In the news

Leadership across different worlds: Post-truth, facts and feelings

2017 has been a strange year so far. There is a disconnect between how things are and how things feel. Last month saw a leadership contest where the winner felt like they had lost and the loser felt as if they had won. This weekend a rugby team felt like they had lost even though they had travelled to the far side of the planet, beaten the odds, come from behind in a series and achieved parity with the best in the world.

Elsewhere in the world, the G20 summit took place. Taking part was the man who had won the US presidential election, even though he had lost the popular vote and is under a Federal investigation. It may not feel as though he is particularly presidential, yet it is he with whom leaders must meet. In the Middle East, Iraqi forces retook Mosul; but the video images of a bombed-out and shattered husk of a city do not convey the feel of a victory.

There are two versions of the world – the world that is and the world that appears to be. Where should we focus our attention? ‘On reality, of course’ would be a likely answer, ‘on facts and truth’. But in a post-truth world, is there still room for fact? The General Election and the EU Referendum were certainly fought on feelings rather than facts. The Alt-Right in the US and the Alt-Left in the UK dominate the social media news space with their ‘alternative facts’. The stock market has always been based on confidence not evidence.

The truth is, as Twenty-First Century leaders, we need to be aware of both worlds. Truth may be unpopular right now, but it won’t go away. No matter how successful you may feel your business is, if the company accounts are telling a different story you may need to take action or seek assistance. If a star employee decides to move on or retire, it may feel like a disaster, but rational thought will remind you that other exceptional performers are out there just waiting for an opportunity. You may feel as though you’ve been particularly diligent regarding regulations such as the Senior Managers Regime, but you are either compliant or you are not.

When it comes to people, we need to remember that feelings are not always telegraphed. We need to develop our emotional intelligence and empathise with how the world feels to others. The records may show that an individual has achieved a great series of results recently. However, you can’t assume that they’re feeling positive about this – the effort may be utterly draining them. An analysis of requirements and skills could indicate that someone is ideally suited to their role, whilst they may actually feel great frustration in their current position and be deeply unhappy.

Leaders need to be able to keep track of multiple worlds. The way the world is – the cold, hard world of facts, laws and reality cannot be ignored. However, the way the world feels is important too – judging trends and gauging direction is how you recognise opportunities. Last, and by no means least, is the need to remember the personal worlds that people inhabit. Clients, competitors, employees, and partners all see the world through their own lens and it is a reality to be mindful of. A work culture is a reflection of how a leader leads, and cultures of understanding can evolve where these worlds can co-exist without friction.

Bearing these things in mind might not help make any sense of a strange year on a strange planet, but it may help you to navigate the strangeness more easily.

Outplacement and Career Transition

Redundancy: From feeling anger to finding opportunities

The days of carriage clocks and gold watches as long service awards are fast disappearing. Not only because employers are discovering more varied gifts of recognition but because long service itself is increasingly rare. Most people currently working can expect to be employed across multiple companies, maybe even multiple industries, during the course of their career. There are likely to be several changes. Not all of them will be voluntary.

This can make people angry. But that is okay. No amount of articles you read about how redundancy is increasingly commonplace can diminish the fact that it can hurt. Ignoring that hurt and treating this particular transition as any other career stepping stone may not be good for your health. Career workshops full of strangers and online guidance do not do justice to the emotions in play. A more personal, human touch is often required.

Redundancy may be the ‘new normal’ but, as PRS’s Career Transition expert Peter Wilford explains, it can also represent ‘a psychological crisis’. For many people caught up in the process ‘redundancy can bring a sudden sense of loss in two areas; the practical loss of income and the psychological impact of loss of status, companionship and the mental well-being associated with being fully employed. It can also undermine our sense of self-esteem and bring about a fear of what’s to come in the future’*.

In a situation like this, there is likely to be sadness and fear – as well as anger. These are emotions that need to be recognised, accepted and worked through. Redundancy releases emotions similar to a bereavement or relationship breakdown. Emotions from events like these can be repressed or brushed under the rug but may continue to haunt you, could ultimately resurface and will certainly impede decision making when it comes to choosing the right career destination for the future.

So how do you deal with a potential psychological crisis, come to terms with change and effectively plan your next steps? Personalised redundancy counselling is the most complete solution. Due to the similarities with bereavement, the Kubler-Ross grief cycle is often used to understand reaction to redundancy: Denial, followed by anger, bargaining, depression and, finally, acceptance. Everyone’s timescale for moving through this will be different and everyone’s needs will vary accordingly, which is where ‘one size fits all’ group sessions can feel unhelpful and an e-learning programme devoid of empathy.

