I have written a lot about leaders recently, and in these rather ego driven times, it is trendy to link success, or should I say results, with the leader.  If you remember England’s rather inglorious exit from the Rugby World Cup, the papers decided to barbeque Chris Robshaw, as if he were solely responsible for their results.  As a keen rugby fan & Englishman, of course I was disappointed by what happened.  However, if I step back, and put on a more objective hat, then I always knew that New Zealand were the best team in the world, I strongly suspected that Australia would contest the final too.  Most people who knew anything about the sport would have said that South Africa would be a safe bet for the quarter finals, leaving every other team contesting that fourth slot.  So realistically, England, Wales, France and Ireland were all battling it out for a single place, and we have yet to win the 6 Nations recently, so it has to be said it was reasonably predictable that this result was on the cards.  So why was it one man’s fault? 

The answer of course must be that it was not.  You can certainly question whether the critical penalty call in the match against Wales when Robshaw chose to go for a line out and glory rather than going for a more conservative, safe choice of kicking for 3 points.  Both courses of action had a chance of failure, kickers and throwers both miss.  He consulted some of his senior players and they agreed, go for glory.  He is a man who always gives his all, and no one was more upset with the final outcome than Chris. 

My main point is, regardless of the rugby, this result was the consequence of how the collective performed, not simply the choices of one man.  Rugby, like businesses is dependent of key people stepping up and leading in their specialist areas.  A business requires everyone to do their best, to focus on the plan and deliver their bit of it.  Most leaders, like everyone else, have areas of their job they are good at, that they enjoy, and others which they tend to neglect or do worse at.  To some extent, they are then dependent on their team to compensate in these areas to ensure that they are properly covered.  A good numbers person, needs a people person at their elbow, and so on.  You may or may not like your leader, but you need to play your part in the team if you want to be part of a win.

A company I know has a leader who has a vision of where they need to go to survive the threats that the economy and competition pose.  I am quite prepared to accept his analysis;  I believe most of his team are too.  So what could possibly go wrong and why is he facing difficulties in getting them to do what is required?

As usual with change, it all starts with communication.  The things they are not telling him, the things that he isn’t hearing and those they can’t discuss.  If you feel that a person doesn’t want to hear what you have to say or feel, then you subconsciously find another way to get the message over.  It maybe by withdrawing intimacy, by withdrawing co-operation or by pursuing your own version of what is right. 

When there are a number of people who feel similarly ‘not heard’ then factions develop and problems arise.  In effect, they take their toys and go home; the team is no longer and you just have a group of bodies inhabiting the same space. 

The only way out is to get the communication flowing again, you have to over-emphasize what you are doing to ensure that they know you have ‘got it’.  You have to act on whatever you have agreed or promised to rebuild trust.  Stephen Covey wrote about the idea of the Emotional Bank account, which I like.  The idea is that the good things you do make deposits in your account of goodwill, and the negative (or more accurately their view of what is negative) actions make withdrawals.  This being Life, the rules are not fair, and you can work for ages to build a small amount of trust and one ‘bad’ action can wipe out the entire balance with the statement “Here (s)he goes again!”  It is tough, it is frustrating but it is the only way.

Good luck…

A client was having problems and the leader was finding it difficult if not impossible to get things done.  He had a relatively clear agenda and one that should make the business more profitable.  However, the very people who stood to benefit from this were somehow just not committing to it.  Why you might ask?  It turns out that not only was there a lack of effective leadership, but there was no culture of followership.  This meant that in effect there was no emotional contract to support him.  It is one thing having a label on your door, but if you want clever people to pay any attention you have to win them over, if you don’t have the muscle to force them.  This requires a number of personal skills such as building rapport, listening and communicating in the way that the listener requires in order to ‘get’ what you are trying to sell.  You need to make a case for Change, which means taking the time to explain (not just tell) them how they too will benefit from the process. 

You don’t necessarily have to do this with everyone, but you certainly have to with those you deem to be the key players, and you need to win over enough to create the momentum to get started.

