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15 February 2022 — The biggest lesson I learnt was how much I don’t know.

That was Emma’s takeaway after 3 months of interning.

My daughter is taking a gap year before university. She said she needed the time and space to figure herself out after the rush and gush of major high school and college exams over the last few years. I’d say if that was her objective, then mission accomplished.

We laud and celebrate victories and breakthroughs of success. But we undervalue lessons that are underwhelming. The ones that tell us what not to do, insights that point out what we don’t know and revelations that show us what don’t add up.

Those are learnings too. As Thomas Edison said, “I didn’t fail. I just found 10,000 ways that something won’t work.”

Emma has come out of the short experience with so much more humility, an appreciation of the details that go into planning the apparently simplest of tasks and the dogged discipline of following through on a single of piece of work.

There was no reward for good work but there was something more valuable – insights and self-awareness. That’s a combination that can set her off on a higher trajectory than any recognition of a job well done.

We seldom work further on our triumphs. Instead, we plod on in the ones that elude success. In the pursuit of tangible and praise-worthy achievement, we gain greater knowledge, finer skills and enduring persistence in the negative space of the what-not-to-do’s.

So, here’s a thought – In our team appraisals, we could start asking the question what were some blind spots you discovered over the past year? What will you do about these?

Knowing what you don’t know is the beginning of wisdom.

Image credit: Emma Lim

4 February 2022 – In my coaching practice, I’ve found it supremely helpful to guide my clients to discover and/or articulate their values even before we dive in to any issue. Values are the true north of our behaviours. They are the litmus test to how coherent our actions are to our beliefs – we feel rested and at peace when what we do are in line with our values and we feel strangely conflicted and sometimes inexplicably stressed when our values and actions are not in sync.

Our core values are underlying traits that trigger us to react instinctively to situations. We feel a natural aversion to people who act opposed to these values and we intuitively steer towards people and circumstances that hold these characteristics true. Put simply, your core values are what you adhere to even when no one is watching.

Here’s my list of values that I offer my clients. They are deliberately overwhelming in number. This is to cause my clients to get in touch with what really matters to them so that they ruthlessly cut out what doesn’t resonate with them wholeheartedly.

The next thing I do is to talk about the selected values to help my clients decipher if those are truly what is irreplaceable for them. Very often, after searching themselves, clients would rethink their first draft and examine more deeply the values that truly represent them.

Have a go at it!

27 October 2021 – When leaders don’t ask for help, their people are worse off, according to organisational psychologist Adam Grant. The seasoned speaker and best-selling author was speaking at a closed gathering of coaches at the World Business and Executive Coach Summit (WBECS) recently.

Grant made the point that many leaders don’t ask for help for fear of looking incompetent, vulnerable and dependent. “If leaders never ask for help, the givers never come out of the woodwork,” he pointed out.

Not only are people denied the opportunity to render help and produce better outcomes, it also sets up a counter-productive culture where asking for help is seen as being weak.

This leadership behaviour has a “chilling effect” on an organisation and the message it sends to employees:

“If you look up in the hierarchy and you see that leaders have to project an image of competence all the time, then they’ll say ‘It is not psychologically safe in this organisation to ask for help. That is a sign of weakness’”.

This contrasts with help-seeking which can be seen as a source of strength, resilience and learning. In fact, to make it safe for people to ask for help, Grant suggested structures can be set up, like a Help Wanted post for staff to seek assistance so aid can be crowd-sourced.

In an interview with Marva Sadler, the CEO of WBECS, the Wharton professor provided data-driven insights to the pandemic’s effect on work and the role leaders play in his signature pithy responses to niggling issues organisations face.

Psychological Safety

Psychological safety is not a novel idea by any measure. It first emerged in the 60s and was reignited by Harvard professor Amy Edmondson in 2014. But the recent tussle between bosses and workers on returning to the office has raised this issue for employees on whether they feel safe enough to express their preferences.

The ball has to be in the leader’s court and mantras like don’t bring me problems; bring me solutions, have the opposite effect of creating a safe space for employees, said Grant.

