Harmonics

A thought for leaders on National Workplace Wellness Day – 31 March 2017

In a previous post I spoke about how the barriers between work and life have been essentially eliminated, with many studies recognising this shift in the ‘new world of work’.  Where highly competent and committed people struggle to cope – visibly over stretched, over committed, overwhelmed, burned out, exhausted, cynical and feeling totally ineffective, wondering how did it all go so terribly wrong?

We can’t assume that leaders are impervious to such challenges just because they are high achievers. In the words of the singer Rag’n’Bone Man, they are ‘only human after all’ …  (by the way its a great song, if you haven’t heard it check it out).

 A number of years ago I attended a workshop delivered by the Resilience Institute, it was part of a conference I was attending and it was the highlight of the conference for me, as I was looking to really understand individual resilience in an organisational context.

What grabbed my interest most of all was the way the Resilience Institute constructed a credible linkage between organisational and individual resilience. At the meeting, they shared the image below which I think delivers a very powerful message in a simple way.  The individual spiral upward towards meaning and flow and its downward trajectory towards distress and depression is reflected and mirrored in the organisational spiral upward towards rigorous application and world class performance and its downward trajectory towards disengagement, high staff turnover and organisational failure.

 

I’d encourage you to consult their site www.resiliencei.com to read their publication Global Resilience Diagnostic Report for 2016; it’s an insightful update on this important subject.

While individual resilience is considered a personality trait, it can be cultivated.  Importantly, groups and organizations can also cultivate a “culture of resilience” which can serve as a form of “psychological immunity” from the effects of challenge and setback.

What is evident in all this is the crucial role leader’s play in role-modeling resilience to influence both individual and organisational resilience.

If the individual experience of overwhelm is to erode your overall sense of wellbeing, distort your thinking, undermine your confidence and drain your energy, then just imagine what a ripple effect overwhelm might have within an organisation where the individual impacted holds a people manager or leadership role. Because when their resilience is low, it can have a far reaching impact not only on work culture but also on overall business performance where:

 

•  Bounce is replaced by inflexibility, anxiety around change and an inability to cope
•  Courage is replaced by fear, doubt and an inability to move forward
•  Creativity is replaced by a struggle with uncertainty and playing it safe
•  Connection is replaced by withdrawal, isolation and loneliness

 

The crucial role of leadership in role modeling resilience is also highlighted in a HBR article Building a Resilient Organizational Culture (2011). The authors state that a culture of organizational resilience is built largely upon what they refer to as “resilient leadership”. They claim that a small number of highly credible individuals who “model” the behaviors associated with resilience have the ability to change an entire culture of an organization as others replicate the resilient characteristics that they have observed.

 It is imperative, therefore, to support people managers and leaders in cultivating “resilient leadership” to ensure people flourish and organisations thrive.

Deloitte University Press has reported extensively on Global Human Capital Trends over the past five years. Their work has ‘provided a depth of understanding of the challenges facing business leaders in a dramatically changing digital, economic, demographic, and social landscape. In an age of disruption, business leaders are being pressed to rewrite the rules for how they organize, recruit, develop, manage, and engage the 21st-century workforce’.

In one of their earlier reports (2014), they described the plight of the  ‘the overwhelmed employee’ where they recognised that an explosion of information is overwhelming workers, while smartphones, tablets, and other devices keep employees tethered to their jobs leaving them constantly ‘on’. They found that while nearly every company sees ‘overwhelm’ as a challenge to individual productivity and overall performance, they struggles to handle it. According to the survey, executives around the world are sounding the alarm, with respondents recognising the urgent need to address the challenge but also recognise that they do not feel equipped to do so.

Fast-forward to their 2016 report where they found that organisational evolution in itself is too slow to address the pace of change and the key findings is that organisations need to change faster ‘by design’.

Pause for a moment to consider how high performing individuals, teams and organisations excel at designing, developing and delivering complex solutions to technical and process issues.

Then just imagine what could be achieved if the best of their innovative capability was channeled into promoting individual and organisational resilience?

More recently in Delotte’s 2017 report, they provided a model which they refer to as ‘a starting point to address a variety of issues including- meaningful work, the purpose of the organization, employee talent development and growth, rewards and wellness, the work environment, fairness and inclusion, and authenticity among management and leadership’.

Significantly, in the model they identified a ‘Humanistic Workplace’ as a core element of the positive work environment.  Organisational language can be heavy on jargon, so it is refreshing to see the term ‘humanistic workplace’ used to describe the essence of the desired employee experience. It is a term that we can all easily understand because of our shared experience of what it is to be human and yet each of us can recognise the individuality of that experience. Similarily, role modeling resilience has at its core a sharing of human endeavor, which at the same time is uniquely personal and individual and that is precisely why it is so powerful.

 

If you are a leader or a people manager, my invitation to you as we mark National Workplace Wellness Day (31 March 2017) is to commit to proactively cultivating your own resilience, self-awareness, self-mastery and self-care. By safeguarding your own wellbeing and vitality, you can positively influence your organisational culture and act as a credible role model for a humanistic workplace where people feel valued, supported, respected, trusted, accepted and included.

