by Astrid Davies | 9 Feb 2017 | Uncategorised
The past few weeks have been challenging for the green movement around the world, because of one man’s actions. He won’t be named in this article, because publicity feeds his actions. I think, however, you know who I mean … This is a short piece to remind colleagues working so hard, keeping our planet alive and well, that this is too important to be wiped away by an ego or two, and that, by keeping making clear progress, every day, we will prevail.
You may be feeling that you need to make a stand against what is happening to environmental policymaking. You may be feeling hopeless when you see “dirty” projects re-introduced by force. These are both valid points of view, but perhaps the most important consideration is the end-game. What will those emotions do to help you, to help the environmental agenda to flourish? For many, anger and indignation move very fast from a force for good, to become a destructive force which blinds us to the wider implications. On the other hand, feelings of powerlessness remove our confidence and belief that “we can”, after all. Neither of these stances is actually productive or helpful, no matter how understandable it is.
There is a fable that the Scottish King, Robert the Bruce, watched a spider repeatedly fail to climb a thread and build a web. He then watched as, through dogged perseverance, the spider built a web, a means of survival, and a thing of beauty. This is often used as a metaphor, alongside the saying “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”. What this doesn’t take into account, however, is whether Robert the Bruce was hampering the spider, moving its silk, damaging its web building. For it is easy to be daunted when your hard work and good intentions can be cast aside with apparently cavalier disregard, or even actively hampered or prevented.
While you are reading this, you may find yourself feeling a little sad, deflated, irritated even. These things are SO big and SO important, what does a silly fable about an arachnid have to do with it? It’s simple. It’s an illustration of the pure power of keeping on, keeping on. There is a movement around the world, moving toward clean energy, clean fuels, cleaner ways of living. That is because humans need that to survive. Air quality and toxin-related mortality are big news driving big self-interested changes – the world’s politicians just don’t shout about it. This comes about from evidence-based research, data, scientific fact. Look at China if you doubt this works. Even deniers have come to accept the facts (and no I don’t mean the “alternative” kind) – the trouble is that they aren’t always taken seriously by a minority. And that is surely the point – they ARE a minority. OK they are a powerful minority, but their power will be transitory. “All things must pass” and, when they do, those of us backing green will still be here, working away to prove the benefits of clean, sustainable fuels and materials for our everyday lives. We will still be here, harnessing solar. We will still be here, rejecting packaging at the point of sale so retailers have to find a way to cope with it. We will still be here, proving that humans CAN make a collective change for good. And that’s the small-beer consumer angle. Those of you reading this involved in cutting-edge clean tech, clean energy and the wider sustainability industry know how much you are doing and how big a difference you are making. Believe it. You really are, and billions of us are grateful that you do.
So, when it gets touch, what CAN you DO, to help yourself to keep on, keeping on? First of all, you can make the choice to keep on. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? However, deciding to keep doing something which is being challenged and undermined is not always easy. It is always brave. ‘though. So make the decision to keep on with the support you give to green in all its guises. Choose bravery.
Next, you can focus on how that bravery, your green choices, make you feel. Focus on the benefits your choices bring to you and those you care about, right now. Don’t think about the distant future when you are considering your own motivation. Deal in the “now”. What is it that is making you burn with energy and passion? What is it that you are working for? What is so important about that to you, right now? Really identify what it is that motivates you, and appreciate quite how much you want to achieve success in your aims. You may want to consider how this is shaping your life goals, and really decide what your realistic life goals would be like when you have achieved them. How would that success be for you?
A key thing that we coaches always work with our clients to do is write it all down. Journal. Keep a log. Keep an online diary. Draw a mindmap. Build a visionboard. Whatever it takes for you to record your passion and what motivates you, so that it can keep motivating you, every day. Share it if it would help to motivate and focus you. Use it at home, use it at work. Dr Stephen R Covey taught us “Start with the end in mind”, so always keep your aims in focus. That way, you always know that you are heading in the right direction, whatever you do.
When you have written down or created your record of what is driving you on, the obvious (but often forgotten) next crucial element, is to look at it. Every day. If you need to change your life goals and motivations a little, then go ahead. Just don’t forget to write down a new log / diary note / mindmap / visionboard. Refer to it often and take a moment to reconnect with what you are about, what you are doing, and why. That moment of reflection in every day is what sets leaders and successful people apart. It is what enables them to drive on, despite the rocks in the road, toward their goals because they believe, they truly know, that they will prevail. This is how you will prevail.
There are a lot of additional steps that could be thrown into the mix, but this simple daily discipline will keep you focused on what is driving you on, and the benefit of that for yourself, and those around you. It is wonderful to have your motivation as a philanthropic, arms-wide-open, world goal. It simply isn’t deliverable on a small scale, every day. You may be working towards that massive goal, but remember to take every day as your brave step toward success. Small steps forward are worth every setback. You know what forward feels like. You know what you will see when you achieve your personal milestone. By reading this, you also have a handy reminder that knowing and feeling are all great, but actually doing is crucial too – and then reviewing the “do”. Regular practice makes a habit. Make purposeful progress your habit, by keeping on, keeping on every day.
I hope that this simple routine outline has been helpful as a reminder that small progress, even in the face of a lot of opposing “noise”, is still progress, is still valid, and is really helping. We will all get there, because we have to. Know that your work is prized by those of us who want a decent world for our children and their children. Thank you for all you do.
by Astrid Davies | 2 Dec 2016 | Uncategorised
The David Brent caricature of leadership is outdated and irrelevant, right? Sadly, wrong. There are thousands of DBs out there, ridiculed / pitied / distrusted by their teams. Are you one of them?
