How to Lead a Team and Gain Respect After Internal Promotion

Most of us start at the bottom of the career ladder and work our way up. We become so proficient at our job, earning respect of the management and becoming a valued member of the team. Eventually promotion is offered, usually within the same team and we can find ourselves leader of the team we were once part of. This does have its advantages, however, doesn't come without its problems.

New to Team Leadership

There is nothing that can gain respect more than people knowing that you have been there and done the job for yourself. You know the systems and procedures, what is expected and the problems that your team may encounter. You can see things from their point of view. This can be a great advantage when leading a team. You know when to cut the slack because of genuine difficulties, but you also know an excuse when you hear one.

The problems arise though when some of the team members may have been there much longer than you, may be older with more experience, or may feel that they were the ones that deserved the promotion. You may find it difficult to be assertive and to feel that you are taken seriously as a manager. Since you were once in their position, you will know how hard the job is and may feel guilty for enforcing deadlines.

So how can you gain respect from your team and get them to do what you need them to without them thinking that power has gone to your head?

Firstly, stop beating yourself up and congratulate yourself on your promotion. It is quite normal to feel this way when you have been used to working on the other side of the fence, as it were. The dynamics of your team have now changed so now you need to embrace this change and take control.

In order to gain respect, you have to give it. Show your team that you value them and support them by listening to how you can help them. Listen to any ideas that they may have. Think back to when you were in their position. If you had a problem, how would you have liked your leader to have handled it? Remember that the only way to get what you want is to ask for it. Never assume that anyone in your team knows exactly what is expected of them. When enforcing a deadline, explain to them when it has to be done by and why, then ask how they think they can achieve it, what do they need to make this happen, how can you best help them? Once they know that they have your full support, then they will do whatever they can for you.

Capita Learning & Development offers a training course in New to Team Leadership, which will help you develop and grow your leadership and management skills.

Yvonne Bleakley
Learning Consultant, Capita Learning & Development

Predictions for Learning & Development in 2014

With the recovery of the recession in full swing, training is on the rise again.  With that said, we have a prediction for Learning & Development moving into 2014 which might just surprise you.

Before we press on with today’s article, here are a few questions you may wish to consider for your business heading into next year:

“How could Learning & Development help your staff members both individually and as a team in 2014?”

“What specific skills would help your business deliver an even greater service to your customers?

“What are the 3 main areas you would like to see up skilled within your team by the end of next year?”

“Combining all of the above, how could Learning & Development help your business rise to the next level?”

Training Predictions for 2014

You do not need to answer these questions in detail right now, however once you have read today’s predictions for Learning & Development you may wish to revisit these questions and see how closely they link to your business and aims for next year and beyond.

The prediction relates to an area which even just 10 years ago didn’t really exist in the Learning & Development world but in contrast, over the last 12 months has been bubbling up and by next year will be ready to explode. This area is called Intrapersonal Skills (relationship with yourself), this includes courses like Emotional Intelligence Training Course, Presenting Skills Training Course, Building Personal Resilience Training Course and Leadership Training Courses.

Presenting skills and leadership courses also relate to Interpersonal Skills (your relationship with others), which no doubt these courses are about that, yet we are realising more and more now that in order to influence others and communicate effectively, we must first own a confident and good relationship with ourselves, especially in the business world. 

Emotional Intelligence takes this one step further and delves into the depths of the subconscious mind, being present and understanding that we can control our emotions or at least manage them, something that is essential when working in a busy and high demanding office environment.

Why are these types of courses becoming so popular in the business world?

• Intrapersonal Skills courses are no longer considered fluffy or non measurable.  This is greatly due to training companies ensuring they are delivering to a higher standard but also because of the growth of the personal development industry over the last 5 years and the direct impact it is continually having on people’s lives for the better.  How many people do you know who have read at least one personal development book at your office?  Perhaps you have read one or more yourself?
  
• Stress costs the UK economy up to 12 billion per year - a recent study done by mental health charity MIND revealed that work is the most stressful factor in peoples’ lives, with one in three people (34 percent,) saying their work life was either very or quite stressful.  Therefore, companies are now being very proactive by investing in their staff members’ health and wellbeing.  Businesses are achieving this by offering staff courses such as some already mentioned in this article.  After all  ‘Prevention is always better than cure.’
  
• With technology making such dramatic advances over the last decade, the focus and emphasis has now been put back on ensuring team members are up to date on these technological advances.  This ‘change’ within a business can also come with a lot of resistance so once again this is where Intrapersonal skills play a vital role in staff members being able to be adaptable and open minded to change.
  
