Play At Work

What, to Where?: The Dress Code a la Mode

November 12, 2015

What to wear, what to wear? That seems to be the big question here in the UK this month. We’re having quite the sartorial debate, and, in some instances, the gloves are really coming off (or going on? I’m not sure where we’re at with gloves right now).

So first up, the V&A museum in London turns down the pussy-bowed blouses and power suits of Margaret Thatcher, the UK’s only (to date) female Prime Minister.

Apparently, Thatcher’s clobber was deemed, well, just that really – clobber, lacking in technical or aesthetic merit and therefore not reaching the benchmark of quality to warrant display by the museum.

It conjured up an image for me of the kind of reception a middle-aged, distinctly middle class woman in a drip-dry polyester suit might get in a store on Bond Street – “She must be lost – or someone’s accountant?”

“You don’t belong here.”

I appreciate the Savage Beauty of Alexander McQueen must be a tough act to follow for the V&A. The point is, they can’t, so shouldn’t bother (nothing is going to top that). But I think they’ve really missed the point of what the Iron Lady’s wardrobe encapsulates – which is exactly that – how a backbench female MP transitions into the Iron Lady, and what she wears to do it.

Thatcher was always Instagram ready – and the outfit chosen very carefully for the occasion and setting – furs in Moscow, wrapped in white in the desert, channelling Elizabeth I at the Guildhall.

The most fascinating thing about this for me is that it’s a visual language mostly denied to men in power. Men have to fall back on accessories – cigars and bowler hats – or unusual facial hair (or head hair for that matter Mr Trump, Mr Johnson). The uniform, the suit, offers far less scope to be creative – you can’t even play around much with the colour spectrum. And even if you go the military route – which at least could give you more colour and bling, then you’ve got to be in it all the time for it to really cut through.

Thatcher clearly embraced the power of clothes and used them to become iconic – much as the subjects of previous exhibitions at the V&A, Princess Grace of Monaco and Diana, Princess of Wales, did (Thatcher just did it on the cheap – and, I would think, for rather different reasons).

I would have thought the V&A could have seen that and that the discussion such an exhibition would fuel would be worthy of them.

And talking of worthy discussions, business psychologist Professor Cary Cooper has been in the news this week talking about the power of colourful clothes to express creative flair at work. He cites ‘people of colour’ like newscaster Jon Snow and Home Secretary Theresa May as good examples of those whose personal style helps them to stand out.

I do think, as a nation, we’ve got much better, sartorially-speaking. London still ain’t Paris for natural, effortless chic, but I do think people are clearly more thoughtfully ‘put together’ – and men have really come on leaps and bounds (David Beckham, in particular, deserves a lot of merit for this – maybe his knighthood will be for services to fashion rather than football?).

Of course, we can question – does it matter, should it matter? Shouldn’t we be judged on the content of our character, not our wardrobes?

Well, yes, yes, of course. But you only have to hear London Mayor Boris Johnson (also this week) talking about “corduroy-jacketed, snaggletoothed lefties,” to know we live in a world where that’s not case.

People judge us by how we look. We face read, label read – increasingly skin read – everyone we meet. In seconds. What you wear is the visual identity of your personal brand – and, just like a tin on a supermarket shelf, you’ll be judged by it. Chosen for it. Or not.

There’s no doubt clients do. I’ve had clients tell me they wanted to work with me because I “looked the part,” – I’ve also known clients to complain about how someone was dressed when they came to their site.

As I’ve always told those I’ve managed, like it or not, people do notice – and often comment. My advice has always been to keep it clean, keep it simple, try to be a little creative and look like you thought about it rather than picked it up off of the bedroom floor, and, whether you have a body to die for or a body to diet, less flesh is always best.

The customer match can also be a useful approach when it comes to deciding what to wear. If you dress in a way that reflects how your client dresses, at a meeting you can kind of blend in, chameleon-like, and people forget you’re not ‘one of them’ – which can help expedite a sense of intimacy, and, consequently, trust (never a bad thing).

It can backfire – they might want to buy you because you’re a compelling ‘alternative’ to them in your ripped jeans and rude slogan t-shirt (but that approach can also backfire too).

It’s tricky. And there’s another dimension to it, a slight footnote of caution to Cooper’s advice, that I’d like to share.

