I have huge compassion for really good managers who take over the leadership of a team from a “manager from hell”. You know the person I mean – he is aggressive and rude; he gets off on humiliating people; he uses threats to get what he wants; he uses gaslighting to manipulate people; and he has left behind him a team that is anxious and has gotten into the habit of making fear-based decisions. So now this chapter is behind them – thank goodness! And a new manager, with great people skills, has been brought in to rebuild the team and turn things around.

It is enormously frustrating when you are a leader who has a genuine open door policy, who genuinely wants people to make decisions, and who genuinely wants people to take the initiative, to receive feedback that his or her people are not doing these things because they still fear the consequences.

Fear is an insidious thing. It is easy to instil and difficult to dispel. It is just not enough for a leader to be an all-round good person. It is just not enough for a leader to know that he or she did not create the fear. The challenge to the new leader is to deliberately create an environment in which fear becomes a thing of the past, everyone has gotten over it and people are taking decisions and risks that are appropriate to their level of responsibility and authority.

I had a client who was battling with the residue of fear that was created more than four years ago – and people were still behaving as though the cause of the fear were present! It was as though fear had been woven into the very fabric of the business. The challenge to the current leadership was to create something different, and this cannot be done through good intentions alone.

So what would it take?
​
1. The entire team needs to be on board. Let’s assume that you lead the management team of a business – they all need to be committed to creating a high-performance, empowering, fear-free environment. The best way to do this is to workshop the following:
a. What is the current truth about the climate in this team/business? Get into detail. Drag all the dirty laundry out into the open. Name the elephants in the living room. Also identify what is good about the current truth because you don’t want to lose that.
b. How do we want things to be? Describe the climate, the relationships, how people will work, how people will make decisions, how people will innovate and initiate change.
c. What is creating the gap between the current truth and how we want things to be?
d. What do we (as leaders) need to change or do differently in order to realise our desired situation?
e. How (and how often) will we review our progress? 

If you are the manager of a team of non-managers, the same process applies – the team is reaching agreement on how we will do things around here, and you are receiving input on how your team would like to be managed in order to bring out their best.

2. Ensure that your plan of action (d above) addresses the following:

1. How will we clarify the parameters within which people at each level should be making decisions? What decisions should be made at what levels?
2. How will we develop the decision-making skills of team members? Will we provide training? Coaching? Some combination of the two?
3. How will we handle it if a team member takes the initiative or takes a decision and it is a mistake? How will we resolve the mistake? How will we support the team member? How will we make it safe for the team member to make decisions/take the initiative in future even though a mistake has been made on this occasion?
4. How will we create the habit of having learning conversations in which we review our performance? The After Action Review (AAR) is a useful format:
   1. What did we set out to do/achieve?
   2. What actually happened?
   3. What worked well?
   4. What didn’t work well?
   5. What have we learned?
   6. What will we do/change going forward/in future?
      
      ​It is helpful if you make one of your own gaffs the subject of the first AAR as it demonstrates to the team that you are fallible and that you are not afraid to hold your own actions up to scrutiny. This will show the team that if you are not afraid there is no reason for them to be afraid.
5. When team members bring a decision to a manager, how will that manager coach the team member so that, ultimately, the team member makes the decision and learns in the process?
6. How will we give recognition to people when they take the initiative or decisions that they were previously reluctant to take? Will we acknowledge this publicly? Will we send an email acknowledging it? Will we make a point of going to their desk to acknowledge them?
7. How will we handle it when a manager is taking decisions that should be taken at the level below him/her? Will we remind him to push the decision back down? Will we hold her accountable for empowering her team members?
8. Take every opportunity to demonstrate that you are as good as your word:
   1. Ensure that your responses are controlled and supportive when people mess up – and they will.
   2. Don’t be afraid to hold your own mistakes up to scrutiny – it makes it safer for everyone else to do so.
   3. Defend your team from outside criticism.
   4. Share praise with your team and celebrate success.
9. Make your workplace a fun place to be. Make laughter a feature of your environment. People think better when they laugh. They enjoy themselves when they laugh. People work harder when they are having fun and are more inclined to put in extra effort. People who are having fun are not paralysed by fear – they are energised.

In recent months, one of my clients invited their employees to complete an online and confidential survey that captured how they think and feel about working for the company. First off, conducting such a survey is brave for any organisation. After all, they are setting themselves up to be told things they might not want to hear. It is also a very scary prospect for managers in the organisation because whatever employees say is going to reflect on them. Furthermore, it is scary for the respondents. What if it turns out that their responses are not so confidential after all? What if their managers don’t like what they say? Any anyway, is there any point? Will what they say have any impact whatsoever?
It has been my experience that the first time an organisation conducts such a survey it has been catalysed by a sense (at senior levels in the business) that the organisational climate or leadership culture is not what they want it to be. Embarking on such a survey then has the objective of setting the baseline – the starting point that will form the basis of whatever work will be done to get the climate or culture aligned with their vision for the organisation. From my perspective, this is exciting – but then I am not inside the organisation, and the survey makes no comments about my own leadership style!
For many, in fact MOST, managers in such an organisation, the delivery of the results of such a survey is very stressful and threatening – especially if the results are critical of the climate or leadership culture. It is particularly stressful and threatening if there is a strong theme of fear and blame within the organisation. Do you remember the THREAT – ANXIETY – DEFENSE response I have described in previous articles? The results of the survey create a THREAT of appearing incompetent (as a leader); this provokes immense ANXIETY and the resulting response is likely to be DEFENSIVE.
This DEFENSIVE behaviour could take the form of:

• Dismissing the feedback and criticising the instrument as being poorly worded or misleading;
• Dismissing the feedback and criticising the respondents or blaming the timing;
• Trying to figure out who said what and going after them.

