We began our Six Word Wisdom series in June of last year. Since then we have spoken to a variety of thinkers in the field of management and organisational development to ask them to condense for us their advice for business into just six words... It's building up to be quite a collection....we thought it was time for a recap. So what have our contributors said?
They have pointed out the importance of taking account of the individual when trying to build succesful organisations:
Develop a compelling customer value proposition - Prof. John Fahy All in all 30 words that say a lot. We'll be continuing to grow the series as we call on the expertise of those in our network.
[post_title] => 30 words your business needs to hear? Friday Blog Roundup
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[post_content] => To coincide with her visit to IMI this week Nancy Kline - the originator and pioneer of The Thinking Environment® process shares her thoughts on attention and interest in a coaching exchange:
Are You Interested?
By Nancy Kline
‘You are so patient.’ I hear this after almost every Thinking Session demonstration. Other people tell me they often hear the same comment about their Attention as Thinking Partners, too. I guess what we do looks like patience. It is still. It is warm. It doesn’t rush. It breathes.
But patience is not what it is. Not remotely. Patience is a kind of waiting, a postponing. It is in reference to the moment when the thing, about which a person is being patient, will stop, and the person can finally act or speak. Patience is a polite dismissing of what is happening or being thought in this moment. It is an invisible drumming of the table. Patience wants the thing to end, but does not fan or act on that wanting. Patience is a cousin of arrogance. It is disengaged.
Attention in a Thinking Environment is not patience.
It is interest.
It is breathless anticipation of what the Thinker will think, and say, next. It wants to know. It wants to hear the Thinker’s creations. It stands ready for birth.
Patience is nowhere to be found. It is interest people are seeing. And interest does do amazing things.
It creates thinking.
About Nancy Kline
Nancy Kline created and pioneered the development of the theory and process called The Thinking Environment®. This model allows people to turn their teams, organisations and relationships into Thinking Environments in which people at every level can think for themselves, with rigour, imagination and courage. The process increases the quality of thinking in, and thus of concrete results from, all human interactions, both in pairs and in groups, and decreases the amount of time it takes to achieve them.
As well as President of Time To Think, an international leadership development and coaching company Nancy is also a published author and public speaker.
Nancy and the other Time To Think Consultants and Coaches do Thinking Environment work in companies, universities, human resource organisations, government agencies and voluntary organisations. Thinking Environment work is active in the UK, Ireland, Sweden, Spain, The United States, Australia and South Africa.
Time To Think began in 1984 and grew out of Nancy's consulting and teaching work near Washington, DC, where she had served as a Founding Director of The Thornton Friends School for twelve years and as Director of The Leadership Institute for six years. She is a Fellow of Ashridge College, UK.
[post_title] => Are You Interested? - Guest Post: Nancy Kline
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[post_title] => A Fixed or Growth Mindset? What it Means for Your Organisation
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[post_title] => 5 Top Tips for Being Focused in Work
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[post_title] => 3 slick selling techniques you should take from the Time-share Salesperson
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[post_content] => Have you noticed that so many of the great managers – and leaders – are really odd?
This can be seen not only in business with enigmatic leaders like Apple's Steve Jobs (described by Bill Gates as "fundamentally odd", but also in some of the more eccentric characters we see in sport - take for example football managers like José Mourinho, Alex Ferguson and Brian Clough.
While there are indeed managers like Manchester United's David Moyes, who are .. average, reasonable, uninspired: just the sort of manager that might make the grade on paper in a recruitment process, the great leadership is seen from managers like Mourinho and Ferguson, neither of whom would have stood much chance of making it through to the interview stage! They weren't even great football players!
Odd, isn’t it?
But is it enough just to be odd? Unlikely... Perhaps there is good odd (Mourinho) and bad odd (take your pick of the world’s despots).
In my experience working with organisations, I have found that the great leaders, despite their seeming oddness, have at least 3 things in common:
1. They are clever– especially with people. They know whose buttons to press – and when! Who to kick and who to hug! They know the game – they know their business inside out.
2. They have more than just one style – they hold their principles constant but adapt their own style to the situation in hand. Mourinho famously let his kit man give the motivational speech to his players last week (in indecipherable “Scottish”, too!). Ferguson could tell his Beckhams from his Ronaldos, his Van Persies from his Rooneys - and found the right words for each.
