Archive for the ‘Training’ Category

A Lesson In Learning

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

Last week I mentioned a bit about learning to write ‘academically’ and also to ski. This week I would like to expand a little on this topic.

We went skiing with friends over the break. One of those we have been skiing with often is my friend Sam. He is 16 and I have known him all his life. I was there ten years ago for his very first skiing holiday.

Since then his level of skill has rocketed. He flies effortlessly down the slopes, swaying elegantly.  It is a joy to watch him skiing.

How Did He Do It?

How has he reached such a level in ten years? Well, there are two main reasons.

Lots Of Practice

The first is that he has been on many skiing holidays since that first year. Some years two holidays, perhaps even three. I’m afraid practising is really useful when it comes to learning a skill. But it’s not all.

Approach To Learning

The way you approach learning makes a real difference too.

You Learn By Your Mistakes

How often have you heard this? It is rubbish. But it’s close to the truth. Let me tell you more about Sam’s approach to skiing and you’ll see what I mean.

He Doesn’t Mind Falling Over

I don’t think I have ever heard Sam complain about falling over in all the years I have seen him skiing (and falling over). When it happens, he just gets up and gets going. Often he laughs.

He Is Always Trying New Things

Last year Sam was keen to try some complicated jumping. We went to the ’ski park’ and he tried many times to jump and do various twists at the same time. It looked really hard but he didn’t give up.

He fell over lots of times and didn’t end up achieving his goal before the end of the holiday, in spite of many attempts.

But that didn’t dampen his enthusiasm.

Playing It Safe

You don’t learn from your mistakes, you learn from trying out new things and finding ones that works. The key to learning from these situations is not being worried or embarrassed about making a ‘mistake’.

Knowing Your Limitations

One of the things you often come across on skiing holidays is people keen to show how good they are by being very ‘macho’ and hurtling down black slopes. Funnily enough, Sam wasn’t bothered about doing the black slopes. In fact, I don’t remember him being that concerned about doing them last year either.

He clearly doesn’t feel the need to prove how good he is.

Asking For Help

Another thing you notice about really skilled people is that they don’t mind asking for help. I suspect that’s probably one of the ways they have become so skilled. They’ve just asked for help when they needed it or wanted to know something.

So often I see people who don’t want to do that because they think of it as a sign of weakness.

Speaking German

We were in the German-speaking part of Switzerland for our holiday this year. As we had dinner one evening, Sam asked me how it was that my German was so good (it is compared with his).

I had to laugh when he asked. His German is very poor (he has less than 10 words available to him I think) in spite of three years of lessons. I explained to him that the reason I am still able to communicate in German some 30 years after learning it at school later is because I have used exactly the same technique as he has used in skiing:

I use every opportunity to practise, I don’t mind making mistakes and I’m happy to ask for help when I need it. In the many queues for the ski lifts I practised translating the posters just for a bit of fun.

The Key Lesson

So here’s the main point. There are probably areas in your life where you are applying Sam’s great strategy for learning to ski. But there are probably other areas where you are applying his strategy for learning German (do no work, take no risks, avoid at all cost).

Perhaps you could gain a great deal by changing your strategy and trying something new or taking a few risks. Research tells us that risk-taking is one of the best ways of improving performance, second only to getting clear accurate feedback. It even comes above having clear objectives. So have a go.   Let me know how you get on.

Do you think it’s good to take risks?

Posted in Improving Performance, Learning, Training | 2 Comments »

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 »

Do Optimistic People Live Longer?

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

Last week I was speaking to a group about Emotional Intelligence, NLP and Neuroscience. A discussion started up about the link between positive thinking and longevity. People were asking if it really made a difference to your health.

Then by coincidence there was a programme on the radio about a similar topic: learning to be optimistic.

The Nuns

You may be familiar with a study on some nuns that was carried out some time ago. When they joined the convent they were each asked to write a short autobiography. 70 years later the words they put into that text were analysed and linked with their longevity.

