Author: Formium

  • The magic of freedom?

    The magic of freedom?

    British training company Happy Ltd has been rated best for customer service and work/life balance among many other awards. Henry Stewart, Chief Executive, has written a book about the story of Happy and its achievements. The book has a clear tone, comes with real-life examples, provides evidence where required and poses thought-provoking questions – overall an enjoyable read. From the title you can guess you will find a public declaration of the methods, views and motives of the author.

    Stewart’s Happy Manifesto is based on ten points:

    The-Happy-Manifesto

    Most of the points are about giving freedom to your people and trusting them. With his book Stewart aims to help the reader put in place the structure that makes freedom and trust possible in his/her organisation.

    The Happy Manifesto shows an aspirational alternative, it can help some managers and organisations but it is still not a panacea which will “Make Your Organisation a Great Place to Work – Now!” Don’t get me wrong, it is a great book, the idea has potential but I can’t see how it could be applied in every case. I find it hard to believe that all employees can work without rules, and in my experience not every manager has the freedom to influence the structure, choose their people and put together a dream-team. If managers don’t have the freedom to choose people for their team, or if they inherit an existing team with set preferences and habits, further work will be needed before they can provide the level of freedom suggested.

    It is apparent throughout the book that Stewart believes in guidelines rather than rules. He says managers don’t give enough freedom to their staff and it could be much more effective if your people made most decisions themselves. Stewart describes the hierarchy of management needs, based on Maslow’s well-known pyramid, which highlights workplace safety, comfort, reward and communication as necessary but insufficient for motivation.

    Stewart proceeds to expand on organisational approaches to develop challenge, support, trust and freedom as the management behaviours leading to high performance.

    Book details:
    Henry Stewart: The Happy Manifesto: Make Your Organization a Great Workplace;
    Kogan Page; 1 edition (3 Jan. 2013)

  • 5 of the best… leadership blogs

    5 of the best… leadership blogs

    We believe that great leaders are made not born. We have brought together a list of 5 thought-provoking blogs which can give you ideas to develop your skills and guidance on your leadership journey.

    1. LeadPicture1ership Freak: Dan Rockwell empowers you in 300 words daily. Enjoyable and makes you think, reading this blog could become an important part of your daily routine.

     

    2. Dr Wayne W Dyer: If you woPicture2uld like to focus on your personal leadership or self- development, this blog could give you some great tips and ways to motivate yourself.

     

    3. Tanveer Naseer: ThPicture3is blog’s main focus is on helping managers to improve their leadership and team management skills, helping them identify the fulfilling purpose of their work.

     

    Picture4

    4. Management Excellence: Art Petty’s blog focuses on developing leadership skills by concentrating on professional presence. Critical thinking is also a central theme on this site.

     

    Picture55. Three Star Leadership: This blog is aimed at leaders at all levels. Tips, lists, strategies to help managers to perform at a higher level.

     

    Picture6We could not complete this round-up without including Gordon Tredgold‘s leadership blog. Hear more from Gordon in our interview.

  • Showing your appreciation

    Showing your appreciation

    Whatever you think of Valentine’s Day, it is mid-February and love does seem to be in the air. In this article we look at the five languages of appreciation you can use to show your ‘love’ to engage and motivate your colleagues.

    Making your employees feel valued is an essential skill for any manager – but what is the best method to express appreciation for a job well done or gratitude for a commitment to quality? Length-of-service awards, employee-of-the-month recognition and merchandise rewards do not always appeal to everyone in the whole organisation.

    In their book The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace, Dr. Paul White and Dr. Gary Chapman highlight that different people have different ways they find appreciation most meaningful. They suggest you will get the best results if you choose the approach to recognition most valued by the recipient.

    According to White and Chapman, the five languages are:

    Words of affirmation

    Praise, thanks and specific positive feedback shared one-to-one or in front of a group.

    Quality time

    Time spent in conversation, mentoring or working together – some of your colleagues feel valued if you take the time to spend with them.

    Acts of service

    Supportive actions, helping out when needed – some of your people will strongly feel that actions speak louder than words.