Another item from the program I listened to yesterday that really resonated was a conversation about geo-engineering & global warming.  Author Oliver Morton, who wrote “The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could Change the World” , was asked whether it was a good idea to bet the future of mankind on this kind of technology.  [For the benefit of those, who like me, have never heard the term geoengineering it is the deliberate large-scale manipulation of an environmental process that affects the earth’s climate, in an attempt to counteract the effects of global warming.]  They were discussing whether the kind of project which affected the whole globe would require some kind of planetary leadership and safeguards, and if these might be more  challenging than the engineering required.  He said that rather than proceeding with the blind optimism and just hoping it all worked out, we needed to go forward with caution and awareness of all the challenges but with the possibility of success in our minds and hearts too.  This enabled us to at least consider how we might succeed. 

Twice today, when faced with a client who was wrestling with some very knotty problems that had so far defied all efforts to resolved them, I referred them to this statement, and suggested that in order to succeed, they at least needed to accept that the problem was soluble.  Famously, Alexander the Great, when faced with the Gordian knot, found one radical way to solve it…..

I listened to a fascinating program today which talked about making and learning from mistakes.  Regular readers will be familiar with my thoughts on the importance of learning from mistakes and avoiding a blame culture.  It is said that the secret to being a successful entrepreneur is to fail often and learn every time you do.  It is a well known truism that if you have never failed then you have never really tried or lived!  Matthew Sayed, author of “Black Box Thinking: The Surprising Truth About Success” says that in the airline industry, they are committed to investigating and learning from every single mistake so that they never need to happen again.  People’s lives are at risk and any failure is international news, so failure is very costly.  The key is that there is a culture of honest investigation and procedures are modified to make them more robust.  By way of contrast, in medicine it is very hard for a surgeon to say “Oops…I messed up”, so they hide behind the veil of medical complexity and “These things happen”.  Thus no one truly investigates as mistakes are brushed under the carpet.  In politics, policies are stuck to as a sign of strength and vision, and you can’t say, “They are not working, lets try something else”, this is deemed weakness, rather than wisdom.

I ask you, which environment would you sooner work in or be served by?

This the third in the series exploring our bad habits in communication. 

Nagging is when you keep on and on at someone to do something.  By definition, if you have asked the same person for the same thing  multiple times they either aren’t getting the message or aren’t receptive to it.  You have to try something new.  Find out why they aren’t doing it, are they unwilling or unable to help?  If they are unwilling, maybe you need to put your case in a way that makes it clear what they get from helping you.  If they are unable, then what can you do to help?  A lot depends on the power balance.  If you are talking to a boss, a colleague / friend  or a subordinate / child.  You have to adjust you strategy accordingly.  We are all familiar with the fact that it gets easier to ignore someone when they keep banging on about the same old thing…

Threatening and punishing can have their place, but really need to only be used as a last resort, and only when we intend to follow through.  They seldom have a positive impact on a relationship, so unless it is terminal, it is usually better to use them sparingly and again when it is done in such a way that after the event, they will understand the necessity.  Bribery to gain control is really just the other side of this coin and equally ineffective.  Think about it, if you reward your child in order to get them to stop screaming, what message do they take away?  When I scream, I get what I want… do why wouldn’t they repeat this lesson? 

Good luck!

7 deadly sins of communication – part 1

7 deadly sins of communication – part 2

When we blame someone (or something) we are seeking to explain or excuse a failure.  Now there is a time and place for analysing what went wrong and who was responsible but usually we do this we are seeking to distance ourselves from what has gone wrong.  Again, it is all about the intention.  It is seldom that it is all down to a single person.  If they work for us, are we monitoring them properly?  Have we given them appropriate support and resources?  Should we have known earlier and acted ourselves?  “Let him who is without sin…” and all that!  If we are acting in a timely way, and seeking to avoid a problem, then it is more effective to focus on what can be done to avoid it or correct it.  Analysis and what can be done better and how to avoid further repetitions happen after in a cool, calm place.

Complaining can take a number of forms:-

1. Venting:  which we all do from time to time but serves little useful purpose, but is damaging when done too often or too long.
2. Active, effective complaining:  this is when you are explaining what is wrong, and what you would like done about it calmly to the person who is in a position to put it right, and
3. Ineffective complaining:  this is similar to venting and serves little purpose as you are failing to be clear or addressing the wrong person. 

If our complaints are intermingled with blame, then they usually feel like an attack and once more we tend to get either meaningless apologies or or defence and justifications; either way we are not motivating the person to address our issue.

