Unveiling the Power of Personal and Collective 'Culture of Care’ - navigating mindsets for success"

One of the key factors in how we get on in life is our ability to manage our mindset. Like training our bodies for an event, we can also train our minds to deal differently with life and work events. Without this training, we give up personal power and simply react to events around us.

In our volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world (VUCA for short), we are often struck with a myriad of ‘triggers’ that can cause us to react. We can become defensive, aggressive, withdraw or become silent. Our ability to manage our mindset in the micro-moment between the trigger and our reaction ensures our mind care, as well as the collective mind care of our workmates.

Often our emotions have automatic behaviours (both micro and macro) associated with them. When someone annoys us, we can roll our eyes, ignore them, pretend to be doing something else, or try to move on; all at a subconscious level. We display many automated behaviours; both helpful and unhelpful.

Hugely complex in its creation, the inner core of our brain creates our emotional reactions. Also known as the reptilian brain, its primitive responsive behaviour is designed to keep us safe. 

Whereas the outer cortex of our brain is our “thinking” brain. Massively clever and complex, the boundaries of its potential are yet to be fully explored. 

Unfortunately, the outer cortex of our brain is sometimes not activated during certain events, causing us to react, rather than respond. Putting it in colloquial terms; we can ‘flip our lid’.

When struck with a challenging situation that causes us to go into fear, we may come out fighting, belittle someone else, try to engage others in our behaviour or retreat into silence and sulkiness. Our reptilian brain takes over. Fear is often a root cause of this behaviour.

Being able to calm our mind when in this situation is not only vital for our mind care but also for the collective. This requires us to learn to manage our mindset during these moments, as well as that of strategies in our collective mindset.

Humans are social beings, driven by a need to belong and feel valued. Psychological safety is the term used to describe the safety that we feel when we are together (Kahn, 1990 [ 1 ]). When in a group of people, we will screen others to evaluate if they will be rejected, ridiculed, mistreated, ignored or insignificant. This drive to be social is often even more pronounced with people in powerful positions. Our evaluation may cause us to withdraw or move towards someone. 

The thing is, however, this behaviour can be detrimental on a personal and collective level. It can hinder growth and diversity. It can cause us to move towards the more dominant person, or to back away and become silent. This hinders our ability to share ideas, it also engenders a lack of commitment and accountability. At a collective level, it hinders shared responsibility.  

A lack of psychological safety hinders personal and collective potential. 

It causes groupthink, where we agree to the loudest or most powerful voice. 

It stifles creativity, replacing it with the status quo. 

It causes distrust.

We avoid critical conversations, in return for keeping the peace at all costs.

It masks the problems, sending behaviours ‘underground’.

It causes anger, depression, and people to “check out”.

A lack of psychological safety can disintegrate organisational culture. The following table shows the relationship between Organisational Culture and People Mode. Where is your organisation or leadership situated?

We need to operate at two levels: the personal and collective, keeping an eye on the triggers within each. 

Our work alongside organisations supports them to create a “Culture of Care”, developing personal and collective ownership. Each person learns how to understand their emotional-social intelligence strengths and areas for development, and specific mind-care strategies to support them personally. We collectively explore triggers, behaviours, and strategies for maintaining a collective “Culture of Care”. This then lays the foundation for a high-performing team.

If this resonates with you, then feel free to drop us a line and let me know what you are experiencing and how you would like it to be different.

Emotional Intelligence – taming the inner critic

When it comes to emotional intelligence, our inner critic can get a little rowdy!  Though we may try to be actively listening so we can deeply connect into a conversation, if we allow it, our inner critic can put up barriers that don’t allow us to be present, with our mind open, so we can really hear. 

Actively listening means we not only listen, but we seek to connect, understand, and ‘get’ not only what is being said, but the person behind the words. I’m concerned that we have begun depersonalising a process that is based on human connection. 

So how do we manage our inner critic so we can truly connect?

Emotional intelligence & the inner critic

Before we even learn the process of coaching, we need to explore what a deep connection looks like.

