Tackling difficult conversations is vital to drive your business forward and maintain your productivity

Tackling difficult conversations: it’s all a game

Do you avoid difficult conversations?

You’re not the only one: research shows that many of us opt out of having conversations where there’s a feeling of confrontation.

We worry that we’ll say the wrong thing and make the situation worse, our imagination creates a whole host of scenarios as to how they will react or we simply don’t like feeling uncomfortable, so we delay the conversation or worse ignore it all in the hope the problem will go away.

It’s easy to allow ourselves to believe that going into conflict will create a cost to our business – but avoiding it is more costly. It leaves problematic situations to run unchecked and limits your productivity in the short and long term. Colleagues know you have shirked it and are dissatisfied that you have let them off the hook!

Stop making excuses

If we’re honest, most of us find ourselves putting off those difficult conversations, and we often do it in very similar ways. We come up with justification for our lack of action: “I’ll see if it sorts itself out”, “it might just have been a one-off” or even “it’s better if they work out for themselves where they’re going wrong”.

Essentially, they’re all excuses for avoiding a conversation we don’t really want to have. Recognising when you’re doing this is vital – only then can you stop yourself in your tracks and decide to take action.

Make it a real conversation

Of course, once we do resolve to tackle the situation and have the difficult conversation, we can still run into problems. One of the most common we see in our work is that people try to control the conversation: they prepare for it and plan it out so thoroughly, it’s no longer really a conversation.

For the person on the receiving end, that can be a very negative experience. They don’t feel heard and they aren’t involved in working out how to move forward, so they’re unlikely to engage with it. As a result, the problem isn’t really resolved, resentment starts to build and it’s likely it will all spill out again in future – and will probably be worse than the first time around.

It’s natural to want to feel prepared, but accepting you can’t predict or control the whole thing is an important part of dealing with difficult conversations. You need to listen to the other person and you need to take on board their ideas for improving the situation. You don’t have to have all the answers on the spot, but it’s vital to come back to them with a solution that reflects what they have told you and shows they have been heard.

That may sound like it’s easier said than done. However, there are plenty of ways to improve your confidence in dealing with conflict and ensure everyone comes out of a difficult conversation feeling positive.

The importance of dealing with conflict

According to research by ACAS, 81% of businesses said conflict has a negative impact on performance, 75% said it wastes management time, and 44% said it costs the company money. Yet as few as 61% of businesses said managing conflict was a priority and only half of organisations offered training in conflict management to their leaders and managers.

So companies which help equip their managers to deal with conflict will almost certainly feel the benefit.

Training people to have difficult conversations

You might think there’s no substitute for experience when it comes to getting better at those difficult conversations, but you can train people to be better at them. The key is to do it in a way which is easy to translate to real life so they can use the skills they learn once they’re back in a workplace situation.

Our game-based learning tool, What Would You Do?, is designed to do exactly this. It uses real-life scenarios to get people thinking not just about the best way to tackle a difficult situation, but also how their mindset influences their behaviour and the results they can achieve.

They can debate the merits of different approaches, discuss how their teams might respond to each, and bring in real-life examples of similar problems they have faced. The game encourages people to look at all the options, including their own role in both creating and resolving conflict, and weigh up the best way to proceed.

Creating an atmosphere where those conversations can happen

The beauty of the game is how well it translates to real life. Throughout development, we saw how managers – even those who had been identified as struggling with their role – took on learning from the game scenarios and began to improve their day-to-day approach. Companies testing the game told us it was more effective than any other tool they had tried.

The key is in giving managers the skills they need for real life – not just box-ticking in a training room. By letting them explore the potential impact of different approaches, they begin to learn for themselves that they can achieve more positive results by tackling things differently. This switch in mindset happens steadily during the training process, but it sticks: back in the workplace, their behaviour is immediately improved.

When managers feel confident in handling difficult conversations, they won’t shy away from inviting them. They won’t allow problems to fester, and their team’s productivity is likely to be consistently high as a result.

Equally, if teams know they can take any problem to their manager and have a frank conversation with a positive outcome, they will feel more comfortable raising difficult subjects. Managers who have the skills to listen and engage effectively, and to take positive action, will have a happier, more engaged and more productive team.

Ultimately, there will always be difficult conversations to be had in the workplace, and it’s unlikely anyone will relish the idea of having them. However, equipping managers with the skills to take on any conflict and come out of it with a positive result will help to reduce the impact on the business when they do arise.

If you’d like to know more about how game-based learning could help your managers to take on those difficult conversations, click here, or contact us.

Posted On September 12, 2018 By Ricky Muddimer In Leadership, Productivity /

The Purpose Principle

I was recently visiting a former client’s office: a company I have not worked with for quite some time but where we still have a good relationship and keep each other informed of what’s going on in our respective businesses.

It was great to catch up with people and see some old friends.

The business in question operates in a very competitive market place and as such, over the last five years or so, has managed its people very closely. So I was surprised to hear that they have decided to remove all local management teams. They now have a matrix structure right across the European business.

“How’s that working?” I asked of a few people that I bumped into. Time and again the answer came back: “It doesn’t work, we get no direction, we get conflicting information on what the priorities are and I don’t know who my boss is any more!”

One particular person went even further and said, “Everybody is miserable!”

It raised the question for me: “Why are you here then… Why are you doing it if it makes you miserable?”

Finding our own purpose

Clearly there are many reasons as to why we do the jobs we do or have the careers that we have, but how many people actually stop and ask, “Why am I doing this? What is the purpose for me being in this job?”

Getting to the bottom of our own purpose is enlightening and helps keep us going when times get tough. There can be no right or wrong answer here either.

So, on a personal level: “Why?”

Is it just a job, a task…? For the money, it pays the bills?

There is nothing wrong with this answer. We all need money and have bills to pay. If that is the case then let’s be clear about it: let’s value the money that the job brings and let’s make decisions about how much we are prepared to put up with or give in line with what we earn.

We also need to acknowledge that you could in theory earn money somewhere else. So, does it really matter what the business does as long as it pays well enough?

Developing your career

It could be more than that though. It could be about having a career in a specific industry: working your way through several experiences within that industry and perhaps working your way towards a particular role that you have always wanted to do. Ambition starts to come into play here. Long term goals, stepping stones and learning as you move towards the desired role can all be important.

This can be really exciting because, if you love the industry you are in, you will regularly feel the buzz that it brings you. It might also give you options to move around the different companies that occupy different parts of that industry. So, if it gets a bit miserable at one company or the culture doesn’t work for you, then have obvious places to look within the industry for a fresh challenge.

Passion for your work

For some people, though, it is not about the money or a career within an industry, it is about a vocation or a calling – a passion for doing something that you believe in. Coincidentally, I met a friend on the same day who told me that she had just been interviewed for a new job with an online pharmacy business. Her current role is focused on customer experience within casinos.

She said, “I could really get out of bed in a morning believing that I am helping someone get the medicines they need rather than encouraging someone to gamble.”

The bottom line here for her is that there is a clear connection to an organisation’s purpose and a belief in what they are doing.

Short-term goals and long-term purpose

For the old clients I visited the lack of local management is resulting in people that have lost sight of the bigger picture and purpose as well as the short-term goals that gave them their energy and helped them feel like there were moving the business forwards. They just don’t know how the dots join up anymore.

For some of them it all feels a bit vague.

If individuals feel lost, then of course teams can feel lost, not understanding what their focus should be, what they are having an impact on or even what they are supposed to be delivering.

Finding your purpose

Whether you are doing the work you are doing because it is a job, a career or because it is a vocation doesn’t really matter; each of these reasons have their own purpose for the individual for that moment in their life.

However, if you are leading a team or running a business ask yourself these simple questions:

What is our purpose as a business? Why are we doing this?
Do our people understand the purpose of the business?
Does the businesses purpose align to the personal reasons people have for being here?

In my experience when you ask people “why are you here?” they don’t always know the answer straight away.

For many, it is not something they think about that often. Digging down and discovering our own purpose (whatever it is) can only be beneficial for everyone. It will ultimately allow people to make better decisions and be more resilient when times get tough.

If leaders can articulate the businesses purpose clearly and often, then even teams that are managed remotely and with a light touch can engage with the organisation’s Purpose Principal.

Posted On September 5, 2018 By Richard Armeson In Productivity /

How to increase productivity by getting your team to engage

How to increase productivity by getting your team more engaged

When it comes to productivity, employee engagement is vital: only employees who have bought in to your ‘why’ will be giving their all to help achieve your aims.

When engagement and productivity leave something to be desired, it’s tempting to blame the employee: they haven’t understood, they don’t care enough, their motivation is lacking. However, based on our experience working with businesses across many sectors, we know it’s usually down to management’s failure to help them to engage.

Why are my employees unproductive?

If you’re struggling to get your team to produce the volume or level of work you know they’re capable of, you need to examine their motivation – and the biggest factor in that is their engagement.

When you set tasks or targets, you base these on your ‘why’ – the ultimate aim you have in mind for yourself and for the team or the wider business. You can see a clear link between the work being done and the end goal. Where many leaders fall down is in communicating this with the team they need to achieve it.

It’s true that, to some extent, people are self-motivating: the best employees will want the satisfaction of doing their job well. However, if they can’t understand the part they play in the bigger picture or appreciate the ultimate aims of the business, self-motivation will not be enough to keep them working at their most effective.

In order to buy in to your ‘why’, employees also need to trust you – and to feel that you trust them. If you let them down, go behind their backs or demonstrate a lack of loyalty to them, they will never trust you and will therefore never engage with your aims. Building that relationship of trust is vital, and trusting them to understand and buy in to your aims is part of that.

What can I do to help my employees engage?

This is one of the questions that comes up most frequently in our work, no matter what the situation we’ve been asked to help tackle. While there’s no one-size-fits-all answer, there are some simple steps any leader can take to improve engagement and lay the foundations for better engagement.

Honesty: Leaders often feel they’re doing the right thing by protecting their team from difficult situations and not sharing the full details of a challenge. Generally, the opposite is true. Employees are quick to realise when they’re being kept in the dark and it undermines their ability to trust their leaders. Wherever possible, share as much as you can with them about the wider picture – good and bad – and encourage their input in your plans for the future.

Be on their side: What people want from their managers is to feel they are supported and backed up. Managers need to listen and really hear what employees are saying, then act on it, even if that means taking issues to more senior management on their behalf.

Consistency: Following through what you say you will do is vital. Of course, it’s not always possible as circumstances change, but when that’s the case you need to go back and explain it to your team – taking us back to that point about honesty again. Consistency also means treating employees fairly and ensuring they know where they stand. There’s nothing more frustrating than a manager whose reactions are completely unpredictable.

Recognition: When team members perform well, make sure they know it has been noticed. We’ve all been in a position where we have slogged over a project and then felt our efforts haven’t even been seen – it certainly doesn’t inspire us to put as much work in next time. From a quick word to acknowledge individual effort to a team reward for a job well done, there are plenty of simple ways to make employees feel valued. Even the smallest acknowledgement can have a significant impact.

