Tag: management

How to overcome the 4 obstacles to giving quality feedback to your hybrid team
Providing motivational and developmental feedback to enhance performance is one of the most important leadership and management skills.

But for managers who lead hybrid teams – flexible in their working hours or location – there are four new challenges that you need to overcome, which are generated by one big difference:

The key difference for a hybrid team is less consistent contact

Where teams use a hybrid working model, or a form of flexible hours working such as compressed hours, the in-person contact between a manager and their team members is less frequent and less regular.

I’ll explain how this impacts on the ability to give effective feedback, and suggest ways you can overcome this.

1. Managers have less direct observation of people’s performance

The traditional co-located team, working 9-5(ish), 5 days a week, gave managers a lot of chances to see and hear their team in action. Managers could gain knowledge passively, almost by osmosis – picking up on when team members were doing things right, or spotting where performance could be improved.

However, hybrid working reduces these opportunities for happenstance observations – so managers will need to be more purposeful and tactical in how they identify issues requiring feedback, and how they deliver that feedback, using the methods below:
- Observed practice. When I am training people to be coaches, one of the most impactful methods is observing them deliver a coaching session. The coach can easily record their session (with the client’s consent), so I gain huge amounts of information about their skills in practice and can provide rich motivational and developmental feedback. Recent AI developments make this even easier for managers – transcribing the audio, or even summarising the main points. Choose the right interaction to observe and see how your team members use their people skills.
- Self-observation and upward reporting. Modern ways of working require greater autonomy, which you can foster by encouraging your team members to be reflective, to identify aspects of their practice they were proud of or unsure about, and to bring these issues to you so you can discuss, analyse, motivate and help them to develop.
- Third-party observations. Without creating an atmosphere of spying, approach other managers – or team members if appropriate – to pass on their observations to you so you can craft appropriate feedback. It’s not a formal 360-degree assessment, just an opportunity for some different perspectives.
- Embed reflection and feedback into the working practice. Make ‘lessons learned’ part of every project review, and analyse successes as well as problems. Following training, encourage people to identify what they learned and to commit to what they will do differently. Agree team ground rules and encourage everyone to give each other open and honest motivational and developmental feedback.
- Feedforward, not feedback. I always champion Kluger and Nin’s Feedforward Interview approach – where managers spend time with their team members before undertaking a demanding task. They clarify expectations and – most importantly – tap into the team member’s past successes and experiences, which they can leverage to enhance their performance this time round. You can sum up the approach as “prepare, not repair”. It doesn’t stop you from providing quality feedback after the event – it just makes it more likely that you’ll be delivering a positive message.
2. Managers find it harder to deliver feedback in a timely manner

The best feedback is given shortly after the event – while everyone still remembers what happened. And traditionally, feedback was something that was given in person, face-to-face. But hybrid and flexible working means a lower chance of being able to do this.

One way round this is to prioritise speed – using digital communication methods such as email, messaging and video conferencing to get the initial points over – and then follow up with a more considered feedback session at a later date, recording the details for future reference.

Obviously, there is a danger if you are providing developmental feedback that a gap between raising it and resolving it fully might cause distress or confusion, so make sure you get the balance right.

3. It is harder for managers to appreciate the context

When working together more consistently, managers are more attuned to how their team are getting on – their levels of work pressure, non-work problems, etc. So if they see potentially problematic performance, they can take account of the immediate context and build that into their feedback.

Without this knowledge, when managers and leaders provide developmental feedback they need to make space for a two-way conversation. Invite your team member to provide their perspective and context, ask them reflective questions to uncover their perceptions, and once you have established the context you can provide your considered feedback.

4. Managers find it more difficult to support the team member afterwards

Less consistent contact means it is harder for managers to monitor their team member’s progress on enacting developmental feedback.

