Tips from the Undercover Boss: What does "they" tell you?

If you're up for a bit of Reality TV (the kind that won't rot your brain or leave you feeling unclean and in need of a bathe), I'd suggest the series Undercover Boss. In the next few posts, I'll explain why. For today, let's look at the sinister use of "they" in organizations. 

I've lately become a fan of the American TV series, Undercover Boss*. Yes, it's "reality" TV but its redeeming quality is that it highlights the major and continuing disconnect in organizations between the folks who make strategy and the people who actually make it all happen every day.

Can you see your CEO mopping toilets?

In each episode, a TV crew follows the CEO of a major company while he poses as an entry-level worker to see what life's really like on the front lines of his own organization.

Leaving behind not only the C-suite but also their (usually large) homes, families and pampered lifestyles, the human side of each CEO is revealed. Each struggles to deal in his own way with his new transient reality of temporary, insecure jobs and moving around from one motel to another.

The situations are predictably hilarious, as these high-powered execs push mops, clean out horse (and human!) shit, try to keep up with the inhuman pace of modern assembly lines and, in more than a few cases are actually told: you're fired!

A whole new take on "bottom line"

What makes it good TV are of course the human interest stories that emerge as the Undercover Bosses learn first-hand what effect their decisions (often driven by cost-cutting and "efficiency") have on the daily lives of their staff.

The bosses also hear staff using phrases like "Head Office" and "Corporate" and "it's policy" as they do things that clearly don't work and often actually make their job a lot harder.

These employees (even if unwittingly) have the chance to "speak truth to power" and let the Big Boss know, in no uncertain terms, that there is a very real "Us versus Them" divide in the organization.

And in case you think that doesn't matter, read on...    


What "they" tells you, and why you should listen

In "They" have a lot to answer for Richard Branson writes:

A company's employees are its greatest asset, particularly in service-based operations where your people are your product. When a company fails to grasp this simple business tenet, the result is invariably an oppositional "us and them" divide between management and front-line staff.

Managers and business leaders should watch for this tendency. A company where the staff consistently overuses the word "they" is a company with problems.

If employees aren't associating themselves with their company by using "we," it is a sign that people up and down the chain of command aren't communicating – and if that turns out to be the case, you'll usually find secondary problems throughout the company, affecting everything from development to customer service.

Repairing an "us and them" environment is a cultural challenge that usually calls for greater employee involvement and improved internal communications from the executive suite to the shop floor. In my experience, middle management is a good place to look for the source of the problem. Feedback from up and down the chain often hits a wall in the person of a midlevel manager who has fallen victim to the "knowledge is power" syndrome.

Identifying such blockages and unclogging corporate arteries will bring huge payoffs.

Watch for my next post, which will include tips and practical ideas for handling these stubborn and unhelpful middle-management communication blockages!

Where you can find Undercover Boss

In Australia, full episodes are available to replay on Ten's website: scroll down in the right-hand window until you find Undercover Boss, then select from recent episodes.

Outside Australia, you can try YouTube or your local network's website. (In fact, if you're a reader and you find a link to episodes of the show, please be sure to share the URL in the comments below - thanks!)

* - big hat-tip to Andrew & Sascha Rixon in Melbourne for letting me know about the series

Social media is good for you (when done well!)

Today as I set out to share some highlights from my past two days at the Melcrum Social Media conference in Sydney, I notice that I've still got a nice buzz...not from the networking cocktail session but from the interaction, both face-to-face and on twitter during the day. Read on to find out why social media is good for you, some ideas on how to do it well - and don't miss your TOP TIP at the end!


Social Media conference highlights

During the conference there was a particularly active tweetstream and there have already been a few great blog posts about the conference; I particularly like the insights of Emma McCleary:

Social media is about long-term engagement; creating things that people want to use and growing spaces online that encourage people to work communally.

We’re all a copy and paste away from inside to outside so there’s no reason to categorise social media as a risk to your organisation or check every post, status update or tweet happening if   you’re not also checking emails or USB sticks that carry files in and out of your workplace.

and Alison Pignon:

...if you don’t trust your workforce, then you have a management issue, not a communication issue. Meanwhile, encouraging free and open discussion (based on a good social media policy and user guidelines) can only help to demonstrate the trust you do have in them. 

Rather than feeling that it’s absolutely necessary to first build a social media strategy and get buy-in from the whole senior team before launching a new tool, sometimes it’s just best to go out there and try it.

Here are a few of the thought-provoking gems provided by Euan Semple's report of the state of social media (for now...):

• Social Media is about "Globally distributed, near instant, person to person conversations" from Cluetrain Manifesto
• Online the Customer really is King/Queen: “If you don't want me to criticize your product, don't have a shit product."~Dave Weinberger
• "In a knowledge economy there are no conscripts, only volunteers (but we train managers to manage conscripts!)"~Peter Drucker

CORPORATE CULTURES

• Paradox of corporate cultures: going to useless, time-wasting, pointless meetings = good, but having useful conversations with people via social media = bad(?!?)
• What's it say about corp culture that staff are unwilling to enter things about themselves on company databases/intranets that they will freely put on web via FB, etc? Dramatically low levels of trust...

HOW-TO

• "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." ~Sinclair Lewis
• How to run social media at your organization: Just do it! "Keep moving, stay in touch, head for the high ground" (from US Marines)
• When confronted by resistance (see "fear of losing control" below) and asked to "prove" the "ROI of social media?" Simply reply "what's ROI of not doing it?" Or, better still, "what's the COI?" (cost of inaction) of continuing to do nothing to engage with our own people?
• Beware of trying to "manage" online communities - they will grow organically, or not at all
• If you build it, they might or might not come... "It's easier to build a tool for the community than a community for the tool."
• And always remember: "No matter what you are trying to achieve social media adoption happens one person at a time and for their reasons not yours."

