Motivational Memos

Thinking About Appraisal and Making it Work

Appraisal is such a good idea and it is founded on such solid psychological principles that it is a wonder it has such a bad reputation, and that it fails to deliver so frequently. It was WE Deming, the great quality guru, who said that it took the average American six months to recover from performance appraisal. The irony is not lost that the average American also experiences appraisals twice a year, so that in effect they never fully recover!

But what are these solid psychological principles? Basically, the father of American psychology, William James, discovered that people perform better when three essential conditions are met. First, that they are set clear goals and objectives. Second, that they are involved in setting those goals and
objectives. And finally, that they are given adequate feedback on how they are doing. This sounds simple enough, and almost an account of how the appraisal is supposed to work: manager meets employee to discuss how they are doing, give that adequate feedback, and then collaboratively set new goals and objectives together. If they don’t collaborate what would be the point of the meeting? They may as well email employees the targets.

Despite this, bosses complain appraisal is ineffective, and staff complain it’s all about ticking boxes. Why does it all go so badly wrong?

There are many reasons, but let’s look at four. First, trying to implement appraisal systems in what might be termed a 'mechanistic' culture. Here hierarchies prevail, which means commitment is lacking. People expect to be told what to do, and bosses expect to know best, sometimes
unintentionally even discounting the views of the employee. Thus the essential collaborative ingredient is always short-circuited.

Next, job descriptions, whilst good in themselves, can be a source of tension with notions of
excellence. Excellence or outstanding performance often implies a beyond-contract arrangement. Staff then end up being judged on an expectation which is not in their job description. If this 'excellence' becomes the expectation, then the assessment is likely to be unfair.

One curious anomaly is also how appraisal might boost the individual performance but at the expense of the team performance. The drive to make the individual perform at a higher level can inflict damage on team morale, especially when the ‘adequate’ feedback becomes, as it often does,
comparative: other team members are hitting targets ahead of you, and so on. Once trust and confidence in the team goes, of course, the effect on individual performances is usually dire as disintegration overwhelms the team members, including those who are hitting target.

Then there are the structural solutions for behavioural problems. Managers and bosses like this, since it appears, at least temporarily, that they are making progress. There is a performance issue which
directly stems from the poor behaviour and attitudinal traits of the employees; this at the best of times is a difficult area to tackle. Sometimes, but not always, it is difficult for managers because the cause of the poor behaviours stems from poor management. Rather than contemplate that possibility the bright idea is to create some structural change or introduce some new system which will dissolve the bad behaviour. Of course, process, structures and systems do no such thing. In fact, appraisal as a system, even badly implemented, will only exacerbate bad behaviours, and this is because the skills needed to conduct an effective appraisal are leadership skills – the absence of which likely caused the problem in the first place – and so only provide another opportunity to demonstrate more ineptitude on the part of managers.

Finally, for now, there is the issue of standards versus creativity. Appraisal is a system and like any system can become more or less flexible. A system which is too standard and target driven can easily
become a drive for conformity. This can manifest itself at all levels – creating safe comfort zone activities, obsession with assessment measures and results, management 'group think', and so on. This drives out creativity and innovation – on which so much ultimately depends.

Getting it right, then, requires some serious thinking and sensitivity – pulling an appraisal package off the shelf is hardly likely to be good value for money, or a good idea!

Assessing Yourself

The world can be a bleak place. Of course, there are always those, in Ian McDonald’s wonderful phrase, who “live lives of sweet and seamless gold”; for whom privilege and a sense of entitlement irrespective of merit smooth the way. But for the rest of us there are problems.

One core source of problems comes from our earliest years and what we come to believe about ourselves and others. The belief becomes so entrenched into our psyche it manifests as a reflex behaviour or action.

I refer to the ubiquitous social conditioning of comparison. God bless them! – but our parents started it: my behaviour is not as good as Johnny’s next door, and he is a ‘good’ boy (or girl).

And this goes on into school years. Not only is our behaviour being compared with others, but so too is our performance: be that in mathematics or sport. In all endeavours we find it is rarely good enough to be second – second is still to be a loser.

This is normative assessment: comparing ourselves with others.

Alongside normative assessment goes another – more insidious because seemingly more fair – type of assessment. Do we measure up? Do we meet the standard?

The standard is, for example, you never tell lies. Sounds good? Yeh, but my family life is entirely dysfunctional – oops, but can’t tell the truth about that, can I? Can we? Strict moral codes that selectively apply.

And on to education. Re-design examinations and assessment so that a ‘standard’ rather than a comparison is the basis of the result output. National Curriculum in Science level 5, which means you understand … a, b, c, d, e and blather to infinity. But do they understand – in a real sense of that word? – and do they love science?

This is criteria-referenced assessment – comparing ourselves with an external standard.

Both normative and criteria led assessments seem to leave everybody in the system disgruntled, dissatisfied, and generally uneasy: there is always somebody better and the standard is always arbitrary – a line is drawn, but whose line? Plus, we all go round internally judging ourselves as unworthy; there has to be a better way – and there is.

The third kind of assessment is called ipsative and this I like: ipsative assessment is where you compare yourself with … yourself! Yes, what is the best I can do? Am I achieving all I am capable of? What do I need to do to motivate myself that bit more in order to gain that bit more success?

So, parents everywhere, stop beating up your children with comments and comparisons of your child with all the others. Instead, identify his or her strengths and cultivate them.

And, employers everywhere, stop being obsessed with competencies and standards that fail to inspire. Instead, focus on personal development and the individual, Ask, what can this acorn become if nurtured properly?

You see, that what normative and criteria referencing have in common is very simple: we can see ‘them’. We can see how other children are different from our own – an easy point of comparison. And we can see – usually in writing – what the standard is. But we cannot ‘see’ – easily – what the child
or the adult may become. As Christ himself said: “Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment”. Look beyond appearances.

Thus it is that the obsession with normative and criteria referenced assessment is often done purely because it is easy – it is lazy too. Let’s end this slackness; let’s make an effort, starting with our self, to ask ourselves what is the best possible me I could possibly be?

Lessons will be Learnt!

Recently I did a 20 minute talk at a University for the RSA Fellows in the area (of which I am one). This had been initiated by a friend who has the foresight to realise that with the imminent shut-down of quango-business services there may be an opportunity for organisations like the RSA to fill an important gap. Part of the RSA’s remit is about ‘manufactures and commerce’ as well as society and
art.

I started my talk by saying that I had been in business for 17 years, had trained thousands of people, worked with hundreds of businesses, and mentored literally dozens and dozens of directors and managers. Thus, what had I learnt from all this experience?

My talk, then, was about the three things I had learnt. First, I had learnt that people are not the most important asset in organisations. That’s right, they’re not. There is a mantra, of course, that says they are – one sees directors beaming with moral self-satisfaction as they repeat – with that rabbit in a headlight look on their faces – ‘People are our …’.

There are organisations where they are, but they are few and far between. The game is given away by the phrase Human Resource management and Human Resource Managers. People don’t want to be a Human Resource (or ‘Asset’) – they want to be people. And they want to be treated as people should be treated. One of the core principles underscoring the development of healthy self-esteem is respect. Whether we are children or adults we need to be treated with respect.

The core skill that delivers ‘respect’ is listening. As we look round the waste of top-down management styles – the ‘Fred Goodwin Effect’ as its latest incarnation might be called – where do we see the listening? The tragedy is that after a while people become inured to being treated badly – even get to expect and like it. An addiction to punishment sets in: the public sector is especially aware of this.

The second thing I have learnt is that leaders don’t lead. Yes, there is a lot of management going on, but although management is necessary it is not leadership. At the top level it is not management we need, but leadership. Part of the reason for this is that most people are secretly crying out to be led – and for a good reason: leadership removes uncertainty and creates stability and security, a primary human need.

Management - all operational stuff. We need a leadership that is genuinely visionary – that creates those images that inspire people to give of their best. Leaders – to be a leader – must engage people, and engagement is what people want.

Finally, the third thing I have learnt is that managers know little or nothing about the nature of the universe, and so ‘go astray’. Why wouldn’t they? Imagine being transported to the most fertile farm land in the world and told to till the ground, but you know nothing of farming. Of course you could expect disastrous results despite the fact that you can create ten thousand amazing Excel spreadsheets!

Perhaps part of the problem is the specialism of the education system: the process by which we come out ‘qualified’ but not educated.

I explained to my audience very simply that if we understood the Tao Te Ching we might understand something about the universe. First, we needed to move away from fruitless speculation on the nature of God: as the first line says, The Tao that can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao. What wisdom is there!

Second, having established not talking about the Tao – the Way – the One because to do so was itself self-defeating, we come on to the real profundity: from One comes Two, from Two comes Three, and from Three comes Ten Thousand things. What does this mean: the immortal, invisible, ineffable One produces Two – Yin and Yang – and Yin and Yang produce Three – Heaven, Earth and Humans – and these Three create all things that are. Oh my!

You can see, as you say this, people thinking – is he off his trolley? What has this to do with business? Everything. Let’s just take one point: if we understood the Two – Yin and Yang – and their ceaseless opposition, we would have known the economic downturn had to happen. The Yang of success had reached such overblown proportions that a Yin correction was inevitable – a correction, incidentally, of the same magnitude as the bubble which spawned it. So this means, if we understand the nature of the universe, the recession is far from over: we have a lot further down to go. But knowing this is reassuring, because we are no longer acting in uncertainty, but preparing for the storm.

The lessons from this are simple and come in the form of three pressing questions: first, how do we make people truly central in our organisations? How do we develop leadership at the highest levels? And how do we educate people so that they ‘see’ more?

No one said, of course, learning was easy!

Motivating our People

Aside from using my product, Motivational Maps, people ask me: how best do you motivate staff? In
short, what tips can you offer? This is great because in a way it’s an acknowledgement that motivation is really critically important even when leaders don’t always want to pay attention to it, or invest in it.

What, then, are the best management tips for motivating others? Here are a few pointers – but first
bear in mind that you want everybody in your organisation to be motivated because if they are, then a process of osmosis sets in, and everyone around feels it, wants it, and then credibility sets in and high energy is the order of the day.

Ten top tips then to use on a minute by minute basis.

Number 1: always be motivated yourself, and give the lead – it’s infectious. Do that corny but effective ritual first thing in the morning: look in the mirror and say, I feel great, I am full of energy, I am the conqueror. Tell yourself with conviction, then go out and live the dream.

Two: look for and find members of your team doing things right – catch them – praise them
immediately.

Three: treat everybody with respect, which means – difficult lesson coming up – listen a lot. Yes, listen a lot, and stop the cackle.

Four: help your people learn – you know why you should be boss, but their view may be much more
limited – limited to: if he’s in charge then I get this job – widen their horizons! Increases in learning produce increases in self-esteem and performance.

Five: make them feel they belong – they are part of your exclusive club – avoid the sense of cabals and inner circles.

Six: stop micro-managing with central directives, give them more control, allow them to
do things their way.

Seven: acknowledge their ideas, publicly where possible, and reward achievement. Remember,
‘strokes’ are rewards too – see Nine.

Eight: give them a challenge – it’s challenging enough winning a contract – add to that in some way, and talk as if you know they can do it.

Nine: say thank you, and make strong eye contact when you do.

Ten: try to understand their motivations and feed them – review the above suggestions and work out which suit which individuals. Treat them personally.

Now with the above suggestions in your armoury – if you have time – go out and win that business.
Remember: feed the motivations of yourself, and your team.

Motivation and Hercule Poirot

Laughter, they say, is the best medicine; and I find in the last few months my tastes have changed considerably in terms of the kind of films I want to watch: much less action and more gentle humour and thoughtfulness.

I have discovered, to my surprise, the wonderful TV series of Hercule Poirot, starring David Suchet, fits the bill perfectly. Suchet is marvellous in the lead, the sets are great, the plots are usually convoluted and one has to try to exercise ‘the little grey cells’ to work out who is guilty, and there is
this overarching humour running through it all – the interaction between Poirot, Captain Hastings, Miss Lemon and Chief Inspector Japp. It’s easy viewing, certainly, but nonetheless enjoyable for that. I have not read the books yet, but I suspect I now may.

One element of the humour that regularly pops up in the film – a thread or element – is the mistaken belief, usually by the English, that the man they are dealing with is French; and this has always to be corrected by Poirot himself: he is of course Belgian. But why is this funny?#

In motivational theory Hertzburg came up with the idea of what he called hygiene factors in motivation. These were elements of work which whilst not necessarily motivating to anyone were necessary because their absence would de-motivate. For example, scarcely anybody would be motivated by a clean toilet at work, or would be motivated by good air-conditioning at work; however, take away these elements and one could be become seriously demotivated. Imagine going to work every day and the toilets were filthy, or going to work in offices where there is no air-conditioning and it is summer and 30 degrees outside!

This led me to reflect on the importance of the smallest detail in the creation of anything, if that something is to be successful. As Marcus Aurelius said, “the secret of all success lies in the organisation of the non-obvious”. Effectively, small details can act as hygiene factors which block success.

So back to Poirot, what is the hygiene factor? The brilliance of Agatha Christie’s creation is the fact that he is Belgian because it would never work – never work in England – if he were French! You could keep all the rest the same – the plots, the settings, the characters, the dialogue, the dress and so on - but the English could never accept or regard even as remotely credible a French detective advising – and outstripping, outperforming – our own Metropolitan Police Force. The idea is inconceivable. (As a sidebar on this matter in the real world: just recently David Cameron, our Prime Minister, faced insuperable obstacles in considering the American, Bill Bratton, for the post of Head of the
Metropolitan Police.)

This all goes back a thousand years to our love-hate (mostly hate) relationship withthe French – they are a ‘power’ (like the Americans now) and we do not wish to feel inferior to them. Curiously, Agatha Christie’s own creation was based on AEW Mason’s fictional detective, Inspector Hanaud of the Surete; but who remembers him now? No, he was French.

Belgium, on the other hand, doesn’t threaten our sense of self-esteem and self-importance at all. A small little country most English people now and then would be hard pressed to know much about. We did know back then – in the Twenties and Thirties – that the ‘awful’ Germans – another power - had invaded them and that we had saved them. We had gone to war to save the Belgians. What, then, if it produced one remarkable human being to whom we could express admiration and our thanks – for making England a safer place from murderers? Frankly, we like to patronise – we feel safe.

So hats off to Hercule Poirot – because he’s Belgian, and could be no other: that motivates us to love and accept, and to warmly invite him into our homes! It is just such a strange element of the story that makes this a multi-million pound success story. How motivating is that?

Being a Champion

It’s strange to say this; it is counter-intuitive. But I often now get asked: how did you cope with your illness? The assumption is always, how did you cope because it must have been awful? And in one and very true sense, this is correct: having had two major operations for bowel cancer and just survived them is awful. Yet, I have to correct people too: bizarrely, in another sense, it has been wonderful!

Of course, I am not wishing for my illness to return – far from it – and keep me as far from a hospital and doctors and nurses as it’s humanly possible to be. But I begin to see – to experience – the truth of that cliché about what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. Or that we thrive in adversity. Or even more particularly, that somehow pain and suffering are at the root of becoming a great person – if we respond appropriately.

It comes back to the simple idea that when everything is going well it is easy to be a marvellous person. Why wouldn’t one? If one won every game one played, achieved every goal one set oneself, succeeded in every task and accomplishment that one encountered along life’s way, then why wouldn’t one have a perfect character and smile and be charming all the time? Yes, one might.

To be, however, a great champion in any field, then one must face giants of opposition, titans of antagonism, and real perils and risks.

One talks, for example, of Muhammed Ali being the greatest boxing champion of all time. Why, because he won the World title three times? Hardly, another may do that. No, because he beat other, real champions; because he faced men like Joe Frazier and George Foreman who were awesome opponents, and who, arguably, in any other age would have completely dominated that sport, but for the presence of Ali. The greatness of Ali was demonstrated in the size and power of the obstacles in front of him.

And to switch sports: Lance Armstrong did something similar in cycling, only here his most lethal opponent was cancer itself, which his brilliant book, It’s Not about the Bike, chronicles. We see side by side here the pain of the cancer and the pain of the training, and the overarching objective of one human being not to become a victim of circumstances.

Thus, the strangest thing emerges when we think about it: no-one likes pain and suffering, and many people want to blame God for it. But at some deep level pain and suffering do provide some sort of character-therapy for people that enables them to endure with triumph dreadful circumstances, and in some cases achieve remarkable victories against the odds, and against the conventional wisdom of what should prevail.

For myself, as I said before, I certainly do not want cancer back, and I am working to prevent that happening so far as that lies within my power. At the same time, I can see that the suffering I went through had some tremendous benefits: how I value every minute now, how I treasure my family and friends at an even deeper level now, and how I see the whole universe shot through with the spirit
of love that is not attenuated or diminished merely by pain – but through that pain can draw one ever closer to the Source – and that is to be a Champion.

The Question of Humility

Humility is a much neglected virtue in the modern world; everyone wants to be a ‘winner’ and the implicit assumption is that nice people finish last, that understating yourself is a strategic mistake, and that humility, basically, is for wimps. Like the virtue of ‘meekness’ it is perceived as a negative virtue for those lacking what might be termed, colloquially, ‘bottle’. This, I think, is a serious mistake and arises from a fundamental misunderstanding of what humility is.

Humility and humble are etymologically derived from the Latin, humus, which means ‘ground’, and ground is low, as opposed to being high. So to be humble or to practise humility is to be of the round, of the earth. What does that mean?

