Charisma or Caring
The ability to inspire others is a key leadership skill, and I am asked by many clients to coach them to be more inspiring. They think it is to do with being charismatic. I don't. I think inspiring leaders genuinely care about their people - they care enough to take the time to get to know and understand what each person is inspired by. If you want to be an inspiring leader, you need to care. It's just not negotiable. Different people are inspired by different things, and you can't take a one size fits all approach - and you definitely shouldn't assume that what inspires you will inspire them.

Empathy is Not Intuition
We often believe that empathy requires intuition - that you must put yourself in someone else's shoes in order to see things from their point of view. I think that requires you to be a mind reader. The easiest and most effective way to develop your ability to see things from another's viewpoint is to ASK them. If you want to know what matters to other people, just ask - and pay attention to the answers.

Authentic Conversations are Key
As you get to know the members of your team on an individual basis, you will have many conversations with them. It is in the context of these conversations that you will get to know what inspires each of them. Generally you will hear them talk about things that matter to them - personal or family goals that they often talk about. Do they talk about how important it is to them to send their children to good schools? Do they talk about the home they dream of building? Do they speak about a course of study that they are longing to follow? If they do talk about these things, listen and pay attention. Ask them questions to ascertain just how important they are and what else they are inspired by.

What about the Quiet People?
Some people are more inclined to keep these thoughts to themselves - for whatever reason. Perhaps they are just more private; perhaps they don't think anyone really cares; perhaps they just haven't allowed themselves to dream. Here is an opportunity to show an interest in them. Ask about what inspires them. Ask what they are trying to achieve in life. Ask who they admire and why - and see how that knowledge can be more inspiring. Perhaps by asking questions you help them to discover what inspires them - that's a real gift because now they can dream!

Everyone is Different
Sincere questions and non-judgement are important here. Everyone is different. You may be surprised what inspires others - especially if that doesn't inspire you! It is what it is for each different person - and differences are fine. What you want to know is what inspires them. It does not need to be what inspires you.

Stay Connected and Celebrate Success
This means you stay interested in their sources of inspiration. What progress are they making? What successes are they experiencing? And when they experience setbacks, help them to use these as learning opportunities so that they can keep moving forward. Most importantly, celebrate their successes and validate the progress that they make. This is far more valuable and inspiring than relying on your scintillating personality!

Contact me
If you are a leader/manager and this topic is something you would like to develop in yourself, email me at belinda@leadershipsolutions.co.za and let's discuss your coaching programme.

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?
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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.

​There has been some interest in the notion that fear is a notorious performance inhibitor, and I have had some interesting questions about how one can bring about improvements to the performance of underperforming managers without invoking fear.
Let’s look at some background. If you are noticing that a manager is underperforming, chances are this is because you have noticed that she is not delivering on a performance expectation that is perfectly clear in your mind – in other words, what she is delivering falls short of your expectations.
It has been my experience that managers have the greatest difficulty handling such issues with the managers who report to them. I think there may be some ego issues – it is difficult to acknowledge that you may have put the wrong person into the job. They may have difficulty defining what it is a manager should be doing in order to deliver on expectations. I think they may also have difficulty having these difficult conversations. They are stressful and they make you anxious. But consider this: will yelling and losing your temper change anything? No – in fact, it will probably make things worse. Will leaving well enough alone and hoping for the best work? No – and you will have the further impact of disillusioning the rest of the team with your failure to take action.
The ability to correct underperformance without using threat or fear depends on the following:

1. The performance expectation must be clear in your own mind. You need to be able to describe it in clear, specific, measurable or observable terms.
2. The performance expectation must be as clear in your team member’s mind as it is in yours. You must have articulated your expectations in a series of discussions with your team member, and your team member must be able to describe the following accurately:
   1. What must be done / what must be delivered?
   2. How it must be done?
   3. When, how often and by when it must be done?
   4. What must be done when it goes wrong?
   5. How is performance measured?
   6. What is the impact of falling short of expectations, and what will be expected if this happens?

If you have not heard these expectations from your team member’s own lips you do not know if she has the same picture of the expectations in her mind as you do in yours.

1. The performance expectation must be monitored regularly and the team member must be given regular feedback on her performance in comparison with the expectation.
   1. She needs to know where she is meeting expectations and where she is falling short.
   2. She needs to have the opportunity to think through and discuss the possible reasons why she is falling short.
   3. She needs to have the opportunity to think through and discuss what she needs/needs to do in order to bring performance back up to expectations.
   4. She needs to know what may happen if she continues to fall short of expectations.
   5. She needs to be encouraged to keep trying and be reminded that she has your support.
2. You need to be sure that you have done all that can reasonably be expected in order to enable her to reach the required levels of performance:
   1. Have you ensured that she has the necessary skill? Have you provided training/coaching in the event that there is a skills problem?
   2. Have you made sure that performance to the standard is recognised and acknowledged (or is it ignored or even punished in some way)?
   3. Have you ensured that there are no obstacles to performance – everything that is required to do the job is in place and works (equipment and technology works and is suitable for the job, the information required is available timeously, the necessary people and other resources are available to do the work, etc.)?
   4. Have you given regular feedback on progress – including noticing when progress is made and saying something when there is insufficient progress?