Getting it ‘right’ can also mean getting it wrong.

I’ve always loved clothes and been very particular about what I wanted to wear, even as a little kid (the genesis of my martyrdom to co-ordination). My first full time job – the summer before starting my ‘A’ levels – was in a designer clothes store. I was practically paid in clothes.

It was a great store, very edgy, stocked designers no one had heard of then – Dries Van Noten, Martin Margiela, Comme des Garcons – and I loved it – the smell of the clothes when they arrived, the weight of them, the feel; steaming them; trying them on; desiring them; bargaining for discount (begging, sulking) and the thrill of the day when I could take something home – and then wear it out that night (all the time praying I wouldn’t ruin it).

It started a lifelong addiction. I don’t buy a lot (because I always know exactly what I want it can take me months, sometimes years, to find that exact thing) but I do tend to buy quality – and designer (the smell, the weight, the feel – oh, and the fact that, at 6’ 3”, most of it actually fits me whereas I struggle in a lot of high street stores, or do I just tell myself that – I could go to High and Mighty I guess).

I’m no slave to fashion (I don’t think). I know what I like and what I think suits me and that’s what I wear. I dress for me, not the world. The fact that the world often stops to notice and compliment me is nice – sometimes a little embarrassing (a slice of self-consciousness anyone?), and I have a couple of friends who always get really irritated when shopping with me (“…no-one ever says that to me!”), but it’s something I’ve grown (particularly as I’ve aged) to really appreciate.

It’s a lovely thing to do. I think complimenting a random person on the street is the ultimate in generosity of spirit (maybe not so much if you’re trying to pick them up, but I’m not talking about incidents like that!).

In work, as stated above, I think my approach to dressing for success has, in the main, been a good one. As an Executive Creative Director, as a Brand Consultant, displaying you know your brands, the power of symbol and signifier, the impact of an image, is part of the job description.

But, even then, there can be this little flip side. It’s not a big deal. It’s a really, really first world problem, but having a certain style can diminish you in some way (certainly in some people’s eyes).

Anna Wintour touches on this lament of the fashionista in the documentary The September Issue. Just because you like clothes and spend your hard-earned cash on them, some people assume you’re a bit stupid. You’re judged in a light at least as harsh as Boris’s dentally-challenged left wingers.

Like I say, it’s not much of a problem (“Oh gee, people think you’re not as bright as you are because you’re SO stylish – I’m weeping for you!”) but it can be really frustrating when people are more interested in the contents of your wardrobe than your brain, or decide you can’t possibly be really serious about anything because you clearly spent time thinking about what to wear.

So, before you radically alter your look, think about what you want to be known for – who you are, or how you look.

For most workers, the key is probably a little creativity, a little bit of colour, a little bit of ‘freedom within a framework’ – after all, Snow is still in a suit, as is May for that matter.

Standing out too much might not get you the right kind of attention and, another good piece of advice, if it’s wearing you rather than you wearing it, take it off.

In every workplace there’s a dress code – written or implied – that’s designed to help you fit into your environment. Some can seem incredibly prescriptive, incredibly pedantic, but they are usually the result of customer feedback about someone’s LOVE/HATE knuckle tattoos or flip flops.

The sad truth can be that that dull grey suit might not be your idea of flair, but it might be just the thing for your customer.

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Stress: Bad Luck, Bad Manners or Just Bad Management?

November 5, 2015

Did it stress you out a little not realising it was #NationalStressAwarenessDay this week?

It did me. If I’d known that, I could have got an appropriate post all ready to rock, ready to promote on the hashtag, relevant, timely…now you’ll be trailing Matthew, trailing, not good, not good…

Stress.

It’s a hard thing to avoid. So do we need reminding of it? Are we not, as so many put it so well on Twitter this week, more than aware of how stressed we are?

Life is stressful. Sometimes a little. Sometimes a lot (although it’s not always easy, and therefore can be quite stressful in itself, telling the two apart, particularly for those of us good at making mountains out of molehills).

Part of the trick is having the self awareness, and trigger awareness, to get a grip on what’s a mountain and what’s a molehill – and I’m sure it was this kind of awareness Stress Awareness Day was trying to promote (as well as, of course, the impact stress has on our health and well being).

