LESSON: However many strengths you have, you must create the space to build rich relationships to be truly successful.
I WAS ASKED TO COACH Amir because, despite his massive potential, he had an Achilles heel that was preventing him realising his lifelong ambition – to be the Managing Partner of his prestigious City law firm.
Amir had several strengths. He worked incredibly hard, could process huge amounts of information quickly, and had unerring judgement about how hard to push and when to settle, and a presence that combined silky charm with a hint of menace. He had been a key rain-maker in his prestigious City law firm since joining it after law school, and had a fearsome reputation in the international legal world. If you were a beleaguered corporation – or ultra-high net worth individual – you could turn to Amir and feel you were in the safest of hands. Everyone respected him. Many feared him. Very few, it seemed, liked him.
When he was just a regular partner that didn’t really matter. The occasional complaint about rudeness was a small price to pay for all the fees he brought in. Besides, the junior associates who found him too much to take steered clear and he built a tight group, ‘Amir’s Army’, who felt challenged and stretched by him, and offered him unswerving loyalty.
His bulldozing methods raised more eyebrows once he won a coveted place on the firm’s management committee, but even there his ability to cut through bullshit was valued, and the outgoing managing partner, Alison, had been equally tough when she had to be. It was she who had been forced to explain to him that what he saw as his anointment as her successor had hit some obstacles. While no one doubted his abilities, enough people had voiced reservations about him to suggest that he wasn’t going be the shoo-in for a position he’d assumed would be his. He had managed to join several exclusive clubs as he climbed the ladder, some old-school gentleman’s clubs and some newer, flashier establishments. He had never been refused entry. Now, here he was, in danger of being blackballed by his own firm.
He was furious. He was even angrier when Alison suggested that some coaching might help, which might at least show that he was willing to listen to what people were saying. After he refused, she showed some of her own, more hidden steel to make it clear that if he wanted her job, he had no option. Which is how he came to be sitting, glowering, across from me. I started by asking him to tell me his story. He kicked off with talk of law school, but I gently insisted we start earlier.
‘If I am to understand Amir the top lawyer, I need to understand Amir the man, and part of that is about how you were shaped – your earliest influences.’
‘You mean Mum and Dad?’ he asked, grimacing. ‘You can count out Dad before we start.’
‘How come?’
His tale was tragic but not, alas, that unusual in its psychological fundamentals. His father had been an immigrant who had never quite been the success he wanted – and pretended – to be. Various failed businesses and financial scrapes with relatives had made him flee to the other side of the country, and as Amir turned from high-achieving schoolboy to growing teen, his dad faded out of his life. He had seen him once, in the last ten years, for a drink, which had lasted ten minutes and, as Amir put it, started with the usual bullshit and then the usual running away. He paused in his story.
‘Mum was OK, though. A bit of a doormat, if I’m honest. You know, weak, and a worrier. Did her best, though, to hold it together for us, me and my sister.’
‘Do you see her much?’
For the first time, the angry scowl he’d shown since I gathered him in reception, slipped a little.
‘Not as much as I should,’ he mumbled.
The rest of his story was as you might guess. Scholarship to a boys’ private school, incredible academic results, some sporting prowess and then his rise through the ranks of his firm. A rocket shooting to the stars, now suddenly stalled, drifting in orbit.
‘So, why are you here?’
‘I don’t have a choice.’
I waited.
‘Look, I have to do this. I don’t want to.’
‘You’re perfectly happy with how you are?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘In what ways aren’t you then?’
He looked at me, properly, for the first time.
‘I could make a good lawyer out of you. Well, an OK one,’ he deadpanned.
We both smiled. Again, I waited.
‘Oh for fuck’s sake, I know what they say. Amir the bastard. Amir the cut-throat. They don’t mind it when I’m cutting our competitor’s throats, do they?’
‘You feel what they say is unfair?’
‘Yes and no.’
‘No?’
He became animated.
‘I’m not bloody interested in them, OK? It’s work. I have got my clients, my family, my friends. I don’t need to be schmoozing people who work for me, right? I save that for people I need to win over.’
‘You don’t need to win over people at work?’
‘Hah! Well, I clearly do or I wouldn’t be sitting here would I?’
As our time was coming to an end, I said I wanted him to do some psychometric tests before our next session. I also said that I thought we’d made good progress and thanked him for being so open. He didn’t really respond, just shook my hand and hurried off.
When the results of the psychometrics came back I wasn’t surprised. I had used them more as a check on what I was thinking, and also because I find that interpreting test results back to people can open their eyes somewhat. As we will see with Amir, it turned out that they helped him to make a breakthrough.
I had used the Hogan test, which measures many aspects of personality including sociability. As I suspected, Amir’s score was low – 17 on a scale of 1 to 100. Incidentally, when I met Dr Robert Hogan, the creator of these tests, we discussed how businesses could best instil high performance. After decades working with some of the most senior leaders in the world, he was blunt: ‘Trust. That’s the thing. Determines everything. Trust in one’s boss predicts the whole range of desirable organisational outcomes: productivity, job satisfaction, and organisational commitment.’ It would have been interesting to survey Amir’s colleagues about whether they trusted him. I suspect very few would have said yes.
