Archive for the ‘Leadership’ Category

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The challenge of a new team

Monday, November 15th, 2010
the-challenge-of-a-new-team

It’s Monday morning and and I am feeling chuffed at achieving a stretch goal we had. After only a few months we managed to perform a short concert without embarrassing ourselves, in fact sounding pretty good  ( if I may say so myself! ).

So what am I talking about?  About three months or so ago a group of us formed a ukulele group. The aim was to learn and develop with an instrument which apparently is easy to play.

We are a diverse group, the only criteria that links us is geographic-we all live almost in walking distance from each other.

Our skill sets range from the musically competent and confident to a couple of first timers including me.

Many of you will have found yourselves in a similar situation at work-thrust together with people from throughout the organisation. Some you know,some you don’t and all with a variety of different skills.

We have no designated leader.  Our leadership comes from the skill groups present. For example our banjo player (who is the most skilled in the group,musically) will demonstrate and share his techniques. Another in the group will start harmonising as we try out a new song and next thing others have joined in. 

We find we have emerging talents being nutured along. One chap will sing a solo while another has found her singing voice-we just need to encourage her  now to sing on her own.

What makes this work so well is we all feel safe to try out new things.  The more experienced are encouraging and offer suggestions rather than criticise.  They demonstrate rather than tell.  Their feedback is always positive.

And our stretch goal came about as a challenge from another ukulele group who were well established.  ”Come and join us for a concert.We will all play a selection and then each group will show off their prowess”.     Or words to that effect.  It felt like a ‘yeah right’ moment but we decided to meet the challenge.

Boy did we practice.  We tried new ways of old songs and then practiced again and again.   Were we Carnegie hall material?  No but on Saturday night in Te Horo we played out hearts out and at the end went home on the bus feeling pretty pleased with ourselves.

You will all know that feeling of successfully accomplishing your goal. Especiallywhen its been a stretch.

So whats next?  A new challenge has been thrown into the group “Lets fill the town hall…”     Watch this space!

Posted in Communication Tips, Community involvement, Conflict Resolution, Leadership, Relationship Management | 1 Comment »

Impact of workplace romances

Thursday, November 4th, 2010
impact-of-workplace-romances

The interesting topic of  workplace romances came up in the Training  Journal Digest late last week.  Stephen Engelhard talked about some informal research his UK  firm, Angel Productions, had conducted on the topic.   His firm were looking at the possibility of providing a training package on the management issues.  No, not on how to manage your workplace romance, but on how to manage  the situation.

Admittedly the research only covered 27 HR managers and 27 people in other work roles, but there seemed to be four HR main issues:

  1. Favouritism – real or perceived
  2. Risk of fraud
  3. Inconvenience of the  happy couple wanting to take holidays together
  4. Distracting emotional fallout if the couple split.  (I would have thought there is distracting emotional fallout while the couple are madly in lurve, as well!)

 Very few respondents had policies on the issue and fewer still enforced their policies. I presume there is a similar pattern here. One UK university researcher on the topic suggested that the recession is leading to an increase in workplace romances…..people turning to sex to deal with pressure?!

The comments are wide open for double entendre – A cognitive behavioural coach suggested the training DVD should include ‘managing hot thoughts’. I think that one at least was accidental.

Interesting working out which categories to allocate for this post.  Possibly I should have included community involvement?

Posted in Leadership, Personal Presence, Relationship Management | No Comments »

Caring is not just for customers

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010
caring-is-not-just-for-customers

The recent earthquake in Christchurch Christchurchcity.govt.nz  showed us that fundamental core value of caring is alive and well.  Neighbours rallied around to help each other setting up BBQs, sharing with each other and making the most of a very difficult  situation.  Organisations donated generously in both cash and goods

And yet we so often read ,or experience, situations when caring seems to have been forgotten.

Caring translates into all our dealings with people not just those closest to us.

  • When we deliver a presentation we should ‘care’ about our audience
  • When we work with clients and customers we should ‘care’ about them
  • As managers and leaders we should care about our staff.

 Yet unfortunatelyoften we get too busy ,or just plain forget to use that core value in almost all of us.

