Shall we stop taking silly risks, and go back to being sensible and boring again?
 

If you’re at all interested in the history of the last hundred years, you’ll be familiar with the cases where governments have done bizarre and stupid things in a crisis, usually resulting in their own downfall. From the disastrous German offensive of 1918, to the mad idea of the Georgian government to start a war with Russia last year, via—oh, I don’t know—the calamitous Argentine invasion of the Falkands/Malvinas 25 years ago, modern history is full of madcap endeavors which always seem destined to fail. What on earth, ask historians despairingly, can they possibly have thought they were doing?

The classic case is probably the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, where historians still cudgel their brains trying to understand why the Japanese could possibly have thought they could get away with attacking a country which was the largest industrial power on earth, with twice their population.

Handling risk—usually very badly

Those of you not especially interested in military history will be relieved to hear this article is about human psychology; in particular, the inability of humans to understand and process risk.

In all of the cases cited, leaders took insane risks in the hope of achieving a smashing, overwhelming success: the end of World War I on German terms, the restoration of national territory seized by the British, and so on. For the Japanese, with a week’s supply of petrol left in the country, the choice was a humiliating withdrawal from China (think an oil embargo to force the US to withdraw from Afghanistan) or a very risky attack which promised, if successful, control of as much oil as they could want and strategic mastery of large parts of Asia.

Roll the dice . . .

You can see where this is going. Human beings are basically lousy at understanding and managing risk. That’s why it can be argued that every sensible organization should try to remove risk from its day-to-day operations as far as it can—because people can’t handle it properly.

Why people make such a mess of risk

Studies have shown that we assess risk based mainly on what we hope to gain, not what we fear to lose. People go to casinos because of the small chance of becoming a millionaire, not because of the very large chance of losing all their money.

It’s no different with the fate of nations. War games in 1918 and 1941 showed that there was a large probability of failure. They also showed there was a very small chance of a smashing success. As for modern financial risk-management techniques, we had better pass over those in silence, out of respect for the dead.

Part of the problem is cultural. This year in Britain, people are celebrating (or in some cases not celebrating) the thirtieth anniversary of Margaret Thatcher becoming prime minister. Thatcher helped publicize the idea that uncontrolled risk-taking was brave and worthy; when in most cases, in fact, it’s either stupid or naïve. Businessmen who took insane risks were given the kind of honors previously reserved for polar explorers and war heroes.

More recently, the willingness to take risks with other peoples’ money was seen as worthy of high salaries and fat bonuses. (I sometimes think that “risk-taking entrepreneur” is a fancy way of saying “greedy idiot”, but I may be overly cynical.) There’s always risk in life, and many successful enterprises involve a degree of uncertainty , but sensible human beings, and sensible organizations, manage to keep it to a minimum.

A new attitude to risk

In practice, the most successful organizations, companies and economies don’t take unnecessary risks. They innovate cautiously, learning from their mistakes and seeking to do better each time. When Toyota developed the Lexus brand, they didn’t risk untold trillions of Yen on someone’s bright idea. They sent a team to California for six months to live among their target market and find out what people wanted and liked. Then they designed and built a car on that basis.

We need to re-think the culture of risk-taking. In today’s bureaucratized and corporate world, individuals rarely suffer any major damage if the risks they take lead to disaster. Heads they win, tails we lose. Risk is part of human life and is an element of taking decisions in any organization. But it needs to be got back into proportion, and minimized as far as we can. We should stop praising and rewarding people who lose all our money at the roulette table.

Technorati Tags: risk, uncertainty, decision making, leadership

Sometimes positive thinking gets in the way
 

One of the things I find tough is coping with people who suffer with ‘delusional optimism’. It’s not that I object to people looking on the bright side. It’s the extent to which I see people hurting themselves and their prospects by doing so as a matter of principle that bothers me.

Many people love to think of themselves as ‘can do’ types. They revel in the notion that—somehow—thinking positively will automatically produce a life of ease and plenty. The ‘American Dream’—the idea that enough hard work will get you anything you want—is endearing, even though it is, unfortunately, wrong-headed. If you truly want to find success, especially in the world of work, it’s better to approach everything by expecting failure. Not ultimate failure, but plenty of it along the way.

‘Delusional optimism’

‘Delusional optimism’ is a habitual failure to accept reality, unless it matches the positive outcome you want. Like Positive Thinking, it’s a way of trying to fool your mind into seeing something ‘good’ instead of whatever is actually there. It’s imposing your own standards of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ on events, which have no such qualities: they are what they are. As William Shakespeare wrote: “It is neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so.” In this case, our own thinking, which may be confused, poorly informed or simply wishful.

