Your integrity is apparent in everything you do, and often when you are least aware of it. It is most clearly evidenced by your behaviour in situations that involve power, conflict and where the stakes are high.

Think of the personal values you hold and ask yourself how closely your recent behaviour has reflected those values in each of the following situations. You could rate yourself on a scale of 1-5, where 1 means your behaviour does not support your values closely and 5 means that it does.

Had you completed this assessment six months ago do you think your behaviour would have been any more closely aligned with your values? What are your answers telling you?

1. Your manager has made a decision that you believe will prove to be foolish in the long term. You could voice your disagreement, or keep quiet and allow him to take whatever consequences come his way.
2. One of your colleagues is showing signs of stress and depression. You could spend time and energy supporting him to help him back up to his usual standards of performance or let him fend for himself.
3. Right now, you are unsure as to the tactics your section should be using. You have a choice of sharing your uncertainty with your people and asking them for their ideas: or you can stay aloof, sure that you will soon find the path by yourself.
4. You have been told to reduce head count. It could be an opportunity to remove people who have not been your best performers.
5. You work in a close knit team. You are feeling anxious and insecure about the changes taking place and know you would be better able to cope if you could share your concerns. Do you talk to your colleagues? In the same situation do you talk to your manager?
6. Your team has been pulling out all the stops for months now. Energies are flagging and you know you should recognise their efforts, but you don’t want to give a wrong impression about how seriously you take current business conditions.
7. One of your team members is not performing, in spite of your efforts. You can keep trying to get to the root of the problem or let the disciplinary process take care of it.
8. You are negotiating some new business with one of your regular suppliers whom you know is now under pressure. You can stay with your regular contract or you can take the opportunity to squeeze him on price.

Related posts

• No related posts.

In the course of one morning this week I received three pieces of feedback from clients who have been through Straight Talk training.

Spot the pattern in their comments!

“I was always taught that showing emotion is a sign of weakness. so I have bottled up my emotions as long as I could, even with friends and family, but then of course one day it all comes spilling out and I look like an idiot. I’ve just discovered that if I think through how I feel and explain it without putting blame on the other person I can talk about things I could never raise before.”

“I’m nearly always critical. That’s how people have behaved toward me. I’ve never liked it but I suppose I’ve learned it from them. So today I tried praising someone that I’ve probably never praised before, and I can’t believe what a difference it made! She relaxed, smiled, and when we went on to talk about some operational issues that I thought we would have dificulty with, it was such an easy conversation.”

“I went to someone’s office for a meeting and he kept me waiting at the door for about ten minutes while he talked on the phone. He could see I was waiting! I was getting angry, wondered if he was being deliberately disrespectful and felt like going back to my office in a huff, but it was important that we speak so I waited. When I got into the office I could see he was stressed so I tried  some empathy. I must have got it right because his manner changed immediately. He apologised for keeping me, explained about the phone call, we discussed the problem briefly, and then we had a really productive meeting. Do you think that using empathy made all that difference?”

It’s made me realise all over again that trying to keep emotion out of conversations and relationships at work is, as someone said, like trying to take the music out of opera. Without it, there wouldn’t be much left of any value!

The skill, that too few of us have, lies in bring emotion into our relationships, in a positive and constructive way.

Related posts

• Tell it like it is (0)
• There’s an elephant in the room (0)
• Keeping to the point (0)
• Everything’s stuck! (0)

Are you stuck?

Can’t get your budget approved? Don’t have a clear answer on your next career step? Still waiting for project approval? Key client holding back on the contract decision? Scared you might be on the retrenchment list?

It’s always hard to get the year up and running but this year seems to be one of the hardest yet! You’ve got your positive affirmations pasted to your bathroom mirror, you take your resilience pills every morning and you’re only thinking positive thoughts.

And you’re still stuck!

One of the most difficult things to do is to distinguish between what you can control or influence and what you can’t; and then to let go of what is out of your hands. It is useful to worry when that worry can translate into smart decisions, creativity and an action plan that moves you forward. It doesn’t help at all when worry saps your energy, causes you to withdraw into yourself, and become depressive.

We tell our children, “Hold hands when you cross the road”. It’s advice we should take to ourselves. We need to reach out, talk to others, share our feelings and offer support to others. We say that misery loves company but the positive spin is that finding out that you are not alone, immediately eases the difficulty you have in coping with things.

Who are the people you should be talking to? What are the conversations you should be having, that will help you get unstuck?

Related posts

• Tell it like it is (0)
• It’s all about emotion! (0)
• Get your bounce back (0)
• Being stressed is a choice - just say no (0)

As I go into the working year I’m trying to identify what must be done, what would be nice to do, and what I should really avoid wasting time on! It seems a good time to focus on the things that will most directly bring results in line with where I want my business to go.

