I ask not for good health, but for an alert and discerning mind.
I ask not that things go my way, but that I have perseverance and courage.
I ask not for less responsibility, but for increased strength.
Master Cheng Yen, Tzu Chi
Hat-tip: Psychological Resilience
As a young psychologist, I bought into the notion that psychology must tell us something that is not common sense. Many leading psychologists still think this way. I don’t think it is right. The profession is setting itself apart from the world, above the world, beyond the world. It is now other worldly.
We should be more like management scientists. You know those tough guys who schedule the plans and manage the electricity grid so an airport never has more planes and people than it can cope with and the national grid doesn’t fall over when we all make supper at the same time?
Hard core scientists don’t set themselves up against common sense. They support common sense. Maybe they also read poetry.
That being said, maybe we need some prose to help people take the first steps. Writing coach, Joanna Young, tweeted this Lao Tzu quote today.
Kindness in words creates confidence.
Kindness in thinking creates profoundness.
Kindness in giving creates love.
Sounds soppy, but these words from 1500 years ago are the core of modern management thinking.
Kindness in words creates belonging and the possibility of collective efficacy.
Kindness in thinking leads to creativity and strategic clarity and hence provides the bedrock of common action.
Kindness in giving creates the common ties that allow resilience and flexibility.
Some time on Google Scholar and you will drown in academic references.
Leadership: who are we journeying with and why are they essential to our journey?
Management: which way are we going and what can each of us do to help?
Human Resource Management: who feels secure with us and will be with us tomorrow?
Hold on to what is good,
even if it’s a handful of earth.
Hold on to what you believe,
even if it’s a tree that stands by itself.
Hold on to what you must do,
even if it’s a long way from here.
Hold on to your life,
even if it’s easier to let go.
Hold on to my hand,
even if I’ve gone away from you.
Found on Inspiration Peak
[Use this when the day has made you too gloomy to fill out a gratitude diary. Remember what is good, what you believe in, what you must do and who is important to you.]
I am 99% persuaded by positive psychology, largely because I thought like a positive psychologist long before it was invented. I never took to clinical psychology so I had nothing to discard, so to speak.
But it is the darker side of life where I think positive psychology has its limits. Maybe the typical positive psychologist does not feel that because they have the skills to deal with people who are deeply unhappy.
My reservations come at many levels. As a practitioner, though, I want to know what to do when we are in a dark place.
What does it mean to be resilient when times are terrible? What are the critical processes that we are trying to leverage?
If I succeed at exercising leadership when times are miserable, if I show resilience and help others to be resilient, what might these processes be?
I would be interested in your thoughts.
The key to listening to angry people, among which I include people who are deeply insulted, humiliated, frightened, defeated and generally gibbering wrecks, is to acknowledge their emotion. We don’t have to agree with their emotion. We don’t have to copy their emotion. We don’t have to make any comment about the circumstances.
We simply have to acknowledge the emotion, and show, through our acknowledgement, that we still respect the person, in spite their emotional display, and in spite the circumstances that led to these humiliating circumstances.
Generally, that leads to slight embarrassment on their part but that is a much more comfortable emotion than the anger and hurt.
We are often angry and humiliated when we have lost status and losing status usually means losing status in a group or being ejected from a group. Referring to a group to which we are both a part helps restore status.
Additionally, when people have been humiliated in front of their nearest and dearest, particularly the partners, children and parents, we should restore their status in their eyes too.
Anger comes from loss of status and be implication, loss of control. When we look for small things we can do now, and we do them, we feel better.
While we are doing all three above, we are active. We take the initiative. We are in control. We belong.
Be grateful, and allow our gratitude to show to the other person. They will be grateful in turn.
Gratitude is a great mood-lifter.
As the other person lifts from utter dejection to a willingness to try, enjoy. And be grateful again. That way we share the ‘positive feedback’ with the other. Let them share the way our mood has improved.
If we have done our job well, collective efficacy and trust should have risen. And we all know that collective efficacy – our belief that our colleagues are competent – is the most powerful factor in raising school quality. It is bound to have the same impact in other circumstances.
