Resilience Disruption

Resilience is often framed in individual terms. I’m often called in by organisations to assist their staff to build personal resilience. It’s the right conversation but the wrong focus. The focus needs to shift to organisational resilience.

Why?

Disruption is on the rise. Chat GPT is topical right now, but it’s just one more (significant) disruption in a growing stream. Natural disasters (Turkey, NZ), Technological (Chat GPT) Geopolitical (China, Russia) Financial (interest rates) and more. All the uncertainty measures are trending up. Some steeply. Disruption won’t be stopping any time soon.

image by AnToineLanz from Pixabay

Individual resilience helps us deal with the direct impact we personally experience. A group of resilient individuals in an organisation can collectively handle impact. And they are even stronger in a resilient organisation.

One of the best ways to build organisational resilience is to focus on Psychological Safety (...the belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. Amy Edmondson).

If you don’t have (and actively maintain) Psychological Safety, you are flying blind in the storm. People will see problems, but say nothing. They’ll avoid responsibility. They’ll shy away from change or building new skills. They’ll fear for their security.

Think of almost any organisational challenge. Psychological Safety builds the resilience to effectively deal with it - Because people are more likely to be and bring their best.

If you are a leader, and you would like a clearer understanding of the behaviour that builds Psychological Safety - lets talk.

Goals?

“The biggest casualty of COVID will be goals and plans”. So said Jason Clarke, Mindworker when I interviewed him right back at the beginning of the pandemic.

I reckon he hit the nail on the head. Many of my goals and plans got sidelined, and no doubt yours did too. During that period we all experienced this together, but that kind of disruption happens all the time on a smaller scale.

Factors outside our control make a mockery of our plans. Consider some of these scenarios, any of which could leave your plans in a smoking pile. Some of them might be familiar:

• War breaks out in your region

• Interest rates climb, changing your financial reality

• New technology threatens or removes your job

• You or someone close to you becomes seriously injured or ill

• A competitor out-paces you

• Your entire worldly goods are lost in a natural disaster such as a fire or flood

• A funding program changes its costing model destroying the margins for your not for profit

• Your business is unable to source mission critical supplies

• You cannot find enough staff to run your business

I’m sure you know people who have been impacted by such realities. Maybe you are currently directly experiencing them yourself.

In the face of these kinds of disruption a typically constructed SMART goal may not stand up.

On survival courses we taught 5 priorities for survival. The priorities give clear focus to make a flexible plan that you can adapt to the reality you face.

Some of the sectors I work with find “Areas of Focus” a great way to handle uncertainty.

Regardless of how much duress you are currently under, being clear about your top priorities and key areas of focus is part of creating a psychologically safe environment that withstands disruption.

What are you focussing on in 2023?

If you’d like a conversation about planning for/in uncertainty, I’d love to hear from you.

Mindset Magic

When I was young a great uncle made coins disappear then magically reappear in new locations, often as sweets or notes. I remember dearly the curious fun it created, and my clumsy attempts to repeat the trick.

Magic gives us a visceral experience of just how much we miss as we look at the world around us. Psychologists tell us that we miss up to 80% of what's happening right under our noses. This is both a super power and flaw for us humans.

Super Power - it allows us to deeply focus and pull detail from chaos. All our successful endeavours rely on this ability, both individual and collective.

Flaw - we are easily lulled into thinking we have the whole picture. The blind spots that result can cause massive (sometimes fatal) problems.

Teams that create psychological safety have a deep curiosity about what they might be missing. Finding a blind spot is cause for celebration rather than criticism.

Magic gives us a playful way to explore blind spots.

I’m delighted to announce a collaboration with the fabulous Stuart Lightbody. Stuart is an award winning, global touring, sleight of hand master. What he can do with card and coin baffles your brain. He and I are running a short workshop on 22 February for humans who are curious about:

• How we filter

• The stories we tell

• Creating Magical Moments

• How these things can be used to navigate uncertainty and lead well

The workshop is going public on Friday, I wanted you to have access to it before then. Tickets can be purchased here.

P.S. I rarely use this blog as a sales platform. There’s no expectation or obligation to buy. However, if you are curious, Stuart and I would love it if you can join us.

Right Conditions

I have been visiting a freshwater lake in a secluded patch of bush north of Perth for 20 years. Back then the trees had lush canopies and no there was no fallen timber on the ground. There’s been some harsh, dry years since.The canopy has thinned out and the ground is littered with fallen branches as the trees self prune for survival. Some ancient trees have died.