All of these responses are going to destroy whatever fragile trust there was that made so many employees respond to the survey in the first place. Their reaction is likely to be something like: “Well you asked for the feedback. You said you really wanted it. You said it would be safe to be honest. Now look what you do. I will never fall for this again.” And they all go back beneath the parapet and seethe with resentment – the exact opposite of what the survey was intended to achieve.
I’d like to offer another perspective. What if we accept that there is nothing to be gained by debating the merits of the feedback? There is nothing to be gained by hunting down whoever said what. Whatever flaws the instrument may have, the feedback is the feedback. It is telling us how people think and feel about working here. We wanted to know, and now we know. We may not like it – but at least we know.
The next questions are:

• How do we want people to think and feel about working here?
• What do we leaders need to change or do differently to make sure that happens?
• What is our action plan?
• When will we run the instrument again to see how we are doing?

Imagine how your teams would respond if they saw you responding in this way. I would anticipate the following:

• Huge relief that there is not going to be a backlash;
• Increased trust;
• Admiration and respect for the leader who is able to take it on the chin non-defensively;
• A willingness to work together to create a climate that is in alignment with the vision;
• Greater transparency and openness;
• A real improvement in organisational climate and leadership culture.

If you do not believe your organisation will do something constructive with the results of an employee survey, it may be better not to do it at all. Handling the results badly will obviously do damage, but don't underestimate the damage that ensues when NOTHING useful is done with the information. Doing nothing is the best way to get employees to disengage - it indicates that management just doesn't care. It is a real gesture of contempt towards employees.
John Gottman, the world-renowned expert on relationships, calls contempt one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse (along with defensiveness, flooding and stonewalling) - it absolutely ALWAYS results in relationship breakdowns - whether it is in personal relationships or working relationships.
Employee surveys should really be seen as integral to the organisation's approach to organisational and leadership development, with the intention being to grow and develop the organisation and its people towards ever greater alignment with the vision and values. In this sense it can be a really growthful experience for everyone.
So what is to be done if you are about to embark on an employee survey, and you are concerned about ensuring that managers ALL handle the feedback well and respond to it appropriately? I have found coaching to be a profoundly valuable resource to managers in the following senses:
1. It helps managers to process and make sense of feedback that they might be disappointed, upset or confused about;
2. It is a forum in which they can think through and decide how to discuss the results of the feedback with their teams;
3. It is a developmental environment in which they can attend to their own growth areas so that they can become the leaders they need to become - if the feedback was not what they would have wished;
4. It is a place where they can decide how to regularly check in with their teams on how they are progressing.

So if this resonates with you and you'd like to consider how to rollout your next employee survey, drop me a mail on [email protected] and let's talk about it.

Does this sound like you? There is a leadership paradox which says that leaders need to manage the tension between trusting their team members and keeping an eye on things. Many leaders step way over the line on this one. Instead of collaborating with their team members and checking in with them regularly, they spend much of their time checking up on their people, and the balance of the time holding themselves aloof from the team. There is a distinct difference between checking in and checking on.
Managers who check on their team members make four kinds of mistakes:

• The first is that they fail to allow team members autonomy in carrying out their work. Micromanagers dictate chapter and verse of what must be done and how it must be done.
  The more empowering version of checking in would involve giving the team a clear strategic goal, and respecting their ideas on how to meet that goal.
• The second mistake that micromanagers make is to frequently ask team members about how the work is progressing, but fail to provide any real help when problems arise.
• Their third mistake is to look for someone to blame when mistakes happen or things go wrong.
  They would be far more empowering if they guided team members through an open exploration of causes and possible solutions. The consequence of this is that team members end up trying to look good (or at least not look bad) rather than honestly discussing problems and how to overcome them. They live in a permanent Threat (of appearing incompetent) → Anxiety → Defensiveness pattern, and team members’ perceptions of their manager settle into a permanent low place.
• The fourth mistake of micromanagers is that they rarely share information about their own work with their team members. This often includes withholding information that would help them in their work – and this feels remarkably like an over-controlling parent, which causes team members to feel infantilized, and their motivation and effectiveness plummets.

When you micromanage your people, it poisons their perceptions of you and the organisation, causes them to feel resentful and frustrated, and saps them of their energy and motivation. Furthermore, it stifles creativity and productivity – the consequence is a team whose output is lacklustre and whose ideas are nothing better than ordinary. This naturally causes managers to panic, with the consequence that they breathe down their team members’ necks even more obtrusively and criticise them even more harshly. The result of this is that team members hide problems from their managers, causing problems to become crises.
 
