Different worlds

A while back I opened up the blog for welcoming stories through different media which share a purpose and imperative for people to change. I called it Learning Stories, and the first submission is from Vera Woodhead. This is a great story, and one I very much enjoyed reading. It made me question if I do these things, and what I know of myself. Thanks Vera.

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Different worlds: from South America to not so sunny Yorkshire

It is 6 am, Friday 15th June 1979. A young girl pushes back the mosquito net and energetically jumps out of bed. She is excited, as today she is going to spend her savings to buy… a book.

Books are important in her life. They unleash the imagination and transport her to different worlds – where people live in fancy houses, drive cars and wear beautiful clothes; where children have adventures and do such exciting things. In this tiny village in South America there is not much to do apart from listening to the world service, pop songs and climb trees.

She heads outside to the shower. Well actually it is a tin shack shared with 2 lizards, a frog and a bucket of cold water. There is no electricity and
she finds her way around by the faint moonlight.

After breakfast, she searches for her shoes. She only wears them when she goes to school. She puts them on, grabs her bag, says goodbye and rushes off as she is late. Its quarter to 7 in the morning and the bus goes by at 7 am. She gets there just in time and manages to get a seat. 30 minutes later she gets off and heads down the road towards the ferry. The water is choppy and the 15 minute journey to cross the mighty Demerara River is now a 30 minute one. She manages to get to school just in the nick of time as the bell goes at 8.30 am

School is St. Stanislaus College. At the age of 7 she had decided that she didn’t want to go to the local village school. She wanted to go to THIS school where the diplomats, ambassadors and rich people sent their children. She persuaded her parents to let her sit the entrance exams to get a scholarship. Secretly, she believed that her parents thought that she would never make the grade and get in but she did. Her year was the first intake of girls in what was an all boys’ school. There was only 1 class in each year of this Catholic school which was run entirely by Jesuit Fathers.

She didn’t quite fit in… with the colour of her hair, her skin, her clothes and shoes….but she didn’t mind. It was a different world…and her teachers were like no other. Father Drake, the Maths teacher was feared as he was the one that did the caning. Father Rigby was a tall thin man who taught French. Her favourite was Father McClusky. As you have guessed, he was Scottish and portly: a bit like Robbie Coltrane’s Hagrid in Harry Potter. He opened up the world of poetry, of Shakespeare, Keats, Blake, Steinbeck, Hardy, Dickens….and suddenly her world expanded again. She got the role of Portia in the school play, recited poetry in the school competition, wrote short stories and even won a few competitions ….

She was good at running, though she didn’t have the right shoes but that didn’t stop her doing well at sprinting. She was no good at art, her paintings never made it on the wall. The rolling pin that she made in woodwork didn’t quite roll and her embroidery work only got her 2nd placed. Imagine being beaten by a boy, Brian, her classmate…oh she loved school.

But her world was soon to be shattered as riots and shooting ensued outside the school and later Father Drake was fatally stabbed.
Her parents decided that it wasn’t safe. They gathered up all their savings and sent her and her sister to live with a spinster aunt in England. Ilford, Essex to be precise. It was a different world. She had never seen houses like these: all in a row, neatly joined up and not to mention, so cold.
School was Bancroft’s, 250 year old and was truly like something from Enid Blyton’s Mallory Towers. If she didn’t fit in the first school, she certainly didn’t fit in here. Language, culture, making friends, school work, the curriculum …were all a challenge but she took it in her stride.

At the end of the 2 years there and with no money left and a handful of qualifications she decided to train as a nurse – that way she could get a job, earn some money, live in student accommodation and move out of Mrs. Trunchbull’s (her nickname for her aunt) house. And so she worked her way up, studied hard and with each qualification gained her salary increased and career and life blossomed.

As you would have guessed that is an abridged version of my early life which has shaped who I am today.

You can’t do anything to change what has happened in the past but you can take control and create a different future for yourself. My learning:

1. Be self aware

Get to know the inner you – who you are, what your core values are, what you stand for …
Find out what your talents and strengths and use them. What are you good at? What can you spend ages doing? What do other people say you are good at? What do others ask you to do?

Align the inner You with the outer You. In the words of Mahatma Ghandi, “happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony”. Be in harmony.