FEAR OF LOSING CONTROL (Hint: you never had it)

• People worry about "losing control". You don't have control anyway! What you DO have w. social media tools is the chance to influence
• "How do I control the msg?" - Try instead "management by being interested": seed existing conversations w. good questions (influence-not-control)
  
• These technologies surface what's going on in your organization (culture, behaviour, etc.) -->Agreed!:
• "Social media in organizations is great for surfacing morons"(!) - yes people will initially have a whinge, but they didn't start whingeing just because social media appeared; it's already happening around the watercoolers. Providing a forum surfaces problems that want fixing and (for those people who never stop whingeing) identify mis-matches in the organization that need addressing for everyone's benefit

BEING REAL

• Good tweets (that build trust & relationships), including those by staff on a corporate twitter account, need to be human and not corporate drone-speak; even inane tweets have a place if they are authentic and create connections
• Sadly, "Watching big corporations trying to get into 'this social media stuff' is a bit like watching your dad dancing at a disco" (LOL!)  
• The most tragic example lately: "BP's biggest failure wasn't only mechanical or engineering, it was in not actively building trusted social networks and not giving straight answers when given the chance

ONLINE EXPRESSION & LIVE INTERACTION

• "Even if no one read my blog, I'd still write it...makes me more thoughtful, more aware, notice more things" 
• Online media won't replace face-to-face interaction; a great use of online collaboration is to improve the quality of the face-to-face you DO have (e.g. by brainstorming ideas in an online forum before meeting face-to-face to arrive at a final decision, or getting a sense of someone's interests and areas of potential collaboration from their LinkedIn profile before meeting for a cafe-chat)

WHAT'S THE POINT OF SOCIAL MEDIA...?

• A few answers: it helps unlock the knowledge the exists in many people's heads throughout the organization/network, so people can find answers and information faster and easier - and get stuff done; it helps break down silos by encouraging interaction; it gives a place to have the conversations (they're already having) in a way that can be entered and influenced by managers and leaders - as equals and colleagues...

Finally, the thing I liked most about the conference was the sense that no one really has all the answers now. Like speaker Helene Bradley-Ritt put it, "implementing [social media] is a change journey" and on that journey we're all fellow travellers, so it was great to be a part of an event designed to help each other along the way to do great things!

Warm, twuzzy feelings...

What explains the need of our BlackBerry-bearing, Twitter-tweeting Facebook friends for constant connectivity? Are we biologically hardwired to do it? Do our brains react to tweeting just as they do to our physical engagement with people we trust and enjoy?

So how come I'm still buzzing today...? The answer to that question and the ones just above is found in this Fast Company article about research by Neuroeconomist Paul Zak (aka "Dr Love"), showing that social media can help spike oxytocin levels in the brain and reduce stress hormones cortisol and ACTH.

"Social networking might reduce cardiovascular risks, like heart attack and stroke, associated with lack of social support" because our brains interpret activities like tweeting as if we were directly interacting with people we have empathy for and care about: "E-connection is processed in the brain like an in-person connection."

Perhaps this is why so many Gen-Y's, whose lives are increasingly shaped by social media, expect to be able to maintain those important connections in the workplace - so much so that one source indicates "for 20 percent of Millennials, or Generation Y-ers (those born from 1980 onwards) a ban on social media in the workplace is often a deal breaker" when deciding whether or not to take a job. 

So here's your TOP TIP: don't just sit there - apply all these great ideas and get connected like your life depended on it...it just might! And please, allow me do my small part to promote your health: in just 10 seconds you can connect yourself with upcoming blog posts - enter your email address in the "Get blog updates sent to your email" box in the top-right side of this page or click on the "Get blog updates by RSS feed" button. (Wondering how RSS works? Watch this video.)

Technology as a loudspeaker - what are you broadcasting?

Technology is a terrific enabler and accelerator of organizational processes, but it's not a cure-all. Read on to explore the nexus where technology overlaps human behaviour and interaction; learn why it's important to know what message your technology is broadcasting - both to your employees and to your clients!


In April I was invited to a seminar in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on the uses of technology in higher education and corporate training.

Among other tech companies and educational institutions, Microsoft was on hand to showcase Surface, its "social way of computing," as envisioned for university campuses and business meetings of the future.

In this idealized future, businesspeople easily find and exchange information with world-wide colleagues and their road-warrior lives are made easier with access to timely information on hand-held devices that speeds them along to fruitful and interactive meetings.

It was pretty slick stuff: technology enabling a whole new way of doing business and, as you'd expect given the theme of the conference, there was a lot of enthusiasm and buzz in the room.

As human behaviour specialist, I was left wondering how these admittedly snazzy tech-tools would help you to deal more effectively with colleague who's just off a red-eye flight filled with screaming kids and has spilled coffee on herself in the taxi ride from the airport.

Or how those gizmos would help to effectively manage interpersonal conflict that might arise in one of these tech-enabled meetings...quite possibly with the frazzled and overtired colleague just described!

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...

The more (and faster) technology changes, the more human behaviour remains stubbournly the same - complex, unpredictable and non-linear.

Now don't get me wrong: I love my gadgets as much as the next guy and technology is a great aid to our working lives. It's in the nexus where technology overlaps human behaviour and interaction, however, where we can clearly see that technology's role as an enabler and accelerator of what's already happening in the organization (you can even say it's also an amplifier) is not as straightforward as some tech-enthusiasts may believe.

