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 don’t care if they are happy. They’re here to work!

I’ve always struggled with this idea. It has always seemed perfectly obvious to me that happy people do better work than unhappy people – so it should matter to us that our people are happy. It was a source of tremendous frustration to me in the 1990s when managers disputed this on the basis that there was no research to prove my assertions! I mean do you really need proof of something that is just logical? Apparently you do. Happily there is now masses of research that backs up this idea.

One of the most compelling for its accessibility and readability is a book by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer called “The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work”. Their work involved analysing 12 000 daily email diaries from 238 volunteers (there was nothing in it for them). Most of the questions were numerical ratings about their perceptions, emotions and motivation during the day (which they call the “inner work life”) but the most important question was an open-ended one: “Briefly describe one event from today that stands out in your mind.” This was the gold mine. From these 12 000 reports, they were able to show what many managers are not able to see:

• Inner work life has many aspects to it and is complex;
• Inner work life profoundly influences creativity, productivity, work commitment and collegiality (the vibe in the team, and the extent to which colleagues help and support each other);
• Inner work life is of profound importance to companies because, no matter how brilliant the strategy, it still has to be executed by people – and its execution usually depends on great performance that requires real stretch;
• Our inner work life is profoundly affected by events occurring every day at work – and negative events have a far more powerful effect than positive events;
• Inner work life matters very much to employees.

 
Their research also revealed 3 types of positive events:

1. Progress in meaningful work (work that matters to the employee);
2. Catalysts – which are events that help to move a project forward; and
3. Nourishers – interpersonal exchanges that uplift people during the course of their work.

Of these three, progress in meaningful work stands out as the most powerful.
 
They also found three negative influences that undermine inner work life:

1. Setbacks  in the work;
2. Inhibitors -  events that create obstacles to getting the work done; and
3. Toxins – interpersonal exchanges that undermine people doing the work.

 
So what does this mean to us? People are most engaged in their work when they can see that they are making steady progress – whether this means that they are achieving their productivity targets, customer service targets, or meeting project milestones. This is why visual management systems are so very powerful – they give people a visual that shows that they are making progress. This is tremendously satisfying – and a sense of satisfaction is just one of the many facets of inner work life. In fact, engagement is happiness in action – it is the joy of being able to see that your efforts make an impact, and that you are moving closer to the achievement of an important goals because of your efforts.

Secondly, a central role of leadership is to get the obstacles out of the way so that people can get on with the job and make progress. Leaders have to take this job very seriously. It means solving problems and giving answers quickly. If your people struggle to get a response from you, or sit with unsolved problems that are yours to address, don’t be surprised if they give up and disengage. If, on the other hand, they see you responding and taking action quickly, they will be encouraged and energised to continue digging deep in order to continue making progress.

Thirdly, make sure that your every interaction with a team member is uplifting and encouraging. Publicly praise and encourage. Any feedback for improvement must be in private and delivered with absolute consideration for its impact on the inner work life of the team member for the rest of the day. Do you want the team member to spend the rest of the day engaged in making progress, or do you want him ruminating on how you treated him? Furthermore, you need to have the leadership courage to insist that everyone in your organisation is spoken of and spoken to with respect. Disrespect and disregard is toxic.

Finally, I repeat – negative events have a far more powerful effect than positive events on the inner work lives of people. Toxic interpersonal exchanges, constant obstacles that prevent one from getting the work done, or the sense that we just can’t get it right are like acid eroding our organisations.
 
Questions to Consider

• What needs to happen for it to be possible for your people to be able visibly track their progress on projects and track the impact of their efforts on their objectives?
• What can you do to make this happen?
• What visible management systems could you use?

To book a free 30 minute Zoom meeting with me to discuss 3 ways in which you might positively impact on the inner work life of your team members email me: belinda@leadershipsolutions.co.za 

​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. 

​

​“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.

​
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.

If you have found this article useful and would like to receive it every month, follow this link: https://www.leadershipsolutions.online/free-leadership-guide-leaders-are-dealers.
I will also send you my free eBook, “Leaders are Dealers”, which has some great hints and tools for leading in challenging times.

