13 ideas for 2013 - White Water Group

But how do you really feel?

Wed, 26 Apr 2017 09:00:00 +0000

It has been a week of strongly held, fiercely expressed and often diametrically opposed emotions. Long repressed fury and grudges have kept pace with eulogies. Whatever your intellectual or political stance one thing has been clear. People have an enormous capacity for emotional reaction and very little ability to be empathic with others.

In every leadership situation, how people feel is of critical importance. It has the ability to make or break initiatives and yet emotions are often given the least consideration in the grand scheme of things. Time and time again, leaders have been surprised at the howl of rage that accompanies their announcements. They don’t see it coming: Bob Diamond’s – no doubt logical to him – view that it was time to move on, sent people ravening for blood. People’s feelings were not yet sufficiently appeased to allow them to let go their anger. Cameron’s ill chosen, Michael Winner catch phrase, ‘Calm down, dear’ inevitably provoked a paradoxical reaction.

Strong leadership will provoke strong reactions. Professional leaders seek to recognise the emotions they will engender by their actions and will plan in advance how they can bring people with them by provoking positive and constructive feelings. In every situation, emotions are a data stream – leaders neglect them at their peril. Above all, they should never just hope they won’t happen. In order to be a truly emotionally intelligent leader, you have of course to start with yourself. ‘Aye, there’s the rub’ – Hamlet. Learning to recognise your own feelings, give them legitimacy and then deal with them appropriately is a precursor to being skilled at dealing with other people’s emotionally charged reactions.

Those at the most senior levels have classically been expected to demonstrate stiff upper lipped stoicism, play their cards close to their chests and indulge in what psychologists would usually describe as denial – often because of their fear of how others might perceive their responses. As a result, they can be disfunctional due to lack of emotional literacy.

Science tells us that leads to pretty grim consequences for people’s health, well being and judgment. Recognising and categorising an emotion influences the emotional experience itself. For example correctly processing emotional reactions to traumatic events – e.g. loss of a job, restricted bonuses, delayed promotion – leads to health benefits, more adaptive behaviours, better relationships, faster results and better working memory.

Being able to label feelings, makes people more magnanimous towards others. All of which contribute to success. Social psychologist James Pennebaker describes verbally labelling an emotion as much like applying a digital technology (language) to an analogue signal (emotion and the emotional experience). If an emotion remains in analogue form, it cannot be understood or conceptually tied to the meaning of an event. Once an experience is translated into language then it can be processed in a conceptual manner. It can be assigned meaning, coherence and structure. The traumatic event can therefore be assimilated, resolved and eventually forgotten.
If this process does not happen, incomplete emotional processing has a deleterious effect on well-being, judgment and decision making. If you have time, catch the fascinating programme on Radio 4 on iPlayer to hear about Pennebaker’s work on Expressive writing.

What we are not suggesting is that you let it all hang out. Quite the opposite! We think you owe it to yourself to take positive action to master a practical emotional approach to processing emotion and events.

If you want to hear more about what you can do in fifteen minutes a day over four days to improve your emotional resilience, give us a call – 020 7036 8899 or drop us a line by return.

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Go with the flow?

