Background

It can be quite frustrating when we have to deal with someone who is considered “overly defensive” or more often than not comes across that way, can’t it? Particularly if they are in leadership positions and use their rank to “enforce” certain positions.  In my early corporate years as a trainee manager in Germany I remember the cynical remark often made by younger people of our less than flexible managers that: “when you walk into the boss’ office, you still have your own opinion, however by the time you’ve left his office you usually have to have theirs”. And they were so good at defending their own views, weren’t they? Those of you a little older can probably still remember and relate, right?

Leadership

So if we lament about defensiveness in the context of leadership, then unfortunately it often comes up in conjunction with either weak personalities who “hide behind their rank”, or conversely with personalities that are overly strong and dislike being challenged. (Do you notice that both perspectives around defensiveness are quite negative?)

Both are often quite difficult for younger or more junior people to figure out or to deal with. Much political savvy combined with the necessary diplomacy is required to make such leaders aware of those traits, let alone challenge them and get them to do something about that.

We have all heard (and probably experienced) the younger generations, like the “Gen Y’s” that “vote with their feet” rather than tolerate such leadership.

I have coached a number of professionals in how to best go about making a working relationship with such leaders work better (for both parties), however today I’d like to discuss this from the perspective of what the leader who is afflicted by such behaviour can do about it.

Being too defensive

There is a fine line between protecting a position you need to protect to being defensive, isn’t there?  We are all driven by different agenda’s, by KPI’s and by incentives, share options etc which in turn are all driven by the result we achieve. So protecting a position is normal business. But there is a difference between leading resources to an outcome and being defensive.

Being defensive is a style of behaviour. It is an attitude.  One dead give-away is that overly defensive people often don’t listen. They are probably also not overly driven by “win-win” in their outlook, but probably rather “I win – you lose”, which are often fostered by defensive thinking and defensive behaviour. Many defensive people don’t appreciate how having  heard or listened to another person’s view can enrich their own position with their additional perspectives.

Most defensive people aren’t actually aware of their defensiveness ”being a problem”. It is often a typical personality related behaviour that plays out unconsciously. In that context it can also be indicative of masking self perceived inadequacies that can still emanate from our conditioning. That might manifest from lacking self confidence or an overly present need for significance. It is in this space of “undoing decades of conditioning” that I have helped many of my clients achieve their biggest breakthroughs, where they have unlearned “bad” habits and replaced them with “good” or certainly more supportive and sustaining habits attitudes and behaviours.

So why do we want to remove defensive behaviour? In my experience it is because it influences the reaction and behaviour of those around us, and it can get in the way of some great solutions or outcomes.

Digging in versus “what if…”

I have learned that if you want your people to “dig in” and stick to their guns, just be defensive. That way most people will be more closed and protective of their respective positions and in my experience also more prone to nitpicking.

If you want more constructive engagement, why not try trusting in yourself and bring an open mind to the table, wondering what the others can bring to the table and what you might learn. I have learned that people around you will get more motivated by possibility thinking rather than constrained by scarcity of thinking or protective or defensive leadership behaviour.

I had a CEO client of mine take the trouble to call me all the way in Germany this week to share with me how he had made some of the adjustments and how he had tried some of the techniques he and I had discussed in a Board meeting he had just finished running. He said it was “the best and most constructive meeting he had led in that organization” and was inspired by the positive and constructive engagement of his Board members compared to most past meetings. I am about to share some of those techniques with you below.

Having to know it all

Leaders often feel that they need to be seen to know everything; that their people always look to them for all the answers. They often (unconsciously) feel that they will look weak if they don’t know something or perhaps don’t have a solution towards something. This can be just as valid in front of customers as it can in front of staff or peers.

I know that this was a major breakthrough for me personally. It may well have been a cultural thing too, but I always felt pressured to have to know everything, particularly in the boss’ office or in front of the Board. It took a coach to make me aware of this and to teach me Letting Go. I’ve done that and so I know that it can be taught and can be learned, if you are willing to learn that.

So how do you prevent being overly defensive?

Awareness. Learning to recognize when you are, and when you are not, and being curious about the difference.And when you do notice your using that behaviour, why not use the palm touching your nose technique I described in my earlier blog Getting Started?

Asking someone you trust to point out your defensive behaviour to you when it occurs (one on one, of course). I’ve learned that it is easier to deal with a real example to which you can then intellectually explore alternatives or better responses to, and then use that as an example or even a metaphor to be leveraged across other situations when they arise.

The learning leader and the learning organization

One of the first things I needed to internalize was that it is OK to not know something. In fact, I learned that the perception of having to know everything or having to have an answer to everything prevented me from learning new things. I learned to “become curious” and to wonder about many things. I learned to wonder how “John” (who was acknowledged to be good at what I was struggling with) might do in the situation I found myself in, and how I could emulate that.

I learned that with the right attitude that allows others to bring forward their solutions and then only adding mine opened the door to engagement and constructive conversation that ended with the choice of the best solution(s), and not the personal defense of just one (my one).

This is also the foundation of a learning organization. Are people encouraged to be curious and to “have a go”? The acid test is when they do and get it wrong. Will they be punished for getting it wrong, or will they be encouraged for “having a go” and allowing the mistake to bring the organization one step closer to another advantage over its competitors?

The old German saying: “der Fisch stinkt vom Kopf”, which loosely translates into “the fish smells from the head” suggests this learning organization attitude starts with the boss’ attitude towards this. And so I have worked with a number of “bosses” to help them learn how to let this “having to know it all” go.

If you are a leader, may I ask you to do a quick check-in with yourself right now and rate yourself on this?

Listening instead of feeling compelled to speak

And so one of the next steps is also to become aware of how much “telling” we use in our communications and how much “asking” we practice. Strong leaders are known to prefer telling. It can be quite a challenge to transition that style into asking more questions to guide the other party to their preferred view, rather than to “tell them”. I wrote about this in my blog Are you listening?. People don’t like to be told. They want to contribute; to be part of the solution and have played a part in the results. Telling prevents that. Asking them for their insights motivates and engages them. But then we need to listen to what they have to say…. and also be willing to take it on board. If we ask and even listen, but then ignore their views, they won’t engage. Why should they?

We can’t hear other perspectives if we aren’t listening. Most professionals and leaders think our value proposition is our skill or experience or knowledge. Most of us are so busy positioning ourselves or wanting to show our clients how much we know and how good a solution we can develop for them that we come across as not interested in them or their message or their needs because we aren’t listening; and so we might miss their message altogether. I believe as professionals we need to earn the right to provide our insights and solutions when we have first completely listened to our customer to outline what they want and what they feel. That entails taking our eyes off ourselves and rather putting them on those we serve or those we lead and then guide them to the desired outcome.

Clients and staff want to be heard, to get something off their chest or get us to hear something we need to hear. And what do many of us do? We interrupt them with our ideas based on what we think they are going to say long before they have finished saying it. Guilty?

So what?

So where do you position yourself on what we have discussed so far? Do you fall more into the defensive category or are you already further down the track towards a more open and engaging style of leadership and communication?

Do you think that you can develop an awareness around your attitude and your style and noticing how you act and react towards certain situations? And with that awareness do you think you can adjust your style for your benefit, for that of those you lead or work with or serve and for that of your organization? So that you experience the same outcome as my CEO client did?

