5 Minutes with Brad Fenech

At just 24 years of age, Brad Fenech CMgr AFIML, senior consultant at Approach ICT, has already enjoyed a flourishing career in Canberra’s public and private sectors. He says the key to being a good manager is practising what you preach. we asked him to share six lessons from his career to date.

As told to Lisa Calautti

  1. Be yourself

“Build your own self. And what I mean by that is: it is all well and good to have role models but take bits and pieces from each as it is impossible to mirror one specific person. We all have our own strengths and weaknesses.”

2. Be uncomfortable

“Go outside your typical comfort zones. Take some risks. For me, that’s learning to be more creative. It forces you to learn more skills and talk to people. With that, you naturally find new ideas popping into your head at random times of the day or night.”

3. Take time out

“Something I have really committed to is meditation. And I can’t get enough of it. We are always on the phone, or a computer or some sort of technology, so there is so much going through my head. A good way to just unwind and collect my thoughts is through meditation.”

4. Be creative and innovative

“While I have found it challenging, these traits allow you to be one step ahead.  As a manager or a leader, if you aren’t practising these qualities, when it comes to your team you can’t expect your colleagues to do the same. It is basic psychology – practise what you preach.”

5. Be a good problem solver

“Two words come to mind – passion and confidence. Someone once said to me that life is all about finding problems that you enjoy solving. I guess the stereotype is that a problem is a negative thing but I am slowly coming around to the notion that they are not all negative. I try to find problems that I
enjoy solving.”

6. Be strong in your decisions

“This goes back to confidence for me. You make a decision and you might not be right, but you sure won’t be the last person to make a wrong decision. There will be naysayers but if you are comfortable with your decision and you have remained ethical and considered all the sources of information, then I don’t think there is anything more that you can do. As a manager or leader, it is important to be able to make a confident decision while remaining ethical. It is as simple as that – make a good example of yourself.”

Suncorp’s Dominique Layt – Investing in your leadership with Chartered Manager

 

Dominique Layt CMgr AFIML, Head of Stores and Speciality Banking Delivery at Suncorp and Board Director has built her leadership career from the ground up, over 30 plus years in the financial services industry. After finishing Year 12, Dominique’s parents encouraged her to take all the Banking entry exams, which lead to her first job as a trainee bank teller with NAB. She was keen to learn, asking other colleagues to show her their different roles so she could cover their days off. Dominique worked her way up to a senior role in the State Office over 17 years. She then moved to Westpac as a Regional Manager, but found that she’d need to move to Sydney or Melbourne for further promotion.

Dominique joined Suncorp in 2007 in business banking strategy just as the global financial crisis was biting, which she credits as an amazing learning experience working on the restructure. She moved into risk management, setting up the bank’s risk frameworks and committees. Dominique’s subsequent role was to establish the bank’s customer retention and insights strategy and capability, handpicking a team which took Suncorp to #1 in customer satisfaction over that time. The team implemented a new way of having a conversation with customers, which lead to positively impacting Suncorp’s S&P’s rating.

You’ve enjoyed an incredible career in the Financial Services industry, and you describe coaching, mentoring and leading high performing teams as your greatest passion. Tell us how you’ve built your leadership step by step over your career. 

One of the things I learnt early in my leadership journey was that each individual is different and to be an effective leader I needed to adjust my approach to the individual where needed. The other thing I learned with experience and growing confidence as you get older is to be factual, clear and open when giving feedback and coaching. Most people do not like conflict and they expect they will receive it if they provide constructive feedback to individuals. Whilst this can happen I have found the majority of people are grateful for honest feedback especially when it comes to career development.

I have lost count of the number of conversations I’ve had where someone has said they have asked many other leaders why they had missed out on roles. Or, why they hadn’t progressed and they had never been provided with tangible feedback that would allow them to develop and grow. One of my strongest influencers today is Brene Brown who talks a lot about vulnerability and authentic leadership. These practices are critical to developing high performing teams and being an effective coach and mentor.

You recently obtained your first Board Director role with the Somerville House Foundation. What are your initial observations on the different style of leadership required of Boards versus Management?

The Board is a team and whilst the Chair is in essence the leader of that team it is different than organisational leader roles where the leader has the ultimate decision making authority. Similar to organisational teams a Board has a mix of skills which, when fully leveraged, allows the Board to be effective at its role. The role of the Chair is much more about ensuring the key skills are fully utilised, each member is actively contributing and the focus is absolutely on the objectives of the organisation the Board is privileged to govern.

What has been your greatest challenge?

There have been many challenges throughout my career, as there are for most people, including strategic and operational challenges during the GFC, shifting from a defensive to a growth strategy and transforming cultures from a merged organisation into one cohesive team. The one that stands out the most is maintaining team members motivation and energy during extended periods of multiple restructures and change which involved carrying vacancies for several months.

What are you most proud of?

There are many team and individual successes over my 30+ year career I could talk about, but whenever I am asked this question the moments that make me the proudest have been individual coaching sessions. Those moments where you help someone realise what is possible and the only thing standing in their way is their own self-confidence. When you literally see the light bulb go on and they realise they can achieve what they are aiming for. Those are the moments where you know you have made a difference to someone else and then to watch them achieve their goals and grow and grow from there is truly rewarding.

What motivated you to pursue the internationally recognised Institute of Managers and Leaders’ (IML) Chartered Manager Accreditation?

I have invested most of my career into becoming the best leader I can be. I’ve pursued my own development, sought out mentors who are strong authentic leaders and consistently sought feedback from peers and direct reports. I once commenced a Master of Leadership through a University only to find it was cancelled after less than a year.