Not that we should ever negate someone’s stress due to our perceived sense of whether it’s justified or not. If someone is stressed, they’re stressed. The last thing anyone needs when they’re stressed out is someone telling them they’re being ‘silly’ by getting stressed out about something so minor.

Of course, the amplification of minor stresses is usually because there are some much bigger stresses going on in parallel. It really can be straws that break camels’ backs, but that’s most likely after a succession of much heavier loads.

Personally, I’m quite good at handling the major big stresses in life (as much as anyone can be) – I’m the kind of person others go to in a crisis, I’m a professional ‘problem solver’ – but I’m not so good at handling the little things.

Not so good at all. Of this I’m well aware.

The little things really get to me because, as I see it, they are unnecessary stresses, things that could easily be avoided.

It stresses me out walking down city streets where you have to watch where everyone else is walking as no one can look up from their screens to actually look for themselves anymore.

It stresses me out having to awkwardly (left-handedly) scan and pack my own shopping in a supermarket where there are no actual people to serve you (and the machines aren’t designed for south paws).

It stresses me out people not saying please and thank you, or holding the door for others, or ignoring customers in shops.

I remember a friend saying to me “But why do you even care, why do you even notice whether the customer in front of you said please or not? Why does it get to you so much?”

It was a good question. I blame a kind of hyper-vigilance, combined with a strong belief that actually, these little things do make a difference, are the oil that lubricates a civilised society and, most importantly, their loss is a sign of a lessening of personal social responsibility – it’s not my job to look where you’re going; the person serving you is a human being, not a machine, be grateful for that and treat them like one.

Could just be I’m turning into a really grumpy old man (don’t get me started on my stresses with inanimate objects – I’ve had more shouting matches with devices than I’ve ever had with living things).

Maybe I’m just, and have always been, a stress head. I remember a teacher at primary school once asking me how I was (in the middle of my re-organising the school library) and, after my saying I was rather stressed, him clearly finding this rather amusing, the notion of a nine year old boy being stressed. He even wrote a ‘avoid the stress’ comment in my little leaving book a couple of years later, so it was probably a real dinner party tale for him.

I was stressed. There were piles of books everywhere and I was tasked with organising them. I was rather precocious too, of course, so maybe it was the adult terminology that tickled him so (this would have been the early 80s, I would conjecture people talked less about stress then than they do now).

Nevertheless, he did negate my stressed out state (something I clearly remembered) and it’s something we all do to others when we’re not sharing the same stresses as them, and probably all do too much.

How many times have you heard yourself say things to a stressed out partner, friend or colleague like:

“Oh, don’t worry about it…”

“You’ll be okay….”

“It’ll all work itself out…”

Or even, the worst, the inexcusable, “Que sera, sera….”

None of it very helpful when someone is up to ninety and the adrenalin and cortisol is flowing.

Not for me at any rate, but then, I’m an exploder. I’ll blow up, have a rant, over-dramatise (“People who bump into others walking down a street while looking at a smartphones should be tasered,”) and then I’ll get over it.

The valve has been flicked, the steam released, and all is right again (at least for me – and I’ve worked hard at learning the lesson that my explosive forms of stress release might actually stress out other people in the process).

Oh, to have a longer fuse. Or to be more obtuse. That would help.

Thankfully, I have a lot of understanding people in my life. They know my triggers – and know, however nuclear I might get in the moment, I will settle down and regain my sense of humour, and perspective, pretty quickly.

(Also, thankfully, I’m working on minimising the stressy Red me and learning to breathe).

In the workplace, though, we can’t expect others to know us so well – and the workplace is possibly the biggest breeding ground for what we call the stress in our lives.

That’s why the ‘checking-in’ principle embedded in Kaizen business philosophy is so appealing to me. The idea that, before starting a meeting, everyone ‘checks in’ their state of mind.

This minimises waste. Everyone gets their stresses off of their chests, with the hope being, having done this, someone’s bad mood (induced by a delayed train and foul weather) won’t make them respond obstructively to a great idea simply because they’re in a foul mood, rather than because they don’t think it’s a great idea (as most of us know from experience, approaching a manager in a good mood with a new idea is a far better guarantee of success than approaching them with the exact same thing when in a bad one).

People are people and, as I’ve said before, we get in the way of ourselves.

