by Martha Karimi | Apr 16, 2017 | Thoughts on Team
Growing organizations have a great opportunity to design their employees’ experiences in ways that attracts top talent to work with them. Yes, salary and benefits competition with the traditional market (esp. the big players) will persist for a few more years, however this might soon be outweighed by the rising interest and demand of talent to work for purposeful organizations that are clearly communicating and delivering their promise to employees.
Besides salary and health cover, a lot of the value you can provide to your employees evolves around their non-monetary needs: growth, learning, belonging, enjoyment, purpose, fairness, autonomy, achievement, fulfilment, balancing personal and work life, friendship, support etc.
Having an Employee Value Proposition means defining what employer you want your organization to be, and then consistently delivering that value.
Want to start the journey of creating your own EVP? Start small with the steps below!
Research
- Research internally: Ask your current team (especially the longest serving employees): Why do they like working in this organization? Get honest feedback on what don’t they like, too!
- Benchmark with similar organizations in your space: What are they doing that is increasing their employee retention? What are they doing or not doing that is increasing their attrition? Then define what you can borrow or do differently!
- Find out: What do candidates interested in a career in your space want from their employers?
Define how you want job seekers to perceive you
- Take time to define: What value do you want to promise your employees? Both current and future potential candidates. What is your strategy to achieve this?
- Live your promise! Put in place activities that will foster the kind of employer brand you desire (more tips in blog below). Your daily actions should be a true reflection of your promise! Your new employees will only stay if they receive what they signed up for.
- Communicate! Keep talking about why you are the best organization to work for. Externally in events, workshops, conferences, use social media, your website, remind employees e.g. through rewards and recognitions for a) those who are adding more value by living the org values and b) those who refer candidates that are successfully hired and retained
Keep track of the impact of your employer brand!
- Measure. Consistency is key. Keep yourself in check though monitoring and tracking your employer brand. Number of applications for jobs advertised? What is your retention rate? How satisfied are your current employees? What is your cost per hire? How far and wide is your brand known?
- Keep innovating on activities to position you as an attractive employer!
- Remember our post on why people resign? Avoid broken promises.
We wish you all the best, we would love to hear how the journey unfolds for you!
by Manuela Müller | Oct 3, 2016 | Thoughts on Team
2 out of 3 CEOs say that their biggest worries are team related: Finding skilled people, building an innovation culture, motivating people in tough times, developing and retaining, you name it.
A recent study by RippleWorks also showed that (as opposed to access to funding, product design, regulatory questions) talent is the challenge that gets harder and more crucial as the business grows.
Chances are high that you are one of the managers concerned about your team’s ability to deliver on the company objectives. You envision that with the right team you can surpass all challenges, make your customer happy and finally take relaxing vacations again.
This blog helps you get started and shares an inspiring success story.
Many entrepreneurs feel alone in handling team questions
Let’s take the story of James (name changed), who runs an agritech company. He sees a lot of potential in his product and has increasing market traction from other African markets. He was uncertain whether his team was passionate and capable to drive the business aligned to his vision. He felt that they were holding back and the more he pushed and asked of them, the weaker their relationship became. Within the company there was no one he could turn to.
We realize how difficult it is for James and other hardworking entrepreneurs to put things in perspective. With limited knowledge and experience in team psychology or organizational design and little data on your talent systems, where do you start?
While running a growing company you hardly find time to review management research, read long books or sort through advice shared by friends or Social Media articles to find out what is tailored to your reality.
Have you considered a Business Health Check?
James decided to engage edge for a health check and after holding frank one on one conversations with his team members we identified the reasons for the low enthusiasm, which James did not expect:
Not having permanent employment contracts led to staff being fearful of firing and acting “guarded”, low understanding of what the purpose of their roles was had decreased motivation and a practice of written and rushed feedback had disconnected the team from James.
He decided to address these root causes: He issued contracts and edge moderated a one-day strategic planning workshop which addressed company vision, role clarity, processing tensions and defining team values. The whole team was invigorated and immediately went to work on generating new leads and improving operations. To James the day seemed like a miracle, the type of conversations he hadn’t had with his team in a long time.
Managers want data and insights on the team and value third party opinion and recommendations. The special value of our health check is that we are there during the first steps of implementation as well, at no extra charge.
While many established organizations (whether corporates, NGOs or parastatal) prefer slow change, we know that for many small and growing companies one month feels like an eternity, especially when cash flow is tight or negative.
