Full hearted

Day 20 (Tuesday 20th December 2016)

20-month survey of the planet Jupiter to be undertaken by

the Juno (the NASA spaceprobe), which entered the planet's orbit on July 5th 2016.

Juno's mission is to measure Jupiter's composition, gravity field, magnetic

field and polar magnetosphere as well as trying to determine how the planet

was formed.

It gives me a great pleasure to host this blog, written by Donna Hewitson. She is an amazing lady with whom I had the privilege of sharing a room when we were both in Uganda, as part of Connecting HR Africa this September. Donna is an award winning HR professional (she picked up the BII's National Innovation in Training Award - Professional Trainer of the Year 2016). Donna is an independent People Consultant and the Director of People Stuff Matters. She writes interesting blogs (on life, travels and work) - both her Twitter handle (@PubDonna) and her blog (PubDonna.com) indicate her career roots. She has a passion for hospitality and leisure and an exceptional talent for knowing what needs to be done to make a business and the people within it thrive.

As well as being an exceptional business woman, Donna is an inspirational person to be with and to learn from. If you want a master class in gins she is your woman (I know thanks to an impromptu gin tasting at Gatwick airport, when our flight was delayed by four hours). If you want a masterfully designed and delivered piece of training that resonates with all attendees, she can do it. If you just want to chat, mull over an issue and put the world to rights, there is nobody better. This year she has made me laugh, helped me cry and encouraged me to think. As you will see from her below post, Donna has not had a conventional route to her now very successful career. However, it is usually those who are comfortable being different who have the capacity to really stand head and shoulders above the rest of us.

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Full hearted

In 2015 I achieved my career dream. After 20+ years of working my arse off, I had reached the heady heights of the position I coveted most. I had so many expectations of how it would be, how I would feel; all of them wrong.

How could this be? Everyone I knew who did a similar job seemed so content, happy in their work, fulfilled. Why did I not feel the same?

Over all these years, I thought that when I had reached the top of my professional ladder I would calm it down a bit. Less of the 60+hrs a week, more family time. More me time. That didn't happen either.

There was something missing.

But what? I have the best man in my life, we have a lovely house, the mortgage is paid off, we travel loads, have the most brilliant friends and we both have well paid jobs. Life is good. I am incredibly grateful for all we have, for all we have worked so hard for.

But still, I could sense a hollow inside.

Things were important to me. After a childhood in Foster Care and then being told I was ready to live "independently" from the age of 16, I've wanted so many things. Things I couldn't afford, things beyond my position in society, things that many took for granted, things I wasn't qualified for. As soon as I was able, I started to acquire all of the things I had dreamed about when I was fresh-faced into the big scary world.

Still, I wasn't complete.

In April 2016, unbeknown to me at the time, I applied to be a part of something life-changing. I applied to join the Connecting HR Africa team for a week of volunteering to use our professional skills to coach, develop and train the leadership team of a magnificent charity, Retrak, to enable them to be better equipped to make a difference to the lives of street children in Kampala. There were so many reasons why I applied and I blogged about them back then.

What did we do in Kampala that filled the gap in my heart?

With the children, we:

• Played

• Played some more

• Read stories, comics and heard songs they had written

• Made masks, drew pictures, made loom bands, coloured in books

• Chatted about anything and everything

• Listened

• Helped with the cooking and serving of lunch

• Participated in a big outreach to street kids living around the slums; this involved social workers, outreach workers and us pairing up to approach the street children, interact with them, listen to their stories and understand how we could help them.

We heard their reasons for running away:

• Physical and emotional abuse. Being beaten by their mother or step-mother. Community Chiefs actively encourage beating children to instil discipline.
• Family breakdown. Father had two wives. Father had died and both wives were ran out from the village. There was no-one to look after this young boy. 12 years old, he was.
• Wanting an education. One boy wanted to go to school, learn enough, graduate and be a lawyer. A rich one. He wasn’t able to receive this education in his village and has run away to the city in the hope to get on a programme.
• Sexual abuse. Gang leader’s initiations involve the requirement to perform sex acts or have sex with the gang leader. If you do not conform, you are beaten incredibly badly. Sometimes the punishment is worse than a beating.