    Tangible gifts

    Giving the right gift that the recipient wants, which may be time off or a development opportunity, can send a powerful message.

    Appropriate physical touch

    A handshake of congratulations or a sincere pat on the shoulder.

    By showing sincere appreciation and personal recognition to your staff you can enhance engagement and motivation.

    Our challenge to you is this:

    How can you express appreciation more often – and in the ways that are most valued by your colleagues?

  • Join us for the 2016 Strengths Challenge

    Join us for the 2016 Strengths Challenge

    Can you hear it? There’s a revolution occurring in our workplaces, and it’s being led by employees – want to join in?

    If you’re fed up with a job that drains your energy, a boss who undermines your confidence and the financial handcuffs that rob you of making the choices you desire, there’s a campaign underway and it’s aimed at restoring people’s happiness.

    It’s called the 2016 Strengths Challenge and we are delighted to be supporting it.

    You see, a decade ago 63% of us believed we’d grow most at work in our area of weaknesses. As a result, only a third of us could name our strengths – those things we’re good at and enjoy doing.

    But today it’s all changing.

    Earlier this year it was discovered that 64% of us now believe building on our strengths will make us more successful at work. In the 2015 Strengths@Work Survey people who said they had the chance to use their strengths each day at work reported:

    • Being more engaged and energized
    • Believing what they do makes a difference and is appreciated
    • Feeling like they are consistently flourishing

    How are they pulling it off?

    Join Michelle McQuaid, the VIA Institute, Live Happy and people from all over the world for a one-week strengths challenge and find out how just 11-minutes of doing what you do best each day can make all the difference in your job.

    All you have to do is register your details here  and get ready to feel more confident, engaged and happy at work starting on 8 February 2016.

  • Book Summary: Switch – How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

    Book Summary: Switch – How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

    Over the last few decades a dispiriting body of research has been amassed, which suggests that the vast majority of change programmes fail, or fail to reach their intended outcomes. In their book Switch – How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, academics Chip and Dan Heath address this challenge head on.

    The authors argue that we all have both an emotional and a rational side, which they portray as the elephant and the rider – for their relative roles and power.

    They suggest that the emotional (elephant) and rational (rider) sides have different needs and limitations that we have to address for change to be successful. Furthermore, we can also smooth the path to make change as easy as possible.

    The Switch model outlines three sets of actions to support each of the elephant, rider and path. The aspects of the model are therefore to:

    Direct the rider by

    • Following the bright spots: ‘Investigate what’s working and clone it.’
    • Scripting the critical moves by specifying the exact desired behaviours.
    • Pointing to the destination, making the desired outcome, its purpose and benefits clear.

    Motivate the elephant by

    • Finding the feeling: allowing people to feel an emotion about the subject, rather than just think about it.
    • Shrinking the change into a manageable size until it ‘no longer spooks the Elephant.’
    • Growing your people to meet the challenges through development and encouraging a growth mindset.

    Shape the path by

    • Tweaking the environment so that it supports and encourages behaviour change.
    • Building habits, so that the new behaviour becomes automatic and no longer requires willpower.
    • Rallying the herd through modelling the new behaviour approach and building on social pressure to help it spread.

    The Heaths have created a leadership book with great – but all too rare – balance. The Switch model and their recommendations are based on robust research from business, management, psychology and even international development.

    These are then presented in a very accessible and readable book with lots of case studies and illustrative examples that both ‘point to the destination’ and allow us to ‘find the feeling’, resulting in an inspirational and immediately actionable read for leaders looking to make organisational or personal changes.

    Switch – How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath is available at amazon.co.uk and amazon.com.  Additional resources are available from heathbrothers.com. The book is reviewed by Eszter Molnar Mills.

    Eszter Molnar Mills is a strength-based leadership and organisation development specialist and founder of Formium Development. She helps organisations and individuals reach enhanced performance by reflecting on what works, and developing skills and strategies for improvement.

  • 5 of the best…resources to keep resolutions

    5 of the best…resources to keep resolutions

    How are your New Year’s resolutions coming along? January is the month of getting fit, being more productive, having a new frame of mind. We collected five resources that can help you keep the resolutions you choose to make, and for sustainably improving habits.

