Be Bulletproof

by James Brooke

  GAVIN’S STORY

  Gavin was an IT manager in a large financial services company whom we met when he was a participant at a workshop we were running. He expressed particular interest in the ideas we were discussing, many of which we have touched on in Be Bulletproof – in fact, so much so that he persuaded his employer that he should develop a role for himself as an ‘embedded’ communications and performance coach for his colleagues. His employer was supportive and we worked together to help Gavin to develop into the role, which he took to with an intuitive insight and zest – the way people often do when they find themselves in a situation where they finally feel free to play to their strengths.

  A couple of years down the line we received a call from Gavin, saying that he wanted to meet and talk. When we met near his organisation’s head office, it was not the conversation that we had been expecting. Things had changed when a new boss arrived to head up Gavin’s department. Gavin had been called into his new boss’s office for what he’d assumed was to be a routine meeting, but he had an uneasy feeling when he realised the head of HR had also been asked to join the meeting. As soon as the boss had started to talk about restructuring the department, Gavin had known what was coming. Soon he’d only been able to see his boss’s lips moving, but the actual words that his boss had used to terminate his employment had scarcely registered.

  For Gavin it was out of the blue. He had been absorbed in his work and never considered being let go. In the early days, shortly after being rejected by his employer, Gavin made the mistake of trying to tell himself that he didn’t give a damn, only to find that he crumpled up with despondency when the truth of the situation leaked back into his conscious mind. He felt lost and helpless for months. He oscillated between feelings of rage about the hurt and betrayal that had been inflicted upon him, and feelings of loathing towards himself for messing up again – for being found out.

  Thankfully the conversation did not end there. It was the next stage on this journey that Gavin really wanted to talk about. Suppressing negative thoughts strengthens them, so Gavin learnt to become mindful of these painful ideas when they bubbled up. When he experienced that familiar sense of sinking, loss or emptiness, he would let it drift into his mind. He would imagine himself just standing back and taking a look at it, like a cloud, or feeling it like a chill breeze.

  There is invariably a turning point when people suffer a blow like this, and Gavin recalled his. It struck him that this was simply part of his story, and that he was in his ‘cave’. The next question was, ‘So what would be the most optimistic, credible outcome to his story?’ His boss simply handing him his job back was neither credible nor within his control. The outcome needed to be something that was within his sphere of influence.

  By asking this simple question, he allowed the next important insight to enter his mind. For it to be the most optimistic, credible outcome, simply answering that getting back to where he was before would not be good enough. The hardship of redundancy should take him forward in some way. With pen and paper in hand, he imagined himself in the future and set about benefit finding.

  Like many before him, he had experienced the indifferent cruelty of redundancy, and its dislocating sense of rejection. He gave himself a simple focus: to use his coaching and communication skills to help others to reclaim their lives after redundancy. This goal energised him. Like Victor Frankl in the concentration camp, he had given the situation meaning beyond his own personal needs. By focusing on others, he had moved away from all-about-me thinking. He also drew on the principle of elevation – that acts of kindness and compassion to others give us greater energy and emotional resources ourselves.

  Gavin acquired clients by word of mouth. As word got around, he was asked to give advice on the local commercial radio station about bouncing back from redundancy. Gavin relished helping others to focus on their strengths and restore their confidence, and to come across well in interviews.

  Every small and modest step that made the situation a little better for his children increased his self-efficacy and spurred him on to another step. By focusing on at least one important outcome in the whole situation, one that he could influence, he increased his sense of control and minimised his sense of helplessness. And because the outcome concerned helping people with whom he could identify, there was no shortage of commitment.

  The initial thinking distortions – ‘The world is cruel’, ‘I am undeserving’, or ‘I always mess up’ – were rendered harmless. The actions he had taken – focusing with absolute determination and compassion on doing worthwhile work that played to his strengths – provided clear evidence that these thoughts were unfounded.

  He did not vent his anger at his erstwhile employer. He did not enact his frustration. He was too focused on his primary goal. And because he didn’t vent or enact these feelings, he didn’t keep fanning the flames of unhealthy emotions.

  He spent a lot of time with people whom he would not otherwise have met. Many became friends. Many had extraordinary, fascinating and rewarding stories. In this respect he had no difficulty in benefit finding.