• The above point also relates to companies being fully aware of the uncertainty felt by many working Britons about their job security so by offering staff a variety of training courses team members can feel the company is investing in them and more so than this, the staff member can keep their skills sharp and even be up for promotion internally when the opportunity arises.

Overall, Learning & Development has the ability to bring staff members together in a fun but professional environment, it allows people to speak their mind about their views and vision with their current company. It can also work as a great motivator even if each staff member takes 2 or 3 skills or tips back to the office with them after a training day and finally, the one thing that is constant is change, training will always work as a facilitator to assist with that change.

Now could be a good time to return back to the questions at the beginning of this article.  However, this time when asking each question, have a pen & note pad ready and consider how Learning & Development could impact the mindset, skills and emotions of staff members within your business and even yourself.

‘All change starts on the inside.’ 

To train your team, have a look at what courses Capita Learning & Development offers in 2014. If you need any tailored courses please call 0800 022 3410.

Written by Pete Scott, a learning consultant at Capita Learning & Development.

To be or not to be a Trainer? You decide…

Trainer: benefits

Being a Trainer can be a varied and exciting role, travelling to UK and International destinations, meeting people of different cultures, with no two days the same. But every job has its up and downs, so what is it really like to be a Trainer?

Delivering courses to large groups of people can be a daunting task. Standing up at the front with all eyes on you could be someone’s nightmare, but then again some people love being the centre of attention! Speaking publicly is something that takes practice and time to build confidence, but this skill is something you’ll never lose once mastered. There’s nothing like the feeling you get from a job well done – receiving great feedback and knowing that you have helped people learn something new or motivated them to develop themselves further. There’s always the odd time when you have to deal with an unruly delegate, but no job can be smooth sailing all the time, and there is a great support network of trainers so we can help and advise each other and learn from each others’ experiences.

People often wonder how trainers remember everything they need to deliver their courses. Although all learning and development professionals spend years developing a base knowledge of a variety of subjects and theories that they can refer to when delivering training, by no means are they required to have all of this information on the tip of their tongues. Preparation is key! Subjects can be revisited and refreshed upon the night before and notes can be made to refer to during the training sessions and in breaks. Of course, some of the learning is so embedded, delivery just comes naturally.

Another big part of the job is the travel involved. Trainers for Capita Learning & Development travel across the UK and also abroad to places like the Middle East, The Gambia and Europe where they can drink in the culture and sights. However, as the travel is for work, trainers find their free time for tourism quite limited as the majority of their time is spent travelling to the venue, preparing and working. But some people are just not made to sit in an office…

So, it’s important to weigh up the pros and cons of any job. And our trainers have all jumped into their roles – imparting their expert knowledge, passion, and support to many people on a daily basis.

As one trainer summarises: “What other job can offer you the experience of working in so many different places, industries, cultures, with new faces and challenges on a daily basis?”

So you decide. To be or not to be a Trainer?

Written by Claire Hopkins, a learning consultant at Capita Learning & Development.

Strategic Thinking – but whose job is it anyway?

Thinking strategically, often seen as the accountability of top management, is a skill and a process that are required to grow the organisation both in times of stability and in challenging circumstances.
So, what is strategic thinking and why should there be a cultural acceptance of it being part of everyone’s job and not just the domain of the select few?

Strategic thinking

The Cambridge dictionary defines strategy as:

a detailed plan for achieving success in situations such as war, politics, business, industry or sport, or the skill of planning for such situations

What the definition makes transparent is that strategy is just that - a plan; a plan to reach something. As such strategy can be deemed to be “owned” at various levels and responsibility and awareness ought to be organisationally grown.

It is true to say that long term, far reaching organisational aims, the design of culture and the creation of ethos must be “driven” - but not owned -  by senior management who ensure that operational plans and activities will then take over. In this way strategy is cascaded down throughout all levels of staff.

But balanced with that, organisations are increasingly bottom-up type businesses.  People want, and must see that they have, the opportunity to inform organisational objectives and deliver their part of the business to contribute to a successful organisation. Of course it is far too simplistic to think that organisations operate as democracies or co-operatives; they need to be managed with plans that can be immediately linked to the external environment and for organisations to be successful these links, and therefore these plans, must be recognised at all levels.

This knowledge must be implicit not tacit in the organisation – how operational and operational plans and thinking inform and support strategy and strategic thinking.

