Are you upset by Brexit?

8th July 2016

We are still being shaken by the aftershocks of EU referendum debate as the consequences reverberate around the country and beyond. For many people it has hit them emotionally in a way they did not expect and has roused an intensity of feelings on all sides that we have not seen for many years.

For Remain voters, the unthinkable has occurred. Many say they woke up on the day after and felt that they no longer knew their country. Overnight they had been transplanted to a place they did not recognise or understand and that are struggling to come to terms with this new reality.

Shock was followed by anger as people moved through the stages of grief, mourning for something they never fully realised they had and could not clearly describe. A sense of being European, being part of something bigger, being connected to our neighbours. A sense of a fellowship that had been torn apart in an instance.

People are feeling lost and disoriented as things they believed were solid and enduring in their world have now dissolved into the ether. They neither know what they have left behind or what future they are moving towards.In this place of uncertainty and ambiguity, they are gripped by fear and anxiety.

The pain and anguish people are feeling is very real as their concepts of who they are, what they belong to and who they are connected to are thrown into doubt. These are the core needs of human beings, we feel vulnerable and exposed when they are not met. It is not going too far to say that, for many, the referendum has plunged them into an existential crisis.

So how is this relevant to you who have left the corporate world, to your life After the Mothership ?

As a country, we are clearly in a period of transition, from being a member of the EU to some other state of being. As an individual in transition, your are experiencing the same effect. You are mourning for something that you never full realised was there, for a future dream that you were not quite aware of. Something has been snatched away that you cannot really explain but you feel the loss keenly.

The thing that gave you a sense of belonging and filled your need for connection has gone, before you had ever realised that you relied on it in that way. Like the goldfish in the bowl who is unaware of the water around them, you did not see the environment that was sustaining you and, now you are out of it, you are flapping around and gasping for breath.

The dislocation and disorientation that you feel is a natural and necessary part of the process of transition, as the past recedes before from future has come into focus. All your feelings of fear and anxiety are perfectly normal, rational responses to your situation.

No-one is denying the magnitude of the events occurring and the massive changes that our political, economic and social systems are going through as a result of the referendum decision. Our politicians are in disarray, our economy in flux and our society in turmoil. Yet, when people leave the Mothership, they often dismiss it as a ‘bump in the road’ or a ‘bit of a change of lifestyle’. In fact, it’s a seismic shock to your world and you need to acknowledge this and the emotional impact it has upon you. To do otherwise is to stay in denial and fail to move through your transition successfully.

I have no idea what the outcome for our country will be and whether this will be a relatively easy or an extremely painful transition. (I hope for the former but fear the latter). However, I do know that you can make your transition go more smoothly by learning from the mistakes that I have made and from the experience the country is going through right now. Whatever the fate of the UK is after Brexit, you can create a bright future for yourself, After the Mothership.

Whatever it is, it has to matter

30th June 2016

The “entrepreneur gurus”, they all tell you “You have to follow your Passion!”.

And you think, “Yeah, right. I’m not some idealistic twenty year old. I need to make a living”. Grizzled old veteran that you are, you have little time for sentiment in business.

Besides, you wouldn’t know what your passion was if it came and punched you in the face.

So, you work out what your skills and strengths are and you cast around for opportunities and you pick something that you are pretty good at and looks like a decent business proposition. You might even quite enjoy it.

And that’s a mistake. I know, because I’ve made it myself.

You see, one of the other things they tell you is “Being an entrepreneur is really hard”.

And you think, “Really?”. You think of the things you’ve achieved in your career and the situations you’ve dealt with. You think of the intense pressure you’ve been under and you say to yourself, “What, harder than that?”

And you’re right to ask because it’s not harder. But it’s not easier either. It’s just different.

Emotionally, it’s different. The highs are higher and the lows are much lower, because you feel like everything is on the line. Your life, your career, your very identity.

Motivationally, it’s different. There’s no-one to set your goals, to encourage you and to urge you on. Or, alternatively, to crack the whip and put the fear of God up you. There’s just you. You have to create your own momentum.