One to one counselling adapts according to the needs of the individual. For those who have completed the cycle and accepted their new situation, counselling takes the form of practical advice and support in finding a new position. Others who have experienced a significant setback as a result of being made redundant – such as a loss of confidence – can work on overcoming their specific challenges too. Services can also be tailored to support an individual when a broader change is required – if, for example, an entire sector of the economy was contracting.

Whether you need to provide genuinely effective outplacement services for your team members or require such a service yourself, the bespoke approach of redundancy counselling helps people feeling anger, feeling fear or feeling fine to seek out the most appropriate opportunities for the next stage in their careers.

* You can find out more about our associate Peter Wilford here and, if you would like to explore this theme in more detail, you can read his full article here.

For a conversation about career transition and outplacement services, you can contact PRS here.

In the news

A Leadership Tale

Once upon a time there were three leaders trying to gain control of their country. One was a confident leader who was so determined to be strong and stable that she told everyone. Unfortunately she did not display other authentic leadership qualities such as some humility, a willingness to engage with her people and believed everything that her advisers told her.

Another leader focused a lot of his energies towards the younger voters. He promised lots of things that would appeal to them like minimum pay, scrapping of university fees and making the environment much more youth friendly. He also came across as authentic and relaxed when talking to voters. He also made good use of social media and communicated effectively.

Finally there was the leader who inherited a political party that was in complete disarray. He also had to try and sell an old set of policies that had already been achieved and there did not seem to be anything new to offer. He definitely came across to voters as someone who had been given a “hospital pass”.

So what was the result. Bizarrely, the person who won the election actually felt that they had lost – mainly because they were expected to win by a massive landslide and did not. The person who came second felt that they had won because they had not been wiped out. Finally, the leader is disarray remained In disarray and not only did not get voted in, but also resigned as leader.

So what is the key leadership lesson? It is all about trust – If all the other factors had remained the same, different levels of trust could have altered the fortunes of all three.

If the first leader had established a strong trust with people beforehand, they may have supported her decision not to engage with the process, maybe even seen it as a sign of superiority. But not enough trust was there. The second leader’s ideas were considered by critics to be too fanciful and optimistic. But many people ignored the negativity because they trusted him. The third leader had to rely on trust. Having been dealt an empty hand, he had to create belief for his followers in a new relevance and purpose. But the trust wasn’t there.

The moral of the tale? If you can persuade your people to put their trust in you then success is much more likely.

In the news

When People Risk Costs £150m

If you want to understand People Risk, take a look at the recent case of British Airways’ £150,000,000 system failure. People Risk is the potential cost and harm that can befall a business when its people make poor decisions. It’s not always obvious how the actions of individuals within a company affect the business as a whole. However, every so often, an example like BA comes along which makes People Risk starkly clear.

The £150m outage is believed to be the result of a single operator’s error. The event is classed as a system failure and, indeed, the IT system did fail. We underestimate systems. It is easy to blame unfortunate events on faulty systems, malfunctioning technology or flawed processes. However, what causes systems to fail? Quite often the root cause is people – in BA’s case, a person.

Security experts maintain that the human element is always the weakest link in the systems they design. High level data security and encryption is most easily undermined by the executive who leaves their laptop on the train or who sets their password to ‘123456789’ or ‘password01’. The BA IT system had its own backup to switch to in case of failure. A likely cause posited for the total shutdown is that someone manually interrupted this automatic switchover sequence, flooding the servers with double the normal voltage.

The BA story is an extreme example. Flights grounded worldwide and thousands of stranded passengers are big news stories. Such large scale errors may not be common, but they do bring questions about People Risk to the fore. How many smaller, unreported People Risk events are taking place on a daily basis? What preventable costs are businesses unknowingly incurring from individual errors and decisions? What is the level of People Risk within your own business?

People may often be the weakest link but that does not mean that they’re inherently flawed. People need to be invested in to the same extent as systems they operate or are a part of. BA had invested in Uninterruptible Power Supplies which have the capability to maintain the current after a mains failure with battery power whilst backup generators automatically spool up and take over. What was potentially missing was an engineer with the competence and confidence to know this, to remain calm and not to manually intervene during the spooling up period.

Reducing your People Risk involves making the most out of your people. People don’t have a backup setting that can spool up in the event of a failure; they need to get things right in the moment. Training, development or coaching your people enables them to make the right decisions at the right time and ensures that your business is as cost effective as possible. As the systems around people grow ever more complex and the stakes of failure rise, reducing your People Risk is more important than ever.

If you would like to have a conversation about People Risk, you can contact PRS here

Or, take a look at our HR Healthcheck:
You probably already make a substantial investment in your people. The People Risk Solutions HR Healthcheck has been designed to help you protect that investment and give you a fixed cost, highly professional, rigorous and independent overview of your people risks. Read more here…