Do you think it will be a worthwhile excercise; that The Price and the Prize will make it worthwhile? And if you think you could or you think I Should but aren’t sure whether or how you can, why not engage a coach to guide you through this important transition?

What if you could?

Are you “on the move” towards your goals or perhaps “stuck in the groove” of complacency? How’s your “get up and go”? Or has it perhaps “got up and gone”? How excited are you about the New Year 2012 ahead? Or is it a case of “here we go again”? It can be either way as we reflect on a year gone by and anticipate what might lie ahead in the year to come, can’t it? Time for a quick attitude check. Because it is just the way of looking at this that matters, right?

Looking back

So if you look back on 2011, how do you feel about it? Satisfied? Enthused? Inspired? Tired? Disappointed? Glad it’s all over? Or was it that good (or perhaps even that bad) that you can’t wait for 2012 to begin? I have certainly found elements of all of those descriptions in my past year however, perhaps because of my now acquired disposition, I tend to look for and find the good in everything, even those that went less well than anticipated. What can we learn from those, good or bad?

Isn’t that what looking back is meant to be about? I would certainly suggest that there is little point in “wallowing” in what was or wasn’t. You may remember my rear-view mirror versus windscreen metaphor, where I suggest that the ratio of time spent looking back versus time spent looking forward should be about the same ratio as the respective sizes of the mirror versus the windscreen?

Looking forward

At the start of a New Year, we always seem to look forward to the year ahead and express what we would like it to be and do for us that will be different from the last one(s), right?

So what is it that you really look forward to in 2012? I’m talking about just a few really big picture beings, doings or havings that really matter to you.

I’m really excited about our (particularly lunar) new year.  It is the year of the dragon and both my wife and I were born in the year of the dragon, so we have chosen to interpret that as “having all the stars aligned for us” in this coming year. We will still spend the last month of the old lunar year working and travelling abroad in January and then plan to “hit the ground running” when we are back early February.

In my blog Managing Expectations I wrote about the role that our expectations can play in how our reality plays out. Hence our expectations of 2012 are that it is “going to be ripper year”!

What do you believe?

Leaping out of bed

In the blog Leaping out of bed I speak about that enthusiastic feeling we experience when we wake up on the morning that we are flying out to some exciting holiday destination. It colours your whole attitude for that day, doesn’t it?

It’s a little like the late Steve Jobs’ famous speech to Harvard university students way back when he spoke  about how (obviously influenced by the terminality of his illness diagnosis) he would look at himself in the mirror each day and check in with himself whether he was doing on that day that which would be befitting of his last day alive. Remember that 7 years passed between his diagnosis and his eventual passing and look at what he still achieved in that timeframe.

A lot of what this is referring to is our basic attitude.

Realistic goals

Would you agree with me that shooting for something worthwhile and something that excites you works a whole lot better when you have set a goal. I wrote all about that in my goals triplogy: Why set goals?,  Setting Goals: The How To and  Goals: Keep on keeping on.

What I’d like to talk about today though is how being unrealistic in our goal setting can in fact be counterproductive. If we set the goals too high, they can intimidate. If we set them too low, they don’t suffice to challenge us or “get us off the couch”.

Either of these unrealistic situations can (and often do) lead to Procrastination; which means we choose (unconsciously) not to get started in the first place, so that we can’t fail. The irony is that we procrastinate in order to avoid beating ourselves up for something we didn’t do, which was something we were in control of setting and doing all by ourselves anyway; circular equation, right?

One of the biggest mistakes people make is found in setting New Year’s resolutions. For example, we spend the Festive season (over) indulging and put on weight. Then we resolve to lose that weight in the first 2 weeks of getting back to work, and while we’re at it, we might as well resolve to lose the 5 or 10 kg we were overweight by before we started – all at the same time.  It’s just never going to happen, is it?

Again my recommendation is to pick 2 or 3 big picture expectations and set some achievable goals but nonetheless with a bit of a stretch. What I found works best if we break that down into a few steps along the way. That way, when we reach the interim step we recognize or acknowledge that and are inspired to keep going.

Conversely if we miss that step, we are only talking about an achievable small piece which we can shoot for again, rather than giving up on the whole goal altogether and “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”.

I can feel a number of you nodding your head knowingly as you read this….

The stationary vehicle

My biggest learning from all of this is that whether you set goals or not, whether they were realistic or not, it all boils down to one simple thing: getting started.

I have often said that you can’t direct a stationary vehicle. I encounter that a lot in my coaching. Until someone has “visibly started moving towards something they want”, I am unable to coach or guide them. You cannot direct a stationary vehicle.

So what’s my point? Get started. Stick with it for a while. Find some support that will encourage you, not laugh at you or listen to your excuses. But most of all? Get started.

My experience is that this one simple choice is the mother of all initiative. I can carry the material for a blog around in my head all week, but until I actually sit down and start writing, nothing happens. And when I do, “it all just comes out”.

I spoke about this in the blog Momentum where if we just “have a go” and get started, we start building and gathering momentum towards our goal. Then its suddenly a case of there we go – job done, and we are allowed to feel good about ourselves rather than having to “beat ourselves up”.

So what?

So how are you going to approach this New Year 2012?

Are you just going to let it happen like:  “It’s going to happen anyway, so I might as well just let it play out”? That’s taking a passive, let’s wait and see approach, right? That way you can’t blame yourself because “it wasn’t my planning or my making”, right?

Or are you going to play an active part in your year of life ahead? Are you going to get started by setting some goals or expectations or big picture anticipations, or whatever you choose to call the things you want?  Are you going to start with some positive images of what you will want to look back on at the end of 2012?

And then are you going to simply get started on a few big ones that really matter to you?

Easy to say; much harder to actually bring about. Here’s a question just for you: what are you going to do differently this year to all the other years that is going to make absolutely sure you won’t look back on the year in regret but that you will look back on it inspired and satisfied?

Perhaps if you are really serious about this, you’ll engage a coach or a mentor to help hold you accountable to achieving these things that really matter to you? If they really matter, wouldn’t they be worthy of such an investment?

I wish you a great 2012.

Have you ever been caught between a rock and a hard place in your career, where your integrity was challenged? How did you respond? What’s your track record? Any disappointments in your own standards or are you “squeaky clean”? Tough question?

Background

Wikipedia defines Integrity as a concept of consistency of actions, values, methods, measures, principles, expectations, and outcomes. In ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty and truthfulness or accuracy of one’s actions. Integrity can be regarded as the opposite of hypocrisy in that it regards internal consistency as a virtue, and suggests that parties holding apparently conflicting values should account for the discrepancy or alter their beliefs.

I’m sure that if you saw the list of values of most people that you interact with, honesty and integrity would feature in their top 10 values, agree? I have certainly found that to be true of probably every client of mine that has done a values excercise, as outlined in the blog Values.

And I’m pretty sure that I would have most of you nodding when I posed the above questions in the introduction, right? I guess that’s one of the things with values, namely that there will be times when we / they are challenged.

Values in action

A few weeks ago I wrote about my friend’s wife being “marched to the door” in Secure job?, and have subsequently been appalled (but not surprised) at how that story played out. After a couple weeks of “letting her stew”, she was “invited to meet with HR” where she was presented with a bunch of trumped up charges of what she was supposed to have perpetrated.  (She had been personally and legally coached to “just listen” and not respond). The absolute audacity and blatant global corporate organisational arrogance of the attitude displayed floored me. They actually acknowledged that “they did everything wrong” and that if she chose to challenge their separation in court, that she would probably win, but that they would make it long and ugly for her, and was that what she really wanted?

