February 8th, 2011 | by Penny
Reflection is one of two key tools we have for building self awareness and improving our effectiveness. The other is feedback. Work places now provide more opportunities for feedback with 360’s and more regular performance reviews with managers. What is less accessible is the time to reflect – both on the feedback we receive and own inner voice reviewing our experiences.
The start of a new year provides a fantastic opportunity to reflect on what you might keep, stop or start doing to make yourself more effective. Make reflection a regular habit in your life – and you will become better at self coaching. It doesn’t need to be two days away from it all in some exotic place (although great if you can), it can as much as 5 mins a day.
Reflection is a great way to review our experiences and how they might shape our thinking and mindsets towards future experiences. When you have a positive experience it can be affirming to reflect on what you have achieved – reward improvement, good decision making and acknowledge strengths. If an experience is less positive – it is away to understand what contributed to it and what you could do differently next time. For example if you left a meeting feeling frustrated because you didn’t agree with the outcome and didn’t voice your opinion. You could ask yourself – “Why did I not speak up?” “ Was it because last time I got shot down in flames or wasn’t listened to?
If you don’t already or believe you don’t do it enough – take time to reflect in 2011.
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January 27th, 2011 | by Lee
Psychologists have long believed that how you stand makes a huge difference to how you feel about yourself and your situation. The Power of Posture, Economist January 13, is an interesting article reporting on research that supports that belief. Scientists at North Western University, Illinois found that research participants who sat in an expansive posture had a stronger sense of their own power than those who sat in a constricted position. The expansive sitters were also more likely to choose the more active option in situations such as speaking first in a debate, deciding to leave a plane crash to seek help, and joining a fight for justice.
Interestingly, the expansive participants’ higher levels of self-confidence occurred regardless of the status of their position.
‘Expansive’ posture? Just like your mother always said – of course! Head up, shoulders back, legs spread wide (oh dear!) and arms reaching outwards. It’s all about enhancing your appearance of size.
Constricted posture? Shoulders hunched, hands under your thighs, legs together. The word ‘fetal’ comes to mind!
If you want to build on this prompt, take a look at: Ten ways to instantly build self-confidence
Posted in Communication Tips, Leadership, Personal Presence, Public Speaking, Relationship Management, Speeches | 1 Comment »
November 30th, 2010 | by Lee
Earlier in the week, a client was weighing up the challenge of letting go some of her technocratic expertise in order to advance as a leader. I realised how often this is a key decision point. Having once stepped up, it is tempting to look back on those halcyon days when life was simpler.
With the conversation in mind, I noticed an interesting post titled: Expert or Dabbler at www.kaizentraining.com. Helen Krag explored a useful metaphor in describing career progress as often being like an hour glass. The start of a career is at the broad base of the hourglass. Early on we have the opportunity to try out many roles and develop new skills. As we progress, many of us become technical experts and enter the thin waist of the hour glass. We continue to learn, but our focus becomes narrower and deeper. When we step up to leadership, the hour glass broadens again. This
time we pick up wider skills plus we expand our influence outwards - networking internally and outside the organisation. Often we broaden our involvement in the community, picking up broader skills out there as well.
Part of the challenge is that while technical expertise is nicely concrete, leadership skills are far more nebulous. In stepping up, we know what we are giving up and it isn’t easy to see what we might gain.
The hour glass helps us think through the issues. There is no single correct answer to the dilemma, but when you feel in a bit of a rut, perhaps that is the time to start to broaden out. It might be possible to try out leadership in a different smaller ways as you move into the opening top part of the hour glass. Notice that your expertise is still there – just further down the glass.
Posted in Leadership, Personal Presence | 1 Comment »
November 24th, 2010 | by Lee
I was looking for something else in the Harvard Business Review and came across an interesting article cautioning people about the current focus on personal strengths. In: Stop overdoing your strengths, Roberts Kaplan and Kaiser point out that whilst it is more productive to focus on your strengths than to focus on your weaknesses, we need to be moderate in that focus.
So how can too much focus on a s
trength become a weakness? Kaplan and Kaiser say that most 360 degree leadership surveys assume high scores are best, but the reality may not be quite so rosy. For example, we all know managers who would score highly on measures of collaboration and as a result find it very difficult to be decisive.
The article sets out an interesting chart of opposing dualities: Strategic vs Operational, Forceful vs Enabling. Their research shows that even a mild overdose of one of the pair will cause the other to suffer. They also have found that overuse of one strength will crowd out another – to the detriment of the people they lead and to their own career. The more forceful a leader becomes, the less she will use enabling approaches.
What can you do to achieve a balance?
- When you get a high 360 rating – once you have finished feeling pleased with yourself, just question whether it is too much of a good thing.
- Ask your colleagues those three powerful stop/start/continue questions: What should I do more of? What should I do less of? What should I continue to do? These questions should flush out the overuse syndrome!
- You should also ask those same questions of someone close to you in your personal life. During coaching, we often discover that the manager’s partner could have given them similar feedback years ago and it would have been just as reliable as any 360 tool! Sometimes a manager who was shocked by some feedback received, discovers that their partner was not at all surprised.
At Communicate we really like the practicality of the DiSC behavioural style inventory. DiSC highlights a common tendency of overusing a DiSC strength when we are under pressure, to the point where it becomes a negative. For example, a peersuasuve influencer, under pressure will often over promise and completely under-deliver.
It might be worthwhile considering whether you O.D. on some your strengths. No idea what strengths you have? We recommend: ‘Now Discover Your Strengths’
Posted in Leadership, Personal Presence, Relationship Management | No Comments »
November 15th, 2010 | by Janine
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 »
November 4th, 2010 | by Lee
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:
- Favouritism – real or perceived
- Risk of fraud
- Inconvenience of the happy couple wanting to take holidays together
- 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 »
October 20th, 2010 | by Janine
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 »
October 18th, 2010 | by Lee
Do you need to communicate complex ideas in your presentation? My son is working on a presentation on progress so far on his Masters thesis and we are doing battle about keeping it simple. To make the point to him and hopefully to be useful to you: Ellen Finklestein has a very useful and brief
online video presentation on keeping PowerPoint simple and visual. In 2.39 minutes she gives a very accessible lesson on why you need to keep slides simple and visual. She includes a before and after sample of the difference.
Ignore the irritating teacherly voice because the content is good. She is using an interesting new technology called BrainShark to share the presentation.
Posted in Presentation skills, Public Speaking, Speeches | No Comments »
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