that our communication will be effective.

Roger Schwarz, in his Skilled Facilitator Approach, offers a number of rules which pre-empt some of the most common communication problems. He invites people to test their assumptions and inferences, for example, and also to explain their reasoning and intent. Looking back on my own communication with John, whom I mentioned in my first posting in this series, I can see that I could have done more to make my own intentions crystal clear and that this, in turn, might have made a misunderstanding less likely.

Marshall Rosenberg, in his book Nonviolent Communication:  A Language for Life, distills a needs-based approach into four simple steps.  He invites us to replace the language of judging with clear observations (step one).  Acording to this rule, for example, we might replace a conclusion (“you’re always late at your desk in the morning”) with a precisely observed statement (“I have seen you arrive after 9am, which is your official start time, two or three times each week for the last six weeks or more.  As a result, I’m starting to think of you as someone who is always late for work”).  His is also a heart-based approach, so that he invites us to share our feelings (step two) as well as our needs (step three) or to seek to connect with the feelings and needs of others.  Only then do we make a clear and specific request (step four) such as “Would you be willing to tell me what you are hearing so that I can know how clearly I’ve expressed myself?”

I sometimes wonder if our investment in improving our communications skills – our personal skills or those of a whole organisation – are predicated on the idea that improved skills make for greater ease in the communications process.  I would add that, for me, this is one area when the opposite is also true.  Effective approaches to communication can make it easier, for example, to discuss the undiscussable.  They can make it clearer where the source of a misunderstanding lies.  At the same time, communication depends on the willing participation of everyone involved and is limited by our own – and others’ – current level of skill.

Take John, for example, whom I wrote about in my first blog of this series.  As I write, I experience both needs met and needs unmet in relation to our correspondence.  John has chosen to withdraw from the group of which we were both members as a way to improve his management of his time. He’s also chosen not to have any of the discussions which might help to rebuild our sense of connection. And me? I am ready – pleased – to support John in doing what’s right for him and in this way to meet my need for contribution.  I have also invited him to join me in the kind of dialogue that repairs relationships – a request to which he has so far not responded.  I feel sad that when I think that a number of needs – for connection, for example, and for respect and consideration – are not currently being met.  At the same time, I’m trusting he’ll do that …when he’s ready.

Real conversations – choosing the focus of your communication

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, , , ,
On Monday, I wrote about two fundamentally different paradigms of communication, drawing on the work of McGregor, Schwarz, Rosenberg and Goleman and expanding on an article I recently wrote for Discuss HR.  Today, I continue this series of postings by discussing the focus of each communication paradigm.

Two different paradigms of communication.  Two different sets of underlying values and assumptions, strategies for execution and ultimate outcomes.  If you want to adopt either one of these approaches, you need to know how the underlying values and assumptions translate into practice.  One area in which the difference is starkly visible, in my experience, is in the focus of attention adopted by users of each approach.

Let’s begin with McGregor’s Theory X;  what Roger Schwarz (in his book The Skilled Facilitator:  A Comprehensive Resource For Consultants, Facilitators, Managers, Trainers, and Coaches) calls a Unilateral Control Model and Rosenberg calls a domination approach.  The aim of the user is to win and not to lose and the user is not concerned about the experience of others.  Implicit in this approach is the belief that there is a single right answer and that all other answers are wrong.  It follows, then, that the user of a domination-based approach to communication will tend to focus on who or what is right or wrong and to gather data which supports the case.  He or she will often favour some kinds of data and dismiss other kinds of data though there may be some internal inconsistency here.  For example, the user of this approach tends to favour objective data and dismiss data concerned with the feelings of others.  At the same time, he or she may take the view that his or or her feelings are justified, especially when they are concerned with judgements about the other person or people.

Marshall Rosenberg, in his book Nonviolent Communication:  A Language of Life, identifies judgements as a key area of focus for the user of this unilateral, domination approach.  This is not about discernment, for the user of this approach often lacks the ability to discern, conflating his or her beliefs, for example, with the facts and confusing observations with conclusions.  Rather, it is about being judgemental.  This is true even when the person concerned is giving positive feedback, which is given in the form of praise and which implies that it is the giver of praise who is the ultimate arbiter of what is right and what is wrong.  In this sense, the emphasis is on what the communicator thinks and believes.