Again, the solution is to be more purposeful where you can no longer rely on happenstance:
- Set up opportunities for the team member to practice their revised behaviour, with you or someone else observing.
- Arrange creative learning interventions such as task-based shadowing.
- Use Kluger and Nin’s Feedforward technique to help your team member prepare.
17th January 2025
It’s good to talk…
“Meetings are the bane of everyone’s life. No-one likes meetings. Nothing ever gets done”

This appears to be the mantra of many a corporate warrior, and it is always interesting to see how different companies and industries try to break this view. So I particularly enjoyed an article in The Guardian newspaper about team meetings and the weird and wonderful ideas that are being used to keep them relevant and on-track.

While some of these ideas look like they could only really exist in Silicon Valley, there is a consistent message – how do you make your meetings productive, relevant, engaging and on-time? And while this question has been kicking around forever – probably since the first cave-people sat down to work out how they were going to kill a woolly mammoth – it is even more relevant in today’s world of remote teams, flexible work patterns, video and phone conferences.

I do a lot of work helping teams with their performance, and in my career have sat through my fair share of meetings. I will share with you my simple formula for successful meetings – plan,clarify, facilitate, support.

1. Plan

Whether you’re leading the meeting or not, time spent planning pays dividends. What are you going to get out of the meeting? Are you going to share information, for ideas, for decisions, to build team spirit, or to observe your team’s performance? What do you need to make it run smoothly? Who needs to be there and what role will each participant play?

2. Clarify

Make sure you and everyone in the meeting knows the purpose:
- Why are we here? What is the purpose of the meeting as a whole, and each of the items on the agenda? Make sure everyone knows what is going on – having clear goals gives you structure, keeps everyone on track, and stops people going off on cross-purposes.
- Why am I here? So often people switch off because they don’t think what is being discussed is relevant to them, or they don’t see the bigger picture. Take time to ensure each item is presented so that everyone feels involved and buys into the conversation.
3. Facilitate, don’t dictate

It is a team meeting, not your meeting. If you take more of a back seat you can encourage:
- Ownership and personal development by having your team members take ‘meeting management’ roles such as chairing the meeting, time keeping or taking minutes.
- Accountability by having the focus of the meeting on team members reporting back on their performance, on the agenda items, on their issues.
- Group accountability by encouraging all members to ask questions of each other. A team meeting is not a series of conversations between you and your team members.
4. Support each other

You might need first to do some team building or thinking about how to structure the meeting for this to work, especially if you have a really competitive team! Think about how you can build the meeting around getting support from:
- You as the team leader
- Each other
- The organisation (e.g. training or feeding upwards on changes to policy / practice)
Focusing on support in this way helps you keep the meeting focused on positive solutions, not complaints and negativity.

The missing factors

There’s also another really important point that I think some of the ideas and attitudes in the article are missing. They focus so much on ensuring the meeting is not wasting time, there is a risk that this is overplayed to the detriment of social interaction. Especially with dispersed teams or infrequent meetings, don’t neglect the social side.

What could you do to help your team members get to know and trust each other?
- Always be in the room 5 minutes early to have a quick chat
- Occasionally add in a team building exercise: quick quiz, craft challenge, presentation from each member on a non-work topic.
And it’s not just a loss of social interaction. If project team meetings adopt the extreme position of ‘leave if it is not relevant to you’ you miss out the chance for innovative thinking or learning from each other. Or your meeting could come up with a great idea which falls apart immediately another department looks at it.

Help is at hand

If you want to know more about developing teams, I’m leading a session hosted by the Chartered Management Institute in London, on 19th November. I’ll share the techniques, models and ideas that I’ve used to help managers build high-performing teams. You don’t have to be a CMI member to attend, just follow the link: Developing Successful Teams

For an engaging and practical guide on team effectiveness and collaboration, I’d recommend starting with Patrick Lencioni’s Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team [Amazon UK affiliate link]

If you want bespoke help on effective team meetings and building strong teams, then click here to see how you can work with me and the coaches and facilitators at Formium Development.

FREE STUFF !

Our Positive Team Meeting checklist has really helpful guidance that is easy-to-use and practical.

