The Dangers of an Undercurrent

Undercurrents can be extremely dangerous.

It is something you think is there but you can’t always tell. You tend to sense it before you see it – an unexplainable conflicting direction of travel that appears to contradict everything you observe with your ‘normal’ senses.

Undercurrents show up in many ways in business. Sometimes it’s a cultural piece – I remember joining a large International business and being told by my new boss, with great delight, that the company was like a swan; beautiful and serene on the surface, but paddling like crazy under the water.

“If you do anything to damage our surface reputation,” she warned “things won’t go well for you or me.”

I guess I never did anything to damage the surface reputation so never found out, because it wasn’t until last spring that I really understood the swan analogy all that well:

A client joined us on The Leader Ship group programme, wanting to better understand their propensity to panic when things went wrong. They described how a coach had helped them learn how to take things nice and slowly when they sensed things were starting to go wrong; problem was, this wasn’t really working in the fast-paced environment the client worked in.

So I set about creating an opportunity for them to experience what was going on in the ‘bad feeling’ moments, in an attempt to help them better understand the implications that resulted from the panic.

As we motored along the channel between all the yachts in the marina, the person in question started to ask more and more pointed, frantic questions… Are we going too fast? What’s at the end of this bit? Do I have to go left or right? Why isn’t anyone listening to me?

I sat with the person and asked them to find the calm place they had discovered with their coach and a new sense of serenity filled the air.

But, the atmosphere soon changed. In the calmness, the client became oblivious to everything around them - including the ￡3 million yacht moored 200 feet away – and the fact the undercurrent was pulling us backwards towards it at an alarming rate. The skipper calmly waited for a reaction, the crew started to gesticulate and shout, but the delegate sat frozen in time. And there is was, the cause of the issues for this delegate.

In any moment of uncertainty – due to perhaps a lack of a plan or unexpected change of direction – this individual would shut down and become entirely unaware of what was going on around them. Their overriding sense was that whatever was going wrong, was their fault; rather than thinking on their feet and looking for threats and opportunities, they become entirely internalised and stopped using their eyes, ears and gut instincts. It was very painful to observe, demoralising for the crew and debilitating for the individual.

When we ran the exercise again, the person sprung into action. Yes it was clunky and shouty, but it was so starkly different we all couldn’t help but cheer out for the achievement.

How are you in stressful situations? And what undercurrent might you be blissfully unaware of?