“The foundation of building psychological safety is encouraging people to speak up about what is wrong – even if they don’t know how to fix it yet”.

Apart from asking for help, leaders asking for feedback can be a catalyst for building a culture of psychological safety.

Grant cited research that showed that leaders who openly spelled out their weaknesses and their development goals saw psychological safety spike and last for almost a year. He went on to give the example of Brad Smith, the CEO of Intuit, who took his 360 feedback from the board and posted it on his office door – the side facing out.

“If you’re a senior executive, the people who work with you already know what your weaknesses are,” said Grant, half in jest. “So, you might as well get credit to be secure enough to admit them and also to have the humility and the growth mindset to want to improve on them”.

In the light of The Great Resignation, where people are leaving their jobs in droves, Grant hypothesised that the inability to speak up freely in an organisation may be one of the push factors for people tendering their resignations.

“The lack of psychological safety has caused a lot of organisations to bleed talent”, said Grant.

Collective Effervescence

In the distancing and remoteness that have marked the last one and a half years of the pandemic, there has never been more of a need to find ways to reignite what sociologist Emile Durkheim calls collective effervescence. This is a state of synchrony and energy when a group of people gather with a common purpose. This results in an empowerment that would be non-existent in isolation. The dislocation, physical and emotional, effected by the pandemic raises the call to restart the collective engine on the new route we’re all taking.

Grant cited data on collective effervescence that showed that apart from interpersonal bonds, clear goals and roles are even more critical to set the momentum going. He defines clear goals as knowing what the mission is and why it matters and a clear role is knowing the link between the task and the mission. These, Grant pointed out, have been sorely missing in many leaders’ agenda.

In a stinging blow to those looking for quick-fixes to their staff’s well-being, Grant laid the cards out unapologetically: “I think we’ve been so focused on the ice-breakers and zoom happy hour, that we’ve forgotten that what people need to feel that collective effervescence is the sense that they fit in, they see that they’re part of something larger than themselves and that they stand out, they have a unique contribution to make”.

His parting shot:

“What that means for all the leaders who are struggling to get that sense of control right now is that it’s time for leaders to stop micro-managing and start macro-managing and give people that context they’re missing”.

A good crisis should never be wasted. In the context of Covid-19, we must be ready to hit the pause button and re-examine business as usual. Every aspect of the way we work, live, communicate, relate has changed fundamentally and it will never be in the same form as it was. The way leaders relate to their teams, whether it’s in motivation, innovation or communication must change.

In the face of less physical contact, surfacing context is crucial. In the past 18 months’ of reflections and adjustments, meaning and purpose have become a focal point of discussions.[1]  As far as data goes, it is time for leaders to revisit their personal, organisational and employee purpose, find alignments, hit the reset button and shift their focus to what’s relevant now. This big shift requires courage and humility to do business unusual.

[1] Case in point, a Coursera programme on finding purpose and meaning by Vic Stretcher, professor of public health at the University of Michigan has seen triple the average Coursera enrolment during the pandemic. Participants were broadly representative across the globe.

24 September 2021 — Where for 40 years the idea of work-life balance touted by the women’s movement vacillated between whole-hearted embrace to outright dismissal, suddenly in a span of a few months, work-life integration is the only way forward.

Lockdowns and work-from-home arrangements have caused workers to confront the coexistence of the two major parts of our lives lived out in one place rather than, as it was in the not-so-distant past, a balance of separate realities demarcated by separate spaces.

Work-Life Integration Isn’t New

The separation of work and home was really the blip in human civilisation. In agrarian societies, the family, the home, and the land they worked on were one and the same. Division of labour was among the family and the boundaries between the home and homestead were fluid. It was the industrial revolution that brought people out of their homes into the factories which began the delineation between the two.

You may have unwittingly experienced this integration if you’ve dined in home restaurants or booked a room in a family home through Airbnb. While, as guests, we are thrilled by the novelty of the experience, the hosting family would have long established practices and lifestyles to merge their business with their personal lives.

