The King's Speech

We have just seen "The King's Speech", a movie about George VI and an Australian speech therapist, the man who helps him find his confidence and ability to rally the English during the second world war.  

It's a great drama about the royal family and their crisis as Edward VIII abdicated and the shy Prince Albert found himself the leader of what the film describes as "a quarter of the world's population."

Here's what I took away from the movie:  If you are having difficulties dealing with the demands of your position you can do a lot worse than getting yourself an Australian coach!

Ok, that's a little tongue-in-cheek and a more than a little self-serving, but what the heck.

Geoffrey Rush captures the Australian archetype really well.  Faced with a prince and heir apparent to the British crown he nevertheless insists he's Lionel, and the prince will go by Bertie, just as he does with his close friends and family.  

When Prince Albert argues about the course of the therapy Lionel insists "my castle, my rules."  And when Prince Albert and the future Queen Elizabeth, (The current Queen Elizabeth's mother), doubt Lionel's effectiveness he lets his results recorded on a gramophone record speak for themselves.

Despite the professional chasm between the worlds the two individuals inhabit they come together as equals in the coaching process.  Lionel and Bertie struggle through ups and downs together, but one thing the future king never has to doubt is that Lionel is definitely on his side.

The speech therapist's one mis-step in the movie comes when he oversteps the boundaries of their relationship and presumes to give advice on the throne and how to run the kingdom.

I work with partners in big city law firms, CEOs, senior executives and very successful entrepreneurs:  I know my stuff, but I sincerely hope they never think I believe I can run their business better than they can!

I really liked the Lionel Logue character.  I almost wish every management consultant and coach had to watch this film and critically compare their practice with the trusted Lionel Logue…I wonder how many  would fall short.

01 01 11

This is a link to our Facebook page, with a music clip to start off the new year.

The music is from M People, the song is “Search For The Hero Inside Yourself” and “Genessis8” has put up some inspiring words and pictures to go with the uplifting lyrics.

This came out in the 80’s when I was at University.  It was like the Rocky anthem for non-Americans of my generation.  We sung it at parties and I’ve seen it performed live at sports arenas with tens of thousands of fans singing along.

This morning I did the Polar Dash, a three mile run in 3F/-16C temperatures.  I wore two pairs of pants, a shirt, a hoodie, two jackets and two pairs of gloves.  Genevieve took this photo of me with the “Dead End” sign disappearing into the distance.  I like the symbolism of that.

To keep me going through the run I listened to some of my favorite music, including the clip on the Facebook page.  I hope you enjoy the music, and have a fabulous start to your New Year.

Update on the Tour De France...

It's Tour De France time. I love cycling. A year ago I wrote an article on the tour and how success in professional cycling and success in business is very similar. The article is just as relevant today, so here it is again...

This isn’t a post just for cycling lovers.  As you can see on the left, I enjoy getting out on two wheels whenever I can.  However, I’ve just spent three weeks watching the biggest international event in professional cycling, and I have some thoughts on what I saw and how it relates to the world of business.  Here are my (slightly) random thoughts.

 

It’s about teamwork.  The cyclists cover thousands of miles across France, and at the end of the race there can only be one winner.  However, it’s impossible to imagine anyone being successful over such a long trial without the backing of their team.  Wheels need to be changed; drinks need to be brought up.  Sometimes a rider sacrifices their own bike to pass it to another member of their team whose bike has crashed and who has a better chance of winning.  If you can’t maintain the support of your team you will never win.

Respect differences.  The Tour De France is a race for all types.  Some of the racers are lean little whippets who excel at sprinting away on the flat.  Some cyclists are powerhouses of muscle who get away from the pack on the long hills.  Each team has a balance of people who are best at different things, and they had better understand and respect each other for their different contributions.

The journey is the prize.  If you don’t make one of the top three placings or win a special jersey for King of the Mountain or similar the financial rewards aren’t that great for three weeks spent pedaling around 3,500 kilometers, (or more than 2,000 miles).  I read that the prize for the fourth place winner is 70,000 Euros, (about $US100,000), and that tails down to the rider that finishes 19th earning just 1,000 Euros.  Even the winner, Alberto Contador, isn’t that well rewarded.  He gets 450,000 Euros, but that has to go toward paying for the team, (and there are nine riders in a team), the support vehicles, the team managers and cooks and buses and everything else.  I’m not saying the ones at the top don’t get enough in support and endorsements to make it worthwhile.  I do think it’s not the money that motivates the average participant.  You can bet they “get in the flow” when they get on their bike, and they get a reward from what they do that isn’t just financial.

Team results?  Team rewards.  Even if you only want to maximize the performance of the best rider, you had still better make sure you reward the whole team for their effort.  We know that there can only be one winner, and you would think the way to ensure that everyone puts in their best effort is to focus on rewarding individual achievement.  Instead, the teams and the organizers ensure there are prizes, jerseys and accolades enough to reward everyone.  Not every rider can be number one.  When you have to get the best out of more than a hundred cyclists you have to ensure that everyone has a stake in making it a great race.

Knocked over?   Get up again.  Every day someone “hits the wall” and falls behind, or literally hits a wall or something else and falls over.  Every day they get up and start over again.  When I was a kid I had tremendous resilience.  If I fell over I’d just dust myself off, get a band aid or two and carry on.  As we get older we lose that, and yet here are people riding with broken collar bones, bruises, cuts and all sorts of damage.  Most of what we think hurts us isn’t really that bad, and if we just get back on our bikes we are surprised by how far we can go.

The link to business?  I love the Tour De France.  There’s something wonderful about watching athletes of the highest caliber competing in any sport.  I think that if any of these cyclists have the inclination to participate in business they have the temperament to do pretty well.

Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever ...

I have written before about the Basic Interpersonal Skills.  The third one is "Always make the effort to make things better".

If you put the emphasis on the word "always" you can think of another way of saying this.  Never give up.

Never give up on your friends, never give up on your commitments, never give up and accept defeat before the game is over.


I tuned into the World Cup today expecting to see an example of this from my beloved Socceroos.  It was highly unlikely they would go through to the next round, but it was possible if they managed to win against Serbia, and the goal difference worked out OK in the Germany v Ghana match.

Australia played their hearts out and secured a close fought win.  Unfortunately for us it wasn't enough to grab a place in the final sixteen.

On the next screen at our local watering hole we could see history in the making at the Wimbledon Tennis tournament.  I have seen matches go to 8/6 in the final set, 9/7, 10/8 and even 11 and 12 all before being finalized.  Izner vs Mahut was still going at 59 all in the final set before bad light called off play for the evening.

Whatever happens in the game I have new example and a new rephrasing of my third Basic Interpersonal Skill.

Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever give up!

Are you an Apple, or are you AT&T?

Let me tell you a tale of two very different customer experiences. At this time of year many of us are heavily involved in holiday shopping, or else we are doing new contracts for services or reviewing our budgets at work. It got me thinking about what sort of customer experiences we want to have, and how can we identify a couple of rules that make the difference. These two customer experiences really happened to me this weekend…and they provide a good model to review the customer experiences we receive and want to give every day.

We decided for Christmas to gift my mother-in-law with an iPhone. She is pretty up to date with modern technology, and it was both a useful and fun present for someone who likes geeky things and can use it in her business. At the same time, Genevieve decided to gift me with one of the same new iPhone 3Gs’s and we decided to update her from her Blackberry to an iPhone and put us all on an AT&T contract.

The Apple store was packed with people, both shoppers and staff. As soon as we walked in we were warmly greeted by an easily identifiable Apple “Genius” in a red top. (By the way, it takes a certain self-confidence to call your sales associates and technical support people Geniuses). We outlined what we were after and in a few moments we were seated comfortably at a table with a bright, young associate eager to demonstrate how the iPhone worked. (Luke: Thank you, you truly are a Genius.) However we still had one question: we had an iPhone already and wanted to know how we could get it onto a family calling plan. Luke explained that he could put iPhones purchased in the store onto an AT&T plan, but could not connect the existing phone to a plan. He suggested we talk directly with AT&T, and showed us where we could find a representative.

Here is where our troubles started.

The AT&T staff were standing around talking with each other, dressed in a wide variety of clothes, and hardly interacting at all with customers who came to their store. When we did get someone’s attention we were shown through a dizzying assortment of plans and prices. On more than one occasion I had to stop the associate to confirm what we were being told. An example: “So this thing is ‘free’ provided we pay more for this other thing?” Many of the plans and handsets were discounted or on special. We left the store once we had got a specific answer to our specific question about putting an existing iPhone onto an AT&T plan, (or so we thought).

We purchased our two new iPhones and returned to the AT&T store to put them onto a new family plan along with our existing iPhone. Here’s where the trouble started. It turned out we had been given incorrect information about the plan, and to put our existing phone with AT&T and change after twelve months as we wished was going to cost us about $115 more than we had been told. No-one in the store denied we had been given the wrong information, (about an hour before). They just apologized and said we could at least get our money back on the iPhones…not so helpful if you’ve just cancelled your previous plan. We talked with a manager, who didn’t seem to have any authority to fix what one of his staff had cost us, and eventually after about half an hour of discussion and various phone calls to their ‘customer service’ line we were given a credit to our account of $115. During that time we were offered free phones we didn’t want, (and obviously didn’t need), and we weren’t told some obvious things about our plans which we obviously did need, (like overseas access since we had told them the iPhone was an early Christmas present because Camille was just about to fly to France).

Meantime, I have since returned a headset that didn’t work to the Apple store. They looked up my account, (on the spot), confirmed the date of purchase, told me the piece was out of warranty, helped me get the supplier's address, and gave me a new, (free), replacement headphone while they took on the responsibility of sending the faulty headset back to the manufacturer.

We were extremely happy with Apple, not so much with AT&T. I should emphasize that it wasn’t so much about the individuals who served us. I believe each of them were well-intentioned and ably trained. It was more about the way the organizations approached their market and empowered their staff to live their brand. Everyone makes mistakes with their customers sometimes, so what was so different about Apple’s approach? Here are a couple of things that spring to mind.

1: Pricing. Apple has a good product and tries to price it fairly and simply. When they make a mistake, as they did with the original iPhone pricing, they admit it. (They gave the original purchasers of iPhones a rebate. Given these people must have known they were paying a premium for being the first to own the new devices the rebate sounds like a smart marketing move when it transpired that Apple weren’t selling enough phones at the original price.) Meantime, Apple have no confusing specials, sweet deals or “free” add-ons that cost money. Personally, I would rather give my service away to someone if they genuinely want to try out what I do than cheapen my product by discounts and concessions.

2: Quality. When you have a good product you don’t need to compensate. Customers of all kinds are pleased to get what they pay for, and usually appreciative whenever their expectations are exceeded. In the Apple store my mother-in-law was giggling like a little girl whenever the sales associate showed her something her ‘smart phone’ could do. It wasn’t just the apps, it was the voice recognition built in, the tagged voicemails, the compass and lots of other things that served as surprise and delight items.

3: Service. The Apple associates genuinely came across as loving their jobs and proud of their product. The demonstrations were enthusiastic without coming across as sales pitches. When something went wrong, like my faulty headset, they were empowered to make it right on the spot. When they didn’t know the answer to a question they said so, and went and discovered where the answer could be found.

Price, quality, service: my marketing professors used to tell us to “pick any two”. Apple shows you that it’s possible to optimize all three without sacrificing profitability. Without dwelling too much on AT&T’s strategy let’s focus on the positive aspects of Apple’s go-to-market philosophy. You can easily sum up their brand as leading edge technology that’s easy to use. You get quality and service and you know you’re paying something of a premium in terms of price. I'm not sure what AT&T's branding is and I'm sure I don't know what they stand for to their consumers, (at least these consumers).

Principled businesses try to make the experience for their customers satisfying in each area while being candid about needing the relationship to be profitable. Principled leaders try equally hard to ensure they have a “leadership brand” and they are transparent about what they stand for and what people can expect from them. Not so all businesses and not so all leaders.

So in your business, do you follow Apple’s strategy, or are you an AT&T?

A psychologist's thoughts on the Tour De France

This isn’t a post just for cycling lovers.  As you can see on the left, I enjoy getting out on two wheels whenever I can.  However, I’ve just spent three weeks watching the biggest international event in professional cycling, and I have some thoughts on what I saw and how it relates to the world of business.  Here are my (slightly) random thoughts.

It’s about teamwork.  The cyclists cover thousands of miles across France, and at the end of the race there can only be one winner.  However, it’s impossible to imagine anyone being successful over such a long trial without the backing of their team.  Wheels need to be changed; drinks need to be brought up.  Sometimes a rider sacrifices their own bike to pass it to another member of their team whose bike has crashed and who has a better chance of winning.  If you can’t maintain the support of your team you will never win.

Respect differences.  The Tour De France is a race for all types.  Some of the racers are lean little whippets who excel at sprinting away on the flat.  Some cyclists are powerhouses of muscle who get away from the pack on the long hills.  Each team has a balance of people who are best at different things, and they had better understand and respect each other for their different contributions.

The journey is the prize.  If you don’t make one of the top three placings or win a special jersey for King of the Mountain or similar the financial rewards aren’t that great for three weeks spent pedaling around 3,500 kilometers, (or more than 2,000 miles).  I read that the prize for the fourth place winner is 70,000 Euros, (about $US100,000), and that tails down to the rider that finishes 19th earning just 1,000 Euros.  Even the winner, Alberto Contador, isn’t that well rewarded.  He gets 450,000 Euros, but that has to go toward paying for the team, (and there are nine riders in a team), the support vehicles, the team managers and cooks and buses and everything else.  I’m not saying the ones at the top don’t get enough in support and endorsements to make it worthwhile.  I do think it’s not the money that motivates the average participant.  You can bet they “get in the flow” when they get on their bike, and they get a reward from what they do that isn’t just financial.

Team results?  Team rewards.  Even if you only want to maximize the performance of the best rider, you had still better make sure you reward the whole team for their effort.  We know that there can only be one winner, and you would think the way to ensure that everyone puts in their best effort is to focus on rewarding individual achievement.  Instead, the teams and the organizers ensure there are prizes, jerseys and accolades enough to reward everyone.  Not every rider can be number one.  When you have to get the best out of more than a hundred cyclists you have to ensure that everyone has a stake in making it a great race.

Knocked over?   Get up again.  Every day someone “hits the wall” and falls behind, or literally hits a wall or something else and falls over.  Every day they get up and start over again.  When I was a kid I had tremendous resilience.  If I fell over I’d just dust myself off, get a band aid or two and carry on.  As we get older we lose that, and yet here are people riding with broken collar bones, bruises, cuts and all sorts of damage.  Most of what we think hurts us isn’t really that bad, and if we just get back on our bikes we are surprised by how far we can go.

The link to business?  I love the Tour De France.  There’s something wonderful about watching athletes of the highest caliber competing in any sport.  I think that if any of these cyclists have the inclination to participate in business they have the temperament to do pretty well.

A lesson in presence from The Next Food Network Star

Developing presence is one of the most common coaching requests from middle and senior executives. It’s rare that someone comes out and says “I need more presence”, but it’s common for people to review their 360 feedback or reflect on their career progression and decide they need a better ability to engage others and generate respect and support.

The Next Food Network Star is a reality program where a season’s worth of contestants come together to compete for the prize of their own show on the Food Network. Culinary challenges are thrown at the contestants each week with the aim of finding out two things: do they have cooking expertise, and do they have the presence to become a television star.

Something that makes the show different is that the judges’ panel includes two food network executives who provide real feedback and coaching. They want to select the finalist with the most presence who will generate ratings for them next season. Along the way they want to develop the finalists with the best potential to maximize their presence for the home audience.

This week, we got a lesson in developing presence from Melissa, (Season Five, Episode Seven if you want to Google it and see the show highlights). In this episode the network deliberately messes with the finalists, putting them on a live breakfast show with various technical faults they can’t anticipate and have to deal with on-air. The host gets Melissa’s name wrong repeatedly, and in various other ways gets her totally flustered on live television.

We see Melissa panic. Her delivery quickens, the tone of her voice goes up, and her facial expressions give away that hunted look that communicates “get me out of here”. After, the judges tell her what they saw, and give her advice on how to improve.

Here are the three things she does to improve her presence:

• Incorporate stakeholder feedback
• Communicate to connect
• Get in flow and enjoy the work

Incorporate stakeholder feedback. I have written before about what many people do when faced with negative feedback. Usually it’s one of four things. They claim it wasn’t really a problem, they provide reasons why they really aren't unhappy with the outcome, they blame something or someone else, or they act like what we know happened didn’t really happen. We can call these the Justify, Rationalize, Excuse and Deny strategies. The trouble is, trying to Justify, Rationalize, Excuse or Deny when we know something went wrong just makes things worse. It makes people want to argue with you so that you “get it”, or it makes them want to punish you so that you “get what’s coming to you”.

Melissa takes the opposite and better tactic. She acknowledges feedback and shows respect for her stakeholders by demonstrating to them how she has incorporated it into her behavior. Note: she doesn’t always have to agree, but she always at least acknowledges feedback and shows how it will affect what she does next time. In almost every case responding positively to audience feedback builds presence. It makes your audience invested in your success because they feel a part of what’s going on with you. In this case the judges panel are a proxy for the real at-home TV audience. Nevertheless, in a strange way watching Melissa take on the panel’s feedback engages our attention and commands our respect and support. (Or at least it did with me…your results may differ).

Communicate to connect. There are many aspects of communicating with presence. In this episode Melissa loses her audience when she is seen to mildly panic in front of them. The judges advise her to be more commanding with her communication. Melissa focuses on what she feels she can control, and we hear her tell herself that she is going to slow down her delivery to be more impactful. “When I slow down my speech my mind and body follow” she says. This is actually great advice for anyone. Call it gravitas, purpose or presence; we know that people with slower and more deliberate communication generally command more audience attention and respect. Speed of delivery is something concrete and actionable that most people can control.

Get in the flow and enjoy the work. You have to “read between the lines” to see this one in the episode. When people are given pep talks before going out to perform they are often told to “just go out there and enjoy yourself”. It’s easier said than done. However, I believe that’s because the advice often misses one vital aspect. You have to “get in the flow” and go enjoy yourself. Think of getting in the flow as being totally immersed and carried along by the work.

Flow is a concept popularized by one of my favorite psychologists, Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. The big implication for presence is that audiences tend to mirror the emotions and behaviors of their presenters. Humans are wired for empathy and imitation. If we see someone enjoying themselves and fully engaged in their work we tend to be more interested and enjoy ourselves more as well. In her final challenge of the episode Melissa lets go of her anxieties, slows down her communication and visibly enjoys being fully engaged in her cooking. (And as an added bonus her better performance comes out in her meal!)

Presence is an elusive concept. Having an impressive appearance or bearing, commanding respect and attention, enlisting others sympathies and support….who wouldn’t want these things?

In this episode we see someone take on three highly actionable behaviors and improve their presence. Whenever I have clients who want to improve their presence here’s my three part program:

• Actively solicit stakeholder feedback and visibly incorporate it into your behavior
• Communicate to connect, (we often need to look at just what is being done to lose the audience)
• Get in the flow and enjoy your work

Top Chef Masters: The Good, The Bad and The Guilty

I noticed on a recent episode of “Top Chef: Masters” that there is a significant difference between the way these seasoned, successful chefs treat failure and the way the normal reality show contestant acts when faced with the judges’ panel. It’s a good lesson for most executives, (whether they watch reality TV or not).

In most cases when someone goes before the judges on a reality show they do one of four things. They claim it wasn’t really a problem, they provide reasons why they really aren't unhappy with the outcome, they blame something or someone else, or they act like what we know happened didn’t really happen. We can call these the Justify, Rationalize, Excuse and Deny strategies. The trouble is, trying to Justify, Rationalize, Excuse or Deny when we know something went wrong just makes things worse. It makes people want to argue with you so that you “get it”, or it makes them want to punish you so that you “get what’s coming to you”.

A key issue that many executives don’t know how to deal with well is the presence of regret. Regret is when you think something like “how much better this would have been if it had turned out another way.” It's OK to feel and express regret. Regret isn’t the same as guilt. Guilt is when you not only regret something, but feel morally responsible or worthy of punishment. For example, if you hit a child who runs out from between parked cars you would naturally feel regret…but if you were speeding or driving under the influence you should probably feel guilty as well.

When people feel guilty they should ‘fess up and face the consequences. When people feel guilty and don’t want to take responsibility, or feel the consequences exceed what they are prepared to face, they Justify, Rationalize, Excuse and Deny.

The Top Chef Masters certainly made mistakes and did things the judges might have found questionable. One very well known chef cooked his pasta in the bathroom, (you have to see the episode). Another froze all his fresh produce before the contest started. However, although both chefs expressed regret, in the sense that they would have preferred things to have happened differently, neither acted guilty. Consequently, the judges didn’t feel the need to argue with them, or punish them.

Most of us make mistakes, and when we do we should be prepared to face consequences without attracting undue argument or punishment. We should regret what happened, and accept the consequences without acting guilty. The way the master chefs acted was exactly the way to do this.

First, they acknowledged what happened without shrugging it off. Again, think of our driver who has hit a child in the road. We would be shocked and angry if the driver’s response was too glib, or didn’t appropriately acknowledge that we all would rather the child weren’t hit. Imagine if the driver said something like “well it’s really too bad but it’s not my fault…it’s not like it was my responsibility not to drive in the road rather than that negligent child or parents’ fault.” Ouch! Instead, our top chefs admitted what they had done and definitely didn’t downplay what happened or shrug it off.

Secondly, they agreed it would have been better otherwise, and expressed appropriate regret. In Top Chef Masters the chefs come before a panel of judges who have eaten their food and sat among their customers. If something the chefs have done affected the judges personally, they apologize, and express regret. A simple “I’m sorry about that” goes a long way to disarm the Argue/Punish response.

Finally, if you watch the episode carefully you see the third element of the chefs’ way of handling their mistakes. They remain quietly optimistic about the future. Either they say they learned from their mistake, (that chef will check the fridge again before he risks freezing his produce), or they put the mistake in context, (obviously the chef who cooked in the bathroom did so because of the extreme circumstances of the setting, not because he thought it was a good place to cook).

I have often seen successful executives take this one step further if they are going to have an ongoing relationship with the “judge”. Sometimes we make a mistake and the person we end up discussing it with is our boss, our colleague or our customer. When that happens it’s good to take the approach of “how can we make this better”. This ONLY works once you’ve gone through the first three steps, (Acknowledge, Express Regret and Behave Optimistically), otherwise you just set off the Argue/Punish response. Note also the “we”. I describe it as mentally getting you both on the same side of the table. Adopt the attitude that you’re going to sit side-by-side with this person and figure out what will improve the situation.

Good executives make mistakes. If they don’t they’re probably not trying hard enough. When they do it’s important they NEVER resort to one of the guilty behaviors, (Justify, Rationalize, Excuse and Deny). Instead, it’s OK to express what's appropriate in the circumstances, (Acknowledge the situation without shrugging it off; Express regret with an apology where appropriate; Be quietly optimistic about the future). Where an ongoing relationship is involved, the good executive knows the importance of engaging the other in making the situation better.

Doubt, Starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman

A few minutes into this movie I wanted to dislike it intensely. It seemed that we were being set up from the beginning to view the priest played by Hoffman as someone who was having inappropriate relationships with the boys in this 1960’s Bronx Catholic school. My reaction was based on the fact that we could see what was going on so clearly, yet the staff of the school seemed oblivious. It would have been too easy to make a movie that attacks the Catholic church, or uses a “ripped from the headlines” approach to engage the audience. However, not long into the movie it takes a turn, and the doubts and ambiguity of the situation start to be spelled out for the audience. This is a clever film, and one with significant lessons for how people try to do well in difficult circumstances, and what organizations need to do to address wrong-doing.

[Warning: Plot spoilers follow]

Streep plays Sister Aloysius, an old-fashioned nun and stern principal of the school. She distrusts Father Flynn, a laugh-out-loud jolly priest with a compassionate view of what it takes to help children grow and provide love and support in a poor working class neighborhood. Sister Aloysius distrusts his use of ball point pens, (we can almost hear her mutter “tools of the devil”), and in turn Father Flynn says “the dragon is hungry” when seeing the principal call another luckless student to her office for discipline.

The drama in the movie revolves around the school’s first African-American student and his relationship with Father Flynn. Is the priest just solicitous and compassionate, or is there something inappropriate in their relationship? Sister James thinks she sees something when the pupil is called to a private meeting with the Father, and she suspects she smells alcohol on the boy’s breath after. The boy’s mother just wants to enable her son to graduate, go to a good high school, and avoid a beating from his father who suspects him of having an “unusual nature”. Sister Aloysius goes on a crusade to get Flynn to confess, Flynn provides extremely plausible explanations of everything that happens.

The film’s ending leaves what actually happened unresolved. We don’t know for sure whether there was any wrongdoing. Indeed, we don’t know if Sister Aloysius’ distress and doubt at the end is at the role played by the church hierarchy, or directed at her own role in removing a potentially innocent priest from his calling to teach, or even a wider doubt in her faith that such things could happen at all.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops gives the movie a favorable review, (http://www.usccb.org/movies/d/doubt.shtml), despite the fact that it deals with themes of child abuse and sexual misconduct within the Catholic Church. I think it is because the film deals sympathetically with the dilemma of the school, the staff and the Catholic Church, a dilemma faced equally often today by contemporary businesses and organizations.

Since at least 1970, social researchers such as Latane & Darley, (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/?qid=20070430084944AAby7D0), have recognized five stages of helping behavior.

1. You must notice an event
2. You must interpret the event as requiring help
3. You must assume personal responsibility
4. You must decide what action is required
5. You must act

The film illustrates that this is not as obvious as it seems. It would have been easy for Sisters Aloysius and James to ignore the warning signs of potential misconduct, and equally easy for them to accept Father Flynn’s explanations as showing no intervention or help was necessary. Similarly, had not Sister Aloysius taken personal responsibility for dealing with the situation and saving the boy the movie illustrates that the church and the schools in this era had no infrastructure set up to deal with child abuse. While Sister Aloysius works through her options it is clear there is no one easy way to deal with a potentially inappropriate relationship in the school and the church. Her actions end up including direct confrontation, (trying to get Father Flynn to confess), and deception, (pretending she has spoken to a nun from the Father’s previous school who has spilled the beans on his past). Sister Aloysius is a model of the Latane and Darley theory, but also a sad illustration that a reinforcing social infrastructure is needed to enable helping behavior to be successful.

