Tag Archives: leadership

Your personal need for integrity

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What has this tea pot got to do with integrity?

 

For me, it all began with a tea pot.

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

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

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

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

Owning my personal “quirks”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your personal need for integrity

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

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

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

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

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

Not just a benign force – values and the amygdala hijack

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

Our principal trainer was unmoved.

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

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

Truly shocked.

And I let that person know.

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

It wasn’t pretty.

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

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

Moving towards greater personal integrity

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

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

Its effect has been profound.

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

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

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

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

Me and my tea pot

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

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

Recruiting for integrity? Be careful what you wish for!

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What is your concept of “integrity”?

Recently, I worked with a client to shape a new competency model for leaders across the organisation.  There was a time when organisations would pay a lot of money for deep research to establish which behaviours marked out their most effective leaders, but this seems to be less fashionable nowadays.  Few organisations have the budget and some find it hard to believe that yesterday’s stars are the right people to meet the very different challenges of today – let alone tomorrow.

No, this was a more pragmatic approach, mining the wisdom of leaders themselves about the core leadership challenges they expect to face in the next 5-10 years, about those people who are handling these challenges most effectively, and about the core behaviours demonstrated by their chosen role models.

One behaviour, integrity, came up as key – and not for the first time.  It seems that, no matter what the challenges of the era, organisations aspire to employ men and women of integrity.

What is “integrity”?
Often, when clients discuss integrity, they think of someone who has clear values and who acts in line with those values.

The person who shows integrity makes promises and keeps them, and acts in ways which are consistent with the values they espouse (some call this “congruity”).  What’s more, they are not easily swayed from their values, even when acting on personal values carries a high risk.  Ideally, the man or woman of integrity speaks up about wrong-doing in the company and challenges poor decisions, with the greater good of the organisation in mind.

Implicit in the concept of integrity is the idea of “good” values – honesty, for example, probity, perhaps.  Clients also associate integrity with wisdom and emotional intelligence, too.

“How,” you may be asking yourself, “could such a person be anything other than an asset?”

Why organisations don’t like integrity in practice
Years ago, I was briefly the colleague of Annie Machon, a former MI5 officer.  She left the organisation I was working for quite suddenly after her partner, David Shayler, hit the news here in the UK after blowing the whistle on some aspect (I do not remember what) of MI5 practice.

Whistle-blowing is just one thing that people do who act with integrity.  In recent history, for example, whistle-blowers Edward Snowden and Julian Assange have been talked about around the world. (Read 5 Famous Whistleblowers Who Shaped History to learn more).  But who loves the whistle-blower?  Rarely is it the higher echelons of the organisations whose practices (mal- or otherwise) have been revealed.

There are other reasons why organisations don’t much like integrity in practice.  If you’ve ever been in a meeting, for example, in which one of your colleagues has made the case – repeatedly – for or against some proposal based on a set of personal values that you don’t share, you will know how much time can be lost in circular discussion.  Especially when the individual’s values are out of alignment with the values of an organisation, integrity can be – quite frankly – a real pain in the arse.

There’s something else, too… that integrity without insight, the behavioural flexibility or even the position to influence or persuade can impede progress towards an organisation’s most fundamental goals.  And who judges whether the (wo)man of integrity is appropriately standing his or her ground or (as Jeffrey recently said of Edward Snowden in the New Yorker) a “grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison”?

If you want your leaders to show integrity, and if you want the result to be positive for you or your organisation, there are things you need to get right.

