Minor Questions of Life

TIME TO MOVE ON...

2010-07-14T11:33:00.002Z

I've been posting here regularly for a few years. Having recently reviewed my internet strategy generally, I've decided to migrate my blogging and my corporate sites to one place. From now on (JULY 2010) my blogs will appear there. This has immediately given me more time to blog so the volume has increased. I hope that you'll join me there....

www.the-confidant.info

Thanks for your support so far, and I look forward to hearing from you there.

Best wishes
Graham.

How projection undermines even polished performers

2010-07-07T14:45:00.001Z

Gordon - how projection undermines even polished performers

The following abstract illustrates typical situations that arise in the course of my work with leaders - it should go without saying that permission to quote has been given, names have been changed, and a few details tweaked to preserve confidentiality.

A few of my clients are referred by their HR Director. There are all kinds of reasons why this happens, but one of them is that an individual is seen as critical to the success of the organisation and yet there are aspects of their behaviour that make it unlikely that they will be promoted. If they use position as a way of monitoring their own self-worth, then the lack of promotion can become a serious undermining factor in their relationship with, and commitment to, their employer. It's my job to help them understand what is going on and give them the resources to make choices for themselves.

Gordon was a good example. As MD of one of the main Divisions in his firm, his financial results were excellent and contributed about 65% of the company profits. His peers were way behind on this scale, but their input to the business strategy and perceived worth to the organisation was often higher than Gordon's. He couldn't understand this and often became sarcastic in executive team meetings and could be scathing in his comments about their individual businesses.

Within his own business stream though, he was very highly respected. His staff would, and often did, give 120% - working exceptionally hard, under tough conditions. Gordon would visit them personally at work, and even quite junior staff could expect a visit. He NEVER criticised anyone in these situations - if they were good, he would make them feel a mile tall, if they weren't he'd quietly have a word with their line managers.

In the industry, his name was well known and highly regarded - indeed he was seen as the natural successor to the CEO. Of course, anyone on the executive team knew that this would never happen - given his way of treating them.

Of course, I had to create an impression with Gordon. He would not suffer a fool gladly. I needed to get him alongside in our first session. We spent it looking at his ambitions and over an hour or so reached a common agreement that something wasn't right - that he should be promoted, wasn't being, and so something was wrong. He had his views on this, but we agreed to let the basic conclusion rest before exploring the 'why'.

In the subsequent session, we reviewed his peers individually and then explored the dynamics of the executive team as a whole and between individuals. Gordon was a little surprised by his own lack of recall of actual dialogue between his peers compared with the extensive recall of exchanges between him and them. We agreed that at the next executive meeting he would do his best to keep his own input to a minimum and instead he would try to make notes of other people's conversation.

To cut a long story short, we used this material to examine two things - firstly to understand the dynamics of the whole team far better - who was allying with whom, what patterns there were in the exchanges, and so on. We also began to see how much of Gordon's dialogue was based on interpretation of others rather than the words they actually used, and hence got to realise how much he depended on a classic defence mechanism - projection - albeit used in a rather complicated fashion.

Gordon typically, took his own feelings (about people especially), and instead of acknowledging them in himself, he would project them onto others. So, for example, he found Derek an intellectual lightweight and Derek's comments often childish in their simplicity. He would witness Shane responding to Derek and interpret Shane's response as being critical of Derek, even though there was no evidence to support this.

Gordon would then take up Derek's defence (to an attack that only Gordon perceived was being made) by attacking Shane. Immediately everyone was confused, felt attacked or in imminent danger of attack, and would spring to their own or each others' defence. It was a bizarre situation and one that frequently repeated itself in different guises.

An approach I sometime use in situations like this, involves us role playing a scenario typical of something that has recently happened in my client's work. When I sense that the time is right, I will stop and ask the client to talk about the language that they are using. In particular, there will usually be a handful of phrases that they bring into the conversation more often that I would expect. I will replay them back and ask them where they learnt them.

In Gordon's case the language he used in peer-to-peer exchanges, was polarised around quite dramatic (usually negative) value judgments of other people. However, if he considered that someone (such as Derek) was subordinate/inferior to him he would be highly protective of them. The voice he 'heard' when he was speaking these words in the role plays was always either that of his father or his mother. It transpired that when he was between 9 and 12 yrs old, his parents' relationship was progressively in decline and they were increasingly, and quite violently, critical of one another. Gordon took on the role of protector to his younger brother and would sit for hours in bed comforting him. Eventually the marriage broke up, and Gordon and his brother were sent to boarding school - an experience he described as 'going from one hell to another'.

With a little insight into what was happening, Gordon's behaviour in executive meetings changed quite dramatically. He enlisted the support of his peers in reinforcing his new style and was, I believe, quite genuinely remoseful for his antagonism in previous years. While there were still many reservations about his promotion potential, he was given a new chance - and took up the post of VP North America for the parent company.

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

Psychodynamic confidant, working behind the scenes, helping those of power see organisations, situations, themselves, and other people differently
grahamwilson.org - businesscoaching.org.uk - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

Reaching inside an executive's hard shell

2010-06-29T09:07:00.001Z

The company that Fiona works for has a high performance management course onto which aspiring MDs are 'invited'. They progress through a series of workshops that focus on the softer skills of leadership, typically lasting ten months, before being offered a role in a different part of the business as a deputy MD. It's a well established programme and most of the current generation of MDs and above have 'graduated' through it. At key stages throughout, including on their assignment as a Deputy MD, the individuals have a coach working alongside them.

Fiona found the programme particularly challenging. The feedback that she received suggested that it was her own lack of empathy that was holding her back. She was angry at this, as she felt that people used her far too often as a sounding board for their emotional stuff, bringing issues to work that weren't appropriate, expecting her to listen and solve their problems when it wasn't part of her job to do that, and yet she always gave them time, tried to help, and allowed them a lot of 'slack' in which to sort themselves out.

Walking around the grounds of a hotel in Windsor that early summer afternoon, we discussed her anger and tried to identify other situations where 'meta' emotions might affect her. [Meta-emotions are essentially where we feel an emotional response to other people's emotional state - so, for instance, you feeling fearful might make me feel sad.] In the course of the afternoon, we identified several instances where other people's emotional states left Fiona with a sense of anger. It was, as if, her only response was anger. Even when her sister had announced that she was pregnant after many months of agonizing, Fiona felt anger.

We didn't try to unravel the 'why' she felt this way. Instead, we agreed that she would keep a simple notebook in her briefcase, and when she felt angry at anything, she would make a note of the date and circumstances. I rather laboured the point because I was concerned that her enthusiasm to address this would wane after a few days. When we met for our first conversation after the workshop, Fiona pulled out her notebook almost with relish. It was full of incidents. We took a few of these and talked through them, in each case looking at how other people might have responded differently. Nothing complex; using the simple mnemonic - SID's GAF (Sad, Interested, Disgusted, Glad, Angry, and Fearful). We wrote the mnemonic on the inside front cover of the note book and introduced the idea that Fiona would carry on exactly as before, but also ask herself the question each time... "On average, which emotion do I think other people might have in this situation?"

Pressure of work meant that we didn't meet again for six weeks. When we did, Fiona dug into her bag and pulled out an email from the Group HR Director. I must admit I took it with a little trepidation. The message was pretty clear... "Since the MD programme workshop, six weeks ago, I (and Martyn [the CEO]) have witnessed a transformation in your relationships with staff and peers. We are absolutely delighted. I do not know when the next appropriate opportunity for a transfer to a Deputy MD role will happen, but I wanted you to know that it will do so very soon."

Having finished reading, I looked up at her and saw that she was crying. After a couple of minutes, she calmed herself and explained that she couldn't remember the last time she had cried. They were tears of sadness - brought on by the warmth she felt at being 'seen through' for the first time in a very long time - that someone, some people, really saw her, appreciated her, and wanted her to succeed.

A lot of people, especially in the world of work, feel that they have to build a hard protective shell around themselves, but for a few this is a form of protection that is far more deeply ingrained. Life is complex and we need a wider repertoire of responses and we need to be flexible in the ones that we use, but we don't get that from a mnemonic, or a textbook, or even a training course, we get it by being interested in ourselves and our own emotions. What Fiona had done was to begin to develop a curiosity in her own emotions that allowed her to be curious about other people's and it was this that had opened her up to a whole new way of relating.

She spent 12 months in her new role, leading a business expansion into SE Asia, before returning to the UK as VP Operations.

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

Teams, groups, executives, and the psychodynamics of unconscious urges

2010-06-18T09:24:00.001Z

Anyone who works with people in groups needs to understand the ways in which the individuals in that group will be handling the emotional dynamics of it. Emotions always enter into groups, no matter what the subject matter is. And, as human beings, we have a lot of ways of handling them. Not all emotions are particularly problematic, of course - provided we are aware of them and engage with them. The trouble is where we are unaware of them, where they are in the unconscious, yet they (or our way of dealing with them) impact on the group and on our individual or collective decision making.

It is so uncommon to be in a group where the emotions are all positive that I shalln't even try to go there. Even when it looks as though this is the case, almost always someone (and, more likely, several members) is experiencing the group in a negative way. Even the most innocuous of settings where there is absolutely nothing to be gained by it, can be a place where some people will allow the worst of their passions to find expression. Most of these negative experiences of groups then, revolve around a sense of being 'threatened'. The group leader who tries to set an environment that is 'supportive', 'open', 'nurturing' and so on, will by this very means alone, threaten some people. So understanding how people deal with the feeling of being threatened is crucial to working with groups.

Practitioners of psychodynamics talk about a set of tools which the mind uses to allow it to cope when it is threatened. These threats fall into three types - REAL WORLD ones, situations where we INSTINCTIVELY feel anxious (said to relate to the "Id"), and where we are anxious because of our CONSCIENCE (related to the "Super-ego").

These tools were originally known as "defence mechanisms", though today they are often refered to as "coping strategies". This is an important difference and understanding why can help us understand an important aspect of psychodynamics generally.

According to Freud, the defences were necessary because they allowed the Ego to 'survive' against the three threats I've mentioned above. 'Survival' is an unfortunate choice of word, because most people associate it with death and the 'death' of the ego isn't death in the physical sense. As I mentioned in my earlier blog (A very quick introduction to Psychodynamics), the Ego is the part of our mind responsible for common sense and rational thought. If it is 'overwhelmed', which is the term I personally prefer, then we begin to develop 'neuroses' or, at least, to display 'neurotic symptoms'.

The popular interpretation of 'neurotic symptoms' is a kind of nervy, anxious, highly strung, or tense behaviour. This isn't a million miles from the psychoanalytic definition, which is a bit broader: behaviour that isn't normal, that isn't caused by some physical problem, isn't psychotic (a mental health illness where someone is potentially rendered incapable of rational thought and action - non compos mentis) and can be explained in psychological terms. (In other words, it's a bit of a 'collect all' term for problems that leave someone sane but suffering!)

So, the 'defence mechanisms' are the tools used by the mind to protect our ability to think rationally, to apply common sense. To spot their occasional failure, we look for neurotic symptoms. It was Freud's daughter, Anna, who published one of the earliest and most comprehensive lists of the 'defences' in 1937. There are twelve of them and I'm going to list them, and give a quick definition, because I think they are really useful behaviours to watch out for. The problem with this list is that, while the mechanisms are good at allowing us to cope with an overwhelming of our common sense, a few of them actually make the neurotic symptoms worse, making us appear less 'normal' rather than more so. That is why people like myself, who work largely with 'normal' people, prefer the term 'coping strategy' to 'defence mechanism'.

I shall, almost certainly, write separately about some of these 'coping strategies', but here's a quick round up of them...

Regression: reverting to earlier (usually infantile) ways of behaving. A classic example in a business context would be the regression of intellectual curiosity to greed.

Repression: where an unacceptable idea is only accessed in the unconscious. For example, someone feeling 'attacked' at work might dream (in quite extreme ways) about revenge.

Reaction-formation: where the opposite to an unacceptable impulse is exaggerated. People who appear to be excessively 'nice', 'polite', and 'interested in others', for example, might actually be harbouring beneath the surface aggressive, critical and self-obsessed desires. To have such wishes is perfectly normal, so their absence is disturbing.

Isolation: where the individual who has experienced an 'attack' goes quiet, doesn't interact, shuts down their emotional responses, before starting again as if nothing had happened. Importantly, they don't deny what happened, but they have isolated it so it has limited effect. I've come across managers who use this frequently, shutting themselves into their office for a few minutes after an emotional encounter, and then emerge 'as if nothing had happened', while everyone else is feeling the tension.

Undoing: happens when someone tries to reverse the threat they felt - almost 'washing it away' or even 'flushing' it away. Often, 'undoing' is associated with a ritual behaviour - a particularly systematic way of repeatedly doing things. A situation that I sometimes (tentatively) interpret as 'undoing' because of its 'ritual' nature is where a management team are going through a significant emotion-laden process and yet insist on dealing with all the steps in their normal meeting agenda, before reaching the last item in 'any other business' to which the real issue has been relegated. It is as if they hope that by putting it off, putting it in its place, it will go away or cease to be an issue by the time they get there.

Projection: is where our own (usually unacceptable) wishes for someone else are transferred onto a third party, or (in reverse projection) onto them. Teenage girls can often be heard saying; "I don't fancy him, but YYY does!" when, of course, they they are experiencing an intensity of passion that they have never experienced before and feels so threatening that they couldn't possibly acknowledge it. Thus, at work, accusing someone else of being angry is usually a mask for our own anger, especially if the cues that made us think this way were limited or subjective. It can be made even more powerful if we are perceived by others as normally having a persona of being 'all caring' (see 'reaction-formation', above).

Introjection: is a normal aspect of development, where aspects of someone (or something) else are taken inside ourselves, to be used as if they were a part of us. In normal development, this will be aspects of the behaviour of our parents. Problems arise with this coping mechanism when the introject (such as our father's way of responding to situations) is inappropriate to the circumstances. I remember being asked to observe a Board meeting at an insurance company in the City. The new Chairman was struggling to work effectively with the management team. What I saw was a man in his late 40s, unconsciously adopting behaviours that he had seen his father demonstrate when he was a child, and which were similar to those of the previous incumbent - a man closer to his father's generation than to his own. The difference in circumstances wasn't merely one of age or generation - the whole nature of the industry had changed along with radical shifts in the dynamics of Boards.

Turning against the self: Described by some as a kind of 'moral masochism', where we take pleasure in punishing ourselves for our unconscious wicked thoughts. A little too easily confused with depression, or with passivity generally, the difference is that the individual using this experiences pain. Because eroticism doesn't often emerge openly in work environments this isn't always the easiest to detect. One situation that I've come across a few times that might reflect this kind of defence, is where someone puts themself into a position where there is a strong chance that they will be punished by others for something that they have done. When we look at what they did, it seems either pointless or irrational given their circumstances. Thus we might interpret the behaviour of the chief executive, who is under threat for the limited performance of their organisation, and who then embarks on a series of sexual indiscretions or harassments that were bound to be challenged publicly.

Reversal: is the more general phenomenon of which reaction-formation is a specific example. It happens where the unconscious thoughts can be reversed, so what we see exhibited is the opposite of the thought. The 'nurturing' boss, for example, who is actually keeping potential competitors for their position at bay. The 'facilitator' who is unconsciously seeking to control might be another.

Sublimation: occurs where the individual channels energy into a socially acceptable activity when their unconscious desires are for less acceptable things to happen (more 'base' and usually related to sexual or aggressive urges). The drive behind some corporate social responsibility agendas might be interpreted this way, but it is usually witnessed at the individual level. The ambitious young executive who devotes themself to working out every night at the gym might be a good example. Paintballing as an executive release is a little worrying on this score! Excessive working hours among middle aged men, for whom the frequency and quality of their sex lives has diminished, could well be related. I sometimes wonder whether the historical tolerance of bullying behaviour in some organisations, whereby aggressive behaviour was not seen as so socially unacceptable as it should have been, was related to the sublimation defence?

Splitting: Both projection and denial depend on splitting as a mechanism overall, but one aspect of this way of coping that frightens me when I encounter it is where the individual appears to have two different personalities - one for the public space of work, and the other for the private space of home. Of course, they don't. In practice, they are experiencing (albeit unconsciously) the same desires all the time. The Canadian government recognised this and used it in a series of powerful TV advertisements...

Denial: on the face of it, is the least robust of all ways of coping. Personally, I think that it is dealing with threats that are almost, or will soon be, conscious. The person who tries to keep doing things the way they always have, when they know that they are not effective, is said to be in denial. It is a significant step in the overall grieving process associated with organisational change. The important aspect is not denial of behaviour but of feelings. I remember a situation a few years ago where a female director was often highly confrontational with the Chief Executive. Her behaviour was quite aggressive and, as HR director I was asked to intervene. Even though I could describe the situations fully, with the words she used and other people's reactions, she flatly denied that she had any kind of aggressive tendency towards the CEO. In practice, her unconscious 'desires' emerged 6 months later, when she became pregnant by him.

So that's a quick whizz through a few of the things that are almost certainly going on under the surface of most of the minds around the table at your next team meeting!

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

What will YOUR wake up call be?

2010-06-16T12:06:00.000Z

The following abstract illustrates typical situations that arise in the course of my work with leaders - it should go without saying that permission to quote has been given, names have been changed, and a few details tweaked to preserve confidentiality.

Wake up calls can happen at all kinds of times of our lives. Evan's came one summer Sunday. He'd driven back from holiday that morning, and the kids and his wife were unpacking the car. He'd sat on the patio recovering with a beer after the long drive from the ferry from France. It had been a great holiday. But as he sat there, he felt a dread rising in him. Instead of looking forward to going in to work the next day, he was thinking of all the problems he just knew he was going to encounter. Over the last fortnight, there'd been a few messages on his Blackberry, but they weren't too problematic, but now he was beginning to worry that his team had been shielding him from the bad stuff until he got back. He knew this wasn't right, but he simply didn't know how to shift it.

Evan's PA is a star. She really does manage his world for him. He'd been a bit reluctant to take her on initially. Whereas most of the people put forward by the recruiters were young, vibrant, and positive, Ellie was far older, had been working for a senior civil servant beforehand, was more serious, but projected the personality of someone who was completely unflappable. When he'd gone off two weeks before, protocol meant he had to leave the 'reins' to the FD but, actually, he'd got far more confidence in Ellie.

It really felt as though he had to drag himself into work on the Monday. By mid-morning he was seething. The FD had managed to avoid dealing with some extraordinary shenanigans between two of the divisional MDs and as a consequence one major customer was seriously angry, two significant bids had folded, and one of the Deputy MDs had left a sealed envelope for him tendering her resignation. Ellie went into his office and shut the door. "Look, I know this probably seems the wrong time, but I really think this would be a good one to think about yourself and what's right for you before you get involved and try to sort everything single-handed. You're having lunch with someone, he's been recommended by my old boss. He's not exactly a coach; he's not a consultant; he's not a shrink; he's sort of bits of each of those." It was an interesting introduction!

That lunchtime, Evan discovered a different side to himself. That afternoon his two MDs discovered a different side too. Strangely, to some, they have found a new appetite for the business. The new Deputy FD has transformed the focus of the Finance Department and she is clearly on a fast path to becoming a great all-round Chief Executive. Evan has elevated his own playing field. He's now got the time he needed to engage with his industry on a wider platform, and has already led one successful take-over of a niche competitor.

Wake up calls happen to us all from time-to-time. Too often we try to battle on. Sometimes, a friend, member of staff, or one of our family, spot the issue before we do. The need though is to act on them when they do happen, to really understand what they are telling us, and to find ways of acting appropriately.

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

A very quick introduction to Psychodynamics

2010-06-07T11:46:00.000Z

I thought it might be helpful to produce a few short notes that describe the background to the work I do. Whereas there are many 'coaches' who work in the field of personal development, there are only a handful of people working as confidants to people of power and who deal primarily with the psychodynamics of organisations. To begin with, I wanted to describe the basics of psychodynamics.

Psychodynamics is the study of the flow of energy created by, and largely contained within, the unconscious* mind but which substantially affects all that we do and feel. It was originally postulated, in the last half of the 1800s, by Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke, a Professor of Physiology in Berlin, who happened to be one of Sigmund Freud's lecturers as an undergraduate, and it was Freud who developed the ideas into the form that is largely still applied today. Subsequent workers have generally added to our understanding of the detail and yet, remarkably perhaps, the theories themselves have largely stood the test of a century of further work.

Psychodynamics assumes that in the unconscious there are ongoing conflicts between different parts of our 'psyche', and our behaviour in given circumstances depends on the state of these conflicts. Part of us wants to do one thing, and another part wants us to do another. The stronger one wins out and that determines how we will behave.

Freud put forward a theory, still in use today, that there were four forces involved, three being parts of the mind, and one being the outside world. Most immediately affected by external events is the EGO. The ego is the part of our psyche that represents common sense and rational argument. For it to be effective at influencing our behaviour it needs to be quite well organized - tidy. The contrast is the part of our psyche known as the ID. This is the nasty, dark part of our personality. It is primitive and disorganized. It seeks only its own gratification or, more accurately, it is always trying to avoid pain of any kind. The third area of the psyche, is actually a part of the EGO and is known as the SUPER-EGO. It is where we stored the lessons our parents taught us when we were young children to observe, reflect, and critique our own behaviour.

For a senior manager in an organisation to work effectively, they usually need to be making things happen. If it's a commercial environment this means they need to be making more money than they spend. In a government setting, perhaps the emphasis is on having one ideology, or one set of initiatives, adopted above another. In the academic sphere, it is key to have one's own ideas accepted. The ID is at play all the time trying to make sure that these things happen. Of course, sometimes deals go wrong, initiatives fail or ideas don't work. It is at this time, that the EGO tries to make sense of what has happened and change the situation or improve the idea etc so that a positive outcome is achieved. But, if this isn't possible, then the SUPEREGO kicks in (and may have been playing all along) and 'tells' the senior manager how to cope emotionally. Many people have wholly negative scripts playing "You stupid boy!", "You'll never be any good", "You're so naive" and so on. If they don't have robust ways of coping with this unconscious self-criticism, then they are likely to be depressed and unlikely to have reached the position they have. So, our senior manager may well have these scripts playing, but they've developed complicated ways of making themselves feel justified, right all along, or to compensate.

I'll discuss some of these ways of coping in another blog, but let's take one as an example. A very common mechanism, in my experience, used by senior managers to 'cope' with threats to their EGO from the SUPEREGO is known as denial. This doesn't mean denying that the 'failure' happened, but denying that one is upset by it. "Oh, you win some; you lose some!" is fine WHEN the person also says, from time-to-time, that they are upset, angry, sad, or whatever, but when it becomes their mantra - "Always look on the bright side!", "Never take these things personally!", "I am proud to be a positive person!", "Things are no different now to when we started - we just need to win one good contract" and so on, then there's a danger that unconscious denial of their emotional conflict is at work. Does this matter? Well yes, it does. Taken to extreme like this it is indicative of what psychotherapists define as a manic mood - the contrast being a depressive mood. When the person discovers that their defence mechanism no longer works, then they are likely to find themselves suffering from depression.

A lot of people find these models, and the need to dwell on them, hard to understand, but one way to make sense of it is to consider how rarely people's behaviour is strictly rational. So much of what people do at work, in their home lives, at school, socially - in fact almost everywhere - is ineffective and inefficient and therefore generally irrational. Psychodynamics theory is simply a set of models that help us to make sense of the irrationality of most behaviour. There are other models, followed by academics from other disciplines, such as evolutionary biology and ethology, but psychodynamics is the one that is most popular among the medical and psychological communities.

Psychodynamics and the individual

Freud believed that there were two types of thinking - primary and secondary. Secondary is conscious and tends to be rational. Primary is unconscious and suspends many of the constraints imposed by 'logic'. When we are awake, we use secondary thinking, whereas when we are asleep we are more likely to use primary thinking.

Dreams are one of the windows that we have on the unconscious, and are said to have two components - the manifest (the story as it appeared in the dream) and the latent (the story that can be interpreted). A great deal of effort has gone into understanding the nature of dreams and the psychological processes at play when we have them.

The primary process of dreams involves, at least, three things - condensation, displacement and symbolism. It is these that the 'analyst' will help the dreamer interpret. As rational thought is suspended in dreams, they are said to allow the unconstrained 'id' to fulfil its wishes.

In my work as a confidant, we don't often interpret dreams, but we do use other 'windows' and, certainly, we work with the idea of an unconscious phantasy and what it is that prevents it from being realised. We also often work with the 'scripts' that we have acquired from our parents and how they influence our aspirations and behaviour in the wider world.

* The term 'subconscious' is only used by laymen; those involved in psychodynamics professionally only ever refer to the conscious (abbreviated Cs) and unconscious (abbreviated UnCs).

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

The Dalai Lama explains why social media work so well

2010-06-03T18:52:00.002Z

In order to network effectively we need to be able to both empathize with others and to receive human kindness from them. People of power often struggle to do either but once they can they are able to exceed even the heights they have already achieved.

The mantra of social media networks, such as Ecademy and Facebook, is that you should give, give, give and then in subtle ways you will receive.

For some users, bent on using these networks to promote their businesses, this can prove tough. Indeed, it is probably one of the commonest reasons why they find that social media networking doesn't work for them. It isn't that it doesn't work for them, it is that it doesn't work that way.

Of course, the idea that those who are the most generous with their time and energy helping others will benefit in the long-term isn't new. Most Faiths have it embedded in their doctrine somewhere. In fact, you could interpret the Golden Rule (the one tenet of life that appears in the holy writings of every mainstream Faith) - that you should do unto others as you would have them do unto you - as meaning just that.

One of the most important qualities for any leader to have is the ability to empathise. Undoubtedly, some are very good at it. Others struggle and, quite often, I find myself working with highly successful, very powerful people, who have reached their pinnacle through hard work and dedication rather than their people skills. They are often frustrated because they feel they have reached a plateau and don't realise that is their lack of empathic qualities that is holding them back. A few are so extremely uncomfortable socially that, had it been identified at school, they would probably have been told that they were somewhere on the scale towards autism.

Now, if you take someone who finds it hard to empathise, and ask them to network in person, they will struggle. But expect them to manage a social media network and they will generally find it very hard because few of the clues they need to tell them how the other person is feeling will be available to them.

They may be nagged, cajoled, parodied, mocked, or simply receive aggresive responses from fellow networkers because their approach is seen to be shallow, naive, and especially, selfish. This is often the kind of response that they have had to endure throughout school, in their family, at college or university and then at work. It reinforces their sense that they have to do things by themselves and fuels their determination.

Often the turning point for someone in this position is when something happens that they didn't expect, and someone, who they didn't know, does something for them that is beyond anything they would do for anyone else. It is receiving this simple act of human kindness that awakens them to a whole world of emotion that had been denied for so long.

This might seem a little strange to some people reading this, but you might be surprised how seeing ME cry in response to one of their experiences can open up a new dimension to them.

For the last few weeks, the Dalai Lama has been experimenting with Social Media. The other day I wrote about another of his entries on Facebook. Well this article was prompted by another of his messages, posted today...

Dalai Lama: "Alongside our natural ability to empathize with others, we also have a need for others’
kindness, which runs like a thread throughout our whole life. It is most apparent when we are young and when we are old, but we have only to fall ill to be reminded how important it is to be loved and cared about, even in our prime ...years."

Social Media networking isn't just about give, give, give.... it is also about receive, receive, receive - once you can do that you will really reap the rewards.

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

Behind the scenes, helping those of power see themselves, other people and situations differently
grahamwilson.org - businesscoaching.org.uk - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

Dalai Lama offers social media users advice on avoiding conflict

2010-05-30T12:13:00.001Z

Social media sites are just as prone to unconscious processes as physical environments. Indeed, you could put forward an argument that they are more so, as many clues used to test out (and refute) our hypotheses about others are either not available, are truncated or we are even forced to adapt our language to suit the constraints of the medium (as with the 140 character limit imposed by Twitter).

This is a problem where the communication is between people who know one another, but on sites where there is a mixture of people who do know one another (to varying degrees) with some who do not, the potential for both conscious and unconscious problems to arise is enormous.

In any group, forum, or club, a hierarchy of users soon evolves. Part of this hierarchy may be deliberate - the site 'founders', for example, may be accorded some status by the users or may consciously exert it for themselves. The same applies to 'staff' members. They are more likely to be more familiar with the use of social media generally, and the specific environment that they have created, and this may confirm their perceived status.

Others may feel that, by virtue of the amount they pay, they deserve a different status. (Bear in mind that this 'feeling' may not be conscious, ie they may not be aware of it.) For some, this will be exacerbated by the visible labels they are given. Ecademy, for example, has 'gray-stars', Power Networkers, Blackstars and Foundation Members. Some social media sites, keen to promote the different levels, will deliberately fuel this sense of specialness, whereas others will not or may do so in more subtle ways. Some members will be pleased to accept the status accorded to them, others will not.

People who volunteer to run sub-groups within the overall forum may feel they deserve a different status. Those who put in effort 'offine' might do so too, and those who feel that they give without any recompense may place themselves above those who give but expect some reward. This is a phenomenon that charities are well used to, with some volunteers, for example, never claiming their expenses and thus affording themselves more virtuosity than those who do claim.

On social media sites it is very rare for 'elections' to be held to determine leadership. In most cases, the individual merely claims the role and in the absence of any other contenders they have it. On one site, last year, ownership of the domain was given by the founder to someone new. The choice was based largely on the original owner's perception that this individual was more likely than anyone to build the site rather than let it decline. As the membership perceived this new owner to have his own commercial agendas there was an immediate flurry of anger. Twelve months on, most people won't even remember it.