Trust also creates upward positive feedback spirals. Though, we may need a lot when we start from a dark place.
To recap:
L – Listen
G – Group
A – Act
G – Gratitude
E – Enjoy
Isn’t it quite astonishing that we welcome a politician with such excitement and anticipation? I would so love to see pictures and videos of what you are are doing as you watch Obama take the oath of office and make his first speech as President.
Today, I chatted online with another “non-American” who added the usual “touch wood” caveat that I mentioned yesterday. None of us want to be too excited “just in case”. And to work through our anxieties seems ill-timed.
The level of our excitement teaches us an important lesson about leadership. Good leadership is not about the man or woman walking in the leader’s shoes. It is about us. It is about our expectations of ourselves and of the people around us.
How much do we believe in Americans, and how much do they believe in us? How much do Americans believe in each other, and how much are they willing to reach out to each other to show that commitment?
Today is the day of those who have worked long and hard for this moment, and who lived their lives believing that this day would never come. Today is the first day they believe they fully belong. This day is theirs to celebrate and to cherish.
Today is the day we get to bask in their reflected joy and to marvel at their resilience, determination, loyalty and generosity. There are not many moments like this in a lifetime when we stand in awe of people who have accomplished so much. It is a day of gratitude when we are happy for no reason than the world has taken us gently by surprise.
It is a moment in which we ask – are we not a little better than we thought?
or will be!
In an earlier incarnation, I had a reputation for taking on the tough projects – multiple constituencies, vested interests, and consequences for everyone involved. I loved that work. It took listening, carefully; it took discretion; and it took carefully working through details to find solutions that others had missed and being very clear about the consequences we asked each party to tolerate.
During most of the time I did this work, I also taught at the local university. Students were always surprised when I told them, usually to encourage them when they were losing heart over a project of their own, that there was a moment during every project when I felt the project was going to beat me. There was always a moment when I had felt that this would be the one.
Starting a small business took anxiety to a whole new level, and the question I ask myself, is why? Why is worrying about cash flow so much more scary?
Is it because we are so much less in control?
Is it because the stakes are higher – if we mess up we may have to pack up the business?
Is it because running out of money assaults our middle class identity more severely than not acing a professional project that was regarded as difficult in the first place?
Is it because I have higher self-efficacy or self-belief in professional work?
Is it because professional work is for other people and I am less motivated to look after myself?
There is a lot of advice around for dealing with debilitating anxiety and I have dispensed a lot of it myself.
The truth is is when we feel deep anxiety, it detracts from anything else. We don’t feel prepared. We don’t have a fall back position. Good times in the past aren’t really relevant. We’re on our own. And now we, can’t sleep, can’t eat or eat too much, and exercise makes us feel like we will pass out. And if we are really lucky, we have a full scale anxiety attack that looks like a heart attack to anyone watching.
I pondered this problem for a day and equally pondered the inadequacy of our advice. We are able to tell people how to deal with theoretical fear, not the real thing.
Then I stumbled on a saying on the Positive Psychology Daily News New Year blog (which is worth reading for itself – check out the Garbage Truck video and the Gratitude Chain). About four authors down, Kirsten quotes the Chinese Philosoper, Lao Tzu.
This is very much like Franklin Rooseveldt”s “there is nothing to fear but fear itself”, but it says more. It does not suggest that we should dismiss negative emotions, or try to arrange our life to avoid them.
A full life includes the positive and the negative, all four seasons, spring, summer, autumn, winter, and we need to be competent in managing all of them. To think of winter as the absence or negative of summer, distracts us from learning how to deal with winter, and more importantly, how to enjoy it.
The idea of happiness promoted by Losada’s work on the dynamics of happiness makes us think of emotional space that includes joy and grieving, linked together on a trajectory shaped like a three dimensional butterfly. It is just as healthy to be in a place of grieving or fear, as one of joy and pleasure, provided it is a place we are passing through and approached in a spirit of inquiry, inclusion and emphasis on what works.