The last few winters have been wetter and the lake is starting to transform. New trees are popping up from seed. Old trees are regrowing their lush canopies. Some that looked dead are sprouting. The bush has been lying dormant just waiting for the right conditions to flourish again.

People are like that too. I’ve worked with some teams where people are uninspired and doing the bare minimum. They have retreated into a self protective mode where there is no creativity, minimal commitment and little energy. Sometimes, it’s toxic with people working in the shadows to make life worse for each other, either to deflect unwanted scrutiny, or to eke out more resources for their own survival.

Just like the lake, if the right conditions are built, people begin to flourish again. Sometimes the turnaround can be incredible and rapid. But it takes the right conditions. In those harsh years, there’s no way you could get those trees to grow. If the conditions are not right, telling a team to behave better, produce results, be more creative, or less toxic will not change a thing. It may even make it worse. Trust and Psychological Safety are like the rainfall. Growth will follow.

Break Back to Back

Guess what! Back to back virtual meetings cause elevated stress levels. Recent research from Microsoft confirms it, but none of us are surprised. Anyone who has leapt from one “Brady Bunch” screen to another has felt it.

Microsoft scanned the brains of 14 people as they went back-to-back, compared to taking a 5 to 10 minute break between meetings. Back to back = elevated and sustained stress levels (Red/Yellow scan). Short breaks = minimal stress (Blue scan).

And while the research focuses on virtual meetings, I reckon it would hold true for face to face ones as well (although at least there is a short decompression as you move from one to the other.)

Elevated stress smashes our ability to think, decide, solve, communicate, and collaborate. Most of those meetings require one or more of these from us. As a survival instructor, creating ‘task saturation’ was a really easy way to create duress for a team on a survival course. Impose a tight deadline, swamp them with information, ask for clear decisions and plans, hit them with distractions and before long the stress levels are through the roof and mistakes are made. That adds even more pressure, as now the team has to solve problems it has created for itself. Now add conflict (or at least friction/tension) as people get shorter and sharper with each other. Does this sound familiar?

We can do better. And we need to. This stuff has a direct impact on bottom line. In Australia there have also been recent changes to Work Health and Safety that put greater responsibility for workplace mental health and wellbeing on employers. This stuff has a pretty clear cause and effect chain. There are known health consequences of sustained levels of unhealthy stress. Back to Back environments may well end up in similar territory of allowing employees to operate in dangerous environments when fatigued. In a tight recruitment market, being a better place to work will also be a competitive edge. Proactively addressing this problem makes sense on many fronts.

Potential system solutions:

• Set calendar systems to make meetings 25 min rather than 30, or 50 min rather than 1hr.

• Set 2 or 3, 15 to 20 minute break blocks per day where none can book anyone for anything.

Potential style solutions:

• Have some meetings standing up/walking, and outside.

• Lead by example. Take mini breaks. Encourage others to do the same.

Potential working solutions:

• Give people greater say in the meetings that they attend, or at least ask ‘why do we need this meeting?’

• Get clear about what the meeting is for. If it’s not clear, can it.

People are generally experiencing higher than normal levels of fatigue, stress and burnout. “Push Through!” is a valid answer in short burn situations. It doesn’t work in longer burn ones.

Let’s create an environment where we all scan ‘Blue’.

HTMPFFIC

I was taught this Pre Take off checklist by an old flying mentor who had been a commercial pilot, flying everything from Tiger Moths to large commercial jets. He used it on the 50+ types of aircraft he had flown in his career. 

H - Hatches and harnesses secure

T - Trim set for take off, Throttle friction set

M - Mixture full rich, Mags on Both

P - Propeller pitch full fine

F - Fuel, sufficient quantity and fuel tap and pump on

F - Flaps set for take off

I - Instruments, reading correctly, temperatures and pressures ‘in the green’

C - Controls, full and free movement and working correctly.

Photo by Neville Murphy

It’s easy to remember and work through. Every one of the items needs to be checked every time. Neglecting a single one could result in a failed takeoff or crash. Trying to remember them without the checklist results in a justified fear that you might have missed something. The checklist dramatically reduces mental workload in the cockpit before take off.

By contrast there’s an engine failure brief pilots give themself just before they start the takeoff. Engine failures are dynamic and require lots of judgement (Check out QF 32 or Miracle on the Hudson if you want insight into this). You can't build a checklist for that. The brief reminds you of the critical decisions needed if the engine stops and speeds your response in the unlikely event it happens.

Checklists create mental Capacity to deal with more dynamic events.