So, when you wake up at three in the morning and find that you’ve been plunged into an existential crisis, telling yourself “I am committed to doing something that I am moderately good at and has a good business proposition” won’t get you back to sleep.

When you have to get yourself up in the morning and go and face another waterfall of rejection as you try and find some customers and get people to support your idea, saying “this is something I am extremely competent at and has excellent revenue prospects” won’t get your head off of the pillow.

And when, after days or even weeks of failure, setbacks, let-downs and frustration, you are on the verge of chucking it all in, declaring “this is something that I really find quite enjoyable and can give me a comfortable lifestyle” is not going to give you the fortitude to carry on.

You have to believe in it.

In those deep, dark moments of the soul, when you have call upon your deepest resources, it has to matter.

You have to want it. With all your heart, your desire and your energy.

You have to say “I believe in this and I’m going to make it happen”.

We naturally take a logical approach to the problem we face because that’s how we’ve been trained in corporate life. Asses assets and desired outcomes and find solutions that match them to each other. Then evaluate against logical criteria, rank them and pick the best one. Only this isn’t choosing a supplier or an IT system or an office location. This is choosing something that is going to be the framework for your the rest of your life.

Instead, you need to start with what you believe in, what your values are, what your dreams are. Because those are things that matter to us, those are the things that drive us. Those are things we turn to when we are truly up against it. And the things we truly celebrate when we are successful.

You have loads of options out there, far more than you can ever imagine. Whichever one you pick, make sure that it matters.

We’re getting up close and personal

16th June 2016

Getting people together is one of my objectives for After the Mothership. I want people to know that they are not alone and to have others to reach out to for help, support and encouragement, and to provide the same in return. That’s why I am starting a regular monthly meetup in London.

I know that ‘networking’ is a daunting thing for most people and for those of us who have been in the corporate bubble, entering a room full of complete strangers can be absolutely terrifying. (Surveys have shown it is the number one fear that people have, with public speaking second and death third!). This is NOT networking. There are no business cards or elevator pitches or high-pressure selling.

This is a relaxed gathering of like-minds, a fun way to meet people in the same situation as you. You can participate as much or as little as you like, for as long or as short as you like.

There will be a little bit of structure, just to lubricate the process, and I will give a short talk on the five things that I recommend people do when their corporate career ends (rather handily, this is the same subject as my free guide!). What happens after that and how it develops is really up to you and how it can best serve your needs. We might get some guest speakers in future or we might make it completely freeform. It’s an experiment, we will learn from the experience and make changes accordingly (in true design thinking/agile/lean style – or common sense, as it’s sometimes called).

I’d love this to grow and to enable people to come together and make some extraordinary stuff happen. But for now, just come along, have a drink with us and say hello.(It’s a free event so you’ll have to buy your own but it will be handily located in a pub!)

Just register here Eventbrite - After the Mothership meetup

The biggest obstacle

26th May 2016

The biggest obstacle to successfully transitioning from your corporate career to a new lifestyle “After the Mothership” is not money, or connections, or any of the other obstacle that you imagine are in your way. It is shame.

It is the shame you feel when you have been ‘let go’,  or have taken the package, or agreed to ‘explore pastures new’. Even though you are told it is not about you, it is the company that has to change, it is the position that has been made redundant, the story you tell yourself is “I am useless, I am a failure.”

Brene Brown defines shame as the fear of rejection, the feeling that we are not worthy of love and belonging. It’s not the same as guilt, it’s much more powerful and dangerous. Guilt is saying “I did something bad”, shame is saying “I am bad”. Guilt is a focus on behaviour, shame is a focus on self.

Shame needs three things to thrive: secrecy, silence and judgement. When we deny it, when we don’t speak about it, when we try to hide it because we are worried about how others see us, we are unwittingly cultivating it. It thrives and grows and invades every part of our being and leads to depression, addiction, aggression and worse. Shame can destroy us, our relationships, our lives.

