Organisational Culture: Art or Science?

For those of you that are from a more mature vintage in Australia, you’ll remember cracker night. On June 7th 1986 I was five years old and it was the last cracker night before fireworks were banned in NSW, Australia. Some of my fondest memories were of cracker night, the excitement, the danger, the noise, the smell, the beauty; it was absolutely magic. One of my favourite fireworks were paratroopers. It consisted of a roman candle with some toy soldiers stuffed in the top with tissue paper parachutes to bring them back down safely following being projected into the air via a small explosion….rather ironic. Nonetheless, they fascinated me. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been curious about how things work. I loved science at school and liked to experiment beyond the confines of the school laboratory. When I was in high school, a kid in my year managed to get his hands on some fireworks. I begged him to give me some as I wanted to figure out how they worked to satisfy my curiosity that had been sparked eight years earlier. I was so desperate, I offered to pay him five dollars for a single cracker. You’ve all seen the images of thousands of small red firecrackers going off to cleanse the spirits for Chinese New Year. I bought one single cracker for five dollars! Yes, I was totally nuts. What was more extraordinary, I never even saw the firework explode. Instead, I went home sat it on a blank sheet of white A3 paper and carefully dissected it with a scalpel to reveal the raw materials used to make it. I wasn’t satisfied with simply seeing the magic unfold, I needed to understand how to make the magic happen.

After three years of lunchtimes in the library studying books, countless failed experiments at home involving coffee grinders, cardboard tubing, tissue paper and plenty of superficial burns, I performed my first fireworks display. That’s right, my very own fireworks display witnessed by about two hundred people. Let’s just say not all of them worked perfectly and I may have failed when it came to following any sort of safety protocol and thankfully nobody was injured…but they were all entertained. Somewhere in between a wayward rocket whizzing past my right ear and the deafening boom of a rogue mortar knocking the wind out of me, I realised that fireworks are a beautiful synergy of art and science. The spectacle only meaningful in the moment, witnessed by fascinated onlookers captivated by the sorcery unfolding before their eyes. This shared curiosity binds people at that moment, a shared experience to be remembered and reflected upon.

Organisational Culture

With such clarity and passion at an early age, you might wonder why I didn’t become a pyrotechnician. The truth is, that’s all I wanted to be. Following a behind the scenes tour of a prominent fireworks company I did ask if I could do an internship which was denied. The only intern they took on previously was supposedly killed in an unfortunate accident involving fireworks…there’s that irony again. With that, I meandered my way to university and eventually landed on psychology where strangely the question of art or science was still being asked. Even today, you might find people that believe Psychology belongs in the arts. Psychologists, on the other hand, do their darndest to ensure that they are taken seriously with their rats, stats and psychometric profiling. Unfortunately, we are often left with black and white perspectives on something that, just like fireworks, can only be fully appreciated when we combine both art and science.

Organisational culture must be one of the most contentious constructs ever conceptualised. Paradoxically, everyone can describe the culture of their organisation, but almost nobody agrees on exactly how it works. We all agree that it exists, but nobody has ever seen it. It’s this nebulous abstraction that behaves like a bad smell. When you first enter a room the smell hits you hard but after an hour or so, it slowly becomes normal to the point where you can’t smell anything anymore. Having tested my olfactory prowess on hundreds of organisations, and like my curiosity fuelled career as an amateur pyrotechnician, I’m on a mission to understand the science underpinning culture. I’m not the first to investigate, nor will I be the last but one thing I have observed is that much of the focus has been placed on ‘Culture Change’. To me, if the fundamental understanding of culture has not yet been agreed upon, how is anyone meant to change it. Moreover, what are you changing exactly? For anyone in this space, you don’t have to look too far to discover the overwhelming number of failed culture change programs. Furthermore, due to their scarcity, the few high-profile success stories often appear to be more like a magical culmination of perfect timing, perfect leaders, and usually a giant slush fund to ensure it all goes off without a hitch. The reality is, culture happens whether you like it or not. Like water running down a mountain following a massive downpour, the water will find it’s own path. If however you can be bothered, you can influence where that water flows. You can’t always know when it’s going to rain, nor how much it will rain but you can plan for it. The remainder of this paper explains culture through my lens…..both art and science. I define it for you, I break it down into its components then show you how to make the magic happen. All you need to do is be curious.

Culture defined

For the following definition to make sense, you need to accept the following assumptions[i]:

Assumption 1: Organisational culture is an individual phenomenon i.e. It can only ever be perceived and experienced by one person.

Assumption 2: Organisational culture is constantly changing. Like a cloud in the sky, it takes form and shape when it binds with your imagination but when you look away for a moment it changes into another form, forever evolving.

Assumption 3: Organisational culture is made up of critical ingredients that when combined in the right quantities create a ‘chemical’ reaction. Like fireworks, if you don’t have the right combination of chemicals, you will never produce the desired effect.

Assumption 4: The key ingredients and the required quantities of each keep changing based on the environment. If you’ve ever tried lighting a campfire in the rain, or strong wind or when it’s hot and dry, you’ll appreciate what I’m talking about.

Assumption 5: Culture matters. If it’s broken, so is your organisation’s future success. The bottom line is….it affects the bottom line.

With these assumptions in mind, culture can be defined as.

“Culture is a reflection of moments upon moments, shaped by what you expect and believe will happen”

In every moment, you experience something which you can reflect upon. In that same moment, another person experiences you at that moment which they can reflect upon. Imagine that it’s as if we are all walking around like shards from a broken mirror, each reflecting our experience into another person’s reflection, we confirm our own beliefs through our behaviours and our relationships. Our bonds with others are solidified when they reinforce our behaviour and therefore demonstrate that they too share our beliefs. I’ll step out of metaphor for a moment just in case I lost you. Simply put, as individuals that turn up to work every day, what we believe shapes what we do and what we do shapes who we develop relationships with. Our relationships then reinforce our beliefs and so the cycle continues. These three elements are what forms culture or what I also call ‘brand’. The culture or brand of your organisation is an expression of the shared beliefs, behaviours and bonds that exists within the organisation and externally with your suppliers, customers and marketplace. There is one overarching element that has a governing role when it comes to influencing culture. That is the environment or background that your organisation is nested in. See Fig 1. For a diagram outlining the culture model.

Fig 1. Culture Model

The importance of the environment

The environment or background is the least controllable element of culture. On a macro level, it includes that marketplace, public perceptions, the economy, industry regulations, political standing and the list goes on. At a micro level, the environment includes engagement and morale, management capability, geographic location, physical surroundings, local leadership stability etc. Taking it one step further, given one assumption about this culture model is that it is an individual phenomenon, the environment extends to each person. This includes their situation, where they live, their prior experience, and their overall physical and mental health. If you’re pursing your lips and raising your eyebrows on this last point, consider the impact the last bullying or harassment claim had on your business. What was the emotional impact? What was the financial impact? What was the impact on the relationships, behaviours and beliefs that needed to be addressed as a result?

For better or for worse, the micro and macro environment are critical factors that need to be constantly evaluated if you want to effectively build your brand in a way that aligns business success with a strong organisational brand. The environment is often what makes culture so complex, unpredictable, and difficult to alter. As I write this, the world is facing a macro-environmental challenge with the COVID -19 virus. The ripple effect that this creates for beliefs, behaviours and bonds alters everything.

Getting the balance right

When I first began learning about fireworks, I had to understand the fundamental ingredients that when mixed create gunpowder. At it turns out, there are three core ingredients:

• Potassium Nitrate (Oxidizing agent) =75%

• Charcoal (Fuel) = 15%

• Sulphur (Catalyst or heat) = 10%

What the textbooks don’t tell you is that these ingredients come in many different forms and with varying degrees of quality. The grade of powder also has a marked impact on the result. Like most things, with a higher grade of quality and a finer grade of powder, the gunpowder burns much cleaner, faster and brighter. Another factor that the textbooks don’t teach you is that gunpowder is incredibly hygroscopic, meaning that it is prone to absorb moisture from the air. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that moisture isn’t going to be very good for fireworks. How is it possible to overcome these challenges to produce safe, beautiful and predictable fireworks? From witnessing what they did at the fireworks factory, the answer lies in experimentation. Each batch of powder created is unique and has to be modified to achieve the correct outcome. The result is consistent performance but the ingredients had to be changed for each batch to match the environmental conditions. A blind approach of mixing the ingredients without any form of iterative testing would result in disaster.

