It's good to talk

I've posted in the past about the power of talking to friends or people in your network who can provide support when you most need it... or vice versa. But how about the power of conversation with a stranger?


This morning I got onto the train in my normal frame of mind - paper in hand intending to read a bit / reflect a bit on the day ahead. I was heading into Reading so a short journey, hence not immediately getting the laptop out. The man next to me smiled and said "Lovely day isn't it?" to which I replied "It is - make the most of it, the rain is on its way again I believe." Train etiquette would normally dictate that the conversation ended there, but he followed it up with "Do you do this journey often?" What passed through my mind was 'he wants to chat - do I make and excuse and bury my head in something, or make the time for him...' so I did the latter. We then had a brief but deeply personal conversation given we had never met before - amazing really in the circumstances. In a 15 minute journey I learnt his wife has MS and is almost completely immobile now although the benefits system would like to classify her fit for work, he is off to London for 4 days on a training course, and worries if she'll be ok. He has 3 grown up sons and the youngest one worries him most on a day to day basis - particularly as he feels that his wife's illness and the big age gap between the first 2 and the youngest means he hasn't had the same start to life. He is a mathematician and manages the complex machines which build data models which predict the impact of disease epidemics, and more.  Wow - so much information in such a short time. So easy to tell a stranger what you might not tell a friend. We ended it with him saying his day was better for having had a friendly companion for at least part of his journey, and me feeling lifted by the power of conversation. It could so easily have been different and both our days would have been slightly less for having not made the effort.


This is a bit like the question "How are you?" - when we ask we often get a bland response ("I'm fine!"), but it only takes a few minutes in the right frame of mind to get to a much deeper level of enquiry and empathy. Really meaning it when you ask how someone is, and then taking the time to properly listen to their response might make all the difference to someone's day. Clearly we don't have time to spend 15 minutes with everyone we meet, and not everybody needs to have that level of enquiry into how they are (most of us are fine most of the time), so then the art is to be able to recognise when it's appropriate and beneficial to take more time to listen, to talk, to be there for someone - stranger or friend.

Positively entitled

 One of the things I struggled with in my early career was how to measure up against my more confident peers. Confidence is an attribute that I've had to work on over the years, and it's been all manner of life lessons, personal and professional, that have finally given me the courage to acknowledge openly that I'm good at what I do and have earned my place at the Boardroom table.


Lessons in life are all very well, but somehow you have to work out how to put them together and then to learn something useful from them. It's no good someone telling you either - you have to experience life for yourself and then find your own way of adapting your habits to operate in a different way. Not easy when life is running at a million miles an hour - this is the reason why reflection is such a powerful and important act to make time for. Even more so if you are a leader of people or a parent.


Part of my personal confidence issue was not an inability to speak up, I did this easily (lesson learnt growing up in a hotel) but the fact that I didn't feel as intelligent / educated / able as the people around me. They all looked so much more polished and capable, more rounded than me. Of course some of these people have now been friends for many years and I know that they felt no different to me...ah, the wonder of hindsight. One common thing that set them apart for me was their apparent sense of entitlement. Not so much in the way of a spoilt child, but more that they seemed to feel more entitled to ask questions and, importantly in my case, to seek support. It took me years to understand that the freedom I had as a child of very busy parents had resulted in a strong sense of independence, along with a diminished confidence to ask for help without an accompanying sense of failure. I still have to remind myself now that it's more than OK to ask for help, that's what being a team is all about.


I read an interesting survey this week about entitlement and creativity - it concluded that those who feel more entitled prove in this study to be more creative. If it's true that our youngest generations have a greater sense of entitlement than those that went before them this bodes well. Given the world is changing very quickly, and the world of work is likely to be very different in even 10 years time, a strong sense of creativity will be all important to develop new the business models which will keep our economy thriving.


So without indulgence, we should celebrate a positive sense of entitlement. If this is about curiosity,  a conviction that the world can and should be a better place and the confidence to change the status quo then it's a vital attribute for the future.



What makes a parent proud

Aristotle called pride the 'crown of all virtues' - without pride 'one would have no reason to accept one's life is worthy of living'.

