Nov 26

2024

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Helen Whitten

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A Personal View on Assisted Dying

Assisted dying ignores “what it is to be human” a member of the Church of England wrote recently, but who is to decide what it is “to be human”?  For them it is presumably a spiritual matter but for others it could just be based on the biology of the human body and its frailties. 

Similarly, a self-appointed “progressive” wrote that people “ought to” end their lives by making the most of their last months. But who are they to tell others what they ought to do, especially if that person has no capacity to make the most of their life? The same writer also stated that, with this bill, a person might be put under pressure to end their life in the “wrong” way.  But who is someone to tell another person what is or isn’t the wrong or right way to spend their last days?

It seems we are being expected to abide by another person’s God or belief system in this.  At a point in time in history it was declared that a life was the gift of God but there can be no concrete evidence of this, only faith.  I believe in the sacredness of life but that does not extend to prolonging it beyond what is tolerable for the individual, plus there are many people who don’t believe in this particular God, or any God, or have other beliefs, but have been dictated to for centuries by people forcing these regulations on others. 

After all, the established religions were against IVF to create life at first, yet this breakthrough has changed women’s and family’s lives and brought precious children into the world. Watch the new movie Joy for a flavour of this.

Contrarily the CofE seems to have been remarkably quiet on the issue of saying that one’s birth sex was created by God in a specific way.  In fact, Welby, as Archbishop of Canterbury, supported trans ideology being taught in schools, which, on the basis of considering “what it is to be human” seems to be very much on the spectrum of making it an individual choice as to what sex one is, despite being born a particular way.  So, if we can have individual choice over one’s body on changing sex, why can’t we have it on choosing to end our lives?

The NHS already acts as God, as does the Government, by making budgetary and clinical decisions around who will get medication and who will not.  It is already an Excel spreadsheet and postcode lottery. It is certainly possible that the NHS could be as keen to kill us off as our relatives would, potentially by applying the Do Not Resuscitate notices.

The independent Office of Health Economics estimated that around 20 terminally ill people in the UK die in unrelieved pain each day.  Also, fewer than 5% of terminally ill people in England who needed hospice care received it in 2023.  It isn’t always possible to alleviate all pain, and many doctors know how miserable that can be. It may be distressing to assist a death, but it is also distressing for staff not to be able to help a patient be free of pain.   

Two-thirds of the UK population want to go ahead with some form of assisted dying, and it is telling that many of them are in the over-65 age-bracket.  In other words, closer to death than some of the people who are dictating the law to us. In the conversations I have had with my peer group, most of us are anxious about the end of our lives.  Most of us want to exit this world with dignity.  Most of the friends I have spoken to say we would choose to die rather than linger in some care home or NHS ward in some state of pain or distress.  We might well choose to go a little earlier but leave this world with dignity, for our own sake as much as that of our families.

What is stopping us are old belief systems that belong to another era, to religions other than our own, other beliefs than our own.  And fear – the endless fear of “the slippery slope” that people will feel they are a burden.  Yes, they might but parents make sacrifices for their children all the time and I hear often that elderly relatives say that their life has become unbearable and that they want to die but can’t. And, as I wrote above, my main fear is whether I have sufficient money to pay for a care home and/or whether I shall die in pain or without dignity. 

Personally, I don’t think it should be the general doctor or hospital ward that supervises these cases.  I believe it should be the Palliative Care system that already deals with compassionate ways of looking after people in their last days.  I have seen people write that we should improve the Palliative Care system rather than approve the Assisted Dying bill.  I believe we should do both and have specialist teams who oversee the terminally ill and ensure their death is as peaceful as possible.

The likelihood of being able to get a High Court Judge to approve these cases is surely only going to lead to more distress and delay, as the courts can’t even bring rape or assault cases to court for years on end.  How can a High Court Judge add anything to the equation, or more than two objective doctors, the person themselves and their families?  What evidence will they be able to analyse, and how? If there is a dispute, obviously the law will need to be actively involved.  Otherwise, I don’t see that involving a Judge brings anything other than more delay and complexity to an already complex event.

In this country we have to effectively starve ourselves to death if we wish to die and, unless we are in a position to be cared for, that can be painful and distressing for all involved.  The alternative is to go to Dignitas, but why should we be forced to travel to another country and potentially put any relative or friend who accompanies us at risk of being accused of being an accomplice?

If we allowed an animal to be in the pain or distress that we allow humans to be, we would be reported to the RSPCA for cruelty.  It seems to me outrageous that I can give my cat a more dignified and peaceful death than I can expect to have myself.  This isn’t murder.  This is a choice personally made about one’s own life, one’s own body. Why should the state or another person have the right to choose what I do with my body if I am not threatening anyone else or putting anyone else at risk?

Of course, safeguards need to be put in place, and I think we need to be very careful when it comes to disability and also mental illness. I have personal experience of those who were mentally ill and suicidal but came out of it and lived happy lives for many decades afterwards.  I am horrified by the posters placed on the tube by Sadiq Khan and TfL apparently of young people celebrating suicide.  This is not what this bill is about.  It is a serious piece of legislation intended to put some people, not all, and only by personal choice, out of their misery as they approach the end of their lives.

There are moments when the world and its possibilities change and, yes, we need to learn from all the mistakes and breakthroughs other nations have made in this complicated subject.  IVF was a compassionate breakthrough and so, I believe, can assisted dying be.  To help someone die peacefully and out of pain can also be a compassionate breakthrough.

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Nov 18

2024

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Helen Whitten

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It’s Time to give Work a Better Press

“You’ll never lie on your deathbed wishing you had spent more time at work.”  That’s how the saying goes and is repeated by many gurus.  Of course it has a point, in that family and friends and other aspects of life are important and should not be neglected.  But when I look back over my lifetime, I realize that some of my very best moments have been at work. So let’s not put others off the pleasures of the workplace.

There are a huge number of people in the UK who are economically inactive and there appears to be a real problem getting young people into the workplace.  This seems to be due to anxiety and mental health problems.  Have they come to imagine that work is a negative experience?  There is so much press in recent years about people not wanting to go into the office or pushing to work from home – is this the problem?  Does the daily commute and interaction with others actually frighten them, put them off?

They need to be informed of other perspectives, don’t they?  We need to share stories of the fun, creativity, teamwork, belonging and the sense of fulfilment we can receive from work.  A good job done, whatever that job may be, can give a real sense of satisfaction.

At the same time there is a group of over 55s who retired young and now would like to get back into work because they are missing the sense of purpose, the social interaction, the enjoyment of challenge that they used to experience in the workplace.  Perhaps some of this group could talk to the young and persuade them that work is not so bad after all, that sitting around doing nothing is not good for the mind, body or soul.

Some time ago I was Deputy Chair of the Work-Life Balance Trust, and Dame Shirley Conran was Chair.  We worked towards encouraging flexibility in the workplace, job sharing and part-time working.  We didn’t intend, by any stretch, to put people off working. We just thought it would make life easier, especially in families where both parents are working, to allow for some flexibility.

But all that was before Covid, at which point some organisations imagined they could do without their offices and save lots of money, and individual employees took on a semi-hermit role at home behind a Zoom screen, or were simply furloughed.  But none of this really works.  We’re social beings and creativity requires more heads than just one and young staff can’t learn how things are done if they are sitting at home and not watching their bosses and colleagues deal with the everyday aspects of what it takes to achieve results for a business or organisation. And if you avoid work you learn none of these things.

I am not alone in saying that I miss the camaraderie, the teamwork of sitting down with a group of other minds and working out solutions to problems.  I had some of the best times of my life meeting diverse groups of people I would never have met had I not worked, or sat behind a laptop at home. Zoom calls don’t allow for those off-piste moments at the coffee machine where you really get to know a colleague or client and chat about topics you might never have thought about before.

Just think how work educates people not only about the skillset required for the job, the way the organisation works, but also about getting on with diverse types of people, people they may not like but have to find a way to work with.  Think of the social skills and resilience that is developed in these moments and how, when one has survived one’s first presentation, or client pitch, or even just a day at work where one has done a good job, whatever that is, one feels better about oneself, and one’s confidence grows.  Some stress and challenge is essential to our growth and personal development. Sitting alone and working from home, or not working at all, does not broaden the mind with other perspectives or experiences.

There is plenty of evidence of how work is better for us than sitting at home bored or feeling useless.  Work can give us meaning, even if it means doing a good job stacking shelves, sweeping leaves off the road, or cleaning a toilet.  Any work we do has a purpose and meaning and our actions, small or large, can have a beneficial impact on others whether it is being a doctor, managing someone’s money, insuring their risks or cleaning someone’s house.  In a recent article a woman who retired young and regretted it, tried without success to find a job of the managerial calibre of her career but is now happily working as a cleaner and being a dog walker.  Doing something for others is better than doing nothing.  And this is quite apart from the fact that earning money gives us motivation, choice and power over our lives.

We need to do more to help coach young people into the workplace and realize how much fun they could make it.  Similarly, those with mental health problems, prisoners, or those with long-term illnesses are unlikely to find their way to fitness or to take the steps required to enter into the workplace without help.  They need coaching to support them in managing simple things like cvs, budgeting rent and food, preparing for an interview, turning up on time.  Step by step, people can learn to develop the life skills they need to take this leap and realize they can swim and not sink, and that they are missing out on something quite precious.

It may be quite hard to appreciate what I am saying if you are in the middle of life, juggling family and work and difficult bosses or clients, but looking back, as I do, on five stimulating decades of work, I encourage you to seek out the good moments, to appreciate that sitting at home ‘in leisure’ is far less interesting than it might appear, especially if you are likely to have another three decades out of work when you retire.  It can be lonely.  You have fewer choices generally, and certainly financially.

I believe individuals lose out spiritually and personally if they take shelter out of the workplace. And yes, flexible working and homeworking can be helpful but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.  The country can’t afford it economically if people don’t go to work but it can also be a personal loss. There’s a big world out there and it can be stimulating, and I am confident that I shall feel very happy, on my deathbed, that I did spend a great deal of my time at work. So let’s give work a better press.

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Oct 22

2024

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Helen Whitten

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Clarity of Purpose and Message is what we need

We all want this government to be successful.  Indeed we need them to be successful in order to provide us with the functioning health, education, justice, policing, defence and all systems that we require to maintain a healthy society. It doesn’t matter what you voted, the reality is that we all desperately need this country to thrive, grow and be harmonious but in order to achieve this we need to receive clear messages and a clear direction from our leaders.  This is true of any leader whether of a country or an organisation. Clarity is key, yet all we have received from this government so far is contradiction.

They give us the message that they are going to hit and punish the “filthy rich” and yet we see these same politicians enjoying the trappings of wealth in freebies of designer clothes, events and spectacles that they themselves have not worked hard to achieve.  They tell us there is no social mobility in this country so they must redistribute wealth and education and yet every one of them and most of those who are ever interviewed on the radio these days have come from poor backgrounds similar to Keir’s endless repetition of being the “son of a toolmaker”.  If there is no social mobility how come so many people are now in positions of power from supposedly poor backgrounds?  Most of those I know who have made money have come from unprivileged backgrounds and done well, so why should they now be punished when they have worked hard, employed others and contributed to this country?

Keir Starmer apparently believes that the fuss made over the freebies is “trivial” which shows how far he gets things wrong.  These things matter.  Those who are hard working people don’t get these freebies.  Indeed they are not allowed to accept so much as a bottle of wine or a meal out in business in case it looks like corruption.  I had to stand up in front of businesspeople every day to present but I couldn’t get any tax reduction for a clothing allowance and don’t like shopping any more than Rachel Reeves does. They want the accoutrements of wealth and success without having worked hard at either or accomplished, as yet, anything. They need to wake up to this message.

They say they are not going to tax working people and yet intend to tax and regulate business to an extent that it is bound to impact those working people they say they are here to protect.  They say they are here for business and yet none of them seems to have much if any experience of setting up a business, putting their investment and hard work into working 24/7 to make it work, employ others and constantly battle the competitive marketplaces of the world. 

