Imagine you are in your regular team meeting; everything is going to plan then the usual thing happens. John starts moaning. Off he goes on some rant about how a decision made by ‘them up there’ is ridiculous, impractical and shows how rubbish ‘they’ are. Everyone starts looking anywhere but at him, and your meeting gets derailed yet again. You know John needs a conversation, but are you brave enough?
These difficult conversations need skillful handling, and either turning the volume up or down on your usual behaviour. Those of us who rush at them, exasperated and angry, risk being too aggressive and argumentative. Those of us who are anxious and nervous risk waffling and sugar coating until there is a soggy mess where a meaningful conversation could have been.
So, what do we do? Here are some tips for having a robust conversation.
Start with Why? Your motive is really important and gives you the right to have the conversation. You must have a reason that aligns with your values around supporting and challenging your staff to benefit themselves, the team and your organisation. If you haven’t got your head in that place it could all go horribly wrong.
Explicitness – don’t faff about trying to hint at the problem or hit them straight between the eyes. A calm, clear statement about the behaviour you find unacceptable and the effect it has on you and perhaps others helps open up the conversation. ‘John, I’m concerned that in the meeting you were very negative about the decision we discussed. I find it disrespectful to senior management when you do this and I can see the rest of the team switching off.’
Listen – there is a saying that behind every negative action is a positive intent so listening is the way to discover this. There may not be of course, there may be a negative intent to the negative behaviour but at least you have shown willing to give a person the benefit of the doubt.
Confidence – showing you are confident that the situation can be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction keeps it constructive and forward looking. ‘You are a really valued member of the team yet your tendency to moan lets you down, I’m sure we can find a way to address your concerns without creating a bad atmosphere’
Overcome barriers – very often people will light fires to deflect you from concentrating on the issue you have raised. Putting these fires out ensures you stay focussed and determined to sort the situation out.
Move forward – keep the conversation focused on steps to take to rectify the issue you have raised, work together to resolve the issue and agree the next steps. It also means that you do not descend into finding blame or judging someone for their actions.
Evaluate – make sure you watch for the change in behaviour, evaluate its impact and feedback the difference it has made. One difficult conversation often creates a much better relationship where respect and trust are consolidated.
It means the ‘Johns’ of the world get to improve their behaviours and you get a more productive working environment.
Many years ago, I applied for the HR Director job at the charity I worked for. In the lead up to it I would pass other Directors in the corridor and panic – they were proper grown-ups and I was a mere child who couldn’t possibly sit at the same table as them because I had no idea what I was doing. I was 34 years old, so not a child, and I got the job. The first Directors’ meeting I attended was like being in a playground, lots of bickering, posturing and disagreement– ironically, I felt like the only grown-up.
It is estimated that 70% of us have some level of impostor syndrome. Most of us doubt ourselves from time to time but when it is extreme it can be really debilitating. A feeling of inadequacy and that you will be found out soon is felt across the population, the workplace and income levels. Outwardly successful people suffer from it – Tina Fey, the comedienne, feels like a fraud, poet Maya Angelou feared being exposed as inadequate, Tom Hanks the actor wonders how he got to where he got and even David Bowie thought he was “utterly inadequate”.
The main symptoms of impostor syndrome are doubting our accomplishments, attributing our success to luck or deception (interestingly when we fail, we blame it on ourselves being useless, when we succeed, we put it down to luck), and having a deep down fear that we will be exposed as being a fraud.
Now, no one likes a boaster, colleagues whose perception of their ability is way above reality are difficult to work with and can be very irritating. However, having a low perception of your actual ability can hold you back and, interestingly, become a bit of an irritant too. In her book “The Imposter Cure”, Dr Jessamy Hibberd notes that many of her clients think impostor syndrome has advantages, it prevents them becoming arrogant. Her take on this is that if someone else treated you the way you treat yourself, constantly doubting your ability and implying you’re a fraud, it would be an abusive relationship that you would want to escape from. So, the syndrome probably does us more harm than good.
Not allowing these negative thoughts to invade our brain is tough if we have been doing it for a long time. It can become comforting, familiar and a habit. If we try to concentrate on appreciating our accomplishments, recognising our impact at work in a realistic way we can go some way to breaking the habit and the sky won’t fall in if we are good to ourselves. What will happen is our inner dialogue becomes more balanced and affirming.
