As we (rightly) strengthen regulatory and governance frameworks to ensure safety and quality of care, we also need leaders who are agile, adaptable, forward-thinking and deeply committed to helping people not just stay safe, but truly thrive.

In my work with leaders I can see that that’s a big ask.

The tension between compliance and innovation, risk management and human-centred care, short-term pressures and long-term reform is becoming increasingly difficult for one CEO, Executive or Board Chair to hold alone.

Perhaps this speaks to the growing importance of diversity in leadership teams. Not just diversity of background, but diversity of thinking, experience and perspective. And equally, the importance of creating leadership cultures with enough trust and psychological safety for those perspectives to genuinely be heard.

I’ve spent much of my career in and around disability services organisations, and I’m now heavily immersed in the aged care sector – both professionally as a coach, and personally through the people I love.

I want the leaders of these organisations to keep me and my loved ones safe and well. But I also want them to keep learning, adapting and improving so service recipients experience dignity, choice and genuinely high-quality outcomes.

Understanding the tension is an important first step in managing it.
And perhaps one of the greatest risks for the sector right now is expecting leaders to carry that complexity without enough support themselves.

Jo Saies

pbperformance.com.au

Making changes in my life often reminds me of the magnets. Sometimes a change feels effortless, and just sticks as soon as I take steps towards it. But more often than not I  feel like I’m in between the two wrong-way-around magnets, pushing up against something that I know I want, but not being able to move forward no matter how hard I try.

Many people come to coaching describing themselves as stuck  –  either they’re not able to make a change in a specific behaviour, or they just a describe a general sense of stuckness in work or life. Common scenarios are

• I’m stuck in a job I feel miserable in
• I’m overwhelmed but I have no control over the things overwhelming me
• I’m desperate to stop (habit x) but can’t seem to make any shifts
• My whole life is stuck in a rut.

Being stuck is a signal that the change we want or need to make is not so much about simple behaviours, but more about identifying and shifting some deeply held core beliefs that are driving those behaviours. Our core beliefs are like a computer’s operating system, and our behaviours are like the applications we use to get things done. Sometimes we can’t improve the application without downloading a whole new operating system. That takes self reflection, hard work and some discomfort, and is often where coaching can have the maximum impact.

If you’re stuck, here’s five steps to take – it’s my ABCDE of getting unstuck. If you’re leading or managing a staff member who seems stuck, you could work through these steps with them in a coaching conversation.

A: Acknowledge you’re stuck – what is the challenge you want to move forward on but don’t seem to be able to?

Eg I want to be able to delegate more….

B: Be honest – how are you not doing the thing you want to move towards? What are you doing instead?

Eg I don’t take time to coach my staff on new projects or tasks; it’s quicker and easier to do things myself….

C: Claim the Rewards – how do you benefit, or what do you gain from this approach?

Eg things always get done; tasks are done they way I want them to be done; I’m confident they’re done to a good standard; I feel good because my expertise is recognised and needed; I avoid feeling bad or being criticised for mistakes or poor work being done…

D: Discover the Downsides – what price are you paying for not following through on changing this approach?

Eg I’m overwhelmed with work; our team is not achieving our goals; I feel like I’m failing and others are judging me for that; my team members feel disempowered…

E: Equalise – Weigh up the short-term rewards and benefits (C) against the longer term downsides (D); What price are you paying for the rewards?

Take some time with this process, and be kind to yourself – the way you’ve been doing things has served you well until now. Your protective beliefs have kept you safe and secure, so acknowledge this, and at the same time acknowledge that getting unstuck means downloading a new operating system to support you to respond more effectively in a more complex environment.

If you need support in getting unstuck, please get in touch to talk about whether coaching is the right tool for you.

Jo Saies

pbperformance.com.au

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.

PB Performance