Tag Archives: accidental manager

Five Blogs in Five Days…I Can Relate to That

15 Friday Jun 2018

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Well I got to day five of my blog-a-day for Men’s Health Week. There’s lots of areas I could cover in the last episode but I wanted to make some linkages to what I have covered this week, so am going to discuss relationships. We know from research that relationships are important in our lives. Good relationships are instrumental to our physical, emotional and mental well-being. The ‘big four’ relationships (in no particular order for reasons you will discover in a minute) are:

Our relationship with:

1)     Our self;

2)     Our family and intimate friends;

3)     Our manager at work; and

4)     Our GP.

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I was going to concentrate on the relationship with your General Practitioner (GP) – and I will get to that – but I went to a master class this morning and it broadened my horizons like all good master classes should. It was conducted by Rasmus Hougaard of The Potential Project. Rasmus has just co-authored a best-selling book, published by Harvard Business Review Press no less, entitled ‘The Mind of the Leader’. Based on extensive research across many countries, where senior executives were interviewed, (open disclosure – I was one) Rasmus found that there are three key components to extraordinary leaders who get extraordinary results. These can be summarised as:

1)     Being mindful;

2)     Being selfless ; and

3)     Being compassionate.

I would strongly recommend getting a copy because it really does provide great insight into how to be a better leader of people and thereby improving business performance. In chatting with Rasmus after the masterclass, I mentioned my blog and he emphasised the point that THE key relationship in terms of  our physical and mental well-being is in fact our relationship with our boss. Clearly I had to touch on that in my blog!

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Given the amount of time we spend at work, our boss can have a direct impact on our mental and physical health. This certainly aligns with what noted management writer and Stanford Business School academic Jeffrey Pfeffer talks about in his recent book called ‘Dying for a Paycheck’. A toxic workplace he argues comes at a huge cost in terms of morbidity and mortality and is a clear work health and safety issue. Managers as leaders in their respective areas have a very strong bearing on the level of toxicity in the workplace, given the culture is either set by them, or allowed to flourish by them. Clearly it’s an area where more focus is needed min addressing men’s health concerns.

The ‘accidental manager’ is often the problem. Frequently technically gifted, they lack the insight to realise that the skills that make an effective leader and manager are not technical at all, but rather the ‘soft ‘ issues like emotional intelligence, insight, reflection , calm, poise, diplomacy etc. Quite often these new managers don’t want to reveal their vulnerability, so fall back on the ego that gave them great succor as content and technical experts. Humility is the key here and the insight to know that it’s good to ask for help. No-one can drive a car without getting driving lessons. Believe me you can do way more damage in charge of people than you can in charge of a vehicle. Learning is paramount and it should be lifelong. Like for me today…I learned new stuff and I do every time I am in the company of people like Rasmus.

The second relationship I want to give some focus to is our relationship with our GP. This is particularly important to us blokes because we under use this incredibly important service. We will get our car serviced within a week of its due date but will put off regular health check-ups. Let’s face it, most of us have less knowledge about what’s going on beneath our skin than we do about what’s going on under our car’s bonnet. Seems the wrong way around somehow.

What if we had a GP with whom we shared a good rapport? I suspect we would be willing to engage with them on a more frequent and earlier basis if they would engage better with us. This is an issue I raised recently with the peak body for General Practitioners, the Royal Australian College of GPs. They have been advertising a lot lately promoting themselves as ‘your specialists in life’, quite possibly mindful of the fact that Ai is already out performing them in terms of diagnosis and treatment choices. So far I haven’t heard ‘boo’ back. A shame really because they must have conducted research in terms of how to engage effectively with their customers, especially men who are a business opportunity just waiting to happen? Before a GP has a practice, first and foremost they have a business. I would encourage all GPs that they need to think long and hard about how they engage with their customers, particularly men to avoid disruption. Ai and machine learning is here and if lawyers’ days are numbered, GPs can’t be far behind.

This would be a great shame because it strikes me rapport with a robot will be much harder to establish than with a human. This got me thinking as to how you might build rapport and get to a level where you have a friendly and trusting engagement with ‘your specialist in life’. Unless you are a contestant on ‘Married at First Sight’ you don’t get married without first building a relationship with your partner. The first step on this journey starts with rapport. If you can’t build this, the marriage is doomed. So it seems counter-intuitive to me to end up with a GP without having some sort of selection process. Otherwise it’s no better than those faux relationship experts who put the MAFS contestants together – and we all know their success rate! I think the best approach if you need a new GP is to draw up a list of what’s important:

  • Would you be more comfortable with a male or female doctor?
  • What age demographic would you feel more comfortable with?
  • Do you need a specialism? e.g. asthma or diabetes – many practices have a sub specialists who cover particular areas in greater depth.

