A while back, struggling to win influence over a business partner that seemed to out-fox me at every turn, I read the newly-published book by Robert Greene called The 48 Laws of Power. It was a great book – full of intrigue and subterfuge. Yet it did me no good at all. My partner seemed to have power in his DNA and I so lacked the courage to implement the “laws” that I actually found them alienating. Far from giving me power, the book seemed to point out my innate lack of power.
The 48 Laws... is enjoying a revival, so I thought I would revisit it. Given my research for What’s Stopping You? - my book on fear of failure (TBP March 2011 by Capstone/Wiley) - could I now make use of Greene's prose? Could I even feel that he was addressing me: a confessed High-FF (as I call someone with high fear of failure in the book)?
Many of the laws still seem to be addressing somebody else in my view – the school bully perhaps or the overly-ambitious office toady. Even after my immersion into the world of self-help and psychology – aimed at making me a more effective human being – I’m unconvinced that such aggressive traits will work for the High-FF, or anyone else for that matter. Why? Because the book forgets one crucial piece of information – THERE IS NO WAR.
For instance Law 15 states you should “destroy your enemy” – “drowning every smoldering ember”. Sorry, you mean we have to murder the guy in the office that also wants that promotion? Jeez, this seems a bit of an over-reaction to me but, agreed, anything short of that does mean they will live to potentially plot against us (especially if they have read Greene’s book).
We are not in the medieval court of an Italian prince so such advice is total garbage as far as I’m concerned – not least because it is also contradictory. For instance Law 2 tells us to “…understand the utility of enemies”, and even suggests we go as far as hiring them – not that they’ll be much use if we’ve “drowned their every smoldering ember”.
Certainly, hiring “enemies” seems like a more mature response than drowning them, but why see them as enemies? We’re in an office, not on a battlefield. Our colleagues have the same hopes and aspirations – and probably many of the same insecurities. Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People suggests we should “synergize” with people – which, indeed, means seeking their utility for our needs (and vice versa). Another Covey habit states will should seek “win:win” outcomes. Again, this seems far more effective to me than constantly fighting battles to some theoretical death – especially for the High-FF who has a poor record when it comes to “win:lose” outcomes.
Quickly – once again – I became disillusioned with The 48 Laws..., although this time from a more learned perspective. In the modern age, these laws couldn’t teach us anything useful – could they? Certainly, the High-FF reads such a book and spots the traits of his or her rivals rather than feels they’re applicable to his or her own situation. There are 48 of them, however. So surely there’s something we can learn beyond the simple truth that we are unlikely to make our way to the top via Machiavellian scheming? In fact I thought around 20 of the rules had some applicability – listed below with my added interpretation for the High-FF.
Law 1: “Never eclipse your superiors”. Your role in any subordinate situation is not to point out or exaggerate their failings but to be useful and support their needs. The unsupportive route caused universal frustration, where you are the most likely loser. The supportive route – even for someone you disrespect – engenders progress. Don’t worry: their defects are known (but may be less than you suppose), as are your competences (ditto).
Law 5: “Protect your reputation”. Given my last book, I can speak from experience here. Once damaged – by foolish or poorly thought-through acts – you will struggle to regain your standing. In What’s Stopping You? I talk of becoming “principles centred” (another reference to Stephen Covey). Undermine those principles and any attempt to publicly impose them will be almost impossible.
Law 6: “Make yourself the centre of attention”. This is not as vain-glorious as it sounds. The main aim here is to not toil in obscurity. Ensure that your acts become known. Don’t be boastful but don’t deny your talents.
Law 9: “Win by deeds not by debate”. Don’t tell people your intentions – show them. Never argue with people (a trait of mine that has won me no friends and lost me many). Act.
Law 10: “Shun losers”. My own interpretation of this is not as harsh as it sounds. At work, many High-FFs hang out in what I call the Negative Club – the malcontents huddling together and moaning about the company or a particular line manager. Progress while part of this gang is all but impossible.
Law 11: “Tell part of the truth and be tactically generous”. Just about every other “law” recommends some form of deceit, so here’s one that states the opposite (albeit in conspiratorial language). Truth is crucial for trust. And trust radiates positivity. People relax in your company and offer you insight and opportunity. Don’t abuse it.
Law 13: “When you ask for help, let people know what’s in it for them”. This takes us back to Covey’s synergistic win:wins. Again, couched in the language of deceit – all this is saying is that human relationships need to be a two-way street that you should initiate. Just make sure you repay your debts, with interest.
Law 14: “Seem to be a friend to gather intelligence”. I’m getting a bit tired of the cloak and dagger stuff to be honest. How about “be a friend”? “Disarm rivals by seeming to be a friend” says Greene. Remove the word “seeming” and this is good advice for the High-FF. Add the word “seeming” and you’ll be found out and distrusted for evermore.
Law 19: “Know with whom you deal: give no offence to the powerful”. In Why Should the Boss Listen to You (2008) strategic adviser James Lukaszewski states that your advice to the boss should always be constructive. “Constructive criticism” is an oxymoron for Lukaszewski as negative comments will stop the boss listening. Seniors are mostly looking for confirmation from juniors. As for “being able to read people” as the law suggests: fine, but don’t over analyse – most characters are complex, and your misjudgements may lead to mistakes.
Law 20: “Make no promises”. Part of this law states “avoid inseparable allies”, which I agree with. These are mostly weak people clinging to a lifeboat. You should not seek nor be a lifeboat. Develop your own goals and judge everything (people, places, situations) by those goals. Alliances (especially “inseparable” ones) can easily lead you from the path.
Law 21: “Play dumb”. Disarm your “victims” (oh, dear) by making them feel smart, Greene states. Certainly, parading your intelligence is setting you up for a fall, while compliments regarding the astute acts and habits of others will be fondly remembered, so this is good advice despite the aggressive language.
Law 22: “Surrender to gain power”. Forget going down in a blaze of glory – defeat is always inglorious so you may as well live to fight another day. When we judge a fight unwinnable we should back off and wait, says Greene. Of course, this is a recipe for sulking and scheming – two traits that will undermine you. Seeking a win:win, meanwhile, makes the notion of surrender redundant.
Law 23: “Focus your strength”. This is good advice to anyone with a lot on their plate. I always tell my team to imagine themselves guarding a footbridge with the marauders (i.e. tasks) being tackled one-one-one. Far better than standing on a beach and watching the invaders overwhelm you from all angles. “Pick one point and bring all your forces to bear on it” is really just effective task management – battle analogies aside.
Law 24: “Be courtly”. “The courtier is adept at intrigue and manipulation” says Greene. But, as a High-FF, you are not – so best focus on other courtly traits such as good manners and flattery.
Law 29: “Plan everything”. Absolutely. What’s Stopping You? goes into meticulous detail regarding goal-setting, strategising and planning. With long-term goals and detailed plans towards achieving them, progress is almost impossible to avoid. In fact you could rename the “self-help” section of the bookshop “set goals and plan” and it would be no less accurate.
Law 34: “Play the king and people will treat you royally”. This is not a treatise for pomposity. It is simply saying that if you conduct yourself well it will be noticed and you will be treated well. Look and act like a loser, meanwhile…
Law 35: “Timing is everything”. Sometimes impossible to know without hindsight but poor timing can destroy your plans. Yet this is more than mere luck. Detailed plans and strong research can usually uncover the secrets of good timing.
Law 38: “Don’t look for a free lunch: disdain it”. If something is worth having it is worth paying for. All freebies extract a price eventually – so even a favour from a colleague MUST be repaid, in triplicate. Again, this is a law the High-FF has to most often learn the hard way – so often have they baulked at the cost of their own journey and jumped on the free bandwagon, only to find it taking them to the bandwagon owner’s destination.
Law 43: “Win hearts and minds”. Forcing anyone to act on your behalf will breed resentment and eventual rebellion. Even Greene's recommendation of winning them by “guile, flattery and craft” will explode in your face if caught. What’s wrong with persuading someone something’s in their long-term interest: because it is? Spend your life building alliances, not fighting enemies.
