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Mental Health at Work

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I like to imagine how different the posts on LinkedIn might have looked when I first entered FTSE commercial life in the 90s.

Have a quick scroll… the brilliant posts around Mental Health First Aid, the importance of psychological safety and emotional intelligence and photographs of employees having fun together doing things only vaguely related to work would have been viewed as ‘nice to have’ or downright fluffy…

But as always, if we look to hard science we can find sound reasons why this evolution and investment in our people has gained huge traction. Mental health disorders cause more absence and reduced productivity at work than bad backs, broken limbs and every other muscular-skeletal issue added together.

A psychology study just published (March 2023) helps us understand more about the specific things that make a workplace or occupation ‘high risk’ for mental health problems – taking aside the actual nature of the work itself or the socio-economic profile of people recruited to that job.

People who reported that they had these three things in their work-life were significantly less likely to experience mental health issues at work. Unsurprisingly the ‘negative top three’ look quite similar:

1)     Excessive Job Demands

2)     Low Social Support at Work

3)     Lack of Control over work

The research also found that staying in jobs where excessive demands, low support and lack of control persist over time increases the risk of mental health issues – we don’t become ‘immune’ or get used to it.

This is one of the first studies to be ‘adjusted’. Removing the jargon means that the results took into account the characteristics of the occupation (for example how dangerous or ‘stressful’ it was), the social and economic patterns of people who are recruited into particular roles (the old terminology of ‘blue collar/white collar’) and the prior mental health of the people studied or any life events that may have impacted their mental health.

What this ‘adjustment’ means in practical terms for those of us who just want to get on and do something about workplace absence or increasing productivity and engagement at work, is that there are no excuses! The top three are the top three.

Research like this is useful because it can remove any smoke and mirrors or doubt about what we should actually prioritise and get on and do.

So provide opportunities for social support, ask people whether they feel a sense of accomplishment – and if not what would and give people as much control and autonomy as you can and you won’t go far wrong!

Equally, continue with excessive work demands and social events or environments that don’t take account of your diverse workplace and expect nothing more or less than higher absence and lower productivity than your competitors.  

Sometimes science does make it that simple!   

The Science of Imposter Thinking

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Simplifying and sharing the neuroscience and psychology of how we feel and why we behave in the way we do is how I help my leadership clients to thrive.

One thing comes up more than any other topic in my work with senior clients – a feeling that you don’t deserve to be promoted or that you don’t have the skills to progress any further and that you should quit whilst you are ahead in case you get ‘found out’.

The technical term given to this (very normal) feeling in 1978 by two American psychologists was ‘Imposter Syndrome’.

As a Mum to teenagers, my school days are well gone but I often reflect on how my choices all those years ago affected my approach to helping clients with the challenge of overcoming Imposter Syndrome many years later!

At my Yorkshire comprehensive, the most progressive A Level on offer was Sociology. Having snapped that up, I ended up doing A Level’s in English Literature and Biology. This strange combination paved the way for what I have been fascinated with ever since – how our bodies and brains work, the cultures we create as social human beings and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of our relationships and experiences at work and at home.

Thus, when I share my thinking with clients on Imposer Syndrome, I first of all play with words! I de medicalise the term, referring to ‘Imposter Thinking’ instead. I then shorten this to ‘it’, to make it physically smaller and thus, metaphorically, easier for clients to manage.

I help clients consider the sociology of ‘it’ and how, in particular, this seems to affect women and minorities.

I also help clients get a super-fast understanding of the biology!

Put simply, ‘it’ is a normal and natural reaction to your brain experiencing something new and feeling a bit stretched.

We might like to think that we embrace change and love a challenge, but speaking to neuroscientist Dr Iain Price, you get a slightly different perspective. He has greatly helped me understand two things:

1) We have a finite amount of brain ‘fuel’ to spend in a day and no matter what we tell ourselves about ‘pushing on through’ it simply doesn’t work. See this related blog for more detail.

2) To conserve that precious brain fuel, your brain plays ‘tricks’ on you. It creates excuses -‘do it tomorrow’, or ‘quit whilst you are ahead’. These sound convincing but our brain creates them not because they are true, but to conserve brain fuel. Moreover, your brain knows exactly the right bespoke excuses to slow you down because it is your brain!

This means that the fundamental problem when progressing our careers is that we can get in our own way because our brain is wired to resist change and will, therefore, invent all sorts of plausible sounding excuses to hold usback. Dr Iain writes: 

Your brain runs on extremely complex ‘wiring’ that’s fuelled by a cocktail of chemicals, and requires a reliable flow of blood, oxygen and biochemical energy to operate – even just to stay still. Learning new skills or changing a behaviour requires extra energy investment to make the new neural pathways needed. Unless you are mindfully controlling your thoughts, your brain tends towards to keeping you wired to the status-quo and it will make coherent excuses to justify being stingy with its fuel!.

This is where the magic can happen! Once we know that it is normal to make excuses and feel a bit of ‘it’ when we are trying to change a habit, develop ourselves or are faced with a new experience, we have a super-power! We are onto the biggest person trying to hold us back – ourselves!

My favourite question to ask clients might help you too.
‘What would you do if you knew you could not fail?’
If you have a moment and a pen to hand, try some automatic writing. Without paying attention to your grammar or creating proper sentences, write down your answer and keep writing without pausing for 5 minutes.

Read back what you have written.
What could you do about that?
And if you need a coach to help you work through your scribbles, give us a shout! There are many other super simple practical activities in my book It’s Not Bloody Rocket Science – The Journal. My clients swear by it to help them beat the tricks their brains play on them. I hope it might help you too.

Imposter Thinking – You Are Not Alone!

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I have had clients who have told me that their life has changed literally overnight when I have shared what I have learnt about Imposter Thinking – or ‘it’ as I prefer to refer to it, to make it physically smaller and thus metaphorically easier for clients to manage. I have seen a sense of real liberation in too many clients to ignore when they realise ‘it’ was not just something they were experiencing alone and that they are in excellent company!  Many other, extremely successful people feel this way too.

Sheryl Sandberg who before Facebook, went to Harvard and used to be chief of staff for a US Secretary of state says, “There are still days when I wake up feeling like a fraud, not sure I should be where I am”. Howard Schulz who was Chairman and CEO of Starbucks and has a net worth of $4.3 billion described how the experience doesn’t diminish if you get more senior. He said that having known many CEO’s over many years that when they become a CEO “very few people, whether you have been in the job before or not, who get into the seat and believe, today, that they are qualified”.

It’s not in corporate life that we feel this way. Maya Angelou, who wrote one of the best books I read during my English degree has won Tony’s, Grammy’s and been shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize says “I have written 11 books but each time I think “uh-oh” they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody and they’re going to find me out”.

In short, if you feel ‘it’, there is some comfort in knowing you are in excellent company! It’s really not just you. When I researched the neuroscience of why we might experience ‘it’, I came to understand that it some ways it is a very human reaction – and an almost inevitable consequence of success – particularly when you have just taken on that new job or a fresh challenge.

Neurologically speaking but put simply, ‘it’ is a normal and natural reaction to your brain experiencing something new and resisting feeling a bit stretched. Our brains like to conserve energy so it notices

when something feels different – and then raising it’s concerns by encouraging you to tell yourself some

potentially unfounded stories about your abilities. It’s only in the recent history that neuroscientists have confirmed that our brains can’t always be trusted to tell us the truth. If something doesn’t fit the existing patterns we have created for ourselves, it is quite normal for us to distort what we see and feel in order to make a better ‘fit’ what we already believe to be true.

So the next time you tell yourself that you ‘can’t’ or ‘shouldn’t’ or feel that something isn’t for the likes of you, remember that senior person that you admire the most had a first day at work once where they knew nothing. Or your favourite person in public life was once not even vaguely famous outside their own family. Then ask a friend you trust or a professional coach or mentor to help you unpick your thinking and work out what evidence you have that you might fail – and what you could do if you believed that you could succeed?

The chances are, what you want from yourself is entirely possible. All you might need to do is convince your own brain to get out of your way!

How to Overcome the Challenges Faced by Women in Business

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This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is PHOT015-Dulcie-Head-Shoulders-Black-and-White-1024x1024.jpg

As published in the Finance Digest, by Dulcie Swanston

The business case for increasing the number of women in senior roles in business is startling. If companies with 33% or less women executives were to perform with the same net profit margin as companies with more than 33% women executives, this would lead to an additional £195bn of pre-tax profits.    

With a broad acceptance of this evidence, the stated and positive intentions on social media (so evident recently on International Women’s Day) and robust diversity strategies in most workplaces, it can be hard to get your head around how gender inequality can still persist in business when it does not make good financial sense and so much effort is seemingly put in to level the playing field.

However, a little knowledge about the science behind gender bias and our personal ‘immunity’ to change can highlight the complex and concealed reasons that stand in the way of women overcoming the challenges they might face at work to progress – and help women and their organisations to work through and beyond them. 

Unconscious Gender Bias

Our unconscious biases were embedded long before our careers began. We all have them, even when we believe ourselves to be genuinely committed to equality. One study highlighted that blind auditions increased chances of female musicians being hired by 46%. And, over 630,000 people in world-wide Implicit Association Test (IAT) for bias correlated males more strongly with competence in science and females with humanities when this competence has no basis in fact. 

This evidence can help us to realise that whilst we might be actively committed to the idea that we want to contribute to having a progressive workplace where women can progress, there may be some things that we are doing that are unhelpful and work against our good intentions. 

For example, if your organisation uses Cognitive Ability or GCA tests which look at thinking and reasoning then you might be interested to know that women perform less well on these tests (this applies to BAME and neuro-diverse candidates too). Non-cognitive battery tests which look at motivation, integrity, and interpersonal skills, don’t have these sub-group differences. 

Your organisation may have research that shows these tests have ‘high predictive validity’, meaning that people who perform well in role, also do well in these tests. However, one study showed that people who do well in these types of tests (white males) have had resources given to them throughout life, such as schooling, childhood postcode and in some cases simply more practice at these types of tests, that make a difference to scores in later life. Another research study showed that men are simply more confident in their abilities to do these tests well. When no brief was given to a group before a GCA test, men performed better than their female counterparts. However, when the women in the group were shown evidence beforehand that women had just as much innate ability as men at maths, the female candidates outperformed the men. 

Does your organisation measure commitment on output or presenteeism?  There is lots of research to show that hours worked do not correlate with equal performance. Are people in your organisation penalised for working shorter hours? It might be worth questioning, aside from salary, what else they miss out on that has simply been overlooked.

It’s hugely discomforting to confront that you personally, or an organisation that you have worked hard to make more diverse, isn’t free of bias and that it is just something that a few stuffy, out of date colleagues have going on. Many of the barriers that women face to progression are unintentional. Appreciating that the ways in which we may all be contributing to making a workplace more difficult for women to progress in and which may even be hidden from the women themselves and their strongest supporters, will be crucial for individuals and organisations that really want to make a difference.

Personal Change Immunity

Whilst we can accept personal change is desirable and necessary, doing something about it and sustaining new habits is easier said than done. Our innate ‘immunity to actual change’ researched by two leading Harvard academics in 2009 soberingly summarised; 

‘…a study showed that when doctors tell heart patients they will die if they don’t change their habits, only one in seven will be able to follow through successfully… 

Business is not life or death so our ability to follow though with change that makes us feels uncomfortable or requires confrontation of personal biases is likely to be even less than one in seven.

Give up?

Understanding the hidden biases and the human difficulty of changing anything at all can help us to appreciate there isn’t likely to be a quick fix or a silver bullet for your organisation or yourself when it comes to levelling the playing field. Without a deeper understanding of the neuroscience that exists underneath our organisational cultures and values, we may understand the business case and actively support the initiatives intended to level the playing field but not understand why the return on investment is frustratingly elusive. Lasting change takes time, constant vigilance and a permanent commitment to cultivating a growth mindset for the women themselves and their supporters – let alone their detractors!  

You’d be forgiven for thinking the changes seem insurmountable! Alternatively, we can take the view that by understanding this science and appreciating the complexity, we can avoid investing organisational finances and personal energy into initiatives that are well intentioned, but which don’t generate change that having a genuinely diverse workplace brings nor at the pace we need for growth. 

Here are three things to invest your time and money in that just might make a difference!

Build trust to get permission to challenge

To have any chance of exposing unconscious bias and addressing our immunity to change, we must trust the person that is challenging our assumptions. As human beings, if we don’t trust that the person who feeds something back to us genuinely has our best intentions at heart and is being authentic and honest, then we can’t help but move into defensive mode to protect ourselves.

Leaders in an organisation who are trying to encourage more women into senior roles must cultivate trust for their teams to feedback openly, or people simply won’t speak truth to power. When it becomes normal to challenge and safe for people to voice uncomfortable truths and raise difficult issues, the organisation has a chance to confront difficult situations that don’t have easy, off the shelf answers. 

Creating a culture of trust which gives people the courage to challenge is crucial when something the leader themselves or the organisation are doing is positively intentioned – but isn’t actually having the desired effect.

Equally women who want to progress can overcome some of the challenges they will face by finding a mentor or coach that they trust implicitly to give them difficult feedback when a behaviour or part of their style is holding them back. 

Invest in the right support

Unfortunately, there is mixed evidence that unconscious bias training works, despite a McKinsey estimate that about $8bn is spent on diversity training annually in the US alone. The UK Civil Service halted their unconscious bias training in 2020 after carefully reviewing evidence which concluded amongst other things that implicit bias training had little effect on the growth of women in management. 

A ‘tick-box’ training day might highlight unconscious bias exists, but it can do more harm than good if people think that in undertaking it, the problem is solved. Tackling unconscious bias will always be deeply uncomfortable because our brains are wired to resist challenges to our existing patterns. It’s therefore naïve to expect that lasting change can result from simple ‘tick-box’ training days. Any training that can even begin to unravel such complex and deep-rooted neurological wiring will need to be deep, thoughtful and ongoing.

