Whenever today’s manager is faced with a difficult situation he / she could always take the BLT approach:

If you don’t know what to do – Bluff

If you cannot bluff your way out – Lie

If lying isn’t working – throw a Tantrum

…alternatively… in extreme cases… identify a suitable scapegoat and threaten to fire them.

Ok, so the above is purely in jest, but sadly for some people there is an element of truth or perhaps even recognition in there. Poor managers still exist and unfortunately however many training courses they attend there appears to be no change in behaviour. Why?

Training works very well when sharing information, establishing processes or learning technical skills. It is less successful when you expect an individual to objectively review their performance, accept new ideas and adopt new behaviour when placed back in either familiar or comfortable situations. It certainly doesn’t work well if you expect a significant behavioural change when the individual is placed under stress. Old patterns and habits immediately re-emerge and you are right back where you started, albeit with a nice folder full of theory sat on the shelf or in a drawer.

Creating a structured development program involving 360 feedback, behavioural preference profiling, training, coaching and effective follow up will make a massive difference to a manager’s performance and the satisfaction and engagement of their direct reports.

If you are an HR professional or L&D specialist you know all this. If not and you would like to understand more have your people talk to our people… (or just drop us an email with questions and your contact details)

A lot of people sometimes feel trapped or stuck in a rut, not getting what they want or deserve from their life, career, relationships or themselves. Unless something significant happens, they carry on… treading the same path and repeating the same actions, quite often in spite of the feeling that builds within.

This feeling develops over a period of time, starting to leave you unfulfilled, under-valued and overwhelmed, leading on to frustration, insecurity, fear and ultimately anger…

Although this is happening all around us, it often feels like we are the only ones going through it. Talking to friends or family can sometimes help but quite often they are the ones re-enforcing this feeling. This is particularly true if your ‘rut’ happens to be ‘fur lined’. You may have job security, financial independence or a secure relationship which can make the rut a safe and outwardly comfortable place to be.

Unless things have reached a critical point it is unlikely that you will face up to the situation or possess the strength, conviction or willpower to potentially climb out and escape… After all, don’t you keep telling yourself that things aren’t that bad, could be a lot worse, lots of people have problems and they deal with them?

How would it feel to be able to talk to someone you could trust, whose only agenda was to help and who was equipped with both the ability to listen and understand you and to help and support you to resolve what you are going through. A problem shared is a problem halved? Well the other half is in finding the resolution to that problem, which is often easier with someone guiding the way.

By meeting on a regular basis you can deal with issues one at a time or one chunk at a time. The important thing is that you always move forwards towards a better future.

By adopting a professional approach, being open, supported, challenged and honest with yourself you will find that the answers you need are there, it just sometimes takes a little courage and curiosity to find them.

Having a coach releases your true potential and, more importantly, allows you to feel good about who you are, where you are going and how you are going to get there.

At metacella we care. We care about you and we care about enabling you, in the true sense of the word, to get you where you want to be.

Unless there is an obvious crisis, accident or serious problem most people resent being asked if they need help. Particularly in the workplace, to accept an offer of help can be perceived as weakness or an inability to perform. So how then, as a senior leader within an organisation, can you improve without resorting to the ‘H’ word?

The first step is to accept that there may be more than one way to do things and unless you have explored some alternatives to your personal operating procedure, you may be missing out on something that could give you the edge.

So what is out there? You can choose a training course or join a development programme but how do you ensure that the content is for you? Quite often traditional training can leave you feeling slightly unfulfilled. Some of the content may have been good and indeed, you may have experienced the odd flash of inspiration. The key though is how much of it do you honestly bring back to the workplace and use consistently? 10%, 30%, 50% ?

All too often you have the best of intentions to apply what you have learnt but your workload builds up, situations need dealing with and we turn to what we are familiar with. It is human nature to go back to doing things the way they have always been done. There is comfort in familiarity. Work is often repeated behaviour and repeated behaviour becomes habit. Breaking any habit is never simple, particularly when you are under pressure or against deadlines.

Imagine though for a moment if you were able to identify exactly what you need to do to achieve higher levels of performance, having an independent sounding board to bounce ideas off, someone who could deliver knowledge, best practice, behavioural change and consistent goal setting, all personalised to your situation and desired outcomes.

Imagine if you had someone who could provide inspiration, challenge, honesty and support and whose only agenda was to enable you to achieve.

How would it feel to be able to talk to someone you could trust, who was equipped with both the ability to listen and to understand you and who could provide genuine insight on your challenges? Thinking about it now, what would you resolve to work on first?

If you are curious about how a professional, tailored and personal development approach would work for you or you just simply need to get more done, feel less stressed and lead a team effectively, contact us now.

The challenges involved in getting to grips with a new role are well recognised and many companies nowadays have well-developed processes for on-boarding and performance acceleration. Such programmes typically include meeting the key stakeholders, focusing on understanding the critical issues, spending quality time with the new team, identifying the quick wins, learning the unwritten rules of the game, making an impact as a leader and defining the new vision plus key short-term strategic goals. Via this means the change for all concerned becomes accepted, the necessary adjustments get made and everyone settles down into the new situation more quickly than might otherwise have been the case.

Whilst this approach to bringing new hires on board undoubtedly seeks to satisfy the desire of organisations to ensure new people become productive as quickly as possible, it fails to recognise a key factor. One of real issues in transitioning to a new job is the underlying and more difficult process of letting go of the person you used to be in your previous role and finding the new person you need to become in your new position.

On-boarding programmes which start with the assumption that a change in role is just that – a change – are missing a trick. We need to broaden our view and recognise that starting a new job puts us in transition and is a complex process. It involves, amongst other things, the reaching of a point in time where we have to let go of something. It requires us to appreciate that to become something else, we have to stop being what we are now; to start doing things a new way, we have to end the way we are doing them now and to develop a new attitude or outlook, we have to let go of the old one we have now. Even though it sounds backwards, the ending of what came before must always come first and be dealt with if we are to move on to the start of something new.

If we overlook this aspect of someone starting a new job we run the risk of underestimating the complexity involved. Adjusting to a new role is much more than simply dealing with a change and, as we plan how best to ensure new people become productive as quickly as possible, we would do well to remember this.

However much we might wish for more hours in the day or to be better able to manage the time that we do have, the truth is that time is a constant over which we have no control.

It is an irrefutable fact that the only aspect to time over which we have any influence is the use to which we put it – every time we choose to do one thing with our time, we are, by implication, choosing not to do something else. Accepting this is the essence to becoming better at time management and in so doing, better at suffering less from the feelings of stress and pressure which so often accompany poor time management.

Understanding how you experience time and what influences how you chose to spend it can be a good starting point:

– Think about the things you “don’t have time for” and the things you can always find time for no matter how busy you are. What are the common elements that separate the two? What does this tell you?

– Think about the things that motivate you most. If you have clarity about these, you will have clarity around your priorities and be better able to handle your time.

– Keep a regular eye on your priorities. Do they regularly influence what you do? If not, why not?

– Go back in your mind to times when you had lots of time and yet did not produce results and compare these with the times when you did get things done. What were the differences between the two?

– Identify what generates the sense of time pressure you feel. How could you reduce or eliminate it?

– Consider whether you often find yourself rushing around. What makes you do so? What is the cost to you of doing so?

– Think about how you choose to spend your time. Do you consciously give yourself choices and if so, against what decision criteria? Do you consider what time will be taken up before you take on new activities?

– What is your view about planning? Is it worth the effort? Do you set time aside for it? How often? Is it enough?

– How do you consider time? Do you live in the present most of the time? Do you have an abundance mentality when it comes to time? Are you relaxed about time? Do the metaphors you use about time give you any clues as to how you feel about it?

Choose the three areas in your life that will make the most difference to how you spend your time. What three actions will you take?

There is no doubt that managers need staff to consistently perform at levels that positively impact the bottom line. Yet how is it possible to keep the team focused, upbeat and performing when there’s gloom and doom all around? How do you motivate yourself and your people when expectations keep changing? How can you keep delivering more and more and expect your team to do the same when it seems that whatever you do, it’s never enough?