For example, if you've been in meetings that look a bit like this unfortunate group - where people aren't engaged, there's an atmosphere of negative interaction and conflict, and a people manager who fundamentally can't manage people - then it's probably clear to you that no amount of technology is going to improve the situation.

Putting touch-screen computers into this meeting will not magically transform it into a smoothly-functioning team. Quite the opposite, in fact: in dysfunctional organizational cultures, technology is more likely to give people more tools to extend unhelpful behaviours and disengagement to a much wider audience, even faster (email flame wars, anyone...? or text messages that read: "PLEASE get me outta here! :-( MeetingFAIL!!!").

Technology as enable/accelerator/amplifier (or, behavioural loudspeaker) 

If you remember the classic technology equation (Garbage In = Garbage Out) and then factor in technology's role as enabler/accelerator/amplifier, it's clear that technology most often functions as a loudspeaker to surface dodgy behaviours in an organization. Technology therefore cannot be the quick-fix panacea to address unhelpful behaviours, because they aren't technology problems - they're management problems, and they need management solutions.

This fact about technology helps explain why some leaders are so resistant to introducing social media tools - because amplifying the kind of talk that happens in a toxic corporate culture will most likely serve to  increase dissastisfaction (and staff turnover), to undermine the command-and-control structure typical of such organizations...or quite possibly a combination of both.

So I would argue that our awareness of the kinds of behaviour being enabled/accelerated/amplified with technology (social media or otherwise) needs to at least keep up with the pace of technological change. And in many organizations that's going to be a pretty steep learning curve.

When it comes to awareness of human behaviour dynamics and taking practical action to create Positive Change, we can't release a new patch or upgrade each year, it's an ongoing effort. Thankfully it's the same complexity and unpredictability of people that also makes us hugely creative and adaptable - and that's very good news indeed for those looking to create Positive Change.

Some questions remain - what do you think?

My next post will tell you more about what Positive CHANGE looks like and how it can help shape behaviour and interactions in your organization. The end result is certainly worth the effort: effective teams that can take adversity in stride and maintain a positive focus on contribution and results.

Other interesting questions remain: in what ways could technology actually expand and deepen our perspectives on human behaviour so we interact and engage with each other more effectively? Beyond being simply an enabler and accelerator, can technology serve to positively shape human behaviour and interactions...?

I look forward to discussing these questions and more at next week's instance of another technology-in-business conference: Melcrum's Social Media conference in North Sydney. See you there!

People Engagement sessions in Melbourne and Sydney

I'm presenting a couple of sessions at this year's "National HR Solutions/Strategies Summit" happening on 13-14 May at the Bayview on the Park in Melbourne and on 17-18 May at the Amora Jamison Hotel in Sydney.*

The sessions are entitled, "It's not Business. It's Personal" - People Engagement that works, on how to use the people-centred practices of Appreciative Inquiry and the Solutions Focus to turn engagement strategy into everyday reality. 

There's a white paper on the subject too, a version of which will be available via this blog in the near future.

For the moment, here's an excerpt from the report summary below:

High people engagement is a hard thing to get right but the payoffs are tremendous – in monetary and nonmonetary terms, including:

•  improved operating income and higher profitability 

• better company performance 

• lower staff turnover, absenteeism and sick leave 

• better customer satisfaction and increased sales

Engagement describes a relationship and, like any relationship, it takes time and constant attention to nurture its development. And business-as-usual doesn’t cut it. Because it’s not business, it’s personal.

Making business personal means having a people-positive culture. Appreciative Inquiry and the Solutions Focus offer practical, action-based ways to quickly bring out the best in your people and, by extension, your organization.

The Solutions Focus in particular is such a SIMPLE (though not easy!) approach that people quickly find themselves asking different questions and interacting in more positive and productive ways. And so “the way we do things around here” starts to shift in ways that actively engage people, because they’re the ones doing the shifting.

Your organization’s engagement strategy will stand or fall based on the ability of your people managers to make it real as they engage with people. Think of the numerous touch-points in your organization where engagement is created (or lost) every day. Equipping your people managers (a.k.a. your engagement allies) with these AI and SF tools can speed up that shift toward a healthy engagement culture.

Remember the engagement gold standard: when your culture fosters adult, two- way relationships between leaders/managers and employees, in which challenges are met and goals achieved, you get good people engagement, increased contribution and better business results.

Turn the “soft stuff” of human behaviour into your competitive advantage by engaging the whole person: make your business personal.

Apprentice Final analysis, RWA: Effective Management

Summary: Management is usually defined as "getting work done through people." More to the point, I think it's "the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it" (paraphrasing former US President Dwight D. Eisenhower). In this final post of my series reviewing the personalities and behaviours of candidates on The Apprentice Australia I'll discuss how Effective Management cost the losers, decided the winner...and how it could have all ended very differently.


Leadership and Management

Increasingly it seems leadership is outpacing management as the focus of development for those people in an organization whose job it is to "get things done through people." Leadership is seen as sexy, management as necessary but...mundane.

So just what is the difference between the two? Some thoughts:

Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.
~ Warren G. Bennis (scholar, consultant, author)

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
~Peter F. Drucker (management consultant, writer)

Management is about coping with complexity. Leadership, by contrast, is about coping with change.
~John P. Kotter (Harvard professor of Organizational Behaviour)

The renowned management theorist Henry Mintzberg at McGill University has lately published a book simply entitled, Managing. In a recent interview on the subject, he commented:

The narcissistic view of leadership [as the primary focus] has taken organisations off the rails. Leadership isn't better than management...I want people to realize that one component of management is leadership but there are lots of other components - information, action, how you involve yourself, how you connect, and all sorts of things.

The grand final of The Apprentice Australia provides a brilliant illustration of his point. In fact I think the most apt comment on management that sums up this week's episode is the following:

Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them.
~ Paul Hawken (environmentalist, journalist entrepreneur)

Episode review - the Final Challenge

I've previously written about the Battle inside your Brain in which the emotional (limbic) and the rational (cortical) centres of your brain vie for control over your behaviours and actions.

I'm going to use that same concept to talk about the performance and behaviour of the three finalists, offering an interpretation of how each one's limbic Emotional Reactive style (ER's, also sometimes known as Survival Strategies) interplays and battles with his/her Adult Rational Type (ART).

Gavin's elimination
When asked what motivated him to want to be the apprentice, the pressure got the better of him and Gavin answered from his Emotional Reactive style as Performer/Achiever* by essentially saying how he wanted to succeed, to achieve and to have lots of money.

By contrast, Gavin has previously shown that he is master of the ART* of diplomacy, genuine charm and building relationships with people. Had his ART won the Battle inside his Brain, he might have said something like, "Mr. Bouris, I relish the opportunity to interact with a wide variety of people and help make them a success working together. I want to apply my knowledge of the law and my experience to build a business alongside you, where I'll be learning the things that I don't yet know about the business world from someone who's been there and done it successfully."

Gavin did not answer this way, and so it was obvious when the Boss revealed only two candidates were welcome on the final ride that Gavin would be the one to leave. His focus on his own personal success and achievement was noted and complimented, but he was eliminated because he failed to use his ART and show that he was a team player. Mark Bouris' final comment: "Gavin, we always get the best out of you, but you haven't gotten the best out of your teammates."


Why Heather lost
In the Boardroom Heather has consistently done a poor job presenting herself and giving clear reasons why she should be hired. At the start of this episode she rhymed off a list of adjectives about herself...but did not link them to any benefits. Moreover, many the things she affirmed were empty words that clearly don't reflect her actual performance to date.

I think this shows a pronounced lack of self-awareness. Her response to critical feedback (both in the past and later on in this episode) has not indicated a willingness to take the lesson; it's been self-justifying, flustered, defensive. These are both indicators of her Emotional Reactive style, the Perfectionist*. Faced with stressors and threats to her self-image that her limbic brain literally reads as life-or-death, Heather's Survival Strategy is to always be in control, always be right.

It wasn't always like this. Early days, Heather made frequent reference to ethics and integrity. At her best, then, her facility with the ART* of integrity, high standards and setting a clear course of action ought to have encouraged straight dealing in a team that's following a clear vision. Instead, victory in the Battle inside her Brain went too often to Heather's Perfectionist ER.

Context: granted, during this challenge Heather had to manage a team of the three most recent departees from the show (Sabrina, Mary-Anne and Gavin); granted, Sabrina had neither forgotten nor forgiven her previous differences with Heather, while Mary-Anne was true to type and swift to condemn Heather's decisions. The fact remains that neither Sabrina nor Mary-Anne had such bad blood towards Morello. That animosity had to have come from somewhere.

We got a reminder early in this task of where that animosity might have come from, as Heather reverted to a take-charge-and-keep-control style. As a result the atmosphere in Team Eventus was rancorous from the very start and only worsened as Heather progressively alienated her team over the course of the task. Despite this, in the Boardroom Heather claimed that in this task she had "let go of that stranglehold of control" that she'd previously insisted upon. I think her Perfectionist ER had her in such a grip, had made her so un-self-aware, that she genuinely believed that was the case.

The key moment of insight came when Heather said, "this task is about me winning the job as Apprentice." At that point it was clear to me that she would lose. She had misunderstood the nature of the task - the outcome of the task was the winner would become the apprentice, but the task itself was about managing a team of people to deliver an outcome - a task that she had failed virtually from the outset.

Heather's primary focus of being in control and being right was also in evidence when she several times expressed her motivation: "I will prove a lot of people wrong," and "I have so much to prove."

And so in the end we did see her passion, determination and desire to win. Her personal performance was impressive. As Brad Seymour commented, "she was an absolute machine - across about fourteen different tasks all at once!" He also observed: "a little more trust wouldn't have gone amiss." The verdict: Heather is a brilliant performer but not a team player and was ultimately unable to manage others. Mark Bouris' final analysis:

You get the job done, you're not out there for a popularity contest...but whilst you might get the job done, sometimes you leave a little bit of carnage behind, there's some hurt and...you might get the job done this time and in this challange, but in my game you've got to show up again the next day and the next day - everybody's got to work together.

Noting her lack of self-awareness and self-management, Mark Bouris asked her point-blank: "is it possible during the task that, in the moment you don't read it?" Meaning: you don't see the effect you're having on others, the chaos and carnage that's resulting? Asked further: "could you do what Morello does, sit down and hash it through with everyone?" Heather said, "Absolutely."

Yet she missed noticing the need to do it, missed noticing the effect it was having in the team she was meant to be managing, missed the point of the task itself...and for all these things she was judged as not up to the role of National Business Development manager - which I think was the right call.

Heather's only chance to win would have been to engage more in her ART of engaging others to rally behind a cause and lay out clearly the task at hand; instead her merciless Perfectionist ER caused her to do it all herself and alienate not only her team but The Boss as well.

Why Morello won
In his own words, "I was myself from week 1 to week 10." True to form, Morello employed his ART*, showing himself once again to be a Practical Problem Solver with a Democratic leadership style. He was happy to delegate responsibility to others, his teammates held him in high esteem and were pulling for his success, resulting in great team spirit and camaraderie.

Morello deftly managed the high-energy and strong-willed Carmen by matching her energy levels and steering her drive in positive, productive activity. He'd made good mates of Sam and Lynton from living in the Apprentice house together and while he sought their input, his was the ultimate say as project lead.

