Archive for the ‘Communication’ Category

Problem With The In-Laws

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

To book your place on our next teleseminar,

Dealing With Difficult People, on 10th February

use this link.

http://www.vinehouse.co.uk/teleseminars3.htm

You’ll find out how to deal with a whole range difficult people including?

negative people,

bullies,

nit-pickers,

thick-skinned insensitive people

and much more.

To get your discount for several teleseminars use this coupon code JAN19TELE

It’s valid till the end of January.

This week’s issue:

Problem With The In-Laws

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To add your comments and discuss the ideas in this email please go to my blog:

Last week I told you about a harrowing problem from a fellow reader. This week I have another one for you, not quite as harrowing, but still a problem for the lady concerned and rather embarrassing for me….

The Problem

We’ll call our correspondent Janet for the sake of anonymity.

Janet has a grandson. Quite understandably, she loves to go and look after her grandson and baby-sit for her daughter-in-law.

Though at first she got on extremely well with Sandra, her daughter-in-law, after a while relations became strained and she asked me for advice on how things could be resolved.

I asked what happened. (As usual I have changed a few of the details to keep it anonymous.)

The Incident

She went over to babysit and noticed that the washing had piled up rather so, as she was there anyway, she put a load of washing in. By the time Janet was home it was all done, ironed and put away.

Janet went berserk. She was insulted, furious and told her mother-in-law to mind her own business and only do the things she was asked to do.

There was a terrible phone call when Janet demanded to speak to Sandra’s husband. He went round to see if he could sort the problem out.

He failed.

There was a lot more to it than what I’ve put here, but I expect you get the picture.

How Embarrassing

As I read the email, I started to cringe. I remembered when my own mother-in-law had come to stay for the first time.

I was out for the day and when I came home things were different. Everything, including our bed and my underwear, had been ironed.

Things had been put away. I didn’t know where. Stuff had been made for tea. I could go on.

I felt insulted. Didn’t she think I could run my own house? I had lived on my own for over ten years, I knew what I was doing. And I never iron my knickers.

So I asked her not to do anything and just have a rest while she was here.

The Need To Be Useful

But the trouble was, she wasn’t happy. She felt useless because she wasn’t able to contribute. That hadn’t really occurred to me. So now I save up the jobs for her.

We have come to an understanding. She doesn’t do all those things round the house (particularly ironing the bed – it looked like a billiard table) or iron my knickers.

Instead, she does things that really help. I save up the ironing and, on Christmas day this year I had all the vegetables ready for her to peel and chop that morning. She always wakes up early on Christmas day so was delighted to have something to do. I was delighted not to have to do the sprouts.

This works really well for both of us (and no, I’m not renting her out, so don’t bother to ask).

Oh No! Am I Turning Into My Mother-in-Law?

Then something happened. I was watching one of my favourite sit-coms: The Big Bang Theory. Anyone who studied physics (or indeed any science subject) will probably like this reminder of their old socially incapable friends.

This episode featured one of the main characters, Sheldon, doing his laundry. He had a strange device for folding his clothes. He put them onto this piece of equipment that looked like several floor tiles loosely linked, and hey presto – they all came out folded the same size and looking like something out of Benetton.

I had to have one. (If you want one they are called Star Folders and you can find them on the web. I highly recommend them…) Now I can’t bear it if the towels and sheets in the linen cupboard aren’t correctly folded and filed. I’m hoping I’ll be able to resist the urge if my own daughter ever gets married…

Are You Denying Someone The Chance To Help?

I urge you to check if you are keeping everything to yourself and not letting others contribute somewhere in your life (work or home). Just yesterday I heard a doctor talking on the radio about out of hours services.

His point was that the government had dictated what those services should be and when they should be available. But these regulations did not suit all his patients, so he had developed a service that did suit his patients but did not comply with the government guidelines.

‘Why didn’t they involve us when they designed this system?’ He asked. Make sure you are involving the right people and remember to share the load.

