Tag: Values and Behaviour

Psychological Flexibility and Identity: Lessons from Macbeth

Posted on by Rachel Collis

Watching Macbeth recently, it became clear that the plot turns on one line:

‘All Hail Macbeth! That shalt be King’

Three witches deliver a prophecy – and Macbeth is never the same man.

Their prophecy is certainly unsettling, planting a possibility Macbeth doesn’t seem to have considered up to this point. But in that moment, nothing has actually changed. Duncan is still king. Macbeth is still a respected general whose courage and loyalty have earned him admiration. If the prophecy is true, there seems little reason to do anything at all. In fact, the wisest response might have been to carry on becoming the sort of man who could one day make a good king — to learn from Duncan, continue serving him well, and trust that the future will unfold in its own time.

Instead, Macbeth becomes captivated by the future. He doesn’t simply hear the prophecy. He becomes fused with it.

Instead of holding it as one possible future, he begins to experience it as the truth about who he is.

Almost immediately, his attention shifts away from the life he is actually living and towards the role he now believes he is destined to inhabit. As the play unfolds, his choices become increasingly organised around that imagined identity. Each decision narrows the next, until actions that would once have been unthinkable begin to feel almost inevitable.

Here’s the strange part: Banquo hears a similar prophecy: ‘thou shalt get kings, though thou be none’ and responds very differently. He is unsettled, but he carries on with his life. The prophecy remains a possibility rather than becoming an identity. Shakespeare never tells us why these two men respond so differently, but I found myself wondering whether that difference lies at the heart of the tragedy.

Our minds are extraordinarily good at producing stories. Some are uncomfortable: I’m not a natural leader. I’m hopeless with conflict. Others are more flattering: I’m the person everyone depends on. I’m the one who always has the answers. We all have stories about ourselves, and that doesn’t have to be a problem. The trouble begins when we stop relating to these stories as possibilities and start treating them as certainties.

Once that happens, our behaviour starts to organise itself around the story. We notice different things. We interpret situations differently. Gradually, the range of choices available to us narrows, because we are no longer responding simply to what is in front of us — we are too focused on the person we believe ourselves to be.

The tragedy isn’t simply that Macbeth becomes ambitious. Ambition, on its own, is not especially dangerous. The tragedy begins when he becomes so certain about the future that he loses the freedom to respond wisely in the present. Rather than letting the future remain uncertain, he fixates on a particular outcome and bends his behaviour to fit it. Instead of asking, ‘What is the right thing to do here?‘ He increasingly asks, ‘What must I do to make the prophecy come true?‘ Those are very different questions — and the future stops being something that might unfold, and becomes something he feels compelled to force into being.

We can all get caught in a similar trap — thankfully, in much less dramatic ways. A leader becomes attached to being decisive, and stops noticing the moment when people actually needed more time to think. Another becomes attached to being the visionary, and stops being curious about the views of colleagues who ask difficult questions or point out practical risks. Those descriptions may once have reflected something true about them, but over time they can quietly harden into rules. Instead of responding to the situation in front of them, they start responding to the story they tell themselves about who they are.

Banquo shows more psychological flexibility than Macbeth. He can hold the prophecy lightly. He neither dismisses it nor becomes consumed by it. He lets uncertainty remain and stays present to what is actually happening. He continues to live according to his values rather than his ambition.

Shakespeare’s tragedy begins long before Duncan is murdered. It begins the moment Macbeth’s behaviour stops being guided by his values and starts organising itself around a future he thinks he must force into being.

So here’s the question worth sitting with: what’s the story you have about yourself that you have started treating as fact?

Where has “I’m the decisive one”, or “I’m the one everyone depends on”, stopped being a possibility and started making your decisions for you? Banquo’s answer wasn’t to ignore the prophecy. It was to keep living his life in line with his values. What would that look like for you?

The Leadership Lesson Hidden In BTS’s Grammy Protest

Posted on by Rachel Collis

A global pop group may seem like an unlikely case study in complexity leadership, but BTS’s Grammy protest shows something leaders often struggle to trust: influence does not come from controlling people’s responses. It comes from living your values so consistently that, when the unexpected happens, people already know how to act.

For years, I have taught leaders how to navigate complexity. One of the central challenges for leaders is to accept that they cannot control outcomes. They can, however, shape the conditions from which constructive responses become more likely. Often, this happens through the everyday choices leaders make: small, repeated actions that teach people what matters before a crisis or disruption arrives.

A few days ago, I watched that theory play out in real time, in a place I did not expect: the relationship between BTS and ARMY (the name BTS fans use for their collective community). What looked at first like a fandom response to an awards controversy became, to me, a vivid example of how culture carries leadership when direct instruction is absent. BTS had not simply prompted a fan reaction; over time, they had helped cultivate a shared culture of meaning, dignity and refusal to be diminished. So when the Grammys controversy arrived, ARMY’s response did not need to be scripted. It emerged from a culture already alive with those values.


The backstory

Recently, the National Recording Academy, which runs the Grammys, introduced a new Asian pop category. The decision was immediately contested. To many observers, it looked less like inclusion and more like a form of containment: a separate space for Asian artists rather than full recognition in the major categories. Associate Professor Jay Song, from the Australian National University, put the concern bluntly when she described the Grammys’ decision to create an “Asian” category as “pathetic and defeatist, and somewhat racist.” ABC News

For BTS fans the announcement landed on already raw ground. Many were still frustrated by the 2021 Grammys, when the show repeatedly teased BTS’s performance throughout the ceremony after the group had already lost its category. As Bryan Rolli wrote in Forbes, viewers complained that the Grammys had “incessantly” hyped the Korean pop septet’s performance, with many joking that the show was holding BTS and their fans hostage.

So when the new category was announced, the old language resurfaced. ARMY began talking again about the “Scammys.”

Then BTS announced that they would not submit their music for Grammy consideration. This was a big deal. BTS had spoken openly for years about their dream of earning a Grammy, and their current album, Arirang, seemed clearly in the running.

BTS explained the decision this way: ‘We hope our music can be heard and loved for what it is, rather than being divided by region or language,’ and then thanked ARMY for standing beside them.


What emerged

The initial response from ARMY was what you would expect: messages of support for BTS’s decision. But then something more interesting happened. Within twelve hours of BTS’s statement, Aliens — a BTS song that had not been released as a single and was not on the charts — reached number one on iTunes in 78 regions, including the US.

Aliens reflects BTS’s experience of alienation within the Western entertainment industry, their pride as Koreans, and their refusal to be boxed in by industry expectations.

Through thousands of actions and interactions across the community, Aliens emerged as ARMY’s symbolic response to BTS’s decision. Like many others, I read the announcement and then reached for the song. It seemed to hold something of how the moment felt. Then I saw on Reddit that Aliens was rising in the iTunes charts. It felt strangely moving to realise that so many fans across the world had responded in the same way, so I listened a few more times. Soon, Aliens had reached number one across multiple countries.

Across social media, ARMY expressed pride in the way the community had responded.

From a complexity leadership perspective, the important point is that BTS had not directed the response. It emerged.

Although the announcement was significant, ARMY’s response grew out of thousands of shared moments that BTS and ARMY had co-created across the previous thirteen years.

In that time, BTS have not simply built a fanbase; they have nurtured a shared way of making sense of the world.

Culture isn’t created by telling people what is important

Watching this unfold made me think about how leaders shape the conditions in which shared meaning develops.

Across years of shared experience, BTS have sung about identity, belonging, mental health, ambition, kindness, love and self-acceptance. They have spoken at the United Nations about the importance of expressing oneself, and at the White House about anti-Asian hate. They have also spent countless hours on camera sharing ordinary moments of life: exploring new countries, chatting, laughing, playing games, cooking, eating and even tidying up.

Gradually, a coherent way of being in the world became evident: a shared form of meaning-making. So, when something unexpected happened, people did not need to be told what it meant; they knew how to interpret it.

That, I think, is what made ARMY’s response to the Grammy announcement possible.


How Values Create Culture

It seems to me that the thread connecting BTS’s leadership with ARMY’s response was the consistent expression of sincerely held values.

This is where Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACT) has something important to contribute to complexity leadership.