When I saw the opportunity to be recognised for the development and investment I have made into leadership I jumped at the opportunity to apply for Chartered Manager Accreditation with IML.

How has achieving Chartered Manager status impacted your leadership journey, and what do you see are the future benefits to come? 

I found the application process another learning opportunity. Completing the application provided me with an opportunity to review, self-assess and consider other areas I wanted to delve further into as part of my growth and continual improvement as a leader.

Now being a Chartered Manager I feel I have the opportunity to expand my career beyond financial services and potentially into areas such as executive coaching or leadership coaching.

What’s one piece of advice for future female leaders?

Read Brene Brown’s books and work out who you are and what sort of leader you want to be. Don’t be afraid to be your authentic self. We do not need to be like anyone else nor do we need to compete with others. If you can be an authentic leader with the right values as your anchor, your team will follow. Servant leadership is a great foundation but authentic leadership means you are “all in” and people will respect you for that; but it takes vulnerability and courage.

In partnership with:

4 KEY FINDINGS THAT DEMYSTIFY OUR BRAINS

NEUROSCIENTIST DR HANNAH CRITCHLOW SAYS THAT MANAGERS AND LEADERS HAVE A DUTY TO GET THEIR HEADS AROUND HOW THE BRAIN WORKS.

By Lachlan Colquhoun // Photograph by Paul Musso

OF ALL THE ORGANS, the brain has always been viewed in a different way, and with special reverence.

Weighing only 1.5 kilograms, or around 2 per cent of our body mass, the brain is seen as the driver of our personalities, the home of our soul, the repository of memory, and the computer that keeps the whole body ticking over so that we can function in society.

While medical science has gone a long way to demystify the physiology of other organs, such as the liver and the heart, our understanding of the brain and its 86 billion neurons has remained comparatively limited until recently.

Breakthroughs in neuroscience over the past decade, however, are rapidly lifting the veil on our understanding of the body’s most complex organ and, in the process, helping us understand more about human behaviour.

“This is a great time to be a neuroscientist, we are peering into the mind as never before,” says Dr Hannah Critchlow, a British author, neuroscientist and fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. “We are learning about the brain at an exponential rate now — there are as many as five to ten thousand new research papers coming out each month.

“We still have a lot to learn of course, and there are still major problems, as we can see with mental health, but we are discovering the real underpinnings of the brain’s operation and this information will help us to better treat some of the debilitating conditions of the mind.”

1. Reality check

Dr Critchlow is at the frontline of neuroscience and is on a mission to communicate its findings to the world. Nominated as one of the UK’s Top 100 Scientists by the Science Council, she is about to follow up her first book Consciousness with a second publication on the theme of “the science of fate”. Many of the insights from neuroscience, Dr Critchlow says, have come from understanding the brain as a physical organ. Advancing technologies such as optogenetics, which uses light to stimulate specific circuits in the brain, are revealing more about the physiology of behaviours that were previously considered part of the mystery of personality. Entrepreneurs and drug addicts, for example, have particular brain anatomies, as do people with ADHD and those who enjoy socialising more than others. For managers and leaders, the challenge is to work with an understanding that everyone has a different perspective on reality and that certain acts that were previously considered voluntary may, in fact, be hardwired. Although exercise and meditation can help us grow new brain cells and the connections between them, just as chronic stress and depression can kill them off, there may be limits to the ultimate “plasticity” of what a person can achieve with the particular brain they are born with. The old adage that “you can do anything you want if you put your mind to it” may prove to have clear scientific limitations. “We can literally see how the circuit board of the mind — this amazing machine comprised of billions of nerve cells, with trillions of connections between them — shifts and changes as we make decisions and experience the world around us,” she says. “We can switch feelings of pleasure on or off, and feelings of anxiety and even addiction, so we are really starting to understand how these discrete circuit boards in our brain give rise to very particular behaviours.” Part of this is a more holistic understanding that the brain does not exist in isolation at the top of the body, and that its interactions are strongly linked with the immune system, to our gut, and to organs such as the heart.

“At its most basic, when you have a cold or the flu you feel down in the dumps and depressed, and there is a physical reason for that because your brain is almost in a depressed state at that point,” says Dr Critchlow. “There is also a lot of emerging evidence which suggests that people with chronic depression might have altered immune systems as well, so their immune system is attacking the brain. An altered immune system has even been linked to the terrifying symptoms of psychosis, and in some patients simply clearing their blood of the faulty immune cells can stop the symptoms for good.”

2. Performance enhancing drugs

These new understandings of the brain have created new treatments for depression and addiction, and perhaps controversially, opened up the potential to enhance our creative capacities through the use of smart drugs. “There is lots of information coming out now about how creativity and problem-solving in the brain is formed, and there are drugs called cognitive enhancers which seem to boost certain aspects of our alertness, or our reasoning and our concentration skills,” says Dr Critchlow. “There’s also psychedelics, which previously people were mainly interested in from a recreational viewpoint, but now small doses of these drugs have been implicated in boosting creativity and problem-solving skills, raising all sorts of considerations around whether we want people in the workplace to be taking small amounts of drugs, even if it does boost their performance.” Alongside research into drugs, there has also been work done on “brain helmets” that use mild electrical currents to stimulate specific areas of the brain to see how this can foster particular behaviours like, for example, creativity.

