Category Archives: The Leadership Project

Choose your reason for being sacked

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Curious story in The Age yesterday* about a case before the Fair Work Ombudsman involving a young woman who was sacked from her job as a personal assistant for a real estate agent because she was “too short” and “looked too young”.

She had been in the job two weeks when she was dismissed. She had recently assisted at an auction by recording bids, and in a phone conversation one of the directors of the company told her her height:

could be a disadvantage at an auction where there was one or more interested parties and she would not have the presence to effectively negotiate.

Another director emailed her to say:

Some of the directors at the auction on Saturday were worried by your overall young look. This will be an ongoing concern.

The Ombudsman fined the company for breaching the Fair Work Act under which it is “unlawful to discriminate against employees on the grounds of, among other things, age.” The company was also ordered to make clear to all their staff that federal workplace laws had been contravened.

What’s so curious, you ask?

What’s curious is that it came out in questioning that the reason given to the employee for her dismissal was not the real reason. The real reason, a director of the company admitted, was that the director who fired her

felt a little awkward admitting that he had very little on to justify an assistant and incorrectly used [her] age.

What’s curious is that neither the journalist writing the story, nor the Ombudsman, made any comment about the lie and the fact an employee was made to feel physically inadequate rather than have a director of the company feel awkward. Instead, the journalist and the Ombudsman concerned themselves only with the ostensible reason for the sacking. Why?

Well, for starters there are no fines for lying or being a jerk. Pity.

***

* Clay Lucas, “Sacked worker too short and too young”, The Age, April 2, 2012

Straight-talking is not about changing anyone

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When we contemplate speaking with a colleague about something that’s bothering us, there are two things that usually stop us. The first is fear; the second is resignation. Fear doesn’t need any explanation, nor any discussion of remedies. There’s just “do it”.

Resignation is more subtle. Underneath resignation is the thought “they’ll never change”. In this we’re perfectly correct. People don’t change, or don’t change as a result of us speaking with them. However, something else can change, and that’s the relationship.

Here’s an example from my own experience. It’s about a small everyday concern, just the type of thing that can make our work lives miserable.

***

By the end of week one in the new workplace, I realised it wasn’t unusual my new manager was talking constantly. She was always like this. When I’d get out of the lift in the morning I’d hear her strong, ex-smoker’s tones from the other side of the floor, and ahead of me would stretch the prospect of a day sitting at the neighbouring desk being battered by a stream of her random thoughts and complaints. She never stopped talking. It wasn’t stuff that required an answer or a comment; it was literally the contents of her head. And because she was highly anxious, the contents, let me tell you, were no picture.

It was like sitting next to a car alarm.

By week two I knew I had to do something. The next day I invited my manager for coffee. Over coffee, I told her the ongoing conversation was making me distracted and unable to concentrate, and I asked her what we should do. As you’d expect, she was taken aback at first and she said what I’d suspected. “It’s what I do. I have to say my thoughts out loud.“

She said a couple more things including “I can’t not do it”, until she realised I’d asked a question and then the conversation took a little turn and I knew it was going to be alright. She suggested I wear headphones if I wanted quiet, and that I tell her if I was working on something that required extra concentration. She also suggested we review the situation in a few weeks’ time. I agreed and we went back to work, with me feeling happy because she was genuinely concerned and because I’d got to say what was there for me.

Eight months later when the project was complete and I was going on to my next consulting engagement, my manager took me out for lunch. Over lunch, and again in a card, she thanked me for my work and acknowledged me:

Trust is the most important thing to me, and I just knew I could absolutely trust you to do what was required.

I don’t think it’s any coincidence she cited trust. She cited trust as a direct result of the conversation eight months earlier. Because here’s the thing: she did not change her talking habits one iota. She was just as loud and talkative at the end of the eight months as she had been at the beginning. What changed was our relationship.

We went from knowing each other only as manager and subordinate, to knowing each other as human beings. I got she was someone who was prepared to participate in a difficult conversation with generosity and aplomb, and she got I was someone who wasn’t prepared to hide things. And thereafter, I just cut her some slack when she went on and on, and she gave up the micromanaging and let me run things as I thought fit.

