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Handing back a contract

I’ve just done something I’ve never done before: I’ve handed back a 4-year contract.

It wasn’t an easy or a straightforward decision, and it certainly wasn’t distress-free, but it was definitely right for me. It also illuminated some important personal priorities and some systemic messages, as well as some learnings I knew already and which were reinforced in the process. I’ve learnt a lot.

Terms, attitudes and philosophy

At the heart of my decision was an inability to tolerate a client’s terms of engagement – both the formal, explicit terms in the shape of changing and unilateral contractual provisions, and the informal, implicit terms, manifested in their attitudes and behaviours, and what emerged as their underlying philosophy. The attitudes and behaviours had been there since the start of our relationship, but as time went on, they became accentuated and aggravated.

Deepest values – and safety

The process meant that my deepest values – the values that absolutely have to be in place for me – were compromised. Integrity, professionalism, honesty, care for the coachee experience, respect, acknowledgment, being heard….. They just weren’t there – and I felt deeply unsafe. My trust in the client was entirely absent. Something had to give: the stress that this was causing me was unsustainable, and it didn’t look like it was going to go away as long as these working conditions were in play.

Moral injury and wellbeing

A colleague commented that what was happening was moral injury: I felt coerced into perpetrating acts that transgressed my deeply held moral beliefs and my sense of what’s right, fair and appropriate. It’s not a condition for which there’s an easy medicine. Interestingly, moral injury has occurred multiple times in the NHS over the past year of the COVID pandemic – and here it was, showing up in the context of executive coaching.

The experience was threatening my wellbeing, and that preservation of my wellbeing was the underpinning of my decision. I had a tough choice to make. Not only the surrender of four years of coaching opportunities and the opportunity to make a difference that mattered to me, but also rupturing coaching client relationships, which matter deeply to me too.

Relationships and consequence

Relationship is something that I prioritise with clients and universally. I hadn’t realised, though, quite how much that rupturing of relationships with clients would be a cause of distress for me.

Interestingly, the act of handing back the contract in itself didn’t bring instant relief or emotional reward, as the trampling of my values left damage in its wake that was impossible to condone and was hard to witness, whether I was in the contract or outside it. The one thing that has brought temporary relief, though, was the opportunity to express my experience in person to the organisation that had contracted me and to the ultimate client. Temporary because we will need to see whether there’s any consequence to what I vocalised.

Learning

As for the learning, there were certainly early hints during the contracting process of the behaviour to come, although those early hints weren’t as severe as the behaviour became. It continued to deteriorate: the omens weren’t good. I made my decision at a point where I was causing the least possible damage to client relationships, albeit not being able to totally avoid that damage. I’ve pushed to be heard by the decision-makers, and that’s been important to me to do (things may not change, but I’ve done all I can). I can sleep at night because I haven’t allowed myself to be coerced any longer into behaviour that compromises my professionalism.

The link between integrity and wellbeing

The significant relief that I now feel has reinforced for me that living and working with integrity matters supremely to me, and that I can only maintain my wellbeing if I’m behaving in integrity. I now feel safe, partly because, rather than being coerced, I have much more possibility of working with clients who don’t crush me.

I’ve learnt too that doing what matters deeply to me is a significant enabler of tough decisions and tough actions.

^{Photo by Max van den Oetelaar on Unsplash}

Integrity, safety and wellbeing

I’ve just done something I’ve never done before: I’ve handed back a 4-year contract. At the heart of my decision was an inability to tolerate a client’s terms of engagement – both the formal, explicit terms, and the informal, implicit terms. My deepest values (integrity, professionalism, honesty, care for the coachee experience, respect, acknowledgment, being heard) were compromised. I felt deeply unsafe: my trust in the client was entirely absent. What was happening was moral injury, and the experience was threatening my wellbeing by demanding that I don’t behave in integrity – and I can only maintain my wellbeing if I’m behaving in integrity. I’ve learnt too that doing what matters deeply to me is a significant enabler of tough decisions and tough actions.

'I' or 'we' as a model for leadership?

