Comet Tails and Dust Trails

Day 28 (Monday 28th December 2015)

28 domino tiles make up a standard set. The earliest mention of dominoes
is from the Song dynasty in China. Dominoes were first played in Europe in the 18th century,
it is presumed that the game was brought to Italy by returning Christian missionaries.
The word "domino' is derived from a spotted hood traditionally worn during the Venetian carnival.

For many of us around the world, today is a Bank Holiday to compensate for Boxing day falling on a Saturday. Even if you have not a day off work, I hope that you are enjoying a peaceful period before the start of the New Year and find some calm in which to read today's wonderful blog.

It gives me great pleasure to introduce a new voice to the Advent Series, Siobhan Sheridan, the HR Director of the leading UK charity NSPCC (founded in 1884 and originally called the National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children). Siobhan commenced her career in a customer-facing role in retail banking and soon found herself responsible for training others. She transferred into HR via Learning & Development. She has an impressive track record, moving from Financial Services into the Public sector, where she was HR Director for Defra and the Department for Work and Pensions, before becoming a recognised leader within the Not For Profit arena. She has a strong moral core and a great sense of humour. Siobhan is active on social media. You can follow her on Twitter, her handle is @SiobhanHRSheri.

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Comet tails and dust trails... 

'Will you write me a post?' 

'Comet tails and dust trails is the theme' she said... I was struck by the beautiful melody of the title, my instant slightly magical desire to grab the tail and take a ride across the night sky and perhaps more importantly, by the fact that I know nothing about either comets or their tails.

Somewhere in the far recesses of my memory I recalled that comets often appeared in ancient stories as 'harbingers of doom' or as 'portents of great events.'  Inspired by recent conversations about traditional stories with Geoff Mead and Sue Hollingsworth, I set off in search of where this view of such a beautiful phenomenon might have started in storytelling terms. 

Fairly soon after I began to forage, I was intrigued to stumble across not just any story, but what is claimed to be the world's oldest work of literature: The Epic of Gilgamesh. I won't trouble you here with the telling of the whole tale itself. It is, as you would expect, quite long.

Gilgamesh and the Star of Anu that falls on him

In summary this famous poem, which apparently dates back to 2100 BC, tells the story of Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, and Enkidu, a man created by the gods to stop Gilgamesh from oppressing the people of Uruk. My interest was piqued not only by the poem itself, which I had never heard of, but also by the story around it. 

First discovered in 1853 it caused a bit of a stir due to containing a number of similarities to The Bible, including a Garden, a Man being created from the soil and of a Great Flood. Dating of the oldest fragments originally concluded that it was older than the assumed dating of Genesis at that time. This lead to a great deal of debate about who borrowed what from who and when.

In 1998 a new discovery revealed the first four lines of the poem. At that stage almost 20 percent of the epic was still missing and a further 25 percent of it was so fragmentary that it could be only partially understood. Translations of the poem though were remarkably consistent and had remained so for about 150 years. 

Just this year however, researchers discovered a new tablet which added 20 previously unknown lines. Not a great deal of additional content when one considers the overall length of the poem but they appear to have a relatively significant effect on the story overall.

Tablet discovered in Sulaymaniah Museum in 2015 resulting in a correction in the
order of chapters and completion of some blanks in the Epic of Gilgamesh

The new section added more detailed descriptions of the 'Forest for the Gods' which completely changed the interpretation of what the Forest was like. They reveal the inner thoughts of the protagonists and describe their guilt at some of their actions, previously unknown emotions. They redefine one of the characters as less of a monster and more of a King and finally reveal that two of the key characters had in fact been childhood friends. The story is now different from that which existed before. 

Gilgamesh and his childhood friend Endiku, by modern artist Neil Dalrymple

Stories are everywhere in our lives. We use them to help us to make sense of many things; of ourselves, others, our work, the world and much, much more. We use them at their best to share wisdom, connect communities, inspire teams and to delight our children. Humans have been doing so for many thousands of years. As Ursula Le Guin said 'There have been great societies that did not use the wheel but their have been no societies that did not tell stories' 

And yet they are of course, stories... 

Becoming aware of a new story can change our perspective of an older one. Our brains have the amazing capacity to create complete stories from incomplete fragments without us even knowing that we've done so. Two people having the same experience can create entirely different stories about it. Before long we can start to feel that the stories we have created are in some way 'right.' Stories have the ability to keep us stuck in an old groove, not realising that we are in some way imprisoned by our own fertile imagination. 

And yet, the addition of a few words, the consideration of a motivation we hadn't realised existed, the discovery of a fact we don't know about or the opening of our minds to a different kind of ending, can quickly change everything. And suddenly what we thought we knew isn't quite so clear anymore.

