The pricelessness of reflection

W. Edwards Deming is quoted as saying, “Experience by itself teaches nothing.”  In a fast-paced world where we are bombarded with more and more stimuli and we are called upon to carry out multiple tasks, this is truer now than ever before.  Our lives are filled with more and varied experiences which, by themselves, leave us with nothing more than information.  Sometimes we get to the end of our very busy days and the most we have made of it was, “I was run off my feet all day,” and we let go the opportunity to reflect on what it all meant to us and our lives.  Are we doing what makes us happy?  Are we spending our lives doing something meaningful to us?  Are our lives enriched by the myriad of interactions and relationships we hold?  Are we making a difference?  If we were asked, we could probably recall the things that happen to us daily, but it is not sufficient to merely recollect if these experiences are to have enormous value to us.  In our working lives, which are becoming more unpredictable and and revolve less around the carrying out of rote routine tasks, we are exposed to a veritable banquet of new experiences and interactions.  Within these experiences lie the building blocks of our transformation.

To build on a previous article, while we certainly need to be open to new information and experiences, we need to do something purposeful with them.  Often in my work, I have cause to reflect on the value of reflection.  Just as every story has a beginning, a middle and an end, so do life’s little episodes.  There is a beginning phase, called the ‘warm up’, the middle phase, where the action occurs, and then there is the last phase, in which meaning is made of the experiences in the action phase.  This last phase is where the reflection happens.  Reflection is essential in order for the significance of the action to be realised.  All too often, we get to the end of the action phase and we hurriedly move on to the next thing.  It’s all do, do, do.

I often liken it to digesting.  If it weren’t for our digestive system, we would find ourselves either unable to take in any more food or passing food straight through our bodies without the benefit of extracting the nutrients that we need to build and grow.  A banquet table filled with food has no significance to us until we take the food into our bodies and let our enzymes go to work.  Only when this has occurred and our cells are making use of the nutrients is the food of any real use to us.  Experience is much the same; only when we have digested it and made conscious meaning of it does it provide us with sustenance and the building blocks for growth.

One of the most skilled experiential trainers I have ever had the privilege to work with, John Bergman, once said, “I provide people with experiences.  I know they’ve had one because I can watch them having it.  What I don’t know is what they’ve learnt from it.  The reflection afterwards is the most important bit.”  Thankfully, I read more people writing about the importance of transfer of learning in the workplace.  Whether you are running a training course, carrying out some one-to-one coaching, facilitating a business simulation with a bunch of senior execs or teaching people to apply social media in their work, it behoves you to facilitate and guide some reflection on what you have been asking people to learn.  Real learning is integrated into who we are as people.  Otherwise, it’s not learnt.  Unless we digest and make meaning of something new, it will pass right through us.  It’s not an added extra; it’s an integral part of the learning process.

In setting up a learning programme with a new client, I have sometimes been asked, “What will the ‘take home’ be?”  If I’m honest, I would say, “I don’t know.”  I could tell you what my agenda will be.  I could tell you what exercises I will get people to do.  I could tell you what I’d like people to learn.  I could tell you that I have a great experiential process that will show sales staff the way to providing better customer experiences.  However, I think we are well past the time when we can assume that just because someone has sat in a training room that they will have learnt what the trainer or their boss or the HR Manager wants them to learn.  Certainly, businesses require people to learn things that will assist them to excel at their jobs and, certainly, businesses want this elusive thing called ROI and certainly, businesses want to spend their L&D budgets on something purposeful that will provide benefits to the people and the business.  That said, spending L&D money is no guarantee of learning or development unless the learning programme (whether that’s a series of coaching sessions or an e-learning programme or leadership development programme) has reflection and integration built in to the programme.  So what’s the take home?  That can depend entirely on how much reflection and integration I ask of people in the session.  If there is none, I’m leaving the ‘take home’ to chance; perhaps some of the people are already good at reflecting and meaning-making, perhaps some of them are not.

Developing the role of Astute Reflector, however, is not only applicable in the context of formal learning; far from it.  More of what we need to absorb and integrate comes from our daily experiences and interactions at work than from ‘formal’ learning situations.  Bringing the learning into work is more than a zeitgeist catch-phrase; it’s about how you view everything that you do, everything that happens to you, every conversation you have.  Is your working day just a series of things to ‘get through’ or are you making the most of your daily experiences, pleasant and not so pleasant, as learning fodder?  Do you get to the end of a busy week with a sense of indigestion because you haven’t processed and made meaning of the week’s events?  We need to shift our thinking so we see that everything that goes on at work is about learning.  There are some compelling benefits that can come to us from developing the role of Astute Reflector in our lives.