3. Plasticity has limits

But while this research shows that capabilities can be enhanced, and that we do each hold the scope for plasticity and flexibility within our brains, Dr Critchlow says a key finding of neuroscience is that many of our behaviours are “ingrained” because of how our brains process the vast amounts of information from the outside world, and accepting this has particular relevance in the workplace. “So rather than trying to make somebody fit into a role and a set of expectations, it may be more productive to just create the environment that will help them to flourish and make use of the skillsets they bring,” she says. “Although our brain has a huge scope for plasticity and we can learn new things, emerging neuroscience is showing that people have specific strengths and weaknesses that sometimes you just can’t change.” People whose brains have a larger prefrontal cortex, for example, with many “slots” for beta-endorphins, are “almost hardwired” to need a wide number of different friendship groups. “They are like conduits which let information be exchanged from clique to clique, so that is a very important role within society,” says Dr Critchlow. “And then there are people with a much smaller prefrontal cortex and they have a much smaller group of friends, or they spend more time with each of their friends in closer relationships. “There is a hypothesis that because these people have fewer beta endorphin spots they don’t need to go around filling them up by meeting lots of other people.” These two types of people respond differently to the workplace. The first type, with the larger prefrontal cortex, may be more comfortable working in an open plan office where they can mix with larger number of colleagues, while those with the second brain type may prefer to work in smaller groups.

4. Entrepreneurial thinking

Neuroscience is also beginning to understand the brains of entrepreneurs, which can sometimes be similar to people with ADHD. “People who are entrepreneurs and who are thriving in taking risks in business have an evolutionary drive to do so and that is based around their brain biology,” says Dr Critchlow. “Much of this is intuitive, of course, and we have talked about this for decades but neuroscience is now demonstrating how this has a basis in the brain.” In her next book, Dr Critchlow is focusing on the subject of “the science of fate,” looking at the extent to which our behaviours are predetermined by the brains we are born with. “I am interested in understanding how much of our behaviour is ingrained,” she says. “We are seeing now that a lot of what we do is predetermined, so that opens up the question on whether we actually have any agency, or any free will at all. We have been sold this concept that the brain is highly plastic and that we have the power to change our behaviours if we can put our minds to it, but this may not necessarily be the truth.” The take out from all this is one of acceptance and tolerance. People have strengths and weaknesses and need to work with them, but at the same time environments need to be sensitive to this to help a diversity of people flourish. “For leaders and managers there is a responsibility for acceptance, but also to use this to be the best person they can be and look after the mental health of their teams,” says Dr Critchlow. She says that she personally has “appalling spelling” as a result of dyslexia, “but I’m okay with that.” Everybody is on a spectrum for every different kind of behaviour, and although there is some wriggle room for moving, we must accept that we need an environment which can nourish us. “Our individuality is a beautiful thing, and it’s the brain which produces that individuality.”

MINDBLOWING EVENTS

Dr Hannah Critchlow will be speaking at a series of IML Leadership Impact events, exploring the neuroscience behind leadership. To find out more and book your seats in Brisbane (8 November), Melbourne (13 November), Sydney (14 November), and Canberra (15 November) visit managersandleaders.com.au/leadership-impact-series/

LEADERSHIP IN 60 SECONDS:

FACEBOOK, TWITTER, INSTAGRAM, SNAPCHAT OR LINKEDIN?

Facebook.

PHONE, EMAIL, TEXT OR FACE-TO-FACE?

Face-to-face. No question! Interesting face-to-face communication helps to synchronise brain waves. Your brain takes snapshots of the world at regular intervals.

WHICH LEADER HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM MOST DURING YOUR CAREER?

Trevor Robbins, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Cambridge. He is good at long-term strategy. A junior chess champion, he places people like chess pieces, to make sure his ultimate aim is realised. It’s beautiful to watch. He’s also very kind and generous with is time.

WHICH LEADERSHIP BOOK DO YOU MOST RECOMMEND?

My next book! It will be about the science of fate.

WHAT IS THE BEST PIECE OF LEADERSHIP ADVICE YOU WERE GIVEN EARLY IN YOUR CAREER?

Always have a Plan A, B and C.

NAME THREE QUALITIES THAT A LEADER CAN’T SUCCEED WITHOUT

The ability to take other people’s thoughts and perspectives on board; pragmatic and practical problem solving; to know when to relax and stop stressing.

COMPLETE THE SENTENCE. LEADERSHIP MATTERS BECAUSE…

Looking to the future, as a species, we are going to be exposed to many problems. We need leadership to help solve them so that we can survive.

The Neuroscience Behind Leadership

In just a matter of weeks I’ll be taking to the sky, travelling from Cambridge UK to the other side of the world, visiting Australia for my first time. I’m incredibly excited about my trip hosted by the prestigious Institute of Managers and Leaders. I’ll be visiting the East Coast cities: Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, and Canberra. There I will be unlocking the mysteries of the mind to discuss how neuroscience findings can help better inform leaders and managers for business.

How do our minds operate? How does our unique perception of the world shape our decision-making? How do fear and stress affect our behaviour? How can neuroscience knowledge help promote creativity and problem solving? What can we do to refine our focus and attention? We’ll be answering these questions and more during the sessions.

Knowledge is power, I strongly believe! And so, as we understand more about the brain, how it shapes our behaviour, we can be empowered and flourish, as both individuals and as companies. During my visit I’m also hoping to literally dive into the minds of leadership professionals, reading their brainwaves live on stage using an EEG machine, to help unravel the thinking behind our decision-making.

