While looking into the concept of the working alliance, I came across a delightful article on the subject of trust in a rather obscure journal on school leadership.

Vodicka, D. (2006). The four elements of trust. Principal Leadership, 7(3), 27–30.

Vodicka identifies the following four elements as being necessary for the building and maintenance of trust.

• Consistency — This is based on the fact that we all try to make predictions about people’s future behaviour based on past behaviour. The more we perceive our predictions to be accurate the more we trust that we understand the other person. It’s also about consistency of meaning, values and intention — not giving different messages to different audiences.
• Compassion — Literally meaning ‘being together in suffering’, this is about valuing all aspects of the other person’s experience, putting yourself in their shoes. The more that people perceive that you have put effort into understanding them, the more likely they are to reciprocate.
• Communication — This consists of unfiltered listening and authentic sharing which has a positive intention but is not afraid to encompass challenging feedback. Defaulting to openness and transparency can have its risks, but it is that kind of risk-taking that establishes trust.
• Competency — This is partly about getting things done, doing things as well as you can and making your actions match your words. It’s also about being willing to expose your limitations and to ask for and accept help.

All four need to be present and interacting with each other.

It is interesting to reflect on successful and unsuccessful client (and other) relationships to see which elements might have been missing from the mix.

There seems to be little doubt that we are in a period of transition when it comes to the world of work driven by developments in artificial intelligence and virtual reality and increasing concerns about environmental sustainability and diversity and inclusion.

Many people are keen to present their speculations on what the result of all this change will look like and how it will affect the careers of the future – but nobody really knows. It is beyond our current horizon because, in all likelihood it represents a phase shift. What implications does that have for someone’s ability to engage in career planning?

Organisations face a similar question in relation to strategic planning during times of change and uncertainty. The Three Horizons Model was developed as a framework to help organisations think about how they build an innovation strategy and navigate major market transitions.

Horizon 1 is the current system – the way things are done now that are about to change. Horizon 3 is the emerging future system – the way things will be done in the future. Horizon 2 is the turbulent transition period in which the old system is increasingly disrupted by the emerging system.

There are five activities associated with the three horizon framework.

1. Prioritising current problems – identifying the deficiencies in the way things are now – the things that make change necessary and could be addressed in the future system.
2. Experiment with innovation – try out new things, see what other things are being tried and learn from the successes and failures
3. Preserving the past essentials – ensuring that you identify what is worth keeping so that it doesn’t get swept away in the change
4. Investigating divergent practice – looking for examples of change already happening within the current system – the edges of current practice
5. Formulating future aspirations – working out what you want your ideal future to look like

Although presented as an ordered list, these activities are iterative and incremental – each activity can provide different perspectives which can modify the other activities.

These activities could be applied to managing voluntary career transitions as well as adapting to systemic changes in the labour market.

Sharpe, B., Hodgson, A., Leicester, G., Lyon, A., & Fazey, I. (2016). Three horizons: A pathways practice for transformation. Ecology and Society, 21(2), 47–61. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-08388-210247

So much of the advice I seen on providing peer feedback is like visiting the past. How many times do we have to suffer the tired recommendation about using a ‘feedback sandwich’? The fact that you are attempting to ‘balance’ positive and negative comments means that what you’re engaging in is not strictly feedback; it is performance assessment. That’s fine if both parties have agreed to that and if they have established clear criteria and boundaries beforehand.

Even if we are talking about assessment rather than feedback, there is mixed evidence about the effectiveness of the ‘sandwich’ method. It is possible this desire to mitigate the ‘bad news’ is as much to do with preserving the self-image of the assessor as it is sparing the feelings of the receiver (Bond & Anderson, 1987).

• Bond, C. F., & Anderson, E. L. (1987). The reluctance to transmit bad news: Private discomfort or public display? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 23(2), 176–187. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-1031(87)90030-8
• Bottini, S., & Gillis, J. (2021). A comparison of the feedback sandwich, constructive-positive feedback, and within session feedback for training preference assessment implementation. Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 41(1), 83–93. https://doi.org/10.1080/01608061.2020.1862019
• Dolan, E. A., Fleming, B. L., Keppel, D. P., & Covert, J. M. (2021). Sandwich With a Side of Motivation: An Investigation of the Effects of the Feedback Sandwich Method on Motivation. ISSN: 2189-1036 – The IAFOR International Conference on Education – Hawaii 2022 Official Conference Proceedings, 297–306.
• Henley, A. J., & DiGennaro Reed, F. D. (2015). Should You Order the Feedback Sandwich? Efficacy of Feedback Sequence and Timing. Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 35(3–4), 321–335. https://doi.org/10.1080/01608061.2015.1093057
• Parkes, J., Abercrombie, S., & McCarty, T. (2013). Feedback sandwiches affect perceptions but not performance. Advances in Health Sciences Education, 18, 397–407.
• Prochazka, J., Ovcari, M., & Durinik, M. (2020). Sandwich feedback: The empirical evidence of its effectiveness. Learning and Motivation, 71, 101649. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lmot.2020.101649

The first problem I have with the sandwich method is that it demotes affirming communication to mere sugar coating or padding to make the ‘constructive’ assessment more palatable or less uncomfortable. This is exacerbated by the fact that anyone familiar with the sandwich method will automatically discount the ‘positive’ elements for this reason.

Helping people to recognise, understand and appreciate what they are already doing well and to build on that is constructive, especially when they are not yet confident in their own competence or in what good practice looks like.

So, what is feedback?

In a scientific sense, feedback happens when information from the outputs of a system are simultaneously fed back into the inputs of the system. Usually, feedback loops like this enable systems to self-regulate their behaviour and maintain an optimal goal state by automatically increasing or decreasing the activities producing the outputs.

To get really picky, I want to focus on that work ‘simultaneously’. For it to be true feedback, the information should be fed back during the activity to facilitate behaviour adaptations in the present moment (see Bottini & Gillis, 2021 above). If the information provision happens after the event, then the behaviour modification can only happen at some point in the future if the activity is repeated. In this case, it would be more accurate to call it review and feed-forward.

So, if it’s not performance assessment, feedback might be better described as collaborative reflection involving an agent and an observer. In performance assessment, the power of evaluation sits with the observer. In collaborative reflection, it is the agent who is empowered to evaluate their own performance by comparing their recollections of the event with recollections provided by the observer in order to identify changes that will affect future behaviours. This is related to the idea that feedback is about promoting self-regulated learning.

• Oates, S. (2019). The Importance of Autonomous, Self-Regulated Learning in Primary Initial Teacher Training. Frontiers in Education, 4. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2019.00102

My second problem with the sandwich is that it implicitly assumes the observer is the one doing all the talking – that the communication is unidirectional. An alternative model based on a dialogical approach to collaborative learning is the Ask-Tell-Ask model:

• Ask – Elicit the agent’s own perceptions of their performance
• Tell – Provide additional observations to either reinforce or modify the agent’s perceptions
• Ask – Check whether the agent understands, agrees with and knows how to act on the reflection

• French, J. C., Colbert, C. Y., Pien, L. C., Dannefer, E. F., & Taylor, C. A. (2015). Targeted Feedback in the Milestones Era: Utilization of the Ask-Tell-Ask Feedback Model to Promote Reflection and Self-Assessment. Journal of Surgical Education, 72(6), e274–e279. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsurg.2015.05.016

Information and attention

To be useful in reflective comparison, the information provided by the observer needs to be different from the information already held by the agent about the event being reviewed. If you are just telling them things that they are already aware of about what was effective and what they could have done better, you are adding nothing. So, if you’re providing feedback to more experienced peers, it pays to be particularly thorough in exploring perceptions the first Ask phase.

In exploring perceptions, it could be useful to consider different ways in which the brain pays attention to stimuli. Attention network theory describes three interactive systems which manage how we pay attention to the world around us:

• Orienting system – focus attention to particular aspects of the environment
  What did the agent notice? How does that differ from what the observer noticed?
• Control system – prioritise relevant over irrelevant stimuli
  What did the agent label as significant? How does that differ from what the observer considered significant?
• Alerting system – anticipates upcoming stimuli
  What did the agent expect to happen? How does that differ from what the observer expected?

• Markett, S., Nothdurfter, D., Focsa, A., Reuter, M., & Jawinski, P. (2021). Attention networks and the intrinsic network structure of the human brain. Human Brain Mapping, 43(4), 1431–1448. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.25734

As a side note, these three different types of attention roughly correspond to three aspects of meaning:

• Coherence – Are you able to process an experience? Is it describable?
• Significance – Are you able to evaluate the relevance of an experience? Is it important?
• Purpose – Are you able to determine your response to an experience? Does it have implications for your choices and actions?

• Martela, F., & Steger, M. F. (2016). The three meanings of meaning in life: Distinguishing coherence, purpose, and significance. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 11(5), 531–545. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2015.1137623

My third problem with the sandwich method is that it tells you nothing about how to provide feedback that actually facilitates meaningful reflection.

We have a plethora of models for individual guidance and coaching and a vast range of pedagogical (or andragogical or heutagogical) models for education, but small group guidance sits between these two extremes. And there don’t seem to be many models out there specifically for this mix of guidance and education.

GINA, gee!

GINA (Group Integrative Narrative Approach) is a model developed by Susan Meldrum of Edinburgh Napier University which brings together the GROW coaching model, Kolb’s experiential learning cycle and narrative approaches to career guidance.

I’m a big fan of slotting together (integrating) theories and models from different domains – constructing conceptual jigsaws. And this is an elegant example of the art.

It’s not just a model for group guidance. It’s a framework for structuring any purposeful group activity because the narrative doesn’t have to be just the story of the individuals in the group, it can be about anything.

The model has been used for single session group guidance but it could be easily scaled for multiple sessions with self-directed individual homework in between. Introducing reflective gaps in this way could help to overcome some of the challenges reported in the research that students found it difficult to answer the questions because they were not used to thinking in that way. It may also mean that participants come to subsequent sessions better prepared, so that it’s not just the talkative ones who engage the most.

Am I wrong?

Although the model includes the idea of reflection and revisiting goals, I would be tempted to incorporate more explicit reflective feedback between the stages.

• Telling the story > Building the relationship:
  • How did the agreed goals inform or limit your choice of story elements?
  • How does the exploration of current reality narratives refine or modify your understanding of the goals?
• Retelling the story > Telling the story
  • How did the original formulations of the narrative influence (guide or limit) the retelling?
  • What aspects of the story have been changed in the retelling (added, increased, diminished, removed)?
• Actions > Retelling the story
  • How is your selection of future actions connected to the way you have reformulated the narrative (priorities and causality assumptions)?
  • What aspects of the story do your chosen actions take forward and what do they leave behind?
• Goals > Actions
  • Have your goals changed and how is that reflected in your actions?
  • How will you evaluate the effectiveness of these actions in achieving the goals?

You know what I’m looking for

The other thing that occurs to me is that group guidance needs an expanded way of thinking about working alliance. GINA contains elements related to goal agreement, task agreement and bond, but it possibly needs to incorporate something more explicit about ‘role agreement’. In one-to-one guidance the macro-level roles are pre-defined (client and helper). However, in group guidance, the participants may well be switching between roles throughout the sessions, sometimes being the client and sometimes performing the role of helper for other participants. Again, this clarity might help participants who struggle to contribute to a particular task to have other ways in which they can contribute.

Of course, now I feel pressure to produce a competitor WHIGFIELD model.

Thank you to Chris Webb for drawing my attention to this via his excellent #TheWeekInCareers newsletter. And, of course, thank you to Gina G.

Meldrum, S. (2017). Group guidance – is it time to flock together?. Journal of the National Institute for Career Education and Counselling, 38(1), 36-43. https://doi.org/10.20856/jnicec.3806

In a recent LinkedIn post Dr Naeema Pasha talked about the contribution of Barbie (Barbara Millicent Roberts) to the field of career theory, citing her You Can Be Anything slogan as the encapsulation of her theoretical position.

This has been viewed by some as a direct oppositional response to more structuralist theories of gendered career choices, exemplified by Gottfredson’s Circumscription and Compromise. However, Roberts’ initial forays into the active de-gendering of career stereotypes pre-dates the formulation of Circumscription & Compromise by almost 20 years.

Some have criticised Roberts’ approach as potentially raising women’s career expectations to a level which increases the risk of a failure to realise unrealistic ideals, possibly leading to career inaction (Verbruggen & De Vos, 2020).

Whilst the use of the word ‘Be’ rather than ‘Do’ places Roberts’ theory firmly within the domain of career identity, some have argued that it conceptualises identity in very superficial terms. They argue that it should be more accurately expressed as You Can Pretend to Be Anything If You Buy the Appropriate Wardrobe and Accessories. However, Cutts, Hooley & Yates (2015) have explored the important role that dress and appearance plays in the formulation and expression of professional identity.

Others have characterised Roberts as playing a role in condoning women’s tragic complicity in their own objectification in order to procure a degree of safety within an exploitative, hedonistic patriarchy (Dif et al, 1997).

If you’re interested in other career theories related to women and minoritised ethnic groups see this article from NGRF.

I was recently interviewed by the wonderful Julia Yates about the application of career theory to practice for a CDI learning project. As part of the interview, she asked me for my favourite career development theory, even though she already knew the answer because I have previously bored her on the subject.

The Theory of Work Adjustment (TWA) is definitely on my favourites list, mainly because I feel that it is so often undervalued and neglected. Part of the reason for it’s neglect is possibly because it is believed to be part of the person-environment fit school of matching theories. Which it (sort of) is. But it’s much more than that.

Many person-environment fit theories work on the often unstated assumption that it’s about fitting individuals into appropriate niches in a fairly stable labour market environment. That’s why they date so quickly when the labour market environment is changing. But TWA envisages ‘fit’ as a dynamic two-way process rather than a one-off, one-sided event. It contains within it the idea that both the individual and the environment can act to change themselves and each other to optimise the degree of fit.

It prefigures more contemporary discussions around resilience by focusing attention not just on the individual’s ability to respond flexibly to the demands of their environment but also on the ability of the environment to respond flexibly to the needs of the individual.

It also contains concepts relevant to social justice in careers – active attempts at adjustment of the environment by the individual. Or, in other words, emancipatory social agency. Obviously, Dawis, England and Lofquist didn’t really explore this potential aspect of their model despite developing it in the 60s.

I think the reason it has this potential to be applied to a wide range or perspectives is that it is a properly systems-based approach. As a theory, it focuses more on the processes of interaction than the content. However, the proponents were swept away with the prevailing approach of the times to develop various psychometric instruments which emphasised content over process.

• Who can I talk to about this?
• Am I the only one seeing this?
• Nobody understands me.

By definition, if people are following you, they are not alongside you. Even if you don’t do anything to distance yourself from your team, just taking on a leadership role means that people will put you in a different category. Even the most authentic leader cannot afford to burden their team with all of their innermost thoughts and feelings. You have to shoulder the responsibility.

Pretty soon, not only are you treated differently, you become different. As a leader you have to perceive situations and think in a way that makes your experience of the world unlike that of the people around you. This means that you tend to leave behind co-workers who are not travelling with you on the leadership journey. Not only that, you are leaving your past self behind. You can’t even keep yourself company.

Some people respond to this by desperately trying to hold on to the old relationships they had with their colleagues and cling to that sense of belonging by acting like one of the gang. But this is fraught with difficulties, especially when the time comes to exercise authority.

So, loneliness is almost inevitable for a leader, but it can also become addictive and dangerous. It’s an easy step from realising that you are standing out to believing that you are outstanding in every way. Feeling like you are the ‘special one’ can mean that you start to over-value your own opinions and ideas. It is important to stay connected to people who can provide you with balanced perspectives, maybe even seek out people who are guaranteed to disagree with you.

More reading

• Part 1 FEAR, part 2 GUILT, part 3 ANGER, part 4 DISGUST and part 5 DISILLUSIONMENT
• A Forbes article on the loneliness of leadership
• A study indicating that lonely leaders are bad for business
• An interview with neuroscientist Antonio Damasio on the importance of feelings in human functioning
• A Harvard Business Review article on emotional intelligence as a key leadership skill

• How could I have thought that?!
• I thought I was better than this!
• This is not how it should be!

As with disgust, the word disillusionment is often used to describe people’s reactions to a leader rather than the experience of the leader him/herself. Religious writer John Ortberg has said that ‘Leadership is the art of disappointing people at a rate they can stand‘ but it is also about disappointing yourself at a rate that promotes growth.

You would think that removing one’s illusions and false expectations in order to see things more as they really are would be a positive thing. However, the feelings of disappointment or even despair when you discover that something is not how you hoped it would be can be crippling, especially if it’s your illusions about yourself that are being stripped away.

For a leader, there are numerous disappointments waiting to slap some reality into you:

• The organisational systems that are meant to help you get on with your job but end up being a demented obstacle course.
• The failure of stakeholders and supporters to live up to their enthusiastic early commitments.
• The team members who do the one stupid thing you thought it was too obvious to tell them to avoid.
• The fact that your overwhelming logic and masteful communication skills have completely failed to win over supporters to your great vision.

But disillusionment is an even more important trigger for learning than guilt. Feelings of guilt encourage us to change our behaviours, disillusionment leads us to change the very way we perceive and think about ourselves and the world around us. That sinking feeling when you discover that your assumptions are wrong is the trigger for some serious cognitive restructuring – or possibly a renewed vigour to change reality so that it lives up to your vision.