Mon, 19 Sep 2016 23:00:00 +0000

Sounds a bit too hippy and laid back for modern leadership? According to positive psychologists, achieving a state of flow is the real key to effectiveness, creativity and sheer joy in your work. In flow, you have total concentration, time flies and you know you are functioning at your very best. You may be working hard but are quite unconscious of that as so caught up in the moment. You are not particularly aware of your emotions, happy or sad – just in the zone. Andy Murray described exactly that state when he won the Men’s singles at Wimbledon last week to the point that he had no memory of the winning point. Now that is real focus! In the white water turmoil of daily life, it can be hard to find those perfect moments of flow – when nothing else seems to matter but the effortless balance of your skills, perfectly matched to the current challenge. These are the moments that are often later recalled as some of your best experiences. The positive psychologist, Csikszentmhalyi (‘Cheeks sent me high’, to you), who has carried out the definitive research on flow, found that these periods of flow were most likely to happen when people truly played to their own signature strengths, without let or hindrance, without interruption or interference. Yet we often find that people have either never been really sure what their true strengths are or have lost sight of them as they climbed up through the organisation. People are also pretty useless at setting aside uninterrupted time. Knowing your strengths We ask clients to write a story telling us about the last time they were absolutely at their best. We call it a positive introduction. It allows us to access their strengths and to help them to find ways to confidently use the strengths in novel ways every day. As a result, they build more of these flow moments into their working life for maximum benefit. Our clients describe very different flow situations: for one it might be the construction of a perfect spreadsheet, for another the exquisite delivery of a fascinating presentation, for some of us it is the deep focus we achieve in a three-hour coaching session. Each to their own and each to their strengths. Sadly, all too often, people can only recall events outside work or that happened many years ago. Life has become so busily at the beck and call of external demands and internal interruption that flow and hence satisfaction and performance are both limited. Focus and concentration hold the key to achieving flow. Distraction interrupts flow. It can take hours to recover the peace of mind needed to get on with the work. The more ambitious the task, the longer it takes to lose yourself in it, and the easier it is to be distracted. 90 minutes for flow Only too often we are disturbed by internal or external distraction and so never truly find ourselves in flow – interruptions, self-doubt and lack of control make sure of that. We all pride ourselves on multitasking when, in fact, that never really works. (Test it out: try walking behind someone who is attempting to walk and text – both activities slow down dramatically and are inefficient and frustrating.) We encourage clients to plan for 90 uninterrupted minutes to get each major task done. Without phone calls, texts, e-mails and people to distract, there is almost no other choice but to achieve some kind of flow. The more flow you experience the greater the happiness people report so it has a fundamental role in both achieving your best and feeling good about it. Passing it on Once you have increased your own experience of flow, it is time to develop the conditions for team flow in order to ensure your people’s engagement. Start by knowing their strengths and allowing them to exercise these in clear uninterrupted time slots. Minimise distraction. Maximise harmony and flow to develop the happiest and most productive team. Averil, François and all at White Water Group

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Compassionate Leaders

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 23:00:00 +0000

‘There is always pain in the room’ (Frost 2003) This week alone I have heard that someone’s frail elderly Mother is going through surgery, a city broker is dealing with a heart problem and has more tests to endure, a banker is despairing about yet more indecision about the rationalisation of her team with the implications for relocation for all the families. Suffering is pervasive in organisations. Yet it is often either ignored or inexpertly handled. Some gruesome examples from real life:

• A Father dies and a manager is asked –‘How long do you think it will take to get over this? Three weeks, maybe?’ The answer was unprintable.

• The young woman widowed after 11 months of marriage. ‘You are young. You will love again’ The result – horror that she might be so fickle.

• The miscarriage. No-one ever mentions it again.

They avoid her in the corridor. The consequence – disengagement and a slowing of recovery. And, of course, no one ever talks to the desolate Father-to-be. We differ from each other in our ability to be compassionate. People often mean well, don’t know what to do, want to know how they can fix things or are worried that they will say the wrong thing. All of which makes them appear utterly lacking in compassion. How important is it for a leader to foster compassion in an organisation? On the one hand there is the humane argument about the right thing to do and, on the other, the blindingly obvious fact that all you have are your people. Until robots are able to replace them, you are stuck with these real life problems. The research shows that compassion at work matters because it impacts on resilience and builds a positive identity within the business. People are healthier and happier. It connects people to each other, it connects them to the organisation through loyalty and commitment and it connects them to their own humanity. Above all, research shows it builds trust in the workplace. Without trust, your workforce will be less engaged. Witnessing compassion elevates and inspires more compassion, giving and caring. Compassion is contagious. It is a virtuous circle. Where the whole person is valued, they are not expected to leave their personal identity at reception every morning. Some of the current working conditions in our organisations expose people to incivility, disrespect, injustice, corrosive politics, constant reorganisation and incompetence on a daily basis. Becoming compassionate involves noticing, feeling, interpreting and responding to the other’s pain. Being a compassionate leader involves building an environment where mere self – interest is not the norm, where high quality connections are encouraged between people, where the whole person is valued and shown care and respect. Sometimes there is a need for the more formal support of coaches or counsellors but more often compassion is shown in the small, inconsequential aspects of behaviour that reinforce how people are cherished and also in the way that bullies and the insensitive are handled and given the chance to develop higher skills of emotional intelligence. Organisational habits can work against this. No trust means no-one will admit to human weakness until it is impossible to hide. No expression of emotion can lead to dangerous repression. Fear of crossing professional-personal boundaries can stultify people’s more caring responses. Concerns about fairness-‘well, if I do it for one, I have to do it for everyone’ – can eliminate concern. Ineptitude leads to avoidance. Leading the way in compassion involves being able to:

• pay attention – compassionate leaders know what their people are going through

• Empathise – compassionate leaders realise that emotion is a data stream they cannot afford to ignore and they become literate in their reading of feelings

• Feel – and to let others see those emotions through careful self disclosure • suspend judgment – a compassionate leader understands that how they tackle challenges may not be feasible for all

• Be rather than do – you can’t always fix what people are going through. It would be arrogant to think you could find a ‘solution’ for some of the complexities of life. On occasions, being compassionate is the best and only thing you can offer. You can tell whether an organisation has compassion by the stories that are told by its employees about the way people have been treated, the care they have been shown and the values that have been lived. Leaders can create and support compassion – enabling routines rather than old, more psychopathic ways of treating people. They can ensure those high quality connections get built. They can foster real values in action by demonstrating good compassionate behaviour themselves. Averil, François and all at White Water Group

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Merry Christmas

Mon, 23 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Like many companies these days, we like to give money to charity at Christmas rather than spend it on Christmas cards.Our preferred charity over the last few years has been the Lynedoch Creche which ‘creates space for up to 70 preschoolers for healing, sustainable living, play and joy with accredited staff, a beautiful learning environment and a place for being’. However, we still like to have some fun – Last year we sent a Christmas Message where we ‘danced’ (find it on Youtube if you must). Apparently it caused a lot of laughter and we got a lot of feedback – most of it of the ‘don’t give up the day job’ variety! This year we decided to just wish you a Merry Christmas. Looking forward to working with you in 2014. François, Averil and all at White Water Group

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Merry Christmas

Mon, 23 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Like many companies these days, we like to give money to charity at Christmas rather than spend it on Christmas cards. Our preferred charity over the last few years has been the Lynedoch Creche which ‘creates space for up to 70 preschoolers for healing, sustainable living, play and joy with accredited staff, a beautiful learning environment and a place for being’. However, we still like to have some fun – Last year we sent a Christmas Message where we ‘danced’ (find it on Youtube if you must). Apparently it caused a lot of laughter and we got a lot of feedback – most of it of the ‘don’t give up the day job’ variety! This year we decided to just wish you a Merry Christmas. Looking forward to working with you in 2014. François, Averil and all at White Water Group

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A leadership compass for the Philippines catastrophe

