It was in this context that I picked up Timothy Wilson’s book “Redirect. The surprising new science of psychological change” http://www.amazon.co.uk/Redirect-Surprising-Science-Psychological-Change/dp/1846142296

The book is a really detailed but readable overview of some of the latest research on various group and individual interventions designed to create positive change. Wilson outlines why many of these interventions have failed, even though they seem at first to make perfect sense.

An example which stood out for me was the “Free Book” project. The idea is that children get rewarded for reading by having a prize that they will get once they have read a certain number of books. For children who were not keen on reading this had a desired effect. Whilst the reward was in place they did read more. But once the reward system stopped their reading went back down to previous levels. The really scary thing was that for children who already did plenty of reading the scheme did not increase their rate of reading but when the scheme was over their level of reading dropped right off! By putting a reward system in place the children had started seeing reading as something that they had to be motivated to do by external rewards and no longer something that they valued themselves.

I reflected on this in terms of the myriad of performance bonus systems that I have seen implemented in the various organisations I have worked in. Many managers I work with love these incentive schemes as they feel that they are able to reward good behaviour with a positive outcome. If you scratch the surface then you quickly realise that all these schemes are doing is introducing a mechanical way of getting us to “do the right thing”. Once the reward changes (and how many incentive schemes are ever that good in a recession?) then the motivation to do the right thing is no longer there.

The key solution that was recommended from the research was something that individuals could easily implement themselves – the story editing techniques. These are defined by Wilson as “a set of techniques designed to redirect people’s narrative about themselves and the social world in a way that leads to lasting changes in behaviour” (p.11, 2011).

You can read more about the story editing technique in this interview with Timothy Wilson

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-to-improve-your-life-with-story-editing

If you are a trainer or change consultant who is bored of the shiny things you might find the book as useful as I did in promoting a more reflective and research based approach to intervening to influence change in organisations.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Redirect-Surprising-Science-Psychological-Change/dp/1846142296

At a club like Guiseley it is going to be the little things that will make a difference and sometimes this gets lost in some of the work on engaging employees. What interests me is not big bold employee engagement programmes produced by an organisational development consultant but the tiny things that managers do day to day with their teams to create an environment which is engaging and supportive.

This quote always focuses the mind of managers I work with:

“Over 70% of people leave their jobs because of the way they are led.” Norman Drummond, Motivational Speaker

So what can managers do to create a work place that encourages engagement. Recent research by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer collected diary entries of employees in a variety of companies. The diary enteries were used to map the relationship between the individual’s mood and the activities at work. The conclusions were that little things made a big and lasting difference. The small wins were important, these are some small wins that I have observed making a difference in workplaces I have been involved in as an employee or as a freelance trainer.

3 Small Wins for Engagement

Listening to complaints and responding

People moan all the time and as a manager it is easy to dismiss this as “just moaning” but if you really listen you will start to pick up themes about what really irritates people. Right now a big issue is the difference between words and actions. A lot of companies are focusing on keep costs down and have not been doing any wage rises. People get it, but what does not make sense is when they see money being wasted by the top managers on a bonding event at an expensive hotel.

Easter Eggs and Ice-Creams

I can remember being thrilled to find an Easter Egg on my desk from my boss one morning when I got to work. It wasn’t the value of the gift but just the unexpected nature of it. Likewise the ice-creams one of the managers popped out to get one really hot day (and they do happen sometimes in Leeds)

Training, Coaching and Investment

Giving people the chance to develop their skills, and I don’t mean just running a lot of generic training courses. It is about really taking time to find out what people need to learn and finding interesting ways to help them learn it. One of the best customer service training I delivered involved sending people round the shops and services of Leeds for 2 hours and then asking them to present their findings about what they had learnt about customer service to our management team. This bit of training costs nothing, just a bit of imagination from your training team, and the willingness to trust that your employees will use the opportunity wisely.

One of the areas of my work that I love the most is when I meet a trainer who says that they have a programme to design that is on a really challenging topic which they are finding hard to bring to life. A recent example I am working on is Assessing Credit Risk in Professional Practice. I can tell that you are already looking excited about this topic! You probably want to sign up now for me to run the session for your team. But just in case this topic doesn’t fill you with heart felt joy then read on and see how you might approach a seemingly dull subject like this.