About one third used positive words; the others did not. It turns out that of those who used positive, optimistic words such as ‘eager’, ‘happy’ and so on, 52% were still alive at 94. Only 11% of those who did not use those words were still alive at that age.

As a result of this, people asked if you could train people to be optimistic. And if you did, would it have a similar impact on their longevity and a positive impact on their lives.

It turns out that it does improve lives.

Teenagers

According to Professor Martin Seligman if teenagers are trained in optimism, they reduce their chances of depression by about 50%.

Not only this, but optimists tend to do better than they are expected to in exams and succeed in other areas of their lives as well. Pessimists tend to do worse. Which I imagine leads them to conclude that they were right all along.

How Annoying

No doubt this is annoying for the pessimists, but Professor Seligman’s research indicates that they would be better off learning to be optimistic. This is what they have been doing at Wellington College and claim that their ‘A’ level exam results have improved quite substantially.

So, What Can You Do?

It’s not about being completely unrealistic, he says.  Here are a few things you can do.

The Worst Case Scenario

One key thing is to identify what is the worst that can happen and what is the best that can happen and then re-assess the situation.

Professor Seligman also points out that you don’t want overly optimistic pilots. He suggests that if the worst that could happen is disaster, then you don’t want an optimist. However, if the consequences of failure are not disaster, it’s good to be optimistic.

Notice what is going well in your life

Write down things that have gone well in your life on a daily basis,  or three successes, before you go to bed. Not just ‘counting your blessings’, but reflecting on them; looking at why they went well. They only need to be small things, apparently.

I remember Peter Honey talking about this kind of thing years ago. I found it quite a revelation. He pointed out that we spend much of our time looking at what has gone wrong and why. But this comprises a very small percentage of our experience. So we are limiting ourselves to learning from this small area instead of looking at what went well and learning from that.

This is a very useful strategy I have used ever since.

So, on hearing about the ‘three successes’ strategy I decided to try it out that evening. The very next day I noticed quite a strange effect. I was out on my normal Sunday run, which is traditionally slightly longer than my usual one during the week. As I ran, listening to an excellent play with Geoffrey Palmer in, I wondered what I was going to include that evening in my three successes.  I found myself working out how the run could be included. What would I have to do to make this run successful?

This is a very different thought to the usual one of ‘How can I prevent myself from stopping and taking a rest or just doing a short run?’

Resilience training

Another area is resilience training. This is all about having the mental skills to deal with the difficult situations in your life. Much of this is what is called ‘Emotional Intelligence’, which includes being able to get yourself into the right emotion for the situation you are in.

Put things into perspective

By this, I don’t mean the ‘Total Perspective Vortex’ of ‘Hitchhiker’s Guild to the Galaxy’ fame. It’s a bit easier than that.

A client of mine came to me because she was ‘useless at meetings’. I asked her to outline what had happened. Sure enough she gave me an example of a very difficult situation with another participant who had got quite aggressive. She hadn’t been able to deal effectively with it.

I asked her if this happened with everyone or just this particular person. She told me it was just him.

‘How many meetings have you had with him where there had been this problem?’ I asked.

‘Four.’ She told me.

I then asked her how many meetings she had a week. It was in the area of 25. I asked her how long she’d been working.  It was around 10 years. ‘So that’s about 1250 a year, and over 10 years, 12,250, roughly.’ I said. ‘And you’ve had a problem with four.’ She nodded.

‘And what is your degree?’ I asked.

She started to laugh, till tears were rolling down her cheeks. ‘I’m a statistician.’ She confessed.

That’s what I mean about putting things into perspective.

Have A Go

It may be you are already a generally optimistic person, but if not, have a go at one of these techniques. After all, what’s the worst that could happen?

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Posted in Improving Performance, Learning, Training | 7 Comments »

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 »

Should learning be fun? The government doesn’t think so

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

When I was about nine, I came home from school one day to find that we had a family living in our spare room. They were black South Africans who had escaped apartheid. The mother, a wonderful woman called Amy, and her two children, Sheryl and Karl, lived with us for about a year, till Basil, Amy’s husband, was able to escape from prison.

