We’re really pleased to share that our new Sharpstone Skinner website is now live, alongside a refreshed brand that better reflects who we are and how we work.

The new site highlights our approach to development more clearly, from how we support leaders and teams, to the values that shape everything we do. It’s more human, more focused, and designed to give you a real feel for what it’s like to work with us.

At the heart of everything we do is a simple belief: real development starts with real people. We don’t believe in off-the-shelf solutions or surface-level change. Instead, we take time to listen, understand your world, and ask the questions that truly matter. It’s this approach that helps leaders grow, teams work better together, and organisations perform at their best, while keeping wellbeing, humanity, and the future firmly in view.

While our look has evolved, our purpose hasn’t changed. We’re still about listening first, tailoring our work to real contexts and settings, plus helping people and organisations grow in ways that genuinely last. You’ll also see more about who we work with, from charities and purpose-driven organisations to professional services firms, SMEs, public sector teams, and household names. What unites them is a desire to learn, connect, and lead with purpose, often at moments of growth or change.

In 2017 it is claimed that Microsoft Teams had 2 million users.  Fast track to 2025 and the number quoted has risen to 360 million.

Since many of us have been working from a range of locations, our meeting load has become meeting overload. What could have been done as a chat across desks is now a 15-minute virtual exchange and these quickly build up and take over the day. The fallout is blurred working hours as people struggle to balance back-to-back meetings alongside their own To Do list within the typical eight-hour day (I can feel you reading “8 hours” and laughing your heads off).

Sir Barnett Cocks, Clerk to the House of Commons at the beginning of the 20th Century said, “A meeting is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.”  He didn’t like meetings much. Wonder what he would have made of our current work communication load?

Ever since Covid confined us to barracks and separated us from our colleagues, team members and clients, our meeting load has become meeting overload.  In the office, what was done as a kitchen chat or a quick stand up at desks, is now a 30-minute exchange on Slack or Teams.  What would have been a get together and a useful conversation over coffee is now a full-blown Zoom meeting. A natter has become an event. It is well meant communication but we’re drowning in it.  It also makes us rather transactional with our colleagues and takes the spontaneity out of communication.  Have you noticed recently that if you have an afternoon meeting with someone in the same time zone as you, they are not at their best?  You may well be their 5th or 6th meeting that day, so it is no wonder by the time you reach them, they aren’t welcoming you with virtual open arms.

Our days have become so full of meetings, none of us is getting any work done.  It’s a worrying trend but one you can reverse by being your team’s meeting saviour.  Better still, save the whole organisation.

Here are 4 ideas to avoid being overwhelmed by the number of meetings in your work week.  They require a shift in mind-set but ultimately, they’re doable.

  1. Don’t have a meeting just for the sake of it. Meetings should be called as a means to achieve more together than you could alone.  They should be a participative and active experience.  Try banning updates (which can be done in another way – by email for example), briefings (do them at your one to ones) and the dissection of long reports (ask for shorter ones).  This leaves the way clear for meetings to be where you and the team explore, discuss, create and take action.
  2. Make your work more visible. The problem with meetings is we think they make us look busy.  If your Outlook diary is packed with them, you’re adding value – right?    You add value with your output as well as your input.  Instead, encourage team members to diarise their work.  Make an appointment with yourself to write a report, plan, think, account manage and prepare for a pitch.  Put these activities in your diary and it elevates the status of the work.  It also prevents people from dropping meetings in to your schedule without checking first.
  3. Encourage radical change across your organisation. This could be to instigate the 15-minute rule to meeting scheduling.  This means you don’t allow meetings to be scheduled back-to-back.  There must be a 15-minute gap.  Better still, 30 minutes. It needs to be agreed across teams and adhered to.  When you think about it, it makes total sense.  You want to arrive at a meeting with the right mind-set – that is, one focussed on the impending agenda, not the recently departed one.  People need breathing space (not to mention coffee and comfort!) to give of their best, so give them a break.
  4. Spread the responsibility and the roles. Meetings feel like a pressure if you’re the one who always has to chair them, plan the agenda and distribute the actions.  Rotate those activities.  As well as developing skills in others, when someone else leads the meeting, it gives it a different vibe, a bit like a change of venue.  And why not have a change of venue?  If logistics allow, agree to dial in from somewhere else, from outside, have a walking meeting where participants walk and talk at the same time (watch out for lampposts).  Experiment and see if your meetings re-energize as a result.

