Most of us aren’t dealing with life or death situations, but once we experience what feels like the psychological death that we can easily associate with failure, we spend the rest of our lives trying to avoid it at all costs. But can failure be helpful?

As a downhill ski racer, and member of the Australian Disabled Ski Team back in the 1990s, there was a saying – if you don’t fall, you’re not trying hard enough. I fell lots! But as a professional, as a leader, as a human being trying to do my best in life, I can be terrified of failure, and it often stops me trying. The anticipated psychological harm feels so much worse than the frequent and  inevitable bruises and bumps I got racing at speed down a hill with limited vision.

Leaders need to be able to fail so they can push themselves and their organisations beyond the limits of what they know, think and do. But it’s hard, because you have to over-ride the internal safety regulator that clicks on the moment we sense the potential for even small failures, and you have to be willing and able manage the biases, judgements and expectations of others around what it means to fail.

So, if you’re not sure if a project will succeed, and there’s valuable learning in giving it a red hot go, here’s some suggestions to help make failure an OK option:

Fail Fast
Get on to it quickly – drawing it out might put off the pain, but prolonging the agony or uncertainty can be unsettling for you and the team. If something isn’t going to work it might be better to know that quickly so you can recover and move on.

Fail Small
There’s no point in risking everything – start with a pilot, a short trial, a low risk part of the business, or with a group of early adopters, and see what happens. You can better manage any risk, and if it doesn’t work out, you’ve minimised the fall-out.

Fail Soft
I used to dread training on days when the snow was packed down hard as ice – I’d hold back just that little bit more, attempting to avoid at all costs, a fall that felt like landing on concrete. Training on softer snow meant losing some of my fear, and being able to push myself to the edge of my limits. What are the conditions that make it easier for you to fail with a soft landing? For example, pick your timing – maybe don’t try something risky until market conditions are relatively stable, or wait until the new merger is bedded down.

Fail Safe
Nothing is ever really fail-safe. Human beings are not perfect, accidents happen, the world works in mysterious ways. We can’t control our environment or each other as much as we think, or as much as we’d like. So let’s get used to things not working out in the way we’d hoped or planned, and be OK with that. That means shifting how we view our own failures, and it also means as leaders, we need to make it safe for others to try and to fail, by encouraging creativity, appropriate risk-taking, and a mindset of experimentation. Reward staff for taking a risk, protect them if it doesn’t work out, and institutionalise a process to tease out and share learnings from failed projects.

So learn to fail by failing fast, failing small, failing soft, and failing safe. But learn from what you did and didn’t do, from what happened and didn’t happen, from what went well and not so well, and recognise that this is the only way we make progress, as individuals, as leaders and as organisations. It turns out that failure is, after all, an option.

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Looking under the bonnet can be a bit like developing greater self-awareness – the process of uncovering more of yourself and learning how you show up with others. And just like with the car, we can actively avoid taking a look inside ourselves for fear of what we might uncover, but in doing so, we run the risk of some disastrous personal and professional consequences.

What are we afraid of?
We avoid looking under the bonnet of our car because we can’t afford the cost of the work that might be needed, because it’s inconvenient having the car off the road while it’s serviced, or because we’re afraid the mechanic might uncover more than we bargained for. These concerns are equally relevant when we consider looking inside ourselves. There might be a financial cost of raising our self-awareness if we’re using a coach or attending a leadership development program; we might worry about what we might uncover; we might lose some efficiency or effectiveness while we’re doing the hard work of examining and shifting our ingrained patterns of thinking or behaviour; or we might worry about whether the expected benefits of the work will be worth the investment of time, money and effort.  And at the end of the day, what we don’t know can’t hurt us, right?

What are the risks if we don’t?
Is blissful ignorance the way to go? If we don’t take a look under the bonnet of the car from time to time, we won’t notice when parts are getting worn, and we’ll miss opportunities for fine tuning the engine that might give us better vehicle performance. And when we never take the time to look inside ourselves, we can miss the warning signs that things are deteriorating. We might miss the fact that we’re becoming reactive, negative, disengaged, inefficient or burnt-out. And we miss the opportunity to fine tune our own internal operating systems which inherently affect the way we show up with others, the way we perform and the way we lead. Self-awareness is the foundation for any shift in mindset or behaviour and is recognised as an essential component of effective and authentic leadership.

