Dr Rob Archer

What is Meaning in Work?

Posted on February 24, 2020May 22, 2021 by Dr Rob Archer

When I retrained to become a psychologist, my MSc research centred on meaning in work. That’s because my work to date (as a management consultant) had been pretty meaningless, which left me pretty depressed, but I didn’t really know what to do about it.

So my research questions were:

What is meaning in work?
How can I find it?

I wanted to create a model of meaning in work to help people find it, but first I needed to understand…

What exactly is meaning in work?

There’s debate in academic circles about what meaning is, and I spent months sifting through these definitions. Eventually I felt the clearest description was in a brilliant paper by Eric Klinger, who argued (1998) that meaning can be seen from an evolutionary perspective.

Think about our ancestors, whose survival focused on successfully finding food and avoiding woolly mammoths in harsh and varied terrain. We are the children of brilliant problem solvers, who would move and adapt to new challenges every day. As a species we therefore survived by being able to respond to our environment and meet a succession of context-dependent goals.

The cognitive processes we developed to help us do that (i.e. our thoughts and emotions), all evolved to help us understand the potential dangers and opportunities that came our way during the pursuit of our goals. It is understanding that enables action to be taken in the pursuit of goals, and successful pursuit of goals = survival.

Klinger therefore argued that the role of human cognition is to manage the process of comprehension, working to sort out

“the ambiguous or confusing stimuli…until they can be dismissed as irrelevant, or channelled into the emotional / motivation / action systems” (p31).

This means that at the heart of the human operating system is an imperative to UNDERSTAND the stimuli reaching us and to place it in context.

This is a serious business, too.

Consider that without understanding we feel uneasy (it’s not for nothing our greatest fear is the fear of the unknown).

Conversely, understanding something brings relief. Think about the ‘aha!’ moment when you solve a problem. It is pleasant because this is a relief from the burden of not knowing. Significantly, this holds even if the news is bad – think about how a diagnosis of a mystery illness often brings relief.

Meaning is essential because it means we are able to act with purpose and agency. Without it we are unsure and lack direction.

Meaning is therefore comprehension, whether that be for survival (understanding the meaning of a fresh Tiger paw print), or symbolic (like comprehending a word in a sentence) or the existential (like the meaning of one’s work).

As Baumeister (1991) argued, meaning in work and life is a process of sense-making which connects an individual’s existence to a wider understanding of the world. When we have meaning in work we understand ourselves and our work in context. Which feels good.

Without meaning our work feels as though it doesn’t make sense, we feel less agency over our place in the world and a sense of unease grows. A pretty fair summation of my time as a management consultant!

Conversely when we understand ourselves and our place in the world, meaning grows. We know how to relate to the stimuli reaching us and we feel more agency over it. Whilst we still experience difficult emotions, we understand why we are experiencing them and that they are in the service of something meaningful…

And that’s a fair summation of my life as a psychologist.

Sources:

Klinger, E., (1998). The Search for Meaning in Evolutionary Perspective and its Clinical Implications. In The Human Quest for Meaning, Wong, P., & Fry, P., Eds. Lawrence Erlbaum, New Jersey.

Baumeister, R. F. (1991). Meanings of Life. New York.

Fighting for what matters: what I really learned about completing a doctorate whilst raising a family and running a business

Posted on September 11, 2019September 11, 2019 by Dr Rob Archer

So I did want to reflect on what I learned during these past few years because so much of it is Working with ACT-relevant.

But I am wary of writing one of ‘those‘ type of posts, or one of those ‘it was tough but I am so glad I did it!’ things.

Fact is, I am not sure I am glad I did it. But I’ve done it now, so here’s what I think I learned:

1. Make every session count

If there was one principle that stood out, it was this. Every time I sat down to work, I focused on taking one step forward.

Sometimes this was impossible, or I even went backwards (the climbing a mountain metaphor helps here – i.e. sometimes you have to go down the mountain to go up again). However, by accepting the tiniest step as progress, including correcting one typo, I can’t think of a single instance where this didn’t work.

And one day, I woke up and it was done.

2. Create deadlines

There were days when I felt totally overwhelmed and my mind would wander to all the things I wasn’t doing / couldn’t do. If this resonates you need deadlines. The pomodoro technique is good for this. So are children.

I would often work during my children’s nap times, which created an exquisite sense of urgency. Sometimes – agh! – one of them would wake before I’d made any progress. To my surprise I was still always able to find one thing to do before running off to the bedroom. It’s amazing how deadlines focus the mind, and a crying child is a very good deadline*.

* My children are for rent on an hourly basis.