  While he was absorbed in his work, Gavin, who was not independently wealthy, did not have the longer-term security that he had before. He still felt occasional anxiety or insecurity. He learnt not to deny his negative feelings, but to reframe his feelings in a modified and balanced way. He would remind himself: ‘Sure, there are many aspects of this situation that are not ideal, right now, but I’m basically okay.’

  By doing this he was using I-can-cope self-talk. Gavin even tried a variation on the ‘advocate-for-your-success’ exercise. He went through an exercise of writing down all the evidence that he could think of in favour of the idea that he would be okay. It was similar to the stock-take of your strengths exercise. ‘It felt stilted and awkward at first,’ Gavin told us, ‘especially as I still had plenty of raw anger, but I forced myself to do it … to write down the words … and in the end I started to feel better and stronger as the words started to flow.’

  The use of the phrase ‘right now’ reminded him that the pain was temporary and not permanent. And, of course, seeing the situation as part of his story meant that he saw the situation as a chapter in his story, and not his entire story.

  Gavin understood the power of writing things down, putting them into words to make sense of the story. He would set his alarm clock half an hour early every morning to put his story – together with thoughts and feelings – into words.

  As he developed enough consultancy and coaching work to support himself, Gavin eventually started to notice something different in the way he was working. He felt more relaxed, less agitated by the niggles of office life. He noticed himself feeling less nervous before meetings with senior people, and less anxious about work. He had the ability to put work issues more into perspective. Gavin wasn’t familiar with the term but we pointed out to him that it sounded like he was experiencing post-traumatic growth.

  Eventually Gavin got to a point where he really did not have to rack his brains very hard at all to find benefits in his change in circumstances. Gavin was lucky enough to meet his future wife when he coached her in interview technique following her redundancy. But that’s another story.

  ENDNOTES

  Introduction

  1 Cherniss, Cary (2000), ‘Emotional intelligence: what it is and why it matters’, The Consortium on Emotional Intelligence, Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, Rutgers University

  2 Britt, Thomas W. (January 2003), ‘Black Hawk Down at work’, Harvard Business Review

  3 Dweck, Carol (15 November 2011), speaking on BBC Radio 4, Brain Culture

  4 Gladwell, Malcolm (22 July 2002), ‘The talent myth: are smart people overrated?’, New Yorker

  Chapter 1

  5 Barkow, J., Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J., (Eds.), The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture (Oxford University Press, 1992); Burnham, Terry, and Phelan, Jay, Mean Genes from Sex to Money
to Food (Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, 2000); Wright, Robert, The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life (Pantheon, New York, 1994)

  Chapter 2

  6 Borton, J. L. S., & Casey, E. C. (2006), ‘Suppression of self-referential negative thoughts: a field study’, Self and Identity, 5, 230–246

  7 Savitsky, Kenneth, Gilovich, Thomas & Husted Medvec, Victoria (2000), ‘The spotlight effect: an egocentric bias in estimates of the salience of one’s own actions and appearance’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78 (2), 211–222

  8 Camilleri, Joseph A. (8 November, 2002), ‘Evolutionary forensic psychology perspectives’, lecture delivered at Westfield State University, Westfield, MA

  9 BBC News (16 August 2010), ‘Ministry of Sound nightclub killer jailed for life’

  10 Nisbett, R. E., & Cohen, D., Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South (Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1996); Shackleford, Todd K. (2005), ‘An evolutionary psychological perspective on cultures of honor,’ Evolutionary Psychology, 3, 381–391

  Chapter 3

  11 Sunday Times (21st August 2011), ‘Glaxo enters dragons’ den’

  12 Drabant, E. M., Kuo, J. R., Ramel, W., Blechert, J., Edge, M. D., Cooper, J. R., Goldin, P. R., Hariri, A. R., & Gross, J. J. (1 March 2011), ‘Experiential, autonomic, and neural responses during threat anticipation vary as a function of threat intensity and neuroticism’, Neuroimage, 55 (1), 401–410. Beatty, Michael J., Behnke, Ralph R. (1991), ‘Effects of public speaking trait anxiety and intensity of speaking task on heart rate during performance’, Human Communication Research, 18 (2), 147–176

