Making Relationships Work

I was recently on a Panel and was asked what did I consider one of the most important professional skills that any manager could have? Without hesitation I said ‘knowing how to make relationships work.’  Why? Because ultimately, being a manager is about managing people. The same applies to leaders. The most effective leaders know how to engage people and that means knowing how to have a relationship with them.

 So there is a real question here for anybody who wants to progress professionally, namely, do you know how to make relationships work with peers, subordinates and with those above you? They’re all relationships but often people are better at doing one of these than the others.

Even if they are good at all of them, I have yet to meet someone who couldn’t be better. And how about taking these skills home too? Why leave them at the office?  Your family might appreciate them!

Being able to start and maintain good relationships is obviously one of the keys to professional success. If you can’t do that that then you just get peoples’ backs up and it’s very hard for them to take you seriously. It also makes it hard for them to collaborate with you. But it is also really important for your personal happiness. Why? Because when we relate well we feel real, we feel valued and we feel understood. We also act differently – we are more ourselves.

When this is not happening all sorts of things begin to unravel. In the case of professionals if you don’t relate well you can pay dearly for it through lost credibility and lost promotion. I’ve worked with many people who had great technical expertise but were seen as a liability when it came to customer relations. Kept in the back room their careers were suffering and they would have stayed there if not for the coaching we did.

In our personal lives being able to relate authentically is obviously important. And it’s not just about being with someone. You can be living with someone but that doesn’t mean you’re relating well to them. I’ve certainly worked with people who describe feeling pretty lonely as they look across at ‘the stranger at the breakfast table’.

For me, one of the pleasures of working with people has been developing the tools to start and maintain great relationships because there are real things you can do.

Pretty much any relationship can be enhanced. I have worked with couples where things are actually pretty good and they want them to be great. Now that is of a different order. Can you make a good relationship great? Yes you can!

What about future relationships? Can you prepare now to make them work? Of course!

Knowing how to do these things is a practical skill. There are some very important how tos that go with knowing how to make relationships work.

Because of this I’ve decided to commit to doing a day in the autumn to share with people some of the tools I use which help ensure relationships work. So if you’re interested for yourself or for others in  ‘How to Make Relationships Work’ I’ll look forward to seeing you then.

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On Becoming Dean of Innovation and Learning

Last week I had the pleasure of accepting an invitation to become Dean of Innovation and Learning for the Purposeful Planning Institute. The PPI consists of legal, financial, wealth and lifestyle advisors to high net worth individuals and ultra-high net worth family offices. They are a great bunch of people who, as their Institute’s name suggests, seek to go beyond simple financial planning and look deeper into the purpose it is meant to serve for both this generation and those yet to come. To do this they need to find out what really matters to their clients so that financial and legal decisions are driven by and serve the client’s fundamental beliefs and values. Being able to do this is a real skill and that’s where I come in.

I have been working with them over a number of years and indeed I will be speaking at their conference as I do each year in Denver in August.

They did a very striking thing recently. They surveyed members about the most pressing kind of innovation needed in the field. What came back was that approximately 60% of respondents said that the greatest need for innovation was in the area of client conversations.

So, not fancy new products, just how to engage in good conversations that ensure people are clear about how to create a future for themselves and others that is in keeping with their goals, values, beliefs and aspirations. To achieve this you need to be able to shift from presentation to elicitation.

That’s why this year my session is entitled “How powerful are your questions?” While some questions are more useful than others in drawing people out there is no magic set of all-purpose ‘powerful questions’ which you can just fire off in any situation.

In addition to having the right question there’s the small matter of rapport and timing. Ever noticed how someone can be technically very competent but not good at putting others at ease? Well it’s the same with elicitation: if you don’t have the rapport it doesn’t matter how good your questions are. Similarly timing really can be everything. It may be the right question but is it the right time to ask it? Instead of defaulting to a few favourite questions which just become a habit, it’s better to have an understanding of what’s going on when you ask a question. Then you can engage appropriately.

So in a nutshell, whenever we ask a question we send the brain on an internal search. The question is how useful was that search? One thing we can do to improve our questioning skills is ask ourselves, what are we’re really going for?

Advisors then would do well to ask themselves a question before they ask their clients anything, namely, ‘What is the quest in my question?’ Or to put it another way, what kind of search am I seeking to trigger?