3. Intensity beats time

I placed intensity front and centre of my strategy. This led me to do seemingly strange things, like working for around 60-90 minutes on the Doctorate even when I had more time available and getting involved in kanban, which ~~sounds like~~ is a cult. I also learned the value of 5-minute runs as a way of breaking things up and thinking things through.

I had ‘TAKE A BREAK’ stuck to my laptop and made it a rule never to stare at my screen defeated.

4. Remember it’s a choice

One especially dismal day I shared my pain on Twitter and got some lovely responses – ‘hang in there’, ‘keep going’ etc, which I was grateful for.

But Mat Rawsthorne said ‘give it up and walk away if you choose’, which felt liberating.

‘Do I choose to do this today?’ was a far more helpful question than ‘Do I feel like doing this today?’, because the answer to the first question was generally yes, and the answer to the second was always no.

5. Ditch social media

Although Twitter etc can be helpful (see above), in general it is DEADLY* to a deep work project such as doctoral research. I basically had to cut it out altogether. What’s interesting is I grew to dislike Twitter much more during this time, as I came to see it for what it is. And if I can’t convince you, let Cal Newport have a go:

* not in the Irish sense

6. I had a lot of help

The fact is I couldn’t have done it without a supportive partner, and I had one who protected my sleep, too.

I literally fantasised about the words of thanks that I would give my family once it was all over, so here they are:

So each one of these principles of committed action really made a difference. But to be honest, they only tell half the story…

Going where you mind says you cannot go

“Where does your mind say we cannot go?”
Steve Hayes, A Liberated Mind

I completed my final write-up in a long, hot London summer with my little children playing in a playground opposite my office.

I can still see them; 2-year-old Orla pretending to be an airplane whilst bouncing on a trampoline. And tiny Sam, toddling and falling about like a gorgeous, drunken penguin.

I have a place in me, perhaps stored in my body more than in words, that remembers the feeling of my own Dad vanishing at about the same age. It’s like a feeling of permanent emptiness where a hug should be.

And so of course that summer it felt like I was doing something similar to my children. Almost at a cellular level, I had a feeling that I’d been here before somehow, and that this struggle inside my office was not where I should be.

At the time, I wrote:

The brutal truth is, there won’t be another summer where my daughter pretends to be Mo Salah or when my little boy is learning to run and talk.
There won’t be another summer when, at bath time, my babies scream with laughter when I shower their toes.
And there won’t be too many summers when they both shout ‘DAD!’ and jump into my arms when they see me.
In 10 years’ time what will I give to have even one of these moments back?

It’s fair to say I had some low points.

And this led to the final thing I learned.

7. Hard choices need self-compassion

My heroes in life aren’t Buddhist monks who meditate on hilltops or Silicon Valley CEOs whose incredible ‘life hacks’ spare them the need to make difficult choices.

My heroes are the ones who struggle and fight for something, and who live all of their values fiercely and imperfectly.

I care for my children, but I care for evidence-based psychology, too. To fight for only one of these would be a shallow victory. Yet to fight for both meant the fight of my life.

So what will I want my children to do when faced with a similar situation?

The same.

I want them to care for their kids of course, but I want them to struggle and fight for what matters to them too. Otherwise, what’s the point?

From this perspective – and only from here – I reach a place where I can finally grant myself some compassion.

Because this was the summer where I stared at one of my most powerful demons and didn’t flinch.

And this was the summer my kids saw their Dad doing that.

And maybe this was the summer – who knows? – that their choices expanded a little.

And many summers from now, when the time comes for them to fight for something, maybe they will have a feeling stored in a place beyond words that they have been here before, and that this struggle is where they are meant to be.

Everything is Dysfunctional: Applying Psychological Flexibility to Organisations

Posted on April 15, 2019February 19, 2022 by Dr Rob Archer

“But every organisation is dysfunctional!”

I was describing the frustrations of running a small business to a friend who works in venture capital. In my mind I felt like the kind of dysfunction I was describing would shock her. Far from it – she seemed surprised at my surprise.

What’s odd is that as an ACT practitioner I am used to the idea that our own thoughts and emotions can frequently be unhelpful. Yet somehow I’d allowed myself to believe that organisations – built by dysfunctional humans like me – should be run in an entirely functional way.

The Dysfunctional Beatles

In early 1967 the greatest band in the world were in trouble.

John was behaving even more cynically than ever, only really coming alive when working on his own material. His relationship with Yoko was also causing resentment among the others.

Ringo was convinced he was surplus to requirements and considering his options in other careers – photography and furniture making. George was also feeling cut adrift, thinking that the others were deliberately excluding his songs.

