There’s no point in trying anything new because I’ll probably fail.LESSON: In today’s fast-changing world you must operate with genuine humility and create the space to be curious and open to learning
RACHEL IS A HIGH-FLYER in a global snacks business. She joined her company as a graduate trainee and excelled at the various internal placements that were part of that programme. After two years she had been asked to choose a specialism and had found that hard. Eventually, after dithering between finance, marketing and Human Resources she’d chosen the latter. Over the next decade she had enjoyed HR and was a particularly commercially minded HR Business Partner, but that hadn’t proved to be satisfying enough for her. For the last few years, like Raku, she had yearned to move more into general management.
The company had seen her potential and hadn’t wanted to lose her to a rival, so she had been given a chance to prove herself in a commercial trouble-shooting role, reporting jointly to the HR Director and Finance Director. During this time she had shown herself to have sound commercial judgement and an ability to work at pace and deliver results. She had therefore just been handed one of the most sought after roles in the business – running the company’s account with one of the UK’s major supermarkets. It was a key role, as so much business was done through that route to market. There had been heated debate about whether the appointment was wise given her lack of experience, but in the end she had been given her big chance.
Sadly, about four months into the job, it seemed that the gamble hadn’t paid off. For the first time in her glittering career Rachel was failing. Such is the importance of the retailer to the business that even the CEO got involved in the debates over Rachel and whether the company should pull the plug on what was always an audacious, even risky, appointment. The business ran on a strict quarterly rhythm and she had about six weeks to show she had rescued the situation. I had been called in to see if, with extra support, Rachel could somehow save the day.
She turned up for our first session ten minutes late. It isn’t always the case that such behaviour is a sign of something deeper (as Freud put it ‘sometimes a cigar is just a cigar’), but often it is. She wore classic business attire and clearly took a lot of care with her appearance. Her lateness, coupled with her distracted air, made me wonder what she felt about the coaching, so I asked her.
‘It’s fine,’ she replied. ‘Good, helpful.’
Sometimes as a coach you have to back your gut and be bold. I went with what all my instincts were telling me.
‘I don’t believe you.’
For the first time she seemed properly to pay attention, but stayed silent. I waited.
‘Don’t believe what?’ she asked.
‘That you really want to be here.’
She grimaced but, again, kept quiet.
I went on, ‘or at least part of you doesn’t.’
‘That’s right actually, part of me doesn’t.’
‘How come?’
‘Well, I know I need help but this is the kiss of death isn’t it?’
‘The kiss of death?’
‘Yes, the final sign that Rachel has failed and is on her way out.’
‘News to me,’ I said. ‘I’m here because Mark and Charlotte (the HRD and FD) want to support you and make you the success they know you can be.’
‘The success I used to be you mean,’ she said quietly and I could see how upset she was underneath her mask.
‘What’s happening is really, really hard for you.’
She looked at me directly for the first time.
I continued, ‘Upsetting on a very deep level.’
She had a fleeting look of what I took to be confusion, an expression that I guessed sprang from surprise that somebody seemed to understand what she was feeling, and was saying it out loud. Eventually she said simply,
‘It is, yes.’
This exchange led to her opening up a bit and she talked about her fear that she had really messed up her career. Already there was a tenor to her remarks that made me wonder whether she was indulging in catastrophic thinking. This is a relatively common cognitive distortion, a psychological term for an exaggerated or irrational thought pattern. These are often the ramifications of the person’s Core Pathogenic Beliefs that make it to the surface. In her case Rachel seemed to feel that a negative event – however insignificant – would lead to absolute disaster.
We then talked about her fear that the coaching was a sign that she had already failed, rather than a genuine attempt to help her not fail. Despite my reassurances, she seemed highly sceptical. I suddenly had an idea, one that would take a bit of manoeuvring to make happen. While I mentally filed it away, Rachel began to tell me the background to the situation she was in. There is always a balance between knowing enough about a client’s situation to understand what is going on and trying to understand it too much. Usually people’s issues aren’t to do with the technical details of their job but rather what are called ‘softer skills’ – the way they think about things in a general sense, or relate to people. This is just as well, or in any given month I might have to be an expert in retailing, digital advertising, private equity and oil trading!
As the session came to an end, I thought that she seemed more relaxed and had accepted the coaching as a positive. As she left the room I said,
‘See you next time.’
She replied, just as the door closed, ‘Yes, if I’m still here.’
I decided that she clearly needed a bit more convincing that the coaching was not a portent of doom, and I went to work on the idea that had occurred to me earlier.
