The Problem With Teenagers

The problem with teenagers is that you cannot bribe them into mental health.

For most teenagers, sexual desire, longing and confusion comes raging to the fore. The youngster looks at the prospect of the grown-up prohibitions ahead and the reality that adulthood means the brunt of responsibility for his life passing to his own shoulders.

Should we really be surprised if the teenager is in the doldrums or protests against the dying of childhood?

The adult-figure most likely shape whether the teenager boy has any appetite for adulthood is his father. The son will ask himself, on some level, is it appealing to become like dad?

A lonely teenager, by the name of Finn, captured my attention in Sebastian Faulks’s novel, A Week In December. He spends all his time in his bedroom at the top of the family house in an affluent part of London. Knowing the boy is probably at home, upstairs, is the extent to which the parents give him much thought. He is in fact using drugs (synthetic skunk) and living on junk food in the hazy fantasy world of his bedroom. Each day, he gazes at a Big Brother sort of reality TV show, where all the participants are psychiatric inmates, with bipolar disorder, schizophrenic or acute depression.

This is how the young Finn spends his life – obliterating any connection with it whatsoever.

Severely neglected children like Finn, often develop neurological problems in the brain, as well as real challenges with functioning in life. We simply need others in our lives in order to grow into healthy adults. We need to be around other brains in order to develop adequate functioning. The adolescent brain is also going through the second radical change after babyhood. Without the good enough experience of others, the Finn’s of this world are likely to develop the sort of mental health problems of those inmates he is watching on the television.

Finn’s father, John Veals, is a multi-millionaire hedge-fund manager, consumed by self-interest, in his private study on the ground floor of the house. (Needless to say, the figure of the workaholic is hardly appealing to a teenager.) He prepares trades that will allegedly destroy the global financial system. Mrs hedge fund meanwhile, Finn’s mother, is comatose on white wine, after a busy days buying handbags. Invariably she is found stretched out with her perfectly coiffured hair on the sofa downstairs. Finn peers at her around the door when he goes to collect the pizza delivery. Occasionally, father and son meet on the stairs, with little more than mute recognition. Meanwhile, Finn’s younger sister Bella - another tragedy in the making - has been on a ‘sleep-over’ at a friend’s house for longer than any of the family care to remember.

The tragic dimensions of this money-rich and emotionally impoverished family are revealed when Finn finally descends into a raging full-blown psychotic episode. He is admitted to a psychiatric hospital, where they have to wait and see whether the psychosis is a sign that he has developed schizophrenia. Finn’s father, receives a call from his wife at the hospital, cuts her off mid-sentence, saying he has an important business call coming through. The father’s flat stubby sentences reveal he has no time whatsoever for his deeply distressed son. 

It is a moment of chilling tyranny.

Whilst I find the financial misdemeanours of John Veals and his hedge fund not entirely convincing, the neglected child Finn, is painfully similar to those I meet in the course of my work.  I probably write this (hoping to appeal to at least one or two readers) because the Finn’s of this world deserve so much more. I wanted Finn’s father John Veals to be just a ludicrous parody of excessive masculinity – which of course he is – however one is left knowing that it is Finn who pays the price and that the daughter Bella may well be next.

This troubled boy is to a large degree, a symptom of the family’s dysfunction, doing the madness on everyone’s behalf. But perhaps one of the many great achievements of the novel is the way Sebastian Faulks seems to me to force the reader to ask the question:

Who is the real psychotic? The son or the father, closed off in his self-absorbed world of business and money?

On the occasions I talk with men in the finance industry about how they see their role as a father, what they feel they should contribute to their growing children’s wellbeing, few can articulate an interesting response. It seems rarely to occur to them to think about it. Commonly, I will hear little more than ‘financial provider’.  (The exceptional fathers of course stand out.) The troubled adolescents I talk to, simply translate endless paternal absence, alongside the obvious excessive material provision, as dad just selfishly following his own dreams. Several of the teenagers say, in a perplexed way, that they rarely see dad laugh or smile. “So what’s the point?” they ask me.  Let’s face it: it isn’t as though dad is absent in order to put bread on the table. Something else is going on in the excessive pursuit of money, the filthy lucre asked to quell some deeper more complex issues to do with self-esteem.