A Killer Checklist

I use and recommend checklists widely as a highly effective Capacity raising tool. A question I often get, especially from busy leaders who are implementing them for the first time is “How do I create a truly effective checklist?”. If you are making one for the first time, brain dump as many things as you can think of in appropriate detail. Then refine using these 4 elements.

1. Use it - The best checklists are the ones you use. A brilliant one left on the shelf is no use at all.

2. Storage - I store mine in a separate notebook in OneNote. Each has its own page. This means I can use it on any device and it updates to all of them.

3. Aide Memoire - the pre takeoff checklist I use is HTMPFFIC. It’s easier to remember that than the separate elements. (More on that checklist later). Is there a way you can make it more memorable?

4. Evolution - As you use it, notice how effective it is. Does it need evolving? Evolution could be simplified by grouping together or adding more detail. When I was instructing survival I simplified by adding “Survival Belt” to my list, rather than the 50+ individual items in the belt. When I pack for a presentation I separate Computer, Power Cables, and Adaptors because each is mission critical and they are stored in different places. I also evolve checklists by updating them on the spot if there are gaps or unnecessary steps. Over a few uses they become highly refined and effective.

The process seems slow when you are building a checklist, but they speed you up and reduce stress later. Well worth the investment.

I find the holidays a great time to practise. You can build checklists for relatively low consequence events and test them out. Planning/packing for holidays is a great one, because it's enjoyable.

Thank you for sharing 2022 with us.

Thank you for sharing 2022 with us. It’s been another epic year of fast paced change and uncertainty. Many of you have shared appreciation for these messages, and have told us how you are putting them into action. Others have asked questions or challenged some of the assumptions behind my thinking, and I love that too. The combination of appreciation and robust feedback has me always looking for new edges and tools that genuinely help to create capacity when we are under the pump.

Next year, it seems the uncertainty will continue. Geopolitical challenges, shortages of staff, higher interest rates, and high levels of fatigue continue to be themes. Be kind to yourself, the people around you, especially people in service roles. We all need it.

In 2022 we've road tested tools to measure psychological safety and trust in teams. The results have been great, with teams significantly shifting the dial on these measures and developing awareness of specific behaviour that makes it possible to do so. We’d love to get that work out to more organisations in 2023. If it’s of interest to you, or someone you know, click here for a coffee or a call to find out more about it.

Thank you once again. Raising the capacity of leaders like you to handle uncertainty and duress is what lights me up. It’s been a pleasure to share the road with you. As 2022 draws to a close, I wish you and the people close to you a peaceful and joy filled holiday season.

We look forward to sharing 2023 with you.

Cheers

Mike House and Team

Notable in 2022

I often get asked about resources and books I would recommend. Here are a few of my personal favourites from 2022. Each of these has some great content.

Podcasts

My most memorable guest appearance on a podcast this year was Sonia Nolan’s ‘My Warm Table’. Sonia has a wonderful, warm way of diving into a conversation. She asks unusual questions exploring people’s backgrounds , influences and food. The result is a different conversation than what is typical. I had a heap of fun on the podcast and it’s become a regular on my listening list. My conversation with Sonia is here.

Episodes that stood out:

Becoming Famous Sharron with comedian Bonnie Davies. Bonnie is a good friend. We mentor each other in many ways. This conversation gave some delightful insights into Bonnie’s thinking and evolution as an entrepreneur and character.

Ripples of Kindness and Compassion with Catherine Kolomyjec. Catherine gives some deep and applicable insight into compassion and kindness. She also discusses evidence and research about how good it is for our wellbeing.

The High Performance Podcast with Jake and Damian. Based in the UK, these two interview some of the most highly successful people on the planet, and mine their experience for insights you can apply. There’s best selling authors, international sport stars, performers, successful business people, researchers and more. It's refreshing in that it is not US centric.

Stand out episode was Owen O’Kane talking about self-care. Powerful tools in there!

The Hubermann Lab. Deep dives into research related to health, wellbeing, fitness and performance. I won’t recommend any particular episodes - they are up to 2 hr rich explorations. If you find the topics that interest you, you won’t be disappointed. Lot’s of cutting edge actionable insights from actual research.

Books

Brené Brown “Atlas of the Heart”. Many of us have a pretty limited vocabulary to describe and understand emotional states. In my book “Thrive and Adapt” I give several reasons why this is a useful skill to have and to build. Brené’s book is one of the most comprehensive resources I’ve seen for understanding and developing emotional literacy.

