The 7 Stances of the Marvellous Manager

What makes a marvellous manager?

Many ambitious employees want to become managers and believe they will make excellent managers. After all, if they are successful in their current role, it’s obvious they will automatically excel in leading a team, right?

It is often said that people don’t leave bad companies, they leave bad managers. As the Great Resignation highlighted, employees want substance from their managers.

Rather than fancy coffee machines at the office, employees want managers that can communicate goals effectively and set the future focus. Employees want to be coached and empowered to achieve their goals and work for managers that make sure the organisational environment is supportive to delivering success.

No-one becomes a great manager overnight, however too often people are promoted into management roles because they have the right technical skills for the department. What is forgotten too often are soft skills. Does the manager have the capability to manage their team well? Has their ability kept pace with their role?

The world has changed, the rigid hierarchical management practices and bureaucratic processes of the past has no place in today’s modern working environment. Here we identify seven characteristics of a great manager.

Thinker

“It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.”

— René Descartes

Great managers know that the ability to think, assess and understand an issue is vital to resolving it. However, sometimes it is important to act even in the absence of complete understanding. This is where good intuition coupled with rational thinking is invaluable and it is vital that managers recognise that the ability to think is a critical asset. It needs to be developed, through training and practice, in the same way as any other business skill. 

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Coach

Just like sports coaches help their team to get to peak performance, great managers know that to help their employees achieve next level effectiveness they need to coach them. That means asking questions instead of delivering answers, supporting rather than judging, building rapport and relationships with your team and providing constructive feedback.

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Enabler

For a team to be successful it needs to understand its part within the organisation and the wider ecosystem including customers, suppliers, and competitors. A good manager knows this and focuses on building networks and relationships with this ecosystem, anticipating challenges and opportunities, to enable their team to effectively perform.

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Facilitator

The manager as a facilitator creates the conditions for the team to work collaboratively, developing mutual understanding, learning, insight, and action. Facilitation goes hand in hand with employee empowerment, bringing out the team’s collective skills, knowledge, and creativity to complete goals.

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Empowerer

Effective empowerment creates the right environment for high performance, and a great manager knows this. An empowerer builds each team member’s confidence in their ability, and the team's capacity, to execute the mission and achieve the desired goals. Empowered employees have greater self-confidence, are keen to develop their skills and use these for the benefit of the team and the company.

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Decision maker

Making decisions is part of the role of a manager, in fact, it’s a fairly big and crucial part. Effective decision-making involves understanding what information you need to inform your decision and applying your skills to select the most appropriate approach going forwards. Great decision-making is about understanding the risks and uncertainty involved, whether they are acceptable and the impact on your team and organisation’s objectives.

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Environment setter

Great managers create the right environment for employees to learn, develop and thrive. They give people the tools and resources to learn the things that they need to learn, to perform well in their roles and grow in their careers.

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Great managers shine – because their team shines

“A leader is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.”

— Nelson Mandela

Great managers put their team first. They set the direction then manage relationships, generate engagement, develop people, innovate, and generate positive change. They lead from underneath and act like a supporting mesh – scooping people up and pointing them in the right direction. Being a great manager is about getting the right balance of support and challenge to motivate and inspire each person to contribute fully and make a lasting difference towards the success of the business.

Raise the Bar

Employees contribute more when they are trusted, given meaningful goals, and empowered to look beyond short-term tasks. When people are empowered, they look at the wider ecosystem of a team, company, customers, suppliers, and the market sector. They ensure their contribution is making a difference, which is good for company culture, productivity and efficiency.

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Improving the Contribution of Managers

The Treehouse Contribution Programme helps organisations, and their employees realise their full potential and become better contributors. Find out more on how Treehouse can help your company can increase opportunity, productivity and develop a sustainable culture fit for the future.

Creating leaders of the future through the power of contribution

Leaders of the Future

We talked in detail about creating change through people in our previous blog “From me to we: Creating Change through Contribution”.  And that contribution is so much more than performance.  A high performer consistently completes their tasks and objective on time, on budget and on spec but yet a high contributor goes the extra mile, they are proactive, spotting challenges before they become issues, they are forward thinkers, innovators and they spot opportunities and act upon them.

It is contribution that makes the difference. 

The perception of leadership and management 

Do you see a leader as a:

• Hero

• Problem solver

• Expert

• High achiever

• Firefighter

• Responder

• Budget holder?

Or do you see a leader as a:

• Thinker

• Coach

• Enabler

• Facilitator

• Empowerer

• Decision maker

• Environment setter?

The misconception of what makes a good manager is common. Have you ever promoted a high technical performer to become a team leader or manager and then wondered why they struggle to deliver and contribute in that role?

Changing people’s view of management 

At the Treehouse we help change people’s view of management and thereafter their capability as a manager. From a manager as the Hero – the person who leaps into action to help the team solve problems and firefight – the one who is the expert and the highest achiever in the team. This is exacerbated by the media and film industry’s portrayal of people in charge who are like superman or wonder woman; saving the day; generally standing at the front and being the hero.

This way of operating is common in knowledge-based organisations, where the ‘currency’ is technical know-how and expertise. People are generally promoted to be the team manager or team leader because they are a great technical expert and deserve a promotion. Still, in reality, a management role is a cross-functional move – it needs a different set of skills to do the job well.

Without high-quality, tailored management development, the new first-line manager doesn’t understand the role; they don’t do the management aspects, instead, they act as the hero or simply add their pair of hands to that of the team, roll up their sleeves and help, and double down when there is an issue that requires technical expertise. The impact of this promotion is that the org has lost its best technical expert and gained a rubbish manager. They have turned a high contributor into a low one in an instant.

Lose-lose.

The Role of Servant Leader

Instead, there is a different, more helpful and accurate view of the management role – that of the manager as thinker, coach, enabler, decision maker, empowerer and environment setter.

Sometimes called Servant Leaders, this manager puts their team first; they set the direction then manage relationships, generate engagement, develop people, innovate and generate positive change. This manager leads from underneath; they are like a supporting mesh – scooping people up, pointing them in the right direction and getting the right balance of support and challenge to motivate and inspire each person to contribute fully and make a lasting difference towards the success of the business.

Creating an environment where ‘contribution’ supports new leaders

The first stage of any new job is to learn and absorb contribution for the business by taking it in from other people. This takes time and happens every time you enter a new role no matter your position.

The individual contribution of team members is the engine – the brain, hands and feet of the company. Their contribution will increase as their technical skills develop. The better team members are at their job, the greater the contribution.

Managers will contribute through other people and are distinctly different to leaders who set the strategic direction. They will also diminish their contribution every time they roll up their sleeves to add an extra pair of hands. They may think they are helping but often they are interfering and impeding the progress of the experts they manage.

It’s an extremely difficult concept for first-time managers and a different mindset.  The transition from being an individual contributor to contributing through others is really hard if not given the right support. They risk becoming frustrated and de-motivated when their efforts are not successful.

Leaders are the internal entrepreneurs who set the strategic direction.  They rely on their highly contributing managers. If managers do their job poorly, they create a situation where leaders need ‘manage down’. This leaves leaders distracted and diminishes their contribution - no one is doing their job well, the strategy suffers and the organisation's long-term sustainability becomes harder to achieve.

So how do we create our leaders of the future?

The change we ignite through contribution in a business is simply getting to a state where:

• Leaders are Leading

• Managers are Managing

• Deputies are Developing

• Team Members are Doing 

And we do this through moving people through the relevant contribution curve through a contribution learning programme. 

Team Members

Team members start their Contribution Curve at the learning stage, and through practise (lots and lots of it!), they have developed and honed their technical skills to reach the peak of their technical mastery at the accomplishing level.

While it would make sense that mastery of a skill should be at the top of their contribution curve, honing a skill can only develop a team so far. Collaboration is the next step to achieving success in a company. Working across an organisation, mentoring others and allowing them to step in and help too is more important than individual progression alone. At the very top of the team members' contribution curve is deputising where they are practising at being a manager and taking on greater leadership roles ready to feed into the manager's curve.

Managers, the leaders of the future

The bottom of their contribution curve is all about the task and your planning horizon is minutes hours days and as you progress to the top of their curve, more longer-term strategies are set concerning for months and years.

At the reacting level, there is reduced contribution from everyone because the managers are not doing the management role.  They are fighting fires, responding to issues, acting as heroes (as mentioned earlier) and very much bogged down in the detail and thinking for the team.

A manager who’s in control has the right team at the right level with the right skills at the right time.  They get results every time, a contented team who are consistently delivering customer satisfaction.

But we want more.

We want delighted customers.  At the directing level, we get an empowered, agile, fulfilled team that contributes highly and you end up with happy customers and loyal suppliers.  This is where your attention starts to drift from down into your team and across into your peers and you start contributing across a wider system.

