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.

• Create team and well as individual goals and talk about them to other teams. How are you working to together to achieve results and are your systems and processes set up to support this?
• Listen first, talk second. As any good salesperson will tell you, the more you talk, the less you learn.  By listening to the needs and challenges of other team members or indeed other teams, the more you can learn how to work with not against each other.  Listening works magic on the person on the receiving end of your genuine attention.  If they feel properly listened to, they are more likely to listen back.
• Share your priorities. People love to plan and prioritise in secret.  They shouldn’t.   Plans fail because they are not connected to an overall plan.  The more you share priorities with colleagues, the better you see where you are dependent on each other’s success, where deadlines and rigid and where there is some flexibility.
• Pick your times to meet. Collaboration meetings are rarely a mistake but the timing of them can be.  Even the most willing collaborators are twitchy on Monday mornings, Friday afternoons or a when a deadline is looming.  Plan your meetings with a collaborative spirit from the start and establish people’s best and worst times to get together on something.
• Reward the behaviour you want, call out the behaviour you don’t want. If you want collaborative working to be a habit, you have to notice it and recognise it explicitly, so people know it is part of your culture and is valued.  If people see it linked to recognition and reward, they’re more likely to do it.

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?

2. 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.

3. 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.

 

 

 

Do you consider yourself a negative thinker and do you sometimes feel undervalued for it? This month’s blog looks at how to get best value from the ability to look on the dark side and how to do it well so you aren’t misunderstood or your contributions overlooked.

We have written before in praise of negative thinking.  The ability to be someone who can

• See the flaws in an argument
• Notice the mistake colleagues have missed
• Highlight a problem others are not seeing
• Spot clouds on the horizon while everyone else is staring at the sun
• Be prepared to look over the edge of the cliff to assess the risk

…is a real gift to team working and organisational effectiveness.  Yet negative thinking is much maligned.  Perhaps we should change the name.  It’s sometimes referred to as critical thinking which seems to sit better with us, but essentially it’s the same thing.

In the end it’s all about how you do it.  Just as positive thinking without substance can make you look a bit giddy, negative thinking without hope means you come across as a drain.  Every silver lining has a cloud and all that.

It isn’t helped by a rather sinister trend that has entered our work culture – that of Toxic Positivity.  This is the belief that you should show up smiling no matter how dire the situation is.  Toxic positivity rejects all difficult emotions in favour of unending cheerfulness and an often, falsely positive façade. Not good.

We need negative thinking to take its rightful place as a useful input to projects, conversations and team working.  Here are 4 ways to help you do just that.

Construct don’t destroy

This means making your negative feedback build on a situation not tear it down.  It helps if you acknowledge that others have a point and don’t begin everything you say with “Yes, but..”.  The essence of constructive negative feedback is that it has a future, suggests there is hope and leaves people feeling like it was a valuable contribution.

Add a pinch of practical problem solving

Negative thinking together with a willingness to act and a problem-solving approach is a great combination.  It means you are bringing action as well as critical thinking to the party.  Get in the habit of holding back on a negative opinion until you have some thoughts on how move forward with a solution too.  Preferably one you’re prepared to have a hand in.

Surprise them occasionally

No one likes being labelled “negative” but if that’s all people see you do, can you blame them?  Instead, balance it with times when you approve, praise and agree – with no caveats.  Not only will you surprise those who label but you will also balance your approach.  It works both ways – the natural positive thinkers could do with learning to apply critical inputs now and then too.

Read the room

Become more aware of how you are being received.  Applying constructive negative thinking is rarely a bad idea, but sometimes you have to pick your times.  Look out for signs that people are struggling, have had their fill for the day, are switching off from what you say, or simply need a bit of encouragement not criticism.  And save it for a better time.

And finally, never apologize for it.  Without our negative thinkers we’d make mistakes – some of them howlers – that cost time, money and energy.  So, you do mean to be negative, because you do it well and for the right reasons. And when you do it that way, it’s a gain not a drain.

When you first go into consulting, everyone tells you it’s famine or feast.  So you learn to make the most of any feasting and prepare for the lean times.  Even the famines have their value: a chance to catch your breath, rest and renew and slow the pace before the next period of abundance.

The highs and lows of workload are not just restricted to self-employment.  Our clients often talk about getting their heads down during busy times and looking ahead to when it calms a little.  Or at least they used to.

