Personal Development Archives - Page 5 of 16 - Smart Coaching and Training

17/11/2024 By David Rigby

Recruiting the right person for the team

Having a cognitively diverse team gets the best results

Many organisations have an HR department that ticks boxes on whether they enough women, gays, colours and nationalities and they think they have diverse teams. In general they only care about the law and diversity and pay scant attention to inclusion, interculturality, neurodiversity and generational diversity as it is not a legal requirement.

Who Needs To Make Money?

McKinsey have proved over and over again that having a truly diverse team is the best way to improve profits. And to develop customers it’s better to have someone who has similar characteristics to serve those customers.
No amount of ‘diversity’ in any of the above categories will be successful if everyone thinks the same way. And a recruiter’s in-built bias will ensure that they still recruit people who will ‘fit in’ rather than challenge the status quo. Your customers don’t all think the same way so neither should your team.

Holistic approach to recruitment

Recruiting a diverse team requires a holistic approach, recruiting the best person for the team is way more important than recruiting the best person for a particular job. Not an approach even thought about by most recruiters who still look for hard skills and experience rather than the soft skills required to work in a team.

FREE EVENT 23rd November 2024

DISCulturally Decoding Human Behaviour with Clair Aghassipour – see below to get tickets

*Smart Coaching & Training’s Clair Aghassipour*

*3 colours worldview – another way of profiling*

How do you go about this?.

Some people are more extrovert (or Active) than others and some are more introvert( (or Reactive). Some people absolutely rely on logic ( or Task Orientated) and have no time for emotion, others think emotion and behaviours such a empathy are very important (or People Orientated). Putting them all together which brings four combinations.
In reality everyone is a combination of introvert/extrovert and of logical/emotional but tend to be predominantly one combination such as ‘emotional/extravert’ , which can be expressed as through the colours red, yellow, green and blue.

Profiling Tools

There are many tools available to assess individuals as to which personality types. There are tools based on the work of Jung which include Insights, C-me and the variants of DISC. Others are MBTI, Enneagram which take a different approach.
Within Smart Coaching & Training we have expertise on many of these tools. And in order to gain an understanding of the concepts of DISC, SCT associate Clair Aghassipour is running a three hour workshop on Colour Profiling using DISC. This will cover the concepts of the understanding of individuals as well as combining to build a truly diverse team. (see details below)

Don’t believe all the stereotyping by Interculturalists

Many interculturalists believe that there are characteristics and behaviours based on nationalities, such as The Dutch are very logical and the Spanish are very emotional. To an extent this is the case, and is a good starting point. But given and even split of cognitive characteristics only half of the Dutch are logical and only half the Spanish are emotional. So the works of Hofstede are a good starting point , but also considering the way people think is a much more useful way of thinking.

*DISCulturally Decoding Human Behaviour 23rd Nov 9.45 CET with Clair Aghassipour – **FREE EVENT** but you have to reserve your place* . *Send request to [email protected]*

All about Human Behaviour

DISCulturally Decoding Human Behaviour Workshop 23rd Nov 9.45 CET with Clair Aghassipour – FREE EVENT but you have to reserve your place . Send request to [email protected]

Read also about Profiling in general here Read also about Cognitive Diversity here

Watch David Rigby give an introduction to Colour Profiling here and also …

David presented a 7 minute test speech for Madrid Toastmasters on Cognitive Interculturality here
Watch is webinar on Cognitive Diversity with DG Talks here
Watch his ‘hot seat’ interview on Cognitive Diversity for GLEAC here.

Smart Coaching & Training works with 27 associates, in four continents speaking 12 languages and raised and working in a wide range of cultures. See our associates here.

01/11/2024 By David Rigby

Demonstrating confidence at events

Change Days Barcelona, Valencia Digital Summit, Professional Speakers Association – Grow Convention Barcelona

Last week I attended Change Days Barcelona and Valencia Digital Summit(VDS), back to back .
Change Days was attended by 40 people VDS by several thousand. Next week at Professional Speakers Association Grow Convention Barcelona.

Presentation Skills

I have learnt that less is more. As a member of the Professional Speakers Association we learn that it’s better to use no slides, but if you must, use slides with very little content especially words. But at VDS these are techies . Every slide a wiring diagram, no time to read given by the presenter, or the presenter read it to you. – and you are supposed to know all the acronyms . No facilities for slides at Change Days. Each presenter drew you in by the force of their personality.

Levels of participation

In both cases, at certain times, there were 6 events going on at once. A stark contrast was, at Change Days everyone was totally committed to fully attend each offering, phones off, no laptops . In the auditoria at VDS– whether a panel was exchanging views or a single speaker was presenting almost 80% of the mainly male audience was not only browsing their phones but actively using their laptops. Hard to believe that hardly anyone found a compelling presentation given the great choice. I admit to not being enthralled about “How many microchips there are in the world” or “how I rescued a failing e-bike business” but those are personal views. However at Change Days learning about KungFu Breathing and How to Marry Yourself was totally engaging.