Definitions of management and leadership – and the difference between them – are everywhere in business – in organisations, in the trade press, sometimes even at the coffee machine. Managers are on the one hand encouraged to measure, monitor, evaluate … and then are often implicitly criticised for being “bean-counters”, only valuing what they can measure. Leaders, on the other hand, are often characterised as go-getters, valiant visionaries, nurturing their teams while driving profits ever upwards. In fact, everyone is likely to be perceived as somewhere on the vast spectrum between these two extremes. The trick is to remember who is doing the perceiving.
In my experience, teams value someone who can combine both roles with a lightness of touch that still enables individuality to be recognised, and a corporate value system to be observed. How do I know? I asked them. I have always asked my teams, my direct reports, what they needed of me, for them to give of their best. I worked hard not to leave this to the annual performance review, but sometimes that was how it played out. I always asked, though. Always. Why? Because I lack the power of mind-reading.
One of the many ways in which the brilliant Ricky Gervais satirises the inadequacies of his character Brent, is to have him assume that he (Brent) automatically knows what his team think, feel, want. Assumption is the enemy of effective management and is a real blocker for effective leadership. Anyone in a supervisory position, who assumes without checking, is working on untested data, which masquerade as “facts” because they are believed to be true by the supervisor, and sometimes sold on up the hierarchy without any basis in truth. So how do you check your facts? You can measure your team performance according to agreed Key Performance Indicators, targets and incentive schemes. You can choose to measure the number of complaints received (always a perverse incentive in my view). You can choose to measure the hours people work (another unhealthy way to monitor people, in my view, because it breeds an unproductive long-hours culture which has more to do with testosterone than it does with bottom-line productivity). So there are a heap of ways in which you can build your wall of “metrics” – things to be measured. That is not the end of it, however. You can still measure, if that pleases you, but why stop at the tick box items? Why not measure the number of times your team exchange compliments, congratulating one another on a job well done? Why not measure the number of times you do that?! Why not measure the number of customer compliments? You may not get many … but how do you go about making that easy? Measurement doesn’t have to be about negatives. Turn your thinking around, and see how you can use measurement and monitoring to good effect. Here’s an idea – how about asking your team?
What else will your team want of their leader? They will want you to manage them – ensure they are paid, that they are kept safe, that they are insured while at work, that they are given work and are free to do that work. That should all be a set of givens, but sadly even those basics aren’t always the case (as seen recently with major high street retailers having staff give birth on the shop floor for lack of a decent break regime). So you need to assume that you do the basics and do them right, the first time, every time. Oh and always, ALWAYS do what you say you are going to do, when you say you are going to do it. If you can’t then you need to explain why that didn’t happen. Accountability and shouldering responsibility are crucial to effective management and leadership. If that makes you feel queasy, then there’s a whiff of The Office about that.
What else will your team want? They may want inspiration. No-one can raise themselves to “go the extra mile” every single day … even the most motivated of us will want someone’s encouragement along the way. Even if we don’t know we want it, we will all welcome it, if it is genuinely meant and delivered in a sincere way. How your team wants to receive that inspiration is up to them … so … (you may be spotting a theme here) … ask! Find out what helps your team go above and beyond. If it is loyalty to their employing brand, that may be because of brand recognition for a premium brand, but it may also be that they feel trusted by the employer, they feel recognised, appreciated and valued. This is worth thinking about – and thinking about deeply. What do you do, to enable your team to feel inspired? What inspires you? Remember – what inspires you may not inspire others … don’t assume.
Teams often value leaders that will fight their corner, taking their part against customers, “Management”, the world. That’s fine, so long as the leader involved maintains sufficient distance from the team that, when things go wrong and performance isn’t at its best, the leader is still able to help his team improve by reinforcing standards, expectations and targets. All too often, people in a supervisory position will fall into the “one of the lads” trap … one to watch at the upcoming Christmas Party season … and then find it very difficult to take a stance against under-performance or disciplinary matters. This is a fine line to tread, particularly for newly-promoted managers and leaders, keen to make their mark. Too chummy with the team, and you can’t be effective when disciplining “a mate”; too aloof and you lose all respect because you have become “one of them”, where “them” is anyone at all, who isn’t one of “us”. And that is a whole world of ill-defined pain.
My experiences tells me that modelling positive work behaviours (“walking the talk”) works best. There will be the obvious positives, such as inter-personal respect and courtesy, maybe remembering birthdays, certainly saying “please” when a task is allocated and “thank you” when it is done. Such things are a sign of strength. [If you have reached this far and still think they are a sign of weakness in work and elsewhere, you ARE David Brent come back to Earth. ] There are also the subtler positives, such as managing your own work/life balance so that you perform your tasks in standard work hours, or managing stress with a calm considered response, or taking the time to seek the perceived truths from both sides of a dispute. How will you know how to find out what works for your team? Yep … ask!
Your team will want someone to provide direction, support and information that help them to do their jobs well. How well do you match up? How will you improve? One of the ways a large number of the most successful executives use, is finding themselves a coach and/or a mentor, to help them learn the ropes. And that goes for the most senior and experienced executives … there is a saying that “you can’t not learn, so long as you are alive”. Double-negatives aside, this has a lot of truth in it. Even the most experienced manager/leader can always learn, hone their craft, or sharpen the saw, as Covey exhorted us all to do as his Habit #7. Asking questions is a crucial part of this. Coaching can be used as a leadership technique. It is also the premier personal development tool for aspiring leaders, particularly helping to develop your own leadership style, formed by reflection, consideration of your own value systems, and how your behaviours can and perhaps need to change, to improve the choices you could be making.
You may have found, as you have been reading this, that you want to find out more, so you can be the best leader you can be. If that is the case, please feel free to get in touch, and we can discuss how you can be the leader your team want you to be. Your team will thank you for it. So will you.
Image (c) BBC – downloadable wallpaper from The Office series
I recently attended the fifth annual 