What started out unpromisingly ended by being a satisfying experience for both of us. And I’d work for her again. Neither of us changed. The relationship did. And it was the relationship that did the work of having us operate together successfully. Where two people are concerned, the relationship is a third and infinitely powerful participant.

***

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More 360-degree foolishness

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Susan Scott, author of Fierce Leadership, describes 360-degree reviews as one of the worst “best practices” used by organisations.

Feedback, she says, is invaluable. It’s just “the anonymous part that gets us in trouble”.

We’re like Woody Allen saying, ‘I’m not afraid of death. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.’

Similarly, we’re not afraid of feedback. “We just don’t want to be in the room when it’s delivered.”

Here are some of her issues with anonymous feedback:

  1. Anonymous feedback doesn’t tell us what we need to know because it is anonymous;  ie, “most people don’t provide specific examples to support their evaluations because more specifics might help the recipient guess who wrote it.”
  2. When the feedback is given, usually once or twice a year, it “rarely immediately follows the behaviour that generated the evaluations, so exactly what we did right or wrong [...] remains a mystery.”
  3. Mostly, such feedback “merely affirms what we already know about who we have been since the day we were born.”
  4. Anonymity is “addictive and contagious”; we “grow accustomed to withholding our real thoughts and feelings. We become anaesthetised, barely registering the consistent message our gut has been sending us for years: Tell the truth. And we infect others.”

Why can’t we be straight with our work colleagues? It’s very simple, though we cook up a storm of reasons and justifications to pretend otherwise. “No, no, they’d be too upset”, “He couldn’t handle it”, “She’s going through a divorce”, “He’d get uncomfortable if I praised him”.

Ah. There’s the clue, the “tell”, as Scott calls it.

Who’d get uncomfortable?

The simple reason for our reticence is that we’re addicted to safety, addicted to being comfortable. Even if it’s momentary, we avoid discomfort at all costs.

She asks,

What is it we fear?

And answers thus:

The consequences of authenticity – intimacy and vulnerability. We fear being real, being ourselves, disclosing our real thoughts and feelings, being seen, being known.

She concludes,

It’s time to change all that.

To read her manifesto about changing it, read the book or go to the Fierce website.

***

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360-degree cruelty

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Earlier this year, when chatting with a client, I happened to mention I was writing a book about leaders. Instantly, the atmosphere changed, and the idle chit-chat became a real conversation. She told me a tale to make any employee’s hair stand on end.

In the previous year, she had had difficulties in the working relationship with her boss who had since left the company. She didn’t elaborate about the difficulties. Somewhere in the midst of the strife she had been asked to complete a 360-degree review.

A 360-degree review is an online survey which rates different aspects of an employee’s performance. It is sent to a certain number of people who are peers, “subordinates” and managers of the employee, the idea being it will provide various viewpoints – a 360-degree panorama – of an employee. The employee chooses the people to whom the survey will be sent, but does not know which person has given which response because the responses are anonymous.

The client did as requested and got a big shock. On the parameters purporting to measure emotional intelligence she scored close to the negative end of the spectrum. This was directly counter to her expectations. She said,

I was totally devastated.

She mentioned two other points:

  • as a result of the review a coach had been hired to help her raise her performance in specific areas
  • over a year later, she still puzzles about who said what, and why they might have said it.

I’ve thought about her story several times since I heard it. Here are some observations.

Institutionalised cruelty

360-degree reviews represent institutionalised cruelty. Franz Kafka wrote about modern man’s worst nightmare: the unspecified crime alleged by the unspecified accuser. And here we are, practicising the nightmare every day.

Institutionalised cowardice

360-degree reviews represent institutionalised cowardice. Such is the terror at the prospect of speaking to another human being in a way that’s straight and frank, a whole industry of cowardice has been concocted to avoid it.

The impact

A person treated in this way may be seriously impacted for months, even years, into the future if he or she doesn’t have the opportunity to get complete on the experience. In this person’s case, the coach may be able to assist her; however, at the time we spoke the emotional charge was still palpable.