#Leadership #LeadershipSolutions #Management #NewManagers #LeadershipSkills #ManagementSkills #LeadershipDevelopment #ManagementDevelopment #ServantLeadership #SelfLeadership #SelfCare

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.
​

​Success in #20Plenty is going to be about far more than whether or not you meet your KPIs. Actually, that’s not really success – that’s just meeting the demands of your boss. Success is going to be about the commitments you made to yourself and kept. Here are some examples:

• Personal growth: did you do the work you said you would do in order to be more in control of your emotional reactions, or do you fly off the handle as badly as you did this time last year?
• Health: did you implement the exercise programme you chose in a disciplined way; did you stick to the eating lifestyle you committed to; did you kick that carb habit that was making you fat?
• Relationships: were you more gentle with your Mom? Or did you continue to be as impatient with her as you always are?
• Money: did you invest money every month, like you said you would? Did you manage to save for that holiday?
• Work: Did you become a better leader and coach for your team, or are you still telling everybody what to do?
• Career: what did you do to build your network in the wider organisation? What changes have you made on the advice of your mentor?
• Community: did you give back in the way you intended to any of the communities of which you are a member?
• Family: What did you do differently in order to make your family the priority that you say they are?

Most of us start the year with goals or intentions for the year – and many of them will fall under the headings above. But then life happens and we get busy and we live on autopilot and suddenly the year is over and oh, shucks!
If you are serious about achieving the goals you have set in these various areas of your life, I recommend that you “appoint” accountability partners. Don’t make one person your accountability partner for everything – rather use a few people and schedule regular get togethers with them where you account for the actions you have taken against each of your goals. Setting up your accountability partners involves a conversation in which you outline the following:

1. Describe the goal, why it is important to you and the actions you intend to take to achieve that goal. Also outline how you think you might get in your own way – your personal bad habits or weaknesses.
2. Ask them to be your accountability partner and clarify what the role means – that they need to hear you accounting to them regularly for your actions; that they need to get you to commit to new actions, if necessary, and that they need to give you honest feedback on how you might be creating your own problems. It is vital that you and your accountability partners agree to mutual freedom of expression within a relationship of mutual respect.
3. Agree on how often you will meet (can be fact-to-face; telephonically; or via Skype) and what that meeting will cover.

In terms of your work and career goals, I recommend nominating an accountability partner who regularly sees you in action and is in a position to give you frank and prompt feedback on how they see you showing up in comparison to the intentions you have shared with them.
Appointing accountability partners takes courage. You will have nowhere to hide! Isn’t that great?

My new favourite quote is from Rob Dial (look for a podcast called “The Mindset Mentor) who says “Success is nothing sexy. It's just a lot of boring habits practiced every single day.”

I’m so with him on this. I am always saying that there is an indivisible bond between success and self-discipline – like love and marriage, you can’t have one without the other. It’s about the things you do every single day.

Here are some of mine:

• Wake up early!
• Do at least an hour of exercise every day (3 times a week I do more because I take my daily walk and then also have a gym session with my personal trainer).
• Meditate for at least 10 minutes before starting work. On good days I will do 20 minutes. I use an app on my phone called “Insight Timer” and I always have a topic on which I meditate.
• Having a list of the most important things I must get done every day.
• Blocking out time in my calendar for work or activities that are important and require a chunk of time (preparation time; writing time; making travel plans; etc.)
• Practicing task completion – I make sure that I don’t hop between tasks like a grasshopper because I know how bad this is for my productivity.
• Making the phone calls and appointments I need to make early in the day (this is something I don’t like doing and I want to ensure that I don’t procrastinate).

Make a list of the disciplines that you know you need to practice every single day in order to set yourself up for success. I can’t wait to read your ideas:

Success starts with what is going on in your own head. It is not about getting a leg up or a handout – although these can help. Too many people spend their lives looking for their big break – and this is often in the form of another person. Someone successful who will offer them an amazing opportunity that will change their lives. How often does this saviour turn out to be anything but? I have seen it too many times, and I’m here to tell you that your future does not depend on someone else seeing your potential and thrusting you forward into the life of your dreams.

You are your own best bet! Nobody cares about you, your life, your career and your success more than you – so don’t make the mistake of putting your future into someone else’s hands. That is not to say that you won’t achieve success with and through others – we almost always do. But it is to say that your success is not up to others.

