Author: Darryl Cross

Crucial Conversations: How to have them

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Introduction: The Problem Won’t Go Away

In the coaching work that I do, it is certainly true to say that almost all leaders and managers who I encounter want to create a positive culture for their staff. They want a good team environment.

However, it is also true that the one thing that seems to get in the road and causes leaders and managers the most stress is when they need to have crucial conversations with their staff where it is important to provide negative or corrective feedback or where there are disagreements or perhaps problems that need to be addressed.

Typically, I find that most leaders simply “hope” that the problem will go away and will privately confide to me that this is certainly what they trust might happen. Unfortunately, that rarely happens. Instead, the problem or issue only gets worse and magnifies over time which has the impact of eroding a positive culture, creating poor morale as well as affecting the reputation of the leader concerned and perhaps also reducing productivity and efficiency.

As a way of addressing issues and delivering negative feedback or pointing out someone’s shortcomings or perhaps identifying poor behaviour, managers typically soft-pedal around the issue essentially trying to avoid offending the staff member. Not only do they not want to offend people and their team, but at a dynamic level, there is also the sense that they want everyone to like them and everyone to think that they are a good leader.

Ironically however, failing to provide effective feedback and skirting around issues only means that others (including the so-called offender), see the leader as incompetent or weak and not particularly effective.

Anecdotally, I have also had leaders tell me that as a way of trying to remedy the problem they perhaps thought it would be okay to provide hints to the individual staff member without actually addressing the issue. Otherwise, they may refer the matter to Human Resources to deal with, or they may refer the matter to the Employee Assistance Program.

How Do You Have the Conversation?

So how do you communicate in a straightforward genuine manner without creating defensiveness or hostility from the staff member? How can you discuss with the staff member in such a way that you do not intentionally offend them? Professor Kim Cameron in his 2013 book titled, “Practicing Positive Leadership” provided an important distinction.

One of the most important attributes of supportive communication is the ability to be descriptive rather than evaluative in the delivery of the message.

In other words, evaluative communication makes a judgement, provides an opinion, or places a label on individuals or their behaviour. For example, comments such as, “You did it all wrong” or “It’s your fault” or “You are ineffective” are all evaluative in style. They do not suspend judgement. They are generally critical and fault finding.

Needless to say, individuals who receive such evaluative statements generally feel attacked and tend to retreat and become defensive or occasionally aggressive or hostile. Naturally enough, they push back and defend themselves by proclaiming that they are not wrong or it was not their fault or that they are very capable as individuals.

In contrast, descriptive comments are more objective in kind and allow the leader to be more congruent and authentic in the delivery of the message. Descriptive communication involves three steps:

  1. Describe the event, behaviour, or circumstance objectively,
  2. Describe outcomes and/or feelings and not the other person’s attributes,
  3. Suggest alternative solutions that could resolve the issue.

Let’s take each of these in turn.

Firstly, describe objectively your observation of the event that occurred or the behaviour that you consider needs to be modified. It is important that this description should identify elements of the behaviour that can be confirmed objectively. In other words, you need to be able to see or hear the behaviour. For example, “You have been 15 to 20 minutes late for work each day this week” or “Your report missed the deadline”.

Secondly, describe the reactions of yourself or others to the behaviour and describe the consequences of the behaviour. For example, “When you are late to work, it disappoints me that you are not adhering to the team’s guidelines and it sends a message to the rest of the team that a lack of punctuality is tolerated and it’s probably fair to say, that it’s not fair on the rest of the team either who do arrive on time or are early to work” or “Missing the deadline, means that others in your team are now penalised and need to work back in order to compile the data necessary and that certainly is not good for team morale or for effective teams”.

Thirdly, suggest a more acceptable alternative or solution unless of course, the staff member can come up with a better solution. This kind of discussion focuses on possible solutions and not on the person and as such, avoids accusations. It also helps the other person save face and avoid feeling personally criticised because the behaviour is not attached to their self-esteem. The discussion preserves self-esteem because it focuses on something that is controllable and upon which both the leader and the staff member can possibly agree. Therefore, the emphasis is on finding a solution that is acceptable to both people rather than figuring out who is right and who is wrong and who should change and who should not.

In summary, the three steps of descriptive communication are as follows:

  1. Here it is what I just experienced, saw or heard;
  2. Here is how I feel about it, how others feel about it, and here are the consequences or the impact;
  3. Here is an alternative solution that might be more acceptable.

A really good rule of thumb in this area of crucial conversations is to avoid using the word “you” in providing feedback. “You” only serves to target people who then become defensive and naturally want to push back or defend their cause. Instead, using “I” as much as possible is important. As outlined above, the leader targets the behaviour, the event, the consequences and the standard that has not been met as well as focusing on possible solutions.

However, it also really important to state that once a descriptive communication has been delivered that it is important for the leader to stop and listen intently to what the staff member has to say. If the leader is not able to effectively listen, then the communication exercise for crucial conversations will be greatly diminished. Effective listening is not something that leaders do well. This is one of the reasons why I authored the book, “Listen Up Now” (www.ListenUpNow.com.au) for business leaders.

How to Actually Start the Conversation

I’m also acutely aware that most leaders and managers will say to me that they do not know how to start the crucial conversation before launching into the descriptive communication. Again, there is a tendency for leaders to tiptoe around the issue and talk about the latest football results, or the weather, or some other current topic before having the crucial conversation which only serves to undermine the trust in the relationship as well as undermine the leader’s reputation for being genuine and authentic.

Instead, there are a number of ways by which the leader can introduce the crucial conversation including the following:

  • “I’m hesitant about raising this issue because I don’t want it to be blown out of proportion or be misrepresented in any way”
  • “I’d like to talk to you about something – will this time work?”
  • “Can I give you some feedback?”

Once the leader has delivered the descriptive communication, then the way of ending the three-step delivery is to finish with something like:

  • “What I’d like now is [state the solution], but maybe there is something I haven’t thought of or I’ve missed”
  • “Next time, I’d like to see this happen…”
  • “What thoughts do you have now on how this might be resolved?”
  • “How can we prevent this from happening again?”
  • “Instead, can you do…”

Leaders need to become proficient in knowing how to have crucial conversations according to the formula and recipe listed above.

Honest communication and feedback is one of the hallmarks of not only effective leadership, but of creating a positive culture where people trust each other to be able to give and receive appropriate feedback.

Yes, it takes courage, but the more times a leader becomes practised in these crucial conversations the more effective will be their team, the better the team moral and the more enhanced the leader’s reputation.

 

[Dr Darryl Cross is a clinical and organisational psychologist as well as a credentialed executive and career coach. He is also an author, facilitator, international speaker and university lecturer. Dr Darryl assists people and leaders to find their strengths and reach their goals as well as grow their businesses, become more productive and create positive cultures. Further information on Dr Darryl can be seen at www.DrDarryl.com and he can be contacted at [email protected]]

 

 

Never Waste a Good Crisis

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Never Waste a Good Crisis:
The Golden Opportunity for the C-Suite to drive for a New and Better Future

By Dr Darryl Cross
(Crossways Consulting)
&
Stephen Dowling
(ETM)

It was Sir Winston Churchill who said, “Never waste a good crisis”. Nothing was more true than in these unheralded times. What have we learned? What have we unlearned? What have we re-learnt? Where can we grow? How or what can we develop? What do we take from all of this?

Apparently, the Chinese symbol for “crisis” is composed of two characters, one signifying “danger” and the other “opportunity”. As we well know too, there are two sides to every coin, so what is the flip side for this pandemic called COVID-19? What is the opportunity?

Throughout history, awful events have contributed to real transformations. For example, the bubonic plague of the 1300s led to the modern employment contract. Cholera epidemics of the mid-1800s provided us with urban parks, gardens and open spaces along with improved infrastructure. With the 1918 Spanish Flu, there was a revolution in healthcare.

This global pandemic has already had a massive impact on the world economy and the full ramifications of which are still to be fully understood. What will be the long-term impacts? What will the new normal look like? What will be next? Are we now living in a world which will keep throwing up new unpredictable “black swan” events?

These events fundamentally change reality, and, what has worked in the past may no longer work in the future. Knowledge & skills can become obsolete overnight, and to ensure one stays relevant we need to be open & willing to unlearn the past.

Can & should we use this as an opportunity, a catalyst to continue to disrupt ourselves, and our organisations, so we can drive towards a better future?