What can contemporary organizations do to enable helping behavior to succeed?

Organizations can “inoculate” themselves against bad behavior by systematically and sequentially addressing Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Abilities and Reinforcement. Using the movie Doubt as an illustration, here’s how a successful implementation might look.

Awareness: What is right and what is wrong needs to carefully explained so everyone is aware of the difference. Meeting with the priest to discuss pastoral matters is right. Calling boys for private meetings with Father Flynn when the purpose is unspecified and setting is hidden is probably wrong. Providing respect and support is right, providing hugs and giving individual gifts, (as Father Flynn does), is probably wrong. One of the major traps Father Flynn and many organizations fall into is that it is not enough not to do wrong, you have to be seen to not do wrong. Even if Father Flynn’s behavior had been acceptable the private and secretive nature of the relationship provided enough of an opportunity that something inappropriate could be happen. As such, Flynn’s behavior was wrong and his actions should have been subject to “the cleansing light of open air”.

Desire: There needs to be a shared understanding and desire of what the right behavior will do, and how the future can be better. Sister Aloysius and Father Flynn have very different views of what is right for the boys in the school. The principal is a disciplinarian who favors mirrored glass to enhance the ability of the teachers to have “eyes in the back of their heads” and hands out repetitious tables and word drills for disciplinary infractions. The priest believes the boys respond to positive modeling, (“look at my clean nails” he says), and offers opportunities for sport and positive interaction as well as delivering his traditional sermons from the pulpit. An organization needs to create a vision of what can come from positive change, and engage everyone in working constructively toward the common goal. Such collaboration lessens the possibility of in-fighting and reduces the opportunity for bad or deviant behavior to exist or worsen.

Knowledge: Had Sisters James and Aloysius been able to understand from the beginning the purpose of what had been happening between the priest and the boy there would have been less room for ambiguity. The priest was secretive, exerting his authority in the face of legitimate enquiries and attempting to intimidate the principal with a sermon on intolerance. One of the surest guards against bad behavior is public knowledge. The less that is secretive in an organization, the less opportunity there is for bad behavior to go unnoticed.

Ability: Sister Aloysius doesn’t know what her abilities are to act against the appearance of wrongdoing from Father Flynn. Had the school or church wanted to ensure such things did not happen there needed to be system of enquiry or “whistle blowing” that empowered anyone with suspicions. The system need not be punitive. It should have given Sister Aloysius the ability to have her doubts heard without adverse consequences. It should have enabled self-learning in the school and church as organizations. The school could have let Father Flynn continue in place, but changed its rules on private meetings with the boys or the giving of personal favors. One of the saddest outcomes of the movie is that you suspect that if Father Flynn were guilty, the church had simply moved him to another parish where he could transgress again unless there were another equally powerful sister to stand up to him.

Reinforcement: This is the crux of the final scene in the film. Sister Aloysius is not positively rewarded for what she has done. Rather, she is left out of the church’s decision to relocate Father Flynn, and left to deal with her own doubts over her actions. She is comforted by Sister James, but not by the church and its hierarchy. We wonder as an audience whether it was worth it for her. There is a whole sub-plot in which the boy’s mother wants no part of confronting the priest, and it seems that she is alone and unrecognized. Would she do the same again? Father Flynn moves on, neither reprimanded nor enlightened as to his role. Indeed, we are told his new position is a promotion. Organizations need to set up positive reinforcement for people who do the right thing, especially when it involves speaking up against authority or disclosing unpleasant truths.

Doubt is a powerful movie with great illustrative power. I will be using it with my clients to demonstrate a practical example of how well meaning people can’t always prevent bad behavior, and how organizations need to reinforce and support people doing the right thing.