Consequently I found myself a week later standing at reception in the company’s soaring glass atrium, its award-winning advertising silently displayed on large screens all around me. I waved over to one of my colleagues, hoping that we’d pull off our carefully planned choreography.
Luckily things went like clockwork. Just as Rachel stepped out of one elevator Jorge, the company’s charismatic CEO, stepped out of the other. I could see Rachel clock this and hesitate. As the big boss strode through the parting throng, she followed in his wake. He greeted my colleague and then turned, feigning surprise at Rachel’s appearance behind him.
‘Ah! It’s Rachel isn’t it, how are you? Let me introduce you to Kylie, my coach.’
She blushed and looked at me. He waited.
‘Umm … this is Derek, he’s uh … my coach.’
‘Good for you!’ he exclaimed, ‘I have always had a coach, some say it is the secret of my success.’
I swear he gave her an almost imperceptible wink.
We all shook hands and went our separate ways. When we sat down in our room she looked at me with a grin.
‘You set that up didn’t you?’
‘Busted,’ I replied.
‘OK, I get the message,’ she laughed. ‘To be honest it’s less Jorge having coaching, though that was a surprise, and more the fact that he would spend time sneaking around playing games to make the point – that means that they must want this to work, I guess.’
From then on she seemed more able to embrace coaching as the support it was rather than the stigma she feared. As we settled into the session I asked her to share her life story.
‘Really?’
‘Yes, it would help me really understand you.’
‘OK, but it’s no fairytale, let me tell you,’ she replied, her face hardening.
She had grown up in a single-parent family and her mum had been pretty directionless, never sticking at jobs and eventually ending up long-term unemployed. She’d clearly been depressed but never received treatment. With tears in her eyes and a great sense of shame, Rachel admitted that when she was at university her mum had spent some time homeless and sleeping rough.
Sometimes we have thoughts that seem to come from deep within us. We feel we know something in our bones. When that happens in a session, I believe that such insights don’t really come from me at all, but from some connection between me and the coachee – part of what psychoanalyst Carl Jung called the ‘collective unconscious’, or what I refer to as ‘the third space’ (see p. 205). When this happens I have learnt not to repress the thought but save it up to ponder on later or – if it seems really powerful and pressing – to offer it up there and then, taking the risk that it may not be appreciated and even be completely rejected. It’s extraordinary how often it is actually accepted as a deep if unwelcome truth.
I had such an instinct about what Rachel was saying.
‘You feel that if you don’t keep pushing, keep succeeding, that you’ll end up like your mum?’ I ventured.
She looked straight at me, with a startled expression.
‘That’s my dream, I literally dream it and then wake up and lie there picturing it. Me, homeless, without Neil [her fiancé], without our flat, in the park, on my own, in rags.’
We had stumbled on Rachel’s core pathogenic belief. It was directly linked to the catastrophic thinking I’d spotted earlier. This is how she articulated it for herself later in the session:
If I don’t keep excelling all the time or make any kind of mistake it will start a slippery slope that will end with me losing literally everything.
That’s quite an exacting and terrifying standard to hold yourself to. But while fear of failure is quite common, what Rachel was experiencing was extreme and it highlights an important point about pathogenic beliefs. Most people have them and – to a limited degree – that’s fine. A little self-doubt or performance anxiety can be a motivating force. But taken too far such feelings become distinctly unhealthy. There is a world of psychic difference between wondering if your work on a project will mean that you will get your hoped for promotion and believing that even the smallest dip in performance will mean you end up destitute.
As we discussed the extent of Rachel’s own fears she began to make a flurry of connections between her professional and personal life. She had always felt a low-level anxiety, even when things were going well, which had skyrocketed in the last few months. She admitted she had been to her GP and was taking anti-anxiety medication. She hadn’t even told Neil about this. As she confessed this she gave a sardonic laugh.
‘Oh my God,’ she said, ‘it’s Neil’s nickname for me – “worry wart”, that’s what he calls me!’
I let the thought sink in.
‘Wouldn’t it be nice if some of that worry went away,’ I asked.
‘God, yes. Yes please.’
We spent our next session unearthing the more realistic, healthy belief that could guide her going forward. The mantra she eventually came up with was:
It’s OK to fail, it won’t be the end of the world, I will survive and do OK.
Pretty simple and obvious to most of us but a revelation to her, who had been semi-consciously behaving as if the opposite was true.