It is a sobering thought that 40% of our happiness is linked to our everyday activities and the choices we make, 50% is linked to our genes and the final 10% is affected by external forces. The good news is we can affect our happiness for ourselves by internalising our success and recognising it as part of who we are and not seeking approval from others which is usually transitory and doesn’t last so we go out trawling for it again.
We often unpack impostor syndrome through our executive coaching so contact us if that would benefit you. We are also presenting at the Institute of Fundraising Convention, on 2nd July at The Barbican in London, on the subject so come along and learn more because you deserve to realise how fab you are.
I’m going to a networking event – who’s coming with me? Don’t all shout at once. Mention networking and we all agree it’s a vital part of our role. Suggest going to a networking event and you start to sniff the fear. We’ve all got stories to tell of networking from Planet Nasty and may just find we have some very important email housekeeping to do on the days when a networking opportunity comes a knocking. But it doesn’t have to be that bad. It helps to develop a survival guide for networking, to get you through those inevitable toe-curling moments.
It also helps if you understand what networking really is. Check out the dictionary definition. It says that networking is, “a supportive system of sharing information and services among individuals and groups having a common interest”. That puts things in a whole different light. The idea of networking is to develop links where you can share knowledge, contacts and good practice.
There must be a real commitment to being both interesting to be with and interested in what others have to say. This kind of reciprocity means no one fleeces or feels fleeced by others as part of the networking experience. It also means you gain the real long-term benefits of networking – namely, raising awareness of your organisation, receiving targeted leads and referrals, sharing ideas and solving problems with other practitioners in your field, and becoming more influential in your sector.
Before any networking activity, you need to do some research. As a teenager during the 1980s with the most appalling taste in films, a favourite was and still is Working Girl where a secretary impersonates her boss to help her climb the corporate ladder. We’re not advocating this as a career strategy; however, her lack of preparation before attending a networking event where she wants to meet one particular man, she’s keen to do business with, gets her into hot water. She (Melanie Griffith) meets him (Harrison Ford) but he doesn’t disclose who he is, and she knows no different. Admittedly back in 1988 she couldn’t Google him but still, she could have done some prep before she went.
Nowadays it is much easier to do some on-line research on people and groups before you go, so there is no sensible reason to walk into an event to a room full of strangers. You will feel so much better if you have an idea about who will be there and whom you would like to meet.
Of course, now, we do much of our networking online but that only gets you so far. Once you have connected with someone on LinkedIn or however you like to do it in your world, you need to start a conversation. And the most meaningful conversations happen face to face, so the skills mentioned previously still apply.
If you’re feeling a bit light on those skills, then talk to us about how we can help you navigate the shark-infested waters of networking to develop relationships and make high-value contacts. Better still, make us one of your high-value contacts.
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 less than excited, 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, so normal service can resume. Be brave and treat it as an invitation to improve services and relationships.
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, but without becoming subservient or rolling in the dirt. If you didn’t get it wrong, something still happened to trigger the complaint so equally you need to act to restore or rebuild relationships
Here are 5 tips to help you find the right balance when dealing with complaints:
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 teams and individuals on assertive and positive ways to maintain good customer and colleague relations and provide expert help on dealing with situations that may involve conflict.
It may not be happiest part of your day, but if handled well a complaint can lead to better ways of working and turn foes in to fans. If nothing else, it’s preferable in the long run that they’re saying it to you rather than about you.
Many managers work hard on their coaching skills. They identify when a member of their team is in the right place to be coached - they are highly competent and confident and need a facilitative approach not a directive one.
Then comes the mind set, leaving their ego at the door, engaging their support and challenge muscles, and using powerful questions complemented by active listening. This creates an enabling environment where staff can bounce ideas around, test some solutions and approaches all in a non-judgemental space. It takes discipline to hold that mind set and hone those skills, as it sometimes doesn’t come naturally to solution focussed managers.
Creating and spotting the opportunity takes skill too and that’s when coaching in the corridor comes in. We associate coaching with a formal environment with a clear agreement that it’s what will happen and yet it can happen more informally like in the corridor. When managers are always up for coaching any interaction with their team can be transformational rather than transactional. Practise makes perfect too, soon it becomes an unconscious competency and staff begin to seek out their manager for the value they add by just allowing the space to think for themselves. It increases the emotional intelligence of a team and organisation, as well as that precious thing, accountability.
It is an investment of time and effort from a manager initially, but the rewards are many. It encourages people to think for themselves freeing the manager up to think bigger thoughts and raise their game too.
So next time a team member catches you in the corridor, engage your coaching mind set and make that time really count.
