Be Bulletproof

by James Brooke

  But the story did not end there. Follow-up research with the same patients discovered that many of the subjects had experienced a sharp increase in other achievements in their lives. It seems that the confidence boost from handling the snake had convinced the subject that he could readily achieve other goals in other aspects of life. Bandura captured the psychological process that appeared to be happening in the term ‘learnt self-efficacy’. Once we start to experience success in one aspect of our lives, however modest, the mind harnesses the confidence that we gain, and uses it as a template to achieve other goals. If you want to give your bulletproofing a boost, give your self-efficacy a boost.

  Dr Karen Reivich, co-author of The Resilience Factor43 and one of the world’s leading researchers into resilience, came to the same conclusion: she identified ‘self-efficacy’ as one of the key pillars of resilience. Self-efficacy is confidence in your ability to solve problems. This is partly about knowing what your strengths and weaknesses are and relying on your strengths to cope. Reivich stresses that this is different to self-esteem. In other words, it is not just about feeling good about yourself; it is about knowing that you can master the skills that will be needed to cope in a situation.

  Think about somebody you know who is a high achiever. The chances are that this person will be a high achiever in more than one aspect of life (infuriating, isn’t it?). Our minds like congruence and consistency. Achieving in one aspect of life activates a template in our minds that we then tend to take forward into the next situation.

  Set yourself some near-term goals that are challenging, but readily achievable through factors within your control. When you achieve them, make a point of letting your mind dwell on the success – how it came about, how it felt and what it says about you. Go and achieve something small but stretching, and then a slightly larger stretch goal, and keep repeating the process, making each goal slightly more stretching than the last. (And of course, you should fail at least some of these goals because, if you don’t, you are not setting goals that are stretching enough.)44

  Summary

  The best way to achieve a big success is to get in the ‘success habit’ by achieving some smaller successes first

  First set yourself some more modest and readily achievable goals

  Dwell in the feeling and enjoy the success, and then set yourself some relatively more stretching goals

  CHAPTER 8

  WINNING IN THE FACE OF POLITICS AND OSTRACISM

  HUMANS ARE NATURALLY sociable animals. We prefer to live and work in groups. Whether it’s day-to-day politics, or getting the cold shoulder from colleagues, being ostracised or rejected by a group, however subtle it might be, triggers our sense of unease. Either extremes of dealing with office and politics and being ostracised by completely ignoring the problem, or, conversely, dealing with it using a forceful approach are not helpful; this chapter will look at how to win in the face of politics and ostracism.

  Case Study 8.1

  Jack had been relaxed about the merger. After all, at the age of 51, having worked in IT for nearly 30 years, he had seen it all before. His division had been de-merged several years ago. Now the pendulum was swinging the other way and it was all about integrating various different units to get greater synergy.

  ‘Or something like that,’ said Jack, rolling his eyes. But this time it was different. ‘It began to dawn on me pretty soon that the rest of the people I worked with had either jumped ship or had new roles as leaders in this new, larger division.’

  As we walked through his local park kicking leaves and enjoying the pale autumn sunshine, Jack went on.

  ‘Then I started to hear rumours on the grapevine that I was being talked of as a troublemaker, some sort of Luddite who wanted to cling to the past and resist change.’

  Jack was told his performance was not up to scratch. A working group was set up, which appeared to be duplicating exactly what Jack’s team had specialised in. Consultation with Jack on the matter was cursory and perfunctory. He felt that he had gone from a senior and admired stakeholder in the company to a dead man walking.

  ‘Suddenly everyone seemed to have new titles except me, and then this new guy was brought in – he was still in short trousers, for goodness’ sake – and everyone else was running around trying to please him,’ said Jack. ‘I watched people of my age who I’ve worked with for years suddenly spouting this trendy management speak. It was awful – I just couldn’t stand the politics.’

  Case Study 8.2

  Claire was surprised to be appointed head of HR. She had been one of a team of HR business partners, and she, like the others, had assumed that the vacancy for their boss’s position would be filled with an appointment from outside. She was, nonetheless, delighted. She would now head up the team of HR business partners, all of whom she knew well.

  However, Claire noticed that things were amiss. Her colleagues seemed uninterested, surly and recalcitrant at team meetings. They seemed to be actively enjoying expressing their lack of enthusiasm at any suggestion put forward by Claire. Simple tasks that she requested would remain undone, met with lame excuses. The team would talk little in her presence but animatedly by the coffee machine – conversations that seemed to Claire to be conspiratorial and exclusive.

  She felt her status as team-leader was under attack and she responded by using more overtly high-status behaviour and attempts to demonstrate her authority. Word soon reached Claire that team members had been disparaging the rest of the team to internal clients, claiming it was divided and leaderless.

  ‘I’d always assumed that the head of department role would go to someone from outside the company and I only went along to the interview because I thought it would be good to keep my interview skills polished,’ admitted the 38-year-old mother of two. ‘But when I got it, so many people inside the company and outside told me that I deserved it. I remember that my husband looked surprised when I said that I couldn’t believe that they’d offered me the job. He sat me down in the living room and said, “You’ve worked so hard over the years – you deserve this.” The kids made me cards to say “Well done, Mummy”.

