On Darkness

Day 27 (Tuesday 27th December 2016)

27 - the number of studio albums released by David Bowie.

From 1967 to 2016 David Bowie was recognised as being at the 

vanguard of contemporary culture, not just for being an outstanding 

innovative musician but also as an artist, actor and designer. Bowie died 

on January 10 2016, after an 18 month battle with liver cancer. 

He released his last album, Black Star, on his 69th Birthday, 

it was released on 8 January 2016 ( 2 days before his death).

It is the extra Boxing Day holiday for many of us. I hope you are finding time to relax, recuperate and spend time with the people you love. I love the lady who has written today's post - Julie Drybrough. She is the founder and Managing Director of Fuchsia Blue Ltd. and is a woman of many talents - an organisational consultant, executive coach, facilitator, speaker, blogger (fuchsia blue blog) and dialogue guide - working with people and organisations to improve conversations, relationships and learning. She inspires people to follow her example and to do things with love.

I first met Julie via Twitter (her handle is @fuchsia_blue) and have subsequently grown to know her in real life. She is a feisty Scottish lass who has moved south to Manchester to live with the man she loves, although she can be found working both across the UK and around the globe. Another major love in her life is, Biba, the dog. She says it how she sees it, is creative, thoughtful, caring and great fun. She enjoys life to the full (be it literally climbing every mountain, photographing and sharing amazing vistas and unusual sights, partying with friends and trying what's available to expand her knowledge and experiences). Julie enhances the lives of many and it is a pleasure hosting her post today.

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On Darkness…..

2016?

What can I say?

In a year where all hell seems to have broken loose in the world, politically, socially, climatically and to be famous seemed to mean that Death had your name firmly in its sights, somehow personal reflections and seem inconsequential and unimportant.

And yet it is always at this time of year, in the darkest months at the point of solstice, that I most seem to need to stop, reflect, readjust, celebrate & consider. There can be peace in the gloom and the murk – a place to hide and be concealed and be… and it can be a scary place – darkness – a lonely place filled with terrors both imagined and real.

If I dwell on heart and heights and hopes – it is at this time of the year I seem to most acutely feel and acknowledge these.

I'm mostly irreligious... yet spiritual in my own way. If I err toward anything at this time of year is a sort of pseudo Pagany/Christiany sense of beginning and the need to appreciate that which is alive. I want to be moved by the tradition of carol singing. I want to feast and dance. I want to walk the dog in the bitter cold in barren woods near me and enjoy the green of holly against the brown sleeping ground. I want the warmth of the house to be welcoming after the cold outside. I want to understand my privilege at having a home, family, safety and not take that wholly for granted….

December in the northern hemisphere speaks to me of winter proper.

Things asleep yet to wake.

Long nights, which inevitably turn slowly toward the spring… turning points.

The dark banished with lights & fires as we strive to see and make beauty in the darkness.

The hope of light and the relief it brings.

Yule has its roots in the old-Nordic word ‘iul’ or the Anglo-Saxon ‘hweol’,
both meaning ‘wheel’, which points to the ever turning year
and natures cycle of life, death and rebirth.Add caption

The dark gap where loved ones, now gone, should be; the way those we love & care for lighten our lives.

I learned a few years ago how scared I was of the dark and how terrifying it is to be without a sense of light; the experience of profound loneliness and the way it hobbles and derails you… I tried, unsuccessfully, to run away from the dark, forcing positivity and trying to conjure light. But I was diminished and sad. I was afraid and alone. My capacity to create light for myself was tiny. 

Dale Grimshaw - street art, UK

My ability to fool myself was even smaller. It was only when I turned to others, asking for help to illuminate and when I began to face into the darkness - looked into my sadness and shame and fear, that things started to re-form.

So at this time of year – if you feel the melancholy or the loneliness or the sadness…. Just know that these are one part of the story – that even in the darkest moments there is the possibility of light. That you may need others to light your way, scary as that is… that it is only knowing the dark that allows us to appreciate the light.

I wish you and yours the very best for the season and for 2017 whether it be dark or light… and I pass on a gift that sticks with me at this time of year – David Whyte’s Sweet Darkness – in the hope you find some semblance of inspiration or understanding in the verse.

