An uncomfortable position

Get sick, be nervous

Hands shaking, stomach churning, heart fluttering, nerve racking, muscle tensing pressure. This can be the experience of a new job – and it is a good thing. Job starts can be difficult because it is at this point that the most uncertainty lays and everything up until here is history. The path is open but a lack of definition obscures the view like a heavy fog whilst the mind simultaneously questions skillset, experience and the ability to perform tasks that are still largely unknown. Discomfort is the normal state when uncertainty is present and the nerves can provide a form of energy rather than act as a facilitator of dread. Like a flashing amber light, these feelings are a caution signal. Be aware, be prepared, be agile.

Know your skills, start achieving

You were chosen to fill the position for a reason and even if doubt as to why lays in the back of your mind, understanding what strengths you bring to the table can help you take first steps and get some early wins. Early wins can help you in several ways such as balancing your initial steps, confidence building, foundation for future opportunity, position justification and networking influence. Knowing your personal processes – how you learn, how you react, how you manage emotions, where strengths lay and which weakness leaves holes – helps build priority points for what to start on, how to approach, how to manage and where to direct actions. Understanding yourself gives you both a base from which to operate and expand upon as well as a fall-back position on which you can rely if required by the situation.

Find holes, plant seeds, get growing

With any new job, especially the high-value, challenging kind that makes you stretch, there is likely to be many gaps in knowledge and skills which can not be pre-closed. So, be prepared to learn. Most learning, like uncertainty, is uncomfortable because it is filled with unknowns, failures and takes investment to develop towards proficiency with little immediate pay-off. The understanding of what to learn can be discovered by identifying key players, observing the culture and asking questions from influencers on where they see things currently and where they are both expecting and directing things to go.

Develop quick and smart – prioritise first

There will be a large list of gaps and it is both impractical and unwise to attempt to close them all simultaneously. Prioritise them from critical (obtain quickly) to trivial (can wait) and further categorise them into opportunity to build, investment required to develop and precision needed to operate effectively. Some will need immediate and full attention while others can be postponed. A few may require fast action but average quality and some others may need high investment in learning the basics but require little need for detail. Whatever the variables, learn them.

Apply fast and small

As skills are acquired, tasks learned and processes formed, apply them quickly. Become accustomed to using your growing skillset by applying them to smaller tasks often so that comfort and confidence builds, small achievements are felt and modest results are seen. Stay aware through the entire process so that you can both witness the progress and identify possibilities to further tune your personal processes. Observing and adjusting process means that with each instance, learning efficiency increases. Actively building a relevant toolbox helps secure the quick wins and demonstrates to your direct network the ability to learn, proactivity and a willingness to grow independently. This leads to opportunity, expansion, and future influence within the system.

Name, skills, needs

The names and titles of colleagues are just the anchor points on which the web is hung. Networking is about identification, cooperation and connection. Your network is your resource pool from which support can be found and ideas spring. Identify skills and make your skills known through observation, conversation and most importantly, demonstration. When in need, find the complementary skills within the network that fit requirements and reciprocate when possible. Work together with openness and integrity and all parties benefit. Even if there is no direct benefit for you, connect nodes of the network that can cooperate and benefit each other. Creating the handshakes that build strong, mutually beneficial relationships solidifies your value to the group. If networking is one of your uncomfortable areas, get researching and practising as soon as possible. There are many good resources and coaches that can offer advice in these matters, use them.

Fail. Learn. Repair.

With so much uncertainty, many unfamiliar tasks, cultural variances and unforeseen challenges hidden behind corners, failure is guaranteed. Fail well. Resilience is built upon the back of adversity and mistake and the ability to persevere, adapt or let go are skills worthy of continual development. Professional freedom comes with responsibility and with responsibility comes consequences. Rather than lay blame or have excuses for failure, use your energy to learn and repair the damage. Fail, learn, repair. Fail. learn, repair. Make this part of your personal mantra for managing the failure of all things, irrespective of size. At times, it may require the support of your network and at other times the weight may lay squarely on your shoulders, whichever it is, make your process for dealing with failure one that turns all failure into a learning experience and skill development exercise.