Commonly, an individual who has acquired status in one area, expects it in another. So, the leader of a group in one aspect of the forum expects (consciously or unconsciously) to be treated specially or to be accorded status when they are participating in another part of the site. A common demonstration of this is where they offer wisdom in an authoritative tone on another part of the site when their status has been acquired in a different one. Some sites will allow them to do this, on others they will be flamed by members for their perceived arrogance. This may simply go against the culture of the site, or it could depend on the degree of integration of members across the different areas.

Most social media sites have some users who are active, some who are less so, some who are passive observers and some who never visit once they have registered. Some of the popular software applications for developing social media sites (Juku, vBulletin, and phpbb) can be set to accord status depending on the number of posts a user makes. Often they label the user visibly with words like... starter, novice, learner, regular, expert, old codger, and supreme commander. How the user and others interpret these labels depends on a plethora of factors, but they all impart some kind of status.

And finally, language can be used to try to exert authority. On one site, for example, a new product was recently launched and, within days, the early adopters were offering to "mentor" others. They could have chosen more neutral language; "If it would help, we could have a chat and I can tell you what happened with mine." To 'mentor' someone implies breadth of experience, a depth of understanding based on their own reflective practice, groundedness, and a generosity that is free from seeking personal advantage. Again, the unconscious effect of their intervention was to seek to reinforce some kind of status.

Under some circumstances, unflinching acceptance of someone's status, the authority that goes with it, and the expectation that their decisions should be followed almost without question, is expected. Increasingly though, the evidence is that the correlation between status and effectiveness in decision making is quite poor. Back in 1995, I wrote a book, "Self Managed Team Working", which highlighted some extreme examples of organisations that removed managerial status completely and discovered exceptional levels of productivity and creativity among staff who had previously never been able to demonstrate their talents.

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama has been using the social media site, Facebook, as an outreach tool for some time. In today's message he offers some advice to society in general, but which has particular relevance to social media sites too. He says;

"As human beings, we are all the same, there is no need to build some kind of artificial barrier between us. With this attitude, there is nothing to hide, and no need to say things in a way that is not straightforward. So this gives me a kind of space in my mind, with the result that I do not have to be suspicious of others all the time. And this really gives me inner satisfaction, and inner peace."

In acknowledging the danger of status, he is highlighting the two sidednesss of it. Just as you might seek status, so I have to choose to give it to you. Coming from a psychodynamic persuasion, the model I tend to use to explore the dynamics of power is that of the family. As young children we observe, interpret and store away a repertoire of responses to situations and mental models of how life is supposed to work. As adults we wheel these out under circumstances that may, or may not, be appropriate. For many of us, the person of status is provoking responses associated with our relationship to our mother or father. Conversely, they are anticipating a response from us parallel to that which they gave to their parents when they were children. But, of course, we are no longer children. And it is when one person knows that and behaves as an adult, and another does not and tries to act as a parent that social media problems (as in real life) explode. But that takes us into the realms of transactional analysis and time for another blog!

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

Interpreting SOHO business names

2010-05-19T13:41:00.001Z

A question posed on a forum recently pushed a few buttons in me...

"Do you think a company name ending with 'consulting' is good for consulting business as well as social enterprise business?"

As some of you know, for the last few years, I've been a guest speaker at the annual careers convention for volunteers held in London. One of the masterclasses that I lead is on Portfolio Working and the topic of "What do I call myself?" often comes up. Yes, I do have a strong opinion about this...

What are people buying? If they are buying something very specific (eg ironing, scaffolding, ready meals for the housebound) then PERHAPS a business name that reflects this will help them find you and save you explaining what it is that you do every time you meet someone new.

Are you selling many things according to their needs? If so, then they are actually buying YOU on the basis of your own credibility, reputation, persuasiveness. In this case, a business name that incorporates your own is going to help them remember you when something unusual comes up.

When they have bought from you, will it be you who does the work or one of a gaggle of mates who are prepared to work at below your own level in order to get work? If it is you, then I would argue it is appropriate to describe your business in your name. If you do so, but actually use others to fulfill the order, then that is - in my humble opinion - deception. This was a classic business model used by all the big firms of accountants and consultants in the 80s... the client got to meet a Partner all the while they were deciding who to appoint, and once the contract was in place all they ever saw was a trainee. Even if your mates are all proficient it was YOU who was bought and it is you who should deliver unless you were selling a specific service or made it clear that there were other people involved and likely to deliver.

One way in which some practitioners try to address this is by adopting a plural term after their name. Fred Bloggs Consulting, FB Consultants, Bloggs and Co, Blogg Advisors, Blogg Advisory Services, Fred Blogg Associates. If they are selling a range of services, by reputation and fielding a team of a few people to deliver, then I figure this is perfectly appropriate.

However, there's another scenario - Mavis Bloggs sets herself up in business offering generic advisory services (no, let's suppose she's a coach) and she calls herself Mavis Bloggs Associates even though she is only a one-person enterprise. Now we don't only have deception (she's kidding prospects that she is bigger than she is), but also delusion (she's kidding herself that she is more than she is). Even more extreme, is when she decides to make herself look even bigger by putting the name into initials - MBA and going global (MBA International)!

Now, sadly, in my experience these folks are often lacking confidence and they adopt this style to prove their own worth to themselves. The tell-tale sign is when their business card goes on to say, Founder, Proprietor, Senior Vice President etc. Rarely in professional services, but for some reason quite common among trades-people they go one step further and instead of providing their first name seek to be known by their surname and so their card, even their local newspaper adverts, refer to Mr F Bloggs. We have a local audiologist like this what he hasn't thought through it how this is received by his target market - pompous, arrogant, self-centred, old are all terms I hear people apply to him.

So, what do you do if you've decided you don't want to be known by your name but prefer something else? This is where self-employed consultants think clever and come up with all manner of associative names - Wholistic Consulting, Inner Mind Coaching, Performance Matters, R-E-S-U-L-T-S, and so on. As a step in the evolution of their thinking this makes some sense as they are beginning to build, in their own mind, a description of what is unique about them. What they don't often do is look at the names of successful competitors and ask why they call themselves what they do? It depends hugely on the specific market, but generally people like to buy from people not from dreams. Cadbury is Cadbury because that was the surname of the founder. Executives at Cadbury buy services from people they know and trust and they shape those services to match their needs, they don't generally go straight to Wholistic Consulting and say "I like your brand can I have some please?"

So, no definitive answers, just a lot of questions to ask yourself when exploring your motives behind the name you trade under. Good luck, and do send me a business card!

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

Tips for professional business development seminars

2010-05-13T23:20:00.001Z

Tips for professional business development seminars

In the last few weeks I've been to three business development seminars. It's a common tool in the marketer's kit, but it is easy to do badly and to lose the little credibility that you had gained by inviting people along. The following thoughts were prompted by these experiences.

1 Attend a few other events and make notes of what they did well and not so well. Mentally run through your own plans anticipating the needs of all kinds of delegates - including those who arrive late or are given different directions. Walk the experience from the car-park to the room envisaging and preventing what you can see might detract from participants' enjoyment.

2 Prepare and practice your contribution. Iron out mannerisms. record yourself and hone your story. I stopped counting the "you knows" at the event on Thursday, when it reached ten in one minute! No excuse.

3 Make sure that you've got a couple of excellent case studies to draw on that are directly related to the audience. Work them out in detail before and be sure that you know the sector well. At the same Thursday event, the presenter tried to waffle through a poorly conceived model of a 'hairdressers salon', when he clearly still had his hair cut by his mother using a pudding basin!

4 In an hour you can't explain everything. You should expect to get no more than 5 points across. Stick to the old formula from advertising - Attention. Interest. Conviction. Desire, and Close.

5 First impressions count. While people are now more relaxed about dress standards the downside is that, in forming their opinions, they place more emphasis on your words. This is not just in terms of the content but the anecdotes and asides. NEVER knock your competition and absolutely NEVER knock your audience. If you invited people with an incentive don't make fun of them for taking you up on the offer.

6 No matter how warm a glow you are getting from some members of the audience ALWAYS respect the whole audience and never run over the time you gave in your invitation. Don't focus on one person over others and don't deviate from the topic to suit a whim. Always thank them profusely for contributing their time and promise a gentle follow-up call.

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

The myth of the SoHo entrepreneurial boom

2010-05-10T08:51:00.001Z

There's a popular perception that one of the trends of the 'noughties' was a growth in the proportion of 'SoHo' businesses.

As Wikipedia defines it: "The modern concept of small office/home office, or SoHo, refers to the category of business, which involves from 1 to 10 workers. SOHO can also stand for small or home office or single office/home office. A larger business enterprise, one notch up the size scale, is often categorized as a small business. When a company reaches 100 or more employees, it is often referred to as a Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME)."

It seems to me that there have been four groups who have most vociferously propagated this perception:

1 Convertors of home offices - the firms who specialise in turning a spare bedroom, or other space, into a designer place to work from home. This began as a trend in the 80s, for companies to allow executives who were travelling increasingly long-distances to spend a little time each week recuperating (though they would never describe it in those terms) by 'working from home'. As pressure mounted further, and trust began to decline, so these busy types were expected to demonstrate that they could work from home and one way of doing this was to have a mini-office at home. As technology boomed, and broadband became a reality, so the SoHo was born.

2 Governments, keen to spread wealth across the country rather than have it polarised in Cities, with all the infrastructure problems that this causes, recognised and promoted the value of working from home. This message reached its first peak in the late 1980s when dramatic reforms in the financial services sector meant that many large companies, seeking to reduce their own liabilities due to mis-selling, began to shift the onus for sales from their own staff to 'independent financial advisors'. It persists today, because Governments realise that people resent being packed like sardines into commuter trains and instead prefer to leave two hours earlier and drive in their own tin protector. The environmental consequences are horrendous and smart politicians realise that they need to promote SoHo enterprise for sound environmental reasons.

3 The self-employed, professional. With the initial wave of independents in the financial sector discovering the comfort of working more locally, and especially from home, so other professionals began to consider the possibility for themselves. They did so tentatively, and they found that it was often not as easy as they had, at first, thought. While they might be a very good, indeed exceptional, designer, computer programmer, telecoms engineeer, project manager, or whatever, working from home was isolated and called on both strong resilience to being alone, and good interpersonal skills to be able to 'sell' what one did. Bear in mind too, that the choice was often sold quite hard to them by their former employers, keen to reduce overhead without seeming to 'lay people off'. Many found this transition very hard, and their self-esteem began to suffer. So, imagine their relief, when they discovered that they were not alone? And to reassure themselves that they were not alone, they were happy to propagate the perception that they were not the only ones making this lifestyle 'choice'.

4 And so, the 'trend' was born. And, to nurture it, a wholly new industry emerged - the industry of 'social networking' - amusingly named, since it has little to do with 'social' and is all to do with 'business', whether online (through 'social networks', such as Ecademy and LinkedIn) or offline (through BRE, BNI, or one of thousands of semi-formalised networks meeting for a 'power breakfast' at golf clubs and hotels around the world). And to sustain their business model, this industry has to propagate the perception that the SoHo is a growing trend.

Just how accurate, then, is the perception that there's a growth in the proportion of self-employed people working from home? Government statistics are readily available these days (http://www.statistics.gov.uk) and extensive time-lines can be traced.

This data shows us that changes have certainly not been 'steady' - the trend is not exactly constantly upwards! There was a 25% increase in self-employment overall between 1986 and 1989. The level remained relatively stable then, if hovering between 3.3M and 3.6M (ie a 10% shift) can be called 'stable'. There was then a substantial decline from 1995 to 2000 from 3.6M to 3.3M, and then a rise back again from 2000 to 2003. A Government enquiry, at the time, demonstrated that the single largest contributor to this was the change in working practices in the banking, finance and insurance sector which forced/encouraged many people formerly employed in those areas to become self-employed.

Since 2003, the overall number of self-employed has continued to grow however the rate of growth in employment has been faster than that of self-employment (ie the proportion of self-employed in the workforce is reducing, albeit only slightly).

Yes, there's been a growth in the absolute number of SoHo businesses, but as a trend in the overall employment picture? No, it's a myth.

Why do we believe so passionately that this myth is a reality? Above everything else, there's a psychological component - a kind of 'reticular activation' which is the scientific reason why we see more cars of the same make, model, and colour as our own soon after we have bought it. Suddenly, that unique rusty-red designer hatchback, that we thought was so unique, is everywhere - oh, what trendsetters we are in our family!

The same is true of our lifestyle choice to be a SoHo worker - as we meet more such people, then we extrapolate that to the rest of the population. Among the self-employed, there's a desire to feel 'normal' and so we see more people who are 'enjoying' the same lifestyle, and we delude ourselves that this is the norm, while we play down in our minds the people we meet who are, and have always been, 'commuter drones' (as one blog described them only this morning)!

There's also a white collar issue - self-employment has been more common for longer among manual jobs than 'professional' ones - farm labourers, milk-roundsmen, shop-keepers, and so on, were generally self-employed. As many modern-day 'professionals', tend to disassociate themselves from manual workers, they tend to 'forget' that these folk have always been 'entrepreneurs'.

You would rarely hear a dairy roundsman (one of the early franchise opportunities - forced to start selling bread, eggs and all kinds of other produce to make a living competing against the spread of the supermarket) describe themselves as an 'entrepreneur'.

However, with the arrogance that comes from 'knowledge' work, those who try one way of processing information, and then another, struggling to find one that actually generates an income, don't stop there but describe themselves as 'serial entrepreneurs'.

Next time someone tells you that the next best thing since sliced bread is to become a SoHo social networker, check out their agenda, consider selling milk at the same time, or step back and decide whether you are really cut-out for this choice or prefer to stay among the undiminished ranks of the employed.

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

What is the 'point' of personal development?

2010-05-03T08:27:00.001Z

Do you visit a coach or therapist to grow? Can people who are 'happy' in themselves benefit from coaching or therapy? If someone is 'doing alright' why should they consider personal growth and emotional development?

From a recent online group discussion....

Timothy: Are there any online directories that allow counsellors/psychotherapists to promote their practices specific to the area of positive adult development?

Graham: Funny question, Timothy. There's lots - some local and some global, ranging from the generic Yellow Pages to specific ones run by psychotherapy membership bodies. In fact, I can't actually think of any Directory that promotes negative adult development! Could be a good theme for a comedy act though. Best wishes, Graham.

Geoffrey: Just out of curiosity, what's the difference between "adult development" and "adult education"?

Graham: I'm not sure that there's a widely recognized difference, but in the circles in which I work, AE would embrace all aspects of intellectual enhancement, whereas AD would refer to enhancing the emotional and spiritual awareness of an individual. Regards, Graham.

Geoffrey: Truly not wishing to seem obtuse, but (here it comes) isn't the objective of most therapy to help patients/clients develop a healthy physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual life experience? It certainly has been my focus for, oh, the last 40+ years or so. Is Adult Development somehow genuinely different or is it a terminological twist?

Graham: I don't think there's any discrepancy here? I can't think of any form of post-adolescent psychological therapy that isn't "adult development". There ARE other adult development interventions which are not therapy, per se, but their followers would say are "developmental" - the most obvious being religions, new age movements, and cults.

And yes, I too would say that therapy has the objective of leading to a "healthy physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual life" though with the emphasis on the last two, and usually where the first two are outcomes of the therapy rather than the main focus. Thus, I would work with a client on the psychological blocks to a healthy lifestyle, but I wouldn't coach them around a running track.

It is hard to define, but in the UK, at least, AE would embrace all fields of knowledge and skill, not just those about the internal growth of a human being emotionally and spiritually. For example, AE includes carpentry, plumbing, foreign language proficiency, car mechanics, cookery and handicrafts. While these can be used as levers to enhanced emotional and spiritual understanding and hence could be described as "developmental" unless a class was called "Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance", or something similar, those signing up for a "Do-It-Yourself Electrics" course probably wouldn't be expecting any profound insights into their psyche.

It was Timothy who used the two phrases in his personal description, perhaps he would like to explain more?

What I was picking up on was his inference that he was looking for directories that focused on POSITIVE adult development. As I said, I can't think of any examples of adult development directories that might focus on the NEGATIVE. I suppose the entries might read something like this:

"Dr Graham Wilson, specialist in the creation of distress, anxiety and phobias. If you thought you were 'fixed' see me! If you don't feel suicidal after just one visit then your fees will be refunded."

I notice that Timothy speaks of "Optimal Adult Development", so I guess he is embracing both negative and positive. I can relate to that, as personally, I am rather concerned about people who focus exclusively on the positive - this seems to ignore the reality of the hardships of life and could be seen as a form of denial at the very least. As you can imagine, I don't hang out with people who have had their teeth artificially whitened and their lips surgically enhanced to emphasise their smiles!

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

Papal visit outrage - it ain't what you do, it's the way people react to it

2010-04-25T09:11:00.001Z

With apologies to Sy Oliver, Fun Boy Three and Bananarama, this morning's shock news is that Foreign Office staff, keen to make the Pope's visit to the UK a success brainstormed such ideas as...

Launch a "Benedict" brand of condoms

Perform a duet with the Queen [ie the Head of the Anglican Communion]

Apologise for the Spanish Armada

Open an abortion clinic, and

Bless a gay marriage.

The context was clear, the staff had been called together for some 'blue sky' thinking about how to turn, what could become a stale, politically-laden, event into something positive, vibrant, and more in tune with the 21st Century.

Brainstorming is a group creativity technique designed to generate a large number of ideas in the expansive phase of problem solving. No-one can realistically lay claim to having 'invented' it, but it was popularised in 1953 by Alex Faickney Osborn in a book called Applied Imagination.

Although psychologists have now demonstrated that it doesn't actually serve it's explicit purpose of increasing the quantity or quality of solutions generated it can be shown to improve morale, boost work enjoyment and improve team-work. The rules of brainstorming are simple - essentially, to focus on volume, to withold discussion and criticism of others' ideas, to verbalise even outrageous ideas, and to build on ideas already shared.

It has certainly been employed for over half-a-century, and it is hard to believe that anyone in 'management' of any kind hasn't been asked to participate in a brainstorming session at some stage in their career. This makes it hard to treat seriously the reactions expressed, by those in positions of considerable power, when the output from this particular session was leaked.

The documents clearly indicated that those involved realised that the ideas were extreme, explicitly set the context, and showed that people were genuine in their desire for a positive end-result (a popular and successful Papal visit). These are precisely the right ways of going about a brainstorming session and documenting it.

Yet, we have a media furour, Government ministers expressing 'deep regret', a civil servant castigated, an ambassador sent to apologise to the Pope, Roman Catholic Bishops describing it as "appalling manners", one suggesting that it is the latest element of a much larger anti-Catholic smear-campaign and a Catholic spin-doctor who wonderfully turned it into a call for Catholics around the world to demonstrate their capacity for forgiveness.

I must admit I find that last one the most outrageous given that we are witnessing the incredibly slow unfolding of a systemic process of sexual abuse by Catholic priests of young children in their care for which they have yet to accept any collective responsibility. That however is beside the point.

These people are perfectly well aware of the technique that led to this document. They have almost certainly used it themselves in the course of their work. They are also well aware that junior staff often feel less constraint than more senior ones and that positive outcomes almost always arise from giving them scope to be creative from time-to-time. They also know that the media are pathetically hungry for stories and will inflate even the most trivial bit of news to get a response.

So, I am far less horrified by the memo than I am by their reactions. These people are the ones who are trying to shape our moral compass, they are the ones in whom we invest the power to make significant global decisions and to address major political and environmental crises. In my opinion, it isn't the junior civil servants who deserve castigation, it is their seniors who appear to have lost themselves in the cloud of their own super-egotistical importance.

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

Is this social media thing just a psychological defence mechanism?

2010-04-17T10:53:00.000Z

If you don't read Seth Godin's blog, then I really recommend that you do.

Today's soundbite raises a question about the daily flow into our Inbox's of email, spam, newsletters and so on - almost all of it low importance and low urgency.

People complain, understandably about spam, but what about all the other stuff? Why is it that many people keep checking if there's fewer messages than they'd hoped for? Does this 'white noise' of generally irrelevant material actually serve a purpose?

Seth argues that it does - it prevents us from experiencing the pain of not having addressed those things that REALLY needed addressing. It's distraction keeps us from anxiety about real work that we haven't done.

So, I'd like to extend that question and ask whether there's a delusional dimension to all our activity on ecademy, linkedin, facebook and so on?

All these interactions with people on continents that we will never do business with, with people who have little or no understanding of OUR business, with people whose networks never overlap with those which we need to access. All the "like" buttons that get pressed before we've even read the item, the re-tweets, and scrawls on the virtual wall of our friend's facebook.

Do they serve a purpose simply to distract us from more practial tasks that would REALLY help our business? I could go on, but I'm sure you get the point.

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

Corporate Alumni Networks - savvy employers nurture their leavers

2010-04-13T11:07:00.001Z

As some of you may know, for the last three or four years, I have been managing the networks of former employees for a couple of large organisations. A corporate alumni network, provides the means for people who used to work together to keep in touch. Some do so purely for social reasons, others do so for commercial ones, and many do so because they know that most new jobs are found through our personal network.

Companies benefit a great deal from alumni networks. Not only are the members usually good ambassadors for the business but they are also a rich source of new recruits. People leave and improve themselves. It is insanity not to be prepared to offer them a job should they wish to return later. They also refer friends and relatives to the firm, and even pass on good business opportunities to their former contacts within the business.

Of course, most companies don't even think of pro-actively managing these networks and just allow them to develop through public applications like Facebook and LinkedIn, but savvy ones choose to provide more for their former colleagues, and that's where I come in.

A couple of us were tinkering with a recent new tool on the internet the other day. It produces animated videos to tell a story. We thought we'd experiment with an animated interview with myself explaining more about these networks. Go on, have a cup of tea and a laugh for a few minutes...

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

Social Intelligence - why some people love parties and others hate them

2010-04-08T21:44:00.001Z

A while ago, I posted a blog entry on Developing Social Intelligence. It obviously struck a chord with a lot of people.

As part of a pilot in-house programme on self-development for a large organisation, I produced a short video introduction to Social Intelligence. Sadly, the recession put an end to this fascinating initiative. The video is my first effort at anything like this, so please excuse the limited technology, but I thought you might be interested nonetheless.

Social Intelligence, first described by Edward Thorndike in 1920, explains why some people are very comfortable in the company of strangers while others find social settings painfully difficult. It is a critical factor in determining personal success, happiness, mental well-being and good personal relationships. In recent years, it has been popularised by "positive psychologists" and the "happiness movement". Academics prefer the original work, and today there are extensive research programmes exploring its genetic components, evolutionary significance and neuro-imagery.

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

The use and abuse of power at work - Association (4/21)

2010-03-30T01:39:00.000Z

By association, we gain personal worth without necessarily having to do anything in particular to deserve it. We rely on the body with which we are associated to perform and we bask in that glory.

Obtaining power and influence through association is at the heart of many conservative institutions. Fathers who attended a certain school may be offered the right to send their son to the same one, or may be heard to have 'put his name down before he was born'. It may be far easier to do this than to join a lottery for a place at an even better school. The school is only relatively recently measured by the academic achievements of its pupils, but instead is seen as a launching point for a career because of the power it conveys 'by association'.

The same applies, of course, to the college or university that the individual goes on to attend. If they make it to Oxford or Cambridge, then it is the college that counts. If it is to a lesser university such as Bristol or Aberdeen, then it may be the Hall of Residence that bestows prestige. There's even an inverted snobbery around two places that Victorians might have sent their less-academic sons to - Camborne School of Mines and the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester.

Many students choose a university because of its prestige, rather than its quality in their particular field, knowing that they will later derive power by association. They may decide which companies to apply to, in the hope that once recruited, regardless of their personal performance, their CV will 'look good'. One reason why class polarisation happens around universities is because students from poorer backgrounds, state schools and who are the first in the family to enter higher education, often don't get advice about the longer-term prestige of certain institutions, especially in respect of particular disciplines.

Professional bodies try to acquire this prestige, as it appeals to prospective members, by purporting to have exacting entry requirements when in practice it is simply the colour of someone's money that leads to their acceptance. Some, such as the "Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce" (RSA) in London, have been so successful at this in the past that, even though membership is effectively open to all, you will see otherwise highly esteemed individuals forego listing more substantial and significant memberships in favour of FRSA after their name. Other popular professional bodies that appear to convey similar kudos are the Royal Geographical Society and the Institute of Directors.

For those who feel an affinity to a particular trade or profession, there are the Livery Companies which almost automatically lead to Freedom of the City of London. Then, of course, the ultimate in membership bodies are the London clubs. A few remain quite exclusive, but many have been forced to widen their net and today will accept almost anyone who is able to afford their fee and gets to know a couple of existing members.

Just as graduates may seek to join certain 'blue chip' companies, so those who have worked for them will draw on this to assume power by association. There is no firm definition of a blue-chip company, the term is simply applied to large, creditworthy businesses with well known brands. The precise membership of this 'club' is constantly changing but most have an enduring strength.

In many situations, the assumption is made that it is at the time of joining the 'elite' organisation that screening will have happened - such that only someone who is particularly good would be accepted there. Ironically, of course, it is mainly when we are recruiting that we assign an individual more power than their counterpart because of their previous associations, thereby perpetuating the myth that the individual is somehow deserving of their status.

Officers in the Army have a remarkably consistent way of speaking. While there are exceptions, and there has been a tendency to maintain a modicum of regional pronunciation, the Sandhurst dialect is widely recognised and instantly allows one officer to recognise another many years later when they meet around the boardroom table. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3589742/Its-fashionable-to-speak-like-a-warrior-again.html)

Without doubt selection for, and being graduated by, Sandhurst, is one of the toughest screening processes that a young person is going to experience, so it is little wonder that so much kudos is attached to it. Power by association that will last a lifetime.

This process is by no means restricted to the educated, upper middle class. The military have also always imbued the troops with a regimental identity. It is well known that a significant proportion of the younger people entering the Forces have had an unsatisfactory childhood and the Regiment soon becomes a new family to them. They gain power by association with it and, in turn, make their own contribution to its ongoing reputation. There are countless small details that allow a former soldier to recognise one of their peers. Apart from physical bearing, ties, watch straps, pin badges, blazer buttons, and subtle verbal cues all play a role.

Any excuse to include a little Porridge...

Even the prison system offers power by association. It is said that there's a hierarchy of establishments among prisoners - the tougher the establishment the tougher you must be perceived to be by the 'establishment'.

Power by association is totally dependent on the audience. In some sectors of society other forms of association have given them power. Obviously this is one of the forms of power exerted by membership of gangs. Gang membership provides the protection and sense of belonging that a family could give as well as a sense of identity.

At the end of the day, power gained by association is simply a form of false reputation, however, to work within some institutions and professions it is essential in order to conform to the culture. It might be worthwhile reviewing your own 'associations' and deciding whether the power that you derive from them is appropriate or not.

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

The use and abuse of power at work - Position (3/21)

2010-03-29T01:10:00.001Z

With many positions (ie roles within structures) comes power. Obvious examples include presidents, prime ministers, chief executives, chairmen, and archbishops. While safeguards may be built in to limit the scope of their power, such people will already be skilled manipulators of their environment before they even assume the top role.

This characteristic of these roles has led them to be stereotyped and subsequently parodied by comedians around the world. This is an old tradition and can be found in works such as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Voltaire's Candide. Monty Python often used this approach taking an authority figure (such as a military officer, the police, judges, Conservative politicians, BBC news announcers, and even God) and exagerating their stereotyped mannerisms to an extreme ultimately spouting complete nonsense. Examples include:

* Police officers, as seen in the Keystone Kops, Inspector Clouseau, Reno 911!, Police Academy, The Thin Blue Line and Carry On Constable.
* Soldiers, as seen in Sgt. Bilko, Carry on Sergeant, Stripes, Blackadder Goes Forth and Il Capitano in the Commedia del Arte.
* Civil servants, as seen in Yes Minister, Carlton Brown of the F.O.[2], The Ministry of Silly Walks and Spin City.
* Priests, as seen in All Gas and Gaiters and Father Ted.
* Teachers, principals, and deans, as seen in Animal House and High School High.

Thirty years on, and this clip from "Yes Minister" shows exactly how positional power can be used and abused by those in the know...

The world is going through a substantial transition, and has been certainly since the 2nd World War, with the power that we were prepared to give such people in authority being severly limited, made far more transparent, or the process by which these roles are allocated being far more clearly defined. The status of politicians has most recently come under threat, as the UK expenses scandal was rather bizarrely very slowly unfolded to achieve its maximum effect. Before that, reforms of the House of Lords had already seen many hereditary peers replaced from their positions of power with life peers whose background and personal achievements were far more visible. The power of the Prime Minister in the last decade or so has shifted enormously compared with the days of Margaret Thatcher. During the Falklands Crisis, she relied upon the naivety of MPs to assume that communication with the forces in the South Atlantic took hours if not days to effect. Today, Gordon Brown's cabinet decisions surrounding the Afghan conflict are subject to instant scrutiny and no-one expresses any surprise that wounded service personnel are brought back within hours to the UK for specialist hospital treatment. As the Catholic church reels with the escalating revelations of sexual abuse by its clergy in the 70s, 80s and 90s, those who thought they would never be questioned are finding that society has changed substantially within their lifetime.

Obviously the assumption of positional power applies to all kinds of role, to some extent dictated by the circumstances. Under certain conditions, for example, a police officer may have positional power (such as the power to detain or arrest someone) but in other situations they have none other than that given to them by members of the public who assume that they know what to do in a particular situation. Of course, this isn't always the case...