In enlightened times and in enlightened organisations individuals want (and seek) amongst other things -

• engagement in the organisation and its successes 
• fulfilment
• sense of being valued

Informed senior management want at the very least -

• People to take responsibility
• Committed individuals
• Success through effort
• To meet (beat) strategic objectives

So what can organisations do to grow the strategic thinking culture and support the above desires? Well it’s back to the ownership of plans at all levels – but plans based on the understanding of how strategy can be informed from the bottom up with a clear line of sight from the individual to the organisation. Steps to achieve this are:

• Establish a raison d’être  – increase the sense of ownership by having people articulate “what business they are in” (make sure it’s aligned to the organisation’s business and coach out any differences) and design a mission around that understanding
• Define the destination - have people agree what the strategic intent is of “their business” – how will they help the organisation beat the competition, differentiate, collaborate or survive?
• “SWOT” the issues – have individuals and teams scan the internal and external environment – what are the requirements for “their business” to succeed? What might get in the way of achieving strategic intent? What resources can be best leveraged and what opportunities are there for growth and improvement?
• Plan the journey – ensure the individuals and teams undertake the design of the objectives that will achieve the strategic intent and state the actions that will get them there.

Naturally these steps can be undertaken at an individual level too and built in to the performance management process.

The bottom line is that it is paramount for organisational success that strategic thinking is considered the property of all and that there is empowerment of individuals at all levels to own and take responsibility.

So whose job is strategic thinking? Everyone’s.

Written by David Mathieson, a learning consultant at Capita Learning & Development.

As a manager, do you know your impact or are you relying on your intentions?

“It is not enough that your designs, nay that your actions, are intrinsically good, you must take care they shall appear so.” (Henry Fielding).

An effective manager is one of the most significant and valuable assets that the team can possess and the very things the manager does and says could increase the effectiveness of the team - the “Hawthorne Effect” (the increase in productivity and effectiveness that occurs due to the impact of the motivational effect on the team as a result of the interest being shown in them) is prevalent.

Effective Management

But there is a danger that the manager can be the single biggest thing that gets in the way of people performing. In their actions and behaviours, managers - who are human after all - may mean well but it is worth considering that it is the impact of what the manager does, not the intention behind actions and behaviours that ultimately matters.

“Impact not intention” – this must be the manager’s mantra.
Consider the manager who:

• always books things in their teams diaries “to save them the effort” 
• filters communications for the team because “they are too busy to do it themselves” 
• takes on the frequent checking of work with an individual “because it shows I am interested” 
• insists on a weekly one to one with each of their team “because it shows I care”
• pays special attention to underperforming individuals and allows the good performers to carry on without managerial input “because they don’t need me” 

Sound familiar?

“But I meant well, it’s just what they want, what they need,” is the cry that goes up. But who decided that? Are these the best thing for the individuals involved to help them perform?  What are these actions really saying to the team?

How do you know whether your actions and behaviours when managing the team are the ones that are most effective for them?
These managers may be misguided but all want the same thing – for the individual to perform. But what do individuals need from their manager in order to perform?  Why not start by asking the individual?

Whilst it is important to remember that managing people is a collaborative approach and the team cannot decide in isolation what they get, in the managerial process of seeking to ensure that people are developed, the team is built and the task is achieved it is valuable to keep in mind that we are talking about the individuals job and their performance so their voice is crucial.

“Seek first to understand. Then to be understood” wrote Steven Covey.
For a manager, getting feedback on own performance is often ignored in favour of giving feedback on others. But reflect on how valuable it would be to know those behaviours and actions that support and reinforce and those that disturb, disrupt or damage.

There are a few things worth considering:

• Developing and establishing a 360 (or 180) degree feedback system
• Building in time at the end of performance meetings to discuss what you do that supports or gets in the way of your people
• Getting other managers to observe your performance and feedback
• Having effective performance discussions with own line manager, ensuring that objectives relating to the management of people are agreed, measured and fed back on  

Samuel Johnson said "Hell is paved with good intentions."
No manager wants to live in hell so create the opportunity and take the time to check your impact matches your intentions.

Written by David Mathieson, a learning consultant at Capita Learning & Development.

Learning and Development: At a Glance

Carol Martin, Senior Consultant and Development Manager, Capita Learning & Development highlights the benefits of training employees - it stops stagnation, it's a great networking opportunity and it generates creativity and innovation.

She also talks about how the recession exposed gaps in the organisational structure of companies and how this has forced companies to train their employees in order to cultivate better performance. Watch the full interview below...

