The power of SCARF and how to make feedback work better, and feel better

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The question of how to get employees to improve has generated a good deal of opinion and research over the last hundred years. Most of us agree about the importance and benefits of feedback. Yet research suggests that feedback is still not being given often enough and when it is given it is not really doing what it is supposed to do; which is to help us improve. A 2018 Employers Council blog post reported that 65% of employees want more feedback. In 2019, Gallup found that only 26% of employees strongly agree that the feedback they receive helps them do better work. However, another study found that 71% of respondents overall agreed that they find critical feedback helpful and motivating. Once you delve into the topic of feedback, you’ll even find conflicting evidence that feedback in business truly enables learning and change. Talking to participants in our management training programmes supports some of these statistics. We often hear from managers that they want to give more feedback, but they lack the methods to give them confidence when they do it.

Statistics aside, let’s focus on two of the most obvious factors of the feedback conversation: The person giving the feedback, and the person receiving the feedback. When both have the skills, confidence and ability to have a productive feedback conversation then you will have a high chance of success (i.e. change). And the glaringly obvious… if the feedback is positive (“you’re doing a great job, keep it up”)… easiest conversation ever! Having a negative, or critical feedback conversation, while making it a productive conversation is of course where the skills, confidence and ability are most needed…

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Before you continue reading take a moment and ask yourself 3 questions …

  • 1. When you go to work, how often do you receive feedback from management?
  • 2. Do you feel the feedback you get helps you to improve your performance?
  • 3. When you give feedback to others how often does it make a difference?

Why is feedback sometimes not effective?

Because sometimes, when we are given feedback, we feel threatened (or attacked), instead of supported and helped. The keyword there is ‘feel’. When humans ‘feel’, or perceive threat, it invokes a primal response (fight or flight) and we can no longer hear what the rational brain is saying.

 

Minimize danger – Maximize reward

David Rock believes that our response has its roots in the way our brains deal with perceived danger and how we always seek to minimise threats and maximise rewards. He developed it into a model of 5 areas that influence our behaviour, the SCARF model (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh5Egsa-bg4, or scroll to the bottom of this post). As Dr. Rock explains in the video, these five factors have a tremendous impact on our motivation on whether we are in that reward state or that danger state.

  • Status – our relative importance to others
  • Certainty – our ability to predict the future
  • Autonomy – our sense of control over events
  • Relatedness – how safe we feel with others
  • Fairness – how fair we perceive the exchanges between people to be

 

 

Managers who want to influence others, their job is to find just the right levers to move people into that ‘maximize reward’ state. Leaders tend to know all about the carrot and stick. They use money and other external rewards to try to motivate people. Turns out there are often far more powerful rewards and threats going on inside people’s heads that are generating their behavior. So if you want to be the best that you can be at influencing others, you need to better understand what makes people tick.

Dr. David Rock

Status

Your perception of your position in relation to other people is what is meant here. Scientific evidence shows that when you experience a drop in status, your brain responds in the same way as when you experience physical pain. Who hasn’t felt intimidated at least once in their life, when we get feedback from others who are (or we perceive as) senior or more competent than us? The opposite is also true; when we receive praise from people more competent than us, we can find it highly motivating. This is the reward side of the status dimension.

If status is a relevant issue in your feedback conversation, remember that who gives the feedback becomes more important than what the feedback is. Naturally, status also plays a part when giving upwards feedback, or feedback to a client or colleague. When you are giving feedback take a moment to reflect on how your relationship with the person may impact your message.

  • Status is not the same as a formal position in a hierarchy, it is the worth we feel for ourselves and the worth we feel others assign to us
  • Status derives from credibility but also from knowledge and competence, so if you lack credibility with a specific audience you can gain it from demonstrating what you know/can do
  • Language makes a difference; using ‘we’, ‘us’, ‘our’ feels and sounds much more inclusive than ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘my’ and can help remove status risks
  • Everybody in an organisation needs to know their role is important and valued

Certainty

“The brain is a certainty creating machine, always trying to predict what’s going to happen.” So, when the feedback giver can provide a really clear explanation about what is going to happen and what is expected, it provides much more certainty for the feedback receiver from the outset. Consider your reaction if your manager unexpectedly drops by your desk and says, “Can I have a word with you in my office?” Do your feelings move towards danger, or reward? When we know what to expect, we tend to feel safer. Introducing predictability, structure and goals in conversations can establish certainty and help people feel more open to feedback.

  • Humans perceive uncertainty as a threat. Recognizing this will help prepare a strategy to reduce what is threatening
  • Communication is a key tool to creating certainty, even if you have nothing ‘certain’ to tell people, the act of telling them precisely this will help
  • If there is genuine uncertainty about the future we can fall back on ‘why’ we are doing something; this can introduce purpose and a feeling that ‘we are in this together’ that can mitigate uncertainly about how things may actually turn out
  • You can mitigate the threat of uncertainty even in small conversations by telling the other person what will happen in the conversation – very important in giving feedback
  • People can gain a sense of certainty by being clear about what their role is and what is expected of them

Autonomy

Autonomy is a key part of intrinsic motivation. Micro-management undermines our autonomy by reducing the control we have over our work  …  and negatively impacts our motivation. Research shows that people who feel that they have no control or autonomy have higher stress levels. If feedback is supposed to be developmental, managers need to take the risk to let team members find their own paths to development. In other words, to be more coach/mentor than director.

  • Autonomy is closely linked to certainty – we if can’t predict the future we won’t feel we have any control over it
  • We react negatively when we perceive we don’t have control over events, our environment and our own choices
  • Autonomy requires trust and a feeling of safety around others, so that we can express our true feelings/opinion without fear of reprisal or rejection
  • Autonomy can be given to team members by e.g. empowering individuals by setting the ‘what’ and allowing them to decide the ‘how’
  • The idea of having options, i.e. making choices, is important to a sense of control

Relatedness

In short, relatedness refers to “our common ground”. When we feel comfortable with the people around us we are more likely to open up, express true feelings and reflect on our own behaviours. We relate to different people for all kinds of different reasons. Think about the people you turn to at work when you have a problem or challenge. Then think about the people you would definitely not turn to.

  • Relatedness is a feeling of belonging when we sense that people care about us as individuals
  • People often sense relatedness (or lack of it) via non-verbal communication, e.g. a nod or a smile to recognise you relate to what others are saying/thinking
  • Buddying, mentoring and coaching are all ways to build trusted relationships and make people feel valued
  • There is a need to pay attention to functional teams in organisations to prevent some teams feeling they are not as important as others; this can lead to silo working and disunity

Fairness

Fairness is highly subjective, so we need to work on people’s perceptions of fairness rather than trying to make things ‘equal’ – not everyone is equal, but we can hold people to a common set of standards. Sensing something is unfair immediately triggers a defensive reaction in our minds. The most common perception of unfairness in the workplace is when we see we are being treated differently to others. Managers can reduce this threat by explaining why they want to have conversations with individuals, and by setting common objectives, standards and rules.

  • Team members need to be able to cut each other some slack when individuals are facing special circumstances and perhaps some standards can be flexible – if this happens we need to communicate it is an exception and only temporary
  • Rewards and recognition need to be based on what people have accomplished rather than who they are, in order to avoid accusations of favouritism and bias
  • Transparency in decision making can help mitigate feelings of unfairness by showing that a range of perspectives were considered
  • Helping individuals see things from different perspectives can promote empathy and reduce a sense of discrimination

To wrap up

We hope you’ll consider using the power of SCARF in your next feedback conversation. For more feedback content, these posts might be of interest to you:

 

 

 

How do we start talking about unconscious bias in the workplace?

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“We know what unconscious bias is, and why it’s important. But we don’t know how to start having a conversation about unconscious bias in the workplace in our organisation”. This was a statement from leaders from a multi-national pharma company headquartered in Europe. Any organisation which is trying to build diversity and manage unconscious bias will start with this, or a similar statement. We worked with the group to break their words down into 3 sub questions and this post shares how we worked with our client to answer these questions.

Should we start with training?

Training seems an obvious place to start. But if you can’t make it mandatory (and ensure that 100% of your employees attend), the people who attend training will be self-selecting. We see this time and again on our training courses, when we hear the common comment “Person X should really attend this training”. Person X is usually a senior manager or a ‘problem’ colleague who probably really needs the training, except that no one seems willing to tell them!

Running training courses is also not practical for many industries. For example, about 50% of the employees of our pharma client work in labs. Small teams with a constant workflow will find it difficult to leave their workstations to attend training.

We are not saying that training is not part of the solution, just not the solution. In the next section you will see some ideas on how to work with people on this topic outside the training room.

How can we support attitude changes?

A workplace is a collection of people with different backgrounds, experiences and views. Everyone is entitled to their views but at the same time we have a right to ensure that the people who work with us work to our goals and values. ‘Inclusion nudges’ are a very effective way of achieving this. An inclusion nudge is defined as “a relatively soft and non-intrusive mental push that mitigates implicit bias and helps the brain make more objective decisions”[1]. Here are 3 types of nudges with examples:

Feel the need

In one organisation we work with, 24.5% of employees are women. What percentage of executives in the company do you think are women? The answer is 7.1%. What do you think about the gap between the two figures? This is an inclusion nudge based on data that aims to help people ‘feel the need’ for change by creating a kind of ‘ah-ha’ moment.

Process

A Process Nudge means changing a system or organisational process in order to eliminate bias by default. Changing the way you conduct meetings or screen candidates are examples of this kind of nudge. We know companies who use a Gender Decoder [http://gender-decoder.katmatfield.com] to ensure the language in job ads is not biased to male candidates.

Framing

The way we frame things can also nudge our brains to think differently about bias. Consider the question “Should we hire more women and ethnic minorities?” reframed as “Are we getting our fair share of the talent that is out there?” Which question would steer you to take action?

Inclusion nudges are a simple and cost-effective way to start working on attitudes and behaviours and they can be launched anywhere and anytime; on a poster in the office corridor, on the intranet, in a conversation in the canteen over lunch. In the next section you will read more advice on how to get these kinds of conversations going.

For more ideas on how to create nudges to reveal bias, see the post 9 Questions to Uncover Unconscious Bias:

 

9 Questions to Uncover Unconscious Bias

How do we convince people this is an important topic?

To put the question another way – what will motivate people to get interested and want to do something about it? For some this will simply be a matter of politics or ethics, i.e. it’s just the right thing to do. For others, this may not seem a topic that impacts their jobs. However, something that will appeal to everyone is the success of the business.

Two of the biggest concerns for organisations we work with are talent acquisition and employee engagement. Removing bias is a key component of managing these challenges. You just saw the link between bias and talent acquisition in the framing example above. Consider another common question, “How can we increase our employee engagement scores?”. Now let’s reframe the question as “Which people in our organisation don’t have a voice and how can we involve them more?”

In other words, by addressing diversity and inclusion we can find a way to address some of the biggest challenges that organisations face today. For more examples of the link between bias and common challenges faced by organisations, read this post What Is Unconscious Bias and Why Does It Matter?

