Four ways psychology influences strong leadership

Young leader and registered psychologist, Rheza Tan CMgr MIML, lists how the mind impacts effective management.

1. MASTER THE LEADERSHIP MINDSET

When I studied business, I found that many leadership concepts are drawn from psychology or informed by the science. The two main lessons that I keep in mind are:

  • Look after people. Don’t just focus on the bottom line. If you look after your people, then they’ll do the same for you and your organisation.
  • Have meaning and purpose. As these are higher-level needs, once people meet their basic needs, they search for meaning and purpose. I found that leaders who share their sense of purpose with their staff and organisation support others in fulfilling their higher-level needs too.

2. CULTIVATE A POSITIVE VIEW

Although I was primarily trained to help people with diagnosed mental illness, when I became a manager I was drawn to positive psychology. It’s about assisting healthy people to increase their wellbeing and happiness. The focus is on enhancing the positive rather than eliminating the negative. When I dug deeper, I found that positive psychology, and business and executive coaching are becoming really intertwined. There’s a strong alignment between positive psychology and coaching. Leaders can use positive psychology models and apply those when helping their teams.

3. LISTEN TO THE UNHEARD

Both personally and professionally I’m drawn to assist those from a culturally and linguistically diverse background – including students, migrants and refugees. Regardless of where people come from, there’s always a struggle to adjust to a new culture. The greater issue they face is a lack of good mental health literacy. Many cultures don’t acknowledge mental health issues. In some, they don’t even have words to describe concepts like anxiety and depression. So it can be challenging for them to get support. As a migrant myself, I understand their experience. When they can speak to someone who understands, it really makes a huge difference.

4. DEVELOP AS A PROFESSIONAL AND AS A LEADER

Completing the Chartered Manager program was the first time I was exposed to a competency framework for leaders. Comparing myself against it was an excellent reflective process. I feel that it gave me an ongoing commitment to be competent as a professional leader. As Chartered Managers, we have a responsibility to uphold ethical business standards and a commitment to leadership development. I know many colleagues who are both health professionals and leaders. While they tend to continue clinical training, they don’t always develop their management knowledge or leadership skills in the same way. Now, I complete professional development for two disciplines – as a psychologist and as a leader.

This article originally appeared in the September 2019 print edition of Leadership Matters, IML ANZ’s quarterly magazine. For editorial suggestions and enquiries, please contact karyl.estrella@managersandleaders.com.au.

Beyond fulfilment: How to keep teams motivated

When employees reach a peak of self-fulfilment and growth, how do you help them to stay motivated? Could there be more to fulfilment than simply achieving personal bests? More importantly for managers and leaders, how does keeping your employees impact your business?

Motivated employees are undeniably valuable. Findings from IML ANZ’s latest National Salary Survey (NSS), show that keeping engagement and motivation levels up is vital. NSS respondents revealed that the single most important human capital challenge they believe would add the most value to their organisation is motivating employees (53%).

Compound that with the fact that the NSS shows a slightly upward trend in voluntary staff turnover. Moreover, what’s the top reason for leaving a job? Employees are looking for a new challenge (72%). So, keeping your teams motivated is not just about getting them to be their best; it is also best for your business.

However, when an employee has achieved much on their own, is it still possible to keep them challenged, excited about the work and motivated to do their best?

Here are some ways to achieve this:

 

Maslow’s sixth level of motivation

Most of us are familiar with Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. At the apex of the five-stage peak is self-actualisation or the realisation of self-fulfilment and peak personal achievements. What is not as widely known is that later in his life, Maslow added a sixth level to his hierarchy of needs – intrinsic values. This involves supporting a cause beyond individual success.

How to harness it: Leaders must help all employees, including high-achievers, to understand how they play a part in the greater purpose of the organisation. Who does your organisation help? How does it contribute to society? Keep them focused beyond self-actualisation to help them stay motivated.

 

The value of teamwork

Staying motivated after achieving much as an individual doesn’t mean high-performing employees won’t appreciate team-led wins. Never underestimate the power of collaboration and great working relationships between colleagues. As social beings, humans always enjoy the sense of working together to overcome an obstacle, reach a goal or even assisting each other when times are tough.

How to harness it: Encourage open communication between teams and within teams. Use technology to open up lines of communication by starting a team chat group. Help your employees get to know each other not just as colleagues but as people – develop real connections by organising social activities. Celebrate successes as a team too.

 

Empowering others

A sense of motivation can be sapped if one feels that they are held back from making decisions. To help keep good performers engaged, display trust in their abilities.

How to harness it: Let your team members make the call on decisions that they know best. Avoid crushing their motivation by making them feel they are powerless when it comes to their own projects.

By emphasising how they contribute to the organisation’s purpose, fostering a healthy team environment and empowering your team members, you’ll keep even the highest achievers motivated to give their best.

Sources:

IML ANZ Members can access these articles via Leadership Direct.

The need for greater trust in recruitment

By Kara Atkinson

 

In the digital era, fast-paced, competitive business environments reward those who are quick to respond to new opportunities and market challenges. Trust plays a vital role in the success of these initiatives, providing a cornerstone for building strategic partnerships, establishing a reputation, embracing digital transformation, and more.

Today, this once-stable foundation is crumbling under the pressure of royal commissions, and large-scale data breaches faced en-masse by organisations in every industry, and we’re quickly losing our footing. This sobering trend is made apparent in a new survey conducted by Harvard Business Review, in which nearly two-thirds (63%) of senior executives at large enterprises throughout the world stated that trust among people, businesses, and institutions has declined over the past two years. Further, after 20 years of research, the Great Places to Work Institute found that experiencing a high level of trust, between leaders and employees, is the primary defining characteristic of the very best workplaces.

 

The challenges

When looking at recruitment, if the process for joining a workplace is engineered through a broken vehicle, then trust is difficult to establish.

Leaders deal with subjective candidate vetting; their recruitment firm only shortlists the people on the market at that time rather than a shortlist of the best people.

On the other side, the candidate deals with unreturned calls, the black hole of resume submissions, and last-minute internal candidate competition and an emotional minefield of career guidance from short term relationships with inexperienced recruitment consultants.

The recruiter deals with outdated, generic job descriptions, usually supplied by their clients. The market is corrupted by over promotion of the same roles. Also, everyone competes in a time-stamped environment where speed wins over quality.

 

The environment

Hiring is never easy. According to a study by Leadership IQ, 46% of newly-hired employees will fail within 18 months, while only 19% will achieve unequivocal success. This lack of vision keeps companies from achieving the holy grail of business outcomes: Trust. This is what keeps teams drowning in a sea of mediocrity and what derails once-promising leadership careers. And this stops trust from developing.

Career ladders are long gone – where once a person signed onto an organisation at 21, followed the rules, were incrementally promoted along the way and retired with a gold watch. As companies have thinned out, leadership positions have disappeared, not to be seen again.

Career pyramids have replaced the ladders. The further up the pyramid people move, the hotter the competition for the top spot and the failure rates are staggering. Harvard Business Review puts the failure rate among management hires at 60% and the consequences of failure derail a once-promising career and cost the organisation time, money and trust.

 

The way forward

It is time for the recruitment industry to rewrite the rules of recruitment. Not just improve it, but, just as Uber did to the taxi industry, they need to transform and disrupt it. Every recruiter is an ‘expert non-transactional specialist with a proprietary search methodology who has access to deep global networks.’ Where is the recruiter who builds their business, and yours, on a foundation of competence, bespoke communication and trust?

Leaders must understand that a true employee value proposition is not only written in the first line of a job ad but is permeated through every touchpoint their prospective employee has.

Kara Atkinson is an executive recruitment expert with 18 years’ experience in helping people continue to build and transform themselves throughout their careers.

Why connection is the key to talent retention

By Michelle Sales

 

Think of the last time you had to deal with some kind of performance issue. Maybe an individual had stopped working cooperatively or seems less engaged in their work.

We think these individuals are being uncooperative or unreasonable, which leads to performance management to try and fix the issue.