The classic series of experiments by Prof Stanley Milgram of Yale University, beginning in 1961, in which volunteers playing the role of 'teacher' were asked to inflict electric shocks on a 'learner' when they gave a wrong answer to a word-pairing exercise, demonstrated that most people were even prepared to obey an instruction from the experimenter when they believed that it was causing severe pain, if not unconsciousness and death. They very effectively demonstrated that normal people, acting under orders from someone in authority, would obey those orders even if they meant going against their personal beliefs. In this case, the positional power was derived from being an 'expert'. These experiments would never happen today, because of the ethical constraints, but the science was solid and they have been featured in countless programmes and publications over the years.

So most positions come with power attached, although the extent to which this is unquestioned is shifting enormously particularly for public positions. The private sector has just as much power attached to its roles though it seems to be lagging behind the public in the degree to which it becomes transparent.

The key to most positional power is that it is a balance between that which is genuinely vested in the role and that which people are prepared to give the person in authority.

How we relate to people in authority is largely dictated by our experience of authority figures in our childhood. People who are brought up to unquestioningly respect their parents, other people, teachers and so on, are likely to give away more power to other authority figures, such as managers and employer organisations, in their adult life. Those who do not have the same obedience instilled into them, are less likely to give away power to (or even recognise) their 'seniors'.

Interestingly, the number ONE message from children to parents is that they understand that they may need to be disciplined, but it should be done with respect - not by abusing the parent's authority.

The extent to which someone in a position of power, such as a business manager, is entitled to power because of their position has to be considered on a case-by-case basis. Twenty years ago, I worked for one company where the 'right' of a senior manager to a named parking space was abolished. They argued that there should be a "first-in, nearest-parked" policy. Last year, I was working for a company where the 'top' dozen managers had named spaces within a few feet of the main entrance, whereas other employees had to walk at least a couple of hundred feet from their car to their entrance and in many cases far more. Is a manager with a PA entitled to have coffee brought to them from the machine, or do they have to get their own? Is a manager entitled to be abrupt, rude, to swear at, other employees? Are they entitled to demand attendance outside the employee's normal hours, or to force them to work when they might have taken leave?

Of course, there will be some managers who exert more power than they are reasonably entitled to, or do so in circumstances where most members of society might question their behaviour. These 'standards' are highly dependent on context, but nontheless, courts are beginning to establish unambiguous definitions of bullying and harrassment - the perpetrators of which often believe that their position entitles them to behave in a particular manner. The following clip twists this around - and delivers a powerful message both about workplace behaviour and domestic violence. Some men in a relationship believe that being male gives them positional power over their partner...

Perhaps one of the most high profile cases of potential positional power abuse in recent months was that of David Letterman who openly admitted having sex with female members of his staff.

It is the use, abuse, and misperceptions of this power, that often causes problems. Over time, society changes the power that it assigns to a particular role, and we often hear examples of the impact of this. Without doubt, in Britain, the respect shown for people like police officers, teachers, and parents, has diminished in the last fifty years or so. Similarly, by virtue of their "celebrity" status, today we are prepared to give far more authority to pop-stars, movie actors, and football players. It is the basis of celebrity endorsements and is a powerful influencer of our behaviour.

Of course, this use of celebrity power is not always negative. As Dame Diana Rigg points out celebrities are frequently used to raise funds for charities for precisely this reason - the public give them an authority and the celebrities themselves do not always perform the scrutiny that they could to justify this.

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

The use and abuse of power at work - Control (2/21)

2010-03-24T23:08:00.004Z

The first form of power that I want to acknowledge is control. Most people seem to be aware of the problems caused by excessive control, and it is a form of power that few people will say they use even though there are plenty of examples of it being legitimised.

As a form of power, control can range from the micro-management tendencies of an individual to the introduction of open plan offices by a company. It may be made to appear acceptable through the use of terms like "compliance", "governance" and "best practice" but essentially all control is concerned with maintaining the status quo - preventing others from doing things without the approval of its perpetrator.

"Health and Safety" is another example of the 'legitimised' application of control which has become so enshrined in work-related jargon, that almost anyone can 'quote' it as a way of stopping people from doing something.

Only yesterday, the UK-based, soft-right think tank, Policy Exchange, published a report damning Health and Safety for becoming a 'ritual excuse' not to do anything (http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/news/news.cgi?id=1146).

Control is usually exerted through mechanisms that involve knowing, supervising, checking up and, more subtly, by creating loyalty. The popularity of loyalty schemes among retailers is nothing to do with rewarding customers, but about diminishing the likelihood of them taking their custom elsewhere. Loyalty becomes a crucial quality for those who seek to use control as a power mechanism. Those in leadership roles may experience staff leaving them as a personal hurt.

It is founded on paranoid traits, an enduring distrust of others with no evidence to justify it, culminating in a conviction that those others are deliberately trying to demean or to cause harm to them. Often the fantasy of what would happen if things were 'out of control' is melodramatic, hysterical, and frenzied.

A fascinating insight into the behaviour of the control-oriented manager can be found in Steve Ballmer of Microsoft, who said the following in a company interview a couple of years ago:

"My natural personality is more the hands-on operator than -- I just love, you know, give me details, give me things to handle, handle, handle. I mean, rrrrrrr. (Laughter.) And it's different. It doesn't make it better or worse; it makes it different. So, really I think if you talk to folks, they wouldn't exactly use the word micromanager, but I like detail. (Laughter.)

Now watch this video...

In 2005, Mark Lucovsky alleged in a sworn statement to a Washington state court that Ballmer became highly enraged upon hearing that he was about to leave Microsoft for Google, picked up his chair, and threw it across his office. Referring to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Ballmer allegedly said, "I'm going to fucking kill Google," then resumed trying to persuade Lucovsky to stay at Microsoft. Ballmer has described the incident as a "gross exaggeration of what actually took place." It would seem that Lucovsky's loyalty to Ballmer had been compromised and, whether exaggerated or not, Ballmer took it far too personally.

In an interview in Belgium in 2009, Ballmer quoted a line from a Woody Allen movie (Annie Hall) where someone says: "Relationships are like sharks. They either move forward or die". It's an interesting perspective, especially as many people with paranoid tendencies report a fragility or volatility of the relationship between their parents and it is this that most psychologists would point towards as the root of the controller mentality - seeking to take control to limit the scope of others to behave in unpredictable ways.

Ironically, control weakens power by limiting what other forms of power can do. Ultimately, therefore, in order to express power, the controller needs to relax their control. They have to learn to trust people, and to interpret their behaviour differently, often for the first time in their lives. The tendency emerges in early adulthood, few people who have it will seek help changing it and, even if they do, they are likely to stop trying when the person working with them begins to challenge their thought patterns. It's a difficult conundrum, but one that anyone who works with people of power has to be prepared to address.

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

The use and abuse of power at work - Introduction (1/21)

2010-03-23T10:52:00.001Z

Human beings share many things with the other members of the animal kingdom. One of these is the drive to be industrious. It goes against our nature to be idle. We create huge empires whose purpose is to keep us engaged in activity. We may delude ourselves that they are to make money, to improve health, to enhance social standards, but in reality, they serve to keep us occupied.

Psychologists have shown, in numerous studies, that one of the fundamentals to a sense of human well-being is the need to be doing something. This need is often hijacked for other purposes - to pay the mortgage, to feed and clothe our family, to feel we have made a mark on the world, to justify our birth or education even, but the fundamental in there is that we have an instinctual need to be industrious.

A smaller group of people have a strong need to measure their success through this industriousness. They rise to the 'top' of ever larger organisations and draw strength from the financial results, the employee count, number of branches or offices, perceived impact of their empire and so on.

As they depend on others to want whatever they have to offer sufficiently strongly to pay for it, so they may seek to improve its quality or reduce the cost of manufacture and delivery. Quality and efficiency efforts provide more work for more people, and inspire an industry in themselves, though for some industrialists such matters are really quite irrelevant as their need is not reflected in the amassing of greater wealth but in the trappings of power that their position brings them.

Power is not, in itself, wrong. It is used to achieve much good in the world. It is the use and abuse of power that can cause problems. Those people of power need to understand how to apply it to best effect, how to respond to others seeking to use it over them, and how to work with others in a position of mutual power. Psychotherapists often refer to these three states as "power over", "power less" and "power with".

My own work revolves around helping people in positions of power understand themselves, other people, and situations, in such a way that they can work with these three states most effectively.

When we start to work together, we often have a discussion about the ways in which these people see themselves dealing with power. There are lots of ways in which you could try to classify power, but I find that one fairly comprehensive review by an American psychotherapist, James Hillman, is a good starting point. He identifies 20 different kinds of power. While I don't find some of his language particularly accessible, and some of his terms are from a different period and culture, I base my own way of looking at the individual and their repertoire of power skills in a similar fashion. This blog, then, is number 1 of 21. The next twenty entries will look at the specific ways in which those of power, derive their power, apply their power, and perhaps abuse their power.

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

When the experts begin to love themselves - Oliver James

2010-03-20T14:33:00.002Z

One of the adjacent villages to our own is trying to raise funds for a new village hall. To do so they have broken free from the usual gamut of bring-and-buy and summer fetes and instead for the last year or so have been hosting some quite extraordinary talks. The speakers have ranged from international figures to quiet experts and many have lived in, or close to, the village. The subjects have been diverse, the discussion lively, and the views sometimes controversial. They have attracted the attention of the national media. If you happen to be interested then their website is www.woottontalks.co.uk.

Last night's speaker was Oliver James, a well-known clinical psychologist, who has been broadcasting on matters psychological since 1982. James was the epitomy of the 80s phenomenon of self-publicising experts. That's not a criticism. Until then, it had gently been expected that someone with genuine expertise would somehow be recognised and their audience would gravitate towards them. He was one of a new generation of academic who realised that this would not happen. Instead they saw the importance of the popular media in shaping their careers and set about making it work for them.

Today, this is not at all uncommon - why, even last week, I was harrassed by advertorial emails to take part in a 'webinar' by an "Internationally famous" builder of professional practices for chiropracters, for goodness sake! The speaker's authority was all self-proclaimed and his advice was simply to do as he had done and promote yourself widely as an expert to your own community of (in his case) chiropracters and other complementary health professionals.

Within the mainstream academic communities there is a more respectable form of this through the numerous chairs in the public understanding of science and similar roles that bring science into society. One of whom, Baroness Susan Greenfield, hit the news headlines for the wrong reasons just before Christmas, when she was unceremoniously evicted from her Royal Institution grace and favour flat amid rumours that she had squandered the limited resources of the Institution on un-warranted and ill-managed 'renovations'.

Personally, I feel it is a little unfair to castigate someone for poor management when it was a different quality that led them into their position of authority, though this IS the basis of the Peter principle and perhaps Greenfield, and others like her, should be better able to recognise the boundaries of their abilities and bring in experts in other areas when the need arises.

Other problems though crop up when the addiction to popularity drives its junkie to seek more and more material with which to work. This seems to have been the case when another of this generation of science and medicine popularists, Professor Raj Persaud, an extremely well-known career psychiatrist, was brought before the General Medical Council in 2008, after persistent complaints that he was plagiarising the work of others. The panel's conclusion, before striking him off for three months, spelt out the boundary that such personalities must be so careful with:

"You are an eminent psychiatrist with a distinguished academic record who has combined a clinical career as a consultant psychiatrist with work in the media and journalism. The panel is of the view that you must have known that your actions in allowing the work of others to be seen as though it was your own would be considered dishonest by ordinary people. The panel has therefore determined that your actions were dishonest in accordance with the accepted definition of dishonesty in these proceedings. The panel has determined that your actions, in plagiarising the work of others, were liable to bring the profession into disrepute."

In between these extremes are a plethora of authorities who straddle the fence between popularist interpretations of their discipline and the academic rigour that gained them entry to this position in the first place.

Of course, there have always been such characters. Perhaps more so in the arts and music than the sciences and medicine, but the approach is certainly not unprecedented. A local example would be William Morris, who moved to nearby Kelmscott in the late 1860s. Morris was already a well-established and widely respected designer, manufacturer and architect. Although he had always had a passion for social reform, it wasn't until his name had been well defined professionally, in the late 1870s, that he began to take a leading role in the emerging liberal/socialist movement. Morris was clearly able to see the links between his philosophy of design and his political stance, and wrote about them, but he didn't use the former to justify the latter. Despite some obvious radical tendencies, and a general approach to life that put him on the edge of 'society', he never appears to have lost the rigour of his thought or confused the boundaries of his professional expertise.

In the last few years, as some of the self-promoting academics has begun to near the end of their working lives, they have produced books that might never before have been accepted for publication. In the past, an academic who wrote one last tome away from his field of expertise, might have found an obscure publisher who would take a limited risk and produce a small print run, but it would have stopped there. Today, publishing is a very different business and, let's face it, many books are bought with an intention of being read but never get opened. The publishers are driven by a profit motive and know that an author who has self-promoted in the past will have a residual market of prospective buyers who will invest in the book by virtue of the author's name rather than any rigour in the content.

Sadly, this has meant that a few academics, whose reputation in their field was rock solid, have been tempted to branch out into popularist topics without necessarily having the peer structure or basic foundation on which to build their arguments.

When I began my own brief academic career, I was based at the Middlesex Hospital in London. One of the great anatomists of the day, Professor Lewis Wolpert, ruled the department in which I worked. While, to some, he might have seemed a polymath, he was actually at the core an anatomist but he was absolute in his understanding of the peripheral issues surrounding his subject, and especially the ethics of medical research. I can't disclose the circumstances in which he demonstrated this one day at the Middlesex, but let it just be said that one cohort of medics will never forget the lesson they learned that afternoon. Later in his working life, Lewis suffered from depression and, in coming to terms with it, he wrote a popular book "Malignant Sadness: The Anatomy of Depression" which has received almost universal acclaim from sufferers of the disease. As a psychotherapist myself, working largely with highly intelligent and fully functional clients, I hope that you will see that I have profound respect for Wolpert and how he applied his considerable prowess as a communicator and anatomist to address a topic in which his expertise was primarily that of the patient, but was after-all on the peripheries of his field too. Just a little later, he wrote another popularist book "Six impossible things before breakfast, The evolutionary origins of belief". Sadly, from my perspective, this book took him beyond the disciplines in which he was authoritative and into a wholly different sphere.

The study of the super-natural, into which religion and mysticism falls, is well-defined and has a strong body of knowledge. By moving from anatomist-communicator to popularist of a different discipline would be one thing, but Wolpert committed the sin of taking an opinion-based stance, and it was this that undermined his credibility. On the basis of this he became a Vice-President of the British Humanist Association and was invited to speak at the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology in Sigtuna, Sweden. His talk was reported as follows:

"Lewis Wolpert's plenary address entitled "The Origins of Science and Religion" was provocative, amusing and from a totally materialist perspective. In his view, religion arose from the uniquely human need for causal explanations, and neither religion nor philosophy contributed anything of importance to scientific undersanding. ... ESSSAT is to be congratulated for offering its platform to a strong-minded materialist, but in the end Wolpert proved unable to enter serious debate with the conference theme or its participants."

It's a sad day, when someone you respected highly, steps over the boundary of their own authority and seeks to use this to influence opinion in another field without realising what they are doing.

So, yesterday, I went along to Oliver James' talk in Wootton with great expectations. I respect James' perspectives on mental health, his evidence-based criticisms of many treatment protocols, even his perception of underlying social conditions that predispose many in society to mental health problems. Indeed, I draw on some of his theoretical views on the predominance of very early nurture in determining many personality traits, in my own work on the behaviour of leaders. Views which, incidentally, are now being seen to have considerably more scientific substance than had previously been supposed.

So why did I choose to be one of the first to leave the Hall, to get away from the atmosphere that this man had created in the space of an hour and a half? I can tolerate most (though not all) bigots. I can work with -ists of most dimensions, racists, sexists, ageists, and, of course, narcissists. But what I found most offensive in the rhetoric of this man was the way in which he had distorted his science, distorted his evidence, to somehow support his own uniquely cynical political viewpoint. His stance was so twisted that there were probably elements of it that almost everyone would resonate with, indeed could even appreciate the irony in, and yet he somehow distorted these views to the point that there were other aspects that, I sincerely hope, almost everyone would find equally abhorent.

In one sentence he would express empathy for the social conditions that led a generation of immigrants to be dominated by mental health issues, and then damned 75% of them as players of the social welfare system. In another, he would invoke a delusionist argument for religion, and then credit churches for their role in addressing social needs. There were countless more examples. He derided Harriet Harman for her poor attitude to mothering on the basis that "I know", "Her mother used to live around the corner." He derided Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Margaret Thatcher, Geoffrey Howe, Peter Mandellson, and countless others, for their poor grasp of the economy and kept referring to, what one member of the audience generously described as, 'an over-romanticised' image of Europe.

And, all the time, he offered the thinnest threads of psychological evidence to support his themes.

Even those that appeared to be close to his real field of expertise were quite extraordinary extrapolations. In his preamble he slipped in an example that he has been picked up for elsewhere. He presents, as a fact, that nearly half of 15yr old girls suffer from anxiety and that a quarter have full-blown depression. Yet, this is a gross extrapolation from a single study of adolescent girls in Glasgow.

He suggests that there is overwhelming evidence that maternal anxiety during the third trimester of pregnancy leads to raised cortisol levels in children for 10 or more years, which accounts for them having "attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder" (ADHD). There is actually only one scientific paper that VERY tentatively suggests a CORRELATION (not causality) between maternal anxiety and ADHD.

There are plenty of articles now building up that criticise James for his opinionated, politically naive, psycho-babble. I shalln't add more to this.

What interests me is how seemingly authoritative individuals, can suspend their self-critic, and project themselves as experts in other fields without recognising that they are crossing boundaries.

I have no conclusions, but I would like to draw attention to the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic Manual (DSM-IV TR) which defines the narcissistic personality disorder. In this, the narcissist is described as being excessively preoccupied with issues of personal adequacy, power, and prestige. There are a number of criteria, most of which could be recognised among this group of self-promoting scientists. I suspect that the learning, if any, that we need to take with us is that while these extreme and needy individuals may be very articulate, amusing, and persuasive, they are characteristically unable to see things from another person's perspective especially emotionally, and are often interpersonally exploitative, in other words they take advantage of others to achieve their own ends. See them as entertainment, but do not fly too close.

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve more by reading themselves, people and situations differently
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What DOES 'banter' in social media say about you?

2010-03-07T12:30:00.001Z

What DOES 'banter' in social media say about you?

It's always been there, but recently I've noticed a few of the forums that I visit regularly seem to have begun to develop longer threads and, on closer inspection, much of their length is due to 'banter'. This has the effect of drawing discussion on the original topic to a close.

A typical example was a perfectly sensible question posed by a novice user about the etiquette on the forum. Answers will all be subjective opinion as there are no definitions of what is and what isn't acceptable there. Within two replies the thread has been taken over by two individuals joking about something completely different. In the case that prompted this article that banter also had a sexual undertone.

So what does 'banter' say about the people who do it?

The study of communication generally, obviously, crosses many disciplines, but because it usually has a purpose the starting point is often embedded in sociology. In this context, 'banter' is distinguished from 'small talk' in some important ways. Fairly typical such definitions would be:

"Small talk is a type of conversation where the topic is less important than the social purpose of achieving bonding between people or managing personal distance."

"Banter, on the other hand, is non-serious conversation, usually between friends, which may rely on humour or in-jokes at the expense of those taking part. The purpose of banter may at first appear to be an offensive affront to the other person's face. However, people engaging in such a conversation are often signaling that they are comfortable enough in each others' company to be able to say such things without causing offense."

Gender and small talk

There is an important gender-related difference in the propensity to use small-talk, which sociolinguist, Deborah Tannen, author of You Just Don't Understand, observed;

"For males, conversation is the way you negotiate your status in the group and keep people from pushing you around; you use talk to preserve your independence. Females, on the other hand, use conversation to negotiate closeness and intimacy; talk is the essence of intimacy, so being best friends means sitting and talking. For boys, activities, doing things together, are central. Just sitting and talking is not an essential part of friendship. They're friends with the boys they do things with."

In other words, males tend to use banter as a way of establishing their boundaries with another potentially aggressive male. It always takes one male to initiate this form of exchange. To do so, they need to feel sufficiently confident of their dominance in the pair for them to take the risk of saying something that would, under other circumstances, provoke an attack (even a physical one).

Banter and escalation to violence

Bear in mind, that many street fights, fueled by alcohol on a Saturday night, are initiated by this very primitive means of exchange. Male A (who has to believe that he has a chance of being the dominant male) tries it on, by saying something provocative to Male B. There are three responses that B can adopt; a neutral one in which they do not pick up the thread of the conversation but say something that distracts A onto a different topic, a submissive one in which they collude with A's perception of his dominance, or an attempt to push the balance of dominance back in his favour - usually by upstaging A or by saying something even more provocative. And so the exchange goes on. Sometimes the violence escalates there and then; other times, the wounded party retreats only to return later intent on violence (often spurred on by the need to re-establish their dominance among the pack that they associate with).

Building intimacy and the 'art' of seduction

For women, as the purpose of the 'small talk' is to build intimacy and connection, displaying overtly aggressive behaviour simply wouldn't work. Instead, most begin an exchange with a mild demonstration of their current state of weakness - describing their vulnerability in a situation, an introverted mood, medical condition, or subordinated relationship at work, for example. The response they are looking for is one of empathy - demonstrated to them not in the psychotherapeutic manner but, as friends might, by acknowledging their situation and then the friend sharing something of a similar nature that they too have experienced. The common experience builds bonds. Solutions and advice are not offered - certainly not directly.

In a mixed gender environment, these two behavioural styles reinforce separation. The rest of the males will rarely expose themselves to potentially escalating violence - they will simply stand back and watch (with differing degrees of intensity depending on their own sense of social (in)security. Again, depending of the context, the females will either await the outcome (if this is part of their mate selection process) or withdraw to their own enclave. The impact of banter on some women, whether simply through observing two males engaged in it, or on submissive/dominant female sexual identities, is why some books on the "art of seduction" mention its use as a strategy for predatory males.

Banter as displacement behaviour for emotional pain

The use of banter in some contexts is a displacement activity - avoiding discussion of more emotionally painful topics. A classic example of this was the style of communication developed among Army officers, especially in the First World War, and perpetuated by some officers even today. In the 1970s, Monty Python even had a sketch based on RAF banter (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rKYL0tW-Ek). The sketch also illustrates how banter can be used to maintain social status and is a key weapon in the armoury of bullies.

Banter, social class, education and bullying

Banter takes different forms among different strata of society and rarely works across the strata, instead the different styles are used to reinforce the group separation and to subjugate the other group. So a public school educated boy will rarely engage in banter with others unless among a group of similarly educated individuals rounding on someone of 'lesser' class. Equally someone from an ethnically-derived culture, may use their 'patois', to reinforce their supremacy over people in authority. Cross cultural exchanges are another rich source of material for comic scripts as this Armstrong and Miller sketch shows (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwNQf08Kxsw).

Banter and social media

Transfer these kinds of exchange to a social media forum, such as ecademy or facebook. While there are some, slightly radicalised forums where banter of this kind is the norm, most business and mainstream social media see it occasionally, may tolerate it, but it is far from commonplace. What leads someone to use it, especially frequently, in their postings?

Unless there is some significantly different mechanism at play, the individuals using it are suffering from the same desperate struggle as their 'offline' counterparts - an unsatisfied infantile id, trying to avoid the social mores imposed by the super-ego. In the online world, people who might never engage in such exchanges face-to-face, feel less threat from the super-ego, suffer less constraint from a sense of conscience, and are happy to benefit from the instant gratification that their fleeting ability to gain the upper hand in an exchange of banter gives them.

So why does the online environment disempower the super-ego?

Much of the power in banter lies in being able to see the effect it has. In the offline world, where such exchanges are usually transmitted by voice and with a gamut of body language to witness the effect is easy to see. Online, where we are largely restricted to the printed word it is far harder. Conversely, online words last into perpetuity whereas the fleeting aside of the physical world has constantly to be reinforced. I suspect, therefore, that it is the lack of other clues that allows the individual to delude themselves into believing that the recipient of their challenge is tolerant of it and also not to detect the effect it has on the larger audience of silent observers. It is this lack of feedback that removes the power of the super-ego.

Is this a growing trend or one that is shifting?

Fortunately, I have some faith that this is actually a trend that is diminishing in most settings. Twenty years ago, discussion forums were rife with this kind of unmediated behaviour. It was precisely this that put many people off accessing them for perfectly legitimate reasons. Certainly, I can recall at least a couple of forums where you would expect people to be tolerant of one another and sufficiently educated to not feel the need to resort to what is, after all, very primitive behaviour. Yet, in both cases one or two individuals persistent failure to consider the impact of their language on others led to myself, and I'm sure others, leaving them permanently.

My sense is that with the massive growth in the use of these media, especially ones operating across wider cultural and social boundaries, and with standards of behaviour reinforced by the communities themselves, we are already seeing this pattern of banter diminishing and its practitioners slowly being ostracised by the other members who want to get on with their real purpose in socialising.

One well-known commentator on social media is Penny Power, one of the founders of ecademy. She applies an adage "Know Me, Like Me, Follow Me". In a business context, that might be extended to "Know Me, Like Me, Follow Me, Promote Me". It's very hard to like, follow or promote someone who projects the personality of a needy infant.

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

Differentiate yourself through emotional literacy

2010-01-07T03:05:00.001Z

From time-to-time, I get asked questions which provoke an excited response in me. The following is a typical example...

If you were looking for an accountant what would be your criteria? Fees, size of practice, location, presentation, service, or maybe something else?

To me this is an easy one to answer! Never mind any of those. PERSONALITY and EMPATHY. I want an accountant who is friendly, never condescending, never critical, always positive, always constructive, and who REALLY understands my situation and does what they can to help me achieve my long-term goals.

I couldn't care less what that person charges (within reason and industry norms, obviously) or where they are based. Their practice is almost certainly going to be tiny (because I wouldn't have confidence in the individual relationship otherwise), I'd certainly be put off by any kind of slick presentation (presentation time is time taken away from them getting to understand me) and what the heck do you mean by 'service'? They are an accountant - for goodness sake - so they know their stuff technically - this isn't like brain surgery - we have a year to sort my finances and I'm not going to die if they don't reply within 24hrs though, of course, I expect them to respond - personably and 100% accurately.

My use of the phrase "what the heck" isn't meant to be critical. Of course, we can go into detail about what we expect in availability, responsiveness etc. That said, I come across too many examples of organisations where these are spelled out as if they are exceptional when I would consider them part of the basic package.

One of the charities I'm involved with has an accountant (http://www.yourtaxoffice.co.uk) and I am frequently amazed at his responsiveness - he must have even bigger bags under his eyes than I do mine.

In this digital day and age, in many industry sectors I'm not sure that these things need spelling out, expectations are high, and failure to deliver means people move on. That said, in the traditional professions (law, accountancy, medicine) people generally don't chop and change... why? Because of the PERCEIVED personal relationship built up over time.

Interestingly, there are some industry sectors where 24/7/365 has become a negative - the motor servicing one, for example, where the convenience of 24/7/365 has been seen through by many people who now expect to be charged more there than they would be elsewhere.

I do wonder how many people ask their accountant for advice during the year? Are we mixing the functions of book-keeping and accountancy perhaps? Maybe, if this is true in your case, "Arthur Sixpence Accountancy and Book-keeping" would be a more enticing description?

Anyway, as I say, personality, empathy, (and a positive attitude) are far more important to me. Perhaps, "Arthur Sixpence, warm and friendly, tax and accounts" would work?

End of story! Next question?

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
grahamwilson.org - businesscoaching.org.uk - inter-faith.net
thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

A further nail in the coffin of the Royal Mail?

2009-12-24T19:14:00.002Z

Tomorrow is Christmas Day. It is also a Friday. On Boxing Day, Saturday, most major retailers in Britain will be open and happily doing business, and so will most on Sunday too. Although Monday is technically a public holiday, you can fairly safely predict that most shops will be open then too. Lest anyone is in any doubt, retail involves people and for the retailer to be open that means that people will be working.

Most service businesses are operating either as normal or with a limited service over the long weekend that Christmas Day and Boxing Day have created this year. For weeks, shops and other businesses have had signs up telling us of their opening hours. They know that they must compete, and that being accessible to the public is a vital component of that.

That so many people will be working over Christmas is isn't surprising - despite the huge volume of seasonal well-wishing that is happening this year, the vast majority of it is just that - seasonal - rather than Christian. According to recent surveys, 66% of the population have NO personal connection with any Faith group, and roughly 25% of the population that do are not Christian, so "Christmas Day" only really has meaning to about 3 out of every 10 people in the country. It has returned to being a seasonal celebration as it was in Pagan days, much like the American Thanksgiving. The concept of it as a spiritual celebration have long gone.

We know that the use of the postal service is in decline. So, I don't think it is unreasonable to expect them to be thinking of ever better ways of delivering their service, of doing so in ways that cost less than their competitors, and that are as accessible.

So it came as a bit of a surprise to me to take my post up to the letter box in our village today several hours before the advertised, normal collection was due (4:45pm) only to discover that it is not going to be emptied again until next Tuesday. No warning, no card in the window on the box, nothing. It seems I wasn't the only person who was caught out by this, as the box is already nearly full.

I do find it a little amazing that, in this day and age, the Royal Mail has decided to close down for four and a half days. I find it particularly strange as they keep telling us that they desperately want our business and don't want to go bust. Perhaps we should stop looking at the Police as a place for institutional racism, and instead look towards the Post Office, if it really has such a disproportionately high number of devout Christian workers who want the time off.

