Dealing With Difficult Relatives at Christmas

December 21st, 2009

Back in 2003 I was interviewed for an article about dealing with difficult relatives at Christmas. I have been asked to re-publish that article, as it is nearly Christmas and some people found the advice handy.

Last week I ran a teleseminar on Feedback. One of the topics that came up from one of the participants was how to give feedback to a colleague who had bullied someone else in a meeting (of Directors) and was virtually boasting about it to others.

I have also had requests for help from people trying to deal with difficult behaviours at home. For all of you, here is the original article plus a few extra bits.

With Christmas Day falling on a Thursday this year, a leading behaviourist says the season of goodwill could actually become a battleground with families being packed together for up to four days.

Nancy Slessenger says, “Christmas is an artificial experience. It bears little resemblance to normal living. It is the one time of year when two or three generations can be packed in a house together. They start with good intentions, but tempers can flare, often sparked by trivial arguments.

“Instead of using the carving knife on the turkey, your thoughts turn to your husband – or his mother!”

But Nancy says there are ways of avoiding such extreme action and simple tricks to prevent family rows from becoming permanent rifts.

Nancy, author of ‘Understanding Misunderstandings’, says “We all know what it’s like to be frazzled in the kitchen when a family member, quite often an in-law, comes in and tells us how to cook the meal!

“Don’t shout. Ignore their advice but turn the tables by peppering them with questions such as – ‘So, what are your thoughts on stuffing? Home made or bought? And what do you cook the roast potatoes in, lard, goose fat, corn oil or duck fat? What do you think of Delia’s recipe? And do you still use Tupperware like the Queen?

“Pretty soon they’ll be sick of your questions and you won’t be bothered ever again.”

Nancy also has advice about handling the Christmas moaning Minnies.

“Don’t try and jolly them out of their misery – use the technique of being even more negative than they are!

“If they complain about the turkey say, ‘Yes, I agree it’s dreadful. We’ll all probably get food poisoning. Let’s throw it away and have some toast instead.’

“Or if they moan about their presents say, ‘Okay, we’ll take them to Oxfam next week if you don’t want to keep them.’

“Adopt this negative technique and they’ll soon stop moaning. If you try and be positive with them, you will make them even more negative.”

Some Additional Advice

That was the article, here’s an extra tip to keep you sane.

Bullies At Christmas

If you have relatives that tend to bully others, set clear boundaries. Be straight about the rules and what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. Bullies are people who are behaving like five-year-olds and need to be treated as such, till they learn how to behave like adults.

The reason they are bullying you is because you are treating them as though they are grown up and allowing them to behave badly.

What’s really sad is that they need love and attention but just don’t know how to get it. Everything they do means they get less love and attention, which paradoxically means they need more.

I spent five hours once coaching a man who terrified his work colleagues. He shouted at me and got very upset. After several hours he complained that ‘no one ever helped him with his problems’.

I asked him ‘I’ve been here since 9am, three hours ago. What do you think I’ve been trying to do?’ He looked at the floor. ‘After all the effort I’ve put in this morning, how do you think I felt when you said that nobody every helped you?’

His face went red and he looked at me and said ‘Sometimes I just need a hug.’ I was completely astonished and noticed that he was near to tears.

What To Say

Take the bully by the horns and be clear on what the boundaries are, just like you would with a five-year-old:

‘You can have your presents when you have finished clearing the table. Only people who help out get their presents.’

It will make your life a whole lot easier over the festive season.

To go with this blog there is s special offer, valid till 4th January 2010. This coupon gives you 25% off any of our products that help you to deal with ‘difficult people’. They are all on this page of our site:

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


To get the discount, just put this into the box asking for the coupon code:  DIFFICULT RELATIVES

Then click the ‘apply’ button.

Let me know what you have to put up with at Christmas and please share your tips on how to do it.

Tags: ,
Posted in Bullies, Difficult People | 2 Comments »

Sir Gerry Does It Again

December 15th, 2009

Last week I watched the first part of another series by Sir Gerry Robinson. This time he was trying to fix Dementia care homes.

Nightmare

He mentioned that his own father had suffered from this awful disease. We were taken to the kind of home we imagine in our worst nightmares; elderly people sat in a lounge staring bleakly into space in silence for hours.

At one point a woman cried out for help for half an hour, and nobody came. Another issue was the way the owners had taken away meals from the staff. The staff are people on almost the minimum wage who work 10 hour shifts.