Delusional optimism causes people to either ignore or down-play risk, and so becomes an additional risk factor in its own right. Russell Ackoff, in Management in Small Doses wrote : “The cost of preparing for critical events that do not occur is generally very small in comparison to the cost of being unprepared for those that do.”

Like the nonsense peddled as the ‘Law of Attraction’, delusional optimism works by persuading people that wishing for something hard enough will magically cause it to happen; or that staying positive will, equally magically, prevent bad things coming along.

It would be nice to be able to work magic, but the only kind that exists in our world is the kind you see on the stage; and that takes hard work, years of practice and is based on deluding the audience into seeing what you tell them to see, not what is actually happening.

Refusing to give up

Another element in delusional optimism is a dogged refusal to give up. This also seems more revered in the USA than elsewhere in the world. It too causes unnecessary pain and loss as people go on pouring time, effort and resources into projects that ‘died’ long ago.

A while ago, I wrote a post about the damage that can be done by allowing ‘hardworking idiots’ to run things (“Are today’s organizations creating hardworking Idiots?”). It is the most popular article I have ever written for this site. The damage that can be done by people who match delusional optimism with enthusiasm, hard work and incompetence is terrifying.

Why it’s better to expect failure before you begin—then keep trying just the same

Failure is a part of everyday reality. You try things and sometimes you succeed, sometimes you fail. It’s extremely unlikely that you will succeed in everything you do, and equally unlikely that you will fail. Life is a mixture. Sometimes up, sometimes down.

If you expect some failure before you begin, you can plan for it. It won’t take you by surprise. You don’t, of course, expect to fail at everything—that is as irrational as expecting to succeed all the time—but you do expect that some things won’t turn out as you want them to.

“Pessimism is, in brief, playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only view of life in which you can never be disappointed. Having reckoned what to do in the worst possible circumstances, when better arise, as they may, life becomes child’s play.” ~ Thomas Hardy

Creating realistic expectations

Many people have pointed out that a good deal of the trouble we have all gone through in the past few months has been caused by organizations and bosses setting up completely unrealistic expectations. By claiming to be able to deliver endless growth in profits, they produced no profits at all.

We do exactly the same to ourselves. Puffed up with delusional optimism, we fill our minds with expectations we will never be able to fulfill. If we had been realistic, the goals we set ourselves would, for the most part, have been fulfilled. Our failures would have been offset by our successes.

Instead, we set ourselves up for continual failure, not because of lack of ability, but because our expectations allowed for no failure at all. By being determined to have it all, we spoiled our pleasure in what we did have. By avoiding the extreme of delusional optimism with an occasional touch of pessimism, you’ll find realism—the middle ground. That never hurt anyone.

Pessimists make back-ups. Optimists believe they’ll never lose their data.

Technorati Tags: positive thinking, self-delusion, unrealistic expectations, facing reality, planning

We’ve all heard about so-called stress tests to check up on the potential for banks to fail. By checking their finances and the strength of their balance sheets in advance, the government hopes to give them time to correct any problems and get ready for whatever lies ahead—this time without relying on government bail-outs and rescue plans.

The government isn’t likely to step in to rescue any of us, but it might not be such a bad idea to follow their lead and try a little self-examination before anything worse comes along.If there’s anything you need to do to ‘get in shape’ to cope with more tough times, better to get started on it now than wait until the crisis arrives.

If you had to face a stress test to check on your ‘workplace viability’, would you pass? Here are my thoughts on what such a test might contain.

• Have you kept your skills and knowledge up to date? If things get really bad—and maybe you lose your job—you’ll need them. You may be able to raise the finance at that stage to go back to school, but adding extra debt when things are already tough might not even be an option. Start doing what you can today, if it’s only spending some time at your local library, or on the Internet, looking through relevant articles and magazines.
• How stable are you financially? Most of life’s problems are a little easier to handle if you have some money behind you. If you’re up to your ears in debt, even the smallest loss of income could tip you over the edge. Sorting out financial issues always takes much longer than you expect. The earlier you get started on putting your finances into a sound state, the better.
• What is the state of your personal network? Are you keeping in touch with friends and colleagues, past and present, who might offer you help if you need it? In a tough job market, networking may be essential to avoid a long wait to find the kind of job you need.
• How strong are your family relationships? Bad upsets can put a terrific strain on personal relationships of every kind. If yours aren’t how you would like them to be, there may still be time to improve them. Should you have to face serious career or financial problems, you will need support. Your loved ones should be the first people to whom you turn. If, because of wrecked relationships, that isn’t possible, you will be adding loneliness to all your other difficulties.
• How fit are you physically? Stress, anxiety, overwork and lack of sleep are all known to undermine people’s health. You may need all your strength and vitality to survive a rough patch. Start now to make sure that you’ll be up to it.
• What about your mental state? If you feel frustrated, depressed and miserable right now, how much worse are you going to feel if your life takes a wrong turning? That probably won’t be the time to try to get yourself together. Again, start to work on your mental state now so you’ll be feeling good about yourself when it’s really needed. If you have to face job interviews, or stand up to a bullying boss, you’ll need resilience and mental confidence.
• Are your expectations realistic? If you’re assuming that nothing bad will, or can, happen to you, you are going to be surprised and angry when it does. If your target is perfection, you’ll never reach it. If your aim is to have it all, your frustration when that doesn’t happen will probably prevent you from enjoying whatever you do have.
• Are you facing up to reality? Are there things in your life that you try to avoid acknowledging or won’t deal with? We all try to put on an acceptable—even brave—face when dealing with others, but it’s a risky thing to do in the privacy of our own hearts. Trying to delude yourself about who you are, what you can do and where your problems lie causes bad upsets in normal times. When things get tough, it’s a recipe for total disaster.

