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November 1, 2010 by Christine

The Zen Of Team Meetings: How To Keep Your Head When All Around Are Losing Theirs

Team meetings can be both fun and productive in healthy business environments. But too often they’re the setting for peacock strutting and bruised egos; hot air-filled games that only stress you out and add to your workload.

How do you keep a cool detachment in the middle of that?

Choose your mental state

Whether you think about it consciously or not, what you get from a meeting is what you expect. Imagine a scenario of attack and defend and that’s what will play out. But set up the positive intention that you are going to share your perspective and be heard, and it’s more likely you’ll achieve just that.

Take time before every meeting to set up your mental and physical state. Five internally-focused minutes at your desk, in the cafe, or even in the restroom will allow you to find a meditative place in yourself. Breathe into your belly to ground yourself. Harness your confidence and positivity, and lock them into your core. Hold yourself upright to embrace and align your own power. Walk into the meeting room calmly assertive, and you’re ready for Zen-like rock and roll.

Dispel unhelpful past experiences

Business provides the setting for the recreation of early-life injuries. If you were ever judged, criticized, bullied, belittled or unsupported as a kid, work, and team meetings in particular, can reconstellate these experiences. And how you feel about them. Oh, your emotions are very present, and they’re prompted by real stuff in the here-and-now. But a large part of what’s going on is more memory than reality.

To achieve a Zen-like state in meetings, become a detective on your own behalf, sniffing out the triggers that hook you into feeling less-than.

Remember you’re no longer in your family home, playground, or boarding school. You couldn’t choose your responses then, but you can now.

Break the psychic time-warp spell by holding together how you’re feeling on the one hand, with here-and-now reality on the other. Feel the paradox alive in yourself and know you can kick it. Live in the present. Find the grown-up, resourceful way of dealing with any game playing that provokes you.

To give you an idea of how-to, here are 3 specific instances where game-playing can catch you. And how you can harness your Zen in dealing with them.

Being attacked

So, you give a progress update, or you do a presentation, and before you know it the guns are out, blowing holes in your argument.

Historically you might have bowed under the pressure, or retaliated. Either way, you’ve never come out winning.

The Zen way is to use the calm confidence you stepped into ahead of the meeting to help you talk back powerfully.

Ask questions to reinforce that confidence and buy yourself thinking time:

“Help me understand what you mean.”
“Can you say more?”
“What specifically don’t you like?”
“Tell me how you’d rather see it working.”

Be empathic:

“You’re not totally bought in to this, are you?”
“I hear your concern.”
“So you think this won’t go down well with Customer Services?”

Be assertive:

“I chose to take this approach because…”
“All the data we’ve got suggests…”
“This was a synthesis of all the views I collated from you last time.”
“As the owner and subject matter expert on this, I strongly believe that this is the best way forward.”

Challenge any inconsistencies:

“Last time I brought this up, you supported it. Now you’re criticizing it. What is your position?”
“Outside of this meeting you told me that you wanted red, now you’re saying blue. Which am I to run with?”

Keep your voice tone level, and your pace even. Keep your body posture open and receptive.

Being talked over

The voices in team meetings like theirs to be heard often, meaning you can struggle to heard.

If they start talking before you’ve made your point, you must stay assertive and interrupt. “I hadn’t finished. What I wanted to say was…”

If they take your point and run off with it at a tangent, bring it back. “That’s interesting, however, my point was rather…”

Being ignored

If you’re being polite, waiting for a gap in the conversation to talk, you may never get it. Don’t wait to be invited. Just start talking. And, if there are peacocks that may mean pushing yourself into the discussion and speaking before they’ve finished.

Being dumped with all the action steps

If you find yourself becoming the pack-pony for stuff to do offline of the meeting, challenge it. “I can do this for the next meeting, but I won’t be able to do that too. Which is the priority?”