Now many of you reading this will be able to relate at some level, where you may have seen or experienced something similar in your careers; perhaps not to that extent, or maybe just as severe or maybe even worse?

Organisation or individual manager?

Upon reflection, would you agree with me that this kind of unsavoury behaviour wouldn’t in any way be written in any policy or officially or publicly condoned by the organisation? Their corporate citizenship and their public image and marketing spin would portray them as “squeaky clean”. But it is performed by individuals in the name of the organisation, isn’t it?

The irony is, that these managers (I struggle to call them leaders) probably wouldn’t appreciate such behaviour towards them themselves, and they probably wouldn’t agree that to be part of their value system. But they carried it out nonetheless. Why? Probably because someone “up the line” had exerted pressure upon them and expected the outcome, leaving it to them how they actually did it. A tough “rock and a hard place” to find yourself in. And yet, under massive pressure to do whatever it takes to satisfy that / those boss(es) demands.

In my experience there will always be times where our values will be challenged; probably a universal truth, right? This is where our resolve is tested; where the saying “every person has their price” is played out. This is where “the rubber meets the road” and we get to see whether this value is:

• one that we aspire to
• or one that we call one of our values because others “expect” us to have such a value
• or whether it is a fair dinkum value that we will hold true to.

In Values I wrote about living in congruence with our values, the absence of which can lead to serious illness.

Consequences

I can remember a situation in my own corporate career where I found myself in such a situation whereby changes in management (and therewith to the approach to certain commitments that had been made) necessitated me taking a position in a vendor negotiation that went completely contrary to what I knew was morally right and to what my own personal values suggested. I made a point of taking a colleague into that negotiation with me and am not proud at all about the result we “had to” negotiate.

From my earliest training, I was taught that vendors form a very important part of the business value chain and supply chain, and that a partnership approach often goes a long way towards both parties winning and growing together. That formed part of my belief system (of course I am not that naïve to believe that always works) and those of you that I have worked with or have experienced my negotiation skills grooming and training will know that this “fairness” attitude drives my style and I am proud of my results track record.

Back to the example however, you can imagine how much “personal pain” this situation caused me, and it wasn’t long after this, that I left that organisation. Consequences.

There comes a time where we simply have to “draw a line in the sand” and make a judgement call about “what is right or wrong” for us in our life and our life’s work, and what we are prepared to put up with or stand up for.

Now I’m not suggesting we should act with impetuosity and ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater”, but I am saying that we could use of intuition and our integrity-meter to help us assess what position we take to a certain situation, or series of situations, and make a call as to what is acceptable and what is not.

To thine own self be true

Shakespeare wrote this so long ago. I was just reunited almost 45 years later with a school friend via the Internet, and really look forward to meeting him again personally when we are in Germany in January. He mentioned that he had studied languages after school and then started teaching. He said he lasted 2 weeks and realized there was no way he was going to do this for the rest of his life. He subsequently became a cameraman and has some fascinating stories of covering events all over the world.

What a change in direction. But you will probably relate well to what I’m about to say next. How many of us, after having invested so much time and energy (and probably money) into an education or professional qualification would have the guts to do what he did? How many of us know people that are still in “that wrong profession” today after a lifetime of regret or simply “settling for second best”?

I think this is a great personal example of where strength of character and listening to your intuition and standing up for what you believe in worked out magnificently for him.

Leadership

But I would like to go back to the previous unsavoury examples. This is particularly important if you are in a leadership position. What is “your line in the sand”? What is “your price” by which you and your behaviour can be influenced to do the wrong thing – to be “bought”?

Where does the breaking point at which you will no longer “do the right thing” have to be for you to cross that threshold? Rhetorical questions indeed, but deeply personal ones that go to the core of each of our own personal integrity.

Easy to judge others. Not so easy when we find ourself in such a situation, right? Righteous indignation when it occurs to us as individuals, but much harder to deal with when we are put in a position to have to act it out “in the name of…”

So what?

And so I’d like to ask you – if you are in a leadership position – to reflect on where you stand in this conversation? If you haven’t been confronted with such situations (yet), it may be a matter of time before you may be. You may never be. But how will you react if and when you are?

Will you have the courage of your convictions to stick to your values? We are the only ones that have to live with the person we see in the mirror.

Tough call, I know. But one worth considering in preparation in case it does come your way someday. And if you are feeling unsure, now or when a situation arises, why not engage the services of a coach to help you work through the options with so many more perspectives than you might come to yourself?

What if you could?

How visible are you in your role? Do you prefer to work alone or together with others? If you are a leader, are you always seen in your office or are you known to be “around your troops?” Do you wait for your people to come to you or are you more out and about and amongst them? What is your preferred style? How comfortable are you amongst your people, or is your office a “safer place” for you?

Background

Merriam-Webster defines “walkabout” as a 1908 coinage that refers primarily to “a short period of wandering bush life engaged in by an Australian aborigine as an occasional interruption of regular work”.

Obviously that is not what I am referring to here, but the term has become quite well used in Australia. I want to discuss this in the business leadership style context that highlights management’s exposure amongst those that they lead.

Up the Organisation

I was first introduced to this concept when decades ago I read the then AVIS CEO, Robert Townsend’s book “Up the Organization”. There are a number of his sayings and doings that I still regularly quote from today which I will refrain from doing here, but one stood out for me that I wish to draw on here: he chose not to have an office. An EA yes, but no office. His approach was that as CEO his place was either:

• with his clients or client organisations
•  walking about his operations or with his people
• In the Boardroom (or other meeting rooms) challenging, debating and implementing what he had heard, learned and observed.

Leadership

There are probably not many topics written about as much as leadership, and of course what I’m talking about here is about leadership – style.

One of the best metaphors in this topic’s context is the military one of the general’s style.

Some are known to be the master strategists who, from the safe distance of their command post tent, direct the operations committing their troops to their destinies to drive the required outcomes -  Leading from behind.

Others (who may be just as strategic) prefer to be out in the trenches rubbing shoulders with their men, inspiring them with their presence and their encouragement – leading from within or even from the front.

Which of these two scenarios do you think the troops are more fired up in or feel more valued? Which do you think will “do whatever it takes”? Literally prepared to die for him?

Neither of these is necessarily right or wrong or better or worse, is it? Of course the right choice will often be circumstantial, but it does highlight very different styles of leadership, much of which is just a relevant in business leadership today.

Walkabout

I have been facilitating and coaching in a large corporate organization in Singapore over the last month where it has been very interesting to watch the typical corporate dynamics play out around me. One leader stood out for me in that environment, which partly inspired this blog. He has a wonderful style of walking about on the floor and engaging with those he leads, those whose support he needs and those he answers to. He is just as busy as the best of those around him, but is seen to make time to talk to everyone – to listen to them and make them feel important. I could see how his people and those around him respond to that.

That is not only a style – that is a skill. A leadership skill. One that really works for him.

My experience, as an employee and both as a leader myself and today as a coach and mentor to some awesome leaders is that this style can be such a successful one. People that know and understand the vision they are being led towards and are made to feel important in the role that they play in the achievement of that vision will “do whatever it takes” similarly to the military metaphor used above.