What happens when a leader or a nation sees the future not through a lens of relationship, action and impact, but through a lens of isolation, cutting off supply routes of collaboration and support? Is this the model of leadership that we really need? ‘You’ and ‘yours’ can actually be the route to ‘me’ and ‘mine’ if only we choose to look through a broader lens. As a coach, I may enquire with a coaching client more explicitly into the implications of ‘I and we’ in contrast with ‘I or we’, at individual level, team level, organisation level and beyond. Putting ‘I’ before ‘we’ risks shutting off not only precious resources but also risks shutting off precious rewards. ‘We’ before ‘I’ might lead to rewards we hadn’t dreamed of.

Coaching through COVID and BMJ Leader

I'm privileged to have had a blog published in BMJ Leader, published in BMJ Leader, one of the publications in the BMJ (British Medical Journal) stable. The blog focuses on the very particular leadership style that characterises Coaching through COVID, the pro bono coaching programme for NHS and care sector staff who are directly impacted by COVID, and particularly those who don't nomally have access to coaching, from doctors and nurses to porters, cleaners, pharmacists, physiotherapists and many others, who are experiencing anxiety, uncertainty, threats to their personal safety and that of their families from contracting COVID-19, distress, trauma, exhaustion and much else.

2020: a year of learning

They say the toughest experiences are also the richest sources of learning. As 2020 closes, I look back indeed on the richest and most intense year of learning I can remember. As the hidden has erupted into the obvious in the most striking of ways, and when some of what we previously took for granted has been completely overturned, it is beyond any doubt that all of us need to beware of claiming that this or that is impossible. Being a co-founder of Coaching through COVID has meant for me the most nourishing, safe, innovative and energising team that I have ever been part of - and we have achieved extraordinary results. And working from home has shown in stark relief the extent to which health and wellbeing fall squarely into the manager’s and the leader’s responsibilities.

Psychological PPE: offer of free support

Free support - psychological PPE coaching - is available at Coaching through COVID for key workers impacted by COVID

The washing machine and the laundry: new perspectives on leadership

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The deafening sound of silence

Silence can denote a holding back from what needs to be pointed out or challenged, a reluctance to speak about one’s own or others’ mental health challenges, or not enquiring into experience of racial difference, which can put at risk respectful connection in a relationship – and at its worst, can create a gulf. In some circumstances silence has a cost which is greater than the benefit. The danger of silence, when people don’t use their voices to admit mistakes, question the status quo, ask questions or offer ideas, is that the thinking power of a team is diminished. When people’s mental health is in play they may continue in silence, unsupported, while their condition deteriorates, corroding their wellbeing. When we fail to enter into conversation about, or to explicitly recognise racial difference, we fail to recognise, respect and acknowledge the individual. A climate of psychological safety enables inappropriate silence to be transformed into the release of rich and fertile thinking.

Psychological safety: the secret weapon of effective teamwork

Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, has been researching psychological safety for 20 years, and defines it as is a shared belief that you will not be punished, ignored or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes. Because in a climate of psychological safety, people feel free to put forward new, and even seemingly crazy, ideas, because they feel free to point out errors and risks to each other (including their seniors) and because they feel free to ask for help and surface failure, rates of creativity and innovation rise significantly. So too do trust, collaboration, engagement and discretionary effort, which link with another benefit: inclusion and the authentic embrace of diversity. I’m accredited as a Licenced Psychological Safety Guardian, which allows me to administer and debrief the Psychological Safety Index, based on Amy Edmondson’s work.

Building resilience to face the challenge of uncertainty

Uncertainty has always been a constant in organisational life, but COVID adds something new to the mix. The effects of uncertainty on individual members of the workforce include anxiety, and concomitant weariness, which seem to be an undercurrent in society at large. Many organisations have found that they’re slowed down by the inevitable precautions they need to take, and that they’ve lost some of their previous robustness, responsiveness and pace. They need more resilience – and nurturing it is one of the most important contributions a leader can make to equipping his or her team to negotiate a successful journey through uncertainty. This blog outlines some of the main contributors to resilience that leaders can usefully focus on.

Leading in complexity and uncertainty

Rather than it being the leader’s role to know all the answers, it’s their role to recognise that uncertainty and complexity demand a new approach to leadership: an approach which means the leader can enable themselves and others to ask questions, to look at things from multiple fresh perspectives, to create an environment which is psychologically safe and compassionate enough for those around them to experiment, learn, experiment again, and to move with curiosity towards some answers and new questions.

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