Obedience

Stop! Before you read any further, I invite you to notice your immediate response to the topic of this post: Obedience.

If you are like me, and many others I know, your instinctive response may be somewhat critical, and you may have immediately started to think of the many reasons why blind obedience is a bad idea.

And of course you are right.  But the title isn't blind obedience; it is obedience.  And I suspect many of us have been educated and culturally conditioned to conflate the two.

Allegory of Obedience, Giotto

Our educationalists and our culture place such a high premium on being an individual, true to yourself and so forth, that the idea of obedience as a Good seems somewhat alien.

Yet clearly it is, and I think we do ourselves and others a disservice by not recognising that fact and interrogating it with a little more rigour.

And if you think I am making a bold, or even rash, claim with 'clearly it is,' I invite you to consider a few practical examples.

In this country, we drive on the left. It is really, really good if people obey that convention. It has terrible consequences if people neglect to do so, even inadvertently.

The lifeguards on one of my favourite beaches in Cornwall tell you not to swim outside the flags, as there are riptides. Again, it is good if people obey that instruction.

But I want to make a more profound point, beyond drawing your attention to our cultural dislike of the notion of obedience (and its practical importance). And that is, I think we all obey, all of the time. The question is what, or whom, do we obey.

The word obey comes, originally, from the Latin: ob + audire; literally to listen to. So whom do you listen to? When you are considering whether to have one more drink, for example, do you listen to the part of you that counsels you to do so, or the other part that suggests that you have had enough already?

If you place all your obedience at the service of your own autonomy, how do you differ from a narcissist?

And as we are social beings, we need rules of some sort at least to coordinate potentially conflicting behaviours (such as which side of the road to drive on).

So the issue, as I see it, is deciding how to use our obedience: what rules, authorities, sources, people or institutions are worthy of obedience?

I think this is an important question for our times, not least as children and young adults in particular need boundaries, to keep them from harming themselves and others. And I fear we have created a culture in which any idea of obedience is so abhorrent to some that they are unable to follow evidence-based health advice, for example, and that the simple sharing of information about healthy life styles is seen as an oppressive practice.

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As so often, this post is my thinking-out-loud rather than my final view; so I'll be interested in others' perspectives, particularly if I've got this wrong...

Artificial Authenticity

Authenticity is a bit like motherhood and apple pie. One can't exactly be against it. Much of the literature on leadership talks about the importance of authenticity, and I think that is right. It is quite clear that people are unlikely to trust and follow a leader who is duplicitous, and inconsistent in words and actions.*  

But I think that the issue of authenticity bears some scrutiny. To take a simple, domestic, example, there are times when my wife (to whom I have been happily married for nearly forty years) can press my buttons, as it were, with such uncanny accuracy that I would gladly biff her on the head with a frying pan.**

Yet I don't. Would it be more authentic to do so, if that is what I am truly feeling at that moment?  I don't think so.  And the reason I don't think so is that we are complex beings, and our true self (our authentic self) is not merely the expression of the transient emotions that we experience at a moment in time. 

So what is authentic behaviour in that context?  I think it is about aligning our behaviour with our best version of ourself. The reason I don't biff Jane with a frying pan (or at least, one of the reasons) is that it is not true to who I am striving to be, or to become.  And by consistently not biffing her with a frying pan for forty years, I have now so developed my character, that I think I can fairly say that I am a non-violent husband, and I think that is a good thing - and indeed an authentic thing - for me to be. 

However, in a sense that authenticity is artificial: it is a learned behaviour - a discipline to refrain from acting on my immediate, and doubtless authentic, emotional response.

But where I think it differs from a problematic inauthenticity lies in the realm of intention. I am genuinely, and consistently, trying to be a loving husband. It is when that genuine and consistent intention is lacking, that someone's behaviour is more likely to be inauthentic in the problematic way.  And the problem with that understanding is that we cannot see another person's intention; we can only deduce it.

However, for myself, I can be clear: it is not inauthentic to aspire to be better than I am; indeed that is, for me, an essential part of becoming ever more authentic.

* I leave aside the rather extraordinary state of our political systems from this discussion...

** Hyperbole, but I'm sure you recognise what I am describing.

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With thanks to  Slava,  Aleksandra Tanasiienko, and Sammy Williams for sharing their photos on Unsplash

Patriotism

As you may remember, if you are (as you should of course be) a regular reader of my posts, I have been learning a poem a week for the last few months. It has been an interesting and fruitful exercise in many ways: not least remembering how we learn things by heart - and how satisfying that can be.

