Blackberry frenzy

I've just spent a very happy week running a 5 day leadership programme. It's one of my favourite programme to run and always gets great feedback. It is also one of the most full on, and delegates and tutors alike are kept pretty busy.

As with many companies the use of blackberries is rife, no sooner do we have a break then they are out and dealing with stuff back at the office/plant. Some of the tutors get most indignant about this - others wearily shake their heads saddened that our delegates can't abstract themselves from work sufficiently to get most value from what we are doing together. I am worried when I find many of the attendees will be working the weekend to catch up from a week away from work.

Organisations make huge investments in learning and it is more than a shame if attendees are distracted by work pressures. However organisations also expect the wheels to keep turning and it is the rare delegate that can free their diary completely.  How do we help participants on our programme to be fully in the 'here and now' when we have them with us, and avoid the email back log they dread on their return?

Strangers to ourselves?

Don' t you love it when you find a really fascinating book that manages to offer some really challenging stuff in a palatable and informed way?  I've been reading 'Strangers to ourselves' by Timothy Wilson, which does exactly that.

As the title implies, Wilson makes the case that we often don't know our own minds, and that actually most of our thoughts, feelings and behaviours are the product of our unconscious rather than our conscious minds - even if we experience it differently. Startlingly he argues that others can often read us better than we can read ourselves - ever seen a friend go head over heals for someone totally unsuitable and only realise it months after everyone else?

Wilson (unlike Freud) believes that it is impossible to know our unconscious mind arguing that its a bit like the software in say a CD player -  we can hear the output (conscious thought) but we have no direct access to the processes that produced it. 

If you  buy his theory - and some of his evidence is pretty intriguing - this has huge implications for any of us working in the people development field. Discuss...

Getting perspective - issues in coaching.

Just got back from holiday, feeling well rested and ready for the Autumn fray. I wish I could bottle it!

I've also come back with a renewed sense of perspective - what's really important and what is just 'sweating the small stuff'. I've also surprised myself with how easily solutions for some supposedly intractable problems have appeared by just giving myself a break from thinking about them. I've noticed the same in stressed out  coaching clients who finally get around to giving themselves a break.

I recently read an appalling statistic that fewer of us are taking proper breaks from work, and some of us even do as much as 3 hours a day work when we are supposedly on holiday. Apart from issues of physical and mental health and family relationships,  how are you supposed to get a real sense of perspective if you are always nose deep in the detail. If we never disconnect from the hamster wheel we never stand a chance of reinventing the hamster wheel.

So here's some tips about ways to stop working while on holiday...

A bad case of binary thinking?

I spend a lot of my time teaching managers and leaders core coaching skills. They bit they most consistently struggle with is being non-directive - asking rather than telling. You can clearly see that this does not compute for many of them. "Isn't leadership about setting direction and providing clarity for others" is the direct or indirect challenge. "Why shouldn't I give them the answers if I know them?".

I think they have a point... up to a point. Leadership is indeed directive; its about providing others with a sense of where they are going, and it is about providing clarity. However leadership is also about bringing out the best in others, and developing autonomous contributors independent of the boss.

So I don't see this as either/or binary argument. Leadership has to be about asking and telling - and often all in the same conversation. Its just that many managers are much more skilled and familiar with the directive end of the spectrum than asking genuinely open questions, listening fully or delivering skilful feedback. Great leaders know when people need certainty and clarity, and when its best for them to figure it out for themselves.

Playing your own game or someone else's?

I had the pleasure of talking to a highly successful project leader today - the sort of guy who takes multi-million pound projects of frightening complexity in his stride and still looks around for a challenge. He'd found exactly that in his new appointment - taking over the leadership of a global transformation team - but to his surprise was finding it harder going than he expected and not a lot of fun.

Inventing your own game?

"I'm so used to playing on my own pitch" he mused " I was so familiar with how things were with my old team but now I'm having to fit in with this new lot". He was right at the start of his own change process, feeling the discomfort and uncertainty of change.

This got me thinking about what it takes to be playing your own game rather than someone else's. For some it is about picking their own team, for others it is about throwing out the existing agenda and bringing in their own. Others never get there and are forever dancing to someone else's tune... never a great place to operate from.

Niceness - an over rated virtue? Issues in Coaching

Is it possible to be too nice? I am lucky enough to work with some really nice people but sometimes wonder if it is a trait that some people take too far. Take Peter - he's a very successful senior manager on the brink of joining the executive ranks of his organisation. He delivers the results, has great relationships at work but his Achilles heel ... well... he's just too nice.

To Peter this is not a problem at all. He has very strong values about courtesy at work and will move heaven and earth to make sure everyone around him is happy and feathers remain unruffled. In short, he likes to be liked and probably, as a consequence, works too many hours and takes on too much. He's a nice guy to be around.

However, from his bosses perspective, Peter's niceness is the only question mark hovering over his further promotion. Does his niceness mean a lack of 'grit' and a reluctance to face into the difficult conversation or make the unpopular decision? Does he spend too much time trying to keep everyone happy? Peter in turn is adamant that his niceness doesn't mean he can't handle tricky situations... he just doesn't want to do it like Genghis Khan.

So is niceness for you a handicap or a sign of an evolved leader?

Talking strengths

I came across an amazing statistic yesterday - it was hidden in a paper by the Corporate Leadership Council on what drives individual performance... a subject dear to the heart of most learning and development professionals. The 2006 CLC's survey of 28,000 people, had distilled out what organisational 'levers'  impact individual performance and found that the vast majority of performance management practices make minimal positive difference. Shocking indeed!

However, stunningly, what did make a big difference was talking performance strengths - that's the conversation that helps employees to know what their strengths are in the first place and and secondly help them figure out how to use them. Conversations that emphasized performance strengths drove a 36.4% improvement in performance, a particularly amazing figure when the same data showed that conversations that emphasized weaknesses  lead to a 26.8% decline in employee performance.

Now I think this is big news for all of us involved in learning and growth in organisations and real affirmation for the positive psychology movement. Many managers and leaders I meet seem to have an assumption that development = fixing our weaknesses, and therefore performance management conversations must be about identifying our gaps and plugging them. This data would suggest that this approach is not only unhelpful but potentially detrimental. So are we teaching managers how to have strengths-based conversations or are we perpetuating the 'fix the fault' approach to development?

Corporate Leadership Council (2006) From Performance Management to Performance Improvement: leveraging key drivers of individual performance. For a copy of the paper click here.