Law 47: “When you reach your goal stop”. Carry on selling once the sale is made and, the chances are, you’ll talk yourself out of a sale. Yet I’d change “goal” to “target” here, as stopping the moment a long-term goal is reached risks undermining the achievement with stagnation. In fact, we should also replace "stop" with "set new ones" as we should always be setting future goals, especially once our original goals have been achieved.
Showing posts with label Stephen Covey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stephen Covey. Show all posts
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Thursday, December 16, 2010
HELP! I’m supporting self-help at a summit of cerebral cynics
Yiks – I have my first gig as a self-help writer! It’s at the School of Life in Central London. I’m a speaker at the Self-Help Summit on January 15th – part of the afternoon session entitled “Help Yourself: How Does Self-Help Help?”
This is exciting stuff. External confirmation (as everyone with high fear of failure needs) that this isn’t all nonsense. That I have a point worth listening to – or, at the very least, worth appraisal from a cerebral and engaged audience. Yet I am immediately posed with a problem (beyond, that is, the obvious terror such a gig presents to someone with fear of failure). The School of Life prides itself on its enquiring agnosticism, as well as its wit and intelligence. Certainly, I hope What’s Stopping You? (TBP 2011) has lashings of all three, but I’d be sharing a platform with speakers that do enquiring agnosticism, wit and intelligence for a living. What can I possibly add?
In fact – with respect to the progamme at least – my potential positioning becomes clear after a quick scan of the speaker biographies. Among the speakers are psychologists, philosophers and writers. This is no more than one would expect from the philosophical and inquisitive School of Life crowd – all no doubt scarily tutored in the ways of dialectic debate. One expects searching questions regarding the true intent of self-help and lots of cynicism regarding its outcomes.
Although this is sympathetic to the positioning of the book, which is critical of the self-help industry for over-promising and offering near-instant cures for innate mental conditions, it provides me with little scope. I hardly add much to the debate if I stand up and say: I agree with the last speaker (at least the bits I understood) almost as wholeheartedly as I’ll no doubt agree with the next. It’s clear I'll have to take a different position: I'll have to defend self-help.
This shouldn’t be so hard. After all, I have written a self-help book, even if I seem to be in denial of the fact – largely because of the genre’s somewhat cheesy reputation.
Here are my notes so far:
Self-help sells...
In an age when everyone demands everything, instantly, a genre of books has emerged to tell us we can, indeed, have it all now. Shock, horror! They may be raising our expectations, sure, but they are also a response to the raised expectations of affluence. Isn’t this Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in action? Having become materially secure, we seek self-esteem: cue self-help. At least that’s the majority position – to have reached the next level. Some in the audience may have progressed further and now seek morality (the top level, according to Maslow). Self-help is harder to defend from this height (though not impossible) because it can sometimes appear to be (and sometimes is) a false promise made to the afflicted desperate for a cure.
This is self help at its worst. Yet, even here, self-help can be defended as capitalism doing its job – creating and fulfilling demands for our general human improvement. For instance, as a kid I watched my dad do lots of jobs around the house. Meanwhile, I put an advert on gumtree.com and some Polish guy or Aussie sorts it out while I take the kids to Dad’s Club. In my view this is progress – both the Polish guy and the kids are better off and I’m using my time more enjoyably. And just as my Polish handymen improve – as long as the supply side is held up – so the bad side of self-help should over time be eclipsed by the good. At least that’s the theory.
...but the hyper-titles are off-putting to some.
The first title for my book was How Not to Fail. Yet my number one target publisher – John Wiley & Sons – suggested that this rather tepid promise was off-putting and wouldn’t sell, so I changed it to the more dynamic What’s Stopping You? In the end I agreed with their view, not because I wanted my advertised outcome to be more than the avoidance of failure – although I did – but because this is a crowded market place and you need to compete. And the title of the book is key.
Another example of hyper-titling comes from one of my heroes: Allen Carr. He wrote The Easy Way to Stop Smoking, a book I loved because it explicitly states there are no instant cures. Carr focused on self-awareness of the triggers trapping nicotine addicts and how they can navigate them. Yet look at the title – you’d think there was a frontal lobotomy kit included. Even Anthony Robbins – cheesy self-help king-of-the-gurus with hyper-titles such as Unlimited Power and Awaken the Giant Within – quickly settles down to offer strong methodologies for practical employment. Indeed, with most of the genre, the over-promising is usually mellowed within: it’s the over-hyping title and cheesy grin from the author that really gets rational eyes rolling.
Self-help helps...
Sourcing answers to problems has to be good for society. All advances require experiment and analysis and, if the self-help industry helps popularize this endeavour, so much the better. For instance, my father was good with a drill and screwdriver but was a pretty hopeless dad. He didn’t think he was hopeless – he’d just swallowed the accepted thinking of his age that small boys had to be toughened up through emotional rejection and mental barbarism (or they'd end up "soft").
Fine, except that we now realise this is utter codswallop. A recipe for low self-esteem and high fear of failure, although such an upbringing probably helped when it came to dealing with restive natives. Yet it took self-help writers such as Steve Biddulph to finally destroy the myth of “tough love” with respect to the treatment of young boys. Sure Biddulph is a psychologist but, make no mistake, Raising Boys is a self-help book aimed at popular consumption. And it took a popular book to change the way people thought about parenting boys. Without him dads would still be in the Dark Ages.
Certainly, my dad never read a self-help book in his life – would scoff at the very notion. Yet this did little for his parenting skills, which was not his fault: bless him. But in our more enlightened age – where self-awareness if more encouraged than self-discipline and where just about every endeavour talks about "best practice" – this is unacceptable.
Meanwhile, I defy anyone to read Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and not become more efficient, or Richard Carlson’s Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff and remain as angry and irritated by tiny annoyances, or Mark McCormack’s What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School and not become more effective in their career pursuits. Each contains great truths to help mere mortals navigate the modern jungle. Yet all belong on the bookshop's equivalent of a cheese counter.
...and knowledge is always a benefit.
Why is ignorance to be cherished, with respect to anything – even self-help? It amazes me the number of times I hear people declare their ignorance with pride, usually when such knowledge is unfashionable. For instance, although a southerner, I like the North of England. I went to Manchester University and have a passion for football, so perhaps that helps. Yet I’m constantly amazed by the number of southerners that say: “Oh I’ve never been up north,” usually with a dismissive wave of the hand as if this somehow makes them a better person. It doesn’t – it makes them small-minded and ignorant of their own country.
Dismissing anything – especially something aimed at expanding our understanding of ourselves – is for those with very short horizons. American educator Derek Bok said: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance” and that is just as true for self awareness, of which self-help is the frontline.
Self-help has a perception problem, especially in the UK...
If you ask someone if they believe in self-development, most right thinking people will of course say “yes”. Self-improvement is also likely to be answered in the affirmative as is self-awareness, self-confidence, self-respect and even self-control. Yet all are alternative names or potential outcomes of self-help. Only the term “self help” generates cynicism – largely because it brings to mind angst-ridden under-confidents lurking in the wrong part of the bookstore and being sucked in by the hyper titles and surgically-whitened grins on the cover. It all seems so embarrassing – like asking for something horrendous at the pharmacist. Yet it also appears synthetic: a bit trashy, sleazy – dare I say it, even a bit too American for us stiff-upper lipped Brits. We’re happy being crap thanks – especially when it comes to our emotions.
...which makes even the self-help writers a little defensive.
In fact my book is no more than a self-help book that begins by dissing the genre. It then nicks its best ideas. Isn’t this how everyone muscles their way in? Certainly, I remember from my political theory and philosophy classes at university each guy demolishing the thesis of the previous thinker before adding his or her view on top. Given this, just maybe I shouldn’t be so embarrassed at the notion of being a self-help writer and, indeed, should use the School of Life talk to “come out” as a wannabe self-help guru. Either that or be “outted” by the other speakers, it seems.
This is exciting stuff. External confirmation (as everyone with high fear of failure needs) that this isn’t all nonsense. That I have a point worth listening to – or, at the very least, worth appraisal from a cerebral and engaged audience. Yet I am immediately posed with a problem (beyond, that is, the obvious terror such a gig presents to someone with fear of failure). The School of Life prides itself on its enquiring agnosticism, as well as its wit and intelligence. Certainly, I hope What’s Stopping You? (TBP 2011) has lashings of all three, but I’d be sharing a platform with speakers that do enquiring agnosticism, wit and intelligence for a living. What can I possibly add?