Development: Supporting team members to achieve their career goals is an important way to increase their engagement. Helping them develop skills in areas that will move them towards their ultimate aim, or putting them forward for opportunities that arise elsewhere in the business, will make them feel you are as invested in their future as they are. It’s a hard thing to do when you have a great team member as it may mean they move on to bigger things, but ultimately you will get more from an employee who feels you value them enough to support their future.

How can I get my managers to improve employee engagement?

Of course, it’s one thing to increase engagement with your own team, but getting managers at other levels to do the same with the people around them can be a bigger challenge.

There are ways to encourage managers to develop a more engaged workforce through training and development – and one of the most effective we have found is to use real-life scenarios. Asking managers to consider different ways of motivating their team and boosting engagement gets them to look at their current approach and consider whether it could be improved.

To support HR and L&D teams to do this, we have developed What Would You Do?, a game-based learning tool that can be used by any business. By posing challenges based on the real issues they may face in their day-to-day life and asking them to debate the merits of different responses, the game helps them not just to behave in the correct way in a training scenario, but to adjust their mindset and influence their thinking in the long term to give better results.

The result achieved through this approach have been impressive and the list of major companies turning to it as a training tool is growing by the day.

If you’d like to know more about how game-based learning could help your managers to develop a more engaged workforce, click here and read about What Would You Do?. To find out more about how it could be used in your business, contact us.

Posted On September 5, 2018 By Ricky Muddimer In Productivity /

How to be productive in quiet spells with the Urgent vs Important square

Important vs urgent: How to have a productive quiet spell

No matter what industry you work in, chances are you have periods when you have less to do.

For a lot of us, those quieter times occur routinely over the summer and at Christmas. These are typically the periods when many businesses are focused on covering staff holidays in the short term rather than embarking on longer term goals such as beginning new projects or making contact with potential suppliers. As a result, businesses across all sectors experience a quiet spell.

It’s common to panic at this point: having spare time is an uncomfortable feeling when you know how closely it relates to your bottom line. There’s a temptation to chase after short-term work just to keep busy, regardless of whether it fits your long-term aims.

But there’s a much better way you could continue to be productive during those quieter weeks.

The Eisenhower Matrix

The Eisenhower Matrix, also known as the Urgent vs Important square, is something we look at regularly with clients when we’re talking about productivity. It looks like this:

More often than not, our time is taken up with work in the top left of the board – it is important and it is definitely urgent. Examples might include responding to clients’ needs or customer complaints, picking up new enquiries, giving instructions to your team or sorting out broken equipment. If you don’t complete them, there will be swift consequences: more complaints, a loss of business or unproductive time for your team.

Our natural instinct is to focus most of our time on this side of the square. The sense of urgency skews our perception of what is important and our workflow ends up being crisis-led: we’re constantly firefighting, rather than working strategically.

Often, when things are quieter, the urgent side of the square is taking up less of our time. Our first instinct is to turn to the bottom-right square: the non-urgent and unimportant tasks. Browsing the internet, wondering if you should get a new laptop bag or reading a magazine could all fall into this area. We don’t need to do them now, they’re not contributing to our productivity, but in those rare quiet periods it’s tempting to do something mindless and allow our brains to switch off.

Focus on Important but not Urgent

Instead, try turning your attention to the top right of the square: the important but non-urgent tasks. These are all the things which make a difference to productivity but for which there are no immediate consequences if they aren’t completed.

For example, strategic thinking and planning are often in this square – along with things like going to the gym. They are important to the business, or to your ability to work well, but there is no direct impact if you don’t do them. As a result, they are often put to the bottom of the list.

What’s your matrix?

When the quiet times hit, your first task should be to create your own Urgent vs Important Matrix. Focus on the Important side of the square and use it to be productive in areas that you often overlook because urgency pulls your attention elsewhere.

If you catch yourself saying, “I’d love to do that, but I never have time” – now is that time. Prioritise the tasks you never get around to but which might make a significant difference to your productivity during busier times. Using quiet spells to lay the foundations for a more efficient workflow or a tightly focused strategy will help you reap the rewards when the busier months return.

Posted On August 17, 2018 By Rob Smith In Productivity /

Why you need a summer holiday to boost your productivity

Why you need to take a summer holiday

As leaders and managers, we all sometimes fall into the trap of thinking we can’t take time away from work.

We worry about what might happen in our absence and we look at our ever-growing to-do lists and decide it would be better just to keep at it. With other team members taking their own holidays, we often feel it’s down to us to provide consistency to the business by staying at work.

Yet there are sound reasons why taking a summer break is not only good for you, but could actually lead to a productive breakthrough that will accelerate your projects and goals.

Change the setting

Research into problem-solving and innovation has shown that we have our best ideas and breakthroughs when our brain is able to make connections between different things. Great ideas are not really ‘a-ha!’ moments; they are more like the collision of different contexts or worlds.

Yet often, when we are trying to see the world differently we do it in the same old environment, surrounded by the same old things. This conditions and limits our thinking to the known; not the best place to make a break through.

To get new ideas, take a break from your normal environment, go somewhere different to spark different thoughts and memories. The more different the location, the more chance the environment will help you see the world differently.

Unleash the subconscious

We also know that our subconscious mind is at its most intuitive when our conscious mind is occupied by a task that is not too taxing. When we are doing something that requires focus, the subconscious focuses on supporting what we are doing. Conversely, when we are not really doing anything, then the subconscious mind is not allowed to wander, as our conscious thoughts become distracting as they wander.