This then spirals out of control: employee engagement continues to decline, performance issues become more challenging and the divide gets even larger, often leading to employee resignation or, worse, firing of potential talent.

The real issue here is not the individual themselves. It is the lack of connection that individual feels.

Studies show there is a connection deficit in workplaces today. For example, employee research completed by the Pew Research Center and the Ken Blanchard Companies reports 81% of people say their leaders don’t listen, and 36% rarely or never receive performance feedback, while 67% wish they did.

Most people, however, would rather leave a job than have a conversation to address a workplace issue. That’s a real shame – not to mention a real problem!

So what to do?

 

Digital detox

The ability to connect in our selfie-obsessed society has never been easier – at least online – so often organisations see the solution to strengthening connection as a technology issue.

Online tools like Yammer are implemented to try to make people converse and share more. Online conferences and ‘catch-up’ meetings are held across different time zones. Sure, many technology enablers are helping us to collaborate more effectively and connect differently.

In reality, though, these one-on-one meetings with people are really just a mechanism for managing work performance rather than getting to really know each other. For example, we prefer to use email to communicate rather than talking face-to-face or even by phone.

Technology is an enabler, but it is never the solution to a human issue. We must learn the art of cultivating real connections in our organisation to truly thrive.

 

Cultivate connection

Prolific author and researcher Brené Brown describes connection as ‘the energy that is created between people when they feel seen, heard and valued – when they can give and receive without judgment’.

When we feel a real sense of connection we trigger neurochemicals that make us feel good. Dopamine, oxytocin and endorphins give us a sense of wellbeing; they make us want to engage and work with others; collaboration happens and performance thrives.

On the flipside, when we experience disconnection, the reaction is as real as physical pain. Cortisol and adrenaline increase in our body, triggering the ‘fight’ stress response. This makes us respond to our environment as if it is hostile, like we’re out of place – which results in the behaviours and impact previously mentioned.

It’s a fact that companies that are voted ‘best place to work’ or an ‘employer of choice’ value and foster connection among their teams and organisations. As Sylvia Vorhauser-Smith, senior vice president of research at PageUp People, puts it, these companies are ‘meeting the more altruistic and basic human needs of feeling connected and being an important part in something bigger’.

 

Trust us

Hence, feeling connected and trusted to be and do our best is the ultimate human condition.

Employees are able to be their best possible self and feel valued and rewarded for this. They feel understood at an individual level and they are clear on the contribution they are making to the performance of the organisation. They love what they do and they connect to each other, their customers, leaders and the organisation in a very human way.

This is when you start to bring out the very best in people. This feeling of connection builds a critical foundation of trust in which your employees feel they can have a voice and can make a difference.

When employees are encouraged to connect, communicate and collaborate better, this leads to an increase in productivity, not to mention happiness. This, in turn, has a positive impact on performance, company loyalty, and of course, retention.

Michelle Sales is a highly sought-after speaker, trainer, coach and author who helps senior leaders and their teams to build confidence and maximise their leadership and performance by consciously connecting with others. She is the author of the new whitepaper The Connection Deficit: Why leaders must bring both head and heart to work to build trust, lift engagement and accelerate organisational results.

How to tackle unconscious bias in recruitment

By Clare Edwards FIML

 

When it comes to making decisions about people, we all like to think that we’re objective, fair and impartial. The reality though is very different because, if we have a brain, we are biased.

Unconscious bias (UB), also known as implicit bias, happens automatically, is outside of our control and is triggered by our brain making quick assessments of people and situations, influenced by our background, culture and personal experiences. The clue is in the word ‘unconscious’. When we are being biased, we aren’t aware of it as the brain can’t reflect at the same time as it’s making a mental shortcut decision.

UB impacts every area of decision-making in organisations including who gets hired, fired, promoted and demoted. It impacts leadership and team effectiveness, the treatment of stakeholders and ultimately, culture.

One of the most common unconscious biases in recruitment is affinity or similarity bias.  This leads us to gravitate towards people who are like ourselves in appearance, beliefs, and background.  We have an unconscious belief – “I prefer people like me over those who are different”.  