Over the past few decades, introspection has got a bad name. It’s all been about action—getting things done and hitting those targets. If your whole time is taken up in running yourself ragged to keep the boss and the organization happy, it’s easy to neglect your own life. Now may well be the time to do something about that. You don’t want to find yourself overwhelmed by events that you could have dealt with better—or even prevented—if only you’d had time to get yourself together first.

Technorati Tags: personal development, careers, career choice, self-development, new job, getting a promotion

Ideas for Rebuilding Your Life and Career
 

(This article appeared in the last Slow Leadership newsletter. If you would like to receive future articles like this, please use the links on this page to subscribe to future issues.)

How can you move on when it seems nothing and no one will give you a break? As unemployment grows and new jobs attract thousands of applicants, is there any way to keep yourself feeling tough enough to bounce back?

One of the first casualties of tough times and adversity is self-confidence. It’s hard to believe in yourself when you have lost much of what achieved over the years and attempts to start again are met with rejection.

You cannot change what has happened, but there are ways to help rebuild your confidence as a prelude to rebuilding everything else.

These are some of the most useful ones.

• Slow down. It’s tempting to rush into finding a way back to where you were, but is that the right place to be? Losing what you had gives you the opportunity to try something different—something that might suit you better and give you greater happiness. It’s well worth careful thought.
• Lighten up. It’s easy to fall prey to melodrama. The media, in particular, love to dramatize, turning every problem into a crisis. Don’t join them. If you take yourself and your difficulties too seriously, they’ll look so big and scary you will feel defeated before you start.
• Things are rarely as bad as they seem—or rarely as good as either. We can all imagine unending horrors ahead. It really doesn’t help.
• Accept your fear. The more you obsess about your fears and try to fight them, the more power they will have over you. if you can accept that you are afraid and move on, their power will grow less. Curiosity is the great antidote to fear. Fear shuts you down. Curiosity opens you up. It’s better to try things in a spirit of frank curiosity, even if they don’t work, than to allow your fears to freeze you in place.
• Remember that failure won’t kill you. Nobody likes to fail, but it happens to everyone sometime. Your dreams may be looking sick, but they are not dead. There’s always a chance to start again or move in a different direction. Of course, if you sit around and do nothing, while complaining how badly things are going for you, you’re stopping yourself from taking that chance. In coping with adversity, we are often our own worst enemies.
• It’s not just about you. What undermines self-confidence as much as anything else is embarrassment. You imagine that others are thinking badly of you. In reality, the world doesn’t revolve around you and most people don’t care about what you do. They are far too busy worrying about themselves and their own lives. Simply accepting that one fact can free you from an enormous burden of worry. No one is watching you all the time, nor judging your every move, so you’re free to get on and sort yourself out in your own way.
• Stay realistic in your outlook. Positive thinking is simply one way of looking at things, as is negative thinking. Neither, on its own, gives you an adequate picture of what is happening. Like day and night, life and earth, you cannot have one without the other.

Adopting a relaxed and realistic approach to life—neither seeking to be positive nor negative, but accepting the way things are—can be wonderfully liberating. Trying to be positive all the time leads to false consolations and hopes. Being negative and pessimistic produces depression and alienates others. As so often, the middle way is what you should strive for.

Adversity is the mother of change

When things are going well, we have little incentive to change anything. We are too comfortable. But when they go badly, it’s worth reflecting that maybe they weren’t so great in the first place.

If you can see your present troubles as the crucible in which a new life is being formed, you can focus on how that should turn out and stop worrying about what went before. Just deciding what you want out of life, then focusing on trying to make that happen, will give your self-confidence a boost.