In fact – with respect to the progamme at least – my potential positioning becomes clear after a quick scan of the speaker biographies. Among the speakers are psychologists, philosophers and writers. This is no more than one would expect from the philosophical and inquisitive School of Life crowd – all no doubt scarily tutored in the ways of dialectic debate. One expects searching questions regarding the true intent of self-help and lots of cynicism regarding its outcomes.
Although this is sympathetic to the positioning of the book, which is critical of the self-help industry for over-promising and offering near-instant cures for innate mental conditions, it provides me with little scope. I hardly add much to the debate if I stand up and say: I agree with the last speaker (at least the bits I understood) almost as wholeheartedly as I’ll no doubt agree with the next. It’s clear I'll have to take a different position: I'll have to defend self-help.
This shouldn’t be so hard. After all, I have written a self-help book, even if I seem to be in denial of the fact – largely because of the genre’s somewhat cheesy reputation.
Here are my notes so far:
Self-help sells...
In an age when everyone demands everything, instantly, a genre of books has emerged to tell us we can, indeed, have it all now. Shock, horror! They may be raising our expectations, sure, but they are also a response to the raised expectations of affluence. Isn’t this Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in action? Having become materially secure, we seek self-esteem: cue self-help. At least that’s the majority position – to have reached the next level. Some in the audience may have progressed further and now seek morality (the top level, according to Maslow). Self-help is harder to defend from this height (though not impossible) because it can sometimes appear to be (and sometimes is) a false promise made to the afflicted desperate for a cure.
This is self help at its worst. Yet, even here, self-help can be defended as capitalism doing its job – creating and fulfilling demands for our general human improvement. For instance, as a kid I watched my dad do lots of jobs around the house. Meanwhile, I put an advert on gumtree.com and some Polish guy or Aussie sorts it out while I take the kids to Dad’s Club. In my view this is progress – both the Polish guy and the kids are better off and I’m using my time more enjoyably. And just as my Polish handymen improve – as long as the supply side is held up – so the bad side of self-help should over time be eclipsed by the good. At least that’s the theory.
...but the hyper-titles are off-putting to some.
The first title for my book was How Not to Fail. Yet my number one target publisher – John Wiley & Sons – suggested that this rather tepid promise was off-putting and wouldn’t sell, so I changed it to the more dynamic What’s Stopping You? In the end I agreed with their view, not because I wanted my advertised outcome to be more than the avoidance of failure – although I did – but because this is a crowded market place and you need to compete. And the title of the book is key.
Another example of hyper-titling comes from one of my heroes: Allen Carr. He wrote The Easy Way to Stop Smoking, a book I loved because it explicitly states there are no instant cures. Carr focused on self-awareness of the triggers trapping nicotine addicts and how they can navigate them. Yet look at the title – you’d think there was a frontal lobotomy kit included. Even Anthony Robbins – cheesy self-help king-of-the-gurus with hyper-titles such as Unlimited Power and Awaken the Giant Within – quickly settles down to offer strong methodologies for practical employment. Indeed, with most of the genre, the over-promising is usually mellowed within: it’s the over-hyping title and cheesy grin from the author that really gets rational eyes rolling.
Self-help helps...
Sourcing answers to problems has to be good for society. All advances require experiment and analysis and, if the self-help industry helps popularize this endeavour, so much the better. For instance, my father was good with a drill and screwdriver but was a pretty hopeless dad. He didn’t think he was hopeless – he’d just swallowed the accepted thinking of his age that small boys had to be toughened up through emotional rejection and mental barbarism (or they'd end up "soft").
Fine, except that we now realise this is utter codswallop. A recipe for low self-esteem and high fear of failure, although such an upbringing probably helped when it came to dealing with restive natives. Yet it took self-help writers such as Steve Biddulph to finally destroy the myth of “tough love” with respect to the treatment of young boys. Sure Biddulph is a psychologist but, make no mistake, Raising Boys is a self-help book aimed at popular consumption. And it took a popular book to change the way people thought about parenting boys. Without him dads would still be in the Dark Ages.
Certainly, my dad never read a self-help book in his life – would scoff at the very notion. Yet this did little for his parenting skills, which was not his fault: bless him. But in our more enlightened age – where self-awareness if more encouraged than self-discipline and where just about every endeavour talks about "best practice" – this is unacceptable.
Meanwhile, I defy anyone to read Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and not become more efficient, or Richard Carlson’s Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff and remain as angry and irritated by tiny annoyances, or Mark McCormack’s What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School and not become more effective in their career pursuits. Each contains great truths to help mere mortals navigate the modern jungle. Yet all belong on the bookshop's equivalent of a cheese counter.
...and knowledge is always a benefit.
Why is ignorance to be cherished, with respect to anything – even self-help? It amazes me the number of times I hear people declare their ignorance with pride, usually when such knowledge is unfashionable. For instance, although a southerner, I like the North of England. I went to Manchester University and have a passion for football, so perhaps that helps. Yet I’m constantly amazed by the number of southerners that say: “Oh I’ve never been up north,” usually with a dismissive wave of the hand as if this somehow makes them a better person. It doesn’t – it makes them small-minded and ignorant of their own country.
Dismissing anything – especially something aimed at expanding our understanding of ourselves – is for those with very short horizons. American educator Derek Bok said: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance” and that is just as true for self awareness, of which self-help is the frontline.
Self-help has a perception problem, especially in the UK...
If you ask someone if they believe in self-development, most right thinking people will of course say “yes”. Self-improvement is also likely to be answered in the affirmative as is self-awareness, self-confidence, self-respect and even self-control. Yet all are alternative names or potential outcomes of self-help. Only the term “self help” generates cynicism – largely because it brings to mind angst-ridden under-confidents lurking in the wrong part of the bookstore and being sucked in by the hyper titles and surgically-whitened grins on the cover. It all seems so embarrassing – like asking for something horrendous at the pharmacist. Yet it also appears synthetic: a bit trashy, sleazy – dare I say it, even a bit too American for us stiff-upper lipped Brits. We’re happy being crap thanks – especially when it comes to our emotions.
...which makes even the self-help writers a little defensive.
In fact my book is no more than a self-help book that begins by dissing the genre. It then nicks its best ideas. Isn’t this how everyone muscles their way in? Certainly, I remember from my political theory and philosophy classes at university each guy demolishing the thesis of the previous thinker before adding his or her view on top. Given this, just maybe I shouldn’t be so embarrassed at the notion of being a self-help writer and, indeed, should use the School of Life talk to “come out” as a wannabe self-help guru. Either that or be “outted” by the other speakers, it seems.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
“Will my career end in failure?” Sounds like it
The Financial Times agony aunt (yes it does have one) Lucy Kellaway recently tackled an issue that tweaked my interest, regarding feelings of failure at the end of a career. This is an extraordinarily neglected subject. What do we say to someone who, near retirement, becomes convinced they have failed: finally, fatally, forever.
Posted first on FT.com to elicit public responses prior to Lucy’s, this was the problem (nutshelled): “I’m a successful businessman approaching career’s end but haunted by a sense of failure. I missed out on the CEO post but stayed on. Now I feel sidelined. Nobody pays much attention and nobody will remember me. They say ‘all political careers end in failure’. Is this also true of business careers?” – Director, male, 57.
Lucy’s replies are usually spot-on but I felt this one lacked some empathy. Yes, she said, nearly all business careers end in failure. They can end in big, spectacular failure – like, say, the career of Tony Hayward – or they can end in little anonymous failure – like our 57-year old director.
She suggested that things may have ended no better had he won the CEO post and that, he should realize, the feelings of failure are “all inside your own head – no one else will care one way or another”. She offered “various mental tricks” to help him feel better, such as “comparing himself to unsuccessful people”. “I suggest you force yourself to stop thinking about success altogether,” she concluded, as “such thinking always ends in tears. The only way to deal with these horrid truths is denial – to distract yourself with other thoughts”.