This week, I learned Rupert Brooke's sonnet: The Soldier. You know, the one that begins: 

    If I should die, think only this of me:

        That there’s some corner of a foreign field

    That is for ever England.

It is, of course, very out of fashion these days - we are much more in sympathy with Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon of course, and with good reason.  So it is fair to say that I started with a degree of antipathy towards it.  But I decided to learn it anyway.

And as so often happens, as I learned it, I grew to like it rather more. It is easy to be critical, and to talk of his naivety and so forth. But there is a genuine poignancy to it; and more than that, there is something important, I think, in being able to enter the imaginative and emotional world of someone who is starting from a very different viewpoint than we do ourselves. 

In fact, in terms of valuing difference, or diversity, I think that is an essential skill, and (it occurs to me) not one that all those who champion EDI always demonstrate.

I think it was CS Lewis (someone else rather out of fashion, I think) who wrote in one of his essays that, if forced to choose between reading only old books, or only new ones, he would choose the old. His point was not that the old books were likely to be better than the new; but rather that if they did contain errors or assumptions that were incorrect, those would be far more obvious to a modern reader; whereas the errors and assumptions in new books might be nearly invisible, as we breathe a more similar cultural air to the writers.

And in Brooke's poem, of course, there is a terrible naivety about the horrors of war; and a degree of sentimentality about his love of England. But there is no jingoism.  And that made me think about patriotism: something else that is very unfashionable. Of course jingoism and xenophobia are dreadful; but then so is anything at the extreme. And I think some risk going to the opposite extreme at the moment of hating our own country and our heritage, with as blind a prejudice as the xenophobe hates other people's. 

Which leads me (as so often) to think how wise Aristotle was in his formulation of the notion of virtue, as a mid-point between excesses.  So we should love our family - not because it is better than other families, but because it is ours; and in due moderation; and likewise our home town, our football team, our country, and so on. In each of these there is something loveable, and it is, perhaps, ingratitude to fail to recognise that - and that would take us to one of the extremes Aristotle would counsel against. But always, that love should be tempered by an appropriate humility and criticality, lest we go to the other extreme.

And for all its sentimentality, I am enjoying Brooke's poem more than I thought I should:

            And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

                        In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

 

Emotional Intelligence - a Behavioural Approach

  

At the start of lockdown, I declared a sabbatical, and embarked on a number of CPD projects. In addition to those I planned at that stage, and in part because of a recommendation by David Clutterbuck, with whom I was studying Leadership Team Coaching, I signed up for a programme with Genos, to become proficient in, and qualified to use, their range of Emotional Intelligence assessments, feedback reports, and development programmes. I have just completed that, and (subject to a practical next week - update: undertaken and passed..) will soon have  (update: now have) the badge. There were a few things I particularly liked about the Genos approach. One was the chap leading the programme, Deiric McCann who was credible and entertaining.  

A second was their model of EI:

This is more comprehensive than many, having six core competences, each underpinned by seven specific behaviours. And that is the other thing I really like: the assessments are behavioural. They ask those giving feedback on an individual about specific observable behaviours. Not only that, but they ask both how important each behaviour is, and also how frequently they see it demonstrated. That gives participants very specific feedback. On the one hand, they learn what they are doing that works, that people find valuable; and on the other, what they could do more of, in order to increase the quality of their interactions with others. And that is all backed up with benchmarking data, and of course with written comments by those completing the feedback.

So I am looking forward to working with this assessment - which is available both in a leadership and a workplace version (ie for those without leadership responsibilities).  I certainly found it useful when I went through the process myself, and got some very helpful and specific pointers both about my strengths and a few things to try differently or more frequently.

For example, one of the behaviours in the Positive Influence competence is 'Responds effectively to others' inappropriate behaviour.' My colleagues who completed the feedback rated this as highly important, but rated my level of demonstrated behaviour rather lower (still high, and within the benchmark, I should add, not that I'm feeling at all sensitive or defensive, you understand...).  That is really helpful to know, and prompted some real reflection.  And I realise that there is some truth in it: I do tend to be a bit laissez-faire, and to see where something is going, rather than intervene early and clearly when someone does or says something inappropriate. And the feedback from my colleagues is that they would prefer it if I intervened; so I will be seeking opportunities to do so. (You have been warned!).  But I hope that makes it clear why I like this particular approach compared to some of the other assessments out there: it gives such specific behavioural feedback, that it is easy to develop a plan of action (putting the plan into action may be more difficult, but that's another story...)

The remaining question, of course, is whether behaving in a more emotionally intelligent way actually increases one's emotional intelligence. It seems clear that it will certainly increase one's demonstrated Emotional Intelligence, and that is surely what the development process is supposed to achieve.  But further, the process of engaging in this way will also lead to greater self awareness, which is one of the foundations of EI, and also self management (which is another EI competence).  Beyond that I refer you to Aristotle on Virtues: we acquire them by practicing them. 

From the Other End...

I have blogged a few times about the work of Nancy Kline and her Thinking Environment; and how the quality of listening that she champions helps people who are listened to in that way to think at their very best.

But what I think has been neglected (or at least, I have seen and heard little about this) is the effect of listening in that way on the listener. So in this post, I consider the Thinking Environment - listening in that way - from the other end, as it were.

By 'listening in that way,' I mean embodying the ten components of a Thinking Environment: Attention, Ease, Equality, Difference, Appreciation, Information, Encouragement, Feelings, Incisive Questions and Place. See my post here for my earlier discussion of these.

My hypothesis is that, over time, the practice of listening in this way instils habits in the listener that become part of his or her character; and I am mindful here of Aristotle's view of virtues being habits of good behaviour.

My idea, therefore, is that these ten components are helping me (and others who follow this discipline, of course) to acquire and integrate certain good habits into our repertoire, and this blog post, as usual, is my thinking out loud, as it were, about this idea.

So what virtues do I think that it fosters? 

In the first place, generosity: the gift of full attention, laying aside one's own interests and concerns for a while and creating that sense of ease which is essential to this work, as well as making the effort to overcome our embarrassment and offer genuine appreciation of the other person, are all generous acts.

Linked to that, but separate, is an appropriate humility.  The component of equality reins in our ego, and any tendency that we may have to assume that we know best. And that is not merely an intellectual posture: the actual practice of listening in this way is often humbling. As people reveal their thinking I am frequently in awe of their qualities, not just in terms of the solutions they discover to the issues they are addressing, but also the values they bring to bear: vulnerability, compassion, tenacity and many others are frequently displayed.  Interestingly, that same component of equality helps us to guard against a false self-deprecation: whilst we are to see ourselves as no better than the other person, we are also to see ourselves as no worse; and for some of us, that is a healthy restorative.

And linked to humility is something about genuine interest in other people and their perspectives that will tend towards wisdom. The component of difference is relevant here: valuing other people's perspectives and seeking to learn from them, rather than simply discount them or over-ride them with our own. This is one path to learning, of course...

Finally, I think the practice of listening like this can lead to increased self-insight. In particular, that can arise from the openness to difference, already discussed, and also from the questioning of assumptions that underpins the formulation of Incisive Questions. The constant quest for assumptions that others make, and our critical engagement with them increases our ability to recognise our own.

Therefore, I continue to work in this way, where appropriate, not only because of the utilitarian reason, that it seems to work for my clients; but also because of the personal development imperative: it is helping me to become more the kind of person I aspire to be (from which my more perceptive readers will realise that I see myself as someone who needs to increase his generosity, humility, wisdom, and self-insight - not an unworthy project for the next few years).

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With thanks to Mimi Thian, Iqx Azmi, Jordan McDonald and Markel Hall  for sharing their photography via Unsplash.

The Pursuit of Happiness

At Cardiff Futures this week, we had a session with the inspirational Aileen Richards. She had a long corporate career with Mars, and is the first woman on the Board of the Welsh Rugby Union.

She raised many interesting aspects of leadership, illustrated by anecdotes from her 30 years of corporate experience, and led a highly-engaged discussion with participants. 

One point she made that has been causing me to reflect was based on an article about parenting that she had read many years ago. It started by reflecting that most parents say; 'I just want my children to be happy.' That sounds a bit motherhood-and-apple-pie. But, the article continued, what they should say is; 'I just want my children to be kind.' 

The point was that is people are kind, happiness will follow, as will other good things. And I think that there is much truth in that.  But I have also been reflecting on the other part of the proposition: the pursuit of happiness (which is famously written into the US Declaration of Independence. 

For I think implicit in the idea Aileen was proposing, and made more explicit in other contexts, is the notion that happiness is actually a by-product of other things. The direct pursuit of happiness is likely to be counter-productive - for it provokes a focus on the self, and on one's own state of mind and emotion that is likely to lead to a selfish outlook: and it is a matter of common observation that selfish people don't tend to be happy.  Conversely, if one considers the truly happy people one knows, it is pretty clear that they don't focus on pursuing happiness: they have more meaningful things to do with their lives. 

