This issue is about cost
effective ways to develop everybody in an organisation.
Many organisations spend lots of time and energy trying to identify which
of their people have "potential". Then they develop these chosen
"critical few" and the "critical many" don't get
much at all.
There are major problems with this. One
is the Pygmalion
Effect which shows that if
you expect people to perform well, they will. This means that everyone
has high potential. Another is that anyone's performance can improve with
training, support, challenge and attention. So, if you want to do well,
you can't leave anyone out. So, how can you develop everybody?
A
wry tale
"It's aerodynamically
impossible for a bumblebee to fly'' said the first aeronautical engineer.
"Its wings are much too short and his body way too bulky for it
to even lift off the ground. How do you suppose it does it?''
"Maybe'', answered the
second engineer, "nobody ever told it that it couldn't
fly''.
A
request for your stories
This
is the fifth issue of these ezines. I have had some feedback saying they
are helpful, so thank you. I would be very interested indeed to hear of
your stories of using any of the stuff in the ezines. If
you give me permission, I could add a story to each edition, with your
name and contact details if you want. I am sure this would enhance
the ezine and develop the ideas too.
So, if
you have had an interesting experience using the ideas, will you email
me a two or three paragraph story?
The problem
about developing everybody
Developing everybody sounds nice
but totally impractical because of the time and resources required to do
it properly. It is impossible to use external professionals like me to
develop everybody, even in small groups. There just aren't enough of
"us" around and we are far too expensive to use like this.
So, we have to find imaginative
ways to increase the gearing from the limited professional resources we do
have so that every intervention counts.
Some solutions
Coaching top managers
There is a huge of amount of
interest in coaching top managers because the behaviour of these people
has such an impact on the attitudes, learning and behaviour of other
people in the organisation. The coach provides listening, support,
challenging questions and new ideas in safe and confidential environment.
Modern working life is so demanding that top people really need a quiet
place where they can think and even rest a while. When they realise how
valuable it is to be developed,
they are more inclined to develop their
staff.
Diffusing developmental
skills
Bring together
naturals
I would love to see
developmental skills much more widely spread in organisations. Some of the
basic skills like listening, supporting, showing appreciation and asking
good questions are not technically difficult and are very rewarding to
practice. They are also very rewarding to receive. In all organisations
there are people who are naturally very good at these things, even if they
have not been professionally trained.
So, we could identify those
people that others talk to naturally. Then we could bring them together to
practice and develop their skills with each other, perhaps using the coconsulting
model I discussed in July. This process could legitimise their role
as informal "counsellors" and increase the amount of listening
and support in the organisation. We used this method in ICI at two
locations to set up internal counselling services and it worked well. To
learn more, click counselling
service and I
will send you a report.
A different way to
use groups
Any good facilitator can help a small
group of people help each other develop. There is good guidance on how to
do it in Action
Learning by McGill and Beaty.
However, if you have many people you probably won't want to use a
professional facilitator in each group. You could try starting a few
groups, working in enough depth that each person gains the skills required
to facilitate a group as well as be an effective member and then
having the groups split after a while to form new groups and repeat the
process. This "cells" approach can rapidly reach large numbers
of people in a very effective way. It also transfers facilitating skills
very rapidly to the organisation.
If you would like to see more
detail of how this might work
in practice, please click cells and
I will send you some ideas.
Teach the basic
developmental skills to everyone
I am going on again about listening. This
is the basic developmental skill and once people are in the habit of
listening, they will learn many other skills quite naturally. People get
excited about listening by giving and receiving it. The secret is to have
people take turns. I mean this quite literally. Run a
session where people take turns listening to each other for say 15 minutes
each way. The listener can ask questions to help the
talker explore but must not interrupt, distract or talk about their own
views. These introductory sessions are easy to run, very popular and
excellent for building cooperation across the organisation. There is a
design for an introductory
session on my web site.
The design is for an
introduction to sixteen people. In
a workshop format, you
can cover large groups of people at a time. Please contact
me if you would like to talk about how to do this.
Use appreciative
enquiry
Appreciative
enquiry is a new approach to
generating positive change that starts by noticing that is rather
wonderful that things work! So let's start by discovering what people
in your organisation are already doing that is helping them develop and
then build on that. Appreciative methods exist for working in very large
groups that will then release lots of energy and enthusiasm for
development and learning.
Before I knew about this, I did some
appreciative work with a retailer about the successful development of
Branch Managers. We discovered that if a new employee had a manager that
developed her or him, then the person would become a developmental manager
themselves. This is confirmed independently in the Pygmalion
article at the beginning of this newsletter.
If you would like to see more results of my
researches, please click branch
managers. There are no
confidentiality issues.
Run meetings
developmentally
There is a lot more on this on
the web site, just click, developmental
meetings . One
key idea is to review the process of the meeting by exploring what works
well and how it can be improved. Don't leave out the first part, we can
learn more from looking at what is working, which we know works, than by
speculating about what might work better!
You can also try having the people there create the agenda of issues that
they want to discuss live at the meeting. This can completely transform
boring routine meetings.
Be
appreciative!
Most
people get far more criticism, that reduces energy and confidence, than
appreciation that builds both. We can increase the amount of
appreciation of good work or good ideas by doing it, talking about it,
using appreciative exercises in workshops and courses. Giving and
receiving appreciation is very rewarding so it can spread organically
without having to be driven. When the climate in an organisation is
appreciative, people will grow and perform naturally. The closest I have
seen to this ideal is described in Nuts!
an enthralling description of South West Airlines. It is the only
management book I have read in bed and been unable to put down.
I
hope to write more about appreciation and self-appreciation in
another newsletter.
Feedback,
please
So,
I hope you have found this information interesting and in a useable
form. The subjects I might cover
in the next issues are :
Appreciation
Conflict
resolution
Developing
your people
Eliminating
unnecessary work
Improving
working relationships
Stimulating
creative thinking
Thinking
tools and processes
Are
these important to you?
I
am sure there are many ways to make this more useful to you. Please
let me know what you think of it, if you have time. If you have any
particular developmental interests you would like me to cover,
please let me know. I will try and respond if I can and if I don't
know anything about the subject, I will tell
you.
Commercial
Organisations can be
so much more than they are. People can achieve astonishing things.
We can learn so much from good examples and by using simple methods.
I am a counsellor and a facilitator of change and all the things I
do and write about are applications of one or two very simple
but profound theories and practices. If you would like to learn
more about how to change your team, or organisation, or even your
life, in a positive direction, please refer to www.nickheap.co.uk
.
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