Whilst Paul may have appeared the happiest, he was himself only a couple of years from his own breakdown. The author of Yesterday aged 26, was beginning to doubt himself. The Beatles were pulling apart.

The Dysfunctions of World-Leading Companies

In 1982 Tom Peters wrote his seminal book In Search of Excellence, looking at some of the best run companies in the world.

It’s a compelling read, until you realise that nearly all of the companies chosen as ‘excellent’ have since either underperformed or gone bust (think Atari).

Phil Rosenzweigh called this the “d elusion of connecting the winning dots“. Yet we still do this. We pick the most successful organisations and then buy the myth that their success is down to their culture and leadership. Think Laszlo Bock from Google, pretending their success is to do with culture; Sheryl Sandberg lecturing on work-life balance, or anything to do with Steve Jobs.

Yet look harder and it is easy to find stories of Google’s dysfunctional working practices (actually, this article did not appear in Google searches but did appear on Duck Duck Go). Facebook’s total lack of work life balance for its actual employees. Steve Jobs being an unbelievable jerk.

Take a look at this clip of Microsoft in 1995 and ask yourself if that can possibly have been a functional place to work:

Think of investment banks, family-run businesses, the NHS…pretty much everything is dysfunctional.

It’s funny how the idea of acceptance – particularly accepting my own difficult thought and emotions – has freed me so much in my own personal life, yet when it comes to the places I work I expect organisations to work exactly as I think they should.

I’m not suggesting that working in dysfunctional organisations is easy or that we shouldn’t try to fix them. But I am suggesting it’s not the only way of assessing whether our jobs or careers are right for us.

The Dysfunctional Beatles (2)

In May 1967, amidst their heightening dysfunctions, the Beatles released Sgt Pepper.

It was a staggering achievement, made all the more remarkable by releasing Stawberry Fields and Penny Lane earlier that year, neither of which made the album.

The Beatles were overflowing with creativity and inspiration whilst growing increasingly frustrated with each other.

The following year, with relations at an all-time low, they released the incredible White Album, having earlier released Hey Jude, which was also not on the album (!)

Finally, in 1969 they released the mighty Abbey Road and in the death throes of the band, Let it Be (which was released after they had split).

In other words, some of the greatest music of all time was recorded amidst some of the most stressful and dysfunctional working relationships.

It’s the same everywhere. Dysfunctional companies run the world; they power things, finance things, change the way we work and live, and in the case of the NHS they save lives and give dignity to people when they need it most.

What Are You Building Amidst Dysfunction?

In ACT, one of the key ideas is that we can move towards our values and goals in the presence of difficult thoughts and emotions.

The test with our own careers, therefore, is not just how dysfunctional something feels, or how frustrating your colleagues are, or how undervalued you feel. (Of course, this is not an argument to just put up with these things – that is not what acceptance means). It is just not the sole measure.

The other part of the equation is what are you building in return? How often do you get to move towards your most important values and goals, amidst the dysfunction?

When I was a management consultant the answer to that was ‘almost never’. But as a psychologist, it is every day – my most meaningful contribution to the world ever.

In the same way that mental health is more than an absence of disease, your job’s worth is more than an absence of dysfunction.

Instead of buying the story that dysfunctional organisations leave us helpless to make a difference, we can learn to hold our stories lightly, and find room to create something of value, amidst the dysfunction.

ACTing On Mental Health: The Evidence

Posted on May 23, 2018May 19, 2021 by Dr Rob Archer

This week someone asked me for a meeting, so I looked at my diary….kept looking…and eventually came up with a date in early December.

It’s not just me – though of course I am terribly important.

I don’t know anyone who isn’t busy (and terribly important) and perhaps no surprise – many of us feel stressed as a result.

Some of the stress statistics would be shocking if they weren’t so familiar:

In the UK, work-related stress accounts for 37% of ill health and 45% of days lost (Health and Safety Executive, 2016).
1 in 6 people in paid employment will suffer a common mental health issue this year (Mental Health Foundation, 2016).
The estimated cost of poor mental health is £74 – £99 billion p.a. (Stevenson & Farmer, 2017).

So what can be done?

Tackling Stress at Work

In a recent interview for the New Scientist (on behalf of one of my Fintech clients), I argued that interventions at both organisation and individual level were required.

But given that 75% of people suffering from a mental health issue will never receive any form of psychological support (Seymour & Grove, 2005), this places extra emphasis on other forms of support, such as workplace training, to help people deal with the demands of the modern workplace. The trouble is, of course, that workplace training often gets a bad name.

And a lot of it lacks even that most basic criterion; evidence that it works. Ideally there should also be evidence of how the training works too.