If you’re interested in team building, then check out our 10 Actions to build a strong team – top tips for helping you use a strengths approach to build better teams.

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6th November 2018
Coaching 101: Myths busted and advice for using a coaching approach
Coaching 101: Myths busted and advice for using a coaching approach

Do you want to help your team members improve their performance? Do your one-to-one meetings often end up with you giving all the answers and telling them what to do? Do you want your team to be more self-sufficient and empowered?

If the answer to any of the above is yes, then I suggest you learn how to coach. Increasingly seen as an essential management tool, coaching supports people to give their very best regardless of their current performance level. Coaching is focussed on helping them find solutions themselves, rather than the manager providing direction or advice. As a coach, and a trainer of coaches, I’m going to share with you some of my key ideas on why all managers and leaders should be coaching.

1. Coaching myths

We’ll cover aspects of how to coach later, but first, let’s look at some of the reasons why managers don’t coach, and debunk these myths.

Myth 1: “It takes too long; it takes less time if I just tell them the answer or what to do.”

You may worry that coaching is too time consuming, but it takes no more time overall than many other management practices. Crucially coaching builds capacity in your team to resolve their own issues – or to come to you with solutions, rather than questions. This saves you time in the medium to long run

Myth 2: “I’m not a professional coach, surely an external person needs to do this work?”

While there is real value in independent coaching, anyone can add a coaching approach to their management toolkit. I’ve trained hundreds in coaching skills, and you’d be surprised how quickly people can take it on board. David Rock defines coaching as ‘the art and science of facilitating positive change’ – and if you think about it, that’s what good managers are all about. The aim of coaching, and the skills you need, are aligned with being a positive and supportive manager: meeting people where they are, then helping them build on their skills, strengths and experiences, addressing shortcomings, finding solutions and identifying strategies to meet agreed targets.

Myth 3: “I’m the manager, I have the right answers, I should always share them.”

You should if there is only one right answer. But allowing your colleagues to maintain ownership, think issues through and work out their own solutions helps to get the best from your people. If you focus on goals and outcomes, your team can be more creative. Sir John Whitmore argues that coaching encourages acceptance of responsibility, which results in a commitment, in turn optimising employees’ performance.

A coaching approach helps establish boundaries around their responsibility for delivering outcomes and resolving issues. Your role is to work with people not for them – helping them work towards solutions rather than micro-managing. It helps when people own their goals.

Telling people the right answers isn’t always effective. Think about training sessions: a significant U.S. study found that the application of learning following a training course was around 22%. The majority simply didn’t put anything into practice. But when training was combined with coaching or some sort of a follow-up, it really helped people put their learning into practise. Suddenly, application went up to 90% – so with an approach of coaching rather than telling you could generate a much better return on your time investment.

2. When to use a coaching approach

PWC’s Global Coaching Study for the International Coach Federation found that coaching creates improvements in areas such as self-confidence, relationships, communication skills, work-life balance, work performance, business management and team effectiveness.

So, is there any occasion when you would not want your team to have those benefits? I’d encourage you to make coaching part of your daily management skills – but especially when there are high stakes pieces of work, big projects, or issues where you’re carrying an awful lot of responsibility.

Coaching can be delivered just in time; you can talk about a project just as it arises. Coaching is targeted, it can be specific to your organisation and the type of work or individual that you are talking to. It can build on their experience, knowledge, and skills while addressing their specific challenges.

By adding a coaching approach to your practice you can look forward to reaping its many personal and organisational benefits.

3. What a coaching approach looks like

Now we’re going to consider how you would start coaching. You can coach anytime, anywhere. Your coaching conversations don’t need to be formal or take more than a few minutes. It is however distinguished from other management activity by two key points:
- it is solution-focussed
- it leaves ownership and accountability with the staff member or coachee.
To achieve this, coaching involves asking insightful questions and providing reflection without giving advice or direction.

3.1 Start with the outcome

Start conversations with ‘what do we want to achieve?’, ‘what do you need?’. Encourage your staff member to articulate where they are aspiring to be or what an ideal outcome would look like.

Then you look at the current situation: ‘This is our goal, and this is where we are at the moment. Let’s talk about how we bridge that gap.’

Next, encourage the coachee to come up with potential solutions or options. Rather than providing advice, ask questions to help them work issues out for themselves: ‘What options do you have?’ ‘What do we need to do to make this project a success?’ ‘How are you going to marshal your skills, experience, and resources to achieve it?’ and the magic coaching question: ‘What else?’ Aim for as many options as they can gather – I often find that the really innovative solutions only emerge once I’ve exhausted all the obvious ideas.

Ensure that there is a specific set of outcomes or actions from the coaching conversation. The coachee needs to choose and commit to their own next step to draw real benefit from this approach.

This basic process I’ve described has been worked up into a number of coaching models. There’s not much difference between them beyond which acronym you prefer.

3.2 It is not about you – ownership and accountability belong with the coachee

In coaching the question is always, ‘what are you going to do’, and then ‘what support might you need to succeed’? Accountability and ownership rests with the coachee or individual whose job or project you are discussing.

Your role is to facilitate their thinking, not to solve the team member’s issues, or do their job for them. Understanding this distinction is remarkably freeing and allows for better quality conversations. It will be tough at first, but try hard not to be directive.

Listen to the other person, rather than your thoughts about how you might respond. What is really important to them? What are their challenges? What opportunities are they seeing? What next steps do they want to take?

When encouraged to come up with our own solutions, we maintain ownership and accountability, and feel much more motivated to follow through than when we are told what to do.

3.3 Provide support and challenge

Provide support and help where it is needed. Ask your team member to articulate what they see as the main challenge in a particular project and how you can support them in overcoming it.

Encourage them to identify the resources available to them; or similar situations or tasks where they have previously been successful.

Praise people for difficulties they’ve chosen to tackle, for taking ownership and accountability or for doing a great job of resolving their own issues.

Also provide constructive challenge. If you hear ‘We can never do that because…’ ask them, ‘Are you sure? Can you tell me what it would take for us to actually be able to do it? Could we do something differently to enable us to achieve this?’ Challenging is often a crucial part of coaching conversations.

4. Coaching is a crucial management skill that you should have

So you can see that coaching has wide-ranging benefits for your team and you – and is a great return on your time invested.

There’s no reason why you can’t go ahead and put into practice the ideas I’ve shown you in your next one-to-one or team meeting. If you’re interested, and would like some support in how to coach effectively, then I’d suggest two options. You could learn by being coached yourself, or you could find some training on coaching skills.

If you want to get the most from your people, if you want to help them develop, then coaching is a great skill to use – as after all, personal growth takes place at the intersection of ownership, accountability, support and challenge – and that is what a good coach provides.

Eszter Molnar Mills is a highly experienced and qualified leadership coach, and has taught coaching skills to hundreds of managers. Eszter and her team at Formium Development provide training and support to managers so they can get the best out of themselves, their teams and their organisations.

How we can help you

Coaching: if you’re looking for someone to help you to find solutions for your goals, we have a number of coaches available for phone/video conference coaching. Click here for more details.

Training: if you want more help on using a coaching approach as part of your management toolkit, then get in touch about our in-house workshops on Coaching Skills for Managers.

Webinar: People who join up to our newsletter get access to a bunch of helpful information and resources. This includes periodic access to our webinar on Coaching.

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11th July 2018
Book Review: The Positive Organization by Robert E Quinn

So many business books leave you wondering “…but how does that work in reality?” That’s not a problem with The Positive Organization – this short book (less than 160 pages from cover to cover) is packed with ideas, examples, case studies and practical exercises, written in an engaging and straightforward style.

Throughout, Quinn challenges us to consider a different way of thinking, and to think about how we can effectively participate in building a positive organisation. A key strength of the book is that it has actionable lessons for all, regardless of job role or responsibility, from board room to shop floor. Each chapter concludes with a tool to use with teams in self-assessment and development, as well as questions to encourage the reader to reflect and set aspirations, to deepen learning.

