Six Ways To Destroy Yourself: Regularly and Often

I was going to attend a Business Networking Meeting today and can’t: I have had to re-prioritise a couple of things that have to be in place by next Monday and that’s it. So what to do? Telephone my friend and associate T and tell him that “I can’t make it and here’s why. ” Do I enjoy this kind of call? No, and I wrestle with my sense of letting myself and others down. I do understand though that there is a greater loss if I fail to complete on the other tasks-due next week and running late. So, a call to make and a blog to write.


I thought I’d use today’s example as one of the ways in which we occasionally tear ourselves to bits. Competing priorities are only part of it. A more difficult challenge is “What do our decisions say about us?” Well, here’s the rub: “Is it better to make an early decision and state that this can not be done, or is more desirable to turn up, rushed, distracted and pre-occupied: which is the more damaging message and which will, in the course of time, cause more reputational harm?” So, I’ll work through today and resolve the outstanding priorities and bear in mind as I’m doing so, they are reasons, not excuses.


I picked up a copy of Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” -timeless and sure footed in its message-you need to be active and positive in the manner in which you engage with the world and the people in it. He gives-in a nutshell-Six Ways To Make People Like You and I love the simplicity of the message. Here they are:


Principle 1


Become genuinely interested in other people
Principle 2


Smile
Principle 3


Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language
Principle 4


Be a good listener, encourage people to talk about themselves
Principle 5


Talk in terms of the other persons interests
Principle 6


Make the other person feel important-and do it sincerely
OR


Self Destruct Principle 1


Others don’t matter, they have little to say that’s of any interest unless you feel you can make a few quid, dollars, euro out of them. Beyond that their lives are 1 dimensional and beneath your contempt.


Self Destruct Principle 2


Smiling is for sycophants who honestly believe that their ingratiating fawning will work. Think yourself as a player in a world-wide poker game in which any betrayal of emotion will lose all you’ve gained, making you vulnerable and beaten, add into the equation an air of mystery and inscrutability-practice these expressions in the mirror (not the one in your car-others will think there’s something the matter with you-and if you’re doing this, there probably is!) Try your new found skills at your next meeting social gathering: bring something to read.


Self Destruct Principle 3


Just tell other people this, “I’m bad at names, I meet so many important people in the course of a day I have to prioritise my brain-space, so remind me; who are you again?” This I find is a brilliant way to secure seclusion, tranquillity and ultimately, poverty.


Self Destruct Principle 4


Learn how to feign attention, interrupt and tell people about something you’ve done that is more exciting, has earned more money or has demonstrated how smart you are. Combined with Self Destruct Principle 3 above, this becomes a powerful strategy that ensure that people will never forget you. They might not want to remember you but that’s not the point.


Self Destruct Principle 5


Other people’s interests are just that: they are other people and therefore consigned to the midden of “dull and pointless”. What of course, they are really waiting for is to hear about you.


Self Destruct


It’s much more important that other people understand how important you are: you might forget them abut they must not be allowed to forget you. The above Five Principles, applied singly, in combination or (and why not go for it?) all together will leave an indelible impression on those lucky enough to have met you.


Good Luck!

Cook Your Way To Social & Emotional Intelligence

Is there a link between the work I do with young people in schools and other company activities? I'd like to think so. We have built high quality working relationships with schools that purchase a service from us, delivering individual mentoring programmes to more generic support to young people, their teachers and mentors. This means that there opportunities to try something different.

I had delivered a piece of work to a group of year 8 & 9 boys. Their profiles were familiar enough-quarrelsome, poor concentration spans and a series of risk/vulnerability factors. We had talked a lot and made efforts to help them prepare to take a higher degree of responsibility for and ownership of the image they project to others.

Talk is fine but it's actions that count and with this in mind I suggested to them that they might consider choosing the ingredients for, preparing, coking and serving a Christmas Meal for some of their teachers and mentors. We had to restrict it to eight. Their invitation list included the Head Teacher, Assistant Head and two members of the Senior Management Team. Learning Mentors and a subject specialist were also invited.

