Organisations and careers – Working with ACT

Do you need a high-performance routine? (Plus: FREE quiz…and hedgehogs!)

Posted on February 22, 2022 by Dr Rob Archer

So, for today’s serious analysis of the modern workplace, I want you to imagine you’re a hedgehog.

There you are, snuffling about in the forest, doing all of your normal hedgehoggy things.

Yes, you’re covered in fleas, but you look adorable!

Then one day you reach a strange bit of the forest which feels a lot harder underfoot, and then there are these two strange bright lights coming at you…

Now, we all know what you should do, which is probably run for it.

But we also know what you (as a hedgehog) are likely to do, which is roll up into a ball.

Now, this doesn’t make you a bad hedgehog.

You’re an excellent hedgehog, you just weren’t evolved for the particular environment you’re now in.

This is what is known as an ‘evolutionary mismatch’.

Now of course we humans aren’t like hedgehogs. We are way more advanced! We’ve even developed flea powder!

But in some ways we are a lot like hedgehogs, in that we didn’t evolve for the environment we are in either….

Why it is so hard to be human

For 99.9% of our evolutionary existence, humans would gather in small groups, forage and hunt for food, we were active in the day and slept when dark, our lives shaped by our environment.

Our ancestors moved a lot (over 15,000 steps per day according to Fitbit’s early records), and ate a wide variety of food.

In his book Origins; How the Earth Made Us, Lewis Dartnell shows how evolution and our environment are not separate events – our biology was shaped by nature.

Every cell in our bodies evolved in sequence with a daily rhythm, (primarily driven by exposure to light).

Yet fast forward to today and everything has changed.

Far from being tethered to nature, we now work in a way which is independent from these daily rhythms.

Where once we were connected to the earth and to each other, today we feel more connected but also more isolated.

For many of us, we hardly see daylight, we are largely sedentary (most of us now walking closer to 5,000 steps per day), and we work more or less constantly.

No surprise that work feels a daily grind…

Biologically and psychologically we evolved to work in a daily rhythm, and disrupting this rhythm leads to a kind of dysregulation, affecting everything from sleep to mental health.

This is another evolutionary mismatch.

Covid as the great accelerator

And Covid has accelerated these trends.

I first met Annette, a senior manager at one of the major airlines, in Spring of 2020.

She told me how when the Covid crisis took hold she and her team had moved into ‘emergency mode’, working round the clock to try and save the business, but

‘now it’s 16 months later and it feels like we’re still in the same pattern’.

From speaking to 1000s of people in many different industries last year, I know many can relate.

Many of us have been drawn into routines which we didn’t consciously design, and which have become unsustainable.

The issue is not whether we can carry on – most of us are good at soldiering on – but whether this is the best we can aim for. If you look at the statistics on mental health since Covid, I would argue not.

But what can we do about this, and where should we start?

Understanding high-performance routines

The first step is to build awareness that we are working in routines for which our brains and bodies were not evolved.

We are working out of sync with the rhythms that shaped our entire biology.

Arguably we don’t even notice the cost we’re paying, because it has become the water we swim in.

Yet by operating in a way which is divorced from our biology we create huge challenges to health and mental health.

There is hope, though.

Unlike hedgehogs, we can do more than just roll up into a ball.

In the next article I will explain what a high-performance routine looks like.

But in the meantime you can build awareness of your existing routine by trying this quiz, which will give you feedback as to whether you might benefit from strengthening your routine.

It is freely available to anyone, including hedgehogs (though admittedly you might need a mouse).

The future of work: Why Psychological Flexibility is a Key Leadership Skill of the Future

Posted on January 7, 2022February 10, 2022 by Dr Rob Archer

A few years ago in the UK, a Panorama investigation uncovered systematic abuse of elderly care home residents who were being routinely pushed about, belittled and humiliated by their so-called carers.

Worse, when whistleblowers drew attention to the abuse it was they themselves who were disciplined by senior management. Empathy for the victims seemed in short supply as it took a TV investigation for action to be taken.