Let Them Eat Cake

We saw one scene where the particular owner grilled a member of the kitchen staff on half a loaf of bread she had found that had been labelled apparently for the night shift. She was clearly convinced that the crime committed was that this bread had been left for the member of staff not the residents.

Another owner spoke indignantly saying he didn’t want the kitchen staff having to bother with food for the carers when they were supposed to be looking after the residents. This was a man living in a £4m home.

It Doesn’t Have To Be Like This

We then saw a very different home in Warwickshire. The residents were taking part in all kinds of activities; many of the normal daily routines that keep any house going: ironing, setting the tables and so on. It was a huge difference.

We must always bear in mind that this is TV, but even so, as my old friend Elaine would say ‘A blind man on a galloping horse could see that,’

The Manager

We met the manager, a cheerful friendly but above all enthusiastic man, who clearly cared. His approach seemed simple and straightforward.

We compared this to the poor woman managing one of the previous homes. She had had no training in this kind of care. She showed Sir Gerry the forms and files she had to keep on all the residents. These listed out all kinds of statistics designed to make sure they were safe. But as he pointed out, there was nothing about the quality of life.

There seemed to be no notes on the previous lives of the residents – nothing to give the staff clues that they could use in talking to the residents.

Quality of life

There was none. It had been sacrificed on the altar of safety. On a lovely sunny day the residents were all locked inside, for their own safety and we heard that you just couldn’t let them out.

As you can imagine, in the Warwickshire home, things were different. We saw the residents planting pansies and a man who was clearly very disabled in some kind of chair using what seemed to be his only working limb to paint a piece of furniture. He was clearly very happy to be doing something useful.

We saw lunchtime in Warwickshire where staff were sat enjoying their lunch with the residents. At the other homes we saw people being fed.

No Such Thing As A Free Lunch?

When Sir Gerry asked some of the disgruntled staff whose lunches had been withdrawn why they stayed, the answer was simple. It was because they really cared for the residents, in spite of the way they had been treated themselves.

What was heart-rending to me was that these very dedicated people were not given the skills or the opportunities to look after the people they cared so much about in a way that would really make those people happy.

A Free Lunch

We learned that it was no more expensive to run the home in this much more effective way.

And it’s so often the case. In fact, I would go as far as to say that running things well is almost always cheaper than doing it badly. If you find yourself cutting lunches and arguing over half a loaf of bread you really need to question what is going on.

When Gerry suggested to the ‘bread woman’ that she get some tips from the Warwickshire home it did not go down well. She responded aggressively and clearly felt threatened. She didn’t want to be ‘told what to do’.

Sometimes when people are in this situation they just can’t believe there is a solution and assume people are out to get them. Whereas Sir Gerry was just trying to help.

Dementia

As yet there is no cure. But there are things you can do to reduce the risks of getting dementia. Getting exercise, eating fresh fruit, vegetables and fish are all linked to lower risk of dementia. Vitamins C and E also reduce it.

Looking after your brain is another way to slow the onset of dementia. This means you need to keep mentally and physically active. This is not particularly recent research, yet the people in two of the homes featured on the programme were left with nothing to do and no stimulation at all for hours every day.

We know that, when you do this to any brain, within a matter of hours there is deterioration. This is why it’s so important to keep people active after operations and brain damage. Yes, they need lots of rest, but they also need to get their brains working.

Marian Diamond

In her groundbreaking research of many years ago now, Marian Diamond took some rats and put them into different environments. One group of 12 rats had toys to play with and other rats to communicate with in their cage. Another group of rats was put in isolation with nothing to do.

At the end of the experiment, there was a measurable difference in their brains. Those of the rats in the groups (the ‘enriched environment’) had more connections between the neurons than the rats that had been kept on their own.

I remember seeing Marian Diamond, who is Professor of Anatomy at Berkeley, show us diagrams of the neurons from the ‘enriched’ brains and the ‘impoverished’ brains. The difference was quite astonishing. The ‘enriched’ neurons had a forest of branches linking them. The others had a few twigs.

I met Marian Diamond several times at various conferences. One time, I went down to the gym early in the morning (about 6am) and there she was, already powering up and down the lanes in the pool. She then leapt out and did her weight training. She was easily 70 at that time.

We left the gym together and climbed up the stairs (about five floors) to our rooms. You can see some excerpts of her being interviewed here:

The Good Home

At the home in Warwickshire, they are helping their residents to keep those connections between neurons going in spite of their illness. In the other homes the problems are just compounded. But it’s not that difficult to do better.

