Ed Batista

The Balcony and the Dance Floor

In 2002 Harvard Kennedy School professors Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky introduced a profoundly useful metaphor to the management literature:

Any military officer knows the importance of maintaining the capacity for reflection, especially in the "fog of war." Great athletes must simultaneously play the game and observe it as a whole. We call this skill "getting off the dance floor and going to the balcony," an image that captures the mental activity of stepping back from the action and asking, "What's really going on here?"

Leadership is an improvisational art. You may be guided by an overarching vision, clear values, and a strategic plan, but what you actually do from moment to moment cannot be scripted. You must respond as events unfold. To use our metaphor, you have to move back and forth from the balcony to the dance floor, over and over again throughout the days, weeks, months, and years. While today's plan may make sense now, tomorrow you’ll discover the unanticipated effects of today’s actions and have to adjust accordingly. [1]

Heifetz and Linsky were addressing the need to assess organizational responses to a leader's efforts to initiate change over time and the importance of creating space in that process for regular reflection. While that is a theme in my practice [2], I also talk with leaders on a daily basis about a wide range of scenarios in which they must move between the balcony and the dance floor in the moment:

• An executive team meeting
• A pitch to a prospect or investor
• A talk at an all-hands or a conference
• A feedback conversation with a direct report
• A Q&A session with employees or media members

In all of these settings--and countless others--a leader must simultaneously be an active participant on the dance floor while also observing the proceedings from the balcony. The ability to act in the moment is essential--it's rarely possible to hit "Pause" in a contentious meeting or a hostile Q&A session and take time to reflect on why things are going badly. All this is easy to grasp conceptually, but it can be difficult to put into practice. If you're a leader striving to occupy both spots at once, what helps? From the balcony, you gather data from others as well as data from within, and then use that information to guide your steps on the dance floor.

The Balcony, Part 1: Data from Others (aka Social Intuition)

Neuroscientist Richard Davidson has developed a framework for understanding the relationship among specific patterns of neural activity in the brain, our internal emotional response, and our subsequent interpersonal behavior. [3] Davidson calls this model the "dimensions of emotional style," one of which is "social intuition":

People differ dramatically in how attuned they are to nonverbal social cues. Extreme insensitivity to these signals is characteristic of people on the autism spectrum, who struggle to read facial expressions and other social cues, but people who fall well short of a clinical diagnosis can also be socially deaf and blind, with devastating consequences for personal and professional relationships. Conversely, acute sensitivity to the emotional state of others is central to both empathy and compassion, since being able to decode and understand social signals means we can response to them. [4]

We all tend toward a given point on the social intuition scale on the basis of our inborn capabilities and formative experiences, but if you find yourself insufficiently attuned to others' thoughts and feelings you can increase your sensitivity. This is the result of what's known as "neuroplasticity"--your brain retains the potential for growth and change throughout your life. [5] A starting point in that process is simply heightening your awareness of the potential data at your disposal.

The idea that precisely "93% of communication is non-verbal" is a myth that has been refuted by Albert Mehrabian, the UCLA psychologist whose research was the basis for that figure. [6] That said, a great deal of communication obviously occurs via facial expressions, body language, tone of voice, and vocables (which are sounds that aren't actual words but nonetheless convey meaning, such as "Mmmm," which generally indicates "Yes, continue.")

It can be harder to gather and interpret such data while working virtually, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. Investing in the right equipment can help immensely, not only in reading the social cues of others but also in conveying your intended messages with greater accuracy and fidelity. [7]

You can also improve your ability to focus on the various forms of non-verbal communication available to you in any given moment. This involves directing your attention, and the most effective tool for improved "attention management" is mindfulness meditation. As I've written before,

Mindfulness...[is] merely the process of noticing what's happening around us, observing where our attention is going as a result, and sensing our cognitive, emotional and physical responses. A heightened sense of mindfulness allows us to direct our attention toward an intended object of focus and away from undesirable distractions... We can cultivate this ability through a number of practices, most notably meditation. A key is viewing meditation as a workout in attention management rather than as a break from the stress of daily life. [8]

While I've addressed the needs of people seeking to increase their sensitivity to the thoughts and feelings of others because that's more common in my practice, it's also possible to be hyper-sensitive to such social cues, and in extreme cases they can become a source of distraction or cause crippling self-consciousness. Here, too, mindfulness meditation can help, and in this context there's a parallel with the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn, who has championed meditation as a means of managing the distracting and even overwhelming effects of chronic pain. [9]

The Balcony, Part 2: Data from Within (aka Self-Awareness)

As we gather data from others' non-verbal cues, we also need to gather data from within, which takes several different forms. "Self-awareness" is another dimension in Davidson's model, although he employs the term in a very specific sense, referring to the ability to perceive the physiological manifestations of emotion:

Some people have a very hard time 'feeling' their feelings: It may take them days to recognize that they're angry, sad, jealous or afraid. At this extreme of the Self-Awareness dimension are people who are Self-Opaque. At the other end are Self-Aware people, who are acutely conscious of their thoughts and feelings and attuned to the messages their body sends them... This heightened sensitivity can be beneficial in several ways. It appears to play a crucial role in empathy, the ability to feel what others are feeling, and by allowing you to understand your own emotional state it can help you avoid misunderstandings... [10]

Note that emotions are physiological events well before they register in consciousness. We take in a situation, interpret it in some way, and the meaning we ascribe to it yields a pre-conscious emotional response. As a consequence neurotransmitters are released, triggering a flurry of bodily activity--an elevated heart rate, or more rapid breathing, or "butterflies" in the stomach--and only then are we aware that we're "having a feeling." People who Davidson describe as "self-opaque" take longer to access this internal data and to associate it with an emotional state.

But as with social intuition we can also be hyper-sensitive to our internal data, which at extreme levels can cause panic attacks or hypochondria. [11] Hyper-sensitivity on this dimension is more common in my practice, although it typically takes the form of anxiety or obsessive rumination. [12] In both cases, whether you're trying to increase or decrease your sensitivity to these physiological cues, Davidson again recommends mindfulness meditation:

How can the same practice both increase and decrease Self-Awareness?... Mindfulness meditation...has a regulating effect on the mind. If you lack Self-Awareness, it can help make internal sensations more salient and vivid. If you are hyper-aware, feeling and hearing your internal signals all too vividly and loudly, it can bring about a kind of equanimity so you are not as bothered by this internal noise. That equanimity eventually helps the noise itself die down. [13]

Self-awareness also involves other forms of internal data, such as intuition. While Davidson's concept of social intuition involves being attuned to the perceptions of others, we must also attend to our own. And we need not view intuition as some form of mysticism. Economist and psychologist Herbert Simon offers a straightforward definition: "The situation has provided a cue; this cue has given the expert access to information stored in memory, and the information provides the answer. Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition." [14]

Note Simon's emphasis on expertise--psychologists Gary Klein and Daniel Kahneman have determined that intuition is more reliable in circumstances that are more predictable and which provide us with feedback on our decisions, so that we learn over time. [15] This is why experience in the settings described above, from team meetings to media sessions, is so useful--even if we can't consciously predict what will happen in any given moment, when we have a broad base of experience to draw upon we're more effective at sub-conscious pattern recognition.

While we're well-served by acknowledging our intuition, we also need to be cautious before leaping to any specific conclusions on that basis. Years ago my colleague Bonnie Wentworth taught me to distinguish between A) an intuitive sense that something is happening and worth paying attention to, and B) my cognitive interpretation of just what is happening. Even when the latter isn't quite accurate, the former is usually worth exploring further.

The Dance Floor (aka Self-Monitoring)

Having gathered all this data, you now have to put it to use in your interactions with others--and in so doing move fluidly from the balcony to the dance floor and back again. But what does this mean in practice? One useful model is derived from a concept known as "self-monitoring." Psychologists Richard Lennox and Raymond Wolfe, building on earlier work by Mark Snyder, developed a 13-question instrument to measure this quality. [16] Their framework incorporates both aspects of the data-gathering process above, self-awareness and social intuition, and the first seven items in the instrument refer to one's "ability to modify self-presentation":

1. In social situations, I have the ability to alter my behavior if I feel that something else is called for.

2. I have the ability to control the way I come across to people, depending on the impression I wish to give them.

3. When I feel that the image I am portraying isn't working, I can readily change it to something that does.

4. I have trouble changing my behavior to suit different people and different situations.

5. I have found that I can adjust my behavior to meet the requirements of any situation I find myself in.

6. Even when it might be to my advantage, I have difficulty putting up a good front.

7. Once I know what the situation calls for, it's easy for me to regulate my actions accordingly.

The final six items in the instrument refer to one's "sensitivity to expressive behaviors of others":

8. I am often able to read people's true emotions correctly through their eyes.

9. In conversations, I am sensitive to even the slightest change in the facial expression of the person I'm conversing with.

10. My powers of intuition are quite good when it comes to understanding others' emotions and motives.

11. I can usually tell when others consider a joke to be in bad taste, even though they may laugh convincingly.

12. I can usually tell when I've said something inappropriate by reading it in the listener's eyes.

13. If someone is lying to me, I usually know it at once from that person's manner of expression.

It's not necessary to formally complete the instrument to make use of the conceptual framework. [17] Simply review these items and consider the extent to which they already feel accurate for you, as well as where you might benefit from being more deliberate. (Items 4 and 6 are "reverse-scored," meaning that affirmative answers imply lesser capabilities.)