So what is the solution? The following guidelines will help:

1. Give the team/team member clear strategic goals that clearly describe the outputs required, any specific standards that the output must meet and any deadlines that must be met.
2. Check in regularly to establish how the team (or team member) is progressing and to ask what support they need in order to continue to make progress. Then provide that support.
3. Use your systems and management processes to monitor output. When it appears that there are problems with output, check in with the team/team member with a view to understanding what is getting in the way. Establish where your support is needed (information; clearing systemic blockages; skill; tangible assistance) and provide it.
4. When problems arise, explore what may have caused them (not who) and possible solutions. Use a problem solving process such as GROW in a disciplined way (see http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_89.htm or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GROW_model ).
5. Share information generously – all information that will help with the work, as well as information about your own work. The less people know about their work, their manager’s work and the company, the lower their perceptions of their manager and their company.

 
Given that we are now working in a world where teams will increasingly be working remotely from each other and from their manager, this is the perfect time for micromanagers to learn to let go of the need to constantly know what is going on (which is all about you and your insecurities) and focus on two really important things:

1. Care for your people - they are all having a VERY stressful time (this article being written during the time of Covid-19) in both their personal AND their professional lives. They need to know you are in their corner and that you genuinely care.
2. Satisfactory output and NOT perfect input - are they getting the work out well enough? This is not a time for constantly insisting on excellence - as honourable as that may be. This is a time for people to ask themselves "when is good enough good enough?"

If this article speaks to you and you’d like to make some personal changes in order to better lead your team and your business, look at this great offer: http://www.leadershipsolutions.co.za/coaching-offer.html​

Of course, many new managers make the mistake of micro-managing their new teams in their zeal to demonstrate that they have it all under control. If you have a newly appointed manager in your team, check out this great online self-study programme that will help them to set things up right with their new teams: https://bit.ly/2NE1AqH 

This article is based on the ideas of Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer as contained in their book “The Progress Principle”, published in 2011, Harvard Business Review Press).

Do skilled people really underperform because they lack commitment? I don't believe this is true at all. All human beings have some innate drives:

1. We all want our lives and our work to matter and mean something;
2. We all want to belong to a family, tribe or team;
3. We all want the respect that comes from being effective and competent;
4. We all want the self-respect that comes from performing well and the mastery of a skill or discipline.

This is not some esoteric fantasy about people. These are facts based on research that has been replicated over and over again (see Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”). Furthermore it simply defies logic to assume that entire population groups don’t care about their work (they’re just here for the pay-cheque); have no interest in what is good for the team; and don’t care if they are competent or not. What arrogance to assume that we are special in this regard and that we are surrounded by low-lifes who just don’t care!
Skilled people underperform because they have become disengaged. Why do they disengage?
Primarily people become disengaged when:

1. They are not working at something that interests them, are good at and which makes a difference in the organisation, and they are not having the experience of achieving mastery in their field.
2. They feel irrelevant and unimportant – their work doesn’t matter to their manager, the team or the organisation;
3. They receive no or minimal recognition when they do well or improve;
4. They experience constant obstacles and getting the work done is an endless uphill battle;
5. There is no sense of team – the team doesn’t meet, talk, pull together, problem solve together. In fact, people probably work against each other in the competition for their own survival;

Most disengaged people did not start out that way. How many new employees have you come across who made no effort in the beginning? They become disengaged over time. So what does a manager need to do to get people engaged again?

1. Make sure they are doing work that interests them, in which they can gain some mastery and which matters to the business.
2. Give them regular feedback about what they are doing well, how they are improving and the positive impact that is having on the business.
3. Take responsibility for removing obstacles that are above their pay grade. There are some things that only you can do - and you must do them.
4. Pull the team together. Make sure the team meets regularly to talk about: 

• What are we trying to achieve?
• What have we actually achieved?
• What are we doing well?
• What are we not doing so well?
• What have we learned?
• What do we still need to do / do differently?

    5. Give team members challenging work that requires them to learn constantly in order to achieve mastery. Provide
        learning opportunities. Know their strengths and make sure that a meaningful proportion of their work plays to
        their strengths.
This keeps the team focused on its deliverables, keeps individuals focused on their own contribution, and ensures that the team is constantly learning.
After 5 years of research The Gallup Organisation were able to offer twelve key questions that you should ask your team members to ascertain how engaged or disengaged they are and why:

1. Do you know what is expected of you at work?
2. Do you have the materials and equipment you need to do your work right?
3. At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?
4. In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for doing good work?
5. Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person?
6. Is there someone at work who encourages your development?
7. At work, do your opinions seem to count?
8. Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important?
9. Are your associates (fellow employees) committed to doing quality work?
10. Do you have a best friend at work?
11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress?
12. In the last year, have you had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

What is fantastic about these questions is that the solutions are in the questions. These are all factors that enhance the likelihood of people being engaged.
When you’ve gathered the information, summarise the conclusions and decide what changes you need to make or catalyze in order to address the issues that you have uncovered.

If these circumstances resonate with you and you would like to influence change in your team by developing as a leader, go here to find out more about how I work and what you will achieve from working with me.

Science is showing us over and over again that the single greatest inhibitor to performance is fear. As a method of extracting peak performance from people in any sphere of activity – work, sport, relationships – it fails every time. Why is this so? It is about survival – and in the corporate jungle only the fittest survive.
In the workplace, only those people who can defend themselves against threats to their survival and demonstrate their fitness (competence) will last and increase their chances of advancement. Defensive behaviour is the same in everyone (and in all animals). When a person perceives a threat to her survival (appearing incompetent or losing his job) it creates anxiety (fear). This causes a hormonal response that shuts down the pre-frontal cortex (the thinking part of the brain). The person then defends against the threat using a fight, flee, freeze or appease response. This is called the threat – anxiety – defence response. 

