Author: Mike Clayton

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Flow and Performance Management

Management Pocketbooks was at the CIPD’s HRD exhibition in full force last week.  It’s always a good opportunity to see what’s new in the worlds of training, coaching and management development.

Thank you, by the way, to the hundred and forty or so people who sat or stood for the forty five minutes of my talk about Handling Resistance, and to everyone who visited the stand.  More on the talk in a future blog.

Is it a trend?

One thing stood out for me at the exhibition.  Maybe it represents a trend – it did catch my interest.

Positive Psychology

"Psi plus" symbol: Positive PsychologyAt least two businesses exhibiting had deep expertise in Positive Psychology, which I’ve covered in one form in an earlier post, and applying it to the workplace.

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I remain convinced that this is a field whose time is coming – I’d put it about where Emotional Intelligence was in the early 1990s.  Who will be the Dan Goleman of this field?

I picked up a copy of the new Positive Psychology at Work by Sarah Lewis and my wife (who nabbed it on the train) tells me it’s really good!

Another Aspect of Positive Psychology is Flow

Have you ever found yourself so immersed in something that time disappears from under you and so, when you finish – or are stopped – you have hardly an inkling of how much time has passed?  You may only then realise how cold, how hungry or even how desperate you are for the loo.  That was flow.

Flow experiences happen when we are in a directed task with clear goals, plenty of sense of how we are doing and, crucially, just the right amount of challenge.

The typical flow state diagram looks like this.

Flow state diagram

High Performance at Work

Flow states are the key to high levels of motivation and performance.  We need to get ourselves, or the people we manage, into a flow state by making demands of them with just the right amount of challenge.  This way, what we are doing always tests us to our limit of competence but not so far beyond, that we feel stressed by it and not so far below that we get comfortable, complacent and bored.

How can we increase the challenge further?

There are two ways to increase the challenge we place on a team member and still maintain the possibility of a high performance flow state:

  1. we can either provide suitable training, coaching, practice or other intervention, or
  2. we can offer our support, leaving them feeling safe from potential failure and able to ask for help, thus extending the range over which they can operate before feeling stressed.

So here’s the deal

Good management is about matching the challenge to the person – and positive psychology shows us why this is.

Some Management Pocketbooks you might enjoy

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A little note…

I have been using the “Psi plus” symbol for about three years now as a shorthand in my notes for positive psychology.  I’ve never seen it anywhere else, but it seems such an obvious shorthand.  Anyone seen it elsewhere?

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What Political Animal Are You?

Tomorrow and Thursday are days out for us

Well, actually, we’re working.  We are at the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development annual HR Development Exhibition at Olympia, London.

If you are there too, come and see us on stand 571, and maybe pop to the Learning Arena at 10am on Wednesday and hear ‘How to understand resistance and handle it effectively’, based on the Handling Resistance Pocketbook.

So let’s have some fun

The Workplace Politics Pocketbook has a lovely model, allowing you to chart yourself against Political Intelligence and Organisational Goal Alignment.  It is most useful for helping you to spot and work with others, but it lends itself to a quick and easy diagnostic for yourself.

image

Have some fun and answer the questions, recognising that most of us will be a combination of all four types, behaving differently in different circumstances.

Quick Questionnaire

For each of the six groups, select the one that describes you best.

  • A:  Clever
  • B:  Observant
  • C:  Determined
  • D:  Trusting
    .
  • A:  Adaptable
  • B:  Swift
  • C:  Sure-footed
  • D: Loyal
    .
  • A:  Vicious
  • B:  Ruthless when necessary
  • C:  Bad Tempered at times
  • D:  Gentle
    .
  • A:  Cunning
  • B:  Wise
  • C:  Hard-working
  • D:  Innocent
    .
  • A:  Resourceful
  • B:  Silent
  • C:  Noisy
  • D:  Naive
    .
  • A:  Sly
  • B:  Aloof
  • C:  Put-upon
  • D:  A follower

Time to count your scores…

Mostly As:  You old Fox, you!