  13 Liening, S. H., Josephs, R. A., & Mehta, P. A., ‘HBEV: 00100 Competition’, Elsevier Inc.

  14 Carré, Justin M. & Putnam, Susan K. (2010), ‘Watching a previous victory produces an increase in testosterone among elite hockey players’, Psychoneuroendocrinology, 35, 475–479

  15 For an excellent, accessible introduction to brain plasticity: Doidge, Norman, The Brain that Changes Itself (Penguin, 2007)

  16 Carré, Justin M. & Putnam, Susan K. (2010), ‘Watching a previous victory produces an increase in testosterone among elite hockey players’, Psychoneuroendocrinology, 35, 475–479

  17 Jecker, John, & Landy, David (1969), ‘Liking a person as a function of doing him a favor’, Human Relations, 22 (4), 371–378; Franklin, Benjamin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (Courier Dover Publications, 1996)

  Chapter 4

  18 Pinker, Stephen, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (Viking, 2002)

  19 Smelser, N. J., Wright, James, Baltes, P. B., ‘Autonomy at work’, International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Pergamon, 2001)

  20 Marmot, M. G., Davey Smith, G., Stansfield, S., et al. (1991), ‘Health inequalities among British civil servants: the Whitehall II study’, Lancet, 337 (8754), 1387–1393

  21 Fine, Leslie M., & Bolman Pullins, Ellen (1998), ‘Peer mentoring in the industrial sales force: an exploratory investigation of men and women in developmental relationships’, Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, XVIII (4), 89–103

  Chapter 5

  22 Lyubomirsky, Sonja, The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want (Penguin, 2007)

  23 Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, Fooled by Randomness (Random House, 2001)

  24 Schulman, Peter (Winter 1999), ‘Applying learned optimism to increase sales productivity’, Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, XIX (1), 31–37

  25 Gottfried, Adele Eskeles, Flemming, James S. Gottfried, Allen (March 2001), ‘Continuity of academic intrinsic motivation childhood to late adolescents: a longtitudinal study’, Journal of Educational Psychology, 91 (3); Karageorghis, Costas (2000), Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport

  26 Rowling, J. K. (July/August 2011), ‘The fringe benefits of failure and the importance of the imagination’, Harvard Commencement, Harvard Magazine

  27 Pennebaker, James W. (May 1997), ‘Writing about emotional experiences as a therapeutic process’, Psychological Science, 8 (30)

  28 Bevin Bavelas, Janet (1973), ‘Effects of the temporal context of information’, Psychological Reports, 32, 695–698

  Chapter 6

  29 Shellenberger, Sylvia (1992), ‘Review of positive illusions: creative self-deception and the healthy mind’, Family Systems Medicine, 10 (1)

  30 Bartolomé, Fernando, & Weeks, John (April 2007), ‘Finding the gold in toxic feedback’, Harvard Business Review, 85 (4), 24–26

  31 Ferguson, Eamonn, James, David, O’Hehir, Fiona, & Sanders, Andrea (February 2003), ‘Pilot study of the roles of personality, references, and personal statements in relation to performance over the five years of a medical degree’, BMJ, 326 (7386), 429–432

  32 Mehta, P. H., & Josephs, R. A. (2006), ‘Testosterone change after losing predicts the decision to compete again’, Hormones and Behavior, 50, 684–692

  33 Lyttle, Nigel, Dorahy, Martin J., Hanna, Donncha, & Huntjens, Rafaële J. C. (Nov 2010), ‘Conceptual and perceptual priming and dissociation in chronic posttraumatic stress disorder’, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 119 (4), 777–790

  34 Bushman, B. J. (2002), ‘Does venting anger feed or extinguish the flame?’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 724–731

  35 McCullough, Michael E., Root, Lindsey M., & Cohen, Adam D. (2006), ‘Writing about the benefits of an interpersonal transgression facilitates forgiveness’, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 74 (5), 887–897

  Chapter 7

  36 Dobreva-Martinova, Tzvetanka (October 2002), ‘Occupational role stress, its association with individual and organizational well-being’, Dissertation Abstracts International, Section B: The Sciences and Engineering, 63 (4B)

  37 Gilbert, Daniel T., Gill, Michael J. & Wilson, Timothy D. (May 2002), ‘The future is now: temporal correction in affective forecasting’, Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes, 88 (1), 430–444