Posted in Communication, Improving Performance, Management Skills | Comments Off

Doing the Right Thing

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

In case you are interested, our next teleseminar is on 10th Feb on Dealing With Difficult People.

I’ll be covering a whole range of really simple easy things you can do with

  • negative people,
  • bullies,
  • nit-pickers,
  • thick-skinned insensitive people

and much more.  To book your place on this or any of our teleseminars use this link:

http://www.vinehouse.co.uk/teleseminars3.htm

To get your discount for several teleseminars use this coupon code JAN19TELE

It’s valid till the end of January.

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To add your comments and discuss the ideas in this email please go to my blog:

A few weeks ago I received a harrowing email from a Grapevine reader that completely grabbed my attention. I have made a few changes to keep the identity private.

A Really Difficult Problem

“I was hoping to seek your expert advice on a matter that has been bothering us. I manage an office of 10. One of my subordinates (an efficient worker) was recently diagnosed with a deadly disease. In my country the disease is much feared. None of my staff have a clue about it.

We are in a fix as to how to handle the situation. We can’t allow the person to continue without letting the other staff know about the condition, as the disease is feared to spread. We can’t even ask the person to leave, the employee is the only bread winner. My heart goes out to the person. We are based in XXXX, where lawsuits aren’t really a problem, so that is not what we are scared of. Can you help!”

Fortunately most of us will never be faced with such a dreadful dilemma. I spent a long time thinking about what to do and how I could possibly help this person.

I knew what I thought he should do: help the colleague as much as possible and educate his other colleagues. But I was also aware that it is very easy to give this advice from my safe little study where I do not have to deal with the cultural issues (which can be very hard).

What also preyed on my mind was the death, about 15 years ago, of a very dear friend of mine, from what I suspect was the same disease. Because of the stupid social prejudices of the time, our friend didn’t tell us he was dying, so we didn’t have a chance to say goodbye.

Whilst I know he got the best medical treatment that was available at the time, I still deeply regret that circumstances meant he couldn’t tell us.

The more I thought about this, the more I realized that our correspondent was likely to be a kind, caring person. Otherwise he would have simply fired the individual concerned. Perhaps even more importantly, I wanted his colleague and family to get the support they need.

So I cast about for examples of situations where people had done the right thing even though it was hard for them.

An Example

My mother’s mother, when advanced in years (certainly drawing her pension), was walking down the High Street one day and saw a ‘yob’ beating up a young Indian chap. She rushed up to him, brandishing her umbrella and shouted: ‘Put him down!’.

The ‘yob’ dropped his victim in surprise. They both stared at my grandmother. ‘Well run, you fool!’ She shouted, more on-the-ball than these men about a quarter of her age.

Over the years, I remember many occasions when my father made it quite clear to me that standing up for what was right was the correct course of action and nothing else was acceptable.

I knew he was right and that I had to give this advice, but had a concern that it would appear easy for me sitting in my comfortable office not having to live with the consequences. I sent some examples from my grandparents and from my father in the hope this would give our dear correspondent the support he needed.

A Week of Silence

I heard nothing for seven days. It was a long and worrying wait. Even though we had only exchanged a few emails I felt that this person was a friend in great need and I was really worried, for him and for his colleague. I wondered if I had gone too far and offended him.

Then, on 22nd Dec I had a really bad day. My mother-in-law was staying with us and she had not put the top on some soup properly so, when I reached for it, I spilled it all over my brand new fridge. I then had to spend half an hour cleaning it all out. As a consequence of rushing to leave I forgot two parcels I needed to post.

We left late. Then we got stuck in bad traffic. Then my mother-in-law decided that she wasn’t hungry and didn’t want to go out for lunch as we had planned. Then she changed her mind again. So I ended up missing my lunch (a nightmare scenario for me.)

When I got home I hastily wrapped the parcels I had forgotten from earlier and rushed to the post office to find it closed. I called Charlie to get directions to another, but the directions were wrong. Eventually I finally found one that was open, just in time to see the postman leaving. So I had missed the post. I felt very annoyed.