I witnessed this when I stayed in a 70-year-old ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn, in Kyoto, now being run by the fourth generation. Ryokans have been around since 705 AD.

Inn Kawashima has 7 guest rooms. Other than the family space on the first floor, most of the other facilities are shared with guests.

Guests and family members meander through the narrow corridors, shared bathrooms, and courtyard. With the same smile the owners flash at guests, they greet returning family members.

As Megumi, the fourth generation family member was taking me through the familiarisation tour of the facility, her children sidled into the room out of curiosity and the topic of family slipped naturally into the introductions.

It was there that I witnessed this fluid merger of lifestyles, an acceptance of interruptions?—?by guests and family?—?and the flexibility of bending to needs without the artificial imposition of space and time.

Cultural adaptation is a skill humans possess in response to stressors in the environment. With the fundamental lifestyle changes remote work arrangements have brought about, it is crucial to change and remodel our perceptions and patterns of lifestyle.

Normalise Interruptions

Gone is the luxury of cloistering ourselves in a meeting room with doors shut and the sign that reads Meeting in Progress when we need uninterrupted time for meetings or planning. Families with young children will attest to that.

Flashback to 2017 when the world laughed in sympathy at the professor who was interrupted by his 2 children and wife during a live online BBC interview on probes in South Korea. Four years later we laugh in empathy with him, having experienced uncomfortable, if not downright embarrassing, moments of faux pas during our online work conversations.

Now that the office has intruded into our homes, we need to normalise interruptions and accept the unexpected.

Welcome to life where dogs bark, cats jump on our laps, children squabble in the background, shirtless husbands wander. Apologise for the distraction but not for the natural rhythm of life. Laugh at the candid moments, say hello to wandering children, be curious about the package that just arrived at the door – and carry on. The less fuss we make of life as it happens, the faster we’re able to focus on work when it happens.

Mobilise your workspace

Since most of us work off a laptop, the option is there for us to shift our workspaces anywhere in the home that permits it – the kitchen island, the balcony, the porch, the children’s playroom. Of course, there are distractions along the way as you move into the shared spaces of the home but the point is to build flexibility into your working habits.

The challenge in this process is, firstly, our own mental models. If you’re the sort that has set places for set functions, you will find this

pattern very disruptive. But that’s what integration is all about – the willingness to dissolve the mental boundaries we’ve confined ourselves to and expand the plasticity of our routines.

If I need thinking time, I’ll hide myself away in a place that gives me solitude. It could be my original workspace, or it could be even in my lift lobby where no one can find me. But if I’m running through some routine administrative task or neatening the design and flow of my presentation slides, I’d be happy to work off my kitchen island where family traffic can be high.

The other hurdle to cross is the cooperation and consent of the rest of the family as unspoken lines that were drawn previously are crossed. This calls for conversations and an understanding of this changed reality and new rules to accommodate the new norm.

Actualise New Rituals

Rituals serve to link our practices with our values. As rituals in a church signify reverence for the subject of worship, so do routines tie our habits to our identity.  Science has also found a positive correlation between rituals and the reduction of anxiety and stress.

The very familiar and comforting act of getting dressed for work, queueing the podcasts for the commute to work on the train, and the usual coffee pickup at the shop on the way to work cement for many of us our warm-up space for the workday ahead. With the loss of the rituals we have come to rely on to anchor our day, many would unsurprisingly feel thrown off, disoriented from the lack of boundaries and the exhaustion from not having the in-between spaces to refuel, recollect, and be reenergised.

Creating work rituals in the home can help to construct the work presence in the personal space. Getting out of the pyjamas and into a smartcasual outfit can be one way to prepare your mind and body for the work-from-home experience. Getting out of those clothes at the end of the workday can also signal for you the time to de-role even though the surrounding remains the same.

Signing in each new week with a vase of fresh flowers may also be a ritual to set for yourself to brighten the home and lift your spirits for the work week ahead. Or pasting a post-it with a quote of the day in your workspace to mark the start of the day or week could be another pick-me-up practice to get you going.