Yet how many leaders will know this or be aware of this and yet still choose to remain in the safety of their office (did I really say “ivory tower”?) and wait for things to come to them? Preferring to use meetings and emails to command and communicate, rather than investing the time in building and developing relationships with those they lead?

Walkies

In my corporate life I often used my lunch break to take a walk. Sometimes to deal with stress, sometimes just to have a think and sometimes to have a chat with someone. It was a great way to get away from the schedule and everything related to that.

I would quite often seek the company of a peer of a subordinate to bounce an idea off, or just to listen to what they had on their mind.

I’m sure you will all do the same from time to time and then often wonder why you don’t do it more often, right?

This was also one of my ways of creating Me Time, which of course I now practice with much more focus. All of my clients get exposed to this concept in a coaching program.

Visibility

In my blog Visibility I spoke about putting yourself in a position where you are exposed to others around you, be it subordinates, peers, stakeholders or bosses. That we can’t rely solely on our performance to gain us the credibility and visibility we need for corporate success and advancement, that we have to pro-actively “blow our own trumpet” to have those that matter notice what we are up to. I wrote more about that also in Managing Expectations.

However, in the context of this blog, my recommendation for visibility and exposure is not along those lines, but in doing so to make yourself more accessible to those you lead and to those around you that can benefit from your presence.

Think about it – how difficult is it sometimes to get access to your boss? You know, to just shoot the breeze or run an idea past them? If they are the “safety of my office” type leaders, it can be quite challenging, cant it?

Would you agree with me that it would be worthwhile for your subordinates to have more of that kind of access to you?

So what?

So what if you made a conscious choice to become more visible? To make yourself more accessible? To introduce or enhance your style of management by walkabout?  To be interested in and to make time to talk and to listen to (your) people. To encourage them; to inspire them to greater things. To make them feel part of your vision; part of the team; part of your organizations success; to play and important role in achieving that together.

Isn’t that what leadership is all about? Please remember that leadership isn’t a passive title conferred upon you; it is an active responsibility that has to be taken and driven to make it work.

Why not add this technique to your style and see if it doesn’t enhance your outcomes and help your staff willingly want to “do what it takes” for you all to succeed?

What if you could?

Do you have a personal succession plan? That is, have you made provision for someone to succeed you? Where and how do you feature in your organization’s succession plan? How can you “move on” if you leave that to someone else manage?

Background

Wikipedia suggests that succession planning is a process for identifying and developing internal people with the potential to fill key business leadership positions in the company. Succession planning increases the availability of experienced and capable employees that are prepared to assume these roles as they become available. Taken narrowly, “replacement planning” for key roles is the heart of succession planning. Effective succession or talent-pool management concerns itself with building a series of feeder groups up and down the entire leadership pipeline or progression (Charan, Drotter, Noel, 2001).

That is obviously a very organizationally focused definition. I consider this topic as an extension to last week’s blog Secure job? in that I believe succession planning isn’t something other’s should be responsible for, but that it could well form part of your Who is driving your bus?.

Organizational succession planning

Most well run organizations have a succession plan process in place. I remember meeting for a whole day at least annually in my peer group with our boss, where we went through every person in our shared services Division together with someone from HR. Each of us had to have someone we’d put forward to succeed us if we were to “fall off our perch” as well as outlining our plans for the development of likely successors, thereby considering the inputs from everyone around the table in terms of their perceptions of the individuals under discussion.  Of course this process dovetailed with the company’s “talent pool” initiative as well.

It was firmly in that organization’s culture that it was as much each individual’s responsibility to have developed appropriate successors if you wanted to make yourself eligible for promotion as it was in the company’s interests. With other words, don’t expect to be developed into bigger and better roles if you aren’t doing so with your own direct reports.

Family business

One of the most visible scenarios for succession planning is the traditional family business. The media is full of stories of intrigues and speculation around succession issues in some of the more well known family businesses and celebrities.

We so often hear about the parents of a family business wanting their children to take it over and continue running their business “for them” after they have retired, don’t we? Only often  to be met with flat refusal by the kids on the basis of: “what, do your job you have been suffering through all my life? No thanks, I’ll pass”….

And if they do, how many times have we heard of those patriarchs or matriarchs then not being able to let go, causing all sorts of pain and frustration, sometimes (or should I say often?) leading to a significant “falling out” between the family members, including the implosion of the business.

However I have also coached a few situations where the father / son handover is working very well, but have to admit that this is rarer than the other way around.

Delegation

I don’t think we can discuss succession planning without mentioning delegation. This always features in my leadership and soft skills grooming, because I have learned that one of our objectives as leaders is to develop others around us to grow their skills and confidence so that we can move on to bigger and better things. Those new to delegation often struggle with “giving enough rope” and certainly need some time to learn to differentiate accountability from responsibility from authority, and I’m sure everyone reading this will be able to relate to that.

My clients learn that one of the objectives of “raising your game to another level” includes “rationalizing yourself out of your job”. Numerous of my “professionals” clients that have come to me “to be coached into leadership” have struggled with this notion where they may not yet have the personal confidence of marketing themselves into that next (leadership) role, and without realizing how much impact this “fear” can have on them unconsciously, don’t do a good job at delegating as a result.

Consultants and contractors

So far we have spoken about company related succession planning initiatives, big and small. How does this relate to all those professional consultants and contractors that aren’t tied into an organizational “pecking order”?

I have learned to believe that “what goes around, comes around” and long before I became a coach, always made a point in my consulting days to practice Leading from behind whereby I made it my business to recognize really good talent and help them look good. In my blog Managing Up I also speak of “making the boss look good”. Both have always served me well in driving my agenda while helping them achieve theirs.

So while you might not be able to participate in delegation per se because of the role you are engaged in as a professional, these have become important professional leadership tenets, which I have found serve to be “asked back again”, or be better recommended to others.

But I am a “one man band” – how should I develop a successor I hear some of you saying? Good point. I’m in the same boat and hence I am collaborating with a few selected business partners where we leverage our individual and collective skills and services orchestrated into a consortium, where the sum of the parts provides a much bigger whole for our clients. The ability to interchange and represent each other helps provide consistency and continuity for our clients. That way the likelihood of continuity and the development of an asset that outlives our individual value is also enhanced.

Personal succession planning

And after moving from large organization through small business to individual professionals in this discussion so far, I would now like to reiterate what I think really matters when it comes to your own personal succession planning.

Firstly I believe it is a good thing to have one. 26 years in a complex, global matrix organization taught me that “if it’s going to be, it’s up to me”, and gave birth to my notion of what I wrote in Are you a “fetch” person? I didn’t wait until I featured in a succession planning exercise somewhere – I made sure I had my own plan in place and ”that I was on the right lists”.

In that context I learned always to be on the lookout for my next opportunity to grow my skills and experience (and in the corporate chapters of my life – also my next role) and then to “fetch” what I wanted, which even included our migrating to Australia to find it. That included me having to be “expendable” in my then roles, so that I had clear passage into the next. Not having developed appropriate successor(s) would have been an obstacle.

I also spend much time in each coaching program teaching the need for and the wherewithal to harness the benefits of personal networking. It is just as important to be able to find and recommend successors from your network as it is to develop those in your employ or control.

So what?

So let me ask you the question: what have you done to “create clear passage” for you into your next role? What people or talent have you found and developed that can “fill your gap” so that you can move on?