Sometimes I will hear some quasi-Darwinist explanation, survival of the richest as a defensive response, as though you just mindlessly create children and let them get on with growing up (Darwin, incidentally, never suggested anything like this). Yet Charles Darwin, who loved Jane Austen novels and the poetry of Milton, was himself an exceptionally loving, caring father and known by many to be so. In this regard, perhaps his life as well as his work is just as extraordinary and worthy of study.  His daughter for instance, said of him:

            "To all of us he was the most delightful play-fellow, and the most perfect

             sympathizer. Indeed, it is impossible adequately to describe how delightful a

            relation his was to his family, whether as children or in their later life."

The performance of excessive masculinity, cut-off from feelings, an efficient extension of the corporate machine, is painful and difficult for many men (and women) in the business world. 

In order to maintain some sense of mental health, the work identity needs to be worn lightly, like a cloak one can remove, rather than life-long armour. It is neither adequate, nor a sufficiently flexible way of being when it comes to fathering.  Our teenagers desperately need both our presence in the lives and our forbearance that some rage against growing up is natural. We should never be sentimental with them, blindly attempting to understand their troubles – they don’t want that – instead, we need to hold firm boundaries, tolerate what we believe is right and stand up against the behaviour we think is wrong. Of course this requires patience and the emotional endurance to cope with our own sense of frustration.

Perhaps the rewards of some studious consideration about how to better love our teenagers, are more enormous than we can ever imagine. 

Our children are after all our true legacy, not our deals, houses, boats or anything else.

16 Personal Coaching Experiments to Try Right Now

As you are reading this piece, it probably means you have some interest in your personal and professional development. Great! Perhaps you are unsure what you can actually do, whatever age you are? 

This is coaching practice you can try out now. 

I’ve worked as a Psychologist, with 23 years experience coaching more than 700 people on a one-to-one and over 15,000 in groups. 

  

I want you to take a leap of faith, trust me for a moment and try out an experiment.  You’re worth it, as the advert says.

Like a tennis player who wants to excel, you can’t read a book and hope to significantly improve your game. You need to honestly assess how you are playing and experiment with different strokes. 

Here, the aim is to achieve greater satisfaction within yourself and your relationship with others. 

My job, is to help improve performance, support talent when things go array, help develop a person’s wellbeing,connect with others well, and build high performing teams.

I have one observation about those who command a stronger sense of awareness of themselves and their relating with others - they...

     Ask difficult questions about themselves

    Experiment with new ideas and ways of relating
    in the world

Give yourself 30 minutes to trying at least one of these 16 experiments below. They are all well tested and work effectively. Some people prefer to simply blame others, their childhood, legacy of parents, the weather, capitalism, or their jobs for their conundrums.  Making money is also a favourite excuse for resisting change efforts. Self awareness is never enough - it's like sitting in the river and saying, "hey, I'm wet." We need also, to experiment creatively (play).  My most rewarding clients, who achieve the best results for themselves, always do these sort of experiments between sessions, that lead to more creative living: 

Why not try some of these experiments with people you are close to?

If you want to share about the experiment you tried, send me a mail: julia@julianoakes.com

Why are Leaders so Boring? How to Radiate in Worlds that Matter

Most of the time, it is very difficult to figure out who the modern leader is.

What does he or she really stand for beneath scripted platitudes? Are they simply in search of power at any price, just as Eichmann determinedly soared his way through the ranks regardless of the human cost of his promotions? 

I find myself asking whatever happens to the hearts of such men and women, as they turn a blind eye, whilst the more morally sensitive feel troubled and bemused?
Our increasingly homogenised world seems to be inhabited with excessively dull leaders; cut from the same cloth as Mr Machine, in a drab suit and a mind tailored to care little beyond self-interest. Eichmann was profoundly 'banal' as many writers commented during his trial - he wasn't a wild, foaming at the mouth psychopath at all.

One of the strategies the contemporary leader is often excessively skilled at, is deadening himself from the effects and impact of his organisation’s activities. What we might call the “normotic” leader, to borrow the psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas’s term. He numbs himself with action, busyness, gambling, alcohol or other mindless pursuits, so he doesn’t connect with just how out of step he is with his own nature. There is another group of leaders who Freud would say have no moral conscience whatsoever.