    Better than before – Gretchen Rubin on habits
    “Habits make change possible by freeing us from decision making and from using self-control.” – says Rubin. She provides resources to help you understand your preferences and choose habit strategies that will work for you. Also look out for her podcast.

    MindTools
    New year, new me. How can you renew yourself most easily? With learning a new skill for personal or career development. Since 1996, Mind Tools has offered practical online training to individuals keen to excel in the workplace. Join them!

    FlexScore
    Did you promise to yourself to be better at managing your money? FlexScore is a website that shows you how are you doing financially and how you are doing compared to your peers. The best part is that you get a free, update financial analysis that helps you understand how purchases affect your financial future.

    2-1080x1080
    100DayChallenge
    A radically different approach helping you keep your New Year’s resolutions. The organisers claim that you can get more done in the first 100 days of 2016 than most people do in 10 years. This is an online programme with a daily video lesson and a specific call to action.

    HeadSpace
    Did you have a stressful 2015? Did you promise that you will give more attention to mindfulness and meditate? HeadSpace is a personal trainer for your mind. You can choose different sessions to suit your mood and lifestyle. You can take a break anywhere and anytime since HeadSpace is available for iOS and Android as well.

    +1 Strengths Challenge 2016
    The list would not be complete without our featured interviewee, Michelle McQuaid’s program. Join if your resolution was being more happy and energized at work. We took part last year and we can tell you that it has had an impact.

  • Tuckman’s stages of team development

    Tuckmans_model_Issue3-232x300

  • Edison’s method – Collaboration is the key

    Edison’s method – Collaboration is the key

    The light bulb; just a simple object in your everyday life. We need it at home, in the office, on the street, almost everywhere. Thomas Edison frequently receives credit for inventing the light bulb (inspite of the efforts of inventors such as  Davy and Swan who came before him). We tend to imagine every great innovator alone in their basement laboratory working on their greatest ideas. But most of them don’t work alone, just as Edison did not invent the light bulb all by himself – he had a team.

    In her book, Midnight Lunch, Edison’s great-grandniece Sarah Miller Caldicott outlines how you can use Edison’s collaboration methods to strengthen your team, whether face-to-face or virtually. It is a four-step process and all the processes within each phase are designed to link together, becoming a self-referencing system.

    The first phase is Capacity; select small teams of 2 to 8 people of varied specialisms. Diversity of strengths will bring the diversity of perspectives. Everybody can learn from each other and the small number is important to create an environment of collegiality.

    Context is the next facet where effective collaboration leads to innovation. It involves individual then collective study of the problem and experimenting with potential ways forward. Learn from the mistakes and use them to create new contexts. Discuss them with your team, listen to every individual, the diversity of the team will increase the possible number of solutions.

    The third “C” is Coherence. There can be disagreements within every team. Step in and encourage a renewed discovery of the purpose with your team, the common goal that binds them together. Teams without a shared purpose are just groups of people. Every team needs an inspirational leader who can step in when it is needed.

    Complexity is the last phase. You can find ideas in the book for how to manage the complexity of collaboration from reskilling the members of your team to leaving a “footprint” as a guide to the next generation, or to other teams.

    Caldicott’s Midnight Lunch is not always an easy read, in order to follow the self-referencing system attentive reading is required. It is a challenging book that can make you rethink how you structure, manage and lead your teams. It offers a number of practical collaboration tools – straight from Thomas Edison’s laboratory – that you can use during your leadership journey.
    Midnight Lunch by Sarah Miller Caldicott is available on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk.

  • November, the Month of Gratitude

    This month we are prompted by the US Thanksgiving tradition to take time and practice gratitude.

    The practice of gratitude as a tool for happiness has been in the mainstream for years. Long-term studies support gratitude’s effectiveness, suggesting that a positive, appreciative attitude contributes to greater success in work, greater health, peak performance in sports and business, a higher sense of well-being, and a faster rate of recovery from surgery.