Tackling unconscious bias in organisations means starting conversations that will interest and motivate people to do something about it. The key to doing this is to make the link between bias and what is important to everyone in the organisation.

Read more in this post…

What Is Unconscious Bias and Why Does It Matter?

 

We hope you enjoyed reading this post. If you would like to know more about our experience of working with clients in this area, feel free to contact us. Or, take a look at some of our training solutions in this area.

[1] Inclusion Nudges Guidebook: Practical Techniques for Changing Behaviour, Culture & Systems to Mitigate Unconscious Bias and Create Inclusive Organisations https://www.amazon.com/Inclusion-Nudges-Guidebook-Unconscious-Organisations/dp/152363541X

What will training look like in 2030? (survey)

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Our clients have trusted us to deliver practical training solutions since 1994. One of the lessons we’ve learned over the years is the importance of spotting patterns. Being able to proactively meet our clients’ needs adds value and feels right. With that in mind, towards the end of 2020 we began gathering perspectives from our network. We spoke with 94 of our clients, leads and contacts (43 L&D professionals and 51 team leaders). 31 people were interviewed face to face.  The remaining 63 were initially interviewed through an online survey. Some excerpts and the results of the survey are below. If you are interested to read the full document, you can download it here.

The rise in individualised, self service training clearly shifts the obligation onto the learner

Almost everyone who took part in our survey envisaged training increasingly becoming personalised. This means that, for better or for worse, the responsibility for learning will shift to the learner. Employees will be expected to select, organise and take part in training, rather than have management and L&D mandate it and organize it.

 

“Training will be like scheduled TV and Netflix. Individuals will expect to find what they want when they want it and how they want it. Central L&D departments will be about making helping and guiding learners and scheduling if required. Learning is learner driven. The L&D departments are less needed” N.L. (CEO)

 

Technology is enabling and driving learning on demand

Almost all interviewees see technology playing an increasingly pivotal role in learning and feelings are mixed. More and more interviewees expect learners to access learning in a range of formats via smartphones and tablets. Many employers will choose this route as a low cost training solution. Some see technology as the driver behind this change, but interestingly a few pointed out that the very human desire to communicate itself is what pushes the advancements in the technology. Either way, technology in training is key to enabling and driving learning on demand.

 

“I see this digital training world being about learning on demand. Short, focused learning will be the majority. People have a problem or a need and then they find their own solution.” G.R. (L&D EMEA)

 

“I anticipate that the trends I’m seeing today will continue flexible learning, bite sized learning, the fragmentation of learning so that people focus on what they need to know or learn at that moment. This will be software based and virtual … and I feel that the solutions we see today with the big platforms is bullshit, but everybody believes in it. We used to have books and now
we have ‘animated summaries’. This isn’t learning” K.K. (L&D Manager)

 

Managers believe their companies will be investing more in learning but L&D professionals believe the opposite

This finding deserves to be explored more. None of the line managers expected to see L&D investment shrink BUT 41% of L&D professionals did. Equally surprising was that 60% of line managers expected to see more money invested in L&D … compared to just 18% of L&D professionals.

 

Thoughts are divided on the need to develop English language skills in staff

Both L&D managers and line managers are split down the middle on whether companies will need to be investing in Business English training. Our first assumption was that this was connected to the type of industry, the country or even the company size, but we could not find a pattern with the sample size (of 43 L&D professionals and 51 team leaders, managers and senior
managers).

 

“We will less likely hire staff who don’t have necessary language skills, and if we do we will be looking for a service to bring them up to speed fast so they can perform on the job”. D.F. (Technical Manager)

 

“I hear a lot from our HR that our new hires can work in English. I don’t think this is accurate. Some of them have spent a year in a foreign country, and many of them have good English listening
skills. But many of them aren’t so called advanced. They don’t have the communication skills we need and the emails they are writing just aren’t professional enough!” C.G. (Senior Manager)

 

 

Download the full version

If you are interested to read more about training in 2030, you can download the full version of the survey here.

Building a culture of accountability (whitepaper)

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In December 2021 we surveyed our clients and contacts, receiving 192 responses across a wide range of roles, industries, and European nationalities. Respondents commented on 7 simple statements. Some excerpts and the results of the survey are below. If you are interested to read the full whitepaper, you can download it here.

What is accountability?

Merriam-Webster defines accountability as “an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one’s actions”.  Clearly there is an obligation for accountability in organisations via job descriptions, performance reviews, etc. However, today’s workplace with its demands for individual autonomy, remote working and complex project structures means that the ‘willingness’ to be accountable must be continually developed by leaders. Some effective, concrete ways of doing this are:

  • making clear agreements
  • empowering people to make own decisions
  • providing feedback
  • recognising achievements
  • modelling accountability

Our experience shows us that leaders sometimes lack the full range of skills to do this. However, let’s first turn to the factors responsible for the gap in expectations and practice of accountability, by looking at the research we carried out.

 

 

 

Analysis of results

  • Respondents answered positively to most statements, particularly recognition (Q.7) and empowerment (Q.3)
  • Respondents’ impressions of effective delegation (Q.1), clarity of expectations (Q.2), and feedback giving (Q.4) were also significantly positive
  • HOWEVER … when it came to managing accountability within and across teams (Q.5 and Q.6), respondents were divided, many disagreeing that managers hold team members accountable to the commitments they give each other.

There is salience in the results. There are positive impressions of managers’ abilities and willingness to hold individuals to account. However, Q.5 and Q.6 suggest managers may need to develop their skills at managing accountability between team members and teams.

Conclusions and recommendations

Our research suggests that while some leaders are very capable of demonstrating the elements that build accountability with individuals, they may struggle with building and displaying accountability between individuals and teams.

Leaders need to …

  • develop accountability with and between individuals
  • develop their team member’s skills to have courageous conversations and hold each other accountable
  • hold the team, as a unit, accountable
  • contribute to a culture of accountability within their management team

The process for developing accountability in Fig. 2 (not shown in this post) applies to all 4 of these challenges, but the actions required differ!

Ultimately, accountability is as much about ‘doing’ as ‘being’. It is the small, noticeable actions over time that build it, specifically:

  • Being clear – delivering an unambiguous message about roles and responsibilities
  • Being courageous – challenging individuals and teams to take responsibility… and taking responsibility ourselves
  • Being empathetic – understanding individuals and relationships

Leaders need to invest in the steps, skills and behaviours that build accountability naturally. Our experience is that when we can break down big concepts into smaller, more practical elements, we can help people to take the everyday steps they need to achieve bigger goals.

Download the whitepaper

The answers to “How can accountability be developed in individual leaders and organisations?” and “What are the skills and behaviours driving each element?” are discussed in the full version. You can download it here.

The CIA model: Control, Influence, Accept

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The CIA model, discussed in The Critically Reflective Practitioner (2008) is a framework for navigating difficult times or situations. We use this model often in communications and leadership training. Sometimes used as a stress-management tool, the model helps bring focus and clarity on actions to take, and guides us how to minimise the impact of external events at the same time as maximising the impact of our personal power. In this post, we’ll explain the CIA model in more detail, and we’ll explore each part of the model to identify ways to implement it.

CIA Model

Control InfluenceAccept
identify which elements of the situation you can directly controlidentify the elements that you can’t control, but that you can perhaps influenceidentify the things that you can neither control or influence, and learn to live with them

 

Control

“It’s not events that upset us but rather our opinions about them.”

Epictetus

When I’m delivering training on change management or influencing skills, I start by asking participants to identify things in the situation or change process that they directly control. At first, they typically produce quite a small list, but with more thought and prompting their lists get bigger. What always strikes me is how many of the things on their lists relate to self-control rather than control of external things. In a nutshell, most external events are outside our control, but we can control how we react or feel about them and the decisions we make. So, the first lesson of the CIA model is that we control more than we think we do – if we know where to look. Here is a list of some of the things that are inside of our control:

  • our emotions
  • expertise/subject knowledge
  • how we react to situations
  • our reputation
  • personal choices/decisions
  • relationships with other people
  • interpersonal skills

Are you making the most of the control you have over these and other things?

Influence

“It is not that we have a short life to live, but that we waste a lot of it.”

Seneca

Once we have a list of what we do and don’t control, we are ready to move on to use what we control to influence the situation. It is not productive to waste time getting frustrated over things we cannot control; rather we need to focus our energy by leveraging the things we do control to exert some influence. For example, building better relationships is a clear way to influence other people.

Who is your role model? Barrack Obama, your line manager, Batman? Role models exert powerful influence over us because we admire something in them. If you find yourself in a difficult situation, ask – what would my role model do? Thinking in this way can help us see the situation in a new way and use the resources we have to find some personal power.

See the links at the end of this post for resources to develop influencing skills.

Accept

“Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness.”

Marcus Aurelius

There are some things we cannot control or influence. In this case we just need to accept that bad things happen. But this doesn’t need to throw us off track. In fact, these kinds of things have the potential to help us grow enormously, if we can find learning opportunities in them. “What’s the worst that can happen?” is a good question to ask in order to get some perspective on the situation. Looking back at past failures and difficult situations is another great way to realise that things which seem the end of the world are seldom so.

The CIA model itself is a method of accepting what can be controlled, and what cannot, and carving out some influence in order to move forward. This doesn’t mean it’s easy to do, but it will get easier.

Endnote

You will notice that we have quoted 3 philosophers in this post. Epictetus, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius lived in the ancient world and developed a school of philosophy known as Stoicism. The basis of Stoicism is that external events are neither intrinsically good nor bad, so it is only our reaction to them that counts and that’s what we need to work on. If we had started this post describing an ancient school of philosophy, you might not have continued reading. But this 2000-year-old philosophy is the basis for much of today’s thinking and trends on self-help and dealing with adversity, from Mindfulness to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) to CIA itself.

We hope you enjoyed reading this post. If you would like to know more about our experience of working with organisations going through change, feel free to contact us.

For more information

For more tips and advice on influencing and dealing with change, see these posts:

Training solutions

 

How to help virtual teams deal with the real challenges they face

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Virtual teams have clear advantages, but they also come with a set of unique challenges; building trust and getting people to work together is just not the same in a virtual environment. If you are leading virtual teams you will already be aware of many of these challenges. If you are not, or if you are new to this, or if your teams are not telling you everything; this post is for you! In over ten years of working with virtual teams in global companies we have collected the challenges that they have shared with us. We can now share with you some of the most common challenges we hear time and again, and some suggestions for how to help with them. This post is even more relevant in our current situation, when teams are going virtual out of necessity rather than design. So, we hope that this post will be a valuable resource to you as you adapt to the new normal of virtual working!

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Challenge 1: Connecting across different time zones

Knowing when to connect with someone halfway across the world is a key challenge that people share with us again and again. Technology allows us to send communications at any time of the day or night. But it does not tell us when we can expect a reply. Delays in response can lead to miscommunication and frustration; not something you want in any team.

How a team leader can help

It really helps to have a whole team discussion about the time zones people are working in. Don’t assume anything; we often find that some virtual teams are completely unaware what time it is for their counterparts! But don’t limit the discussion to just the time of day; in addition, bring in people’s preferred working patterns. We have found that these types of discussions can help people manage their own expectations and tailor their communications more effectively to their remote colleagues.