 

These virtual gatherings should be something to relish not dread.  And we will continue to dread them unless we make some changes and reverse this trend of meeting overload.  Let’s get back to looking forward to meetings because they are a break in our day, a chance to connect with colleagues and where better things happen as a result.

 

We use the word collaboration so much these days it is in danger of heading in the Bullshit Bingo direction.  It’s the sort of word you keep finding on creased pieces of flipchart paper after team away days.

But the act of collaboration at work has so much value we can’t dismiss it purely as a fad.

Compete with your competitors, collaborate with your colleagues

Competition has great value where you want to be better than, to beat and to be the best.  However, where you want to problem solve, innovate and improve, collaboration works better.  We work with clients who intend to work well within and across teams, but sometimes get derailed.  Here are 5 things we encourage them to do to get collaborative working back on track.

These are just a start but they are a good start.  We work with teams and leaders who have struggled with collaboration yet realise its value.  They just don’t know what to do to make it happen and that is where we come in.  Talk to us about building a collaborative culture and we promise it’ll be way more than a word on the wall where you work.

Human beings love to categorise, don’t they? When we talk about generations, we are usually referring to our family, who fits where and how we can trace them back. Or we use it to complain about their music.  When marketeers talk about generations, they mean people grouped together sharing birth years spanning 15-20 years who display certain common characteristics.  Based on the work of Neil Howe and William Strauss, the Generations help us understand people’s attitude to life, leisure and society and have an interesting application to work.

What were your early career drivers? If you’re a leader whose first thoughts are ambition, climbing the ladder, becoming a manager, responsibility and recognition, then there’s a good chance you occupy a different generation to the people you are now managing and the teams you now lead.  Perhaps you are a Baby Boomer managing Millennials or a Gen X leading a team of Gen Ys.

Since the start of this decade, we’ve been on a rollercoaster of change. Younger team members have their own set of drivers and include prioritising health and wellbeing over ambition. Older team members who took early retirement after the pandemic are returning in their droves, having discovered they can’t make the finances stack up for a longer later life, plus they miss the buzz of work.

All this means teams today can span four generations, each bringing unique strengths, perspectives, and challenges to the workplace. The key here is get inside the heads of the people you’re trying to recruit and retain and find ways to appeal to them. This involves thinking differently about what you can do to attract good people and keep them once you have them

Next month we’d love it if you would join us at the International Fundraising Congress where Helena Sharpstone and Jhumar Johnson will lead an interactive discussion to explore the realities of working in multi-generational teams. We’ll look at everything from differences in motivation, communication styles, and workplace expectations to the shared values that unite us all.

And we’ll definitely be talking about your generation.

As the weather hots up (ever the optimist) our workloads often cool down.  If you’re seeing light at the end of a huge to do list, how are you going to use your downtime to best effect?  Summer affords us an opportunity to take a breath, take a break and tackle some items on the not so urgent list.  Quiet times can be brilliant for finally getting down to a few of those things that get pushed back when we’re busy.  Here are 3 ways to make the most of a quieter period.

  1. Engage in some work based or other learning

Whether it’s learning a skill, beefing up your knowledge, chasing a new experience or attending an event, summer is a great time to bring yourself up to date or take yourself a bit further in the subject of your choice.  Busyness can be bad news for learning and if you’re coming out of a frantic period, it may have struck you that you’re falling behind or just feel a bit stale, so freshen up with some learning.  I’m doing just that this week by investing in time to develop my thinking and listening skills.  As a coach, trainer and facilitator, you would think I’m an excellent listener and a deep thinker, right?  Wrong. I’m as susceptible as the next person to gaps in skill, distractions and suffering from “clever clogs” syndrome where I try to show my worth instead of shutting up and listening.  So that’s what I’ll be doing – brushing up on those skills central to my job and getting better at stuff my clients value. That’s me – what about you?

  1. Improve a system or tidy up a process

This could be something big that benefits your team, department and organisation or it could just be for you.  We all tolerate processes that slow us down and systems that aren’t fit for purpose.  But we don’t have time to do anything about them.  So we limp along and develop work arounds.  With a bit more time and headspace we can create something better.  And afterwards you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it years ago.  Maybe AI can be of some assistance here and if that’s a brave new world for you, you’ll be ticking the box on point one above, engaging in some learning as well as improving a set up.

  1. Renew contacts/widen your networks

There’s this assumption that everyone disappears in July and August but lots of us don’t.  After 23 years shackled to school holidays, I’m finally discovering the delights of travel in the quieter months.  For many of us, this period can be a great one for having that coffee, finally getting round to meeting, arranging a get together or whatever.  Summertime isn’t known for its big conferences but stuff still happens and it feels more relaxed.  Get some dates in the diary and enjoy sharing and comparing with sector mates and new contacts.

There you have it – 3 ways to make the summer period work for you and if summer isn’t your quiet time – save this for later and pull it out when your cool down comes around.  And if you see no down time on the horizon - a miserable thought – give yourself a break and read our blog Peaks Need Troughs for some inspiration.

Fessing up is common at coaching sessions.  Like the CEO who admitted that when they headed up an Engineering firm, they were a great engineer but as a leader, a pain in the neck.  Too much nit picking, not enough enabling.  They just couldn’t resist getting stuck into the work of others and what was intended to be helpful was received as interfering.  The next job move was to a role leading an organisation in a totally different field – a field they knew nothing about – so there was no choice but to lead.  If you don’t know how to do the work of the people you manage, your purpose suddenly comes into focus:  put energy into leading and managing the organisation and its people to achieve better things.

The start of the decade took the skill of backing off to a whole new level.  Without having people under our noses, we couldn’t engage in close contact managing (for that, read meddling in some cases) so we had to learn to trust and enable.  Now that we are well into our next phase of working, which for many has settled as a mix of in-person and remote working, it’s time to take yourself by the scruff of the neck to avoid unlearning the good habits the last few years encouraged us to embrace. Let it go, let it go…

It helps to remember what got you to this point.  Did you rise up the ranks due to your technical abilities?  You were so good at the work, it earned you a promotion.  Or perhaps you entered through a different route.  You were great at leading teams and managing projects and able to apply those skills in a range of settings.  Neither route is better; it just is what it is.  You can’t help what you don’t know and you can’t unlearn what you do know, but you can make the best of either situation and avoid the inevitable management traps.

So, for leaders and managers who are experts in the work of the people in their teams:

  1. You will always have credibility. You’ve been there and done it and you have wisdom to offer, so mentor others to grow and develop in their knowledge and skill.
  2. You might find delegation and letting go a bit of a challenge. Will they do it as well as you?  As it happens, they may do it better, which is great, but even if they don’t, they may just do it differently, or cheaper, or quicker than you and all of those have value.
  3. Be careful all roads don’t lead to you. Technical experts often become fixers of others’ problems rather than coaches who help people work it out for themselves.  One day you may leave and whilst you want a decent send off, people to be a bit sad, to say the void you leave will never be filled etc, etc., you don’t want the place to fall apart.  So encourage people to sort their own problems, with your support.
  4. Your knowledge is not in question here, so take time to develop your leadership skills. Leadership is a skill to be mastered, like any other and the great thing about it is you can apply it in a variety of settings
  5. Watch out for meddling tendencies dressed up as “being helpful”. If you do it because you are missing something you love (management roles can be very lonely for technical leaders), find something else you love, or be a contributor on another project rather than overpowering others who have a job to do too.

And for leaders who didn’t take the technical route:

  1. Listen hard and learn fast. You don’t need to be able to do the jobs of everyone in the place, but you do need to know how to have intelligent conversations with them about their work and what you can do to smooth their path to success.
  2. Consider a stint on whatever happens to be your version of the shop floor, more than one if you can. It’s a first-hand experience you can discuss with people, which will give you a better insight than just observing. Plus it may well up your credibility with others. At the very least it will give them something to laugh at.
  3. Attend forums where you can develop a bit more technical knowledge. As well as benefiting you it shows commitment to the team, respect for what they do and can help you develop some great networks.

Whichever route has got you to where you are now, make a pact with yourself to use your knowledge and skill to be the kind of leader people want to have around.  Meddling is so last decade.

 

 

 

When was the last time you learned something and did you find the opportunity yourself or rely on someone else to do it for you?

We tend to think of training a bit like teaching – something we rely on others to drive; something that is done to us.  Learning and development though is wider and has more opportunities for you to drive your own growth.  So how do you take control of your own learning in a fast-changing world, where time and attention both in work and outside are under pressure?  A good place to start is by adopting the 70:20:10 model of learning.

The 70:20:10 Model for learning suggests we gain 70% of our knowledge from job-related experiences, 20% from interactions with others, and 10% from formal educational events.