Start today

My final piece of advice is this: do something right away. It almost doesn’t matter what. Few things build competence more than getting something done. Few things undermine it more than doing nothing. Work out what is the next most obvious thing to do and do it. It’s that simple. Keep doing that, over and over again, and you can achieve almost anything.

Technorati Tags: adversity, moving on, building a new life, self-development, resilience

Cutting the ‘overheads’ in your life and career will be the best way out of current problems.
 

Can you imagine someone waking up one morning and saying to themselves, “My life is far too simple. It’s high time I complicated it more”?

Now may be the time to do some serious ’spring cleaning’ to get rid of anything that you don’t need any more and which may be holding you back. Not only will it make your life simpler and less costly of time and effort, it will also help you focus better on what is most important in moving forward.

Do one thing at a time

I was one of the first to point out that so-called multi-tasking, which was once all the rage, is guaranteed to make you less effective. I won’t go over the arguments again, since they have since become commonplace. But it is worth pointing out that many people would benefit from taking some time to sort through their priorities and decide which one or two are worth following.

I do mean ‘one or two’. The more priorities that you have, the less any of them are truly priorities. If you have six priorities, even if you put them in order, how many are you able to work on consistently for more than an hour or so in any week—maybe in any month? How much priority is that?

Often the best way to make you life simpler and more effective at the same time is to choose a single priority, devote enough time to working at it to have an impact and get it done before moving on to anything else.

If, for example, you want a better job—or a new job—in current circumstances, and that is truly a priority for you, trying to handle other things at the same time will make it much less likely that you will get what you want. It will probably mess up whatever else you tried to do at the same time as well.

Omit everything unnecessary

Our lives are like ships at sea. In time, they become encrusted with barnacles and other attachments, each one slowing progress and adding to the effort it takes to move forward.

From time to time, they need a good scraping to get rid of all these ‘hangers on’. Most of us have half-completed projects, partial ideas and once-important activities that we hold onto—usually because, like lost puppies, they look at us with big, pathetic eyes whenever we think about letting them go and we can’t quite bring ourselves to harden our hearts and walk away.

The trouble is that we never bring any of them to the stage where they might add something useful. They are perpetually ‘in progress’, never ready for use. Instead of adding anything useful to life, they hang around the edges, begging for attention and never leaving us alone.

Everything extra you carry drains energy, time and attention from what matters most. Get rid of it. You’ll be glad you did.

If you aren’t going to do it, forget it

All those things you are intending to do, but have never got around to doing, another common source of extra ‘weight’. If you are honest with yourself, you know that you aren’t going to turn them into action. If you were, you would have done it by now.

I mean those expectations you formed once, long ago, and still carry about with you. Those plans you made, but never acted on. Those achievements you boasted you would deliver, but which proved more difficult—and far less interesting—the longer you lived with them.

I’m often amazed at how many of the so-called failures people feel bad about were never more than pipe-dreams. How often the gaps that depress them are only there because they made a statement of what they would do and could never bring themselves to admit it was a crazy idea, best set aside.

Life will bring you more than enough genuine failures and problems. Don’t add more by clinging to silly promises, just to avoid the embarrassment of admitting to a mistake.

Spring cleaning time is here

Spring is the traditional time in many cultures to clean the house and get rid of all the mess and dirt that built up in the cold days of winter. It’s a good idea to take the same approach to whatever has built up in your life between the red-hot times of the former boom years and the bitter winds of recession that have come around since.

If you want to see any tiny shoots of hope that are appearing in the gloom, you won’t do so if they’re covered with ’stuff’ you no longer need.

Get to it!

Take some time out to put your life and career in order:

1. Limit yourself to a single priority (two at most) and focus on getting that done before thinking about anythingelse.
2. Dump whatever threatens to distract you from that aim.
3. Decide what is necessary for you and dump all the rest. Be brutal. We all carry around far more than we will ever need.
4. Clear out all the half-completed projects and ‘things you will get around to’. Let them go. If you were ever going to do them, you would have done so. You haven’t, so you won’t in the future either.
5. Lighten your load by cleaning off what has got stuck to you and is slowing you down. Don’t allow anything to waste your time, attention or energy, just because it’s there.
6. Do it now. Procrastination is what produced most of the rubbish. Don’t wait another day.

Technorati Tags: change, cleaning out your life, making a fresh start, simplifying your life, simplicity

Many people shy away from change because of the pain they associate with failing. It doesn’t have to be that way.
 

As we try to pull ourselves out of our current problems, it’s clear that we are all going to have to make some significant changes. The chances are that you will fail in at least some ways in your first attempts.