3. They reach for the stars, and hold themselves – not just their staff – to the highe
st standards. They are unrelenting in their quest for success. Their self-belief is unshakable. Failures are used as opportunities to learn. Success is inevitable – the only question is when.
So perhaps there is something to be learned from seeing past what might seem like strange personalities and assessing our potential leaders instead for intelligence, a flexibility in style and an unshakable self-belief and ambition. It may be that these characteristics are more important to success as a leader that meeting any definition of "normal".
Dermot Duff is Programme Director of the ManagementWorks IMI Diploma in Management and the ManagementWorks IMI Diploma in Strategy & Innovation - programmes specifically aimed at developing management and strategic capability in SMEs. His expertise is in the area of SMEs, project management, manufacturing and supply chain management and he is the author of Managing Professionals and Other Smart People. His work focuses on developing practical implementable solutions founded on sound theory.
If you are interested in honing your skills as a leader in your organisation speak to us about the IMI Diploma in Leadership starting this Spring. The programme is aimed at dramatically enhancing leadership skills, awareness, impact and judgement. To know more check out the brochure or watch this clip.
[post_title] => Are You Odd Enough to Lead? What do Steve Jobs, José Mourinho and Alex Ferguson have in common?
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Leadership teams can start the creation of high performance cultures by implementing the following 6 steps:
1. Establish a sense of urgency
They need to make it clear that the current culture needs to change, articulate the vision and business case, and describe the opportunity (as John P. Kotter states in his book The 8-Step Process for Leading Change) in a way that appeals to the hearts and minds of people.
2. Develop a set of strategic beliefs
These are the beliefs senior executives have about their organisation’s environment that enables shaping business strategy e.g. Dell believed that customers would, if the price was right, buy computers from a catalogue rather than go to computer stores as the conventional wisdom dictated they would. They created a $7 billion business.
3. Develop a set of values
Values enable the organisation to act on its strategic beliefs and implement their strategy the right way. Values shape the culture of an organisation, define its character and serve as a foundation in how people act and make decisions. Dell’s values supporting its strategy and strategic beliefs include: Delivering results that make a positive difference; leading with openness and optimism and winning with integrity.
4. Capitalise on quick wins
Capitalize on and honour your cultural strengths and act quickly on any critical behaviour changes required.
5. Challenge those norms that get on the way of high performance
Norms are informal guidelines about what is considered normal (what is correct or incorrect) behaviour in a particular situation. Peer pressure to conform to team norms is a powerful influencer on people’s behaviour, and it is often a major barrier affecting change. It is always easier to go along with the norm than trying to change it…. Common samples of negative norms in some organisations: Perception that it is ok to yell at people, ignore people’s opinions, etc.
6. Role model and recognise the desired behaviours
As Gandhi wonderfully put it “Be the change you want to see in the world”. This empowers action and helps embed the desired culture you are trying to create.
Behaviour is a function of its consequences. Behaviour that results in pleasant consequences is more likely to be repeated, and behaviour that results in unpleasant consequences is less likely to be repeated.
According to B. F. Skinner and reinforcement theory “future behavioural choices are affected by the consequences of earlier behaviours”. The argument is clear; if you want people to be brave and challenge the status quo, you shouldn’t make them feel awkward or like difficult employees when they do. Furthermore, if want people to contribute at meetings make sure you actively listen to them and act on their suggestions and ideas.
Caution:
On his famous article “On the folly of rewarding A while hoping for B” Steven Kerr argues that the way in which we reward and recognise people doesn’t always deliver the desired results. We all have being in situations where we are told to plan for long-term growth yet we are rewarded purely on quarterly earnings; we are asked to be a team player and are rewarded solely on our individual efforts; we are told that the way in which results are achieved is important and yet we promote people who achieve results the wrong / in a Machiavellian way.
A friend of mine was recently at a hospital and he complained to the ward manager about the doctor’s bad manners and rudeness. The answer he got was “do you want to be treated by the best heart doctor in the country or a not so good doctor but with a really nice bed manner?”.
My argument is why can’t we have both?
Pedro Angulo is the Programme Director of the IMI Diploma in Strategic HR Management starting on 16th November 2016.
Pedro is an Organisational Effectiveness Business Partner in AIB and Chairperson of the Irish EMCC (European Mentoring and Coaching Council).