As I stood grumbling to myself in the queue waiting for a woman who took a full 10 minutes, I absent-mindedly checked my emails and saw one from my dear friend. Here it is:

The Rersponse

“Dear Nancy,

I cannot tell you how much I appreciate, you taking out so much time in writing back. Especially to someone whom you hardly know! The Lord has surely blessed you with a very kind and patient heart.

Thank you a million for the words of encouragement and wisdom. I must apologize for not having responded to you any earlier. But I surely spent the week working out and deliver what I now firmly believe is the right way to handle this situation. I actually took the liberty of sharing extracts from your mail with the other decision makers here. In a gist here is what we decided & actioned:

1. The Colleague can continue to work with us as long as possible

2. The rest of the staff were apprised about the situation and also educated

3. Their support was sought in ensuring that the disease or the matter be never discussed with the colleague, and every attempt be made to make the colleague feel comfortable.

4. Also take certain educational sessions on necessary precautions that need to be taken compulsorily

5. Provide all the necessary medical reimbursements to handle the course of the medication

6. All informed were sworn into maintaining absolute privacy about the matter. Its not to be discussed for any reason whatsoever”

The Best Christmas Present

I can’t tell you how happy I was to get that email. To know that someone had taken the  challenging but right path, in spite of the personal difficulties for him was truly inspiring. That’s why I’m sharing it with you.

I hope you don’t ever have to deal with anything like this, but we do all have smaller situations when we have the opportunity to do something to make others’ lives better, even though there is a cost to us (financial or otherwise).

Bullying

Recently I’ve been helping someone deal with being bullied his their manager. Happily he was able to get a transfer to another department. The question was, should he do something about the way the manager behaved (it was pretty bad) to try to reduce the chances of it happening to someone else?

And if so, what?

He just wanted to get away from the situation and leave it behind him, which is understandable, but in this case that means it is almost certain someone else will run into the same problem (we already know who that will be).

Do You Have An Opportunity?

What can you do to right a wrong? If we all did this on behalf of our fellow creatures, I suspect there would be fewer injustices in the world and perhaps more happiness.

Have a go.

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Posted in Communication, Improving Performance, Management Skills | 1 Comment »

What Have You Achieved?

Saturday, November 7th, 2009

I’ve been working with a group recently who are in the middle of a merger. As is the way with these things, they will all have to apply for their own jobs. Some of the people have been there for 20 years and not been for an interview in all that time, let alone put together a CV.

Selling Yourself Is Hard

It turns out that many of these people are finding it hard to sell themselves and prepare for an interview.

I’ve put together a programme for them with a few key steps in it. It occurred to me that they are not the only people in this situation at the moment and you also might find some of these tips handy.

It’s also useful to be prepared should you ever find yourself in the position of having to go to an interview, or sell yourself in any way. So here are a few pointers to keep in mind.

What Have You Achieved?

This is the key. You need to be aware of what you have achieved. Astonishingly many people aren’t, and even those who are often have ‘blind spots’. So what do you do if you are one of those?

You need to build a list of your main achievements. ‘How do you do that?’, I hear you ask.

Your Past Appraisals and Performance Reviews

If you have kept copies of these, they can be a great source of material. Just read through them and this will prompt your memory.

Your Diary and Schedule

Go through your old diaries and review your schedule as far back as you can. You will soon be reminded of what you’ve been up to and what has been achieved.

What If You Have No Achievements?

I was confronted by several people who thought they were in this category. All of them were wrong.

Look at the difference between how things were when you started and how they are now. Even if you are doing the ’same job’ you will probably find it has changed. Usually you are dealing with more. This could be more customers, sales, bits of paper, phone calls, emails, complaints or people. Or it may be you are doing the same with fewer resources or in less time.

Or it may be you have implemented new systems. If this is the case, focus on the service levels from the new systems or how you kept up services during the change.

Build Your List

Now you need to start listing out your major achievements. Between 10 and 20 would be a good start. Once you have done that, you need to hone them.

