Be Bulletproof Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Authors

  Title Page

  Introduction

  1. How the Bulletproof Mind Works

  2. Changing Your Mindset

  3. Using Jujitsu Communication

  4. Handling Toxic Bosses and Other Dementors

  5. Turning Rejection into a Springboard

  6. Decontaminating Toxic Feedback and Other Assaults

  7. Turning Around Failures and Setbacks

  8. Winning in the Face of Politics and Ostracism

  9. Delivering Feedback in a Way that Works

  10. Bulletproof Reinforcement

  11. The Bulletproof Toolkit – 82 Ways to be Bulletproof

  Epilogue – Gavin’s Story

  Endnotes

  References

  Index

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Overcome any obstacle to win success at work.

  However good you are, there are always times you come under fire at work. But how do you turn a crisis into an opportunity, and make yourself bulletproof?

  In Be Bulletproof, business trainers James and Simon Brooke reveal the top practical solutions for strengthening your resilience – so you can bounce back from every setback, rejection or criticism. You’ll learn to be confident, positive and self-assured in the face of any office adversity.

  Arm yourself against workplace hazards like:

  harsh criticism and hostile colleagues

  company politics and bad bosses

  rejection and failure

  redundancy or losing your job

  and – dare we say it? – your own mistakes

  This is an essential guide for anyone looking to get ahead in the warzone that is often the workplace.

  About the Authors

  James Brooke is a director and co-founder at Threshold, an international training and consulting firm dedicated to helping companies, teams and individuals to communicate and work together better. James has twenty years’ experience in the field of internal communication and change management. He has held senior positions with a number of consultancies and has directed multi-national programmes for a number of high-profile companies. He has led major research programmes for international institutes and business schools, and is a regular contributor and speaker on business courses and seminars.

  Simon Brooke is a communications strategist and journalist with 25 years’ experience in communications training and development. Having started his career in corporate, financial and consumer PR, he moved into political strategy and has held senior communications positions with major political parties on both sides of the Atlantic. Simon now works with senior executives to develop their communications strategies, identify their key messages and to help them to express their ideas in both speech and writing. As a journalist, he currently writes and edits on a freelance basis for most of the national newspapers, on subjects ranging from business and management to marketing, education and the media. He is also the author of two novels.

  More about Threshold

  In addition to James Brooke, Peter Nicholas and Dr Amy Silver are also principals of Threshold. Threshold’s clients include Aviva, BP, Coca-Cola, Rolls Royce and Pfizer.

  www.threshold.co.uk

  The Be Bulletproof Project

  The Be Bulletproof Project offers a series live interactive workshops which offer the opportunity to develop and practice the techniques of Be Bulletproof, with expert guides, feedback and practice with live actors. For more information visit: www.bebulletproof.net

  INTRODUCTION

  Getting really bad news or suffering a serious professional setback can sometimes feel like being hit by a bullet.

  However, this does not need to be a downward spiral. How is it that, for some people, having these bullets fired at them seems to lead to greater opportunity? What can we learn from these people? What are the common beliefs and attitudes of resilient people?

  Can we identify a pattern? Here is an interesting analogy:

  As they thundered across the plains of Central Asia on horseback, the Mongols must have been a terrifying sight. Few warriors have ever matched their leader, Genghis Khan, for military prowess, ruthless determination and the ferocity of his attacks. Despite their fearsome reputation and unparalleled military successes, the Mongols were relatively lightly protected, unlike many of the soldiers that they defeated. Heavy metal armour would have slowed them down and a large part of the Mongols’ success was due to the speed and agility of their horsemen.

  In fact the most innovative and effective part of their armour was not made from iron or leather but from silk. The Mongols were great supporters of trade and, in particular, the Silk Road. As well as profiting from the trade in silk, the Mongols used it to create shirts, which they wore into battle.

  What, you might wonder, do Mongol warriors’ silk shirts have to do with you if you’re struggling with an overbearing boss, being ostracised by your colleagues, or suffering rejection, setbacks or brutal criticism? Well, we can’t avoid the slings and arrows of the modern workplace but we can learn to minimise the damages caused and recover rapidly. Let’s look at how those silk shirts worked to protect their owners – and what we can learn from them.

  Often, because of the shape of the barbs on an arrow, simply trying to pull it out would tear the flesh far more severely than when the arrow first hit. Although the Mongols’ silk shirts wouldn’t prevent an arrow from entering the body, when it did the arrow would not break the fine, yet robust, layer of fabric. So, it was relatively easy for the warrior to simply remove the arrow by gently pulling away the silk around the wound. He could then continue fighting.

  Fast forward to the twenty-first century. Have you ever worn a bulletproof jacket? The most common variety is called a ‘soft vest’. Soft vests are made of high-tech fibres, which are densely woven together for extra strength and then usually covered in resin and plastic. Bullets cause damage because they hit the body with a huge force focused in just one very small area. Most bulletproof vests work by diffusing this energy across a much wider surface, allowing that wearer to live and fight another day.