Challenge 2: Getting to know other team members as individuals

It is much simpler to know our colleagues’ working styles and flex to them in a co-located space because we can see how they work. In a virtual team these things are more hidden. Virtual teams who don’t know each other are more likely to fall into conflict and work to separate agendas.

How a team leader can help

The secret to building intimacy in virtual teams is to do more of it and be explicit about it. Explain why the team needs to make extra efforts to get to know each other and the benefits of doing it. Plan time at the start of meetings for personal check-ins, encourage people to reveal non-work related things about each other. Host a ‘virtual’ breakfast or coffee meeting for people to socialise. One team we worked with devised a set of 20 questions for new teams to break the ice; simple, non-threatening questions like ‘Do you prefer coffee or tea?’ can start things going and encourage people to open up. The time you create for personal bonding will pay rewards later. But the key is to realise it doesn’t happen naturally in virtual teams.

Challenge 3: Holding each other accountable and giving feedback

This is even more critical in a virtual team because we simply can’t see what other people are doing. Distance can too easily undermine the things we do more naturally in co-located teams such as giving feedback and holding each other accountable.

How a team leader can help

Ensure that the same processes and standards are applied for giving honest and timely feedback and holding each other accountable. DEEP and DESC are two approaches that work extremely well. In the office you may stipulate that feedback and performance conversations happen face to face. In a virtual team this means video calls; don’t let email take over just because it’s more convenient.

See the next challenge for a technique that can help drive team accountability.

Challenge 4: Keeping focused and engaged

Individuals will need to work more independently and with less supervision in a virtual environment but will also become more easily distracted and may lose focus due to competing work/life priorities.

How a team leader can help

Borrow a very effective technique from the iterative, agile approach; ‘Stand Up’ meetings are a short daily meeting to check-in and align with each other. In the meeting, team members are asked to share what they will be working on today and what obstacles they may face. For a team leader this provides valuable insights into problems that you will need to work on that day. For team members this is a routine event than can help them focus and energise.

Challenge 5: Making it more personal

Technology has introduced many more personal features today but teams that we work with still say that having a screen between them can make virtual teams feel impersonal.

How a team leader can help

Virtual hugs or pats on the back, telling jokes and playing games can all help to make things more personal. But the number one thing that creates the biggest impact is to turn on the webcam! As humans we connect to faces instantly and, according to the Mehrabian studies, our body language accounts for 55% of how we express emotion and attitude. It still surprises us how many virtual teams do not switch on their cameras. It’s a small step that makes a very big impact.

Challenge 6: Scheduling too many (and too long) meetings

Meetings can be draining in a physical environment. For virtual teams they can feel even longer due to the lack of physical interaction and interruption from technical problems. So, it’s important to manage meetings a bit differently in a virtual environment.

How a team leader can help

Acknowledge that virtual meetings are more of a strain and mitigate this by making them shorter and more frequent. Ensure that meetings are timetabled with people’s time zone and schedule considered; remember that these things are not as visible as they are in a co-located space. Use the tools you have in meeting software to involve everyone and keep people attentive and engaged; for example, hand raising, emoticons, breakout rooms. Check out the links below for specific posts on meetings.

Challenge 7: Knowing how much to communicate

When we are not working physically together it’s difficult to know what is too much, or too little communication. If we get it wrong we risk over-burdening our team mates, or feeling isolated.

How a team leader can help

Finding that ‘Goldilocks moment’ of just the right amount of communication means agreeing together when and what to communicate. It’s also worth thinking about which tools to use for which kinds of communication and the differences between synchronous (real time e.g. video calls) and asynchronous (delayed e.g. email). Successful virtual teams we have worked with use some simple techniques to manage their team communications, e.g. asking before interrupting, having agreed communications ‘black out’ times, and simply sharing their preferences.

 

More information on this topic

For more advice and tips on virtual teams, see these posts:

If you are interested in our training programmes on managing virtual teams, click on the links to learn more.

 

Virtual teams work across time, space, and organizational boundaries—and they are becoming increasingly common. As these virtual teams interact through technology and only occasionally meet face-to-face, it is important to rethink and sharpen the way we collaborate and communicate . In this short video Scott Levey, a director at Target Training outlines 3 simple steps you can follow to make sure your virtual team makes an impact.

 

The power of storytelling in business: 5 lessons learned

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Storytelling is a topic of great interest in the business communications world.  Conferences and speakers around the world are praising the power of storytelling and attracting audiences. Why? Humans have told stories since our earliest beginnings. We all tell stories. It was part of our survival and development. Stories are all around us, from campfires to multimillion dollar movies, so why do we have to make a case for it in a business environment? Why do people want training on something that comes naturally? In a business context, perhaps we don’t want reveal too much of ourselves, show too much emotion or not be taken seriously at work. Our storytelling seminar gives participants the skills and determination to tell more stories and better stories in the workplace. This post shares five lessons learned about storytelling in business.

Lesson 1 – What does your listener want?

What attracts audiences to the telling of a story? We identified three things:

  1. emotion

  2. energy

  3. authenticity

Children will demand expressions of the energy of the characters, the emotion of the plot and telling the story “like you mean it”. Telling bedtime stories to children is a practical example of the standards adults have for stories as well, though many may not say it. Adults need the same things to be engaged.

Lesson 2 –  What makes a good story good?

As Aristotle observed, a good story starts with a character in trouble. The character is one the audience can identify with–not too good to be in trouble and not too bad to deserve the trouble to come.  The story progresses with the development and deepening of the trouble to create a sense of fear in the audience so the resolution of the problems leaves the audience with a sense of relief.
Aristotle referred to the stages as pity, fear, and catharsis. Stories from Greek tragedy to Toy Story follow this model in one way or another.

In the workplace we can tell stories about problems, consequences and solutions to reflect Aristotle’s model.

 

 

“Storytelling comes naturally to humans, but since we live in an unnatural world, we sometimes need a little help doing what we’d naturally do.”

 Dan Harmon

 

Lesson 3 – Crafting stories that fit

The STAR Model is a basic and effective format for telling stories in a business environment. The model fits the needs of business audiences as it sets the scene, describes the action in it and talks about what happened to resolve the situation. This model is very effective in behavioral interviewing, answering questions about past performance and offering a status update.

  • Situation – clearly explain the facts and assumptions that make up the context of the action.
  • Task – detail the task to be completed or the goal to be reached.
  • Actions taken – describe all relevant actions taken to complete the task.
  • Results achieved – describe the immediate outputs and eventual outcomes of the actions taken.

Lesson 4 – Courage to connect

If work for you is simply an exchange of power, storytelling and other enhanced communication tools are not important.  Others will translate what you say into orders if you are in a power position just as you may interpret orders from your superiors. If you want your workplace to be a place where people build something together instead of following the orders of the few, storytelling is an active strategy to humanize the workplace for you and your co-workers. It provides opportunities for meaningful connections that inspire trust.

Lesson 5 – From stories to action

A good story can set the stage in a business environment and yet we often need to make the purpose clear once it is complete. We can achieve that Socratically through a debriefing method or by simply telling the listeners what we had in mind directly.

A clear explanation of the purpose of the story provides a natural, logical connection to the observation of what the teller and the listeners need to accomplish in a business environment. When listeners can connect the story to their current situation, they become involved in the process of identifying what to do and why it needs to be done—without having to be told.

 

Related training services

For more information about what we can do to help you succeed globally, here are some of our leadership solutions

Delegating for results

Practical training for all managers looking to develop their, and their team’s impact through effective delegation.

 

 

Leading a team that is working from home

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When workers are suddenly sent home to work they will face plenty of challenges, especially if they’ve never done it before. Team leaders will face an additional challenge: Leading a team that is working from home. In this post we offer a range of tips and advice for how you can do that. To keep it simple and easy to implement we’ve stuck to a 3-step approach:

  1. Start by understanding the challenges
  2. Keep the team working together
  3. Lead your team as they work from home

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What are the challenges?

Technical

An immediate priority for leading a team that is working from home is to ensure that team members have the tools to do their jobs remotely. This includes both productivity and communication tools. As a leader you can approach this with the whole team by checking they have what they need and discussing which kinds of communication technologies work well for them. Not everything will work as it did in the office and as a team you may need to decide to use ad-hoc technologies as a temporary solution.

Emotional

Some team members may feel isolated and this can have a serious impact on motivation. This is best discussed in a one-to-one setting. Individuals will all have different emotional and psychological challenges and you need to know what these are in order to help them. A simple question like, “How are you looking after yourself?” can open up a discussion and go a long way to making team members feel supported individually. Read more on this topic in our post Dealing with Loneliness and Isolation when Working from Home.

Personal

Don’t forget to also look after your own needs and work through your own personal and logistical challenges. If you don’t address these, you won’t be as effective at helping other people with their issues. Get advice on how to do this in our post Three Steps to Adapt to Home Working.

How do I keep the team working together?

In the 1970s, MIT Professor Thomas Allen discovered that team cohesion is strongest when employees are physically closer. His ideas have been taken forward by some of the most successful companies who engineer ‘collisions’ between employees to strengthen bonding and group affiliation; simple things like coffee-machine conversations, team social events, sharing stories, etc. So, how can you do this with a team that works in physical isolation from each other? Here are some ideas we have seen that work:

  • Set up daily check-ins or ‘stand-up meetings’ at the start of each day where the team shares their priorities for the day and any impediments they face. This can give team members a reassuring routine which is both work and socially focused and help to overcome feelings of isolation. It also gives you a helicopter-view of what’s happening each day.
  • In team meetings always add an agenda item with a question like, “How is this arrangement working for us?” This helps to address emotional/psychological issues of individuals and build trust. Avoid closed questions (asking “Is everyone ok?” won’t give you much information) and use “us” and “we” to reinforce team togetherness.
  • Monitor team communication patterns to pick up on problems, side issues and tone that team members are using with each other. This doesn’t mean using spyware! You just need to go over conversations that are happening on Slack, Teams and other conversation channels.
  • Use video in team communications; humans bond much better to faces than to voices and non-verbal communication sends powerful signals of belonging and empathy. Seeing faces also puts more energy into calls, which helps to overcome feelings of isolation.
  • Create and manage social interaction to replicate what normally happens in the office; have a virtual lunch together, share internet memes, play games together, just get people laughing and having fun. Social interaction is the base of creating trust in a team; you just need to do it a bit differently in a virtual work setting.

Which skills do I need for leading a team that is working from home?

 You don’t need new skills to become an effective leader of a home-working team, but you will need to use some of them more. Here is a short list of where to focus your leadership skills:

Be available

You may have an open door policy in the office but that won’t work in a remote team. So, be explicit about when and how team members can contact you. If you haven’t heard from someone in a while, check in with them and ask how they are. At the same time be careful that you also ring-fence the time you need for yourself and your own tasks.

Solve problems

This is probably the biggest thing your team will need from you, at least at the start. You may need to be flexible and change processes if necessary, for example lifting constraints on how and where data is stored and shared. Focusing on outputs rather than processes will help push the team towards purposeful activity and away from missing their old physical environment.