With the staff, we used our skills to deliver personal effectiveness sessions to all of Retrak’s centre teams. This was followed by leadership development and coaching for the senior team:

• Ian led on Resilience

• Amy & Lisa shared approaches for giving Feedback (a role play with Sophie and myself included)

• 

Teamwork and Values-Based Leadership was delivered by Alice

• 

• GROW Model facilitated by Kate

• I wrapped up the session demonstrating the impact of appreciation

We held

• 121’s
• coaching sessions

We are providing

• On-going commitment to support

We made a sustainable difference to so many people during our week together and we formed bonds and friendships that will last forever.

I realised what was missing for me all these years. It wasn't enough to prove to others that I could achieve my dreams from a bit of a false start. It wasn't enough to fill my life with things. What I needed to do was help affect the quality of life for other people, to be there, listen, understand and guide, where I could, to assist in positive life choices. 

Donna had this tattoo done to commemorate her time in Uganda
each star represents a member of the team who were with her

Returning from Uganda, I continued volunteering and became the Ambassador for 3 more charities.

For the first time in my life, I have a full heart. I am complete.

"Talk to me..."

We live in a time of constant conflict – as I write the police in Hong Kong are firing rubber bullets, pepper spray and tear gas on a peaceful protest for democracy. Every time I read or hear the news there is yet another depressing story of aggression and dispute – planes sent to bomb Kobane (as part of the US-led coalition against ISIS); fighting near Baghdad; drug cartels murdering and intimidating innocent citizens in South America; airstrikes in Pakistan; the misery of people inadvertently trapped in war zones around the world, kidnaps, beheadings, victimisation and rape. For a supposedly civilised species, we should be ashamed of ourselves.

Student protester amid clouds of tear gas
Picture taken from Twitter

Things have not changed since Marvin Gaye recorded “What’s Going On?” his subtle protest against the Vietnam War.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-kA3UtBj4M 

or indeed since the early 1590’s when Shakespeare wrote his famous tale of “star-cross’d lovers”. Despite its reputation, Romeo and Juliet is perhaps more about conflict than it is about love. Certainly that is the impression that Mats Ek gives in his modern version of the classic romance. 

I saw Mats Ek’s ballet, Juliet and Romeo on Saturday night and wept; it was the final performance by the Royal Swedish Ballet at Sadler’s Wells in London. I did not cry at the state of Swedish dance, nor was it was the tragedy of a love so powerful that it is worth dying for that reduced to me tears, but the agony of a mother who had lost her son. Despite the modern, thought-provoking set and costumes, the production is visceral, at times brutal, occasionally humorous, but consistently charged with emotion. Juliet is charming, on the cusp of womanhood – a gawky adolescent filled with passion and mood swings. The rival gangs mooch and posture within their stark urban environment and there is little compassion towards others in an unforgiving and hierarchical society. There is some warmth displayed by The Nurse, but she is a rebel, breaking the rules (riding off to fetch Romeo on a Segway) in a bid to gain a piece of happiness for the girl she clearly loves. Her compassion, willingness to cross boundaries and ability to communicate with all types of people mark her out in contrast to the majority of the other characters. Most are self-seeking and oblivious to the harm they cause. Tybalt urinates contemptuously on the corpse of Mercutio, after murdering him. Romeo slays Tybalt, repeatedly stamping on his head until he dies.  There is little compassion or empathy. Perhaps that is why I was so struck by a moving portrayal of maternal devotion. It was Tybalt’s mother, played by Marie Lindqvist, that gripped my heartstrings – the torment of a woman mourning the loss of a treasured son. 

Woman with Dead Child, 1903 etching by Kathe Kollwitz
souce: Wikipedia

Conflict is centred round emotion, but it does not have to be over something huge like national boundaries, political power, the destruction of a way of life or murder; it can be as simple as a fight within a family over a household object or chore. I visited my mother on Friday – it had been her 82^nd birthday while I was abroad on business early last week, so her grandsons and I went to spend time with her at the end of the week. 