So, why now? We currently live in the era of the brain: a recent revolution in technology allows us to peer into the mind as never before. We can visualise the architecture and operation of the brain, in fine detail, as the world is navigated and our sense of self formed. As a result, we are discovering that certain complex behaviours are ingrained, whilst others are skills that can be built on and improved. Neuroscience is also helping us to understand more precisely the nature of what it means to be conscious, and to live with the ability to form a subjective view. We’ll explore the ramifications of this, how it can sometimes lead to conflict, and how to help prevent it. We’ll also discuss the emerging fields studying the science of altruism and compassion and the relevance for business environments. Through neuroscience, we are learning how to open minds to more productive collaborations. These findings build on research from the disciplines of theology, psychology, sociology and philosophy and provide the lens through which we can have a mechanistic understanding of the very nuts and bolts that makes us, well, us! The results and have vast implications at the level of both the individual and society.

I’m really looking forward to my trip. I’m hoping to also discover new ways of thinking about the brain from you, the business leaders, learning from your perspective.

On that note I would love for you to take part in little experiment! Listen to the below audio track.

It’s tricky to understand, right? In fact, it’s complete gobbledegook! Now listen to this second track. Poor camel! Now play back the first track again. Suddenly it makes sense, right?

First Track:

Second Track: 

The cadence of both sentences is the same. This happens because our brains are both awe inspiringly sophisticated and mesmerising in their action, but also inherently lazy, always trying to take short cuts in their processing in order to make assumptions about the world. As a result the brain superimposes your previous experience of making sense from the sentence with the similar cadence onto the first gobbledegook track. This simple audio illusion helps us to understand how our perception of the world is built from a culmination of our highly individual life experiences. It also helps us to appreciate how we can each hold such wildly conflicting views of the world and why consensus building can be so tricky. Such consensus building, taking onboard other people’s perspectives, is vital for leadership and management and we’ll be exploring how neuroscience can also help us achieve that. I’m really looking forwards to discussing this and more, meeting you shortly in Australia!

Dr Hannah Critchlow is an internationally-acclaimed neuroscientist with a background in neuropsychiatry. She is best known as the presenter of BBC’s Tomorrow’s World Live as well as for her work demystifying the human brain on regular radio, TV and festival platforms. Hannah’s work in science communication saw her named as a Top 100 UK scientist by the Science Council and one of Cambridge University’s most ‘inspirational and successful women in science’. During her PhD she was awarded a Cambridge University Fellowship and as an undergraduate received three University Prizes as Best Biologist.

4 reasons to trust (valid and reliable) psychometric assessments

It goes without saying that human behaviour is incredibly complicated. It’s determined by an intricate combination of factors, and – as you can imagine – trying to predict how a person is going to behave, or react, or perform is no easy task.

Enter psychometrics, whose goal is to get accurate and unbiased insight into people’s mental abilities, personality, and behaviour. But how on earth is this possible?

1. There’s a lot of evidence that they work

Organisational Psychologists have spent over five decades researching, creating and rigorously testing psychometric assessments that are robust enough to predict when and why a given person will be successful or not in a given job. And as someone who is working towards becoming an Organisational Psychologist, let me tell you that these folks are an extremely hard to impress, detail-focused and highly sceptical bunch.

There’s now a large body of highly credible scientific evidence that demonstrates that a person’s results on a (valid and reliable) psychometric assessment can strongly predict a number of different work-related factors, including:

  • Future job performance: how well they will learn new tasks, solve complex problems and perform on the job
  • Organisational fit: whether they’re likely to share the organisation’s values and feel more committed and engaged in their job
  • Safety behaviours: how likely they are to accept personal responsibility for safety at work and avoid risky behaviour
  • Behaviour and personality: how someone naturally prefers to behave at work, the kinds of behaviours they have adopted, and how difficult it is to sustain behavioural changes
  • Emotional intelligence: how well they can identify, understand, manage and use their own and other people’s emotions.

These kinds of assessments also give employers a standardised, fair and equitable way to compare candidates for a role, based on criteria that have been scientifically proven to predict success in a particular role.

2. They need to demonstrate reliability and validity

The next question has to be: how do we actually know that these assessments can really do what they say they will? It all comes down to two little words: reliability and validity.

These two properties are the foundation of psychometric assessments, and are the reason you can have confidence that psychometrics will help you identify and select the right people for a role.

So, what do we mean when we talk about reliability and validity? Let’s take a look at each concept on its own.

Reliability refers to the ability of an assessment tool to produce stable and consistent results. For example, a personality assessment should produce very similar results for the same candidate each time they complete it within a similar time period.

We can break reliability down a little further as well, into sub-categories that include test-retest reliability and internal consistency.

Test-retest reliability happens when we administer the same test to the same group of people several times, and achieve similar results each time. So, if someone is assessed as being a top performer in their first test sitting, a reliable test will give us a similar result the second time they complete the same test.

Internal consistency reliability examines the consistency between the different items within a test. This means that if there are two or more items in an assessment that measure the same construct – for example, in a safety assessment, there might be multiple items that assess a person’s locus of control – we would expect that the same person will answer all of the items in a similar way.

Validity refers to the extent to which an assessment measures what it is intended to measure. For example, a measure of intelligence should measure intelligence, and not something else, such as memory. Like reliability, validity has a number of sub-categories which all need to be met for a test to be considered a legitimate psychometric measuring tool.

A particularly important sub-category is predictive validity. This concept is all about how well a test score can predict performance on a set of future criteria.

A nice example of predictive validity is the incredibly strong and rigorous scientific evidence that a person’s score on a cognitive ability test predicts their future performance at work. In other words it is very likely that the higher a candidate’s score on a (valid and reliable) cognitive ability assessment, the better their job performance will be.