Where it nearly fell down for Morello was in moments of excitement and high energy, when his Emotional Reactive style of Adventurer/Fun-seeker got the better of him. When the Battle in his Brain tipped in favour of limbic response, he was constantly throwing out new/ bigger/better/more ideas for how things could be a show, a lot of fun, entertaining for all involved! In the Boardroom assessment he got his knuckles rapped for engaging in too much theatre and having just too many stories/themes/ideas going at the same time. Learning how to "know when to say when" will be useful discipline for this new Apprentice.


RWA - Effective Management

Morello succeeded because he was able to take his team through the Six Steps of Effective Management:

1. "Lay down the law." - It would seem that he clarified the roles, goals and expectations so that each person's individual efforts are contributing to the group objectives and goals. Doing this at the outset provides an underlying source of enduring continuity in the face of transition, change and even crisis periods to come.
   
   
2. "Talk it through with them." - by encouraging expression, his team members had the chance to say what they think and feel. Free expression like this may well cause conflict. That's normal and necessary. What is required is an agreed way to deal constructively with such conflict. As we've seen too often on other Apprentice tasks, unexpressed emotional reactions do not go away but instead go underground to fester and bubble up in unproductive ways at inopportune moments.
   
   
3. "We're going to make this big!" - With the emotional energy released in the previous step now ready to be put to practical use, this step answers the question "what's in it for me?" to tap into the passion and drive of each team member. This step is about getting things done, the achievement of aspirations.
   
   
4. "Guys let's get together on this" - The previous step unleashed each person's self-interested passion and drive for results. Now is the time to ensure there is a personal connection so that internal competition does not tear the team apart. Morello's personality suggests a sense of personal commitment to build authentic relationships between team members, who as we saw this week gladly go the extra mile for him...and for each other.
   
   
5. "Getting it done." - This step is about the actual step-by-step execution of the plans, adjusting resources, ensuring good information flow and adjusting on-the-fly to take advantage of opportunities as they arise.
   
   
6. "Here's the positive outcome." - Working with Morello you have no doubt that at the end of the task there's going to be celebration, a chance to talk about what people did well and highlighting contributions...all the kinds of things that look at the long term and serve to build lasting relationships.
   

By covering all six of these steps Morello unified his team with Effective Management. He was able to get his team members to do what he wanted them to do - because they wanted to do it and wanted him to win - and in the end he came out on top.

To find out more from tmc about the six steps of Effective Management and how to apply them in your own management style, contact me directly.


Your thoughts & opinions

I hope you've enjoyed this series of posts reviewing The Apprentice Australia. In this series I have enjoyed sharing my views on the candidates' personalities and behaviours, and sharing some of the tools/models that I use in my consultancy work to provide you with Real-World Applications.

Now the series is over, I'd love to hear your comments about the show, these posts, your experiences at work, or any other thoughts you'd like to share. Just click on Comments and you're ready to write!



*I will post an overview of the 9 Emotional Reactive ER styles in the near future, along with the 8 Adult Rational Types (ARTs). Watch this space!



Related previous posts:
Analysis of episode 1, RWA: Foundation & Force
Preview of episode 2, RWA: Conflict Management
Apprentice week 2 analysis, RWA: Giving/Receiving Feedback using Head & Heart
Apprentice week 3 analysis, RWAs: Team Leadership and Setting a Team Culture
Apprentice week 4 analysis, RWA: Coaching for high performance
Apprentice week 5 analysis, RWA: "The Relationship is the Customer"
Apprentice week 6 analysis, RWA: The FIT model
Apprentice week 7 analysis, RWA: Authentic Emotional Intelligence
Apprentice episode 8 preview: double trouble
Apprentice week 8 analysis, RWA: Effective Collaboration

Photo credit: Apprentice trio, Andrew Morello.
.

Story conference in Melbourne, 8-9 October

Celebrating Story: Approaching Change One Story at a Time

There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories. ~ Ursula K. LeGuin

Have you a passion or curiosity around story? Are you a coach, facilitator, change consultant, qualitative researcher, narrative therapist, OD professional, manager or leader? Are you interested in celebrating and sharing ways that you have worked with story? Are you interested in learning more on how others have used story and narrative in their work? Are you seeking inspiration and new ways forward?

My friends at Babelfish Group have organized a two-day conference this 8-9 October in Melbourne to explore the use of story and narrative approaches to change across the areas of business, government and community.

I will be there to run an interactive session on the brain-based aspects of story, narrative and meaning-making (particularly the neuroscientific reasons why it's so challenging to shift people's narrative in organizations and why change programs often fall apart or fail to take hold as a result). Hope to see you there!

To find out more about presentations and other details, check out the conference brochure or contact conference organizer Andrew Rixon directly at +61 400 352 809.

And - tell him Todd sent you!




.

Managing "Millennials": 6 steps to success with Gen Y (and everybody else too!)

It turns out that managing "Millennials" (a.k.a. Generation Y) isn't so different from managing everybody else...they're just more forthright in asking for - and in some cases expecting - well-balanced and people-centred management practice.

A 6-step process will help you to manage Gen Y - and everyone else in your team - to get the results you want.

At the risk of generalizing (and with a hat-tip to this useful Fast Company blog post) here are a few popular perceptions about Gen Y attitudes towards the world of work:

• Strong parental links (some would say: being fawned and doted upon by Boomer parents) means this cohort is accustomed to having a strong sense of place, origin and position.
• They have also been pumped up by their folks to believe they're "special" and can achieve anything. This ego-inflation has been compounded by the "you get a trophy just for participating" ethic in schools and sports, implemented for fear of stigmatizing underachievers. As a result: they expect that same kind of approval from bosses, preferably on a daily basis.
• Facility with all sorts of technology that connects people means they have widespread social networks and an ability and willingness to engage in self-expression in any number of online forums (facebook, MySpace, twitter, blogs, You Tube, et al.).
  