When we were roaming the African savannah plains, out looking for lunch (or becoming lunch if we weren’t vigilant), different equalled dangerous, so we are programmed to consider people who are different to us as ‘foe’ before friend.

Unconsciously, when we first meet someone who appears different, (even for microseconds), our brain’s master error detector fires off subtle signals checking for safety, while consciously we are openly welcoming, curious and respectful.

Because most of our biases are unconscious, putting systems and processes in place can help to mitigate them.  Awareness training can also work, but it is most effective when supported by a conscious effort to have a culture of diversity and inclusion where bias is challenged.

Here are four practical strategies for mitigating unconscious bias:

 

1. Challenge existing processes

 

When crafting job advertisements, apps like Textio can help managers avoid gender-biased language and ensure the vocabulary they use is inclusive, gender-neutral and not influencing candidates subjectively.

Software company Atlassian put Textio’s software to the test by reworking the way in which it worded its job advertisements. In just one year, the company increased the number of women being hired for technical positions by 80 per cent!

 

2. Minimise our ability to revert to affinity bias

In first-round selections, consider removing a candidate’s name, tertiary education experience and all other factors that don’t directly relate to the attributes you are seeking in a successful applicant.

In auditions for symphony orchestras, screens were put in place between the musicians and the interviewing panel (and female candidates were asked to remove noisy heels). This increased the likelihood that a female musician would advance to the next round by 11 percentage points. During the final round, ‘blind’ auditions increased the likelihood of female musicians being selected by 30%.

 

3. Re-think decision making

When we make a conscious effort to slow down and reflect on the drivers behind our decisions, we can uncover hidden biases. This is even more effective when executed in a group environment because we don’t challenge our own biases because we’re not aware of them!

Actively welcome differing perspectives in recruitment decisions; the people don’t have to be from the same department to help shine a light you might not see.

Being open to having our decisions respectfully challenged requires a culture of psychological safety.  This supports us in becoming more open-minded, less judgemental and more flexible to changing our decisions based on the feedback we get.

 

4. Proactively drive inclusion

Having a diverse workforce brings benefits – and investing in, and focusing on, inclusion brings even greater success. It makes sense to want your employee base to culturally, racially and ethnically reflect that of your customers/ stakeholders and to have these people feel fully included.

 

  • Encourage people to interact more with those traditionally outside of their ‘in-group’ to expand their awareness and appreciation of difference
  • Team-based psychometric profiling tools such as Team Management Systems (TMS) and DiSC are extremely helpful. These provide an objective insight into preferences of self and others, our key differences and how we can harness differing strengths to make the whole greater than the sum of the parts.

 

Recruiting people is the most important and potentially costly decision that organisations will make. It makes sense therefore to invest energy, focus and time in ensuring that the people we hire feel valued and included members of our community from the outset and for the duration of their career with us.

 

Clare Edwards is the Principal of BrainSmart Consulting. She is also a speaker, facilitator and author. She studied the Neuroscience of Leadership – how knowledge of our brains can help us to be more emotionally intelligent and effective leaders and managers. Clare now helps people effectively manage and lead themselves and others in complex and uncertain business environments. 

Doing more to beat unconscious bias
Keep an eye out for the next edition of IML ANZ’s quarterly print magazine, Leadership Matters, where Clare Edwards joins a panel of experts to delve deeper into unconscious bias and how to overcome it.

Smart play is a serious team-building strategy

By Lisa Calautti

 

Richard Shrapnel is amongst only a small handful of Lego® Serious Play® Facilitators in Australia. Lego® Serious Play® involves using Lego bricks to bring together leaders and their staff to unite them in problem-solving to help create a cohesive business approach.

 

Building blocks of better business

Shrapnel strongly believes this is an effective tool to help develop better business strategy. He came across Lego® Serious Play® in 2002 via an article in AFR Boss reviewing CUB’s use of the method. He completed the facilitator’s course in Enfield, Connecticut, USA in 2003 and again in 2011, this time in Singapore, learning about the program’s methodology and science.

