Season of goodwill: Challenging the persistent Growth attitude.

Published on December 24, 2020.

Article by Anjali Chatterjee: Founder and Transformative Business Coach at Artemis Coaching Ltd.

This year has brought us all a new landscape of choice: do we fall into despair or harness the positive opportunity brought on by The pandemic of 2020? While there many different conditions at play that may shape the choice we make, our human ability to reflect and re-evaluate our experience to the degree that we can, makes us unique as mammals. And now, at the end of the year we have another opportunity to choose whether to spend whatever festive break we have grasping after work opportunities or, do we choose to stop, restore and refuel ourselves for whatever may arrive on our doorsteps next year? Because, frankly in all aspects of life we have little idea as what politically, economic,socially and health-wise may arise. And might not necessarily be a bad thing. Uncertainty in and off itself, can just as likely bring new exciting possibilities as it can, whatever it is that we dread. If my Photos App hadn’t decided to crash, I had planned to put a photo in here of a crashing wave, pun definitely intended, but it did crash so that leaves me to fully try to explain myself more fully. So here goes. 

The first of my two thoughts; that the pandemic has brought many of us the opportunity to re-evaluate our working lives. Then to realise more fully than ever before, what is most important to us in our personal lives. And then, the chance to re-align our life accordingly. I feel a slight tension in writing that, because I know that it has not been as straightforward as that for everyone on the planet. So I am also going to write my acknowledgement here that for many other people, families, businesses and communities this year has been tragic, cruel, and yet even through that, the human capacity for course and kindness has largely, though not comprehensively also shone through. Where politics has failed in countries like India, charities and individuals have stepped in. This meant that the needs of some people in communities such as the people of the Dalits in India, were able to be met in significant ways with food, temporary shelter, and safety. After trying to eek out food and work to be able to feed members of their families by, walking hundreds of road seeking what little work there is left in the big cities, many were left stranded in large cities while ‘lockdown’ was sanctioned with no politically organised access to basic food, supplies, accommodation for these People. I want to acknowledge too how similar tales have evolved in the UK with food parcels also being distributed here as well as in India, throughout this pandemic to ensure that some households have some kind of nutritional support. 

So, for me this year has been the ‘great leveller’ where we have all been hit wave after wave of anxiety and uncertainty. And with this, have witnessed a tangible sense of anxiety amongst entrepreneurs and businesses chase and catch hold of commercial opportunities made available today, incase they are not there tomorrow. It’s also a flavour I have noticed growing in the advertising for online work opportunities that are pouring increasingly though the multi-media airways. The mostly have one theme in common: the offer of opportunities to ‘change your career’ or to ‘ free of yourself from fear and anxieties' in return for huge sums of money. I am going to admit that it makes me feel uncomfortable and I think that this pandemic situation, that is leaving many of us feeling vulnerable and insecure, may well need another approach to add to the mix. That is trusting this opportunity to re-evaluate our working AND life values, and allowing ourselves the time to figure out how to re-align our business practises in accordance with that. 

When we’re not anxious and fearful, for any period of time, there are also other positive findings in the atmosphere in this time of Co-vid. There was an incident recently outside my local Post-Office shop that highlighted for me a growth in something else I’ve been witnessing. Perhaps something we as a society have been craving increasingly for in this era of social-technology. That is, more basic community awareness & social-responsibility. Here’s the incident: one rainy afternoon, patiently standing in the queue to go and post a few parcels in my local Post Office shop. There were maybe five or so other folk in the queue behind me on the street, when a smart-looking couple, maybe in their early fifties, walked straight past me and the handful of us waiting outside the shop, and walked straight in. Normally, I admit I would have quietly seethed thought my teeth but ultimately kept quiet. I probably would have then forgotten the incident quite quickly as thoughts of the emails or teaching plan I had to write up after my Post Office trip had ended. But this time, I didn’t hesitate before turning around to my comrades in presents, and said “Did I really see that?”My comrades met me with wry smiles, great eye contact and shrugs. Normally again, I might have have left it there, but some sense of social responsibility found it’s way to my throat and I heard myself assertively but quietly calling into the shop to the couple,

“Uhhhmm excuse me…” the couple turned instantly (rather telling of their known guilt I liked to imagine at the time) “…there’s actually a queue to go in there.” I just ‘quietly’ mentioned. 