They say they are for law and order and have shown themselves to get very tough on those who tweeted after the Southport murders and yet they let out prisoners who have done far worse crimes and allow shoplifting to go pretty much unpunished. Perhaps they see it is as “trivial” to bother to arrest those who have gone into Tesco and stuffed as much as they could under their jacket, as I saw the other day here in Kew, and run out before they could be caught.  Maybe Tesco can afford this but a small independent bookshop in Norwich had £1000 worth of stock stolen recently and that is a great deal of money for a small business.  But I don’t think politicians understand the small stuff and how it impacts people’s everyday lives. They say they will stop the boats and criminal gangs but they don’t seem to realize how deeply entrenched these gangs are now in our society and that those who shoplift are often part of such a gang.  Similarly turning a blind eye to “illegal” immigrants or asylum seekers throws up the question as to whether others decide to turn a blind eye to the word “illegal” in other things, such as stealing.

They say they will protect women and yet in the next breath say they will let transgender men enter women’s changing spaces.  They say we need more homes, yet they treat landlords as if they are all greedy criminals and make it as unattractive as possible for anyone to become one.  They say they are here to protect the elderly and yet take away the annual heating allowance for most and are, it seems, intent on raiding any of us who have managed to save or need our savings in order to raise income for daily living.   

They say they are for free speech and yet we see examples of people being silenced for writing, expressing or tweeting an opinion and they do nothing.  It makes many of us writers extremely nervous about what we share these days.  It’s beginning to feel like the Stasi, and with Starmer saying he believes that government needs to be like a ‘nanny state to protect the public’ – eg with the ban on smoking in pub gardens – it begins to give him the flavour of a potential authoritarian, and that’s unlikely to end well for any of us.

They seem to be, consciously or not I am not sure, following the examples of the Kremlin in using disinformation.  As I mention in my book No Lemons in Moscow, the Russians for sure have an interest in sowing disinformation in their own country and certainly in the West in order to stir up discontent and division.  The last Labour Government were the princes of spin and made it almost an inevitable part of political messaging, to our detriment.

Hannah Arendt wrote “The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer.”

This government need to do better on clarity. They had months to prepare but they have left the UK population with endless contradiction and confusion in that period.  No leader can expect people to follow them unless those people buy into what they are being told.  You can’t buy into contradiction. I rather fear that they are deliberately making it unclear, knowing we would not like what they were truly intending.

We all need to hold them to account on clarity of purpose, free speech, fair justice and functioning public services, all for the common good. Surely, we all want a successful government of whatever hue.  But I fear that if they don’t clear up this messaging soon we shall all end up, as Arendt says, not believing anything any longer.  That is a dangerous place for us to be, both as individuals and as a country.

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Oct 01

2024

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Helen Whitten

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The Nature of Life is Change and Challenge

Adapt or die.  Well maybe that is a bit dramatic for a rainy autumn day but we only have to look back through history both in terms of humanity, the animal world and nature to see that this is true. This week the last coal mine in England closed and the Port Talbot steelworks was shut down.   Thousands of people are having to rethink their lives in major ways.

On a more prosaic level, thousands of school children are attending a new school, where there will be new teachers, potential new friends, a new environment.  How many of them have been encouraged to stop and think “who do you want to be at this next stage of your life?” or “what do you want to have experienced in these next years alongside exams?”.  Most of the time we just blindly walk into the next challenging situation without taking even a short time out for that reflection.  

Yet change, and its challenges, are part of our daily lives.  Once we have withstood the ups and downs of school we move on to college, university, work and the adult life.  We have to let go of childish ways and learn how to take responsibility, to juggle work, finance, mortgages, relationships, marriage.  In my own experience becoming a parent is the most transformative moment of most people’s lives – the enormous responsibility we take on for a child’s life and wellbeing, the joys and heartaches of watching them grow up.  And then they leave us to go to university or into work and it is both a proud yet terrifying moment – “oh help, who am I going to be now?”!

Entering work and moving up into new roles, managing and leading others, often with little training, possibly being made redundant, moving to a new environment, all this requires flexibility.  Even in today’s world many are under-supported in managing these transitions successfully and confidently.  And don’t get me on the subject of old age, retirement and all its challenges!  I have learnt that if we set a goal, our mind works to bring to notice the actions that will help us attain it. Despite being 74 I still have a vision board in my kitchen and I watch with admiration people many years older than me composing music, painting pictures, writing books and forging new adventures of all kinds. 