If you have done all of the above and are still not happy with the performance of your team member it is appropriate to have a conversation that clarifies that meeting the performance expectation is not negotiable.
There are some steps to follow:

1. Get your mind right – do not have this conversation if you are angry and uptight. Do your preparation.
2. Articulate the performance that is expected and describe how it continues to fall short.
3. Remind the team member of the things you have done in order to give her the best chance to succeed.
4. Ask if she thinks there is anything else you should be doing in order to enable her to succeed. Discuss this and agree if this is reasonable or not. If it is a reasonable request, agree to the action. If it is not a reasonable request, say so and give a reason.
5. Clearly state that meeting the required standard of performance is non-negotiable, and the deadline by which such performance must have been achieved. Also describe what you will have to do in the event that the team member continues to fall short of expectations. This may include taking disciplinary action. Indicate your reluctance to go this route and that you hope it will not be necessary.
6. Make yourself available in the event that the team member requires any further support from you.

In your dealings with the team member, make sure that you remain calm and that you never threaten. Advising someone of the consequences of continued underperformance is not a threat – and there should be no threat in your tone. It is a statement of fact – that no manager can be expected to tolerate prolonged underperformance from any team member. Be sure that you are prepared to follow through.
In all of this, it is so important to remember that we are dealing with people, and compassion is key. We are living in tough times, and people are struggling with all sorts of things that we know nothing about. Discussions relating to the possibility that someone may lose their job are not to be taken lightly. While it is never a good idea to allow underperformance to run too long, it is important that you can look yourself in the mirror and know that you have done everything you can, and more, to help this person perform as required.
A word to the wise – it is preferable to have the first of these conversations as early as possible. The longer underperformance is allowed to persist, the greater the difficulty in correcting it – after all, your silence and inaction implies that the performance is okay.

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.
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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. 

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​“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” These are the opening lines to Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. If they had been written in 2020 they could not have been more appropriate!
I’d like to share with you the story of two people – Darby and Joan. Both successful businesspeople, Darby ran an engineering business with 65 employees, and Joan was the Sales Director of a large corporate. Darby had always been described as laid back. Always calm, nothing ever seemed to phase him. Joan was more highly strung. She worried a lot; often reacted too quickly to issues without taking the time to gather the facts; was given to high highs and low lows. She was exceptionally good at her job and her sales teams all did really well, but it was always at quite a high price emotionally. When the Covid-19 lockdown happened, as you can imagine, Darby and Joan responded very differently.
In the days before lockdown, Joan found herself in meeting after meeting with her principals in the European head office. They worried about adjusting forecasts, getting deposits in before lockdown, adjusting salaries downwards for non-essential staff and making sure that all deliveries were completed before lockdown. She had no time with her team except for half an hour on the day before lockdown when she breathlessly emphasised how important it was that they make sure that they don’t lose a single sale during this time.
During lockdown, she was all over the place. On and off social media, back and forth between her emails and phoning her team members to ask for progress on pending deals and new quotations. She continued with her daily meetings with her European head office and only discovered at the end of week 1 that she could have a team meeting on Zoom. When she did have a team meeting it was business, business, business. She seemed not to have the emotional capacity to deal with her team members’ fears and concerns.
She slept badly and was up in the early hours of the morning trying to figure out how to achieve the sales targets after lockdown – after all there were only 8 days/7 days/6 days to go. She was distracted when she was helping her children with their school work, and struggled to follow a routine every day. She endlessly ruminated over “what if this, and what if that”.
Darby, on the other hand, spent some time with his team before lockdown deciding how they were going to handle things. He wanted above all else to make sure that jobs were saved and that the business would be able to ride out the lockdown and recover quickly when it was over. He and the team agreed on various tactics that they would use to achieve that, and then they talked to the wider team and agreed on how they would proceed during the initial lockdown, and what they would do if the lockdown were extended. They agreed on how they would stay in touch with each other during the lockdown. Darby made sure he and his other managers were set up properly to do whatever business they could remotely. They got in touch with all their customers personally and informed them of the plan. Darby also contacted his bank to defer his bond payments on the business premises and some capital equipment payments for a few months so that they would have working capital when this was all over.
Following conversations with his wife and children, he designed a daily routine for himself that included waking at the normal time, an exercise regime of an hour, time during the morning to attend to business, lunch with the family, household chores and projects in the afternoon, followed by family story time and dinner. He and his wife also agreed that their children would do a certain number of supervised hours of schoolwork and how they would share this load.