Our approach brings results fast, which is exactly what small companies want
Within 2 weeks edge completes the diagnostics, which in itself gives you immediate outcomes:
- From our experience at least 70% of team members shift their mindset, resulting in immediate behaviour change. This is because of the coaching methodologies we use in the interviews.
- The team will reflect together on how they can utilize each others strengths better. We facilitate this in workshop format – all included in the diagnostics package!
- The diagnostics report will enable you to see the team and your own leadership in a new light, which makes all the difference.
Speed of change will depend on you: What are you willing to address?
Continuing with the same approach and expecting different results will not get you far. Are you as the manager willing to change the rules of how the game is played? Are you bold enough to address some of the gaps in your management approach that are highlighted in the diagnostics?
In the case of James he decided to give each of his employees permanent employment contracts within one day! The staff could see his commitment to them and to the process. With this increased sense of security, they immediately responded and
In most cases defining the new rules of the game can be achieved in 1-2 weeks. This may involve
- creating action plans per employee,
- redefining and allocating roles
- a different way of interacting with each other, through setting team principles.
After a period of one to three months of applying the new rules, you will evaluate the progress. If the agreements made don’t result in the needed progress, you can take more a new set of measures.
Return on Investment
As one of our customers in Mombasa said “I need to know where the money I spend on your work will come from. Either through decreased costs or increased revenues.” Many SMEs are cash-strapped and compare money flowing out and coming in on a monthly base.
Well, let’s get out the calculator and do some maths!
If we believe the Gallup statistics drawn annually across the US workforce since 2000, then only a third of your staff are engaged (meaning enthusiastic and committed to their job and your company) and 51% of your staff are not engaged and 17% actively disengaged. (See all figures and definitions here)
Add up what this means in terms of your payroll every month! How are you feeling about the amount?
What if by choosing different management approaches you can turn another 30% of your staff into engaged team members within a month and curb the effects of the actively disengaged ones who live out their dissatisfaction? You would know that you are on track to rising revenues and profits in the near future.
In those rare cases where you end up letting people go, you will know that both you and the staff member tried to salvage the relationship in the best way. Nothing is more painful for a manager than looking back at a termination decision with “would haves” and “should haves” in mind and having to face hiring costs without accurate data on what went wrong in the past.
In summary, the return on investment is high!
Start with a self-diagnostics
Following these 4 steps can get you started. And it won’t take you more than a week!
- What are you observing in the team that fuels your doubts? And what are you missing? (Strictly list behaviours only and don’t interpret/judge! e.g. say “in team meetings people don’t speak up” as opposed to “people are not interested in having meetings”)
- From this list, prioritize 2-3 changes which you need to see within the next 1 month. Ask selected trusted team members how they think this change can be achieved.
- Ask yourself in all honesty: How might you as management be contributing to low performance and engagement in the team? (this is the most difficult part to assess without a qualified external opinion, but you have to start somewhere)
- Conduct a simple anonymous survey in the team to learn the team’s perspective. Using the “net promoter score” methodology, it should only have 4 questions: On a scale from 1-10 how likely are you to recommend your friends to work in this company? What one thing should change for you to give a higher score? On a scale from 1-10 how likely are you to recommend your friends to buy the services/product of this company? What one thing should change for you to give a higher score?
And when you’re done let us know what you got out of it!
Together we can dig deeper and find the most meaningful levers to progress.
by Martha Karimi | Aug 5, 2016 | Thoughts on Team
In our work with growing businesses, we estimate that at least 85 % of the talent challenges they face could have been avoided from the beginning.
And when is the beginning? When we talk to start-up founders, a common phrase is ‘‘We are still very young now, we need to figure out the business model and raise capital and then we will have time to deal with talent issues’
This is influenced by beliefs such as:
- The people factor is not as important as getting the model right and raising money.
- Talent management advisory is expensive and doesn’t match start-up needs (this is the gap edge closes)
- Talent strategy can be designed later on when the business has gained traction and is preparing to scale. Basically at the doorstep from childhood to adolescence.
Do you think these ideas hold water? From our experience there are more challenges waiting at the “preparing to scale” stage and you would love to avoid “childhood diseases”.
Common talent challenges in start-ups and fast growing businesses
You find yourself in a difficult situation when your business starts to grow you realize the key factor that will take it to the next big phase is talent. These ‘sudden talent needs’ may seem overwhelming especially when they come calling to be addressed at critical business seasons.
Normally it sounds like this:
- ‘I don’t think I have the right team to drive sales’.