We shopped, they chose and stayed within budget. We met the following day and working to a tight timescale, produced the meal-ably and enthusiastically led by a Senior Support Assistant who clearly enjoys a first class, respect led relationship with the lads.
They did it! They cooked and served a 3 course Christmas Meal. There was, I think, a considerable amount of emotion around the table: what had taken place was much bigger than the sum of its parts and at what still, in spite of financially pressed times, commercialism and cynicism, Christmas remains an important time of year every adult around the table received an unexpected gift when the Head Teacher asked the lads what they would take away from and remember about the occasion. Although all the food had been eaten, several of us swallowed very hard one one of the cooks said "Your faces when we served the meal."

How does this link to our other activities? Well, reputations get tarnished, we are all capable of huge acts of self sabotage and we sometimes need an opportunity to prove to others that there is more to us than the day to day, sometimes highly reactive exposure we have to each other. When this opportunity arises, it needs to be witnessed and affirmed by respected others who need to hear the perceived impact of "doing things better and differently". Whether as a Coach, Mediator, Teacher, Mentor, there are experiences that occur daily that mean as much in one context as they do in another. I drove away that evening with much more in my heart and soul than I had arrived with earlier or dreamed possible. For not the first time, the Coach was coached, the Teacher was taught and the Mediator was not needed when this leap of faith was taken.

Developing Lunch Time Supervisors (ii)

We prefer to enter longer-term sustainable relationships with our customers. One of the benefits for us is that we get to see the outcomes of the work we deliver: it's immensely rewarding to witness, in real terms, the amount of movement teams are capable of making.
Working with one of our customers, we have developed a "Lunch Time Team Charter", a simple 3 Fold leaflet that delivers some very powerful messages about the the Lunch Time Team and how it contributes to the well-being of the school community.
An enthusiastic and committed management team have worked with us throughout and the 3 fold will now be

• shared with the whole workforce
• e-mailed (where appropriate) to parents and carers
• used as part of the induction pack for next academic year's Year 7 learners
• the subject of tutorial/assemblies

Nothing beats good practice! There are regular meetings between the supervisors, student support managers and a Deputy Head Teacher. It was a privilege to attend one very recently and to witness at first hand the shift in dialogue in this team of 12 people. It has moved from sounding "stuck, helpless and problem-donating", to a place where it is "dynamic, resourceful and problem-solving."

My drive home that evening was made up of around 25 miles of gentle rolling country-side between two major urban areas-the spring sun and crisp skies of late March contributed to the feeling of well-being that had arisen from the massively positive messages and tangible progress demonstrated by a team that had committed to the development process, supported by a school that takes seriously the value-added to be gained from investing in the development and growth of its workforce. Some days are just better than others!

Team Development. A Dignified Approach

“External consultants are free loaders on the make who have loyalty to no-one other than themselves. “ Now there’s a long sentence to communicate with just a glimpse or a reluctant handshake: I’m pretty certain I’ve heard it or something like it though.

• Fact, teams fall out.
• Fact, sometimes it gets better by itself.
• Fact, sometimes managers intervene and the situation may improve-there are others when their intervention may exacerbate an already difficult situation.

Having an insight into the nature of the conflict will help, there can be movement from Hot (overt) conflict to Cold (covert) conflict. In our experience, Hot Conflicts are easier to recognise, approach and are open to intervention. The overt nature of the Hot Conflict either isolates key players or causes them to join up with groups who share a similar view of what has happened and therefore what needs (in their view) to be done. Cold conflict presents us with a range of far more subtle and toxic organisational pathogens.

We have recently worked with a team to bring to an end a Cold Conflict that had begun with a typical (and as I write, sadly topical) re-organisation. Several experienced team members had left, their posts having been made redundant. A re-organisation and re-structuring meant that it was possible to replace them numerically with less experienced people in re-defined roles. Clusters and sub groups rapidly evolved accompanied by increasingly declining levels of cooperation and increased levels of mistrust generally and mistrust of managers specifically, From the outset, it seemed reasonable to conclude that the team had become absorbed in a purpose other than work and that, as a general view, management had lost its ethical right to manage. There were other rumblings as cliques grew more defined and felt free to comment on the performance of other team members, querying both their competence and their commitment.

We were commissioned to deliver a Team Building Programme. Our role was to enable the team to reach a point from which it could secure a better future in the context of a highly competitive internal and external environment.

We used the following approaches:

• A questionnaire that enabled us to communicate with the team (collectively and individually) about perceptions and beliefs with the aim of recognising “Where we are now”.
• 
  A questionnaire that enabled us to talk about the situation in Hot and Cold terms within a framework that supported discussion and openness.
• 
  A process of identifying the Team’s internal and external audiences and to take ownership of and responsibility for delivering “healthy and productive” messages.

Team members were required to complete a challenging exercise in developing a dialogue that defined their expectations towards and from each other and their managers-in short they have a right to be managed, management has a duty to manage.

We looked at “soft skills” in the context of emotional intelligence” and their impact on the dignity and regard with which they wanted to be treated as individuals and the reciprocal need to treat others in a similar manner. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”

The process was spread over two sessions, each under “Chatham House Rules”. The first event was challenging participants were understandably defensive. They were nonetheless receptive to the pre-event feedback and provided some insightful, if occasionally reluctant contributions that enabled us to broaden the scope of discussions throughout the day. Our approach required us to ensure that quieter team-members had significant opportunity to register their views and observations. This would require more vociferous participants to accept the premise that they would sometime need to “take a step back” from their usual (preferred?) style of behaviours in meetings.

IT WORKED. The opportunity to reflect of the relationship between the team and its internal and external audiences provided sufficient focus to give a common purpose without too much introspective navel gazing, increasing a sense of helplessness or re-affirming dysfunctional positions.

We left a two week gap between sessions in order to create some space in which team members and managers could reflect on the issues raised. This “gave permission” for team members to talk to each other, consider their positions on long held beliefs and to consider their individual readiness to “shift their positions”.

There’s a risk: those with deeply entrenched views who are likely to witness a reduction in their power and influence have an opportunity in which to secure their power-base. We took a judgement call, my view being that we had in our first session, exposed and secured agreement regarding the need for change. Actions that may undermine this position may therefore be seen as contrary to the good of the team. Day 1 had given me an opportunity to sow the seeds that enabled team-members to consider the “ESSENCE OF HUMAN DIGNITY” as a significant contributory factor to team performance. The “gap” provided a space in which the seeds could germinate and grow.

There was a WOW FACTOR at the beginning of Day 2! It was apparent as we were setting up, that the conversations people were having over their “coffee on arrival” were energised, there was a lot of laughter and a tangible sense of purpose. The optimism experienced at the start of the day was an accurate indicator of what was to follow and remained present throughout.
Our “job” was to reflect to the team, the reality they had described on the pre-event questionnaires and during the first session. Our “challenge” was to enable the team to describe a new reality and acknowledge the changes required and individual and group stages in order to produce sustainable growth. Our role was to guide the team in its discussions, so that the risks and challenges associated with change were articulated and understood in the context of the perceived and actual benefits to the individual, the team and the organisation.

We were required to be bold and to engage participants in a process that required them to describe in precise terms how they should work together, address challenging issues, achieve consensus, deal with disagreement and accept that this takes within a context in which they have a right to be heard and management has a duty to manage,
Here are some of the benefits/outcomes participants shared with us:

Talk needs to be followed by an Action Plan – who/when/by given date/deadline

Be prepared to revisit the Action Plan to achieve consensus

Increasing levels of communication needed

Decisions not currently made by consensus

We have lost the ability as a team to achieve the targets set as there are not enough regular divisional meetings to make the team effective

Individuals need to be accountable

The sessions were very helpful

We need to remind others of the protocols of making a complaint; this teaches them professionalism for life

We need to take ownership of issues, not undermine when someone else takes ownership

We need to make time to talk to each other away from the work-place

This has raised our awareness of roles/responsibilities/pressures etc at every level – BUT this needs to be incorporated into the Induction process for new staff so that unnecessary/unrealistic expectations are not fostered.

“Open door” policy needed – to get to know each other

Mentor system in place, but not everyone aware of it

There is a physical divide to the team as they operate on 2 floors – previously a concourse system

On reflection – do not put all new staff in one office, they need to work alongside experienced staff

Admin sits apart from the rest of the team and as such feels apart from any team spirit which may be engendered.

We are now aware of the problems and are in a position to do something to improve it.

Perhaps the most satisfying recognition of what had been achieved came a few months later. The team had been required to produce a piece of challenging work for accreditation which if gained would mean increased job security and some growth.
The team was successful-it is the manager’s view that the outcome would not have been achieved without the increased sense of collaborative working, focus and purpose secured over the development programme and delivered in the context of the relationship between desired outcomes and human dignity.