Honing Your Achievements

When you tell people about what you have achieved during an interview, you need to do it in a way that lets them know just how skilled you are. This means that you don’t just say:

‘There was this problem with the department and we fixed it.’

You need to let them know HOW BAD it was to start with. This is to highlight the difference between what it was like before your (excellent) intervention and how great it was afterwards. Otherwise your achievements will not be seen as being as good as they are.

Cut To The Chase

Do you know where this expression comes from? It’s from the cinema. It means that, when things are getting a bit boring, you need to get to the exciting bit. Showing how bad things were does that.

Time Scales

Let them know just how tight things were. It often sounds much more impressive when you include this detail.

Your Skills

Be sure to let them know what you did and what your thought processes were. They won’t ask, so you need to make it clear. Here is an example from one of the people I worked with recently. It started as: ‘I prepared the accounts for a company we took over.’

This was the finished version:

‘We had just taken over another company. It was nearly the year-end. The Chief Accountant had left. I had to prepare the year-end accounts in four weeks from a standing start.

I realised the information needed to be gathered quickly so worked out a plan to get it all in place first. No one was left who had the skills required to prepare the accounts, so I freed myself up from some of my other duties by delegating tasks to my team and focussed on the accounts.

I had the accounts ready with three days to spare. Once this was done, I put in place a plan to ensure that the information would be gathered more effectively next time and there would be someone there to do the accounts.’

Competencies

If you have a copy of a job description from a position you are applying for, you can look through the competencies or capabilities and make sure you have examples of achievements that cover all of them. Usually you will find that each example, if you prepare it properly, covers several
competencies.

You will also find that you have several examples for each competency. This is not cheating; it’s making sure that you can give the interviewer plenty of evidence that you have what they need in a convincing
manner.

A Side Effect

By the end of our workshop, one of the side effects is usually that people are feeling a lot better about themselves. They have discovered that they do have lots of skills and abilities and have achieved a
great deal.

A Suggestion

Even if you are not applying for a job, how about listing out a few achievements anyway, so that you are prepared?

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Posted in Communication, Training | 2 Comments »

Are You In The Talent Pool?

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

Why I Left Two Really Good Jobs

After nearly four years in my first job, I left. I needed to see something different.

When she heard I was leaving, Joan, the head of HR, called me to a meeting.

‘We were just about to promote you.’  She said and went on to tell me about all the great opportunities I was leaving behind. A few years later, I had a similar experience. I handed in my notice and was summoned to see the Group Manufacturing Director.

‘I had you in line to be the next Manufacturing Director at your site when your boss, Paul, moved on.’ He told me. ‘I’m very sorry you’re leaving.’

What these situations have in common is that neither of them had told me about the plans they had for my career. Had I known, I certainly would not have left when I did.

Talent Pools

Many of our customers have ‘talent pools’. At a very good lunch recently I was discussing this with an old friend. He’s an extremely talented individual (I mustn’t be too over the top because I know he reads this and it might go to his head, but he is very good).

The problem is, at his organisation, it really isn’t very clear if you are in the Talent Pool or not. And even if it is clear, no one really knows why they are in or out.

No manager is able to say to their team member ‘If you want to be in the Talent Pool you need to do this.’ Which is what they really should be able to say.

So the whole system is the source of rumour and misunderstanding (at best).

Should You Have A Talent Pool?

A good question. You need to ask yourself why you want a Talent Pool and how it will help.

In my view you should certainly have a clear idea of the possible potential of each employee. You should be clear what the opportunities are for them and what they need to do in order to meet the requirements for opportunities.

You should also know what talent you are going to need over the next few years and be matching that up with the people you already have where possible.

It may be that you want to identify people who have the potential (as far as you can tell) to join the Senior Management Team or the Directors.

Why Do People Keep It A Secret?

I’d like to think this is just incompetence rather than a deliberate attempt to annoy people. Usually it’s because the criteria for being in the talent pool are woolly and no one really understands them.

