Forging Resilience

64 Dr. Sharon Pickering: The Art of Personal Alignment, Discovering Your True North

• Aaron Hill • Season 2 • Episode 64

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Dr Sharon Pickering shares her perspective on personal and professional alignment, challenging us to explore what alignment means to us as individuals and how it impacts our ability to perform at our best. We discuss how to navigate the complex relationship between our internal values and the external demands that compete for our attention in modern life.

• Understanding alignment means recognising there's no right or wrong way to align yourself with your values
• Finding alignment requires putting joy at the centre alongside your purpose and values
• Adaptability is crucial for alignment, especially when rigid goals and timelines create unnecessary pressure
• Recognising misalignment often requires an emotional check-in that many people resist or don't know how to do
• Negotiating with yourself must come before negotiating with others for true alignment
• The best starting point for alignment is asking "What is in my control?"
• Alignment is cyclical and changes daily—it's never perfect but always personal

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Forging Resilience, exploring for a different perspective on strength and leadership. Join me as we discuss experiences and stories with guests to help gain fresh insights around challenge, success and leadership.

Speaker 2:

Today on Forging Resilience, I'm joined by someone who's had a profound impact on both my personal and professional life my friend and my mentor, dr Sharon Pickering. With a background in human factors and now the founder of SP Human Elements, she helps high performing professionals across safety critical industries look at risk through a whole hostilic lens, drawing on decades of insights and knowledge from working with organizations and working at organizations like NASA, ames, boeing, and applying the evolution of human factors. Today we're going to dive into the complex topic of personal and professional alignment. Sharon, welcome to the show.

Speaker 3:

Hello, nice to be with you again.

Speaker 2:

Brilliant to see you. So, Sharon, why are we talking about alignment today?

Speaker 3:

That's a brilliant opening question. Why are we here? Why are we talking about alignment? For me personally, it's been a very recent recognition that alignment is something that needs to be focused on daily. I never really understood alignment going through school, all of my education, my early career years. It's only really been recent years where alignment has been offered to me as something to focus on from my mentors and I certainly appreciate that in there is no right or wrong, there is a definition of alignment, but for us personally, as we are all all unique, there is no right or wrong. So I value the exploration of what alignment means to us individually and I'm always welcoming the opportunity to have that conversation so.

Speaker 2:

So what does alignment mean to you today, then?

Speaker 3:

It's something that I have crafted, let's say, over the years of delving much deeper into the concept of alignment. So, because I build a safety net of systems around high performance professionals, I have to, I have to, I need to, I must put them at the core. But in order to do that, I must also put myself at the core before I can help them help others. So a lot of people talk about high performance, which I recognize, that value, that that's worth and contribution to the world, and what I do is focus on how do we stabilize an optimum level of performance so that when the high stakes peaks are required, we're already prepared. So alignment for me is understanding my unique self and it's understanding how to relate what's happening in a world internally and externally. That brings back to my values. But also, more recently, I've recognized there's always been a huge part of alignment missing and that was remembering to put joy at the center as well.

Speaker 2:

Part of me wants to challenge this and I will, and from a, from a general place, for my own understanding and my mind is always what was already starting to to formulate a, an answer. But why might this be bollocks? And and also also, what about the nomad in the desert, or our great-great-granddads, or the tribe that live in the jungle? That probably won't be discussing alignment, what's different between any one of those groups and us, and why? Yeah, I'll leave it at that.

Speaker 3:

Love the challenge and challenge accepted graciously. Um. So in my experience, I've observed humans at work, um, at life, for three decades, professionally now, but obviously I can't just switch off from that. I'm trained to do that, so. So I do that with everybody I interact with, and now I'm worried that I'm going to lose some friends because apparently I'm psychoanalyzing them. That's not what I'm doing at all, I'm just observing. So I think we don't have to worry too much about the label.

Speaker 3:

At the moment we've labeled this feeling or this way we engage with our world as alignment, and that works for us right now. It works in the context that we're able to share with other people that maybe just go about their day. There is a sense of continual alignment that they may not recognize as the concept of alignment. So, for example, you know, evolutionary-wise we were designed to ensure that we had food for fuel, we avoided danger and we had shelter and warmth. Nothing's fundamentally changed in the realms of who we are as humans. But now there's so much noise. There's internal noise and that's competing for our attention all the time, for our attention all the time that comes from trying to cope with judgment, validation, continual learning. And then there's the external noise, which is obviously things that are happening around us that are seemingly out of our control. They may represent themselves as stressors which we can dive into in a little while, could be healthy, or they could be hindering our progress.

Speaker 2:

So whatever we label this experience as doesn't really matter where we come from it's fundamental to human understanding, human behavior and human performance yeah, and for me I, from what I'm picking up on what you say in my own little interpretation with my my brain was running off to, is that I think and in my experience, um, that people that from different generations lived a different pace of life, that people in tribes is my assumption here, but all the nomads don't live the the lifestyle that we do.

Speaker 2:

So lifestyle has a lot to do with it, and that they are probably a lot more present with the things that they're doing rather than doing lots of things. For example, from the moment we get up, we're on our phones, we're on Zoom calls, we're electronically bombarded with messages from radio, tv and media. Like you alluded to, there's work, there's the stress, and media. Like you alluded to, there's work, there's the stress, and there's all the competing that goes on at a societal level, whether we're conscious of it or not, and that they just probably aren't exposed to that level of stress. They're much more in touch with their instincts because there's time and space to think and connect it to themselves. They probably understand themselves slightly better or more in tune with their environment or connections, friends, family, even if they might not describe it like that or label it like that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I get that perspective, but I'm going to gently nudge back because they're still human. So, regardless of our environment, the people that we interact with, the belongings we have, the the weather system that's impacting our day, we all experience cycles of change. So even for the tribes in the Amazon jungle, for example, at some point there will be stresses for them. I can't find the next meal to feed my whole tribe Now. I'm really, really struggling. That's the same impactful level of a stressor that we experience in modern western world. So I believe it comes down to comprehending that we are still humans wherever we're, wherever we're grounded, where, whatever we're doing in life, and that it it holds the same weight in a way, because it's ours. Nobody can actually measure it, nobody can actually judge it.

Speaker 2:

It's actually what we feel yeah, I'd buy in into that and completely agree with that. I completely agree with that, um, but my thing is, we're probably more aligned to them, spell, spiritually, spiritually connected to themselves and their environment, which I think is also part of the the reason. But I completely agree, agree that a stress for one person is probably equals, if not more, stress to another. I don't, like you say, I believe I don't, don't think we can measure it from the granny spilling the milk and getting worried about that and that's the, the tea afternoon ruined to the person who can't feed their family. It's the stress, is stress for the, for the human. I believe that as well. Um, so what? What have you done then? Sharon? You talked at the beginning about um. It's something that's come into your uh radar much more more recently as alignment. What have you done to align yourself to, yeah, to yourself, to your values, your gifts, or uh, fundamentally allowed myself some adaptability.

Speaker 3:

Um, that just immediately spat out my mouth as the most obvious thing to say, because I can certainly say that pre-COVID I was on a trajectory that was very goal-orientated. Everything was. It was opportunistic in a way that it happened, but I always knew that I wanted to achieve, or must achieve, certain steps, and that was more a self-validation process, I believe, and there was not really any. There was not really any room for maneuver in there. It had to be done, it had to be achieved. Even right to the point of in my late 30s, I was about six years in to a part-time PhD and I'd set this really arbitrary goal on myself that I had to finish this PhD by the time I was 40. I mean, nobody was putting that pressure on me. The university was allowing me, I believe, nine years to complete it on a part-time basis. But I had this internal dialogue that if I didn't do that it was failure. And I don't know where that was driven from. Was it a societal pressure from a past experience? It certainly wasn't any pressure from family. They were massively supportive. Friends joked have you not finished this bloody PhD yet? So, but it was all me. It was all my internal dialogue and there was there was a fear of failure for sure. So I'd put this really arbitrary goal of completing this PhD by 40. And then I didn't. And then nothing happened. Nothing changed, you know, nobody was hurt, nobody died, and fundamentally that was way more important than anything else. I still was able to hold my head high that I was contributing to the world in my profession. I was still able to complete it with another few years to go.

