Archive for the ‘Feedback’ Category

Does 360 Degree Feedback Work? What Do You Think?

Monday, November 30th, 2009

I had an email from a Grapevine reader a while back asking what she could do about some very unpleasant feedback she had had.

Roughly, it suggested that she did a poor job, was bad at prioritising and often missed important things.

In the past, all the feedback she had had was about how well she was doing. She had never had any feedback like this before and was completely distraught. Worst of all, it was anonymous and there was no way of finding out what the individual meant, who they were or what they were referring to.

The feedback had come through a 360 Degree Feedback process that her company had introduced.

360 Degree Feedback

Just to clarify, 360 Degree Feedback refers to getting feedback on your performance from all levels of people you work with; managers, peers and those working for you.

Another Example

I worked with a client that had called me in because they had introduced a 360 feedback system and it had caused some serious problems. The MD had decided to ‘have a go’ first himself to show that it would be fine.

Unfortunately he got some feedback indicating all was not well. He then went on to ’share’ the information he had been given, but omitted to mention any of the less favourable comments.

Unfortunately, for those who had written those comments, this immediately destroyed the credibility of the whole system.

The Problem

In this case one of the main problems was the design of the system and the poor quality of the questions. They were really a licence for anyone to launch a rant about whatever they liked, instead of a way of getting useful, factual information that would help people to develop.

Training and Guidance

In my view people should not be asked to give this kind of information without, at the very least, some kind of guidance on how to do it. I have trained enough people on giving feedback to know that many people need some help in this area.

This is particularly true when they are looking for improvement or have problems with an individual. Any fool can moan and complain, but it takes a little skill to be clear about what is required in a helpful way.

The system (or ’solution’ as it’s often called) also needs to be very carefully designed, especially the questions. If not, it can cause many problems.

A Question For You: What Are Your Experiences of 360 Degree Feedback?

I’m asking this question because it came up in our Appraisals Teleseminar last week. Rachel, who works for the Alzheimer’s Society, and was taking part in the Teleseminar, wondered if anyone had got experience of this they were willing to share.

I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who have had both good and bad experiences in this area. So, please let me know, on the blog so we can all share this, what those experiences are and what you would recommend/not recommend.

I’m sure many of you have opinions on this topic. You probably also have your own questions. Please add them here.

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Posted in Appraisals and Performance Reviews, Feedback, Improving Performance, Management Skills, Training | 15 Comments »

Why Don’t Leaders Have The Skills They Expect Us To Have?

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

This was prompted by a comment in my blog from Dave McCoy, a long time contributor:

‘As always I am struck by the irony that “leaders” rarely show the qualities they expect in their staff…’

Let me know what you think.

This is something I have seen more often than I can count and I imagine you have too. But Dave’s point is why is it the case?

I think there are six main reasons:

  • Lack of awareness
  • Not taking responsibility
  • Poor feedback
  • No example to follow
  • Lack of training
  • Poor recruitment

Let me start with a short story. I was at the sixtieth birthday party (yes, another party) of a friend recently. He is from Jamaica and told a great story about one of the people who influenced him in his life. It was his grandmother.

One day she said to him:

‘You’d better get yourself an education, man.’  He paused and we all held our breath as we waited for her words of wisdom, so we could pass them on to our own children.

‘Coz you’re USELESS!’ he bellowed, impersonating the great lady.

‘You can’t even climb a tree like your brother…’ The tirade continued.

I was stunned, as was the rest of the audience. Then we all laughed. It was this piece of feedback that had prompted our friend to pull up his socks and, eventually, get a good education.

Sadly many leaders do not have as perceptive a grandmother as our friend did.

None Of Us Is As Self-Aware As We Could Be

This is the first reason, I think. No matter how skilled we are, there are faults we have that we are blind to.

It’s Worse For Leaders

However, most of us have the benefit of the odd piece of feedback from friends and family, or even colleagues.

How we respond to that feedback determines how much feedback we get in the future and whether it is reliable.

Unfortunately for leaders, the quality and objectivity of the feedback they get is often dubious. The paradox is that the worse their skills are the less likely they are to be given objective feedback (and to act on it).

This is because people are frightened to give them feedback or don’t have the skills themselves. The reason they don’t have the skills is because they have not been developed by their managers (because the managers don’t have the skills….)

Blame The Middle Managers

Many times we have heard of swathes of ‘middle managers’ being cut from an organisation that has become ‘top heavy’. In the health service in particular people are always concerned that the money goes ‘directly to the patients’, not to bureaucracy which, to them, is ‘middle management’.

But you must ask yourself: Who appointed all the middle managers? Who decided they were necessary? Who identified the skills required and drew up the organisational plans?

Yes, it was the senior managers. The ones who are so often immune from the cuts.

Why Don’t They Realise It’s Their Fault?

If you have children you will be familiar with the difficulty of choosing a school. Even when you’ve got a good one, if the head or principal changes, you know the school will too.

Like any organisation, the school is only as good as the person at the top.

The problem for the person at the top is that they have no example to follow. Whereas people lower down the chain can raise their game, can learn from their manager and be inspired to greater things by them, this option is not automatically open to someone at the top.

They have to make a conscious effort to do it. And many don’t. It simply doesn’t occur to them.

As a consequence of this, they do not improve their skills and this lack of development is cascaded down the organisation to the detriment of all.

Why Don’t They Go On The Training Courses Like Everyone Else?

They have lots of excuses but I think the main reason is fear. They don’t want to be found out.

One of the most successful programmes I have ever run was successful because the Managing Director (a man who had several glaring faults) insisted that all employees went through the programme and that included the directors.

We had one director on each module. Initially this was a struggle for some of the people there (not just the directors). But it soon started to work. They just mucked in with everyone else and the benefits were tremendous.

The Benefits

During a time of recession we increased orders and market share, whilst halving the number of complaints received.  (Their competitors all made cuts in staffing levels.) Having the directors on the programme meant that they knew what everyone was talking about and got help in implementing the new ideas.

It’s no good keeping them separate in some ivory tower so they can be allowed to imagine they don’t need to learn new skills.

Recruitment

Perhaps one last reason why you get this problem is the poor recruitment processes often used at senior levels. This can include badly drawn up person specifications so that the management skills required are given a very low priority if any value at all.

The worst case of this I saw was a man, apparently a ‘technical expert in his field’, who had previously been in academia and was recruited to run a massive department. Before this he had managed one secretary.

The HR representative warned the directors not to recruit him due to his appalling level of management skills but they ignored her advice. I was asked in much later to see what I could do to retrieve the situation. By then the damage had been done and it was far too late. I’m sorry to say that he was not able to learn the skills he needed to master in time; it would have taken years.

Looking at this list, perhaps it’s surprising that we have any skilled people at the top at all! But I think if they are prepared to accept the salary, they should be prepared to learn the skills and this should be made clear to them at the start. The trouble is, the rest of us let them get away with it.

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Posted in Feedback, Improving Performance, Learning, Management Skills | 7 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 »

Is Dumbledore Really a Good Headmaster?

Monday, July 20th, 2009

This week I’d like to ask a question about a fictional character, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts. These days he should probably be called the Head Teacher, but I’ve stuck to the title given to him by J K Rowling.

I love the Harry Potter books; I’ve read every one of them, listened to Stephen Fry reading them (possibly the best way to experience them in my view) and seen all the films.

They are also favourites of Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty (The National Council for Civil Liberties here in the UK), who gave Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix as her book of choice on Radio 4 because of her insights into police states.

Dumbledore

Albus Dumbledore is often described as the best headmaster Hogwarts has ever had. So let’s look a bit more closely at what he achieved when measured against the responsibilities of any head teacher.

Responsibilities of the Head

The ultimate responsibility of a head teacher is the learning, development and safety of the students in their care.

Given the slightly unusual nature of the situation, the risks to life and limb for Hogwarts students seem to be higher than those in many other schools. I think we could say, initially at least, that Dumbledore has taken these seriously. Though his method for dealing with them is more to rely on the excellent ministrations of Madam Pomfrey than any weak-minded health and safety precautions.