Roger Steare rogersteare.com recently spoke at a meeting  and he talked passionately about the need to get back to using our core values at work. We care about the things that matter close to us -our families (and/or animals!)  and yet so often at work the culture dulls what we know is intrinsically right -the universals that make us civilised.  The too tight job description so we don’t ‘go the extra mile’.  The rules that stifle common sense

Perhaps it’s time to take stock and not wait for a disaster to bring out the best in us .We all do care  it’s now time to show it

Posted in Communication Tips, Community involvement, Conflict Resolution, Customer Service, Leadership, Presentation skills, Relationship Management, Speeches | No Comments »

Warm up is vital to audience engagement

Monday, October 4th, 2010
warm-up-is-vital-to-audience-engagement

We know that warm-up is a vital part of preparation for sport. Before a game we need to get the heart pumping, warm the muscles we will need to use and get the body ready to make unusual movements like twisting or jumping.

So too do audiences need to be warmed up to whatever we want to communicate.The audience is always warmed up to something, but unless we are aware of the warm-up process they may not be mentally in the right place.  As they arrive, whilte some maybe very keen to listen, others might not want to be there, or expect that the presentation will be too hard for them to understand. To get them warmed up you will need to establish your credentials on the subject fairly early on.  You may want to show them that it is easier than they thought to understand this difficult subject. 

This concept is closely related to the general idea of audience engagement and here are soem tips on that from TechRepublic. 

It is also a bit different: Each time you need to audience to shift what they are thinking about or doing, you need to plan carefully how you will get them make that shift. For example:

  • If you want them to buy your suggested solution, make sure you warm them up to the pain of the problem it solves. 
  • If you need them to give you their views on how some change will work, make sure you explain how it will look in practice and be welcoming of dissent.

Audiences are a little different to sports players because they are really always warmed up to something.  Make sure you control where that warm-up is heading. Don’t go off on a tangent or they will warm-up in the wrong direction. In short, don’t jump them, or confuse them!

Posted in Leadership, Personal Presence, Presentation skills, Public Speaking, Speeches | No Comments »

The key to presence is being present

Friday, September 10th, 2010
the-key-to-presence-is-being-present

A common issue for our coaching clients in the past year has been the challenge of increasing the impact of their personal presence. Their  questions are often: ‘What is this ‘presence’  thing and how do I get more of it?’

While everyone needs to be aware of their personal presence, as we take on more influential leadership roles, we  need to be even  more conscious of establishing our presence.

 The key to it is simple…..or is it?

Seek first to understand

The message isn’t new:  Great personal presence requires us first to simply be present to others – by listening to them very carefully. Steven Covey sums it up well with his quote: ‘Seek first to understand before being understood.’

This seems very straightforward, but most of us tend to go into conversations focused much more on our own point of view – what we find interesting, what we want to talk about and so on.  This approach certainly establishes presence, but of the wrong sort!  To develop a strong positive presence, we need to focus first on understanding where the other person is coming from in the conversation.  

 Active listening is the key communication tool for keeping ourselves present.  There’s a challenge though, because while listening appears to be simple, it isn’t often easy.  The process requires commitment and real discipline of our conscious thought. Sometimes we have to keep repeating to ourselves: ‘I really want to listen to this person.’  When we manage to focus in this way, we are truly present. There is a very powerful story that captures the magic of this combination in The Power of Presence and Listening: A Fellow’s Narrative by Musharraf Navaid MD, in the Journal of Palliative Medicine.

Posted in Communication Tips, Community involvement, Effective Meetings, Leadership, Negotiation Skills, Personal Presence, Presentation skills, Public Speaking, Relationship Management, Speeches | No Comments »

Look effective when introducing a panel of speakers

Monday, August 30th, 2010
look-effective-when-introducing-a-panel-of-speakers

Do you sometimes need to introduce a panel of speakers?  Many of our clients need to do this when bidding for some work, or when convening a panel of speakers at a conference. Ellen Finkelstein’s newsletter last week included a polished and simple way of doing this by using PowerPoint .

Aside from images providing faces and names, briefly explain why each person is included in the panel. Each panel member’s expertise needs to clearly add something special to the occasion and to fit with the whole.   As you introduce each person,you explain why Person B follows Person A and so on. In your introduction make sure you answer the following questions:

  1. Why we are covering this specific subject, as part of the whole presentation?
  2. Why we are covering this aspect now?

If you would like some more tips on other aspects of leading or convening a panel, there are some useful ones in Presentation Pointers

Posted in Effective Meetings, Leadership, Presentation skills, Public Speaking | No Comments »

Is your audience really listening?