An investment in training that helps both male and female understand how to build trust by being authentic and empathetic and then using that trust to provide positive and proactive challenge that people can hear is likely to have more positive impact and better long-term return on investment.

Coaching or specific female focused training can have an impact by improving resilience, confidence, and by enabling women to flex their style. However, if this is not being done within an environment where their endeavours will be supported back in the organisation in the layers above them, it’s likely to be a wasted investment, the best women will either leave with their newfound knowledge or revert to role modelling the behaviour that exists already in the successful people around them – which is over-represented with middle class white males.

Unconscious bias being part of, but not the sole focus of, personal development can show significant return on investment. Learning about the research and science into authenticity and diversity in mixed groups can be hugely beneficial. Becoming an authentic leader who people can trust necessarily involves understanding your limiting beliefs and unhelpful innate biases. There is huge power in understanding the importance of dialling up the qualities you might naturally possess that help others to trust you even though you may be unaware of the impact they have. Equally, without truthful feedback we can’t dial down the things we are doing with positive intent but are not aware that are getting in the way. 

Start with yourself

If you are a woman in business challenge your own bias about what you can and cannot do. Of
course, it makes sense to focus on your strengths but try to identify when you are telling yourself or
others something that has no basis in fact but does have some truth in the way that gender is
perceived – for example “I’m no good with numbers” or “I’m useless with technology”. Question
whether you have tried to get better at numbers or whether you are investing enough time in
getting up to speed with the technology relevant to your marketplace.

Are you perpetuating some of the myths that exist in your organisation with your own words and
actions? Question yourself and others around you when you hear limiting beliefs about
presenteeism such as “I can’t really commit to the hours a more senior job needs” or over-
apologising for being a parent when inevitable difficulties arise “I’m so sorry, I feel terrible, but I
need to fetch my son from school because he is ill”.

It can be frustrating when an organisational process is getting in the way of your personal
development. It is also undoubtably ‘unfair’ that the same behaviour in a man can be perceived as
‘strong’ and in a woman as ‘aggressive’. However, investing too much thinking power and airtime on
things that you can’t control or influence can distract you from investing your precious brain fuel and
limited time on the things you can. Are you better spending hours railing at the injustice that if you
were a man that your work persona would be perceived differently? Or taking that unpalatable truth
as unfair but out for your control for now, and finding a smart, slightly different but still wholly
authentic way to present your ideas that gets people on board.

Lisa Wilcox 2020. Women Count 2020. The Pipeline p.16.

IT and Why It’s Not Just for Girls

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Imposter Syndrome is often seen as primarily a female issue and is often talked about on IWD. First things first – I replace the word ‘syndrome’ to de-medicalise it and then shorten and reduce Imposter Thinking to ‘it’ in lower case capitals to give ‘it’ a smaller place in my clients lives! 

The Big Idea

Feeling like you don’t deserve your success and that someday soon you will get caught out and revealed as a fraud is not just a female phenomenon. However, I do think it being perceived as such could be down to the collective courage of more women trailblazers sharing openly that they felt ‘it’ when they first pushed through the glass ceiling.

On International Women’s Day we should thank them because so many of us now openly share that we feel like a bit of an imposter sometimes. Research suggests over 70% of us will experience ‘it’ our lives.

However, perhaps being in a minority whether at work or life in general does play a part? In my own experience, I often discuss ‘it’ with men who aren’t generationally established as middle class or clients who belong to a minority group of some sort – whether that be due to a disability, neuro diversity, ethnicity or anything else. I also support clients who experience it and wonder if it is because they were outliers in their families – perhaps they were first in their family to go to University or it is unusual in a friendship group to take on a big corporate role.   

Feeling you belong to a minority connects with some recent neuroscience that helps to explain ‘it’. Our brain runs on extremely complex ‘wiring’ that’s fuelled by a cocktail of chemicals, and a reliable flow of blood, oxygen and biochemical energy to operate – even just to stay still.  Developing our thinking, our skills or creating new habits requires extra energy to make the new neural pathways needed, whereas despite our ambitions for ourselves, our brains like existing pattens and the status quo because they are simply more energy efficient.

Our role models and our external influences can shape these internal patterns. If you have have first hand knowledge of people ‘like you’ who have experienced success – despite you knowing them to be human, vulnerable and ‘normal’ – then it stands to reason that your brain won’t resist similar success quite so hard because it sees a pattern that it recognises. What is true for them can also be true for you. If you are in a minority, it can be harder to find those role models. This means your brain has to work harder to create that and to create the neural pathways that make achieving your potential feel possible.

A little bit of science knowledge can be a really good thing…Just because your brain is wired to prefer the status quo to conserve energy and to put off doing something today that could be brilliant for your future, doesn’t mean that you have to put it off until tomorrow – which we all know never comes! 

Perhaps use today – whether you identify as a female or not – to take a brave step forwards to help build your dream and to thank the women that confessed to ‘it’ before you. Pause see that you probably richly deserve the success you have already, because you were humble and intelligent enough to feel a bit of ‘it’ and have the capacity to reflect upon about what brought you here. And probably did a lot of hard work along the way!  

Dulcie Shepherd Swanston is the author of It’s Not Bloody Rocket Science and the owner of Top Right Thinking which provides Executive Coaching and training that sticks. She is also an Associate Director of the global talent and coaching business, People Untapped.

Blog 2 to follow shortly: The Science of Imposter Syndrome featuring neuroscientist Dr Iain Price.

Contact Dulcie

The Big 6

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Growing Young Leaders

Most of us have read articles about the work generation gap – Generation X and Baby Boomer leaders trying to manage the expectation of Gen Y and Millenial co-workers. Given my experience of recruiting and developing graduates over the past 15 years, I have seen at first hand some of the challenges. However, with any challenge comes opportunity. I’m exceptionally proud that in the FTSE 250 company where I led the team responsible for graduate recruitment and development, if you fast forward 15 years, many of the wonderfully enthusiastic, (slightly naïve!) 20 somethings that I met are now MDs or CEOs in their own right. Some of that success is down to education and career moves, but there is something to be said for how I helped those young people to “navigate” through their early career years – helping them to step back from career limiting conversations they were thinking about having or providing a safe place for them to explore how they feel.

Sometimes you don’t realise what you did, until you see the results many years later! Thus it is only with the benefit of hindsight that I have done some extensive research into integrating young people into work so that we can all make more of the potential opportunities for the generations to work fabulously together – and get the business results that this can bring, faster.

We often tell our young people that the key to future success is to “…work hard…get your grades at school/University.” So this they dutifully do… However, the world of work is very different and the rules of engagement differ from employer to employer. I’m often asked to help organisations who want to undertake cultural change or establish their vision and values. In those sessions, it can actually be quite difficult for adults who have experienced different organisational cultures to pin-point exactly what it is that makes their organisation tick and why some people succeed in it where other individuals (who might be equally talented on paper), don’t. How do people get on around here? Sounds like a really easy question to ask. But in most organisations I have experienced, it is actually quite difficult and nuanced to answer.

Your values or your competency frameworks might be written in black and white, but there’s likely to be a lot of grey in between. Perhaps you have some people who were promoted before the framework and values were introduced because they were technically very able and whilst they are OK as team leaders, they are a long way from modelling the behaviours that you now actively recruit? Or maybe you have a senior leader whose behaviour is sometimes very out of sync with what you have written on the wall, but this is tolerated because they have significant experience the business can’t live without.

Through our education, we train our young people to think “Yes, but…” a lot. They are taught first to understand a logic or a factual argument and then to explore what their own eyes tell them, and to back that up with evidence. Therefore we should not be surprised that using that same model in the workplace takes some practise because applying those techniques to matrix organisations with complicated cultures, employment histories and some quirky characters to boot is actually really difficult.

If it is hard for experienced adults to describe, imagine what it is like for a 20 year old with the limited work-experience that comes alongside studying hard to understand what work and career progression is actually like in real life. I have met many young people who struggle to express themselves well at work to start with – they don’t do their future selves any favours. Sometimes the values and competencies don’t help them. Let’s assume that “Honesty” is a core value and that “Straight Talking” is a core competency. I have many examples in similar circumstance of helping new graduates to understand that there is a significant and and important difference between expressing strong opinions that shows they are driven and ambitious versus expressing emotionally charged “honest” frustrations that their careers are not moving in line with their rapid but essentially unrealistic expectations to anyone who will listen.

So what can you actually do? Well, here is the result of my own research – some scientific and some based on my experience of working with young people who have subsequently gone all the way. I’ve focused on the GAP between what the organisation wants and what the young person has to offer. Equally the opposite GAP – what the young person wants and what the organisation has to offer. My work is about bridging that gap by:

1) Helping young people to understand “the grey” – how to prepare and present themselves so they can navigate their organisation. Helping them to develop the resilience and self awareness so that they channel their drive and focus appropriately, enabling their potential on paper to be recognised sooner.

2) Helping experienced leaders to understand the power and implications of their behaviour . Well-intentioned interventions can actually inhibit the development of the young person – or at least slow down the time it will take for them to become the highly productive team member they can absolutely become. Small, simple, personal actions can make an exponential difference.

In a 2016 study, Deloitte found that 70 % of millennials were planning to leave their employer in the next 5 years, citing a lack of leadership development development as the primary reason. Thus taking the time to develop your most talented millennials makes sense in order to develop retention. However, given the gaps highlighted above, it makes sense for development activities to focus on both helping the young leaders develop skills the organisation wants AND asking the current more senior experienced leaders to support that development so that they increase their understanding of the millennial mindset. Deloitte found a direct correlation between building a solid foundation of trust and integrity and millennial employee retention.

We use the 6 key criteria that the Young Foundation reference in their research paper “Ready for Work” to highlight the specific areas forming the GAP. This work highlights the criteria that young people needed to develop to get and keep their first jobs. This was not created with graduates in mind, but we have found in our own work that the principles absolutely apply. We refer to these elements as The Big Six in our development programmes:

• Self Aware – Taking responsibility, not shifting blame and controlling emotions.
• Receptive – Accepting feedback with humility and respect to address weaker areas.
• Driven – Focusing on the right things. A positive attitude, punctual, organised and persistent.
• Self-Assured – Asking questions, Impact of body language and self esteem on growing trust.
• Resilient – Coping with setbacks, rejection, obstacles and mistakes. Managing uncertainty.
• Informed – Understanding workplace, cultural etiquette, presentation and customer service.

Each of our programme modules focuses on 1 or 2 of the Big Six. However the approach is iterative and we build upon the previous module inputs in order to increase the efficacy of the later modules. For example self awareness using a very simplistic form of MBTI/Jungian type based on colours is used on Day 1, but we use these colour behavioural preferences as a was to understand what might get in their way of asking for feedback or staying focused and positive on Days 2 and 3.

We encourage the young people to feedback to one another on every session about how they come across to one another in relation to each of the Big Six. This regular feedback cycle helps to both develop their understanding (in order to feedback to someone else, they have to understand the criteria in more depth) and to enable them to get comfortable more quickly with giving and receiving feedback – a key part of the “Receptive” quality in itself.

There is no “pecking order” for the Big Six, but in our experience, building resilience gives easier access and better success with the other Five. Thus understanding and building resilience is a “golden thread” that is woven throughout our programmes.

There are commonly known to be 6 Domains or predictive factors of Resilience – Collaboration, Vision, Reasoning, Composure, Health and Tenacity. Given that 6 unrelated words are quite hard to remember, we map these 6 into our THRIVE acronym. We have found that this simple adaption makes retention easier and in no way detracts from the validity of the 6 Domains.

Tenacity remains – Learning perseverance and some skills to grow mental toughness are required in order to increase your speed of “bounce back”
Health remains – Exercise, nutrition and sleep have well known practical effects on our ability to cope.
Reasoning remains – Accepting that resistance to change is the human norm, but learning to accept change as inevitable helps to increase resourcefulness, problem solving and self-reliance.
Integration replaces the more usual Collaboration – Strong social support and integrating with people in your community and family is statistically shown to increase resilience and even reduce disease mortality rates.
Vision remains – To be resilient in adversity, your brain needs a reason to go on, a purpose.
Emotional Control replaces Composure. Developing the ability to choose a positive/optimistic mindset, practising self control and mindful self-awareness are all key to noticing where our resilience is low and deliberately taking control of emotions in order to re-charge it.

We use science and research to make the building of resilience a “no-brainer” for the young people and include specific sessions on individual aspects such as developing an optimistic mindset using Seligman’s (live longer and earn more money, anyone?!) and David Rock’s recent neuroscience on the effect of feeling threatened on our ability to think reasonably about change using his SCARF model (have up to 80% of your cognitive function disabled before you respond to a challenge, anyone?!)

We also do a simple, repeated activity in every session to connect the group with the wide variety of research on the topic. We ask delegates to do a internet review using their phones at every session to find a Top Tip for building resilience. They are not constrained. Their Top Tip can be about building resilience generally or specifically about sleep, exercise or mindfulness. Repeating this activity throughout the programme enables them to try out their own tips or those found by other team members and report back on their progress.

We describe that the Big Six Qualities can be Emerging, Developing or Established. We encourage the young people to think about where they would rate themselves and to actively seek feedback from other people in the organisation and their family and friends. Interestingly our experience is that the delegates over-rate themselves to begin with, but become much more critical as the programme progresses. We hope that this is the beginning of their development of a “growth” mindset that we regularly refer to on our programmes; that actually they see “Developing” in each of the Big Six as an end it itself – almost a permanent state – rather than rushing to tick the box to become “Established”as they tend to do in the beginning.

In terms of established leaders we encourage informal and proactive support for the programme. We have undertaken “pre-sessions” for the line managers of leaders where we walk them through the programme. We let the established leaders know more about what young people really want from work and therefore specific things that they can do that will be actively helpful in both embedding the learning AND demonstrating the qualities that the young person is likely to value highly. Examples include proactively asking their young leader to share their learning with the team; offering 2 way feedback sessions and reading supplied blogs about the science underpinning the programme.

We also help the established leaders to understand some of the accidentally unhelpful things that they might do unless well prepared. Examples include forgetting the young leader is going on the session and not asking about it, seeing 121 reviews as nice to do and modelling exercise, sleep, holiday and relationship resilience good habits by ensuring their own work:life balance is managed. We discuss the importance of the “Authority Matrix” – that young people will repeat what they see you do if you are in a position of importance – not what you say and so mixed messages are important. We encourage the established leaders to think about their own habits that might accidentally advertise micromanagement and over-working as a “good” leadership quality by sending emails on holiday or regularly working on days off.

We usually also have sessions entitled Leading by Example and Company Values on these days. We use storytelling to explore the importance of congruency for young leaders between what they hear about your business via the Values, Competencies or their Induction and their first experiences of dealing with the leaders in the business. So on their first day your young leader might read your Values on your company literature. The values might include Lead by Example. Stands to reason that they go, “OK so I can expect everyone here to get on by Leading by Example”. Then let’s imagine it’s their first meeting with a senior mentor they have been allocated. Maybe the mentor had to postpone their first meeting because a really significant business issue came up and their board director wanted an essential piece of information. Then perhaps at that re-arranged meeting the mentor apologises profusely for running a bit late and starts the conversation with “Tell me a bit about you,” whilst trying to find their CV. We help the more senior leaders to reflect on habits they might have which might undermine or confuse a young person for whom transparency and clarity about the culture are virtually important. We usually refer to a 2010 Deloitte study, that unlike their generation, younger employees are generally less motivated by bonus, benefits or pensions. Instead they look for flexibility, company culture, training, the opportunities to use their creativity, transparency and real time feedback.

Another study we refer to comes from Cornell University.
Their research found that young people require:

 Highly productive environments
 To feel valued and be able to voice opinions
 To be taught new skills, to be reviewed on how well they apply them and to be given feedback.
 To be given career development opportunities
 Managers who allow autonomy and flexibility

Practical activities that we ask the senior group to consider are how they could better seek opinions and ideas from the individuals in the group – or from the group as a whole. Ideas from those groups have included sharing blogs, message boards, shared social media and more regular succession planning.

With some clients we have also set up reverse mentoring schemes with senior executives and invited members of the senior and executive teams to be trained in the Big Six by the young leaders as part of a final activity on the day of their “graduation” from the programme.

Hopefully this insight into our research based approach not only summarises some of the science and research about how to develop young people, but enables you to better understand some simple things that your learning teams, individual line manager and your organisation could actually do in order to increase the efficacy of your graduate development. We’d love to help!

Lose the Guilt…The Dangers of Lockdown Projects…

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There have been many articles circulating about the best way to deal with lockdown, furloughing and long weekends. Learn a new language? Get your house-hold jobs done? Volunteer? Catch up on the Box-Sets?

The best one that I read, by a psychologist, suggested that because there was no precedent for these strange times that one size doesn’t fit all. Whilst some people might feel the need to fill the time with purposeful activities, others will feel they want to do the opposite and literally let the days flow by with no plans whatsoever. The recommendation from the article that stayed with was the concept of “radical acceptance” – that whatever you notice about yourself in these unusual weeks – simply accept you are as you are. Notice your thoughts and behaviours but do so without judgement, guilt or giving yourself a hard time about not having “your perfect lockdown”.

Developing high levels self awareness, managing your internal voice and practising the art of observing without prejudice is a pre-requisite for the job I do. One thing I have come to know about myself is that I am appalling at relaxing by doing very little. Lockdown has been no different. I’ve been compelled to find activities or projects. However, I’m not a fan of the articles I have read that suggest everyone should get busy and feel guilty if they don’t. It sounds obvious, but sources of relaxation and pleasure are very different for different people. I have come to know that just because I relax better via activity, I should be cautious about doing anything to signal subliminally or overtly that those who relax by not being busy would be “better off” joining me. Not only can it be plain irritating, but when we influence others as a parent, boss or coach, we can accidentally make people feel that they are not “doing enough”. I hope that more often than not these days I signal to my laid back friends that taking a whole day to just “be” is something I envy their ability to do, rather than something I am comparing unfavourably with my list of “achievements” over a weekend.

I read a while ago that how we relax can be related to our personality preferences and our innate wiring. Certainly my lockdown has been very “Red” and full of Extraverted Thought. I’ve been taking action and doing things that “make sense” because they look to make practical advantage of the situation we are in. I have other friends more “Yellow” friends who have whole-heartedly entered the world of video socialising with a gusto, that I personally would find exhausting, but they are exhilarated by. My “plenty of Blue” energy husband, working 12 hour days from home, is already seeing this period as “business as usual”. He is resolving problems that seem quite complex to me with minimal fuss or debate so he can focus on the long term strategic plan.

Whatever is working for you, one thing I have been a bit disturbed by are the tweets and articles that suggest that if you don’t come out of lockdown with a new skill or a stronger than ever network, that you have somehow “failed” the lockdown challenge.

What this perspective fails to note is that for much of the population, this will be a time where people will feel the need to reflect, not act. We can sometimes forget that actually taking pleasure in just “being” is exceptionally good for our brains and one of the great luxuries of first world living. Thus, rather than being critical of my more “Green” friends using the time to reflect on how the world is and might be and “producing” very little who feel a bit guilty about it, I’m reassuring them reflecting much and “achieving” little is something more of us would benefit from doing and actively a great thing – and to positively ignore those who would seek to criticise their coping mechanisms and sources of strength and pleasure.

I’d be really interested to know what you have been doing and whether you think it related to your innate wiring. Have you surprised yourself? Or actually done things that are “so you” that it makes you smile?

Let me confess to what I have been up to and in reading the above, please be reassured that I am smiling at myself needing to stay busy with practical things and am in no way suggesting you should find a project, just because I needed one! And I use the word “confess” because as ever, with so many of my projects, some friends and colleagues will admire my drive and creativity…whilst some (2/5th of my teenagers included) will think I am just a little bit mad…

I created a deck of playing cards…

Normal Playing Cards – with extra learning sneaked in…

As ever, there’s a story…

Those of you who have attended Tea Break Training sessions (currently closed but hopefully opening soon) will know that I always bring 2 things.

  1. Reassurance about the benefits of experiencing “incompetence”. I share how I deliberately take on a challenge every couple years to remind myself about how it feels to be utterly incompetence at something – and to prove to myself and others that staying “incompetent” can be a choice. When your brain tells you “I’ve never been able to and you can’t teach an old dog new tricks…” or “I’d love to do that but would never have the time…” those phrases are likely to be personalised and terrific sounding “lies” – a trick that your brain plays so that you won’t feel the shame of any incompetence, or invest the time in doing something about it. All very well if the new skill doesn’t really matter, but actually quite important in personal development if the world is moving on and you aren’t keeping up. I help people to understand that our brains are very good at inventing very grown up sounding responses involving how busy we are or how we can manage perfectly well without a skill, to make it the sensible choice not to do anything about it.
  2. Lots of post-its…

So my point 1) includes a story I tell that as a child, I had tried and failed to play several instruments and thus told myself “I can’t play a musical instrument…so as 40+ adult I have learnt to play the guitar (and to sing along, but the teenagers would disagree with the verb “sing).

I can now surf (even the teenagers need to admit that one is true.)

The hidden incompetence I had been meaning to getting around to fix for a while is that I’m rubbish at History. There we go, I said it out-loud. It’s been fairly well hidden because I did an English degree, so I’d always been able to bluff my way through a game of Trivial Pursuit or a pub quiz by pausing to “let other people have a go” when a question about who was on the throne at a certain time or which composer wrote…But the truth was, having not even chosen History at GCSE, I hadn’t a clue. I was a bit embarrassed by it so I’d decided I’d embrace my incompetence and I had an idea how.

It involved my 2) – Lots of Post Its.

I decided to do a home version of the classic history classroom where timeline that you get near the ceiling like an educational wallpaper border, I would get some colour co-ordinated gaffer tape to match my decor and create one myself by chronologically writing the dates of the Kings and Queens of the UK around the wall. Then I would write a novel, a poem I loved, a play I’d enjoyed and some of the key things in history that were of particular interest to me on a post it. And I would stick them up on the time-line. That way if I was watching a quiz on TV and a question came up about history and could zip to the right part of the timeline and know the answer. In time, after a few months of it being there, I could take the timeline down and I would still know what went where or I could at least work it out because I would know that Shakespeare was to the left of the big light and quite a long way from Mozart who was closer to the picture of the Tyne Bridge.

Genius right?

Well I thought so. I bought the kit. Calligraphy Pens. Chalk Markers. Got excited. This was going to be a GREAT lock down project.

Fabulous Materials

Well NOT as it turns out. Definitely NOT Genius according to the teenagers. When I excitedly told them about my plan it didn’t go down so well. Imagine telling your kids you had cancelled all Birthday and Christmas presents this year due to Covid 19 and you were going to raise money by doing a live acoustic guitar and you wanted them to publicise it on their Instagram accounts.

Yes that positive.

Amid the shouts about getting the step-ladder out to take the time-line down the moment it went up, my husband calmly brought the project to a halt. “You won’t need the step-ladder guys, I’m tall enough to reach.”

Resigned to remaining historically ignorant, I went off to sulk with a glass of wine and a bit of online shopping. I’d fancied a really nice set of playing cards for ages. I’d initially asked for a set for my birthday and Mother’s Day but with lockdown I’d changed my mind and asked for IOU’s for restaurants instead. It was then that the various thoughts coincided in my left-field, connective, noisy brain. Why not create a deck of cards that had the same information as the timeline that wouldn’t embarrass anyone. I could just play my patience and learn my facts all by myself…

It didn’t take much to send my brain into a much more positive over-thinking state…

If all the hearts were writers and you were playing a game and got a “run”, you would get to know your writers and who came where, almost by accident, just by playing a game of cards.

If all the Spades were the corresponding Kings and Queens of the time that matched the writer on the Heart card, and all the Diamonds were composers, then if you were playing a game where you collected all the 7’s you would know that Jane Austen was writing, when George III was on the throne and Mozart and Beethoven were around…

Given I’ve written a couple of books with pictures and I’ve produced some card games for training, I knew I’d be able to turn the idea into something real. Never one to let the practical realities like the expense get in the way of imagination, I thought I’d crack on. I started a spreadsheet to do the research and happily distracted myself when I started to worry about things I couldn’t control.

Just like I recommend to my clients, whenever I started to veer outside my sphere of influence or control and worry about global death tolls, my vulnerable relatives or the plight of some of the wonderful businesses I know and love, I instead looked up who was composing music when Shakespeare was writing plays. Or when Edward proposed to Mrs Simpson, what would people have been reading or listening to.

Fast forward 3 weeks and this small project has turned into something quite lovely. My friend Sarah Walden who runs Noodle Fuel – a publishing and production company specialising in children’s reading and education – loved the idea and thought they had potential. The wonderfully talented Mark Bennington who does my Rocket Science illustrations (and is cool enough to have worked on The Beano for many years) was also in lockdown had some free time and some great ideas. Sarah recognised that the economics scaled up a bit with a local printer could mean this was an opportunity not to provide myself with one super-expensive set of cards to play Patience with, but a way to do something philanthropic and sell them with a donation to charity.

We contacted The Big Issue Foundation, a charity I have grown to love over the past few months and here we are. My lockdown cards will be available from next Wednesday. The Big Issue Foundation will make £1 per pack sold. I’ve had hours where the weight of the world wasn’t on my shoulders. And the teenagers are talking to me again – and actually said they will play some cards with me when they arrive…because “actually Mum, they are an alright idea to say they came from your head.” I’ll take that.

So do or don’t do a project. Please yourself. I did. And I’m really happy I did. But when they arrive, I’m going to try to develop another area of incompetence – probably for me, the hardest of all…Doing nothing for a few days. Other than perhaps playing cards…

Coronavirus – Keep Your Brain Well

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With the upheaval and challenge we are all experiencing, our brains will be doing things that will both help and hinder our mood and our well-being. If we take a minute to notice our emotions and our thoughts, there are some things we can do to help make our thinking more productive – things that are scientifically proved to not only make us feel better, but also give us a chance at recovering more quickly economically and physically.

However hard it is to imagine right now, everything does pass. We might not ever be quite the same people in quite the same landscape. However, there will be a future where we look back and reflect on “What I did when Coronavirus happened…” and today is history and not reality. It’s time to start thinking now, not just about what you will do practically, but what you can do to protect your mental health and your capacity to think straight. Taking time to think about your thinking will mean you are more able to come out of these weeks, ready to face the challenges ahead and embrace the new opportunities that will exist.

Stopping to reflect is also a chance for you to think about the behaviours you want to be remembered for. What did you do to be your best self when the chips were really down?

Here are six pieces of science/research that might help. I have also attached the take-away postcard that we use in Tea Break Training to help people to remember the concepts.

  1. People are generally well intentioned – even if their actions are unhelpful

We are all different and we all react to stress, panic and change in different ways. Before you jump down the throat of an older family member or friend who tells you about something they have done which seems absolutely unacceptable – “I’m still going for my haircut, regardless of my cold” or “I sneaked a Calpol into my handbag because I could only buy one” – ask yourself how they could have done that with a positive intention.

We can all act weirdly when we experience extreme threats. Asking open questions to genuinely understand their intentions, rather than vowing to avoid them forever for being selfish will be a challenge. However most of us will only admit to ourselves that something we did was a bit stupid if we really trust them. Feeling that we trust someone implicitly, means that we are better able to hear and respond to the challenges they put to us.

Make it safe for people to tell you the truth about how they are feeling – even if it led to some ugly (but well intentioned) actions.

Take a breath. Outright confrontation usually makes our human brains find more evidence that our random act of selfishness was totally justified. We need to educate and influence, not alienate one another. Asking open questions in a calm voice is more likely to mean that someone is honest and open about the root cause so that you can understand the intention and the action.