Wed, 13 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Exceptional circumstances call for exceptional leadership What started as a strong gust of wind supposed to cause mainly material damage rapidly escalated into a crisis of the scale of the Japanese or Indonesian tsunamis. Beyond the human tragedy, I have noticed two recurring emotions in the media reports so far: the sense of being overwhelmed and unfairness. Overwhelm caused by the sheer scale of destruction and the complexity of reaching victims when there is no infrastructure left. Unfairness that the tragedy has hit so hard a country which felt well prepared. This combination of unfairness and overwhelm can hit any organisation – think of the Japanese companies caught in Kobe earthquake for example. They also apply closer to home: any industry that has been suddenly been killed off by a new technology. In all cases, ‘special’ leadership is called for but what kind? Highly directive? Creative? Disciplined? It is easy to rush into wasteful or damaging action or to be frozen into analysis paralysis, as all options seem to lead to dead ends. Act, Sense, Respond Back in 2005 researchers turned to the mathematics of complexity to understand unpredictable business situations and developed the Cynefin framework. The model classifies the operative context of situations from Simple (business as usual) to Complicated, Complex and Chaotic. In a Complicated environment, a single solution does exist – this is the realm of the leader as ‘expert’ (either directly or by calling-in the right expertise). In this context analysis is key but is also the greatest blocker to action. The leader must both solicit expert opinion but also encourage novel ways of thinking. At some point the leader provides a cut-off decision between finding the best solution and moving to action. The keywords to the thinking are: Sense, Analyse, Respond. Complex problems are also called wicked problems. This is where problems are inter-dependent, there are multiple feedback loops and no single ‘right’ solution. The leader’s role is to create the situation where an actionable solution can emerge. For example, in the film Apollo 13, the leader puts experts in a room and asks them to find a solution. He creates pressure (“if you don’t find a solution they will die”) but also protects them from a premature jump into action to satisfy the urge to ‘do something’ as well as external influence. Keywords of the model are Probe, Sense and Respond. In the Chaotic situation the model changes to: Act, Sense and Respond. The leadership style changes to command and control to establish some form of order: there is no point carrying out any analysis, the focus is to ‘stop the bleeding’. This is what a trauma response team does: stabilise the patient before any assessment takes place. This is also part of what we are seeing in the Philippines: get some helicopters out, reopen some airports, get large quantities of rice on the ground. Right now. Following the response to chaos, the role of the leader is to migrate the situation rapidly from Chaotic to Complex, a situation where a number of solutions will emerge, each contributing to an overall improvement. It is not important for resources to be allocated optimally, simply for multiple contributions to solving the complex problem. At this point the challenge of the leader is to know when to move away from command and control and get back to letting ideas flourish. Consider Rudy Giuliani: he was the perfect leader for both the chaos that was New York when he took over in 1994 as well as the World Trade Center tragedy, yet his style was too uni-dimensional to deal with the ‘business as usual’ years that followed. Visibility as a prerequisite One aspect of leadership that is often overlooked is the need to be visible, especially when there is no news. Philippino media – and people – are baying for news right now. Any news. We have long known from crisis management that any unpalatable truth is better than denial – anyone remembers the Perrier crisis? However, leaders often confuse the absence of news as a lull enabling to regroup and think. It is precisely when there is high ambiguity or anxiety and nothing whatsoever to say that leaders should be at their most present. Take the case of former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan: although he acted decisively to force utility Tepco to handle the nuclear meltdown risk seriously, his popularity rating dropped to 17%. There are also numerous examples from the financial crisis, from Lehman to Goldman Sachs were employees were kept in the dark much longer than necessary, resulting in long term ill-will. Skilled, balanced leaders know how to switch their style. They are visible and courageous. They want to make a difference and take action which is aligned with the complexity of the situation. That’s all we wish for the Philippines right now. François, Averil and all at White Water Group

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Wine making and leadership: pick your strategy carefully…

Sat, 12 Oct 2013 23:00:00 +0000

October typically represents the lull between the harvest season in the Northern hemisphere and the release of the Beaujolais nouveau in late November. A perfect time to attend a wine tasting organized by the good people at Bordeaux Index. As the evening progressed, I grew increasingly torn between the pleasure of tasting fine wines and the frustration of observing an industry that was losing its bearings while buffeted by three massive waves of change: global warming, global branding and global competition. There have never been so many regions producing good wine, yet we observe a trend towards mediocre, ‘in your face’, undifferentiated and expensive plonk:

Global warming raises sugar levels in grapes, resulting in much higher alcohol content. This makes wines taste stronger and sweeter. It is tricky to control alcohol levels precisely, so many producers just give up
Global branding means that all producers want to achieve the ‘Robert Parker taste’: a leading American wine critic whose scores carry a direct and immediate correlation to the price wine can fetch around the world. His preference is for wines which are highly concentrated – in order to rise above the alcohol perception threshold – and have immediate appeal, as opposed to subtle taste. Being concentrated they have a low yield are therefore more expensive to produce
Finally, producers around the world are competing for the same predictable product and all wine ends up tasting the same. This week, I tried wines from Australia, Chile and the USA costing well over £50 a bottle, which were both remarkably similar and pretty undrinkable…

If wine is not your thing, then imagine listening to music on a boom box with all the settings turned all the way up: the resulting wall of sound will get your foot tapping due to its immediacy, but will also rapidly grow tiring. This lemming-like reaction to major change is not new: systematic benchmarking and business process re-engineering were essentially crowd reactions to the first wave of technological change in the late 80s . Benchmarking was a serious lapse of corporate imagination and resulted in products such as the ‘Eurobox’, where for about 10 years every European car looked remarkably bland and similar. As companies outsourced every possible function and adopted standardised software and processes, multi-nationals became clones of one another. Yet I would argue that every period of big change essentially represents a raising of the quality threshold, as well as an incentive for crowd behaviour. Cars today are infinitely better designed and built than in the 80s; the global supply chain has improved both product quality and affordability. So perhaps we can think of big change as a two-step process:

a rush to adopt new technology or ways of working;
followed by an opportunity for innovation and differentiation from competitors.