How’s she left?

This person was big enough, courageous enough, to continue in her job, and since that time things have improved dramatically. The problematic manager has resigned and she admires her new boss. On the other hand, she is left unsure of where she stands with her colleagues and what they really think of her. That’s potentially crippling.

What about you? Do you have any horror stories of 360-degree reviews and other organisational instruments of torture? Add a comment or write me an email. I’m going to start keeping a file of them.

****

Image: From the movie, The Trial by Orson Welles, 1962, based on Kafka’s book

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Situations pertaining to leaders #5: Casual vilification in the workplace

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First day of the new consulting project, and the kick-off meeting with the client is imminent. The new consultant, contracted to do the bulk of the work, arrives.

The Project Director and the Account Executive are nervous. This is their big chance to really hook the client. Sure, the client’s been buying some back-room services, but this? This will be the beginning of the front-room stuff. They take aside the consultant for a little pre-meeting meeting.

The Account Executive starts.

Now, A (the Manager of the client workplace) has been here for about five years but this is a new project for her and she really doesn’t know anything; she’s uncertain and out of her depth; this could be a big win for her … it’s our job to make her look good.

The Project Director nods. The Account Executive goes on.

C (the Senior Manager), on the other hand, is lazy. Sure, he’ll be hanging around for the first bit, but after that, he’ll lose interest.

Both nod. They studiously avoid elaborating.

A short while later, the kick-off meeting starts. During the meeting, A and C start a vigorous battle of tit-for-tat. C states something he construes as a fact, A resists and asserts the opposite. A smirks, C rolls his eyes and asserts something else. C smirks and A says, “No, we didn’t decide on that, we decided on this …”, and so it goes for 40 minutes.

After the meeting, the new consultant, aghast at the general vituperation, passes comment to the Project Director and the Account Executive. They shrug, their eyes shooting off in all directions.

The new consultant, jaundiced within the first hour by the behaviour of colleague and client alike, ponders these questions:

  • how did the context created by the Project Director and the Account Executive contribute to the playing out of the scenario in the meeting? To what extent did the consultants’ casual vilification of the client staff bring forth the very demons they discussed?
  • if, instead of rehearsing the shortcomings of the client staff, the consultants had rehearsed the gifts and skills of those same staff, how would the meeting have been different?
  • what is it about the workplace that has us think “success” depends on knowing the worst of someone? For the consultant can still hear the unspoken assumption of the Project Director and Account Executive — “without knowing ‘what we’re up against’, we won’t be able to deliver what the client wants”
  • what will have us get that the casual, ubiquitous vilification of fellow workers is utterly poisonous, no matter the “justification”, no matter who indulges in it?

***

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Situations pertaining to leaders #4

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Last week I had the opportunity to interview one of the leaders of a large charitable organisation whose mission is  “enhancing life and increasing hope for disadvantaged, marginalised and oppressed persons, especially women and girls”.

The organisation has existed for more than 150 years, and sprang from the work of an order of nuns whose vision and commitment still animate the organisation today. The leader shared a story with me about how he and the organisation discovered what integrity really meant.

The test

About 15 years ago, the organisation faced a test. The State Government, led by Jeff Kennett, a deeply divisive figure in recent Australian political history, had just overturned the basis on which governments and charities had worked together for decades.

Until that point, charities worked together to assist their clients. They shared information with other organisations, and each organisation looked out for the other. They understood the efforts and successes of one organisation benefited all.  At one stroke, however, the government decided that henceforth charities would have to compete against each other for government funding.

Shocked and confronted

Each organisation in the sector was thrown back on itself to contemplate a future in which they would be isolated, competitive and obliged to assume the role of supplicant.  It was a time of deep despair and dismay for all organisations. Many doubted whether they would survive, and they feared for the lives and wellbeing of their clients.

At first, this man’s organisation was no different.