The couple to their credit immediately smiled apologetically, and left the shop saying,

“ Oooh we’re sorry, we didn’t see the queue, we’ll come back later” and smiled. I smiled in reply (of course), before turning to my comrades in Christmas presents, for one of the women in a rain-mac to declare to the whole queue,

 “ What did they think we were doing, standing here by the road taking in the fresh Co-vid air & rain?!” to which the queue broke out in laughter, peels of it.

Another incident, not so charming, happened at work recently and you may notice a similar theme. A colleague, lets call him ‘AB’ had written a proposal for a project time-line for a particular business, and had then shared it with another colleague, let’s call her ‘CD,’ to get her opinion & feedback. I then received a distraught call from AB a couple of weeks ago claiming that CD had not only not provided the promised feedback, and had instead taken and presented the proposal as her own. It was difficult to know how to respond to this but to explore it I’m going to refer to the Spiral Dynamics model, and one particle version by Roemischer in a 2002 article, that has been inspiring me for several years now. It’s an excellent adapted version of the original model by Beck (2002) and interpreted by Wilber (2006), and I have found it helps me as a Business Coach, Mindfulness Teacher Trainer & Supervisor to evaluate and choose how to develop my communication and decision-making in the business environment.

So, while the themes in the above two incidences are clear for you all I am sure, I think it pays to highlight them for transparency: ethical decision making, individual awareness and social responsibility. I’ve highlighted these smaller incidences because they are happening around us all the time at work and in our personal lives. They are not as dramatic and arousing as the political scandals of false expenses claiming, etc, but I think it’s these small incidences that give us useful opportunities to develop our ethical sensitivity in the workplace. Opportunities to see clearly where our business conduct and communication can evolve in serving our customers and local communities that ultimately give our business a purpose and income.

These small transgressions help us to practice ways that by small step by small step, shape our businesses into effective and transparent learning environments. Ones that reflect our true values as business entrepreneurs & leaders, and more fundamentally as human beings first. And this I think is one of the gifts of the Pandemic. The severity of the uncertainty over the past year, has brought every single one of us up against the very primacy of our human existence. Alongside this, is the reality of how much we need each other. In this moment I’m thinking of those many lorry drivers in Kent, who have brought us our chocolates, our vegetables, our imported wine from across Europe, and many of which will now miss Christmas time with their own families, or to spend it in their own homes. Our primal need for our collective consensus to co-operate with and for each other has rarely been more plain to see. 

While the collective co-vid anxiety can be used as an excuse for minor offences in social responsibility, like the two above incidences, Beck’s Spiral Dynamics model, portrays a wonderful web of spiralling conditions that through the Ages, have taken the human race across the terrain of advancement in our intellectual capacity, coalescing with our present ability to use the sources of the Earth to create this Technological Age. In the model, we see how with each age our capacity as humans to have progressive degrees of reflective awareness, is shaped as much by threats in our physical environment from dinosaurs and frequent earthquakes, as it is by our neurology and base physiological instinct to survive. I have found this a tangible and clear framework of reference especially during this Pandemic era as I develop a tool to assist individuals and teams to evolve their commitment to social responsibility.

In terms of applying this to our individual business or teams, each turn of the spiral depicts where you or your team presently are in response to the Pandemic. The communication and working practises of your business can be easily located by assessing where you currently are on the dynamic scale of values. This in turn marks where you and your team are in terms of value-based work practises both within the organisation and to customers. Once recorded, this can provide an useful picture of what may be holding you back in terms of moving forward.

The further memes higher up the model, provide the co-ordinates for where the areas of business that need further development. This has the potential to move you from being a business inspired solely by your fiscal giant, to one that is concerned to the level of awareness that brings action. And with action, comes the possibility of becoming more orientated towards social responsibility and global sustainability. To be effective in this, none of us need to be perfectly formed multi-million corporation. Nor do we need to believe in any fantasy involving us individually saving the world. But we can individually as businesses, contribute in some small or large way to all Peoples across the globe having equitable access to those basic human rights of health, and ethically provided education & employment. I read an article recently where a reader commented how business will be about productivity to meet fiscal targets. I was heartened to read five more comments that disagreed and pointed the reader to the reality that business is changing. So, perhaps you are now asking if being ethical can work for businesses? Then my answer is an empowered yes and will simply suggest that perhaps IBM, Patagonia, and Triodos Bank can speak for themselves. 

