Motivate Employees at Review Time by Asking “What Are Your Proudest Moments?”

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Employee performance reviews are notoriously painful, but they don’t have to be. Reviews can actually be useful, productive, meaningful conversations that do what they’re intended to do: improve employee performance. Some of the changes leaders need to make to have more effective reviews are pretty easy, like knowing which to talk about first: performance, goals or money. (It’s money). Another key tip is to start every review by asking “What are your proudest moments?”

Some of you may be wondering: how does asking for their proudest moments differ from a self-appraisal? When you ask for a self-appraisal you ask for the proudest moments, but you also ask for the biggest failures. And while it might not be a bad thing for your low performers to have to bring you an honest evaluation of their biggest failures, it’s actually quite harmful to your top performers.

Psychological dynamic different for high and low performers

There’s a different psychological dynamic that happens when high and low performers experience failure. Low performers might not know about the failure, they might not care, or they may have even intended for the failure to happen. High performers, on the other hand, have a high degree of critical self-awareness. This is wonderful, because most of the time these valuable employees already know they messed up—even before you tell them. And they get right to work on fixing the problem and making self-corrections so they never mess up like that again. However, most high performers are also prone to beating themselves up pretty hard when they mess up. And that can quickly turn the focus of the review back onto stuff they’ve already corrected and moved past. Plus you might get swayed listening to a high performer beat himself up and give lower marks than are deserved.

Proudest moments also ensures you don’t miss the greatest thing your employees did that year

Keeping things focused and balanced for high performers is only one reason to ask about proudest moments. Starting reviews with this simple question also helps leaders avoid the biggest employee de-motivator: missing the greatest things your people did that year. What you learn by asking this question gives you great information to work from during the review. Let’s face it, it’s nearly impossible to remember what every one of your employees did 12 months ago, so have your people make the list and tell you their proudest moments. It makes a big difference to them if the two great things they did get remembered and talked about a bit.

Another benefit is that by asking about proudest moments, you get clued in to the kind of meeting you’re in for. If an employee tells you, “I am just so proud of myself because I made it on time for work 70% of the time this past year which is a huge improvement over the 50% I managed the year before,” it tells you what kind of conversation you’re in for.

So before your next performance review period starts, simply ask your people to make a list of their proudest moments. If your organization conducts 12-month reviews, ask employees for their proudest moments from the past year. Or if you do six-month reviews, have them look back on the past six months and answer the question in writing. And just like self-appraisals, always do your own evaluation of the employee before you read their proudest moments. This allows you to avoid neurological biases that can skew your evaluation and make the review less objective.

Learn more about how to make employee reviews less painful including why talking about money should be done in a separate conversation by attending our webinar Taking the Pain Out of Performance Reviews.

An expert in aligning goals and people to create thriving organizations, Mark leads one of the world’s largest studies on leadership and employee engagement.

Mark’s award-winning work has been featured numerous times in publications including The Wall St. Journal, Fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg BusinessWeek and the Washington Post. His media appearances include CBS News Sunday Morning, ABC’s 20/20, Fox Business News and NPR. Mark has lectured at Harvard Business School, Yale University, University of Rochester and University of Florida. Mark is the author of five books including the McGraw-Hill international bestsellers, Hundred Percenters: Challenge Your People to Give It Their All and They’ll Give You Even More and Hard Goals. Mark’s most recent book, Hiring for Attitude, reflects the team’s latest research and insight into how hiring decisions can align with engagement goals and culture characteristics.

Leadership IQ’s turnaround, culture change, and performance enhancement through employee engagement work has been recognized in a diverse set of industries including healthcare, financial services, energy, manufacturing, logistics, and hospitality. From his roots as a turnaround specialist, Mark created Leadership IQ to address problems in performance before they hit the bottom line.

View the original article here

Wedding Guest Dresses: The LOOK Edit...

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Wedding Gu...

Topshop Cl...

Mango Plea...

Topshop Po...

Ted Baker...

Mango Plea...

Wedding guest dresses are always a nightmare to find, no matter how soon you start looking. We know those weddings never stop so we've edited our fave wedding-perfect dresses available to buy online right now. Hope it helps!

View the original article here

Watch: Primark's New Lingerie Collection Video Here!

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Hands up who wants to see Primark's new lingerie collection? Well look no further, as we have an exclusive video from the high street fashion fave of them showing off their new underwear range - and it looks fab.

All you have to do is scroll down to watch the video (and prepare to write down some new additions to your lingerie wish list). AC

See Primark's new lingerie range here

View the original article here

Celebrity Casual Style 2013: The Best Outfits So Far...

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Celebrity...

Ashley Tis...

Rachel Bil...

Elizabeth...

Jessica Al...

Miranda Ke...

Give your off-duty wardrobe a fresh new spin - check out all the very best A-list casual fashion and get instant inspiration. Amazing outfit styling ideas are only a click away...

View the original article here

Consider these 4 Communications Styles When Delivering your Next Presentation

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

You may be presenting to a group from within the same industry or even department, but that doesn’t mean everyone in your audience has the same preferred communications style. Different people have very different ways they prefer to give and receive information. Which means that the kind of delivery that engages some people may send others in your audience scrambling for the exits.  One of the big challenges when presenting to a mixed group is correctly adapting your communication style so your whole audience stays focused on what you’re saying.

To make it easier, we distilled it down into four basic default communication styles people can fall into. These are not personality types; this deals specifically with how you like to give and get information. Here’s a brief description of each default communication style:

The Intuitive type refers to those people who are not terribly emotional, but who are quite free form. Intuitive types don’t necessarily like things to flow from A to B to C and so on. They like to cut to the chase, so it’s best to skip directly to the end: what’s the real value you are bringing this person today? If you can get the Intuitive types in your audience to buy in on the end result right away upfront, you’ve got a much better shot at getting them to listen to all the other stuff you’ve got to say.The Analytical type refers to those people who prefer things unemotional but linear. These are your “just the facts” kinds of people. They don’t want to hear a lot of warm-and-fuzzy feeling words, so don’t waste the Analytical-type communicator’s time by telling them you understand their pain; instead just give them the numbers and data they need and want.The Functional type refers to people who generally like their communication to be emotional and linear. These folks like to have control of the process so it’s always best to move in a linear fashion: from A, to B, to C and then follow through right to the end. If you try to skip around in your presentation or jump to the enticement of your “wow” finish, you risk losing the attention of the Functional-type communicator.The Personal relater is both free form and emotional. These are the folks who want the warm-and-fuzzy emotional approach.   So feel free to dive right into all the details such as: Who else is going to be involved/ how getting involved will make them “feel”/ who else they will touch by getting involved, etc.  You can’t just come in and dump a bunch of facts on personal-type communicators, even if they are startling facts. These folks are still going to need a more interpersonal connection.

Even from these brief descriptions of the four communications styles, the conundrum is obvious: they all want something different. The good news is that, by knowing what the 4 types are, you can plan your next presentation knowing you need to hit all 4 types in your delivery. And we’ll teach you how to do that in our upcoming live webinar The Secrets of Killer Presentations.  But here’s a quick little take away secret you can start using now:

When great speakers present to a new or unknown audience, they assume all four communications styles are present. And there’s a certain order they present their information, in order to communication to each style. They begin by addressing the Intuitive types, then they speak to the Analytical types, then to the Functional types and they close by speaking to the Personal types. We see this often in presidential speeches or wherever there’s a mixed audience of preferred communication styles. Working in this order, from the Intuitive to the Analytical to the Functional to the Personal addresses attention span: Intuitives have the shortest attention span, then the Analyticals, then the Functionals and the Personals have the longest attention spans.