There are many other cases of strong and rigorous associations between people’s scores on a particular construct and their subsequent performance at work, including:

  • A robust association between a candidate’s score on a measure of work reliability or integrity and their rate of absenteeism from work
  • A clear association between candidate’s score on a measure of safety and their likelihood of suffering a workplace injury or accident.

3. They go through an extremely stringent development process

Developing a psychometric test is not the kind of endeavour that can happen overnight. While anyone can pull together a quiz or questionnaire and deliver some results to people (certain magazines do this very well – and they’re fun to complete), constructing a proper, valid and reliable psychometric assessment is a whole other world of complexity.

Because they do have such stringent criteria to meet and need to prove that they can provide genuine information about a candidate’s suitability or ‘fit’ for a particular role, psychometric tests can take up to 10 years to develop.

To be taken seriously, the test developers have numerous hoops to jump through. One of these is making sure that the items in the test are measuring the construct they’re supposed to measure – and just that particular construct – as precisely as possible.

This involves conducting an intricate statistical analysis to determine which items should be eliminated from or retained in the item pool, and whether additional items need to be developed.

Yet another challenge is ensuring that psychometric assessments remain up to date and relevant. This usually means that tests need to be continually updated over time, based on feedback and new research in the field.

4. They have safeguards to prevent faking or response distortion

‘But wait!’ you may say. ‘This is all very well and good, but what about candidates giving the answers they think you want in an assessment?’ And that’s a really good question.

Obviously, when candidates are applying for a job, they’re motivated to show you their very best side. This also means that they’re likely to be tempted to give fake or distorted responses on an assessment, such as telling you they’re more reliable than they really are.

This is a question that psychologists have pondered for many years, and there’s a whole body of psychological literature dedicated to it. From all of this research, there are a number of different – and effective – ways we can reduce the opportunity for candidates to fake their responses, including:

  • Verification testing: candidates complete the same assessment (with different questions) a second time under supervised conditions to verify their original results
  • Validity scales: checks are built into the assessments (by certain questions or algorithms) to detect whether candidates are trying to present an overly positive image of themselves or their behaviour

Making candidates aware of the consequences of faking: some psychometric assessment providers (Revelian included) also collect some fairly sophisticated forensic data behind the scenes, and are alerted when candidates exhibit suspicious behaviour. Alerting candidates of this before they begin the assessment and that their results may be deemed invalid if they do not respond honestly is a useful and effective method of reducing faking. So, as you can see, developing and delivering a valid, reliable and robust psychometric assessment is no mean feat and there are some extremely stringent guidelines attached.

And while this is a burden that we – as psychometric assessment developers – must bear, the great news for employers is that these same stringent guidelines mean you can be confident that tests meeting these requirements will give you accurate, fair and reliable predictions of how candidates will behave and perform at work.

About the author:

Jarrah Watkinson is a provisional psychologist undertaking a Masters of Organisational Psychology at Macquarie University. Jarrah is presently completing an internship at Revelian with the Sydney team, and during her time at Revelian Jarrah has been involved in a number of projects to deliver assessment and selection solutions across a range of industries. Jarrah is passionate about employee health and well-being, user-experience, and creating innovative ways to select and assess employees.

The Institute and Managers and Leaders have just partnered with Revelian, an Australian-owned company trusted by top employers around the world to provide psychometric assessments that reveal powerful insights about people, organisational culture and development. Revelian helps leaders to improve their HR metrics and find the best people for their organisation.

Find out more about how Revelian’s psychometric tools can help you recruit top talent here.

The big, fat lie on my CV. Why leadership is about creating a mentally healthy workplace.

Ok, it’s confession time. My CV is not 100% accurate. Actually, that’s not 100% accurate. I’ll re-phrase it and tell it how it is; I tell a big fat lie on my CV.

I guess that now I’ve gone public with this uncomfortable fact, I’m going to need to fish out my CV and ‘make it good’. Were I ever to apply for a new position it’s pretty likely that I’ll be ‘googled’ and this article will probably pop up. Given that fact, I’m probably best to correct my omission and admit to my … my … my what?

My anxiety disorder.

My anxiety disorder that stemmed from doing a job that I absolutely hated, in a workplace environment I found incredibly stressful and toxic.

I ‘survived’ in the role for just 4 months. And then I called and said I wasn’t coming back. Ever. And I didn’t. I never went back. Not even to complete the dreaded ‘clear your desk’ routine. I simply stayed home one morning and decided to pretend the job had never existed. And I deleted it completely from my CV. It was easier that way. It meant that I didn’t need to explain that I’d taken a job and quit after 4 months. That I was a quitter. Or worse than that; that I was a quitter who called one morning and said I wouldn’t be coming into work. Ever again.

The morning that I called to say I was never coming back will live in my memory for years to come. That’s because it was totally different from the previous four months of Monday mornings to Friday mornings. On each of those mornings, I had travelled from home to Wynyard Station in Sydney by train. I had then sat on a bench on the platform of Wynyard Station for anything from 30minutes to 2hours (yes, on more than one occasion I sat for two whole hours!) trying to muster the courage to walk into the office. Every single one of those minutes sitting on that bench on the platform was nothing less than personally excruciating. Each minute was spent trying to pluck up the courage to stand up and go into work. On a few occasions I didn’t. I simply walked over to the opposite platform, boarded a train heading back the way I came, and went home.

Even when I did make it into the office (via the longest possible route from Wynyard Station to Castlereagh Street), I headed straight for the bloke’s toilets. Once in the toilet, I invariably needed to remove my shirt. And wait. And wait. And wait.