This is just one example in a long line of depressing stories about toxic leadership. From MPs to journalists, and leaders in organisations from Big Tech to oil, the modern era seems one where empathy, care and values in leadership can be in short supply.

Values and leadership

Theorists like Bruce Avolio have argued that we need a more authentic form of leadership, which connects leaders to what really matters to them. This acts as a kind of compass for leaders, which is especially useful in times of uncertainty (read; now).

Connecting leaders more powerfully with their values is also important because it has been shown to generate positive psychological outcomes in followers.

And yet…

There is one slight problem with these ‘authentic’ forms of leadership: they are bloody difficult to do.

Leadership values easily get derailed by circumstance and expedience as well as by existing organisational cultures. It takes a special kind of courage to execute values in practice.

Yet most modern leadership theories (and training) deal with values as though all that remains after identifying them is to go off and do them.

Good luck with that.

Understanding our values is only half the battle. Values have a flipside – an admission price.

Put simply, pursuing our values makes life psychologically harder, not easier. We tend to hurt where we care.

It is much easier to avoid this psychological discomfort – something that psychologists call experiential avoidance. However in the turning away from our discomfort, we often turn away from our values.

This is why experiential avoidance is perhaps the biggest driver of substandard leadership behaviour (as well as in clinical contexts, poorer mental health).

After all it’s far easier to avoid that awkward but important conversation than to have it.

how can we help our leaders live their values in practice?

Psychological flexibility is a concept which started in the clinical context (over 8 50 randomised control trials show its effectiveness in improving mental health) but is now gaining traction in organisations.

Many of my organisational clients are introducing this training, not least because psychological flexibility is so practical, and especially effective with difficult situations involving ambiguity or uncertainty – what Todd Kashdan ‘calls the messiness of human life’.

Psychological flexibility is important in leadership for three reasons:

It helps people clarify and understand their values in practice, not just in theory.
It helps people stay more aware of the present moment, which means that they are more likely to notice opportunities to be empathetic and engaged with other people.
It gives leaders the skills to move towards their values and deal with the psychological cost of doing so. By building willingness to have difficult thoughts and emotions, it reduces the natural human tendency to avoid them.

Too many leadership training programmes focus on values and forget to train people in the skills that help them live their values.

Yet unless we do this, leaders will continue to run from the pain that empathy brings them.

The Marginal Gains Handbook – Practical ideas to survive and thrive in the age of Coronavirus

Posted on May 7, 2020 by Dr Rob Archer

We are delighted to release VERSION 2 of this free, practical guide of evidence-based ways to survive and thrive in the age of Coronavirus.

DOWNLOAD HERE

This version includes improved ideas for thriving in the age of Coronavirus as well as a new section on parenting in lockdown.

This is from a CEO who’s been using it with his organisation:

Your Covid Marginal Gains booklet has been a great source to help me during this once in a life time roller coaster. It deals with so many layers that we are all going through and gave me confidence in what I was telling my team, give me solace in what I was feeling, and hope for what despair we all go through.

Continue reading “The Marginal Gains Handbook – Practical ideas to survive and thrive in the age of Coronavirus” →

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.

Learning To Step Over Coercion And Create The Workplace Culture That You Want

Posted on June 17, 2015June 17, 2015 by Rachel Collis

In his wonderful book, The Nurture Effect, Tony Biglan, states that ’the most important stressor we humans typically face comes in the form of coercive interactions with other humans.’

Coercion is where people use unpleasant behaviour to influence you. If you do what they want, then the aversive behaviour will stop…at least for a while. Coercive behaviour in the workplace includes overt bullying and intimidation but it also can be more subtle – put downs, teasing, social exclusion etc. It can even involve using expressions of disappointment as a form of control.

Pause for a moment. What workplace situations have you found most stressful?

How much of your stress was because other humans were being coercive towards you?

My hunch is that coercion is an almost universal quality of deeply unhappy workplaces.

Sadly, some organisations have a culture which encourages coercive behaviour. These organisations are unpleasant places to work.

Biglan writes:

‘We need to replace all of this coercive behaviour with behaviour that calms, supports and teaches – the kind of behaviour that helps others thrive.’

What would that be like? Imagine a workplace where people ask directly for what they want in a calm way. Where they support each other to do well, to learn and to thrive.

Biglan suggests many empirically supported strategies for creating these nurturing environments. The one that has resonated most strongly with me is to make a personal commitment to this sort of calm, supportive and nurturing behaviour.

This is, of course, easier said than done. It is particularly hard to be calm, supportive and nurturing when others are being harsh and coercive towards you. Our impulse in these situations is to either respond with our own harsh, coercive behaviour or to just give in. The nature of coercion is that we want it to stop and we want it to stop quickly, so we tend to react to it in unhelpful ways.

If we want to create change, Biglan suggests that we need to learn forbearance. We need to step over our initial impulse to punish and coerce others and instead focus on responding with firm kindness. We need to be able to shift gear and respond in ways that build connection and foster growth.

Biglan quotes reams of research to support his suggestion that what the world needs now is for millions of us to just decide – ‘I want to step away from harsh and coercive treatment towards others, Instead I will nurture connection and growth. I will focus on creating environments where humans flourish.’

He also suggests empirically supported strategies for how to put this into practice.

These strategies include the behavioural analysis that Rob described in the previous post. Looking with openness and curiosity at what antecedents and consequences may be encouraging the damaging behaviour and also at what antecedents and consequences would encourage the desired behaviour.

Biglan also explores how ACT skills can be important in achieving this change to a more nurturing culture. As people become more mindful, practice acceptance of their emotions and are more connected to their values, they find it easier to change their behaviour.

I highly recommend The Nurture Effect to you. It is an important book. A book that explores how the science of human behaviour can improve human lives.

I want to live in a world where the majority of people are behaving in ways that nurture learning and growth. How about you? Shall we get started?

Helping Alpha Executives to Drop The Corporate Armour

Posted on November 2, 2014 by Rachel Collis

According to Ludeman and Erlandson (2004). ‘Alpha’ executives make up 70% of senior executives. They are confident and intelligent, competitive and impatient. They like to be in charge.
‘Alpha’ executives don’t tend to listen well to others. They engage in dominance behaviours, (Schmid Mast and Hall 2009) such as:
Taking charge of the conversation
Interrupting others
Talking down to people
Expressing strong opinions
Tending to steamroll others into doing what they want (Schmid Mast and Hall 2003)

And unfortunately these behaviours seem to worsen as they get more power.

Senior alpha executives can find it hard to let others influence their decision making. (See, Morrison et al. 2011)
Alpha executives often have unrealistic expectations of themselves and others. This can lead to burnout, both in themselves and in members of their team. Alpha executives can be dismissive of others feelings and can fail to notice the negative impact that their competitive and aggressive approach has on others. Colleagues and direct reports can sometimes experience the aggressive alpha behaviour as bullying.

Alpha’s often achieve results in the short to medium term; they look confident; they speak up in meetings. They look like potential C-Suite material and they get promoted.

But once they reach higher levels of management, the need for cooperation and collaboration grows and their dominance behaviours start to hold them back and sometimes even derail them.

I often coach executives who exhibit some, if not all, of those alpha behaviours. I enjoy working with them. I like their intelligence, their focus on results and honesty. It can also feel intimidating. The curiosity and exploration that is central to good coaching can seem like a waste of time to these executives – and they let me know this assessment in no uncertain terms!

How does ACT help these executives to develop more effective leadership behaviours?

An ACT-informed coaching approach would likely include:
– Identifying workable and unworkable behaviours
– Helping the executive to make better quality decisions
– Choosing values and choosing how to convert those values into action
– Developing compassion for self and others
– Broadening behaviour and improving the criteria the executive uses to select their behaviour in a given situation.
– Building psychological flexibility (of course!)
– Uncovering unhelpful internal rules that are controlling behaviour

In this post, I want to explore the tricky topic of working with these executives and their emotions.