That's pretty heavy stuff, but it's so fundamentally important in finding our purpose - we need to be proud of ourselves, of our accomplishments and abilities, but also we seek to see pride in our efforts from significant others, particularly those we look up to, our parents.

Pride can be confused with arrogance, but they are very different. Pride is a rational evaluation of oneself - of achievements that are worthy. And there in lies the challenge. Very few of us are good at standing back and seeing our own accomplishments for what they are, for knowing when we have achieved something that is good or even great. I can't count the number of times I have genuinely praised someone for doing something that I would not have acknowledged in myself. We are often our hardest critics, and in doing so, we make assumptions about what others would see as success and something to be proud of.

In my rational moments, I know my parents are proud of me and what I've achieved. I have a wonderful husband, great kids, a lovely house, my health and happiness. I have amazing friends and the opportunity to do the things I want to do. I have strong moral framework based on the things my parents taught me - respect, honesty, hard work, love. Despite all of this my irrational self strives for more, I don't yet feel I've done enough. Some of this I know is growing up in an environment where my parents worked very hard to make ends meet, long hours running a family hotel, but it also must come from somewhere else - so what does make some people absolutely driven and others not so? My siblings aren't wired quite the same way as me so it's not all nurture.

As a parent myself I'm starting to get a different perspective. Of course I'm proud if they do well in spelling or ace the hockey match. But actually I'm most proud of the little things, when they look after each other and are respectful, when I see one of them say thank you unbidden, seeing my youngest daughter reading a book for pleasure rather than because she has to, seeing my step daughter complete her first marathon - not because she did a good time but because she worked really hard to get round with a massive smile on her face. I'm proud of my kids because they are becoming good people, not because they've beaten everybody else.

It's easier to be proud of others than of yourself, but unless you can find that rational, unjudgemental pride in yourself, you'll never acknowledge others will feel that way also about you. And if you don't believe the people that matter aren't yet proud of you, you'll never find peace because you'll still be striving. So give yourself permission to be proud about what you achieve every day - it will make a difference.

Permission to change your mind

Over the weekend I was frustrated to read about Sheryl Sandberg's Mother Day post where she retracted her missive to all working women to Lean In. It seems that as a single mother she's now realised that maybe it isn't quite as straight forward as she had originally thought - in fact combining work, kids and life can be bloody difficult. While her comments didn't surprise me, after all this blog started as a quest to find a purpose beyond simply grafting away every day, what disappointed me was the media response to it. I read more than one commentary berating her for ever suggesting women should have contemplated striving for an equality in the first place, but even more disappointing was the criticism directed at her for being wrong and only now realising it!

Regardless of your personal situation and point of view, Sheryl Sandberg raised up the issue of equality and how women should feel empowered and entitled to an equal seat at the tables of power. I read her book with mixed feelings, not least as I was reading it at 5.30am in the gym - multi tasking to fit everything into my daily life! My mixed feelings came from agreement that women should absolutely feel entitled, something I have struggled with in my working career, but also because her book put even more expectation on working women to push harder at work at a time when they are balancing all kinds of competing demands. I was left feeling that it just wasn't as simple as the book made out. Roll on a few years and the sad, untimely passing of her husband, and she has now found that out first hand.

So why did the media coverage make me so mad? It wasn't the fact she had come out to say that she was wrong, it was the fact that she was criticised for doing so. It must be heart breaking to have plucked up enough courage to say "I'm wrong, I'm sorry", only to have people attack your actions and intent. She could so easily have just kept her head down and said nothing - good on her for not doing this - for coming out and acknowledging that with the passing of time and her greater experience, she's learnt something new. Our ability to learn is fundamental to our development. Our courage to say "I got it wrong" is fundamental to our authenticity as leaders. If more leaders and more businesses were confident to do just that, we would be a better society.

The blessing of experience

Yesterday it struck me again how much of our confidence is about perception, and also how it can come and go based on the situation and the people you have around you.  This journey of reflection has me on a confidence high at the moment - finding a path through what I do and why is filling me with a sense of purpose that I didn't have previously and it feels good. I still can't suggest I have all, or even most, of the answers, but I do feel like I'm making progress and that my friends is one of our basic needs.

So why was yesterday special? I was at a Future Partner Development event at Oxford University's Said Business School working with a small group of people on partner track. It doesn't feel like 5 minutes ago that I was going through similar development events, questioning whether I even wanted to be a partner - what would it mean, would it mean daily compromises for the rest of my working career. Was I selling my soul to the devil for the sake of a few more pieces of silver?!? 10 years on (eek - how did that happen) I have some of the same questions, but I finally have the perception to be confident in my ability to make the best of it.

I was particularly struck by a conversation with a lovely lady who is currently on Mat Leave and worrying about how she will come back and balance work, baby, partner processes and all the other demands on her metal and physical energies. As she looks around her there are still so few role models of women who are making it work without excessive compromise, who are managing to combine a demon adding career with being a hands on mum. I reassured her that it is possible, but you have to be strong and don't ever underestimate the importance of your support network - be they for work or otherwise. I remember feeling the same way. I met women who had nannies, women whose kids were a bit older and in boarding school, women who had grandparents on hand to help - all kinds of model but none felt 'quite like me'. The reality is that you will never find the complete fit in someone else's model - after all, that's what makes you unique - but what you can do is pick and chose from other people's experience and think about what might work for you. Of course the other important lesson to learn is just as you think you've got it sussed and you have equibrium, something chances and you have to tweak again - get used to it - being a working parent is a roller coaster!

The other reinforcement from yesterday was how much experience I have gained over the past 10 years. I was a young partner entrant which has mixed blessings - it's less painful getting there but you suffer afterwards, just as everyone is looking at you and thinking you've made it and have all the answers. I now have the blessing of experience and can remind people to breathe, not take it too seriously, remember it's a role play and client situations are often easier, remember above all that what we do is deal with people and people have feelings - treat them with respect. It was really fulfilling to give some of that experience back, to help in whatever way I can make the transition easier for others. The biggest advice of course is don't take it too seriously - it is just a job after all.

All this was reinforced by reading an article shared by a colleague and friend on remembering to do 3 simple things in our frantic, always on, technology enabled world. The article (London Business School, 3 reasons to stop, think and sleep) reminds us that that as senior executives and role models we need to carve out space to recharge and reflect. Being busy is addictive but it's not a long term strategy for success, particularly as our world becomes ever more complex. Focus on priorities takes time, after all as quoted 'when you're fighting off the alligators it's hard to remember you were trying to drain the swamp'...

Trying it on for size

Over the past week or two I have been on a bit of a journey of experimentation around the subject of confidence. Having taken to heart the '6 things people need' I've been also making a conscious effort to observe and acknowledge more explicitly the fact that I'm no different to others in a quest for purpose. It's been quite a revalation! What's been so interesting for me is that having acknowledged to myself that this search for higher purpose is such a common one, it's allowed me to let go and start see the purpose in what I already do today. The reason this is so surprising to me is that it's not as though I thought I was the only one, so what's changed? There's something of the mindfulness approach at work here. Although I don't explicitly practice mindfulness, I do seek quiet spaces and time to reflect, think, plan and be thankful - normally an early morning walk is a perfect space for me to do this. I also listen to many podcasts and these stories of other people can help to put my life into perspective. The most powerful podcast recently in this respect was Kim Cattrall on Woman's Hour. She gave a frank and raw insight into her problems with insomnia, a condition that seemingly came from nowhere and quickly took over her life. If you can, seek it out and listen as there are so many lessons. The two I took away were these:
1. Never judge someone at face value - Ms Cattrall looks amazingly composed and together - inside she was falling to pieces;
2. When a problem arises take time to fix it - for her it was to learn to stop, let go, do nothing, be still,  breathe, just be. She also needed to make this a habit rather than a hobby.

Out of this embryonic acceptance of me comes a growing confidence of who I am and in turn the value I bring. For a long time my secret professional angst is that I'm not and never have been a rainmaker. I excel at building strong personal connections quickly, putting people at ease and creating trust upon which the firm can then develop opportunities to win work. I do this internally and externally and I have a deep seated belief in one team and people first - if we work together we will be stronger and more successful and our people will be more engaged. I've always felt though that this is a bit of a cop out - surely all partners have to be big work winners - isn't everything else secondary? It's certainly the impression I was brought up on.  So while I've held this secret belief I've also noted people want me on their teams. Staff want me as their mentor / counsellor / champion. I'm held up as a role model and generally invited to  strategic meetings. Clients note and value my input. Actually, on reflection others see value in me when I didn't or couldn't. It's taken 10 years of being a partner or equivalent to finally acknowledge that the value of diversity applies to me as well. As ever, you have to first know yourself to know others - as ever, it's all about me.