In helping the students to be able to defend themselves against the unique dangers they face, I’m not sure we could agree that he has succeeded. In the crucial recruitment of a Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher, Dumbledore has singularly failed time and time again. Professor Quirrell, the first teacher Harry had in the subject, was under the control of Voldemort. Dumbledore was completely duped by Lockhart, a teacher entirely lacking in the magical or teaching skills required, though he did seem to have some interesting ideas about lessons.

In Professor Lupin we saw a man (or werewolf) who really knew his stuff and also how to teach. So this was a drastic improvement. He was unfortunately hounded out of his job due to blind prejudice from stupid parents.

We then see Professor ‘Mad Eye’ Moody take on the role. He seemed to be well qualified and his teaching skills seem to acceptable. However, we later discover that he is in no way who he pretends to be. Once again Dumledore has been duped.

We might ask why Professor Snape did not get the job in the first place. He clearly has the magical skills required, though his teaching skills and leaning towards favouritism need to be questioned.

It would probably be fair to say that Dumbledore had Professor Umbridge forced upon him so probably can’t be criticised too heavily in this case. Her focus on the theory with no practical application at all was nearly disastrous for those in her lessons.

In the areas of Divination and Care of Magical Creatures there are also serious shortcomings. Dumbledore recruits Professor Trelawney in case she makes another prophecy. Taking her on has nothing to do with her teaching skills (which are very poor).

Hagrid is certainly enthusiastic about his Magical creatures, but has no teaching skills. He is thrown into the job and tries hard but does not seem to be given any support in this new role.

What Does Dumbledore Do About It?

We don’t hear anything about his efforts to improve teaching and learning in the school, except for his constant efforts to replace the Defence Against The Dark Arts teachers. But this is only because they die, are irreparably damaged or forced to leave. He does not deliberately get rid of any of them.

He does not seem to use his skills (way above those of normal Head Teachers) to identify any shortcomings in his staff, nor give those teachers the benefit of his experience and skills.

He also seems to allow pupils to be given meaningless detention for trivial offences as though there is no clear policy on the matter. There is rampant bullying going on at Hogwarts. We get the impression that Dumbledore knows about this but seems to allow it to happen.

Standards

It is the responsibility of a senior manager like Dumbledore to set clear standards in all things including teaching, detention, discipline and behaviour.

Other Interests

We can, though, admit that Dumbledore has other things on his mind that are important; the vanquishing of Voldemort being of the highest priority.

A Very Important Question

As I ran a workshop last week (not for Hogwarts teachers) one of the participants said that she thought the reason that so many managers do not use the basic management skills they are taught (setting objectives, giving feedback and so on) is because there are no consequences if they don’t.

She is, as you will know, completely wrong and also, in a strange way, completely right.

The Consequences

The consequences of poor management are poor performance for the whole organisation. They are lost sales, redundancies and ultimately companies closing down. The trouble is that most managers don’t see any connection between these things and their own poor performance.

This is because no one makes it clear to them that they are responsible for what has gone wrong.

Back to Dumbledore

How many managers have put someone into a role that they have no training for without any support as Dumbledore did with Hagrid? How many have recruited people who have turned out to be all but useless like Lockhart? How many have allowed bullying to thrive in their departments and companies?

Many. And I suspect many haven’t thought the results were anything to do with them.

I suspect that very few have really thought about the long-term consequences for others of their errors and incompetence.

Responsibility and Seniority

It’s about time that people did have to take responsibility for their actions. The more senior you are, the more impact your actions and decisions have. But it often seems that the more senior you are the more you are cushioned from their impact. If things go wrong, you get a nice pay off (in the worst case) whilst others lose their jobs and yet others lose their savings and pensions.

At least we can say that Dumbledore did take responsibility. He did not sail away from Hogwarts with a golden handshake. He personally made the sacrifice. He also admitted to his mistakes and never lost touch with the consequences for others. Perhaps that’s why we like him.