Hands-on experience (the 70%) is the most beneficial for us because it enables us to discover and refine our job-related skills, make decisions, address challenges and interact with influential people within work settings. We also learn from our mistakes and can get in the moment feedback on our performance. If you ask an experienced person how they got to where they are now, they won’t tell you about what they studied, they will give you a list of experiences.  How they got thrown in at the deep end, volunteered to take on a gnarly project, how they stumbled a few times, got up, wiped their grazed knees and learned from the experience to do better next time.  70% of what we learn, we learn by doing.

The model continues by suggesting that 20% of what we learn, we learn from others.  This can be a formal arrangement like getting a coach or a mentor, as well as learning from your own manager.  Or it might be informal like watching someone do something really good (or bad!) and learning from what you see.  Now that we work in a more flexible way from a range of settings (hooray for that) the moments to see and learn from others are all the more precious.

And that leaves the final 10% - formal learning – a small but mighty piece of the puzzle.  Study, courses, training events and workshops, whether online or in-person, still provide a great opportunity to add to our learning.  This is the bit we tend to think of first when we talk about learning, because it’s usually a planned event.  Make the most of these experiences and enhance them all the more by moving quickly from the formal learning applying it back at work – which puts you back in the 70% arena.

So, here’s a quick reminder:

Create a world for yourself where you can manage your own development through doing, coaching, mentoring and generally putting your hand up for stuff, as well as the more traditional methods of training and education and see where it takes you.  Make this year the one that you devote some time to your own development.  Be prepared to invest in yourself.  And as with any DIY, it’s all in the preparation.

As the days get longer and the sky bluer (a girl can dream), let’s stop, breathe and turn our attention to motivating people.

We love to turn motivation into a verb – as managers, we talk about how we plan to motivate our teams.  However, motivation is not something that can be done to someone else.  All you can do as the team’s leader is create an environment where people is able to motivate themselves with you offering them what they need to keep skipping back every day, working willingly and effectively.  Individual motivators will be different, but you could do worse than concentrate on these three areas: autonomy, mastery and purpose.  Daniel Pink refers to them in his book “Drive” as three consistent motivators for the modern workforce.

All teams need to feel they can work without checking back with you at every stage, so develop them to a point where they have autonomy.  Especially now, where we seem to be having trust issues with people we trusted before – just because we don’t always work in the same physical space anymore.  This is your problem, not theirs and most team members flourish with a bit – or a lot – of autonomy.

Teams want to move and grow – to feel they are mastering new skills and abilities, so provide opportunities for your team to stretch and develop.  People also need to see a point to their work; to feel they are doing something valuable with their day, so ensure everything you do together has purpose and drives you towards results and success for your organisation.  Ask yourself, if it isn’t important and it won’t take you forward, why are you asking the team to do it?

Providing a motivational environment is one thing, but what do you do when a team member has lost their mojo?  Lack of motivation hits us all at one time or another, and it helps as their manager to take a coaching approach.  By asking powerful questions, you can focus on why they’ve lost motivation and think through their options to turn things around.  The most powerful question any manager has in their armour is quite simply – “How are you?”  But you have to mean it and you have to allow time for the answer.  Never ask this one with half an eye on the door and furtive glances at your mobile phone.  Asking “How are you?” is a great way to start a conversation with someone who is clearly not okay but not talking about it.  And then you can help them think through the highs and lows that may have led to a descent in motivation, plus what the options are to improve things.

You can’t re-motivate people any more than you can motivate them in the first place, but you can be a key player in supporting them to get themselves back on track.  And once back, with autonomy, new things to master and a real sense of purpose it will be all systems go.

Complaints are a reality of working life.  Whether they come from a customer, a colleague, a supporter or any other key contact, we are never going to get it right every time.  If the thought of a less than delighted email, a stroppy phone call or a furrowed brow face to face meeting leaves you worried, it’s worth remembering that a complaint made shows a modicum of care.  People who complain to us do so because they want to see a wrong (perceived or otherwise) put right and normal service resumed.  So treat it as an invitation to improve services and relationships and be brave.

