Tag: Values

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’


A Father’s Day post from New York

Posted on by Dr Rob Archer

It is Father’s Day and I am traveling – this week in New York.

It’s days like this I worry that I am failing the Cat’s in the Cradle test of Fatherhood.

If you’ve never heard the song here it is:

This song really meant nothing to me until I became a Dad, and then it meant everything:

My son turned 10, just the other day

He said, “thanks for the ball, Dad, come on let’s play!

Can you teach me to throw?”

I said, “not today, I gotta a lot to do” He said, “that’s OK”

And he walked away but his smile never dimmed,

It said, “I’m gonna be like him, yeah,

you know I’m gonna be like him.”

And the cat’s in the cradle

And the silver spoon,

Little boy blue and the man in the moon

“When you coming home Dad?”

“I don’t when, but we’ll get together then, son,

You know we’ll have a good time then.”

Maybe you can imagine how the songs ends.

It is a hard listen, today.

I don’t think I am failing this test, but it is a reminder of the price of failure. 

Be present. Put the tech away.

Keep trying and don’t put it off, because the time is now. 

All we ever have, is now.

The Great 2022 Reset: You don’t need new habits, you need a (high-performance) routine

Posted on by Dr Rob Archer

It’s January so psychologists like me are legally obliged to write about habits, resolutions and the like. 

If that’s what you’re after I heartily recommend the work of Katy Milkman, BJ Fogg and James Clear.

These people have undermined the idea that habits are about repetition (“21 days to build a new habit!”) and introduced the more accurate idea that it is how we feel during any given behaviour that creates a habit.

Yet this conversation also misses some key variables. 

The first is that how we feel is often not within our control. We are usually better off trying to control the context around a behaviour instead. 

The second is that it is sometimes not the habit itself that is key, but the timing and sequencing of a behaviour that matters most.

And this is why I believe what people most need in 2022 is a reset coordinated not by habits, but by high-performance routines.

What is a high-performance routine?

Well, let’s start with the opposite. 

At some point in the last 20 months many of us have fallen into routines that we didn’t really choose or design. 

For whatever reason, what started off as a sprint became a marathon and we became locked in routines where we worked harder and longer, became more sedentary, and days all blurred into one. To assess your own routine, how many of these bullets resonate?

  1. Everything feels like a priority
  2. You hunker down for hours in front of your screen, taking few breaks
  3. Some days you hardly move from your desk (a good indicator is less than 5,000 steps per day)
  4. You feel constantly distracted, pulled between different priorities
  5. You reach midday and realise you’ve not been outside
  6. Work often bleeds through into the evenings, weekends and holidays
  7. You find it hard to switch off and / or sleep
  8. You often feel tired in the morning
  9. You feel guilty that some areas of your life are being neglected
  10. You worry about the impact of all of the above, but are anxious that if you work less you will feel even more overwhelmed

This is what I call the ‘flat line’ way of working where we work in a continuous, often dysregulated way, without any real structure or boundaries.  In this way we ignore our own body’s need for recovery and instead ‘push on through’.

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The ‘flat line’ can work for a while, but over the longer term it becomes an insult to high-performance and dangerous to mental health (primarily because it’s a very unnatural way to work).

Worse still, in this context potentially helpful new habits can seem like an extra burden. 

For example, imagine telling someone who is overburdened that they need to start doing meditation. Even though meditation might help, in the short term it is likely to feel like another burden; one more thing to do (and possibly fail at).

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Meditation – just one more thing to fail at

High-performance routines are different for 3 reasons.

1.      Routines create their own rhythm, with one part of the routine enabling the next. Habits are easier to stick to when part of a routine.

2.      Individual behaviours become much more powerful when part of a routine.  What was an isolated behaviour becomes a meaningful pattern, linked to our biological rhythms as well as our long term values and goals.

3.      Routines create a sense of control; of everything having a time and a place. And this creates the positive feelings for change to be sustained.

In the next few weeks, I will be publishing a series of posts on high-performance routines as well as giving away my new e-book on the subject.

In the meantime, I would encourage you to consider what an ideal daily routine would look like for you. 

You could start by downloading the template below and seeing if you can identify what your ideal daily routine would look like if you had complete control over each day. 

I did this for myself and with many clients last year, and the results were always revealing.

daily-hpr-exerciseDownload

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 to choose your values and why it matters

Posted on by Rachel Collis

There is compelling evidence that spending time thoughtfully choosing your values is a good idea (Cohen & Sherman, 2014).

Research suggests that spending even a few minutes considering your values has some significant benefits, including:

In this post, I want to give you some strategies for how to choose your values.

Steve Hayes (Professor of Psychology at the University of Nevada and one of the founders of ACT) defines values as

 ‘…intentional qualities of action that join together a string of moments into a meaningful path’

(Hayes & Smith, 2005)

So values are qualities. Words like: curiosity, kindness, courage, compassion, generosity.

Take a moment to think about this. What words would you want your friends to use when they describe you to someone who hasn’t met you? What qualities would the best version of you express so consistently, that this is how people describe you to others?

This is what I would want people to say about me:

‘Rachel is really kind and wise. She is incredibly non-judgemental. She loves to learn and is very curious about what makes people tick. She is easily moved to laughter or tears. She enjoys the simple things – a lovely cup of green tea; a beautiful flower; spending time with the people she loves.’

