About time - paying attention to a precious resource

Today, I deleted someone from my phone book and erased their address from my contact book. 

I sent her a text wishing her well, and telling her that this was the last time I would contact her. The person who's no longer on my list of Christmas and birthday cards and has been taken out of my iPhone hasn't been in touch for a couple of years now.  I've tried numerous times to raise her, not just at Christmas when most people guiltily realise that we've not been in touch since last Christmas. I've texted, emailed, phoned and written, with no response.  And so now, sad but resigned, I've decided to make the effort no longer.

I don't do this often.  I'm generally of the view that there's some resolution for arguments, some method of fixing a broken relationship, and so it's very rare indeed that I give up, and stop the communication.

While this is undoubtedly a failure on my part to patch things up, it has also felt oddly liberating. In fact, I'm going to be looking through my ancient address book and making further decisions like this.  This will give me more time to spend time with people I care about, people who care about me.  People who love me, value me.

My mum is someone who suffers from my pre-occupation with work and friends.  This has happened all my life on the basis that to my mind, mum would always be around.  After all, I'm her daughter and she is almost obligated to be there when I call.

Except now, she's older.  Looking at it dispassionately, I have less time with her than I did last year, and the year before that.

Time, once in plentiful supply - despite the plethora of technology to enable us to do more, more quickly - is now becoming a very precious commodity.

So in 2013, I will concentrate on spending my time with people and family who desire my company, rather than trying to coax a relationship out of those who have other things to do.  Time is priceless - I will stop frittering mine away.

Nothing to see here...

I'm uneasily aware that my blog has slipped to the bottom of my agenda.  No posts since August.

This is of course, one of the golden rules of blogging - make it regular. So if I know this, and really would like people to be interested enough to read it- what's going on?

If people recognise that what they're doing is not the way it should be, feel guilty but still don't change what they're doing - there's a reason.  Maybe not an acknowledged reason - I can make all the excuses I like about being busy, or uninspired - but a reason that, twisted though it might be, is stopping you doing what you know would give you more success.

So - what are my reasons for failing to blog? I have been busy, that's true. And on holiday.  But I find time to watch my favourite TV programmes or shout at the TV during BBC Questiontime. So really, I know that these aren't my reasons.

And I might well have been uninspired - although as mentioned, current affairs still stir me to action in terms of tweeting. So that's demolished that excuse.

So what is the reason I'm not tweeting regularly? Am I lazy? Unreliable?

Excuses - or 'reasons' - as we re-label them, are often a smokescreen for what's really going on.  And I think the real reasons why my blogs aren't regular, is that actually I am butterfly-minded, easily distracted and at the beginning, I have loads of enthusiasm, but not the discipline to maintain momentum. Plus, my time management can be appalling.

And if I'm honest, I suppose that sometimes, I see all the intelligent comments made by other bloggers, and wonder if what I think about the world is worth reading.

All bad habits begin like this, I think. We find justification for our actions, whatever they are, and on the surface, they satisfy us.

But scratch that surface, go a little deeper, and the reasons are different, often very different. A little self analysis often reveals more unflattering 'reasons'.  And once you acknowledge the true reasons for your unhelpful behaviour, then you can start to tackle them. And ultimately change them.

The death of an author - an unknown friend

I learned a liitle while ago that one of my favourite authors - Diana Norman - had died. I suppose my shock was linked to the idea that - although she didn't know me from Adam - she and I were somehow connected, and I feel I should have been told, personally, of her death.

I remember feeling something similar when I heard of the death of Robertson Davies, whose intricate, clever, sometimes labyrinthine novels had kept me so entertained while I was in my thirties.  It was a sense of loss, of disappointment, of something unfinished.

And so it was with Diana Norman. As an author she had enthralled me, seduced me with a heroine who was sharp, clever, brave, who said witty things and did stupid things. Much indeed, like a big chuck of humanity. When I last read of Adelia, she was - I hope - about to save her lover from the wounds of a fight he had just fought. I hoped all would be well, and that he would continue to irritate her through further novels. 

And then - nothing.  No further book releases. When I finally put her name into Google and came cross the notice of her death from cancer, I felt bereft. Not only because I had lost a source of great pleasure, but because I felt I had lost a friend, a confidante.  And I never had the chance to tell her that I loved her work, because I never managed to get round to it. 

While this is completely academic and of no use at all to Barry Norman, her husband, it taught me a valuable lesson.  It is never too soon to tell someone how much you value them, or their work.  It is always urgent.  

It has also made me think about the impact I might have on people. If an author I've never met can evoke such feelings of warmth, perhaps I - in other ways, maybe - should make the effort to do the same to people I do know?   