What I absolutely must avoid is spending time on activities that meet the goals of other people, but not my own.

So I know that there is one phrase I shall be using frequently and I thought I would share it with you. It consists of only eight words, or some variant of them, but this phrase has saved me endless trouble and time in many situations.

I use it when someone has made a plan that involves me or has asked me to do something I don’t think I should do. My cue to use the phrase is an immediate feeling that I don’t want to get involved in the way I’m being asked.

The phrase is,”I don’t think this will work for me.”

You could also say something like, “I’m not sure about this”, or, Let me think about this for a moment.”

It does two things. It immediately signals your reluctance and sets the tone for the conversation that is to follow. Secondly, it buys you time while you think through exactly what your reservations are.

Use it next time someone tries to bully you into agreeing with their plans and schemes. Set the tone of the conversation and slow it down so you have time to think.

Try it! It could be the simplest advice you get all year.

Related posts

• No related posts.

We talk a lot about showing respect, providing excellent customer service, empowering people, developing high performing teams, building trusting relationships and creating motivating and challenging environments. This article examines how living up to some of the most common organizational values requires that we use some very specific behaviours, few of which come easily.
Talk is cheap. Walking the talk is a different proposition, and the problem with values is that what you say about them is irrelevant. It’s what you do about them that counts. Here are some of the values that organisations most commonly aspire to. How well do you walk the talk?

A universal way of showing Respect is to listen. Listening conveys respect regardless of differences in culture, language, gender orage. How well do you listen? Do you really listen to the youngest or newest member of your team; to people with whom you disagree; to customers who are consistently irate; or when you just KNOW what someone is going to say? It’s OK not to listen; but if you don’t, you can’t claim to be respectful.

We admire people who behave with Integrity. What do they do that makes them different and special from others? Mostly they behave consistently, they keep their promises and stick to their words. One of the behaviours they use is that of saying “No” to avoid compromising their integrity. Few of us are prepared to say “No” when faced with someone in authority or someone who really needs help. Often we do not have the skills to communicate our real feelings and are afraid of the consequences, or at the very least of being thought unhelpful or uncaring. Your integrity can rest on one word, “No”!

Encouraging the Personal growth of people means agreeing on goals and targets, giving them feedback on how they are doing and then holding them accountable for their achievements. When people are asked about the one question to which they would like an honest answer in the workplace, they most often answer, “I’d like to know how I’m doing”. But in the course of a lifetime of work, many say that they have never received a really honest answer to this question. How frequently and honestly do you give feedback? Have you ever shirked on feedback and coaching to get to disciplinary action? If you have, you have withheld the most important information people need as a basis for improving their performance and you cannot claim to live up to the value of encouraging the personal growth of those around you.

Without Innovation we are unable to adapt to changing circumstances. We accept, in theory at least, that the oldest, most experienced and most senior member of a team doesn’t always have the most creative ideas. Why then do senior people insist on giving others their ideas, instead of learning to use probing incisive questions that help people think for themselves, coupled with careful listening to their answers? Are you guilty of giving people your ideas instead of helping them develop their own?

You simply can’t Build Relationships with customers or colleagues if you can’t do empathy! Empathy is used to acknowledge the feelings of others. Using it effectively is the only sure way to defuse anger and negativity. Excellent customer service, effective teamwork, and good leadership are impossible without it. In spite of that, it’s not often used in the corporate world. How sensitive are you to the feelings of others? Are you willing to acknowledge those feelings? Are you able to talk about them when it is appropriate? How effectively do you relate to those around you?

Examine the values to which your organisation aspires. You might find that you need to be a little more circumspect in talking about them, and that you need to change some of your own behaviour if you are to claim that you are walking the talk.

Related posts

• No related posts.

Meetings are often inefficient and costly. They take forever. They lack structure or process. The wrong people attend. Some arrive late. People dominate the discussion to get their own viewpoint across. Those who may have valuable contributions don’t get a word in. There are lots of pointed fingers, raised voices and interrupting. At any time, one third of the meeting doesn’t know what is being discussed; one third does know but has lost interest in the outcome; and argument rages amongst the rest, whose only decision may be to set a date to start talking all over again - because some of them have to leave for another meeting. Afterwards no-one remembers what was agreed, let alone discussed, and those who don’t have another meeting to attend, escape to their desks and some real work with a sigh of relief. Sound familiar?

