FREE ARTICLES FROM SARAH LEWIS
A treasure trove of practical advice either written by Sarah herself, based on her experience garnered from over 20 years of helping organisations to change themselves, or by a carefully selected guest author.
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Don't be a nodding donkey - how to listen appreciatively
How might the spirit of appreciative inquiry, the desire to ‘grow more of what we want’ help create more effective listening? And how this might help reposition ‘active listening’ as a systemic, dynamic, creative act.
Active Listening as a set of activities
The popular model of ‘active listening’ is often presented as a set of behavioural ‘mechanics’ that if employed judiciously with demonstrate to an audience that ‘listening’ is taking place. The recommended behaviours include: good eye contact; not interrupting, clarifying; summarising; and displaying other visible signs of attending. It is very easy for these behaviours to become de-contextualised; to become a list of ‘to do’ behaviours. At which point it can become the ‘nodding donkey’ school of listening. I certainly have experienced the disconcerting effect of talking to someone who is showing all the right behaviours but behind whose waterfall-mist eyes it is clear that disconnected thoughts are crowding and cascading. I am not being ‘heard’ although he or she may be hearing what I say.
How might the spirit of appreciative inquiry, the desire to ‘grow more of what we want’ help create more effective listening? And how this might help reposition ‘active listening’ as a systemic, dynamic, creative act.
Active Listening as an intention
We need to recognise that listening is always an act of intent: we are listening to some purpose or for some reason. There are many different possible purposes, for example:
• To bear witness
• To provide space for someone to think
• To provide help
• To provide encouragement
• To help sort confusion
• To share an experience
• To find fault or spot flaws
• To appreciate
• To amplify and fan early successes
And so on. Each might require listening for different things. So at a meta-level we could ask ourselves, firstly, what might be our own personal default intent when we listen, and secondly what do we particularly need to be listening for in this conversation, what sort of listening is appropriate here? There is a shift from an emphasis on body language to an emphasis on integrity of intention.
What might help
These things might help in all situations
1 Feeling peaceful in ourselves, aligned in mind and body
2 Not worrying about ‘the next thing to say’ or ‘getting it right’
3 Allowing that whatever kind of listening shows up is the right kind
4 Recognising that intense listening can be full of activity – asking many questions, reformulating a lot, re-acting. It is not necessarily a passive activity.
5 Having the ability to say ‘I’m not able to offer you my full attention, or to listen well right now because…( I’m getting anxious about time, I’m distracted by…)’
6 Recognising that the concept ‘I must to 100% present’ is precisely that, a concept that may be unobtainable at any given time
In general, in a spirit of appreciative listening we might find ourselves listening for:
What is working?
What are the resources available here?
What good is in this?
What is the broader picture, and how can we connect to that?
We might ask ourselves questions such as:
What arouses my curiosity in this?
What do I connect to?
What excites me in what is being said?
What can we grow from this?
Thanks to the other participants in the source conversation for this line of thought, Madeline Blair, Suzanne Quigley, Pauline Doyle, and Claire Lustig-Roche, which took place at a Blore AI Retreat event hosted by Anne Radford in the UK in 2011.
More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.
See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.
Appreciating Change Can Help
Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership.
For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715
What engaged employees want and how to find out if they're getting it - from a report by Roffey Park
Roffey Park research suggests that there are three key components to employee engagement: my job, my organization, my value. Their report ‘The human voice of employee engagement: understanding what lies beneath the surveys’ gives a full and readable account of the factors that make a difference. A key finding is that pride is at the heart of employee engagement.
A three-part model
Roffey Park research suggests that there are three key components to employee engagement: my job, my organization, my value. Their report ‘The human voice of employee engagement: understanding what lies beneath the surveys’ gives a full and readable account of the factors that make a difference. A key finding is that pride is at the heart of employee engagement.
People want:
- To be treated as individuals
- To be consulted and informed about things which affect them
- To feel valued for themselves and what they do
- To be supported with work issues
- To have clear and fair process for performance evaluation and development
They want their leaders to be:
- Strategic
- Visible
- Communicative
- Trustworthy
They want a good relationship with their manager. Effectively they want to be able to feel pride in themselves, their work, and their organization. When they do, they are highly likely to be engaged employees.
Finding out what lies behind the survey data
One way to help explore employee engagement survey data is to assemble focus groups of organisational members and to ask them to record on post-its the immediate feelings they experience when someone asks them the questions
‘Where do you work?’
‘Who do you work for?’
‘ What do you do?’
These post-its are then organized, by question, under red, amber and green headings (traffic lights), and a discussion takes place.
The beauty of this process is that this raw data can be presented to the senior decision makers not able to be present at the focus group. It allows them to get a real feel for the sentiments, practicalities, and personalities behind the bland statistics of the engagement survey results: what they should treasure, what they should notice, and what they need to change.
This article is based on information shared by Roffey Park at the ABP conference 2011
More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.
See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.
APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP
Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Not only can we help you understand what your results mean using processes such as that outlined above, we can also help you to grow employee engagement and pride in your organization by working in an appreciative and strengths based way with your people. Find out more about how we can help you with Engagement.
For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715
Performance management and appraisals - common pitfalls and how to do it successfully
Too often appraisals are seen as a human resources owned and driven technical process. Understanding performance management as a social process helps us to realise that the important and key components are the quality of the relationship and the communication. From this perspective the paperwork trail becomes a supporting mechanism rather than the driving mechanism.
The good news is performance management works
‘A hospital that appraises around 20% more staff and trains about 20% more appraisers is likely to have 1,090 fewer deaths per 100,000 admissions.’[i] Many other studies have also found this strong relationship between performance management, appraisals and organisational performance. How come then, it is a disliked process in so many organizations? It’s hard to do well
Performance Management is hard to do well. Some common difficulties identified in research include
Ø Poor quality performance discussions between managers and staff members
Ø Standardised, jargon filled, prescriptive and overly detailed paperwork
Ø Line managers lacking competence and commitment to the process
Ø Employees having a poor understanding of the goals or point of the process
Ø Rating and pay agendas dominating the discussion, driving out time for performance feedback and development planning
Ø Lack of follow up or practical action between formal reviews
Many of these problems arise because of a failure to recognise that it’s a social process.
Too often it is seen as a human resources owned and driven technical process. Understanding performance management as a social process helps us to realise that the important and key components are the quality of the relationship and the communication. From this perspective the paperwork trail becomes a supporting mechanism rather than the driving mechanism.
As one of the managers in the Institute for Employment Studies said ‘its about having communications and good one-to-one conversations.’[ii]
What does this mean for managers? What helps?
1. Recognize, and use, the power of positivity
Feeling good accesses many useful personal and organisational qualities – creativity, complex thinking, sociability, resilience and so on. Appraisal conversations are a good opportunity to create some positivity. To do this they need to contain a ratio of at least 3:1 positive to negative experiences for both parties. This means time should be spend genuinely seeking out and paying attention to things that have gone well, successes and achievements over the last time period. At the same time it’s an opportunity for employees to express their appreciation of their manager’s support and guidance over the period.
2. Use positive psychology based appraisal processes
Increasingly practitioners are creating positive appraisal processes for the regular review meetings. For example the enthusiasm story that asks a manager prior to the meeting to think about when they are most enthusiastic about this employee, when they have seen them at their best. The best self-reflection encourages the appraise to understand their strengths and attributes as seen by others. The feed-forward interview encourages the appraiser and the appraisee to focus on building forward from the best of the past.
3. Recognize performance appraisal as an ongoing activity
In addition, managers should be praising good work as it happens, not waiting until the formal ‘appraisal event’. The diamond feedback process is effective here. In the same way, of course, they should be dealing with problems in performance as they arise. In this way the ‘formal’ appraisal becomes a punctuation point in an ongoing discussion that pulls everything together that has been happening over the last period, and links it to future activities. Formal appraisals really shouldn’t contain any surprises.
4.Learn about success from studying success
One way to help develop a more positive feel to appraisal activity is to spend at least some time focussing on learning from success. There is a common misconception that one can only learn from mistakes and failure. It is true they are important sources of learning – about how to avoid failure. They don’t necessarily teach about success. Studying success tells us about what success looks like and how it is achieved.
5. In building relationships it’s quality not quantity that counts.
Research shows that the quality of our connections and interactions with others vary enormously. What people really value are the high quality connections where they feel something important is happening in the moment of the conversation. In general these are two-way conversations where each is able to build on the other’s contributions to create something new (as opposed to experiencing a one way downloading of information for example). Each party is left feeling refreshed, energised, valued and recognised. They can be fleeting moments. Over time they build to a resilient relationship that can withstand strain, such as the strain of having to give feedback on poor performance. Use your micro-moments of interaction well.
6. It’s a culture not an event
Performance management needs to be seen as a cultural process. The organization needs to create a culture where reviewing group and individual performance after events becomes an unexceptional habit. As each meeting, project or presentation finishes quickly ask how it was for people and if there was anything different they would like to see next time. After a sales pitch review with colleagues how it went. As it becomes part of normal organisational life for everyone to review their own and, when invited, colleagues performance, so the ‘appraisal’ meeting will become less of a ‘dead’ event.
7. Link it to the mission
Make it clear to everyone how these conversations relate back to the organisational purpose so people can see performance management has a bigger purpose than just ‘improving’ them personally.
8. Use the three top tips
Keep it simple
Equip the managers
Avoid forced distribution curves
More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.
See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.
APPRECIATING CHANGE CAN HELP
Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more about how we can help you with this and other aspects of Leadership.
For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715
[i] Songs of Appraisal Michael West http://www.bit.ly/West06
[ii] http://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/pm/articles/2011/08/performance-management-fine-intentions.htm
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