Although this is a perfectly learnable skill, very few people exercise such intellectual discipline. It’s incredibly helpful because if you know what you’re going for, you’re far more likely to notice if you don’t get it and you’re much less likely to be distracted by an out of left field answer. Outstanding communicators invariably know what they’re going for and don’t get distracted.

As ever innovation begins with how we think. Just how rare this is as a mindset was brought home to me by a student in an Innovative Skills program I was running recently who exclaimed: “You want me to think before opening my mouth? Wow! That’s pretty innovative!”

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Innovation – Hidden in Plain Sight

Last week I spent a couple of days in half hourly conversations with all sorts of different businesses who are interested in what we are doing and in particular the ways in which they could innovate more effectively using the tools that we are currently making available.

This was exceedingly interesting, many contacts were made and offers proposed. However, in some of these conversations I found myself pointing out how innovation is really all around us, how people are almost oblivious to it and why it’s useful to begin recognising it.

Some examples? Around 2007 more people in the total world population started living in cities than in rural areas. That is a huge shift and the consequences are pretty difficult to overestimate.

To give you an example of just how profound these can be, if you look at the US there are a couple of staggering statistics; 90% of  US GDP and 86% of all US jobs are generated on just 3% of the landmass of the continental US. And that 3% is in cities.*

Now those cities often don’t get to keep the wealth they have generated and hence can have poor infrastructure.  But that doesn’t alter the fact that cities are hugely important innovation and wealth generators.  Indeed the very process of urbanisation is itself a demonstration of innovation. And we’re only just beginning: in the next 25 years it is estimated that 300 million Chinese will move from the countryside to cities like Shanghai. This represents the largest migration in human history.

This is why I sometimes say that innovation is hidden in plain sight and people go about their business without realising that it’s happening all around them.

Here are a couple more less dramatic but equally pervasive examples, this time from the world of fashion. How about high heels? The heel as we know it is something of a recent invention – and it started as something for men.

Louis XIV was a short man and he wanted to be taller so he wore heels. Thus the court and all the men began to wear heels. This, by the way, is why we talk about people being well-heeled: it means they have cultural standing and financial means. Eventually heels become the province of women and they are reinvented again and again.

And then there is the little black dress.  Historically this is a very recent creation and yet it is absolutely ubiquitous. Pretty much every woman has a little black dress. Thank you, Coco Chanel.

If you really want to know where the little black dress came from you need to know where she came from. She grew up in a Catholic orphanage in the 1890s surrounded by nuns in black habits.

Right up until the early 1920s the only people who wore black used to be servants, nuns or those in mourning. So the idea of a dress that is the complete opposite of the Victorian bustle with its voluminous crinolines, a dress that is simple and black is not just innovative, it’s revolutionary.

Fast forward to the 1920s and the little black dress is born. It really takes off when Zelda Fitzgerald, the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, wears one. The flappers are gone but the little black dress lives on. Now it’s a part of every woman’s wardrobe.

We are surrounded by innovation. Look around!

*‘A Country of Cities’, Vishaan Chakrabarti, Metropolis Books, 2013

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Celebrating What’s New!

I’m looking forward to this weekend: on Saturday it will be an opportunity to meet up with old and new friends because it will be our third 25^th Anniversary Celebration Day.

One of the things I’ve been spending time on these past couple of years is the very idea of innovation and how to be innovative. A lot of people want to innovate but don’t necessarily know how to. It is true that innovation is the life blood of commercial success, but it’s also the basis of personal well-being. (If you’re in any doubt about that just ask someone whose relationship has gone stale).

Being able to innovate then is very important - which is why I began to work with Professor John Bessant who’s background is innovation in organisations. We got together because John had got to the point where he was very clear that the next stage was not organisations but what happens inside people that makes it possible for them to be innovative. We met when he came to take the Practitioner with me. Many of the NLP techniques are potentially useable to foster that overall capacity to be innovative. This is not the same as being creative: you could be creative and not really do anything. To be innovative you need more than an idea: you have to follow through and do. Something has to actually happen.

John is going to be joining me this weekend and we will be sharing some of the tools that we have in our new programme that will be starting in the Autumn.         

I also want to spend some of the time looking at the long and winding road that is a person’s life. Having a way of making sense of where you are on the journey, knowing how to take charge and go in a direction that is meaningful to you is crucial. So often what I hear from people who have taken trainings with me is that what they found most valuable was how it helped them re-orientate in their own life. They have a new awareness of what they are about and where they want to be going.