Make rules and hold people accountable to them

It’s important to establish some ground rules with the team, for example on which communication tools to use for different tasks, how and when to contact each other. You then need to monitor that the team is sticking to those rules and jump in when they are not.

Continue to manage performance

Research shows that employees value their performance being managed and they rate managers highly when it’s done well. This is still true in a home-working environment, but it will take more communication and more regular, smaller steps to address the distance and isolation. A practical start is to set some short term performance goals on adjusting to home-working at the beginning.

We hope you enjoyed reading this post and please share what works for you in the comments. If you would like to know more about our experience of helping teams with remote working, feel free to contact us. We also offer training on managing your focus, energy and impact when working from home and leading people when they are working from home.

 

A practical guide to storytelling in business

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People have always told stories and they are a vital part of our communication. Today, storytelling has become accepted (and sometimes expected) in a professional context. We’ve seen a rapid demand for our practical storytelling in business training solutions. Whereas 8 years ago there was sometimes a need to convince people that a storytelling approach was valid, we rarely get any pushback today. This change in attitudes can be partly attributed to the power of the TED talk format, partly to our push back against death by PowerPoint and people speaking to us in bullets … and mainly because storytelling never went away. When done well, storytelling connects with people in a way no other communication approach can. This post outlines the essentials so you can get started.

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What is a story? And why should I use them?

Every story has …

  • a plot
  • a beginning, middle and end
  • often involves overcoming a problem, challenge, obstacle, dilemma
  • but above all …. a story connects on a human /emotional level

This last point is the key. A story is not a series of events or a case study. It should connect with people and create an emotional reaction.
This connecting makes stories easy to remember. When done well stories bring meaning to information and have the power to move people. Depending on the story and the skill of the storyteller our brains …

  • produce cortisol during the tense moments in a story, which allows us to focus
  • produce oxytocin, that promotes connection and empathy
  • release dopamine which makes us feel more hopeful and optimistic

If you are interested in the science behind these statements, these two HB articles explore the science behind storytelling and what makes storytelling so effective for learning.

This means you can choose to use a story in a wide range of situations. We often use stories when presenting, influencing, teaching, leading or just in day-to-day discussions. Consider using stories when you want to aid memory, celebrate, challenge assumptions, connect, convince, encourage, energize, entertain, explain, impress, inspire, motivate, persuade, reinforce values or beliefs, scare or shock, sell, support, teach or warn.

How do I build a story?

Learning to build a great story is a skill, and it can require practice. If you want to build a story you need to start with your audience. Your first question has to be “What do I want them to feel?”. Sometimes the emotion you arrive at may surprise you. Secondly ask yourself “What do I want them to understand? think? do?”. Then think back over the situations you’ve been part of, or have observed. It is far easier and far better to tell stories that mean something to you and are your stories. You can share other people’s stories but make sure you have the information and the understanding to bring it to life. Again, a story works because it connects on a human /emotional level.

This post goes behind the scenes with 2 of our staff, discussing the challenges some professionals have when building a story and how they approach this in a training environment.

If you are struggling to build a story, then try using the IDEAS approach:

  • Identify the emotion you are trying to create. Then identify what you want your listener to understand and do.
  • Decide which story would best accomplish this and connect with your listener
  • Expand your story. You have the bones, now put the flesh on them.
  • Anticipate their questions and reactions. Now choose to deal with these within your story or intentionally leave this out to provoke discussion once you’ve finished telling the story.
  • See the story as you tell it.

Finally, don’t assume you can just get up and tell it. You need to practice your story, if you want to make it matter.

How do I actually tell my story?

If the story means something to you, you will already have the content and the structure. Make things personal and tell tough stories. If your story is tough and personally matters to you, you will naturally find the pace, the tone and the body language you need to make your story captivating. When you are developing and practising your story, follow these 3 great pieces of advice:

  • Invest time in building it
  • Practice out loud
  • Make it personal to you

When you are delivering the story …

  • see the story as you tell it
  • use outer and inner language. Outer language is what physically happened, while inner language is how the person was feeling thinking. An advanced tip is to avoid eye contact when you are sharing the inner language.
  • use plenty of LOTS (language of the senses). This includes what you saw, heard, smelt, tasted, tough or felt
  • take your time. If your rush your story, you will rob it of its richness. You wouldn’t want to read a story structured into bullet points, would you?

And if you want to get really good …

  • use memory devices e.g. words, phrases or images repeated in different places
  • use a tangible object or image as a starting or closing point
  • when doing dialogues adopt a different voice/body/position for each person
  • consider your space – roam the room or sit on a chair – BUT actively think about it!

What should I not do when telling a story?

Telling a story is NOT the same as making a presentation. A lot of the techniques you’ve learned on presentation seminars are story-killers and using them will rob your story of its emotional content. For example:

  • Don’t put your key message up front
  • Don’t tell them what you’ll tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them
  • Don’t start with the structure, start with the emotion
  • We would also suggest you avoid the phrase “Let me tell you a story”

Storytelling is a learnable skill! It starts with identifying your goal and understanding your audience. You need to know the emotion you are looking for. From there you start hunting for the right story, which you then craft through practice. Don’t rush it, do not “present” it, and have the courage to just tell a story person to person. You’ll be surprised at the impact you can make.

And if you’d like support, whether it be coaching or training then do get in touch. We’d love to help you be even better at storytelling.

17 practical ways senior managers and executives can support training and development inside their organization

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Recently one of our clients asked me to co-facilitate a workshop at an annual global event. The client is one of the largest building materials companies in the world, and their annual event is attended by plant managers, country directors and executives. Amongst the presentations and plenary sessions they wanted to run 2 challenging workshops which would then lead to concrete action plans. One of these workshops focused on the ambitious goal of quickly becoming carbon free, and the other on training. 

Our client wanted to further strengthen their learning culture and ensure top-level management were playing an active part in this journey. Rather than asking the senior leaders “What do you need?” the question they wanted to ask was “So. what can you do?” – and the participants loved it.  They were more than happy to share their experiences and opinions, and all were quite vocal when expressing that learning and development was their responsibility. As one Indonesian plant manager said  “You at headquarters support us and help us, we like the e-learning and the virtual delivery offers … but we are the important ones because we need to make it happen”.

Based upon their input, and expanded through interviews with other clients, here are 17 ways that senior managers and executives can actively support training and development within their organizations.

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  1. Ensure that the message of how training connects into your long-term health and strategy is lived by all levels. This means looking for opportunities to repeat this message and using concrete and relatable stories.
  2. Be clear to your L&D teams about where you see your future challenges. What will the critical skills be in 5 years time? What trends do you see in your market? Where do you see the skills gap? What are the core behaviours you want to see in your staff’s DNA? If you show them where you want to go they will help you get there.
  3. Support the building of a skills matrix for roles , then with a rolling 36-month focus, ensure training is connected directly to this skills matrix. This is an upfront investment that then provides a clear framework for deciding where training budgets go.
  4. Tap into “management by objectives“ behaviours and make learning a target for your management team.
  5. Encourage awareness that people learn through experience and exposure. Be an example and look into include and involve upcoming talents and high-performers.
  6. Expect your management teams to lead by example and actively join training sessions. This helps ensure that training is seen as strengthening for the future and not a sign of weakness or gaps.
  7. Be seen to be looking for training and development for yourself. This sends a clear message that training is about becoming stronger and not a sign of weakness.
  8. Insist that managers actively feed back to the central L&D team regarding their current and future needs, satisfaction levels, and ideas for the medium and long-term. Strive to make the internal customer surveys a formality.  Your L&D teams should know in advance what is working and what is not if they are benefiting from direct conversations with the regions.
  9. Ask to see that all training has a clear objective and that this is reinforced before, during, and after the training by line managers in person. This isn’t about checking quality, but rather showing the people involved in the before and after that you care, and these steps aren’t nice-to-have add-ons!
  10. Connected to above, insist that all training programs lead to follow up actions by team leaders and line managers. See #4.
  11. Ensue that clear and tangible training objectives are communicated at multiple touch points. Find stories and examples which connect the importance of learning and development to medium- and long-term goals. Yes, this similar to points 1 & 2 but we can’t emphasize it enough. If people understand the “why” then things happen.
  12. Whenever you visit a plant or site, take the time to meet the local training dept and ask what else you can do to support them. They’ll really appreciate this … and you are again sending a clear signal that training and development is strategically important to you.
  13. Get involved with your emerging talents programs. These people are your future. They’ll be energized by your involvement and they’ll energize you too!
  14. Commit to actively supporting a training session once a month by joining the first 15 minutes, explaining why this training is relevant, showing interest in the people in the room and being clear about what we want to see afterwards
  15. Show little tolerance for regions reinventing the wheel. Identify the core strategic programs needed by all regions– get these programs right through piloting them – and then make sure there is budget to adapt them to the local skill levels and languages.
  16. Get involved when budget ownership questions threaten the actual delivery of training. Help cut through the complexity of cost centers and encourage the company to work as one organization.
  17. When costs need cutting, defend training budgets and training availability. It’s too easy to cut it and the savings are often small compared to more painful options but the message is clear. Do you want your employees to see training and development opportunities as a bonus or as an expectation?

For more information

If you’d like to know more about how you can actively make the most from your training investment then download this simple and practical guide.

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Balancing your emotional bank accounts – practical activities for managers and leaders

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In our previous blog we explained what an emotional bank account is and why managers need to care about building them . To quickly recap, an emotional bank account is a metaphor coined by Stephen Covey in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It describes the amount of trust that’s been built up in a relationship, and when trust is high, communication is easy and effective. Every time a manager says something supportive, shows respect, helps somebody with a difficult situation, etc., they make a deposit in that person’s emotional bank account.  Every time they criticize, blame, lie, intimidate, etc., they make a withdrawal.  Over time, the effects of these deposits will help transform that relationship. This post goes deeper into how to build your emotional bank accounts.

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How do you build a healthy emotional bank account with your team?

Every manager and team are different, and culture can play a part, but at the end of the day it comes back to our relationships and how we behave. Covey identified six ways to make deposits (or reduce withdrawals):

1) Understand the individual

You need to know what the individual wants and what constitutes a deposit and withdrawal for them.  Whereas one employee might be exhilarated by presenting their project results to the board another may prefer to be in the background and their contribution acknowledged privately.  Ask yourself what drives them? How do they want recognition? What makes their eyes light up?

2) Keeping commitments

We have all broken a promise and let somebody down, and when we do this, we are making a withdrawal.  Keeping commitments is about doing what we say we’ll do, keeping our promises, delivering what we said we’d deliver, being on time, being where we should be, fulfilling our promises. If you consistently keep your commitments, you build healthy emotional bank accounts with people.

3) Clarifying expectations

Each of us have different backgrounds, experiences and expectations. We see the world differently.  Clarifying understanding and expectations is essential if you’d like to minimize misunderstanding and wrong assumptions. By proactively investing time in clarifying expectations and building a  mutual understanding of what you need, don’t need, want, don’t want etc you can minimize the “ I thought that..”, “I’d assumed ..”, “To me it was obvious that …”.  And keep in mind that if you are leading people and teams virtually, then the risk of false assumptions and misunderstanding does increase, and formalizing things with communication charters does help.