I see Organisational culture in much the same way and is made up of these three key ingredients:

• Bonds/Relationships (Oxidizing agent or oxygen)

• Behaviours/Actions (Fuel)

• Beliefs/Values (catalyst or heat)

The overarching influence of the environment needs to be accommodated to get the outcome you’re looking for. If the balance isn’t right in response to the environment, you either get no spark at all or the whole thing will violently blow up in your face! Balancing the right proportions in response to the environmental influences enables the chain reaction to occur. What it creates is a brilliant fusion that equates to a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. Look no further than the simplicity of fire. Once you have the right mix of wood, oxygen and a spark to get it started, you establish something that is both beautiful to observe, provides warmth, heat for cooking food and boiling water, and light to be able to see. Your brand or culture is the fire you create in your team or organisation. If you leave it unchecked in a hostile environment, the fire can rage out of control and cause catastrophic consequences. In contrast, if the environment is cold and damp, the flame may be weak and go out altogether. A healthy culture has a flame that burns brightly and organically but remains carefully controlled in response to the ever-changing environmental conditions.

Creating an aligned culture strategy

Before jumping in and creating a ‘culture change’ strategy, it’s important to understand each of the elements as they are currently. The best place to start is by asking the following questions across multiple stakeholders at all levels of the business. The objective at this point is to not change anything but to simply understand how your brand interacts with the current environment (both micro and macro).

• What are the current beliefs you have about your organisation? How are these beliefs helping or hindering your organisation? How do those beliefs influence the brand or culture of the organisation?

• How do people interact with one another? Are they friendly and sociable, busy and frantic, individualistic and isolated or efficient and respectful? Are the behaviours of your people (Staff, clients, suppliers, partner) enhancing the brand of your organisation?

• What sort of relationships do people have with one another at your organisation? Are they mutually beneficial? Are they clinical, professional and a touch cold? Are they challenging, robust and growth-oriented? Or do they feel like an annual family get-together around the Christmas table; obligatory and a tad dysfunctional?

• What is the current environment (micro i.e workspace, team, engagement) you’re operating in?  What are some of the broader environmental factors (Macro i.e market trends, political factors, national security, public health concerns) that are facing your organisation?

Now that you have a clear understanding of the factors underpinning your organisational brand or culture, and the environmental factors (both macro and micro) influencing it, you need to be ruthless about whether it is supporting your organisation to succeed. The point being, your brand or culture might be perfectly pleasant but if it isn’t aligned to the growth targets, customer service charter, employee value proposition, or shareholder expectations, you’re leaving your success up to chance.

Our results are good…. why do we need to bother about our brand or culture?

For those of you that are agreeing with the emboldened question above, I hope you’re not in a leadership role. If you are, read the next paragraph carefully.

Your brand and culture are what enables you to deliver excellent service, fantastic products, innovative client solutions, or world-class employee experience. Your bottom line only exists because of the nebulous cloud-like construct we have coined as ‘culture’. Countless organisations have had amazing financial success but ultimately failed due to cultural or brand challenges. See the following list of some well-known organisations and brand names that have either ceased to exist or had a catastrophic fall from grace.

•       Kodak

•       Ansett

•      Schwinn

•       Toys R Us

•       Dick Smith

•       Enron

•       Polaroid

•      Lehman Brother

•      Atari

•       Commodore Corp

•       Radioshack

•       Nokia

•      General Motors

•      Compaq

The above list is a reminder of how ephemeral success can be. Furthermore, the need to constantly innovate, challenge, rediscover and push through complacency is critical for continued success. Your brand or culture is made up of the relationships you form, the beliefs you hold, and the behaviours you reinforce. Their combination creates the flames that forge a personal and organisational legacy. How you want to be experienced in the world is directly reflected by how you interact with the world. If you are feeling somewhat underwhelmed by the culture of your organisation where you currently work, before judging, remember the definition. Culture is a reflection of moments upon moments shaped by what you believe and expect will happen. If the culture doesn’t align to you, it doesn’t make it bad or wrong. It simply means that you don’t fit. My advice, try mapping out your own beliefs, behaviours, and bonds that you want to experience at work. Do a sense check based on the current micro and macro environments then start looking for an organisation that fits what you want. If however, you choose to stay in an organisation that doesn’t work for you, your reflections on the brand and culture are a reflection of how you see yourself. In other words, everything you hate about the culture, you become. Finally, to answer the question is Organisational Culture art or Science? I say it’s both. In art, you find science and in science you find art. Your ability to create both in a consistent way that captivates others is what will set you apart.

About Me:

My name is Joe Hart and I’ve spent my life thus far seeking to understand why people do what they do. I’m an Organisational Psychologist and am also obsessed with patterns. Patterns underpin everything we do, everything we think and everything we feel. Organisational culture is like the Rubiks cube of human behaviour. It seems impossible, but there is a method to what seems like chaos. If you’d like to crack the code that’s holding you and your team back.

Contact me here:

E: joe@joehart.com.au

M: 0425 224 825

W: https://joehart.com.au/

The war for attention: A challenge for future leaders

For decades organisations have been focussed on how to win the “War for talent”. This concept of attracting and retaining the best people for your organisation to beat the competition has been studied and written about extensively. Billions of dollars are invested by the largest organisations in the world every year to ensure they win this so-called “war”. Reason being, it’s hard to find talented people, and even harder to keep them. Before you tune-out and move onto the next story in your newsfeed let me hold your attention for a moment longer. If you want to win, stop focussing on trying to “win” new talent and start focussing on how you harness the attention of the talent you already have. A room full of highly talented people that are constantly distracted is far less productive than a room full of average people who are highly focussed.

Talent vs Attention

When was the last time you recall being 100% focused on the task at hand for more than 15mins without letting your thoughts wander, your motivation wane or your frustration build? For many people, it may even be a challenge to recall the last time they spent more than 5 minutes focussing on a single task. If that’s you, then your talent is being hindered by your inability to focus your attention. In doing so, you’re not working toward your potential and denying yourself the opportunity to be happy, fulfilled and successful. When I think of attention it’s like holding a magnifying glass at an angle to catch the rays of the sun so they can concentrate intensely on a single point. When you get the angle just right, the heat becomes so focussed that it can cause wood and paper to spontaneously combust (or a few ants meet a gruesome and spectacularly fiery death). At the wrong angle, the magnifying glass does nothing to increase the intensity of the sun’s rays or worse, block the sun’s rays altogether and create a shadow! In many ways, the ability to focus your own attention is how you create a critical threshold for productivity, creativity and ultimately achieve results. The rays of the sun are reflective of talent, but without the magnifying glass focussing our attention, we can never fully generate enough energy to create fire.

Attention-deficit

We’ve all experienced having the best of intentions to finish off an important project or deliverable only to get side-tracked by a multitude of competing priorities and not follow through on what we started. Sadly, the competing priorities that steal our attention are usually our email inbox or notifications on our phone. I’ve asked thousands of people to consider what’s most important to them over the years and not one of them has ever answered with “email”, “social media” or “responding to my latest text messages”.  Despite this, many people still gauge their productivity, value and effectiveness on how many emails they have in their inbox. About three years ago when I was still working in corporate, I had a colleague peer over my shoulder and make comment on how few emails I had in my inbox. I personally wasn’t phased by how few emails I received. I saw this as a sign that I was communicating clearly with my clients and meeting their expectations. It meant that I was spending more time sitting with my clients and doing what I do best, rather than spend time hunched in front of my laptop. My colleague’s interpretation was that my job was on the line and I should be feeling vulnerable. My response… “thanks for your concern. I don’t get paid to have an inbox crammed full of emails, most of which are not relevant to me.” With a smug tone, they made a prediction that I wouldn’t be there much longer. About three months later, that same employee was made redundant and I continued on in my role for another 6 months before jumping ship. The point here is, where your attention goes, your energy flows. Indeed, when your attention is so thinly spread, you start to suffer from an attention deficit. This colleague was so focussed on transactional emails and other menial tasks, their role was no longer of value. They had become irrelevant.

Attention first, talent second

The reason why your results aren’t reflective of your potential isn’t that you don’t have enough talent, it’s because your talent isn’t focussed. Just as you’re beginning to make some progress your attention is shifted onto the next distraction. This tendency to follow distraction is not new but let’s just agree that the explosion of social media and the prevalence of smartphones has made being distracted a whole lot easier than it used to be. What’s worse is that the most popular apps are those such as Instagram, Tik-Tok and Snapchat that predominately use short videos to capture your attention. What’s more, is that while our ability to sustain focussed attention is getting shorter, our time spent on social media apps is increasing. Don’t get me wrong, I love the benefits that social media have introduced to the world and fully support them moving forward. My real concern is how organisations are managing this “war for attention” which will only become more relevant in the coming years as generation Z and generation alpha kids start to form a larger percentage of our workforce. I don’t care how talented somebody is, if they aren’t able to hold their focus for more than a few minutes without checking their social media feeds or texting a friend, we have a problem.

Despite me being Gen Y (or Millenial if you prefer that terminology), my kids insist that I’m a “boomer” and I’m acutely aware that this article is likely to get a similar response. Please don’t misinterpret what I’m writing here as sledging social media. I’m not. I am, however, challenging you to think about how you sustain your own attention and consider how you might focus the attention of your team when it is filled with Gen Zs and Gen Alphas over the next decade.

How to focus your attention

Cal Newport discusses strategies to reduce distraction in his book “Deep work” which I highly recommend reading. There are many ways to focus your attention but one of the best ways I know is to engage in learning. When you are learning something new (particularly if you are interested in the topic/task) you become fully engrossed, leaving little room for faulty thinking, boredom, negative thoughts or self-doubt to creep in. Motivation is arguably the biggest hurdle when engaging in new learning which is why I make conscious learning a daily practice. As most of my clients know, I’m a juggler and have been practising for 25 years now. Every day, I spend time focussing my attention completely on finessing my skills and enhancing my ability to sustain my focus. There have been times in my life where my practice has fallen off the priority list, but each time I come back to it, I recognise how important the daily ritual is to align my body with my mind. As an executive coach, being able to focus my attention is a critical skill. Without this skill, I’d be unable to hold presence with my clients which is essential for them to be able to get present in our sessions. While it’s rather serendipitous that I discovered juggling at an early age, I maintain that it is the single best activity I have come across that simultaneously engages the mind and body in complex adaptive learning but also allows you to flex between that which is easy and that which is challenging. I also attribute my ability to remain calm under fire to my years of conscious practice with juggling[1]. Additional benefits include reduced stress, reduced anxiety, improved peripheral vision, improved co-ordination, and some studies have even shown and increase in both white and grey matter in the brain as a result of continued practice.

If you’d like to give it a go and learn for yourself, check out my youtube videos here which guide you through steps you need to take to learn how to juggle.

If juggling isn’t your thing, have a go anyway! If you are resisting it because you  “don’t have time” or “you already know how” or you’re “not very co-ordinated”. These are all excuses that you are using to not learn. My advice, drop your ego and stop telling yourself bullshit stories that are preventing you from learning, improving and developing. Your ability to focus your attention, be in the moment and enable others to do the same will be what sets you apart as a future leader. Nobody is born with the ability to completely focus so it takes considerable practice. While it may be hard, the payoff is well worth it.

[1] If you’d like to learn more about the research on the many benefits of juggling please email me at: joe@joehart.com.au and I’d be happy to share my resources with you

Do you know your pattern?

If I was to ask you above all else, what’s the most important thing you want to know about yourself…what would you say? Take a moment right now to reflect on an answer. The truth is, most people don’t know how to answer this question and simply say “I don’t know”.

Having asked this question of hundreds of leaders I’ve observed that with a little bit of thought, it’s not hard to come up with an answer. Some of the most common answers people give are:

• “to know if I’m leadership material”

• “to know if I have what it takes”

• “to know how people ‘really’ perceive me”

• “to know why I react in certain ways to certain people or events”

• “to know that I’m making a difference”

• “to know that I’m not a complete idiot or waste of time”

The common thread linking the above answers is to know that which you yourself cannot see. To know your own automatic, unconscious patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving. To know your own pattern is to have what I call True perspective and it’s something you can’t achieve alone. To know your pattern is like having a map to a secret treasure that contains all the riches you’d ever need. Indeed, knowing your pattern is the greatest gift you’ll ever receive, should you be willing to receive it. Sometimes, we may think we are aware of our patterns where in fact, we are just observing the familiar outcomes associated with them.  Below are a couple of frequently occurring examples of people focussing on the undesirable outcome, not the pattern that underpins how they got there.