The other test I used, the Firo B, measures inclusion (how much people want to be with other people); affection (how warm they are with others); and control (how much they need to be in charge). Amir’s scores were very high on the latter and very low on the first two – 1 out of a possible 9 for both measures. These scores confirmed that Amir was a very self-sufficient person. He didn’t need a lot of social interactions. He didn’t enjoy being warm towards people beyond a small group, and he didn’t want most people getting close to him. Relationally, he largely operated as a lone wolf. When we next met I explained all this to him and he had the grace to accept the results.
‘I’m happy with it, though.’
‘Well,’ I replied, ‘I am not so sure. But this isn’t therapy, it’s coaching, so let’s think about the effect of this on your work life. How might such a person be perceived?’
He smiled: ‘A bastard.’
‘Maybe,’ I replied. ‘Does that bother you?’
‘It’s enough compensation for missing out on being managing partner?’
He looked at me quizzically.
‘Look, Amir, no one has told me this but here’s what I suspect, you think this coaching is a formality, something to be ticked off, so that your promotion can happen. I suspect you’re half right. It is a formality, so that they can refuse you it.’
He stared at me, his eyes hooded and cold. I felt how his adversaries must feel. It didn’t feel good.
‘But I can help you. I can help you have a real shot at what you want. But only if you want to be helped.’
I waited. He said something, in a whisper. I waited more.
‘I do. I will.’
‘You mean it?’
‘Yes. I do.’
Again the moment of vulnerability was snatched back. He leant forward, his expression becoming aggressive, almost taunting.
‘But how?’
I explained how. Coaching isn’t always about fundamental underlying change. Maybe it’s better if it is. I don’t know. That’s a philosophical debate we can have one day. To me, it’s about helping people be better at work. If that comes about because of some Damascene conversion, some deep personality shift, that’s great. If it comes about more tactically, more transactionally, that’s fine too. I explained all this to Amir.
He grinned, ‘So you’re going to help me fake it.’
I smiled back.
‘I’d prefer to say I am going to help you compensate.’
Now I have to admit, I wasn’t being entirely honest with Amir. I have seen, many times, and hoped it would be true for him, that once someone has opened themselves up to a change of being, even if done cynically, they actually do experience a deeper shift, one that becomes more authentic. They may fake it. But with luck, they fake it until they make it.
When we next met I asked Amir if we could do a stakeholder map.
This is a great tool that almost anyone can benefit from using. Again, like most of the best tools, it’s simple. On a piece of paper you draw a small circle in the middle with your name in it. You then draw other circles around it, which are linked by a line to you at the centre. In each of these circles is the name of a stakeholder. Stakeholder is just jargon for someone you should be connected with. After people have done their initial map, I ask them to create an outer periphery with people they are less in contact with but who they should still have good relationships with. An example would be the woman in Accounts. She may not matter day to day, but she will matter come the year’s end, so lay the relationship groundwork now.
After you have drawn the map, rate (on a scale of 1 to 10) how good your relationship with each person is right now (using the ‘Professional Intimacy’ model in Chapter 4 as a guide) – then rate how good (again out of 10) it should be. Do some soul-searching and be brutally honest. I have done this exercise hundreds of times with people and, almost always, the disparity between what you know is needed and where you are now is sobering.
The ideal score will vary. For example, you should have at least an 8 or 9/10 relationship with your boss, despite any difficulties, whereas your relationship with the person in Accounts who oversees financial control for your business unit may only need to be a 6. The late-night security guard shouldn’t be forgotten, but a 2 or 3 will probably suffice. You can then go on to devise strategies for each person, having prioritised the person you should work on most.
One thing that I always stress to people, especially those who feel very busy or are introverts, is that it’s actually a lot easier to create a rich connection than people often think. A dinner, lunch or even an hour’s chat over coffee can create relatively deep bonds that can sustain a working relationship for a long time. The key is to spend some personal, professionally intimate time with the other person, so you cease to be a name on one of hundreds of emails, or someone they said hello to at a meeting, and become an actual person.
*
My motivation for doing stakeholder mapping with Amir was about opening up the whole idea of relationships in his mind and moving him into a different space. Doing the exercise split him into two. His rational side knew that the people he’d sketched out were important, and that having good relationships with them made sense; after all, his lack of these was precisely – despite his hard work – what was looking to cost him the top job he so desired. His more emotional side, though, couldn’t resist being contemptuous of that idea. So as he rated people he would deliver crisp one-liners about what he thought of each of them.
‘Utterly useless … Wanker … Couldn’t argue his way out of a paper bag … Stupid tart … Empty suit … Arse-licker.’
‘Wow,’ I said, ‘Joe in research must have really done something to upset you.’
He looked at me, surprised. ‘No … Why?’
‘Well, you seem so angry and scathing about him.’
He paused for thought. ‘Oh, give me a break, it’s just how I talk.’