Of course, Aristotle was on the case, back in the day: he maintained that true happiness is to be found by pursuing the virtues.  And I think he may have been onto something.

Risk taking and prudence

I have been reflecting a bit about risk-taking and prudence; and my different relationship to physical and emotional (or social) risk.

That has been prompted, in part, by a recognition that over the summer I made a number of imprudent decisions about physical risk; one of which led to my damaging my ankle quite severely, taking a fall from a rock-face, and another leading a group of friends over Striding Edge in fairly adverse conditions (I learned later there had been a severe accident that very day with someone falling from the ridge; and a fatality two or three days previously).

And then, in discussion with some other coaches, I was reflecting on taking risks as a coach, and recognising that I had never regretted taking a risk in that context, but had regretted occasions on which I had failed to do so.

At the level of physical risk, my conclusion is that I should start to act more like the venerable grandfather that I am, rather than the teenager I was thirty-five years ago. That is simply a matter of growing up.

But with regard to social or emotional risk, I have been reflecting on the excellent analogy in Daniel Nettle's book on Personality. He talks about smoke detectors, and points out that a smoke detector can fail in either of two ways.

On one hand, it can go off when it is not necessary; which leads to people standing outside in the rain waiting for the fire brigade to arrive and give the all-clear to re-enter the building. On the other hand, it can fail to go off when it should do, which leads to possible loss of life.  Naturally enough, manufacturers over-calibrate smoke detectors, so that the first error occurs, rather than the second.

Nettle's point is that our response to risk can be over-calibrated like that. Clearly, over the years, I have managed to over-compensate with regards to physical risk, but, like many people, social and emotional risk remains over-calibrated; so that there is always a tendency to over-react to perceived risk and refrain from, or withdraw from, situations that feel risky. 

And as with physical risk, the way to re-calibrate is experience: regularly pushing the boundaries of perceived risk, until I am more comfortable with it.

So if I offend you next time we meet, put it down to experimentation with calibration: it’s nothing personal!

Shame and Guilt

Over the last couple of days, I have been at a Daring Way workshop, run by Jacqui Sjenitzer, and based on the work of Brené Brown (see here for an account of a previous workshop with Jacqui on this material).  I will blog more about the workshop overall (it was excellent) when I have had time to reflect on it further. In this post I want to pursue one particular line of thought. 

One of the many helpful distinctions that Brown makes is between guilt and shame. According to her understanding, guilt is 'I did something bad,' and shame is 'I am bad.' Further, she states that shame is positively correlated to addiction, depression, and many other problems; whilst guilt is inversely correlated to them: it leads to much better outcomes.

That led one of the participants on the programme to say: "People talk about Catholic guilt; but really it's Catholic shame..."

I understand that for many people, that may be their experience of Catholicism; and I am not going to argue with their lived reality. However, it is also my experience that the opposite is true, and that my Catholic upbringing, at least, has allowed me to deal appropriately with guilt and not be shackled by shame. We didn't get into that discussion on the workshop - it would have been a fairly major digression, and Jacqui wanted us to move on. So here are my reflections.

My thesis is that Catholicism is very powerful. And like anything that is powerful, when abused, it becomes very destructive. But used properly, it is a great force for good.

I was pleased that one of the other participants, at the end of the programme, chose to share a quotation attributed to Mother Teresa, which she felt summed up the spirit of the course:

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.

 What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway. 

The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.

Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway. 

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God.  It was never between you and them anyway.

That, it seems to me, is an example of Catholicism done properly.

One of the things that interests me is how much of the new wisdom on how to live a healthy, happy and successful life is already embedded in the Catholicism in which I was raised.

From Viktor Frankl, we learn of the importance of meaning and purpose: from my upbringing, I know that my meaning and purpose are to love and be loved.

In a world that seems ever more bitterly divided, I hold fast to my Faith that all were created by love, in love, and for love.

To move on from difficult stuff, Brown (and others) teach us that we need to acknowledge it, learn from it, apologise or make amends when appropriate, and then leave it behind. Many use therapy to help with this. In my tradition, that need is met by a daily examination of conscience, prayers of contrition, a resolution to do better next time, confession, and absolution. The psychological benefits of this practice, alone, are extraordinary (when correctly practiced, of course).

The research on the benefits of meditation is convincing many people of the importance of this as a daily practice. We learned that from the Desert Fathers (and Christ himself, of course), and daily meditation is the cornerstone of a life of prayer.