I am very pleased that Lawrence Kershen QC,  who took his Practitioner with me in 1990, will be joining me on Saturday. Lawrence’s journey can tell us a lot about how to engage with our inner calling. It has immediate relevance for anyone wanting to be true to themselves. More of that on the day.

When you start thinking about the journey that is your life, being able to just keep going is also a crucial part of the art of succeeding. So the other thing that I really want to focus on are those secrets of perseverance.

Winston Churchill’s adage of “never, never, never give up” is really to the point here. After having guided ITS through 25 years of ups and downs I think there are some things I can usefully say about how to ensure that you do not just survive but you actually thrive.

It is going to be a jam-packed day and, hey, here comes summer!

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On Leadership & Overwhelm

One of the most important things I do is working with people who are in leadership roles in very different organisations all over the world. As part of that I find I am frequently asked to engage in coaching the next generation of leaders in how to be effective as leaders.

A hallmark of leadership is you have responsibility but you also frequently feel there are many things you need to attend to. So, it is often the case that leadership and the experience potentially of overwhelm go together.

How do you address overwhelm as a leader? This becomes a question which any effective leader has to have an answer to. One of the things that’s fascinating to me about being overwhelmed (or fearing that you’re going to be overwhelmed) is that no one is ever really overwhelmed by what they are doing. In fact they are overwhelmed by the number of things they are not doing and that they feel they should be doing. You therefore have this very curious thing that overwhelm is not about what you’re doing but it is about what you feel should be doing. 

The secret of dealing with overwhelm is getting very clear about what matters most. If you don’t know how to prioritise it is going to be really difficult to avoid feeling overwhelmed. If on the other hand you cultivate the art of prioritising then overwhelm is not something you are going to be on the receiving end of because you will always be addressing the questions like... what is most important here? Where do I need to focus my attention first? What is requiring my attention now?

You are therefore constructing timelines for yourself as well as asking, ‘what is my top 10, my top 5, my top 3 things to do? Being able to do this is a learnable skill but without practice it’s something which is very difficult to do in the moment. Until you actually have some means of stepping back you are unlikely to do that because you are way too busy being busy.

One of the things I notice about people is that the longer they are in the world of work, the busier they get. The busier you are the greater the danger of you not being strategic because you are just doing your best to keep up.

How to ensure that you don’t get lost in your own busyness or you don’t get overwhelmed by the drama of the day? Well, you know what it is like when you come back from holiday - you frequently see things differently. Why? Because you’ve taken a break and stepped back. You’ve created a breathing space.

I think very often that is what good coaching does and it is absolutely why the CEOs I work with value having a coaching space. It is because every so often, on a regular basis, they step back from the drama of the day and they do something really important. They take a breath, they take stock, they look at the big picture and then determine what really matters here. Again they are prioritising, but they are doing so based on their own values and there is an understanding of what is important going forward. They also look at what is in keeping with their own primary values and the goals they seek to realise. If you don’t do this on a regular basis you will forget what your primary values are and what you are going for because you will just be trying to keep up.

Good coaching creates the space to be strategic not just in your leadership but in your leadership style. This prevents overwhelm and that means you get to be a whole different kind of leader  – one who can inspire others to learn how to do this too.

That has got to be a skill worth learning.

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15 Videos!

I have just had a very video based day. It has been extraordinary really and a contrast between the old and the new too.

Many years ago I was approached by The Open University to see if I’d be willing to contribute to their MBA programme as they had a course which was on “Creativity, Innovation and Change”.  Indeed I think they still do.

That saw me going with a group of ITS alumni to the BBC studios in Marylebone High Street and recording a piece which has been used for many years now.  As it happens, somebody who took that MBA Open University programme was particularly taken with what we were doing regarding how to be more creative and how to generate innovative strategies. This person contacted me a little while ago to say that he would very much like to come and video me talking about creativity, innovation and also leadership.

Times have moved on and instead of me going to a studio he just came to the house. He is actually Italian and this will be going out through an Italian portal for leaders who are English speaking.  It was interesting how we did it remarkably easily, with no fancy studio equipment. It was just fascinating to do. Also to hear his take on how taking the Open University course had made a real impression on him. That was one piece; the old way and the new way all in one.

