I spent a while a few nights ago not booking a ticket to and an hotel in Paris. For a couple of days. I'd take in the monumental Basquiat exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Wander round. Go home. But I didn't book the ticket. Airfare and hotel would have been £400-£500. Why would I want to pay that to be aloine in Paris when I could be alone in London for free? Because that's the point: I would be on my own. I haven't been on an "away" holiday - except for a short break to see my friends in Utrecht and a trip to Nice - since I broke up with my last girlfriend. Two years ago.
The emotional truth of my childhood, adolescence and early adulthood was that I was alone, as in lonely. When my parents moved us from Bexleyheath to Teddington in the summer of 1967, the boys and girls in my class got up a collection and bought me a car for my Scalextric. We went ten-pin bowling. I don't know if that makes me popular. I'm not sure I felt as if I belonged at my own leaving do.
I was one of those children who say they don't have any friends. I didn't share anyone's life, see the inside of their homes, meet their parents. Except Geoff Mason, who was another slight misfit at Erith Grammar. We hung out from time to time, but that was it. We didn't go off on any adventures (we were eleven years old: going into central London would have been an adventure). And a guy called Derek Hasted who was into model railways and at Junior School played the descant recorder well enough to get to play the treble recorder (as I did) and later, as I've just discovered through Google+Facebook, became a guitar teacher and runs a number of guitar groups.
You can live a life on your own right up until the day it occurs to you that everyone else has a partner and you're the Old Guy With No Friends Of Their Own. Slightly creepy. I've started seeing myself as a creepy old guy, and if you don't shake that suspicion, you're done for. If someone doesn't validate you by finding you sexually attractive and pronto, you start to want not to be in other people's company. Because when you are you feel creepy. That's how I feel.
If I'm feeling ironic, I'll say that I can remember either what I used to do with attractive women, or why I used to do it, but not both at the same time. Ha ha. I've got so used to not having someone to share my sexual feelings with, I barely let myself have any, lest I remember how nasty the bitterness of sexual disappointment is. How it alters everything I say and do and how it stains everything else I feel. And then there are days when I think I would rather feel that than feel the bland nullity I usually feel. Feeling-good becomes feeling-good-because-you're-not-feeling-bad. Not feeling-good-because-you-got-laid-last-night-and-it-was-fabulous.
I have lost the sense that other people are magic. That they can and will make my life better, enhance it, add to it, and otherwise make getting out of bed a better idea. Lose that and you're left with habit as the only reason for leaving the front door.
This too shall pass, as we say in AA. And the sooner it does the better. But right now, it's where I am. And if I don't share it and name it, it will go on being where I am.
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
Monday, 8 November 2010
Oh Comely - The Official Magazine of Pixie Girls Everywhere
The third edition of Oh Comely is out. I found a copy of the second edition about five weeks ago in one of the many absurdly-well-stocked newsagents in Soho and Charlotte Street. (Those newsagents have magazines - mostly fashion, style and design - that you couldn't even find in Borders before it went broke. I'm pretty sure there isn't a newsagent outside that square mile anywhere near as well-stocked. Certainly not W H Smug.) It describes itself as "a magazine about people and their quirks and their creativity, rather than money and what it can buy". If it were any more cute, it would be twee, and it is so girly it could never be gay. It took me a while to understand what it is, but it's the long-awaited official Pixie Girl Magazine.
To understand that, you have to know what a Pixie Girl is. She isn't the "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" of the movies, though they may look alike. MPDG's are a male fantasy. Real Pixie Girls are, well, they look like Nadia Dahlawi and Sara Jade, who are not only the record label Young and Lost Club, but also damn near reference PG's.
To understand that, you have to know what a Pixie Girl is. She isn't the "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" of the movies, though they may look alike. MPDG's are a male fantasy. Real Pixie Girls are, well, they look like Nadia Dahlawi and Sara Jade, who are not only the record label Young and Lost Club, but also damn near reference PG's.