- “We don’t have the right structures for our people to perform”.
- “Everything is in my head, all I need is time to write it down”.
- Suddenly there is need to balance between roles of manager (plan, organize, direct, monitor) and leader (inspire, motivate, influence). With little experience in both in the past this can be a daunting experience.
- The initial thought that everyone can do everything is not working anymore. There is little productivity from the team
- Need to move from a ‘plug and play organization’ during on boarding of new team members to a more standardized on boarding process. Additionally, another common need streamlining who, when and how acquire new talent which often leads to the realization that due to the past way of recruitment, a few changes may be needed.
So what can you do?
Thinking through your talent needs from the initial stages as you model your business is thus key to ensure when time comes you are ready to scale smoothly.
A few things you could think about or seek a professional talent advisor to guide you through are:
- As founders: What are our strengths as workers, as managers, as leaders? Where are our gaps as a team? Which threats arise and how can we avoid falling into these traps?
- How are my leadership skills? Where do I need to grow? What type of leader do I want to be? How comfortable will I be delegating and a growing team where I cannot control everything? How can I be more prepared for that stage?
- What strengths do I currently have in the team (skills, knowledge, experiences, individual talent; do I have creatives, implementers, connectors, systems people etc.)
- How will my business needs evolve in the next 6-1 year and beyond time? What will that demand in terms in terms of talent needs? What do I need to do / learn / test right now in order to be more prepared then?
- How do I want my company culture to look like? (think through working environments, decision making, conflict resolution mechanisms, how we talk with each other, which 4-5 values if displayed consistently will drive our purpose?)
- What will success look like in my business for me to say that my team is highly productive? How do I as leader have to act to allow this to happen?
- What criteria shall I use for my recruitment process?
- How will we set new team members up for success as fast as possible? How much time will the founders have to invest per hire?
Thinking through these simple yet much needed questions will guide you in your decisions and actions at that very Start – Up stage and if you are already growing it is never too late to start. Start today. Commit to make time! Maybe you will pack your bag, go to the beach and sit with your co-founders for a few days talking these through. Or you book a fixed 90-minutes founders breakfast for the next months.
Also, finding a trusted talent partner to walk with you in this journey is ideal: they ask you the right questions and pick up work here and there on the way.
Keep tuned get more insights on building and managing your team in a growing business.
by Manuela Müller | May 10, 2016 | Thoughts on Team
When I explain what services we offer at edge, I often get asked if we help write Job Descriptions. The short answers is “Yes!” and the long answer is more complex. In this post I want to explore with you the current state of JDs in organisations and new ways of getting your people to do what they need to do.
So what are Job Descriptions? Let’s look at the high and diverse demands we have of them:
We want them to be a talent attraction tool that, once thrown out there, will get the right people to walk in for interviews! We expect them to facilitate the manager’s job (i.e. drive behaviour and performance among our staff)! We also ask of them to be the referee in ugly moments: “You didn’t perform according to, erm, laid-out expectations, so we decided to let you go”. Then obviously they’re also a legal requirement andneed to be attached to employment contracts.
And yet, little thought, skill and effort is put in, resulting in a chaotic picture in companies.
In typical companies of 15 staff, between 3 and 10 people do not have a Job Description. Employees can very rarely access their colleagues’ JDs (and especially not their boss’). At least three different templates can be in play in one company: some outlining numerical goals, some outlining career paths, some outlining skill requirements for the role, and so on. The staff themselves tell us that they haven’t opened their JDs for many months and that they don’t fully remember what they say.
When we collect and analyse a company’s JDs, we find considerable overlap between them, and also key gaps, where on paper noone is in charge of key business processes. Most importantly, the Job Descriptions hardly ever outline how people should view their role in relationship to external and internal business environment and priorities.
What we are experiencing – and you might agree – is that what gets done in a working week is determined by pop-up emergencies, the manager’s intuition, and what people find energy for, more than job descriptions.
Our advice: don’t get stuck on Job Descriptions – find a system that serves your company
In our work with small and growth-oriented companies we see the realities of Job Descriptions every day and we know that the old system isn’t working in the new world. 2016 is not about me doing my job and you doing your job (only)! It’s about us working together to answer the constantly changing business demands.