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Then Darby, being the measured, laidback soul that he was, proceeded to live in exactly this way. He took one day at a time. He refused to indulge in the excitement about “when we go back in 8 days/7 days/6 days time”, and was mindful of how much attention he paid to social media. He checked in twice a day and was very circumspect about how much credibility he gave to much of what he read. He stayed in touch with his team, encouraging them, calming them down, reminding them not to worry about what would happen after lockdown or ruminate over “what if this and what if that”. When they did venture into “what if” territory he would say “Well what if that happens? What will you do?” and stay with it until they at least had some actions that they would take in the event of that “what if” coming to pass.
Of course he was concerned, as any business owner would be, but he kept his attention in the present, and paid attention to what was under his control at that time. He regularly phoned his customers to find out how they were doing and how they were feeling about their businesses, taking time to encourage and calm them in the same way he did with his own team. He used his time to learn about new engineering processes that he wanted to explore, learning new skills and working on various household projects and hobbies that he had never had the time to before. And he stayed in touch with his friends and family, encouraging them and lightening things up for them.
He was optimistic about a number of things: that lockdown would end; that times would get better; and that the economy would improve. After all, bad times always roll around to better times, and the world economy has always recovered.
This time of Covid-19 and worldwide lockdown is causing us to draw on our very best selves or risk spiralling into despair and mental illness. Never has it been more important for us to “mind our minds”.
It has been said that the mind is a faithful servant but a tyrannical master. We can see exactly how this played out with Darby and Joan. Notwithstanding their different personalities, Darby and Joan clearly had different levels of mental discipline. For whatever reason, Darby has excellent skills that enabled himself to “mind his mind”. Let’s have a look at what they are:

1. He recognises that he has a responsibility to other people – his wife, his children and his team – and understands that how he behaves will influence how they feel and behave. This is such an important leadership quality – the recognition that it is not just about how you feel. It is about how other people feel. If you want people to be cooperative, calm and thoughtful during a crisis, then the leader must create calm. Just by putting the needs of others before his own, Darby created calm for himself – after all, it is impossible to create calm for others if you are an anxious, worried mess yourself.
2. He decides what is important right now – and in the case of his business, what was most important was that they all pull together so that the business and all the jobs could be sustained. He also needed some backing from his bank, and asked for it.
3. He focuses on what is within his control and brings other people back to what is in their control when he talks to them. Within his control are his thoughts, his routine, his contingency plan (in the event that the “what if” happens), his conversations with his team and his customers, his impact on his children.
4. He sustains optimism without obsessing about what life will be like when this is all over. Optimism is the quality of being hopeful about a positive future. It is not necessarily attached to a specific positive future. It might best be captured in this quotation that I love: “Everything works out in the end, and if it hasn’t worked out yet you haven’t reached the end.” So he doesn’t count down days because that will only result in disappointment if lockdown is extended – but he does speak about the likelihood that things will change and improve and that we may return to a nicer world than the one we left behind.
5. He does not allow himself to be tormented by endless “what ifs”. When my clients play “what if” I always respond with “Well then answer the question! If that happens, what will you do?” This is a kind of scenario planning exercise – when you know how you will respond if your fear comes to pass, it takes some of the power out of that fear. In fact, this is exactly the approach I have been taking with clients who want to talk about life after lockdown. We don’t have a crystal ball, but we can explore the possible scenarios that could play out and think about how we will respond to each one.
6. He sustains a routine. Healthy routines build our resilience during the best of times, and are especially important during the worst of times. Having a reason to get up in the morning, staying fit, having goals in the form of your domestic chores, projects and hobbies, having set meal times and family time, all create a structure and predictability to your day that keeps you and your family resilient.
7. He reflects several times a day on the blessings this lockdown has given – time to learn new skills and processes; time to work on his projects and hobbies; story time with his children every afternoon; time to play with his children during the week; time to talk to people; and regularly notices how lucky he is. In doing this, he notices that this time is full of gifts.

These are all skills that Joan seems to lack. She is unable to create calm for her team because she is unable to create calm for herself. Focusing on sales at a time like this is the last thing her team members and her customers need. What they need is calm, care and encouragement. She needs to take her attention off herself and focus on what her team needs from her – just that is a powerful way to mind your mind. Making other people’s concerns more important than your own will diminish the magnitude of your personal concerns.
The time will come soon enough when they can worry about targets – but right now, when nobody can get out there, when nobody is buying and when everyone is worrying about how their businesses will survive is not the time to be pushing the numbers. Reminding people that “this too shall pass” would be more useful. Joan’s attention is in the future, on things she cannot control and on needing to know what will happen – all redolent of someone who is a slave to their mind. She needs to learn to stop herself from doing these things. She needs to notice when she is doing them and bring her attention back to the present moment and those things she can control.

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