Getting it right when recruiting for integrity
Here are just four things for you to think about before you include “integrity” as a competency in your model of effective leadership:

  • Are you clear about your organisation’s core values?  Integrity can be a hindrance as much as a help if your leaders show integrity in line with values your organisation does not espouse.  Before you look for integrity in your leaders, you need to get clear on the core values of your organisation.  Only then is helpful to understand if your recruits share your values and can embody them in practice as well as espouse them in theory;
  • Integrity is just one behavioural ingredient:  Think carefully about what other behaviours your leader needs in order for integrity to be an asset to your organisation.  Do your leaders show empathy, for example – the ability put themselves in the shoes of their colleagues and to look at things from another point of view?  Do they show judgement – the ability to see the issue under examination in a larger context or to weigh the pros and cons of a particular forward path?  Integrity without empathy or judgement can look like just plain bloody-mindedness;
  • There may be other things besides leadership behaviours:  If your concern is to promote a certain set of values, you need to look beyond the integrity of individual leaders.  Recent scandals in the UK’s NHS, for example, point to a wide range of issues which undermine patient care.  What checks are in place when recruiting new staff?  What training is provided to develop core skills associated with good patient care?  What is the impact on staff of short-staffing or other issues?  The list goes on;
  • It may not be integrity that secures adherence to values:  This is something organisations struggle with and still, when your organisation’s values are clearly outlined and reflected in policies and practices which have been designed to support them, it may not be the integrity of your leaders that keeps people on track.  Instead, it may be other behavioural qualities such as a desire to do well.

And what about you?
I hope this posting has helped you to think through some of the issues that face you if you are thinking of including integrity as a core leadership behaviour in your organisation.

Having said this, I also want to point to something more personal – your own need to live a life of integrity.

This, though, is the stuff of another blog posting.

Are you confident of recruiting the right (wo)man for the job?

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In recent years, the relationship of the UK’s banks with the concept of “risk” has been evolving rapidly.

Risk in the banking sector comes in many forms.  Lending risk is perhaps the most obvious.  The collapse of the global economy in 2008, for example, has been widely attributed to a policy in America of offering sub-prime mortgages – essentially, of lending to people who couldn’t possibly repay their debt.  In the UK, the appetite for lending risk in banking has changed dramatically in the intervening years in response to changes in the regulatory environment and an overall move away from an environment of light-touch regulation.

Another prominent area of risk – in banking and other sectors – is the risk of fraud.  I don’t know about you, but I often field e-mails purporting to be from this, that or another well-known high-street bank and urging me to update my security details.  I’m tempted to dismiss them – who on earth would be fooled by such a scam?!  But the fact that they keep on coming suggests that yes, they work.  Of course, this is just one way in which client accounts are accessed fraudulently.  Banks increasingly have to keep abreast of the creativity of crooks.

Periodically, banks also fall prey to the risk of trading by staff beyond authorised limits with the consequential losses.  Another prominent area of risk in banking is in the failure of IT systems.  And, well, the list goes on…

The risk of recruiting the wrong person for the job
There’s a risk that’s spoken of less often, in banking as elsewhere, even though it’s a risk that we take on a regular basis – the risk of recruiting the wrong person for the job.

Maybe you’ve been there yourself.  You interviewed a range of candidates and one or two really stood out as front-runners.  Perhaps they had a track record of experience that was way ahead of their peers.  Perhaps they had worked for all the best organisations.  Perhaps they had had an early success that made them stand out or, simply, impressed you in interview… you made your decision and looked forward to the outcome…

…except that…

…the person who looked so good on paper and who impressed you so much at interview turned out to be someone quite different once his or her feet were under the desk.

If ever you’ve had this experience, you’ll know how painful it can be and how difficult it can be to unravel.  For starters, even if your antennae start to twitch early on, it takes time to realise that yes, you really have got a problem on your hands.  Probably, you’ll want to take action to support the individual you’ve recruited to give him or her the best possible chance to succeed.  Meanwhile the body of evidence starts to grow which tells you you’ve got it wrong.  Some of these can be hard measures –  deadlines or targets that have been missed, for example, or a failure to deliver something (a proposal, a new client, an IT system…) that was promised in interview.  Some of them can be so-called “soft” measures – a failure to engage with key stakeholders, for example, or to set a clear and compelling agenda.

By the time you’ve identified the problem, tried to support the person you’ve recruited in getting up to speed, realised you need to move them into a different job or to sack them, sacked them and recruited a replacement, the consequences can be bruising and include the time lost in moving forward a key agenda, the alienation of employees or key stakeholders, the costs of recruiting a replacement… the list goes on.

