Is monitoring staff working at home a good idea?

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hi, my name’s Neil Poynter and welcome to the Leadership Soapbox.

For those of you who’ve been here before, welcome back. For those of you who are new viewers, you are very welcome. This is where I sometimes get on my soapbox about things, and I talk about things that matter to me, and I think are pertinent around leadership and management.

Today’s is one of those. I want to talk about something that’s really relevant to COVID, to where we find ourselves in the work situations that we’re dealing with now.

It’s caused and provoked by some news I saw last week that Microsoft are bringing out some new software for monitoring homeworking. I’ve got a real problem with this.

What’s the message that we are giving our people who are the people who go out and do wonderful work for us and make all the things happen? And I say to you, now you’re going to do remote working, you’re going to work from home. Now I’m going to monitor you. I think there’s a real problem in the message, if you like.

The underneath message that that sends, because what is it? I think it is, we don’t trust you. We don’t trust you to put the hours in, to do what we say, to be good employees.

So what’s the impact of us saying to people, we don’t trust you? I think we’re going to see a drop in performance. I don’t think we stand a chance of getting that real optimal performance that we would really like to get from our people.

If you look at all the studies around engagement, around motivation, one of the big things is you’re trusted, you’re empowered, we believe in you, we want you to go, go do it. Organisations that work on the basis of this is the result I want, how you do it is up to you.

And yet here we are in really testing circumstances, where people are feeling under pressure for loads of reasons. There’s looking after children, there’s looking after relatives, there’s the worry of the overall context. And yet we’re saying to them, we don’t trust you.

I have a real problem with that. Now, if you are in an organisation, that’s thinking of doing this, I want to challenge you about this and go please think about this and really don’t do it.

What I really want you to think about doing is going, we trust you, we want you to go away and work like this, and we believe in you. Now at the end of this video, there’s going to be a link onto another where I’m going to go into three bits of theory that really back this up. Okay?

First of all, there’s a psychotherapy model. Some of you will not know that I’m a trained psychotherapist. Well, there’s a piece of theory that really backs this up. I want them in adult. I don’t want them in child. I don’t want to talk to them as a parent. I want to talk to them as adults. Do I monitor them as adults? Hmm, interesting.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Are they going to feel good about themselves if I don’t trust them?

And then finally McGregor’s XY theory X theory manager, versus Y theory manager. I’m going to go into those on another video. But right now let’s just think about the impact of a message that says I don’t trust you. I think this is really key.

Now I’d love to hear your views on this. What are you doing? What do you think about this?

How do we develop an environment of trust, where we want people really performing at their highest level as much as possible giving us their best but at the same time we’re telling them we don’t trust them. I think this is critical, I think it’s vital that it’s something we think about before we go too far down this avenue of over monitoring them. Sure there’s a right amount, but is it monitoring how they do it or what they do?

There’s the jury let’s have a think, let’s have a chat about this. If you’d like to have a conversation about this neil@neilpointer.com, send me a comment below. Let’s have a conversation about it. What are you doing about it?

Let’s open this up to people and follow up, click on the link on to the next video, and I’ll tell you more about it there. But let’s just think about this. What are the benefits of really developing trust?

Thank you very much. I’ll see you in the next video.

Explore the series:

• Building trust with work at home staff – video 1
• Building trust with work at home staff – video 2

Leadership during COVID

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hi, my name is Neil Poynter and welcome back to The Leadership Soapbox.

This time what I want to talk about is what we’re all going through at the moment, COVID. I want to talk about the impact, I want to talk about what we’re seeing and I want to talk about what we as leaders need to perhaps be doing right now.

So let’s just step back from this for a moment and think about what we are all going through. I am seeing and hearing lots of people now starting to suffer from some form of fatigue from this. There’s a lot of people who are feeling the pressure of the environment, of the loneliness, of the change in the way in which we are working and living. And this is I think now starting to really impact on people.

So there’s two aspects to this that I want to particularly pick up on and I want to touch on a bit of theory here because I think we can bring some stuff into this that we can learn from.

So the first one I’m looking at and I’m seeing is an impact on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Now, if you understand Maslow’s hierarchy of needs or if you don’t rather, there’s five levels of need.

First one is physiological that’s food, water and air. Second is safety and protection, we need to feel secure. Third one is social need, we are a social animal. Fourth need is self esteem. We need to feel good about ourselves, about what we do about where we are, what we provide and fifth level is self fulfillment that we grow, we develop.

