Tag Archives: emotional intelligence

A modern understanding of the brain

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, ,


Brain science has progressed and continues to progress at such a fast rate in recent years that concepts that were very fashionable just a few years ago are now known to be vastly over-simplified.  We also live in a society which favours rational thinking over all else.

Recently, dear friends and members of my mastermind group, Marc and Melanya, have been speaking highly of a book by psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist, called The Master and His Emissary:  The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.  I put in my order on Amazon recently (my, it’s hard to get a hardback copy!) and await its arrival.

At the same time, my friend and coaching colleague Len Williamson highlighted this talk on www.TED.com:  The Divided Brain by, you guessed it, Iain McGilchrist.  www.TED.com says of this talk:

Psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist describes the real differences between the left and right halves of the human brain. It’s not simply “emotion on the right, reason on the left,” but something far more complex and interesting. A Best of the Web talk from RSA Animate.

I wonder if the number of views equates to the number of people who have watched the talk or to a much smaller number – it bears viewing many times.
If you want to understand the way your mind works or to gain insight into the mind of colleagues, this is a good place to start.

Reflections on my 50th birthday

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There is something wonderfully bold and liberating
about saying yes to our entire imperfect and messy life.
With even a glimmer of that possibility, joy rushes in.
Yet when we’ve been striving to make “Pillsbury biscuits” for a lifetime,
the habits of perfectionism don’t easily release their grip.
When mistrust and skepticism creep in, we might be tempted
to back down from embracing our life unconditionally.
It takes practice, learning to bounce back
each time we’re dragged down by what seems to be wrong.
But […] when we stop comparing ourselves to some assumed standard of perfection,
the “biscuits of today”, this very life we are living right now,
can be tasted and explored, honored and appreciated fully.
When we put down ideas of what life should be like,
we are free to wholeheartedly say yes to life as it is.

Tara Brach
Radical Acceptance:  Embracing Your Life With The Heart Of A Buddha

On Saturday, I had a moment of awareness of being in heaven.  I was sitting in the You Don’t Bring Me Flowers cafe in Hither Green on my way back from a visit to my hairdresser.  It helped that the sun was shining – had shone, indeed, on my walk from Lewisham, through the underpass at Hither Green Station, along Springbank Road and all the way to Hither Green Cemetery and back.  It helped that my sandwich was freshly made and accompanied by a (very rare and much savoured) cup of coffee.  It helped that I was seated by the window and enjoying the bustle of the cafe.  Most of all, it helped that, in this moment, I was present to each and every one of these things – even to the strange juxtaposition of my feelings of sheer bliss with the rather prosaic view out to the rows of cars parked on either side of the street.

Life has not always been bliss, is not always bliss at this time.  Regular readers know that the year started with the final illness and death of my uncle and more recently the death of Sir Colin Davis with whom I have regularly performed in recent years as a member of the London Symphony Chorus.  There have been other deaths, too.  Business has been relatively quiet this year.  Initially I was grateful for this period of quiet and even now I know how much it has benefited me to take my foot off the accelerator for a while.  I have taken time to assimilate the death of my uncle and to notice how it signals to me the passing, one by one, of my mother’s generation.  I have been busy with the house and am thrilled that, having completed the kitchen last year, Gary returned to prepare one of the spare rooms for a second lodger (so that the house can work harder to pay for itself) and to strip and varnish the floors in the hallway.

There are, though, bills to be paid.  As the months have gone on at this slow pace I have been feeling increasingly anxious about money, even whilst some part of me feels totally calm.  With the anxiety about money come all sorts of thoughts …about the future consequences of this quiet patch, …about whether after almost eleven years of running my own business, I should be looking for a proper job, …about what I should do  next to make things happen… about… about… about…  It’s not that I have been entirely idle.  I have not.  I have continued all sorts of activities which, over time, keep me connected to the world and let people know that Learning for Life (Consulting) is open for business.  At the same time, in recent weeks, as these different voices within me seek to hold sway, I have found myself neither fully resting nor fully productive.

There are moments when I have been touching into a layer of thinking that is deeper still.  I have been surprised, for example, to catch myself fearing that friends and family will not join me in celebrating my 50th birthday.  I know these fears are not rational and still, they have, at times, been present – or I, at times, have been present to them.  These are fears of being alone and unloved.  In my work life I have also had fears – old, old fears of being incompetent and unable to find my way forward.  I recognise the tenderness and feelings of vulnerability that comes with these thoughts.

I know from my work with clients that I am not alone with my concerns.  Yes, the particular thoughts relate to my own circumstances and still, others also grapple with a plethora of thoughts and with the fears that accompany them.  Currently, I am reading Tara Brach’s book Radical Acceptance:  Embracing Your Life With The Heart Of a Buddha.  Brach begins her book by describing what she calls the “trance of unworthiness”.  I have met it in the Board Room.  I have met it at every level of the leadership hierarchy.  I have met it in my own experience.  Brach is not alone in naming our common experience.  I think of Timothy Gallwey’s Inner Game of Tennis, of James’ and Jongeward’s Born to Win and even give a nod and a smile to authors whose names and books will come back to me later.  I am blessed in having skills and also friends and colleagues who have skills to help me to respond compassionately to my own deepest fears.  On Monday, I took time with Steve Matthus, from my mastermind group, to bear witness to those parts of me that are struggling and filled with fear.

Right now, though, on the day of my 50th birthday, I take time to bear witness to everything that is in my life at this time.  I bear witness with deep, deep gratitude to friends, family and colleagues for the love and care which nourishes me in my life.  I bear witness to the extraordinary privileges that are in my life at this time or have been in my life in the past, including my life and career as a trainer, consultant and coach, including my diverse roles amongst friends and family, including my experience as a lifelong student of what it takes to live life consciously and fully, including my years of singing, including more than half a lifetime of singing as a member of the London Symphony Chorus.  And I bear witness to the twists and turns that take me, at times, by surprise and to the fears and doubts as well as to the yearnings and even the needs fulfilled.  This is my own imperfect and messy life.

Most of all, I wish myself a very happy 50th birthday.  

How criticising in private undermines your team

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, ,

There’s an old adage that leaders should “praise in public, criticise in private”.  It’s so well established that many people accept it without question – except one.  Roger Schwarz, writing in March for the Harvard Business Review’s blog, recently wrote a posting entitled How Criticizing in Private Undermines Your Team.  I recommend you read it.  Why?  Two reasons – maybe three, even four…

  • If you hold the view that you shouldn’t criticise in public, this article will help you to test your view against your practical experience and maybe even to revise it;
  • If you have any ‘persistent offenders’ in your team, this article may give you alternative approaches – and ones that work;
  • This article may deepen your understanding of what it means, as a leader, to hold ultimate accountability for the performance of your team;
  • If you’re the “leader” of a family (i.e. a parent), this article includes pearls of wisdom for you in this other leadership role.
In case you haven’t spotted it, Roger Schwarz is author of The Skilled Facilitator and a favourite source for me of leadership and communication wisdom.  His regular newsletter is well worth signing up for and his article Ground Rules for Effective Teams can be downloaded for free.

The fears that keep us working harder than we need to

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, ,
I’m away this week, writing this blog posting ahead of time and scheduling it for publication on the day after the Easter Monday Bank Holiday.  As I write I am savouring the prospect of a short trip to Istanbul, with my mother, brother and family.  I have long since identified Istanbul as a place I’d love to visit.  I am also looking forward to a week in which my main focus is not work but play – a combination of spending time with loved ones and exploration.
In the run-up to my departure, I have been inviting discussions with my colleagues in the awareness that the heart of my work centres on helping leaders to do what they do with ease as well as with good results.  Often, my work is about helping clients to identify the next stage of their career and to move easily towards it.  For some, this movement towards is imbued with ease.  For many it is not.  So, my question to my colleagues is this:  what is it that keeps us working harder than we need to in order to achieve results?  I’m not talking about the kind of hard work we put in because we are engaged and inspired – what some call “discretionary effort”.  I’m talking about times when we struggle to achieve the outcomes we long for.  I’m talking about times when we work long hours but with little to show for it in terms of our desired outcomes or the way we feel.  I’m talking about the dialogue that goes round and round in circles and still, fails to lead us to the outcome we most need.  The list could go on…
Today, as I write, I am struck by a couple of resources highlighted to me by colleagues.  The first is a blog posting about a man called Simon Sinek whose name is new to me.  This led me in turn to a talk by Simon on www.TED.com – not just any talk but, at the time of writing, TED’s 7th most watched video ever.  In this talk, Simon outlines the simple difference between those leaders and organisations which manage to engage and inspire and those that, no matter how fantastic their product, fail to gain a foothold in the marketplace.  This is what Goleman and colleagues describe as the visionary leadership style in their book, The New Leaders.  This is what inspires the discretionary effort from staff.  This is what engages – excites, even – a tribe of loyal customers.
My question, though, was about the opposite side of the coin.  What is it that keeps us working too hard – struggling – to achieve results?  I was delighted to be pointed to this posting, entitled The Fears Leaders Never Speak Of (And How AQAL, Zen, And The Chinese New Year Can Help).  In this posting, author Ginny Whitelaw points us to the fears that sit beneath our efforts – fears that are often unrecognised and in this way given the power to drive our behaviour.  She also gives an intriguing recipe for responding to our fears which has the potential to empower us in the most counter-intuitive way.
But hey, I’m on holiday right now.  If you want to know more, you’ll have to read the bog postings and watch the TED talk.
Mmmm… 

The art of asking

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, ,
In recent weeks, I confess I have engaged in a classic response to challenging times – going shopping.  It all started with a tea pot in Oxfam in Blackheath.  I loved it so much that, having bought it, I started to look for other items to match.  I uncovered the name of the pattern, discovered places to buy this pattern (long since discontinued) and have quickly built up a collection.  I have even, finally, succumbed to having cupboards and shelves built in my dining room.  This has given storage space for my new collection, it has been designed to display some of my new items, and it has also given storage for just some of the books around the house because, yes, I am also a bibliophile par excellence.  I can rationalise that I have been meaning for a while to replace some of my tired old china and this has been the opportunity to do it.  At the same time, I notice that this period of intense activity has followed the death of my uncle, distracting me from some of the feelings of grief and loss that came with it.
This collecting frenzy has also had an interesting side-effect, because in order to build my collection, I have had to ask for help.  It started when I posted some photos of my tea pot on Facebook and asked if anyone was clearing out their collection.  A number of friends responded with sources of information about this pattern (Denby arabesque) and pointed me to places that sell it.  For the first time, I ‘discovered’ eBay.  I bought a bowl, for collection only, from someone who lives near my younger brother, leading me to ask him if he’d be willing to collect it.  And then another from someone who lives near my older brother so that, once more, I found myself making a request.  I bought a large collection some miles away and asked a friend with a car (who keeps a car in London?  My friend Alan) if he would be willing to drive me.  The list goes on.
The tenderness of asking for help
Making requests of my friends and family – and so many requests of so many friends and family – has reminded me of the tenderness and sense of vulnerability that comes with asking for help.  Yes, I’m talking about me.  But I’m also talking more generally.  I would even go so far as to say that we live in a culture which frowns on the honest request.
In case you doubt this assertion, here are just a few examples of the ways in which we have learnt to bypass making requests – which I share alongside the invitation to notice how many you use yourself or notice in others:
  • One way that springs to mind is to make a “requorder” (“Take this to the post room, will you?”  “Get this done by five o’clock, won’t you?”).  This is an order or instruction embedded within a request.  Beloved of parents, managers and other figures of authority, the desired response is implied in a way which makes it just a bit more difficult to say no than an open honest request;
  • Another way is to hold in mind an expectation that is never openly shared (“Any normal manager would have noticed how upset John was feeling”  “Who on earth would turn up to such an important meeting without preparing?”  “Do you think anyone has told her that trying to go through a 60-slide deck in half an hour was bound to bore the pants off everybody?”);
  • Giving feedback is also often a way of making a hidden request (“This document is in a terrible state.  I found at least six mistakes on every page – it’s just not up to scratch!”);
  • And of course, there’s always the option of giving an order (“You need to complete this document by 5 o’clock at the latest!”  “Make sure everyone has the minutes at least two days in advance”).

As ways of getting things done, these tactics vary in their ability to achieve a desired outcome.  One of the least successful is to complain around the water-cooler (or at home to our husband or wife):  talking about what someone should have done or should do in future rarely leads to a change of behaviour on the part of the person concerned.  More successful is the option of giving an order – at least in the short term.  Over time, though, the use of a coercive style of leadership can have a corrosive impact on how people feel at work.  (If you haven’t already read it, read Daniel Goleman’s article Leadership That Gets Results for an introduction to research in this area.)

Having said this, one thing that all these approaches delivers is this:  it protects us from all the feelings we have when faced with the possibility of a “no”, and one laden with judgement at that.  For many, our feelings of tenderness and vulnerability when making requests reflect all sorts of experiences from our earliest years.
The art of asking
This blog posting takes its heading from a talk on TED.com by singer Amanda Palmer.  If you recognise the challenge of making requests or find yourself wondering if some of the strangest behaviours of those you lead come from avoiding making requests, then you may enjoy hearing what she has to say.  For my part, these are a few things that work for me when I’m making requests:
  • Recognise my emotions around making a request:  There are times when the thought of making a request brings up some emotion for me.  An example of this is the anger I feel when faced with a car, loud music and a number of teenagers in the car park opposite my house at bed-time.  I always start by noticing my emotion and noticing what the emotion is;
  • Get clear about what I really want:  With the young people in the car park, for example, I may recognise how early I need to get up the next morning and how much I’m longing for sleep.  I want to be confident that when I go to bed in a few minutes time I’ll be able to sleep without a background noise of voices and loud music.  This is a way of giving myself empathy and tends to soothe the emotion.  It’s also important to help me make a request that really does meet my needs;
  • Think about different ways of getting what I really want:  As long as the only way for me to get to sleep is to get those youngsters out of the car park, it’s difficult for me to make a request rather than a demand:  I know people sense the energy of a demand behind the words of a request.  Thinking about a variety of ways forward makes it easier for me to make a request.  Before I make a request, I take time to think about different options;
  • Get curious about what others may have on their minds:  The kids in the car park have a reason for being there.  Taking time to imagine what those reasons may be helps me to connect with others as and when I do decide to make a request.  And because I still remember my mother telling me “I want, doesn’t get”, it helps to remind myself that actually, we all like to contribute to the well-being of others;
  • Get clear about what I want to request:  Sometimes, the request I end up making is not the one I first thought of.  I’ve learnt, for example, to ask the youngsters in the car park how long they’re planning to be there and to explain why that’s important to me.  They might feel unhappy to be asked to leave right now, but it’s hard to find a reason not to share their intentions.  In the workplace, I may want someone to do something for me but first, I want to know if there’s anything standing in the way.  Often my first request is a request for information about the other person (“Is this something you’d be willing to do?” “How does this idea land with you?”);
  • Make the request when I can easily accept a yes or a no:  Especially when my start-point has been one of emotion, I take time to reach a point when I can hear a yes or a no with equal ease before I make the request.  Only at this point do I open the door and walk across the (real or metaphorical) car-park;
  • Make a simple action-request:  I may say hello and check in.  Quite quickly though, I cut to the chase.  I make my request and explain why it’s important to me.  I make sure my request is specific – describing the action I want someone to take.  Then I wait for – and welcome – the answer.

I recognise that there may be unanswered questions for you.  (“What about when you do need the report done by 5pm?”  “What about the staff member who always says no and needs to say yes?”).  Please ask me those questions in the comment box below and I promise to write a response.  For now, though I wonder – how do you manage the art of asking?

A different kind of business development

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence,
There has been a certain amount of laughter in recent weeks in my Mastermind Group as we recognise something we have come affectionately to refer to as a “different kind of business development”.  These are the moments when something in our lives seems to take us away from those activities we have on our “to do” lists – when a major decision brings up emotion we did not expect, for example, so that the last thing we want to do is to “set to” and work our way through our well-honed plans, or when the needs of a loved one – an illness, operation, or a death with everything that it brings – reminds us of priorities which seem to have nothing to do with business, or when the pain we feel about past events in our lives stands up and demands attention.
Sometimes the business of the day is not business
There’s a task that no headteacher wants to face and yet, when it comes, recognises that it is the most important task of the day.  The death of a child who is a pupil in your school cannot be ignored.  Instead, it requires your attention and that of the children in your care.  Assemblies represent an opportunity to remember the child who is lost, as do books of condolence.  Teachers know to look out for signs that children are distressed and not coping and to make time for conversations or just to be present to each child and his or her experience.
In the adult world, there is a risk that we fail to see that we still need the same kind of love and care.  There is also a risk that we fail to recognise the myriad moments when such love and care is needed.  Perhaps the time comes when we lose a loved one through death or separation and divorce.  Equally, it may be the events in our business that stimulate emotion – the threat of redundancy, for example, or even the uneasy guilt that comes with keeping your job when others have lost theirs.
Sometimes the stimulus for distress or some other emotion is in the minutiae of our daily working lives.  It is some task we find ourselves postponing even though we know, rationally, how urgent or simple it is.  It is the fact that, “yet again”, our colleagues in XYZ department have… well, you get the gist.
The perils of “powering through”
In a culture that favours logical thinking and purposeful action, we can tell ourselves that we have to power our way through these tender moments.  Yes, we have suffered a death, but we have to do our bit at work, people will think ill of us if we don’t, we have a mortgage to pay, and who will do it if we don’t?  These and other thoughts lead us to put aside our feelings and move quickly to action.  Some may even encourage this approach, teaching us to favour action over reflection or to dismiss those parts of ourselves that are not on board.
Powering through does have its downsides.  Sometimes, the failure to slow down and reflect means that we fail to get to the bottom of a problem or issue and find ways to handle it that work.  Sometimes, powering through causes the accumulation of stress and leads to illness.  One friend powered through against all advice following first the death of her father and then the breakdown of her marriage – only to come to a complete halt when she succumbed to ‘flu.  A fellow user of the Hogan suite of tests, which are often used for recruitment and development at the most senior of levels, is always alert to clues in the tests’ results that might point to stress or illness.
Powering through can also have another effect – the effect of reinforcing old messages from childhood.  Your needs don’t matter.  Part of you is worthy – but another is not.  The very denial of our feelings and experience evokes unmet needs, the pain that goes with those unmet needs, and ways to cope that we designed when we were just two, or three or six years old.
Responding effectively to the business of the day
It takes faith to respond effectively to the business day.  I am not talking about religious faith – though this may be important to you.  No, I am talking about an ability to attend to the business of today in the belief that it will move you forward in ways you cannot yet see.  This is about understanding that your staff need to attend to their grief following your most recent round of redundancies as part of coming to terms and even engaging with a new organisation with a new agenda.  This is about trusting that supporting John in caring for his dying wife will not only help him through but also lead to the best, albeit as yet unknown, outcome for your business.
As a leader, responding effectively to the business of the day begins with you.  It begins with you being aware of and taking care of your own business.  You need to put on your own oxygen mask before you can help those you lead.  Take time to notice those things in your life that really are your business for today.  Take time to respond to the needs you have that may not fit easily into a “to do” list or 30-day plan.  And yes, take time to notice those times when your team or members of your team have business to attend to and think carefully about how to respond.
And whether you are dealing with your own business or responding to the needs of your team, think carefully about the implications of powering through and ask yourself, instead, how you can bring a quality of compassion that brings healing to a person or situation.
I wonder, what is your business for today?

Receiving the gift of feedback

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence,

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

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

Feedback – a nugget of gold

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

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

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

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

Asking for feedback in your leadership role

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

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

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

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

Taking the learning from the feedback you receive

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

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

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

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

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

Love your colleagues? Expressing affection at work without tripping up

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Managing the things that matter

About Dorothy, Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, ,

I’ve been following a discussion in recent days on LinkedIn about a blog posting by Jonathan Brown entitled Working late is no excuse.  The title succinctly captures the core message in an e-mail sent by the Managing Partner at a law firm to address lateness by fee earners – that working late in the evening is no excuse for a late start in the morning.  A reflection of our era, the e-mail clearly reached the desk of the author and went on (if Mr Brown is correct) to “go viral”.

It took me back to a time when I worked extensively with one of London’s “big five” law firms, back in the late 80s and early 90s. Many of my contemporaries (including some of my buddies in the London Symphony Chorus – how did they do it?) were young lawyers working their socks off in this and other firms. They knew they would get a partnership or a nice juicy job outside the firm and experienced the long hours as a fair exchange. As the recession bit, though, the “jam tomorrow” become a possibility rather than a certainty so that people began to reconsider their options. Notwithstanding the recession (threat of redundancy etc.) young lawyers started to think twice about putting in so many hours.

One commentator on the LinkedIn thread crisply summed up one point of view:  “This is another example of lazy management – managing what’s easy (the number of hours people are in the building) as opposed to what’s important (what they achieve for the organisation). How many examples have we all witnessed over the years, of managers judging their staff by how long they are sitting at their desks as opposed to by what they actually accomplish while sitting there? It’s sad to think that even in a law firm top management can’t come up with a smarter way of evaluating its staff’s contribution”.

Sometimes, managing time in this way is indeed a proxy for more meaningful management of performance, as if time equals – in the long run – results.  We all know it doesn’t, but what do we do differently if we want to manage performance pending the results?  As it happens, I recently initiated another thread on LinkedIn about the use of a coaching style of leadership.  As I write I think of some of the sales managers I have interviewed over the years – for developmental purposes, assessment or promotion – who have described sitting down with members of their team and asking them in considerable detail about how many calls or visits they are making per day or week and with what outcomes.  This kind of on-the-job coaching gets under the skin of “hours per week” and can give a real boost to staff performance.  In short, it’s possible that our Managing Partner just didn’t stop to think about what’s really important in the workplace and how to manage staff in ways that boost real performance.

It’s also possible that he committed an entirely different error (though, I confess, I doubt it) – the error of failing to explain adequately why an action or expectation is important.  I recognise that this is something I have to remind myself to do – because at times something seems so obvious to me I think it doesn’t need saying.  Often it does.  Reading the Managing Partner’s e-mail it’s not clear how a few minutes’ lateness impacts on performance or why turning up on time really matters.

It certainly seems to be a general view that the tone of the e-mail – familiar to me, I confess, from dipping my toes from time to time into legal waters – is unlikely to raise levels of motivation and engagement across this particular firm.  But this, perhaps, is a topic worth unpacking in another blog posting.  I’ll leave it for another day.

Christmas is over… or is it?

Emotional Intelligence


This article was written for Discuss HR and first posted at the beginning of this week.

It’s two weeks now since many people started to come back to work following a break for the Christmas holidays.  It was a break – but not necessarily a rest.  Last week the popular press was full of stories reflecting the fact that petitions for a divorce are highest in January:  no doubt 2013 will be the same as any other year.  Just as businesses have negotiated their way through holiday rotas and are starting to get back on track, who knows what little wobbles are taking place as men and women in the workplace are distracted by the aftermath of Christmas in their personal lives.

Reflecting on the joys and challenges of Christmas, I found myself pondering the enduring significance of our families of origin in the workplace.  In the mid 1990s, I first encountered the world of behavioural competencies and my expertise in this area still makes a significant contribution to my income.  One colleague, though, used to say that you could find out everything you need to know about how someone will perform at work by asking them about their family of origin.  Are they a single child or one of several?  And where in the pecking order do they sit?

Wikipedia reports that Alfred Adler (1870–1937), an Austrian psychiatrist, and a contemporary of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, was one of the first theorists to suggest that birth order influences personality. He argued that birth order can leave an indelible impression on an individual’s style of life, which is one’s habitual way of dealing with the tasks of friendship, love, and work, though it also reports that such theories are controversial in psychology.  But how do our experiences in our family of origin manifest in the workplace?

Take, for example, the relationship between a manager and those people he or she manages.  I wonder how much early family patterns are manifest in the relationship between an individual and his or her boss.  It takes maturity, for example, to realise that just because an individual has the role of manager, it doesn’t mean that he or she has the skills – the full ‘kitbag’, if you like – to execute the role effectively.  I see a parallel here with life in the family:  how easy it is to continue to struggle with the gap between one’s ideal parents and the parents we actually have.  Moreover, if we struggle to make requests in the family or even imagine that it’s for our parents to know what we need and provide it, this behaviour is likely to show up at work where we may unconsciously see our boss as one more parent figure.

In my own life, I have found that work and family go hand in hand.  Taking part in 1999, for example, in a large research project into what makes for an outstanding teacher, I was well prepared by a wise colleague for the experience of walking into a school for the first time in years.  And it’s not just walking into a school that evokes our inner child – one coaching client of mine was at a loss to understand why he struggled to speak when meeting his CEO until he made a connection with his early memories of his father.  Another client could not say “no” in the workplace until he had first found a way to say “no” to his parents’ most difficult requests.

One of the implications, it seems to me, is that work is a place in which, over time, we mature and “grow up” or, equally, fail to mature and grow up.  Through my work and personal experience, I know how much coaching can contribute to this process, bringing huge benefits both to clients of coaching and to their place of work.  As I complete this article, though, I find myself wondering, how important is it for HR and their “sister” professionals to be aware of the shadow cast over our work by our families of origin?  And, insofar as we have insight, what do we do next?