Foxes are politically intelligent and use their cleverness for personal gain – they are often known for playing games.
Grrrr

Mostly Bs:  What a wise Owl you are

Owls understand the politics and use their wisdom to work for the benefit of the organisation.
Tuwooo

Mostly Cs: You’ve grown up to be a Mule

Mules are determined to get what they want, and will ignore the established politics of the organisation.
Hehawww

Mostly Ds:  You’re a trusting Sheep

Sheep are suspicious of politics and only want everything to work out well for all concerned.
Baaa

This may be a bit of fun, but it has a serious side

Workplace politics trips many of us up, so understanding how to read the signals and play the game is important, and David Bancroft-Turner’s Workplace Politics Pocketbook is an excellent guide for the novice, with some great tips and hints for seasoned politicians too.

Workplace Politics Pocketbook

It is filled with skills to develop and a proper analysis of our four feathery/furry/hairy/woolly friends.  Apologies to David for simplifying his ideas for fun!

This – and all of the Management Pocketbooks Titles are available at special show prices during the CIPD HRD Exhibition.  You can get £1 off any book and if you buy five, you can get a sixth one free – that’s six pocketbooks for £34.95.

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Handling Sales Objections

In last week’s Pocketblog, we looked at one way to make a sale.  But often it isn’t the selling that defeats us: it’s the objections.

CIPD HRD Exhibition

Resistance gets us every time and this is the topic of the Management Pocketbooks Learning Arena Session at the CIPD HRD Exhibition on 6 April.

At that session, I will be speaking on:

‘How to Understand Resistance and Handle it Effectively’

I will speak at 10am, and then return to the Management Pocketbooks stand (Number 571) to meet readers and answer questions.  As well as being the editor and principal author of the Management Pocketblog,  I am also the author of the Handling Resistance Pocketbook.

At the stand, you can get all of the Pocketbooks at the special exhibition rate of £1 off, and if you buy five, you can get a sixth one free – that’s six pocketbooks for £34.95.

Resistance to Sales

I will be speaking about resistance to change at HRD, but to follow from last week’s blog, let’s take a look at how my ‘Onion Model of Resistance’ applies to objections to sales.

OnionModelSalesResistanceL4

The Onion Model

The Onion Model sets out the layers of resistance we encounter – whether to our ideas, to change, or to our sales proposals.  As an example, here is a video of me talking about the fourth layer of resistance to a sale; when the potential customer says something like:

‘I don’t like your proposal.’

In this short video, I am talking about this level of resistance, and illustrating it with an example.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmEMdscBpR0]

So here’s the deal

Your job, when you encounter resistance, is to engage with it in a positive way.  Identify what level the resistance is at, then deal with it appropriately.  When you handle resistance effectively, it will often just melt away.

The Handling Resistance Pocketbook

The Handling Resistance Pocketbook, by Mike Clayton

The Handling Resistance Pocketbook covers:

  • How to understand resistance
  • The importance of a sound process
  • Ways to start persuading
  • The power of language and questioning
  • Resistance to change
  • Sales objections
  • Conflict
  • The psychology of resistance

My Handling Resistance blog is at HandlingResistance.com

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Sell like your doctor

There is an awful lot that business people can learn from doctors, and I once sketched out a keynote talk: ‘What medical doctors can teach us about business’.  If the UK Government gets its way with National Health Service reforms, I might dust it off, re-title it: ‘What medical practice can teach us about business’ and take it on the road to GP groups around the country.

Let’s look at pain

Take Your MedicineDoctors rarely have any problems convincing a patient to take their medicine or have their operation.  Most people who do resist their doctor’s advice do so because they also have conflicting advice – often from another doctor.

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Of course, the stakes can be very high at a doctor’s surgery: you may be in pain, concerned for your long-term health or even facing terminal illness.  Your doctor can diagnose what is causing this and offer ways to remove or reduce the pain, enhance your long-term health prospects and even, perhaps, cure a life-threatening illness.

How does this relate to sales?

Nobody buys anything without a reason, and there are only four reasons why anybody does anything:

  1. Duty – they feel they ‘must’
  2. Curiosity – they need to ‘scratch an itch’
  3. Pleasure – they want something that will ‘feel good’
  4. Pain – they want to ‘stop the pain’

What doctors can do is offer the promise of stopping the pain.  As a salesperson, this is a phenomenally effective way to sell.  If you can identify what hurts for your customer, then you are on your way.