To create the best conditions to allow your subconscious to focus on breakthroughs, new ideas or problem solving, occupy your conscious mind in something engaging enough to keep it occupied, while not too demanding. This is why you have your best ideas in the shower, out on a run or diving the car! So, chilling in the pool, or spending some time playing on the beach with family or friends could be just what you need.

The great outdoors

There is a whole area of psychology that focuses on our relationship with nature. Open natural spaces, especially where there are lots of green and fractal shapes (think plants and trees) create a restorative environment, helping to restore us to our baseline levels.

That sounds a bit technical, but basically the evidence indicates that being in these spaces allows us to reduce stress and recharge. Yet where do we spend most of our time? In man-made spaces, focused on neutral colour tones and straight lines.

In a nutshell, if all you can do is get out of the office and go for a walk in the park, it will make the world seem better. If you can take a few days out to explore more of the natural world, even better.

Accessing positive emotions

On top of this, positive emotions, such as happiness, joy, gratitude and even serenity, enable us to think more widely and see connections and new possibilities. By contrast, negative emotions act to focus our thinking on the problem at hand, limiting the scope of ideas available. This concept of positive emotions was developed by the psychologist Barbara Fredrickson in her ‘broaden and build’ theory which shows how positive emotions help us thrive.

Continuing with the same old routine isn’t going to bring new, positive emotions into our lives. Staying at work day in, day out will just serve to keep us focused on the same old problems. Instead, getting away, doing something different that brings us positive emotions – whether that’s heading out onto the golf course or taking the kids for a day at the beach – will open up our minds to new opportunities.

So if you are thinking that you don’t have time to take a break this summer, that you are too busy, or up to your neck in alligators, then it might be time to think again. Some time in a different environment, especially a natural, restorative space, that gives your subconscious the time it needs to process the challenges and goals you are facing is probably just what you need.

In fact, you probably can’t afford not to go on holiday. If nothing else, it will make you smile, and that alone may be enough to create the breakthrough you need.

Posted On August 16, 2018 By Paul Hutchinson In Productivity /

Five reasons your team are not productive

Do you wonder why your team are not as productive as they should be? Here are five ways you could be running your business with the handbrake on!

Lack of Clarity

It may seem obvious, but for people to be productive, they need to have a clear understanding of what exactly is expected of them, what rules and boundaries they are supposed to operate within and what timelines exist.

Test it: Ask your people to describe to you their goal. Are they specific; is there a calendar date?

In the absence of clarity we are effectively saying we don’t care where we end up! Imagine telling your team we are heading north: exactly where will they end up? Just one degree out at the start can lead to being miles off where we thought we would be by the time we arrive north.

Absence of Purpose

People will add the greatest value when they connect to the guiding purpose. They will generously give discretionary effort when they connect with a higher purpose. Look at volunteers for good causes: they gladly give their time for free! Your purpose provides the sense check for every decision you make.

Test: Ask your people to articulate their understanding of the organisational purpose.

Consider: how well have you articulated your organisation’s ‘why’? In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins describes the value of a corporate purpose. Imagine recruiting your people with all your focus on the ‘what’. If, like many organisations, your strategy needs to change, the connection with the ‘what’ is lost and their commitment is now challenged. However, your purpose should never change and therefore a team recruited to connect with the ‘why’ will happily adapt to a change in strategy: they will see it as necessary to achieve the purpose.

Lack of Autonomy

Being too prescriptive, restricting the space for your people to explore and decide ‘how’ they go about delivering their objectives will feel, for them, limiting and disengaging. This feeling will restrict productivity, and your people will only do what is asked and no more as they are not expected to think. Even in environments that are heavily process-driven to maximise consistency, reduce waste and optimise output, people can be allowed to solve problems or create space for them to work on other areas of the business.

Test: Ask your people what frustrates them most about their work.

Look for opportunities where you can involve your people in improving the business, create mini projects for them to get involved in and make an impact on the company. When set up in the right way, these can provide many benefits; engaged people, improve collaboration & teamwork and tangible business results.

Lack of Confidence

People will hold back or fail even to get started on their objectives when they lack confidence or feel others lack confidence in them. This sense, feeling or perception creates inertia and leads to a waste of time which could cause missed milestones and costly project delays.

Test: Ask your people on a scale of 1-10 (10 is high) how confident they feel that they can achieve their goals. Look for a 6 or above.

A lack of confidence (a number of 5 or less) stems from ‘unhelpful thoughts’. These thoughts are based on assumptions, limiting beliefs and biases. They may not be founded in fact or reality yet we allow them to have debilitating effects on our performance. Externalising these thoughts is a crucial step to removing the interference they cause. This will require you to create an environment where people feel able to share concerns without feeling insecure or threatened.

Frustrating Environment

People get easily distracted, whether it’s internal politics, perceived unfairness in how colleagues are treated or the systems and processes driving them mad. While they are focused on these environmental factors, they cannot be entirely focused on delivering their objectives. As Peter Drucker said, “So much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to work.”

Test: Ask your people, if they had a magic wand, what three things would they wish for to make it easier to achieve their objectives.

Look out for these three areas:

– Internal conflicts – a common cause of conflict is a lack of strategic clarity and purpose. It is this high-level perspective that enables priorities to be established and decisions to be validated. In the event of conflict, who wins out currently? Whose ego dominates?

– Do your systems enable your people to do their job or do they perform in spite of them? Designing your systems around your people AND processes will enable them to be more productive. How many workarounds exist in your business? Have your people accepted and normalised these productivity killers?

– Do the processes that you have spent time and money developing really exist and get followed, or are your people finding other ways to get the job done? Have your processes been over-engineered to meet overzealous interpretations of rules and regulations?

The environment question provides an excellent source of potential value. Your people will happily tell you what’s wrong if given the opportunity – however, this comes with a health warning! Once you ask, you will raise expectations that things will change and whatever you choose to do with the feedback, above all, you must maintain an open dialogue about your decisions and the reasons behind them.

Thinking Focus works with teams and business units in organisations around the world, helping them achieve breakthroughs by enabling them to think differently. Our clients range from medium-sized enterprises to divisions of blue chip multi-nationals.

Working with teams on a specific issue, or across a business unit to drive productivity, we tailor the approach to deliver the desired outcome. We challenge teams to deliver accelerated behavioural change and performance improvements.

Posted On August 8, 2018 By Ricky Muddimer In Productivity / 1

Ten questions to ask yourself if you want high quality leadership

Ten questions you need to ask if you want to develop high quality leadership

by Graham Field

Ensuring high quality leadership within any organisation, large or small, has always been a challenge, and much has been written on this subject. Pick up any leadership book or read any leadership material and it must seem like the Holy Grail is waiting to be found!

From our own extensive research and experience, we at Thinking Focus believe that there are three key areas to focus on to become a quality leader, which in turn will bring about organisational success.

Below, we discuss these three areas, as well as giving tips for leaders to focus on in order to improve performance. When reading the following, consider yourself now against the areas mentioned: where do you see your strengths and where are your development areas? What do you, or others in your organisation, need to concentrate on to become high quality leaders?

Ask yourself our 10 questions – and answer them as honestly as you can. Then act on the information you have to make the improvements needed to achieve your aims.

Shaping The Business: This is about getting any organisation ready for success, and as a leader the key areas for you to work on are:

Creating, and continually encouraging, a supportive, inclusive environment: Environments don’t just happen; they need to be created. The most basic question any leader should be asking themselves is “what type of environment do I want to create?” The most successful organisations worldwide ensure that the environment they create supports everybody – through effective HR policies, great inductions, mentoring and coaching schemes, and other forms of employee engagement. High quality leaders recognise the value of having these in place as a motivating factor and ensure their people are really included in decision making processes.

Shaping your organisational structure and processes for great success: Once quality leaders understand the ‘what’ (environment) they focus on the ‘how’ (structure and process). As a great starting question, and one that should be constantly revisited, these leaders know the answers to “what structure, systems and processes would be the most helpful to support our overall vision/aims?” This question allows leaders to focus on the ‘nuts and bolts’ of their business considering, for instance, whether the structure actually supports people, really is customer focused or can demonstrate attention to quality. High quality leaders know structure and process must help, not hinder, organisational success and implement them rigourously.

Master the fundamentals of your business: Any great leader works at mastering what makes organisations tick – particularly their own – whether this be through self-learning, through mentoring or through development programmes. High quality leaders make understanding “what key business principles do I need to learn and master?” a daily task.

Strengthening The Team: Focus on the people side of leadership, and the importance of developing and motivating the best team a leader can have working with them.

Ensure the team you have has the right people doing the right things: Any leadership text will highlight that leaders need followers – and in the world of the organisation, this is about having the right team. High quality leaders not only recruit the right people, they place them where their skills will be used to maximum effect, ensuring both business success and individual motivation. As a leader, knowing the answer to the three-part question “what does each of my team bring to the party, how effectively are their skills being used and how might their skills add even greater value?” is essential. And this is not a one-time question, but an ongoing one. High quality leaders are constantly aware of the skills mix of their people and move their teams around for maximum success.

Make sure everyone fully understands their role – and how this fits with your vision: There’s a great analogy often used to demonstrate this point about two stone cutters working in a quarry and they are both asked what they are doing. Stonecutter one replies “I am cutting stone” – clearly demonstrating they understand what they are doing. Stonecutter two responds “I am part of a team building a cathedral” – clearly demonstrating they know not only what they are doing, but how it fits with a bigger picture. High quality leaders understand this point and make sure that the people they work with know not only what they are doing, but also why. These leaders ask the question “what can I do to bring my vision to life for everyone?” and then engage everyone in answering it.

Understand that relationships matter: Everyone in an organisation, or indeed who interacts with it, is important – and high quality leaders understand this and work at it. Knowing how to interact with people, how to effectively delegate to motivate and develop people, how to develop a relationship of trust and how to communicate effectively are all important factors that great leaders understand. Answering the questions “which of my people skills need the most work?” or “which relationships do I need to focus on the most?” gives great insight – and helps to forge a development path to gaining new skills, or brushing up on existing ones!

Seizing The Opportunities: Focus on building on all of the above, then allow high quality leaders to be the most proactive they can be and either make the most of opportunities as they arise or, ideally, create new opportunities for success.

Dig around in your organisation – find the opportunities: When everything is running smoothly, as it will be if the organisation has been shaped and the team strengthened, reflecting on how everything is working is a key trait of high quality leaders. Unwilling to rest on their laurels, effective leaders will be constantly exploring how things are working, highlighting areas for improvement and seizing these opportunities. Ignoring the rule of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” they probe what’s going on with a view to continuous improvement. Make answering the question “where is there an opportunity for improvement in this?” one of your daily habits.

Reduce reaction times on vital knowledge – and create sources of information: Opportunities are always presenting themselves through the information that surrounds us – high quality leaders not only make the most of this, but also find ways of ‘being in the know’. Regularly reading trade journals, attending seminars and networking events, following the news, and really listening to what’s being said in meetings are all seen as opportunities to take in something vital before turning it into meaningful action. Knowing something and filing it for future reference may be helpful, but turning that knowledge into an opportunity for creative thinking and speedy action is the way of the high quality leader. Make sure when vital knowledge comes your way you can immediately answer the question,“what’s the most creative way of using this information for organisational success?”.

Make innovative leaps in everything you do: High quality leaders know that unleashing their own creativity, and that of their people, holds the key to so many problems, challenges and opportunities. Creativity is no longer the gift of the select few in organisations: a function of leadership is to harness the creativity in everyone. Most managers and leaders are able to look at where incremental improvements can be made; the most effective leaders look to move things up a gear; consider how to develop creativity and innovation to ensure that they are prepared to make giant leaps, not small steps. Answer “what’s the most creative and innovative thing I can do with this?” regularly – and make sure your creativity skills are topped up at all times!

From working with our clients, we believe that by following the nine tips above, and putting in the time to answer the ten questions within them, anyone can start to increase their leadership capability. You may already be doing some of the above, and only need to work on just a few of the areas. Whichever approach you need, and decide, to take, as a high quality leader make a commitment to do something with the information above!

Posted On July 26, 2018 By Paul Hutchinson In Leadership, Productivity /

How to motivate your employees and increase performance

by Graham Field

One of the greatest challenges that leaders face in the workplace is how to motivate their employees. How best do we inspire and support them to increase their performance?

There are many theories around employee motivation, but in the this blog we’ll be giving practical suggestions that all leaders can put in place immediately.

To start with, we’d recommend that leaders assess how much they understand their team members’ motivations. This can be done simply by drawing up a table like this:

Team Member:

What Motivates Them?

What Demotivates Them?

B:
C:
D:

The challenge is for leaders to see how many individuals in their team they could honestly complete this table for. Our guess is that many would find it a struggle! High quality leaders know these basics and use this knowledge to actively motivate their people, avoiding doing the things that they know cause demotivation.

Let’s now turn our attention to three sources of thought which we think are important in employee motivation, engagement and performance.

Gallup Q12

It makes sense for us to use this commonly-cited source as our starting point. Created by pollsters Gallup, it measures employee engagement and its impact on business outcomes by asking employees to complete a survey. The survey questions cover 12 areas of consideration, which we cannot directly quote because they are under copyright.

However, the questions look at areas such as expectations at work; rewards and recognition; opportunities and progression; relationships between colleagues; materials and resources; leadership and support; communication; belonging, purpose and mission; and quality of work.

Asking questions around these areas are really important and give us a great insight in to some of the motivating factors of all employees (ourselves included). But leaders then need to do something with the information they get from asking such questions.

In fact, they need to then answer some questions themselves! Examples of what they could think about are:

What could I do to ensure that all my people clearly understand what is expected of them?
How could I make praise & recognition a daily habit for my team?
What could I do to ensure everyone is constantly involved with driving the business forward?
What opportunities might I create for growth for my people?

And then, of course, they need to be proactive in committing to actions based on their answers to increase employee engagement and guarantee performance.

Ohio University Research

In 2000, Ohio State University carried out research into Human Motivational Factors (the things that drive our behaviour). Their research highlighted 16 different basic desires that affect behaviour. We think five of these have the biggest impact in the workplace, so let’s look at each in turn:

Curiosity

This is described in the research as “our desire to learn”. For us, this is an important factor in employee motivation. Leaders need to think about their people and the opportunities for learning that are available to them. From our work with organisations, we recognise that many people are given (or forced in to) ‘opportunities’ through training programmes. But, how focused is this development in terms of both what they really need to be a high performer and what they really want for their own development?

As a leader, ask yourself: How could you ensure that the desire to learn is (appropriately) fulfilled in your people?

Independence

This is highlighted as “our desire to make our own decisions” and, in our experience, it’s something that many employees may feel divorced from. Leaders need to consider what opportunities exist for their team members to make decisions. It’s not necessarily always about what they do (these will, after all, reflect your team or company goals), but certainly about how they can achieve them. Many managers will highlight what they need people to achieve, which does give focus. But they will also insist on the way in which things must be achieved, and this can stifle creativity, limit continuous improvement and ultimately demotivate. High quality leaders understand that the ‘What’ may need to be told, but the ‘How’ should be within the gift of the employee to decide.

As a leader, ask yourself: What freedom could you give your people to enable them to decide how to achieve your team goals?

Honour (morality)

This is described as “our desire to behave in accordance with our code of conduct”. More simply put, it’s about ensuring that our values are met in whatever we do. Many people are demotivated by what they see as a lack of congruence between their personal values and how the company they work in is operating. One a leader’s roles is to understand the values of their people and help them to align these values with where their organisation is headed. As a leader, ask yourself: What could you do to ensure there is ‘values alignment’ for your people?

Power

Quite simply, this is “our desire to influence people”. It’s one of the more curious Human Motivational Factors, but it’s something that can be seen every day in the workplace as people strive to gain the buy-in of others for mutual success.

As a leader, ask yourself: How can you use influencing techniques with your team? (this is a whole different blog altogether!)

Order

Something that many of us desire is order – in other words, we crave the certainty and organisation that daily routine and habits give us. We all have things that we do in a certain order, and most of us strive to be much more organised and structured. The number of people we’ve helped with their time and personal management demonstrates how important order is to us. We’re big fans of giving supporting structures and certainties to people, as long as they work, bring about success and allow for individual involvement.

As a leader, ask yourself: What structures or order might your people need, and how could you ensure these are put in place to support your team?

Ron Clark, former ‘Outstanding Teacher of the Year’ at Disney’s American Teacher Awards

We believe strongly that inspiration can come from many areas, and the story of Ron Clark shows us that, no matter what your walk of life, when you’re looking to develop the motivation to perform, there are some simple things you can do.

Ron was a teacher in in a tough New York school when he won his award in 2000. He went on to become a New York Times bestselling author and a motivational speaker on the subject of inspiring educators.

We’ve picked out three of the areas he highlights when talking about motivation in the classroom, which we think continue to be very relevant in the workplace.

Raising expectations

Setting stretching, yet achievable, targets works! People will generally perform to the level that’s expected of them. If we expect little of people, they will match our expectations. The flipside that we, as leaders, can embrace is expecting great things from our employees – and giving them the skills, tools and resources to enable them to meet our raised expectations.

As a leader, ask yourself: What expectations could you set that might challenge and stimulate your team?

Celebration and praise

It seems really easy – and really commonplace – for the negative stuff such as lack of achievements to be brought to the fore. But building in celebration and praise are essential tools in developing employee performance and maintaining motivation.

As a leader, ask yourself: What might you find today that you could praise and celebrate?

Have a genuine interest

We recognise that there is value in having an interest in your people – and, as Ron suggests, this should be a genuine interest. At the simplest level, this is being interested in the response to questions; really wanting to know the answer to “How are you today?”.

As a leader, ask yourself: How could you develop a genuine interest in your team, and how could you show that you really are interested in your people?

As leaders, there is no magic wand we can wave to increase employee engagement and performance. However, one thing we can do is to invest quality time in understanding what makes our people tick. This forms the very basis of any aspect of managing people, and is the building blocks of high performing teams.

We recommend taking time to invest in your people and find out what really motivates them. After all, they really are the best asset your organisation has.

Posted On July 11, 2018 By Graham Field In Article, Blog, Coaching, Continuous Improvement, Culture, Leadership, Mindset, Productivity /

How gamification can help your business

A range of organisations are turning to gamified learning as a way of motivating employees, boosting engagement and driving business success.

The technique allows companies to deliver effective learning content and training strategies combined with an element of fun. Applied successfully, it can help businesses achieve goals and outcomes by using game dynamics to connect with employees, gain feedback and measure performance.

What is gamified learning?

‘Gamification’ is the use of game thinking and game mechanics in a non-game context to engage users and/or solve problems. It uses achievement, reward, creativity and self-expression and then uses points, badges, levels, leader boards and various challenges to motivate employees.

But these mechanisms don’t always make a difference on their own. The focus of the approach needs to centre on individual development – the ‘human aspect’ – to help employees feel valued and enhance their problem-solving skills.

Board games

Many companies apply gamification within their apps, websites or e-learning tools but the good ‘old fashioned’ board game can have equally positive benefits, as well as some extra ones. A key difference is that they bring people together to play and discuss the game face-to-face. This leads to a greater sense of engagement and a more productive session.

When it comes to the way we behave in different scenarios, board games can develop areas such as communication, resolving conflict, team work, creativity negotiation, empathy and decision-making. They can help to increase learning and create a sense of achievement.

As an example of how even ordinary board games can teach us business skills, take Amazon’s best-selling board games in 2017. They include the classic Monopoly, which teaches us how to seal a deal and use negotiating skills as each player looks to build up their position on the board. And the fast-talking description game Articulate is not only a lot of fun but also tests skills of creativity, communication and team-work as players work together to achieve a common goal – with the added, high-pressure element of having just 30 seconds in which to describe as many words as possible.

So think how effective a board game would be that’s specifically created to be played in a business environment, and focuses on work-based scenarios. This was our thought process when one of our clients, world-leading car seat manufacturer Adient, asked us to help find an innovative solution to their management training needs. The result was that we created a gamified learning solution based on a traditional board game, using a simple game play premise to improve leadership skills, engagement, and communication between peers.

What Would You Do? is a scenario-based game which tests decision-making abilities both in an immediately reactive as well as a more considered way. Although points are awarded for preferred answers, enabling participants to move up the board and win, the mechanics of the game are really just a vehicle for generating discussion and debate, and sharing experience and expertise. It allows peers to work through business issues in a fun and engaging way.

What Would You Do? is available to all businesses and is aimed at first line managers, team leaders and supervisors. It also works as a resource to develop graduates and identify management potential.

It was launched in May and received overwhelmingly positive feedback, with the board game approach proving particularly successful in engaging participants and helping to make learning stick.

Posted On June 27, 2018 By Paul Hutchinson In Continuous Improvement, Leadership /

What Would You Do? The launch of our management training resource

Last week’s official launch of What Would You Do? (WWYD) – our innovative new learning and development tool – was a resounding success, with half of the guests instantly arranging company demonstrations or further meetings.

Taking place in London on May 17^th, the launch event welcomed around 50 representatives from major organisations in a variety of sectors, including finance, retail, transport, health, food, law, housing, packaging and public services. It was also great to see representatives of multinational companies, as our vision is to roll the game out not just in the UK but also abroad.

The beauty of the launch event – and a big part of the reason for its success – was that WWYD is best appreciated when it’s played. It takes the form of a board game where participants aim to move up the board by getting points for correctly choosing the most appropriate answer to a variety of work-based dilemmas.