Armed with this list of requirements then, I think the next step is to shop around a few local practices identifying those who might fit your criteria. Asking who specialises in Men’s Health is the next action to be taken. Once you know this you can see whether that GP or those GPs meet your earlier criteria i.e. age, gender etc. Most likely some will.

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The next step, I believe, will be some of the best money you can spend to live a longer, more active and fulfilled life. Book appointments to meet with your shortlist and simply chat with them. This will quickly identify whether they are someone you could establish a long-term trusting relationship with. If you need help narrowing the field, tell them what you are there for i.e. you are interviewing them to see if they will make your short-list. Those interested and understanding of what you are doing should make the list. Those who take umbrage should not. There is no place for ego or power gradient differences with your GP.

If you really want to turn the heat up in the interview, move the patient chair from next to the Doctor’s desk to the middle of the room and get them to swivel their chair towards you. This changes the power dynamic and disrupts what is known as the ‘sociology of illness’ where the patient feels like the child in a parent-child relationship. If they can get through this without batting an eye, they might just be the one for you.

Next you should really dive deep into what does their self-professed interest in men’s health mean for you and what does it look like? If I’m having a GP who specialises in men’s health I need to ‘feel and touch’ the difference. In my experience quite often there is no appreciable difference between a GP who is a men’s health specialist and one who isn’t. This surely can’t be right.

The final clincher is can you see yourself liking this person? Will you build rapport and trust such that you can will be able to tell them anything that may be bothering you no matter how squeamish or embarrassed you might feel? If you can get all these issues covered in an appointment then you are building a key cornerstone into your long-term well being. Be prepared to book a double appointment (GPs love those) and don’t be worried about not finding your ideal match on the first ‘date’.

We know that relationships are key to good health. They can help us avoid anxiety and depression. They can intervene before issues build to a point where suicide might be considered an option. They help us build resilience and nurture us through times of hardship and suffering. Relationships at work can help us flourish or flounder depending on culture and how good the manager is. Relationships play a pivotal role in our physical and mental health. As humans  we want to live longer and be healthy and happy. We can all relate to that!

 

Channelling Oprah By Accident

15 Tuesday Dec 2015

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I went to the Oprah Tour of Australia in Brisbane recently . There I’ve said it! Fair play to Oprah she did, mid-show, acknowledge the 9 or so of us blokes in attendance, whereupon we were asked to stand and received the ‘love in the room’. It was just a momentary and miniscule glimpse of what it must be like to get adulation like Oprah does. She then went on to regale the audience with her ‘recipe’ for happiness, peppered with anecdotes from her life to illustrate junctures at which important things happened. All events that have helped her form her view on happiness and success. She touched on authenticity, having clarity of purpose, intention, dedication of service and surrender amongst other things. This gave me pause for thought. While her recipe for life seemed fairly common sense I reflected it wasn’t a bad recipe for achieving success in the business world either.

Just a couple of weeks ago now Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull released the much awaited policy on innovation. In his own words this is the best time to be alive in Australia. That point may be moot but you could prosecute a strong case to say it is perhaps the most interesting (and not in a Chinese proverb sort of way). In short the main issue confronting us is the re-calibration of the Australian economy from one of pulling resources from the ground (Coal, Iron Ore and Gas) to one of innovation. We were once the ‘lucky country’ and now we are striving to be the ‘creative’ one.

Out of the earth we once extracted wealth and now we must extract from our minds and spirits (the well of creative ideas) the new wealth. Once we extracted resources and sent them overseas without much in the way of a value-add, only to buy those goods back as steel and other value-added products. Now we must do the value-add bit here. When the commodity is ideas and we don’t value add in our own backyard it’s called a brain drain. We must have ideas and then shape and polish them if we are to maintain our enviable OECD position in terms of absolute wealth and also in terms of stature and national self-esteem. This is a nice segue to Oprah  who talked a lot about self-worth. Little it appears can be achieved if this is not at its optimal level. The real challenge now will be how we manage creativity and ideas within the workplace. Just the word ‘workplace’ sounds like a misnomer  because creativity, long associated with play, may seem a slightly awkward bedfellow to work (grind) which is what we get up each day for.