It does seem we might be waking up to the fact though that poor people management is indeed one of the biggest causes of workplace stress.

Yes, we can support people to find better stress management techniques and create environments that support this. For their own interests, it’s smart for businesses to do this. I think it’s great to experiment with the patterns of the working day as highlighted by Mat Luschek in People Geekly this week too; there’s no question overwork, tiredness and lack of opportunity to even think about a healthier lifestyle, let alone the time to implement one, have a massive impact on engagement, productivity and innovation.

But the top priority has to be on making every manager a better people manager.

Letting each other know what stresses us out is a good place to start.

Pretending we don’t get stressed – I’ve had this so many times in interviews and I never buy it – is a pointless exercise. As animals, we’re programmed to get stressed, it’s how we survive. Fight or flight. Stress can drive us forward, make us think through consequences.

Stress, in many ways, has been the key to the success of our species. We need it. Just not so much of it, and not so much of it caused by what really amounts to casual, day-to-day human interactions where we should all know better and be able to play nicely.

As with pretty much everything, it all boils down to communication.

It stresses me out when…you stressed me out when…I feel stressed when…I’m sorry I stressed you out when…are all good places to start.

In the happy workplace, people check in with each other. In the unhappy workplace, everyone just wants to check out – and that’s a really stressful place to be.
Thirteen Men

October 29, 2015

I don’t usually like to split things up along gender lines. I think the trouble with gender is that we don’t have the right words – everything’s too loaded. Everything ends up stereotyping everyone.

I know ‘feminine’ men (and I don’t mean effeminate men here, different thing altogether) and I know ‘masculine’ women; ‘tomboys’ who turned into fashionistas and school yard ‘cissies’ who turned into tough men. I know guys who are turning into their mothers and girls who are just like their fathers.

In fact, in families, a lot of families, I think gender characteristics can swim about quite fluidly in the gene pool. So many of us possess a blend of our mothers’ and fathers’ personalities (with a great big chunk, the biggest bit, that’s just us, ours alone).

So all this Venus and Mars stuff, all continually pointing out the differences between men and women, when we surely, as human beings, have more in common than points of difference, seems divisive, unconstructive.

But then you look at the stats.

Ah yes, of course, the stats. The lifeblood of content. No wonder then, when it comes to gender difference, so many stats are so alarmingly different as to demand attention (the gender pay gap anyone?).

And this one: today, in the UK, statistically speaking, sixteen people will take their own lives.

Thirteen of them will be men.

In my last post, I pondered the subject of the ‘Warrior’ gene, present in 30% of men and representing a biologically-driven challenge in processing emotion, and whether this might have a bearing on the truly frightening statistics that, if you’re a man under 45, you’re more likely to die by your own hand than any other cause (the number of men committing suicide in their 40s and 50s is also soaring).

The night I posted I saw a trailer for a BBC documentary with British Rap Artist Professor Green, covering his own father’s suicide (and last night I watched it).

It was a raw, incredibly brave, compelling, heart-wrenching film. One of those documentaries you watch that leave you feeling a little stunned and almost slightly winded at the end; proving the power of the explicitly personal, universally human narrative to punch the consciousness and make you think about others’ lives, so similar and so different to our own.

Watching, listening to all the stats and facts and academic opinion, it’s hard to deny this reactive suicide epidemic (not too dramatic a word when you think no other disease or disaster eats up more young men) is a male problem.

And, like all male problems, we don’t like to talk about it. And that’s the problem.

In so many forms, Green (aka Stephen Manderson) exposed the recurring narrative hook, a fundamental truth of male identity, that is the belief you mustn’t be, and must fight to not appear to be, in any way vulnerable, or to voice any vulnerability (a challenge Manderson himself, understandably, faced throughout the filming).

There was talk that perhaps the male youth of today are developing healthier identities. That these forty something suicides were the result of the ‘buffer’ generation, squeezed between the post-war traditional ideas of male identity as lived by their fathers and the metrosexual modernity of their millennial sons (for a long time I’ve conjectured that Generation X is the truly lost generation, but that’s a whole other story).

Then Manderson visited a family who had recently lost their son, a guy who seemed to have it all, who, unexpectedly, at twenty six, had killed himself – and you couldn’t help feeling that it might be too soon to be too optimistic about the robustness of Gen Y and Millennial men.

