I was recently interviewed by one of Montreal’s leading investment analyst, Mr John Archer.
This title refers to the silent motto of many of my executive coaching clients who refuse to talk at home about work, especially work problems. Oft cited reasons include:
I don’t want to burden my wife
He’d never understand anyway.
I’d be seen as whining
It’s too complicated to explain.
Of course, there is a nugget of truth in each comment, however, there is a way around each objection as well. More importantly, my experience as well as the research research demonstrate that social support is a crucial element of coping with stress. Telling someone, especially a family member, about what is bothering you at work sets in motion an entire sequence of positive events.
Firstly, the very act of speaking demands that you organize the material that otherwise is probably just floating around in your head – a farrago of events, emotions and fearful outcomes. Speaking takes this often hopeless mess and converts it into a coherent narrative. You, the listener to your own dialogue, are the first beneficiary of this preliminary organization.
Speaking to someone also objectifies the issue. In other words, you move from being embedded in the issue to a position of talking about IT. This objectification further aids clarification. However, it also buffers your self-esteem because it construes the problem as something other than you. You are talking about it rather than you and it being a common entity.
Thirdly, speaking about that critical boss or the overly demanding client gets the problem, at least temporarily, out of your head. Rumination, or what happens when you keep a problem in your head, produces bad outcomes. It rarely results in productive problem-solving. More seriously, rumination gradually warps reality so that your imagined worst-outcome moves from an hypothesis to a certainty the longer you ruminate. Verbal expression breaks this closed-loop and opens the way for change.
Discussing the problem at the family dinner table does something else. It educates kids about the world of work. As a university professor dealing with young people, I am continually impressed by their creativity and enthusiasm, however I worry about their knowledge of the world of work. I see many young people sweating over career choices that are limited to doctor, lawyer, engineer or unemployed. Talking about work -the office politics, the stresses and the successes -helps prepare our kids for the world they will all eventually enter. Examples that illustrate that job happiness relates as much to the climate of a company as the job title the person has is an important educational step.
These points and others were covered in my recent radio interview on job stress. Here is an excerpt from the interview.
I was recently interviewed about the nature of work on a local Montreal radio station.
In the interview, emphasized the important transformation of raw materials to a higher sense of completion that is the essence of work. Whether, as an accountant who takes numbers to produce a final budget or a craftsman taking raw timber to a finished sculpture, we need to achieve. The process not only brings a sense of completion, but as described in the recently published, Rush: Why you Need and Love the Rat Race by Todd Buchholz an emotional rush as well.
You can visit Dr. Todd’s homepage here:
Listen to my podcast below:
Part 1:
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A senior telecom VP who came to my office for help starting a new career related the following:
“I was at the beach with my family and found myself doing something that for all my career I swore never to do – work. Not only did I work, but I actually enjoyed doing it without feeling that I was sacrificing my vacation. What gives? Am I a changed man?”
“Not really,” was my answer, but the context of the work has changed.
Leading up to his period of forced unemployment, my client was very much plugged-in.
As an expert in IT, there was both need as well as opportunity to acquire all the latest gadgets. Any problems in managing the organization’s systems, plans concerning development or major hardware purchases provided more than enough reason to keep his blackberry humming. The demands of his previous job were voluminous and continual, except during vacations where he unplugged. In these break times, he resented the intrusions and always stuck by his “no-work” rule.
Now things are different. Struggling to form his own new software company, life has changed dramatically. There is uncertainty, but also excitement and challenge. More importantly for our vignette, there is the issue of control- specifically control over what he wants to do and when he wants to do it. One could argue that things are perhaps more desperate. However, it is more that that. Instead of responding, or feeling he had to respond to every email, text, or tweet, he can now select what he responds to.
As an aging baby boomer, I still remember the iconic Lucille Ball TV segment where Lucy frantically tried to package chocolates at the end of a run-away conveyor belt.
Not only did the volume exceed her capacity but more importantly, she had no control over the speed of the conveyor belt. As you can image, my client now chooses to work during some periods of his recent holiday. Not only did he work; he actually enjoyed it.
The bottom-line: Whether you are your own boss or not, either by selecting, filtering or prioritizing, control the input of your work. It will reduce your stress and increase your enjoyment.
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Coping with the Hot-Seat: lessons from Rebekah Brooks
No comments · Posted by Ian Bradley in executive coaching
In my practice as an executive coach, clients often come to see me in a crisis. Frequently, that crisis stems from a superior’s criticism of that client’s on the job performance. Whether it was a failure to meet specified sales targets or a budgetary over-run, defending oneself successfully is something of an art.
Today’s televised testimony of Rebekah Brooks in front of the UK parliamentary committee investigating nefarious practices under her watch at the News of the World, NOTW, made for interesting viewing. Setting aside what Ms. Brooks might, or might not have ordered, approved or known, there are interesting lessons that can be drawn from her performance. Some of the lessons might be appropriate for people facing their own particular hot-seat inquiry.
Time and time again, Rebekah Brook’s steered the conversation away from the alleged transgression to what she and others were doing to remedy the situation. When apologies were issued, many related to her personal frustration with the speed of the process of retribution. Repeatedly, she attempted to seek committee endorsement of this common ground. Although we are adversaries -she seemed to be saying – we can at least agree upon the need to fix the problem.
A variation of this strategy can be attempted in a business context. Admit the fault, or not, and then speedily and sincerely move to what you are doing to improve things.
The ex-editor’s testimony was also fascinating for its forays from concrete to conceptual thinking. When it served her well, Ms. Brooks remained with the actual events; the more details about whom she met or employed, the better. However, there was adamant refusal to take a natural leap of generalization into the conceptual. In other words, no number of specific examples of phone-hacking practices allowed her to made any general statement about the operating culture at NOTW.
At other times, generalizations abounded. Seemingly criminal practices of the News of the World were placed in a general category of practices common to a long list of cited newspapers.
Her testimony played both sides – under my watch, there were isolated bad practices that didn’t form a pattern that nonetheless existed in the industry.
This is clearly a risky stratagem for those being grilled by a superior in a workplace setting. There is some obvious benefit to the hot seat occupant to contain the criticism to the precipitating incident, and hopefully not, incidents. The generalization that most bosses make is one of concluding that the events are not isolated but reflective of a unitary personality flaw in the employee. Problems x, y and z are quickly attributed to putative traits such as laziness, carelessness or low motivation. The only defense is details, specifically providing situational details that framed the employee’s thinking and constrained the available courses of action.
The style or delivery of these details is equally important. Rebekah was firm, assertive but respectful. She peppered her comments with kudos acknowledging the investigating committee’s experience, prior knowledge and difficult mandate. Although quietly properly cast as a villain, she often attempted to align herself with the committee on specific issues. Lining up against convicted pedophiles or working hard with the committee member to fight against the obscurities of her own memory were just two of many examples of this attempt to break the them-versus-me theme.
Very often I encounter employees who too readily admit fault based upon the faint hope that their personal contrition will yield a similar forgiveness from management. Often, the opposite occurs; managers sense vulnerability and attack even harder.
Of course, there were many aspect of Ms. Brooks’ testimony that I wouldn’t advocate, such as, her immediate foray into issues that did not even come close to answering the posed questions and her many unprompted and irrelevant asides about events. Nonetheless, Rebeka Brooks also displayed many self-defense strategies that any embattled employee could learn from.