“Disruption does not apply to organisations.
The truth is it applies to individuals.” Barry O’Reilly

What’s the Immediate Lessons to be Learned by CEOs?

It was a stop and prop that no-one saw coming. We all stopped. Businesses stopped, jobs stopped, social engagement stopped, churches and conferences stopped, gyms and exercise stopped, sports and recreation stopped.

Never before in our lifetime have we ever had a full-stop like now. And we’re all in it together. Not just one country, or one state, or one locality. All of us. The whole planet.

What have we recognised first up?

  1. Our mental model (beliefs) have changed.

As a result of COVID, our mental model (& core beliefs) about the world have been fundamentally challenged and they will have been changed. We have unlearned some beliefs and relearned some new ones. Not having a choice in the matter has of course helped speed this transition, but the big part is that we’ve done it, and proven to ourselves that we can, in fact, do it when we have too.

It’s simple to see in the work-from-home or remote working. It’s taken over a decade for most leaders to accept that it might actually be a workable solution and previously, some have allowed their staff to work from home for, say, a half-day or even a day a week.

Then Bam!

Everyone has to work from home.  Believe it or not, the world kept spinning and employees kept working, and from most reports, employees are more productive and happier not to mention less traffic on the roads and less wasted time getting to and from work.

What other beliefs are we holding onto? What other areas do we need to examine? What other blind-spots do we have?

  1. We have all adapted quickly.

Change for most of us is slow. We are creatures of habit. However, not so with the pandemic. For example, we have been able to adapt with two years of digital transformation in just 2.5 months. We suddenly embraced software like Zoom or Microsoft Teams and the like. Leaders are recognising that these video conferences actually do work and that maybe we really don’t have to spend time waiting in airports and catching planes spending valuable dollars on travel and accommodation.

“We saw 2 years of digital transformation in 2 months”
Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO;  30th April 2020

One South Australian food packaging company called Detmold for example, turned to making Personal Protective Equipment with face masks for front-line workers. Apparently, Dyson (the vacuum cleaner and appliance manufacturer) set about making respirators for ICU departments in hospitals.

The message is clear. We can adapt and quickly if necessary.

Where Are We Now?

  1. Things were already broken.

Many C-Suite would not always agree that things were broken. But think about it. Consider for example, the lack of work-life balance that is not sustainable and the low levels of staff engagement across various industries and sectors.

Firstly, the evidence of a broken system is the increasing levels of stress and burnout. Most organisations were struggling to cope prior to COVID, but now it’s getting worse.

The previous VUCA world (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) was playing with our minds and causing us stress, anxiety and pressure with a lack of work-life balance for many.  The stress and burnout had become overwhelming for many.

What’s interesting too is that given we have all had to stop, many are now enjoying the return to a slower life and a life where it is not so fast-paced and where they have time to re-connect with their families and their children.

Secondly, there are poor levels of staff engagement across the global economy. According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace, only 15% of employees are engaged in the workplace. What does that do to the bottom line?

Employees are now able to view a company’s culture through social media where businesses are more transparent than ever before. Not surprisingly, employees are voting with their feet to work for businesses where they feel engaged and empowered. How big an issue is this for organisations? Will you be able to attract and retain bright, creative and capable people?

And whether we like it or not, the world will continue to change at an increasing rate. Remedy?  We need to find a better way. It was not sustainable the way it was.

  1. It is clear that the top roles in any company or organisation outdistance the capabilities of any single person.

Part of the dilemma of the outdated command and control kind of leadership that we have all known, is that in a VUCA World, no-one individual can do it all. No one leader can now be across it all.

As Manfred Kets De Vries states, “In our global highly complex world, the heroic leadership figure has increasingly become a relic”.

An underlying assumption of the traditional top-down hierarchical model is that the further up the hierarchy an individual goes, the more they know, the more that they can make the best decisions in the interest of the organisation. How can this remain valid now in our rapidly changing and complex world?  It is no longer valid. It’s a myth.

It is little wonder therefore that a growing number of executive leaders are either declining the top job or choosing to opt out.

  1. The traditional command and control model of management is no longer relevant.

The world has fundamentally changed, yet we are still (by and large) using an outdated management model based on the thinking, principles & processes from the 19th & 20th century. This model is characterised by adopting a “top down” functional hierarchy based on a specific “command and control” way of operating at its core.

Would you believe the military actually abandoned “command & control” after the Napoleonic wars realising how ineffective it was in a fast-changing dynamic environment, but yet it’s still seen by the majority of CEO’s as normal and accepted best practice today.

Most organisations are trying to have a foot in the 19th and 20th Century camp while trying to cope with the 21st Century (see the Table below).

The big problem is, these distinct models will never work well together. They are fundamentally very different ways of thinking, working & leading.

Answers to these questions are very different under both approaches. How should we best organise ourselves? How should we assign & fund work? How should we control & manage work? What is the role of leaders & managers? The answers to these questions are very different and they will have very big ramifications within organisations.

If the CEO still has a mental model based on a top down hierarchical traditional “command & control” approach, then he or she could be the company’s biggest obstacle.

As a CEO, it is important to accept that the reality has fundamentally changed and the traditional management approach is no longer “fit for purpose”, and major systemic changes will be needed if they want to evolve to a 21st century approach.  If, as a CEO, he or she is currently on the left had side of the Table above, then this transformation journey will need to start with them! As the most senior leader in any organisation, it is critical to get onto the right page. Unlearning the old and relearning the new.

Where Do We Want to Get to?

As the great W.S. Deming once pointed out, “mankind invented management, so we can re-invent it”.

Here are two inspiring examples of people who are doing just that:

John Seddon from the United Kingdom is a thought leader in relation to leadership. His thesis for this new age stacks up. He has re-defined the work of leadership and argues that we need a transition from “command and control” to “motivate and mentor”. He this process the Vanguard Method. What does this mean? Now that leaders are in uncharted waters like never before, they have an opportunity to re-build alignment and commitment from their people by dispensing with the traditional tools of bureaucratic control. Instead, he proposes focusing on the system itself.

For example, the Vanguard Method was implemented by Owen Buckwell, the Head of Housing at Portsmouth City Council in England. Over 40,000 people rely on him for warm, safe and comfortable homes. Each year, he is responsible for dealing with 17,000 blocked toilets and 100,000 dripping taps in 17,000 council homes. Buckwell got curious about how his customers could be more satisfied, and instead of focusing on managing people and budgets, he focused on the design and management of work.

In this way, he listened intently to phone calls from complaining customers over an extended period of time. He learnt that at least 60% of the complaints were preventable. Hence, Buckwell went about designing a new work system that gave value to the customers (not value to his record-keeping, data and statistics around which the previous system was designed). Buckwell rearranged the work system in order “to carry out the right repair at the right time” for the tenant, not to try and receive favourable reports from the Government.

The result? Interestingly, not only do repairs now get done on the day and the time when the customers want, but Buckwell also halved his costs. Further, this all meant that he was able to change his supply chain and carry 25% less stock.

Zhang Rummin, CEO of Haier took over the struggling company in 1984. Haier is a whitegoods appliance maker based in Qindao, China, and is currently the world’s largest appliance maker with a turnover of (US) $35 billion with 75,000 employees. It wasn’t always so. The trigger to the turn-around was not a pandemic, but the fact that the company was making poor and inferior products. Rumour has it that in the beginning, Rummin lined up scores of appliances in a row and in front of all the staff got employees to smash up these appliances with sledge hammers; the point was that that was all that these appliances were good for and that things were about to change.

Now the company has about 4,000 self-managing microenterprises. About 250 are market facing (“users”) and the rest (“nodes”) supply them with components and services like IT and HR support. Users can hire or fire nodes or even contract with outside providers if they deem that IT and HR for instance are not providing adequate services. The Nodes revenues are tied to their Users/ success.

Ultimately, everyone is accountable to the company’s customers. Everyone is encouraged to be an entrepreneur. All targets are ambitious, and rewards are tiered, performance based and potentially hefty.

The result? For the last decade, the gross profits of Haier’s core appliance business have grown by 23% a year while revenue growth has increased 18% yearly and there has been $2 billion in market value from new ventures.

We see these as two foremost examples of people who are re-inventing management and finding a better way.

How Will We Get There?

We are very aware of the massive challenges that exist here. On the face of it, the task at hand appears very overwhelming, maybe even an impossibly.

So, where do we start? We start by getting the foundations right.

In his book “The One Thing“, Gary Keller says that success at anything is all about lining up a series of dominos.