The PG is feminine without being sexual, and attracted to all things slightly insubstantial (cupcakes, embroidery, folk music, non-corporate careers). Confident without being assertive, she yet has an air of uncertainty, and while she isn't a Material Girl she does like the trinkets and objects she surrounds herself with. They can be promoted without being ambitious and while they would never admit to husband-hunting, when they grow up, PG's become those self-satisfied well-off suburban wives and mothers (aka "Twickenham Wives") you see during the day in Kingston-Upon-Thames, Guildford, Putney and other such places. No-one was ever a PG at school: it's something that happens to a girl in the summer between the school and university.
The magazine has many nice moments and lots of wistful photographs of pretty girls. The essays and interviews are refreshingly not about successful people, and I could buy it just for the quirky decision tree at the back. The guiding lights / editors are liz bennett and des tan (it's a lower-case kind of magazine) and they seem to have decided that they're tired of the usual editorial tone of modern magazines, which, let's be honest, hasn't changed much since the early 1990's and is of marginal relevance to the 2010's. It's also not about money, just like it says, and that's probably what attracts me to it.
Buy a copy. Really. Enter a gentler world.
Friday, 5 November 2010
Promotion As An Anti-Climax
I have done my share of bitching and moaning about The Bank. And I will do some more when they deserve it. But a couple of weeks ago something happened that, well, in cliche-land it would have taken me by surprise, but this is the real world.
Last summer I'd taken a job below my personal pay band because I had had a couple of bad appraisals (the justice of which were mixed), I didn't fit in with any of the jobs on my grade but nor did they want to lose me, and nor did I want to be unemployed. The rules gave me three years' salary protection, but there would be no pay rises. After that, HR could cut my salary back to match the grade if they so chose.
Absent that threat, I couldn't care about grades.
So I came back from a week's break and my new line manager took me aside and told me that they were prepared to offer me a senior analyst role that was in the same pay band as I am. They have been interviewing for a couple of months and the people with more skills than me won't take the job (not enough money, not CV-enhancing enough), whereas the people who will take the job are way short on my skills. Which I knew. I said "I should just shut and say thank you, shouldn't I?" Which was what I did. What I didn't do was feel a deep sense of relief, a sudden uprush of gratitude, a lightening of the spirit or any great urge to rush out and celebrate. I didn't even rush to tell my friends. I didn't even feel a I-told-you-so victory.
Instead, my back and shoulders locked up and became so painful I had to go see my osteopath on Harley Street. And that's where my emotions are: locked. I have no idea what I'm feeling at the moment. I've spent the last fifteen months under the threat of having my salary cut, and on an fifteen month job interview. You might unwind from that in an instant, but I can't.
I've felt lost since. Before I was someone trying to remove a threat to their salary. Now I'm not. Now I have to figure out what I do next. I have to keep up the same pace I've been doing to prove myself, and maybe even exceed it. I have two newbies to train over the next few months, which I can turn into a learning and CV-enhancing opportunity. But right now I feel lost. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. Not for The Bank, but for me.
Last summer I'd taken a job below my personal pay band because I had had a couple of bad appraisals (the justice of which were mixed), I didn't fit in with any of the jobs on my grade but nor did they want to lose me, and nor did I want to be unemployed. The rules gave me three years' salary protection, but there would be no pay rises. After that, HR could cut my salary back to match the grade if they so chose.
Absent that threat, I couldn't care about grades.
So I came back from a week's break and my new line manager took me aside and told me that they were prepared to offer me a senior analyst role that was in the same pay band as I am. They have been interviewing for a couple of months and the people with more skills than me won't take the job (not enough money, not CV-enhancing enough), whereas the people who will take the job are way short on my skills. Which I knew. I said "I should just shut and say thank you, shouldn't I?" Which was what I did. What I didn't do was feel a deep sense of relief, a sudden uprush of gratitude, a lightening of the spirit or any great urge to rush out and celebrate. I didn't even rush to tell my friends. I didn't even feel a I-told-you-so victory.