The Executive corridor (or C Suite – a term I really don’t like) is populated with managers whose qualifications fall into one of three distinct groups:

  • technical experts with a management qualification tacked on;
  • professional managers whose expertise lies solely in the art and science of the practice of management; and
  • technical experts with no management qualifications to speak of.

In the past knowing more than the other ‘bloke’, and yes it has generally been a male, has been the prerequisite for promotion or advancement in the workplace. This has had two impacts:

  • the most knowledgeable person in the chain has been taken out of the position immediately lowering the knowledge quotient at the pointy-end;
  • a position requiring an altogether different skill set has then been occupied by someone ill-equipped to handle it. Arise the accidental manager.

There is nothing wrong, per se, in promoting a technically proficient worker. This can act as an encouragement to others to strive to do better (or as Oprah might phrase it, to be the best you that you can be). However before doing so there are four precursor activities that need to be set in motion first:

  • working with the soon to be promoted team member getting them to realise there is a whole body of knowledge that they don’t know but will need to;
  • helping them realise that falling back on their default technical knowledge to define their sense of self-esteem in the new role is not appropriate;
  • providing some baseline management training before the promotion; and
  • instilling in them the notion that they are now on a path of lifelong learning.

In short it is necessary to do succession planning, or as Oprah might say, find your thread, follow and nurture it.

Regrettably the world is littered with accidental managers. It has become so acute that the Chartered Management Institute in the UK, the peak body for management professionals, has identified this as a key risk to the UK’s success in the digital age. The impact of accidental managers in the workplace is varied. It ranges from small business failures to meltdowns of global enterprises; the shockwaves of which ripple across the globe. Seldom do such impacts happen without individuals and families being affected. Compare an accidental manager to a not yet fully qualified pilot. At least s/he has auto pilot to rely upon. The promotion of managers without the requisite insight, training and commitment to lifelong learning is a catastrophe waiting to happen. Those who have put in the hard yards of learning and study over the years are often left to pick up the pieces and in ‘repairing’ those mishandled by accidental managers oftentimes find themselves reaching into their wider families to help salve their wounds.

With the need for Australia to generate ideas and turn these ideas into commercial successes, there is a greater need now than ever to have managers in place who are anything but there accidentally. There are four generations in the workplace – boomers (me), Gen X, Gen Y and Gen Z. As managers we will need to add this additional complexity to the existing skills necessary to run a successful business. Add to this the requirement to be able to create a culture where ideas can be encouraged, shaped and presented to market and we can begin to see that not only is the accidental manager well out of their depth but the assured manager may well be coming up short up themselves.

The ability to generate ideas is not enough in its own right anymore. The testing, hot housing, incubating and prototyping will require courage as it involves risk and risk taking. If we are to survive in the digital age and this new era of innovation, our approach to risk must change. Our default position of being risk averse can no longer protect nor sustain  us. This begs the question as to whether the existing breed of assured managers are up to the task (me included). Oprah may well prompt us to ask the question as to whether were are getting our team members to embrace their failures and allowing them to learn from them. We cannot innovate unless we fail some of the time. We cannot grow as individuals without some elements of failure in our lives. Failing in front of our subordinates is a huge display of vulnerability but without leadership by example how can we expect our team members to learn from us?

Failure starts to take us into areas where very few assured managers are comfortable to travel. Many of us may not even recognise that such terrain exists. Failure and success, creativity and innovation start to go to the spirit or soul of a person. To become successful managers we are going to have to embrace the soul and recognise the way it affects those about us. We will need to know about energy and flow. Required reading should now include Csikszentmihalyi, Myss, Chopra and Sheehy while still including Hamel, Prahalad, Porter, Pfeffer et al.

Oprah has a head-start here because she was able to build a successful media empire based on self-belief, focus, intention and surrender. She knows intrinsically that the spirit requires nurturing and in doing so, flow – the well from which we draw ideas – can bring happiness. As assured managers we are going to have to continue to learn and do so in new areas; some of which may not sit that comfortably with our scientist selves.

Highly developed intuition will be required (future blog topic on the way). I suspect business school learning will not be of great help here. Sure we can learn about digital marketing and the importance of cash flow at B School, but to learn about soul and spirit as Oprah would reflect will require us to attend ourselves. Perhaps the way of the future for managers is retreats built along the lines of ashrams? The drive that made us devote our own time to improving our management skills must be re-kindled to encourage us to learn new skills and acquire new knowledge that awakens new dimensions; those that will lead to innovation, business success and above all true happiness in the workplace and beyond.