“80% of global respondents agreed with the statement that corporations have a responsibility to prioritize their employees, the environment, and their community as much as they prioritize delivering profits to their shareholders.” (Miranda, 2020)

So using the Spiral Dynamics model takes this Pandemic crisis and transforms it into an opportunity. An opportunity that can help your business to re-evaluate the effectiveness of your working culture. This means reassessing the potential of your organisation to move from what Sir John Whitmore called the ‘selfish capitalist,’ to more of a business culture that is aligned with accountability, awareness and social-responsibility. Research suggests that it can takes eight weeks to begin to see tangible meaningful and sustainable change for yourself and your team the making strategic decision that effect how you communicate and function in business. So how can we start (or sustain) this process once it has started to explored. Here are a few basic steps that you can act on straight a way:

1. Remembering your own initial business motivations and values: this is when we can viscerally recall what fired our imaginations and passions to set up our business in the first place. Depending on what our motivations were, we are likely re-in-vigour the frontal cortex part of our brain concerned with community, empathy, learning what we did right and wrong in our relationships at work, and most importantly, creativity.

Life has a habit of throwing a shroud over Creativity and smothering it over time. So we need to dedicate time to it. Schedule it into our diaries in the midst of our other meetings and business breaskfasts. When the prefrontal cortex is triggered, we also remember our common humanity, and this can fuel our motivation to communicate and connect with each other at work, as well as in our leisure time. And if that is all this Pandemic has brought us, this sense of common humanity, then maybe this year will have bought us the most valuable form of wealth, and one that can provide us with truly sustainable business practices and partnerships.

2) Time to restore through leisure activities: when we learn to reflect on our day on a regular basis we can synthesise all that has happened in our work commitments. I do understand the pressure in running a business, leading a team, or developing a Start-up. I’m now in my own second business. That sense of urgency, especially in a time like this when we can see more & more other businesses starting up or pushing forward, it can hard to dismiss those nagging doubts in the mind that keeps you striving on for another hour at the end of the day so that you're still at the computer at 1.30am. Or perhaps you have simply missed another lunch break. But this urgency and adrenaline over a long period of time can reinforce a sense of the meaningfulness and drive of our business and it's relationships becoming brittle, hardened and superficial. Inevitably this will leads to feeling disconnected form our own inner landscape, where we have forgotten are our original goals and motivation, and lost the valuable connections and co-creating opportunities we normally share with colleagues, and others close to us. This is another spiral but a less healthy one. One that only leads to exhaustion where any satisfaction is fragile, inspiration at best short-lived, and your own mental or physical health risks becoming a drained source, no longer able to fulfil your goals. 

3) Recognise what is happening: From my own experience, leading a Team when you are not in a fresh and dynamic relationship with your core values can yes, lead to success, but a form of it that is strained and unstable. Meaning, purpose and vision evaporate from communication with yourself and your team, leading to a quickly changing workforce, and little commitment from those who remain. Experience has taught me the importance of taking time to remember those values and basic human needs important to you, and to show gratitude to staff at every opportunity. And not by email but in person. One staff member said to me after a few years of mangling my last team,"You know I have worked in many different health settings and you are still the only manager that says thank you, and it’s great.” In these times in which we are experiencing such intensity of anxiety & uncertainty, everyone appreciates an expression of gratitude. 

Whether we are simply using our initiative, or are leading teams, or managing projects, our our targets are not always going o be met, and things are not always going to go the way we want them to. There is nothing wrong or even unhelpful in getting things wrong, its where our learning curve benefits and where we can achieve future business growth. Acknowledging that wrong decision however, can be just the catalyst you and your team need to become vitally charged with motivation and shared ownership. There is a humility in being transparent when we have done something wrong, or have missed the mark in a conversation and offended a colleague. When we make the decision to recognise where we have acted unwisely and acknowledge our mistake and it's impact, just that acknowledgement can be the foundation of what inspires your work force to step deeper into their commitment to the organisation. This is a huge motivator for all parties and one that can sustain teams for the inevitable lulls and peaks in business.

These qualities help to build creative, effective and supportive working partnerships. A leader is not only those at the head of large corporations but anyone who is willing to be a positive example for those around them in the office, or on Zoom while working from home. So possible first questions to help you start you process towards re-aligning your business environment to your positive values is this: is your work environment (in situ or online) set up to support you and those working with you, to be a true individual in how they want to communicate and make ethical business decisions? Is there a movement towards believing that this will facilitate progressive & thriving opportunities for your business? If yes, brilliant, keep developing those. If not, that's great, you have found your way forward.