So, thinking about all this, I wrote a book, The Change Wizard, now available on Kindle and Amazon, with the now, very sadly, late Richard Israel, with whom I also wrote my first book Your Mind at Work: Self-Knowledge for Business Success.  In our mid-fifties when we wrote both books, and working in the coaching arena with people in many different fields and walks of life, we observed how little time people gave to considering their sense of themselves within these transitional moments. 

As companies focus on results and don’t always have the budget for developing staff, we decided to offer an in-depth manual for personal change.  This is not organisational change.  It is about you, your life, your values, your dreams, options and choices, decisions and actions.  It is about your relationships with partners, joys and possible difficulties, divorce, bereavement and it is all about how to adapt to what is and yet look constantly towards and envision a positive future and “be prepared”.

We have created this as a Seven Step process that you could undertake giving it a few minutes over seven days, seven weeks, seven months or however much time you wish to invest in yourself.  Alongside the book we have also created a Change Wizard Journal with space for your own ideas, goals and reflections as well as the questions and exercises we have provided in both books.  These steps are:

Step One: The Mechanics of Change: understanding how change occurs; knowing how your mind works; knowing how you learn, how you can unlearn and relearn and continue to be open to new possibilities

Step Two:  Becoming aware: what is Working and What is Not, and why; inevitable change, being proactive within trends.

Step Three: Defining your Positive Outcomes: what will change look like and feel like, how will others know when you have got there?

Step Four: Developing the Will to Change: identifying the benefits of change, and engaging the emotion necessary to motivate you to work at it.

Step Five: Planning how you are going to get there; identifying what skills, capabilities, resources and support you need to help you achieve your goals.

Step Six: Practice makes perfect: overcoming obstacles, eliciting feedback, learning and persisting

Step Seven: Enjoying Success and setting new goals: Celebration and review. What worked and what did not work? The continuing stream of life – where are you going next?

I think our generation, growing up with parents who had just been through World War II and who had been born during World War I, understood that life could be tough.  That attitude probably hampered some of our goals, certainly for women whose roles were often still defined in the home or in lowly jobs.  Yet I think the understanding that our lives could be full of change and challenge gave us that sense of being prepared and we realised we had to develop resilience and be adaptable.  From what I hear and read I think perhaps younger generations are having to learn the importance of resilience a little later in life and that, alongside the dreams, we all have to develop the character to withstand both the downs as well as the ups.

Richard Israel and I have been great believers in developing this self-knowledge and preparing oneself for the future.  As Socrates is reputed to have said “the unexamined life is not worth living”.

The Change Wizard and the Change Wizard Journal together with our time management fable The Front Page give you the method to examine your life and consider your future, whatever your age.  The exercises can be reworked at any new stage of your life – and there will always be new stages.  These stages can be daunting or exciting and our firm belief is that investing a few minutes of your time to think about yourself, the life you want to create, and how you want to be within it, is worth every moment.

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Sep 18

2024

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Helen Whitten

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Flexible working is one thing, being told to work from home another

The government is telling civil servants and organisations that employees should have the right to request working from home from Day One of their employment. They are also saying that staff should not be disturbed out of hours.  Of course, employees should not be abused or over-worked but is it really up to a government to dictate how individual companies work?  Surely there are already laws that prevent exploitation?  Each company is so different – one SME might be employing 1-10 people, another large organisation at least 3000.  You can’t demand a one-size-fits-all practice and expect it to work.

The argument is that WFH boosts productivity but I am not aware that this is always the case, considering that there has been widespread working from home in the public sector and whether you are trying to get a driving test, a change in Land Registry, finalisation of probate, completion of a Court case or a response from HMRC I suspect we have all experienced anything but efficient service in recent years.  There is little we can do about this in the public sector as there is no choice to go elsewhere – unless we all band together and complain that our taxed money is not providing the service we can justifiably expect.

But in the private sector bad service means clients go elsewhere.  If they go elsewhere the business folds and no one wins.  A business is not run for the sake of its employees, it is run for the sake of its clients and through the company’s success the employees also can succeed and thrive.  The employee needs to feel motivated, for sure, and in this they need to understand that there is a virtuous circle of performance. We have, in our coaching practice, a motto of motivation that if the individual does well=the company does well=everyone does well, including the general economy. This boosts happiness as well as performance and productivity.