Recruiting for competence
As early as 1973, Professor David McClelland wrote a paper entitled Testing for Competence Rather Than for Intelligence which was published in the American Psychologist.  He proposed that a proliferation of aptitude and intelligence tests had created a whole movement in the US which, however, failed effectively to predict actual performance.  Instead of joining his colleagues in pursuit of a general and universal test of individual aptitude, McClelland proposed an alternative;  he looked for ways to test for competency which were rooted in an understanding of the job and of the characteristics and behaviours that actually differentiated high performers.

Ground-breaking at the time, McClelland is widely credited with opening up our deeper understanding of what makes people effective in a wide range of roles and the word “competencies”, which he used in his 1973 paper, is now widely understood.

Widely, but not universally…

Whilst some organisations have made great strides towards recruiting the right (wo)man for the job, mistakes still happen.  Organisations are particularly vulnerable to making mistakes in which people make decisions based on a poor understanding of the job and of it’s essential requirements, a poor understanding of what it takes to succeed in the job, and replacing effective methods of assessing for competency with over-reliance on a person’s career history (as reflected in a CV), on interview methods which fail to get under the skin of a candidate’s actual capability and on “gut feel”.

If you want to recruit effectively, here are just some of the things you need to be thinking about:

  • Do you have a clear and simple job description in place which clarifies the core purpose and essential requirements of the job?  Too many senior recruitments fall at this very first hurdle;
  • Do you understand the competencies that predict success in a given job?  It seems to me that, at the moment, too many behavioural descriptions are “motherhood and apple pie” rather than reflecting any careful observation of (let alone quality research into) what makes people effective in a given role.
  • Do you have an effective method for testing for competency?  Assessment centres are widely used when recruiting for multiple role-holders whilst I use competency-based interviews to assess candidates for senior leadership roles.

I would add that the use of psychometric tests can enhance your recruitment efforts – though they are not, in my view, a substitute for any of the core elements outlined above.

And banking?
We can all look at the banking sector and name senior figures in the industry who were reckless in the extreme in the period which led up to the events of 2008.  They are casting a long shadow over the industry… the mythology of the banking “fat cat” is alive and well and will no doubt be slow to respond to any actual changes in banking behaviour.

My own experience has been a little different.  Assessing candidates for senior roles in UK banks I have met any number of men and women who are concerned to support the success of UK banking, the effective management of risk and a real connection with the customer.

At least in retail banking, that’s you and me.

PS  The photo came from a recent walk along London’s South Bank.  Some of the photos I took on that day will be appearing on my new website – coming soon – at www.learningforlifeconsulting.co.uk

Coaching: when you need help to find your own way

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

Preventing employee suicide

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

When you hesitate to show compassion in your role as a leader

Developing as a leader, ,
Do you feel comfortable to show compassion in your role as a leader?

If you’ve ever had a tough time in your career, you’ll know how much you yearn for compassion.  Perhaps you’ve had difficulties with a colleague or you’ve made a great howler of a mistake and are afraid of the consequences.  Perhaps you’ve had challenges at home – when someone you love has had an accident, been ill or died, for example, or when your marriage has been in trouble.  You’ll probably recognise times in your life when you have been in need of empathy and compassion – but did you get it from the boss?  In my experience, many people turn to their colleagues when they are in need of compassion in the workplace.
As a leader yourself, you may have hesitated to give empathy to your staff.  Sometimes, your judgement may have got in the way of your compassion (“What would make someone get upset about such a minor thing?”) or perhaps you fear the outcomes from showing compassion (“How can I show compassion for such a stupid mistake and still hold him accountable?”).  Roger Schwarz, in his recent article for the Harvard Business Review blog, entitled What Stops Leaders from Showing Compassion, outlines key reasons why leaders hold back.  Roger also shares a recent paper which tends to suggest that compassion creates positive outcomes in organisations.  The paper is entitled Compassion Revealed:  What We Know About Compassion At Work (And Where We Need To Know More) and it builds on a great deal of earlier work.
If you want to get geaky, follow up on this paper.  As much as anything, it has a long list of references including some of my own favourites (look for Boyatzis, Goleman and McKee).  But even if you don’t want to get geaky, I invite you to take a moment to reflect.  How comfortable do you feel to express your compassion for those you lead?  What supports you in expressing compassion?  And what, if anything, holds you back?  My own experience, from interviewing hundreds of men and women in leadership roles over the last twenty years, is that those who are most effective have a heart.  The respond with compassion to their staff in a wide range of situations and regardless of the rights of wrongs of a situation.  What’s more, they do so with skill.
I’d love to hear from you.  Yes, how comfortable do you feel about responding with compassion to those you lead?  But also, how confident do you feel that you have the skills you need to express your compassion in the workplace?  What support do you need to increase your ease and skill in responding with compassion to those you lead?