We need to start by figuring out what are the first most important dominos that we need to focus on. At any point in time, you should be able to identify ‘1’ thing which is most important at that exact moment in time. What are the starting foundations which everything else will build on? What will make everything else easier down the track? What will help us build momentum? Identifying these is of course, the big challenge.

To learn a fundamentally new way, we need to first be open and willing to “unlearn” the past, otherwise it will never work. You will just end up trying to map new thinking onto your old mental model which will never gel.

We all act based on our mental model of the world. What do we believe is true? What do we believe is the best way to get stuff done? How do we best achieve our outcomes?

“The world as we have created it, is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”
Albert Einstein

Before we can learn a new way, we need to unlearn the old. This is the very big challenge as it’s not something which is typically easy to do. We each need to find our own path up the mountain and the journey is everything.

To be able to change your mental model you need to see & experience things for yourself.

However, as we’ve said earlier, the great news is we’ve proven to ourselves with COVID that we can do it. We can change our mindset (beliefs) & behaviours. Not having a choice did of course make it a bit easier than normal, but let’s see this as the great opportunity that it is and build on this for the future.

What Will Stop Us?

Even though all the rules have now been broken and there is a grand opportunity to create a new way of operating, the majority of leaders will fail themselves and their businesses by retreating back to what they knew in the past.

1. Overcoming Fear

Like a rubber band that is stretched, leaders will ping back into their original shape. Why so? Fear.

Fear that they will somehow lose control if they don’t do as they’ve always done. Fear of looking stupid or ignorant or less knowledgeable if they try things differently. Fear of looking vulnerable. Fear of riding on uncharted waters where they might be out of their depth.

“What if I muck up?” “They all look to me as their leader, so I have to look like I’m in control.” “What if it didn’t work out?” “I don’t know where to start.” “I’m stuck.”

As one book title aptly says, “feel the fear and do it anyway”.

2. Overcoming Learning Blocks

It was back in 1991 when Chris Argyris stated in his Harvard Business Review article that, “Because many professionals are almost always successful at what they do, they rarely experience failure. And because they have rarely failed, they have never learned how to learn from failure”. True words decades later.

It is a truism too that we learn more from our failures than from our successes. Sadly though, the C-Suite will generally do all they can to continue to look good, look like they are in control rather than being vulnerable and acknowledging to themselves and those around them that in these unheralded times, it is about experimentation, trial and error and trying things differently. This kind of transparency and honesty is real leadership which is endearing to followers.

The basis of success for the C-Suite is usually about clear vision and goals, time-lines set in place, experience-based judgement, the ability to convert data into useful patterns and themes in order to make decisions, but in a pandemic, this evaporates overnight. Then what?

Things are now happening so quickly that time-lines become redundant and the ground is constantly moving which means executives either become paralysed or scramble frenetically to try to re-plan. Hence, time-tested approaches involving careful analysis and consensus building are no longer relevant.

Leaders with a healthy ego, and a sense of who they are, will not balk at trying something different now. Level 5 leaders (see “Good to Great” by Jim Collins) won’t retreat from experimenting and seeing how they can dispense with the traditional management methods in order to adopt new and better ways of thinking, working and leading.

To be a great leader now and into the future, the most important attribute we believe is courage. To be able to break free of the old outdated traditional models will be exceptionally challenging and brave leaders are needed to lead organisations on this path.

“Courage is the first of human qualities because
it is the quality which guarantees the others.” Aristotle

Summary

If ever there was an opportunity for leaders to try something different, this is it. This is the moment. We wouldn’t have wished this pandemic on anyone, but now that it is here, it provides the perfect springboard for leadership to be brave enough to try a new way.

As a result of COVID-19, all leaders have had to adapt. Limiting beliefs have been smashed and we need to use this as an opportunity to challenge many more beliefs which underpin our existing “command & control” management model.

Mankind invented this model of management so we can re-invent it. The current model was created for a very different time (a world of mass production, economies of scale, & standardised products), and it’s “used by date” has well and truly passed.

Sadly, it is our prediction that most leaders won’t be courageous enough, but those who do, will thank themselves, their businesses will thank them and their stakeholders will also thank them.  The future for all involved will be brighter and sustainable beyond this crisis.

So, if you are up for the challenge let’s focus on knocking over these dominos one at a time.

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
Chinese Proverb

 

Resilience in Tough Times

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Resilience: How do we manage ourselves when our world is upside down?

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) has predicated terms like “unprecedented”, “never before experienced”, extraordinary”, “unimaginable”, “unmatched” and “very challenging”, and there is certainly unanimous agreement that it is a changing landscape on a daily basis and it appears to be completely unpredictable with uncertainty about how long this virus will take to play out not only in terms of disruption to individual’s lives, but also how long it might take for businesses to recover.

What is Resilience?

Life doesn’t come with a manual or a booklet termed “Trouble-shooting” to show us how to handles life’s circumstances especially significant events like a death, serious illness, financial hardship or relationship breakdown. These events (big or small) impact people differently. There are a myriad of thoughts and feelings that surround such situations and overall, people seem to adapt reasonably well. That’s called resilience.

The American Psychological Association defines resilience as “The process of adapting well in the face of adversity, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress”.

Interestingly, these adverse kinds of events not only allow us the opportunity to bounce back, but to grow and develop. Such events don’t have to define you. Copig with such events and becoming more resilient can only help you through difficult circumstances, but also allow you to grow and improve.

Although it is not possible to control the health situation in our world or the economy for that matter, we can in fact, seek to control our own environment and build resilience in those domains of our life which we can command. How do we go about doing that? How do we build resilience? How do we become more bullet-proof as the world throws various curved balls at us?

In short, it’s like building a muscle. You have to feel the pain and the stress, but the muscle gets stronger as a result. You have to work at it though and it does take time.

Essentially there are four major areas of our life that we need to take charge of as a way of building our resources and our resilience. Let’s look at those four main building blocks for resilience.

1. Energy

Where do we get our energy from? You and I both know that if we don’t have energy for our day, then life is much more difficult than ordinarily it might be. For example, if you have a headache or cold, then typically, you don’t have the energy and enthusiasm for your day as you would when you are feeling healthy and well.

The research shows that we get energy from a number of sources and none of these are of a surprise to any of us. In fact, you simply need to read the press or listen to the media to get advice on any number of these areas. At times, the advice might be confusing, but there is little doubt that these are critical areas to be considered and if you are serious about resilience, you cannot afford to overlook them. In particular, they include the following:

(1) Diet and Healthy Eating
This comes as no surprise and clearly the evidence is strong that what we put in our mouth largely determines our overall health and well-being. The general rule of thumb is low carbohydrates and plenty of protein and keeping away from junk food.

Although alcohol sales have skyrocketed through this pandemic with people forced to stay home, it is important to watch your alcohol intake (and consumption of drugs). Try for an alcohol free day every second day or maybe for a few days in a row.

(2) Fitness
As the old saying goes, “if you don’t use it, you lose it”. This is especially going to be critical during a period of partial or total lockdown where individuals will be restricted to their home setting. The basic formula is 30 minutes each day to be active and walking for instance is highly recommended.

How do you exercise though if you are confined to a limited space? Clearly there are ways that this can be done and needless to say, exercise is critical to helping us remain fit and healthy.

(3) Sleep
Again, this is not news, but the evidence is quite clear that if we want energy for our day, then we need to have adequate sleep and rest. I had an English teacher in secondary school who could exist on four hours of sleep a night, but those people are a rarity and most of us need at least 7 to 8 hours sleep.

As a general rule, there’s some solid evidence that suggests that turning off devices and screens an hour before bedtime is good practice.

How do you ensure therefore, that you get to bed in good time? What disciplines do you put in place to ensure that you get a good night’s rest?

(4) Relaxation
In this fast-paced world, it is critically important to have time out and have time away from work. In this period with the Coronavirus however, it may well be that many of us are being forced to look at how we use our relaxation now that the world has slowed and we are being forced to stay indoors and are not being consumed with the busyness of life with its many distractions.

(5) Mindfulness
Being still and reflecting is important downtime for each of us. Whether that is in the form of meditation, yoga, journaling or prayer or whether it just means that you stop and recall the things in life that you’re grateful for, this is an important activity which allows us to change gears and to endeavour to be present in the moment.

(6) Parent Training
Interestingly, the research shows that if we know how to be an effective parent (more or less), then this is a huge advantage in having energy for living. There is no doubt at all that being a parent can be fatiguing and exhausting in so many ways. Having some firm guidelines on how to be a parent and having some tools at your disposal helps to ease the constant demand of what parenting is all about.

Now that schools are closed and parents are being asked to engage in home schooling as well as the fact that parents are trying to work from home too, this going to bring about all sorts of issues and difficulties. Knowing how to be a good parent in so-called “normal” times is hard enough let alone in pandemic times.

As an aside, I wrote a book on this topic of parenting called “Growing Up Children: How to Get 5-12 Year Olds to Behave and Do As They’re Told” and followed it up with “Teenage Trouble Shooting: How to Stop Your Adolescent Driving You Crazy” (see Books at www.DrDarryl.com ).

2. Positive Mindset

As Dr Wayne Dyer once said, “As you think, so shall you be” or as Proverbs 4:23 states, “Be careful what you think, because your thoughts run your life”.

It is a truism that everything begins with a thought and once you really understand what you think about is what actually expands, you need to start to be careful what you actually think about (…think about that for a moment!…).

In this day and age, when there is a good deal of negativity that surrounds us (not to mention the current COVID crisis), it is important to try to be positive rather than pessimistic; are you a cup half empty or cup half full person?

It was the Greek philosopher Epictetus, in the first century A.D. who said, “Man is disturbed not by events, but by the view he takes of them”. More recently, it was Dr Stephen Covey who put it in similar terms like, “It isn’t what happens to us that effects our behaviour, it’s the interpretation of what happens to us that effects our behaviour”.

A model for helping us with our thinking and allowing us to keep positive is what I call the ABCD of human behaviour. It goes like this.

In other words, once you know that you have started to feel badly (whether for example that might be feeling anxious or fearful, down or depressed, irritated or angry), you then know that in all likelihood, you have engaged in some faulty or irrational thinking. Rather than letting that thinking get out of hand or you continue to worry unnecessarily, you need to show the discipline of being able to turn your thoughts around so that you feel differently.

This does require a discipline because letting your thoughts run away with you and letting negative thoughts dominate you so that you become pessimistic or a “worry wart” does little to assist you and is not only destructive, but mentally draining. To stop this negative cycle, you have to replace those negative thoughts with more positive ones.

Because thoughts are hard to catch, it’s often best to write down your negatives and look at ways you might be able to turn them around or reverse them somehow. For example, instead of saying “I am stuck in my career”, you could perhaps write, “it is true that I am in a current job that I don’t enjoy, but I can look at ways to move out of this role perhaps by using a mentor or coach or perhaps by gaining some additional skills or qualifications, but no one is holding me in this job against my will, so I can do something about it to start to improve my situation.” Then when you focus on this more positive statement, rather than your initial automatic negative thoughts, you can see a light at the end of the tunnel, and you feel more optimistic and more hopeful.

Of course, this might be easier said than done and if you want more information on how to do this then I can refer you to my book titled, “Stopping Your Self-sabotage: Steps to Increase your Self-confidence” (See https://howtostopselfsabotage.com )

3. Communication and Relationships

It was one of the founding forefathers of psychology in William James who once wrote, “The greatest need of every human being is the need for appreciation”.

Interestingly enough, research by Prof Martin Seligman and his associates revealed that companies that flourished and did well economically were those where positive communication was obvious. In fact, they devised something called the “Losada Ratio” where it was calculated that the companies that were doing well financially had a ratio of 3 to 1 of positive comments to negative comments particularly in relation to their business meetings and communications.

At a personal level though, a ratio of 3 to 1 within a marriage or permanent relationship is not sufficient to maintain such a relationship and instead, the ratio for a strong and loving marriage or a relationship is 5 to 1.

As Tony Robbins once said, “The quality of our life is determined by the quality of our relationships”.

Now it is true that not everyone is in a marriage or permanent relationship, however, it is critical for you to understand that who you surround yourself with and the kinds of persons they are, has a profound impact on your demeanour and your overall temperament.

It is true that certain people in life are what we might loosely call “energy vampires” and these are not the kinds of people who enhance your life or improve it in any way. Instead, you need to surround yourself with people who are positive and with whom you can be yourself and those with whom you can count on when the going gets tough.

4. Purpose

The final area in terms of how to build resilience is all about knowing and understanding your purpose in life and is what Prof Martin Seligman calls the “meaningful life”. His research shows that the largest contributor to human happiness is belonging to and serving something bigger than ourselves.

Connecting with something external and using our highest strengths to serve something beyond our individual lives gives us meaning and purpose and a sense of well-being.

For some people, this might be volunteering to work with the Red Cross or helping out in a soup kitchen or assisting in a charity for homelessness. For others, it might mean attending church and serving their God and caring for others within their community.

Finding purpose in your life is not an easy journey and it is not one which is generally discovered quickly and instead, takes a good deal of thought and possibly conversation to allow things to crystallise in an individual’s life.

In summary, in a world that is now being turned upside down and where we are moving in unchartered waters, this is the time when we need to ensure that we are resilient as best we can be. The four building blocks above give us hints about how we might manage this.

Indeed, since many of us now need to work from home and some of us on the planet are in the lockdown, then this certainly might be the exact time when we can stop and reflect because our world has stopped around us and forced us to do the same, and we can take stock of our lives and where we are heading and how we can build resilience to get there.

Team Coaching: A New Enterprise or Simply a Re-model of the Old?

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No individual Can Do it Alone

An increasing number of leaders are discovering that effectively running an organisation, whether a business unit, a small company, or a large corporation is harder than ever before. It isn’t however, that senior leaders are less skilled or less experienced than in the past. Nor are the teams that they lead in any way inferior to those of the past.

Instead, it is the changing roles of both the leader and team member which have now been reshaped in a cauldron of intense competition and relentless change that has come about through a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) World.

Almost everyone excepts that we live in a VUCA world, however in terms of the future, Peter Hawkins in his 2017 book Leadership Team Coaching writes, “If you think the last 10 years was a VUCA period of hyper-velocity change, then tighten your seat belt, summon up your courage and take a deep breath, for the next 10 years will almost certainly be even faster and more challenging.”

With the current emphasis on globalisation, productivity and growth, it’s all about scope, speed, and customer intimacy where leadership teams must consistently ensure that client’s needs are met (and often exceeded) and that such needs to happen immediately.

Senior leaders therefore not only need to run their business and run their teams, but at the same time, also focus on transforming the business and its wider system.

In short, it is absolutely clear that the top roles in any company or organisation outdistance the capabilities of any single person.

It is little wonder therefore that a growing number of senior leaders are either declining the top job or choosing to opt out. Their jobs are becoming relentless and all consuming and many are leaving because they see not only what it is doing to themselves, but to their family and loved ones. It is simply not worth it.

Added to the complexity and rapid change in our world is the perpetual myth that we believe that the person at the top is in fact, the star in shining armour who is going to lead us out of the wilderness and into the promised land. He or she will save the company and turn it around and make massive profits while at the same time doing so in an environmentally friendly and sustainable manner.

As the leadership guru Warren Bennis states in his 1997 book, Organizing Genius: The secrets of successful collaboration:
“Our mythology refuses to catch up with us. And so we cling to the myth of the Loan Ranger, the romantic idea that great things are usually accomplished by a larger-than-life individual working alone. Despite evidence to the contrary – including the fact that Michelangelo worked with a group of 16 to paint the Sistine Chapel – we still tend to think of achievement in terms of the Great Man or the Great Woman, instead of the Great Group.”

Interestingly, he wrote that over 20 years ago…and nothing has really changed. The myth is still being perpetuated. A tad slow to learn aren’t we?

What therefore, is a way around all this?

The Leadership Team

Theoretically, the obvious answer is that the Chief Executive, General Manager, Managing Director or the “boss” needs to draw on the rich pool of knowledge, talent, experience, entrepreneurship, perspective and creativity embodied within the senior leadership team.

Of course, every top executive surrounds themselves with a group of top advisors and managers who are meant to carry out the mission of the organisation.

In reality, though this does not really happen.

In fact, quite the opposite can occur. How does a top executive herd a group of cats where each “cat” has their own agenda and vision with little or no team focus, no shared direction and therefore, little, if any traction. Sure, it looks like lots of people are doing “stuff”, but is it the right stuff and is it really benefiting the organisation as a whole?

Typically too, each of these “cats” will certainly say that they are all committed to the organisation and are all pulling together, but the reality is that egos get in the way (eg., power, control, money) which plays out in office politics, in silos developing, in clichés, in playing favourites, gossip and inuendo, and in withholding information.