Three things spring to mind. First, that to be of the earth is to be aware and sensitized to the fact that we live in seasons, and more particularly that there is a time to live and a time to die, paraphrasing Ecclesiastes. It is not resisting the flow of things as they are because this is ‘me’, and I am self-evidently a ‘special’ case. Further, it is not arguing with the nature of the universe and taking
great delight in blaming God or whoever when things go wrong. I am sure you know the sort of thing I mean: where was God when my mother, son, or whoever died? This is a kind of vaunting and defiance against reality; of course, nobody wants or likes death, or any of the other injuries that come to us
through time, but the humble person sees and accepts there are seasons for all things, and that unmitigated joy is not the lot of anyone born on this world.

Second, being of the earth enables one to see the interconnectedness of everything. We need each other if we are to thrive, and not just live or exist; but more than that we need all the living things that the world holds. In reality we are dependent on them; sometimes it is the lowliest creatures which are the most important – the plankton in the oceans, the earthworms in the ground, and so
on. What this means is that the humble person values all creatures, and all living things, recognising the interdependence of everything. When we treat the fruits of the earth as mere commodities, as mere stuff to fuel our fantasies and ambitions, then we are arrogant and proud, and we are not of the earth – we destroy the Earth and in return the Earth gets round to destroying us.

Third, and finally for now, being of the earth means spending less time in our heads, in our minds, thinking. Thinking for most people is a comparative activity and it is relentless and harmful. Comparing themselves with others and concluding we are superior, or even inferior, on an on-going basis puffs up the mind with notions of difference and specialness; it creates barriers between people.

Instead we should spend more time in what the Chinese call the Dan Tien, the point about
two inches below our belly buttons, the centre of gravity of the whole body, and the gut – the place of balance, the point of instinct, and where we direct our breathing when we meditate. This is not to denigrate thinking per se, but to remind us that when we are of the earth we are much more centred, and therefore balanced. Ultimately it means we slow down – smell the roses and actually ‘do’
all the clichés we like to allude to, but often fail to implement.

Humility is not only spiritually good for us, it also has enormous health benefits too, as well as helping us in our relationships with others. Why not be humble, then? Perhaps it’s because of old and bad habits; perhaps it’s to do with poor, early and continuing conditioning; and perhaps it’s because people don’t want to be of the earth when they can aspire to their own private delusions of heaven.

 

The Right People Need No Motivation

Jim Collins, the world famous management guru, has said that “if you have the right people on your bus, you don’t need to worry about motivating them”. As a friend of mine said, “Does this mean that employee motivation programs are useless?” It would seem so – if only we could get our recruitment right, then we would employ a whole bunch of self-starters who would not need to be motivated by management. Wow, would that save costs? Yes. So this sounds like a good – no, great – idea, but is it?

My own view is that there is a truth in what Jim Collins says, but that he isn't exactly right either.

In the first instance we need to take the problem back a frame. Most people hire on the basis of qualifications and experience, often forgetting that high energy, which is effectively high motivation, is the number one factor for outperformance. So attracting and recruiting these people in the first place makes sense - but how are we to do that? It is not easy to establish in the first instance who are the genuinely motivated types of people; one thing we do know is that most people at interviews appear motivated, and furthermore that being superb at interviews usually means that one is great at interviews rather than being great for the role that one is being interviewed for!

But then having got these people, the notion that they continue to remain motivated if you do nothing about them is lamentable - sure, like the Duracell bunny, they'll run longer and more effectively than the non-motivated people you initially recruited, BUT they still need input - less input than the non-motivated people, but input nevertheless. Furthermore, although it could be
argued that that such very effective people are self-starters, the benefit of inputs is also aligned with reading their minds - if you don't input you are not likely to really find out what is going on inside their head - and bingo, the self-starter up and leaves because there is no engagement with him or her.

Thus it is imperative to provide the most motivated with even more reasons to be motivated; and that leads on to the reason of reasons - namely, the best people always have it in them to want to be better - so helping them really gets them and you up to the very highest levels of performance, and at the same time gets more buy-in, more staying power in the relationship - thereby reducing turnover costs.

The truth is – the obvious truth is – things change, and that includes especially motivation. We all know of high performing, highly motivated men and women who once were outperformers but have now fallen by the wayside, as it were, and become, in some instances, positive liabilities. What
happened to them? Many things can happen to them – simple burnout for one thing; neglect for another; and yet for another just lack of meaning or core purpose – why am I doing this when I never see my family from one month’s end to another?

So, yes, recruit the highly motivated – that’s good advice from Jim Collins. But don’t imagine job done! Motivation is like physical fitness: wherever you are on the scale of it, you need constant and persistent inputs stay fit, to stay motivated. True, the self-motivated can provide a lot of this for themselves, but let’s be sure: management has a lot to offer to keep performance really high.

The Beautiful Disgrace of Burn’s Night

Sometimes one has to admit that something so beautiful can be a disgrace. We have just passed just such a moment for the English. I am referring to Burn’s Night, of course, that marvellous invention of the Scots, celebrated on the 25^thJanuary!

To digress a moment, I think it would be true to say that if we think about matchless musical composition we would have to concede, certainly from a Western perspective, that the very highest levels of musical achievement belong to either Italy or Germany. For my money JS Bach is without peer, so Germany would be the pre-eminent musical nation with Italy a very close second. We have had fine composers in Britain – Tallis, Purcell and so on – but not as great as JS Bach and a host of others.

And we could ask the same question about fine art. There we might conclude that the honours for the very greatest painters might be shared between the Italians and the French. And again, we have produced many fine painters, but not Leonardo Da Vinci.

So why labour this point? Because Britain, in the same way as Germany and Italy are pre-eminent in their fields of music and art, is preeminent in literature. This island has produced – and by extension the wider world productions in the English language - a raft of the greatest writers ever known, including one, William Shakespeare, certainly the greatest playwright ever, and arguably the greatest
poet. Of course Scotland has produced many fine writers, but in this instance Shakespeare, and for that matter Milton, Spenser and Chaucer, were all English.

What is disgraceful, then, about this from the English point of view is that England has not had the wit to create or to celebrate its literary heritage in the way of a Burn’s Night. Even Shakespeare’s birthday falls on St George’s Day and so is eclipsed by it. That’s even more frustrating when one considers that the 23^rd April is also the anniversary of that quintessentially English, though minor,
poet Rupert Brooke: “Think only this of me, that’s there’s some corner of a foreign field that is forever England.”

How is it that we cannot celebrate poetry and a poet with haggis, whiskey and good cheer in the way that Scotland can? Of course I wasn’t stopped from such a celebration this year – in fact, had a wonderful time, which led not only to the general recitation of poetry and fine dining, but the spontaneous acts of singing and dancing. In short, the creation of real culture – people getting
together, sharing what is valuable, and really communicating and creating. By analogy, Shakespeare is for the home, not just the theatre.

So if not a criminal offence, it is a disgrace that the English have not got or invented their own version of the Burn’s Night – celebrating whatever poet seems relevant to that event. Perhaps we in England should start a campaign for a Poet’s Night? Any interested?

Homer’s Odyssey and Personal Development

‘Narrative may be regarded as a primary act of mind’, as someone once said, and so it proves true in all great stories: they tell us the primary truths about ourselves, and often what seems to be only an objective narrative is also an internal account of what is going on in the soul of mankind. Nowhere more so than in the really great stories: all sacred literature, and add to that Shakespeare and Homer.

In the latter case, of course, the word ‘odyssey’ has come to mean a journey, and one of the most difficult and profound sort. Heroes – and heroines – can only become so by overcoming immense difficulties like those depicted in Homer’s Odyssey.

If Personal Development is a journey, is an odyssey, then what can we learn from Homer about it?

Firstly, that Odysseus himself is on a mission. Simply put, he wants to get home again and re-join his wife. But the interior mission is much deeper: it is to find the true and real Self, the Self that has been hidden and repressed by ages of civilisation and warfare; it is to be ‘home’ again where home is not just an address on the door, but where you should be and where all life is comfortable and beautiful; and it is where you find again and love ‘Penelope’, who is in reality not just your wife (or husband) but your faithful soul. Finally, it is where you destroy the ‘Suitors’ – the forces of indiscipline and chaos that have been dogging your heels ever since you left home.

There are nine core dangers you will face, and there are nine key tools at your disposal to help you diffuse them. Let me outline a couple of dangers.

The Sirens are a well-known feature of the Odyssey – their fatal song shipwrecks all mariners who pass and hear it. They were, quite literally, the fatal attractions of their day. All of us have experienced fatal attractions and been driven of course as a result. The result of too many fatal attractions is a
surfeit of experience – often expressed as knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing.

What is the cure for the Sirens? Binding – Odysseus bound the ears of his mariners with wax so that they could not hear the temptation, and got them to bind him to the mast so that he could hear, but not respond. In fact he was almost driven mad by desire, as he heard but could not move. This 'binding’ is very similar to the Christian notion of ‘lead us not into temptation’ – avoidance is the key. And along with it the use of friendship – Odysseus could not have succeeded without explaining his plan and gaining the consent of friends on board who could be relied upon not to ‘break’ the pact. So self-limitation and friendship can enable us to survive the Sirens!

A less well-known danger in the Odyssey is the Laestrygonians, who are giants that nearly destroy Odysseus and his men – in fact several of his ships and their crew perish as a result of their rock-throwing. This kind of ‘giant’ meets us in real life in the form of problems: problems too big to handle. Often we valiantly battle on, trying to get a grip on the problem, when any analysis, SWOT or otherwise, would conclude that we should run – escape the problem by exiting it altogether. In other words, not making the mistake of thinking that continued persistence in tackling the ‘giant’ is finally going to wear the giant down; it’s not, get real, and get out!

There are seven other dangers, and there nine key tools that enable us to realise our mission in life, and to get home. I shall be exploring all of this on my Personal Development course on the 24^th February, 2012: http://personaldevelopmentmentoring.webs.com

I hope to see some of you there and re-committing to your mission, your odyssey in life.

Do We Really Believe in Teams?

One of the mantras of most managers is that teams outperform collective individual performance. There is lots of research that substantiates that, and in any case it is summed up in that well-known poster acronym: T.EA.M., or Together Each Achieves More. Put another way: teams produce a synergy in which the net output is not additional but geometric. Four people as a group produce 1+1+1+1= 4 units of productivity; but four people as a team can produce 1x2x3x4=24 units of productivity! The most spectacular example of this, which uses a totally different algorithm, is the domestic partnership when it’s a real team: two people create extraordinary productivity in each other.

That said, however, the reality on the ground is that team outperformance is less a belief and more
a thought; and thoughts are nowhere near strong enough to break the emotional needs of managers – the needs to control, to micro-manage, to divide and rule. In short, many managers pay lip service to teams and creating teams, butconsciously or sub-consciously sabotage the creation of them.; they end up instead with groups or departments of people, all sharing a label – the Finance department, the HR department and so on – but being nothing like a real team.

What then is a real team? What makes it different from a group? There are of course many lists of these qualities, but I think it comes down to four key elements.

First, teams have a remit or reason for being together – they have a purpose for which they exist. Second, teams accept and embrace interdependency; in other words, everyone in the team has skills and knowledge which is absolutely essential for the purpose to be achieved. Third, team members believe in the power of teams and so act accordingly; and fourthly, and finally, teams are always accountable to the whole organisation – they do not create fiefdoms and separate empires working autonomously from the main and larger mission of the whole organisation.

With this in mind, the starting point for all managers is to get a grip on whether they are genuinely creating and promoting teams, or whether they are deluding themselves with ‘team talk’, but actually sabotaging their creation.

To do this I have found five simple questions, which, because they are so objective, tend to expose reality. So answer Yes or No to these five questions:

1. Do you think teamwork important in your work?
2. Do you conduct training programmes to ensure your team is effective?
3. Do you review the effectiveness of your team(s)?
4. Have you been involved in training programmes run by your direct line manager to ensure team
   building?
5. Do your line managers review the effectiveness of their team(s)?

If the answer to any of these questions is NO – what are you going to do about it? If your only YES is
to question no. 1, then you have been caught with your pants down! Think about it.

The Antidote to Fear: Trust

I read an ancient Arabic story the other day about a merchant traveller with his caravan on his way to Baghdad. Half way to his destination the merchant encounters Pestilence who informs him that he too is on his way to Baghdad. Pestilence’s reason for travelling there is to kill five thousand people. Having delivered that piece of stunning news Pestilence disappears and the merchant continues his trip.

We next see the merchant returning from Baghdad where again he is intercepted by Pestilence. The merchant is angry.

“You lied to me,” he roars at Pestilence. “You told me you would kill five thousand people, but fifty thousand are dead.”

Pestilence patiently replies, “I told you no lie. I said I would kill five thousand people, and I have killed exactly five thousand people.” There is a pause and then he completes the information: “Fear killed the rest.”

Fear? Yes, fear – a word that is now synonymous with all that is problematic with being human. For some fear is the root disease behind all our maladies. It is fear that causes us to do wrong and hurt others as we seek to secure ourselves; fear that causes stress and leads to all sorts of illnesses; and fear that leads us to react to situations instead of being creative about them.

So what is the antidote to fear? The antidote is the same as it always has been: trust. First, trust in God. This is easy to say, but much more difficult to do. Can we accept the wisdom of the universe and rejoice in all our circumstances, not just the good or the fun bits?

Second, trust in others. Most people would agree that over the last fifty years there has been a serious deterioration in trust between peoples and communities. Yet our only real security – whose lack ignites fear – is with other people; if we cannot trust others we are destined to a life of fear, of always covering our back, of checking up on, of imagining the worst. How do we establish trust
between people?

Finally, trust in our Self – in our essence, or our soul. We need to enter our own souls and find there goodness and worth – and so the strength to face anything. Of course, the heart has traditionally been the seat of the soul, and that is why when we trust the in our Self we find courage. Courage, etymologically, derives from the heart. Trust in our Self, then, produces courage, which is also an
antidote to fear.

And why is this so important – because we are starting a new year with many new challenges. The economic meltdown could be cause enough to despair. Then again the situation in many areas of the world – North Korea at the moment and in some other states like Iran – leads one to fear the outbreak of a wider war. The fall in living standards, the chronic indebtedness of individuals, the scarcity of jobs and civil unrest, the general malaise of hopelessness partly originated by lack of any belief systems in the West, and if these weren’t enough on their own to inspire fear, there is the Mayan prophecy about the end of the world this coming December!

So, let us resist to the temptation to live in fear. Instead we must trust in God, learn to trust others, and most importantly find that trust of our Self within our Self, so that we can face 2012 with courage and confidence. And in doing so, prevail.

How Nothing Creates Performance and Beauty

I was with some friends the other day, including Ginny Richards, and she had just played the piano superbly well. We were discussing how it is that some people play the piano – or instrument or sing – so expressively, and others, who may be technically proficient, make it all sound so dead.

There is no easy answer, but my own focused on the space between the notes. Whether intuitively or not, the great instrumentalists play the notes but are more aware of the spaces between them. In fact these spaces frame the notes and are as important as the notes themselves; for it is in the contrast between a note sounding and its succeeding emptiness that the soul of the music resides.

Technically proficient performers tend to mechanise the notes and the spaces: they measure, precisely so, and thus no real feeling permeates the bridge between the sounds and its cessation. The expressive performers sense that note and its attendant silences – aching to speak through them indeed – are intimately connected; thus, in playing, they work to make the connection explicit.

Of course, this is also true in other disciplines. English poetry, for example, at its best and greatest, depends on rhythm and metre – the stressed syllable is framed by the unstressed ones, and in that contrast powerful emotions can be generated. And this is one reason why purely visual – or image-driven – poetry is less evocative. Certainly, the deliberate randomness of so much post-modern poetry completely fails to touch us at a deep level because there is no patterning of the sound effects, so the responses tend to be merely cerebral. In short people who like this stuff do so because it reflects their own view of the world, not because the poetry has entered the silence between the noise of words – and so driven to the surface the full force of the deep, chthonic gods of human emotion.

But perhaps most importantly of all is in the area of meditation which deploys the same principle. To wit, against the ‘something’ – the fullness – of life, the meditator enters the ‘nothing’ of meditation. As the Tao Te Ching puts it: ‘thirty spokes surround the hub: in their nothingness consists the carriage of effectiveness’. Breathing reflects this – the fullness of the breath in is followed by the emptiness of the breath out, but before the ‘out’ can happen there is a point of space, of turning, when the breath is neither in nor out, but suspended, as it were, on nothing.

When we meditate we deliberately try to empty our minds, and by doing so we return refreshed to the world of ‘things’. Further, it could be said that meditation on ‘nothing’ refreshes – cleanses – the doors of perception that have become so locked up for most of us.

I started by using words about playing the piano “superbly well” and singing so “expressively”, but really the one word, the most important word, that captures what happens when we pay attention to the spaces between the beats, the ‘nothings’ between the ‘somethings’, is the word ‘beauty’. We hear the beauty in the music and in the poetry; and arising from the meditation we see it – the beauty - in all that is natural, and sometimes even in what is not.

Thus, step by step, music, poetry, and meditation lead us eventually to the mystic realm where all is beautiful.

The Real Meaning of Christmas

I love Christmas, and I am especially looking forward to it this year because, as some readers of my articles may have deduced, I have been seriously ill and in hospital for three months. At one point it looked as if I wouldn’t make Christmas at all; and then as if I’d still be in hospital over Christmas. So to be out of hospital and at home with the prospect of Christmas before me seems truly wonderful.

 Of course, for some, Christmas is fundamentally flawed – it has been spoilt, commercialised, and all its true values have been destroyed. These people have a point; but what is the real meaning of Christmas?

 We will all doubtless have our own ideas, but for me Christmas can be expressed in five simple words extracted from the Nicene Creed. Personally, I am not a big believer in creeds as they tend to be divisive; so I use these five simple words and invite you to interpret them literally, mythologically or symbolically, or as you will.