It’s worth remembering:

– the factors that motivate employees change over time and vary between people according to things like their employment status, gender, age, income and occupation. You need to keep your finger on the pulse of what motivates your team and place the motivation of your team at the heart of what you do. Motivation is not a one-off task – it requires your constant effort and attention.

– often the strongest potential motivators are the things employees value but lack. By understanding and addressing what these are for the members of your team, you may find you can increase motivation and performance – and it might cost you a whole lot less than you think!

– you need to be aware of your own impact on the team. Do you add or detract? Do you inspire or bring down? Do you empower or control? Not only do you need to understand how your behaviour (both verbal and non-verbal) affects the team – and make sure it’s sending the right messages – you also need to understand what’s important for each and every member of your team and adapt your approach accordingly.

– you need to be prepared to be creative. If a motivator for your team is money, how can you meet this need whilst maintaining an acceptable cost base? If appreciation and recognition for a job well done is what makes the difference to someone in your team, how can you personalise what you do to generate the best response? If the challenge of new and interesting work is the main motivator, how can you think outside of the box and find ways of offering this?

– it’s good to keep in mind that what motivates you might be very different from what motivates others. Putting time and effort into something you would find inspiring will bear little fruit if it has no meaning to others. Make sure you know your own preferences and be prepared to put them to one side as you consider what might work for others.

– recessions can have a significant impact on what people value. Not surprisingly, job security and financial rewards tend to become more important. You need to manage these two drivers of your employees’ motivation during recessions. Being open and honest with them and continuously communicating the information your people want and need to hear will make a significant difference.

– because the market today for most employees is weak, it can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking motivation is unimportant – after all, many people won’t have much option but to stay put. Whilst this might be true, there will still be some movement of staff and it is likely that the most talented employees will be the ones that you lose. You need to create financial reward packages that retain the very best employees yet also motivate everyone else. And if you do lose a key member of the team, make sure you put sufficient time and attention into managing the impact on those remaining.

Motivating the right behaviour is vital to business success. It requires creativity, flexibility and constant attention. It requires a clear vision of the way forward and clarity around the goals that have to be accomplished. It requires leaders who communicate honestly, build and maintain trust, take time to listen to what people value and adapt and respond accordingly. Motivating the behaviour and performance you need from your staff is one of your most important responsibilities.

Stress itself is neither positive nor negative. It is simply energy under force. It is how we use it that makes it limiting or empowering. When we are able to use stress to our benefit it motivates us to achieve our goals and outcomes. It gets our adrenaline flowing, keeps our energy high and helps us to keep focused. It engenders our sense of passion for what we are doing and provides the drive we need to achieve. Without stress we can find it difficult to get going and may leave things to the last moment so the pressure to meet the deadline forces our performance.

When stress becomes limiting it impedes our energy flow and causes a wide range of mental, physical and emotional consequences. Yet despite all that is known about stress we often maintain “it could never happen to me” and refuse, either consciously or unconsciously, to recognise or accept the symptoms. We don’t hear others when they suggest we might be suffering from stress and can feel there’s something shameful or inadequate about admitting we are no longer able to perform as well as we did. We may believe in today’s climate that a level of stress is only to be expected and there is little we can do about it. It may even be that we get some sort of strange satisfaction from feeling we’re the only person around here who holds things together and gets things done and that the stress we’re under is a worthwhile price to pay.

Even if we are prepared to acknowledge that stress is causing us a problem, the strategies we use to deal with it are often not the most effective because they are not based on an accurate diagnosis of its the source: Is our stress arising from our environment for example, or because we lack the appropriate skills and capabilities to do something? Are negative beliefs about what we are trying to achieve getting in the way? Does the issue conflict with our image of our self, our self esteem, our self-identity? Are we finding it difficult to see how what we are trying to achieve contributes to our vision (for life, for our business) or is our stress coming in some way from our behaviour or actions? Is it something we are somehow generating ourselves?