 

Deirdre McLoughlin is a coaching associate with Harmonics specialising in Organisational Development, Executive Coaching and Psychotherapy.  

Harmonics specialises in helping organisations plan for change, manage change and support their people through change.  To learn more visit www.harmonics.ie or contact us on 01 8942616, 061 336136 or 021 7319604 or email info@harmonics.ie

 

Follow Harmonics on LINKEDIN and keep up to date with trends in the World of Work

 

References

•  Global Resilience Diagnostic Report – Resilience – Institutehttp://resiliencei.com/2016/12/global-resilience-diagnostic-report/

•  Building a Resilient Organizational Culture – https://hbr.org/2011/06/building-a-resilient-organizat

• 2017 Global Human Capital Trends | Deloitte | Human capital trends – https://www2.deloitte.com/be/en/pages/human-capital/articles/introduction-human-capital-trends.html 

‘Do you need a prod? Do you need a little darkness to get you going?’

These insightful words by poet Mary Oliver are an invitation to us all to consider our own vitality and wellbeing.

The barriers between work and life have been all but eliminated, with many studies recognising this shift in the ‘new world of work’.  Where highly competent and committed people struggle to cope – visibly over stretched, over committed, overwhelmed, burned out, exhausted, cynical and feeling totally ineffective, wondering how did it all go so terribly wrong?

So what’s going on?

In a recent Deloitte University Press article The New Organization – Different by Design, Feb 29, 2016, Josh Bersin et al.  ‘describe a series of 4 key drivers coming together to create disruptive change’ in today’s world of work.

• Demographic upheavals have made the work force both younger and older
• Digital technology is now everywhere, disrupting business models and radically changing the workplace and the way work is done.
• The Rate of Change has accelerated. The rate of technology development has significantly increased the pace of change in business as a whole, requiring organizations to be more agile.
• A new social contract is developing between companies and workers, driving major changes in the employer-employee relationship.

Check it out for yourself  …

Take a good look at how you and your organisation are responding to these drivers.

Can you identify the overstretched, over committed and overwhelmed amongst you?

People don’t readily talk about being overwhelmed, because to do so is perceived as too risky a conversation to have, even with oneself.  Yet the feelings don’t just go away simply because you bury or ignore them. The experience of overwhelm can significantly drain your energy, distort your thinking, undermine your confidence and erode your overall sense of wellbeing.

This is particularly hard to deal with if your identity is tied to high achievement and high performance, delivered consistently over many years.

In the interest of cultivating your own wellbeing, my invitation to you is to reflect on the statements below, and in the words of Mary Oliver consider if recognising your own ‘little darkness’ is just what you need right now to ‘get you going’ again

Take time to consider … …

• are you placing excessive expectations on yourself ?
• are you working hard but feeling you’re not getting anywhere ?
• do you fear you have lost your edge, lacking in confidence ?
• do you see results for the huge effort you are putting in ?
• do you feel ‘all over the place’ when normally you are really focused?
• do you feel others are critical of your performance ?
• do you feel misunderstood and unsupported ?
• is there no end in sight to ever increasing demands ?
• do you feel resentment, perhaps even a simmering sense of rage, inside ?
• do you have angry or aggressive outbursts ?
• do you feel disengaged and increasingly cynical ?
• are you more inclined to withdraw, withhold, isolate yourself ?
• have you lost connection with your friends ?
• have  you lost connection with your sense of fun?
• when did you laugh out loud last?
• do you find yourself descending into cynicism and blame?
• are you feeling overly negative, despairing that things can ever improve?
• do you wonder are you beginning to lose belief in your self ?
• do you wonder if there is more to life?
• are you drinking a bit too much just to relax in the evenings or weekends?
• are you feeling exhausted all the time ?
• do you go to bed exhausted only to wake in the early hours unable to sleep?
• do you feel close to collapse?
• do you experience physical signs of stress – heart racing, headaches, digestive problems, muscle tension / back pain, etc…

Is it now time for you to press the pause button?

The most difficult thing to do when you are under severe pressure is to take one step back and become an observer to your own internal process.

This is the first and most important step in taking back control.

It is this first critical step that matters most.

Remember you are only asked to take one step back. 

It is not about running away, it is not about giving up and it is not about conceding defeat.

It is about reconnecting with your innate capabilities and sense of self-belief and control, reminding yourself that your resilient spirit remains hopeful and strives for health and vitality.

Let us turn our attention to what you can do to redirect yourself towards health, wellbeing and a return to peak performance.

First Aid Plan

Your ABC of Self-Care.

Acknowledge where you are and seek help

Where you go for help will depend on your situation. Consider discussing your situation in a meaningful way with your doctor, EAP professional, your family, boss, HR professional, mentor or coach as appropriate. If you feel there may be underlying medical issues such as depression or chronic fatigue it is important to seek medical advice.

Back to Basics

Babies are born with innate survival instincts. They eat, sleep, breath and cry in order to stay safe and connected to their caregivers. As we go through life we take these innate instincts for granted and it is only when we encounter disturbance in sleeping, eating, breathing and connecting that we fully appreciate the magic of human existence.

