Life in Chiaroscuro - Day 52

Day 52 (Sunday 21st January 2018)

52 - the age at which Harry Houdini died - by this time he had amazed and baffled people
in much of Europe, Russia and the U.S.A. On 21st January 1903 he escaped Halvemaansteeg
police station in Amsterdam. 1903 was the year when Houdini really became an icon - he was
already known for being good at escaping handcuffs but he now began to make a name
for breaking out of jails. he also managed to break into a safe for a Moscow locksmith
(who had been trying to do so for 14 years) revealing a treasure trove of jewels and
earning Houdini $750 for 9 hours work (a significant sum at the time).

Today is my husband's birthday and we are going out for a family lunch. His mother is coming to celebrate with us. She is finding life without her husband very hard. Death is, in so many ways, so painful for those of us left behind.

The post you read today is by Jacqueline Davies. It is open, honest and at times a painful read (as well as being the second post in a row with a wonderful poem  written by the contributor). Jacqueline says much about herself below, so I will only say a few words... Some of you may remember Jacqueline's Call To Arms in the final post of last year's series. At the time of writing last year she was the Master of the Guild of Human Resource Professionals (@GuildHRprofs) and the first openly lesbian Master of any City of London Guild. She was also the HR Director for the FCA (the regulatory body for much of the Financial Services industry) - a huge and demanding role. In her post she made a statement of the role of HR that has resonated with me this year, we need to be:

"standard bearers for the best of what it means to be human. To hold ourselves and others to account and to be provocative when we see integrity or conduct threatened."

I genuinely believe that HR as a profession is in the best position I have ever known it to be in. Increasingly leaders, colleagues, clients and the communities in which we work are becoming aware of the importance of culture and conduct. That does not mean we should be complacent or smug - someone in HR clearly turned a blind eye to inappropriate behaviour in Miramax when Harvey Weinstein was at his most predatory. We need HR to be the moral compass (it is no coincidence that a compass is the symbol of the HR Guild here in the UK) and to ask the difficult questions. Since leaving the FCA Jacqueline has teamed up with Tania in their own business consultancy and I think you can tell from its name that she will not be shrinking from facing things head-on - Audacity Associates. In addition, she is an advisor to the Henley Business School, a Governor of Middlesex University and Chair of the National Skills Academy for Financial Services. You can connect with her on social media - her Twitter handle is @JacquelineLD.

The beautiful Chiaroscuro paintings and photographs used to illustrate this piece have all been selected by Jacqueline.

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The Italian’s use the term Chiaroscuro to describe scenes painted in ‘light-dark’, how tonal contrasts are created to provide shape, show character and tell stories.

Life in Chiaroscuro

Seven years ago my mother died. More precisely, I gave my consent for her life support to be switched off, then she died. This decision has weighed heavily with me, replaying while I wait for sleep and returning at dawn before I can crowd it out with plans for the day. This isn’t a post about grief, it’s a post about how we can re-mix the colours on our palette to make sense of living with both darkness and dawn. How I’ve learned that a ‘Chiaroscuro filter’ can distinguish the things that matter from the beautiful, daily distractions that fill our life’s canvas.

You see I lost my Mum some thirty years earlier. She disappeared inside a black cloak of depression. Up-to this point, she loved us unconditionally and taught us how to love back. As we progressed though high school, quite suddenly everything changed. She was unable to go out, unable to get up and when she did was so heavily medicated that when we looked into her eyes we couldn’t find her. This would mean returning from school never knowing if she would be in the kitchen or in bed or if the paracetamol packets would be empty. My father, a steelworker worked around the clock. My younger sister and I found coping strategies. I had wanted to be a painter, but being the oldest, I took charge and I followed my father’s lead; I dropped Art, working relentlessly until I could flee to university. I didn’t stop; travelling like a train through a tunnel, on and on while decades flashed by through the half-light.

The Young Singer by Georges de La Tour

Then, just before I turned 40, the same age Mum was when she became ill, I sat in the hospital, holding her hand and let her go. Just a year before, I had become a Mum and the wonder of holding a new life while letting another go, meant that even the most brilliant moments were outlined by loss.

I took a year out from paid work but I didn’t stop. We moved house, I also took on the Chair of a national charity and wrote a book. I then returned to work and ploughed on. Alongside this, becoming ‘THE BEST MUM I CAN POSSIBLY BE’ became my chief preoccupation. As any new parent will tell you, our radiant daughter brought a new type of light into our lives. It was initially, searing, so bright, I had to blink through the first year learning to adjust to the profound joy and then to the greying fear that arrived. Fear of loss, fear of repeated patterns, fear of not knowing what to do next. Learning how to live with this felt like picking glass splinters from my heart.

Madonna and Child with St Anne by Caravaggio (c1605-6)

Some seven years later, I sat still in a hospital bed watching the sun rise and fall through an oxygen mask. Pneumonia had pressed the pause button on my life. A close friend, shared a conversation with her husband that stopped me in my tracks; ‘your on the top of our list to go first because you’re living faster than anyone else’. In the year that has followed this I’ve stopped permanent work and started painting again. I’m learning to slow down, middle age is helping. I’m learning to look, to see darkness and dawn as an artist might. Noticing the line and shadow in the everyday and being able to distinguish what really matters and to teach this art to my daughter.

Photograph of an apple by Jimmy Wen

I wrote this poem to make sense of things.

Three Daughters

After you left us I waited,

Holding your hand until the silence

Holding my breath until

       the sun came up again and I could escape outside

Gulping the new morning air

And watching the circling gulls

       shrieking their songs of loss and longing, high above the hospital car park

I mostly remember your hands

How they put plasters on my grazes

Turned pages at bedtime

       stirred pots, brimming with love

These are my hands now

Life hardened palms

Stretching out to reach my daughter

       to teach her how to hold time

       and when to watch the sky.

Detail from "Rest on the Flight into Egypt" by Caravaggio (c1586)

The Mother Song, written and performed by Andrea Menard

This is Your time

Day 48 (Tuesday 17th January 2017)

48% of workers in Brighton are happy - making it the happiest
place in the UK in which to work, according to the Work Satisfaction Survey
conducted by LinkedIn in early October 2016. (Glasgow and Leeds came
2nd at 45%; third were Manchester and Sheffield at 43%; then Edinburgh
at 42%; Southampton and Birmingham were at 41%; with London,
Liverpool and Cardiff scoring 39%. People in Norwich were the least happy
with only a third saying they enjoyed their work. Workers in small
businesses were the happiest. Other important influencing factors included
a person's relationship with colleagues (rated at 55%), doing work
that has a positive impact (44%) and having a healthy work/life balance (38%).

Today's is the final post in this year's Advent Blog series. It has been a privilege being the host and curating some truly wonderful pieces. As in former years, I will produce a summary, once the dust has settled. Before then, I would like to thank all the contributors. We had a number of new voices this year, as well as some "old favourites" and we covered subjects on a gamut of topics, literally from birth to death. A traditional Advent Calendar has 24 windows, but we have doubled that and given people something to enjoy or to ponder through the dark days at the start of January. I find it heart-warming seeing the strength of the community that the Series inspires - encouraging new and shy bloggers, consoling those who had more hollows than heights, celebrating with those who have scaled new heights, and accepting the range of topics and interpretations of the theme. The Series is as much about the readers as it is about the writers. Huge Thanks to you All.

On the day when Gene Cernan, the last man to have walked on the moon back in 1972, has died (he has left a lasting impression on history, quite literally, as his footprints can still be seen), we have a post that urges us all too to make our mark and potentially to influence and change the future. 

We are closing the series on a high with a "call to arms" by Jacqueline Davies, a well known and highly respected HR Director. She cares passionately about the HR profession and the impact it can have on workers and the workplace. In June last year Jacqueline was installed as Master of the recently founded Guild of Human Resource Professionals. (She is the first openly lesbian Master of any City Guild.) Jacqueline has experienced discrimination as well as support and inclusion during her career and she has no qualms about fighting for a fairer world; she was on the Board of the NUS, a Trustee of Stonewall for nine years, and its Chair from 2012 to 2014.

Jacqueline has an impressive career - she has been a Managing Director at Barclays - where she lead the talent and resourcing agendas for the global retail Banking division. She has held significant roles, primarily within the Talent space, for most of the UK's leading retail banks, including Lloyds Banking Group, HSBC and RBS as well as a time in insurance. She is a business writer - her first book, The Truth About Talent, was published in 2010. She is active on social media - you can connect with her on Twitter, her handle is @JacquelineLD.

Most importantly she is a devoted mother and loving wife.

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This is Your time

This week I have returned to work after two months sick leave. I've never had so much time off before but as the Dr also reminded me I've never really been ill before. In the scheme of things, a hospital stay with double pneumonia and then the draining, astonishing fatigue that follows is relatively modest but it's left me with a new sensitivity on things that matter. Time to take stock on a tumultuous year where the personal became political again and where our human differences were once again in the spotlight.

So as world leaders gather in Davos to focus on Inequality and as Washington prepares for the Trump Inauguration, I think in 2017 it will be important to return to the things that matter to take the inspiration from Jo Cox, that we have #moreincommon and the outgoing US First Lady Michelle Obama who said in her final speech:

“Our glorious diversity… is not a threat to who we are. It is who we are.”

Michelle Obama giving her final White House speech
Credit: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

In June 2016 I elected by my peers to lead the new Guild of HR Professionals (@GuildHRprofs).

Today's author - the current
Master of the Guild of Human Resources Professionals
Photo credit: Gerard Sharp

At my inaugural dinner I spoke about returning to and being proud of our professional essence - being specialists in humanity. And, that our companies needed our leadership to bring humanity back to work. I've had a growing sense that our profession's now routine emphasis on MI, process and service improvements has distracted us from getting to grips with how we connect people and purpose. It seems to me that all ‘highs and hollows’ in corporates and public services in ultimately pivot on this. From Hillsborough to Saville, from banking failure to vehicle emissions scandals. Every inquiry tells a story of people losing their way – no clear set of values, no incentives to drive activity for the wider or future world and no ways of responding to those with concerns or those impacted. The question I have asked myself is as HR leaders what role do we play?

Little Girl by Sarah Goodreau

We have learned that we need leaders who can learn from this and step up. I believe as a profession we have much to contribute here but we must now go beyond 'serving, advising and partnering'. We must be the standard bearers for the best of what it means to be human. To hold ourselves and others to account and to be provocative when we see integrity or conduct threatened. In this sense our role as leaders is to act in the future interest of our organisations. We need to anticipate the impact of decisions made today on tomorrow’s cultural health, workforce capability and company reputation. This means leading in a sustainable way and it requires us to tune in diligently to the social and political dramas playing out around us.

With this lens I reflect on June 2016, the historical month; when the UK elected to leave the EU, the Orlando shootings where 49 LGBT people were killed and 53 injured, and the murder of Jo Cox. In 2016 social fault-lines seemed to be everywhere cutting across countries communities and families.

How do people make decisions and respond to issues
given the information available to them?
Image via @PoliticsPunked

I wasn't prepared for the personal impact these events would have. I received calls and mail from HR professionals across the world. I heard stories of fear walking to the tube, of sisters spat at, of dreams evaporated and of others who had become unmoored from previous certainties. These stories showed that uncertainty followed 'otherness', a different colour skin, a different accent, a different gender or sexual identity and we were suddenly more aware of this. I heard senior, experienced folk from these groups express personal anxiety for the first time in years. Across wider social groups I also heard unguarded comments surface some well meant but with divisive undertones suggesting that fear and ignorance was back. It took me back.

I'm old enough to remember a time before 'Diversity & Inclusion' became a key part of our professional repertoire. When outside of work, on early Pride marches we ran down the street to hide from the bottles thrown at us, or where a trip to A&E was sadly too regularly the end of a night out for friends who ‘looked different’.

Changes in the workplace have in many ways helped drive wider social attitudes. I still remember when it was legal to discriminate on difference; when it was commonplace to be overlooked, side lined or threatened at work. I was once made redundant because I had a female partner. I know of many others bullied or sacked because they were different. Even now I have friends who are only just relaxing into being themselves despite holding C-suite positions. Typically this discrimination reached into every part of an organisation's culture or a company's way of treating its customers. Many saw the tide of change as 'political correctness', fortunately many more saw that this made sense to close a talent gap and others just knew it was the right thing to do.

Research has now shown that organisations who got a hold of this agenda first are thriving; knowing, valuing and blending differences makes for stronger teams, innovation and organisations reflecting the constituencies they serve. And yet at the turning of a new year, I am reminded of Martin Luther King's warning that for evil to succeed all it takes is for 'good people to do nothing'.

It is with this in mind that I believe our profession has a crucial role to play - it's not political or politically correct to speak truth to power. We are what we do and at our best we notice potential, we nurture wellbeing and we have powerful conversations that move people and whole organisations forward. I appreciate that we are not always at our best and, to some, I will sound naive. But at the opening of 2017, I don't believe we have much more time to lose, humanity needs us to put humanity at the heart of HR. Let's step up and lead.

You Guys - William Ayot

This is your time

For frosty mornings in towns you will never know,

For resentful receptionists and chirpy secretaries,

For flipcharts and outcomes, for plans and reports,

For too much coffee and too many words.

This is your time.

This is your time

For dressing in the dark and cars to the airport.

For planes and trains and railway stations;

For loneliness, for grief, for embracing doubt,

For keeping hard secrets in the face of love.

This is your time.

This is your time.

For being what your people need you to be,

For managing fear while showing calm,

For being their mother, for being their father,

For holding the line, or the hope, or the dream.

This is your time.

This is your time

For sudden sunlight breaking through the overcast,

For sweet green spaces in concrete canyons;

For the care of strangers, for anonymous gifts,

For learning to receive little acts of kindness.

This is your time.

This is your time.

For standing to be counted, for being yourself,

For becoming the sum and total of your life,

For finding courage, for finding your voice,

For leading, because you are needed now.

This is your time.

John Griffith-Jones Chairman of FCA making the after dinner address
& reply on behalf of Guests at the inauguration dinner for the new
Master of the Human Resources Professionals Guild (today's writer)
You can see Jacqueline sitting serenely beside him,
having just made her own speech. Photo: Kate GL

Humanity is a good thing