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The Vulnerable Leader

Posted on by Rachel Collis

I love this TED talk by Brene Brown.

 

In it she describes her research on ‘the whole hearted’.  She found that they demonstrate:

  • the courage to be imperfect
  • compassion – for self and others
  • connection to others as a result of authenticity
  • willingness to fully embrace vulnerability as a necessary part of a life well-lived.

‘In order for connection to happen we have to allow ourselves to be seen….really seen’

This reminds me of the inspirational leaders I have worked for.  There was something about their willingness to be wrong; their compassion for themselves, the team and the clients and their absolute authenticity, that was utterly compelling. I wanted to do a great job for these leaders. It was enlivening to work for them. I knew that if I made a mistake they would show the same compassion for me that they showed to everyone. That openness to vulnerability and compassion seemed to create an atmosphere where I could make wiser decisions in my work.

Why does compassion and openness to vulnerability make a difference? I think it is because then it allows us to:

  1. Be in contact with the present moment – seeing the world as it is, rather than as as our minds tell us it is. We can then take action based on the real situation rather than our internal story about what is happening.
  2. Make space for painful feelings with compassion rather than trying to avoid or control them. This frees up an awful lot of mental energy.
  3. Acknowledge when we aren’t acting according to our values and adjust our behaviour.  It can be very painful to realise that we have let ourselves down and, in some way, not been the person we want to be. Self compassion and acceptance (rather than avoidance) of painful feelings enable us to notice these moments and use them to guide our next steps.

Brain: ‘Do More, Sleep Later!’

Posted on by Dr Rob Archer

Our brains evolved to scan the environment, seek out possible problems and solve them.  Our brains did not evolve to say: ‘tell you what, I’ve done enough analysing / thinking / scanning for today, I’m clocking out’.  And the brains that did do this, were soon weeded out.  Probably by lions.

So, the non-stop brain is highly adaptive for survival situations.

But what happens if, like now, the imperative is not survival but productivity, and where the information we receive is increasingly limitless?

Well, the response is the same.  We naturally keep scanning the environment, seeking out problems and attempting to explain or resolve them.  And of course, this takes time.

So fast forward to today and we are naturally feeling very busy.  We are trying to cram more in.  Not all of the side effects of this are negative of course, but I want to focus on just one that is.

I came across some Australian research recently which simply looked at the number of hours we work vs the number of hours we sleep.  Here is the result:

Now, I don’t know if this is a bad thing for productivity per se, but I suspect overall it is, especially if we are working in a highly distracted, disengaged way.  But I do know about some fairly conclusive research from the University of Warwick, which found that people who slept for less than 6 hours per night were almost 50% more likely to die from heart disease and 15% more likely to die from strokes.

Our minds naturally seek meaning and coherence from the world around us.  But our worlds have expanded and we have become addicted to activity.  As Ian Price argues, today we even get status from being busy.

So in an age of limitless information, our natural responses may no longer be adaptive.  We may need to re-think our thinking in order to thrive.

Self Compassion in Business

Posted on by Dr Rob Archer

A few years ago, I’d have laughed at the idea of using compassion – let alone self compassion – in a business context.  It seems so incongruous.

But now I think it’s indispensable.

I think it could be argued that the main problem with the workplace is lack of compassion. Showing compassion is often equated with weakness, or letting ourselves or others off the hook. In fact Paul Gilbert has shown that we fear that we will become lazy if we are too compassionate, so it is seen often as a bit soft, unbusinesslike.

Yet I would argue the alternative is far less successful. Effective leadership, organisational design, employee engagement, meaning in work, resilience – all of these start with compassion. And the evidence is growing to support this view:

  • Students with most self compassion were least likely to procrastinate (Williams, Stark and Foster, 2008)
  • Self compassion predicts resilience / re-engagement with goals following failure (Neff et al, 2005) *
  • Self acceptance predicts willingness to receive and act on feedback (Chamberlain et al, 2001)

As Kelly McGonigal outlines here, self compassion correlates with lower depression, social anxiety, anger, judgment, close mindedness, less unhealthy perfectionism, greater social connection and empathy. And not only that, but self compassion can be taught. The big question is how.

Many cognitive therapists would start with disputing or changing negative thoughts about ourselves. Yet I would start with context, and acceptance. And for this, no one says it better than Ken Robinson:

“Human beings were born of risen apes, not fallen angels.  And so what shall we wonder at? Our massacres, our missiles, or our symphonies?

The miracle of human kind is not how far we have sunk but how magnificently we have risen.  We will be known among the stars not by our corpses, but by our poems.”

People Assume It’s You, Not The Situation

Posted on by Rachel Collis

The ‘fundamental attribution error‘ is a psychology term used to describe how we often make mistakes in interpreting why people have done something.

‘People have a tendency to give personality based explanations for other peoples behavior more weight than situational factors. ….(But) people tend to explain their OWN behavior to situational factors more than personality factors.’

An example of this is, if I see you respond angrily to a difficult customer I am likely to conclude that you are impatient or unskilled in customer relations but if I snap at a customer I know that it is because I am sleep-deprived because my child has been unwell and frustrated because this is the fifth time I have dealt with unreasonable complaints from this particular customer.

Susan Weinschenk says that knowing about the fundamental attribution error doesn’t seem to stop us from continuing to make it. Which is sort of reassuring to me because I repeatedly notice myself doing it!  She suggests we:

‘try and build in ways to cross-check your own biases. If your work requires you to make a lot of decisions about why people are doing what they are doing, you might want to stop before acting on your decisions and ask yourself, “Am I making a Fundamental Attribution Error?”

My approach is to build some flexibility into my interpretation of the event by brainstorming as many different explanations as I can for why the person might act that way.

How To Transform a Team

Posted on by Rachel Collis

Sometimes teams become unhappy. Just like in a bad marriage, all the interactions become loaded. Problematic behaviour is noticed and ruminated upon. Attempts to improve things go unnoticed and wither. People are in pain and at a loss how to improve things.
So what needs to happen to change things?
My work with unhappy teams suggest a few ideas
1. Explore the situation with curiosity – are there some real world problems that are adding to the disharmony? Things like lack of role clarity, lack of resources, unclear expectations? Fix these.
2. Acknowledge – the pain; the impulses to act out that pain and make things worse; the many attempts that people have made to improve things; the feelings of hopelessness, ‘Things are never going to get better’.
3. Develop some team values. At all costs avoid motherhood statements here. Find the words that express what, deep in their hearts, team members want this team to stand for. The team values statement should be a clarion call – something so powerful that people are willing to face the pain of taking action to sort the mess out. To take action over and over again even if it doesn’t seem to lead to change. Change is slow and hard won – we often need to labour unrewarded for a while before things improve.
4. Agree on behaviours and actions that align with those values. What would your customers, colleagues etc see and hear you doing if you were living those values?
5. Make a plan for when they relapse. How will you respond when someone doesn’t live your agreed values?
6. Encourage them – be a cheerleader in the tough times.
Do all this with compassion, curiosity and openness and perhaps, just maybe, things might change.

The Sun Always Rises – Hemingway

Posted on by Dr Rob Archer
This struck a real chord for me, especially as I am going to be on a plane tomorrow:
“We stare at our computer screens cataloguing our lives unaware that every important decisions has been taken by one goal: the avoidance of pain. We look out of the airplane window reviewing our belief system and realise that it’s an anti-belief system, a rejection of our values.

How did I get here?

We don’t see the consequences of one bad decision – I’ll eat this, I won’t go for a run tonight, I’ll take this job and pay off my loans, this job will give me confidence.  But each decision makes it less likely we’ll do the ideal, and the effect mounts”.

So Do Your Really Care About Your Team?

Posted on by Rachel Collis

How likely is it that your team would say ‘Yes’ in response to the following statement?

‘My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person’

If they do say ‘Yes’, would you be one of the people they think of as demonstrating ‘caring towards others’?

Gallup has found that people who answer ‘Yes’:

  • Are more likely to stay with the organisation
  • Have more engaged customers
  • Are more productive*

So, caring about your employees/co-workers seems to be a good idea. But, so often this comes across as fake and, in my opinion, fake interest is worse than no interest at all.

In order for this to feel authentic to both you and others, it needs to connect to a deeply held value. So, my question for you is: Who do you want to be at work? How do you want others to see you? If ‘caring’ is a value you want to enact at work then not only will you feel authentic and vital but you might just be adding to the bottom line too!

* Taken from Vital Friends – Tom Rath

The Near Enemy of Psychological Flexibility

Posted on by Rachel Collis

I recently presented an ACT workshop with NeLi Martin and she spoke about the concept of the ‘near enemy’.

In our attempts to become better people the near enemy can actually be more dangerous than the far enemy.  For example, the far enemy of compassion is hatred but the near enemy is pity. It is easy to differentiate compassion from hatred but much more difficult to spot the more subtle differences between pity and compassion.
In this blog, I often mention psychological flexibility because it is associated with well being.  Steve Hayes defines psychological flexibility as:

The ability to contact the present moment
fully and without defence
as a conscious human being
engaged in life as it is – not as your mind says it is –
and, based on what the situation affords,
changing or persisting in behaviour
in the service of chosen values.

The far enemy of psychological flexibility is ‘experiential avoidance’ – making inflexible choices that aren’t aligned with values and that have the core aim of avoiding painful thoughts, feelings or memories.  Experiential avoidance is associated with all sorts of poor outcomes.

But the near enemy is to turn the choice to live a value laden life into a harsh, ‘fake it ’til you make it’; ‘suck it up’; ‘carry on regardless’ approach.  I think if we want to avoid this near enemy, we need to have a stance of self-compassion when we are doing our best to live our values.

The Well Being Equivalent of 5 Fruit and Vegetables a Day

Posted on by Rachel Collis

The Foresight Mental Capital and Wellbeing Project aimed to, amongst other things, ‘identify the wellbeing equivalent of “five fruit and vegetables a day”.’ Based on an extensive review of the evidence they came up with:

1. Connect… with the people around you.
2. Be active… find a physical activity you enjoy that suits your level of mobility and fitness… and do it!
3. Take notice… be curious. Savour each moment. Reflect on your experiences to help you appreciate what really matters to you.
4. Keep learning… try something new. Rediscover an old interest. Set a challenge you enjoy achieving.
5. Give … practice intentional acts of kindness. Show gratitude.
Nice.  These truths about how to live a good life are fairly obvious. It interests me how often I need to be reminded of them if I am to actually do them.

I would also add a sixth ‘serving’  – without this one, the others are pretty meaningless:
6. Develop Psychological Flexibility

The ability to contact the present moment fully and without defence as a conscious human being engaged in life as it is – not as your mind says it is – and, based on what the situation affords, changing or persisting in behaviour in the service of chosen values (Steve Hayes)

The evidence for the association between psychological flexibility and emotional well being is becoming pretty compelling.

Psychological Flexibility in the Workplace

Posted on by Dr Rob Archer

So many leadership courses are based on the idea that to improve performance we must firstly sort our thinking out.  So we focus on motivation, confidence, self-belief or ways of controlling or removing anxiety and stress.  Sounds logical enough.

The problem is whilst this approach makes such intuitive sense to us, the evidence does not support it.  Our minds are expert problem solving machines which evolved to scan the environment for threat, propose hypotheses, and then prompt action to avoid, control or get rid of any threats. But when we try to apply the same techniques to our own thoughts, beliefs and emotional states, the evidence is that we make the problem worse, not better.

This may sound like a small distinction but it has profound implications for the way we learn, teach and improve performance  in the workplace.  In short, the evidence suggests that focusing on trying to alter, control or avoid emotional and cognitive states as the means to improving performance is flawed.  From workplace stress to task concentration, innovation, depression, anxiety, OCD and even chronic pain management, all are showing that attempting to regulate our own internal states IS the problem.  By trying to get rid of anxiety for example, we make enemies of our own thoughts and emotions and increase our distress.

In contrast, the alternative – psychological flexibility – gives people control over their lives, ironically by letting go of the struggle of trying to control their emotional states.  It is the ability to focus on task-relevant stimuli whilst feeling negative emotions that drives better performance and reduces distress (see Gardner and Moore, 2008).

This is why I use Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) in my career work.  It helps people move towards the life they choose whilst handling the doubts and fear that come with that move.

It’s also why we’re slowly building a range of courses which use Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in the workplace, Rachel in Australia and Rob in the UK.  We are pioneering this approach, but for HR Directors and L&D managers everywhere, we think this is the future.