Such heightened awareness won't automatically result in behavior change, but it's the necessary first step. That said, making the effort to track all this additional data and translate it into more effective interactions is likely to be fatiguing, at least at first. For a decade I helped train MBA students at Stanford in coaching principles and practices, which requires a increased degree of self-monitoring, and they inevitably experienced their first coaching sessions as exhausting. [18] But as I've noted before, persistence in any discipline tends to yield a degree of ease and increased stamina:

With repetition we eventually relax, and the process becomes more automatic and require less deliberation.This doesn't mean that we lose all awareness of our abilities, but when engaged in an activity we don't need to focus intensely on our goal to hit the mark. [19]

A final point on self-monitoring and authenticity, topics that psychologist Adam Grant and author and researcher Brené Brown explored in an online debate in 2016. Grant initially took a position that could be paraphrased as "authenticity is overrated," citing a set of studies showing that people who are high self-monitors generally experience better outcomes in professional life. [20] But Brown rejected Grant's premise that authenticity and self-monitoring are inversely related:

In my research I found that the core of authenticity is the courage to be imperfect, vulnerable, and to set boundaries. ...I would argue that authenticity requires almost constant vigilance and awareness about the connections between our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. It also means staying mindful about our intentions. Real authenticity actually requires major self-monitoring and isn't, as Grant proposes, the lack of self-monitoring. In fact, setting boundaries is, by definition, self-monitoring. [21]

Being more deliberate about your behavior with the intention of guiding an interaction to a better outcome may feel novel or uncomfortable, but that certainly doesn't mean you're being "inauthentic." As I've written before, we may feel that way when we view our authentic self as something we discover, but I think it's more accurate (and more productive) to view our authentic self as something we create:

When we're tackling new tasks or trying out new behaviors that cause discomfort or require fatiguing conscious thought, rather than interpret those feelings as signs of "inauthenticity" we can view them merely as evidence of inexperience. Note that this approach doesn't require us to persist indefinitely with everything that feels like a struggle--we may conclude that certain tasks or behaviors simply can't be added to our repertoire, or that the effort required is too great or the reward too meager. But we shouldn't be dissuaded from the attempt by fears that we're acting "inauthentically." [22]

 

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Footnotes

[1] A Survival Guide for Leaders (Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky, Harvard Business Review, 2002)

[2] For more on creating space for reflection, see the following:

• Open Space, Deep Work and Self-Care
• How to Think (More on Open Space and Deep Work)

[3] The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live—and How You Can Change Them (Richard Davidson and Sharon Begley, 2012)

[4] Ibid, page 51.

[5] What is brain plasticity, and why is it so important? (Duncan Banks, The Conversation, 2016)

[6] For more on Mehrabian and non-verbal communication, see the following:

• Mehrabian and nonverbal communication (Olivia Mitchell)

• "Silent Messages": A Wealth of Information About Nonverbal Communication (Albert Mehrabian)

[7] Better Conditions for Working Remotely

[8] Don't Just Do Something, Sit There! (Mindfulness for Busy People)

[9] For more on Jon Kabat-Zinn's work, see the following:

• Arriving at Your Own Door: 108 Lessons in Mindfulness (Jon Kabat-Zinn, 2007)

• Mindfulness Meditation for Pain Relief (Jon Kabat-Zinn, 2010)

• Full Catastrophe Living (Jon Kabat-Zinn, 2013)

[10] Davidson and Begley, pages 54-55.

[11] Ibid, page 234.

[12] Why You Can't Stop Thinking About Something

[13] Davidson and Begley, page 237.

[14] What is an "Explanation" of Behavior? (Herbert Simon, Psychological Science, 1992)

[15] Strategic decisions: When can you trust your gut? (Olivier Sibony and Dan Lovallo interviewing Daniel Kahneman and Gary Klein, McKinsey Quarterly, 2010)

[16] Revision of the Self-Monitoring Scale (Richard Lennox and Raymond Wolfe, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1984). For a comparison between Lennox and Wolfe's scale and Synder's original work, see Snyder's Self-Monitoring Scale and Lennox and Wolfe's Revised Self-Monitoring Scale (John Roob, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 1994).

[17] Should you want to complete the instrument, while I'm unable to find a version of Lennox and Wolfe's revised scale that can be scored (or even a data set of results for comparison), you can complete Snyder's original Self-Monitoring Scale. Snyder's version has 25 true/false questions, while Lennox and Wolfe's 13 items are scored on a six-point Likert scale (0 = always false to 5 = always true). But as with any psychometric instrument, bear in mind that the map is not the territory.

[18] Three Conversations (On Better Communication)

[19] Conscious Competence in Practice

[20] Unless You're Oprah, "Be Yourself" Is Terrible Advice (Adam Grant, The New York Times, June 4, 2016). I discuss the Grant-Brown debate further in Cautionary Tales (Authenticity at Work).

[21] My response to Adam Grant’s New York Times Op/Ed (Brené Brown, LinkedIn, June 5, 2016)

[22] Leadership and Authenticity

 

Photo by Quinn Dombroski.

Jeff Pfeffer on Flattery

Flattery will get you everywhere.

~Mae West [1]

I'm a student of the work of Stanford professor Jeff Pfeffer for many reasons, including his rigorous pragmatism and no-bullshit attitude. (This is even reflected in the title of one of his books: Leadership BS.) [2] A client recently observed a pattern of obvious flattery being directed toward a high-status member of a group, and my client expressed some surprise that such seemingly insincere praise would have the desired effect. This brings to mind Pfeffer's comments on the subject:

One of the best ways to make those in power feel better about themselves is to flatter them. The research literature shows how effective flattery is as a strategy to gain influence. Flattery works because we naturally come to like people who flatter us and make us feel good about ourselves and our accomplishments, and being likable helps build influence. Flattery also works because it engages the norm of reciprocity--if you compliment someone, that person owes you something in return just as surely as if you had bought the individual dinner or given a gift-because a compliment is a form of gift. And flattery is effective because it is consistent with the self­-enhancement motive that exists in most people...

Most people underestimate the effectiveness of flattery and therefore underutilize it. If someone flatters you, you essentially have two ways of reacting. You can think that the person was in­sincere and trying to butter you up. But believing that causes you to feel negatively about the person whom you perceive as insincere and not even particularly subtle about it. More importantly, think­ing that the compliment is just a strategic way of building influence with you also leads to negative self-feelings-what must others think of you to try such a transparent and false method of influence? Al­ternatively, you can think that the compliments are sincere and that the flatterer is a wonderful judge of people--a perspective that leaves you feeling good about the person for his or her interpersonal perception skill and great about yourself, as the recipient of such a positive judgment delivered by such a credible source. There is simply no question that the desire to believe that flattery is at once sincere and accurate will, in most instances, leave us susceptible to being flattered and, as a consequence, under the influence of the flatterer. So, don't underestimate--or underutilize--the strategy of flattery. University of California-Berkeley professor Jennifer Chatman, in an unpublished study, sought to see if there was some point beyond which flattery became ineffective. She believed that the effectiveness of flattery might have an inverted U-shaped relationship, with flattery being increasingly effective up to some point but beyond that becoming ineffective as the flatterer became seen as insincere and a "suck up." As she told me, there might be a point at which flattery became ineffective, but she couldn't find it in her data. [3]

I'm not suggesting that you should "suck up" to anyone, in part because such behavior is usually observed by others and may have an undesirable effect on them. (My client now has a new--and unflattering--perspective on the other members of the group noted above.) But Pfeffer challenges us to see the world not as we want it to be, but as it really is, and it's worth bearing in mind that we're highly susceptible to the effects of unscrupulous flattery even when we know it's insincere.

 

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Footnotes

[1] Mae West (1893-1980) was an actress known for her risque persona and double entendres.

[2] For more on what I've learned from Pfeffer, see the following:

• Force Isn't Power
• Cautionary Tales (Authenticity at Work)
• What Do Great Leaders Do?
• The Trium Group on Responsibility

[3] Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don't, pages 33-35 (Jeff Pfeffer, 2010)

 

Photo of Mae West via tom-margie.

Group Dynamics: Very Loud (and Very Quiet) People

A theme in my practice is the leader whose team includes a very talkative (or very reserved) member, whose participation deviates substantially from the group norm. Very talkative people may speak at great length, weigh in on every topic, or interrupt frequently, leaving others feeling frustrated or stifled. Very reserved people may participate rarely or not at all, leaving others feeling hesitant or anxious.

It's absolutely not the case that members' participation should be equivalent, but groups generally have a limited capacity to tolerate divergence from normative behavior before experiencing distress. In part this is because the existence of agreed-upon norms help all members calibrate and regulate their own participation, and when the range of behavior in a group becomes too broad, it can no longer be said that a "norm" even exists. [1]

And in many groups the potential to make a valuable contribution is evenly distributed--this may be the rationale for each member's inclusion in the group--but uneven patterns of participation undermine the group's effectiveness. This can be exacerbated by factors related to group tenure or social identity--for example, a long-term member may be much more vocal than new members, or a member who's a demographic minority may be much less vocal than the majority, especially if they're an "only" in some way. [2]

If you're a leader with an unusually loud (or unusually quiet) team member, what can you do? First, assess your tolerance (and that of the other group members) for communication styles that differ from your own. Bear in mind that the goal is a more effective group, not simply one that's more comfortable for the majority. [3] Having done that that, what further steps can you take? You always have these tools at your disposal:

1:1 Dialogue

You can speak individually with the very talkative (or very reserved) person about their participation in the group. But note that this isn't just about "providing feedback." While you are in a position to help this person understand the impact of their participation on how they're perceived by others and on the group as a whole, it's essential to bear in mind that an individual's behavior in a group is in part a function of the group environment. The failure to recognize this is one of the most common dynamics in social psychology--it's so prevalent that it's called the "fundamental attribution error": Ascribing causality to an individual when causality actually lies with the situation. [4]

So it's essential to acknowledge the group environment and its potential impact on the individual's participation. (This can be a fruitful topic of discussion for the group as a whole--see below.) But a starting point can simply be learning more about what's going on with this person in other domains of work or life that might be affecting their participation in the group. This can lead into a discussion about what it's like for this person to be a member of the group, raising your awareness of their group experience.