 Then there are leaders like Paul Smith.

He falls into an entirely separate category of leader, by aligning his efforts and the impact of his company with his own moral conscience.

Paul Smith is a breath of fresh air, a joyful man, seemingly free of corporate pretence no matter how successful he becomes. My sense is that he doesn’t hide anything from himself in order to soldier-on, dehumanise himself in order to do things he doesn’t want to do. It’s a well know fact how robust his ‘No” can be towards potential investors and partners if he views them as rather money-driven sharks. His growth strategy isn’t the mindless ‘big is best’, “why would I need to open 20 shops a year that have no character and mean nothing,” he says, “when I can open two or three that are really interesting and give people goose bumps?" 

A leader using words like “goose bumps?”

I like it.

In the foyer of the Conrad Hotel in Tokyo, a few years ago, I met this legendary fashion entrepreneur. He was signing autographs, mobbed by fans. He looked fabulous, not just because he looks so funky, but by the sheer gusto of his aliveness.

I was checking into the hotel, proudly carrying one of his holdalls with the trademark image of a striped British Mini Cooper.  

Paul has been a huge success in Japan – as well as worldwide - with over 2,000 local people employed by Paul Smith Ltd., becoming the biggest European designer in the difficult market of Japan with over two hundred shops. Rumour has it that he used to take a small train set into early meetings with his Japanese colleagues and play with it when he got bored.                                                                

Perhaps part of Paul Smith’s success is sustained by the fact that he’s the sort of leader who has a Department of Silly in the basement of his London offices. It houses all sorts of wacky objects to inspire more than creativity.

Such permission inspires play, a sense of fun and connecting that helps us to forget our individual separateness and remember our shared humanity that makes us a team rather than merely a group. Paul Smith’s best leadership advice is perhaps his simple words:

“Everyone gets on better when you just be yourself.”

You cannot do that if you are hiding from the sights, sounds, smells and other forms of knowledge that indicate you are out of step with your own conscience. Who really is that grey, that boring, as the often-dull performances in the corporate office life suggests? Is what we mean when we nickname a leader “The Empty Suit”, someone who has sold his moral conscience to the highest bidder? 

The fantasy of working against one's moral-self for decades, to magically return to an earlier  state of integrity upon retirement, is one of the saddest human illusions. It rarely happens when we've been slowly killing ourselves off, as we perform the false self.

Working in an alive way with the very real dilemmas seems the only way forward.   “You’ve got to somehow keep your purity but still get your income,” says Paul, “ even when each pulls you in an opposite direction.”

To keep your purity means to resist covering your eyes from seeing and looking at yourself and what matters to you. It also means saying you matter, not just the whims of the tribes. 

Don’t give up on yourself, on what makes you truly unique, no matter how high the bribe, tempting the status, or shiny the accolades.

There is surely no higher ambition than to be true to your own conscience. 

With such ambition, people invariably stand a chance to radiate, just like the incomparable Mr. Smith.

What is Narcissism & Can you Teach Listening?

You meet an old colleague for lunch and he talks incessantly about himself. His business is great, his children are perfect and his sex life is implausibly amazing. There is nothing he speaks of to even hint at vulnerability. Then just before he leaves, he finally makes eye contact, needing affirmation in return from your eyes, as he tells you how much he has enjoyed himself.

Such self-involvement is an aspect of narcissism. A healthy degree of narcissism is of course necessary in order to survive. To value others, we need to value ourselves sufficiently. In a market-led economy such as ours, it is necessary to promote oneself (as I am doing now) as well as, our business endeavours (yes, I am writing a book called ‘Bankers on the Couch’ and I continue to coach and build teams).  We massage our appearance in the mirror, on Facebook (my hair rarely looks as neat as the picture here) and in varying degrees create an image designed to provide some self-satisfaction (I’m writing in pyjamas, thankfully you can’t see me).

Perhaps the best way to think of narcissism is on a continuum from healthy to unhealthy, that may vary with time and place. During times of acute stress, we are likely to exhibit more of self-focused traits. In cases of extreme narcissism, the person relentlessly persecutes himself, causing himself great pain and anxiety, especially when he does not live-up to the ideal he has of himself. His self-esteem despite all his glories and achievements is weak and brittle hence the excessive need to prove otherwise.

