What happened to the people agenda?

While listening to the various talks and hearing from respective speakers at speakers at #HRD12, I’m left with an over-riding thought that will not prove popular. In the main, HR Directors and L&D Directors are not doing enough to move the people agenda beyond boxes being ticked, meeting compliance standards and getting better engagement scores. There are some very good leaders at that level who I respect a great deal. But when you have organisations like the CIPD asking these people to come and talk about their organisations, I’m looking to get some real nuggets of insight into how you’ve positively changed the business. Often, I’m left lacking and thinking what I’m doing is more than enough, and in some cases a lot better than the presented organisation.

This raises a few questions. By what standard are we saying the people agenda is of significant calibre that they should be presented at a conference? Some of the speakers requested to attend shouldn’t be the ones speaking. Send someone else from the organisation who has the charisma, know how and ability to present to a large group of people. Your title does not mean you have the fit or ability to speak. Although I bet someone in your team does.

For all the talk of engaging employees with new fangled technologies, how many senior leaders are actively using the tools available to them to do this engaging? Again, I only know a few who do, and the respect they have is bar none. Where’s all the resistance to usage coming from? What perceptions are they battling with? What barriers are they presenting themselves that they don’t want to take part in the conversation? Allowing your staff to use tools, and having an open approach to engagement is not the end game. You need to be in the thick of it.

One of the presentations I attended was about engaging Gen Y, and I was expecting to hear about how L&D methodologies have changed in their organisations to meet the changing ways of learning and attention being grabbed. I learned a lot about great recruitment strategies, but nothing about the delivery of learning. I learned more about how companies like Skill Pill can enable mobile based learning, and it’s another way to consider delivery. This tells me L&D is not doing enough to be innovative in the way we deliver learning, but also we’re not being challenged sufficiently to really push that boat. I take this personally. I love what I do, and think I deliver learning in ways that are varied and interesting, and I don’t think I’m doing good enough.

We’re in a constantly changing world and that brings with it a lot of opportunity and risk to try new things. So who should be the Chief Creative Officer when one doesn’t exist in your organisation? Who should be the Chief Listening Officer? Who’s being the Chief Story Teller? I would suggest these roles sit with these senior leaders from HR and L&D. We have the space and authority to fulfil those roles, it just seems we’re shy of being responsible for them.

I think there should be an HR Director / L&D Director summit where they discuss the people agenda and finally come up with what they think they’re trying to achieve.

Who’s the bigger fool?

Leaders. Plenty of stuff written about them. I’m not a leader. Not in the way we’re all made out we should be. Steve Jobs did this. Richard Branson did this. Henry Ford said this. GE cut the bottom 10% of their organisation every year. And your CEO? Well he just got lucky.

But this post isn’t about leadership. It’s about the followers. Me. I’m a follower. I learned a long while ago I’m not a leader with a vision or with drive to achieve. Not in the sense of leading a business. I’ve still got a lot to learn about the world before I think I go down that road.

But I can tow the party line. And tow it well. I know how to deliver a message. I get company politics. I understand people and what drives them. I can sell in an idea and encourage discussion. I’m a loyal follower. I’ll defend my company to the hilt.

This is true of the world outside of work. I’m a loyal brand follower: Disney, Nike, Android, London, Marvel Comics over DC Comics. I’m also loyal to my family and friends. I quite enjoy being part of the crowd and in amongst the thick of things. I like to be in with current news and not being left out of the loop. I can take someone’s idea, credit it to them and help spread the message.

So I follow. And I follow faithfully and with genuine belief in the idea, plan, vision or whatever you want to call it. I’ll give direction where I think it’s needed and provide advice where I think it will help. I have ambitions to be a business asset. Sounds pretty boring huh? But that’s my role. I’m a support function and I’m pretty clear about the value I add to the business and where I add it. I don’t bring in sales, or develop strategy, or create marketing plans, but I know how to make all those things happen.

People like me, we’re good for the business. We help the culture stay strong and true to its word. My old boss is a great example of this. He wasn’t just the head of learning and development, he was a core part of the cultural development programme we had. That’s influence right there. But he was under no illusion that he had any more power than this. Partly because this was quite enough, partly because that wasn’t his interest anymore. Partly because he enjoyed being in the thick of the way the business operated.

I’m happy being a follower. I know my lot and what’s expected of me. I also know what can be achieved and how to make it happen. Leadership, that’s for you. Following, that’s what I do best.

>I’d like coaching please

>I want to provide a look at how you should be planning your management training for your organisation. There’s a lot of iffing and aahing about what constitutes good management in today’s world. There is structure you can and should have in place and all it takes is a bit of planning.

The first thing I have to talk about is whether or not you go external or internal. That’s to say should you bring in an external trainer or have someone internal deliver the training? The answer to this lies in where your budget lies and how you choose to spend it. There are some very good external trainers who will do a stellar job of training in this field. Just please, whatever you do, get some ‘free’ or ‘taster’ training first as you don’t want to pay £oooo’s for someone only to realise the training has been dead pan. To further this, if you have used a particular external trainer you’re happy to recommend to others please let us know in the comment section below.

Also, I’m not getting into defining leadership over management. In truth, the two terms are so interchangeable that it only really makes a difference to those concerned with titles.

Ok so there are 5 categories of management training you need to give thought to.

1) Management Essentials. This is about giving the managers who are in their role anew or within a 18-24 month old a core look at the things they need to know. Policies, procedures, core management skills such as objective setting, feedback skills, performance management, basic coaching skills, some models on motivation, delegation and flexible management styles. These are the core things that any new manager just has to know. Without this they’ll forever be lost in the sea of management and never know if they’re on the right path.

2) Effective Management. This should be for managers who are experienced in their role, have had teams to look after and need to know what more is expected of them. At this level they should be exposed to a psychometric tool of some sort to raise their own self awareness and give them insight into how other personalities are likely to either support or clash with one another, including their own. There should be some further development of actual management models such as Situational Leadership or a Coaching model such as GROW, better description of techniques surrounding motivation either delving into studies from Gallup or Roffey Park, and some form of business insight or business acumen development from leaders in the business.

3) Emotional Intelligence. This should be for managers who are growing in their role to a senior role and need to be able to understand how to work with a wider group of people and increase their influence across the business. Emotional Intelligence is a much disputed area of management devleopment in recent years. To be honest since competency frameworks were introduced, EI is the last big model introduced in the last 20 years. The dispute arises from the fact it’s mainly credited to Daniel Goleman. If you can get over that, there are many good EI models developed by practitioners who are credible and very reputable. Namely Dr Reuven Baron or work doen by Consulting Tools. This should also include a proper 360 survey tool to truly unravel an indicidual and allow for genuine personal development.

4) Global Management Effectiveness. In an increasingly global world, this level of manager needs to be aware of cultural differences, how to get the best out of teams in other countries, how to deliver on projects that involve global clients, effective multi-national communication. This is a truly difficult topic to handle and needs someone with experience in this field to deliver this.

5) Leadership Excellence. This is for those at senior levels within a business who are looking to find out what it is they’re missing. Training at this level is often about how to inspire teams, deliver a strategic vision, deliver powerful messages, operating at a level where you’re thinking about the future and long term development of the business.

So where does Coaching fit into all of this? Honestly? At every single point. But that’s a whole other blog post. In essence coaching should only be utilised if you are certain of the goals and purpose. If you think you need it because you’ve been hearing lots of great things about the great work Bob has been doing with other people similar in a role to you then you’ve got the wrong idea about where your personal development needs to be.

And you can take the categories I’ve named above and give them any other title you want to change them for. This is intended to provide a framework for overall management development. There are other considerations I’ve not given them time of day to such as succession planning or talent management. To be honest though you can take those concepts and adapt the above to fit those.