This is aspirational. It is who I want to be in my relationships with others. Some of the time I display those qualities but others I don’t. My intention, over time, is to be more and more like that person. And when I am not the person I want to be, I hope that I can notice those moments with curiosity (I wonder what is going on for me here?) and self-compassion (It is disappointing that you … but you are human, aren’t you?).

It is helpful to repeat this activity for different areas of life. You might consider how you want to show up at work. How you want to approach your own self-care and health. What qualities you would like to express in your relationships with your loved ones.

If you are struggling to think of the ‘right’ words. Russ Harris has a good list of suggested values in this free handout (go to page 23 & 24).

Spending time deeply considering what you value actually helps you to live those qualities more consistently, as it makes it clearer what you’re aiming for.

It may be that considering how you want show up, freaks you out. If it does… that is okay. Take a breath and don’t panic. You don’t need to nail this in one sitting. You can try different values on for size and adjust them. And remember, this is aspirational – you don’t have to be expressing these values currently. Just give yourself some time to consider – What do I choose? What qualities matter to me?

If you are feeling stuck, try taking the VIA Character Strengths test, designed by positive psychologists, Martin Seligman and Chris Petersen. That might give you some clues about which values give you a sense of flourishing.

If you would like some more suggestions for defining your values, these worksheets are really good:

Once you have chosen about 8-15 qualities that you feel describe the person you want to be, then you can use them as a compass to guide your behaviour.  Remembering that you don’t have to do this perfectly – you are human and you will have many, many moments when you don’t show up as the best version of yourself. Do be kind to yourself in those moments.

“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) 

References

Association for Psychological Science. News Release July 22, 2008 Reflecting on values promotes love, acceptance

Cohen, G. L., Garcia, J., Apfel, N., & Maste, A. (2006). Reducing the Racial Achievement Gap: A Social-Psychological Intervention. Science 1, 313(5791), 1307 – 1310. 

Cohen, G.L & Sherman, D.K. The Psychology of Change: Self-Affirmation and Social Psychological Intervention Annual Review of Psychology 2014 65:1, 333-371

Creswell, J. D., Welch, W. T., Taylor, S. E., Sherman, D. K., Gruenewald, T. L., & Mann, T. (2005). Affirmation of personal values buffers neuroendocrine and psychological stress responses. Psychological Science, 16(11), 846-851.

Crocker, J., Niiya, Y., & Mischkowski, D. (2008). Why does writing about important values reduce defensiveness? Self-affirmation and the role of positive other-directed feelings. Psychological Science, 19(7), 740-747.

Hayes, S. C.,  & Smith, S. X. (2005). Get Out Of Your Mind & Into Your Life: The New Acceptance & Commitment Therapy. Oakland, CA, New Harbinger Publications

Nelson, S. K., Fuller, J. A. K., Choi, I., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2014). Beyond self-protection: Self-affirmation benefits hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40(8), 998-1011.

Wilson, K. G., & DuFrene, T. (2010b) Things Might Go Terribly, Horribly Wrong: A Guide to Life Liberated from Anxiety. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger

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)

Is Meaningful Success Possible Within an Organisation?

Posted on by Rachel Collis

Working in a twenty-first century organisation can feel pretty bleak. Many employees describe feeling increasingly discouraged, disconnected and disengaged. They struggle to feel a sense of meaning or joy in their work.

Do the harsh realities of the global economy make this inevitable? The situation can seem pretty depressing. But there is hope! New ways of running organisations may be about to change everything.

In his book, Reinventing Organizations, Frederik Laloux describes vibrant and meaningful workplaces that still deliver key outcomes. He calls these organisations ‘Teal organisations’.

in this approach, the organisation is considered to be a complex adaptive system, like a city or a forest. This is in contrast to the current dominant metaphor of the organisation as a machine. This change in metaphor is important. If an organisation is a machine, then people are seen as replaceable cogs. Whereas, in a complex adaptive system, all of the parts are important. Different parts interact in surprising ways and a small action by one element can create large, system wide changes.

In Teal organisations:

  • The usual hierarchies are dropped.
  • Individuals are given much more autonomy.
  • People often work in small, semi-autonomous groups that are nested together to create a larger system.
  • Everyone is seen as able to take on a leadership role whenever needed.
  • All employees are provided with training in the skills they need in order to navigate the complexity of this sometimes challenging environment.
  • Individual workers can make important decisions – as long as they seek advice from those who will be affected by the decision.
  • The CEO doesn’t decide on strategy or tell people what to do. The group agree a broad purpose, and then ‘the role of the leader is to listen for where this organisation naturally wants to go’ (Laloux). 

What I particularly like about Laloux’s perspective is that he doesn’t pretend this is easy. It is clearly challenging to implement this approach. If a Teal organisation is to flourish, appropriate processes and systems need to be put in place. For example, successful organisations adopting this new approach all have clear processes for dealing with conflict.

This model does give hope for the future. It suggests that grim and soulless workplaces may be replaced by something much better. Within a Teal organisation, it is highly likely that employees will experience a sense of meaningful success.

You probably don’t work in a Teal organisation at the moment, but it may be possible to start to shift the centre of gravity. In a complex adaptive system, small changes can lead to dramatic shifts. Just adopting some of the Teal daily organisation practices in your team could help build autonomy, meaning and a sense of community. Try picking one small change suggested on the Reinventing Organizations Wiki, implement it and see what happens.

Fostering these changes will require a degree of psychological flexibility. You will need to be present, open and flexible. You will need a capacity to observe what is happening; take thoughtful action; notice the outcome and then take more action.

You can watch Laloux explaining his research in more detail in this talk:

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.