That’s part of the natural learning process. If you let this put you off, you’ll remain stuck where you are—miserable with what you have, but afraid to change it in case that makes you feel worse.

What’s the way out? Is there some way to lower the risk associated with change and reduce the pain of failure? Part of the good news is that those usually go together. What reduces one often lowers the other as well. The other good news is that the solution—or a good part of it—is in your own hands.

What causes the pain?

• Losing face. We don’t want to look stupid or have others laugh at us. We would rather stay where we are that risk being seen to have tried and failed. The truth is that it isn’t that big a deal. What are a few sniggers compared with days and hours stuck in a job you hate? Besides, most people are so wrapped up in their own concerns any attention that pay to yours will never last long. Let them laugh. If you stop caring, it can’t hurt you.
• Perfectionism and unrealistic expectations. It’s easy to set yourself goals that are so ambitious you will never reach them. That sets you up for failure before you start. Perfectionism causes people to devalue their achievements, simply because they can imagine something better. To fail at some unrealistic goal is a self-inflicted wound. Baby steps, repeated with perseverance, will take you further than leaping headlong into the quest for some imaginary perfection.
• Unwillingness to let go and escalating commitment instead. How often have you wondered at someone who is obviously backing a losing strategy, yet refuses to give up? What about the person, or business, that pours more resources into a project that has already consumed more that it will ever be worth? In truth, we all do this. Knowing when to let go is a precious gift. So is the courage to do it. Too many people respond to failure by increasing their commitment in the hope that, somehow, it will all come right if only they spend a little more. It won’t. You’re compounding your losses and doubling your risks. Investors are advised to set a specific level in advance at which they will cut their losses as a means to get past the emotional urge to try just a little longer. That’s good advice for the rest of life too.

What drives up the risk?

• Having an ‘all or nothing’ attitude. This goes with perfectionism and unrealistic expectations. Most success comes mixed with a little failure. If you seek only unblemished achievements, you’ll go on looking. Be grateful for what you can get and make the best of it.
• Changing too much too quickly. Couple this with escalating commitment and you have the perfect recipe for disaster. There’s only so much change any of us can handle at one time. Going beyond this makes no sense, however tough it makes you feel at the start. Accept your limitations happily. They’re usually there to prevent you from messing up more than you can handle.
• Failing to stop and think if what you are changing is the real problem. It’s common to find people have jumped into a commitment to change before thinking about it properly. Then they don’t want to lose face by backing down. The old military adage that time spent in reconnaissance is rarely wasted is worth remembering. Don’t make a move until you are as certain as you can be that it is going to address the real problem.
• Following fashion. Just because ‘everyone else is doing it’ doesn’t make it a good idea. Most fashions are based on little but gossip and people’s fear of being left out of something. To go back to investing for a moment, the advice that it’s a poor idea to be buying what everyone else is buying makes sense. Doing that pretty much ensures you’ll pay over the odds. Fashion may sound important, but it never lasts long enough to be worth paying much attention to.

Handling rejection

You are going to experience rejection. Dealing with that can be a painful process too. There’s nothing worse than feeling you’ve truly given your best, only to find the other person wasn’t impressed. With so many people chasing every job, and more trying to find ways to get out the rat race altogether, rejection in the job market is inevitable. If you set up your own business, many people will reject what you have to sell. The trick is learning how to handle rejection and use it as preparation for another opportunity. I know it’s easier said than done, but the alternative—giving up—is usually worse.

• Don’t get mad. That is going to increase the chances that your response will be strong on emotion and short on common sense. It’s easy to burn your bridges for the sake of short-term satisfaction and get a reputation for being a hothead. Anger is a poor adviser.
• Pay close attention. People’s typical response to rejection is to shut it out—to close their ears and block off the source of pain. Bad idea. Even rejection and failure—especially those two—can be useful if you are willing to learn from them; and learning starts with listening carefully, so you can understand why things didn’t turn out the way you wanted. Just because the message hurts doesn’t mean it isn’t essential to your future success. Too many of us condemn ourselves to repeat our failures because we won’t pay attention to what is causing them in our own behavior.
• Let go and move on. Don’t tie up your time and energy in going over and over the rejection and the hurt it caused you. That won’t change anything. The minute you fail, or suffer rejection, look for the next positive step you can take towards your goal and take it right away.
• Don’t give in to desperation. Other people can ‘smell’ it and will write you off before you open your mouth. Despair is the ultimate ‘sin’ against yourself. Once you give in to it, there’s nowhere else to go. Life is never as bad as it seems—and never as good either. As my great-grandfather used to say, “It will all be the same in ten years time.” If you look what has happened with that in mind, you’ll get the hurts in perspective.