While I find these decisions amazing, what I object to is the discourtesy that they have shown, indeed the arrogant disregard, for people's time and energy, that failing to tell them that this is what they are doing represents. It is an institutional complacency born out of their once massive nature that is simply no longer justifiable.

I had already been looking at the number of physical greetings cards that I send each year and how many more this year were sent electronically. It seems to me that there's a simple technology gap that will soon be filled by someone. At the moment, most people will not print out the electronic greetings that they receive, but I am sure that the growth in digital picture frames will mean that someone, somewhere, is working on a device and a formatting standard that will mean that greetings sent electronically can be displayed in our homes without having to turn on the laptop and point it into the room! It is easy to do, it just needs a little work to make it practical and convenient. I would not be a bit surprised if Hallmark aren't beavering away at it as we speak. There are millions of people accepting that they can't send an aesthetically pleasing card, but instead using instant messages on Facebook and the like as a way of making contact with one another. When the facility I describe comes live, I am confident that there will be a huge demand.

So next year, I shall send even fewer greetings cards. I shall not be surprised at the news that the Post Office has gone forever. And I shall look forward to a resurgence of people sending aesthetically pleasing personal greetings, albeit electronically, rather than in sound-bite emails and instant messages as they do today.

Incidentally, I did try ringing the Royal Mail complaint's line to express my amazement. The response I received was really quite dismissive. The person on the other end of the line assumed that I was Christian and therefore was going to be taking the time off myself. He tried telling me that it would be too much work for the post men who collect from these boxes each day to slip a notice in the display panel with the Christmas closure times on it. He explained that closing like this was a tradition that "goes back hundreds of years" (which I can categorically say is not true as my Grandfather was a postman and he used to work on both Christmas Day and Boxing Day). He was "personally astonished" that I wanted to complain about the lack of information and that I expected them to collect at 4:45pm.

He did however, register my complaint, taking my address and telephone number, and gave me a reference number for them. I asked what kind of response I could expect. He explained that I couldn't - the complaint would be handled internally but I would not be contacted.

Another case of institutionalised contempt for customers.

WAKE UP ROYAL MAIL - THE WORLD IS CHANGING AND YOU NEED TO CATCH UP WITH IT!

On that not so positive note, to those of you who fall into the minority, I wish you a wonderful Christmas. To those who treat this as a seasonal celebration, I wish you the compliments of the season. To the millions of people who will be working tomorrow (not only in the armed forces, the emergency services, the retail sector, the services sector, and those in remote roles where it is simply not practical to switch off and come home) I thank you for your diligence, and wish you a very happy new year!

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
grahamwilson.org - businesscoaching.org.uk - inter-faith.net
thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

Would you help me with an ebook? Collaborative project. NO CATCH!

2009-12-14T21:30:00.001Z

Every year, around this time, I start to pull together my notes about goal setting and New Year's Resolutions.

I shall be doing the same again this year. To make it a little different I began to wonder if it would be a nice idea to produce an ebook of examples of New Year's Resolutions - to give a little stimulation to a few people. Just to stress one thing, although I shall write the foreword, I would never dream of making any profit from this - I shall offer it for download from as many places as possible - my aim is to inspire people to think outside the box when they make their resolutions this year.

So this is what I'd like to do... I'd like to produce an ebook, with 52 different examples of New Year's Resolutions in it. I'll collate them and may just tweak the English, but anyone contributing an example will get full credit - in the form of their name, their website name, and a short description that they supply. I'll do my best to make the book presentable and hope that you will be happy enough to want to forward copies to your friends and colleagues too. Interested?

I'm planning on pulling this together on December 21st, so get thinking! If I'm short of entries, then I'll add more after that but absolutely no guarantees.

Why not visit this page and make an offering - http://www.gbw247.info/newyears/

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
grahamwilson.org - businesscoaching.org.uk - inter-faith.net
thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

An apocalyptic view of leadership (v2)

2009-12-09T11:25:00.002Z

My clients and colleagues know where I am coming from in my leadership development work - I have a strong interest in personal growth, authenticity, the spiritual dimension to work. I worked in the empowerment industry for 20 years, and trained as a psychotherapist.

Why the preamble? Well, I'm about to write something that may shock a few of you. You see, this morning I saw a message on a forum that nicely summarised the model of leadership that we've preached for many years - the leader in touch with themselves, highly relational, empowering of others - both employees and customers - and so on. But it worried me. This stuff has been promoted by myself and others for a long time. It has been promoted for millenia. If it was all right, surely evolution by natural selection would have made it the predominant model for leaders throughout the world? But it hasn't.

Here's my response:

The list of leadership behaviours and values that we promote, bears a strong resemblance to the kind of list that someone reading Tom Peters books back in the 1980s or Robert Greenleaf's in the 1970s would have seen. Indeed, I'm sure that Dale Carnegie would identify with them from the 1930s.

So what's new, and why do we keep needing to preach the old stuff?

In the early 1990s, the US Air Force conducted a very impressive study into future worlds, specifically those around 2025. The material is all in the public domain. They identified three global trends and used these to extrapolate a number of scenarios. The three axes were:

The rate of growth of the growth in technology

The polarisation of global power

The focus of US military activity - ie whether it was domestic or international

The scenarios developed showed that under many conditions we were moving slowly and steadily towards a less-caring, more militaristic, and even apocalyptic world - whether dominated by feudal barons or martial law.

Out of this came many insights. Among them was the recognition that our perception of many of the practices that we assume to be static - and I'd suggest leadership skills would be one of those - needs to shift. Just because we have grown accustomed to the kind of emotionally benign leadership models spouted by Carnegie, Greenleaf and others since the emergence of management from the industrial revolution dark ages, doesn't mean that life is going to be so easy for much longer.

Since the movie Wall Street hit the screens, we have had images of a less humanistic approach to management portrayed to us. Gecko wasn't the first of his kind - it was the proximity of his character to the real experience of followers that made it so close to the bone.

The factors identified by the Airforce 2025 project are leading slowly but relentlessly towards a midway point between a couple of their scenarios - a world dominated by a few axial powers (based on powerful commercial empires rather than democratically elected ones) and attacked by growing, but only loosely coordinated, terrorist/subversive forces. This is why the US is seemingly so obsessed with the imposition of democracy and the eradication of Al Khaida outside their own territories. Sooner or later domestic terrorism will prevent them from expending their efforts there, and we will see the consolidation of Eastern commercial influences focused around China and the northern Pacific Rim.

Interestingly, in the UK a disproportionate part of the population suffering from severe mental health issues and being forced into homelessness are from military backgrounds. The same is true in the US. In the US, post Vietnam, a large number of highly trained 'killing machines' returned home unable to adapt to a gentler society. Many of these adopted lifestyles that were self-sufficient and kept them on the perimeter of society and social intercourse. Many of the Al Khaida followers promoting a terrorist campaign, are said to have been trained to respond as guerillas to the threat of Russian military actions a couple of decades ago. It is from this environment that domestic terrorism may well emerge. Our present military efforts are likely to be fuelling the very force in our own countries that we are trying to eradicate elsewhere.

In this militaristic world, I agree that there will always be leaders who have the soft skills that make them NICE people to follow, but I think it is time we gave up trying to force that model down the throats of a future generation of prospective leaders. The world in which they are going to have to operate is a far harsher, far more violent, far less 'rational' one than you and I would like or have experienced.

Leaders then will command loyalty through ruthlessness, manipulation, and providing the basic physical needs (especially security) of their followers and their families by being constantly on their guard against attack. We already see this model in eastern Europe, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other communities. It is not a million miles from the environment of the early 20th century in Italy and Chicago, and later in Northern Ireland.

Let's stop kidding ourselves that softly, softly, touchy-feely leadership is going to work into the future, and start exploring why it is that some of us want to perpetuate these approaches when the survival of the next generation depends on a far tougher approach. It is interesting that few of, even, today's leaders join this bandwagon - I don't hear Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Rupert Murdoch, Mark Hurd or Steve Jobs preaching employee empowerment, customer focus or emotional intelligence, and they aren't exactly an ethnically diverse group are they?

It's time for a tough revision of our thinking and a very different approach to preparing thr future generation of both leaders and followers.

There now, I wonder if that shocked you?

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
grahamwilson.org - businesscoaching.org.uk - inter-faith.net
thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

Have you tested your own Customer Care experience?

2009-12-09T08:36:00.001Z

Given that I spent the first third of my career helping organisations in the pursuit of Excellence (a la Tom Peters), the first element of which was to be "obsessed with customers", it is hardly surprising that I notice customer facing issues.

Today's experience with a software manufacturer highlighted an important aspect of Customer Care.

Coffee Cup Software produce tools for people preparing websites. There are some very sophisticated ones and some quite simple ones. They are low cost (rarely over £20) and work remarkably well. (OK they aren't as tried, tested and proven as other suites, but for this kind of utility I've found them to be pretty good.)

As some of you may know, I've just revamped my business coaching website (www.businesscoaching.org.uk) and in the process I used two of the Coffee Cup utilities.

One of them, which produced the enquiry form, had a simple glitch at one stage, but was easy to fix and now seems to work perfectly.

The other is intended to pull RSS news feeds from some of my special interest sites (mainly on ecademy (http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=club&op=group&cl=357)) .

Sadly it refused to work. I checked the software support forum and read through their FAQs, all to no avail. So I filed a 'ticket' with "Support" - through a medium known as "myroom". A day or so later, a message arrived from "CustomerCare@coffeecup.com" telling me that the 'ticket' was updated and that I should log on to "myroom" to read it. Keen to resolve the problem, I did so, only to find that there was no sign of either my query or their response.

So, I replied to their email asking for further help. Guess what? Yes, the message bounced back telling me that:

This "is an automatically generated message. We will not see or read the email you send to this mailbox..."

Let me get this right - the company has an email address "CustomerCare@coffeecup.com" but messages sent to it are bounced back and we are told that they DON'T READ THEM. That is not what I call 'customer care'.

It is almost akin to Marks and Spencer making people wanting to return defective items go up to the top floor and queue to speak to someone behind a metal grill! I kid you not.! They thought their exchange policy was 'customer friendly' - it was the experience that most definitely was not. It was instead totally humiliating.

Now I know that coffeecup will resolve this hiccough, but it illustrates a phenomenon that seems increasingly common lately. The leaders of organisations believe that they have listening ears - for news from within and feedback from without. They may even have invested fortunes in the systems and processes to achieve this degree of listening. And yet, the reality is that those systems aren't working properly.

So the moral is simple really. Go home, and get your son, daughter, husband, wife, partner, friend, mother, father, or simply a mate from the pub, to go through the process of testing it for you. Give them a simple but pertinent bit of customer experience and see how easy it is for them to feed it back.

It could be a salutory lesson!

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
grahamwilson.org - businesscoaching.org.uk - inter-faith.net
thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

The risks and responsiblities of personal development

2009-11-14T15:26:00.003Z

Every now and then someone launches a new 'personal development' product that is based on providing people with a fairly profound (usually physical) experience, and then getting them to relate it to the ways in which they go through life. On one of the forums that I lead, someone posted an item about one such product. This is my response...

I am very uncomfortable with the use of activities like this as a means of personal development. My concerns revolve around four aspects;

Firstly, I think it takes a considerable leap of faith/imagination to relate what someone experiences in diving, climbing, swimming, parascending, walking on hot coals, horse riding, mountain biking, or whatever, to the day-to-day realities of their work.

Let's take a simple case - Fred is mildly claustrophobic but he goes along with the idea of a diving experience for personal development. He does it, and inevitably he comes face to face with his fear. He has unconsciously evolved a career in IT operations and works late shifts, both of which have the advantage that they mean he has less contact with other people. He knows he doesn't like confined spaces, but he hasn't related this to a general avoidance of, or polarisation in, human relationships. His personal development is limited by this working pattern and the avoidant behaviour. His claustrophobia may well have some relationship to these things, but will he be able to relate it to his career limiting behaviours?

Secondly, the facilitators of these events are rarely, if ever, trained, skilled, and experienced, in dealing with the transition that the individual is experiencing when they perform the activity.

I witnessed a perfect example of this twice this week at mass training events. Because of the nature of the sessions, it was conceivable that the (self selected) participants could be put into a position where they had to confront the unresolved grief of the loss of an infant. The main facilitator of the event recognised this possibility, and chose two of her team of co-facilitators to be ready to help such a person. The recommended action was to remove them from the room and 'talk to them'. Now, her own lack of experience in this field was highlighted by her choice of those people - two more emotionally controlled individuals it would be hard to find. They were selected because they were women, not because of any counselling skills or specialist experience in working with grieving.

Going back to Fred... He may not even remember that, as a young child, his older brother (whom he revered) smothered him in his bedding one day when they were playing and then made fun of him for crying. Nor may he remember his mother's dismissive attitude that simply told the two of them to make up and stop being so rough. OK, provided that he is accompanied by an older male instructor, the personal development experience might be the perfect opportunity to explore his responses to such authority figures, and relate that to his claustrophobic defence mechanism, but will the instructor be capable of facilitating such a profound process of personal development?

I'm afraid that my experience has been that many of the individuals who feel called to offer this kind of process, benefitted from it themselves at some stage and then assume that others will too. They do not have the necessary training, skills, or experience to understand, let alone manage, the responses that they provoke.

Related to this is my third concern... It constantly amazes me that HR professionals, will allocate a senior player in their organisation to a 'coach' expecting them to work on the individual's attitudes which are impacting on their performance at work, without any consideration of the coach's credentials to do so. This needn't be negative as performance coaching of high flyers is just as much about working with their attitudes.

Let's suppose that the 'experience' works, and Fred confronts his claustrophobia, is able to expose his anger towards his brother (subsequently projected onto all male authority figures) and returns to work incapable of continuing in his role because his coping strategies have been abruptly dismantled without new ones being developed. Shouldn't he expect the person facilitating his experience to have suitable psychological safeguards in place to protect him and his livelihood? I think he should and I think a court would too.

Finally, we have to remember that, in a corporate setting, where many of these experiences have been peddled in the past, the self-selection or voluntary participation criteria may be compromised - and often were. Peer pressure, or direct orders, may lead to someone enrolling that didn't really want to be there. The individuals may be exposing aspects of themselves, to their peers, that those people should have no reason to know about in order for the individual to do their job. And related to this, what about the person who has an unseen disability and so cannot participate? Do we have the right to exclude them from the team-building or personal development activity? I would argue not, and in both situations, I would say that this is creating a good case for constructive dismissal.

I saw a simple example of this in my own career a few years ago. So called, high flyers, were sent on a four day management development programme by the company. On the third evening, the facilitators suggested that the group of participants might take responsibility for organising some entertainment. Some kind of impromptu cabaret was put together. One of the people was a guitarist and he decided to perform songs. He got up on stage, played a couple of numbers and then chose to play something 'romantic'. He directed his gaze towards one member of the group, as professional singers might often do, as if he was singing to her. After less than a verse she ran from the room screaming and was so traumatized that she couldn't complete the final day of the course. In the long-term, had she remained with the company, this would have had a serious impact on her career. It transpired that, as a teenager, she had been raped by a singer in a band who had 'eyed' her from the stage.

Setting up personal development initiatives of all kinds exposes people to transformation that they don't necessarily expect but we need to be absolutely sure that we are equipped to deal with the consequences of these things before we do so.

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, supporting leaders as they achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

Writing (and speaking) made easy - Part 3 - The Sales Model

2009-11-06T01:18:00.001Z

The model is actually quite straightforward - it needs to be, because the skilled user of it has to remember it and, in the course of a conversation, for instance, be ready to shift from one stage to another, when they pick up signals from their audience that they have got the message of a particular step.

The same model is used to structure selling conversations, the writing of articles, press releases, presentations, blog entries, brochures, flyers, and even just letters. You can also use it to plan workshops, communication campaigns, advertising programmes, and lots more - literally anything that involves 'selling' through words is best communicated this way.

Before you start anything, it is important to spend time defining precisely what you are looking for from the sales activity. "Having had this conversation, I will have been successful if... I have an agreement to a further meeting." "By the end of the presentation, I need to be able to walk up to anyone in the room and for them to know exactly what the service is that I am offering." "I expect any visitor to the website to leave me their contact details and want me to call them." It can be tough to define but it is a vital step.

The selling process is broken down into five steps, remembered by the acronym, AICDC.

ATTENTION

A simple one liner or a short paragraph, that grabs the attention of the reader/listener. It can be provocative, informative, questioning, challenging, but it HAS to grab their attention. It shouldn't lie, distort the truth, embellish, or mislead - any of those will annoy the reader when they find out.

INTEREST

This is the step that builds curiousity. It should contain enough information to make the reader/listener want to know more, but also feel that they now know more than they did before. It sounds a tough balance but it's easy when you realise that lots of people don't know when to shut up! Many people in a selling situation, try to flood their listener with far too much information - the important thing is pick up the signals that they are curious, then to stop yourself and move on to the next step. Easier when you are speaking directly with someone, harder with a large audience, and may involve some experimentation with the printed word. As a rule of thumb, this is going to be about 30% of your material - maximum. (If your material calls for loads of information, then distil the essentials for this step and provide the rest as handouts, an appendix, a data sheet, or some other medium for the person to refer to later - but don't you dare then skip the rest of the steps until they have done so!)

CONVICTION

This is where we try to build a sense of relevance to our audience. We take some of the features or information that we have alluded to in the interest step and show how it relates to the audience. This isn't an excuse to keep the information giving interest building going on for longer! "When we spoke the other day, you said..., well our data suggests..." "I guess that one of the challenges you face is..., well..." "If we look at the figures for your home area..." "It must be tough managing that kind of problem, this could be the answer...". Again, this is a maximum of 30% of your material/time/slides/words etc.

DESIRE

So, we move on to building the emotional connections. There's rarely any need to refer to your own product, service, or whatever it is that you are trying to 'sell'. In this phase, you are concentrating on helping the person experience what it will FEEL like to have your help, or sometimes, what it might FEEL like NOT to do so. "It would be a huge relief to know that..." "The sense of control that you feel having ... is really reassuring" "I don't know how you cope at the moment."

CLOSE

Once you have a sense that they can see how good it would feel to 'buy' from you, then it is time to 'close the sale'. I know this will sound awfully corny to some folks who don't think of themselves as sales-people, but it really is vital. "Let's fix an appointment when we can get together." "When would be a good time for me to ring on Tuesday with the initial results?" "Give me your card, and I will send our terms through."

There's so many different ways of closing, that there could be a separate essay on those alone, but the important thing is that entering this process you had an idea of the outcome you were looking for and the close should achieve exactly that - not a half-baked intermediate step, but the actual outcome that you wanted.

And that, as they say, is that. Remember that there were two earlier parts:

Writing (and speaking) made easy - Part 2 - Writing and Public Speaking are both creative forms of selling
Writing (and speaking) made easy - Part 1 - The pervasive nature of selling

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, supporting leaders as they achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

Writing (and speaking) made easy - Part 2 - Writing and Public Speaking are both creative forms of selling

2009-11-06T01:16:00.000Z

You might have noticed that I do quite a lot of writing and public speaking. I actually enjoy both enormously, which helps. When I was 16, I had to sit a set of exams known then as 'O' levels. Typically we did 10 or so subjects, before specialising in the following year. English as it was taught at that time was divided into two parts - English Language and English Literature.

I never could get my head around English Literature. Don't get me wrong, I love reading... there's always a dozen books on the go at any one time, and I love the excitement of both fiction and non-fiction. But I could never understand why we had to dissect everything we read and project onto the author all our own meanings and interpretations, when we knew that they had actually just been starving, living in a garret, with a girlfriend who was pregnant, and a mistress whose husband was mysteriously powerful and they were desperately scribbling to get the money to get away from it all! Not surprisingly, when it came to the exam I scraped through with the lowest pass mark.

English Language, on the other hand, fascinated me - I couldn't handle the fancy terminology of nouns, adjectives, verbs, and so on, but I loved the incredibly inexpensive way of being creative. Give me a pen (a real one with ink in it) and several sheets of paper, and I could be lost for hours. My English Language exam wasn't without a little trauma - the exam question was to write an essay on a practical joke that misfired. I remember writing a story, in the first person, about an incident at school where a bucket of water was placed above a door and fell onto someone as they came through. The punchline went "Christ, you've bloody killed him!" And in a short paragraph at the end I described the probation sentence that we had all received.

The exam finished, and I went out to the school bus, I sat alone, I began to shake, I began to get worried, by the time I got home I was in a right state. As an adult, I'd have had a drink to settle my nerves, but of course I couldn't just do that as a kid. I don't think I explained to my parents why I wanted to disappear into my room that night - I really thought I had goofed! I even thought that I'd get into trouble for what I'd written, though I soon rationalised that one away. You can imagine the relief a few weeks later when the results came through and I'd got a top grade!

With hindsight, I'd actually applied the selling model that I'm about to share with you. As you'll see below.

After a rather upsetting experience at junior school, where one teacher used me to get at another in our annual performance of song and dance (I was "Harry Hawk" in the song "Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all"), I took a distinctly back seat when it came to the performing arts!

We had the occasional balloon debate at secondary school, where I rarely got to even try my parachute, and I remember a school trip where a large group of us were stranded on a Scottish island overnight and kept each other entertained by speaking for 2 minutes on a subject of anyone else's choosing - my exposition on "the contents of an empty crisp packet" proved so memorable that someone in Australia even remembered it over 30 years later!

It wasn't until my PhD that I really got to experience that transformational moment, where we have so completely screwed up that we vow 'never again'. I was given the chance to speak at an academic conference. I completely misjudged the audience, gave a poorly prepared presentation, tried to tell them FAR too much, got mangled in my own notes and so on. I knew it was happening, but could I stop myself?

There's more to speaking than delivering - you need to know what you are going to say, in what order, and what you want the audience to do as a result of hearing you. There are far too many speakers who don't know the answer to all three parts before they open their mouths. And that is where selling comes in again - we are trying to influence someone so that they do what we want them to do.

The selling model is great, because it provides a structure, based on a simple understanding of the psychology of decision making that you can then apply to both your writing and your speaking.

So let's think for a moment about what goes on when someone decides to do something...

There are three 'qualities' that need to be met. To be persuaded someone has to have a CURIOSITY about something. If I am not curious then I will stick to what I have always done. Curiosity is an incredibly under-acknowledged professional attitude. People who have curiosity are nice people to work with. People who express an interest in you (who are curious about your story) are the people you like and will develop friendships with. Leaders who show a genuine interest in the people they work with are the ones who people will follow despite enormous personal risk and discomfort. Curiosity keeps rigidity of thinking at bay, it brings a freshness to our experience of the world. In a funny way, curiousity keeps people young - at least in their minds if not their bodies.

The second quality is RELEVANCE. There's a reason why charities that support children and animals are more popular than others. Growing up is a tough process - it involves a lot of experiments and many failures and, while we may forget most if not all of these, we can't help but experience growing up as a time of vulnerability - a time when we depended on others to help us. Most adults can therefore empathise with others who are vulnerable. If you want to win someone over tug on their vulnerability. These charities become relevant to almost everyone. Anything that we 'sell' needs to have relevance to the other person. Some will be a direct match to their need, others will satisfy a hidden psychological connection, but they always need to be relevant.

Assuming that we have somehow fascinated the other person, or the audience, and that we have convinced them that whatever we are selling them is relevant to them, we still need to do one thing to get them to go along with it...

That third quality is EMOTION. People often say they want something. They may even devote hours to studying it. The step that is missing though is a real desire to change from what they do at the moment. Ask any weight-loss specialist, and they will say that people often know all about their diet and what they need to do to lose weight, it is simply that they haven't really got excited about being lighter.

So the selling model that I'm about to explain has to (and does) address all three - it raises curiosity, it highlights relevance and it excites the passions.

Time to go on to part three...

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, supporting leaders as they achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

Writing (and speaking) made easy - Part 1 - The Pervasive Nature of Selling

2009-11-05T12:36:00.001Z

It's funny how coincidences happen. In the last few days, I've been in conversation with three different clusters of people all of whom were trying to do similar things - they either had to prepare a document for publication, deliver a speech, or start blogging.

Are they the same thing? Well, although there are obvious differences, to my way of thinking they are almost identical - they are each trying to sell something. They have an idea and they want others to be interested in it.

If you think about it, almost all the interactions we have at work are somehow or other involved in selling - we're selling an expectation of a level of performance, a way of doing something, the desire to do it in the first place, and so on. In every case, we want someone else to do something and they don't have to do so, and therein lies the sale. Some will be easy, some will be hard, but all involve selling of some kind.

A WARNING ABOUT MODELS OF ANY SORT

Businesses are steeped in processes. They have procedures for this, procedures for that, rules, dictats, systems, and so on. Some people kid themselves that they invented this, that, or the other, methodology and then go on to make it out to be their intellectual property (IP). Of course, some such claims are legitimate - somewhere I used to have a copy of the patent application for putting bubbles in chocolate bars - now that IS a neat bit of IP. Sadly, though I reckon that many of these approaches are actually nothing more than one person's attempt to appear clever.

A long time ago, I worked for a guy who figured he had invented the definitive approach to organisational change. Don't get me wrong - he knew his stuff - he could quote all the original authors and so on - but he produced a simple six step diagram and by repeating it to himself so many times, he began to believe that he had invented the new sliced bread. One of his favourite quotes was from Alvin Toffler - that "change is the only constant". He could rattle it off with a wonderful dramatic emphasis. One day, he was working through his standard pitch when a business leader stopped him and said, "Mr R, thank you, but your model simply takes us from one state of stasis to another, that's not what anyone needs - as you said; 'change is the only constant' - I suggest that you rethink your model and come back when you've tried out the new version somewhere else."

Over lunch a few months ago, I demonstrated to one prospective consultant that I too could create a super-model to describe group dynamics - their field. Let's try it as I type...

We'll think of a topic... With COP15 on the horizon, let's try something to do with climate adaptation - I know.. a model for the collection and validation of research data will do.

HEALTH WARNING - PLEASE DON'T TAKE THIS TOO SERIOUSLY - IT IS AN ILLUSTRATION

We begin with a sexy acronym - a short word that anyone can relate to, albeit in different ways. Let's try STOOL. Nice word, conveys images of Val Doonican to some, milking parlours to others.

Problem solving methodologies have been around since pre-civilisation, and although they differ a little, most have two phases - a divergent one and a convergent one. This is just a simple case of problem solving and decision making, so let's try diverging and converging steps in our STOOL model...

We begin with something nice and big - a SURVEY, which generates lots of information, though it's not easy to relate the different strands, because they are in different languages, from different sources, and different disciplines. So we have to TRANSLATE the data. It is critical to get new opinions whenever we do anything otherwise we are in danger of missing something, so we need to take our newly translated findings and make them OPEN so others can comment. Collecting their feedback we ORGANISE both the old and the new data and then we produce a report about it - we LITERATE. There you go, we have a STOOL model for the collection and validation of climate adaptation data.

Of course, we then have to sell that model to the world's scientists, academics, and politicians. But first, we'll say it over and over to ourselves until we are convinced that it is 'robust' and then we'll slap a little TM or (C) on it so others will think it is more profound than it really was.

Now, I'm sure that you and I would never be so stupid as to think that this model had any potential what-so-ever, however there are a lot of folks out there who do exactly the same thing as I have just done, and then they sell that model. Having the idea is only a tiny part of the journey to success - the toughest bit is in the selling!

END OF SILLY MODEL BUILDING ILLUSTRATION AND EXPLANATION OF WHY I APPEARED TO DIGRESS

Now, I am very fortunate, because donkey's years ago, I was offered the chance to attend a course. It was one of a series, delivered by one of the most successful management and leadership training institutions around - with a track record that stretched back to the 1920s. They taught lots of topics within their portfolio, but the consistent theme in them all was that getting anything done involved people relating to one another and specifically, getting someone else to do something that you wanted them to do.

They too had a model. It was exactly the same kind of thing as I have illustrated just now, with exactly the same health warnings. But they knew that. They weren't so silly as to think that the secret lay in the model; they knew that the difference lay in the relationship between people. It was in the application of the model rather than the words themselves.

Their model was just a way of helping us structure our approach to influencing the other person.

I'm about to share that model with you, because I happen to find it incredibly useful, but I don't want you to forget that it is still only a model.

Time to go on to part two...

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, supporting leaders as they achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

Governance, fraud and the leader's confidante

2009-10-13T12:11:00.001Z

Last week's 10th Annual Conference of Corporate Governance (#wccg09), explored alternative, hopefully more effective, means of corporate governance. What emerged clearly from the presentations and the discussion was that our current approaches to governance miss the mark. They are targeted at corporates rather than individuals, at the workforce rather than the directors, at catching rather than preventing, and are a shotgun approach when a rifle is needed.

My own paper was used to start the conference. This is a slightly modified version. I have split it into two parts for posting here.

Click here for Part 1: Governance and Fraud

Part 2 - The role of the management confidante

In recent years, we have seen a growth in the field of corporate responsibility (CR). When it began, it was called 'corporate social responsibility' (CSR), and it was about helping those who lead large organisations to see that they have a responsibility towards the societies in which they operate.

While CSR has continued to evolve and there are many excellent initiatives and third-party interventions that do genuine good for the world around us, internally it has struggled. My experience is that, in some wave of euphoria, positions were created within these businesses that have come under threat when the 'luck' I mentioned earlier has become less common.

Under pressure, the well-intentioned, individuals who filled them have had to dumb down their plans and redirect them on what should really be basic operational issues - the ways and means of reducing energy costs, limiting the risk of prosecution for environmental damage, and so on. While they were once, champions of a higher set of values in the leadership of enterprises, today they are too busy dealing with simple abuses. A few had the ear of the leaders, but most were chosen from within, for their breadth of knowledge of the business and its technical dimensions, rather than their independence, the robustness to challenge those in positions of power, and their understanding of emotions, and the emotional component of individual decision making.