         Diana Norman, who wrote under the pen name Ariana Franklin died in January 2011.

Sshh! don't mention your pay!

I invariably enjoy the Birkbeck Business Week because it brings me up to date with the latest research interests of the school and fires up the Quattro grey cells.

This year was no exception – there were sessions on the impact of induction on employee identity and a session on the current darling of the consulting world, employee engagement.  Being the critical sort – Birkbeck had taught me well! – I was pleased to see Teaching Fellow Richard Williams was as healthily sceptical as I was.

But one of the most interesting session for me was Julie Dickinson’s presentation of project work on pay secrecy.

Academic research here is scarce – well, it is secret – and Julie gave some of assumptions about the potential pros and cons of keeping pay under wraps.

It doesn’t seem to be a uniform phenomenon; the well paid would rather keep their payslips close to their chests; the less well-paid appear to talk more openly about it – possibly to complain?

The research – such as it is – is not only contradictory but also fairly difficult to compare.  Studies look at perceptions and employee outcomes from pay secrecy, but they look at slightly different variables.  And therefore reach different conclusions.

A lively discussion pondered whether pay secrecy isn’t more about the inability of organisations to properly define the value produced by different jobs than it is about a need to keep compensation private – although obviously privacy does come into it.  Some people thought that openness about pay may lead to “poaching” key staff – although a recruiter in the audience said that it was rare that she saw people being overpaid against the market average when pay secrecy was written into their contracts.

A key point about pay secrecy was the opportunity it gives for increasing pay inequality by the back door. There was a lot of discussion about the transparency supposedly inherent in the public sector (every senior civil servant had their salary published in bands, someone pointed out) and lacking in the private sector.

My own view was that inequality in pay seems to be in place regardless of how transparent pay is – there are plenty of women in the public sector who are paid less for doing more work than their male colleagues….

An interesting discussion, even without the solid empirical evidence.  Perhaps because of it!

Coaching - fixing leadership vulnerability in secret

I've been an executive coach for about eighteen months and I love the work.  I've been lucky in that my clients and I have worked well together, identifying the real issues at play (often not the presenting ones) and stretching towards solutions that my clients can sustain without any further intervention from me.

Having got a few senior assignments under my belt, I now am looking - in a crowded marketplace - to grow this side of my business.  I'm thrilled that all of my clients so far have been happy to recommend me, and have written some rather humbling testimonials.  I had one this week from a client I worked with for six months, which completely lit up my day:

Karen's coaching has been genuinely life-changing for me.  She has a friendly, positive, upbeat manner combined with an assertive approach which does not let you get away with anything. Karen listens, asks  powerful questions, offers alternative ways of seeing situations and makes the coachee responsible for their own career.  She also records conversations and sends you incredibly helpful and eye-opening summaries of what you said and what this might mean, which really highlight where you might be stuck.  Having worked with Karen for six months, I feel so much more confident.  I have my work-life balance in check, I am much more assertive, I am really enjoying my job and people keep telling me how great I  look!  I'd highly recommend Karen as a coach.

I was about to post this glowing comment on a well-known business networking site, when she asked me not to as a number of her own work colleagues were also on the site, she said.

Obviously, this doesn't mean I'm any less delighted with the testimonial, but so many people have also given me testimonials but then limited their circulation, I'm starting to wonder if coaching is something people want to hide.  A bit like treatment for an unmentionable disease.

Which in turn led me to wonder if vulnerability in leadership is so unacceptable that to admit you're having a bad time is career-limiting. As is having coaching, which may imply there's something to fix.

Earlier this year, I conducted an interview with a very senior executive in a European company. He told me that when he arrived at his new post, the first thing he had to do was to restructure, putting 40% of the workforce out of a job.  As we talked about this experience, his voice cracked and he became noticeably upset.  He told me that he had personally been involved in talking to all those made redundant.  He told me how painful it had been.  He told me that he had, in effect, behaved "unprofessionally" by letting his people know, in an all-company meeting, that he was at the end of his tether, and walking out.

He told me, that as he sat back in his office, alone and in silence, wondering if he should tender his resignation, email after email began to appear in his inbox.  They all said that they had known their pain, but now they understood his.

While I was setting up the interview, his personal assistant told me just how inspirational she found her boss, and how, two years after he had taken the role in the company, everyone liked and admired him.

Now - is this a coincidence?  To be openly public vulnerable, to show feelings as a leader, and to be admired by his people?

Latterly, I don't think so.  And yet, a leadership position often seems to mandate a patina of invincibility to be painted over your personality, and it cracks at your peril.