And entrepreneurs sense this – gut feelings tells them that updating written Job Descriptions on a monthly base is not a good use of their time. What we’d love you to do is take the next step:
What will set you apart as an innovative company is finding YOUR system of allocating roles and tasks and aligning your staff to the business priorities. You know that you have found the right one when your people collaborate and innovate together, when they reduce handover time between any two people or departments without you getting involved, and when individuals raise flags and create solutions to issues that are crucial to the company’s success.
Innovation is required – Four things that your role allocation system needs to do for you:
- Harness someone’s strength to get results. No two individuals are the same. Even if your last Head of Sales and the new one have a similar CV (which is already rare) they will still have different approaches to delegation, to teamwork and to decision making, and different tasks will give them energy. Your system of allocating work needs to harness the individuals’ strengths and approaches – otherwise you are setting them (and in turn your company) up for failure. Forget what is ‘typically done by someone with this title’ but rather cross-allocate work in innovative ways in conversation. As M-Kopa’s CEO Jesse Moore told me, “we don’t find great people for jobs, we find jobs for great people”.
- Ownership: – read ‘accountability’. You need exactly one person to be ultimately accountable for a given domain. If people feel that the buck doesn’t really stop with them, they will be less motivated to do a great job. Why? Because autonomy is a key human need! When you delegate accountability you also need to delegate the decision authority that will allow the person to best deliver on this issue. Stop yourself and colleagues from getting into other people’s business. Insist on clarity of role all the time (some useful tips here). If you don’t trust your staff to deliver, then perhaps you have defined the role too widely or too vaguely. If you don’t trust someone to deliver even though the role is clearly defined, then deal with that separately. Are you finding it generally hard to trust others? Do you see a gap in the person’s capacity? Is it the wrong person on the job?)
- Effective and efficient collaboration. Think football (or rugby if you prefer): What does it mean to be a striker? A mid-fielder? A fly-half? Getting clarity on where people are supposed to ask and give help to each other will make sure that in the heat of business they will collaborate without fear and doubts! You need transparency in who does what, and how you expect roles to overlap and intertwine. In turn it avoids endless meetings and everyone being CCed in every email.
- Agile ways of pivoting people’s roles. If you use lean methodologies to evolve your business (whether conscious or unconscious) then you expect your priorities and product delivery processes to change constantly and rapidly: some things change every week, others change every quarter. But the truth is that the changes will not follow a calendar; they are determined organically by your market learnings. Therefore we find scheduled reviews of JDs are inadequate. Your process needs to allow anyone to call for a “role allocation review” at any time!
What you can do right now?
- Find out how well your current system of allocating roles and tasks is serving you! Have a conversation with your teams: Ask them questions like: “Last Monday morning, how sure were you about what you were supposed to do that week?”, “What are the 3 most important things that this business needs from you this quarter?”, “What do you know for a fact that you are allowed to decide by yourself?”, “Where do you think you have to consult others before acting?”, “How would you like to be rewarded for success in your role?” (While touching on rewards, the answers to the last one will tell you whether your team clearly puts individual goals to their roles.) Mostly content yourself with listening here, let them do 95% of the talking.
- Distinguish what the lawmakers need from you (to keep the Nation’s workers safe) and what your company needs from you (to fulfil the purpose you set out with, across all three bottom lines: social, environmental and financial); the two are very different! Once you accept that you as management need to fulfil both needs, you gain the freedom and willpower to experiment with the right internal ‘role allocation and collaboration’ system. You might even end up scratching the term ‘Job Description’ entirely!
- Make the role conversation public: Lead the team in making full use of the office as ‘your workshop’, asking them to visualise what they deem helpful to perform: a board for priorities and objectives, drawing workflows, making individual and group goals public, clarifying decision matrixes, etc. It will cost you time (approximately one day) and some money (for materials such as paints, flipchart paper, cardboard, post-its and a team lunch). Repeat this quarterly, with the aim of reviewing, re-writing and refining who does what, what quantity and quality is required and how people collaborate!
- Talk to us to find out how we can support you in getting the ‘Right Person on the Right Job’, for example in having helpful conversations, identifying people’s strengths and capacities, mapping roles and accountabilities and finding the right system of tracking who does what with you!
by Martha Karimi | Mar 18, 2016 | Thoughts on Team
“I think we hired wrongly”. Over the last 2 years working with fast growing businesses I lost count of how often I have heard this statement.
At edge we view the recruitment process as a core business process, because the ability for any business to succeed lies heavily on having the right human capacity to drive the vision.Yet our experience is that it is often sidelined, due to lack of time, budget and capacity.