Going back to wine, modern techniques such as night-time harvesting and temperature-controlled fermentation have now spread to the remotest parts of the world, and the reliable screw-cap closure is becoming ubiquitous. This has raised the bar for quality and consistency globally. Yet the mistake that many businesses make is to follow the crowd for too long. There is now a space to be taken for a global brand or region of subtle-tasting wine – New Zealand seems to be in pole position. The learning for leaders, of course, is one of wisdom and courage:

Do anticipate big change and embrace industry transformation when it is part of a deep trend
Yet remember why you are in business: only you can answer the questions of where to compete and how to compete. Every industry has space for both mainstream excellence and deep differentiation
The final step of course is to be able to tell the story in a congruent way to all stakeholders and demonstrate courage if you decide to go against the trend.

We drink to your success in achieving this! Averil, François and all at White Water Group.

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Yom Kippur, forgiveness and leadership

Thu, 12 Sep 2013 23:00:00 +0000

Tonight, for Jews around the world, marks the beginning of Yom Kippur, a 25 hour fast and Day of Atonement. It is not an isolated event but rather the culmination of 10 days of preparation for the new Jewish year. Although it can be seen as a deeply sad day punctuated by prayers for the departed and reflections on sins and personal shortcomings, it can also be seen as deeply optimistic ritual and active preparation for the new year. As we shall see below, there is much to learn for all of us as leaders as we strive to build humane organisations and high performing teams. You don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy the benefits of asking for forgiveness… A ritual that is good for you Part of Yom Kippur involves considering everybody one has wronged during the past year, from family to colleagues to outsiders and actively seeking their forgiveness. This can take the form of a conversation or a letter. In turn the affected person must recognise the sincerity of the apology and the effort spent in preparing it. This is very comparable to the ‘gratitude exercise’ described in positive psychology: one of the few true win-win situations where both the giver and receiver enjoy measurably increased life satisfaction, self-esteem and health. The way Yom Kippur starts the process is by focusing on introspection: only when we are prepared to ask for forgiveness can we get the ball rolling. There are many cases for example where the person who has committed a hurtful action (voluntarily or not) suffer themselves either through guilt, misalignment with their values or simply because they have damaged a relationship that was either pleasant or useful. Asking for forgiveness opens the door, irrespective of who was responsible for what. Consider for example the deadlocked situation between star footballer Zlatan Ibrahimovitch and his then coach at Barcelona Pep Guardiola: a total breakdown of a relationship where neither side was willing to apologise first, according to this BBC interview . Asking for forgiveness as a positive process What limits people’s ability to ask for forgiveness is often a misunderstanding of what it means. For starters, it is not ‘all or nothing’, nor is it equivalent to plea bargaining – letting you get off lighter; in business we may think that asking for forgiveness equals straying from principles or showing weakness. Instead it actually shows humanity and the right to make occasional mistakes, even big ones. Often it has no other consequence than helping both the offended and offender move on. It is perfectly conceivable for politicians for example to ask for sincere forgiveness about the war in Iraq and its dreadful consequences, without admitting they were wrong (knowing what they knew then). Asking for forgiveness can also be a process. For Yom Kippur it builds on the new year resolutions: what to achieve, which habits to acquire, which habits to lose. It prepares the ground for change by getting rid of emotional dead wood. A way to conduct a ‘forgiveness meeting’ can include:

1) Preparing: make a list of how your behaviour may have hurt someone

2) Saying sorry (obvious, but a good place to start!)

3) Telling the other person you understand the consequences of your behaviour

4) Clarifying the causes of your behaviour: was it poor judgment, an accident or even deliberate?