My observation is that many, but not all, of these executives have learnt to disconnect from their own emotions. This disconnect is often contributing significantly to their insensitive and impatient behaviour. The behaviour is, in a sense, a form of running away from unwanted thoughts and feelings.

Executives have often donned corporate armour, in order to protect themselves, in the sometimes hostile environment of organisations. Whilst this armour can be helpful, it does make it hard for them to be emotionally intelligent and agile.

In many, the armour was actually created early in life. It may well have been adopted in the school years, as a response to the harsh experiences that many of us have during childhood. This means that many of these executives have never learnt to really notice and label their emotions, a core skill of emotional intelligence.

Emotionally intelligent leaders can tease out the different grades of their own and others emotion, for example separating impatience from frustration or anger. Emotionally intelligent leaders can notice emotions that may be pulling them in different directions. They can pause, notice their emotions and notice the urges that result from these emotions, without having to act on those impulses. They can hear the wisdom their emotions often offer, perhaps about the risks in a situation or how others may be feeling about something.

The lack of emotional awareness that some alpha executives experience is often coupled with avoidance of many of the ‘softer’ emotions. This does not mean, however, that the executives are genuinely emotionless, the emotions will still be present and will often drive behaviour unconsciously.

The aim of coaching alpha executives can often be to help them to learn to engage with their own emotions with more curiosity and wisdom.

This work can be scary for executives, many of them have an emotion phobia; where approaching certain emotions, such as sadness or fear, can make them freeze or escape. Just like with other exposure work, this needs to be done with the consent of the individual concerned and with gentleness and curiosity.

Often the most important thing that a coach can do in this situation is to help the executive to pause and notice. How does it feel in your body as you talk about this issue? And what does that tell you? And what do your values and the needs of the situation suggest you do next?

As people become more fluent with their own emotions, they become less driven by them and have a greater capacity to choose the most effective behaviour in a given moment.

As people become more open to their own emotions, they also become more aware and empathic towards others.

As emotions become welcome companions, the corporate armour becomes less necessary, vulnerability becomes possible and life becomes richer.

(For Australian Readers – I am running a workshop on this topic at the APS International Coaching Congress in Melbourne in November 13th to 15th)

Are we more likely to be compassionate to others when we are compassionate to ourselves?

Posted on September 25, 2013September 27, 2013 by Paul Atkins

When you feel judgemental about yourself, do you also feel more judgemental about others? Or are you one of those people who speaks harshly to yourself in ways that you would never dare or care to speak to another? What do you think is the relationship between self-compassion and compassion towards others?

These questions matter a lot. A strong relationship between self-compassion and compassion perhaps suggests common learning histories for the two behaviours. While ACT directly cultivates self-compassion through acceptance, it emphasises other-related compassion only indirectly. If we want to improve the ways we relate to one another in organisations and daily life, we need to know how and if changing our relationship to ourselves changes our relationship to others.

The evidence is mixed. Some research suggests we treat people very differently to ourselves, while other research suggests commonalities. Looking carefully at the differences between these studies may help us learn more about what is going on.

Evidence compassion towards self and others might be unrelated

There might be no relationship between self-compassion and other-directed compassion. As children, we learn to distinguish between “I” and “you”, and much of our early sociolinguistic experience teaches us that others have different perspectives, preferences, traits and experiences to ourselves (McHugh & Stewart, 2012). We can learn to behave quite differently towards ourselves than we do towards others.

Language can create powerful differences between how we behave towards ourselves and others. One example is the fundamental attribution error where, when someone acts badly, we overestimate the effect of personal characteristics and underestimate the effects of the situation as a cause of their behaviour. Towards ourselves we are more likely to take account or circumstances influencing our behaviour. For example, while we are quite happy to blame bad driving on someone else’s incompetence or malice, we are more likely to see our own poor driving as the result of situational factors like being late for work. This is a clear case where we behave quite differently in our judgements towards self and others.

Once we make an appraisal that a person is personally responsible for the situation in which they find themselves, we are less likely to experience empathic concern and more likely to experience non-compassionate emotions such as anger (Atkins & Parker, 2012). And of course in Australia we have seen how it is perfectly acceptable to treat asylum seekers arriving on boats with their children in a very different way to how we would expect ourselves and our children to be treated. The more we see the other as different to ourselves, the less likely we are to extend compassion towards them (Goetz, Keltner, & Simon-Thomas, 2010).

Society reinforces big differences between compassion towards self and others. It wasn’t that long ago that our society seemed to reinforce young women in particular for being kind to everyone except themselves. Many older women in particular seem to feel badly about themselves unless they place others’ needs ahead of their own. So, if the distinction between self and other is seen as real, and the right social reinforcers are in place, it is entirely possible that self-compassion and other-directed compassion could be quite unrelated.

Evidence compassion towards self and others might be related

But, perhaps fortunately, there is also a growing body of evidence that emphasises the similarities between the ways we relate to ourselves and others. Many of the psychological approaches developed during the 50’s and 60’s relied upon the assumption that self-acceptance was related to acceptance of others (Williams & Lynn, 2010). More recently researchers have begun to test this idea empirically. Neff and Pommier (2013) recently found that self-compassion is positively related to compassion towards others.

Neff and Pommier (2013) studied three groups: college undergraduates, community adults and meditators. They measured both self-compassion and different aspects of other-focused concern such as perspective taking, forgiveness, compassion, empathy and altruism. Overall there was a significant positive relationship between self-compassion and other-focused concern.

Why might self-compassion and other-compassion be related?

Why did this relationship occur? The factors that were consistently related to self-compassion across all groups were perspective taking, forgiveness and the capacity to manage personal distress. Perhaps our capacity to stay present to our own difficult experiences helps us to stay present to the difficult experiences of others. Or perhaps our capacity to stand back and see our self-critical thoughts as thoughts and not necessarily the truth, is exactly the same skill as our capacity to stand back from our automatic stereotypes and judgements about others. Perhaps learning to accept our own failings teaches us that we are all fallible. Or perhaps we acquire a deeper knowing that we are not, after all, ever separate from others, that we are all “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny” (Martin Luther King in his letter from Birmingham Jail).

However, Neff and Pommier’s study also revealed interesting differences in the strength of the relationships for different groups.

For meditators, there was a stronger link between self-compassion and other-focused concern – perhaps we can explicitly train people to break down barriers between self and others?
For women, there was a weaker link. Women are more likely to display higher levels of other-focused concern than men, but they are not more likely to display higher levels of self-compassion. Perhaps that social training of young girls that I mentioned earlier is still alive and well.
Finally younger adults showed weaker links between compassion for self and others. Neff and Pommier argued that this might have been because young adults over-estimate their distinctiveness from others and they are still forming their own identities and understandings of others.

Neff and Pommier’s study has big limitations. It ignores individual differences and relies upon self-report measures. We cannot tell whether the relationship between self-compassion and compassion for others really is weaker for women or whether this is just an artefact of women feeling more pressured to self-report compassion towards others. What we really need are within-person studies using measures of behaviour and context. Am I more likely to act compassionately towards others in circumstances that have primed me to act compassionately towards myself: e.g. when I have just meditated or been treated kindly by another?

And what life experiences strengthen or break down the distinction between self and other? ACT is one experience that can build both self-compassion and compassion for others (Atkins & Parker, 2012). Perhaps other life experiences work the other way.

As I have been writing this blog, I have been working with legal educators to design programs to enhance well-being and relationships among legal students and practitioners. In emphasising objectivity and the distinction between right and wrong, legal training seems to sometimes create almost impenetrable walls between thoughts and feelings, and between self and others. And legal students and practitioners are among the unhappiest people in Western society (e.g. Kelk, Luscombe, Medlow, & Hickie, 2009). Could lawyers perhaps be a canary in the coal mine for what happens when we let language excessively dominate our lived experience and we build the walls too high between ourselves and others?

Relational Frame Theory offers a very useful way of understanding what is going on here. Consider the two sentences:

I am less deserving
I am more deserving

The first thought might precede a lack of self-compassion, while the second might precede a lack of compassion towards another. What is going on in these sentences? Our society generally focuses on the comparison words MORE or LESS, and so we have endless debates about who is more or less deserving of compassion. But by focusing on this comparison we ignore the more fundamental move contained in these sentences. The shared “I am” slips by unnoticed. It is in these little words that the “truth” gets established that there is a separate “I” that has inherent qualities. And of course what these sentences really mean is “I am more or less deserving THAN YOU” so in making the claim that I have certain qualities I am implicitly and always making the simultaneous claim that YOU are separate and have certain qualities as well.

Difference and separation arise in language. We relate to ourselves and others differently only when we are caught up in the world of words, judgments and abstractions. Perhaps Neff and Pommier’s results point to what is left when the language of separation loses its hold just a little. In those moments we see that these divisions only exist in language not in the underlying reality. In the end we are drops of water, or bubbles rising in a pot. What looks like difference and separation is really only a temporary expression of an unfolding process – and “I am” and “you are” become simply “IS”.

Of course, philosophers through the ages have come to the same view. Rumi put it this way:

Out beyond our ideas
Of wrong doing
And right doing
There is a field.
I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the words
You and me
Have no meaning.

– Jalaluddin Rumi

Taoism is a rich source of similar ideas. I would love to hear from you if you have other examples of similar quotes illustrating the power of language to create separation between self and other as this is an area I would like to explore further. Thank you.

References

Atkins, P. W. B., & Parker, S. K. (2012). Understanding individual compassion in organizations: the role of appraisals and psychological flexibility. Academy of Management Review, 37(4), 524-546.

Goetz, J., Keltner, D., & Simon-Thomas, E. (2010). Compassion: An Evolutionary Analysis and Empirical Review. Psychological Bulletin, 136(3), 351.

Kelk, N., Luscombe, G., Medlow, S., & Hickie, I. (2009). Courting the Blues: Attitudes towards depression in Australian law students and legal practitioners: Brain & Mind Research Institute: University of Sydney.

McHugh, L., & Stewart, I. (2012). The Self and Perspective Taking: Contributions and Applications from Modern Behavioral Science: Context Press.

Neff, K. D., & Pommier, E. (2013). The Relationship between Self-compassion and Other-focused Concern among College Undergraduates, Community Adults, and Practicing Meditators. Self and Identity, 12(2), 160-176. doi: 10.1080/15298868.2011.649546

Williams, J. C., & Lynn, S. J. (2010). Acceptance: An Historical and Conceptual Review. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 30(1), 5-5.

Why Organisations Should Measure Psychological Flexibility

Posted on July 3, 2013 by Dr Rob Archer

What should we measure to predict job performance?

Organisations spend millions of pounds each year measuring cognitive ability as well as various personality dimensions – and they are right to do so. Although personality and ability are not perfect predictors, they are a good deal better than the alternatives.

Two classic papers help demonstrate this. The first by Robertson and Smith (2001), shows that two factors predict performance best of all – cognitive ability and integrity. Of these, cognitive ability is the best single predictor of performance. At the bottom, interestingly, are factors such as handwriting (no surprise), but also years of experience, age, job references and even (unstructured) interviews. Anyone with an interest in valid, reliable and fair selection processes should read this paper.

And yet the challenge must be to improve selection processes still further. After all, even the best selection methods predict only around 60% of someone’s likely job performance. Clearly other factors matter.

This is why in the second classic paper by Sackett and Lievens (2008), the authors identify the need for incremental validity – factors which add to our ability to predict performance over and above existing measures. They identify situation based moderators as being critical to improving our understanding of how specific traits predict job performance. In other words, the extent to which the situation itself overrides ‘personality’ or ability factors, and demands a more flexible set of responses.