 The five simple words are: ‘He came down from heaven’. The key word in the sentence is the middle one: ‘down’ – ‘He came down …’. You see this tells us about the direction of the godhead, of the divine. Human beings want ‘up’ – to ascend, to have more, to grow further, but the godhead comes down. Humans have enthroned themselves in the heaven of their own egos, exalted their own self-importance, and drawn immense satisfactions from promoting the works of their own hands. By contrast, the godhead comes down, and that is what we must recall.

 Before I fell ill in July of this year I was an extremely strong, self-confident individual who could anything I wanted to, or set my heart on achieving; I scarcely felt a sense of limitation. But as I lay there in the hospital bed, getting weaker and weaker, so my ego drained away and I began to see – to use a Biblical phrase – that my ‘own right arm could not save me’.

 And that was then, and this is now: some seven or so weeks after I left hospital, its memories get dimmer and more remote. The lessons learnt seem less important and we forget what we need to remember. Old habits return.

 So Christmas reminds me that God needs to come down – down – into my heart and mind and re-establish divine presence there. I pray then that that will be true for us all. And what does that mean?

 It means, perhaps, to become like the baby in the manger, like all babies in fact. Babies have no ego, they are open to all experience, and open to everyone. They are accepting – of all reality. If we could be more like that all the time how much better would this world be?

 May, then, the real meaning of Christmas come alive in your hearts and minds, as you reflect on that brilliant line from the Nicene Creed: ‘He came down from heaven.’

Pedagogy and Motivation

I was asked an interesting educational question recently about motivation and pedagogy: to wit, what pedagogy is used to create classroom strategies that each motivator prefers?

Pedagogy is a word that one doesn’t encounter as frequently as one did, say, in the Seventies; what does it mean? Pedagogy is the science of teaching, of instruction, of training. It answers the question of how people learn effectively. Just preaching to people may make the preacher feel good, but will the audience learn anything? An exceptional preacher, possibly, may well impart knowledge and information, even rouse people to take action; but in the real world if every teacher in the classroom used ‘preaching’ as their dominant pedagogy, there would be even more disaffected and bored youngsters than there are now.

To teach – or train - effectively we must understand how people learn effectively. This understanding then informs the way and ways we present, communicate and offer information, knowledge, concepts, ideas and even practical skills.

There is a definite correlation between Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and motivation itself; further, the nine motivators – as defined by Pink in his book  Drive, and by others in their work – are themselves grouped into three categories of three: some motivators, those relating to control, wealth and expertise, are predominantly about thinking. And this is obvious (if you think about it!): exercising control, creating wealth and developing expertise all have in common a planning element to them. They are the typical motivators of high achievers in the work place; they are also, to use NLP terminology, synonymous with the ‘visual’ – the what-you-see-is-what-you-get, with plans that are logical, coherent and highly visible.

By contrast, three other motivators are highly geared to feeling. These reflect the needs for security, belonging and recognition. Security is something that fundamentally we can only achieve through relationships; belonging is equally about relationships with others; and recognition can only come from others – and from positive relationships with them, usually. Relationships, then, are less about the NLP ‘visual’, and more about the NLP ‘auditory’; for it is in listening to others that the strongest relationships are built.

Finally, three motivators are related to knowing, which is intuitive and direct, rather than being logical and considered like thinking. These motivators are creativity, freedom and meaning. These motivators are at the peak of Maslow’s Hierarchy – they are self-actualisation motivators. And they are very direct. To take one example, creativity: everyone knows, or should know, that one doesn’t think one’s way to being creative, although much thought may precede the ‘creative’ moment. The universal testimony about creativity is that it comes in a flash – in poetry it is called the ‘muse’ – and immediately solves complex problems and produces outstanding works of art. It is instant, and invariably the creative, him or herself, knows they have been a conduit for inspiration. In NLP terms, then, this knowing corresponds with the ‘kinaesthetic’, because the creative moment goes through the body – it is felt, although that is not the same as being a specific feeling.

It should be clear from the foregoing that the pedagogy that motivation needs to use to create effective classroom strategies is NLP or the three modes of perception called Think-Feel-Know (TFK), and these two correspond. To take the latter, then, what are its characteristics?

Think-orientated people prefer detail, data, statistics, evidence, proof, references and generally lots of information. In complete contrast to this feel-orientated people like stories, examples, pictures, anecdotes, metaphors, analogies, graphs, diagrams and more generally and literally getting the picture! Finally, the know-orientated people like plain, simple facts – get to the executive summary as quickly as possible.

Each of us has all three modes of perception, but we tend to be dominant in one, and have a secondary backup. Thus classroom strategies need to reflect on how a balance of all three can be achieved; and better still, if the classroom and individuals can be profiled, then to weight the balance towards the dominant one or two tendencies. This is even more critical where special needs are involved.

And a curious thing also arises. It could be that the profile is done through a Think-Feel-Know or NLP test to establish which modes are dominant in any given student. But it can also be reversed engineered: namely, a motivational profile of the individual or class, based on the nine categories of motivation, and the three triads I mentioned, would give the teacher a clear idea of which of Think-Feel-Know modes of perception were most likely to be effective.

It can hardly be emphasised enough that an appropriate pedagogy for classroom strategies is essential, and equally, if don’t want to think about in that pedagogic way, presenting learning in a way that motivates students is core. Let’s learn, then, more about motivation.

Visiting the Underworld with Orpheus

When I was a child I was fascinated by myths, and especially those concerning the underworld, what we sometimes call journeys into hell. It is difficult to account for why these sort of stories appeal, although now – at the later end of my life – it’s all very clear: having been to hell – my 3 months hospitalization – recently, then obviously my fascination was a sort of premonition of the fact!

All cultures have stories of heroes who descend into hell, but the most interesting I know of are the myths of the Ancient Greeks. Many of their heroes stormed hell – Heracles, Theseus, Odysseus to mention only three, three who returned. Of course, some – like Pirithous – failed to make it back.

But of all the heroes who explored hell, the greatest – the one who descended furthest - was ironically not a great warrior at all: the poet and musician Orpheus went deeper into the Underworld than even Heracles, and did it through his music and poetry alone. What is the significance, then, of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth?

First, the desire to enter hell arose not from a compulsion for heroics but because his beloved wife, Eurydice, had died as a result of a snake bite. Thus Orpheus resolved to enter hell in order to bring his wife back to life.

In facing all the dangers and perils of hell, Orpheus’ solution was the same: to play his music and sing his song. So Charon, the ferryman, rowed him across the Styx without the obligatory payment; so Cerberus, the three headed dog that was virtually impossible to subdue, except by Heracles, was charmed into sleeping by the music; so all perils and obstacles yielded to the music. Till at last, Orpheus stood in the very throne room of Hades, lord of death and hell, himself.

There, before Hades and his queen, Persephone, Orpheus reached the climax of his song and struck the notes. It is said for the first and only time Hades wept – tears of molten tar. But more remarkable still, being in the throne room itself meant that the sound within its box vibrated throughout the whole domain of hell itself. All in hell heard the song of Orpheus.

Thus it was that the damned, Ixion at his wheel, Tantalus striving for his water, and Sisyphus fruitlessly and endlessly pushing his boulder up the hill only to find it roll back down each time, suddenly froze. They heard the music and their pain lifted. Their dull animal instincts to repeat and repeat their pointless activities – like rats in a maze- gave way to the return of human cognition.

For a moment they experienced relief and were enthralled by beauty – the beauty of Orpheus’ singing.

And then it ended – and the damned returned to their endless damnation. Hades was grateful for the entertainment and said he would grant whatever Orpheus wished for; and Orpheus requested the return of the life of Eurydice. This was granted but with one tiny condition:  that she follow him some twenty paces behind and that he must not turn to look at her before reaching sunlight again. Orpheus eagerly agreed.

So Orpheus retraced his happy steps, knowing Eurydice was right behind him, following him back to life. But then tragedy struck – within sight of daylight at the end of the tunnel leading up to the world, Orpheus needed to check she was still there. He turned, looked, and even as he did so her form, which had gained substantiality on the way up, now began to de-compose; she waved one last despairing wave, and was gone, forever. His journey had achieved nothing, and he returned alone to the world of sunshine above ground.

But had he achieved nothing? It seems to me two important lessons emerge from the tale. The first is by asking the question, why did he fail? The answer is clear: he failed because of his unbelief – his lack of faith – he did not take the god at his word. The god, who was delighted with the song and the singer, had no reason to lie, and yet Orpheus in turning refused to believe him.

And this is our problem: we do not believe the god who speaks within us – what Jung called the Self – the deeper part of us that incorporates the unconscious and the archetypes. We rationalise and we think our egos know all the truth – and then as we disbelieve the god we are struck down with our own specific tragedies.

The second lesson, however, is far more optimistic. It is to contemplate how hell itself began to turn into heaven as the song was sung; and that reminds us that the universe – the uni (one) – verse (song or poem) is precisely that. All life, all joy is in the music, the pattern, the structure that underpins all that is. And so, even hell is transformed if we can sing our own song.

Are you Orpheus? Are you singing your song – being your own poem? Or are you someone who will die with their music still unsung and inside them? The message is clear: get singing – who knows – you may well rescue your own Eurydice from the depths.

Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth

As we passed a church on the way to Bournemouth Rail Station the other day I saw a fantastic advertising poster. It said: “The B.I.B.L.E – Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth! What a concept, what an acronym! In today's Western society there is – despite the relentless barrage of bad news, war and mayhem – an almost wilful amnesia about the reality of death. Apparently, in Japan, if there could be said to be any good coming from the recent earthquake and tsunami, it is the report that young people are abandoning their addiction to cocoons of virtual reality and suddenly waking up to find they can help the relief effort. But more locally, listen to any personal development guru going on and talking about 'limitless, unlimited possibilities and potential' if we just change the way we think; alas, no amount of positive thinking produces 'unlimited' possibilities or averts the final destination of death.

The Bible itself may or may not be your idea of the final authority for 'Basic Instructions', but the question surely is: what are the basic instructions? How shall we live? What makes for our health, happiness and success?

So far as we are physically concerned the answer is pretty clear – clear, presumably, because physically what happens is entirely visible: if we eat too much, drink too much, fail to exercise we soon find ourselves in a state that is diseased and dis-eased. Not good.

The real challenge is finding the basic instructions that apply to the 'invisible' human world – the spiritual or what for most people might be termed the psychological. People seem to have a great deal of trouble understanding or accepting what is really causing their actions and re-actions, and basically getting them into trouble. One thing I notice time and time again is just how many people pride themselves on being rational, logical, scientific even – as if that really were the case, or as if they ever could be!

Spock is a wonderful invention of the human mind, but he's not real; humans may approximate more closely to him than to Captain Kirk, or any other member of the crew, but nobody is 'logical'. Underlying all their decisions are emotions, and complex, subconscious psychological patterns mainly learned at a very young age. To pretend otherwise is to compound the problem. The beginning of wisdom is self-awareness – all people who boast they are completely logical, therefore, are illogical and unwise.

But to return to the central theme: what then are the Basic Instructions we need to know before leaving the Earth? Here psychology can help, but why bother? Religion is much more powerful and has known the answers since the beginning of time. As Ptahhotep, about 3000 BC, said: "Follow your heart all your life, do not commit excess with respect to what has been ordained”, or "He who has a great heart has a gift from God. He who obeys his stomach obeys the enemy"; or, again, "All conduct should be so straight that you can measure it with a plumb-line."

This is what might be called 'wisdom' literature and it seems to exist in all significant traditions, and far from being outmoded and outdated its validity continues being re-affirmed by those who follow these sort of precepts. It can almost be summed up in  one brilliant phrase that says, What you sow you shall reap – the law of consequences. And how hard is it for some people to foresee those consequences on which individual and society's destiny may hang?

Let's look, then, at some of these commandments – basic instructions – in a new light, not trying to make it conventionally religious, but trying to get to the heart of what it is saying.

First, remember the Old and New Testament injunction to 'love the Lord your God'? It sounds like the standard call to worship the Big Man in the sky; but is it?

Vivekananda made this point: “That man who has no faith in himself can never have faith in God”. The truth is that God is transcendent and also immanent – 'Thou Art That', as the Hindus preach. The Christi-Judaic tradition has tended to over-emphasize the externality of God at the expense of the likeness within. Re-read St John's gospel with that thought in mind!

The image of God cannot be less than God since – holographic-ally – God cannot be diluted: the smallest fragment of God is God. Thus loving oneself is the core of self-worth, self-esteem, and is an essential aspect of our daily life. What are we doing to love our self – to build true self-worth? The consequences are profound: Nathaniel Brandon described self-esteem as the strongest force in the universe.

Second, as Christ said, “All things are possible for those who believe”. We like to talk of self-confidence – what is that? Confidence, etymologically, comes from the Latin: 'con' – with, and 'fidence' – faith. To have confidence is to have faith – a deep belief – in one self, in outcomes (optimism), and in God-the Universe-the Tao, or the Way. The stronger our faith in these three areas, the more we are conforming with the reality and nature of the universe.

Finally, in this brief overview, along with faith goes love: empathy, compassion, understanding, forgiveness, gratitude – a raft of qualities that genuinely make life worth living. As Brian Tracy once observed: all our efforts are directed towards finding love or compensating for the lack of it. If we were more aware of this fact perhaps it would inform our words and behaviors at a deeper, and profounder level.

I have only touched on this subject, and there is plenty more to say. But what are your 'basic instructions before leaving Earth'? Are you going to love the self, your self? Will you have faith in the Way? Can you love and find love? These are routes to ultimate joy. Whatever you do, don't live accidentally!

Coaching, Mentoring and Spirituality

Sometimes in mentoring and coaching the question of spirituality comes up with a client; it is not necessarily the issue they engaged you for, but the conversation spirals in that direction, and you are faced with that awkward moment of deciding whether to explore it with them or leave well alone. I think it is important not to discount it for the simple reason that our lives are holistic in nature – and furthermore it is not as if 'it' - spirituality or God - could be compartmentalised even if we wanted it to be.

Many people of course have an entirely erroneous and/or stereotyped view of spirituality and of what 'God' means; this is natural since many religions themselves generate these limited images - idols - of their faith. As the Tao Te Ching puts it: 'The Tao [the Way, the God] that can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao”. In short we must be careful not to take the words, signs and symbols too literally. One classic example of creating idols in the West is imagining God as some grandfather or Father Christmas in the sky that people must somehow slavishly kowtow to. But God, if we could speak of God in human language, is both transcendent and immanent and cannot be conveyed in that way.

This is why Plato, arguably the greatest of the philosophers of the West, said that there were two clear proofs for God's existence: the first was the existence of the human soul which testified to the reality of God. The soul, the Self, is in fact God, because the 'image of God' in man is itself and necessarily God because God cannot be diluted. Or put another way, God is holographic – the smallest fragment would still be fully divine. And we know that when we contemplate our Self.

The second proof was the design of the world or the cosmos, and those who could not see its marvel were dull and stupid. We have to go to extraordinary lengths to deny the design and to flat-line the wonder - this universe for all of Dawkins' non-science and stepping outside the sphere of his own competency, never happened by accident. And that is part of what the opening of John's gospel is about: in the beginning was the Word, the logos, the meaning - and everything is infused by it; and at some deep level those who seek to deny this are denying themselves - their own deep Self is being contradicted by their ego mind.

There is a deep mystery in and to life and nobody could deny this; but people who absolutely assert there is no God, no spirituality, against the consistent and persistent testimony and evidence of the vast majority of mankind, are not being rational - they are engaging in an act of faith more irrational than that which they condemn and mock.

So, to return to the question, what do you do as a coach and mentor when this kind of issue raises its head? Firstly, you listen very carefully. This listening is not just active listening and a set of skills - like, lean forward; it is act of being. As Ptahhotep, some five thousand years ago, said, "To listen is better than anything, thus is born perfect love." And, he also added: "God loves he who listens. He hates those who do not listen." To listen is almost synonymous with to love; it is why the child turns to the mother, because she will listen; and why so many partnerships fall apart because one or both stop listening to the other. When we pray we speak to God and draw our mind and soul into a focus; when we meditate we listen ... and in the silence the possibilities take shape.

Secondly, you try to establish the direction in which it is going, what sort of God or spiritual experience do they have in mind or are alluding to, and why are they prompted now to raise this issue? Invariably, people are led in this way because of some incompleteness in their life.

Thirdly, through gentle questioning they may wish to reveal what this is and why it is important. Curiously, these kind of discussions lead to the heart of another human being, and in them humility is of the essence - both for the client who is recognising perhaps for the first time that 'you can be anything you want' is a half-truth, and for the coach because in being in that role so close to somebody, presumption is an ever present danger.

Fourthly, you reflect back to them their own answers with intonations that may enable them to see, as it were, the real implications of their state and of what they are saying. Thus, you begin leading them through a process in which they can see their Self more clearly and so begin to see possibilities and options ahead. This is very liberating; it need hardly be said, you don't beat them about the head with your religion or any religion. You enable their own Self-discovery, for in discovering the Self is a pathway to true spirituality – and a way to be free the false ego mind.

 

 

 

My Life After Death – a Vision

There are two stultifying views of life after death that must be refuted. The first is that there is no life after death; this view, promoted by atheists and humanists, is a desperate appeal to deny the collective wisdom of mankind from time immemorial that has decided otherwise. Even reincarnation is a way of looking at another life after this one. And the Egyptians, Greeks, Hebrews et al. knew there was and is a judgment to come.

The second pernicious view is the idea that ‘heaven’ is a boring place – uniform and monotonous – where everyone sits around playing harps and singing hymns in praise of Father Christmas or the parody of God that God has become in the West. As Christ said, ‘In my Father’s house are many dwelling places’. So whilst the grounds for being in ‘heaven’ remain constant for everybody – which, in summary form, is to love and to believe – the manifestation of ‘heaven’ will be as infinite as the human imagination and more.