So whilst the stories that we hold dear, about ourselves, our organisations  and the world, deserve to be held dear and honoured. Its helpful perhaps to also be able to be open to holding them lightly, seeing them change or reinterpreting them in order to allow ourselves and others around us to grow and move forward.

Stories are a truly wonderful creative force in the world, offering  a delightful opportunity to look at the world, our organisations and ourselves in new ways.  As Geoff Mead writes in his book 'Coming Home to Story' 

'The magic of storytelling is an essential and timely contribution to the re-enchantment of our disenchanted world'

Christmas Story Telling, A Winter's Tale, 1862
by Sir John Everett Millais

I hope that your Christmas creates the kinds of stories that you will want to tell for many years to come and that you all have a thoroughly magical and enchanted season of goodwill. 

I'm off to grab a hold of the tail of that comet and see where it might take me...

Of Nice and Men

Day 34 (Sunday 3rd January 2015)

34 is the age at which men are "at their most attractive"
(according to research conducted by Allure Magazine,
using a sample of 2000 respondents);
for women perceived peak appeal is at the age of 30.
Personally I don't think that age is important.

How are you enjoying the first weekend of the New Year? I am off to West Sussex to visit friends.

After the rush of the past few weeks, it is good to sit quiet and contemplate. This reflective post by Tim Scott hits the spot. Tim is Head of People and OD at the charity Brook, based in Liverpool and winner of the HR Management category of the 2015 Charity Times Awards. Tim is a social media adept - active on Twitter (his handle is @TimScottHR), he blogs (his site is  , but he also writes guest posts for the CIPD and for HRD (HR Director) magazine, and he has even co-authored a book on "Putting Social Media to Work" and future-casting the world of work in a decade's time. Tim has an active life IRL - he is a devoted father, husband and a music-nut. He often brightens people's timelines through his quick wit, repartee, sound advice and music recommendations.

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It feels to me like 2015 was a year of austerity and blame, celebrity and social antisocial-ness. All too often, what marked us apart was given more attention than the things we have in common. We saw it demonstrated time and time again that people are complex, messy and unpredictable. 

As we go about doing our daily stuff, we all leave trails in our wake through our actions, interactions and lack of action - like a comet's sparkly tail streams after it and coal leaves behind a dirty, powdery dust. The theme of this year's Advent blogs made me wonder whether, in this time of supposed mindfulness, we are really mindful of the trail we are leaving - and particularly the impact it has on others?

What I see on a daily basis suggests that not all of us are. For example, just a few minute ago I was walking to the station to catch the train I'm currently travelling on. Two men passed each other on the pavement in front of me, walking in opposite directions. Neither moved completely out of the others' way and they ended up catching each other's shoulders awkwardly. What surprised me most was that neither even broke their stride: without a backward glance, they carried on walking. 

Days of Judgement Cats in the City, sculpture by Laura Ford, 2015

This was hardly a life-changing incident - I imagine similar things happen thousands of times a day - but it was quite a forceful impact and for neither party to apologise or even acknowledge what happened didn't feel right somehow. Maybe I'm old-fashioned on this kind of thing but it all felt a bit, well, "not nice" as my kids would say. 

"Nice", is a seriously underrated attribute in my view. We see "nice" as being almost an insult sometimes, suggesting something insipid or just OK - particularly in business and management where we still regard Sir Alan Sugar's pantomime baddie act as something to aspire to. 

Personally, I regard being called nice as a compliment. I remember being involved with a disciplinary dismissal years ago and as I was escorting the unfortunate ex-employee from the premises, she thanked me. I said, somewhat incredulously, "why are you thanking me? We've just dismissed you!" She said "Yeah, but you did it nicely". 

Not every dismissal I have been involved with has gone quite so smoothly but that's an occupational hazard for a whole other blog...

My ultimate point I guess is that sometimes HOW we do stuff is as important as WHAT we do in terms of the impact on other people. In our day-to-day interactions, we can choose the how, even if we can't choose the what. Would it have hurt those two guys to have apologised to each other? Certainly not as much as the initial impact must have - and it might have eased the glowering look on the face of the chap coming towards me. So my challenge is, as we enter the start of the New Year and look back on the old: what is the impact you are having on the people around you? What trail do you leave in your wake? As someone said at a conference I was at recently, "Do you light up a room when you enter it - or when you leave it?" Are you sprinkling magical comet trails or depositing sooty coal dust?

P.S. Apologies for the appalling title. Sometimes once I think of these things I can't get them out of my head. Just like you are probably now singing Kylie to yourself. Sorry again.