Remember that Zen is all about self-mastery, something that’s the subject of continual practice and improvement. Instead of seeing team meetings as a drudge, see them as another opportunity to learn about yourself and grow. Another opportunity to polish and perfect. Try some of these things out and see what works and what doesn’t. Don’t think win or lose. While the other players may think the game exists on the outside, understand that for you there is only the internal game, and that your opponent is always only yourself.

So, the next time you look at your diary and see a shitty meeting coming up, decide to look forward to it and bring it on!
photo credit: moonjazz

October 22, 2010 by Christine

The Great Indispensability Hoax

I woke up this morning with a scratchy throat. You know that thing you get when your body is fighting an infection? It’s not at all bad or disabling and I’m dosing up on mega vitamin C and echinacea, as they normally help me see bugs off pretty quickly. But it has been making me wonder what I’ll do if it turns into something more nasty.

Will I be a hero and work on regardless, or will I down tools and allow myself recovery time?

Serendipity being what it is, this is a topic that’s come up in sessions with my people these last few weeks. The common theme is indispensability.

But what does that mean, and do you see it the same way I do?

“They Can’t Do Without Me”

You can get trapped into thinking that your boss, or your business – even some of your social engagements – can’t survive without you. That they’ll fall apart if you’re not there to prop them up or contribute.

You tell yourself that it wouldn’t be right to let people down; to disappoint. You get yourself caught in all sort of emotional knots, feeling guilty and anxious if you even consider taking to your bed.

So you drag yourself in, imagining that you’ll get kudos from your boss from being such a stalwart. Everyone does it. They might look like shit and be miserable. They might make jokes about their man flu or whatever. But they’re there.

It’s in our culture to do this. Just look at the adverts for over the counter remedies that infer it’s okay to keep working through.

And, if you’re honest it makes you feel good to keep turning up, and getting on with whatever rubbish gets thrown at you. It allows you to feel wanted and important.

But, if you feel obliged to ignore an illness, isn’t there some doubt in your mind about your true value?

Aren’t there some deeper questions you’re needing to ask yourself?

Doormats get walked on

You can kid yourself that, especially in this economic environment, showing you’re indispensable by always being around means that you can’t be fired, or taken advantage of.

But I have news for you.

Companies can drop you in an instant, and hold no remorse at all for doing so.

Clients can take you for granted, and make no apology about it.

So quit feeling on behalf of others, and start feeling for yourself.

Putting Yourself First

Look at things a little differently. The UK Government’s Austerity Plan is scheduled to last for four years, meaning that you’ve got to take a long term perspective. Part of that is being able to keep going through tougher times than we’ve yet seen. You’ve got to be well to have the resilience to do that.

I know people who have battled to work in spite of bad viruses, because they thought themselves vital to some corporate situation. People who subsequently went on to develop post viral syndrome, or irreversible health conditions, or burn out, or some mixture of all three. And were subsequently unable to work for extended periods of time.

Can you afford to be that incapacitated for the sake of taking a few days in bed now? I know you think I’m exaggerating. I guess so did they at the time.

We can all take our health and wellbeing for granted. But, without them everything else is meaningless. If there’s one person to whom we must become indispensable before anyone else it’s ourselves.

Becoming Linchpins

Rather than being a trusty, loyal flunky, following the rules, and putting such huge store on turning up regardless, you need to get smart and think about what value you bring to your employer, to your entrepreneurial venture, or to the world that’s unique to you, and deliver it. To use Seth Godin‘s idea, you have to see yourself as an artist, trust that you bring something very special, and put it out there.

You then become indispensable, not for the hours you put in, or for your busy work, but for the difference that is you.

So, you become less dependent on your employer’s or client’s brownie points to feel that you’re a good person, because you know there’s value inherent in who you are.

In that scenario, taking a few days off to look after yourself is vital. It’s a way of nurturing and protecting what you bring.

So, how are you going to see things next time you’re ill enough to question going into work? Oh, and if I suddenly drop off the radar in the next few weeks, you’ll know what I’m doing.

October 8, 2010 by Christine

Writing Your Own Story Beyond The Corporation

Quit your corporate job for whatever reason and it’s not just the security of the pay check you lose.

