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Make Silence Your Answer

As we work with our people, they see us as leaders who know everything. After all, we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t have the skills and knowledge to have the answers, now would we?

And when we are asked for our solutions, it’s all too easy to give them. For speed; for knowing the way is ‘right’; for a subtle massage for our own ego and for playing the role of the ‘boss’ and showing off our prowess.

Appreciating that we may well be able to fix most things that employees come across is one thing. Letting them find the answers for themselves is a much stronger skill, even though there might be hiccups along the way.

By ‘not knowing’ the solutions, we open up our people to developing their own sense of creativity, leading to new solutions, confidence building and much more capable team members.

When asked the question, try asking one back and be still. By letting our people fill the spaces with their thoughts, solutions and ideas, they become the empowered ones who can take on some of the ‘stuff’ that we choose to fill our days with.

Using silence as the answers we give may be too much on every occasion we are asked for help. And it’s a skill for leaders that can take some time to develop.

The outcomes are much more valuable to us than simply the letting go of purring as we are perceived as the ‘star’. Much better to arrange a team of stars around us by not having all the answers and letting the silence do the work.

‘Remember that Silence is Sometimes the Best Answer’ from ’20 Ways to Get Good Karma’ – The Dalai Lama at SpiritualNow

Personal PR – How To Fly Your Own Flag

On many occasions of any career, there are times where it’s vital to represent yourself fully. To make the best publicity you can for ‘yours sincerely’. And there are easy tactics you can use…

Whether you are applying for a promotion in your existing organization; looking for a new job altogether; or simply experiencing a performance review, there are steps you can take that will enhance your outcome.

Most, if not all individuals, find it hard to tweak their achievements to make the best of them. Whether this comes from naivety, modesty or simply a misjudgment of what they can pluck from their experiences, it’s hard to say.

The truth is that long hours wringing hands and fretting need not be suffered. Because in the main, all you need when being assessed is already within you. All you need to create a really effective candidate – or A+ result in your performance.

There are six key steps (plus a bonus!), to making the most of your assets:-

1. Start Early

Be aware. When you are in the thick of experiences and learning, always, but always be prepared to make a note – however small – of something that you did. You don’t have to write a whole portfolio of it, that can come later (just kidding!). Just notice when things happen.

2. Link to Role

By being aware of what you might need to take careful note of before you start looking for it. Here you’re simply looking for the categories upon which you will ultimately be tested and then you can start to create a list of your personal activities (the ‘What I did’ of your evidence).

3. Keeping Up

As you create this list of your activities, you categorize them as you go and as the evidence piles up, create a note also of the gaps too. Then you can pro-actively ‘create’ the activities you need to make your offer almost irresistible. You will become rounded and thorough and then have the luxury of deciding not just that you have enough, but you have a choice of evidence you can talk about when you are being assessed.

4. ‘I Can’t Find Enough’

It’s vital to understand that the evidence you create does not need to move mountains. A clear action you personally took, where you can demonstrate just four simple elements – What you did; Why you did it; What the outcome was and What you learned is perfect – and keep it short and succinct. It gives them clear facts and a space to ask you more too – A perfect candidate!

5. Last Minute?

Left it too late? No problem! All you need is a kindly colleague to ask you the questions and push you for answers. It’s amazing at what we leave out or underestimate in ourselves. With focus, it’s possible to create quite comprehensive evidence if you are coached to create it in a couple of hours with a ‘coach’ friend drawing from you the actual – even where you think there are few.

6. Blagging!

Actual lying can never be condoned – least of all because you’ll get found out and if you were successful and got something without really deserving it, likely as not it wouldn’t suit you anyway. You can – and must – embellish, by really stretching out all you do in a category and make it really sing for you. Every scrap of paper evidence; every single impressive fact and figure pile up to become much more interesting to assessors.

7. And Finally – A Bonus Step!

Always but always focus on what you did. Yes, you personally. Using ‘we’ and’ they’ won’t cut it. Be brave and strong and shout about you out loud. Use the ‘I’ word and really show what you are made of.

We all do pretty good work. We all deserve that you be recognised and in the main, we don’t shout about ourselves enough. And when you don’t, who will?

Change Management – Life Goes On

When your people are implicated in changes you are making, it can be a challenge to keep them focused on keeping their output up.

As a manager, it’s your vital role to help keep them focused on the day job, whatever else is going on.