Then at facilitating what you get is real, effective and efficient contribution.  Much more than performance, you get innovation, you generate opportunity and you consistently delight the customer all of the time.  With very high employee satisfaction, your team becomes magnetic with people queuing to join the department.

And finally, at leading, your attention is up and out into the wider market with long-term partnerships and sustainable revenue streams.  You are thinking in months and years rather than hours, days and weeks.  You are taking the strategic narrative from the business leaders and turning it into language and meaningful goals for your teams to act on.

This translation function joins up the team, so they are all pointed in the right direction and all understand what they are doing on a daily basis.  It is also a translation function which runs in the opposite direction, taking the employee voice (from those at the coal face), and turning it into insights to inform the strategic direction.

The manager of the future is a conduit, cutting through organisational treacle to create seamless communication.

Treehouse Contribution Programme

Treehouse provide tailor-made programmes that recognise the culture and structure of the organisation and ensure that managers are coached in a way that will move them from being doers to thinkers and direction setters, and people who see the big picture and the contribution they must make.

You can find out more about out Contribution Programme here and how we use it to transform reacting managers into leaders.

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Treehouse Contribution Programme

Treehouse provide tailor-made programmes that recognise the culture and structure of the organisation and ensure that managers are coached in a way that will move them from being doers to thinkers and direction setters, and people who see the big picture and the contribution they must make.

You can find out more about out Contribution Programme here and how we use it to transform reacting managers into leaders.

From Me to We: Creating Change through Contribution

From performance to contribution

Shifting the focus from performance to improving contribution not only results in a more efficient and effective team. It also creates an agile culture that is fit for the future.

Most companies have performance management systems that measure how well an employee completes the task they are asked to do. The focus is on how the individual has met the objectives set from the last review, which in most cases was 12 months ago.

Performance Management

Focuses on the individual and how well they have met their objectives.

In a constantly evolving business landscape, it seems counter-effective to be focusing purely on individual performance. As the saying goes, there is no I in team and yet performance management focuses on the individual and how well they have met the objectives set a year earlier.

The result? Rather than contributing to the greater good, employees learn that individual activity is what gets measured - and therefore what matters. Where is the incentive to go the extra mile when it’s your completed tasks rather than your contribution that really matters?

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Contribution - Greater than the sum of parts

Contribution

Is the difference employees make to help your business succeed.

Performance is activity, it’s doing what you are asked to do. Contribution is the difference employees deliver that helps the business succeed. Contributors spot challenges before they become issues, in short, they are the grease in the wheels, ensuring everything keeps turning.

To give an example, imagine two employees, Dave and Sarah, are tasked to build an engine component this week. To do this they need a specific widget that the company holds in stock, so they go to the warehouse to collect the widget. In the warehouse, they spot that these are the last two widgets remaining on the shelf. However, as they only need two, they take one each and return to building their engine component this week.

Sarah and Dave achieved their performance targets because they completed the engine component in the set time frame. However, prompted by the out-of-stock situation, Sarah has considered the potential impact to the team of the widget being out of stock and has acted. She starts to work with the procurement and supply chain teams to ensure that out-of-situations are avoided in future.

By thinking about the entire system and taking action to ensure effective and efficient workflows, Sarah is making sure the system works better for everyone.

The difference people make

Contribution is people thinking about and improving the entire system.

When performance becomes your activity and the focus is squarely on hitting goals and targets, productivity will inevitably suffer. Whereas contribution is the difference people make when acting in the best interests for the company, and it’s the extra factor that helps organisations to succeed.

Contribution is about thinking of the entire system, being proactive and adding value in a way that creates real difference. It is more than just ticking performance boxes.

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Rewarding activity instead of behaviour

Organisations that focus on rewarding activity inadvertently foster an environment where the attention is on tasks, short-term goals, the tactics of delivery and problem-solving - which inevitably happens after the challenge has become an issue.

These outcomes are often the result of four key counter-contributing behaviours seen in leaders and managers.

Poor Time Management

Managers who can’t manage their own time well are the type that are rarely available to their team. These managers are always in a rush because they are reacting to every situation that arises.

This type of manager tends to have little interest or influence within the company outside of their own area. Their behaviour is the opposite of contributing, this type of manager is only thinking about their little bit of the business and not the company. 

Lack of Courage

Seen all too frequently, particularly in technical businesses, where managers tend to tolerate inappropriate behaviour and low standards. Why? Because they don’t want to have difficult conversations or face feedback that could be uncomfortable, they just allow the issue to continue unresolved. 

This type also doesn’t manage upwards very well, their excuse being that they don’t want to get involved with office politics. The reality is that their behavioural style to exert influence with their own team is confrontational or autocratic – and that does not translate well when dealing with their own managers. Office politics is not the issue, their behaviour is and what may seem like a display of power is really a lack of courage. True leaders focus on letting go and empowering their people not holding them back.

Looking After Number One

Managers that display counter contributing behaviour are focused on looking after themselves. Knowledge is power and these types guard their own expertise, just so they can come to the rescue when a situation goes wrong. This is particularly the case with individuals in power who gain a sense of self-worth from retaining technical expertise.

The expert in the room who knows everything, can fix everything but won’t mentor their team or share their knowledge is purely thinking of themselves. They keep the prestigious and high-profile tasks, ensuring the limelight remains on them.

Rather than letting someone else learn, grow, and benefit from their experience, this type of manager loves being centre stage. Being indispensable is at the very core of this type of manager and if that involves discouraging career progression, particularly for those people who might be a threat to them in the future, then so be it.

This manager is likely to hold back valuable members of their own team from progressing and moving on within the company because it works in their favour. This behaviour is harmful, leaving teams disempowered and dependent instead of self-sufficient and motivated.

Not a ‘people person’

A bad leader is one that is not people orientated. They give lip service to the value of appraisals but treat them as a box ticking exercise rather than a valuable conversation with a member of their team. This type is dismissive of suggestions from others and has little interest in people, primarily because they do not know how to handle them. They avoid uncomfortable situations at all costs, mainly due to a lack of courage.

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Contribution: A catalyst for change that boosts productivity

If the past two years have taught us anything, it’s that organisations need to be agile and able to respond to evolving events. We need leaders who can lead, managers who can manage, team members doing and deputies developing.

Shifting the focus from ‘me’ to ‘we’ encourages greater contribution and delivers tangible results. It builds skills, shifts mindsets, creates greater capability, and develops a culture where employees can learn, develop, and succeed.

Employees contribute more when they are trusted, given meaningful goals, and empowered to look beyond short-term tasks. When people are empowered, they look at the wider ecosystem of team, company, customers, suppliers, and the market sector. They ensure their contribution is making a difference which is good for company culture – and for the bottom line.

Contributing teams deliver customer satisfaction and keep loyal suppliers engaged. Catalysing higher levels of contribution allows people to become more agile. This makes teams magnetic and desirable; others see an enriched team firing on all cylinders and they want to be part of that success - people will be queuing to join the team. As long-term partnerships continue to grow, so does company productivity, efficiency, and revenue streams.

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Contributing Managers Create Contributing Teams

Managers play a critical role in taking the strategic narrative from the leaders and turning it into a language that can be understood with meaningful goals for their teams to act on. This translation function is important because it connects people in the team, ensures they know their daily purpose and understand the future direction.

This translation function flows both ways with managers taking the employees’ viewpoint from the coal face back up to the leaders. This insight from the front lines is invaluable for informing strategic direction. Contributing managers are valuable conduits through which communication flows naturally.

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Increasing Contribution levels, Increasing Success

When companies choose to measure contribution rather than performance and develop the mindset and behaviours to support that choice, increased potential, and opportunity natural follows.

The companies we have worked with have seen a significant increase in contribution, delivering measurable differences and observable benefits. Managers that were once bogged down in the detail, firefighting issues and responding reactively have, through our contribution programme, reversed this spiral. Their teams are now functioning at a higher level, collaborating with their peers, and more consistently delivering good customer service.

People want to be employed in rewarding jobs, where they are trusted and valued, working in companies they are proud to be a part of. By helping managers to think differently, through independent coaching and learning, negative behaviours can be eroded. 

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What is the recipe for improving contribution?

Our Contribution programme helps organisations and their employees realise their full potential and become better contributors. It consists of:

• Assessment (self and 360°) of current and desired contribution and co-creation of a Growth Plan

• One-to-One Executive Coaching Sessions to act on the Growth Plan

• Action Learning Sets for group problem solving

• Topic Training Modules to fit with where each individual is on their learning journey

• Senior Leadership Team (SLT) Workshops to work on team-specific issues.

Find out more on how Treehouse can help your company can increase opportunity, productivity and develop a sustainable culture fit for the future.

“The programme devised by Treehouse has had a dramatic impact on our people; developing them from managers to capable leaders who are making a real difference. Truly valuing contribution; setting direction, not telling, creating engagement, developing others, and leading with authenticity & humility.”