In ACT, we spend a great deal of time helping leaders clarify what genuinely matters to them, because values shape behaviour.

Only sincerely held values can sustain the kind of behavioural consistency that, gradually, becomes a recognisable pattern.

Anyone can act compassionately for a while. Most of us can use the language of psychological safety in an important meeting or keynote. The real test comes in the everyday interactions of leadership. When we are tired or under pressure, our behaviour drifts. It either reflects what we truly value or becomes shaped by the need to avoid discomfort.

That is why sincerity matters. It makes sustained consistency possible.

If compassion genuinely matters to me, it will naturally find expression in how I listen, how I disagree, how I respond when I am frustrated, how I speak about people when they are not in the room, and in countless other moments that nobody notices individually.

Through repeated everyday moments, people experience those values as a recognisable way of being. That consistency becomes part of the shared culture. From there, coordinated, intelligent behaviour can emerge without anyone needing to prescribe it.

Perhaps this is one pathway by which complexity leadership can be both simpler and more demanding than we usually imagine.


Why this gives me hope

Watching Aliens climb the charts, I realised this was the first time I’d experienced that process from inside a system rather than observing it from the outside.

The feeling that surprised me was pride. Inadvertently, I had become part of a community that had responded to a principled act with another small, symbolic act that felt deeply aligned with a culture formed through years of shared experience.

This is what the BTS example makes tangible: Leaders cannot prescribe or predict every response, but they can cultivate the values, relationships and conditions that help people to make coherent decisions when no instruction exists.

What if the heart of complexity leadership is living your values sincerely and consistently enough that, when the unexpected happens, people already know how to respond?

Looking back, the remarkable thing was not simply that Aliens reached number one. The remarkable thing was that millions of people, spread across countries and platforms, independently recognised it as the right song.

There was no need for a coordinated campaign, or for BTS to tell ARMY how to respond. The judgement had already been distributed through the culture BTS and ARMY had built together across thirteen years of shared experience.

Maybe this is what complexity leadership asks of us: to make our values visible in the small, ordinary moments, so that when disruption comes, people have something to orient by.

For someone who spends her life helping leaders work in complexity, that felt less like fan behaviour and more like a leadership masterclass from ‘seven normal boys from Korea’


The 3-Space Model

Posted on by Dr Rob Archer

*UPDATE*

This post by Dan Carter is very similar to the 3-space model described below:

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7184014249415917570

The 3-Space model is a really flexible way of navigating transitions.

It is as relevant to elite athletes as it is to those in business.

Here’s how it works:

Imgine you have 30 or so seconds between work calls or meetings.

It is easy in that context to take the stress or emotion from one call into another. In turn this can impact behaviour in the next call, with the cycle potentially repeating.

This is a tricky challenge – 30 seconds is not long, after all!

And yet there are techniques that can help with fast emotion regulation and help us take more more effective action.

One of these is the 3-Space model.

Instead of doing nothing in the 30 seconds, divide the time into 3, roughly equal parts:

The First Space – Processing your emotions

In the first 10 seconds, try to tune into your body – what are you feeling? What thoughts are you experiencing? What emotions are you feeling? Where do these show up in your body?

The Second Space – Pausing to get present

In the next 10 seconds, see if you can intentionally pause to bring yourself into the present moment. You can do this by taking a couple of deep breaths, looking at the sky or touching a cold surface.

The Third Space – Picking your response

In the final 10 seconds your job is to intentionally pick the most effective behaviour in the next passage of time. For example:

  • Business: What kind of impression do I want to make in the next meeting? What are my objectives?
  • Home life: What kind of Dad do I want to be when I turn the key and open the door?
  • Sports: What can I do to put pressure back on my opponent?

I wouldn’t say the effect of using the 3-space model is dramatic, but I do find its value tends to compound over time.

I regularly use it with my children, especially when tired, and it helps ‘lift and shift’ me away from reactive mode and towards being more connected to my values pretty reliably.

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

Posted on 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 850 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:

  1. It helps people clarify and understand their values in practice, not just in theory.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.

How having a messy car might actually align with your values

Posted on by Rachel Collis

Do you have some activities that you just avoid? You never quite get them done and you feel bad about not getting them done?

It could be cleaning out the kitchen cupboards; sorting out your email; exercising; updating your LinkedIn profile; cleaning your car…

We know we should do it, but we kind of don’t choose to do it.

And that would be okay, but if you are like me, your mind sometimes uses this lack of action as evidence that you are lazy, disorganised, neglectful…

I drive a 5 year old car. I almost never wash it. It is usually messy on the inside too. Hats, sunglasses, shoes (including, I am embarrassed to admit, a pair of red Crocs), sundry shopping bags and wrappers from chocolate bars are scattered around the seats and floor. Discarded bits and pieces that found their way into my car but never seem to find their way out.

Why is my car like this?

The logical reason is that having a clean, tidy car is low on my list of priorities. Now and again I write ‘Clean out car’ on my job list for the day, but other, more interesting (Write blog post) or more urgent (Invoicing) tasks crowd it out.

Even though I often have ‘good reasons’ for not cleaning out my car, when someone else sees how messy my car is, my ‘I am not good enough’ story pops up. I worry that they will see me as lazy and disorganised. (Which sometimes I am, but I don’t want other people to know that!)

I could use this concern to motivate me. I could clean my car to avoid the pain of other people’s judgment. In ACT terms this is an avoidance move. An avoidance move is where a behaviour (e.g. cleaning the car) is about avoiding painful internal stuff (e.g. fear of other’s judgement). There is a lot of research to tell us that a life that is organised around avoiding unwanted emotions isn’t healthy. It is clear that repeated avoidance doesn’t lead to a rich and meaningful life. So, perhaps, for me, having a messy car might just align with my values?

This is where is gets tricky. Just because cleaning my car could be an avoidance move, it doesn’t mean that ‘not cleaning my car’ is a move towards my values.

It depends what I do instead of cleaning out my car. If, instead of cleaning my car, I engage in activities that link to my values – writing a blog post; spending time with people I love; learning something new – then, over time, those choices will likely help me to build a rich and meaningful life.

But if, instead of cleaning out my car, I obsessively watch videos of Beyonce, trying to figure out if she and JayZ are happy or not. Then it is likely that I am caught in avoidance, which is usually a bad idea.

So what do we do, when we are in the grip of avoidance? The first step is to take a breath and notice. How are you feeling in this moment? When you pause, see if you can notice, with curiosity and kindness, the whole range of thoughts and feelings that show up. And then, pause some more and see if you can notice what thoughts or feelings you might be avoiding.

For me, as I pause my YouTube video, I could notice that I don’t want to feel:

  • Bored whilst I clean out my car, or,
  • Anxious whilst I write a blogpost ‘What if people think it is stupid?’, or,
  • Challenged and a bit stressed as I try to master a new piece of theory.

Could I make room for those thoughts and feelings? And, if I did make room for them, and chose what to do next based on what really matters to me, what would I do?

Sometimes, just now and again, that might even be to spend ten minutes cleaning out my car.

Step 1 for Success: Choose What You Value

Posted on by Rachel Collis

If you were completely free to make your life about things that truly matter to you, what would they be?

Pause and let that question sink in. Let the words settle within you….

If I was completely free to make my life about things that truly mattered to me, what would I choose?

Your mind will likely come up with all sorts of limitations – “But I am not free…”

Remind yourself that you are just thinking thoughts – you don’t have to act on those thoughts.

If you could just let yourself answer that question, what would the answer be?

If you have a moment – jot down your answers to that question.

I encourage you to sit with the question slightly longer than feels comfortable.

See what bubbles up for you.

Now ask yourself the opposite question:

If I was completely free to make my life about things that truly mattered to me, what wouldn’t it be about?

If you were to let the answers to these questions run your life, what might change?

If I was watching you live this life – the life where you give time, energy and attention to what really matters to you and you don’t give time, energy or attention to what doesn’t matter to you – what would I see and hear you doing?

Some time ago, I was suffering from writer’s block, feeling stuck. Finding myself avoiding writing, even though I wanted to do it. I talked with my friend, Paul Atkins, a wonderful coach, and it became clear that I had got myself in a muddle. The joy of writing (something I value) had got mixed with an unhelpful focus on whether others would approve of my writing. Paul helped me to come up with a phrase to remind me what really matters to me:

‘I choose a life where I value writing and learning and connection rather than chasing approval, materialism and prestige’.