4) Attending to the little things

Relationships aren’t only built by big moments but by the little things too. These are the smiles in the corridor, holding the door open, short thank you emails, remembering their daughter has just started school, not heading straight to your office but spending a moment walking through the open office to be seen. Kind words, smiles, courtesies, warmth. Human interest, and taking time when you don’t have to.

5) Showing personal integrity

Relationships are built on trust and integrity. What does integrity mean? The word “integrity” comes from the Latin integritatem, meaning “soundness” or “wholeness.”  Integrity is not situational –  it is a state of mind.  In Covey’s words…

 

 

“ Integrity is conforming reality to our words … keeping promises and fulfilling expectations.”

 

 

What does this look like in practice? Here are 7 musts to start with…
  1. Do the right thing for the right reasons and because it’s the right thing to do – even if it is going to be unpopular with some people.
  2. Face the truth and talk about it. This is the reality principle of “seeing the world as it really is, and not as you wish it is”.
  3. Be upfront in your communication. People want to know where they stand and what is going on. People won’t always like what they hear but they will value the adult-adult relationship.
  4. Know you are sometimes wrong and that you sometimes make mistakes – and admit this.
  5. Take responsibility for what you do and don’t do.
  6. Put the needs of others before your own.
  7. Be loyal to those not present – confront gossiping, complaining and bad mouthing about people who aren’t in the room.

6) Apologizing when we make a withdrawal

we are all human, and we all make mistakes and get things wrong. Know when you’ve made a mistake, admit it and apologize with sincerity. Admitting you’ve made a mistake doesn’t necessarily mean it is acceptable but it’s a start, and can be healing to a relationship.  Avoid the temptation of wanting to discuss why you made it before you discuss and show understanding of the impact it had on others.  And understand that if you are continually making the same type of withdrawal, trust will erode. It’s the smaller things that kill relationships in the long run. Finally, don’t try and lighten withdrawals with banter, humour or a “shit sandwich”– this is rarely appreciated.

To add to the list above , tolerance and forgiveness are also powerful deposits, as is appreciative inquiry and holding back judgment and sweeping statements.

A 10-minute practical activity for managers

  1. Write down the names of 5 team members that are important to your team’s success.
  2. Now look back at your calendar over the last 2 weeks and use this, plus your memory, to find evidence of deposits and withdrawals.  A meeting went poorly and they left frustrated – that’s a withdrawal. They bent your ear and you listened and gave them your attention – a deposit. Build a simple balance sheet (name at the top, left column is deposits, right column is withdrawals.
  3. Now put the paper down / close the document and go and do something.
  4. A few hours later (or even the next day) come back and for each of the 5 team members write down what you believe motivates and drives them?  What gives them energy and what takes it? How do they like to communicate? And what do they see as recognition?
  5. Almost there … now
    1. Look at your evidence of deposit and withdrawals (step 2) and ask yourself hwo you feel about the balance
    2. Look at the types of deposits and withdrawals and ask yourself does this tie in with what they need? Not everyone will see public recognition as a deposit And not everyone will see direct feedback and getting straight to it as a withdrawal. Deposits and withdrawals are personal.
  6. And now the final step. Ask yourself what can you do in the coming month differently?  If possible, plan them into your calendar by finding tangible moments e.g.. You can’t enter “Tuesday 14:00-14:30 listen” but you can set up a meeting to discuss a project and make a conscious effort to listen first.  https://www.targettraining.eu/listening-skills-10-areas-to-improve/ @brenda – was there an ALF download ??
  7. And if you are keen to make more deposits then why not use a regular catch up meeting or a chat over lunch to learn from them more about what is actually important to them, what would increase their trust in you and your relationship , and what you could do more/less of.

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If you are interested in learning more about how we integrate emotional intelligence into our leadership and management training solutions, please contact us.

Why managers should care about their emotional bank accounts

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In our Practical Toolbox for managers training program, we often hear that the time spent on giving feedback is one of the highlights, and implementing DESC frequently makes it onto the manager’s transfer plan. One of the key points they take away is that the success of your feedback/feedforward rests upon your broader relationship with your partner. Put simply, if you have invested in them as a human being then feedback conversations are far more likely to go well.  To look at it from the other side, if you haven’t invested in somebody, if you haven’t built trust, and if you haven’t built a meaningful professional relationship with them … well don’t be surprised when thing go pear-shaped.  If you are managing others, you need your emotional bank account with your staff to be healthy.
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What is an “emotional bank account”?

The term “emotional bank account” appears in Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. In Covey’s own words:

“An emotional bank account is a metaphor that describes the amount of trust that’s been built up in a relationship.  It’s the feeling of safeness you have with another human being.  When the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant, and effective.”.

Covey made the term popular, but the concept behind the “emotional bank account” is not new.  When we take more than we give from a relationship over the long-term, then we shouldn’t be surprised if the relationship suffers.  This holds true in all our relationships, from those with our partners, kids, friends, colleagues, clients, and suppliers.

The metaphor took off within the business training world because it is immediately understandable. You make deposits, save up money, and when you need that money later, you withdraw it. An emotional bank account is an account of trust instead of money. We all know how a bank account works … plus bank account sounds more business-like which helps a certain time of person accept the idea.

Every time a manager says something supportive, shows respect, invests in somebody as an individual, helps somebody with a difficult situation, makes time for them etc they make a deposit in that person’s emotional bank account.  Over time, the effects of these deposits will help to transform that relationship. And conversely, every time they criticize, blame, defend, ignore, lie, intimidate, threaten, etc they make a withdrawal.

We are all human and there are times when we are making more withdrawals than deposits.  Just like a bank, we can go in the red and then come out of it. The trick is to be in in the healthy green zone over the longer term.

Why should managers care about emotional bank accounts?

It is rare to hear managers dismissing the concept.  Almost all managers we work with in our management and leadership solutions want positive, productive, rewarding, trust-based relationships with their staff and teams. Concepts such as authenticity, credibility and trust are valued by the vast majority of organizations, and books such as “Servant leadership in Action”  and Goffee & Jones’“Why should anyone be led by you?”  and have captured this.

A personal sense of self-worth and respect is important, but meaningful and strong relationships in the workplace also lead directly to tangible results.  As a manager, your success is largely is dependent on your staff. Leaders who build strong and meaningful relationships within and beyond their organization give their business a competitive advantage. Emotional bank accounts are not just about the “soft stuff”. They are about delivering results through performance.

Healthy emotional bank accounts play a role in practically all of a manager’s day-to-day tasks.  When a manager tasks, delegates, motivates, influences, leads meetings, communicates, reviews, resolves conflicts, gives feedback, navigates difficult discussions etc., the relationships impact the success. All of these are moments where a manager can deposit or withdraw, and each of them has a range of potential for success or failure.

To summarize: If a manager cares about their emotional bank accounts they are more likely to succeed in the short, medium and long-term. If a manager doesn’t take care of relationships and withdraws more than they deposit, then they can’t expect to see a highly motivated team delivering outstanding results.

Check your emotional bank accounts – a practical activity for managers

  1. Write down the names of 3+ people that are important to your team’s success. Ideally try and identify a range e.g. team member, manager in another department, customer, supplier etc …
  2. Then ask them if they have time for a meeting to reflect on your working relationship. Make sure they understand that this is truly the reason, that nothing is wrong per se, that there isn’t a second goal to the conversation.
  3. Start the meeting by reiterating that you would like to strengthen the relationship. Ask them to share things that you have done/not done which will/can/would build trust.
  4. Listen and ask exploratory questions to understand. Do not reframe what they say into what you wish they had said. Do not defend. Just listen.
  5. Thank them and let things settle.
  6. Finally, identify specifics and patterns amongst the people you’ve spoken too, and identify next steps.

More about emotional bank accounts

In our next blog post we’ll go deeper into the behaviours related to  “how you build emotional bank accounts” and share another practical exercise.

The Four Horsemen: contempt and stonewalling in the workplace

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Healthy and respectful working relationships are a must if you want an effective and enjoyable workplace.  In the first post of this series, I introduced John Gottmann’s work on the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse. In the second post, we looked at what you can do to tackle the toxic behaviours of criticizing & blaming and defensiveness. This blog post will dive deeper into the last 2 toxic behaviours – and possibly the most damaging of the 4: stonewalling & contempt. We’ll explore why they happen, their impact and how both parties can change things for the better.  We’ll end with what a manger can do when they see these behaviours within their teams.

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Contempt

Contempt is when somebody makes it clear that they feel somebody has no value and deserves no respect. As it has been built brick-by-brick over time, it is tough to dismantle, and is probably the most destructive behaviour amongst Gottman’s “Four Horsemen”.

Contempt can manifest itself as ongoing sarcasm, cynicism, insults and aggressive, belittling or mocking humour. It can be seen in small gestures (eye-rolling when a colleague starts talking in a meeting, snorting at the mention of a project, a smirk or a single “hah” when a  colleagues name is mentioned) to full on mocking and cruel statements e.g. “Wow, you’ve done better than I ever expected – even by your standards that’s truly great work Susanne. You must be exhausted after having made so many mistakes”.

When somebody shows contempt, they are actually communicating that they see themselves as better and worth more.

Why do we do show contempt?

Feelings of contempt are typically built up over time – negative experiences create their own story and, too often, nobody has tackled the situation effectively. This can leave a person feeling frustrated and angry and looking to establish some sort of “superiority”.  Contempt can also come from a sense of moral superiority based on class, cultural or religious differences. Peers can feed into it or enable it.

What happens when we show contempt?

Contempt destroys teams and relationships. It prevents trust and respect and makes it hard for any real human warmth. It is tangibly damaging, causes stress and can harm people emotionally, mentally and ultimately physically.

So, what can the person showing contempt do differently?

Truth be told, if you are showing contempt for others there is a good chance you no longer care about turning things around. However, if you have a high level of self-awareness and realise that you have become somebody you don’t want to be then this is already a great step. Going forward you can focus on redefining your relationship with your colleague through …

  • seeing the other person as a human being with equal value.
  • seeking a positive trait in them and acknowledge it first to yourself and then to the other.
  • finding something they do that you value – then tell them.
  • communicating your needs with “I” statements and not “you” statements e.g. “I feel…”, “I want…”
  • actively looking to find opportunities to make deposits in their “emotional bank account”.

And what can the person receiving contempt do to limit the toxic impact and turn things around?