David Spiegelhalter “The Art of Statistics - Learning from Data”. At face value this sounds like a dry and boring book. It’s certainly not a topic I'm immediately drawn to. I read an interview with David on the topic of Uncertainty. It was fascinating and insightful. The book is warm and easy to read (understanding it is another challenge!). David gives some great insights into making sense of information, including false information. Lots of applicable insight and tools for dealing with Uncertain environments where it’s unlikely that you will get the complete picture.

On the fiction front, “I am Pilgrim” by Terry Hayes is a stunning novel. One of my top five of all time. Epic in scale, fast moving, constantly evolving and edge-of-your-seat stuff. I was late to this party, so you may have already read it. If not, check it out. I’d love to hear what you think.

Is there anything that has come across your desk in 2022, that had a significant impact on you? I’d love to hear about it.

To be Avoided

Imagine waking from surgery to find that the wrong leg had been amputated. That would leave you without a leg to stand on. An Austrian surgeon that made the error last May is in a similar position. The surgeon claimed human error which wasn’t well viewed by the court awarding damages.

Medicine, emergency response and aviation, are all fields who have widely adopted checklists as a way of reducing (preferably eliminating) errors like these. 

Checklists make a massive difference where there are one or more of these factors at play:

• High consequences for a mistake, like marking the wrong leg, forgetting the fire hose, or not closing the aircraft door.

• Reliable repeatability, like having everything you need in the operating theatre, on the fire truck, or in the cockpit.

• Mundane tasks, like double checking patient details, fire truck maintenance, and pre take off checks.

• Rapid response required, like a patient going into cardiac arrest, someone trapped in a burning building, or an engine failure over the Hudson River.

• Lengthy time intervals between occurrences, like any of the above professions doing annual compliance checks.

A checklist removes mental load from some activities, increasing the Capacity for responding to others. While the Austrian Surgeon’s claim that the ‘wrong leg’ was human error is probably true, the negligence comes from overlooking one or more critical checklists specifically designed to avoid such mistakes.

Where could you benefit from a good checklist?

Some examples might be:

• Reporting

• Recruitment

• Preparing to present

• Responding to complaints

• Customer service

• Making products

• Frontloading your week

• Holidays

Decision-Making Capacity

Have you ever reached a point where you can’t even make a simple decision? End of a long day, fatigued and asked to choose between 2 simple food options. It’s a strange feeling not being able to bring your decision making ability to bear, even though it's not a difficult decision and consequences are low. It’s called decision fatigue. And while there’s still debate about whether it comes from making too many decisions and running out of capacity, or from mental exhaustion and stress is unclear. Either way, it seems we have our limits. Like the VO2 max we looked at here, we need to either increase our capacity via skills, tools and exposure, or clear capacity somehow.

Some examples of clearing capacity…

Former US President Barack Obama was said to have a whole wardrobe of identical suits in blue or black. It meant there was no need to decide what to wear each day. It was going to be a suit, and the occasion dictated or blue or black.

A speaking colleague, Shil Shanghavi, pre-decides and prepares most of his food for the week, eliminating food decisions during the week.

One of my mentors, Peter Cook, has a pre-decided work routine when he flies. Rather than trying to decide what movie to watch, he meditates until the seatbelt light goes off and then gets into some writing. He describes it as a decision he made once and then sticks too, so he doesn't have to make it every time.

Are there decisions you could unload by making them in advance or once rather than often?

Frontloading for Capacity

I’ve had a small store and ready room added to my office. My business had outgrown my office space. Even when I was relatively ordered and organised, it was cluttered. The store means I have spaces designed for frontloading.

Front loading = Removing future controllable stress.

An example is a shelf dedicated to the equipment I need for live, face to face experiences. There are 3 shelves. One holds equipment that I often use but not every time. One is essential equipment. One holds consumables I use in my presentations.

I recently flew to Sydney at short notice for a conference keynote. The shelf eliminated packing stress. I could quickly and easily see everything I needed, and load it into the carry on bag that is now stored under the shelf. Along with a refined checklist (more on this later), packing was quick and stress free.

When I’m done, I replace items on the shelf and restock what I used. This takes discipline. I’m not always great at that part, but it’s an easy investment now, for a future benefit. The better I frontload, the more Capacity I have to deal with high cadence periods of work.

What/how could you front load to increase your capacity?

Capacity for Empathy

People close to me have gone through some challenging stuff in the last while. Some of it has been personal, some professional. In every case it’s been caused or exacerbated by a lack of empathy.

