Week 12, 2024
Work
As predicted, the confluence of simultaneous engagement-ends, the end of the financial year, and impending Easter holidays have made this a hardcore week. My diary has been pretty back-to-back, with at least one high-stakes meeting or workshop each day. And though the meetings and workshops are the work - each also created work which I didn’t have time to do (and which now is parked in my brain, nagging at me). I’ve ended the week physically, cognitively, and emotionally exhausted. Reflection: my work schedule demanded that I be observant, active listening, quick thinking, creative and emotionally well-regulated for too high a percentage of the week. Not all meetings are created equal, so I need to be much more deliberate in scheduling some downtime (or at least lower stakes work) around the intense stuff. I’m also in these meetings with other colleagues - I need to keep checking on them, making sure they’re okay, and helping them if they’re not. And writing that down I realise that I need as sense-check for myself: if the level of intensity or pressure is high enough to make me want to protect my colleagues from it, then perhaps I ought to be intervening on my own behalf too.
One client meeting was not what we expected at all. A Hail Mary high stakes meeting that went in some weird directions but ended up in an astonishingly positive position. Half the planned session structure and content was critical in getting where we did, the other half turned out to be pretty irrelevant. And of course we couldn’t have predicted in advance which would have been the useful half.
I’ve been reflecting on experiences with senior leadership teams and executive boards over recent years, and teasing out the difference in my mind between “toxic leadership” and “dysfunctional leadership”. There are plenty of toxic leadership teams around Whitehall. But there are also quite a few organisations in the public sector that are dysfunctional without the toxicity. For example, some leadership teams are well-intentioned and full of nice people who for one reason or another don’t deliver; some leadership teams are delivery-focused and value harmony so highly that they’ve designed out necessary interdependence by building siloes so tall that they can deliver within their unhelpfully narrow scope without ever treading on anyone else’s toes. Reflection: behaviours like collective leadership, collaboration and challenge don’t come easy to those with an affiliative harmony-seeking leadership style. In underperforming organisations, meetings that feel easy and seem to go well might actually be a sign of dysfunction.
Personal
Cate and I didn’t record the podcast. Turns out she’d invited me to be interviewed, rather than to interview her. But we did get a chance to try out the tech set up and discover some quirks we wouldn’t have learned about otherwise.
Art class - I missed because Emily was ill, again.
My youngest keeps on hiding discarded chewing gum under the living room sofa. We discovered a pile this week. I’ve found myself thinking about trust a lot, as a result. On the face of things she and I have a shared vision of a nice, tidy, clean living environment. It’s certainly a preference she declares, and she always keeps her own bedroom in check. But despite this, she’ll choose to do things that mess up (and sometimes damage) rooms in our house: sometimes she’s rebelling, sometimes she’s being lazy, but whatever the reason she’s usually putting her own needs or interests ahead of the family’s in one way or another, and I struggle to trust that she won’t do it again. Reflection: This feels a little like some client situations I see - superficially something is a shared endeavour, there’s a common vision or objective, people declare their commitment…and then one or both head off and do something that damages the trust of the other, setting off escalating reactions and responses. How do you rebuild that trust? In my parent/child relationship, of course, it’s my job to be the adult: there is no winning or losing. But in the workplace? It can feel very different. What does it take to convince someone to choose to be the adult?