The manager who is always telling people that they are stupid or useless, or telling them that they don’t know their jobs or are going to lose their jobs is going to make his people fearful or anxious. As a consequence, their thinking brains will shut down and they will fight (get aggressive, defend themselves or blame other people), flee (withdraw and try to fly under the radar), freeze (become paralysed and unable to take decisions or act) or appease (apologise, try to make nice, anxiously try to please). 

The threat – anxiety – defence response sets up a vicious cycle. Here is an example:
Your boss is in a meeting with an angry customer. The customer asks her a question to which she does not have an answer. Your boss feels this as an attack on her competence (threat) and this provokes an emotional response in her (anxiety). She angrily promises the customer that heads will roll and heads back to the office. At the office, she calls you in and hauls you over the coals for not doing your job properly (threat of appearing incompetent), you feel anxious and angry (a double hormone whammy) and angrily remind her that you had been waiting for her to make a decision and come back to you. The only reason you had given her no feedback is that you were awaiting her decision so you could take action. So actually it is not your fault at all (defence). This does not go down well with your boss, who experiences the second attack on her competence in one day and … etc. etc. You get the picture.
​
People who are afraid will never perform well or take the initiative:

1. Their brains cannot think because the pre-frontal cortex shuts down.
2. They do not have the confidence to act because, if they get it wrong, their survival will come under threat – again.

If you want people to perform, managers must do the following:

1. Admit that team members may be fearful and take responsibility for putting that right.
2. Make it safe for people to report errors or mistakes, and treat them as opportunities for the whole team to learn. If you don’t, people will continue to hide their mistakes (can you blame them?) Better still, acknowledge people for having the courage to report errors or mistakes.
3. Resist the temptation to yell, accuse people of being incompetent and threaten them with the loss of their jobs. That is the thing they fear most and it will cause their brains to shut down. It will also cause them to disengage from their work.
4. Make the effort to connect with your people. Talk to them. Thank them. Show an interest in them, their work and their lives.
5. Do not pass on any unhelpful stuff you experience with your own boss to your people – have the strength of character to act as a buffer. 

​I have really struggled through the last 2 weeks. The first 3 weeks of lockdown were not too bad. I discovered that I really like this way of working – going up to my office, being able to write, seeing my clients online, and all while looking out at my lovely garden and my beautiful view. I was excited at the opportunities that this time of Covid-19 might bring, despite the inevitable hardship. The idea of no longer having to get up at 3.45am in order to catch a 6.00am plane to get to clients in another city was replaced with the anticipation of being able to work with clients anywhere in the world, because they would have had personal experience of how a virtual coaching session can be completely satisfactory. I understood that I would have to adapt to the online world in terms of my marketing, and that I would need to work out how to build relationships with prospective clients despite not being able to actually be in the same room with them.
Then last week I just felt sad. My son is stuck in Vietnam unable to work and unable to come home. I can’t do anything to help him except send money (some things don’t change). My mother lives alone in a retirement facility and has been confined to her flat. Furthermore, she has always resisted technology, so she does not even have the benefit of video calls and family chats – and I can’t do anything to help her except call her every day. Dear friends of mine are losing their businesses. Under any other circumstances, I would be providing them with coaching in order to find ways to survive and thrive – but the current circumstances provide almost no wriggle room.
I was kind to myself last week – I allowed myself to be sad. I recognised that I was dealing with a kind of grief – the loss of all that was familiar; the loss of my familiar ways of connecting with clients and prospects; the loss of the ease that had characterised my working life. I reminded myself that it is ok to have a meltdown; I don’t have to be strong every single day; I don’t always have to put a positive spin on things. Sometimes things just suck and it’s ok to feel sad about that.
Then this week came around and I really struggled to find the energy to do what I know I must do. It felt like I was having to dig really deep every single minute of every day – and I really couldn’t find the energy to do so all the time. I took this to my regular session with my Coach Supervisor, Graham. I asked him to just coach me through what was happening to me. I came out of that session with some really powerful insights that might be useful to you.
Graham immediately connected my malaise with my enneagram. I am an 8 – a dominant driver. I make the world manageable and safe by taking charge and being in control. I have broad shoulders and a pretty thick skin; the capacity for a heavy workload and a high work rate; I am adept at figuring out how to respond effectively in almost every situation; I am most comfortable when I am in charge; being in control and having things under control is my happy place. On the flipside, powerlessness makes me feel extremely vulnerable – and 8’s do not like vulnerability at all. It threatens their sense of being capable and effective people. The most frightening place for me is where I cannot figure out an effective way to respond to a difficult situation. I realised from my discussion with Graham that this really is the first time in my life where I have felt utterly powerless. On every other previous occasion where things have been difficult either in business or in life, I have been able to figure out how to take charge and work things out – but I was feeling the vulnerability of simply not having an answer. And in feeling so utterly powerless, I was allowing myself to catastrophise. I remember using some really dramatic language around “this government having its boot very firmly on the neck of the people”, and “if they wanted a Venezuala, then this is just the perfect storm!” This is not like me at all. I am not a conspiracy theorist. Generally I am an optimist. One of my axioms is “Everything works out in the end, and if it hasn’t worked out yet, you haven’t reached the end.”
Having had the insight that my malaise is about powerlessness, the balance of my coaching session was about reframing my current circumstances, and figuring out how to take back some power.
But something else happened in that conversation - I shifted my attention to my clients, who are generally executives and senior managers in large companies. Many of my clients are also enneagram 8’s and I am sure that many of them are having their own struggles with powerlessness. That sense of powerlessness will manifest in different 8s in different ways. Because I work alone and don’t have a team that I need to manage and inspire to get things done, I went into my malaise (and not a little grumpiness). But leaders of teams will often do the complete opposite. They will move into intense activity and “pushiness” in order to salvage the situation and save the day. I have clients who, through lockdown when sales activities had all but come to a halt, were in virtual meetings from 8.00am until 6.00pm. What were they talking about? And with such intensity? The 8s were hustling to wrestle back some control - whether it was control over a team that is working remotely, or control over the inevitable financial crisis that their business faces. Typical behaviours when 8s feel under threat are to dominate, confront, be forceful, impose their will and vision, be brave and forge ahead, no matter what. (But that doesn’t work very well when you work alone!) What gets lost is the open-heartedness and caring that is true of 8s when they are at their best.
I think there are 2 topics here. Firstly, if being in control is your familiar place, what do you need to do to regain a calm sense of personal effectiveness despite the fact that there is so much going on that is outside of your control? Secondly, how should you lead your team so that you create a sense of calm and give them the sense that there are things they can do to exercise at least some influence or power despite the impact of outside circumstances over which they have no control at all.
The starting point is to recognise the vulnerability that you experience because of powerlessness, as well as the negative impact this has on your thoughts and your behaviour. Consider using these questions to help you:

• What am I feeling that is so intensely uncomfortable right now?
• What are the thoughts that have given rise to these feelings?
• How am I showing up / behaving that is directly related to my feelings and thoughts?
• How is this further impacting on my thoughts and feelings?
• How is this impacting on my team members?

Then you can tackle some of your thoughts and test whether they represent some form of truth or if they are unhelpful assumptions and catastrophising. Graham asked me to reframe or challenge some of my thoughts, and one of them was the “boot on the neck of the populace” thought. Is that really what the government is doing? Is that really what Cyril Ramaphosa and Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma are doing? Then my compassionate capacity kicked in and I was able to wonder if people who had such a negative agenda would look so utterly exhausted all the time. Surely not.
Maybe these questions will help:

• Which of your thoughts are true? Which are untrue? And which do you not know ithe truth of?
• In the case of the thoughts that are untrue, what truth is more likely?
• Where you simply don’t know, what alternative assumption would be more helpful?

Finally, you can identify areas in which you can take back some power. For me it was about the fact that I know there are certain things that I must do every single day in order to build relationships with new prospects in a world where I cannot go and meet them. I must phone at least 2 clients every day, just to connect and see how they are doing. I must post an engaging article, quote or video clip every single day in order to be in front of my prospective market. I must respond in an generous and engaging way to posts by people either in or connected to my market. I think of these as my 20 Mile March.

• What do you need to do every single day in order to “impose order amidst disorder, discipline amidst chaos, and consistency amidst uncertainty” (Jim Collins)?

The second area to think about is your team. How can you help them to also “impose order amidst disorder, discipline amidst chaos, and consistency amidst uncertainty”? When under intense pressure, 8s forget that they are dealing with team members who are also struggling. 8s come into their own when they are able to “use their strength to improve others' lives, becoming heroic, magnanimous, and inspiring”. Consider these questions:

• What does each of your team members need from you right now? Don’t guess! If you don’t know because they haven’t told you or because you don’t know them really well, then ask!
• How can you help your team members to impose their own order, discipline and consistency? This is probably a coaching or mentoring opportunity?
• How can you inspire your team to be courageous during these times?

During the course of May I will add to these thoughts. If you are interested, please connect with and follow me on LinkedIn or follow my Leadership Solutions Facebook page.
If you think anyone else would find this article useful, please share it. 

In the inimitable words of M. Scott Peck:
"Life is difficult.
This is a great truth. One of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult - once we truly know and accept it - then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters." (From The Road Less Travelled).

The world over, life is difficult. What tends to vary is the source of the difficulty. It may be the economy. It may be health. It may be family issues. It could be the internal politics of your company. There are as many sources of difficulty as there are people. 

In my coaching practice, my clients are dealing with the following sources of difficulty:

• declining markets;
• disruption to the normal flow of things because of the corona virus causing delays in manufacturing, imports and deliveries as well as disrupting access to overseas markets;
• headcount freezes because of real or anticipated economic slow down resulting in having to do more with less;
• having to shave margins to the bone just to compete (which I've heard called "the race to zero margin");
• toxic workplaces where people are constantly on edge, where bullying is rife, and where people always feel like they have to watch their backs;
• pressure from overseas holding companies because they have problems (even if your local operation is flying);
• rolling out new initiatives and piloting new business models under global scrutiny;
• having to manage teams that feel overwhelmed, undervalued, and fed up while trying to inspire excitement about some vision that currently feels like a pipe dream.

And that was just last week!