  Imagine the challenges we face in the workplace as bullets: rejection; unfair bosses; negative feedback; uncooperative colleagues; and antagonistic, job-threatening meetings. Be Bulletproof provides a range of practical ways in which you can create your own version of the Mongols’ silk shirts and the modern-day ‘soft vest’. It’s not about being the hardest, toughest warrior in the office; instead, it’s about diffusing or absorbing the impact of attacks. After all, if you attempt to trudge around the office – and through your career – in your own thick, heavy and apparently impenetrable suit of armour, you’re going to find life hostile and pretty lonely. It might be tempting to think like this when you’re under attack but the problem is that if you do you won’t learn anything, you won’t interact with colleagues effectively and, worst still, you will waste energy that could be better used elsewhere.

  There is a saying: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil … because I’m the biggest bastard there. Well, maybe. But another way of looking at this is that such an attitude is probably going to make your life in an organisation nasty, brutish and short.

  So, how do you create your own Mongol silk shirt or develop your own individual bulletproof vest? Over the last 20 years, we have been looking at the psychology of communication – more specifically how companies communicate with their staff and how those staff interact. At our training company, Threshold, we have helped literally tens of thousands of people in business across the world. What
we have learnt from them has been as valuable as the lessons we have learnt from academics and other specialists.

  Together we have looked at the wisdom of ancient thinkers and how that has been tested by modern psychology, and then developed. We’ve conducted interviews with other experts in our fields, such as psychologists, sports coaches and writers, for additional information and advice. We’ve also spoken to those who have suffered serious setbacks themselves – but recovered from them – in order to gain their insights and to learn from their personal experience.

  The chapters of this book address the most common forms of attack that we face in the workplace and then introduce the tools and techniques you need to ‘bulletproof’ yourself.

  Think of this book as a way of constructing your own bulletproof jacket.

  We have identified three key themes:

  • ‘Mindfulness’ and its modern scientific descendant: cognitive behavioural theory. This is about being self-aware. Being conscious of your thoughts, why you’re thinking something and how this can affect your emotions.

  • The new science of Positive Psychology. This doesn’t mean pretending that everything’s great. Instead, it involves the use of a new strand of psychology to change the way you view events in order to increase your resilience.

  • Understanding your ‘Story’. Thinking of things in terms of your ongoing story will help you to reframe difficult incidents and put knock-backs into perspective so that you can learn from them and move on.

  This book looks at the theories behind personal resilience, flowing on from these three main pillars, and offers practical tips and advice to help you become more resilient in a variety of different scenarios. We have organised the ideas in this book broadly, under the scenarios in which they might be most relevant, but they are certainly not limited to only these scenarios. Each is helpful in the light of the wide range of life’s knocks and setbacks, so we strongly recommend that you familiarise yourself with them all.

  So, what explains the difference in success between individuals? Intelligence? IQ is indeed important, but estimates suggest that it only explains between 4% and 25% of the difference in career success between individuals1. Even if we accept the upper parameter, that still leaves a lot to be explained.

  Is the difference explained by motivation? Time to explode a myth about motivation: motivation is not an innate character trait. We all possess motivation, but for most of us it is largely situational; it varies according to the circumstance we are in. Any intelligent organism that lacked motivation would not survive long enough to pass its genes to the next generation. Indeed, studies show that the most motivated individuals can readily become the most demotivated when things go against them.2

  While motivation per se is a human universal, sustained motivation in the face of setbacks certainly does vary between individuals. This important predictor of life and career success can be learnt.

  And then there’s the ‘talent’ myth: the corrosive idea that has so gripped the corporate world that some employees are differentiated from the rest by the fact that they are innately talented. We only need to look as far as research in the classroom to debunk this. Research among school children shows that those who have been labelled as ‘clever’ are the ones who crumble most when they fail at a task. Children who make the best progress are those who willingly persist at a task despite setbacks. In the words of psychologist Carol Dweck of Stanford: ‘For the ones who simply figure that “these are just harder problems, I just need to figure out how to do them”, their confidence remains high, their enjoyment of the task remains high and their performance gets better and better.’3 Resilience makes the crucial difference when it comes to performance. It is worth reflecting on how today’s corporate leaders would benefit from learning from the classroom.

  The Enron débâcle was said to be exacerbated by the organisation’s addiction to labelling certain employees as ‘talent’. When these individuals experienced failures the organisation – convinced of the innate ‘talent’ of these people – would typically confabulate explanations which attributed the causes of failure to factors outside of their control (typically market conditions or having been let down by others). The result was that these individuals – who were happy to go along with the more comforting explanation – failed to learn from their mistakes and grow resilient in the way that more durable top performers do.4

  Look at the biographical details of most high achievers. Far from leading consistently gilded lives, most of these people spent long periods in the wilderness. Many successful entrepreneurs, for instance, cite an enforced redundancy as an important springboard to their success. For many successful people, there is no epic incident. It is simply a case of turning life’s day-to-day ‘micro-aggression’ into opportunities.

