Within English-speaking countries certain phrases summarise the moment at which that first option is considered.  ’When the going gets tough the tough get going’ is synonymous with sports pep talks the world over. It’s a phrase that’s been around longer than the hit pop song of the same name in the 1980s sung by Billy Ocean. ‘Toughen up’ and ‘Harden up’ (and their expletive cousins) are all regularly representative in both New Zealand and Australian vocabulary. Of late, post Christchurch earthquakes throughout 2010 and 2011 (and a few into 2012) a new term has emerged, migrating from the construction sector culture and into mainstream language – ‘Drink some concrete’. Ironically a community event (disaster), while increasing the load upon us also reveals new found strength many never knew they had.

There is no doubt that stubborn determination to confront challenge, accept reality, stop moaning, and become proactive is a legitimate and, at times, extremely valuable coping choice. At other times, however, it is not. Not everything is best managed by a philosophical ‘toughen up’ type of approach, and not everyone can do it effectively. At worst it is a mechanism of denial, avoidance and self-delusion as to the impact of events. At best, however, it is a useful means by which we accept and adapt to reality, focus on what we can control, and psychologically move forward towards what can be rather than ruminate over what has been lost. As long as the latter accurately describes the change in personal philosophy ‘toughening up’ should be an encouraged and supported coping choice.

When it comes to organisations supporting individuals through crisis, however, it is often difficult to know when drinking concrete should be encouraged, by whom, in what way, and at what stage of the coping process. Indeed, resilience is very rarely a linear progression after a major disaster. It is a longitudinal wave line where peaks of hope and progress are punctuated by troughs of despair and frustration. The challenge we face is knowing when toughening up as a deliberate coping choice is effective, to be encouraged, and advocated for. This is particularly challenging when a broad event reveals the variety of individual capacity for change and individual journeys of resilience that expose differences in personal frailty, innate capacity to absorb more load, and generate inevitable comparisons and value judgements as to individual worth over time. It is hard to be or remain sympathetic to those who are struggling through the aftermath of an event when we perceive that we, ourselves, have a) been through greater personal adversity, b) taken strides to make improvements and changes for the better, and/or c) the cost of supporting those individuals who continue to struggle is using resources (be they physical and/or psychological) that are increasingly being resented by those whose attitude is one of pride that they coped on their own and made choices necessary to come through in a positive/adaptive manner.

From a human resources and management perspective the additional risk is coming across as insensitive or unsympathetic and as a result we make allowances, sometimes reasonable and sometimes not. The consequence of those allowances is a slowly growing resentment from ourselves and other colleagues towards those who begin to believe that generosity is being taken advantage of unfairly or unappreciatively. Again, at times this demand for support and differential treatment (e.g. time off or time back at work, attitude in the workplace) is warranted but at other times not – either by virtue of deliberate malingering (in reality very rare) or the unintentional tolerance of some ineffective coping choices that harm others in the team as well (e.g. extra workload absorbed by colleagues, decisions made without desired input, loss of team spirit through fatigue). Rehabilitation back to work is a joint effort between employer and employee. It is not merely the absence of every workplace hazard (in the case of the employer) or the absence of all subjective ill health (in the case of the employee).

What, then, are some useful systemic guidelines post-disaster that support an expectation that ‘drinking concrete’ is not an unreasonable expectation in order to cope with a community-wide event that has affected us all? These may be controversial but after practical experience guiding many organisations, teams and individuals through a major disaster experience they are also effective in helping us decide when we have a) done enough as an employer, and b) whether an employee has done enough for themselves or needs to do more before further resources are expended.

1. Boundary setting from the start. Leave allowances to manage recovery affairs should be spelt out clearly within the first week, alongside expectations of return to work and work hours. While necessary flexibility applies it is important that some boundaries and expectations are established early to avoid setting limits only after the patience of an employer has been exhausted.
2. Management using local knowledge. It is easy to debate the readiness of someone to return to work and the support provided by an employer when management decisions around the provision of support and adaptability to personal circumstance are made outside of the affected area. The saying ‘You have to be there to get it’ is very accurate. The understanding of personal adversity, the immediate community challenges, and the needs of staff – both practical and emotional – cannot be achieved while sitting in a city a thousand miles away. Leaders need to be on the ground. The benefit of this is they understand local needs, can respond to them with individual sensitivity, and their instructions and decisions are more readily accepted.
3. Early evaluation of needs and an auditable response. Some who struggle and linger with poor coping choices are genuinely experiencing post-traumatic reactions. Many, however, also argue that not enough was provided, at the right time, at the right place and in the right way. A structured means of evaluating need, recording support provided, and monitoring ongoing status is critical to establish just what has been done and when, and how the level of support provided/demanded compares to others inside the organisation equally affected.
4. Identification of the ‘new normal’ with regards to expectations. In other words, what is the standard of work expected in the current context and how has it been communicated? How will that standard be expected to change over time? What is the standard of management support and monitoring we expect of those affected? What support can we guarantee (e.g. time off for rebuilding meetings with builders or visiting time with family members injured) and what is negotiable (e.g. limits to paid time off per week, days working from home, extra time spent dropping off and picking up children from school given changes in travel routes and class start and finish times).
5. Utilisation of occupational health expertise earlier rather than later. Key questions that will guide management and an organisations response include: What can be considered to be ‘normal’ behaviour post disaster? How has employee assistance (counselling) been utilised and what advice has come from it to assist coping? How have managers been upskilled to identify and act on early signs of resilience ‘troughs’? What procedures have been put in place to monitor workload, and changes in personal circumstances and personal needs? What objective measures are used to assess fitness for work and/or what needs are disaster-related and which are other-related? What underlying attributes and conditions are contributing to ongoing stress reactions affecting performance and health?

1. The assumption that task is everything and emotion and behaviour is nothing. Emotion and ehaviour is, are reality, everything. Emotion determines how we filter information and perceive events. Behaviour determines how we perform and in turn listen to what is said, contribute to a team, become part of a culture, and identify what is cceptable and unacceptable at work.
2. Lack of relationship management skills. Being able to give instruction, conduct a meeting, listen, and engage in social chit chat are all valuable skills. But, while they may be a part of it, they’re not the sum total of skills necessary to understand what motivates others, what builds trust, what gets people to listen to you, and what devlops influence over time. The real benefit of good relationship management skills is that they pay off when things are going wrong. The ability to get others to listen, to make suggestions that are agreed with, to negotiate an outcome, to maintain the dignity of others. When things go wrong such skills are valuable and rare.
3. Failure to allow time to build relationships, respond to staff issues, and address things early. So often I come across issues that could have been resolved early by a conversation involving inquiry, clarification, establishing expectations and exploring simmering issues. Why do we not? Because we lack confidence or worry about looking silly, lack time to observe, or lack the skill to know what to look for that warrants a subtle conversation or plan to nip things in the bud.
4. Failure of measurement. We measure what we can measure so it looks good on a spreadsheet without asking how it affects what’s important around here and to our customers. Yes, dollar value of widgets made or lost time injuries avoided are important but is that all? We might say behaviour is important but that old adage, ‘What gets measured gets done’ applies. If we don’t measure it it loses importance in our day to day thinking.
5. Cumbersome performance review and/or appraisal processes where there is no buy in from the team who see it as a bureaucratic exercise with no clear relevance. Many organisations have this challenge but it’s the role of the managers and leaders in an organisation to develop a culture that sees self-improvement, learning and development as a positive and celebrated part of working here, and not as an opportunity to just pick or go on a course every six months.

Mistake 1: They had a pulse. No matter the need for the skills, the knowledge, or the capability at the time for the vast majority of organisations a bad hire costs significantly more in time and money than a position that remains vacant until the right person comes along.

Mistake 2: Poorly done referee checks. Or even no checks. Closed questions, no exploration of answers, lack of understanding of the areas to inquire about and why, and poor recognition of the role that ‘soft skills’ play in performance and teamwork. Often I come across people who are selected, only to clearly have entrenched counter-productive attitudes, that are widely known to those they have worked closely with.

Mistake 3: Failure to understand all that adds ‘value’. Skills are important, as are knowledge, qualifications and experience. But no one works in a vacuum. Value is more than widgets produced or meetings held. It includes communication style, management of conflict, self-image, ability to learn, willingness to listen, acceptance of feedback etc. This is especially the case with management. The further we go up the management tree the more managing talent rather than task adds value to our employer. What talent does the person need to manage, how, in what way, and with what expectations from the organisation? This shouldn’t be a simple announcement but an ability to be evaluated.

Mistake 4: Failure to scratch the itch. In other words, “I’m a good judge of character.” In this case we deliberately, and unintentionally and without awareness, focus on the ‘evidence’ that supports what we want to see in someone, especially if we like them. All to often I’ve been told, “Well I had a feeling….” Only to realise that those feelings were shared by others but no one was willing to stand up and say they weren’t 100% comfortable with that selection decision. If we have a doubt we need to articulate it and test that hypothesis further, not assume it was an itch we didn’t need to scratch. Maybe there was nothing there, but maybe there is and a little more probing is money and time well spent providing the area of doubt is clearly clarified as to what it is and the risk it has for the business.

Mistake 5: A mate/colleague vouched for them. We like to trust those we know but who says our mate or colleague’s assessment is any better or worse than our own? Some good talent can be identified this way but also some disasters. Due diligence still applies – no short cuts or desire to attribute good judgement to a friend unnecessarily. This can be great information but it still pays to assess the credibility of the opinion. A few questions can establish just how much and in what way a colleague has worked with someone they vouch for or if they merely base their evaluation of “She’s a great person” on the fact she was supportive on a major issue faced 3 months ago, or simply seems inoffensive and fun during the occasional lunch.

Mistake 6: Failure to understand the difference between what is wanted and what is needed. What is wanted is what we think is important from a distance. What is needed is what is really important right in front of us! If you want to know the difference ask those who report to the new hire or have to work closely with them what they are looking for for them to be motivated and productive. This is a simple task, and not merely a chance for a team to be unrealistic. To the contrary, most teams will see it is a constructive opportunity to assist a process that is in their interests to be done right.

What was interesting about this case, however, is the fact that the employee was fired for inappropriate use of time was lost in translation. The justification for the sacking, at least amongst staff gossip and by management, became that the employee was sacked for looking at porn at work.

Here the lines between fairness and morality become blurred and is a good example of how personal morality can affect decision-making, or at least the ‘myth’ around justification for major decisions. Decisions are always easier to justify when one can take the moral high ground, as came to be the popular view in this case. Often that adds value to a good decision, but at other times it masks the real issues and doesn’t address them. There is significant risk here in the workplace when individual and group morality serves to justify differentiating treatment of behaviour. In this case, porn was used to justify sacking for misuse of time when, in fact, employees misuse employer time, well, all the time.

The employees view, in this case, that his behaviour was justified because he was browsing porn whilst on his lunch break actually has some merit. Not because porn is acceptable viewing at work, but because a number of employees justify mis-use of employer time in this way on a regular basis. And yet, no sanction is put forward. Consider the myriad of retail sites such as Trademe or EBay, news sites such as CNN or Stuff here in New Zealand, Facebook, or even browsing cinema sites to organise a movie for the weekend. These are regular viewing by many workers during break time and seen as, quite rightly so, harmless. They are commonly viewed as a legitimate ‘perk’ of having internet access at work and as long as the privilege is not abused, deemed ‘appropriate’ by many bosses (who at times do the same themselves, let’s be honest).

But what is the difference between viewing a porn site and Facebook if the standard is misusing an employers time? The answer is, none. Clearly the employee in this case should have been censured and possibly even fired and any number of reasons could have been used from offensive behaviour to breach of company policy regarding internet use to repeated behaviour if they were, at the time, under a performance improvement plan after prior indescretions. However, we must take care that personal morality does not interfere with decision-making else we set a double standard based on what is deemed acceptable by what is ‘popular’ rather than what is right. If you’re going to be sacked for watching porn and the reason is mis-use of company time then the standard should also be to sack someone for browsing on Ebay or Facebook during work hours (I can hear the chorus of horrified shrieks from here). Of course we rarely do that because the morality is different, even though the mis-use of time from the employer is the same.

While it remains to be seen if such productivity can be maintained as there is an inevitable cut-off point by which neurology and biology overcome determination and commitment, what is it that creates that sense of purpose? If only we could define it and recreate it we would not only be so much more productive but also happier in what we do. After all, one of the key causes of work satisfaction is a clear sense of meaningfulness between what we are doing and a desired outcome (‘paperwork’ may well be valuable but it lacks the sense of purpose one gets when repairing a sewer line that allows a hundred households to flush). How do we manufacture the same sense of commitment we see among many of those rebuilding Christchurch in ordinary and everyday activities? Is it even possible to do that? It may not be long-term but it might be temporarily. We have seen amazing examples through history of long-term commitment to a cause, unfortunately only during wartime, and in particular that of total war where the civilian population is exposed to the risks and dangers of conflict. This, in some way, may explain the sense of purpose existing in Christchurch today – everyone is affected, the entire community, and there is no escape from it.