If you are already excited and want to book a place check out my clients website!

http://www.cmlawltd.com/contact-us.php

The main challenge that the trainer faces is resisting the feeling that face to face sessions must be used to explain the legislation and guidance. Face to face time is too precious to waste by verbalising what would work as a set of hand-outs or a self-explanatory slide show. We have to move away from the idea that we have to verbalise stuff for it to be learning. I can read a lot quicker than you can talk so just let me get on with the reading or give me an audio podcast to listen to. Please don’t just stand there talking at me!

There are ways you can use the time with people in a room so much more effectively than talking at them..

Tip 1: Separate background knowledge from discussion and stimulation

• Provide in advance a set of self- explanatory Powerpoint slides to work as a slide show. Avoid using lots of bullets, try using different visuals to bring this material to life.
• Create an attractive detailed written guide to the legislation and guidance.
• Create on line learning questionnaires to check knowledge before or after.

Tip 2: Engage people with the topic

• Its about hearts and minds so find reasons for people to listen. I once used real press releases about breaches in data protection to get people to realise how serious it can be when it all goes wrong.
• Run a face to face group session which encourages participants to discuss a range of different scenarios and to explore the consequences of breaches in the legislation.
• Work with the group to generate some tips to create a check list to use when assessing risk
• Create some fact cards using the information in your hand-out pack and get participants to use these cards to assess typical situations they may face. An example I created for the credit management course was selecting the best search to do when your organisation has no budget for credit checking.

Tip 3: Brief Everyone about the Training

• Make sure everyone in the organisation knows about the training and what you are planning to cover. This will help to ensure that the right people attend and that they know why they are attending the training.
• In your publicity talk about the benefits of attending the training, in the case of credit management it will save your organisation taking on a client who never pays their bill!

The most important thing is about the commitment of the leadership to the training, leaders can have a big influence on training being seen as more than just a “one hit, big tick” event. Effective leaders will make sure that the training becomes part of the way that things are done and provides a safe place for practice and follow up to happen. The trainer can do wonderful tricks to make most topics come alive but if the training is not taken seriously in the organisation then there is no return on the investment and this must be the most boring message for organisations to get!

If having read this you want to attend a programme on Credit Risk Assessment for Chambers and Law Firms then you can book a place at

http://www.cmlawltd.com/contact-us.php

www.bellthompson.co.uk

I have been working a module on business ethics for a client and have been researching materials on business ethics. I have a copy of the “Good Business- Ethics at work” which is produced by the Quakers and Business Group.  I confess to not having studied this with as much vigour as I should, especially as I am actually a Quaker! I have found it to a very challenging guide and am finding lots of gems to help with the leadership module.

The first section is about honesty and integrity and this seems so relevant today as organisations attempt to shore up practices to ensure that a HackGate incident doesn’t happen to them.

The section begins with advice and then queries which are designed to encourage individuals to reflect and review their own practice.

Honesty and Integrity

Advice

The most important word to remember in all business dealings is ‘integrity’. Integrity is essential to developing trust; we know that a person is acting with integrity when he is not moved by opportunist or self-seeking impulses and we can trust his response to a total situation. Integrity involves being open honest, truthful and consistent with your beliefs in all your business dealings.

The whole of business requires trust, faith and goodwill. In the emerging digital economy, establishing trust is a critical factor for success.

Queries                                      

• Are you honest and truthful in all you say and do?
• If pressure is brought upon you to lower your standard of integrity are you prepared to resist it?
• Do you do what you promise, even if it just to return a phone call?

One of the pressures on my integrity is that I am successful at running training workshops but I know that the return on investment on these is poor unless the organisation really embed the learning. Do I refuse to take on training projects unless there is embedding included or do I leave that to my clients to wake up to the waste of learning that goes on? What about you, what do you say about the dilemmas you face and the pressures on your integrity in your world?

When the Tour de France came to London I caught the pro-cycling bug and started to grasp the fundamentals of pro-cycling which until that point I had not fully understood. Like all trainers I use stories and anecdotes to explain my learning points. These stories have to be real and have to come from your own passion so it is only natural that the Tour starts to seep into my leadership and trainer development programmes.