Grabbing my cup of coffee to start the day and another to signal the middle of the morning and tea close to the end of the workday are things I do to delineate the time. And the chit chat in the kitchen with family as I take the breather segues itself neatly into my home persona, as I take my “work voice” several notches down in projection and energy and joke with my children about the latest PewDiePie video (think water cooler chats, but with family instead of colleagues).

Having rituals established throughout the day to demarcate mental models of the workspace while seamlessly easing in and out of the work (mental) and home (physical) spaces will help to integrate the two.

If there’s anything the pandemic has taught us, it’s flexibility. With every wave of infection and changes in protocols, the only way forward is to bend. We are more adaptable than we make ourselves out to be. Yes, it’s inconvenient, uncomfortable and, yes, it involves letting go of set practices. But it’s well worth it if the outcome of integration is a net gain in productivity, relationships, and well-being – in whichever space you choose to be in.

15 February 2021

My 82-year-old father-in-law, a survivor some of Malaya’s worst crises like the Japanese Occupation and the Emergency, has declared this Covid pandemic as the worst disaster he’s ever experienced. One year into the onset of the insidious spread of the virus and no one can say for certain when some light at the end of the tunnel can be glimpsed.

For businesses, it’s been one end of the pendulum or the other – for those who are left standing, it’s either survival mode or boom time. Whether in plenty or in want, volatility is the order of the day because the same reality confronts us all – what’s next? How do I deal with the ever-changing policies, standards, operations, demands, expectations, behaviours, data?

The best leaders, the enduring leaders, are made in a crisis. The divine dual ability to sink into the details in one moment and soar above them in the next is what makes them extraordinary. And one way they display their superiority is in their communication.

Meet in a frequent blend of interactions
In the initial stage of a sudden, or fast burn crisis, communication protocol demands the first holding statement be out within an hour of the incident. Thereafter, updates are given every three hours or less. In the second stage of the crisis when a search and rescue is still ongoing, for instance, and there are no significant developments, spokespeople continue to hold conferences to address various issues like technicalities, rumours and even emotional next-of-kin.

In times of business volatility, this second stage modus operandi should kick in. In small and medium organisations, engaging with staff every week should be expected, but in reality, is not common. There needs to be a blend of formal and informal engagements. Aside from the weekly updates, leaders must make it a point to have coffee chats among three or four staff members, small enough to have each person in the group feel responsible to keep the conversation going and big enough to feel the safety in numbers.

In large organisations, team leads must mirror these small group check-ins while having their own sessions to receive input from their leaders.

These interactions are there for leaders to show up and be present. Frequency is important to establish trust, consistency and accountability.

Frequency is important to establish trust, consistency and accountability.

Even if there’s nothing concrete to report (and that’s more often the case than not), use these sessions to listen, for that, too, is vital part of communication. You may elicit discussion around their challenges, their small victories, their ideas, and even their home front, recognizing that work and home are intrinsically linked.

Empathy over Facts
It’s a quality that is in great demand but short supply. And in times of ambiguity and uncertainty, when urgency compels activity, it is often neglected. But it is precisely in times of instability that the act of communicating heart to heart is highly needful. Empathy is the gift of holding the other’s soul – through trials and triumphs – in that moment of non-judgmental acceptance and revelation. It means, simply put, being human.

Empathy is the gift of holding the other’s soul – through trials and triumphs – in that moment of non-judgmental acceptance and revelation.

Alicia Tillman, the CMO of technology stalwart SAP, hit the nail on its head when she called out the need for empathy in the midst of the turmoil of 2020:

For me, empathy is what this year has been about…As a leader in and steward of the customer journey for a global organization, we need to dial in to the needs of our employees and our customers more than ever before and ensure that we’re responding with action that is significant enough to lead to the change people want to see.