I doubt this made our man feel any better about his predicament. Lucy is a highly-successful writer (the inventor of the hilarious Martin Lukes), so she may have had difficulty empathizing with the energy-sapping dull pain of realization and disappointment that had depleted this man’s self-esteem so late in his career. Unlike Lucy, he hadn’t achieved his goals, and now felt he wouldn’t. There are few mental tricks – and especially not denial – that can suppress such a thought.
So what could I say to make this man’s outlook more positive? Looking for ideas, I read the reader’s responses, which were predictably less measured.
• FT reader: "Wow – you maintained a decent position into your late 50s. That’s success. I hope I’m as lucky as you."
This chimes with Lucy’s mental tricks in my opinion. Reframing your thoughts to focus on the positive will offer only the briefest of respites. By his own standards this man has failed. And it’s his perceptions that matter: no one else’s.
• FT reader: "You seem to be suffering from the kind of existentialist angst that most folk address in their teens."
I absolutely agree with this, although I’d replace “most” with “many” as “most” people never face existentialist angst at all. Facing it at 57 is no crime, and will have its advantages: he should be mature enough to cope with the realization that “yes” he will die and “no” he will not achieve everything he wants to achieve. Writing to Lucy is just the start of his coming to terms with this “awful truth”.
• FT reader: "Incredibly narcissistic. Why should anyone remember you? What have you done to make the world a better place? Have you eradicated world famine?"
He knows this – hence the crisis. Yet there are many ways to change the world, not just through charity. Our 57-year old worked for a mid-sized multinational – probably the strongest sector historically for producing life-saving drugs or equipment or even ideas. Also, charity workers have their own benchmarks of achievement, not all of the “save the planet” variety.
• FT reader: "You may wish to consider not defining success by what others may or may not think of you."
He hasn’t. He’s measured himself against his own standards – the billions that failed to achieve his status are, quite rightly, irrelevant.
But among the trite replies were two I thought worthy of further thought. “If you really want to be a CEO,” said the first, “then you are still close to the average age and over 20% of CEOs are in their 60s.”
Certainly, the other guy may falter or become disliked by the board, or there may be a crisis that requires a different sort of head (bringing Mr. Haywood to mind again). Yet why wait? They’ve made their choice and, to be frank, they probably expected (wanted even) you to take the hint and go. One assumes some form of early retirement is possible (making a nuisance of yourself may be a good way of getting this on the table) perhaps with some lucrative consultancy projects as a further sweetener. Meanwhile, sourcing non-exec positions with smaller companies looking for your kind of experience can help rebuild your self-esteem. There are even agencies that can help in this quest.
This brings in the second interesting comment, which declared: “at the end of the game nobody will spend time wondering how the knight on the side of the board got there. They are all pondering THEIR next move, and so should you”.
Certainly, it’s the next move that counts, not the last one (which was a setback you seem to relive daily). The key is to get a plan, develop a strategy and become an effective executioner. With this in mind, I think Stephen Covey’s the man for you. His Seven Habits of Highly Effective People will shake you from your self-fulfilling stupor of negativity, even at your age.
With breath-taking abridgement, here they are:
1) “Be proactive” (don’t mope around the office writing to Lucy – take action),
2) “Begin with the end in mind” (work out what you really want in the long term and move towards that goal with every step you take),
3) “Put first things first” (plan your route),
4) “Think win/win” (this is a must in terms of changing your current win/lose thinking, which is probably making you a bit of a pain in the office),
5) “Seek first to understand, then to be understood” (with every conversation, listen to others rather than inwardly shouting “listen to me”),
6) “Synergize” (develop your network, and use it).
7) “Sharpen the saw” (develop the skills you need to succeed – don’t struggle on with rusty instruments).
At your age it’s also worth considering Covey’s 8th Habit, written as a follow-up to the multi-million selling Seven Habits… . This habit requires you to “find your voice and help others find theirs’,” he states – making the point that self-obsession is desperately unhealthy (as you now realize), while “choosing to serve is the most effective habit of all”. He implores us to find our “unique personal significance”: the key element of ourselves that we can offer to others, perhaps via teaching, mentoring (maybe through non-exec roles) or even consultancy – anything that can pass on that hard-acquired wisdom. Certainly, such a quest would make the perfect final innings for a man of your calibre.
And if you think 57 too old to start, then you are probably right. On the other hand, if you think – with your age and experience – you are now in the perfect place to get going on forging your own path (rather than one dictated by a soulless and myopic board), then – again – you are probably right. So what if you drop dead en route? What a great way to go – far better than staring at the rain everyday and wondering what might have been.
Posted first on FT.com to elicit public responses prior to Lucy’s, this was the problem (nutshelled): “I’m a successful businessman approaching career’s end but haunted by a sense of failure. I missed out on the CEO post but stayed on. Now I feel sidelined. Nobody pays much attention and nobody will remember me. They say ‘all political careers end in failure’. Is this also true of business careers?” – Director, male, 57.
Lucy’s replies are usually spot-on but I felt this one lacked some empathy. Yes, she said, nearly all business careers end in failure. They can end in big, spectacular failure – like, say, the career of Tony Hayward – or they can end in little anonymous failure – like our 57-year old director.
She suggested that things may have ended no better had he won the CEO post and that, he should realize, the feelings of failure are “all inside your own head – no one else will care one way or another”. She offered “various mental tricks” to help him feel better, such as “comparing himself to unsuccessful people”. “I suggest you force yourself to stop thinking about success altogether,” she concluded, as “such thinking always ends in tears. The only way to deal with these horrid truths is denial – to distract yourself with other thoughts”.
I doubt this made our man feel any better about his predicament. Lucy is a highly-successful writer (the inventor of the hilarious Martin Lukes), so she may have had difficulty empathizing with the energy-sapping dull pain of realization and disappointment that had depleted this man’s self-esteem so late in his career. Unlike Lucy, he hadn’t achieved his goals, and now felt he wouldn’t. There are few mental tricks – and especially not denial – that can suppress such a thought.
So what could I say to make this man’s outlook more positive? Looking for ideas, I read the reader’s responses, which were predictably less measured.
• FT reader: "Wow – you maintained a decent position into your late 50s. That’s success. I hope I’m as lucky as you."
This chimes with Lucy’s mental tricks in my opinion. Reframing your thoughts to focus on the positive will offer only the briefest of respites. By his own standards this man has failed. And it’s his perceptions that matter: no one else’s.
• FT reader: "You seem to be suffering from the kind of existentialist angst that most folk address in their teens."
I absolutely agree with this, although I’d replace “most” with “many” as “most” people never face existentialist angst at all. Facing it at 57 is no crime, and will have its advantages: he should be mature enough to cope with the realization that “yes” he will die and “no” he will not achieve everything he wants to achieve. Writing to Lucy is just the start of his coming to terms with this “awful truth”.
• FT reader: "Incredibly narcissistic. Why should anyone remember you? What have you done to make the world a better place? Have you eradicated world famine?"
He knows this – hence the crisis. Yet there are many ways to change the world, not just through charity. Our 57-year old worked for a mid-sized multinational – probably the strongest sector historically for producing life-saving drugs or equipment or even ideas. Also, charity workers have their own benchmarks of achievement, not all of the “save the planet” variety.
• FT reader: "You may wish to consider not defining success by what others may or may not think of you."
He hasn’t. He’s measured himself against his own standards – the billions that failed to achieve his status are, quite rightly, irrelevant.
But among the trite replies were two I thought worthy of further thought. “If you really want to be a CEO,” said the first, “then you are still close to the average age and over 20% of CEOs are in their 60s.”
Certainly, the other guy may falter or become disliked by the board, or there may be a crisis that requires a different sort of head (bringing Mr. Haywood to mind again). Yet why wait? They’ve made their choice and, to be frank, they probably expected (wanted even) you to take the hint and go. One assumes some form of early retirement is possible (making a nuisance of yourself may be a good way of getting this on the table) perhaps with some lucrative consultancy projects as a further sweetener. Meanwhile, sourcing non-exec positions with smaller companies looking for your kind of experience can help rebuild your self-esteem. There are even agencies that can help in this quest.
