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Choose how you respond to pressure, disruption and uncertainty | Tom Watkins

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Struggling to accept what we are sometimes faced with is a normal part of being alive, like a tax on being human works-in-progress. Our battles with reality are usually won, in the end, by reality. But have you noticed that for very many people, reality increasingly involves relentless pressure and frenzy? Three inescapable societal trends are behind this. Being overwhelmed by them is optional. I was with a friend for one of our regular discussions we have, over coffee or during a 30-minute … [Read more...]

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The best and simplest goal: get better

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Can most of us, with enough persistent effort, get pretty good at anything? Probably. Effort, as psychologist Angela Duckworth has shown, counts twice:  talent x effort = skill, and skill x effort = achievement.  And though both talent and our willingness to exert persistent effort may be at least partially genetic, only a minority of our personality is inherited. High performers  don’t rely on either nature or nurture, but on a combination of the two — and they are really good at nurturing … [Read more...]

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Like a clock during a thunderstorm

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We are shaped by what gains our attention and occupies our thoughts. To limit unhelpful fight, flight or freeze reactions to adversity, we must develop some voluntary mind-control over our attention. We should know how to put it where we want it, whenever we need to. Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm. [Robert Louis Stevenson] Acquiring this ability should never become a matter of … [Read more...]

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The very common denominator

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When the Operations Manager, my mentoring client Julia, met two of her team to address a complex performance incident, I was present in an observer role. She'd estimated the meeting would take 15 to 20 minutes. Ben and Allen (no actual names used here) responded well enough to Julia's genuine curiosity, her clarifying questions and occasional paraphrasing to test and demonstrate her understanding. 10 out of 10 for that:  she'd been working with me to improve those practices and was doing … [Read more...]

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Emotional Agility

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To have a decent shot at developing our personal character, we must bring the mind itself under control. For this ... We should prepare for a lifetime of challenge, as there is no more difficult task in life. [1]  One test of progress is how calm we remain under provocation. On what does our ability to do that depend, and how might we enhance it? Mountaineering over a molehill I offered to support a colleague, but during the exchange he offloaded irritation in my direction. It was a simple … [Read more...]

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It’s Terrible! Let’s Co-ruminate.

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Three sharply-dressed passengers sitting nearby on an early morning flight were sufficiently loud, articulate and interesting for me to overhear their conversation. Mid-level managers in a high-tech industry, I figured. Over the next 50 minutes they repeatedly agreed they'd be more effective and happier if their staff, colleagues, senior executives and clients would behave better, just get out of their way, or be different people. Definitely a co-ruminating group:  regurgitating and re-heating … [Read more...]

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I Don’t Trust You

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We usually avoid saying this directly to those we mistrust.  It's more common to report our unease and reasons for it to other parties, make vague or indirect complaints, or practice avoidance. By then the relationship has effectively failed, though the mistrusted person may be unaware of this.  It can be difficult, if not  impossible, to repair the damage. Given the centrality of trust to cooperation and collaboration, what can be done and how can we behave in order to develop and maintain … [Read more...]

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Enhance personal resilience

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Experiencing adversity . . ?  Then you're suffering, right? Not necessarily, of course. At some level we all understand that emotional resilience is situational; we sometimes have it and sometimes lose it. We know that adversity can draw out and develop personal strengths.  Resilience is not a rare quality limited to confident optimists with few negative attitudes. We may also accept that personal resilience is our own responsibility. Almost everyone has a degree of mental robustness and … [Read more...]

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How shall we argue?

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Ideally, at the start of any significant relationship we'd agree on answers to this question before the first inevitable important disagreement. Attempting that agreement while actually arguing is a complex process, like trying to fix an aircraft while flying it. However, in its absence these nine strategies can help limit the risk of damage when we're up to our armpits in challenging interpersonal conflict. They are for most people easier to grasp than apply, because acquiring and entrenching … [Read more...]

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Our Interpersonal Inheritance

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Conversations are the barometers of organisational health but personal objectivity about the quality of our contributions to them can be like asking a fish to describe water. Mostly they're a constant, unnoticed system in which we conduct interpersonal relationships. And it's never just us involved: we inherited many of our practices uncritically from our families-of-origin as our parents inherited similarly from theirs. Because they may be based on redundant or unhealthy patterns, the topic's … [Read more...]