Such strenuous living, I just don’t understand

I had some more driving lessons at the weekend.

I am still not a very good driver. Paul downgrades his ambition for me further with every lesson. Now we’re at ‘I’ll be happy if you can take the car out without having a panic attack.’ I point out that I still need to be able to park the damn thing. He says, ‘You might never be able to understand what the car’s doing, but if you learn the instructions for parallel parking then you’ll be okay’.

It got me thinking about strengths again. Peterson and Seligman claim that we have signature strengths, and that we’re at our best when we use them. They argue that signature strengths are innate and immutable. Similarly, Marcus Buckingham, who has led much of the extensive research on this at Gallup, makes a powerful case for focusing on our inborn talents. It’s an efficiency argument: we work hard on our weaknesses to improve slightly, whereas we can improve our strengths rapidly with much less investment, working with the grain rather than against it.

I mostly agree. In particular, as I believe I’ve written before, I think we waste a lot of time trying to be good at everything. In the corporate world, employers waste a lot of time trying to get their staff to be good at everything. And they sideline those who aren’t gifted at their ‘core competencies’, rather than finding out what people are good at. That’s the genesis of SSP.

I do better when I focus on my strengths than my weaknesses, even when my weaknesses are more directly related to the task in hand. I don’t understand why this is true – and I’ve never successfully made the case for it to an employer – but I believe it.

But I’m not learning to drive because I want to be good at everything. I’m learning to drive because I don’t want my father to be confined to barracks when my mother isn’t there. Whether I have natural talent is a moot point. It does raise an interesting question, though – how good should I try to be? Is there such a thing as a ‘good enough’ driver? Is it sufficient to have a formula for parallel parking, or do I need to understand exactly what the car is doing? It’s particularly interesting because the stakes are high.

And, as so often, I also think that it’s Always More Complicated.

Growing up, my gifts were those of the intellect – logic, analysis and synthesis, mathematics, creative thinking. I couldn’t relate to people at all. I didn’t understand them and they frightened me. I couldn’t work out the rules of saying the right thing, and therefore I usually said the wrong thing, and I couldn’t understand why it was wrong. In this day and age, I might have been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome.

Over twenty-years, I taught myself to be good with people. It has been slow. It has been difficult. I have had many setbacks and I have often been tempted to give up. But I am now better at being good with people than most of the people who are born good with people, because I have worked at it so hard. For the last five or ten years I have mostly been employed to be good with people.

And – here’s the interesting thing – when I work with people now, it feels like I’m using a signature strength. I’m in flow. I am energised and enthused. My soul is saying, yes, this is the work you are here for. It feels very similar to solving a complex problem, which really is work I was born to do.

So what’s happening when we use our strengths? Is it nothing more than the pleasure we take in the exercise of competence? Could I feel like this when driving if I practised enough?

Or is there more to it than that?

Under the circumstances, formal dress is to be optional

Giving in to temptation and live-blogging the preparations for my parents’ seventieth birthday party. (And, no, it’s not just so that I can use the title. Although now that you mention it.)

This post could actually be titled ‘project management lessons from the asylum’, or similar. We have thirty-seven people arriving in just under two hours. A little of the food has been ordered in, but most of it has been prepared by us. And, my family being what it is, we could easily accommodate another thirty-seven unexpected guests without running out of provisions.

We do events like this on about a five-yearly basis. It is completely bonkers. My mother does not enjoy it, because she is terrified that my father will overdo it and sustain an injury and put himself in hospital for months. (This is in fact quite likely.) My father does not enjoy it, because he hates parties. And, yet, there is a bizarre adrenaline-fueled kick to it all. I have been chopping eel fillets and dressing salads since early this morning, and I am rather disappointed that I now have enough of a break to write this post.

My family are all insanely competent. They all know exactly how to go about everything. They are very opinionated. They care very much that everything is done right. Therefore, there are lots of arguments about things like what size cheese knives to use and whether to stack the glasses on the left or right side of the table. In the past, I would have been in there with the best of ‘em. These days I keep my head down and do what I’m told.

And, doing this, I notice that it’s a lot less stressful than it used to be.