Is this something you are aware of as an opportunity or the absence of as a potential threat? What might you want to do about this in your career, if you haven’t already started?

What if you could?

How “safe” do you think your job or role is?  No matter how senior, do you really think that you are in a “secure” job or contract? “Secure role” has become a bit of an oxymoron, hasn’t it? Think about it – how quickly can and do things change? Look at your environment over the last few years – isn’t volatility simply part of the deal today? Do you really think they can’t change for you? Are you prepared and in control for when they do?

Background

Last week one of my best friends’ wife was marched to the door of the building of her company after a track record of 16 successful years in a very senior role in a global corporate environment. One of ever tightening KPI’s and remarkable year on year procurement outcomes and significant bottom line improvement results in a vastly deteriorating economic climate of her country. It is a reality in that country at the moment that there are quotas for the proportion of different population groups evident in the structure of any organization – a fact every organization needs to adhere to or avoid at their peril, particularly when it comes to the continuity of lucrative government contracts….

Having her feel like a criminal in front of her shocked employees on that march to the door was all part of the intimidating approach such multinationals adopt today to help “soften up” the individual for the inevitable ensuing negotiations on how much or little separation package either party can secure for themselves.

Who is in control?

I have written about this in So you got shafted…as well as Ego versus Outcomes recently, and in Who is driving your bus? I speak about no matter how senior or junior or whether an executive, an employee, a contractor or consultant, you always need to be in control of your career and your activities. That in today’s globally visible and competitive business world we earn our right to an income one month at a time. That it is naive for anyone to think that their boss or their company or contract or client has any other great interest at heart than their own. That most roles have a 2-3 year focus, maybe sometimes 4 or 5 years at the outset. That we can rarely rely on an individual boss or an organisation to truly have our career interests at heart.

In Are you a “fetch” person? I wrote about how much you proactively “fetch” what you aspire to or expect to progress your stakes or your career. Or whether you passively wait for your boss or the organisation or market (or the world) to “bring” you your next opportunity?

Business place realities

Getting back to the “safe” job or role comments made in the intro I’m sure you’ll agree with me that today the reality of our business environment is plagued (or blessed) with threats of change (and opportunity) not only based on currently massive global economic turmoil and uncertainty but before that already with M&A volatility? Market pressures, M&A or even just plain old organisational or “boss” change can (and does) result in the most positive and performant individuals suddenly “falling from grace”, right?

Now call me downright negative at this point because of the unsavoury picture I am painting (which is certainly not my natural disposition) but would you agree with me that if you step back and think about this, it has become pretty real? And that my friend “could have seen this coming” and had a “plan B” ready?

Immunity?

So  can I just check in with you personally very quickly? Just have a think about your current role in your current organisation or contract. Are you immune to any of the above volatilities? Are you prepared for the impacts of any of them occurring to you? Do you have a plan B or C? Are you truly in control of your career? Or may you just be at a potential risk of any of the above vagaries? Please be reminded of my “11^th commandment” at this point: “you can kid anyone as much as you like, but you can never kid yourself…”

Doing what it takes

In most of my coaching, mentoring and grooming programs I guide my clients away from any passive approaches to their careers and urge them to take proactive control of their career, as I outlined in my blog Your career – Choice or Chance?. To put yourself actively in the driving seat. To keep an open mind to what’s happening in your division, your company, your industry, your profession, your skills, the relevance of your experience and your ongoing value proposition – so you are always clear about trends, requirements, expectations and opportunities around you. Don’t you owe that to yourself and to those that depend on you?

In my own case I even go so far as to engage my own personal astrologer at the start of each (lunar) year to give me her insights into the energies out there in terms of my very own personal chart interpretation. Whatever it takes, and whatever works for you, right?

On your own?

As I wrote in Mentoring you neither need to, nor can you do all this on your own. Having a sounding board in a mentor or coach is very useful not to rely on their advice but to test and challenge your thinking and offer further perspectives. That doesn’t look to them for a plan, but presupposes that you already have one and that you want to test different approaches of pursuing it while taking potential threats and opportunities into account.

Performance management

In my performance management grooming and training I urge my clients to take a proactive approach to their own performance review – that you don’t leave that up to the boss, but that you “fetch” an update more often than just the obligatory annual conversation. I suggest that in preparation for each such review you not only have all the necessary facts, evidence and anecdotes to back up your performance and growth but at the same time also have developed a solid understanding of what is occurring within your company and then to test the market as to what’s happening around you and that your resume is up to date. If my friend had done this, the event of last week could never have been such a surprise because she would have held her boss (and herself) accountable to being in the clear about and discussing, agreeing (or disagreeing) and documenting any performance misalignments between them.

So what?

So how do you interpret or perceive the “reality” of your current role or job or contract? How “secure” do you think you are? How well are you in control of your career situation? What alternative plans do you have in case things go “pear shaped”?

Or are you leaving that to “others” or perhaps to chance?

What if you felt you weren’t sure and you engaged the services of a coach to work through your situation with you and you either confirmed the degree of “control” you have or figured out a bunch of options and mapped a few plans towards making them happen for you?

What if you could?

How big is your ego? How often does it “get you into trouble”? Or at least have you reacted spontaneously to something that you considered “affronting” only to regret that impetuosity afterwards? How well can you control your ego, so it doesn’t get in the way?

Background

I have been working in Singapore for a number of days and today a few of my local clients chastised me that it was Tuesday already and they hadn’t seen this week’s blog yet. Well I guess I better get on with it…. And I’ve wanted to write about this topic for a while now. So here goes.

Of course our ego is a fundamental driver of who we are and how we see ourselves. It forms a large part of our “left brain mind chatter” and represents what I have on a few occasion referred to as “mini me”. It is the driver behind our wanting to be recognised – our need for significance, it sees to it that we don’t allow ourselves to be “slighted” and it makes sure that our self worth is maintained.

Naturally, we all need a healthy ego, don’t we? It is a fundamental part of our competitive drive which in our tough business world today ensures that we remain competitive. However, how much is “healthy”? And when is it not enough? And when might it be too much? What is the right balance?

Rational and Irrational

I’m sure you’ll also agree with me that our ego can get us into quite some deep water, when we give it too much free reign and allow it together with our emotions to take us where we would normally never go. We can probably all remember as youngsters or as adolescents where we got ourselves into “a fight” or at least a very significant argument. If we thought about it afterwards, wasn’t the trigger or cause often something quite trivial but nonetheless maybe something we took quite personally? I call that allowing the ego to rule.

As adults and certainly as leaders of others, we have probably learned how to be more “rational” and to keep our ego in check, right? But every now and then we can still fall back into such situations where we “lose that control”, can’t we? Particularly if we may have imbibed on a little too much alcohol or “social group interaction” – perhaps at the footy or so?

Example

You know that I work with many clients in the space of defining and managing their careers. I have been coaching a client in Europe through a massive “fork in their road” for a while now. We have been preparing together for an impending case of  So you got shafted… for quite a time and this week it finally came to pass. His role was made redundant. (Please notice that I didn’t say he was made redundant)

This client has driven and enjoyed an extremely successful decade of very significant business outcomes with this organisation, which suddenly came to an end simply through the arrival of a new boss….. (You know how many people I have encountered that still believe there is such a thing as a “safe job”? No matter what your job is, and at what level, all it takes is a merger or acquisition or sale of a company or as in this case, a new boss, and all of a sudden everything can look completely different, can’t it? Yet people will still be complacent instead of actively practicing Who is driving your bus?)