This waiting game was due to the fact that I’d developed a very weird ‘sweating issue’. And when I say sweating, I don’t mean normal ‘Sydney style sweating’. I mean sweating that resembles swimming. In a swimming pool. Fully clothed. My time in the toilet of the toxic workplace was spent wafting my shirt in a vain attempt to dry it out, and mopping my torso with a towel. A towel that I had been forced to carry with me when the weird sweating thing had started about two weeks into the job.

Needless to say, I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Looking back now, I guess I’m pretty lucky. I did pluck up the courage to seek help and that help really helped. The psychologist suggested that quitting the job might be the best course of action.

And yet, the odd thing is that I continue to lie on my CV. I continue to pretend that ‘it’ didn’t happen. And I know exactly why this is. It’s because I’m ashamed. I’m ashamed to say that I couldn’t cope. That I was weak. That ‘it’ (a toxic workplace) got to me. That I quit.

In the cold light of day, if I were to describe the workplace (that description is for a different blog on another day!) it would be crystal clear to everyone that the workplace was a complete disaster. It was totally toxic. From top to bottom. And yet, I remain embarrassed. Embarrassed that I couldn’t cope. That ‘it’ got to me. That I didn’t man up and push through. That I regularly sat frozen on that bench on the platform at Wynyard Station – sometimes for up to two hours. That I sometimes just went home. That I stood in the toilet mopping the sweat from my body with a towel I carried solely for that purpose.

That I wasn’t mentally strong enough to cope with a workplace that wasn’t mentally healthy.

And I’m still not. I continue to lie on my CV.

And I’m certainly not alone or unique in this. Research by beyondblue has found that up to 1 in 5 employees is working with a mental health issue. They also found that whilst 91% of staff thought that mental health in the workplace was a crucial issue, only 52% felt that their workplace was mentally healthy. In the UK, stress, depression and anxiety is the single biggest cause of absence from work – accounting for almost 13million days off work every year.

Here in Australia, all States have WH&S legislation that require employers to provide and maintain a working environment that is safe and without risks to health, including psychological health. The onus is firmly on employers to provide a workplace that is mentally (and physically!) healthy, and to monitor the mental health of their employees.

Creating a mentally healthy workplace is a key leadership issue. As leaders we must ensure that our workplace operates in a way that protects workers from harm to their psychological health. Doing nothing is no longer an option. It’s time for the stigma surrounding mental health to end. It’s time for change. Maybe it’s time for me to change my CV.

 

In February and March 2018, the Institute of Managers and Leaders, in conjunction with beyondblue, will deliver a workplace mental health series in 18 different locations around Australia. The series – called Leadership Outlook will focus on equipping helping businesses with the practical strategies and resources to create mentally heathy workplaces. Click here to register for your nearest event.

 

By David Pich FIML, Chief Executive

Institute of Managers and Leaders

 

 

Getting To Know You

By Jane Caro, Author, Journalist and Broadcaster

Are you quick to judge? You may be projecting your own shortcoming on to others. Try a dose of self-awareness.

I THINK IT was US comedian Sarah Silverman who pointed it out first: President Donald Trump’s tweets criticising others for failings and wrong-doings are not actually accusations but confessions. So often, whatever he claimed others were doing, it turned out he was doing himself. There are many other examples of this kind of behaviour.
I now automatically expect that those who froth at the mouth about immorality, adultery, lust and what they call the ‘abomination’ of homosexuality, will sooner or later be caught in flagrante delicto with a mistress, a young man in a public convenience, a prostitute, a cache of child pornography on their computer or all four.

 

I have often wondered about those who claim climate scientists have concocted a sophisticated international conspiracy about global warming for personal gain. I don’t know if they are aware what your average climate scientist earns, but it’s highly unlikely their academic salaries are enough of an incentive for that level of risk and intrigue. If you want to know where the financial incentives are concentrated in the battle over climate change, I suggest you look to the climate deniers themselves, those who fund them and the billions tied up in the fossil fuel industry. The motives they ascribe to scientists are much more likely to apply to them.

 

We seem to be in the midst of an epidemic of psychological projection. This is the theory that people protect themselves from their own unconscious and unwanted impulses and desires by denying they have them while projecting them onto others. Irrationally hating people who look different from you may indicate you have deeply buried feelings of inadequacy and inferiority.
Being hostile to women may indicate an unacknowledged fear of your own softer side.

Jane Caro will be emceeing at the 2018 International Women’s Day Great Debate in Melbourne, where 6 high-profile Australians will share powerful leadership insights on the iconic female slogan ‘The Future Is Female’. Book your seat now

 

Perhaps the cure for all this psychological projection is self-awareness. To be self-aware means we cannot deny our own unwanted and unacknowledged impulses and desires because they no longer remain stuffed into the darkest corners of our subconscious. Left to gather dust, the unexplored parts of ourselves can cause a great deal of harm. Those are the parts of us that destroy families, careers, friendships and lives, without anyone really understanding why.

 

Unfortunately, no flesh and blood human is completely self-aware; there are always things about ourselves we are blind to. However, that does not mean we cannot strive to be as self-aware as possible. Indeed, if you find yourself having dark suspicions about someone else’s motivations based on little or no evidence, or take an instant but visceral dislike to someone, those can be red flags about something you are denying in yourself.

 

If, for example, you think most people are untrustworthy and only out for themselves, look carefully at your own motives and behaviour. If you are jealous of your partner and spy on them seeking evidence of infidelity, look to your own desires and untrustworthiness. If you find someone irritating or pushy, examine yourself, especially if the person you feel such animosity towards is well-liked by others.