Instead, my back and shoulders locked up and became so painful I had to go see my osteopath on Harley Street. And that's where my emotions are: locked. I have no idea what I'm feeling at the moment. I've spent the last fifteen months under the threat of having my salary cut, and on an fifteen month job interview. You might unwind from that in an instant, but I can't.
I've felt lost since. Before I was someone trying to remove a threat to their salary. Now I'm not. Now I have to figure out what I do next. I have to keep up the same pace I've been doing to prove myself, and maybe even exceed it. I have two newbies to train over the next few months, which I can turn into a learning and CV-enhancing opportunity. But right now I feel lost. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. Not for The Bank, but for me.
Wednesday, 3 November 2010
Guru Advice and The Real Seven Habits
I mentioned that all the management trainers mentioned Stephen Covey's book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I have no intention of reading it and fortunately I don't need to. Mr Covey has provided a useful summary on his website, and it's that I'm going to refer to. The Habits are fairly simple, it's the gloss he puts on them that's objectionable, but I'm not going to discuss it.
Habit One tells you to focus on you Circle of Influence (what you can do something about) instead of their Circle of Concern (what you worry about but can't change); Habit Two tells you to develop an Personal Mission Statement, defining what you want to do, on your "plan for success"; Habit Three suggests you do what's important to you first; Habit Four, that you should stick to your true feelings and commitments, express your ideas with courage and believe there is plenty for everybody; Habit Five suggests you should listen to what people say before rushing in to say your piece; Habit Six that you value the differences between people so you can co-operate with others who can do things you can't; and Habit Seven suggests you should exercise, eat well, keep learning, make meaningful friendships and practice meditation or some other spiritual discipline. You can guess there is a noticeable lack of statistical tables contrasting the surveyed behaviour of "effective" people with that of "ineffective" people. It isn't that kind of book. It's a guru book. It's sold in the gajillions, but nobody knows how many of those copies were abandoned fifty pages in and turned to good use as a door-stop (it's a big book).
There are four rules for pseudo-guru advice. It should be unqualified in scope and apple-pie in content, so you're not likely to suffer prima facie disagreement; it should be something people don't do naturally or can't do easily, so we can get some good guilt trips going; it must have no political consequences; and it should not be an analytical discussion of the ideas involved, let alone refer to actual psychological research (therapies and advice come out as mostly ineffective when researched). One of the rules must be that you are responsible for the state of your life and for changing it. In self-help literature, the economy and politics is random like the weather. It wasn't Wal-Mart that put your Mom-and-Pop store out of business, it was your own damn inability to adapt to the times. Gurus never say "get on your bike" but only because their editor told them it would make them look unsympathetic. This responsibility thing is a huge subject that I will discuss elsewhere.
So let's get to the advice. Of course we should eat well, exercise, meditate and develop our minds and relationships. Good luck doing that when you work on an industrial estate an hour's drive from home where the only food is supplied by a sandwich van and there is nothing but grey delapidation all round. And when you get back, the kids want to play, your spouse needs attention and you have to get to bed by half-past ten to get eight hour's sleep before waking up at half-past six. Weekends? By the time you've gone shopping, entertained the kids, washed, ironed, housekept and slumped... you know the score. Here's the thing: instead of blaming the organisation of post-modern capitalism, you blame yourself. Neat huh?
An effective person only listens to someone whose co-operation they need, and they are only listening for the buying signals. The rest of the time, they no more listen than the rest of us. We don't need to. Most people state their views not for discussion but for expression. They don't mind what's called "an exchange of views" and a lot of perfectly good conversation is just that. When someone is angry with you? They don't want you to engage with what they say, they want you to witness their anger and be contrite. What matters is the tone, not the words. If you pull that reflective listening schtick on them, they will throw things at you and you will deserve every bruise.
