UTurn^TV

Is your workplace plagued with petty behaviour?  Is your team culture negative and filled with too much stuff that doesn’t have anything to do with getting the job done? 

As ever I would love to hear your thoughts…

Jules

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If, like me, you are one of the 2.5 million viewers of the Channel 4 programme Undercover Boss I wonder how many of you reflect on this programme in relation to your own workplace?  I’m sure you do.  The comparisons will be really easy to make.

I love the fact that someone deserving gets something nice at the end of the programme.  I usually think  ‘oooh how lovely’ and have a bit of a cry.

However, if every CEO and Managing Director in the country really wanted to know what was happening on the ‘coal face’ in their organisation it’s extremely unlikely that they would be able to disguise themselves sufficiently with a new haircut and a pair of glasses if there were only 20 people in the company.

Good CEO’s and Managing Director’s recognise that without their people not a lot actually happens in their organisation and it’s in their interest to know how staff feel and what it’s really like to work for the company.  However, how do they find out if they can’t get an offer of a TV crew and some plastic surgery?

My experience tells me that the only sure way to know how your people are feeling is to ask them.  I don’t mean staff surveys that give people limited choices in what they’re allowed to answer or suggestion boxes that can be percieved as paying lip service to listening.  What I’m suggesting is that each person in the organisation is given the opportunity to express their views about how they feel and what they would like to see improved and what follows is an active exploration of those views with some clearly owned actions and some resulting activity.

Resulting action is critical to ensure, again, that you haven’t conducted a ‘lip service’ activity.  ‘Actions speak louder than words’ is a great maxim to live by.

There may be things that we don’t want to hear, that make us feel uncomfortable but we all know that a ‘clearing of the air’ is generally a good thing to do.  Obviously this needs to be done with respect, care and compassion but adopting this approach will pay huge dividends.  There may be issues raised where it’s just not possible to effect change but if you know about it you can at least provide an explanation of why it can’t be changed.

As your organisation expands and a few more layers of management structure become necessary it becomes even more essential that you, as the leader of your organisation, have fostered an open, honest and direct culture.

I have been working with a manager recently who told me about his team of ‘complainers and whiners’.  When I asked him to write down what they were complaining about the piece of paper I gave him stayed blank.  He explained that he didn’t know one thing they complained about because he had learned how to cut the conversation short assuming that all they were doing was complaining.  Further exploration revealed that there were actually some real, if fairly minor, business issues that needed to be addressed.  Even if the eventual outcome wasn’t what the individual was looking for they would at least be able to see that a genuine attempt at finding a resolution had been made.  This improved relationships dramatically.

One of the greatest gifts we can give another human being is to listen to them.  Really listen.  How often have you felt that you wanted to get a really important point across but you knew the person that could make a real difference wasn’t listening?  From a human perspective it’s soul destroying.  From business perspective it can build a culture of mistrust, demotivation and stress.

How does your organisation ensure that you know how your staff feel?  I would love to hear your views and hopefully you won’t have to go undercover to know how your people feel about working in your company.

Jules

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Time poor?  Not enough hours in the day?  Not enough days in the week?  This video will help.  Guaranteed.

Lots of love

Jules

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Whilst carrying out one to one Compassion Management Training I often find myself helping people to improve their one to one working relationships as a by product of showing them new management techniques.

Working with a manager recently we began the session by discussing conflict resolution.  My approach is always to teach new management techniques in the context of particular situations that managers are dealing with at that time as I find abstract learning rarely has the same depth of impact.

This manager was having problems with a ‘difficult’ member of staff and it became evident quite quickly that she was carrying a huge amount of anger towards this person.  Talking the issue through I realised that both parties appeared to have become entrenched in their own position, with neither willing to move towards any sort of compromise.

So, I asked the manager to list all of the words that she was feeling about her staff member.  These are the words that she listed:

• Upset
• Angry
• Mistrusting
• Disappointed
• Frustrated
• Challenged
• Stressed
• Let Down
• Don’t like her
• Negatively influencing the team
• Sad
• Can’t get through to her
• No middle ground
• Giving too much
• Stuck
• Don’t know what to do

I then asked her to spend a moment really trying to get inside the thoughts and feelings of her member of staff.  I asked her to try and really imagine what it is like to be that person. Then I asked her to list all of the words that she imagined her member of staff might be feeling.  This is what she said:

• Shitty
• Under Pressure
• Not valued
• Angry
• Fearful
• Frustrated
• Let Down
• Mistrusting
• Not Supported

As you can see, although the two lists aren’t exactly the same the feeling emanating from both of them is pretty similar.