However, as in many coaching assignments, there was more than one factor at work, what Freud called over-determination. The other surfaced from the feedback calls I did with the people she worked with. Whenever I can, I do these after the first or second session, asking the client to nominate around half a dozen people who know them at work. I will then phone each one, spending half an hour or so, in confidence, asking about the client’s strengths and weaknesses as they see them. I then synthesise these into a few themes and share these with my client. The list of those approached should be a diverse one: the client’s boss and a couple of other senior stakeholders, some peers, some direct reports. I always push to have so-called junior people included in the list, and it was Rachel’s PA and the youngest commercial guy in her team who shed most light on what was going wrong. During our chat they both used exactly the same expression: ‘She won’t admit what she doesn’t know.’
Again, her childhood story held the key. With her mum proving so erratic and unable to cope, Rachel had taken on the role of looking after her younger brothers and sisters. In the psychological jargon she had been ‘parentified’. This can have positive consequences – such children are often high achievers, able to take on responsibility and deliver, but the phenomenon also has a less healthy shadow side.
In Rachel’s case she had been terribly worried, anxious and frightened, but hadn’t been able to show it – to her mum, her siblings, or even herself. So she had developed a way of reassuring herself that she could cope. She knew everything. She didn’t need help. As we discussed this together, it emerged how this underlying need to project absolute confidence and competence was negatively affecting her. We were able to see that her second core pathogenic belief was:
If you ask for help, the whole world will come crashing down, and you won’t get the help anyway.
We spent a while talking about vulnerability, something she’d never felt able to show growing up, and together we watched the TED talk on ‘The Power of Vulnerability’ in which Brené Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston, describes how we have to dare to be vulnerable in order to fulfil our in-built drive for connection. One of the key findings from Brown’s extensive research is that people with a strong sense of love and belonging also have a strong sense of their own worthiness, and are courageous and embrace vulnerability in spite of any feelings of shame or fears of being seen. The result is what Brown calls a ‘wholehearted’ life, full of gratitude, connection, compassion and meaning.
I became convinced that allowing herself to show vulnerability, and then being open to getting help would be the key to Rachel’s success. But that was a big ask. Her pronounced fear of failure and inability to seek help were the twin dynamics that were driving her towards the very failure she dreaded. Like a small plane plunging, helter-skelter, towards the ground, we had to yank the controls hard and get her up and out of her nose-dive.
The breakthrough came as we chatted one day. She had been opening up more and more, and as she talked about what she might do differently she suddenly said:
‘You know, Derek, I don’t really understand how it’s supposed to work, not like I did when I was doing HR.’
She stared off into space, seemingly weighing up something in her mind. Her gaze shifted and she locked eyes with me.
‘How about this for vulnerability?’ she lowered her voice and whispered, ‘I don’t know what the fuck I am doing.’
She seemed surprised to hear herself saying this out loud but, of course, it was just the echo of what her PA and colleague had said a few weeks ago.
Sometimes, if I feel the need to say something – what, in psychoanalysis, is called an interpretation – I don’t. Often the person will say it for me. I felt that the answer to Rachel’s woes was on the tip of her tongue. That her brilliant mind was ready to knit all our insights together and arrive at the one thing she had to do. She didn’t disappoint.
‘Why don’t I just bloody ask?’ she said. She looked deep in thought for a moment and then caught my eye again and laughed.
‘Why don’t I just bloody ask?!’ she repeated.
The answer to this deceptively simple question was that her twin binds of being petrified of failing – and being seen to fail – and her reluctance, even phobia, about asking for help, was why she hadn’t. But our work had loosened these binds and, together, we had created the psychic space for her to think differently.
The next fortnight was a whirl of activity as she went round telling people that she’d gotten things wrong and needed their help. She asked the right questions, truly listened and synthesised everything into her own solutions. She paid particular attention to people on the ‘coal face’, mining them for information. This reminded me of something Carolyn McCall did regularly when she was CEO of easyJet. She would get out of her office and spend a day behind the check-in desks or assisting a flight crew, believing that if you aren’t listening at that level, you’ll never really know what’s going on. The Japanese have a word for it – going to the gemba or ‘real place’. In Rachel’s case, by the end of the fortnight even people at the big retailer whose account she handled were enlisted as her ‘teachers’. It might have been a risk to show vulnerability to people she had a tough commercial relationship with and had to better in negotiations, but she went ahead and did it anyway.