We deny it because we are probably the only one in our peer group that is in this position. At best, we will be one of a few. We already have been rejected by the corporation we used to work for and now we find we do not belong in our social group. We stand apart because we are not in a ‘normal job, we stand apart because we are going through a major life transition whilst they are all (seemingly) carrying on much as before.

At the very time shame rears it’s head and fuels our fear of rejection, we feel rejection. At the very time we fear we are not worthy of love and belonging, we feel estranged from those closest to us and that we don’t quite belong any more. So our response is to ignore it, to pretend that we are still the same when we cannot possibly be. And we withdraw, we avoid awkward social situations where we might be asked what we do, where we might feel our worth is being judged. We go within ourselves, we cut ourselves off from the groups we belong to, cut ourselves off from the love that is available to us.

As we push ourselves deeper into our shame, it runs two tapes in our head. The first is “You are not enough – not good enough, not smart enough, not anything enough”; and the second is “Who do you think you are?” These put our self-worth in a vice-like grip and squeeze the life out of it, draining us of the very resource we need to get through this life change.

Our generation, now in our 50s, is not good at talking about these issues. We lack the language, we are uncomfortable addressing our emotions, we don’t share them and support each other with empathy as routine. Men are particularly bad at this and also feel the greatest shame in this situation. We feel very strongly the obligation to be the provider and protector to our family and so we feel an acute sense of failure when, through no fault of our own, we are unable to fulfil this role. Even if intellectually we know it is a shared responsibility with our partner, we still hold on to this at an emotional level and it is a big trigger for our shame. So we try to bury those feelings and pretend we are the same as before.

It’s not unusual for people to get depressed after their corporate career ends. It’s also quite common for people to self-medicate with alcohol or other drugs, or to have a bit of a melt-down. This causes further isolation, more withdrawal and deepens the sense of not belonging. For many people it is just a passing phase and they come out of it and get back to their normal level of mental health but for others it persists and for a few it develops into a significant mental health issue. But we don’t talk about this. We let shame take over and we keep quiet, letting it grow even more.

I believe shame is the single biggest issue for us to address when we leave our corporate careers and the hardest for us to deal with. It is essential that we do, though, because it is the barrier to our progress. Shame has no place in transformation, which is our objective, so we must resolve it.

The good new is that there is an antidote to shame and that is empathy. When we share our troubles and our feeling with others we allow them to innoculate us with their empathy.

Brene Brown tells us how to do this when she says

“Shame hates having words wrapped around it. If we talk about it, it loses it’s grip on us”.

It’s time we starting talking about shame.

Mind the Gap

19th May 2016

After you leave the Mothership, you have a big transition to make so that you can be successful in whatever you choose to do (and however you choose to define success). You have to adapt to a very different environment and there are a number of changes you have to go through.

Some of these differences are obvious, like not having a regular salary and other benefits but also being able to decide your own priorities and work habits. Some are good, some bad.

There’s also a lot of less obvious stuff, to do with your mindset and perspective. For me, these are the important differences, this is the real gap that you have to jump across.

I’ve been thinking about this for some time and I see it as more of a continuum between the fully-paid up company stormtrooper at one end (that’s the employee) and the full-on, unconventional, creative businessperson (that’s the entrepreneur) at the other, rather than a divide. Off the top of my head, I came up with this list of attributes (about 7 years ago, in fact) and found that these two extremes were almost complete opposites.

Employee Entrepreneur

Hardly any of us are at the extremes, by definition, and you could say they are caricatures. However, on the Mothership we tend to be nearer to the employee end and, to survive and thrive after the Mothership, we need to move more to the entrepreneur end. That’s the journey we face.

We’re often told to focus on our goals and so you might ask yourself how far towards the entrepreneur end you need to get to be successful. This is not the right question because you won’t actually know until you get there. Trying to be as ‘entrepreneurial’ as you possibly can may be setting yourself up for failure and there’s a distinct danger the attempt will nearly kill you!