An expert in aligning goals and people to create thriving organizations, Mark leads one of the world’s largest studies on leadership and employee engagement.

Mark’s award-winning work has been featured numerous times in publications including The Wall St. Journal, Fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg BusinessWeek and the Washington Post. His media appearances include CBS News Sunday Morning, ABC’s 20/20, Fox Business News and NPR. Mark has lectured at Harvard Business School, Yale University, University of Rochester and University of Florida. Mark is the author of five books including the McGraw-Hill international bestsellers, Hundred Percenters: Challenge Your People to Give It Their All and They’ll Give You Even More and Hard Goals. Mark’s most recent book, Hiring for Attitude, reflects the team’s latest research and insight into how hiring decisions can align with engagement goals and culture characteristics.

Leadership IQ’s turnaround, culture change, and performance enhancement through employee engagement work has been recognized in a diverse set of industries including healthcare, financial services, energy, manufacturing, logistics, and hospitality. From his roots as a turnaround specialist, Mark created Leadership IQ to address problems in performance before they hit the bottom line.

View the original article here

One Thing Leaders Can Do to Be Better Listeners

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

One thing we as leaders can do to be better listeners is to acknowledge that there are certain emotions that, when we feel them, we shut down and stop listening.

We need to be aware of these patterns in our own behavior so that when we experience the triggers that set us off, we can anticipate that we’re probably going to have some bad reactions and circumvent that from happening. At the core of all this, of course, is that when we have those bad emotions, we need to figure out what caused us to feel that way so we can avoid having it happen again in the future. 

This is the essence of listening

If you know that when you hear somebody talk about something in a particular way that causes you to feel something negative, and as a result of that negative feeling, you react badly and it shuts down your ability to listen, you’ve just established an emotional chain that you need to break. Because once you know there are certain things that when you hear them, they set you off and cause bad reactions, you are prepared to recognize it coming and say “Oh wow, this is going to spark an emotion I want to avoid.” This allows you to handle that emotion differently so you stay plugged in and listening to what’s being said instead of wandering off into a negative emotional reaction.

It is fascinating and amazingly reinforcing that when you start to become more aware of an emotion, you become more aware of yourself. And the more self-aware you are, and the more aware you are of others, the more control you have. So, try to anticipate the situations that are going to set you off so you can put yourself in the right frame of mind to be able to compartmentalize your own emotions, bracket them, and key into what other people are saying. This way, you do hear that critical nugget of information that you absolutely need to hear.

For more tips on great listening, including how to stop yourself from making snap judgments and learning to dissect every conversation in order to ensure you hear the message that’s truly being delivered, attend our webinar Lead by Listening.

An expert in aligning goals and people to create thriving organizations, Mark leads one of the world’s largest studies on leadership and employee engagement.

Mark’s award-winning work has been featured numerous times in publications including The Wall St. Journal, Fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg BusinessWeek and the Washington Post. His media appearances include CBS News Sunday Morning, ABC’s 20/20, Fox Business News and NPR. Mark has lectured at Harvard Business School, Yale University, University of Rochester and University of Florida. Mark is the author of five books including the McGraw-Hill international bestsellers, Hundred Percenters: Challenge Your People to Give It Their All and They’ll Give You Even More and Hard Goals. Mark’s most recent book, Hiring for Attitude, reflects the team’s latest research and insight into how hiring decisions can align with engagement goals and culture characteristics.

Leadership IQ’s turnaround, culture change, and performance enhancement through employee engagement work has been recognized in a diverse set of industries including healthcare, financial services, energy, manufacturing, logistics, and hospitality. From his roots as a turnaround specialist, Mark created Leadership IQ to address problems in performance before they hit the bottom line.

View the original article here

SAG Awards 2013: See All The Pictures

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Screen Act...

Amanda Sey...

Jennifer G...

Justin Tim...

The Cast O...

Michelle D...

Swoon-worthy red carpet dresses, Justin Timberlake, and some of Hollywood's biggest power coupes - oh yes, the Screen Actors Guild Awards 2013 was one event definitely worth checking out...

View the original article here

Cara Delevingne Rocks Top-To-Toe Burberry!

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Model du jour Cara Delevingne has won our hearts for her fun, and not too serious, take on fashion and style. And there's no doubt that Cara knows just how to rock an ultra-cool look.

read more

View the original article here

How Can Leaders and Managers Make Performance Reviews More Meaningful?

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

A Q&A with CEO Mark Murphy

Q: Leadership IQ’s research into the effectiveness of performance reviews produced some pretty discouraging results. What are the exact numbers?

MM: We did a study of a little over 48,000 people and only 13% of managers and employees thought their year-end reviews were effective. And by effective I don’t mean that they liked the experience, but rather only 13% said their review had a positive impact on their future performance. And just as disturbing, only 6% of CEOs thought the performance reviews their organization used were effective. That’s a lot of resources being funneled into something that is producing more or less zero benefit, and probably even creating new problems. Poorly conducted performance reviews are a big demotivator for most employees.

Q: What can leaders do?

MM: There’s actually a lot that can be done. Starting with the process side, there are factors like: What kind of content you should have in this conversation? What order the conversation should take place? What is the correct basic structure of this conversation? Leadership IQ has specific scripts we teach for talking to high and middle performers, which are really different than the low performer conversations you should be having. And then there’s the development side of a performance review, knowing the right way to plan with the employee for what comes next.

Q: What’s one of the biggest things most performance reviews miss?

MM: Attitude. I see this all the time where a manager gives somebody a 5 out 5 on a performance review and then three months later he’s calling HR saying, “Oh, hey, listen, I need to fire this person.” And HR comes back and says, “What do you mean you need to fire them?  You just gave them a 4 or 5 on their performance review, they just got glowing marks, how could you possibly need to fire them?” And the manager says, “Well, you know, it’s for attitude, it’s for reason that our system doesn’t really evaluate. So I had to give them good marks because they have great skills, but their bad attitude is just killing me and the whole department is suffering.”

Q: Why do so many reviews skip evaluating attitude?

MM: There’s a big misunderstanding about what objective means and it keeps a lot of managers from realizing that attitude absolutely is measurable. Objective means verifiable and observable, it does not mean quantifiable. So just because you can’t assign a number to something, like a bad attitude, like gossip or stirring up conflict, it does not mean it is not a valid issue. Attitude leaks out in behavior, and attitude can be measured to the extent that it emerges in the form of those behaviors. And, of course, behaviors can be verified and observed. Managers may not be able to mind read, we can’t climb into people’s heads and divine what our folks are thinking, but we can observe their behaviors and determine what’s appropriate and what’s not.