The central premise of the book is that building a positive organisation requires accountability and authenticity, that for it to be successful it has to be emergent and self-generating. This approach is built on listening, consultation and empowerment at all levels.

What marks this book apart from many others is both the effectiveness of Quinn’s model, as well as the Positive Organization Generator – over 100 real-life examples of how organisations have successfully increased their positivity.

Mental Maps and bilingualism

Quinn suggests that the culture of an organisation can be summarised in a mental map – an indication of what a company believes and assumes, covering domains such as Motivation, Status and Change. Most organisations, and most leaders, operate using what Quinn calls a Conventional Mental Map, a top-down, traditional hierarchy. He contrasts this with the more complex Positive Mental Map, focused more on networks and relationships, and a focus on the common good and authentic communication.

However, this is not a binary state – Quinn suggests a successful leader needs to be ‘bilingual’ able to speak the language of both maps depending on the need of the people they are working with, to find the right tools for the right occasion.

A question of balance

Quinn provides us with a further analysis of organisational culture – the Framework of Organizational Tensions. Quinn groups organisational characteristics into two opposing lists, for example Individual Accountability and Cohesive Teamwork. If taken to extremes either of these positive characteristics could be negative – conflict on the one hand or group-think on the other. To illustrate the need to maintain balance between these positive forces, Quinn separates each pair on opposing sides of a disc, with an outer ring of negative forces that may arise if the positive force is over-developed.

This idea of tension and balance is crucial to Quinn – organisations are not static, they are dynamic, and to effect positive change we have to consider the whole system, that positives can turn into negatives.

A call to action

Having developed these models, Quinn turns to a number of key issues in developing a positive organisation, in chapters that focus on how to drive organisations forward by developing and promoting authenticity, creating a sense of purpose, fostering bottom-up change and collaborative development. He uses a range of interesting and relevant examples, referring back to the models at every stage.

In these sections he is challenging and insightful on the role of the individual, on our willingness to work for the common good, our ability to leave our ego and control behind when trying to develop an organisation that thrives. He is also realistic about human nature, and how difficult meaningful change and personal authenticity may be, but makes clear the benefits of developing leadership capabilities and organisational positivity.

Over to you

Quinn concludes by sharing with the reader his Positive Organization Generator. Designed to confront sceptics and resistance, he provides 100 examples of where an organisation has made positive change (from a range of industries, and with links to further articles on each of them). This is an amazing resource that gives readers a real opportunity to understand “how it works in reality”. Rather than just adopting these ideas, his instruction to readers is to re-invent them – to be inspired by the examples, extract the principle and re-imagine it for your own context, moulding and adapting to fit.

Robert E. Quinn’s website www.bob-quinn.com provides you with the resources from the book, including the Positive Organization Generator.

Or you can buy the book from Amazon UK or Amazon USA.

For more ideas you can also follow his daily blog: www.thepositiveorganization.wordpress.com

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Formium Development helps individuals and organisations to harness their strengths and improve their performance and culture. We know change can be hard, so we can bring our expertise to help you with organisational development – such as implementing the ideas in The Positive Organization.

Click here if you’d like more information on how we can help you and your team analyse, assess, challenge, innovate, communicate and develop.

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5th July 2018
Impactful women leaders

Worldwide, at the lower levels of organisations over half of the staff members are female but if you look higher the number of women shrinks. Therefore, we’d like to share with you list of 5 impactful leaders who just happen to be female.