On a final note, as another way to schedule in some prefrontal lobe time, I have been watching the sea, following it patterns of ebb and flow, and the rhythm of its waves. Do you know that before every wave happens, there is first a lengthy gathering of momentum from water being magnetically pulled and dragged from miles by the sea - and of course the moon. Both are strong influences and neither of which we have any control over. There is much of that gathering of momentum that is not even noticeable to the naked human eye. To take this metaphor further for the workplace, the first we know of the wave is when it begins to surface maybe 300-400 meters out to sea. You can see it rise out of the water like shelf with the momentum. As it starts to meet other waves, it slightly crashes into the other wave, and either unites as one, or disconnects and continues on it's own journey, each in their own momentum once again. Here, it will either unfurl quickly (not a surfer’s wave), or it will steadily ride through the body of water surging while waiting in front of it. Either way, it will finally rise into a crest of a wave. But, before it finally completes its cycle of reaching up into an arching high crest of the wave, to unfurl in that beautiful arc back into the body of water, it hovers. It hovers, just slightly. The wave apparently stands still, momentarily, while all the water molecules synthesise to form a whole. Only then, after that pause, that moment of synthesis, does it then continue and is unfurls fully to be complete it’s cycle. Only then can it fulfil it’s potential.

And each of us, and your team are not so different. We need time out from constant chasing of growth. The neuroscience world is keenly aware that our brains are just not cut out for it. One article suggesting that we are only programmed to deal with between 5-9 tasks a day, including our personal hygiene routines and meals. We need to space in our schedules to ensure that all the aspects of our experience have time to be processed and assimilated into useful learnings for our daily life, that is to not only to cope, but to thrive. Only then can we fulfil the potential the goals we have set ourselves. This means that time off from actively and persistently working on your continuing professional development portfolio, or that last phone-call or email. That to-do list we all know so well will never be completed. If you inspired and motivated, there will always be something else to do.

When we allow time for synthesis, a deeper form of evaluating our business strategy & work satisfaction and can take place. One that allows thoughts, imagers and 'gut feelings' to emerge from seemingly no-where. In reality though, they have come from the cavernous pool of your life and work experience to now emerge in the space allowed in your relaxation and self awareness. When they arrive it is in the form of 'new' ideas and 'exciting' solutions.

It’s been an incredible year and your mind, body & business venture deserves the opportunity to appreciate and synthesis all that has happened. Only then,can your experience become a dynamic motivating force, bringing clear working objectives, rooted in grounded reflections that fuel your working relationships, and open new opportunities. Can I hear the complaint coming of, “What, take time off, when the competition is so high?!?” Yes, take this festive season off to be by yourself, or with your family or friends, maybe your pet dog, but whatever you do please take time to be off from your schedule and to step fully into the other areas of your life. Mindfulness is not relaxing, though it is a great bi-product of it. Mindfulness is our ability to pour our attention into whatever and where we are with vital sense of appreciation, a knowledge that one is resourced and able to respond creatively and appropriately to whatever arise in our experience.

So, turn off the striving button off for a week, maybe more if you can, be confident that our business will survive and may even benefit from you taking that risk along with your strategic forward planning. I recognise that learning to feed your creative mind alongside also finding ways to give your reactive mind a break, could possibly feel like a chore in and of itself. So, I’ll finish by sharing that when I started to follow my own advice, I also started to experience new collaborations & business opportunities in ways I could not have fore planned but have nevertheless enriched my working life.

So I am signing off now with a wish that this festive break brings you all you need in health, happiness and prosperity (in whatever way is meaningful to you). In the new year I will be enjoying working with my own values based model of Spiral Dynamics in business and team management. There will also be taster sessions in how to work with anxiety and stress in daily life in both hon-based and office based work environments. These will lead into my my seven week course of the same theme, due to start the end of February, 2021. My one to one coaching sessions re-commence Monday 11th January. For more about available dates and details please message me on LInkedIn or, email me at [email protected].

Bibliography:

J. Whitmore, 2017: Coaching For Performance 5th Ed: Nicholas Brealey Publishing 

J.Witter: The Benefits of a Value-driven Business: Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellevate/2019/05/16/the-benefits-of-a-value-driven-business/?sh=301509da5980

References: 

J. Roemischer, 2002: What Is Enlightenment Journal, Issue Fall/Winter 2002. 

G.Miranda , 2020: IBM named one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies

| 2 minute read | February 25, 2020https://www.ibm.com/blogs/corporate-social-responsibility/2020/02/ethisphere-2020/