My client quickly realised that if both of them are feeling this way then the chances of finding any kind of professional, constructive or peaceful resolution to their issues wasn’t going to appear any time soon.  During the session we decided that she would discuss both of the above lists in an open, warm and caring way.  This way, she felt that it would be much easier to discuss some performance issues that she had concerns about in the hope that this difficult relationship could be put back onto a much healthier footing.

Regardless of who is right or wrong, for the sake of securing a positive resolution, it’s my view that we all need to start looking for the commonalities that we have with the people we work with.  It’s really easy to identify how different we are from everyone but this just helps us to remain apart from others.  Finding the common ground might take a bit of soul searching but for the sake of a peaceful and productive workplace my experience tells me it’s a much nicer way to do business for all concerned.

Once we understand where we have things in common with the people we work with, the resolutions will often float to the surface without a great deal of effort.  If you’re having problems with a member of your team perhaps you could give this approach a try, just once, and see whether it makes a difference.

As always I would love to know your thoughts and experiences.

Lots of love

Jules

This video doesn’t really show Jules at her best because she’s feeling a bit under the weather.  However, she talks about how you treat your staff when they are ill and what you can do to help them feel better sooner.

There is a huge wealth of information out there that helps you ‘improve your turnover’ or ‘increase your sales’ but in my experience taking the time to focus on your personal performance will help you do all of these things.  Today I talked to some business colleagues at a networking event about U Turn’s 5 C’s of Improving Business Performance.  These will work for you if you are a business owner or a team manager.  My 5 C’s are:

• Chill
• Courage
• Communicate
• Care
• Celebrate

Hope you find this useful and I do hope you will devise your own victory dance and find something to celebrate every day.

Let me know how you get on.

Jules

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The following blog is taken from a Project Management website owned by a friend of mine.  He is the best Project Manager I have ever worked with and is the only one I know that can bring in an IT project on time and on budget.  Whilst Ian focuses on ensuring efficiency within the project management tasks it is great to see that he also recognises the need to ensure that the emotional needs of staff need to be taken into consideration too.

The constant focus on hard tasks, deadlines and outcomes above all else is often a recipe for creating unhappy staff.  The best managers take an holistic approach to their teams and make sure they check in on the ‘happiness monitor’ on a regular basis.

You can visit Ian’s site at P M Advice.  I hope you enjoy his blog as much as I did and as always I would love to hear your thoughts.

Push, Push … and SNAP!

I work with so many programmes and projects that run to tight deadlines and suffer from mistakes that cost the programme days even weeks of delays. Why is it so hard for managers to understand that constant over working of staff will result in mistakes, in re-work, in lost time due to having to fix the mistakes. Management must recognise that driving staff to do excessive hours only works for short a period, in my experience, about two weeks, then mistakes start happening that cost more time than that perceived to be saved by pushing on.

So, remember as a professional project manager, you are only as good as the team around you, so it is your job to manage their hours to avoid over working and the impact of mistakes. This month I have witnessed a massive push to hit a, made up, deadline that has resulted in mistakes and problems causing over 3 weeks worth of delays. Added to this is the personal impact on each individual that will last longer, as sickness lost further time and damaged personal relationships outside the office are also damaged.

Remember a happy team, works far more effectively than an unhappy worn out team.

Teams often spend too much time running around like headless chickens and call it work.  In the majority of cases someone avoided making the time to put some stabilising foundations in place which would ultimately save time and money.  Is your team like that?  Do you spend all day sticking Elastoplasts on broken arms?  This video might help.

What a funny old week.  I have had several meetings and training sessions this week with clients and business associates where the conversation has turned away from the main reason for the meeting onto more personal subjects.  As someone who is always willing to lend a listening ear to anyone in need I often find myself furiously scribbling book titles, website, music and organisations that have supported me in my personal development over the last 11 years.

In my work with middle management and teams, looking at who I am in a positive way and learning new and better ways of approaching life has made a big difference to how I work so as you can imagine I’m a big fan.

I thought it might be useful (and save me some time!) to list below what has inspired me over the years.  I’m not claiming that these things are ‘the answer’ – they just happened to work for me.  If they work for you that’s great.  If not then I hope you find what you’re looking for somewhere.

The Celestine Prophecy: An Adventure – This book by James Redfield was the first one I read that was in the personal development genre.  At the time it blew me away and it’s still one of my favourites.  I had no idea that you could ‘be better’ or ‘be happier’ by reading anything so it was a revelation on many levels.  Looking back, I now know that because it was presented in story format it made it easy for me to accept and acknowledge the concepts you are encouraged to consider.  The blurb about the book is “THE CELESTINE PROPHECY tells a gripping story of adventure and discovery, but is also a guidebook that has the power to crystallize your perceptions of why you are where you are in life–and to direct your steps with a new energy and optimism as you head into tomorrow.”