  • Look after yourself and work to stay balanced and neutral when interacting with this person. Shut out the unhelpful “whatever I do will be seen as wrong” self- talk. Reward yourself for not feeding into a situation.
  • People don’t always realize that they are being offensive… or how offensive they are being. Raise awareness of behaviours in a neutral / inquiring tone e.g. “What would you like to achieve by saying that?”, “Why are you rolling your eyes?”
  • Ask questions about the other’s intent – especially if they are not communicating in their first language. e.g. “Are you aware that, when I hear you say … I feel …?” “
  • Reflect how the contemptuous behaviour is impacting you e.g. “I feel belittled when you roll your eyes when I talk. Is this intended?”
  • Say how you feel about what is going on and show your desire to make things right, e.g. “Can we take a step back and slow things down?” “Insulting me isn’t helping us to move forward and find a solution”, “ What is the best way to tackle this issue for both of us?”
  • Indicate that you are willing to move beyond the present and press the reset button e.g. “I feel we are struggling. How about we try and start again from the beginning and build a new working relationship?”
  • And when things get too much, don’t be afraid to seek support within your organization. When you do this focus on you and your feelings… and not what they said/did.
  • And finally, know where your limits are and seek support from your manager or HR if you feel these are being crossed.

Stonewalling                     

When somebody feels they are frequently and undeservedly being blamed or treated with contempt, they may choose to withdraw into themselves and give one-word answers or even refuse to participate at all. Discussion, healthy questioning and positive conflict are key elements of any successful team.  Stonewalling stops this from happening, and feeds contempt, defensiveness and blaming.

Why do we do stonewall?

By refusing to cooperate, engage, react or communicate we look to protect ourselves and ride it out. Beneath this we may be seeking to control or establish hierarchy e.g. “I don’t need to listen to you”.

What happens when we do this?

The impact is that communication stops. The other person may become increasingly frustrated, angry and then despondent. Communication collapses and relationships quickly collapse too. Other colleagues get pulled in to the toxic situation as they become impacted, and everything gets slower and tougher … meaning ultimately performance and results suffer.

So, what can the “stonewaller” do differently?

If you recognize this behaviour in yourself and want to change you can…

  • focus on who you choose to be – who am I really? How do I want to behave?  How do I behave when I am at my best?
  • ask for space if you need it, and commit to resume once things have calmed down.
  • find a way to calm your emotions. Is there a third party you can express your feelings to? Alternatively, verbalize them out loud to yourself (or write them down if you prefer).
  • work out why you have reached this point. Why are you so angry and reluctant to contribute? Answering these questions may help you to understand your feelings better and enable you to continue.
  • avoid righteous indignation e.g. “ I don’t have to take this anymore” or seeing yourself as an innocent victim

And what can the “stonewalled” do to limit the toxic impact?

  • Ask yourself why are they stonewalling? What are you doing/have you done that is making the other person not feel safe in expressing themselves?
  • Focus on building safety. Agree a fixed time, neutral and private location, confidentiality and help them come back into the conversation with simple exploratory open questions.
  • Accept that a break might be needed and press the “pause” button while communicating that you are committed to continuing the conversation later.
  • Really listen to what the other person is saying.

What can a manager do when they see contempt and stonewalling within their team?

The hard truth is that as a manager you probably won’t be able to do as much as you might like to.  Whereas a skilled manager can actively help team members get past criticizing, blaming and being defensive, contempt and stonewalling are far more difficult to deal with. In fact, any blog would struggle to explore the variables and options.  Here are some questions to ask yourself…

  • What is the impact of the behaviour on the team and our results?
  • What can I accept? What can’t I accept? Where is my line in the sand?
  • Where is the contempt or stonewalling coming from? e.g. why this person? this situation? this environment?
  • How willing am I to reflect back what I am seeing? The impact it is having? And the impact it may have later?
  • Am I prepared and committed to consistently confront contemptuous or stonewalling behaviors over the long-term?
  • To what extent can I ring-fence a person without impacting the team or passing more work and responsibility on to others?
  • Am I choosing to do nothing? Or am I afraid to do something?
  • Who else can help me in this situation?
  • To what extent has HR been involved so far? What can they do?
  • Under what circumstances am I prepared to let this person go?

Whether you are just moving into a management position, managing a conflict in your virtual team, or just want to get the very best from your staff and the teams you manage, being aware of Gottmann’s work on the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse is incredibly useful and practical. At the end of the day, results are delivered through people and people are complex. None of us are always at our best and we can all struggle in relationships.  Awareness of the 4 Horsemen is a start, followed by self-reflection and support.  An effective manager is neither a counsellor nor a buddy – but they do need to manage people as individuals – and this means managing knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours.

The Four Horsemen: criticism, blame and defensiveness in the workplace

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Healthy working relationships are a must if you want an effective, efficient and enjoyable workplace. In our last blog post I introduced John Gottmann’s work on the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse ; criticizing & blaming, defensiveness, contempt and stonewalling. We explored why tackling these 4 toxic behaviours is essential if you want to drive performance and deliver results. This blog post will dive deeper into the first 2 toxic behaviours. We’ll look at criticising & blame AND the defensiveness it creates. We’ll then explore why they happen, their impact and how both parties can change things for the better. Finally, we’ll look at what you as a manager can do when you run into these behaviours between team members.

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How to detoxify criticism & blaming in the workplace

As every manager knows, when things go seriously wrong it is important to discuss “What happened?” and to ask “How can thing be done differently next time?”. Being able to do this in a transparent, open and constructive manner is hugely powerful.  Jim Collins explores this with the “autopsy without blame” behaviour in his excellent bestseller Good to Great. For “autopsy without blame” to work, you need people to feel safe – you need to detoxify criticism & blaming in the workplace.

First of all, it is important to understand the difference between complaining and criticizing. A complaint addresses a specific failed action. A criticism includes a negative judgement about the other’s personality or character. Blaming is when you are abdicating responsibility and laying all fault and consequences at the other person’s feet. For example …

  • Complaint – “Thierry, we are now behind schedule with the FAT.  I’m in a really difficult position with the client.”
  • Criticism – “We are behind schedule with the FAT because you forgot again to update Max. You’re so disorganized.  Now I’m in a really difficult position with the client, Thierry.”
  • Blaming – “This is all your fault … and now yet again we are behind schedule with the FAT. You didn’t update Max like you should have, and now I have to solve things and deal with the client … what do you think about that? This is all on you Thierry.”

Clearly criticizing and blaming aren’t helpful or productive behaviours – but if we are honest with ourselves we have all displayed them at some point.

Why do we do blame and/or criticize others?

We have made up our mind about what happened and want to either hold somebody responsible or change somebody else’s behaviour. We tell ourselves we are just “giving feedback”, “holding others accountable” or “saying it how it is”.

What happens when we do this?

The typical (and often unintended) impact is that the receiver becomes defensive (the second of the 4 Horsemen) and constructive communication stops. The receiver will probably be less open about what actually happened as they don’t feel safe – and possibly even become dishonest, holding information back or reframing things. Alternatively, the receiver feels threatened and fights back with criticism or blame. None of this is very productive or beneficial for a healthy professional relationship.

So, what can the “blamer” do differently?

To best avoid the above, you as the potential “blamer” need to…

  • take responsibility for your own feelings – and don’t lay them on the “receiver”.
  • be open and curious about what happened. Look to understand first.
  • turn your “complaint” into a request. Concentrate on finding solutions to the problem and how you can avoid it in the future rather than focusing on the past e.g. Instead of saying “You didn’t tell me about the review meeting”, say “I really don’t want to miss another one of those review meetings, could you send me the dates for the rest of the year?”
  • use “I” language and not “you” language e.g. “I have the impression that… / To me this comes across as…”.
  • examine how you can actively contribute to a solution – it is unlikely you are completely powerless, and you will feel better if you are aware of what you can change and control regardless of what the other does.
  • be future-oriented. Again, look to understand so things can be better in the future. Mapping out on a piece of paper what happened and contributing factors can be a powerful and safe tool.
  • apologize when appropriate – did you intend to “attack”? It could be you do not feel you were being critical or had a different intent, but what matters is how the other experienced it.
  • and at all costs avoid trying to hurt the other with sweeping personal attacks such as “What is wrong with you?” or “What exactly is your problem?”

What can the “blamed” do to limit the toxic impact?

And if you find yourself being criticized or blamed try to…

  • assume their intentions are good. They are not intentionally trying to hurt you, nor do they want you to “feel useless”. They just aren’t doing a very good job of communicating.
  • listen and try to find a reasonable request embedded in their “complaint”.
  • focus on your relationship. If they are “blaming”, what are their needs?
  • resist the urge to fight back – don’t get stuck in a “who is doing what to who” spiral.
  • stay calm, assertive and openly empathic.
  • try to refocus the discussion on the future. As above, mapping out what happened and contributing factors helps.
  • help them to refocus on your relationship.

How to detoxify defensiveness in the workplace

The toxic behaviour of “defensiveness” often follows feeling criticized or blamed. It is a natural fight/flight response and, just like criticism & blaming, defending is very much about the past rather than the future.  Defending can look like excuses, denying responsibility, or even blaming the other (“I’m not the problem here – you’re the problem!”). Defensiveness rarely helps move things forward.

Why do we do defend ourselves?

We defend to preserve our own sense of self.  We want to preserve our self-identity, our sense of integrity and of being right/fair/committed/competent etc.  We are protecting our ego from criticism and can swiftly start to behave like the “victim”.

What happens when we do this?

The unintended impact is that conflict either festers or escalates.  Either way, the relationship suffers. Being defensive also prevents the autopsy and understanding of the problem, which in turn prevents finding sustainable and realistic solutions.

So, what can the “defender” do differently?

  • Really listen …. really, really listen. Shut out unhelpful self-talk and use active listening skills.
  • Connected to the above, look to clarify what you think you are hearing.
  • Now look for the “10%” of truth. It is incredibly unlikely that the other person is making everything up. Ignore the criticism and focus on the issue that is being raised. Even if you disagree with what they are saying and how they are saying it, there is probably some truth in there somewhere which connects to you and your part in the situation.
  • And once you have considered your contribution to the problem, accept and embrace your personal responsibility for the problem. Everybody is wrong sometimes.
  • Acknowledge the impact that you contributed to. Apologize when appropriate. And to quote an overused cliché, own your mistake. You’ll be surprised how powerful and effective saying “I’ve listened to what you said and after thinking it over … you are right. This is my mistake.” can be. Sometimes tackling a situation head on can also quickly change the dynamics e.g. “I’ve listened to what you are saying [criticizer braces them self for denial and prepares to continue attack] and I completely agree with you.  I didn’t do this in the right or best way [criticizer surprised and silent]. Let’s talk and see what you and I need me to do differently next time [criticizer pulled into future orientated discussion].”

 And what can the “attacker” do to limit the toxic impact of defensiveness?

  • Explicitly and authentically clarify your intention. Work to help them understand that your intention is not to hurt them. You just want to have a tough conversation because this is important to you.
  • Make them feel safe if you can.
  • Again, really listen … talk less and listen more.
  • Clarify what is being heard by the other person.
  • Use “I” language and not “you” language.
  • Show respect.
  • And reassure them that their image or reputation is not at stake. You are focusing on this situation and not everything in the past, present and future.
  • Reconnect to trust (past and future).

What can a manager do when they see criticism, blame and defensiveness within their team?