Are Gen X fathers raising their sons to be better at accepting their vulnerabilities, dealing with setbacks or failure; are their Gen X mothers? Are we, as a society, a culture?

Well, I’m not sure. I don’t think there are many platforms where men share their own vulnerabilities – and surely this would be the way to assure their sons it’s okay to feel the same.

A couple of years ago, I saw a great keynote speech at the end of a conference from a CEO who spoke about the power of admitting to vulnerabilities as a leader. People respect people who admit they don’t know it all. They like people who can show they have good self-knowledge, it makes them easier to work with (you can get better at predicting their responses for a start, which always helps with timing – and timing, as we know, is everything).

It was a really powerful speech, really inspiring. It came from a woman.

So what are we going to do about this? I see more crises in male identity ahead – from campus rape culture to Insta-induced body dysmorphia (did you know, the ‘typical’ customer of health food store Holland and Barrett isn’t mung-bean-soaking middle-aged hippies, it’s young guys, buying protein powers to pump up – and look good for that selfie).

Mike Buchanan, the leader of political party Justice for Men and Boys (and the women who love them), produces a weighty argument against the state for creating this crisis, but fails to mention the most startling fact of all – the laws and systems that he says are assaulting the human rights of men and boys are also, overwhelmingly, designed and run by men too.

Which brings me to work culture – and hope.

Working cultures really can, I believe, lead the way. I’m not saying they are leading the way – in many workplaces, acting out the warrior or psycho boss is almost in the job description. Vulnerability results in a P45. People hide their tears in cubicles. But it can. We can have that dialogue at work. We can balance up the dialogue, admit we’re all vulnerable and find the power in that.

Many working environments certainly need to be healthier places for women to go – but they should be healthier, more productive places for everyone. Ultimately, it’s a commercial imperative. A societal one too: burning people up and out scorches many more people than just the person who dies.

We really need to think about workplace exits too. Women don’t tend to kill themselves when they lose their jobs. Lots of men do. And what employer wants someone’s life on their hands.

If more men like Stephen Manderson can show us the way, show us it’s okay to be a bit F’d up and crack people open to TALK about that, seriously talk about it, we might make some headway.

If more enlightened leaders can show us greatness comes even when you have some vulnerabilities (Churchill, anyone?), we might make some headway. We need to. This is scary.

The same day I posted my last post and saw the Professor Green trailer, Twitter was full of @manwhohasitall, the account parodying the inane barrage of advice working women can be subjected to in the media.

I guess it makes a good point about how condescending (and unrealistic) a lot of this advice can be, but I looked at it another way. Women have this content, advice, these dialogues, to consume or spit out as they decide. Men don’t.

There might be a lot of dross among it, but there must be something in it – looking at those stats, women are coping with 21st century life far better than men. They talk. They discuss things.

What do men do? Laugh it off. Spoof it. Bottle it up. Repeat the pattern. Rationalise it away. Be ‘typical’ men.

And some, too many, go and kill themselves believing there’s no way out.

Perhaps if we did have some channels, some outlets for men to express SOMETHING, ANYTHING about how they feel about, and are (or aren’t), managing their lives – without fear of ridicule – less than thirteen men today would feel they’re worth so little as to not exist at all.
Murder in the C-Suite: Is Your Boss Really Out to Get You?

October 21, 2015

Baggage. We’ve all got it. And it’s not just the result of our upbringing and sibling rivalries and conditioning and experiences. It’s there is our brain, apparently, sometimes right from the very start – just waiting for the right trigger.

This was the roundabout conclusion of a fascinating BBC documentary ‘The Mystery of Murder: A Horizon Guide’ I came across on iPlayer, a scientific exploration of the neurological, genetic and environmental ‘baggage’ that tends to be found in those who kill.

Okay, so let’s expand a bit on baggage. We’re all flawed beings. We all have our own little (or big) neuroses. We all have ‘issues’. And we all bring them into work (whether we’re conscious of them or not). We’re ‘complex machines’. We’re humans. But few of us are, happily, fully loaded with danger.

Not that you’d think that if you listened to how people talk about those they work with. A convention of the workplace is the amount of time we spend blaming other people for not dealing with their baggage – and, more for dramatic effect than as any form of considered diagnosis, we carelessly label them psychos, control freaks, megalomaniacs, narcissists, schizos – conjecturing on the root of their issues from the things we know about them, or suppose about them, or project onto them.