And that’s the key point from Sir Gerry. You don’t have to be unpleasant or mean. Running things well, and making a profit can be done in a way that is fun and good for everyone. And it’s not hard. Sometimes it’s just a question of having the courage to ask for and accept some help.

If you are in the UK, and would like to watch it, the second and final episode of ‘Can Gerry Robinson Fix Dementia Care Homes?’ is on BBC2 tonight at 9pm (15 Dec). Enjoy.   Let me know what you thin.

Tags: ,
Posted in Brain, Learning, Management Skills | 3 Comments »

Increase Your Efficiency With Little Effort

December 7th, 2009

Recently I talked about being optimistic and how that could improve things. We’ve been doing it here and I certainly do feel more optimistic as a result.

So here’s another very simple thing you can do that really makes a difference. These days it’s called ‘mindfulness’ and is cropping up everywhere at the moment. However, it’s not new. It’s coming up again now because (after thousands of years) there is now the neuroscience to explain why it works which I suspect persuades those who thought it was just ‘fuzzy fluffy stuff’.

But in case you aren’t familiar with it, or would like a refresher, here it is. There are many different definitions. My understanding is that mindfulness is about being aware and in the moment.

The benefits of developing ‘mindfulness’

These include:

  • Stronger immune system
  • Improved ability to focus attention (concentrate)
  • Reduced stress
  • Increased ability to ‘multi-task’

I think most of us would be glad of improvements in any of these areas.

I trained in this years ago, but don’t remember it being called ‘mindfulness’. I can certainly tell you that, over the last 10 years I have had a total of one day off sick (that was made up of two half days).

As you know, I’m always looking for ways to improve, especially ones that are simple and easy to apply, so let me share this with you.

What Does It Involve?

Meditation

One aspect is meditation. At their most basic, many forms of meditation involve repeating a word or sound many times either in your head or out loud. You just let any other thoughts drift in and then away, like clouds. I was told that all I had to do was to do this a couple of times a day and I would see benefits.

I noticed a big drop in stress levels. I didn’t really measure my ability to focus, but I think most people who work with me would say I can generally do that quite well. (Though there is always room for improvement!)

Directing your attention, and holding it in place, re-wires your brain. This happens during the meditation, but just repeating it regularly (daily if possible) changes your brain in lasting ways. The executive systems, including the cingulate cortex, become better at paying attention. This new skill is then applied across everything you do.

Being able to focus your attention is crucial to just about everything you do at work (and probably out of work too).

Wider Awareness

We often do things ‘without thinking’. So we don’t notice what is going on. Simple exercises to improve awareness can have big benefits. Again, they can reduce stress, but they can also help us to notice how we are thinking and improve our thinking.

This skill can help us to spend less time in negative cycles of thought, worrying about things or brooding on past problems.

I learned some exercises in this area from my singing teacher. We did breathing exercises. Now don’t worry, they are not difficult. All you have to do is, when you are walking (preferably outside somewhere nice) slow down your breathing.

One exercise I learned involves breathing in for two steps, out for three, in for three, out for four, in for four, out for five and so on. My teacher could get up to 40 steps for one breath. I have never made it that far.

It doesn’t have to be that hard. You could just have a go at breathing in and out every three steps. As you do it, really expand your rib cage. If you can breathe with your diaphragm, do that.  Notice any areas of tension and relax them. Smile. Pay attention to the objects you are walking past.

Notice the feelings in the different parts of your body as you do it.

Do this for just a few minutes. Even if it’s as you walk along a corridor at work, it’s still useful.

The Research

The reason why this is now becoming so popular again, I think, is because the advanced methods of research available to neuroscientists mean that people can say why it’s working.

The insular cortex becomes better at sensing the interior state of your body, your primary emotions and at recognising the emotions of others, which improves your emotional intelligence.

Focusing on your breathing and slowing it down sends messages to the heart to slow down. Breathing more deeply increases the blood supply to your brain, which increases the oxygen supply to your brain (no bad thing).

Why Do I Like This So Much?

Simple. Because you don’t have to work hard to get the benefits. Amazingly, even just a few minutes a day will give real benefits. This is why I’m passing it on to you. A really simple, completely free couple of techniques that are virtually guaranteed to improve your life. What could be better?

Let me know how you get on. And if you have some exercises you would recommend, please share them here. I feel sure that there are some great ideas out there.

Posted in Improving Performance, Learning | 6 Comments »

Does 360 Degree Feedback Work? What Do You Think?

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.

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

Do Optimistic People Live Longer?

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?