Once she’d freed herself from her core pathogenic beliefs Rachel found herself flourishing again. Her strengths – her intellect, creativity and ability to get on with people – asserted themselves once more. This is the pernicious thing about CPBs, they are ‘the enemy within’. Like the foulest weeds in a garden, they slowly strangle all that is healthy and good until we can barely see what once was there and what might, with work, be seen again.
It actually took another six months until Rachel’s big account was really back on track, and the company, to their credit, stuck with her on that journey. As she showed she was now approaching things with a wholly new mindset, it allowed them to relax their own fear of failure a bit too.
*
‘Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.’
attributed to Mahatma Gandhi
Rachel’s tremendous fear of failure and inner paralysis around asking for help greatly inhibited her in her new role. The heightened sense of responsibility she had carried with her from childhood into adulthood, while an asset in many ways, did not allow her any capacity to be vulnerable, to admit what she didn’t know or ask for help. She developed a persona – a ‘pseudo-self’ – which she carried with her into adulthood in order to cope with the challenges of her childhood. Masked by this persona, she presented herself to the world as permanently capable and independent, but this came at a high price as it also shut out any opportunity for her to learn more about herself. We don’t all need to have had a homeless mother to have this CPB. In 2015, a survey in the US found that one in three Americans were scared of failure, with millennials more likely than any other age group to have this fear. Another study found that people tend to deal with the idea of failure in four ways: success-oriented people see failure as an invitation to improve rather than a reflection of their worth; over-strivers are so afraid of failing that they go over and above what’s needed to make sure they don’t fail; failure-avoidant people tend to procrastinate, make excuses or avoid setting stretching goals; and finally, failure-accepting people have so internalised the expectation that they will fail, that they do not even bother to try. This final group is the hardest to motivate.
What we seem to have forgotten is that as children we failed all the time, and that these failures were an essential part of learning and developing. People with a growth mindset (see p. 64) challenge the idea that failure is final and something to be ashamed of, instead they see it as a learning experience rather than a reflection of who they are as people. Babe Ruth, the famous US baseball player, scored a record-breaking 714 home runs in his career, which shifted the paradigm of what was possible within the sport – but he also had 1,330 strikeouts, which at the time was unheard of. The simple truth is that winners fail a lot, but they don’t just flinch and do their best to bear it until it passes, they deliberately set out to learn and grow from their failures.
Worryingly, research is emerging that shows that fear of failure is something of a gendered issue; studies have found, for example, that while men will apply for jobs they feel 60 per cent qualified for, women only tend to apply if they feel 100 per cent qualified. A vast global study of female entrepreneurship found that in every country studied women had lower perceptions of their entrepreneurial capabilities than men – an idea that is not borne out by any objective reality.
As for Rachel, on a subconscious level, she had decided that making any space to learn – to discover something new about herself, her role or the world – would mean admitting that she didn’t have all the answers, and doing that felt too risky given her childhood associations with that form of vulnerability. She couldn’t untangle the past from the present, and it was only through coaching that she was able to admit that there were some significant (but, crucially, not insurmountable) gaps in her knowledge. It took a fairly dire situation to force Rachel to admit what her colleagues could plainly see – that there were a number of things she needed to learn.
There is a clear overlap between ‘learning’ and the reflection we discussed in the last chapter. But there is also a fundamental difference. When reflecting, you are focused on something that is happening or has happened (hence the suggested questions in the Reflecting Cycle on p. 32). You then explore your thoughts, feelings and behaviour in reference to that particular event. Learning, on the other hand, isn’t necessarily about developing your own thoughts about something that has happened or will happen, but is a more general endeavour. André Gide called it the willingness to lose sight of the shore in order to discover ‘new oceans’; and Marcel Proust wrote that it is a voyage of discovery that is less about ‘seeking new landscapes’ and more about ‘having new eyes’. Learning is about the new and the familiar. It involves acquiring knowledge and skills, but it also entails a shift in perception. It is about the world, but, as in Rachel’s case, it is also inevitably about us. There is a constant interplay – a dance – between two foci: learning about ourselves and learning about the world.
Let’s take a look at the latter first. Rachel’s fear of failure and sense of over-responsibility – which in her case were born out of her core pathogenic beliefs, but which are also engendered in many corporate cultures – essentially paralysed her ability to think clearly about what she needed in her new role (to learn what to do, seek feedback and ask for help). While some executives contend that stress stimulates them into doing their best work, and while there may be some benefits to working under pressure or to a deadline, the truth is that too much anxiety puts the body into fight or flight mode, Over time this may well create adrenal fatigue and burnout, and also inhibit our ability to learn. Rachel’s fears hooked her into a ‘fixed mindset’ and prevented her from adopting a ‘growth mindset’, concepts developed by Stanford professor of psychology, Carol Dweck. A growth mindset is characterised by a belief that one’s most basic abilities are not fixed or innate but can be developed. A fixed mindset, on the other hand, presupposes that talent is innate and that you are either good at something or not, leaving little room for humility, curiosity, learning or growth.