This brings in the second interesting comment, which declared: “at the end of the game nobody will spend time wondering how the knight on the side of the board got there. They are all pondering THEIR next move, and so should you”.
Certainly, it’s the next move that counts, not the last one (which was a setback you seem to relive daily). The key is to get a plan, develop a strategy and become an effective executioner. With this in mind, I think Stephen Covey’s the man for you. His Seven Habits of Highly Effective People will shake you from your self-fulfilling stupor of negativity, even at your age.
With breath-taking abridgement, here they are:
1) “Be proactive” (don’t mope around the office writing to Lucy – take action),
2) “Begin with the end in mind” (work out what you really want in the long term and move towards that goal with every step you take),
3) “Put first things first” (plan your route),
4) “Think win/win” (this is a must in terms of changing your current win/lose thinking, which is probably making you a bit of a pain in the office),
5) “Seek first to understand, then to be understood” (with every conversation, listen to others rather than inwardly shouting “listen to me”),
6) “Synergize” (develop your network, and use it).
7) “Sharpen the saw” (develop the skills you need to succeed – don’t struggle on with rusty instruments).
At your age it’s also worth considering Covey’s 8th Habit, written as a follow-up to the multi-million selling Seven Habits… . This habit requires you to “find your voice and help others find theirs’,” he states – making the point that self-obsession is desperately unhealthy (as you now realize), while “choosing to serve is the most effective habit of all”. He implores us to find our “unique personal significance”: the key element of ourselves that we can offer to others, perhaps via teaching, mentoring (maybe through non-exec roles) or even consultancy – anything that can pass on that hard-acquired wisdom. Certainly, such a quest would make the perfect final innings for a man of your calibre.
And if you think 57 too old to start, then you are probably right. On the other hand, if you think – with your age and experience – you are now in the perfect place to get going on forging your own path (rather than one dictated by a soulless and myopic board), then – again – you are probably right. So what if you drop dead en route? What a great way to go – far better than staring at the rain everyday and wondering what might have been.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Ten tips for motivating (new) hires
I was clearing out my folders the other day and came across this – a note I sent to two of Moorgate’s seniors as they began to develop their own teams. I reproduce it here in full, because it is worth seeing as an “authentic” and genuine piece of advice, although it is possible to already see the influence of What’s Stopping You? (TBP February 2011). Obviously, it's also heavily geared towards the PR industry, but I hope there is some resonance elsewhere (and, yes, I realise it is a bit “Martin Lukes” but I was trying to fire-up enthusiasm for team-nurturing among managers that had not previously seen it as their role).
Ten tips for motivating (new) hires
1) Paint a broad picture. It is important that they immediately see the entire scope of their world – whether this is project wide, client wide, Moorgate wide or even – as I like to do – market wide. I take out new recruits and tell them about how what we do fits in to the business world – this is our part in it. I also tell them about every client, the structure of the company, our future prospects and recent history. This makes them see where they fit into the company – both now and in the future - and how the company fits into the world. It also prevents them working in a vacuum. They can see how their endeavours fit in with the broader picture. Adam Smith broke the pin manufacturing process into 20 constituent parts and declared that specialisation of each element was the key to improved productivity. Yet we are not machines. Humans need to see the whole and to understand their part in the production of the end product (and the global usefulness of that end product) to feel motivated.
2) Delegate meaningfully. Don’t just hand them the dross. We have employed bright people with good academics, so we should throw something important at them from the start. We can employ any idiot to do the crap. My guess is that they’ll respond more to a meaningful challenge than to a meaningless one. But be sensible – the lead article in Risk for a Friday deadline may be a bit much. Something tangential but meaty, on the other hand, may do the trick.
3) Practice “one minute management”. Kenneth Blanchard’s book The One Minute Manager recommends that you spend just a minute outlining to team members a vision of the end result sought for the project. You then DO NOT micro-manage them (either at the start or during the project) in terms of how to achieve it. Especially with the Internet at their fingertips, they should be able to develop their own route to the result. By micro-managing the route to the solution, you risk making the meaningful task you have set them meaningless. No intelligent person wants to just carry out orders. They want to be given projects they can make their own. My wife has never learnt this with respect to my cooking – turning my offer to “do dinner” into a stand-over me session involving when and by how much to salt the vegetables. This, no matter how many times I tell her to critique the final dish rather than the step-by-step process. Demotivated, I usually now watch The News instead.
4) Be on hand but not domineering. Of course, they may get stuck and need some guidance. But this is not the point to say “that’s fine – leave it to me”. Again, offer “one minute guidance”. Just state, to the minimum, what direction to head in. The Internet may help here, or we can just say "why not call this guy on this", "we have a book on that", "try this article" etc. Also, best to guide using terms like “what has worked for me was...” rather than “come on, it’s bloody obvious how you find this out you thick idiot”.
5) Insist on a complete project – even first time. State the end result required and expect a version of that result – not a half version. You can then critique it on a holistic basis – stating what has worked and what has not. Even if they need to start again completely (which is rare) it is still better for them to learn the entire process on their own than be carried across the line by you. If they insist on telling you each step, fine, but this should only be verbal. Most half-done handovers are attempts at avoiding the tricky bits in order to go to lunch or surf the web. They learn less (except that you are a pushover) and leave you with the tricky bits. This is why I even throw back articles that don’t have a headline.
6) Go through the whole project with them. Once they have handed over a complete first draft it is important to spend some time going through it with them. Explain the good and bad bits. Take your time here – this is the feedback bit and it should be given some respect. Don’t dismiss it out of hand even if they are 90 percent wrong. State the 10 percent positive as well. And say why and where you think the 90 percent went wrong. The chances are they took a wrong turn somewhere along the project – try and find this point and state it. From here they can start again.
7) If crap, make them start again. If it is 90 percent crap and you think “it’ll take me 30 minutes to do it myself, why go through another round of pain”, you’ll remain stressed, they’ll become increasingly convinced they are crap and the whole spiral goes in the wrong direction until a potentially strong colleague is lost. In the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Stephen Covey talks about “sharpening the saw” – meaning that many prefer struggling away with a blunt saw because they feel they haven’t the time to sharpen it. This is self defeating. Unless your hire really is an idiot (in which case we shouldn’t have employed them) the onus is on us to make them productive. The length of time he or she remains unproductive is 90 percent down to us. So don’t give up and take over a project – however tempting.
8) Make them do the corrections. Again, the temptation is to take on the project ourselves at an early stage in order to get the job done. This is a mistake. Every correction you make on their work is a correction you’ll also have to make next time as they will not have learnt the need for such a correction. Sure explain it to them (verbally or by annotating the paper) but make sure it is explained. Your aim for them is perfection – nothing else. This can only be achieved by making them correct their own work, whether they think you are being petty and officious or not.
9) Tutor them in the ways of the office. Whether you agree with the office etiquette or not it is not arbitrary, it has been developed for a reason (usually to improve professionalism, to foster team equality or to prevent poor behaviour by individuals). It is important for new team members to feel part of the team as soon as possible, and offering help and guidance regarding the culture of the company is vital in this respect. Also remember that what you say at this point is important. If you undermine the culture of the company then you are undermining it on their behalf as well. This puts them on a collision course without their ascent, which is unfair. So be supportive or, at the very worst, neutral. This is particularly the case with respect to our hardly-draconian dress and time-keeping policies, but also on the niceties such as making the odd cup of tea or being tidy around the office. Being liked by colleagues is important to their well being (and if they don’t care about being liked – well, that is also revealing).
10) Get them in front of the client. While this can be risky it shouldn’t be too risky (or we screwed up in the interview process). It is therefore important to make them feel involved in the A-Z of the process as soon as possible. And, as we are a company aimed at offering communications services to clients, this means getting them communicating with clients – and editors – asap. In fact, the early meaty projects given to them should remain with them even if that means them communicating with the client or an editor. Again, one minute management should suffice in instructing them (though it does no harm reminding them that they need to be polite to the people that put food and drink on our table). Emailing clients with you CCed, may offer a lower-risk start to the process.