It doesn’t have to be like this! Use the ten tips below to run meetings where you:

• save time and money
• make better decisions
• ensure commitment to action

1. Meet with the right people
How many times have you attended meetings where the wrong people were present and the right people were missing? Scrutinise the people who attend your meetings. Be clear on what you expect from each one; then make it clear to them. You might have smaller meetings but you will get much more done!

2. Start on time
People learn very quickly whether your meetings start on time, or if they don’t. Announce that in future your meetings will start exactly on time, and make sure they do. If there are latecomers do not back track. Instead, ask them to respect the starting time. If that doesn’t work, tell everyone that you will start the next meeting on time. Do so, and lock the door. Most people only have to be locked out once to learn the lesson!

3. Set ground rules
Different types of meeting need to function differently to meet their objectives. Make the purpose of the discussion clear, then set ground rules that will help achieve that purpose. For example, if you are gathering data, a useful ground rule is that everyone with input will be heard before possible actions are put forward. If you make ground rules explicit, people know how they should behave.

4. Appoint a gatekeeper
A gatekeeper makes sure that time is allocated to the important issues, not merely the most topical or personally relevant to someone with a loud voice. The gatekeeper has three responsibilities.

• Agree the agenda with the chairperson of the meeting
• Agree priorities and time allocation for each topic
• During the meeting, signal the chairperson on how time is progressing

The gatekeeper can be anyone with some personal discipline and a timepiece! Meetings with effective gate keeping allocate appropriate time to important topics and free up the chairperson to manage the content of the discussion.

5. Write it down
During the meeting make notes or appoint a note taker. Usually all you need are brief notes on the key points of discussion, actions agreed and the people responsible. At a follow on meeting, start with the action list to ensure continuity and accountability.

6. Stick to the point
Meetings that lose focus are time consuming, frustrating and seldom achieve their purpose. Use paraphrasing behaviour to keep people on track. First, listen carefully so you understand what is being said. Then interject: for example “Let me check we’ve all understood”. Next, paraphrase the essence of what was said. Once you have regained control of the conversation, you can redirect it as necessary. Using this one behaviour to maintain focus in a meeting, you can achieve twice as much in half the time.

7. Hear from everyone
If you have the right people at the meeting, make sure you hear what they all have to say. Avoid having a few people dominate the discussion by using names and gestures to invite specific people to speak. Be equally specific in asking others to stay quiet and listen to the contributions.

8. Keep it clear
Summarise as you go along. It keeps the conversation on track and ensures that everyone is clear about what has been said. As the meeting progresses, summarising helps you build up “small yes’s” of understanding and commitment that you can consolidate at the end of the discussion.

9. Look backwards and forwards
There is a great difference between collecting information about an issue and deciding what to do about the same issue going forward. For data collection use questions that seek information. To find solutions, use questions that ask for ideas for action. Meetings often get stuck in the asking for and giving of information, without getting to action. It’s more comfortable, everyone has their say, but it doesn’t achieve much.

10. Build quality solutions
Don’t let meetings degenerate into a win-lose fight. It happens when several ideas are put on the table and participants defend their own until one wins. The winner, who probably has the loudest voice, takes all, even though the idea may not be the best. The losers are unlikely to have any commitment to the idea and so implementation will be unsuccessful, at which point the whole process starts over. Encourage people to listen to and build onto the ideas of each other so you get commitment to better quality solutions.

Related posts

• No related posts.

Life is a flow of wonderful times, good times, not so good times and bad times. All we can be sure of is that there will be constant change. We never know how long our current troubles will last, or if they will get worse before they start to get better. The light you see at the end of the tunnel may well be another train!

Resilient people have the ability to keep going when the going is tough. They have reserves of inner strength that help them adapt to change. They understand that events in the world are neutral: then they choose how to interpret and react to them. They stay focused on what must be done, and they keep moving forward.

Of the many definitions of resilience, one of the best is, “the quality of being springy”. How springy are you? Can you roll with the punches? Do you stay optimistic? Do you bounce back?

Use the guidelines below to build up your own resilience and get your bounce back.

• Think positive
• Choose your battles
• Suspend judgment
• Realise you’re part of the problem
• Make it safe to talk

Think positive
Becoming a victim is a choice. Decide not to be a victim. Empower yourself with words like, “I can… I choose… I’ll do it”. When you say, “I can’t… I have to… They made me…” you immediately give away your power.

Being resilient doesn’t mean you ignore your unhappiness; it doesn’t mean you never ask for help from your friends; it doesn’t mean you feel strong every day! It does mean you understand the powerful impact of negative thoughts on your well being. You know that negative thinking and indecision drain your energies. You know that the longer you ignore a problem, the more you are going to worry about it.