We become better at learning from mistakes.  When our Astute Reflector role is well-developed, we regularly stop and debrief, either by ourselves or with others, to examine what went well and what didn’t go so well.  Once we have made this conscious, the chances of us repeating our mistakes begin to fall dramatically.

We distill the ingredients for success.  Rather than leaving good performance to chance, becoming conscious of what works well also shows us the way to consistent excellence.  This isn’t about finding the one or two things that work well and sticking to them, for ongoing reflection is the thing.  However, we can improve our chances of future success if we have actually stopped to reflect.

We see patterns that were previously hidden.  When we reflect, we connect the dots with other experiences in our lives.  This begins to show up patterns.  If you are a systems thinker, you will hold that everything is connected to everything else.  Reflection illuminates those connections, from where we become more conscious of values, habits and attitudes which serve us well and those which don’t.

In his excellent article on mastering the art of self-reflection, Adam Chalker lists three kinds of reflection: reflection-on-action, reflection-in-action and critical self-reflection.  I believe that all three of these are indispensable abilities of the role of Astute Reflector.

If we inculcate the practice of reflection-on-action, we habituate ourselves to asking questions such as:

• What was I trying to achieve?
• What did my actions and responses create: in myself, in others, in the wider system?
• What did I do well? What did I do too much of (that got in the way of excellence)?  What did I do too little of?
• What does that remind me of (from the past)?

Growing the ability to reflect-in-action means that we become more able to notice ourselves while we are doing something and, if necessary, shift our attitudes or actions.  It’s a bit like reading a map while we are on a journey, checking to see if we are heading where we want to go.  If we wish to develop this habit, we can ask ourselves:

• What am I actually doing right now?
• How are people responding to me?
• How am I feeling right now?
• Am I heading in the right direction?  If not, what change of course is required?

I’ve written before on the need to develop more critical self-reflection and self-awareness.  This is taking a cold, hard look at ourselves and asking the challenging questions:

• What lies do I tell myself?
• What am I pretending not to see about myself?
• Am I doing something which truly brings meaning and joy to my life?
• How do I enact power?  Is it personal potency or power over others?
• Do I like who I am?

Once again, these are not discretionary matters to consider only if we have the luxury of time; the role of Astute Reflector is core to the world of work today.  Charles Darwin knew about the value of learning when he said, “It’s not the biggest, the brightest, or the best that will survive, but those who adapt the quickest.”  Making it a habit to ask, “So what?” expands our awareness, helps us to fine tune our abilities and increases our sense of potency in the world.  Best of all, it costs nothing to grow the role of Astute Reflector and maximise your day-to-day experiences.  Cost of training programme that teaches you nothing new: $2000.  Becoming more reflective and conscious: priceless.

 

 

 

How ample is your toolbag?

As the old saying goes, if you have only a hammer, you see only nails.  Frankly, I’d much rather have the plumber who opens his or her toolbag and has the whole range of tools necessary, rather than the one who brings only a hammer and uses it for everything.  It’d be a pretty botched job if they did.  Not only that, I’d much rather the plumber who not only has the full tool bag, but also that he or she is proficient at using all of them.

There is a parallel for personal capabilities.  We are systems of ‘roles’, that is we have a whole myriad of capabilities at our disposal.  They all interact and interconnect with each other.  So when you are having a conversation with your staff about their performance, you use not only your ‘clear communicator’ role, but you also call on your ‘relationship manager’ role (you want to ensure that you have a good working relationship after the conversation), your ‘wise change agent’ role (you want to make sure you provide some coaching or mentoring if required) and your ‘lover of people’ role (you want to let your staff know what they are doing well and applaud them for the unique contribution they make to the business).  Obvious, I know.

Rarely do we call on just one of our capabilities at any one time.  Because we are interconnected systems of roles, it is therefore hard to justify simply ‘playing to your strengths’ and leaving the rest to good luck.  I’ve seen many folks in senior positions do just that.  Many people use what they’ve got and try to get by.  They overuse a role or roles to mask what they haven’t got.  Alternatively, they overuse a role at the expense of another which they have, but which is underdeveloped, so this becomes a default setting.  Read my earlier post on personal glass ceilings, this is what I’m talking about.