So I wonder if acknowledging coaching is an admission of weakness that few leaders - at whatever level - are willing to make.   And I expect that, until leaders are allowed to be human and be vulnerable, and until coaching is seen as development rather than "fixing", most of the testimonials I'll get will be anonymous.

After the apology

I tried to make an apology to someone tonight. I had behaved badly, giggling through something she had said at an event discussing leadership and the role of internal communication in increasing profitabilty in organisations.

In my defence, I wasn't laughing at what she said - although the example of Ed Milliband as an authentic leader stretched my self-control somewhat.  No, it was the expression of ludicrous disbelief of a mate of mine, which sent me over the edge.  Quite rightly, the speaker took umbrage, and began to complain....and then the facilitator took a hand and moved us on.

Immediately the event finished, I got up and went towards her to speak.  She backed away from me, and I protested, asking her not to leave and saying that I wanted to apologise.  I said I had been very rude and I wanted to beg her pardon.

To my surprise, she asked me if I had always been that aggressive and recounted not only my rudeness that evening, but also a few other rudenesses that while she hadn't seen, she had imagined. She told me how childish I had been, and although I tried to explain that it wasn't her, but my friend, who had caused my hilarity - she was having none of it. Truly stunned by this time, it was me who was backing away now, pursued by this woman who now started to question my attitude, my thought patterns and my anger management issues. She then landed the clincher.

"Perhaps it's because I don't speak the same as you that you think what I say is so funny. Do you think I have a strange accent ?" she spat at me.

Now I may be many things, but being biased by a foreign accent isn't one of them. And although I had noticed her accent, this had not influenced my view of her choice of leaders, or indeed biased my view of her or her opinions. My best intentions now long disappeared, I lost my temper.

"No, I think you've got a problem, love," I snappily responded.  Gathering up my bags, I began to move away from my seat, pursued by her all the way.  I didn't tell her where to go, but I did tell her to "go away" (JUST that, nothing else!) and was finally rescued by another of my friends.

On the tube, it suddenly struck me that this is how wars start. A slight, a mistake, a wayward flick of an eyebrow, a smirk in the wrong place.... whatever our disagreements about authentic leaders, by the time I went to apologise, I was suddenly responsible for not just this slight, but for everything that had gone wrong not just that day, but possibly all her life.

It's at this stage that I realised that the apology for a giggle in the wrong place was never going to be enough.  I could have prostrated myself for half an hour and still the misunderstandings would have remained. I'm not proud of my behaviour.  But, you can only be responsible, and apologise, for so much of the pain in someone's life.

Picture perfect - motivation in an instant

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award comes to an end tomorrow.

Every year, almost without fail, I get myself  - and any stray kids or adults I can round up - to see the exhibition at the Natural History Museum. And every year, I feel almost compelled to weep at the images they capture, showing me a sometimes alien, but stunningly beautiful world.

Insects whose black luminous bodies flicked with rainbows jostle with glossily beautiful birds and big cats, vast underwater caverns in turquoise and midnight blue sit beside white and brown tundras of aching loneliness. However well you think you know the world, the exhibition will reflect it through other eyes, making even the domestic and familiar unfamiliar.

So my favourite photographs are not those taken in the remote Andes by photographers who laid for hours (or even days) on their stomachs in snow, or mud to capture nearly-extinct creatures.  Or those who risked death in freezing waters, being nudged by great white sharks looking for their next meal.

No, my favourites are the ones taken by younger entrants, sometimes below the age of ten, of common birds  I see in my garden, or the park - robins, seagulls, blackbirds and bluetits.  These wonderful shots capture the sheen on every feather, the breath of a thrush at dawn in an autumn meadow, a perky robin defending its territory in pristine snow.  And sometimes, the narrative paragraph which accompanies the photograph indicates that the photos is not the result of hours of patient waiting, but chance.  A serendipitous, once-in-a-lifetime, lightening-strike chance where perfection is seen through the lens of a camera, and captured.

My partner asked me if I was encouraged or disheartened in my own efforts by the wonderful images on show.

I am discouraged by the underwater, Andes shots of rare and endangered species with people spending months waiting for the right shot; as a communications consultant, that rugged life is unlikely to be mine.  However, a photo taken in my garden, or the local park, with fingers metaphorically crossed, which emerges as perfect - that I might aspire to.

So am I setting my sights lower? Some might say so.  Looking at some of the photographs, I think not.  But the spontenaeity of the photograph seems somehow right with that kind of shot, and after all, what are the chances of a perfect shot?  It would take some application which might, at the very least, be equal to lying on your stomach in the middle of nowhere for hours on end.

