I wrote about applications and interviews last week and it evoked such a positive engagement, it feels worth spending a bit more time in this space before we leave it. I’m going to be outspoken in one or two areas so please remember, these are just my personal views. If you disagree, I’d love to hear from you.
I’m not a particularly rebellious person – it might not have been me singing ‘do you hear the people sing?’ from the top of a barricade – but I have always had an intense dislike of being told what to do. Not by figures of authority, not by bosses, not by colleagues and certainly not by my family (who read this blog and will be nodding).
Generally speaking, this refusal to accept the judgments of others has served me quite well and sometimes along the way it has pushed me out of a job and into a better one. To be clear, I am not about to launch into a narcissist’s charter, I don’t always know best and I do constantly ask for opinion and advice from those who do know better or differently around me. But accept that any individual has the right to judge, categorise, reduce, or generally sum me up: I don’t.
Eric Berne’s transactional analysis theories opened up a new world of self awareness for me. Very simply (too simply), Berne’s theory is that there are three ‘states’, one of which we always adopt when entering into a communication or ‘transaction’. There is an adult state, which is balanced, rational and calm, generally the state you’d hope to find your life coach in when you meet. Then there is the parent state, which assumes a role of authority and superior capacity to that of the interlocutor. Emotionally and linguistically this role can be dominant, judgemental, patronising, directive, impatient – or all of the above! Generally, the parent is about know best and tell. Finally, there is the child state, in which the limbic brain takes centre stage and emotions govern responses – a child’s emotions can be erratic and transient – laughter, fear, sadness, playfulness, acquiescence, subservience, anger, greed…all bets are off but the child state signals the acceptance of the dominant position of the parent.
When people enter the interview zone, they do so very often in the child state. Ahead of them loom the towering figures of the parent interviewers. They rehearse and project stories of inadequacy, judgement and failure; they engage their darkest memories of previous failures (also stored in a cupboard in the limbic brain) and they prostrate themselves before the worthy opinions of others. This danger is such a critical thing to be aware of when you set out on the interview journey.
Arriving at an interview in child state can have a devastating effect on your chances of success. In fact I will go as far as to say it pretty much means that you won’t succeed. I have interviewed ‘child state’ applicants who render themselves almost unable to articulate for fear that every word they utter will be ‘wrong’ in the eyes of the interviewers (parents/judges). I have seen people respond aggressively to quite simple questions. As a new Principal, I once did a ‘getting to know you’ interview with a teacher and my opening gambit of, ‘tell me about yourself’, was met with the truculent response ‘why should I?’ Child state in interview generates imposter syndrome, undermines your sense of self worth and erases from your available memory banks any information that might showcase you in a good light.
When in child state in an interview, we try for answers that we think will please the interviewing parents. Our looping negative self-narrative scans constantly for signs that we have got something ‘wrong’. When the parents ask us to talk about our faults, we go for answers that might sound like virtues, the most common one of which is, “I’m a bit of a perfectionist’. This answer sets all sorts of alarm bells ringing for judgmental parent interviewers and mostly signals, ‘I worry about what people think about me so I go for 10 out of 10 in everything I do to avoid blame’. Perfectionism really isn’t anything to showcase. Perfect may exist in nature but it doesn’t in human behaviour. It is at best a subjective state and at worst an excuse for unhelpful, uncollaborative, habits.
I was astonished this week, whilst trying to support a friend with an interview process, to see that her application questions were returned to her with a rating attached. If your organisation does this, please feel free not to accept my judgement here but this act, which I presume was intended to be helpful, drove my friend immediately into depressed child state. Quite literally, she received a rating on a scale of ‘Great’ to ‘Low’ for each of five submitted application answers. There was even an accompanying web graph tracking her scores against the best answers from the applying cohort – which further demonstrated her inadequacy. HR team – come on! Really? For this behaviour read ‘we are the parent, we set the questions, we know what the best answers are and we will mark your response for your own good’. I’m making myself irritated again even writing about this, paternalism gone mad…now I can hear the people sing…
My rejection of judgement really has served me well in the interview space. I enjoy interviews because I go in as an ‘adult’ and I don’t accept that the people I meet have a right to judge me. I don’t think this comes from a place of arrogance, I just don’t allow people to speak to me as ‘parent’, preferring to anticipate an adult exchange. I don’t know where this mindset came from. I wasn’t born that way – for heaven’s sake, I didn’t even study my strongest and favourite subject at university because my Headteacher told me to choose a different one. I wasn’t born able to speak to large audiences, present to Boards, lead huge schools, I learned how to do it by learning not to accept or fear the unknowable judgements of an audience. Retrofitting that process with transactional analysis theory, somewhere along the way, I learned to turn my ‘won’t be told’ child into a ‘won’t be judged’ adult.
My favourite won’t be told story this week was Tamara Hardingam Gill’s piece on the CNN website: The Welshman who mailed himself home from Australia in a box. https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/welshman-who-mailed-himself-home/index.html
Brian Robson’s decision, in 1965, that he didn’t like living in Australia and had to get home to Wales must be the ultimate refusal to accept reality (that he was trapped in Australia and couldn’t afford to go home). Nailing yourself into a crate for 96 hours and travelling cargo (to the wrong country) is a decision that few others would have made and he was very lucky not to die – but you have to admire the sheer bloody minded determination not to be told.
I’d stand beside Brian on the barricades any day.