Love it

Whether today is the first day of a new job, the last day of an old or any day in between, do what you need to do, learn what you need to learn and enjoy the experience you both receive from and provide to your environment. Every start will have an end which will be followed by another start. With experience and development, beginnings will still be uncomfortable, but each time in new ways that widen and deepen your processes and understanding.

The Success in Failure

When a company achieves strong results, phrases like ‘we worked hard, we were able to improve, the strategy we implemented paid off’ come from the leadership. But, if results are weak, ‘consumer confidence is down, competition is fierce, the difficult economic situation’ phrases are frequented.

When things go wrong, we much rather (and more commonly) create excuses and lay blame than look at our own actions and shortcomings. There are many reasons for this but three quick examples may be that it is easier to accept a loss incurred when the cause for the loss is not our own, the cost of laying blame is preferable to feelings of personal inadequacy and, to protect ourselves against negative repercussions.

Distancing ourselves from failure may insulate us from adverse emotions and immediate exposure but often weakens our future ability and may cause us to avoid failure altogether. Avoiding failure is a losing game as the act itself supports the failure to change, and the future of a system without movement is an inevitable death.

In order to be strong in failure, understanding needs to be developed. In much of our experience, failure and mistake are used synonymously but this is not the case. One way to look at it could be that a mistake is a known failure repeated, such as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Mistake looks at the right and wrong of something whereas failure looks at the state of a situation which makes it a snapshot of a mid-process event. It may take many instances of varied failure to produce a successful outcome and many more to reach significant consistency.

Accepting failure as a part of an ongoing process allows room for learning, development and innovation to be built so that each occurrence helps the system become wiser, stronger and more creative; bringing success one step closer.

Understanding failure

The first thing to understand about failure is that it isn’t personal. Failing doesn’t make you a failure. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t look at your techniques, skills, ideas and process, it means that these things aren’t you and are always in a constant state of change so, don’t identify with them, work at improving them.

The next is, do not ignore failure. To learn from it, one must investigate and understand it. Identify all of the inputs in and influences on the failed process. Do this well, and the value of information gathered far outweighs the cost of the failure and what this insight presents in the future, may prove invaluable in itself.

Having said not to ignore failure, the next step is not to attach to it. For the lessons learned to be useful, they need to be applied to a following attempt. Look deeply, let go and move on.

The last is related to the first, You are not defined by your failures but, accept that others are likely to define you by them. Approach their opinion like a failure on their part and do not identify with it but do not discount it as worthless either. The perspectives of others can be an excellent source of information, possibility and strength if you choose not to take them personally.

Our relationship with failure is a complicated one. The way we see it, feel it, stigmatise it and dodge it is influenced by many factors in our various cultures and education systems. The dropping of the negativity towards, the understanding of and the disconnection to failure opens enormous potential for failure to be transformative. So rather than try to pass the responsibility of failure onto others, own it, learn it and build upon it. And, if you are in a position to judge failure, reward the attempt, support the investigation and be a part of building something greater.

In hindsight, the end destination may be a success but the trail behind is always littered with failure.

Scaling what we think we know

Where are our preferences and impressions formed, are our feelings ours, can we truly take another’s perspective, is there an alternative? What we really know and why to take the journey for answers.

Get on the scale

As we travel along our journey, our experiences, training, parents, friends, media, governments and thoughts come together to create a scale rating system. Most times, this scale is created passively as our mental systems manage and compile information in the background into a rulebook that then dictates our impressions of the world around us.