As Peter Senge from MIT Sloan School of Management is reported to have said:
“It is amazing how often you come across teams with an average intelligence of over 120, but the team functions at a collective intelligence of about 60.”

What happens for example within a leadership team that is under pressure and being overloaded, is that they will allocate responsibility for a specific stakeholder group to an individual director or senior executive. For instance, the financial director or corporate affairs director looks after the investors; the human resources director the employees; the sales director the customers; the compliance director the regulators and so on. It is easy to see then how this can lead to systematic stakeholder conflict in the leadership team that occurs between these various leaders and as such, a team that is meant to be fully functioning breaks down.

Ruth Wageman and her colleagues at Harvard University write in their 2008 book Senior Leadership Teams that in their research;
“Typically, there are two or three team members in any executive team who struggle with taking on an enterprise perspective rather than maintaining the traditional functional or operational orientation. These individuals may handle their individual leadership responsibilities very well and therefore be regarded by the leader as definite keepers. They are not derailers, but rather are leaders who are struggling a bit to make the transition to teamwork.”

Needless to say, if it is true that the group only moves as fast as its slowest members, then these two or three executives will cause the Executive Team to falter and they will inadvertently sabotage the progress of the group.

How then, does a team really become a team?

What is Team Coaching?

A critical skill now for any leader given that they are not able any longer to do it all themselves is to be able to create real teams that function really effectively. As was mooted above, this is easier said than done.

In other words, the key skill for leaders is not only to know how to coach their direct reports, but more importantly, be able to coach the whole leadership team. This means developing the team to move from a hub and spoke team dependent on the team leader, to one with much greater degrees of shared leadership and collective accountability and responsibility.

Much of the growing interest in team coaching has come from the realisation of the limits that can be achieved through individual coaching and leadership development, which can certainly help create strong individual leaders, but leave in place misaligned and poorly functioning leadership teams.

Jennifer Britton in her 2013 book, From One to Many points to two key definitions of team coaching, namely:
• “The team improve performance, and the processes by which performance is achieved, through reflection and dialogue.”
• “Coaching a team to achieve a common goal, paying attention to both of individual performance and group collaboration and performance.”

In their 2008 book in the Senior Leadership Teams, Ruth Hackman and her colleagues state that:
“Effective team coaching addresses the task-related behaviour of the team with the intent of helping it develop and sustain three things: (1) high levels of motivation for the team’s collaborative work, (2) effective collective approaches to team tasks, and (3) the ability to identify and deploy all the considerable talent that team members bring to the table. High quality team coaching is about the work that members must accomplish together.”

In their 2006 book, Coaching, Mentoring and Organizational Consultancy; Supervision and development, Hawkins and Smith defined team coaching as:
“…enabling a team to function at more than the sum of its parts, by clarifying its mission and improving its external and internal relationships. It is different therefore from coaching team leaders on how to lead their teams, or coaching individuals in a group setting.”

Team coaching therefore is a sustained process of dialogue, reflection, learning and action occurring over time.

What is the difference between Team Building, Team Development, Team Facilitation, Team Training, and Team Coaching?

With respect to teams, there have been a plethora of terms. Do they all mean the same? Are there differences? In short, the answer to the first question is “No” and the answer to the second is “Yes.” Let’s explore further.

Team building is an initial stage in the life of a team’s development (see below) where the team focuses on team bonding with the team members understanding, communicating and relating better to each other by getting to know each other more. This might involve using some psychometrics including personality profiling or perhaps outdoor team challenges or social activities as a way of improving or creating trust in the team.

Team development is any process carried out by a team, with or without assistance from outside, to develop its members’ capability and capacity to work well together on their joint task. For example, there is the familiar Tuckman model from 1965 of the various stages of teams including Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing as it goes about its development process. Team development can take several forms including outward-bound exercises to fun activities or away-days.

However, the research is clear that team-bonding and team-activity events have little impact on actual team performance (see Peter Hawkins, Leadership Team Coaching, 2017, Page 72) and do not translate into improved daily performance at the work front.

For Team Facilitation, Training and Coaching, see the table below:

 

What are the Benefits of Team Coaching?

As Jennifer Britton outlines in her 2013 book From One to Many, the table below outlines team coaching benefits:

 

What is the Optimal Group Size for a Team?

In terms of size, because team coaching is an intense kind of process, the International Coach Federation indicates that the group should be no more than 15 persons. However, many coaches surveyed in the Jennifer Britton book Effective Group Coaching, reported that the optimal size for them was between four to eight people.

In the Foundational Course for the Team Diagnostic Survey, both Ruth Wageman and Krister Lowe state that the number of linkages between team members dramatically increases as the team’s size grows. They argue that once a team begins to get above 6 or 7, the opportunity for process problems increases exponentially.

In short, keep the team size to single figures and anything above 8 or 9 in particular is going to create substantial issues.

Summary

No CEO or “boss” can make a leadership team great. Sadly though, experience shows that in the main, leadership teams do not provide the solidarity, focus and drive that is critical to taking a company or business to its optimal level of growth, productivity and profit. Individual alliances, agendas and egos typically get in the road and either slow the group down or sabotage its outcomes.

While leadership development courses have been around for decades and individual coaching has really only gained traction over the last two decades, neither of these have really been successful in guiding leadership or senior teams to effectively perform.

Team coaching therefore has now come into the fore over the past decade and especially over the last 5 to 10 years or so as an important means to allow teams to be fully productive where they are clear on their purpose and their structure and where they have mutual respect for each other, acknowledging each other’s talents and skills and providing support to each other as they strive to achieve the goal holding each other accountable.

Overall, team coaching is a relatively new model for allowing groups to effectively work together to produce outstanding results.

How to be Happy in Life: A Longitudinal Study over 75 Years

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Longitudinal studies are rare, especially those that span 75 years. So, what does a longitudinal study across 75 years tell us about how to lead a good life and be successful in life? What secrets did such a study reveal about a satisfying life?

The popular press would have us believe that it is all about becoming rich, living in the best house and driving the best car. It is about affluence and wealth. It’s about luxury holidays and dining in 5 star restaurants and hotels. But is it really?

This study is reported by Dr Robert Waldinger who is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development (see his TED Talk). He is currently the fourth Director of this project across almost four score years. The study began in 1938 where two groups of boys were studied from the Boston area.

One group were Sophomores (ie., 10thgrade in secondary school) from Harvard College and the other group were boys from a poor and disadvantaged area in Boston who lived in tenement housing with no hot or cold running water. Two very distinct groups.

Since the beginning of the study, these males have been interviewed every two years along with a range of assessments including medical reports, blood samples, brain scans, interviews with parents, and questionnaires. Once they moved into adulthood, the assessments also included videoing their relationship with their wives, as well as interviews with their children.

The study began with 724 men. Sixty are still alive and in their 90s. The research found that while some developed addictions such as alcoholism or developed mental health issues such as schizophrenia, others climbed the social ladder to the top. One in fact, was a US President.

How did some manage to struggle in life while others seemed to be very successful? What were the crucial factors for a good life?

The results were clear.

Firstly, it was discovered that healthy connections are positive for us as individuals. In contrast, loneliness creates a toxic environment where people are less happy, health declines earlier in mid-life, brain functioning deteriorates earlier and these people also live shorter lives. Within the USA at least, 1 in 5 persons report being lonely. What does that do for the health of a nation?

Secondly, it is not just about having friends or being in a committed relationship, it is about the quality of those close relationships. Living in a connected warm relationship is both positive and is protective. On the other hand, living in the midst of conflict such as a poor marriage, is bad for our health and is actually worse than getting divorced.

Interestingly, at age 50 years, the greatest predictor of health and satisfaction was those who were engaged in a positive relationship. Those most healthy in their 80s, were those most satisfied in their relationship in their 50s.

Thirdly, the research found that good, positive relationships not only protect our bodies, but also protect our brains. In other words, having secure and attached relationships where you can count on another person in times of need, when the going got tough, the other was there to support and care meant that our brain functioning in our 80s was significantly healthier. Those individuals who were in poor relationships had earlier memory decline.

So, what’s the message?

In an age where we want a quick fix to a happy and satisfying life and where there is the myth that it’s all about wealth and riches, fame and fortune, nothing is further from the truth.

Instead, a satisfying and healthy life is about positive relationships with family, friends and community.There is no quick fix or silver bullet. Relationships take time, effort and are hard work. Good relationships though are the answer to a good life.

The obvious next question then, is how do we create positive relationships with our spouse, friends or community?

With a spouse, it is about communicating which means listening to each other and making time to do so. It is about fighting fair and being able to have “crucial” conversations. This all means the television goes off or the smartphone is put away. What it also means is finding things to do together and maybe changing it up somewhat and trying out new things together. This might look like trying a new restaurant or place to eat, going to the movies together, enrolling for a course together or exploring a new holiday destination.

With friends, it is the same principle. It is about taking the trouble to care and be supportive. With the community, it is about giving which might suggest volunteering or helping out at the local sports club or at church or being involved with a community activity or charity.

It is all about connection – and doing so in a positive way.

The good news though is that none of this is beyond any of us.

Discipline in Schools: No surprises here

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The header for the article in “The Sunday Times” in Perth on 10th June, 2018 read “Be Firm with Us” (page 13).

A researcher, Helen Egeberg, from the School of Education at Edith Cowan University had surveyed adolescents in Year 10 from six Perth secondary schools (both public and private).

Results showed firstly, that more that 80% wanted teachers who ensured that behaviour in the classroom remained under control. Contrary to the popular notion that teenagers really just want to “muck around”, instead, the opposite was true. This comes as no surprise to some of us in the helping professions who understand that we all feel safe when behaviour is being controlled whether it is in the kindergarten, the schoolroom or the workplace. Adolescents want to both feel safe and be able get on with the process of learning.

Secondly, the results showed that more than 85% of the students also wanted teachers who cared about them as individuals and who respected their ideas and suggestions.

It’s the same age old principle that makes for effective parenting, effective teaching and effective managing, namely, the balance of both structure and boundaries as well as care and support.

It’s not hard really. It’s just a real pity that so many parents, teachers and bosses don’t get it.

 

What is Culture?

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I recently heard Jim Whalley (CEO, Nova Aerospace) give a keynote address at an awards ceremony and I was struck by some of his opening lines: “In real estate, it is about location, location, location.  In business, it is about culture, culture, culture.”  So what is culture exactly?

Herb Kelleher (Chairman, Southwest Airlines) says that, “Culture is what people do when no one is looking.”  

However, Ravasi and Schultz wrote in 2006 that organisational or corporate culture is a set of shared assumptions that guide what happens in organisations by defining appropriate behaviour for various situations.[1] Therefore, organisational culture affects the way people and groups interact with each other, with clients, and with stakeholders. In addition, culture may affect how much employees identify with a company or business. [2]

Tony Hsieh —
American internet entrepreneur & CEO of the online shoe & clothing store Zappos.com

It is also what is unspoken and what is “allowed to go through to the keeper”. In other words, culture can be explicit in the form of a set of company policies and values, but it can also be covert in terms of what is allowed to occur within the company.

According to Tony Hsieh, “Your company’s culture and your company’s brand are really just two sides of the same coin. Your culture is your brand.”

Incidentally, organisational culture is unique and distinctive for every organisation or company and is one of the hardest things to change.

In essence though, organisational or corporate culture is all about the values and practices shared by the group. It’s about “the way we do things around here.”

Culture is typically guided by the leader and the leadership group. As the saying goes, “the fish rots from the head”.[3] Hence, the converse is true too. Authentic and genuine leadership promotes trust in a business and that has a trickle down effect throughout the organisation.

But how does culture and strategy fit together? Well, fit together they do.

Indeed both culture and strategy need to run in parallel, side by side.

By viewing the diagram below, it is implicit here that both are absolutely critical to business success.

No-one but Peter Drucker could have said it better, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”.

It is also important to recognise that culture alone is not enough to drive change, improve performance, increase job satisfaction or lift the level of commitment in an organisation. Culture needs to be managed in conjunction with a viable overall business strategy.

Attention to culture therefore along with a sound business strategy allows the duality of these two facets to drive growth and profit.

Sadly however, the reality is that in most organisations, most of the focus, energy and effort goes into strategy, processes, procedures and policies. In workshops that I conduct, participants will say that anywhere from 75% to 95% of their time, energy and effort goes into Strategy and Strategy Planning.

Sadly, there is scant attention paid to culture and especially how to create a positive environment that allows individuals to thrive, be engaged and be empowered. Culture is often left in a sense, to fend for itself without anyone really driving to create a positive environment.

It’s like trying to ride a one-wheel bike by just focusing on Strategy alone. Much easier to balance and drive the business riding on the two wheels of both Strategy and Culture together. Why make it hard? 

 

For more information on culture, please see www.LeadershipCoaching.com.au

[Dr Darryl Cross is a clinical and organisational psychologist as well as a credentialed executive and personal coach. He is also an author, international speaker and sessional university lecturer. Dr Darryl assists people to find their strengths and reach their goals. Further information on Dr Darryl can be seen at www.DrDarryl.com and at www.LeadershipCoaching.com.au ]

Footnotes:

[1] See Ravasi, D., Schultz, M. (2006). Responding to organisational identity threats: Exploring the role of organisational culture. Academy of Management Journal, 49 (3), 433-458.

[2] [See Schrodt, P (2002) The relationship between organisational identification and organisational culture: Employee perceptions of culture and identification in a retail sales organisation. Communications Studies, 53, 189-202).

[3] This proverb dates back to 1674, when it appeared in a treatise called “An Account of the Voyage to New England”. It is based on the fact that fish do begin to spoil at the head. As a figure of speech, it means that any problem in an ogranisation can be traced back to the boss.

 

Researchers found that Behaviour in Secondary School predicts Income and Occupational Success later in Life

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How you behave in school predicts life success above and beyond family background, IQ and broad traits. That was the title of the academic article just published by M. Spengler and others in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2018) and published by the American Psychological Association.

In short, students who show interest in school report greater income 50 years later regardless of parental income or IQ.

Being a responsible student, maintaining an interest in school and having good reading and writing skills will not only help a teenager get good grades in high school, but could also be predictors of educational and occupational success decades later, regardless of IQ, parental socioeconomic status or other personality factors, according to the research.

“Educational researchers, political scientists and economists are increasingly interested in the traits and skills that parents, teachers and schools should foster in children to enhance chances of success later in life,” said lead author Marion Spengler, PhD, of the University of Tübingen. “Our research found that specific behaviors in high school have long-lasting effects for one’s later life.”

Perhaps this finding is not surprising. If a student learns some sound effective habits (eg., being organised, having good study habits, showing “stickability”) in primary and secondary school, then it might well be expected that those students would go on to be more successful than their peers.

However, what is going to ensure that we actually set up our adolescents for that success?

How do we do that when many would argue that the school system that we have is hardly “interesting” and is in fact, archaic. Some have asserted that the school system which was originally set up to teach the agricultural workers how to read and write as we moved in the industrial era to work in factories, really hasn’t changed much since that time. Some have rightly asserted that one of the biggest mistakes in our so-called enlightenment was to close down technical schools

How do we do that when many would argue that the school system that we now have is hardly “interesting” and is in fact, archaic. That school is out-dated and irrelevant.

Some have asserted that the school system which was originally set up to teach the agricultural workers how to read and write as we moved into the industrial era to work in factories, really hasn’t changed much at all since that time. Many have argued that schools are behind the times especially in relation to computers and technology and that many of the students are well ahead of their teachers when it comes to software and technology.

Some have rightly asserted that one of the biggest mistakes in our so-called enlightenment was to close down technical schools or colleges which were at the heartland of our trades. These colleges were an absolute boon for those students who didn’t really learn from a book, but were very much hands-on learners. A generation of apprentices came out of these technical colleges and they loved their work.

Where is it written that life is all about getting an ATAR score in Year 12 so we can all go to University? 

Many adults have asked why in school they weren’t taught important life skills like budgeting, opening a bank account, learning to be emotionally intelligent, understanding how to communicate and listen effectively, learning what leadership is all about, learning how to be innovative and entrepreneurial, learning how to start and manage a business and so on.

If the researchers are accurate about their findings that school behaviour and interest in school predicts later success, then as a community we’d best take a long hard look at whether we have the best school system for setting up our adolescents for that success. Many would argue that we don’t.

Gaslighting: The art of making you feel like you are losing it

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Origins of the Term 

Ingrid Bergman in the 1944 Film

“Gaslighting” is a term that has nothing to do with how we used to light our street corners and our homes. Nothing of the sort. Instead, the term originates from the play by Patrick Hamilton in 1938 called “Gas Light” together with the film adaptations in 1940 and 1944 which demonstrated the systematic psychological manipulation of a victim by her husband. In the story, the husband attempts to convince his wife and others that she is insane by manipulating small elements of the environment and insisting that she is mistaken, remembering things incorrectly, or delusional when she pointed out those changes.