We must ask ourselves:

• How comfortable am I, being present to a person?

• How do I convey connection through my body language or my tone?

Let’s consider the story of a young leader.

This woman began in positional leadership early in her career. She was identified by others as showing huge potential, given various roles, and quickly rose to senior leadership positions.

But like a duck on water, visibly she glided along effortlessly, whilst underneath she was paddling madly. If she made the slightest mistake, she would beat herself up, chastising herself for days or even weeks afterwards. When asked to reflect on her journey, she found it difficult to see her achievements, instead focusing on what was missing. She settled for nothing less than an A-grade in her studies and would drive herself hard to achieve this. Guilt played a large part in how she operated. She felt guilty if she wasn’t working and she felt guilty if she wasn’t spending enough time with her children. 

This highly respected leader had incredible people and organisational skills and was also creative in her approaches. Outwardly she seemed like she had it all together.  Only the few she allowed to see behind this, saw someone whose inner critic was running rampant.

She is not alone. 

There are many incredible leaders of all ages whose inner critics are sabotaging their work and well-being. This internal fight however doesn’t have to be. The road to inner-critic recovery begins with self-empathy. If you’ve found yourself connecting with this leader’s story, then I encourage you to explore the following pathways to increase your emotional intelligence with self-empathy. 

The 3 elements that contribute to empathy

According to Roche Martin, the three elements that contribute to empathy are: listening, curiosity and emotional connection. When we apply these not only to those around us, but to ourselves, both the outer and inner critic can be tamed. For those who are trying to tame the inner critic these three elements can be applied in the following way:

Listening: The key to listening is sometimes NOT to listen; particularly if you are saying unkind things to yourself! A way of checking this is to ask yourself:

“Would I talk to someone else like this?” “Is it true? What’s the evidence?”  

Begin by checking your internal messages and looking for counterevidence. Attune your listening to the positives.

Curiosity: Being able to hold information away from you and look at it with a sense of curiosity is an important skill to learn. To view it from a “That’s interesting!” mindset helps one disassociate from the emotion and reflect from an objective standpoint. From this viewpoint, we’re able to gain a less emotionally charged perspective.

Emotional Connection: Part of having an emotional connection involves showing compassion; both towards others and ourselves. This means allowing oneself to be ‘real’, to make mistakes and to forgive oneself. It also includes giving and receiving aroha. This may take the form of taking time out and doing something you enjoy. This doesn’t have to be something large; it may just mean giving yourself ‘permission’ to take time out to go for a short walk during a busy day. 

Our #developme challenge

As you go forward into this week, spend some time practising self-empathy. 

• Become aware of your inner voice

• Hold its messages away from you with a sense of curiosity and compassion

Over time, as you continue to do this your inner critic will become lessened. You will learn to be gentler on yourself, to find inner calm, and to acknowledge and appreciate the gifts you have to offer. 

The journey may not be easy, but it is well worth taking.

How Deliberate is your Leadership?

One of the core messages of the emotional intelligence leadership work I do with New Zealand schools, businesses, teams and individuals, is to help them notice the choice point in their behaviour.

Most often, our behaviour is an automatic reaction to a trigger or a scenario. We are creatures of habit, and that predictability provides us with a level of safety. Understanding the impact of your thinking on your behaviour and those you lead is vital. Deliberate leadership starts with you.

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

~ Reframed from Viktor Frankl: Man’s Search for Meaning

The mindset of choice

Viktor Frankl was a man who endured horrific hardships during the second world war in several Nazi camps including Auschwitz. Frankl lost his mother, brother and wife at concentration camps. Viktor and his sister were the only survivors from his family.

The message within this quote has huge implications for our lives and leadership today. It speaks deeply about a mindset of choice. A mindset where we’re able to create space prior to a response. A space to make considered choices before we respond.