After reading the Lao Tzu quote, the mental trick I found useful was to think of myself inside fear – not looking at it, but being inside it, looking at it around me. That seems to restore a sense of what I am doing.
It is not accepting unhappiness, which one reading of the quotation might suggest, but seeing myself dealing competently and effectively with negative situations.
I hope that this helps anyone else who faces perilous decisions this year!
UPDATE: For an HR Managers perspective on the Recession, I have written a summary on a new post.
Gwendolyn Brooks
One of the hardest concepts to grasp, I think, is that there is a time for everything under the sun. But, are we supposed to enjoy tragedy? Are we supposed to accept injustice?
Seasons at least come and go. Some bad times are more protracted and we are trapped in waiting. Some people are born into bad circumstances, or find themselves there with little possibility of exiting.
I really loathe the expression “glass half full”. I think it often means “I’m alright Jack”, and when it does, it is aggressive. It is denying someone the legitmacy of their own experience.
That said, when it is our turn to be caught in bad situations, do we really want to wallow?
I’ve seen a lot of writing, here and there, that we are abandoning, at last, a Cartesian view of life – a dualism where we separate mind and body. In bad circumstances, though, I think we need dualism. We need to see reality for what it is. We need to say, this is reality as it is unfolding. It is important to acknowledge reality in all it awfulness, to call it by what it is, and describe it, without any pretence to do otherwise, in its own terms.
It is also important to say that it frightens us, gives us anxiety attacks, humiliates us, and clouds our judgement.
What we must NOT do, is confuse it with ourselves. We are not our reality. We simply exist within the reality.
Obama has commissioned poet, Elizabeth Alexander, to write a poem for the inauguration, and through the press coverage, introduced us to another American poet, Gwendolyn Brooks. Her advice for people living in very difficult circumstances says it all.
“Conduct your blooming in the noise and whip of the whirlwind.”
I couldn’t see any copyright information on this page, so I have copied the poem below. If I am in breach, please do tell me and I will respond immediately. Thanks to George Hartley of Ohio University, more of Gwendolyn Brooks poems can be found on the same page. Her is the full poem.
Gwendolyn Brooks
For Walter Bradford
1.
This is the urgency: Live!
and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.
2.
Salve salvage in the spin.
Endorse the splendor splashes;
stylize the flawed utility;
prop a malign or failing light–
but know the whirlwind is our commonwealth.
Not the easy man, who rides above them all,
not the jumbo brigand,
not the pet bird of poets, that sweetest sonnet,
shall straddle the whirlwind.
Nevertheless, live.
3.
All about are the cold places,
all about are the pushmen and jeopardy, theft–
all about are the stormers and scramblers but
what must our Season be, which starts from Fear?
Live and go out.
Define and
medicate the whirlwind.
4.
The time
cracks into furious flower. Lifts its face
all unashamed. And sways in wicked grace.
Whose half-black hands assemble oranges
is tom-tom hearted
(goes in bearing oranges and boom).
And there are bells for orphans–
and red and shriek and sheen.
A garbageman is dignified
as any diplomat.
Big Bessie’s feet hurt like nobody’s business,
but she stands–bigly–under the unruly scrutiny, stands
in the wild weed.
In the wild weed
she is a citizen,
and is a moment of highest quality; admirable.
It is lonesome, yes. For we are the last of the loud.
Nevertheless, live.
Conduct your blooming in the noise and whip of the
whirlwind.
This is a serious post and I would love some of the heavy hitters out there like Jon Ingham, Scott MacArthur, Bay Jordan and Jon Husband to critique it. Others please join in!
I am a work psychologist. That means I am as much concerned about work as I am about psychology. I do a lot of background reading about management, organizations, new work like nanotechnology, etc.
McKinsey have just circulated an old report 2002 report on risk and resilience in recessions.
They argue that firms that come out of a recession in the upper quartile, differ significantly from other firms. The winning group, lets call them “recession-lovers”, either hung on to their upper quartile position, or came up from below.