2. Be a sponge

Knowledge is powerful. The more you know the more you can use it to your advantage. Coupled with experience, knowledge and its application can help to progress your career, expand your worldview and grow your wisdom. Be open to learning and one of the best way of learning is through doing. You might not get it right first time, but making mistakes is all part of learning and building resilience.

Do something on a regular basis that stretches you and takes you out of comfort zone. It may be difficult, hard work, uncomfortable and perhaps even painful at times. But it is often from undertaking such acts and developing mental toughness that we grow progress and achieve our greatest accomplishments.

3. Be yourself

In the words of Tigger, “the most wonderful thing about tiggers is I’m the only one.” There is only one you. Strive to be you only better. You are unique with your own set of talents and gifts.

When you realise that, you will stop comparing yourself to others – we are all different, with different skills, and talents.

Be proud of who you are and where you have come from. Don’t be a clone. Be an individual. Stand out from the crowd. Find opportunities where you can have a voice and put yourself forward when leadership opportunities present.

4. Be accountable

When things go wrong, don’t blame others and your life. Accept responsibility for it, learn from it and move on. Get into the mentality of seeing hurdles and problems as a challenge. And when faced with them, ask, ‘what do I need to do to solve it, who can I go to for help, what have I done in the past that has worked, how can I use my strength to get through this? …’ You have it within you to find the solutions, Believe you can

5. Be connected

It is our relationships with other people which form a network that supports us, make our lives meaningful, and ultimately enable us to survive. This is also good for our mental health and well being. Nurture your relationships and connections.

In your travels you will find people who will buy into you and your story and when they offer to help, seize it. When you need help, do not be afraid to ask for it. Seek out your friends, connections or find a mentor.

Connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter @verawoodhead

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If you want to contribute to Learning Stories, get in touch.

A Story about Change Leadership

Reblogged from People Performance Potential:

There's a lot that can be written about leading change and aspects such as change resistance.  It's a major part of my professional practice and I'll be writing more pieces on leading change in the coming weeks.

To start though, I want to share this story with you. I hope it makes you think about what is possible when you want to create change.

Read more… 980 more words

Hacking the performance review

There’s this thing happening in the near future, a collaboration with the CIPD and Gary Hamel. They’re calling it a #hackathon. How very interesting.

It’s a project to crack workplace practise, make it meaningful and add actual value.

This week we’ve seen the likes of Perry Timms and Rob Jones get involved in the conversation and give some thoughts on poor performers at work and the unnecessary level of process we are sometimes guilty of putting into place. Both good places to start a conversation and get those grey cells working.

The other day on Twitter I asked what term we could replace the term performance review with. And so, dear readers, I ask you to be involved in this discussion. Let’s remind ourselves of the purpose of the performance review, and the options available.

Performance reviews in most organisation are that formal point of the year when you sit down and have your appraisal with your line manager. There are a lot of people writing about how to perform a good annual review. Even I did once… or twice… or three times…

That’s not the point though. The point is we need to move on. We need to move on from this concept of appraising performance and move towards a concept of appreciation and progression. And here comes the obligatory challenge – what about the retrospective element of reviewing work? Hold. That. Thought. Compadre.

Here’s where I lay out the ideal. Performance reviews need to be one of the first things that get hacked. Into little itty bitty pieces that can be scattered in the wind. It has served its purpose as a way of managing your people. For most people it’s looked on with disdain, and that same majority would much rather it just didn’t happen.

But what to replace it with? Well, there are two main contenders for replacing the traditional manager-employee review. In both instances, the onus is on the individual. That is, if the individual wants to receive feedback on work achieved, it is up to them to do the necessary leg work and provide the evidence. To whom?

Well first option is to have a panel of reviewers. The individual presents their evidence for a job well done over a given period of time, and they are interviewed/interrogated/examined about their work. Based on this, the panel decides on the performance of the individual, provides feedback, and makes recommendation for future work. These reviewers would likely be other managers. What I like about this is it gives the opportunity for other managers to learn about work happening across the organisation and gain better understanding of workplace pressures, challenges and successes. It also presents a real challenge of committing to the process in a regular and consistent fashion in order that fairness of the panel is maintained.