11) OK, one more than 10 – finally, show them some respect. Chances are they will turn up with a mix of correct and incorrect assumptions about work. Who cares? It is not our job to take on these assumptions, at least not head on. We are simply a company trying to win some clients and to please the clients we do win so that they’ll carry on using us and pay their bills. If they have ideas about this, fine. Let’s listen to them (even if we decide not to act upon those ideas). As far as I’m concerned the more people coming up with big-picture ideas the better. So big-picture thinking is to be encouraged.
Ten tips for motivating (new) hires
1) Paint a broad picture. It is important that they immediately see the entire scope of their world – whether this is project wide, client wide, Moorgate wide or even – as I like to do – market wide. I take out new recruits and tell them about how what we do fits in to the business world – this is our part in it. I also tell them about every client, the structure of the company, our future prospects and recent history. This makes them see where they fit into the company – both now and in the future - and how the company fits into the world. It also prevents them working in a vacuum. They can see how their endeavours fit in with the broader picture. Adam Smith broke the pin manufacturing process into 20 constituent parts and declared that specialisation of each element was the key to improved productivity. Yet we are not machines. Humans need to see the whole and to understand their part in the production of the end product (and the global usefulness of that end product) to feel motivated.
2) Delegate meaningfully. Don’t just hand them the dross. We have employed bright people with good academics, so we should throw something important at them from the start. We can employ any idiot to do the crap. My guess is that they’ll respond more to a meaningful challenge than to a meaningless one. But be sensible – the lead article in Risk for a Friday deadline may be a bit much. Something tangential but meaty, on the other hand, may do the trick.
3) Practice “one minute management”. Kenneth Blanchard’s book The One Minute Manager recommends that you spend just a minute outlining to team members a vision of the end result sought for the project. You then DO NOT micro-manage them (either at the start or during the project) in terms of how to achieve it. Especially with the Internet at their fingertips, they should be able to develop their own route to the result. By micro-managing the route to the solution, you risk making the meaningful task you have set them meaningless. No intelligent person wants to just carry out orders. They want to be given projects they can make their own. My wife has never learnt this with respect to my cooking – turning my offer to “do dinner” into a stand-over me session involving when and by how much to salt the vegetables. This, no matter how many times I tell her to critique the final dish rather than the step-by-step process. Demotivated, I usually now watch The News instead.
4) Be on hand but not domineering. Of course, they may get stuck and need some guidance. But this is not the point to say “that’s fine – leave it to me”. Again, offer “one minute guidance”. Just state, to the minimum, what direction to head in. The Internet may help here, or we can just say "why not call this guy on this", "we have a book on that", "try this article" etc. Also, best to guide using terms like “what has worked for me was...” rather than “come on, it’s bloody obvious how you find this out you thick idiot”.
5) Insist on a complete project – even first time. State the end result required and expect a version of that result – not a half version. You can then critique it on a holistic basis – stating what has worked and what has not. Even if they need to start again completely (which is rare) it is still better for them to learn the entire process on their own than be carried across the line by you. If they insist on telling you each step, fine, but this should only be verbal. Most half-done handovers are attempts at avoiding the tricky bits in order to go to lunch or surf the web. They learn less (except that you are a pushover) and leave you with the tricky bits. This is why I even throw back articles that don’t have a headline.
6) Go through the whole project with them. Once they have handed over a complete first draft it is important to spend some time going through it with them. Explain the good and bad bits. Take your time here – this is the feedback bit and it should be given some respect. Don’t dismiss it out of hand even if they are 90 percent wrong. State the 10 percent positive as well. And say why and where you think the 90 percent went wrong. The chances are they took a wrong turn somewhere along the project – try and find this point and state it. From here they can start again.
7) If crap, make them start again. If it is 90 percent crap and you think “it’ll take me 30 minutes to do it myself, why go through another round of pain”, you’ll remain stressed, they’ll become increasingly convinced they are crap and the whole spiral goes in the wrong direction until a potentially strong colleague is lost. In the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Stephen Covey talks about “sharpening the saw” – meaning that many prefer struggling away with a blunt saw because they feel they haven’t the time to sharpen it. This is self defeating. Unless your hire really is an idiot (in which case we shouldn’t have employed them) the onus is on us to make them productive. The length of time he or she remains unproductive is 90 percent down to us. So don’t give up and take over a project – however tempting.
8) Make them do the corrections. Again, the temptation is to take on the project ourselves at an early stage in order to get the job done. This is a mistake. Every correction you make on their work is a correction you’ll also have to make next time as they will not have learnt the need for such a correction. Sure explain it to them (verbally or by annotating the paper) but make sure it is explained. Your aim for them is perfection – nothing else. This can only be achieved by making them correct their own work, whether they think you are being petty and officious or not.
9) Tutor them in the ways of the office. Whether you agree with the office etiquette or not it is not arbitrary, it has been developed for a reason (usually to improve professionalism, to foster team equality or to prevent poor behaviour by individuals). It is important for new team members to feel part of the team as soon as possible, and offering help and guidance regarding the culture of the company is vital in this respect. Also remember that what you say at this point is important. If you undermine the culture of the company then you are undermining it on their behalf as well. This puts them on a collision course without their ascent, which is unfair. So be supportive or, at the very worst, neutral. This is particularly the case with respect to our hardly-draconian dress and time-keeping policies, but also on the niceties such as making the odd cup of tea or being tidy around the office. Being liked by colleagues is important to their well being (and if they don’t care about being liked – well, that is also revealing).
10) Get them in front of the client. While this can be risky it shouldn’t be too risky (or we screwed up in the interview process). It is therefore important to make them feel involved in the A-Z of the process as soon as possible. And, as we are a company aimed at offering communications services to clients, this means getting them communicating with clients – and editors – asap. In fact, the early meaty projects given to them should remain with them even if that means them communicating with the client or an editor. Again, one minute management should suffice in instructing them (though it does no harm reminding them that they need to be polite to the people that put food and drink on our table). Emailing clients with you CCed, may offer a lower-risk start to the process.
11) OK, one more than 10 – finally, show them some respect. Chances are they will turn up with a mix of correct and incorrect assumptions about work. Who cares? It is not our job to take on these assumptions, at least not head on. We are simply a company trying to win some clients and to please the clients we do win so that they’ll carry on using us and pay their bills. If they have ideas about this, fine. Let’s listen to them (even if we decide not to act upon those ideas). As far as I’m concerned the more people coming up with big-picture ideas the better. So big-picture thinking is to be encouraged.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Concerned by the weather? Then change it (your concern that is)
The darkening skies and encroaching cold do it to me every year. I start wishing I lived in California. The signal is usually the return to GMT, which this year coincided with Halloween – another sign-post indicating the misery ahead for any Earth-dwellers living over 3,500 miles from the Equator.
Sorry, I should cheer up I know: the Christmas Season can be lovely – unless, of course, you own a PR company. And then it’s all contract-renewal paranoia mixed with a truncated-month, fattened pay-packets (except your own) and hungover colleagues.
Oh dear, oh dear – perhaps Stephen Covey can snap me out of it. In the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People he writes that it is the world of the reactive person to spend their lives angry and depressed about things they can do nothing about, such as the weather or December’s unstoppable approach. As far as Covey is concerned, railing against such things is about as effective as barking at the Moon: emotional energy expended with absolutely no return.
Instead, Covey offers us a major point of mental differentiation between what we should, and shouldn’t, be bothered about. If we want to be more effective as a person we have to divide the world into those things we can influence and those we can’t, with the correct focus for our energies being what is within our power to change.
Covey maps this by describing all external inputs into our life as being part of our Circle of Concern. However, some of these inputs are beyond our control, such as – indeed – the weather and the seasons, but also the traffic, or the actions of governments or large corporations (or the unions given London’s recent spate of strikes).
What we can determine within the Circle of Concern – such as our own well-being and our work and home life – he calls our Circle of Influence. And anybody trying to take action to make progress in their life should focus only on what they can change – their Circle of Influence – leaving areas where we have no influence both physically and mentally alone.