A survey by Robert Half International showed 39% of hiring managers surveyed said bad hires cost them productivity. Even more shocking is that supervisors spend 17% of their time (approximately 1 day per week) in managing poorly performing employees.
So how can you avoid such high costs? We have compiled a few of the traps our clients have previously fallen into, why you should evade them and how to navigate them
The proactive vs passive sourcing trap
“We posted on the local job sites, they shared a number of CVs, we met each of those candidates but none was aligned to what we were looking for.”
Often occurs when you rely on traditional channels to get talent, e.g post a job description and wait for applications. We have found this often results in candidates who are completely misaligned to what your business needs in terms of skills, mindset and cultural fit.
To reach the right target you need to put extra effort into the sourcing process. In most emerging markets there are millions of jobseekers with varied skills levels who are looking for any kind of work. They will apply for almost all jobs posted.
Social networking either through targeted headhunting or referrals and working closely with a recruiter who fully understands your business needs is recommended to navigate this trap. It may cost a little bit more money, but it will earn you ROI by hiring more productive talent and avoiding costs of extensive training and recruiting.
Still in line with sourcing we hear “There is no talent here”. Which prompts me to ask: “Where have you been looking?
There is plenty of talent. The important question is if you are positioning your company in the places where this talent would be looking for you!
Also are you designing roles that are as agile as your business is? (In more traditional structured organizations JDs fixed to one person might work perfectly. However in fast changing environments there is need to take a different approach, begin with defining roles that are needed to drive your business and then assigning those to the best fit talent at the moment, allowing flexibility to add more roles as business grows and reassign roles when needed. An individual could have more than one roles making them feel more connected to contributing to business in a variety of ways).
The cultural fit trap
“Soandso is a great person. But she just doesn’t fit here. She is used to a different system. We feel she would fit in a more structured, hierarchical environment. We are not like that.”
When it comes to culture the person could be greatly skilled, however the pain is on a different level: How they interact with the team, challenges blending into unstructured environments, showing behaviors contradicting your company values.
You need people who will be your brand ambassadors. They will plug and play to the behaviors of your organization as culture is the glue that keeps your organization together.
Design your selection process to include cultural fit assessments, get referees to talk about the candidate’s behaviors relating to the culture of your organization. We recommend that you hire for culture first, this does not mean you choose people who are less skilled just because they fit your culture as sometimes misunderstood. It simply means that you put culture fit as a minimum must-have requirement in the selection process.
“If you work with people who we have no respect for, or we don’t like them it creates a lot of obstacles in the workplace, including increased turnover“ says Alon Zouaretz, founder of Talsona, a job placement platform that places emphasis on culture fit.
Skipping onboarding due to limited resources yet expecting performance from new hires trap
“We actually don’t have a standard onboarding process. Time is limited and yet so much to do, so we find ourselves sidelining onboarding. We don’t have anyone assigned to do it. But actually we think that the right people can figure things out themselves!’’
In a study by analyst firm Aberdeen Group 86% of respondents said that a new hire’s decision to stay with a company long-term is made within the first six months of employment. That requires a great first impression!
After talent planning, onboarding is probably the second key aspect of the recruitment process that is often overlooked. A proper onboarding process spread out with engagements before Day 1 all through to about a year in rapidly engages and connects your new hires to the life of the organization. Investing time and allocating a responsible to ensure the process is implemented to set up your new hires for success and ensure higher opportunities for retention. Having a high turnover is expensive hence better to support your new hires in setting themselves up for success.
Friends trust/market unfamiliarity trap.
I always ask, “How did you get the current team members?” The most common response has been “Well most have been from friends and our network. They were referred to us and seemed like good people, so we hired them!”
This could be mistaken for social recruiting. It is not! When you like someone from a single conversation and offer them a job the next day, without much background check on their experience, achievements, capabilities or comparison with other candidates you are setting yourself up for tough emotional situations (as you will have to let go someone who may have become a friend or is still within your close network) and you are jeopardizing your business goals (by creating a wrong person on the wrong job or right person on the wrong job scenario).
This can be overcome by similar approaches to the passive trap vs proactive. In addition it is key to take time as you are working on modelling your business and creating your strategies to also plan ahead on talent. Learn more about the talent trends, expectations and challenges in your market. This will be very helpful in deciding overall how you approach recruitment from planning to onboarding.