Guru advice is often willfully naive. For instance, most people don't fret about things outside their Circle of Influence because they are silly and ineffective. They do it to sound as if they are involved in the Great Issues of Our Time ("Think Global, Act Local" is worthy of an advertising agency and was probably devised by one. It gives an entirely specious significance to acts that are utterly insignificant. It's right up there with "The Personal Is The Political", which gave feminist significance to every little fight a wife picked with her husband.) Or more sadly, they do it as a displacement activity, because they have no real opportunities to get involved in anything significant. (We're back to that thirteen-hour work day and those lost weekends again.) A few people do fret about stuff they can't affect and not for show or displacement, and they do need to see a therapist. They are also the very last people who would and they certainly won't read self-help books. Besides, every activist started off fretting about something that was only in their Circle of Concern, until they decided to get active and extend their Circle of Influence to include the cause.
While we're on naivety, as for believing there is enough for everyone? Because we live on a finite planet, the amount of anything is limited. There's an amount of "everyone" which is too many for any given resource (other than World Peace). So if you really want to think that there's enough to go around, what you're really thinking is that there's a manageable amount of competition for the available resource. That doesn't have quite the same spiritual ring to it.
A "plan for success"? This assumes that you have by now found out what you want to do with your life, that it is legal and moral and that you can make a living doing it. None of this is guaranteed. Very few people make money doing what I want to do, so I have to have a day job. In post-modern capitalism, your "plan for success" is going to be more a "plan for adaptation" as house prices whistle skywards beyond your ability to raise the funds, your employer makes you redundant, your sex life dries up because being out of work is such a turn-on... you know the score. None of that matters. If you don't have a home of your own, it's your fault, I mean, it's for you to take action. You can do it, Little Engine.
The reason the gurus get away with this stuff is that we want to believe them. They don't need to put in the qualifications to their advice, because they know we will do it for them. They don't need to deal with the political and economic issues because we don't want to either: we want to be told that it's our responsibility because we'd rather be lazy and spiritually weak than economically and politically powerless. I might almost suggest that most self-help books are bought - or at least read all the way through - by people who want reasons to blame themselves for their failure. Because the alternative is to take political action, and no-one, not even The Invisible Committee, knows what that looks like.
Besides, from my experience, highly effective people have the following traits: 1) lots of energy; 2) not dealing with people and things that don't advance their cause; 3) a do-able plan and the resources to carry it put; 4) a product or service that meets a need; 5) either actual justified confidence or the ability to blag others into believing they can do it; 6) nothing to lose and 7) a neurotic need to achieve and succeed. Achievement takes special efforts. There are no well-balanced millionaires, creative artists and scientists, political activists, award-winning sports(wo)men, war-winning generals, Special Forces operatives, CEOs or elected politicians. And if the guru tells you that those things aren't a measure of effectiveness, they really are moving the goalposts.
Habit One tells you to focus on you Circle of Influence (what you can do something about) instead of their Circle of Concern (what you worry about but can't change); Habit Two tells you to develop an Personal Mission Statement, defining what you want to do, on your "plan for success"; Habit Three suggests you do what's important to you first; Habit Four, that you should stick to your true feelings and commitments, express your ideas with courage and believe there is plenty for everybody; Habit Five suggests you should listen to what people say before rushing in to say your piece; Habit Six that you value the differences between people so you can co-operate with others who can do things you can't; and Habit Seven suggests you should exercise, eat well, keep learning, make meaningful friendships and practice meditation or some other spiritual discipline. You can guess there is a noticeable lack of statistical tables contrasting the surveyed behaviour of "effective" people with that of "ineffective" people. It isn't that kind of book. It's a guru book. It's sold in the gajillions, but nobody knows how many of those copies were abandoned fifty pages in and turned to good use as a door-stop (it's a big book).