  ‘Things started well but after just a few weeks I began to feel that my colleagues were no longer committed in the way I was,’ she said. ‘I assumed that perhaps they were just getting used to the new situation – after all, some of them had been on the same level as me just a few weeks earlier and one or two had even been technically senior to me, whereas I was now the boss.’

  Claire found that people arrived late for her departmental meetings and that they either sat in silence or put up objections to her ideas. They seemed to be enjoying expressing their lack of enthusiasm at any suggestion she put forward. Simple tasks that she requested would remain undone, despite her repeated reminders. Her new ideas never seemed to see the light of day and even regular activities were overlooked.

  ‘I’d walk out into the open-plan office where I used to sit and suddenly the chat and laughter would stop. A few times I went into the kitchen area and the other people there fell silent – I was sure that they’d been talking about me. I can understand that some people were jealous about my promotion but I’d been given the job fairly and squarely and that was it.’

  Claire’s attempts to organise a drink after work fell flat and she soon began to feel seriously low, especially when the company’s CEO started to notice that the HR department was falling behind.

  If you put three people in a room, you’ve got politics

  When you’re caught on the wrong side of office politics, it isn’t pretty. Everyone (or almost everyone) claims to dislike politics, yet virtually everyone says that they witness it, in some form or other, in their place of work. The apparent contradiction is explained by the fact that we only see a situation as politics when we are caught on the wrong side of it. Otherwise, it is just the way people are.

  There is a saying that if you put three people in a room, you’ve got politics. And why wouldn’t you? If politics
is about power, influence and relationships, then these phenomena are at the heart of our modern species.

  Collaboration is an essential part of being human, and the primary means by which we have survived so long. The idea that evolution leads us to become more selfish is wrong. Evidence shows that we have actually evolved to become more and more cooperative. It is likely that those in the past who were disinclined to cooperate would have been unlikely to survive. This is because, in the field of human endeavour and organisation, win-win situations are more common than zero-sum-gain situations.45

  Central to human survival and growth is the idea of ‘Non-Zero-Sum-Gain’: the idea that if we cooperate together, we are both better off. To do this, we need language to cooperate and then we need emotions that facilitate interaction with others, for example, sympathy, empathy, trust, a sense of justice and ethics.

  Here’s an optimistic note! Not only does conflict arise out of our evolutionary past, but so does conflict resolution. Naturally, in survival terms it is better not to fight; resolution saves the cost of fighting. Conflict resolution is central to being human – though if you are caught in the cut and thrust of politics right now, it probably doesn’t feel that way.

  Our cave-dwelling ancestor needed to be very quick in forming judgements. This also helps to explain a phenomenon that psychologists refer to as ‘Negativity Bias’. In short, our ancestors were particularly fine-tuned to threat or danger and quick to see the negative. For them, mistaking a potential friend for an enemy was a wasted opportunity, but mistaking an enemy for a friend was likely to be fatal. This means that today we are also sometimes inclined to judge too quickly, to be too steadfast in our initial opinion and to overemphasise threat and hostility. Our minds too readily polarise situations into friend or foe.

  Summary

  Politics is about power, influence and relationships

  We only see a situation as politics when we’re caught on the wrong side of it

  Although conflict arises out of our evolutionary past, so too does conflict resolution

  But we often judge too fast, overemphasise threats and too readily polarise situations as friend or foe. Standing back from the situation, trying to avoid seeing everything as black and white or good and bad, will help create a more accurate, useful picture on which we can act

  Engaging in office politics is a survival technique – recognise this and don’t get emotional about it

  Humans collaborate because of the principle of Non-Zero-Sum-Gain. If we band together to hunt the woolly mammoth, we get a share of a much bigger kill, and so we get to eat better than if we hunted individually. If, as the accounts department, the sales execs and the IT people, for instance, we all work together on a project, we all benefit far more than if we tried to do the whole thing ourselves.

  Where there is clear alignment between the individuals’ needs and those of the larger team, there is harmony. As this team increases in size, its overall goals become more complex, as do the fears and motivations of the people in it. The fields of both psychology and economics tell us that the fear of loss is a greater motivator than the joy of gain. We suggest, therefore, that most politics are defensive. Far from scheming world domination, when most people indulge in politics it’s because they are seeking to defend themselves.

  And, by the way, individual interests come first for all of us, and so they should. Collaborating to achieve collective goals is the means by which to meet individual interests. If our ancestor had simply allowed individual interests to be subordinated to collective goals, this would have been an unwise survival strategy and we would probably not be here today.

  On the other hand, in our view corporations often put implicit pressure on people to take part in a masquerade whereby participants are required to pretend that individual needs either do not exist or are somehow unmentionable and not legitimate. Politics arises where people feel the need to disguise individual interests, needs and concerns. Instead, these manifest themselves via implicit and unseen relationships and alliances.