— Head of Engineering and Service Management, BAE.

Is promotion to management a poisoned chalice?

The impact of promoting unprepared managers

Managers that lack leadership skills negatively impact their teams, so why do we keep promoting without training? 

Picture the scene; you have a star performer in your technical team of experts. This person shines above the rest, working diligently and delivering for customers, partners, and the team. This individual’s contribution benefits the collective group, ensuring goals, objectives, and purpose are met. In short, they are the very definition of a team player. 

You want to reward this person, as they clearly have great potential, are a valuable member of the company and deserve to be recognised for their hard work and dedication. The obvious next step is a promotion, and in many organisations, this means a management role of some kind such as team leader, supervisor, or manager.

Promotion as a reward

The benefit of promoting a valuable employee is that they feel recognised and rewarded. They are less likely to seek opportunities elsewhere if they feel acknowledged for their individual contribution. Additionally, by promoting from within it sends a positive message to employees that the company is actively recognising and rewarding in-house talent.

What most companies fail to appreciate is that a promotion to management is effectively a cross-functional move. The newly anointed manager is changing their role, from being a specialist within the team (an engineer, scientist, lawyer, accountant, software developer...) to being a manager of people. It’s a completely different job, from individual contributor to people leader, and requires a different set of skills that the employee, most likely, doesn’t have.

Expertise is not the same as experience

I remember when I worked at a large fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, according to the employee survey results, the Assistant Brand Managers were the least happy, suffered the most stress and were the most likely to leave. Many hung on in there in the hope of being promoted out of their misery. For this cohort were managed by a group of newly-promoted Senior Brand Managers, none of whom had any previous management experience. No timely training, was given to how the new Senior Brand Managers would lead and manage others. Low and behold the outcome was an unhappy, demotivated team and a destabilising churn rate within the department.

Too often employees are rewarded with promotions for the excellent work they do in their specialist area. It’s assumed that as experts in their current job, they will naturally succeed in managing others doing the same role. The reality is companies are promoting their best technical expert and gaining a bad manager. A double bad whammy. Who wants that?

Shadow of the untrained manager

As the saying goes, people don’t leave bad companies, they leave bad managers. The practice of promoting without training is surprisingly common and it doesn’t just negatively impact the team, it also affects the bottom line.

Without the right management training, the newly promoted manager reverts to their comfort zone by meddling in the technical work that their team should be doing. They delve into the project powered by the belief that more hands make light work and thinking that a team of 5 can become a more productive team of 6. The new manager doesn’t realise that their task is to lead the team, to motivate and inspire them to contribute in a way that creates a collective contribution equivalent to a team of 20.

When a manager gets too involved in the technical work of the team, the individual members start to feel disempowered, like they are not trusted and will respond by checking out altogether or being (consciously or unconsciously) disruptive. The team is no longer greater than the sum of its parts and the new manager has inadvertently created a drain on resources and a contribution sink.

Skilled managers are good for business

A trained manager not only boosts individual contribution across the team, but they also retain and motivate employees, thereby reducing the headaches and costs associated with turnover. Great managers attract, hire, and inspire great people, which in turn, increases the company’s ability to deal with gaps in the talent pipeline. Good managers lead productive and effective teams that punch above their weight in both performance and contribution to the business as a whole.

How to say no nicely

Say yes but mean no?

How often do you say yes when you really mean no? Generally, we have a clear sense of what our priorities are and what we should be working on at any given time, but our plans are scuppered by saying yes when we mean no. Why do we do that?

Humans are fundamentally social creatures, and we have a desire to please, fit into the community, be helpful and make a difference. We are hard-wired to say yes in the moment, and please the person in front of us, when to make the most valuable contribution we should really be saying no nicely.

The impact of saying yes can affect our ability to perform sustainably – it might require us to dig deeper than we are able to do, either energetically, or by cashing in too many ‘credits’ with others to help us out of a tight spot. Or we might be saying yes to something that infringes our boundaries and that can cause resentment and, over the long term, burnout.

Saying no nicely isn’t about being inflexible or being out of the door as soon as you reach your contracted working hours. It’s having a clear sense of your boundaries, what you can be flexible about, and what are non-negotiables, and having ways of saying no that leaves both you and the person asking you to do something with mutual respect intact.

It can be daunting to say no, as often the people placing unexpected demands on you are more senior. But there are ways to try and manage expectations and make the consequences of saying yes to important tasks or other urgent tasks known.

Say no nicely and negotiate an alternative

Here are some examples of how to say no nicely and negotiate alternatives so you are consistent with your boundaries:

• I can do that, but project x will be ready later

• I will struggle with that now as I have a personal commitment, can someone else help until I get back?

• When is the real deadline?

• What part of that needs to be done now, what can come later?

• I’d love to be able to help, can I do it on x date?

• If I do this now, the consequence is x. Are you OK with that?

• A.N.Other is better placed than me to do this because she/he has x skills.

When you don’t say no nicely

Sometimes it can be helpful to see what it looks like when you don’t say no nicely and are not consistent with your boundaries. Can you spot yourself or anyone else saying:

• I have a prior engagement but it’s OK I’ll do it later tonight

• I’ll have to do it because it’s for my boss’ boss/senior person/VIP

• I’ll come in early to get it done

• Sure, no problem (then grumbles or grimaces or rolls eyes)

• I’ll just work through my lunch hour

• OK, I’ll do it instead of this (important, not urgent) task

• I’ll do it because it’s you and you asked nicely

Sound familiar? Want to manage situations differently in the future?

How to fix the problem

The starting point of change is to acknowledge you have an issue that needs sorting, next is to raise your awareness of the problem, to identify how big it is and what potential solutions might be.

Here is a ‘Spotter Sheet’ to help you. Either download our example sheet or take an A4 sheet of paper and divide it into four quadrants with a small section across the bottom where you can record your overall take-out or ‘lightbulb’ moments. Try to capture examples for each of these:

1. Example of how someone made boundaries clear in a constructive way

2. Example of good negotiation where each person achieved a win

3. Example of how someone said no nicely

4. Example of what the missed opportunity was in a boundary infringement

Finally, add your key take-out or lightbulb moment in the section at the bottom.

To test different ways to improve your ability to focus on the things that really make a difference, use the Spotter Sheet in combination with the examples of how to say no nicely that are given above. You may find this is a useful approach to use outside of work as well, and it might be a good place to start and practice techniques to stay in control and meet your goals if you’re making your first steps to changing how you manage demands on your time.

Still stuck?

We offer management development and coaching support – if you want to book a coaching session for yourself or a learning and development programme for your team then get in touch.

Want to turn ideas into actionable outcomes? Then you need the A-Team!

Why you might need a facilitator

When people had a problem and when no one else could help, that was the time to call in the A-Team. Professional facilitators may not travel in black transit vans with red alloys and a stripe, but they are equally formidable at creating the environment to develop permanent capability.

You may be wondering why a facilitator is even needed? Ask yourself a question, when was the last time your company had a great workshop?

Think back to the last workshop you were involved with. I’m sure at the time it probably felt like a positive and productive session with everyone in the room was coming up with good ideas, suggestions, and solutions. However, the following day when looking through the flip chart pads and sticky notes you realise there isn’t much output to show for it. There are no actionable objectives, no conceived solutions, just some half-formed ideas that will need a lot of work. What the workshop delivered was a pile of seed ideas, not actionable ideas.

The power of facilitation

Seed ideas are valuable and as the saying goes ‘from little acorns, mighty oaks grow’. However, ideas need to be spoken out loud because these seeds are the springboard from which others can evolve and create actionable ideas. Seed ideas need to germinate, not just be written on a sticky note or a whiteboard and left forgotten.

This is when facilitators come into their own, moving people from seed ideas to actionable ideas. Let me give an example; if a department head has an objective to improve the performance of their team, the seed idea might be to improve the capability of managers to coach their teams. The actionable ideas generated will be to:

• run coaching training courses

• host lunch and learn practice coaching sessions

• embed a coaching session in all appraisals

• role model coaching by senior leaders

• organise action learning sets with managers to unblock any issues when trying to coach.

Ask two powerful questions to reach actionable ideas

With our facilitation workshops, the focus is to develop permanent capability within the company and embed it into the culture. How do we do this? When facilitating workshops, there are two simple questions we ask:

1. How are you going to do that?

2. Give me an example?

Simple but powerful.

If you don’t have the facilitation skills in-house, then it makes perfect sense to bring in the A-Team to design and facilitate a workshop for you. Alternatively, our Facilitation Skills Training builds permanent in-house facilitation capability.

Why do we make things so complicated?

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

— Albert Einstein

Humans have a way of making things complicated, even when we try to simplify things, the result can be a more complex solution than was necessary. Road signage can be a good example of overcomplicating a solution. How often have you driven to a new location and been overwhelmed with signage?