In the meantime, Amazon are insisting their staff return to the office five days a week.  Neither solution is perfect.  Managers need to have individual discussions with new recruits and staff so as to tailor what works for the individual and what works for the business. I wrote an article about this same topic in September 2020 and I believe everything I said there still applies, so I have reprinted it below. People need some time in the office to learn, bond, create, have social groups and develop a sense of belonging and loyalty to their employer and I can’t believe that it isn’t possible for the employer to also arrange to give them time for home commitments, so that the employee is not stressed or pulled in too many directions.

Similarly, regarding timing of calls or emails in or outside working hours, for some people it suits them better to be contacted in the evenings when they have put children to bed. Often there is a simple equation to be negotiated but personally I do not believe it is up to the government to tell a small business how to manage these sensitive areas, or to give new employees the right to demand impractical ways of working. 

Obviously if your team are scattered across the world there is no ‘office’ to go into and people can work from home, yet most of those teams that I personally know make sure that they get together regularly for a few days at a time to share knowledge and ideas.  Digital nomads can enjoy travelling and working from anywhere in the world for a time yet can be disconnected and end up somewhat of an ‘outsider’ from a regular team who see each other more often. 

Young people today can be stuck in their parents’ home, eating lunch with retired Mums or Dads, whereas when we started work, equipped with our Luncheon Vouchers, we got together as a social group to go to the local café or cafeteria.  Being in the office helped us learn how to be professional, turn up on time, respect others, dress and behave appropriately and develop a mutually fulfilling network. There is a balance in all this so don’t force the young to be stuck home alone, even if they need a bit of encouragement to come out of their burrows.  I worry that if we don’t do this there will, in a few years’ time, be a reduction in competence as these people reach managerial level but have not observed managerial or leadership practices other than from occasional Zoom screens.  I would be interested in your views…!

My article from September 1 2020: Are business leaders really thinking of the long-term business and emotional consequences of their staff permanently working from home? It may have been a delight for some people not to have to commute and to spend time at home but for others it has been lonely and isolating.  We have had an exceptional spring and summer: how will it feel once the English winter of grey clouds, cold and rain arrives, I wonder?

Many years ago I was on the Committee of the Work-Life Balance Trust.  Our aim was to get work-life balance, flexible working, job shares and home-working on the agenda of Government and business.  We did a pretty good job and since that time, back in 2002, work life has transformed in many ways and working options are far more readily accessible than they were then.

But the point of the changes we were lobbying for was to enable people to have autonomy over their lives and flexibility to manage family, work and life in a more manageable way.  We were not suggesting that companies enforce home-working on their staff and whilst I accept and understand that we needed to do this during lockdown I am concerned at the tendency for organisations to now demand that all or most of their staff continue to work from home.

Home-working suits some people more than others.  Those at the top of businesses and therefore making these decisions are no doubt living in pleasant houses in nice surroundings and are likely to be – though not always – in settled relationships with children either at home or who have left home.  They are also at the top of their game whereas those they manage are on a career ladder, which is far harder to climb without access to the hubbub of an office or shared space.

I’d like these leaders to give a little thought to those who are living in cramped apartments without much personal space, or having to stay with their parents longer than they might otherwise have done, or are in a flat-share where the other person is also home-working and potentially talking too loudly on their phones, or interrupting.

They may have young children, toddlers, babies, making a noise and demanding their time.  I know quite a few stressed parents who have had to work well into the early hours of the morning after having to supervise their young children during the day.  People can do this for a short time but a loss of sleep does little for cognitive capacity or the immune system in the long term.

There are those who are extravert who love to spend time with people and can’t, so have to make more of an effort to create their social life outside the office.  Or an introvert who too easily becomes a hermit.  Or someone living with an abusive partner who used to get some relief and support from going to an office and now is stuck in hell.

Some people can manage the discipline of a home-working day, others get distracted and pet the cat or fill the washing-machine.  The environment of an office gives people structure, routine, a sense of purpose and contribution, whether this is in the public or private sector, a doctor’s surgery or factory.

Many of my generation and our children met their spouses at work – you spent time together, had much in common and ended up falling in love.  Much harder to do that from the isolation of a flat, Tinder or no Tinder. So how easy will it be for young people to forge new relationships and meet their future spouse?  These young are sitting at home behind a screen all day with hormones raging and no place to go – not surprising we are having all these illegal raves!

Then there is all that you are missing that can enhance your career – watching how your bosses comport themselves in the office with their fellow senior managers, with their direct reports, with clients.  One can learn so much from just watching people walk about an office, or hearing how they discuss a business project on the telephone.

How will a boss ‘spot’ the person who has talent beyond what they are currently doing?  It is so often that one perceives the hidden talent in others through a chance remark, or in observing how well they manage a particular situation.  So much harder to do this when all you receive is emails or online output, only seeing the person physically via Zoom. 

The creativity of a group of diverse people or diverse thinkers come to more innovative solutions than any one person on their own.  Someone you bump into in the corridor or chat a problem over with on the other side of the desk can often have the answer to a challenge, or the information you require.  They can share with you what has worked or not worked, inform of best practice whatever kind of organisation you work in.

There are meetings – often thoroughly tedious and unproductive, perhaps, but one does learn how to chair, how to speak up with an idea, how to listen, and can gain the cross-fertilization of information from other departments.  And the banter that lightens the discussion can often bring a negotiation to a close more easily than plodding through a process in the sterile world of online meetings.  Plus the fact that many deals are done at the coffee break, and that you forge social and business relationships with colleagues who can remain an important part of your networking circle for the rest of your life.

Yes, I know all this can be done on Zoom or Microsoft Teams or whatever but it is just not the same.  I remember some of our clients discussing flexible working many years ago and remarking that one had to be careful that people didn’t go ‘native’ – that meant that they almost forgot who they were working for, lost that sense of pride or belonging.  The solution was to make sure they came into the office frequently enough to bond and remember the organisation, product or service they were representing.

Of course, people can save themselves from the ordeal of commuting.  I remember some of my clients leaving home regularly at 4.30am and not returning until after 8pm.  Too long a day.  But now the trains and tubes are empty and all those small businesses that relied on the working population for their income will go bust.  And if the economy goes bust we all suffer – and not just us, people all over the world who may supply the goods from India, South America or the Far East, could face poverty.   People suggest that the provincial cities may revive as a result of these changes but if everyone is stuck away on their computers all day there is no great reason for this to happen.  We have to get out and about.

And what does all that sedentary computer time do to our bodies and brains, I wonder?  Our brains are plastic.  They alter literally every day as we think or adapt to new tasks or ways of working or living.  Habituating to seeing people through a screen rather than in real life is bound to change our perceptions, limit our social and emotional intelligence, potentially also our empathy.  We are detached, possibly less able to pick up those intuitive messages that you gain from a tiny cue of body language, tone of voice, eye movement, that gives away how the other person is feeling or what they are planning.  So much harder to do this through a screen.  And as for our physical health, many people had gyms within their office space and would use them before or after work or in their lunch break.  This could possibly be harder to find, and more expensive, where they live.

Wonderful to have flexible working, to be able to work from home for part of the week.  But it needs to be a choice and something that is negotiated by a manager and their team individually.  This blanket decision that some organisations are making that everyone should now work from home does not make financial sense as far as the nation’s economy is concerned.  It does not make social or emotional sense and it cannot make sense with regards to personal growth, team development and the nurturing of individual and organisational enterprise.  Let’s get back to the fray and try to reboot our economy, otherwise we shall all suffer. 

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Aug 31

2024

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Helen Whitten

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The Way we Talk – or Don’t

I was reading an article last week that reported that Gen Z do not answer their phones.  I have heard also on Oliver Burkeman’s Inconvenient Truth series on Radio 4 that Gen Zs find it stressful to pick up the telephone to order a pizza, and now I read that they don’t want to talk to waiters in restaurants and would rather order via a QR code (anathema to me!).

All this takes me back to 1968 and being 17 years old, in my first job at Bodley Head publishers. My kind boss, Guido Waldman, would ask me to make a telephone call for him to a literary agent or maybe an author, or simply to book a restaurant for him.  Was I stressed? Absolutely! In fact, as it was the 1960s and everyone smoked, I would light a cigarette before making that call (not something I recommend!). Somehow it gave me the courage to pick up the phone.