Back in medieval times, a landowner, would employ a confidante - someone they knew was educated, understood the human dimension to work, worked to a set of reasonably defined 'higher values' and was not afraid to challenge the wisdom of decisions - such was the calibre of the confidante - at a time when, for others to do so, would often mean summary execution.

Of course, the role was open to abuse, and the risks were known, but were outweighed by the potential benefits - better decisions, more highly motivated staff, a greater appreciation of the softer arts of leadership, and access to an independent analytical mind. In those days, such advisers often came from monastic communities as these were the bases of education and the cultivation of personal values. The popularity of the Arthurian legends with their Merlin, of Gandalf in Tolkien's stories, of the Norse God, Odin in his wandering habit, and others indicate the degree of trust people place in this wise advisor role.

The role of the 'chaplain to a household' continued until the late Industrial Revolution. There were clearly some whose impartiality could be questioned, and whose personal circumstances made their objectivity doubtful, but such relationships were under constant review.

When armies were drawn together by personal allegiance, the chaplain to the household, would often accompany the troops, and in the Boer War and especially the First World War, chaplains became an essential integrated part of the Army. Their job was not simply to counsel the young soldiers facing death, or to minister to those who had died, but to act as confidante and advisor to those in power - bringing an emotional and spiritual dimension to decision making.

While the British military stick to fairly conventional definitions of faith and religion in defining the role of chaplain, the US has opened up considerably, recognising the importance of a far wider grasp of ethical, emotional, and spiritual issues in service decision making, and while they still have a shortage, their chaplaincy today recognises and tries to represent nearly 250 different paths to the role.

While the respect once held for Faith has diminished, and many people are no longer happy with established religions and their creeds, surveys suggest that most people now see the benefit of a wider emotional and spiritual contribution to the ways in which we govern our society. Even in the fictional world of Star Trek, the Captain of the Enterprise had his own spiritual counsellor, Deanna Troy, who provided precisely this understanding.

I am certainly not proposing that chaplains, per se, should become the guardians of morals within corporates, but I do believe that by making it the norm to have identifiable individuals with clearly credible skills, acting as emotional and spiritual advisors to the leaders of larger businesses should become an important aspect of their public governance.

Many public bodies, such as NHS Trusts, already appoint such individuals as non-executive directors. There are a growing number of businesses appointing Quaker advisors to their management boards.

Is it unreasonable for us to expect the annual Company Report, to document the specific actions that each director has undertaken for their continuous professional development? Is it unreasonable to include in this a record of the number of hours of 'supervision', as the psychological profession call it, and perhaps even the credentials of the supervisor in the fields of emotional, spiritual and ethical development?

Whatever the title of these confidantes, I believe it is time for us to try different approaches and I hope that above all, these crucial aspects of management will be incorporated by future generations. The new generation, Generation WE, is demanding a new approach, and they explicitly mention spirit in their manifesto. It is up to us, baby boomers, to respond.

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

Governance, fraud and management of emotion in decision making

2009-10-11T13:47:00.000Z

Last week's 10th Annual Conference of Corporate Governance (#wccg09), explored alternative, hopefully more effective, means of corporate governance. What emerged clearly from the presentations and the discussion was that our current approaches to governance miss the mark. They are targeted at corporates rather than individuals, at the workforce rather than the directors, at catching rather than preventing, and are a shotgun approach when a rifle is needed.

My own paper was used to start the conference. This is a slightly modified version.

Part 1: Governance and Fraud

Our approaches to corporate governance in recent years have tended to revolve around regulatory frameworks, reporting structures, and operating standards. As if to justify the time we devote to them and, more importantly, the time we expect other people to spend on them, we delude ourselves that we are defining ways of achieving good outcomes for the day-to-day management of an enterprise. It seems extraordinary but some people seriously believe that filling in this form, following that procedure, making this statement on the bottom of our emails, or secreting a link in tiny print at the bottom of our website to a load of legalise, both absolves us of almost any personal responsibility and magically impacts on the bottom line of the business. It is a joke - a delusion. If we look back over the last 18 months we see that just about every one of those institutions that contributed to the economic 'meltdown' had all these components in place.

In practice, however, what we are really trying to address is the propensity for fraud to happen in business environments.

These frameworks, structures and standards are translated and imposed on organisations that have little or no need for them; where fraud relatively rarely happens and, when it does, it is of far less substantial scale. The end result is an ineffective approach and a bureaucratic burden, applied too widely, that achieves little.

These measures try to strike a balance between the preventative, the deterrent, and the retrospective. In practice, many so-called preventative measures merely define the technical system through which the fraudster must navigate. Deterrents have existed ever since formal legal systems emerged millennia ago and yet the courts still have a steady stream of increasingly sophisticated corporate frauds to deal with. For the kind of people determined to defraud, deterrents simply don't work. Retrospective measures may make us feel vindicated in the long-run, but do nothing to stop the hurt that is caused by the frauds. Our focus therefore has to be on prevention.

In the last two years, a number of businesses, indeed whole industries, have been exposed for their irresponsible behaviour - where they failed to assess adequately the risks they were taking with the assets of others. These have been so extreme, that the global economic system has been shaken. There are signs of recovery, and sadly, I believe that the opportunity is rapidly being lost to reinvent many of these pointless Governance measures and to replace them with more effective and targeted approaches.

While organisational theorists can identify dynamic processes (group think, collusiveness, scape-goating, and so on) that are happening well beyond the ken of mere mortals, I prefer a slightly more down-to-earth perspective.

Despite what corporate lawyers will tell you, companies do not do actually do anything. They are inanimate. It is people that do things and when they do so within the structure of a corporation it may appear as if the company is doing something, but - at the end of the day - it is the people inside it that are doing so. Even when it is of the magnitude of the recent debacles, corporate fraud always emanates from one individual, or at most a small handful, usually with one persuasive leader.

Our approach therefore has to focus on individuals.

Most corporate fraud appears to happen in democratized countries within large businesses. There are obviously exceptions, but this appears to be the commonest environment. Large businesses are actually quite a small part of the world of work. The largest employers in the world are the Chinese Red Army, Indian State Railways, and the National Health Service (NHS). While I am sure that they have their problems, there are relatively few instances of large-scale individually-generated, corporate fraud associated with them. There appears to be a difference in the set of values espoused by those who work 'not-for-profit' to the values that drive people who work in the world of 'profit'. Corruption is about values and our approaches to governance need to reflect this.

Similarly, the Gross National Product (GNP) of democratised nations is generally dominated by the micro-business community. Far more people work for themselves or for very small companies than do so for the large corporates and, while the ethics of some of their trading practices will always be open to criticism (as the victims of dodgy builders and itinerant car dealers will vouch), it is not the small fry that our approaches need to address. We need to concentrate on the behaviour of people within larger businesses.

Psychologists of crime, tell us that such people often begin with small misdemeanours and when they get away with these, so they slowly escalate. It is by no means a coincidence that a disproportionate number of speeding and parking offences are apparently committed by those in senior positions in business. When those in other positions of influence commit relatively minor offences, (such as a senior police officer caught speeding, a senior civil servant caught fiddling their lunch expenses, or a hospital administrator seeking personal favours) they are so exceptional that they hit the headlines. Such small scale offences are so common among business-people that it rarely even warrants a mention in the local newspaper.

Fraud, broadly speaking, falls into four categories;
That committed against an organisation by a (usually senior) member of it. This includes offences against shareholders and creditors by high-flying entrepreneurs.
That committed against an organisation by a client, such as insurance fraud, tax evasion, and abuse of benefits.
Acts committed by one individual against another, including the classic 'con' tricks and trade 'scams'.
And those where a number of victims are solicited indirectly, such as the Nigerian advanced fee frauds perpetrated via email.

When we talk of governance, we are largely addressing corporate fraud by one of a small number of senior members of an organisation against the other stakeholders in it.

To be successful in business calls for self-confidence, hard work, a preparedness to adapt to failure, the ability to cope with being alone, and large measures of good luck. Sadly, it seems that when things are going well, when luck is available in copious quantities, we often dismiss it, and perceive our success as being entirely down to our own skills and attitudes. In some people, (and, of course, no-one reading this paper or attending the conference could possibly be in this category), this perception breeds an arrogance, a sense of invincibility, that can lead even individuals who are otherwise quite law-abiding, to think that they are above the law, that they are a 'special case', indeed that they are not answerable to anyone.

We have known that an individual's perception that they are 'above' the rules that society creates, is embedded in their childhood - typically around 7 to 9 years of age. It is directly related to the relative absence of their father in their upbringing. Many social problems, especially those affecting young men, originate from the values developed through this absence, whether it was caused by the breakdown of marriages, military service, schooling away from home, or the 'long hours' working culture. If we are to look at ways of preventing corporate fraud, and many other ills, we need to better handle the phenomenon of single parent families, and parenting skills generally.

It seems that most of those who go on to commit commercial fraud have recently experienced financial strain or vulnerability. While they may appear affluent to the rest of us, they see themselves as being at a disadvantage, but it is often the consequential fear of loss of power, influence or status that they later report as the triggers to their criminal behaviour. This is an emotional response. It is rooted deeply within the individual and is not something that can be erased by simplistic awareness raising, 'compliance' training. Our approaches to governance need to recognise the emotional response behind fraud.

We need to provide those individuals most likely to be tempted to defraud with appropriately skilled, long-term counter-balances to help them 'normalise' their thinking. I stress again, that this doesn't mean company-wide immersion style interventions, but instead highly targeted approaches when someone begins to assume the degree of authority that might open the box of temptation to them. Corporate fraud is not always done for the direct personal gain of the individual - as I've said, it is often more complex than that.

Many frauds begin as a one-off response to the person's sense of vulnerability, albeit by an individual who has already learned that they can 'get away' with minor misdemeanours. Once their fraud is apparently successful though, we know that many begin to gain some secondary pleasure in the knowledge that they are fooling the world, and especially that they are demonstrating their superiority to others. The likelihood of committing fraud is therefore a long-term phenomenon - it is not a one-off event, but something that has a life-cycle. The emotional counter-balances that we provide to such corruption-prone individuals therefore need to be embedded within the norm of their day-to-day work, not one-off responses, or short-term fixes.

Part 2 will follow in a few days time.

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

The interesting case of an OVER performing team

2009-09-11T18:20:00.000Z

Some days, it is magic! You can imagine my surprise when I was sent the following conundrum by email this afternoon, by someone who is supposedly a Leadership mentor and yet needed to ask for advice in dealing with it! It seems one of his contacts (a specialist in organisational culture no less) had asked him for help with a relatively rare leadership issue - I quote in full to make sure that no-one is in any doubt about the nature of the problem....

Dear (name removed to protect the 'guru')

We (I) lead a group of field based service culture consultants. Over the past 5 years, we've been through a tremendous amount of change in supported programs and phases of implementation vs support roles. Through it all, we've been a bit of an experiment for the company, so we've been in "hyper-drive" to develop our people to deliver at aspirational levels to "prove our worth". As you can imagine, this type of continual Q1 focus takes its toll on all, and burn out sets in. I own the responsibility for creating this environment.

Moreover, we are at a point now in which there is no longer a need for "hyper-drive" leadership - things are running well and I believe that we can slow down to maintain successes and engage a realistic continual improvement plan. But here's the rub - I can't get my down-line leadership team to slow down! I have been deliberately watching my words and actions to set a more even-keel environment, but they are all very committed and can't seem to break the 5 year habit. Throw a reorg on top of it all and well... you get the picture.

So, can you provide any insight/stories about how I, as the leader, can model and support a change in our situational leadership mode, as well as anything that might be insightful to share with them to help realize that there can be a work-life balance when you understand priorities and see where we are in the big picture?

Thanks for your guidance!

So that's the problem. Perhaps you'd like to spend a nanosecond thinking through YOUR response?

OK, that will do! Here's mine...

Nice to have an easy one for once...

Simple, but attention to detail is important.

Firstly, though, I need some basic information... Key to this is what your CURRENT profit is? I'm happy to accept answers in US Dollars, Pounds Sterling, or Euros.

Next, I'd like to know what level of profit you would be happy to achieve if the team could be encouraged to slow down. Ideally, in the same currency, but if you really need to quote in a different one, I can cope.

Now, I'd like you to do the arithmetic and calculate the difference. I realise that there are two different ways to get the same answer, either will do.

Got an answer? Great. Now, I'm glad that you have top/core team agreement to this need, as it is vital to the success of the next step...

I'd like you to speak to the CFO, and ask him (it is generally better to ask, rather than write, and if there are subsequent conversations, choose a different place for each one)...

To transfer the figure that you came up with - the difference between the two profits - (Hey! I heard that one too... but the answer is a bit too spiritual for this forum.) - to the private bank account in Switzerland that I'm going to send you by private message.

OK? Great. Now the joy of this solution, is that YOU don't have to do ANYTHING with your team - they are just fine - they can carry on as if NOTHING changed. No fancy consultancy programmes, no clever acronyms, no boxer shorts printed with "go slower" slogans. Just plain and simple.

Told you it was easy!

PS For anyone with the opposite problem - a team that need to produce more, yesterday - give me a call or email - my website is www.grahamwilson.org!

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

Bank holidays, portfolio careers and winter cold cures

2009-08-31T10:41:00.002Z

I was interviewed by someone from the Economist the other day about 'portfolio careers'. It was a weird conversation as she clearly hadn't got a clue what I was talking about. She had a reason why almost every strand of my work wasn't a 'real' career, the only bit she could relate to was writing and, obviously, I am "only an amateur at that". In the end, she (clearly disappointed) drew the interview to a close and asked what I would be doing over the Bank Holiday... She still didn't get it when I said that like many 'portfolio careerists', I'd be working!

I hope you get some time off - me, I'm about to make the winter's supply of Elderberry 'cordial' which has nothing to do with work other than (hopefully) keeping me at it when the germs start circulating later in the year!

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

How PowerPoint contributed to the Columbia re-entry disaster

2009-08-05T20:53:00.002Z

There are only a handful of authors whose books have been pivotal to my career. Perhaps one day I'll write a definitive list. Some that I can think of right now are;

John Rhodes' "Badgers Bend - Animal Hotel"
D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's "On Growth and Form"
Tom Peters "A Passion for Excellence"
Richard Feynman's "Lectures on Physics" and...
Edward Tufte's "The visual display of quantitative information"

Strange mix, but there we are! It's been a long time since I've read any of them, and, to be honest, hadn't expected to come across any new work by any of the authors (at least two of them are dead, after all!). So it was a delight to come across Edward Tufte's blog, and to see that he is still very much involved in his field - in a very substantial and dramatic way.

Edward Tufte is younger than I had assumed him to be, from my early encounter with his work. He is an American statistician and Professor Emeritus of statistics, information design, interface design and political economy at Yale University. He has been described by The New York Times as "the da Vinci of Data", and by Business Week as "the Galileo of graphics". He is an expert in the presentation of informational graphics such as charts and diagrams, and is a fellow of the American Statistical Association.

When I was completing my PhD, I was lent a copy of his seminal book, The visual display of quantitative information, I can very honestly say (and I doubt if anyone would take issue with this) that I have never been enthralled by a statistics book - and I can't really say I was by Tufte's book, but no-one could dispute that this one made you realise how important it was going to be to you from the very first few pages.

If you would like to understand a little of the importance of Tufte's work and, if you EVER use PowerPoint to do presentations, then I strongly recommend visiting his blog and looking at this excerpt from one of his books: PowerPoint does Rocket Science. Be prepared to feel a little angry as the story unfolds!

If Prof Tufte should ever read this little tribute, I should like to say thank you. Your work influenced me profoundly and, especially in the earlier part of my own career, it was frequently in my mind and undoubtedly led to some of my own minor successes.

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

Speed networking - not all it is cracked up to be

2009-08-05T00:29:00.000Z

This evening, I received an invitation to attend a speed networking event in Berkshire. Now, I'm not particular keen on these kind of events, because I do feel that relationships are important in business, but the chance to have an afternoon building my business seemed appealing - especially as it involves an expenditure of only £25.

I may still go, as much out of curiosity, as having high expectations of the event. But, why should I have such limited expectations? Well, the organisers PROUDLY tell me:

"Our first event in Chelmsford attracted some 24 businesses and we had very positive feedback from all attendees, including two companies who received three orders, and a quality consultant who won a new contract."

Now their English is a little unclear: do they mean that there were SEVEN new bits of work that came from this event or only FOUR? Well, either way, my old schoolboy statistics A-level comes out and I do the obvious calculation. On the basis that any pair of companies present could have done business either way, with that number of businesses there were actually 552 potential combinations (ie initial bits of work). This means, at best a conversion rate of 1.3% and at worst a conversion rate of 0.7%.

Now, I don't know what kind of result you would expect, but those don't really seem that impressive to me. What do you think?

If you're interested nontheless, you'll find the organisers website here: www.speednetworkingberkshire.co.uk

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

How to turn down a job offer

2009-07-22T19:16:00.000Z

Even though we are in a recession and so job opportunities are harder to come by, it is important not to leap at the first offer if taking it would force you to compromise yourself further than you are prepared to go.

It ALWAYS pays to talk through the compromises that a job offer represents with someone else, preferably someone who can be more objective than you.

Having decided not to accept, you need to decide how to say NO. In these days of networking, it is vital that you do so in a professional manner that leaves room for a relationship to continue even if you are not going to join their firm, or are being recruited through a third party. You need these people in your network of contacts - you need to be in their mind should a MORE SUITABLE opportunity come up in the future.

So how do you say NO? There are really five key messages to get over:

1 Say how grateful you are for the offer (and mean it!)

2 Let them know how much effort you have put into your decision. It is worthwhile spelling out some of the key factors that attracted you initially. "Your approach to XX was particularly impressive, and I could see how much I would have enjoyed working with the members of your team who were involved in the selection process."

3 Explain the detailed reasons for your decision. These CAN be directly related to the job as it emerged to you through interviews etc, or it may be something professional, longer-term, or personal.

4 Reiterate that you treat the choice of place to work very seriously and feel that you need to be sure that the role will be one in which you can really excel, and that this particular opportunity therefore didn't feel right.

5 End your 'turn down' in a way that demonstrates openness and a desire to maintain contact. Say that you hope that they will still consider you for other positions, and/or that you hope to meet them in a networking capacity in the future.

If they try to press you to join them, then it's worth exploring what would need to change to make it a better prospect.

If not, then move them to your list of networking contacts and begin to build the relationship. It amazes me how many people, having turned down a job offer (or simply not making it through to that stage) sever all contact with the recruiter or the company. It is precisely this group of people that you need to embrace in your network.

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

Business preparedness for swine flu - oh, come on!

2009-07-21T14:51:00.001Z

Yes, I know that it's easy to be cynical, but when you receive an official email from a Government quasi-Quango, with particular responsibility for business continuity in the small to medium enterprise sector, containing important guidance on how to deal with swine flu, you just know that it's going to be a laugh!

Well, Business Link, in a remarkably quick response, have jumped on the bandwagon, and issued advice on just that topic. You can read:

Recommendations for workplace hygiene.

Putting contingency plans in place.

Managing employee absence.

How to cCommunicate with your employees.

Now, apart from the fact that this is addressed to SMEs, where it is as likely to be the owner/sole trader who is ill as it an 'employee', and who can presumably communicate with him- or her-self while recumbent in bed just as easily as when slaving over a hot desk, I doubt if reminding this individual to wash their hands after they have been to the loo is really going to do a lot for the prevention of flu of any kind, let alone swine flu!

However, the idea that to counter this dreadful contagion you should "create a list of the transferable skills of each employee and consider who could be retrained or redeployed in the event of staff absence." is obviously a good one. No doubt your husband or wife will find it helpful being reminded how to answer the phone and reassure customers that it's not really fatal - unless there are underlying health problems (and you don't know of any), but if your partner should not get back to them in a couple of weeks assume the worse and find another supplier. Actually to save spreading the disease through unsterilised telephone systems, perhaps it would be better to record an answerphone message instead.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember though is that before you succumb, you are advised to "ensure IT systems can cope with high numbers of employees working from home." In other words, when the cantancerous old so-and-so is on the mend, make sure that they have their laptop plugged in and connected to the broadband, because as a swine flu survivor they are sure to want to tell everyone about their miraculous recovery and the fact that their business survived too!

Have a laugh, read more here: http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/detail?itemId=5001344587&type=ONEOFFPAGE&site=210

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

Climate mitigation - McDonalds takes a lead

2009-07-21T08:56:00.001Z

Be honest, you didn't expect to read that did you?!

Well, in 2007, the US fast food industry consisted of around 250000 outlets, of which McDonald's alone had 14000 in the US and a further 32000 worldwide. Fast food outlets are extraordinarily inefficient environmentally, so it's good to see that, by the end of this year, the Big Mac will have TEN gold-standard buildings WORLDWIDE. (My emphasis.)

Their first such building opened in Sweden in 2000 (ie NINE YEARS AGO) and they currently have SEVEN. Apparently though, their commitment to such measures is increasing!

These buildings' features include lamps that use light-emitting diodes, energy efficient appliances and heating and cooling systems, daylight-harvesting technologies, sustainable and recycled materials, low-flow toilets and recycling bins. No, that was not a mistake... they are actually going to have RECYCLING bins.

I'm glad that they are taking such a lead. Sadly though, I think this reeks of being an insult to the intelligence of their customers. PR department - shoot thyself in the foot!

Read more here: http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200907171300DOWJONESDJONLINE000671_FORTUNE5.htm

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

The role of a psychotherapist's supervisor

2009-07-15T10:59:00.000Z

Wow, I just received a sharp rebuttal for an article I wrote about writing to build your counselling/psychotherapy practice. The individual wanted me to know that she was 'outraged' that I had implied that marketing advice was a part of the role of a psychotherapist's supervisor.

So what is their role?

The textbook definition is that they are there to protect the therapist's clients.

OK that's fine and there are many ways to achieve this. In my experience though this is only a small part of the role. Especially in the early stages of a counselling career, there may be a need to review every client in a selective but 'verbatim' manner. (He said; I said etc) However, this need should soon evaporate and the dialogue can become more expansive.

The four areas that I find most therapists relish are aspects of personal therapy, work around their impact and presence in the world generally, developing their personal brand of therapy, and how to take themselves to market.

Personal Therapy

We are all aware that (from time-to-time, at least, all the time, perhaps) clients bring material that has some relevance to the therapist themselves. If the therapist is in personal therapy on a regular basis, then they can, of course, take this material to those sessions, but the reality is that many practising therapists stopped this some time ago. It is in both the interests of the client and the therapist to work on this in supervision. Of course, it can go deep and that might either mean that the supervision contract needs reviewing, or that the individual decides to go back into personal therapy, but either way the starting point is in supervision.

Expanding their worldly influence

Therapists chose to study and qualify because they had issues with their own history. This is one of the reasons why therapy trainings last so long! We can't be effective until we find some resolution for this material. Relatively few people seek help because they are highly socially outgoing and feel confident in public! (That isn't to say that all people who sustain a strong public profile ARE confident - we all know that most comedians and many entertainers have a long history of personal trauma and mental health crises.) Once an inner resolution is achieved to this, and the therapist finds that they have the resources to offer something to their clients, then I tend to find that they become restless and want to have a greater impact still. I don't think it is any coincidence that many leading psychotherapists, past and present, take a strong interest, and become involved, in social change and politics. As someone with whom they have a personal relationship, who understands their professional pedigree, and who has the skills to help them find voice to this drive, the supervisor is an obvious choice of support. As this often embraces their perspective on clients and their issues too, it again seems to me to be perfectly right for it to form a part of the role of a supervisor. Putting it another way, if a therapist DOESN'T feel a desire to expand their sphere of influence, at least to some degree, then I would be worried that they had not actually found an inner resolution to their own issues and might need to work on them more.

Developing a personal brand of therapy

Straight from training, a lot of therapists fret that they might break some rules, don't fully understand the subject, can't perform perfectly and so on. That's understandable. Some idolise their particular strand of trainings 'guru' - past or present. It slightly frightens me how many graduates go back to their original school, still in love with their trainers, and manage to have affairs with them - which is an indictment of the trainers rather than the graduates, but also reflects pretty poorly on the training itself. But I digress... putting idolatry to one side... Freud, Jung, Adler, etc, all started out as a student, graduated, continued to learn, developed the confidence to assert their own ideas, and did so. They developed a personal brand of therapy. Every practising therapist needs a personal brand. In my experience, far too many therapists complain that they don't get many clients and yet, when you look at their literature and their approach to marketing themselves the image is so cloudy and so confused that no-one seeking clarity (which most clients are) would consider going to them. To do this in isolation is likely to yield to either intellectually interesting but practically useless outpourings, or to dangerous distortions. To do so in dialogue is likely to mature and enrich these personal ideas and themes. Freud and Jung might have fallen out - for which they are famous - but the important thing was that they were engaged in dialogue beforehand which helped them each develop their perspectives. Of course, you needn't use your supervisor for this nurturing of ideas, and some supervisors themselves find it hard to do, but personally, I see it as an important aspect of the work. The supervisor is a part of the mechanism of the ongoing professional development of the therapist and if they aren't up to enhancing the intellectual grasp of their supervisee's practice then I wonder why they are a supervisor.

Helping the therapist go to market

And so to the original reason for this article... Should the supervisor help their supervisee develop their marketing plan and take themselves to market? Clients are protected best by having an experienced therapist with well-founded confidence and clarity of mind. They achieve this through practise. You practise by having clients - therefore you need clients. If a supervisor is to help you achieve your best, they need to help you find sufficient clients. Some will be able to do this by virtue of their position - supervisors at 'centres' usually have responsibility for referrals - some will do so with clients they can't accommodate in their own private practise - others will help the supervisee develop their own marketing plan and help them put it into place. Whatever the means, a therapist without clients is not going to keep coming to the supervisor for long, so it is in both parties interests for the supervisor to embrace this as a part of their role.

I hope that explains how I see my role as a supervisor, and how I experience my own supervisor. If it offends anyone, I am sorry, but there really are no black and white areas in the fields of human relations and perhaps it would be worth your while exploring where your own models have come from - I'm not saying you are wrong, simply that there are alternatives.

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

Writing to build your counselling/psychotherapy practice

2009-07-15T09:05:00.001Z

52 Themes for Counsellors and Psychotherapists to write about in their local paper

This list began with a conversation between two therapists. They wanted to build their local practices, and had decided that they wanted to find a way of getting people to come to see them. They'd tried all kinds of leaflet drops - doctors' surgeries, hairdressers, florists, funeral directors, coffee-shops and so on.

They decided to try to get a regular column in a local newspaper. Having created a list of topics, similar to this one, they scoured the local papers (including the freebies) until they found a couple that looked good possibilities. They wrote up a half dozen themes into short 250-word articles which appeared to be the size of a typical 'column' in the papers concerned, and sent them to one of the editors asking for feedback. Within a month the first appeared. It took another couple of months for the trickle of clients to build up. On occasions after publication, they had follow up calls from the local radio stations and appeared on those briefly too.

Unfortunately, it didn't take long for their creativity to dry up and instead of a regular column they ended up sending ad hoc articles instead. Fortunately, by then they had a steady enough stream of ongoing referrals.

1 New Year Resolutions
2 Why birth can be so painful
3 On death and dying
4 Why grief is necessary
5 When the children go to school
6 Giving up
7 Being yourself
8 Why marriages fail and how to stop them
9 How to find a good therapist
10 Churchill's black dog
11 Whose anger is it anyway?
12 When all your choices seem to go wrong
13 Learning from our own life
14 How talking cures work
15 Feeling deserted
16 When the children leave home
17 Mid-life crises
18 Too much anxiety
19 Why suicide?
20 Getting your bloke to love you
21 There is always a choice
22 Growing old is never easy
23 Do you cry a lot?
24 Helping your child tackle bullies
25 What's this thing called love?
26 The outsider looking in
27 Surviving childhood abuse
28 Building confidence
29 Feeling proud of yourself
30 When Christmas loses its cheer
31 Tackling money worries
32 Falling out of love
33 It was never meant to be like this
34 The human need for meaning
35 Hate is a powerful word
36 No place to hide
37 Why some people are just plain spiteful
38 How fear can grip you
39 How to cope when things go wrong
40 How to cope when you lose control
41 Breaking up is never easy
42 Dealing with addiction
43 Listening skills for parents
44 Putting something behind you
45 Finding meaning in life
46 Building a social circle
47 An unnatural fear of intimacy
48 Sexual healing
49 Patterns from the past
50 What has pain got to do with it?
51 Now you've tried pulling yourself together
52 When you don't look the way you want to

If you want to discuss this approach, explore other ways of building your professional practice, or get the kind of support that you really want from a supervisor, then do get in touch.

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

Making heroes out of leaders

2009-06-24T22:09:00.000Z

Reading Neil Oliver's "Amazing tales for making men out of boys", published in 2008, has set me off on a reflective trail of current leadership wisdom. Corporate and political leadership, especially, have come under the cosh a great deal lately, largely around the ethical dimension, and I think Oliver's book offers some good material to explore what has gone wrong and and what needs to go right.

Unfolding the sotry of Scott's death in the Antarctic with a remarkable collection of heroic tales ranging from the Ancient Spartans to Apollo 13, Oliver explores what it takes to be a leader and a hero. Depending on your definition, not all heroes and leaders, but (often unknowingly) all leaders are someone's hero.

These days, whether out of political correctness, fear of the outcome, simple illiteracy, or ignorance, we don't tell tales of heroes. Whenever someone does something out of the ordinary, it seems the 'gutter press' are out to discover the dirt in the story or the skeleton(s) in their closet and soon the hero is undermined.

In the past, it was by knowing the stuff of legends, whether lived in their lifetime or not, that new heroes were groomed, so that they too could take a place in history. Oliver's heroes are adventurers, conquerors, the conquered, the wealthy and the poor, the privileged and the underdog, the politically astute and the poor souls who found themselves in the wrong place, at what was arguably the wrong time. Yet, they all showed heroism by doing the right thing when the situation called for it.

Do we need heroes these days and, if we do, under what circumstances?

Oliver draws some tentative conclusions about what makes a hero which certainly make a useful starting point. Heroes, it seems, have fathers who they would like to prove themselves to. Their mothers who have played other than normal roles in their lives; perhaps being responsible for the care of their mother earlier than you would expect, perhaps being too close for comfort, perhaps dying in their childhood. Heroes have often grown 'apart' from their family and other children - not always being comfortable in their company and, as adults, often socially ill-at-ease, especially with the other sex.

Heroes have a strong sense of duty to a body greater than themselves and their family. Whether to their regiment, society, the nation, clan, or humanity as a whole. This is not simply a question of putting others needs above their own; it is about being prepared - indeed even expecting - to sacrifice their own life for the sake of others. Heroes place little emphasis on the act of dying itself. While, no doubt, there are some humanist heroes most, it appears, see death as a transition rather than a final act, and therefore, they usually have some Faith that embraces such a continuum.

There are some fascinating examples of individuals who were driven by their own needs and aspirations and for whom 'success' proved elusive until they put these aside and acted self-lessly for a higher good. For those who were also leaders a consistent quality is a deep and detailed concern for the day-to-day welfare of their 'followers'. Frequently, this is not simply a question of showing an interest, but of a passionate concern - giving more than might be expected of a leader in a position of power. In return, they are not simply respected but loved, and the degree of commitment shown to them is not merely that of an employee but a devotion that could be beyond that shown to their family - and could too include the ultimate sacrifice.

While a few of Oliver's examples are individuals for whom their behaviour, in an instant, defined them as heroic, most were serial heroes. One event perhaps stands out. Often, though not always, this was their final act, but for many it was an early step in a long life of heroism.

So, a few questions for the leaders among us to ponder...

What precisely is our personal 'higher aspiration'? We might struggle to define it, and our life may not currently reflect it, but to achieve our fullest potential as a leader we should have some inkling and be working towards it on a day-to-day basis.

What is our attitude to death? Especially our own. Or another way of looking at this would be to ask what is our attitude to our own life? To what extent do we deny its possibility? Without hastening it, what do we do to simply delay the inevitable? And, what do we put off doing today on the assumption that there will be time later?

Few of us work in isolation. These days fewer still have direct 'reports', as corporate hierarchies would have them, but most of us have a number of people who are dependent on us or for whom we have some responsibility. How many would say we cared about them? How many would say our care went beyond what they might reasonably expect? What could we do, on a day-to-day basis, and from tomorrow (no later), to achieve this degree of concern?

We often get drawn into a career path that is about perpetuating the status quo. It may involve material growth but nonetheless it is about perpetuation of a system of hierarchy and seniority. I often hear leaders say, once they have retired, "this is how I wish others would do things - it isn't how I did them, but with the benefit of hindsight, it is how I wish I had." So, how about changing the time-scale? Don't wait until you retire and apologetically advise the new generation. Instead, why not take a stand? Be a hero. Regardless of the personal consequences, make a change for the better in your work. What could/should you, your business, your industry, do differently and what could you do to make this happen?

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

Why climate security affects us all

2009-06-18T11:10:00.002Z

This is the second part of a keynote paper prepared for the 11th Global Conference on Environment Management, held in Palampur last week.

A short-term geopolitical scenario

This though, is not a conference about the science and technology necessary to save us. It is about climate security - the geopolitical factors that arise from climate change that pose as great a threat in a shorter timescale.

If we know that the glaciers will be gone by 2035, and we can be pretty confident that the governments will NOT act soon enough to transform the lower-atmospheric CO2 concentrations, then this ceases to be a feat of engineering that must be achieved. Instead, it becomes a matter of politics, migration, cross-border conflict, and international intervention.

The precursor of most cross-border conflict is human migration. No region is more directly threatened by human migration than South Asia. The IPCC warns that “coastal areas, especially heavily populated mega-delta regions in South, East, and Southeast Asia, will be at greatest risk due to increased flooding from the sea and, in some mega-deltas, flooding from the rivers.”

Bangladesh in particular will be threatened by devastating floods, monsoons, melting glaciers, and tropical cyclones (originating in the Bay of Bengal), water contamination and ecosystem destruction caused by rising sea levels. The population of Bangladesh stands at 142 million today, and is projected to increase by approximately 100 million people 30 years, despite climate change and other environmental factors making the low-lying regions of the country uninhabitable.
Most of the displaced people will move inland, a migration that is expected to cause instability and friction with established communities as they compete for already scarce resources. Other migrants will seek to go abroad, creating heightened political tension not only in South Asia but in Europe, the US, and South-East Asia, as well.

India will struggle to cope with a surge of displaced people from Bangladesh, but they are not the only ones who will seek refuge there. Approximately four million people inhabit the small islands in the Bay of Bengal that are already being slowly swallowed by the rising sea. Most of these communities will have to be accommodated on the mainland sooner or later.

Many of the borders and territories, in the region are already contested, and this large-scale migration is going to fuel these differences. Add to this the deteriorating socioeconomic conditions, radical Islamic political groups, and dire environmental insecurity, and there are clearly severe regional and potentially global consequences.

As climate change has its greatest impact on areas that are already challenged for resources, it is limiting the effectiveness of many of the current development projects financed by the international community even though they are increasingly important. The World Bank estimates that 40 percent of all overseas development assistance and concessional finance is devoted to activities that will be affected by climate change, but few of the projects adequately account for the impact that climate change will have. Consequently, dams are built on rivers that will dry up, and crops are planted in coastal areas that will be frequently flooded.

In Nepal, for example, the melting glaciers are leading to glacial lake outburst, where high energy flood waves reaching as much as 15 metres in height, destroy downstream settlements, dams, bridges, and other infrastructure. Millions of dollars in recent investment have been lost because the hydro-power and infrastructure design in Nepal largely fails to take these floods into account. Ultimately, this further stresses the country as it tries to preserve a fragile peace. Given its proximity to the conflict zone of Kashmir and the contested borders of China and India, an eruption of severe social or political turmoil in Nepal could have ramifications for the entire South Asian region.

I hope that I have managed to illustrate in sufficient detail, exactly why climate security is such a crucial subject for us all to grasp. In almost every part of the world, there are unique circumstances, that individually appear local, and of limited impact. However, the underlying trend of climate change exacerbates these to the point of significant social unrest which in turn accelerates the impact of climate change by making efforts to reduce it impossible and undermining those efforts that are made.

What does climate security mean to 'real' people?

2009-06-08T18:53:00.002Z

This is the first part of a keynote paper prepared for the 11th Global Conference on Environment Management, being held at Palampur later this week.

At the UN Security Council debate on climate security in 2007, the Ghanaian representative, LK Christian, spoke of growing evidence that nomadic Fulani cattle herdsmen were arming themselves with sophisticated assault rifles. They were doing so in order to confront local farming communities, who in turn were threatening their cattle herds. The cause that he gave for this increasing tension was climate change which is expanding the Sahara desert.

Only the day before, the Security Council had been discussing the crisis in Darfur. This is a conflict in which 200 000 people have already died. It is a conflict in which there has been that same struggle between nomadic and pastoral communities for resources made more scarce through a changing climate.

We know from studying earlier civilizations that declined and collapsed that it was often shrinking harvests that were responsible. For the Sumerians, rising salt concentrations in the soil lowered wheat and barley yields and brought down this extraordinary early civilization. For the Mayans, it was soil erosion following deforestation that undermined their agriculture and set the stage for their demise. For our twenty-first century civilization, it is rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations and the associated rise in temperature that threatens future harvests.

To illustrate the problems of climate security, I am going to focus on the Indian Ganges, and Chinese Yellow and Yangtze river basins. I could have chosen almost any part of the world, but as this conference is in Himachal Pradesh, these seemed a good or bad choice depending on your perspective.

The world is currently facing a climate-driven shrinkage of river-based irrigation water supplies. Mountain glaciers in the Himalayas and on the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau are melting and could soon deprive the major rivers of India and China of the ice melt which is necessary to sustain them throughout the dry season. In the Ganges, the Yellow, and the Yangtze river basins, where irrigated agriculture depends substantially on rivers, this loss of dry-season flow will shrink harvests.

The world has never faced such a predictably massive threat to food production as that posed by the melting mountain glaciers of Asia. China and India are the world’s leading producers of both wheat and rice - the staple component of the diet of most of humanity. China’s wheat harvest is nearly double that of the United States, which ranks third after India. With rice, these two countries are far and away the leading producers; together they account for over half of the world harvest.

In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (www.ipcc.ch) reported that Himalayan glaciers are receding rapidly and that many could melt entirely by 2035. In particular, if the giant Gangotri Glacier which supplies 70 percent of the Ganges flow during the dry season should disappear, then the Ganges will become a seasonal river - flowing during the rainy season, but not during the summer dry season when irrigation water is so essential.

A leading Chinese glaciologist, Yao Tandong, has reported that the glaciers on the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau in western China are now melting at an accelerating rate. He believes that two thirds of these glaciers could be gone by 2060, which will substantially reduce the dry-season flow of the Yellow and Yangtze rivers.

Like the Ganges, the Yellow River, which flows through the arid northern part of China, could also become seasonal.

At the same time, overpumping in both India and China, is depleting the underground water resources that both countries use for irrigation. Water tables are falling everywhere under the North China Plain, the country’s principal grain-producing region. When an aquifer is depleted, the rate of pumping is reduced to the rate of recharge. In India, water tables are falling and wells are going dry in almost every state.

Losing the river water used for irrigation could lead to politically unmanageable food shortages. The Ganges River, for example, is the largest source of surface water irrigation in India, and is the principle source of water for the 407 million people living in the Gangetic Basin.

In China, the Yellow River basin is home to 147 million people whose fate is closely tied to the ice-melt feeding the river because of low rainfall in the basin. The Yangtze, meanwhile, is China’s leading source of surface irrigation water, and helps produce more than half of China’s 130-million-ton rice harvest. It also meets many of the other water needs of an estimated 368 million people that live within its watershed.

The populations in either the Yangtze or Gangetic river basin are larger than those of any country other than China or India. The ongoing shrinkage of underground water supplies, the prospective shrinkage of river water supplies, and the consequent crop and subsequent food crises are occurring against the demographic backdrop of a growth in population by 2050, in India of an anticipated 490 million people, and in China of 80 million.

Grain prices around the world continue to climb and any disruption of the wheat or rice harvests in these two leading grain producers will greatly affect not only people living there but consumers everywhere. In both of these countries, food prices will rise and grain consumption per person will inevitably fall. In India, just over 40 percent of all children under five years of age are already underweight and undernourished, and we can safely predict that hunger will intensify and child mortality will likely climb.

For China, where there is already a struggle to manage food price inflation, there may well be spreading social unrest as food supplies tighten. Food security in China is a highly sensitive issue. Anyone in China who is over 50 years of age is a survivor of the Great Famine of 1959–61, when, even according to official figures, 30 million Chinese starved to death. This is also why Beijing has worked so hard in recent decades to try and maintain grain self-sufficiency.

A decade ago, China, was essentially self-sufficient in soy-beans; today, it is importing 70 percent of its supply, which has helped drive world soy-bean prices to an all-time high. As food shortages further unfold, China will try to hold down its domestic food prices by using its massive dollar holdings to import grain, mostly from the United States, which is the world’s largest grain exporter. But, as irrigation water supplies shrink, Chinese consumers will be competing with American domestic consumers for the US grain harvest. India may also try to import large quantities of grain, though it probably lacks the money to do so, especially if grain prices keep climbing.

This is not a problem that we are leaving to future generations. 2035 is only 25 years away. Assuming that starvation, pestilence, and war do not kill you, most people who are under 50 today, will still be alive then. If you are under 50, you have a responsibility to do something about it.

Glaciologists have given us a clear sense of how fast the glaciers are shrinking. The challenge now is to translate their findings into national energy policies designed to save the glaciers.

The critical factor is to reduce low-altitude atmospheric concentrations of CO2. At issue is not just the future of mountain glaciers, but the future of world grain harvests. The challenge is to abandon current policies and cut carbon emissions by, at least, 80 percent - not by 2050 which is the target many political leaders have tried to suggest, but by 2020.

The first step is to stop building coal-fired power plants, which contribute significantly to these low altitude CO2 levels. Ironically, of course, the two countries that are planning to build most of the new coal-fired power plants, are China and India - the two countries most massively threatened by the carbon emitted from burning coal. It is now totally in their interest to try and save their mountain glaciers by shifting investment from coal-fired power plants into energy efficiency and wind farms, solar thermal power, and geothermal power. It has been estimated, that China, for example, could double its current electrical generating capacity from wind alone.

When leaders fear to lead

2009-05-27T20:16:00.001Z

The other weekend, I was lucky to attend the Annual Branch Conference of the Royal Life Saving Society (RLSS). The RLSS is a charity, established in 1891 to combat a high drowning toll. The techniques advocated by the Society were soon adopted by many countries and today the RLSS represents the largest single organisation dedicated to the teaching of lifesaving and the prevention of drowning.

The Society is responsible for the standards, and most of the training, of every lifeguard in Britain - both those who ensure our safety in swimming pools and those who patrol Britain's beaches. In every county, most cities, and many towns, clubs and classes are held each week, teaching young and old, the essential skills of water safety, water rescue, and resuscitation.

Lifesaving is growing in popularity at the moment as more and more young people, especially teenagers and university students, are taking part in the competitive aspect of the sport. Lifesaving competitions are dramatic, exciting, very tough, and incredibly moving events. Some are held indoors and some on beaches and other open-water venues, including lakes and rivers.

Have you ever been on a beach, and seen the crowd that turns to watch as the inshore RIB (rigid hulled inflatable boat) powers off to recover a young child on an inflatable that has drifted off to sea? Or perhaps it was the red and yellow clad beach lifeguard running through the waves to catch the little child that got immersed as they played ball in what they (and their parents) thought was waist high water and suddenly became adult shoulder height?

If so, you'll know how dramatic and yet how fast these rescues have to be. Well, imagine half a dozen such lifeguards racing one another to recover a casualty from the bottom of the pool, negotiating hazards as they go. You'll soon realise what an appeal the competitive translation of these 'skills for life' can have!

The RLSS is not all about drama and excitement. Its volunteers also teach almost every cricket coach in basic resuscitation and first aid, accredit every swimming teacher as competent to rescue a pupil during lessons, offer every new parent free training in the skills to 'save a baby's life' and, recently, hosted many evening sessions for the parents of Babies and Toddlers, again teaching them life-saving skills through a scheme sponsored by Tesco.

The RLSS, like many charities in Britain, depends on volunteers. Without volunteers, most clubs would close, many classes would stop, few lifeguards would be qualified, no swimming teacher could teach, deaths during cricket matches would increase, and the 2600 babies who choked in Britain last year would have died. Volunteers are the life blood of the RLSS.

Volunteers, of course, have 'rights'. While they may not be paid, they deserve to be motivated in other ways, and although they often claim less than they might, they shouldn't be unduly out-of-pocket for their efforts. They deserve respect, they deserve to be protected from risks, they deserve appropriate and relevant training. Unless they have waived the right, then they deserve privacy, and a variety of freedoms. No-one would deny this. According to the law, these people are employees and, as such, their rights are protected by a raft of legislation.

Of course, over the years a small handful of cases reach the courts, where a volunteer from somewhere across the charity sector, feels that their rights have been compromised. Although it falls behind the number of cases that are heard for paid employees, these volunteers do, from time to time, feel that they have been sufficiently badly treated that they deserve compensation through the legal system.

We are not talking of a flood (thank goodness) but there is a steady flow of cases such that, at this year's Conference, a seminar was offered for those of us with responsibility for developing volunteers, to help us become aware of the range of legislation that we have to manage our way around. Forty or so of us, sat for a couple of hours, exploring the dark recesses of the legislation, standards, protocols, 'best practices', guidelines, policies, and Acts, and learned a number of multi-lettered acronyms along the way. I gave up counting, but I think it's safe to say that there are a good couple of dozen bits of legislation that MIGHT be used to seek retribution for the victims of these abuses.

Now, I don't want you to think that I feel workers, real workers (both voluntary and paid), don't deserve such protection. I most firmly do feel that they deserve protection. My grandfather imbued me with a very clear sense of the rights and wrongs of labour relations and I wouldn't dream of denying them this hard earned support.

However, I know I am not the only person to suggest that some of these quasi-protections are ineffective, inefficient, retrospective, nannying by the State. I don't blame 'the State' for anything though. I think that there are two collective groups responsible for the ludicrous state of affairs by which a school needs a qualified Mountain Leader to take a bunch of kids onto the playing field for a nature walk. The first, are the self-appointed, unqualified, often untrained and unmanaged, obsessive-compulsive personalities who disorder everyone else's life by insisting on ritualised procedures because "health and safety requires it." The second group are the equally dysfunctional band of lawyers who will gladly lead someone up the garden path of legal redress, on the trail of some distant lucre, when realistically, what is needed is for the leaders of an organisation to see that they have failed and to put something in place as an appropriate prevention of a future case.

We have reached the point where, whether in the voluntary or paid employment sectors, leaders are afraid to lead, trustees are afraid to trust, and directors are afraid to direct, simply because of some exaggerated sense of fear that they will be prosecuted and held liable for some petty infraction of an over-sensitive individual's rights. [Wow! I'll start reading the Daily Express soon!]

We now face a situation where employees are bombarded with the potential for compensation, where they can engage a solicitor on a 'no-win, no-fees' basis, and get 'anonymous' support for their legal case to reach ludicrous levels of appeal. Meanwhile, companies and charities need to retain the services of lawyers and insurers to protect them from exaggerated, nefarious claims from morally-outraged, fortune hunters.

So, where is this diatribe going? Well, I was delighted to hear today that the Employment Appeal Tribunal, in a landmark decision, awarded £25k costs against a claimant in a racial discrimination case. They found that she had fabricated a ‘deliberate and cynical lie’ in claiming that she had been named a ‘black bitch’ by her managers. They also found that her claim that she was unfairly underpaid by 50p per hour was not reasonable as she had accepted her level of remuneration for months with no qualms.

I hope that it was not simply a case of personal avarice or greed that led her to this point. I hope that she has the means to pay the £25k. I hope that those stirring lawyers and benefactors seeking to prove a legal point at the expense of the individuals and organisations involved will, at least, 'bail her out'.

Above all though, I think/I hope, that we see in this case, a small sign that society has turned a corner. That these ridiculous nerds who hide behind the facade of loosely interpreted legislation, obstructing progress, cramping exploration, denying experience, and generally forging a path towards dullness and despondency, will see that their days are numbered and a new era of vitality and excitement lie ahead!

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

A few more thoughts on networking...

2009-04-20T12:18:00.005Z

Quite a few people have given me feedback on my Better Networking leaflet lately and, in particular, they have asked for some thoughts on face-to-face networking at events, so I have pulled together a few more pointers. So much of the success of such events depends on your attitude to yourself.

We all know the scenario - in a fit of enthusiasm for expanding our range of contacts, we committed to go to a 'networking evening' a few weeks ahead. The day arrives sooner than we expected and we have a bundle of better things to do, but our conscience gets the better of us and we set off in a bit of a hurry and expecting to be a little late. On the way, we consider turning around a couple of times, and when we arrive in the car park we also give it some serious thought. However, we're there so we'd better go ahead. Entering the room, we see the usual characters - a little cluster of committee-types in the distance engaged in earnest conversation, a few pairs giving their attention to one another desperate to look interested and actually panicking that they are going to have to say something intelligent in a moment, and a couple of individuals standing on the edge of the group. At this point we spot the wine waiter and gladly grab a glass. Now what do we do?
Let's begin before you leave for the event and certainly in the car on the way...

Be realistic about yourself and what you would like out of the meetings you are about to have.

If you don't have some clear outcomes that you are looking for then the conversation will be aimless, lacking purpose, though potentially perfectly acceptable socially. There's nothing wrong with going to a networking event simply to have a drink and enjoy meeting a few folks. However, it isn't usually the purpose of the event, and you are unlikely to achieve certain kinds of outcome (such as new leads, collaborators, suppliers, innovations for your business) from the time.

Be prepared to ask other people what they are looking for from the 'networking' too. It can be a good way of developing a conversation.

Also be prepared for the fact that some participants HAVE come to make a number of initial acquaintances and to build a deeper rapport later. They won't be too happy to linger as you go into a deep explanation of the inner workings of your latest paradigm!

It really doesn't matter what you are wearing but it is important that you feel confident.

Some people, such as Richard Branson, appear confident in very relaxed clothes, others can't relax unless they are in a designer suit. Spend time becoming sure of yourself and what you feel confident in. Tweak it to perfection, and then wear it. Yes, there ARE norms of dress in certain industries and certain environments, but confidence is MUCH more important than matching the norms. By confident, I do NOT mean being relaxed. Sadly, I often come across people who seem to think they must dress in a suit and then look stiff and anxious at the same event as others are dressed in cords and a pullover looking calm and confident. You can't give someone your full attention when you are feeling awkward and all they go away with is an impression of an uncomfortable person and an uncomfortable conversation.

A handshake can cement long-term positive feelings and help you remember names!

When you approach someone, get eye-to-eye contact, stand tall, relax your shoulders. Smile, pause, and then offer your hand in a vertical fashion (thumb and fingers arranged above one another), firmly but not too firmly. While holding their hand, take a breath, and say; "Hello, my name is ..., and what is yours?" When they say it, shake their hand, and say; "It's good to meet you, ...". Release their hand naturally at this point. (Written like that makes this sound a bit false - it isn't as bad as it sounds and, with practice, will feel perfectly natural.

When you are parting company, again get eye-to-eye contact, smile, then a second handshake, this time using your other hand to gently enfold their elbow or upper arm, accompanied with: "It's been good talking, ..., I hope we'll meet again soon."
You will be staggered how many other people's names you will remember and how many people will remember yours. They will also feel far more affinity to you than to other people.

Lots of people feel relieved to find anyone to talk to and then don't move on soon enough.

Remember that the reason YOU are there is to network - that means meeting as many people as possible and with both of you warmly remembering a little about the other. You can't say that you have achieved this if you only speak to a small handful of potentials. Longer, deeper, more meaningful exchanges can be had later by meeting one-to-one - the job at this event is to prepare the ground for future contact.

If you are one of those folks who find yourself sticking close to a few people, challenge yourself to do better. Set yourself goals, such as: "I'm going to introduce myself to double numbers!" or "I'm going to make sure I collect a dozen business cards." or "I'm going to talk to four people I have never met before." Repeat this goal setting on a half dozen occasions and achieve the goals and you'll find you've got it cracked!

Connect with people as equals.

NEVER consider yourself above another person, nor as an inferior or subordinate. Always look for some connection between you during the conversation, having identified it and without necessarily speaking about it, use your 'insider knowledge' to ask them questions about their experience. This makes them feel listened to, and they will leave the conversation with you feeling better.
Judging people is a dangerous sport, best left to professionals!

Be careful not to talk about yourself too much.

Monitor how much you use "I", "You" and "We in your conversation. Take responsibility for the conversation (as a DIALOGUE) guiding it if it becomes one sided or negative. People don't have positive feelings towards braggers, but they do towards listeners.

I hope you'll find these useful. If you have anything to add, or would care to share your experiences, do call.

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org

Corporate Alumni Networks - managing your reputation and protecting your future in recessionary times

2009-04-12T23:51:00.002Z

Why reputation among former employees is so vital...

Imagine yourself, in three years' time. A former colleague calls - perhaps it's one of those you've had to 'let go' this year, or someone who saw an opportunity elsewhere and left. Their call is no surprise, because you've kept in touch with them ever since. They want your advice...

Perhaps they've seen you advertising a job and wonder if they should apply...

They've heard you are struggling with something that they were an expert in and think that they could help you...

The business they are running is looking for investment or to be acquired...

They have discovered a solution to a technical problem that has thwarted you for years...

They know someone they think would make an excellent member of your team...

They have heard you might want to dispose of a part of your firm and they are eager to buy...

They have an idea for a new product stream and would like to know who's best to discuss it with...

Maybe they have spotted a new market and would like to help you develop it...

There are ways of managing your reputation and getting a return on the investment...

Despite the rhetoric, for most companies struggling to keep afloat in a tough recessionary market the likelihood of maintaining such bonds with former employees is small.

Whatever our reason for moving on, whether we are made redundant, fired, or even go of our own choice, there is usually a bitter after-taste. Few people sing the praises of a former employer - certainly not in the next few years. It is a natural part of the psychology of adapting to change - to project the blame onto the former employer and so make the future look better.

Employers too, used to take what some might describe as an arrogant approach: that someone who has left has been disloyal somehow and should never be entertained again. There are still many who act this way.

If you want to nurture your relationships, and build an body of ambassadors...

Now, suppose I said there is a way to manage your company's reputation despite these tough times, to maintain the morale of staff who leave your organisation (and encourage those that stay), to build a pool of potential future employees and of grass-roots ambassadors for the business, to provide a source of relevant innovative ideas and an extended network of referrers of business opportunities, and all this for very little outlay... would you be interested?

There is an inexpensive way of achieving all this...

Known as a 'corporate alumni network' - it calls for long-term commitment and a belief in the potential of former staff, but it costs very little to run, and can add enormous value in many ways.

As one Group HR Director said; "It's a no-brainer really - just one senior player recruited through the network can pay for all its costs."

If you recognise the benefit of keeping in touch, of nurturing the relationship with former staff, of providing a communication channel through which they can keep in contact with you, build their network, learn about opportunities, involve you in their future ventures, and through which you can make a positive contribution to their immediate needs, then I think you'll find I have something important to offer.

A few enlightened employers have proactively managed these relationships in the past: The Mars Group, Motorola, McKinsey, KPMG, and Ford are all examples. This used to involve a lot of hands-on effort, was achieved by post or phone and was expensive. It often meant formal events to which members were invited and which required corporate sponsorship. Along the way, the firms had to learn that they couldn't control the networks, but they could influence them.

The power of the internet means that, left to their own devices, employees can organise their own networks. They are fragile, lack authority, don't have corporate support and input (both essentials), and have no 'agenda' to sustain a positive relationship with the company.

A modern solution, facilitating two way flows of information and a climate of care...

Today, more firms are waking up to the possibility of offering their former staff access to an online environment, where they can maintain contact, nurture individuals and relationships and build a positive reputation. The technology is simple (though some IT departments seem reluctant to admit it!) and is completely outside your own infrastructure so it poses no threat, brings no long-term responsibilities, and is accessible to FORMER staff who (obviously) have no access to your intranet.

What makes the network work though, is its day-to-day management. Facilitating a corporate alumni network (which is the term that these groups are known by) calls for skills in distant relationship building, an understanding of the psychology of communication and the emotional needs of former staff and an ability to offer online 'counsel' where appropriate, an ability to mentor those who are embarking on more senior roles, and to support those who might be launching their own businesses.

A lot of support costs very little...

I hope that you'll be persuaded that this is a simple approach that could reap considerable rewards for your business. It costs very little, though it needs a long-term commitment to make it worthwhile, but the return on the investment can be enormous.

Visit my website: www.corporate-alumni.info to read more, to download an independent report on the nature of alumni networks, to read comments from others like you, and to learn what leads to the success of good networks. Give me a call to arrange a meeting.

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org

Politicians urged to use the economic crisis to fight climate change and eliminate poverty

2009-03-03T01:04:00.003Z

Oxfordshire-based businessman, Dr Graham Wilson, is leading a call for politicians to seize the opportunity presented by the current economic crisis simultaneously to address long-term environmental threats and global poverty.

This was the conclusion of delegates at the 4th World Congress on Corporate Responsibility who met this week in Vilamoura, Portugal (26-28 February 2009). Under the chairmanship of Ola Ullsten, former Prime Minister of Sweden, they developed a global model for sustainable corporate growth. They demonstrated ways in which organisations can benefit from addressing the long-term environmental threats that confront the world.

The participants came from throughout Europe, Asia, Indonesia, the Gulf Region, and North and South America, and included representatives of companies, NGOs and academics that have established corporate responsibility as a model for business growth. The industrialists represented manufacturing, financial and service sectors.

With Dr Wilson, who is based in Lower Heyford, as moderator, they explored the relationship between the current economic collapse, poverty, and the Green economy. He explained; "Governments around the world have followed the UK lead by increasing public spending to promote economic growth. What we were able to demonstrate was that, by focusing this spending on the 'big issues' of climate and poverty, Governments can achieve a three-fold benefit rather than pursuing one that merely props up already exhausted markets."

In his opening comments, Antonio Castro Guerra, the Portuguese Deputy Minister of State for the Economy and Innovation, said that market structures will change and that it is crucial to develop innovative responses linking policy, industry and society.

"The world stands at a crossroads. We can turn back to business as usual or we can choose to use the huge opportunity the green economy offers as a way out of the current financial crisis and as the means to create a just and sustainable world" added Dr Madhav Mehra, President of the World Council for Corporate Governance.

Ulric von Hentaller, of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, went on; "Governments have recognized that the most significant way in which they can redress the economic crisis is by immediate and targeted public investment."

"Although PPPs, public private partnerships, have been used for some time, the current crisis brings their importance to the fore" commented Roman von Rupp, president of MEI Europe, based in Portugal.