While it's often safer to navigate such potentially fraught topics in a 1:1 setting, there are two pitfalls to be aware of here: First, if this person is prone to defensiveness, a discussion about the group dynamic can be a way to avoid acknowledging the impact of their personal behavior. Awareness of the fundamental attribution error should temper the assignment of causation or blame, but it doesn't absolve individuals of all responsibility.

Also, in your efforts to represent how others are perceiving this person's participation, you may (or may not) have direct input from other members of the group, and you may (or may not) have their permission to attribute their comments to them. Here you face some difficult choices: If you share input from other group members but preserve their anonymity, the person you're talking with may feel exposed and unsafe in the group. If you share input from other group members and reveal their identities, these other people may feel exposed and unsafe, or you may set off a round of follow-up conversations that they're not yet prepared to have. And if you don't share input from other group members, you may create the mistaken impression that you're the only one who's troubled by this person's participation.

The ultimate solution is build a group that's sufficiently robust to hold such conversations in real time with all members present--again, see below. But the reality is that some groups never achieve this ideal, and others reach it only in rare moments--an exceptionally meaningful exercise at an offsite, or a heartfelt conversation over dinner. So while you work your way toward that ideal, the interim solution is to offer feedback based primarily on your own observations, while being rigorous about the format and process to maximize the likelihood of a productive response. [5]

Structured Processes

This involves using various cues and procedures to ensure that every member of the group participates while no member predominates. It need not be complex or cumbersome--simply telling the group, "I want to hear from everyone on this issue" is a type of structured process. It can also be distinct from the group's ordinary discussion--for example, one of the reasons to conduct a "check-in" at the beginning of a group experience is to elicit equivalent participation from all members and thereby set a precedent for subsequent interactions. [6]

Structured processes can be used at any point in a group experience, although the initial cue alone may be insufficient, and you may have to take further steps to regulate participation levels as needed. Note that all such procedures come with a cost, which is why they should be employed judiciously:

• Using a timer to limit participation reins in people who tend to run long. A cost is that such people may feel unduly constrained. [7]
• Speaking in a predetermined order ensures that everyone participates. When meeting in-person, this can be as simple as "going around the table" (or the circle, as the case may be.) A cost is that people who are reluctant to participate may feel anxious as their turn approaches. An alternative can be participating "popcorn" style--you're free to speak up when you choose, but once you've spoken you have to wait until everyone has joined in before speaking again.
• Using an object (when in-person) or relying upon a facilitator to designate the speaker will minimize interruptions. A cost is that the discussion can feel stilted or excessively inhibited.
• Pausing and inviting everyone to take some written notes before resuming the discussion can help talkative members organize their thoughts while also spurring reserved members to speak up. Costs include the time consumed and the interruption to the previous flow of discussion.

The idea isn't to become dependent on structured processes, but, rather, to weave them into the group experience as needed. And despite their various costs, their benefits include not only more balanced participation, but also a sense of novelty. When such processes are well-facilitated (which takes practice), groups can welcome the change from their habitual patterns of interaction.

Direct Intervention

This involves taking action in the moment to reduce participation by a talkative member (and evoke participation from the rest of the group) or evoke participation by a reserved member (and reduce participation by the rest of the group). An advantage of this approach is that it focuses on the individual whose uneven participation is affecting the group, without requiring a structured process separate and distinct from the group's normal discussion. A potential disadvantage is that the individual may feel unfairly singled out and have a negative response to your intervention.

One solution is obtaining permission in advance from the individual under consideration, not only to avoid surprising them with your intervention, but also to ensure that they understand your motivation. It's essential that they feel supported by you as the leader rather than criticized, and an outcome of your 1:1 dialogue with them can be a shared strategy along these lines. A key is intervening subtly at first and escalating slowly to more direct measures.

With a very talkative member, you can...

• Ask the group for more input, hoping that others speak up.
• Ask explicitly to hear from other group members.
• Ask this individual to briefly pause to create space for others.
• Interrupt this individual, particularly if they've interrupted someone else or are talking over others.

With a very reserved member, you can:

• Ask the group for more input, hoping that this member speaks up.
• Ask explicitly to hear from this group member.
• Ask others to briefly pause to create space for this individual.

Such interventions are easy to describe in the abstract, but can be difficult to implement without creating a sense of awkwardness or embarrassment. And yet if you're never willing to accept the risk of stumbling, you'll never develop the skills necessary to intervene with grace and tact.

But even though as the leader you'll always have a special role to play in the development of the group environment, you need not bear this responsibility alone--nor will you succeed if you try. At some point it will be both desirable and necessary to invite all members to assess the group's culture and norms and offer suggestions for improvement.

Group Dialogue

We can think of this as a "meta-conversation": a group discussion about how the group holds discussions. This is far more difficult work than most people realize, which is one reason why so many exercises conducted with this goal in mind fall flat at best. There is a basic conceptual challenge--group dynamics are complex, and relatively few people get much useful training in understanding them.

But at a more fundamental level discussing a group's dynamics with the members of that group inevitably evokes a degree of self-consciousness and vulnerability, which often exacerbates the problematic behaviors that necessitated the discussion in the first place. It's a profoundly thorny dilemma--but one that's worth trying to untangle.

One of the greatest benefits of a group dialogue is its efficiency. While separate 1:1 conversations with group members are useful, as noted above, that process is not only time-consuming but also subject to various degrees of distortion because other group members aren't present to correct misunderstandings or inaccuracies regarding their behavior and intentions.

While specific topics to be addressed here include the optimal range of group participation, the impact on the group of non-normative behavior, and the impact of the group environment on non-normative individuals, it's useful to be aware of the general conditions necessary for any productive norm:

• A set of shared beliefs about how individuals should behave.
• Sufficient mutual esteem among members so that its withdrawal would be felt as a loss by any individual.
• A willingness by members to openly acknowledge a norm violation by a peer.
• A willingness by members to withhold esteem from a peer as a consequence of a norm violation. [8]

So note the value of taking the time to build meaningful relationships among the group members before jumping into a "norms discussion." As I've written before,

This is why relationship-building on a team is so important and why leaders who dismiss it as fluffy bullshit are missing a critical factor in the process of developing productive norms. It's not about "liking each other"--it's about the power of mutual esteem. [9]

Finally, be aware that no single discussion will permanently resolve such a complex set of issues. We call them group dynamics because we expect them to change, and the patterns of behavior that support (or inhibit) effective group performance today may do the opposite in the future. As David Bradford, one of my mentors, used to say, the most productive group norm is a commitment to regularly revisit the group's norms.

 

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Footnotes

[1] For more on the definition and establishment of norms, see Rules Aren't Norms (On Better Meeting Hygiene).

[2] Research on the impact of group composition and diversity on performance is inconclusive--it's easy to find studies supporting almost any point you want to make on the subject. Two observations drawn from my experience are that 1) homogeneous teams experience less conflict but can be more prone to blind spots and "groupthink," and 2) heterogeneous teams can only make effective use of their diversity once they learn to manage conflict effectively (including, but not limited to, the topic under discussion here.)

[3] Work Style Differences

[4] This is the definition I learned in 1998 from Roberto Fernandez, my brilliant Organizational Behavior professor at Stanford. The initial work on the fundamental attribution error was done by Stanford psychologist Lee Ross: The Intuitive Psychologist and His Shortcomings: Distortions in the Attribution Process (Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 1977).

[5] For more on effective feedback, see the following:

• How to Deliver Critical Feedback
• Feedback Is Not a Gift
• Make Feedback Normal. Not a Performance Review.

[6] Check in to LISTEN, Not Just to Speak

[7] When using a timer, it's preferable to avoid a harsh or abrupt tone--I've used the sound of this Tibetan bowl in many different settings over the years:

Tibetan Bowl

[8] Rules Aren't Norms (On Better Meeting Hygiene)

[9] Ibid.

 

For Further Reading

Group Dynamics: The Leader's Toolkit

Group Dynamics: Norms and Emotion

Freud on Startup (Conditions for Group Effectiveness)

Huddle Up! (Building Group Cohesion)

Symptoms of Group Strength

 

Photo by Chris Christian.

The Rubber Band Effect

One of a leader's foremost responsibilities is predicting the likelihood of future events and planning accordingly. A leader's effectiveness at this task derives from a number of sources: time and space for strategic thinking, access to critical data, a knack for pattern-recognition--or the ability to hire others with the requisite skills and make use of their recommendations.

As a result, good leaders spend a material portion of their time envisioning the future--weeks, months, and even years ahead of the people around them. They peer over the horizon and get a sense of what it might be like to live there. This capability can be a tremendous asset--but only when it's coupled with the ability to influence others to adopt and act upon that same vision. In the absence of this capability, even the most far-seeing leader will suffer the fate of Cassandra in Greek myth: Blessed with the gift of prophecy, doomed to never be believed.

Imagine there's a rubber band connecting the leader with the people around them. When the leader travels forward in time to envision the future, the rubber band stretches. This produces a useful and necessary tension between the leader's vision and everyone else's current reality, which, under the right circumstances, can move people to adopt this vision of the future and begin to act accordingly. But if the leader runs too far ahead or pulls too hard in an effort to bring people along, the rubber band breaks. There's a rupture between the leader's vision of the future and everyone else's current reality, and the leader loses influence as a result.