To evaluate something we compare it against our personal reference scale to tell us what sounds, looks, feels, smells and tastes and weigh it as good, bad and everything in between. But, these scales are built to appraise more than just our physical senses. We develop these for psychological and emotional experiences too. Interpersonal relationships, beliefs, values, likes and dislikes, actions made personally and by others, and a vast amount of other aspects that we place judgement upon. Essentially, these scales create our position on all matters that concern us (and many areas that don’t).

Getting emotional

A conflict is created when something challenges our current position. If someone acts out of accordance with our social rules, we feel uncomfortable. If our ideas are questioned or criticised we feel attacked and get angry. And, if we act in a way that breaks our own values, we feel guilty. But, when the situation aligns with the rulebook we are satisfied and if we act to surpass our personal levels, we feel happy and proud. All of our emotions skip and slide based on these judgement scales as they deliver our expectations for the way things ought to be, shouldn’t be, what is best or the worst. We become emotional slaves to an invisible list that we have been programmed to follow.

Another’s shoes

Once a position is held, it is very difficult to move to an unfamiliar one and this in part is why it is challenging to shift to another person’s perspective. It is uncomfortable and sometimes terrible to change perspective but even when a move is made, it is impossible to truly see through their eyes. Having only our experience, our scales, our held positions, we can never fully imagine those of somebody else. We can never completely understand, we can only guess. And because our seemingly objective guesses (born from limited information and a position calibrated from personal experience) match with what we already know, we feel that we have done well and drawn an accurate and relevant picture. Empathy is a skill that is used as an attempt to close the gaps in interpersonal positioning but due to varying experience and the resulting reference points, it is an imperfect tool that can never completely achieve parity between positions. There is always an error.

Closing the gap further?

Understanding. Not an understanding of their position, an understanding of ours. The acknowledgement that no matter how strongly we feel, our gut reactions, our personal experience, our norms and beliefs – have made us biased. Our own shoes affect our thinking on all things. We are attached to what we know much more strongly than to the unfamiliar and are obviously completely blind to what we do not know. To obtain understanding, we have to accept that we are imperfect in our judgement due to our priming and preferences and allow room for errors. In so doing, we leave space for growth because we have a deeper understanding of where we may be, where they could be and where other things possibly lay; and know that we may be wrong. We can build a more relevant map and understand that the blurred lines between locations are a known unknown, but do exist.

From an emotional standpoint, the understanding that our thoughts, actions and reactions cause feelings that may not be entirely accurate (and at times are significantly inaccurate), we are better able to disconnect, observe our position and interject a little active rationality to better understand the situation. Our decision making ability can improve not by the increase in information, but by the increase in awareness of potential judgement errors and therefore the risks involved.

Sail off the edge of the world

The sight of uncertainty raises questions of what is hiding in the fog and like an explorer looking to discover what lays beyond the horizon, we can journey into these areas and begin to clear the air. With a curious mind, and an open heart, challenges are met firstly by acceptance, secondly by questions and hopefully, as the right questions are asked, understanding. When it comes to communication between people, what is often hiding in the murk is a lot more similarity than difference but our positions and the trust in the accuracy of them, work to make unknown waters no-go zones. This lowers the chance of conversation, narrows dialogue between borders and therefore any real, honest and truthful understanding.

Grow together

The fog insulates us from having our position challenged and can help us feel a sense of security but, it isolates us from each other and can make us cold, inflexible and ignorant. When two parties both work to blow the fog from the distance between, they grow outwardly together, and inwardly deeper. An internal repositioning of narrow-minded knowing to open-eyed unknowing, sharing experience and challenging the reference scales opens the possibility for acceptance, understanding and change; and greatly increases its probability.

It takes one

If a question comes from a root to understand, accept and be open, a reply is more likely. The response or lack of one hints at a position which aids understanding and points to roads through barriers so that the conversation can continue. If the reply comes from a curious, like-mind, the conversation is one of effectiveness, development, adaptability and mutual growth. The benefits are large, the implications are huge.

Taraz Kanti-Paul

One voice to start a conversation, two to continue, many for peace. Fear dies with understanding.