In her new role, Rachel succumbed to what Dweck calls ‘fixed-mindset triggers’, which for most of us are fairly similar – challenges, criticism, or performing below par or less well than others. When faced with these we can all too easily feel we are being attacked, and so get defensive and retreat to a more ‘fixed’ mindset and lose our learning orientation. These triggers can also easily stir up our core pathogenic beliefs, and unless we make a concerted effort to challenge and overcome these, we will usually find that insecurity and defensiveness are not far behind. Whatever your defensive behaviours – whether you shrink and blend in, become controlling, go off the radar or turn to a vast array of other responses, one thing is certain: defences definitely inhibit our ability to grow and learn.
Falling into a fixed mindset is perhaps one of the most insidious threats facing many talented, high-potential leaders. Admitting that you don’t know everything, or that you still have room to grow, often feels too uncomfortable and too risky, especially in a demanding and competitive environment. Ideas may be the currency of the twenty-first century, but it is difficult to come up with good ideas if you do not give yourself permission to come up with bad ones. Creating the space to learn involves being willing to embrace our fundamental fallibility.
The paradox of the fixed mindset is that for Rachel, as for all human beings, learning and discovery are innate. We each have 100 billion neurons in our brains – the brain’s building blocks – and each neuron has between 1,000 to 10,000 connections to other neurons. These connections are known as neural pathways. Every day, more electrical impulses are generated in your brain than in all of the mobile phones in the world!
Some of the pathways are extremely well trodden, which is why we can perform tasks like brushing our teeth or driving without having to concentrate on the motor skills we employ. This principle applies to our emotional and cognitive responses as well; the way we feel, think and react to certain events becomes second nature to us not because that is inherently who we really are, but because it is how we habitually respond to life. This then creates well-worn paths of least resistance for the electrical impulses to travel along in our brains.
Scientists used to believe that the brain was ‘hard-wired’, incapable of changing, adapting or reorganising itself. It was believed that once we reached adulthood no new neurons were produced and that the brain had little ability to create new neural pathways. It has since been discovered that the brain retains the ability to literally grow throughout a lifetime, although this does decrease somewhat as we age. The brain is, in fact, ‘soft-wired’, a term coined by renowned neuroscientist Dr Michael Merzenich. This ability to adapt is called neuroplasticity.
The implications are quite profound – we might have much more ability to transform aspects of our personality than we realise. We are not stuck with the brains we were born with and we’re not trapped in patterns of thinking or behaviour, however ingrained they might seem. In other words, you can teach an old brain new tricks.
Kimani Maruge’s story provides an inspiring example. In 2004, the 84-year-old Maruge entered The Guinness Book of Records by becoming the oldest person in the world to start primary school. He had never been to school but when the Kenyan government introduced free primary education, Maruge seized the opportunity, enrolled, and learned to read from scratch.
It’s harder, maybe, if we come at this from a position of success or status. After all, while often exciting and expansive, learning can also be frustrating, anxiety producing and downright uncomfortable, particularly when our professional reputation or ‘credibility’ is at stake.
Insecurity, close-mindedness, arrogance and plain old ego can all shut down our space for learning. The shore of certainty is one of the most insidious obstacles standing in the way of new discoveries. We have to become willing to be beginners again, to ‘lose sight of the shore’. Thinking that you already know everything you need to know greatly inhibits your ability to greet a familiar scene with fresh eyes. As unsettling as it may feel (especially to executives in senior roles), there is something to be said for the Zen principle of beginner’s mindset, popularised by Shunryu Suzuki: ‘In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.’
*
As well as creating space in our minds to learn about the world we also need to create space to become more self-aware. We all have behaviours, habits, blind spots, personality traits or tendencies that others can see but which we can’t or are only vaguely aware of. Despite much of the current business and leadership discourse about how we all ought to concentrate on playing to our strengths, the truth is that our blind spots derail us from being able to fully leverage those strengths. They have the potential to undermine our best efforts and, as Rachel found, to cause real damage.