Selling like a doctor

Here’s how

  1. Discover their pain
  2. Make sure they are aware of it
  3. Demonstrate that you understand what’s causing it
  4. Suggest your product or service can heal it
  5. Let the potential customer ask you questions
  6. Provide evidence that your medicine works
  7. Discuss the perfect prescription for them

So here’s the deal

Next time you are trying to sell, take some time to diagnose your potential customer’s discomfort.  The more pain they have, the keener they will be for the right medicine.  If they also believe that you have that medicine, they’ll bite off your hand to get a fix.

Some Management Pocketbooks you might like

Selling is an essential skill for anyone in business, so it’s a great time to polish up you skills and remind yourself of the basics.

The Sales Excellence Pocketbook The Sales Person's Pocketbook

The Sales Excellence Pocketbook

The Salesperson’s Pocketbook

The Negotiator’s Pocketbook

The Key Account Manager’s Pocketbook

The Telesales pocketbook

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Marketing is an Ethos

I think Neil Russell-Jones strikes the nail perfectly in his introduction to the Marketing Pocketbook:

‘Marketing is not a department or a group of people.It is an ethos, that is a type of thinking that must flow throughout an organisation and permeate every aspect of its operations.’

What he means is that we should not leave marketing to ‘the marketers’ and we should not consider it a distinct activity from any other aspect of running our business.  Every aspect of every organisation from a multi-million-mega-corp to a sole-trader; and from the biggest Government department to the smallest cog in the Big Society machine needs to reflect the need to get a positive message out.

The game has changed: the rules are the same

SocialMediaThe game of marketing has changed out of all recognition in the last ten years.  The web and social media marketing channels have taken over and present us all with a huge amount to learn about how to use them effectively.  Luckily, for the moment, the rules are the same – in the sense that they are defined by human psychology.

 

Continue reading Marketing is an Ethos

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After Generation Y?

Have you ever noticed that things seem to cluster in your life?  There seems to be a ‘time’ for certain things: one minute they are in the deep background, and the next, they emerge and keep assailing your senses.

So it has been these last few weeks for me.  Nearly a month ago, I attended an interesting talk and wrote a blog about Generation X and Generation Y, and then found out about a unified theory of all of history, based on generations.

I returned to that theme a week later, to speculate how Generation Y (born between 1980 and 2000) would behave as managers in the workplace.  But the theme could not leave me alone.

What comes after Generation Y

Continue reading After Generation Y?

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Team Leadership

One of the most popular models of team leadership is John Adair’s Action Centred Leadership.

Three Circles

In this model, leadership expert, John Adair, identifies three overlapping circles of concern for a team leader: the team’s task, the team itself, and the individuals in the team.

It is a wonderfully simple model that encourages you to weigh the attention you give to each, against the needs of the situation.  Adair has much to say about your responsibilities in each category.

John Adair's Three Circles Diagram

More Circles

Like any model, part of its value comes from its simplicity.  The price of simplicity, however, comes from what the model misses, neglects or under-represents, in achieving a memorable elegance.

Here are three more circles (among many), that one could add to Adair’s model.

Organisational Context

There are a lot of reasons for team leaders to focus beyond their team and onto the wider organisational context within which their team sits.  Firstly, how does the team’s task set fit into the wider group of activities?  Team leaders need to know this to set the team’s tasks in context and therefore give them meaning – one of the most important motivators.

Under this heading, we can also consider the team’s relationships with a wide range of stakeholders, and the interest those stakeholders have in the team’s work.  Particular among those stakeholders are other teams.  The team leader needs to find ways to manage the interfaces and dependencies with other teams and work streams.

Finally, we have to acknowledge the role of politics.  Not what many of us sign up for in the world of work, but for team leaders, actively navigating their organisation’s political reefs is a necessary expedient.

The Leader’s Emotional State

‘Never under-estimate the impact of your emotional state on your team’ was arguably the best management advice your author ever got (thank you George Owen, if you ever get to hear of this blog).

Team members will look to you for all sorts of guidance and, unconsciously, will take their emotional cue from you.

Vision of the Future

Not only should you be looking beyond your team, as team leader, but look beyond the now of today’s tasks and today’s team and today’s individual.  What will your team need to do tomorrow, and next week, and next month, and next year?  And how do you need to evolve it to prepare the team and its individuals to deliver?

Show your team vision.  While some are motivated by pride in what they are doing today, others need to see what is in store.