To criticize and blame is human. We have all done it.  All of us have also been unhelpfully defensive. Differentiate between a team member who displays this behaviour now an again (which is human) and one who displays a pattern on an ongoing basis

  1. Create a safe environment and build trust by sharing personal experiences of being on both ends – focus on the immediate and longer-term impact of the behaviour on individuals, team and results. Be careful not to lecture, and instead share your perceptions and experiences.
  2. Refocus the team on what happens next time (and reinforce this future-orientation when somebody starts using past tenses).
  3. When you run into a pattern where an individual is regularly criticizing and blaming others, don’t be afraid to assert your power as a manager and deliver feedback on the destructive behaviour you are seeing. Then, keep an eye out for this behaviour continuing under the surface or transforming into contempt.

In the 3rd and final part of this series we’ll look at how you can tackle and overcome the remaining 2 “horsemen” – stonewalling and contempt.

Meet the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” – and why they matter in your workplace

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Since 2015 we’ve been heavily involved in a Management Development program for one of the big 4 accounting firms in Luxembourg. One of the many rewarding aspects of being involved in such large flagship projects, is the chance to co-train with other management trainers and learn from each other. In 2017, thanks to Alexandra D, I discovered John Gottman’s work and since then I’ve seen it help people in and out of work with the relationships that most matter to them. If (like me) you haven’t heard of him, John Gottman is a highly respected psychologist and relationship expert, who with his wife, Julie, leads The Gottman Institute [ https://www.gottman.com/]. Gottman studied relationships between spouses and couples for over two decades and discovered patterns of behaviour that he could use to predict which relationships would not survive with over 90% accuracy.  Although his research and calling focuses exclusively on couples, his thoughts and methods easily transfer to our professional lives and our workplace relationships too!

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Meet the 4 Horsemen (or the 4 team toxins)

Gottman believes that there are 4 negative kinds of behaviour that can destroy relationships. This 2-minute video introduces them nicely.

The four destructive behaviours are:

  • blaming and criticism – attacking your partner’s character, behaviour or personality.
  • defensiveness – seeing yourself as the victim to pre-empt or ward off attacks and blaming others for your failures.
  • contempt – attacking your partner’s sense of self with sarcasm or cynicism to insult or abuse them.
  • stonewalling – withdrawing from the relationship and any meaningful connection.

Gottman calls these 4 destructive behaviours “the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”. I’ve also heard coaches and trainers rename them “The Four Team Toxins” in an effort to make them sound more business-relevant.

Why the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse matter in the workplace

And let us be honest – we have all probably displayed these 4 toxic behaviours and acted in a toxic way at one time or another. We are human. And whether you want to call them “the 4 horsemen” or “the 4 team toxins”, these behaviours matter in the workplace – and in a very tangible way.

These behaviours are toxic to an effective, respectful and rewarding workplace. If interpersonal relationships are breaking down, you can expect to see the quality of communication deteriorating.  Tasks and projects will take longer, work will be incomplete or below expected standards and, as the behaviours impact productivity, you can expect to see poor results.  Motivation, commitment and team spirit will all suffer, and destructive conflicts will increase. And at its worst you’ll see stress, illness and good people leaving because “They’ve just had enough”. If you want to drive performance, you need to tackle them head on.

So, what can managers do about the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse?

“Ok, some people aren’t as nice as others, that’s life … but as an Audit manager what should I do? I’m a manager not a counsellor.”

 – Marcel, Manager in Audit & Assurance

Every professional who cares about their relationships with others will benefit from exploring the 4 Horsemen by …

  • being able to recognize when you are behaving negatively.
  • learning to consciously shift your mindset when necessary.

Whether toxic behaviour is a common occurrence or a thankfully rare phenomenon, great managers need to …

  • be able to recognize when others are behaving negatively.
  • learn to help others understand their behaviours and the impact it may have.
  • be able to tackle difficult conversations with both individuals and teams.
  • learn to help others stop negative spirals and have a fighting chance of turning toxic relationships around.

In parts 2 and 3 of this blog we will explore how this can be achieved but to close, here are 5 practical tips to get you started…

  1. Take responsibility for your own feelings. This starts with you consistently building self-awareness and reflection into your actions. Focus on who you want to be and how you want to be … regardless of what the other person does or says. This is tough but immensely powerful.
  2. Practice curiosity – ask yourself “What is actually happening here?”, “What am I missing?”, “How have I contributed to this situation?” and “What will help us through this?”
  3. Do not make assumptions and openly check your findings. This will help increase others’ willingness to listen and engage in healthy conflict.
  4. Deposit into other people’s emotional bank accounts and feed positivity into your relationships: regularly have appreciative conversations and look to show recognition.
  5. And when you do see toxic behaviours between team members, tackle them.

When bulls collide – why senior managers need to master using influence instead of power

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Over the past year we’ve been working on 3 leadership projects with plant managers across Europe and the US. These projects have involved coaching talented operational managers on the verge of promotion to a more strategic level. For many of these managers this is a surprisingly tough jump. They are now no longer the sole “go-to “decision maker for their teams. Now they need to get the buy-in of their superiors and peers as part of getting their job done. … they need to influence others.
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Moving from a telling to an asking approach when influencing

For managers with a telling or “push” influencing style, this transition creates a particular challenge as they need to move from a “telling” to an “asking” approach when influencing others. Those used to telling others what to do are generally used to quick decisions and immediate actions. Until now they have relied on their “power”… and have been relatively successful so far in their careers!  Their power can come from:

  • organizational authority (“I’m the plant manager” )
  • expert status (“I’ve got 15 years of experience in this area”)
  • information power (“I was involved in this from the very beginning “)
  • or just sheer charisma (“I know you’ll follow me”)

Indeed, quite often the manager is so used to exercising power that they don’t know the difference between power and influencing. Part of our role in the training is to help them see the tangible differences between “I want you to do X and you do it. How you feel about it is secondary.” (power) and  “ I know you’ll do what needs to be done because you want to do it and believe it is the right thing to do.”  (influencing).

When bulls collide and why influencing by power stops being effective

Imagine two bulls colliding and locking horns. When two push-style leaders try to share the same operational space, problems can come up. During training and coaching we’ve heard this expressed as “He doesn’t listen to me”, “She discounts my expertise” and “It’s his way or no way”.  When we’ve dug deeper and asked them how they have tried to influence the others, we often find they are solely relying on a directive or persuasive style of influencing (push styles) – as opposed to a collaborative or visionary style (pull styles).

Why different influencing styles matter

As part of our influencing training we work with clients to help them understand and use different influencing styles. No style is better or worse than another – each has its strengths and weaknesses, and each has its place.  However, as Dale Carnegie so visually described in How to win friends and influence people applying one style to every situation is like “fishing with strawberries” … in other words ineffective and ultimately pointless.  As the managers move to a more strategic role and need to deliver results in cooperation with other senior managers they need to develop different influencing styles. They need to sometimes “ask” and not just “tell” – to “pull” and not just “push”, and to let go of getting things done through their “power” alone. So what to do?

Stop “telling” and start “asking” – 5 practical steps to influence other senior managers

As Marshall Goldsmith coined “What got you here, won’t get you there”. Relying on power alone won’t deliver the commitment needed for individual and organizational success. Senior managers need to master influencing as they climb.

  • Acknowledging that the style and methods you are used to using aren’t working is a first big step. This may feel uncomfortable and sometime this can take far longer than you might expect!
  • Being willing to try something different is the second. A simple tip is to always present more than one good option. If you are trying to influence somebody who is also a directive “push” influencer, keep in mind that (like you) they really dislike being boxed in with only one alternative. One alternative feels like an order. If you hear yourself saying “We have to…” or “Our only real option is…” it means you are probably still relying on your power.
  • Put yourself in their shoes and try to find out what is important to your counterpart and include it in your reasoning. Let the other person know that you are trying to use their frame of reference. If you don’t know their interests and what they value, it is important to find out. Let him know that his success matters to you too. This blog post offers questions to consider as you try to understand your counterpart.
  • Know what you can control, can influence and need to accept [https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/control-influence-accept.htm]. Expand your influencing zone by developing more influencing tools.
  • And then consider what you are going to say and how you will say it. This blog post on Linking and building to successfully influence others is worth your time.

If you would like to know more about how we have successfully provided influencing training in face-to-face and virtual delivery formats across Europe and beyond then don’t hesitate to contact us.

Managing high performers – the Miles Davis way

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What does Miles Davis have to do with managing high performers in business? Good question. Miles Davis is rightfully acclaimed as an icon of jazz, but he didn’t make music alone.  Throughout his career as a bandleader, Miles worked with other iconic figures of jazz to create music that stands even today as among the highest forms of the genre. John Coltrane, Herbbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, “Philly” Joe Jones, Keith Jarrett, Ron Carter, Tony Williams and many others among the giants of jazz graduated from “Miles University”. Miles Davis, time and time again, brought together some of the most talented musicians in their own right to work with him in his musical exploration. How did he do it? This article will explore the lessons of Miles Davis in the art of leading the best to be their best. eBook: The definitive checklist for qualifying training providers

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Lesson 1: Be excellent, publicly

Miles Davis was able, on many occasions, to put together bands of some of the most talented musicians of their time throughout his career. Miles’ reputation clearly preceded him. Receiving a call from Miles was seen as having achieved a high level of musicianship. But that wasn’t the only reason so many musicians with promising solo careers agreed to support Miles. They believed they would learn something based on Miles’ excellence as a musician and band leader. Miles greatness was easy to see through his performances, compositions and recordings.

How easy is it for high performers to recognize your excellence? There is a tendency among many leaders not to “toot their own horns” about their own performance and accomplishments. While a leader may not need to sing his own praises, it is important that someone does it for him. A leader’s excellence will attract others who want to achieve the same level of competence, while increasing the leader’s  credibility and ability to guide, mentor and teach.

Lesson 2: Don’t hire a trumpet player

Miles’ great combos included players with different styles and tendencies. He hired players who would complement his playing and each other’s. He didn’t need anyone who sounded like him because he had that covered.

In business, it can be difficult to avoid the temptation to hire people who mirror our backgrounds, experiences, styles and tendencies. After all those competencies served us well in our careers. It is important to remember as a leader that our success is a reflection of the past while we are hiring for the future.  The pace of change doesn’t only require different technological skills it also requires new communication and leadership skills from those current leaders needed at earlier stages of their careers. Hiring teams with complementary but different skills and areas of expertise broadens the set of problems they can solve and increases their impact on the organization.

“It’s not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.”
Miles Davis

Lesson 3: Play together and produce excellence

Miles’ bands grew into cohesive units through performances, not rehearsals. Each performance created a wealth of learning opportunities for Miles and his band mates. The urgency of the moment created a focus and intensity that would be very difficult if not impossible to reproduce in a rehearsal. By focusing on playing together and learning from the experience, Miles could correct on the spot, encourage and support his band to take risks, push themselves and reach new heights of excellence.

How often do you perform with your high performers? Finding opportunities to produce excellence together will give you more chances to learn from each other.