"SWEET DARKNESS"

When your eyes are tired

the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone,

no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark 

where the night has eyes

to recognise its own.

There you can be sure

you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your home

tonight.The night will give you a horizon

further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.

The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds

except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet

confinement of your aloneness

to learn

anything or anyone

that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

John Atkinson Grimshaw, oil painting UK, circa 1880

How to lose hearts

Day 26 (Monday 26th December 2016)



26% of the Far North, the most pristine area of Australia's Great Barrier Reef 
has died. During 2016 the Reef suffered the worst bleaching on record. 
Scientists claim that the damage is caused by rising sea temperatures (in February, 
March and April, sea surface temperatures across the Great Barrier Reef were the 
hottest on record, at least 1C higher than the monthly average).

It is Boxing Day - a traditional time to sit, read something and reflect. I am sure that David D'Souza's post below will make you do just that - it should provoke thoughts, regardless of whether you manage people, work for others or just know people who fit into either camp. His piece has made me stop and contemplate how I work, what I do with and how I lead others and also to consider the approach of the wider business within which I sit. Are you aware of how you make others feel?

David is the Head of London and Head of Engagement (Branches) at the CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development - the UK-based professional body for HR and people development with over 140,000 members). Previously he has worked within HR (with a strong bias towards learning and development) and has run his own consultancy. I am fortunate to have had him in my team and I can vouch for the fact that he is as values-driven, and family-orientated, as he comes across on social media. He is also a genuine polymath who can turn his hand and intellect to most things. He is a natural communicator and connector - you can meet and tweet with him on Twitter (his handle is @dds180) or else read his thought-provoking blog - 101 Half Connected Things or else his posts on LinkedIn.

David is a regular speaker at conferences and events, but just as impactful in a quiet one-to-one chat. He is a genuine, super-bright and awesome person. I am honoured to call him my friend.

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A Ten Step Guide to Losing Hearts in The Workplace

Rather than a deep confessional I wanted to give people something constructive for the New Year. A workplace guide to losing hearts and leaving people hollow. A 'How to' guide for anyone wishing to spend a year removing trust and destroying group dynamics, should you be so inclined. I've had a reasonably long career and I've worked with some experts in this field over the years. Their lessons stuck with me and my commitment to people being entitled to the opposite is one of the reasons I joined the CIPD.

Of course, if you wanted to avoid doing the things on this list you might find that, at the very least, you don't do bad things. People often say that 'not bad' isn't the same as 'good'. I'd agree, but sometimes 'not bad' is good enough. 

How to lose hearts:

1. Heroically take upon yourself the burden of the critical decisions and then get them wrong. Work with assumptions as if they are facts and LinkedIn quotes as if they are strategy.                                                                     
   
2. Lead so well no other voices can be heard or recognised. Become the only voice that matters in the organisation. Go big.                                            
   
3. Create a distance so great between your espoused values and your deeds that people point to it from afar as though it is a wonder of nature. They whisper in hushed tones in the corridors, they whisper of that gap. They marvel at your lack of realisation.                                                             
   
4. Involve people at the point their involvement is largely redundant and then rail at them for a lack of 'engagement'. Dictate the rules of engagement and then object to being called a dictator. Use an annual survey to indicate commitment to everyday involvement.                                                      
   
5. Keep your friends close and your budgets closer. Invest only in people and things that are conspicuous in their proximity to your world view. Create a comfort blanket of vanity projects and acolytes.                                         
   
6. Keep talking about not being able to be half on the bus - until only the people on the bus are the ones that aren't smart enough to challenge the destination and timetable (even though it makes no sense)                         
     
7. Pay no attention to the physical environment. People are lucky to have a building at all and if they were as good as you they'd get a nicer space to work in - with windows and a supportive chair and everything.                    
   
8. Communicate what you want to communicate or what people want to hear. Leave the trickier task of telling them what they need to hear for another day 
   
9. Make unfair reward your target. From exec pay down to saying "thank you", be selective, preferential and shun transparency. Tell yourself that if someone wouldn't object then you aren't making the tough decisions          
   
10. And finally, remember why you hired all those bright people: to make you feel good about taming their intellect and having them all agree with you.    
    