It’s not completely comfortable. It is not comfortable taking orders from my younger sister on how to fill a water jug. My ego rebels. It is not comfortable observing the flaws in their project management . Who has an overall list of tasks in order? Why is C. making decisions and also doing tasks, which makes her unavailable to give orders to the next available minion? Why do I have a list of tasks without instructions, which means that someone has to stop what they’re doing and show me which bench is to be moved and where? I want to step in, not to get my way about how to cut the game pie, but to get them to improve their decision-making structure. Once a management consultant, always a management consultant.

Bu, y’know what? It doesn’t matter. Parties are like conferences. As long as there is enough to eat and enough to drink, it is very hard to screw them up. It will be fine.

It doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t matter if there is a bit of extra angst or unnecessary activity. And I don’t have to make it right. I’m not responsible. Actually, it’s none of my business. I’m just the sous chef. It feels okay.

Maybe I will be able to go back into the workplace and just do my job. That would be very good news, if so.

Some think it’s noise, I think it’s pretty

This started as a comment, but got too long.

I agree with this. I don’t think it’s a good idea to be committed to an organisation, because it can’t commit to you. I know too many people who’ve had their hearts broken by redundancy after a lifetime’s service – not because of the loss of the job per se, but because they’ve discovered that their commitment to the company is not reciprocated.

But I think it’s possible to be committed to work in other ways. I think we can be committed to do a job as well as possible, even if it will be over by the end of the week. I think we can be committed to be present, to show up and do our best, even if we have no control over the outcome. I think we can be committed to people, to keep our word, to do what we’ve said we’ll do either verbally or through signing a contract with an company. I think we can be committed to learning, or to giving of ourselves without requiring reward or validation. (Not giving everything, but giving something real.)

We can be committed to a mission – to contribute to building equality, for example – through our work, through relationships and conversations, through how we lead our lives. (This isn’t a post about spirituality, but one of my favourite quotes is from St Francis of Assisi: evangelise wherever you go, and, if necessary, use words.) We can be committed to a path: to be loving, to grow, to spread clear thinking and reason. We can be committed to humanity – to do all our work in a way that will give something to others. I expect there are more.

At the moment, I’ve got as far as the concept of commitment. It’s everywhere in my thoughts right now. But I don’t yet know what I will commit to, and how I will practice it. I think it will take a while, because I’ve been doing the opposite for so long.

This list is a good place to kick off my thoughts, and I hope that more insight will come.

Don’t get ideas, this won’t last forever

This post started about procrastination, because I am doing too much right now. I have a big college crunch and I should be working. Instead, I’ve spent today reading Reginald Hill and helping my flatmate spend money on clothes.

The first SSP post was about procrastination. SJ hasn’t done it all her life, but I have, and it’s a real problem. I’m better than I was, but I still procrastinate, especially working on my own. (Of my three assignments, I’m currently doing most work on the one that involves other people, even though that one has the least scary deadline.) SJ wrote about fear of failure, and I can certainly stick my hand up for that.

But I’m no longer sure whether procrastination per se is the problem, or whether it masks something deeper.

I spent Saturday morning finishing off step 5, confessing my somewhat tangled relationship history to C. And she noticed something that came as a surprise: the common thread is my fear of commitment.

I’d never thought about it like that.

But she has a point.

I looked up the dictionary definition and got the official act of consigning a person to confinement (as in a prison or mental hospital), which made me laugh a lot. But then I got this: The state of being bound emotionally or intellectually to a course of action or to another person or persons. That’s what I’m talking about.

I have had quite a few relationships, and I have twice cohabited with a partner. The second time, I thought we were going to get married, and I was devastated when it fell apart. Cohabitation, that’s commitment, isn’t it? Surely if I share my life with someone, I’m committed to them?

I’m not going to write about that relationship, because he would hate it. But I have come to realise that commitment is not what I believed it was, and that I was not as committed as I thought. In some ways, I was keeping myself apart, expecting that I would have to take care of myself. I didn’t really share myself. I didn’t give up control of my future. I didn’t put the relationship first and myself second. That’s one of the reasons the relationship didn’t work, and I regret it deeply.