• Riding the wave of a boom economy and sheltered from the harsh realities of the world by their over-protective parents, young adults expect, even demand, that their jobs be fun and fulfilling.

Now before this generational portrait starts to look too much like a mob of clueless spoiled-brats and self-esteem junkies who won't deign to set foot in the workplace on anything but their own terms - let's take a step back and look at the long view.

Historically, every new generation has reaped the benefits of what's come before - better tools, improved nutrition and health and (particularly over the past century or so) techniques for developing greater self-knowledge and insight into human behaviour.

Could it be that Gen X and the Boomers are simply envious - both of the ready availability of these advantages and of Gen Y's unwillingness to settle for outdated management practice that's not much advanced from 19th-century Taylorism?

A better way of management

For years now the argument in favour of "soft skills" has been: if you treat people well, they will perform better. Command-and-control management style (a.k.a. scaring the crap out of people) admittedly gets results in the short-term...and over time produces disengagement, dissatisfaction, health problems and burnout - with all the attendant negative effects on performance and results. And forget about using C&C with Gen Y, who will simply walk.

Today the insights of neuroscience and brain research provide the hard science to back up the "soft skills" message. Below is a six-step* management process, one that will meet Gen Y demands for a more engaging management style and that will work equally well with the Gen X-ers and Boomers in your workplace.

In this brief overview I'll simply describe the function of each step. In future posts I'll offer more details on practical application to manage individuals and teams.


STEP 1- ROLE
Role starts things off on the right foot by A) establishing a sense of community (with shared values, a code of conduct, and understanding of how the group adds value in a wider context), and B) letting people know how and where each individual fits into the larger group.

Clarify the roles, goals and expectations so that each person's individual efforts are contributing to the group objectives and goals. Build a solid, agreed-upon foundation at the outset to provide an underlying source of enduring continuity in the face of transition, change and even crisis periods to come.

STEP 2 - VOICE
Voice is about expression and creativity. People are going to have thoughts and feelings about the content discussed in the previous step. It's therefore vital to now acknowledge the emotional component with dialogue and an environment that promotes the free expression of thoughts and emotional reactions. Something need not be done about every comment that is made, but people must have the chance to say what they think and feel.

Free expression like this may well cause conflict. That's normal and necessary. What is required is an agreed way to deal constructively with such conflict. This step can be quite confronting (Gen Y is not shy about self-expression!) but skip it at your peril: unexpressed emotional reactions do not go away but instead go underground to fester and bubble up in unproductive ways at inopportune moments.

When team members feel secure in freely expressing themselves, emotional reactivity is minimized and the emotional energy can be productively channeled into creative output. The advantage to doing this step well is that expression results in better understanding, clarity, enhanced creativity and group collaboration.

STEP 3 - REWARD
Reward is about motivation, action and reward - the drive to achievement that comes from the healthy expression of ego. With the emotional energy released in the previous step now ready to be put to practical use, this step answers the question "what's in it for me?" to tap into the passion and drive of each team member. It is results-focused and promotes action over words, performance over process.

"Fortune favours the bold" could be the motto...which can also mean that people "leap without looking". Therefore when describing goals make clear both the consequences of non-achievement and the benefits of achievement. Frame the task in terms of each person's self-interest - but also how achievement will benefit the team collectively. To keep people on track and productive, phrase performance measures in positive language that motivates, rather than coercive language that triggers emotional reactivity and fearful anxiety. This step is about getting things done, the achievement of aspirations.

STEP 4 - HEART
Heart is about empathy, inclusion and relationships. The previous step unleashed each person's self-interested passion and drive for results. Now is the time to ensure there is a personal connection so that internal competition does not tear the team apart.

Being smart about connecting with your people will help foster a sense of belonging for each team member. Active listening helps managers to be aware of both the explicit and implicit messages in what team members are saying, to know when something just doesn't feel right and take action to head off potential trouble before it becomes disruptive. People don't work for companies or money - they work for people. Offering a sense of personal commitment will build authentic relationships between team members, who gladly go the extra mile for you...and for each other.

STEP 5 - HEAD
Head is about data, tasks and learning. There's an old saying: "People don't care what you know, until they know that you care." In the previous step you got people to care, now you can apply the strength of those relationships to a strong task-focus.

Get clear on the step-by-step actions, make resources available, allocate them efficiently and leverage them to move forward. Ensure good information flow, analyze data for patterns to apply and exploit. Learn from experience and apply that learning to make necessary changes to strategy on-the-fly. Develop skillsets and expertise through training and encourage curiosity about how things work - and could work even better.

STEP 6 - VISION
Vision is about conceptualization, the big-picture and long-term, seeing things as they could be rather than how they are. The previous step's task-focus went right down into the weeds of details and data; now it's time to zoom back up to the 30,000-ft. perspective. Reconnect the purpose and actions of the team to the wider vision of organization and, wider still, to the trends of the industry, economy, regulatory bodies, and marketplace to consider future plans.

This final step has two important components: A) it pulls together and aligns all the previous ones by focusing on a positive future state toward which everyone can strive, and B) by celebrating what's been achieved so far, it sets the stage for reinvention, for a new foundation and the renewal of the 6-step process.

All 6 steps, every time

Regardless of our generational cohort, each of us has a preference for some of the 6 steps over others, whether Role or Reward, Voice or Vision, Heart or Head. This preference means we favour some steps and want to skip over or quickly rush through the others. As a manager, the advantage of following the 6-step format is that it ensures you address the areas that are of greatest interest to each different team member. The result: much higher levels of understanding, quality communication and better team engagement.