Up with down time

Today is the third anniversary of my civil partnership to the fabulous Fiona and on this lovely sunny day, we went to see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Natural History Museum. Before we left the house, I changed my handbag twice - the first was too small for what I wanted to carry, the second too like a business bag.

While I was on the tube, I looked at the contents - my reading glasses, enormous purse (fat with no end of credit, debit and loyalty cards), the note book I jot thoughts in, my diary (paper, small, slim and I fear slightly inadequate in these electronic times), my iPhone, a lipstick (I took out the whole make-up case, it wouldn't fit) and finally my Kindle in case I got bored on the tube.

I wondered why I had so much stuff.  Just ten years ago, I wouldn't have had this amount of paraphernalia.  Now, I think I cram my bags with things to do in case I have a spare moment - papers to read, emails or blogs to write, my diary to plan.

So - is this the gradual erosion of "down" time, where you do nothing at all except let your mind go blank or - at a pinch - daydream?  Which means of course, that you never have a spare moment and this, I think, is damaging.  I recognise in a wired, connected world that such thinking is old-fashioned, heresy even, in a world where work never stops.

But  work should stop.  This gives tired brains the time to recuperate and in that recuperation, comes renewal.  Research  indicates that the time people are most creative when they are most unconscious. Daydreaming and "doing nothing in particular" is crucial - it's said that Nolan Bushnell, the founder of the Atari company, was inspired for what became a best-selling video game while idly flicking sand on a beach.  What wonderful ideas could we all have if we stopped working all the time, and started staring into space?

So throw away the big bags - go out with money in your pocket and a phone which you need for emergencies only.  Watch people and interactions rather than stare at electronic games or bury your nose in a paper. Let thoughts float around your mind and let it drift into new waters.

It may not only be better for your creativity, but having a lighter bag will probably benefit your posture too!

A bucket list of possibilities

Heard of the phrase the 'bucket list'? This is a list of things you want to do before you die - or kick the bucket.

The idea is, of course, that when you make the list and see what is really important to you, the question to ask is why - if these things are so important - you're not doing them now.

I was talking to my partner about this, discussing what it is that makes people continue on the hamster wheel, rather than concentrating on doing what they really want, what will really make them happy.  And it struck me that fear has a lot to do with it.

Fear of doing something other than the norm. Being on a hamster wheel, while it might be dull, is at least predictable. You know how to turn the wheel, it doesn't threaten your competence because you know how to do it.  Getting off the wheel might mean you have to do something new and different - and the potential for failure goes up.

The other fear, of course, is fear of mortality.  While you continue to do what's habitual, the grim spectre of mortality is hidden by all this movement. It's only when you stand still, think of doing something different, that  the passage of years comes into sharp focus and the chill breath of death can be felt on your neck.  The noise of the day-to-day hides this - and the silence of stopping it can be so unnerving that many people choose not to.  It can often take something catastrophic to force that pause, the reassessment, the enlightenment.

And finally, the bucket list may not be all that it's cracked up to be. Part of the problem may be that individuals really don't know what will make them happy.  A bucket list which promises so much but delivers little would be a massive disappointment, particularly in the still and quiet as we move away from the sound and fury of everyday life.

So is the answer to the fear of the bucket list to do it? Or not?  I think the answer is probably somewhere inbetween.  Do small things to give you respite from the hamster wheel, to challenge your mortality but not necessarily meet it head on.  To stretch, but without letting go - until you perhaps find that the music of possibility is louder than the din of habit, and therefore harder to resist.

Getting better - minute by minute

As I sat on the bus at 7.37 on Monday morning - no small event in itself, I'm not an early riser if I can get away with it - I noticed a faint glow in the sky, catching the glass panels of the Shard in the distance.  The sun, starting to rise.  Earlier than yesterday, later than tomorrow.

I'm a massive fan of 21st December, the winter soltice.  It heralds the arrival, in increments of a few minutes, of longer days, and shorter nights.

It comes without fail and without fanfare, bringing - albeit slowly - light into our darkness.

I've seen a lot of blogs with New Year resolutions - mostly about being more direct, more healthy, more honest and having less tolerance for bullshit.  All of this is laudable, some of it profound, much of it entertaining.

But this year, after a fairly stressful 2011, with too much worry and insufficient money and the pain of loss among my extended family,  I've decided to try and simplify.

Rather than make several resolutions which I may/may not keep, I thought I'd endeavour to be like the winter soltice instead.

Arriving quietly, mostly unobserved, and making things brighter and warmer.