Great organizations like Southwest Airlines, Ritz Carlton and Disney; they all regularly assess attitudinal issues. And it’s those attitudes that make those companies so famous and so successful. So this is one of the things you have to be crystal clear about. You don’t want your managers who are conducting reviews avoiding tackling issues related to attitude because they think attitude can’t be measured. That’s just sending low performers with bad attitudes back out there with strong validation that they are welcome to keep on exhibiting those bad attitudes. It’s just a fact that too many managers mistakenly avoid tackling attitudinal issues because their definition of objective is distorted.

Q: Employees tend to hate performance reviews as much as the managers who have to give them. What can managers do to make it easier on employees?

MM: A lot. You can start by making sure that you call in your high performers first. Let them take that walk into the review with full knowledge that they are in the first group and that defines them as a high performer. Not only is this going to make them feel great, it’s going to send a clear message to your low performers. Especially when you next call in your middle performers.

Also, if you meet with low performers first, they are going to go back out there and interact with their peers and have all kinds of negative things to say: lots of denial, blame and excuses. They’re going to be angry and they’ll want to take others down with them. You take that power away from low performers when you meet with them last, because by then you’ve already got all these high and middle performers out there who are feeling pretty good about things. They’re not going to be interested in listening to low performers gripe and bash. And that’s going to make low performers feel the sting of a poor review even more.

Q: What’s one of the biggest mistakes that happens in low performer reviews?

MM: One of the worst things you can do, and lots of managers do it, is use a compliment sandwich. And that’s a compliment followed by some corrective feedback followed by another compliment. It sounds something like this: “You know, listen, Bob, you’re just so talented.  You’re the smartest person on the team. You get nasty and caustic when we’re in these team meetings and it’s really hurting our morale. You’re just so smart. I want everybody else to see how smart you are.” So basically, if I’m Bob, what I just heard is “I’m great, I’m smart. I hear a compliment. Then I hear Charlie Brown’s teacher (“wawawa”), but, wow, then I hear another compliment, the boss just said he wants everyone to know how smart I am. Oh boy. I’m great. I am golden.” The compliment sandwich is a giant fail. No one hears the corrective feedback shoved in the middle of two compliments.  The only effective way to deliver corrective feedback is to state the facts.

Attend our webinar Taking the Pain Out of Performance Reviews and learn more specific scripts for talking to high, middle and low performers. Learn about the other mistakes managers make when reviewing employees and some simple fixes you can make to conduct more effective reviews.

A professional corporate writer with over 20-years’ experience crafting just the right words for executives to use in challenging situations, Lyn is a passionate and adept qualitative researcher. Her seasoned skills as an interviewer make her quick to identify the unique attitudes and behaviors that define an organization. Lyn’s extensive expertise in public relations and persuasive communications translates strongly in her contributions to Leadership IQ’s custom-training programs.

View the original article here

Ted Baker Discount: Get Free Delivery Now!

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

What: Ted Baker is offering free delivery for a short time only. We think now's a good time to treat yourself to this floral parka jacket - it's perfect for this unpredictable, wet weather).

When: The discount is on right now (30 January 2013) and runs until 3 February 2013.

Ted Baker Floral Parka Jacket

Ted Baker

read more

View the original article here

Asking “Why?” Often Implies Judgment

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

One of the most harmful things you as a leader can do to compromise good listening is to impose judgment on the person you are communicating with.  And when you ask “why” somebody did something, one thing to bear in mind is that the word “why” often implies a judgment. Even if you don’t intend to do this, the word “why” is often used as a “Why did you do that?” and it has a snarky “Boy that was stupid” implication.  Even if your intentions are innocent and you really just want to know why someone made a decision a certain way, the recipient of your question is likely to react defensively if you use the word “why” as a question.

Instead, try taking a slightly circuitous route and instead of saying “Well, why (did you do that)?” which implies “What are you dumb? That was a bad thing,” say something like “Tell me more about what made you choose that action.” This is a much less judgmental way of asking “Why?” and it encourages the recipient to open up and share their reasoning. Then, listen to what they have to say. Collect the facts.

Knowing how to identify the facts and separate them from interpretations and reactions is key to effective listening. Attend our webinar Lead by Listening and uncover the psychological secrets of great listening.

An expert in aligning goals and people to create thriving organizations, Mark leads one of the world’s largest studies on leadership and employee engagement.

Mark’s award-winning work has been featured numerous times in publications including The Wall St. Journal, Fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg BusinessWeek and the Washington Post. His media appearances include CBS News Sunday Morning, ABC’s 20/20, Fox Business News and NPR. Mark has lectured at Harvard Business School, Yale University, University of Rochester and University of Florida. Mark is the author of five books including the McGraw-Hill international bestsellers, Hundred Percenters: Challenge Your People to Give It Their All and They’ll Give You Even More and Hard Goals. Mark’s most recent book, Hiring for Attitude, reflects the team’s latest research and insight into how hiring decisions can align with engagement goals and culture characteristics.

Leadership IQ’s turnaround, culture change, and performance enhancement through employee engagement work has been recognized in a diverse set of industries including healthcare, financial services, energy, manufacturing, logistics, and hospitality. From his roots as a turnaround specialist, Mark created Leadership IQ to address problems in performance before they hit the bottom line.

View the original article here

Cara Delevingne Rocks Top-To-Toe Burberry!

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Model du jour Cara Delevingne has won our hearts for her fun, and not too serious, take on fashion and style. And there's no doubt that Cara knows just how to rock an ultra-cool look.

read more

View the original article here

Big Presentation Coming Up? Make it Your Best One Yet

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

A Q&A with CEO Mark Murphy

There isn’t a presenter alive that doesn’t want their audience absolutely riveted; sitting on the edge of their seats with rapt attention. Yet, the reality in most presentations is that the audience is sitting back, kind of relaxed and spacing in and out.

Here Leadership IQ CEO and best-selling author, Mark Murphy, shares some ways anyone can deliver a killer presentation.

Q: You say storytelling is a critical element in delivering killer presentations that really catch and keep an audience’s attention. How does that work?

MM: It’s all about dopaminergic response. Basically, when something really interesting, like a good story, happens, the brain starts to light up. And if the story is really exciting, the amygdala gets involved (that’s what you want) and says, “Wow! This is fascinating stuff! I’ve got to start activating some of the other chemicals in the brain—we’ve got to pay close attention to this!” So it goes and starts activating dopamine, which is a neurotransmitter for highly pleasurable things, highly attentive things.

And whoa! Once dopamine gets involved people really start to pay attention. Plus dopamine helps sear whatever it is folks are experiencing (in this case, your killer presentation) into their memory so they don’t forget it. So a great story is a way of getting the brain to say, “I am really engaged with this. I don’t want to miss a word that’s being said here. I am going to remember every word I hear.”

Next time you’re listening to someone else’s presentation, pay attention and see if you experience any moments that leap out at you and just get seared into your brain. Where you walk out of there quoting something you just heard to everyone you run into that day. If you don’t have that kind of experience then it is likely that the person speaking didn’t get anywhere near activating anything beyond your prefrontal cortex. They didn’t get into your limbic system, and they certainly didn’t excite your amygdala.

Q: So what’s the secret to telling a great story that excites the amygdala?