To find out more about how tmc works with leaders and their teams to get results by applying the 6-step process just described, send an email today!


*-based on the six intelligence centres described in the NeuroPower framework
.

Presentations at EBTA, IAF Europe, NeuroPower Symposium

September this year will be a busy month for Todd, who will present at three conferences in Europe and Australia.

Imagine - EBTA 2009

At this year's annual conference of the European Brief Therapy Association in Helsinki on 04-06 September, Todd will present a 90-minute workshop entitled Making Integral Theory practical, or, Wilber in the real world

Abstract: Integral Theory is a powerful explanatory theory (it is, after all, based on Ken Wilber's ambitious book "A Theory of Everything") but how can we practically apply it for people and organizations? And what is the link to Solutions Focus practice in particular?



In this session you will: a) learn how to apply this theory to coaching, consulting and communications in real-world settings b) experience the benefit these insights can bring as you share your ideas and thoughts with fellow participants c) discover how to apply the knowledge to your own practice. No previous knowledge of Integral Theory required.

You can register to attend this conference here.

IAF Europe 2009

The 2009 conference of the International Association of Facilitators Europe in Oxford, UK runs from 18-20 September. Todd is presenting two interactive 90-minute sessions: The facilitator as coach and Identify and deliver on your personal brand.

You can register to attend this conference here.

NeuroPower Symposium

A symposium to be held in Sydney on 24-25 September will explore the practical management, leadership and organizational applications of what the latest neuroscience insights and brain research are telling us about human behaviour and social interaction.

The event features Peter Burow (Australian consultant and developer of the NeuroPower system) and Professor Matthew Lieberman, an expert in the field of Social Cognitive Neuroscience who co-directs the SCN Lab at the UCLA Department of Psychology.

At the symposium Todd will present a case study of his work over a two-year period with a management team at Lloyds TSB Bank in London.
.

Transformational Leadership Intensive - Cairns Jan/09

There's a great opportunity coming up in Australia that I want to let you know about.

The next Transformational Leadership Intensive training program will be held in Cairns, Queensland from 20-24 January 2009. In this intensive workshop you will explore the meaning, context and value of Transformational Leadership and gain skills in this practical application of the NeuroPower framework.

The program will be taught by the creator of the NeuroPower framework, the author and strategist Peter Burow. My role will be as co-facilitator for the program. I will also help participants to embed the knowledge gained in these workshops in their particular work settings with practical follow-on coaching sessions.

See the flyer here - for registration details contact me.

Overview

During five intensive days you will learn more about how to weave together the three key areas of Management, Leadership and Transformational Leadership (see diagram below) to ensure peak performance for your business or organization. Subsequent coaching ensures that you to retain this knowledge and are better able to apply it to your own real-life situations.

Management – learn the six needs that effective leaders must satisfy in order to build a stable, agile, focused, performance-oriented, informed and team-centred organization

Practical skills:

• identify why teams are not functioning effectively
• execute processes to increase trust, creativity, passion, connection, knowledge and hope within teams
• coach employees on their signature strength and help them to practically embed this knowledge in their daily work

Leadership – learn the concepts of character and integration as applied to Leadership and how life stages and psycho-emotional/spiritual development changes the individual’s motivation, focus on attention and worldview

Practical skills:

• create a coherent vision and sense of purpose that aligns people to that vision
• apply character as a leader to every management dilemma for increased business performance

Transformational Leadership – learn the role the brain’s limbic system plays in motivation, communication, attitude change, perception and decision making

Practical skills:

• communicate and negotiate with each of the limbic types
• transform the energy expressed as resistance to change into the motivation and commitment to carry out change processes

These skills will enable you as a Transformational Leader to:

• provide strategic advice regarding the specific actions required to contextualize the change and engage employees in rolling out your strategy for enhanced performance
• advise leaders on the actions, processes and sequence of messages to be employed to maximize positive employee engagement
• describe at all levels of the organization the key messages needed to dissolve resistance

COACHING increases retention of information by up to 400%

These workshops are an excellent way to learn how to apply the powerful and practical NeuroPower framework at a very reasonable time and cost investment. What’s more, the program includes post-workshop coaching to practically embed your new knowledge in your own setting and ensure that you gain maximum value for your investment.

You are probably familiar with the concept of the “learning curve” that refers to how fast we learn information. The same psychologist who described that concept also discovered the “forgetting curve” which states that we begin immediately to forget what we have learned unless we revisit the information and, ideally, apply it to embed the knowledge.

Memory experiments show that within hours most people will retain less than half of the overall material presented, and after 30 days only about 22% remains. With coaching, however, the information retention increases to as much as 88% - a four-fold increase. Clearly, coaching on practical application of knowledge has the potential to achieve tremendous results.

As a workshop participant, here's how coaching works for you:

• during the five days you will first learn the theories and skills
• before you leave on Day Five you set yourself a few practical tasks to do within a set period of time
• you then have a go at applying them with your own work and personal situation
• we have regularly-scheduled coaching conversations to close the loop on your learning, exploring what has worked well in your practice and what useful tweaks you will want to make for next time.

Overall the coaching follow-up process offers you the vital opportunity to:

review your efforts
reinforce your successes
revise your approach where things need improvement
rehearse new applications and practices in advance of doing them “for real”
reengage with the learning process and thereby
retain your knowledge as you strengthen the neural connections associated with that learning

Once again, if you are interested and wish to find out more, email me.