Speaker 3:

And I remember sitting down with my two supervisors and very different characters and they said to me one of them said to me why do you want this PhD? And I don't know if this was a naive comment at the time or really what I valued and meant as a mission. I said I want to not only contribute to the world, I want to change the world. And one of the supervisors said well, you're doing a PhD for the wrong reasons. And the other one stopped and said actually, if that's Sharon's reason, then that's her reason. So it was quite an interesting realization that, no matter what I thought in my head, what my dialogue was, other people had a different perspective and it may not match mine. So again, just right back to what I started with. There is no right or wrong. And I did finish the PhD painfully nine full years, which now I look back as a combination of chaos, control and achievement. And now I can quite proudly say, regardless of all of the situations that were against me, all of the times I thought I should just get off this roller coaster.

Speaker 3:

I continued. Now just going back to the original point adaptability. For me, there was never any adaptability in that. So I defended my PhD one week before COVID was announced, or at least the threat of what that was going to do to the world, and then I had to stop. I then had to stop. I'd finished the PhD, I'd successfully defended it, and I went into that with a massive fear of failure. For me it was going to be an outright fail and a complete rewrite. The result ended up being minor changes, literally a few pages. It was all good, and then I had to press pause on life, and then I had to really stop and think. Well, now there almost is no sense of control. There almost is no sense of control. I've just spent all of this time building my knowledge base, building my offer into the world to be able to go out there and change things, and actually now I'm just at home wondering what do I do with myself? So adaptability was something I really had to bring to the forefront of my internal dialogue.

Speaker 2:

How can people maybe in your own experience as well tell that they're out of alignment?

Speaker 3:

then, apart from maybe not being adaptable, yeah, that's an interesting one because I think sometimes, certainly the conversations that I've had with many kinds of people all over the world I've lived and worked in seven countries now, so you get different perspectives all the time and I think there's extremes. I've at least witnessed and heard the extremes. I've at least witnessed and heard the extremes. There's people that are very resistant to having the emotional debrief with themselves to understand what alignment means for them. Then there's the polar opposite individual where they are very in tune spiritually. They are very in tune with knowing what works for them, what doesn't work for them and everything in between. So I don't think there is a magic equation or recipe.

Speaker 3:

Really Like your ingredients or your toolkit is what you make of it and the only way you can know and maybe it's not even this crystal clear. I can't possibly say to you today I'm in 100 alignment, because I know I'm not. Maybe it's 80 today, but maybe. But I can tell you a few weeks ago it was probably more like 40 and that was for different reasons. You know energy levels, things that were happening at work, things that were happening in life, just simply clouds outside. You know there's a lot about that. So how can people engage with their own alignment, own alignment it's it's from my perspective, from my experience of, of all of the individuals I've I've worked with and talked to. It's personal. You really have to make it your own, unique spin how might they do that?

Speaker 2:

and I've got some ideas here from from what you've said and to almost fact check and and yeah, go back to to my alignment with certain things that I'm doing in my life and I'm curious to hear what jumps out at you.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah well, you and I talk about this pretty much in every mentoring session because it's impossible to ignore it once you tune into it it's almost like the dial of a radio, and I think alignment for a lot of people in the traditional sense has represented itself as purpose. Am I in line with my mission, my goal, my purpose? I would gently and warmly challenge that in where's the emotional energy sit? So now I do an emotional energy matrix, which is something very, very unique to me, because I always was given, I was always over given and I was always doing more than potentially I was able to at the time.

Speaker 3:

So if we think about a combination of resources, so those resources can look like what you physically have available to yourself in terms of I feel great today, therefore, I'm going to write 20 pages or I feel really crap.

Speaker 3:

Today, therefore, I'm just going to have to go for a walk and accepting that, that that shifts and changes. And then the resources available to you from others. So you and I are very good now at asking for help, but we're both very honest about a time in our life where that wasn't either possible or something we were willing to do. So I'm going to offer that an emotional check-in, like we do this quite frequently. In fact we do this religiously in high-stakes industries, where the debrief at the end of the mission or the day or the period of time has an emotional element to it. But in day-to-day life I haven't I haven't witnessed that very often that people are willing to have that, willing or know how to have that conversation, firstly with themselves and then with others in terms of an emotional debrief. But I would definitely offer the benefits of understanding your own energy matrix, and that can be everything from work, family, friends, social commitments, all of the standard commitments for running a healthy body, mind and soul.