Example 1:  The leader that believes that their team is not delivering to level that they expect. Their assumption is that they have the wrong people in the team. Their pattern, however, is to not clearly articulate what they expect from their team and each member within it. Without clear expectations, the staff become confused, misaligned, and reactive. Dysfunction follows, fears sets in, team members are let-go and the cycle continues when new people come on board.

Example 2: The team member that is overworked, doesn’t have any time for themselves and is constantly annoyed by the lack of support they receive from their colleagues. Their frustration builds up over time when they see their colleagues swan in and out of work without the same level of pressure they feel. Unable to contain their frustration they experience a ‘meltdown’ resulting in a sick day, serial ‘venting’ to their partner, a trusted colleague or worse, their boss. They assume that the problem is that other people are not taking their load of responsibility resulting in the pressure they feel. In reality, they are extremely poor delegators and fear to let go of projects. Their fear is due to a pattern of feeling undervalued so they combat this fear by taking on more work to demonstrate their capability.

Example 3: The executive that ‘knows’ what’s right for the business but nobody will listen to their solutions. Their assumption is that other people are not as smart as them so they are unable to comprehend their ideas. Believing that forcing their perspective will not be beneficial, they sit back, withdraw, and watch how things unfold. Unbeknownst to them, their pattern is one of acquiescence, the tendency to simply agree with things when in fact, they are in doubt. The enter all conversations with a bias of already ‘knowing’ the answer and if somebody challenges it through ideas, opinion or analysis, they simply withdraw. They exude superiority and hold concrete views about what is right rarely offering honesty in their discussions. As a result, their relationships remain transactional and shallow.

Whether you recognise any of these patterns in yourself or people you work with is beside the point. The point I’m making here is that our first stab at understanding what’s creating the issue, outcome or result that’s getting in our way is usually wrong. In order to get to the core of the issue and change, we need help in seeing the underlying patterns of our thoughts, feelings and behaviour.

Characteristics of a pattern

If you want to create lasting and sustainable change in your behaviour, you first need to understand the characteristics of a pattern.

According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, a pattern is defined as:

“a reliable sample of traits, acts, tendencies, or other observable characteristics of a person, group, or institution”

The Oxford online Learners Dictionary defines a pattern as:

“The regular way in which something happens or is done”

Both definitions apply to patterns of behaviour, sleeping patterns, consumer spending patterns, prevailing patterns of speech, relationship patterns and the list goes on. Having spent my whole life being part of a pattern, recognising patterns and responding to them, I’d say I’m somewhat of an expert. The good news is, so are you.

Something I’m particularly interested in is what our patterns can tell us about how we learn, especially when it comes to learning about ourselves. Self-awareness, having made an appearance in pretty much every model of leadership or emotional intelligence ever conceptualised, is arguably the most important characteristic we can ever develop. The challenge, as with most important things, we can’t do it in isolation. We need feedback on how we interpret what we are learning, the mindset we adopt before, during and after we learn but also the physical and emotional environment we create to frame our learning experience.

For those that know me or have worked with me before, you’ll know that I’m a juggler and have been doing it for more than 25 years. I’m still learning and constantly challenging myself with new juggling patterns that stretch my capabilities both physically and mentally. Over the last 25 years, I’ve distilled the core characteristics of patterns (fundamental to learning how to juggle) down to the following four keys. These keys can be applied to any behavioural change you are trying to make at work or in your personal life.

1)      Patterns are infinite: In a standard juggling pattern, the balls all follow a continuous flow that resembles an infinity sign. As long as you keep throwing the balls with the correct trajectory and rhythm, you will be able to juggle indefinitely. Applying this to leadership, parenting or life, our patterns (both good and bad) will continue infinitely without intervention.

2)      Patterns are changeable: Following on from the first pattern, while infinitely recurring, all patterns are changeable and malleable. Using Juggling as an example, the way in which you manipulate the balls through the air is only limited by your imagination, capability and physics. Everything we do, think and feel is changeable should we have the courage, desire and tenacity to change it. The brain itself is a map of all behaviours enabling us to speak, plan, move, see and hear. If a certain part of the brain is damaged, such as that which enables us to speak, we will struggle to communicate verbally. However, due to neuroplasticity, the brain is able to change the pattern associated with speaking and use other parts of the brain to complete that task. This is an extremely simplistic example, but indeed, if our brains are able to fundamentally change how neurons are connected and organised to complete complex tasks such as speaking, we can change any behaviour.