Sheryl and Karl joined my brother and me at our school. They didn’t perform very well at the beginning, both coming near bottom in their classes in maths.

Improvements

Over the next term they joined in with the games we played at home, many initiated by my father, a skilled maths teacher. They all involved doing some kind of mental arithmetic, though this part of the game was never stressed, it was just taken for granted.

Our favourite game, which we would beg my father to play, was traditionally conducted while we helped him with the washing up. It generally started with the phrase: ‘Think of a number…’ You would then be led through various mental acrobatics. At the end of the game my father would ask you what the number you had was. ‘Seven’ you might answer.

‘The number you first thought of was ten.’ My father would respond. We would gasp with delight and wonder how he did it. Then we would beg him to do it again.

Helping dad with the washing up was a real treat. I’m serious.

By the end of their first term with us Sheryl and Karl were up there with the maths test results, coming around 2nd or 3rd in the class compared to 32nd or 33rd.

A Report

So you can imagine how pleased I was to hear of a report; the Cambridge Primary Review, produced recently here in the UK, that dared to suggest that there was too much emphasis on formal education in the early years and that, up to the age of six, there should be more ‘play based learning’ in schools.

Excellent, I thought.

Not only does my experience tell me that the Cambridge Primary Review has got it right, but the neuroscience I have spent the last 15 years learning about also indicates that this is the right way to go. I often wish I had known what I know now about learning when I was a student and back at school. As I write this I am on my way back from a neuroscience conference.

There has been fantastic research in this area. One of the key findings is that learning should be fun. In fact, if it is, you learn better. This is because, when your brain perceives a ‘threat’ (which can be anything you don’t like) it is less able to learn than when it is in the ‘approach’ state (feeling happy or positive).

In the ‘approach’ state, you have the capacity in your prefrontal cortex (PFC) to learn. Otherwise, space is taken up in the PFC with worrying and other negative thoughts.

Playing vs Learning

What we are talking about here is play-based learning. Dame Gillian Pugh, who co-authored the review, explained that play-based learning was not a “wishy-washy, ‘just let them get on with it’ thing”. “It’s a balance between children-initiated and adult-initiated learning,” she said.

The trouble is there are many people who don’t understand that. When I was at one of the excellent ‘Learning and the Brain’ conferences in Boston a few years back, I met a teacher, Penny. She was extremely enthusiastic. She loved the conference, where neuroscientists come along and talk about their research to teachers to explain what their research tells us about learning and how best to go about it.

Penny told me the sad story of one of her brightest pupils. Penny had been to a previous conference and taken on board many new ideas. She had gone back to her school and implemented lots of them.

Most involved using all the senses, involving the children and getting them to play ‘games’ through which they learned key concepts and ideas. The children loved the new games and the improvements in results had been dramatic.

Unfortunately the parents of this one poor girl had complained and said that their daughter was not to take part in these ‘babyish’ activities. So the poor girl had to sit on her own, while all her friends were having fun, working in her exercise book. Penny had completely failed to get across to the parents that these new tools improved learning rather than the other way around. Her parents were unable to comprehend that a love of learning is a gift for life.

A Step Backwards

It would seem that our government has a similar lack of understanding. They have dismissed the ideas in the report as ‘a step backwards’. Unbelievable.

For some reason other countries in Europe mainly do adopt this approach, it is we who are behind.

Why Don’t They Read The Research?

I will be writing to my MP about this and I know he will write back, as he has replied to all my previous letters. He usually has good answers too. But I’m really struggling to think how he can possibly answer this one well.

Another Example

I was recently working with a client on a ‘Staff Development Day’ for her organisation. She needed people from different sites to come up with ideas around specific situations.

She was planning to provide a flip chart and pens. I suggested she also provide some magazines, scissors and glue. A sad expression passed across her features.

She told me that, whilst the staff at her site had enjoyed this technique in the past, the staff from other sites had seen these tools as ‘childish’ and refused to use them. They felt this kind of thing was beneath them.

Dendrites

The job of any educational institution, school, college, university or training department, is to help learners to grow new dendrites. Dendrites are the links between your neurons. Even as you read this, new dendrites will be forming, linking hitherto lonely neurons together in your very own head.

Well, when I say ‘lonely’, a neuron can be connected to 10,000 other neurons, so I am exaggerating a bit.

If you are a trainer or a coach or fertilise learning in any way, this is your ultimate goal. It’s just like your old teacher told you. You are creating paths through a forest and the paths most trodden are the ones that form memories and learning.

Why Do Some People Think It Must Be Hard Work?

I can only imagine that they themselves had unpleasant experiences at school when they were younger and feel that, because they suffered, so should everyone else. Or perhaps they believe in the ‘no pain, no gain’ mantra. Whilst this may be true for exercise, it’s not true for learning.

Unpleasantness of any kind reduces the ability to form new memories, to be creative and to problem-solve. The opposite is true of positive emotions and what is called the ‘reward state’ in the brain.

Making Success Easier

If you can help people to be happy at work and in a learning environment, your results will improve. It’s not that hard, give it a go.

Let me know what you think abou this? Do you agree? Or should learning be hard work?

Posted in Learning, Training | 14 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 »

What Do You Need To Know About Managing Performance?

Monday, October 5th, 2009

A Really Good Manager

One of the best managers I ever had the good fortune to work with was Ken, who was the production manager where I was the manufacturing director.

I am convinced he was virtually telepathic. He always seemed to know about everything before anyone else. He had the ability to walk onto the shop floor and know instantly if there was a problem.

One day a member of another team in my department came to see me. He asked me if I knew that one of the lads in the production department had been ‘bothering’ one of the younger women. Apparently he had been following her home and kept asking her out.

I was thrilled. At last, I was ahead of Ken. I wasted no time. I thanked my informant and went straight to see Ken. I was trying hard not to let a grin of satisfaction intrude on the conversation – after all it wouldn’t look good if I was smiling when I broached the subject with Ken.

‘Ken, did you realise Paul is causing a few problems with Marie?’ I asked innocently, holding my breath as I waited for him to ask me what it was about.

‘Spoke to him yesterday.’ Said Ken. ‘I think that’ll be an end to it.’

I have no idea how he did that. However, the rest of his tools were more obvious to we mere mortals.

What Is Managing Performance?

Managing performance is what a manager’s job is all about. He or she is responsible for getting the performance they need from their team.

Unfortunately not every manager is like Ken. Over the years I have encountered many examples of very skilled managers and also many examples of the complete reverse.

We have often been asked to run workshops on various aspects of managing performance. These cover anything from dealing with poor performance to delegating and empowering people.

New Tips Booklet

After several prompts I thought it was about time I put all the key points into a tips booklet to go with the others, but covering aspects of performance management that are not included in our material on objective setting, performance reviews, motivation or giving feedback.

However I want to make sure that we get everything that you need into the booklet.

So now it’s over to you.

What Do You Want?

What are your most important questions about this area? What is it you’d like to know? Or what would you like the managers in your company to know?

Please let me know by adding your ideas to this blog so that others can see them for inspiration.

One of the biggest problems many managers face is not being able to deal with poor performance. Probably about 90% of the performance issues I come across could have been tackled easily if they had been dealt with at the initial stages. But many managers either don’t notice or hope they will go away. I think this is because they don’t know how to tackle problems.

So let me know what it is you’d like to see in this new booklet – if it’s about tackling and spotting problems or about how to set things up so you don’t get them.

We have always had a great response from you whenever we’ve asked for your thoughts on these kinds of areas so I look forward to getting your questions and ideas and perhaps an interesting discussion on the blog.

Many thanks in advance.

Posted in Improving Performance, Learning, Management Skills, Objectives, Training | 13 Comments »

Is Your Memory Fading?