My mother with her three daughters
Picture taken by Paul Clarke

My youngest sister had generously given my mother a cordless telephone as a birthday gift, but had left it to charge prior to it being ready for use. I received an SMS from my little sister on Friday, delegating the set-up and training on usage to me. I appreciate that sounds simple: not being tied to the phone’s location (on a flight of stairs leading to the kitchen) and being able to take the handset either into the garden or with her when she wants to sit down seems a sensible thing for my mother to be able to do. I could pre-programme numbers of family, friends, her doctor and so forth into the handset, to make it easier for her to call people. Using a cordless phone would help familiarise her with her mobile (which she uses sufficiently infrequently that I have to remind her what buttons to press when making a call each time she sets off on a trip to the hospital). The intention behind my sister’s offering was good - it was expected to enhance my mother’s life. However, that was not how my mother viewed the gift. She likes having her traditional telephone where it is; she is used to its location, its ringtone and is comfortable with dashing to the stairway to answer it. Now that she is older, she has difficulty remembering new processes and the concept of pre-recorded numbers sitting inside her phone seemed impersonal and distasteful – “what’s wrong with my address book, leafing through the pages is so full of memories?” She was worried by the base-station’s cable – there is a shortage of plug sockets in her house and, without an adapter, she feared losing the use of her beloved plug-in radio. Our mother did not like her well-intentioned daughters pushing her around and forcing change. I found myself in the midst of a family conflict.  

The problem could have been avoided if there had been better communication from the outset.

 

Miner birds chattering

Conflict can occur in almost every area of life. At work it is one of the managerial problems that individuals find most difficult to cope with. Many weak or inexperienced managers are tempted to try to ignore it, but pretending that a problem does not exist will seldom make it go away. Often taking no action to resolve a matter just makes things worse. Distrust, distress and misunderstandings can fester and morph into bigger problems when the initial ill feeling, on which the conflict is founded, is not addressed. When helping their patients, psychologists usually look for the root of a problem, as understanding the cause and tackling its issues is more likely to produce long-term benefits than focusing solely on current symptoms.  Managers would do well to follow their example and to delve a little deeper to understand why team members feel and behave as they do. 

 

Be mindful of the roots of a problem

Team dynamics can be impacted by many things including: jealousy, insecurity, perceived injustice, fear, alleged disparity in treatment, stress due to heavy or unequal workloads, disputes over time-keeping, invasion of personal space or a range of inter-personal matters. If ignored there is a high probability that performance will drop, factions may develop, formal complaints will be raised and/or talented employees, who can secure alternative employment, will leave.

In my experience, the best way to overcome conflict is by putting yourself into the other party’s shoes, to try to understand their viewpoint. A degree of tolerance and empathy is often all that is required to diffuse a charged situation. Few people come to work with the intention of causing distress and I have never met an employee who actually wants to be unhappy. In addition, many people fail to appreciate that conflict can be turned to advantage, as often it provides a wonderful opportunity for learning and growth. A good leader can leverage conflict for team building and individual development; the ensuing discussions, grounded in divergent thinking, frequently result in innovation and creative solutions. All is takes is effective communication.

Like Mats Ek, twist the expected to produce something fresh, new and invigorating. Ek changed the familiar title of Shakespeare’s play (although Elizabethan documents show that Shakespeare also contemplated twisting the heading so that the lady was named first). The protesters in Hong Kong are requesting a voice, in that they want their opinion to be taken into account when political appointments are made. We all want our issues to be appreciated – this requires communication. I urge you to follow the advice laid down in Marvin Gaye’s song and hear your employee’s plea (in whatever way they are communicating to you) to

“Talk to me.”

The Nurse, who successfully walks the tightrope
of effective communication & empathy in
Mats Ek's Juliet & Romeo

A happy twist!