3)      Patterns are learnable: If I was to place five balls in your hand and ask you to juggle them unless you’d previously learned how to do it, you wouldn’t know where to start. You may not even be able to imagine what juggling five balls even looks like, or that it’s even possible! If however, I taught you sequentially how to juggle one, two, and three balls you’d easily understand how to juggle five balls based on the patterns you’ve already learned. You’re applying the framework from a simpler task to a more difficult one. Knowing that patterns are both changeable and learnable should provide you with the confidence and knowledge to keep developing yourself.

4)      Patterns are disguised: Our patterns are so natural, so seamless, so automatic that until we are made aware, they are disguised to us. It’s very difficult to lift the vale on our patterns without any external feedback from other people that know us. Even once we are made aware, without actively working on learning new patterns or changing existing ones, we will quickly revert to our well-practised patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving. In this way, the disguise contributes to the infinite nature of our patterns. Similarly, we can wrongly attribute lost relationships, a breakdown in communication, poor performance at work, or a dysfunctional team to issues external to us, where in fact it is our own pattern creating all the issues, we just can’t see what is blindingly obvious to those around us.  

For anyone wanting to test their co-ordination, stretch their brain and learn something new, check out my juggling tutorial on Youtube for some basic lessons to get you going.

Why should you understand your pattern?

When it comes to how you think, feel, and behave, your patterns are the single biggest influencing factor shaping everything you do. It, therefore, makes total sense why you should know your pattern so you can better interpret what happens, engage more effectively with your environment, and sustain a mindset that is positive and focussed.

We all know how important it is to focus on forming good habits, and I too follow this line of thinking. Having recently read James Clear’s Atomic Habits and Brendon Burchard’s High-performance Habits, it’s clear that our fascination with building good habits and breaking bad ones is here to stay. Here’s where I think it gets a little tricky. I may go through the process of establishing a really strong habit of going to the gym, which after 66 days has become part of my identity. I continue going to the gym and getting stronger, leaner, and fitter. If however, I have an overarching pattern of self-sabotage that is disguised to me, I’ll create these unconscious challenges that start to erode my ability to maintain my habit of going to the Gym. Some examples of these could be;

• Creating a challenging relationship at work such that my performance is hindered, I will have to work extra hours to make up for it and don’t have time to train at the gym.

• Allow myself to eat ‘whatever I want’ which has a negative impact on my health and physical performance making it difficult to keep training at the gym.

• Keep pushing beyond my limits physically resulting in overtraining or injury, preventing me from training at all.

• Focus all my emotional effort on everybody else’s issues (friends, family, partner etc.) leaving me with no time left to train. Because I was sacrificing myself for others people feel sorry for me and understand why I stopped training at the gym.

While these may or may not be entirely applicable to you, we all have patterns that we follow. These patterns are often invisible to us and therefore dominate how we respond, think about, reflect upon and engage with our environment. Habits are transactions where are patterns represent the bank balance. Some of our patterns are good, some are bad, and some are just plain ugly. Learning how to see them and doing something to change them is what makes all the difference.

How do I see my own pattern?

It’s not easy, and you may not like what you see, but the best way I know is to ask people (about 6-8 should be enough). It can be difficult to have the conversation directly with people so you might want to ask a coach or mentor to ask on your behalf. The questions that I use are:

• What are my strengths?

• What are my weaknesses?

• How could I improve?

• What can you offer me?

• What do you need from me?

• What do you most want me to know?

As a starting point, these questions will give you some great insight into what your patterns might be and how they are holding you back or thrusting you forward. I’ve used this same combination of questions to provide hundreds of leaders with “True Perspective” but sadly, there are many that don’t do anything with their newfound insight. The irony is those patterns that are so well disguised that it takes a monumental shift in perspective to reveal them when we finally do see them our usual response is outright rejection.

My final word

The reason why most of us can’t answer the question “What do you most want to know about yourself?” Is because we fear seeing ourselves the way the rest of the world sees us. The truth is, that which we most fear is usually what we need the most. As we close out 2019 and welcome in 2020, take a stand to have the courage to see your own pattern, take responsibility for it, and most importantly do something to change it.