MM: There are a number of different ways to tell stories that really get people’s attention. Here’s one that uses an unexpected twist. Imagine you began a presentation by saying, “Six months ago, we upgraded our servers. Our website visitor capacity doubled. Our website loading speed tripled. And our profits dropped by 80%.” You can do something like that. Take your audience in one direction and then all of a sudden take them in a totally different direction. That’s one of those things that will make people’s heads spin a bit and get them to think, “Wait a minute, did I just hear what I thought I heard? I better start listening more closely.” You can also tell stories that build an emotional connection or introduce a startling fact.

Q: What’s one big thing to avoid when giving a presentation?

MM: Narcissism. When you talk about others more than you talk about yourself, that’s good. But when you talk about yourself more than you talk about others, that’s bad. But that can be challenging in some presentation situations. Leadership IQ teaches presenters to apply the Narcissism Ratio which is a little check that signals when it’s time to tell a story or to talk about somebody or something other than yourself. That way you don’t spend 20 minutes talking about all of the awards your company has won – something about which your audience probably doesn’t care. And it directs you to talk about something about which they do care, something that’s really going to activate them and get them on the edge of their seats.

To apply the Narcissism Ratio to your next presentation, keep track of how many times you say “I” or “me” versus the number of times you say “customers” or “employees” or “you” or “they” or anybody other than you. It takes some practice, but it’s really quite an effective way to keep your finger on the pulse of where your presentation is going as it happens. That way you are always on track and making sure your  audience stays fully engaged.

For more tips on delivering memorable presentations, join us for our upcoming webinar The Secrets of Killer Presentations.

A professional corporate writer with over 20-years’ experience crafting just the right words for executives to use in challenging situations, Lyn is a passionate and adept qualitative researcher. Her seasoned skills as an interviewer make her quick to identify the unique attitudes and behaviors that define an organization. Lyn’s extensive expertise in public relations and persuasive communications translates strongly in her contributions to Leadership IQ’s custom-training programs.

View the original article here

Asos's Violet Satchel: We're In Bag Lust!

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Is that the sun we see shining outside? We know, we'd forgotten what it looked like too, but it's given us the perfect excuse for a bit of online SS13 shopping.

Asos's super cute parma violet satchel bag with scalloped egde is our hero buy of the week - mostly because it injects instant spring fling into our wardrobes without us having to bare the flesh, bonus!

At £22, it's an absolute steal, beacuse let's face it, money's still tight thanks to that pesky Christmas comedown.

ASOS Violet Satchel Bag, £22

read more

View the original article here

Asking “Why?” Often Implies Judgment

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

One of the most harmful things you as a leader can do to compromise good listening is to impose judgment on the person you are communicating with.  And when you ask “why” somebody did something, one thing to bear in mind is that the word “why” often implies a judgment. Even if you don’t intend to do this, the word “why” is often used as a “Why did you do that?” and it has a snarky “Boy that was stupid” implication.  Even if your intentions are innocent and you really just want to know why someone made a decision a certain way, the recipient of your question is likely to react defensively if you use the word “why” as a question.

Instead, try taking a slightly circuitous route and instead of saying “Well, why (did you do that)?” which implies “What are you dumb? That was a bad thing,” say something like “Tell me more about what made you choose that action.” This is a much less judgmental way of asking “Why?” and it encourages the recipient to open up and share their reasoning. Then, listen to what they have to say. Collect the facts.

Knowing how to identify the facts and separate them from interpretations and reactions is key to effective listening. Attend our webinar Lead by Listening and uncover the psychological secrets of great listening.

An expert in aligning goals and people to create thriving organizations, Mark leads one of the world’s largest studies on leadership and employee engagement.

Mark’s award-winning work has been featured numerous times in publications including The Wall St. Journal, Fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg BusinessWeek and the Washington Post. His media appearances include CBS News Sunday Morning, ABC’s 20/20, Fox Business News and NPR. Mark has lectured at Harvard Business School, Yale University, University of Rochester and University of Florida. Mark is the author of five books including the McGraw-Hill international bestsellers, Hundred Percenters: Challenge Your People to Give It Their All and They’ll Give You Even More and Hard Goals. Mark’s most recent book, Hiring for Attitude, reflects the team’s latest research and insight into how hiring decisions can align with engagement goals and culture characteristics.

Leadership IQ’s turnaround, culture change, and performance enhancement through employee engagement work has been recognized in a diverse set of industries including healthcare, financial services, energy, manufacturing, logistics, and hospitality. From his roots as a turnaround specialist, Mark created Leadership IQ to address problems in performance before they hit the bottom line.

View the original article here

Big Presentation Coming Up? Make it Your Best One Yet

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

A Q&A with CEO Mark Murphy

There isn’t a presenter alive that doesn’t want their audience absolutely riveted; sitting on the edge of their seats with rapt attention. Yet, the reality in most presentations is that the audience is sitting back, kind of relaxed and spacing in and out.

Here Leadership IQ CEO and best-selling author, Mark Murphy, shares some ways anyone can deliver a killer presentation.

Q: You say storytelling is a critical element in delivering killer presentations that really catch and keep an audience’s attention. How does that work?

MM: It’s all about dopaminergic response. Basically, when something really interesting, like a good story, happens, the brain starts to light up. And if the story is really exciting, the amygdala gets involved (that’s what you want) and says, “Wow! This is fascinating stuff! I’ve got to start activating some of the other chemicals in the brain—we’ve got to pay close attention to this!” So it goes and starts activating dopamine, which is a neurotransmitter for highly pleasurable things, highly attentive things.

And whoa! Once dopamine gets involved people really start to pay attention. Plus dopamine helps sear whatever it is folks are experiencing (in this case, your killer presentation) into their memory so they don’t forget it. So a great story is a way of getting the brain to say, “I am really engaged with this. I don’t want to miss a word that’s being said here. I am going to remember every word I hear.”

Next time you’re listening to someone else’s presentation, pay attention and see if you experience any moments that leap out at you and just get seared into your brain. Where you walk out of there quoting something you just heard to everyone you run into that day. If you don’t have that kind of experience then it is likely that the person speaking didn’t get anywhere near activating anything beyond your prefrontal cortex. They didn’t get into your limbic system, and they certainly didn’t excite your amygdala.

Q: So what’s the secret to telling a great story that excites the amygdala?

MM: There are a number of different ways to tell stories that really get people’s attention. Here’s one that uses an unexpected twist. Imagine you began a presentation by saying, “Six months ago, we upgraded our servers. Our website visitor capacity doubled. Our website loading speed tripled. And our profits dropped by 80%.” You can do something like that. Take your audience in one direction and then all of a sudden take them in a totally different direction. That’s one of those things that will make people’s heads spin a bit and get them to think, “Wait a minute, did I just hear what I thought I heard? I better start listening more closely.” You can also tell stories that build an emotional connection or introduce a startling fact.

Q: What’s one big thing to avoid when giving a presentation?

MM: Narcissism. When you talk about others more than you talk about yourself, that’s good. But when you talk about yourself more than you talk about others, that’s bad. But that can be challenging in some presentation situations. Leadership IQ teaches presenters to apply the Narcissism Ratio which is a little check that signals when it’s time to tell a story or to talk about somebody or something other than yourself. That way you don’t spend 20 minutes talking about all of the awards your company has won – something about which your audience probably doesn’t care. And it directs you to talk about something about which they do care, something that’s really going to activate them and get them on the edge of their seats.