TM

Global outbreaks of Framework Fatigue and Model Mania

In my recent travels across Australia, the UK, Canada and Asia, I've been talking to businesspeople and consultants about what tools and consulting approaches help them to achieve practical and sustained results - in their lives and in their businesses. In these conversations I have noticed two trends: framework fatigue and model mania.

Framework Fatigue

There are many, many models, personality profiling tools, psychometric assessments, systems and frameworks in the marketplace today. You've doubtless heard of them, possibly used them, possibly been subjected to them. To name just a handful:

• MBTI - Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
• JTI - Jung Type Indicator
  
• KTS - Keirsey Temperament Sorter
• FIRO - Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation
  
• DISC - four quadrant behavioural model
  
• NLP - Neuro-Linguistic Programming
• EI - Emotional Intelligence
  
• AI - Appreciative Inquiry
• SF - the Solutions Focus
• CBT - Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
• BT - Brief Therapy
• NVC - Non-Violent Communication
• VIA Signature Strengths Survey
  
• MBS - Management by Strengths
• Strengthsfinder by Marcus Buckingham (Gallup)
• SDI - Strengths Deployment Inventory
  
• HBDI - Herrmann Brain Dominance Indicator
• Systems thinking (e.g. Senge's Learning Organization)
  
• ICP - InterCultural Competence Profiler
• ILA - InterCultural Leadership Assessment
• Belbin Team (Roles) Inventory, a.k.a. Self-perception Inventory
• LSI/OCI - Life Styles Inventory/Organizational Culture Index (Human Synergistics)
  
• LGAT - Large Group Awareness Training (Landmark Forum, Goldzone)
  
• (...and the list goes on...)
  

Are you starting to get a case of information overload? Well that's what framework fatigue feels like. So that you can find your way out of this maze, and in the spirit of full disclosure, I'll give my view.

I have used some of the frameworks listed above in my own consulting practice to good effect with clients, notably Solutions Focus, Strengthsfinder, NVC, some systems thinking and some of the ones based on Jungian psychology. Of the others I can say that most are sound, useful and provide some insight to certain areas of human behaviour and performance. Then there are the bad apples; a few have decidedly poor reputations.

Model Mania

You may have had the experience where, despite their better natures and good intentions, enthusiastic people skilled in a given framework, system or method will claim for it explanatory powers far beyond what the thing was ever built to do.

This is model mania: the belief that the entire world can be understood through a particular lens, often to the exclusion of most (if not all) others.

In the famous turn of phrase offered by the American financier and Presidential advisor Bernard Baruch: "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

I've always been partial to a 'toolkit' approach, and in my consulting engagements always look to 'make it fresh' for each new client, using the tools appropriate to the context and issues present each time.

For those of you faced with so many available options and with so many of those options claiming to be all things to all people, how do you know which one does what, let alone which one works? I offer the following checklists, the first one what to beware of, and the second what to look for.

Checklist: what to watch out for

If you observe the following, it's time to ask some hard questions. If the framework, model or system:

• Actively fosters long-term dependence on the consultant or service providers
• Features a lot of hard-sell and constant expectations of signing up for more 'advanced classes'
• Uses processes that are done 'to' you rather than 'with' you
• Keeps materials, tools and mechanics of the actual processes a tightly-guarded secret from you
  
• Categorically condemns certain forms of human behaviour while others are lauded in an unqualified manner (i.e. stop all 'red' and 'green' behaviours in favour of doing only 'blue' ones)
• Encourages you to recruit others (family, friends, colleagues) in an ever-widening, Borg-like assimilation process
• Makes far-reaching explanatory claims across all aspects of human behaviour, as seen through a single keyhole view
  

Checklist: what to look for

To get the best long-term value and real results from your time and money invested, you should reasonably expect the following from an explanatory framework focused on human behaviour:

• Transparent - the tools are put in your hands for you to use for yourself with guided tuition
• Holistic - it has language that works 'from the boardroom to the boilerroom' and all the moving parts work well together
• Integrated - the framework features both internal consistency and an ability to coexist harmoniously with other explanatory models in your existing 'toolkit'
• Humanistic - its tenets line up with what the great traditions and civilizations of the past have had to say about human behaviour, personality and group interaction
• Scientific - uses the latest neuroscientific insights on brain function in a practical applicable way
• Empowering - offers insights to identify blind spots and reactive behaviours, in order to break repetitive patterns of unhelpful behaviour and help you achieve what you want for yourself
• Positive - is based on the belief you are not 'broken' and focuses on helping people achieve all they are capable of being by accessing their particular gifts and talents
• Developmental - describes the process toward personal integration and realization of one's full potential
• Interactive - more than a model for self-awareness, it gives you the tools to better interact with others and relate to them emotionally, cognitively and behaviourally
• Versatile - has application to the fields of self development, effective communication, management skills, fostering better leadership, transformational change in organizations, interpersonal relations, negotiation, sales skills, persuasion and influencing, difficult conversations...
• Practical - results-focused and applicable from the very first day of training

Having used and studied most of the frameworks on the long list at the top of this post, I can say that I have yet to see one that ticks all the boxes of the list immediately as well as the NeuroPower framework.

What is most positive about it is that I have not needed to 'unlearn' any of my previous training. The NeuroPower framework (as developed by author and strategist Peter Burow) is an integrated toolkit of useful and practical tools based on neuroscience and brain function. There is plenty of room for other tools and methods that you are already using and that work - because if they work, they must by definition line up in significant ways with brain function.

In this way NeuroPower happily coexists along with other methods and systems...though it's possible that once you have experienced its holistic nature and powerful explanatory insights into human behaviour, it may become your preferred toolkit for any number of applications!

As always, to find out more you can email me to talk about how I am using NeuroPower in my work with clients around the world.
TM