Almost every book on leadership talks of the importance of integrity, based on clear values. I strive to run my business (and indeed life) according to the values of Faith, Hope and Charity; and informed by justice, prudence, temperance and fortitude. (Temperance is not a fashionable word, but it is vigilance against excess: and how much that is needed at present!). My favourite (and recurrent) feedback is that I help to re-kindle or strengthen hope.

We are learning more and more about the beneficial effects of the practice of gratitude. From my earliest years, I have been taught to give thanks for every day, for every meal on the table..., in fact for everything.

As I say, I recognise that others have had a dreadful experience of a Catholic upbringing, and that is truly tragic (and shameful for the Church). But I think that the other story also deserves to be told; the formation that inspired not only Mother Teresa, but also Maximilian Kolbe, the friar who volunteered to die in place of a stranger in Auschwitz, Lech Walesa, the leader of Solidarity, and countless others in every field of human endeavour.

Thinking about Values

Lots of things have been prompting me to think about values and their relation to the work we do. We had a fascinating day in Cardiff recently looking at what it might mean to be a values-led Institution, informed by two of their philosophers, and also a guest speaker from Findhorn; but mainly drawing on the collective wisdom of the assembled academic and professional staff.  I have also been working with Winchester University on a similar agenda; as well as writing about my own practice for my ILM Diploma assignment; and most recently discussing possible futures for the SAgE Faculty at Newcastle, including the underlying principles of any strategy.

Thinking about all of these, I have not been able to come up with anything more potent and relevant for my own business than the classic articulation of Christian philosophy, building on Greek philosophy. That is, I see my business as being founded on the three pillars of faith, hope and charity, and run (as best I can) with prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance. 

Clearly, as I am a Christian, each of these has a supernatural meaning for me. But they also have a very definite here-and-now aspect, which I think is relevant to people of all belief systems, including agnostic or atheist ones.

Faith, in that sense, I associate very much with Viktor Frankl's insights on the importance of meaning (see here for more of my reflections on Frankl, and here for an external summary of his life and work). One of the things I do when I am working at my best is help people to find meaning in what they are doing and experiencing, and thus the belief that it is of worth and value (or if not, the belief that it is worth addressing that issue!).

Hope is foundational to my work. More than once, I have received unprompted the feedback that what I help people to do is to discover or re-kindle hope, and how powerful that is. That hope may be built on the realisation that we really can make a difference, that we can make the future better for ourselves and for others, and that however dreadful a situation one finds oneself in, our response to that, and to that extent our future, is open for us to influence: which of course links back to Frankl's work.

Charity is an orientation to the good of other people: seeking to do things for the benefit of others, and avoid things that will be against their best interests. First of all, do no harm... Again, I seek both to live like this, and to help others to do so. A lot of my work with conflict and negotiation is about seeking to get people to understand the perspective of their adversary; and that includes ceasing to view them as an adversary, but as a human being with rights and good intentions and good will.

Prudence, I think, has a bad press. I see it as being about taking courageous decisions, whilst avoiding being reckless. Again, that is something I strive to do myself, but most often see with admiration, and sometimes awe, in my clients. 

Justice is widely recognised as one of the fundamental values to which most organisations commit, and it is very clear that if employees, for example, sense inequity in their treatment, that is very bad for the organisation. Increasingly, organisations are looking beyond internal equity and adopting programmes of corporate social responsibility, to spread justice further afield. In the case of my business, that results in both directors giving significant time on a regular basis to a number of charities.

Fortitude is a virtue that I associate particularly with tenacity and with the courage to tell the truth, even when it is difficult or feels disadvantageous to do so. Again, these are values I strive to honour, but would have to declare them to be work in progress.

Temperance is another misunderstood virtue, in my view. It is the virtue of appropriate moderation. It curbs greed, arrogance and excess. That includes excessive value placed on work activities at the expense of all the other human activities which have a claim on us (our responsibilities to our families and friends, for example) or which would be good for us (such as staying fit). Thus it is closely associated in my thinking with that integration that is at the heart of work/life balance. 

I realise, as I write this, that I am setting a high bar; so I invite those who know me to hold me to these aspirational values, and to let me know each time I fall short of them. Only by constantly working towards them, I think, will I be able to run the business that I want to run.

Habits of mind

I have just finished reading Neuropsychology for Coaches, by Brown and Brown. I found it a very interesting and enjoyable read, as it explained the lightest theories and hypotheses emerging from the ever-expanding understanding of how the brain actually works, and discussed the implications for coaches.