It’s similar with work. I’ve never done a job for longer than two or three years, max. When I’ve got bored or the illusion has been shattered, I’ve walked away. And I’ve always been attracted to what I didn’t have and quick to find the flaws in what I did.

I need to learn commitment. I’ve worked harder on this course than I’ve ever worked before, but that’s not the same as commitment. If I were committed, I’d be working, not reading detective novels when the going gets tough.

I need to be committed to the work that I do. I need to be committed to the people in my life. If I am ever to have a relationship again – and I hope I will; I’m not even thirty-seven – then I need to be able to commit to a partner. I need to be committed to myself. Commitment needs to be at the centre of my spiritual practice right now.

I might be wrong. I’m often wrong. But I think that if I were committed, I wouldn’t procrastinate.

I could have turned you inside out. But I chose not to do.

SJ and I were talking about choice.

Socially, we construct choice as a good thing. Choice in schools, choice in hospitals. (Sadly, this does not extend to my particular choice, which would have been not to go to school at all and might well have been to blow it up.) SJ was questioning the value of choice, and this is at least in part a post provocateur to get her to expand on this a bit.

But I do think about choice. I use aspects of NLP as part of my coaching practice, and much of that is about helping people to increase their choices. A key concept of NLP is learning to develop flexibility about how to achieve your goals, and I do believe in this. So, for example, if my goal is meaning in life and I think I can only achieve it through working for a company with a noble mission, I will be fairly unhappy working in financial institutions. However, if I can be flexible about where I’m useful, new possibilities open up. I could derive satisfaction from supporting my colleagues, or I could accept that work is not the source of my meaning in life and instead look for it in sponsorship or volunteering in the Oxfam bookshop.

Realising that I have a choice – and being willing to make it – is useful. When I feel trapped by a situation, I look for choices. How can I break down my goal to give myself as much choice as possible? It’s been very useful for me.

However, there are spaces where choice does not help us. Barry Schwartz writes about the paradox of choice, and this is a valuable frame. (Here’s a fun commencement speech by Schwartz about this. God, I love the Internet.)

He poses the question: how much choice is too much choice? His answer is interesting: he distinguishes between maximisers, who look for the perfect solution, and satisficers, who are able to say ‘this is good enough’. Satisficers pick up the first tube of toothpaste that works for sensitive teeth and costs less than £2, whereas maximisers will go through every tube on the shelf to find the cheapest or the best. Unsurprisingly, satisficers are happier. And people are more likely to make decisions if they have less choice.

Of course, one way to frame Schwartz’s work is that we have a choice about how we relate to choice. We can decide where we want to be maximisers and where we want to be satisficers. (If you are an aeronautical engineer, for example, being a maximiser is a Very Good Idea.) As we understand the distinction and become more aware of what we do, we gain more choice.

It’s an interesting space. It is not straightforward, but I think I’m still broadly pro choice, so to speak. If we believe we have choice, rather than believing that there is no way out of a situation, we are stronger. Viktor Frankl said it best: “Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.“

If the bogeyman should try to play tricks on your sacred mind

I was going to start this post with my own experience of depression (and hence antidepressants), but instead I think I’ll come over all self-righteous and start with the statistics. Which are well-known, but truly frightening when we think about how much this disease is still stigmatised and misunderstood. Read and cry, people, read and cry.

Depression is an extraordinarily horrible thing. I have never forgotten listening to Margaret Tebbit* on Desert Island Discs, saying that if she had to choose between her past depression and her present quadriplegia, she would choose the latter without a second’s hesitation. Not everyone has it this badly, but I think a lot of people would recognise this.

I have had depression twice. Both times I have been treated with SSRIs and they have worked for me. I took them for six months each time, and at the end of this time I was able to stop without any trouble. And in that time, I was able to get out of the vicious circle of pain and make the changes I needed. Some were external changes (get a new job, stop taking the pill), and some were internal changes (get some rest, stop crying at work all the time and get some stuff done, forge some relationships). If I were to get depressed again – and I was this close, less than two years ago – I would go straight back to the doctor and say, medication nao plz.

