Sometimes I receive stark reminders of how brutal organisational life can be. These days, given my self-employed status, I receive them through the portal offered to me by my clients, rather than through my own direct experience of being on the inside. But the reminders are no less hard hitting.
In the last few months I have born witness to individuals who are utterly burned out and whose lives are imploding as a result of dedicating themselves for decades to the relentless demands of the business world; been in conversation with people who are limping away from organisations which they thought were purposeful and human, but who have spat them out after years of loyalty and hard work; held sessions with senior leaders who feel lonely and uncared for at the top and whose core is yearning for something more easeful and fulfilling; facilitated days with teams who are on their knees from the excessive hours and unremitting pressure and criticism.
It is not unusual. In fact it remains, I think, more the rule than the exception. It leaves me marvelling at the inhuman organisational paradigm that continues to prevail. It also leaves me marvelling at how it is that so many people continue to opt into this paradigm. It makes me laugh dismissively at the alleged new-found focus on mental health in the workplace with so much talk about extra days off, more flexible working, access to yoga or such like. Don’t get me wrong, there may be a place for these, but for as long as the fundamental model — which is simply not conducive to employee wellbeing — persists, these things will only ever be tiny sticking plasters at best. My conclusion is that if your mental (or physical) health is NOT being negatively impacted by your experience of organisational life, I am MORE, not less worried about you, what you have become desensitised to and more generally who you may have become! And let’s be clear — it’s not just the business world. The NHS is probably one of the best-known broken systems in the UK. The charitable and humanitarian sectors have an employee population that is on its knees. It is everywhere. The world is awash with broken organisational systems that are recycling damage to its employees and, in the cases of bigger conglomerates, to the wider world.
My executive work is about helping people to lead and work well. It is about helping leaders unleash their creative energy as a force for good in their organisations. It is about helping teams develop stronger relationships with each other, that provide a platform for dialogue, complex problem solving and innovative thinking. It is about helping people have the difficult conversations so that new, creative, more constructive beginnings can be found. And it’s really, really hard work. It’s hard for those on the inside to find the “presence and focus” (as one client put it to me recently) required to be in this kind of conversation (rather than the hamster wheel conversation about the next deadline). It’s hard for people to find the energy to engage in finding a different way when they are consumed by the current way. And sometimes, I admit, it’s hard for me to witness it, to try to be useful in amongst all of this, and to maintain my motivation to continue trying to make a difference.
I recognise in myself the temptation sometimes to walk away from ‘that kind of work’ and focus my efforts on work that is easier, where there is greater appetite and capacity for change, greater possibility to influence the fundamental forces that are at play. But then I figure that that is tantamount to giving up. And that doesn’t feel right either, partly because of the millions of people who work in those other systems and partly because the world needs these organisations to find a better way. I suppose this is something about what leadership requires of me.
And so I find myself choosing the radical act of hope; hope that there can be change; hope that we are capable of bringing it about; hope that together we can find a better way. And hope does feel like a radical act when all around systems seem to be breaking or already broken. But without hope, what else is there? The ability to hope (if not believe) and inspire it in others is surely one of the biggest prerequisites for leaders these days.
And so I wonder how your capacity for hope is faring in today’s world. I wonder what keeps it alight. I wonder how you keep the bonfire (or flicker) of hope alive inside yourself. One thing that works for me is retaining my relationship with beauty which replenishes me, lifts and inspires me. I do this in two ways; the first is through creativity and the arts — my own and that of others, be it music, painting, writing or poetry. The other is through turning my attention to the natural world; a sunrise, the colours of autumn, the power of the ocean, the sweep of the sky from the top of Primrose Hill.
Hope and beauty, beauty and hope! May they flourish! May they support us! May they fuel our efforts to keep on trying! May they continue to help me tread The Neon Way.