When working with people who are highly stressed my approach is always to go back to basics. Working first to address sleep and diet issues and building in a regime of mindfulness, breathing and relaxation techniques and above all supporting a sense of safety and connection with family, friends and life in general.

Connect to your Core Values and Capabilities

Under pressure people often lose connection with their core capabilities of intellect, creativity, sense of purpose and connection with others. These resources have not been lost although they may seem unavailable when most needed.

People who have lost confidence can find it difficult to access their strengths, but with patience, self-reflection, courage and support to take the necessary action, it is absolutely possible to regain strength and flourish. I have witnessed this happen many times. Just as people lose confidence they can also regain it.

What is needed is a commitment to your own health and wellbeing and an absolute refusal to diminish yourself in the process. While it is essential to accept the reality of the situation you find yourself in, it can be all too easy to dwell in negativity.

A key determinant of a fulfilled life is a person’s sense of hope and optimism; we need to be ever vigilant of not feeding negativity, as it only serves to undermine us.

Resilient Organisations Cultivate Resilient Behaviours

There is much that can be done to proactively support wellbeing so that the downward spiral does not go unchallenged. Organisations can proactively support their people to develop skills of resilience and emotional intelligence.  By cultivating self-care, optimism, focus, self-expression, interpersonal relating, problem solving and stress management, employees can equip themselves with the insight to recognise early distress signals and the ability to take decisive action to quickly interrupt the downward spiral.

Burnout serves nobody. While it is seen as a feature of over commitment, it is not a badge of honor that anyone wants.

Beating Burnout by Monique Valcour HBR Review Nov 2016 https://hbr.org/2016/11/beating-burnout outlines key strategies for dealing with burnout and is a great reminder that the sense of being overwhelmed is a signal, not a long-term sentence.

In this volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous – VUCA – world, more than ever it is imperative that organisational leaders prioritise their own wellbeing so they can thrive and become highly effective role models of resilient, positive, focused and generous leadership.

The prize for all to share is an engaging and supportive organisational culture, capable of attracting and retaining exceptional and committed talent.

Deirdre McLoughlin is a coaching associate with Harmonics specialising in Organisational Development, Executive Coaching and Psychotherapy.  

The stresses and demands of daily life, not just life transitions, can take its toll on us physically and psychologically. We are living in a world where uncertainty is constant, we have 24/7 connectivity and where we are continually being asked to take on more change in our home and working lives. We need to be able to react quickly to change, achieve more with less, and ensure we don’t become overwhelmed. We need to be more resilient, but sometimes that’s easier said than done.

Next week, on Friday 31st March, Ireland’s third National Workplace Wellbeing Day will take place.  The purpose of the annual event is to encourage employers across Ireland to promote employee wellbeing.  So it’s timely to remind ourselves of the importance of wellbeing and building our personal resilience. There’s a message here for employers too as workplace stress can contribute to absenteeism and can impact on productivity.

Resilience, which is directly related to wellbeing, is about our ability to cope and “bounce back” from difficult situations.  The World Health Organisation defines wellbeing as “the state in which an individual realises his or her own abilities, can cope with normal stresses of life, can work productively, and is able to make a contribution to his or her own community.”

But people do not respond to stressful events in the same way.  Some of us seem to be more resilient and cope better with challenges than others.  Resilience is a characteristic and, like all characteristics, the amount we possess differs from person to person. Developing resilience is a personal journey. From the day we are born our resilience is being developed. Whether it’s when we are learning to walk, to make friends, to do exams, manage the demands of work or most importantly manage the way we interact with those we love.

Our need to be able to deal with the hard times calls on our resilience.  While many of us want to be perfect, the harsh truth is that none of us are. It is in dealing with our mistakes and foibles that we need to draw on our resilience.  When things go wrong (as the often will), we have a number of choices; ignore them, learn from them, or crumble under them.  By learning from the hard times we grow our resilience.  The good news is the learning from Positive Psychology tells us that we can all develop more resilience.

Here are my tips for individuals on how to take a personal approach to growing your resilience:

1. Stay Connected: our relationships with close family members, friends or others are important in strengthening our resilience and so, be open to help and support from those who care about you.
2. Don’t see a crisis as “the end of the world”: we can’t stop difficult and stressful events happening in our lives, but we can change how we view and react to them. So, keep things in perspective, try looking beyond the immediate difficult situation and consider how the future might be different or better. Listen to your body to see how it reacts to this change in your thought process.
3. Have a strong sense of purpose: resilient people have a strong sense of purpose and meaning in their lives. Develop a vision of what gives meaning to your work and life, write it out and be guided by it.
4. Consider lessons learned: how you have successfully dealt with difficult situations in the past and trust yourself to do so now.
5. Accept that change is part of life: There is only one thing that is certain in life and its change, at the same time there are occasions when things cannot be changed. Focus on the things that you can change and look to the future. Consider change as an opportunity to reflect on what is and look for opportunities to learn and grow.
6. Take decisive actions: don’t just hope that problems will go away; use sound problem-solving strategies to consider what actions you can take in the situation and act!
7. Set goals and take actions to achieve them: make sure your goals are realistic and taking steps, even small ones, towards them is powerful in developing resilience.
8. Work on being flexible and adaptable: resilient people are able to adapt to new people and situations quickly; they let go of the old way of doing things and quickly learn new procedures and skills. They can also tolerate high levels of ambiguity and uncertainty in situations.
9. Cultivate a positive view of yourself helps build resilience; be confident in your ability and trust your instincts. When you find yourself having negative thoughts restate them positively. Be optimistic, good things do happen, visualise what you want instead of worrying and being fearful.
10. Take care of yourself. Eat well, exercise, focus on continuing the things that help you relax and actively work on developing and maintaining a positive work life balance.
11. Keep your sense of humour!