The Case for Using ACT to Improve Mental Health in the Workplace

As part of the preparation for the New Scientist interview (and prior to publishing a Systematic Review on the subject) I looked at some of the main evidence for ACT training. Below I’ve listed five workplace studies which caught my eye.

1. Dahl, Wilson and Nilsson (Behavior Therapy, 2004)

This study gave an ACT intervention to a group of Swedish care workers selected as being at high risk of long term work disability due to stress and musculoskeletal pain. An ACT group was compared to a group who received their respective medical treatment as usual (MTAU).

At post and 6-month followup, ACT participants showed fewer sick days and used fewer medical treatment resources than those in the MTAU condition, with a mean of 1 sick day versus a mean of 11.5 sick days for the MTAU condition.

2. Flaxman and Bond (Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 2010)

This study randomly assigned 311 local government employees them to either stress management training based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (n =177) or to a waitlist
control group (n =134). The ACT program consisted of three half-day training sessions.

Across a 6-month assessment period, the ACT training resulted in a significant reduction in employee distress for those who had been at high risk initially, as well as a significant reduction compared to the waitlist group. In fact, of these initially distressed SMT participants, 69% improved to a clinically significant degree, compared to 31% in the waitlist group.

3. Waters, Frude, Flaxman, Boyd, (British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 2017)

This study demonstrated that even a short, one-off training intervention can have positive effects. A 1-day ACT workshop was offered to 17 care home workers in Wales, UK with a further 18 assigned to a waitlist control group.

At 3 months post-intervention, those in the ACT group reported a significantly lower level of psychological distress compared to the control group, with clinically significant change exhibited by 50% of ACT participants, compared to 0% in the control group. When the control group received the same ACT intervention, 69% went on to exhibit clinically significant change.

In keeping with ACT theory, the ACT intervention also resulted in significant improvements in psychological flexibility, but did not significantly reduce the frequency of negative cognitions.

4. Vilardaga et al., (Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 2011)

This was a cross-sectional survey with nearly 700 addiction counsellors working in substance abuse treatment centres in the USA.

Results indicated that burnout was more strongly associated with psychological flexibility than other well-known predictors of burnout e.g. job control, supervisor support, salary etc. The study concluded that a future approach to reduction of burnout among addiction counsellors should target psychological flexibility.

5. Lloyd, Bond and Flaxman (Journal of Work and Stress, 2013)

This study took 43 employees of a UK government department receiving an ACT workshop (3 half days over 2 months) aimed at increasing participants’ levels of psychological flexibility (PF), and 57 participants allocated to a waitlist control group. The study found significant reduction in burnout and strain in the ACT group.

Crucially the study was also able to show that it was higher levels of PF that mediated (or caused) the reduction of emotional exhaustion at follow up. In other words, this study showed not only that ACT training works, but why it works.

Conclusion

Of course, training psychological flexibility is only a part of the solution to a complex problem. We shouldn’t overstate the evidence, or see it as a standalone solution. But increasingly it looks to be a critical part of our response to an increasingly demanding world of work.

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Avoiding Stuckness With Values

Posted on April 16, 2018 by Dr Rob Archer

[This is from a series of posts written by Rob Archer and Rachel Collis in reply to a reader who felt that values were actually keeping him stuck].

Right from the start, the ACT model made sense to me, and made so many things clearer.

Apart from the bit about values.

That bit left me confused, but I let it go, thinking it would all work out.

But it never did really. I still get stuck on values really easily. I think my mind loves the idea that I have a set of values, and jumps at the chance to know EXACTLY what I SHOULD be doing. Finally!

Next thing I know I’m treating values like they are a real thing. I conflate values (how I do things) with decisions (what I do). I mix up values (how I want to be) with my own needs. I look to values to tell me what the ‘right’ answer is, and when I get stuck, I blame values conflicts.

I don’t think it’s just me. Values are brilliant for bringing vitality and purpose to life, especially when options are limited. But in coaching we are often dealing with people with too many choices. Values can add to this sense of overwhelm, at least in my experience.

Yet at the same time, I feel like values have changed my life. How the hell did that happen?

How I understand values, when I understand values

The other day my two-year old daughter told me her name was ‘Orla Archer’ and I simply burst with pride. The words caught in my heart. Orla Archer.

Up to the age of about 7 or 8 I was called Robert Davies. Then my Step Dad arrived, married my Mum and on the day of the wedding they asked me whether I wanted to be called Robert Davies or Robert Archer. I was never in doubt.

Since then I’ve always been proud of that name, without ever really knowing why. Now I think it was all about choices.

I chose the name, but I also began to choose other things. I chose all the best stuff; sport, Liverpool FC and of course, The Beatles. I also chose organisation, determination, anger, softness, self-reliance.