Instead, the really interesting question is to ask yourself where you are starting from, how far along the continuum are you?. If you are honest with yourself, the answer may shock you.

Now I was a bit of an intrapreneur when I was on the Mothership, so I placed myself quite a way towards the entrepreneur end, maybe even around the middle. I didn’t buy all that corporate bullshit and risk-aversion and conformity. No way.

This was a mistake. It made the gap to being a successful entrepreneur look small and so I got frustrated when it seemed to be taking me so long to make these minor changes.

What I now see is that I totally underestimated the impact of being in that corporate environment for so long. All the time you are being pulled towards the employee end, being pressured to conform and rewarded for behaving like a good corporate stormtrooper. Er, I mean, employee. I just didn’t realise how far that way I had been dragged.

With the pressure from the organisation and your peers, you just can’t help being dragged that way. We know the power of peer pressure from  Asch’s psychological studies in the 1950s but more recent work by Berns in 2005, using brain scanning, found the startling truth that peer pressure actually changes the way you perceive a problem. In other words, it changes the way you think, so that you are gradually being pushed away from your beliefs and intuition without you realising it.

The result is that you just can’t help looking for risk-avoidance rather than opportunity; using process in preference to intuition and creativity; playing by the rules instead of breaking new ground. And it all seems perfectly natural.

On reflection, I can see that my starting position was much nearer to the employee end of the continuum than I was aware and, frankly, comfortable admitting to. So the gap was way bigger than I thought and it was going to take a lot more time and effort to get across it.

You need to know where you are first before you can get to anywhere else. If you are starting your journey from the wrong place, you are not on your journey, you are lost. Be really, brutally honest with yourself (perhaps get a friend or a coach to help you). You might have to admit you are not quite the person you thought you were but only then can you see what you have to do to become the person you want to be.

Picture by Clicsouris (Own work (Photo personnelle)) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Going from Zero to Hero

5th May 2016

When you get made redundant (or ‘let go’), you are told “It’s not you that’s redundant, it’s the position”. But what you feel is, well, redundant. It feels personal, whatever platitudes they spout at you. To feel otherwise is to accept that it happened without any reason, that you were just the victim of misfortune and the capricious cruelty of the world. As humans we seek reasons, explanation, cause and effect. That’s why we ignore reality and assume we are at fault, that we must have, in some way, deserved it.

So, we don’t feel like heroes. I know I didn’t. I felt rejected, a failure, inadequate, weak. Quite the opposite, in fact.

But we will be. We will be the hero of our own story because we have to. It’s the only way we get through this and out to the other side. So how do we do this?

Well, lets consider the concept of the hero’s journey, as introduced by Joseph Campbell in his book “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” and developed by other writers since. This is the basic narrative structure of many myths and stories including those of Buddha, Moses and Christ. You’ll recognise it from many novels and popular films, and has three main stages: Departure, Initiation and Return.

This extract from Wikipedia explains the structure:

In the Departure part of the narrative, the hero or protagonist lives in the ordinary world and receives a call to go on an adventure. The hero is reluctant to follow the call, but is helped by a mentor figure.

The Initiation section begins with the hero then traversing the threshold to the unknown or “special world”, where he faces tasks or trials, either alone or with the assistance of helpers.

The hero eventually reaches “the innermost cave” or the central crisis of his adventure, where he must undergo “the ordeal” where he overcomes the main obstacle or enemy, undergoing “apotheosis” and gaining his reward (a treasure or “elixir“).

The hero must then return to the ordinary world with his reward. He may be pursued by the guardians of the special world, or he may be reluctant to return, and may be rescued or forced to return by intervention from the outside.

In the Return section, the hero again traverses the threshold between the worlds, returning to the ordinary world with the treasure or elixir he gained, which he may now use for the benefit of his fellow man. The hero himself is transformed by the adventure and gains wisdom or spiritual power over both worlds.

Well, “Departure” is covered. It might have looked a lot like being chucked out, or it could have been a pleasant affair with wine, canapés and speeches, but it’s done. You have departed the corporate world, you have left the Mothership.