Unlike animals, we have a pre-frontal cortex which enables us to move beyond a stimulus-response mode of operating. It allows us to place logic and thought into the stimulus we encounter. This ability can vary between people and stimulus, depending on elements such as:

• our past experiences

• the severity of the stimulus and;

• our current level of emotional intelligence

Emotional Intelligence guru, Daniel Goleman teaches that providing there are no neurological impairments, we can develop our emotional intelligence and so too the power of choice over our responses, resulting in growth and freedom.

Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace

Jo had been at her workplace for three years. Over that time, she made huge inroads and achieved positive results within the organisation. Recently, however, she had begun feeling upset with the direction the organisation was taking. She was starting to feel that the more she gave, even more was being asked of her with little, to no acknowledgement.

Another person came to work alongside Jo. This person brought different strengths, but in Jo’s eyes was getting all the kudos and was starting to achieve things Jo had been trying to instigate over the past three years, as well as taking the accolades for it. Jo was feeling sidelined, as though all her hard work stood for nothing.

There are a variety of emotional responses Jo could now take. She could:

• Retreat into her shell, just do her job and no more

• Have it out with the other person or their boss

• Start speaking ill of the new person behind their back

• Start looking for other jobs

• Attempt to have a civil conversation with the person

Jo has choices in this situation. A choice to hide, undermine, blow up, run or have a conversation. Which of these choices move beyond stimulus-response? Which of these choices requires emotional intelligence? Which of these choices provides an opportunity for growth?

Jo’s leader also has choices to make! What would you have done?

• Would you have even noticed a change in dynamics?

• Could you have identified what was ‘at play’ in the situation?

• How would you have dealt with it?

• Would you have even bothered dealing with it?

• Would you have identified the impact if Jo left; both for the organisation and for Jo?

Emotional agility

Part of the process of emotional agility is being able to show up to the feelings, thoughts, and emotions that are a natural part of all workplace relationships. All teams experience them. Without a bedrock of workplace-wide emotional intelligence tools and capabilities, the ability to create a distance that is healthy and to then make choices that are productive and effective can be extremely limited, resulting in continual team turnover and job dissatisfaction.

Identifying that ‘choice point’

Remember, as a Team Leader, deliberate leadership starts with you. Understanding the impact of your thinking on your behaviour and those you lead is vital to your institutional success.

And as individuals, we must realise that ‘choice point’ holds the key to the level of success we’ll attain throughout our working lives.

Digital Natives need the Rauru Whakarare framework

Even unbelievable content can seem believable if presented in the right way. Ākonga need the skills to navigate online content appropriately. Adding statistics makes fake stories seem even more believable.

The internet is a vast and dangerous place for children to navigate on their own. This is why digital citizenship, cyber safety, digital fluency skills and online etiquette need to be firmly in place in your curriculum.How can we help them to navigate the world wide web safely? Let’s take a look at the Rauru Whakarare framework and how it can help to shine light on finding appropriate online sources, identifying biased content and stopping students from getting lost down online rabbit holes.

1.  Whakapapa - the background

Does the website have a padlock icon on the url (in the address bar)? Why was the website created? What was it created for? How relevant is it to our context in Aotearoa? How did it come to be online? 

These kinds of questions are ideally located alongside rich learning experiences where ākonga can publish professional looking content (Sway, Google sites, Thinglink, Wordpress) so that they understand that content online doesn’t ‘just exist’ - it comes from somewhere, there are real people behind it and we need to think about how, where and why it is online. Thinking about the whakapapa of a source helps us to evaluate its usefulness and reliability. 

2. Orokohanga - the origin

Where did the site originate? When was it published? Is this content current and timely? Is this a back-dated online newspaper or is it today’s news? Is it a repost of old content? Orokohanga as an evaluative lens helps us to think about the time/date and place (also identified in the whakapapa as the binding element of all sources) as a critical context. Aligning the website to its publishing date helps us to figure out whether or not it is valuable or current for research purposes. And if it is not relevant or current, we need to keep searching. 