Almost inevitably, when life is difficult, we focus all our energy and attention on managing that difficulty. As a consequence, we start doing things that actually make things more difficult for both ourselves and those around us. Let's consider some examples:

• we spend more and more time in meetings that are not productive and are less available to our people;
• we work longer hours in order to meet tighter deadlines;
• we stop taking lunch breaks;
• we eat more junk and eat for comfort more often;
• we sacrifice exercise because we are too busy;
• we zone out on social media more often because we are too exhausted to actually engage with our spouse or children;
• we use booze to relax and pills to get to sleep;
• we rush from meeting to meeting, walking too fast and looking too intense or stern and talking too fast and listening too little;
• we carry with us a pervasive anxiety that just sits in the pit of our stomach creating this feeling of impending doom;
• we obsess on the bad news that is all around us which only adds to our sense of impending doom.

Sound familiar? Did I just make your day even more difficult?

These behaviours are how we respond to the difficulties that are part of life when we have not made peace with the idea that life is difficult - and what we are dealing with today just happens to be the present source of difficulty. And, as with all things, this too shall pass. And then things will be less difficult, and then things will get difficult again. 

The point I am making is that the difficulty you are experiencing now is part of how life works. It may feel unusual or special in some way, but it isn't really. And the sacrifices that we make in terms of self-care and care for others does not help us through the current difficulty - it actually makes things worse. When we sacrifice self-care we ensure that it is our lower selves that we are pitched at our difficulties, when the situation really requires the highest version of ourselves. When we sacrifice self-care we communicate to others that this is what is expected and what is required - with the result that those around us also bring their lower selves. The characteristics of our lower selves include:

• impatience;
• anxiety;
• short-tempers;
• fear-based thinking (which is thinking of a far lower quality than the thinking that happens when we are calm) resulting in fear-based decisions.

When life is difficult it feels right that we should be pushing the hours, working harder, taking less time for ourselves and others - it feels like this is what we need to do to get over the hump. But trust me. This hump will be replaced by another hump, and then another one. So what do we have to do?

1. Accept that your current difficulty is your normal for now. It is what it is. It's not special. It's not unusual. It just is. Ask yourself this question: if you knew that this situation was what you have to look forward to for the rest of your life would you carry on the way you are? Or might you think "The hell with it! I might as well take care of myself!"
2. Get some perspective. Get off the playing field and up onto the balcony and take a look at what is going on on the field. Do this with someone you trust who is not on the field too - a coach, a mentor, a friend who you know will help you gain some perspective. Gaining perspective is about:

• creating some distance between you and the current difficulty;
• getting clear on priorities;
• working out a game plan to address the priorities; 
• deciding what not to focus on for now.

3.  Put some essential disciplines in place:

• exercise time;
• eat away from your desk;
• eat good calories. Your brain is an energy gobbling machine. Don't feed it garbage. Garbage in, garbage out;
• set limits on your working hours and boundaries between work and home. For example, eat breakfast and dinner at the table with your family and without devices; work longer at the office if you must but then don't work at home; or do an hour of work before the family is awake and then have breakfast with the family;
• sleep: know yourself. If you are an 8 hour per day person, then that is what you need. Sleep is essential to your productivity and effectiveness;
• block out time for your people. Life is difficult. They need access to you;
• take time out. Find a relaxation practice that suits you: a walk in nature; a mindfulness meditation; listening to flowing water; something that will slow down your racing mind;

4. Make a To Don't list. When life is difficult, we have to decide what we are going to put down. 

• What meetings should you not go to? What meetings just shouldn't take place at all? Would everyone's life be easier if there was a Friday ban on meetings? Should meetings be limited to 40 minutes? Should you have your meetings standing up?
• What responsibilities should you delegate or just put down for now?
• What tasks or responsibilities need to be executed in a leaner, simpler, less engineered way?
• During which times of the day will you not be available to take calls?
• Is there anything else you need to NOT do because it adds little value and is making life more difficult? Is there anything your team should NOT do for the same reasons?

5. Slow down! Walk more slowly. Talk more slowly. Listen more attentively. Don't make fear-based, knee-jerk decisions. They create as many new fires as you think you're putting out. Fear-based behaviour on the part of a leader creates panic and anxiety. Your job, when life is difficult, is to create calm.

• Practice asking more questions. When life is difficult the quality of your thinking is paramount. You don't have to have an instant answer. You have to have a quality answer. Ask questions until you have looked at the issue from every angle. Then make your  decision. 
• If at all possible, sleep on your decisions. This will slow things down a bit, and will also allow your subconscious to apply itself to the issue and make sense of things in a way your conscious mind does not. Identify what decisions must NOT be made until you are sure they will result in quality actions.

6. Find moments where you can have fun. Play with your children for half an hour. Go on a date. Play a silly board game. Laugh! The release of endorphins when you laugh counters stress hormones and improves immunity, as well as contributing to an overall sense of well-being.​

​7. Make time for your faith practices, if you are a person of faith. Knowing you are not alone is hugely positive for your sense that you can get through whatever difficulties you are dealing with. 

When life is difficult, self-care is key. The tactics I've described are all about taking care of yourself - and many of them will also take care of your people. When your people are struggling with the same difficulties that you are, or some of their own, these tactics will help to build their resilience. Self-care is absolutely vital to building resilience - in yourself and in others - and resilience is what gets us through the tough times.