What traps have you fallen into that cost you time and money? Happy to hear your experience. At edge we can help you navigate these traps and many more saving you time and effort in hiring. Talk to us today to learn more!
by Manuela Müller | Jan 26, 2016 | Career Happiness, Thoughts on Team
I would like to explore with you the impact of unaddressed feelings in the workplace. If this topic is new to you, this is a great place to start. Talking about one’s feelings at work for some seems like a scary, a stupid and unwelcome thing to do. Here’s why the opposite is true and a few tips to keep in mind.
Let me start by sharing a story a good Kenyan friend of mine told me about growing up. He painted the picture for me how boys receive constant reminders from all sides that men don’t show feelings. “First your mum beats you, then when you cry she beats you again for crying. It’s not a single incident, it happens in diverse forms: neighbours, teachers, aunts etc. And now society blames men for not being in touch with their feelings”.
So how does it manifest itself when a large proportion of society grows up like this? Maybe some of this sounds familiar: “I think he got up on the wrong side of the bed, that he’s behaving like this” or “Look at that one, kila saa anacatch mafeelings”. (slang for s/he is always catching feelings). If you look at these statements, you’ll see that they’re judgemental. But mostly they’re vague and simplistic: Avoiding to explore the complex connection between a human’s inner world (what they think, feel and need) and their outer world (what they say and do).
Well, it doesn’t have to be that way. I have met men and women who explain their inner world to large groups in clear and concise language as if it was the most normal thing to do, who use lingo like “triggers”, “emotions”, “needs”, “explore”, and discuss how to use this as a powerful tool for collaboration, leadership and decision making. Coming from a science background, trained in the language of process, facts and proof, I was blown away.
I believe that many people are actually somewhere in between: We are aware of our feelings, but not sure how to talk about them (write about them on Social Media, sure… but talk?!). We believe that such expressions won’t be welcome. Unsure how to deal with the volcano of emotions inside us. Worried of repercussions of airing out how I fell. At the same time this generation doesn’t see the point anymore of being a different person during and outside working hours.
We also expect a lot from our colleagues and bosses: Be a real human, make me feel welcome and connected, be deep and credible, but don’t dare to overstep my emotional boundaries!
Two important reasons why this is relevant in the workplace:
- Feelings are the messengers about our inner world. Messengers where our needs are being fulfilled (positive feeling) or not being fulfilled (negative feeling). Ignoring these messengers or not sharing their message with those around you, will eventually impact on your behaviour and productivity and thus on project and business performance. Typical outcomes are loss of interest in the work, people choosing not to stretch in their assignments or sharing their views and knowledge, decline in collaboration, silo behaviour between departments etc. On the contrary where thoughts, feelings and needs are shared and explored in conversation, we are more likely see increased motivation and commitment, collaboration and internal innovation ability. These effects have been researched and studies show scary numbers, for example one by Gallup saying that only 1 out of 3 employees are fully engaged at work.
- You can’t bottle up negative feelings and thoughts forever. You’ll either get physically sick, turn cynic (which might get you fired) or explode in an unsuitable moment, unable to verbalize your thoughts and leaving others clueless of “what just happened”.
Instead, a healthy work environment makes space for exploring the thoughts, feelings and needs, that are hidden in each of us.
If you want to try, please have a look at these few basic principles:
- Expand your vocabulary to talk about feelings. What else is there beyond happy and sad, frustrated and excited? The more precise you can be in identifying and describing what is happening inside you, the more alive you feel and the more connected others will become to you.
- Point out positive situations and mention positive feelings at least 5 times as often as negative feelings. Most office environments need that! (In fact it’s been quoted as recipe for lasting marriages since the 1990s)
- When you mention positive feelings without context, it creates a good atmosphere, but you are not creating a lasting change. “I am happy that we are making money”. The power of mentioning to others how an external event created your internal reaction lies in them understanding you better. “When I see you negotiating hard and successfully with this client, I feel hopeful because I start imagining how you and I can work together better as a team to fulfil our financial goals”
- Mentioning negative feelings without mentioning a concrete request can be interpreted as blaming language. “Today I am very frustrated with our low sales numbers (turn back to staring at my screen or going for a smoke)”. Avoid this, especially when you are in a leadership role. Much better is “Today, I feel very frustrated with our low sales numbers. I would like to hold a spontaneous meeting tomorrow to discuss what we can do about it. If you want to join in, let me know!”
Let us know about your experiences in implementing some of these tips!
At edge we support our clients bringing in some of this powerful language and making it part of “how we work around here”. Within ninety minutes workshop time you hear a manager say: “I feel much more connected with you all than in the last months!”