In general, knowing where you are going, and where to park once you have arrived are important pieces of information. But often we have signage overload. It’s clear the original thought process was well-intended but the result is too much information to onboard. The driver is faced with so many signs they don’t know where to focus their attention and miss the important piece of information they need. The original purpose of making the driver’s life easier seems to have been forgotten somewhere along the way.

Complex journeys

Work environments can be complex, meetings about meetings, then there are the reports, workflows, forms, processes, and emails. So many emails. Ask a colleague how their working day is going and often the response is “busy”.

We are all so busy; our workdays are filled with meetings, emails, calls and reports but how much of it adds to productivity? From the conversations we are having with companies, there is the awareness that the workplace has become overcomplicated. Like multiple signs on a road, the intentions were good but along the way, people lost sight of the purpose of the signs.

Workers are feeling overwhelmed and burnt out by work, whether they are office-based, remote or hybrid. There is too much to do, too many distractions (video call fatigue, anyone?) and expectations on all sides are higher than ever. It’s time to create simpler workplaces, where employees are empowered, know what the direction is and are unencumbered by legacy work rules that have outlived their time.

Keep things simple

You would have thought creating a simpler work environment would be easy. But sometimes what should seem simple is anything but. Lisa Bodell, a leading advocate of simplifying work recounts a conversation she had with a neurologist. They made the comment:

“The brain is the most amazing organ we have, it starts working from the very moment we wake up, and it doesn’t stop until the very second we step foot into the office.”

— Lisa Bodell

Thinking in the workplace is a daring act as we rarely have the space and time to just sit and think. We have confused activity with productivity and forsaken thinking and innovation.

Reducing complexity removes barriers to getting things done. However, not all complexity is bad, some matters are complex and require appropriate processes that serve a purpose. The answer is identifying the complexity that causes inefficiency, creates barriers, confusion, and loss of morale.

The path to better answers is asking better questions. Leaders need to ask employees provocative questions, create productive agitation, and get under the skin of the problem by lifting people out of the status quo.

Demolish barriers

How often do we carry out tasks in a certain way because it’s always been done that way? 

We assume it’s a company rule and go with the flow, not questioning why things are the way they are. After all, the rule must be in place for a good reason otherwise it wouldn’t remain a rule, right?

These cultural assumptions hold us back from questioning whether rules, reports, processes etc are still relevant or whether they have outlived their time. It’s important to identify what is holding back creativity and innovation - and then demolish those barriers.

The decision to change the culture and embrace a simpler one must be followed by action, or it won’t happen. It isn’t a one-time activity or an annual event. We spend more time making things complex than we do simplify them. For culture to change, leaders must pledge to a code of conduct and commit to simplification as an operating principle.

Change is a choice and for change to happen it must be a daily habit. For every task, meeting, and activity we need to ask ourselves ‘is this necessary’ and ‘is this being done in the most minimal way possible’ whilst still achieving the goals.

By simplifying the work environment, we empower people to make decisions and to identify and remove barriers. We create space to think, and we give innovation an opportunity to flourish. Employees will direct their attention to where their leaders focus – don’t deviate from the journey and neither will your team.

9 meeting personality types – can you spot yours?

How to facilitate meetings to get the best from every personality type

Productive meetings are a great way of achieving objectives, creating new approaches to solve tricky problems, and stimulating two-way communication. Effective meetings leverage all the brainpower in the room in pursuit of getting work done. However, with so many personality types in one room, it can be a challenge to engage everyone.

Understanding the personality types of team members and how to deal with them is an important part of keeping meetings productive. Here we identify nine personality types and the best way to deal with them.  See if you can spot yourself...

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The Hippo

Heavy by name and heavy by nature, the Hippo (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion) casts a large shadow in any meeting. Their views can carry more weight, especially with impressionable and junior members, and this can bias outcomes. The best way to deal with the Hippo is to speak with them before the meeting and ask if they can take a step back and invite others to express their views. This will encourage debate, the sharing of ideas and empower meeting participants to contribute.

Outward signs of seniority can promote further power imbalance, stifling opinions and creativity. After all, it’s called power dressing for a reason! Removing obvious status symbols such as designer outfits, luxury branded pens and military decorations can help to create a balanced atmosphere despite title differences and seniority.

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The Resigned

Usually, in a trance-like state, this personality type has checked out before the meeting has even started. The Resigned has been in so many unproductive meetings, they have given up trying to change them. The best way to revive their interest is to give them hope that their contribution counts. Be clear on meeting purpose and follow up, ask for their input and if necessary, pair up fellow Resigned personalities to work together in pairs.

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The Prisoner

Told to come along to the meeting by someone else, the Prisoner can be a disruptive force. With the sole aim of gaining freedom, the Prisoner will mount a rebellion against incarceration until they are released from captivity. The only way to deal with this personality type is to signpost the way to freedom and encourage them to leave the room.  

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The Sweat

This character believes that over contributing to meetings will win them brownie points with the HIPPO or Owner. To get the best out of this personality type, channel the Sweat’s energy into a specific task. It will aid facilitation and drive their focus away from seeking praise and to the task at hand.

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The Pedant

Dotting the i's and crossing the t's is a way of life for this personality type. Uncomfortable with ambiguity, the Pedant needs to get every detail right, there is no room for error. This personality type is all about the details, and that is completely at odds with ‘big picture’ people. In their quest for getting the details right, the Pedant can lose sight of the objective so play to their strengths by making sure they attend planning meetings. Think right person, right time – and keep the brainstorming/strategy meetings far away from the Pedant’s schedule.

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The Visionary

Pedants beware, the Visionary doesn’t do detail! Overflowing with big ideas that stream out, mostly unfiltered, the Visionary provides a deluge of thoughts, concepts, and brainstorms. Be prepared for frequent plot twists as you sift through the torrent of ideas to find the golden nugget. Get the best out of a visionary by being clear on the purpose of the meeting and what must be achieved. Always have the question visible to sharpen the focus of these creative thinkers. Lastly, ensure everyone understands that the Harvesting section will be tasked with finding the diamond idea amongst the rubble.

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The Waffler   

The term filibuster was invented just for the Waffler, talking until he’s blue in the face. Once they gain the floor, they have no plans to relinquish it anytime soon. Just like the name implies, the Waffler loves to blather on and on, making the same point repeatedly. Setting solid ground rules and rewarding good behaviour is the way forward with the Waffler. You want to encourage them to adhere to the rule of ‘telling, not selling’ but if it all gets too much switch to silent ideation mode if needed.

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The Owner

Requests the meeting in the first place – but rarely has a clearly defined purpose, goal, or subject matter that the meeting needs to address. The Owner tends to hold the reins too tightly and struggles to relinquish control, constantly telling the facilitator how to run the meeting. The way to deal with the Owner is to ask powerful questions until the objective is well-defined. It’s vital to clearly outline the role of the Owner and Facilitator in the process. Once parameters have been established you can move forward and agree meeting objectives together.

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The Facilitator

Like a chess grandmaster, the Facilitator’s role is to use all the pieces on the board to achieve the outcome set by the Owner. Fortunately, they have benefited from facilitation training with Treehouse!

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Facilitating Better Meetings

Facilitating meetings can be stressful and unrewarding unless you know what you are doing. Fortunately, we have an online course to help you learn the skill of facilitation. Facilitating Better Meetings will help you develop the skills to make your meetings more effective, dynamic, and engaging.

Advanced Facilitation

As well as the online course Treehouse has two further levels of facilitation training available:

• Facilitating Workshops Foundation – available virtually or face to face

• Facilitating Workshops Advanced – available virtually or face to face

Investing in the skills to make your meetings engaging and productive will save your organisation money, enable you to achieve your objectives and make your people happier – who can beat that feeling of being part of a team that is firing on all cylinders, powering through the work and creating great solutions that delight customers?

Make meetings great again!

Today’s meetings

Meetings are part of our daily professional lives, not even a work-from-home mandate during a global pandemic eradicated them from our work calendars. We merely adjusted our schedules and shifted from meeting in person to online.

Yet many of us think that meetings are ineffective and unproductive, according to research data collected from a variety of surveys. In fact, findings suggest that many meetings are not only inefficient but are counterproductive and have a negative impact on morale, with 67% of employees complaining that they are spending too much time in meetings, hindering them from being industrious at work.

Research into working practices show that the average British worker spends 26 working days per year in meetings. That’s more than most employees holiday allowance! Managers and professionals aren’t immune to meeting mania either, losing on average 30% of their time in meetings that could have been invested in other productive tasks.

Meeting culture is taking a toll not just on employee morale but also on the financial well-being of the corporate balance sheet. A survey of 6,500 people from the USA, UK, and Germany found that among the 19 million meetings that were observed, the ineffective meetings cost the UK economy up to £45 billion per year.

Embedded into culture

Meetings are so embedded into office working culture that we often fail to appreciate just how much time employees spend in meetings. The statistics speak for themselves:

• Overall, 15% of an organisation’s time is spent in meetings, which has increased year on year since 2008.

• On average middle managers spend 35% and upper management spend 50% of their time in meetings.

• More than 35% of employees cited spending 2 to 5 hours per day on meetings and conference calls but say they have little output to show for the time spent.

No tier of management spared

Meetings are viewed as a necessary activity to keep projects moving forward and keep the team engaged. However, the research doesn’t back this up; a survey of senior managers in a range of industries revealed:

• 65% said meetings keep them from completing their own work.

• 71% said meetings are unproductive and inefficient.

• 64% said meetings come at the expense of deep thinking.

• 62% said meetings miss opportunities to bring the team closer together.

Just who or what is driving this culture of endless meetings when surveys reveal that even senior management feels it’s a wasteful use of time?

It appears we have sleepwalked into accepting unproductive, inefficient meetings that chew up valuable chunks of our working week. But it doesn’t have to be this way.  When run effectively, meetings are an opportunity to clarify issues, set new directions, sharpen focus, create alignment, and move objectives forward.

Improvement requires change

People are social creatures and meetings can be the sweet spot where we get work done, together. Meetings that are run effectively can be energising and morale-boosting, facilitating people to come together to collaborate on projects, coordinate resources and build their community.

To achieve this, we need to make meetings super effective, to leverage all the brainpower in the room in pursuit of clear meeting objectives, aligned with the purpose of the organisation. Adopting the right approach not only increases a successful outcome but it is also respectful of people’s precious time and the intention of making the most of it.

The good news is that running better meetings is a skill that can be easily learned, and it is called facilitation. Treehouse has an online course called Facilitating Better Meetings that will help you develop the skills to make your meetings effective, productive, and engaging.

Reap the benefits of better meetings

Meetings can be highly effective in getting work done, creating new ideas to solve tricky problems, and stimulating two-way communication. Increasing the effectiveness of meetings can:

• Accelerate innovation - increasing the quality, volume, and frequency of strategic insight.

• Improve speed to market – by exchanging ideas and insights across projects and responding more quickly to customer needs and market opportunities.

• Increase accountability – creating an environment where more people contribute to discussions and decisions more often, resulting in higher levels of personal ownership.

• Optimise time management – effective meetings are more productive, saving time and money.

Innovation and Change Management

Embracing innovation and change allows organisations to seize new opportunities, improve efficiency, and build resilience

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By investing in the skills to make your meetings more engaging and productive, it will ultimately save your organisation money. It will make your people happier because they will feel involved and valued as a contributor and empowered to achieve their objectives.

There is no greater feeling than being part of a team that is firing on all cylinders, powering through the work, and creating great solutions that delight customers. When it comes to meetings, we should think like a 90's techno band and aim for shorter, better, faster, stronger.

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Survey data sources:  Harvard Business Review, Moo, Timely, HR Digest.

What is your Personal Brand?

What is your personal brand?

Gravitas and Personal Brand

This course will help you understand your Personal Brand and how to evolve it to positively influence people's perceptions of you, now and in the future.

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And if you aren’t managing yours who is?

Not many of us think of ourselves as a ‘brand’, let alone giving any thought to how we should be developing our own. Whether you are aware of it or not, you have a personal brand – it’s what people say about you when you are not around to hear it. Your personal brand is based on the interactions you have with people, both in-person and online. If the thought of developing our own brand feels like an exercise straight out of the David Brent Book of Leadership, it’s time for a rethink.

Ask yourself this question, when a colleague tells you a new person is joining the team, what is the first thing you do? I would be amazed if the answer isn’t ‘Google the name to learn more about the person’ because for most of us that is exactly what we do!  

We all have a brand and whether the first impression is in person or from an online presence, people will form an opinion of you, and this will build over multiple interactions. The pertinent question to ask yourself is do you want to be the person controlling how you are perceived?

What do we mean by ‘your personal brand’?

In a word, it’s your reputation. Every interaction you have with others leaves a memorable experience and instils in people what they can expect from you. When consistent in delivering those experiences, it leaves an impression and builds a strong reputation.  

By being conscious of your brand, delivering it clearly and consistently across a wide audience, you can open doors to opportunities that may have once felt closed. You can differentiate yourself from the crowd, and professionally from the competition. Your brand becomes your personal calling card, a distinct and authentic representation of you.

In building your personal brand, you define your individuality, maximize your strengths and manage your choices to create future opportunities. It gives you the chance to showcase your unique combination of skills and experiences that make you who you are.

Know your value

People with strong brands are clear about who they are. They know and maximize their strengths. The first step in building your brand is understanding your strengths, your abilities, and your value so you can present yourself confidently and consistently.

The American entrepreneur Malcolm Forbes once said, “Too many people overvalue what they are not, and undervalue what they are.” Having a good understanding of who you are and being confident of your skills, knowledge and expertise makes personal branding an easier task.

Be consistent

Do not underestimate the power of emotions in professional interactions. When people describe having a gut feeling about someone, it’s usually an emotion-based judgement. Being conscious and deliberate about your interactions with people can influence what they think about you, so endeavour to always make those interactions positive.

The emotions you evoke with your team, your peers and your management can have an impact on your career. By being more intentional in how you behave and conduct yourself, you can influence what people think of you.  

Be authentic

Authenticity is at the heart of your personal brand. It’s far easier to be consistent in how you interact with people if you are always true to yourself and to others. Building a personal brand isn’t about creating a perfect persona. It’s about being confident in who you are and what you do.

Personal branding is not about selling yourself or a product. It's about being true to yourself and being consistent with who you are and ensuring your reputation reflects the true authentic you.

Discover your X-Factor

Building your personal brand is not a one-off event, just like you, your personal brand is constantly evolving. The process of understanding who you are and validating your skills should be something you revisit many times over your lifetime.

Identifying who you are and what makes you stand out can deliver many benefits. In particular, it will give you the clarity to know where you would like to take your career and life. If you want to understand your personal brand but don’t know where to begin, we can help. Our course is self-paced, allowing you to build and evolve your brand at a speed suitable for you. Start your journey to a more authentic and consistent you today.

Improve or Move?

Improve your prospects and build your brand

The start of a new year is when most people draw up a list of resolutions, effectively a wish list of things that this year (as opposed to previous years) they WILL achieve. With a spring in our step, we optimistically identify areas of our lives that we want to address and start a plan for self-improvement. They say the path to hell is paved with good intentions and in our zeal to improve everything all at once our professional lives rarely escape scrutiny.

YOUR PERSONAL BRAND ONLINE TRAINING

How to positively evolve and influence people’s perception of you

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If you are finding yourself questioning whether you are as motivated and engaged as you once were in your role, it might be time for a change. However, change doesn’t always mean leaving your current employer. The grass might be greener elsewhere but if you are not ready to make the leap, the change you are looking for might be closer to home.

Don’t move – improve!

After the two years of tumultuous change, you would have thought people would be craving the safety net of a known environment. Yet social media is awash with new year resolutions and for many a change of company or career is high on the list. It seems that in 2022 we are keen to purge more from our lives than the 3kg of Quality Street consumed over Christmas.

The reality is that the pandemic forced many of us into survival mode. Our daily routines were turned upside down, our homes, workplaces and schools all merged into the one crowded, noisy, chaotic space. We had to batten down the hatches and get through it. It was difficult but we coped and that has given many of us the confidence to take a step back, reassess and think about our professional goals and ambitions.

Look before you leap

As we mentioned in our previous blog, The Great Resignation, Covid has provided an opportunity for employees to reflect on their role, whether their skills are being put to good use, and explore a sense of their own value. Work occupies a huge part of our lives, and the pandemic has shown that we want to be part of something bigger and more meaningful. When looking for a change it’s tempting to think the answer lies in leaving for pastures new. Before making the leap it’s important to think about what it is you want to change. Are you looking to enrich your role or improve your promotion prospects or change career path altogether?   

If you feel like something is holding you back, it could be your personal brand. The term ‘branding’ used to be reserved only for commercial businesses. However, in a digital world where many of us can be Googled to within an inch of our lives, our personal brand is something we should be mindful of. Most people are not intentional or thoughtful about what they stand for, or how they come across to others. If you feel stuck in a rut, overlooked, or under-appreciated developing your personal brand could help.  

Building a strong personal brand

Your personal brand is the unique combination of skills and experiences that make you who you are. It is how you present yourself to the world and differentiate yourself from the crowd. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, was famously quoted as saying, “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

A personal brand is about making a lasting impression and connection with people. To do that, you need to represent yourself honestly and consistently. You can influence what people think of you by understanding how your behaviour and conduct affects those around you.

The process of building your personal brand will help you consider how you define your current place and where you want to be in the near-distant future. It helps determine who you are and where you are going. Without clear direction, you might get stuck in the rut of your current path.

Increase your visibility and reputation

Building your personal brand takes time and effort but it can change the way people perceive and respond to you; impacting how your team, peers and management view you. To understand your personal brand and how to evolve it in a positive direction, enrol today on our course.

Make 2022 the year you invest in yourself; it could be the best personal and professional new year’s resolution you have ever made - and stuck to!

Hybrid working: Are you at risk of implementing a one-size-fits-none approach?

Is your approach to hybrid working really working for all?

In the 1800s, the Industrial Revolution moved workers from fields to factories. In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic was the catalyst for a similar shift, with most suddenly forced to swap their offices for their kitchen tables. This once in a generation opportunity to reimagine how we work has been welcomed, with 85% of those questioned for a recent Office for National Statistics survey admitting they wanted to use a hybrid approach of both home and office working in the future.

In the Treehouse, we’ve been talking to existing and new clients about the demands that hybrid working is placing on professionals in all industries and at all levels: leaders, managers and team leaders. There certainly seems to be an appetite to embrace change, but we sense there are still some barriers to actually designing and implementing your hybrid policies.

So, how can you ensure you implement an approach to hybrid working that works for all?

The first step is to acknowledge that you don’t already have all the answers. You may think that you know what your team wants, simply greater flexibility and more opportunities to work from home, but you will find that their needs are far more complicated than just physical location.

We’ve learnt that each level of a team has distinct learning needs and it’s essential that you tailor hybrid working programmes for each group. If you fail to assess and respond to the individual needs of each level of the team and make everyone, no matter their position, feel supported, appreciated, and empowered during the transition, you may find your approach becomes one-size-fits-none.  

The key to success is to take a hybrid approach to hybrid working.

We suggest breaking down an organisation into three levels: leaders, managers, and teams. Starting by addressing the needs of these three groups individually will be the best way to create a hybrid working model that will fulfil the needs of the majority, not the few.

Leaders:

As a leader, you are probably the person your team looks to for answers, but this is unchartered territory and you now need to adapt and learn the necessary new skills to help navigate others through the transition to successful hybrid working.

Although this opportunity to reimagine the world of work is good news, as a leader you now have to take a step back from an environment you know and have succeeded in, and find the growth mindset to identify new processes and solutions.

As well as finding the solutions, you also have to develop your communication skills to clearly explain any new policies to your team. Effectively communicating the thinking behind any hybrid solution and encouraging every member of staff to buy into it is an essential change management skill that every effective leader now needs to hone.

Hybrid working brings with it many benefits, but it also has negative health and well-being implications. As a leader you now have an important pastoral role to play, nurturing relationships and communicating to staff that the organisation understands the new challenges and that you are there to offer support. Similarly, you must regulate your own work-life balance to help you cope with change.

Find out more: What skills do leaders need for the Hybrid Working era?

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Managers:

Keeping the wheels on the bus turning has just become even more difficult, with remote and hybrid working adding many challenges to the role of manager.

As a manager, you may not have been involved in building the strategy behind any new hybrid working approach, but you will be required to implement any changes and keep all members of your team, no matter their location, on time and on task.

You’ll be expected to develop new communication channels and encourage your team to use them. Seamless collaboration and communication in a hybrid world will be the glue preventing your team from segregating and stagnating.

Hybrid working means presenteeism is now outdated and as a manager, you must adapt your thinking and performance measurements to take a more outcome-focused rather than output-focused approach to managing your team.

Pastoral care will become a far more important part of your role but remote working brings some challenges to that task. Where team members were previously there in person, you now have to effectively communicate with them both face-to-face and remotely and learn the skills to gauge a team members well-being and morale no matter where they are working.

Developing these soft skills will be key to making all employees feel appreciated and empowered.

Find out more: What skills do managers need for the Hybrid Working era?

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Team Members:

Hybrid working means that being part of a team now looks very different. Formal and informal discussions whether in the boardroom or by the water cooler have now been almost entirely replaced by video calls or emails.

You will already have had to learn how to work much more independently but in a hybrid working model, you will have to develop the skills to work both alone and face-to-face.

Time can be wasted without knowing and understanding the systems and processes you should be using in a new hybrid working world and it is up to you, and every colleague in your team, to play your part by taking the time to understand the resources and tools at your disposal.

Relationship building remotely is one of the hardest skills of hybrid working but forming and nurturing bonds with customers, suppliers, team members and managers is essential if your projects are to be kept on track.

You must not allow more home working to lead you or your projects to stagnate. It’s up to you, and the colleagues on your team, to continue to collaborate, innovate and drive success.

Being open and trusting of your managers and your co-workers will help you draw support from others. Being alert to your own and others' emotional reactions will also help you to respond and adapt to the changing situations and challenges that the hybrid working world brings.

Find out more: What skills do team members need for the Hybrid Working era?

The future of work is hybrid

While surveys are clearly showing that the great shift to more work-from-home has been welcomed and surprisingly effective, there is no doubt that it has brought some negatives in terms of diluting office culture and belonging.  But the future of work is most certainly hybrid and implementing a new normal that combines the best of office and remote working will require you, and every member of your organisation, whether a leader, manager or team member, to adapt, develop and play your own part in driving the future.

The great resignation: Why leaders need to listen, not just hear.

Workers are leaving their jobs

Around the world, workers are leaving their jobs in record numbers, in America the problem is so acute that it has its own trending hashtag, #thegreatresignation. In April this year, the US recorded more than four million people quitting their jobs, according to a summary from the Department of Labor. This represents the biggest spike on record.

A Microsoft survey of more than 30,000 global workers showed that 41% of workers were considering quitting or changing professions in 2021, and a study of workers in the UK and Ireland showed 38% of those surveyed planned to quit in the next six months to a year.

Readdressing work-life balance

Is this trend a response to the pandemic or a symptom of something deeper? Let’s face it, full-time work occupies a significant number of our waking hours. Add to this commuting time, which for many can be around an hour at the start and end of each day, we spend a great deal of our life in and commuting to, work.

Working from home stress-tested us all; families were suddenly plunged into living, working and home-schooling together for months on end. Many city dwellers noticed that things were greener on the other side of the fence and voted with their feet, heading for the coast or countryside and this was reflected in price spikes in these locations.

Wherever we lay our hat may be home but when you are couped up together 24x7 that home can suddenly feel quite small and confining. That could be one reason for the rise in shed sales, where space is a premium, even a run of the mill shed looks attractive.

Worker rebellion for the modern workforce

The data shows that for many employees, lockdown prompted a life re-think. A recent study conducted to determine why job changers left their previous roles, showed that 40% of employees cited burnout as their top reason for leaving their job.  

In many respects, the pandemic poured petrol on an already lit fire. Workers are rebelling against woeful leadership that focuses on presenteeism over productivity, dictatorial managers, and tone-deaf companies that refuse to pay well and take advantage of their staff. No longer can companies wheel in a table tennis table into the staff room and hope that’s enough.

Workers have taken a step back and reassessed; Covid provided an opportunity for employees to reflect on their role, whether their skills are being put to good use, and explore a sense of their own value.

Pre-pandemic, companies focused on offering the ultimate office experience, with nice coffee machines and breakout rooms with sofas and gaming consoles. But this didn’t count for much when we all suddenly had to work from home. The capability of managers to manage and communicate effectively was exposed.

The way forward

The veneer has been stripped and it’s a good thing. Companies can stop focusing on office fripperies and address gaps that the pandemic has harshly exposed. The benefit is that these are areas of substance that will make a positive difference to company culture and productivity. Companies need to trigger a sea change and that starts with asking some tough questions about current company culture.

• Leadership: Employees want to be part of something bigger and that starts with leaders who set a clear vision for the business which is linked to meaningful goals for each employee. Leaders need to know how to lead well, have organisational insight and make timely, bold decisions. They need to be able to simplify organisational treacle and set the right environment in which their people can flourish.

• Management: People are promoted into management roles because they have the right technical skills for the department they manage. What is forgotten too often is soft skills. Does the manager have the capability to manage their team well? Do they realise that being promoted into a managerial position is a cross-functional move? Has their capability kept pace with their role? Is there learning & development support in place?

• Team members’ engagement and motivation: Have they been developed well? Do they fit in their role or are they a square peg in a round hole? Have they had the right long term career planning support and personal capability development along the way?

The UK has a labour shortage and a skills gap; the pendulum has swung in the employee’s favour. How a company treated its people over the last year and a half will determine the course of the future. Investing in the learning, development and overall wellbeing of your workforce is not only good for staff retention, but it also makes good business sense. It creates a culture of engaged and motivated employees who feel part of the bigger picture and are resilient to weather whatever storm may lay ahead.

Hybrid Working Programmes

We’ve had plenty of enquiries in the Treehouse about our tailored Hybrid Working training programmes. New and existing clients are looking for programmes to help their business adapt; some are looking for short programmes to focus on leaders, whilst others are looking for longer programmes to support managers or team members.

Take a look at some examples of our tailored hybrid working programmes.

It’s about team success, not team location

our working future has changed

The pandemic turned the world of work on its head and overnight companies had to enable everyone to work from home. It wasn’t an option; it was a business imperative that had to happen, and IT departments pulled out all the stops and made it happen.  

The pandemic may have started as a destructive force, but it showed us what could be achieved. Future digital and business transformation plans became reality almost overnight. Businesses had to reframe the concept of work and ask themselves, is the value of what staff achieve based on what they do or where they do it?

Pre-Covid resistance to flexible working

Prior to Covid, many businesses were hesitant to implement a flexible working policy over concerns that productivity would decline. The pandemic forced a global work from home experiment and the outcome was that productivity didn’t fall off a cliff as many companies had feared. It proved the age-old adage that work is something we do, not somewhere we go. Irrespective of location, teams performed, and work got done.

Hybrid working will likely be the default mode for many companies in the post-Covid environment. The transition from everyone working remotely to a hybrid arrangement may take some getting used to for leaders, managers and team members. At Treehouse we have seen an uptick in requests from organisations trying to find their way in the new normal and it’s a subject we have been discussing with new and existing clients.

Vision into action

Hybrid working is more than just working anywhere, it’s about embracing a vision for what the future of work can truly be. It requires action to happen at three levels: organisation; manager and teams coming together to build a hybrid working model that delivers business results and meets customer, supplier and staff needs.  At Treehouse we have developed programmes to help your business to adapt. We have short programmes that focus on leaders, and longer ones to support managers or team members.

The great thing about working with Treehouse is that you can choose from standard elements like our Onboarding in the Hybrid Working Era module and then customise your learning journey with modules such as Executive Coaching, Action Learning Sets, or a specially tailored module. We will work with you to design and deliver a programme that enables your workforce to thrive in the hybrid work environment.

Example Hybrid Working Programmes

Training programmes to help organisations adapt and increase their capability for Hybrid Work.

Seize the opportunity

Whether your company labels it hybrid work or remote work, the important fact is it’s just work. When teams perform cohesively, they deliver results and meet expectations, a poorly functioning team doesn’t, irrespective of location. The pendulum is unlikely to swing back to how things were pre-pandemic. Hybrid working is a positive leap forward that empowers people to do their job in a way that works for everyone. It puts the focus on team achievement and business success not on presenteeism.

According to a study by the Centre for Economic and Business Research, flexible work would allow almost 4 million parents, carers and disabled people currently locked out from work to re-enter the workforce. It would enable part-time workers to do more hours and could add £48.3bn to the UK economy each year.

Companies have endured disruption and survived, now is the time to develop hybrid work models and thrive. By building on existing business resilience, you can ensure your organisation is always ready for whatever comes next.

How to get the best out of team Workshops

Workshop Facilitation – the way to reset your strategy and set your team up for success

Your team has been dispersed and mostly working from home for almost 18 months. Some people may have popped into the office, but you’ve not managed to get your team together for some high-quality thinking for ages. Zoom and MS Teams are better than nothing but being able to get everyone in a room together and chew through some meaty (or vegan!) strategic questions and think richly about the future opportunities or challenges together has been missing, right?

We have recently seen an uptick in requests to facilitate strategic planning workshops, campaign development workshops and senior leadership team meetings in person. Some at (almost deserted) offices, others at very pleasant but equally quiet hotels and conferences venues.

These facilitated workshops have acted as strategic resets, new business development launches and team bonding experiences.

What can a professional facilitator bring to your workshop or meeting?

• Independence: good facilitators are agnostic – they don’t get involved in the content but manage the people and the process to get to the desired outcome. No waffling. No bias. Just high-quality conversations.
• Leveraging all the brains in the room: the workshop facilitator has permission from the group to facilitate. Sounds obvious but we use that permission in ways someone on the inside cannot. We do not defer to the HIPPO (highest paid person’s opinion), we are able to cut off unhelpful conversations, steer people away from rabbit holes and bring in quieter members of the group in ways that they find suitable. We also ensure people work during brief backs – no zoning out!
• Managing the emotions: Skilfully and gently helping people reconnect after a difficult and lengthy period apart, where we’ve all had to deal with some big stuff and that needs to be recognised and managed carefully.
• Managing the energy in the room: keeping people engaged by taking breaks (sometimes unorthodox ones) when people need them and enabling them to work hard during the sessions.
• Sticking to time: we start and end when we say we will. No overrunning.
• Delivering the outcome: before the workshop we work with the problem owner to clearly define the questions to be answered and the desired outcome from the workshop or meeting. Then we deliver it.
• Flexing and adapting: as the military say ‘no plan survives first contact with the enemy’. The same holds true for a workshop’s agenda. Expert workshop facilitators know what’s essential to achieve and flexes the methods to suit. We have probably encountered the situation before and know what to do about it. We check in with the problem owner so that changes in direction are conscious, deliberate and for good reason. No flip flopping. No aimless meandering.

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Workshop facilitation is a capability that every organisation needs. If you don’t have it, then ask us – we can help either to facilitate your workshops and meetings or to train key internal people to become facilitators.

Hybrid Working – the business case for reducing business miles

An opportunity to reduce your carbon footprint?

In the pre-Covid world, most defence organisations clocked up thousands of business road and air miles to liaise with customers, suppliers, other sites / facilities / teams. The bottom-line benefits of the lockdown loss of this expenditure have not gone unnoticed and most defence organisations are rethinking what constitutes essential business travel.

Well before Covid-19, reducing your carbon footprint was a growing priority for consumers and businesses alike. Some defence companies had established green travel plans to encourage staff to travel in a more environmentally sustainable way to reduce costs, improve the health and morale and boost environmental credentials.

To add further focus to the environmental agenda, the Ministry of Defence published a Climate Change and Sustainability Strategic Approach report in March 2021 with a commitment to ‘recognise both the necessity and opportunity to build on our existing successes in cutting carbon and mitigating Defence’s impact on the environment.’[1]

Your Hybrid Working Capability

Is your defence organisation is putting more thought into managing essential business travel in the new normal? Do you need wider help building your hybrid working capability? We’re here to help, no one has all the answers, there isn’t going to be one size fits all.

• The Hybrid Working Capability Diagnostic: Identify, in just 5 minutes, where the gaps are in your organisation’s hybrid working plans and what to do about them.
• Upskill your leaders, managers and teams to equip them for effective hybrid working with our hybrid working tailored training modules
• What are the implications of Hybrid Working for the defence sector? Treehouse has written a research whitepaper involving new and existing clients and have concluded there are 7 complications around Hybrid Working that organisations need to explore.

If you’re not sure where to start, our Training Needs Assessment will help you identify what your organisation’s current capability is and then provide the recommendations for improvement.

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Sources

LawDonut, Environmental business travel

[1] Corporate report Ministry of Defence, (March 2021), Climate Change and Sustainability Strategic Approach

“I’m not returning to the previous life”

The Push and Pull of the new working normal

In the Treehouse our clients are starting to come together as work teams for the first time, for team away days and to be in the office for one or more days a week. We’re beginning a slow and cautious creep out of lockdown and the reality of hybrid working is beginning to take shape with many noticing the push and pull of different perspectives about what good looks like in the new normal working world.

For those who have benefitted from a better quality of life during lockdown slipping back into old habits is something they are resisting. This is particularly true for staff who have valued:

• less time on the road and the benefits of less road / air miles, many noticing improved physical and mental health and stronger relationships with friends and family

• getting back chunks of time previously spent commuting to and from work in heavy traffic and on overcrowded public transport

• protected time and space in a quieter home office for purposeful, clear thinking

• the flexibility to work when and where they are most effective, sitting in the garden or going for a walk being some of the most frequently mentioned productive workspaces  

For others there’s a strong pull back to the office:

• to have a clearer boundary between home and work life

• to end the isolation of living and working alone or with a limited number of friends and family during lockdown

• for a better connection to the internet and online work tools

• to access office facilities from photocopiers to whiteboards, meeting rooms, the watercooler and the coffee machine.

If you’re noticing a push and pull dialogue in your organisation as you build your hybrid working capability we can help:

Need help building your hybrid working capability?

• Where are you on hybrid working? No one has all the answers, there isn’t going to be one size fits all. Identify, in just 5 minutes, where the gaps are and what to do about them.
• Upskill your leaders, managers and teams to equip them for effective hybrid working with our hybrid working tailored training modules
• What are the implications of Hybrid Working for the defence sector? Treehouse has written a research whitepaper involving new and existing clients and have concluded there are 7 complications around Hybrid Working that organisations need to explore.

If you’re not sure where to start, our Training Needs Assessment will help you identify what your organisation’s current capability is and then provide the recommendations for improvement.

The Implications of Hybrid Working

Traditional Office Culture is becoming a thing of the Past

PWC have told their 22,000 staff that they can now start and finish work when they want and spend 40 to 60% of their time remote working. Nationwide and BP have taken it one step further, embracing a full-time home working model.

As we slowly move out of lockdown, it’s obvious that for many of the 32million UK workforce, the 9 to 5 pre Covid office culture will be a thing of the past.

Not all work can be carried out remotely

Is a remote or hybrid working model feasible for all industries across all sectors?

McKinsey have studied the time spent on different activities within various occupations. Unsurprisingly, their analysis found that remote work is best suited to those whose roles require cognitive thinking and problem solving, managing and developing people, and data processing. Finance, Management, Professional Services and Information Sectors are amongst those with the highest potential for remote work. The findings also suggested that highly skilled, highly educated workers are those most likely to succeed in their roles while working remotely.

What about the UK defence and supply chain sectors ?

Unlike many of the professional services roles identified by McKinsey as being suited to remote work, there are many jobs in the defence and defence supply chain sector that are not so clearly defined. While some activities during a typical day lend themselves to remote work, there are other tasks that require a physical presence and a more hands on approach.

The importance of technology for hybrid working

The transition to remote working has been seamless for many thanks to advances in communication and collaboration technology. The businesses that have moved from an office to remote model successfully have heavily invested in the required communication technology and software. Beyond having a work-issued laptop and smartphone, collaboration software (eg Miro, SoCreative, Kahoot and Jira7), meeting software (eg MS Teams, WebEx, Skype and Zoom), communication software (eg Lync and Jabber) are used widely in many industries to support hybrid working.

It is clear that the ability to remote work depends on these technologies, and whilst financial and professional services organisations have prioritised this spending, the public admin and defence sectors have not.  If the UK defence and supply chain sectors are to be able to offer any form of hybrid working to their workforce, they may need to consider greater investment and a balanced risk approach to communication technology, software, and hybrid office infrastructure.

Hybrid Working has implications for power, influence and competence

Hybrid working is inextricably tied to power; it creates power differentials within teams that can damage relationships, impede effective collaboration and could ultimately reduce performance. It reinforces divisions between the ‘head office/ major sites’ crowd and the ‘remote working’ crowd. It’s easier to have a team of 20 all being remote rather than 15 people in a room and five remotes.  To lead effectively in a hybrid environment, leaders and managers must recognise and actively manage sources of power that can impede or facilitate hybrid work.

Managers may not have the skills to manage Hybrid Working Teams and Projects

The burden of delivering change, including the transition from total lockdown remote working to post June 2021 Hybrid Working will fall most heavily on those with management responsibilities. A successful hybrid working model will depend on managers having the people, process, communication and collaboration skills to leverage the contribution of the wider team.  Existing core management skills will need to be sharpened, as one Treehouse client said “I need to work out how to package bundles of work for staff to do when they’re working from home.” Different ways of working will be appropriate at different stages in a product life-cycle so hybridity working factors will need to become a normal part of project planning and design reviews. 

Staff may need to develop the skills, confidence and mindset for hybrid working

It is not only senior leaders that will need to learn new skills to actively manage hybrid working. Team members will also be required to gain a range of soft skills to increase their contribution and thrive in a hybrid environment. Adaptability, willingness to learn new ways of working and to develop trust and proficiency in new technology are all keys to a successful transition from on site to off site working.

The transition to a hybrid workforce also requires a ‘people-first’ strategy, one that establishes the skills, agility and learning culture an organisation and its workforce will need to be successful. 

Most importantly, we need to identify the wants, needs and drivers of staff as they embark on their own personal journeys to becoming part of a hybrid workforce.

Onboarding and talent management can be more challenging

Most of the learning in organisations is informal or on-the-job. CIPD’s report identified how managers were conscious of how remote working during Covid 19 had reduced opportunities for ‘shadowing, and the things that you just instinctively pick up by being sat with a group of people with a similar responsibility to you’. 

Informal learning is important throughout a career but there are several points when learning needs are particularly intense. These include:

• new starters at junior (apprentice, graduate) and senior levels,

• following a promotion,

• when taking on a new task or area of responsibility and

• when switching teams.  

To address this managers need to be alert to recognising the points when more support is needed and to organise more structured development opportunities. This could include organising a wider support network instead of a single mentor together with better documentation. In project based work, managers could deliberately mix people up on consecutive projects to create greater opportunities for development.

Seize the opportunity

If there is one positive to come out of the Covid pandemic, it’s that the ingrained working norms of the past have been reviewed and re-evaluated. Whether a remote or hybrid working model is a practical and realistic choice for every industry and every role is doubtful, but the pandemic has made managers and team members think and consider alternatives. Organisations that take this opportunity to review their working models and take into consideration the opinions and requirements of all team members from the top down have the greatest chance of making any new style of working a success. 

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References

• Susan Lund, Anu Madgavkar, James Manyika, and Sven Smit (2020), What’s next for remote work: An analysis of 2000 tasks, 800 jobs and nine countries (McKinsey & Company)

• The Office for National Statistics 2019 report

• The Office of Communications (OFCOM)’s 2019 Connected Nations report

• Ismail Amla (2019), Empowering people in a hybrid workforce (Capita)

• Emma Jacobs (2020), How to make the hybrid workforce model work (FT.com)

• Mark Mortensen and Martine Haas (2021) Making the Hybrid Workplace Fair (Harvard Business Review)

•  (CIPD's) 2021 report, Flexible Working: Lessons from the Pandemic

Hybrid Working - is it the new norm?

What is Hybrid Working?

At its simplest, hybrid working means some staff working from a central office and others working remotely from home or at another location. This can be contrasted to distributed working which enables companies to hire, train and support an entirely remote, full-time team across the country, or even multiple countries.

Is the Hybrid Working Model new?

Ahead of the curve, big tech, Silicon Valley companies such as Google, Apple and Twitter were well practiced in distributed working. In the UK remote working has been a gradually rising long-term trend, the Office for National Statistics reported that 6% of the workforce were working remotely full time and 30% working remotely for at least some of the time by the start of 2020.

As we all know, COVID-19 suddenly accelerated this trend. In March 2020 we were told to “work from home if you can”. Employers responded quickly and during the period 23 March to 5 April 2020, the average proportion of the workforce that was working remotely from their normal place was 48%.  

Will the Hybrid Working Culture stay?

Individuals and many organisations have been pushed to the limit over the last 12 months. Feedback from Treehouse clients suggests that most have successfully made the transition to remote working. Programmes are continuing to deliver and special arrangements are in place for occasional access to facilities for those that need them.

So, will remote working stay? There seems to be demand from employees. In a study carried out for BBC News and King's College London, conducted by Ipsos MORI, a third of workers 32% say they anticipate working from home more post lockdown. Many employers have been conducting regular pulse surveys to capture employees thoughts on wellbeing and working arrangements. Some employers are responding quickly. This week the UK’s biggest building society, Nationwide announced that 13,000 office staff could choose where they work under a new flexibility scheme.

Most businesses are considering Hybrid Working

63% of participants who responded to the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development's (CIPD) employer survey said that they planned to introduce or expand the use of hybrid working to some degree, combining time in the workplace with time at home, depending on the needs of the job, the individual and the team.

Hybrid Model for the future

It remains to be seen how significant the move from office working will be in 12 months time. For many employees, some activities during a typical day lend themselves to remote work, while others require access to office or other on-site facilities. This suggests many sectors operating a hybrid model of some sort, with employees working remotely and from office/ on-site facilities during the working week. Treehouse sees an opportunity, or perhaps a necessity, to treat hybrid working not as something to simply get through but as the start of lasting change to the way organisation’s work.

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References

• Distributed Workforce Model: Why it could be the future of work (People Matters)

• Coronavirus and homeworking in the UK labour marketing (ONS)

• Business Impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) Survey, expectation responses over time, UK 1 June to 23 August 2020 (Waves 6 to 11) (ONS)

• Covid: More walking and family chats post-lockdown - poll suggests (BBC)

• Aerospace and defence organisations must use their experience from COVID-19 to change how they work forever (PA Consulting)

• Flexible working: Lessons from the pandemic (CIPD)

The 23 Skills of an Integrator

The 23 Skills needed by the modern Integrator

As discussed in our “Integrating the Integrators” blog, the integrator role is increasingly becoming a necessity in every business.

The integrator has the immense challenge of bringing together a variety of non-connected elements of a business, or indeed a supply chain, to deliver a successful solution for the end-customer. To achieve this, the integrator must be equipped with a variety of skills.

Download our free guide: “The 23 skills of an Integrator”

At Treehouse, we have identified that there are 23 skills needed by the modern integrator split across four stages of development (learning and experience):

• Foundation: the who, what, why and how of integration

• Advanced: the facilitation of integration

• Mentoring: drawing upon experience to help other integrators

• Leading: leading integration across the organisation

Complete your details to download the full guide below: