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.

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Where does your leadership style fall on the continuum from highly consultative to highly directive?

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

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

What I want to talk about this time follows on from my previous video in which I talked about five points that leaders should be doing right now.

Well, it’s not just about what we should be doing. It’s about how we do it. And this is about our style and the way in which we engage with our people.

Remember from that previous video, if you haven’t seen it, I mentioned the importance of engagement and building motivation. Well, this is part of it, because how we behave with people has a huge impact on how well they will take on our decisions and plans.

So what I’m going to do in this one is just use a very, very simple behavioral model, and it’s a continuum, where at one end, I’ve got a highly consultative style and the other end, I’ve got a highly directive style.

And there are three things that are going to impact where we are on that continuum.

So first of all is time. How much time do I have available?

Now, let’s just think about a situation here. In a crisis, I don’t have a lot of time. I’m time short. That necessarily means that consultation has to be, if it happens at all, kept short and brief, I’m definitely going to be moving towards the highly directive style, especially in a genuine crisis.

So my first factor that impacts this scale is time.

The second factor that is going to impact this is the amount of knowledge and experience that my people have.

There is no point in my consulting with people who have no experience or knowledge. Equally, there is a huge advantage to me consulting with people who have got lots of knowledge and experience.

Now, this brings in really that if I have time, and knowledge and experience available, there is no doubt that my best solutions are going to come to problems by moving towards the consultative end of the scale. So this is where we want to aim for.

Now my third factor that will impact this is how willing people are to engage in a consultation with me.

If they’re not, there is no point again.

So three factors, time, knowledge and experience, and willingness. Now spin that over and remembering the point that our best solutions are going to come to problems from the highly consultative end. And what I’ve now got is three things I need to develop in my team.

I need to give them time.

I need to create knowledge and experience in my team.

And thirdly, I need to create the willingness and engagement and the desire to want to be involved with things, because there is no doubt that is where my best solutions are going to be.

Now a question for you, how good are you at delivering those three things

How good are you at giving people plenty of time, allowing them to develop knowledge and experience, and do you create that desire, and do you choose to flex your style depending upon the situation that you’re facing?

Okay, this is all important stuff that we need to be thinking about. So if this is something you’d like to talk more about, please drop me an email, or a comment, or whatever the best way is for you to contact me. But this is also something that I’m going to be leading into a deeper dive video when we start talking about emotional intelligence. So look out for that one. I hope that’s useful, and I look forward to speaking to you soon.

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5 steps to leading during the Covid crisis

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hi, my name’s Neil Poynter and welcome to this edition of The Leadership Soapbox. What I want to talk about in this episode is what we, as leaders, need to be doing right now.

We find ourselves, and when I say we, I’m suggesting almost every organisation in the world and therefore every leader, is finding themselves in challenging circumstances. Things have changed, things have changed quite dramatically for some organisations, some more than others, and this is when we, as leaders, need to step up.

Leadership, when things are going well, is easy, it’s great fun, we can set some plans, make some decisions and people go off and execute. It’s when life gets challenging and difficult, that we as leaders, need to step up.

Have you ever had that experience of suddenly people turning around and looking at you and going, “so what do we do boss?”

Yeah, well, we’re kind of in that moment, aren’t we?

Okay, so what I’m going to do is I’m going to give you five questions that we need to be able to answer in the affirmative to make sure that we’re doing what we’re doing. And these questions work as a great way of making us think about, are we doing it as well as we can?

So here we go.

Question one, do I understand, do we fully understand the situation that we find ourselves in and what the impact of that is?

Now, by understand, I mean two things.

First of all, the insight. Do we know what has happened to us and why? And then the foresight is, what does that mean for us going forward?

Now, that’s what I mean by understanding. So it’s that ability to comprehend what has happened to us, and also know what it means going forward, that’s understanding.

Now, and if I can’t do that, it’s almost impossible for me to succeed at the next bit, which is point two; are we making the right decisions and making the right plans in order to match our situation?

I cannot even know if I’m making the right decisions if I don’t fully understand the situation, or have enough understanding of the situation, to make those decisions and to be able to decide what decisions I need to make.

So there’s a real sequence here, understanding, decision-making, and then plans come out of decisions.

What am I going to do?

What’s the situation?

What are we going to do?

Decide what we’re going to do.

Now we plan how to do it. So that’s the first two.

Point three, Am I, are we actively engaging and generating morale and motivation for our people.

People are concerned right now. They want to know that we are on it. They want to see visible leadership that is there and ready to step in and ready to be available for what is going on. And they need to trust us. So, what are we doing to generate that engagement and motivation in our plans and decisions?

So, engagement and motivation.

Point four, delivering and execution. Are we monitoring the delivering and execution to make sure it’s happening?

Are we ready to step in and take control if necessary, to make sure that we drive that delivery and execution through? Now that doesn’t mean we’re actually doing everything because obviously what we’d really like is to set all the plans in motion and get others to execute them. But well, people need to know again that we are interested and on it. It also plays into point five where we need to be able to constantly review.

So point five, we need to review, is our delivery and execution matching those plans and decisions?

So this is a circular process, we start with our understanding, which is around the outside if you like. Then we’ve got the decision and planning. We’ve then got the engagement and motivation, and then going on into delivery. But it’s circular.

We all know that no plan survives first contact with reality. Things are going to change. We’re going to need to make new decisions. Then reengage with people, then execute.

This is a circular process. We need to be checking, are we delivering against those plans?

Are we delivering against the situation we find ourselves in?

So there are five points for you.

Now I want to follow up this video with two others. One is a case study of an organisation that I think is doing this really well right now.

And the second one is, okay, this is what we should be doing. Now I need to talk, now we need to think about how we do it. How do we as people engage with our teams, and do we change our style at all?

So this is the what, we now need to think about the how. So there should be some links coming up to videos and also to the subscribe button. I hope that’s been useful. Let’s be thinking about these five questions.

And if you’d like to carry on the conversation with me, please send me an email and it would be great to hear from you. Thanks very much.

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