In making the case for a particular approach, the user of the domination approach is likely both to emphasise the use of data and to be keen to control its use.  This might include avoiding scrutiny of his or her own data and ignoring or dismissing data which does not support his or her particular way of thinking or forward path.  Parties to communication become opponents, seeking to prevail, galvanising their arguments in order to win.  This approach may be explicit (in the request for a presentation to support a proposal, for example) or implicit (in the way we think about our colleagues behind the scenes).

What, then, is the focus of a Mutual Learning Model?  This is McGregor’s Theory Y – what Rosenberg calls Nonviolent Communication (or NVC).  This approach is about collaborating in order to achieve a variety of outcomes, including business and personal outcomes.  This paradigm has as its central focus desired outcomes, underpinned by needs or – to use the language of negotiation – “interests”.

What is meant by needs – or interests – in this context?  I tend to favour Rosenberg in the way he clearly differentiates needs from the strategies by which we meet them.  This is something that we often confuse.  The leader who says to a member of staff that “I need you to get that paper to me by 5pm today” is not talking about the need itself but about the strategy by which he expects it to be met.  Nor can we infer his needs directly.  Perhaps, for example, he has a meeting the following day for which he wants to prepare – but not by staying late at work and at the expense of his family.  In this case, his needs might be for connection and intimacy and he plans to meet them by spending time with his wife and family.  Perhaps, though, he knows his own job is on the line if he doesn’t get this paper to his boss in good shape by 9am the next day.  In this case, he might be trying to meet some fundamental survival needs – for food and shelter, for example – by taking action to secure his ongoing employment.

Why is this distinction important and how does it facilitate successful communication?  Because when needs are shared it becomes much easier to reconcile the irreconcilable.  Knowing that the writer of his paper can’t start her final read through until 4.30pm, for example, gives the leader the opportunity to make different arrangements.  If his concern is to spend time with his family, he might choose to take his lap-top home so that he can take delivery of the revised paper on-line or asking another colleague to check the paper whilst its author is in her meeting.  If his concern is to hold onto his job he might be more inclined to stay late to review the paper after his colleague has got it to him or even to ask her to prioritise the paper over the meeting she was planning to attend.  This is essentially a “win, win” approach:  one which aims precisely to achieve outcomes which meet the needs of everyone involved.

It follows, then, that data is seen and handled very differently.  Instead of using data to make a case, users of this second model of communication share data and test it carefully in order to build understanding and to open up new ways to achieve desired outcomes.  Data, in other words, is seen in relation to needs rather than in relation to who or what is right or wrong.


The idea that communication might seek to identify and respond to diverse needs tends to gladden the hearts of many people in the workplace.  Until, that is, they realise that holding real conversations means standing close to the fire.  I’ll be writing about this in my next posting.  Meantime, I wonder:  where are you placing your attention in your communication with yourself and others?  If you’re willing to share, please leave a comment below.

Real conversations – choosing a communication paradigm that supports your aims

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, , ,

In this posting, I write about the most fundamental area of consideration when it comes to communication – that’s your communication as well as communication in your organisation:  the paradigm that underpins your approach.  This posting expands on my posting on 3rd March, 2011 for Discuss HR.


Whilst it may seem simplistic to look at just two styles of communication – two paradigms of communication – a number of deep thinkers in the field of leadership and communication do just this.  Douglas McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y, for example, outlined in his classic book The Human Side Of Enterprise, relate essentially to two different paradigms of communication. One of them (Theory X) is based on the idea that management control is required because employees need to be “coerced, controlled, directed and threatened with punishment to get them to put forth adequate effort toward the achievement of organisational objectives”. This communication paradigm is based on the idea that some people know better than others and have, as a result, the right to dominate and control. (In practice, this belief often translates as “because an individual is in a more senior role than his team he should know better than others”, a belief that is as likely to be held by his team members as it is by the leader him- or herself).  As an alternative, McGregor offers Theory Y, which is based on the assumption that employees are worthy of trust and respect because they are intrinsically motivated to do a good job.