Sure, there’s the kudos of your employer’s brand name, and your status conferring job title. But more than that there’s the loss of the whole story of who you are, the role you play and the script you enact with others.

Turn up at dinner with city sorts and introduce yourself as an Associate Lawyer for a Magic Circle firm, or a Product Manager for a Dow Jones company, and people think you’re someone. You’re character fits their map of what’s important in the world.

Go off in pursuit of your new age retreat centre, your virtual cup cake business, or your social media enterprise. Or just explain that you were made redundant in the last round of cuts, and see how people react then.

Will they get it? Will they understand what’s driving you? Will they see your value?

And do you care?

It’s a tough one, because we understand ourselves so much by the way we see ourselves reflected – or not – in other people.

But dealing with disapproval, or just downright indifference, is a vital rite of passage if we are to healthily leave the corporate theater.

My own story talks to this.

Until eleven years ago, I had big jobs for big firms. I wore the status I believed they conferred like badges of office. I drew strength and confidence from them.

I could say, I’m Christine Livingston, Human Resources Director, American Express, and people would be impressed.

I could turn up in a sharp suit and present tough messages to a Board of Directors as a Managing Consultant with Gemini Consulting and know I’d be listened to.

Leaving those personas behind to become a freelance HR/OD consultant, as I then did, and who was I? How would I distinguish myself from the thousands of others saying they did the same thing?

And was I crazy to imagine it was possible?

What made these questions even more difficult to wrestle with was other people’s reactions.

When I resigned from Gemini, my boss took me to lunch and told me I couldn’t leave.

“You’re star quality,” he said. “You’re going to go to the top of this firm. Hang in.”

When I stood my ground, he then began to question my mental health, and offered me a paid sabbatical while I sorted myself out.

Then there was the headhunter. A moment of doubt saw me, while still under notice, interview for a top Training and Development job. It was huge. I’d conned myself into imagining I might be able to have the kind of work life balance I wanted and pursue my professional interests through it. But starting to hear about the international travel requirements brought me back to reality. When I told the headhunter that I was withdrawing from the selection process and why, he was dumbfounded.

“You’re quitting a stellar corporate HR career to freelance? But why? You have no commitments; no family. Are you crazy?”

Then there was a former colleague. It wasn’t an obvious put down, but the offer of contract work, doing much more junior stuff than I was capable, delivered an ever so subtle insult.

All these things and more made me doubt myself profoundly. Maybe I was ill, crazy, less capable than I’d dared to imagine?

This was all so unexpected, confusing and immobilizing.

The breakthrough came when I began to understand that these people were voicing my own worst fears. Sure, they were expressing their opinion. But by voicing what a little part of me was secretly believing, their words cut deeply.

The moment I dared to confront my own concerns was the moment I could answer them. I owned that indeed I’d never been more clear about anything in my life; that if forgoing top jobs in order to create the space for life and relationships meant I was crazy, then crazy was good; that I was able and talented, corporation or not, and was going to own my level of ability without need of a job grading system.

My story still unfolds, but I’ll never regret choosing to write a new script. What’s holding you back from rewriting yours?
photo credit: roland

September 6, 2010 by Christine

How We Use Work To Avoid Our Selves

How was your weekend? Glad to be back at work for a rest?

Me? Well, I was caught off guard yesterday when I stumbled upon my divorce certificate while hunting for other documents.

Maybe it was because I’d been having such a delicious weekend. On Saturday I’d done a wicked Bodypump class, met up with an old friend and gone window shopping. Sunday morning I’d hung out with Steve drinking coffee, talking shit, and having a laugh. I’d just been saying how happy I was with life right now when it struck.

It wasn’t at all the memory of the divorce itself. At the end of the day that was just a bit of paper that landed through my door one morning without ceremony. No, it was the memory of the years of empty Sundays that had preceded it.

You may well be thinking that this is not the kind of experience that you’d associate with generally upbeat and positive me? And perhaps that’s all the more reason that I want to share it with you.