SJ and I were talking about this yesterday. (SJ, please shout me down in comments if I have misinterpreted, and I will edit accordingly.) She is struggling to understand how antidepressants can work for endogenous depression. She gets it for reactive depression, because she can see that it gets you out of a temporary bad place. But she currently sees antidepressants for endogenous depression as being like insulin – one is okay as long as one takes them, but then the problem comes back exactly as it was before.

I’m fairly certain that there are other ways to look at this, because I know that mostly people don’t take antidepressants for life even if they have endogenous depression. But I am struggling to find a good way to explain it. I started thinking about water – when I spill a little water on the counter washing up, it soon evaporates. But when I spill a lot (yes, this does often happen, why do you ask?) then it stays there and I have to clean it. I wondered whether depression was like this – if it’s possible to switch back from ‘a lot’ to ‘a little’ through medication, the rest will evaporate? But I can’t support that scientifically. It’s just what I’ve seemed to notice.

I am still thinking about it. I have a problem that’s not completely dissimilar – an unexplained pain in my side that’s so painful it keeps me awake at night. And I was talking to another friend yesterday about taking painkillers for it. And she said ‘I just don’t see why it has to hurt when it doesn’t have to’.

This seems like a good mantra to me. A lot of things hurt. Some have to. But probably more don’t. I’m not an advocate of medicating reality, but I don’t think this is quite the same thing.

I am not here to tell SJ what to do. In SSP we believe that one size does not fit all, and I will support her whatever she chooses.

But I will be working with that idea for myself. Quite a lot is hurting in my life at the moment, and maybe, just maybe, it doesn’t have to.

* Margaret Tebbit is the wife of British ex-Tory cabinet minister Norman Tebbit, and was paralysed from the neck down in 1984 in a terrorist attack on a hotel where the party conference was being held.

Investment v involvement

Two of the people I admire most in the workplace are my two most recent exes, both of whom I worked with before I dated them.

I admire the first because of his professional judgment, which is impeccable. He would come home and say ‘those two teams are going to merge’, or ‘A is going to leave and B will get his job’. No inside knowledge – just instinct. And he was always right, every single time. If I’d opened a book on his words of wisdom, I’d have made a fortune.

This is an amazing gift (and a damn useful one), but all I can do is to admire it from afar. There is no point in trying to develop my ability in this space.

I admire the second for something rather different – his ability to detach. He works hard, but at the end of the day he leaves work in the office where it belongs. And, if things are not going the way he thinks they should go, he does not get wound up. He is mildly frustrated on occasion, but he does not take it personally and he does not obsess about it and he does not think it is his job to make the world the way he wants it to be. He does his bit and that’s it. Done. Move along now, nothing to see.

This is something that I could aim for, and I am doing so. It’s number one on my list of what I want to do differently when I go back into the workplace.

SJ and I had an interesting conversation about control, but I was never convinced that we had nailed the source of our difference – or, indeed, nailed whether we actually disagree. Then, this morning, I got something in my mail box that gave me a different take on it – this newsletter, which draws a distinction between investment and involvement. And I think it highlights what I was trying to say, but does a much better job.

My problem has been that I’ve invested myself in the wrong things. Other people’s approval is a good example. Actually, there’s almost nothing I can do about what others think of me, other than being polite. I can’t control their opinions of me. I’ve wasted a lot of time and energy trying – time and energy I could have spent doing project work, or singing and dancing and swimming.

Another example is trying to make the outcome of a project go my way. I can do my job, but I can’t make others do theirs in the way I would like. When I worked for Megabank Corp, I spent my life trying to get others to do what I wanted. Of course, none of it worked. because we are powerless over others. They kept on doing their thing in their way, and all I ever managed to do was to tire myself out and cause myself and those around me a great deal of angst.

My ex involves himself without investing himself. And I want to learn to do that. It’s why I’m seeking the wisdom to figure out what I can change and what I can’t – so that I don’t invest myself in the things I can’t change. Which is almost everything.

Doesn’t mean that I won’t be involved. But I won’t be invested.

And, as I keep re-learning and re-learning, the one thing I can change is me. And that, I’m both involved and invested in. Very much so.