Anyway, his success was in no small part attributable to his insatiable hunger to achieve – all the time. Very sophisticated and being very much in control, my client is a truly “type A” personality without the ability to know “when is enough”. I’m sure you’ll agree with me that such ongoing success is rarely apparent without being driven by more than a “healthy ego”, right?

So his challenge for this impending “negotiation” (and in the preparations leading up to it) was to manage his ego – to get it out of the way. Ego in such negotiations allows the emotional clouding of judgment and very often interferes with the outcomes that could have been achieved.

In the preparation, we needed to focus heavily on avoiding the “heat” or blood pressure to intervene. Well, he did absolutely great. He was a cool as a cucumber and he got a great outcome. He acknowledged afterwards how important that ego management had been for him. He could concentrate with full attention on the subtleties and was firmly in control, which even unnerved the 3 managers “trying to do him in”.

Great example, isn’t it? So have a quick think. What other examples can you think of where keeping ego in control resulted in a better outcome? Or conversely, perhaps an even better example or lesson would be where you lost your advantage because you did let your ego too much leeway? I can think of a number.

Leadership

In the management and leadership context, I know that the management of ego plays an important part in driving successful outcomes, or conversely, provides examples of where it simply gets in the way. In my blog Leading from behind I speak about the achievement of better outcomes through others by having them drive YOUR initiatives for THEIR reasons. This approach should include them collecting the accolades, which of course necessitates your ego allowing that. I probably don’t need to remind you how rare that can be in corporate life today, where in the hustle and bustle of “getting ahead” it’s often a case of “everyone for himself”.

I believe it takes quite some ‘elegance of leadership” to adopt the approach I’m suggesting. We have all no doubt experienced the authoritarian (did I say Draconian?) leader who largely works on the basis of “be reasonable – see it my way”, right? Would you agree that (quite remarkably) such styles still exist today and that they are often ego driven (perhaps without the “perpetrator” even being aware of that?) There is often very little support for their decisions or outcomes, is there?

Conversely, when we are led by someone who has a more supportive style that allows us to use our initiative and our creativity to deliver something bigger that normal, and allows us to “have a go” without all the stifling rules and restrictions, how much better can we be?

Left versus Right brain

In my blog The left brain and the right brain I speak about the ego fuelled “left brain mind chatter”, versus the more “big picture oriented” right brain that looks at things more holistically and isn’t worried about “being slighted” or other less critical issues. Reason prevails in the right brain.

In my blog Using “the Gap” to reframe yourself I speak about giving yourself a bit of space (in the gap or pause) to consider your initial response to something before you make it and to ask yourself in that pause what your intended outcome is and whether the intended response will help you or hinder you in its achievement. Just a few seconds of consideration, to step back as it were, may be the difference between “rushing in” and making the right call.

So what?

So as so often, we have some choices, don’t we? Particularly as a leader of others, I would urge you to choose the right brain, as outlined in the previous paragraph more often than you do the left brain. That you choose the outcome over the ego. That you allow yourself an ego check that will help you choose the right response and assure the better outcome more often that not.

You can you know? Every time. What if you could?

If I were to ask: who are you?” how might your respond? Would you say your role or title or your profession, or your faith? What would you say? You know, I’m a project manager, or a CEO or a mum etc. And if I said: “what defines you?” what might you say? Two questions that really go to the same “what is your life purpose” place, don’t they? Today’s blog is going to ask a lot more questions than it could hope to answer, as the answers will usually be very personal indeed to each and every one of you, however, I hope to create quite some awareness around this.

Background

I am currently reading (or should I say studying?) Neale Donald Walsh’s trilogy “Conversations with God” and am being gloriously challenged in my open mindedness, my outlook and my thinking – left, right and centre.

You know, I have found most of us run our lives on autopilot. We go through the motions of “what we do” every day, sometimes (or is it often) not being really aware of what we did at the end of the day, right? Are we really doing what we love best? Are we doing what really matters to us? Or are we “just showing up” because we need the income to support or sustain our material lifestyle?

Roles

In my pre-coaching questionnaire I ask my clients to reflect on their Balance in their lives, suggesting they assess their time estimates allocated in a given month over their different roles, given that we are usually a son or daughter, a sibling, a friend, a partner or husband or wife, a parent, an employee or business person, an artist, a sportsperson, a holiday maker etc.

We have so many different roles, don’t we? Are they what define us?

Things

Is it the clothes we wear, or the car we drive, or the area or the home that we live in, or the schools we went to and our kids go to, or where we go on holiday, or the impressive title of our designated role or profession, or the restaurants we frequent? Are they what define us?

I read the above somewhere referred to as the number of comma’s in our salary and the number of letters behind our name.

Belief in Self

Some time ago I sought some local business culture advice and insights into a country I was planning to do business in and was advised to “lose the watch”, suggesting the watch I wear would be “condescended” there and that people wouldn’t want to do business with me at the level I sought if I wasn’t seen to be wearing a Rolex or similar. Well, I can tell you that I certainly didn’t believe that such a superficial level of perception defines me, and I am very happy with who I am and what I do (and the watch that I wear). However, how many of us may “fall for that” if we were so intent on “chasing the dollar involved”?

I have learned together with so many of my clients how important it is to “know what we stand for”, lest we “fall for anything”.

In the now

Those of you that have read any of Eckhart Tolle’s work (starting with “The Power of Now”) will know how we differentiate between the past, the present and the future. That most of our conditioning we still allow to affect us comes from the meaning we gave to events in the past (made in the mind), that most of our worry comes from our concerned anticipation of the future (made in the mind) and that life was meant to be lived in the now (and that this is best achieved when we learn to shut up the incessant left brain mind chatter) and allow us to be fully present in the now.

I have used a metaphor before that if the size of the rearview mirror in our car could represent the time spent “looking back”, and the windscreen were to represent the time we spend “looking forward”, then perhaps the size of the rest of the interior of the car might represent the time we can spend in the present.

So does where we spend most of our time either “in our mind” or rather “in our life” define who we are?

Education

Is it where we went to school that matters, or what we learned at school that matters? Does our education define us?

Is your education sometimes used as an excuse? Or did it perhaps raise in you a “hunger” to learn and experience new things? To be innately curious about life and how things work and how things might “pan out”? Is that what might define us?

Recognition

Another trap we can fall into in terms of what defines us is allowing our ego too much leeway.  We can be “lured” or “sweet talked” into pandering to our ego with impressive titles. We can be too strongly driven by our need for recognition. Is it perhaps our image what defines us? That makes us vulnerable to “the committee of they”, doesn’t it? You know, that we are always looking to or wondering what others may think of us, instead of knowing who we are and sticking to what matters to us.

Friends

My late mum used to say: “show me your friends and I will tell you who you are”. We are so strongly influenced by who we “hang out with”, aren’t we? Is that what defines who we are?

Results or Success

Could it be that our success, that is, our quest to deliver results defines us? Don’t our peak athletes run the risk of being defined by their presence, their persona, their fame, their ability to draw a crowd? Is that “outer image” really who they are? Or is it the internal drive to succeed and overcome adversity – the “mongrel” in them that defines them?