A Challenging Year

Day 27 (Sunday 27th December 2015)

27 lunar mansions or nakshatras in the Hindu, Vedic and ancient Indian astrology.
In the West people follow their solar horoscopes, in India the Moon is of greater importance
each mansion is based on the 27.3 day period it takes the Moon to traverse all 12 signs of the zodiac.
Each nakshatra is 13°20’ wide. The series begins at 0 with Aries and runs counterclockwise as above.
The nakshatras are each sub-divided into 4, making 108 sections that are used for divination
(e.g.if your Moon is at 6°. your influence is Saturn). The mansion containing your Moon and its
planet are believed to influence your future, combined with the stars for that period.

Today I am delighted to introduce Helen Green, a talented blogger who is making her first appearance in the Advent Blog series this year. Helen has a powerful background in sales and marketing, working with some of the world's leading brands, where she showed a flair for insight. She has a degree in psychology, a masters in organisational change and is an accredited executive and business coach. She is based in London and runs her own company, Orient8, which she founded in 2011. She is active on social media (you can follow her on Twitter, her handle is @orient8you). As you can guess from the title, Helen's year could be described as "coal dust" - hard found, dirty and difficult, but there is a twist. She has been brave enough to share with us some very personal moments and I am sure we can all learn from her words.

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It’s been a challenging year.

As I look back on 2015, the standout features are all bad ones.

I was out for dinner recently with good friends and recounted the story of my year to them. One of my friends seemed a bit exasperated with me. She reminded me that I have so much that is good in my life and to be thankful for, despite the challenges.

Of course she was absolutely right.

My brain is Velcro for the bad stuff and Teflon for the good.

Dr Rick Hanson, neuropsychologist and meditation teacher says in his book “Buddha’s Brain - The practical neuroscience of happiness, wisdom and love” –

“we evolved to pay great attention to unpleasant experiences. This negativity bias overlooks good news, highlights bad news, and creates anxiety and pessimism.”

Mmmmm – sounds familiar!

So the chances are your brain is just like mine and you’ve had a challenging year too.

Or have you?

Just in case, I have an insight I would like to share with you.

In July this year, as I said goodbye to my Mum just before she went into surgery, not knowing if it was for the last time, I kissed her forehead, stroked her hair and wondered what on earth I might say. Although my body was screaming at me with pain and fear, stroking her hair had a calming effect and the words started to flow.

“In the end Mum, all there is, is love. I love you.”

Twice recently I have shared this story.

The first time was with a young woman who was really struggling. She has moved half way round the world to be with her love and was trying to work out how she could pursue both of her passions – her relationship with him and the beautiful work which she feels called to do.

We were on a workshop together and I recounted my story as she listened. Tears filled my eyes as I spoke – it is still so raw and powerful - and when I took a little pause I looked at her to discover tears in her eyes too. We let the moment just be, words not necessary as we connected at some deeper level.

Soon it was time for her to tell her story whilst I listened. She told me she had been moved by my story and was starting to notice that what had felt like a tortuous either/or situation, was no longer that way. Love is everything and her love for her boyfriend and for her work mean that however hard it may be to reconcile the two, she knows she can and will do it.

The second time I recounted my story was with a friend who is going through a tricky time in his relationship. After listening to him talk for some time, I told him of my experience.

I said “in the end all there is, is love. Everything else is just stuff. You love each other - don’t let the love go.” 

I was crying again though more softly and in less pain than at my Mum’s bedside.

His response? A silence, followed by a rather breathless “wow, that’s a powerful insight. I just want to hug you.” This was not possible as we were talking on the phone at that moment, but I felt his love - that of a true friend - for me. I know too that he is in some small way changed by that conversation, that connection.

Mother Theresa said;

“I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.”

And as my favourite philosopher (!) Audrey Hepburn once said;

“The best thing to hold onto in life is each other.”

At this holiday time of year when we get to spend more time with our loved ones, let’s hold onto each other, love (and be loved) until it hurts.

After all, in the end, all there is, is LOVE.

I was mistaken – it’s been a wonderful year.

"All You Need is Love"played live at Buckingham Palace 

by Paul McCartney, Joe Cocker, Eric Clapton and Rod Stewart, 2002

 

Turn Down the Light

Day 26 (Boxing Day - Saturday 26th December 2015)

26 bones in a typical adult human foot and ankle. We seldom appreciate the mechanical
complexity and strength of our feet. The ankle acts as a shock absorber -
a foot can sustain enormous pressure (several tonnes over the course of a 1-mile run).
One quarter of the bones in the human body are in our feet along with 33 joints
and over 100 muscles, tendons and ligaments.