2. Accept that you might not be telling yourself the truth or seeing things as they actually are

Life has already monumentally changed for us all. Change is always difficult and our brains particularly don’t like changes that we didn’t plan for. Your brain is a pattern machine. Its job is to simplify life for you. To store and create patterns so that you don’t have to live everyday like it is your first day on earth. In doing so, your brain looks for information to back up patterns it already has. 

Your brain, like you, is well intentioned, but in making life easier it also deliberately deletes new bits of information that don’t fit the pattern or adapts them to be more palatable to an existing belief. This is true even if the information is scientific and accurate. Your brain will still try to distort things if you don’t already believe them to be true. You might have heard an older or at-risk relative telling you they are going to carry on regardless and that the virus won’t affect them. Not true, but their brains will find convincing reasons based on their “evidence” for it to feel true. 

In these last few weeks, we have all been asked to change our patterns. Even if we are physically able to, our brains will resist. If you have found yourself saying “I don’t need to change because…” look again at the scientific evidence before you listen to your own research of one. You might tell yourself “Well I don’t know anyone with the virus so I don’t need to do X Y or Z…” It’s not true – but your brain might try and really, strongly convince you that it is. Pause and reflect. Give people permission to challenge you if they hear you telling yourself “lies.” 

3. Count your blessings 

Even when we absolutely think life can’t get worse, bizarrely it can help us to remember that they could. We release powerful chemicals when we find things to be grateful for – even if we think we are really scraping the bottom of the barrel! I reminded myself of this piece of science when on top of 48 of the most difficult hours in my professional life and the personal challenges most of us are facing, I was in A&E with a daughter with concussion… 

Plan B by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant is a good place to go for more information. Think what you like about her or her company but no one can fail to feel sympathy that her husband died suddenly on holiday whilst in a gym. The story of how she coped and parented her children through this is helpful, because she did so with the help of Grant, a psychologist from Wharton who speaks scientific sense about loss and grief. 

There are many studies that show that writing down grateful thoughts has scientific benefits. Thinking those thoughts has been shown to release Dopamine into our bodies (Class A drugs like cocaine also causes dopamine to be released so respect its power). Serotonin is then also released if we write them down. Serotonin release and uptake is the basis of many prescription anti-depressants. This powerful combination can help us to experience physical effects like better sleep or less pain and psychological effects like feeling happier and having more willpower and optimism.

You might not feel that anything will make you feel any better – but the science says otherwise. Even if the situation doesn’t change, you have the chance to send chemicals around your body that will make you feel better about everything being as it is. Feeling better is not something to be avoided. It is something you can do to stay well and think more clearly. 

Take 5 minutes out to reflect and write down 3 things that you are grateful for a couple of times a week for the next 12 weeks. It has strong proven scientific benefits. Bizarrely, do it particularly if you don’t feel like doing it and are telling yourself things couldn’t get any worse and it will be a total waste of time.

4. Actively remind yourself to think optimistically

Either by yourself or with your friends’ help, deliberately look for positives every day and in every conversation you have with yourself or someone else.

Seligman is the man to google if you want more information or need convincing about the power of positive psychology. His research, subsequently emphasised beyond doubt by others, has found that people with optimistic thought patterns live longer and earn more money.

This period will pass. Science suggests that people who train themselves to have an optimistic mindset during this downturn will emerge healthier and more prepared to take advantages of the opportunities that will be there in the new world reality, than those who practise pessimistic thinking and don’t notice them.

When things happen, good and bad, we can either see them as affecting everything and as being long lasting (Seligman refers to these as Universal and Permanent) or being short term and relevant to just the point at hand or to this one thing at this one time (Seligman uses Temporary and Specific to describe these). 

When good things happen, people with optimistic mindsets look for ways in which the changes could be made Permanent and Universal. When bad things happen, optimistic mindset people remind themselves that the incident is Temporary and Specific – this means their brains are less likely to start looking for “evidence” why the bad “luck” will continue. 

People with pessimistic mindsets do the opposite. When good things happen they tell themselves it won’t last and is just a one off – they see good things as Temporary and Specific. When bad things happen, people with pessimistic mindset say things like “Things always go wrong for me. This is typical, just my luck.”

Check out “always” and “typical” – these type of words provide “evidence” to your brain, and to the brains of others, that the bad things are Universal and Permanent. 

These mindsets have a huge difference not just on how we feel (optimism releases the chemicals mentioned in 3) above), but also on what actually happens next in terms of events.  

Brains of optimistic thinkers are primed to look for opportunities and connections with other areas of their lives where they could be an upside. Remember point 2) above – your brain looks for evidence that things are true? You have more chance of finding opportunities to be “lucky” if you are looking out for them. This creates a positive cycle where, because you are looking, you can find other good things and opportunities.

If you are looking for evidence that things won’t get better you will find that evidence and your brain will start to miss or distort opportunities because they don’t fit the pattern that everything is going to be bad forever. There is no such thing as good luck or bad luck. It is all about perception. 

Most of us are in the lucky 99% who can and will have a life after the virus has been eradicated. You do have a significant amount of power about what that life looks like – even if it doesn’t feel that way right now. What are you learning about yourself, your customers, your suppliers or your business in general that could be useful to you in the future?

5. Ask yourself whether you are spending precious brain energy on something you simply can’t control or influence

One of our most popular Tea Break Training bite-size sessions is called Sphere of Influence. Our brain energy is not infinite. We think we can power on and keep going but we can’t. To think well, we need a supply of glucose and when it is gone, the quality of our thinking diminishes until we get more glucose produced by our bodies (or get a quick hit by a sugary cup of tea in my case)

It’s not just about brain fuel. Once a moment is gone, it is gone forever. When I started to think about my thinking and to log and reflect where I was spending my energy, initially I was horrified. The amount of time I spent dwelling, raging or worrying about things that were outside my control was frightening. What if I spent that time doing something productive instead? What could I achieve?

Quite a lot as it turned out. I tried the tricks and I wrote 2 books. Whatever you think of them, they are a darn sight better for me than sending large amounts of cortisol round my body would have been! 

I have attached one of the activities from Its Not Bloody Rocket Science – The Journal, to see if thinking about your thinking in this way could help you.

It is a really simple trick. At any point in the day, stop to notice whether your brain is occupied in doing or thinking about something that is in your direct control. That’s great. Keep doing it. 

However, if you notice instead that it is spending time on thinking about something you can’t control but can only influence, just pause and check. Is the amount and intensity of your thinking time invested in “The Thing” commensurate with the amount of time you are spending on it and the worth of “The Thing” to you. If you have spent hours on something that you have only a little control over and it’s not really that big a deal, maybe focus on something else instead. 

If you notice that you have just wasted an hour dwelling on something that is past and you can’t do anything about it now or something that is entirely outside your sphere of influence or control, then stop. Don’t waste another hour. It is not a productive use of your energy and it is unlikely to be doing you any good mental health wise. I recommend doing something instead that you are not good at so that you have no option but to concentrate on it. I love reading and films but because my mind can wander, they are not always a great distraction for me when I am at my worrying worst. Knowing about this science however has enabled me to learn to play the guitar and sing at the same time…(I won’t, I promise…)

Pick something you can’t do currently that you would like to learn to do. If you can’t find a guitar shop open, how about learning a language via an app, knitting, cooking something complicated from scratch. Every time in the next 12 weeks that you find yourself thinking unproductively, spend five minutes doing the thing you would like to learn to do instead. It creates a “break” from unproductive thinking which means you don’t dwell for as long. You might just be able to speak French when the country is open again for business...

  • 6. Feeling a sense of panic or not being able to think straight are normal

Most people have heard of the “fight or flight” reaction that we experience when we feel threatened by something. This response is evolutionary. Put simply, the chances of us all being here as individuals in this crisis are tiny. Every person in your ancestral chain had to stay alive and met another specific person who also happened to be alive, or you would not exist at all.

There is a lot about odds in the news at the moment. However think about these odds. It’s mind blowing to think that the odds of me and you as individuals being here to experience these strange days at all is way more than a trillion to one.

Go and buy a Richard Dawkins book from an online independent bookshop to get your head around this. For now, in my simple and far less beautiful prose terms, we are here because our ancestors had the chemicals and brain wiring that kept them alive when they needed to fight off a bear, run from a fire or hide from the cold or the elements.

As a result of their survival, they have passed down particular evolutionary brain wiring to us. The fight or flight reaction is one of them. However, most of us are not running from bears every day and given you are reading this online we are both lucky enough to have a warm home and a computer (count your blessings from point 3 and just imagine what it is like to be homeless right now…)

This “old” wiring is alive and well and does the same things to our bodies (makes our heart beat faster, makes the blood run to our feet, give us a flush to the face), but the things that bring on these reactions aren’t bears or the need to find shelter from extreme cold. The things that trigger these “old” reactions in us can be modern – and less obvious. 

At a basic physiological level, your fight or flight reactions are powered by blood and oxygen. Not just the obvious reactions like increased heartbeat but also the sweaty palms and butterflies in your tummy.  Not many people are aware of the implications of your fight or flight reaction on your thinking power and simply knowing about this has helped some of my clients immensely. The blood and oxygen required to power your fight or flight reactions has to come from somewhere – we don’t carry round oxygen tanks and blood transfusion monitors in daily life and our body has finite amounts. There is a simple, physiological reason that you can’t think straight when you are threatened – the blood and oxygen required to power the physical reaction in your heart, feet or face is coming from the specific part of your brain that deals with conscious decision making and rational thought.

Thus it’s entirely normal not to think of a great riposte until after the argument or to not be able to find the right words in a situation where you feel deeply hurt or that something is really unfair – because the blood and oxygen required to come up with your best responses is no longer powering the part of your brain that does that – they are simply elsewhere.

David Rock knows his neuroscience and you can find him talking about a model I love that simplifies all of this called SCARF on the internet everywhere. SCARF is an acronym and it helps us understand the modern day threats that can trigger the SCARF or “fight or flight” reaction. These are threats to our S – Status, our C – Certainty, our A – Autonomy, our R – our Relatedness or Relationships with one another and our F – our sense of Fairness. 

The viral outbreak is likely to have triggered not just one of these reactions in most of us but all 5. You might have previously been the breadwinner in your family or the captain of your football team. Suddenly you might not be either. That is your Status trigger switched.

Certainty? Wow, that went last week for all of us.

Autonomy? There is lots of debate about what the state should or shouldn’t do to restrict our freedoms but we can’t choose to fly or holiday and some of us can’t even leave the house.

Relatedness. Absolutely – we are all feeling increasingly isolated, even if we are surrounded by people. Bet you have some friends and family that we talked about in 1). Social media is full of people getting angry.

Fairness. You bet. The views on what is “fair” right now and sending us into our own paroxysms of righteous indignation are wide ranging and sometimes extreme. It gets us angry and we feel it unfair that some people will lose their lives, jobs or livelihoods.

Emma Barnett’s show is my go-to place to keep me sane, informed and entertained and there was a great section on the morning I wrote this (18th March to listen back). It was about whether people thought it unfair or reasonable that their friends were still out for dinner or socialising. My 12 year-old posed a question over dinner – “Mum it feels really unfair that literally the whole world is being punished because one person ate a bat.”  

It doesn’t matter to your blood, oxygen and brain whether your sense of “unfairness” is triggered by something logical or rational. You could be totally misguided and still feel angry about something being unfair, meaning that you experience the inability not to think clearly (and then, as a result, say something you don’t really mean or something insensitive or unfair in return…) 

This takes us neatly back to point 1) Be kind. Even if your most wise friend seems to have lost their sense of right and wrong. It may simply be they are experiencing the very opposite of a rush of blood to the head. Share this science with them. It will help you to remember it for yourself.

So, it’s time to think about your story. What will you tell your grandchildren that you did and didn’t do in the coming weeks? How will you stay mentally well and have as many powerful positive chemicals in your body as humanly possible? How will you train your brain to see things as they are and to prepare for the opportunities at the end of this to rebuild our world? 

None of us will be perfect in the coming weeks. But let’s accept what we don’t do well as quickly as we can and make deliberate choices in how we think to be the best versions of ourselves. We need collective brain power at the end of this. Training your own brain is something you can do, when so much else of what is happening in the world is out of our control.

If you think that reading about the science in more detail would help or you would like some practical exercises to help you to think more positively and to think about your thinking in the coming weeks, check out my books here. I have a stash and will be posting them personally if other sellers can’t!  https://www.toprightthinking.com/shop-2/

Click on the links to try these activities

Reduce the time spent on unproductive thoughts that don’t change anything, with this activity from It’s Not Bloody Rocket Science – The Journal.

https://www.toprightthinking.com/portfolio/coronavirus-keep-your-brain-well/

Help yourself to feel better. Use this activity from It’s Not Bloody Rocket Science – The Journal, to think about the things you are grateful for.

https://www.toprightthinking.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/RSJACT006-Gratitude123.pdf

Old Habits Die Hard

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The Big Idea

Given that you can’t open a paper or magazine in January without a mention of New Year Resolutions, you might be surprised to know that most of us have given up on giving things up for New Year. 75% of adults reported that they didn’t make a resolution last year. This is more prevalent in the over 55’s than the under 24’s. The research also found that for those who did make a resolution, only 5% of people were continuing with the new habit, almost a year later. So maybe those over 55’s tried and failed so many times that they think there is no point promising themselves they will take up more exercise or cut back on the cake…

Regardless of your views on dry January, another study makes sobering reading. When doctors tell heart patients they will die if they don’t change their lifestyle habits, only 1 in 7 were able to make the change needed to live. Literally, even when it is a matter of life and death, being motivated to make a change isn’t enough – and that is because it is very easy to want to change something, but in fact our brains are hard wired to hold onto habits – even if they are not good for us and might lead to an early demise…

Whilst January and the start of a new decade is a great time to take stock, the research says that however motivated we are to make positive changes in our lives, most of us simply won’t be able to follow through. We will fail.  