How do we do it?
Building self-awareness is like exercise – you need to make a commitment to the process, make time for it, and practice. Build habits of self-reflection, find opportunities to get feedback, and stay curious about your own behaviour, what’s driving it, and its impact on others.

• Listen to your internal narrative – this has such a strong influence on our external behaviour
• Notice your reactive behaviours – are there certain scenarios that tip you into being aggressive, controlling, arrogant, passive, distant, critical, complicit.or other habitual ways of operating that limit leadership effectiveness
• Recognise situations that trigger an over-reaction in you – one that in hindsight, or from another’s perspective, is completely disproportionate to the circumstance
• After a meeting or a significant interaction, think about what you said and did, how you intended it to be received, and how it might have been perceived differently
• Find ways to ask for feedback – don’t wait for the annual performance appraisal to find out how others experience you. Start with people you trust, whether they be superiors, peers, reports or people in other life domains – ask them to share how they see your strengths, and where they notice a behaviour that they perceive might be limiting your effectiveness
• Take a formal 360 assessment (using a reputable tool and process) to learn about how others experience you, and how this might differ to your own self-perception, then work with a coach to unpack what this might mean for you
• Journal your self-reflection, look for patterns, trends, insights and opportunities
• Stay curious – try to suspend your judgement about what you notice through self-reflection and replace with curiosity and permission to grown and learn.

When we make the effort to service our car, we’re ensuring we get optimum performance of our vehicle over time. When leaders make the effort to shine a light on the underlying thinking patterns that drive their behaviour, they gain access to an untapped reservoir of new choices, possibilities and potential for more authentic, sustainable and effective leadership.

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Recently I’ve noticed I also have my own internal safety manager who monitors my choices, decisions and actions to prevent me from coming to harm. And I’ve also come to realise how much this safety manager gets in the way of me achieving my goals. He’s the voice in my head that says watch out, be careful, danger ahead, go back, not now, not me, are you sure???  I’ve given him a name and a persona to help me take back control!

From working with my clients, I know the internal safety manager might give out warnings like

• ‘better not take on that new client in case you don’t really know what you’re doing’
• ‘don’t tell the interview panel about that important project you successfully managed….they might end up hiring you and you could let them down’
• ‘careful setting those KPIs for your team too high…what if you don’t achieve them?’
• ‘best if you don’t tell your colleague she let you down in that stakeholder meeting…you might look like a trouble-maker for raising it’

Our safety manager serves an important purpose, keeping a look out for perceived threats and imminent dangers. Not only physical dangers, but psychological risks such as rejection, exclusion, exposure, failure, criticism, shame, embarrassment, and humiliation amongst others. His ultimate purpose is self-preservation.

But there can also be high costs of playing it safe, including:

• Dissatisfaction – we may not pursue a dream, a passion or a goal because of the risk of harm, so we stay unhappy in the status quo
• Mediocrity – we might limit our horizons, settling for what’s known and certain in case discovery is uncomfortable
• Paralysis – we end up doing nothing because the risk of taking action seems too great
• Perfectionism or excessive planning – obsessively over compensating to avoid or minimise risk
• Failure – we can unwittingly sabotage our own chances of success because of a fear of failing or a fear of not being worthy of our success.

Safety managers can seem very authoritative and can be profoundly influential in the way we perceive and engage with the world. They may have been with us for a really long time, probably serving a legitimate purpose at one point, but chances are they’ve outstayed their welcome!! We don’t want to eliminate them completely (otherwise we’d all be jumping out of planes without parachutes to establish our capacity for flight). But to lead a satisfying, successful and meaningful life, we may need to do some work on keeping our safety manager in check.

If you think you’re under the excessive influence of your own personal safety manager, plan to get better acquainted. For the next 24 hours see if you can notice even small examples of:

• When does he show up?
• What are the triggers?
• Does he have a voice – what kinds of things does he say?
• Does he conjure up uncomfortable sensations – where and how do you experience these?

Once you’ve noticed the presence of your safety manager, spend some time digging a little deeper:

• What is the potential harm you’re being warned about?
• How does this influence your behaviour – what do you do more of or less of to prevent or minimise the risk?
• What is the cost of doing this?

For example, my safety manager shows up every time I go to write these articles! Right now, he’s saying ‘if you write an article about safety managers people will think the article is lame…they’ll criticise you and you might lose your credibility’. And how do I respond to minimise the risk of this perceived harm? ‘I’d better choose another topic that’s more interesting, more relevant and more valuable to everyone who reads my articles…oh wait, that might not be good enough either…(repeat by 10, feel frustrated and overwhelmed then postpone until another day!).

At this point it’s pretty easy for me to acknowledge that my thinking, influenced by the habitual warnings from my safety manager, is keeping me safe by avoiding the possibility of criticism and judgement. But I can also recognise the cost – in this case, paralysis, procrastination and an inability to complete something I know is important. So now I can weigh up the costs and benefits, and make a mindful choice about whether to heed my safety manager’s warnings about the selection of article topic.

Be prepared for the difficult sensations that might arise when you choose to ignore warnings from your safety manager. Noticing and allowing feelings of uncertainty, anxiety or even fear is an important element of keeping your safety manager in check. Yes, there’s a cost to rejecting safety warnings – it might be butterflies, cold sweats, sleepless nights, feelings of vulnerability or self-doubt. But playing it safe can come at a bigger cost:

• it’s hard to be the effective and influential leader that you’d like to be;
• it’s hard to stay positive, productive and high performing in the face of challenge and uncertainty;
• it’s hard to be truly authentic in the way you show up with others;
• and it’s harder to achieve the personal and professional goals and successes that you’re truly capable of.

Ultimately, it’s harder to be your personal best.

Pay attention to the safety messages, but challenge their validity and choose to proceed with the actions that are aligned with your values, goals and purpose. You might be surprised at how this opens up opportunities for success and satisfaction you didn’t think possible.

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It makes sense then, that we enter positions of leadership (and by that I mean positions of influence, not just positions with defined authority), with a suppressed or even non-existent sense of curiosity. Our job at this stage is to keep not only ourselves, but others – our family, our staff, our community, our team – safe, and a little curiosity can be a dangerous thing. Evolutionarily, exploring unknown territory can get you killed, and if our basic needs are being met, why risk it? Better to stick with what we know and stay alive.Here are three scenarios in which leaders might benefit from a greater sense of curiosity.

1. Be curious with your people
Leaders often feel their job is to give people advice or solve problems. After all, isn’t that why you got the job – to fix things, help others or find solutions? When people come to us with a question, a problem or a challenge, it’s tempting to jump in with a quick response. But in our haste to get things done, if we don’t take time to understand the challenge and explore unknown ground, we can end up providing well intentioned solutions to the wrong problem. Instead of seeing ourselves as expert advice givers, how would things change if we worked with our staff from the perspective of curiosity? Curiosity allows us to ask questions instead of giving answers, and curiosity allows the other person to think, reflect, and potentially find their own solution.

2. Be curious with your team
One of the key benefits of teamwork is being able to capitalise on the combined wisdom of each of the team members. In effective teams the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. How much more effective could your team be in solving deep, complex problems, if you could support them to remain curious with each other? What new insights might the team uncover, what  richer understanding might you reach, and what intractable problems might you solve if, instead of ‘that won’t work’, ‘that’s too risky’, ‘that’s not my patch’ or ‘we’ve tried that before’ we coached our teams to keep asking each other ‘how could that work’, ‘what can we try’, ‘how can we build on each other’s knowledge’ , ‘how do these different perspectives go together’, ‘what other ideas are there’, ‘who else can contribute’ and ‘where could we start’?

3. Be curious with yourself
When we experience negative thoughts, feelings or sensations, we’re often quick to judge ourselves. It’s the classic one-two combination punch. We feel something like disappointment about a particular outcome, then we start feeling anger or blame at ourselves for not being good enough. Our inner critic, alive and thriving in most of us, kicks in, and we’re off judging and critiquing ourselves. How would things change if, instead of judging our initial feeling of disappointment, we were simply curious about that feeling – noting it, naming it, experiencing the feeling for what it is, and allowing it to be? How would the feeling change in intensity or impact, how would our reaction to it be different, and how might that lead to a different result? Acknowledging negative feelings and examining them with interest, much like a curious scientist, can diffuse the impact of that feeling, and can be a circuit breaker to prevent the inner critic taking hold.and spiralling you into negativity.

So I’m suggesting that curiosity can help us expand our perspective, our knowledge, our skills and our experience. It helps us to navigate complexity and ambiguity, and is therefore a key enabler of leadership effectiveness. How can you strengthen your curiosity to better manage your own reactions, capitalise on the strength of your team and empower your staff so you can work together to achieve more than you thought possible? Curiosity is the difference between knowing and discovering. Curiosity keeps judgment at bay and encourages consideration and inclusion. So what do you need to do to let your curiosity run wild?

Jo

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More seriously, I finished my run thinking about all the important reasons – other than public safety – to look up. Every screen staring dog walker is missing out on all those beautiful autumn sights, sounds and smells,not to mention the chance to exchange smiles with a neighbour, whilst at the same time risking personal and canine catastrophe! We can’t smell the roses with our nose in a screen – look up and take in the little things around us that can bring us great joy.

People used to day-dream or make idle conversation in queues, at the bus stop or waiting to meet friends at cafe – now we look (and feel) like a social misfit if we’ve alone in public without something really important to check on our device. Look up and smile at the person opposite, it might make their (or your) day! Drag your eyes away from your screen and be with your own thoughts – we need these times to process the happenings of the day, form opinions, draw conclusions, plan for the future or come up with new and exciting ideas. Look up and chat with the person next to you – it may be an interesting conversation or you could end up talking to your future spouse!

I don’t drive so I’m on public transport every day, and I can’t remember the last time I saw anyone offer their seat to someone who needed it – not because people are heartless (I hope), but because everyone is engrossed in their phone. Children and adults alike fail to notice the pregnant woman, the teenager on crutches or the old man teetering precariously in the aisle right next to them. Look up – you might just notice someone who’s frail, lost, unwell or who’s just had a really bad day amd who could do with a hand, a seat or a kind word.

I’m sure we’ve all witnessed the slightly ironic sight of couples, large groups of teenagers or adult colleagues supposedly enjoying each other’s company at a café or social gathering whilst all are absorbed in the private world of their own devices. Social connection is such an important contributor to our mental health and well-being, yet I fear we’re losing the ability to relate in an authentic and meaningful way to the people we’re with in the real world. Look up and connect with the important people around you. You chose to be with them for a reason – notice the subtle clues that tell you how someone is really feeling, share something about yourself, listen deeply, create trust, and let’s not lose the experience and the joy of true human connection.

I want to end with a much more poignant scenario. This last week two of my closest friends have been touched by suicide. Two beautiful men with strengths and with vulnerabilities who got to a place where they could no longer look up. Their perspective had narrowed to such a point where they saw only one, tragic way forward. When we experience challenging circumstances, troublesome thoughts, painful feelings or a deep sense of hopelessness, look upwards and outwards – not to deny those feelings or sensations, not to cover them up and pretend to ourselves and the world that they don’t exist or don’t matter, but to connect with the people who love, nurture and ground us, and who can help offer a different perspective on the reality we’ve created.

The great Stephen Hawking was wise on so many levels:

“Remember to look up at the stars
and not down at your feet….
if you feel you are in a black hole,
don’t give up – there’s a way out.”

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1. Find your meaning
The importance and meaning of Christmas is instilled (and often forced upon us) through our exposure to media, and religious, family and cultural traditions. If we don’t resonate with that meaning, Christmas can be a period of confusion or cynicism. So find your own meaning for this time – I’m not religious, so for me it’s a time for connection, reflection and gratitude.

2. Create your own imagery
Since snow-flakes, angels and an overweight man in an impractically un-Australian outfit don’t do it for me, I look for the imagery that brings my Christmas meaning to life through music, pictures and tokens Take a listen to one of my favourite ‘carols’ Tim Minchin’s White Wine in the Sun (which incidentally, is about connection not drinking!)

3. Connect with people that matter
If Uncle Bob is always obnoxious, and sister Susan cant stop criticising the state of your house, do you really need to do the big family lunch just because it’s expected? Consider doing something different – catch up with the difficult rellies for brunch, then hang out with the people you love for a picnic in the park. Mix it up, so you still maintain connection with those you need to, but you also have some time with people that nurture, love and support you.

4. Manage your expectations  
Try not to put too much pressure on yourself or others. Its only a day…the food and the decorations and the presents don’t have to be perfect. If your Christmas meaning is about connecting with others, then this should be your focus – enjoy your time with them, and let the not so important stuff wash over you.

5. Manage your time
Not everything has to be done by Christmas! You don’t have to fit every last job that’s been on your list for a year into the last week, and you don’t have to catch up with every person you know in the universe in December – give yourself a break – schedule stuff for January and beyond, when the world has slowed down again.

6. Take a break
If this is the time you take holidays from work, then make sure you actually take a break – let customers and staff know you’re on leave, organise some back-up if you can, re-direct your emails and put a message on your voicemail. You’ll come back feeling far more refreshed, and be more productive (and probably a nicer person!) having had the down time.

7. Control what you can, let go of what you can’t
You don’t have to go along with everything that everyone else wants to do – you can try to influence decisions about family gatherings and presents and holidays through discussion, and put forward suggestions that are going to work best for you. But then recognise the things that are outside of your control to change, and make a decision to go with the flow, rather than wasting angst and energy on resisting and complaining.

8. Do something for others
Gift giving was once a unique expression of love and care of others, but can now seem an onerous  chore or a race for popularity based on giving the most impressive gift. What else can you do to show concern and kindness for others – volunteering some time, donating to a charity in lieu of presents, giving people the gift of your time, or surprising someone with a random act of kindness?

9. Create positive emotion
What for you, brings a sense of joy, exhilaration, serenity, pride or fun? You may not be able to lessen some of the more painful feelings that come up, but can you schedule some activities that trigger your positive emotions? A walk in the hills, a game of beach cricket, your favourite DVD or a browse through the photo album to savour some happy memories. I love singing, so even though the words in our traditional carols don’t resonate, I still go for it when I can to experience the pure joy of bringing the music to life. And I never tire of watching my nieces’ nativity plays and end of year concerts for that feeling of pride and joy.

10. What are you grateful for?
I do have a personality with a built-in yearning for life and all that it has to offer – this is great for inspiring dreams, fuelling my goals and driving self-improvement. But it can be double edged sword, because at vulnerable times I can focus on what I haven’t had in my life, and the loss can get the better of me. So I know I need to make a greater effort at this time to feel gratitude for the people in my life, my experiences, talents, achievements and character traits, and for the life I’m fortunate to lead. I have so much to be grateful for.

So that’s the recipe that works for me – leave out some ingredients, or add some of your favourites to create your own amazing Christmas delight. Please enjoy, stay happy and safe, and I look forward to connecting with you in 2018.

PB Performance

There’s no explanation for why my sight was affected – it was just one of those things that I put down to incredibly bad luck. But on the other hand, I was also extremely lucky because I was treated by an outstandingly skilled eye surgeon who was able to give me the sight I have today. I’m unlucky that I have only 25% of normal sight, even with my glasses, but I’m lucky that it’s 25% more than no sight at all.

At school it was unfair that I was teased because of my ridiculously thick glasses and nose to the page reading (even some adults still make offensive references to both), but at the same time I’m incredibly fortunate that I was gifted with a smart brain, that I was able to cope with normal schooling, and that I possessed a fierce determination to be the best that I could be.

I could write pages about how sometimes I feel unlucky (that small child who was teased and excluded is still in the background stamping her foot because life isn’t fair). But I could write just as much about the times I feel so fortunate, so lucky and so grateful for the people, things, characteristics and experiences that make me who I am.

So the story I tell myself now is that I’m both lucky and unlucky – that life is neither fair nor unfair, it just is what it is, and it’s forever unfolding. And in response to the inevitable negatives or disappointments, I’m practising being less reactive, by not feeling sorry for myself, comparing criticising or assigning blame. By focusing on the bigger picture of life in its totality, I can be more accepting of what is, inevitably, the roller coaster journey of being human, alive and flourishing.

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“Organisations don’t change… People do”.

So, no matter how lean your thinking, how strategic your restructuring, how good your process re-engineering, or how innovative your system design, change efforts will come to nothing if our people aren’t supported to change their behaviour. And often that means more than providing them with information or training – it means helping people to adapt, by facilitating a shift in the thinking, beliefs and assumptions which keep them wedded to the old ways.

We know communication is critical to the success of a change project, but what does this mean in reality? At the strategic level we need a detailed stakeholder engagement plan, a comprehensive training plan and some inspirational sermons from the CEO about burning platforms and melting icebergs. But this is not where the real business of change takes place – the engine room of change is fuelled by the day to day conversations between the Executive Team and their senior managers, between the senior managers and their team leaders, and between the team leaders and the front line staff who report to them.

It’s in these conversations that staff discover and process the reality of the change and how it will impact on them. And it’s in these conversations that staff have the opportunity to have their personal concerns addressed, their questions answered, their frustrations aired, their fears disclosed and their ideas heard. I believe these conversations are the real heart of organisational change.

So, do our leaders and managers feel skilled and motivated to engage in the kind of conversations that will support their people to understand, engage with and adapt to the changes expected of them? A spate of recent horror stories from my clients has led me to believe that perhaps not. Here’s a few examples:

• My client was emailed by his manager (on the weekend) asking him to include some data in an attached executive paper – the paper included a recommendation, which my client was oblivious to, that his job was to be redundant in a proposed re-structure
• An operations executive, who knew her job was to be abolished as part of a shift in organisational strategy, had been told she would be redeployed into a newly created stakeholder engagement role. In an executive meeting to discuss the proposed new roles, the HR manager inadvertently distributed the wrong version of the new structure document, on which the CEO had handwritten the names of his preferred occupants against all of the executive roles – my client’s name was not on the chart!
• A service delivery manager found out, whilst watching an all-staff video message from the CEO, that the program he’d successfully led for three years was to be abolished due to lack of alignment with a change initiative
• A learning and development manager found out her full year budget had been slashed by half, when her manager made an off-hand remark about perceived program credibility at a team meeting.

These examples are careless and disrespectful at best, but threatening, anxiety-provoking and disengaging at worst. Is it any wonder we see resistance to change if this is how it’s managed?

If we want change projects to succeed, we need to give our leaders, particularly our middle managers, the information, the tools, the skills and the confidence to have what can be challenging and emotionally charged one on one conversations with their staff. If you’re a manager, and this is not what you signed up for, you may want to re-evaluate whether you’re in the right role, since leading people through change is a crucial and ongoing leadership competency.

If you’re up for this important and satisfying work, keep in mind the following tips:

• Share information about change directly and personally with the people who are impacted most by it – that means face to face, one on one, not in a team meeting, public forum, via email, or (god-forbid) a text message
• Prioritise your conversations – communicate with those most impacted by the change first, and more frequently
• Tell your staff as much as you know about the why, when and how of change, as soon as you can – don’t wait for something big to announce or for the glossy presentation from the Comms team before you start your conversations
• If you don’t know something, communicate that you don’t know, don’t just not communicate – faced with an uncertain future and a communication void, staff will fill in the gaps with their own interpretation, which could be way off the mark
• Show empathy during your conversations – practice recognising and acknowledging what the staff member may be feeling as a result of the actual or perceived impact of the change. Fear, anxiety, grief, frustration, exhaustion and self-doubt are just some of the legitimate feelings that staff may be openly expressing or doing their best to hide
• These conversations are not just a channel for you to convey information, but a critical opportunity for you to engage deeply with your staff member about their concerns and fears as well as their hopes, ideas and expectations – remember, you have two ears and one mouth – listening is just as important, if not more so, than talking.

Whether you’re leading change, implementing change or being impacted by change, start talking about it directly, openly and constructively, and let’s get to the real heart of successful change.

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Perfectionists set high standards for themselves which are often beyond reach or reason, and are highly self-critical when these are not met. A perfectionist needs to perform at heroic levels and achieve flawless results. This is often driven by extreme fear of failure, avoidance of criticism and negative judgement, or by a desire to please others, to gain their approval and to belong.

But there’s a high cost to perfectionism – do you recognise any of these potential consequences?

• high levels of anxiety – we worry we’re never going to be good enough, and the possibility of failure is always looming
• frustration or depression from never being satisfied with our own efforts or results – like being on a treadmill, we never get to our end point, we just keep setting higher and higher standards then beating ourselves up for not meeting them
• feeling overwhelmed – taking on too much because we’re unable to delegate when we know others won’t be able to meet our unachievable standards
• being highly critical of others who don’t meet our expectations, and so alienating colleagues and those we’re close to
• over-control – trying to excessively control situations or people to achieve perfection
• unable to take pleasure or pride in accomplishments, because they’re never enough..

Perfectionism can be hard to recognise, because it seems natural to us to set and exceed heroic standards. And like many behaviours arising from ingrained thinking patters that once kept us safe and helped as feel worthy, it can be hard to shift.

If some of this rings true for you, here’s some suggestions and reminders –  they’re not perfect, but they may help:

• Start by identifying the areas of your life or work where good enough is OK – does every element of your life need to be driven by such high standards?
• Let go of social comparison – there’s always someone in the world who’s better at something, has more of what we want, or is smarter, thinner, more popular or richer
• No-one is, in fact, perfect
• Although we’re conditioned to judge our own self-worth by socially constructed external markers of success, our true value exists independently of our status, possessions, achievements or relationships
• Set goals that are realistic and personally meaningful – don’t strive for something just because it’s important to please someone else or in order to feed a mistaken belief that you need to be superhuman
• Making mistakes is a fundamental part of being human – recognise and accept that it’s the way we learn and grow
• Think about your definition of success – where did this come from, is it genuinely your standard, and is it now serving you in pursuit of a happy and fulfilling life?
• Painful sensations, including failure and the disapproval or rejection of others, are an inevitable part of being human – allow yourself to experience and accept these
• Get comfortable delegating – let others learn by taking responsibility, practicing and making mistakes, with your support, not your criticism
• Take time to really appreciate your achievements and successes.

The perfectionist’s life is one of striving and struggle, in which goals, actions and relationships are driven by the desperation of avoiding failure, criticism and the disapproval of others, rather than by the joy of working towards what’s really wanted – healthy and realistic goals arising from personally meaningful values. In this sense, perfectionism can be a real barrier to both leadership effectiveness and a happier life. With some awareness and support it’s possible to let go of our perfectionist tendencies, enabling us to live a lighter, freer, happier and more successful life, in which our desire to do well works for, rather than against us.

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Sadly, there is increasing evidence that this throw away mentality is impacting our approach to friendships, relationships and other social connections. Thanks to electronic and social media we’re more connected than ever before, but it’s also super easy to disconnect. In a heartbeat (or a finger swipe) we can unfollow, unfriend, reject, delete or even archive any connection that no longer suits or serves us – to quote John Cleese – without so much as a by your leave. After all, why hold on to a relationship when there’s Plenty More Fish In The Sea (as one popular internet dating site would have us believe). Researchers have called this ‘relational disposability’.

Man is a social species – we survive and thrive through our interdependence and interconnectedness. But surely that connectedness involves something more than keeping a compendium of acquaintances, maintained through brief and superficial exchanges in the real or virtual world?

Here’s Dr Brene Brown’s take on connection “I define connection as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard and valued; when they can give and receive without judgement; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship.”

Deep and genuine connection sustains our relationships, enriches our lives and enhances our wellbeing. There is even evidence that social isolation is more detrimental to our long term health than obesity, alcohol or smoking. But sincere human connection involves opening up, being vulnerable, sharing from your heart as well as your head, giving and receiving love, understanding and support, being able to trust and be trusted, and staying authentic.

It also requires an ongoing investment in the connection for the mutual benefit of both parties. Sometimes that investment is simple, joyous and effortless, other times it takes energy, strength and courage. But that doesn’t mean we simply discard the relationship or upgrade to a new model just because that’s the quick and easy thing to do.

I love connecting with people – it’s part of my job, and it’s part of what drives and nourishes me as a person. Sometimes I’m not very good at it, but I believe utterly in its importance, and always work hard at it.

• If you have loads of connections, why not work at enhancing those rather than finding more
• If connecting doesn’t come easily for you, pick one or two relationships to deepen and work with those
• And whilst the art of connecting involves looking for similarities and sharing common ground, it also means accepting individual differences and the rich diversity within our families, workgroups and communities.

Enjoy connecting or re-connecting over the Christmas and holiday period, and I look forward to connecting with you again in 2017.

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