Even if it means the bright sparks within them no longer shine.

Angels around you at all times

Day 25 (Sunday 25th December 2016)

25% increase in UK trained doctors is planned by the UK Government to

enable the UK to become "self-sufficient". This plan was 

announced in October 2016 and will take effect as from 2018.

Doctors' Training places are set to expand from 6,000 to 7,500 pa.

Currently 25% of doctors working for the NHS were trained abroad.

For those of you who are celebrating today, I wish you a very Happy Christmas. Regardless of your religious beliefs, I hope that the next few days are good and that they provide you with some time to recharge and connect with loved ones and friends. I am spending the day with my family in London.

Our Christmas Day post comes from the wonderful Michael Carty. He is seen by many as the connective glue that holds many in the HR social media community together. Always interested, always mindful of others and respectful - a true gentleman. Michael is a thoughtful and talented blogger - you can read his words on Tumblr.

Michael has for many years followed and commented on HR for XpertHR and is known as a benchmarking guru who can make sense of complex analytical data and communicate it in an easily understood manner to others less capable than himself. He is active and supportive on social media (often encouraging people to attend tweet-ups and events), indeed he and I first met at a tweet-up and over the years we have established a close friendship. You can follow him on Twitter (his handle is @MJCarty)

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Angels around you at all times

For much of 2016, the world has seemed an appallingly cruel place. There has been much to make a heart feel heavy and hollow. Comfort and joy - those traditional fixtures of the festive season - might seem in short supply. But even in these times they are still there, as abundant as they have ever been. Angels are not on high. They are around you at all times. You just have to ask for their help.

"I can't believe people care about me like that, and they don't even know me." 

Hearing these words brought tears to my eyes in public at the start of this month. 

These words come from a story that seems - the more I think about it - like a modern-day, real-life It's a Wonderful Life. Angels play a key role in this story. So does Twitter.

The tears came as I was walking to the train station through the bustle and tacky Christmas lights of a noisy and busy part of South London on my commute home. I was listening to an episode of RuPaul's consistently delightful What's The Tee podcast. He was talking to his podcast co-host - and fellow RuPaul's Drag Race judge - Michelle Visage about Jake.

The media recently picked up on Michelle Visage using Twitter to crowdsource help for Jake, a gay and trans teen from Elizabethtown, Kentucky (you can read one brief account here). Jake's mother had banished him from the family home on grounds of his sexuality, telling him by text message (as Visage recounts it): 

"We didn’t raise you to be like this. That’s not the way God wanted it. No, you can’t come home."

Jake set up a Twitter account to reach out to Michelle Visage, who shared a screengrab of the text message, and asking for reassurance that life might get better for Jake from the wider community.

She responded to Jake with words of support and reassurance, and shared Jake's situation with her own Twitter followers. "Floods of tweets" came through, with people offering moral support, help, jobs, food and shelter for Jake. 

Both Jake and Visage were overwhelmed and humbled by the love and kindness out there. Through the advice and support offered by Visage and legions of perfect strangers, Jake has made tentative progress with his mother and been able to move back into the family home. He is by no means out of the woods ("I fear for him" when Jake raises the trans issue with his mother, says Visage). But Visage is there for him. As is a new support network of thousands of friends. 

Michelle Visage is humble about her role in Jake's story:

"I knew that I don't have that many followers - 290,000 or whatever. All I did was tweet it and it got picked up. But it wasn't meant to be about that. It was meant to be about - anybody would do this. And thank you so much for this help. And because of this help, this kid saw that he was loved. It just goes to show you how strong and how resilient and how amazing our community is when we pull together."

RuPaul takes up this theme:

"I wonder how many people have this story to tell? So many people go through this. And so many people survive. I've said this before. There are angels around you at all times. But because you have free will, they will not intervene unless you say: 'I. Need. Help.' Boom. It's done. And that's what happened with this kid."