There are four rules for pseudo-guru advice. It should be unqualified in scope and apple-pie in content, so you're not likely to suffer prima facie disagreement; it should be something people don't do naturally or can't do easily, so we can get some good guilt trips going; it must have no political consequences; and it should not be an analytical discussion of the ideas involved, let alone refer to actual psychological research (therapies and advice come out as mostly ineffective when researched). One of the rules must be that you are responsible for the state of your life and for changing it. In self-help literature, the economy and politics is random like the weather. It wasn't Wal-Mart that put your Mom-and-Pop store out of business, it was your own damn inability to adapt to the times. Gurus never say "get on your bike" but only because their editor told them it would make them look unsympathetic. This responsibility thing is a huge subject that I will discuss elsewhere.
So let's get to the advice. Of course we should eat well, exercise, meditate and develop our minds and relationships. Good luck doing that when you work on an industrial estate an hour's drive from home where the only food is supplied by a sandwich van and there is nothing but grey delapidation all round. And when you get back, the kids want to play, your spouse needs attention and you have to get to bed by half-past ten to get eight hour's sleep before waking up at half-past six. Weekends? By the time you've gone shopping, entertained the kids, washed, ironed, housekept and slumped... you know the score. Here's the thing: instead of blaming the organisation of post-modern capitalism, you blame yourself. Neat huh?
An effective person only listens to someone whose co-operation they need, and they are only listening for the buying signals. The rest of the time, they no more listen than the rest of us. We don't need to. Most people state their views not for discussion but for expression. They don't mind what's called "an exchange of views" and a lot of perfectly good conversation is just that. When someone is angry with you? They don't want you to engage with what they say, they want you to witness their anger and be contrite. What matters is the tone, not the words. If you pull that reflective listening schtick on them, they will throw things at you and you will deserve every bruise.
Guru advice is often willfully naive. For instance, most people don't fret about things outside their Circle of Influence because they are silly and ineffective. They do it to sound as if they are involved in the Great Issues of Our Time ("Think Global, Act Local" is worthy of an advertising agency and was probably devised by one. It gives an entirely specious significance to acts that are utterly insignificant. It's right up there with "The Personal Is The Political", which gave feminist significance to every little fight a wife picked with her husband.) Or more sadly, they do it as a displacement activity, because they have no real opportunities to get involved in anything significant. (We're back to that thirteen-hour work day and those lost weekends again.) A few people do fret about stuff they can't affect and not for show or displacement, and they do need to see a therapist. They are also the very last people who would and they certainly won't read self-help books. Besides, every activist started off fretting about something that was only in their Circle of Concern, until they decided to get active and extend their Circle of Influence to include the cause.
While we're on naivety, as for believing there is enough for everyone? Because we live on a finite planet, the amount of anything is limited. There's an amount of "everyone" which is too many for any given resource (other than World Peace). So if you really want to think that there's enough to go around, what you're really thinking is that there's a manageable amount of competition for the available resource. That doesn't have quite the same spiritual ring to it.
A "plan for success"? This assumes that you have by now found out what you want to do with your life, that it is legal and moral and that you can make a living doing it. None of this is guaranteed. Very few people make money doing what I want to do, so I have to have a day job. In post-modern capitalism, your "plan for success" is going to be more a "plan for adaptation" as house prices whistle skywards beyond your ability to raise the funds, your employer makes you redundant, your sex life dries up because being out of work is such a turn-on... you know the score. None of that matters. If you don't have a home of your own, it's your fault, I mean, it's for you to take action. You can do it, Little Engine.
The reason the gurus get away with this stuff is that we want to believe them. They don't need to put in the qualifications to their advice, because they know we will do it for them. They don't need to deal with the political and economic issues because we don't want to either: we want to be told that it's our responsibility because we'd rather be lazy and spiritually weak than economically and politically powerless. I might almost suggest that most self-help books are bought - or at least read all the way through - by people who want reasons to blame themselves for their failure. Because the alternative is to take political action, and no-one, not even The Invisible Committee, knows what that looks like.
Besides, from my experience, highly effective people have the following traits: 1) lots of energy; 2) not dealing with people and things that don't advance their cause; 3) a do-able plan and the resources to carry it put; 4) a product or service that meets a need; 5) either actual justified confidence or the ability to blag others into believing they can do it; 6) nothing to lose and 7) a neurotic need to achieve and succeed. Achievement takes special efforts. There are no well-balanced millionaires, creative artists and scientists, political activists, award-winning sports(wo)men, war-winning generals, Special Forces operatives, CEOs or elected politicians. And if the guru tells you that those things aren't a measure of effectiveness, they really are moving the goalposts.
Monday, 1 November 2010
Employment Market Opportunists Number 9: The Money Launderer
This came to me via Total Jobs, who ought to know better. I haven't changed any names.
"My name is Joseph Lewis and I discovered your CV for the position that Roum Group LTD. is filling. We believe your skills match this vacancy the best. Currently, we are actively hiring independent agents who will represent the company in different regions. You are not required to have any extra knowledge or to be experienced in this business, and this occupation can endow additional income to you and your family as it will not require more than few hours per week. Roum Group LTD is looking for candidates who are ambitious, intelligent and have a strong work ethic to join our team. Regardless of the type of work you've been doing, if you're motivated and looking to start a career with an excellent income opportunity, you might be just who we are looking for! In addition, we provide a one month paid training period. During your training you receive online training and support. Your training is the first step to your success; therefore you must take it seriously. If we have sparked your interest and you'd like to learn more, please e-mail us your updated contact information at hr.joseph.roum@gmail.com. NOTE: This is not a sales position."
Why should your warning bells be ringing? 1) LTD in capitals. 2) "endow additional income". 3) A one-month paid training period? For "independent agents"? Never heard of in legitimate business. 4) If it's not a sales position but you're representing the company, what are you doing?
Google the Roum Group and you will find nothing. Google "Roum Group scam" and on page two a site called www.scamwarners.com you'll find a post with this...
"My name is Joseph Lewis and I represent Roum Group LTD. We have evaluated your CV and decided that your skills meet our basic requirements for a Payment Processing Agent position. Roum Group LTD. is a legally recognized organization designed to provide services to consumers, small businesses, and other organizations. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, most being privately owned and formed to earn profit that will increase the wealth of its owners and grow the business itself. Your performance and attention to detail can help grease the wheels of capitalism, help small business owners through tumultuous economic times, and help to enrich you in the process. We are looking for independent agents who will represent our company in various regions. The position being offered is currently based on a part-time schedule. You don't need to have any special education to work with our team, because you will be trained and receive unlimited online support during your paid training period.
On average the working hours are 2-3 hours/day. We appreciate the labor of our representatives and pay them properly. Salary depends on your activity (you will be paid min. GBP 1,500/month, but completing all assigned duties properly will increase it up to GBP 1,800)."
Payment Processing Agent mon pied. This is money laundering. And Total Jobs, who are respectable, should know better.
"My name is Joseph Lewis and I discovered your CV for the position that Roum Group LTD. is filling. We believe your skills match this vacancy the best. Currently, we are actively hiring independent agents who will represent the company in different regions. You are not required to have any extra knowledge or to be experienced in this business, and this occupation can endow additional income to you and your family as it will not require more than few hours per week. Roum Group LTD is looking for candidates who are ambitious, intelligent and have a strong work ethic to join our team. Regardless of the type of work you've been doing, if you're motivated and looking to start a career with an excellent income opportunity, you might be just who we are looking for! In addition, we provide a one month paid training period. During your training you receive online training and support. Your training is the first step to your success; therefore you must take it seriously. If we have sparked your interest and you'd like to learn more, please e-mail us your updated contact information at hr.joseph.roum@gmail.com. NOTE: This is not a sales position."
Why should your warning bells be ringing? 1) LTD in capitals. 2) "endow additional income". 3) A one-month paid training period? For "independent agents"? Never heard of in legitimate business. 4) If it's not a sales position but you're representing the company, what are you doing?
Google the Roum Group and you will find nothing. Google "Roum Group scam" and on page two a site called www.scamwarners.com you'll find a post with this...