To apply the Narcissism Ratio to your next presentation, keep track of how many times you say “I” or “me” versus the number of times you say “customers” or “employees” or “you” or “they” or anybody other than you. It takes some practice, but it’s really quite an effective way to keep your finger on the pulse of where your presentation is going as it happens. That way you are always on track and making sure your  audience stays fully engaged.

For more tips on delivering memorable presentations, join us for our upcoming webinar The Secrets of Killer Presentations.

A professional corporate writer with over 20-years’ experience crafting just the right words for executives to use in challenging situations, Lyn is a passionate and adept qualitative researcher. Her seasoned skills as an interviewer make her quick to identify the unique attitudes and behaviors that define an organization. Lyn’s extensive expertise in public relations and persuasive communications translates strongly in her contributions to Leadership IQ’s custom-training programs.

View the original article here

A Listening Exercise to do Next Time you Watch a Movie

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Leading by listening requires developing two kinds of awareness. There’s self-awareness, which involves getting a handle on personal triggers so you know what sets you off, what makes you pay attention, etc. And then there’s awareness of others, what we like to call “other-awareness” where we learn to observe and interpret the emotions of others so we can wipe out any wrongful assumptions we might otherwise make and just stay focused on the facts.

There are two parts to developing other-awareness. The first is developing our observational skills, which is all about focusing and paying attention, and the second part is interpreting those signals. Now, I’m aware this all sounds amazingly easy: we just pay attention and that gives us more other-awareness… piece of cake, right? The problem is we observe all day long, but we typically don’t pay that much attention to what we’re seeing. Consider, for example, a dime. You’ve handled dimes plenty of times in your life, and you’ve had ample opportunity for observation. But can you really describe a dime? “It’s silver and ridged on the edges,” most of us will say. Fewer will know it’s Franklin D. Roosevelt’s face on a dime. And even fewer will be able to correctly say which direction his profile faces, or what’s written on the back of a dime. This is where other-awareness comes in; it’s keying in and really paying attention and more accurately processing everything that’s going on.

Build other-awareness with this fun exercise 

To build other-awareness, there’s an exercise you can do the next time you watch a movie. The movie just needs to be on DVD or on-demand, any format that allows you to pause and repeat a scene a few times.

Here’s how the exercise works. First, pick a movie (it can be one you’ve seen before, but it’s more fun with a film you’ve never seen) that includes a scene with two or three people interacting. Avoid big action movies, as we’re looking for strong dialogue between human beings. You’re going to watch this scene where people are interacting twice: once with the sound off, and then a second time with the sound on.

The first viewing, with the sound off, you just want to observe. What are the people on screen doing? Without any sound to help you out, try and key into what is happening with these characters. Check out their facial expressions: are they smiling, staring, frowning, eyebrows raised, blinking rapidly? Are they breaking eye contact or are they holding eye contact? What’s happening to the color of their faces? Is one person’s face suddenly getting red? Who has tight lips or relaxed lips? Is someone wetting their lips?

Next look at gestures: maybe someone is nodding, or shaking, or covering their mouth or eyes, scratching their face. Where are everyone’s hands? Maybe a character is cracking his knuckles.  What about their bodies? What are the angles of everyone’s heads? Are the characters close to each other or far apart? Are they slumping? Are they leaning forward? Are they shrugging? Doing this without sound removes all other distractions and just lets you observe. Then, with the sound still off, start to make some interpretations. Assess which emotions you think are present just by watching body language, facial expressions, etc.

Now watch the same scene with the sound on. And again, you want to key into the gestures, facial expressions, etc. while now also listening to the words and assessing what emotions you think are present. How do your silent observations compare to the observations you made when you had audio cues to help? How observant are you?

Now take this exercise back to the workplace

Meetings are a great place to do this, so the next meeting you are in, observe all the facial expressions, the gestures and the body display, and start to mentally note what emotions you think are present. What’s neat about doing this at work is you can test some of your hypotheses.

So after you’ve made your observations and started to figure out the emotions you think are present; come up with three possible explanations for those observed behaviors; three hypotheses. Maybe hypothesis #1 is: I’m watching Jane and maybe she’s feeling sick, and #2 is: Maybe Jane’s upset because we’re talking about her new assignment and she’s confused by the directions, and hypothesis #3 is: Maybe Jane’s tired. What we want to do is come up with various hypotheses for the behaviors we see because when we develop alternative and multiple hypotheses, it prevents us from getting fixated on just one type of solution. Once we get fixated, it’s very hard to keep an open mind about anything. But when we have multiple hypotheses for things, that is, by definition, having a much more open mind, it automatically amps up our listening abilities.

Next consider the likelihood of each of your three hypotheses by observing some more. See if you can find additional evidence, for example, in the “Jane is tired” hypothesis, you might observe: “Jane has two cups of coffee on her desk and she doesn’t usually drink coffee. She has been working late the last few nights, maybe she is tired.” If possible, you can even go to the person and say, “Listen, just curious, but I noticed you’re staring off in the sky, your arms were closed off, etc. Since we’re friends here, I wonder if I can ask you what’s going through your mind, what were you feeling right then?” That way you can find out which of your hypotheses were correct.

The goal of this exercise is to teach you how to be a more effective observer of human behavior and more effective at correlating those observations to your assessment of what emotions other people are feeling. This allows you to develop a more effective sense of the causality of those behaviors and those emotions. Because the more aware of yourself and others you become, the more effective you will be at distilling everything you hear so you can get right to the nugget of the information you need.

For more tips on improving your listening skills, including a 7-part checklist that tests whether you’ve truly heard all the information you need, attend our webinar Lead by Listening.

An expert in aligning goals and people to create thriving organizations, Mark leads one of the world’s largest studies on leadership and employee engagement.

Mark’s award-winning work has been featured numerous times in publications including The Wall St. Journal, Fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg BusinessWeek and the Washington Post. His media appearances include CBS News Sunday Morning, ABC’s 20/20, Fox Business News and NPR. Mark has lectured at Harvard Business School, Yale University, University of Rochester and University of Florida. Mark is the author of five books including the McGraw-Hill international bestsellers, Hundred Percenters: Challenge Your People to Give It Their All and They’ll Give You Even More and Hard Goals. Mark’s most recent book, Hiring for Attitude, reflects the team’s latest research and insight into how hiring decisions can align with engagement goals and culture characteristics.

Leadership IQ’s turnaround, culture change, and performance enhancement through employee engagement work has been recognized in a diverse set of industries including healthcare, financial services, energy, manufacturing, logistics, and hospitality. From his roots as a turnaround specialist, Mark created Leadership IQ to address problems in performance before they hit the bottom line.

View the original article here

David Beckham Will Donate His ENTIRE Paris Salary To Charity

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

David Beckham is officially our hero. The footballer has made headlines and melted hearts this morning as the realisation of his latest move sinks in. 

In case you missed the big news - David has announced that he'll be moving to Paris for the next five months to play for the team Paris Saint Germain - and will donate every penny of his whopping salary to charity. Better yet, a children's charity. Excuse us while we swoon… 

read more

View the original article here

How Can Leaders and Managers Make Performance Reviews More Meaningful?

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

A Q&A with CEO Mark Murphy

Q: Leadership IQ’s research into the effectiveness of performance reviews produced some pretty discouraging results. What are the exact numbers?

MM: We did a study of a little over 48,000 people and only 13% of managers and employees thought their year-end reviews were effective. And by effective I don’t mean that they liked the experience, but rather only 13% said their review had a positive impact on their future performance. And just as disturbing, only 6% of CEOs thought the performance reviews their organization used were effective. That’s a lot of resources being funneled into something that is producing more or less zero benefit, and probably even creating new problems. Poorly conducted performance reviews are a big demotivator for most employees.

Q: What can leaders do?

MM: There’s actually a lot that can be done. Starting with the process side, there are factors like: What kind of content you should have in this conversation? What order the conversation should take place? What is the correct basic structure of this conversation? Leadership IQ has specific scripts we teach for talking to high and middle performers, which are really different than the low performer conversations you should be having. And then there’s the development side of a performance review, knowing the right way to plan with the employee for what comes next.

Q: What’s one of the biggest things most performance reviews miss?

MM: Attitude. I see this all the time where a manager gives somebody a 5 out 5 on a performance review and then three months later he’s calling HR saying, “Oh, hey, listen, I need to fire this person.” And HR comes back and says, “What do you mean you need to fire them?  You just gave them a 4 or 5 on their performance review, they just got glowing marks, how could you possibly need to fire them?” And the manager says, “Well, you know, it’s for attitude, it’s for reason that our system doesn’t really evaluate. So I had to give them good marks because they have great skills, but their bad attitude is just killing me and the whole department is suffering.”

Q: Why do so many reviews skip evaluating attitude?

MM: There’s a big misunderstanding about what objective means and it keeps a lot of managers from realizing that attitude absolutely is measurable. Objective means verifiable and observable, it does not mean quantifiable. So just because you can’t assign a number to something, like a bad attitude, like gossip or stirring up conflict, it does not mean it is not a valid issue. Attitude leaks out in behavior, and attitude can be measured to the extent that it emerges in the form of those behaviors. And, of course, behaviors can be verified and observed. Managers may not be able to mind read, we can’t climb into people’s heads and divine what our folks are thinking, but we can observe their behaviors and determine what’s appropriate and what’s not.

Great organizations like Southwest Airlines, Ritz Carlton and Disney; they all regularly assess attitudinal issues. And it’s those attitudes that make those companies so famous and so successful. So this is one of the things you have to be crystal clear about. You don’t want your managers who are conducting reviews avoiding tackling issues related to attitude because they think attitude can’t be measured. That’s just sending low performers with bad attitudes back out there with strong validation that they are welcome to keep on exhibiting those bad attitudes. It’s just a fact that too many managers mistakenly avoid tackling attitudinal issues because their definition of objective is distorted.

Q: Employees tend to hate performance reviews as much as the managers who have to give them. What can managers do to make it easier on employees?

MM: A lot. You can start by making sure that you call in your high performers first. Let them take that walk into the review with full knowledge that they are in the first group and that defines them as a high performer. Not only is this going to make them feel great, it’s going to send a clear message to your low performers. Especially when you next call in your middle performers.

Also, if you meet with low performers first, they are going to go back out there and interact with their peers and have all kinds of negative things to say: lots of denial, blame and excuses. They’re going to be angry and they’ll want to take others down with them. You take that power away from low performers when you meet with them last, because by then you’ve already got all these high and middle performers out there who are feeling pretty good about things. They’re not going to be interested in listening to low performers gripe and bash. And that’s going to make low performers feel the sting of a poor review even more.

Q: What’s one of the biggest mistakes that happens in low performer reviews?

MM: One of the worst things you can do, and lots of managers do it, is use a compliment sandwich. And that’s a compliment followed by some corrective feedback followed by another compliment. It sounds something like this: “You know, listen, Bob, you’re just so talented.  You’re the smartest person on the team. You get nasty and caustic when we’re in these team meetings and it’s really hurting our morale. You’re just so smart. I want everybody else to see how smart you are.” So basically, if I’m Bob, what I just heard is “I’m great, I’m smart. I hear a compliment. Then I hear Charlie Brown’s teacher (“wawawa”), but, wow, then I hear another compliment, the boss just said he wants everyone to know how smart I am. Oh boy. I’m great. I am golden.” The compliment sandwich is a giant fail. No one hears the corrective feedback shoved in the middle of two compliments.  The only effective way to deliver corrective feedback is to state the facts.

Attend our webinar Taking the Pain Out of Performance Reviews and learn more specific scripts for talking to high, middle and low performers. Learn about the other mistakes managers make when reviewing employees and some simple fixes you can make to conduct more effective reviews.

A professional corporate writer with over 20-years’ experience crafting just the right words for executives to use in challenging situations, Lyn is a passionate and adept qualitative researcher. Her seasoned skills as an interviewer make her quick to identify the unique attitudes and behaviors that define an organization. Lyn’s extensive expertise in public relations and persuasive communications translates strongly in her contributions to Leadership IQ’s custom-training programs.

View the original article here

Delivering Presentations: The Rules of Dating Apply Here Too!

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Imagine you’re out on a date and your goal is to really impress. You want to be the only person in the room your date can see or hear. Given that goal, what would you say is the best way to start the date:

Start the date by sharing your life history including all your great accomplishments and the things that matter most to you.Start the date by talking to your date about the kinds of things he/she finds valuable.

Now, in the dating world, pretty much everybody gets it right, you talk about “them.” But here’s the shocker: once we move into the world of business presentations; another place where winning quick audience favor is critical, pretty much everybody gets it wrong. Because instead of using what we know works, most folks begin their business presentations by talking about “themselves.” In fact; over 90% of the presentations we’ve studied began with a slide that looks like this…

And unless you’re attending a narcissist’s convention, this is just a terrible slide and horrible start to your presentation. You don’t even have to read every bullet point to feel the automatic turn off. This slide is all about “you”: when you were founded, how many clients you have, how big you are, how many awards you’ve won, etc. If you used a personalized version of this slide in a dating situation, I guarantee you’d be sitting alone at the bar before the first round of drinks arrived.

It doesn’t matter if you’re presenting to one person or a room of a thousand, the only way to grab your audience’s attention is to spend the first 10 minutes addressing issues that matter to them. Neurologically, those first 10 minutes are when your audience forms their opinions about you. It’s when their brains absorb all the incoming data (that would be you) and then decide whether or not to allocate any more neurological energy to listening to that big noise coming at them (again, that’s you). And because you know this little tidbit of knowledge that comes to us from the world of brain science, you can use it to your advantage.

Dating Research that Proves Affect of Opening with Messages About “Them”

Let’s jump back to dating for a minute. Perhaps you’ve heard of a free online dating site called OkCupid that was created by a couple of guys who met while at Harvard. Now, I married my high school sweetheart, so I don’t go there trolling for dates. But back when the founders were still actively blogging, I used to check out OKTrends and I was pretty impressed with the statistical research they shared. Like the study where they looked at the kinds of words men use in their opening messages to women, to learn what does (and doesn’t) generate a reply. As you can imagine, some of the opening messages were incredibly cheesy. For example, some of the words the study revealed that DON’T work (i.e. women did not reply to the man’s message) were: “sexy”, “beautiful” and “hot.”

I’m happy to report that there’s a redeeming flip side to this. Because there were some words and phrases the guys used in their emails to women that generated huge numbers of responses.  For example:  “You mention…”, “noticed that…” and “curious what…” all got fantastic responses (statistically, messages with those phrases get double the normal response rates). So basically, if a guy appears to have read a woman’s profile, and he shows knowledge and interest in the things she’s interested in, he’s got a much greater chance of hearing back from her. A good “guy message” would sound like this: “You mention that you like cooking and I noticed that you travelled to Italy. I’m curious what your favorite region was in terms of cuisine?” That’s a guy I might let my daughter go out with—when she gets to dating age, and luckily, that’s far in the future.

The lesson in all this is: whether you’re dating or making million-dollar presentations, start by talking about the other person and their interests. Let them know that you know what they want to hear about, that you are sensitive to what they want to gain from this interaction and that you care about the same things that they care about.

In my upcoming webinar, The Secrets of Killer Presentations, you’ll learn how to assess the four personality types you’ll find in your audience so you can begin every presentation knowing exactly what your audience wants to hear from you. And if you’re addressing multiple personality types, you’ll learn how to time a presentation to safeguard those different attention spans so you know when to deliver the bottom line, when to be to linear, when to stick to the facts and when to get warm and fuzzy to build an emotional connection.

An expert in aligning goals and people to create thriving organizations, Mark leads one of the world’s largest studies on leadership and employee engagement.

Mark’s award-winning work has been featured numerous times in publications including The Wall St. Journal, Fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg BusinessWeek and the Washington Post. His media appearances include CBS News Sunday Morning, ABC’s 20/20, Fox Business News and NPR. Mark has lectured at Harvard Business School, Yale University, University of Rochester and University of Florida. Mark is the author of five books including the McGraw-Hill international bestsellers, Hundred Percenters: Challenge Your People to Give It Their All and They’ll Give You Even More and Hard Goals. Mark’s most recent book, Hiring for Attitude, reflects the team’s latest research and insight into how hiring decisions can align with engagement goals and culture characteristics.

Leadership IQ’s turnaround, culture change, and performance enhancement through employee engagement work has been recognized in a diverse set of industries including healthcare, financial services, energy, manufacturing, logistics, and hospitality. From his roots as a turnaround specialist, Mark created Leadership IQ to address problems in performance before they hit the bottom line.

View the original article here

Motivate Employees at Review Time by Asking “What Are Your Proudest Moments?”

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Employee performance reviews are notoriously painful, but they don’t have to be. Reviews can actually be useful, productive, meaningful conversations that do what they’re intended to do: improve employee performance. Some of the changes leaders need to make to have more effective reviews are pretty easy, like knowing which to talk about first: performance, goals or money. (It’s money). Another key tip is to start every review by asking “What are your proudest moments?”

Some of you may be wondering: how does asking for their proudest moments differ from a self-appraisal? When you ask for a self-appraisal you ask for the proudest moments, but you also ask for the biggest failures. And while it might not be a bad thing for your low performers to have to bring you an honest evaluation of their biggest failures, it’s actually quite harmful to your top performers.

Psychological dynamic different for high and low performers

There’s a different psychological dynamic that happens when high and low performers experience failure. Low performers might not know about the failure, they might not care, or they may have even intended for the failure to happen. High performers, on the other hand, have a high degree of critical self-awareness. This is wonderful, because most of the time these valuable employees already know they messed up—even before you tell them. And they get right to work on fixing the problem and making self-corrections so they never mess up like that again. However, most high performers are also prone to beating themselves up pretty hard when they mess up. And that can quickly turn the focus of the review back onto stuff they’ve already corrected and moved past. Plus you might get swayed listening to a high performer beat himself up and give lower marks than are deserved.

Proudest moments also ensures you don’t miss the greatest thing your employees did that year

Keeping things focused and balanced for high performers is only one reason to ask about proudest moments. Starting reviews with this simple question also helps leaders avoid the biggest employee de-motivator: missing the greatest things your people did that year. What you learn by asking this question gives you great information to work from during the review. Let’s face it, it’s nearly impossible to remember what every one of your employees did 12 months ago, so have your people make the list and tell you their proudest moments. It makes a big difference to them if the two great things they did get remembered and talked about a bit.

Another benefit is that by asking about proudest moments, you get clued in to the kind of meeting you’re in for. If an employee tells you, “I am just so proud of myself because I made it on time for work 70% of the time this past year which is a huge improvement over the 50% I managed the year before,” it tells you what kind of conversation you’re in for.

So before your next performance review period starts, simply ask your people to make a list of their proudest moments. If your organization conducts 12-month reviews, ask employees for their proudest moments from the past year. Or if you do six-month reviews, have them look back on the past six months and answer the question in writing. And just like self-appraisals, always do your own evaluation of the employee before you read their proudest moments. This allows you to avoid neurological biases that can skew your evaluation and make the review less objective.

Learn more about how to make employee reviews less painful including why talking about money should be done in a separate conversation by attending our webinar Taking the Pain Out of Performance Reviews.

An expert in aligning goals and people to create thriving organizations, Mark leads one of the world’s largest studies on leadership and employee engagement.

Mark’s award-winning work has been featured numerous times in publications including The Wall St. Journal, Fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg BusinessWeek and the Washington Post. His media appearances include CBS News Sunday Morning, ABC’s 20/20, Fox Business News and NPR. Mark has lectured at Harvard Business School, Yale University, University of Rochester and University of Florida. Mark is the author of five books including the McGraw-Hill international bestsellers, Hundred Percenters: Challenge Your People to Give It Their All and They’ll Give You Even More and Hard Goals. Mark’s most recent book, Hiring for Attitude, reflects the team’s latest research and insight into how hiring decisions can align with engagement goals and culture characteristics.

Leadership IQ’s turnaround, culture change, and performance enhancement through employee engagement work has been recognized in a diverse set of industries including healthcare, financial services, energy, manufacturing, logistics, and hospitality. From his roots as a turnaround specialist, Mark created Leadership IQ to address problems in performance before they hit the bottom line.

View the original article here

What makes great listening so difficult?

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

A Q&A with CEO Mark Murphy

Q: Listening seems like it should be so simple, yet the average person retains only 10% of what they hear. What makes great listening so hard?

MM: Great listening requires a lot more than nodding your head and going “Uh huh. Wow, that’s interesting.” There’s actually a whole way of thinking we need to embrace about the information that’s coming at us. And that involves how we can parse it all out, dissect it into its component parts and then probe for more information. Also, we need to make sure we’re not getting fixated on unimportant information; that we’re not letting our emotional buttons get pushed such that we can’t hear the real kernel of the message that is coming at us.

In the world of management and work, not everything we hear has equal importance, so we need to know what we are listening for. Because there are some things we hear, certain words, for example, that can set us off and cause us to miss some of the really important stuff that we do need to hear.

The challenges of great listening are plenty. But if we gain the skills, and a deeper understanding of how it all works, so we can then identify and key into what is absolutely important and relevant for us to hear, great listening is absolutely possible. Anyone can do it, but you have to want to do it.

Q: What do you mean when you say we need to key into the important parts of a conversation?