When it’s time for a break

Developing as a leader
I’m away this week.
I haven’t gone far.  Together with my dear friend Andy, I have gone to Oxon Hoath in Kent, where we will spend the week catching up (Andy lives in Sydney now, so there’s lots of catching up to do), doing gentle yoga practice, meditating, eating the wonderful food that will be prepared for us (hopefully by chef Paul Smith – he’s a favourite of mine), listening to talks by Alistair Shearer (another favourite of mine) and walking around the beautiful countryside that surrounds the house.
I won’t be checking my e-mails (OK, maybe enough to clear out any junk and catch anything urgent).
I won’t be taking any calls.
Probably, I won’t even be thinking of my clients.
I won’t be writing any blog postings (this one has been written in advance).
I won’t be looking at ‘to do’ lists, let alone adding anything to them or ticking anything off.
I won’t be sending any invoices or chasing for payment.
I won’t be paying my suppliers.
The list goes on and on…
It’s not, though, that these things don’t matter to me.  They matter a great deal.  Instead, it’s because I know that, if I am to be present to my clients and able to support them, I need also to take care of my needs for rest, nurture, companionship and more.  It’s because my needs are met and my heart is full that I am able to give so much to others.
I hope that you, too, are taking a break some time.
   

Seven steps towards taming your inner critic (and one sure fire way not to)

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence,

Have you noticed how, just when you’re trying to muster a bit of confidence, your inner critic steps in and pulls the rug right out from under your feet?

Perhaps you’ve just started a new job – you’ve had a promotion or moved to a new company.  You’re doing your best to focus on how to succeed in the job and all the while, your inner critic is telling you that you don’t have what it takes, with full and vivid detail of the reasons you’re unlikely to succeed.

Or maybe you’ve taken on new responsibilities at work – they’re everything you’ve been campaigning for and you know you have everything you need to deliver and still, your inner critic is ready to wade in the minute you get what you want with objections and concerns.

It seems there’s no end to the situations in which your inner critic can find fault.  Some are in your professional life and some are in your personal life.  What’s worse, it seems that the closer you come to realising your goals, the more the voice of your inner critic is amplified.  At times, it’s so overwhelming that you’re paralysed with fear and you wonder if you’ve made the right decision.  Maybe you’ve already started to look for the sign marked “exit”.

One common approach to taming your inner critic… and why it doesn’t work

Over the years of dancing with my own inner critic and of working with clients, I have found that the most common approach to taming your inner critic simply doesn’t work.

What’s the approach?  Put simply, it’s to dismiss the concerns of your inner critic – and maybe your inner critic him- or herself – using every means at your disposal.  One way is to use rational persuasion (“You say I can’t do X but I did X last week and it worked really well”).  One way is to dismiss your inner critic with anger, hatred and disdain (“Why won’t you leave me alone?  I’m not listening to you!  You talk such rubbish!”*)  When I ask clients how well these strategies are working for them they tell me, without exception, that they’re not.

Why not?  The answer is simple.  Your inner critic is a guardian for you of particular needs.  The more you ignore your inner critic, the more he or she fears that your needs will not be met… and the more s/he turns up the volume to make sure s/he gets heard.

If you can’t go to battle with your inner critic and win, you may find that the only alternative you can find is a sense of inner collapse.  In this state, you wonder if you really should have taken on the job, you tell yourself you’re bound to fail, you find no way forward.

