Hi Everyone
I hope you’re doing ok.
I was chatting to a colleague the other week and we were talking about mental wellbeing. My colleague was feeling low. During the conversation I asked what they would advise someone else to do and they found it really easy to answer. They said they could be kind to someone else but not themselves. I explained that I’d found the concept of multiple selves helpful when considering this scenario. Most of us these days know about the child brain within us. Also called the lizard or chimp brain. This is the inner self that protects us using fight, flight or freeze responses as well as seeing to our basic needs (“I’m hungry”, “I’m bored”, etc.). It’s always on alert for the proverbial lion that’s hiding behind a tree somewhere waiting to jump out and get us. Then there’s our adult brain. I think of the adult brain as me. The one who goes through life experiencing stuff. But there’s more. In Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (I just found out it’s full title ‘“Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas”) published in 1843 (the year before the John Stock Companies Act received royal assent in 1844, the origin of Companies House) Ebeneezer Scrooge is visited by the ghost of a former employee and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. Spoiler alert! These spirits essentially teach him the nature of kindness and he ends up a changed person. You can read more about A Christmas Carol on the internet, or even watch it, it’s good! But I’m going talk about my own spirits now. Actually I’m going to talk about my past, present and future selves and I’m going to do it using a cup of tea. The time is 06:45 on a weekday morning, the alarm has just woken me up. “Alexa, kettle on”…. “Alex, turn on the kettle”…“ALEXA… TURN ON THE KETTLE!”. By the time I reach the kitchen, the kettle has finished boiling so I fill the teapot. No need to put teabags in as they’re already in the pot. I set the microwave to two minutes to warm the mugs that are already in there. Ding! The mugs are ready which also means the tea has had time to brew. In goes in milk and the tea and I’m back in bed with a brew within five minutes. Sounds like I’m living the dream right? Yeh I know, it’s great. Which kind soul got all this stuff ready for me? Me of course. My now past self treated me with kindess and thought about my morning experience and did some things to improve it. Now think about this, at 10pm the night before I was living in the present. My present self thought about my future self and acted with kindess. Fast forward to 10pm the next night and my then present self will learn from the actions of my past self and repeat the kindess. I use this separation of selves to help me in all sorts of situations in my life. It helps with think objectively and gives reasons to get things done. So back to my colleague who was struggling to take a lunch break and go outside. By thinking about their future self that afternoon and what they would feel like after a walk outside, they were able to decide to be kind to that person and go for that walk. I’ve learned a lot from my past self, so much has happened in my life between the two photographs above, yet at 26 I never thought about what I could do for myself at 43. These days I do think about what I can do to be kind to myself in the near and distant future and I take action. So if you can’t be kind to yourself, be kind to your future self.
I joined a product management team meeting this week. Now I love to chat but conversely I find it hard to give the time over to just catching up with colleagues. I feel like meetings need a purpose. The purpose of the meeting? To shoot the breeze on some stuff and keep in touch. It was a good meeting. I learned some stuff, we exchanged some ideas and built some new bonds as a wider team.
I’m part of a Future CH design group which is meeting twice weekly throughout March to explore various aspects of our future state. We kicked off the design sprint this week. There’s a good blend of people representing the entire organisation and some lively and constructive conversation. I’m really pleased to be part of the group which gives me the chance to help shape our future.
As a group of digital leaders, we finished some ongoing training about our operating rhythm, A big part of the work was how we communicate with each other which ranged from communicating as a team down to the interpersonal relationships between individuals and right back to our own emotional intelligence. I tend to throw myself into this sort of thing and there was a stage where I felt a bit cross at something that was said. So I put the feelings into words, literally describing my rising heart rate and trying to convey why in a constructive way. This prompted some good conversation and as my heart rate lowered I described it which prompted a bit of laughter. I’m not saying we should all do this or even that I do it all the time. But in that moment it felt right and was met with good humour and understanding.
I’m working with colleagues across our digital department to build a community of interest. To get things started the core team who volunteered to take responsibility for the community with me reviewed the basics of Scrum, a fundamental part of our community. I’ve learned a lot about Scrum over the last year, more than in the entire time I’ve been a Certified Scrum Master and I’ll admit that I was tempted not to join the 101 session. But I did join. I can always learn more, be that new appreciation for stuff I thought I knew or something I might have filtered out previously or just plain missed. I also joined because I’m leading this team. They volunteered to work with me. I want to show them the same commitment that the community needs from them. So I joined. And I learned.
On Thursday a colleague in our service management team invited me to a 4pm planning meeting. They’d spotted that I was getting together with my team and took the opportunity to pinch the time slot to get us all together. This kind of thing really pushes my buttons, “stealing my time” to put it emotionally, or at least I think it used to. They explained in the invite the challenge they had and when I put myself in their shoes I knew I wanted to help. At this stage I could have just said to my team “we’re doing this thing instead now”. But I didn’t. I referred to the invite we’d all received and asked them what they’d like to do. I was prepared to support whatever decision they made. They chose to support our colleague. The meeting ran until 6pm. But the commitment shown by all present meant that we had enough planning data to support an urgent business case amendment. It was a critical meeting but somehow we had fun doing it. If you’re new to any of this stuff. If you’ve switched career, if you’re an apprentice or a graduate just starting out… have fun at work. It’s easier to get stuff done that way. This is what I would tell my 26 year old self. To put it differently, my past self has taught me to have fun in the present.
Be excellent to yourselves and each other
Si