The Power Of Intention: Change The Way You Look At Things And The Things You Look At Will Change: Learning to Co-create Your World Your Way – Wayne Dyers book is pretty well described in the subtitle of this book.  I found it incredibly useful for looking at the world differently than I ever had done.  It certainly helped me to see how much of the negative stuff in my life was being created by me.

The Power of Focus: How to Hit Your Business, Personal and Financial Targets with Absolute Certainty – I love Jack Canfield (obviously not like that because that would be weird seeing as I don’t know him).  I love his practical, useful and down to earth style that tells it like it is in the nicest way.  The Power of Focus is great if you want to get control over your life but don’t even know how to start a To Do List.

Ludovico Einaudi is a classical pianist and composer who is still alive.  He writes some of the most beautiful music I have ever heard.  Taking time to relax and chill out is an essential part of staying sane and this music is just perfect for that.  There is peace and beauty in this music that takes you to another place.  (Mines always a hammock on a tropical beach.)  My favourite albums are Divenire, Einaudi: Le Onde and Nightbook which is his latest release.  If you ever get the opportunity to see him play live it will be well worth it.

In what sometimes seems like a mad mad world His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s book The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living is a great book for challenging your thinking on how the world should be.  I would never call myself a bhuddist but there is a huge amount of wisdom in this book that will apply to everyone’s life.

In order to keep my skills and head in the right place I work with a wonderful woman called Jane Lumley.  Describing what she does would take all day so beyond saying she is a Health Kinesiologist I would strongly suggest checking her out.  Her site is Reflecting Health and I would encourage you to explore what she does.

Reading Nelson Mandella’s auto biography makes you realise that when you have belief anything is possible. Although I would always recommend reading any books about inspirational people, Nelson Mandella’s strength of character shines throughout this book. A Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela

I have just realised as I have been writing this that I could end up making this blog the longest blog in history!  There is so much out there that can inspire you to change whatever aspect of your life you feel needs to change.  Perhaps the list above will give you some starting points that will lead you to exactly what you need.  I certainly hope so.

I would love to know what inspires you.  Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below so that anyone who reads this can have wider choice.

I hope wherever you are you are well and fine.

Much love

Jules

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Anyone who is self-employed will know that there are as many positives as negatives in running your own business.  For me personally, one of the best positives is having the freedom to create my own environment.  Where I work, what hours I work, what decisions I make and…. what I wear.

I had a conversation recently with another business owner who, very casually, “and of course I put my best suit on for the meeting”.  Why it stuck in my mind I don’t know, however, I did begin to notice that many people mentioned this as part of their normal preparation for meetings.

I don’t wear suits anymore.  I spent more than 15 years going to offices where wearing a suit or formal business dress was an absolute must.  I remember ‘dress down Friday’s’ as a clothing nightmare because I had to think really hard about what to put on, which I never had to do Monday to Thursday.  I did think it was all a bit pointless anyway as there were more rules for what you couldn’t wear on Fridays which ended up being an apparel minefield.  These days I just wear what I want to wear, but then as I am self-employed I have that choice.

When in discussion with clients about who they are at work, many will say something to the effect that “I have my work personality and my home personality and my work personality comes off with my suit.”  It always strikes me as very odd that anyone would make a deliberate choice to assume two different personalities into their psyche, AND that they would associate one of them with a set of clothes.

It is clear that some areas of business where people work in offices are not holding fast to the idea that formal work wear is a necessity.  I can’t remember the last time I met someone who works in web design who wore a suit.  Whilst I imagine there have been one or two I have found on the whole there is a much more relaxed attitude to clothing.

It’s clear that the suited approach to business is one that is very deep seated in our culture and, in general, the expectation is that an important business meeting requires a suit.  During one conversation someone asked me “wouldn’t you wear a suit if you were going to an important meeting?”, the inference being that I would have no hope of sitting in front of a potential corporate client in my informal clothing and win any business.

When we look at others we make an instant judgement about them don’t we?  We make a judgement based on our own beliefs and prejudices and clothing plays a big part in our perception of others. We all know or have heard of billionaires who dress like they live on the streets and people who don’t have a bean to their name but are walking around in the latest designer gear. (My grandma always referred to them as ‘all fur coat and no underwear’.)

My skills, abilities, intelligence, dedication, determination, motivation do not change dependent upon what I wear but many of us set a great deal of store by what we see.

I would encourage all of us to take the time to look beneath the clothing (not literally obviously) and focus on who it is you are talking to, what they are saying and whether this is a person that you can connect with.

I for one will continue to dress the way I feel like dressing so if you meet me be sure and say how fab my outfit looks!

I would love to hear your views so please leave a comment below.

Lots and lots of love

Jules

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