Monday, April 10, 2006
What to say when you don’t know what to say!
Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com
Women are often tasked with managing personnel issues. If you are, you have a key role in the development of a ‘listening culture’.
For organisations to be successful, a ‘listening culture’ is vital. It brings greater performance, higher productivity and more staff buy-in, because when staff feel valued and recognised they do more to support the business.
As a woman you’re often seen as having caring and nurturing skills, which is why there are more women than men in Personnel Departments. It also means you have a vital role to play in the effective communication that is key to developing a listening culture.
This may not be easy. People aren’t born to be good listeners. It takes training and confidence-building to do so. And individuals are often promoted because of their academic prowess rather than their people management skills, and receive insufficient training in this invaluable management tool.
Time (or more specifically lack of it) can also be a factor; and it can be easy to find yourself getting out of your depth in a conversation and not knowing what to say next – discouraging you from engaging in similar discussions in the future.
The benefits of effective communication
By comparison, effective communication reduces the incidence of misunderstanding and consequent errors, and enables employees to be more readily aligned to the vision and leadership of the organisation, and to work more efficiently. This in turn reduces the opportunity for disharmony, discontent or dissatisfaction, and supports a healthy working culture.
Effective communication enables managers to be more aware of the internal and external pressures on employees, and promotes the opportunity for flexible and efficient management – for example by enabling the provision of suitable interventions in the instance of sickness absence, care issues or bereavement that might benefit from temporary, flexible working arrangements.
The importance of active listening
It goes without saying that effective communication includes active listening skills - engaging with the person you’re listening to and responding appropriately.
The ability to listen actively enables the person who is speaking to talk without interruption or contradiction and, by virtue of having a ‘sounding board’, clarify his or her opinion or circumstance. The positive effect of this is to improve self-confidence and encourage a better assessment of any proposed action, prior to it being taken.
Unfortunately, it’s often the very people who require the most help who will deny they’re in need of such support. They will frequently assure colleagues that they can manage and are in control of a situation, when the reality is not only that they can’t cope, but that they have never been actively encouraged by the organisational culture to seek help.
Active listening should therefore be seen as an essential managerial tool and part of effective people management. It should be within the skills portfolio of all managers, and available to be used in the maintenance of a stress-free work environment and the avoidance of disruption or discontent within the workforce.
Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com
Women are often tasked with managing personnel issues. If you are, you have a key role in the development of a ‘listening culture’.
For organisations to be successful, a ‘listening culture’ is vital. It brings greater performance, higher productivity and more staff buy-in, because when staff feel valued and recognised they do more to support the business.
As a woman you’re often seen as having caring and nurturing skills, which is why there are more women than men in Personnel Departments. It also means you have a vital role to play in the effective communication that is key to developing a listening culture.
This may not be easy. People aren’t born to be good listeners. It takes training and confidence-building to do so. And individuals are often promoted because of their academic prowess rather than their people management skills, and receive insufficient training in this invaluable management tool.
Time (or more specifically lack of it) can also be a factor; and it can be easy to find yourself getting out of your depth in a conversation and not knowing what to say next – discouraging you from engaging in similar discussions in the future.
The benefits of effective communication
By comparison, effective communication reduces the incidence of misunderstanding and consequent errors, and enables employees to be more readily aligned to the vision and leadership of the organisation, and to work more efficiently. This in turn reduces the opportunity for disharmony, discontent or dissatisfaction, and supports a healthy working culture.
Effective communication enables managers to be more aware of the internal and external pressures on employees, and promotes the opportunity for flexible and efficient management – for example by enabling the provision of suitable interventions in the instance of sickness absence, care issues or bereavement that might benefit from temporary, flexible working arrangements.
The importance of active listening
It goes without saying that effective communication includes active listening skills - engaging with the person you’re listening to and responding appropriately.
The ability to listen actively enables the person who is speaking to talk without interruption or contradiction and, by virtue of having a ‘sounding board’, clarify his or her opinion or circumstance. The positive effect of this is to improve self-confidence and encourage a better assessment of any proposed action, prior to it being taken.
Unfortunately, it’s often the very people who require the most help who will deny they’re in need of such support. They will frequently assure colleagues that they can manage and are in control of a situation, when the reality is not only that they can’t cope, but that they have never been actively encouraged by the organisational culture to seek help.
Active listening should therefore be seen as an essential managerial tool and part of effective people management. It should be within the skills portfolio of all managers, and available to be used in the maintenance of a stress-free work environment and the avoidance of disruption or discontent within the workforce.
Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com
# posted by Carole Spiers @ 9:27 PM 
The Gift of a Woman’s ‘Positivity’
Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com
An employer has come to think of his department as a well-assembled machine - all the right categories of staff in all the right places. Then one of them leaves, and suddenly everyone’s saying ‘It’s not the same without Anne-Marie … she’s left behind a huge gap.’ So what is this quality that marks out the person who is so sorely missed? Is it their qualifications or good track record? No, the special X-factor in such a woman is the positive charge she generates from within.
It is something beyond normal logic. Such women are often described as ‘magic’ or ‘special’, and are often able to bestow some of this quality on other people - creating new, unsuspected reserves of effort and goodwill, apparently out of nothing. There is something about them when they are in the room: they exude positive energy and are great to be with. Unlike negative personalities, they attract people to them and their positivity often rubs off.
It’s therefore worth trying to define this quality of ‘positivity’, with its huge range of impacts on everything from efficiency and punctuality to reduced staff turnover and improved customer relations. And clearly it starts with attitude - the root of all behaviour - which in turn dictates performance.
The Workplace as Theatre
The word ‘performance’ reminds us that the workplace is partly a theatrical arena, where people have to play certain roles in order to achieve a desired outcome. Actors have to play comedy on days when they may be feeling low, and in the same way, you have to speak on the phone in the same professional manner - whether it’s to a favourite colleague or a nuisance salesman.
Actors are there to carry conviction, to exude sincerity, or in other words to perform - brilliantly. They soon lose impact if they are seen to be just reciting lines written by someone else. So, for example, you should avoid the “Have a nice day” and plastic smile of the Disneyland waitress, even though for much of the time you may be having to say things you do not necessarily mean - possibly out of deference to a boss or client, or by way of the small-talk that lubricates dialogue with nervous colleagues or strangers. (Try saying what’s really in your mind, unprocessed and undisguised, and you probably won’t last two minutes!)
One half of your ‘positivity’, then, will be a successful act. But the other half has to be genuine – a core philosophy that defeats cynicism and gives you an indestructible optimism. This is what really connects, and will be missed about you when you’re gone.
Think for a moment about your legacy and what you are going to be remembered for. You might not be a Mother Theresa or Anita Roddick– but you might leave behind a winning smile, a happy demeanour, a positive energy that people want to package.
Your positivity is what you will be known for - and that is what will really be missed!
Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com
# posted by Carole Spiers @ 9:22 PM