We include coaching skills in all our leadership and management programmes as well as a stand-alone workshop, as we believe it’s a vital part of making your team great.
If you are a leader in a smallish organisation you know you need to be a master of many trades. You are expected to handle high level strategic and
So how do you balance the big and the small in role and still come out on top with a top team? By knowing where and how to invest your energy, that’s how. To be a high performance leader when the pressure is on (and when is it not on nowadays?), knowing when to lead and when to manage is a key skill. In a job where everything is urgent, it is easy to lose sight of what is really important -what will make the difference to your work and move you closer to your goals. Being brave enough to do what is important is where leading comes in.
Urgent tasks (often where management features) still need to get done, but sometimes not in the order you have been doing them. Stand back for a minute/go hide in the loo/do whatever you do to get five minutes peace and ask yourself if it is worth risking missing a deadline in favour of a doing something that will really take you forward in the long run.
Relationships are also key. It is said that 85% of all problems at work are to do with relationships. The number may be debatable, but you can’t disagree with the sentiment. Relationships matter in these big roles so define the ones that matter most – both internal and external – and throw yourself into developing them.
And finally – okay not finally but before the space runs out – never, ever stop learning. Developing yourself and your team is every bit as important as bringing in the results. In fact it’s largely how you bring in the results in the first place.
To talk to us about how you think big even when you’re leading small, just add it to your Important Things To Do list and get in touch.
There are many myths around motivation and many misuses of the term, which can be very confusing when we feel we’re a bit lacking in that area and would like to give ourselves a boost. One definition we use is that motivation is the drive to do your job willingly and well, over and over again. Using that as our basis let’s examine some of the myths then look at the reality.
Motivation comes from within, it can’t be plugged in. One human being cannot motivate another human being no matter how hard they try or how many carrots and sticks they employ. If someone doesn’t want to be motivated there is nothing anyone can do about it except the person themselves. It’s like someone eating a meal for you when you’re hungry – they may be satiated but you still feel hungry.
Want to know how to be motivated without carrots and sticks? Contact us.
We’re huge fans of good manners in the work place. Greeting everyone with a smile, saying please and thank you, recognising a great piece of work and giving credit where credit is due. The end of year letter to all employees from the CEO spreads a warm feeling and sense that all the hard work you have done has been noticed. There are a few seconds of that nice warm feeling and then….it wears off because it’s not enough to sustain you through the next year’s hard slog. If only motivation were that easy.
We can show you how motivating yourself is more than a nice warm feeling.
Henry IV was fantastic at these, in their time and place they enabled soldiers to gird their loins and go forth into battle. A good old stirring speech never did anyone any harm in times of worry or disappointment and they certainly have their place in the realms of inspiring you to go forth and conquer a problem, a challenge or a difficult client. However, come the morning after when the dust has settled the sparkle will have faded from the rhetoric and the effects will not carry you through the whole year.
We coach people to discover what really motivates them.
We are motivated broadly by three factors – people, achievement and enjoyment. We like interacting with others, working with people who are professional and engaged and who pull their weight. We like a sense of achievement, of making a difference or ticking off the “to do” list. Interesting, stimulating work motivates us too, the kind that stretches us and develops us personally and professionally.
The key to your motivation is to work in an environment where you can pick and choose what will motivate you today. Organisations need to be good caterers, they need to provide you with a really awesome buffet and not be tempted to do you a packed lunch. Your organisation can’t do this by guess work though. You need to communicate with your manager about what really motivates you and ask them to work with you to make sure it’s on the menu most of the time, and then you can get the fix you need. This means you can heal yourself, your manager doesn’t have to spoon feed you and you can be responsible for your own levels of motivation.
So there you have it, the myths have been challenged and the serving dishes have been warmed. Go forth and influence your own motivational environment.
To do more than inspire contact us.
We all know that group work starts with an ice breaker, expectations and ground rules. It is an important section to warm everyone up and get us all agreeing to how we will work together. On the ground rules someone will often mention putting phones and laptops away. For us this is common courtesy yet for some teams we work with this is such a problem that it has to be written down making it a public declaration. Too often it is not adhered to – and nobody says anything. The eyes roll, a few throats are cleared and meaningful looks are exchanged but no one calls out the behaviour.
Does this sound familiar in your team? You love your team mates but sometimes their behaviour drives you nuts, gets in the way of real performance and you wish ‘someone’ would say something. Well you are right; being accountable for your behaviours and those of your team mates is the bedrock of high performing teams. What hurts the team hurts the performance of the team and impacts on how you all work together.