We have no idea what is happening in the whole of someone’s life. We usually just see the parts we are directly involved in or that they choose to share. Firing harsh shots at people has impacts, often far beyond what you see, and certainly beyond what you intend. Growing our capacity for empathy is part of the success recipe.

Many people at the moment are tired and maxed out in all kinds of ways. If you are also at or past your maximum it can be challenging to find empathy. Here are some mindsets I find helpful:

• Assume people are acting with good intent, and to the best of their ability. What they are doing may not be ideal, but chances are they are doing the best they can with what they have.

• Be Kind. Don’t fire harsh/cruel/provocative shots. There’s a saying that is attributed to many people, who knows where it actually came from - It suggests “Before you speak ask yourself if what you are going to say is true, is kind, is necessary, is helpful.” It’s great advice. Ideally tick all 4, but I reckon at least 3 of 4 is the threshold. Be especially mindful of this if you are feeling hurt or unjustly treated. Start with yourself - sometimes we can be our own harshest critic - My inner voice can say unkind things to me I would never say to someone else.

• Focus on issues, not people. Help the people around you to do the same. A sub standard piece of work needs to be sorted, but don’t use it to attack the individual. Even if there are serious performance issues, deal with issues, don’t attack the person.

• If you do stuff this up (and all of us have moments where we are more reactive than we wanted to be) genuinely apologise and do your best to repair the damage. Extend grace to others when they are trying to fix things with you.

When we are overloaded, tired, sick, hurting, grieving or struggling in other ways, none of this is easy. But it always gets us further and faster than the alternatives.

Slow Death of an Option

Our leader from last week had decided to ‘kill off an option’. It turned out the decision was quickly and easily made when examined in the light of Capacity and her intended direction.

Implementing the decision will take longer. It’s tempting once a decision has been made, to rush toward the end state. Sometimes we can and it’s the best thing to do. Sometimes we have to move slower.

Her decision executed well will require some planning time, pitching her most preferred alternative to her current boss, plus recruitment and training time in a tight market. All up, that may take 8-12 weeks.

She’d love to rush forward, but the higher value comes now from doing it well. That will set her up for longer term success.

Do the options you need to kill need a quick death or a slow one?

Great Questions

I’ve been a fan of great questions my whole life. They have a way, when asked well, of opening and deepening really interesting conversations. Over the years I have kept notebooks filled with great questions I have heard. I was recently interviewed on Sonia Nolan’s “My Warm Table” podcast. Sonia combines questions about food, family and expertise that result in a dramatically different type of conversation. I’ve loved listening to Sonia and some of her other guests, and hope you enjoy the conversation we recently shared.

By the way, I’m keen to keep adding to worthwhile podcasts out there. People like Sonia put a lot of work into great content. If you know anyone looking for guests, let me know.

Delegation for Capacity

Imagine a high performance foiling Yacht sailing the Americas Cup. They have 11 crew, all with highly specific roles on board. When they are working well, the boats are poised on a knife edge of F1 like performance. It’s a great example of effective delegation for capacity.

The skipper may well have the skill to fill all the roles on board, but if they tried to sail the boat single handed it would never reach anywhere near its full potential. To make the most of the boat and the team, the skipper has to delegate.

Workplaces are like that too. Without effective delegation Capacity is severely compromised at every level:

Overall Performance - Capacity is reduced because of do-overs, lack of clarity, inappropriate workloads, ineffective use of the total capability of the team.

Leaders Performance - Capacity is reduced as leaders are likely overloaded with micromanagement, having to solve all the problems/provide all the answers, frustration that the team is not working as it should (BTW this is often a leadership problem, rather than a team member problem)

Team Member Performance - Capacity is reduced due to overlapping roles, lack of clarity, waiting for ‘permission’ and missed opportunities to develop greater capability.

As a leader, one of the highest return on investment skills you can develop is Delegation. How do you shape up?

Finding Unusual Links

What have financial forecasting, survival and leadership capacity got to do with each other? This Friday I’m joining Michael Ford, CEO of Castaway Forecasting on Nick Samios’ Lunch Money podcast.

We’ll be exploring what leaders can do in messy, unpredictable and uncertain times. Among other mindsets, we’ll be talking about the value of forecasting possible outcomes to the situation you are in. This isn’t about predicting the future. It’s about maintaining mental flexibility to deal with a range of possibilities. Let’s take a doomsday prepper and an athlete who is sure they will win. Both are forecasting.

