Performance for Growth

CIPD Report shows worrying trend

The CIPD has just released it’s quarterly survey of employee attitudes and it shows a worrying trend around trust of senior management. Only about a third of employees said they trust or have confidence in their senior managers. This is clearly not a good place to be as we ease (slither) out of recession. They correlate this low trust with the fact that employees have a negative perception about consultation, this has got worse over the last four quarters. Senior leaders should take note as this could make a big difference to the speed at which the organisation recovers or how well they take advantage of a disrupted market. The pickings could be rich but if the employees have low trust they may not respond they way you need them to.
This reduction in the perceived level of consultation could be linked to leaders having to make difficult decisions over the past year, and clearly that’s what they are expected to do, and often those decisions are not the sort that could be consulted on, but somehow the leader still needs to make the employees feel involved and communicated to. Savvy leaders who recognise this and dedicate time and energy to address it will reap the benefits.
Trust is a multi faceted thing and often means different things to different people in different circumstances, so while sending out the occasional corporate memo to update people is a positive thing to do, it is unlikely to build trust.
Our Leadership Development programmes are always tailored to your needs, we help leaders find their “authentic voice” and help them connect to employees at an emotional level which is key to building trust. Click Here or call us on 044 (0)1189832017 for a no obligation discussion

BIS report uncovers compelling evidence

David MacLeod and Nita Clarke were commissioned by the Department for Business (BIS) to take an in-depth look at employee engagement and to report on its potential benefits for organisations and employees. The Secretary of State for Business, Lord Mandelson, encouraged the independent reviewers to examine whether a wider take up of engagement approaches could impact positively on UK competitiveness and performance, and meet the challenges of increased global competition.The independent reviewers’ answer is an unequivocal yes.
Since Autumn 2008 they have seen many examples of companies and organisations where performance and profitability have been transformed by employee engagement; they have met many employees who are only too keen to explain how their working lives have been transformed; and have read many studies which show a clear correlation between engagement and performance – and most importantly between improving engagement and improving performance.
The evidence is clear, engaged employees generate 43% more revenue than disengaged ones, 70% of engaged employees indicate they have a good understanding of how to meet customer needs and engaged employees are 87% less likely to leave their organisation.

The same sort of correlations can be found with most key metrics including productivity, lost time accidents etc, but the $1m dollar question is how do you increase employee engagement.
The answer came through very clear, aside from the need for senior management to communicate, the single most influencing factor is the behaviour of the employee’s direct Line Manager, and what’s more, there are some very clear behaviours and attitudes that make all the difference. How are your managers doing, do they know what makes the difference?, do they have the skills?, do they care? 
If you are interested in having your employees give 57% more discretionary effort or generate 43% more revenue or become 20% more productive then get in contact, our leadership and management programmes are fully aligned with driving engagement and if you want a specific programme to focus just on engagement we also do that. Click Here or call 044 (0)1189832017 for a no obligation discussion.

Case Study

Coaching is sometimes perceived to be a soft option or even a perk, nothing could be further from the truth but coaches often face the challenges that these perceptions present. The following case gives some insight, all the references have been changed for reasons of confidentiality.
Stephen was a VP in his organisation and was being lined up for a larger role but had been given feedback about some areas he still needed to work on. His CEO had engaged a coach personally before with great success and was confident Stephen could benefit in the same way so had arranged for Stephen to be coached.
Stephen was not convinced but agreed to attend to keep the CEO happy. Stephen had heard about coaching and considered it to be a soft option, a bit of a cosy chat and felt his time would be better spent with an expert who could help him quickly overcome the feedback by telling him what he needed to do differently, after all he was a fast learner and wanted to sort this quickly so that he could progress into the role.
The first meeting was the key to how  this coaching relationship would continue, (or not, as all good coaches will help the coachee find another coach if they think the chemistry is not right).
Stephen’s approach was to put up barriers and try to get the coach to tell him what he needed to do. The coach resisted the temptation to buckle under Stephen’s assertive behaviour but steadily built the relationship to the point where he was able to provide a significant challenge to Stephen through questions. This could have destroyed the relationship there and then, but the rapport was strong enough for the challenge to land effectively and after a long a difficult silence, (which the coach purposely allowed Stephen to fill with his own thoughts), Stephen opened up and revealed the real reason why he was struggling, (in the areas where he had received feedback).
There were some deep rooted confidence issues that Stephen had never shared with anyone. He couldn’t share them at work because he knew this would be seen as an even bigger weakness, and, for someone in his position to admit would be career suicide, yet here he was talking about them for the first time.
After the first session Stephen could not wait for the next and felt very motivated to work on the things his coach had helped him identify.
The final result after five sessions was that Stephen successfully addressed the feedback areas and went on to get the larger role.
He is now an advocate of coaching and says that he has never been challenged so much, but in a way that felt supportive at the same time. He no longer sees coaching as a “soft option”

If you would like more information about our flexible coaching programmes Click Here or call 044 (0)1189832017 for a no obligation chat.

Government Grants are available through the LSC

The government has made funds available for grants up to £1000 for Leadership and Management training through the Learning Skills Council (LSC).

Each organisation can apply for a total up to £1000 of grant support

  * The first £500 must be used for the senior person.

  * The second £500 needs to be matched by you.

  * You must apply to see if you qualify first.

  * Organisation pays for all training first, then receives grant after.

Qualifying Criteria

  * Must employ between 5 and 249 people

  * Be from an EU country

  * Not have received Leadership and Management funding previously.

If you think you might qualify and would like to discuss more, give us a call on 044 (0)1189832017 and we can help you.

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Don’t miss out on these valuable discounts

As a special incentive for the new year we are offering some generous discounts of up to 20% on our core programmes.The Early Bird scheme applies to any new programmes that are effectively booked with us before the end of Feb 2010. The qualifying programme can be delivered any time during 2010.

So for example: If you contact us during Feb and are interested in running some Leadership training later in the year and you receive a costed proposal from us, we will show the discount in the proposal. When the programme is delivered the discount will be applied to the final invoice even if the programme has been modified since the proposal. (The discount will not apply to any work that we are already in discussion with you about)

Click Here to contact us or call us on 044 (0)1189832017 for a no obligation discussion