With clients I use a model of potential called DEEP, which delves into twelve qualities under the headings of Decision-making, Execution, Emotions and Motivation, and People skills. By breaking down the different elements that combine to predict high potential, it allows people to explore where they are strongest and weakest, highlighting areas they need to develop. Creating the space to identify our development areas and derailers, and acknowledging these to ourselves and others, makes us stronger not weaker. As Bryan D. Ungard of the Decurion Corporation memorably puts it ‘Feast on your imperfections or starve on your ego.’
Yet we all have internal blocks and barriers to change. We are all tempted to live in our comfort zone. We all make errors, work less than efficiently and are unavoidably human. Leaders have to get comfortable being in metaphorical ‘beta’ mode all the time, more focused on becoming than buying into the illusion of completion. To coin another metaphor, as someone once said, a painting is never really finished; it simply stops in interesting places.
Today’s best leaders possess open minds and are humble, they recognise that we exist in networks, and that in an increasingly complex world and marketplace no single individual will ever have all the answers. Google’s Senior Vice President of People Operations, Lazlo Bock overtly looks for humility when hiring. ‘Without humility,’ he states, ‘you are unable to learn.’
With some help from me, and the support of her bosses, Rachel was able to create the psychic space to learn some key internal things about herself that opened her up to learning the new, external things that she needed to know to really succeed at her job. Every one of us would prosper from admitting, as she did in the end, how much we have still to learn – in both of these important realms.
Creating the space to learn has much in common with creating the space to reflect. As well as a curious mindset and the discipline to prioritise more abstract things over the concrete demands that you face every day, the four aspects of space we looked at in Chapter 1 are all relevant. Let’s revisit that section for a moment and think about how each impacts on your desire and ability to learn.
As in the last chapter, think about how you can make time to regularly and systematically build learning into your working life. It is interesting that many professions now expect people to have Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and that this is sometimes an actual requirement. It is for therapists, for example, and is becoming so for certain types of consultants. Yet most people who work in businesses don’t have such a formal requirement to renew and refresh their learning. In the absence of anyone telling you to do this, you should adopt the mentality anyway and carve out some time each month when you will be carrying out your own bespoke ‘CPD’, even if you don’t get a certificate at the end.
Think about where you are most comfortable learning? In the office with your headphones on? At home with your feet up? In a coffee shop? I worked with one executive who was a member of the London Library, a beautiful old institution in London’s St James’s Square. Whenever he could, he used to block out whole afternoons to stroll down from his office in Victoria and sit among the thousands of dusty volumes, the dozens of students and writers (some of them rather dusty themselves), and focus on whatever subject he was trying to master. When I last saw him he was grappling with AI (Artificial Intelligence) and the potential effects of it on his industry. If he felt he’d made good progress he’d treat himself to coffee and cake, but if he felt he’d been a bit aimless or distracted he would forgo this pleasure and head straight back to the office ready to try again next time.
If you’re an introverted learner you will be happy on your own, in a quiet place with a book or tablet on your lap. If you’re an extraverted learner, consider setting up a study group, or forum where people can present ideas and join discussions. One Global HR Director I work with asks her entire HR community (some 500 or so people) to join an hour-long webinar every week. Each quarter they do a quick online survey to discover what people want to learn about and who might deliver some interesting content. Sometimes it’s one of the HR people themselves, sometimes an outside expert one of them knows, sometimes they even ask academics or authors to present. Recent subjects have ranged from ‘What’s the latest best practice in performance reviews?’ to ‘What is blockchain?’, and they invariably get over a hundred people joining each week.
One obvious way of getting others to help you learn about yourself is to ask for feedback, but I am always amazed at how this powerful tool is usually only used irregularly and informally. Turning to a colleague after a meeting, or even conversation, and asking ‘How did you think I did there?’ could – and should – be a weekly or even daily occurrence.
I once worked with a business leader who had been highly successful, reaching the top level at companies such as HSBC and British Airways. He was a super smart, engaging individual, but he drove people hard and could be pretty direct. ‘Sharp elbows’ was his euphemism for it. However, he sometimes underestimated the impact of his style on certain people who were less robust. When, as part of a big transformation project, I undertook some stakeholder feedback calls, people actually talked about being frightened of him at times. He was genuinely surprised – and chastened – by this, and it allowed him to see himself as others saw him. He put a lot of effort into recalibrating his interventions so that while he still challenged and pushed people, he didn’t intimidate them – at least not too much. What he did was brave. We often shy away from feedback because it might be something we don’t want to hear. But it often reveals things that we need to know, and provides the greatest raw material we have for learning about ourselves. I have also, incidentally, found that the mere act of asking for feedback can change people’s perceptions of a leader.