There is though, a way forward.  You simply need to take a different approach.

Seven steps towards taming your inner critic

Even when the voice of your inner critic is overwhelming, there are ways to move beyond fear to achieve an inner calm.  These are seven steps towards “taming your inner critic”:

  • Step 1, step outside and say hello:  Have you ever noticed how, when your inner critic is active, his thoughts are your thoughts?  His fears are yours?  Especially when you’re feeling overwhelmed, it can help to step out of being the inner critic.  Step out of your inner critic – stand up and shake yourself down, for example, leaving your inner critic behind on the chair.  Or hold out your hand and look at your inner critic – and take a moment to say hello.  Your hello is a way of recognising your inner critic and engaging in dialogue;
  • Step 2, get curious:  Far too often, when you do battle with your inner critic, you lose sight of an important principle – that she loves you and wants to do you good.  Your relationship with your inner critic starts to transform when you start to really understand what she wants for you, so ask her!  Keep asking (“what is it that you really want for me?”) until you get under the skin of particular strategies (“I want you to say no to the job”) to the baseline need she is trying to protect.  This is usually about safety, security… she wants to keep you safe;
  • Step 3, acknowledge your needs:  When you dismiss your inner critic, you arouse his fear that you don’t care about your needs for safety and security so that he redoubles his efforts to protect you.  It helps to let him know that you, too, want to be safe.  No ifs or buts – just let him know that for you, too, safety matters;
  • Step 4, say thank you:  Take time to thank your inner critic for her good intentions.  Thank her for being the guardian of your safety and security throughout your life.  If this sticks in your throat it may help to separate in your mind her good intentions and her ways of trying to meet your needs – there’s no harm in saying that you’ve really struggled with her way of supporting you and still, you’re beginning to understand how much she has always meant well;
  • Step 5, notice his skills:  Your inner critic brings a great deal of skill to the task of taking care of you.  When you try to dismiss him, you’re likely to dismiss his skills… his ability to think ahead and to see all the potential pitfalls, his imagination in conjuring safe alternatives.  The more you notice and acknowledge these skills, the more you can begin to see how it might be helpful to have these skills on your team and to collaborate with your inner critic;
  • Step 6, share with her your other needs:  Your inner critic may be the guardian of your safety and security but you also have other needs – the kind of needs you meet when you take on a promotion, or new responsibilities or, in your personal life, embark on a new relationship or take on a bigger mortgage.  It’s never your needs that are in conflict – only the strategies by which you seek to meet them.  So, when your inner critic has been heard, she may be ready to hear you.  Let her know what other needs you want to meet – over the years, clients have talked about freedom, autonomy, self-fulfilment, intimacy and many more;
  • Step 7, invite collaboration:  When you are confident that you have heard your inner critic’s need for security and that your inner critic has also heard your wider needs, ask him if he would be willing to collaborate so that you find ways to meet all your needs.  When you hear a yes, you have reached a point of departure – a moment where creativity begins.  At this point, you have moved from struggle into a creative embrace of “how can we collaborate to make sure all our needs are met?”

In truth, these steps are not so much about “taming your inner critic” as about building a different relationship with the guardian of your safety and security.  And it is a relationship rather than a once-and-for-all way to rid yourself of fear.  One implication is this – that the more you learn to engage in constructive dialogue with your inner critic, the more you can work with him or her to balance your need for safety with other needs.

(*And in case you’re reading this and looking over your shoulder – pretending you don’t talk to yourself in this way – well, I want to let you know that in my experience, we all do.  Healthy people have a rich inner community of parts, including their inner critic.)

When does your inner critic shout the loudest?  And what has worked best to help you to move out of overwhelm and into inner calm?

Making the transition from expert in your field to leader

Developing as a leader
Recently, I spoke with a client who is struggling to make the transition from being an expert in his field to effectively leading others.  It is a common challenge for people who, in the beginning of their careers, have invested time and effort to develop their mastery of their chosen field – the law, engineering, IT, accounting… the list of such jobs is long.