Now the very simple idea in Maslow’s model is that if a lower level is removed or is threatened then the requirement for the higher levels dissipates or disappears. So what we are seeing at the moment is that level three, our social need is actually being taken away from us at the moment. Now I’m not going into the politics of whether that’s right or not but it is.

I’m noticing and hearing a lot of people now struggling to be motivated, to push forward, to achieve which is probably around self-esteem because of that pressure at level three. So there is something here for us about creating some social networking. Let’s park that one out to one side.

The second piece of theory that I’m noticing is the Kubler-Ross change curve or grieving curve. And if you’re familiar with that, is as we dip down into the curve and as we come down into it, we’re going through anger, denial and then despair and into acceptance. And then hopefully what happens is that we start to come up, acceptance, realization, looking forward, anticipation and coming out in the other side and starting to the mood pick up.

Now, if you think about what’s been going on, we’ve been stuck in and around the bottom, there hasn’t been any real idea of when we can start to pull out of this. Now, I can see both hope and challenge in what’s going on, which I’ll come to in terms of our actions. So the Kubler-Ross curve we’ve been stuck down here.

Now, normally when we’re managing change, what we’re doing is we give people hope by giving them some way on a timescale, we haven’t been able to do that. So people have been stuck down here in the bottom of the curve, wondering what’s going on. So we’ve got two impacts, we’ve got two things really, really coming into play here.

Now the third one is threat, there is a threat. There is a virus out there. It impacts people, we’re seeing people dying, we’re seeing people suffering long-term health issues. There’s perhaps that element of threat there for people.

We’ve also got the winter coming. If you’re watching this in the Northern hemisphere, we’re into winter, long, cold, dark evenings, nights. We don’t have the summer anymore that we had for the lockdown one, lockdown two seems to have really got to people.

So what do we need to be doing? Okay, couple of things that are springing to my mind, we need to be creating those social networks. We need to be creating opportunities for people to engage with one another in a relaxed and social manner. How can we do that? Is this around having quiz nights, some form of entertainment, relaxed scheduled coffee mornings? I know a scheduled coffee morning, a relaxed schedule coffee morning may not sound relaxed but getting people together, but without work, without any other purpose apart from to connect, how can we do that? Let’s explore that.

The other thing I think we need to be careful of is that we’re starting to get some hope in terms of a vaccine. Okay, but there’s still probably going to be some months before that is completely rolled out. This is not going away fast. And there is the prospect that we’re going to come back from Christmas, whatever form Christmas takes or the festive season to what we don’t yet know. But there may be some months yet before this situation changes.

Now, that means we as leaders have got to be prepared for that. So what can we do?

Okay, I’d like to point you back to my three videos about what we need to do. If we want people to work for us, the morale videos and I’ll put a link back to number one at the end of this one. We need to be actively leading and not only the team but individuals. I think it is very important right now that we respect that individuals are going to have their very specific needs.

How do we behave? Okay, I’ve stayed out of the American politics but I want to just compare and contrast that the mode of behavior and the way people are talking, Joe Biden, calm, considered, we are fighting the virus, not one another, okay. Whether or not we agree with the politics, the manner and the way in which he is now starting to communicate is that that we would normally expect of a leader. And I think that’s very important.

What we need is calm voices but portraying hope and moving forward when we can but not lying about the reality. And that’s important, people will know when you are not being authentic and genuine. This is a time to be authentic and genuine with the news you have on what you are telling people.

So let’s just wind that up. First of all, COVID, not going away for a while.

Two, Maslow, social needs. What can we do? Let’s do something that gets people together on a social networking basis.

Three, we’ve got this pressure on the Kubler-Ross curve on the grieving curve, people are stuck down in this very depressive, quite depressive place at the bottom of the curve. We need to be aware of that, that we’ve got to handle that. Therefore, how do we deal with that?

Okay, this is the leadership, this is the morale piece, giving people some hope that the business is okay. Refer back to those morale videos that I spoke about and the final piece being authentic and real and caring about our individuals. This is so important right now.

Okay, that’s it. There is so much for us to do. I think I’m going to break this one down into a number of bite-sized chunks and I’ll speak to you all soon. Thanks very much, bye.

How to lead during Covid

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hi, my name is Neil Poynter. And welcome back to the Leadership Soapbox. It’s sorry, we’ve been away for a while. I just had to sort a few things out, but we’re back. You’re going to see some changes here soon maybe some stuff happening.

Now, what I want to talk about today and this is a very quick introductory video to a longer one about what we’re having to deal with now, COVID.

There are real leadership implications about what is going on right now. We’re in either second or third wave depending on where you are. We’re seeing real impact on people now. And I don’t just mean physically. I mean, mentally, morale, motivation, mental health.

We need to be aware as leaders right now, that our people, however good we’re feeling, our people are starting to be impacted, especially I would say the more extrovert people who thrive on social interaction and being out and about, and being with people. And I don’t mean professionally as in perhaps our sales forces or perhaps those more field-based people. But I mean the extrovert personalities rather than the introverts.

There are a lot of things that we need to be paying attention to now. And leaders are going to need to step up over the next few months. I’m not saying we haven’t already. I think we have more work to do. I think there are many more things and there’s more time that we are going to have to manage this situation for.

Where we are now, this is not going away.

We need to be calm.

We need to be considered.

We need to have a plan for how we are going to deal with potentially I think the next six to nine months.

Yes, there’s hope about a vaccine. Yes, we can all hope.

There’s a lot of things that need to be achieved yet before we can move forward. Now, the thing that I want to wave as a flag here is that yes, people are looking at festive seasons and getting together with their families, hopefully for some sort of celebrations, whichever festival you’re celebrating. But what’s after that?

We’re going to hit the new year, January 2021. How are people going to be coming into that?

And then, if you’re watching this in the Northern hemisphere we’ve got two to three months of winter and still potentially in the situation we’re in.

We need to have a plan as to how we’re going to handle that. Now, what I talk about on the longer video, which I’ll link to at end of this, is some particular aspects of theory that we need to be thinking of. But we also need to be taking action and thinking about what we can do to help our people through this.

Whether you are in a business, a local authority, a political party or whatever, I don’t care. Right now, if you are in a position to influence people how they behave to lead, we have a responsibility to step up.

We also have a responsibility, to be honest with ourselves about how we’re doing. I’m going to be honest here. This has been a struggle. This last one, this last lockdown that we had in the UK, I’ve personally struggled. It’s been hard And we need to accept that. And that a lot of people will be feeling that.

Now, remember, this is an external factor that’s happening to us. This is not our fault. This is not anybody’s fault this is happening. And I’m not getting into the politics of that now, but it is there. It’s a reality.

People are struggling and that’s okay. This isn’t good. This isn’t normal. This isn’t great at all. So if people are feeling down, it’s kind of not their fault. It’s okay. And we need to make space for them to say that.

So that’s my main point of this. What we now need to be doing is going okay, how do we help?

How do we support our people moving forward into 2021? And we need to have a plan.

So think of this, I’ll put the link on the end of the video. Oh, it should be coming up sometime probably around about now. Have a look at the longer video. It’s about nine minutes, but I go into some particular aspects that we need to be thinking about.

And then I’m linking off that into my morale videos which I did earlier, which are now relevant, very very relevant about what we need to be doing. But we need to have a plan.

Okay, thank you very much for watching. Let’s start thinking about this. We need to have that plan for COVID and 2021. All right. Thanks very much for watching. I’ll see you again soon.

How to build morale by treating everyone fairly

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hi, my name’s Neil Poynter, and welcome to this week’s edition of The Leadership Soapbox.

This one is part three of my series about engagement and morale and how we build these. Now, I’m talking about this again, in a time with COVID, it’s on the rise again. This is so important what we are talking about here.

People are feeling threatened. They’re feeling endangered at a level. And what we can do as leaders to reassure them and make them feel good about what they’re doing and what they’re involved in is critical right now.

So, just as a quick reminder, in video one and two, we talked about the emotional and the intellectual engagement.

Emotional was about there being a clear goal and aim, a plan, and then people being clear about what their role is in the plan.

The intellectual part was that they could believe and look at the plan and go, “Yeah, that’s possible,” even at a stretch. But they look at the organization they’re in, and they go, “Yeah, I think we can do this.” And thirdly, they look at the leadership and go, “Yeah, they’re competent, “and I believe they’re capable of delivering this.”

So, now we come on to the third part, which is the physical or material. Do they have what they need, want, desire, what creates that need, for them to be able to do the job?

Now again, there’s three parts to this in the model.

First of all, fair treatment.

They’re treated fairly, salaries, discipline, you know, poor performance, you know, rules. Do rules apply equally to all? Now, here’s one, a contentious issue to think about, isn’t it? Are we as leaders held to the same level or are we held to a higher level of behavior? Do we need to be seen to be following the rules? An interesting thought in the current climate, and in particular, with you know in the U.K., we’ve had examples of perhaps this thinking. So, fair treatment, people are treated fair and they know they’re going be treated fairly.

Secondly, best tools for the job.

We give them what they need to be able to carry out the work. Where possible, they get exactly what’s needed, and it’s as good as possible.

Thirdly, working conditions are as good as possible.

We look after them. We make sure that they work in comfort, that they have reasonable conditions. And they should be as good as possible. If people feel we’re penny pinching or well, we don’t really need that. How important do they feel to us? Now remember, this is about giving an impression about how important they are. Now, it’s got to be authentic. So, this is what I say, and I linked this back to what I said yesterday in my video about compassion, we need to genuinely care about our people. And this is where we show it, fair treatment, right tools for the job, good working conditions, and we genuinely care about looking after them.

So, where does this model come from? Now, in the first video, I talked about a gentleman called Bill Slim. Well, let me now give you his proper title, Field Marshal Viscount Slim and his book, Defeat into Victory. If you want a classic of leadership, this is one to read.

Now, he wrote this model of morale in 1942, on his own in his notebook. I won’t go into the full story now, but I want to bring out is the fact that he lived the rules himself. And I’ll give you an example.

He was commanding the army in the jungle, many thousands of people, and one of things he used to do was that he would have to put whole units onto half rations for a period of time. If any of his units went onto half rations, so did his headquarters, including himself. Any of his units. So, it wouldn’t always be the same unit, obviously. And perhaps you’d have one go onto half rations and then another. His headquarters was on half rations the whole time. He could not countenance giving that order and then not living with it himself.

Now, you talk about fair treatment, you talk about being seen to be being fair. That’s what I think leadership is about. It’s a great example of living it.

Bill Slim is revered in the British Army as being one of its greatest ever leaders, and there’s very good reason.

So, my question to you is what are you doing now in this current climate to build engagement and morale with your people?

This is a critical subject. If you’ve got any questions, the email is neil@neilpoynter.com If you’d like to have a conversation about this, what are you doing? Let’s share this. What are we doing?

What practices are out there that people are doing right now to build morale and engagement with their teams in this critical time? It’d be great to find out.

Thank you for watching and I’ll be back soon.

Follow the Building Morale series

• Building Morale Part 1
• Building Morale Part 2
• Building Morale Part 3

What role does compassion play in leadership?

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hi everybody, my name’s Neil Poynter, and welcome to a special, quick edition of The Leadership Soapbox, an additional one this week.

And today, I’m going get on my soapbox a bit, because there’s something I want to talk about. And it’s the subject of compassion in leadership and do they work?

Is compassion part of leadership?

Well, okay, I’m going to start off with a quote from Jacinda Ardern, the New Zealand Prime Minister, who’s recently been re-elected on a landslide. Let’s just listen to what she says,

“One of the criticisms I faced over the years is that I’m not aggressive enough or assertive enough or maybe somehow, because I’m empathetic, I’m weak. I totally rebel against that. I refuse to believe that you cannot be both compassionate and strong.”

Jacinda Ardern

Well, let’s take this apart and also, let’s put this into a context. The context is what we are living in at the moment. People are scared. People are concerned. If we talk about, “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs,” we are down at level two concerns. People are worried about their safety and security. So what’s our role as leaders now?

I would put it to you that Jacinda has got it absolutely right. Compassion is integral to good leadership. Now, just think about it for a moment, leadership is about people. If you don’t care about your people, if you don’t bring compassion into your decisions when you are leading, you’re not caring about your people, therefore, you know, what are you doing?

Now, what I’m seeing is an increasing amount of macho posturing from leaders, puffing out their chests, trying to stride around the stage they’re on and going, “Look at me.” No, that’s not your job as a leader. What your job as a leader, that I would put it to you, is to make your people successful, to make them feel secure and good in what they are doing and confident about what they are doing and able to move forward.

Our job as leaders is to make our people successful.

Now, part of that is compassion. When we are in difficult times, when we are struggling, when people are genuinely concerned about what is going on in the world, that is when leaders have to step forward and demonstrate their compassion.

Now, guys, and I’m going to say something here, guys, maybe, just maybe, we need to learn something from the more feminine side of leadership here.

We need to care. Now, I don’t think this is necessarily a problem, okay? Let me tell you where I learned this. I learned this at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. I learned this as a young Army officer. You care about your people. You care about your soldiers, very simple lesson. Your soldiers eat first. You don’t eat first. You make sure your soldiers are looked after first. That’s compassion. You’re caring for them. You’re making sure they get what they need in order to be successful.

But also in our decisions, we have to be thinking about the impact of what we are doing on our people. What’s going to be the effect of this decision I am making right now on my team?

Now, sometimes we need to make tough decisions. I get that. I totally get that. But how you then behave with that tough decision, how you follow through on it, do you demonstrate that even though it may be harsh, and I’m thinking now companies are having to make redundancies.

I understand that, it’s tough. But how you treat those people who you are going to let go demonstrates to the people who are staying, how you really think about them. There is nothing wrong in being compassionate. There is everything wrong with macho chest-puffing and trying to be the big man. That is not leadership. That is self-aggrandisement. And that is something completely different.

I put it to you, that this is a really important thing that we need to be thinking about. What are you doing to demonstrate compassion, to be compassionate? And it has to be authentic. So what can we do to support our people?

And I think this is a really, really important part of what we’re doing at the moment and what leaders need to be about. So what is going on? What do you think? What can you do?

What, let’s have a discussion about this, about compassion and about where it fits in leadership today. Thank you very much. I’m Neil Poynter. Subscribe to the channel below if you can, and let’s have that conversation about compassion because it’s important.

Thank you very much.

How to build morale by showing your staff that the organisation is capable

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hi, my name’s Neil Poynter, and welcome to this week’s episode of the Leadership Soapbox, now this is part two of my three, or probably be four-part series actually, on how we build morale and engagement in our organizations.

So if you remember, in part one, I described that we’ve got to engage three parts of people, we’ve got, got to engage us at three levels, there’s our emotions, there’s our intellect and there’s actually us as physically, as people. So last time we covered the emotional engagement. ie engaging the heart, and that was about having a clear objective and goal that people want to get to, a plan, and then people understanding their part in it.

So this week we’re moving on to the intellectual engagement, now it’s great if we’ve engaged people emotionally, cause they wanna be part of it and they will, and now they go, so how, how do we do this?

And what they now start to do is to look at you, your plan, and your organization. So again, three things we need to do, to be able to engage people intellectually that, yes, this is going to work.

So first of all, the plan has to be seen as being achievable, if challenging. Now there are some people who would say, needs to be challenging to put the stretch in there, but it needs to be something that even if challenging people go, yes, that’s possible, it’s achievable, yes with a stretch, we can do it, because if it’s not, they’re just not going, they’re going to give up.

Okay, you might have the best goal, and a reasonable plan is active and people understand that, but if I don’t believe that you’re actually going to be able to achieve the plan, that they’re just not going to engage.

Okay, so let’s say you’ve got an achievable plan, great, tick! Part two, the organization is capable and effective, all right, so what people do is look around themselves and go, so this plan with this group of people and this capability, can we achieve it?

Now again, if they’re thinking, well, we’re not organized properly, we haven’t got the right capabilities, they’re going to lose faith. So again, here’s something, is the organization capable of achieving that goal and that plan?

Now it might be that part of the plan is to develop the capability, well that’s okay, that’s good, but you’ve got to tick that box. Can people look around the organization and think yes, this organization is capable of doing it.

Now the third one is where this gets personal, people look at the leadership and go is the leadership of this organization competent?

Able to lead this plan?

And does it care about its people?

Is it going to think about it’s people on route now, this is where it starts to become about us, and it’s really important that if you’re the CEO of your manager of a department or leading a department that your management team, your leadership team is seen by the people in the organization as being competent and capable of leading this plan.

That’s not just that they’re good leaders, but there’s actually got to be a degree of technical competence here, so that they are capable of executing this plan, now, I think there’s also that final part in there that, you know, do they care?

Are they going to think about the people that they’ve got in their teams and how they’re going to deploy this plan?

So three things, again, this intellectual engagement, this is where people are going to quiz you mentally, is this plan achievable? Is this organization capable of achieving this plan? At least the leadership competent.

So this is where we get quite pithy, so I don’t know, ask yourselves is your leadership team competent? Is the plan achievable? Is your organization capable?

Now, if you’d like to discuss that or have a talk about that, then please get in contact with me, you know, what are your plans for making your organization competent and capable?

Is your leadership team up to what you’re doing?

Okay, so that’s part two. I’ll tie this in with part one, but let’s start thinking about this, what are you doing to engage your people?

And let’s have a conversation about it. Thanks very much and I’ll see you next time.

Follow the Building Morale series

• Building Morale Part 1
• Building Morale Part 2
• Building Morale Part 3

How to support someone’s mental health by listening to them

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hi, my name is Neil Poynter and welcome to this special World Mental Health Day edition of the Leadership Soapbox.

This is a very important day and it’s important because it raises awareness about something that is going to be and is a huge issue for us at this current moment in time with what is going on in the world with COVID, with people in lockdown, with people having to live in very different circumstances.

This is a really important angle that we need to be thinking about as people, as managers, as leaders and just friends. Now the UK Mental Health Charity Mind UK is running a campaign this year called Do One Thing. Now I want to talk about one thing that we can all do. And I want to talk about this from my own personal experience and I’m going to be very open here.

From 2010 through to 2013, I went through my own mental health crisis, I had a mental breakdown for want of a better term and it’s one I’m happy with, it’s a term I’m personally happy with.

One of the things that is most important is the isolation and how you feel when you are going through something like this. And one of the most powerful things that people can do is just listen.

Now I want to give you a couple of tips about how you can start to and go through and finish listening to someone.

Now the first thing is to genuinely ask, authentically ask, how are you? And when they give the body swerve, But, oh, yeah, life’s good at the moment, things are going well, the boys are okay dah, dah, dah, whatever, you go, Ah, sorry, no, how are you?

Now, this is especially important with carers and people who are handling lots of things and they’re struggling to stay out of the mire. How are you? Now, they may brush over it. Now if they do, don’t try and hold them but it will have registered that you are interested in them and that will be so important.

If they do give some indication that they might be open to talking, then say, do you want to chat? Do you want to talk? What’s going on? What’s happening?

Now, if you do that, please make sure you’ve got the time. If you haven’t then say, look, would you like to chat sometime? I can’t stop now, but I’m really open to chatting, let’s make a time. But if you’re going to make that time then please make sure you’ve got time to listen to them.

Third, so actually listening. When you listen to someone, you don’t have to do anything except listen. You don’t have to say anything apart from acknowledge, just go, aha, yeah, yeah I get that, yeah I understand. That’s all you have to do. You don’t have to solve anything, you don’t have to say anything, it’s not a conversation. Let them talk, if they want to get angry about something, let them get angry. Obviously, you’ve got to be safe but I mean angry about something not in the room. If they want to cry, let them cry. If they’re a good friend and you would hug them and they’re crying, then say, would you like a hug?

But you don’t have to solve anything or do anything for them, okay. Just listen to them, give them the space to let this out. You have no idea how helpful that can be and how validating for them that someone is prepared to just listen to them.

When it sort of comes to an end, ask if you can help in any way, I would say, don’t do, is say, “Right, I’m going to do this thing” because you are taking the ownership of the situation away from them. Ask if, can I do anything to help? If they say yes, great. If they say no, I’m okay, I’m coping, all right but just let me know if there is anything I can do.

My final point is if they don’t respond and if someone’s gone quiet on the phone and they’re not replying to messages or anything like that, please don’t give up. The very fact that you stay in contact you keep on contacting them, will register with them at a level that they are important. So please don’t give up on them. If they don’t respond to you with messages, leave a message on the phone saying, just to, I wanted to get in touch with you, let you know we’re all okay, wanted to know how you’re doing, please pick up the phone to me. But if they don’t, don’t get bored with them, just keep on going.

Okay, a brief message to perhaps someone who might be struggling at the moment, please reach out for help. Please talk to someone, please ask for the help you need. It’s okay to be not okay. You might feel difficult, embarrassed, even some shame about it. It’s not real. And nobody else will think that of you. Pick someone who you trust and contact them, please do that.

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, that’s it for me today. I’m going put some links up now about various charities, Samaritans et cetera. Please think about people around you, please reach out. Please make contact, please just go and listen.

Thanks very much. I’ll see you next time on the Leadership Soapbox.

How to build morale by showing you value your people

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hi, my name’s Neil Poynter, and welcome to this week’s episode of The Leadership Soapbox.

What I want to talk about this week is something called morale.

How do we get people to want to work for us, to really buy into what we’re doing, and to give much more of their available performance?

Now in about 2003, the Harvard Business Review brought out a piece of research that basically said that if you only pay people, the best level of performance you can hope for is about 70%.

Now, that kind of sounds okay, but actually that’s leaving nearly a third of their available performance on the table. So how do we get to that 70, 80, 90% level where we’re getting that proactive behaviour?

We’re getting them spotting problems. We’re getting the creative solutions. We’re getting them to solve things before they even become a problem. When we’re really getting that buy-in and commitment to what we’re doing.

And why is that important now?

People are nervous, people are scared, and they’re scared at quite a deep level. They’re scared for their homes, they’re scared for their jobs. And that attacks our motivation at a very deep level.

If I went into Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we’re into level two and three. Now, how do we reaffirm this? Okay, so let’s look at this.

Now I’m suspecting I’m going to break this video into three parts, or this into a three-part video series. And I’m going to use a model that’s a few years old and it’s attributable to a guy called Bill Slim. I’ll tell you more about him in the final video, but he said that we need to engage people’s needs. And there are three levels of need. There’s an emotional need, there’s an intellectual need, and there’s a physical need.

Now we need to engage those in order. So first of all, how do I engage someone emotionally?

Well, it’s about them feeling that they’re wanted, and that they are valuable and that they are involved in something that is useful and good. How do we do that?

One, we need a goal. We need a clear goal that they can buy into, that they can see as of value, and also that there is a hierarchy of goals. So there’s an organizational goal, there’s a department goal, there’s a project or team goal. But they can see how, what they are doing, what they are involved in, links in all the way up the chain to what the overall purpose of the organization is and how it helps. Because if it doesn’t, why am I doing it? So we need to answer that one first.

So we’ve got a goal. Second, there’s a plan and it’s not just a plan, it’s an active plan that goes out to solve this problem, to meet this need, to really get on top of it and they can see how it’s going to work.

So two, an active plan that meets the goal, that ties in with the organizational goal. Okay, getting this?

Now the final bit, and this is where I think the real magic is in this, because I’ve seen it really work. And it’s then saying to that person, that individual, this is your role and why it’s important in whatever it is we’re doing. And it’s directly saying to them, you’re important, you do good work. This is important that you’re doing this.

So my question to you here is when was the last time you told people they were important?

And I don’t mean as a group, I mean, individually and said, this is why your job is important to this organization, this is what you contribute. Now that goes into people’s motivation at such a high level. If we’re talking Maslow, we’re talking level four, self-beliefs you know, it’s really, really important, but this is also about them seeing that they are part of the overall goal, they can see what they contribute.

And it’s so important to people. Now, I’m just checking the time. I’m going to have a story, which is going to take me about a minute, so stay with me. I saw this put into practice by a manager who saw a 40% change, improvement in absenteeism and sickness in her department in a month, simply by telling people, that they were of value and what they contributed. Now it doesn’t really matter what organization that was. But let me just say that that contributed totally to the bottom line.

40% just by people knowing they were important and valued. Now you might think people should know they’re valued by how much you pay them. No, they don’t. Believe me that just disappears. You got to show them they’re important and tell them they’re important and let them see they’re important by how they contribute into these plans, into these goals. That’s when they know they’re part of something.

Now that right now is going to really help people that they know they’re valued. So that’s part one, goal, plan, individual role. That’s engaging them emotionally. That’s their emotional needs about them being important in the organization and of value.

Come back and join me on video two, which will be out soon, and I’ll put a link after this and we’ll talk about the next one, which is engaging them intellectually, and their intellectual needs.

If you liked this, please like it, hit the like button, share it with people or and, please get on the email to me, let’s have a conversation about this, about how this can work in your organization. And here’s the question. Remember, when was the last time you told your people they were important?

Thanks very much. I’ll see you on the next video.

Follow the Building Morale series

• Building Morale Part 1
• Building Morale Part 2
• Building Morale Part 3

What does leadership look like at all levels in an organisation?

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hi, my name’s Neil Poynter, and welcome to this week’s episode of the Leadership Soapbox. What I want to do this week is answer a question I’ve been sent in. And it’s about is leadership applicable at different levels in an organization and what might it look like?

So, the first part of that is a very easy answer. Yes! I think leadership is applicable at every level of every organization.

And it comes from that first video I did, which was about the question we need to be answering. And if you remember that video, that question was; “What support does my team need from me in order to be successful, today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year?”

It’s an attitude of mind. I care about my people. I want them to be successful at what they do. So what support do they need from me now?

As soon as I am thinking in that way, I am starting to think like a leader. Because I’m orienting myself towards what is success and what does my team need to get there. It’s not about me, I’m thinking about my team and what they need to be able to do and to achieve. And that is ultimately what leadership is all about.

We have to deliver the results, but we have to do it with our team. And the team that is well-led, at whatever level of the organization is going to be more successful than a team poorly led.

Now, the question also said about, what’s it going to look like?

Well, I think the fundamental principles are the same. The tools we will use and the scale of the issues and the challenges will be different, but that’s why we progress and move through an organization with experience as we gain that. But the fundamental key aspects of that leadership are the same.

So if I go back to the second video I made, where I talked about five key points that leaders need to be putting into action, there was understanding the situation we’re in, making the appropriate plans and decisions, providing the motivation and engagement that people need, supervising or being around to oversee the delivery and execution and step in if necessary.

And then fifth, if you view that as a cycle, constantly reviewing the decisions and plans. Are they working? Do we need to change anything? And going back around that cycle again.

And then, in the motivation and engagement, and the third video I talked about leadership style. Where am I having to be directive or am I able to be consultative? And the key aspect there, having thought about this even more, have I got time? Now, it’s not “have I got time?”, how do I make the time? How do I give the team enough time to be consultative with them, so that they can engage with the plans and decisions?

If I’m imposing things, you can be sure that someone’s gonna go, “well, what about this?” If we give them the time, if we can give them the lead in to be engaged in that process, about how things are going to work, we are going to get much better results.

And I think those principles apply at every level of an organization. And it’s up to us, to ask that initial question, and then be able to apply the answer and to make the appropriate plans and decisions and do make the appropriate actions with them.

So, is leadership applicable? Absolutely. What does it look like? It’s fundamentally the same, just the scale and some of the specific tools that we might be using are going to change.

But I think there is that fundamental approach.

Do I care about my people?

Do I want them to be successful?

If I do, then I’m starting to think like a leader.

Okay, thank you very much. Please, any more questions, please send them to neil@neilpoynter.com and I really look forward to speaking with you all again soon. Thanks very much.

A case study on how a business used the 5 points of crisis leadership

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hi, my name is Neil Poynter, and welcome to this video from the Leadership Soapbox.

What I want to do in this video is something a bit different. I want to give you a case study from an organization that I’ve been involved with over a number of years now, and that has gone through a very specific change program. And I want to talk about it in the context of the five points that I did in my video about what leaders should be doing now.

And the reason I particularly want to do this is I think it exemplifies the importance of a number of the points in that video. And so I’m just going to walk you through those five points and talk in general terms about what this organization did.

So if you remember that video, the first point was about understanding the situation.

And I talked about understanding being not only having the insight about what is happening and why it’s happened but what it means going forward.

So this is how this all started, and the MD of this particular organization was paying particular attention to an area of his business and what was going on in his marketplace. And he saw a very very clear threat on the horizon that was coming towards them from a competitor. And he saw it and was able because of his ability to work through the figures, et cetera, to predict the impact that it would have.

Now, this led him to the conclusion that something had to change, that he had to do something differently within his organization. But here’s the point. If he didn’t have such a thorough understanding of his environment, of the context, of the situation and what that might’ve meant going forward, he wouldn’t have been able to make the decisions.

So, that point one in that other video about understanding your situation, and this is absolutely critical in this case study.

Now, once that understanding was clear, he was able to move through, get with some useful people, some people who knew what they were talking about and make some really good decisions and plans about what needed to happen and what needed to change in the organization. So the decisions and plans were made that was point two.

Point three was about engagement and motivation.

Now, a huge effort went into publicizing, why the organization needed to change. What was the impetus? What was it that was so potentially threatening that meant this organization needed to change?

And so a lot of effort went into that third point about engagement, engagement and motivation to change, to follow through on the plans and decisions.

Now then we went into stage four, which was the delivery and execution of that change. And again, monitoring and I made the point in the previous video about the importance of monitoring.

There were special meetings set up, there were special sessions, there were special ways of reporting all to do with making sure that these plans and decisions were being pushed through.

Now, if you remember, the final point was about constant review and this being a circular process that people went round in terms of understanding the situation, if you like overall, then the decision making and planning, then there was the engagement, then there was the delivery and execution and this constant flow around all three.

Now, this is what this organization has done. And indeed what it’s seeing now is that because of the changes that it went through, it actually has survived and positively thriving this year in the COVID environment, because the culture that’s been put in place in the organization now is one that has been much more able to deal with what has gone on.

Now, if you’d like to know more about that and perhaps how that impacts or could impact on your organization, please drop me an email and let’s have that conversation and let’s start talking about it.

Thanks very much.

View all Leadership Soapbox posts here