Joe Hart 2/6/20 Joe Hart 2/6/20

Pattern Recognition: Helpful or Harmful?

Like it or not, much of our behaviour can be explained by instincts or as Google defines it, our “natural or intuitive way of acting or thinking.” Indeed, instincts are a type of pattern that is built into us, hardcoded if you will. These include sexual desire and attraction, hunger and the assimilation of food, the dizzy feeling you have when looking over the edge of an extremely high building or cliff, and the strange sensation you get when someone doesn’t quite seem right or appears to be lying to you.

In fact, today, as I was sitting at my desk I noticed a man dressed in high vis gear while talking on his phone walking down my driveway. As soon as he spotted me sitting in my office staring back at him, he quickly turned around and walked back up the driveway. At first glance, this could be disregarded as someone that got the wrong address or a trade worker wanting to do some maintenance. The strange thing about this guy is that he did exactly the same thing last week. While it seemed strange last week I was in the middle of a client call when it happened so I couldn’t chase him down to find out who he was and what he wanted. Today, however, I was free, so I promptly followed him up the street. He continued to have what looked like quite an animated conversation while he was walking and after about 30 metres he put his phone in his pocket, he then turned around and saw me following. Without skipping a beat, he kept walking, pulled his phone back out of his pocket and picked up with the animated conversation. By this stage, I was pretty certain this guy was up to no good and wasn’t really having a conversation with anyone. Cautious but curious, I kept following him to see if he was going to get in a car or truck….assuming he was a tradie. He got to a street corner and stopped so I kept walking. He stood with his back to me continuing to ‘talk’ on his phone for about 2mins. I waited patiently maintaining 1.5 metres of a distance of course. He put his phone away and turned to me with a steely look in his eye. I asked, “ Are you alright there mate?”. Cool as a cucumber, he said that he was waiting for a delivery and needed to figure out if the truck could turn around in our driveway. This might be a plausible explanation on a country road but not for a house that’s on a six-lane, divided road Highway such is ours! Predictably, it turned out that there was no truck, just his van that is most likely full of stolen goods from other properties he managed to successfully ‘hit’. I managed to capture a pic of his van without him noticing me and promptly reported his registration details to the police.

In the above example, it’s easy to see how my interpretation of a behavioural pattern triggered an instinctual response for me to act. Noticing patterns in behaviour, allows you to appropriately take action when you see something that doesn’t quite ‘fit’. The problem with this is, now, every time I see someone in high vis gear walk down our driveway, I’ll be more vigilant in my assessment of their intentions. In some cases, like mine, it’s probably a good thing but in others - like soldiers returning from war- it can lead to issues such as anxiety, depression or PTSD.

Pattern recognition is a powerful tool to evaluate what to do next, and in many assessments used by organisations to select candidates based on their ‘fluid intelligence’, tests of abstract reasoning examine your ability to spot patterns and determine the correct response in the sequence. In this way, correctly interpreting patterns is a huge advantage for human beings both past and present….but I’m not so sure about the future. Patterns are thought to be behaviours that have evolved to help us survive and succeed in our natural environment. While this is true for the majority of the time, our environment is changing more rapidly than our natural more intuitive ways of acting or thinking and therein lies the problem. Our environment barely resembles anything ‘natural’ anymore. We are walking around with some seriously powerful hardware in our heads (talking about our brains here) with an ever-changing environment that is becoming increasingly complex year on year. Our software (patterns and instincts) is in many ways, horribly outdated. This is the equivalent to playing the first version of space invaders on a modern PC. Unless the program has been updated and adapted to the new operating system, it simply won’t work or will be compromised at the very least.

While there are our baseline instinctual patterns that are largely automatic and often, irrelevant, the future belongs to those that can begin to write their own code, design new patterns that serve as behavioural blueprints and set the example for others. We typically know these people as ‘leaders’ in modern society but I like to think of them as ‘Pattern Programmers’ or ‘Pattern Hackers’. These people have learned the art of programming their own behaviours to meet the needs of their environment. It takes effort, discipline and tonne of self-awareness but the result is a ripple that grows exponentially along with their contributions to society. A recent example is Bill Gates, who is in my opinion, one of the greatest pattern hackers of all time. He has the ability to identify patterns in behaviour and extrapolate what that means for industries, countries and in the case of COVID-19, the world. If you haven’t already watched it, have a look at Bill’s Ted Talk from 2015 where he outlines the risk of a global pandemic and the world’s inability to respond to it appropriately.

The truth is, while not everyone will learn how to ‘write their own code’ so to speak, we are all walking around with pretty much the same hardware in our heads. It’s the programming that you do that’s going to set you apart…and like anything hard, it’s something you can learn. You’re not always going to get it right, but it’s time to evolve your ability to respond to your environment proactively because our inbuilt programming is no longer sufficient. Whether you have a suspicious character wanting to rob your house or want to be the next Bill Gates, I’m certain that if you consciously work on shaping your mindset and how you interpret your environment, you’ll be better at recognising patterns that will help you succeed.

If you’re interested in exploring your own patterns more, download my pattern recognition worksheet and send me a note if you need any help with it.

Pattern Recognition Worksheet

References

Bill Gates’ Ted Talk 2015 - https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_the_next_outbreak_we_re_not_ready?language=en#t-128669

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CHECK-OUT WHAT ELSE I DO

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A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ME

I’m fascinated with people, always have been and always will be. From a very early age, I keenly observed people, I was curious about what motivated them, what made them successful and why they made certain choices. This curiosity led me to study Psychology. After graduating with my Master of Organisational Psychology, I worked for Gallup, a global leader in engagement and strengths-based development. I became a strengths-based coach, engagement expert and worked with senior leaders all over the world.

If you’re curious about how I can help you personally or with the leadership of your team/organisation get in touch via my email: joe@joehart.com.au | website: joehart.com.au | Phone: +61425 224 825

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Joe Hart 21/5/20 Joe Hart 21/5/20

What's the value of coaching? Is it really worth it?

Like any ‘new’ (relatively speaking) area of practice, executive coaching has had its fair share of scrutiny regarding the Return On Investment, the efficacy, and ultimately the value it generates. There is a growing body of evidence supporting what we already knew, effective coaching has a positive and observable impact on employee performance, engagement, wellbeing, self-regulation, goal attainment, and transformational leadership (Burt & Talati, 2017; Teebom et, at, 2014; Jones, et.al, 2016; O'Connor & Cavanagh, 2014). In other words, it works and if you’re smart, you’ll seek out coaching for yourself, your team and make it accessible to the rest of the organisation.

The ‘ROI’ of Coaching

Of course, variables such as capabilities of coach, scope and length of coaching, the willingness of the coachee to engage and the environment the coaching is happening all play a major role in coaching success. For the sake of this discussion, let’s assume 1) The capability of the coach is high 2) The coachee is willing to engage and 3) The environmental context is conducive to a successful coaching outcome. With these conditions being met, coaching becomes an opportunity to express freely, experiment with ideas, test new behaviours and develop as a person and a leader. As outlined in his research (Grant, 2012) the late Anthony Grant, founder of the first Masters of Coaching Psychology course in the world, suggested that traditional ROI calculations were misleading and ineffective in explaining the positive impact of coaching. As such, trying to put a dollar figure to a coaching engagement has often resulted in highly spurious and misleading figures. In many ways, trying to place a dollar value on the impact coaching has had on a person is like asking somebody to explain the worth, in dollars, of the relationship they have with a close friend, spouse or child. While it is possible to come up with a number, as sophisticated as the formula may be, it is likely to produce a dollar amount that doesn’t ‘feel’ right.

The value of coaching for an individual- Wellbeing & engagement

Rather than try to put a dollar value to the impact coaching has had on a person, a much better way to evaluate coaching efficacy is to measure outcomes such as wellbeing, engagement (both leader and their team), goal attainment, and transformational leadership. After all, if we can see a positive shift in a leaders behaviour, it creates a positive ripple that flows through every interaction both direct and indirect with that leader. Moreover, this positive ripple acts just like a stone dropping in the centre of a still pond. The ripples gently expand in all directions, so relationships in all areas of a leaders’ life will be enhanced through the process of coaching.

The value of coaching for organisations- The ripple effect

When I engage with organisations, usually with an intact leadership team, and sometimes with a broader cohort of leaders, I get to see how this ‘ripple effect’ contributes to enhancing organisational culture. At the core of it, culture is made of the relationships, beliefs and behaviours that are collectively shared in the organisation (I recently wrote an article on organisational culture that goes into more detail you can read here). At times I have been able to engage with employees at all levels in the hierarchy from the Managing Director, senior managers, middle managers right through to the front line staff, all in the same organisation. Being able to observe the beliefs, behaviours and relationships that perpetually reinforce the culture at all levels was astounding. The depth of insight a coach is able to access is comparable to an artist shifting from painting a figure on a canvas to sculpting in three dimensions. The result is far more accurate, observable from every angle and highly nuanced. In a study by Sean 0’Connor and Michael Cavanagh (2014), they measured the positive impact of coaching within an organisation using Social Networking analysis. They demonstrated that coaching enhanced wellbeing of coachees but also those that were closely connected to them. The authors concluded that the positive influence of leadership coaching extends beyond the individual being coached.

The value of the ‘immeasurable’

Just imagine for a moment, that you are at the top of your game, you’ve always enjoyed success and have been rewarded throughout your career for your capability. You’ve seen others struggle at times and wondered why they weren’t able to ‘work harder’ or ‘push through’ to succeed. The very next day, you get a call from your CEO explaining that you have been terminated and an envelope with a severance package was in transit to your home, you are no longer required to go to work. Regardless of the legitimacy of the reason for termination, the value of the severance package, nothing feels fair.

In another example, imagine you are at the beginning of your career and you have landed a massive opportunity to step into a leadership role. You don’t feel ready, you know you don’t have the experience or capability to be a great leader yet but somehow got the role. You feel out of your depth, anxious to succeed but not sure where to start. The day before you were to start your new role, you get a call from an old mentor who offers you sage advice, allays your fears and reinforces their belief in you. You feel an inner confidence rise, your voice takes on a new timber and a calm feeling of ‘I’ve got this’ washes over you.

Finally, I’d like you to imagine that you are a great leader, your team admires you, your organisation rewards you for your success but still, you want to be better. Like a boxer fighting with his shadow, you know you can’t get better at your craft until you have someone real to spar with. The problem is, you don’t know where to find them but you know that to continue to improve you need to be challenged.

In the above scenarios, the value placed on what each person needs is highly subjective, extremely context-specific and would be very difficult to translate into a dollar figure. However, if I was to suggest that as the terminated executive, should you not get any support, you would fall into a deep depression and never find your feet again, what value would you place on getting some help? Similarly, as the upcoming first-time leader, what if I was to tell you that without adequate mentoring and guidance you would fail and likely never want to dip your toe in leadership again. Last but not least, if you were the admired leader that never found somebody to challenge you beyond your current capability, you would lose your motivation to improve along with your far-reaching influence.

The true value of coaching

Like all the best sportspeople in the world, whether it be a team or individual sport they all have coaches. Would they still be great athletes without a coach? Absolutely. Would they achieve the same level of success without coaching? Not likely. There’s a point at which the dollar value you place on the intervention becomes less important than what it means to you. In business, it’s the same. While knowing that it will help you be more successful financially is a critical decision-making insight, the real (immeasurable) value comes with the ability to clearly articulate that which is most important to you and focus all of your effort on it. That clarity and the associated change in thought, feeling and behaviour is the true value of coaching.

References

Burt, D. & Talati, Z. (2017) The unsolved value of executive coaching: A meta-analysis of outcomes using randomised control trial studies. International Journal of Evidence-Based Coaching and Mentoring, 15(2)17-24.

Grant, A. (2012). ROI is a poor measure of coaching success: Towards a more holistic approach using a well-being and engagement framework. Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice, 5(2), 74-85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17521882.2012.672438

Jones, R. J., Woods, S. A., & Guillaume, Y. R. F. (2016). The effectiveness of workplace coaching: A meta-analysis of learning and performance outcomes from coaching. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 89(2), 249–277. https://doi.org/10.1111/joop.12119

O’connor, S. & Cavanagh, M. (2014). Research Poster. The Coaching Ripple Effect: The individual and Systemic Level Influence of Leadership Development. http://www.psywb.com/content/3/1/2.

Theeboom, T., Beersma, B., & van Vianen, A. (2014) Does coaching work? A meta-analysis on the effects of coaching on individual-level outcomes in an organizational context, The Journal of Positive Psychology, 9:1, 1-18, DOI: 10.1080/17439760.2013.837499

Joe Hart 27/4/20 Joe Hart 27/4/20

How coachable are you?

My coach then said to me…”That’s because you’re not coachable….how can you coach somebody when they think they already know everything?” In shock, I didn’t have a reply at the moment….my first thought was “You’re not allowed to say that…you’re my coach! Aren’t you meant to make me feel good about myself or something?”.

When I first started my career, I had a strong bias toward data. While you might think this is a good thing, it came at the expense of openness, intuition, curiosity, depth and learning. My training as a Psychologist was such that I felt that all truth was contained within the data, but I was thinking small. I had indeed convinced myself that if the data had not been captured and converted into numbers, then it was not relevant. I recall the first time that somebody coached me around my strengths.

It may shock some of you (especially my clients) but I was quite sceptical about the validity of coaching process and thought that it might be like going to see a clairvoyant or some other form of a psychic healer. I recall sitting back in my chair waiting to be ‘coached’ with an arrogance about me that I feel ashamed to reflect upon. Throughout the session, I was completely judgemental of my coach, literally rejecting all of what was being shared…and that was only the first 10mins. Very quickly, my coach realised that they weren’t getting very far with me and asked “Why are we here Joe? What do you want to get out of our time together?”. I wasn’t sure how to answer the question, other than saying something expected like “I’d like to understand how I can use my strengths more”. The session bumbled on and didn’t lead me to any insights or epiphanies.