Start to be aware of your thoughts. Challenge the negative ones. Are they rational? Do the facts support them? Use affirmations to replace negative thoughts with positive ones.

Choose your battles
It’s hard to keep bouncing back, when your first attempts to fix a problem haven’t worked. It’s tempting to give up, ignore the problem and avoid thinking about future consequences. That never works! You get deeper into debt, end up in a career dead end, or find yourself in a relationship that’s getting worse, not better.

Which of your problems still have to be resolved? Where do you need to bounce back? Identify priorities and decide on the action you can take. Then take it!

Suspend judgment
Resilient people focus on solving problems. They know when they don’t know. They do not assume they have all the answers or that they have the right answers. When things go wrong they are the first to ask questions. When they know the facts, they form an opinion, then they move to action. People who lack resilience start off by blaming others for their misfortune. That only increases their feelings of being victimized and powerless. Their negative emotions take over, their thinking skills are paralysed, and they become less and less able to take positive action.

Learn to separate facts and events from your own emotional interpretations. Your problem solving skills will improve, and so will your self esteem and self confidence.

Realise you’re part of the problem
If you’re resilient you are aware of how you behave and the impact of your behaviour on others. You accept responsibility for your decisions and their consequences. You look back so you learn from your mistakes: then you take the learning and move on. You don’t continue with self defeating habits: you don’t indulge in self criticism: you don’t put yourself down and you don’t’ expect failure.

Accepting that in every situation, you are in some way part of the problem, is one of the toughest tests of your resilience. When you can do it, you are more likely to approach others without arrogance or accusation. When you communicate more openly, you share more information, and resolve problems more easily.

Look at the challenges you are facing. In what ways have you been contributing to the problems?

Make it safe to talk
Resilient people are courageous, not foolhardy. They know they need to get results. They also know that developing trusting, respectful relationships makes problem solving easier. They know how to make even sensitive conversations safe. They talk to the right people, no matter how difficult.

When you know how to make a conversation safe, everyone feels comfortable putting forward what they know, what they think about it, and even how they feel. With all that on the table you really find out what is going on. You can deal with reality. When people feel threatened and unsafe in a conversation, they don’t speak up. Real issues aren’t uncovered. No surprise then that the proposed solutions don’t solve the problem!

How good are you at making conversations safe so people talk openly? Do others share their information, opinions and feelings with you? Do you know what is really going on?

Related posts

• Everything’s stuck! (0)
• Being stressed is a choice - just say no (0)

The pace of life gets faster and faster. There’s more and more we have to do: there’s more and more we want to do. How much more of this can we take?
Have you stopped recently to remind yourself that being stressed is a choice? (Although when you are up to your neck in crocodiles, it’s hard to remember that it IS a choice!)

We constantly make decisions, each of which has consequences for our lifestyle and on the amount of stress we face. There are the really big decisions that determine our life path; for example: where to live, whether to marry, have children, the kind of job we seek, personal targets we set ourselves, the cultural and recreational activities we choose to become involved with.

Then there are the smaller day to day choices, where we decide if wewill say “Yes” or “No”.

Yes, I can get back in time to come to your dinner party. I’ll come straight from the airport.
Yes, I’ll be pleased to do the opening at your product launch
Yes, I’ll definitely be at the presentation: I’ll bring copies of the figures for everyone
Yes, of course, you must stay the weekend; it’s no trouble
Yes, I can get the report done this evening. You’ll have it on your desk in the morning.
Yes, I’d love to stop by on the way home from work. I’ll pick up something to eat.

You could of course choose to say “No” in any of these situations. Think how doing so would ease the pressure! Think how much you often want to say “No” but don’t! Why don’t you? I think there are a number of reasons. We don’t want to offend, we feel obligated, we would feel guilty. Lastly, we just don’t know how to say “No”, without causing offense or damaging the relationship in some way.

Next time you want to say “No”, try these steps. Underlying them is the notion that you first offer consideration to the person making the request; then you give consideration to your own needs. Only THEN do you make your decision.

1. Ask questions until you are CLEAR on exactly what the person wants; check that you understand fully.

2. Use empathy to ACKNOWLEDGE how the person feels about the situation.

3. Step back and take time to RECOGNISE your own needs ands priorities.

4. Think through the EFFECT and consequences of your decision.

Then, if you decide to say “No”, FIRST give your reasons, so the other person can understand how you arrived at your decision. At least this way, they will understand your decision and be able to respect it, even if they would have preferred that you had said “Yes”.

Learn to say “No” so you can CARE for yourself.

These lines are from Dennis O’Driscoll’s poem, “No, thanks”. They express it rather more bluntly!