Learning and Development Outsourcing by Capita Learning & Development

In this month’s post we are inviting you to watch a video introducing Rob Williams, Sales & Solutions Director at Capita Learning & Development, who talks about his role in learning and development outsourcing.  Rob has been part of Business Focus Learning, a project on identifying the learning and development needs for businesses and how to deliver the services while demonstrating value for money. 

Does your company outsource learning and development or is the training done internally? What benefits have you seen when outsourcing these needs?

Training Industry Trends

In the current economic climate companies are careful on what they spend money on and often training is at the bottom of the list. However a lot of employers still value investing in their employees, wanting to keep in pace with business demands and changes but also to improve the standard of their work, keep them stimulated and interested, which in turn leads to higher retention of staff. It is important to retain and develop talent within the company as hiring and training new employees prove to be more costly.

Trends show that training programmes have become shorter in length and 90-minute espresso sessions have become quite popular for people with busy schedules, who do not want to (or cannot afford to) spend hours on training courses anymore. Shorter but more intensive courses have become far more effective. The main objective is that employees can discover practical techniques which can be implemented immediately in their workplace. The benefit for the company is maximising investment with this time-efficient training concept.

These days more and more businesses are turning to e-Learning as it offers a versatile and highly effective alternative way to progress skills and also helps to keep training costs low. The biggest advantage is flexibility - people can fit the training into their own schedule and learn at their own pace. This has become increasingly important in our busy lifestyles. 

For more industry trends watch Capita Learning & Development's, UK Delivery Team Manager, Liz Kemp, speaking about the trends and changes in the training industry, bespoke and tailored training solutions and what the future holds for the training industry. 

With the impact of the recession still being felt nationwide, UK employees are increasingly expected to do more with fewer resources. Capita Learning & Development has taken the industry trends and customer feedback into account and identified a full suite of programmes and short courses to tackle the development needs of the UK. They range from Leadership and Management through to Personal Development; and accredited programmes.

We have updated and also added some new courses, for example Talent Management and Succession Planning as the current competitive recruitment and retention climate is creating the need for innovative talent management strategies. Also new is Evaluating Learning Intervention Effectiveness. In order to maximise the impact and return on investment of any learning it is essential to measure the effectiveness. Businesses need to make sure that retained learning is put into practice and its impact should be measured.

To find out more on our training courses, download the 2013 directory below:

Are You As SMART As You Think You Are?

Each New Year we resolve to lose weight, quit smoking, or whatever. In the vast majority, these aspirations end in failure, but why does this happen?

The smart money, you might say, would probably be on a lack of goal setting. Without clear, measurable goals, the reasoning goes, we are doomed to fail. SMART goal setting has become such a staple of management training that it seems superfluous to remind you that the acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable (or Active), Realistic (or Relevant) and Time-bound.

Businesses and Government have enthusiastically embraced this goal-setting model and the world of work is now awash with SMART goals. But how effective are they?

First, a quick trawl through any random sample of business plans or appraisal documents will soon reveal that very few goals are SMART in practice. Setting a truly SMART goal is quite difficult; it takes time and thought to fashion something meaningful – time that managers rarely take, in my experience.

Second: the things that are most easily measured are likely to be of the least use, and vice versa. In practice, people often measure what they most easily can, rather than what they should. Thus, for example, we might know how many meetings staff members attended, but their effectiveness therein is less well understood.

Third: organisational emphasis on goals and targets understandably shifts management attention towards results; the monitoring of "how did they get there?" is often left undone, potentially leading to nasty surprises later, when managers find good results being underpinned by dubious practices.

Last: organisational metrics are often confined to management activities. I frequently ask my course delegates: "When was the last time you were measured on your coaching activities?". "Never" is the most common, depressing, answer. It seems many senior managements, despite espousing them in principle, routinely ignore a whole raft of leadership activities for measurement purposes, filling managers' schedules by default with management activities, and thus constraining time available for leadership.

And so, as we embark upon 2012, my question to you is simple: are you as SMART at work as you think you are? 

By David Soloman, Learning Consultant, Capita Learning and Development

What motivates employees?

We are not as easy to manipulate, nor as predictable, as you’d think. An MIT survey calls into question the reward/punishment models that most organizations have been built on...

What the study showed was that, for simple, algorithmic, mechanical tasks, financial rewards work. But once the task moves above a rudimentary cognitive skill level, then financial rewards actually… backfire.




How can that be?