But, as those at last week’s event quickly realised, the game itself is really a subterfuge: it creates a safe environment in which people can reflect on and discuss common issues, sharing experiences and learning from each other, as well as committing to new behaviour. When played between peers, it helps a team to discuss options and best practice, and highlights individuals’ gaps in skills and knowledge, or their management potential. When played cross-functionally, it can highlight incongruities or inconsistencies between different departments and managers across a company.

Playing the game

What Would You Do? gives maximum impact for minimum cost. As outcome-focused behavioural change experts, the team at Thinking Focus created WWYD to enable organisations not only to train their managers effectively but also to drive long-term culture change. Psychological concepts are woven into the game and, when played enough, the scenarios, debate and decisions can turn into learned behaviours which are then applied in the workplace.

The game includes 200 cards, each of which pose a different scenario covering one of eight management topics, to give variety, breadth and depth. The scenarios are split into two types: those which are set against the timer and require quick and test emotional decision-making, and those which are open to debate and result in more logical and rational decisions. The questions are designed to be as ‘grey’ as possible in order to generate the most discussion. Although there are no right or wrong answers, points are awarded for preferred answers.

Teams of up to eight people play the game, overseen by a facilitator. The facilitator role is key to the game, expanding the discussion, offering alternative suggestions, and even pointing out that the best option may not be one of the answers, or it may be a combination of them. Different companies with different cultures will also vary in their choice of the best response. For the launch event, Rob, Rich, Ricky and Graham acted as the facilitators with different teams.

It was fascinating to see how the role and background of each of our launch attendees influenced their answers to the scenarios posed in the WWYD questions. The majority of participants at the launch work in L&D or HR roles, but some are managers within other departments. It led to some interesting and insightful debate – which is exactly one of the main objectives of the game!

It was also great to see people not just talking about what they would do in hypothetical situations, but actually what they have done in similar, real work-based scenarios. There was much nodding of heads and even ironic laughter when some of the dilemmas were read out – showing us that people not only related to the hypothetical situations, but had actually in some cases dealt with something very similar. And, interestingly, some said they would choose one answer, but when the situation arose in real life, they had actually done something different.

The response

The feedback from our guests was brilliant! Here are just a few of their comments:

“I like the simple approach that gives the opportunity for quite deep thinking and discussion.”

“It’s a good tool and catalyst to start conversations.”

“I like the flexibility of it, you can use it at all different levels, flex it to your own business. It’s as useful on the shop floor as it is in the boardroom.”

“It creates genuine conversations, not pseudo conversations.”

“I can’t compare it to anything else really. It’s very interactive.”

“It’s the discussion and the result that’s important.”

“An organisation needs to know the way their managers work things out, and ask: Do we want to keep doing it this way or does this show us that we need to change?”

Inspiration

The launch also heard from Sonia Belfield, Adient’s HR director for Northern Europe. She described how she inspired us to create WWYD and how it has been trialled across her organisation to great success.

She said: “Team leaders are the most fundamental people in our business because they manage the vast majority of people that we employ. For me, WWYD is about helping people to be able to have conversations that make them better managers.”

The facilitator is key

The role of the facilitator is critical to the game, enabling rich discussion between the players. In the wrong hands, people could just end up playing the game and not learning from it. That’s why we give guidance on selecting the right people in an organisation to act as facilitators, as well as offering facilitator training as part of the WWYD package.

Facilitator training takes approximately five hours, and offers guidance on how to make the most of setting the game up correctly and the dynamics of managing the gameplay in the best way possible.

There are some real subtleties about the scenarios, so facilitators need to be able to listen to the answers that are coming back and give reinforcement of any good answers. The training aims to give the facilitator the confidence to be able to deal with different conversations, as well as how to manage the players (for example, how do you deal with the person who doesn’t get involved, or the one who always waits until the others have answered?)

The game also includes a facilitator’s handbook, which includes a debrief of each scenario and offers suggestions for discussion.

Interesting questions

Our launch guests had a variety of questions about the thinking behind the game, and its application within the workplace.

But they also asked about various areas of development, some of which we are already working on, and others which gave us new ideas.

How do you keep the game up-to-date and relevant?

All the scenarios we have created are as valid today as they were 10 or 20 years ago, and they will continue to be so for years to come. But we are looking at adding scenarios based on other issues, such as diversity and inclusion.

We’re also keen to investigate the development of a digital version of the game and – directly prompted by a question at the launch event – will be looking at training facilitators online.

We also intend to create a facilitator community, where facilitators of WWYD can share experiences, issues and ideas with other facilitators from other organisations.

Does it fit in hand luggage on the plane?

This was quite possibly the most unexpected question of the day – although it’s very relevant to organisations with international offices!

The answer is that the fully-boxed version will only fit in the hold – and it’s robust enough to do so – but that flexibility over how the game is played means that the key pieces can easily be packed in to hand luggage.

And finally…

Well, what a great start! We’re now busy following up on all those requests for more information and demos, including some from organisations who weren’t able to attend the launch but are nonetheless intrigued by the benefits that WWYD could bring.

Why not contact us to see what all the fuss is about? Or read more about WWYD: how the game was created, the thinking behind it, and how it works in practice.

Posted On May 23, 2018 By Ricky Muddimer In Article, Blog, Change, Coaching, Continuous Improvement, Culture, High Performing Teams, Leadership, Management, Mindset, Productivity, Psychological Safety, Resilience, Trust /