Speaker 2:

So you've got me to do this exercise, and my question to you is that we just did it on projects, though this time. The last one I did was just on projects what projects and collaborations you involved in down the left-hand side and the next one was rate it, I think well, this might be on my own twist rate it from one to five of how, how much it fills you. And then the third column any thoughts that come to the mind. And my question to you then is there's one or two on there which appear really cool, which really, I think in that moment fill me. But what if my gut gets it wrong? What if I'm enticed or seduced into something that that a younger part of me wants to do, but it might be out of alignment yeah, that's human nature.

Speaker 3:

Um know, sometimes that's obvious and sometimes it's really just a feeling, but does that mean that you can't pursue something, you can't be curious to continue for a while? So it's interesting. Your representation of the energy matrix is slightly different to mine in terms of the columns and the way that you measure it. If your scale is one to five, I've actually put mine in a percentage where actually, quite simply, 100% is my full bucket, and how do I want to spread the energy to the different work projects in this case? So what's interesting is, even though we're having very honest and open conversations, is, even though we're having very honest and open conversations, how we're internalizing that and how we're understanding that is slightly different.

Speaker 3:

Um, so there is a sense of intuition. That is important and, and certainly a lot of the professionals that I've spent a lot of time with, I mean, I have to really get into their head. This is beyond just the environment designed perfectly, the tools, the procedures designed perfectly, but in order to really enable them to understand their own health and performance, we have to have conversations that are massively uncomfortable. And I will continually plug the curiosity and sense of control aspect, because that is not something we're ever taught. That is something we almost have to create.

Speaker 3:

Our own version of your version of being curious and having a sense of control is completely different to mine, as everybody that is listening right now, but what does it mean to you? And that's definitely been a real barrier in getting quite a high of the these really incredible people across a bridge where they start to engage with the emotional side of what they're doing. You know, let's just talk about surgeons and and flight test pilots the elite and they are absolutely exceptional at their job, and then I bring in the emotional aspect and then pretty pretty more often than not, we hit a barrier so that they can start to unpack. What does this mean in the bigger picture of the way I show up my alignment?

Speaker 2:

how I allow some adaptability in this process of life. Love it no-transcript. But to start to get an understanding of our gifts and be able to express that. Not everybody can do that and that can seem really uncomfortable. There's an emotional element to that Understanding ourself, our limitations and strengths, as I alluded to, their gifts, our values or north star, and the ability to connect to ourselves. And that's not something that happens in a day or even a weekend, as you've alluded to. It's a lifetime of her experience to to be able to talk about this today. Yeah, what comes up for for you when you listen to that?

Speaker 3:

I think excitement actually was the initial response, because this is just what it is today yeah and I don't know.

Speaker 3:

I don't want to put time frames on things, but imagine I'm trying to imagine my future self, because my current self looks back now and thinks oh, if only you knew that, as you're at the point of defending the PhD that you so massively thought you were going to fail. But every day is, you know I say it quite flippantly, but I think I do genuinely mean it Every day is a school day and it's, I think, the adjustment side of what goes on in our heads as well.

Speaker 3:

You know I talk to the people I've worked with in really incredible organizations, incredible organizations. The support network around them is fraught with maybe a misjudgment or a misalignment, in this case, of what it is to be human in an activity that you're performing. So we can talk about any any right now. This doesn't have to necessarily be a high-stakes environment, but people talk about showing up and your skills as technical skills and soft skills, which is completely off-kilter with actually everything that human factors science is offering, in that the human is. Everything the human is experiencing is essential skills, it's not soft skills. So I think there's a shift and an evolution that I've seen, certainly over the last 30 years. But even today I still have to have the baseline conversation with people to open up a door that they may never have peeked behind before. I still have to bring the emotional aspects to their being burnout, um, and I I definitely you know I'm a big advocate for that because primarily, everything I've ever done is the prevention of burnout, harm and and fundamentally, death to to self or others, um, but that's because it's familiar to me. I've been doing that for 30 years in a career.

