How do you value your people?

The relentless pressure on finances is putting a serious strain on all aspects of business.  The slow, painful and uncertain crawl out of the longest downturn in living memory means there is less money available to invest in improvements and yet, there is an ongoing demand from staff to increase salaries as they feel the pinch in their personal lives.  But what are your staff and Managers really worth?  How do you go about estimating their value; their contribution to your success?

A Lethal Combination

There is still a lot of talk in HR circles about how the bonus culture that got the banks into a financial crisis is still alive and well.  But there is another aspect to motivation that no one has mentioned.  It lies beneath the surface and could even be damaging your organisation, business or team. 

Are you sacrificing your relationships?

The quality of your results is determined by the quality of your relationships. From customers and clients to staff and suppliers, if you don’t maintain good relationships your results will suffer.  In fact, good relationships are no longer enough.  As pressure and competition rise we need excellent relationships.  This will become even more important if we want to take advantage of the tender green shoots of recovery. 

Are your relationships ‘On Purpose’?

Every relationship has a purpose but all too often it is unspoken, undefined and ambiguous.  When things are going well we naturally assume that our purpose is aligned and there is a good mutual understanding.  However, this allows many interpretations and both parties may have completely differing views and expectations of the relationship. 

Three Shifts that will transform your productivity

I often hear the complaint ‘Everything is a priority!’, but if everything is a priority then nothing is a priority.  The word ‘prioritise’ means to rank, select or place in order, so if everything is equally important then nothing is ‘more’ important and nothing is a priority.  However, I also understand the immense pressure everyone is under these days.  We are all expected to do and achieve more, yet there are only 24 hours in a day.  So the only solution is working smarter not harder.

The Structure of Disappointment (or even misery)

Is there a part of your work (or your life) where you are overplaying your strengths?  It is useful to consider that what can be a strength in one context can lead to frustration and upset in another. 

Are your emotions helping or hindering performance?

Your emotions are setting the standards in your business because the performance of your team is like a mirror of your inner state of consciousness.  If you want to change their performance you need to change the way you are thinking about it.

Are You In A Rabbit Warren Or A Helicopter?

It takes all types to make up a successful business.  I have a number of clients where one of the top team is the ideas person and there are others who make things happen.  I’ve always been intrigued by what makes these relationships successful - or fraught with difficulty.

Training is a waste of Time and Money

Most training is a waste of time and money because senior management have not given it enough thought.  They often look at it in isolation as a way to ‘fix’ other people and neglect the most important aspects including their own role in the process. 

The Problem with Positive Thinking

In a classic business context it is usual to have things like Key Performance Indicators, Targets or Critical Success Factors and it is always recommended that these should be SMART.  But there is a lot more to achieving a goal than simply applying the SMART acronym.  I have been a student of applied psychology for over 20 years now and I am always curious about finding the difference that makes the difference. 

Are you a Player or a Pawn?

It’s your choice
We all make our own reality.  Whether you believe this or not, you are always right.  You simply select specific evidence in your experiences of others or of a situation as proof for your beliefs.  It is usually done way below your conscious awareness and can help or hinder your ability to respond effectively, because no matter what your situation, you see yourself as either a Player or a Pawn.

When Rapport is not enough

While rapport is very important, sometimes it is not enough.  By listening carefully to the words people use to express themselves we can identify a number of motivational traits that can help us to understand, predict and influence the behaviour of others.

Do you have the crucial skill for the 21st Century?

While there is some talk of recovery there are still lots of economic traps ahead.  Success in today’s workplace is not only about your level of skill and competence; it’s about how quickly you can recover from setbacks and learn from mistakes . . .

Can you let go to grow?

Is your brain damaging your business?
Why do so many senior people struggle to delegate key tasks even when they know they are limiting growth by being the bottleneck in their business?  The latest scientific evidence shows that it’s not only down to skill, it’s our brain getting in the way.  There is always a lot more to be done in a day than you can achieve by yourself and the key to success is knowing what to let go of.  But letting go creates uncertainty and your brain hates uncertainty almost more than anything else.