Sheryl Sandberg – The COO of Facebook and founder of the Lean In Foundation. The non-profit organisation is part of a movement to develop a more equal world – as detailed in her book, Lean In – and supports women in the workplace and through empowerment groups.
Ann Francke – Author of the FT Guide to Management and CEO of the Chartered Management Institute, a non-profit organisation aiming to create better led and managed organisations, through creating more qualified managers and establishing management as a true profession.
Meg Whitman – Business executive, currently the President and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and also the Chairwoman of HP Inc. A former manager at Disney and Hasbro, she is still best known for leading the online auction site, eBay.
Tamara Box – The chair of the Financial Industry Group and the head of Structured Finance at Reed Smith, and worldwide acknowledged expert in strategic financial advice. Tamara is passionate about engaging millennials and women in the professional world. Also, she is one of our autumn interviewees.
Carolyn McCall – The CEO of EasyJet is one of the business leaders who has been asked to join the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Group – the body that advises the PM and the Government on business difficulties.

24th August 2016
Celebrating women in leadership

Against the backdrop of Theresa May taking office as the UK’s second ever female Prime Minister and Hillary Clinton potentially becoming the first female President, women at work are still paid significantly less than men and there are fewer of them the higher up the management ranks you look.

Yet there are some shining examples of women at the helm of corporations, their own companies and communities.

As an increasing number of female leaders find their way to the top of organisations and find their voice, one thing is clear: enabling women in leadership benefits all.

It is not a binary or a win-lose issue. Female leaders do not succeed against their male counterparts, they succeed alongside them and with men. Women’s progression benefits all, including male employees as gender balanced organisations are more inclusive, better places to work as well as being more successful.

I also strongly feel that the way forward for women is not be more like men, but to add a different, complementary voice to the conversation. Where everyone is emboldened to be his or her authentic best self, the organisation truly benefits from culmination of all talents within. Over the coming weeks, we will showcase some exceptional female leaders on this blog. You can also access the Women in Leadership issue of People & Purpose the Positive Leadership Journal: http://peopleandpurposejournal.com/issues

13th July 2016
Business approaches for tackling poverty

The authors suggest that few of the most sustainable and scalable solutions to poverty and deprivation are those based on business – instead of charitable – methods. This chimes with Melinda Gates’ TED talk about adaptable strategies from Coca Cola that could make non-profit organisations more effective.

The practical guide, Scaling Up includes a wide variety of case studies of both the families this kind of approach has helped, and the organisations and social entrepreneurs who have successfully applied it. The book comes across as an extremely well researched while written with the practitioner in mind. Examples from around the world including India, Latin America and Africa range from the more familiar cases of microfinance and housing to community savings and utilities.

The authors recommend a range of strategic and market-driven approaches which can help people at the bottom of the economic pyramid, effectively challenging many assumption of the traditional charitable / donor-reliant approach to NGO-led development. The opportunity to achieve scale is explored both as the traditional scaling of the organisation itself, and as increasing its influence on the ecosystem.

The contents are practical, addressing core management problems just like finance and marketing in a new context. The book is very well structured, the only tougher aspect to its presentation is the excessive amount usage of acronyms, which grates in spite of a glossary at the front of the book.

Reading the book is more than likely to be of instant benefit to managers already working in social enterprises or the third sector, but Scaling Up is a remarkable read for any leader curious about the economics of social justice.

The book is available on amazon.co.uk and amazon.com.

25th May 2016
5 of the Best … Quotes on strengths

Formium Development team believe in a strength-based leadership approach. Leaders should concentrate on developing strengths instead of fixing weaknesses. Practicing a positive approach will likely help you and your organisation to become a lot more authentic and also more effective. Read our most-liked quotes on strengths:

What’s your favourite quote on strengths? Share with the online community in the comment section, or tweet us your favourite quote @FormiumLtd!

4th May 2016
Ensure that people know what is expected of them

When I talk to managers and leaders, the theme of high performance is a frequent topic of conversation. We can all agree that being an excellent organisation and delivering exceptional products or services are very important, but does everyone we work with know what we actually mean by excellence in the day-to-day?