He had particularly singled out Norma, one of the junior secretaries in his team. Nearing retirement and lowest in the pecking order, she sat below his PA and the team’s senior secretary. His wishes would mostly reach her via them, but occasionally he had to speak to her direct.
‘She’s such a wet blanket, even her name annoys me. You should see her desk. Little knitted bits of crap everywhere, and about a hundred pictures of her bloody dogs. Two ugly little terriers. You’d think they were her kids, the silly cow. Plus she’s useless. Always slow, never takes initiative. I’d sack her but for some reason they won’t let me.’
After he’d finished his rant, I said, ‘I think, Amir, it is possible, that this level of anger and contempt is not actually about these people at all, least of all some lonely elderly lady and her dogs.’
His arrogant look faltered slightly.
I took my chance.
‘Now Amir, I know you a bit by now and I know that what I am about to ask you to do is a bit weird, but will you have a go?’
He looked sceptical.
‘It’s just an experiment.’
He sighed, ‘OK.’
‘What I want to do is lead you through a visualisation …’
*
When Amir was ready I asked him to tell me what he saw.
‘Nothing. A blank. Greyness.’
‘OK. Now, look out into that space and tell me what reaction you have to the idea I am about to mention. It could be a thought, a feeling, a bodily sensation. Whatever you experience, tell me. Try and describe it. Now take a few more deep breaths.’ I paused. ‘OK, now imagine that another person appears. What happens to you?’
‘Who is it,’ he asked, his voice sounding a bit dreamy.
‘Anyone, no one in particular. Just a generic person. Someone else, other than you.’
He took a deep sigh, and leant back.
‘What happened?’
‘I ummm … I felt invaded, he, it’s a he, he’s too close.’
‘Try and stay with it. What’s happening now?’
‘I feel bothered, messed with …’ He waved his hand in front of him, as if pushing something away.
When leading visualisations, I often find that the first reaction, while meaningful, covers up a deeper, more fundamental reaction.
‘What might you be feeling, underneath that “bother”?’ I asked.
He flinched. Then grimaced.
‘What, what is it Amir?’
‘It … It doesn’t make sense …’
‘What doesn’t?
‘I umm … I feel …’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I feel frightened.’
‘OK, do you feel safe?’
‘Yes, yes, I’m OK. It’s just not pleasant. Really not pleasant.’
‘OK. Well, let that figure back off or fade away. Has that happened?’
‘Yeah, yeah, it’s happening …’
‘Have they now gone completely?’
‘Yes, yes, it’s all OK now.’
‘Now feel the sensations of you sitting in the chair here, and the sounds of the room, and take some deep breaths.’
I waited.
‘Then, when you are ready, open your eyes.’
After a few moments he opened his eyes. He looked puzzled, and still a bit scared. It was time for an interpretation: a statement that explains what is happening, or has happened. A key insight, if you like. Some coaches prefer to couch these as questions, but if I feel I am on to something, both intellectually and also in my gut, I will just say what I am feeling. Other times, I might ask the person what they think something means. You’d be amazed how often they get it bang on the money, as Amir did.
‘So, what do you make of that?’
‘Well,’ he said, looking at me and sounding a bit vulnerable for the first time since I had met him. ‘I guess that’s what I think of other people. All other people. No wonder I keep my bloody distance.’
I paused while his words sunk in, for both of us.
‘I think that’s right,’ I eventually said. ‘What your dad did, and your mum to a lesser extent, was teach you that other people were trouble, burdens, unreliable. If you come to believe that, it’s no wonder you’d decide to keep away. That was a perfectly sensible coping mechanism to deal with those people, but not …’ I paused again and we finished the thought together, ‘… not everyone.’
‘I fucking hated him, but there’s a period before that which I never think about. It’s weird, I know it’s there but it almost isn’t. I will it away. There was a period when I didn’t hate him, I loved him, and I wanted him to love me. But he was such a pain, so angry, so moody, that I couldn’t get close to him, in fact, a lot of the time I was scared of him …’
He was beginning to tear up.
‘You took that idea, that people had to be fended off, otherwise they would scare you, and let you down, with you through life. But it isn’t what everyone is like.’
‘It isn’t what Sandy’s like,’ he said, referring to his wife.
‘No, you let Sandy in, somehow she proved herself.’
He smiled at that. ‘You should ask her! She’d say it took a while. I finished with her three times. She said I was a nightmare.’
I paused.
‘Yes, you were a nightmare. You are a nightmare.’
‘Look, our time’s up, but reflect on all that, and let’s talk about it again when we next meet. If something comes up that upsets you, you can call and we can talk before then, OK?’
He didn’t call (I hadn’t expected him to). After all he was a tough, resilient guy, but at our next session, for the first time ever he wasn’t late, in fact he was sitting in reception twenty minutes early.
As soon as the door closed on our room he started talking excitedly.
‘Last time was really interesting, right, I talked to Sandy about it and she said it’s spot on, that’s what I’m like.’
He went on to give some examples from earlier in his life, and from his marriage. Then his energy subsided and he looked directly at me.
‘I guess I am wondering what we do about it, though?’
‘Well, here’s the idea. What we discovered last time was what in my jargon I call a core pathogenic belief, or CPB.’
I went through all that with Amir. We then spent some time reviewing what had happened in our last session, and what he had thought and felt. I then said I was going to leave the room for five minutes and see if he could come up with an articulation of his CPB. I handed him a marker, pointed to the flip chart, and left. The phrase has to come from the heart. It can’t be my language, it has to be theirs.
‘Be bold, be true. Don’t pull your punches. Tell it like it is.’
Five minutes later I came back in and he was sitting quite still in his chair. On the flip chart were various sentences with words crossed out and added. After the jumble, he’d written, confidently and clearly (I apologise for the language):
I think other people are cunts, so I get being a cunt in first.
He looked up at me and smiled a shy smile. It was as if a different Amir was emerging. I smiled back. He held up his hand. We high-fived.
‘Wow,’ I said.
He smiled again, this time sadly. ‘And who’d want a cunt as Managing Partner?’
We sat in silence for a while.
‘OK,’ I eventually said. ‘I’m going to leave you for another five minutes. See if you can come up with the antidote. The belief you want to have, even if it’s not fully there yet.’
When I returned, the flip chart paper was blank. He was standing looking perturbed and pensive. I wondered what had gone wrong. Then, with a smile and a flourish, he pulled the paper up and revealed this:
People are OK, I’m OK, stop being such a dick.
I laughed out loud, and again, we high-fived.
We talked about what he might do to remind himself of this new, more realistic, helpful mantra. In a typically ballsy move he said he was going to have it as his smartphone screensaver.
Though it would take time to be fully digested and acted upon, now that we had dealt with this enormous semi-conscious blocker to Amir behaving differently, we could start the detailed work of building his relationships.
Over the next few sessions we talked about what he might do. He bravely decided he was going to open up to people. Explain what he’d learned in coaching, ask forgiveness, and ask if they would give him a second chance. Many people were sceptical, thinking he was just playing them to get his promotion. Others were more receptive. Over time he worked through the people on his stakeholder map. As we neared his final session I noticed that there was one person he hadn’t tried to interact with. Norma, one of his secretaries, the one with the dogs he found so annoying.
‘Well, she’s like third down in my support staff,’ he began justifying himself. ‘I mean is it even …’
As he was about to say ‘worth it’ he caught my expression, and laughed.
‘All right, all right, lay off, I’ll do it.’ He looked reflective. ‘You know if I’m being really honest, I’ve been avoiding doing it with her. No idea why.’
I decided to hazard a guess. ‘Does she remind you of anyone?’
‘Umm, no. I don’t know many people like poor old Norma. I can honestly …’
He stopped abruptly and slammed his fist down on the arm of his chair.
‘Jesus. You’re right. Jesus. My bloody Mum.’
We let it sink in.
He shook his head, ‘Fuck me.’
‘You know what to do.’
A couple of days later, for the first time, in what had been a rather intense coaching assignment, Amir called my mobile and left a voicemail:
‘It’s me, Amir. Look I did it. I went up to Norma and sat on the edge of her desk. She nearly had a heart attack. I smiled and picked up a particularly garishly framed photo of the dogs, and said, “Who are these fellas then?” She looked startled but then reeled off their names, ages, favourite food. I thought she wasn’t going to shut up. But then she said, “Oh, listen to me going on, you’ve got work to do, off you go.” My assistant was looking over, couldn’t believe her eyes. Anyway, you’ll never bloody guess what happened. I’m just forwarding you an email. You won’t fucking believe it, have a read and call me back.’
I checked my inbox and clicked on his email. It was a forwarded one from Alison, the current Managing Partner, who had sent him for the coaching.
FROM: Alison B—, Managing Partner
TO: Amir k—, Litigation Partner
SUBJECT: Change?
Hi Amir,
I just wanted to ask you to come and see me to talk about the future. It seems to me that there is now a chance to progress things. I have been watching you for the last few months and have to admit I’ve seen someone who has changed quite a bit. There are far fewer outbursts, far less noise (informal and formal) getting back to me about your behaviour. It’s a black joke, but one of the other partners asked if maybe you’d had some terrible health scare. I’ve also heard the words, ‘considerate’ and ‘collaborative’ used in connection with you, both a first as far as I can remember. Of course some people are suspicious but yesterday something happened that made me think that whatever is happening has to be real. You won’t know this but Norma Blackwell works here because she is an old school friend of my mum. Well, our visits to her in the Hospice overlapped last night and we had a little chat. She mentioned you’d been asking her about her dogs, and even said she could bring them in to the office one Friday (which incidentally I think is against our health and safety policy). Nonetheless, I thought as she bustled away, if Amir is chatting with Norma about her dogs then something really has changed. Pop by later and let’s talk.
Best,
Al
‘When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.’
Dale Carnegie
If Amir could have chosen which chapter his story would have featured in, a chapter on connecting and relationships would probably have been bottom of his list. Yet it was around relationships where his work lay. First, he had to get to grips with understanding his behaviour and the underlying feelings he had about relationships. After this, he had to set about building his relationships in a new way. While Amir would probably have preferred to be featured in the ‘Do’ part of this book, presented as someone who was crushing it, it’s no accident that he appears here. His story demonstrates that however we feel about other people, we cannot not be in relationship with them. If we believe, as Amir did, that people are four-letter words, then that is what we will experience as we interact with them. As he found, it’s also often what we end up becoming. This applies whether we believe people are by and large kind, or pathetic, or cold, or annoying. Our perceptions are the baseline for how we interact with the world, and as Amir’s story demonstrates, how we view our relationships makes a huge difference to how fulfilling or irritating those relationships are. In the previous two chapters we looked at how we can get in touch with our own emotional reality – and share that with others. This chapter takes those ideas to a deeper level and looks at how we can create the richest relationships possible at our work.
When an organisation starts to struggle, something is usually happening relationally. In their book Real: The Power of Authentic Relationships, the clinical counsellors Duane and Catherine O’Kane share their belief that all issues are actually relational: we might think we have productivity problems or a problem with morale, but the real issues are relational. For example, mental health issues cost the UK £70bn per year, with 15.8 million work days lost due to stress, anxiety and depression. While many people see this as an intrapersonal issue taking place within the individual alone, the O’Kanes suggest – and I agree – that much of this is actually to do with what’s happening between people. Some work issues patently involve relationships: your boss might not pay you as much attention as you’d like, your team may not have gelled, a new colleague may have joined who you’re threatened by, you may feel your peers exclude you or you might be weary of office politics. But many other issues are actually relational ones in disguise. They might look like lethargy, lack of motivation, low engagement, underperforming, being close to burnout, overworking, high turnover, high absenteeism and so on, but underlying those symptoms the root cause is often problems with one or another relationship. Maybe right now at work you feel yourself holding back and not giving your best? Maybe your direct reports are holding back, and you are not getting the best out of them? What relationship issues could be playing a part in these problems?
I once worked with an MD who ran the biggest of several UK regions for a FTSE 100 household name. As we discussed his development areas, he wrote down on a flip chart that he wanted to move from a leader who ‘gets on OK with most people’ to a leader who ‘as well as doing the day job builds deeper relationships.’ I had to gently rebuke him. For someone at his level, building deep relationships was the day job. There was nothing more important. Everything else stemmed from that. Once he thought about it he ruefully agreed. This isn’t just true for senior executives, your relationships at work – whatever your role – are the bedrock of what you can achieve. I used to work in a consultancy where there was always competition for the best rooms to work in and see clients. My colleagues were always a bit mystified (and annoyed) that I always seemed to get allocated one of the large, airy corner offices. What they didn’t know is that every time I went on an assignment abroad I would bring back a little present – a keyring from Moscow, a fancy glass perfume bottle from Saudi Arabia, a small carved tortoise from Africa – for the receptionist, who was the person who allocated the rooms. There was a tale told of Robert Maxwell, the overbearing media tycoon. At a fancy dinner he asked the waiter for an extra bread roll, the waiter apologised and said that he’d see if there was one left over once he had served everybody. Maxwell grew angry and boomed the inevitable rebuke, ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ Prompting the waiter to respond with a whispered, ‘Don’t you know who I am sir? The man in charge of the bread rolls.’
While every relationship is unique, healthy relationships share a number of characteristics that can be ‘tested for’ and developed if they’re found to be lacking. These are identified in the Professional Intimacy model I have referenced before (see p. 95). They include empathy, openness, authenticity, trust and boundaries. Let’s look at each of these in turn.
Empathy is quite simply the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, to get a sense of what they might be thinking, feeling and experiencing – to see things from a different perspective. This sounds simple but takes quite a lot of emotional maturity to be able to do well, since it often requires that we suspend our preconceptions and judgements towards another person and make understanding this other person and their experience as important if not more important than our own.
At Ray Dalio’s hedge fund, Bridgewater, the culture is characterised by its openness, built around the principle of total transparency. If you consider yourself to be a fairly open person, consider this: at Bridgewater, there is no such thing as a ‘private’ meeting since anyone can see who is in any meeting at any time, and every single meeting, whether internal or with clients, is recorded and the files are made available to anyone in the company who wants them (excluding proprietary client information). Openness might seem antithetical to how many businesses have traditionally operated, but it’s actually a secret weapon for businesses – and leaders – wanting to get ahead. In a world characterised by KPIs, targets, baselines and other often mind-numbing statistics, taking a brief moment to acknowledge another human being in your daily business can really, really make a difference. Openness can mean many things: sharing your ideas in a meeting rather than hiding and protecting them; looking a colleague or client in the eye and smiling; sharing aspects of yourself that feel slightly vulnerable, such as your sense of humour. Openness can also just take the form of asking your colleagues questions about themselves. I quoted Dale Carnegie at the beginning of this section. He also said, ‘You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.’
Authenticity has become a buzzword in recent years, and for good reason; we crave authenticity in all our relationships, and work is no exception. Authenticity, as Amir found, can feel frightening. It requires us to let go of our safe, impenetrable business personas and to bring our whole selves to the table – quirks, imperfections, emotions and all. Doing this might bring up old feelings, or it might throw us into uncertain waters in which we experience new feelings. Either way, it can feel a bit risky leaving the metaphorical masks and armour behind. Understandably, many businesses get a bit nervous about this, but there is a fast growing movement of people and business leaders who recognise that welcoming authenticity has many tangible benefits. Authenticity has the potential to make loyalty and engagement skyrocket. For example, a Gallup study found that 87 per cent of workers worldwide feel emotionally disengaged, and yet it’s clear in my mind that even one moment of authenticity can really brighten someone’s day. Authenticity doesn’t mean blatantly ignoring or disrespecting agreed business codes or ethics, and neither does it mean sharing every personal and private detail of our lives at work; it simply means that we do our best not to deliberately hide parts of ourselves that could actually add something brilliant and enriching to our experience of being at work. Authenticity sometimes means mustering the courage to be ourselves in a world that tells us to be anything but, and choosing to practise authenticity will sometimes feel challenging as we push back against the strong urge to fit in at any cost. Authenticity allows us to bond with others at certain moments, while other times it leaves us feeling more alone. Either way, people know that they are dealing with someone real. As the philosopher Alain de Botton once wrote, ‘Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone – and finding that that’s OK with them.’
Trust is an interesting one, particularly because in many business settings, people are decidedly wary of and guarded around each other. I like this simple trust test, which I came across a number of years ago. See if you can answer yes to the following two questions. First, would you buy a used car from this person? Second, if something happened to you, would you leave your kids with this person? These questions cut to the heart of what trust is about – your belief that another person’s intention is to deal fairly with you and does not intend to rip you off, and your belief that they care enough about what (or who) you care about to take care of it (or them).
Strong relationships are also characterised by clear boundaries. These set the ‘rules’ – what’s in and what’s out. Clearly an aspect of this would be inappropriate behaviour, but it could also be subtler than that. For example, if someone is going through a difficult divorce, they may or may not want to talk about it, however close to you they feel. Rather than hazard a guess, or taking the safe option of saying nothing, you can set the boundaries using the kind of clear communication we have been discussing. For example, saying something like: ‘Hey John, I know things are tough at home at the moment, if you want to talk about it let me know’ might elicit the response, ‘I’d love to actually, it’s weird never to mention it when we get on so well.’ Or it might be met with, ‘Actually Michelle, I’d really rather not talk about that at all, but thanks for asking.’
Boundaries also relate to self-esteem. Whatever someone says about you shouldn’t easily penetrate your boundaries – you don’t need to take on board other people’s negativity. Try seeing yourself as someone in control of what you allow to get to you. If too much gets through, imagine yourself having a tougher boundary – a suit of armour, say, that repels bad stuff from other people.
Finally, boundaries link to accountability and help us clarify what is our responsibility and what isn’t. They help us build strong relationships through being honest, straightforward and direct with the people we’re dealing with. When I can get that to you by Friday morning means I can get that to you by Friday morning, trust and rapport strengthen; when however we try to please people by never saying no, or do not accurately assess what’s on our plate, or are disorganised and scatty, and I can get that to you by Friday morning means by Wednesday next week, or I meant next Friday morning, it can really knock the quality of our relationships, as Tamsin finds in Chapter 8.
How we communicate with others is also crucial – both verbally and non-verbally – and determines the quality and depth of our relationships to a large degree. Our communication styles tend to reflect how we perceive and feel about people deep down; consider the example of someone who is constantly apologising to other people, or the person who never makes eye contact, or the person who talks incessantly and doesn’t ask other people questions, or the person who uses humour so much that you never really get to know them. Communication can make or break a relationship.
The tricky thing with relationships is that the characteristics described in the Professional Intimacy model can be as elusive as the snitch in a game of Quidditch at Hogwarts. They certainly need as much effort to find and keep.
We are thrown into relationships at birth, and regardless of how loving or well intended our upbringing, we have all been ‘fucked up’ to some extent, to quote the wonderful poet Philip Larkin in his ode to parenting, ‘This Be the Verse’. When it comes to relationship issues, there are literally thousands of strange and wacky human behaviours. No doubt you’ve witnessed (and exhibited) a few in your lifetime. Triggers for relational anxiety are everywhere: anytime we encounter leadership or followership, our brains kick into gear, connecting the dots between the present situation and all the times in the past when we’ve encountered this kind of situation. The same goes for making mistakes, taking risks, facing change, uncertainty or the unknown, or embarking on beginnings or approaching endings.