Unless we fully understand the causes of our stress we’re likely to restrict our actions to dealing only with its symptoms and, whilst there is no denying this can be of benefit, it misses the point. For just as we would want to get to the root cause of a problem, for example, with a product or a customer in order to find the best solution, why wouldn’t we do the same with our own sense of well being and health?

The world in which organisations operate today is changing. Global competition has never been more intense, clients are becoming more knowledgeable and more demanding and new advances in Technology continue to affect all aspects of our lives. In response to these changes, the need to evolve our professional knowledge and technical skills continues apace. Indeed, in our knowledge-intensive world some have argued that the only real source of sustainable competitive advantage is the ability to recognise and adapt to these changes faster than the competition.

But, in our drive to keep up to speed and ahead of the competition, has our focus on technical competence and professional knowledge been at the expense of other aspects of our development? Have we lost sight of the need for a balanced and broad curriculum of personal training which encompasses not only the technical and knowledge-based requirements of our roles but also the softer aspects such as emotional intelligence and exceptional people skills? Have we fallen into the trap of believing that a day or two spent on a training course will provide the depth and breadth of development that we need? Do we believe we don’t have the time to focus on our own leadership development in addition to the other areas or that such time, if taken away from the office, will simply add to the mounting pressure and stress we already feel?

If the answer to these questions is “yes”, then we are in danger of falling behind the competition rather than moving ahead. Whilst there is no doubt technical skills and knowledge are essential, they are only part of the solution. Understanding the human dimensions of workplace life is equally, if not more, important. Being capable of building powerful and effective relationships at work, capable of skillfully managing our feelings and behaviour and knowing ourselves and others is crucial. Appreciating the links between current work issues and our previous experiences and why we typically respond to certain situations as we do, gives us the option of accessing new ways of thinking and acting. By investing in our personal as well as our technical development we reap the benefits of reduced stress and increased confidence. We can learn how to:

– inspire and motivate followers, creating loyalty and commitment – improve our interpersonal skills, including influencing, motivating, presenting, resolving conflict and delivering bad news – build high-performance teams that truly are greater than the sum of their parts – refine our networking and business development skills – improve our performance management skills, including being able to handle “difficult conversations” – delegate effectively – coach and mentor others effectively

Much of our competitive advantage will come from the way we operate as an individual within our world of work and in how we are as a leader of others. Making sure we pay equal attention to all aspects of our development has to be the way forward if we are to grow and flourish.

All organisations benefit from the continuing high level of performance of their staff and, where performance falls below the accepted standard, from the use of effective performance management systems and processes.

One challenge for many organisations however, is how best to manage and assist those members of staff who continue to perform at a level which is just about acceptable (meaning performance management would be inappropriate and/or unfair). Whilst there is no doubt such individuals do bring some value to the organisation, they also present a number of potential difficulties:

– their lack of success means other, more effective members of staff may be unable to progress/develop and as a result may decide to leave the organisation altogether

– their confidence levels may fall as a result of their continued lack of success resulting in a gradual diminution of performance which can be difficult to manage

– their performance in their current role may impede or prevent the organisation from introducing and embracing much needed change

– those managing such staff might find it difficult to understand or identify what it is that is holding them back, meaning they are unable to offer constructive help, guidance or support

– with a continued lack of success at finding a new role, the individual concerned may give up any efforts to move on or ahead, leaving the organisation with a more permanent problem.

Working with an external coach can assist in a number of ways:

– the organisation can be seen to be supporting and helping the individual in their aspirations – a coach can provide unbiased, objective opinions and feedback on aspects of selection procedures such as interview techniques and presentations – a coach can take the time to rehearse the individual in preparation for interviews and selection discussions – a coach can increase the individual’s self-awareness and confidence meaning future interviews (and all other interactions at work) are likely to be more successful – by working with a coach, the individual can be challenged to reflect upon their performance in their current role and encouraged to identify ways in which they can improve

Unsticking staff who are stuck, either by facilitating a return to improved performance or by helping them to secure a new role, sends a powerful message to the team about you as a manager. It clears the way for change and delivers the results needed by all concerned.