Often it’s because people don’t want to upset those who aren’t in the Talent Pool. Personally I think it’s worse for people to waste time speculating when knowing the answer would be quite useful. It almost implies that the company is ashamed of having a Talent Pool if they won’t let you know if you are in it.

Or it’s a way of wielding power over people.

Generally this approach just backfires (as it did in my case).

Clear Criteria

In many cases organisations have a box divided into nine squares and managers are asked to put their people into the correct box. The top right hand box means you’re in the pool.  What managers should be doing is assessing the skills of each individual carefully and objectively. However, only some managers are skilled enough to do this properly.

So you end up with seriously flawed information. If you’re going to do this, you need to have extremely clear criteria for each box so that managers can make an objective assessment and be confident in the assessments of their colleagues.

Unless there is this trust that all the assessments are carried out objectively and to the same standard, people will not have confidence in the system.

So if you are going to do it you must have clear and open criteria so you can make decisions easily. This is not as easy as it sounds, which is probably why people fail to do it so often.

What’s Important

In these situations you first need to be clear about what it is you want to achieve. So work out your objective. Then work out what’s important about the way you do it.

Once you’ve done that, you can start setting up a Talent Pool in a way that is appropriate for your organisation. I would urge you to do it in an open, straightforward way if you are going to do it.

Usually we want to improve the skills of people in our company, so there’s generally no harm in letting people know what skills we need them to develop and why.

Once you have your Talent Pool you need to be clear what you are going to do with it.

I have seen many cases where these people have left because expectations were not fulfilled. I’ve also seen cases where they were badly thought through.

In one particular case a company identified lots of very talented people and gave them the opportunity to get extra experience and training, but then, for some strange reason, others in the company were not willing to give them the opportunities they wanted, so many left. It’s hard to calculate the cost of this to the company involved.

Are You In The Talent Pool?

It’s always worth asking your manager about this. He or she may not be able to tell you, or may be reluctant. But it might avoid you making the mistake of leaving just because you are unclear about your prospects.

Of course you must remember that, however fantastic your skill set, sometimes there just aren’t any opportunities for you in your current organisation. You might as well find out now.

Posted in Appraisals and Performance Reviews, Communication, Feedback, Improving Performance, Management Skills, Training | 2 Comments »

How to save yourself a lot of time

Monday, October 12th, 2009

Another Party

A couple of weeks ago I was at yet another party – we have a rampant social life here.   It was the 25th wedding anniversary of some very old friends of mine.

Actually, it was really the 26th anniversary, but who’s counting? The party was so good that we thought we should do something similar ourselves, if we make it that far.   The food was excellent, as I was expecting. (I lived with these friends for a while and, as you know, I have a good memory for food.)

The wine was local and the beer was superb. There was also a great ceilidh band with a woman who called the dances so we just about managed to do them all in safety without any serious injury (though I did lose my shoe in the very first one).

We only knew a few people there, but that didn’t make any difference to our great enjoyment of the event. One of the people we did know was Viv, an old colleague of mine. It was so good to let her know that her influence has spread far and wide.

Inspiration

I have told several stories of her great skill that inspired me over the years. Here is one of them.   When I was a production manager we had a purchasing department that was a nightmare to deal with. It once took me nearly 25 minutes to get one of them to agree to place an order for some parts that we had run out of (that they should have ordered anyway).

Slippery Dave

Dave, or ‘Slippery Dave’ as we called him, would ignore you till you were right at his desk. Then when you asked about the missing parts, his answers were vague and worthless. It was like pulling teeth. Here’s the conversation:

Me ‘Do you know when the leaf springs are coming in?’

Dave ‘Possibly’

Me ‘When’

Dave ‘Soon’

Me ‘How soon?’

Dave ‘Quite soon?’

Me ‘What day?’

Dave ‘Wednesday’

Me ‘Which Wednesday?’

Dave ‘Next Wednesday.’

Me ‘How many?

Dave ‘Quite a few?’

Me ‘How many, exactly?’

Dave ‘A few boxes.’

And so on.   As Basil Faulty once said ‘I could spend the rest of my life having this conversation.’

The New Recruit

Then a new person, Viv, joined. I was not happy. It had taken me years to work out how to get what I needed from Dave, and now I was back at square one.   I walked up to her desk, gritting my teeth. Here’s the conversation:

Viv (Before I was even close to her desk.) ‘Hi, I’m Viv, how can I help you?’

Me (Surprised and suspicious.) ‘Hello, I’m Nancy. Good to meet you. We’ve run out of leaf springs. I need to know when they are coming in.’

Viv ‘What’s the part number?’

Me ‘0224 546489.’

Viv ‘How many would you like?’

Me ‘2400′

Viv ‘When would you like them?’

Me (Startled) ‘Thursday please.”

Viv ”What time on Thursday?’

Me (Aghast.) ‘10′.

Viv ‘I’ll sort this out and call you within the hour.’

Too Easy

I was not to be taken in that easily. I made a note in my book to call her back the next day, sure she would let me down. However, Viv called me back half an hour later to let me know the springs would be there when I needed them. And they were.

An Accident

A few weeks later there was a very bad accident on the motorway and the whole department, except for Viv and the secretary, was in the pile up. None of them was killed but they were badly injured. They were all off for at least six weeks.

In the mean time Viv ran the department, doing her job and the jobs of four men with just herself and the secretary. Guess what? Everything ran smoothly.

The Odd Thing

I was intrigued. How could she have done it?   No one else even seemed to notice how spectacular this was. I decided that I would find out what she did that was so special, so I got myself on a project with her. I learned a huge amount. (Most of it is in our booklets.)

The Answer

Simple. She could carry out a conversation in 2 minutes that took the rest of them over 20 minutes. When you spread this through the day you’ll see how she could be so efficient and such a joy to work with.

So here are a few tips:

Identify the people who are most affected by your time management Ask yourself (or them!) what you could do that would save them the most time, with minimal effort to yourself.

Remember that doing things promptly often takes less time than leaving them and doing them later (such as passing on or delegating work).

Be clear and sensible in your communications, don’t keep beating around the bush. It wastes your time and everyone else’s.

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How Honest Are You?

Monday, September 21st, 2009

In a piece of fascinating research Dr Stefan Fafinski and Dr Emily Finch studied public perceptions of dishonest behaviour.

Some of the findings were a little surprising, if disappointing.

Nearly two thirds of people said they had taken stationery home from work, but 82 per cent thought it dishonest, according to the study.

Nearly 97 per cent said taking a DVD from a shop was dishonest, but only 58 per cent thought it dishonest to download pirated music, and only 49 per cent said it was dishonest to buy a pirate DVD.

Why Are We Dishonest?

There’s quite a bit more to come as their study continues. However, I think it’s worth asking why so many people are happy to take stationery home from work even though they think it’s dishonest.  And we know people take a great deal more than just stationery.

Some Embarrassing Statistics

In fact, what is really horrifying is to compare the figures from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Crime in the United States with the estimates for theft and fraud in the workplace.

For 2004: total cost of all robberies in the US as $525 million.

Theft and fraud in the workplace: $600 billion.

Apparently the IRS (the tax people in the US) think they probably lose about $350 billion a year in taxes that should be paid and are not.

I have no reason to imagine that the figures are any different in the UK or any other country.

In his fascinating book: ‘Predictably Irrational’ Dan Ariely describes some of his research into honesty (and the lack of it).

We All Do It

It turns out that most of us behave dishonestly to a small extent when given the chance to cheat. We are also more likely to steal when we are a step removed from the ‘victim’ or from real money. So we don’t see copying a CD as the same as physically removing £15 from an old lady’s purse.

For some reason we see a burglar who may take £1000 as worse than a company executive who cheats employees out of a pay rise.

And it doesn’t just stop with individuals. Dan Ariely gives an example of company stealing. It was almost identical to one I had experienced myself. His friend had earned thousands of Airmiles, yet when he tried to use them there were ‘no seats available’. We have had exactly the same problem. This kind of thing is just as dishonest as stealing.

I was talking to our accountant just yesterday. I suggested a course of action. ‘But you’d have to pay tax on that.’ He said in horror. I have tried to explain to our accountants that I have no problem with paying tax. We use the facilities – I went to a state school, I drive on the roads, I have used the NHS. I am delighted to go to free art galleries and museums. How does he think these things are paid for? Evading tax is stealing from all these places and from the community.

He seems happy enough to use the facilities himself.

Your Brain

One of the factors here is part of your brain; the insular. One of its functions is to let you know when you are being treated unfairly. It also focuses on the cost of what you buy – but strangely does not get as excited when you spend that money on your credit card. It’s much more concerned when the money is in real cash.

A Pain in the….

I know that many people working in companies feel that they have not been fairly treated by that company.  It’s very hard to ignore that feeling. It turns out that it is a real physical pain.

The trouble is that once you feel unfairly treated, your judgement starts to be modified. You feel justified in getting your own back. I think this is why so many people indulge in what is clearly dishonest behaviour. It’s a ‘tit for tat’ justification.

Distance

Couple this with the distance when stealing doesn’t involve taking cash from someone’s wallet and we can see how it’s easy for people to justify dishonesty to themselves, because it seems only ‘fair’.

What Can You Do?

You may by now be thinking there is no solution to this problem. Fortunately you’d be wrong.

In another experiment Dan and his colleagues asked one group of students to remember 10 books they had read at school. He asked another group to list the 10 Commandments.

The two groups were both then given a test and an opportunity to cheat. Astonishingly the book group cheated just as much as all the other groups they had tested in similar circumstances, but the Commandments group did not cheat at all.

Other research getting people to sign up to a ‘code of honour’ delivered similar results.

Values

So many companies have values and behaviours, but very few really use them. I’m sure you have examples of organisations you’ve dealt with or worked for where they have values such as ‘respect’, ‘honesty’ and so on, but you don’t feel they have behaved in a way that is in line with those values.

It may be that the answer to workplace theft could be as simple as getting people to remember the company values. Of course that would mean the whole company would have to live up to them in the way they treated customers and employees alike. They would have to actually mean them, rather than them just be a marketing statement as so many are.

They would also need to be clear, easy to understand and straightforward to implement.

Call me old-fashioned, but I think it would be a very good thing.

Do you know what your company values are? Do you have any? Have you ever used them?

To have a go at the Honesty Lab test, where some of this research comes from go to:

http://www.honestylab.com/

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Posted in Brain, Communication, Improving Performance, Management Skills | 4 Comments »

Do You Speak Plain English?

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

A Salutary Lesson

As a production manager I identified one of the barriers to learning a key process in my department was simply being able to remember the next step. It was a long process with over 60 different steps, each of which had to be completed in the correct order.

 

So I decided to compile a manual with all the steps in it for people to use as a guide while they were learning. It took me ages to put everything together. I did it on one of the first word processors, ‘Edit 2′ (I guess it was probably the second, judging from the title).

Compared to what we have today it was a nightmare, but at the time it was a lot better than nothing.

Once I had the first draft of my new manual I gave all my people a copy and a red pen. I asked them to make any corrections that they could as they were going along carrying out the task.

I don’t think I have ever seen so much red pen. It was your worst homework ever marked by the teacher from Hell.

Four rounds later, I finally got full marks from my team. I was quite horrified to discover how poor my communication was, in that it needed three major revisions to get it into a form that people could understand.

Several years later when I visited the factory, I was astonished to see my manuals still there with all my original drawings and instructions. It turned out they were very popular.

Plain English Campaign

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Plain English Campaign. I quote here from their web site:

‘We believe that everyone should have access to clear and concise information in plain English.’

Finance

Just this morning I took my daughter and her friend to a holiday activity. Her friend told us that yesterday evening her father had had a strange phone call. It was from a financial organisation. Apparently he had ‘left them no option’ than to send him a cheque for several thousand pounds.

This was all because he had not replied to their letters.