Shocked and confronted, the leaders of the organisation gathered together to choose their course of action. And that’s when the spirit of the long-ago nun who founded the order, a woman known as an “innovator, an ambitious person, impatient of authority”, rose again.

The group decided they could not take the government’s money on these conditions and they decided to speak out about it. They considered their long and illustrious history and the impact on the thousands of clients should their organisation not survive, and then they chose to fight anyway.

The eye of the storm

It was the beginning of a very difficult period in the life of this man and his organisation. They were subjected to threats, had to make staff redundant and endured, he said, “many sleepless nights.”

The threat to the organisation’s survival lasted for many months and was only resoundingly decided when the government, against all predictions, lost the 1999 election.

Looking back on that time, the man said while it had been “torrid” and hugely confronting, there had been many unexpected benefits from the organisation’s refusal to participate in the game of competition; its refusal, as he put it, to “sell their soul”.  One of them was the impact on writing their next mission statement.

Shortly after it became clear the eye of the storm had passed, it happened to be their business-planning season. This time, he said, writing their mission statement was a whole different exercise. This time everyone was conscious they were choosing words they had to be able to stand by should the situation require it.  Everyone had gotten that

it’s one thing to talk about integrity, it’s another to live it.

***

Image: Girl not alone, 2011, acrylic, gold leaf and coffee filters on canvas, 135 x 240 cm, by the wonderful Ghadah at Pretty Green Bullet

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“Can female leaders be true to themselves?”

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“Can female leaders be true to themselves?” is the noxious sub-heading in an article contained in Harvard Business Review’s recently-released collection entitled HBR’s 10 must reads on leadership.

The sub-heading may be the work of a sub-editor, but I’d plump for the authors, Robert Goffee and Gareth Jones. They have a habit of using antagonistic questions such as the title of their well-known book, “Why Should Anyone Be Led by You?”

There are many reasons the sub-heading and its use in the article rankles with me.  Here are just a few:

  • it’s the one and only time in the article in which women are mentioned, and when it occurs it’s positioned inside the discussion of a problem
  • it’s the only article in the collection of ten articles that cites males leaders only
  • the answer they give to the question is “no, because women always adopt one of three strategies: (a) hiding, using their clothes and appearance, (b) resisting, (c) playfully affirming the stereotype”; in effect, they say, women cannot be authentic and are thus snookered when it comes to leadership
  • I live in a country in which a woman has been elected Prime Minister and she is failing very publicly, very gruesomely; one of the reasons commentators give for her failure is a lack of authenticity and authority. Perhaps she does have issues with authenticity and authority, but in a society in which “experts” such as Goffee and Jones can hawk their awful, limiting views, there’s a temptation to ascribe any issues to her gender and have that be the end of the discussion.

I simply will not believe women cannot be authentic leaders. Je refuse!

***

The multiple effects of acknowledgement

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Recently, I’ve started doing an acknowledgement exercise each morning. For five minutes, I write down as many things as I can think of to acknowledge myself for.

I started doing this because I noticed I was producing results but not appreciating them. Instead of stopping and acknowledging the fact I’d made something happen that wouldn’t have happened otherwise, I was preoccupied with the things I hadn’t yet made happen.

I was living with the two birds in the bush, not with the bird in my hand.

So for the last week I’ve been doing this acknowledgement exercise each morning, and it’s making a difference. Not only do I get to experience the accomplishment and satisfaction I was foregoing previously, it also illustrates some curious phenomena.

One phenomenon is that it takes courage to do this. There is resistance to articulating one’s results and it shows up in thoughts like “I didn’t really do that; I had help” or “Yeh, well, I got lucky there” or “I think I’ll pass on doing this exercise today; I don’t really need to do it …”

Another is that it can be very surprising to discover what one wants to be acknowledged for. Often, it’s not what you think.

One of the best storytellers I’ve ever met – Marcelle Bernand, a leader of Landmark Education’s Communication course – has a great anecdote about the effect.