So now you have to go through “Initiation”.  You have to journey through this “special world”, which is really yourself. The “innermost cave” is your true self, your essence, and the “ordeal” is the inner struggle of understanding and acceptance. The reward is self-knowledge, which will be the foundation for your future life and success.

The “Return” is when you begin to create your new life and career, armed with a new-found resilience, understanding and acceptance. The personal growth you have experienced has transformed you and given you the wisdom and spiritual power to move forward and succeed in your goals.

The key here is that the pain and discomfort, the uncertainty and anxiety, the disorientation and anguish are all a necessary part of the “Initiation”. The way through is to look into your inner self and question yourself deeply so that you become more self-aware. That’s what makes you the hero in your own story. It’s the hardest but most important part.

You can get trapped in this “special world” for a long time, which is why I write this blog. I want to be one of your helpers who gets your through it and returns you back to the outside world.

So, put on your poncho and chew on your cheroot. Or jump in the telephone box and put your pants outside your trousers. Get ready to be a hero!

Or, if you prefer, join can join our tribe and get regular dollops of wisdom by signing up below.

(If you’re a regular reader of the blog you might have noticed another three stage model I’ve spoken about, Bridge’s model of Transition. Well, that’s because Bridges also looked at ancient rituals and ceremonies of native tribes. There is much wisdom to be learnt from the ancients, it seems.)

Why trying to get a job could be your worst option

26th April 2016

It’s a natural reaction after leaving the Mothership to look for another job. After all, paid employment is all the we’ve known and the pull of the paycheque remains strong. We feel like there is certainty and security around having a job and it looks a lot less threatening than the alternatives. In fact, it seems like the safest and best option.

In fact, the opposite may well be true, for several reasons.

The first one is that recruitment is broken. The process of selection has become so convoluted, so contrived and so capricious that it has become painful to go through. It’s a massive time and energy suck, from deciphering the management gobbledegook and ridiculously specific requirement specs to submitting your application through tortuous and unfriendly websites.

In return, you mostly get ignored (if you’re lucky) or demeaned. Not only do companies feel it is perfectly acceptable not to acknowledge any applicants (even though this would be a cheap and easy thing to do with today’s systems and technology), I’ve heard of people who have gone through several interviews and then hear nothing, get no further response at all. I’ve also heard of job specs being changed during the interview process or jobs being pulled altogether – both between the offer and the contract and even between the contract and the start date.

It’s hardly comforting to reflect that your fate throughout this process is in the hands of people who would have looked to you for advice and guidance, and even mentoring, in the past. Now, they can remove your application in a second, due to misunderstanding, bias or even by error. After so many years of holding senior positions and being responsible for making things happen, this lack of control makes you feel powerless and is very stressful.

The second reason is that if the process doesn’t kill off your chances, somebody in the process will because of your age, experience and perceived cost. Of course, ageism is illegal but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, it just means it’s not explicit. It’s entirely possible the people interviewing you, selecting you and potentially those managing you will all be younger and less experienced than you. They may perceive you as a potential threat, or inflexible, or too questioning, or just difficult to relate to, or any of the many other preconceptions about older executives.

It’s been shown that the older people are, the more effective they are in getting things done but this premium, that comes from experience and wisdom, is not well recognised. Youth and energy is more prized in our modern work environment.

Thirdly, it is likely that you will end up applying for roles that only play to one or two of your strengths, or are at a more junior level than you had previously worked, in order to widen your search and improve your odds. Actually, this can do the opposite. If you go for, say, project management roles because you’ve done a lot of that in the past, you are going to be up against project management specialists who will have more focused experience and skills than you. If you are going for more junior roles, you will be seen as over-qualified and may be perceived as a threat by those who will be above you.

Finally, if you didn’t leave the Mothership on your own terms, you probably had a painful and bruising exit. You may well have had an extended period of unpleasantness before that. Do you really want to go back into that sort of toxic environment again? Is it really worth it?