"My name is Joseph Lewis and I represent Roum Group LTD. We have evaluated your CV and decided that your skills meet our basic requirements for a Payment Processing Agent position. Roum Group LTD. is a legally recognized organization designed to provide services to consumers, small businesses, and other organizations. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, most being privately owned and formed to earn profit that will increase the wealth of its owners and grow the business itself. Your performance and attention to detail can help grease the wheels of capitalism, help small business owners through tumultuous economic times, and help to enrich you in the process. We are looking for independent agents who will represent our company in various regions. The position being offered is currently based on a part-time schedule. You don't need to have any special education to work with our team, because you will be trained and receive unlimited online support during your paid training period.
On average the working hours are 2-3 hours/day. We appreciate the labor of our representatives and pay them properly. Salary depends on your activity (you will be paid min. GBP 1,500/month, but completing all assigned duties properly will increase it up to GBP 1,800)."
Payment Processing Agent mon pied. This is money laundering. And Total Jobs, who are respectable, should know better.
Friday, 29 October 2010
More Courses From The Bank: What Coaching Isn't
I did the two-day course on coaching that's part of The Bank's Leadership course recently. Coaching is about having someone else monitor your technique, spot where it could be improved and work with you to improve it. Part of that is helping you maintain the state of mind you need to be in to perform well, but coaching isn't therapy. Nor is it training, which is either about learning skills and knowledge that you don't have or practicing certain moves so that they become second nature. Coaching is about improving what you're already doing pretty well. Or not, if you attended the course. Which was based on the techniques used by soi-disant life coaches, and especially the GROW acronym: clarifying Goals, what the Reality of the situation is, looking at the Options you have and then working out what you Will do to get started. This isn't coaching. It's planning.
The closest we came to getting specific instructions about doing anything was through a role-play. My actress was a middle-aged lady regulatory risk wonk with little confidence and less presence (good acting) who needed some more money and was thinking about promotion to grades where knowledge is nothing and confident bullshit is everything. In the real world, I would never have accepted her request to use my newly-acquired coaching skills, and even if I did, I would have done exactly what I did in the role-play, which was shut the relationship down politely once I realised what kind of person she was. I can't have people like that in my life. I was supposed to have asked questions (I did, just ones that were rather too much to the point) and done a lot of supportive reflective listening. In the second, my colleague had a boisterous but effective team leader who was going to take a step up to working with senior managers and he was slightly concerned that she might make the wrong impression on the upper muckamucks. What he was supposed to have done was ask questions that invited her to reflect on her behaviour: "how do you think senior management might interpret you being late to meetings?" That sort of thing.
Discussing the role-play afterwards, I explained that if anyone but especially my line manager started using those "how do you think" questions on me, I would assume it was Quiz Time and I was being set up. That is not, I said, how you talk to adults, but to children, and the kids don't like it much either. I would have simply checked with my boisterous project manager something like this: "that bit where you're late for meetings? You know you can't do that with senior management, right?" Which I could do in real life because both my project manager and I would know what I was referring to. And which would constitute coaching as ordinarily understood - a quick, on-the-fly technical check.
But not as understood by people who do Life Coaching to supplement their incomes as freelance external trainers. Uh-huh. They need to use the GROW (or any other) acronym because it provides a repeatable structure to their life coaching sessions, which are with people with whom they don't have a history nor a common work culture and can't have the shorthand conversations that you can bet Roger Federer had with Severin Luthi.
Does it matter? Yes. Coaching is one thing and it should not be confused with advising, or training or planning, or helping, or rescuing, or bailing-out-of-the-shit, or discussing-a-problem, or giving a one-to-one, or therapy or appraising or any of those other things it got confused with during the two days. Each one takes place in different circumstances, with different relationships and uses different techniques to achieve different aims. Lumping them all together and calling it "coaching" is just sloppy. It misses the chance to get some serious, specific, useful content over.