The Scenario

As Ruth Ostrow recently reported in an article titled “Sanity Stealers” in “The Australian” on Friday, 26th January, 2018 (page 14), her situation went like this. She said, …”a recent experience really distressed me. It involved someone who was in the wrong. When I caught her out, instead of apologising, she somehow convinced me that I was to blame. She relayed events differently to what I had remembered, to the point I questioned my own sanity – and she accused me of creating a drama because I was feeling so guilty about my own bad behaviour. Hugh? I was so confused and kept going over events in my mind until I became convinced that I had remembered exactly what happened, which included catching her red-handed in an act of betrayal. Why had I ever doubted the facts for one minute?” Ostrow goes on to say that she had fallen for a deflective technique called gaslighting.

What is Gaslighting?

So what is it exactly? It’s the manipulative behaviour or technique of one person to make the other question their own reality and their intuition and then doubt themselves so that they become more dependent on the “gaslighter”.

The ultimate goal is for you to second-guess the following:

  • your choices (“Maybe I was wrong after-all”; “Maybe it was my fault”; Maybe I am to blame”),
  • your perceptions or interpretations (“Maybe I didn’t see it properly or maybe I did miss something”; “Maybe my memory is just not as good as it used to be”), and
  • your sanity (“Maybe I’m just going nuts”; “Maybe I really am just losing it”)

Doubting yourself in this way only serves to make you more dependent on the abuser. It’s a technique used by abusers, narcissists, dictators, con-artists, bullies, and cult leaders who all seek to gain control over you.

Sound familiar? Ever doubted yourself with someone in particular? Of course, we all have doubts at times, but sometimes there is a specific person who always makes us feel like we need to second guess ourselves.

For example, in some abusive relationships, spouses may flatly deny that they have been violent or lie about what happened. In parent-child relationships, especially where there is drug abuse or mental health issues such as personality disorders, then the parent might use gaslighting to keep the child quiet about the abuse or addiction. Where a child is emotionally, sexually or physically abused, the adult might use gaslighting to ensure that the child does not say anything to outsiders. In cases where the parents have had a nasty separation or divorce, one parent can use gaslighting to portray the other parent as “hopeless”, “irresponsible”, “immature” and a “total idiot” to the child, in order to get the child to side with the one parent against the other. In the work situation, you could have a manager who micro-manages for control, who changes their minds and then denies it, who lies about what happened or what occurred or who tries to align people against you.

Typically too, the gaslighting happens gradually in a relationship. It’s kind of like you get lured in and then in a sinister and insidious way, the gaslighting begins. The gaslighter may even initially camouflage the digs, put-downs and innuendos in humour. But they are barbs none the less. At first you may see it all as somewhat harmless or you reason that perhaps they are just having an “off day” or even that you explain it away by saying that “they’re stressed just now” or even “that’s just the way they are”. Occasionally too, you might be tempted to excuse them by saying that you’ll change them or that somehow “they’ll come round”. None of this is true however – they are gaslighters! Ironically too, your attempts to let them off the hook only means that you are gaslighting yourself. Think about that for a moment…

What are the Signs of Gaslighting?

In Psychology Today, Dr Stephanie Sarkis among others, writes that gaslighters generally use the following techniques:

  1. They tell blatant lies.

You know it’s a lie, but they say it so convincingly that it is kind of unsettling. If they can tell lies like this, what can you really believe about them? This keeps you unsteady and throws you off ‘centre’ and starts to tip your world upside down which is their goal.

  1. They constantly criticize you or find fault.

Nothing is ever good enough. They constantly chip away at your self-esteem and get you to really doubt yourself. No matter what you do, you didn’t do it properly or no matter what choice you made it was wrong. All this negativity adds up over time and lays the groundwork for the gaslighter to play with your perception of reality. This also means that the things in which you were once confident, you also start to doubt. “Maybe I never was really good at that after-all.”

  1. They blame you for their behaviour.

Yes, it’s all your fault. Every disagreement or argument in the end boils down to it being your fault. You’re to blame. You’re the one who created this situation. You find yourself constantly apologising in order to keep the peace and trying to gain some sort of harmony. For example, you point out a poor behaviour or their negative emotions and suddenly, you’re the one who is “dramatizing” it all or “over-reacting” or just being “overly sensitive”. You can’t win, and so in the end, you shut down. This is designed to keep you mute, and for you to question your own grip on things.

  1. They deny they ever said or did something, even if you have proof.

At some level, you know that they did something or that you heard something, but they out and out deny it. Their denials are such that as a reasonable person yourself, you start to doubt your reality. Maybe there was another interpretation to what you saw or heard. The more that this occurs, the more you question your reality and you start to accept theirs.

  1. They use what is near and dear to you as ammunition.

They know for example, that your work is important to you or your children are very important to you and they know of course, that your identify is fundamental to who you are. For work, they might state that you only have the job because the company feels sorry for you or they couldn’t find anyone else to do the job. In regards to your children, you say that you should never have had them. They tell you that you are a worthy person, but it’s just that you have this long list of negative traits and poor behaviours. They undermine who you are as a person.

  1. Their actions do not match their words.

These gaslighters do not have integrity as people, so you’ll see that their words and their actions are not congruent. Ultimately, don’t believe the words. Words are cheap. Actions speak louder than words.

  1. They throw in positive praise to confuse you.

While gaslighters are intent on bringing you down and undermining you, on occasion they will say something positive about what you did. Again, because you are a reasonable person, you cut them some slack saying, “Maybe they aren’t so bad after all”. But they are. This see-saw effect of negativity mixed with the occasional positivity only serves to keep you off-kilter again and unbalanced.

  1. They know that confusion weakens people

When things are unstable and you can’t count on consistency, you start to question everything. It’s like walking around on egg-shells. This is exactly the goal of the gaslighter. The more unsteady that you become, the more that you rely on them to feel “stable”.

  1. They project onto others.

Whatever they are accusing you of doing such as abusing alcohol or cheating on the relationship is a ploy to deflect attention away from them. They project onto so you find yourself so busy defending yourself that you get distracted from the gaslighter’s behaviour. The truth be known that whatever they are projecting onto you is probably a very good indication that they are dong exactly that ie., drinking way too much or having an affair.

  1. They try to align people against you.

As you’re aware of by now, gaslighters are master manipulators of their environment and they will find people who will stand by them no matter what and they use these people against you. Remember that they are constant liars so they will say things like, “This person knows that you’re hopeless too” or “This person knows that you’re not correct”. Now, it may well be that these people didn’t say anything of the kind, but nevertheless, this throws you and you’re not sure who to believe. If you don’t know who to trust anymore, then this can lead you straight back to the gaslighter.

  1. They tell you that everyone else is a liar.

By asserting that everyone else is a liar including family, friends, workmates or even the media, it threatens your reality. What’s the truth really? Because you are reasonable and genuine, you’ve never known anyone with the audacity to say such things, so maybe they are right. Maybe they do have a sense of the real “truth” after-all? So maybe you need to turn to them for the “correct” information – which of course, is not correct at all.

  1. They tell you and others that you’re crazy.

Finally, Dr Sarkis writes that this is a master technique because if the gaslighter can discredit you to the point of your sanity, then no-one is going to believe you in relation to the gaslighter’s poor, inconsistent, and inappropriate behaviour.

What are the Personal Signs that you’ve been Gaslighted?

According to psychoanalyst and author Dr Robert Stern who wrote “The Gaslight Effect“, there are some tell-tale signs for the individual caught up with a gaslighter:

  1. You are constantly second-guessing yourself.
  2. You start to question if you are too sensitive.
  3. You often feel confused and have a hard time making simple decisions.
  4. You find yourself constantly apologising.
  5. You can’t understand why you’re so unhappy.
  6. You often make excuses for your partner’s behaviour.
  7. You feel like you can’t do anything right.
  8. You often feel like you aren’t good enough for others.
  9. You have the sense that you used to be a more confident, relaxed and happy person.
  10. You withhold information from friends and family so you don’t have to explain things.

What to do?

Of course, it goes without saying that if you’re in such a relationship, then you are in danger emotionally and psychologically and you need to realise that such a relationship could impact you for some extended time (months or a few years) even if you manage to get out of it because of the significant effects on your mental health.