In short, the ‘heaven’ I am going to when I die I can dimly begin to discern now. Can begin to imagine now! And I want to share this with you as it was inspired by my readings in the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

When I die my spirit will leave my body and for a short instant – less than a millionth of a second but feeling like a lifetime – I shall visit the underworld; and be released, fully conscious of my shortcomings yet powered by a grace that renders them of no account.

Immediately my spirit will travel at the speed of thought to a nebular cloud cluster somewhere up there in the stars, possibly near the sign of the Scorpion, and ignite a burst of hot gas, and I shall become a new star, in a new constellation, possibly forming or being part of a new galaxy. And I will blaze with heat and light.

The beauty of this is when my wife also passes on, probably some time after my demise. Same process – and she too becomes a star – a binary with me: forever facing each other – and, as globes are 360 degrees, the eternal light source  - rotating around each other, and emitting our light full on, without any diminution or veiling that comes with the physical body.

Then those we love and who have loved us will join the constellation – or be in place – family and friends and those who have touched our path – and the swelling theme of light will become a swirling galaxy of attraction moving across the heavens till the end of time and the consummation of all things.

Such is the dream of my end.

It says in Corinthians that the ‘eye has not seen and ear has not heard’ and the heart of man has not conceived ‘all that God has prepared for those who love Him’. Nevertheless, it would appear unambitious and un-god-like not to let the imagination run riot on what happens on that day when the spirit – my spirit - is set free!

Why motivation is NOT often in the work place

It is not an original observation to say that in most work places we look we find that most people are not highly motivated. In many cases they are not motivated at all. They need to work and their commitment to and engagement with their employer extends no further than the next pay cheque. This is not a desirable state of affairs, and there are many reasons for it, but perhaps the most unnoticed aspect of the whole business is how little attention employers pay to the issue. It’s as if most of them live in a world where motivation of staff - and of themselves - is the least important thing, and having the least impact of all on the bottom line. Unfortunately this assumption is wrong, but if we look deeper matters are much worse.

The decision not to consider motivation as part of the business bottom line has profound psychological roots. It’s not just that business owners, directors and executives don’t think about motivation - much - it’s that they can’t. This becomes clear when we look at the four major pillars that underpin any business or organisation for that matter.

First, there is finance - the money! The Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that drive the business: return on equity, profit, turnover, cash flow and so on. This is a yes-no situation: either we have the cash flow or turnover or relevant metric, or we don’t. Accountants, usually, supply us with this information. And when the worst occurs, we know that.

This principle also applies to the second pillar, sales and marketing, and also to the third: production and operations. Managers, for example, check on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly basis - how many leads, how many prospects, how many conversions, how many sales and so how much revenue has been generated. Ditto for marketing: the advertising campaign, the web strategy, produces how many enquiries or clicks? And ditto for production: we ask how many widgets this month or how many service calls?

The point being that even when times are bad we know how we are doing. This is because we have Finance, Sales & Marketing, Operations directors keeping tabs on all this productivity and information.

But put another way, when we think about companies, we have these types of directors in the main precisely because they attract the kind of people who are drawn to certainties: the spread sheet full of numbers that tell us where we are. And if we invest in inputs we can measure the outputs, which are usually fairly predictable: for example, for every hundred leads that our marketing produces we convert about five on average into an actual sale.

Notice in this that whether the business or organisation is doing well or badly one thing remains constant in the three dominant areas/pillars of the business: namely, the psychological certainty of knowing where we are, of having the numbers which become our compass through the changing environment. This need for psychological certainty is compelling – it produces emotional security - but has a disastrous side effect: in the fourth area/pillar - the people category (in which leadership, culture, morale and motivation are included) it doesn’t work. As the British scientist Denis Burkitt put it: “Not everything that counts can be counted.”

Specifically, in the areas of people motivation, leadership and culture we find that given in-puts do not necessarily produce predictable outputs. The most frequent and outstanding example of this occurs with money: pay increases often demote staff despite the fact that a wage increase is precisely what they say they want.

The reasons for this are complex; but all MDs, CEOs, and executives will have stories not just of the failure of money to motivate, but the failure of dozens of other initiatives too: be they re-structured flexi-time, increased time off, more training, better social events, environmental improvements, and so on – what would seem obviously a 'good thing' becomes for some reason a cause for disgruntlement.

Thus in the people domain the certainties of numbers gives way to uncertainty, and with that there is the two corresponding phenomena: the rise of ambiguity, and the erosion of control. Most managers – exactly because they have sought to be managers – resent and resist these two tendencies. In fact the best way of dealing with them is ignoring them altogether.

We 'contract' with people (don't we?) to do the work; so, we're paying them, so they should work, shouldn't they? A kind of blind eye approach is adopted in principle, and only when things go seriously wrong – by which I mean the numbers all start going negative – is some attention paid to staff motivation. And usually, in a fairly simplistic way: let's send them on a course or fire them!

So what we have, then, are 4 pillars of an organisation, three of which – Finance, Marketing/Sales, and Operations – produce emotional security in the way they are set up and constructed to be measured. This means that directors and senior managers, by and large, have a massive disposition to want to deal with these areas AND, correspondingly, subconsciously or otherwise, an aversion to actually dealing with the fourth and final pillar on which the other three really depend: the People.

The people pillar, then, concerns itself with all that is not secure! With all that is ambivalent and difficult to quantify. What is it about people that makes them so intractable?

If we think about it, it is because life is really like that. To live is always to be aware of inherent difficulties (including death) whereas human civilisation and mankind's intellect tends to want to mask over that with its certainties and constructions. Thus, profoundly, in dealing with the people pillar ‘management’ is never enough: leadership is required with all that that entails. Leaders – who motivate – are the only ones who can create real value; and that means embracing ambiguity.

Imaginary Beings, Numbers and God

The imagination is one of the most powerful faculties of the mind or indeed of human beings generally. It was the poet W. B. Yeats who said: “The imagination has some way of lighting on the truth which reason has not … and its commandments are the most binding we can ever know.” But then he was a poet, so he would say that, wouldn’t he?

Then again the great scientist Einstein, said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” So you’d think the case was closed; which is to say that imagination is staggeringly important to our life? Yet sadly, very few people take imagination seriously. And sadder still: take their own imagination seriously.

This comes out in all sorts of ways, but to take one example: literary criticism. I know a significant number of critics who regard Charles Dickens as a great novelist (and I am not saying that he is not of course). Why? Principally, because he’s “realistic” – because he deals with “life” – and he depicts conditions as they were. But almost to a man they turn their noses up at Tolkien because “it’s all fantasy…silly hobbits…ridiculous scenarios” and they simply can’t buy what is fantastical. If things are not rooted in the practical, in the believable, then they just have no value.

My friend Helen Orme, writer and mathematician, told me a wonderful story the other day that consolidated the power of the imagination in a most surprising way.

She was telling me about the mathematical number “i”. For those unfamiliar with it “i” is the letter standing for the number which reflects the square root of minus one and “i” was chosen because it stands for “imaginary”. In short, there cannot be a number which is the square root of minus one – it is pure fantasy – and so the letter “i” stands in its place.

A moment’s thought tells you why there can be no actual real result. The square root of a number is the number which multiplied by itself creates the original number. For example, the square root of 4 is 2 because 2 x 2 = 4. The problem with the number -1 is that two negative numbers multiplied together (remember they have to be the same number) produce a positive number: so -1 x -1 = +1. Equally, two positive numbers produce a positive number. So there cannot be a number multiplied by itself to produce -1, hence the introduction of “i”. 

But what’s the point of that? Well, as Helen pointed out to me, this extremely imaginary number – which can’t exist – has all sorts of interesting properties and solves some profound and practical real life problems – for example, in meteorology and electricity and so on.

What doesn’t exist seems to support and solve existential questions for what does! I am reminded of the Tao Te Ching and its concept of nothingness which frames everything: there can’t be a bowl without the hollow – or ‘nothing’ - that the wood curves round. So too with a window: it is the spaces – or nothing - between the frames that enable the window to be a window and let in light.

And so, isn’t “God” too an “i” – an imaginary number, seemingly impossible, and yet without whom the equations of life do not work?

It is interesting how “i” works particularly in the field of meteorology – which way the winds blow – and electricity – how power goes down the line and is stored – all very God-like activities.

So next time people start getting heavy about “reality” and “proof” and what they can see with their own eyes, tell them to remember “i” – the imaginary is at the heart of all things and enables reality to function.

Entering the Whale

Firstly, apologies to all of my regular blog readers, who may have noticed that I have been inactive for a month. It’s not a holiday, much less a picnic…

Imagine this: you are a strong boat sailing on various waters; accustomed to repelling the pirates of the sea, and repulsing the birds of prey from the air. You have done it for years – all is dandy. Then, suddenly, out of the blue one Saturday, when you least expect it, you are swallowed whole by an enormous whale which all the while had been lurking beneath you – it’s mouth closes all around you, and you go down living into the depths.

Such happened to me. We set out, my wife driving, one Saturday, to visit my brother in Essex but never made it! Acute pain built up, and nearly made me pass out; we had to turn back and by evening I was in the Emergency ward of Bournemouth General Hospital. A clear blue sky had turned sombre and truly I was in the belly of the whale.

I stayed there for six days and nights – a land of not-living and darkness, despite the glow worms of some nursing kindness. Three blood tests, three CT scans, two X-rays, other tests and a procedure they asked permission to do because there was a “risk”. And still they didn’t know – what was it?

I could not sleep for four nights and I did not eat for five days, and all the while a phantasmagoria of suffering and pain was going on around me! The screams for more morphine racked the air at random times. For three days my temperature was all over the place. The external consolation on a daily basis was the visiting of my wife – how precious is love at these moments?

And internally – I focused on my breathing, I meditated, and I prayed. Three lines from the Bible came to me again and again, and I used them as the focus of my prayer and contemplation.

The first, as I remembered the line was from Genesis. Sarah laughing in disbelief when she hears God promise her husband, Abraham, that she – in her old age – would become pregnant and bear a child. God rebukes her: “Is anything too difficult for the lord?”

In my illness I focused my prayer on that aspect of God that I knew from my own life: namely, that with him all things are possible. What then was this 6 cm obstruction in my gut compared with that power to do impossibly difficult things?

Then, I reflected on the Psalms: “Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you.” The promise of God – this was my day of trouble – to call therefore, in my spirit, in my mind, in my emotions, demanding the honouring of that pledge, demanding with humility and contrition.

Finally, I remembered and prayed around that wonderful line from the Epistle to the Hebrews in the New Testament. It is written, “Moses endured…” because? How? …”he saw Him who is invisible.” Because he saw what is un-see-able. A perfect paradox: to see what cannot be seen. Yet that strengthened me.

I focused my prayers on seeing the one who cannot be seen – and in the depth of the fifth night I wept as I felt His beauty beside me, in me - I felt the joy of the Lord. And after that I slept soundly for the first time in five days and in that sleep I had a vision.

I saw the cause of my illness, and symbolically I met the illness itself – “Alfred” – a three foot midget who stopped me flying. As I suddenly woke from the vision at a key point in the dream I knew the ending was still unclear, but also that God had shown me what I needed to do to create the healthy ending I sought.

On day six, though weak and with my wife, we persuaded the doctors to discharge me from the hospital and so I quit the whale.

Now at home, I am recuperating, and imagining that the chrysalis will return to health, and be a butterfly soon. Thank you for reading this, your prayers for me are appreciated. 

 

   

Winning the war

Somebody was speaking to me today about how important story telling is for a speaker, and I couldn’t agree more. The Cox Report on English teaching, like most Government sponsored reports, was full of well meaning waffle, but it did have one blindingly brilliant sentence in it: “Narrative may be regarded as a primary act of mind”.

And so it is not only in public speaking that telling stories is critical, it’s critical all the time – it’s primary in fact; for only when we tell the story and move away from the abstractions of our language that we really convey the message that we intend.

Take the other day. I was on a Skype call to a friend and they had a business problem. They said to me, “James, I am not sure what to do. I have this product which I acquired a year ago – it’s going well, although I need to do more marketing. But there is this new product and I am sure there is an even bigger market for it, and I could add it easily to my portfolio, although it is quite an investment to acquire. What should I do?”

What a decision! I don’t know – what should he do? I could analyse further, drill down and find out a little more may be, and from that provide a more informed opinion. But the trouble with a more informed opinion is – it is only an opinion; but if I drill down enough I will be giving advice. And then if he takes it and I am wrong … ultimately he needs to make the decision. Enter the story.

I say, rhetorically, do you remember World War II, my friend? He laughs. I have always thought, rightly or wrongly, that the biggest single reason why Hitler lost the war was at Moscow. Remember he was at the gates – his whole army could have taken the capital and sent Stalin fleeing to Siberia where with the best will in the world conducting operations would have been to say the least much trickier. But at that crucial moment when Hitler needed to tell his Generals to take the capital, he did something else.

He ordered them to take Moscow AND he ordered them to take Leningrad and Stalingrad as well. Against the advice of his own Generals he split his army in three parts and from one attack on one objective, three much smaller German armies attacked three widely separated objectives.

The rest is history as they say, for Hitler failed to take Moscow, failed to take Leningrad, and most significantly failed to take Stalingrad – Stalingrad being really the point where the whole tide of the war turned against him. The War was there for the winning, but instead of focusing his forces, Hitler in an act of blind arrogance and self-delusion threw it all away.

So it is in business. Do we have the resources to fight a war in more than one market? Are we dividing and weakening our capabilities? Can we follow this through? Thus I ask myself.

“Ah!” he said. He understood. I didn’t know his answer, but the story focused his mind on what he needed to do. And the rest is history.

The Motivation of Art

Like most people I love art in all its forms, especially literature, music and painting. We take it for granted that art exists; after all, the papers are full of reviews of it. Only last Saturday the Telegraph was stuffed with interesting art reviews. But as I read some of them I thought: is this art?

Take the case of ‘performance artist’ Marina Abramovic. A colour picture showed her sitting on a large mound of bloody bones, as if fresh from a butcher’ shop, her hands handling the bones, and her smock saturated with blood. Then we learn that she “stark naked … ate a kilo of honey, drank a litre of red wine, carved a pentagram onto her stomach using a razor blade, whipped herself, and lay down on a cross made of ice for half an hour, bleeding copiously.”

The reviewer, approvingly and with relish, goes on to describe further excesses as works of art – and doubtless proves it art because people queue to see it, including Sharon Stone and Lady Gaga. Wow! VIPs here then?

The article is nearly one and half pages in length – amazing exposure in fact. Again, it sounds fuddy-duddy to question whether this is art, but is it? People thinking something is doesn’t make it so, anymore than millions thinking Hitler was the saviour of Germany made that so; he wasn’t – and millions of people were deluded.

So it is in the art world. There seems to be a nihilistic and nasty movement, which is anti-art and so anti-life, masquerading as the real thing and it has got a grip on the media and critical establishments. We had a great launch of the Bournemouth by the Sea Arts festival last night at the Royal Bath Hotel – and here too we had one act of conceptual nonsense parading as ‘art’.

What is art? Art is the revelation through some media – including, but not limited to, words, lines and sounds – of the soul of the person, situation or thing. By which I mean: the truth of that person, situation, or thing is made manifest; so always, no matter how ugly, hideous, or distorted the object of artistic representation is in itself, art reveals its intrinsic beauty; makes visible its shining.

Thus art is never mere excrement on a wall, or condom in a bed, or random fall out, because the ‘soul’ of some one, some thing, some situation, is always complex, is always meaningful, has always the ‘logos’ present. For ‘conceptual’ artists this is too difficult to understand, so they simplify – they ‘soapify’ it and serialise chunks of reality, which is why cleaners at exhibitions frequently bin these items by mistake.

The anti-art marketing process is simple but effective: here’s a slab of excrement in your face – you know what excrement is, they challenge? – ah, so, you recognise my art. They do their ‘thing’ and it is done. Let us, then, be done with giving credit to conceptual termites pretending they are artists and this is art – it is not and neither are they.

Art like life portrays and conveys complexity even within the simple: a sunflower in the hands of a great artist suggests far more than ‘mere’ sunflowers. True art even when dealing with the evil and unlovely creates beauty – and beauty inspires and motivates. Put another way: our energies and capacities are enhanced by real art, and correspondingly diminished by conceptual drivel, muzak, and reality TV.

Acorn to Oak

I was recently invited to address over 100 Sixth Formers about motivation and their careers. It’s a wonderful opportunity and it’s great to not talk to business people sometimes, and have an entirely fresh audience – at 17 years old, very fresh!

As I scanned their ranks I could see the overwhelming problem: just how does an acorn become an oak? The process is so mysterious and impenetrable. At one level we know – or we think we know: it grows. It derives nourishment from the soil and the sun and it expands. But that simple, simplistic explanation – because it ‘explains’ – takes away the wonder, the sheer awe-someness, of what actually happens.

People long in the past, before the advent of science and our world of ‘explanations’, had a much deeper reverence and respect for these natural processes. Consider: the acorn in the palm of your hand, and then view the mighty oak – how one thing becomes another!

And so it is with babies and children: they are small and fragile and inconsequential almost, one day, and then the next – I blinked once – and they are Shakespeare or Michelangelo – or Hitler or Stalin. How does this happen?

One reality, I think, that it is crucial to understand is that the invisible world dominates the visible; in other words, what we do not see is more important than what we do. The ancient Egyptian Book of Heaven and Hell put it this way: “All the world which lies below has been set in order and filled in contents by the things which are placed above; for the things below have not the power to set in order the world above. The weaker mysteries must yield to the stronger; and the system of things on high is stronger than the things below.” This may seem arcane, but it has a profound truth. One aspect of its truth we know from our own experience: namely, what is invisible is more important than what is invisible. What is invisible? Our values, our courage, our truth, our love. Behaviour may – rather weakly (and we can fake behaviour anyway) – reflect these invisible things, but behaviour is not ‘them’.