When life is difficult, our default is to dive into action. Most of these tactics are counter intuitive, so you won't trust that implementing them all at once will do anything except create more problems. So start with one thing first. My own recommendation is that you start with some form of relaxation practice or exercise regime - but it's horses for courses really. Just start with one form of self-care. Then as you see that it actually helps, you could add another and another. And remember to care for your team as you care for yourself. They share your difficulties even when yours are personal.
​

If you are a manager committed to leading in a coaching way; a manager who has done some “Manager as Coach” training or who has read and experimented prolifically with coaching as a style; a manager who sincerely works at using a coaching approach to leading your teams; a manager who is human, has bad days, experiences stress and pressure, and who inevitably messes up despite your best intentions; this series of articles is for you. This is the eighth in series of 12 monthly articles, first published in SA Coaching News in which I share tools, techniques and practices that you can use over time to create new default behaviours that will enable you to live into your intentions of being a coach and creating a coaching culture in your team.
 
In my coaching work with executives and managers, I frequently hear stories that suggest that my client is struggling with some “childish’ behaviour in their team. My tendency is to name it as exactly that because it opens up the opportunity to explore how my client may be managing in a parental way – behaviour that enables this childishness. Is my client excessively critical, figuratively wagging her finger at “naughty team members” for not behaving or performing as expected – in which it is no surprise that there is a culture of blame and unaccountability? Is my client overly nurturing, rescuing team members by fixing or completing their work for them, letting them off the hook – resulting in a pattern of “delegating upwards” or delivering incomplete work?

The Parent – Adult – Child model has its roots in Transactional Analysis. It is not the purpose of this article to present this entire approach, but to demonstrate how the model can be used to raise the maturity (emotional intelligence) of a team by moving the manager’s behaviour away from being either an overly critical or overly nurturing Parent to something more Adult – thus enabling and expecting more Adult behaviour from team members. The principle here is that we are all adults making an adult contribution to an adult pursuit (the work of the organisation) – and we need to approach that in an adult manner.

As an aside, I have observed Parent – Child patterns of behaviour at every level in my client organisations – including at Board and Executive levels.
​
Let me start by sharing a beautiful Parent – Adult – Child diagram created and developed by Karen Pratt, an exceptional Cape Town-based Coach and Coach Supervisor, adapted from the work of S. Temple (1999):

If you are a manager committed to leading in a coaching way; a manager who has done some “Manager as Coach” training or who has read and experimented prolifically with coaching as a style; a manager who sincerely works at using a coaching approach to leading your teams; a manager who is human, has bad days, experiences stress and pressure, and who inevitably messes up despite your best intentions; this series of articles is for you. This is the seventh in series of 12 monthly articles, first published in SA Coaching News in which I share tools, techniques and practices that you can use over time to create new default behaviours that will enable you to live into your intentions of being a coach and creating a coaching culture in your team.

One of the areas of manager coaching that always seems complicated is that where your team member has an issue with another person and wants to talk about it. Indulging this can feel like gossip – and it is gossip where you, as the manager, get caught up in the content and your curiosity is about what happened, and who said what, and what next, etc. etc. I have had many times in my coaching career where I have been coaching several (and sometimes all) members of a team, including the leader of that team.

​In my contracting under such circumstances I always say something like this: “I am going to hear from all of you about all the rest of you. In every conversation where one of you talks about an issue or concern you have with any other member of the team, I will only be interested in thinking about what you are going to do about it – whether that involves dealing with that team member or dealing with yourself. I will not have any conversation with any of you that you should be having with each other. You may say anything you like about any other member of the team. But know that before the end of the coaching conversation I will always ask you what you are going to do about it.”

This is not gossip. This is coaching – your intention is to assist the team member to understand what is going on for them and then decide what they are going to do. You should contract something like this with your own team members when you take on coaching as your leadership style.

In some instances, your role might be to challenge their assumptions about the intentions of the other person. Team members often react strongly to the actions, comments or other behaviour of a colleague because they assume that the behaviour has something to do with them: “she seems to get pleasure out of making me look like an idiot”; “he’s just trying to make it look like the error happened in my team, when the problem is really in his team”; “no matter how well I prepare for my meetings with him, he always manages to throw me a curved ball – it’s like he always wants to show me up as not having covered something”.

In other instances, team members will talk about something that really suggests that a courageous conversation is required. In my book, a courageous conversation is one in which something important needs to be communicated to a colleague because it relates to their effectiveness and success – and not communicating it increases the likelihood that this colleague will get themselves into difficulties that could be prevented – and there is the likelihood that the colleague may not respond well to the conversation. In other words, something must be said AND they may react badly. Nevertheless, a conversation must be had.

Challenging Assumptions

You will know that the issue relates to your team member’s assumptions if they say things like “I don’t know why she always wants to make me look like an idiot”, or “He’s trying to pin this on my team when the problem is really somewhere else”, or “I don’t know why he’s always so angry with me”. There are many variations on this theme. Often the behaviour that is described is defensive – anger, aggression, stonewalling, blame. Any defensive behaviour suggests that the protagonist feels the need to defend – in other words, they feel at risk or under attack. It is by creating the opportunity to think about what might be going on for the other person that you challenge the assumptions of your team member. In some cases, the person you are coaching will understand that they are the reason why their colleague feels the need to defend themselves – in which case, your coaching may be about how they might behave differently in order to arrive at a more productive outcome. In other instances, your team member may realise that the defensive behaviour of their colleague is not about them at all – that there is something going on in the environment that is making their colleague feel at risk or under attack or under relentless pressure. In this case, your coaching might result in a bit of compassion for the other person. “What might be going on for so-and-so that might make her feel that she needs to defend or protect herself?” This compassion will either cause them to decide to let the “bad behaviour” pass with no response at all – knowing that “it is not about me” - or to have a courageous conversation with their colleague about the impact their behaviour is having.
 