 

The self-aware person will have all the usual failings but they will look to themselves first when things go pear-shaped rather than automatically assuming that if they feel bad or behave badly, it must always be someone else’s fault. Self-aware people own their own emotions, both positive and negative. They own their own weaknesses, failures and vulnerabilities. They face up to their own mistakes and take responsibility for them. They accept that the only person they can change is themselves.

 

In fact, the more self-aware you become the more grown-up you become. Plenty of human beings, which is both their tragedy and ours, never make it past adolescence in terms of emotional maturity. This includes a great many of our leaders. I can think of two right now who are clearly cases of arrested development and are huffing and puffing at each other while their fingers are hovering over nuclear hot buttons.

 

Frankly, the need for more emotional self-awareness among those who lead has never been more urgent, but if the only person you can change is yourself, I guess we better all start there, whoever we are.

 

JANE CARO RUNS HER OWN COMMUNICATIONS CONSULTANCY. SHE WORKED IN THE ADVERTISING INDUSTRY FOR 30 YEARS AND IS NOW AN AUTHOR, JOURNALIST, LECTURER AND MEDIA COMMENTATOR.

Cultivate Imperfection: Why Going Full Frontal is The Root of Successful Leadership

By Heather Gibson, Managing Director at Pendulum Partnership

 

I cultivate leadership and love being a leader. It’s a very large part of who I am and my mission is to help other leaders develop their mindset through enlightened discussion and reframing that is grounded in my own leadership experience.  Whites of the eyes conversation; relentless agility to create and execute new concepts; helping businesses to find new routes to market; pounding the streets in the face of major economic disruption; high octane pace and adaptability; and communicating across generations of leaders and entrepreneurs to interpret and write their unique stories.

At the table right now are some stark choices on many levels; systemic, societal, economic and demographic.  In all of these realms outstanding leadership is vital to delivery and to building a sustainable future. Make no mistake this is an opportunity; and it’s a human disruption that is required.

To bring the real you to your choice of work and hustle is the ultimate gift, it is the need of our time and, I know, one of the essential struggles of humanity in the wake of everything that’s happened.  All this change, the disrupted trajectories, the generational legacies and the unimaginable tragedies that lay before us now: they hurt the people, people. And they’re hurting you.

That’s why it’s time for a serious paradigm shift, at a hurtling pace and the centre of it all is a self-aware, transparent leader who is willing to accept this reality; to go beyond the beyond and be ready to change tack at every moment – even when you think the deal is done.

No more head in the sand ignorance of elephants in the room.  This sets you back days, months, years, even a lifetime and the fact is we just don’t have that time.  I know you know this; the actual struggle isn’t the time spent at the bottom of a change curve, or programming artefacts of change.  It’s the (still) inevitable pull back to the status quo that pervades our business world even today.

Look, I get it.  Information is everywhere and it is overload.  As a leader you are beholden to the mantras of delivering sustainable financial value for your organisation; potentially of sheer survival; possibly of getting an idea off the ground; the near universal sense of uncertainty.  But as an innately self-aware, life experienced human you are also not immune to the positive benefits of more information.  You would like to ‘be the change you want to see in the world’; to do what’s right and serves your values well.  Whilst you are not too badly off, you are worried for future generations, your children, your loved ones.

What I want to say to you is that there is something better than this; something that can develop your leadership and cultivate self-awareness (aka the whole you and nothing but the you), to bring your absolute game face to the table every single day.  Even to live a more fulfilled life.  And that is a think different, talk different mindset that will allow your leadership to shine; one that celebrates imperfection, pushes hard into a new paradigm and attains total clarity.  Clarity that accepts the reality of today’s changing world and recognises you as the disruptor of disruption: a result that gives you the seeing eyes to deliver the intricacies of your current state to get to the future state successfully.

This new leader is one that thinks and functions like an athlete; sharp, crisp and flexible to get the performance result. But it’s more than this.  This development is fully into you and who you are.  To light up the real you as part of your leadership, day in and day out.  Fully self-aware and cognisant of staying right in that zone; able to push limits, deal creativity with scenarios and make who you really are the trump card with the X-factor.  This is the style of leader we need and I know it’s totally relatable as you read these words.

Our path to happiness is taking shape in new, exciting and bold ways (it really is); over and above outdated, traditional, smoke and mirrors, power orientated structures. It’s a physical, emotional, spiritual, mental, cognitive curveball that impacts work and organisations.  That ‘war for talent’ has a whole new dimension; it’s not just people liking, coming and going, but needing, seeking and asking.  Questions, truth, honesty, reality, authenticity, options, opportunities.

To expand your thinking, it’s important to accept the reality that cultivating a mindset of disruption will enlighten and enable a better you. This is what will bring creativity to your business; the foundation for innovation. It will make the discussions and decisions easier and pave the way for new opportunities.  And it will make you see how pivotal the role of transparency is in this story unfolding.

These are the vibes humans and they relate to leadership. Your leadership.

From one leader to another, I know you want this but you are living in a state of perpetual exhaustion; already applying considerable lateral thinking, problem solving and creativity just to work through the immediate complexities and, inevitably, the grind of breaking down barriers and getting stuff done to serve the purpose of today’s agenda.  One laden with expectations of a lifestyle and existing paradigm that is fading and creating a risk to the sustainability of your business.

The need to reframe your current mindset and position your leadership as the source of competitive advantage is a mandate that cannot be under-estimated or ignored.  Self-aware, raw, honest; free from filters, blocks and outdated thinking.

Coz blink and you’ll miss it.  It’s already happened; the future is here.