Roger Schwarz, in his book The Skilled Facilitator:  A Comprehensive Resource for Consultants, Facilitators, Managers, Trainers and Coaches, refers to what he calls our Theory in Use and identifies two theories which broadly align to McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y.  He takes the work of Argyris and Schön, 1974 and Action Design, 1997, to outline his Unilateral Control Model.  This is what Marshall Rosenberg, author of Nonviolent Communication:  A Language of Life refers to as a domination approach – McGregor’s Theory X.  Schwarz maps very simply the core values and assumptions held by the user of the Unilateral Control Model, the strategies which derive from those beliefs and their consequences.  The aim of this Theory in Use is to win and not to lose, for example, and assumptions include the belief that “I understand the situation;  those who see it differently do not” and “I am right;  those who disagree are wrong”.  It’s easy to see how such beliefs limit communication, discouraging an open dialogue about different points of view, and lead in time to misunderstanding and conflict, defensiveness and mistrust – before, in turn, leading to limited learning and reduced effectiveness.  Schwarz also outlines a Theory in Use which he calls the Mutual Learning Model.  This is characterised by assumptions which value the contribution of all parties, recognising that “I have some information;  others have some information” and “each of us may see things that others do not”.  The strategies that derive from these assumptions tend to lead to increased trust and understanding, on the one hand, and reduced conflict and defensiveness, on the other.


Schwarz’s model illustrates one aspect of McGregor’s research that is often overlooked:  that both theories appear to be “right” in the sense that they constitute self-fulfilling prophecies. If you want motivated staff, choose and cultivate an approach to communication which is rooted in acceptance and aspires to mutual learning (Theory Y). If you want mistrust and mediocre performance to proliferate, choose a domination-based approach (Theory X).  This finding is echoed more recently in Daniel Goleman and colleagues’ The New Leaders:  Transforming The Art Of Leadership Into The Science Of Results.  In it, the authors identify six different styles of leadership and highlight that each style has its place:  the most effective leaders are able to select different styles to meet the needs of different situations as they arise.  At the same time, they caution against the over-use of certain styles, highlighting how this can create dissonance in the workplace.  In short, a leader’s choice of leadership – or communication – style significantly affects the climate across his or her team or organisation and this in turn has a measurable impact on business results.


In practice, few people use one paradigm or the other exclusively.  Some people, for example, view some members of their team in one way and other members in another, so that they are likely to use the Unilateral Control Model with those staff they least trust and a Mutual Learning Model with a few select members of their team.  Other people aspire to use one model – often the Mutual Learning Model – and find that, at times, they slip back into the other model, perhaps because it’s the one they grew up with.  I wonder:  what is your experience?  And are you willing to share it here?


Both approaches differ in where they place attention. If you’re serious about choosing motivation and engagement, you need to choose MacGregor’s Theory Y approach to communication and, in turn, to choose to focus your communication in a way that supports it.  I shall be writing about what this means in practice over the next few days.