Sometimes, we might seriously consider that our colleague or, more likely, manager is, in fact, psychologically ‘damaged’ in some way. I think it’d be fair to say, rarely do we think “It’s not their fault; it’s how they’re wired.”

The Horizon programme got me thinking about this because, through presenting various big data research studies relating to neurological and genetic factors, alongside studies in nurture as well as nature, it concluded though many of us may have the biological triggers for murder, those triggers are almost universally squeezed only when put in a psychologically damaging environment, usually from a very early age.

Murderers are created by nature and nurture.

It still begged the question, taking a scientific analysis of the mind of a murderer, is it possible to excuse the crime, or diminish it, by identifying the fault in the machine that sparked the impulsion, the compulsion?

But it was the triggers, and how present these are in so many, that was so fascinating and really got me thinking – particularly about those that tend to occupy the C-suites of our biggest businesses and organisations.

Those with a biologically-determined killer instinct tend to have quite a lot in common. The main thing is they’re all men. Well, almost. Ninety percent, to be exact (and, due to this overwhelming representation, the programme only explored recurring factors in men).

Excess testosterone, unsurprisingly, can be a factor, particularly in sexually motivated killers. Low seratonin was another, encouraging thrill-seeking to replace the missing chemicals. A bigger surprise to me, though, was the identification of the ‘warrior’ gene in men and its connection to poor responses in the emotional centres of the brain, leading to expression of emotion being replaced with aggression. A gene present in some 30% of men.

So let’s think about that for a minute. 30% of the male population’s brains are naturally wired to be aggressive. That’s a lot of guys. That’s a lot of CEOs.

It could also help explain one of the most tragic stats there is in this country – that, if you’re a man under 50, you’re more likely to kill yourself than die any other way. When emotion overwhelms, that aggression can turn in on itself, or the warrior just can’t go on fighting.

In psychopathic killers, the overwhelming neurological characteristic is a brain that doesn’t ‘do’ empathy. At all. They showed some brain scans of psychopaths and ‘normal’ people watching violent footage. In the norms, everything was lighting up. In the psychopaths, nothing changed. Shut down.

The scariest bit though was the psychopathic ability to learn to act empathy. The desire to control and manipulate can clearly be a big spur in learning how to display emotional intelligence.

The happy news was the rather jolly presence of a doctor who, through his research, found he, indeed, had all the triggers – and could identify his own marginally psychopathic/unempathetic traits – but was a happy family man from a happy family (though they didn’t seem all that surprised when he came back from his lab with his diagnosis).

This one case study in the programme proposing nurture can outstrip nature, at least some of the time, got me thinking about business leaders, often said to have psychopathic tendencies – the ability to think ‘big picture’, above ‘the little people’, think ruthlessly, pragmatically, perhaps for a perceived good (like a good old-fashioned Messiah complex) – or, more likely, for personal gain, be it power, status, money or, even more likely, all three.

There are 93 men running the FTSE 100. According to studies, possibly (but in no way certainly), 3% could have psychopathic tendencies. 30% could be warriors at the very least (though that could be a mistake to think all warriors are leaders, some might just relish war and I can find no studies into the correlation).

From my own experience (and echoing that of Victor Lipman in Forbes), I’ve had the privilege of interviewing a lot of leaders throughout my career and it really has been a privilege: they’ve all been courteous and considered, seemingly genuinely engaged and generous with their time (even when it clearly has been pressed); I’ve had great insights from them and learned an awful lot.

And they always tend to be very on-a-level, straight forward kind of people. They always seem to be very authentic, and you can see how people want to follow them.

Of course, now I have to look back at those interviews in light of my new found knowledge into just how good psychopaths are at lying, but, having also interviewed some real, institutionalised psychopaths too – when I was still at school believe it or not – my gut tells me these people weren’t faking their high emotional intelligence or deep understanding of their operations and cultures (not that you can really compare the experience of working with someone to having a one off 121 interview).

The ‘Psycho Boss’ is a role embedded in our culture. I would argue, it’s celebrated too (and even emulated, as anyone who has ever seen The Apprentice can testify to). From Gordon Gekko to Patrick Bateman to Frank Underwood, success is often positioned as the result of a certain kind of psychopathy. We glamourise the power, the breath-taking ruthlessness. It’s appealing in a dangerous way. Sexy. Devilish.