  38 Dobson, Keith S., Dozois, & David J. A. (2001), ‘Historical and philosophical bases of the cognitive-behavioral therapies’, in Dobson, Keith S., Handbook of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapies (2nd ed.) (Guilford Press, New York, 2002)

  39 Damasio, Antonio R., Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain (Penguin Books, New York, 2005), 193–194

  40 Jackson, Jamie, Guardian (8 August 2009), ‘Chelsea put faith in Bruno Demichelis’s science to get results’

  41 Beauchamp, Pierre, & Beauchamp, Marla K. (2001), ‘Winning performance using biofeedback for sport psychology and better athletic training’, Advance for Physical Therapy and Rehab Medicine, 21 (21), 24

  42 Williams, S. L., & Zane, G. (1997), ‘Guided mastery treatment of phobias’, Clinical Psychologist, 50, 13–15

  43 Reivich, Karen, & Shatté, Andrew, The Resilience Factor: 7 Keys to Finding Your Inner Strength and Overcoming Life’s Hurdles (Broadway, 2002)

  44 Bandura, A. (1977), ‘Self-efficacy: towards a unifying theory of behavioral Change’, Psychological Review, 84 (2), 191–215

  Chapter 8

  45 Fry, D. P. (2000), ‘Conflict resolution in cross-cultural perspective’, in Aureli, F., & de Waal, F. B. M. (2000), Natural Conflict Resolution (Berkeley: University of California Press); Maynard Smith, John, and Szathmary, Eors, The Major Transition in Evolution (Oxford University Press, 1997); Wright, Robert, NonZero: The Logic of Human Destiny (Pantheon Books, 2000)

  46 Willemsen, Martijn C., Böckenholt, Ulf, & Johnson, Eric J. (August 2011), ‘Choice by value encoding and value construction: processes of loss aversion’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 140(3), 303–324; De Dreu, Carsten K. W. & McCusker, Christopher (May 1997), ‘Gain–loss frames and cooperation in two-person social dilemmas: a transformational analysis’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72 (5), 1093–1106

  47 Tajfel, H., Human Groups and Social Categories (Cambridge University Press, 1981)

  48 Jecker, John, & Landy, Dav
id (1969), ‘Liking a person as a function of doing him a favor’, Human Relations, 22 (4), 371–378

  49 ‘Can mess make us racist?’, broadcast on All in the Mind, BBC Radio 4 (25 May 2011)

  50 Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2003), ‘Character strengths before and after September 11’, Psychological Science, 14, 381–384; Peterson, C., Park, N., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2006), ‘Greater strengths of character and recovery from Illness’, Journal of Positive Psychology, 1, 17–26

  51 Haidt, J. (2000), ‘The positive emotion of elevation’, Prevention and Treatment, 3; Algoe, S., & Haidt, J. (2009), ‘Witnessing excellence in action: the other-praising emotions of elevation, admiration, and gratitude’, Journal of Positive Psychology, 4, 105–127

  Chapter 9

  52 Finkelstein, Stacey R., & Fishbach, Ayelet (June 2012), ‘Tell me what I did wrong: experts seek and respond to negative feedback’, Journal of Consumer Research (published online 26 July 2011)

  53 The survey was conducted by YouGov on behalf of Threshold.

  54 Gilbert, D. T., & Malone, P. S. (1995), ‘The correspondence bias’, Psychological Bulletin, 117, 21–38

  55 Ross, L. (1977), ‘The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: distortions in the attribution process’, in Berkowitz, L. (ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 10, 173–220

  56 Pittenger, David J. (Fall 1993), ‘Measuring the MBTI and coming up short’, Journal of Career Planning & Placement

  57 Interview with Dr Tim Rees by Luckwinder Goulsbra, on behalf of Threshold.

  Chapter 10

  58 Barefoot, W., et al., The Health Consequences of Hostility (1983)

  59 Loehr, Jim, The Power of Full Engagement (Free Press, 2004)

  60 Carney, Dana R., Cuddy, Amy J. C., & Yap, Andy J. (October 2010), ‘Power posing: brief nonverbal displays affect neuroendocrine levels and risk tolerance, Association for Psychological Science, 21 (10), 1363–1368

  61 Nolen-Hoeksema, Susan, and Davis, Christopher (October 1999), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77 (4), 801–814