​We’ve all had that feeling of nervous anticipation before a big challenge in our working lives – a crucial client presentation, a difficult negotiation, or even just too much to do in too short a time in the week ahead.
 
It’s the same in sport before a big match, and as all football coaches will tell you, it can be a good thing because it “gets the adrenalin running” and makes you play better. It can in sport and business also so cripple a player or participant with worry that they don’t sleep the night before and never turn up for the big event.
 
The crucial thing is not that nerves happen, because they do and to the experienced and accomplished as well as to the novice. Mark Twain once said: “There are only two types of speakers in the world: the nervous and liars”. And nervous stress can be quite damaging to our ability to function effectively. See this an article on how anxiety can adversely affect a negotiation.
 
What matters is how we manage and approach the inevitable stress we all experience in our working professional worlds day in day out. We all have the ability to take some conscious steps to manage difficult situations, and to turn nerves to our advantage. "The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another." - William James, American philosopher and psychologist.
 
Here’s a good article from the Harvard Business Review about how to “Conquer Your Nerves Before Your Presentation” which focuses on thorough preparation. I’ve found rehearsing a presentation at least three times however well you know the subject makes the actual event go so much better and helps nurture a calm attitude.
 
I also think it really helps to rise above the anxiety and to realise that all of these work and sporting events are there to be experienced and actually enjoyed – not worried about. The greater the challenge the greater to opportunity. The great tennis players seem to be able to rise above their nerves and to really enjoy the big occasions such as the finals of grand slams and actually to look forward to them. John McEnroe once commented on Roger Federer’s ‘joie de vivre’, saying that he’s ‘never seen someone love playing as much as Roger’.
 
It also really helps to get stuck in and get on with the pressure situation, recognising all of the nerves and stress and working through them in practice, rather than worrying. The American business man Lee Iacocca commented: "In times of great stress or adversity, it's always best to keep busy, to plow your anger and your energy into something positive."
 

According to Wikipedia a witch-hunt is a search for people labelled "witches" or evidence of witchcraft, often involving moral panic or mass hysteria. The classical period of witch-hunts in Early Modern Europe and Colonial North America took place in the Early Modern period or about 1450 to 1750, spanning the upheavals of the Reformation and the Thirty Years' War, resulting in an estimated 35,000 to 100,000 executions.
 
Although as all readers of Harry Potter will know "Indeed, Wendelin the Weird enjoyed being burned so much that she allowed herself to be caught no less than forty-seven times in various disguises. With the use of a Flame-Freezing Charm, however, the flames were rendered harmless, creating only a gentle tickling sensation which Wendelin enjoyed.”
 
In reality witch hunts have survived metaphorically into the current day and age, and they are anything but light hearted, threatening careers and reputations with impunity and very often without justification.
 
Looking back over my career I can recall a number of times in professional practice where something went seriously wrong in a corporate or commercial transaction and when the dust had settled a bit, the inquisitions and finger pointing started. It was as if they took on a life of their own. Nobody vaguely associated with the work was immune, however distanced they were from the actual mistake or problem. Those not involved were “righteously” looking for scapegoats – for witches they could burn – as if that would somehow right the wrong.
 
I am all for understanding and attributing responsibility in these circumstances to ascertain what went wrong, to avoid making the same errors and to improve professional practice. But these laudable aims are often overridden by a “blame” culture. Staying with the religious theme it can to my mind also be a little bit like “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” (Jesus in John 8.7).
 
Here is a good article on How to Survive a Modern Day Witch Hunt, focused more on the political world, which comments Americans used to put aside their political beliefs to work together, and now they actively use their beliefs to purge each other from the public sphere through modern Inquisitions.
 
Of course investigations are sometimes necessary in the workplace environment but it is important that they are run fairly and as this article suggests To perform a legally compliant and effective workplace investigation, you must be sure that the investigation does not transform into a witch hunt.
 
I think if you are subject to a witch hunt, you have to stand up for yourself and demonstrate objectively what your role was, seeking support where you can, but recognising as the American novelist Walter Kirn commented “Everyone loves a witch hunt as long as it's someone else's witch being hunted.”
 
It’s still a very scary process however you try to manage it, especially when witch hunt style investigations have some corporate seal of approval. As Joni Mitchell sings in the song Tax Free Lord, there's danger in this land, you get witch hunts and wars when church and state hold hands.
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​It is quite amazing in this age of the Internet and social media how everything has to be new and modern or it doesn’t seem to count. It’s only the latest blog or theory that appears to have any profound validity. Any media product or management process that is more than 10 years old is ancient history.
 
And yet this just isn’t true. I have finally got around to reading How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie - which was first published in 1937 – when the Z1, originally created by Germany's Konrad Zuse in his parents living room, was built and is considered to be the first electrical binary programmable computer. A far cry from today where we all have by contrast extraordinary computing power in the smart phones in our pockets.
 
The latest edition brings the book more up to date, but the essential message is the same, and is as true today as it was before the Second World War. Whether in the context of professional or personal life there are three central tenets and one overriding lesson. The broad theme is the capability of individuals to improve whoever they may be and whatever their position in society. Within that there are three fundamental principles:
 
1 Don’t criticise. “I will speak ill of no man and speak all the good I know of everybody.” – Benjamin Franklin.
 
2 Provide sincere appreciation. “The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.” - William James the American philosopher.
 
3 Understand what other people want. “If there is one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as your own.”  - Henry Ford.
 
Abraham Lincoln said in the context of the American Civil War of 1861 to 1865: "Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us therefore study the incidents in this as philosophy to learn wisdom from and none of them as wrongs to be avenged."
 
Maybe it is just professional and management theory that is to blame. As the author Morgen Witzel commented in his book A History of Management Thought: Of all the sciences and social sciences, management is the one that most deliberately turns its back on the past. Yet management as we know it today did not spring into life fully formed. Management has more than just a present; it also has a past, and a future, and all three are inextricably linked.
 
Personally, I think it is simpler and that in our professional and personal lives we are seduced by the latest thinking into believing that we are learning it all for the first time, especially if it has some foundation in technology or artificial intelligence or something similar.

​I received my certificate this week for passing the Royal Yachting Association (RYA) VHF radio short range course. You need this qualification as well as an International Certificate of Competence in order to charter a sailing yacht in Europe. One of the main features is how to send a distress message in an emergency by using a digital (DSC) and Mayday (derived from the French m’aider, literally help me) voice message on the emergency Channel 16. The simplest method particularly if you have no time because the boat is on fire or sinking is to press and hold a red distress button on the radio which automatically broadcasts both a distress message and your position.
 
Managing a distress situation in a yacht calmly and in a planned way is critical. I recall sailing in the Mediterranean Sea and going below to discover water sloshing around the floorboards. Water coming in is not good in a boat out at sea and it is easy to panic, which is not very helpful. However, there is a procedure for dealing with this. First taste the water – if it is fresh one of the water tanks is leaking and you do not have a major problem. Secondly start the electronic bilge pumps. If these do not work operate the manual ones. Then look for the source of the leak and stop it. If this stems the flow fine head to a harbour. If not send a distress message. If the boat sinks abandon ship and take to the life raft.
 
The same is true in a business crisis. Start by recognising it may happen and then managing it. At the end of a long hard negotiation of a high profile joint venture supply contract I once worked, at the last minute just before signature, the other side raised a potentially serious regulatory difficulty. Our team was very deflated. But we had a senior corporate lawyer with us and he simply took charge, said right let’s regroup and deal with this, take a note of what has happened and if necessary start preparing for a dispute. We all rallied, the point was dealt with and we signed.
 
It’s all about recognising that crises will occur and preparing for them. Sir Clive Woodward’s England rugby union team went onto the pitch for every game with a plan for most eventualities and the leadership on the field to implement change if required. The American prelate Richard Cushing said Always plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the Ark.
 
Here is a good blog from Harvard Business School on crisis management in negotiation which discusses the need to prepare and to have ground rules, drawing lessons for businesses from police hostage negotiations.
 
And every potential crisis if anticipated and managed in the right way may open the way to opportunity or to learning more whether sailing or in business. As John F Kennedy said When written in Chinese, the word “crisis” is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.