A study was done at MIT, where students were given various tasks ranging from memorizing digits, solving word puzzles to throwing a ball through a hoop. To incentivise the students, they gave them three levels of rewards similar to a typical motivation scheme within an organization. Thus if they reached level 1, they would get x, if they reached level 2 they get y, etc. What the study showed was that, for simple, algorithmic, mechanical tasks, financial rewards work. But once the task moves above a rudimentary cognitive skill level, then financial rewards actually… backfire.

Once you get above rudimentary cognitive skill, it's the other way around. For simple straight forward tasks, like 'if you do this then you get that', financial rewards deliver outstanding results. But when a task gets more complicated, when it requires conceptual, creative thinking, then those incentives don't work. If you don't pay people enough they won't be motivated. What this proves is that money is a motivator, yes. But the trick is to pay people enough so that money no longer matters, and people think about work, not cash.

What then emerged was a new purpose-driven motive based on three key factors: autonomy (get out of their way), mastery (people want to get better at tasks), and purpose (people want to make a contribution). Autonomy means to be self-directed. An Australian software company, Atlassian, told their developers that they can work on anything with whomever they want for 24 hours every quarter.  All they have to do is show the results to the company at the end of the 24 hours. Afterwards everyone got together with refreshments and discussed what they worked on. That one day of pure undiluted autonomy has lead to software fixes, various ideas for new projects and a culture based on innovation.

Mastery is the urge to get better at stuff. This is why people play musical instruments at the weekend. Why would people spend time on something that is not going to lead to any financial rewards or finding a partner?  Because it's fun and you can get better at it which is satisfying. Take for example companies like Linux, Apache and Wikipedia. Various people around the world who have satisfying, challenging jobs which pay them a good salary, spend their spare time contributing to Linux or Wikipedia. But why are they doing this? Because it's challenging, it involves mastery and they get to make a contribution to the world.

More and more organisations across the world are realising that they need to have a purpose. Partly because it makes acquiring new talent easier and it makes coming to work easier. When the profit motive becomes unmoored from the purpose motive, bad things happen. Companies who are flourishing are animated by this purpose. Take Skype as an example: 'Our goal is to be disruptive, but in the cause of making this world a better place'. We need to have purpose in order to get up in the morning and go to work. The science indicates that we care about mastery, and we want to be self-directed. Based on these findings we can build better organisations, which in turn will also lead to making our world just a little bit better. 

Traditional management styles are great when what you are after is compliance. But in this new, purpose-driven world, you need to enable staff to do what they do well – and here, self-direction works best.

The changing face of learning & development (70:20:10)

Learning and Development is changing. As an organisational function, it is having to become far closer to Operational delivery and to Internal Communications than to Human Resources.

As a concept, organisations are beginning to realise that Learning & Development is far wider than the formal training which has, up to now been the primary focus of investment.

Over the past 40 years, research has consistently indicated that:

• 70% of learning & development activity takes place from real-life and on-the-job experiences, tasks and problem-solving.
• 20% comes from feedback and from observing and working with role models.
• 10% comes from formal training.

(See: Princeton University's Learning Philosophy)

As an example see the recent report from Best Practice on how managers learn (pdf).

The Learning & Development function within an organisation has a role to play in supporting each of these aspects, whilst, at the same time, understanding that control over the learning experience becomes devolved to the end-user for much of the time.

On-the-job

In a rapidly changing work environment, employees need a range of tactics to help them adapt to different situations.

These will often include:

• Asking someone who might know “the answer”
• Searching for (and finding!) information that will help them work out “the answer” – both from internal and external resources. (There is a strong relationship here with a knowledge management function)
• Trial-and-error
• Using a job-aid that has been prepared for this situation

Learning from other people

Employees will maintain a network of peers, who can provide answers to questions, feedback and modelling of best behaviours.

These may include their managers in a coaching relationship, but, more likely will be their direct peers, and, more often these days, will be people both inside and outside the organisation, with whom they have a virtual relationship.

Formal training

The goal of all formal training is to change behaviours to match the organisation’s stated values. Here there is a strong relationship with internal communication and external marketing – to ensure that the messages going out to clients and shareholders match the reality of how the organisation works.

Formal training may include:

• Classroom workshops
• Lectures
• Online webinars
• Direct communications from “the centre”
• Designed learning experiences, such as simulations and tutorials
• Assessed activities

L&D departments need to recognise these different ways of learning, develop ways to support them, and learn where to focus their investment to give the most return.

That's probably the subject of another post, but, if you can't wait, read Clive Shepherd's book: The New Learning Architect

This article was first published on my personal Learning Conversations Blog. 

Mark Berthelemy is a Solutions Architect at Capita Learning & Development, he also runs the popular learning blog - Learning Conversations.