The art of listening, reflecting and responding in mutual understanding is the job of every leader. If you approach these interactions, not just as a talk shop, but a fundamental and productive part of moving the agenda forward, you will find not just more motivated people but also useful insights, as Tillman reveals. Conversations about the challenges SAP’s customers faced and the solidarity SAP experienced with them resulted in free products to the market that targeted the most needful area of their business, like supply chains.

Authenticity
The main reason leaders avoid interactions in times of uncertainty is the discomfort in dealing with difficult conversations. MBA courses aren’t exactly skewed to skills you can’t measure. Authenticity is the posture of speaking and listening without masks and allowing space for honest, heartfelt disclosure.

Authenticity is the posture of speaking and listening without masks and allowing space for honest, heartfelt disclosure.

The first step is to recognize that you don’t have all the answers and having the courage to sit with the incompleteness. This is in no way a celebration of incompetence or ignorance. Rather, it is taking the initiative to open the floor to a shared humanity and by so doing, an invitation to others to contribute to the story bank of experiences and ideas which you all can use constructively to move things forward. Sharing stories of failing forward, if you will. The narrative you weave must be sincere to lend courage to listeners and create a bond of understanding. It is upon this commonalty that relationships are strengthened and unity is formed to push through the crisis.

Statements could sound like:

I want to say that it is true we have experienced a significant reduction in our order book. To that end, we are looking at alternative sources of income through an early release of some of our new projects. We are looking at all ways to boost our topline without going anywhere near headcount. For instance…

I know that many of you are unhappy about the way decisions have been made in what may seem to you like a haphazard way. It is hard be understanding when you have no view of the cockpit and are being tossed around by the turbulence. Let me just say that we are in the same aircraft and we’re going through the same motions as you. The decisions we have made have been done in consultation with our directors – I would like to think that we have put together the best minds. And we are aware that  the changes have caused you a lot uncertainty and is just plain unsettling. I ask you to walk with us through this storm. We will all be affected, some more than others, but this storm will pass and we will be stronger for it.

Personal
Clarity is common clarion call in most organisation’s playbook. How about clarity with vulnerability?

When the pandemic first hit, Marriott International CEO Arne Sorenson was one of the first few leaders who got his video message out to staff globally. It was a textbook demonstration of empathetic communication, not just for the pedantic ticks in the boxes of what he said, but the sincerity and the vulnerability he displayed in referring to his “new bald look” after his cancer treatment, his admission that he has” never had a more challenging moment than this one” and with a crack in his voice, he reveals how painful it was to let go of staff.

While it is important in a crisis that leaders demonstrate control, in a prolonged drought with limited clarity in sight, inspiration is caught through deep bonds of unity when a leader can reveal his own struggles, his humanity.

In a prolonged drought with limited clarity in sight, inspiration is caught through deep bonds of unity when a leader can reveal his own struggles, his humanity.

Speaking in the first person, “I”, instead of “the company” or “we” or “the board” is one easy way to start:

I have sleepless nights asking myself, “What am I not seeing? What have I missed?”

I have been keeping late nights keeping our investors from around world in different time zones apprised of our situation.

Do I always have all the answers? No. But my job, together with my team, is to scour every nook and cranny for possibilities.

I was having a conversation with my 7-year-old the other day and asked her how her day in school went and she said, “I don’t know.” When I asked her what she’d learnt that day, she replied, “I don’t know.” And when I asked her what we could do together for fun, she responded, “I’m not sure, Mummy.” I think this sense of being out of our depth and being lost is what we’re all feeling.

Personalising your communication assures the recipient of a common humanity in times of uncertainty. Of course, a solid plan of action is a must. But more than that, where the outlook is fluid, the personal touch or even just a word of mutual understanding can be a shot in the arm and a source of inspiration to hope on.

In our hurry to fix what’s broken, it is instinctive for us to hit the play button to start doing and leave the talking on the back burner. But crisis communication is an intrinsic part of crisis management because it isn’t just what you’re doing, but what you’re seen to be doing, that’s part of the fix. So remember to communicate, connect and calibrate, because you’re not just fighting a fire, but you’re leading people through it.