Change is essential and natural. It always comes with some risk and pain, but it doesn’t have to be so much that it prevents you from doing what needs to be done. By addressing the risk and pain openly and directly, you can nearly always take steps to minimize them. It’s also worth remembering that you may get as much pain and risk, or more, from standing still.

Technorati Tags: change, overcoming rejection, dealing with setbacks, handling failure, moving on, finding success

(Another guest article by Karen Senteio)

In tough times, you can still come alive again—but only if you are willing to risk coming out to play.
 

When we were kids, it was the best thing in the world to have friends knock on your door and ask you to come out and play.

Opportunity knocked and you were ready.

Somewhere along the way, it became harder and harder to step out of the house and play. I am not sure if the kids stop knocking or we stopped answering. Either way, we stopped inventing, playing, dreaming, doing and taking action on the things that interested us. They were silly childhood things that no longer had a place in our lives.

Well, I beg to differ. They are what will make you come alive again.

Find that child again.

It is the childhood skills of reinventing, exploring, doing and taking action on opportunities that are the new core competencies in making real change in your life. Those are the keys to open doors that seem closed. You have these skills, though they may be locked up somewhere in your head.

Lucky for you, that little kid inside you knows where the keys are. Find them and shake them. Hear them jingle. Wouldn’t you like to use them again?

• If you are in a dead end job and you desperately need a new opportunity, shake those keys.
• If you are thinking about starting a new business, but are afraid of what people may say, or whether it will work, shake them.
• If you are thinking about going back to school, but think you are too old to be of any use, shake them.
• If you think you have burned too many bridges to change who you have been, shake them.
• If you are thinking big and others are telling you to play small, shake them. Shake them until you shake some sense into yourself.

What are you waiting for? The sun is shining. Opportunity is knocking. Go out and play.

Karen Senteio is a business and life coach and president of VERVE. She has over 20 years experience in developing and coaching individuals and groups to achieve personal success and work-life balance. You can visit her web site at Verve and contact her at Karen@vimandverve.net

Technorati Tags: opportunity, moving on, making a fresh start, life skills, inner child, starting out again

Finding out what makes you unique and important to others will reveal your way forward.
 

Can you find some compelling points about you that differentiate you from everyone else? If you take a little time, I’m sure you can. Each person is unique. Everyone has some strengths, even if they aren’t the ones they would like to have. This exercise is vital to show you how to move forward, away from today’s problems, with a reasonable assurance that you can be successful.

There are many ways to set about this process, from highly structured questions to sitting and thinking about it. Here are a few that fall somewhere between these extremes. They’re structured enough to be useful to people for whom simply sitting and thinking is likely to result in a brain that goes in every direction except the one they want; and simple and open enough to encourage creativity and break out of rigid patterns of convention.

1. Find a useful image or metaphor to get you going.
   To stimulate your thinking, imagine yourself as an animal, or a machine, or a business providing a service. If you were an animal, what would it be? What is that species good at? What strengths does it have? Can you find the same strengths in yourself and maybe exploit them in similar ways? If an animal image doesn’t do it for you, try seeing yourself as machine (What would it make? How would it do it?) or a business (What would its brand be? What customers would it serve? What would it offer them?). The point is not to find something ‘deep’ or clever, but to open your mind to possibilities you may be overlooking.
2. Ask your friends to describe you honestly.
   Don’t fish for compliments; they won’t help, unless they are genuine. Don’t get mad at what people say or try to defend yourself. Just listen. What you want are more objective views about yourself and what you offer the world than you can get from staying inside your own head. You know what you have in mind; others may seem the same behavior, or hear the same words, but interpret them differently. This is useful information. It might show you how to use what you do today to better effect.
3. Try unexpected combinations of known strengths (or a strength and a weakness).
   Again, what you’re looking for is to jolt yourself out of the normal rut of thinking. Many successful businesses have been formed by taking separate activities and combining them in a new way. Once it’s done, it seems obvious. Before they did it, no one thought of it. Think Google linking their expertise in on-line search with advertising to use thousands of blogs like this one to deliver targeted advertisments, automatically, in a way no print outlet can match.
4. Try taking something you feel strongly about, but has no link to the world of work, and imagining how you could turn it into a career or a business.
   One unique set of factors that you always have is made up from your likes, dislikes and passions. Most people lay these aside when they go to work and become the neutral people employers prefer. What if you didn’t? What if what you offered the world was you: with all your passions, interests, quirks and oddities. How could you make that interesting? How could you turn it into something other people would pay for? If you’re wild about Nature, could you turn that into something that would combine with your background as an accountant? If you love hiking, how could you use that to make you stand out amongst all the other cogs in the corproate machine you work for?
5. Throw the ‘vehicle’ into reverse.
   What might be needed to go in exactly the opposite direction to the one that seems most obvious and natural to you? For example, if you assume success demands hard work, try considering how things would be if success was measured by how little work you could do; if working hard for long hours was a sign of failure. How might this feel? What would be needed to be successful on those terms? You don’t actually have to do the opposite of what you have done until now (though there’s no reason why that shouldn’t be an option). All you are doing is forcing your mind away from biases that may be hiding important truths.
6. Find an approach to work and life that doesn’t appeal to you—or that you think is useless—and list all the reasons why it’s really the right way forward.
   If you’re conservative and conventional in outlook, explain why being adventurous and liberal would be better—and vice versa. Again, you don’t have to put what you find into practice. Just making yourself think positively about something you automatically avoid can free up your thinking and generate fresh ideas.