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

Can You Resist A Marshmallow? How do you feel?

November 14th, 2009

You will probably remember the experiments carried out by Walter Mischel about 40 years ago at Stanford University. He gave a group of four-year-olds a marshmallow and promised them another one if they had not eaten the first one when he returned 15 minutes later.

About one in three of the children managed the task successfully.

Enron?

My favourite was the boy who was given a biscuit made up of two halves stuck together with some kind of icing. As soon as the experimenter had gone, separated the two halves and licked the icing, then stuck the biscuit back together again. We wonder if he later became a senior manager at Enron.

In follow up studies Mischel discovered that the ability to wait, or to ‘delay gratification’, is about the most effective predictor of success.  It out performs IQ by a long way.

Why Does Waiting For A Marshmallow Predict Success?

In a lecture I attended recently at the NeuroLeadership Summit, Matthew Lieberman, Ph. D, who works in the field Social Neuroscience, looked at these experiments and explained what was going on in the brain as far as his research shows.

Your Options

When you are trying to resist some kind of immediate reward in favour of a long-term benefit you have various options:

Distraction – Focus your attention elsewhere on something that will keep you occupied. This works because you only have a small amount of space in your working memory to think about anything, so using it up with one thing means you have no space for anything else.  Unfortunately, thought, next time you face the same situation you have to do the same thing again so there is no learning. It also impairs your thinking skills at the time (and even later).

Suppression – (The ’stiff upper lip’ here in the UK.) This can be effective, but is quite hard work. It also increases stress.

Reappraisal – This can work well and give you a new insight into a situation. However, it only works if you believe it. If you do, it can work in other situations too.

Detachment – This can have radically positive or negative connotations, depending on what you do and how you do it.

Walter Mischel was able to teach the children a technique that was effective. He got them to imagine a picture frame around the marshmallow and think of it as a picture. At the age of four, your prefrontal cortex has not developed enough to come up with this idea, but is developed enough to learn it and put it into practice.

The Problem You Face

This is the activation of your amygdala. It’s a part of your brain that is activated when you feel a strong emotion. It’s like your personal alarm system. The more activated it is, the stronger the emotion. So the key is to find a technique that somehow reduces the activation (or turns off the alarm), once you have been alerted.

It turns out that the part of your brain able to do this is the Right Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex (RVLPFC). In someone who is good at keeping their emotions under control, the activation of this area and the amygdala behaves rather like a seesaw. As the RVLPFC goes up, so the activation in the amygdala goes down.

It’s something you can learn to do.

What is even more interesting about this area is that it suppresses other things too. It’s the area of the brain affected by Tylanol or Ibuprofen that reduces physical pain.

So what Dr Lieberman and his colleagues found was that if you are suppressing one kind of thing others are also suppressed.

Feeling Worse

It’s also offers and explanation as to why why, when you are ill or in pain, you are more likely to feel lonely or upset. Or conversely when you are lonely or upset, pain is likely to be worse then when you are happy and cheerful.

Your Grandmother Knew This

As is often the case, it’s the kind of thing most of use ‘knew’ anyway, but it’s good to have a scientific explanation that shows us why it’s a good idea to visit someone who is ill or upset and cheer them up.

Inhibiting Your Response

A friend of mine is currently, very bravely, undergoing treatment to get over her fear of going to Tesco’s (a supermarket here in the UK). Now you may be thinking that you don’t like going there either, but for her, it’s a really serious problem. However, she has been going and conquering her fear. What she’s been doing in effect is training her RVLPFC to take control and it should and she’s making excellent progress.

What’s really interesting is that if I got you to inhibit a physical response; that would also inhibit any emotional responses that you have, because these are all run by that same part of your brain. Once it starts inhibiting it acts on everything. So if you inhibit your desire to hit someone, you will start to feel less angry. Hitting them won’t do that. If you reduce your feelings of anger, it will be easier not to hit them.

Labelling Helps

It seems that labelling the emotions you feel activates the RVPRC and prompts it into suppressing unhelpful emotions. Interestingly this is more effective for men than it is for women.

Dr Lieberman thought this might be because women talk about their emotions more than men in general. I think most of us would agree to that. What is particularly interesting is that, when asked, people say that they don’t think talking about how they will feel will help. But when he measured the activation of the amygdala in their brains, it clearly did help.

So come in guys, tell us how you feel! It really does help.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

What Have You Achieved?

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?

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Communication, Training | 2 Comments »

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

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 »

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

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.

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

Are You In The Talent Pool?

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 »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »