First published 10 April 2023 on Your Best Year Starts Here with Nigel Risner.
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After episode 200 we had a bit of a pause, then came back with a few more, and I said it felt like being the band that does the big tour and then disappears while everyone wonders if they've split up. Nigel asked if we were Oasis. We're not. We haven't fallen out.
Nigel took that somewhere useful. People leave a job because of a manager they never sorted things out with, and then a few months later he gets the phone call. The new boss is just like the last one. Of course he is. If you want change, you start by changing yourself. I can't change everyone around me. I can change my response to them, though, and how I show up rubs off on them anyway.
Nigel's version is that you don't have to like people, but you do have to trust them. And if you really can't stand where you are, you're not a tree. You can move. He told a story about driving from North London to see his parents in Surrey and being wound up about the trip home before he'd even got through the door.
Trust took up the rest of it. A colleague of mine runs his team on one rule. If you lie, you leave. Mistakes are fine as long as you own them. Nigel had the same idea at his finance company about 35 years ago. Everyone could claim two bars of chocolate a week and their windscreen wash, and once a year he'd check one person's expenses. Lie, and you were fired on the spot. It saved him hours.
We also got onto the fact that neither of us does detail very well. I said I could put a presentation together an hour before giving it (I don't normally leave it that late, but I could). Nigel sounded genuinely shocked.
What I took from this one
- If you want change, start with yourself. You can change your response even when you can't change the situation.
- Walk away from a manager you never sorted things out with and you'll probably find another one just like them.
- You don't have to like someone to work with them. You do have to trust them.
- Watch what happens after a genuine mistake. If people are cowering because they got caught, that tells you something about your culture.
If you work on your strengths, you get stronger. If you work on your weaknesses, you just get strong weaknesses.
Nigel Risner
And if you don't like where your environment is, you are not a tree, you can move.
Nigel Risner