Recently we’ve noticed less talk about the quiet times.  We used to have peaks and troughs and now we just have peaks and peaks.  How did this happen?  We are aware of chronic burnout in our teams, we acknowledge it is an issue but push on regardless.  We’ve become used to being rewarded for being “busy” that we value it above effectiveness.

This month’s newsletter is in honour of the much-missed troughs, down time, quiet periods or whatever you like to call them.  For some industries, they occur in summer and at the end of the year/early Jan.  For others, those are the busy periods and there’s a slowing down at different times of the year.

Here are some reasons why we need the troughs:

• They allow us to pause. We’re people, not machines, and even machines get taken out of action for a check-up every now and then!  Slowing down, resting, taking time out and just doing less in the day gives us a chance to renew and refresh those essential internal resources we need to do our jobs well.  We think better, and more good ideas come when we feel rested and relaxed.
• They are the perfect times to build in reflection and review. Being results-focused is great and essential for success, but it doesn’t mean we have to fall into a pattern of result – on to the next thing, result – on to the next thing.  By reflecting at the end of a piece of work, project or event, we can discuss what went well, what didn’t and what we would do next time to be even better. The alternative is to stumble on and miss out on the valuable lessons learned from a bit of a wash up.
• Quieter periods in our work are a great time for progressing those back-burner tasks. You know the ones. We manage without them when we’re in a peak but if we could only get even one done, they take us forward.  These activities are often referred to as the important non-urgent tasks.  No one is pressuring us to get them done, but once completed, they give us a real sense of progress.  It could be engaging in some research, improving/updating a system or process or doing some valuable networking.  You limp along without doing them and then once done, wonder why you didn’t get started years ago.
• Troughs give us a chance to learn (also a back-burner task). When was the last time you did something for the first time?  When was the last time you were able to add some knowledge, experience or skill to your CV?  Troughs give us a chance to take time out for our own learning, to master something new, to grow personally and professionally.  These new skills may well come into their own during our busy times so making space for learning really does make sense.

It's time to make a change so peaks and peaks become peaks and troughs again.  Make time for the troughs, see them coming, value them, use them in the ways suggested and you’ll be better able to – not just cope – but thrive in the busy times.

Confession time – are you a manager and also a bit of a Fixer? Do you like to run a tight ship and keep a close eye? Whether you manage projects, people or both, you love that warm, fuzzy feeling of having solved someone else’s problem, taking a burden off their shoulders, making it your problem and then fixing it – that’s what Fixers do. And it’s an act with honourable intent, yet it often has unexpected consequences.

A number of recent coaching sessions with a range of individuals has shown up a pattern. Each of these people is able, skilled and experienced – a real asset to their team. And each has been managed by a Fixer. Or in some cases, let’s call it what it was – micromanagement. This has resulted in these individuals doubting their own judgement in the job they do so well. The constant dictating solutions, checking up, taking stuff off them, not to mention red-penning their work (yes, really) has stolen away their ability to think for themselves and make choices confidently, even when a part of them knows they are good choices. Instead, their energy goes in to tying themselves up in knots trying to second guess what their manager wants and worrying all the time that they’ll be wrong. And then getting told that they are. This is not good.

Coaching sessions can help build people’s ability to value their own judgement again, but it takes time. If you manage others and know yourself to be a Fixer and also know your fixing is fast becoming micro-managing, here’s what you can do to speed up the process:
Stop doing it!

But apart from that, also:

1. Learn coaching skills. We can help you with that. All managers should have them and they give you a whole new perspective on managing and developing others. Coaching is about listening, asking powerful questions and helping individuals solve their own problems using their judgement rather than yours.
2. Realise your standards are just that – your standards. They may be appropriate for the job; they may not be. Just because you did it that way, doesn’t mean it’s the only way to do it. They may even be a bit out of date, so open yourself up to other approaches and only impose standards or ways of working where they are widely recognised by your profession as the only way to do things.
3. Decide to get that warm, fuzzy feeling from something other than fixing. At some point in your career, you were given freedom to develop your own judgement and that’s why you’re credible now. Give that gift to your team by empowering them, letting them get on with it and yes sometimes, allowing them to fail. That’s how they will learn (or re-learn) to trust their own view and make decisions with confidence.
4. Destroy the red pen.