Shrapnel says the method is particularly popular in Asia, the USA and Europe. “In Australia the typical response I get is, ‘But this is a toy and it’s play and therefore it’s not serious!’”

It is a statement which Shrapnel can easily counter. He is passionate about this Lego method as a valuable learning technique and its power in getting people to use their left and right brains to bring creative logic together and their imagination to create stories around an image they build. “It actually allows you to tap into thoughts which you would otherwise not consider and to be far more creative,” he explains.

 

Serious play in action

Lego® Serious Play® workshops last from a half day up to three days and have been popular amongst medium-to-large corporations, not-for-profit organisations as well as religious groups. A typical workshop begins by proposing an individual activity, for example, ‘build your dream job’.

“It’s getting people used to expressing themselves through building a model and once they are comfortable with that you then come back to the business side,” Shrapnel says. “The tool and methodology allow people to communicate at a level that they otherwise would not be able to reach, and to build an outcome that they can then take away as a combined group. That is the power of it.”

As the workshop progresses and attendees are comfortable with using the specially selected Lego bricks, they come together to form a single model as a team to begin a narrative of their business. It is at this stage participants can see environmental factors around the model and their impact.

“Here’s your part of the business, here’s my part of the business and that is the market. These are the competitors, the technology … all impacting what we do. And because it is now a 3D model, it’s very rich and you walk around it and look at it from a different angle.”

As it is built, each person not only tells their story, but everyone tells a new combined story. “Every person speaks to the model explaining this is our story, our business, and how we will be effective and achieve the outcomes we seek.”

This article originally appeared in the September 2019 print edition of Leadership Matters, IML ANZ’s quarterly magazine. For editorial suggestions and enquiries, please contact karyl.estrella@managersandleaders.com.au.

The business of mindfulness in modern workplaces

By Anthony O’Brien

 

It’s not the start of an Irish joke, but what do search engine Google, retailer Target and bank JP Morgan, share in common? Apart from making plenty of moolah, these corporate heavyweights have introduced a commitment to mindfulness practices into their workplaces in recent years.

While often associated with adherents to the Buddha rather than mammon, mindfulness training courses are becoming common in New Zealand and Australian workplaces as firms seek ways to reduce stress and absenteeism, increase productivity, develop better leaders, and generate more creative workplaces.

The Australian Psychological Society’s website says work-related stress results when the demands of work exceed resources for managing those demands. Another report from the Victorian Government says workers experience stress over organisation culture, bad management practices, job demands, the physical work environment, relationships at work, change management, lack of support, role conflict and trauma.

 

MINDFUL LEADERSHIP

As a leadership tactic, mindfulness helps people to be more effective by directing focus to the most pertinent task at hand, according to Harvard Business Review. Deprogramming multi-tasking tendencies and intentionally focusing with full attention results in higher quality interactions and decisions, says HBR.

Pippa Hanson CMgr FIML, Chief Executive Officer from The Sports Injury Clinic, regularly speaks on the topics of stress management, work-life balance and thriving under pressure. The IML ANZ Member believes the age of the mobile phone and the internet has increased the need for mindfulness. “People are on their emails, not just when they’re sitting in front of a computer but they’re getting access on their phones. They’re carrying those phones around with them, they’re contactable 24/7 if they’re not putting boundaries in place.”

Creating boundaries is being mindful of what limits you’re setting for yourself as a manager and leader, “not only to complete your day-to-day activities, but so you know what your day looks like and what time it starts and finishes,” Hanson advises. “If you allow your day to be interrupted by responding to every email, you’re not mindful of what your day looks like, and that causes pressure, stress, poor mental health, and a lack of productivity. So, a lack of mindfulness has a negative impact on people’s work day.” Hanson also advises managers and leaders to be aware of how many times per day they check emails, while strategies such as turning off app notifications, can improve mindfulness.

 

DEFINING MINDFULNESS

Hanson says mindfulness can be confusing for the uninitiated. “I find some people only associate it with meditation or colouring in. They don’t believe that they’re mindful when they do other activities like crafts,” she says. “Mindfulness is about being present and aware of your current situation, rather than being on a mouse wheel and just going through the motions every day.”

For Hanson, who manages a busy allied health business employing 60 staff including health practitioners and administrators, mindfulness includes taking a midday break to assess the first half of the day before the afternoon shift begins. “I walk, at the end of the day because after a busy schedule of meetings, phone calls and face-to-face contact, just walking and listening to a podcast, radio or music, allows me to switch off from work, before I step back into family time.”

Hanson adds that mindfulness doesn’t just speak to physical fitness, but mental fitness and the ability to cope with pressure, stress, and the unexpected.

 

Mindful leader, Catherine Stock-Haanstra FIML

 

FINDING THE SWEET SPOT

A 90-day mindfulness plan has been around since Warren Buffett was a boy. But it’s only now becoming more widely accepted in business, says Hanson. “Mindfulness has crossed over into leadership in the workplace for health and wellness as well as business strategy and time management.” While practising mindfulness is part of Hanson’s daily routine, it is also a major component of her firm’s broader strategy. “Our leadership team takes a day every quarter to switch off from everything. This day is about focusing on our achievements and where we’re going, but really without interruption and without taking the phone calls and without reacting to the emails. This enables us to be present, slow down and focus without the extra pressure.”

Hanson says individuals will have a unique mindfulness sweet spot. “Mindfulness is different for everyone, and everyone does respond differently, and it’s about identifying that for yourself. There are simple breathing strategies that you can do at lunchtime to slow your heart rate down, and to take those deep breaths, which when you’re rushing and busy you don’t often do. Others might walk around the block, or someone might say, ‘No, I’m going to put my headphones on and listen to music for 10 minutes’.”

Laps of a pool give swimmers plenty of time to cogitate and practise mindfulness, while Hanson says some people gain satisfaction from running or riding. “When you’re focusing solely on something different, your present activity, you are switching off from work, or your family life because you can’t think of both of those things at the same time.”

If managers and leaders can understand mindfulness, they are better placed to educate their teams. “Maybe the phones haven’t stopped and the team won’t take a lunch break or a tea break. However, if managers and leaders can teach their employees about walking away and getting some fresh air and then coming back, it just makes for better relations in workplaces, better relations with clients and better outcomes for everyone.”

The full version of this article originally appeared in the September 2019 print edition of Leadership Matters, IML ANZ’s quarterly magazine. For editorial suggestions and enquiries, please contact karyl.estrella@managersandleaders.com.au.

How to retain talent through learning and development

By Chris Burton

 

Increasingly, successful organisations understand that providing impactful development programs not only deliver performance benefits, it also provides a wonderful way to engage and retain staff who value learning and professional growth. But what does that look like in practise?

 

USE FEEDBACK TO INFORM DECISIONS

Many organisations use psychometric feedback tools as part of their professional or team development initiatives, for example, you might have a teamwork session that provides feedback about your team preferences or style. However, good feedback tools should be versatile enough that they can be re-framed to look at your work performance through multiple lenses and in multiple contexts. A learner might have good insights about how they work within teams, but what does the feedback tell them about their own individual work? Alternatively, the feedback might be great at helping an individual leader understand how to better collaborate with the different works styles of their teammates, but can it provide the entire team with reliable metrics to analyse their work processes?

 

To address how feedback informs our performance conversations, we can use a psychometric like the Team Management Profile (TMP) which was developed in Australia and used by more than two million people around the world. We know from the TMP worldwide database* that 51% of managers prefer to work in a systematic way on activities focused on immediate, tangible results. While that is not particularly negative, a problem arises when we compare the numbers of people who like to innovate and come up with new ideas (8%), or who like to focus on activities that ensure the sustainability of our work processes and organisational culture (2%). When we can understand the operational consequences of this disproportionate distribution of our work preferences, we can then make better decisions about our performance improvement strategies.

 

GENERATE ECONOMIES OF SCALE AND SCOPE

By extending the way that staff apply their learning to improve performance, we not only generate an economy of scale for the business, we also realise an economy of scope. The economy of scale occurs when we generate efficiencies by working with multiple people and supporting collaborative learning. The economy of scope occurs when we see that we reuse our learning resources to apply knowledge to other activities and contexts, providing us with the adaptability we need to compete in the 2020s.

 

Organisations keep their staff engaged with L&D initiatives by providing the workforce with new ways to apply and evolve their current knowledge in order to enhance how they work. And when the employees are increasingly capable of transferring their ideas into performance improvements, they achieve results more efficiently and contribute more to their teams. This, in turn, creates a multiplier effect, because when staff are generating good results in a continually improving, inclusive and results-focused environment, they are more inclined to be engaged and remain with the company.

 

FOSTER A LEARNING ATTITUDE

How do you promote your professional development initiatives internally? Do you shine a light on the opportunities your staff have to improve their performance? Do you help foster an attitude of learning transfer and continuous improvement? By making the effort to evaluate the performance impact that your training has on your team, you can highlight the benefits to your staff and stakeholders. And this, in turn, will engage, stretch and retain staff.

 

EQUIP YOURSELF WITH THE RIGHT TOOLS

Retention of key talent is always a hot topic for Australian managers. The Institute of Managers and Leaders Australia and New Zealand has a suite of diagnostic and development tools engineered to improve the ability of your organisation to retain talent and develop performance through improving self-awareness. If you would like to know more about the range of People Analytics tools available, please call 1300 362 631, email corporate@managersandleaders.com.au or visit managersandleaders.com.au/people-analytics

* Team Management Systems Research Manual (5th Edition), 2019. ITMS: Brisbane

Chris Burton is the Learning & Development Director, Asia-Pacific at Team Management Systems (TMS). He previously worked with Margerison and McCann for more than 20 years, is now an Executive Director and leads TMS’ Learning & Development Asia-Pac team as a programme facilitator and subject matter expert. An accomplished speaker and facilitator, Chris’s work spans from delivering keynotes at international conferences, to coaching boards and senior executives as well as delivering engaging, impactful workshops.

What mining teaches about the connections between people, knowledge and success in business

By Ken McDonald FIML

 

About the time that I was learning about business analysis, the managing director of our company, Weipa, assigned me a task that would occupy 100% of my time for about 12 months. In brief, we had to move quickly to be able to supply a more cost-efficient blend of trihydrate bauxite (ore that is the primary source of aluminium) to a leading refinery in Gladstone. If the trihydrate bauxite from a competitor went into Gladstone, it would change the dynamics of future negotiations. There was a major business threat if we did not supply and opportunity if we did supply trihydrate grade bauxite of about a million tonnes per year.

The managing director, Ian Gould, explained the context in some detail and said, “I want you to get trihydrate bauxite from Weipa to Gladstone by the end of this year.”

That was very clear. The reasoning was also crystal clear. How to do it was a foggy highway – initially. I do not intend to bore the reader with all the technical work that took place, but we were successful. There were many restless nights but it was a great case study in problem-solving that goes back to the Jaques stratified systems theory about levels of work complexity. There was some very good teamwork across multiple sites as well.

There were a number of streams of work taking place in parallel. Geologists and technical people who had a good knowledge of the bauxite deposits were combing through historical data to see if there were “pockets” of trihydrate. Chemical and process engineers were developing ways of analysing bauxite chemistry. Drillers at Weipa were drilling and analysing the bauxite to find potential trihydrate pockets near existing mine faces in targeted areas.

Considerable time and effort were also being spent on understanding the fundamentals of the ore. This was critical information for our current project. Interestingly, fully productive operating mines tend to be driven by less-detailed analyses. It is easy to lose sight of the fundamentals if there is no significant change. However, if you are seriously challenged, fundamentals are like gold.

We subsequently sent a trial shipment of trihydrate bauxite which proved a success. When capital was approved, the Weipa operations and Gladstone refinery were equipped to mine, handle and process trihydrate-grade bauxite, thus increasing the output of both operations.

I, meanwhile, learned some valuable lessons:

  • The importance of understanding the fundamentals of a product or resource
  • When you give people clear targets, appropriate discretion and good context, you can be pleasantly surprised with their contribution
  • As a leader, you do not have to be the expert on everything. You do have to be able to out all the pieces of work together in a coherent work plan

This is article is an edited excerpt from Ken’s book, ‘Management, Machinery and Money’.

Ten ways to make an impact from the middle

By Lisa Calautti

 

While chief executives and their C-suite colleagues often hit the headlines in the business media, the vast majority of managers do not actually operate at that high-profile level. Most are ‘middle managers’ who sit between senior management and the wider workforce. This silent majority can sometimes struggle to make their voices heard in their organisations, but it’s important for everyone that they find a way.

Sam Bell FIML, IML ANZ’s Corporate Services and Research General Manager, says that influential middle managers are invaluable because they help secure the willing cooperation of staff, assist in garnering support from colleagues and earn a hearing for their views and opinions among bosses and senior leaders. Influential middle managers are often the catalyst for positive change in a business – securing approval for new ideas, proposals, and initiatives.

For those middle managers seeking to develop their influencing skills, Bell shares the following tips:

 

1. BE CLEAR ABOUT YOUR AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

Influencing is about getting a hearing for your own ideas and perspectives, about playing a role in shaping agendas and strategies, promoting change in your organisation and getting approval for new initiatives and projects. You will be unable to achieve this, without a clear understanding of your exact aims and objectives. Keep up to date with the current position of your organisation and the market or sector in which it operates.

 

2. UNDERSTAND ORGANISATIONAL DYNAMICS

Gain an understanding of your organisation’s culture. Remain alert to the unwritten rules of how things are done and be aware of the dynamics of power and authority within your team, your department and the organisation. Ask yourself: Who are the prime movers and shakers? Who has a reputation for being able to get things done?

 

3. UNDERSTAND WHAT MAKES PEOPLE TICK

If you are to influence anyone, whether it is those you manage, colleagues in other departments or senior managers, you need to get to know them and to understand what motivates them and what their personal and professional goals are. Pay attention to body language, tone of voice and facial expressions.

 

4. BUILD RELATIONSHIPS

Network widely across all areas and levels of your organisation, so that people know who you are, what you do and what you stand for. Take an interest in people and invest time and effort in developing relationships.

 

5. FORM ALLIANCES

To develop real influence, you will need to go beyond a loose network of contacts. Build alliances and coalitions of supporters based on common interests and values. Weigh up who is most likely to support you and who will be the most valuable partners.

 

6. PLAN AHEAD

It is vital to be proactive and plan ahead if you are seeking support for a particular course of action. Think carefully about what you want to achieve, whose support you need to gain, when is the best time to introduce your ideas and what is the best way to do it.

 

7. HONE YOUR COMMUNICATION SKILLS

Communication skills play a crucial role in influencing. Active listening and questioning skills will help you to read other people and to pick up on subtle verbal and non-verbal cues as to what they really think.

 

8. LEARN TO CONTROL YOUR EMOTIONS

Your enthusiasm and even passion for your ideas can be a powerful force. Influencers need to be assertive – to express their views confidently, to make reasonable requests of others and to set boundaries. On occasion, you will need to stand your ground and rebut criticism. But don’t allow assertiveness to degenerate into aggressive behaviour.

 

9. LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES

Don’t become discouraged if your influencing tactics are not always successful. Recognise that you won’t win every battle and resolve to learn from your failures. When things go wrong, try to identify the reasons and consider what you could have done differently and what might work better next time.

 

10. DON’T LOSE YOUR MORAL COMPASS

While being influential does require single-mindedness and a degree of calculation in working towards your goals, it’s important not to lose sight of your personal values. Positive ethical influencers seek to demonstrate the benefits of their ideas, not just for themselves and their position but for their colleagues, the wider organisation and society in general.

ACCELERATE YOUR LEADERSHIP SKILLS

Leading and influencing from the middle of the management hierarchy comes with pressures from above, below and laterally. IML ANZ’s Intentional Leadership Accelerate Program equips managers with the skills required in this crucial leadership position.

The program blends facilitated learning, online study, practical workplace projects, leadership coaching, mentoring and diagnostic reports. See how Accelerate delivers development differently here.