10 Tips for co-facilitating online sessions
There’s always been a valued role for facilitators to co-host meetings and workshops so leaders and all involved can participate more and worry less about the process. With COVID-19 thrusting…
Federer and the performance benefits of working part-time
The professional tennis circuit is a punishing arena for men’s and women’s bodies. To aim for #1 requires a level of commitment and a volume of matches that seem beyond…
Will you stay or will you leave?
Fascinating article from researcher Irit Alony, of Wollongong University, published in the Conversation today. She and her colleagues applied the successful divorce-prediction criteria of John Gottman, from the University of…
[How] are questions better than affirmations?
Thanks to John Campbell at Growth Coaching International for the link to recent research into the benefits of asking questions before doing a task, versus making affirmations. The research shows…
Retrench the role, respect the person
I'm working with a management group at present where there have been a number of retrenchments and we all agree there is no easy way to do it. The key…
Are your people smart or do they work hard?
Lots of useful ideas in Roger Dooley's Neuromarketing blog on how to use the workings of our brain to enhance our marketing persuasiveness. Most of the ideas are also translatable…
Work life flexibility – a useful business strategy
A Fast Company leadership article about CFO views of work life flexibility strategies is yet another example of the knowing - doing gap. Yost's study of CFO perspectives confirms that…
Wellbeing and Resilence are replacing Engagement
According to a recent HR breakfast presentation by Roger Collins, Professor Emeritus, UNSW, managers and HR representatives can best help their employees by focusing on Wellbeing programs rather than Engagement…
Co-operative not Superior Specialists
I'm working with a client whose strategy was to hire the best specialists and throw them together to solve the problems faced by their clients. You can imagine the result…
Hunters and Carers
I’m grappling with the consequences of implementing the strengths based philosophy and a recent conversation with a good client is indicative of the dilemma. This organisation wants their Relationship Managers to be as good at bringing in new clients as they are at looking after them, but few in the team seem to have both strengths in balance (funny that) and training isn’t a viable solution, unless other things are addressed.
The strengths approach (and my experience) says that those who are “hunters” love wooing others (winning them over – to use the Clifton Strengths Finder category) and will never be as good at caring as they are at wooing. When they’ve brought a new client in to the organisation, the wooing is over and the hunter is on to the next prospective client and the new client can suddenly feel a bit “unloved” if no one else takes over to care for them.
The carers in comparison, are a little bit slower in forming relationships with new clients and find the wooing very difficult so they procrastinate. But they love looking after existing clients and making sure they are happy.
A mix of hunter and carer is ideal, but we are more likely to create that in a team than to create that mix in a person.
What happens to a manager of a team who has been tasked with making sure each team member does their share of hunting and caring?