Tag Archives: emotional intelligence

The dance of honesty – being honest with yourself

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, , ,

In recent days I have been writing about honesty and its opposite – lying, deception, call it what you will.  I recognise in this subject a double bind:  it’s hard work to maintain a lie, it’s hard work to be honest.

Today, I thought I’d say a few words about what it takes to be honest with ourselves.  What immediately springs up for me is compassion.  The more we judge ourselves, the more likely we are to be dishonest with ourselves.  You think you have to be a fully formed Director from the minute you step into the role?  It’s going to be hard for you to be honest about areas in which you don’t yet have the skills you need.  You think you have to be good at managing people?  You may find it hard to own how hopeless you feel when you try to address performance problems in your team – the easy way out is to blame your under-performers.  You think the delays in progress towards your targets are unacceptable?  You could end up blaming all the external factors that have a bearing on results and lose sight of any power you have to make a difference.

At the same time, compassion does not equate to zero accountability – paradoxically, I’ve often found the opposite is true.  If we can show ourselves a level of self-acceptance and compassion, we are often better able to take action.  To take an example from above, if you know you are new to the role of Director and you accept that you will have some learning to do, you will find it better to take action to identify those areas in which you need to learn and to seek out your learning.

One of the most powerful forms of self honesty is the kind of honesty that comes when we attend to our own actions and inner dialogue.  Roger Schwarz, author of The Skilled Facilitator, calls this your “left hand column”.  Here’s an example from one leader from a meeting in which he is practising for the first time attending to his left hand column:

“John puts forward his ideas and I immediately hear judgements in my head.  ‘Here we go again… we’ve been through this a million times and John still doesn’t get it!’  I can feel my temperature rising and my face is getting more red.  I notice that John  has said several things that I haven’t heard because I’m already thinking about how I want to respond.  For the first time, I take a pause before responding – letting him finish.  I feel something new – something I haven’t felt before – humble or embarrassed or something… because for the first time I recognise that I’m not listening.  I always thought the problem was with John and now I realise that I am part of the problem…”

Are you ready for this kind of self-honesty?  Are you ready to be the observer of your own inner dialogue?  Here’s an exercise for you in case you are:

  • Take time alone – thirty minutes or so – with a pen and paper or your notebook or computer;
  • Take a moment to identify a time when you were in your flow – a time when things were going well for you and you were at your best.  Spend ten minutes making notes on your inner dialogue during that time.  Try to capture as much information as you can – about your thoughts, your feelings.  One way to do this is to have separate columns on your piece of paper (a) for what you said and did, (b) for any actions by others, and (c) for your inner dialogue;
  • After ten minutes stop and take a two minute break.  After your break, do the same thing again but this time for a time when things weren’t working for you.  Go through the same process, noting everything you can remember about the event.  Stop writing after ten minutes and take a two minute break;
  • In the remaining six minutes, make notes about your inner dialogue.  Notice what parts of your inner dialogue contributed to your success.  Notice what parts of your inner dialogue contributed to any problems you experienced.  Notice any inner dialogue you have in response to your new insights;
  • Before you finish, take a moment to acknowledge yourself for the work you’ve done and for your self-honesty in the process.

  

Exploring the consequences of honesty and deception

Emotional Intelligence

How much hard work do you put into maintaining a lie?

And if you’re telling yourself “this doesn’t apply to me”, hold on!  Take a moment to notice the feelings this question evokes in you and to sit with them – is it irritation, outrage, impatience?  If it is, there may be something for you to learn – if only you’re willing.  Because if you’re honest with yourself and even if you think you always “tell it like it is”, you probably have a way to go when it comes to telling the truth.

I ask the question because telling one lie usually involves you in a number of additional lies, even in the most simple of cases.  Your friend asks you to go out and you tell him you’re busy because you don’t want to take time to explain that you prefer to stay at home.  In order to live with your lie you tell yourself that to tell him would be to hurt his feelings – something which you can only guess in advance.  And when he asks you down the line how your other thing went you have quickly to extemporise a response.  “Fine, thank you…”  already you’ve told another lie.

The workplace is no different.  Perhaps you are holding back from telling your boss you think his plan of action has some potentially disastrous consequences.  Perhaps you have decided not to let your team know about forthcoming changes in the structure of your organisation.  Perhaps you’re avoiding telling Jo that his work colleagues have been complaining about him behind his back.  Whether in work or away, the likelihood is that your attempts to withhold some truth are aimed at saving you from some unwelcome consequence… from the wrath of your boss and from having your “cards marked”, from having to manage a team that’s unsettled and losing focus or from losing staff before you’re ready to let them go, from a response you cannot predict but know might be difficult from Jo…

You’re probably not thinking about the negative consequences of withholding honesty.  You’re not thinking, for example, about how much it weighs on you – what hard work it is and the guilt you feel – to tell a lie.  You’re not thinking about the erosion of trust that accompanies your dishonesty over time.  You’re not thinking about how your current gain is your future loss as those around you uncover the truth and re-visit the way they view you.

You probably don’t know just what’s possible when you embrace and commit to honesty – to a step-by-step journey towards more honest relationships and communication.  How would it be for you, for example, to discover that the response you have most feared from your boss or employing organisation just isn’t going to happen?  Or to discover that it is and to be able to decide how best to respond?  How would it be over time to build relationships in which you can be honest and be accepted at the same time?  How would it be to put down the burden of maintaining some kind of lie – an image of yourself that matches your idea of what you should be as a leader, a parent, an employee, a spouse – and to feel the lightness that comes with being yourself?

I begin to wax lyrical.  I wonder, what is your perception of the consequences of honesty… and deception?

The dance of honesty

Emotional Intelligence,

Harriet Goldhor Lerner wrote a number of books whose titles begin with the phrase “The Dance” – The Dance of Intimacy, The Dance of Anger, The Dance of Deception…  I haven’t read them all though I did recently read The Dance of Deception as one of a number of books about lying and deception.  Daniel Goleman’s Vital Lies, Simple Truths is another and so is Dorothy Rowe’s Why We Lie:  The Source of our Disasters.

Each book is quite different.  Goleman talks of the science of lying – how it works in the brain.  Lerner writes specifically for women (her book is subtitled Pretending and Truth-telling in Women’s Lives).  Rowe draws on an extraordinary array of contemporary examples to illustrate her thesis.  After I read her book, for example, I was moved to read about the children of prominent Nazis in Stephan Lebert’s book on the subject, My Father’s Keeper and then The Himmler Brothers by Heinrich Himmler’s great niece Katrin Himmler.  Rowe dedicates a whole chapter to Lying for Your Government in which she suggests that whilst the CIA, for example, exists to tell the truth to American presidents, CIA chiefs soon learn that it’s not in their interest to tell the president what he doesn’t want to hear.

Reflected in these books are a number of truths about honesty and lying.  We all lie, for example, and we all lie about lying.  We all lie with good intentions, and we often lie to ourselves about what those good intentions are.  (If you doubt me on this one, just think about a time when you’ve told what often gets called a “white lie” in order “to save someone’s feelings” and try on for size the idea of going ahead and telling the truth.  You’ll mostly find that you were saving yourself from a difficult experience at the same time).

The truth is also that telling the truth can be hard work at times which is why, today, I am appropriating Lerner’s use of the phrase “the dance” and applying it to honesty.  Telling the truth involves a commitment to honesty, a willingness to hear how others respond and – in the longer term – a readiness to live with the unpredictable consequences.

This subject is so vast that I wonder where to start and feel sure I shall return to it.  Perhaps a good place to start is by sending out an invitation to you.  My invitation to you is this:

  • Ask yourself how committed you are to honesty and to telling the truth – a mark out of ten is one way of answering this question;
  • Commit to noticing for a week how honest you are in practice, especially at times when honesty is challenging for you.  Notice the times when you decided to be honest even though you were putting something at risk. Notice the times when you chose to avoid honesty in some way – be it with yourself or with some other person;
  • After a week, return to your mark out of ten and check how accurate it was.
Do let me know how you get on…

Is a need to please hurting your business?

Emotional Intelligence

Mashable.com recently published an interesting blog on the need to please:  Is a need to please hurting your business?  You can read it here.

If you click through to the article, you’ll find it speaks for itself.  In case you’re hesitating, here are three questions you might ask yourself to see if this article might be of interest to you:

  • Do you ever say yes when really, you want to say no – and end up feeling angry and resentful afterwards?
  • Do you ever say yes and then do no – hoping that the yes will be enough to keep someone (your boss, clients, spouse etc.) happy?
  • Do you ever find yourself feeling stretched and overworked because you haven’t found a way to negotiate limits to your total workload?
And of course, you might also ask yourself if you’re managing anyone who displays these patterns.  If you’re managing a whole team that act this way – well, that’s also a sign to pause and reflect.

Kitchen confessions

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I know, I know… it’s time I gave an update on the progress of my kitchen.  Is it finished yet?  In fact, Jeannie Morrison, my friend and fellow member of the London Symphony Chorus, was kind enough to e-mail before Christmas and to express her hope that I would be enjoying my brand new kitchen at Christmas.  Sorry, Jeannie,  I’m not there yet.

An old Chinese cupboard before its kitchen transformation

The amount of preparation has been prodigious.  The walls have been stripped.  The chimney breast has also been stripped back to the brick work along with a section alongside it.  And because the bricks were in such a poor state, Wills rebuilt part of the chimney breast.  The old sink has been moved round so that the window at the end of the room can be taken out to make way for a door.  And now the new door is in, Wills has started the process of converting the old doorway to a window.  I could carry on – but you get the idea.

You may spot part of the old cupboard as well as
getting a rough idea of the design of the new kitchen

Gary, who spotted a 19th Century Chinese cupboard (rather worse for wear) and saw its potential, has been working miracles with it in the kitchen, creating a cupboard as planned with the central section of the original piece and another wall-to-ceiling cupboard to house the boiler.  If only he’d consent to having his picture taken I might have caught his boyish delight this morning when we discussed just what a success this is proving to be.  And yes, the picture above also gives you some idea of the state of my kitchen at Christmas.  Fortunately, my nephew Edward, who lives with me, was away and – when I was not with friends and family – it was just me at home.  Oh!  Me and the mouse that is!  Seen once but not since.

New appliances are multiplying in the lounge   

Over time, various appliances have been delivered and some of them are biding their time in the lounge.  The new sink has been with me for a while, and now the dishwasher, a new radiator and (I confess) the first proper kitchen bin I have ever owned, are all ready and waiting.  It feels so grown up!

I’m smiling as I write, recognising that I, too, share a good deal of Gary’s childlike glee.  I’m also smiling because I recognise just how many of my friends see this kind of experience as the ultimate nightmare.  I think of Roger Hamilton’s book Your Life, Your Legacy:  An Entrepreneur Guide to Finding Your Flow which I’ve mentioned before on this blog.  Hamilton highlights different ways in which entrepreneurs generate wealth and I know that my own signature approach to generating wealth is primarily creative.  I am loving the creative process of designing the new kitchen.  Even in our private lives our key strengths and preferences show up.  

Finding the points of leverage in your life

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence,

Last year, several times, I mentioned Richard Rumelt’s book Good Strategy Bad Strategy as part of a series of postings on developing your strategic thinking.  I feel drawn to his book as the New Year begins.

In particular, I feel drawn to return to the concept of leverage.  Rumelt defines this in various ways, pointing to what he calls the “pivot point” that will magnify the effects of focused energy and resources.  His examples include President Ronald Reagan’s speech on 12th June, 1987, at the Brandenburg Gates in West Berlin.  Reagan – knowing of the gap between Mikhail Gorbachev’s claim that the Soviet Union was liberalising and the facts on the ground – took the opportunity to say:  “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalisation:  Come here to this gate!  Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate!  Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”  His speech had the effect of highlighting to Western Europeans the imbalance that existed between a system that allowed free movement of people and one that had to restrain its citizens with barbed wire and concrete.  This in turn gave political leverage to Reagan.

In my own life, I am often delighted by small acts which have a disproportionate effect.  In 2007, for example,  I was contacted by a former colleague who had been asked to join a project team as a coach.  She wasn’t available to say yes but she thought of me and passed on my name.  I worked extensively with the team’s client that year and one of the people I coached has often referred potential clients to me since.  This simple act on the part of my former colleague continues to make a big difference in my life.  In similar fashion, I have written before on this blog about the ease of giving vouchers from my local supermarket – incentives to spend more money in exchange for extra reward points – to people who are already spending that amount of money at the till.  Sometimes this small incentive clearly makes a big difference to someone for whom money is tight.  Always it brightens the day both of the giver and the receiver.

It’s not that I want to focus in this posting on giving and receiving.  Rather, if you are wanting to take some of the hard work out of achieving results – to achieve more and with greater ease – looking for and acting on the points of leverage in your life can yield a bonus prize of easy results.  Perhaps you are spending a disproportionate amount of your time and energy on managing someone who you know, in your heart of hearts, is in the wrong job.  Tackling the issue head on takes time and energy and still, in the longer term, you know it will benefit you and the person concerned.  Perhaps in your own work you are holding on to a task you really hate when actually, delegating it to a member of your team could support their development and free your time to leverage your natural strengths.  Perhaps as a parent you are constantly trying to steer (control?) the activities of your teenage child when actually it’s time to loosen the rein a little, saying your piece and being ready to support whilst recognising you cannot protect them from all the dangers of the world.

I wonder if this idea of leverage has any resonance for you, right now.  Are there areas in which you find yourself expending time and effort with little by way of return?  Are there opportunities you’re currently missing to take some small action that will make a disproportionate impact in your life or the lives of others?  As you enter the New Year I invite you to take five minutes to identify five fruitless activities you need to let go of and five easy wins you have yet to harvest.  Please share them here.

Happy New Year.  

Reflections from the dentist’s chair

Emotional Intelligence

Yesterday I went to the dentist to have a filling.  In the midst of a busy morning – getting things done before going up to Blackheath – I didn’t give it a second thought.  When I sat down in the dentist’s chair, however, I could feel my body tensing and I experienced waves of emotion.

My dentist, Lydia Pink at Sparkly Smile Dental Practice in Blackheath, is utterly fantastic and I knew – my rational brain knew – I had nothing to fear.  We’ve done work together with nary a problem.  No, this was the emotions of a much younger me, stimulated by being in the same situation many years earlier.

This was not “the same situation”, of course.  As a child having my first fillings, I don’t remember ever having an anaesthetic.  Dental techniques were not as developed then as they are today.  More importantly still, empathy was not then in fashion:  I don’t remember anyone showing any understanding of my fears.  Back then, I didn’t have what I needed to handle the situation alone.  No wonder it still casts a shadow in my adult life.

I wonder what responses are stimulated in you by reading this posting.  Perhaps you, too, have fears about letting someone loose with your teeth.  Perhaps you are ready to shut out these or other emotions – in yourself, in others.  It’s easy to deny them (by projecting them onto others, for example).  It’s easy to judge them.  And still, the bottom line is this:  both you and those you live and work with experience emotions in the here and now that reflect your childhood experiences.

The role that emotional intelligence plays in our effectiveness at work and at home is now well studied and documented.  As a leader, you are likely to be far more effective if you are able to embrace emotions – your own, others’ – and have ways to respond.  Your ability to respond effectively makes a difference in the moment.  It also makes a difference over time.

And Lydia?  She was quick to acknowledge my emotions and to accept them.  She took time over her work, telling me ahead of time what would happen and checking in with me to see how I was doing.  What I did notice and welcome were tears, which I take to be the grieving of a much younger me for the needs that were not met in my childhood dentistry experiences.  I wonder if I am letting go of the fears I felt then and everything that came with them.

Locked in conflict?

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If you’re locked in conflict and don’t know which way to go, take a moment to watch this short clip on YouTube.  I offer it because it may help you to reconnect with your sense of humour (it’s funny!) and also because it offers a key insight into conflict and why it persists.

A number of thinkers in the fields of negotiation, mediation, communication and conflict highlight the need to let go of positions and focus on interests.  Maintaining a position involves taking the view that only one course of action – often requiring a particular response from another – will work and seeking to persuade that other to follow your path.

When you can understand what needs will be met by your preferred course of action you can find alternative ways of meeting those needs.  Equally, if you’re willing on both sides to understand each other’s needs, you can explore ways in which both people’s needs can be met.  Strangely, when you identify actions you can take to reach your desired outcomes and which do not depend on a particular response from another, the conflict tends to go away.  In case you need it, remember the mantra “you can’t change the others, you can only change yourself”.

Marriages can be saved, business deals can be struck, countries can avoid war by letting go of positions and connecting with underlying interests.

Developing your strategic thinking: sharing your strategy with others

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In recent days I’ve been writing about developing your strategic thinking and in this posting I come to the question of how to share your strategy with others.

This question implies that you do have a strategy.  It’s been interesting to me in recent days, reading Richard Rumelt’s recently published book Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, to notice how he differentiates between having a strategy and communicating it.  The bottom line?  It’s not enough to be charismatic and engaging – you need to engage people in a strategy that is more than just “fluff”.

In case you want to develop your skills in communicating strategy and getting people on board, I offer a number of suggestions below:

  • Observe how others communicate and engage others:  Any number of historical figures have had to communicate a vision to and engage others, including Churchill, Gandhi, Martin Luther King and more recently, Barack Obama.  Even as I write, my list gets longer, and I am especially thinking of people who were successful in engaging others in a vision for the future that was subsequently realised.  Desmond Tutu, for example, is widely associated with South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission which played an important role in a successful transition to post-apartheid South Africa.  In the UK Aneurin (“Nye”) Bevan is recognised as championing what has become known as the National Health Service – free health care for all Britons.  Not all such leaders have been popular or have championed causes which win modern day support – any number of political or rebel leaders nonetheless successfully championed a cause.  The more you engage with their story the more you develop your understanding of the many different ways in which leaders engage others in a vision and strategy for the future;    
  • Get behind the examples to understand the theory:  My old favourite, Goleman’s book The New Leaders, outlines research which identifies different leadership styles and how they work in practice.  It’s a great place to start if you want to understand the impact of communicating a vision and how you can cultivate this style as one of a number of styles you need to lead effectively.  For an example of what different leadership styles look like in practice, you can do worse than hunker down with the grainy old war film, Twelve O’Clock High.  This film shows two different leaders leading the same group of men in different ways and with dramatically different outcomes.  If you can get past the subject and the age of the film it is the perfect companion to Goleman’s book;
  • Develop your communication and speaking skills:  If it’s speaking that’s holding you back, there are many ways to develop your skills.  Toastmasters has often been used by leaders to develop skills in speaking publicly.  Others have trained in neuro-linguistic programming (or NLP), nonviolent communication (NVC), Roger Schwarz’s Skilled Facilitator Approach and other approaches in order to develop a wider range of communication skills.  Of course, you don’t need to go through training to develop your skills in communication.  As an alternative you might want to seek out opportunities both inside and outside work to practice and develop your skills.  These may range from sitting down with your team to talk about the future to speaking at conferences or facilitating discussions.  A good coach can support you in identifying steps you can take which provide growth as well as supporting you in re-framing old fears about speaking.

This is my last posting – for now – on how to develop your skills in thinking strategically.  It’s been quite a series – and at the same time, I recognise the limitations of these suggestions:  if you want to develop your abilities in this area, you need first to identify what specifically you need to develop in order to move forward.  “Strategic thinking” involves quite a bucket-load of skills.

If you have questions that you’d like me to grapple with, please share them using the comments box below.  Many of my postings are inspired by and reflect my work with people in leadership roles.  Equally, if you have other comments or suggestions that could help readers to develop their ability to think strategically, please share them.
 

Developing your strategic thinking: shaping a compelling strategy

Developing as a leader, Developing leadership across your organisation, , , ,

In recent days I have been writing about how to develop strategic thinking, recognising the importance as a leader of the ability to see the big picture, to shape a compelling strategy and to communicate in ways which engage.  So what does it take to shape a compelling strategy?  I offer a few ideas and suggestions to get you started:

Firstly, you might like to carry out some research:

  • Get curious about successful strategies:  There are many ways to come at the question of shaping a compelling strategy and all of them have something to offer.  One place to start is to think of the businesses that have been highly successful and to get curious about why:  what is their strategy?  I think instantly of organisations that have consumer appeal (my own favourites include First Direct banking, Ikea and Pret a Manger).  One example that has become an internationally recognised case study is the Seattle Pike Place Fish Market.  One downside of its fame is that the DVD (for which, follow this link) is priced at corporate prices, though the book (When Fish Fly:  Lessons for Creating a Vital and Energised Workplace from the World Famous Pike Place Fish Market) is easily available.  Another favourite of mine is Clive Woodward’s autobiography Winning! because it highlights what it took to turn aspiration into practical strategies which in turn led to the England Rugby team’s World Cup win in 2003.  Remember, too, to look close to home – to parts of your organisation that have been highly successful or to organisations you have worked for yourself;
  • Get curious about unsuccessful strategies:  Famously, Gerald Ratner’s strategy for his jewellery business was a winner until, in 1991, he shared it publicly.  He talks about this on YouTube in a plug for his book.  Look around you to find examples of strategies that haven’t worked.  Some of them may well be inside your own organisation.  Many of them will be out in the wider world:  what was Lehman Brothers’ strategy before it went bust in 2008, for example?  And what was the ailing Apple’s strategy prior to Steve Job’s return in 1997 as CEO of the company he had co-founded?  In truth, one of the easiest ways to access examples of bad strategies is by reading what some of the academics have to say about bad strategy, which leads me to my third suggestion…
  • Read what thinkers about strategy say:  Currently I am reading the recently published book Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt – it’s a goldmine of examples of both good and bad strategy and it also includes thought-provoking ideas from the author on what differentiates the two.  An enduring favourite is Jim Collin’s Good to Great which reflects the findings of detailed studies of what differentiates organisations which have been successful over time from those that have not.  Equally, Sydney Finkelstein’s book Why Smart Executives Fail and What You Can Learn From Their Mistakes includes insights into the errors that smart executives make in shaping and executing a compelling strategy.

When you’ve carried out your research, you might like to distil your learning in two areas in particular:

  • Distil your learning into key measures of a successful strategy:  Rumelt’s Good Strategy, Bad Strategy highlights the risk in shaping a compelling strategy which fails to address key challenges or which fails to translate grand aspirations into a concrete plan.  Before you shape your own strategy, I suggest you identify key hallmarks of a successful strategy – these are the measures against which you will test your own strategy before you start to think about how best to communicate it to a wider audience;
  • Shape your approach to creating a successful strategy:  Once you know what your key measures of success for creating a successful strategy are, you are in a position to shape your approach to shaping your strategy for your own business or part of the business.  Your approach may vary depending on the needs of the business – from sitting down with a blank sheet of paper, through consulting with those you lead to engaging the support of specialist consultants.  

 Once you’ve distilled your learning and designed your approach, you’re ready to…

  • Shape your strategy:  It’s tempting to offer key pointers for your strategy and – at the same time – this topic seems too important to summarise in just one bullet.  By now, though, if you’ve taken time to broaden your view (follow this link to read about this subject), to do some research into what differentiates successful strategy, to distil your learning into key measures of a successful strategy and to shape your approach you’re ready to execute your approach in order to shape a successful and compelling strategy.

I wonder, do you have experiences you can offer here to help other readers?  What have you found most helpful?  Equally, what questions would you like me to address in future postings?