Lesson One: It’s All About the Team

Road racing is a great example of team work. Way better than the examples of football we used to wheel out when I worked in the law sector. In a cycling team you have clearly defined roles both on and off the road. One of the fascinating aspects is each team has a team leader and the job of the rest of the team is to protect and support that person so that they can get a win for the rest of the team. This means a real sacrifice of personal ego and also means “burying yourself” in pure physical effort to get your team leader to the front. Listen to Mark Renshaw talking about his role in supporting Mark Cavendish to get to the front. Mark Renshaw could win a sprint but he clearly defines his job is to support Cavendish and Mark Cavendish will always talk about how the team made it possible for him to achieve his win. This article from the sports Guardian outlines these roles

Tour de France 2011: Inside the Team HTC-Highroad engine room  http://bit.ly/q8QarF

Lesson Two: Support Staff are Essential

The domestiques are a bit like our admin teams in business. They do the jobs which are essential for the smooth running of the operation. They work incredibly hard to provide water and supplies at the right time and place. The difference is that in Pro-Cycling there are no plans to cut the domestiques! The admin team in cycling is not seen as a soft cut option as it is in business. They recognise that without the support of the domestiques the team leaders would not be able to achieve their race wins because they rely on this backroom support to do their job effectively.

Lesson Three: Observational Coaching and Feedback is Key

During the race the riders are given constant observation about performance of their team members and other teams. They agree a strategy at the beginning of the day and then update the strategy as the race develops. The coaching and management team see what is happening and adjust the strategy minute by minute. There is constant follow-up on the plans and how these were implemented by  the riders.

Lesson Four: Set and Monitor your Ethical Standards

Pro-cycling has had a dubious ethical background with high levels of cheating by doping and other methods. This caused challenges for teams finding sponsorship. Now many of the teams such as Garmin, HTC High Road and Sky have established a clear team ethical code which defines expectations of the team members and creates a culture where a cyclist knows that any attempts to use any drugs is just not acceptable. The equivalent of a phone hacking scandal is unlikely to happen in contemporary cycling because the team managers have set a clear code, monitor the team against the code and make the consequences of code violation really clear. Team managers do not write an ethical code and then ignore it.

So 4 lessons, can we learn something from the model? Is sport ever relevant to the organisational world?

Customer Journey Mapping is a method of identifying the main processes that a customer meets when they have an interaction with an organisation. By spending time mapping the journey a customer actually takes organisations can make changes to their processes which are based on real customer requirements.

Customer Journey Map Sample

There has been a lot of work done in the UK about mapping customer journeys and the Cabinet Office website is a great place to explore different types of journey from the physical journey of customers using Eurostar through to the virtual journey of someone apply to enter the UK as a worker from outside the EU. http://www.cse.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/getDynamicContentAreaSection.do?id=9

My project involved the careers team from a large University in the UK who wanted to know more about what customer journey mapping was about before they could decide whether to use it in practice or not.

The activity I designed was based on some fictional student profiles. These were designed so that the team could explore the journeys of those students who were not current users of the careers service so that they could identify if there were opportunities that were being missed by the service.

Creating the Map

With a group of 50 people designing the event was like designing a piece of choreography. The easiest option would have been to create groups of 5 and for the 5 people to work together on deciding the steps the student would take, their thoughts and feelings and then to plan some reactions to this. The problem with this approach would be that the groups would remain set for the whole session and the element of practice sharing and team work would be lost. I therefore created some steps for the mapping activity which meant that by the end each person was familiar with 4 different customer journeys. This is what I mean by choreography because as a facilitator you are designing each step and imagining where each person will be when you make the next move. I used a large bit of paper with arrows showing where the moves would take people so I could be sure that the moves would maximise the interactions of the different team members.

Moving the groups around meant that I avoided having to have a lengthy feedback session where each group talked about the particular challenges they had faced when creating their map. This wasn’t necessary because I had designed the event to increase the exposure to different journey maps. In my experience these feedback sessions are rarely worthwhile because most participants “tune out” very quickly. I often find that the most boring participant volunteers to give the feedback and unless carefully managed they quickly end up explaining every small discussion that they have had instead of focusing on one important element.

In the place of the large feedback report at the end of the various small group activities I devised two large group sharing activities, these helped to summarise and conclude the event and gave some valuable reaction feedback to my client.