He is a motivational speaker and regular presenter at HR, coaching, change and business conferences / events._____________________________________
[post_title] => 6 Steps to start the creation of high performance cultures
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Mary Lynch
19th Mar 2019
Mary Lynch is associate IMI faculty on the Coaching for Business Performance short programme.
Related Articles
30 words your business needs to hear? Friday Blog Roundup
Are You Interested? - Guest Post: Nancy Kline
A Fixed or Growth Mindset? What it Means for Your Organisation
5 Top Tips for Being Focused in Work
3 slick selling techniques you should take from the Time-share Salesperson
Are You Odd Enough to Lead? What do Steve Jobs, José Mourinho and Alex Ferguson have in common?
6 Steps to start the creation of high performance cultures
FeedForward – A new direction in giving effective feedback
Giving effective feedback is an essential skill for coaches, managers and leaders but also one that is regularly dreaded.
.“We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.”– Bill Gates.
Giving effective feedback is an essential skill for coaches, managers and leaders but also one that is regularly dreaded. Employees need to know if their performance is what their leaders expect from them and, if not, they need suggestions on how to improve it.
Many leaders have used techniques such as the classic “sandwich” approach which formed the core of many training and feedback sessions in the past. A feedback approach that begins with a positive comment, followed by a negative comment and closed with another positive comment.
The fundamental problem with feedback is it focuses purely on the past.
Overcoming the Fear of giving feedback
Managers regularly report a fear of giving feedback. If feedback is poorly delivered it can be detrimental to employee engagement and motivation and only certain people can use this negative or critical feedback to develop. Employees regularly report not hearing very much at all in a feedback session once something negative has been said and also not recalling very accurately what was said.
In truth when receiving feedback people often hear their own negative judgements, internal criticisms and filter what is being said through personalised feelings of hurt pride.
A Gallup survey found that 67% of employees whose managers focused on their strengths were fully engaged in their work, as compared to only 31% of employees whose managers focused on their weaknesses.
Sheila Heen, Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School and a Founder of Triad Consulting has spoken extensively about the need to understand the experience of the feedback. Feedback is difficult because it stands at the juncture of two human needs – the need to be loved and accepted for who we are and the need to improve and be better than we are.
When you’re giving feedback we first need to think about your experiences of receiving feedback and then about what the other party is experiencing. Our beliefs, values and ultimately our skill as feedback givers is influenced and shaped by how we have received feedback.
Feedback has a problem – it’s always looking at the past. (Picture Source)
Feedforward
Feedforward is based on giving future suggestions rather than focusing on the past. In this way, it is about developing people and helping them to work on what they can change in the future. It is an objective description of what must be done in the future.
One of the issues with feedback is that, while it outlines what someone did or didn’t do, it lacks specific information about what the person can do to change and improve. Feedforward provides a constructive outline of the skills or behaviours which are required for successful achievement of a goal.
Feedback can also instil feelings of failure and inadequacy and prevent people from moving forward whereas feedforward can inspire someone to action with confidence.
Feedback invites reaction as with the best will and intention in the world the giver of feedback tends to include personal judgement, reaction and feelings. Feedforward describes something which has not happened yet, making it objective and depersonalising it.
Marcus Goldsmith has written extensively about feedforward and I would agree when he says that feedforward works because it is a positive focus on solutions for the future rather than the mistakes and shortfalls of the past. Similarly, Managers and Leaders working with high achievers can benefit from using feedforward because as Marcus says, “feedforward is especially suited to successful people”.
High achievers benefit from clearly understanding their goals in specific ways which help them to achieve and this is exactly what feedforward does, as when it is done well, it serves as a clear description of how to excel.
Mary Lynch is associate IMI faculty on the Coaching for Business Performance short programme. Mary specialises in the areas of Organisational Development, Change Management, Diagnostic Design and Interpretation, Performance Management, Leadership and Coaching.
We began our 
This can be seen not only in business with enigmatic leaders like Apple's Steve Jobs (
st standards. They are unrelenting in their quest for success. Their self-belief is unshakable. Failures are used as opportunities to learn. Success is inevitable – the only question is when.
So perhaps there is something to be learned from seeing past what might seem like strange personalities and assessing our potential leaders instead for intelligence, a flexibility in style and an unshakable self-belief and ambition. It may be that these characteristics are more important to success as a leader that meeting any definition of "normal".
Source: www.clubsolutionsmagazine.com