MM: Here’s one example of how it works. Let’s say we’re in a situation where an employee is uncorking on us a little bit. Maybe they want to talk about a project we assigned them that’s not going well and maybe they are little (or a lot) upset. They are using emotional language and it’s subjective, and even a little negative. Other than letting them unload, we think there’s not a ton of value in listening to what’s being said. But the thing is, as difficult as that may be to listen to, there may be a really important nugget of information that we really do need to hear. Something that is going to clue us in to what this person needs so they can go fix the error, or avoid having it happen again. And yet, we’re not hearing it because we’re fixated on all of the other stuff; the distraction. So we need to have a listening model that allows us to separate the stuff we do need to hear from all the rest. We need a way to remove the emotional element and just get to the facts in order to help this person find the right solution.

At Leadership IQ we teach the FIRE model which allows us to separate the Facts from the Interpretations, Reactions and Ends. Because it’s in the facts that we are going to find that one nugget of really good information we need. The FIRE model allows us to compartmentalize all these other pieces and say, “I just got some tough feedback, but there are some good facts here. There are things I need to listen to, so I need to compartmentalize some of this other stuff I’m hearing so what I am really focusing in on is the facts.” And until we have a listening model that lets us separate it all appropriately, great listening is very hard to do.

Q: How can we know if we got all the facts?

MM: First we need to know how to probe deep to get past all the superficial stuff so we are only focused on the facts we need. And there different kinds of probes, like factual and direct probes or emotional and indirect probes. The situation and the comfort level that’s present basically directs the kind of probe you use.

For example, indirect probes are best in helping circumvent defenses when you think someone’s guard is up. But once you probe down to the facts, and you are no longer dealing with interpretations, reactions and ends, there’s actually a very simple checklist you can mentally run through to make sure you are collecting adequate facts. It’s the same basic checklist used for all information gathering: Who, What, When, Where, Why and How.

The first step is to get the conversation focused on just the facts and you can do this by doing the “Who, What, When, Where, Why and How” assessment in your mind where you say:  “Okay, well, first, who: do I know who was involved. Okay, yup. I got that. Do I know what they were talking about? What actually happened? Okay, got that. Do I know when it happened? Do I know where it happened? And then, am I making assumptions based on these things or do I actually know why it happened? Do I know what precipitated this? And do I know how it happened?” It takes a bit of practice, but after a while it just happens naturally so you are always thinking about the Who, What, When, Where, Why and How of your conversations and that alone will make you a much better listener.

To learn how to keep your own emotions in check when listening to someone is making you agitated, attend our webinar Lead by Listening.

A professional corporate writer with over 20-years’ experience crafting just the right words for executives to use in challenging situations, Lyn is a passionate and adept qualitative researcher. Her seasoned skills as an interviewer make her quick to identify the unique attitudes and behaviors that define an organization. Lyn’s extensive expertise in public relations and persuasive communications translates strongly in her contributions to Leadership IQ’s custom-training programs.

View the original article here

How Can Leaders Successfully Communicate and Implement Change?

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

A Q&A with CEO Mark Murphy

Q: You cite a Harvard Business School study that found 70% of change efforts fail. Were these big or small changes?

MM: The study wasn’t specific to big, mammoth change efforts like reinventing a business model. These were small change efforts. But big or small, most change efforts seem to run into the same brick walls over and over again, and leaders reacted predictably badly 70% of the time.

And it’s actually more serious than that, because not only did the majority of change efforts fail, the failures also threatened to take down the leaders that tried to lead them. A Leadership IQ study found that mismanaging change is actually the number one reason why CEOs get fired; it far outpaced financial performance. Every leader understands the risks are high. Change is hard and when it doesn’t work, there are dire consequences. All that said, we don’t have to let change fail. We can almost guarantee its success if we understand the basic phases and nature of change.

Q: What’s at the core of creating a successful change effort?

MM: There are three questions that have to be answered for a change effort to be successful. If these questions can’t be answered, the change effort is going to fail:

Why do we need to change?Where are we going?How are we going to get there?

The interesting thing is that most successful changes don’t answer just one of these questions; they answer all three. We can, with almost certainty, predict the success or failure of a change effort simply by asking, “Do you understand why we need to change?” and “Do you understand where we are trying to get to?” and “Do you think we can actually pull it off; do you know how we are going to make it happen?” If you can’t get answers to these three questions, the Why, Where and How of change, then your change effort is almost certainly doomed to failure.

And perhaps more importantly, the 30% of change efforts that succeed (according to the Harvard study) tend to pull all three levers simultaneously. They tend to work on the Why, the Where, and the How all at the same time. The problem is that most leaders have a favorite. They work on either the Why, or the Where, or the How. The overwhelming majority of folks do not work on all three simultaneously. Of course, depending on the environment of the organization, some of these are going to be easier or harder than others to pull off.

Q: What’s the most effective way to communicate change?

MM: Letting folks know about change is a pretty tough message to deliver. And the worst way to communicate that message is the yelling-and-screaming approach. Yes, you have to deliver a message that is sufficiently tough so that you can get people to leave a place they like. But the more emotional you make your message; the more likely people are to put their guard up. Emotional content will only make them feel attacked; they’ll box themselves in and they’ll tune out your message.

Instead you have to take a much more low-key approach. Focus on data – the less emotional the message the better. Make the message factual without hyperbole or exaggeration. Let the message be what the message is going to be. Communicate the message in as calm and rational a manner as possible. The more objective your data, the better. Language like “I think” or “My gut tells me” is not convincing.

You’re much better off getting some objective evidence in order to justify why it is we need to leave our present state. Get evidence from third parties: financial, operational, strategic, market, benchmarks. With the objective third-party facts delivered in a calm, rational way you will have the best chance of actually moving people off of the status quo. Get additional evidence from your audience (self-report surveys, focus groups, etc.) as well as from your customers. To the extent that you can get information from really credible sources, not just third party sources, but from people like your customers, patients, etc. you will be giving people a sense that your sources are believable. Doing so will deliver the message that it’s not about you, the CEO/manager, but it is about the customers, patients or shareholders.

And give people some time to process it all. Remember, it may be the first time your people are hearing this message (or at least the first time they’ve needed to pay attention to it). The more educated you can make your people, the more access to can grant them to a similar level of information that you have access to as a leader, the easier your change effort will be. The broader the horizon they can see, the more likely they are to come to the same conclusion that you’ve come to – that change is necessary.

Who is the best person to deliver the communication?

Employees are more likely to listen to their middle managers than their CEO. The employees will look at whatever the CEO puts out in a memo with skepticism until they ask the middle manager, “What do you think? Is that for real? Is this really going to work or is it just going to be like all of the other times?” Employees may turn to some of the more powerful employees to see what they think. CEOs can write memos until they are blue in the face, but at the end of the day it is how managers and key performing employees react to the change effort that is critical.

To learn more about communicating and implementing change in your organization, attend our webinar “Change Management That Lasts.“

A professional corporate writer with over 20-years’ experience crafting just the right words for executives to use in challenging situations, Lyn is a passionate and adept qualitative researcher. Her seasoned skills as an interviewer make her quick to identify the unique attitudes and behaviors that define an organization. Lyn’s extensive expertise in public relations and persuasive communications translates strongly in her contributions to Leadership IQ’s custom-training programs.

View the original article here