Of course, this doesn’t stop us reacting to uncontrollable events beyond our Circle of Influence but still within our Circle of Concern. It is human nature to grumble about such things. Yet if we spend our lives becoming angry at what we are powerless to control we will compound our sense of powerlessness – even ending up feeling victimised by what we perceive as the forces lined up against us. Proactive and effective people, meanwhile, change what is changeable by focusing only on what is within their Circle of Influence – at least according to Covey.
Yet there's a major caveat to this. If we are truly bothered by particular events beyond our Circle of Influence we can make sustained efforts to influence them – perhaps by making that move to California, or by standing as an MP in order to influence governments, or by changing our commuting arrangements to avoid the traffic or transport unions.
Indeed, surely I could do this with my own circumstances? I run my own business, so why not move to California, or Florida, or even the financial boomtowns of Singapore or Dubai? Surely, if I’m that bothered about things within my Circle of Concern (such as the weather) the only mentally-sustainable route is to make the changes necessary to put those things within my Circle of Influence.
So why not? Perhaps because we are fearful of making the move – not an uncommon problem for those with high fear of failure (the target audience for my forthcoming book: What’s Stopping You?). But perhaps there’s another reason. Just maybe any examination of what we’d have to sacrifice to render something within our Circle of Influence reveals that those frustrations aren’t quite as acute as they seem. My desire to live in California, for instance, would require me to disrupt my children’s education – and their burgeoning friendships. It would part us from our friends and family. And it would mean moving away from a city I actually love and admire despite its many frustrations.
Indeed, California seems like a bit of a backwater to me, compared to London or, say, New York. And a move to New York leaves me no better off with respect to the weather (as anyone experiencing a New York winter can tell you). In fact, London winters are usually rather mild (last year excepted). And there’s the skiing season to come. And did I mention Christmas? Sure, the office environment can be a bit annoying during December but experiencing Christmas through the eyes of my two small boys is pretty wonderful. As was Halloween come to that. And there’s the fireworks to come at the weekend…
So just maybe it’s not proactivity that will get me out of my annual autumnal funk – it’s simply finding a different perspective from which to view it.
Sorry, I should cheer up I know: the Christmas Season can be lovely – unless, of course, you own a PR company. And then it’s all contract-renewal paranoia mixed with a truncated-month, fattened pay-packets (except your own) and hungover colleagues.
Oh dear, oh dear – perhaps Stephen Covey can snap me out of it. In the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People he writes that it is the world of the reactive person to spend their lives angry and depressed about things they can do nothing about, such as the weather or December’s unstoppable approach. As far as Covey is concerned, railing against such things is about as effective as barking at the Moon: emotional energy expended with absolutely no return.
Instead, Covey offers us a major point of mental differentiation between what we should, and shouldn’t, be bothered about. If we want to be more effective as a person we have to divide the world into those things we can influence and those we can’t, with the correct focus for our energies being what is within our power to change.
Covey maps this by describing all external inputs into our life as being part of our Circle of Concern. However, some of these inputs are beyond our control, such as – indeed – the weather and the seasons, but also the traffic, or the actions of governments or large corporations (or the unions given London’s recent spate of strikes).
What we can determine within the Circle of Concern – such as our own well-being and our work and home life – he calls our Circle of Influence. And anybody trying to take action to make progress in their life should focus only on what they can change – their Circle of Influence – leaving areas where we have no influence both physically and mentally alone.
Of course, this doesn’t stop us reacting to uncontrollable events beyond our Circle of Influence but still within our Circle of Concern. It is human nature to grumble about such things. Yet if we spend our lives becoming angry at what we are powerless to control we will compound our sense of powerlessness – even ending up feeling victimised by what we perceive as the forces lined up against us. Proactive and effective people, meanwhile, change what is changeable by focusing only on what is within their Circle of Influence – at least according to Covey.
Yet there's a major caveat to this. If we are truly bothered by particular events beyond our Circle of Influence we can make sustained efforts to influence them – perhaps by making that move to California, or by standing as an MP in order to influence governments, or by changing our commuting arrangements to avoid the traffic or transport unions.
Indeed, surely I could do this with my own circumstances? I run my own business, so why not move to California, or Florida, or even the financial boomtowns of Singapore or Dubai? Surely, if I’m that bothered about things within my Circle of Concern (such as the weather) the only mentally-sustainable route is to make the changes necessary to put those things within my Circle of Influence.
So why not? Perhaps because we are fearful of making the move – not an uncommon problem for those with high fear of failure (the target audience for my forthcoming book: What’s Stopping You?). But perhaps there’s another reason. Just maybe any examination of what we’d have to sacrifice to render something within our Circle of Influence reveals that those frustrations aren’t quite as acute as they seem. My desire to live in California, for instance, would require me to disrupt my children’s education – and their burgeoning friendships. It would part us from our friends and family. And it would mean moving away from a city I actually love and admire despite its many frustrations.
Indeed, California seems like a bit of a backwater to me, compared to London or, say, New York. And a move to New York leaves me no better off with respect to the weather (as anyone experiencing a New York winter can tell you). In fact, London winters are usually rather mild (last year excepted). And there’s the skiing season to come. And did I mention Christmas? Sure, the office environment can be a bit annoying during December but experiencing Christmas through the eyes of my two small boys is pretty wonderful. As was Halloween come to that. And there’s the fireworks to come at the weekend…
So just maybe it’s not proactivity that will get me out of my annual autumnal funk – it’s simply finding a different perspective from which to view it.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Forgive me sinner, for I have preached
A key theme in my forthcoming book What’s Stopping You? (TBP 2011) is the notion that many people that suffer from insecurities and fears then go on to become what I call “preaching motivational converts” after they have “seen the light” or have been “born again”.
And while I realise writing a book on the subject of fear of failure (as well as other insecurities halting our progress) opens me to the charge of hypocrisy, there is a difference – honest! The core thesis of What’s Stopping You? is that the near-consensus of opinion among psychologists is that our fears are innate and cannot therefore be swapped for a headlong rush in the other direction. If you have fear of failure now, you will always have it, which is the bad news.
The good news is that, once we realise this – and the fact what I call the “monkey on my back” is coming with us – we can make strong progress in our lives. Become aware of our insecurities and the behaviours they drive and progress is possible – dealing with that monkey’s negativity as we go. Deny he is there – perhaps via some quick-fix “cure” that is potentially a deeper form of self-denial – and a terrible reckoning may await, at least in my view.
A core secondary element of this concerns how we focus on others as we make progress. Once enlightened, it is easy to see insecurities and mental failings in the behaviours and speech of everyone we meet. And we may even be tempted to start offering unsolicited advice, even to strangers. I’ve been on the receiving end of such advice on several occasions and it is pretty irritating – hence my view that once we are “recovering” from insecurities such as high fear of failure (and I’m deliberately making the comparison with “recovering” alcoholics who have to face up to their addiction at every meeting no matter how long they have been sober) we should avoid such preaching because it is both annoying and unsustainable.
Why write this now? Because I have sinned in this respect – falling short of my own standards I am afraid. And it was on this blog: the Twitter-virus enforced shutdown of which has given me time to reflect and to consider what I want to reload. Hence my repentance below.
First up were my two posts on NLP. This may seem odd, given that one reading of the above can be seen as an attack on neuro-linguistic programming, or at least the quick-fix excesses on its fringes. But I now realise that I drifted into the very preaching I was arguing against. NLP has helped millions of people gain confidence, so who am I to criticise, simply because the joy and comfort it brings to so many can result in the occasional convert making uncalled-for observations about my, yes absolutely, insecure behaviour?
SORRY.
Those two posts generated some pretty heated reaction from people who have obviously benefited from NLP. And they are right – to start lecturing people for lecturing people is wrong, so I’ll lecture myself instead. Lecturing others is an annoying trait whoever delivers it, and no matter what it is about. The point of “recovery” is to focus on our own behaviour – no one else’s. And that means even holding our tongue when being told of our insecurities by someone that has clearly “seen the light” via NLP or any other form of self improvement. What’s Stopping You? is NOT condemning NLP – in fact it borrows a lot from it. And I shouldn’t have lapsed into the very trait I was criticising.