We all know that we’re unique, we all feel unique, yet smother our uniqueness to conform to the expectations we imagine the world has of us. Doing so makes us expendable—easily swapped with any other ‘worker’ with a vaguely similar set of skills.

You won’t build a satisfying career and future through being the same as everyone else. Nor will you rebuild your dreams and find your path out of the economic downturn that way. This is the time to recall that being unique is what makes you important as well.

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Technorati Tags: change, personal growth, finding your path, moving on, facing the future, recovering from recession, rebuilding your career

Why the current turmoil may accelerate women’s leadership careers
 

A guest article by Suzanne Bates

Has our economic crisis been partly the result of too much leadership testosterone, both on the trading floors and in the boardrooms of banks and investment firms? Would a more balanced male-female presence have made a difference in averting the current crisis? It’s worth considering.

Many experts agree that corporate leadership teams need a balance of women and men. Both male and female traits are essential to the success of any organization. Last year, in separate studies, Catalyst, an organization that supports expanded opportunities for women at work, as well as McKinsey & Company both concluded that companies with more female executives and directors perform better.

But the argument for more women isn’t simply about personality traits that impact the culture of a company. Judy Rosener, a University of California professor emeritus, found that a company with a mix of male and female leaders—with their differing attitudes regarding risk, collaboration and ambiguity—will typically outperform a competitor that relies only on the leadership of a single sex. Today the vast majority of companies are dominated by men. If Rosener is right, they wouldn’t perform any better if they were dominated solely by women. Her point is that a balance is needed, with women bringing something extra to the table that companies need to thrive.

What women need to get those leadership opportunities

The likely way out of this economic turmoil could well include a better balance of men and women at the top. However, this doesn’t mean that any and all women leaders will be capable of capitalizing on today’s developing opportunities. Women leaders still have to develop specific skills to stand out in their organizations.

What are these skills?

One important skill is to focus on is articulating a vision for your organization. You won’t get promoted to the top unless people see you as able to help chart a new course for the organization. In the January 2009 issue of Harvard Business Review, a 360-degree feedback study by Herminia Ibarra and Otilia Obodaru finds female leaders are seen to be strong in such traits as tenacity and emotional intelligence., yet trail men in one important aspect: the ability to conceive and communicate clear vision.

How can this be changed? Some of what need as a career woman, not just to survive today’s economic downturn but to make a name for yourself, accelerate your career and get on the fast track, will likely include:

• Raising your visibility: When people know you and talk about you in a positive way, word gets around that you are a woman to watch. You can have the world’s most brilliant ideas, but, if you don’t make it a point to raise your profile, nobody will ever know.
• To make a name, you’ll need to be good at giving presentations to senior management, stakeholders and boards. Determine where the up-and-coming people in your industry are, where they’re meeting, what they’re doing, and how you can join them.
• Put events and practice time on your calendar and prepare like mad. Don’t view the speaking role as an “after hours” activity but rather as part of your job and essential to your future. If you don’t set aside time to prepare and practice, you may as well not do it because you won’t shine. Get serious about it.
• Take leadership positions, join committees, give speeches, join professional organizations, get on the boards of non-profits. You’ll also want to consider writing articles and books and doing media interviews. All of this gives you the aura of a leader and expert in your industry, and also helps you meet the people you need to know.
• Speak up and speak well. You need to master the podium, appearing confident and at ease. Speaking is not a natural-born skill; you learn by doing. To become a polished, confident speaker, speak in public so often that you end up enjoying standing at the front of a room and connecting with an audience.
• Find mentors and consult with them often. You need savvy male and female mentors who support you, believe in you and are willing to help you navigate the challenges of corporate life. They’ll also help get you out speaking a lot, and in front of the right people.
• Walk around the office and get to know everyone. It’s still true, unfortunately, that women tend to go into their offices, put their heads down and work and work all day. We emerge only to grab lunch from the fridge or leave at the end of the day. Break any hermit-like tendency .
• Take professional development seriously. I have yet to come across a male executive who doesn’t believe it’s worth it to invest his time in executive coaching. Get with it, get help, go to seminars, find a coach.