In short, trying to get a job back in corporate land can leave you open to indifference, rejection, disrespect and even abuse. It’s entirely possible that you can spend months and months applying for jobs without getting anywhere, draining your energy, enthusiasm and your precious finances. When your confidence has already taken a blow and your self-esteem is in a lull, opening yourself up to this can be very risky. Does this still sound like your best option?

Some people do manage to get another job, often through their network, and it’s likely to be one of the large percentage that are never advertised. If that’s possible for you, then great. You will probably know if that’s viable quite early on and will have had opportunities come to you by that route in the past. However, there is still the question of whether you wish to remain in that toxic environment. What’s more, the chances are that you will be back outside the Mothership again in a few year’s time.

For many of us, however, our networks are not well-developed or extensive enough to yield these opportunities. If that’s the case for you, then your best and safest option is to focus on Plan B and forget about trying to get another job. And Plan B is to create a life that is rewarding, fulfilling and sustainable. A life designed to fit you and not to fit an employer. The best option is actually to work for your own future.

5 ways we sabotage our business after leaving the Mothership

21st April 2016

It’s quite common for people to set themselves up in their own business after leaving the Mothership, offering  their services as a consultant or coach or trainer, or some combination of these. I did and I’ve seen many others go this way because it’s the easiest and obvious choice, so it’s popularity is not surprising (although whether this is the best choice is a question for another day).

What’s surprising to me, however, is how these intelligent, articulate and able people manage to sabotage their new businesses whilst believing they are being perfectly rational. Even more surprising, they all make one, some, or even all of the same five unintentional mistakes (yes, me included).

When you begin a business delivering your personal services, you have a set of existing assets that you should be using to turbo-boost you at the start. These are

  1. Your experience and skill set
  2. Your industry knowledge
  3. Your network of contacts and relationships
  4. Your ability to address specific, high-value problems
  5. Your status and credibility (to some extent, this is a product of the others)

Using these to get your business up and running, you can get to that crucial break-even point as quickly as possible. You can develop a new direction after that but you will have proved to yourself that you can make a  living from your own efforts and can move forward with confidence.

Instead, all too often we disable or ignore these assets by doing the following:

  1. Doing something completely different

You’ve spent all your career in IT but now you’ve decided you are going to offer psychometric profiling as a service. Or leave behind your HR expertise and go into web design. This is not usually driven by some mis-guided desire to ‘follow your passion’ but by a desire to have a change from what you’ve done in the past (and got completely jaded about).

2. Work in a different industry

Similar to above, we decide we no longer want to work in the industry that we know. It may be because we believe it is shrinking or just that we are heartily sick of it. Instead of leveraging our knowledge and contacts, we decide to go into an industry where we know nothing and nobody. Or worse, go into several industries, any industry, as long as it’s not the one we’ve come from.

3. Work in a different location

You’re fed up with the commute and the noise and hassle of working in the city, so you decide it would be nicer to work nearer to home; have a better life balance, spend more time with the family or on our hobbies. This sounds lovely. Unfortunately, you don’t know anyone in your local area and so have to build up networks and relationships from scratch. As you get to know your area, you  realise that there aren’t any of your target customers in your locality, which would have been obvious from the start if you had thought about it for more than a second.

4. Ignore our existing network

Having spent all our working life building up relationships and establishing credibility and trust, we decide to ignore this network because we don’t believe it will be relevant to our shiny new business. Instead, we put large amounts of time and energy into meeting new people, in the hope that they will prove to be the right ones to reach our customers. However, these new people do not yet know us, trust us, rate us or remember us and so do not provide any leads. Meanwhile, the people in our old network (who do know, trust, rate and remember us) could  connect us to our target customers immediately but aren’t because we’ve never asked them too – because we’ve assumed they couldn’t.

5. Make a generic offer to a generic market

About the most common statement I have heard at networking events and when speaking to people new to running their own businesses is “I provide a wide range of consulting services to small, medium and large businesses”. It’s not their fault, they are unfamiliar with the skills of marketing and are operating well outside their comfort zone but they might as well say “I do some things for some people”. Actually, that is what they are saying. It’s impossible for anyone to help them get any business or for them to focus their own efforts in an effective way. They are basically firing arrows up in the air and seeing who they land on because they are scared that if they aim at a specific target they will miss out on other opportunities. (I, of course, have NEVER been guilty of this ;-9)

 

These apparently rational decisions are often made because we have not worked through the ending of our corporate career. This is an event that has the same psychological impact as a divorce or the loss of a loved one and it is vitally important to process the events, feelings and emotions so that we can move on and transition to a new career and life-style. All too often the final part of corporate career is an unpleasant experience, a bruising and sometimes traumatic exit that colours our judgement and causes a rejection of what went before. Instead, we need to hold onto the positive assets to build your new business, at least for the initial stage.

It seems to take people about 1 1/2 to 2 years to figure out what they are doing wrong and to process their experience enough to be able to re-evaluate their past career and leverage those assets. By this time their initial enthusiasm, energy and capital is badly depleted but, with luck, they will have learnt enough and found enough resources along  the way to recover the situation and make their business the success they were always capable of.

If you are a corporate leaver, consider these five unintentional mistakes before you decide on how to start your new business. You don’t have to build upon your past but it makes it a lot easier to get to a level of success that supports you financially, so that you then have the freedom and confidence to move in a new direction.

Sometimes, of course, changing your occupation, industry, location or network can work but not if you are looking to trade on your prior expertise, which you often are as a consultant, coach or trainer. These are mistakes people make unintentionally, that’s why you need to think about them. (although the last one is ALWAYS wrong and you definitely need to think about that).

Brene and Me

6th April 2016

I can’t remember when we first met. I think we were introduced by a mutual friend, Seth. I followed a link in his blog and there she was, talking to Ted.

I watched her talk. It was startling, surprising, moving. And I knew it was aimed at me. There were hundreds, thousands, maybe millions in the audience but I know she was talking to me.

“So”, I thought, “this vulnerability thing. It’s important, isn’t it. I really should do something about it”. And then I carried on as before.

I came across her again a few weeks later. Someone else, I think it was Jonathan, was talking to her. “This is definitely important” I thought, “I must do something about this. Perhaps I should get her book.” Only the book was only available in hardback in the US, so I decided to wait until the paperback came out. I told myself it was the price but maybe that was a convenient excuse to avoid possible discomfort from reading it.

It was a few months later when I got her book and I read it through avidly. “Wow, this is really serious stuff, I must do this wholehearted living thing, I must be more vulnerable”, I thought. And I carried on pretty much as before.

But I kept bumping into Brene. More talks, more blogs, more podcasts. I felt like the damn woman was stalking me! “I haven’t really got this yet, have I?” I said to myself. So I read the book again, and I told everyone how important it was. And I carried on pretty much as before.

Unsurprisingly, not much changed. This was a disappointment. “What’s wrong with you?” I asked myself, “why don’t you get this stuff? Why aren’t you doing ‘vulnerable’?” Exasperated, I read the book again, only this time I took copious notes. One way or another I was going to drill this stuff into my thick skull.

Now, change is a funny thing. It seems that nothing is going on and then it all happens at once. Of course, it’s not really like that, it’s a steady stream of small, almost imperceptible changes that occur until a tipping point is reached. I kept going back to my notes, listening to Brene again, trying to shed the armour I had built up over the years. Then, one day, I just decided I wasn’t going to do that shame thing anymore. I decided that what other people think is entirely their affair. No more shoulds, oughts, musts and have-tos. I decided I am enough. I decided I am worthy of love. I decided I am going to be vulnerable (because that’s what let’s the good stuff happen).

This wasn’t the beginning, nor was it the end, but it was a big step. I was able to switch off all the scripts that I ran to do myself down and make me feel bad. I was able to quieten, if not entirely silence, my inner critic that always told me I was worthless and it was all my fault. I felt that I could look up and look forward, that I could escape the box that I had been trapped in for so long.

I still meet with Brene from time to time. We still have work to do. There are relapses, there are times when I want to put the armour back on, times when I want to crawl back into the box and hide. Being vulnerable, you see, is not about weakness, it’s about strength and courage and some days we just don’t feel that strong or courageous. It feels easier to go back to what we knew, what had been familiar, what had seemed comfortable. But a few words from Brene puts me straight, reminds me how awful that was and what more there is to be gained by wholeheartedly embracing life.

I still wonder why I knew this was important, why I persisted. Intellectually, I got it but I couldn’t seem to access it, as if the armour I was seeking to shed was getting in the way. But it called to somewhere deeper inside me. I just knew I had to listen to Brene until I got it.

I think you should listen to her too.

Circles of Safety

31st March 2016

Ever been in a team where everyone trusted everyone else to give their all and you all looked after each others’ backs? It felt good, didn’t it? I’m betting that team was one of the most successful you’ve ever been part of.

Remember when you last met up with your mates for a few beers? People you had known from school days, had got into scrapes with, made mistakes with. Can you remember the times you fished each other out of trouble, covered up for each other’s nefarious activities, looked after each other when you’d gone too large too early? Doesn’t it feel great to be with people you can trust, with a bunch of people who care for each other?

That warm glow that you feel is because you are in a circle of safety. It triggers the release of two chemicals in our brain that make us feel good.

We release serotonin, which makes us feel responsible for those who help us succeed. And helping us gives them a hit of serotonin in return.

We also release oxytocin, which generates feeling of friendship, love and deep trust. It causes us to carry out acts of generosity, to feel empathy for others, and to develop bonds of trust and friendship. Not only that, it’s effect last and grow stronger over time, replacing that serotonin hit with a continuing good feeling.

This is how we feel inside a circle of safety, when we feel that we belong.

I always tried to create circles of safety for the teams I led and I believe the successes I achieved where due in large part to this. I didn’t know why it worked at the time but I could see that it did and it was just the way I preferred to work. I am prefer positive, progressive environments, I prefer to enlist people and persuade them to co-operate. They give much more than you expect when you do that. Now I know I was just addicted to the good chemicals!

However, when I reflect back on my corporate life, I have to say there weren’t too many occasions when I felt in a circle of safety. In fact, most of the time the environment seemed to have been created to  have the opposite effect. A culture of fear and control kept us continually on alert, or ‘on our toes’ as our managers euphemistically put it.

When we feel threatened in this way, our body responds by firing up our fight or flight response. Cortisol and adrenaline flood our body so that we can deal with immediate danger, the levels returning to normal once the threat has disappeared. However, under a culture of fear the feeling of danger is constant so the threat never disappears. Consequently, our body retains the high levels of cortisol for long periods of time, which causes very real damage to our bodies and our health.

When you leave the Mothership, when you are no longer part of the corporate life, that sense of permanent danger is removed and your body is no longer stressed in that way. However, you are also removed from the circles of safety that existed. Even in the worst environments, you always have a few colleagues who look out for you and watch your back. Even the worst corporate provides support and protection from some of the sources of danger.

Now you are alone, isolated and feeling very vulnerable. Like the old antelope left by the herd for the lions to attack, you now feel in mortal danger and your fight or flight response is on full alert.

This is why you may feel jumpy, edgy, and find it difficult to concentrate, feelings you may have expected to leave behind once you had escaped the fear-driven culture of the corporate.

In this situation, it’s very important to connect with the other communities that you are part of, to get that social connection and the reassurance that you belong to other circles of safety. It’s also important to start building new networks of people who are in a similar situation, where you can support each other and create a new circle of safety for each other. You may not really feel like doing either of these things but it really is crucial to your well-being and success in coping with this situation.

One of my aspirations is to create a community around this blog and to enable the formation of those circles of safety. To make it easier for us to connect with others of like-mind and experience, so that we once again feel that there are some people looking after our back, who care for us and who we care for in return, somewhere that we feel safe and feel that we belong.