Integrity – a different form of leadership

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, , , ,
What counts is for a man to dare to be entirely himself,
standing alone, one single individual alone before God,
alone with that enormous effort and responsibility. 
Søren Kierkegaard
Working with client organisations to create a model of the competencies they wish their staff to demonstrate – that is, the competencies that differentiate high performance – I have noticed over the years how quick commissioning clients are to ask for the inclusion of Integrity.  This competency is concerned with acting in a way which is consistent with what one says is important – some call it congruity.
In practice, though, I find that organisations want this from their employees – up to a point.  Leaders want their employees to speak openly and honestly, for example, as long as the message is one they want to hear.  They welcome employees who act in line with their own values, as long as their values are congruent with the values of the organisation.  Perhaps, even, they want their employees to be open and honest with customers or clients, as long as they still get the deal.
I have been reminded of this in recent days as I reflect on Uwe Timm’s book In My Brother’s Shadow.  Born in Hamburg in 1940, Timm was 16 years younger than his brother and had few memories of the young man who lost his legs, and then his life, as a member of the German Army.  Timm’s book is both an intensely personal memoir of family life during and after the war and an exploration of the difficult questions that surround the Germans’ involvement in World War II.  How is it, for example, that the Germans asked so few questions about their Jewish neighbours as they gradually disappeared from view?  Of his own brother, he wonders how he could speak of the British bombing of Hamburg as inhumane whilst never making the same judgements of the killing of civilians by soldiers in the German army.
Surveying the literature Timm highlights the case (from Wolfram Wette’s book The Wehrmacht) of a German officer who walked down the street in his home town in uniform together with a Jewish friend, at a time when Jews were branded by the Star of David.  The man, who, in this way, demonstrated the highest level of integrity, was dishonourably discharged from the army.  He also highlights, drawing on Christopher Browning’s book Ordinary Men, how few soldiers took the opportunity that was freely given to them to ask to be withdrawn from duties which included killing their Jewish compatriots.
I want to add that I share Timm’s reflections with the clear understanding that we all face challenges when we seek to act with integrity – to make choices in line with our values in the face of increasing levels of personal risk.  In this sense, leadership has nothing to do with the official role in which we find ourselves.  Rather, it has everything to do with our willingness to make considered choices – and to own those choices – in line with our most heartfelt values, knowing that we cannot control the responses of others to the choices we make.  I believe that this remains a challenge for us all.  And I am grateful that I have not yet had to face the level of challenge faced by Germans during World War II and by many around the world today.
Returning to Timm, I note his awareness of the values that fuelled the choices of his parents’ generation including a strong sense of community and of obedience to community values.  It was in adherence to these values that many men, brought to trial after World War II, said:  “I was only obeying orders”.
No wonder, then, that Timm chooses to quote Kierkegaard, as part of his explorations.
PS  Just to let you know, as a member of Amazon Associates UK, I shall receive a referral fee for any books you buy using the links in this posting.

A reminder for you on your worst of bad days

Alternative approaches, Emotional Intelligence, , ,
Few people are one hundred percent winners or one hundred percent losers.
It’s a matter of degree.  However, once a person is on the road to becoming a winner,
his or her chances are even greater for becoming more so.

Born to Win
Muriel James and Dorothy Jongeward

There are days when everyone else seems to have it sussed.  Other people have got there, so why haven’t I?  If you add timescales (“other people have got there before me”) you have the killer equation for feeling really bad about yourself.

“There” might be a state of mind (“other people are more calm, relaxed, joyful”).  “There” might be some kind of skill, aptitude or personal quality (“other people are more emotionally intelligent, diligent, organised”) or even the sum of all the skills, aptitudes and qualities to which one aspires (“other people are so much more capable than I am”).  “There” might be some position – personal or professional – to which one aspires (“other people find partners and settle down”;  “other people get to be Director by my age” etc.).

This is the language of “winners” and “losers”.  Psychology – and especially the branch of psychology called Transactional Analysis – has long since identified this kind of thinking with all its permutations.  We might think “I’m OK, you’re not OK” and act from this position.  We might think “you’re OK, I’m not OK” and act from this position.  We might make the ultimate generalisation (“everyone’s OK, except me”) to make it especially tough to get out of bed in the morning.  It’s not that we live the whole of our lives from one place – though we may do.  Rather, at a particular point in time, we may unconsciously choose a position.

As a coach, I work with people who are choosing to become winners, even if they were not winners before.  Even so – perhaps especially so – the person who is dedicated to his or her learning may have days when all the learning he or she has done seems to amount to nothing.  How come, with all this learning, I am still struggling with the same old things?  I was reminded of this recently as I held a space for a client on just one such day.

There is of course, an assumption that lurks beneath such thinking.  It is the assumption we brought to our journey of learning – that once we had done our learning, everything would be OK.  We did not anticipate that part of our learning would be to discover that we continue to have good days and bad days, we continue to have areas which sit outside our comfort zone, we continue to have experiences which stimulated grief in us, or sadness, or anger, as well as those which stimulate joy, gratitude, delight.

In my own journey, I have been especially grateful for Muriel James’ and Dorothy Jongeward’s wonderful book Born to Win.  They begin their book, which draws both on Transactional Analysis and Gestalt, by providing a vivid and compelling description of what it means to be a winner and what it means to be a loser. Winners are those who successfully make the transition to become independent and then interdependent adults, choosing authenticity over putting on a performance, maintaining pretence or manipulating others.

Perhaps the most essential point in their description is this:  being a winner is not a “once and for all” thing, but an ongoing journey.  As much as we may have our bad days, winners are able to be present to their emotions, to welcome them even, and still to recognise them is what is, in this moment.  Winners get to choose how they respond to their emotions and winners choose responses that reinforce their overarching choice to choose to win.

I could say so much more and still, I choose to leave you with this simple question:  what choices are you making on your worst of bad days?

PS  Just to let you know, as a member of Amazon Associates UK, I shall receive a referral fee for any books you buy using the links in this posting.

A tragic expression of an unmet need

Emotional Intelligence, , ,

We’ve all met them.  The person whose behaviour in our monthly business update meeting is so bizarre that all the post-meeting talk is about them (“what was THAT about?”) rather than about the business.  The person everybody has labelled as “difficult” and whose office nobody visits – unless they HAVE to.  The person who seems so calm and on top of things one minute so that we are surprised when, suddenly, they respond to something we say in an entirely different tone.

Daniel Goleman, in his book Working With Emotional Intelligence, draws on the field of neuroscience to identify the “amygdala hijack”, the moment when something in our external environment stimulates emotion in us which is disproportionate to the event itself.  Sometimes we observe it in someone we know and are taken by surprise.  Sometimes it is the regularity with which we observe it in someone that prompts us to call them “difficult”.

What can be more challenging is to own that we, too, are stimulated in this way.  It is challenging because, as an observer of others, it is so clear that their response in a given moment is not rational – so clear that we judge.  And when we, too, fall prey to this ancient cocktail of stimulus and response, what then?  Are we to judge ourselves as harshly as we judge others?  No wonder we prefer to look away as if we are not witness, too, to our own behaviour.

I am reminded of this today when my work with a coaching client prompts me to offer an alternative perspective.  Marshall Rosenberg, author of Nonviolent Communication:  A Language for Life, describes such moments (and more besides) as “a tragic expression of an unmet need”.  Rosenberg’s phrase captures with compassion an assumption which is also at the core of neuro-linguistic programming (or NLP), the assumption that every behaviour has a positive intention.

At times, our attempts to meet our needs are highly ineffective.  This may be because we are overtaken by an amygdala hijack.  It may be because we lack the skills to take effective steps towards our desired outcomes.  It may be because we are so fearful of the feedback that is coming our way that we refuse it, so that we miss a valuable opportunity to adjust our course.

When we respond to ourselves and others with judgement, when we see such actions as irrational and inept, we are liable to tell ourselves that somehow something is wrong with the person, as if we are our behaviour.  A equals B.  Worse still, it is as if we are our behaviour at our moment of greatest ineptitude.

Rosenberg’s phrase and its first cousin assumption in NLP offer a more compassionate view.  We were trying.  We were trying to meet a need.  We did not meet it well in that moment.  Paradoxically, this more compassionate view does not excuse us so much as open up new possibilities.  For, if I can recognise that I have a need which is not yet met, I can try new ways to meet it.  And if I can see past the behaviours of others to embrace them as people who, like me, also have needs which they did not meet well in a given moment, I have an expanding range of possibilities in the way I respond so that both my needs and theirs might be met more fully.

Are you ready to let go of your judgements – of self, of others – to connect with the needs that lie beneath our most irrational and inept behaviours?

PS  Just to let you know, as a member of Amazon Associates UK, I shall receive a referral fee for any books you buy using the links in this posting.

To blame or not to blame

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, , ,

This week I have been responding on my blog to a talk by Brene Brown at http://www.ted.com/.  Before I move on, I want to highlight and explore just one more comment from her talk:  when she suggests that the definition in the research of blame is “a way to discharge pain and discomfort”.

I confess I think of the early morning news team on Radio 4.  Do they ever report an unhappy event without asking “who’s to blame?”?  I often wonder who this serves and how.  Nor are the newscasters on Radio 4 alone.  Families blame their fellow family members for the every-day inconveniences they mete out on each other or they blame others outside the family for events – sometimes tragic events – that befall them.  Societies blame other societies (or even vague concepts, such as “terrorism”) for actions they do not enjoy.  People blame politicians.  Politicians blame each other.

I ponder the use of blame in the organisations I work with, for here, too, blame is used liberally.  Managers blame their staff for various actions and outcomes that do not meet their needs.  And because they hold the power of position they do this, at times, directly and openly and even as part of a formal process such as appraisal.  One team blames another (sales blames customer service who in turn blame accounts…).  Sometimes such blame is expressed openly and directly.  Oftentimes it is a low, ongoing grumble in the background of our interactions with each other.

Without question, our choice to blame has a positive intention – we do it for a reason.  If Brown and her colleagues in the world of scientific research are right, we do it to discharge pain and discomfort.  This raises a number of questions for me:  how effective is blame as a way to discharge pain and discomfort?  What are the side-effects?  And what are the alternatives?

Perhaps it would help to define blame in some way.  At the time of writing, Wikipedia offers the following definition of blame:  Blame is the act of censuring, holding responsible, making negative statements about an individual or group that their action or actions are socially or morally irresponsible, the opposite of praise. When someone is morally responsible for doing something wrong their action is blameworthy. By contrast, when someone is morally responsible for doing something right, we may say that his or her action is praiseworthy. There are other senses of praise and blame that are not ethically relevant. One may praise someone’s good dress sense, and blame the weather for a crop failure.

How effective is blame as a way of discharging pain and discomfort?  It seems to me that it must be effective to some degree, otherwise we would not do it.  To take one of the more extreme examples we can imagine, the relative or friend of someone who has been murdered may well find it easier to feel the anger that comes with blaming the person who has committed the murder than they do to be present to the intense feelings of grief connected with the loss of a loved one.  To give a more mundane – but nonetheless pertinent – example, the manager in the workplace may well find it easier to blame his (or her) staff for their failings than to recognise the shortcomings in the instructions he gave or to acknowledge his role in recruiting staff who lacked the necessary skills for the job.

What are the side-effects of blame?  It’s easy to see that blame has consequences that are undesirable.  If we choose to blame others, for example, we live with the ongoing feelings (of anger, resentment and so on) that go with blame.  And we do this whilst never being entirely free of the feelings we are seeking to hold at bay.  These include the grief of the mourner or the fears of the manager, and so on.  At the same time, there are consequences that go way beyond our immediate emotions.  Blame creates the culture we live in, for example, so that even when we are dealing with people who do not think in ways which produce blame we may fear blame from others because it is what we do ourselves.  In organisations, blame is often associated with a failure to get to the root cause of a problem or issue such that the problem continues.  Both the problem itself and the blame associated with it consume energy in ways which are unproductive.

So what are the alternatives?  I am going to offer two of many:

  • If the aim of blame is to discharge pain and discomfort, perhaps a key area to look for alternatives is in the area of handling our emotions.  Marshall Rosenberg, author of Nonviolent Communication:  A Language for Life, invites people to transform difficult emotions by understanding the needs that underpin them.  This means connecting with our unmet needs and the feelings that go with them.  This may well help us with the second of the options I offer here;
  • If our aim is to address a problem or issue, then it helps to focus on the outcomes we want and to explore what it would take to get to our desired outcomes.  Thinking about how we or others are contributing to a problem is no longer a matter of blame but rather becomes, in this scenario, a matter of identifying barriers to progress so that we can find ways to make progress towards our desired outcomes.

Whilst we may continue to consider who is responsible, both options involve letting go of attaching blame in order to get the best outcome.  I wonder, are you ready to let go of blame?

PS  Just to let you know, as a member of Amazon Associates UK, I shall receive a referral fee for any books you buy using links in this posting.  

Numbing painful emotions: is it really good for business?

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, ,
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Kahlil Gibran
The Prophet

On Monday, I wrote about Brene Brown’s masterful exploration of empathy and connection on TED (follow this link for a reminder).  Today I want to pick up on her assertion that, by numbing pain and other difficult emotions, we also numb – in equal measure – our capacity for joy.  Is this true?  And if so, what are the implications in the workplace?

Brown highlights in her talk that we numb our emotions as a strategy to protect ourselves from our feelings of vulnerability.  How do we do this?  Brown points to the experience of her fellow Americans, saying, “We are the most in debt, obese, addicted and medicated adult cohort in US history”.  And just to be clear, the picture that accompanied the word “addicted” highlighted alcohol rather than any other substance. Some might say, isn’t this a high price to pay for a bit of emotional pain relief?  Others might say – by their actions they do say – this is a price worth paying.  After all, isn’t society structured in a way that supports this?  But it doesn’t stop there.  As Brown points out, insofar as we numb our negative emotions (she cites vulnerability, grief, shame, disappointment) we also numb our capacity to experience the positive emotions (including joy, gratitude, happiness).  This is not a new discovery as Kahlil Gibran’s passage On Joy and Sorrow from The Prophet amply demonstrates.  Even so, it seems to be a discovery which is not widely known or understood.

I want to take a moment to touch in the implications for us in the workplace.  How many of us have experience of working in places where the expression of negative emotions (maybe positive emotions, too) is – implicitly or explicitly – discouraged?  It seems to me that our wokplaces are, increasingly, emotionally sanitised, so that oftentimes the response to emotion is to get someone out of the building (on “compassionate” grounds) as quickly as possible.  If we’re feeling angry because we didn’t get the promotion we hoped for we are left to find our way through or even expected to pull ourselves together.  If we are shocked by the way a customer has spoken to us on the phone we’re expected to meet our targets by picking up the next call.  If we feel nervous in our first meeting as a member of the Board we sure ain’t going to show it.

If Brown – and Gibran – are right, the corollary of this is that we lose touch with all positive emotions.  The satisfaction of recognising a piece of work well done is lost in the midst of our fear of criticism or even our own self-criticism.  The pay rise brings a temporary boost to our emotions before, quickly, becoming a new part of our every day reality.  The passions that motivated us to join our organisation become lost in the everyday experience of surpressing our emotions.

Last week I pointed to a posting by John Hepworth on DiscussHR about employee engagement.  He begins by saying:  According to Seijits and Crim (2006), a professor lecturing on leadership amused his audience by relating the following:  “A CEO was asked by a business journalist how many people work in his company.  ‘About half of them’, the CEO responded”.  It seems to me that Brown’s research points to a fundamental truth:  if organisations are serious about engaging the full commitment and contribution of their employees they need to get real about human emotion.  We all have emotions.  When we accept this as a fact of life we can begin to explore how these emotions serve us, to learn how we can recognise these emotions and even to learn how to manage and work with these emotions.  Only then can we begin to create the kind of culture and climate in which peole thrive.  This gives us a much greater chance of achieving what some call “employee engagement”.    

Leadership and employee engagement

Developing as a leader,

John Hepworth, writing on Discuss HR, highlights the role of employee engagement.  As a contributor to this brand-new blog, I take a moment to add comments of my own, recognising the importance of employee engagement in overall performance and the role of leadership in stimulating or undermining employee engagement:

The Hay Group (for whom I worked for a while a few years back) recently reported that employee engagement is at the top of the list of employer concerns right now. Over the years, they have also drawn heavily on research that suggests that organisational climate is the major factor in creating high levels of employee engagement and that the behaviours of leaders are the major factor in creating organisational climate.

One of the interesting things about this is that we now have masses of research that points to the role that emotional intelligence plays in our success at work and still – as John suggests – to recognise doubt and to seek help is to be seen as “weak”. Perhaps, too, leaders fear that to be open to the doubts and fears of others is also seen as weak.

I think of Anne Wilson Schaef, author of numerous books including The Addictive Organisation, who puts forward the idea that the malaises we observe in organisations are simply the reflection (projection?) of our own symptoms.

Which makes me wonder, what does it take to stand up and be counted as a fearful, doubting and emotional human being? And who has the courage to go first?