responsibility

What more can we do?

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It goes without saying that the last three years have been a hell of a ride for most employees. In the UK we’ve faced into Brexit uncertainty, a global pandemic and now a war in Europe. And in many other countries across the globe, there is a shared sense of anxiety, uncertainty and fear. Those feelings are shared by many of us regardless of whether we are at home or at work.

There is much business can do to be a force for good in the world, I genuinely believe that, but whatever kind of organisation you work in or lead one of the biggest things you can do now is to focus on the needs of your employees and to truly focus on the things that they need, rather than the things that you want them to do for you.

Whilst it won’t be an exclusive list, those things generally revolve around three key words; certainty, acceptance and care.

When there is so much disruption around us, the more that we can do to provide a single place of certainty is hugely important to our psychological wellbeing. I’ve long argued that anyone who says they, “love change” is generally talking about change they’re in control of and at the moment there is so much going on our of our control that the more we can provide boring levels of certainty for our organisations the better.

The last two years have shone a huge light on the different lives that we all lead, our differing choices, responsibilities and backgrounds. In times of significant disruption it is easier than ever to feel alone, to feel that we are the only ones that are experiences life in a certain way. Our role in not only talking about accepting difference, but showing it on a daily basis is a huge signal towards psychological safety. When the world feels fragmented, we can act as a force that brings people together for the better.

And whilst care might feel like an old fashioned word to use in terms of leadership or organisational responsibility, the value and power of it remains undiminished. Genuine care reaches beyond statements of intent, or social media posts about your latest endeavours, it operates first at the individual level and if that is absent the rest falls into insignificance.

We can’t, of course, change the world. But we can each day make it slightly better, but only if we challenge ourselves to ask what more we can do.

Holding yourself back

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I regularly meet people with a clear narrative on their unhappiness in their organisation. It isn’t that I attract it, at least I don’t think so, I just consider it a facet of the job; when you spend your life working with people you can expect to hear the good, the bad and the indifferent.

Whilst the situation, the participants and the timing of the narratives are different, the organisations, the villain, the circumstance all change, there is one common factor that links them all together. The victim is the narrator.

Life has a habit of throwing us curve balls, things don’t always proceed in the way that we would like, or indeed envisage. Sometimes circumstances run amok with the best laid plans that we have made. Our ability to move on from this determines both our success and our happiness.

I’m no life coach, so I’ll stick to the events that take place at work and offer you three options if you’re unhappy with something that has happened in the past that still holds you back;

  • leave and go somewhere else,
  • find a way to accept it,
  • remain unhappy at your own cost.

It really is that simple.

Ultimately, you are singularly responsible for your happiness and whilst you can’t control the things that happen, the promotion missed, the pay rise promised or the reporting change, you can control your response to it and your actions thereafter. Life is full of ups and downs, dwelling on the low points has no material impact on anyone else, it just holds you back.

Which, by all accounts, is a pretty dumb thing to do.

 

 

 

Actions and consequences

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Are we always responsible for the consequences of our actions? It seems that’s the accepted wisdom, but I’m really not so sure. On one hand, it makes for a remarkably neat way of judging others, but it also feels like a convenient “get out of jail card” for absolving others of acting in an appropriate way.

Our social and political landscape is full of judgments on decisions that were made and the unintended consequences;

He should have known…

She should have seen that coming…

And similarly, our organisational rhetoric often places so much onus on individual actions and the subsequent consequences. Particularly the more senior that an individual gets.

I have no doubt that our actions define us, how we choose to be, how we present and behave, how we interact with others. Unless you believe in a higher force, we are all responsible for our actions. But in accepting this, do we throw ourselves open to however the universe responds as entirely fair?

If you choose to go out at night, are you responsible for being mugged?

Or wearing the wrong clothes, accepting of being harassed?

I don’t think anyone would suggest that the individual has to accept these consequences. Yet in the political, social and commercial aspects of life we hold a different burden of proof.

Being able to differentiate responsibility for the choices which we control and the consequences we do not allows us to analyse and interrogate responsibility in a much more balanced way, but it also helps us place responsibility where it really lies.

None of us want to be held to account for events truly out of our control. But whether we set the same bar for others…well that’s a different question.

 

 

 

Lawyers have moral responsibilities too

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In the middle of last week, a story broke about a businessman who had made financial settlements using Settlement Agreements including NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) on a number of occasions following claims of sexual harassment and racial abuse.

Despite the undeniably serious nature of the original actions, in a world of global news reporting it may not have warranted front page news, except the businessman in question took an injunction out against the newspaper that had investigated the claims preventing it from publishing the details. And then in return, a Lord used parliamentary privilege to name the businessman.

I’ve followed the story, beginning to end and you know what? The whole thing stinks.

It stinks because instead of having the right debate, we’ve wrapped the story up in one of legal rights and wrongs. We’re discussing the integrity of the courts versus parliament, we’re discussing the integrity of NDAs, we’re discussing the integrity of legal precedent.

When we should be discussing the integrity of the people involved. The individual(s) that carried out the act in the first place. The leaders and HR professionals that sustained the culture in the organisation(s). And of course, the victims.

But also the lawyers that drafted the agreements, that defended the agreements and who have now lost sight of the individuals at the heart of the matter and are making intellectual arguments about legal supremacy, when if they and their peers done the right thing in the first place, this wouldn’t have been an issue.

Now I know that I’ll be faced with arguments that these agreements are entirely legal and proper, that it isn’t for lawyers to determine right or wrong but simply to enact what is legal and what is not. That the sanctity of the independence of the courts is paramount etc. I know, I’ve heard the arguments before. But I call b******t.

I’m sat here wracking my brains trying to think of a time in my 25 years of practice where I’ve been involved in a case where we’ve used a settlement agreement to settle a case of sexual harassment or racial abuse, and simply I can’t think of one. So to have multiple ones in the same organisation?

You can talk about the sanctity of the agreement and the “independent legal advice” that the individual has to take before they sign, but I want to talk about the moral responsibility of people propping up a rotten culture. I hold my profession to account, I hold leaders to account, but I also hold the legal profession to account. You can’t make clever arguments to claim immunity, you own this problem too.

So instead of continuing to engage in intellectual masturbation on the rights and wrongs of a member of the House of Lords naming the individual in question, let’s ask ourselves why they had to. Instead of debating the use of NDAs versus public interest, let’s ask ourselves why they’d ever be used in a case of this kind. And instead of pointing the finger at others, let’s start by asking ourselves a few searching questions.