If you completely own the notion that You are your own best bet, you will take charge of and responsibility for how this year and this decade unfolds. That is not to say that the external factors of the world will not affect you at all – but you can decide just how much they affect you. You are the captain of your own mind. You are responsible for your state of mind. You are the boss of your intentions and expectations. Your expectations are your responsibility. What you put out is what you get back – so make sure that you get clear on your highest intentions and expectations in order to set yourself up for success.

My motto / theme / clarion cry for this whole decade is #20Plenty. If you live in South Africa, you will have 101 really good reasons why that is totally ridiculous. But we can each decide what we are going to sign up for. I am simply not signing up for a decade of struggle. I am signing up for #20Plenty. Make sure that your highest intentions and expectations set your #20Plenty up for success. Imagine if every single one of us had this mindset? We could and would create miracles!
​
Decide what you will and won’t buy into or embrace – I am simply not buying into any talk of recession or national collapse. Decide what you will and won’t allow – I will not allow vile, racist vitriol to pollute my Twitter or Facebook feeds. Decide how you will show up and what you will not allow in yourself – I will make a point of noticing all that I have to be grateful of every day, and will not allow myself to be drawn into other people’s “ain’t it awful” conversations.
Call to action: If this speaks to you, please answer the following question in the comments:
What do you expect YOUR #20Plenty to hold for you?

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 tenth 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.

The topic of psychological safety has come up several times in conversation over the last week or so, and has been bubbling under as a topic for days now. Wikipedia defines “psychological safety as a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking.[1] It can be defined as "being able to show and employ one's self without fear of negative consequences of self-image, status or career" (Kahn 1990, p. 708).[2] In psychologically safe teams, team members feel accepted and respected.”

In the absence of psychological safety, innovation, “radical candor” (see Kim Scott), team learning, engagement and continuous improvement is inhibited. It is important to the manager coach for creating an interpersonal dynamic that is free from guardedness. It creates an environment in which team members do not fear judgement, ridicule or the potential of saying something that is career limiting.

Uncertainty about how to “be” with one’s manager is a significant inhibitor to the quality of thinking that manager coaches seek.

A couple of years ago I was working with an executive who had got off on the wrong foot with his team. He was radically different in every way from his predecessor. While the team may not have liked his predecessor, they did know how to work with him. Because they did not know how to work with my client, they did not trust him and he had real problems getting going with them.

I had recently come across an article by Leah Fessler (https://qz.com/1046131/writing-a-user-manual-at-work-makes-teams-less-anxious-and-more-productive/) in which she describes writing a user manual for yourself that makes your team members more certain of how to deal with you. I have subsequently read other articles advocating something similar. Your Personal User Manual will have a number of headings which you can use for guidance. Here is one example:

1. My Style
2. What I value
3. What I don’t have patience for
4. How best to communicate with me
5. My flaws

• What I am working on in myself
• What to do when my flaws show up

1. How you can help me
2. What people misunderstand about me

You could do a little research and make up your own set of headings. Completing the content under the headings is a valuable reflection exercise. It causes you to think carefully about yourself, your flaws and hot buttons, and what your team should understand about you in order to not feel the need to guess or tiptoe around you. It also gives them guidance about how they can help you to grow and develop.

In order to complete your personal user manual, you could use a number of sources:

• Any personality profiles you have completed (such as Strengthsfinder, Enneagram, Myers Briggs, DISC, etc.)
• Your most recent performance appraisals
• Colleagues and team members: send them the same questions and have them share their experience of you

Once you have sufficient input, finalise your Personal User Manual. Then share it with your team and have a rich discussion with them, encouraging their comments and questions.  Then encourage them to each compile their own user manuals to be shared and discussed at later team meetings.

This is approach has a number of benefits:

1. It gives you the opportunity to model vulnerability – meaning you show yourself honestly and unguardedly (including your flaws), knowing that judgement is possible.
2. The fact that you are willing to be vulnerable in front of your team demonstrates more loudly than your words that you will create the same psychological safety for team members who reveal themselves.
3. It teaches that we are not all the same and that we make a mistake when we deal with everyone in the same way. We are able to use this information in order to deal with different people in ways that suit them and bring out the best in them.
4. It is a valuable tool in the journey to self-awareness.
5. It could be subject-matter for future coaching conversations with your team members – if they wish to do so.