The McKinsey report has a few sentences I find ambiguous. They are also talking about firms that make the UQ. They aren’t talking about firms who climb from LQ to Median say, so we should be careful not to over-extrapolate.
I have found THREE characteristics of the ‘recession lovers’.
1. ‘Recession-lovers’ surge ahead because they were always clearly focused on what they are doing. Prior to the recession, recession-lovers are involved in less acquisition activity than their rivals. Recession-lovers maintain their acquisition activity during a recession, while others drop acquisition activity to the steady level of the recession-lovers.
Can we conclude that firms who are less successful during a recession were involved in shakier business prior to the recession?
2. Recession-lovers make 33% more sales per employee than their rivals. During the recession, they maintain this ratio by spending MORE money on sales and general costs. To do this, they absorb lower margins (TESCO’s just announced this I think).
Can we conclude that more successful firms move to protect and maintain their central markets?
Can we conclude that less successful firms are willing to jeopardize their market position by taking quicker profits?
3. Recession-lovers spend more money on R&D and double this expenditure during the recession.
Can we conclude that rivals had thought that their markets and products were stable and by cutting back further believe that markets will be essentially unchanged after the recession?
If I have summarized this report correctly, then there are hard questions HR Managers should be asking as they consider redundancies, cutbacks, etc.
1. When we hired staff, we assured them of their importance, and the value and importance of the products and services they would deliver. What has changed?
2. Now the market is tougher, surely we should give staff more, not fewer, resources to do their work and to sell our products and services. If we don’t allocate more resources, than why? Was our previous allocation of resources thoughtless, or, is the market is worth protecting, in which case . . . What are the ethical and legal implications of what we are saying?
3. If we are making less provision for R&D, then are we saying that the demand for our products and services will be stable into the future? Is so, why not write long-term contracts for staff on those lines?
I would like to phrase these questions as constructively as possible and I don’t want to overreach.
How can we improve our understanding of a business so that in the future we can ask the right questions earlier?
Where do young HR managers in UK develop and test their understanding, BTW? Which are universities and firms known for turning out HR Managers with solid business sense?
UPDATE: For an HR Managers perspective on the Recession, I have written a summary on a new post.
Image by Darwin Bell via Flickr
For the last two weekends, I ran a little poll here on your plans for beating the recession. The full poll and results are at the end of the post.
Of the two score or so people who answered, this was the modal response.
I have only scenario planned the future INFORMALLY. I am planning to 2010. My business is YET to be affected by the recession. I expect to grow 25% over a 2007 baseline. I will find a RECESSION-BEATING strategy.
Let me add these three observations.
Moreover, any one person’s sense of hopelessness could be explained by the level of social support they perceived from relevant others. Here are some interesting results.
And feeling supported by their family was strongly linked to the number of family members having work or income
In hard times, it is very important for the management system to provide support. This is likely to have a chain effect. The CEO needs to show belief in his or her direct reports and they need to show belief in their direct reports.
Enourage people to remain within churches and sports clubs, help them stay in touch with their families and make it easy for them to do so. Have we arranged for Hindu employers to have time off for Diwali? Do we celebrate Eid? Do we help people take time off for important events?
It is pretty likely that
- collective efficacy (expressed belief in the importance and competence of our colleagues) and
- solidarity (our willingness to support each other through thick-and-thin)
add a critical 5-10% onto our collective performance.
I wonder if there are any practitioners out there who are focussing on these ‘soft’ concepts and linking them to the ‘hard’ results of revenue in hard times?
Here is my original poll. Thanks so much for contributing. Despite my experience during other crises, I was still pleasantly surprised that we are so confident.
[polldaddy poll=1005163]
[polldaddy poll=1005175]
[polldaddy poll=1005188]
[polldaddy poll=1005210]
[polldaddy poll=1005254]
If you have never read Steve Jobs’ commencement address, here is a link. This is Steve Job’s story from dropping out to college to surviving his first life threatening illness. Read his philosophy of life.
I’ve not read the original before. Here it is.