So I've been trying this on for size. At first hesitantly and to safe friends - partners I think will understand my perspective (and fears). To my surprise they didn't throw up their hands in horror but nodded and agreed. In fact most have responded with an admission that neither are they - most of us are working really hard to make the metrics, we have good years and OK years and recognise that it's only one or two who land the multi million pound deals. The reality is though that it's those we hear about time and time again and it creates this perception we should all be at it. While I agree we should strive to be winning good jobs, we should celebrate great margins as well as great revenue, great teaming as well as individual contribution - we are very quick to hold up the most senior person as the winner. I'd also like to see some honesty and celebration of the many roles that are vital to making our work places the successes they are. After all, that's what authentic leadership is all about.
So my challenge to others this time is to think about what you bring (easier said than done, might take a few attempts and you may even have to ask someone to help you...), and then have the confidence to say it out loud, with pride. The more times you say it the more confident you will become in your own value. Confidence without ego is a very inspiring attribute...and you know you're worth it.

The simple art of talking

Sometimes the most important thing in our quest for meaning and purpose is to know when it's got too much. Yesterday I sadly read the inquest report of a friend which set out how this vibrant, successful man had reached a point of no return and taken his own life. Outwardly it seemed he had everything - a great business, bright happy kids, a new relationship, his health. Inwardly it had all got too much and the business he had built was overwhelming him to the point that his life goal was for something simpler. When he felt this was out of reach, he made a decision which will impact those that knew and loved him forever. The reason I write about this is because it affected me quite deeply. Here was someone I had turned to for wise words and guidance. yet in his time of need it appeared there was no-one he could find sufficient comfort from to be able to face another day. I just wish it had been different.


We see so much now about mental health in the work place. Whether this a sign of the times or the reality that life is getting busier and more complex and our brains are struggling to evolve as quickly as they need to is unclear, but it's a good thing that some of the former prejudice is being addressed. For any of us who step out of bed in the morning with a sense of purpose - be it because you have a passion or a mortgage to pay - there are many demands to consider and it's a juggling act. For some it's just too much and so the question is how to balance?  This is as important (if not more so) than any search for meaning - after all what value does meaning have if you've no one to share it with?


Balance is one of the most important lessons I learnt many years ago, and it's been a principle I've stuck to. Realistically you can't expect it everyday - it's a bit like feeding a toddler - some days are good, some not, but the question to ask is have you got it right if you consider it in the round. Like many I probably learnt the hard way - broken relationships, burn out and the rest and for me the lesson was finally driven home when my first daughter arrived somewhat unexpectedly 8 weeks early. I went from being absolutely front and centre of my team and our work, to being in a neonatal unit, completely out of the loop. The world didn't stop. The work got done. People stepped up and I realised I was dispensable and that's a GOOD thing.


Finding balance comes in many forms and I am a passionate believer in the power of conversation. Talking a problem or challenge through for me is a wonderful way of exploring the options and getting a different perspective. If this can be done while walking then all the better. Walking is one of the most underrated exercises and accessible to everyone without exception. For me often a walk with a friend to talk something through is all the therapy I need to restore the equilibrium in my mind and the faith in my heart. I suspect this is also why the rates of male suicide are far higher than female - women naturally it talk out with a friend - men apparently less so. Being silent is not being strong.


I am lucky enough to have an amazing network of brilliant, inspirational, loving friends - male and female but it's the women I look to for my therapy. Whether its a glass of wine and a giggle, a long walk and a deep conversation, a moment shared via text or a saga explored face to face they are there for me and vice versa. I have a personal network and a work network of women like this and they are vital to my development, well being and sanity. Without them I would be so much less and I love them all.


So my lesson to take into today is to be grateful for all these lovely people and remember the quest for purpose is only one of our needs to satisfy. There are so many experiences to savour and enjoy along the way. Look around you for the people that love you and find time to talk - it's a wonderful thing.