The second option is to have peer reviews. The individual again presents their evidence for a job well done, but in this case to a panel who consist of your peers. That is, no one is in a management role reviewing your work. The feedback you receive is based on the understanding of the work you present, and your work is shared across the organisation. This allows a level of transparency and openness about work practices which may not have been evident before, and the feedback is likely to be objective. The main challenge to this is trusting the word of your colleagues, and being able to identify what development or progression you could benefit from.

There is also a big assumption with both of these models that the pay system is not linked to the performance review process. This shouldn’t happen anyway. It’s a poor excuse for managing staff by coupling it with a pay review and expecting people to clap like sealions when you wave a bit of money in front of them. Such a degrading way of treating people, and yet most organisations are absolutely wedded to the process.

Instead this should be laid out up front in the employment contract. Your base salary is this. Increase in salary is based on specific criteria – most important of these being organisational success. No organisational success = no pay increase. Bonuses are paid under exact circumstances. Submission for pay increase needs to be under these principles. There are very good ways of making all of this happen. It just doesn’t need to be nor should it be linked to the performance review process.

So what about the retrospective element of appraisals? Well, as I’ve mentioned in the posts above, and as I tell every line manager I work with, that retrospective element should be happening regularly and consistently throughout the year. The annual review is then a summary of previous conversations, where the only thing to actually talk about is what’s happening in the future? We’ve summarised everything we’ve been talking about regularly over the previous review period, and we both understand if it’s been a successful, non-descript or poor year. So now let’s focus on the coming review period and what needs to happen tomorrow.

Again, I’ve said this before, but if your annual review is the only time to actually review your person’s performance, then a) you shouldn’t be a manager b) see a) c) your organisation doesn’t believe in the process for it to be effective d) you need better development in this area e) all of the above, especially a).

This also then questions the very relevance of being a manager. If part of what a manager is responsible for is the development and progression of staff, and I’m suggesting this is removed from them and shared with others in different ways, what are they left with? Well, people still need to have a line manager for a host of operational and development based needs. The role of the manager isn’t to hold the hands of every person they’re responsible for, it’s to give support and develop staff based on organisational needs.

So, I’m intrigued by this hackathon, and what it could unleash. It needs people to get behind it, and I’m sure there will be.

And bearing in mind everything I’ve just mentioned and talked about above, what would you call the performance review?

The L&D and Community kaleidoscope

I’m concerned about you my fellow L&Der. I see that you’re listening to things being said out there. I see that you’re interested in what others in the profession are talking about. And there’s plenty of things being talked about of interest. Some of it by internal practitioners, some of it by e-learning specialists, some of it by technology specialists, some of it by external practitioners. And they’re all saying and talking about different and interesting things.

There’s a whole blogging community who are dedicated to promoting their word. Some use social channels to spread their brand, their work, and their good name. For them, social media is a powerful mechanism for a gainful living. For others, social channels allow their voice to be heard, they spread a message, they build a following. And for others social channels are a way of hearing what’s being said out there. There’s a different way of thinking that they want to be exposed to because they recognise things need to be better but don’t know where to start.

When I came across the #connectinghr community, I was captured by the lack of interest in any agenda people may have had. It was (and remains) about bringing professionals together from all walks of HR (and beyond) who want to be able to share knowledge and talk about their work in meaningful spaces. I enjoyed what this released for me, and realised I needed more as an L&D professional. The idea of L&D Connect was born and with the help of others, a community rallied around and we pushed for more to happen as an L&D community. #ldconnect and #ldblogs was created as a result.

I’ve enjoyed that the people who have attended the two unconference sessions have come from all walks of L&D professional – all those mentioned above, and more besides. We come together and respect each other as professionals. Everything else is left at the door. Why does it matter, and who does it matter to? All we expect is that people get involved in the conversation when they’re ready. There’s opportunity for people to take part in the conversations that matter to them, and there’s no pressure to talk if you don’t want to. The social channels help amplify what’s being said in the room to those outside who want to be part of the conversation but can’t attend.

It’s all quite organic and fluid. It’s the most inclusive environment I’ve ever encountered. It’s the most engaged I’ve ever been with a group of other people. It’s focused on people dynamics and trusting people to lead where the conversation takes them.