Harry Potter

I think the reason I love the books so much is that the characters are so true to life, as are the situations, in a strange way. We have all seen people put into jobs they can’t do. We have all experienced unfair systems and seen managers do nothing about them or even be quite oblivious to them. We have also seen them make monumental mistakes and get away with it.

So we can understand how it feels and recognise the situations in the books.

Taking Responsibility

It’s time managers realised that they are responsible for the performance of the people in their departments and that un-tackled performance issues in any department are a performance issue for the manager of that department and should be treated as such.

Measuring Basic Performance Management by Senior Managers
In my view you need to ask people working for a senior manager these questions:

  • What are your objectives?
  • What are the performance standards?
  • What are your levels of performance so far this year?
  • What do you need to do differently in order to improve your performance?

If people in a manager’s department can answer these questions correctly, then we at least know that the foundations are there. If they can’t answer these simple questions then we need to find out why not and take action to improve the performance of the manager.

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Posted in Bullies, Difficult People, Feedback, Improving Performance, Management Skills | Comments Off

If there was bullying here, I’d know

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

Do you have problems like this in your organisation? Why do you think they happen? I would be really interested to read your comments.

The bus bringing my daughter home was half an hour late on Wednesday. As a consequence I ended up talking with one of the other mothers with whom I am normally just on nodding terms.

We chatted for a while about the school both our daughters used to go to. I said that I had been keen for my daughter to leave as soon as possible because I was not wholly happy with the Head Teacher. She looked very surprised and then in hushed tones, admitted that she thought him to be a ‘Tony Blair’ type who was smooth and a good talker but did nothing to resolve serious problems.

I had to laugh. This was because when I first encountered him I described him in exactly the same way to my husband. Even going so far as to say he was ‘like Tony Blair.’

Bullying

She went on to recount a meeting she had had with him to express her concern about bullying.

He adjusted his glasses so he could see her directly over them and said, in patronising tones: “There is no bullying here. If there was bullying here, I’d know.”

This was the same response I had from an HR director on a workshop who had been in her company for 20 years. She said the workshop was irrelevant to her because there was no bullying in her company.

She left early. The woman who had organised the workshop came up to me and apologised. She said she’d worked at that company as a consultant for many years and there was a massive bullying problem.

Why Didn’t They Know?

In an effort to be fair to the Head Teacher and the HR Director, I must point out that it can be hard to spot bullying, especially if you don’t know what you are looking for.

Lack of Awareness

I was working with a group recently running a workshop on recruitment. We very quickly identified the cause of their biggest problem in recruiting.

(Now I know recruitment may be the last thing on your mind at the moment, but I’m telling you this so that you know that not every corner of the economy is writhing in agony. Some of our clients are actually recruiting.)

Allow me to describe the process they use. Let’s see if you can spot what’s wrong.

1 The manager identifies that they need to recruit
2 They write out the job description
3 They compose the person specification, based on the job description
4 They write an advertisement
5 The HR department arranges for the advertisement to be posted
6 The applications come in
7 The manager shortlists the candidate
8 About 6 – 8 weeks later the HR department sends out a letter, only to the successful candidates, letting them know they have an interview either the next day or in the next couple of days
9 They hold the interviews on the arranged day, but only 10% of the candidates turn up and often not one of these is a suitable candidate.

Did you spot the problem? I expect you did. It’s the 6 – 8 week gap before sending out the interview offer letters.

I must admit I was horrified at this. To give people just one day’s notice of an interview after making them wait two months to learn if they have an interview is pretty bad. Not letting people know they have been unsuccessful is, to me, a lack of courtesy.

Also, I imagine most of the skilled candidates will have, by this time, been for interviews with other organisations and probably accepted offers from them.

The Costs

As part of the workshop last week we spent some time working out the cost of recruiting a new person. This assumed the person was a good fit for the role. The cost (when you add in the time of all those concerned, advertising and so on) can easily be between £10,000 and £20,000.

The cost of recruiting someone not suitable for the role is much, much higher. That’s what we are often tempted to do when faced with just a limited number of candidates and we are desperate.

So the cost of this one small problem with the process is massive.

It’s hard to put the cost of bullying in terms of money, but we have. Just one person bullying his team and colleagues cost one organisation (a hospital) £2.6m over five years. This included the cost of constant recruitment to replace people who had left as a result of this individual’s behaviour and the cost of using agency staff (double the normal employment cost) because recruitment proved more and more difficult as the individual became notorious.

How Can People Be So Blind?

Here are some of the reasons:
1 The person responsible for the offending part of the process has no idea of the cost of their inefficiency. They’re not doing it on purpose; they just don’t know that it’s a problem.

2 It may be that the process was fine when it was originally implemented, but over the years it has slipped and the people who knew what they were doing have been replaced. And no one has checked that it’s still working.

3 No one has told them there’s a problem.

4 They don’t listen because they are so convinced that their system (or school) is perfect that they can’t conceive of the situation being any different.

We Are All Guilty

I think this last reason is the root of it in many problems. And the worst thing is that we are all guilty of it. We just don’t want to believe there’s a problem or it has simply never occurred to us that there could be one. Even when faced with evidence, we deny it.

In the case of the bullying I suspect that even if the Head or HR Director ever asked people about bullying they asked people who didn’t want to tell them the truth for various reasons or were doing the bullying themselves. So as far as they were aware, there wasn’t a problem.

In the case of the recruitment process, I think that department is completely unaware of its responsibilities and defends its processes rather than investigating and improving them.

Responsibilities

When you are in charge of an organisation, department or process it is your responsibility to set up reliable independent checking processes to ensure that the service you are responsible for is performing as it should. It is not acceptable to wait till people complain about it or problems crop up.

Of course you can’t have a way of checking absolutely everything, but you should be checking the most important things.

The Easy Way

Here, at Vinehouse, we believe in doing things the easy way, wherever possible. So here’s what we suggest: Ask your customers (internal as well as external) what’s important to them about what you do. Then just ask them how they would know you were doing a good job.

Then set up systems to measure whatever they say is important. It’s not rocket science, but it could lead to drastic improvements in the performance of your organisation and some huge cost savings, if everyone just asked these simple questions.

Posted in Bullies, Feedback, Improving Performance | 3 Comments »

Are You Professional?

Monday, May 18th, 2009

A few years ago we went to a concert given by Uri Caine, in Nottingham. Though I’m sure he is a very skilled musician, it was one of the worst concert experiences of my life. After the first few bars, the rest of the evening was completely unintelligible to my ill-educated ears. Worse still, we were right in the middle of a row, there was no interval and so, no escape.

I’m quite a keen concertgoer. Though my family would say I have rather limited taste in music, just because I don’t know any pop music from about 1980 onwards.

Last weekend we went to the Keswick Jazz Festival. You had a pass for the day and could just wander into (or out of) any concert as you pleased.

This meant there was no danger of repeating the Uri Caine experience.

We also had the benefit of a Tutor (who visually could have been Wolverine’s dad) giving us background information on different jazz musicians and a commentary on the bands we had seen playing.

However, his knowledge was sound.

One evening we were discussing a band that most of us had seen featuring Lucien Barbarin a fantastic trombonist. Personally I had very much enjoyed their playing. Our tutor went on to describe the lack of skill of the rest of the band and then to outline the worst feature of all: They were drinking beer on stage. This, in his view, was ‘unprofessional’.

I was immediately transported back to a discussion over lunch early in my career with some colleagues, one of whom was my manager. He was telling us that Neville, the UK Sales Manager had told the Managing Director that there were no ‘professionals’ in the Manufacturing Department (our department).

We were outraged.

I will just take a few moments to describe the UK Sales Manager. He wore the same suit every day, and had done possibly since the early fourteenth century when it was purchased. He was clearly a stranger to his barber and many of his shirts would have benefitted from a closer relationship with a washing machine.

We naturally spent some time pointing out his many faults and declaring ourselves to far more ‘professional’ than he or any member of his team was.