Right at the end of the session, my coach asked me what insights I’d taken from our session. When I replied with “Not really…there wasn’t anything that came up that I didn’t already know”. My coach then said to me…”That’s because you’re not coachable….how can you coach somebody when they think they already know everything”. In shock, I didn’t have a reply at the moment….my first thought was “You’re not allowed to say that…you’re my coach! Aren’t you meant to make me feel good about myself or something?”.

Interestingly, that first coaching conversation was probably one of the best sessions I’ve ever had as it challenged me to reflect on how I was showing up. I saw myself as an open and curious thinker that valued people and insight above all else. I enjoyed intelligent discussions, being challenged and brainstorming ideas. What my coach was saying, completely contradicted everything I wanted to be and who I thought I was. What hurt the most, was that my coach was right! I wasn’t coachable and it was preventing me from experiencing everything I desired. Like most people, I didn’t like feeling vulnerable, threatened or stupid and for me admitting that I didn’t know something was the ultimate trifecta. I had this weird hang-up about not being smart enough so I spent all of my time making sure I ‘knew’ everything. Of course, knowing everything is impossible so what happens is your world becomes smaller and smaller. Your fear of being vulnerable becomes so overpowering that you create a shield of knowledge around yourself, constantly reinforcing it with the same knowledge or areas of expertise.

It’s rather ironic that my primary profession became a coaching psychologist and one of my favourite areas of discussion is about vulnerability. Researchers such as Brene Brown have invested their whole careers trying to understand vulnerability and how it works. What makes Brene Brown’s work so compelling is that she personifies it. In her my famous TED talk to date, she shared her vulnerability to communicate her research. There is no better way to demonstrate vulnerability than to be vulnerable.

How can you increase your coachability?

That first coaching experience that I had shook me up and awakened me to a truth that I needed to hear. It has also helped me identify that to get the most value from your coach you need to drop your guard and be vulnerable. The following represent some basic patterns you can introduce into your world to get the most out of coaching.

1) Be open: This might seem obvious and if you’d ask someone directly if they were open, most likely they will say ‘yes, of course, I’m open’. Your personality is likely to play a role in how open you are so if you like change, variety, and like to be challenged intellectually you will most likely be on the more ‘openminded’ end of the spectrum. If however, you are more conservative, change-averse, and prefer more pragmatic or practical discussion, you are on the more ‘closed-minded’ end of the spectrum. Regardless of your personality type, you will get more out of the coaching if you are open to being challenged, to see different perspectives, and want to continue to change/develop who you are.

2) Be curious: For coaching to work for you, you’ll need to bring a healthy dose of curiosity to the sessions. This looks like you asking questions, challenging your coach and most of all, challenging yourself. I great practice to get into is to start framing your questions (to yourself and others) with “I’m curious about…” or “I’m curious as to why…”. By increasing your curiosity you will naturally glean more insight from your coaching sessions.

3) Be willing to learn: For you to learn something, the first step is to accept that you do not already know the answer. If you already know everything, there is nothing to learn. Don’t confuse learning with fun either, sometimes the greatest lessons are delivered through the toughest challenges. As any teacher knows, the learning your student experiences are proportional to their willingness to engage.

The Coach

If your coach doesn’t appear to embody the coachability traits (Openness, Curiosity and Willingness to learn) then you might want to find another coach. Any great coach I know (and I know a lot) is a committed lifelong learner, willing to be challenged about anything…especially what they think they know. If you conversations are feeling one-sided or you aren’t getting what you need, before you throw the baby out with the bathwater, raise it with your coach so you can both work on the flow of your sessions. Like any relationship, you’ll need to find your point of connection to make it work. One final thought, there conversations that you have in everyday life that are coaching opportunities (to be coached and to coach). I’d encourage you to increase your awareness of these opportunities to speed up your progress.

A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ME

Joe Hart 20/4/20 Joe Hart 20/4/20

Learning how to learn: The infinite pattern

2020 is already becoming the most challenging year most people have ever experienced. Rather than fill your newsfeed with strategies to ‘Lead through uncertainty’ or ‘manage your team via zoom’, I wanted to share what I learned in 2005, 15 years ago. Joseph Campbell’s work on the Hero’s journey inspired me to create the infinite pattern which I’ve used to recount my experience.

1) The Call to learn (January 2005)

I’d worked my arse off to get accepted into the honours year for my bachelors in Psychology. I spent most of my first-year and second-year at university trying to figure out what I wanted to study, but by the time I found psychology, I’d already racked up a few fails on my academic transcript. By third-year, things were getting more serious and I’d decided I wanted to apply myself. I hadn’t considered doing honours but one of my mentors at the time suggested that I should at least try. The odds were stacked against me but with a bit of hard work, I slogged it out and got accepted. I’d also managed to score a place with one of the most sought after supervisors so I had a lot to be happy about. By mid-January, I was already conducting experiments on learning and memory using Rats in a Morris water maze. Things were going brilliantly for me…I finally felt like everything was falling into place. Toward the end of January, things started to go awry. Firstly, the month worth of experiments and training that I’d been doing turned out to be a dead end. I had to change direction for my honours thesis which added a bit of time pressure to what is already an intense year. To add to that pressure, my wife announced that she was pregnant!

2) Finding my mentor (March 2005)

To make ends meet, I was working two jobs at the time. I was selling laptops and printers at Officeworks by night and running experiments in a neuroscience lab for the rest of the time. I was walking around in a daze, pretending that my wife wasn’t really pregnant and that somehow there had been a mistake. By the end of March, it was official. She’d hit the 12-week mark so we were going to have this baby. For me….shit got real. I wasn’t ready to have a kid…. I was pretty much a kid myself. I’d only just figured out what I wanted to study. My first reactive thought was to defer doing my honours so I could focus on working to make enough money to support my family in a responsible way. Interestingly, none of the academics that I spoke to at university advised against this option so I made a call to defer my studies and ‘do the right thing’. When I told my boss at Officeworks what was going on and that I needed to work full-time, in the nicest possible way, he rejected my plea for help. He told me that the best thing I could do for myself and my family was push through and finish my studies. In other words, toughen the f**K up! It wasn’t what I wanted to hear but somehow, I knew he was right.

3) Crossing the threshold (May 2005)

By now, I was deep into my honours thesis and all of the rigamarole that goes with it. I was also reading the ‘bible’ for parents to be, What to expect when you’re expecting, getting more anxious about being a dad by the second. The more I knew, the more anxious I became. That was until someone told me that nobody has the perfect formula for kids and you won’t know what you need to do until you need to do it. They then added that once you think you’ve got it all figured out, it all falls apart and you have to try something different. While frustrating and annoying, this was exactly what I needed to hear. It enabled me to cross the threshold between what I know and enter the realm of the unknown. For a few months, I was focussed, supportive (so I thought), open, and felt a little bit excited about being a dad. Then, shit hit the fan.

4) Facing challenge (August 2005)

Following a routine visit to the doctor, my wife was put on bed rest due to the risk of our baby being born 2 months premature. On the 20th August, our son was born 6 weeks early and weighed about 1.6kg (that’s about half what a healthy full-term baby weighs). Needless to say, my honours thesis was an afterthought once he was born. My wife and I were visiting the hospital every day because he was too little to bring home. He was being fed through a tube, stuck inside a humid-i-crib with only short times where we were allowed to cuddle. It was one of the strangest experiences I’ve ever had. I wanted to love and protect this little human that I’d brought into the world but was completely dependent on the nurses and doctors to look after him. After two months of visiting the hospital every day, feeding him through a tube and tracking his daily growth on a chart we could finally take him home.

5) Overcoming Self (October 2005)

There wasn’t a person in the world that judged me for putting all of my focus on my son. Despite all of that, my non-existent honours thesis was gathering metaphorical dust on an imaginary shelf. The due date was looming and I was preparing myself to face the cold hard truth that I’d failed. When I spoke with the honours coordinator about options I was advised it was too late to pull out without failing but it wasn’t too late to submit my thesis. If however, I was planning on submitting my thesis, I needed to honour the faculty rule that no theses get marked until everybody (who indicates they will hand their thesis in) hands in their final thesis. I wanted to give up as I honestly thought failure was inevitable. I had more than a handful of people provide me with the ‘out’ I was looking for which entailed pulling up stumps. My wife, however, refused to accept my defeat. She shared with me exactly what she needed to share and it changed my perspective forever. In many ways, the words she used broke all the rules of diplomacy and it certainly wasn’t a message delivered with eloquence. Regardless, she gave me a proverbial kick up the arse that I needed to screw my head back on and get the job done. After one week, approximately 210 cups of tea, a minor case of deep vein thrombosis, some very generous help from my supervisor, and some mild hallucination due to lack of sleep, I handed in my thesis one week past the due date. In handing in that thesis, I’d conquered myself and all that I knew was possible.

6) Consolidate (November 2005)

After the intensity of the year that was 2005, I forgot to mention that we were also planning our wedding. With the Christmas holiday period came an opportunity to regather myself and find my groove as a dad (as awkward as I was). My memory is a bit shady, but I’m pretty certain it involved lots of nappies, sleepless nights, and the odd moment of bliss to remind me that it was all worthwhile. I went to visit my supervisor to thank him for his support through what had been a very challenging time. By that stage, I also found out that I’d received a 79 for my honour thesis which I was extremely happy about. When I boastfully commented on my mark, my supervisor agreed that is was a good result. He then said, “You got a good mark but you didn’t learn as much as you could have”. Once again, while I didn’t like what I was hearing, I knew exactly what he meant and I agreed with him. There were too many instances where I took the easy road, the popular choice or the responsible path. Too often I chose to stay stuck in the ‘known’ rather than venture into the unknown.

7) Teaching Others (January 2006)

It was a small wedding, close friends and family held in my uncle’s backyard. I think our largest expense was a rental car for the week and flights to Melbourne. Somehow, the simplicity of the day, the people and the ceremony highlighted what was most important. All my fears that came with being a new dad, our son being born early, potentially failing my honours year and toying with becoming a full-time employee at Officeworks (no disrespect to the role), were opportunities to learn how to learn.

The infinite pattern

Like that crazy year in 2005, I’ve had a few doozies since. So far, 2020 is certainly up there when it comes to rank-ordering the most challenging. Whenever I’m feeling like things are tough, or I don’t know what’s going to happen, I draw strength from that time in my life when the only way to know how to proceed was to let go of what I knew. To embrace the unknown, as paradoxical as it sounds, enabled me to face the necessary challenges to get over myself. Having since worked with thousands of people to overcome challenges I’ve recognised that this pattern isn’t unique to me. Rather, it’s a pattern we all follow when we learn how to learn through life. Some call it the school of hard knocks. Others see it as bad luck. I see it as an infinite pattern of learning we all experience over and over again. If you navigate life with an awareness of this pattern, it won’t necessarily make it easy but will make your experiences more meaningful. Ask yourself right now…Where are you in the infinite pattern? Are you stuck in the known? Have you ‘crossed the threshold’ into the unknown yet? What’s your next ‘call to learn’?

If you’re keen to learn more, contact me at Joe@joehart.com.au or visit my website at joehart.com.au

Joe Hart 13/4/20 Joe Hart 13/4/20

The Truth Hurts: Moving out of Blissful Ignorance

‘Truth’, is something that philosophers and psychologists have been debating for millennia and will most likely still be debating it for millennia to come. I too have been seduced by the concept of truth for my whole life…particularly the paradox of truth. By this I mean, how being honest or truthful often translates into the end of a relationship, conflict at work, or an identity crisis, or the uncovering of something you wish you could unlearn! If being honest or truthful carries with it the foundation of integrity, why does it lead to so much challenge? The answer, which I believe to be true (see what I did there!), lies in perspective.

For example, self-awareness is characterised as one’s ability to align actions with one’s own internal values or standards. Additionally, someone who is highly self-aware will be able to objectively evaluate themselves and correctly understand how they are perceived by others. Based on the above definition, I want you to rate yourself using the following scale. See fig 1.

Fig 1. Self Awareness Scale. Please rate yourself on a scale of 0 to 10 using the statements on either end of the scale to guide your responses. To calculate your overall Self Awareness, simply average all ratings out of 10.

Without knowing you, your aspirations, values, personality type, sexual preferences or IQ, I can confidently assume that your self-rating landed between 5 and 8 out of 10. The reason for this is due to a cognitive bias explained by the Dunning-Kruger effect. This is the tendency to overestimate our ability particularly when our ability is low. This can show up in all areas of our lives like our driving, intelligence, athleticism, and attractiveness just to name a few. Our ability to see ourselves in truth i.e. our actual ability, capability, intelligence, athleticism or awareness is masked by our cognitive biases. While having an inflated sense of your ability to sing or play tennis on the weekend comes with very little consequence for our success in life (unless you’ve chosen to be a professional singer or tennis player) there are other areas where the impact on results come at a far greater cost.

In the context of leadership, be it self-leadership, team leadership or leading an entire organisation, self-awareness is a critical ability for any leader to master. Moreover, self-awareness is arguably one of the most important skills for anyone to master regardless of their leadership level. In my work with people as an Organisational Psychologist, there are three questions I’ve spent much of my working life trying to answer. 1) What makes some people more self-aware than others? 2) Is it possible for anyone to enhance their self-awareness or become more self-aware? 3) Does increasing a person’s self-awareness translate to positive results in a business context?

The answer, thus far, to the first two questions comes down to a person’s ability to acquire, accept, and actualise feedback. While there are differences in self-awareness based on IQ and personality factors, the differences are not meaningful. Through experience, we gain or lose confidence which tends to affect our level of self-awareness. If we show up with an inflated sense of confidence, our actual ability won’t correlate (blissfully ignorant). Conversely, if we have a wealth of experience our confidence will likely be high and correlate significantly with our actual ability (Consciously masterful). See fig 2.

Fig 2. The relationship between Confidence and Actual Performance. Joe Hart 2020.

The process of maintaining or developing a supreme level of self-awareness requires the same three components. 1) To acquire feedback from those you deal with. 2) Accept the feedback as a valid perspective to be considered. 3) To put into action or Actualise the feedback you have received. While this three-part formula appears intuitive and simple, don’t be deceived. Each component requires large doses of curiosity, humility, and courage. We all like to think we are better than we are and to be honest, it’s an ego affirming state-of-mind. I’ve often had challenging conversations with leaders followed by them stating “thanks for letting me know…but I think I preferred being blissfully ignorant”. I too have personally faced the dilemma of gaining self-awareness to only create a desire to turn the clock back to revert to blissful ignorance. The reason why blissful ignorance is so appealing is that it takes no effort, it feeds on our laziness and reinforces that we don’t need to do anything. Equally, conscious mastery can only be achieved through a relentlessly iterative process of lessons learned, application of knowledge, experimentation and above all…hard work. Given the choice, most people will opt for the chronic but bearable dull ache that comes with never achieving one’s potential rather than the acutely painful experiences that equate to personal growth. What’s more interesting is if asked what’s more important, most people will acknowledge that personal growth rates higher on the life fulfilment scale than coasting through life without significant challenge. On this last point, we can begin to answer the third question; Does increasing self-awareness translate to positive results in a business context?

My answer is no, not by itself. I have numerous examples of people that I have coached that one could argue have increased their self-awareness remarkably over a relatively short period. Despite their new-found insight, they harboured no strong desire to accept nor actualise the feedback they had received. When this occurs, sadly but not surprisingly, their performance in a business context usually decreases. To understand this, I look at the concept of employee surveys usually run by Human Resources to provide a snapshot of how people are feeling. If the organisation seeks feedback (acquires) but does not accept or actualise the results. The response from employees is usually one of “why did I bother wasting my time doing that survey if they aren’t going to do anything”.

Applying this same insight to a leader seeking feedback to improve, if they do nothing with the feedback, those involved in providing their perspective will begin to wonder why they bothered or if the leader even wanted to change in the first place. Even more simply put, it takes more than just asking for feedback to improve. You need to do something with the perspective you are given.

What then is Truth?

Truth is found through the process of acquiring, accepting and actualising the perspective that others provide you. This true perspective you receive is only half the battle…it’s what you do with that perspective that leads to results. This same truth applies to improvement in every aspect of who we are and what we do. Whether it be a karate grading, writing a book, submitting a tender for a large piece of work, a final exam, an audition for the lead role, a job interview, or even receiving treatment for a life-threatening disease, these tests all carry the same truth. They are all hard work. They all require you to step outside of yourself and truly see yourself as you are. To grow, expand and achieve results, first requires you to see yourself the way the rest of the world sees you. Only from this ‘True Perspective’ are you able to lead with the truth.

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Joe Hart 6/4/20 Joe Hart 6/4/20

Are you running on Autopilot?

Disruption causes us to re-evaluate what’s most important, like a quarterly clean-out of the fridge. There is likely some bad food in there that’s causing the whole kitchen to stink. Taking everything out enables you to consciously determine what goes back in. That’s exactly what happened with my automatic credit card payments. I gave them a good clean-out and got rid of that ‘bad smells’ so to speak.

Mid last year, I noticed a few anomalies on my credit card statement so, with a quick call to the bank, I cancelled my card. Indeed, it turned out that I was the victim of some clever fraudsters trying to make inconsequential transactions on my card of small amounts like $26 with the detail section showing “Amazone” or “Netflixx” to make it seem legit. Given a subscribe to both services, I could have easily missed it. Once I’d gone ahead and cancelled my card I knew I had to go through the painstaking process of changing all of the automatic payments that I had set-up on the card. With all the best intentions in the world, I completely forgot about it.

Strangely, I didn’t hear anything from anyone in the first month. Somewhere in the deep recesses of my subconscious, I knew something was up but that’s when I started getting the communications. Services that I didn’t even know I was paying for, starting getting cut-off, subscriptions faulted, insurance companies ‘warned’ me of my impending doom! The most alarming thing to me was the sheer number of automatic payments that I’d accrued over the years. It turned out that the sudden disruption caused by some sneaky fraudsters was a total blessing. Their foul play alerted me to all the things I couldn’t see…the things were ticking away in the background unconsciously transacting, not delivering any value.

The beauty of disruption

The curse of habit

Habits are both our best friend and our worst enemy. In James Clear’s Atomic Habits, he describes a habit as behaviour that has been repeated enough times that it becomes automatic. The concept of not having to think about something is so incredibly seductive that when we are offered the automatic payment option, we jump at it. It ultimately appeals to our laziness which is easily justified by most people prescribing the ‘crazy busy’ label. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for learning about how to build great habits and break bad ones, I’m just a little concerned that our brains are so biased toward automaticity that it’s easier to just leave things on autopilot. This is particularly true when we hold beliefs about what we ‘should’ be doing or what ‘can’t’ be done.

Conscious vs Automatic processing

Something that I’ve learned following the whole credit card debacle is that not everything deserves to be in the automatic bucket, especially some of the smaller inconspicuous payments. Some of the bigger ticket items like a mortgage or car repayment certainly deserve to be processed automatically due to the value they create. I believe the danger lies in the many smaller ‘purchases’ we make that cumulatively, become quite costly. This doesn’t only apply to our direct debit payments but also behaviours that we perpetuate in our lives. Alcohol consumption, Smoking, diet, exercise, self-development, socialisation. All of them can play a part in our lives if we choose, my argument is to make sure you choose wisely before putting them in the automatic processing bucket.

Choosing wisely

Using the categories below, I want you to categorise all of the ‘things’ that you currently spend your time or your money on. Automatic ‘things’ can be payments, or time you spend with loved ones, or colleagues, or associates. Equally, what you deem as high value could be time by yourself or spending a huge amount of money on a luxurious holiday. It is up to you how to allocate where each of your ‘things’ fits.

Once you’ve completed the exercise, you’ll see a clear pattern concerning what you categorise as conscious vs automatic and what you see as high value vs low value. If you can see that there is one quadrant that seems a little bloated (it’s most likely going to be the Automatic Low-Value quadrant), then you know where you need to make some changes.

Don’t overthink this one, it’s not meant to be a mind-bender, but it is meant to be a quick and simple way to help you rebuild yourself and your life after some significant disruption. After all, we all have an opportunity to capitalise on the disruption we are currently facing and make conscious choices about how we rebuild our lives moving forward.

Joe Hart 31/3/20 Joe Hart 31/3/20

The Evolution of ONEself

How you respond to these questions is what defines you as a leader. Regardless of how many people report to you, the size of your empire, or your political connections your leadership is defined by you. If you’re wondering whether how you’ve answered is right, then you’ve missed the point. There is no perfect leader or characteristic, or a better way to lead. There is only the choice to commit to expressing who you are in everything that you do to align with how you want to be remembered in the world.

Three weeks ago I was engrossed in a conversation sparked by a manager who made the following comment:

Manager: “When I’m at work, I’m professional and polite. I don’t come here to make friends or build lifelong relationships. I come to work to get the job done. I can’t stand it when I see people standing around chatting about all kinds of non-work-related things. I feel like telling them to get on with their work already”

Me: “How about outside of work? What are your relationships like with people?”

Manager: “Oh…outside of work I’m a different person! I’m the life of the party. People that know me personally wouldn’t recognise me for the person I am at work. I’m completely different….and that’s the way I like it”.

Me: “So…your saying that who you are, changes depending on the situation you’re in?”

Manager: “well…yeah…it does. I want to keep clear boundaries between who I am at work vs who I am at home”.

Me: “I get that…and I respect what you’re saying. I’m also curious about if your worlds ever collide. By that I mean, when does what you are working toward in your personal life intersect what you are working towards in your professional life?”

Manager: “Mmmmm…Good question. I don’t know”.

Like many of you, my world has been turned upside down over the past few weeks. Uncertainty has become the new normal as we all manage the contrast between what ‘was’ to what ‘is’. For a large number of people, their worlds have changed due to material consequences such as losing their jobs, cars, and homes. This is indeed challenging but for the most part, not what’s most important.

For all of us, there is a far more interesting dynamic at play and that is the acute reshaping of all our identities. I call this the evolution of oneself. The conversation I recited above occurred between me and a manager before all the COVID-19 craziness took off. I dare say, if we had the conversation today, it would be a very different dialogue.

When we face challenging times, it’s the best opportunity to understand our true self…you know, the one that you are regardless of whether you are at work or home. When people create clear boundaries between who they are at home vs who they are at work things get a little funky. By funky, I mean they spend a great deal of energy maintaining an image of what they think they need to be in their work or home context. To me, this is exhausting!

Interestingly, when asked what is most important to them, or what do they care most about, or what are their values, most people must consider deeply before answering. In many cases, they can’t answer at all. To buy more time or dodge the question they will seek clarification by asking, “do you mean at work or home?”. While I understand the need to regulate behaviour based on context (some things aren’t appropriate in certain settings e.g. sharing details about your sex life in a board meeting), however, letting your environment dictate your values, the things that you care about and what is most important to you is dangerous.

When faced with significant challenges, what matters to us most is always easy to grasp. If you ask a person facing death what’s most important, they might answer family, or following your heart, or courage. Similarly, if someone has a partner suffering from a protracted illness such as cancer, they will easily answer ‘time’ ‘health’, ‘happiness’ or ‘the one you love’.

Never before in my lifetime have I witnessed so many people simultaneously walking the line where our personal and professional identities meet; our true selves. In an instant, the world has insight and true perspective on what matters. Many people are now able to see themselves. They are challenged with their identity, especially when it now appears divergent from their life that was.

Multiple selves

The evolution of oneself is recognising that there is only one true version of who we are. Anyone who believes that we adopt multiple selves in the world is an actor. Pretending to be someone they are not might be fun for a while, or demonstrate great skill but inevitably, people grow weary. This seems like a great strategy, one that I tried for many years before I woke up one day and couldn’t articulate what was most important to me. If you’re currently attempting the ‘multiple selves’ strategy take heed of my warning, eventually, you’ll slip up somewhere and your multiple selves will clash. Furthermore, if you adopt this strategy as a leader, you’ll never lead effectively because your energy will be too thinly spread. The multiple selves strategy condemns you to transactional behaviour determined by the boundaries you place around your self and others that feed the emotional needs of yourself and those around you.

Evolving ONEself

To get this right, you need to accept the following:

a) There is only one version of you….regardless of the context, challenges or person you are facing

b) You are in control, you are responsible and only you can do what it takes to progress

c) There is no end game. This is a continuous process of investing in yourself. You must relentlessly commit to your ongoing evolution.

d) You will never completely ‘know’ yourself. Self-awareness is a process, not an end state.

Now it’s time to start leading. Start by asking yourself the following questions.

1) Are you reacting or are you choosing?

2) Are you fully committed to being yourself….ONEself?

3) How do you want to be remembered?

Joe Hart 16/3/20 Joe Hart 16/3/20

Organisational Culture: Art or Science?

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 ‘the 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.

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.

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/

Joe Hart 3/3/20 Joe Hart 3/3/20

What’s the difference between a Grasshopper and a performance review?

While Grasshoppers may not be scary to you, the truth is, you are definitely fearful of certain things. If not, you’d likely be dead already because it’s fear that keeps us safe. The major challenge today is that most of what we fear involves situations that are not life-threatening at all…such as, getting stuck in an elevator, being in a large crowd of people, public speaking, asking a ‘dumb question’ in a room full of senior executives, challenging your boss, losing your mobile phone, not having access to the internet or preparing for you next performance review. Before you judge, these are all real examples that I’ve discussed with my clients that evoke physiological responses similar to those that you might experience when faced with real danger. What’s worse is that common way of dealing with such fears is to avoid them completely. While this seems smart it acts to reinforce the learned fear response so if you ever get presented with a situation you can’t avoid, you’re likely to experience panic. This avoidance tactic also reinforces the notion that it’s ok to stay comfortable and not push yourself to grow, expand and develop. In other words, you get to be a bit lazy which your brain loves!

The air was thick with heat, that oppressive muggy heat that completely saps your energy. I was walking home from school, my legs flopping about beneath my body reluctantly following the orders coming from my brain. As I arrived home I made my way around the back of the house eagerly anticipating the daily ritual of a bowl of Weet-bix in front of the TV to watch cartoons. Without warning, as if I’d been struck by a poison dart that disabled all of my muscles, I couldn’t move. I was completely and utterly frozen with fear. About two metres in front of me, perched on the wall was a giant Grasshopper….yes, a Grasshopper. Before you laugh, let me explain. These grasshoppers were no ordinary insect. They were massive brown alien-looking creatures that had giant wings and could fly great distances. If you’ve never seen one, have a look at the images below.

Fig 2. Fully Mature Grasshopper, 8.5cm long

Some people refer to them as locusts and they have the capability to destroy whole crops when they swarm in large numbers. Despite all of this, I’m yet to read about anyone that has suffered severe injury or death from a grasshopper! Initially, I wasn’t scared of them at all but after repeated exposure to running the gauntlet (the pathway up the side of the house) where grasshoppers would jump unpredictably off the wall into my face and hair, I’d become fearful. In fact, I started to develop anxiety about walking up the side of the house. I dreaded that part of my daily journey home more than anything. I started questioning why I was afraid of a pesky grasshopper and thought there was something wrong with me. I tried to convince myself that there was nothing to be scared of, but the mere sight of a grasshopper was enough to make me freeze in my tracks, elevate my heart rate, and shorten my breath.

The brain at work

Years later, when studying the psychobiology of memory and motivation at university, I learned about how the brain responds to threat (perceived or actual). In my case, a bad grasshopper season had exposed me to the perils of being ‘attacked’ while walking up the pathway at the side of the house. Over time, my brain had learned to generate a fear response when I spotted a grasshopper. Before I was even consciously aware of a grasshopper, like a sixth sense, my body would activate the fight, flight or freeze response. This all kicks off in a brain structure called the Amygdala, the emotional centre of the brain. The Amygdala is fantastic at responding to life-threatening situations by making our bodies jump out of the way of an oncoming car, hide from a person that is wanting to do us harm or run like hell from a vicious dog. It does a brilliant job of keeping us safe when there is no time to think through a logical response. The problem emerges when our well-meaning Amygdala starts activating stress responses to non-life threatening situations. The outcome? Anxiety disorders, panic attacks, agoraphobia and generalised withdrawal. The function of the Amygdala and how it has benefited mammals for millions of years is now becoming a maladaptive process in modern society. As an executive coach and psychologist, anxiety is something that I come across very regularly. It’s not always extreme to the point of severe panic attacks but it’s definitely enough to have a negative impact on your quality of life, relationships and ability to be productive.