Perhaps you are already familiar with this transition and all its challenges.  You’ve invested significantly in developing your skills.  You know what you need to do in a given situation in your field.  Now, though, you have staff to manage and instead of doing everything yourself, your primary role is to help members of your team to deliver.

Why is it so challenging to move from expert to leader?

I don’t want to understate the challenges that come with making this transition.

Firstly, you were so good at being an expert.  Of course you were!  You invested years in developing the skills and knowledge that made you an expert in the first place.  Now, as a leader, you recognise that you face many situations in which you don’t know what to do and in which, what’s more, the connection between what you do and what transpires seems increasingly tenuous – outside your control.  You try something – and you do try – and it doesn’t work.  You make the case for the next level of investment in your team and it gets turned down.  You delegate an important project to a member of your team and it doesn’t quite turn out.  You want to make it work and when it doesn’t your instinct is to withdraw back to the work you do so well.

And yes, there is the whole issue of standards.  It’s all very well trying to achieve results through others – delegating to your team or collaborating with your peers – but sometimes you wonder if anyone’s standards match your own.  How can you do this leadership thing without presiding over the decline of standards?  For surely, when your standards are so much higher than anyone else’s, you have to let them slide a little or drive your team to distraction with your feedback.  As you try to balance allowing people to do things to their own standards and giving feedback you sometimes wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to do things yourself.

You may not notice and still, there’s a third challenge that may be keeping you stuck.  It’s the challenge of embracing a bigger agenda.  As an expert, you were charged with things to do – projects perhaps, case files, bridges to design.  The projects got bigger, they may even have been called “programmes” and still, they were projects.  Now, as a leader, the performance of your team is your task, your project… but there is a risk that you haven’t spotted it yet.  What’s more, there’s a risk that you’ve spotted it and yet, when things get tough, you find it easier to get stuck in to the work of your team because that’s where you know you can succeed.

Making the transition – some “how tos”

How then, can you break the cycle of taking action to move forward, struggling with the results and retreating to your old ways before taking action again?  Here are just a few things that may work for you, because they’ve worked for others in your situation:

  • Remember you’re not alone:  It can feel as though you’re moving from a relatively private success into a hugely public arena of failure when you take your first steps as a leader.  When it does, it helps to stop, breathe and remember – you’re not alone.  You are not the first person to have grappled with this transition and you won’t be the last;
  • Find a reason to stay the course:  For some people, leadership is its own reward.  It comes with all sorts of bells and whistles they have longed for and finally get to play with.  For the expert, leadership can bring a sense of loss or sacrifice – unless you have a compelling reason to make the transition.  Perhaps you realise that you can no longer do everything yourself.  Perhaps there’s a vision you have that you can’t deliver alone.  Whatever your reason, it’s your reason to stay the course – so think about what you’re trying to achieve, especially when you feel the lure of your expertise;
  • Make time to lead:  Especially in your first leadership role, you may struggle to balance your technical contribution to the team with your role as leader and it could go either way.  Is it your leadership agenda that will give way to immediate projects or vice versa?  You choose.  Choose a percentage of your time that you will spend on the larger agenda of leading your team.  Think about when and how you will spend that time.  The more you have made plans to spend time and know what you want to do, the more likely you are to choose to lead;
  • Cut yourself some slack:  In your early days as a leader, it’s unlikely that you will show the same level of skill in your leadership role as you will as an expert.  Perhaps the biggest challenge you face is dancing with the voice of your inner critic.  He or she is vocal enough in your area of expertise but, hey!  s/he’s louder still when it comes to your first steps as a leader.  Learning to hear your inner critic without being overwhelmed is a skill in itself – one that’s worthy of at least one posting on this blog (look out for it during the days ahead);
  • Build a support team to help you through:  It may be that you have the best boss in the world  – or wife or husband – who can support you in making this transition.  It’s likely though, that you could do with more help.  Perhaps there are areas in which you need to develop a new kind of expertise – in how to influence others, for example, or how to get the best out of your staff.  It could be that you need new skills in self management.  Your boss, your colleagues, a mentor, a coach… make sure you have all the help you need.

