Day 2 of ESaC

Today. Today we’ve started venturing into the detailed learning of what it means to understand emotions in others. As a reminder, the 7 universally recognisable emotions are: sadness, happy, anger, fear, contempt, surprise and disgust. We were taken through the micro expressions people display when they experience this emotion. We were also taken through the theory of how an emotion triggers an automatic appraisal process which leads to an action. There’s a lot to go through, so let’s get started.

First of all we we’re taken through the emotion timeline. That is, from the moment we experience an emotion, how do we move to action. This is at the core of self-awareness on the topic and leads itself to helping us to understand how to manage these emotions when we feel them. I can’t reproduce the timeline or go into detail about its facets due to copyright restrictions.

Essentially when something triggers an emotion in us, we are physiologically hardwired to ready the body for action. We cannot change this as it’s been evolutionarily passed down to us. This all happens within milliseconds. Our experiences will add information to this readiness in order that the body prepares itself in the right way. Most of the time we can trust this automatic reaction. Part of this automatic reaction is the micro expression seen, and part of it is physiological readiness. Up until this point, we’re not conscious of what’s happening. From the point of readiness is when we can determine what action to take. We can either trust that an instinctive action is appropriate for the situation, or we choose to act differently. Once we’ve acted we start to return to our base line – or our normal way of behaving.

What I like about this model is that it helps to give a process to what happens when we feel an emotion to when it is initially acted on. We were taken through the model to help us see how for any of the seven, we can pick a distinct trigger for an emotion and track the path to action. It’s hard to capture just how significant this level of personal insight is. The purpose in doing this exercise is so that we raise our self awareness to enable us to understand how to manage our emotions better. What is crucial about doing this following the Ekman methodolgy is that it’s steeped in scientific research, not just observations and intuition about human relationships – hard data about the human condition.

We moved on from there to learn how to display the seven emotions. I really enjoyed this as it was a good opportunity to practice the facial expressions that go with each. I posted the pictures up attempting to show: base line, sadness, anger, contempt, disgust, happy, surprise and fear. What I found in practicing these was that when I display some of the emotions, they are more subtle (especially contempt!) than they should be and can be.

There was good opportunity to take the Micro Expression Training Tool (METT), which you can also do here. It’s an interactive tool which provides you with information on recognising micro expressions and feedback about selections you make. This was really useful as it tests the learning gained from practicing the micro expressions.

Towards the end of the day we had probably the most pertinent discussion for the L&D community – what about body language? Without doubt, there is no scientific research which shows that non verbal communication through body language means any set of behaviours. That is because, unlike the micro expressions which are universally understood, body language is completely contextual. A backward ‘V’ sign in the UK has one meaning, and something very different in European countries. Importance of eye contact has a myth of indicating truthfulness, but this is not borne in anything. Eye movements that are meant to indicate remembering facts, or making up lies are completely untrue. I could go on. Importantly, very importantly, all L&Ders need to be very careful that we do not describe body language in terms of fact, or science, as there’s no scientific research that currently supports any of it. What we should be careful to do is help people to understand they need to be aware of the persons mannerisms they are with, and notice significant changes to the norm, and from that infer that something changes, but we cannot attach meaning to them.

Today has been full of learning. I’m glad that Paul Ekman International has decided to make this training public as it will only help to strengthen the way many of us use what knowledge and experience we have in delivering interventions, in working with others, in coaching, and in self awareness.

Day 1 of ESaC

I’m attending a three day course called Emotional Skills and Competencies. It’s run by DPG Plc, whom I came into contact with via Mr Mike Collins whom I met at the first L&D Connect unconference. This is my how I’ve found day one.

The course focuses on helping you to understand emotions in you and others. It is completely built on the work by Dr Paul Ekman. Followers of this blog will know I hold Dr Ekman in high regard in the field of psychology, body language and insight into human behaviours. That, for me, automatically puts this course a par above anything on emotional intelligence that is in the open market.

