If you don't like your situation, change the situation

I'm going through stuff at the moment, both professionally and personally. It's all a bit frustrating as essentially I don't feel useful.

This isn't about self-doubt, I'm doing a good job of stuff, and I know I am, I'm just not feeling useful. And that's annoying. Keeping this to the confines of the work situation, there's things which need to happen which I think I need other resources to enable a good job of stuff. And in fairness I've been a bit reluctant to be pro-active about making them happen.

Those of you following me on Twitter will know I'm running a course on 'Making a Personal Impact'. Part of this means letting others know about being pro-active. And immediately I'm left with the thought, I'm not practising what I preach.

So here it is. I've known I need to do better, and I could just bitch about what I'm not happy about, but that's not going to get me anywhere. I can change the situation though so it meets my needs. How? By taking a look at each of the things I'm currently doing which I think are effective, and evaluating how truly effective those things are.

I hate self-evaluating. It's a pain in the arse. But that's the thing about change, you have to start with an evaluation. Only then can you move forward. You can't change the situation unless you have a good assessment of what you're doing now.

And when I say change, I don't mean make sweeping changes. Look for the things that have meaning for you. Do the things that will enable the change you're looking for. You're responsible for what happens in your life. Listen to those around you. Hear what's going on. Understand it. Question it. If you can act, then act. If you can't. it's because you haven't understood the real issue.

And I don't mean change the situation in a sweeping or tangential move. You made a conscious decision to enter your situation. You thought/believed/hoped it would mean something new/interesting/challenging for you. If it's not, you can make it into what you want it. But you have to be the one that does it. No one else will make it happen for you. And I don't mean bulldoze through disrupting or damaging people in your path. Make it meaningful for everyone concerned.

I've written before about Intelligent Behaviour, and this is a another important facet of what that behaviour looks like. Act intelligently so that the behaviour you are expecting is what you are displaying.

Are emotions good for business?

I love Dragon's Den. It's a fantastic bit of reality TV which I enjoy. And I hate reality TV. So this is one of the few I indulge in. It's in season 8 which goes to show how strong the show is. The format of the show is simple enough. Pitch your product to a panel of investors ("dragon's") and if they believe enough in you and your product, they'll give you the investment you're looking for, and take some equity in your business.

The presentations are what I like best about the show. You have to have a good product, but sometimes that isn't enough. If you can't sell it, they won't buy it. In one of the winning pitches last week, the presenter cried because of the praise heaped on her by Theo Paphitis (one of the dragons). I cried out on Twitter that crying is cheating in presentations - and I stand by that.

It prompted a conversation with a fellow L&Der, Stella Collins, around what emotions are allowed to be displayed in the workplace. And this is an interesting topic. So let's have a peek at what research tells us.

The question isn't so much do emotions have a place at work, I think it's more, how emotionally intelligent are your workforce? This also ties in with the Intelligent Behaviours theory I've been working on. First let's look at an emotionally intelligent workforce.

First, it's important to recap what emotional intelligence is. It's a form of multiple intelligences, and Daniel Goleman took selective work and coined the term emotional intelligence (EI or sometimes referred to as EQ). He argues that EQ is distinctly different from IQ in that it can be something which can be learned over time, where IQ is a static ability. Within this, he describes five broad sets of behaviours that you should remain conscious of if you want to be successful in your dealings with others: social skills, self regulation, self motivation, empathy and self awareness. Over the years, a variety of measurement tools have been developed to identify areas of weakness and strength in EQ and subsequent techniques to help develop your overall EQ. Some of these that come to mind are Baron EQi and Consulting Tools 360 EQ tool.

Having an emotionally intelligent workforce means you need a team of people (not necessarily managers) who understand what it means to be emotionally intelligent, how to respond to others, and how to develop others capabilities of being emotionally intelligent. For example, if Bob is angry and is shouting at Berk, the first port of call for most people will be to turn a blind eye and gossip about it later, then for someone to make a complaint to HR, then for some formal action being taken, and all of it on both employees formal records. That's hardly what Bob or Berk want to happen, regardless of how inappropriate their behaviour.

If someone is emotionally competent though, they will be able to deal with the situation immediately, with autonomy and confidence. This means, addressing Bob initially and taking him away from the situation, letting him vent, empathising with him, understanding what brought him to that level of anger, and then allowing him some time away from the desk and team. It's about taking Berk aside and doing the same thing. And then, if both are agreeable it's about getting them in the same room and being open with one another about their disagreement, and once it's been aired and genuinely resolved, they go back to their team.

This sounds all rosy, but this is a blog post and I'm limited by how much I can elaborate. But you can quite comfortably see there is a process driven way of dealing with this, and there's having an Intelligent Behaviour mindset as I've described.

Equally, if Bernie is upset and starts crying, how do you react to this? Typical behaviour may be to just shy away from dealing with it, and probably recommending he go home for the rest of the day, and on his return ask him how he is, but not really deal with it. Or you can allow him to go away and cry, seek him out, and then talk with him to find out why he's so upset. If it's something which can't be dealt with there and then, is it something which will be a barrier to him working for the rest of the day? If it is, then he should go home as there's no sense in him being at work. If it isn't then you need to provide some coaching for him so he can focus on the work ahead for the rest of the day. You then touch base again at the end of the day and find out how he is before he goes home. The next day you catch up with him one last time, just to ensure he's ok.

What some large companies would tend to do in this situation is to send either of the people above to a counsellor of some sort and seek professional help. And that may be appropriate for a small percentage of the workforce, but for most situations on a day to day basis, an Intelligent Behaviour mindset suggests there's a much better way to deal with people when they're displaying strong emotions.

Are you behaving intelligently?

A while back I started this topic about Intelligent Behaviours. I started to talk about two aspects of the title - what it means to be Intelligent and why I chose Behaviours. I'd like to continue that discussion piece to evolve my thoughts and the theory.

In particular I want to focus on the workplace as that has resonance for a lot of people. In my last job I had to do a lot of training on the topic of Diversity. Part of that training was centred on the consequence of acting inappropriately or insensitively towards someone and the process of disciplinary. There was no positive message in there at all. It was all about 'Don't do this or else'. There's two things within this I'd like to tackle.

The first is the delivery of the message. As L&Ders we should be able to encourage a group to reflect on their actions and reach a decision about how they want to act in future. The problem with the delivery style of the training was that it was telling people what they weren't allowed to do. If the discussion came up about what they could do, it was chance that directed it and nothing else.

However, think about the development of the discussion and training if you get a group to think about behaving intelligently towards their colleagues. In the first instance it's about recognising what behaviours are appropriate as well as inappropriate. And not just a typical flipchart list of 'touching', 'shouting', 'arguing', etc. That only superficially addresses those behaviours. There needs to be a set of development activities that centre around the skills that enable understanding of those behaviours e.g. active listening, learning about cultural differences, how to ask questions, all things which are key in enabling behaviours to be understood better.

The intelligent piece then focuses on how to act on that learning. And that's the difficult bit for a lot of people. If you know that you shouldn't be putting undue pressure on your team, but you aren't cognisant of your own behaviour how can you act intelligently? You need to take a long look at yourself and either seek feedback or find ways to raise your self-awareness so that you can learn what acting intelligently means for you. If it's about being professional, in what respect do you need to do this. If it's about explaining your thinking more, what is it that you think is or is not happening now?

The second piece I'd like to tackle is the focus the company places on this topic. A company has as much responsibility to behave intelligently as does its staff. From the company though it should be less about process and protocol and policies and more about behaving in ways that make people feel valued, and if they're misbehaving then dealing with that appropriately.

For example, Bob comes into work drunk after every lunch break for a week. Typical action would be to discipline Bob for breaking company policy and being under the influence of alcohol. If he doesn't improve in 2 weeks he'll be let go. That's fine but what a stick approach.

How about a company giving Bob time off from work, fully paid, on the condition that he immediately seeks professional help, paid for by the business, so he can overcome his problem. A timeline is given for 2 weeks to turn it around, and if there's no satisfactory result, then he will be given a further 2 weeks off work, unpaid, but still has to get help. If there's still no joy, then you enter into formal proceedings explaining that you've offered the support, you're still committed to helping Bob, and together you will find a way to improve, unfortunately he has to go through a disciplinary. You also have an open forum with the team about how they are dealing with workload and any other stress with the absence of Bob so they are not ostracised.

A company won't do that though because of the time and investment involved. Instead they'd rather have an unproductive worker, who isn't dealing with his issue, getting worse, and with the fear of losing his job hanging on his head. His team and manager aren't dealing with the situation well either and they're feeling the stress. He leaves, and the post is vacant for 3 months resulting in increased unproductivity. Recruitment fees stack up, you finally find someone, and 3 months after they start they're finally at an acceptable working level. 8 months down the line of Bob leaving, you're finally productive again, after a lot of cost to the business. It could have been dealt with in 4 weeks.

I've created extreme situations, and this theory is far from infallible. However, it does offer an alternative perspective to how we currently approach problems and issues on a day to day basis. Intelligent Behaviours is about what it suggests. Thinking about how we behave so that we can make intelligent decisions for the benefit of everyone involved.

Banter is not wrong

A good friend of mine, Jim, has gone through a small ordeal which has made me (re)ponder the way we think about Diversity. Jim is a smart guy, and has a quick wit. He's been with his employer for a number of years now and is working his way through the ranks. In his current post he has a mixed team of people he works with. Now Jim's not a malicious person in any way but what happened has now given him the name Mud.

Jim enjoys banter - as we all do - with his work colleagues. What he didn't bank on was someone in his team not appreciating his banter. Jim made a comment and used a euphemism to make it funny. His colleague took offence and decided to address it with Jim. Thankfully it's not turned into anything serious, but it made me think about how easily behaviours can be misinterpreted.

What worries me is there is a clear uncertainty from employers and employees about what is acceptable in the workplace. Clearly direct and indirect discrimination of any kind is just unacceptable and should be dealt with. And acting in inappropriate ways is clearly unacceptable - butt slapping, shouting, intimidating, etc. But in a lot of everyday occurrences, it's the non-obvious behaviours which need to be considered.

Think about any of the following: A female employee referring to colleagues using words like 'honey', 'love', 'darling'. A male employee walking around the office in cycle clothing (not wrong but certainly not appropriate). An Asian employee displaying an England flag at his desk during an international sports competition. A practising religious person keeping on their desk in view of everyone a copy of their religious text. Are any of these wrong? As any case law specialist will tell you it's all about the context.

So here's my context. In a previous post I mentioned Intelligent Behaviours. If staff act intelligently they would see that in most instances a behaviour perceived as inappropriate was actually harmless. It's when you don't act intelligently that things go awry. Having an Intelligent Behaviour mindset means you're not only looking at what was said, but the mannerisms of the person as a whole, their normal interactions, their attitude to work, their attitude to the organisation, their interpersonal skills, all these give you a picture of what that person intended. Bearing that in mind, in most instances you should see no malice intended.

I'm not dismissing those individuals who do allow their prejudices and biases to influence how they work with others. Even they should take the time to think intelligently about what they're doing. This is about allowing a workplace to have a freedom to act and behave in a way which others are accepting of and appreciate. If your organisation is reticent to do this or thinks this is not talking about the real world, then your organisation has a behaviour problem that rides throughout all levels and you need to make some tough and necessary decisions about how you want to rectify these.

So, banter is not wrong. It's a very British quality mind, and other cultures will have different cultural norms to be adhered to and respected. The important thing to remember is if you have an issue with what someone has said, think intelligently about the context, not just the words, and more often than not you'll have a different appreciation to your assumption.

Intelligent Behaviours

I'd like to promote a new line of thinking that seems to be in line with the changing world we live in. The digital age promises a lot for the future of society. Access to content has never been greater, speeds for access are now fought for, consumers are consuming more and demanding more, communities are standing up for their rights all across the globe, ideas, thoughts, challenges are being pushed and nurtured right across every member of society in our education systems, places of worship, businesses and any other institution that fosters and develops minds.

This also means that we, as a society, need to embrace a different kind of thinking. I'm calling this Intelligent Behaviours. I had considered calling it Intelligent Psychology but on reflection psychology can be perceived to be limited to the mind - although that's not true. By calling it Behaviours you can then start to focus on what people are doing as well as inferring their psychological state, as well as taking into account things happening in the economy/society/world, as well as being mindful of other factors such as societal institutions - family/work/education.

And the Intelligent part? Well that's around our ability to not only discern between right and wrong, good and bad, good and evil, but act in a far more considered manner which can only be described as intelligent. Intelligence isn't just about thinking critically, analytically, having a deductive mind, observant, or a myriad of other attributes and attitudes. It also encompasses acting on your feelings, emotions, values, beliefs and experiences. Vital to this is intelligence with wisdom, conviction and passion. But importantly, I think, it is about acting in a way which not only serves to inspire behaviour in others, but also sets a constantly evolving benchmark of what it means to act intelligently.

So what is it I think it important about Intelligent Behaviours? In essence I think it hinges on being able to help anyone, in any situation, see past what they think they need to do, challenge themselves to think intelligent and then decide what behaviour will help them achieve this. We might call this coaching/mentoring/counselling/feedback/advice, and they all may play a part in this. Intelligent Behaviours seems to invoke in me a real sense of purpose about the term. And it should develop into a complete philosophy which I will embark on.

This will be the first in a string of blogs where I'll be developing this concept of Intelligent Behaviours. I hope you'll stay with me on this path as I think this is an important concept to consider and make available. I also look forward to your thoughts and feedback about this topic.