On the same day I also got a series of links - 15 altogether  - each being a short link to a video I had recorded at the request of some students. These videos feature different topics looking at innovation, entrepreneurship, branding, work-life balance, the role of collaboration, keys to successful living and how to survive in a recession.  And they are ready to roll. I have just been having a look at them. I could wish for better lighting and so forth.  Nevertheless it seems to me they are very much of the video age. None are more than two or three minutes. 

A video is a useful way of saying something to the point very briefly and hopefully to give people a steer on different ways of coming at being more resourceful and of course more resilient. Of course I had something to say on the role of Applied Neuroscience - you would be surprised I think if I hadn’t! - but also on the nature of entrepreneurialism and why it isn’t just to do with business.

Learning to have an entrepreneurial mind set would be an incredibly useful skill to develop as part of every child’s learning experience. In essence being an entrepreneur is about having a dream and being able to follow that through, being a self-starter, creating something, making changes based on whether or not you are succeeding and daring to dream.

One of the videos is called, Do You Need a Plan?  Yes, you may but you won’t just need a plan, you will need some passion  too. You will also need to go with your gut when the plan says one thing and your feelings say something quite different – I know which I’d trust.

These kinds of thoughts and being able to offer them in videos is very satisfying and very simple. My hope is that we’ll be able to put these out fairly soon. I’ll keep you posted.

So, the world of video...Good Lord!

Until the next time. 

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How Neuroscience Can Help Trigger Innovation

Well this past week has been one of those wonderful times when some of the themes that I’m particularly passionate about have been coming together in ways that I thought would probably happen but I didn’t quite know when.

So earlier in the week I was talking with Professor John Bessant with whom I’m preparing some material on innovation and how to be innovative. He is somebody who has spent many many years at the forefront of exploring innovation in organisations and we first met because John was just interested in what he considered to be the missing piece - namely how to be innovative at an individual level; what can you do and what can you give people that can enable them to be more so. That has been the focus of our attention. We’re in fact going to be doing some work later in the year showing people exactly how to do this and as team leaders how they can enable others to be more effective too.

A few days ago I was also talking with Professor Patricia Riddell about neuroplasticity and the ability of the brain to essentially reinvent itself and the extraordinary potential possibilities that this throws open. Of course this started with a re-understanding of the field of neuroscience of just what was possible. Initially it was assumed that the brain was the brain and there you go: you got what you got. However, what has been so clear in the last ten years is that essentially the brain can re-invent itself, not just to any degree at all but beyond our wildest previous imaginings and we really don’t know the limits.

Now, when you put these two things together; innovation and what is called neuroplasticity do you think they might just have anything to do with each other? Well of course, because what we’re taking about with neuroplasticity is not just people having a new idea once in a while, it is about the brain literally changing itself at the bio-electrical and chemical level. When you have, for instance, new insights, you are changing the organic structure of your brain. It is not just a nice idea, there is something going on internally laying down new neural pathways.

This has got amazing implications. People recovering from traumatic injuries? Well clearly this will be good news because much more may be possible than we thought. In addition, just in ordinary everyday life, pretty much anybody can learn to become more able to do things that they previously thought they couldn’t. If that is true for an individual then it is also going to be true for a group of individuals who might just be known as a team. Or for many teams who might just be known as an organisation.

Now think about this, what would it be like if we started looking at teams and organisations as able – or not - to encourage more people to be more innovative, that is to say, to be become more capable of demonstrating their own brain’s neuroplasticity. Or are we working in organisations where there’s an extraordinary kind of rigidity? As in, it must be this way because it has always been this way. It is not that we don’t want procedures, it is not that we don’t find protocols useful as they have an enormous role to play in making sure we don’t wake up every morning and re-invent the wheel. But if you want to stay stuck make sure you don’t believe that change is possible, that you don’t believe that your own brain can deliver an extraordinary rate of change that you can barely imagine - and make sure that you don’t think other people can do it either. Well who on earth would want to do that?

And of course that is why bringing these different worlds together is so potentially rewarding and for me incredibly exciting.

We are actually going to be having a Celebration Day on 1st June and John’s going to be joining us on that day. He and I will be exploring some of the dimensions of innovation and how to be innovative as an individual. But before then Trish and I will be exploring the promise of neuroscience as it relates specifically to this new quality of being able to achieve greater plasticity - and thus greater flexibility and greater creativity.

Our whole world opens up if we just understand what is possible for our brain. That’s why I’m looking forward to this coming weekend on neuroplasticity. So, until the next time.

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