More reading

• Part 1 FEAR, part 2 GUILT, part 3 ANGER and part 4 DISGUST
• The hype cycle for new technology could just as easily describe the leadership learning journey
• An interview with neuroscientist Antonio Damasio on the importance of feelings in human functioning
• A Harvard Business Review article on emotional intelligence as a key leadership skill

• Do I really have to do this?!
• How could they produce such shoddy work?
• This behaviour is unacceptable!
• I don’t want to be associated with these practices!

There is a pithy saying often credited to Mark Twain but which probably originated with a French writer Nicolas Chamfort.

Eat a live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.

Considering how important disgust is as a human emotion, it is surprising that so little is written on the subject of leadership and disgust. But as a leader, if you don’t experience that ‘ugh!’ feeling fairly regularly, you are probably doing something wrong.

Taking on a leadership role doesn’t give you the right to dump all the things you don’t like doing on your poor underlings. One function of a good leader is to clear the crap out of the way so that your team can get on with their important tasks. This doesn’t mean doing their jobs for them but engaging with and improving systems so that they help rather than hinder.

Many people aspire to leadership roles because they desire autonomy or greater control. The sad truth is that, as a good leader, you usually end up doing lots of things that you don’t particularly enjoy but which are necessary. Dealing with poor performance when you want to maintain harmony or striving to build team confidence when you just want to rant at their errors. Consulting all your stakeholders and analysing the data when you want to rely on your gut and get on with things or making that decision and acting on it even though you don’t have all the data you need to be certain.

A good leader should recognise when it is time to act in ways that go against your normal habits and instincts. If you never feel like you are eating a toad you are not developing the range of behaviors a good leader needs.

The brain circuits that are involved in physical revulsion are also at work when we experience moral revulsion. The financial fall-out of corporate scandals, from cheating software in cars to mis-selling insurance, can be huge. Developing a stronger sense of disgust in response to bad practice and unethical behaviour is an important priority for any leader.

More reading

• Part 1 FEAR, part 2 GUILT and part 3 ANGER
• An article on the link between disgust and ethical behaviour
• An article on the hidden costs of organisational dishonesty
• A detailed explanation of ethical leadership from the Institute for Ethical Leadership
• An interview with neuroscientist Antonio Damasio on the importance of feelings in human functioning
• A Harvard Business Review article on emotional intelligence as a key leadership skill

• How could they do that to one of my team?!
• Don’t they see how important this is?!
• I’m not giving up that easily!

Anger is one of the few emotions that bad leaders are often willing to embrace – venting their frustrations on their team in order to make themselves feel more powerful. This is why so much that is written about leadership and anger focuses on how to control it and remain calm.

However, feeling anger is a sign that you care about something and want to protect that thing from a potential threat. In our evolutionary past the thing we were protecting with our anger might have been our own survival or the safety of our family.

To determine whether experiencing anger is a good or a bad thing as a leader, ask yourself the question: ‘What am I trying to protect?’ If it’s your own status, sense of power or desire to be right all the time, then chances are you are experiencing destructive anger and you need to get it under control. If, instead, what you are trying to protect is the self-esteem of a team member, the loyalty of your customers or the quality of your services, then anger may be completely appropriate. Another test for the validity of your feelings of anger is whether you get just as angry at yourself if you are the one whose behaviour is threatening that thing you care about.

Even if it’s OK to feel such ‘righteous anger’, there is still a question about how useful it is to express that anger. There is mixed evidence about the effect of leaders displaying anger in the workplace. It can motivate some workers and demotivate others. It can be helpful in some negotiation situations, but not others. It can enhance perceptions of leader authenticity by showing that you care or reduce respect by showing that you cannot control yourself. It obviously depends on the context and on the way you demonstrate your anger.

One of the effects of anger is to motivate you to act without giving too much consideration to the consequences. This can be great for overcoming fear but can also lead to doing things that you end up feeling guilty about. Anger focuses your attention on the perceived threat so that you can devote your resources to countering it, but it can make you blinkered so that you fail to notice other important things.

The main question to ask yourself is ‘Are my feelings of anger going to help me fix this or do I just want to make myself feel better?’

More reading

• Part 1 FEAR and part 2 GUILT
• A Fast Company article on how leader expressions of anger can motivate some people and demotivate others
• An article discussing research on the potential benefits of angry feelings
• An interview with neuroscientist Antonio Damasio on the importance of feelings in human functioning
• A Harvard Business Review article on emotional intelligence as a key leadership skill