I Might as well Do It Myself!

If I had a pound for every time I’ve heard a manager or supervisor over the years utter the words, “I might as well just do it myself”, I’d be quite a lot wealthier.

I suspect that everyone who’s ever had to manage anyone else has, at some point used the line, and I’m sure every parent has. Sometimes, other people just don’t seem to do things Right. By Right I mean, of course, the way you, or I, would.

Like the times others use a comma where I would use a semi-colon or full stop. Or ask a different question to the one that was on my lips during a sales call. Or, heaven forbid, make a mistake, which, of course, I would never do. (Oh, apart from that occasion when I forgot to … and that time when no-one seemed to notice that I hadn’t....)

Anyway, I digress. The point is, that if everyone completed every task in exactly the same way every time, our offices would be about as interesting as rooms filled with toasters. And all the manager would need to do is flip a switch in the morning.

And nothing would ever change.

Luckily, people are different; bringing their own mix of skills, attitudes and experiences to any task or role they’re presented with. They might not complete every task the way you would, they probably won’t complete some as well as you would, but probe the differences more deeply and you’ll probably find other things they do better than you, or ideas they’ve already implemented that you’ve never considered.

Great managers tend to be great coaches. And a great coach doesn’t help individuals become as good as the coach; they help people become as good as they can be.

Which is just as well: How many boxing titles did Angelo Dundee, who famously coached Mohammed Ali, win himself? (I think the answer is none though I'm relying on the internet here. I don't profess to know anything about sport!*)

So, next time you feel like saying, “I might as well just do it myself”, just remember that stepping in might be debilitating for you (have you really got time to do it yourself) and the member of staff. They might never be able to do what you do as well as you do, but they’ll probably be able to do what they do much better.

I’ll leave you to make sense of that.

*Except in World Cup years when I become an overnight expert in all things football.

Rod Webb
www.glasstap.com

In the Naughty Corner

I was not always a model employee. Even during a period of considerable success in my previous career, when I’d transformed a department to deliver huge gains in productivity, morale and motivation, I could sometimes find myself in the naughty corner.

The most notable incidence came when during one coffee break, my colleagues and I came up with the idea of launching an ‘employee rag’. 

Our rationale was that the ‘rag’, which we named ‘Allegedly’, would raise morale and money for charity. It would create development opportunities for staff as they learnt editing and writing skills, and the involvement of both management (like myself) and more junior staff, would encourage teamwork and team pride.

That was the positive side of the motivation coin. The less positive was that we were feeling a bit rebellious as a result of a new heavy handed management approach from Head Office, following a change in our London-based MD, who’d never visited our Yorkshire offices (and to the best of my knowledge never did).

I volunteered to get the project off the ground and, as you’ve probably guessed, the whole thing blew up in my face. ‘Allegedly’ proved a little risqué for the new MD who, apparently, was particularly offended by a letter purportedly from him to our agony aunt, which simply read: “Nobody loves me”. 

Both I and my MD probably learnt a lot from this experience. I learnt quite a lot about disciplinary procedures from the receiving end, but I also learnt important lessons about evaluating ideas, risk management, networking, power and politics. 

The lessons I learnt about power and politics were clarified and brought home to me when I read the new modules Clare Forrest has written for Trainers’ Library. Power and politics can be uncomfortable concepts, but I wish I’d had the opportunity to learn about them through these brilliant new modules when I was a young manager. 

My MD would have benefited from them too: His response to the publication of ‘Allegedly’ not only created a black market for the magazine (with copies allegedly changing hands for ten times their face value in London), it also directly led to me being elected to the bank’s first international staff council and consequently to a huge increase in my own power and influence.

Rod Webb
www.glasstap.com

Chasers Are Good

I was delighted this week to discover yet another service that is remarkably similar in concept, if not execution, to Trainers’ Library being promoted. This one is based in America and has a very similar pricing plan to ours, (which might of course be an extraordinary coincidence).

Delighted? That’s a bit odd isn’t it? Have I completely lost the plot?

Well no, not really. In my past life, I worked for one of the large banks, where I was often frustrated by the fact that we never seemed to be first to market with anything. First with internet banking? No. First with offset mortgages? No. First with free banking? Nope. In fact, I can’t think of a single time when this particular bank was first to market. Instead, it pursued a policy of following the leaders at a safe distance.

I’ve often talked about the importance of innovation to businesses – the need to constantly adapt to a world in a permanent state of flux, for example. But one aspect of innovation that I’ve sometimes overlooked is just how motivating it is to be at the front of the pack. I touched on the thrill of winning last time – well, winning wouldn’t be anything if we weren’t beating someone into second or third place. We rely on those chasing us to improve; it’s their improving performance that drives us to improve.

Apple recently launched the iPad. It’s success won’t ultimately be told by the number of units sold. It’ll be told by whether in five years time, laptops with traditional keyboards are largely obsolete, in the way that phones with keypads are rapidly becoming consigned to the technological dustbin. In other words, we’ll know the iPad has delivered all it promises, when Apple’s competitors follow.

Being innovative is exciting and motivational and nothing confirms success more than imitation. The competition snapping at your heels can deliver a boost to performance and drive like no other. You could almost feel the electricity buzzing off the development team this week as they worked on our next set of service enhancements, due to come online this year and next. It’s probably been our most productive week for ages.

What can you take away from this? Allowing teams to be innovative, to lead, even in a small way, delivers benefits beyond the possibility of a unique improvement in process or a new product. It allows your competitors, internal or external, to motivate your employees, and you, as they struggle to keep up. 

Rod Webb
www.glasstap.com

Meeting Expectations

At secondary school, when it came to sports, I was hopeless. As we lined up on the wall, and the team captains picked their teams, I knew that I would be one of the last to be chosen. And if there were an odd number, I knew that I might very well be packaged with another sporting dud – two for the price of one.

I treated cross country as a gentle stroll in the country. I could take as long as I liked, nobody expected me to be back early, and sometimes I and my fellow duds could fit in a quick detour into town on the way round. If I was in the top 60 or so getting back, nobody would be disappointed, including myself. The perception I, and others, had of me was continuously reinforced.

Now, this is all very odd. Because I am, by nature, an extremely competitive person (as anyone who ever played Monopoly with me will testify). I was reminded of this when I was driving through Burford yesterday and passed the Cotswold Wildlife Park. “I won tickets to there when I was a kid” I exclaimed, beaming. “For writing a story about badgers.”

The event occurred when I was just ten, but I remember it clearly. The class had been given the challenge of writing a story about animals, with three family tickets to the wildlife park to be won by the authors of the best stories.

What I remember in particular was my determination to win and my expectation that I could win. I remember too the hard work I put in, dreaming up my story, writing and re-writing it, before finally, handing it in to be judged.

Then came the morning we received the results. The first two ‘winners’ were announced – not me! I recall a growing sense of panic and then, finally, the teacher saying: “If there had been a bigger first prize, this person would have won it…” and the euphoria I felt when my name was called.

Some might say that I had a talent for writing but not for sports, and that may be true. But actually, when I reflect back on the stories above, what really strikes me is the difference in my attitude and how that was affected by my own, and others, expectations of me. An extraordinary teacher, Malcolm Emery, had instilled in me from an early age a belief that I could write (even if not very neatly – I was the last in my class to be promoted from pencil to ink pen – I’m an even messier writer now!)

The thing is this. People generally live up, or down, to their own expectations, which are usually the result of other people’s expectations. The two continuously reinforce each other in an upward, or downward spiral.

Here’s an experiment you may not wish to carry out. Find someone who is just falling short of their targets. Reinforce your mutual expectations by reducing their targets and wait to see what happens. In my experience, invariably, the sales person’s performance will deteriorate so that they’re now struggling to achieve the new, lower targets.

Rod Webb
www.glasstap.com

Positive Ripples

I’m feeling rather proud of myself. A little exercise I wrote for Trainers’ Library several years ago has been endorsed by Show Racism the Red Card, the charity that uses professional footballers to educate against racism.


The exercise in question is The Witches of Glum. The charity considers it to be such a powerful tool for illustrating how deeply rooted stereotypes can be, and the dangers of making assumptions, that it’s to be included in a resource pack being put together for educational establishments around the UK. I’m thrilled that something I really enjoyed writing might be helping to make a difference.


I have to be honest though. This isn’t the result of some grand scheme. I never imagined Witches of Glum would become one of the most popular and widely used exercises in Trainers’ Library when I wrote it. I didn’t even appreciate, when I’d first written it, how much discussion and learning it could provoke.


Sometimes, training can seem a fairly unrewarding role, particularly if you’re dealing with behaviours that are slow to change and/or you’re not on site to see what happens after you’ve finished delivering your training.


It’s worth remembering then that the actions we take every day as trainers (and as non-trainers) are like pebbles thrown into a still pond. We never really know how far the ripples we create will travel.


Sometimes the extent of our influence is surprising. I had another sharp reminder of this a while back when I bumped into someone who had attended a Creative Thinking course I ran for volunteers a few years before. He told me how that training course had inspired him to launch a community music shop, which sells instruments and music and, perhaps more importantly, is widely involved in supporting and encouraging the local music scene. Core Music in Hexham provides rehearsal space, music lessons and even recording facilities, and all profits are reinvested in the local community, providing music based services to those who can’t afford to pay for them.


I’m sure many of you have similar stories about the ripples you’ve generated from your own training interventions, and if so, I’d love to hear them.


Of course not all the ripples we generate will be positive. I’m sure we’ve all had situations where we wish we’d handled a situation better. But just recognising them and learning from them are part of that ripple effect too.


Now, I’m going to go before I tie myself up in mental knots.


For more information about the great work Show Racism the Red Card is doing, visit their website at www.srtrc.org. And for Core Music, www.coremusic.co.uk.

Rod Webb
www.glasstap.com

Who do I think I am?

My blog has now been given its own link on the Trainers’ Library website. It’s something to do with one of our objectives for 2010,  which is to get our Google ratings higher. Apparently, dynamic content, like a blog, is a really useful tool for increasing your rankings. So there you have it; a truly practical tip in a blog.


So, how do I feel about this extension of my strange mutterings to the wider world? To be frank, I was neither flattered, nor thrilled when the idea was mooted. And, when I first saw my blog on the website, I felt vulnerable. I worried about the impression it would give. I imagined you all muttering into your teas things like: “Who does he think he is – really?” “Talk about ego – he thinks he’s Peter Honey now” (or some such authority). I was even less impressed when I saw that photographs had been added, “to break the page up a bit”.


My reaction is interesting isn’t it? And probably a little bit English too: This concern about ‘overstepping the mark’, this feeling of vulnerability, and dislike of being too much in the limelight. They’re feelings that many of us experience: The first time we’re asked to give a presentation to a group of managers perhaps, or the first time we walk into a room of people as their manager.


And, I’m reminded of a piece of advice a member of my team was given when she expressed many of the same fears after she became team supervisor. The advice she was given (not by me) was to dress one level higher than her role. It’s advice that seems a bit reminiscent of the 1980s - the days of Dynasty and Dallas; when shoulder pads were so large you wondered how women were able to navigate through doorways. But for this individual it worked. Dressing up a bit gave her greater confidence, made her feel more ‘in the role’ and more fitted to it.


And it reminds me too of growing up in a village pub. From a young age, I helped out behind the bar, washing glasses and such, and at the age of 18 I began a lengthy, albeit part- time, career serving beers. The weird thing was that behind the bar I was extrovert, confident and in control. When it came to socialising on the other side however, I reverted to a shy, nervous boy.


Maybe, there is something to be said for role-play after all; maybe role-play is something we do until the role becomes comfortable. In which case I’ll continue playing at being a professional writer, and imagine I’m a sort of cross between Stephen Fry and Robert Peston, and just hope you’ll humour me during my journey of discovery and development.

Rod Webb
www.glasstap.com

Running Towards or Running Away?

This month’s blog comes from a rather cramped spare room at my parents, where we’re currently squatting whilst we look for a new home. The experience of selling our home of the last two years got me thinking about motivation.


I believe there are essentially only two forms of motivation. We can be motivated to run towards something - a goal - or away from something - a fear or discomfort. Sometimes, they co-exist.


When we launched ourselves into this latest mini-adventure, we had a clear goal – we were planning to spend a couple of years living and experiencing life in France, working, as we do now, from home, with one week in six spent in the offices in Alston. The goal was exciting, and enticing. I imagined spending my weekends riding through the sun flecked forests of Normandy, drinking wine on the terrace in the evenings, walking with my white German Shepherd to the local Boulangerie each morning to buy some bread, taking lunch in the local town square – you get the picture.


For a combination of reasons, we’re probably going to hold off our move to France for a little longer, and we realised this a few weeks before we sold our house. So, what motivated us to continue with the sale? Well, mostly, a desire to escape the howling 80-mile an hour winds and non-stop rain that have launched themselves at our hilltop farm almost, it seems, without pause for the last two years. (In fairness, we had been warned before we left the relative comforts of Alston that things were a bit dire at this end of the Wear Valley but thought we were hardier than we ultimately proved to be!).


So, here we see the two forms of motivation co-existing – running towards something positive and running away from something negative.


I suspect that in the current climate, a lot of the second form of motivation is being used in organisations around the world. And that can be useful if we want people to react quickly – we’re basically tapping in to the same drive and energy that would lead them to run from a fire, or, in the case of Indiana Jones, a rolling boulder. But what happens when they sense they’re out of danger? They stop.


So, here’s my thought (finally, I hear you scream): If you want your people to deliver long-term planning, and a sustained high-level performance; in other words if you want to keep them motivated for the long term, you’re more likely to achieve that if you give people something positive to run towards – as long as it’s somewhere they truly want to be.

Rod Webb
www.glasstap.com

Dennis the Menace

When I was a child, my parents employed a friend, a qualified builder, to do some work on their roof. Unfortunately, it only came to light that the friend in question had no insurance after he’d set fire to the house. That was an awkward situation for everyone! Thirty years later, I still remember the builder’s adapted name: Dennis the Menace.

The story came to mind last night as I was considering the difficulties of managing friends.

Perhaps shaped by my parents’ experience, I’ve always been obsessive about distinguishing between personal and professional relationships. It’s not impossible for someone to fall into both categories but where they do, you’ll both need to clearly understand the distinction and how it will be applied. Even then, problems can still arise if both parties aren’t able to compartmentalise their relationship or don’t have a sufficiently developed emotional intelligence.

The blurring of personal and professional relationships at work is never so apparent or confusing as when people move from being one of the team to managing that team. It’s often the most difficult career transition we’ll ever be asked to make. It’s a transition that can strain friendships or previously successful working relationships to breaking point.

Here’s a question that illustrates the difficulty:

Daphne has been a member of a team for two years and within that team of ten, there are three people (Gwenda, Marjorie and Derek) with whom she’s very good friends. Not only does she socialise with them regularly, she’s included them as friends on Facebook. Other members of the team are listed as friends of Marjorie and Derek but not as friends of Daphne. Now that Daphne has been promoted and is responsible for managing the team, what should she do? Does anything need to change?

Facebook provides a modern and interesting illustration of just how tricky this change can be. For myself, I’ve made a rule that I don’t include people who work directly for me on my Facebook list of friends (though most ex-employees are on there). Whilst I enjoy socialising with the team, I think we all need some private space away from the boss.

When people are promoted from team member to team manager they will, hopefully, get lots of training. Typically they’ll learn about communication, dealing with performance issues, setting objectives, running appraisals etc. Perhaps though, we also need to ensure we’re preparing them for the more human dimensions of the change they are faced with. It’s probably not possible to provide hard and fast rules but perhaps we do need to ask questions like the one above in order to raise awareness and help individuals plan for the most difficult change of all.

Rod Webb
www.glasstap.com