The participants urged policy makers to ensure that this public spending focuses on environmental improvements, creating jobs that will address the financial crisis and will also, they believe, make dramatic in-roads into global poverty.

The group went on to identify a number of critical action points that they feel governments, industry and the public need to address.

ACTION POINTS

1. We believe the focus of this investment should be in the field of renewable energy and achieved through open market competition rather than subsidy driven. Further employment opportunities exist in resource reclamation, and environmental restoration.

2. Accounting practices need to embrace social and environmental assets, with appropriate standards being developed and adopted.

3. A new generation of corporate leaders need to be nurtured - driven by personal values that are just, sustainable, peaceful, and participative and respect human dignity.

4. Sustainable industry is only realised when personal gain is not achieved at the expense of corporate and society needs.

5. We live in a global world but need to reengage at a local level, with small communities owning and monitoring business activities in ways that remain consistent with free-trade.

6. This local focus (5) applies to the ownership of enterprises and the regulation of their activities, and extends to the responsibility that those organisations have towards the many stakeholders that they impact upon.

7. Partnerships between government, industry and NGOs need to be focused on the combined approach to address the environment, economic and poverty crises.

8. The Millennium goals provide a starting point for this approach, but need to be reviewed with a stronger focus on the immediate context.

For further information, contact:
Dr Graham Wilson - 07785 222380 (gw@grahamwilson.org)
Dr Madhav Mehra - 07957 448998 (madhav.mehra@wcfcg.net)

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org

Greening the economy

2009-02-23T16:08:00.001Z

In a few days time, I shall be giving a keynote address, and acting as rapporteur and co-chair, at the 4th Global Conference on Social Responsibility in Vilamoura, Portugal. I've been asking for help from lots of people online and off- in preparing for this and so I thought it was only fair to post my initial draft of the keynote here. It will change, and there are to be some illustrations of positive change added, but I suspect the bare bones are there. If anyone feels like offering thoughts for improvement, I'd be delighted to hear.

It is time to go beyond rhetoric and into action. Sadly though, most political agendas are strong on the former and lacking in the latter.

The scale of the change that we need to effect is scary, and we do not have a good track record where scary change is involved. We know that every year, in Britain, 30000 people die because poverty prevents them from heating their homes adequately. The burden on the healthcare system of this is estimated at £1 billion every year. For more than 40 years, we have known that one simple change in Western diet would eradicate world poverty and yet, for vanity alone, we refuse to make that change. Everyday, in Britain, on almost every High Street, and certainly in several places in almost every town, you can go into a shop and buy freshly prepared food from an endangered species. We know that stocks are dwindling, and yet we seem to believe that it is our God-given right to eat a species to extinction.

Yes, change is scary - and sadly the political responses are either Utopian or merely business as usual.

'Greening the economy' is about providing people with meaningful work, work that draws on their talents, their values, and their aspirations. It is about ensuring that this work contributes to the 'bigger picture' - not in peripheral ways, not in abstract ways, but in real tangible ways. It is about that tangibility not merely ameliorating the degradation of life on this planet, but on reversing trends, or restoring balance, on making earth a better place to live - for this generation and for future generations.

The mechanisms that have brought about this sorry state of affairs in which we find ourselves are remarkably robust and self-maintaining. We talk of sustainability, and yet it is these destructive forces that are self-sustaining.

We all need to work. It's not just about making a living... it's part of being human. But somewhere along the line, work became Economics and real people were forgotten, and at the same time, we ceased to care about the world we live in.

"I must admit that I personally measure success in terms of the contributions an individual makes to her or his fellow human beings." Margaret Mead (1901-1978, Social anthropologist).

As we have seen, all too clearly, in recent weeks, the greed and avarice of a few individuals seems to know no bounds. And yet, we still place such magnates of power and wealth on pedestals. I do not say that they have not necessarily earned their financial wealth, but I do not confuse that with a wealth of human spirit.

Oh, yes, we SAID we cared. We gave small amounts of money to charities to assuage our consciences. But those folks who tried to say that there was a real problem and it was getting worse were, and still are, labelled as cranks, as trouble makers, as radicals, and when they protest they are criminalised or, at the very least, further marginalised. Unless you fit into the 'system', you are dismissed, and if you fit into the system, it seems that you don't care - because certainly your actions fail to address or influence any of the crucial issues that need to be addressed.

We need to embrace these different thinkers, not marginalise them.

"If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place." Margaret Mead.

There are three strands to the Green economy; renewable energy, reclamation of resources (aka waste management), and restoration of our natural heritage (Renew, Reclaim, Restore).

In the first of these, renewable energy, catalysts are needed to increase the preparedness of people to make use of alternatives and to encourage the applied technology to be developed. There are both simple and exciting possibilities but people need to be 'encouraged' to use them.

The reclamation of resources is the dirty cousin. It has a seriously poor PR image. It is perceived, understandably, as being an unpleasant, low skill, low wage, and limited future career. Few parents will praise their children for getting into this as a vocation! Yet, we need to turn this about. There are technological opportunities within it. There are massive scales of influence to be achieved, and increasingly, the environment in which it works is not filthy and disease-laden.

Many people say that they would relish the opportunity to work outdoors, and many jobs that restore our natural heritage are outdoors-based, and yet few such positions can compete with the lucre offered by the construction sector. In many parts of the world, it is no longer viable to be a farmer, to work in forestry, or to engage in nature conservation. Instead, we encourage further scarring of the landscape - which we cleverly call the 'built environment' as that sounds greener. And we delude ourselves that leisure uses vindicate further destruction of natural habitat - there is nothing natural, sustainable or ecologically-restorative about a golf course! We have to change this perception among the younger work force especially, making restorative work both meaningful and financially rewarding.

In all three, we need to invest in new technologies and redress their relatively poor public image.

So what, if anything, can the individual do?

We can make the perpetrators, prognosticators, aware of our dis-satisfaction and of our desire for change. We can do all we can to educate and inform our fellow human beings of the issues and the need for change. There is far too little information, readily available, accurate and trustworthy, about the complex dynamics influencing every consumer choice...

Do cocoa-bean growers still employ slave labour? And how do we chose to respond?

Are flowers grown in Kenya environmentally worse than those grown at home? And if they are actually less harmful, why does one European government encourage us to believe they are so bad, and another collude by saying nothing to dissuade us?

We can make simple choices in our own day-to-day living. In our consumption of limited resources... In our efforts to not simply ameliorate the deterioration but to reverse the trends... In refusing to invest in an economy that is corrupt, detracts from the global challenges, and further contributes to the decline... We can support others (emotionally, physically, and spiritually) who seek to create a better world. And we can cease to support those who are determined to find fault in every situation... and instead report the good news stories that CAN be found in today's world.

All banks are NOT the same. There are ethical investment alternatives. For example, the Triodos Bank originated in 1968 when an economist (Adriaan Deking Dura), a professor in tax law (Dieter Brüll), a senior organisational consultant (Lex Bos) and a banker (Rudolf Mees) formed a study group to see how money can be managed in a socially conscious way. By 1971, the Triodos Foundation was founded to provide gifts and loans for promising new social initiatives and enterprises. Two years later, the Triodos Guarantee Fund was founded to issue guarantees for innovative companies and institutions to help them to access bank funding. Then, in 1980, Triodos Bank NV was established with EUR 540,000 in start-up share capital and a full banking licence from the Dutch central bank.

We CAN be the change. Remember the words of Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) Statesman and spiritual leader): "A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission CAN alter the course of history." We must "be the change we want to see in the world."

Remember too the words of Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

So, I end, where I began... It is time to stop the rhetoric and begin to do something practical... To 'GREEN THE ECONOMY', we need to do three things... BOOST the economy, CREATE jobs in the three areas (resource recovery, renewable energy, restoration of our natural heritage), and REGENERATE the spoiled environment. My challenge to us all is to think of just one (though ideally more) idea that would achieve one or more of these aims. Capture the idea on a postcard (of which there will be a supply at the conference) {or an email if you are reading this online} and pass it to me. I shall do what I can to publish and promote these as part of the post-conference proceedings!

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org

An environmentally more friendly alternative to Google

2009-02-16T23:37:00.002Z

It's easy to get carried away with apocalyptic thoughts about the future of the planet and shrink into a personal cocoon. With a little bit of science though it's possible to make more informed choices. At the moment, most consumer options are limited to ones that ameliorate the damage done by an organisation or its products, rather than offering genuine hope for the direct reversal of major environmental trends. That doesn't mean that they aren't worth exploring though.

So to begin with let's understand a little more about the hidden costs of our internet habits. You might be interested in seeing this article which appeared in the Times last month ("Revealed: the environmental impact of Google searches"). Essentially, when you perform a search using Google (and most other search engines, to be fair) they try to be as quick as possible in getting the results back to you. To achieve this, they have a number of servers around the world and they compete with one another to perform the search and return the results. As a result a great deal of the energy used to run these machines is wasted. Estimates vary, but a typical search on Google will generate between 7 and 15 grams of CO2. By comparison, boiling a kettle generates the same.

Taken individually, few of us would worry too much about that, but when you consider the millions of searches being performed every day, that's a lot of CO2 being generated.

Now, I have nothing against Google - it provides nearly 1/10th of my business income, so I'd be hypocritical if I did. However, choice is important, and personally I am switching most of my own searches to:
www.ecocho.co.uk
I have found the search results to be just as extensive, the display is a little clearer, and the time delay in getting the results is marginal to the point of being barely perceptible. In practice, I believe that the engine behind them is Yahoo, however the big difference is that they offset their carbon footprint by planting trees, using a process that is externally verified.

There's even a black screen version, which apparently also reduces the energy used.

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org

Greening the economy

2009-02-03T11:41:00.002Z

I'm sure we're all aware that there's been quite a substantial lobby, especially in the US, over the last few months for governments in responding to the global financial 'crisis' to adopt restorative strategies that also have a positive impact on the environment. A good summary of the issues/proposals can be found in a paper by the US Conference of Mayors: http://www.usmayors.org/pressreleases/uploads/GreenJobsReport.pdf. There is also a shorter press release here: http://www.usmayors.org/pressreleases/uploads/greenjobspressrelease.pdf

In a nutshell, the proposal is that governments need to encourage industry to 'boost the economy, by creating jobs, that will regenerate the environment'. It's a simple idea, but it is not so easy to say how it can be made to work.

In a couple of weeks, I shall be acting as rapporteur for a Conference in Europe on this theme. The delegates will be asked to generate ideas for ACTIONS that companies and leaders can take - in other words, PRACTICAL ways to Green the Economy. These ideas will be collated and somehow published. The exact format of the publication will depend on the quality of the responses and the volume. The participants will be a broad range from 'celebrity' politicians and lobbyists, through legislators, to regular kinds of business folks.

I thought I'd throw open an invitation to us all to put OUR thinking caps on and see if we can also generate ideas on the same theme. If you would like to post UPTO 250 words and give your name, organisation, and email address (for confirmation purposes - these will not be published), I will do my best to incorporate your ideas into the publication and they will be credited. If nothing else it's a useful exercise in thinking, it could be a simple bit of good PR. The obvious proviso has to be made that "the editor's decision to use comments is final. We may edit with care to fit the format and style of the publication." Obviously good ideas will get included, blatant self-promotion won't.

You're welcome to send ideas direct to me, but personally I think it would be good to post them here as comments to stimulate the thinking of others. Obviously, I will keep you informed of the progress on the publication.

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org

Free Year Planner for 2009

2009-01-08T16:04:00.000Z

Having put in the effort for my own purposes, I thought I'd offer it as a freebie to anyone who needs one. If you follow this link you'll be able to download a free Year Planner for 2009 with the England and Wales Public Holidays on it.

Best wishes for 2009

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org

Resolutions, goals, happiness and engagement

2008-12-29T07:18:00.002Z

Around this time, each year, many of us take time out to do a little reflecting and setting ourselves some hopes and expectations for the following year. This time last year, I posted a blog entry on how to stick to your resolutions. The ideas hold and I shalln't repeat them here - please check it out.

A few weeks ago, I posted a blog entry about happiness and how we were beginning to understand much more about the science of happiness. I mentioned that there are now a number of 'meta-analyses' summarising the research evidence and that these make useful points to check our intuitive understanding. So, given the time of year, I thought it might be helpful to try to capture the latest evidence around goals and human happiness and performance...

Back in the 1970s, psychologists commonly believed that personal happiness was determined by a comparison between our current state of being and what we thought it could be. If the gap seemed huge, we'd be unhappy; if it seemed easily 'achievable' then we'd be happier. Although they were a little more sophisticated in their argument, this was essentially the view of people like Campbell et al (1976), and represented the mainstream perspective. If this was the case, then the simplest way for someone to become happier, would be to lower their expectations of themself!

Psychology in the intervening years has, to some extent, politicized. Left-wing thinkers, seeking more equality in the world, reject this idea on the basis that it is likely to reinforce the 'have/have not' or 'us and them' mindset that dominates much of the world. Right-wing thinkers, who tend to seek the reward of 'excellence', also reject it, because it discourages their Nirvana-like seeking.

What, we now realise both schools of thought were missing, was that human beings do not approach their goal setting efforts as blank sheets of paper. Three things in particular affect our approach to the future: our present state of mind (on a scale from 'gloom', through 'neutrality', to 'optimism'), our determination to shape our future (from the passive to the dynamic) and our response to a world/system that doesn't change precisely how we want it to (our response to rejection - 'fragile' or 'resilient').

The key to happiness and our goal setting is the middle one of these: our determination to shape our own future. We know that children generally like to challenge themselves - without competing against others, they will instinctively set themselves scales against which they test their own performance. And it is in that self-reference that the secret lies. It is not in competing against others but in stretching ourselves that we achieve more AND feel happier. Happy people always have projects that they are working towards; new things to understand; new achievements.

If we set ourselves too high an expectation, then our frustration at not realising them taps into our ability to handle rejection and, soon, this translates into a state of despair and depression. It is important to stretch ourselves, but not too far.

Conversely, if we set ourselves too low an expectation, then we become bored. In the 1970s, the economist, Tibor Scitovsky, wrote a book called the Joyless Economy, in which he explored why so many people were unhappy, even though they had plenty of money. His explanation was boredom. They had chosen a state of comfort over one of stimulation. They had failed to develop interests outside work that engaged them, stimulated them, and encouraged them to seek to grow themselves emotionally and spiritually. Despite the huge pressure many people report themselves as being under today, the average American and Briton still find time to watch television for a staggering three and a half hours each day. Without being disrespectful to the TV producers, watching other people do things is no substitute for doing them yourself.

That boredom is a serious contributor to unhappiness is not a new idea, both Bertrand Russell and John Milton Keynes said as much too.

The psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990), used the word 'flow' to describe the sense that we can all experience of being so engaged with something that we lose much of our conscious awareness of the rest of the world around us, albeit temporarily. This state is one 'goal' of meditation, but it is also crucial to athletic performance, the creative process, and sensuality.

So, this year, as the mince pies slowly work themselves through our systems, and we reflect on the coming year, let's stretch ourselves - but not so far that we are likely to be frustrated, and determine to find new projects and new ways of engaging - in which we can become truly absorbed. In these ways, we will be happier, more productive, and leave an even greater legacy.

In my blog last year, you'll find a link to the 212 - The Extra Degree short web 'movie'. If you find yourself struggling to accept that just a little stretch is all it really takes, or your boss is encouraging the 'reach for the clouds' sort of goals, then this will challenge your thinking, so I'd urge you to look at this and maybe even send them a link to it - hey, you could send them this blog and remind them that I'm available to help leaders as they achieve more than they ever dreamt was possible!

Best wishes

Helping people achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org

When is a model more than just a pretty face?

2008-12-22T00:09:00.003Z

There are a couple of schools of thought among the marketers of professional services. On the one hand, there are those who believe that professionals sell themselves - well, the relationship with them - and the warm experience that doing business with them provokes. The other school holds that we should turn ourselves into products as a product is, they argue, easier to sell than the feelings that one person provokes in another.

You will probably know which school I fall into, given that my website tries to convey something of my personality, that my business is simply named "Graham Wilson Ltd", and the current iteration of my strapline being "Working behind the scenes helping leaders to achieve more than they ever dreamt they could" - which describes what I do rather than using a product name.

There have been times when I have been urged to productise, and I'll play with the idea, but usually find that it doesn't work for me. Probably the last time was about three years ago when I created a six-session package of leadership mentoring called "Conversations with Leaders" in response to a request from a particular company.

Another form that this productisation takes, among the professional services sector, is to create a 'model' and promote it.

By the way, have I told you about my leadership development model? It's called TROI (TM). It's widely applicable and encourages leaders to explore more avenues before implementing strategic actions. The letters in the acronym stand for Thought, Reflection, Observation, Intervention. The idea is simple but, of course, the application is profound. The thought phase involves having a thought. These thoughts themselves are the essence of good leadership - a leader who doesn't have thoughts is a bit of a damp squib really. Some thoughts will be good thoughts and some will be bad ones, but having thoughts is important. I have developed, over the years, many very successful (naturally) tools to help the thought process and on another occasion I will write about some of these.

I digress slightly by explaining TROI (TM), but one of these days I will get around to writing a book about it, along with a number of practical tools, such as a pack of 52 playing cards that you can use to help with the Intervention phase. You see, timing is crucial in any leaders' role. Intervene too soon and you run the risk of destroying everything; intervene too late and you could have missed your opportunity. There's a Windows XP bundled version of the cards that you can use, but I often suggest to leaders that they are better using the more traditional manual tool. By distracting yourself in this manner it is possible to ensure that you don't suffer from premature intervention.

As I said in another blog recently, I freely admit, that in my naïve youth, I did create a couple of these models myself for real. Today though, I am generally critical of them. Why?

Well, firstly, in my experience they rarely have any science behind them. They are a simple representation of some basic idea that will never be validated because to do so would be impossible, the author lacks the academic rigour to do so, and no-one would fund them to either.

Secondly, their authors have an inflated perception of the importance and impact of the model often making quite ridiculous claims on their behalf.

Along with this exaggerated sense of value, their authors often try to limit the number of people who can adopt the model - by trademarking, copyrighting, or registering the name, then launching some kind of licensing scheme through which interested parties can only be approved to use the model with appropriate training.

Incidentally, the TROI (TM) masterclass will be launched in January and bookings are already being taken - our webshop is still under development, so a transfer of $1000 non-refundable deposit to my PayPal account will do fine. The venue will probably be the US CoastGuard vessel, Enterprise, which through its numerous international missions, has perfect facilities for experiential learning in the leadership field.

Now, from time-to-time, an author (usually an academic) does publish something that has real predictive value and is not simply a method of categorising observable phenomena. Once published, the paper or book is reveiwed by peers and subsequently refined. This process may go on for years before a wider audience begins to hear of it. They may be tempted to commercialise it (ie productise it) by launching tools, instruments, training events, grades of qualifications, and so on. But usually, their ego is not sufficiently tied to it and they allow someone else to do this if they really want to. Often, commercialised 'products' can be seen to be thinly disguised versions of something else that has been in the public domain for some time, usually the outcome of the work of someone whose personal values were altruistic rather than avaricious.

I am not saying that genuine discoveries don't occur from time-to-time, even amongst management consultants, but I am suggesting that a 'product' that lacks academic rigour, has little predictive power, can't be falsified, is deliberately simplified ['dumbed down'] to make it learnable, and is based on someone else's work, has little more to offer than some quack cure-all from a Spaghetti Western.

There are no absolutes in this - each case has a blend of originality, insight, and tack - and discernment is in the hands of the reader, but my criteria are these;

Does it have a body of academic knowledge behind it?

Is that body the author's own or, at least, are the originators openly acknowledged?

Can it be used not simply to classify but genuinely to predict future events?

Can we find settings where it does not apply?

If there are limits to its application, does the author openly acknowledge these?

Let me give a few examples to make my point a little clearer, I'll let you be the judge of their merit...

Mind Mapping or Concept Mapping?

Back in the 1970s, a British author, Tony Buzan, published a book called "Use Your Head" in which he proposed a method of note-taking which he called Mind Mapping(TM). These continue to be promoted by Buzan; there are books, DVDs, tools, software and licensed instructor training courses. What Buzan has not widely mentioned is that the generic form on which his idea was based, 'concept maps', have been used for centuries in learning, information gathering, memory development, visual thinking, and problem solving by educators, engineers, psychologists, and others. Some of the earliest examples were developed by Porphyry of Tyros, in the 3rd century AD, as he graphically portrayed the work of Aristotle. Philosopher Ramon Llull (1235 - 1315) also used concept (or mind) maps. The 'semantic network' was developed in the late 1950s as a theory to understand human learning and it was developed into mind maps by Allan Collins and M. Ross Quillian during the early 1960s. If anyone was to be described as the 'father of mindmaps' it would be Collins or perhaps Quillian, both of whom continue to contribute to academic research in the cognitive psychology field and whose work is really coming of age now with the growth in importance of semantic networks in internet searching. However, Buzan claims to have invented modern mind mapping, apparently 'inspired' by science fiction novels, such as those of Robert Heinlein and AE van Vogt. When compared with the concept map (as developed by learning experts in the 1970s) a mind map is simply a radial form with just one central key word.

Fierce Conversations or Person-Centred Counselling?

In the 1990s, Susan Scott, published a book entitled "Fierce Conversations". It has been transformed into a slick marketing operation (Fierce (TM) Inc) with... tools, licenced training, etc. No-one would deny that it's a clever marketing gimmick to rebrand 'flower arranging for senior managers' as 'aligned stalking'. However, when you read the book, you might be a little surprised to discover that it has a striking resemblance to the work of the internationally acclaimed psychotherapist, Carl Rogers, whose approach was known as "person centred" and the attitude underlying it was "unconditional positive regard". "We are not therapists...", Scott proclaims, but the person whose work she has commercialised most certainly was.

Situational Leadership

Back in the 1960s, Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard wrote a book called the Management of Organizational Behaviour, in which they postulated a model of leadership that broke away from the one style suits all and instead recommended different styles to suit different situations. The 'situations' were determined by the development level of the person being led - whether they were technically savvy or not and whether they were confident in their abilities or not. This was ground-breaking at the time. Other models did not look at the individual but at the circumstances (for example, leadership in war, in factories, in shops and so on). Of course, a criticism of their work might be that it assumes only one category of leader and yet four categories of follower, but it depended on its simplicity to be used and besides few leaders would like to be told that they somehow fell short of perfection. The Hersey-Blanchard academic collaboration has endured and their book is in its 9th edition. They both developed spin-offs - Hersey and his "Situational Leader" (SL) products and Blanchard and his "One Minute Manager" series. Both have produced licenced products and training and have seemingly been successful at it, but their core is their academic research and it's robustness. There have been times when new research has led them to adjust the approach and while this has often merely affected the odd word or two nevertheless their products have not become stale.

The five stages of Grief

Back in 1969, a Swiss-born Psychiatrist, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, published a book, "On Death and Dying" in which she put forward a model of the stages through which an individual passes when they are experiencing the loss of someone. Known today as the Kubler-Ross model of the Five Stages of Grief it has been almost universally adopted by professionals concerned with loss, not simply through death but jobs, divorce, financial security, even organisational change. Kubler-Ross had plenty of opportunity to commercialise her model, but she did not. Her interest lay in providing for those whose lives were to end, and in 1994 at the age of 68, her home and possessions were lost when arsonists destroyed them to prevent her from establishing a hospice for babies dying of AIDs in Virginia. She died without commercial gain, but her legacy is her work, her impact, and her model.

And finally, lest anyone should think I was serious... More information on the TROI model of reflective leadership can be found [HERE].

Best wishes

Working behind the scenes, helping leaders achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org

The Myth of Positive Stress

2008-12-16T13:08:00.004Z

At some time in the late 1970s, a well known TV scientist put forward the idea that there was a certain level of stress that was optimal for performance. He had no evidence to support this 'claim' but asserted it with sufficient authority that it was widely accepted and adopted into a lot of 'stress-management' literature. It continues to resurface today, often in management literature, and is particularly popular among the "positive psychology", "psychology of achievement", and some goal-oriented coaching communities.

The concept was used to justify management practices that put pressure on employees to perform - such as setting 'stretch' targets and high proportions of performance-related pay in an individual's remuneration package.

The rational that was used to support this model was two-fold; a sporting analogy and a model of creativity that assumed that people would devise more creative solutions to problems when they were moderately stressed.

Sports people depend on a build up of adrenaline to perform at their peak, especially in shorter duration events. This is probably the only situation where deliberate pressure works to improve performance. Performance in almost all other jobs depends to a large degree on clear decision making and creativity. The effect of adrenaline actually works against both of these.

Endorphins (or more correctly Endomorphines) are produced by the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus and they resemble opiates in their ability to produce analgesia and a sense of well-being. Discovered in 1975, they are released during long, continuous workouts, when the level of intensity is between moderate and high, and breathing is difficult. This also corresponds with the time that muscles use up their stored glycogen and begin functioning with only oxygen. Workouts that are most likely to produce endorphins include running, swimming, cross-country skiing, long distance rowing, bicycling, aerobics, or playing a sport such as basketball, soccer, or football.

For a short while it was assumed that endorphins were responsible for the 'runner's high' after finishing a race. Again, this entered the popular mythology and it was suggested that promoting an 'endorphin high' was a good way of motivating people at work.

However, scientists now believe that the 'rush' or 'high' is a euphoric response to completing a challenge rather than as a result of exertion. This is similar to that experienced by many people from eating chocolate, smiling, laughing, sunbathing, being massaged, meditating, singing, listening to their favourite music, or having an orgasm. (In other words, situations that are generally associated with relaxation and the absence of stress!)

We now believe that this feeling is not related to endorphins (or any other opiate, for that matter) but to cannabinoids - a group of chemicals most commonly associated with the cannabis plant, but also produced in the neural pathways of mammals (incl. humans).

The creativity link between stress and problem solving is constantly being disproven. Even simple experiments, using tests of problem solving performance with individuals under naturally occuring levels of stress shows that their performance is hampered by the stressors.

So, if you want your people to be optimal performers (especially in times of economic uncertainty) the answer is NOT to spell out the severity of the current world, your dependence on them to exceed their previous levels of performance, or to offer ongoing employment or financial bonuses based on this. Yes, be open and honest, but also help them to test the reality of the tales of doom and despair (and do so yourself), help them to explore their options and understand the choices THEY can make. Buffer and protect people, don't expose them to further fear. If there was a single service that the news media could perform right now, it would be to take a more responsible and balanced approach rather than adopting scare tactics and sensationalist headlines. The less people live in fear the more they will be able to achieve.

Best wishes

Helping people achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org

Developing Social Intelligence

2008-12-11T22:08:00.001Z

Thorndike, in 1920, divided intelligence into three facets; understanding and managing ideas (abstract intelligence), concrete objects (mechanical intelligence), and people (social intelligence). In his words: "By social intelligence is meant the ability to understand and manage men and women, boys and girls -- to act wisely in human relations".

In 1933, Vernon provided the most wide-ranging definition of social intelligence as the person's "ability to get along with people in general, social technique or ease in society, knowledge of social matters, susceptibility to stimuli from other members of a group, as well as insight into the temporary moods or underlying personality traits of strangers".

When we speak of 'social' in this context, we don't mean simply at parties or other informal gatherings. We are referring to all settings where two or more people interact. The behaviour that they exhibit though is not related to any positional power or other authority - it is consistent regardless of these. This leads to the concept of living 'authentically'. Authenticity is a technical term in existential psychology, where the conscious self is seen as encountering external forces, pressures and influences which are very different from it. Authenticity is the degree to which one is true to one's own personality, spirit, or character, despite these pressures.

In 2007, Shaun Killian, an Australian educational psychologist provided a useful model identifying five characteristics of socially intelligent leaders:

1. They are confident in social situations.
2. They both have and demonstrate a genuine interest in others.
3. Whether dealing with people they know or strangers, they are adept at reading and responding to others.
4. They are able to express their emotions and feelings in a clear and appropriately assertive fashion.
5. Their understanding of social environments and the dynamics within them is well developed.

Confidence in social situations

These people know that they can be effective in a social situation. They present themselves with conviction and enjoy playing to a social audience.

People who are not socially confident are self-conscious and shy. This prevents them from developing the other traits. Feedback that they receive reinforces their sense of social ineptness making them even more self-conscious and shy.

For anyone who lacks social confidence, developing it is the essential first step in developing social intelligence. We now know that social inhibition is associated with biological differences in the neural transmitter patterns. These neural patterns become strengthened with repeated use, which is why it is hard to change our patterns of behaviour, but there is plenty of evidence that such pathways can be relearned.

Having and demonstrating a genuine interest in others

Socially intelligent people show a genuine interest in others, but this is something that they concern themselves with even when they are alone.

When interacting socially they put aside their own internal mental distractions and externalise the focus of their attention. This is known as being "in the moment" or "fully present" and achieving it in every conversation makes the person very responsive to the other one - less so at the intellectual level but in understanding the other person's feelings and emotional responses.

People lacking in social confidence, tend to internalise - their attention being on their own thoughts and (usually) discomfort. As a result they miss valuable cues and appear disinterested.

By being fully present, socially intelligent people remember faces, names, eye colour, and other details as well as being able to notice subtle changes or differences in someone such as when they change their hair style.

Showing a genuine interest in others though goes beyond just being fully present as it is an attitude that persists even when they are alone. It involves caring about their well-being. This interest shows itself in both simple and complex behaviours, such as being on time for appointments, maintaining appropriate eye-contact, anticipating people's needs (such as offering them refreshments or pointing out facilities to those who might need them).

Without this authentic base, the individual is simply seen as being manipulative.