Due to the quality and number of posts submitted this year, not all of which could appear prior to the 25th December, the series will continue until mid-January 2016 as a Post-Advent selection. 

I hope you are enjoying the festive break. Today is a good day for gentle relaxation and contemplation and I am sure that reading today's blog will hit the spot... It is a candid post by Gary Cookson. Gary is an experienced HR and Organisational Development (OD) specialist based in Cheshire to the north of England. He has touched many people's lives for the better. He has held various corporate roles in HR and OD and has managed to fit in some independent work alongside these over the past few years. He is changing his full-time role shortly (more of that below). Gary is a keen sportsman (including participating in triathlons, dancing and amateur wrestling) and a devoted dad. Gary is a natural networker and active on social media - his Twitter handle is @Gary_Cookson. He is also a prolific blogger - you can read his posts on his blog, HR Triathlete or catch many of them on LinkedIn.

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I've thought long and hard about what to write in response to the advent theme of comet tails and coal dust. I wanted to make this post personal, but also relevant to those reading it. I've been inspired by reading some of the earlier posts and these have given me the idea to talk about my own experiences in job interviews this year.

Prior to this year I hadn't had one job interview for about five or six years. This year I've had five or six in the one year. And I've learnt as I've gone along, as one should, and the story has a happy ending because I've been offered and accepted another role in a really good organisation which I will start in February.

Lots has happened to me this year and the role which I started the year in disappeared, but I was given the chance to apply for other roles in the organisation. At the same time I became aware of a number of other similar roles coming available at other organisations.  And I applied for them all.

My approach was to try my hardest, and to prepare thoroughly for the processes. I figured there were one or two roles, and one or two companies, I really wanted to work for.

I rehearsed answers to likely interview questions.  I read dozens of books.  I practiced my presentations tens of times.  I looked up my interviewers on LinkedIn and Twitter, and imagined what kind of person they wanted me to be. I even tried adopting some behaviours I wouldn't normally in order to totally blow away the interviewers.

And in all applications this was enough to get me comfortably through the first stage, and sometimes the second stage, of the process. In the majority of the processes I got down to the final two.

Down to the last 2

I imagined at these points that my interviewers were so dazzled by my stardust (comet tail) that I'd be bound to be offered the job. I really did try ultra hard to impress people and brought what I thought was my A-game to each interview.

It didn't work. And in hindsight, I don't think I was being myself, the real me, in each of the interviews.  Ultimately, the interviewers saw something, saw someone, that wasn't 100% real. And they didn't give me the job.

And then last month I saw a job advertised that looked good, at an organisation that looked good. But I'd done some thinking of my own and had decided that I might not go for it, that I might tread a different path and look at self employment. I'd blaze my comet tail solo.

But something made me apply, but only half heartedly. I didn't put even half the effort in to this application that I did for the jobs earlier in the year. I wasn't bothered if I didn't get an interview.

I got an interview.

I didn't prepare much for it. I thought I'll just play it by ear and see what happens, and if I don't get through to the second stage then I'm not too bothered.

I got through to the second stage.

I had a task to prepare for, and decided not to prepare for it, but to simply turn up and be myself, and think on my feet and see what happened. I didn't think I'd blow them away with this strategy, and I hadn't stalked my interviewers on social media beforehand. I was me in that interview, relaxed, argumentative, sarcastic at times and not at all trying to get through to the third stage, just trying to approach it how I would in a real work situation. Showing my coal dust.

And I got through to the third stage. And did exactly the same, not expecting the job to be offered and feeling OK about that. I wasn't desperate and wasn't out to impress anyone or make them think I was someone I'm not.

And the job was offered to me.

I was blown away, but both pleased and flattered. And after working my notice, I'll be starting with the new organisation in February. I'm excited and I'll talk more about it on my own blog I'm sure.

But this advent series has made me reflect on who I've been this year.

I've tried to shine. I've tried to blaze. I've tried to outperform everyone, including myself.  And that hasn't worked. I've tried too hard, and got nowhere better than second place.

My comet tail wasn't as brilliant or as illuminatingly attractive as I thought it was. In the early half of the year I experienced more failure because of this approach than I ever thought possible.

And maybe failure is what shapes people. Maybe rolling oneself in coal dust and taking the shine off oneself is what is needed. Maybe one can shine brighter by turning down the light.

Here's to 2016 and being more natural.

It's in your hands

Raising a Glass

Day 25 (Christmas Day - Friday 25th December 2015)

25% of humans are dichromats according to Prof. Diana Derval. The colour nuances
we see depend on the number and distribution of cones (colour receptors) in our eyes.
Look at the above spectrum, if you see less than 20 colours you are a dichromat, like dogs,
which means you have 2 types of cone (and probably like wearing black, beige and blue).
If you see 20 - 32 nuances you are a trichromat with 3 cones (in purple/blue, green and red areas).
50% of us are trichromats. Seeing 33-39 colours makes you a tetrachromat, like bees. You have 4 cones
(in purple/blue, green, red and yellow areas. You are likely to find yellow irritating.
If you see more than 39 you are making things up - there are only 39 colours in the test
and your computer/smart phone probably only translated 35.

Like last year, in honour of her founding the Advent Blogs series back in 2011, the Christmas Day post is by Alison Chisnell. Alison is an inspiration to many of us - courageous, ethical, knowledgeable, compassionate and warm. She is an exceptional HR professional (in September she became the Head of HR for the Risk Consulting division of KPMG) and a devoted mother, a valued friend and an inspirational runner and trainee triathlete. She was one of the first to welcome me into the Twitter HR community (her handle is @AlisonChisnell) and I responded when she asked for contributors for the first Advent Blogs series. We are friends and I have huge professional and personal respect for her. She is an excellent, but sporadic, blogger - you can read her words on her blog - The HR Juggler.

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Can you see me? Can you see what I’ve done? My hands are dark with toil,

Coal miner's hands by HayNateHaywood

my brightness lights up the sky. 

Hale Bopp in 1997 - Credit Bob King

I persist, I endure, I inspire, I remember.

We are all authors of our own stories, we all choose how we want to remember our year. Comet tails and coal dust, beautifully juxtaposed, fleeting brilliance and relentlessly hard graft. Tangible progress others can see, incremental achievements visible only to ourselves. How human that we want to tell about them, to share, reflect and relate. This is me doing just that, knowing that they may only matter to me alone.

Time heals. If last year was dominated by redundancy, this has been the year of in-between, of embracing the not knowing what is coming next, of pushing some of my personal boundaries further than I thought I could. Ambiguity, uncertainty, discovery, adventure, pride.

This year I’ve had the gifts of time and of uncertainty. It’s been the only year I can remember where I have held three very different jobs and generous gaps between each, which have enabled me to reflect, savour, enjoy and grow. 

There has been coal dust, of course there has, moments both passing and persisting of self-doubt, apparently promising opportunities fading to grey and impatience for change to arrive.

What I choose to remember though, is this:

• Sitting in the morning sunshine of Sydney harbour, drinking coffee with my husband while my children play around me, savouring the sense of freedom and contentment, knowing that this moment has made the journey to that point entirely worthwhile. That without the personal upheaval and change, we wouldn’t have taken the leap of making the trip and that our horizons have grown as a result and that they will not shrink back.

• Running the London marathon in pretty much the form of my life, (almost!) effortlessly pacing 9.5 minute miles to well over 20 miles, the joy and excitement of crossing Tower Bridge with my good running friend, the enormity of crossing the finish line, knowing that I’d given it my all and achieved what I was capable of, the best version of my running self. It seemed impossible until it was done….and already, only a few months later, it starts to feel impossible to replicate!

• My first foray into triathlons, pushing myself out of my comfort zone, persevering with front crawl until I can finally now regularly swim well over a mile without stopping; plunging myself into a cold, slightly murky lake and discovering I love the freedom of open water swimming.

These are my comet tails, my marks in the sand, my experiences this year that remind me that I am capable of so much more than I think, that pushing boundaries holds its own rewards.

And yet, there have been quieter moments during the year that have changed me and my perceptions too. Those that don’t leave a trail of stars, but imprint their memory on my consciousness just the same. I struggle to articulate the power of the in-between, the glorious terror and freedom of declaring myself between roles, in transit, open to opportunities… the simultaneous sense of being rudderless and yet also liberated from being hemmed in by labels, restrictions, expectations. 

The power of choice, of self-control, of holding my nerve, of going with the flow, of trusting that things will work out, the understanding of what is within my control and the many things that are beyond it, the gradual emergence of a stronger, more resilient personal and professional confidence. Rather like the memory of the Sydney sunshine, that makes the journey fully worthwhile and one that, in hindsight, I would not change.

So, this Advent, may your comet tails shine brightly and illuminate your hopes for the year to come. May the coal dust shape our thinking and experiences, enabling us to find the diamond within that hard, dark, uncompromising rock, providing us with the energy and enthusiasm we need to move forward. May this Christmas time, this New Year be a happy, healthy, positive and prosperous one for you and your loved ones and let’s raise a glass to ourselves and each other. 

Merry Christmas!