Change is challenging. And when individuals are affected, it can be a huge challenge to maintain focus, morale and engagement, because of the personalized implications they may feel concerned about. It can be a tough call for them to make.

Managers need to have the ability to manage the attention of the employees in their team, even when there are the significant distractions that come when change impacts on them.

At a time where focusing on managing change effectively is at the top of their own agenda, the best managers are taking the time to make sure that the performance of their team remains focused on the day-job.

They do this by being all the more visible than usual and by taking the time to engage with their people like never before. This is time-consuming and challenging in itself. And it’s a vital role for the more diligent managers to play.

There’s a spin-off too. Where a team are in the thick of change, with all its implications – real or simply perceived – making concentration all the more difficult, there’s a need to get grounded and back to normality.

Where a manager is able to combine change management with their normal role in managing and leading their team effectively – and be seen to do so – it will have a beneficial effect on team energy, focus and keep excitability at least a little under control.

Managers who take off the change manager hat for some or even most of their time and show that they are focusing on their normal role, will be demonstrating a resilience during times of change that will impress model for their people too.

This ‘normalizing’ behavior will slowly and surely percolate into the way their people do their job and help calm down the excitement that so often bubbles under when circumstances are changing.

Good managers focus on the day-to-day requirements of the organization and with that, instigate a normality that can so easily get out of hand if allowed to.

Change management is not simply about delivering a change program, it’s about taking your people with you and helping them see that for most of their work, change is an insignificance that can get out of proportion.

Managers who are managing change this way, will be showing that they care about their priorities effectively and, with that, their people will most likely keep engaged where they add value best.

© Martin Haworth 2011. This is an expanded version of just one of many change management ideas, from Resilience in Change. For your free – downloadable today – ‘Managing Change’ Super-Simple Success Tips e-book, visit http://www.ResilienceInChange.com

Key Steps for Engaging Employees in Change

Even if change is ever present in people’s everyday lives, there are still a whole lot who find it discomforting, especially when they are not prepared for it or if it is imposed on them.

There is a way forward…

Engaging employees in change is much easier if they are given adequate information about what’s going on. The earlier that good communication processes are in place, will help maintain relationships with the workforce and ensure that the potential for full engagement is possible.

To make the best to get everyone on board – as enthusiastically as possible – here are a few reminders that will help managers be better at leading and delivering change.

In successfully engaging employees in change, the first rule of thumb is to foster good relationships with them. Talk to your people and – perhaps even more importantly – listen to what they have to say as well. When those in your team trust you, they’re much more likely be agreeable to any changes you propose. Keeping talking to them will build the necessary confidence that adjustments are not only for your betterment, but will be of value to them as well.

Another opportunity to better engage your people fully, would be to always seize opportunities for change when they crop up. Prospects for change leading to performance improvement are always nearby when it comes to the workplace. Engaging employees in challenging change situations will be much less difficult if you always take your chances in developing them and letting them grow in new ways as a matter of course.

So if they are used to appreciating the positive values that comes from change when it’s in their favour, they won’t be afraid to face different changes with optimism rather than fear and doubt.

It’s also vital to make certain that you are clear in stating the changes you want to make. By letting your people truly understand precisely and accurately what is in need of a change, they will be more prepared to accept the idea – and the consequences – and to really get involved to help you find solutions for delivering the outcomes you need.

Engaging employees in change is also be a whole lot easier if you show them that you’ll be participating in the change as well. By taking the lead in stepping out of your own comfort zone, yourpeople will have a better understanding of why it needs to be done and that you are fully behind it – even if there are some difficult circumstances that you need to accept personally too.

Finally, it’s very important to make only one big change at a time. This will lessen the shock value; enable full focus on delivery and will let people cope and be comfortable with the process. Success on any change occasion will help if they need to face more in the future.

Engaging employees in change is a very do-able option. Indeed, when they are fully informed and involved, many employees relish changes for the added interest and challenge they bring to the workplace.

How to be a Management Legend

Being a management legend in your own lifetime might seem to be something of an impossibility. A dream you sometimes dream when you are having one of those spare moments (like you do!).

So, here’s the skinny on how to make this possible, with the minimal of effort.

When you look at the quality of management out there in the real world right now, you might find that being a legend is not that difficult.

