Individual greed for material success and a focus on financial growth at all costs have proven to be toxic for the Western world. The time has come to find a more balanced definition of success which includes growing as human beings and making a contribution to the well being of the collective.In this blog post I reflect personally on the impact the Thatcher years had on my life and the journey I have been on since then. A journey that has led me to realise that in order to have healthy rather than toxic growth we need to espouse balance in our lives, in the way we lead our organisations and in how we utilise the resources of our planet.The Thatcher YearsI graduated in 1979, the year that Margaret Thatcher came to power. Like her I was a shopkeeper’s daughter who was brought up serving behind the counter with a father who put business first.
Margaret Thatcher’s individualist philosophy chimed well with me in the 1980s. I was ambitious and wanted to prove myself in a man’s world. I aspired to get to the top of my profession and I became a Fellow of the Market Research Society. I aspired to run my own company and was a Board Director and Shareholder by the age of 30. I aspired to and did accumulate the material trappings of success. I believed that anything was possible if you had drive and worked hard to realise your goals and I did exactly that.
The Brighton Bombshell
I thought I was invincible! But just like Margaret Thatcher I was hit by a bombshell in Brighton. In April 2000, after delivering a paper in the Brighton Conference Centre, I took the rare opportunity to pamper myself. That was when I found a cancerous lump in my breast which was to be a turning point in my life.
Through the cancer I came to realise that I had totally lost myself in all of the striving, that my life was out of balance and that my way of working was toxic to my health and my relationships. I also came to realise that I was being presented with an opportunity to grow as a human being. I redefined my view of success. Material success had not made me happy. I discovered that happiness was on the inside not the outside and that fulfilment comes from making a difference to others’ lives.
Starting Again
When we sold our business in 2002 I started a second career. By then I had got in touch with what I was really passionate about, namely leadership and helping others to realise their potential. I retrained as an executive coach and have been coaching individual leaders and leadership teams since then.
I am still as passionate as I was in the 1990s about helping more women to rise to the top of organisations. However, more than anything I now aim to support both women and men to be balanced leaders.
I want the financial crisis to serve as a wakeup call to develop new criteria for success. We have the possibility of shifting from a focus on toxic growth to the sort of growth that is healthy for individuals, organisations and the planet. Let’s make that our definition of success and move beyond the legacy of the Thatcher years!