As Robert Davies I’d never really chosen anything for myself. I was in survival mode too often. But from ‘Archer’ onwards, I started to choose things.

Crucially, I didn’t have to state in advance what my values were. If anyone had asked me whether I was ‘living my values’ I’d not have had a clue. They weren’t the ‘right’ choices necessarily, or the easy choices.

But looking back, this choosing was the beginning of the essential ‘Archer-ness’ that feels like the most worthwhile bits of me, even today.

This is how I understand values.

Values help with hard choices

Values, therefore, are different from decisions, and from ethics and morals. With values it is the choice that seems key. What am I valuing rather than what are my values.

My favourite all-time TED talk is by Ruth Chang. In it she argues that values are about ‘hard choices’; situations where there is no right answer. Those situations are tough! But from another perspective they can be liberating, because this is our one chance in life to properly choose stuff….

Avoiding stuckness with values

I still don’t really know what my values are. Or at least if I cling to the idea that I have a stable set of values for all situations, then I quickly get stuck.

But if in a given situation you ask me what my ‘values move’ is, or how I would choose to respond to a situation, or how I behave when I feel like a version of myself I can be proud of – generally I can do that.

So right now, in this moment, I try to focus on the choosing.

And one day – perhaps long after I’ve gone – Orla Archer will tell you what my values were.

Mindfulness 2.0 – The Future of Mindfulness

Posted on May 11, 2017May 23, 2017 by Dr Rob Archer

My Granny died last month, aged 97. Good knock, Gran.

Granny 6

It wasn’t such a sad death really, as the real essence of Granny that we all knew and loved had long disappeared.

I wonder how much of our grief is like this; tiny portions of loss spread out across the days and weeks, regular downpayments helping to spread the cost. Well before she left Granny’s fingers had been prised away from the habits and routines that defined our lives.

Then once she was gone the routines of commemoration take over. I had to read out some words from my Aussie family and then say some words of my own. It was all very life affirming, as death can be.

I was struck by how we remembered Granny. What she did, yes. But also how she did it. Granny could be quite formal, snooty even, but the Real Granny was also silly, curious and generous.

I mean, does this look like a woman who really cares whether your elbows are on the table?

Granny 1

Mindfulness

Comparing myself to Granny’s generation seldom goes well.

She and her friends fought a war for freedom with incredible modesty and courage. I get annoyed with software updates on my smartphone.

I’m more caught up in my head, too. Busy, but not always about important stuff. Granny did stuff for her family and community. If I’m not careful I do stuff on social media.

Of course this isn’t just me, and maybe this is why mindfulness has taken off. This ancient practice has been seized upon as an antidote to the age of distraction, and there’s a lot of evidence suggesting it works too.

Yet at the same time there are problems with the mindfulness movement. In his new book Carpe Diem Regained, Roman Krznaric highlights two:

First, the mindfulness movement focuses too much on the self, leaving it thin on moral foundations.

Second, in placing so much emphasis on attending to the present moment, it overlooks how much human beings thrive on striving for meaningful goals.

Krznaric also points out that studies suggest mindfulness may increase wellbeing, but not pro-social behaviour. (Author’s note: please see my comment below for an update on this).

So what is mindfulness really for, if all it does is help us bear these atomised, self-absorbed lives that would be so alien to Granny?

Mindfulness 2.0

Do you remember the early days of the web, when websites were static and focused on giving people information? This was web 1.0, when the focus was all about spreading awareness and knowledge.

The next generation of websites were interactive. Their focus was on changing the way we did things like communicating, finding jobs and looking at kittens. This was web 2.0.

The same leap is now happening with mindfulness – a movement away from simple awareness to using our awareness to do things.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is in the vanguard of this movement. ACT combines hard-edged science with the ability to move people, literally and figuratively. There are four reasons why ACT is the future of mindfulness:

ACT RCTs 2016

Evidence. It includes all of the benefits of mindfulness – with over 180 randomised control trials now demonstrating its effectiveness in everything from depression, chronic pain, smoking cessation and weight control to workplace effectiveness.
Practical. It offers different ways to be mindful – making mindfulness more accessible to more people than ever before.
Clarity. ACT is based on a clear and transparent philosophy of science which helps practitioners learn faster and explain concepts more clearly. (Once I got this I never thought in the same way again).
Behavioural. The use of the acronym ‘ACT’ is deliberate, because ACT is a behavioural intervention which focuses less on peoples’ thoughts than on what they want to DO in life. ACT explicitly links mindfulness to values and action: it is mindfulness for a purpose.

ACT positions mindfulness as a call to action. It links awareness to behaviour that can actually change the world for the better.

Isn’t this what the world really needs?

And isn’t it how we will be remembered?

Using Values When You’re Somewhere You Don’t Want To Be

Posted on October 12, 2016 by Dr Rob Archer

I am writing this whilst sitting comfortably on a plane, powering through a brilliant autumn sunset towards Helsinki. I have everything I need, and the work will be great.

And I don’t really want to go.

This has nothing to do with Helsinki you understand. Who couldn’t be excited by the land of sauna, summer cabins and err, Moomins?

Me.

I don’t want to go because it’s going to be hard work. And lots of travel. And above all I’m sad because I’m going to miss my family. I feel like I just want to stop and go home.

Using Values When You’re Somewhere You Don’t Want To Be

This classic ACT move is easily forgotten, but when I remember it always helps:

~~Ask the cabin attendant for an extra gin~~
Take a moment to consider why I am making this trip in the first place:

What values are at the heart of my choice to be here?

This question tilts my attention towards the purpose of my being here. And purpose is the great generator of meaning.

So, why did I choose to be here?

Meaningful work. I am here because the workshops I run often help people shift in a positive direction. The data we’re collecting supports this.
Learning. I hope to learn something from the people I meet, and their reaction to the training. And it’s exciting to learn something about the countries I visit; Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland.
Security. I want to provide for my family so that they have the stuff they need to thrive. It is not the sole purpose of being here, but it is a factor.
Psychological Flexibility. Deep down, I know that without moments like these, my capacity to experience joy in life would diminish. As Kelly Wilson said, happiness and sadness are twins that either grow strong together or die together.

Tuning into my own values doesn’t get rid of the sadness, but it provides a different context for it.

It mixes something in with the sadness. Something richer.

And now I’m flying in a different way.

I am not so consumed by thoughts of wanting to go home.

My sadness feels like it has been dignified somehow.

It is the admission price for a life I have chosen, and I am grateful for it.

The Psychology of Leaving

Posted on June 22, 2016 by Dr Rob Archer

In my work as a psychologist I have worked with hundreds if not thousands of people who face a common career dilemma:

They are dissatisfied with their current situation;
They feel uncertain and anxious about alternative options.

This is when people get trapped in a dilemma; stay or leave?

From working with so many people in this situation, here are some general points I’ve observed.

The mind instinctively prefers the status quo

Our minds prefer the stuff they already know, because it is safer.

The problem is, most of my clients want more out of life than ‘safe’. Overwhelmingly, they want the chance to author their own lives, make positive decisions, and to break free from inertia. Yet it is impossible to do this without taking a risk and minds prefer certainty…

So people often end up staying where they are, but more by default than choice. They console themselves with hopes that their situation will get better. And the organisation often responds, offering enhanced status and perks. I remember I was offered a promotion and a £5,000 pay rise. Yet what I needed was a more fundamental change in my life. Most people want a sense of control and authorship over their lives and that was certainly the case for me.

By accepting these short term compensations, we duck the human need to author our own lives – the ‘hard choices’ that Ruth Chang so brilliantly identifies as the way to build identity and meaning.

Other people have a stake in the status quo

Another common issue is that those around us often have a stake in the status quo. These vested interests can be hard to tease out, especially as they often show up as a kind of protective concern.

In my case, I had perhaps 3 or 4 friends who ‘got’ the change and offered support. Many of the rest questioned and even ridiculed it.

Moving towards what we value always takes willingness

On the flipside of what we most value is always something that we fear. Therefore, for the really big decisions in life we need to:

Define what we really want – for example meaningful work or more autonomy;
Develop willingness to experience some anxiety in exchange for making a choice which is in line with our values.

Without this willingness, it is very difficult to break out of patterns that are not working. Change is essential for renewal, but it always takes courage to take that first step.

Change is never ‘in’ or ‘out’

There is always the temptation to see (career) change in terms of black and white. Do I stay in my job, or leave? Yet the reality is rarely like this. All of my clients make intelligent transition plans to gradually shift towards something better. The most common is to stay in their current job, but changing their relationship to it so they can work on a ‘plan b’ on the side.

No matter what the choice – stay or leave – the most important thing is the plan that follows. After all, the plan is where we deal with the reality of what follows.

So what’s the right answer? Of course there is no right answer, only context and choices.

But in general, whilst it is usually easier in the short term to stay, I notice that those who leave rarely regret it. In fact, they almost all start to feel more authorship over their own decisions, and greater vitality, meaning and purpose in life as a result.

The Incredible Tale of Leicester City Football Club…and the (Limited) Power of Thinking

Posted on May 14, 2016May 18, 2021 by Dr Rob Archer

“Following today’s devastating result for the national team, I take full responsibility for the most unfortunate choice of coach, which has resulted in such a poor image of the national team being put before the fans.”

It is November 2014 and Giorgos Sarris, the head of the Greek Football Association, has just sacked Claudio Ranieri, a genial 62 year old Italian manager, after losing to the tiny Faroe Islands.

It was beyond embarrassing, and the end for Ranieri after only 4 games in charge. It was also probably the end of his career. His quirky, kindly personality seemed out of kilter with the hard realities of modern football.

At that time, Leicester City Football Club were rooted to the bottom of the English Premier League. After a record 13 match winless streak they were certainties for relegation, which was really no surprise – Leicester are one of the ultimate ‘yo-yo clubs’.

Meanwhile the league title was again being won by Chelsea, a team managed by Jose Mourinho who had replaced Ranieri some years previous. Mourinho was the opposite of Ranieri; knowing, calculating, snide. He is the kind of man who stamped on insects as a child. Even his jokes contain a bitter aftertaste.

But Mourinho seemed modern, Ranieri a relic. Chelsea, at the top of the league, had the manager and the money. In contrast Leicester had 20% of the budget of Chelsea, and were facing certain relegation.

It’s all just maths.

Season 2015-16

The following season started out like any other, but then unfolded as though reimagined by Picasso.

One by one the established realities were inverted:

Leicester City had escaped relegation and somehow remained in the Premiership after all.
Jose Mourinho was sacked by champions Chelsea after a disastrous start to the new season.
Leicester City charged to the top of the table, stayed there, and – incredibly – last Saturday were crowned champions with largely the same players who had battled relegation a year ago.

The odds of Leicester winning were 5000-1 against. To put that into perspective, the odds of finding Elvis alive today are 2000-1. It was unthinkable, impossible. The greatest upset in sporting history.

And at the helm of this towering, absurd achievement was a man called Claudio Ranieri.

Explaining Leicester’s Season

There is now a cottage industry re-examining the leadership secrets of Leicester’s rise. Of course Ranieri is no longer seen as a relic. Now he is seen as having an ability to keep things light and deflect pressure, to ‘make his players believe’.

Certainly for months he had joked with the press, smiled with the fans, laughed at any talk of winning the league. Suddenly he seemed a refreshing alternative to the cynicism of Mourinho.

But from a psychological perspective, there is one standout lesson from this incredible tale.

The (Limited) Power of Thinking

Leicester didn’t win the league because they believed they could do it. Let’s be clear, no one believed they could do it.

The psychology behind their success lies in being able to hold thoughts lightly, whilst focusing on constructive, workable actions in each moment.

Of course this isn’t easy. Although thoughts are not reality, they feel like reality. This is fusion – the process of seeing thoughts and reality as the same thing. Fusion can be very useful, especially for survival. But it can also limit our ability to thrive because our thinking can be so limited, prone to bias and swayed by ‘wisdom’ which turns out to be wrong.

Even now it feels wrong for Leicester to be champions, which is perhaps why so many people say that it still feels more like a dream than reality.

What does this have to do with ACT in the workplace?

So many people today feel trapped in jobs they don’t enjoy, or are drawn into lifestyles that are drained of joy. Yet the traps are set by fusing to thoughts like:

‘I am too old to change career’.
‘I am too introverted to be a leader”.
‘I can’t control my angry response with my kids’.
‘I am not in a position to take control of my career’.

Whilt these stories may contain elements of fact, they are not reality. We feel trapped by these thoughts, but we are not trapped in a way that say, a dog would understand.

The problem is that when we buy into our thinking and stories wholesale, we risk acting within the confines of the story and failing to author our own story. We fall into the comfortable illusion that there is nothing to be done, events are outside of our control.

And this is what Leicester have really taught us. It is not ‘if we dream it, we can do it’. Most of us find it hard to control our thinking.

The skill we can learn is to hold belief (and disbelief) lightly, acknowledging that our own thinking is limited; an artist’s impression of the real thing.

Fusing to stories of hard luck or powerlessness may make life easier in the short term, but it also makes it smaller.

Leicester have shown us that reality is far from what our minds tell us it is. If we learn to hold our thoughts lightly, and focus instead on workable behaviours in the direction of what really matters to us, then the world opens up.

And just occasionally, we far exceed what we can ever have imagined.

How can Behaviour Analysis Help in Coaching? (part 2!)

Posted on August 17, 2015August 24, 2017 by Dr Rob Archer

I’ve recently been travelling around Europe and the Middle East on a kind of values and defusion tour. It’s been an amazing experience.