Monday, September 14th, 2009

A few weeks ago my mother called me to let me know my father had forgotten something. I was a bit surprised. I wondered why she was calling me on such a trivial matter.

Then it became a bit more obvious. She was just letting me know because he never forgets things, so that I would know for future reference. I quipped that she should try living with my family who I constantly have to remind about most things.

My father is in his 80s now so I suppose he’s allowed to forget the odd thing here and there. Once she had reminded me, I realised that, yes, I couldn’t remember him forgetting anything. He just seems to have that sort of brain.

I remember asking him once how he remembered things. He laughed and told me how he had explained to someone a way of remembering a particular number. The number was 119. ‘It’s easy.’ He told them. ‘It’s just 7 times 17.’ I laughed at that point (he’s a mathematician). Funnily enough I’ve been able to remember that ever since.

Then I started thinking about my own family and why I’m constantly having to remind them about things. So I decided to do something about it.

When you get stressed, this can have a bad impact on your memory and you start forgetting things like a birthday or where you put your keys. As many people are stressed at the moment I thought it might be useful to share a couple of strategies with you.
I’m running a workshop on this soon for one of our clients. It’s not for a month, and it’s already full, so I suspect there are quite a few people keen to improve their memories out there.
What’s great about the course is that, whenever I run it, people are already reporting improvements after just three hours. It’s all simple stuff that you can use safely at home, so here are a few tips for you.

What Most People Don’t Know (or have forgotten) About Memory

People who have good memories don’t just do it ‘automatically’ they have ways of remembering things.

These techniques can be learned by anyone, no matter how old they are.

An Easy Strategy

I taught my daughter one of these techniques. After just a couple of hours she was able to remember a list of 20 unrelated items in about 3 minutes.

I set her a task of being able to remember 30. A day later she was up to 28 and the following day she was able to remember 30.

I won’t pretend she was keen to learn, but she was certainly pleased with her new ability once she’d done it.

A Bit About Your Memory

Memory isn’t just one system; it’s lots of different systems. Most people with poor memories are just relying on one. That’s a bit like only having one route to a destination. When there is a block on that route, you can’t get there.

Having many systems means that even if one route is blocked you can still retrieve your memory through another route.

Some of Your Memory Systems

* Visual – you remember what something looks like
* Auditory – you remember the sound
* Procedural – the memory in your muscles of what you do – like inputting your PIN into a key pad or riding a bike
* Smell – the only sense that connects directly to the brain
* Contextual – where you were or the context for a particular event
* Emotional – what you were feeling at the time – humour is one of the most effective for memory

Any good memory system uses as many of these as it can.

A Simple Memory System

The first system I taught my daughter is one with numbers. You simply write down each digit from 0 to 9 and turn each one into a picture of your own choosing. So ‘0′ could be a plate, ‘1′ in my case is a bottle of beer, and ‘2′ a swan.

Once you have finished your pictures you need to memorise them. However, this should be reasonably easy; you are able to use several systems:

* Visual – you remember the picture you drew
* Auditory – talk to yourself while you do it or, better still, think of a sound that links to the picture
* Procedural – you have physically done it
* Smell – if you have used something with a scent
* Contextual – where you were when you came up with the pictures, or some context around the number that is meaningful
* Emotional – if you make the pictures funny in some way or interesting, they will be more memorable

Once you have done this, then whenever you need to remember a list of items, or even tasks, you simply link each one somehow with one picture. Do your best to make it funny and include sound and some kind of movement.

Another Technique

It turned out my daughter had used a different technique to get up to her list of 30 items. It’s one I had come across years ago called the ‘Roman Room’. You simply remember a room, (or a building or place, like your garden) and put the things you are trying to remember in places in that room. Then, to remember everything, you simply take a mental walk around.

Personally I have never managed to get it working satisfactorily and prefer the numbers method. But she found this technique worked better for her. The key is to find a system that works for you and use it.