    But while we may acknowledge gratitude’s many benefits, it still can be difficult to sustain. So many of us are trained to notice what is broken, undone or lacking in our lives. And for gratitude to meet its full potential in our lives, it needs to become more than just a Thanksgiving word. We have to learn a new way of looking at things, a new habit. And that can take some time.

    That’s why practicing gratitude makes so much sense. When we practice giving thanks for all we have, instead of complaining about what we lack, we give ourselves the chance to see all of life as an opportunity and a blessing.

    Remember that gratitude isn’t a blindly optimistic approach in which the bad things in life are whitewashed or ignored. It’s more a matter of where we put our focus and attention. Challanges and problems exist, but when we focus on what works and what we can appreciate, including our strengths and the strengths of others, we can make great gains in performance and well-being. Gratitude balances us and gives us hope.

    There are many things to be grateful for: a great team, loyal and appreciative customers, challenging and exciting projects at work, new learning, our health, a long list of friends and family to plan festive gifts for. What’s on your list?

    Author’s content used with permission, © Claire Communications

  • Managers to leaders – Business Innovators Radio interview

    Managers to leaders – Business Innovators Radio interview

    Meeting the organisational and individual challenges of excellent leadership is crucial for any business.

    Formium Development Director Eszter Molnar Mills was interviewed for Business Innovators Radio on leadership challenges and how harnessing strengths and investing in development can mitigate these.

    You can listen to the interview on iTunes, or visit http://businessinnovatorsmagazine.com/eszter-molnar-mills-managers-to-leaders/ where you an also read the accompanying article for Business Innovators Magazine.

  • Work is my (second) Happy Place!

    Work is my (second) Happy Place!

    Do you know that place when you can hide from stress and the darkness of the cruel world? Probably, you think about a special place right now. It can be a real place like a hidden bench in the park near your office where you usually enjoy your lunch-break or it can be an abstract place like the Narnia of YouTube. The places like this are called your happy place. The Narnia of YouTube is my No.1 happy place. A couple of days ago I realised I have another one: my workplace.

    Yes. It is weird isn’t it? Well, it should not be weird to feel happy at your workplace. It should be normal since you spend most of your time there. There was a 5-day challenge which helped me to improve my strength and turned work to my second happy place.
    It called the Strengths Challenge 2015 by Michelle Mcquaid and her team who believes that creating a daily eleven-minutes strengths habit is an easy way to put people’ strengths to work. Firstly, you have to identify the strength you want to develop. (Find out more about your strengths by taking the free VIA survey.) The next step is to cue the habit in 30 seconds. At the third part you will need 10 minutes. You have to practice your strength-development routine. Dive into a routine that allows you to put your strengths to work. The last part was the FUN part. Reward your behaviour for 30 seconds.

    I chose creativity. They say a creative adult is a child who survived. I think you don’t have to survive to be creative, you can improve that just like any other skills. How did my 10-minute practice look like? I decided to check different projects on crafty sites like Pinterest or Weheartit and watch tutorial videos on YouTube. To be honest I was an eager-beaver… Sometimes it took a little more than 10 minutes, just for the fun! I got some really great ideas about desk organizing, office-exercises, home-made lunch and a lot of other things. My reward was a nice latté and a little group messaging with my friends.

    Creativity can be used in any kind of work. For instance I have to use it to create content, edit pictures, write catchy social media updates or blogposts, create nice infographics etc. But as I said you can use your creativity in any kind of job. “In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun and, – SNAP – the job’s a game.” Sounds familiar? Marry Poppins. Isn’t it fun to find the right pop cultural reference to your message? She was right, you just have to be creative and find your spoon full of sugar which will help you to get the job done.

    Or you don’t even have to be that creative just find the thing what you’re really good at it, your strength. Built on it then use it daily to take care of your tasks. You’ll feel much happier during your work hours when you feel that you’re really good at what you’re doing. So, I bet you have daily 11 minutes to transform your workplace into a better place for yourself.
    If you would like to explore your own strengths and how they can benefit you, book a free exploration session.

  • Stakeholders Optout

    Thank you for letting us know, you will no longer receive e-mails in this sequence.