A manager I know struggled to get two teams to work more closely together; not for the sake of it, but because their lack of cooperation was leading to poor outcomes, late delivery on deadlines and dissatisfied clients.  She had superb relationship skills and would have endless conversations with each of them, trying to get them to collaborate more.  She requested, she coaxed, she enticed, she pleaded.  She tried to persuade, she tried to appeal to their better natures, she discussed.  All of this was to little avail and she was beginning to feel like a nag.  Want to know the thing that got them to work closer together?  It wasn’t her communication or relationship skills, both of which she had in spades.  It was her ‘big picture thinker’ role.  When she set out the big picture of what was happening, each team got more interested in the other.  They saw how interconnected they were and that if one fell down, the other followed.  Rather than “Could you guys please fill out those client job sheets fully?” it was “When you guys fill out these forms fully, this team over here has a better picture of what they are required to do and won’t have to waste time coming back to you with endless questions and they also will also provide a finished product that is in line with the client’s needs, is on time and will get the client to come back for more.”

Seems simple I know.  But it was the quantum (tiniest) shift that made the quantum (biggest) shift, not only in terms of their outputs, but also in terms of inter-team relations (and the manager’s stress levels).  She had tried and tried to use the capabilities she was good at, but when she extended herself in an area which was less developed, she got what she was after.  No longer would she then have to rely on her hammer, she could use the right tool for the job.  She wouldn’t have to just get by on her good relationship skills.

The point here is, there is a danger in resting on your laurels.  You will limit your career, your sense of personal satisfaction and yourself if you decide that you’ve learnt enough or that you can just get by on what got you to where you are in your career.  I know of one or two people who are a stone’s throw from nabbing a C-suite position, but have made a (probably unconscious) decision that professional development is just for their staff and not for themselves.  ”I didn’t get where I am today by learning how to be a more consultative boss.”  Fine.

Hope you enjoy the view as your staff member leafrogs you to become your CEO.

Can you teach a leader to be visionary?

I’ve recently been taking part in a really interesting thread on LinkedIn about visionary leaders.  The question is “Is visionary leadership teachable?  Can you teach a leader how to see the bigger picture?”  I bang on about how everything is learnable, everyone is teachable…blah, blah, blah.  I do actually believe this is absolutely true.  In my time, I have worked with senior executives, factory workers, the learning disabled, adolescents, traumatised people, mandated clients sent to me from the criminal justice system…. even engineers for goodness sakes, you name it.  I’ve seen it happen.  People learn.  Oh, yes they do.  People change.  Indeed they do; sometimes in spite of themselves.

HOWEVER……

….there will always be factors which impinge on each individual leader’s ability to integrate this learning into their being.  There will also be many ‘life’ factors which determine how easily a particular individual will learn and how adept a particular individual is at applying what they learn.

I’ll add that the ability to see a ‘bigger picture’ or to be ‘visionary’ is but one of many leader-capabilities that are required for a leader to excel.  These include capabilities such as knowing the self, managing relationships, loving and valuing people, managing time and resources, inspiring and motivating people, coaching and mentoring. There are many, many fine leaders who possess many, many of these capabilities in spades; and watching them in action, and watching them make it look so easy, it would be easy to conclude that they were just born this way.  All of these capabilities work in tandem with each other, because we humans are systems of interconnected roles within ourselves.  That notwithstanding and even though it’s rather artificial, let’s, for argument’s sake, isolate this thing of being a ‘visionary leader’.

What does it mean to be one of these things?  I quite like this description: “The visionary is both the “keeper of the flame” capable of holding focus through the entire creative process and one who can either lead the organization through the unknown to manifest the desired visions and/or create the space for creative spirit of members of the organization to freely unfold to manifest the desired vision.” (RYUC)  I also like this link because it lays out some of the characteristics of a visionary leader: possesses a deep sense of personal purpose, strong social presence and superb communication skills, sensitivity to others, willingness to take risks.  Wow.

While none of these things is innate, the experiences and relationships we have from the day we are born immediately begin to impact on us and serve as the classroom in which we learn these capabilities.  It would be easy to conclude, when observing one of these excellent-leaders-who-make-it-look-so-easy that they were born that way.  They were not.  They learnt it.

If we take one of those characteristics of a visionary leader, let’s take strong social presence, there will be a difference between those who grew up in a family where they were applauded for being social and those who grew up in a family in which they were admonished when they spoke out.  The latter may go on to learn what it takes to be socially skilled, perhaps via other life experiences and relationships or reading self-help books or going on a course, but they will speak it as if it was a second language.

I see a parallel with learning a language.  Many, many moons ago, I used to teach a programme called “English for Teachers”.  It was for teachers of English who wanted to extend their own knowledge and grasp of the language.  They were all non-native speakers, though you would have struggled to tell with some of these folks; they even had an English accent.  None of these people were raised speaking English, however they had developed a very high level of proficiency to the point that they were able to teach it to their own students back in their home countries extremely effectively.  Some of them would even try to correct my English and therein lies a key difference: consciousness.  Because they had to be more conscious about their use of this skill than I did, they were more awake to its use than I, as a native speaker, was.  We natives can sometimes be a little lazy with our language, but it’s ours.  It is so well integrated into our very core that we don’t have to be so conscious of how we use it as often as a non-native does.  Same can go for leadership capabilities.

Some leaders will be blessed by having already been to the classroom of life that has taught them a whole bunch of useful capabilities.  Others will have been severely deprived of such opportunities and have to work really hard to learn them.  I suspect that most will have gathered a fair amount of these skills already and just need to add some in.  This last one  is what I usually find.  We most often work with people who are already good at the ‘achieving’, who can already master relationships, who are good at motivating others, but who are seeking to develop, say, more of that big picture thinking.

With effort and attention (both acts of will), they succeed.  They become fluent over time.  To paraphrase the TV ad, “It happens, but it doesn’t happen overnight.”  And eventually, I suspect, they will even develop the accent so that nobody will know the difference.

How can I free up my creative genius?

Most of us have had moments in our working lives when we don’t live up to our own expectations.

*Think of the manager who is unnecessarily harsh in a performance appraisal when she intended to be encouraging and motivating.

 *Think of how we prematurely reject new ideas from others when we intend to be inclusive and open to creativity.

 *Think of how we escalate a conflict situation with a co-worker when we intend to reach resolution. 

As Homer Simpson would say…. DOH!  We take ourselves by surprise……and when we go away and reflect on our behaviour, we wish the floor would open up and swallow us or there was a rock to crawl under.  For some time afterwards, we cringe whenever we think of it and berate ourselves saying, “What was I thinking?  I can do better than that!”  We certainly don’t entertain the possibility that there was anything good in what we did.

And yet, even in those very worst of working moments there is the seed of something good, if we take the time to find it.  No matter how small: an intention; a positive attitude; a good opening line; a calm demeanour; there will be something that we already do well, and that we can build on as we learn how to get the whole performance we are looking for.  I know what you are thinking:  “What a bunch of new age, PC nonsense!  It’s this sort of thinking that is sending the economy to the dogs!”

However, to fail to recognise strengths is akin to throwing the baby out with the bath water.  It is demoralising, demotivating and just plain false to think we have to start right from the beginning again.  As Dr. Max Clayton states, “…there tends to be an over-emphasis on the inadequacies of people….When people become aware of what is (good) in their functioning,…problematic areas of their life become easier to manage.”

Learning how to shift a behaviour or attitude in ourselves, therefore, is most effectively done using a strengths-based learning approach.  A strengths–based approach to learning is simply one that builds on what you already can do: your current talents and capabilities are the spring board that takes you from good to great.  Common sense you might say, and yet really, how common is it?

So why not focus on what is working, rather than on what is not?

At Quantum Shift, a strengths-based approach is inherent in the methodology we use.  At the heart of the method is the premise that each of us has within us the role of the creative genius; the seed or potential to respond creatively and appropriately to any situation we experience.  As we grow up, we use our creative genius to work out how we will respond to the challenges life brings and we develop a whole range or repertoire of other roles in support; and we continue to do this until the day we die.    Our ability to respond well across many contexts and situations is dependent on the roles we have at our disposal; and because we develop our role repertoire directly by experience, this means every experience is a learning opportunity, a chance to grow our role repertoire.

Below is a simple method you can use to help you learn and build on the strengths you have already developed.  This exercise is always easier if you can enlist someone to help you out.  Bring to mind a recent interaction or conversation with another person at work, where you would like to have done it differently (or better).  Re-enact this specific incident or moment with your ‘helper’, so they get to see and experience what occurred even if it is only from your perspective. Remember it is YOUR performance that is at the heart of matter, so what YOU did is the key to the situation.

 FIRSTLY, ask the question: What did I do well? It is all too easy to go to what you did badly, but it is essential to start with what went well.  This is where the other person is invaluable as they are more dispassionate and therefore more likely to see the good as well as the bad.  List everything you can observe, no matter how small; you are building your self-awareness as you do this.

 SECONDLY, ask:  What did I do too much of?  Sometimes we do things so well that they become habitual or overly comfortable default settings, and we over-use them, at the expense of other things that might get us the outcome we are looking for.  There is nothing inherently ‘wrong’ in what we did, but we over-used it to the point that it got in the way of an ideal outcome.

 THIRDLY, ask: What could I have done more of?  What other things could I also have done in this moment that would have got the outcome I wanted?  What resource within myself did I under-use?

Making this analysis is vital in order to develop a new behaviour or attitude.  Reflecting in this way allows us to free up our creative genius and grow something new from what we already have and who we already are.

>Not everything that counts can be counted

>

We are in the process of a change, from what we know well, to something new and unknown; it’s a change in the paradigm we live in.  In other words, it’s BIG.  The time of transition always feels unstable, chaotic, because that’s exactly what it is.  We know the old and we keep getting dragged back into it because it is what we know.  We don’t know what the new looks like because it’s not here yet.  Perhaps we fear it.   We can just guess at what it will be, and we can have a feel for what we might need to be able to manage in it.  It must have felt a little similar in the transition period between when Galileo first announced the earth was not the centre of the universe until the day it became the accepted public paradigm.  It didn’t happen over night.  

The paradigm shift is from seeing things in their separate parts to a more systemic approach.  This isn’t new.  The idea of thinking holistically or systems thinking has been around now since the 60s and 70s and a systems approach to thinking about all sorts of areas of human endeavour has been growing since this time; leadership, organisational development, ecology, research technologies, health, etc.  This is now becoming main stream thinking and no longer a ‘new age’ or ‘hippy dippy’ thing.  The thinking behind the paradigm shift has certainly begun, however the way we behave has been slower to respond.   This is simply because we don’t know how.

Our predominant technologies, whether they be human, measurement, economic or industrial, are themselves largely mechanistic in design and function and basically are not able to create the shifts in behaviour we desire.  We need new holistic technologies that we apply to a whole system and measure holistically in kind.

If we are to view leadership from a holistic perspective, it is really not useful to consider what ‘makes up’ a good leader, as this maintains a mechanistic paradigm.  Growing leaders and leadership is not just about learning new strategies or techniques.  Rather, the truest measure of your leadership is in ‘what is created’ under your watch; in your team, your organisation, your community and in the world at large. 

Knowing what you wish to create is a daring place from which to begin the quest for leadership development.  To start by asking yourself, “What sort of a leader do I wish to be?” and having a personal vision for leadership is the most likely way you will achieve it. 

Leading people is neither simple nor linear in nature.  Apparently, Einstein had a sign on his office wall at Princeton that said, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” Leadership is a lot like that.  While we can certainly put KPI’s in place to measure what a manager does or doesn’t do, quantifying leadership is not so cut and dried.  The days are long gone when organisations that want to be at the forefront can rely merely on ‘competent supervision’.  They require good leadership.

Developing leadership capability requires ongoing commitment to be in the realm of the unknown and the uncountable.  It requires reflection to learn from the inevitable mistakes that should be made along the way.  It requires an investment of time, energy and money. (All three of those are usually the main excuses not to do anything new, when the actual reason is fear.) 

None of us is a ‘born leader’; although some have been blessed with a genetic disposition and life experiences that may make the quest less demanding.  Leadership is multi-disciplinary; it involves a breadth and depth of individual capability that none of us acquires innately.  Developing our leadership capability is an act of will.

I have said it before and I’ll say it again: research in the area of emotional intelligence indicates that these capabilities are both recognisable and learnable. However, genuine interest, hard work and personal investment are required, in the pursuit of acquiring these abilities.  It is also worth noting that it is not for the faint-hearted.

So, the whole leader is one who recognises and behaves as if the buck does actually stop with them; and who is willing to get to the inner workings of who they are as a person, consciously transforming themselves into the leader they wish to become; shifting their effort from trying to change or blame other people to changing their approach and personally trying out new approaches.  This leader is then more likely to achieve the results and outcomes they are looking for from their people.

>You’ve either got it or you haven’t….Oh, really???

>When I think of leadership, I think of things like ability to empathise, ability to achieve win-win in conflict situations, ability to motivate and inspire, ability to delegate (which implies ability to ‘let go’ and trust others), ability to think and act strategically, being self-aware…..

In my previous life as a therapist, I had extensive training and supervision around attachment, as most of my clients had some sort of attachment disorder, and from those experiences, I have come to believe that we are all born with dispositions.  They are the ‘background music’, if you like, that colours our initial interactions with the world.  Things like ‘character traits’, ‘personality traits’ or whatever term you wish to use, however, are learned in our early years.  These things eventually become part of our hard wiring, but we are not born with these.  We are intensely influenced and shaped by our early environment and early relationships in such a way as to colour a lot of how we see the world and how we respond to it.  I’m talking about how early relationships and experiences impact on our limbic systems.

I believe the only things that are innate are our drives to move away from pain  or move towards pleasure.  HOW we do that is shaped by those formative years. 

I am suggesting that leadership skills are ALL learnt.  Nobody is born with the ability to empathise.  We learn that when we receive empathy from our primary caregivers.  Having said that, all of those ‘soft skills’ I listed earlier, and others, can be developed and honed later in life.  There are now human technologies which can, to some extent, re-hard-wire our brains such that we can develop these things.  In my work, I apply a suite of action learning methods distilled from the work of Jakob Moreno.  While some of my clients say it feels like ‘magic’ when they notice immediate and lasting shifts in their world, it is definitely not magic.  Modern science is now doing research which shows that when such methods are applied, the key parts of the limbic system which need to be stimulated (in order to re-learn an emotionally based response) are indeed activated.

I think a lot of the cynicism about training these skills is derived from people’s experiences of ‘training events’ which don’t result in significant shifts in attitude or behaviour.  It is vital when crafting a learning programme, that the correct type of learning PROCESS is used.  Transactional processes are great when trying to train something like ‘how to use excel spread sheets’ or ‘how to write a business plan’, but transformational processes are best used when trying to develop something anything in the realm of leadership, culture or communication, if we want to actually learn HOW to do something and not just learn ABOUT it.  It is also important to see leadership development as just that…NOT training.  Training and development are both essential but have different applications and generate different outcomes.  Leadership is developmental.  It does not happen at an event, it happens over time, so patience, hard work and commitment are required.  

>Courage in the first instance, not the tenth!

>

I’ve written about this before, but it bears repeating.  In workplaces large and small, there is a silent plague.  People are immobilised like possums in the headlights.  What’s the cause of all this workplace stuckness?  The line manager needs to tell her direct report that he needs to start coming in to work on time.  The Executive Assistant needs to tell the MD that his way of interrupting others at the Management Team meeting is affecting morale.  The admin staff need to tell their boss to stop micro-managing and let them get on with their work.  In all of these real-life situations, people are scared that if they say the ‘hard thing’, they will lose respect, damage a good working relationship or be seen as the office ogre.  After all, getting on at work is all about popularity, isn’t it?

Performance management is not about dressing up problems to make them look good; it’s not about ‘saying three (…or five…or ten…) positive things for one negative thing’; it’s not about beating about the bush; it’s not always about the old FIFO principle; and it’s certainly not about avoiding the issues.  However, avoiding the issue is often the favoured choice of managers who are in the position of having to performance manage their staff.

A wise teacher once suggested that it requires the same amount of courage to do something difficult, whether you do it instantly or leave it until later.  What courage in the first instance does, however, is prevent the build up of layers of unnecessary strife that ALSO needs to be dealt with later on, when the initial issue snowballs into something major.  If we think bigger about a difficult conversation we can see that it is only fair to give a person the opportunity to modify their behaviour before THEY themselves become the issue – what a great incentive for dealing with the issue early.  The lesson, then, is ‘courage in the first instance; not the tenth’. 

It is indeed possible to train yourself in courage.  Use of action learning techniques, such as Role Training, generates the new behaviours alongside new attitudes.  The old adage that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks doesn’t apply here, either.  Research in the area of emotional intelligence does indicate that these capabilities are both recognisable and learnable.  Old dogs are learning new tricks well into their 60′s, 70′s and 80′s in fact.