Am I glad he pressed me to make these calls? Absolutely, as each time I made a call it became easier to make the next and eventually I could make those calls without lighting a cigarette, and in fact quite enjoy the conversations I might end up having with an agent or author.  What else did it do for me?  Hone my social skills, build my network of contacts, discover that people I imagined might be terrifying were actually incredibly easy and friendly.  And, as life and my career moved on from place to place, I came to realize that all those contacts were invaluable and, who knows, the person I was speaking to might one day become my next boss or my client when I set up my business.

So when I read that an employer, when interviewed, said that he felt he should adapt his own expectations that his employees should answer his phone calls I thought no, absolutely not. He is their boss.  He is there to encourage them, to demonstrate to them that it is polite to answer a phone call, that it isn’t necessarily scary and that in fact it is their responsibility, in working for him, to answer his calls and make calls if necessary.

What we don’t do we lose, or never gain, the ability to do.  If we don’t drive on a motorway for a long period we find it far more stressful the next time we do it.  The brain is a ‘use it or lose it’ machine and has the capacity to adapt right until the day we die but we have to prompt it to do so. 

It is natural to feel shy in company when one is young (and later too sometimes).  It is natural to find making or answering a call stressful when one does it for the first time, but we can learn, step by step, to master this art, just as we learn to master a new app on our mobile phone.

I think it was on Oliver Burkeman’s programme that I heard a young person say that they did not think they should feel uncomfortable in situations they face.  Yet life is endlessly uncomfortable and this self-made rule is impossible to achieve. We must help young people realize that life is about learning to manage challenges and that self-confidence as well as competence is gained by pushing one to do what is uncomfortable – provided, of course, the task is legitimate and achievable. A useful phrase in such a circumstance can be “I would rather I didn’t have to do this but I can manage it if I do…!”

The change in how young people communicate was brought home to me again recently when on a writing holiday in Crete.  We were sitting in quite an upmarket bar in Chania and these three beautiful young girls, probably around the age of 19, came in.  They sat down and ordered their cocktails and then rather than chatting to one another, each one of them was on their phone, raising a glass to their followers on Facebook or Tiktok or whatever.  Hardly a word was exchanged between them as they were too busy interacting with their screens.

Perhaps we need to help them develop the art of conversation.  This is surely possible.  My older sister was very shy when young and my mother helped her to learn to ask questions so that the other person did most of the talking.  When business coaching clients of mine were shy about going to client meetings or business conferences, we worked out topics of conversation together, as well as questions they might ask and pieces of information they were happy to share, so as to boost their confidence when they walked into the room and were faced with a crowd of strangers.

In thinking about all this I came to realize that the loss of the landline has also made the randomness of who one speaks to nearly extinct.  The landline used to sit in our hallway, as it did for most people, and so anyone who was passing by would answer it.  The person calling might not be seeking to speak to the person who picked up the call but it meant that one had random short conversations with many different people – a mother or father-in-law, an uncle or aunt, a brother or sister, the husband of a friend, a child or teenager, a boss or client, etc.  It taught one to respond to many different types of people.  Today, one phones direct, on one’s mobile phone, to the person one wants to talk to, on their mobile phone, and so we miss out on those incidental conversations we might have.  It has changed the family dynamic radically.  We end up with one-to-one relationships with our sons or daughters or friends and lose those incidental conversations with others in the extended family circle.

As I am a worrywart it then got me thinking that without a landline how does a child phone 999 if something goes wrong, should their parent’s mobile be nowhere to be seen or they don’t know how to use it?  Hey ho, but that’s just typical anxious me.

Learning to converse can be unnerving at any time of life.  Sitting at table over a meal and experimenting with topics of conversation can certainly help young people develop the flexibility to talk to different people in different situations. We shall never get this perfectly right, but we do get better at it, though I still, aged 74, get shy in certain situations and I think that is quite natural, not something that requires a label. Nor do I think others should adapt to make me feel ok – it’s my issue, not theirs, and I continue to work on it. 

I empathise, therefore, with the anxiety Gen Zs might feel about answering a phone call but I encourage them to do it as often as they can and they will discover that their brain will adapt to help them manage these random conversations and, who knows, they might just thoroughly enjoy talking to someone who has phoned them. Or that call might even open up an opportunity for them that they had never dreamed possible.

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