If you are having difficulty, and finding yourself overwhelmed, then the first point in the list above is the most important tip.  As Dr Damien Amen put it, “all of us have problems, the smart ones get help.”  Our advice to you: if you are struggling, be smart and reach out and get the support you need to grow your resilience. Very often a coach can help you with this.

Diversify your thinking

I confess that I had my eyes opened wide recently when I saw a group of transgender men thrust themselves towards us provocatively wearing Knee High Kinky Boots. What was more embarrassing, I was sitting beside my 14 year old daughter watching this spectacle and had to provide a very fast forward running commentary to update her on the facts of life that I had omitted in previous chats. We were on a weekend daddy and daughter trip to London and a lovely lady at the ticket booths earlier that day had recommended this Olivier award winning West End Show “Kinky Boots” as a must see. We booked immediately and we weren’t disappointed as the show was a knockout.

It told the story of a traditional English shoe manufacturing business in freefall and a son who needed to turn it around after his father’s death. He was fresh out of college when he had to return from London and save the business. He had little experience of change management and was very unsure of his own career path. The musical has some core messages running through that we can apply to change and career planning.

Parents Career advice

The career advice the son received from his father was to take over the business. The son wanted to head to London and enjoy a different life but his father was interested in legacy and passing the business onto the younger generation. But less than one third of family businesses survive the transition from first to second generation ownership. There is enormous pressure on many children to do what their parents believe is the best career choice for them.

My career advice? Never take a job out of duty or responsibility to your parents or another person for that matter. This leads to unhappiness and a growing resentment as you get older. Your parents, while well-meaning, only see the world from their perspective, they’re from a different generation and their career advice is not always right for you, especially in this much changed world of work.

Following someone else’s dream

In the show, the son’s girlfriend was very pushy, she wanted the expensive boots and the dream lifestyle associated with being attached to the business owner’s son. She had created her dream of living in London but had not taken the time to truly understand what motivated him. He was unwilling to let her down and was following her direction because he did not know what he wanted himself. He did not trust his own opinion. He depended on his father for his identity until he ran away. He was torn between a father that saw him as the heir and a girlfriend who saw him as the answer to her upmarket dream lifestyle.

“To thine own self be true are wise words” from George Bernard Shaw. Don’t get caught up in someone else’s dream. Seek help to become brave enough to call it out early before you feel you don’t have the power to turn back. It doesn’t matter how far you have gone down one road, remember you can always turn back.

Don’t worry what anyone thinks

I attended the Talent Summit recently where Dan Pink spoke about the benefits of enabling Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose in the workplace. He was asked after his talk what advice he would have given to his 18 year old self. He gave two answers. (1) Marry well – by that he meant marrying not for money (yet he did say it helped!) but someone with whom you can be yourself and (2) “Don’t worry what others think”.

In the west end show, the son was diversifying into producing kinky boots for drag queens. It was a niche but profitable global market replacing his traditional British men’s shoes market which was literally dying on its feet. Initially, he was worried what his employees and the locals in his home town of Northampton would think. He overcame initial resistance, believed in himself and is building a global business now. We all need to diversify our skills for the future to stay ahead of the change curve. We should not worry about those who want the world to stand still, they will be found out in time.

Diversity – We also saw a transgender man in the show not accepted by his work colleagues and his fellow workers refused to use the same toilets as him. I witnessed this early in my career when I worked with a gay colleague and some of my workmates refused to use the men’s toilets at work because he used them! We work in a more multicultural workplace now and we need to resist the mentality that says “we always did it this way” as this type of thinking silences new ideas and inhibits progress.

MIT’s media lab has a long tradition of encouraging unorthodox ways of doing things. Its Chairman Nicholas Negroponte notes: “New ideas emerge from a heterogeneous collection of edgy, unorthodox people, from architecture to arts, from maths to music”. Today, new ideas are not coming from the top of organisations, they are coming from the edge, from those who may not conform to our traditional ways but who have a lot to offer if we only listen and engage them.

In summary, the message from Kinky Boots is to back yourself, worry less about what anyone thinks and embrace diversity as an opportunity to change your thinking which could indeed change your life direction. This quote from Einstein rings true when we take the learnings from Kinky Boots.