What level of thinking are you encouraging in your people?

We are facing an unprecedented crisis in workplace motivation.  Only the businesses that are quick to learn and adapt will survive and thrive in the current economic climate.  Survey after survey is showing that the majority of people are disengaged at work and are delivering well below their best efforts.  But we now have an opportunity to use a more creative management approach – by utilising below conscious motivation patterns.  

Are you winning or losing?

Do you ever feel people aren’t listening to you – especially when you know you are right?  Well consider this; when you decide you are right the other person must be wrong, which means you are probably not listening to them!  It’s interesting to see that whenever a contentious issue is being discussed, people seem to put more effort into being ‘right’ than finding a solution that will benefit the business.  In their determination to be heard and to score points they don’t listen to one another; it becomes a battle for status.  Unconsciously they are actually seeing each other as a dangerous threat, so vital insights and possible solutions are missed and by trying to win, both lose.  But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Are you too certain to learn?

The ability to rapidly learn and apply new ways of working is the key to business success, especially in our knowledge-based economy.  The dramatic changes in technology are leaving some senior people stranded as they struggle to manage the vast amounts of information required to run a successful business.  But there is also something else that can inhibit your ability to learn.

How to avoid Silly Mistakes

Dealing With Increasing Complexity
In a world of ever-increasing complexity it is becoming very difficult to maintain high standards and control mistakes, especially the silly ones that seem to be repeated, even by competent people.  There is a surprisingly simple answer to this fundamental problem that many businesses suffer from.  But very few people want to implement it because it offends their ego.

Is ‘Captainitis’ getting the better of you?

No one really likes to be challenged but it is sometimes very dangerous to have everyone around you agree with you.  If you don’t encourage your people to challenge you the results can be fatal . . .

Take for example the following exchange taken from the flight recorder of Air Florida flight 90 just before it fell into the icy Potomac River near Washington DC, in 1982.

Are you empowering your people or just exerting your power?

There is a lot of talk these days about empowerment yet very few managers actually do it because they seem to be more concerned with exerting their own power. This is understandable because power can be addictive and it takes courage, faith and belief to let go and truly empower others.  How effectively are you empowering your team?

How proficient are your people?

As a senior manager you probably have very high levels of awareness and technical expertise in your chosen field.  You can effortlessly make decisions that actually require reflecting on your vast experience, and sorting through millions of mental maps with various levels of complexity.  But what about your people?  What level are they at and what are the steps they need to take to get to the next level?  What are the steps you need to take to help them?

Are you getting the tension just right?

You can only control that of which you are aware, that of which you are unaware controls you.  Awareness is very empowering but we often neglect it because we are too busy; addicted to the urgency of crises and fire fighting.  But there is another way . . .

Are you giving negative instructions? (and programming people to deliver what you DON'T want?)

It can be frustrating when people don’t do what they are supposed to do and yet many managers unwittingly make things worse by emphasising what they don’t want rather than what they want.  The science has proven that this only perpetuates the problems because the brain can’t ‘not think about things’.

How are you Unlocking Performance?

Reject Conventional Wisdom
Conventional wisdom says “Treat others as you would like to be treated” and yet this is the root cause of most performance problems and communication challenges in the workplace (not to mention personal relationships!).  In a massive study of managers who were leading high performance teams, researchers Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman discovered that great managers have very little in common.  However, they all reject conventional wisdom. 

Why some people can’t take a hint

The most frustrating thing about communication is that it is never good enough. There is always someone who will get the wrong end of the stick; they will choose to interpret what you're saying in a completely different way than what you intend, or they simply won’t take a hint.  It’s all about below conscious motivation and once you know what to look for you can become even more effective.

Selecting for Talent

Imagine everyone on the planet simultaneously getting in contact with 150,000 other people.  This is what is actually happening with each of the neurons in the brain of a young child.  Scientists now know that by the age of three there are up to fifteen thousand connections for each of the one hundred billion neurons in our brain.  Not surprisingly this is far too much information to cope with, so we have developed a way of making sense of it all.  Our own unique sense of it!  During the following ten years our brain refines what it believes is important and begins focusing on particular connections more than others.