It turned out that he had been contributing to some kind of savings plan. He needed to take some kind of action (we have no idea what) but had not realised what the letters he was sent were, so had thrown them away.

We are not talking about an illiterate person here. But I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the letters were almost incomprehensible to the normal person.

I confess that I too have had letters like this (sadly not offering me lots of money, though I will be reading them more carefully in the future) but letters from financial institutions that made little or no sense to me.

I think Legal and Medical professionals also fall into the same trap as those in Finance.

Chrissie Maher

I once talked to Chrissie, who started the Plain English Campaign. She wanted people to be able to communicate effectively and understand what they were told and what they read. I bought her guide and found it invaluable, packed with good sense and straightforward help.

Other Views

Last week I heard an interview with someone who was completely against the Plain English Campaign. He was adamant that they wanted to completely eliminate the passive tense – this is where you say:

‘Customers are reminded not to leave baggage unattended’

As opposed to:

‘Don’t leave your baggage unattended’

(Or even better: ‘Keep your baggage with you all the time.’)

I was quite astonished that he was so venomous in his attack. Unfortunately from what I know about the Campaign, he had completely misunderstood what they were trying to achieve. He seemed to have taken one piece of advice out of context and generalised it to be used everywhere.

The Reason for Plain English (or any other language)

It all depends what you need to achieve. In the business world we generally want people to easily understand anything they read or hear.

We are all suspicious of the ’small print’ because we (quite correctly sometimes) assume that companies only use this to hide important information from us.

Why Do People Use Confusing Language?

I think there are two main reasons. The first is that people don’t realise the other person (their audience) doesn’t understand what they are saying or have written. The second is a deliberate attempt to make the other person look stupid or to deceive them.

Usually it’s the first. When I work with people helping them to clarify their objectives, they have usually done their best. Often they have simply copied from someone else or an example they have seen.

This happens at very senior levels as well as junior ones.

When I was working with the board of an international company to help them get their 22 complicated objectives down to something meaningful (we got it down to eight) I asked them how they had arrived at the original 22.

They had just copied most of them from others they had seen. They had known that these objectives were more than a little opaque, but had thought this was how they were ’supposed’ to be.

A Big Problem

One of the biggest problems with not understanding is that, very often, you don’t realise you haven’t understood what the other person has said. Everything seems clear to you so you don’t question it.

When it comes to objectives this can cause serious problems.

How To Make Sure People Have Understood

When it comes to objectives, there’s a really easy way to make sure you both have the same understanding of the situation. If you are the manager, ask the individual what their plan is for achieving the objective. Once you have heard the plan it will soon become obvious whether the individual has the same understanding as you do.

If you are the individual, simply check your plan with your manager. They’ll soon tell you if there is any misunderstanding.

Improving Your Communications

If you use this process on a regular basis, you’ll soon learn better ways of explaining yourself.

Another Big Problem

Yesterday I took my daughter for a treat. We went to have a massage each. As I was having mine, Curley, our masseur, told me about her maths teacher. She was too frightened to tell her teacher when she didn’t understand, so consequently failed her exam.

On one occasion her teacher had told her she was so stupid she might as well bring in crayons and draw at the back of the class instead of joining in with the lesson.

This approach of assuming it’s the other person’s fault when they don’t understand is much more common that we realise.

Another Salutary Lesson

When I wrote my first book: ‘Difficult People Made Easy’, I had an excellent editor, Jo Parrfit, to help me. (If you are thinking of writing a book I’ll be happy to pass on her details.)

I had the same experience again. Passages I thought were clear and easy to read came back with requests for information and clarification (several times in some cases).

The trouble is we all think what we are saying is perfectly obvious, but that’s not the way to measure communication. It has to be measured by the recipient.

Only if he or she truly understands the meaning, have you communicated effectively.

Communication Responsibility

Our responsibility in communicating with others is to make sure that the message is in a form that means it can be understood easily and correctly. To do this, we always need to check to make sure.

In this way we never become complacent and constantly improve our skills. Sadly, the Plain English Campaign still has a lot of work to do.

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