3. Mana - the authority

This is pertinent and timely given that recent changes in Twitter management allow twitter users to buy authentication. How credible is the source? What kind of following do they have? What credentials do they have? Has this been peer-reviewed? How much has it been reshared? Is this paid content? Considering mana means we can apply a critical lens to the creator - Why should this view be trusted? What agenda might the publisher have? Is the source written with appropriate language without errors? Is the content accurate and reliable? These questions could be used as prompts for engaging activities with ākonga. Exploring bias by writing a deliberately biased article, exploring grammar and spelling and writing conventions by sharing deliberate errors for others to fix and generally having active discussions about the importance of being research informed, peer-reviewed and accurate when publishing research content online. 

4. Māramatanga - the content

Understanding the research question clearly will help ākonga to be able to apply Māramatanga to their online research. Does it shed light (marama) on the question? Is it relevant to the research question? How might it contribute to wider understanding of the topic? Is the source ‘a good fit’ in terms of the information it provides? Māramatanga considers the appropriateness of the information for the research purpose, the audience of the end product, and the project’s context. It should add value and connect to a deeper understanding. Is this website useful for my research? Just because an online source has passed the orokohanga, whakapapa and mana ‘tests’ does not necessarily mean that the information will be a good fit for purpose.

5. Aronga - the lens

Discussion of aronga is a great way to teach the differences between objective and subjective representation. It also allows us to actively teach bias, critically look at the author’s agenda and consider the publishing biases of different organisations or sites. Aronga represents the lens we use when looking at online sources. It also allows us to reconsider the content’s mana by thinking about its whakapapa and orokohanga. Aronga connects to “perspective” and helps ākonga to see ‘through’ the information to identify a creator’s bias. Exploring fake news, unpacking mockumentaries and making fake news are all fun activities to embed understanding of deliberate biases that can be applied behind the scenes. When ākonga understand how easy it can be to mislead and create deliberate bias in their writing/publishing, they will be able to apply a critical lens on online content with more understanding.  

How will you help your ākonga to navigate online sources more safely? Just because they are ‘digital natives’ does not mean that they come equipped with the right critical skills. It is up to us to guide them and help them not to ‘fall’ for everything they see online. The Rauru Whakarare framework is a great first step in starting the conversation.

For more useful digital citizenship resources and lessons check out commonsensemedia.com

I Can Statements - what would this look like at this time of year?

Schools often use ‘I can’ statements as signposts for learning. These are positive statements that support students to know the small steps that they have achieved. 

This stimulated some further thinking… what do ‘I Can’ statements look like for us at this time of year….

I can get my reports done

I can get my data in 

I can support an end-of-year event 

I can get through to the end of the term.  

Let’s take a step back -

How about the deeply personal or personable ones… the statements that have the ability to make a significant difference to yourself and others.

I can look after my own well-being 

I can look after the well-being of others in my team.  

What could it look like if we wrote some ‘I can’ statements for managing our own wellbeing and contributing to the wellbeing and culture of our team? What would it look like for you?

I can make a plan to look after my own wellbeing:

Add in your own ‘I can’ statements - after all, what you can manage is deeply personal for each of us 

• I can choose my attitude

• I can focus for xxx of time and then have give my brain a break

• I can have a plan in place for my well being

Considerations might include:

• Sleep 

• Diet

• Exercise

• Boundaries

• Balance = Responsibility, Accountability + Time for the things that give me joy  

• Gratitude practice 

• Looking for ‘the good’ in every day

When we feel good our brains release ‘feel good’ chemicals - the fab four… serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins.  Studies into neurobiology have found that these chemicals are activated at a higher level when you do something good for someone else. Through a series of fMRI neuroimaging tests, research suggests that our brains feel more rewarded for selflessness and giving.  Therefore there are ultimately greater benefits to giving than receiving.  In terms of developing and supporting the wellbeing of yourself and others it’s a win:win.  Hence the reason to explicitly plan for how you can support the wellbeing of others in your team. 

Doing something selfless fully supports self - this is great news for leaders who are promoting a team approach to wellbeing.   

What might your plan be?  I can contribute to the wellbeing of others through: 

• I can share a small piece of positivity with someone every day

• I can support others to celebrate their successes.

So what’s your plan?