No, you can take No for an answer, without bothering
your head to pop the question.

No, even Yes means No in my tongue, under my breath:
No, absolutely not, not a snowball’s chance, not a
hope.

Related posts

• How straight do you talk? (0)
• Get your bounce back (0)
• Everything’s stuck! (0)

It sounds so easy. Facts are facts, that is, until we feel strongly about something. Then emotions take over, and not even facts are what they seem. There are four common mistakes that we make.
1. We load the facts with emotional baggage. The emotional tone of a statement is most often carried in the non verbal signals that accompany the words. You may choose your words carefully, with the full intention to have an open discussion about something, but the tone, pitch and loudness of your voice all give away your true intent…to accuse or blame. Gestures such as finger pointing, raising eyebrows and frowning, add to the effect. Standing up, pacing around, and waving your arms make the message unmistakable. The open discussion becomes attack and defense. A delegate on a workshop recently said, “It isn’t a conversation; it’s a street fight!”

2. We present opinions and feelings as if they are facts. We say things like,” Well, the fact is, I think…” and much of the time we get away with it. In the heat of argument, few of us are thinking clearly enough to put up a challenge. No-one stops to ask why the conversation is getting more and more out of hand as each participant reacts every more strongly to the accusations of the other when the facts become lost in the emotional cloud.

3. We generalize and exaggerate when we should be specific and accurate. We say, “You’re always late” when the facts are that “You have been 20 minutes late twice this week”. Words such as always, never and everybody, are almost certain to be inaccurate and are therefore likely to evoke a defensive response from the person to whom they are directed.

4. We present facts that don’t support the case we are trying to make. For example, if you are discussing future career direction with an employee whom you think would make a better technical specialist than a manger, you need facts to support the person’s excellent technical performance AND those that support poor management behaviour. If you are discussing a pattern of recurring behaviour, you need more than just one example! When selecting the facts that you will present in a discussion, from all those that are available, you need to consider the ones that have given rise to your feelings about, or interpretation of the situation. Then the other person can see how you arrived at your opinion, even if they don’t agree with it.

There are conversational topics that will always be difficult to handle, and people who will be volatile and defensive. Getting your facts straight before you start a conversation and using them accurately during it, gives you the best chance of keeping the discussion on a rational and emotionally objective basis.

Related posts

• No related posts.

People often say they make difficult conversations even more difficult by becoming emotional; and later regretting, deeply, what they have said. Expressing our feelings is not easy, and most of us have learned to be very cautious, scared even, about doing it: scared of the negative reaction we might cause, scared that we’ll look foolish or vulnerable, scared that we might damage the relationship. So we play safe, bite our lips, suffer in silence. Even in our most intimate and important relationships we often go to extreme lengths to avoid telling it like it is - especially when it comes to expressing how we feel.
We forget that while emotions can be buried, they don’t go away. Most often, the more we try to ignore them, the more they build up. Finally when they explode, they do indeed do damage; damage that might have been avoided if we had spoken up right at the beginning.

Explaining how you feel about something, especially after days, weeks or months of hiding it, is usually accompanied by an immense sense of release. When you speak up, tell the truth, the pressure is off. The truth is the bottom line. There’s only one version. When you tell it there is no danger that you will forget what you’ve said, contradict yourself at a later date or tell someone else something different. Once it’s out there, it can be dealt with. While you are hiding it, you are not dealing with reality. The real causes of problems are not discussed; action to solve them is not taken. As unresolved problems build up, so do the accompanying feelings.

Given that it is difficult to speak up about feelings, it’s worth knowing two basic steps that minimize the risk.

Start by describing what has given rise to your feelings. What happened, what was said? It’s important to be able to describe exactly what you are reacting to, so the other person can see the source of your feelings. It does not mean that they will necessarily agree with your reaction, but at least they can see where it came from. Choose your words so as to avoid blame and accusation. Stick to the facts and keep it as clear and simple as possible. When you have decided which facts you will use, check that they are the best ones to use to show where your feelings came from.

Then label your feelings. Identify exactly how you are feeling. This is not as easy as it sounds and it may take some time before you find the right words. Start with “I”. Anything else will come across as an accusation. To a friend who was critical of you in front of others, you might say, “When you said, (quote his or her words), I was embarrassed”. How different it sounds when you say, “You embarrassed me!”

Getting in touch with your feelings and learning how to express them can be a life’s work. Start with simple things and in safe relationships. The rewards will make it well worth while.

Related posts

• The best of times or the worst of times (0)
• It’s all about emotion! (0)
• How straight do you talk? (0)
• There’s an elephant in the room (0)
• One manager is getting it right! (0)