Essentially, Dr Ekman has provided us over 40 years of research and development into what emotions humans feel, how they are displayed facially and physiologically, and what process we automatically goes through whenever we feel an emotion. Dr Ekman has found there are seven universally recognised emotions – sadness, surprise, contempt, happy, anger, fear and disgust. When we feel one of these, there are distinct facial and physiological reactions that accompany each one. We’re hard wired to react in these ways, and we can’t escape it.

It’s been useful to spend today understanding these emotions, and how there are other descriptors which we may associate with each emotion. For example, With ‘fear’ we may also feel anxiety or apprehension, with ‘sadness’ we may feel gloomy or despair. Through understanding the emotions we are able to increase our self awareness, and recognise the ‘spark before the flash’.

We’re starting to learn that when working with others, before you can start to ‘read’ them using these techniques, you have to create a base line from which you understand what is ‘normal’ for that person. From that point, once you start to observe reactions from them, you are able to determine what change that person is going through, and how you should best respond to them. Ultimately, what this course is trying to help us to achieve is how to have more productive and constructive relationships.

As we’ve been going through the course, two things come to mind. This is a must attend course for anyone who deals with other people on a regular basis. Learning about emotional competencies in this way is a sure fire way of helping everyone to understand how to recognise emotional reactions they are feeling, others are feeling and therefore how to work better with others. This isn’t restricted to HR, L&D, OD, Coaching professionals. This is anyone in the business world who regularly has to present, influence, facilitate or lead others.

The second thing is this is proper learning and development. We’re getting first class training from Phil Willcox and Aaron Garner, who have been trained by Paul Ekman International. Where discussions are meandering into other realms of hearsay and myths, we’re being given quite clear guidance on what scientific research has proven and what it hasn’t.

More tomorrow.

Calling all hands

So that’s where the inspiration for an ‘All hands meeting’ came from. I really should have clocked that one sooner.

It’s often interesting to hear what’s happening in the world of employment. Not employment law, but in these hard times, securing work seems to be at the fore front of a lot of people’s minds. I’m amongst that group, and trying to secure gainful employment. And as others have done before me in speaking about their experience of job hunting, I’d like to share mine.

Some brief context – I’m searching for senior learning and development or organisational development / effectiveness / design roles. I’ve been at it for about 3 months now. I’m doing all the good stuff I should be doing – registered with agencies specialising in this field, looking for opportunities daily, applying to jobs of interest regularly, and generally making sure I’m doing what I can to find a job. I’m a firm believer that you have to put the hard work in seeking a job in order to get the right job for you. It’s hard.

Here’s my learnings so far.

Agencies are easily the first and best port of call. In an age of social media and the likes, there are a lot of roles going direct to agencies that don’t even enter their own job sites or job boards until they’re sure that’s what they need to do. I have to say I’ve been impressed with the relationships agencies are building with candidates. When I speak to the consultant I’ve met, they recognise my name and know what I’m looking for. When I speak to them about potential roles, they’re advising if I’m right for it or not. I get reassurance from them that I’m in good hands.

LinkedIn is my best friend right now. Second to agencies, a lot of companies who want to hire direct are posting on there. I’ve easily applied to more roles directly through LinkedIn than I have job boards.

Twitter isn’t doing anything for me. It’s useful in letting people know updates as to what’s happening with my job hunt, but that’s about it. In a chat with David Goddin earlier today, he made a very good point that most people won’t be coming on to Twitter to see who’s applying for a job they’re hiring for. Most people will be using Twitter like they always do. Equally though, most people are very kind in helping to spread the message that I am looking for work. That is very appreciated.

The rhetoric on using social media to source jobs has been made a bit more interesting. As I’ve said, LinkedIn is proving to be a gold mine. Twitter is for good conversation. The two aren’t meeting in the same place. I suppose that’s fine. What it means for me is I’m being far more active in other online spaces than I thought I would.

My CV is undergoing daily revisions. The more I see job descriptions and roles being advertised, the more I think my CV needs to be stronger. This is a personal thought, and I’m by no means advocating everyone should be doing this. A long while back I wrote about the Death of the CV. We're a long way from that point, and the CV continues to be the first impression recruiters gain of you. However, I've been more free about where I make my CV available. Mine is on Google Drive too. I’ve simply edited it to make sure only the personal contact details I’m happy to be publicly available are there.

I overestimated my ability to find work. This is a hard one to swallow. I entered the job hunt thinking I was a shoe in for anything being advertised. I got a very hard wake up call. There are a lot of very good candidates applying for the same positions I’m going for, with experience that is better, and with credibility I can’t compete with. *deep breath* It’s ok though. I’m determined to fight harder for the positions I’m going for.

There are other learnings I’ve had about work and life, but these are the ones which relate to my candidate experience so far and my job hunt.

When did we forget?

Across most interactions with business and organisations that we come into contact with, we’re given some sort of designation. It’s different to a job title or a career in something. You don’t mind being designated a fighter jet pilot or a police officer or a Chief Executive Officer. But when you walk into a shop you’re called a customer. In a hotel you’re a guest. At the local club you’re a member. At the betting shop you’re a punter. And actually, that’s all fine. It helps to define the relationship of us vs them. You know, the people serving us.

Those people serving us, they have designations too. Staff. Workforce. Resources. Personnel. In some organisations and companies they’re lucky enough to be called ‘People’. But only by a select few. When you start to delve a bit deeper into various functions in an organisation they lose that title. HR starts to call them ‘Staff’. Recruitment starts to call them ‘Candidates’. Learning and Development starts to call them ‘Delegates’. Operations call them ‘Numbers’. Finance call them ‘Liabilities’. Ok that’s unkind, but you get what I’m saying.

About a year ago, I stopped doing this. People are people. At work you don’t stop being a person. Although you’d think that’s what happened. Policies start to dictate ‘your behaviour’. processes forget we’re human by nature and won’t always follow the prescribed way of doing things. Some people at work rely on processes and policies to make themselves feel important. They try to help others by enforcing the way it has been decreed to be done. They forget the people they’re helping are trying to live their lives, and a big part of that is being alive at work.

It’s part of my job as an L&Der to respect everyone and listen to all discussions, input, conversations and feedback. I don’t accept that though. I’m at work to do a job, and I do it well. But in working with others, I see them as people first. That has to be the first port of call for all the work we do as HR professionals. A lot of people speak up about the irony of how Human Resources is now less about Human and more about Operations.

We’re in this role because we are meant to believe in the power of people to do things that make organisational life a success. When we start designating them as something other than people, we immediately stop achieving this goal, and become focused on processes and procedures. Not once will you ever see a journal article or white paper published that highlights the success of X process in the making a business successful. It’s always a person or team who made it happen.

I’m Sukh Pabial, nice to meet you.

Reflections on #ppia

So it’s been 4 weeks since #ppia. I’ve been reluctant to write about the day because I’ve not known what to write. There has been some good follow up action happening in the online world, and this has been heartening to see. David Goddin wrote about how he thought it was a social learning masterclass. That’s very generous, and it gives me a lot of food for thought about what learning events should and could be like. Martin Couzins has curated various posts and content created in this round up post and I’m genuinely amazed such content was created at all. The Storify’s give such a great sense of the conversation being had on the day. That also gives me food for thought about learning events and why this action isn’t more prevalent.

Then I look at online interactions and how people seem to be connected through attending #ppia and are being highly engaged in each others postings. Martha Wright started a discussion on her #project365 blog about #3goodthings and the forum is truly inspiring stuff. Emma Vernon has been very disciplined and trying to post things daily on Twitter. Sarah Mason seems to have caught the bug, and she wasn’t even at the event.

What did #ppia mean for me? I’m still not sure. I brought together a group of very interested individuals who wanted to learn how to lead more positive lives for themselves, and in someway take that knowledge and apply it back to the workplace or their work practices. It’s pretty great to think I helped that to happen.

Kate Griffiths-Lambeth was so impressed by the notion of a Gratitude Visit, she wants to collect people’s stories who have done such a thing and collate them into a book she can publish. I think that’s brilliant and what a joyous read it would be.

I feel a sense of success at having made the day happen. I put a lot of work into creating something different, and I definitely did that. I threw out the rule book for what a learning event should look like and created a discussion. The environment was more than safe for exploring many threads of thought and challenging preconceptions. In and amongst that, I provided the content and delivered some key messages. A great piece of feedback from Mervyn Dinnen was that I didn’t come across as the expert. I just shared stuff and let people decide what they needed to do with it. If that’s not what L&Ders should be doing as par for the course then I don’t know what we think we’re doing.

Questions have been raised about doing another one. The jury is still out on that one. It took a lot of effort to make happen individually. Stars need to align, the universe needs to speak to me, and a bolt of lightning from God to give me some of that same motivation I had in wanting to make this happen.

I’ve spoken before about being a positive deviant. I certainly deviated from the norm of traditional L&D events. I deviated from the norm of traditional marketing methods. I deviated from the norm of ticketing the event at a high price. I deviated from the norm of giving away all the content to anyone who has an interest.

I still also don’t know what to call it. I’m stuck in calling it an event. It wasn’t a workshop but it was. It wasn’t a course but it was. It wasn’t a conference but it was. It wasn’t an unconference but it was. An event is the best thing I can think to coin it. I don’t mind it being called any of the above, but I don’t think any of them actually capture what the day was.

To my mind, #ppia is one of those events where I won’t really know what I achieved that day until some time down the line, and I’m ok with that. I’m enjoying seeing online activities and interactions amongst those who attended. I’m enjoying knowing that I delivered something which pushed the confines L&D seems to be stuck in. It was a good day. That’s enough for now.

Brainstorming

Over my career, one of the activities we’re all taught about is brainstorming. In some quarters I’m aware this is taken as a term which is not sensitive to those who suffer conditions in the brain where electrical impulses go on overdrive and effectively hyper-charge the brain. There are other terms I’ve heard used – ‘thought showers’, ‘ideation’, ‘creative thinking’, ‘etc’. I don’t wish to be offensive, yet I’m hard struck to use a term which does not fit the purpose of this post better.

The thing is, we’re not taught how to brainstorm well. What we’re told is some other form. Make a list of all the things you can think of. Put all your ideas down on a piece of paper and we’ll select the best. In pairs discuss the best way to do this and present a solution. Everyone come up with one idea that we’ll share.

Oh. The. Pain.

The essence behind any form of idea generation, is to find a bit of inspiration that drives something forward. There are good ways of making this happen. Like this:

Belief in good ideas coming from anywhere. Just because you’re the leader of a team, and you’re initiating the brainstorm, doesn’t make you the best placed to come up with the best suggestion. If you’re asking the team for some misguided notion that you’re engaging the team, and you’re not willing to take their ideas on board, then you’re not actually engaging them. You’re belittling them. If you believe that your team might have a better solution than you, then be open to what they have to say.

Judgements are best left at the entrance. This is true of life, but sadly we’re not all geared that way. You need to lay some groundrules/principles that help people to understand that it doesn’t matter what they suggest, it won’t get dismissed. It may not get used, and it may not be given the time of day, but it won’t be judged.

Together we’ll get there. Collaboration is just bloody brilliant. I’m a big believer in better things being possible because we help each other get there. If one person makes a suggestion, others can and will suggest some variation. It’s motivating when it happens like this.

As the facilitator, recognise every contribution. The best way for this to happen is to write it down where everyone can see it’s being added. Even if your team members only suggest one thing, at least they’ve suggested something. And when they see you’re including on a long list of other stuff, they’ll know they were part of building a solution. Hurrah!

It has to be a long list. Brainstorming and coming up with three things to discuss is so self-defeating you may as well not have bothered. Only from a long list can you see where the nuggets of gold lie. Inspiration will come, but only when you see what ideas people have.

There are many techniques for actually carrying out a brainstorming session, and that’s for another time to discuss. If you follow the above, you’ll see that the techniques make little difference because you’ve already enabled everyone to bring their best.