Values

In my blog Values I speak about “living” what we value versus “aspiring to” values that others expect of us. Aren’t your values a significant part of who you are? You know, the filters by which we judge right or wrong or good or bad? Which of these are still part of our conditioning and which are the ones we truly “own” in our everyday lives today?

Speaking of which, would you be amenable to a quick exercise? Similarly to what I wrote in Self Worth, if you were to consider a few people that you “look up to” or admire, what do you really value in them? And if we were now to assess yourself on how well we love those values in ourselves, how might we “stack up”? Is that perhaps what defines us?

When I have…

I remember as an adolescent often pitching to myself: “when I reach or achieve xyz, then I will….” Can you relate? It was only a number of years ago that I realized that I was still allowing myself to think and act this way. The acid test is usually when we get there. If the quest was to reach xyz because then I will be happy, did it work? Are you then any happier having achieved it?

Without all that

However, what happens when we strip all those ‘titles” or images or external attributes away and just leave the “person we are” underneath all that?

If we were left with only the clothes we are wearing, our health and all our relationships but “have nothing left materially”, how might we feel about ourselves then? Kinda hard to imagine, I know, but what if you were to try? How would we feel? Hopeless, Depressed, Valueless? Excited?

What if we could try Using “the Gap” to reframe yourself and wonder how we might feel about being like a new born baby, like a clean sheet of an artist’s canvas, but with decades of life experience, skills, knowledge, wisdom, IQ and EQ? A new start but with everything I am and everything I know available for me to use?

Couldn’t you get really ex cited about that?

So what?

So after all that, where does that leave us in this conversation today?

Have I helped you reflect and create a stronger awareness of the questions that relate us better to “who we really are?” To differentiate platitudes from what matters and get us to think about what our true purpose might be?

Aren’t all the above examples some of what defines us? Don’t they all add little pieces into the fabric that makes us who we are?

Doesn’t it come down to a few key questions about what our vision might be, where we are on our path towards that vision, how far we may have allowed “life to distract us” from that path, and what we might want to do to get us “back on track” to our true path again?

What if you could?

As Confucius said so well so long ago: “Remember, no matter where you go, there you are”.

Are you known to be a decision maker? Do you usually make good decisions? What does that take? Do you sometimes “get them wrong”? Do you sometimes struggle to make decisions? Do you worry about getting them wrong? Are there some decisions you find harder to make than others? What’s the difference?

Background

Decision making can be regarded as the mental (cognitive) processes resulting in the selection of a course of action among several alternative scenarios; also defined as a position or opinion or judgment reached after consideration.

We make all sorts of decisions all the time, most of which we don’t really notice. Are you consciously aware of deciding to change lanes in the traffic, or to look at your watch to know the time, or which sandwich you choose at lunch time? Do we worry much whether we get those wrong?

So why is there sometimes so much “angst” attached to making “bigger decisions”? You know, ones where we know that the outcome can have a big impact? Isn’t it amazing how sometimes the size or impact of a decision can start a rush of “what if” fears in our left brain, which can also lead to Procrastination?

Not making decisions

I thought Theodore Roosevelt captured it beautifully when he said:  In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.

I’m a Libra star sign, and we are not known to be the world’s best decision makers, right? We can dilly-dally around a decision looking at one perspective and another, and another and then “on the other hand”… and sometimes find it all too hard and then rather not make a decision at all – that way we at least don’t get it wrong. Can some of you relate to that?

However, I have learned that not making a decision is often far worse than making a “bad decision”. Do you find when we don’t make a decision that we can be prone also to “beating ourselves up” about not deciding? However at least you can correct or adjust a “bad” or “wrong” decision. Like I sometimes say: “you can’t direct a stationary vehicle – it has to be moving before you can direct it”.

Bad Decisions

So what’s a bad decision? Clearly it is considered “bad” if it didn’t result in the expected outcomes. But of course we didn’t know that at the time of making the decision, did we? It is only in hindsight that we can pass judgement. This to me often gets to the crux of the issue we are discussing here.

What do we need to make good decisions?

If there was something fundamental I have learned from all my coaching and mentoring as well as from my own personal experiences, it is that our belief in ourselves drives most of our attitude, our behaviours and our outcomes. As Henry Ford so rightly said: “if you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re dead right”.

To me this underlies a lot of the question of why some do and some don’t believe they can make good decisions.

Going back to “the fear of getting it wrong”, it is in that space ahead of a decision that this plays out, particularly when it comes to “big or important” decisions, right? Do I have all the facts? Am I making the right choices? What if i get it wrong? This is so typical of the perfectionist’s behaviour, where rather than getting it wrong, it is “safer” to either not have a go at all or delay the decision until we “have all the facts” or other similarly procrastinating behaviours. This where self doubt also comes to the fore, doesn’t it?

Yet others are known to look at the facts, assess the situation and “bang” – there’s the decision. What’s the difference? Is it confidence? Is it “wiring”? Is it practice and experience? How do we overcome this “paralysis”?

Confidence

In my blog Confidence, Certainty and Doubt I suggest that irrespective of our confidence about a certain situation, that as a professional, we owe it to ourselves to act with certainty, and that our certainty needs to firstly be greater than our own doubt and certainly come across as greater than the doubt of whom we are communicating with. A little like “fake it till you make it”, right?

Is that it? Of course not. But it is certainly an important component.

Making good decisions

There are so many references to follow and there has been so much written about the techniques and tools etc about making good decisions elsewhere that I won’t go into that in any great detail here.

But what I have learned is that one of the most important aspects of making good decisions is just to make them – just to get on with it, and then fine-tune and adjust them as we go along.

Fundamentally it is about getting all the facts and insights together so that we can make an “educated” decision.  Doing our homework. Reading the trends. Seeking opinions. Finding anecdotes. Checking resources. Recognizing and assessing dependencies. Knowing who has the power and who has the need. Interpreting the ramifications.

In my blog Planning in scenarios I spoke about establishing the “best case” and also the “worst case” scenarios and then figuring out the most likely of outcomes, which we can then interpret and  assess.

At best, all  of these help us to “paint a picture”, but at the end of the day it’s all still a bit speculative because the future we are trying to interpret or predict hasn’t occurred yet, right?

A great example for me is the purchase or sale of a share. We can get all the right information and advice. We can research and analyse. All the “facts” can point towards the “right choice”. Yet it is still “a bit of a gamble”, isn’t it? And then the outcome might have nothing at all to do with the actual profitability of the company, but be influenced by what a bunch of politicians in Europe agree (or disagree) on.

I have also learned that if we look at this one transaction in isolation, we will potentially be more worried about “getting it wrong” than if we just keep pursuing what we feel is right and that over a period of time and experiences we will be more likely to get more transactions (and decisions) right than wrong. Whilst this is “only” a belief, I think we can get much more encouragement from that than applying too much emphasis on just one singular decision. It’s about Trusting oneself, isn’t it?

Gut feeling

At that point I have learned to rely on my gut feeling. I like to listen to my intuition.

I’d like to repeat a story I’ve told about an associate coach who saw and picked up a coin lying on the ground on his way to a coaching session, and wondered about the significance of having found that coin. In his session, his client was agonizing over a decision how to choose between a new job opportunity in England versus another at home in Australia. After much deliberation the coach saw no other way out than with a knowing smile to suggest flipping the coin he held in his pocket, which his client agreed to. The result was the job in England. When he “tested” how his client felt about the decision that had been reached in this way, she said she felt she was disappointed. Now the true feelings emerged and the right decision to take the “local” option prevailed. Gut feeling. In my blog Goosebumps I stressed how important it is to “listen to what your body is telling you”.