Did I take anything away from the course that was useful? Not really. It's aimed at the very people who won't do it: the manipulative managers for whom "performance management" is what you do when you need to get rid of people, and "coaching" is what you do when you've told someone that what they've been doing is wrong and you're very disappointed in them.
Every one of the trainers so far has mentioned Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I'm sure I skimmed it in a bookshop once and put it back because it was too new-age for me. I'm starting to think I need to read it, not because it might tell me something, but because it's the Enemy's Bible.
The closest we came to getting specific instructions about doing anything was through a role-play. My actress was a middle-aged lady regulatory risk wonk with little confidence and less presence (good acting) who needed some more money and was thinking about promotion to grades where knowledge is nothing and confident bullshit is everything. In the real world, I would never have accepted her request to use my newly-acquired coaching skills, and even if I did, I would have done exactly what I did in the role-play, which was shut the relationship down politely once I realised what kind of person she was. I can't have people like that in my life. I was supposed to have asked questions (I did, just ones that were rather too much to the point) and done a lot of supportive reflective listening. In the second, my colleague had a boisterous but effective team leader who was going to take a step up to working with senior managers and he was slightly concerned that she might make the wrong impression on the upper muckamucks. What he was supposed to have done was ask questions that invited her to reflect on her behaviour: "how do you think senior management might interpret you being late to meetings?" That sort of thing.
Discussing the role-play afterwards, I explained that if anyone but especially my line manager started using those "how do you think" questions on me, I would assume it was Quiz Time and I was being set up. That is not, I said, how you talk to adults, but to children, and the kids don't like it much either. I would have simply checked with my boisterous project manager something like this: "that bit where you're late for meetings? You know you can't do that with senior management, right?" Which I could do in real life because both my project manager and I would know what I was referring to. And which would constitute coaching as ordinarily understood - a quick, on-the-fly technical check.
But not as understood by people who do Life Coaching to supplement their incomes as freelance external trainers. Uh-huh. They need to use the GROW (or any other) acronym because it provides a repeatable structure to their life coaching sessions, which are with people with whom they don't have a history nor a common work culture and can't have the shorthand conversations that you can bet Roger Federer had with Severin Luthi.
Does it matter? Yes. Coaching is one thing and it should not be confused with advising, or training or planning, or helping, or rescuing, or bailing-out-of-the-shit, or discussing-a-problem, or giving a one-to-one, or therapy or appraising or any of those other things it got confused with during the two days. Each one takes place in different circumstances, with different relationships and uses different techniques to achieve different aims. Lumping them all together and calling it "coaching" is just sloppy. It misses the chance to get some serious, specific, useful content over.
Did I take anything away from the course that was useful? Not really. It's aimed at the very people who won't do it: the manipulative managers for whom "performance management" is what you do when you need to get rid of people, and "coaching" is what you do when you've told someone that what they've been doing is wrong and you're very disappointed in them.
Every one of the trainers so far has mentioned Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I'm sure I skimmed it in a bookshop once and put it back because it was too new-age for me. I'm starting to think I need to read it, not because it might tell me something, but because it's the Enemy's Bible.
Wednesday, 27 October 2010
In Praise of Billie Ray Martin
Many years ago I poked my head round the door of some Saturday morning TV. There was a band. In less than a chorus I was converted by the singer's soulful, strong, edgy voice. That was Electribe 101. Here's their classic Talking With Myself...
No sooner had I bought the CD than they vanished. It was a while before I found out the that wonderful singer, Billie Ray Martin, was still working. Here's a stone classic, Space Oasis, from her debut album Deadline For My Memories.
I love the overtones, inflections, variations, passion and colour of her voice: take some time to listen. There's an interview with her as well...
No sooner had I bought the CD than they vanished. It was a while before I found out the that wonderful singer, Billie Ray Martin, was still working. Here's a stone classic, Space Oasis, from her debut album Deadline For My Memories.
I love the overtones, inflections, variations, passion and colour of her voice: take some time to listen. There's an interview with her as well...
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