The first technique was the “one minute spotlight” session. This enabled anyone to give an insight or view on the activity to the whole group, and they had up to a minute to communicate their thoughts. A few people did volunteer to share their thoughts in this format and it was helpful to get the insights. The final activity was a reaction board activity. This uses the large Post It notes from 3M. http://solutions.3m.co.uk/wps/portal/3M/en_GB/Post-Its/Post-It/Products/LargePostIt/

Reactions to the Event

I have recommended these before in my blog, and they are a really good way of ensuring that the whole group can read the comments written by others. The notes were very popular with the participants too, when I came to clear up I found that all there were none of the large Post It notes left!

Each person had one note and wrote their reactions to the event:  something that that they found useful, something that they were concerned about or something that they think will impact on practice. Once the individual has written their note they stick them on the wall and this is left up for others to browse at the end of the event.

What I found really satisfying about this event was that the time that I spent on the planning meant that the event ran to time and all the activities were completed without the rush and chaos that can sometimes happen with 50 people in a small space. I also invested time visiting the client before the event to talk through the plans and to see the space. This was invaluable as it became apparent that the “large room” would only accommodate 50 people if they were sat in rows and therefore I needed to think creatively about how to use other space in the building, as a result several groups worked on their maps in corridor areas. It made me conscious again about how facilitation is not just about the event but about the work that needs to happen both before and after the event to make it meaningful for the organisation.  I think we undersell facilitation as just an event but our pricing should reflect the complexity of the planning that is involved to make the event work well.

Ideally there would be a team of facilitators to work with this size of group but the client only had a small budget and so I relied on my student Preeti and a small team of their staff who volunteered to facilitate the groups. This was helpful but in retrospect I wished I had had longer to brief them about their role. There is always a balance to be struck between over facilitating groups and leaving them alone. In reviewing the event it was clear that some of the administrative staff did not find the event relevant to their needs and this might have been more easily picked up if I was working with the groups in a more intense way.

It was good to put the customer journey mapping process to use with such a large group, I had only previously done the work with a much smaller group of people. I can see how valuable customer journey mapping will be to organisations as they start to review their service delivery model to help cut costs, if this is done in combination with a journey mapping process then the changes might improve customer service and deliver some cost savings at the same time.

Christine Bell

www.bellthompson.co.uk

The brain dump onto Post It notes works really well when everyone can easily articulate their thoughts but sometimes you want something deeper to be explored and the conventional brain dump can end up being a mass of slightly meaningless unconnected words.

We explored using visual imagery as a trigger to an initial dialogue and looked at how you might use this in different settings. I used a set of visual cards from St Lukes Resources. http://tiny.cc/stlukescards

We laid the cards out on the floor and discussed how and when a facilitator might display the cards and the impact it might have on a group when they came into the room and saw a range of image cards around the room. We discussed how sometimes just laying the cards out can create a buzz and indicates a move into a different exploration than the standard brain thought.

The topic we choose to use the cards for was how we saw our respective careers at the present. We both selected one card that had a resonance with us about our career. We then explained it to each other. We then each wrote a phrase on a Post It note that summarised what the other person had said, this helped to clarify and capture our thoughts. With a group of people this can be very helpful if you want the group to find common themes that have emerged from the images, I often find that unless we capture the individual thoughts the group can be too literal and focus on the pictures instead of what they represented to the other people in the group.

We then reviewed the cards and selected a picture that represented where we want our careers to be in the future, what would a successful career look like for us. Once again we shared our thoughts and then gave each other a summarised statement on a Post It note.

Where our careers are and where we want them to be...

We then discussed different questions you could use for the images including:

What image represents your team when it is at its best?

• What image represents your approach to leadership?
• Which of the images represents how you want to influence others in the future?
• Which of the images describe how your organisation is seen by employees?

We also discussed the situation where the cards might help encourage sharing and participation:

• Creative people would like using metaphors
• People who are less comfortable with writing information onto Post It notes will often use richer language when verbally describing an image (I found this in my work with various international groups)
• More introverted individuals will appreciate being able to take their time to describe an image instead of the more frantic approach of a typical brain dump type activity. (this was certainly the case when I worked with a group in Ukraine recently, this activity was the only time that one of the group shared their thoughts in front of others in a larger group setting)

Preeti asked what the next step would be and we discussed the way you might use our previous session on braindumping, clustering and voting to pull out the key themes and generate some action points. We also identified that in our career discussion we had both identified a gap between our career now and where we want to get to so the next step might be to do an individual or a group gap analysis.