Once you’ve sought feedback, you may find that someone has told you something you feel is wrong or unjust. If that happens the first thing to do is check whether you are being defensive, maybe ask others what they think. But it could be that the person concerned is misreading you, or basing their feedback on a misconception. In a really open feedback culture you could discuss this with them – give feedback on their feedback. Then they could give you feedback on your feedback on their feedback. And so on endlessly. I jest – but not entirely.
Before starting out on your own path to more learning, it is worth checking in to see the extent you are operating out of a growth mindset? Here is the schematic I have developed over the years for talking to clients about this difference:
The key to developing a growth mindset is to become aware of your inner dialogue – the chat that goes on in your head between you and … well … you. Noticing and challenging your thoughts can often be awkward and even uncomfortable in the beginning, like working out a new and unfamiliar set of muscles. Luckily it gets easier the more you do it. Here are some classic examples of the kind of thoughts or ways of perceiving yourself, your life and the world around you that you might want to challenge:
There’s no point in trying anything new because I’ll probably fail.
Why does this kind of thing always happen to me? It’s not fair!
You can’t win. Life is hard.
I’ll never be able to do/achieve that.
That’s just the way I am.
Failing is the end of the world.
Try identifying your own negative thoughts (and your journal is a great way to capture these as they happen, so you can reflect on them later) and then:
ASK YOURSELF: What’s the evidence for this thought? Is it really true? Is it the whole story? What more rational, balanced thought could I put in its place?
NEXT ASK YOURSELF: What is my mindset – fixed, growth or somewhere in between? Which areas in the above table do I need to work on? What can I do to adopt more of a growth mindset?
Here’s one last tip for redefining failure and reframing any skills you haven’t yet mastered. Instead of seeing it as a fixed state of affairs, simply tell yourself ‘this hasn’t happened … yet.’
The learning style debate is a hot one in psychology with various competing models and not a little controversy. Undoubtedly, the idea was overegged for a while and to some extent educationalists have now moved away from it. Nonetheless, there is no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There is little doubt in my mind that people do prefer to learn in different ways. That’s not to say they can’t learn in other ways, just that they would prefer to learn in certain ways – and are therefore more motivated to do so.
One of my business partners, Paul, hates it when I send him stuff to read. He much prefers talking things through (there is an echo here of the ‘reflecting styles’ I mentioned in the last chapter). My own simple version of the various styles is as follows:
| Reader | Prefers to consume information in books, articles or via transcripts |
| Watcher | Prefers watching presentations, videos or looking at diagrams or flowcharts |
| Listener | Prefers to have ideas explained verbally and then discuss them |
| Sketcher | Prefers to sketch out ideas as they learn them, using images and shapes (the person who will most get infuriated if all the lids have been left off the whiteboard pens) |
| Doer | Prefers actually practising in real life situations rather than learning abstractly |
Common sense tells us that most of us can learn by all these means and do so. The 70:20:10 model of learning says that most (70 per cent) of learning should be by doing (i.e. ‘on the job’); 20 per cent from being exposed to others (e.g. learning communities, coaches, mentors etc., what psychologists call social learning); and just 10 per cent from formal learning (workshops, webinars, seminars and so on).
When I raise this issue with clients, they will have some idea of what their preference is, but it is usually ill-thought through and hazy. Amazingly, few people have accepted the consequences of their preference, and even less have acted upon it. So this is less about providing an insight that you were hitherto blind to, and more about helping you take something you know, deepen your insight around it, and then equip and support you to actually do something with the thing you already knew but weren’t putting into practice. For example, if you’re primarily a ‘watcher’, don’t buy books that will simply pile up on your bedside table; instead spend time googling for TED talks, author presentations and the like. If you’re a mainly a listener, start exploring the fascinating world of podcasts. There’s one to accompany this book called ‘Create Space’, and our company does another one featuring interviews with top leaders called ‘Leadership Lessons’. By mastering your learning style you use your time and energy in the most efficient way and so create the greatest space possible for your actual learning.
ASK YOURSELF: What is my learning style preference? Have I sought out information that corresponds to the way I learn?