Speaker 3:

But I think if I wasn't a human factors professional, would I be able to easily have these conversations? Maybe not, I can't really answer that, but definitely my angle on that is our ability individually to things keep going in motion, but at some point we have to do a version of our pause. Pause doesn't mean stop everything. The world keeps revolving, but you have to put everything on hold. Pause can mean you're still having forward momentum, but you're you're more engaged with what's happening. You're in a review cycle and then you can make decisions, and whether that's an intuitive decision or a conscientious decision of what works in this situation, you can start to adjust and then move forward in more alignment.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think it's a really important point there, because those baseline conversations that you alluded to love it or hate it, conscious or subconscious is because emotion drives everything, and especially as, as middle-aged men like myself, we're not taught that. We're not taught that, so it seems really alien and uncomfortable to talk about emotions. But no time, let's get. We've got stuff to do. Um, and what comes? Yeah, I did a post. Well, in fact, one of my last posts has been a while since.

Speaker 2:

I posted on linkedin about an observation I had in in london of not from a judgmental perspective, almost from there's two aspects to it, really a cultural one, and just what we do to fit in. Do we even realize and I was with my family for a few days glorious sunshine is, that is an incredible week in london and, um, we're walking from from one side of town across the river to the other and it was kicking out of work time. So the the bars being that, the sun was out, you know what Brits are like and in London they are absolutely heaving and there's people all on the streets drinking. It's just after work, drinking, it's early, the atmosphere is fine, but my reflection was wow, I've been that person, by the way. So there's no judgment.

Speaker 2:

I wonder how many people are there because they actually want to be. I wonder how many people are just trying to fit in. Might they even realize that? Um, and a comment and a question at the end of the post is what, what might be we might be doing to fit in? And a response from from somebody? Again, no judgment along the lines of I do fuck all to fit in, um, and it takes us back right to the beginning of of knowing ourself and I think I think we do a lot to fit in because we're human, we've got, like you say, we need to provide shelter for our family and food for ourselves, and we're just not aware of it. We're just not aware of it because they haven't created the space or been asked the questions or gone into that discomfort to ask ourselves or be asked what is it that drives us? What are our gifts, what might our true self want?

Speaker 3:

yeah, it's really interesting, isn't it? Because there are times and even even for us, certainly now, knowing what we believe, we know, there's still so much more to learn. Um, you still find yourself in situations where you think I haven't really got the time or the energy for this. But I think that is where alignment comes in. You know, it's never going to look like a version of perfect, it just simply doesn't exist. But already, knowing that that's not necessarily in alignment, that experience isn't in alignment, it's good enough. We don't necessarily have to, you know, piss people off and run away and be arrogant and start to, like you know, forge our own way of being, against all odds, like we, we still. We still have to find, we have to find a way to interact with the world, even if it doesn't necessarily 100% align with our version. Um, so definitely, you know, I've been in situations where we're having conversations. Just an example off the top of my head Six test pilots want something designed a certain way and then, when we actually get into the details of it, then suddenly five test pilots want it one way and there's one anomaly test pilots want it one way and there's one anomaly, but now he's too worried to say that he wants it this way for these reasons and they were.

Speaker 3:

They were valid safety reasons, because now he's going against the grain. So you know, we have to look at the situation. That situation should not have allowed a massive amount of adaptability because there was a safety critical impact In other situations. In day-to-day life you might find yourself at a networking event, for example, because that's just what you've got to go and do sometimes, and you might think I just don't have the time for this because I have the 10 priorities sitting on my desk, or I'd rather be at home with my family, or I'd rather be out on my run because the sun's shining, but sometimes it's necessary. So you just have to judge and definitely these have been really important points in pretty much every conversation I have, both professionally and personally. Like you have to be the judge of what your alignment is and what you're willing to tolerate, what you're willing to adapt to so we're back after a few little technical issues there.

Speaker 2:

It seems Sharon's computer, phone and internet isn't in alignment with her today, but I was trying to duck out of the conversation a question around negotiation. But I'm not going to. And what's on my heart to share around that is, I think, is in my relationship. It's something that me and my wife completely different characters, very different outlooks on life, very different experiences, different cultures, different languages and our therapist has been talking to us about. Neither of us is right or wrong.

Speaker 2:

Going back to what you're talking about, but if we try and impose our perspective or opinion as the right one, it's like two heads clashing. If you imagine two fists bumping into each other. It's going to be who can shout the loudest, who's going to win the war of attrition, rather than finding out or trying to understand the other person's perspective, points of view, hopes, fears, concerns, goals, dreams and I'm talking specific, specifically about relationships here, and especially being parents as well and and taking those and meshing what both works, elements from both parties of what works, to create our own forward plan, rather than usually something inherited from parents, society or fear or trauma that we might not even be conscious of. So that's what negotiation feels like to me. It's more of a trying to understand the other person's perspective with curiosity, and I think a lot of compassion is the other thing that jumps out at me.

Speaker 3:

Thanks for sharing that. I'm going to add a compliment to it there's an element of negotiation with yourself as well. I'll give you my version of my negotiation. So I have to firstly negotiate with myself before I can amicably negotiate with other people in all aspects of life, whether that's my husband, my immediate family, my friendship circle, my colleagues or whoever I interact with at the supermarket.

Speaker 3:

I hadn't actually appreciated that there was a massive, massive element of negotiation in alignment until I started reading books about negotiation. I've always been semi-obsessed with it, to be honest, but didn't really understand that it was so relevant in day-to-day life. So for me now, negotiation is front and center of alignment, of me understanding my alignment, alignment putting joy at the center and allowing adaptability and we've talked about this quite a lot but allowing the process to flow. Sometimes we're so, sometimes we can be so rigid and sometimes we can be so laser focused, which is not all. It's not a bad thing, that's not a negative spin on that, but also sometimes the process, if you allow it to flow, can show you other directions that you may not have taken notice of before, to allow for a slightly different angle or a slightly different path.

Speaker 3:

Um, engaging with values is super important, and then building that community. So then that's where the external, the external players come in. You know, definitely we value mentorship. I have a mentor, I'm your mentor and other people's mentor, coaching you know you coach, you have coaches, therapists, whatever you need in your community. That, for me, is like your safety net almost, and all of those components are in the giant mixing bowl of whatever your version of alignment is. In my opinion, like it.

Speaker 2:

Like it. So for people that have been listening to today, doc. Um, where does the real process of alignment begin? Like, would you say? It's more mindset and environmental behavior, and what might be the smallest thing that they can do?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, definitely try not to get overwhelmed by all of the factors, because it is all of the moving parts, definitely what works professionally with everybody I work with and personally for me and other people that I have these conversations with.

Speaker 3:

It's starting with the question what is in my control? And it's a seemingly simple question, but then you can start to really break out the layers of you know things that are wanted, needed versus needed, versus essential in life, and don't be afraid to have some of those things that you want, because that can equal your alignment. I know in the past I've struggled with expressing my emotions in terms of I need a spa break because I'm about to break down, I'm exhausted, I've just done a 60-hour week, for example, but that probably wasn't the right way to express it. The better way, that's more aligned, would have been I want that, but I was never able to say I want. I always expressed it as a, as a need, um. So don't be afraid to explore what's in your control. Do you have a choice? And and providing nobody is going to get hurt in the process, like those choices are yours to own.

Speaker 2:

Love it. Is there anything you'd like to mention around alignment that we've not talked about today?

Speaker 3:

as we start to wrap up, I think we've covered a lot in there. I mean, I think, if I'm honest with you, each one of them is probably a podcast episode in their own right. It's a complex word because it has individual intention and meaning. So probably to conclude, the best way to wrap it up would be just remember that it's your unique version of alignment. There are cycles of change, and what is in your control has proven in my experience to be the best way to have a sense of control love it.

Speaker 2:

Awesome doc. Thanks so much for your time and conversation and, uh yeah, continued support nudges challenges.

Speaker 3:

Um yeah, it's deeply appreciated, so thank you for being here today it's been an absolute pleasure to share this time with you and I look forward to our next conversation. Awesome Cheers dog, Thank you.