If good leaders spend time living in the future, great leaders perfect the skill of inducing others to join them there. Sometimes this entails active efforts to shape and influence others' views--but it also requires the ability to abstain from taking action when necessary. Because the foresighted leader not only assesses the likelihood of future events, but also pays close attention to current trends and the extent to which they are sweeping other people along in their wake, with or without further action by the leader.

The great leader steps into the future just far enough to encourage the people around them to consider the possibility of this alternative reality, but not so far ahead that their vision is dismissed or ignored. The great leader allows the combined force of their vision of the future and the movement of current trends to bring people along without unnecessary force by the leader or undue stress on others. The rubber band stretches, but it does not break.

Is this always possible? No, of course not. Events rarely align so neatly. But it's something to strive for, and here's how this process shows up every day in my coaching practice: The leaders I work with are tasked with looking into a volatile and uncertain future and placing high-stakes bets on what they believe to be the likely outcomes. They will inevitably be compelled to make decisions with imperfect and incomplete data. And they must do this while leading teams that include a number of people who are manifesting various forms of anxiety: aggression, panic, paralysis, denial.

The metaphorical bands that bind the leaders in my practice to the people around them are fraying under the strain. They must not break. My clients must maintain sufficient tension to help move their organizations and their employees forward, without putting so much pressure on people and systems that the bands rupture. It is a delicate balance.

 

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For Further Reading

Aggression, Panic, Paralysis and Denial

How to Cross Antarctica (On Surviving Chaos)

The Importance of Shared Narrative

 

Adapted from Leadership in Crisis (FDR and the Rubber Band Effect).

Photo by laogooli.

Talking About Promotions (with Very Ambitious People)

A theme in my practice is the leader with an ambitious employee who's anxious to be promoted, sometimes to the point of urgency. Most of these people share a set of common characteristics: very high expectations for their professional accomplishments, a nagging sense that they're "behind" in some way, and an idealized vision of the happiness (or relief) they'll experience when they achieve their goal.

But their talents and capabilities can differ substantially, of course. Some of them are already operating at an elite level, and their ambition is entirely justified. Others are just as obviously not at an elite level, and their ambition is sadly misguided. But most of them fall somewhere in the middle--they show substantial potential, but they haven't yet clearly demonstrated that they merit a bigger role, a new title, or increased compensation.

In my work with leaders facing this challenge, I encourage them to bear those common characteristics in mind while tailoring their approach to suit the employee's current and potential contributions. If you're in a similar situation, what might this look like?

Managing Expectations, Part 1

With an obvious elite performer, the leader's task is to manage their expectations--but not in the way you might think. Conventional expectation management entails counseling patience, but that's not what I mean here. If you have an elite performer who feels an urgent need for their talents to be recognized, then if you don't find a way to meet that need you'll soon be relieved of this problem, because they'll take their talents elsewhere.

And yet no matter what role, title or comp they're able to command--from you or from another employer--their sense of urgency and the feeling that they're "behind" will almost certainly diminish only for a brief period before it returns in full force. This is the predictable result of two powerful psychological forces: Hedonic adaptation ensures that we readily adapt to changes in our circumstances, which means that even our greatest aspirations, once fulfilled, are soon taken for granted. [1] And social comparison means that we have a deeply rooted predisposition to assess our progress in life by considering our status relative to others who we consider salient figures--and we tend to focus on those who we perceive as "ahead" in some way. [2]

You can't "turn off" these drives in your ambitious elite performer, nor would you want to--they serve a useful role for the species, even as they cause anguish for most of us as individuals at various times in our lives. But if you hope to retain them as a long-term colleague, you'll both be well served if you can help them understand these dynamics and how to deal with them. That doesn't mean encouraging your elite performer to settle for something less than they believe they deserve, but it does involve addressing and coming to terms with the anxiety and other emotions that underlie their ambitions. This requires you act as a mentor, not just a manager, and you can't simply impose that relationship on someone--you have to be invited in.

• The Trap of Competition
• Stop Trying to Be "Good Enough" By "Getting Better"
• Understanding the "Pie Chart" in The How of Happiness

 

Managing Expectations, Part 2

With an ambitious employee who's an adequate performer but obviously not elite, it's also necessary to manage their expectations, but with different goals in mind. Not only is this person not going to be promoted anytime soon, it's likely that they're going to be levelled or managed out. I make the assumption that there's an unbridgeable gap between your employee's ambitions and their current capabilities, but they're not a chronic under-performer who's failing to add value. (If that's the case, then you should be managing them out now.)

But if you'd prefer to retain them--and yet have no intention of promoting them--then you need to determine whether it will be possible to level them successfully when it becomes necessary. This is always a challenging managerial task, but here the difficulty will be compounded by your employee's unrealistic self-assessment. In this process both of you will need to make a contribution.

You'll have to provide data demonstrating a performance gap, an opportunity to learn from the incoming manager, clarity on your employee's new role, and--perhaps most importantly--sufficient grace to ensure that your employee feels respected throughout the process. Your employee will have to respond with non-defensiveness--which will be easier for them if you fulfill the responsibilities above. And both of you will need to trust each other, which requires investing in the relationship over time.

This will obviously take time and effort, and in any given case you may conclude that it's not worth the trouble. But note that the ability to successfully level an adequate employee who's not an elite performer is a tremendous managerial asset, and you won't learn how to do it if you never try.

• The Fine Art of Levelling
• Merciful Exits (On Under-Performing Executives)

 

From Potential to Excellence

Most of your ambitious employees will fall somewhere in between these two extremes--they haven't yet demonstrated consistent elite performance, but they show substantial potential, and the question is whether or not that potential will be fully realized. And one of the best tools at your disposal to influence that outcome is clear, direct feedback on the nature of their performance. One simple framework involves providing feedback in three distinct "buckets":

1. Here's where you're already delivering excellence.

This should be an easy bucket to fill, but many managers fail to make effective use of it. They worry that positive feedback will cause an ambitious employee to feel entitled to a promotion, so they withhold it--which only increases the employee's anxiety and agitation. Or the manager learned in some terrible training session that they should always offer "positive feedback" before delivering the real message--which only trains people to ignore their positive feedback. As a consequence many managers are simply ineffective at delivering meaningful positive feedback that truly has an impact. But it isn't rocket science--it just takes diligent effort and practice. [3]

2. Here's where you're making progress.

This is the bucket that most managers over-utilize. But true excellence (above) and clear under-performance (below) shouldn't be lumped together with other areas of responsibility where your employee is making progress but not there yet. This bucket is an opportunity to have a nuanced conversation with an ambitious employee and let them know that you can discern not only the effort they're making to improve, but also their still-insufficient results, and you want both halves of that message to register.

3. Here's where you're falling short.

This should also be an easy bucket to fill--your ambitious employee has clearly fallen short in some key areas, or you wouldn't be wondering whether or not to promote them. But here again many managers fail to offer meaningful critical feedback. They worry that direct feedback will be demotivating, or that their employee will respond defensively. While it's your responsibility to learn how to deliver critical feedback in a way that's less likely to evoke a defensive response, this is also a valuable opportunity to assess your employee's ability to hear criticism and take responsibility for setbacks, which is a significant indicator of future success.

• How to Deliver Critical Feedback
• Make Feedback Normal. Not a Performance Review.
• Why Some Executives Derail (and What You Can Do About it)

 

Finally, note that the timing of these conversations matter--your employee is likely to want to hold them more frequently, and as noted in the post linked above, I don't think leaders should wait for formal review cycles to provide developmental feedback. That said, in some cases it makes sense to defer discussions about promotions until there's enough data to justify further consideration. I once had a CEO client whose sales leader tried to renegotiate his comp every single quarter. This proved untenable.

 

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Footnotes

[1] For more on hedonic adaptation, see the following:

• Lottery Winners and Accident Victims: Is Happiness Relative? (Philip Brickman, Dan Coates and Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1978)

• The How of Happiness, pages 48-51 (Sonja Lyubomirsky, 2007)

[2] For more on social comparison, see the following:

• Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect, pages 33-34 (Matthew Lieberman, 2013)

• The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn't, What Shouldn't Make You Happy, but Does, pages 131-132 (Sonja Lyubomirsky, 2014)

[3] Conscious Competence in Practice

 

Photo by Sam Beebe.

Why "Truth-Tellers" Fail (and How They Can Succeed)

A theme in my practice is the leader with an employee who thinks of themself as a "truth-teller." This person often has some keen insights to share, but their communication style is preventing others from heeding their message. In this context I'm reminded of the figure of Cassandra from Greek mythology, a high priestess and the younger sister of Hector, the great warrior of Troy.

The god Apollo gave Cassandra the ability to see the future, but after she rejected his advances he put a curse on her so that her true prophecies would always be disbelieved. When the Greeks left a massive wooden horse at the gates of Troy as a supposed peace offering, Cassandra warned her compatriots to destroy it, but they ignored her as they conducted a victory feast: "We stationed the monster fraught with doom on the hallowed heights of Troy. Even now Cassandra revealed the future, opening lips the gods had ruled no Trojan would believe." [1]

After the fall of Troy, Cassandra was captured by the Greek king Agamemnon, and both of them were subsequently murdered by Agamemnon's wife and her lover, as shown above. It's not a happy tale. My clients' truth-tellers don't face anything nearly so dire, but it's highly likely that their insights will be ignored, and it's quite possible that they'll run into career-limiting difficulties. If you're a leader with an employee who fits this description (or if this describes you), what can you do? Here are some issues to consider:

Cognitive biases matter.

Truth-tellers can be aware that their communication style is flawed, but they're often surprised that it has such a significant impact on others' receptivity to their insights. They believe their ideas should be assessed on their intrinsic merits, without having to worry about crafting a persuasive message. But this reflects a poor grasp of human psychology and a lack of awareness of some fundamental principles of communication.

There's too much data in our environment to be able to carefully parse each and every incoming signal. [2] The process of logical reasoning is too slow and laborious, and our capacity for deliberate thought is a finite resource, so we've evolved a host of "mental shortcuts" to enable us to make quick judgments that are sufficiently accurate for most purposes. These shortcuts are also known as "cognitive biases," a term that gives the impression that our brains are somehow faulty or even prejudiced. [3]

It's more precise to say that our thought patterns are often highly predictable, and efforts to persuade others must take these patterns into account in order to be successful. The truth-teller who insists on ignoring these principles isn't being rigorous or disdaining superficial niceties, although they often like to characterize themselves this way. They're just refusing to acknowledge reality, and that's not rigor--it's magical thinking. Here are three predictable patterns in human psychology that truth-tellers must take into account if they want their message to be heard.

Likeability matters.

Psychologist Robert Cialdini has identified a set of powerful cognitive biases related to influence, which he describes as the "fundamental principles of persuasion." [4] The very first one is the "Principle of Liking": We find likeable people more influential. It's important to distinguish between "likeable" and "pleasing" or "deferential," not least because adopting a pleasant or deferential demeanor may undermine one's authority, another important source of influence. Likeability can be established through a number of specific tactics, and Cialdini highlights two: similarity and praise.

A sense of similarity is evoked by identifying shared experiences, beliefs, values, and interests, which often occurs when we're engaged in small talk. And praise doesn't have to take the form of obsequious or insincere compliments. We find it flattering when someone simply asks us questions or expresses interest in us, which is really just another form of small talk. In general, most informal conversations offer opportunities to establish likeability simply by signaling, "I'm paying attention to you, and our relationship matters to me." [5]

Note that cultivating likeability need not entail being indirect or less candid with the primary message. Truth-tellers often undermine their own influence simply by failing to devote any time or attention to the informal conversations that usually occur at the beginning of meetings and after the agenda has been concluded. They pride themselves on being "all business"--but that actually means that they're less effective at accomplishing their goals.

Packaging matters.

Louis Cheskin was one of the first researchers to apply psychological principles to commercial marketing, and as a contributor to such icons as McDonald's Golden Arches, the Marlboro Man and the Gerber baby, his work left an indelible mark on the 20th century. [6] Author Malcolm Gladwell discussed Cheskin's concept of "sensation transference":

Cheskin was convinced that when people give an assessment of something they might buy in a supermarket or a department store, without realizing it, they transfer sensations or impressions they have about the packaging of the product to the product itself. To put it another way, Cheskin believed that most of us don't make a distinction--on an unconscious level--between the package and the product. The product is the package and the product combined. [7]

Gladwell goes on to cite research demonstrating the effects on this concept in a variety of consumer products: Ice cream tastes better when it comes in a cylindrical container instead of a rectangular one. Brandy tastes better when it comes in a decanter instead of a wine bottle. Margarine tastes better when it's colored yellow instead of white. These signifiers affect our senses, altering our perceptions of the product itself.

Linguist and liberal political advisor George Lakoff has described a parallel process that occurs in the realm of communication and messaging, referred to as "framing," and "Lakoff's First Law" is that "Framing trumps facts":

All of our concepts are organized into conceptual structures called "frames" (which may include images and metaphors) and all words are defined relative to those frames. Conventional frames are pretty much fixed in the neural structures of our brains. In order for a fact to be comprehended, it must fit the relevant frames. If the facts contradict the frames, the frames, being fixed in the brain, will be kept and the facts ignored... This has an important consequence. Political liberals have inherited an assumption from the Enlightenment, that The facts will set us free, that if the public is just given the facts, they will, being rational beings, reach the right conclusion. It is simply false. It violates Lakoff's Law. [8]

We need not share Lakoff's political orientation to grasp the significance of his theory. Just as Cheskin demonstrated that the perceived properties of a product are not fixed but highly malleable and contingent on the packaging, Lakoff notes that the impact of a message is not an inherent property of the facts it contains, but a function of its frame--a form of packaging.

Truth-tellers are like Lakoff's naive liberals--they think that if they just present "the facts" then the rightness of their ideas will inevitably be sufficient to win the day. There's no universal solution here, but the key is recognizing that influential ideas are packaged in a host of ways that contribute to their impact, and effective packaging must take into account the audience's "frames" and preconceived notions.

Narrative matters.

The sum total of a message's facts, packaging and framing is ultimately a narrative--some form of story. And stories play an essential role in human life because they enable us to make sense of and navigate uncertain environments. As I wrote recently,

Organizational psychologist Karl Weick called this "sensemaking": we rely upon narratives to "make sense" of ambiguous situations and pursue a plan of action in coordination with others. But our reliance on narratives means that in the absence of a coherent story we will feel lost and ungrounded. [9]

So a fundamental challenge in any communication effort is that when people are faced with a situation that they don't fully understand, they will rapidly construct an explanatory narrative using whatever data is readily available. [10] One of the difficulties for the truth-teller is that this process will include a host of assumptions about them and their communication style, and if they haven't made an effort to cultivate liking and to package their message effectively, then their audience's explanatory narrative will likely work against the truth-teller's goals.

Further, many truth-tellers have a degree of technical training or quantitative skill that informs their insights. As a result they see a "story" in the data that most people fail to perceive. This is particularly true with regard to probabilities--a number of cognitive biases evolved to help us avoid the complex computations necessary to calculate statistical outcomes with precision. [11] The challenge--and the opportunity--for the truth-teller is to translate their quantitative insights into a narrative that other, less numerate people can readily grasp.

A note on authenticity.

While the issues raised here aren't difficult to understand, many truth-tellers struggle to put them into practice because doing so feels "inauthentic." But this represents a misguided conflation of authenticity and familiarity or comfort. Yet another cognitive bias is what psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls "the law of least effort," which reflects our tendency to expend as little mental energy as possible. [12] As a consequence we have a preference for the familiar and the comfortable, and this includes our own behavior and communication style.

The truth-tellers in my clients' organizations have been very successful up to this point in their careers--that's why they now find themselves working for my clients. And their (familiar, comfortable) communication styles have either contributed to their success in their previous roles or been outweighed by their other strengths. But these truth-tellers now find themselves in a new position or an evolving setting in which they have to modify their communication style if they wish to enjoy continued success.

This can feel daunting, particular to the truth-teller who takes pride in their authenticity, as so many do. Here it can be useful to explore just what we mean by "authentic" and how our understanding of that term can pose a barrier to productive change. As I've written before,

A popular view of the authentic self is that it's an identity at the core of our personalities, something we're born with and must discover through a process of excavation. We may find this view appealing for a number of reasons. If our authentic self is already fully formed within us, then conscious efforts to modify it are fruitless, and we need not feel obligated to undertake the hard work of change... An alternative is to view our authentic self as something that we actively create, forging it out of a combination of ongoing life experiences in the context of any inherited preferences and aversions. [13]

If the truth-teller can adopt this latter view of the authentic self, they make it possible to experiment with alternative communication styles that may feel unfamiliar or uncomfortable but are not inherently false or phony. And if you're working with someone who fits this description (or if this describes you), the key is recognizing that this process will likely evoke a degree of vulnerability (which they'll be unlikely to admit) and establishing an environment in which it's safe to change. [14]

 

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Footnotes

[1] The Aeneid, page 83 (Homer, translated by Robert Fagles, 2008)

[2] Why It's So Hard to Pay Attention, Explained by Science (Daniel Levitin, Fast Company, 2015)

[3] When Heuristics Go Bad (On Cognitive Biases)

[4] Harnessing the Science of Persuasion (Robert Cialdini, Harvard Business Review, 2001)

[5] Bosses and Birthdays (The Importance of Small Talk)

[6] Featured Thinking: Cheskin Research (Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, 2000)

[7] Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, page 160 (Malcolm Gladwell, 2005)

[8] Lakoff's Law (George Lakoff, Edge, 2004)

[9] The Importance of Shared Narrative

[10] Seeing What's Not There (The Importance of Missing Data)

[11] Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, Science, 1974)

[12] Thinking, Fast and Slow, pages 35-40 (Daniel Kahneman, 2013)

[13] Leadership and Authenticity

[14] Why Change Is Hard

 

Photo of Campanian water jar (hydria), circa 340-320 BC, by failing_angel.

How to Cross Antarctica (On Surviving Chaos)

Business author Jim Collins recently gave a talk in which he discussed the contrasting leadership styles--and fates--of pioneering polar explorers Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott:

The work that Morten [Hansen] and I did in Great by Choice was really, ultimately, about thriving in chaos.

Number one, we observed that you learn how to exert self-control and self-discipline in a world that is out of control. We found this marvelous matched pair, Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott, the first two to try to go to the South Pole in 1911. It was like an entrepreneurial startup heading off into the most uncertain and unforgiving environment. It wasn't just, "Hey, let’s go to the South Pole, hunker down and survive." It was to try to be the first in history to reach the South Pole.

What we found is that the way Roald Amundsen led--he’s the one who got there first and got back alive and safe--was different than the way Robert Falcon Scott led. Scott got there second, and then he and his entire team died on the way back that same year.

The environment was completely out of control. It's the South Pole. It's 1911. It can easily kill you. You think it's hard building a company in California? Try going to the South Pole in 1911. It was the moon mission of 1911.

Amundsen was very, very disciplined in his march across the plateau, and Scott was very erratic. Amundsen stayed on this consistent march. He never wanted to get exposed to a terrible storm when he was depleted and exhausted. But even on really uncertain days, he would still make progress towards their goal, they were 20-mile marching across the plateau. Scott was much more erratic. He had big days and not big days, and the weather determining his pace rather than himself...

I go back to Amundsen and Scott. Both calculated the amount of supply depots they needed. It is highly inefficient to multiply your potential supply depots by three. But it's not highly inefficient if you're coming back, winter's gathering on you, and you run out of supplies and die. Tell me what efficient is. We found that great companies are kind of irrational in their "efficiency." They’re not the most efficient use of capital; they’re not the most efficient use of buffers. What they are is enormously resilient by design. [1]

My clients aren't polar explorers, but many of them are trying to be the first in history to accomplish a particular entrepreneurial venture, and at the moment all of them are trying to navigate an "uncertain and unforgiving environment." Winter isn't gathering--it's already here. If you're in similar circumstances, here are some issues to consider and questions to ask yourself:

Discipline & Consistency

Collins cites Amundsen's discipline and consistency as keys to his success and his team's survival. But this approach isn't exclusive to explorers in far-flung places. The English novelist Graham Greene was not only acclaimed (nearly winning the Nobel Prize twice) and popular (selling more than 20 million books in his lifetime), but also prolific (publishing 24 novels among countless essays and stories). [2] And discipline and consistency were hallmarks of his approach to work that continued through World War II and the London Blitz:

Over twenty years I have probably averaged five hundred words a day for five days a week. I can produce a novel in a year, and that allows time for revision and the correction of the typescript. I have always been very methodical, and when my quota of work is done I break off, even in the middle of a scene. [3]

Note the importance of stopping as a form of discipline. Amundsen stopped to ensure that he wouldn't get caught by a storm. Greene stopped in order to maintain his momentum every workday. And you'll undoubtedly need to impose similar limits on yourself. As Intel CEO Andy Grove once wrote, "My day always ends when I'm tired and ready to go home. Not when I'm done... A manager's work is never done. There is always more to be done, more that should be done, always more than can be done." [4]

You probably won't have to cover 20 miles over snow and ice for today to count as a success--although you may need to write 500 words. Whatever your field, I suspect that in a chaotic and unpredictable environment the more control you can exert over your time, your effort, and your output the better off you'll be.

• What forms of discipline would support more consistent effort?
• What data will tell you that you've reached a useful limit?
• What boundaries and routines will help you stop? [5]

Efficiency

As Collins' remarks make clear, the definition of "efficiency" is highly contextual. An "efficient" use of resources in flush times when conditions are predictable and success is more likely will not serve you well when the environment changes radically. In your current role it might not get you killed, but it could certainly cause you to run out of time, money, patience, or stamina.

The key is understanding your existing constraints and how those constraints change with the environment. A regular topic of discussion in my work with leaders is the emergence of new constraints as their organization evolves. Limited capital is almost always the first and most significant gating factor, and it must be treated as a scarce and precious resource to extend the company's runway. But over the past decade capital was often rapidly surpassed as a governing constraint by talent, public prominence, or the leader's availability. [6]

With recent shifts in the economic climate, capital is again becoming a more salient constraint--but as Collins points out, an "efficient" use of capital won't be much help if you've run out of supplies in between depots. And even if you're responsible for capital allocation in your organization, perhaps the most important resources you need to allocate efficiently are your own time and attention. [7]

• What finite resources impose constraints on your personal and organizational operations?
• How might those constraints change under conditions of uncertainty?
• What's been your definition of "efficiency" in recent years?
• How should that definition evolve to suit the emerging environment?

Resilience

Collins mentions "resilience" only at the end of the excerpt above, but it's a quality at the heart of his message. While we may rightfully admire Robert Falcon Scott's bravery in the face of the challenge that ultimately claimed his life, that's not the same thing as resilience. As I've written before,

We often misunderstand the meaning of resilience, confusing it with invulnerability or toughness. The etymological root of resilience is the Latin resilire, which means "to rebound, recoil or jump back." Resilient materials deform under pressure while retaining their internal consistency, later returning to their original form. Iron is tough, but it's not resilient--when it reaches its breaking point it shatters into pieces. [8]

The "uncertain and unforgiving environment" of the next few years will no doubt test your resilience, and it may test your bravery as well, but let's not confuse the two. Let's also not view resilience as a monolithic quality we possess or lack. Work by psychologists Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatté suggests that our degree of resilience is a function of the extent to which we manifest certain characteristics and engage in specific behaviors, all of which are learnable or subject to influence: Emotion regulation, impulse control, optimism, causal analysis, empathy, self-efficacy and reaching out. [9]

And therapist and meditation teacher Linda Graham notes that we can build resilience through "priming," or enhancing our ability to experience certain emotions or physiological states that will serve us well in difficult circumstances. In addition to beginning each day with some form of loving, physical connection--like a hug!--and recalling a memory or a hope that evokes a sense of well-being, we can also train ourselves to recognize when we've lost our composure, take a moment to breathe, feel our heart beating, and calm ourselves before proceeding. [10]

• What elements of resilience in Reivich and Shatté 's model feel like strengths of yours? How might you leverage them more fully?
• What elements feel weaknesses of yours? How might you cultivate them more deliberately?
• What daily practices enhance your ability to handle stress?

 

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Footnotes

[1] Jim Collins on 'Thriving In Chaos' (Dan Bigman, Chief Executive, 2022)

[2] Graham Greene Dies, 86, Novelist of the Soul (The New York Times, 1991)

[3] The End of the Affair, page 34 (Graham Greene, 1951)

[4] High Output Management, page 47 (Andy Grove, 1983/1995)

[5] Happy Workaholics Need Boundaries, Not Balance

[6] The Problems of Success

[7] To Stay Focused, Manage Your Emotions

[8] The Ruling Out of Possibilities (On Failure)

[9] The Resilience Factor: 7 Keys to Finding Your Inner Strength and Overcoming Life's Hurdles, Chapter 2: How Resilient Are You?, pages 31-47 (Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatté, 2002). For more on resilience and further excerpts from Reivich and Shatté's work, see The Art of Self-Coaching, Class 5: RESILIENCE & VULNERABILITY.

[10] Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for Maximum Resilience and Well-Being, page 230 (Linda Graham, 2013)

 

Photo by Eugene Kaspersky.

Whether or Not to Fix a Broken Relationship

A theme in my practice is the leader who's struggling to repair a damaged working relationship with an employee. In most cases we start with the assumption that a better relationship is possible and that even a long-running conflict can be resolved. This usually entails the following steps in some form:

• Having both parties engage in an ongoing dialogue about the relationship.
• Identifying the behaviors and ways of working that each party finds problematic.
• Discovering how the other party is interpreting those behaviors.
• Understanding the intentions motivating those behaviors.
• Providing--and soliciting--more frequent feedback.
• Being prepared for regular setbacks.

This obviously involves a great deal of time and energy, and I'm not suggesting that leaders should always follow these steps or that they should try to fix every broken relationship. As I've noted before, one of the most common mistakes made by my clients is waiting too long "when making the difficult decision to fire someone. There were good reasons for the delay--there always are--but in hindsight they generally wish they’d acted sooner, and often all parties would have benefited." [1]

Further, if sustained underperformance by the employee is a contributing factor, then leaving them in their role may not be a kindness but a form of cruelty. As management thinker Peter Drucker once noted, "I have never seen anyone in a job for which he was inadequate who was not slowly being destroyed by the pressure and the strains, and who did not secretly pray for deliverance." [2]

But in many cases there are legitimate reasons for a leader to make a good-faith attempt, and I find that my clients typically want to try. And yet even then this work can prove exceedingly difficult, leaving the leader wondering at some point whether additional effort is warranted--and sometimes it isn't. If you're a leader facing this situation, here are some issues to consider and questions to ask yourself:

Intentions

We often assume that other people are more aware of our intentions than they really are. Or we believe that expressing our intentions once is sufficient, failing to appreciate that most messages are retained only after they've been repeated multiple times. [3]

• Is your employee aware that fixing this relationship has been a priority for you? Do they realize that you've been actively engaged in these efforts?
• If not, you need to be more explicit about what you're trying to accomplish.

Emotions

We also assume that other people are more aware of our emotions than they really are. We think what we're feeling is obvious, and yet the other person has no idea. This matters because a necessary step in the process will be an expression of vulnerability on your part as the person occupying the higher status role. [4] Why? Because vulnerability is the key to empathy, and empathy is the key to conflict resolution, but people don't naturally "empathize up" with leaders. [5]

To be clear, this does not mean that you should accept more than your share of responsibility, or fail to hold your employee accountable for their share, or seek to placate them by appearing weak. (Weakness isn't vulnerability, nor is vulnerability weakness. [6]) A starting point may simply be acknowledging that you care about this relationship and want it to to succeed. Whatever form it takes, it will almost certainly make you feel uncomfortable.

• Is your employee aware of the range of emotions you've experienced in this process? Do they realize that you've felt some vulnerability and discomfort?
• If not, you need to challenge yourself to communicate in a way that's more outwardly expressive and consistent with your inner state.

Trust

When there's sufficient awareness and understanding of your stated intentions and reported emotions, another barrier can be a credibility gap. Your employee may believe in your good intentions but be skeptical of your determination to follow through on commitments. They may lack faith in the sincerity of your disclosures. Or, even more troubling, they may distrust the legitimacy of the entire process.

• Does your employee believe that you mean what you say? Do they believe that you say what you mean? Do they believe that you've been sincere in your efforts to repair the relationship?
• If not, you need to scrupulously examine your behavior to ensure that it aligns with your intentions and emotions, and then redouble your efforts to build trust. [7]

Ability

A final factor to consider is your employee's ability to reciprocate your efforts and serve as an active counterpart in the process. The factors above all have an impact here, of course--in their absence, your employee may be able but unwilling to play their part. But in some cases people are open in principle to improving a relationship and yet lack the ability to make the necessary changes. This is often related to difficulty with emotion regulation [8] or a reluctance to take responsibility for one's own actions. [9] And while emotion regulation and a willingness to take responsibility are learnable skills, that process inevitably takes time.

• Does your employee have the capacity to manage their emotions, forgive you for your shortcomings (real and imagined), acknowledge their own contributions to the problem, and actively work with you to repair the relationship?
• If not, you need to determine if that's going to change in the time you have available.

With shared awareness and understanding of your intentions and emotions, as well as requisite degrees of trust and ability, you may conclude that continued efforts to fix this relationship are warranted. But as I advise my clients, be mindful of the consumption of your most precious resource--your attention--and the expected return on that investment. [10]

 

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Footnotes

[1] Don't Wait

[2] The Effective Executive, page 89 (Peter Drucker, 1966). Quoted in Merciful Exits (On Under-Performing Executives).

[3] For example, see Replication and Analysis of Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve (Jaap Murre and Joeri Dros, PLOS One, 2015).

[4] Resolving a Protracted Conflict

[5] The Difficulty of Empathizing Up

[6] "The perception that vulnerability is weakness is the most widely accepted myth about vulnerability and the most dangerous... To feel is to be vulnerable. To believe vulnerability is weakness is to belief that feeling is weakness... Our rejection of vulnerability often stems from associating it with dark emotions like fear, shame, grief, sadness, and disappointment--emotions that we don't want to discuss, even when they profoundly affect the way we live, love, work, and even lead. What most of us fail to understand and what took me a decade of research to learn is that vulnerability is also the cradle of the emotions we crave. Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, accountability, and authenticity... I define vulnerability as uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure." (Brené Brown, Daring Greatly, pages 33-34, 2015)

[7] For more on trust, see the following:

• Safety, Trust, Intimacy
• Two Sides of Trust
• Understanding the Trust Equation (Charles Green)

[8] The Tyranny of Feelings

[9] The Trium Group on Responsibility

[10] Growth, Profitability and Return on Attention

 

For Further Reading

Better Working Relationships

Work Style Differences

Racing Up the Ladder of Inference

Intent vs. Impact (When Communication Goes Awry)

Make Feedback Normal. Not a Performance Review.

 

Photo by Henry M. Diaz.

Nick Cave on Grief

Australian musician Nick Cave is no stranger to grief. At age 19 his father was killed in an automobile collision, a trauma that seems to have contributed not only to his decision to drop out of school to pursue music, but also to the initiation of a decades-long heroin habit, which he finally kicked after multiple stints in rehab. Nearly 40 years later, in 2015, Cave's 15-year-old son Arthur fell from a cliff and died from his injuries. The loss of Arthur had a profound effect on Cave and his wife Susie Bick, transforming not only their shared perspective on life, but also Cave's approach to music, art, and religion.

Cave discusses all of these topics at length with journalist Seán O'Hagan in a revelatory new book, Faith, Hope and Carnage, which proclaims on the back cover, "This is not a memoir. This is a conversation." Distilled from more than 40 hours of phone calls between Cave and O'Hagen over the past two years, the book provides a setting in which the two men explore complex ideas that require not only ample time and space, but also a tremendous amount of trust and a willingness to be candid and vulnerable. (In addition to serving as Cave's interlocutor, O'Hagan acknowledges his own grief following the loss of his younger brother Kieran.)

 

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Nick Cave: ...I don't know quite how to explain this, Seán, except that perhaps God is the trauma itself.

Seán O'Hagan: You're going to have to try to explain that one. What do you mean by "God is the trauma itself?"

Cave: That perhaps grief can be seen as a kind of exalted state where the person who is grieving is the closest they will ever be to the fundamental essence of things. Because, in grief, you become deeply acquainted with the idea of human mortality. You go to a very dark place and experience the extremities of your own pain--you are taken to the very limits of suffering. As far as I can see, there is a transformative aspect to this place of suffering. We are essentially altered or remade by it. Now, this process is terrifying, but in time you return to the world with some kind of knowledge that has something to do with our vulnerability as participants in this human drama. Everything seems to fragile and precious and heightened, and the world and the people in it seem to endangered, and yet so beautiful. To me it feels that, in this dark place, the idea of a God feels more present or maybe more essential. It actually feels like grief and God are somehow intertwined. It feels that, in grief, you draw closer to the veil that separates this world from the next. [p 32]

 

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Cave: You've experienced sudden loss and grief, too, Seán, so you know what I'm talking about. You are tested to the extremes of your resilience, but it's also almost impossible to describe the terrible intensity of the experience. Words just fall away.

O'Hagan: Yes, and nothing prepares you for it. It's tidal, and it can be capsizing.

Cave: That's a good word for it--"capsizing." But I also think it is important to say that these feelings I am describing, this point of absolute annihilation, is not exceptional. In fact it is ordinary, in that in happens to all of us at some time or another. We are all, at some point in our lives, obliterated by loss. If you haven't been by now, you will be in time--that's for sure. And, of course, if you have been fortunate enough to have been truly loved, in this world, you will also cause extraordinary pain to others when you leave it. That's the covenant of life and death, and the terrible beauty of grief.

O'Hagan: What I remember about the period after my younger brother, Kieran, died was a sense of total distractedness that came over me, an inability to concentrate that lasted for months. Did you experience that?

Cave: Yes, distraction was a big part of it, too.

O'Hagan: We talked earlier about the act of lighting a candle, and that for me was the only thing that could still my mind. It was as if peace had descended if only for a few moments.

Cave: Stillness is what you crave in grief. When Arthur died, I was filled with an internal chaos, a roaring physical feeling in my very being as well as a terrible sense of dread and impending doom. I remember I could feel it literally rushing through my body and bursting out the ends of my fingers. When I was alone with my thoughts, there was an almost overwhelming feeling coursing through me. I have never felt anything like it. It was mental torment, of course, but also physical, deeply physical, a kind of annihilation of the self--an interior screaming.

O'Hagan: Did you find a way to be still even for a few moments?

Cave: I had been meditating for years, but after the accident, I really thought I could never meditate again, that to sit still and allow that feeling to take hold of me would be some form of torture, impossible to endure. And yet, at one point I went up to Arthur's room and sat there on his bed, surrounded by his things, and I closed my eyes and meditated. I forced myself to do it. And, for the briefest moment in that meditation, I had this awareness that things could somehow be all right. It was like a small pulse of momentary light and then all the torment came rushing back. It was a sign and a significant shift. But when you mentioned that sense of constant distractedness, I was thinking about how, after Arthur died, there was a raging conversation going on in my head endlessly. It felt different to normal brain chatter. It was like a conversation with my own dying self--or with death itself. And, in that period, the idea that we all die just became so fucking palpable that it infected everything. Everything seemed to be at the point of dying.

O'Hagan: You sensed that death was all around you, just biding its time?

Cave: Exactly. And that feeling was very extreme for Susie. In fact, she kept thinking that everyone was going to die--and soon. It was not just that everyone eventually dies, but that everyone we knew was going to die, like, tomorrow. She had these absolutely existential free-falls that were to do with everyone's life being in terrible jeopardy. It was heart-breaking. But, in a way, that sense of death being present, and all those wild, traumatised feelings that went with it, ultimately gave us this weird, urgent energy. Not at first, but in time. It was, I don't know how to explain it, an energy that opened up all kinds of possibilities and a strange reckless power came out of it. It was as if the worst had happened and nothing could hurt us, and all our ordinary concerns were little more than indulgences. There was a freedom in that. [pp 41-43]

 

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Cave: If there is one message I have, really, it concerns the question all grieving people ask: Does it ever get better?... The answer is yes. We become different. We become better.

O'Hagan: How long did it take before you got to that point?

Cave: I don't know. I'm sorry, but I can't remember. I don't remember much of that time at all. It was incremental, or it is incremental. I think it was because I started to write about it and to talk about it, to attempt to articulate what was going on. I made a concerted effort to discover a language around this indescribable but very ordinary state of being. To be forced to grieve publicly I had to find a means of articulating what had happened. Finding the language became, for me, the way out. There is a great deficit in the language around grief. It's not something we are practiced at as a society, because it is too hard to talk about and, more importantly, it's too hard to listen to. So many grieving people just remain silent, trapped in their own secret thoughts, trapped in their own minds, with their only form of company being the dead themselves. [pp 43-44]

 

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Cave: I have since come to understand that there is little headway that we can make around grief until we learn to articulate it--speak it, say it out loud, sing about it, write it down, or whatever. There is no place to speak about grief in our regular lives. It's just not done, so we are left with these infernal abstractions that reside in our mind, and that, perhaps, unconsciously impact our behaviour. [p 95]

 

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Cave: Arthur's death literally changed everything for me. Absolutely everything. It made me a religious person--and, Seán, when I use that word "religious," you do understand the way that I am using it, right? We've talked enough about that for you to understand I am not talking about being a traditional Christian or something like that. I am not even talking about a belief in God, necessarily. It made me a religious person in the sense that I felt on a profound level a kind of deep inclusion in the human predicament, really, and an understanding of our vulnerability and the sense that, as individuals, we are each of us, imperilled.

O'Hagan: You feel that we are imperilled?

