Is it OK to be Nervous?

I was involved in a project recently and the prospect of it made me really quite nervous. The nature of the project is unimportant however the feelings of nerves or anxiety are, I think, common to many of us prior to and during important projects at work.

A brief history of the project circumstances is as follows. With a 3 month lead in it was decided that a piece of work should begin culminating in a final delivery date of 11^th September. The team comprised about 12 members from different disciplines and the preparation would involve some work in small teams and a great deal of individual work. All of which needed to link up when, for the first time, the whole team came together on 11^th September.

Initially I was excited about being involved and then the magnitude of the project became apparent, at which point, the little voice in my head started its commentary
“Will you be good enough?”
“Those guys have done so much more than you, how come you are on this team?”
Throughout the preparation phase I felt varying degrees of 'OKness' and 'not OKness'. On good days I thought my contribution was valued or, at least, I’d “got away with it” and on bad days, I felt I ought to drop out and leave them to it.

So are nerves ok? It’s a good question and, in short, I’d say yes, definitely. However, this comes with some added datail. They are ok if they aren’t harming your health, happiness or performance. If any of these are being affected then you might need other strategies for managing nerves and anxiety.
The good thing about being nervous is

·       It keeps you sharp

·       It helps you spot potential problems

·       It helps you prepare thoroughly

·       It keeps you on track

·       It motivates you to do a good job.

It is harmful when

·       It affects your sleep, diet or family relationships

·       When it causes you to be distracted in other circumstances

·       When it sends you into a pointless mode of activity which is not leading towards the end goal.

From experience I know about myself that the greater the feeling of nerves before an event or project, the greater the reward after the successful delivery. Furthermore, the truth is, I have no evidence to warrant the nervous feelings anyway, no disastrous outcomes, failed relationships or hopeless projects that suggest the nerves are founded in reality.

The voice in your head that suggests it will go wrong, you won’t be good enough, you’ll forget a crucial detail just at the time when it is essential and all the other variations on a critical theme is only one voice, it just happens to be talking particularly loudly at that moment. The trick is to turn up the volume on some of the other voices, the confident ones, the rational ones the ones that know all your competencies and capabilities.  Those are the voices that can reassure the nervous, critical ones, that can give a balanced perspective to the anxious ones and that can help you treat the nerves as a friend to be used and learned from rather than an irritant to be feared and frustrated by.

Now for those of you reading this and asking yourself “Do I have voices in my head?” Well, guess what? That was such a voice speaking right there.

And how did the project go on the 11^th September? Well, my role changed radically with only a few days to go to a role I wasn’t expecting to be doing. All 12 of us worked hard and it was a hugely successful project and the results were excellent. I didn’t make a mess of things and my new role was central to the success of the project and I played my part and contributed to the overall success. I think nerves are ok and in fact, if it weren’t for nerves, I do not think I would operate at the level that I currently operate at, they keep me sharp.

There is some great work on handling nerves and anxiety in an article on Mental Toughness in the British Journal of Sports Psychology by Graham Jones; if you are interested in exploring this more please do get in touch.

Piers Carter

Leadership Coach & Consultant

How do I manage my boss?

This week I have been reflecting on a number of clients who have been telling me about issues they face with their line managers. Some report that their boss is always on their case chasing figures, some are saying that the executive group are unusually hungry for information, some are talking about how they micro manage and some are talking about never seeing them.

Does anyone have the perfect boss? Do you remember an old boss positively in the light of the new one who is terrorising you? Is your new boss a breath of fresh air?

Line managers come and they go, we ourselves are line managers and our managers have a manager of their own. So how do we manage in these ever changing circumstances?

The most common problem I hear about in my role as an executive coach is something to do with the boss having a different style to the coachees. Perhaps the coachee is very supportive and team focused and the boss is task focused and driven by results. Perhaps it is the other way round. Your boss might have done something which has tainted your view of them going forward. You are unable to view them in the same light as before. You may not respect them because they have not got the skills or expertise you would expect of someone in their position – It is possible that your direct reports think some or all of these things about you.

So, what is to be done?

Relationships, including the one with our boss, comprise 3 different spaces

·       The space you are in

·       The space the other person is in

·       The space between to two of you

In which space are you most influential?

Which can you do something about and how quickly?

It is probably the space you are in and the space between to two of you. The space they are in is their domain and, unless they are prepared to meet you in the space in the middle, it will be hard to change them significantly.

Starting on the positive side, Jo Owen (see reference below) identified a few standard expectations of team members in interviews and surveys with over 1,000 bosses. The five most common expectations that bosses had of team members were:

1.   Adaptability.

2.   Self-confidence.

3.   Proactivity.

4.   Reliability.

5.   Ambition.

These are relatively low hurdles for team members to jump over. Many team members manage to fall over them: just by consistently displaying the five characteristics above you will be ahead of the pack. Many team members fall into the traps of excessive analysis, negativity, can't-do, backwards looking and complaining. That is not a recipe for impressing any boss.

"The essence of the relationship between the boss and the team member is built on trust: once trust disappears on either side, then the relationship is effectively over."

Successful management of a boss has four elements:

1.    Decoding the rules of survival and success. Ask around, get to know your boss, invest in the space between you and them and find out what makes them tick. Speak to others and learn from how they experience this person.

2.    Building trust: avoiding career limiting moves. Bosses do not like being upstaged or surprised and need to feel they are in control. Good surprises are not good, but bad surprises are even worse. Bosses can deal with bad news, provided they hear it in private first and early enough to do something about it.

3. Building a career network. It makes sense to build a career network beyond your own boss. Get to know people who sit alongside your boss and the people in HR who run the assignment and promotion process. Find a powerful sponsor in the organisation: someone who is at least two levels above you. They can be useful coaches and can guide you towards the right assignment and the right bosses.
4. Turning moments of truth into moments of magic. Some moments of truth are entirely predictable, and need to be managed well. The three most important moments of truth are:
1. Assignments.
2. Budgets.
3. Major presentations and meetings.

Beyond these strategies and techniques it may be ‘just a style thing’. It may be a personality clash and the solution could be in addressing the way you think about the situation rather than changing anything about what you are doing in the situation.

Some of the thinking about this appeared originally appeared in Industrial and Commercial Training, Volume 39 Number 2, 2007.

The author was Jo Owen.

Piers Carter

Leadership Coach & Consultant

What's this blog about?

This blog is focused on my thoughts about my work with businesses, coaching and facilitating productive conversations. I will take real issues raised by my clients and coachees and expand upon them and hopefully provide something useful for you, the reader.

 

Please enjoy these postings and keep having productive conversations


Piers Carter
Leadership Coach & Consultant