One last point about learning styles: social media is a fantastic way of finding learning material that suits your style. You can use Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to follow, like, or join with different people, organisations and groups. You will then be served endless links to articles, videos, blogs etc. that should match the interests you have chosen to connect with. I then use an app called Pocket as a way of storing these for later consumption, with just one click on my browser or iPhone. It’s like having your own personal library with you at all times. There are also some fantastic magazines and books out there. I personally devour at least one business book a month (as well as a novel or two), and get the FT delivered to my door early every morning.
One cautionary note, though: it is easy to get overwhelmed by all the information out there. Signing up to just a few good feeds will still result in more stuff than you can consume, even if you set aside time and are disciplined about it. But what’s to get anxious about? You wouldn’t even know this information existed if you hadn’t gone and found it, so let it go. Better to spend ten minutes in the coffee shop reading five good articles and letting fifty pass you by than feel a failure for not reading more, and then probably avoid reading them altogether. To quote the Tesco slogan, ‘every little helps’ – but you don’t have to empty the supermarket shelves.
ASK YOURSELF: Am I actively trying to increase my knowledge? Where will such knowledge come from?
As mentioned earlier, the DEEP model of potential can help to identify the qualities that you need to spend time developing. You can use the model to self-reflect or as a stimulus for a feedback or mentoring discussion. It’s not just about, for example, how innovative you are, it’s also about the detail and texture of this: in what ways are you innovative? What brings out your innovative side and what stifles it? How could you be even more innovative?
DEEP model of potential
In the diagram above, potential is indicated by how much of each of the attributes listed on the left-hand side you possess. These twelve factors look at who you are. They are ‘converted’ into performance through your Experience – what you’ve done; your Choices – what you want; and Fit – the interplay between you and your environment.
I use various measures to help determine an individual’s personal potential profile but you can do a basic job yourself, looking at each of the factors and reflecting on how strong and weak you think you are in relation to it. Maybe ask a few colleagues what they think? Discuss your thoughts with your manager, or a mentor.
ASK YOURSELF: How do I think I fare against each of the twelve attributes? Where am I strongest? Where am I weakest? What can I do to develop myself across the spectrum?
In addition, setting goals and building in motivation are crucial. Set yourself a concrete goal, write it down, have a plan and set a timeline. What do you want to learn, how and by when? Don’t be overly ambitious. Aim for ‘one-degree shifts’ rather than trying to make sweeping changes overnight. If you imagine a boat travelling 100 miles in a straight line across the ocean, and then altering its course by just one degree, the boat will eventually arrive at a completely different destination.
Build in motivation and reward, like my client who had sojourns in the library. For example: ‘Once I feel I really understand all this talk of the “fourth industrial revolution” I will treat myself to that new bag/trip/slap-up dinner I’ve been wanting.’ This is what psychologists call ‘operant conditioning’ and it can include punishments as well as rewards. As always, go with whatever works for you.
ASK YOURSELF: Do I have a clear goal, how am I motivating myself to achieve this?
There is one last tip that you might consider if you want to create the space to learn more. Few people do it, even though it is blindingly obvious. If you want to learn, find a teacher. Whatever your learning style, being with someone who has the knowledge, skills and experience you want to acquire – and who is willing to spend time passing these on – is a fantastic resource.
Again, my experience shows that almost everyone knows this but hardly anyone acts on it. This is particularly hard to believe, as most people love to teach. Especially successful, accomplished people, who may be less driven by material rewards, and be highly motivated by the recognition and respect that comes with teaching and mentoring. Yet so few of us ask them to help us – what a wasted opportunity.
One of the most impressive executives I ever worked with was the Finance Director for a well-known retailer. He was a working-class guy who had surmounted a difficult early life by virtue of his intelligence, charm but above all, determination. When I asked him about his ambition he stated it simply: ‘I want to be CFO of a FTSE 10 company.’ It turned out that a couple of years earlier, he had done something that I had never heard of anyone doing before (though it is completely obvious, and, as we shall see, effective). He had emailed the CFOs of the FTSE 10 at the time, told them of his goal and asked for their help. Two didn’t reply, five were supportive but essentially fobbed him off, and three offered to meet him. From those meetings he gained a couple of people he’s still in contact with and a mentor who has devoted dozens of hours to teach, encourage and support him. Impressive though this client was, there wasn’t anything that special about him. Apart from the fact that he knew what he wanted and asked for help in getting there. As he put it to me, ‘I couldn’t have bought what I’ve learned in the last year. I hesitate to say this as a finance guy but it was literally priceless.’
ASK YOURSELF: Could I find myself a teacher? Who might that be? How can I approach them? Make best use of them? How can I ‘pay it back’ and teach someone else what I know?