And no matter where I went I saw humans. Lots of them! Some in busy cities like Brussels or Munich; others miles from anywhere, in the wilds of Sweden, the deserts of the Middle East or quiet fishing villages in the Med. And everywhere you see how humans have adapted to their environment through different cultures, clothing and lifestyle. Clever old things.

But if humans are so good at adapting, why do we sometimes struggle to adapt to what life throws at us?

Funny you should ask, because this is where our second Very Exciting Idea from Behaviour Analysis comes in:

“Fusion can be thought of as a generalised reinforcer”.

And why is this such a big idea?

Because it is useful for clients who struggle to adapt and that turns out to be, erm…

ALL OF US!

So sit back, take the soft top down and put on some rock classics, as we explore why ‘fusion can be thought of as a generalised reinforcer’ is such a useful idea, especially in coaching.

What is Fusion?

In ACT, fusion is a term for when we become fused with, or stuck to, our thoughts.

In a state of fusion it can be hard to separate ourselves from our thoughts. For example, if I am fused to the idea that ‘this is a hopeless blog post’, that is all I can see. Yikes!

From this perspective, it is easy to act as if the thought is true. So I might give up writing halfway through and see that the garden needs watering, or that the cat urgently needs stroking. (And I don’t even have a cat).

If this becomes a pattern I might fuse to a new story: I am hopeless…

Here there is no distance at all between me and the thought.

One recent example I had was with a manager at a construction firm who had received negative reviews about his ability to influence senior execs. His story was that as an ‘I’ on Myers Briggs and someone who hates small talk, there was little he could do to influence others. He was simply “not cut out for senior management”.

It is easy to see how fusing to stories like this can hinder development. But why do people fuse so readily to such unhelpful stories about themselves?

Meaning as the Brain’s Priority

Klinger (1998) argued that humans survive primarily by being able to respond to their environment. The brain evolved to help us understand our environment during the pursuit of goals, working to sort out “ambiguous or confusing stimuli…until they can be dismissed as irrelevant, or channelled into action”.

Understanding the ‘meaning’ of things is therefore the brain’s top priority. This is why the experience of not understanding something is associated with feelings of unease, because we do not know how to respond. Conversely, when something is subsequently understood, we experience the ‘aha!’ response, which is much more pleasant (King, Hicks, Krull, & Del Gaiso, 2006).

With language, meaning takes on a wider metaphorical significance, so humans start to consider the ‘meaning of life’. But the priority remains the same:

“meaning is a matter of human understanding, regardless of whether we are talking about the meaning of someone’s life…or the meaning of a word or sentence” (Klinger, p29).

Meaning is constructed in context ,and for humans especially this means it becomes socially constructed: “the meaning of a gesture by one organism is found in the response of another.” (Mead and Morris, 1967). Gergen and Gergen (1988) suggest that coherent self-narratives are essential for establishing credibility and maintaining relationships.

When someone tells me that I am ‘making sense’ (a rare occurrence) then I experience it as a compliment. ‘I know what you mean’ is often greatly reassuring:

“Provided that languaging is reinforced from an early age, coherence is also reinforced. As a result, coherence… becomes a generalized reinforcer for verbally competent human beings.” (Blackledge, Moran, & Ellis, 2008).

Aha! Why Fusion acts as a Reinforcer

One reason why fusion is reinforcing is that it can quickly provide a sense of coherence (i.e. meaning) to otherwise confusing or ambiguous information.

For example, if I receive a poor assessment of my influencing skills, I can make sense of this by fusing to a story that I am an introvert, or have never had any training in assertiveness, or am ‘not cut out for senior management’.

Perhaps it is no surprise that people cling to these stories as a means of control over their lives. My life is a mess and this is why.

Meaning trumps everything, including whether the story is helpful or not.

For example I often fuse to a story that certain aspects of my character and upbringing make me unable to hold down relationships, and this can be consoling at times. The story makes sense of my experience – and relieves me of the responsibility to change.

And this is when fusion becomes truly problematic.

Because when we fuse to language our behaviour tends to ossify, which can reduce our capacity to adapt.

But if we can learn to hold language more lightly we retain our ability to adapt, and the world opens up before us once more.

Sources:

Examining the Reinforcing Properties of Making Sense: A preliminary Investigation. Wray, Dougher, Hamilton & Guinther, The Psychological Record (2012).
The Search for Meaning in Evolutionary Perspective and its Clinical Implications, Klinger, from The Human Quest for Meaning edited by Wong & Fry (1998)
Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviourist. Mead and Morris (1967)

For more on using ACT in workplace and career coaching please follow The Career Psychologist blog.