Reading and responding to others

Once someone can be fully present in a conversation, they need to be able to listen attentively to the other person. Attentive people notice facial expressions, body language and tone, and then put these clues together to read how people are feeling and whether or not they are being genuine. The problem is that such interactions happen almost instantaneously and this depends on intuition. While it is possible to teach someone to do this better at the rational level, it is far harder, though not impossible, to develop the intuitive sense.

Expressing emotions and feelings clearly, being appropriately assertive

The assertive expression of ourselves depends heavily on non-verbal communication and tone of voice.

Socially intelligent people express emotions well and they do so in ways that benefits those around them. Emotions are said to be contagious, and if they are expressed clearly and intensely, then other people will catch them. While remaining authentic, socially intelligent people express the emotions and feelings that they want others to catch.

In general, positive emotions improve performance in the workplace, and yet joy, happiness, and excitement are the least expressed emotions in the workplace.

There are times, of course, where other emotions are called for. Sadness improves our ability to learn from failures and setbacks. Fear enhances our ability at anticipatory action learning, through which we can see (and therefore put right) faults in plans before we implement them. Anger drives us to try to put perceived wrongs right.

The socially intelligent express contagious emotions that are appropriate to the context and the task at hand.

At times, we need to show empathy, by expressing emotions on behalf of others. Empathy is not just an awareness of how others feel; it is feeling it with them. It is possible to develop empathy. For example, try to imagine how someone is feeling in a paticular situation, then remind yourself of a time in your past when you felt the same way. Feel the emotion return to you, and then you are more likely to genuinely express it.

Understanding social environments

Finally, a good knowledge about people and the workings of the social world can then be applied to any social situation. Socially intelligent people understand the different personalities of those they work with, whether intuitively or by study. This helps them to motivate and deal with different people in different ways. They understand the, often unwritten, norms and etiquette for varied social situations. Socially intelligent people are also aware of the social connections that exist between staff members and the different forms of power relationships within the group.

Developing social intelligence

While we now believe that genetics does play a role in determining social intelligence because of clear links to personality characteristics such as extraversion, dominance, social presence, affiliation and self acceptance.

However, social intelligence can also be developed. Understanding it is a good first step. Developing social intelligence though means changing the way you act and interact with others, and then turning these changes into new habits. This takes focused attention and practice over time, allowing new neural circuits to form within the basal ganglia of the brain.

Have a look at my guide to emotional literacy for more ideas on how to develop this essential aspect of social literacy.

Best wishes

Helping people achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org

Emotional Literacy

2008-12-10T15:02:00.002Z

I don’t like the term ‘emotional intelligence’, or EQ, for several reasons; it is only one aspect of a more substantial area of psychology – social intelligence - that has been around since the 1920s; it is a cleverly marketed but shallow treatment of a complex subject; it implies that it can be measured and that there are therefore ‘norms’ to which people can be compared; and, as it was originally defined, it is highly manipulative of others. I prefer the educational psychologists’ term ‘emotional literacy’ – which I see as a fundamental stepping stone to social intelligence.

Developing emotional literacy in adults can’t be reduced to 10 simple steps. It involves a great deal of self-study. It isn’t something you simply learn and then use – instead you have to go through many iterations, thinking you have got the message only to have to re-visit and re-do the thinking. Slowly, unconsciously, you change. It isn’t sudden or conscious. You don’t simply take something on-board and then behave differently - the things that determine how you behave are too deep-rooted. You can change though and this guide offers a few approaches to help you.

NB If you would like a pretty formatted copy of this guide, click HERE.

1 There are no quick fixes

Developing your emotional literacy means investing time in yourself – observing, interpreting and acting on, your behaviour. You need to invest and to accept that some of what you discover may be painful until you ‘deal’ with it.

2 Keep a personal journal

Almost every ‘expert’ or ‘path’ expects you to keep a personal journal of your observations, tentative questions, analyses, and interpretations, with details of your successes and failures along the way. Write a few words every day or so. It isn’t a ‘diary’ or a biography – it’s a place to record your feelings and your interpretation of them. Use it as a place to ask yourself questions.

3 Describe your personality today

Try describing your personality as it is today. Ask friends, colleagues, or people who see you from a distance, for honest feedback. Family are usually part of the reason why you are the way you are, and rarely dispassionate. It may seem unusual, but if you don’t feel comfortable asking others, then start with an astrological description – you can usually find a description on the internet of your star-sign. Don’t accept all it says, but ask if you feel it fits?

4 What has shaped you so far?

Look back over your life and ask yourself where these characteristics came from. Most originate in childhood, so what do you think led you to be like this? For instance, if you feel you’re shy, when did you first feel this? Were you ‘always’ like it or did something happen that so embarrassed you, that you avoid attention at all costs? Did you live in the shadow of an older sibling? Again, you need to keep returning to this step.

5 Recognize your emotional buttons

What makes you uncomfortable? Build up a list of things that make you feel uncomfortable. These may be things you do not like doing or feel uncomfortable doing. Think how you would know – apart from simply putting off doing them, does your jaw lock, do your fists clench, do you become ‘grumpy’ or break out in a cold sweat? Common ‘buttons’ include: public speaking, writing letters, confronting people, borrowing from people you know, shopping for clothes, dancing, dating, sex… Go through step 4 again – where do these things come from?

6 What makes you happy or not?

Which aspects of your life are you happy with and which less so? Look carefully at what they tell you about yourself. EG: If you loathe commuting to work, what led you to a job that involves a commute? What is stopping you from doing something else? We’re not interested so much in the practicalities as the emotions and the arguments behind them – many of which will be flawed.

7 How authentic are you?

Do you wear a mask? Many people do, yet those we respect for their wisdom don’t – they are authentic – what you see is what you get regardless of the circumstances. We often wear two or more masks – such as one at work and one at home. A supposedly very emotionally-balanced ‘spiritual guru’ (who often spoke of the need to stop our egos controlling our lives) had photos of herself and copies of her books displayed all over her house. She was wearing two masks. Would anyone get to know her? Draw your masks – whether in words or images – and go through step 4 again.

8 Draw on your intuition

Do you draw on your intuition when making decisions? People are frightened to admit that they have no rationale for a decision. Companies imply that it’s bad not to justify something rationally. Yet we all make intuitive decisions. Behind most decisions is an intuitive element. Emotionally literate people recognise this, are comfortable drawing on their intuition, and accept emotive reasons as just as valid as rational ones. Decisions are not all major and life-changing nor are they often about right or wrong, so try asking yourself more often what your ‘gut-feel’ is or what you would like to do rather than what you feel you have to do.

9 What can you learn from others?

Do some people “push your buttons”? What is it about them that gets you going or makes you clam up? They often represent something about ourselves. Whether they come across as patronizing, flippant, overly friendly, controlling, ‘in your face’, flamboyant, or dogmatic, there is usually someone from our past who had similar qualities or they are qualities we’re afraid we have ourselves. Go through step 4 again!

10 What happens when you feel threatened?

We may deny that we feel threatened, or draw on a complicated repertoire of ‘coping strategies’. This would be fine, only we acquire these when we were a child (NB go through step 4) and they have often ceased to work in adulthood. Probably the commonest is ‘sublimation’ – we throw ourselves into something highly absorbing, such as a hobby or committee, rather than examining what else is missing from our lives.

Best wishes

Helping people achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org

Why Social Intelligence is more important than simply EQ

2008-12-07T12:28:00.001Z

There’s more to success than manipulating peoples’ emotions.

The idea of emotional intelligence seems to have pervaded business thinking since the book on the topic by Daniel Goleman was published in 1995. The first use of the term is usually attributed to Wayne Payne's doctoral thesis, “A study of emotion: Developing emotional intelligence” which he presented in 1985. Before this, though, the term had appeared in Leuner (1966). Greenspan (1989) and Salovey and Mayer (1990) also preceeded Goleman.

The idea that the management of our feelings (including emotions) was important to success in our society is not a new one. Even Darwin postulated that emotional expression was important to survival and adaptation. In the 1900s, even though traditional definitions of intelligence emphasized cognitive aspects such as memory and problem-solving, several influential researchers in the intelligence field of study had begun to recognize the importance of the non-cognitive aspects.

The science that encompasses EQ though dates to the 1920s, when EL Thorndike, used the term “social intelligence” to describe the skill of understanding and managing other people. Without wanting to seem pedantic, I think this is a far better place to start than Goleman’s popularised version.

Without doubt, marketing is crucial to business success and a catchy title to a book makes a big difference to its sales even if the content is a little less than revolutionary. In the case of Goleman’s EQ, the reductionist approach and it’s subsequent exploitation by a number of other authors has sadly created a body of knowledge that is exceptionally ‘leaky’ and relatively few ‘professionals’ in the field give it much credibility. Criticisms range from its lack of originality and substance, inability to predict, too broad definition, and worst of all that it contains assumptions about intelligence that are simply not correct (or even may be discriminatory).

Wherever we begin, the reason that these theories have become important is that the traditional approach to intelligence, measured as IQ, had long been known to be a poor predictor of personal success, performance, or any other outcome – it simply measured the ability to perform a set of relatively abstract tests.

Thorndike was the one of many to suggest that there was more than one determinant of how people perform. In 1940, David Wechsler described the influence of non-intellective factors on intelligent behavior, and argued that our models of intelligence would not be complete until we could adequately describe these factors. In 1983, Howard Gardner's “Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences” introduced the idea of Multiple Intelligences which included both Interpersonal intelligence (the capacity to understand the intentions, motivations and desires of other people) and Intrapersonal intelligence (the capacity to understand oneself, to appreciate one's feelings, fears and motivations).

Definitions vary, but Salovey and Meyer focused on emotions – the ability of an individual to perceive, use, understand and manage, their own and other peoples’ emotions.

Goleman effectively took the definition back to the Social Intelligence construct of Thorndike, by saying that it was both emotions and feelings that were being perceived, used, understood and managed. In doing so, and in popularising this approach though, I believe that something has been lost and it’s helpful to go back to Thorndike’s original model of social intelligence if we are going to really be able to perform more effectively.

Edward Thorndike deserves a far wider popularity than he receives. Born in 1874, he devoted himself to understanding how learning happens and how to maximise its benefits. He was, without much doubt, the father of modern educational psychology. His initial research was on problem solving in cats trying to establish whether they really had exceptional insights. In the process he developed the concept of learning curves which we still use today. In WW1 he devised a method of screening applicants for military service which is still in use today. This method, a form of psychometric assessment, recognised (and broke free from) the limitation of English language ability to make this assessment. He recognised how seriously another ability (like the use of English) could influence other factors, and this led to him to develop the basis of Action Learning, which (amusingly) every generation since seems to reinvent as if it were their own.

Action Learning draws on the idea that traditional teaching (and preaching) are limited to the scope of the teacher rather than the student. They will progressively reduce knowledge and skills rather than expanding them. This is the theory which explains why coaching, counselling, facilitation, and peer supervision work more effectively. It’s also a powerful argument against hierarchy in organisations and many other structures.

In the next part of this blog, I’ll explain more about Social Intelligence and how it ‘works’.

Best wishes

Helping people achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org

What makes us happy?

2008-12-03T13:52:00.000Z

Over the last five years or so, there has been a fairly dramatic shift in the way in which psychologists look at the human condition. For the last hundred years or more, they have based most of their understanding on our problems… essentially by studying people with known medical conditions and mental health issues, they have evolved a science of human dysfunction.

The radical change in direction has been to study instead what is ‘normal’ and what makes the majority of humans ‘normal’. At one extreme of this has evolved a branch of psychology known as ‘positive psychology’ – which takes as one of its guiding principles the idea that it is not satisfactory to be ‘normal’ but instead it is preferable to be positive.

‘Positive psychology’ emerged as a new area of psychology in 1998 when Martin Seligman chose it as the theme for his term as president of the American Psychological Association. The term originates though with Abraham Maslow, who coined it in his 1954 book ‘Motivation and Personality’.

Recently a number of ‘meta-analyses’ of positive psychology have been published, and from them some interesting aspects unfold. One such dimension involves happiness and what makes some of us predominantly happy and some of us predominantly unhappy. Three studies in particular have contributed to our current view of happiness – the German Socio-Economic Panel, the US General Social Survey and the World Values Survey. The findings provide a useful focus for those of us working with individuals who would like to be happier, as well as to policy makers in Government who are concerned with ways of promoting happier societies. If you are interested in a detailed summary of these issues, check out Lord Layard’s book “Happiness – Lessons from a new science” on which much of the following is based.

Firstly, let’s be clear about a few things that we can be sure do not really contribute to happiness;

Age

Gender

Appearance

Physical energy

Mental energy

Education

For each of these, we now know that the contribution to an individual’s happiness is extremely low or non-existent at all.
Instead, we can say that there are seven factors that contribute to the bulk of an individual’s happiness. In order of decreasing importance, they are;
1. Family relationships
2. Financial situation
3. Work
4. Community and friends
5. Health
6. Personal freedom
7. Personal values

Family relationships – When most people marry or have children they enjoy a peak of happiness for a year or so before returning to their previous level. When they separate or divorce they suffer a drop in happiness for a year or two. Men return to their underlying level sooner than women. Half of US children will be living in a single parent household by the time they are 15, so marriage break-up is a very real cause of reduced happiness. Couples who remain ‘in love’ tend to have better sex lives, have better hormonal balance, be healthier, live longer and be happier than they were four years before they were married.

Financial situation – There have been some fascinating studies on income. Absolute income has little or no effect on happiness. Two things do. Firstly, the relative level of income to who ever we compare ourselves with (generally our local community). Secondly, changes in our income. We are generally happier being poor but with good prospects of an increasing income than being well-off but with little chance of an increase.

The prospect of a drop in income of one third is used as a benchmark of many other factors in studies of happiness. For example, the impact of separation is FOUR times greater than that of a drop of income by one third, and the impact of being widowed is DOUBLE.

Work – Work provides not only income but also meaning in our lives. It also provides self-respect and a social network. The impact of being unemployed is three times greater than our benchmark of one third income drop. Being employed but in an environment where unemployment is increasing substantially, is also seriously bad for happiness. So, believing our job is stable and living in a society where unemployment is low and also stable are good predicators of happiness.

The nature of the work is also important. Dull repetitive work has a direct and substantial effect on our health, literally doubling the likelihood of arterial related diseases.

Community and friends – The impact of the quality of our community is two-fold – how much we trust people and how safe we feel. We feel happiest when we live in a community where we can trust people around us. Asked whether they could trust most people around them, 5% said so in Brazil and 64% in Norway. The impact of this on national happiness (still measured at an individual level) is the same as a drop of one third of income.

Health – Although we generally care about our health, it doesn’t feature as a particularly high factor in determining happiness despite lots of reports in the 80s and 90s about endorphins as nature’s ‘prozac’. Generally, people adapt well to the loss of health and it has little impact on happiness, with two exceptions – mental illness and chronic pain. These two elements are largely a reflection of our inner feelings than any physical limitation. Their impact is roughly the same as becoming unemployed.

Personal freedom – A fascinating effect on happiness (again, measured at the individual level) at the national level is that of perceived personal freedom. When people feel that they have more control over the government policies affecting them they feel happier. The impact is huge – as much as marrying (and this is sustained throughout rather than dropping off after a couple of years)!

Personal values (our personal philosophy of life) – There are two factors that have the greates impact on personal happiness; believing in some kind of higher purpose for society and caring for others. People who care about other people, rather than being pre-occupied with themselves are happier. Interestingly, people who worry about “doing well” in their lives suffer from more anxiety than those who worry about “doing good” for society in general.

Whatever the belief system, when people believe in some higher purpose (whether it is God, spirituality, or mindfulness) they are TWICE as happy as the effect of our benchmark 1/3rd drop in salary.

Summary – So, to capture all of this; working on our relationships, managing our finances, having meaningful work, living in a community in which we feel safe and can trust people, seeking help promptly for mental health and chronic pain, taking an active part in government and developing our sense of connectedness and spirituality, will all have a profound impact on our own happiness.

Best wishes

Helping people achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org

Fertilising trees to combat climate change

2008-12-01T00:37:00.003Z

We live in a world of relentless technological advancement, and I've been writing and speaking for some time about the potential for technology to address many of the immediate environmental concerns that confront us. My own view is that these 'solutions' will really emerge in the Pacific Rim area as rising sea levels, especially, begin to threaten the economic dominance of the region. This scenario was recognised by the US defence staffs back in the early 1990s as being particularly likely if the US began to focus more on internal threats (eg domestic terrorism) and less on global interventions - a direction that appears to be unfolding as Barack Obama develops his new political agenda.

When we speak of 'technology', we usually do so with digital science in mind - communications, data processing and so on. When we think of 'biotechnology' it is often with genetic and nano-technologies in mind.

It's important to remember though, that biological solutions to environmental concerns have been with us for many centuries and some may, with a lot more care than has been exercised in the past, offer the potential to tackle today's crises.

Two groups of researchers, one at the University of New Hampshire and the other at the University of Bologna, have independently begun to concentrate on the interplay between natural Carbon and Nitrogen cycles as a mechanism for regulating the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Essentially, trees with high levels of nitrogen in them absorb proportionally higher levels of carbon dioxide and reflect higher amounts of solar energy. The exact relationship between nitrogen and solar reflectivity remains a mystery. It seems as though nitrogen could act like a switch, changing the structure and cellular properties of leaves so that they become more mirror-like especially within forests in the cooler regions of the Earth.

The potential therefore exists, in these cooler climates, for us to increase the proportion of trees with naturally higher levels of nitrogen in them, and to fertilise trees with increased nitrogen thereby reducing the carbon dioxide levels and reducing greenhouse effects in the atmosphere.

The balance is complex though, as nitrate leaching into groundwater and emissions of nitrous oxide are as environmentally threatening. In dry climates too, such fertilisation may not work as plants with high nitrogen levels also tend to have high water needs.

However, we already know that trees in the vicinity of high industrial and vehicle nitrogen emissions are absorbing more carbon from the atmosphere and it may be that this approach is an important one in well targeted and carefully controlled environments.

Best wishes

Helping people achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org

When dynamics spiral out of control

2008-11-20T02:09:00.003Z

21st December 2008: Since posting this blog entry, I have received email from Don Beck, one of the original authors of the Spiral Dynamics approach, addressing some of the issues raised here and, in particular, providing some more information on his work on world issues. I have appended his main message at the end of the entry.

21st December 2008: Anyone interested in the original work by Clare Graves, might also be interested in the site: www.clarewgraves.com. This site is managed by Chris Cowan, the other original author of the Spiral Dynamics model, but it does contain links to a variety of original resources, including audio clips, of Clare Graves himself.

Spiral Dynamics (R) is grandiosely claimed to be an all-encompassing model to understand the universe. It has 8 pretty colours arranged in a lovely spiral, some words to describe each, is dismissed by academics, and has a cult-like following.

Maybe it's our search for meaning, but it amazes me sometimes how happily people project authority onto others. Without doubt one of the reasons I gave up being a 'management consultant' was that I had grown tired of individuals who had developed some kind of 'model' with nothing more than a simple acronym or a catchy diagram, and then peddled it as if it was going to win the next Nobel Prize for ingenuity.

Alright some models seem worthy of a little credit (the periodic table or that brilliant map of the London Underground come to mind) but most are merely a convenient way of categorising things or describing a sequence of events. Every now and then management media appear that have the latest of these convenient must haves (The One Minute Manager, Myers Briggs, Situational Leadership II, and SMART goals are all examples). There's usually three clues that they are little more than marketing hype for one consultant or another - a conveniently packaged way of trying to differentiate themselves:

The first is that effort has gone into visual design - as if nature would have based itself on a model that needed CAD skills.

Second is that they always have a fixed number of stages, levels, steps, or phases of which there are two schools of thought - either keep it few so people can hope to remember them, or make it many so people are impressed by the complexity.

Thirdly, stick on a TM, (R), or (C) as a little suffix.

I wonder how many Nobel Prize winning theories had "12 steps", were printed in colour with neatly overlapping pyramids or circles, and had a TM appended to their name? [ed: The answer is none.]

Forgive my cynicism. It isn't envy at their intellectual acuity. I am speaking with a modicum of authority here, and for once I can prove it, check out my books ... and you'll find a six step model for problem solving (PRIDEE) and the Rocket model of organisational change! (We even had printed stickers with that one on it.) Aaaargh!

Well, I'm afraid I have just sat through two days of a conference in which we were invited to absorb the delights of a 'biopsychosocial' system model known as "Spiral Dynamics (R)". Since its inception in 1996, Spiral Dynamics has catapulted into the world of management models, but what makes it different is that it doesn't just explain how to cut costs, motivate monkeys, or perk up performance, this one explains everything. In case you didn't quite catch that, the authors claim that this theory explains EVERYTHING, not just why you and I get out of bed in the morning, but why the sun rises and civilisations decline.

The hype has been such that well-intentioned proto-devotees have burned up their redundancy cheques to fly to Texas or California to study it and be licensed to use it on their own. The flood has been such that proponents pop up all over and they gladly share their new found model. But all is not entirely rosy with this particular one...

It neatly conforms to all my criteria for Nobel Prize winning status: it has a colourful pretty diagram, the acronym takes the form of the different colours (beige, purple, red, blue, orange, green, yellow and turquoise) and that lovely little (R) mark. But how does it stack up to more critical inspection?

Criticisms of Spiral Dynamics

The general discipline of memetics and especially its branch, Spiral Dynamics, based on the research of psychologist Clare Graves, proposes that individual thought patterns have a consistency, they are a coherent system, and that individuals can move from one system to another, from one level of complexity to another. These systems or levels have been variously described as 'consciousness formations' and 'constellations of values'. It is these underlying value systems that make an individual 'tick', but Spiral Dynamics goes further, using these value constellations to explain the history of civilization in terms of societies moving from one 'average value constellation' to another.

This is not a criticism of memetics as such (ie the general idea that thoughts can spread like viruses, from one mind to another). We live in an era of peer-to-peer network-based knowledge transfer in which the viral perspective of memetics has value and leads to useful hypotheses. Nor is it a criticism of the work of Clare Graves, which has largely been interpreted in this way some time after his death in 1986.

Don Beck and Christopher Cowan collaborated on a book, entitled “Spiral Dynamics – mastering values, leadership and change”, which was published in 1996.

By 1999, Beck had begun to expand the model aligning his thinking with that of Ken Wilber (termed Integrative Psychology), and by 2002 the two of them had launched the SD-Integral movement. Beck’s website is at http://www.spiraldynamics.net/.

It is the application of the Spiral Dynamics school of memetics as propagated by Beck and Wilber (the so-called SD-Integral, or SDi model) that critics focus on. Their concerns are that the model's implications are political as well as developmental and that while the terminology of the theory is seemingly inclusive, the practical implications of the model can be seen as socially elitist and authoritarian. They say that it has rapidly evolved into a political neoconservative movement using the (pseudo-)scientific basis of memetics as a cover.

There is a large and growing body of criticism of Wilber and his theories. As a starting point you could try visiting http://www.integralworld.net/index.html .

Cowan, on the other hand, formed a working relationship with Natasha Todorovic. Their work is described on their website: http://www.spiraldynamics.org/ . Cowan has tried to distance himself from the work of Beck and Wilber and if you want to read his substantial and clearly angry rejection of it, check out this link: http://www.spiraldynamics.org/faq_integral.htm .

Clare Graves was at pains to say that his theory was not intended to imply that people cold be categorised into developmental boxes. He was also clear that we do not personally evolve from basic levels to higher ones. Cowan makes it clear that he follows the same viewpoint:

“While it is an expansive sequence in some respects, this is not a hierarchy of wisdom or decency or even intelligences, much less happiness and worth. Instead, it delineates a series of different ways of prioritizing and framing those things as solutions to one set of problems create new ones which require new thinking to resolve. First congruence then, if necessary or possible, growth. There is an increase in cognitive complexity as we move through the systems, but not in intelligence. Different intelligences are valued differently at different levels, just as different levels have their own sense of the spiritual, of the social, and of the essential.

To the extent that higher levels offer more degrees of freedom and consider a more expansive group of elements, they are 'better than' lower levels in the long run. However, the qualitative key to this point of view is appropriateness: using the brain which is there in ways that are constructively adaptive to the realities at hand with the openness to deal with the world to come.”

This is very different from the way in which many people present Spiral Dynamics and especially those influenced by the SDi approach.

The manipulation of lower tiers by the supposedly more evolved

In their work, Beck and Wilber emphasize that one of the characteristics of what they call "tier two" individuals, also called "Spiral Wizards", is their ability to make superior decisions for all parties concerned and to manufacture consent for their approaches at lower levels using resonant terms and ideas.

As well as outlining an underlying developmental theory, SDi gives explicit suggestions to these "Wizards" for both consensual and non-consensual management of "lower-tier" individuals.

One critic of SDi, Michel Bauwens, has argued that some conceptions of what it means to be "second tier" have come to resemble Nietzsche's idea of the Übermensch [1].

The emphasis SDi places on exercising power derived from greater developmental attainments has also been characterized as coming from a number of other past political theories emphasizing decision-making by a select elite, including Plato's idealization of the philosopher king.

Ostracism of critics

Within its own model, SDi is characterized as a "second tier" concept, which implicitly flatters those who support the theory and potentially invites self-confirming bias.

This is one of the defining characteristic of cults, and as the number of popular followers of Spiral Dynamics grew there have been people who have expressed concern that it is a mentally disturbing and socially alienating world view. Cowan has tried to put this in context, but largely does so by blaming people who use the model without understanding it properly.

Pseudo-science

Public criticisms of SDi have simply been dismissed by its advocates as expressions of lower-level memes, particularly the "mean green meme" [2]. This internal refutation of external critiques was one of philosopher Karl Popper's criteria for establishing that a system of belief is non-falsifiable and for distinguishing non-science from genuine scientific theory [3].

Some critics dispute the universality of deeper linear or emergent transitions as proposed in Spiral Dynamics, due to the high degree of variation they see among the surface expressions of human cultures over time. The claim that humans have changed systemically on psycho-social dimensions, such as self concept or the human propensity and reasons for self sacrifice, over the time period proposed in Spiral Dynamics, is not currently supported by mainstream anthropology, the social sciences, or evolutionary biology.

[1] Michel Bauwens, "A Critique of Wilber and Beck's SD-Integral", P/I: Pluralities/Integration, no. 61: March 23, 2005
[2] Natasha Todorovic, "Mean Green Meme: Fact or Fiction" http://www.spiraldynamics.org/documents/MGM_hyp.pdf
[3] Popper, Karl R. (1971). Open Society & Its Enemies. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01972-X.

Best wishes

Helping people achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org

FROM DON BECK'S EMAIL CORRESPONDENCE:
"I teach at the Adizes Graduate School and use his [Clare Graves] Life Cycles model in our work along with Spiral Dynamics.

I played a major role in the transformation of South Africa out of apartheid (63 trips) and since Clare Graves was alive until l986, we worked together on a major multi-layered strategy to deal with the unique complexity that existed in the land South of the Limpopo River.

Much of my work, today, especially in Israel-Palestine and now with the Mexican Teacher's Union to design education for that entire troubled society, grew out of the "tear gas days" in South Africa. Since I had worked for several years in the National Football League (Dallas Cowboys and New Orleans Saints) I was able to aid the Springbok Rugby side in the l995 World Cup as a team psychologist, since Mr Mandela needed a nation-building euphoria.

You might check www.buildpalestine.org for a real world application of the Gravesian theory.

We are currently developing a major South American initiative (Chile, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Guatemala, and even Venezuela) as well as growing interest in Russia, Ukraine etc.

My PhD work at the University of Oklahoma in the mid l960s was with Muzafer Sherif at the Institute for Group Relations where we were working with the auto-kinetic experiment and the Assimilation/Contrast Effect in Social Judgment, as a means of defusing major conflict in a bipolar context. We found this to be useful in the Netherlands, especially, in dealing with the threats of Jihad-inspired violence, resulting in a series of Dutch Summits om Fundamentalism. The third summit drew 900 Dutch leaders and has now resulted in a significant re-design of the Dutch government. I am quite aware of the problems all over Europe, especially in Germany and UK, with the integration of Islamic thought structures within the indigenous cultures.

We have also developed what are called Vital Signs Monitors, data mining, web crawlers, and other software packages designed to identify the underlying dynamics in a society. The Government of Singapore was the first to embrace the technology and Iceland is following. Their name is RAHS - Risk Analysis Horizon Scanning -- and it will become a major geopolitical piece to increase the quality of decision-making.

My Dutch colleagues and I have now formed the Hague Center for Global Governance, Innovation, and Emergence.

I broke any relationship with Cowan back in l999.

While I did some work with Wilber, that all began to wane six years ago because of his constant distortion of the Spiral Dynamics/Gravesian model.

Cowan put the TM and R on the concept which I bitterly opposed, wanting to keep the concept clean for academic applications, as you properly noted.

Graham, there is no "cult" of any type; colors were first used in South Africa as a short hand code to replace skin pigmentation; there aren't types of people; these complex adaptive intelligences spring from the interaction of humans with Life Conditions rather than a Calvinistic, pre-determined flow.

We are now doing major mind/brain research at the Brain Research Lab at the University of Cologne and have announced what we call "Large-Scale Psychology' as a new branch in academic psychology.

Far too many people make huge claims about "Second Tier" but it was Graves who identified, in his disciplined research, the major shift between the 6th and 7th Level priority patterns and that platform does contain more expansive codes and ways of dealing with world problems.

We just recommended to the US State Department that they fund a "cement factory" in Bethlehem because, based on the value-systems capacities, that would be a much better choice than a high tech factory that might disappear next year."