Join the debate – what would you add?

Please do use the comments facility below to tell us what you would add to this model.

Management Pocketbooks you might enjoy

You can read about John Adair’s Action Centred Leadership in The Management Models Pocketbook.

The Management Models Pocketbook, by Mike Clayton

Other Management Pocketbooks you might like are:

The Leadership Pocketbook

The Teamworking Pocketbook

The People Manager’s Pocketbook

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Generation Y at work

Last week, I got side-tracked in my quest to learn how Generation Y (born between around 1980 and 2000) will handle the challenge of management in the workplace.  The oldest and most talented of them are stepping up to that challenge already and we can expect a significant cohort of new Generation Y managers in our workplaces over the next few years.

Back to that highly salient topic…

Continue reading Generation Y at work

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As simple as X, Y, Z: the complexities of Generational Theories

There are an awful lot of interesting things to do with yourself, and a new one came my way last week: I discovered my local Cafe Scientifique.  If you aren’t familiar with the concept, for the price of a tea or coffee, you can listen to some of the latest ideas in science and technology at a local cafe.  Mostly, they will be presented by a visiting scientist – sometimes eminent.  You can learn whether you have one nearby, or how to start one, here if you’re in Britain, or here if you’re not.

My first Cafe

My first experience was great (thanks to Paula Kennedy for organising it) and the speaker, Professor Averil Macdonald, was excellent.  Averil talked about Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y.  What makes a good talk is not so much what is said, nor how it is presented.  A good talk sets you thinking…

Continue reading As simple as X, Y, Z: the complexities of Generational Theories

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Balance is everything

So much of western thinking divides the world into four.  You only have to look at management models to see this at its extremes: psychometric profiling, such as DISC®, personality types such as Merrill-Reid or Lifo®, and most common of all, the innumerable “four box models”.  These all have something valuable to tell us, but are all hampered by two features: they allow only four classes in an infinitely varying world and they have to go to great lengths to then assure users that  some admixture of classes is not only allowed, but encouraged.

This is South Korea’s national flag.  It too represents an ancient division of the world into four components; in this case, the four major tri-grams of the I Ching stand for (clockwise from top left): heaven, water, earth and fire.

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One model stands out by putting the balance to the forefront and making its four categories the secondary feature of the model.  This is Robert Kaplan and David Norton’s Balanced Scorecard.

Balanced Business Scorecard

In one of Harvard Business Review’s most read articles (it appears in their compilation of ten must-read articles), Kaplan and Norton set out how a business can achieve success by focusing on four different areas; not just on financial performance.

The principles at stake here are simple: if you build a great business, financial success will follow, focus only on the financial metrics and you cannot build a great long-term business, and if you are going to focus more widely, you need to develop measures of success that are as rugged as the well-established financial measured.

It takes me back to my old favourite adage: “what gets measured gets managed” – see the earlier pocketblog: “Are targets a waste of time?”

Kaplan and Norton’s four Perspectives

The original article (Harvard Business Review Sept-Oct 1993) looked at a case study of engineering company, Rockwater, whose four perspectives were: financial, internal processes, innovation & learning, and customer.  These have become crystallised to the extent that many businesses take these categories off the shelf.

BalancedScorecard

However, whilst they are valuable for many businesses, the principle of selecting four perspectives that can dictate the future success of your enterprise is far more general than this.  Whether you run a business, a public service, a charity or a small group of people in any sphere of life, the fundamental methodology holds: find your key perspectives and develop the measures that you value most.

A Balanced Scorecard Methodology

Seven steps are all it takes… and a lot of careful thought and involvement of colleagues.  Skipping those tough parts, here it is in a nutshell.

  1. Make sure you have a clear vision and strategy
  2. Find the performance categories that best link your vision and strategy to success (Here are some different examples: service standards, thought leadership, marketing activity, performance management, internal morale)
  3. For each perspective, define a small number of objectives that support your vision and strategy
  4. Develop standards or ways to measure progress and build simple systems to monitor and communicate performance against each perspective

  5. Spread the word throughout your organisation that these measures will drive your reward and promotion mechanisms
  6. Monitor performance and compare it with your objectives
  7. Take action to bring performance in line with your objectives

Some Management Pocketbooks you might like

The balanced scorecard can be used at several levels from strategy to day-to-day operations.

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