Experimenting with Journaling

As I mentioned in my post a couple of weeks ago, I have been experimenting with the Genos Journalling App.  I have now done that daily for a fortnight, so (as promised, fearsome Reader) I am now reporting back.  (And for those following this saga attentively, I did find an old blank hard covered book in my stationery cupboard, and my handwriting isn't quite as illegible as I pretend).

It has been a useful and interesting experience.  I chose Self Awareness as my focus for the fortnight (the other options on the app are Personal Vision and Gratitude).  The various 'prompts' to which I responded include: I need to ask for help when... I am at my happiest when... I tend to sabotage myself when... I enjoy myself best when... and so on.

The discipline is then to write for the chosen length of time (3, 5 or 10 minutes, without stopping, and with no self-censorship, until the buzzer on the app goes.  In many ways, it is similar to working with a Thinking Partner using Nancy Kline's Thinking Partnership process (regular readers will know I'm a fan.

As to what I wrote, that will remain between the covers of my journal: that is rather the point. But the interesting bits are always when you write something that surprises you, or that you have always known but somehow lost track of, and so on.

One thing that is valuable is to go back over what you have written a while later and mark up what is particularly important

There was one prompt that I rejected (you always have the option to choose another prompt, if you don't like the one offered). The one I rejected (twice) was: One compliment I know that I deserve is... You may speculate and draw your own conclusions about what that says about me, should you wish to do so.

With regard to the Genos tool, it works well, apart from a few typos (particularly in the Gratitude prompts), and I would recommend it as a starting point. It's weakness, of course, is that it only has the three topic areas (and a finite number of prompts, of course).

For myself, however, I am now going to choose my own prompts, focusing on some different areas of my life that particularly want to attend to over the coming months.  I may report back further in due course.

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With thanks to Aaron Burden for sharing his photography on Unsplash

Vulnerability

This morning, a fellow coach, Christina Gates, posted a very personal entry on her Linked In feed. I commented on how good it was, and she replied that it had been hard (and important) to write.  I really felt for her, as it was a very vulnerable expression of her feelings. And I reflected on the different emotions that accompany vulnerability. When we are considering making ourselves vulnerable, we often feel fearful: as Christina said, it is a difficult thing to do. Yet when I read a post like that, I am almost always left feeling greater admiration for the person who wrote it than I had done previously. And I suspect that is true for many people. There is a curious power to vulnerability; not least because we recognise the bravery that sits behind it.

My thinking then went on to some of the feedback I got from the EI 180 I did recently, and to which I have referred in previous posts. One of the messages was that I could use less self-deprecating humour.  My justification for such humour is that I hate arrogance (and I am aware that is a risk for me: that I can be quite proud, and that could easily translate as arrogance). Self-deprecating humour, I would maintain, prevents that.

But now I am wondering. Is it perhaps, in my case at least, a defence against feeling vulnerable. If I have named and laughed at my own foibles or inadequacies, I suspect that it makes it much harder for others to give me feedback on them: it is disarming in a rather self-serving way.

I was reflecting on this with a colleague this afternoon, and at the end of the conversation, she paid me a compliment. I responded with some self-deprecating humour - even though I had been discussing with her just minutes previously my intention not to use it. And she was good enough to call me out on it, which was extremely helpful.

And I am interested in reflecting on that, too. It suggests that not only am I uncomfortable with criticism, I am uncomfortable with praise, and use self-deprecation to address that discomfort too. Is it intimacy that makes me feel vulnerable, then?

Yet I am aware, too, that I do make myself vulnerable on occasion. So there is something about context that I need to understand further.  And I need to keep a close watch on that self-deprecating humour, too!

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Thanks to Ava Sol and Nik Shuliahin for sharing their photography on Unsplash

More reflections on Time Management

Since installing Toggl (see previous post, here) and despite being very busy (as Toggle reveals: I will put some analysis on this blog in due course) I have been reflecting further on Time Management.

When I run workshops on the topic, I often start by joking that if ever business is slow, I can always sell a time management workshop; and there is some truth in that. It is a perennial problem for many people in many organisations. 

But this week's insight (or was it just remembering or bringing to the surface something I have long known?) was that time management is really about two quite different , but in practice inter-related, questions.

One is How do I allocate my time? and the second is, How do I manage myself?

I say the two are inter-related, because in my experience (and thinking not just about myself, but about the many people with whom I have worked on this vexed issue), the decision on how to allocate time is profoundly impacted by one's self-management skills (or lack thereof...)

By this I mean that it is relatively easy to block out time in the diary every week to work on important activities before they become urgent. But then something arises: an interruption, a distraction, a more urgent (or more enjoyable) task; and it is in the management of one's responses to these issues that success in time management lies.

I should add that I am not an advocate of 'stick to the plan, no matter what!' If the building is on fire, then leaving it seems to be a better idea! 

However, what one should do is, firstly, notice that one has a choice, rather than react out of habit; and secondly make that choice by a genuine consideration of the relative importance (as well as urgency) of the distracting activity.  More often than not, the right course of action is indeed to stick to the plan.

So developing the self-management strategies to enable one to notice the moment of choice, to make the choice based on the right criteria, and then to implement the choice, becomes a key focus for those determined to improve the way in which they use their time.

A Revealing Slip?...

I blogged recently about the shift in my self-understanding that was triggered by the Hogan Dark Side questionnaire. In particular, I reached an understanding that my social reserve (in informal situations) is not by fundamental orientation, but a learned defensive behaviour.  That shift has had some real, interesting and thought-provoking results.

The first thing I noticed was shortly after my feedback session, when I attended a reunion of participants on a programme I had run a while previously. Normally, such occasions are precisely those on which my social reserve is evident. Historically, I have engaged little and not particularly enjoy them. However, on leaving that evening, I noticed that I had engaged a lot more, in a more relaxed (and in Hogan terms, colourful and imaginative way) and as a result had enjoyed the occasion a lot more.

Interestingly, that was not as a result of any intention - I had not planned to do so, as a result of my new insight. No, my analysis is that the new insight itself, alone, was enough to change my behaviour slightly, and the positive feedback that elicited from others reinforced that, and that led to a different pattern of engagement.

The next notable point of interest, and one tending in the other direction, arose last week. It was the end-of-course dinner for a year-long programme at a university. Again I was relaxed, and allowing my habitual reserve on such occasions to slip away. And then I said something careless, that I wished I hadn't said, and which was picked up on (very gently) by someone at the table.

I was recounting the story of a film, The Story of Ruth (the 1981 one, with Connie Booth, not the earlier famous film of the same name) which had used our family house as a set - in fact a set for a number of different locations in the film. I mentioned that it was, amongst others, the respite home 'where all the loonies lived...' At that, someone at the table raised an eyebrow and muttered 'careful...' or something.

Reflecting on this later, I was struck by a few things.  Firstly, I was interested in the slip itself. Was it because I was relaxed, and thus betrayed an attitude I would sooner hide?  I don't think so: I really do not think, or talk, about those with mental health problems as 'loonies.' So where did it come from?  My best guess is that in telling the story, I was reverting to the teenager who first told his friends that story in 1981, and used the language I would have used then. Not an all together comfortable reflection, but I think an honest one.

But I was also keenly aware that such an embarrassing slip is precisely the kind of reason that I had developed my social reserve. When I was younger, I would have found it completely mortifying to have been in such a situation, with people (I would have imagined) forming all sorts of judgements about me. But now, I am better placed, emotionally at least, to deal with such embarrassment without being completely distraught. Also, when I was younger, the likelihood was that a social faux pas would lead to ridicule and possibly bullying or ostracisation. That is certainly no longer the case.


So despite the embarrassment of that moment, I remain happy with my less reserved self, and will continue to take the risk of expressing myself more on such informal social occasions - and just pray that I don't make too much of a spectacle of myself!

My Dark Side

A number of my coaching clients, and some fellow coaches whose work I rate highly, have spoken well of the Hogan psychometrics, and especially the one that identifies potential career de-railers - the so-called Dark Side assessment.

So I have decided to get trained on these, and as a first step, had  a go at completing one myself, under the guidance of Julia Cater of People Decisions. It was very interesting.

My initial reflections on the report that emerged are that it has quite high face-validity; that is, I recognise myself in it (rather more than, say, a horoscope). Moreover, my wife (if not my greatest fan, certainly my most acute critic) also recognised me in it.  And we could both see, even though there are areas where we both think it gets it wrong, that it is a very useful basis for reflection and discussion with a coach (I have yet to meet Julia for the de-brief).

Overall, it suggests that my high scores (that is, my strengths-that-might-become-weaknesses-under-pressure are being Reserved (Independent can become detached), Imaginative (Imaginative can become eccentric) and Colourful (vivacious can become dramatic).

I also score very low on some areas where perhaps I lack the strengths at all: Diligent, Dutiful and Sceptical.

By and large, that's not too far off the mark.  However, I strongly disagree with Lacking few well-defined beliefs or interests, but with regrets about past behaviour and Lack passion or enthusiasm.

I think the Reserved is somewhat overstated, particularly Not communicate frequently or well,  and likewise the Colourful  especially Talk more than he listens.  And clearly, those two points, Not communicate frequently or well, and Talk more than he listens, sit rather oddly together.

However, I can see how it arrived at all of these, and they (and many of the other points) are worthy of thought and discussion - and even as I type, I am wondering if, under extreme stress, those may have some validity...

The big question, of course, is about the self-report aspect. For instance, I answered some questions based on the literal words, even though I suspected (and I think rightly) that they would be interpreted in a way that is not what I feel about myself. For example, when a question has ‘never’ or ‘always’ in it, I always take that literally so will tend to disagree, as there is nearly always at least one exception; whereas if it has nearly always or almost never, I will answer the opposite way.  So the process didn’t feel very robust in that way. Also, I was aware of what it was likely to be saying about me, and there is always that tendency to answer about the Andrew I’d like to be…

All in all, very interesting, despite these reservations, and as I say, it could certainly be the basis of some useful exploratory discussions and reflections.