But It’s So Much Effort

Yes, the initial stage of learning a system is a bit of an effort, I concede that. But it’s worth it. When you know you can remember things, you feel more confident and your stress levels go down. And, most importantly, life becomes easier because you are able to remember things.

Once you get used to using a memory system, it becomes easy.

You can find these techniques and many others in Tony Buzan’s excellent book ‘Use Your Memory’.

If you do any training or educating of others, you can find out more about your memory and how to help participants remember what they have learned in ‘Memory Tips for Educators’ by Lew Miller, one of our range of booklets. To find out more about Lew’s book go to

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

where you will find that and my booklet on improving your brain.

Remember

There is always something you can do about your memory. It’s a system that can be improved with a little effort. In fact Tony Buzan claims that if you put in this effort your memory can actually improve with age rather than getting worse. I agree with him.

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It’s only June

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

My father was a head teacher for many years. As a result of this he was good friends with our head teacher (or ‘Headmaster’ as we called them in those days).

Although I was not very fond of ‘The Beak’, as he was known to us, my father had a great respect for him and his level of skill. One story he told us about The Beak was of his first teaching job. The Beak died a few years ago now at about 80, so he must have been looking for a teaching job around 1940. This was no easy task.

He was a good historian and also well qualified in French. His wife was French. But still jobs were hard to come by. Eventually he was offered a post. The head, on offering him the position, told him that he would be teaching History, French and German.

‘But I don’t speak German.’ was his swift and worried response.
‘It’s only June.’ came the answer.

So The Beak learned German and, apparently, was merely paragraphs ahead of his pupils at times. My father is German and assures me that the Beak’s German was very good.

A Similar Example

I was reminded of this story when I listened to some extracts from a book by Professor Eric Hawkins; Journey Into Language.

He described the same situation in teaching pupils Spanish. He said he enjoyed discussing questions of grammar with them and working on the answers together and commenting on the inadequacies of the explanations in the textbooks.

Most of all he comments that it was much easier for him to understand the difficulties of the pupils when he himself was facing them.

Understanding

That last thought of Professor Eric Hawkins reminded me of an incident years ago when I shared a house with two friends. It was in the early 14th Century before mobile phones (though we did have a TV). We all shared the one phone in the house. Each of us religiously wrote down the length of every call, noted what type of call (long distance, local etc) and put our name by it.

Every three months, when the bill arrived, I would add up all the calls and allocate the payments accordingly. As a testament to our honesty, this system proved that we were pretty good. We were usually within a pound or two of the actual bill.

As a testament to our mathematical skills it was a bit more worrying. Neither of my cohabitees was capable of adding it up correctly.

A Shock

So you can imagine my surprise when Steph told me that she was changing her career and retraining as a Maths teacher. I could hardly stop laughing. ‘But you can’t even add up the phone bill.’ I said.
‘Yes, and that’s why I’m going to make a great maths teacher. I know what’s it’s like not to understand maths in a way that you could never know’ she shouted at me.

I was really put in my place. It was an extremely useful lesson and one I have put to good use as a trainer and coach ever since.

Something You Find Difficult

I have made it a policy to always be learning something I find difficult. The reason for this is that when you are teaching others something you find easy, it is very easy for you to forget what it’s like for them. And this does not make for good teaching, training or coaching.

It’s very easy to criticise other for all kinds of things – we all do it. What’s far more difficult is to give them feedback that will help them, structure our training in ways that will make it easy for them to learn and set up systems that encourage the behaviours we want rather than catch people out when they go wrong.

It’s difficult but I believe it should be the goal of every manager. (And probably parent too….)

Just a Suggestion

So today, if you should find yourself about to criticise someone else, spend a few moments working out what you could do to make it easier for them to do a good job instead – and then put it into action.

Then, look at what you could learn that would be challenging to you.

For ideas go to
http://www.vinehouse.co.uk/brainshop.htm

You’ll find lots of ideas in my booklet ‘Boost Your Brain in Your Spare Time’. Not only will they help you to understand the issues others sometimes have, they will also improve your brain. What a bargain.

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