The pessimistic prepper invests time and resources to be ready for a bleak future. If their scenario comes true, it’s the best ‘I told you so’ story in history (assuming there’s anyone left to tell). Any other scenario will likely see them completely unprepared.

The athlete’s envisaged win is way more positive than the prepper, but if reality strays from their perfect outcome, they may be just as stuck.

Leadership includes the capacity to imagine many different outcomes, play them through and anticipate what you might do differently. The key is not to buy into them. Winning forecasts add pressure if you are losing. Doomsday forecasts add pressure if something unanticipated comes along. Consider many possibilities. Hold them lightly and accept whatever reality throws at you.

If you’d like to listen to the Lunch Money podcast episode here’s the link.

Influence

Influence was the only tool I had. To get anywhere, the hearts and minds of the people around me had to be engaged. My last role before I started my business was a stroke of leadership genius. The Executive team recognised my willingness to “play” in spaces of deep change that others found uncomfortable. They created a position unlike any I have seen before or since. My role was to advise/recommend changes and then create the momentum to make it happen. I had no staff. I had no budget.

Nothing in my space got off the ground unless there was broad alignment. People had to be willing to invest time, energy and resources for anything to advance. I was often called on when a change project was not going well, so the starting point was often scepticism about the project.

The Big 5 I focussed on were: 

• Genuine Care – I was deeply interested in what the impacts and benefits of the change were for the individuals and groups involved. 

• Deep Listening - Getting a full understanding of what the change involved for everyone, including the potential risks and downsides for them was a critical ingredient. When I was listening to understand, I didn’t try to influence their position. 

• Benefit - We collaborated on making the greatest benefit for as many people as possible. If there was less in it for some, we focussed on how the change would deliver value at an organisational level.

• Transparency - When there were inevitable compromises to be made, I made sure everyone knew what they were and why. I doubled down on this if the compromise had a disproportionate impact on someone.

• Deliver or Discuss - If I said something was going to happen, I worked hard to deliver. If it wasn’t possible, I always renegotiated expectations before they were due.

Often change processes are framed in adversarial terms. “On the bus or not”. People view expressed fear, additional load, or highlighted problems as resistance. More often than not, this is evidence of people caring about the result. If you can develop a shared picture of the end point, it's much more likely that people will pull together toward it. And it will build strength and connection across the team for the future.

Ineffective Concern

What are you concerned about? There are probably a few things that it is wise to keep an eye on and plan for. That’s not the same as worrying or fretting about them. As with many aspects of life, it’s simple, but not necessarily easy.

I try to limit concern to factors that will have a direct impact on me, and that I have little control over. With today's Reserve Bank announcement further raising the interest rate in Australia, this is definitely a legitimate concern for many of us. We can’t directly change the interest rate, but we can pre-consider its implications and our potential actions. It’s prudent to keep an eye on it, because it will have an effect.

Ineffective concern would be worrying, ruminating , or losing sleep over it. Ineffective concern would also be ignoring it.

The best tactic to reduce worry is to run some realistic scenarios as a mental exercise. Consider their impact on you. Scenario planning is not about predicting the future. It’s about seeing alternative courses of action.

Are there any current elements in your environment you are ignoring but should be paying some attention to?

Are there any that you are burning time and energy worrying about instead of exploring options and potential actions?

Get after those… It can be scary to take the lid off the box, but it’s liberating to have a clear picture of implications, then face them square on.

Kindness

Our local open spaces look great. Today I saw why. A young city staff member was flat out with a rake and blower piling up and then picking up autumn leaves and rubbish. Without her efforts I reckon it would be knee deep. I paused on my morning walk and said “Thanks, the place looks great.” She smiled.

I’ve been reminded a lot lately about the impact of kindness. It’s easy, especially if we are stressed, to be short with others or overly focused on problems and criticism. At its worst, this can even be people making personal attacks. I certainly don’t always get this right. However small those harsh moments, they have a negative impact.

Christine Porath and Christine Pearson have investigated the impact of incivility (unkindness) in the workplace for decades. Their findings are profound. Even small moments directly impact people's mental health, productivity, customer service and the bottom line. Being kind is not only the decent human thing to do, but it makes good business sense too.

At the moment, many people across sectors are feeling fatigue, stress and pressure. One of the practical things we can do to impact this is set the intent of kindness, and follow it with action.

Ask yourself:

• When, how and with whom am I most likely to be harsh?

• In what simple ways can I demonstrate kindness today?

• How can I be kinder to myself?

If you’d like some specific suggestions, let me know.