While it is really useful for a manager who is new to the team to do this exercise, there is also no harm doing it later in your relationship with your team. As my client discovered, it was in making himself more knowable that he was able to build healthy relationships with his team and break through their resistance.

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 fifth 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.

Whether you are a manager of managers or you find yourself coaching a peer who manages managers, there are some interesting complexities. When the source of difficulty or frustration is a manager who is not taking appropriate action on the performance of their team member, what is the coaching topic?

Let’s use a fictitious example. I lead a team of managers. One of them – let’s call her Lindi - is struggling to deliver on her KPIs because she has a team member (Pete) who is not performing. I also am not aware of any specific action being taken to address Pete’s non-performance. We have discussed non-performance against the KPIs before, and Lindi had agreed to take up the issue with Pete, but I am not seeing any improvement in what is being delivered from that team. Therefore, the topic of my coaching discussion will be Lindi’s failure to manage. In essence, Lindi is underperforming in that she is not taking action (or effective action) on Pete’s non-performance– and her inability to achieve her KPIs is a symptom.

Any performance coaching discussion is better handled when one uses a fairly standard set of stages. In my coaching, I work with clients to come up with their own stages, but these are the ones I use:

1. Describe what you have observed and why it concerns you.
   I notice that your team is still not delivering on its KPIs. We talked last month when you missed target, and I notice that your team has missed its targets again this month. This concerns me for a couple of reasons. One is that with each passing month we are increasingly unlikely to meet our annual target – and that is not good for anyone. The greater concern is that it suggests that you have not managed to get Pete up to speed yet. I am concerned that you might be struggling to manage his performance, and I would like to be able help you to sort this out so that you and your team starts to experience more success.
2. Ask if they would be willing to work with you on this.
   Are you willing to work with me on this?
   [The use of a closed question here is intentional – I want to know if you are open to a discussion: yes or no.]
   
   

{You will not follow steps 1 and 2 if a colleague has approached you for some peer coaching.}

1. Ask for a description of their experience. Ask follow-up questions that uncover what has been done; what has happened; what meaning is being made of what is going on (assumptions at play); the extent to which they are able to take the perspective of the underperforming team member. This is all about understanding the situation and identifying the key issue(s).
   What has been going on for you?
   What have you tried?
   How did Pete respond? How was he in the discussion?
   What has happened since then?
   What do you think might be going on for Pete? [This is a key question because it is probably what Lindi and I will work with – it may well be the key issue here.]
   How do you feel about this? What impact does it have on you and the rest of the team?
2. Ask questions that explore what will happen if nothing changes, arriving at the conclusion that change is not negotiable.
   What will happen if nothing changes?
   How will that impact on your team?
   How will that impact on the wider team?
   Are you saying that there really is no choice – we have to solve the problem? [Again you see the power of a purposeful closed question.]
   What specific change would you like to see?
3. Refer back to the key issue identified above: ask questions that explore options for supporting Pete in addressing the key issue(s).
   How might you make ..… easier for Pete?
   How often might you do that? And for what period of time?
   What else could you do? How might you involve Pete in the solution? How would you coach him?
   How might you track his progress? How could he track himself?
4. Ask questions that summarise the commitments and arrive at agreement on a review.
   Could you summarise for me what you will do?
   How do you intend going about it?
   What will you do if it does not have the results you hope for?
   How will I know if you are struggling?
   When shall we meet again to see how this is working?
5. End with a short reflection that identifies the key learnings.
   What stands out for you as most useful from this discussion? How might this influence you in future? How will you use this with other team members? What have you learned about yourself?

​While this article has specifically discussed coaching a manager who has an underperforming team member, taking the time to structure any discussion that may be tricky is good practice. It keeps you focused, it acts as a kind of rehearsal and it also ensures that the outcomes covers most, if not all angles.
​
For your convenience, here are the steps without the blurb:

1. Describe what you have observed and why it concerns you.
2. Ask if they would be willing to work with you on this.

Steps 1 and 2 are not applicable if a peer has requested some coaching.

1. Ask for a description of their experience until you both deeply understand the situation and the key issue(s).
2. Ask questions that explore what will happen if nothing changes, arriving at the conclusion that change is not negotiable.
3. Ask questions that explore options for addressing the key issue(s).
4. Ask questions that summarise the commitments and arrive at agreement on a review.
5. End with a short reflection that identifies the key learnings.