Breaking the fear

That same summer, when my fear of grasshoppers was at its height and the shame I felt about being scared of grasshoppers was starting to wear me down, something really interesting happened. We had a relief teacher, Mr Shepperd, taking our class. He was a calm and grounded teacher. He had a reassuring presence about him that I really liked. One day as the class was walking through the school toward the sports oval, Mr Shepperd was reminding us of the rules of dodge ball when I noticed one of the biggest ugliest Grasshoppers I’d ever seen attached the pole, right next to his head. One of the other kids in the class pointed at the Grasshopper to warn Mr Shepperd, who kept on talking while he casually grabbed the pest, twisted it’s head off like he would the cap of a beer then chucked it in the garden. At that moment, my admiration for Mr Shepperd experienced an exponential increase. Additionally, that single act that was so unexpected and powerfully disruptive served as a circuit breaker for my brain. It was as though my emotional triggers had been demoted and my logical brain now had a voice. From that point onward, when faced with a grasshopper all I could think about was Mr Shepperd twisting its head off. It was a brilliant example of how a learned pattern of behaviour was disrupted through unexpected and novel exposure that helped enable me to rewire my brain. If however, Mr Shepperd let out a shriek upon seeing the grasshopper and took three steps backward, my fear response would have been reinforced and consolidated further. It may have lead to fear so great that I would need clinical treatment such as medication and exposure therapy!

What’s the point of this story?

Circuit break your discomfort

When you’ve recognised that your fear response is entirely generated by you and that your brain has established a connection between a stimulus (like a grasshopper) and a physiological response (freezing and elevated heart rate), you’re able to break the pattern. Once you’ve broken or disrupted the pattern, you’re able to start training your brain to respond in a different way.

Get your body back in balance- When you’re experiencing a physiological response it can be confusing and scary. Furthermore, there’s nothing logical or rational about what is happening. The most important thing to do at this moment is to activate your parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest function). If your body’s out of whack, your mind won’t be much use. Common techniques to get this happening involve progressive muscle relaxation, deep breathing, going for a brisk walk or swim, and various mindfulness exercises to name a few. For those that know me well, I use juggling as a technique to reset the mind and body to bring it back into balance. The benefit of juggling is that it requires all of your attention so it prevents you from focussing on that which is triggering your fear response. At this point, I do want to point out that we are all a bit different, so if meditation actually frustrates you, then it’s not going to be very helpful. If you’re more of an active person, then maybe going for a run or swim is a better option. There is no rule book….so you’ll have to experiment to figure out what works best for you.
Face your fear- Once your back into balance physically, it’s time to challenge yourself by exposing yourself to the Grasshopper! As hard as it might seem, it’s the only way you are going to circuit break your fear and create a new association in your brain. If you’re lucky enough, you’ll have someone role model facing their fears for you, as Mr Shepperd did for me. You’ll likely need a bit of support and encouragement from people that have your back, but with a bit of courage, you’ll be able to make some great progress.
Don’t settle, seek growth- Part of the core issue underlying the irrational fears we develop is our tendency to retreat, withdraw and retire. All of this is about shrinking who you are as a person, settling for mediocrity and complacency. Our brains have evolved to keep our bodies fat and safe with the least amount of effort. Modern society provides the perfect opportunity to achieve both with next to no effort at all. Rather than succumb to the seduction of lazing about, take a stand to outgrow your fears by tackling them head-on. If you need support to do this, don’t hesitate to ask for help. In my experience, trying to tough it out is a mistake almost every leader I know has made. When things aren’t going well for you, use your support network shamelessly…that’s what it is for.

For those of you that have suffered from severe anxiety and/or depression, please don’t take my recommendations as judgement. There are differing degrees of severity and you need to seek support that matches your condition. For severe cases, the intervention of a clinical psychologist, GP, and Psychiatrist are essential. If however, you’re experiencing a physical response that doesn’t match the situation (such as increased heart rate, sweating, shortness of breath), have a go at getting your body back into balance first so you can challenge your fears, not run from them.

So…..What’s the difference between a Grasshopper and a performance review?

So, to answer the question in the title of this article, what’s the difference between a Grasshopper and a performance review? If they both trigger a physiological response to fight, flee or freeze, then there’s no difference at all. They both represent a learned response that doesn’t always appear to be logical from an outsider’s perspective. If you’ve never experienced some of the reactions I’ve discussed in this article, then I encourage you to empathise with the physical response a person might be having and help them get the support they need. The last thing they need is somebody to reinforce what they are already telling themselves….that they should be able to handle a bit of stress here and there. The issue with this line of thinking is that it’s logical. When your Amygdala hijacks your brain, your body has no choice but to follow commands that have kept our species thriving for millennia. It’s usually those people that have something to prove to themselves or somebody else that will bunker down for the long haul. While admirable, it’s a path to extreme suffering that leads to devastation for them and their families. If you or somebody you know appears to be struggling, show a bit of love and support by getting them some help.

If you’re not sure where to look but are wanting some information, head to https://headtohealth.gov.au/service-providers for some great resources and links to mental health providers in Australia. Many of the resources and support services are free of charge and confidential.

Joe Hart 28/1/20 Joe Hart 28/1/20

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

Joe Hart 3/1/20 Joe Hart 3/1/20

What’s really derailing you?

Right now, you and most of your colleagues are reflecting on 2019 and planning for 2020. Some go through a rigorous process of mapping out the year, setting goals, and create a clear execution plan. Others like to be a little gentler on themselves and make a pact with themselves about what they are going to do differently so they don’t suffer the same sort of fate that 2019 served up. This planning can involve personal, work or a combination of both priorities. While I think whatever process you use is totally fine, and the idea of readying yourself for the year to come is also an excellent mindset too often I see people thrusting themselves into inevitable failure. How do I know? I’ve done it myself…repeatedly.

For example, when I was at university, I had a tendency to spend a whole lot of time setting up structure and systems at the start of the first semester of the year to ensure that I was organised. I’d diligently study and do all my extra reading. By mid-term, my enthusiasm was waning, just when all of the important assignments were being issued. I’d put loads of work into researching and coming up with great ideas but didn’t like putting it all down on paper until it was ‘really good’. I’d rarely hand an assignment in late but would usually submit something that was more like a 2nd draft than a finished product. The result of all of this was usually a comment on my paper that it lacked polish and seemed incomplete. My pattern in this situation was to over-engineer the structure, research and content of my assignment. I feared to hand in a sub-standard paper that didn’t have any real substance or depth of thinking beneath it. When it came to finishing it off, I lacked clarity in my thinking and because I was exhausted my commitment to quality dropped off. The outcome was mediocre results, a credit at best.

Unfortunately for me, I didn’t know my pattern for at least a decade after I left university. Now, I approach assignments with much less structure or research in the beginning. I start conceptually and build it out from there. This enables me to be far more productive and less attached to one idea. I can easily pivot from one idea to the next because my focus is not to finesse my idea to perfection before I write anything. It’s more about blurting out everything onto paper and finessing it iteratively. The irony with this is my initial desire to be conscientious and quality focussed created a pattern of behaviour that caused the exact opposite. Often, what we think is the problem e.g procrastination, lack of structure, discipline, is not the issue at all. You need to look deeper than the obvious to identify the real pattern of thinking, feeling and behaving that is derailing you.

If you want to identify the underlying pattern that is hidden under the vale of well-intentioned action plans, lofty personal goals, and vague commitments to changing something read on

Warning! None of this will work if you aren’t really honest with yourself. At this point, I’m going to require you to stop the bullshit, quit pretending, and give yourself some tough love.

1) Name your Mindset: Don’t overthink this. Just give it a word such as Open, Curious, Excited, fixed, growth-oriented, never-give-up etc. For the example above regarding me at university, my mindset was best summed up at fear of failure. Remember this is not an exercise in determining what you want, it’s about identifying the pattern you carry. You may not like what you write down and that’s usually a good sign you are being honest. Awareness is what we are trying to achieve here so persevere with this task at hand

2) Know your interpretation: This one is a little trickier as it requires you to step outside yourself for a minute. I’ve previously written about perspective-taking in my article ‘ five perspectives’ if you want some more info on the topic. Ultimately, you need to see how you are interpreting what is happening around you. In relation to my university example, my interpretation was that I would fail if I didn’t have a really structured approach to my study, my assignments, my reading etc. My interpretation; structure and discipline necessary for success, both of which I felt I was incredibly deficient in. I could do it….but it was like pulling teeth, drained all of my energy, and wasn’t sustainable for the entire semester.

3) Evaluate your environment: When I speak of the environment, I am talking of both the physical and the emotional environments that you create. I would often study at home which offered certain amounts of freedom but was isolating and was easier to get distracted. Doing my work in the library or labs at university was much more focussed and efficient but usually my last choice (my interpretation of structure and discipline involved me isolating myself to avoid distraction). My emotional environment was a harsh landscape, made harsher by the self-inflicted ostracism. I’d punish myself with gruelling study sessions and force myself to relisten to lectures that I didn’t fully grasp. It was a begrudging exercise filled with resentment. This shroud of emotion was like a thick fog preventing me from seeing what was further than 10 metres in front of me. To put it bluntly, I was miserable….and I did it to myself.

Now that you’ve Named your Mindset, know your interpretation and evaluated your environment you need to understand how they are interacting to get to the story that’s driving your pattern. Here’s how you do it.

By downloading the worksheet or drawing your own, fill in the Mindset, Interpretation and Environment components. Now, your task is to name the thoughts, feelings and behaviours that are created as a result of the overlapping elements. Below is my worked example based on my time at university.

Fig 1. Worked example- Pattern Recognition

Once you complete filling out each component, you’ll be able to pin it on the wall, step back and see your pattern more clearly. I like to draw a giant diagram on the wall using flip charts stuck together to give me more space. It also enables me to stand back and see the pattern on a large scale. Here’s where it all gets very interesting. If you superimpose the pattern that you identify onto other problems, scenarios and issues that you have in your life, you’ll most likely find that it’s applicable. This is a clue that you’ve correctly identified a recurring pattern of thinking, feeling and behaving. You can use this model to understand why your relationships aren’t working out, jobs keep disappointing you or life isn’t meeting your expectations.

My advice

Before you lock in your annual plan, make sure you understand the patterns that are driving your behaviour. If you don’t, you’re likely to be setting yourself up for a catastrophic and ironical failure. Just remember, how you think affects how you behave, and how you behave affects how you feel. As this cycle continues, it’s always your fault. If you find yourself looking for a silver bullet, someone to blame or an excuse to justify what happened, take a look in the mirror.

Joe Hart 24/12/19 Joe Hart 24/12/19

Do you know your pattern?

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.

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.

Joe Hart 15/12/19 Joe Hart 15/12/19

The Fishbowl: Real life, Real people, Real cases | Adam Camerlengo

As part of my regular posts, I’m introducing a new series called ‘The Fishbowl’ that focusses on real people and how they self-reflect, prioritise, make decisions and show up in the world. It takes courage to put yourself out there and share aspects of who you are and what you believe has shaped you and your life. However, I strongly believe (and my experiences and my clients’) suggest that when you demonstrate courage and show a bit of vulnerability, it enables you to grow and expand. For anybody reading this, take the opportunity to self-reflect and potentially see yourself in their stories and learn from their own insights and courage. You never know, you too might feel compelled to share a bit more of who you are with the world….what’s the worst that could happen?

As part of my regular posts, I’m introducing a new series call ‘The Fishbowl’ that focusses on real people and how they self-reflect, prioritise, make decisions and show up in the world. It takes courage to put yourself out there and share aspects of who you are and what you believe has shaped you and your life. However, I strongly believe (and my experiences and my clients’) suggest that when you demonstrate courage and show a bit of vulnerability, it enables you to grow and expand. For anybody reading this, take the opportunity to self-reflect and potentially see yourself in their stories and learn from their own insights and courage. You never know, you too might feel compelled to share a bit more of who you are with the world….what’s the worst that could happen?

Introducing Adam

Adam and I first met in the Karate dojo about two years ago. In that period of time, I’ve seen Adam kick some serious goals in life such as compete in a Karate tournament held in Malaysia representing Australia, obtain his black belt, further progress in completing his degree toward becoming a fully qualified Chiropractor and volunteered much of his personal time to establish himself as a loved and valued member of the Artarmon Shinkyokushin Karate Dojo.

For anybody that knows Adam, he is a fast talker and can sometimes, according to Adam, be overlooked as a bit of a ‘class clown’ so people tend not to take him seriously. Over a two hour chat armed with an iced coffee, a beautifully air-conditioned building where we could escape the thick white smoke that is currently choking Sydney, Adam (with a little bit of help from his great friend Vera) shared his story with me and ultimately answered the question “how did you end up here?”.

The conversation began with Adam launching into stream-of-consciousness type flow of verbal expression that reflected Freud’s free association technique without the couch. There was no need for me to lead with a question, Adam was already there, masking his nervousness about agreeing to ‘share his story’ with me by talking without taking a breath for the first 5mins. Once he finally did stop for breath, he asked: “so how does this work…. what are we going to do?”

The stories we tell ourselves

I asked Adam to share his story with all of us because he has recently experienced a series of significant accomplishments. It’s brilliant to see when somebody is in their flow, taking the bull by the horns and leading a fulfilled life. My intrigue with Adam and his story lies not in his accomplishments but more so in what he tells himself when nobody else is listening. Sometimes these stories are so automatic and well-rehearsed that we are no longer aware of them. On the other hand, sometimes they are so dominant that we can’t focus our attention on anything else. What is clear, whether we are aware of what we tell ourselves or not, they play a significant and profound role in how we live our life, shape our future, and interact with the world around us. They influence how we related to others, communicate our message, reflect on challenges or opportunities, experience love, hate or any other emotion. Fundamentally, what we tell ourselves has a huge impact on everything that we do.

Adam’s ‘story’

Before I even finished my sentence explaining the concept underlying the stories we tell ourselves, like any self-confessed fast talker, Adam quickly interjected with a wry smile and slightly flippant tone stating “that’s easy, my story is that I’m not good enough and I’m not working hard enough”. Indeed Adam is very self-aware of his own story and how that has contributed to shaping him to this very day. He may not have gone to the lengths of illuminating how dominant this story has been in shaping his behaviour and the outcomes he has achieved. He is, however, aware of the agitation that it creates, like an old injury that only shows up during the coldest months of the year….it’s always there but we sometimes forget how it is affecting us until it stops us from doing what we want.

Following Adam’s admission to the story that he habitually tells himself, I probed further to understand if he knew where it came from. This was where the conversation got tangential – which for a speed talker like Adam means we covered his story in a pattern that resembled a Mr squiggle drawing (apologies for those too young to understand the reference…..watch the YouTube clip!) i.e. It starts with a few dashes on a page that iteratively morphs into a comprehensive image. In short, he couldn’t articulate exactly where it came from but through verbalising his thoughts, we managed to get to the core.

The ‘drunken man’s’ stagger

Adam, like most of us, has not taken a linear path through life thus far. Very rarely does someone decide what they want to be early in life and seamlessly make it a reality. It does happen….but more often than not, our journey resembles something that looks more like a drunken man’s stagger….swaying from one side to the other, backward and forward, around in a few small circles to finally land at a destination. At that point, the drunken man sobers up and says to himself “how did I get here?”.

With surprise in his voice, Adam affirms that he was actually one of the ‘cool kids’ at school. He wasn’t quite sure how it happened but given one of the kids in his group was a budding AFL superstar (no small thing in Victoria) he was cool by association no through his own sporting prowess. He also had a gift for music that stemmed from his mother. He was encouraged to get involved in all music, art and drama at school. While his understanding of music is savant-like, his real passion emerged in Drama.

Adam has always felt underestimated, which he admits he likes. It gives him an edge over those that put him in the ‘class clown’ box. For those that did make fun of him or disrespect him, he quite simply didn’t take shit from anyone and stood up for himself. Knowing that others underestimated him, he used this as fuel to motivate him to work harder and not be predicted by inferential statistics like everyone else.

He went on to study performing arts at university with the intention of establishing himself as an actor. Following a lot of hard work, knock-backs, and part-time jobs in coffee shops and bars Adam realised he wasn’t happy. While he was battling to make himself a name in showbiz, he took an interest in mixed martial arts and inspired by George St Pierre took a few classes in Kyokushin Karate. Soon after, he started taking his training more seriously than his career. It was through a routine visit to an inspirational chiropractor that Adam had been seeing for a hip injury (most likely agitated from practising martial arts) he was persuaded to explore getting qualified as a Chiro. His first response to the suggestion “I’m not smart enough to do that”.

Right here we see a simple comparison with family members, accomplished friends, academically successful peers or authoritative professionals. The story of “I’m not good enough, smart enough, big enough, strong enough……. ENOUGH!” kicks into gear. It’s a toxic story that only through grit, pure determination, and consistency can we succeed despite the crippling distraction from our own imagined foibles. Fortunately for Adam, Karate was an anchor for him to challenge his deep-seated belief that he wasn’t good enough and wasn’t working hard enough. Shinkyokushin is well known globally to be one of the strongest forms of Karate in the world. The training is tough and unrelenting with an undertone of ‘never give up’. The philosophy of karate reinforces to never be enough and never work hard enough. Indeed there is no end game…no goal to achieve…no state in which you rest. Even when obtaining a black belt, which Adam has recently achieved, you are welcomed into what is known to be the ‘void’. Below is an excerpt from a training manual explaining the transition a Black Belt makes upon successful completion of the grading.

KU- The Void. When we are born we know nothing. Through training, we strive to achieve a different level of “nothing”. At first, the body controls the mind, then the mind controls the body. Ultimately the mind is clear and can ignore problems, anger, worry and become calm. This is the way to live a happy life.

Working hard for things you want?

There is a lot of wisdom in working hard to get results, and a truckload of evidence to support that it works. The challenge with this approach is that you can spend your whole life working really hard to obtain a trophy, car, family, house, status, job title, or belt colour (in the case of Karate) without really knowing what you want.

In the absence of knowing what you really want, you are susceptible to your own imagination which emerges in the form of bullshit stories that you tell yourself….just like Adam (and all of us for that matter) has done for his whole life. The energy and focus it takes to override such toxic stories is far greater than the effort we put into knowing what we want. Just imagine if you redirected all that energy toward your aspirations.

The trick for Adam…and all of us for that matter is to change our focus. Rather than working hard to achieve what we want, we need to work really hard to KNOW what we want. This is not a one-off tick-the-box exercise but an ongoing commitment to the most important project you’ll ever work on….YOU. The best way to do this is to ask yourself often, ‘What is most important to me right now?’ Answer it honestly, work toward aligning yourself to what is most important and your whole life will make a lot more sense.

True Perspective

Like many of you reading this, Adam is very intelligent. He is going to graduate with his second degree, has a black belt and competed in karate tournaments against top-level opponents. Despite all of that, he still tells himself that he’s not smart enough, not good enough and doesn’t know if he’s working hard enough. How is it that someone who is intelligent and achieves so much in life still believes falsities that he tells himself in stark contrast to what all the evidence suggests? One of the greatest lies we can ever tell ourselves is that how we think others perceive us is true. If you’re feeling sorry for Adam right now, don’t. Take a moment to see yourself in his story and recognise that while you might have a slightly different way of expressing it, you also have a story that rules you, that you believe to be true despite all of the evidence that suggests that it isn’t!

Once you know your story, what do you do next?

The answer lies in neuroscience and the simple truth that [1]‘neurons that wire together fire together’. Every time Adam faces a challenge or sees something like a stretch goal, his default pattern of thinking, feeling and behaving is linked back to ‘not good enough’. We build ‘evidence’ to confirm what we already ‘know’ (this is known as a self-fulfilling prophecy). The best way to break this is to introduce a roadblock, power surge or hijacking of the existing pattern. This is something that fundamentally challenges what we tell ourselves, how we see ourselves and subsequently how we behave. I call this circuit breaker True Perspective which represents the overlap of how we see ourselves with how others see and experience us. It’s more than being self-aware, it is our self-concept in action. True Perspective is seeing yourself the way the rest of the world sees you. In this case, I didn’t ask Adam’s friends, family, colleagues and clients to provide their rating of him so it isn’t a fair representation of Adam because it is only made up of Adam’s self-concept. He did, however, have his good friend Vera present and she chimed in to let me know that Adam is quite hard on himself.

Figure 2 - Adam's Self Evaluation- True Perspective

Evolution of self

For the last 15 years, I’ve been working on a framework to help facilitate personal and professional development. Too often I see people that overinvest in one element more than the other which over time, throws them out of balance. For example, this looks like working all hours to deliver on a massive project and missing out on time with family. Alternatively, it could be taking a 6 month break off work to do a trip around the world to make up for the lost time. Neither of these is wrong, but they certainly aren’t balanced. From my personal experience and the experience of my clients, the imbalance that prompts their corrective action stems from being misaligned i.e. How they want to be experienced and remembered by others is not matching their day to day behaviour. This, in psychology, is what we call cognitive dissonance.

Based on [2]Adam’s self-ratings, I’ve plotted where he sits on the evolution of self framework and as you can see it’s primarily focussed on relationship boundaries. Much of the session that Adam I and had was focussed on the relationships he has with his peers at university, with those he loves, and the relationship he has with himself. Over the coming months and years, Adam has an amazing opportunity to transcend his focus on relationship boundaries and move into the transformational elements of the framework.

When it comes to ‘self’ it’s ever-expanding, evolving concept that is constantly changing based on your interactions with the world. The more experiences you have, the more refined (and hopefully aligned) you will be.

Application

When it comes to applying this model, it can be utilised with reference to situations, such as how you perform on projects or in a particular role at work or even in a volunteer context. You may also like to apply the model in a more personal setting such as with your social circle, your immediate family, or in relation to your life partner. There is no limit to the application as the principles are the same across all contexts and with all relationships. The key is to leverage the combination of ‘True Perspective’ with the Evolution of Self Model to ensure you are continually defining, refining and progressing toward creating your legacy i.e. living in alignment with how you want to be remembered.

References

[1] Löwel, S. and Singer, W. (1992) Science 255 (published January 10, 1992) "Selection of Intrinsic Horizontal Connections in the Visual Cortex by Correlated Neuronal Activity". United States: American Association for the Advancement of Science. pp. 209–212

[2] Normally, I would interview 6-8 nominated stakeholders to obtain the ‘others’ perspective. Given this was not a full program, I kept it to a self-evaluation only.

Joe Hart 2/9/19 Joe Hart 2/9/19

The importance of Self Expression in Leadership and Life

When I speak of expression I wouldn’t blame you for conjuring up images of you telling your boss to get stuffed, having a massive argument with your in-laws, singing at the top of your voice while driving (out of tune if it’s me!) or delivering a speech at your wedding (with the aid of a little bit of booze). Rather, expression is the most honest form of communication you will ever take part in. When somebody fully expresses themselves, regardless of the activity they are engaged in, you can feel it.

If you’ve been following my blog or have worked with me at some point, you’ll be no stranger to my opinions on the importance of self-expression when it comes to living a fulfilled life. Lately, I’ve been reflecting on why I place so much importance on expression in my work, with my clients, and for myself. The answer…. because it’s what I believe we all most need to be effective.

Expression explained

A colleague once shared with me that he was a very high-level pianist and loved everything about playing the piano. He explained that when he was playing, it felt like he wasn’t in control of his body, as if he was watching himself play. He further described that it was an amazing feeling to be so connected to what you are doing that you can fully immerse yourself in the task and pour your heart and soul into the activity. People gave him feedback such as “you could feel the passion in your music” and “you played your heart out in that last piece”. In stark contrast, some of his fellow students with the same teacher were technically brilliant at playing the music, but they lacked any emotional connection. When they played, people were impressed but not moved.

In another example from one of my all-time hero’s Bruce Lee, he said during a television interview “Honestly expressing yourself...it is very difficult to do. I mean it is easy for me to put on a show and be cocky and be flooded with a cocky feeling and then feel like pretty cool...or I can make all kind of phony things, you see what I mean, blinded by it or I can show you some really fancy movement. But to express oneself honestly, not lying to oneself...now that, my friend, is very hard to do.” Watching any of Bruce Lee’s films or interviews, you can quickly see how he performed with such intensity and that his presence on set created a legacy that still burns bright today.

Countless other examples can be seen in artists, leaders, writers, speakers, actors, performers, and athletes. No doubt, at this point you can reflect on a similar experience. Perhaps you know what it feels like to be deeply immersed in an activity that you were able to transcend the task and deliver it with emotion? Surely you have experienced a wave of emotion after seeing someone deliver a brilliant performance, a heartfelt speech, or achieve a breakthrough sporting achievement?

My journey with expression

Dangerous comparisons

I grew up in a highly creative and expressive household. My dad, a professional clown, puppeteer, and musician was readily able to access emotion to communicate his message. I used to watch in awe as he was able to cast a spell over his audience. As a street performer, it was as if people were drawn to him the same way they might follow the scent of freshly cooked bread – comforting and irresistible all at the same time. Similarly, my eldest sister is a gifted musician, actress and dancer. Her ability to express what she was feeling through her craft was nothing short of miraculous. While I had an immense amount of pride (and still do) in my dad and sister for their creative genius, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit smaller when I was in their presence. My attempts to express myself seemed to be inadequate and didn’t quite generate the hype that they both received. In my teens I experimented with music, had a go a street performing, dancing, sculpture, visual arts and drama but never felt that my performances or creations were very good. At the time, I desperately wanted some feedback as to what I was doing wrong but lacked the courage to ask and in honesty would not have taken any constructive criticism very well. Deep down, I knew that that I wasn’t making people ‘feel’ anything I just didn’t know how to fix it.

‘Fixing’ the problem?

Feeling like a failure, I made a conscious decision to reinvent myself when I went to university…to be studious, conscientious, academic, but most of all…. stop ‘trying’ to be creative like my dad and sister. I failed dismally at the first three commitments but sadly managed to kill my creative self with resounding success and a multitude of unforeseen consequences.

I became a consultant and mastered the art of ‘professionalism’. Hiding my emotions, using data to drive my decisions, and advising clients using logic. It worked - I was good at my job - that is all. My identity became my job…. there was no emotion, no connection, just the safety of logic. I recall a time where a new friend had invited me out for drinks. He was quite a loud and obnoxious character and he said to me “loosen your tie mate…..what’s with the part in your hair?….relax!”. He didn’t know it, but I’d received the same sort of comment about three times that week already. I was so successful at not expressing myself that I’d become this boring consultant that wore dark suits, a tie, and didn’t know how to be natural.

One day when I was packing my stuff to move houses for the 3rd time in as many years, I opened a box that I’d been carting around for most of my life to inspect the contents. As I fanned through the pages of an art diary, I recognised my creative self in the ink drawings, self-portraits, and various abstract collages. All these years, I’d kept my expression locked away but didn’t want to let it go. I’d created a state of cognitive dissonance which was driving this unfulfilled state I was in. To put it bluntly, I’d been lying to myself about what was most important to me. As we all know, being lied to is not a nice feeling but it’s always coupled with an element of doubt – doubt that you might be wrong or misinterpreting the situation. When you lie to yourself, there is no doubt and that’s what makes it so damaging. Like the blind-spot in your side-mirror while driving, if you aren’t able to change your perspective by glancing over your shoulder you’ll end up having an accident and likely blame the other driver because you couldn’t see them.

The hidden consequences

At the end of another crazy long day, still in the office, I noticed a feeling in my throat. It felt tight…sort of like that lump in your throat you get when you’re about to cry. It lasted a couple of days then slowly went away, I didn’t think much of it. Over the course of the next few months it happened more frequently and was usually coupled with a bit of stress at work. Despite shifting jobs and having different roles this tightness in my throat would keep showing up. I’d all but given up until when sitting with a client in a coaching conversation, I heard my own advice. You see, my client had spoken about how they would become stressed in certain situations so I’d instructed them to describe where they ‘felt’ the stress in their body. They put their right hand on their throat and said “I feel this tightness in my throat...it’s like that feeling you get when you’re about to cry…you know what I mean?”. Alarmed at how accurately they had described what I felt I replied “Yes…I know exactly what you mean”. They went on to say… “It’s as though I’ve got so much I want to say but I lock it all in, stop myself from saying what needs to be said”. I mentally stumbled backwards…and there it was, I could finally see what was lurking in my blind spot. While I thought by stopping the pursuit of artistic expression, it would enable me to focus my attention on getting ‘smart’ and ‘knowledgeable’, and ‘successful’. Instead, I shut down all expression which turned me into a boring, frustrated, logic machine that didn’t know how to feel or express in any meaningful way. I felt like a dead man walking.

How to fully express yourself

I still consider myself a novice at this…which ironically is the answer to how you fully express yourself. The secret is to stay ‘empty’. The more content you put into your head, the more distracted you become. This distraction basically dilutes your honest, off-the-cuff, unfiltered expression.

One might think of this as an ability to become intensely focussed to the point where there is nothing else in your awareness at that moment. Like, for example, the stillness and calm you see when Roger Federer hits a backhand in slow-motion. Or the moment a child first finds there balance and takes their first couple of steps. After months of failure and persistence, when they least expect it, they effortlessly do what they previously couldn’t.

I could jot down some mindless points that describe the ‘3 steps to expressing yourself honestly’ or ‘7 strategies to become more open’ but this wouldn’t be of service to you. Instead, I challenge you with this.

Forget all that you know, all that you think you know, and everything you know that you don’t know. As if your brain is a cup filled with water to the brim…. pour it all out. Have the courage to start again and not know anything. In my first ever job interview when they closed with “do you have any questions for me?” not really knowing what to ask (being my first job interview and all) I asked, “what advice to you have for someone starting out in their career?”. The answer they gave has stuck with me forever – “Stay curious”.

At the time I thought I knew a lot, I had it all figured out. I’d created a world where everything made sense, so I didn’t have to experience the vulnerability of not knowing. Little did I know (that pun was totally unintentional) that wall of knowledge that I’d built brick by brick was the same barrier preventing me from expressing what was most important to me.

So, at this point, you might be kicking back on the sofa with the TV remote in hand, ready to ‘empty’ your mind and let go of all that you know. Unfortunately, that’s not what I mean. Like the years of practice Roger Federer devoted to his backhand or the thousands of failed attempts a child makes before they finally walk, you need to earn the right to let go of what you know otherwise, you’re just plain ignorant. Mastery of any kind requires deliberate practice (10 000 hours of it according to Malcolm Gladwell) but at some point, you transcend that practice and you’re able to express what you feel through what you do. This is true of anything…not just music or sport. Like pretty much everything in life, to fully express yourself you need to embrace the paradox of knowing so much that you don’t need to know anything at all. The aim here is to enable yourself to express yourself honestly in everything that you do. This is not simply going through the motions by replicating the moves, plucking the strings or delivering the correct sequence. Instead, it is letting go of safety, slapping your fear in the face and embracing the unknown.

Joe Hart 15/8/19 Joe Hart 15/8/19

Performance Management vs Performance Investment: The devil is in your intentions

Feeling shellshocked, Paul left the meeting room feeling confused. Words that his manager had used like ‘disappointed’, ‘commitment’, ‘performance’, and ‘proactivity’ were all jumbled up in his head. The message was that Paul needed to lift his performance as his manager had been disappointed with the results; he needed to show a bit more proactivity and commitment. It was then followed up with, “we’re here to support you to be successful”. Paul knew his probation was due to finish up in exactly four weeks. Blinded by his emotions, Paul agreed to ‘lift his game’ while suppressing the noise his guts were making as they churned with fear.

The phone buzzed relentlessly to notify that a new message was awaiting. As if there was nothing else that mattered in the world on a Thursday night, Paul leapt to his phone with the eagerness of a highschool student awaiting communication from their first love. Despite his enthusiasm, Paul wasn’t expecting an important message, it was more of a distraction from the mind-numbing work he’d been doing.

The message read:

Sensing the urgency, Paul paused for a moment to consider why his manager would be texting him so urgently for a meeting. He then replied:

Paul had only been in the company for about 5 months and was finding his way around his role. He found the organisation quite challenging with very little development, a massive workload, a fairly disengaged team, and a manager who didn’t really seem to care. He wasn’t really happy with his decision to join the company but he wanted to give it a shot and not give up on the organisation too early. Besides, it took a lot of effort to shift jobs and Paul had left a great manager and team for the prospect of a bigger brand, higher pay, and more responsibility.

The meeting

Paul met with his manager in a small windowless meeting room with fluorescent lights so bright and airconditioning so cold, he felt like he was in a hospital ward. His manager seemed tense. Paul knew this meeting was not going to be good.

The problem for Paul was, the decision was already made. His manager had no intention of keeping him and urgently called the meeting to later justify the course of action to the Human Resources department. Paul had also grown very accustomed to ignoring his guts when they started to churn with fear….a practice that prevented Paul from seeing what was really happening around him.

The real intention

Sadly, like Paul, many people experience very similar situations where they join a new company full of hope and expectation to soon find themselves staring longingly into the rear vision mirror that was their old job. It’s not that their old job was better or even good, it’s that the performance management conversations endured with an ill-equipped manager guided by a dehumanised organisation are humiliating. While it would be easy to lay blame on the manager, or the organisation, that is not the intention of this article. Given so many people I have worked with over the years have experienced a similar situation I wanted to provide an alternative view on how to generate the best outcomes for both employers and employees, without all the noises from guts churning with fear.

Performance Management vs Performance Investment

As a standard practice, most organisations are well acquainted with the annual performance review which often carries no benefit beyond HR meeting their KPIs. If the organisation is ‘progressive’ and has the capacity, they may even conduct a talent review to determine the true performance of their employees in relation to their potential. In recent years, organisations such as Accenture and Deloitte have radically revamped their performance management process in favour of ongoing regular performance conversations, reliable performance measurement, and strong investment in development for employees. Early indicators are demonstrating the increase in employee engagement and productivity as a result not to mention the massive amount of time that is no longer wasted by leaders gaining consensus on employee performance behind closed doors. In a 2015 HBR article, a study conducted on Deloitte employees suggested as many as 2 million hours a year were spent on the employee evaluation process of all 65 000 employees. None of this is surprising if you consider the data presented in Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report, suggesting that 85% of the world’s employees are either actively disengaged or not engaged.

Rather than focus on evaluating employees to understand their performance and whether they have potential, I’d like to suggest that organisations evaluate how much they have invested in their employees to maximise their performance. Assuming that you’ve made a decent hire, how much time have you invested in that employee? What sort of opportunities have you given them to grow, develop, and expand? Is their performance a reflection of their capability or the amount of time you have spent with them?

Below is a decision matrix that you can use to quickly classify how your team fits and more importantly, indicates what you can do improve.

Performance mgt vs performance investment.png

High Growth (Engaged + Productive)- These are high performers that are responding to the investment you are making in their development. They are engaged and productive employees. Sadly, there are only about 15% of employees globally that fit into this category so when you get them there, the trick is to keep them there.

Flight Risk (Not Sustainable)- They are your high performers but the discontent is usually written all over their face. They have the capability and like to demonstrate what they can do. Unfortunately, you can’t provide them with the development they are seeking. Without providing them with an opportunity to stretch themselves, you’ll lose this talent.

Poor Fit (Wrong role/company)- For many reasons, people end up in the wrong role and sometimes in a company that just doesn’t gel with them. You’ve invested in their development but somehow, they just aren’t performing. Go back to your selection process and make sure you have a good process in place to support who you are bringing in. Often, the recruiters that sourced your employees are doing such a great job at selling the role that they might be inadvertently setting unrealistic expectations. Sometimes, despite a great process, things still don’t work. In my experience, the majority of performance issues fall into this category. Try changing the person’s role first but if that still isn’t an option, initiate an honest conversation about organisational fit and support them to move on.

Neglected (Helpless + Stuck)- For these poor souls, they’ve never really been given a fighting chance. The philosophical debate of the chicken coming before the egg springs to mind here….did you not invest because of their poor performance? Or did their poor performance stem from a lack of investment? Regardless, the right thing to do is to provide them with an opportunity to feel valued and supported. It’s amazing what a little bit of encouragement can do for someone’s productivity. Even if their performance doesn’t improve, you’ll be able to help them find their next role knowing you gave them a shot.

Where to from here?

For all four quadrants, while there are differences in how to manage employees that reside within them, the solution for all is the same; invest!

For my entire career, I’ve been listening to justifications about why 360-degree assessments don’t work or how engagement survey data is wrong, or why employees are too entitled. The truth is quite simple. If you take the time to invest in your employees by encouraging them to expand, learn, grow, and develop, they will perform. If you hold them accountable, give them responsibility, and let them fall, they will perform. If you treat them with respect, empower them, trust them, and have good intentions, they will perform.

The next time you are on either side of a conversation like Paul was at the beginning of this article, see if you can decipher the intention that sits beneath the words.

For managers- challenge the investment you have put into the employee. Ask yourself if you really are willing to invest in their success and develop their capability. Can you see yourself cheering for them on the sideline like a doting parent….all while you know they will never be the best player on the team? If the answer is no, then your falling back on a process to help you terminate an employee i.e you have bad intentions. My advice, rise to the challenge of having a tough conversation and be a manager. That’s what you get paid for.

For employees- listen to your gut….if it’s churning with fear it’s probably responding to what’s happening around you, while your judgement is clouded by emotion. Hanging on to a role to prove a point, save your pride, or dodge adversity simply doesn’t work. When faced with bad intentions, simply walk in the other direction.

My final thought for the day….before embarking on a 360 review or performance management process, reflect on your real intentions that lurk beneath the surface. If your intentions are bad the tools you utilise will also turn bad. These tools are designed to elevate and support employees not trip them up.

Joe Hart 6/8/19 Joe Hart 6/8/19

The 5 Laws Governing your Leadership Legacy

I’d like you to imagine that you’re in a hospital surrounded by medical professionals, machines beeping, people rushing about, and a heaviness is surrounding everybody. You feel it too as you know that you must make a choice. The doctors have so professionally outlined all the pros and cons associated with either choice you make but the final decision lies with you…and you alone. You’re feeling a little bit angry at the situation, it’s not fair that this decision rests squarely on your shoulders….is it? You feel cornered like you’re being pressured into making the wrong decision…will you? You wish somebody else could just tell you what you need to do…. don’t you?

14 years ago, I was facing such a choice. My wife was pregnant with our first child who was due to be born in about two and a half months. Everything had been going so smoothly that I kept having to remind myself that she was pregnant. That all changed when things got complicated. During a routine check-up, our doctor recognised that things weren’t quite right. Our son was at risk of being born a couple of months early so my wife was hospitalised and put on bed rest. We were given a flying tour of the Newborn Intensive Care Unit (NICU) where all the premature babies were cared for. I had a hard lump in my throat as we were being ‘inducted’ knowing that I would soon be joining the other sleep-deprived parents staring at their babies longingly; their view obscured by the Perspex walls of the humid-i-crib and the bunch of tubes and wires that represent an artificial umbilical cord. I was numb, I couldn’t really feel anything.

The ‘big’ day

She’d been on bed rest for two weeks now so I’d convinced myself that the baby would be born normally and we wouldn’t need to be in the NICU. That morning, I got a call from the hospital that the baby was coming….the lump in my throat hardened. Upon arrival, I did my best to reassure my wife that everything was going to be ok. That’s when the doctor mentioned some of the other problems. The baby’s position wasn’t normal (he was bum first) so a natural birth would be difficult. We could choose surgery but that also came with its risks for my wife and our baby. Overwhelmed with emotion, my wife wanted me to make the decision.

My choice

I chose a natural birth option. This was potentially the riskiest for both mother and baby but also the best option if they both made it through. Given the complex situation, we had 6 doctors in the room. I felt so small, helpless and insignificant. I was only 24 years old and the lump in my throat was so tight now, I could barely speak. The next few hours were a slow-motion blur resulting in my son being born naturally. The nurses quickly jumped into action as he wasn’t breathing, and his heart had stopped. Feeling the relief of giving birth my wife looked over at me for reassurance that he was ok. That moment stood still…..what was likely only 10 seconds felt like hours. Not knowing how to respond to my wife’s gaze, I looked on as the doctors and nurses were trying to revive our son. My wife squeezed my hand and asked ”is he ok”? It was at that moment that I heard what sounded like a gurgling noise that was reminiscent of a scene from Jurassic park. For the first time in two weeks the lump in my throat had softened…I could finally speak unhindered “He’s going to be fine”….I said.

Leadership Legacy

Leadership is about showing up in a way that represents who you are. Legacy is about defining how you are remembered. Having worked with thousands of people in their pursuit of being great leaders I’ve seen the very best and the very worst of Leadership Legacy. As highlighted by my own experience with my wife and first son, how you show up in difficult situations defines how you will be remembered. There is no ‘right’ or ‘known’ path for great leadership but we all know it when we see it. A great piece of research outlined by Gallup references the ‘four needs of followers’ by simply asking a group of 10 000 managers to describe the traits of a leader that has had a significant positive impact on their life. The results of their study showed four common themes that emerged. Great leaders were characterised by Trust, Hope, Stability and Compassion. While great leaders make mistakes all the time, we tend not to remember them for what they got wrong, but more so for all of what they did right. How do great leaders create such a positive experience for those around them?

The Five laws

Through my own work coaching leaders, I’ve observed some universal truths that guide the actions of those that are aligned with their leadership legacy. Below is a brief summary of these universal truths that can be used as guiding principles for those that want to accelerate their own development and more fully live in alignment with their legacy.

Law 1 | Listen with depth – Great leaders are brilliant listeners not just of the words being said but also to that which is unsaid. The ability to truly listen requires more than just your ears. As Malcom Gladwell wrote in his book ‘Blink’, your ability to process micro-expressions, be aware of your own biases, and draw conclusions under extreme pressure all happens within the blink of an eye. Oscar Trimboli’s fantastic book ‘Deep listening’ expertly guides us through the different levels of listening starting with self then moving through to meaning. Oscar also reminds us of the need to be mindful of your shadow or unconscious listening behaviours which prevent you from listening deeply.

Law 2 | Learn with endless vigour – We all intuitively know that when we are learning we have more energy, feel motivated, engaged, and connected. We also know that sometimes learning can feel hard, especially when you reach a plateau. Great leaders relentlessly commit to their learning which takes humility. While having an outcome focussed mindset is great for kicking goals, we tend to focus less on the process of learning if we are too focused on the light at the end of the tunnel. In my own practice of juggling, yoga and martial-arts I am continually reminded that there is no end goal. Being present and connected to daily practice is indeed the intention. Some days you are strong, while on other days things just don’t click. This is also a part of the learning process which requires consistency, dedication, persistence, and discipline. In the pursuit of mastering an ability, we learn how to master ourselves. Self-mastery is self-leadership.

Law 3 | Liberate yourself and others – Almost all of what prevents us from achieving that which we most desire exists solely in our own head. Great leaders can separate their past experiences from the meaning they attach to them. It’s not what happens to you that matters, it’s what you make it mean that causes all your suffering. Being able to transcend your past, and let go of your hang-ups will give you the freedom to truly lead. Doing this for yourself provides you with the capacity to liberate others. Keep in mind that this is not a one-trick pony. We are constantly wired to interpret what happens to us in a way that is meaningful and makes sense. The sooner you realise that this is how we have evolved to feel safe and in control but won’t help you succeed, the better. To grow and lead, you must embrace your fear and the inherent meaninglessness associated with your experiences.

Law 4 | Link people, concepts, and experiences– To quote Paul Kelly “From little things big things grow”. My interpretation, our thoughts represent where we choose to focus our attention, which drives our behaviour, which creates outcomes. The thousands of thoughts driving our behaviour and outcomes everyday form our identity. Who we hang out with, what we choose to do in our spare time, the TV we watch, the partners we choose, the work we do, the products we buy, all represent ripples on a pond. The pond being the universe and a thought represents a pebble tossed into the calm water. The more pebbles we toss the more ripples that form. When the ripple caused by my pebble collides with yours, we start to see how complex and messy things can get. Great leaders recognise that all things are linked. Knowing the far-reaching nature of these connections arms leaders with the wisdom to act with integrity. A pebble thrown with accuracy will cause a ripple effect that’s both beautiful, intentional, and knows no bounds.

Law 5 | Love with courage – As Steven Covey wrote in his book ‘The seven habits of highly effective leaders’ love is what you do and who you are being, not what you are feeling. If you no longer feel in love with your work, your partner, or your life. It’s time to have an honest conversation with yourself about what you are doing. By this I mean, how are you showing up in your relationship, to work, or in life? Are you always late? Ask yourself if this represents the actions of someone who loves their team, their partner, their friends or their family? Are your actions aligned with love? Or perhaps you drink too much alcohol? Ask yourself, is this what love looks like to you? Do you get angry with your kids and dominate them by yelling and screaming when they misbehave? Ask yourself, are your actions reflecting love? I know it’s hard and most of us get it wrong most of the time but it takes courage and vulnerability to behave in alignment with love. You might call this gratitude, acceptance, courage, expression, vulnerability, connection etc. Whatever you call them, they are all rolled into behaviours aligned with love. Great leaders are able to love knowing that they will get hurt, knowing that there is no other way to truly be.

Closing thoughts

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not sharing these laws with you to ‘tell’ you what to do. I wrote this article off the back of the most common question I get from people when I’m coaching them. They ask “What do great leaders do?” or if they are honest “Do you think I have what it takes to be a great leader?”. The 5 laws come from great leaders that I’ve worked with, my own self-exploration, and through understanding the research of others. The laws represent what great leaders do. To answer everybody’s question – Do you have what it takes? Absolutely. If your willingness to love outweighs your fear of being hurt, you will succeed. Like my experience throughout my first son’s birth sometimes the best leadership comes in the form of knowing when not to speak or intervene. It takes leadership to accept that you don’t know what the outcome will eventually be and to trust the natural process by standing back to watch everything unfold. One final thought; your leadership legacy is not governed by your title nor your authority, it is determined by your ability to lead with love.

Joe Hart 16/7/19 Joe Hart 16/7/19

It’s not at all about winning…but it’s all about winning : The paradox of life

“It’s been a rough week,” said one of the other dads standing on the sideline pre-match, thermos in hand at the ready. I gave him a wry smile followed by a confirmatory nod, acknowledging that I too was weary from the five back to back losses our boys had experienced over the preceding three days. Not only that, we’d been battling the bitter cold dished up by Canberra mornings; frost, biting wind, and a little bit of drizzle for extra misery. You see, our boys’ team was firmly lodged at the bottom of the ladder in the soccer tournament, about to play their last match against an undefeated team secured at the top of the ladder. With heavy hearts, everyone was expecting another loss.

The pressure of expectation

Earlier in the week, the boys started out strong, winning their first match comprehensively. In some ways, this set them up for the expectation that they could do very well in the tournament. In contrast, their second match was an absolute disaster, outclassed in pretty much every way. They got crushed with a 6-0 defeat. Following on from that first day the losing streak was maintained. There was a predictable amount of controversy both on an off the field. Some questionable calls by the referee (who appeared to be barely 14 years old) were heavily influenced by the intimidating shouts coming from parents that value soccer more than life itself. Their screams resembling the snarls and growls of an angry dog, foaming at the mouth, ready to attack. Despite the rule of ‘silence on the sidelines’ there were some that couldn’t help it, their desire to win was too great even though they weren’t the ones playing the game.

The dangers of watching from the sideline

We’d all been looking forward to the tournament, knowing that the boys had worked hard to be there. We secretly expected them to do well….and held a desire to see them at least get through to the semi-finals…After all, it was entirely possible? After the jubilation of the first win, you could feel the excitement of the parents lift momentarily before the almost audible ‘thud’ following the first crushing defeat. On the surface, we all say to each other “it’s all about the boys having fun….” or “As long as they do their best and learn something, it will all be worth it”. In reality, what we want to say to each other is “It would be awesome to go home with the cup in hand our boys victors in the tournament” or “I’d love for my boy to experience the joy of being in a team that has what it takes to win against the toughest competition”. What became evident by the end of the week is that the parents were more invested in the team winning than the players were. The challenge with this position is that none of us was able to influence that which we were so invested in. We were powerless, confined to simply watch, support, observe, and stay silent. Victims of our own frustration.

The power of ‘showing up’

The boys are a group of talented young players. They train a couple of times a week and they are all good mates. They take their sport seriously and all have a deep seeded aspiration to become a great soccer player one day. They are however only 10 years old and having fun seems to be the most popular item on the menu. What’s refreshing is that even with the crushing defeats, the boys would get over it quickly. They didn’t dwell on the bad calls, the angry parents on the sidelines, the bullies on the other teams. They kept getting back up and dusting themselves off. Of course, they each had their moments where they were upset with their performance, made mistakes, and felt like they could have done better but they were persistent. They were playing to win but if they lost, the game wasn’t over for them. It’s almost as if they knew they were playing a bigger game of growth and development that was beyond the scope of the tournament.

The outcome

So, here we are, the final match that EVERYONE expects our boys to lose. I’d even had a work call scheduled for the first half so wouldn’t have to endure the assault but, as it often happens, my call was rescheduled. I was locked into watching the entire game. As they were warming up, another this other dad and I noted while sipping on our hot tea fresh from the thermos, that the boys seemed unusually vocal. They were talking to each other a lot. The chatter was positive and constant which created a vibe around the team. Their body language was ‘up’, they seemed confident…not about winning but about how they were going to play their game. Just before they ran onto the field, I grabbed my son’s attention and said “hey mate, what’s the plan”. He said, “We’re going to play to win and have fun”. What unfolded next was nothing short of glorious. The boys played their best game yet. It was a tight tussle which ended with a victory to our boys who managed to defeat the undefeated. What started as a melancholic conversation about the week that had been, ended with every parent giving each other high fives. As one of the parents, I know how tempting it is to remedy any situation with the cliché of “it’s not about winning…it’s about having fun”. Reality speaks a different language and that sounds more like “losing feels crap, especially if you know you can do better”. The trick is to keep playing to win even when you’ve been on a massive losing streak. While their campaign was over and the opposing team still progressed through to the semi-finals, they were later beaten in the semi’s and denied a place in the final that I’m sure they had their minds set on.

Leadership lessons from the sideline

Just in case you got caught up in the ‘story’ of it all, I thought it would be helpful to summarise some of the leadership lessons that spending a week with hopeful parents and a group of competitive 10-year-old boys has taught me.

1. Expectations are poison – The best movie I ever saw was the one that I didn’t plan to see. I had no idea about the genre and the title gave nothing away so when I watched the film I was totally engaged, in-the-moment and enthralled. The opposite can be said of the worst movie I ever saw, the hype and expectations were so great that the movie couldn’t deliver. Similarly, when we have our heart set on an outcome such as a sporting event, academic achievement, relationship, job offer etc. We are living in a fantasy, one that is not grounded in the present moment. Don’t get me wrong, we need to set clear expectations at work to get results but when you find yourself drifting into the realm of fantasy, pull back, you’re ironically setting yourself up for a remarkable fall from grace.

2. Is it about you…or them? – This is a tough one because nobody likes to admit that they have an ego and everyone likes to think that they put the needs of others before their own. The truth is, altruism is rare, and some would argue doesn’t really exist. I could tell myself that sacrificing a week of my time was all in the best interest of my son and his aspiration to be a soccer star but that wouldn’t be entirely true. I like watching him play soccer, I like watching the team succeed and deep down I feel part of that success which strokes my ego. At work, this can be seen often when teams or individuals are awarded recognition for outstanding achievement. Whether it’s the manager’s intention or not, it’s impossible not to connect oneself with the success of the team or individual. Like the parents cheering (or snarling) from the sideline, it’s a combination of wanting what’s best for the team and what’s best for you. Once you understand that you are indeed selfishly invested (at least a bit) you’ll be able to reconcile some of the anxiety or stress you feel when things aren’t quite going according to plan.

3. Keep ‘showing up’ – Like much of life the ability to keep showing up is 90% of the battle. If we decide to stay in bed at the first hint of a challenge, we will likely never make it past the challenges of kindergarten. Regardless of how tough it is, how “it won’t make a difference” or “it’s hopeless”. The power of simply showing up and having a go carries more weight than anything else. Many people go through the motions, but this is not showing up. ‘Showing up’ can be defined as being present both physically and mentally to fully engage with the task at hand. The temptation to give up is strong especially when things aren’t going your way. It is in those moments that the truth about who you are and what you are capable of is revealed.

4. It’s not about winning, but it’s all about winning – Political correctness says that I should encourage my son to play for fun and not push him to be competitive. On this point, I fundamentally disagree and proudly admit that I encourage my son to play to win but make sure that he’s having fun in the process. I know he loves soccer and works hard to develop himself. I think it’s brilliant that at such a young age the boys all demonstrated a relentless commitment to their development as individuals in a team that wants to win. It’s that spirit, courage and tenacity that will enable all of them to succeed. In business, if you don’t win your customers’ hearts and minds, you lose. It’s tough, cold, relentless but in the real world, nobody is going to soften the blow for you. The balance is right when you’re doing something that you love, that matters, that’s worth fighting for but you also have fun with it.

5. It’s all in your head – There are countless examples of people achieving extraordinary things that reinforce the same point. What your mind wants, your body will deliver and what your body delivers your mind wants. In other words, by thinking you create desire and by doing you gain satisfaction. If it’s combat-sports, extreme strength, cold exposure, wealth accrual, scientific breakthroughs, artistic expression, or motivational leadership; If people had used logical reasoning to achieve their goals, they would have quit long before their breakthrough. Possibilities will always remain unknown to you, that is until you do the impossible.

The moral of the story?

If you want to live a fulfilled life, behave like a bunch of 10-year-olds playing soccer in a competitive tournament. You’ll have your moments of glory, setbacks, mistakes, unfair calls, injuries, a bunch of tears and a whole lot of disappointment. Always play to win, but make sure you also play to have fun. If you’re feeling a bunch of pressure from some onlookers from the sideline ‘supporting’ you, don’t play for them, they are there for themselves as much as they are there for you. Play your own game

Joe Hart 25/6/19 Joe Hart 25/6/19

The cliché of poor communication

If you ask someone if they are a good driver, most people will indicate that they are above average. This is also true for intelligence, leadership, and even communication. This phenomenon is known as the Dunning-Krueger effect. Basically, most of us have an inflated sense of our capability regarding pretty much everything we do. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule (of course you are thinking you are one of them) but mostly, it’s true. What’s even scarier is that those of us that are most incompetent overestimate our abilities to a greater extent.

In business, communication is an exceptionally important part of our day-to-day. Without effective communication our relationships deteriorate, our productivity is hindered and our undesirable emotions (anger, frustration, anxiety) start to bubble up to the surface. In fact, every qualitative focus group I’ve ever conducted highlights communication as being a key factor influencing employee morale. Scarily, this finding is so pervasive that I can confidently include ‘poor communication’ as a key finding for any organisation having trouble with culture and engagement. Rather than go down an infinite path of micro diagnosis (this is my term for the need to keep running diagnostics to identify ‘core’ issues rather than taking action to face them) I’ve come up with a couple of communication hacks that will instantly turn things around for you, your team and organisation.

“Without effective communication our relationships deteriorate, our productivity is hindered and our undesirable emotions (anger, frustration, anxiety) start to bubble up to the surface.”

Admit that you need to develop

In line with the theme in many of my posts, you need to start with yourself and acknowledge that if there is an issue, you’re probably a big contributor to it. Try resisting the temptation to look at everyone else as the problem and start by committing to make a change in yourself. With regards to communication, this means accepting that you will need to improve to get a better outcome. Self-development takes humility and relentless commitment. Drop your ego about being a brilliant communicator as your belief serves no purpose in effectively communicating.

Enhance your dialogue

Any decent engagement survey measures how clear employees feel about their role, the company direction, the vision, values, team goals etc. In fact, Gallup’s Q12 survey identified that the statement “I know what’s expected of me at work” is one of the single best predictors of an individual’s overall engagement. As such, one of the best practices you can incorporate into your meetings is to finish with “can I just go over where we landed and make sure we are on the same page?” or “Can I have a go or playing back what you want me to do to ensure that I’m clear on what you need” or “can you share back what I’ve asked so I can be sure that how I’ve articulated myself is clear?”. While you need to find your own language and the words that work, simply adding a few questions in your toolbox that help bridge the gap between what we said and what we want is a game changer.

Be consistent

If you follow the first two pieces of advice, you’ll realise very quickly how often you make poor assumptions and leave meetings where people are confused, unsure, disengaged and frustrated. You might even be telling yourself “I already do this at the end of every conversation”. I’d invite you to further challenge yourself because even the very best I’ve worked with struggle to keep up this practice. Just saying “right….is everyone clear?” is not enough. People don’t want to look stupid by seeking clarification. They also don’t want to look like they are challenging your authority, so they’ll sit back and be silent. Furthermore, most people are so busy and, in their head, that they aren’t really listening anyway. Their assumption is “If it’s really important I’ll get an e-mail, or someone will follow-up with me about it”. In general, people hold a view that internal meetings are not useful, so it shapes their behaviour when they show up. They are disinterested, not clear on objectives, and distracted. By simply asking somebody to articulate what they heard and share back the actions they are going to carry forward, you have engaged them.

Be patient with yourself and others

Initially, you might feel as though you are patronising or you might stumble on your words when clarifying expectations. This is totally fine. It takes practice to clearly and consistently set expectations. You’ll need to allow for some growing room as you’ll find that it feels awkward the first few weeks you try this. You might also see some resistance from your team and those around you. They are used to showing up to meetings with you in a certain way. When you shift your behaviour, it will necessarily shift how they show up. This can take time before you see any benefit. You may indeed find things get slightly worse before they get better.

Be open and transparent

Whenever we change our behaviour, people need to figure out ‘why’. It’s an inherent human need to know the cause or meaning associated with any shift in behaviour. As outlined in the book Hardwired Humans, everyone loves to gossip, it’s a basic human instinct associated with social grooming. One thing you can guarantee, if you shift your behaviour and it’s noted, your team will discuss it with each other. Rather than allow this conversation to evolve organically (and potentially in a harmful way), try being upfront about what you are doing and why you are doing it to ensure they aren’t creating a story around your motivation. For example, if you asked someone to ‘playback’ their understanding of the issues raised or the actions you want them to take, they could easily assume that you aren’t happy with their performance or even questioning their capability. It sounds silly but if you sat in on some of my coaching conversations, you would realise how much of what people worry about is completely made up.

As a final thought, most challenges that individuals and teams face are due to poor alignment of expectations resulting in what feels like bad communication. Even if you don’t get it right, simply discussing expectations will dramatically shift the dialogue you have with yourself and your team. If you find yourself sitting silently in a meeting, a little confused, disengaged or distracted, draw on some courage and ask a clarifying question. You’ll either get full alignment in response or some valuable discussion will ensue. For those of you that scoff at the idea that people may not be clear on what’s expected of them, know that you represent a red flag. It is likely you that needs to step back and evaluate whether your assumptions are serving you or shielding you from the truth.

Joe Hart 19/5/19 Joe Hart 19/5/19

5 Reasons why perspective matters

I distinctly remember the first time I created a sculpture.My art teacher had decided that a boy in our class who suffered from rheumatoidarthritis would need to sit on a chair positioned on top of the tables so wecould all observe him as our “subject”. I remember feeling sorry for the guy ashe was mildly disfigured due to his disease. I wasn’t sure if the teacher hadasked him to be the subject for this reason…. or had he nominated himself tohave a whole class full of students use his body as the subject matter fortheir sculpture. He didn’t seem to be phased by the request so I relaxed intothe task at hand. Having never done sculpture before, I was curious as to how Icould create a great sculpture. We were using clay and I found that I couldmake my figure interesting from one side only to find that the other sidelooked horrible. This push and pull became a little frustrating and seemed tobe an ineffective way to create a masterpiece. Feeling a little miffed with theexercise, I heard my teacher say “your challenge is to make your sculptureinteresting from every single angle. You need to let the piece emerge as youcontinuously refine your interpretation of the subject”. For whatever reason,what she said clicked for me. I’d been trying to create a three-dimensionalsculpture by observing the subject, my mate with rheumatoid arthritis, from asingle perspective. It prompted me to get up and move around the subject andexplore how he looked from every angle. As a result, I was able to create afantastic sculpture that was unique and interesting from every single anglethat you looked at it.

"Unfortunately, the perspective taken in many cases is unidimensional, fixed in their seat and only observing the subject from a single point of view. The result, an uninspired piece of work that is dull with little impact on the observer."

Every time I’m stuck on a problem, helping my kids with achallenge, working through a solution with a client or even observing someoneelse’s artwork in a gallery, I always think back to that experience I had whenI first attempted to create a sculpture.

Indeed, I use sculpting as a metaphor in leadershipdevelopment, self-development, culture. In all of these areas, we are aiming tosculpt something be it a great leader, a better version of ourselves or aculture that everyone would love to work in. Unfortunately, the perspectivetaken in many cases is unidimensional, fixed in their seat and only observingthe subject from a single point of view. The result, an uninspired piece ofwork that is dull with little impact on the observer. In an organisationalcontext, these are the run of the mill ‘leadership development’ courses thatare a ‘feel good’ fiesta for a couple of days but ultimately develop nothing. Or a self-development course that enables youto feel better about yourself but see everyone else in a negative light. Orworse still, the culture ‘change’ program that promises to change so much thatnothing changes at all….at least not before the environment organically changesfirst.

What’s my perspective on all of this? Get more perspective!It’s way too easy to put the blinkers on and see things from a familiar, triedand tested viewpoint. If you always see a problem, in the same way, you’re veryunlikely to develop novel solutions. In fact, when you take a different perspective,you might not see it as a problem at all!

One tool that I love to use with clients (and myself) iscalled the ‘5 perspectives tool’ (thanks to David Drake for creating the tool).When an individual or team is stuck on a problem, the ‘5 perspectives tool’ isa great way to help them get unstuck and see things from a different angle. It’sa very simple method to generate multiple viewpoints where there are seeminglyno options left. Start by writing down your problem or challenge in the centreof your page then draw 5 spokes representing other perspectives you could taketo describe the same problem or challenge. You’d be surprised how hard it is togenerate more than 3 perspectives and to get the 4^th and 5^thcan be exponentially more difficult.

This tool reminds me of that first experience I had creatinga sculpture. It helps me see things from every angle and ensure that myinterpretation is a well-considered, ‘interesting from all angles’ solution.

One final perspectiveI’ll leave you with, most problems that we are facing a no bigger than a grainof sand. It’s just that our focus is so intently fixed on the grain of sandthat we can’t see anything beyond it. If we are bold enough to step back andsee the bigger picture, our problems become no more than a grain of sand on abeach that is barely perceptible in this vast universe. If you’re up for the challengeof becoming a better leader, better version of yourself or shaping a betterorganisational culture, have the courage to step back and see the biggerpicture. You might surprise yourself and end up creating a masterpiece.

Joe Hart 13/5/19 Joe Hart 13/5/19

How master manipulators keep you on their string

As a child, the world is full of wonderment, everyexperience is new and filled with excitement. The world feels like a magicalplace of endless possibility. Until of course, we hit our teenage years and oneday we wake up to the familiar burden of the mundane, the known and the boring.While the contrast is stark, our wonderment slowly ebbs away with each joyfulexperience fading like a favourite shirt that’s seen too much sun. As adults,we are constantly pursuing the magic, the innocence and the curiosity that weall once had for the world. So much so that we can overcompensate by fallingvictim to those that see our insecurities, our weaknesses, and our deepestdesires.

When I was about 15, my dad was working toward developing a puppet show that he could tour locally in schools, markets, and private shows. He’d worked long and hard on it and needed someone to help him out as a second performer. Being fascinated with such things, I was more than happy to help. As I got to understand the show, learn my lines, practice how to perform using glove puppets, I soon began to appreciate the art form. I also became increasingly aware of the ‘magic’ tricks associated with bringing a puppet to life. For example, if you’ve ever watched a puppet show, what makes it brilliant is when the puppets interact with the audience. They come to life as real characters by asking questions, pointing people out and making quick-witted comments in response to any hecklers (usually a pesky 3-year-old) amongst the audience. For a child, the mystery is too great…and the puppets are confirmed as the real deal. There is no possibility that they are fake. For adults, they are impressed at the cleverness of the script and wonder how such a feat is achieved…all the while knowing that a puppeteer is in control of the show.

They keep us on their string by being highly entertaining to all, brilliant storytellers, quick-witted and almost psychic in their responsiveness to their stakeholders. Such abilities are extremely powerful for influencing stakeholders and equally damaging for those that get drawn in.

For those of you that know, this will seem obvious, but the secret lies in the material used as the backdrop. It’s a very thin vale, with highly reflective material so when lights are shone directly at its surface it sparkles brilliantly for the audience. For the puppeteer, however, this becomes the perfect camouflage to observe the audience undetected. For the illusion to work, the puppeteer must be in complete darkness otherwise their silhouette becomes detectable and the illusion of the puppets being alive is destroyed. I distinctly recall one show where my dad and I were about halfway through our version of 3 billy goats gruff. Suddenly an overly bold child (most likely the pesky 3-year-old heckler from before) snuck around the back of our puppet theatre and lifted the canvas door. Light poured in exposing the magic trick, the child’s face was a combination of excitement and disbelief. The answer they were looking for was right in front of them….they just didn’t want to believe that what once was beautiful and magical was now just a man with his hand in a puppet.

Puppeteers are master manipulators, actors and magicians all rolled into one. An ageless art form that continues to capture the imagination of audiences to this day. I’d like you to consider the master manipulators you’ve come across in your work-life over the years. More specifically, I’m referring to the Machiavellian leaders from the Dark Triad (Machiavellian, Narcissism, Psychopathy). Those that appear to be able to manipulate us with their cunning, strategic minds. Lure us in with their charisma and appear to understand our emotional state providing us with a sense of comfort and security. They always know what the right thing is to say. Like the puppeteer, these master manipulators have a highly reflective backdrop that when surrounded by darkness makes their true character completely undetectable. They keep us on their string by being highly entertaining to all, brilliant storytellers, quick-witted and almost psychic in their responsiveness to their stakeholders. Such abilities are extremely powerful for influencing stakeholders and equally damaging for those that get drawn in.

Nobody likes being manipulated, especially when they have no idea it is happening. There are those that prefer not to know how a magic trick works and enjoy the sheer entertainment of it all. They buy their ticket at the door, scoff some popcorn and immerse themselves in the experience. In contrast, there are some that prefer not to get involved at all. They stay at home in safety, never exposing themselves to the thrill of the illusion. Finally, there are those that are familiar with the ‘magic’ of it all and revel in the opportunity to take up a ringside seat at the circus, carefully watching each act to see if they can spot the trick, catch the illusion or unveil the master manipulator.

As a psychologist and executive coach, I’d like to share myperspective on how to deal with a Machiavellian leader as it’s highly likelythat you will have to at some stage….or most likely already have!

If you’ve cottoned on to their cunning ways, manipulative tendencies, and magnetic lure. Move on, get out and don’t look back. While you may want to go toe to toe with them, demonstrating your ability to uncloak their true character, you’ll ultimately fail.
If you’re currently caught in the web of a Machiavellian leader but aren’t sure, ask yourself how they make you feel. If this swings between “I can do anything” to “I feel smaller than a grain of sand”, I hate to break it to you but you’re being manipulated. Upon this realisation, see point 1) Move on, get out and don’t look back.
Like most people, you’ll ignore my advice and think that you are a smart capable human being who is resilient and strong. Therefore, you will go toe to toe, you’ll jump in the ring with them and give it all you’ve got. You may even knock them down a few times but to your dismay, they keep popping back up again like a bobo doll. Here’s the secret, like the highly reflective backdrop of a puppet theatre, you can’t see the puppeteer’s true character, the harder you look you will begin to see a form. That form is merely your own distorted reflection, your shadow self, aka, your dark side. The sooner you recognise that by fighting the Machiavellian leader, you are fighting with yourself, the better equipped you will be to bow out gracefully, move on, get out, and never look back.

One closing remark, spare a thought for the Machiavellian leader, the master manipulator or the genius puppeteer. While you may not feel they deserve any of your empathy, consider their existence. Highly reflective, surrounded by darkness, living by stealth to remain undetected. A keen observer of others, but never observing themselves. Their own reflection is impossible to detect in the absence of light. Despite their relationships, they are never truly known to others. A victim of themselves, ostracised by their inability to see themselves. As one can only imagine, isolated to a small room in complete darkness devoid of any connections would be the ultimate punishment. Understand that when you try to take them on, you are stepping into that darkness with them. My advice, have empathy for their suffering then move on, get out and never look back!