Take your career development seriously by seeking out opportunities that can move you forward and keep up your momentum. By expanding your visibility, articulating the ‘vision thing’ and speaking clearly and powerfully before the right people, you’ll move up . The choice is yours.

Suzanne Bates is the author of Motivate Like a CEO: Communicate Your Strategic Vision and Inspire People to Act!and Speak Like a CEO: Secrets for Commanding Attention and Getting Results: Secrets for Communicating Attention and Getting Results.She is President and CEO of Bates Communications, a firm that transforms leaders into powerful communicators who get results, and writes The Power Speaker blog, along with such books and products as “Make A Name In Business”and “The Power of Adversity: Communicating with Clients and Customers in Challenging Times.” You can visit her website at www.bates-communications.com.

Technorati Tags: woman leaders, glass ceiling, getting ahead, skill for woman leaders

Why leaders need to do more than think their way to recovery
 

A guest post by Kate Sweetman
 

“I can’t get the attention of our top leadership,” a senior level manager in a major global bank complained hotly last week. “No one can. All they do is hunker down together in one of the conference rooms and talk strategy.”

I guess it is not surprising that smart, analytical people try to think their way out of trouble; plus, in this particular case, a crushing level of embarrassment would drive almost anyone underground. But when people at the top of the house essentially cease to communicate with the rest of the organization, they need to snap out of it. They are not writing an economics term paper. They are leading an organization, and that means interacting with the people who are looking to them for guidance, and providing those folks with the truest picture the leader can draw about their collective future.

What kind of leadership do you need for a downturn then?

We are often asked this, and the answer is: “nothing special.” The same balanced approach that marks leadership in good times serves equally well in downturns. When times get tough, mediocre leaders often retreat into a monomaniacal focus on the bottom line. Great leaders, however, continue to balance the long term needs and the short term ones and maintain equal focus on investing in plant, products, marketing and people.

Leaders who understand this will help their organizations stay focused and action-oriented in the face of current conditions, and so be well positioned for the recovery.

Why trust my opinion?

Aren’t there already a million points of view on leadership out there? Yes. That’s why Dave Ulrich, Norm Smallwood and I conducted an analysis of the field with the simple goal of creating order out of that chaos. We wanted to find out what all great leaders have in common, regardless of context and without respect to personality or mission. What we found is that leaders need to be extraordinarily disciplined around the five basic rules of leadership. We call this the ‘leadership code’.

1: Shape the future. The leader answers the question “where are we going?” and makes sure that others understand the direction as well. They manage the paradox of being open-minded about the possibilities while also staying rooted in reality by involving customers, employees and other key stakeholders in strategy development and alignment. They target key customers and investors to focus their strategic investment.

2: Make things happen. The Executor dimension of the leader focuses on the question “How will we make sure we get to where we are going?” Good leaders ensure a clear line of sight between the short term and the long term, as they engage themselves and others with clear accountability and certain consequences. They meet promises by taking action.

3: Engage today’s talent. Effective leaders know how to engage others to get immediate results by drawing the right talent close: communicating well, and connecting the individual to the mission. Talent managers generate intense personal, professional and organizational loyalty. In tough economic times, leaders also remove poor performers, demand productivity, and communicate even more to those who stay what they must do to survive.

4: Build the next generation. These leaders work to build a cadre of people with the longer-term competencies for strategic success. They create a workforce plan focused on future talent, develop that talent, and help the most valued employees see their future careers within the company. Effective leaders, even in tough economic times, jump on the opportunity to secure the new talent whom the times have made accessible.

5: Invest in yourself. At the heart of the Leadership Code—literally and figuratively— is personal proficiency. Do what you need to do for yourself to bring your best self forward. Be in front of your employees. Be confident and candid as you build your credibility. Under stress, the tendency for anyone is to play only to immediate strengths—to do what one is best at today. Too often these days, that is holding small, high level meetings. Resist that temptation. If you are to be a leader today, or at any time, you need to be doing five things, not one thing.

Kate Sweetman is a leadership consultant with The RBL Group and the co-author of Leadership Code: Five Rules to Lead By.Her leadership blog for FastCompany.com, “Decoding Leadership”, can be found here. She is a former editor for Harvard Business Review, and a graduate of Harvard Business School and Yale University. She lives in Milton with her husband and two children. You can contact her at katesweetman@verizon.net

Technorati Tags: leadership, leadership traits, leadership code, kate sweetman, success as a leader