Teams that do not hold each other to account are not as productive. The lack of attention to performance and behaviours creates resentment and different performance standards for different people. This encourages mediocrity as deadlines and deliverables are missed and the burden of discipline is pushed onto the leader.
Get accountability right and you will ensure that poor performers feel pressure to improve. You will identify problems quickly by questioning someone’s approach without hesitation which establishes respect among the team who are held to the same standard. One main advantage is that it avoids excessive bureaucracy around performance management and corrective action – music to your ears?
So how does a team start to improve its accountability? It starts with the leader, if that is you stepping up and calling out unproductive behaviour is your job, you need to role model holding the team to account then others can follow suit. Discussing capability with your staff is relatively straight forward; you have the evidence on standards and performance and can discuss and hopefully close the gap with training, extra supervision, coaching etc. But what about behaviour? That’s trickier because it feels really personal – “John, we said no laptops in the meeting can you put it away”, feels a bit parental and often stops a leader pulling someone up. Yet how would you feel if we told you avoiding that conversation makes you a Pooh Bear leader?
Pooh Bear leaders smother their staff in cotton wool, their favourite avoidance tactics are:
· Excusing behaviours – “Mary’s had a tough couple of weeks”
· Shrugging their shoulders – “that’s just Nick”
· Sticking their fingers in their ears and humming a tune – “what bad behaviour, I didn’t see it”
They justify their behaviour by describing themselves as a permissive leader, giving people space to be who they are and not micro managing them, in reality they fear holding people to account. Don’t we all? It’s really tough to pick someone up on behaviour that is harming the team, it’s a risk and yet if we don’t do it we risk something worse – a slowly declining performance and a team that becomes really irritating to be part of.
You also hold back the personal development of your individuals. If you have a moaner in your team that you turn a blind eye to, guess what? They get known as a moaner and however hard they try to get that promotion or become part of that interesting project team their reputation goes before them and they never achieve their potential …..all because you did not let them know that behaviour was harming themselves and the team.
Once the leader has begun to encourage better behaviour it gives all team members the signal that it’s ok to do this too and to expect to receive feedback in return. It has to be in the spirit of making the team better and is always easier when the team has a high level of trust. This is not an excuse to pull colleagues apart it’s an excuse to make everyone the best they can be for the good of the team and the organisation.
If you feel able a good exercise is to ask all team members to write down a positive behaviour for each team member, something they value their colleagues for and then one that they would like to see improved or increased for the good of the team. The leader should get the feedback first so they can model the receiving of the good and the improvements. It’s amazing how the affirmation of positive behaviour creates a real bond in a team and the less than productive behaviour becomes something to aim for. We usually find that the less than good behaviour is always something recognised by the recipient and is something they may welcome working on.
All of us can point to someone in our careers that gave us some feedback on our less productive behaviours, and we thank them for it. Hearing it may not have been comfortable but we appreciated the time and energy that person put into helping us round off a sharp edge and the fact that they were on our side.
Wouldn’t you like to be that person for someone else? Isn’t it worth it to make your team really fly?
Part of being a great team is the ability to have a good old argument. Except that arguing is not everyone’s cup of tea, even the word sends shivers down some people’s spines whilst others rub their hands together with glee. Yet teams that don’t have a constructive level of conflict are boring to be in, keep doing the same things and getting the same results and frankly, begin to feel a bit stale and uninspiring to be in.
Teams that avoid constructive conflict:
• Have boring meetings
• Create environments where back-channel politics and personal attacks thrive
• Ignore controversial topics that are critical to team success
• Fail to tap into all the opinions and perspective of team members
• Waste time and energy with posturing and interpersonal risk management
Teams that indulge:
• Have lively, interesting meetings
• Extract and exploit the ideas of all team members
• Solve real problems quickly
• Minimise politics
• Put critical topics on the table for discussion
We work with many different teams from the most senior to service managers, fundraising managers and operational functions and we have learnt along the way what it takes to get a team arguing and raising their performance.
Call it what you want
The term you use can have a huge impact emotionally on individuals in your team. For some of us the word “conflict” conjures up a massive aggressive row with shouting and threats of physical harm so maybe that isn’t the term for you. We have heard many ranging from healthy conflict to chucking ideas around to heated debate. Many teams we work with agree on the term to signal when it is happening so everyone knows it is a healthy constructive part of their relationship that results in better performance. A favourite is a team that announces that they need to “enter the padded cell “– a place where ideas and opinions can be thrown around without risk of injury.