  Politics comes down to the needs of the individual that remain unspoken. We can openly discuss our motivation to perform, achieve team goals, beat the competition and make money for our employer. We somehow feel the need to pretend that we do not have other obvious needs, such as: the need to protect our own personal livelihood and security, should these come under threat; the need to put ourselves in line for the next scarce promotion opportunity; the need for a sense of belonging, inclusion, status and respect among the group.

  As we know, a useful way to reduce unhelpful feelings and to restore clear thinking is to write things down. When he did this, Jack was careful to recognise that he, too, has material and psychological needs with regard to the potential to gain and risk of loss that comes from working with a group of people. It is also important to keep reminding yourself not to make a judgement about the legitimacy of other people’s interests. Don’t expect the way in which other people respond to their interests to be entirely rational and reasonable, either – they’re fallible human beings like you.

  Put yourself in the shoes of colleagues who are also involved in the situation. What might be their material or psychological needs that they feel are currently under threat? Note that this is not slipping into the mind-reading trap; it is simply attempting to imagine the situation from other people’s points of view. You must remain conscious that you do not know for certain what they are thinking.

  For example, if a colleague on a project seems to be keeping you in the dark and preventing you from receiving information, it may well be because they feel insecure. When under pressure, it might feel that knowledge is power and that keeping this knowledge to themselves is useful in shoring up their position. Perhaps they’re just feeling out of their depth generally.

  The first step in dealing with politics is to restore your clear thinking in order to allow your unhelpful feelings to subside. This involves seeing the politics for what it is. You might still feel unhappy with the way that you see certain colleagues behave, but nothing is as conspiratorial, pernicious or insidious at it might feel in the heat of the moment. People are just looking to protect themselves, as you are. To be human is to feel insecure.46

  Summary

  Humans collaborate using the principle of Non-Zero-Sum-Gain – it’s better to work together

  But we still have our individual needs, and politics occur as we try to pretend that they don’t exist

  Bulletproof people deal with politics by maintaining clear thinking and calming any unhelpful feelings

  Learn how to cut through bullshit

  Bullshit is a close relative of politics, and the two of them can often be seen together. Like politics, bullshit arises when people feel the need to enter a shared pretence. The pretence is that we do not have individual needs and priorities.

  In his essay ‘On Bullshit’, the philosopher Harry Frankfurt draws an important distinction between lying and bullshit. Lying, Frankfurt argues, requires an active awareness of the truth and then a planned deception. Bullshit, on the other hand, is neither as clear-headed nor as intentional. Bullshit arises out of our mind’s ability to create a version of reality that works for our needs and which we then manifest through our words and deeds. Some aspects we may know to be untrue; others we allow to slip into the vague twilight world between truth and our preferred reality.

  For example, Steve joins Company X as head of quality from its main competitor, Y Corporation. Steve has a reputation for shaking things up, reducing waste and cutting costs. He can’t wait to bring in Acme Consulting to lead a big project to do this. He can’t wait to prove his value to Company X. But Jim, who’s head of operations, doesn’t like the idea. Why should he? If the project succeeds, it puts the spotlight on Jim for not cutting waste sooner. On the other hand, Richard, the sales director, is happy to have waste cut in operations, but feels he has a clear run at the CEO’s job when the current CEO retires. If Steve turns out to be a hero beca
use of the success of this project, it might just complicate things. Kim is head of HR. She wants to launch a big project or her own and this one may just compete for budget and resources. Nobody will say no to Steve’s project. Jim welcomes the plan but points out that if they are going to do it, they must do it right. You can’t rush these things, and the proper diligence and stakeholder authorisation should be sought. It will need to be ratified by various committees. Kim says that she, too, is very keen on the project, but that it would be better to wait for a working group in the company to feed back its findings, just so that everything is aligned, you understand. Richard is very enthusiastic, but it would be far better not to do it as the busy Christmas sales period is approaching. Eventually Steve leaves the company, frustrated. That’s bullshit.

  Steve’s project was in Company X’s interest, but Steve failed to identify and work with the interests of Richard, Jim or Kate, or at least to allay their fears.

  However, straight-talking conversations, if picked wisely and thoughtfully, can cut through bullshit in a refreshing and helpful way. Two people might see things differently, but nobody has superior intentions or a superior perspective. It is tempting to use the corporate ‘we’ to sound as though you speak from greater authority. Equally, it is tempting to position your message as this is what everyone thinks, or this is what people have said. You have integrity and credibility when you speak for yourself.

  If you’re working within one of the many organisations where bullshit is spoken fluently, try this for a setting-out-the-stall statement in a peer-to-peer conversation: ‘The way I see it is that we both want ABC. From my point of view, XYZ is important, and I suppose 123 is very important to you. Have I got that right?’

  Steve could have said to Jim, ‘I am very keen to bring in Acme Consulting because I know they’re good. If I put myself in your shoes, I know I’d be really keen that operations are seen to have ownership of this and that your guys get due credit for any savings that come out of the project. How can we do this so it works for both of us?’