“We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them”  Einstein

Career Progression was all so predictable in the past; when getting a good college education was followed by entering an organisation at graduate level and climbing the corporate ladder. Loyalty and hard work was rewarded with job security and building a pension over time would ensure a secure retirement. How times have changed!

We are witnessing huge change in organisations. Uncertainty has become the norm. CEO’s have never had access to as much information but find it increasingly hard to decipher a clear road map with any degree of confidence. It has never been more challenging to be a leader or an employee because the old rules for business and career success simply don’t work anymore. It’s like we have a 10,000 piece jigsaw strewn all over the floor without the cover to show us the big picture of our idealised future.

Businesses are under increased pressure from employees to provide meaningful career development and career progression. Delayering of levels means less promotion, while new activities require new skills often only supplied by new hires. The loyal employee is being marginalised by this new world of work and they need support. I also hear lots of Future of Work talks with titles like “The Rise of the Robots” warning our jobs are going to be outsourced. The talks are headline grabbing but they offer very little practical career advice for employees on how to bridge the gap to this new workplace.

 Will a robot take your job?

There is even a link on the BBC technology website to assess how susceptible your job is to being automated in the future. It is estimated about 35% of current jobs in the UK are at high risk of automation, according to a study by researchers at Oxford University and Deloitte. Surprising results show that roles such as accountants, finance, telesales roles show a 95% risk of being automated. Check out your own job title here.

One thing we can predict with certainty is that few roles will escape impact, including many in professional and managerial roles. This will have a knock on effect on career paths and the capabilities required to succeed. With so much change, there can be no fixed talent pipeline or definite career pathway. The traditional wisdom offered by senior mentors in organisations is less relevant than before because what they did simply won’t work in the new world of work. This is all new to senior business leaders too and they simply don’t have the answers.

If you are a young technology-savvy employee, you have potentially more information than your boss and more power than ever before. This is a time in your career to take more risks, explore new concepts and offer fresh thinking because you are not biased by the traditional “way we do things around here”. If your ideas get rejected at first, just keep coming back with a better business case each time. This is how you build career resilience.

So what is required to succeed? And what do I mean by the 4 Ace’s?

1.  Awareness of Self

We need to become more self-aware. We need to do more work on ourselves and I don’t mean more botox!.  In an era where we will compete with outsourcing of activities to robots, we increasingly need to know our strengths and our limitations. It is not simply a battle between four different generations in the workplace, it is becoming more “human” in our dealings with ourselves and others. We have all met highly strung go-getters who treat others harshly and themselves even worse. They have forgotten what it is like to show empathy to others and to accept gratitude.

Action tip – Take the time to complete some self-awareness exercises to truly understand what makes you come alive and then start to seek projects that play to your motivational skills. The Harmonics  Career Portal, for organisations wanting to offer employees  a self-directed career management solution, has a suite of self-assessment exercises.

2.  Awareness of our Environment

 We need to be keenly aware of the changing environment around us. This includes technology, globalisation and demographic changes. The era of average is over; once upon a time people used to work like robots on the factory floor in the industrialised age. We are now at the beginning of the fourth industrial revolution, but this time it is a technology revolution. We have the advantage over robots in being able to think and sense the change around us but only if we become more aware. Once we increase our awareness of the environmental changes we can adapt and reskill.

Action tip – It is your responsibility as an employee to find out more about the future world of work. Download www.flipboard.com on your mobile phone and follow channels like robots, machine learning, artificial intelligence, future of work to become more aware of the changing environment around you.

3. Adaptability

 We have deeply ingrained habits of being and doing but we must become more adaptable to all this change. Charles Duhigg in his excellent book The Power of Habit – “Why we do what we do and how to change” explains that for a habit to be changed we must believe change is possible. He describes the 3 step “cue – routine – reward” habit loop. Our cue could be getting stuck reacting to all of our emails each morning, our routine is turning on Microsoft office first thing and our reward is a full inbox of emails signalling people want me and I am important!

Neuroscience has shown us we get a dopamine reward when we look at our texts and emails, it is a signal we are wanted! We need to move from reacting to “we are wanted” to deciding “what we want” to change in a positive way that works for us. Luckily our brains have what is called neuroplasticity (the ability of the brain to adapt and change) as a result of environmental changes around us.

Action tip – Adaptability is a reactive response to some change that has happened in the environment around us. Think of a time when you changed and why you changed? For me, it was a time when I was unemployed, in debt and needed to start Harmonics to survive and support my wife and family. I had a survival “why” but I also had a growth “why”. I wanted to grow a successful nationwide career consultancy firm that would help change lives. We only adapt and change when we have a strong enough “why”. This Simon Sinek video will help you uncover your “why”.

4. Anticipation

This is one of life’s great skills, the ability to anticipate the future and its consequences. We often follow the path of least resistance and ignore the warning signals in our environment. Great sports players have this tremendous skill to anticipate the next play in the game. Key to making a steal in basketball is the defenders anticipation of where the ball is headed before it gets there. They must anticipate this early enough beating the attacker to the ball and avoiding committing a foul. Superior anticipation skills are an important component of the elite Athletic Brain. In school we were educated to answer the questions the teacher gave us in the exam. The real world does not have set questions and timed answers, we must anticipate what is coming next and trust our instincts more.