Some clients tell me they can’t change – they have tried, failed and therefore accepted as true what they sang badly but boldly via a karaoke machine over the festive period – “I Am What I Am”. What I help people to understand is that the science doesn’t say we can’t change. It says we choose not to.

Recent research into ageing and the human brain says that it is a myth that all of our key mental development has happened by our mid-20s. Due to something called “neural plasticity” it is still perfectly possible to change and adapt – even in our 60s and 70s. The research proves that, if we choose to, we can develop our thinking to achieve more than we thought possible. There is also growing evidence that people who do adapt and change tend to earn higher salaries and live longer.

This single fact is how I can make a living as a coach – I ABSOLUTELY KNOW, with NO DOUBT WHATSOEVER that the person in front of me is DEFINITELY CAPABLE of more than they currently believe. Science puts that beyond doubt. So, once I have shared that science with my clients, we work hard – identifying opportunities and exploring barriers so we explicitly understand what the individual needs to do more or less of – and then crack on with it.

But as Shakespeare said: “Aye, there’s the rub”. Because the key word/s in that last sentence aren’t the sexy or motivating ones like “identifying opportunities”, “exploring barriers” or even “crack on”. Sadly, it is “work hard”.  

That is a key part of the problem with a New Year Resolution or change at any time of the year. It sounds easy. Your clothes feel tight so you tell yourself “I’ll just cut back on the cakes.” You know you are drinking too much wine so you tell yourself, “It will be easy to cut back, I’ll not drink in the week.” But “I’ll just” and “It will be easy” are poisonous lies we tell ourselves. It sounds easy. So that fact that it is really, really, hard to change comes as a bit of a shock.

We have perhaps come to think that giving something up is like so much else in our lives – an “on-demand” activity. But breaking habits isn’t like that. Your brain is a pattern machine. It loves collecting experiences, conversations and memories and finding existing patterns that it can fit them into. This means that every time you do or hear something, your brain holds onto the things that fit established thought patterns that you have already. The unfortunate thing is that it modifies beyond usefulness or even discards things you see or hear that don’t currently fit the pattern you know and love.

This is the simple reason why new habits that are good for us are so hard to get established. It would be great if getting into a new exercise routine is as simple as joining a gym or buying a bike but it is not ( as those of us with a gym membership direct debit but very few actual gym visits will know) We like the idea of a new pattern – that’s why we get excited about the idea of a New Year and a New You, but our brains are not very effective at the implementation part.

Remember that going to the gym or cycling on a weekend morning would be a new pattern. Implementing new patterns require will-power, resisting the urge to do something you want to do or doing something you really don’t want to do, requires deliberate thought. Deliberate thought requires mental energy and your brain is a Scrooge-like miser – it doesn’t like spending that energy.

This is particularly true if getting on the bike or going to the gym is likely to change or remove an existing pattern – perhaps if you are going cycling on a Saturday morning you will have to trade some Friday night beer? Or in going to the gym after work, you will have to leave work early or be home later. This might easily give you an attack of the guilts.

Remembering the science here can come in very handy. Because our brains hold onto existing  habits and patterns for all they are worth to save energy, one of the tactics that your brain will use is to tell you “lies” Your brain is fabulous at coming up with some very convincing reasons as to why you should not change the pattern today. Your guilt or your FOMO could actually be lies that your brain has invented because it simply doesn’t want to invest the energy required to create the new thought pattern.

This trick your brain plays on you is perfectly normal and is part of a condition we all experience called cognitive dissonance. Every day it is part of being human to look for evidence that what we believe to be true is actually true and to dismiss anything we see, hear or tell ourselves that doesn’t fit our current patterns. Because change is hard work and requires will-power and effort, when the going gets tough your cognitive dissonance really kicks in.

Cognitive Dissonance and the miser-like quality of resisting new patterns to save energy does have a purpose – your brain does everything for a reason – even if it gets in the way of change! The cognitive part of our brain – the bit responsible for remembering things, making decisions and so on, is actually quite small. This is why we are rubbish at some types of multi-tasking – our brain simply doesn’t have the room or the power to process two conscious thoughts at the same time.

All is not lost though. The great thing about patterns and habits is that if you persist, when the new habit is established to the extent that you are doing it, almost without thinking it moves out of the conscious part of your brain to our unconscious  (the limbic brain if you want the technical term). When this happens we can multi-task and the new habit doesn’t feel like so much of an effort – because we are not doing two conscious activities at the same time – we are doing an unconscious one and a conscious one.

Think about learning to drive. When you first got behind the wheel of a car you could think of nothing but mirror, signal, manoeuvre. Chances are , you now drive mostly unconsciously –  leaving you free to talk hands free, listen to an audiobook or imagine your future It’s why even if you have a break from driving/cycling etc, you never forget how to do it – you don’t need to remember how to remember something if it has moved into your limbic brain. Imagine learning how to forget to drive?!

In summary, the truth about creating new productive habits and breaking old unhelpful ones is simple but a bit depressing, because there is usually no quick fix. Most of us are well intentioned and are genuinely motivated to make changes in our lives but science proves good intentions are not enough. Particularly on days when you are tired, feeling a bit unloved and super busy, your brain will actively find evidence that making the change doesn’t really matter. That you don’t have time. Or that you aren’t the most unfit/overweight/disorganised/bored of all your friends…so if it’s not really broken, why go to all this horrible effort to fix it?

Before you settle for the status quo though, remember the good news – the research into neural plasticity and the other side of the cognitive dissonance coin. If you get to grips with the tricks that you brain is playing on you, you can absolutely change things. Expect to work hard on thinking about your thinking and you can achieve things beyond what you currently imagine (or ditch a small but irritating habit!) 

Change requires clear sighted thinking about your thinking. It requires you to develop the ability to assess the way you are currently filtering what you see, hear and tell yourself. And to see if those filters need adjustment.

So, take heart, prepare to work hard and start to think about your thinking.

Got It – What Now?

Avoid “don’t” or “mustn’t”

Ever told yourself to stop worrying and get to sleep and been unable to? Or wondered why a child touches a hot plate when you have told them not to? Our brains are not very good at recognising the “don’t” or “stop” in a sentence. One study found that insomniacs actually sleep better when they are told to try to stay awake.

If we did a quick experiment and I told you NOT to think about something, even for a split second you would find it harder than you think. Try now.

Absolutely DON’T think about a blue double decker bus.

However, every time we have a brain glitch, we also have an opportunity to use it to our advantage.  Try re-framing your commitment or resolution. If you tell yourself “I won’t have that cake”, sadly all your brain has heard is CAKE. You can’t help but think about cake. Frame it instead as “I’m going to find ways to make heathier eating choices” Another option is when you think CAKE, find something else quickly that you can focus on instead. Choose something that requires your full attention remembering that our brain is rubbish at multi-tasking – so it can’t think about CAKE if it is trying to learn a new language on an app or writing a thank you note to someone.  

Fold Your Arms

Yes honestly! Fold your arms right now. Now fold them the other way. How does that feel? I’ve done this activity with over 10,000 people and the results are always the same. Folding your arms one way feels normal, you don’t think about it. Folding them the “other way” feels weird. You have to think about it. It takes effort.

It is unlikely that you were taught to fold your arms one way over the other. There is no right or wrong way to do it and no danger to you in doing it the opposite way. Your brain simply prefers one way over the other because it has a pattern or a neural pathway to fold them that way and your unconscious brain now folds your arms for you so that you don’t have to think about it.  Asked to fold your arms the other way, it becomes a conscious task that requires conscious thought because there isn’t an established neural pathway for that alternative.

Think about any change you want to make using the arm folding trick. Chances are what you are doing now has become normal. The opposite will feel like folding your arms the wrong way. However, if you persist both will start to feel quite normal – after 10,000 goes at folding my arms the wrong way, I promise you this is true!

Listen for Your Lies

If you are going to try to break a habit, actively start to listen out for the excuses that you tell yourself as to why it is OK to “Do it tomorrow”. I have unashamedly stolen Cordelia Fine’s term for these excuses – “lies”. Her book A Mind Of It’s Own is one I recommend at least weekly to clients. Actively listen out for the lies you are telling yourself, and call yourself out on them. Maybe give other people who you are close to permission to call them out too. Remember they won’t sound like lies – they will sound like really plausible reasons that it is OK to have a lapse. That is because they have been invented by your very individual brain. The lies will perfectly suit you. Your brain is literally designed to tell you the very best personalised lie possible so that it can hold onto an established pattern.  When you hear your brain inventing an excuse like “I really don’t have time today” or “I should really stay and finish this work rather than go to the gym tonight” you brain has intended to convince you absolutely and completely to believe the lie. Some of my clients have reported that noticing the lies makes them feel like they are making progress. Feeling positive about yourself is linked to better success with breaking habits and making better judgements. This means noticing your lies can have a double benefit – you start to think about your thinking and you get the feel-good factor.

Practical Reminders Can Help the Shame Factor  

When you fall off the wagon or start to listen out for your excuses/lies it can be a bit disconcerting. Cordelia Fine goes as far as to say that the only truly self-aware people are often the clinically depressed. There is truth in that because your lies and excuses aren’t exclusively a bad thing – they are actually there to protect you from feeling the full shame of your failure. This gives us a classic catch 22.

  • Your brain wants you to avoid feeling ashamed of yourself for not going to the gym, so it tells you a lie to justify not going to make you feel better.
  • Calling out the lie is the only way to start to change, but if you do call out the lie you probably will feel ashamed of yourself.
  • Feeling ashamed doesn’t help us to think and change so we are more likely than ever to persist with the unhelpful habit.

Psychologists did some research where they got people to imagine they had done something really bad (it was kill a child in a road accident, so it was pretty horrific.) They got a comparator group to imagine they had done something really good. They then asked both groups to do a maths test, with an option for a period of practise first.  Biscuits were available for all participants. The people feeling low did worse on the test because they didn’t practise. They mooched around the room instead, flicking through magazines and opening drawers. And they ate double the amount of biscuits. This experiment was with imagined events. So, think about what happens when you have real life issues going on that you feel bad about. Is it really any surprise you can’t hold off the pies or get to the gym? 

We know that where there is a brain flaw, there is also a way we can exploit it to our advantage. The researchers also found that where they put up a sign to tell people that eating the biscuits wouldn’t make them feel any better, people didn’t eat the biscuits. When people were made aware of the facts, they performed just as well as those with happy thoughts.  

So, the top tip here is simple tricks work. That post-it note on your fridge that says “remember extra treats won’t actually make you feel better in an hour” might work. A note on your desk that says “remember, if the first thing you do is check your emails, you won’t make a start on your actual priorities” could help.

Replace Judgement with Curiosity

Try not to avoid feeling the shame of failure. Rather, when you are feeling ashamed of yourself change the language that you are using to talk to yourself about your lapses. When you find yourself avoiding the gym using sentences to berate yourself, or catch yourself saying “you are useless – how hard can it be to resist a piece of cake?” the change will get harder. Instead, deliberately use what I call “Curious and Interesting” questions – “Ok, so it’s interesting that I’ve avoided the gym tonight. Has today has been particularly stressful?”  Or “OK so I feel a bit rubbish about myself for eating that cake but if I took the time to be curious instead what would I notice about today – has it been particularly tiring or upsetting? What was my best lie?”

Expect to Fail

The drop in self-esteem from the “failure” makes us feel worse and means we are even more likely to resort to the cake-tin and the corkscrew for comfort. I help my clients to understand that failure is totally normal and something to learn from and build upon, rather than use as a sign that you will never succeed

There is a psychology study I love to quote because it is memorably about radishes and biscuits. Volunteers were sent into a room. Some were told to resist the biscuits and just eat radishes. A second group were told to eat whichever they wanted. They then tackled a puzzle afterwards. Those who hadn’t had to spend mental energy resisting the biscuits, persevered for twice as long as those poor souls who had been on the radishes…Resistance is hard work.

Remember, resisting something or doing something new takes conscious brain energy. Because we only have a finite amount of conscious energy, if we are using that energy to make decisions in the day job and resist the biscuits, we will get pretty tired. Make decisions – your day job!

It’s not weak to find you don’t seem to have the energy to resist the biscuits after a busy day, it’s inevitable that you find it hard. You simply don’t have the resources to resist.

Your brain will want to use that as an excuse/lie of course – “Come on, there’s no point in going the gym, you’re shattered”, but a quick rest of your mental resources can work wonders. Allow your brain to recharge. Stop thinking for a minute. Shut your eyes, use a calm app but otherwise don’t look at your phone or just take a walk outside. You will be amazed at what 3 minutes of not thinking can do.

Failure doesn’t have to mean that the effort is wasted – quite the contrary. Using the Curious and Interesting test about what caused you to fail on that particular occasion can be enlightening and game changing. Imagine finding through your thinking that you fail most spectacularly when you have had 6 hours rather than 7 hours sleep the night before. Maybe you will find you are working on fixing the wrong habit?

Practise Matters

Imagine that the part of your brain that deals with change is like a muscle – psychologists sometimes refer to it as the moral muscle. There is a great study that showed that where people used conscious energy to make a small everyday change that this strengthens this moral muscle. If you imagine your brain being like a real muscle it helps. Doing a particular exercise every day without fail will strengthen the relevant muscle you are working on. You wouldn’t consider exercising that muscle just twice a week as wasted energy. You would expect it to have some effect – just maybe not as impactful as quickly.

Scientists think that the important thing about changing habits is to keep trying. Forgetting is normal – you are battling your own established brain circuitry after all! But remembering to remember and persisting with thinking about your thinking, particularly when you fail, does work. It’s just hard work and your brain would rather give up.

Expect More Failure When You Feel Tired or Unloved…

Another study asked two groups of people to work at a task for a full day. One group had work that involved a lot of mental stimulation. Another group had a simple repetitive task. In the evening the researchers put them in front of a TV screen with a still picture and waited to see who would turn off the TV first. In every case it was the people that had done the simple work that acted first. They simply had more mental reserves left to go “this is boring”. Those whose brains had worked hard were slower.