Sometimes the only thing that sets you apart from your competitors is the way you deal with people and issues when they go wrong.  There’s a balance to be struck here.  If you’ve made a bit of a mess, you need to admit the error and put it right.  If you didn’t get it wrong, something still happened to trigger the complaint so equally, you want to act to restore or rebuild relationships

Here are 5 tips to help you find the right balance when dealing with complaints:

  1. Respond quickly to acknowledge the complaint, by email or phone. You are not acting at this stage, just acknowledging receipt.  It’s respectful and avoids escalation.  It’s like the restaurant server who shows you they know you want the bill even if they can’t get over to you yet, versus the one who studiously avoids your eyes and gestures.  Let people know you’ll be back to them very soon but allow yourself some thinking time.
  2. Once in conversation, work hard to really listen and not second guess. Conversations (even email ones) involving conflict are stressful and the temptation is to be thinking about what you are going to say in response which means you risk missing the main points.  Try to stay calm, slow it down and really take in what is being said to you.
  3. Separate content and tone. People who complain are never happy, and their tone is likely to reflect this.  Getting hung up on tone will only distract you from the content.  Ask yourself “What are they actually saying here?” and separate that from how it is being said.
  4. Acknowledge what has been said in a genuine way. This is otherwise known as “rolling with the punch”.  It is what you say to form a bridge between the complaint and what happens next.  They need to see that you can put yourself in their position and see it their way even if your position is different.  Wording is everything here.  Irritants like “I hear what you say” are usually said by people who clearly haven’t heard and they only serve to inflame.  “I see what you mean” or “I can appreciate how frustrating this was” or “Thank you for getting in touch about this” may be better.
  5. We need to deal with the “s word”. So terrorised are we by court action, we have lost the ability to say sorry.  So unless you have been advised against it, saying sorry when you’ve got it wrong is genuine and powerful.  And even if you’re not to blame, it’s reasonable to say sorry that upset has been caused.  It’s also important to say sorry without blame.  If the mistake is an organisational or departmental one, you are the one dealing with it, you should be the one saying sorry on behalf of others.  It follows the thinking at everyone is a marketeer and how you deal with this situation paves the way for others.  And a final word on saying sorry.  You need to do it right.  Anything that begins with the words “I’m sorry if you feel we have….” is not saying sorry!  It’s a veiled way of saying – the problem is yours.

After that it is all about moving forward. Give reasons why something happened if you’re able.  Reasons aren’t excuses – they’re explanations and they can help.  Then move to put things right.  What would they be happy with?  What would you be happy with?  What will be done and how will you stay in touch?  Consider your own experiences as a consumer.  Some of our best relationships develop out of a wrong being put right in a way that exceeded our expectations.  If a complaint is handled well, it’s an opportunity to win over a tricky colleague, turn a client in to one of your greatest advocates and enhance your reputation through others telling people how well you dealt with a difficulty.

At Sharpstone Skinner we work with leaders, teams and individuals on assertive and positive ways to maintain good customer and colleague relations and provide expert help on managing situations that may involve conflict.

Dealing with complaints may not be happiest part of your day but better they say it to you than about you. And if handled well, a complaint can lead to better ways of working and turn foes in to fans.

In our world of 24/7 communication, the options for ways to talk to each other are endless. It wasn’t always the case. 30 years ago, for many, email was only an option at work, at your desk and within your Organisation and that was it. 20 years ago, we were only just discovering mobile phones could do more than text, 15 years ago computers were bigger and iPads were but a twinkle in Steve Jobs’ eye.

Look how far we’ve come – or have we? This ability to communicate day and night through so many media, is giving rise to something of a rebellion. Some colleagues are choosing to slow down their communication and not get back to people too quickly – or risk setting up unrealistic expectations. This is understandable but can be highly frustrating to others who are waiting for a response and don’t understand why they are not getting it.

So how long is too long to get back to someone and what is a realistic expectation for a response time?

There are those of us at one end of the scale who will reply in a nanosecond and not understand why it isn’t reciprocated at similar speed. And then there are those of us who like to weigh up the urgency, take it one task at a time and not interrupt what we are doing to respond to a communication that needs to be prioritised. I’m the former by the way, which will come as no surprise to those who know me. It’s driven by a “Do it now or it’ll slip off my list” mentality. “Make better lists” I hear you cry. Noted.

In the end, speed of response depends on a number of factors including the nature of your work, the kinds of communication options you have available to you, time zones, locations and your own personal style of communication. And there are some rules of good practice we can all apply including:

Perhaps it is time to re-examine the way we communicate and respond to others at work. Agree what works well that you want to keep and what needs a bit of reinvention – to serve everyone better. And try to keep ego out of it. Holding off on responding to make a point or show how busy and important you are just makes you look petty or inefficient.

It’ll be fun to write this blog again in a few years’ time and see what has progressed in the world of work communications. Maybe we’ll be able to engage with each other through thought transmission. Until then and in the absence of mind-reading, let’s use the tools we have to best effect and in the words of Debbie Harry - not leave each other hanging on the telephone.