No two people are alike, but many of our worst work behaviours can be summed up by the following quote from the book An Everyone Culture by Robert Keegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey. At work, they write, ‘Most people are doing a second job that no one is paying for … covering up their weaknesses, managing other people’s impressions of them, showing themselves to their best advantage, playing politics, hiding their inadequacies, hiding their uncertainties, hiding their limitations. Hiding.’ When we hide, we present only certain aspects of who we are, often shutting the personal away, making it private and inaccessible while we’re at work, perhaps only letting our defences down (a bit) when we are at the pub. We live double lives. The skills, qualities and assets that make up these more ‘personal’ parts of our identity get shelved. At our absolute worst we hide, we lie and we fake our way through the working day. A point echoed by the O’Kanes, mentioned earlier, who have worked with individuals, couples and groups for well over fifty years between them, and who describe three categories into which almost all of our limiting behaviour fits: hiding, pretending and defending.
I have known three of the last four British Prime Ministers and was once lucky enough to be invited for Sunday lunch at Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country residence. Over the roast beef the conversation was free flowing, fun and quite personal. After lunch, during more of a working session, the mood shifted, as the then Prime Minister moved back into his ‘professional mode’. There was no more joking or emotional connecting, just a cold, intellectual focus on the question in hand. While this shift was understandable up to a point, so defensive was the atmosphere that you could almost feel the life draining out of the room. I certainly don’t think it brought out the best in people, however serious the subject.
Amir, too, was a skilful defender. Nobody ever got the chance to get close to him. His brash, rude way with people often offended, and was extremely effective in keeping people at arm’s length. We all have mechanisms and strategies for dealing with people, formed in response to the core pathogenic beliefs we make up at different times in our lives. Some of us present very differently to Amir. We might have learned that the world responds well to us when we are sweet, or intellectual, or bold, or funny or seductive. Much of this will depend on the unique circumstances we found ourselves in when we were younger. For many of us, the person we become often mirrors – or contrasts sharply – with an important person in our life who let us down. Amir’s relentless achieving stood in stark contrast to his dad’s underachieving, and his aggressive manner was formed with his mum’s weakness as a backdrop. While many of our personality traits are what make us uniquely ourselves, it’s also worth considering the contexts that shaped us – the whens, wheres, whos and whys that influenced the people we became. As Amir found, the behavioural patterns that served us brilliantly in childhood eventually become obsolete or even outright damaging to us as adults, creating the very thing that we initially tried to defend ourselves against. Amir was shocked to realise that, deep down, he was frightened of other people; I’m sure Amir’s colleagues would also have been shocked to learn this, since he did 99 per cent of the frightening! Our defences are clever like that. They often cover up the truth so effectively that we’re gobsmacked when we discover it.
Some of the forms defending takes include criticism (cleverly putting the focus on someone else’s weakness and keeping one’s own out of the limelight); stonewalling (in which we go cold on one or more colleagues, quite literally shutting them out); contempt, working in silos; or being outright hostile. Whatever form it takes, the same principle applies: any time people position themselves defensively instead of relating openly and with candour and trust, things start to become difficult. Underneath all defences is the fundamental defence against vulnerability.
There is one further way we can stop ourselves from building richer relationships. It is by thinking that we don’t have enough space to talk to people properly, because we are all so busy, something I raised with Amir when we were doing his stakeholder mapping. I find that people who are less naturally relational assume that if they start talking to people it’ll never end, and consume all their time, but generally, people will know what’s appropriate (just as Norma did). They just like some sort of connection, on a more personal and ‘real’ level. That will still leave us with our own particular mix of extraversion and introversion, and varying levels of inclusion needs and sociability – which is all fine. The purpose of Amir’s story is not to prescribe a certain way of being, but to help you think about how you relate and why, and what you might do differently, given your unique make-up, in your own chosen way. How might you create space to connect with people on a deeper, more real level? As the stakeholder map shows, the pace and depth of these relationships will vary. Making this space is not about being nice – or even available – to everyone. It is about making sure that the relationships that matter are healthy and nurtured.
With the influx of an entirely new generation – a generation who have grown up in a culture deeply immersed in sharing and social media – I think we’re going to see a further shift towards employing people not simply for their skills and experience, but for personality, values and cultural fit. Consider again that Gallup finding that up to 87 per cent of workers feel emotionally disengaged from work. It’s crystal clear that relationships have the power to be the gateway to a transformed, more engaged, more resilient workforce where people are encouraged to work and play together, to be entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial, to study and learn and fail and try again, not in isolation, but in an engaged, creative, thriving community. Rich, real relationships have the power to transform our levels of satisfaction, fulfilment and creativity. But they can only do this if we open our minds and hearts, risking hurt, risking loss and risking being fully alive. The choice is always the same – to greet and interact with the world from a place of defence, or to show up from a place of love. It’s as simple and as difficult as that.
Whether you love being around people or at best merely tolerate them, the one thing you cannot do is divorce yourself from other people – even if you take a break, leave or ‘end’ a relationship. Very often, a relationship that is ‘over’ still continues in our mind; have you never found yourself thinking about someone years – even decades – after you’ve lost touch with them? The other thing to bear in mind is that relationships are like living organisms: they need ongoing attention, time, energy and care. Mastering relationships is a practice, not an event.
Use the stakeholder mapping exercise and the ‘Professional Intimacy’ model to audit the quality of the key relationships in your working life. Work out a plan to take you from where each relationship is now to where you want it to be.
To go even deeper you can do what in twelve-step fellowships, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, is described as ‘taking inventory’. We can learn a lot about relationships by looking at what’s not working, focusing our attention on our contribution rather than the other person’s. Take some quiet time to mentally run through all your main day-to-day relationships and notice how you feel as you reflect briefly on each one. If there is any judgement, resistance, discomfort or unease, it might be a sign that you have some work to do – even if it appears to be the other person’s behaviour that’s ‘making’ you feel a certain way. The foundation of real emotional accountability is recognising that nobody has the power to make you feel anything. If we feel something – hurt, offended, violated, talked down to – it is because on some level we agreed with the other person’s assessment of us. That doesn’t give anyone the right to do or say what they want; words can sting and actions can wound. But it does emphasise personal responsibility, which – especially when it comes to relationships – our world could do with more of.
Making space to reflect on your relationships can be powerful, as Amir found. You might realise, like he did, that someone you dislike or have a problem with at work subconsciously reminds you of someone from your past (remember how Norma reminded Amir of his mother?). Or you might acknowledge that you’re caught up in – and possibly perpetuating – unhelpful relationship dynamics, such as power games, office politics, infighting, gossip, teasing, bullying or people pleasing. You might be hiding, lying, faking, pretending or defending. Acknowledging this doesn’t make you a bad person, it simply makes you a person, and a responsible one at that. We rarely want to admit that we have been mean, or lazy, or calculated, or petty. It’s much less embarrassing to point out how Sandra in Finance or Tom in Marketing messed up. It’s hard and uncomfortable to acknowledge our mistakes and it requires guts, maturity and humility. In short, it requires vulnerable leadership. It might comfort or inspire you to know that at Bridgewater, the following equation is deeply embedded in the minds of every employee, associate and partner: Pain + Reflection = Progress. Take any pain or emotional discomfort stirred up in your work relationships, add a dose of reflection and you will inevitably learn, grow and make progress. If you’re in a leadership position of any kind, it’s worth acknowledging that your action and inaction may have more of an impact on those around you and the wider relationship system than someone more junior to you.
Once a month, you might want to take some space to reflect on any key relational issues that you encountered in the previous thirty days. As I said earlier, wherever you find people, you also find unspoken yet powerful psychological content concerning authority, leadership, gender, intimacy, power, control, individuality and togetherness. If something nags at you, or you realise that something happened which isn’t resolved, focus on your contribution to the upset only – much more easily said than done! Aim to take from it only what’s going to help you develop, and clean it up, communicating with the intention of being accountable and kind.
ASK YOURSELF: What’s not working in my work/personal relationships? What am I contributing to the problem? Where am I hiding, lying or faking? What’s one step I can take to change this? When will I take it?
It is incredibly easy in our fast-paced, metrics obsessed world to go for months or years without pausing or making enough space to reflect on what we’re doing it all for. This chapter has encouraged you to make space to relate, and part of that, for me, necessitates remembering that there is sacredness in the everyday mundanity that we can all too easily take for granted – and that much of that occurs not in the office or on the road, but at home.
Bronnie Ware worked in palliative care for many years, with patients who had between three and twelve weeks left to live. She found that over and over again, people shared a few key regrets as they looked back on their lives. Sometimes it takes something as final and confronting as coming face to face with our mortality to look at what really matters. In a 2012 article for the Huffington Post, Ware reported that the second most common regret was, I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. She writes: ‘This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship. Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.’ There are many caveats and nuances to all of this, and each of us has to decide for ourselves whether we are living to work at the expense of other aspects of our lives. We’ll return to the idea of Balance in Chapter 11.
But for now, with regards to the topic of Relate, I’d like you to consider whether this applies to you – not only from your perspective, but from your family’s, too. It can often be tricky to challenge what is expected of us by our employer, but any uncomfortable conversation has to be better than looking back and really wishing that you’d been home for family supper at least a few nights a week. So the final ‘tool’ I offer you in this section is simple: step away from the office. You might even use the Professional Intimacy model to throw some light on how your personal relationships are faring. It may not be a pretty sight! Go and connect and create space for the most important people in your life. You will not regret it, and your to-do list will be waiting for you in the morning.
In Part 2 we have looked at three aspects of connecting: checking in (with yourself and others), sharing what is going on for you emotionally, and relating on a deeper level. We have looked at some ideas and models that might stimulate and support you in making your relationships even richer.
There are a multitude of lessons – tuning into yourself; sharing your emotional reality with others; and creating the space to audit and then build the relationships that matter. Above all, though, you must be willing to be vulnerable and take risks, and show up as the ‘real’ you, albeit with the right professional boundaries.
I named our relationship model ‘Professional Intimacy’ on purpose so it would raise eyebrows and make people think. There’s no doubt in my mind, though, that the right sort of intimacy is both appropriate and necessary between colleagues at work.
Now that we have explored the two foundations to execution, thinking and connecting, we can move on to look at the action that flows from these – Creating Space to Do.