This month we feature a guest blog by one of our masterclass attendees, Reinier Spruit.  Reinier applies his thoughts on building teams, to fundraising, but honestly, his wisdom gained from attending our session could be applied to any discipline.  Read on and consider how this applies to you and your team.

 

This is how you build the best fundraising team.  In October at the International Fundraising Congress, I attended the masterclass run by Helena Sharpstone and Jhumar Johnson entitled “Leadership essentials and building inclusive, resilient teams”. Theory and practice were beautifully brought together this afternoon. It was once again confirmation that fundraising results are completely dependent on the great people who work in our organisations. From how good those people are at their profession, how those people work together and how they are brought together by the right management and frameworks.

I say it often: the Head of Fundraising is one of the most important ingredients for successful fundraising. Perhaps the most important ingredient. The Head builds bridges up and down, hires the right people, sets an ambitious course, prepares the rest of the organisation to be successful, and… builds the best fundraising team. A team consists of several individuals who work together towards a goal. The combination of all these fundraisers as a team should lead to a better result than if you were to add them together separately. In other words, the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

During the masterclass, Helena and Jhumar introduced Patrick Lencioni's book: 'The Five Dysfunctions of a Team'. One element shows that trust is the absolute basis of any well-functioning team. A lot can go wrong due to a lack of trust. Members of teams that lack trust hide their weaknesses and mistakes from each other, hesitating to ask for help or give constructive feedback. They draw premature conclusions about the intentions of others without attempting to clarify them. They don’t recognise and utilise each other's skills and experiences. And they may hold grudges, dread meetings, and find reasons not to spend time together.

But the other way around is also true. Members of teams with a lot of trust in each other admit weaknesses and mistakes. They ask for help. They accept questions and input about their responsibility. They give each other the benefit of the doubt before coming to a negative conclusion. They take risks when providing feedback and assistance and appreciate and make use of each other's skills and experiences. This leaves them able to focus their time and energy on important issues, not on politics. They offer (and accept) apologies without hesitation, look forward to meetings and other opportunities to work as a group.

When we talk about fundraising, we often talk about response rates, revenue, retention, data-driven and donor-orientated fundraising. But attention to the dynamics in your fundraising team is just as important and, in many cases, an absolute condition for achieving results at all. This is only possible in an environment in which people feel safe. Psychological safety [in a work environment] means feeling safe to take interpersonal risks, express your opinions, disagree openly, raise concerns without fear of negative consequences or pressure to cover up bad news.

That sounds great, but how do you create that safe environment as Head of Fundraising? In theory this is not very complicated. Treat others as they want to be treated. Welcome curiosity, because asking questions is very healthy! Promote healthy conflict, because a good discussion works wonders. Give everyone a voice, because every voice matters. Position failure as a real possibility, always give the benefit of the doubt, and put yourself in someone else's shoes.

How much attention do you pay to your amazing fundraising team?

Many thanks to Helena and Jhumar for a great masterclass!

Next month we’ll be heading north of the border to deliver an opening keynote at the Chartered Institute of Fundraising’s Scottish Conference on Fresh Thoughts on Leadership.

But really – is there anything new to say about leadership?  Well, we think there is and here are three thoughts for starters.

Firstly, leadership is a mind-set and a set of actions and behaviours, not a job title.  So, if you’re about abandon this blog because you don’t think you’re a leader, stay for a minute longer.  You don’t need a team or even a project to lead.  Leading can be about the way you bring new ideas to a conversation, notice things others have missed, pick up on an emerging theme and convince others to try an alternate approach.  We work with a number of clients who consider their “key influencers” across the organisation, every bit as key to business success as their leaders and managers. You are a leader, you just have to realise where, when and how you do it, to make the most of it and challenge yourself to step up.

Secondly, leadership doesn’t have a particular profile.  It used to.  When we first got into this game, leaders were easy to spot.  You led from the front, directed, demonstrated and knew how to address the crowd – and if that wasn’t your style, you didn’t get the job.  This is a dated view of what you now need to lead and our world (in case you hadn’t noticed) has changed.  Nowadays, leadership largely means 3 things: authenticity, good self-awareness and the ability to access all areas.  We no longer play a role; people want someone genuine they can relate to and who they believe gets them.  We don’t want people we have to make excuses for – we want them to know themselves well, accept feedback and work on the warts.  If the old-style leader description sounds like you – that’s fine – those things are still needed sometime, just not all the time.  Leadership also means listening, adapting, enabling and coaching.  At times it means being relationship focussed, at other times, task focussed. There is a place for looking ahead and a place for dealing with what’s in front of you.  The point is you need to spot what’s needed and adapt. Again – no one needs the title of leader to do that.