A different group of researchers also found that when we feel socially excluded we are also more likely to reach for our cake/biscuits/wine. Dropping going for an after work pint or a calorie loaded coffee with a friend might sounds like a practical solution to cutting out wine or cake but actually may not help you as much as you think. Finding other ways to stay connected with your friends and work colleagues will be important.

Remembering that your brain is going to have a field day with it’s lies and make it much harder work for you to stick to a resolution if you have a day at work or home that makes you feel a bit bruised and unloved, can help. So be hyper-alert and appreciate you might have to work really hard to get to the gym or resist the wine in the fridge after a bad day.

Plan for the Long Haul

You might have heard that “it takes a month to make a new habit” but unfortunately recent research says it takes most of us a lot longer. The “month myth” did come from a doctor – a book called ‘Psycho-cybernetics’ written in the 60s by Dr Maxwell Maltz, a plastic surgeon turned psychologist who noticed that after plastic surgery it took about 21 days for the average patient to get used to his new face or lose “phantom limb” syndrome after an amputation. Unfortunately, Malz looked for correlations with other habits that don’t stand up to modern scientific scrutiny.

Our YouGov findings echoed a previous study that UCL did in 2010. To succeed you will have to persist with a new habit for on average 66 days (or until about March 6 for those who are doing a New Year Resolution) before you have created a neural pathway strong enough to withstand your excuses/lies and allow your unconscious to take over the task. Most of the people in our study who kept going with a change for over 3 months also made it to the full year.

It is worth planning for feeling more tired than usual for probably 3 months when you make a change – even if you are “just” resisting cake or trying to remember not to bite your nails. The UCL average also contains some depressing news for some people – for one person it took 254 days of persistence. Given that willpower to resist is very energy sapping, this poor person must have been physically and mentally exhausted by the effort. You might decide that the thing you want to achieve is simply not worth 3 months hard work. If so, be honest with yourself about that now. Certainly, having a long list of resolutions or things you want to change about yourself is not likely to succeed if you tackle them all at once. With my clients we take time to find the most important things to work on and then tackle them one at a time. Maximum two at a time if the two are closely intertwined with each other.

Help Yourself and Others

You might well be exception to the rule – the UCL average of 66 days to break a habit, had one person succeed in just 18 days. However, imagine the lucky 18 day person saying to the 254 day person, “Come on mate, it’s easy. Just do it. If I can you can. It’s a simple case of mind over matter” etc.

Comments like that are likely to be well intentioned, but make it even harder for the person to succeed. So sometimes it’s no surprise that well-meaning advice from our super-fit, successful friends can be more a hinderance than a help! Be specific with your friends and family about what they can do to be helpful. Maybe share the science and give them permission to help you spot your lies. Be clear that jokes about you “eating all the pies” definitely won’t help. The right sort of support works wonders. Feeling like a failure or an “outcast” in comparison to your colleagues or friends does the opposite. It makes breaking the habit even harder given the science we have talked about above. 

Be Specific

Scientist have found that you have much more chance of changing something if you use something called Implementation Intentions. Telling yourself not just “I am going to do more exercise” probably won’t cut the mustard. However, telling yourself “I am going to do more exercise by taking a spin class on a Tuesday and going for a 2 hour walk on a Sunday” works much better. A simple trick, but hey, given this is such hard work, why wouldn’t we grab some simple things that research shows does make a difference?!

Make Brain Patterns Work For You

Something called ‘context-dependent repetition’ can really help you to have more good days than bad days whilst you are waiting for your unconscious brain to kick in. Let’s take a work example. Say you decided that you want to spend less time on emails. First, take the advice about being specific from above – “I want to reduce the time I spend on email so I am going to resist looking at email before I have written down my priority for the day”. The next step is to give that specific action some context and to make it dependent on something else. So, each time you close your laptop at night, put a plain post it on the screen. When you open up your laptop the next morning, you will need to get the post-it out of your way. You can do this by writing down a single achievement that you want for yourself that day first and sticking it up next to you.

Doing this means that when you first open your laptop and write on your post it, a mental link is formed between the context (opening your laptop) and your response to that context (writing your post-it). Each time you do a post-it in response to opening your laptop, this mental link gets stronger. When you open your laptop and this prompts you to think about your objective for the day automatically without giving it much thought, a habit has formed. You have simply replaced the habit you probably have now (opening up your laptop and opening email first) with another habit, opening up the laptop and creating your priority for the day.

I trialled content dependent repetition after a recommendation from a coach I know who works all over the world with senior executives – helping them to stay healthy and resilient. I used his recommendations for a couple of simple things – to drink more water and take more exercise. At night I would place a pint of water by my bed and choose an uplifting song for the next morning. When I awoke I would drink the pint of water, click play on my phone and get straight down on the bedroom floor to exercise for the length of my chosen track. More often, I carried on for 2 tracks. Those 4-6 minutes of exercise a day adds up usually to about 25 minutes a week. It’s not as much as I would like but what I was finding was that even that 25 minutes was at risk if I was looking for a “window” in which to do it all at once (“I’ll do it on Sunday…” was my usual lie) What I have learnt though, thinking about my thinking, is that if I start to potter downstairs for a cuppa, that exercise never happens. I have to do it before my clever brains starts making excuses – so just as I wake up and am a bit bleary is perfect!

What’s In It for You

Our brain likes habits because they are mentally efficient It can be helpful to think about what fantastic use you could put your “spare” energy to if you just created a new habit (say defining your daily objective) and removed  a bad habit (wasting hours recycling email) . One way to start to invest your time wisely and to start to use your energy better is to notice you are doing your bad habit, stop immediately and do something else instead, straight away – even if it is for just 1 minute.

This has really worked for me. I wrote sections of my first book and learnt to play the guitar by doing 5 minutes of writing or 1 minute of chord practise as a distraction activity for 2 particularly bad habits – biting my nails and over-dwelling on a particular frustration in my life that was out of my control. The writing was relatively easy. I’d do a paragraph on my phone if that is all I had to hand. In the case of the guitar, I got a stand and put the guitar by my kitchen table where I spent most of my working life as well as my home life. When I noticed myself doing one or the other, I would pick up the guitar for 5 minutes, thus breaking my thought pattern for a moment. Remember we can’t multi-task so doing something you aren’t good at immediately takes your full attention.

Think About Your Thinking

I’ve left the big one until last. If you are still reading, stay with me. This could change your life. There is a fantastic book called Immunity to Change by Harvard Professor Robert Keegan and Harvard Director Lisa Laskow that I recommend to clients all the time.

Keegan and Laskow write with experience and knowledge about how our brains are actually immune to change. How our very wiring and nature sabotages even those who are most enthusiastic and motivated about making changes.

In a nutshell they talk about the difference between technical changes and mindset changes. Technical changes are relatively easy to make. So, let’s assume for a moment that you didn’t know much about the research into calorie intake and intermittent fasting, or the life-threatening dangers of not getting enough sleep. It might be that finding out that a change is needed might be all it takes to get you to think about your eating patterns or turn off your screen at night. This would be a technical change. For me, as it turns out, some of the exercises that I was spending time on were not that efficient. A great personal trainer later (thank you Hedge Haigh) and bingo, I’ve made a technical change which has meant I spend less time on muscle based exercises, have indulged horribly over Christmas but am starting the New Year without a muffin top. Don’t diss technical changes. They can be brilliant.

However, for most of us, the persistent things we have tried to change are harder. This is often because it involves mindset change, rather than technical or structural change. It requires us to think about what we really really want, to quote the Spice Girls. This is because sometimes the change that we want to make, that on the face of it seems really simple, is not that simple at all. Sometimes a different priority that we have, another thing that is important to us, is in direct competition with the thing we want to change. If we are not aware of these competing priorities we might not realise that some of the things we are trying to achieve are bound to fail, because they are a direct contradiction to something else that we hold dear.

A practical example can work best here. Try drawing 4 columns on a piece of paper. Keegan and Laskow call this an “Immunity Map” – and it’s available free on the web.

Title the first column “New Behaviour (they call it “Visible Commitment”). In that column, write down the new behaviour that you want to create. Let’s assume it is “Drink less Alcohol” for our purposes.

Title the second column “Doing/Not doing Instead” and under that heading, list all of the things that you are doing instead of that behaviour that you want to change. So, in our case that might be “over-indulging at weekends with friends” and “always having wine with dinner” and “reaching for a G&T after a hard day to wind down”

Now for the tricky third column. Keegan and Laskow call this “Hidden Competing Commitments”. Have a look at each line in column 2 and have a think about what things you like about yourself or things that are important to you that those habits in column 2 are actually supporting. So, for example you might realise that your “over-indulging at weekends” from column 2 is because you are “love being the life and soul of the party” or are committed to “Having a reputation for being able to take my drink and be the last man standing”. You might realise that “always having wine with dinner” is actually supporting something really important to you such as “Making evening meals a real event with my partner or friends”. You might think long and hard a realise that “reaching for a G&T after a hard day to wind down” is connected to “Rewarding myself after a long day” or “Living every day as it it is my last”.

Once you start to think about your thinking, you start to realise that you have next to no chance of achieving the things in column 1, because you have some competing priorities that require column 2 in order to survive. Or at least that is what you tell yourself. Onto hard-thinking column 4. What big assumptions are you making? Our brains love an either/or. The either/or is simple. So a big assumption you might be making is “I can’t be the life and soul of the party if I am sober” or “meals don’t feel like an event without wine” or “If I can’t reward myself after a long day with a G&T then what is the world coming to…” The problem with these assumptions is that we don’t test them. What your brain is less good at is answering this brilliant question “What would you do if it didn’t have to be either/or and you could have both.”

So, as we have often come across in this chapter. Where there is a brain glitch, there is also an opportunity to use it to your advantage. Instead of allowing those big assumptions to live on and squash any chance you have of drinking or eating less or getting the job of your dreams, thinking about your thinking can work. You can have both. Sometimes just knowing these assumptions are there can help because they make you realise that some of your “doing instead” from column 2 are choices, not necessities. I recommend people experiment. Pick a party and have just 3 drinks to prove to yourself what could be possible. Book a massage for an evening where you know in advance you have a tough day to get through. Get in from that hard day and do 5 minutes dancing and singing in the kitchen to your favourite song – then see if you still need the G&T to feel good.

To download both the article and workbook , visit our bonus material section:

Bonus Material

Immunity to Change: Robert Keegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey

A Mind of It’s Own: Cordelia Fine

Research on Time taken to Break Habits: (Lally, van Jaarsveld, Potts, & Wardle, UCL. 2010

What’s in it for me?

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I have been meaning to cover the topic of different ways to motivate people for ages. But with the book (named after this very blog!) taking up any writing time, it’s been on the back burner.

Lucky for me, I have been coaching a senior client who decided to take the writing into his own hands after one of our sessions!

The results of focusing on different motivations have been pretty impressive for him. Tangible and measurable. Trust him. He’s a lawyer…

Motivation Blog – John Kushnick

The issue of what motivates individual members of staff arose as a result of some very useful feedback from my direct Reports – it appears that I didn’t know what made them drag themselves into work every morning.

I had never really thought much about this before, assuming that everyone would obviously be the same as me. Why wouldn’t they?!

My first port of call after some tips from my inspirational coach Dulcie was that font of all knowledge, google. This took me to a couple of very useful articles: 9 Types of Motivation that Make It Possible to Reach Your Dreams by Dylan Buckley and 10 Types of Motivation: What They Are & How to Use Them, by Evan Tarver. Are these the best, the last word on these subjects? Who knows! It’s a long time since I’ve immersed myself in academia. What I can say is that they pricked my interest, unlocking that part of my brain that was looking at motivation but hadn’t let me know. Tricky things these brains.

I started by boiling down their work into 2 categories and 9 types of motivation.

The Categories are overarching and the types of motivation can appear in each:

1. Intrinsic: these people are motivated by internal rewards like fulfilment and contentment. This is about what is within that person rather than external rewards. It might also include the desire to avoid negative outcomes that are self- rather than externally-imposed. For example, they may have a strong fear of making mistakes, of failure, whereas the employer puts no such pressure on them.
2. Extrinsic: these people are motivated by external rewards like a bonus or raise as well as negative external factors like getting fired.

I then narrowed down the Types of Motivations to 9. The articles use slightly different terms but I was satisfied in the end that the following was the best way for me to separate out the key motivating factors:

1. Incentive/Salary – commit to actions due to the expected rewards. This is a classic motivation and one that is as valid as any other, although perhaps not destined to lead to the most truly rewarding working life.
2. Fear – act to avoid painful consequences of failure. This may be intrinsic (the employee’s own fear of failure) or extrinsic (where the employer has a history of moving on those who fail to meet targets). This is not necessarily one to encourage but it can be effective – please bear with me! One of my Reports is driven by a fear of the regulator and this means that she will ensure that her team work diligently and accurately so as to ward off the perceived risk of the firm being shut down for poor performance. It will not be a surprise that this person’s other main motivating factor was Recognition (see below).
3. Power – act in order to control own working life and/or others. This can appear to be somewhat negative but the employee motivation for power may be altruistic, to get the job done effectively rather than power for its own sake.
4. Recognition – I am recognized & respected by others. This is a powerful motivator. Who among us didn’t blush with pride when given a compliment by a teacher? If as a manager you get this right then you have an employee who will be self-motivated to go above and beyond for you; just top them up with praise and awards, step back and watch the needle go off the graph.
5. Competence & Learning – learning new skills is reward enough. Work should always be about challenges and I can’t think of any business where there’s been anything but radical change over the last few years.  This makes this employee an invaluable member of the team. While many want certainty and stability (see below) others want to rise to the challenge and help make your business future proof – or at least keep up with the breakneck changes. It is therefore vital to provide these employee’s with the right environment to stay ahead of the learning curve.
6. Autonomy – “I do it my way”. This is a more individual based version of Power in many ways; maybe more of an introvert. A valuable member of your team with this motivation will need to be protected from those trying to exert Power over them.  The challenge will be to manage and harness their talents within the framework of the needs of the business without letting them disappear into their world at one extreme or feel micro managed at the other.
7. Stability – “I like to know the future”. Not everyone wants or can cope with constant change. They will work best in an atmosphere where they are given very set tasks and sheltered from change while it is still being debated. They will have to be carefully managed when change becomes inevitable so that they can focus on all that stays the same rather than stress about the changes.
8. Status – “I have social standing” This can go hand in hand with Competence & Learning and is a more visible version of Recognition. It may sound a little big headed but need not be. For example, the status as an expert may be required to make it easier for that employee to train others.
9. Teamwork – “I am a member of the group”. This is a classic motivator and one that must always be encouraged. Like ants we all achieve far more together than we can on our own.