Here are three prerequisites of legend status:-

A good manager is able to deliver the required results. Indeed it isn’t hard to drive employees hard and for a while to run any business or team in an environment of fear.

Legends are more than this.

Any old manager is able to make friends with the employees in their team and be that ‘Good old boy (or gal)’ for a while. Being a good buddy for those you manage isn’t hard for a while.

Legends are more than this too.

Some good managers are able to come up with a bit of a plan for the foreseeable future (and there are less even of these than you might think). It’s something of a plan on the ‘back of an envelope’ sort of thing, but it’s better than nothing.

Legends are different to this as well.

So, to create legendary status as a manager, there are four key steps that go beyond the ‘good’ and become legendary:-

1. Deliver Results

Legendary managers go beyond delivering for the short-term, vitally important though that is – especially in the climate of right now.

Focus on results for today is simply not enough to get your legendary badge. You have to go further.

There needs to be an understanding that whilst today is allowed to take up some of your management style, legendary managers have an eye on the future too. A future where there will be broader demands on the team to deliver results and to be much more effective that will need to be accommodated.

So legends are constantly considering the needs to be even better in the future. To develop their people through challenge and support that encourages risk-taking for employees – but in an environment where they feel safe enough to give it a go.

Results for today are who we have become as a society – as good managers – the greatest and the legends do more to focus on the today – and the tomorrow.

2. Create Relationships

Legendary managers are well thought of by their people. Indeed they are memorable and would often feature on that most famous of lists – three people who have been the biggest influences in your life.

Legends know that relationship building is not something that you can turn on and off at will. They know that the very best really, truly, live relationships.

They don’t really need to work at it – except perhaps at first – because it’s something they do naturally. Building relationships is about being out there with your people. Talking with them and much more importantly, listening to them and valuing them because of that.

Legendary managers are able to tread that fine line that divides familiarity with relationship. They – and their people – know what’s allowed and what isn’t.

Relationships are also about fairness, equality, trust, rapport, keeping promises and more. Relationships are that togetherness where each would – and will – go the extra mile. Manager and employee – together.

3. Vision for the Future

Legends come from having a motivation and drive that is irrisistible. An ability – a charisma – where their people can’t help but come along with them.

To get there requires inspiration and the skill to see the possibilities and share that energy with your people. When you dream for yourself, you know that it’s possible.

When you bring your people along to collaborate on the possibilities, then they will always remember that you had them there with you at that momentous time.

Having a vision is a great idea. Co-creating a vision together with your people is unexpected and unbelievable – they will love you for it.

Being a management legend is simply an amazing opportunity not only to deliver the results you want, but also to do that with purpose. The purpose of being with your people on their journey too.

Be Yourself as a Manager – No-one Else

There’s a way of sensing when a manager is ‘putting it on’. It’s a sense many, if not all employees have, to some extent or the other – and they will quickly sniff you out…

It’s very tempting as you manage a team new to you. They expect great things of you, the ‘new broom’ manager coming in to shake things up a bit and make the difference.

It’s a clean slate for you too, as you move into this new management role. A new team of people to work with. Maybe even a new organization too.

Those old experiences where you could have been so much better are behind you. Maybe these new employees won’t know the old you. That one who might have done the job even better.

So you try to be something different from before. Perhaps it goes beyond the learning you’ve had from the past, where things didn’t always go quite to plan.

You are free of those times where you got caught out – more likely got caught short – in your management. So you can start again here – and be different.

When you learnt those lessons, perhaps even some of them were made public – in addition to those where you yourself knew that you could have been better, you could have wished them away. But, if there was anything about you, you didn’t because you learned about yourself. Learned how to ‘do differently’ (otherwise known as ‘better’) next time.

So now you have the big chance to be different and you want to try it on. Thing is, that sixth sense of your people. They can tell when a manager isn’t being authentic. They just can. Employees have suffered generations of managers and so they know when you are simply not being the true you.

And you know, they want the true you, because that’s where they are able to get to know you – understand you and, above all, respond to you and the way you do things.

If you try to be someone you aren’t, it will be clear. And in addition to seeing through you playing a part, they will come to resent you for actually trying to be someone you aren’t. They will feel besmirched that you weren’t trusting with them from the start by showing them the true you – the inner you.

Your authentic self as leader will be the easiest and most effective way to be your best and you really will be respected for it.

And as you lead from the heart, the model you set will be followed by your people. They will be authentic with you as well.