This is why we should measure a third factor; psychological flexibility. The (accurate but pretty awful) technical definition of psychological flexibility is:

“contacting the present moment fully as a conscious human being, and based on what the situation affords, changing or persisting in behavior in the service of chosen values”.

What this means in practice is a measure of someone’s ability to:

Focus on the present moment, including awareness of one’s thoughts, emotions and the demands of the situation; and then
act in accordance with one’s chosen goals or values at that time.

Psychological flexibility is therefore a measure of the extent to which someone is able to transcend their automatic or learned patterns of behaviour, and act in ways which better fit the situation:

“This enhanced capacity for noticing, and responding to, the goal opportunities that exist in one’s environment has been described as “goal-related context sensitivity” (Bond, Flaxman, & Bunce, 2008).

‘Goal-related context sensitivity’ can be thought of as a secondary skill which helps people to implement their primary skills (e.g. communication, problem solving, creative thinking) more effectively. By measuring psychological flexibility we can assess how well someone can adapt or persist in the face of difficulty and how well they are able to remain focused on the demands of the present, rather than implementing the same strategies irrespective of the situation.

Psychological flexibility has been shown to predict performance of an in itself (see Bond et al 2008) but it also helps us account for situational awareness. Therefore if we want to build on our understanding and prediction of high performance, we should measure this, too.

References:

Robertson, I.T. and Smith, M. (2001). ‘Personnel Selection’, Journal of Occupational and Organisational Psychology, vol.74. no.4, pp.441-72
Sackett, Paul R. and Lievens, Filip, Personnel Selection. Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 59, January 2008. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1141954
Bond, F. W., Flaxman, P. E., & Bunce, D. (2008). The influence of psychological flexibility on work redesign: Mediated moderation of a work reorganization intervention. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 645-654.

Understanding the Real You

Posted on June 1, 2013May 19, 2021 by Dr Rob Archer

As a psychologist, many clients want me to help them understand themselves better. Who am I? Who is the ‘real’ me? How do I become more like the real me?

~~And because I am all seeing and knowing, I am able to tell them and their lives are transformed.~~

In particular, people going through a transition (for example a career change) are understandably keen to understand who they really are, because this will help guide them and inform their decisions.

It is very easy to believe that if we can just understand who we are, then we can be liberated to be that person. It is an alluring thought, as the pull to certainty always is.

The problem is that whilst the idea of a ‘core’ you; a fixed, immutable essence of you (that sounds like a brand of perfume: Immutable Essence of You by Chanel) is alluring, it is also dangerous. It can lead people to see their lives from a narrow perspective, as the content of their history and experience. Then we create powerful stories of who we ‘really’ are – I am an introvert, I am bad at Maths, I am depressed. In ACT this is known as the self as content perspective.

Yet there is another perspective of the self which is where we are the context or the holder of our ever changing experiences. This allows us to take a more fluid, flexible perspective of our selves. One exercise I like to do with people to explore this idea is to take their Myers Briggs ‘type’ and then list all the ways in which they regularly act against their type. It is easy to do, and helps loosen the power of the self as content perspective.

In this short video Julian Baggini explores exactly this idea, but what’s interesting is that he does this without any knowledge of ACT, thereby bringing a fresh perspective. He asks whether the self is an illusion, and concludes that this is not a helpful question. It is more helpful to see the self as a process, rather than a thing.

It is this view of our self as a process which can liberate us. Instead of something fixed to discover, our selves become something we create. Instead of ‘being’ depressed, I am someone who sometimes experiences feelings of depression. What I like about this advert is that it takes just such a view – I have pain and my life is bigger than pain:

In turn this flexible, ‘context’ perspective helps us act more flexibly. We are free to experiment, and to transcend narrow, fixed views of ourselves.

Instead of asking who we really are, we can begin to see that we are the person we create, one behaviour at a time.