Thirdly, leading and change go hand in hand. You don’t just want to have a tolerance for change, you need to rather like it.  Because it’s going to be there whether you like it or not.  Leadership thinking embraces change and prepares for it, supports others to be prepared but also realises the impact of fast and constant change (welcome to 2023) so considers how we balance nothing staying the same with helping ourselves and others to look after themselves and avoid feeling stressed all the time.

Notice we said thirdly and not finally.  Because there’s so much more to say.  But for that you need to journey to The Dear Green Place aka Glasgow. If you’re already going, we’ll see you there.  If not, there is still time to bag a ticket.  Especially when you consider leadership is also about staying up to date, with fresh thinking. And when the leaders in the room are identifying themselves, you’re one of them putting your best foot forward.

Hello All. We first put this piece out in 2020 during the early part of pandemic.  Three years on, we noticed a renewed interest in it, with lots of you clicking to read it on our website.  It seems to chime with people in the light of the latest set of challenges the economic and political world is throwing at us.  So, we’re running it again – we hope you find it of value second time around.

Bravery and courage are central themes in so many books and films we have grown up with.  The lion in The Wizard of Oz follows the yellow brick road in search of it, Shakespeare’s Hamlet calls on it to avenge his father’s murder and Jo March, in Little Women, bravely fights gender stereotyping to make her own way in life.

Leadership has always been associated with bravery but never more than now.  As we enter the next stage of this new world, the pressure is on to maintain high performance, often in the face of significant challenge, profit and income shortfalls and uncertainty about the future. So maybe now is the time to think about what being brave really means in your role and how it may be different from relying on bravado.

First, some differentiating definitions:

Bravery is defined as courageous behaviour and character, whereas bravado is described as a bold manner intended to impress or intimidate.

You can see the problem here.  Bravery is all about substance.  It inspires belief and trust in leaders.  Bravado may be motivating and exciting at first but lacks weight if not followed up with evidence, action and consistency from those who employ it.  As the quote says – we need a backbone, not a wishbone.

So, when the pressure is on and whether you lead an organisation, section, team or project, how do you remain brave and avoid the bravado trap?  Here are 3 ways.

• Brave leaders have the courage to open themselves up to feedback, welcome it and use it positively. Acting with bravado on the other hand can make you sound overconfident, even arrogant.  And it closes you off to feedback.  Sometimes we hide behind bravado when we are afraid of what we’ll hear if we seek feedback.  Don’t be.  If you go out to people with a well thought out argument and can back up your reasons, any feedback you seek will acknowledge that you have thought things through and may add a useful dimension to your proposal.  Better that they say it to you than about you.
• Share what you know. Brave leaders are generous with their experiences and don’t withhold information without good reason.  The bravado brigade often choose to stay quiet, fob you off and withhold information which only breeds a culture of suspicion and scepticism. It is true sometimes you need to access bravery when you don’t feel brave, to straighten up in front to people and communicate with conviction.  No one wants to see their leader unravel in front of them.  But that shouldn’t stop you communicating concerns and collaborating with others to solve problems.  Bravery, like resilience, doesn’t have to be a lone sport.  Sharing what you know will grow the team’s skills and abilities and encourage bravery in them too.
• Embrace diverse thinking. This means being brave enough to surround yourself with people who don’t think like you do and will challenge existing ways of working to drive change for the better.  Leaders who prefer bravado often surround themselves with yes people – those who think in the same way or at least won’t challenge them.  This might be an energy saver and feel good at times, but in the long run is not a good thing.  Research tells us that diverse teams are more likely to be high performing. So have the courage to welcome a range of views and approaches.

 

We aren’t born brave – or maybe we are and life bashes it out of us.  Either way, being brave is a choice.  It’s scary at times, requires energy and effort. It means you feel the weight of responsibility to lead people relying on you to set the direction.  But it is rewarding too and what we need from our leaders right now.  Anyway, what’s the alternative – fake it til you make it?  You may not make it.