What, then, are the ingredients of a purpose that transcends? Using the example of Christchurch post 4 September 2010 (7.1 magnitude) and 22 February 2011 (6.3 magnitude) we can identify the following elements that have created a purpose that transends.

1. A clear outcome: A clearly defined endpoint by which we can determine success and/or failure. Knowing how our particular role, skills and efforts are contributing to the larger project we are working on and being able to look back and see, tangibly, what has been achieved by our effort. In other words, the chance to look back and say ‘I did that.’

2. A clear link: Knowing how and in what way we contribute to the bigger picture. How does this task or project matter and fit into the overall strategic direction of what we are undertaking? It is not just the completion of this task that is important but the opportunity to get on to the next one as part of a greater cause.

3. Recognition: Spontaneously or planned, timely feedback on work underway or completed that reinforces the appreciation of those who see, use and witness what is being undertaken. This might be internally generated through company initiated awards and acknowledgement or informal team celebrations during- and post-completion. This might be externally generated through public thanks and even spontaneous acts of kindness by members of the public. Whatever the origin the recognition reinforces that fact that this is not a business as usual time.

4. A catalyst event: Few leaders can by force of personality, time in history, or circumstance alone transcend individual priorities and dominate thinking across the broader body politic. Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill and Robert F Kennedy were great orators and, in their own way, great men. But their words would have not had the impact they did outside of the environmental circumstances of their time. A catalyst event can be used to generate a need across the broader population, inside a company or outside of it, that starkly re-prioritises what is important and not important in daily life. In other words across a critical mass of the population the ‘big picture’ view changes for the majority of people at the same time.

Effective leaders are those who motivate through a purpose that transends individual differences. They understand and find an event and/or cause that emotionally engages and is personally relevant to a critical mass of their employees in such a way that it shifts thinking. Without a shift in thinking then behaviour, and hence productivity change, will not follow. Such a cause must dominate conversation, inspire hope, create a sense of individual contribution to a greater good, and generates determination to overcome. Without a clear and present danger, of some form, there is no ability to overcome individual priorities and reluctance to self-sacrifice time and energy to a cause. Whilst a natural disaster may generate such a danger automatically the challenge for today’s leaders who wish to inspire greater productivity and satisfaction (they both go hand in hand) is how to communicate the same vision and need greater than the individual, and which the individual wishes to be part of.

In memory of Bill Perry, CEO of Fulton Hogan, who passed away suddenly on 30 July 2011. Our thoughts are with his family and the Fulton Hogan team.

1. Honesty. In good times everyone makes money and does well, and problems can be tolerated more easily. In bad times that ain’t so. It is important that issues are not buried and are addressed appropriately, be they about people, systems, or the fundamental aspects of the business itself. Lack of self- and business-honesty is the number one reason why businesses and teams fail. Pretending a problem isn’t there or not recognising it for what it is, does not mean it doesn’t exist.
2. Shared values and platforms. To compete and deliver effective responses to customers, staffing and market challenges must be met quickly and creatively. The key to this is a standardised process, and clear standards and expectations. One of the myths of standardisation is that it prevents innovation but this is not the case if part of that standardized approach is a method for identifying and actioning recommendations for improvement. Shared values and standards allow people to stop wasting time on basic activities and focus on higherorder issues and concerns.
3. Collaboration and partnership. Work with others, not against them. Share resources, contacts and ideas. Explore and identify who your business partners may be by engaging your network. The keys to a successful business partnership are shared values and beliefs, and open communication. There is generally plenty of business around but we have become used to working only one or two ways. Learn from others, ask questions, be prepared to help others out. You will be surprised how much it will benefit your business and team.
4. Innovation and point of difference. Be prepared to think outside the square and, if an idea has merit, explore how it may work for you. We are products of our environment, and so is our team. To paraphrase two well known quotes from unknown authors “Necessity is the mother of invention” and “Don’t be afraid of adversity. It may move you in the one direction you always wanted to go.” Be prepared to stand out from competitors by your attitude, approach, philosophy, and branding. In a crowded market these pay real long-term dividends.