Marcelle and her sister had had a disagreement and in the process of sorting it out, they concocted a game. The game was to tell the other person what they wanted to be acknowledged for, and then have the other person acknowledge them. Of all the things Marcelle could have asked to be acknowledged for, she chose one. She asked to be acknowledged for being the person who cleans the lint filter on her sister’s clothes-dryer.

***

Image: Poster by Saint-Genies and Roland, c1960, courtesy of Galerie Montmartre, Melbourne, Australia

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Situations pertaining to leaders #3

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In 2008, a new police sergeant arrived in a disadvantaged suburb of a major Australian city. He had been groomed for the line command with a stint in a neighbouring district, but it didn’t prepare him for what he found in his new patch.

Each Thursday night, hundreds of youths from different local ethnic groups, as well as agitators from more distant suburbs, would congregate in the local shopping centre and engage in violent brawls.

Residents were frightened for their lives and abandoned the shopping centre, while shopkeepers faced each Thursday night with dread. Security guards employed by shopping centre management did what they’d been trained to do: shut down the trouble-makers and move them on, often meeting violence with violence, abuse with abuse.

One or two senior officers, long-timers, counselled acceptance. “It’s been like this for years,” they told the sergeant.

But the sergeant felt otherwise. He set out to have things be different, and soon the slow and steady work of building affiliation began.

First up were the security guards from the shopping centre. The sergeant went to them and made a request. He requested they speak respectfully to the youths when having them leave or move along. If a youth didn’t do what was required, he told the guards they should take whatever actions they were entitled to take. Thus, he made a request and reaffirmed their discretion in one stroke.

This was the beginning of the transformation the sergeant wrought.

***

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Situations pertaining to leaders #2

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After a string of unspeakable difficulties, including the sinking of his ship, Endurance, which left he and his men scraping a precarious existence on the unstable ice floes of the Antarctic, and an extraordinary journey in the three open life boats to the penguin-shit-covered speck of Elephant Island, Sir Ernest Shackleton faced his most severe challenge. There was no other option. The men couldn’t last on Elephant Island.

Surely, they would starve or die of exposure before anyone passed by. They had only five weeks’ worth of rations, and the polar winter was about to set in, forming a widening barrier of ice between them and passing seals and penguins. After six months of living outside the ship, the Boss had to admit that there was little more he could do to keep his men together: ‘The health and mental condition of several men was causing me serious anxiety.’

He determined that he and five others would take a boat and “make a bid for South Georgia, eight hundred miles away, as impossible as that sounded.” He explained,

The risk was justified solely by our urgent need of assistance.

***

Now came the matter of choosing who to take. He called for volunteers, “though he already knew the crew he wanted.” Not only did he have to think of the task ahead, he had to think of the “consequences for those left stranded on bleak Elephant Island.”

Which is why he knew he couldn’t take his most precious comrade, the inimitable Frank Wild. All of Wild’s skill and intelligence and experience would be needed to keep the men together on Elephant Island. For similar reasons, he knew he had to take the two trouble-makers, McNeish and Vincent, for they couldn’t be left to poison “the already grim atmosphere on Elephant Island.”

He took Crean who begged to go, and was “tough and levelheaded”; and McCarthy, “whom everyone liked” and was “a quiet, highly efficient Irishman brought up in sailing ships” who never “groused or gave any backchat”.  And of course, he took Captain Worsley, the navigator, for if they

missed their mark they would be lost in the vast open waters of the South Atlantic.

On 24 April, 1916 they set off on the voyage that

nearly a century later is still hailed as the greatest boat journey ever accomplished.

By the time they arrived at South Georgia Island 17 days later by some miracle of the human spirit, both McNeish and Vincent were lying at the bottom of the boat, incapable of doing anything. Vincent had been like it for most of the journey. In the midst of hurricanes and ice storms, and bailing for their lives, he had been useless.

Shackleton and his party had not only survived, they had done so carrying two men. Four men did the work of six. It was no accident, Shackleton noted, that the two slackers were the “two most pessimistic members of the entire Endurance crew.”

***

All references from Shackleton’s Way by Margot Morrell and Stephanie Capparell.

Image: The Endurance, by Frank Hurley

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