Having reviewed the subject and written the Motivation Pro Forma I sent it, ahead of their meeting, to my Reports together with a copy of the articles and a summary of what I was trying to achieve. I asked them all to think about theirtop 2 motivating factors ahead of the meeting so that we could discuss what they were and how I could best motivate them.

What was interesting was the degree that those who had (correctly) fed back about my lack of knowledge of their motivation actually lacked any real knowledge of it themselves! While this may at first blush appear to be a disadvantage it actually proved extremely useful in opening up the process so that we could both truly understand what motivated them.

We went through the categories and types of motivation and discussed what each meant to them. This allowed us to get a far more nuanced version of what their key motivating factors were, rather than just using the headline names. For example, while some saw Power as a negative, denying that they wanted the raw sounding control over others, one employee saw Power more as a way to obtain the best results for the company by controlling their work processes proactively.

By taking notes about their views about each motivation type and highlighting their top 2 Motivation Types I was able to get a full picture of what they needed from me. Interestingly it also gave my Reports some insight into what they wanted from their jobs. It is amazing how easy it is to spend so much time at work without ever really thinking what we want out of it!

Something else that was a pleasant surprise was that no one chose Incentive/Salary in their top 2: this is not to say that it was not seen as important, but rather that this is an outcome rather than an aim in and of itself. We all go to work in order to be paid (that’s why it’s called work and not play) but it’s a sad state of affairs if that’s our main reason.

By understanding my Report’s true motivation I can achieve the perfect Win Win scenario of improving their experience at work which should also lead to their becoming more productive and effective. Now why wouldn’t I be motivated by that?

Here is a version of John’s questionnaire that you are welcome to download and use.

Motivation Type – Pro Forma

Are MBTI/Insights/Personality Profiles still worth doing?

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Quick answer. Yes

3 BIG caveats

1) Use wisely and get someone to help you interpret profiles in line with the latest neuroscience and psychology, rather than relying just on the various commercialised products arising from Jung (MBTI/Insights etc) or Marston (DiSC etc) Brilliant minds and some great subsequent interpretations. But Jung/Marston did published their original works on psychological types on which these tools are based in 1921 and 1928 respectively and things have moved on a bit.

2) Don’t slavishly adhere to one version of “the truth” and treat whichever profile you did as “the answer”. It’s all helpful information to use as a start point, but there is not a silver bullet that will change your life and help you to suddenly make friends, get promoted or be a successful and popular leader who gets everyone to be both excited and productive. Remember that the products arising from the 1920’s psychology have now given rise to extremely lucrative businesses. So of course you will be told that “ours is different” and it will change your business for the better, forever… Mmmm.

3) Don’t use it to make excuses based on “your type” and  evidence/pretend that you can’t do things because you are Red/Blue, Introverted etc” Best to be honest and say “ I just don’t like doing that and I’m looking for an excuse.”

BIG caveats aside, I have had some remarkable results and some stunning ROI for individuals and organisations that were based on insights (with a small “i”) that stemmed from a session understanding and talking about their own personality profile or a team’s collection of “types”.

I can only speak from my own experience. What I have found is that used sensibly, the profiles give you a shared and balanced language that enables you to receive and interpret helpful feedback from other people about what you are doing that drives them to distraction.

Having words other than “I hate you and you are useless” enables you  to have a productive discussion with someone about what they are doing that cramps your own style, rather than rant to your other half about them, wasting your precious leisure time in the process.

We use a good old mixture of the psychologies for our common sense (and quick and pretty cheap) approach to psychological profiling. Our clients tells us it works wonders. But we suspect that is as much about encouraging and giving people the physical tools to have “top right” – high challenge and high trust conversations after reading their profile than the profile itself.

A personality profile is a starter for 10. Reading it and exclaiming how remarkable it is and how well it seems to have captured your brilliance and your “allowable weaknesses” gets you about 1% of it’s potential. It’s super easy to do that bit. Therefore a lot of people do it!

The hard work (and thus the big wins) come when real people use the knowledge in the real world. Use the profiles to have really difficult conversations. Give and receive really tough feedback. Feel vulnerable and have to dig deep resilience-wise to bounce back from uncomfortable truths.

And keep those horribly difficult conversations going and going…

Not many people do that bit because having started, they suddenly become much too busy with the day job or the latest organisational call to arms which needs their immediate and full attention.

We call that avoidance “Look a bear”. But that is an entirely different story!

 

Great Leadership – simple to define…really hard to do

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Most leaders I speak to these days appreciate that “Just do it, because I’m the boss” doesn’t work very well. In a knowledge economy and service businesses where smart people have the option to leave, JFDI is either dead or dying.

Leaders I usually work with find a more collaborative approach quite natural. However I’m also very fond of those who are honest enough to confess they’d prefer to be completely in control of absolutely everything…but are learning to live with it!

But what do you do when you do when the chips are down? When you need to influence others to “do it your way”, maybe because a tough, unpopular action is needed for a business to survive or thrive?

Well, the short answer is…It’s’s not quick or easy. And I guess that is obvious – otherwise everyone would be doing it!

Science and research have some answers. But a straw poll around the kitchen table with your family or in the bar with your friends will probably tell you the same thing.

If you ask: “If someone asked you to do something that might physically harm you or you were really frightened of, how would they need to make you feel in order for you to even consider trying it?”

I have found that 99 times out of 100 (once you have debated “How risky?” “Is it life or death?” “But would you do it for a million pounds?” etc) that the same 2 things come up:

“I’d have to really trust them and their motives for asking me to do it,”

“They’d need to convince me they knew what they were doing and would stay strong and calm, even if I was panicking or things went wrong”

People are people (not a quote from science but still wise words!). So if trust and convincing people you would stay strong matters where risks are personal and make your palms sweat, why should it be any different at work?

As humans we are wired to avoid things we would rather not do and will go to great lengths to convince ourselves we don’t need to (see the blog on habits for more about why) So in order to stand even a fighting chance of landing an unpopular decision or unwelcome change, people need to trust you on 2 levels:

1) Trust you as a person – do they believe you have good intentions towards them?

2) Trust in your competence – do they believe you are strong enough to act on those intentions?

Science and research suggests that great leaders who get the brilliant results in the fastest time get a “Yes” to both questions. Really quickly. And they are successful because they then have more time to spend on the business of getting more things done.

Researchers think that the key to this is that some of our human wiring is really old – paleolithic – so c.2-3 million years old. But that this wiring still functioning and powerfullly influences our thinking.

For our cave dwelling ancestors, choosing the right person to be led by, might have been a matter of life and death. Quite literally. Their survival would have depended on being able to choose quickly the person who was most capable of physically protecting or providing for them.

Those who choose well, lived and got to pass on their genes. Those who didn’t, died and didn’t get to pass on their genes. So most of us alive today have those genes and this evolved behaviour.

So even though we don’t live in caves and are making these decisions in a high tech office or over a networking coffee, we are still beholden to that old wiring.

And even if we are 45 and highly experienced, it is probably unrealistic to assume that 45 years of even the most impressive professional success can over-write habits that were 3 million years old in the making.

Most of the time we make decisions about who to trust in a split second – because it’s old wiring that controls that decision. And back in the day, any procrastination meant we got eaten.

BBC’s Horizon had a fab programme where neurologists showed how even the authenticity of our laugh affects who we trust in that split second. Our brain can sense a fake laugh. And it makes the part of the brain light up which triggers a reaction of “Don’t trust them- hide/run!”. A genuine laugh fires up the part of the brain which triggers “Oh, I’d like to be part of their group”.

We can’t fake what we feel. And it is instant and instinctive. We want to think we make rational choices based on weighing up logical arguments, but really our subconscious brain has already chosen who we want to follow and is now looking to prove itself right about that choice to trust or not trust someone. The decision has already been made. You just don’t realise it yet.

Imagine the time saved if you could get an instant “Yes” to both the “Trust:Intent?” and “Trust:Capability?” tests? 

But this equally explains why someone who has been promoted because they are really competent can struggle to get a team aligned behind them? Or why you have a really well intentioned leader who can’t seem to stretch performance?

It’s because you need both things to lead well. You can’t lead to your potential if you pass one test but not the other.

So when people don’t do things to your standard when you are are not there to “supervise” or can’t seem to make decisions without you being there to help, you may have to face an uncomfortable truth. Maybe their subconscious gave you a big red Britain’s Got Talent “X”  to one of those fundamental Trust Intent/Trust Capability” questions…

And because this all goes on at a subconscious level you probably didn’t notice what you did or didn’t do to get the “X”.

And whilst you might get feedback around the edges, your team would probably never tell you straight.

Imagine feeding back to someone more senior than you (who you did not trust!) that your gut instinct is not to trust either their personal intentions or their competence!…Mmm maybe not! But I bet you’ve never had that feedback either!

The news gets worse before it gets better…

Back to the research. Different experts describe these 2 key traits or dichotomies of “good intentions” and “strong capability” using different terms, but all broadly find the same thing.

Stanford psychologist Deborah Gruenfeld describes the 2 traits as Approachability AND Authority – “I will move towards you because I trust your intentions and I’m happy for you to be in authority because you know what you are doing and will be strong enough to do it”. 

Harvard’s Amy Cuddy talks about the dichotomies as “Warmth” AND “Strength”. “I warm to you because I trust your intentions”, I will follow you because you are strong and have the capability to protect me when things get tough”. 

Others who have translated this into practical advice describe “Support” AND “Challenge”. So “You support me so I trust your intentions and I expect challenge from you because it reinforces you are strong and knowledgeable”

In principle this all makes sense and separate research aligns. But this is really hard to get right in practise. This is quite simply because those 2 things are really hard to do at the same time. Hence my intentional use of capitals. In fact, let me re-phrase:

Our body and mind find it almost impossible to do both of these things at once.


Deborah Gruenfeld gives the example that that to be authoritative, you need to project your experience and your knowledge as being greater than that of your team. To some extent this leads to distancing yourself from them. Then to be approachable, you need to get closer to them and demonstrate genuine warmth and empathy – really valuing your relationships with people and hearing their perspective – even though you may know more. Difficult to do.

Amy Cuddy and the Harvard team point out too that there is a hormonal thing going on too – feeling “warm/supporting people” generally means we are secreting a hormone called oxytocin. And feeling “strong/being challenging” generally means we are secreting testosterone.

The bad news biologically is that these 2 hormones are not very good at co-existing in the body – Some evidence suggests that releasing oxytocin cancels out some of the testosterone – and vice versa. So in effect the existence of one may neutralise the power of the other!

So not only is it hard to be both warm and strong in practical terms, it would appear our bodies might have a biological issue with it as well! It’s a bit like being on a see saw. When one is high, the other is probably low. You can be “OK” at doing both together, but it feels impossible to have both ends of the see-saw on the up at the same time.

Leading people in tough times and getting them to do things they don’t want to do is not fast, easy and may not feel  “natural” because:

1) Being a good leader is really hard because it requires you to do 2 different and potentially contradictory things at once


2) It is not likely that you can expect yourself or other people to “get over themselves” or  “grow up” and get over these needs being met because, the needs are based on inbuilt wiring that is millions of years old 

So what can you do. That’s a long answer. It’s possible but you will probably have to do some things intentionally that don’t come easily.

A short easy way to start though is to take a “first things first” approach. Researchers think that the 2 dichotomies have a pecking order. Trusting the person has to happen first. Simply, if people don’t warm to you, they probably will look for reasons not to find you capable.

Saying you just don’t trust someone isn’t quite hard to justify and to define. But saying you have concerns about their experience or skills seems a more logical reason to question their decisions and not to do what they ask.

If you don’t gain genuine trust, you don’t pass GO. Work on other people trusting you personally and your intentions towards them FIRST. 

So before you start planning your big speech where you want to be impressive and establishing your credentials, think more simply about how your team could warm to you? Are you “real” and authentic in your dealings with them? Are you “likeable”?

Maybe you are reading this and thinking about someone you want to help to become more effective? And as you start to explain that the “soft” stuff of trust and likeability is not “soft” at all – it is the stuff of caveman survival, you can almost hear the response of “I’m not here to be liked, I’m here to be respected?”.

Perhaps quietly point them to the study done at Harvard where people were asked to rate their previous leaders across 2 scales – whether they liked them and whether they thought they were effective leaders. The study created a database of almost 52 thousand leaders. Of those 52,000, only 27 who were “disliked” were also rated as “effective”. By my maths that means only 0.05% of the people who were not liked, managed to convince people they were good at their job.

I’m not sure people proclaiming they are “not here to be liked” and “don’t have time for that soft stuff” would actually want those kind of hard odds? Particularly when we all know that “what do you think of such and such?”comes up daily at the coffee machine or over lunch. And can make or breaks careers, progression and reputations, regardless of HR talent processes.

People who are “not there to be liked” may well not feel the need to take action if someone answers with “I don’t like them that much”. But they probably would care very much if they knew there was a clear correlation with people also saying “I actually don’t think they are very good at their job.

This correlation comes down to the same desire for “evidence” – if we don’t like or trust someone and it is intuitive, that feels a bit wishy-washy so we will look for “evidence” that we are “right” to have that view. And surprise, surprise, we can find evidence for what we believe to be true.