Delegation

In my leadership grooming and training around the topic of delegation, I speak about how whilst  we delegate the responsibility, we still retain accountability and that an important factor is the authority we grant the other person to make independent decisions before having to come back to us to seek approval –that is, how much “rope we give them”. Doesn’t “knowing how much authority” we have sometimes come into adding doubt into making good business decisions? To me this is another important example of “clarity at work” in good leadership.

So what?

So what does this all mean to you? If you are “a good decision maker”, probably not a lot.

However, if this strikes a chord with you, what have we learned from it? What might you do differently on Monday?

With the awareness this has created, could you perhaps choose to have a go at “behaving more decisively” in the coming week and seeing how you can “adjust and fine-tune the moving vehicle” rather than leaving it stationary?  Perhaps to listen more to your gut feeling over your “left brain mind chatter”?

Perhaps you can become more aware of how you make your decisions and look at how you can improve the process? Perhaps it is simply a matter of “deciding to be more decisive”?

Perhaps you worry less about making a “good” decision and concentrate more about “just making decisions”?

Perhaps you will conclude, like I did a long time ago now, that “just doing it” generates confidence, which in turn creates better outcomes, and thereby invokes all sorts of providence as I wrote in The blue Honda?

What if you did and what if it could?

How prevalent is “the blame game” in the culture of your organisation? How much more important is “looking good” than getting the right outcomes? How easy is it to point a finger at someone else when taking responsibility to learn from a mistake would perhaps convert the error into a future strength for everyone in the company? How good are you at “the blame game”?

Background

I have seen blame defined as the act of censuring, holding responsible, making negative statements about an individual or group that their action or actions are socially or morally irresponsible; blame being the opposite of praise.

Blame stresses censure or punishment for a lapse or misdeed for which one is held accountable; to hold responsible; find fault with.

So how does blame manifest in your environment?

Culture

When we speak about corporate culture, it is often referred to as: “how we do things around here”. I’m often amazed how an organization made up of so many different people from so many different backgrounds can collectively have a specific culture, and have often wondered how that comes about and how it can take on such different directions.

Of course there are many contributing factors, some of which arise from the manner in which the organisations leadership lives out their own and the organizations values. In German we have a saying: “der Fisch stinkt vom Kopf”, which loosely translated into English suggests that “the fish smells from its head”, implying that many behaviours set “at the top” are copied and played out, even exacerbated  in the ranks below.

And so when a blame culture becomes evident, it is often important to look for whether and how this might “start “at the top”. Ironically, that is “blaming the top”, isn’t it? Whilst that may well have an impact on the culture, isn’t it the responsibility of each and every individual to play their part? Isn’t it a “cop out” to blame “the culture” for a blame culture? Isn’t it individuals who “point the finger”? Couldn’t each individual make a conscious choice to rather do the right thing?

Attitude

Our positive, constructive and professional attitude is something we can all choose or ignore, right?

So when something goes wrong, don’t we have a choice? Instead of finding someone or something to blame, couldn’t we take responsibility ourselves for the situation and rather focus on solving the problem or rectifying the result and recognize the learnings we can (individually and collectively) take from it? If enough of us did so, wouldn’t that have an impact on the culture, and help move things away from a “blame culture”?

I suppose that this may well be influenced by “the politics” of the organization or that specific situation – whether we see that we either have or don’t have “the power” to act one way or the other.

And so, if we allow ourselves to be overly ego driven, then we might give far more value to “looking good” in front of others or even more importantly, in front of the boss, right? In that scenario it would be much easier to find and apportion blame to someone or something else, thereby (supposedly) distancing ourselves from the error. I’m sure every one of us can think of examples of where this has occurred – where we have done so or witnessed someone else doing so, right?

In that context, I guess it doesn’t help that we have developed such a “litigation culture” and that particularly the legal profession has much to gain to help “find someone to make responsible” – to blame.

And our politicians seem to have taken Managing Spin to a whole new level, haven’t they? Slippery as eels, they often duck and dive, trying to find something the other party did wrong, rather than focusing on addressing and “fixing” the problem. It appears more important to be seen to look good than necessarily help find a solution, isn’t it?

The learning organisation

I have often spoken of the learning organization in my blogs. I believe that the learning organization has a far greater opportunity to succeed in exceeding its goals than one where blame and finger pointing and punishing mistakes are prevalent.

In one of my very first blogs Using “the Gap” to reframe yourself I spoke about creating a pause (a gap) to consider the response we were about to make towards something and ascertain whether there might not be a better response available that might create a better outcome – the reframe. Wouldn’t this create the opportunity in which we could maximize our (and the companies) learning?

Again this can be driven by individuals, but is so much more evident and productive if it is supported by leaders and made evident through their behaviour.

Blame at home

So far we have spoken about blame culture within organisations. What about the role of blame at home or in our personal lives? Isn’t this also a significant factor in the harmonious relationships we keep at home, within our families? Isn’t this where blame is born and learned? Isn’t this part of our conditioning – where a child will emulate what it sees in the behaviour of its parents and role models and learns to emulate? Isn’t it true that if a child is raised in an environment that encourages “having a go” and learning from mistakes it may have a substantially more constructive and positive outlook than if it learns that it is more important to find and apportion blame when something goes wrong?

Of course that has a bearing but as responsible adults we have a choice. We can either “hide behind” conditioning and get really good at the blame game or we can adopt a more responsible attitude and choose a more learning oriented approach.

Harvard Business Review

I found the following “what you can do about it” advice in the Harvard Business Review which I found worthy of sharing here:

• Don’t blame others for your mistakes. The temptation is huge to point the finger elsewhere when you make a mistake. Resist it. Not only will you gain respect and loyalty from your followers, you’ll also help to prevent a culture of blame from emerging.
• When you do blame, do so constructively. There are times when people’s mistakes really do need to be surfaced in public. In these cases, make sure to highlight that the goal is to learn from mistakes, not to publicly humiliate those who make them.
• Set an example by confidently taking ownership for failures. Our findings showed that blame was contagious, but not among those who felt psychologically secure. So try to foster a chronic sense of inner security in order to reduce the chances that you’ll lash out at others.
• Always focus on learning. Creating a culture where learning — rather than avoiding mistakes — is the top priority will help to ensure that people feel free talk about and learn from their errors.

• Reward people for making mistakes. Some companies are actually starting to incentivize employees to make mistakes, so long as the mistakes can teach valuable lessons that lead to future innovation.

So what?

So where does this leave you on the topic of blame?

When next you notice someone around you pointing fingers instead of taking the responsible option, why not make them aware of it? You know, it might be so ingrained in some of us, that we don’t even notice us doing so any more?

When next something in your life or work goes wrong, can you see how Using “the Gap” to reframe yourself could help you notice whether you are about to take  a “blame” approach to the situation, and if so, to look for a more appropriate response?

If you are a leader of a team or an organisation, what if you reflect on the culture of your organization and sought a few views ‘from the ground” as to how this plays out in your culture? What if you realized blame is more prevalent than you thought? As the “head”, what will you do about it?

Now that it is in our awareness, can we all see what we can do about it and how positively it can affect most of our relationships?

What if you could?