Second (of three) concerns a post on an unidentified woman at a party – with, again, me stating that our less-than-satisfactory exchange was based on both her insecurities and mine. Yet how could I possibly know? I was simply interpreting her behaviour. I was not inside her mind. Sure, I knew what I was thinking – my insecurities had been triggered. But how could I possibly know what was driving her speech and behaviour? Of course, I was simply offering an opinion, not stating facts. But it was an opinion based on prejudice – that I had some predetermined idea of what was driving her behaviour. I didn’t.
SORRY.
Indeed, my reaction to that episode is a majorly significant moment in my recovery as a High-FF (what I call those with a high fear of failure). Her responses to me triggered a negative response from me based on my insecurities. Previously, that negative response would have been anger, followed by depression, followed by remorse, or potentially withdrawal, followed by depression, followed by anger. The more “enlightened” me, however, responds by looking for the insecurities in her. Yet this supposedly better response is the more dishonest – I haven’t dealt with my insecurities, just reflected them back to her, no matter how wide of the mark that may be. And while we could say, who cares, at least my insecurities have been dealt with, such deep self-denial is a long way from recovery or any attempt at recovery, in my opinion.
The final charge concerns my thoughts on “snake oil salesmen” in the motivational industry. In fact I was merely chiming along with an article in The Economist on this subject, as well as my own rationalism and scepticism regarding such practices as hypnotism and acupuncture. In reality, the key for the recovering High-FF is self-awareness regarding the appalling and self-destructive way we have judged the world around us up until now. For each of us there is a “wake up” moment that is tremendously enlightening. It is the moment we realise that our confusion and fears regarding the world is not some unique personal hell, but a mental condition that most probably started in early-childhood based on traumas (big and small) and our reactions to them. Perhaps without us realising it, these fears have grown into major phobias in adulthood that have stopped our progress, or at least hampered it.
My own “wake up” moment came from a casual reading of Anthony Robbins – a cheesy American motivational guru that is heavily influenced by NLP and also uses hypnotism and other methods that I now feel inappropriate for my own recovery. Yet Robbins started me on a journey that has – from good experiences and bad as well as from deep research with psychologists and self-help gurus – led me to a better place. But that journey was unique to me.
As I state in the introduction to the book, High-FFs need a map in order to chart their progress, but that only they can draw that map – it is a personal journey with its own rivers to cross and jungles to penetrate. What’s on that map, and where that map takes them, is 100 percent up to them. Robbins was an early landmark on mine and he remains an important source for the book, being quoted throughout. If others have hypnotism or some other methodology that wasn’t right for me but has worked for them, good. While I maintain my view on quick-fix solutions, seeking a solution – any solution – is probably the most important step anyone can take.
As Stephen Covey (another American motivational guru, although less cheesy than Robbins) states, “without pro-activity we are lost”. With it we’ll eventually find our way. The journey’s the point – not the mode of transport, the route or the stopping points on the way. So stop preaching.
SORRY.
And while I realise writing a book on the subject of fear of failure (as well as other insecurities halting our progress) opens me to the charge of hypocrisy, there is a difference – honest! The core thesis of What’s Stopping You? is that the near-consensus of opinion among psychologists is that our fears are innate and cannot therefore be swapped for a headlong rush in the other direction. If you have fear of failure now, you will always have it, which is the bad news.
The good news is that, once we realise this – and the fact what I call the “monkey on my back” is coming with us – we can make strong progress in our lives. Become aware of our insecurities and the behaviours they drive and progress is possible – dealing with that monkey’s negativity as we go. Deny he is there – perhaps via some quick-fix “cure” that is potentially a deeper form of self-denial – and a terrible reckoning may await, at least in my view.
A core secondary element of this concerns how we focus on others as we make progress. Once enlightened, it is easy to see insecurities and mental failings in the behaviours and speech of everyone we meet. And we may even be tempted to start offering unsolicited advice, even to strangers. I’ve been on the receiving end of such advice on several occasions and it is pretty irritating – hence my view that once we are “recovering” from insecurities such as high fear of failure (and I’m deliberately making the comparison with “recovering” alcoholics who have to face up to their addiction at every meeting no matter how long they have been sober) we should avoid such preaching because it is both annoying and unsustainable.
Why write this now? Because I have sinned in this respect – falling short of my own standards I am afraid. And it was on this blog: the Twitter-virus enforced shutdown of which has given me time to reflect and to consider what I want to reload. Hence my repentance below.
First up were my two posts on NLP. This may seem odd, given that one reading of the above can be seen as an attack on neuro-linguistic programming, or at least the quick-fix excesses on its fringes. But I now realise that I drifted into the very preaching I was arguing against. NLP has helped millions of people gain confidence, so who am I to criticise, simply because the joy and comfort it brings to so many can result in the occasional convert making uncalled-for observations about my, yes absolutely, insecure behaviour?
SORRY.
Those two posts generated some pretty heated reaction from people who have obviously benefited from NLP. And they are right – to start lecturing people for lecturing people is wrong, so I’ll lecture myself instead. Lecturing others is an annoying trait whoever delivers it, and no matter what it is about. The point of “recovery” is to focus on our own behaviour – no one else’s. And that means even holding our tongue when being told of our insecurities by someone that has clearly “seen the light” via NLP or any other form of self improvement. What’s Stopping You? is NOT condemning NLP – in fact it borrows a lot from it. And I shouldn’t have lapsed into the very trait I was criticising.
Second (of three) concerns a post on an unidentified woman at a party – with, again, me stating that our less-than-satisfactory exchange was based on both her insecurities and mine. Yet how could I possibly know? I was simply interpreting her behaviour. I was not inside her mind. Sure, I knew what I was thinking – my insecurities had been triggered. But how could I possibly know what was driving her speech and behaviour? Of course, I was simply offering an opinion, not stating facts. But it was an opinion based on prejudice – that I had some predetermined idea of what was driving her behaviour. I didn’t.
SORRY.
Indeed, my reaction to that episode is a majorly significant moment in my recovery as a High-FF (what I call those with a high fear of failure). Her responses to me triggered a negative response from me based on my insecurities. Previously, that negative response would have been anger, followed by depression, followed by remorse, or potentially withdrawal, followed by depression, followed by anger. The more “enlightened” me, however, responds by looking for the insecurities in her. Yet this supposedly better response is the more dishonest – I haven’t dealt with my insecurities, just reflected them back to her, no matter how wide of the mark that may be. And while we could say, who cares, at least my insecurities have been dealt with, such deep self-denial is a long way from recovery or any attempt at recovery, in my opinion.
The final charge concerns my thoughts on “snake oil salesmen” in the motivational industry. In fact I was merely chiming along with an article in The Economist on this subject, as well as my own rationalism and scepticism regarding such practices as hypnotism and acupuncture. In reality, the key for the recovering High-FF is self-awareness regarding the appalling and self-destructive way we have judged the world around us up until now. For each of us there is a “wake up” moment that is tremendously enlightening. It is the moment we realise that our confusion and fears regarding the world is not some unique personal hell, but a mental condition that most probably started in early-childhood based on traumas (big and small) and our reactions to them. Perhaps without us realising it, these fears have grown into major phobias in adulthood that have stopped our progress, or at least hampered it.
My own “wake up” moment came from a casual reading of Anthony Robbins – a cheesy American motivational guru that is heavily influenced by NLP and also uses hypnotism and other methods that I now feel inappropriate for my own recovery. Yet Robbins started me on a journey that has – from good experiences and bad as well as from deep research with psychologists and self-help gurus – led me to a better place. But that journey was unique to me.
As I state in the introduction to the book, High-FFs need a map in order to chart their progress, but that only they can draw that map – it is a personal journey with its own rivers to cross and jungles to penetrate. What’s on that map, and where that map takes them, is 100 percent up to them. Robbins was an early landmark on mine and he remains an important source for the book, being quoted throughout. If others have hypnotism or some other methodology that wasn’t right for me but has worked for them, good. While I maintain my view on quick-fix solutions, seeking a solution – any solution – is probably the most important step anyone can take.
As Stephen Covey (another American motivational guru, although less cheesy than Robbins) states, “without pro-activity we are lost”. With it we’ll eventually find our way. The journey’s the point – not the mode of transport, the route or the stopping points on the way. So stop preaching.
SORRY.
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