Action tip – Anticipation is a proactive approach to change. We are seeking it out before it impacts us in a negative way. We simply need to practice the skill of anticipation and see ourselves as elite corporate athletes who set our own high standards. This article on the athlete brain offers tips on how elite athletes learn to anticipate, you can modify these tips for your career.

In summary, if we become more aware of ourselves and our environment and make a conscious decision to adapt and anticipate change, then we can take control of change and not fall victim to it. I will leave you with this quote to guide you on your way…

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not into fighting the old but on creating the new” – Socrates

John Fitzgerald is the Founder of the Harmonics Group. Harmonics specialises in helping organisations plan for change, manage change and support their people through change.

Follow Harmonics on LINKEDIN and keep up to date with trends in the World of Work.

 

Could the best time for women’s careers be in their 50’s?

Fiona, an NHS psychologist of 30 years professional experience and mother of three, was surprised to apply for her first management role at the age of 50 – and get it.  She had worked part-time while her children were growing up, so she was gleeful at the prospect of being able to wield influence at last.

Mary, a freelance book editor and self-confessed introvert, applied successfully for a job as a lecturer for a new creative-writing course at her local university.  Having worked silently at home for so many years, it was in her fifties that she discovered the joy of interacting with a class of eager students.

As an Executive and Career coach with Harmonics, I work with women trying to navigate their career paths in organisational structures and systems that themselves are adapting to change. Could it be that in their 50s the best choices emerge for women?”

Different career paths

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox describes how the decades treat men and women’s careers differently. The traditional career path is characterised as linear and unbroken.  Between 20 and 50, the trajectory is upward and then has a sharp drop off.  But for traditional – read male she suggests.  It does not represent the experiences of many women that I know.

Female career stages can be summarised as follows:

20’s	All ambition, experience and fun
30’s	Culture shock – for many, conflict between competing family needs and big job opportunity tests. Some choose to leave the company they’ve been with, or move into the sidings for a period
40’s	Possibility for re-acceleration but in some sectors and certain roles, it’s hard to catch-up for lost/slowed down years away from the fast-track. However, women who have forged their own businesses do well!
50’s	Suddenly more time to think; kids have flown, financial pressure beginning to lift – a new beginning?

 

“Highly educated and highly skilled women are re-emerging the other side of the family crunch” writes Wittenberg-Cox. “Are late bloomers”, she then asks, “a potent new force in global business?”

A fourth stage

In  The 100 year Life , Gratton and Scott’s research forces us to push out the horizon of our older years.  It is extraordinary to realise that, as of 2016, “children born in the West have a 50% chance of living to age 105”.  So as 50 is now the start point for the second half, should women (who tend to live longer than men), follow the tradition for winding down then? Should they consider changing up a gear instead?

50’s women offer more

After 30 years in a variety of senior roles, Maria decided it was time to leave. Financially secure, she could now stop, but in her heart of hearts she knew she was not yet ready to be at home full-time.  Initially she thought of consultancy, but that did not provide the rhythm of organisational life that she needed to choreograph her day.  Undeterred, she sent out smoke signals to her network, and was flattered to find that her skills and experience were in demand on a project basis.  She realised that at this stage of her working life she values priorities differently.  “Project work is great,” she says now, “because it has a clear beginning, middle and end. I love that”

In addition to her core skills and experience, here’s what else she describes herself as bringing to all new work:

A crucial customer ‘Voice’: In financial services where she is now, her insights as a customer are sought after. So she can help to shape products and services that are increasingly aimed at her own ‘greying pound’.

Self-knowledge: “I’m there by choice.  I’m not afraid to speak up and I’m beyond being interested in politics and posturing.  Let’s say I know how to steady the ship when that is necessary.”

Flexibility: “Probably the greatest asset that I offer is that my time is my own. I’m free to travel, work different hours, and I can flex around the needs of others. This is an ace-card for all organisations trying to accommodate less-flexible younger talent.”

Want to find that new gear?

To expand your options, start by assessing your own assets by looking more broadly than you might first think.  Gratton and Scott suggest examining three asset areas:

1. Productive assets: Knowledge, skills, professional, social capital, reputation
2. Vitality assets: Health, relationships, regenerative friendships, balance
3. Transformational assets: Self-knowledge, diverse networks, openness to experience

Consider talking to one of Harmonic’s career planning specialists.  “You are always searching for the sweet-spot”, says Harmonics Founder John Fitzgerald. “This is where what you know, what you are best at, and what you are passionate about, overlap.”

And if you are not yet 50, is this relevant?

Well, yes, it is. That’s because you have an even longer multi-staged career to plan ahead for.

1. Longer careers require even more adaptability and continued targeted investment. So carefully consider the three asset areas above. Rate yourself to see where you are putting your attention now.  Where else might you need to focus to ensure you build a rewarding multi-staged career?

2. If you are in a relationship, discuss career planning with your partner as a team goal – instead of two competing sprints. Wittenberg-Cox asks “Who is to say that one of you shouldn’t run the 30-50 sprint, the other the marathon?”