In many ways, it confirmed things I already knew, and also offered fresh understandings of why some of the things I know work are actually effective - not least the story approach about which I have written my own book.

One of the key things for me was reaffirming the power of established neural pathways: the way in which every time we follow a particular pathway, we strengthen it and increase the likelihood of using it again.

That is phenomenally useful in terms of learning: indeed that is how rote learning of things like times tables works. But it also informs how we make sense of the world: the stories we construct, which is what I explore in my book. (Incidentally, when this is disrupted, it has very grave consequences for the individual: see for example this article in today's Guardian). And, as Brown and Brown make clear, these strengthened neural pathways largely determine how we act. The more we behave in a particular way, the more inclined we are to do so in the future. This is the force of habit.

So some of the things a coach is seeking to do when helping someone to make desired changes are to help them to:

1  remember to avoid telling someone what not to do, as the brain has no capacity for that;

2  discover where the new thinking or behaviour already exists in their repertoire (since, with adults, it is far easier to strengthen neural pathways that already exist than to create new ones though that is possible)

3  rehearse the new thinking or behaviour frequently, both in the coaching sessions and outwith them.

That is the premise not only of my (exceedingly new and original) work with shifting stories, and the more widely-known use of affirmations, but also of the ancient wisdom of the Greeks (Plato and Aristotle in particular) with regard to virtues.

Virtues were regarded as habitual ways of behaving. As a teenager, I rebelled against that notion: surely to be virtuous one should be choosing on each occasion to do the virtuous behaviour. Now, however, I am more inclined to agree with the Greek (and subsequent Christian) understanding of virtue as habitual.

The merit in virtuous behaviour, in this understanding, springs from two things: one is the effort that has gone into establishing the habitual good behaviour in the first place; and the second is the effort required to exercise that behaviour when other influences (self interest, the natural appetites, external duress etc) are pushing one in another direction.

That of course begs the question what is good behaviour: and again, I think the Greeks had some insights here, which were built on in the Christian tradition, giving us the classic formulation of Faith, Hope and Charity; Justice, Fortitude, Temperance and Prudence. As a set, these are hard to beat; I recognise that many who are not religious will raise an eyebrow at Faith, but would suggest that they consider it in the light of Viktor Frankl's work, and see it as referring to that sense of ultimate meaning which Frankl identified as so important. 

But the practical aspect of this with which I want to conclude is the question of how we develop such virtuous habits. Again the Greeks, and the Christian tradition, have some wisdom; wisdom subsequently rediscovered up by theorists like William James (Henry James' brother) and later by experimental researchers such as James Laird. This is the simple notion of 'as if' behaviour (and indeed 'as if' thinking). 

To become brave, for example, repeatedly behave as a brave person would behave, and you will establish that virtuous habit. To become more hopeful, deliberately think about situations as a hopeful person would, on a regular basis. In that way, you can strengthen those neural pathways, until they are simply part of who you are. Whilst the wisdom has indeed been around for centuries, Brown and Brown's book shows that the latest advances in neuropsychology help explain how and why that works.

Best predictor of group effectiveness?

As I have remarked before, it is always pleasing to come across research that matches and validates one's own beliefs and values.

In this case, it is an article by Adam Grant in the McKinsey Quarterly, called Givers take all: The hidden dimension of corporate culture.  In it, Grant argues that the single strongest predictor of group effectiveness is the amount of help that people give to each other.

Note that this is not just about individuals being prepared to offer help, but also for that help to be accepted: that is to say, it is about a culture in which people are both generous and open with their time and their skills, but also have sufficient humility to recognise that they need help.

He explores not only why this might be the case, but also how to go about developing such a culture, and cites many examples, including the intriguing Reciprocity Ring exercise, with which I shall experiment (watch this space).

I won't summarise the whole thing here: it is worth reading in full - not least for the wonderful example with which Grant concludes his piece. I have no doubt the book, on which the article is based, would be worth reading, too.


As a Christian (work in progress) I have long thought about the relationship between virtues and leadership (and organisational behaviour more generally). 

I think one could draw up a remarkably robust set of corporate values based on the virtues: faith, hope, charity; justice, fortitude, prudence and temperance.  

So I am delighted to see that work like this validates such things as charity and indeed humility. Understanding the value of virtues is one thing; putting them into practice is, of course, another and more difficult challenge.  But as Grant points out, in his final paragraph, walking the talk is essential (or as one team I worked with put it: we may not always walk the talk, but be do try to stumble the mumble.)