It could be alluring to act it out. A trap, a role, history tells us, many fall into as leaders, developing, in the name of success, the ruthless pragmatism and self-serving impulses that dehumanise all who surround them.

Which is exactly the kind of thinking that allows psychopathic murderers to kill people.

I’ve no doubt it would be healthier to challenge that narrative, change that narrative. We must. Let’s not kid ourselves though. Businesses take on plenty of tough cookies and crumple them up. The world of work can be, if not a war, a battlefield, a viper’s nest – and it’s tough at the top.

We do need tough people and the challenges of our chaotic world sometimes require a bit of ruthless pragmatism, at least in the system we have now and in how the world works – and, sadly, I don’t see many signs of the world changing to allow for much else right now.

Always one to try and find a happier flip-side, however, I’ve never felt, over the last two decades of my working life, as I do now, such a strong desire for something else though, collectively in businesses and in all of the people I meet and interact with on social media.

Ultimately, I think we’re bored of the battleground. Fatigued by the mind games. We desperately want authority we can believe in and I really believe that’s a powerful driving force for change (we might be entertained by Gordon or Frank, but we don’t really want to work for them).

The challenge is that all sounds a bit emotional (and we know what a dirty word that is in business), and, with all this talk of warriors and psychopaths and alphas, it does get you thinking about the struggle to bring true empathy and EQ into the workplace and have this led from the top.

Perhaps that’s the biggest career challenge for our business leaders in the evolving 21st century workplace today: developing empathy probably isn’t what got you to the top, but it’s probably what’s going to keep you there.

After all, collaboration – that current, constant watchword of the contemporary business and the hopeful spur to that elusive increased productivity – only works with empathy, sympathy, harmony, balance, emotional intelligence.

This can be easily dismissed as idealism but it’s also worth remembering we’re hard-wired for empathy as a species – it’s what helped us survive.

And real collaboration is not impossible to achieve at all, it’s not just an ideal it’s a commercial imperative (indeed, the killer commercial instinct for the millennial age) and, when it happens, it is where the best ideas come from (and are most likely to be delivered). I’ve been lucky enough to see it in action many, many times (but, come to think of it, I don’t think there was a potential psychopath in the room at the time).
The Games People Play

October 3, 2015

I’m always surprised, no matter how frequently it happens (and it does happen rather frequently), that when I tell someone I’m a Creative Director (I rarely tell social contacts I’m an Executive Creative Director* – that just seems pretentious) they reply by saying “Oh, lucky you – I haven’t got a creative bone in my body.”

It’s definitely a definition thing. I don’t really believe these people aren’t creative in some form or another, but rather that they don’t identify as being creative.

Which begs the question – what do we define as creativity then, and how is it created? Are ‘creative people’ born or made? Or is creativity a state of mind, rather than a specific skill set?

I don’t think creativity is solely the preserve of those who work in the creative department of an organisation (or within the creative industries). Creativity comes in all forms.

Google the definition and the first thing I found was ‘the use of imagination or original ideas to create something; inventiveness,’ – no mention of pens, paintbrushes or Adobe there. No mention even of art and crafts or literature, music, acting or dance – the things we think of when we think of being ‘all creative’.

For me, the power word is imagination – and, thanks to the Twittersphere, some things I’ve read recently have shed a little light for me in relation to the life experiences (and, perhaps, innate characteristics) that lead to a self-proclaimed creative state of mind.

The first is the link between creativity and memory. The Harvard theory goes that the better your memory, the better you can access early, formative memories, the more creatively inclined you are likely to be.

It’s all about ‘episodic’ memory – in other words, mental time travel, which in turns leads to ‘divergent’ thinking and the ability to imagine a new future out of your experiences from the past.

I can buy this theory. I have a very good memory. Sometimes, a punishingly good memory (I have to confess it can sometimes be hard to let go of a grudge because, via my memory, I have instant access to the feelings surrounding the episode that lead to the grudge in the first place. As I’ve got older, and hopefully matured, it’s easier to forgive – but I still don’t forget!).

Certainly my brain is full of a lot of seemingly random details – I don’t know much about a lot, but a know a little about an awful lot, something that’s very helpful, particularly in the brainstorming process (and when playing Trivial Pursuit).

In fact, wide ranging interests and general knowledge is something I’ve always looked for when recruiting. Strong conceptual thinkers are often strong because they can link things that have never been linked before together to form something new. Original ideas are often born that way.

But are we born that way?

The picture accompanying this post is of me, at about three years old. Look at it carefully and it’s a very telling picture.

There I am, on a sunny but not particularly warm day (I remember it, or think I do), outside on the front lawn, with my colouring books, purple crayon in left hand, my mother’s wooden wedges (very seventies) on foot (I had a real passion for heels in my toddler years – I’m rarely out of them in pictures. Not something I carried into later childhood or adulthood, but then I am 6’ 3”) and clearly enjoying myself (I’m a happy little chap, aren’t I?).

My brother and sister were probably playing a game in the street with the other kids, but there I am, outside, but still ‘inside’ – colouring, creating, imagining. And, I’ve no doubt, I came out that way. I painted, I wrote stories, I made things. I was good at these things.

Creation, very early on, was purpose, identity and companion for me (and saved me from the outdoorsy rough and tumble my siblings enjoyed far more than me).

But, though I might have been the most ‘artistic’ child of the three of us (‘the creative one’), we were all very imaginative and inventive. I made things, but all of us made things up. Particularly games. We were always inventing games (and were especially good at reinventing board games).

Games were a big thing in our house. Monopoly on Christmas Day was eventually banned by my mother as it just got too nasty as we all got older (insider trading, blackmail, smear campaigns etc. etc.), but, other than that, board games were always encouraged.

Now, you have to remember, this was an age before 24/7 kids TV, before kids had social schedules that would rival the Court Circular in The Times.

During the summer holidays, if we weren’t building camps outside or going on bike rides (yes, we really were that Swallows and Amazons – save for lashings of ginger beer), we were inside playing games. Those were the options – and, if you said you were bored, we always met the same response from our parents:

“Only boring people are bored. Go and find something to do.”

Entertainment wasn’t laid on for us. Victorian as it sounds, we had to make our own. Turns out that was a very constructive thing to do.

We were almost forced to use our imaginations, which made us all creative – not to mention, slightly unconventional – people. Disruptive talents, as it were.

And encouraging us to play games, particularly games of strategy like Monopoly, was, it seems, a smart parental move too.

I’m not sure my parents ever thought of it as helping us to develop life skills (or, for that matter, work skills), but recent thinking suggests they were actually enabling us to do just that.

According to the authors of Your Strategy Needs a Strategy (Reeves & Wittenburg, HBR Press 2015):

“Games…can create an experiential, interactive and tailored understanding of strategy…Used appropriately, games can help corporations build strategic skills in a timely, cost effective and focused manner – a critical capability in today’s dynamic business environments. It’s time to break the taboo – and get serious about play.”

I’ve written before about my belief in the power of Play at Work, so I’m heartened by this movement (and particularly by the fact that it’s not just aimed at the ‘creative types’ who everyone thinks spend their time riding scooters around the office anyway).

Minimising risk. Encouraging interaction and collaboration. Fuelling healthy, fun competition. None of these things can be bad for any business, right?

Solutions – and deeper engagement – can be found in giving people time and space to explore their imaginations. You might not be artistic, or good with words, but that doesn’t mean you’re not creative and have no imagination. All people need is space, time and quietude to find it – and the biggest return might just be a talent community with a truly winning, and inventive, mindset.

The same goes at home. The world needs more creative minds and demands clearer strategies (and meaningful interactions) to deliver. I’m not sure you can get all that from endless solitary play on a tablet (so often the staple pacifier of bored children today).

I would really encourage parents to break out the board games. Be prepared for the rows. Maybe gen up on a few episodes of Judge Judy. You could be helping them develop good life skills – strategy, negotiation, dealing with failure. You could be setting them up for a career they’ll really love.

People might be born with innate creative skills, but everyone can be creative when the conditions around them are created to encourage them to be that way, child or adult, work or play (or, even better, at the intersection of both, where the really exciting things happen).

*This month, after five years as Executive Creative Director at SMRS, I will be leaving the business and my next role is, as yet, untitled!