Positive deviance

Back in college. (9 days out of the last 13. I love college, I really do, but this can be over nao plz?)

Yesterday was a high point, though – positive deviance! I got very excited just hearing the name. (Be quiet at the back.) I texted SJ to say, ‘We are studying positive deviance!’, and got the reply, ‘Is that something in statistics?’, which just shows what happens when you work with accountants.

One of my stories about my fifteen years of corporate life is that people didn’t want star-shaped pegs, only identical round pegs with the points rubbed off. So this space is personal for me, and I filtered the seminar through my own feelings and experience.

Positive deviance is defined to be ‘intentional behaviours that depart from the norms of a referent group in honourable ways’. Spreitzer and Sonenshein, who work on this, acknowledge that ‘at first glance, positive deviance appears to be an oxymoron’, and that we are taught early that deviance is bad. Our lecturer suggested that organisations do not distinguish between positive and negative deviance, and that organisational systems are set up to keep people within norms and preserve the status quo.

This resonated with me. It’s why I’m here and doing the work I do – because I’ve seen so many people silenced and sidelined for not fitting within organisational norms, people who have so much talent and passion to offer. So I am heartened to learn that someone is studying the value and benefits of differing from the norm. It’s relevant for my life, and it’s relevant for my beliefs about people – that we all have unique strengths and that we’re at our best when we are able to use them. In other words, we are all star-shaped pegs.

I became very interested in the idea that positive deviance is ‘intentional’. I always deviated from the organisational norm – but was this intentional? Or was it just acting out? I always find it hard to see the middle ground between ‘I am a misunderstood star-shaped genius surrounded by unbelievers’ and ‘no wonder I was never valued and rewarded; I was acting and reacting like a six-year-old’. The answer, probably, lies somewhere between the two. But I can’t say it was intentional.

Spreitzer & Sonenshein write about the personal qualities that enable positive deviance: meaning, courage, self-determination, focus on the other, personal efficacy. I’m not going to write about these in detail, partly because this post is already too long and partly because I am not yet sure what I think. But these are all qualities that I would like to have more of, and I don’t doubt that they would increase my effectiveness as an SSP in the workplace.

But I have questions. Is positive deviance really a property of the individual, or is it in fact a property of the organisation? How contextual is it – in other words, is a successful positive deviant able to repeat the experience in a different environment? Is positive deviance just for leaders, or can it be for the rank and file? Is it possible in any culture, or is some permission or cultural openness required?

I suspect the answer lies somewhere in the middle. I can probably do more than I used to believe, and less than I would like. It’s certainly not going to work if I try to do it all myself, without trying to meet the organisation where it’s at. And it’s not going to work if I sit back and wait for the organisation to discover the brilliance of my positive deviance.

I don’t know what I’ll do when I go back to work, and I guess I won’t know until I get there. I guess I’ll be working on making my deviance intentional rather than random. (This sounds so weird.) And I hope I’ll be looking to develop the enablers on the list above – especially courage. And, above all, I’ll be reminding myself that deviance can be positive, but it isn’t automatically. I have to take responsibility for making it so.

Those days are passed now

Carol Craig came to speak to my class this week.

Her work springs from her interest in Scottish culture. (If you click on one link in this post, make it this one.) Her main thesis is that Scotland suffers from a crippling lack of confidence. She talked about the the troubled relationship between England and Scotland and the ’schizophrenia’ of identity that this brings for Scots. She cited some aspects of Scottish character and culture that she sees as central: the reluctance to put one’s head above the parapet and draw attention; the bone-deep pessimism; the scepticism; the extensive social problems; the way that diversity is silenced. She painted a picture of something broken. She thinks Scotland’s need for positive psychology is great.

I was listening, transfixed. And in between listening, I was madly texting everyone I know: I’m learning Scotland’s psychology!

I have a complicated relationship with Scotland. With one exception only, all the men I have loved have been Scottish or of Scottish ancestry or deeply connected to Scotland. I worked for a Scottish company for six years, and the work and culture always seemed to be deeply informed by the national character. I have spent a lot of time there in the last ten years, and I have come close to moving to Scotland on several occasions.