6 methods to set obvious expectations for high performance
Too often, managers seem to lead through mental telepathy. Without clearly communicated expectations– in terms of standards or the milestones against which we analyze our progress – team members may not know what to do and how to do it. This can result in uncertainty, undermining effective teamwork, initiative and productivity.
Properly setting expectations for employees or team members is a critical dimension in quality workplaces, according to a large research of managers undertaken in the 1990s by The Gallup Organization. Underneath are a few ideas on setting clear expectations that will set standards for excellence and outcomes.
1. Begin with creating a compelling goal. Describe and explain what you want the end result to look like. Not just what you want done, but the purpose and the results you want to achieve when the project is finished and the responsibility of everyone in its achievement. People want to know that their job, whether large or small, makes a difference.
2. Talk about what you mean by “excellent performance”. This step is needed to make the vision ‘actionable’ and translate it into tangible performance measures. Set metrics where possible, paint a complete picture of the requirements you are expecting. Refer to your performance review form or competency framework for behavioural standards.
3. Concentrate on the required outcomes, instead of on the exact steps you want your people to take. Think of this as coaching rather than controlling. Encouraging your people to design their own way of delivering positive outcomes allows each team member to use their strengths to their fullest potential.
4. Provide regular feedback. The yearly appraisal or performance review is insufficient and often too late to let staff members know how and whether they are meeting your expectations. Give feedback along the road: define the context, refer to the vision and give your reasons for the feedback. Next plan for a way forward, ask for more or less of what you observed. Take a coaching, rather than disciplinarian approach. The more two-way communication, the greater the clarity around the expectations.
5. Give positive encouragement. Until you are particularly experienced at giving feedback, don’t use the ‘sandwich’ of positive– constructive– positive comments. As Ken Blanchard suggest in One Minute Manager, catch employees doing things right and you’ll get even more of it.
6. Give people the flexibility to perform well. As soon as the expectations are clear get out of the way and let people to meet them. Having set clear standards, milestones or due dates, every member of your team will have the ability to track their own progress, check whether they are meeting the milestones and behavioural standards. This approach also allow individuals be accountable for delivering their own work, so that they can course correct where needed or stay on track to make their full contribution.

To find out more about Positive Leadership view our webinar.

26th April 2016
5 of the best…influencers on Twitter

Exceptional leaders hardly ever stop learning, they know they can always improve themselves. Twitter is a great resource for thoughts, ideas and good examples. Here are just some of the top influencers that we follow and retweet on leadership skills or company culture. Check out our selection:

Through Alison Green’s Ask a Manager profile you can ask her a question like ‘this is what my boss says, what does it mean?’ Send her your questions or learn from others’ cases.

Based in London, David Shepherd tweets tweets about Human Resources, employment law, pay, benefits, the labour market, data services, b2b media, and a whole lot more.

Aadil Bandukwala is a social recruiting consultant with a history in Talent Acquisition and Social Media. Worth your while following him if you want to know everything about recruiting.

Lolly Daskal’s Twitter feed is about coaching, management, leadership, consulting. You can find truly informative posts, inspirational quotes and pictures shared by her.

Dan McCarthy , self-described leadership and management development geek. His profile has everything that has to do with leadership and management.

Who is missing from our list? Let us know in the comments below!

23rd March 2016
Women in leadership

A summary of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In

Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Facebook, presented a TED Talk on why are there so few women in leadership positions. Her book, Lean In started from that 15 minute talk. Sandberg’s argument is that excuses and justifications will not get women anywhere. In her book she provides useful suggestions to urge women to take their place in the working world while taking ownership of a leadership concept. Women have to take a seat at the table, even if they feel uneasy at first, says Sandberg.

They have to lean in and have the will to lead. She says women have to break with internalised attitudes that hold them back. Throughout the book, Sandberg carefully weighs the double binds, internal and external, that hold back women from achieving their goals, their potential at the workplace.

Sandberg’s work is a combination of hard data, academic research, her own experiences, observations and life lessons with a hint of humour. Lean In is more than a book, it’s kind of a feminist manifesto as she calls it; part of a movement to create a more equal world.
The book is available at amazon.co.uk and amazon.com.