Agree ground rules
Draw a line across a flip chart, label the left hand side “very uncomfortable” and the right hand side “very comfortable” with a mark in the middle. Ask each team member to place themselves on the line according to how comfortable they feel about indulging in conflict. Those to the right are the miners of conflict. They need to be unleashed because they are happy to prod and poke an idea to make it the best it can be. Those on the left are the climate builders, they make sure the debate is held in a mature way and that when it’s over everyone is ok. Some teams we work with draw up a charter for conflict – how we want to behave during debate – which reflects the needs of the left and the right and respects what each bring to the debating table. After a while the charter doesn’t get referred to as the habits become second nature.
Get rid of your hat
This is vital for healthy debate. Everyone must let go of their functional hats, throw them in the air so they can see what the bigger picture is. The moment this happens everyone can take part without feeling defensive or that they are having a personal dig at someone. The issue then becomes ‘ours’ not ‘mine’ or ‘yours’. In one management team a head of finance had to explain that the team would have to bear with him and his department whilst they adjusted a large financial process that had been driven by a strategic decision way above his head. Instead of his colleagues moaning and trying to challenge the decision and shoot the messenger they all rallied around, helped him think through the impact and together they agreed how everyone would behave through that period. They took their hats off and didn’t force the finance manager to sit with his firmly on his head.
Ask don’t posture
Posturing is a very clear sign that all is not well in a team. An issue is raised and the statements reign down on everyone’s heads none of them bearing any relation to what has been said before. It is said that we don’t listen because we are too busy thinking what we want to say next and posturing is clear evidence that this is happening. In one team as a colleague was making his point another colleague raised her hand to speak wriggling in her chair like a small child such was the passion of the point she wanted to make at the expense of listening to her team mate. Questions are your best friend in debate it means everyone can take part whether you understand the technicality of the issue or not and it often opens up a wider discussion.
Practise makes perfect
The more you do it the easier it is and then it doesn’t feel like conflict. Some of the best teams we work with think they are rubbish at conflict and then they have a healthy debate in front of us and when we point out that was conflict at its best they are surprised and delighted. Conflict done well is invigorating and productive and so energises everyone. The adrenalin pumps a little but not so much that the quality of ideas plummets and you are ready to fight or flee.
The advantages of being good at debate are plenty yet the real beauty of it is the way it builds trust. When a team has trust that is wide and deep it can do anything it sets its mind to and overcome any challenge or obstacle. Working in a team that trusts is a great place to be and a good constructive argument can help get you there.
Are you and your team ready to enter the padded cell?
Volatile times are creating an environment where organisations are constantly confronting new business challenges, undergoing profound change, and being asked to pivot to meet new and tougher expectations.
Like many buzzwords before it, ‘pivot’, is gaining traction and likely to be the most overused word in the workplace for 2017. When people use the word pivot what they really mean is change direction, yet pivot implies a technical sense of ease with a short sharp movement. What it doesn’t describe is the reluctance, fear and foot dragging individuals associate and experience with change.
At Sharpstone Skinner we believe that change can only really come about from understanding yourself, others and learning how to work together in a positive way. This is not a luxury but a necessity, and something for individuals, teams, and leaders to work towards.
Maya Angelou said ‘If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.’ This seems easier said than done and wishing your team would just get on with it when they feel they have no control over a change is a tough ask. Some of the frustration heard at senior levels centres around the drive for people to be agile, disruptive and to pivot. These technical terms sound great as they are crisp and to the point, but they remove concepts of emotional response, resource, and time from the equation.
One of the most critical decisions leaders make is to know when to stay the course versus change direction. On top of this, the modern leader must also factor in time, resource, and people. If you pivot you must take them with you. Change can feel dramatic and this in turn can influence team motivation and performance – we call these Defining Moments and they can be both positive and negative.
Many of our solutions involve an underpinning of self-awareness and the valuing of differences in others, that’s why we are Licensed Practitioners of the Insights model. We believe it is a great framework to begin conversations around differences and how to harness them for higher performance, greater wellbeing, and change management.
We use Insights Discovery for personal effectiveness where individuals can gain a deep understanding of themselves and their colleagues. We also use Insights for leadership and management development, team coaching and feedback.
For more information on Insights or how we can help your team pivot, contact us today.