‘Professional’

Over the years I have come to realise that the word ‘professional’ is one of those words that needs to be used with great care and, in most instances, is best avoided. I checked it in the dictionary. Here are the synonyms:

  • Expert
  • Specialised
  • Qualified
  • Proficient
  • Skilled
  • Trained
  • Practiced
  • Certified
  • Licensed

The antonym is ‘amateur’.

As I sat there listening to this criticism of the band whose playing I had enjoyed so much I again felt that sense of rage. I think it was mainly because, when I was in a jazz band we all drank beer on stage. Consequently I felt I was being personally and completely unfairly criticised.

I started to wonder why this beer drinking was such a problem. Needless to say, we were eagerly observing the fluid intake of every performer after that. You won’t be surprised to learn that most of them had a glass of something near by.

Ultimately we decided that we didn’t see it as a problem. As my daughter said, she often closes her eyes when she is listening to the music anyway.

Then I started to think about other concert situations. I love some kinds of opera. I’m listening to Handel’s Scipione as I write this.

I realised that I wouldn’t expect to see the soloists supping beer on stage during a performance of a Handel opera. I’ve sung in many choirs and seen many perform, and again, I wouldn’t expect that of them. But I also wouldn’t expect the audience to wander in and out.

But we’re talking about a jazz festival with informal concerts where the audience can walk in and out as it pleases. When I was in a band, we mainly played in pubs. The audience were drinking (and smoking in most cases). People would often buy us drinks.

You may not know this, but in Handel’s day people did wander in and out of concerts (especially long operas) and even played chess during the performance.

Standards

The real question here is ensuring that we are applying standards correctly and appropriately.

In her excellent book ‘The Sceptical Feminist’ Janet Radcliffe Richards gives a very useful example. She asks the reader to imagine two castaways marooned on two separate desert islands. One is lush and green with plenty of resources, the other barren. Would you burn down the foliage on the lush island in order to make the positions of the castaways ‘fair’?

Clearly that would be stupid.

I think it’s the same here. Yes, we don’t expect to see Don Giovanni quaffing a beer whilst on stage. Just as we wouldn’t expect to see Lady Macbeth having a quick swig as she intones ‘Out, out damned spot’.

But a jazz band playing in an informal concert is a very different situation.

What we forget is that very often Don Giovanni or Lady Macbeth could be gasping for a drink. I know that during some choir performances I have been. Just because it’s inappropriate for them in that situation, should we burn down the island of the jazz player?

Are They Professional?

We come back to the word ‘professional’. It all boils down to what we mean by ‘professional’ and if we think someone is ‘unprofessional’ what we really mean. In my view it’s safer to use one of the other words and be much more specific about what we mean.

In essence, calling someone ‘unprofessional’ is a lazy way of insulting them, and possibly making ourselves seem better at the same time. Wolverine’s dad did comment that in his jazz band they never drank on stage.

Other Favourite Dangerous Words
I have many of these, but near the top of the list must be ‘strategic’. It seems to be a word that is often used to denote status.

So often I have coached people who have been told they need to ‘think more strategically’ by managers who were unable to explain exactly what they meant by ‘strategically’.

I was once asked by a new client if I could help her with her department’s objectives. She was in a great hurry. She needed to have them all up on the department web page by Friday morning and it was already Wednesday afternoon.

I asked her how she had come to be in this very tight spot. She told me it was because she had only just been given my number. That wasn’t really what I meant. You’ll love her job title: Director, Strategic Planning.

What’s Really Important

When I discussed the playing of the band with our Wolverine lookalike he did say that he too had found the piece played by Lucien and the pianist to be excellent. To me it was a sublime few minutes. It was so good I would have sat through Uri several times just to hear that.

I think we need to be careful when we are criticising others and giving our opinions. We need to check our motives and be careful of the words we use. It is so much easier to criticise others than to give effective and useful feedback (well, it is till you know how). It can also be damaging and often serves no honourable purpose.

I’d love to hear of your favourite dangerous words and your thoughts on this. Please add your comments here.

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