Agi Galgoczi

16th March 2016
3 ways to create a high performance culture
Does culture matter? Recent research carried out by James Heskett at Harvard Business School suggests that 20%-30% of corporate performance can be attributed to a positive, strong performance culture. As Edgar Schein, probably the most prolific and oft-quoted researcher and author in the area of culture, suggested: “The only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture. If you do not manage culture, it manages you and you may not even be aware of the extent to which this is happening.”

High performance cultures embrace innovation and empower people to contribute to that innovation. They espouse values on taking calculated risks, being innovative, being supportive, and being a learning organisation. Amanda Whittaker Brown of IDeA identified four specific signs of a performance culture and a culture where high performance is an integral part of how the organisation works:
- People feel comfortable talking openly about performance.
- Individuals know how what they are doing makes a difference.
- People share a commitment to achieving shared objectives.
- When there are problems, people work together to resolve them.
There are three specific actions leaders can take to create a high performance culture in their organisation:

1. Co-create the desired culture
Involve others in designing and shaping the team or organisational culture. In order for you to be able to identify and articulate what a desired culture would be, you need to understand and be able to communicate the vision for the organisation, its purpose and how individuals and teams can contribute. Your team need to be able to understand the difference that they are making.

Once the vision for the organisation or the team is clear, consider whether the current culture, norms, and behaviours serve it, or whether you need to make some changes. Talk to your team, customers, senior management or board about how they see those objectives and aims being delivered, what your core values are and what type of underlying culture is need.

Invite your colleagues and stakeholders to co-create the desired culture through conversation. Identify what works well and where changes are needed to enhance individual and organisational performance. Teams and staff can take part in this conversation and feel ownership and accountability, which in turns underpins a performance culture.

Once you have identified the desired culture, make sure that you are modelling, not just communicating new values and behaviours. If you’re asking other people to change, you need to remember that that will require quite a significant change on your part as well. Agree and describe what high performance looks like, agree how people will work and behave as part of the culture.

2. Replace a culture of blame with empowerment and accountability
Develop a culture of empowerment instead of blame, which stifles innovation and creativity. Enable people to take responsibility, to make decisions, to take action. At an organisational level, empowerment is supported by management commitment and relatively few layers of hierarchy. It’s important that people are supported with the right skills so they can take advantage of empowerment. Provide development on teamwork, communication skills, decision making, and risk management or other appropriate areas.

Ensure that your team has clarity of objectives and corporate priorities and that they are rewarded for doing the right things. Accept mistakes and ensure that people learn from their mistakes.

Accountability is equally important. It’s not quite enough, from a cultural perspective, for people to be accountable to you because you’re their boss. They actually need to be accountable to each other, so they can say, “We each understand what everyone else’s role is and we each commit to delivering our individual role for the benefit of the team.”

3. Set high expectations and enable people to meet those expectations
Maurizio Freda, Estee Lauder CEO said: “You need super talented people who know they need to do fantastically well. When your leadership team takes the same attitude, you create a culture where each one can give his or her best. In particular, you have to find the strengths of each individual in the organisation and then you can create magic.”

Choose people with lots of potential who have some of the strengths that you’re looking for, and allow them to play to their strengths.

Provide a combination of high support and high challenge. Set the expectation that people have to do well in this organisation, that you are aiming for excellence and that you trust that people can meet these expectation as they are supported and set up for success. People can meet those high expectations because they get to play to their strengths, they get the development that they need, and if they make mistakes these are looked at as learning opportunities.

These three leadership activities help you embody Schein’s statement that “Leaders are the main designers and builders of an organisation’s culture.”

Eszter Molnar Mills is a strength-based leadership and organisation development specialist and founder of Formium Development. A qualified executive and team coach, she helps organisations and individuals reach enhanced performance by reflecting on what works, and developing skills and strategies for improvement. Through team coaching and facilitation Eszter also helps organisations and teams work together to develop positive and productive cultures.
9th March 2016