Courageous Conversations

As I said earlier, I believe a conversation is courageous when the content may be hard to hear, must be heard, and the reaction might be strongly negative or emotional. Most often, people avoid such conversations either because they don’t want to hurt their colleague, because they want to avoid unpleasantness or because they simply don’t care enough about their colleague to say what must be said. All of these reasons are problematic.

When you do not want to hurt or upset a colleague, your empathy is going to harm your colleague because avoidance of the conversation means that they will not hear something that will help them. When you want to avoid unpleasantness for yourself, you are protecting yourself by being insincere. And if you simply don’t care for your colleague enough to have the conversation, this is actually passive-aggressive behaviour – hanging a team member out to dry, when something could have been done.

I’m a big fan of Kin Scott’s book, Radical Candor. She teaches that truly courageous conversations require two things: firstly, that you genuinely care about the best interests and well-being of the other; and secondly, that you challenge them directly in terms that are clear and unequivocal.

Let’s start with the first part. In coaching the team member with the issue, you need to confront the issue of care: “Do you care enough about the best interests and well-being of your colleague (and the team) to have a conversation that makes you feel uncomfortable?” This is a whole coaching topic on its own. If your team members do not care enough about each other to do this, then you have some work to do with them team in creating psychological safety, mutual care and concern and a climate of candour. If the issue is only with the team member being coached, your conversation might be about the impact on the team of their not caring – there is no point in coaching on how to challenge directly until a point of caring has been achieved. Failure to do so may result in this team member sharing feedback in an obnoxiously aggressive manner – or not sharing it at all. (And don’t fall for the line that “You are the manager. You must handle it.” It is only if the attempts at a courageous conversation by your team member fail that you might step in. It is important that team members have the courage to handle issues directly with one another.)

Once you are satisfied that your team member cares enough about their colleague and the team to have a courageous conversation, your coaching can turn to how to have the conversation. You might find the following questions useful:

• “What do you want your colleague to know and understand?”
• “How will you say it?”
• “What could you say to your colleague before you start that might make them receptive to hearing what you need to say?” (It is often useful to set a courageous conversation up with something like “I need to talk to you about something that you may find difficult to hear. I want you to know that I am sharing it with you because I care about you and your success. Could I ask you to hear me out to the end before you respond?”)
• “How can you be part of the solution? How can you be supportive?”
• “What strong reactions do you expect from your colleague? How will you deal with these if they happen?”
• “Tell me about your own possible reactions and feelings. What will you do to keep these in check?”
• “When will you have this conversation?”
• “Would you like to check in with me after you have had the conversation?” (This is probably a useful thing because you will then have a sense of how the issue was handled and the outcome.)

Of course, the questions above are also great self-coaching questions when you need to have a courageous conversation yourself!

We are ending the "Leaders are Dealers" series on one of the most critical topics: the effective use and allocation of resources within an organization.  If you would like to catch up on previous articles, please follow this link.

This is a critical leadership role – choosing where to allocate resources and where not to. It must be guided by your strategy – which contains all your key choices (read “Playing to Win” by A.G. Lafley):

• What are you trying to achieve in the business – your winning aspiration?
• Where do you play?
• How do you win?
• What are your core capabilities?
• What management systems are required?

These choices will determine where you will allocate resources – people, money, time and attention – and where not. Choices must be made and you need to have a reference point for making these choices.

Every day leaders must make decisions about how to fund or resource competing and dissimilar initiatives. For most managers, allocating resources is fairly easy. After all, they have a fairly narrow set of objectives to achieve, and they choose based on what will deliver the best financial results. However for a CEO or business owner it can be far more difficult as s/he juggles more complicated financial goals. Does one go for revenue or profitability? One tactic is to ask those requesting such resources what they would take out of their budgets in order to fund the initiative in the event that additional funding were not available. The response is telling – especially if they decide they wouldn’t take anything out because this new initiative is a lower priority than what is in the budget.

Allocating people can be even more difficult. Business success depends on being able to attract and retain the right talent – as well as utilising this talent in the best possible way. This allocation of people needs to work for both the organisation and the individual. This can be tricky. If an employee’s interests lie in one direction, while the organisation needs that person focused elsewhere it can create tension that could result in the employee becoming disaffected. This is a tricky juggling act, and needs to be handled sensitively. Could you free this person up to work in their area of interest on a project basis rather than permanently - if moving them permanently creates additional problems for the business?

To what do you refer when you need to make decisions about allocating funding to initiatives that have not been included in the budget? What tactics help you make an intelligent choice? Do you have a talented employee filling an essential role – but this employee is desperate to do something different? How could you manage this in such a way that you act in the best interests.

Watch this space for the new series, starting in January 2016, and please feel free to contact me any time with queries, suggestions or comments.