See, I’d got married when I was 24, right after my mother died. I’d undoubtedly confused love with needing security, but after the frenzy of organizing the wedding, life began to feel flat. Of course, I was mourning the loss of my mother, but everyone else had moved on, so I imagined I should have too and blamed it on my job at the time. Andrew was also bored, so we hatched a plan to get ourselves “down south” and into more exciting jobs. He ended up getting work near Horsham, where we bought a house: I joined Amex in London and began commuting.

Last week I was writing about stories. The one I’d written for that part of my life was more like a fairy tale. Poor orphan girl is rescued by her knight in shining armor who carries her off to a foreign land where she has a wonderful career, owns a detached house, has two cars on the drive and takes a couple of foreign holidays every year. To the outside that’s probably how it looked. But, as Roxy Music says: “In every dream home, a heartache”.

For a start, Andrew was no prince charming. Far from being my hero, he leached me emotionally and financially. Monday to Friday he was a catering manager. But most weekends, even in the depths of winter – in fact, especially in the depths of winter – he was at some windsuring meet-up in some or other part of the country. I’d tried to join in with that crowd, but it wasn’t my scene. There is nothing more boring than freezing your face off for hours watching small dots on the horizon; or standing in bars all night getting off your head drunk watching men in their twenties and thirties acting like school boys.

So, increasingly I spent my weekends in this odd situation where I was married, but was always alone. From time to time I’d touch my sense of isolation. I’d feel sorry for myself and wonder what I was doing. I’d consider how my reality didn’t fit my fantasy. But for the most part I avoided really looking at it. It was easier to hold things together than to confront things and kick-start a chain of events that might lead to God knew where.

I escaped to work as a way of numbing out

Yesterday as I sat there awash with all those feelings again, and the sadness for myself that I’d had to endure them at all, I asked myself “How? How did I do it? How did I get through these awful days and survive?”

I suppose I’ve known this for some time, but yesterday it came home to me with more felt force. I’d completely numbed myself out on what was happening. And work was the key thing that allowed me to do so. Although it was always a shock to the system when the alarm went off at 6.00 am, Mondays were always a relief. At work I knew who and where I was. I felt confident and capable there. I could throw myself into deep waters with a strong degree of certainty that I’d find my horizons sooner or later. But the same was far from true in my personal life.

It’s ironic that I chose to work in Human Resources. I like to think that I did so from a very caring perspective and that I was a good leader. I certainly had a lovely team of people around me, and some great colleagues; people who felt like family. But there was safety in that too. I could give all of myself Monday to Friday and withdraw on the weekend. At a level, it didn’t have to touch me.

Of course the whole thing fell apart. It was always going to. The first domino went down on discovering that Andrew’s playboy motto – “windsurfers do it standing up” – was now referring to more than just his sailing pursuits. I’ll spare you the detail of the battle for my sanity that went on around all of that for another day. Suffice to say that my corporate career was at its peak as I went through a painful and protracted divorce on grounds of infidelity.

Why am I sharing all of this? What’s its relevance to the blog?

Well, work can play a hugely important role in our lives. When we put who we are to the service of the world the sense of engagement and satisfaction can be enormous. But it’s also possible to use work to vicariously meet needs in us that we’re currently unable to address elsewhere.

I’d love to tell you to stop doing so and to concentrate more on what’s really going on. But I fear that’s coaching bullshit, and that, if you’re pouring yourself unduly into your work, and avoiding your self in the process, it’s because at a level somehow you need to right now. For me, finding my way back to my self was not a decision, but a process that took time. Indeed, it’s one that’s ongoing. Instigating divorce proceedings was only the beginning of me doing my own different kind of work; an inner work that would allow me to resurrect my soul.

And yes, I’ve done a lot to get to the point of having a very rich and happy life. But even now I have days of being drawn down into my feelings and wanting to escape from them. It’s just that, this time I decided to share it.

How about you? How do you use work as a way of escaping from your self? What one small thing can you do today to give your self some space?
photo credit: HikingArtist.com