Why I'd Work For Mr Selfridge

I was chatting enthusiastically about Mr. Selfridge to one of my colleagues the other day – shocking I know, we should, I’m sure, have been getting on with something. (For those of you not in the UK and therefore missing out on the latest period drama to hit our screens, Mr Selfridge charts the rise of Selfridges, the prestigious department store in London’s Oxford Street.)

The interesting thing was that we both said how much we’d have liked to work for Mr. Selfridge or at least the version of him we’re seeing on our TV screens.

But what makes Mr Selfridge as depicted by the charismatic Jeremy Piven the sort of person you, or at least Tanya and I, want to follow?

The easy answer is he’s an inspiring leader. But what does that mean?

Well, he’s very good at creating a vision. From the very first episode, everyone who worked for him felt that they were on an adventure, that Selfridges was going to be something bigger, better and more exciting than anything before. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?

And importantly, he’s able to bring his vision to life, which he does himself on the shop floor, and not by sending a memo round.

His enthusiasm too is electric - he’s a whirlwind. He could also be called a showman, a retail genius, a risk taker and a visionary. 

But what Mr Selfridge is particularly good at, is genius at, is something we’ve been talking a lot about recently… employee engagement. 

In our recent new modules for Trainers’ Library, we used the following definition of employee engagement:

“When an organisation values their employees and the work that they do and the employees value their organisation and the work that they do.”

And this pretty much, for me, epitomises what’s been going on, to date, at Selfridges. Although he’s clearly the driving force behind his business, interestingly, and heart-warmingly, Mr. Selfridge never seems to take credit to himself – he always recognises any achievements as the result of a team endeavour. And his team responds – almost matching his own innovation and daring.

Perhaps there’s one element of employee engagement we haven’t focused on enough yet – integrity of the leader. And perhaps that can be broken down into two other words – honesty and trust. 

Mr Selfridge gave a great team talk last week, after it had come to light that a small number of employees were stealing from the store. And I loved the way he linked behaviours back to his vision for the store, his values and to his belief in his team:

“I wanted to talk to you about something that’s really important to me – honesty. Every customer of Selfridges can trust they’re getting exactly what they’re paying for. I’m proud of that, I hope you are too. Steal from this store, you steal from yourselves... Honest endeavour together – this is the spirit of Selfridges.”

In the same talk he also added, “Without trust, you can’t run anything.” 

So, even in difficult circumstances, Mr. Selfridge reminds us that we’re in this together, that we’re a key part of the business and that the spirit of the business is the team working together and trusting one another. 

Yep, I’d work for him.

Why I Love January...

I love January. Well, not all of it. I hate the darkness and the way the weather can trick you into thinking it’s a nice day until you step outside and a biting East wind slaps you in the face. Come to think of it, I hate the post-Christmas credit card too….

Let me start again, January is a fantastic time to be at work. And I love the fresh start, the new strategy, the new ideas, the planning, the buzz and the excitement that a new year at Glasstap generates. 

A big part of this is our strategy day, which involves all of the UK team getting together away from the office, where we give ourselves the mental and physical space to focus creatively on the year ahead. (Although emails are still monitored to ensure urgent enquiries are dealt with.) 

We begin the day by having a final review of the previous year. Although we review progress against our strategy at quarterly team meetings, this final review is important. It allows us to think about our successes and those areas where we could have done better so that we can learn from these and use those learning points to move forward in the current year.

The day also involves some team exercises to get us in the mood as well as a lot of brainstorming and idea generation.

But the day is also about the ‘nitty gritty’. For those of you that don’t know, Glasstap has been built around five key values, or as we call them, ‘Passions’. Three of these, to be Innovative, Customer Focused and Socially Responsible are featured on our website and stationery. The other, more internal Passions, are to be Financially Strong and Team Spirited.

These Passions have been a fundamental part of our business since 2002. (Before that we had nine values and we could never remember what they all were!)

During the course of our Strategy Day, we commit in our teams and individually to what we’re going to deliver under each of the Passions. This involves us thinking about what we’re going to do better, more or differently. We identify where we’ll need help from other teams to help us achieve our goals and then we commit our actions to paper (or virtual paper). 

The records from the day take two forms:

Our Strategy:
This is on our intranet, with a list of objectives under each of our five Passions. It’s updated regularly as we progress through the year so that all of the team can see at any time which objectives we’re hitting and where we need to improve.

Personal Objectives:
Team members record their personal objectives on a record that forms part of their appraisal process. Observant readers will have noticed that by doing this, we’re effectively killing two birds with one stone (with apologies to any vegetarians). We don’t need lots of time consuming separate meetings to agree individual objectives – everyone already knows what their contribution is going to be and how their performance will be measured. We do still have individual review meetings, but the outcomes from the strategy day make these very straight forward and largely focused on providing the help, support and training that individuals will need to achieve their objectives.

I’m really excited about the outcomes from this year’s Strategy Day, which took place in Alston House Hotel last week. In fact, this year’s strategy day has left me even more fired up and excited than usual and I can’t wait until you see the results yourselves as they filter out in the form of new services, new materials and new initiatives. I hope you like them and I hope you’ll let us know what you think - the feedback we receive (for example in our customer satisfaction surveys) does have a real influence on the objectives we agree on our strategy days and the priority we give them.

Why do we put so much emphasis on one day of the year? I truly believe that this one-day is a vital ingredient in the success of Glasstap and here’s why I think so:

• Every member of the team is involved in agreeing our team objectives.
• Team members know what they need to deliver for the team to achieve its objectives.
• Every team member makes a personal, public commitment to doing his or her bit.
• Everyone can see immediately how their individual goals fit with the team and organisational goals.
• Our Passions ensure we have a balanced approach to running our business. They’re essentially an adapted version of the Balanced Business Scorecard, which mean we’re not focusing on short-term financial gain but on developing a truly unique and superb suite of services in the long-term.

Perhaps the most important thing though is that because our team is so involved in the development of our strategy, they feel ownership of it and a commitment towards it. And that, largely is what we strive for when we talk about employee engagement. (You’ll find some fantastic new material in Trainers’ Library on this very topic.)

Seven Copyright Myths Exploded

Oh dear. Before I even start I feel the need to warn you that this is going to be really dull. In fact, to be on the safe side, and bearing in mind Health and Safety, I’d better state here and now that this blog may cause drowsiness – so please do not read it whilst driving or operating machinery.

I didn’t even want to write it really; researching legal guff really isn’t my thing at all. So, why did I? Well, I did it because I’m constantly astonished at the number of professional trainers who are, presumably unwittingly, regularly breaching copyright law. Given the penalties that exist for copyright infringement, I felt that this stuff, boring though it is, is important.

So, I filled myself with caffeine, did some research and set out to clear up seven common copyright myths. Here they are:

Myth 1:
It’s OK to use images downloaded from Google Images in my PowerPoint and handouts.

False. Google Images is merely a search engine that searches websites for images. Google does not own the rights to any of the images displayed and cannot therefore give those browsing and finding the images a licence to use them. Ownership of the images found in Google Images remain with the websites they were found on, or the original creator of those images.

Using an image found on Google Images in PowerPoint is therefore a clear breach of copyright unless you have the image owner’s permission to use it. We created Trainers’ Images to help trainers avoid this trap.

Myth 2:
It’s OK to show film clips or television clips in training events.

False. That is, not unless you have a licence from the owner to show it. But there is good news here. Two organisations provide licences that cover a number of works:

The Motion Picture Licensing Company Ltd (MPLC) (http://www.themplc.co.uk) 
This organisation offers the MPLC Umbrella Licence® which grants permission from over 400 major Hollywood studios and independent producers under one blanket agreement.

Filmbank Distributors Ltd (Filmbank) (http://www.filmbank.co.uk) 
This organisation offers a more limited public video screening licence (PVSL) agreement for a lower number of producers. There are also licences for specific businesses, such as hotels, ferry companies and events organisers.

Myth 3:
It’s OK to play music in my training sessions.

False, unless there’s a PRS licence in place. With the advent of accelerated learning, suddenly everyone began playing music during their training events. But you cannot play commercial music publicly, even in an office with just a couple of employees, without a PRS licence. The good news for trainers is that if you are running a training event in a venue that already has a PRS licence, for example, a hotel, you should be covered by that licence. But always check with the venue that they hold a PRS licence. For more information, go to www.prsformusic.com.

Myth 4:
If it doesn’t have a copyright symbol it’s not copyrighted.

False. The Berne copyright convention means that in general copyright exists on every original piece of work whether or not the copyright symbol is present.

Myth 5:
Everything on the Internet is in the public domain and free to use.

False. There is a common misconception about what public domain means in copyright law. A work will fall into the public domain only when copyright expires, which is normally many years after an author’s death. Being accessible to the public is not the same as being in the public domain.

Myth 6:
It’s not a breach of copyright if I change a decent percentage of the words or adapt it?

False. Sadly, it’s not as simple as that. In terms of ‘fair use’, the term usually applied to quoting from another’s piece of work, there is no magic formula as to the amount you can ‘quote’. As a general rule if by copying you could reduce the commercial value of the original work (by for example, reducing sales of that work) there will be a breach of copyright. If you adapt someone else’s work, this is called a ‘derived’ work. The author will have a claim on any money you make from the derived work.

Myth 7:
It’s difficult to bring a case against copyright theft.

False.  Again, this isn’t the case. Action following copyright theft is usually taken in the civil courts. Whilst in criminal law, the accused is innocent until proven guilty, in civil law it is only necessary to prove that it is likely, based on the balance of probability, that the defendant is guilty.

So, here’s some good news to cheer you up again. Glasstap’s materials, found in Trainers’ Library and Trainers’ Images are developed and owned exclusively by Glasstap (except the articles which are included with the author's permission). If you have a Library+ Glasstap licence you can use any materials in Trainers' Library with no risk of copyright infringement. And if you're a Gold customer, you've got access to all of our images too which, again, you can use without risk. Now, don’t you feel better?

Finally, to suitably adorn my posterior (cover my backside) I’d better point out that I am not a solicitor, have no legal training and that before acting on any information in this blog, you should seek professional advice. I will not be held liable for any losses etc. etc.

Rod Webb
www.glasstap.com

Merlin's Magic Part 2 - What My Horse Has Taught Me About Leadership

In my last blog, I talked about my experience training a previously unhandled horse and the lessons I could take from that experience and apply to training people.

In this blog, I want to use the same experience to talk about leadership.

To train a horse, you first have to become a leader to that horse. Leadership is an integral part of horse life. Every herd has a leader – although the role can change. In our herd (of three!) there is a clear leader. The hierarchy is most apparent when you want to bring the horses in – they always come off the field in the same order and both boys will ‘hang back’ to show due deference to our mare. (As I write this, Bobby is making a huge racket outside because my partner is off riding the mare and he’s been left behind!)

In episode 1 of my home videos, I illustrate something that Monty Roberts causes Join Up. It’s a powerful illustration of what can happen when you establish your leadership credentials and something I found quite emotional the first few times it happened. An effective leader can lead his horse not just from the front, but from the side, from behind or, of course, from above.

So, how do you establish yourself as a leader of a horse, and what can that teach us about leading people?

Here is a list of things that Merlin has taught me about being a leader of horses:

1. You only become a leader when the horse sees you as a leader – not when you give yourself the label. (If you have to chase your horse round the field to catch him, who’s the leader?)
 

2. Leadership is built on trust. The horse will only truly follow you if he trusts and respects you.

Communication starts with listening. You have to listen to what the horse is telling you (through body language) and the feedback you’re receiving in order to understand their perspective and be able to work with it.
 

3. Never deal with issues in anger. If you’re angry, walk away. Horses don’t respond well to anger and anything you might do in the heat of the moment is likely to result in a defensive, knee jerk (and often dangerous) reaction. (Fear and previous difficult experiences are often at the heart of long-term behavioural problems too.)
 

4. Punishment simply doesn’t work as a tool for improving the performance of your horse. It’s important to focus on rewarding the right behaviours, rather than punishing the wrong ones. And, when asking them to change a behaviour, it’s important to reward the ‘slightest try’.
 

5. One of my roles is to establish clear goals and expectations for the horse and myself. Goals need to be a mixture of short-term goals (getting him to clear a low jump without hitting it) medium-term goals (riding him) and long-term goals (competing?).
 

6. My job, ultimately, is to help my horse be the best he can be. I need to regularly review performance and be ready to challenge Merlin in order to help him step outside of his comfort zone and achieve his full potential (for example, when dealing with the puddle phobia).
 

7. Finally, the reward. The more successful I am as a leader, the easier (and safer) my life becomes. A horse that is unafraid, willing, that can be guided with the lightest touch, that feels valued, respected and listened to, is a joy to work with.

Personally, I think you could replace the word horse with person (or people on occasion to keep it grammatically correct) and end up with eight pretty decent golden rules for leading people too. (And, no, I don’t have to chase my team round a field in order to get them to come in to work!)

What do you think? As always, I'd love to hear your views. You can leave your comments here, or if you prefer, email me.

(And now I promise to get off my high horse and talk about something else next time. Actually, he’s not that high…)

Rod Webb
www.glasstap.com

Merlin’s Magic Part 1 - What My Horse Has Taught Me About Training

Those of you who attended this year’s Trainers’ Conference will know that over the course of the last twelve months, I’ve fulfilled a lifelong ambition. In July last year I bought a previously unhandled horse and started on the journey of training him myself. It's been a thrilling adventure.

I bought my first horse nine years ago as a novice and since that time I’ve learned a lot about natural horsemanship, a concept I was lucky enough to be introduced to by a friend in Cumbria. My first horse, Bobby, is about 19 now and is a trusting and trusted friend.

In a nutshell, natural horsemanship involves communicating with horses in their own language. It relies heavily on body language but also on a few simple principles based on how horses communicate with each other.

I consider training Merlin to be one of the most rewarding experiences of my life and the process is teaching me a lot about horses. What I didn’t expect however, was how much of what I was learning would apply to leading and training people too.

I go into detail about some of the learning points that I can apply to training people below. But, before I get on to those, you might like to view some home movies. My partner filmed me 'at work' with Merlin on two separate occasions and they'll show you something of the journey I've been on. I've added captions too to hopefully help make some sense of what's going on. To view them, click here.


The Learning:

1. Horses learn most when they are right on the edge of their comfort zone. Merlin lets me know when he’s at that edge by blowing a little through this nose. At this point he’s telling me that he’s feeling challenged but he’s able to control his nerves. If I push him too far and he becomes scared, he’ll panic. At this point anything he learns will be negative as he tries to escape the whole learning experience.

People are a lot like that. No-one learns much when they’re in a state of panic and any lessons learned will almost certainly revolve around ‘how can I avoid ever being in this situation again’. But we do need to be encouraged to push the boundaries of our existing comfort zone in order to learn and expand it.


2. My role as Merlin’s trainer is to help him find his own solutions to the problems I present him. So, when I wanted to train him to jump over a pole, I deliberately took the pressure off when he reached the jump and gave him time to think and work out how to overcome the challenge himself. I also rewarded him each time he completed the task successfully by giving him a little break/time to relax. As a prey animal, horses really value feeling safe and under no pressure.

It’s important to make the ‘learning space’ in organisations safe too; a space that is not demeaning and that is free of recrimination or ridicule. And, whether it’s learning a new process or skill or going through a large change programme, people will be motivated if they feel that where they’re heading is better than the place they’re leaving – that they’ll feel more comfortable when the journey is complete.


3. Perhaps the most important lesson of all when training a horse is to communicate in a clear and consistent way that the horse understands. I need to use his language, not mine. Body language and words must deliver the same message.

The same applies to people.

(When I look back on the videos I can see where my communication is muddled or unclear and I can see the confusion this causes.)


4. Reward and recognition is important. Horses can be rewarded by treats but I prefer praise and comfort (which can be as simple as a rest or a stroke) as reward mechanisms.

It’s important to recognise and reward people’s learning successes too. (Though I strongly recommend you find alternatives to the neck stroke.) And a break from the pressure of learning can be a reward for people too. (I have a few friends at the moment who are doing degree qualifications and I know how much they’re looking forward to a break from the essays.)


5. Learning is experiential. You can’t explain to a horse how to do something – they have to learn by experimentation and doing. (Try showing a horse how to jump a fence or run at 30mph whilst carrying someone on your back and you’ll get my point.)

I have always firmly believed that people too learn best when the learning is experience based, testing and applying their skills, knowledge and beliefs in order to develop them.


6. A pause gives the horse time to reflect on the learning that is occurring. (A horse will often lick his lips when he’s processing new ideas or information. It’s a sign that he’s ‘got it’. You'll see he does this in the video very clearly when watching the traffic pass him by.)

Pauses within the learning experience are important for people too; providing opportunities to reflect on what they’ve learnt and think about how they might apply that learning .


7. Training Merlin involves lots of repetition and review to reinforce the learning and build confidence.

Practice and review are critically important for people too and help to turn ideas into established habit and changed behaviours.


8. When I'm training Merlin, the learning has to be in ‘bite size’ chunks. It’s important to know when to stop in order to avoid confusing him or turning him off the learning experience.

And, once again, the same surely is absolutely true of people.


Well, there we go. I knew I couldn’t be succinct when on my absolute favourite topic of my horses. And I haven’t even got onto to the lessons about leadership, which I’ll cover next time.

In the meantime, if you’ve any thoughts about this blog or want to challenge any of my learning points, let me know.

And if you have any questions about the videos, or natural horsemanship, I’d love to hear those too. It’s a topic I’m passionate about.

Rod Webb
www.glasstap.com

The Power and Weakness of Images

I received an email that has really made me think. I’m still thinking about it now as I read back over my completed blog. There is no doubt that the email’s author has a point (which we’ll address) but the email also made me think about the nature of images and how we interpret them.

The email I received was a criticism about the nature of the photographs on Trainers’ Images. The writer suggested that our images played to stereotypes. To quote: “It was interesting to note that images around problem-solving and decision making in the main feature men, images around coaching feature women, images around gossiping feature women and images relating to working late feature men.”

Good grief, I thought (or something similar) when I checked the images in question – it’s a fair cop. And it is. If you choose to interpret some images in a certain way they could show a gossiping woman, for example. And certainly the pictures showing decision making depict men.

But hang on, those images don’t show decision making at all – they show a complete inability to make decisions don’t they? What a terrible slur on the male of the species.

And doesn’t that image with the ‘gossiping woman’ actually show a really ineffectual male manager, prepared to act on hearsay rather than observed behaviour?

And when we get to “images around coaching feature women” things become really interesting. I checked back – every coaching image bar one, features a man and a woman and in each it’s not possible to clearly state who’s coaching whom. (They were deliberately set up that way.)

The way photographs are interpreted can tell us a great deal about the observer’s ‘map of the world’. Indeed, our own interpretations will tend to reflect our own expectations of the world. It’s a similar principle to the ideas used in the Witches of Glum exercise.

Look through our photographs again, by following this link. Personally I think the way we’ve portrayed women as bullying, but otherwise effective and conscientious people who have all the bright ideas and men as ineffective, anorak wearing, accident prone buffoons, who can’t manage time, their intrays or other people, or even decide, come to that, if they need an umbrella or not, is appalling. ;-)

Of course we’ve more to do to ensure a balance in our portfolio of images and we’ll always make sure we mix roles up to ensure, as far as possible, that we never categorise behaviours based on race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability or any other difference. (For the first two photoshoots, we employed an even split of male and female models ranging from their early twenties to their late sixties, from ten different ethnic backgrounds. And that’s not easy to accomplish with 16 models!)

There’s a point to be made here about the power and weakness of photographs. There is a weakness because photographs can lead to powerful connections that we may not expect, or desire. And that’s where deliberately vague images, like the abstracts we’re creating for Trainers’ Images can come into their own. By removing some of the detail, we can remove most of the information our brains need to jump to conclusions.

But there’s real power too in the fact that images will be interpreted in a particular way based on an individual’s inbuilt view of the world. This emotional connection can be used to provoke thought and discussion around issues ranging from equal opportunities and diversity through to management and leadership style, and even positive v negative behaviour. Take the working late thing, for example. You might view this as depicting positive behaviour – the conscientious employee. I see it as a negative image – depicting someone unable to manage his working day effectively, or perhaps a potentially damaging organisational culture. (I’ve worked in an organisation where I observed employees competing to be last in the office – but more about that another time!)

Rod Webb
www.glasstap.com

The Inner Voice

It’s a few weeks now since this year’s Trainers’ Conference, and I’ve been reflecting on my own learning and insights. The most important for me, I think, was the power of the ‘inner voice’.

I was struck by the significance both of our keynote speakers, Jim Lawless and Sally Gunnell put on the ‘inner voice’.

We all have an inner voice – as Jim says, it might be the one that just said “no, I don’t!” And it has a huge impact on our emotions, beliefs and ultimately what we actually do and achieve.

The inner voice is particularly good, in my experience, at preventing you taking action. Like right now – I actually want to take a few hours off work this afternoon to pop into Exeter but that voice is coming up with all the reasons why I can’t:

“It’s a ‘work day’, you’ve already had one day off this week and besides, you’re all behind, look at the number of emails in your inbox and just look at the state of your desk. You can’t even see the surface to dust it. And anyway, it’ll be too late soon.”

Oh dear.

I experienced the full impact of the inner voice last year when I first thought about fulfilling a life-long ambition. I’ll talk more about that adventure another time but in short my ambition was to buy and train, by myself, an unbroken (I hate that word) horse.

The inner voice had a field day with that (forgive the pun):

“You’ve no idea what to do. You’ve never even been near an unbroken horse. They’re dangerous. You don’t have the skills and, besides, you’re too old now.”

Ouch!

It was actually the age thing that made me challenge the inner voice – the realisation, (which I think only comes to you in your forties) that time isn’t endless.

So, I did what Sally talked a lot about. I changed the inner voice. Instead of worrying about my lack of skills, I thought about how it would feel to work with a young horse. I imagined a bond developing and the feeling I would get the first time I sat on my horse. I thought about what help there might be if I needed it and I focused on the need to take action now, because time isn’t endless.

Right now, I’m tasting lunch in Exeter. See ya. :-)

Rod Webb
www.glasstap.com