Heather Gibson will be one of many speakers at our upcoming Brisbane Conference on the 2nd November 2017. Book Now to hear Heather and many other specialists in their respective fields discuss attributes of successful leaders at this full day event.

Why There’s Nothing To Fear From AI

Emotional intelligence will still be a key attribute once AI takes over our rudimentary work. By Candice Chung

 

It’s a question straight out of a science fiction novel . . . will artificial intelligence eventually replace us?

As machines continue to get smarter, and our appetite for quotidian technology grows, it makes sense that the most rudimentary work involving rote tasks and mass information processing are being automated. Think of a time when the ATM didn’t exist, or when ticket sales were only done over the phone or in person; or the idle nights at video stores where memories of summer jobs — once a rite of passage for cash-strapped teens — grew faint as well-worn VHS tapes. All those tasks were once performed by humans, but now, a world of digital providers await us.

But while it’s true that artificial intelligence is changing the labour landscape, experts believe it will also bring forth opportunities for a different kind of talent.

“There’s a lot of speculation that many employees will lose their jobs due to new technology, [but it has actually] allowed us to more effective pinpoint where, and how, we want people to work for us,” says Sue Howse, managing director of Harrier Talent Solutions.

“What automation and robotics can’t do is strategically manage themselves, staff, clients or take into account the unknown or the Black Swan events of the world. To be successful companies will always need those with a high level of emotional intelligence (EQ) who can navigate different circumstances.”

Areas that will see a rise in demand for high-EQ employees include client-facing and decision-making roles. In fact, according to findings on Havard Business Review, skills like “persuasion, social understanding, and empathy” are going to become “more and more prized over the next decade”, as artificial intelligence take over menial tasks.

 

“When the limits of technology have been reached and human interaction is required to solve a problem, a new type of person needs to show up”
– Linda Simonsen, CEO of Future People

 

There will also be a spike in demand for roles that require emotional labour. “Emotional labour refers to work that involves managing one’s own emotions or those of others. This especially applies to leadership roles and project managers leading change and transformation, as well as front line roles that involve engaging people, such as contact centre and face-to-face customer service and sales,” says Linda Simonsen, CEO of FuturePeople.

“When the limits of technology have been reached and human interaction is required to solve a problem, a new type of person needs to show up. This in-demand person will be a highly engaged, knowledgeable and emotionally intelligent brand ambassador who can connect emotionally, show empathy and personalise the solution.”

The key to thriving in the era of AI is a willingness to embrace change and demonstrate flexibility. “It’s an exciting time. AI is a positive step for the business world,” says Simonsen.

“It will see non-value-add and transactional tasks automated, freeing up people to do what makes them human – that is, their ability to feel and impact how others feel; think creatively; collaborate and engage with others to solve complex problems.

Being Professional Doesn’t Mean You Stop Being A Human Being

 

One of my (many) professions these days is a public speaker. I often attend conferences in all sorts of sectors that I would never otherwise get to see up close and personal.

It’s a great privilege and generally I learn two things. The first is that every sector and industry think the challenges they struggle with are unique to them – but they’re not. Everyone, regardless of where they work, is living in the same moment of time and is beset by the same trends and problems as the rest of the world.

The second is that a lot of people, especially when asked to present at an industry conference, confuse being a professional with being a robotic, bland and impersonal bore.

It’s as if they believe they must not allow any particle of their personality, humour or lived experience to intrude on their presentation. The result is not only eye-glazingly dull, but would have been much better handled if they’d simply distributed a copy of their (often endless) Powerpoint and remained seated while the audience read it.

The horror of your life intruding on your work has reached pathological proportions among some who strive to be taken seriously. I blame the pernicious phrase “work/life balance” for this epidemic. If you think about it, the idea simply does not make sense. Do you go to work when you are dead (dead inside, perhaps, in some jobs)? No. Well, in that case, work cannot be separated from life. It’s one part of it and that is all.

This false elevation of “work’’ as the only thing that exists outside of life may be part of the reason so many professionals appear allergic to letting anything personal slip out when they’re representing their job or employer. Sadly, such attempts at separation not only fail, they’re damaging.

When I mentored young aspiring career women (another profession of mine), I would often have to explain to them that a particularly nasty and inexplicable comment from a superior was what I called a toxic emotional fart. It was invariably an aside designed to make the young person feel inferior and was unnecessarily mean and annihilating. The young recipient of the bad smell had often spent days puzzling over it and may even have wept a few tears.

 

 

“A lot of people confuse being a professional with being a robotic, bland, impersonal bore.”

 

My explanation was that the toxic fart had nothing to do with the shaken young woman (or man). It was simply an unconscious expression of what occurs when so-called professionals suppress their humanity and have emotional baggage they will neither acknowledge nor deal with. The pressure of the things they ignore builds up until it must escape and when it does it covers all those nearby with its odour.

A professional is not just someone who turns up on time, follows through on their commitments, delivers work by the due date and knows their business – although all those things are important.

They’re not just people who deal fairly, honestly and ethically with their clients, colleagues and staff, important though that is. They don’t simply pay their appropriate taxes (yes, professionals do that, too, they’re also good citizens), and obey the laws of the land. Although they must do all of those and more.

A professional is a person who understands – not just their own job – but themselves. This matters because until you understand yourself – your motivations, vulnerabilities, weaknesses and toxic baggage (we all have some), you haven’t a hope in hell of understanding other people.

It’s called emotional intelligence and really professional managers have lots of it.

If you don’t, you can bore us all with stats and graphs and “consumer insights” until we’re blue in the face, but you’re not fooling anyone, except yourself.