Craig’s presentation was valuable for me. She is a very gifted presenter and she talked a lot of sense, but the resonance was deeper than that. At one point, she was talking about Scottish idealism and how it can lead to depression and anger when people don’t live up. She talked about the Edinburgh Calvinist ministers looking through the windows of their parishioners on Sundays to check that they were at their devotions, and how this has led to a culture of thinking that everyone’s business is the community’s business. And I thought, I recognise this. It helps me to interpret people I’ve loved.

Craig got me thinking about generalisations. Mostly I am not a fan of generalisations. (Please note careful choice of wording here.) But I have been known to make trenchant generalisations about the Scots. I have been accused of racism here, and I think that was probably fair, so I’m a lot more careful than I was. That’s a whole ‘nother post, really.

But Craig’s thesis is not just a collection of generalisations. Her book is profoundly scholarly – her background is in philosophy and political science – but her work is practical. She is using her generalisations to choose which areas of the positive psychology canon to focus on – confidence, self-esteem and resilience, for example. She is helping many Scots to change, to become happier and more resourceful. I find that exciting, and I wish I could be part of it.

There are aspects of Scotland that I love beyond reason. The landscapes of the Highlands, the atmosphere of the West Coast, the architecture of Edinburgh; all take my breath away with their beauty. And there are aspects that I find hard; I always felt rather ground down by the number of Scots whose football team of choice was ‘whoever is playing England’.

I don’t know how to be in relationship to Scotland. I love Scotland, but don’t always like it. I can’t live there now. And I am not of Scotland. I am a foreigner there. But Craig has rekindled my love of Scotland, in all its flawed glory. It hurts a little, but it’s good to be back in touch with it.

You’re trying to make sense of something that you just can’t see *

Today I am learning about spirituality.

My class consists of ten people: 3 diehard atheists who consider themselves ‘non-spiritual’ and find the whole thing rather off-putting; 6 who consider themselves to be “a spiritual person” but don’t believe in God, and one person who outed herself as religious. (Me.)

We started by talking about definitions of spirituality. Themes that came up included connections with other people and the world around us and the search for meaning and transcendence. My definition (which might have been slightly softened because I was acutely conscious of being the only person in the room who plays for my team) was ‘a connection with something that is greater than yourself’. (No prizes for guessing where that wording comes from.) And I hastened to add – which I do believe – that this could be anything. For some, it’s a connection with the natural world. For others, it’s their relationships with those they love, or a more general sense of connectedness to others. For me, it’s God.

I don’t expect everyone to believe in God. I wish it didn’t get quite such a bad press, because it’s by far the best thing in my life. It makes me a better person, and it makes me happier and more at peace. But it is not everyone’s thing, and I do not think it is my job to tell other people what to believe.

However, I do believe that we all have a spiritual side to us, even if this does not translate into a search for the divine. I do believe we have an innate desire for meaning and connection in our lives. My ex-boyfriend, a militant atheist, found his meaning in life through helping his friends. He would do anything for them, and nothing made him happier. And it was a different kind of happiness from how he felt cooking or gardening or skiing. Perhaps a better word would be fulfilment. Others find this in creative activity or relations with family, or a myriad of other sources. And I do believe that we benefit on many levels from nurturing our spirituality, and we suffer if we ignore or deny it.

This post doesn’t have any particular point. I’m not trying to make a case for anything. I’m not even trying to pass on my own learning, because I’ve come to this place through a long and complex journey and I do not believe I could have got there any other way. As much as anything, I’m writing to figure out what I think.

It is an interesting topic for a lot of reasons. It’s interesting to watch my class getting het-up about this, far more than they have done over any topic so far. And so far this week we have talked about ancient philosophy, culture, experiments on people and animals (yes, I cried all evening on Monday, why do you ask?), the mind-body problem, nihilism, loneliness, existential angst and death. (Yes, I am tired, why do you ask? And it’s only Wednesday.)

There is something in this space that is really emotive. It presses buttons, both in the spiritual types and the atheists. I’d venture to suggest that it presses buttons for SJ, and it presses buttons for me. I’m becoming very curious about what’s going on here.

* My thanks to Hano for the title of this post. He is now in charge of post titles.