5) Stating what you would do in the future in a similar situation

6) Formally asking for forgiveness – don’t expect to receive it, this is just the start of the process

7) Promising to fix what is in your power to fix or influence

In turn, and in their own time, the hurt person may adopt Desmond Tutu’s definition of forgiveness: “To forgive is to abandon your right to pay back the predator in his own coin, but it is the loss that liberates”. Leader as instigator of forgiveness The framework for Yom Kippur is easy: God demands that you should ask for forgiveness. It is not so easy in the corporate world. How do you create the right environment? What gives you the authority? There are many reasons: we know for example that good leaders demonstrate humanity, personal imperfection and have a high degree of emotional literacy; there are very good at reading tensions between team members, whether or not they had something to do with creating them. The John Templeton Foundation sponsored numerous projects on forgiveness . The learning regarding the role of leaders in creating the right environment can be summarised as:

1) Leaders should provide vision and meaning. For example by recognising that ‘hurt’ is a feature of corporate life (e.g. downsizing) and remind colleagues of the higher purpose of the organisation and the need to focus on outcomes.

2) Leaders should also provide legitimacy and support: they should communicate that human development is as important as financial performance; they should also outline forgiveness as a corporate strength that sits along other strengths such as courage, wisdom or curiosity for example. They should also celebrate and amplify exemplar behaviour.

Creating the space to ask for forgiveness Processes become institutionalised when they are rehearsed often. It would make sense for organisations to initiate quarterly reviews where teams take time off to think, not just about business performance and strategy but also about how well they are working together as well as with their customers and suppliers. Participants could prepare in advance for the meeting by thinking who they want to have a conversation with in order to clear their own emotional dead wood and prepare the quarter ahead. Doing it often lowers the stakes and also prevents resentment to accumulate. The leader’s role would be to ensure that conversations do happen – and that participants focus on positive outcomes. If you are interested in designing such a thinking space, get in touch. We’d love to help you set it up and create a really high performing team. Averil, François and all at White Water Group

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How self-censorship can prevent us from being engaging leaders

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 23:00:00 +0000

Here is a frequent conundrum: you have an important message to communicate. It may be a big change; or a need for action; or fostering collaboration between old enemies. Most of us will use a mix of logic and statistics, perhaps outside expert reports. We rapidly categorise the apparent needs of our audience and play to those – finance people want numbers, for example. Having shown our hard evidence, we then present our audience with a rosy future. And hardly anybody will believe us or feel genuinely engaged. Why is this? In telling a rational, ‘left-brain’ story we typically commit three mistakes:

We assume that pure facts will engage others
We put ourselves outside of the story
We show a perfect world without any of the fears and doubts of real life

A good illustration comes from our work in investment road shows: investors receive perfect presentation after perfect presentation and are totally bored with yet another ‘hockey stick’ financial projection. The first thing they buy is people: therefore trust, therefore humanity. This is far removed from discounted cash flows. Take Cambridge Cognition – a pioneer in the field of memory loss assessment, for example. When we started working together, their presentation was very precise: it gave huge credibility to the quality of their clinical research (over 1,000 peer-reviewed papers), yet failed to introduce the story of dementia and its terrible impact on individuals and families until slide no.20, by which time any interest had truly been extinguished. Yet the company had developed a 10-minute test, run from an iPad, that can diagnose dementia 18 months ahead of anything else on the market. In their effort to impress the City, the presentation buried the human story under layers of market size assessments and clinical tests. Today the company defines itself as a profitable ‘brain health’ pioneer, and their Cantab product is on course to become the equivalent of the ‘blood pressure test for the mind’. They have also just successfully floated the company in London. Aristotle was the first to codify story telling in Poetics, defining notions of plot and character. He was also the first to outline the need for a change of fortune, but not necessarily a happy ending. Aristotle was also a teacher of Alexander the Great, not only a model military strategist but also a charismatic leader. Today’s leaders can learn not only from Aristotle but also from playwrights, novelists and film-makers. Narrative techniques are plentiful but an absence of fluency in using them can sometimes become an excuse to avoid addressing the bigger question of the psychology of the storyteller. The classic situation/ complication/ solution mantra needs a human element and it is the leader’s job to find an angle relevant to the specific audience. In order to do this, the leader needs to take a personal risk, which is why we often prefer to hide under the blanket of facts and figures in PowerPoint or Excel. For us, storytelling is probably less about narrative techniques and more about displaying courage and confidence by putting a very personal view forward. This is a fascinating subject – we are deeply interested in collecting as many stories as possible, in order to understand how different leaders approach storytelling and perhaps address any personal anxiety in doing so. We are running a special breakfast seminar in September to share this research and celebrate the best stories. Please get in touch if you would like to volunteer stories yourself or refer another leader you know. We can treat any story in full confidence or make you the star of the show! Just drop Gus a note at: gmoffat@whitewatergroup.eu Averil, François & all at White Water Group PS: we are proud to sponsor the 2013 M&A Awards where we will celebrate the year’s best stories of companies articulating a compelling vision for their strategies, no doubt partly through great storytelling. Image: Aristotle & Alexander The Great in debate at Mieza, 343 BC