Cave: Yes. Insofar as anything can turn catastrophic at any time, personally, for each of us. Look at this pandemic. Look how unbelievably vulnerable we are. All these systems supposedly holding the world in place and we are laid low by a virus. Each life is precarious, and some of us understand it and some don't. But certainly everyone will understand it in time. And because of that, I feel a kind of empathy with people that I never felt before. It feels urgent and new and fundamental. For the predicament we have all found ourselves in--the predicament of an imperilled life. [pp 105-106]

 

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Cave: I think grief reinvents us. When I say grief, I mean the second life we lead after trauma. It feels more essential. The way we respond to things is altered--we become, as human beings, more precise.

O'Hagan: Yes, and much more selective in terms of what we listen to, read, watch. I like to think we become more attentive and discerning, but maybe it's just that we have less patience these days. [p 151]

 

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Cave: We've talked about this a lot, the idea that suffering is, by its nature, the primary mechanism of change, and that it somehow presents us with the opportunity to transform into something else, something different, hopefully something better. That God bestows upon us these terrible, devastating opportunities that bring amelioration and transformation. This change is not something we necessarily seek out; rather, change, is often brought to bear upon us, through a shattering or annihilation of our former selves. [pp 165-166]

 

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O'Hagan: I wonder if it is necessary to almost go under in order to come through stronger.

Cave: You mean, in regard to grieving?

O'Hagan: Yes.

Cave: That's an interesting idea, and I completely understand what you mean, but there is a very dangerous and seductive feeling to living life on the brink that I think should be resisted. In that very dark place, the grieving person can feel a proximity to the one they have lost that can be difficult to turn away from, or return from. That particular kind of grief can have a deadening and, I don't know, mechanising effect that, in some cases, can be permanent. I mean, Susie and I felt this within ourselves; for a while, there was a kind of zombification. I don't want you to misunderstand what I am saying, but there can be a kind of morbid worshipping of an absence. A reluctance to move beyond the trauma, because the trauma is where the one you lost resides, and therefore the place where meaning exists. [p 168]

 

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Cave: We tend to see grief as an emotional state, but it is also an atrocious destabilising assault upon the body. So much so that it can feel terminal.

O'Hagan: Yes, and when you are deep in grief, there's no real comfort to be had in people constantly telling you that time will make things better. But I distinctly remember waking up one morning, having finally had a decent night's sleep, and thinking, it's going to be okay. There was a sense that something had shifted imperceptibly. Did that happen to you?

Cave: Well, at first there was nothing but darkness, but, over time, Susie and I started to experience something like small fragments of light. These points of light were essentially thoughtful gestures from the people we encountered. We began to see, in a profound way, that people were kind. People cared. I know that sounds simplistic, maybe even naive, but I came to the conclusion that the world wasn't bad, at all--in fact, what we think of as bad, or as sin, is actually suffering. And that the world is not animated by evil, as we are so often told, but by love, and that despite the suffering of the world, or maybe in defiance of it, people mostly just cared. I think Susie and I instinctively understood that we needed to move toward this loving force, or perish. [pp 169-170]

 

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Cave: I am very familiar with this feeling. It is the compensatory gift at the heart of grief. The usual precepts collapse under the weight of the calamity: the terrible demands that we place upon ourselves; our own internal judging voice; the endless expectations and opinions of others. They suddenly become less important and there is a wonderful freedom in that as well.

O'Hagan: Well, "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose," as the great Kris Kristofferson put it.

Cave: Ha! Exactly, Seán, exactly! Fuck, I love that song. [p 190]

 

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Cave: Grief can lead some people to dark places from where they simply never return. I have seen it often. People constricting around an absence, growing hard and mad and furious at the world, and never recovering. There is nothing to lead them back from the abyss. And beyond that, too, I think the point-blank rejection of all spiritual matters as mere nonsense has its own problems. I'm talking about the outright rejection of religion by some who basically see it as a kind of inherent evil. That stance is a denial of all the potential good religion brings: the comfort, the succour, the redemption, the community. This thinking can bring its own kind of nothingness--not always, of course, but often. And, as we are seeing, people find a version of religion elsewhere, in tribalism, in their identity, in politics, for God's sake, in possessions. Look at our glorious secular world as it stands today. To me, secularism can also feel like a kind of hardening around an absence. So, essentially, what I am trying to present is the idea of grief as a gift. Grief as a positive force. Grief that can become, if we allow it its full expression, a defiant, sometimes mutinous energy. [p 220]

 

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O'Hagan: You both somehow managed to go beyond the trauma and the grief to the place where you are now. Did you make a conscious decision, as I think you once said to me, to defy it?

Cave: ...The life Susie and I have is full and replete with meaning. I love Susie more than I ever have. She feels the same about me. Our love is often joyous, which doesn't mean we don't shed our share of tears. I don't know how we got to where we are, because, in truth, I don't know where that is. I do know we shall never recover fully from the death of our son, nor should we. We are marked by it, and Susie carries a sadness that lives just below the surface of her loveliness, and perhaps that's what also makes her the astonishing and oceanic woman she is. I do know that Susie and I apportion meaning to the smallest things, in a way we never did before, and we get enormous comfort from this. Grief comes and goes, but it no longer scares us. We can collapse together, or apart, in the knowledge that tomorrow we will be back on our feet. I know that mostly I am happy and life is good. I don't mean that casually or trivially. I mean that life is actually good. People are good. I rarely see badness in people; rather, I see layers of suffering. I think people can do both terrible things and wonderful things when faced with the true understanding of their own powerlessness, vulnerability and lack of control. And I think Susie and I are acutely aware of the precarious nature of not only our lives, but all lives--their rareness, their preciousness--and that it can all disappear in an instant. In the light of that knowledge, we find gratitude to be a simple and essential act. And Arthur showed us that--the necessary and urgent need to love life and one another, despite the casual cruelty of the world. Love, that most crucial, counter-intuitive act of all, is the responsibility of each of us.

O'Hagan: You see the world as essentially good.

Cave: Well, in Revelations, there are those beautiful lines: "Look, He is coming with the clouds / And every eye shall see Him." I feel the goodness of the world must be experienced to some extent through the mechanism of suffering--the God in the cloud--if the notion of goodness is to hold any kind of truth or real substance. Beneath the surface, simple happiness is rarely simple at all, and most often hard-earned, and the price can be high. How Susie and I arrived at that place, I don't know, Seán. Like I said, I don't what what this strange place even is, but it was reached with baby steps, and through darkened rooms and countless cigarettes and a multitude of kindnesses from so many people, and many lessons learned along the way--just like anything else. [pp 239-240]

 

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For Further Reading

The Red Hand Files (Nick Cave). A website that Cave launched in 2018, The Red Hand Files consists of a series of answers to questions posed by the public. One of the most moving is Issue #6: in which Cave responds to the following:

I have experienced the death of my father, my sister, and my first love in the past few years and feel that I have some communication with them, mostly through dreams. They are helping me. Are you and Susie feeling that your son Arthur is with you and communicating in some way?

 

BOOKS AND ESSAYS

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End (Atul Gawande)

The Denial of Death (Ernest Becker)

Dying: A Memoir (Cory Taylor)

Gratitude (Oliver Sacks)

Mortality (Christopher Hitchens)

Sheryl Sandberg, UC Berkeley Commencement (2016)

The Violet Hour: Great Writers at the End (Katie Roiphe)

The Year of Magical Thinking (Joan Didion)

When Breath Becomes Air (Paul Kalanithi)

Why Mortality Makes Us Free (Martin Hägglund, The New York Times, 2019)

 

POEMS

"Aubade" (Philip Larkin)

"For the Anniversary of My Death" (W.S. Merwin)

 

RELATED POSTS OF MINE

Mourning Ends, Grief Need Not

On the Shortness of Life

Marcus Aurelius, 3,000 Years, and the Present Moment

 

Photo of Nick Cave by NRK P3.

Laughing at Myself

The older I get, the more I appreciate the ability to laugh at myself.

Thankfully, with each passing year I have an increasing number of opportunities to practice.

Among other benefits, it causes most of my so-called "problems" to vanish, leaving me to wonder what all the fuss was about.

This applies not only to my more obvious follies--although that's important--but also, and more fundamentally, to seeing myself as a subject of mirth.

This doesn't involve mockery or shame or any kind of self-loathing. I'm proud of who I am, even as I remain a work-in-progress.

Nor does it entail going through life with a smirk on my face, minimizing my sorrows and grief. Our losses are what make us whole, and the lessons I've learned from mine are invaluable.

But I'm increasingly aware of my absurdity and my foolishness, particularly when I feel "thwarted" in some way, when the universe has refused to arrange itself to suit my preferences.

Sometimes this perspective causes me to question those preferences in the first place--were they truly "needs" or just whims? And sometimes I persist in my efforts, but with a lighter heart and less attachment: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The older I get, and the more I laugh at myself, the more I value the wisdom of Jim Harrison, a hero of mine: "We know a great deal, but not very much."

 

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For Further Reading

Middle-Aged Men and Ponytails

Adventure, Tragedy, Comedy

Learning from Sisyphus

We're Not the Center of the World (But We Think We Are)

I have a special admiration for authors who laugh at themselves as they share their wisdom, and here are some of my favorite texts in that vein:

The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking (Oliver Burkeman, 2012)

The Search for the Genuine: Nonfiction, 1970-2015 (Jim Harrison, 2022). The line above is from Harrison's 1998 essay "Why I Write, Or Not," page 59.

Death: The End of Self-Improvement (Joan Tollifson, 2019)

How Come Every Time I Get Stabbed in the Back My Fingerprints Are on the Knife? (Jerry Harvey, 1999)

Photo by David A. LaSpina.