This is at the heart of L&D. L&D is less about us as professionals and more about the people we’re working with. Communities like L&D Connect help us to see that trusting people dynamics trumps models and theories every time. Yes we may need to guide the conversation to happen in a certain way, but L&D isn’t about that input, it’s about the outcome. That outcome is paramount to a good learning event. That outcome is whatever the person involved decides. We can’t drive that. We can’t make it happen. We can have the discussion to help figure out the goal, and hopefully facilitate the journey to getting there, but that’s not in our control as much as we may want it to be.

Things like social learning, informal learning, e-learning, mobile learning, face to face learning, are all things we need to remain mindful of and aware of. I don’t pretend to know about a lot of these things. Partly because some of them don’t interest me, and partly because I’m trying to strengthen skills I already have. My cognitive load is already quite full. So what I’m aiming to do is lean on this network and listen to what they have to say.

They help me to understand more, and for that I’m grateful. It makes me a better L&Der, and it means I’m better at understanding what spectrum of knowledge I could and should be drawing on.

Does this sound like it works? It does. That’s all I can say. There’s plenty of talk about how social technologies are helping us to create and become part of communities that serve a greater good. I’m all for that, and it jives with my philosophy of life. We all have the ability, capability and capacity for doing good in our lives by helping others. If I can move to help others, I am fulfilled. This is my purpose.

So we come back to L&D Connect. We’re arranging to meet on Tuesday 23rd April. It’d be great to see you there. You can book your ticket here.

Business minded L&D

So you know how we hear lot’s in the profession about being more business minded to give ourselves value? Well, I’m onboard with that as a concept and as an ideal. It helps me to understand there are things I can and should be doing which will help me to be better at the job I do. If I choose to.

But what does it mean to be more business minded? How do you get more commercial acumen? How do you gain business acumen? As an L&Der, does this stuff actually make a difference to the job we do?

Well, it can make a big difference. It’s what sets ‘trainers’ apart from ‘L&D professionals’. To my mind, there’s a role for both in organisations.

We need trainers. That is people who are proficient (or even possible expert) in a particular skill set, and can help others learn that skill set. That’s all we need them for. They come in, deliver the training and leave. In terms of evaluation, they’re lucky if they get happy sheets completed, and a sign of success is if they’re brought back for more sessions in the future. They may call themselves consultants to feel better about their product, but titles don’t really matter in this regard. If someone comes in and delivers training, I expect a fairly high standard of delivery, mostly because I’ve helped to commission them, and so the return on expectation as well as return on investment needs to be quite high. In terms of tailoring their content to meet the needs of the training, I would fully expect this to happen, with a full consultation about how to make it relevant for the people involved.

L&D professionals need to be good trainers. Not effective, but good. I know, I know, how do you quantify good from effective. Let’s not go there today. Training is a core part of what L&Ders do. Then there’s the rest of what comes with the territory.

L&Ders have to be consultative about the organsiation itself. That is, they need to be going out there and finding out just what the different parts of the organisation do on a day to day basis. It’s one thing knowing that retail planning is all about floor space and how much rack space is optimum for different products, it’s another thing knowing why and how they’ve come up with those equations, and how does that affect brand success and thereby retail success. That meat on the bones, that’s the shit which makes things happen in organisations. It doesn’t matter if you’re in retail, professional services, manufacturing or healthcare. Getting to the core of each part of the organisation is one of the key ways to understand how the organisation becomes successful. This is one of the steps to business acumen.

Talking with the leaders is another key part in the mix. The people leading the organisation are the ones who have stories to share, and their stories are worth heeding well. In those stories are nuggets of information which provide context to a lot of what you see happening around you. The culture is like this because. The process is like this because. The success of the organisation is like this because. The leadership is like this because. It doesn’t matter which level of leadership you engage with, as long as you get a range of stories. That’s what helps you get under the skin of the organisation. Once you’re there, you’re part of the fabric. You’ve become part of the story, and whatever you do in your time will help to mould that story. Those leaders will help craft it continually, and they’re the ones to keep listening to. Doesn’t mean you have to act on everything you hear, just listen.

Get a sense of what the press, social networks and media are saying about the organisation. How is it doing? How is it perceived to be doing? How are people talking about the organisation? What’s the recruitment like? What’s the brand like? What’s the message people leave with when interacting with the organisation? This is all valuable information. It helps to craft more stories you can use to help you understand about the organisation.

Read business related material. Be this from the likes of Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times, a business book, a blog, or listening to BBC Radio 4, you have to be in the know about current affairs. It’s what affects organisations daily. Understanding the strengths and pressures being faced in society can help to inform you of what your organisation might be facing. It’s not to be underestimated how savvy the people at the top are. They’re tapped into these conversations readily. You need to be to.

Those four things, they provide L&D with the basis of how to be business minded. The next step is probably the hardest. Aligning what you do to the organisations goals. From everything I’ve described above, you have the knowledge – the acumen – to be good at what you do. To then take the organisations goals and create meaningful aligned L&D goals is hard. You might think you want to create a course on Time Management, and it might be needed, but which organisational goal does it relate to? How about that leadership workshop? That e-learning provider? Those external trainers? The training budget spend? Which areas of the organisations goals can you draw a clear line of sight to for all of these things and more? Once you can do that, that’s when you’ve got it sussed. And if you’ve done that – can you share that success story with the rest of us? Cos that’s like the golden egg right there.

Other things like creativity, innovation, technology, social learning, informal learning, all become part of the mix, and can make for a highly effective L&Der. But those things come with the continued CPD every L&Der needs to be maintaining in their own way.

Psychometrics get a bum rap

I got stabbed in the heart the other day on Twitter. The knife was taken out and plunged once again in my gut as I re-read the tweet. It made my heart bleed. I reeled from the damage and had to take a few days thinking time off. My body needed serious recovery, and I sought some internet counselling. What was it that caused such pain and hurt to my person?

“I’m about to go through some Myers Briggs training. Give me strength.”

Oh my eyes! Oh my soul! Please excuse me while I go cry for a moment.

I asked the question, what is it about going through the training they weren’t looking forward to. I was told it was because it’s like reading a horoscope, it could be applied to anyone.

Sadly, this is true.

Except.

A clinical trial takes years of development before it is passed and allowed to be used by medical professionals to treat patients. Thousands of people go through the trials, and a complete data set is produced that helps doctors to understand under what circumstances should a particular drug be used. What medical condition should the patient be presenting that suggests a drug should be administered? What population is it meant for? What age range is it most appropriate for? What are the limitations of the drug? What are the possible side effects of the drug? When will you likely see the benefits of taking the drug? Who commissioned the testing, the development and the production? Are there ulterior motives?

So by the time the doctor says you should take this drug, this many times a day, for this period of time, it’s with a strong degree of confidence that the doctor thinks it will help improve your condition.

And at the same time, the doctor could just as well prescribe a placebo, and there’s a fifty/fifty chance it could help improve your condition because you believe it will.

That drug is meant for millions. There is no guarantee it will help, just a very educated guess.

There’s a large number of people who will accept the drug because they trust the doctor, and they’ll trust it will help improve their condition. And there’s a smaller number of people who will scrutinise to the nth degree the prescribing of drugs, because they think they know better than the doctor. Only a very small number of people actually do.

Which is interesting then that there’s such reluctance to consider the usefulness of psychometric testing. In and of themselves, psychometrics are designed to provide insights on quite specific things. They’re not meant as a one size fits all. So I wonder why there is reluctance about using them. For example, the 16PF measures 16 factors of personality. The Myers Briggs Type Indicator measures 4 pairs of preferences. The Belbin Team Roles measures 9 different preferred team roles.

They’ve all gone through quite rigorous testing and development which allows the facilitator a degree of confidence that they’re going to help the person understand something better about themself. The person needs to be open to this, and open to what it might raise for them. It’s that self-awareness which is important because it helps us to be able to decide how to act. It doesn’t have to come via a psychometric, and I’ve written before about the association people have with profiling. It could come via coaching, or via mentoring.

I feel psychometrics get a bum rap because of bad experience with them. A facilitator didn’t help the person gain something. A facilitator fumbled their way through the tool and it wasn’t a useful exercise. A facilitator was inexperienced in the tool and created more uncertainty about the value of the tool.

Or possibly the person receiving the feedback has passed on their own cynicism about the tool. Or their bad experience of it.

Psychometrics get a bum rap. What do you think?