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010
is-your-audience-really-listening

The Executive Speaking Blog came up with an interesting post recently: Can you tell whether people are really listening to the boss?  Sounds like a good game: Keep the score for audience reaction to the boss’ presentations!

We often get asked the broader question: How can you assess audience’s reaction? There are the obvious responses of people falling asleep, looking angry, or walking out. But what about the more subtle responses? Usually if people are fidgeting or looking down most of the time, they are bored.

It can be hard to tell. In smaller centres in NZ, often audiences don’t interact much, but will stay on to discuss things  afterwards. In bigger cities, they may interact so much that you think you have made a whole lot of NBFF; then as soon as you finish, they leave!

Individuals within an audience may have unusual reactions.  Recently a client told me about a presenter who just used slides, each containing a great deal of information.  The presentation involved the audience reading them. Sounded tedious to me, but my informant said the presentation was fascinating, because of the interesting slide content. 

It is very difficult for a presenter to accurately read audience reaction.   You might think the whole thing was a disaster because you missed an important point, yet the audience may have liked it. At other times some of the audience may have looked grumpy and yet come up afterwards to say they thought it was great.

Some tips:

  1. Ask someone before your presentation to give you feedback afterwards on the level of audience engagement.
  2. Know your material very well, so you can stay mentally free enough to focus on audience reaction. 
  3. If what you are doing is boring your audience, change it!

Posted in Effective Meetings, Leadership, Personal Presence, Presentation skills, Public Speaking, Relationship Management, Speeches | No Comments »

Should you trust your intuition?

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010
should-you-trust-your-intuition

Recently a client was in a final interview and planning to make a senior  job offer to a highly suitable candidate.  Everything appeared to be going well, except that my client suddenly  became aware of a growing sense of uneasiness about the preferred candidate.

Follow up on that intuition

 They had conducted extensive interviews with the person; the referees were all glowing; when my client checked back with the rest of the recruitment panel they couldn’t understand his sudden wariness…but unease it was. Should he insist on pulling back, when up till then everything had checked out well; or should he trust their thorough process?

We discussed what had  happened at the two or three points when he got his gut feel. The comments were: ‘Oh, there was some  slightly negative body language in the candidate that didn’t align with what was being said…nothing much really…’  ‘Later on, I guess I just wondered whether the candidate would be as committed as we thought.  I don’t know why’  

We could call that unease ‘intuition’, but was it?  Gut feel or whatever you call it, I have learnt in positive and negative ways the value of trusting it.  Some years ago a searing recruitment experience decided me that if I ever felt a deep unease that didn’t relate to the evidence, I would at least carefully follow up on that unease.  In my coaching of a very wide range of people, I have found awareness of my intuition to be a very reliable indicator of what is really going on.

 I am very suspicious of ethereal versions of ‘intuition’.  I suspect so-called ‘intuition is just a bunch of minute clues that only we pick up subconsciously – then they build until we notice them as intuition. For more explanation of this, check out: Lifehack.  

If we define intuition as ‘perceptive insight’,  there some useful things for a practical person to tune into:

  1. In an intense discussion, we unconsciously pick up very subtle changes in facial expression, skin colouration and nuance of tone.  These are only minute clues until they cluster around a stronger general impression that we then experience as ‘unease’.  Don’t jump to conclusions, but trust the feeling and follow up on your concerns.
  2. When you notice a gap between the message communicated in the body language and the message in the words, look carefully at that gap. There are a lot of unsubstantiated claims about the messaging in body language, but research warns us to be alert around this type of misalignment.
  3. We also bring to the communication our experience in similar situations.  A relevant but past experience might be almost forgotten yet still trigger an alarm bells in the present. When we think about it afterwards, we will usually remember exactly what that experience was…and its lesson!

Obviously you have to observe the other person very carefully. The weird thing is though, that  to develop your perceptive insight, you have to listen very carefully to yourself.  Be  very alert to your own reactions.  Trust them. Don’t jump to conclusions, but do follow up on your instinct, by asking questions.

 There are some really good tips on listening to your own awareness at a blog with the appealing name of: hellomynameisblog  

So what happened in client’s case?   He decided to insist that the panel take the time to check up on his concerns. Having taken legal advice, they went back to the referees and that turned out to be a very good move.  Put briefly: They re-advertised!

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Posted in Communication Tips, Conflict Resolution, Effective Meetings, Leadership, Negotiation Skills, Personal Presence, Relationship Management | 1 Comment »

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