  CHAPTER 1

  HOW THE BULLETPROOF MIND WORKS

  MUCH OF WHAT we feel, and the way we react to situations, is inherited from our evolutionary past. These instinctive reactions are strong, but can be counterproductive in our modern lives. Recognising this is key to developing the silk shirt that will make you bulletproof.

  Why do incidents at work seem to be capable of wounding us so much? That voice in your head tells you to get over it. Your friends reassure you that it is no big deal. Common sense tells you that you are not physically injured. You are not in any physical danger. It is probably unlikely that your immediate livelihood is really in danger. Unless you happen to work in a very small number of professions – such as healthcare or the military – it is very unlikely that you or anybody else is likely to die. But we do know that toxic incidents at work – which may seem scarcely apparent to an onlooker – can and do have a disproportionate effect on our sense of well-being. This, in turn, can have an impact on our levels of stress, and on our relationships, cognitive functions and health.

  We use the term ‘toxic’ as an incident, which, if left to go unchecked, will infect other aspects of life such as self-confidence, relationships, cognitive ability, stress and health – and, of course, future success and relationships. Toxic incidents include rejection, mistakes, redundancy, dysfunctional bosses, ostracism, antagonistic meetings and brutal feedback.

  There is plenty of leadership advice on resilience and adversity of the ‘blind-man-climbs-Everest’ type, as we call it. The assumption here is that tales of heroic achievement in the light of great adversity (at least, far greater than what you are going through) will help you to put your own more mundane travails into perspective, and subsequently inspire you to heroic feats. There is certainly a place for this approach, but it can prove counterproductive. The problem with this sort of advice is that, if you are feeling low, it can often serve to emphasise the gulf that you are feeling between your own self-image and the noble or heroic, rather than inspire. We feel low following what should be viewed as a fairly trivial incident, and the critical parent in our minds tells us that we have no right to feel that way, and that we should get over it. Then we feel more critical of ourselves for allowing ourselves to be affected in this way. You are unlikely to go blind and we assume that you are unlikely to climb Everest. For reasons that you’ll soon understand, how you deal with the mundane knocks and bruises is a key predictor of success in life.

  Introducing your inner cave dweller

  An arrogant colleague, a bullying boss, unfair or aggressive criticism, repeated rejection and ostracism by the group can wear us down. The pain caused by these things is real. It is what Professor Kip Williams, University of Purdue, Indiana, refers to as ‘Social Pain’. Social Pain serves the same purpose as any other form of pain. It is there to tell us that something is wrong, and that if the situation continues our well-being is in danger.

  Ostracism by the group, an undermining of our status and the removal of our autonomy might be unpleasant for us now, but these things would have had very serious consequences for our ancestors. They posed direct threats to whether we got to eat, with whom we mated, and the extent to which
we could rely on the collective protection of the group against external threats.5

  How often have you reacted to a situation in a way that you know – as an intelligent modern human with the benefit of reflection – will be counterproductive? Sometimes it can almost seem that to be human is to know the right thing to do but to fail to do it. It’s hardly surprising, then, that we often end up reacting to a situation in a way that the modern civilised part of our mind knows will be counterproductive.

  Many psychological instincts that developed over time were excellent for our survival for 99.9% of human history, but in a sophisticated modern environment they let us down. We know that the foods that kept our ancestors alive – salty, fatty or sugary foods – are bad for us, but we still crave them. Similarly, when confronted with a setback or aggressive or negative behaviour from colleagues, we may know that anger, hostility, sulking, sabotage, self-justification or denial are not helpful responses, but we react in this way nonetheless.

  The good news, however, is that we’re not powerless to do something about these historic, cave-dweller emotions. On the contrary, once we understand where these emotional responses are coming from, we can take a step back and make the most productive choices. It sounds simple, but simple is not the same as easy. Being able to do this takes some practice but it can be done – and you can feel the benefits almost immediately.

  Too frequently, leadership and management training focuses on knowing what’s the right thing to do in a situation, but this is the smaller part of the equation. What matters is the ability to develop methods and strategies to make sure that you naturally, and automatically, do the right thing.

  We use the term ‘inner cave dweller’ simply as shorthand to describe the impulsive, emotional responses that are driven by our ancestors’ survival needs. Our inner cave dweller is far from stupid – after all, we wouldn’t be here today had he not been so adept at staying alive. In a similar vein, we shouldn’t make the mistake of viewing emotions as an inferior form of psychological processing. The evolutionary psychologist, Steven Pinker, argues that emotions are very effective shortcuts by which we prioritise high-order goals. Our instinctive responses are powerful. They evolved because they kept our ancestors alive – excellent back then, but not always so useful today.