Angels. Friends rallying to offer support. This could be a modern It’s a Wonderful Life. No man is a failure who has friends.

Back in 2014, I wrote the following about our hostess in this advent blogs series, Mrs Kate Griffiths-Lambeth: 

"I said to Ailsa Suttie earlier this year that Kate is perhaps the closest person to an angel that any of us are ever likely to meet. Kate has time for everyone, judges no-one, and is generous with her wisdom and support. Here are some beautiful words from a post she wrote last year: 'Life is so short, but it offers an amazing journey, it would be a shame not to appreciate and enjoy each precious step.'"

There are angels around you at all times. Kate is one. I want to thank Kate for all she has done and does for me, for our community, for perfect strangers about whom none of us but Kate will ever know. 

Kate when a little girl

Please join me in raising a toast to our wonderful advent blogs hostess, Mrs Kate Griffiths-Lambeth. And if you are on Twitter, please, please tweet her a Christmas message of gratitude and love.

Barefoot in the heart: Father Christmas

Day 24 (Saturday 24th December 2016)

24 successive match wins is international rugby's longest winning streak
(achieved by Cyprus between 2008 and 2014, when their run was ended by Andorra in Paphos) -
something for the England team to aspire to. England won their 14th consecutive rugby union
international when they beat Australia 37-21 at Twickenham on 3rd December 2016,
and ensured that they finished 2016 unbeaten.

It is Christmas Eve. I hope you have managed to get all that you wished to achieve done by now - I have a busy day ahead and may have to cram all my Christmas preparations into the late afternoon. Mind you, it is only my fault that I have left things so late. However, regardless of my own short comings, I can always find time to read a piece by today's contributor - he has become part of the Advent Blogs' tradition - Neil Usher. Neil is widely recognised as a creative and inspirational wordsmith. His offering this year is one of his barefoot pieces; given the day, the subject, a traditional festive character, is apt. Due to the need for it to be read as a complete piece there is no pictoral punctuation. Neil invariably delivers a thought-provoking and beautifully crafted Advent Blog and this year does not disappoint.

In addition to being an exceptional writer, Neil is known for his position at the forefront of thinking about work and the workplace, he writes an excellent blog on the subject - workessence. Neil is employed as the Workplace Director for Sky and has deep roots in property and facilities management. Neil understands that the environment in which people are based has a profound impact on how they feel and hence perform. You can follow Neil on Twitter (his handle is @workessence).

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Barefoot in the heart: Father Christmas

December only means one thing your obsession with possession the gift of receiving it never stopped you wanting scoping believing in hopeful fragility I'm everywhere at the same time via the impossibility of fractal transgression that eludes the military and even time I'm the least feared man with a beard in history no need for a third runway I'm living pantomime always behind you weaving fantasy through a childhood where everyone has been good irrespective no filters no sortation just one commonly-held nation without vanity older than creation but unstamped by time I bring fighters from their trenches for a fleeting moment of humanity amid the collective insanity I'm reconciliation the living manifestation of forgiveness even Trump gets to ask for a PlayStation beyond the miracle of the shimmy of my sleekly sleddish vehicle by the snowbound still of the awakening dawn I'm back in the peace of my lair with just the symbolic yet shambolic reindeer terrified of the pale pink skies content to just be iconic it's me that eats all your carrots and mice pies though I wish you'd leave a rare steak and chunky fries got to maintain this orbital girth it’s the USP that makes you love me long after you stop believing I have any part of reality but there’s always a distant bell that rings the faintest possibility of the frailty of your adult logicality for beyond the jolly innocence I’m destiny but in my frostbitten heart I am barefoot you perpetrate this state of clinical obesity I'm ridiculed stripped of my masculinity the ultimate self-parody no succession plan in the recurrence of eternity tortured by a lack of elf engagement and frantically maintaining the illusion of home delivery my seminal utterance a shallow trio of santa guffaws the spirit as ephemeral as a flambé as armies return to the trenches the homeless to park benches I keep thinking this year it will endure but it's repacked and returned nothing ever learned and while I promise myself with exhausted regularity I'm done from a love stubborn whole and pure every year I've returned