Finally, if you know someone who is feeling pensive about turning 50 – a wife, colleague, sister, mother, or friend, please share this information. It might well turn out to be their best career decade yet.

Do you want to break Free?

It’s that time of year when unrealised ambitions come to the fore in people’s minds. It reminds me of that great Queen song “I want to break free!” Freedom is something we all wanted in our teenage years; to carve our own path in life. But, for the majority of us, we adapted, followed our parents, teachers or friends career advice and followed the most secure route.

I meet so many people in my career transition coaching sessions who tell me they would love to have a go and start their own enterprise at some stage in their life, but something always holds them back.

So what really holds us back from breaking free and having a go at a start-up? Here are the most common reasons I hear in coaching sessions. But as someone who struggled with many of these issues until I started Harmonics when I was 40, I have also added remedies that may help you overcome them:

Here are my top ten reasons why people fear a start-up and how to overcome them

1. Working alone – We usually work in collegiate work environments where we have work friends, someone to chat about the weekend, the game, personal issues, the new hair colour, the boss, the economy. We are social creatures for millions of years and have always thrived in little communities – so the idea of a lonely start up can feel too isolating for many. Remedy – Co-working spaces are now freely available in almost every town and city where you can share low cost office facilities and ideas with like-minded business start-ups.

2. Why would anyone listen to me? – While we may have a new business idea, we tend to be strongly influenced by ‘group think’. We doubt if what we have to say is truly different or worth listening to. It requires a level of self-worth and single-mindedness to say what you believe and to stand out from the crowd. Remedy – Once upon a time only the influential in society, like doctors, solicitors and clerics, had a voice. Now, due to the growth of social media, information has become democratised and everyone has the opportunity to influence. Join a LinkedIn group of your choosing, start your own blog and create a dent in the universe and you will create followers who want to listen to what you have to say.

3. I need a certain standard of living – You have worked long and hard to get to this level of income and fear putting your family under pressure should you fail and run out of money. Remedy – You do need a trusted personal financial advisor to know exactly what you and your spouse/partners appetite is to financial risk. There are no guarantees with a start-up, so for anyone starting up a new business it is important to have a financial plan to give you peace of mind on how much you really do need – you could be surprised.

4. Leaving the uncomfortable comfort zone – There is something about the comfort zone that will always say “it is just not worth the effort”. Even though it may be quite uncomfortable where you work and what you do, when we talk about moving away from it, we become scared and often freeze. Remedy – If you are unhappy in what you do now, it is extremely unlikely to improve anytime soon. Make a decision to move toward goals that motivate you. Yes, it will take you out of your comfort zone and it may take longer than you expected, but it will move you in the right direction rather than plateauing in a role that is not your future.

5. I don’t know about financial accounts for running a business – When we work for a company our salary is paid into our account each month, so having to look after our own finances in business is all new. Remedy – We have spoken about having a personal financial advisor but you also need the support of a good accountant. The great ones will have supported many other people just like you so choose wisely and make sure you get the right fit.

6. I’m over 50 and too old for a start-up – Over 50’s sometimes fear that they are too old to start a new business venture and worry that they are not tech-savvy enough for the future world of work. Remedy – It is interesting to see that a study funded by the Kauffman Foundation surveyed 500 successful high growth founders. Against all stereotypes, it was found that twice as many successful entrepreneurs are more than 50 as under 25. So life experience is more valuable than you might at first think. 

7. What if it doesn’t succeed – There is always the fear of it not working out and everyone knowing. At work it’s easier to cover up a mistake as it’s not out there for everyone to see. We’re negatively biased and our ancestors survived attack with one priority – Safety First! When faced with a difficult choice, we will often choose the safer option. Remedy – Once you have made the decision to start your new venture, there can be no turning back. You have to commit to be successful in life, business or sport. With commitment comes the power of focus and intensity required to get you closer to your goals. Commitment is easier when you have a “why” that comes from within. People who don’t succeed in business usually have a plan B should things not work out so they don’t fully commit. In business, it’s got to be all or nothing, you have to take the leap of faith and back yourself no matter what.

8. It will take too long to get it off the ground – It’s true, it can take a long time to get a start-up off the ground and this can deter people from committing to a new venture. Remedy – Start-ups require patience and perseverance. You need to be in it for the long haul. It is a known fact that many new start-up enterprises give up too early. This is why diets don’t work long term, the novelty wears off and it is just easier to go back to what we know. The bigger win is succeeding and becoming your own boss, if this is what you really wanted in the first place, because nothing else will ever fully satisfy you.

9. My spouse or partner won’t let me – This is a very common barrier we come across especially when people over 50’s get access to a healthy severance package that they want to direct into a new start-up idea. Remedy – While it important to have the support of your family, it is often the case that you have to back your own gut instinct. You are an expert on you; surround yourself with at least five people who have experience in starting up a new business. The people you choose to surround yourself with will be critical, especially during a challenging time, as they will act as your personal boardroom. You may need to form a new network because you are now in a new business and not an employee anymore.