I keep reminding myself of this. This is what I choose. I get side-tracked. I get hooked by what others want of me or what the world tells me is important…and then I remind myself:

‘I choose a life where I value writing and learning and connection rather than chasing approval, materialism and prestige’.

Go back to what you wrote earlier, give yourself some time to mull it over and then choose your own phrase.

A phrase that describes the life you would choose, and perhaps also what you wouldn’t choose. Don’t stress about making it perfect – you can adjust it whenever you want to.

Once you have a phrase, then, with deep curiosity and kindness, notice what you do. Notice the moments when you are aligned with your own definition of success and moments when you aren’t.

“In this very moment, will you accept the sad and the sweet, hold lightly stories about what’s possible, and be the author of a life that has meaning and purpose for you, turning in kindness back to that life when you find yourself moving away from it?”

(Wilson & Dufrene, 2010)

Traps to Avoid On the Path to Success – Or Why You Can’t Have it All

Posted on by Rachel Collis

Do you want to be successful? If you are like me, then your response to that question is, ‘Hmm...It depends‘. It depends on what ‘being successful’ means.

We are surrounded by the message that success is about ‘having it all’. Over and over again, the world implies that if you are to truly consider yourself a success you need: love, money, a prestigious job, a wonderful family, happy kids, lots of friends, health, a beautiful body, a lovely home with a shiny kitchen, a fancy car…. Only when you have all of these things can you count yourself as successful.

How dispiriting!

Even worse, we are sold the myth that it is actually possible to have it all. A multitude of articles; books and courses promise, ‘if you just do x, then you will … lose weight, earn lots of money, get that promotion’ etc. We are encouraged to believe that if you keep following all of this advice, then, one day, you will have it all. You will know that you are successful. And, all will be well.

However for people like me (and perhaps you) this belief – that you can/should have it all – is exhausting and unhelpful.

In practical terms, when you pursue success, you come up against a tricky contradiction. Some of the things you need to do in order to achieve objective career success, actually make it harder to build meaningful relationships and be happy. For example, objective career success is linked to working long hours and moving for work. However, moving to a new city and working long hours both make it difficult to maintain meaningful relationships and are both associated with decreased happiness.

More than that, this isn’t a level playing field. When it comes to objective career success (salary and promotion), white men who live in developed countries have a head start.

A further difficulty is that it is actually getting harder and harder for most people (even white men!) to achieve objective career success and this trend is likely to get worse rather than better.

The ‘having it all’ myth is also problematic because of how it can mess you up in other ways.

I notice that whenever I buy the ‘you can/should have it all’ myth, then I start to berate myself, because:

  • I spend too much time reading about Donald Trump and not enough time doing deep work
  • I eat too many biscuits and not enough kale
  • I am not a university professor and I haven’t written a best-selling book
  • I don’t earn a six figure income.

When I buy the ‘having it all’ myth, I run around trying to get everything right. I feel anxious about all the things I am not achieving. I feel exhausted and overwhelmed and my life passes me by as I pursue the ‘infinite more’.

When I buy the myth that I can have it all, I see myself and my life as problems to be solved. I fail to notice moments of joy and connection. I notice myself thinking, if I just try a little harder; If I read the right book; if I do all the right things; if I just become better or different in some ill-defined way;  then, everything will fall into place. Then, I will have it all and then…I can relax and enjoy this moment.

But what if you and I were to accept that we can’t actually do it all or have it all? What would that be like?

Instead of focusing on getting everything right, perhaps we could give our attention to being here now. To embracing this messy life with all of its imperfection. Whilst at the very same time, with courage and lots of self-compassion, we face up to the ways we need to change. Not in order to get the perfect life, with the fancy car and the posh job, but so that we give ourselves a fighting chance to achieve the things that really do matter, which probably include:

None of these are easy. All of these require an ongoing commitment to gently aligning moment to moment choices with these longer term goals. All of these become more likely if you practice certain behaviours – such as mindfulness and self-compassion.