So to return to my talk – how does the acorn become the oak? – I gave these youngsters three questions to get their heads round.

One, who are you? Stop identifying yourself with your name, your parents, your rank, your possessions, your future role – who are you in yourself? And if you have never thought about this, now is the time to start.

Two, what is your mission? Everybody is here to do something, but what? There is in fact no manual that comes when we are born, which is a problem; we have to figure it out. What were you designed to do? One clue is: it tends to be something you get a special buzz out of doing and always have.

Three, what motivates you? Clearly, mission and motivation need to be aligned. Over and above whatever qualifications you get at school and college, you need to do work that motivates you. Do not die with your music still inside you – that would be a waste.

And isn’t that, then, metaphorically, the answer to how an acorn becomes an oak? It plays its own internal music – and the sound reaches to the heavenly skies.

The nebulous, the subjective and the sub-conscious

I find when I talk about motivation I frequently have to admit three things: that motivation, as a topic, is nebulous, subjective and mostly ‘sub-conscious’. What do I mean by this?

When Dr Johnson, of dictionary fame, was asked, What is poetry? He famously replied that this was like asking, What is light? We all know what light is, but it is difficult to say what it is. So with motivation: we know what it is, the average person thinks they know what it is because Wayne Rooney and other sports persons are motivated, aren’t they? But what is it?

For those who dig deeper, they have been on a course somewhere, some time, and have walked on fire, yelled out they can do it, and generally experienced the pure rah-rah of motivation. But again, what is it?

And here’s the point: until we create a language for a topic we cannot be specific - the opposite of nebulous. All trades, all activities, all knowledge involve their own particular jargon or set of words – a kind of shorthand – which enables practitioners to communicate effectively and swiftly about the topic. Be that topic computers, love, law or gardening, each has its jargon. But motivation? The push and pull, the carrot and stick … we find very quickly that its language is limited.

So, too, it’s subjective: motivation seems touchy-feely, entirely down to what one person thinks it is, and no more substantial than a personal view. The opposite of this of course is objective. And we get really objective when we can not only describe the thing in language, but also measure it. We can add numbers to the descriptive jargon. Wow, when this happens, we are making serious progress in our understanding of motivation.

Finally, what about the ‘sub-conscious’, what’s that about? Basically, most people have no idea consciously of what actually motivates them except perhaps in an immediate tangible sense: I am hungry and motivated to eat. The finer drives are all but invisible.

Here is where I like to say the opposite of sub-conscious is not conscious, but visible. What we want – and what language and measurement make possible – is the rendering of the sub-conscious into visible reality and understanding. At last, we see what motivates us and others. Then, and only then, are we really in a position to be able to ‘manipulate’ motivation – to control motivation – to get a handle on motivation.

Thus I make no apology for going on about our own product, The Motivational Map, which is specific, objective and visible (in its final output, the report or Map); and its effects are correspondingly powerful and transformative. I, and all the Map practitioners around the world, have time and time again witnessed amazing insights and a-ha moments as individuals, team, and whole organisations suddenly get to see what is really going on with the motivations – the energies – at their sub-conscious roots.

 

 

Being a pilgrim

For those of you who haven't read it, or seen it, my latest collection of poetry is called To Be a Pilgrim and is available on Amazon. I won't bore you with self-eulogies – I'd like to say it's sensational, but hey: you be judge. What I will say is sensational, however, is my wife's art work on the cover (and for that matter in the interior). Her line drawing of the 'Millennium Man' exactly fits the theme of the collection: a back view, giving the impression of the man staring forward, supported by a large walking staff, a kind of axis pointing to heaven but grounded on the Earth.

Anyway, I think it's a marvellous piece of art work and the point is how these images and words can suddenly and unexpectedly seep into reality. As has often been observed, how life imitates art, or is inspired by art.

My seventeen year old son, Joe, regularly does Shaolin kung fu on a Saturday, and has been practising for years. He walks across the park to The Littledown Sports Centre, does his training there and then walks back home.

The other day he did exactly that, and was walking back, carrying his Shaolin bo-staff. This is a long staff used for weapons training. Suddenly, two ill-advised eight to ten year olds ran across to him. I am sure you know the type: the sort that have nothing to do, and nowhere to go, except to be in a public park seeking entertainment, which isn't always healthy for them.

“What's that?” one said.

“It's a staff,” my son replied, warily watching their movements.

“I want it,” said the other one.

“I am sorry,” said my son.

“I want it,” he repeated.

“I am sorry,” my son said, “but you can't have it.”

“Why not?” said the kid.

“Because I need it for my pilgrimage,” said my son.

“Wow,” said the first kid, visibly impressed. “Are you a pilgrim?”

“Aren't we all?” said Joe, and swiftly moved on. They stood there – one scratching his head, the other stunned!

Increasing billable hours

 

For those in the service industry – accountants, lawyers, consultants, trainers and coaches, yes coaches – one of the most important aspects of their business is selling their service. And after that, the second most important thing, if they want to stay in business, is increasing their billable hours. Now let's be clear here: we are not talking about artificially inflating the number of hours worked for the client without any real delivery of extra value – that would just be unethical and crummy. Instead, we are talking about how we can add more value to the client and so legitimately add more hours' work to our bill because in doing so we are adding real value to their business or even to their personal development.

One well trodden route to increasing billable hours is by extending one's knowledge and skill range. This is good, although it can run into another problem: the me-too problem. In other words becoming a generic 'whatever' (accountant … coach) who can solve all their problems; the problem being that one isn't particularly an expert, or sensationally good, at any of the solutions; but one can get by. It is the opposite, if you will, of being niche in one's expertise.

A potentially better solution than merely extending the range of one's service skills is acquiring complementary products that support, reinforce, and develop the core proposition. This certainly worked for me, and it especially works in the area of repeat sales.

As we know, acquiring a new client is the most expensive part of the sales operation; but once you have a client, then if you can get repeat business from them, then that seriously improves the margins of the business. Further, if that is a product they come to see they need, the repeat sales require little 'servicing', because by definition the product is what it is.

So, to take an imaginary example: you are an accountant who does a client's accounts. You develop some software – the product – that enables them to do some basic tax (or whatever) calculations for themselves; they only need the yearly upgrade, which you charge for. Clearly, this adds value, empowers the client, and one piece of work – the upgrade – can service hundreds if not thousands of clients, all of whom pay.

What I am about to tell you is obviously anecdotal, but true for me nonetheless. I am telling it because I am frequently asked, What is the benefit of using your product, the Motivational Map, James? Consultants and coaches ask me this question.

I could in answer to it go on about the features of the product, or even the performance benefits for the staff; however, I'd rather talk about the business benefits for the licensees who use the product, and the benefit specifically to me in using it with clients. What is that benefit?

I was a trainer and coach for 10 years. During that time I had hundreds of clients. If you asked me, What was the average length of your client engagement, then the answer would be somewhere between three and six months. In other words, a Director of an organisation would contact me and contract me to run, say, a communication skills programme spread over three months, or ask me to mentor three members of staff for one day a month for three months. And I got used to that way of working. When they were pleased with the result, they'd contact me three or five years later and invite me to do it again! But it was always time limited in the first place.

All that changed with the creation and adoption of Motivational Maps. Because the Maps provided real time information on an ongoing basis, and were a simple, cost-effective product, the average tenure within a company became something more like three to four years!! And, even better, the contracts were far bigger: instead of doing work over six months for three to six thousand pounds for a single client, I was working for twenty thousand plus pounds a year. The Maps could even go in when I didn't.

Thus I say to all coaches and consultants who want a more distinctive position in the market place, consider a product to complement your service. And for those who are working in the developing people field/sector, I say – consider Motivational Maps: they'll work for you, if you work for them, and won't disappoint your client.

 

Windsurfer, the beach, the baby

Last Thursday morning Linda and I decided to take a long walk through King's Park, across to the Woodland Walk and then down to the beach, from where we could walk onto the centre of Bournemouth. Quite beautiful. As we hit the beach at Boscombe we realised there was – what technically might be called - a “helluva” wind blowing. And alas, it was blowing against us!

By the time we reached the centre of Bournemouth and could get out of it we were truly done in! Along the way, though, I had spotted one amazing thing.

The wind was up, the waves were rough, and the sea was empty: across the horizon I saw no boats, and even the gulls seemed subdued somewhere else; except, there, just beyond the Boscombe pier, a solitary windsurfer – a speck – out there on the deep – surfed the waves in a kind of joyous abandon. He caught my eye and I slowed to watch him now I had spotted him.

He, in fact, traversed an arc – a long arc out from his starting point on the beach, between two groynes – which returned him back. So far out, it looked extremely difficult and dangerous to navigate in such waters. He returned safely in, paused for a few short moments, and then launched out to do exactly the same thing again. I say exactly, but of course, we never enter the stream at the same point twice – the danger and the difficulty were, perhaps, the same, and may be his courage too, but in launching again who knew if he would come back?

I was reflecting on why he was doing it. The beach was denuded of people; and the promenade itself had few – and they all were hurrying away, coping with the wind, no time to stand and stare. This was not one of those summer pose type of people – LOOK AT ME! Nobody else in the whole universe could have existed, yet still he would have done what he did.

The great poet – probably the greatest of the Twentieth Century – WB Yeats had an expression: “the fascination of what's difficult” - and here it was in action. The conquest of the elements, or better still the subduing of them till they bend not just to the human will, but to its imagination. Like a musician sitting at a piano with a whole bunch of notes and keys in front of them – a C, a E and so on; and from these creating an unexpected musical masterpiece.

Thus did the proud windsurfer strike me in that moment of bleak and blustery glory – composing his work of majesty on the very tracks of the sea and through the very power of the wind. How transient – the sea opens and accepts the force that splits it and allows the way through and the way back to the shore. And then closes behind and there is no trace left that he was ever there. So the music sounds, and after there is stillness.

On Saturday in Bangkok, my eldest son, PJ, posted on Facebook pictures of the birth of his third child – his little mouth open and crying for the light of the day. May he surf sublime all the days of his life.

Building unshakeable optimism 2

Step 3 is to recall past achievements and better performances. Many people have problems recalling good events and high achievements. I once coached a young man whose only recollection of success was being able to recall winning a swimming race when he was ten! Clearly, this is wholly debilitating. One secret to overcoming this handicap is to remember that small things are an achievement. For example, your ability to make someone smile is a great achievement – ultimately, 85% of the satisfaction we are ever going to achieve in life will come through relationships. In other words, by serving and helping others we achieve wonderful things. Small things can be highly significant. See Step 5 to help you further with this.

Step 4 is to detect patterns – and having done so to break bad patterns. This is easier said than done – but the first thing is to notice the pattern. Most people don’t get that far, so cannot possibly destroy bad habits or increase their optimism. For example, it’s easy to snack on chocolate bars all day long without realising they are responsible for our weight increase! We have not noticed the insidious pattern. Similarly, it’s easy to spoil a relationship because one habitually says the wrong and thoughtless thing without seeing our action for what it is. KEEP A DIARY - keeping a diary is invaluable for spotting a pattern - log stuff.

Step 5 is to record good events and achievements. Our self-talk tends to be 75% negative, so we need to consciously reverse this. Keeping a diary and looking to log at least 3 achievements a day is wonderful in this regard and helps step 3 as well – go back over your diary and start ‘dwelling’ on high achievement moments. Re-create them in your mind – re-live them – can you ‘feel’ how you felt then? Can you see it? Hear it? Even taste or smell it? For example, that swimming race he (at Step 3) won, can he smell the chlorine on that day as he recreates it in his mind? Can he hear the cheers? See the applause? If you can do this, then you can ‘anchor’ these experiences into your conscious mind and call them up whenever you want. This is important.

Imagine you are going for a job interview. You feel nervous. You have made a deal with yourself. Every time you say the words ‘swim win’ you flash the images of that glorious winning day. You do this just before you go in to the interview. How differently do you think this will make you feel walking into the room? Try it (using your formula to re-create the high achieving moment).

One final comment to make here is on being persistent. People become more enthusiastic and energetic when they can go for goals that are quickly obtained; however, persistence isn’t about the ‘quick’, but the long haul. To develop resolute optimism requires persistent application in the same way that running a marathon requires constant training. So you can start with the affirmation of step 2: I can do it! From there, press on.

Building unshakeable optimism 1

Optimism is one of those prerequisites for a successful life. Why? Because fundamentally it is about our belief system: the belief that things will turn out well. To those who believe, as Jesus himself said, all things are possible. And the well known law of attraction also informs us that what we don't want will come our way if we spend most of our time thinking about it.

How, then, can we get more optimism in our life? Belief is not something static – a sort of, we have it, that's it. It grows – like the mustard seed; it needs exercise and constant handling to ensure it reaches its full potential. We need to differentiate in our minds between real belief that is organic, and that static kind of dogmatism that embraces 'propositions of faith' and then proceeds to build a wall around all mental activity. That isn't really faith or belief; it's a kind of deadwood rigidity that derives from the termites of fear that corrode our being. Don't get me wrong: I am not saying that propositions of faith are valueless – we need these things to understand what we do think – but unless they can 'grow' we are shut off from life.

So to return to the central idea of optimism: how do we get more of it in our life? Here is a five step process for generating more optimism in your life:

Step 1 is to question frustrations. Can our frustrations be changed? Are we just accepting situations and problems. A good starting here is to write down exactly what the frustration is. When we see it in print we can begin to become more ‘objective’ about it – we can more literally ‘handle’ it. Is your boss causing frustration – who, when, why? The more specific you are, the more you will be able to see specific avenues that may remove you from the impasse. This will make you feel more in control; this will make you feel more optimistic.

Step 2 is to affirm that I can work this out. Affirmations are incredibly powerful. Feed your subconscious mind a continual diet of positive thoughts. Affirmations need to be: personal (‘I’ am/have/do something), present tense (avoid the future and past as the subconscious mind does not recognise them), and positive (again, do not say ‘not’ as the subconscious mind can’t read it – ‘I do not think of pink elephants’ – damn! Foiled again.)

Performance, Motivation and What Else?



We have long held at Motivational Maps that performance is down to three core components: direction, skills (including knowledge), and motivation. So far as the operational work goes at middle and technical levels, then we are really concerned with two aspects: skills and motivation, and this since the direction – strategy, plans, goals, objectives – is invariably set at senior level and cascaded down. Thus, our homely and simple formula: Performance equals Skills times Motivation. And to make this really understandable we often ask individual to rank themselves out of ten points (maximum) for skill in their current role, and then do the same for their motivation levels. This gives a neat performance percentage score which is easily understandable and generally pretty accurate.

But let's be frank: it is not always enough. Yes, skills and motivation are what performance is about in all normal human work activities; however, unfortunately, there are abnormal situations where a 'fourth' component enters and clouds the picture. Unless one is wary of this, one can get trapped into thinking one has a solution to a motivational problem when in fact motivation is little to do with it.

What am I talking about? What is the 'fourth' component? Before answering that question it comes down to realising the source of motivation itself within us. One prime source is our self concept – our beliefs about our self – which includes our self-esteem, how we feel about our self. I have always maintained that the one instance where the Motivational Maps don't work is where we are dealing with chronically low self-esteem. This may affect somewhere between 10-15% of the working population – so a small number of the whole, but not insignificant.

So how do we know when self-esteem is chronically low? The absolute answer to this question is summed up in one word: games. People who suffer from chronically low self-esteem always play games. Bizarrely the Map reading can still be 100% accurate – right – but because one is dealing with a game player, it makes no difference, since the game player seeks primary motivation from the co-dependence, not the internal motivations aligned to the healthy self concept.

A case of this came my way recently. I was asked to deal with a member of staff who was not meeting performance criteria and over a two year period seemed to be slipping. Further, other members of staff were complaining about him, and he seemed to be out of control. Sometimes he seemed enthusiastic and committed, and others he just went off the boil. The point was that this up and down behaviour was extremely destabilising not only for the team, but also the managers.

They assumed there was a motivational issue, but to their surprise they found that on doing the Map he was 84% motivated – staggeringly high, and 'in the zone' in fact. In examining the top three motivators there was general agreement that these accurately reflected what the person was like; there was general agreement that this person was highly skilled and knew exactly how to do the job – they had demonstrated this in the five years preceding the two year problem period. So if motivation was high, skill was high, why was performance very weak?

The answer is: it's not the motivation – so far as the job went, it was motivating; however, in reflecting on this particular case, and going back over the history, we find someone overlooked for promotion (and for whom the Maps establish prestige as critically important) and who as a consequence from that moment has decided not to play ball. In other words we find a human being who has made a decision, actually counter to their own motivational welfare, to go 'slow', as it were, to play things by the book, and to do as little as possible. Despite their conscious intention to play 'their game', however, at times the job got interesting, and they get more motivated than they intended. Hence the variations in performance.

Motivation goes with the grain of who we are; when we honour it, we feel good and get more energy; when we play with it and think our rational minds know better, we screw up, as this person did. Ultimately, our lack of commitment shows through, the bare minimum becomes not quite enough, others notice and ask questions. Finally, we are made redundant, having become so by a failure to work with our own motivators.

So, key lesson: if the motivational score is at real odds with the performance, ask the question – am I dealing with a game player here? If you are, then supportive action is probably not your best option.

What is difficult about Motivational Maps?

 

Every product, service and system has its difficulties, ranging from the sublime difficulty to the easy and the awkward. Awkward is the one we dislike the most; easy we can deal with, and sublime can throw us a challenge, so that when we prevail we feel good about ourselves. But awkward? Hmm, that's just damn irritating. 

 What about Motivational Maps – what is the most difficult 'thing' about them? We've been doing them now for some five years, and thousands have been done, so we should be getting a clear idea. And we are. Just recently, with the launch of Smart Development Solutions' Motivational Youth Map (http://www.smartdevelopmentsolutions.co.uk/), largely for students in schools, we have had a whole new audience – and they have identified exactly the same difficulty: loudly and clearly!

So what is it? It's the forced choice between the statements. Motivational Maps is a self perception inventory – like the Belbin Inventory. It works by getting you to allocate points between two statements according to how much you prefer them. However, the number of points is fixed, and furthermore, since there are an odd number (five in fact) and no half points are allowed, you are 'forced' to prefer one statement over another.

To give an example of how gut-wrenching this might be, and to take an example not on the Map, imagine you are a devoted animal lover with loads of pets. And you do a self perception inventory with the following two statements: 

I like dogs

I like cats

 

You have to choose between these two statements by allocating the five points. If you give the dog the whole five points, you have to give the cat zero points; and vice versa. But you love your doggy – doggy deserves all five; yet, you have two cats too, you adore. So in a shabby compromise one has to be worth only three, but treachery of treacheries, the other then is devalued with two. Can you feel the pain of this? 

The question I get, then, is: I don't want to do this, this is distorting what I really want, believe, feel. Why should I do it?

It is tough, but there is an answer, and here it is: the motivators of the Map are all in us. And like values they reside in a hierarchical structure whether we can discern it or not. The ultimate example of this in real life would be a life and death situation in which events conspired to make you choose between your two children, and you could only save one, and if you didn't save one, you'd lose both. 

In that situation, as instant as it might be, you would make that choice: factors conscious and subconscious, including potentially abandoning the choice to some irrational or superstitious 'sign' would prevail - you make the choice and the preference and its underlying value structure becomes clear. So with the motivators - we will always, faced with two highly desirable choices, attempt to get both, but if we can't our motivation will lead us to choose one. The key issue is knowing what that one is for you; and not allowing a 'logical' over-ride or second guessing to occur. 

Where we love both, then the scoring will be close to reflect that. So forced questions allow for this two-almost-equal by distributing the scores: here 3:2 or 2:3; but if you feel that strongly about one motivator, then you will certainly give it 5s when it is up against motivators you really feel little for. Or by analogy, perhaps when up against 'pets' you feel little for. Doggy 5, Snake 0!

Touched by death on a Monday morning

Sometimes highly inconsequential things affect one deeply. Death, of course, is not inconsequential or even consequential to the one to whom it happens, for as Wittgenstein famously said, “Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death”; but for those of us who remain it is another 'object' that we observe to a greater or lesser extent.

That Osama Bin Laden has been killed may or may not be a good thing for the Western democracies; but I have not been affected by his death, although it may be extremely consequential. No, the things that touch us deeply tend to have roots that stretch long into our past, and perhaps in a strange way one never consciously thought what might happen if that person were no longer with us.

Such a thing happened to me today. I flicked onto the BBC news page and found the announcement of John Maus' death, at his home in LA, aged 67, from liver cancer, which he apparently had been struggling with for six months. John who?

John Maus is more popularly known as John Walker. John who? Yes, one third of that amazing pop trio, The Walker Brothers, who scored 2 major number one hits in the Sixties, and sold something like 23 million records. But again, the thing is, most young people today know nothing of those days; may be they know one or two of the really famous groups like the Beatles or the Stones who register because of their influence or continuous touring, but it is difficult now to see the impact of a group like the Walker Brothers.

Impact or not, sales or not, number ones or not, though, I remember them well; remember first hearing them in 1966, being intrigued by their sound, becoming a fan by about 1968, the time of their first break-up, and then going to acquire all their back catalogue, and subsequently all the material of the lead singer, the great Scott Walker.

The point is John Walker, whilst having a fine voice that harmonised with Scott's in some amazing classics, was very much in the shadow of the popularity of Scott. Scott is now a sainted 'classic' – Mojo Hall of Famer – one of the greats, endorsed by David Bowie, et. al., whereas John is view more simply as a 'popster'. Yet for all that he deserves big credit for his massive contribution to the sound that the Walker Brothers achieved, and which was the springboard for the greatness of the solo Scott in the five years following the first group split.

I saw John live in 2004 in the Solid Silver Sixties tour along with Peter Noone, Wayne Fontana and the Dakotas. He was absolutely superb and his rendition of the Walker Brother classics on which he had not sung lead vocals – The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore and Make It Easy On Yourself - was convincing and moving.

And I realised as I saw him then that he had always been with me. For over four decades I have been listening to him, either accompanying Scott, or leading vocals himself, as in that famous EP, Solo Scott, Solo John. He was the lesser light of a great group, but he was still a real talent; now he was gone. The world seemed emptier; the route to the past more difficult to trace. A domino had been knocked out of place. I miss him already.

Getting success clear in your mind

"What's your definition of success"? - a question I was asked recently by someone who claimed that "no one I know has a satisfactory answer". Curious how others would answer this. Anyone?

There is a tendency to regard this as an entirely personal matter, as if by simply defining what you want means that therefore if you get it, then you have been successful; this is a dangerous approach, and actually about as far from the truth as it's possible to be. Success, then, is is not simply subjective, no matter how many people brainwash themselves into believing it is. What large numbers of people have considered over a long period of time has a weight and compelling power, and we ignore it at our peril.

One useful thing to do to establish what success may be is to ask a room full of colleagues or friends what they think it is. You will find that most people have at most 3 concepts. But take somebody who says, ‘It’s achieving goals’ and you write that down. Another says, ‘It’s about family’. When you then ask the person who said ‘goals’, so family is not important to you (or the other way, ask the ‘family’ person why goals are not important to them) they invariably concede, ‘Why, yes, family is important to success as well’. It’s just that most people never fully think through what success means, or – more cruelly – haven’t got the memory to remember more than either two or one thing!

Success, then, is not a smorgasbord of one or two things, but seven areas in which we need to achieve a result; and each of these seven things are interdependent. At different points in our life one or more might be highlighted and become critical for us. What are these seven areas? They are: self-esteem, energy, loving relationships, wealth, meaning, growth and self-awareness.

To avoid misunderstandings let's briefly provide a little more detail about each one of these. Self esteem has three core components to reflect upon: our peace of mind, confidence and communication. Energy has a two-fold aspect: our literal energy or zest on a daily basis, as well as our physical and psychological health. Loving relationships – long term relationships are foundational: how may do we have and what is their quality? Quality relationships are a key indicator of success. We are fed this story all the time – because it is true – in all Hollywood (Citizen Kane) and fiction: to gain the world and not have love and friendship is a sad and tragic place to be.

We also need wealth; by wealth I do not mean being rich: I mean having enough money to stop worrying about money! And here we see very clearly how the 7 areas are interdependent: for lack of money causes worry, which affects peace of mind and our self-esteem, just as it can affect loving relationships – it is estimated that something like 50% of marriages breakdown over financial matters. And, too, we need meaning in our lives, as Victor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning, makes clear: meaning, purpose, direction are all vital to our well being. In fact immunises us against stress: people without purpose or direction quickly find themselves depressed and ill when they aimlessly drift into difficulties and problems.

Finally, we have growth and self-awareness. Growth is about the Maslow Hierarchy: the need to become all that we can become, to realise our potential, and not to die with all the music still inside of us. That is a terrible fate: I could have been … - but I never did, never committed or seized the opportunity. Self-awareness is different from the other six areas in that it is the guarantor that they are 'real'. Human beings have a huge capacity for self-deception: for imagining that they are one thing – cool, hot, handsome, beautiful, attractive, skilful, intelligent, powerful, acute, reasonable, trustworthy, generous and so on – when asking the six people who know them best would immediately confirm that their 'virtues' are entirely delusional. In short, we need to examine ourselves scrupulously in order to become more self-aware, so that we can genuinely grow.

Thus, if we look at these seven areas and ask ourselves how are we doing in each of them we should be able to spot our weakest link: where do we have a problem in our success chain? Is our self-esteem weak? Do we lack energy? How are our quality relationships? Are we becoming more financially secure? What about our purpose, is it clear, is it being lived? Are we growing as a person – learning new stuff, for example? And finally, how self-aware are we really – and what mechanisms do we have in place to make us more self-aware?

The key thing here is to see success for what it really is and then identify your weakest link and go to work on creating a plan to improve it. If you work on your weakest link for 18 months or so, you will find that all the other areas improve too.

 

 

Thinking about appraisal 2

What then is appraisal? A good starting point for this is to understand what psychological principles performance appraisal is based on. William James, the founding father of American psychology, discovered that there were three conditions that always led to enhanced performance.

The first was that people always performed better when they had or were given clear aims or objectives. Goals or targets would mean the same thing here. The importance of this cannot be overstated. Basically, the aim or objective is the directional mechanism. It is what we are looking for and forward to – it gives us not only direction, but as it impacts our imaginations then it stimulates energy and enthusiasm. Notice, however, that linked with ‘aim’ is the word ‘clear’ – many goals are vague and woolly. This can be fatal. We must, as far as possible, remove all ambiguity. One method for doing this is via the well established principles of creating SMART targets and Standards.

Secondly, people perform better when they are involved in the formulation of the aim or objective. This is obvious when you think about it. For those who have young children, think back. You can stand towering above them and tell them what their objective is in visiting aunty Helen – and then hope they behave! Or, you can kneel down at their level, talk at their level, and say a few things about what you hope will happen at aunty Helen’s and let them say what they hope will happen – and so go on to draw the threads together: what you both agree is going to happen at aunty Helen’s! This has much more chance of being effective. It might be now be technically called empowerment: give people an input into the project ahead and you get buy-in.

And third, people perform better when they are given adequate feedback. However, I must add: adequate is an ‘inadequate’ word to describe what I have in mind. People really perform better when they are given quality feedback. The kind of feedback where what they do is noted, its consequences articulated, praise is free, they are asked to repeat it, and confidence in expressed in them.

It should be clear that these principles which William James discovered are precisely what a good appraisal should cover: goals, involvement and feedback. The tragedy, then, is why do so many people dislike appraisal, and why does appraisal so often seem to fail to work?

The answer lies in the three elements: managers find it difficult to set SMART goals, they somehow also often find it difficult to involve the staff member in setting the goals, and finally, probably most difficult of all, giving quality feedback is all but impossible: well done, is the best they can muster.

Thus, managers need motivation to enhance their skill set because unless they do they will always be spending time, which will be wasted. Staff deserve better. The result for the organisation is colossal if the appraisal process is truly maximised.

Thinking about appraisal 1

The primary goal of organisations is find and keep customers so that in this way they make a profit. But they cannot do this without the active support of their staff. The key issue is to help teams and individuals improve their performance. How, then?

Appraisal is just such a system that is designed to help organisations and the people in them improve performance. In fact, it could be argued that if performance were not improving after introducing an appraisal scheme, then what would be the point?

Unfortunately, Deming, the great quality guru, observed that it took the average American employee about six months to recover from a typical performance appraisal. As such appraisals tend to be bi-annual this means that they never fully recover! And it’s not only Americans who experience this horror: the UK, especially the public sector, have many stories of where what was intended as a tonic to the troops proves to be an albatross around everybody’s neck. Why is this; and what, then, is appraisal?

Before answering these questions I’m going to say at the outset that it is my belief that it is possible for any organisation to have an effective – even a motivational – appraisal system. Many of the problems that appraisal generates can easily be avoided – it’s all in the setting up and the thinking through. However, let’s be clear: no amount of knowledge or insight, even coupled with relevant skills, is going to enable a manager or boss to run a good appraisal programme when they personally are – what might be called – ‘psychologically or emotionally deficient’.

By this I mean that the manager is using their position to play games. This might be summed up as having - in Transactional Analysis terms – one of three negative life positions: first, ‘I’m OK, you’re not OK’, which will lead them to consistently ‘put down’ the subordinate. Or, ‘I’m not OK, you’re OK’, in which they will lack confidence for positive follow-through; or worst of all, ‘I’m not OK, you’re not OK’, which leads to despair and cynicism and the self-fulfilling prophecy of hopelessness – what’s the point, nothing works, does it? If as a boss or manager, these sound familiar attitudes in those below (or even above) you, then I advise you try to develop a strategy for dealing with it before attempting appraisal. Appraisal will only expose the glaring deficiencies, not remedy them.

Three types of people

 Someone once said that there were two types of people: people who divide the world into two types of people, and people who don't! A brilliant paradox, but alas not wholly true, because there are three types of people, not two; it is as well to know these types because one of the most important decisions we will ever make is who we allow to enter our inner circle.

If we have too many 'drainers' – that is, emotional energy drainers in our circle, game players, negative people – we will quickly find that no matter how talented and knowledgeable we are, our prospects start becoming limited. Equally, the more 'boosters' we enjoy around us, the more energy we have, the more successful we are going to be even if our innate talent is not so strong.

The first way to spot who is a booster and who a drainer is by being in touch with one's feelings – you feel it in their presence: you feel 'bad' or you feel 'good', but the trouble with this simple prescription is that many people are not in touch with their feelings, so cannot differentiate until it is too late.

Thus it is that another way of categorising people might be useful, especially if the categorisation depended more on observation – thinking, rather than feeling. And there is such a way, and it involves considering what people talk about.

At the bottom end, the people to avoid or curtail, are mediocre people. What is their characteristic? Mediocre people talk about … other people! Bizarrely, this is not a good thing, because firstly, the talking about other people tends to be negative: criticism or worse, gossip, sarcasm, judgement and other detrimental words. Further, talking about other people tends to be about how they 'relate' to us – we become fixated by comparisons with them – we feel better in ourselves searching out their faults. Ultimately, we develop a co-dependence on them: we exist in the light of how they are, and not in our own essential self.

In the middle are average people. Average people talk about 'things': things are important to them. What are things? Possessions, typically: the house, the car, the money in the bank, the gadgets. Big things – my big status car? Bigger is better. Holidays and experiences – ever met the endless bore who wants to – whether you will or no – go on about the 36 countries they have visited, the five peaks they have climbed, the oceans they have yachted, and so on. There is of course nothing intrinsically wrong with going to 36 countries, climbing 5 peaks, and yachting across the oceans, only for these average people – who as a result of 'things' consider themselves superior people – they have transmogrified experience into a 'thing', a badge, a medal to display – and that is so average. It is what young children want for their efforts.

Finally, we have great people. What do great people talk about? Great people talk about ideas. Yes, they love meaning, they love freedom and creativity. They are open to change because talking about ideas can really engage them with other people; talking about ideas can throw new light on 'things', be they never so 'thing-y'. Talking about ideas means we can soar to be strategic, yet can stoop to be operational. Ideas energise – we can become excited by ideas. Ideas are to die for. Of course becoming fixated on one idea and closed to other possibilities starts to limit the greatness, but nevertheless habitually talking about ideas is a sure sign of a great person.

So, this is not about how we feel – it's about what does that person talk about most of the time? Other people? Possessions and things? Or are they talking ideas? Let's get more ideas people into our lives.

Checking out optimism

Optimism is a favourite topic for coaches, and quite rightly so. There is now so much important literature about it and its consequences.

I am on record as saying that optimism is a pre-requisite for success in leadership and management, and probably every major area of our life, including relationships. For, after all, what kind of relationship would it be in which either or both people in it expected 'things' to turn out badly? (The answer to that question, incidentally, for those interested is: we'd be in a 'Soap', a real life and popular soap). One of the core reasons for promoting optimism as a way of life and also as a fixed mindset is the simple fact of the self-fulfilling prophesy: what we believe tends to affect how things turn out. GK Chesterton put it well when he said, “At least in the mind of man, if not in the nature of things, there seems to be some connection between concentration and reality”. Or, what we think about … materializes.

Given all that, however, I think it important to strike a blow for true optimism rather than a rather pernicious form of pseudo-optimism, which regularly surfaces on chat forums, especially from coaches and others actively involved in the the personal development movement.

I encountered it only the other day. A discussion was under-way about selling and why 'sales' was a dirty word in Britain, and somebody chipped in with a heart-felt critique of British society and the expectation that selling was a rip-off because of the banks, the politicians and others that had contaminated our perception of fair play. Some immediately assumed this was 'negative' and discounted the input.

And this is the point: optimism is about positive expectations – things turn out well for those imagining things turning out well – but it is not about discounting reality, turning a blind eye to negative things, people and events – as if seeing just how bad something or someone is means one is not being optimistic. In order to be fully optimistic we need to embrace just how bad some things, events and people get.

Thus, we really ought to chip in and attack the banks, especially their senior management for appalling incompetence, insensitivity and greed. Optimism requires we do so; and then, may be, we can hope to see a better world beyond whereby in a democracy perhaps this time public opinion will lead to lasting change and a better banking system. Further, and optimistically, we can all learn more caution with our banks – be less trusting of their advice and perhaps begin to see that our money might be better off elsewhere. Optimistically, diversity of investment becomes a consequence of their incompetence. The crisis, then, becomes a spur to improve our situation.

Similarly with politicians: pretending we are in a world of trust and benefit, that any one person or party could be trusted, would not be being optimistic, it would be being foolish; it would be turning our radars off as the missiles were coming in. It would be … pollyannish. And there's the word: pollyanna - “someone whose optimism may verge on the insufferable” (Chambers Dictionary). Yes, insufferable and unreal. Things are going to turn out much better – say I optimistically - if we critique the leadership of the Labour Party, if we insist on leaving Europe, if we tell British Prime Ministers to stop going to war at the hint of a pseudo-moral position that seems to apply nowhere else in the world.

Ah – I feel so much better getting that off my chest – I feel more optimistic: I am sure things are going to turn out well for all of us.

The new financial year

 The new year is a long time ago; what was fresh now seems stale. But the good news is that there are always three new years in merry old England. There's the new New Year beginning on the First of January; there's the academic new year starting in September when schools return from their summer vacations; and then again, plum in the middle, there's the financial new year, which in the UK starts on the 6^th April when the new tax year begins. Many companies organise their accounts around it – and we are one – so we are now in the first quarter. How are things, then?

Well, April 2010 to March 2011 was a cracking and ground breaking year for Motivational Maps Ltd in all sorts of ways. Two important events preceded the actual April kick-off. One, on what appeared at the time as a negative note, but which proved a massive boon, we changed our web developers. And my! that made a massive difference when we came to arguably the biggest single event of the year: the development of our new product, The Motivational Youth Map. More anon.

Second, shortly before the April start, Linda and I had had a series of remarkable consultancy sessions with the great Dr Dave Richards. We'd had some excellent consultancy advice a couple of years earlier from another consultant, which was invaluable, but we had begun to lose the plot just through our own 'drift'. What Dr Dave did was give us a seven point focus that even now is at the heart of what we do.

We came into the first quarter, then, running: our number one priority to recruit new level 3 licensees of our product anywhere in the world. By May we had over from South Africa two top coaches who were with us for nearly eight days, were trained by us, and granted an exclusive South African license, which has now extended to Botswana.

In June we had over a world class executive coach from Italy for a license; and then we had an extraordinary run of licensees right up to Christmas, culminating in the exact opposite of the South African adventure: namely, appointing a superb business guru to handle Maps in the Dorset area – my own patch, as it were. Wonderful. We had really got some quality people.

And as exciting again was the creation of the Pupil – or as it came to be called – the Youth Map for pupils in schools. A first rate consultant and company bought an extended exclusive license in the product, as well as some equity too; they trialled the product in a Bournemouth Secondary school, achieving phenomenal results, and from this the product was launched nationally at Warwick University on the 4^th February – it is already making serious inroads in national and international markets, so compelling is its proposition and outcomes.

It was in 2010 also that the long awaited Higher Education Map pilot at Coventry University Business School finally got signed off and agreed, and this is under-way as I write. When the pilot is finished we hope to float it as we have the Youth Map.

The last quarter did not quite sustain the level of commitment and interest that the preceding three quarters did, but as we pack away the receipts and invoices for our accountant to process we are quietly confident that it has been a great year.

But what next? What challenges does the new year hold? What must we do?

The priority for Motivational Maps remains the same: to attract and recruit first rate licensees in the UK and round the world. In the UK we particularly want new licensees in counties where we are either not represented or under-represented. So, London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Lancashire, Northumberland, Birmingham top of our list. From the world perspective four countries must be our special concern: the US, Canada, Australia and India. These are powerful and large markets – coaches and consultants who want a superior competitive advantage we believe should use our product. Thus we are actively searching for those coaches and consultants who want to build a business with Maps as core.

Beyond that we need to support existing licensees. This is done in many ways, but crucially the area of product development itself is vital here. We realise that Maps have a uniqueness which eventually others will seek to replicate. The only way to safeguard that uniqueness is to develop it further; it's about creating a level of complexity and layering that means that copycatting will be superficial at best, and more likely just plain inadequate.

The new year is off to a flying start. So much is happening which is so exciting. Part of the joy of running your own business is the freedom to meet people you like . So happy new – financial - year to all my blog readers. Let's hope we meet up this year. Keep in touch. And get motivated!

Relieving negative self talk

 

Everyone at some time or another experiences negative self talk. Why is this and what should be do about it?

The first character who speaks in the Bible is God: at Genesis 1 v 3 God says, “Let there be light”, and there was. This is a pattern of God's language: he frequently speaks in imperatives or what we might call commands. That's hardly surprising as He is God.

The first question in the Bible, however, is spoken by another character: the serpent – the Devil – who says, “Indeed, has God said, 'You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?” And there we have it: the first question, the first, in effect, doubt, expressed by the Devil. Whether you want to believe in this literally is irrelevant to my purposes in this article; what is clear is that psychologically this is profoundly true.

Asking questions is all too often threatening to others, and all too often symptomatic of doubt in us. Whether that be doubt about our political institutions and their validity, or doubts about our partner or colleagues or bosses, once the questioning mode starts we all too frequently lose faith in someone or something, and our feelings about them become divided.

Nowhere is this more important than in our thoughts about ourself. Once we start serially questioning our own motives, our own talents and abilities, our own – and this is deepest of all – self worth, then we are in serious trouble: we cannot succeed at anything, for to use the New Testament psychological insight – the house divided against itself cannot stand. We call this deep questioning of ourself 'negative self talk', and for some people it a permanent condition of torture.

How, then, can be lessen or even remove this thorn in our flesh, because every one at some time or another experiences this problem? Here are ten great ideas to help you relieve negative self-talk.

One, move, or more accurately, break the body set. What this means is that once we start being negative about ourself we find that a certain rigidity or tension creeps into our body and its posture. Thus, at its simplest level, going for a brisk walk is a good idea. Take those strides, feel those arms swinging purposefully side to side.

Second, be in the here and now. In other words, stop regretting the past or worrying about the future. Easier said than done? Yes. The key technique for being in the now is meditation and focusing on your breath. This can be aligned to point number one if we consider disciplines like yoga, chi gung or tai chi: in these the breath is central, as is breaking the body set, all the while slowing down and enjoying the moment.

Third, exaggerate the problem – yes, you heard right: exaggerate the problem! So, you are telling yourself that you are an unattractive person, that nobody would like you? Dead right – you're Quasimodo, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Frankenstein, or whoever – and as the picture, the cartoon almost, forms in your mind, its very exaggeration starts becoming comical. If we can laugh at ourself, then we can offset the sting of the negativity.

Fourth, undertake physical exertion. This is slightly different from point one, because here we are talking about more serious and heavy physical exertion: some serious gardening, for example, is quite different from going for a brisk walk. And so might be a serious house clean. It will be different for every one of us depending on our age and fitness and health; nevertheless, physical exertion always takes our mind away from the negative ramblings of our mind.

Fifth, create your own safe place, or haven, or as I like to call it, my den. Where can you go where you feel at peace, at one, and safe? This may be a room in your house or flat. It may be, as it often is for people, a spot in nature – a park, a beach, a forest. Beauty always heals.

Sixth, review the sounds that surround you. Do you have music that is beautiful, that is healing, that restores you? Not to put to fine a point upon it, there are some musical styles which are ugly, discordant, aggressive and manufactured to maximise unhappiness in your soul. Avoid these. Instead, listen to the opposite; that may include some popular and modern music; but do not forget the wonders of JS Bach. As Roberto Assagioli put it in his marvellous book, Psychosynthesis: “The music which can especially produce this kind of healing influence is that of JS Bach ...” and he cites Albert Schweitzer who calls a composition by Bach, “an expression of the Primal Power which manifests itself in the infinite rotating worlds”. Bach is “a song of love, unfolding itself in the light of intelligence, and impelled by will. That is why it enriches so much.”

Seventh, talk with someone. A good friend can correct our erroneous views of ourself, can restore the correct balance to our thoughts, can enable us to see the good when all we can grasp is the bad. This is especially important for men who have a tendency to bottle things in, regard 'sharing feelings' as unmanly, which is clearly a mistaken and negative thought in itself.

Eighth, consider other people. One of the problems with negative self talk is its tendency to promote self-obsession at the expense of true self love. Who can you help? Who needs your assistance or support? Once we think like this we begin to realise too that whatever we were thinking our shortcomings were, there may be somebody else who has it far worse than we do. This, bizarrely, though not good in itself, relying as it does on comparison, yet can get us to re-evaluate our own position.

Ninth, take a nap, and indeed sleep more. Sleep is nature's healing balm, and we need more of it. In our pressurised Western life styles some people do not get enough sleep – which should be at least seven hours a day. If you know you are only getting five or six hours, ensure you steal naps during the course of the day. You'll feel a lot better and negative thinking will recede.

Finally, and possibly controversially, learn to pray. If meditation is listening in the silence to the voice of the universe, then prayer is asking and focusing with intention on the universe to help. There are no atheists in fox-holes, as the saying goes, and developing humility through prayer is paradoxically one of the single most powerful things you can do to feel better about yourself. It's counter-intuitive, but it's true, as many testify. Pray – for as it says in the First Epistle of John, 3 v 19-20: “We set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.” Surely, that is a staggering thought that silences doubt even as we begin to contemplate its majesty?

 

 

Understanding more about mentoring

There is much written about coaching, which is undeniably an incredible and powerful way to develop people. Far less is written about mentoring; yet mentoring is one of the most powerful tools for personal development known to mankind.

Speaking generically, there are three major ways to improve oneself: first, trial and error – a necessary but largely expensive way of doing so. The expense comes in the wasted time, money and emotion that trial and error predicates; it may be described as the 'evolutionary' approach – one may be dead before achieving the right solution! Second is modelling; this is a methodology much in vogue in the West since the advent of Neuro Linguistic Programming whose whole rationale was based on observing and imitating excellence. Often coaching uses NLP techniques. Another word for this would be the old fashioned concept of imitation: you did not, for example, attempt to write original poems, but you imitated the classics which had been created before. This is powerful. But third, and finally, we come to mentoring, arguably the most powerful method of all, and certainly the one with the longest pedigree.

Mentoring goes back at least as far as the Odyssey of Homer, about 800 BC, and is named after the character, Mentor, an old man and friend of Odysseus, who is asked to look after and educate Odysseus' son, Telemachus as the father goes off to fight in the Trojan War. Clearly, the activity of mentoring pre-dates this particular example, but its point is clear: the mentor is a substitute father figure whose role is to develop the young man, the son. Lest it be thought sexist, the character Mentor dies before the end of the story, but Telemachus is unaware of this because the goddess, Pallas Athene, goddess of wisdom, has taken his place and simulated the dead man. Thus mentoring seems both a male and female process.

How is mentoring such a powerful process? I think it works because it does five things especially well. First, it intensifies experience and the implications of the current situation. Many people who need help come to see a coach, a counsellor, a consultant – a mentor – with a problem; they know it is a problem but often they have not fully grasped the implications. Like some small stone in the shoe, they think they have a minor irritant that they want removed; but the mentor gets them to see that the stone in the shoe is more like a razor blade and if decisive action is not taken soon then they are likely to be crippled.

Second, the mentor is somebody – hence the age of Mentor – who typifies experience. The initial reaction we all have – particularly as young people – to a problem is that it is unique. Nobody, for example, has ever fallen in love the way we have, or suffered as we have now that we have been rejected. Effective mentoring cuts through this and enables the client to see that whatever the problem they have, this problem has been encountered before, and therefore there is a solution.

Third, and this follows from the second point, the mentor emphasises that you are not alone. Gaining reassurance from the mentor's grasp of the problem, and expression of support, is crucial in building the confidence of the client to tackle the issue.

Fourth, the mentor paints a picture, helps you paint a picture, of the desired end state that resolves all the tension. The client confirms what they really want – they visualise and can see it – now as strongly as the problem they had not fully grasped in the first place. From this, fifth and finally, the mentor can help suggest ways forward – drawing on knowledge, experience, like situations, and all that appertains to the case. In short, the mentor becomes this invaluable ally who is truly allied to our needs; just like the substitute father/mother that Mentor originally was.

And perhaps that's hardest thing: creating just that level of relationship which is professional and yet presses beyond that – for what true father or mother is satisfied with merely a 'professional' relationship with their child? It is the dimension of commitment that makes all the difference; hence the power of real mentoring.

Who Needs Traffic Lights?

I walked this morning to my regular Tai Chi practice with Dr John. And as I always do I came to the T-Junction at the top end of Ashley Road. There is an intricate system of traffic lights – you know the sort, with green arrows so that while one lane is on red, another parallel one can flow round the corner. Naturally, I pressed the Pedestrian button and waited for the lights to change and allow me to cross.

As always, this waiting takes quite a while as all the combinations of red, red-amber, green, green arrows in all directions, have to run their course. I noticed too how dangerous traffic lights were. They engendered a 'my-right-of-way-move now' sort of attitude as a couple of times somebody was beeped as they weren't quite fast enough off the mark for the tastes of the car behind. I sensed as well that people turned off their attention from driving because the light said stop or go, so there was less looking and listening. And certainly as I stood on that corner I saw the acceleration towards me of cars swerving desperately to get round and 'beat' the light before it changed. In fact the traffic lights positively seemed to make the traffic more dangerous, which, of course, is precisely the opposite of their intended function.

Why is this the unintended consequence of traffic lights? It is I think another example of that death by a thousand cuts which is our modern society. At every stage somebody must control our activities, for we cannot be allowed to control them ourselves. No, we could not possibly approach a T-Junction without traffic lights and manoeuvre our way round or across using common sense and courtesy, paying attention to the other cars, for that would be dangerous!

In the same way on trains – we used to be able to open a window, or actually pull a window down as the train pulled into the station and undo the lock of the door as it was still moving – oh! too dangerous – so now we are secured inside till the electronics buzz and we are allowed out: allowed out, not deciding we want to get out and can do something about it.

And if we want more on the law of unintended consequences, look at hospitals: the lethal bugs and infections due to in-sanitation were not a problem when responsibility rested firmly with matron and she had the authority and conviction to do something about it. Now of course with all the health and safety regulations, including the obviously sensible compulsory hand-washing for visitors, we still don't crack the issue. The idea seems to be: the system has dealt with the issue, so it has been dealt with – despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Attempts to create safety and security by by-passing human responsibility and decisive intervention are doomed to failure, and the saddest aspect of it of all is the infantilism it creates. The so-called nanny state is alive and well and dis-empowering at the deepest level. We need to resist it.

The importance of belief

Belief is the essence of religions throughout the world, and having belief. And religions throughout the world have at least one commonality: there is not a religion that I am aware of that does not exhort its followers to believe AND as a result of believing to become more perfect – to follow the path. So belief is transformative in its very nature. Without belief it is impossible to follow, impossible to succeed, and impossible to become what you truly are. Which last statement, obviously, is a paradox, for how can you become what you already are? In the same way that the acorn is and is not an oak tree, but all that is the oak tree is in the acorn, but latent.

Before going further with his discussion we need to review another word that is closely allied to belief, which is the word ‘faith’. Not everyone would agree with me, but I think that we must not try to put on words like faith and belief the murky history of fanaticism, intolerance and mass murder. People kill other people, but can they really be for religious reasons? True, the murderers of all religious hues always claim the reasons are religious, but how is that tenable when all the true major religions eschew violence? Because someone says they killed for their faith – for Jesus, for Buddha, for Islam – does that make them religious?

We need, I think, to bear in mind that not all witnesses speak the truth; that man can be a self-serving animal; and that even serial killers rationalise their actions – in fact, are most likely to produce ‘God’ as their witness and defence: God told them to do it. A classic case would be Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, who claimed he murdered prostitutes because he was told by God to do it. Is that faith or belief? Delusion or deception springs to mind, and the idea of taking at face value the comments of deranged people who claim they are acting for God - that is, have faith – is at very best dubious.

To return then to the real 'concept' of belief, we need to get (through religious experience and writings primarily, and also through what has been observed in the secular world through research and experimentation) that belief is not a concept. It is not a simple idea that we mentally assent to: certainly there may be a conceptual component, but more than that for it to be a belief there is an emotional affirmation with it that goes to the root of our being and how we feel. And that is why it is transformative, because our emotions, far more strongly than our thoughts, transport us. Emotion: e-motion, that which is moving us, causing motion, providing the fuel, the energy to take us further forward in the quest of our lives.

Belief, in fact, lies in the heart – the traditional residence of the human soul – and not the brain. Belief being in the heart also means that true belief inspires courage – ‘cour’ (Latin) – which again is always associated with the heart (e.g. Richard the Lionheart). Thus to renew ourselves we need to pay more attention to how we feel and draw on this strength in our thinking and imagination. What we believe will become our reality; that is what all the scriptures tell us.

 

Consultants - and changes afoot!

A recent article in a London paper stated that the NHS in London “splashes out £114M on advisers”. Here, they helpfully explained, 'advisers' meant ‘management consultants’. As a management consultant myself I should be saying, Good! But I am not. Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, is staggered by the bill and wants to reduce it by at least 45% over the next four years.

I am reminded of the worst client I ever acquired some ten years or so ago. This was a huge family-owned food production company that had just been purchased by Venture capital; they asked me to go in to do some training work on developing middle managers’ capabilities. Sounds great! I wasn’t expecting the hero’s welcome awaiting me on my first visit in.

“We are so pleased to see you,” they said.

I said, “Fantastic, but I don’t usually get such an enthusiastic initial welcome."

“You don’t understand,” they said. “We’ve never had training before.”

“Jeez!” I said.

And then one almost surreptitiously whispered, “Except of course when we do it in threes”.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I don’t follow you.”

“Well, we’re not allowed to do training – or we weren’t until the buy-out. It was an offence punishable by instant dismissal. So we had to do it in threes.”

I must have looked more bewildered still. “I don’t get it – if you weren’t allowed to do it, then why were you doing it and doing it in threes? What’s does doing it in threes mean?”

“We had to have training; we couldn’t function without it, but it was sack-able. So we had one person train another, and the third person had to keep a lookout down the corridor in case the MD was patrolling. That way we could stop in time and pretend we were doing something else.”

“B---y heck,” I said. The full horror of the regime dawning on me, and then the critical question: “But why? Why would any MD not want training for staff?” I guess I was innocent in those days!

“Because he reckons he pays us to do the job.”

“Yes?”

“Well, if he recruits and pays us to do the job, why do we need training to do it? If we can’t do the job, then he wouldn’t employ us. If we can’t do the job we’re expected to leave or be sacked.”

“I see,” I said, incredulously.

And ain’t that it, bizarrely? Of course, this was an extreme situation. But let’s return to our London NHS. If the senior executives were being paid £50-60-70-80K pa to do their jobs, then buying in specialist expertise might seem warranted, but when you are on 3 or 4 or even 5 times these salaries, why do you need ‘experts’? Aren’t you being paid enough to be an ‘expert’ yourself? What are we paying these hospital chiefs for, exactly?

Further, the management consultants that I largely know – in small practices throughout the UK – add massive and measurable value. The kind of consultants used in these NHS contracts tend to be one of the big 20 conglomerates, and they all have a common practice: charging senior partner rates whilst installing junior-somethings-in-their-twenties-learning-on-the-job, whose particular aptitude is largely feeding back what the client - and the senior partner responsible - wants to hear.

So, as a management consultant myself I think I can agree with Andrew Lansley – cut by 45%? Go on, Andrew, make it 85%! Nobody will notice the difference – except the big 20. Expect an upturn in the freelance market!

 

Leadership as theatre

To work in metaphors is the essence not of childishness, but of maturity, and it is fundamental to our appreciation of the world because it enables us to see the invisible relationship between things, ideas and processes. Metaphor is essentially dynamic - precisely what leadership is. If we wish to capture the essence of the dynamism of leadership we will use a metaphor in order to 'grasp' it; if we wish to compartmentalize leadership and exhibit essentially static models we will use competency boxes. Both models have their uses, but the former is far more exciting, and far more likely to inspire than the latter. Once we can do that, then we may be able to break the metaphor down into helpful components.

First, then, let us see leadership as a performing art. A stage is the model for its process. Consider three main ways in which leadership is theatre:

1. leadership is a performance. Every leader addressing staff will vouch for that; and so will their managers chairing departmental meetings. There is an 'up-front-ness' about leadership, which is undeniable even in the most retiring leaders. The performance we must remember is essentially task-orientated: the purpose is to do the performance, and that before an audience. Thus, a good leader must be outcome orientated, since audiences are always evaluating what we do.

2. leadership is intrinsically connected to teamwork. Yes, the star on stage may well be the leader, but the play - the performance - can only be as good as the weakest member of the cast. Unless rehearsals involve everybody, performance - no matter how 'strong' the leader - will be weak. A strong personality who does not pay attention to his staff proves a weak leader, and clearly is exercising 'personality' at everyone else expense.

3. leadership is about 'play' - theatre is a play in both senses of the word. There is a recreation/re-creation in the activity. It is what we all complain we have lost. As children our 'work' was our 'play', and thoroughly enjoyable it was too! We didn't want anyone to send us to bed. Now, we find we collapse only too readily in bed, exhausted by work - a work that is devoid of 'play'. This is a vital thing about our leadership activity we need to re-discover: that work should and must be a form of play, and if it is not then we are heading for trouble. Overtime - overwork - has no psychological meaning when we 'play' (are being creative), since the only limits are those that the task itself defines for us, and which we readily accept.

If one can accept the sense of the above metaphor, see its aptness, then one is already a long way from the scientific approach - the tick box approach - which demands certain outcomes if only highly specified procedures are followed. One sees that every performance of the play is different, that the unexpected is more than likely, but that preparation, planning, practice, too, have a fundamental role in this. There are principles of acting, as there are of leadership, but the mechanical application of them leads to the most wooden performances. We politely applaud the by-the-book performance that imprints its faultless execution upon our consciousness, whilst creating a boring, empty and 'right' world; and we love the heart-warming theatre of conviction where all the idiosyncrasies of person, time and place dazzle us with their razzmatazz.

It is important to realise here that we are not substituting warm, fuzzy, touchy-feely (and so ineffective) pictures for hard-edged, hard-nosed, realistic (and so effective) competencies: the working out of the implications of a performance is every bit as 'hard' - as any theatre director knows - as defining a competence in ever greater unit or elemental detail.

For example, if we take point 1, performance, we might consider what this means in terms of presentational knowledge/skills/attitudes at one end of the spectrum, and what it means in terms of problem-solving and decision-making at the other. But the essential difference between the two approaches is that competency presents a reductive approach to human endeavour, a mechanistic, dissection-al, feel-bad effect; whereas metaphorical interpretation presents an achievement approach - a live-up-to, how-good-can-we-make-this-performance, holistic feel-good effect.

The 'feel-bad' derives from the inevitable failure of everyone to meet all the competencies, a shortfall which assessment always establishes; the 'feel-good' derives from the awareness that the show is on the road, it's going to be fun, we're aiming for brilliance, but whatever the result, there will be a show - there is no failure in this. Nevertheless, it must be recognised that for some, the 'safety' of ticking the right boxes will far outweigh any desire they have to 'perform'. The ease with which bureaucracy is established even within some small organisations is testimony to that. Be that as it may, leadership remains a performance. Some will prefer the competency approach precisely because it offers 'all-inclusive', 'quality-assured' solutions; metaphors will not do this.

Getting to grips with performance

 

The subject of performance is one of the most important of our lives and of our business. The reasons are not difficult to understand. At one level we are constantly judging how people perform, consciously or subconsciously. This may be easy to get when we consider a leader or manager at work: we think, of course, the annual appraisal and performance review – that’s the way things are. But it’s much more pervasive than that.

 We go into a restaurant and long before we begin to think how the chef has performed with the meal, we are making assessments about the décor and especially how we are treated. In some instances how we are served is more important: if the staff makes us feel important and welcome we may well go back even if the cuisine is not as good as elsewhere.

 Further, if the post arrives at 3.00 PM and usually we get it at 11.00 AM we think the performance is poor. More seriously, if when we get home our wife /husband/partner doesn’t treat us in the way that we consider worthy of us we become very discontented. Usually, when this happens over a prolonged period of time we don’t say, Darling, your performance as my partner has been poor’, instead we scream over some issue or other or simply leave and find somebody else.

 Even with our children we expect them to perform as children should perform. In fact it could be said that the parent who has no expectation of performance from their child is rearing a monster.

 Thus, at every level, whether we think about it or not, we are deciding when we interact with somebody else: are they performing for us?

What then is performance? In our model Performance has three dimensions.

The first of these is Direction. In order to perform we need to be going in the right direction. From an organisational point of view we like to use posher words: we say that we need the right vision and strategy. And we set goals and targets accordingly. From the individual point of view, going in the right direction from the work perspective means choosing the right sort of career in the right sort of environment, given your own strengths and weaknesses.

The second key aspect of performance is Skill. By which I mean skills and knowledge that enable one to do and complete task and activities successfully. Again, there may be other words - like competencies – with subtle shades and differences of meaning, but the gist is clear. Can we master the techniques and knowledge that enable us to get things done? In most organisations huge resources are devoted to coping with the Skill needs: we undertake TNAs (Training Need Analyses), we run Induction programmes for newcomers, we ensure that our appraisal processes discuss and discover what further skills our staff require to function effectively, and so on.

Finally, the third key aspect of performance is Motivation. This is the least understood aspect of all, whilst at the same time is the one that the most lip-service is paid to. (Please, let us never hear again the expression: staff are our most important resource!) Motivation is the energy, and the direction of that energy, that we bring to any task. Like energy it is difficult to ‘see’, and like energy its absence is always immediately felt. It is curiously the glue that holds the strategy and the skill together: without it the best strategy in the world will fail, and all the skills will avail you nothing. But motivation on its own is directionless and awkward.

Thus, if we consider our organisation and our self, we might ask, how are we performing and how would we know?

One way of knowing – the most common and superficial way – is by outputs or outcomes. In other words, most people will assume that if there business is highly profitable or as an individual they are currently making lots of money with loads of perks in their current post, then they are performing well. This may be true, but there is, too, a large a probability that it is illusory and that they are deluding themselves!

What do I mean by that? Outcomes, whilst desirable and necessary, don’t always tell the whole story and we sometimes need to dig deeper. A good contemporary example of this – that I hope makes it really obvious and incontrovertible – would be the banks. Up till 2007 every one would say they are performing at a high level; and yet this proved to be totally unfounded, and despite the fact that Sir Fred Goodwin walked away a rich man, few would argue he performed successfully; on the contrary, he took RBS in the wrong direction (had the wrong strategy), he (and most other senior bankers apparently) did not have the skills and knowledge of banking (or qualifications which often can reflect this), and their motivations, such as they were, do not seem to have been directed towards the company’s benefit, rather their own.

Hindsight is easy, but the point that is important is this: yes, by all means, let’s monitor outputs carefully, but also if we want to be a high performer, let us use other methods to establish how we are doing. There is a saying in America that ‘feedback is the breakfast of champions’. We all need feedback and that begins with our own efforts to understand where we are.

I invite you therefore to do a simple exercise, really a review of your current performance inputs. Consider your current organisation or your self personally and ask how are we, or I, doing, out of ten, on the three key aspects of performance? Ten out of ten means our direction/skill/motivation is superb, and one out of ten means we can barely spell the word, let alone understand it.

 

I WOULD RATE THE DIRECTION OF MY ORGANISATION ….. /10

I WOULD RATE MY CAREER DIRECTION ….. /10

 

I WOULD RATE THE SKILL SET OF MY ORGANISATION ….. /10

I WOULD RATE MY CURRENT SKILL SET ….. /10

 

I WOULD RATE THE MOTIVATION OF MY ORGANISATION.... /10

I WOULD RATE MY CURRENT MOTIVATION ….. /10

 

This is simply rough and ready, but having done it what do you discover? Look at which of the three areas is lowest. And any score below 6 needs serious attention. Also, ask a friend or colleague for their assessment (and compare notes after) – how accurate are you?

The beginning of all change is in self-awareness – and that includes our ability to perform at a higher level.

Thinking and our destiny

 

One of the most famous texts of the self help, personal development movement is James Allen's As a Man Thinketh. This fascinating book was first published in 1905 and has been cited ever since by almost every personal development guru, especially American guru. And for good reason: from its central contention - “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he” - comes the corollary so dear to American experience that you can be whatever you want to be. That life and potential are unlimited. In other words, the American dream.

I don't myself fully subscribe to unlimited human potential, but I do subscribe to James Allen's view that our thoughts create our reality, our happiness or otherwise, and ultimately our destiny. As he says, “Strong, pure and happy thoughts build up the body in vigour and grace”; and further, “a particular train of thought persisted in, be it good or bad, cannot fail to produce its results on the character and circumstances”.

James Allen doesn't fall into the sloppy thinking of asserting that the virtuous are always rewarded, and the vicious are always punished because he sees that even 'vicious' people may have some good qualities that enable success (and virtuous people faults which block their progress). And 'time and chance' happens to all people. But, critically, good seed produces good fruit, and bad seed does not.

With that in mind it is worth commenting on the recent death of Jane Russell, the glamorous Hollywood movie star. Her greatest film success was probably in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes when she co-starred alongside Marilyn Monroe. They became friends; but oh how different their careers and outcomes.

For me the most interesting thing is Monroe's 'smart' comment on Russell: “Jane tried to convert me to religion and I tried to introduce her to Freud”. In this one sentence, may be, one can see those whole destinies forming.

Jane Russell was a committed Christian; she had problems, including alcoholism after the death of her third husband (two of her husbands died, one of a heart attack after only 3 months of marriage). But what you see as she lived on till she was 89 was a resilience, a toughness, a belief in God and herself, that could not be completely displaced by devastating external circumstances. She achieved things and had a real life.

Monroe, on the other hand, five years younger than Russell, dying at only 36, in thinking that Freud was some sort of liberating 'god' abandoned herself to the priests – psychoanalysts - of this particular and obnoxious and hopeless religion. Hence the dark and chthonic forces that seem to have been with her from the beginning. Happy? It doesn’t appear so – and her death, suicide or murder, is as murky as the values she espoused.

Of course, Hollywood loves Monroe more than Russell, as do the public: she is ranked sixth in the all time greatest female legends list. But this 'love' is exactly the same kind of love that Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and currently Amy Winehouse and Charlie Sheen experience: we want the spectacle of talented or artistic people self-destructing in the name of freedom, in the delusion of liberty, in the craze of excess. Somehow this provides justification for our more modest indulgences, and also vicarious pleasures.

Perhaps. But there is no getting away from What a man thinketh – ultimately we pay the piper. So it is better right at the start to find role models who really do inspire us to do good and to be good, rather than the celebrate the helpless wrecks pretending they have achieved freedom and personal expression when – it is quite clear – they are so unhappy and hate themselves. Thus, three cheers for Jane Russell!

Vision, details and the centipede

I’m a great believer in vision and goals. But, as with everything, there are limits. This was never truer than when I heard the story of the centipede.

One day, not so long ago, two teams of animals decided to compete to see who was best at football (soccer). It was a case of the large animals versus the small ones. Elephants, rhinos, hippos, lions and tigers versus rats, skunks, hedgehogs, frogs and, well, the centipede. Naturally, there was a lot of animosity and name-calling

“We’ll crush you small fry”.

“You big lumpuses,” said the Tiny Team.

The day arrived. The coach for the Tiny Team was very excited. “Go out – give it everything you got,” he said. “Remember – you can do it – believe in yourself.”

So out they went. And they returned at half-time, bruised, crestfallen, and down 3-0. The rhino (the elephant’s run always tended to peter out) – once he’d gotten up steam – was unstoppable. But the Tiny Team’s coach was a real motivator.

“Go on,” he said. “Don’t quit now – winners never quit and quitters never win. Visualise that ball going in the back of their net – next thing, you’ll see it happen!”

So out they went. The game had barely kicked off when the rhino got possession and charged straight at goal. He was in the penalty area and on-side. The goalkeeper – the frog – had simply jumped aside. All the rhino had to do was shoot …. when suddenly there was a green flash. The rhino, hypnotised, crashed over his own feet. The rest of the players were riveted watching him collide with the mud and into the goal post. Thud! Except … and the ball went in the other end. The score was now 3-1. A huge cheer went up.

“Who did that?” cried the Tiny Team’ coach in ecstasy.

“Got ‘em that time, coach,” yelled the centipede.

“Well done, centipede, keep it up,” beamed the coach.

“Right”, thought the tiger. A neat bit of paw and claw work later and there he was, open goal in front, when … whoosh … a green blur, and suddenly a goal at the other end. 3-2.

“Who did that?” cried the Tiny Team’s coach.

“Got ‘em again, coach,” yelled the centipede.

“Well done, centipede, keep it up.” That’s more like it, thought the coach.

Now the lion – who always saw himself as a cut above the rest – was really hacked off. He made it his personal business to score (usually he couldn’t be bothered). One roar and the small animals vacated the pitch on mass. He was just about to put it in the back of the net when … whoosh, green lightning … and the score was 3-3!! Unbelievable!!!

“Who did that?” roared the coach.

“Showed ‘em again,” chuckled the centipede.

“Well done, centipede, keep it up – we can win this one,” said the coach. Then a quizzical look came over his face. “By the way, centipede, where were you in the first half?”

“Putting on my shoes, coach,” replied the centipede!

You see, the best vision, the most sublime goals, the most wonderful exhortations and inspirations in the world won’t work unless … we really ensure we’ve taken care of the smallest details! Ask the centipede.

What small details might trip you up – at work, in your relationships, in your self development?Here are some typical examples:

At work – lack of punctuality, failure to keep promises, disorderly work habits and record keeping?

In relationships – lack of time spent with a loved person or friend, inattention to others’ needs, critical and blaming spirit, failure to generously praise and encourage.

For self development – lack of exercise, lack of sleep, lack of special hobby/interest, no ‘learning’ stretch built into future programme for your life.

Be honest with yourself – where do you need to tighten your focus? If you’re not sure, then ask someone you trust. Run the three areas in bold type above through them – do they think any of these points apply to you?

 

Leverage and people

In organisations dealing with the people is always about dealing with all that is not secure! With all that is ambivalent and difficult to quantify– leadership, culture, values, management, motivation and morale, attitude, training and development, performance and so on. And the thing about these elements is that they are highly ambiguous. What is it about people that makes them so intractable?

If we think about it, it is because life is really like that. To live is always to be aware of inherent difficulties (including death) whereas human civilisation and mankind's intellect tends to want to mask over that with its certainties and constructions. Thus, profoundly, in dealing with the people aspect management is never enough: leadership is required with all that that entails Leaders – real leaders – are the only ones who can create 'leverage'.

What do I mean by 'leverage'. First, let me say that we need to be clear about the tricky nature of language itself - when we say people are an 'asset' we are of course speaking metaphorically - we are saying they are 'like' an asset in some important sense; but with all metaphors nothing can be pressed too far. To say people ARE an asset isto practice a fundamental literalism that will lead us astray - and has led bad leaders astray: assets can be wasted, so 'waste 'em'!

Second, and perhaps more importantly, the real point about leverage is, I think, to understand the essential benefit point between leaders and the staff. And this point can be summed up in one word: performance. It is vitally important to the organisation that people perform, but it is equally vital to individuals that they perform because their own self-esteem is correlated to performance; and whether they are aware of it or not, the strange fact is - every single human being is consciously or subconsciously making an assessment on every other one every moment of the day as we interact. If the post doesn't arrive - we're not happy - if the waiter doesn't attend our table, swiftly and respectfully, we don't rate that restaurant - if our partner doesn't demonstrate love sufficiently we start thinking about someone who will - AND, so it goes on. Thus it is - every one of us needs to feel we perform: at work, in relationships, and in our own internal being. This performing creates value that leads to even higher levels of achievement, and degrees of life satisfaction.

So, to leverage staff, to return to the business, is about enabling them to perform at a high level whereby they achieve objectives whilst simultaneously building up their own self-worth and self-satisfaction. This kind of leverage enables the Pareto Principle to work: when this level of performance kicks in, the organisation experiences a productivity from an individual which is four times higher than the average, and sixteen times more than the lowest performers. Quite frankly, it is absolutely worth the investment in time, money and effort to leverage staff – and to do this by investing in leadership, real leadership.