10. Someone tells you it is a mad idea and it won’t work –This is where you have this new business idea and you begin to believe it could work. Then you share the idea with your partner, or friend and they tell you a thousand ways why it will never work. Remedy – Firstly, I only take advice from those who have started a business before because they advise having been down that road. Secondly, adopt the Walt Disney approach. He used a three dimensional view to assess his new business idea that become a global empire; the dreamer (creating a vision), the realist (how it would work) and the critic (what could go wrong). Don’t ever allow anyone to pour cold water on your idea unless it has been fully explored in a balanced way. Allow facts to replace opinions.

If any of the above 10 reasons have held you back from setting up your own enterprise, I hope the ensuing advice has given you the confidence to continue on your journey. But pay attention!

Start-ups fail every day

There has been plenty of research on why start-ups fail. A study by CBI Research on 101 start-ups identified the top 20 reasons start-ups fail. The number one reason cited by 42% of those surveyed was that there was no market need for the product or service! The big lesson here is that thorough market research is essential. Spend time making sure your product or service offering is unique and is right for the right market. The old adage of fail to plan, plan to fail.

ISAX

There were never as many supports for those seeking to explore a start-up. The ISAX ingenuity-accelerator-programme is a great example of an innovative new programme now available to would-be entrepreneurs who have an idea, are aged over 50 and would like professional support and advice and a network of like-minded people on a similar start up journey.

We have only one chance at life

The reality is we will all be living and working longer. The second half of our lives, from 50 on, can be the most rewarding time in our lives but only if we are brave enough to re-evaluate what we have to offer, face our fears, have a right good go at life and not have any regrets. We only have one life so why not realise our dreams before it really does become too late.

Enjoy the roller coaster ride

I have been involved in three business start-ups and I was given great advice when starting Harmonics by a business mentor. He said “enjoy the roller coaster ride”. It has been just that; the highs have been remarkable, memorable and unforgettable experiences I never experienced before in my life. The downs have served to teach me to never get carried away with myself. They also taught me to adapt our products or services to meet the continually changing market needs. But one thing I did learn was that I had a lot more capability and potential than I ever thought possible because I did have a go!

 

How to know who’s really ready for promotion into management

Commonly cited stats estimate that about 60% of newly promoted managers fail within the first year (Ashkenas, 2015), pointing to a critical miscalculation in the decision process for selecting who is ready for “next level” management. Given these odds, decision-makers could simply flip a coin – heads, she gets a promotion; tails, she doesn’t get a promotion – and achieve a higher success rate (50%) as well as save hundreds of thousands of euros in the time spent in ineffective talent review meetings.

Leaders all too often rely on current performance and “gut feelings” when making critical decisions about who is ready for promotion into management positions. Mark may be picked over Kevin because he has great numbers and the Hiring manager thinks he’s a nice guy.  However, a single bad leader can cost a company over €1 million per year in net losses (The Ken Blanchard Companies, 2009). So the question remains: why do organizational leaders continue to promote employees based primarily on their high performance in current roles?

“I know my talent,” most executives believe. Truth is, they only know what they see – how those employees perform in the current (and past) roles they hold. Based on the potential of €1 million per year net losses, clearly bad promotion decisions can result in bad business outcomes.

Simply put, when considering which employees are ready for management positions, high performance in one role is no guarantee of high performance in the next, especially if the skills required and responsibilities and outcomes needed are vastly different. Consider, for example, an engineer and their responsibilities versus those of their line manager. The engineer has (specialist) technical knowledge for problem solving. Their line manager might also have the same (specialist) knowledge and skills but must also be a (generalist) leader, manager, influencer, planner, organiser, etc., of others. The same applies in other roles: IT technician versus an IT manager; a sales professional versus her sales director.

This promotion problem is known as the Peter Principle – when organizations continue promoting high performers upwards until they reach positions for which they no longer possess the skills or abilities to succeed (Parrish, 2015). It is a common occurrence and leads to stress for the Organisation and the newly promoted manager with the following results:

Young Leaders are drowning – At Harmonics we see this happening quite often with young millennial leaders promoted into new positions with little or no career development or leadership coaching. Mentoring isn’t happening as much as before, as mentors in the business are time poor.  So the new leader is often left isolated trying to solve new people problems they have never encountered in their careers before.

Young Leaders are leaving – These same leaders who are not succeeding at their promoted level, leaving their roles for new employers. They have been badly bruised emotionally by the experience and it takes some time to regain their confidence. They choose to leave and save face by going to a new employer doing what they used to do rather than have a career development discussion with their employer. The employer loses a great talent to the business.

However, there are objective ways to assess and support an employees’ career readiness for promotion…

Young Leaders need career coaching – The problems outlined above can be avoided by providing career development coaching before and after a promotion to greatly improve their prospects of success in the role. Our new Career Acceleration Coaching for High Potentials Programme is targeted to address this specific issue.

For more information on our suite of interventions for aspiring future Leaders (including our Career Accelerator Coaching Programme, Effective Career Conversations for Managers, Leadership Development Programme or the 5 Dysfunctions of Teams Workshop), please contact Harmonics today on 01 8942616 or email Harmonics to request more information.