What is the Key to better understanding?

Relationships can be the most exciting part of business especially when you meet a new client who not only really needs your product, service or expertise but wants it because they feel you understand them and the issues they face. But relationships can also be the most challenging part of our lives. The more you look at all the claims going through Employment Tribunals, the more you find that about 95% of them have the breakdown of a relationship as the initial cause of the problem.

Are you interviewing or being interviewed?

Recruiting good people is not easy, they are usually gainfully employed.  However, when they are available many businesses squander the opportunity to get them on board due to lack of structure and organisation. Applying a few simple techniques can make you highly attractive to the best candidates.

Do you have Inspired Working Relationships?

Almost every problem at work boils down to the quality of relationships.  This can range from the relationships we have with shareholders and clients to the relationships we have with our line manager, colleagues and those who report to us, but it also includes our relationship with ourselves and our relationship with our work.

Break the Rules!

It’s excellent managers – not pay, benefits, perks or a charismatic leader – that are critical to building a strong, high performing workplace.   Great managers are not only catalysts and translators, they consistently break the rules of conventional wisdom!

Relationships or Results – What’s your Focus?

Is work about getting results no matter what?  Or is it the quality of working relationships that really leads to success?  We each have deep motivational preferences that drive our behaviour and focus our attention.  If they are neglected or ignored they can lead to problems that undermine understanding and success. 

Are you ensuring that your feedback is being heard?

Giving effective feedback to an underperforming team member is a key skill for any manager and yet it is still frequently misunderstood.  The latest research in neuroscience is shedding some light on how we can improve the impact of our feedback and turn performance around.

How is your Working Style affecting performance?

Is your working environment lowering the productivity of your people?  Is your personal preference getting in the way of others?   Our working traits and preferences can have a profound effect on our productivity and if the environment doesn’t match our needs we can get stressed and de-motivated.  Yet there are often some simple solutions.

Balancing confidence and competence

A great way to get over the winter blues is to challenge your physical and mental skills at high altitudes.  Every fibre in your body is alert to any physical feedback as your mind tries to balance the mental cocktail of extreme excitement, anxiety and danger.  While surges of adrenalin keeps you totally focused on the here-and-now so you forget everything else, if you misjudge the conditions the consequences are immediate. . .

How do you try to convince others?

There is a significant difference between having some thoughts about something and being convinced about it. When it comes to your clients and customers it can make the difference between saying a clear ‘Yes’ or just a ‘Maybe’.  The ability to convince others is critical to business success. 

How do you handle negative feedback?

Receiving negative feedback is never easy but by managing your thinking and your emotions it is possible to use it positively.  It’s all about perceptions and what you make it mean.  If you think about it, all of the most successful people have simply made more mistakes and had more negative feedback than others . . . but they never let it get them down.

In management, once is not enough

Are you falling into the trap of telling your people only once and assuming that they will then diligently get on with your request?  How do you ensure that your requests stay at the top of their list of priorities?  Are you taking your power for granted?

How do you convince yourself?

We all have to make hundreds of decisions every day but how do you go about convincing yourself of something? Why do some people ‘know right away’ and others seem to need more information. Understanding your own ‘convincer mode’ can make a significant difference in the way you gather information and the results you get.

Not another (!!!) Meeting!

Communication is the oil in the engine of any business and yet it is often neglected, careless or squandered – especially in meetings. Few people look forward to business meetings because they are frequently felt to be unproductive and a waste of time.  But, all too often they are also reluctant to put in the required effort to prepare in advance, be on time and stick to the agenda!

Developing Response-ability

Eyes wide open seeing nothing
Hurtling down a very steep slope with speed making the icy wind bite into my face, every nerve in my body alert with adrenalin pumping through my veins, my eyes wide open . . . yet I could see nothing!

Characteristics of an Inspired Team

What’s the difference between a team and a collection of individuals each taking clearly defined roles?  What defines a mature team from an immature one? When do we support an ailing team-member, and when do we call it a day?  Wouldn’t it be simpler to streamline operations and just do it yourself?