Step 1 is to make a stand for yourself and realise that you are your own best friend and that you owe it to yourself (if not to your children and family if you have any) that your partner is dysfunctional and unhealthy and that this is a toxic relationship. Call it for what it is. Never wait for them to “come to their senses” – it just won’t happen. They will stay in denial and they will never ever admit that they are gaslighting. So, give up on any awareness or confessions on their part.

Step 2 is to get out as quickly as you can and as safely as you can. It might mean that you don’t give any hint of leaving, but you just go. You cannot save them or get them to therapy (remember that there’s nothing wrong with them!), but you can save yourself. You’re worth saving! Get some trusted friends and family to support you and help you to leave.

Step 3 is to get therapeutic help and support. You may well need it after the battering you’ve taken over months or years of this toxic relationship. Therapy helps you to see things in perspective once again and it helps to have an independent opinion that you did the right thing by leaving.

Step 4 is critical in that you never look back. Don’t even think about second chances for your partner. Instead, focus on recovering and re-discovering yourself and going forward in positive ways. There is a big world out there waiting for you and you owe it to yourself to realise your real potential.

 

[Dr Darryl Cross is a clinical and organisational psychologist as well as a credentialed executive and career coach along with being an accredited family business advisor. He is also an author, facilitator, international speaker and university lecturer. Dr Darryl assists people and leaders to find their strengths and reach their goals as well as grow their businesses, become more productive and create positive cultures. Further information on Dr Darryl can be seen at www.DrDarryl.com and www.LeadershipCoaching.com.au he can be contacted at [email protected]]

Giving Negative Feedback: The stressor for managers and leaders

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What Commonly Happens

In the coaching work that I do, it is certainly true to say that almost all leaders and managers who I encounter want to create a positive culture for their staff. They want a good team environment.

However, it is also true that the one thing that seems to get in the road and causes leaders and managers the most stress is when they need to have crucial or challenging conversation with their staff where it is important to provide negative or corrective feedback or where there are disagreements or perhaps problems that need to be addressed.

Typically, I find that most leaders simply “hope” that the problem will go away and will privately confide to me that this is certainly what they trust might happen. Unfortunately, that rarely happens. Instead, the problem or issue only gets worse and magnifies over time which has the impact of eroding a positive culture, creating poor morale as well as affecting the reputation of the leader concerned and perhaps also reducing productivity and efficiency.

I’m also acutely aware that most leaders and managers will say to me that they do not know how to start the crucial conversation before launching into delivering any negative feedback. Again, there is a tendency for leaders to tiptoe around the issue and talk about the latest football results, or the weather, or some other current topic. Instead of delivering the feedback or pointing out someone’s shortcomings or perhaps identifying poor behaviour, managers typically soft-pedal around the issue essentially trying to avoid offending the staff member. This only serves to undermine the trust in the relationship as well as undermine the leader’s reputation for being genuine and authentic.

Not only do they not want to offend people and their team, but at a dynamic level, there is also the sense that they want everyone to like them and everyone to think that they are a good leader. Leadership is not about winning a popularity contest.

Ironically however, failing to provide effective feedback and skirting around issues only means that others (including the so-called offender), see the leader as incompetent or weak and not particularly effective.

Anecdotally, I have also had leaders tell me that as a way of trying to remedy the problem they perhaps thought it would be okay to provide hints to the individual staff member without actually addressing the issue. Otherwise, they may refer the matter to Human Resources to deal with, or they may refer the matter to the Employee Assistance Program.

The Remedy

So how do you communicate in a straightforward genuine manner without creating defensiveness or hostility from the staff member? How can you discuss with the staff member in such a way that you do not intentionally offend them? Professor Kim Cameron in his 2013 book titled, “Practicing Positive Leadership” provided an important distinction.

One of the most important attributes of supportive communication is the ability to be descriptive rather than evaluative in the delivery of the message.

In other words, evaluative communication makes a judgement, provides an opinion, or places a label on individuals or their behaviour. For example, comments such as, “You did it all wrong” or “It’s your fault” or “You are ineffective” are all evaluative in style. They do not suspend judgement. They are generally critical and fault finding.

Needless to say, individuals who receive such evaluative statements generally feel attacked and tend to retreat and become defensive or occasionally aggressive or hostile. Naturally enough, they push back and defend themselves by proclaiming that they are not wrong or it was not their fault or that they are very capable as individuals.

In contrast, descriptive comments are more objective in kind and allow the leader to be more congruent and authentic in the delivery of the message. Descriptive communication involves three steps:

  1. Describe the event, behaviour, or circumstance objectively,
  2. Describe outcomes and/or feelings and not the other person’s attributes,
  3. Suggest alternative solutions that could resolve the issue.

Let’s take each of these in turn.

Firstly, describe objectively your observation of the event that occurred or the behaviour that you consider needs to be modified. It is important that this description should identify elements of the behaviour that can be confirmed objectively. In other words, you need to be able to see or hear the behaviour. For example, “You have been 15 to 20 minutes late for work each day this week” or “Your report missed the deadline”.

Secondly, describe the reactions of yourself or others to the behaviour and describe the consequences of the behaviour. For example, “When you are late to work, it disappoints me that you are not adhering to the team’s guidelines and it sends a message to the rest of the team that a lack of punctuality is tolerated and it’s probably fair to say, that it’s not fair on the rest of the team either who do arrive on time or are early to work” or “Missing the deadline, means that others in your team are now penalised and need to work back in order to compile the data necessary and that certainly is not good for team morale or for effective teams”.

Thirdly, suggest a more acceptable alternative or solution unless of course, the staff member can come up with a better solution. This kind of discussion focuses on possible solutions and not on the person and as such, avoids accusations. It also helps the other person save face and avoid feeling personally criticised because the behaviour is not attached to their self-esteem. The discussion preserves self-esteem because it focuses on something that is controllable and upon which both the leader and the staff member can possibly agree. Therefore, the emphasis is on finding a solution that is acceptable to both people rather than figuring out who is right and who is wrong and who should change and who should not.

Summary

In short, the three steps of descriptive communication are as follows:

  1. Here it is what I just experienced, saw or heard;
  2. Here is how I feel about it, how others feel about it, and here are the consequences or the impact;
  3. Here is an alternative solution that might be more acceptable.

Further Tips

A really good rule of thumb in this area of crucial conversations is to avoid using the word “you” in providing feedback. “You” only serves to target people who then become defensive and naturally want to push back or defend their cause. Instead, using “I” as much as possible is important. As outlined above, the leader targets the behaviour, the event, the consequences and the standard that has not been met as well as focusing on possible solutions.

However, it also really important to state that once a descriptive communication has been delivered that it is important for the leader to stop and listen intently to what the staff member has to say. If the leader is not able to effectively listen, then the communication exercise for crucial conversations will be greatly diminished. Effective listening is not something that leaders typically do well. This is one of the reasons why I authored the book, “Listen Up Now” (www.ListenUpNow.com.au) for business leaders.

Because leaders are often stuck about how to begin such a conversation, there are a number of ways by which the leader can introduce the crucial conversation including the following:

  • “I’m hesitant about raising this issue because I don’t want it to be blown out of proportion or be misrepresented in any way”
  • “I’d like to talk to you about something – will this time work?”
  • Can I give you some feedback?”

Once the leader has delivered the descriptive communication, then the way of ending the three-step delivery is to finish with something like:

  • “What I’d like now is [state the solution], but maybe there is something I haven’t thought of or I’ve missed”
  • “Next time, I’d like to see this happen…”
  • “What thoughts do you have now on how this might be resolved?”
  • “How can we prevent this from happening again?”
  • “Instead, can you do…”

Leaders need to become proficient in knowing how to have crucial conversations according to the formula and recipe listed above.

Honest communication and feedback is one of the hallmarks of not only effective leadership, but of creating a positive culture where people trust each other to be able to give and receive appropriate feedback.

Yes it takes courage, but the more times a leader becomes practised in these crucial conversations the more effective will be their team, the better the team moral and the more enhanced the leader’s standing.

 

[Dr Darryl Cross is a clinical and organisational psychologist as well as a credentialed executive and career coach along with being an accredited family business advisor. He is also an author, facilitator, international speaker and university lecturer. Dr Darryl assists people and leaders to find their strengths and reach their goals as well as grow their businesses, become more productive and create positive cultures. Further information on Dr Darryl can be seen at www.DrDarryl.com and he can be contacted at [email protected]]