If you’re in the midst of making the transition to leadership, I’d love to here from you:  what is your biggest challenge?  And if you are looking back and thinking “yes, I remember it well…” please share your experiences and especially the lessons that made it possible for you to make the transition from expert to leader. 

Essential lessons from The Apprentice

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence,
Neil Clough
Fans of the BBC’s Apprentice were glued to the television last night for the interviews.  The gears were shifted from the fun and games of various tasks (a bit like the kind of assessment days I have been involved in over the years in corporate GB) to close scrutiny of candidates and their business plans.
It soon became clear that it wasn’t looking good for the men.  It was hard to see a way out for Jordan Poulton, whose business plan, it emerged, was for a business owned by someone else with whom he had a ‘gentleman’s agreement’.  He was the first to go.  Next, it was Neil Clough, who continued to maintain that his business plan could work despite clear feedback to the contrary from Lord Sugar’s advisers.  Finally, it was Francesca MacDuff-Varley whose spirited performance could not disguise her lack of business savvy.
Of the three candidates to leave this week, none was as hard to let go as Neil Clough, who has looked like a potential winner from the beginning.  As he sometimes does, Lord Sugar expressed his regret at having to say goodbye to him.  On The Apprentice‘s sister (or should I say brother..?) programme, The Apprentice:  You’re Fired, he said that “Neil’s greatest flaw is his inability to listen to sound advice”.  In a way, it doesn’t even matter whether or not the advice was sound – Neil was unable to adjust his approach for any reason.  It could be that listening to sound advice was indeed where it was at.  Equally, it could be that recognising that the people with the power and the ear of Lord Sugar had a view which was different from his own should have been enough to have Neil thinking about how to adapt.
For me, the important issue was not that Neil was unable to listen to sound advice.  No.  The important issue was this:  why was Neil unable to listen to sound advice?  We already knew, before last night’s episode, that Neil saw the death of his father when he was just 18 years old as a defining experience – this is something he shared in an impassioned speech on the business away-day task.  What struck me last night, though, was Neil’s need to succeed in order not to let his father down – or his wife and children, come to that.  To put it another way, Neil’s personal need to succeed – linked to his experience of losing his father – was such that he couldn’t let go of his faith in his business plan, for who would he be then?  There was, simply, too much at stake.  And maybe to put it yet another way, Neil had conflated separate issues (the death of his father, his desire to live up to his father’s expectations, his success on The Apprentice and no doubt more besides).  If you can’t separate your feelings about a past event from what’s happening today you will, at times, act in ways which are not good for you or your business.
Now, please don’t get me wrong.  Our most personal experiences can be a great force for good.  How many charities are borne out of grief and loss which successfully address injustices or provide much-needed support?  How many great leaders are fuelled by the desire to right some wrong or heal some injustice?  To bring this right up to date, I think of Andy Murray’s recent Wimbledon win and its potential to heal the deep sense of loss and emotional scars of the community of Dunblane.  Perhaps the word ‘heal’ is the important word here.  The desire for healing can be a force for good both for an individual and for those whose lives they touch, within business or without.  At the same time, the failure to bring healing where it’s needed can lead to behaviours in the workplace which are dysfunctional both for the individual and for the business.  For me, more than anything else, last night’s episode of The Apprentice shone a light on Neil’s deep need for healing from the painful, early loss of his father.
Neil, in case you’re reading this, I want to express my wish for you.  I hope that you come to understand one day that, no matter what your father wished for you when he was alive, you do not have to be better than anyone else or to succeed every time in order to do your loved ones justice… nor indeed, in order to be loved.  I hope you find self-acceptance such that you can see yourself more fully, knowing that the occasional failures that will beset you take nothing away from who you are.  Indeed, I trust that by developing a deep sense of self-acceptance you will uncover the fullness of your strengths as much as you are able to see and embrace your weaknesses and your failures.
And to others who read this posting I would like to add that  if you see something of Neil in yourself I want to reach out to you, too.  Let your experiences be a force for healing for you and for others – a force for good in the world.