In the end, I do need to eat less biscuits and more kale. But not so I can tick ‘perfect body’ off my ‘having it all’ list. (I am a middle-aged lady – I think that ship has sailed!) Instead, I choose to eat more kale because it is one way of caring for my precious body.

Perhaps we can’t have it all but, instead, over time, we can make choices that lead to a life that is rich and meaningful and that might just be better than having it all.

Using the ACT Matrix to Help You to Be The Person You Want to Be…More Often

Posted on by Rachel Collis

I use the ACT matrix a lot in my workshops and with my coaching clients… and on myself! It is a tool that helps to build mindfulness, self-awareness and valued living. It is based on contextual behavioural science and is very easy to use.

I have made a video explaining how I use it:

 

You can download a pdf handout of the ACT Matrix here.

Kevin Polk (who is one of the people who developed the ACT matrix) has lots of free resources relating to the ACT matrix at his website.

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

Posted on 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?

What a Country GP Can Teach You About Fame and Fortune

Posted on by Rachel Collis

My father was a doctor. When he finished medical school, he planned to pursue a career with some prestige attached to it. He was going to become a surgeon or physician in some teaching hospital. He would work his way up the hierarchy until he was like Sir Lancelot Spratt, with a host of nurses, doctors, medical students and sundry allied health professionals traipsing after him, writing down his pronouncements and doing his bidding.

My mother had a different view of what sort of life would suit them and she persuaded my dad to instead become a country GP in a relatively poor part of Derbyshire. He spent much of his working life visiting patients in their cramped terraced houses or sitting in his surgery looking into the ears of snotty nosed children. He was not followed around by an entourage. His work was not with the rich or the famous and he didn’t become rich or famous himself. On the surface, he might seem like a relatively insignificant figure.

But if you walk into the local newsagent with my father, who has been retired for 14 years now, it is very likely that someone will rush up to him and say something like, ‘Oh Dr Collis, It is my lovely, lovely Dr Collis’.

In his small way, in this small village in the middle of England, my dad is famous. He is famous to these people because he was very, very kind and caring to them at a point in their life when they needed this more than anything. Because he listened to his patients with great interest, even if they were telling him about problems with endless green snotty noses. He started with the assumption that his patients mattered and their worries were important and that meant everything to them.

My mother is also ‘famous’ in this small village in Derbyshire. She is famous for her stalwart support of people through the tough times of life, for her capacity to be with people through the periods of grief, loneliness and overwhelmingly bad odds that visit us all. People often say to me, ‘I don’t know what we would have done without your Mum when…happened.’

My parents remind me of the wonderful poem, ‘Famous’  by Naomi Shihab Nye, here is an excerpt:

The river is famous to the fish
….
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.

There is so much written about how to become successful. But the success these articles describe is about fame and fortune rather than the gratitude of a middle aged lady in the local newsagent. And that is a problem.

It is a problem because chasing money and status sucks vitality out of life.

It is a problem because pursuing status is associated with less happiness; less satisfaction with life and also more anxiety.

It is a problem because chasing prestige leads you to focus energy on things that aren’t really important to you:

“What you should not do, I think, is worry about the opinion of anyone beyond your friends. You shouldn’t worry about prestige. Prestige is the opinion of the rest of the world…..Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like but what you’d like to like…Prestige is just fossilised inspiration. If you do anything well enough, you’ll make it prestigious…

Prestige is especially dangerous to the ambitious. If you want to make ambitious people waste their time on errands, the way to do it is to bait the hook with prestige. That’s the recipe for getting people to give talks, write forewords, serve on committees, be department heads, and so on. It might be a good rule to simply avoid any prestigious task. If it didn’t suck, they wouldn’t have had to make it prestigious.’ Paul Graham

When you are in your late 70’s, as my father is. What will touch you most:

  • That you rose through the corporate ranks?
  • That you earned lots of money and drove a fancy car?
  • That you were, in your own world, a Lancelot Spratt?

Or,

  • That somewhere there is a person; someone who, like you, is insignificant in the scheme of things; and they remember how you treated them?
  • That somewhere there is a piece of work, something that was done really well…by you.

If you were famous in these small ways – what would you choose to be famous for?