Lesson 4: Don’t tell them what to do, tell them what not to do

Related to lesson three, play together and produce excellence, is the style of debriefing and guidance Miles offered to his band mates following their performances.  Miles didn’t put a group together hearing the music he hoped they would produce in his mind, then correcting them to come as close as possible to his vision. Miles believed in an experimental approach to developing new music. When reflecting about what took place in performances, Miles would say what his band mates shouldn’t do but he wouldn’t tell them what to do. He hired them for their expertise on their individual instruments. He wanted them to bring their ideas to the table so they could take ownership of their performances and the product of the group.

The high performers in your organization reached a level of success before becoming members of your team. When managing high performers, take advantage of their creativity and input by channelling, not directing their contributions to the organization.

“If you don’t know what to play, play nothing.”
Miles Davis

Lesson 5: Listen to save the day

Deep listening is the art of hearing not only what is said but also what isn’t said. On stage, Miles had the opportunity to lay out and listen to what his band mates were playing.  There were times when while reaching for new forms of expression, the band lost its way. By listening to what wasn’t there, Miles could enter the fray at the right moment with the phrase that would bring the other players back together again, finding a groove that was satisfying to the musicians and the audience.

Look for your opportunities, especially in conflict, to find what isn’t being said and remind the participants in the argument that they are on the same team. Listen for agreement that the parties may be missing, summarize, and encourage them to listen deeply to each other when emotions run high. “What I am hearing is…” is a great way to interject.

“I’m always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning… Every day I find something creative to do with my life.”
Miles Davis

Lesson 6: Talk about life, not music

With our busy lives it may be tempting to leave work at work and leave life at home.  We can get through our workdays without sharing with others the experiences that shaped us outside of the work environment. Miles believed knowing the personal histories of his band mates was crucial to being able to know them musically. He invested time in learning about the backgrounds of his band mates and he shared his own. This sharing created an environment of trust that helped his musicians to work with each other more closely.

Be willing to be more open when you are managing high performers as it can lead to more effective, trusting relationships. A deeper bond of respect can increase loyalty to you, and commitment to your organization and its goals.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

On leadership: Here are a  few blog posts on the topic.  If you are interested to learn more about our leadership skills seminars, please contact us, or take a look at the very popular seminar “A practical toolbox for managers”.

 

TED talks on motivation and leadership

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This week’s post was meant to be about customer service skills. Once I had my initial ideas on virtual paper, I started searching online resources. Very quickly and inevitably I ended up on TED.com and almost an hour later, I was still watching videos, no longer anything to do with customer service. My post was about what customer service professionals can do to stay motivated, with an array of some not so nice customers contacting them. It was inspired by one of my not so very motivated participants. He said: I don’t care if they’re nice or not. I don’t care if they think I’m nice or not. I still get paid for taking the call. Being motivated to do a good job has very little to do with having ‘nice’ customers – ultimately. That was one of the points of my post. Perhaps I will finish the post, it was an interesting training session. This post is instead about everyday leadership, feeling good and staying motivated.
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What makes us feel good about our work

Behavioral economist Dan Ariely starts his TED talk ‘What makes us feel good about our work‘ with a mountain climbing example. “…If you read books of people who climb mountains, difficult mountains, do you think that those books are full of moments of joy and happiness? No, they are full of misery. In fact, it’s all about frostbite and having difficulty walking, and difficulty breathing — cold, challenging circumstances. And if people were just trying to be happy, the moment they would get to the top, they would say, “This was a terrible mistake. I’ll never do it again.”

Everyday leadership

This very personal TED talk from Drew Dudley is easily transferable to a business context. ‘Everyday leadership‘ starts with a clear message. “…I’ve come to realize that we have made leadership into something bigger than us; something beyond us. We’ve made it about changing the world. We’ve taken this title of “leader” and treat it as something that one day we’re going to deserve. But to give it to ourselves right now means a level of arrogance or cockiness that we’re not comfortable with. And I worry sometimes that we spend so much time celebrating amazing things that hardly anybody can do, that we’ve convinced ourselves those are the only things worth celebrating. We start to devalue the things we can do every day. We take moments where we truly are a leader and we don’t let ourselves take credit for it, or feel good about it.”

The happy secret to better work

Shawn Achor’s very funny talk ‘The happy secret to better work‘ is definitely worth watching. “… One of the first things we teach people in economics, statistics, business and psychology courses is how, in a statistically valid way, do we eliminate the weirdos. How do we eliminate the outliers so we can find the line of best fit? Which is fantastic if I’m trying to find out how many Advil the average person should be taking — two. But if I’m interested in your potential, or for happiness or productivity or energy or creativity, we’re creating the cult of the average with science. If I asked a question like, “How fast can a child learn how to read in a classroom?” scientists change the answer to “How fast does the average child learn how to read in that classroom?” and we tailor the class towards the average. If you fall below the average, then psychologists get thrilled, because that means you’re depressed or have a disorder, or hopefully both.”

 

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Not bored of videos yet? This playlist contains 7 talks on loving what you do. Also recommended, here are a few customer service posts from our blog. Our new and very much improved Boost your Business English blog is online.

Giving feedback using the DESC model

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Everybody understands that performance feedback should be constructive, focused and to the point. Effective feedback can resolve conflicts, overcome problems and improve individual and team morale. It doesn’t really need mentioning that ineffective feedback often accomplishes the opposite. Or that if you are skilled at giving effective feedback, your team will be more motivated, which leads to better performance.




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“While feedback should focus on behaviour, performance feedback is still a personal conversation between people about people. Emotions always play a part in interpersonal communication. Effective feedback is as much about bringing the right message(s) across as it is about how your message is interpreted.”

Scott Levey

Some feedback facts*

  • 98% of employees will fail to be engaged when managers give little or no feedback
  • 69% of employees say they would work harder if they felt their efforts were better recognized
  • 78% of employees said being recognized motivates them in their job

*(source)

Giving positive feedback is easy

No matter how skilled the feedback giver is, if the receiver isn’t interested in hearing or taking the feedback, nothing will get through. The more difficult the feedback, the more the giver needs to consider the the emotional impact of the feedback. Giving positive feedback is easy.

What is and isn’t feedback?

In an interpersonal environment, feedback is communication about a person’s performance and how their efforts contribute to reaching goals. Feedback is not criticism. Criticism is evaluative; feedback is descriptive. Effective feedback is goal-referenced and tangible, actionable, personalized, timely, ongoing and consistent. As a leader, giving feedback is a task you perform again and again, to let people know where they are and where to go next in terms of individual, team, and company goals.

Giving feedback is a touchy thing. Think back over feedback you have received in the past. Chances are you’ve been given feedback that helped you develop. And, unfortunately, chances are somewhere in your career you’ve been given feedback that made you feel defensive, resistant or unmotivated. By putting yourself back in your old shoes, and thinking about how they actually gave you the feedback, you can improve your own feedback skills.

Common mistakes people make when giving feedback

  1. Avoiding giving feedback
  2. Focusing on the person and not the performance
  3. Giving feedback on what is going wrong, and never on what is going right
  4. Coming  across as judgmental
  5. Doing all the talking, and none of the listening
  6. Giving the feedback without any context
  7. Making generalized, vague statements
  8. Avoiding responsibility for what they are saying by referring to others
  9. Getting defensive if they don’t understand you, or you don’t understand them

“We can’t let our own success, education and advancement ride on whether the person giving us feedback happens to be talented or caring. We have to learn to learn from everyone around us, including people who are lousy at giving feedback, or who don’t have the time to do it thoughtfully. Our individual success depends on it, and so does the collective success of the organization.“

The DESC model

In our skills-based Leadership training, we use the simple 4-step model DESC for structuring feedback. Participants in our “Practical Toolbox for Managers” seminars often highlight DESC as one of the most valuable tools they take away. This model is designed to help you to get your message clear and it can even take the stress out of the feedback conversation for those of us that weren’t born with effective feedback-giving skills.

DESCRIPTION

Give an objective and concrete description of what you have observed using “I” statements.

EFFECT

Explain the effect or impact it had on your business, the team or its members. If the effect was an emotion, name it. Your body language and tone of voice will already be showing your elation or frustration – putting them out in the open can help you move things forward.

SOLUTION

Build the solution through a directive (“What I would like you to do next time is …”) or a participative approach (“What do you think we can do to avoid this next time?”).

CONCLUSION

Build a “contract of commitment”. Check your understanding of what has been agreed, and get commitment for the future.

Further Leadership resources:

Powerful Communication – The Power of the Purpose Pyramid

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listening skills target trainingThe purpose pyramid is one of the simplest and yet effective communication models for introducing a presentation, opening a meeting or organizing your thoughts that there is. It is so simple, in fact, that no one seems to take credit for it though you will find it in the work of many communications gurus. The four questions in the pyramid aren’t special by themselves, but together they offer a powerful way to connect what you want to do with the goals and needs of your organization, no matter what business you are in or function you perform. Why? + What? + How? + Who? = Alignment. The Purpose Pyramid makes it easy for you to structure your communication – in any situation.

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pyramid

Why?

Why is where you share or remind your team about the deeper meaning and purpose of the organization. This is the reason that energizes you and your colleagues as well as your customers. What’s your why? Your purpose is best when it brings the energy of your team together and they can all see themselves in it. It should also attract internal and external customers to your work.

A band plays music, by definition – but wouldn’t you rather see a band whose purpose is to give you high energy and a memorable musical experience?

At a more nuts and bolts level, you can also apply the why to day-to-day interactions and situations. An example could be to state the purpose (why) of a meeting on the agenda for everyone to see. If there is a question about being on track, the team can refer to the mutually agreed purpose of the team.

What?

What refers to the tasks you and your team need to get done to contribute to making your purpose a reality. At their best these tasks are things you can track and observe easily so all can know when it is accomplished. For example, to have better meetings is not a clear task. Having everyone contribute to the meeting is a clear task. The SMART principle is a great model to use, just remember they should in some way contribute to achieving your purpose.

An example could be to make task identification a two-step process. Instead of automatically identifying who should complete a task at the same time as identifying the task, outline just the tasks first. Going through the how before identifying who will help team members to know what they are committing to.

How?

How is where you turn to your method, approach or process, How will you get your tasks accomplished? For example, sticking with the “better meetings” example, if my task is to have everyone contribute to a meeting, I could tell the team members I expect them to contribute and hope for the best or I could use a polling technique in the meeting to give each attendee the space to speak uninterrupted.

If a task is complex, the “how” could be a process or procedure that helps to complete the task effectively and efficiently. If you have standard operating procedures in place, this is the time to stress their use.

An example could be to identify the resources and process necessary to complete a task before asking who will do it. Leaders get a chance to offer support to the team and may encourage team members to accept a stretch task because they know how they will be supported.

Who?

Who refers to the individual and collective commitments or expectations that match your team to the tasks at hand. In most meetings the who stage tells how well we’ve done the other stages. If team members recognize and connect with their purpose, the necessity of a task and the process and resources to get it done, it’s a lot easier to agree to do them. With the clarity you’ve built earlier, it is easier for you to ask for what you want while committing to do what is necessary to support your team. A great question at the end of a meeting is “what have we agreed to do?” to check agreements without sounding like a task master.

Browse our blog for more tips and tricks

And/or let me know of any other useful communication tools that always work for you. I look forward to hearing from you!