More tomorrow…

• Seven deadly sins – part 1

A psychiatrist named William Glasser identified seven habits that damage and undermine effective communication.  They each have a positive counterpart, the things we can do to promote good, healthy communication and relationships.  They are:-

I think this list is pretty useful and self explanatory on its own, but it maybe helpful to explore it a little further.  No one likes to be on the receiving end of the first list, and most of us would deny doing it to others.  I suspect our intentions may often be positive, but under stress, our behaviours can let us down and what emerges either is, or feels like, these negative things.

You may feel it is either justified or needful to point out what is wrong with something or someone.  However, the key is not only how you do that that but also in your intentions behind this.  If you do so to hurt them (perhaps because you feel they hurt you), because you are frustrated, stressed or angry, or simply to make yourself feel better than them, then it will always come over as negative and as soon as they feel this, they then will only either block out what you are saying or defend against it.  Not only do your intentions have to be positive, but your language must also signal and reinforce this.

I will further explore this over the following days, so stay tuned…

I was watching Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year, and once more was entranced by the talent of view and the sheer diversity of talent and techniques used.  We saw about ten different artists all with the same brief come up with ten entirely different paintings.  It maybe this doesn’t (and shouldn’t) surprise you.  However, I’m currently confronted with a business that has a group of bright people who will all benefit from its success coming up with very different versions of the way forward. 

The thing is that in business we tend to feel that there is one right way forward and it is the job of the strong leader to identify it and drive the others towards it.  What if it was more similar to the artistic challenge and there were a number of viable, equally valid paths to success and it was the job of the leader to find the way through the maze that elicited the greatest commitment and support?

There has been so much hysteria and so many rantings since England lost to Australia, that I thought I would see what it might teach us about managing change.  Obviously there are two elements to all this, much as there are to most business issues.  There the cold hard facts, and how they are interpreted which is often influenced by the second element which is how people feel about it all. 

It was openly acknowledged that England were only part way through rebuilding their team with many new and inexperienced players.  We had only 25 caps per player which was the fourth least in the tournament and almost half those of New Zealand, South Africa and Australia.  Whilst we had a big pool of talent to pick from we had not been able to field a settled side at any stage during the build up with Lancaster having tried 14 different mid-field pairings.  We were ranked 4th in the world prior to the World Cup, so mathematically we should have made the semi-finals, but we were also in the so called “Pool of Death”, which contained the 4th, 5th, 6th & 10th best sides in the world, so it was clear that all 8 of the top teams couldn’t make the quarter finals.  So why was everyone so shocked that we lost to two very good & more experienced  teams?

Change is a continual process and events such as the World Cup measure where you are on a particular day.  I have no doubt that we could and probably should have beaten Wales, but I think even at our best we would have struggled to match Australia playing that well. 

One of the reasons I find rugby so compelling is the two of the key elements are leadership and communication, the same as in business.  Modern rugby is a game which relies on disbursed leadership, with someone handling defence in the backs, someone responsible for attack, another for lineout calls, and the overall team decisions.  Poor Chris Robshaw had to take all the criticism for the call to take the lineout in the dying minutes of the Welsh game, but I suspect someone else made the key call to throw it to the front. He has taken the leader’s role and protected his team mates from the public’s fury.  This will keep the team united.

There are already cries to throw out the coaching team and the captain and the head of the Rugby Union, but if we want to make good decisions we need to do so based on facts.  England didn’t make that many errors when they lost to Australia and were acknowledged as winning the first 60 minutes of the game against Wales so how can we need wholesale change?  It maybe that we need a fresh hand on the helm to help us with the next phase of our development but this should be because of where we are now and what we need now not because the current team failed.  There is no doubt Lancaster succeeded in building a strong squad culture and identified and developed some bright new talent.  Yes, you can use pain as a spur, but in the long term we don’t want these players to feel like failures because they failed on this occasion.  The job is to great over time not at a single moment in time. 

Did the team have a game plan?  I’m sure they did.  Was it based on much and detailed clever analysis?  I’m sure it was.  Did they execute it?  I don’t know but it is a well known military truism that  “No plan survives contact with the enemy” and did they players feel empowered and able to play ‘heads up’ rugby?  I think that is one place we fell down.  I also think we lack certain basic skills in the loose and we don’t have kicker who puts the ball behind the opposition. 

In the end, a team will only succeed if you have the right people with the right skills and they feel empowered to make the right decisions on the ground.  A team, or a business, needs a certain amount of experienced heads to give weight and perspective, and the right number of younger, more energetic youngsters trying new things.  Success come from getting the balance right.