In extreme versions, the narcissist does not see others at all. The other is merely an extension of the self and judged according to whether they supply what is needed from them. If they don’t, they maybe destined for the reject heap along with others from the person’s past.  Narcissistic interpretations of events tend to put the person right at the centre of what occurs, rarely on the periphery. The friend wins the lottery or gets promoted and immediately he thinks, 'why didn’t I'?

The more troubling aspects of narcissism are hinted at by three observable factors: firstly, an inability to hold eye contact with another person, secondly an interest in appearance/performance, that borders on obsession and thirdly, an excessive difficulty in listening to another attentively. I am often asked, if it is possible to teach those with highly narcissistic tendencies to listen. My answer is that it is rather like a learning to play the piano; you have to want to and it takes a lot of practice to be any good, although it’s easy to make a lot of unpleasant noise. Fundamentally, extreme narcissists often don’t value listening to others because to listen, involves letting go of both control of a conversation and exploiting it entirely for one’s own needs.

We are all vulnerable to the seduction of the narcissistic leader with vision - often an outstanding entrepreneur - who tells us the sky’s the limit, creates myths of dragons to slay and spins dreams like celebrities. The downfall of the narcissist leader is the difficulty of dealing with people different from himself – such as staff with different views and opinions - as others are seen as merely an extension of his own existence. If he had someone whispering, “You are only a man,” as Caesar did, he’d fire him. Any sign of real autonomy, in independent thought, opinion or action, is likely to be judged as disloyalty. This is radically illustrated in the narcissism of Hitler: to agree with him, thus serving as a mirror that reflected him twice his natural size, secured Nazi membership. To disagree with him, was to smash his inflated image of his own glory and meant expulsion, to be made an outsider – a mad person.  This of course, is the fate potential whistle-blowers against corporate corruption and crime, dread. Some naturally choose to walk away from business – many are talented leaders we need at the helm of our institutions - unwilling as they are, to play the role of magnifying mirror to the narcissist leader.

The financial regulators, since Lehmann’s crashed in 2008, have in a sense, been attempting to regulate the pathological aspects of narcissism. The top of the world of finance tends to be led by such narcissists, who create an aggressive, bullying culture in an attempt to force upon the corporate body, a uniformity of thought and action the narcissist needs. Remember, to disagree with the pathological narcissist, is to attack on not only his self-esteem but his very existence. As you can imagine, it is unlikely that such a person receives or handles critical feedback well, and may go to significant lengths to expel and humiliate the person with the courage to give it.

Collective narcissism blossoms when we are employed by an organization that strengthens our ego ideal, our preferred if fantastic version of ourselves as omnipotent and accomplished. (It might help to imagine the blonde heads of the Nazi party nodding and witnessing themselves in reflected glory.) Thus, our personal brand is inflated by the brand of the company we keep, which can operate as a powerful lever of not only commitment but also control. It may influence members to work long hours, collapse work/home boundaries and convince people to tell lies and commit, defend grossly immoral and corrupt practices. Until the financial regulators understand this, their endeavours will fail. But like all brands, whether Nazi or Enron, they can be more than tarnished into non-existence.

At the heart of pathological narcissism is terrifying fear of an abyss inside, and extreme vulnerability. In private sessions with me, if the client has sufficient ego strength to bond and enough sense of security, he will often describe feeling a fraud have difficulties with sleep, with nightmares of ghouls and other frightening figures inhabiting dark nights. Most of all, behind all the bravado is invariably acute loneliness. He’s not stupid, he knows relationships matter and that no matter how omnipotent he feels at times, like all of us, he cannot defy the need for others anymore than he can defy death.

Invariably we will find there is a trauma that runs through many generations in his family, of people who have great difficulty holding another person in their minds. So when I really think about them, sit with them and authentically explore how they feel, they often can only imagine it is to exploit them in some way as some kind of commodity. This of course reveals their life experience of relationships.

As for the extreme narcissist learning to listen, he will first have to believe there is some value in more than barely registering other people and that he may hear something of value.  This moment may come only when his downfall has occurred, the roots of which were most manifest in his inability to listen.