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Passing the baton

Sun, 12 May 2013 23:00:00 +0000

Passing the baton: doughnuts and delegation

The last couple of weeks have illustrated three different styles of passing the baton: first Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands abdicated. Her son’s turn, as expected. Then Queen Elizabeth II asked her own son to represent her as head of the Commonwealth – a significant gesture, call it cautious delegation or planned handover, depending on your opinion. Finally, Sir Alex Ferguson, the Scottish ‘King of English Football’ resigned to take a board seat and an ambassadorial role. In all cases big shoes to fill: they each have totally dominated their epoch. Knowing when and how to go is, for these three successful leaders, the final test of their wisdom.

So, what is the best way to go and is there a lesson for other leaders? There are many different styles: from those wishing to ‘die on the job’; to those who pretend to pass responsibility but turn into back-seat drivers; or to those who rapidly move on to the next stage of their life. As one would expect, there is plenty of literature on the subject. The reasons why leaders hang on for too long range from personal issues (e.g. loss of social identity, fear of boredom); to trust of successors’ ability to continue their work; to family pressure not to retire… We would like to explore two themes today: making leaving attractive, and raising your confidence in your successors. Doughnuts are good for you In his 1994 book, The Empty Raincoat, Charles Handy used the American doughnut (donut?) as a metaphor for managing work and meaning: imagine inverting it so that the dough is at the centre (donut experts call them munchkins); then there is a void, then an outside boundary. At the centre is your work; that which appears essential on a day-today basis. The void represents potential: all the other things than one can do either to extend work beyond one’s role or to do other meaningful things. Wise leaders fill the void continuously, adding more dough. The boundary is there to represent a limit: without a boundary it is easy to be oppressed by guilt, for enough is never enough. Leaders often have a core that is way too big – they do not take the time to develop other aspects of their life. So when you threaten to take the core away, there is nothing left. Other leaders are highly stressed, always pushing the boundary out, thinking that if they stop, the world will collapse. The wise leader will both achieve meaning during their tenure but also have something to turn to when it is time to pass the baton. Sir Alex may seem totally obsessed by football but he also has a lifelong involvement in horse racing, charity work and labour politics: his doughnut will not be empty when the core gets taken away in a couple of weeks. Another example is Bill Gates who seamlessly switched his great skills away from Microsoft and towards his foundation. The courage to practise delegation The issue of trusting successors is actually a straightforward one: start early, identify candidates and prepare them properly. The infrastructure exists: boards are in charge of managing succession; HR Directors deploy talent strategies. But these count for nothing if leaders do not practise the habit of developmental delegation. Over the years we have interviewed dozens of Chief Executives and asked them how they spent their time: most devote a surprisingly high amount of attention to actively developing people. To quote one of them: “I see my day job as distributing problems and checking solutions; beyond this, managing stakeholders and stretching people while supporting them are the other areas where I can add value.” In our experience professional delegation and timely feedback are skills which need to be learnt and practised. Many senior leaders – not just entrepreneurs – are incredibly amateurish at getting the best out of their teams. It is like purchasing a very expensive sports car but only ever running it on two cylinders. It typically starts with their own beliefs and fears. Once they analyse their own career journey and attack subjects such as the reluctance to appoint really smart colleagues, they are ready to build high performing teams and make themselves redundant. Good delegators and people developers exhibit daily courage, dominating their fear of tasks being done less well and less quickly than if they did it themselves. Practice creates habits and habits take time to install – as we know from working with our senior clients. Leaders with well installed habits are best equipped to knowing when and how to go: the ultimate test of a leader’s courage.

Averil, François and all at White Water Group

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