One of the theoretical models we looked at was Appreciative Inquiry which helps us as facilitators to make a question to explore that will energise people and focus on positive attributes. We also discussed the use of SPO and the Feedback Loop, two techniques that Tony Mann discusses in his book that I have raved about before:

Facilitation Book

A gap analysis is simply looking at the two questions below and identifying what the difference is between now and the future.

Question One

Where are we now? What are the indicators of this state? What is the evidence for this? What are the characteristics?

Question Two

Where do we want to be? What does it look like? What will be the characteristics of this desired state? How will we know we have reached this state

It is about a plan that identifies what needs to change for the future state to be achieved? You can ask simple questions about what the individual or group need to stop or start doing? The answers that emerge from this can be used to create an action plan

Our initial thoughts

Our first session was about how to use Post It® notes to generate a range individual responses to a question concerning a team/organisation for example: What causes our meetings to overrun? What is helping employees to feel engaged with the business? What do consumers want from our business?

Once the answers have been recorded and grouped into categories the next task is to clarify the meaning of each item and ensure that they are in the right category. If the meanings of each note is clarified it then become possible to remove any items which are clear duplicates. This discussion is really important because it will start to define what the key priorities are for the group.Having agreed the categories it is often useful to have a reflective dialogue. A dialogue is a listening space where each individual can choose to share their insights so far and any themes that are starting to emerge from the conversations so far. Inexperienced facilitators often miss this stage and move straight onto voting on the issues and this can mean that some of the more complex grey areas remain unexplored.

The next option might be to prioritise the issues and one very simple way of identifying which are the most important issues for the group is by using a technique called Multi Voting. I have tended to use multi coloured dots so that each person can record their vote on each item at the same time and not have to see their score recorded on a chart.

The number of dots can be allocated by taking the total number of categories eg 6 and allocating 6 points to the top choice, 5 to the next point…., this requires 16 dots per person. However if there are more categories than this and lots of people, then this can become very messy in which case it is often recommended that the number of items are divided by 3 and then dots allocated so there is enough to put one dot on 2/3rds of the items. I often propose that a maximum of 3 dots can be placed on each item.

Our attempt at multi voting

I wondered what other facilitators were doing on the topic and I discovered lots of different methods. One other method I liked was from an organisation called Dotmocracy and they have printed sheets you could use. I can see how these could be combined with the post it notes to really gain some insights from larger groups on the issues: http://www.dotmocracy.org/sheets

Then I came across this blog discussion on the use of dots and I realised that this was a really big area of debate amongst facilitators. http://www.albany.edu/cpr/gf/resources/Voting_with_dots.html

My conclusions are to stick with a process that makes pragmatic sense at the time and the facilitator will need to make a judgement call. All the attempts to make a science out of the number of dots looked flawed in practice and I am drawn back to the title of Tony Mann’s book: “Facilitation: an art, a science or skill or all three” and would conclude that this is a great example of “all three”

Facilitation – an Art, Science, Skill – or all three? Build your expertise in facilitation

 There is a heavy reliance on “pop” research and this is used without thinking by trainers and facilitators when they are working with groups and when they are training others in their professional area. I have come across a number of facilitators who based their designs on accommodating the four different learning styles identified by Honey and Mumford. Their designs include activities which will appeal to the four different styles. What is concerning about this is that this was not the intention of the learning styles approach in the first place and secondly there is very little researched evidence into the validity of this tool or others that are similar. To read more check out the Learning Skills Network site and download their document:

https://crm.lsnlearning.org.uk/user/order.aspx?code=041540

 Another good site I have come across is Roger Greenaway’s site which is packed with research on facilitation and learning topics. I came across this page when I was preparing some materials for a workshop where we are going to critique the issues of learning styles. This page gives a summary of Kolb Experiential Learning Cycle and then explores critiques of Kolb.

http://reviewing.co.uk/research/experiential.learning.htm

 One of the really exciting elements of my new project to develop an academic pathway in facilitation is the need to do a literature review in the field of facilitation and start to separate out some of the myths from the well researched and documented data. I know this is going to make my practice stronger and I hope will influence others.