You might find your personality lends you to either strength or warmth more easily than the other. That’s OK and very normal in my experience. But it’s what you do with that knowledge that counts. A later blog will deal with “tactics” to help you be more challenging or more supportive – quickly and whilst still being “you”.

But for now. Ask yourself what your intentions are towards your people? Do you genuinely care if they are happy at work? Do you really want them to be promoted and maybe take their skills with them? Would you protect them if they tried and failed?

Would you trust you? 

Do you like the “You” that you brought to work today?  

If the answer is “No” or even “I’m not sure”, your team can probably sense it a mile off. 

And if they have sensed it, their brain will not be able to help looking for evidence that it makes perfect sense to question or delay what you have asked them do. 

It will feel absolutely the right decision to spend time covering themselves, rather than taking a leap of faith and getting on with it.

So for now, put on a genuine smile. Put your phone down. Go walk around. Spot what makes your team’s eyes light up. Find ways to like them as people. Sure, it’s time away from your massive “to do” list. But it might unlock more performance and potential than you can imagine.

We have a “tea break” training session on high trust:high challenge that gets great feedback. If you think it could help you, give me a shout at dulcie@teabreaktraining.com

What to think about before you ask for a payrise

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There are 3 things it helps to think about in advance if you really want to secure a pay rise. Few people actively look forward to a conversation about money. Recent research by the BBC has suggested that women in particular find it difficult to ask. Thinking carefully about these 3 things should help you feel more prepared and hopefully to find the courage to give it a go. 

So well before you plan to open your mouth to ask think about…

1) What facts will help ? – some good evidence and background information will increase your chances of success

2) Who you are asking and what do you know about them? – this will help you to prepare how to ask them in particular

3) What you are like under pressure?  – you can then plan how not to be your own worst enemy !

So firstly – what facts will help. 

Prepare and take along evidence of some great results or specific responsibilities that illustrate that you are worth more. To get a payrise you are likely to need to show that you are going above and beyond whaat is expected of you – Remember to show what you will do in the future as well as what you have done in the past.  

Find out what your job is worth – look at similar jobs both inside and outside your company so that you can be clear about whether you are actually being underpaid at the moment and what a reasonable salary is for the work you do.

And think about the best time to ask – How your Company is performing and how the pay rise process works are important to know. It may be that there is simply a better time of year to have the conversation – maybe when budgets are being set or when cash flow is not an issue.

So on to the second piece of thinking – How to ask the person you are asking. 

You are probably asking someone you know so think about them personally… When are they personally at their most receptive? – is there a good day of the week or a time of the day to avoid? Certainly don’t catch them off guard by asking them in passing or when they are preparing for an important meeting themselves.

Think about what you know about their working preferences. Would it be better to ask them for a formal meeting in the office or ask to speak to them informally first? Do they like making decisions in the moment, if not, think about giving them advance notice of what you want to talk about. Some people like to reflect and so it might be better to ask and then give them a summary in writing so they can think about it?

Think about what they value in employees in particular and draw their attention to when you have done those things. Also plan what not to say – avoid anything that hints at complaining, arguing or over-sharing such as “My pay is not fair because…or I’m desperate for more money right now….” 

Finally think about your own responses in difficult conversations so that you can plan not to be your own worst enemy. 

Neuroscientists think that these highly charged situations at work make our bodies react in the same way that our ancestors did when they experienced a physical theat – so having a payrise conversation might mean your body goes into “fight or flight” mode. When our heart is racing our our palms are sweating during these highly charged situations the neuroscientists have proved that up to 80% of the blood and oxygen that is normally helping the part of the brain that deals with rational thinking and problem solving is diverted to your heart and your extremities – so just at the point where you need your wits about you and need to be able to think clearly, your rational brain is working at about 20% of its usual capacity….great ! So what can you do ?

Well, getting angry or upset won’t do you any favours, whereas staying calm and considered will. So if you notice that you are becoming emotional, breathe and remember that you may not be able to respond in a level headed way, so try not to start talking until you have really taken a moment to think about what you are saying.

Practise out-loud – saying slowly and calmly the key points you want to make – and then practise leaving it there and staying silent!  We can tend to talk too much when we get nervous. It’s often better to say what you have to say and then shut up so that you can really listen to the answer you are given.

And if you get a no, well that’s life. Rehearsing for this and preparing a question like “How would I make this a yes in 3 months time ?” is certainly better for your career prospects than threatening to resign ! 
So…Think about the facts. Think about how to ask the person you are asking. And think about how to prepare yourself. 

Then my ultimate tip is – just do it ! Asking for a pay rise is a real “who dares wins” situation. Because it is difficult to do, your brain will try hard to find you all sorts of reasons not to experience the discomfort of that conversation. So look beyond your natural resistance.

Ask yourself honestly, what do you really have to lose by respectfully asking your boss to review some evidence that suggests you are worth more?

You might get a “no” … but in the process you may well get some feedback that will help you understand what you need to do more of to get a yes in the future. 

And given practise makes perfect, asking for a pay rise once, will make it easier to ask next time! 

There’s more information about how I can help you personally with these challenging conversations at profitablyengaged.com and teabreaktraining.com.

Do you have Imposter Syndrome…?

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Ever have that sinking feeling that today is going to be the day when you finally get caught out ? The day when the mistakes, white lies and near misses of your past are finally going to catch up with you? And everything you have, will slowly start to unravel as you are revealed as a fraud?

If so then read on…you are not alone, research has suggested that over 70% of us feel this way sometimes. Maybe a bit of science might calm your heart-rate?

The technical term given to it in 1978 by 2 American psychologists is “imposter syndrome”. It is so called because you feel yourself to be an “imposter” somehow living a life that you do not rightly deserve. That you don’t really have the skills and expertise at the level your position or salary seems to merit.

You may remember a Talking Heads song with the lines “You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile and you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife. And you may ask yourself, Well, how did I get here ?..”

In our house we call Imposter Syndrome “running from the blagging police” – we laugh over a beer about an old fashioned bobby, running red faced towards us and simultaneously blowing a whistle. When he finally catches up, he puts a friendly but firm hand on our shoulder and says “Come on mate. Times up. You’ve had a good run at it but it is time to admit you don’t really know what you are doing and hand back the car/house/wife.”

I have had clients who have told me that their life has changed quite literally overnight when they realised this was “real” thing. When I told them that research suggested this was the number 1 coaching topic for Executives you could almost hear their sigh of relief. I don’t like to refer to it as a “syndrome” anymore. It makes it sound like an illness or something quite rare. Now that we know it is part of the human experience for most people, I talk about it as Imposter Thinking – Here are the tips that I share with my clients so that they can not let Imposter Thinking get in their way. I hope they help you too.

Accept Imposter Thinking is a normal part of being successful. 

Success usually relies on taking a few risks. Without taking some risks we can’t really make any mistakes. And we get our best learning from getting things a bit wrong and trying again. So making mistakes, rescuing some near misses and flying by the seat of your pants sometimes are likely to be part of the reason you are successful…Not evidence of the opposite!

Accept Imposter Thinking as an inevitable consequence of our brains not being wired to hear other people’s thoughts

We can only judge other people by what we see on the outside. By their results and outputs. What they say and do. We judge ourselves from the inside and judge ourselves based on our intentions. We process thousands of thoughts every minute. Thus we know intimately about every single time we had a near miss, or something we achieved was frankly down to a good dose of luck or chance. There are millions of pieces of evidence. But there are millions of pieces of evidence in everyone else’s mind too. It’s just that we can’t know about them. We simply don’t and can’t see into the minds of other people like we do our own.

Do the Maths – there are worse things to be than an Imposter…

Bertrand Russell said “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt”. Think about it. You have probably worked with enough people to have seen a few idiots and some wild overconfidence at first hand. Given that research suggests that 70% of people suffer from Imposter syndrome at some point and clinicians estimate that around 4% of the population are sociopaths and 1% are psychopaths….Yeah…Do the Maths. I’m blunt with my clients sometimes. “Don’t worry – it’s just evidence that you aren’t stupid or a psychopath”

If you feel like an Imposter sometimes, you are in good company

Many other, extremely successful people feel this way too. Take Sheryl Sandberg who says “There are still days when I wake up feeling like a fraud, not sure I should be where I am”. Howard Schulz describes how the experience doesn’t diminish if you get more senior. He said of the CEO’s that he knows that “very few people whether you have been in the job before or not, get into the seat and believe, today, that they are qualified”. It’s not restricted to business. Maya Angelou a hugely gifted writer who has won Tony’s, Grammy’s and been shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize wrote “I have written 11 books but each time I think “uh-oh” they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody and they’re going to find me out”. There have been countless articles written on this topic – the Harvard Business Review, the BBC, The Guardian, The Times. It’s really not just you…

There are some things that have really helped me and my clients. They might help you too…

When it happens, welcome it. It is simply evidence that despite your success, you haven’t got too big for your boots and your brain still wants to learn more.

Accept you don’t have to achieve perfection to deserve what you have. No one is perfect or the finished article. And if you thought you were perfect…well…revert back to doing the Maths!

Realise that you can reduce the risks. You can set your bar lower so it will happen less often. But you will also be pretty mediocre by your own standards.

Don’t expect it to get any better – another promotion or more success won’t make this go away. If anything, you will just get more “evidence” that you have been over-promoted!

Actively work with smart, honest people who have different strengths to you. Make it safe for them to give you feedback. You can stop worrying you will miss something because they’ll let you know.

You have a choice about how much power to let it have. Decide not to give it head-space and energy that could be better spent reflecting on the facts that underpin your success and learning from mistakes.

Focus on what you did do when something went well. Not what you didn’t do. You don’t have to have done everything perfectly for the end result to be good enough. Remember the 80:20 rule.

Help your self and others by naming what it is. Dare to be vulnerable when your instincts are telling you to keep your cards close to your chest. It made it less insidious and easier to laugh about it.

Use the “worried” feeling that you don’t know enough to your advantage. Remember you are seeing things with fresh eyes. Research shows that many scientific breakthroughs come from non-experts daring to ask a “stupid question”

If it pops up, congratulate yourself that it is probably evidence you are conscientious, reflective, honest and modest. Would you really want to NOT feel it and be the opposite of those ?

For more information on coaching to help with Imposter Thinking get in touch at dulcie@profitablyengaged.com or to train teams on how to overcome it, ask us for help at hello@teabreaktraining.com

Why doesn’t training stick ?

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After years in senior HR roles and managing large teams of people, I was frustrated when we spent time and money on training that didn’t seem to impact on the day job. I would have understood if the training wasn’t very good ! But often this was brilliant training that was delivered by great people, using sound business models and robust research. More often than not, “happy sheets” would provide feedback that the training was great. More often than not almost all the delegates would say that they would definitely use the skills back in the workplace.

So I wanted to do know more about why people who were keen to use the skills back in the workplace, didn’t end up doing so. And what I could do about it.

Cue – lots of research, conversations with training professionals and good old fashioned thinking later…There is one element of the training that I now know from experience can make all the difference. (Clue…it is not the quality of your slides…)

The interest and the involvement of the line manager – before and after the training – makes a significant and measurable difference as to whether training makes a difference to the business. 

It sounds so simple and so obvious. But come on…Let’s be honest. When I was a busy line manager, could I, hand on heart, say that I made proper time to have a powerful conversation with everyone who worked with me, in order make the training investment I had made really count?

No I can’t. And not for bad reasons.

What were my excuses…Err…The main one was that I trusted them to get on with it by themselves. They were capable people. I was sure they would ask if they wanted help…Right?

Well no. Not according to some of the best people I have spoken to who have 100s of years of experience between them. And not according to some of the latest research about what makes us work at work.

Knowledge moving from a classroom to the front line requires the line manager to proactively do something. Trusting people to get on with it sounds like empowerment, but it often doesn’t lead to a new behaviour or a new idea making it into the day to day work life of your teams.

Put simply, the science says your teams will mainly focus their minds on what you talk about and what you “reward” with your attention. 

If you don’t talk to them about what they have just learned and help them to think how they want to use it, 8 weeks later, more than 80% of it will be forgotten. 

“I’d love to do that but I just don’t have the time…” Is a common response I get when I challenge a line manager to do this well. The great news is that I have found a few simple ways to do this that really work.

People who have used it tell me it’s fast and actually quite rewarding.

We use the GROW model as a tool. It’s simple, it works and most people know it. Perhaps we could have invented new acronym, but why bother when this works just great ? We keep it simple.

If you are a line manager and one of your team is going on a training course, give them 4 minutes of your undivided attention and ask them a good “G” question and a good “R” question.

When they get back to work, give then another 4 minutes of your undivided attention and ask them a good “O” and a good “W” question.

Of course, ask more than 1 question if you like. Give them 7 minutes of your undivided attention by all means! However, our research suggests just 2 questions asked before one of your team attends training has a remarkable effect. Promise.

If your mind is blank (or one of your team is meeting you in 2 minutes and you can’t think of a great question…!), then give these a try. You could always build on them to make them more personal.

Pre Training

G (GOAL) Questions:

What are you hoping to get from the training ?

How are you going to measure if attending this training was a success for you (and/or the Company)

What would you love to be saying to me if I called you in the car on the way home after the training?

R (REALITY) Questions:

What is stopping you being really good at this already ? (You may want to probe if this is down to “Skill” or “Will” if you have the time)

What will stop you making the most of this opportunity to learn or practise your skills ?

Are you really up for this? What could change that?
Post Training (ideally within 24 hours but 78 hours max)

O (OPTIONS) Questions:

What things do you want to do differently as a result of the learning ?

What could you start doing differently today?

What could you do and what will you do ? What’s the difference ?

W (WHAT NEXT) Questions:

How will we measure how successful you have been ?

What can I do to help ?

What do you want me to do if you don’t deliver on your good intentions ?

Give it a go. Let us know if it works or how you improve upon it.
And contact us at hello@teabreaktraining.com to find out more about the full Tea Break Training model. We’d love to include your successes in our research…