*Smart Coaching & Training at Change Days :*
*Sheona Della Fort, David Rigby,*
*Caroline Dream, Jessica Breitenfeld*

At VDS the most interesting person I met – placing females into the Techie industry – knew many of the people at change days. At Change Days there were four Smart Coaching & Training associates, all of whom presented , Jessica Breitenfeld, Caroline Dream, and Sheona Della Fort , and several other people I already knew. I this safe environment the best thing to do was to develop connections with people I didn’t know and we will be great friends next time!

Professional Speakers Association (Spain) – Grow Convention Barcelona 9 November 2024

The next weekend it will be my third Professional Speakers Association Convention. I am pleased to presenting on Diversity along with fellow Smart Coaching & Associate Ricardo Cabete and 15 other speakers. It will be like a combination of the two previous events.

It’s worthwhile to have invested the time in the past to know these experts and to be fully confident in their presence. Why not come along on November 9th and improve your confidence? https://psa-spain.com/convention/

*Professional Speakers Association –Grow Convention*

Smart Coaching & Training works with 28 associates, in four continents speaking 14 languages and raised and working in a wide range of cultures. See our associates here.

Speaking

Many of our associates learned how to speak via Toastmasters and Professional Speakers Association Read more

03/10/2024 By David Rigby

Can you give us a course on Leadership Development?

“Do you want to develop a leader or do you want a course?”

“Can you give us a course on Leadership Development ?”
“What kind of people need the training? “– “Various, different experiences and locations”.
“How many people will there be?” – “We will tell you an hour before the training.”
We have been asked to provide courses and trainers. It’s useful to know about the background of the trainees and, indeed, how many there are. You see the responses. These recent conversations were guaranteed to make the course generic, the trainer’s life difficult and the trainees’ experience potentially irrelevant.

Who Needs Leadership?

Organizations whether private or government bodies or countries need to have leadership. To do this they need leaders who are not just positional power leaders (placed there by their buddies in government). They have past leaders, current leaders, and to ensure the long term, they need future leaders. “If you always do what you always did, then you always get what you always got.” Keeping a steady hand is useful but is it as useful as preparing the organisation for its future in an ever-changing global world? So you need to develop leaders who can cope with the future.

Leaders are at different stages of development

Developing leaders is not just a case of attending a standard 5-day content training course and then you are an expert. Leaders will be at different stages of development in their life and have had different backgrounds and experiences. The leadership journey is never ending and you can never know it all. Leaders need to know different things, at different times, for different situations and types of evolution. Education needs to be forward looking, inspiring and visionary.

Leading starts with leading yourself

Some of Leadership learning is about acquiring skills but a lot of leadership learning is about developing your self understanding and your personality.. To be a leader you need to have followers and the first person you need to lead is yourself, hence the importance of “Know thyself” and your psychological makeup.

*Smart Coaching & Training Leadership training in Dubai*

*Pari, Martin, Malcolm and Clair – four leadership experts*

The stereotype of a leader

A leader does not need to be an old white privileged dominant male though many of those are brought up to think they ought to be and follow the command and control style. Leadership style should depend on who you are , where you are and who you are trying to lead. Organisations have their cultures which often clash with country cultures. And remember that 75% of people do not follow their country stereotype in the way they think or behave.

The marginalised leader

Some of those who are being lead may belong to marginalised groups, such as LGBT+, Neuro, generational, women, the poor, the working class, colour, living in a different country from where they were born, different religions. Some may be intersectional. And of course the leader may themselves belong to many marginalised groups.

It depends on the roles of those you are leading

Leading a country is different from leading a football team (maybe). Leading when you have authority (i.e. do what I say) is different from where you don’t. Try leading volunteers! Try being a consultant in an advisory role! Try being a nurse leading your patient on they way to recovery. Try running a committee where you (and indeed they) don’t have the authority to decide anything. Try dealing with a child. They all require leadership skills, the power of ‘follow me’ and persuasion skills, and getting someone to follow ‘your vision’.

Leading is different from Management

Comparison can be made with Projects and Programmes. A manager’s task is about delivering a set of objectives, to perhaps a set budget in a set time in order to achieve the key performance indicators (KPI’s). They manage people to achieve this. They may also be interested in ensuring that they will have people who can deliver in the future, or they might not care. A leader is measured by the benefit they deliver and not what they did . Leaders determine the way and encourage and inspire others to follow. New leaders often start with a lot of management focus and a little leadership knowledge, but gradually become leaders.

*from Professor Peter Hawkins* *– leadership is not just about leaders*

Western Wisdom

Western Leadership teaching is often not appropriate for the location of the trainees. And whether they are in their country of birth or elsewhere. Leading diverse cultures is not easy when one where the staff never have had to take responsibility and others where the staff challenge authority .

There are many cases where Delegates have ‘learnt’ leadership from Western trainers and have said “this is great but culturally we cannot apply any of it in our home country.” The Westerners may think their method is better but is that just arrogance. In may ways it’s like saying women never invented anything.

Smart Coaching & Training works with 20 associates, in four continents speaking 12 languages and raised and working in a wide range of cultures. See our associates here.

Leadership Development

We work with you to build a plan to deliver your Leadership development. This can involve courses and workshops and one-to-one coaching. It can be a continuous process. The facilitators who mainly do this are :

They, like many other associates have experience of Leadership in many countries.

Conventional Leadership Training

SCT offers conventional leadership training in courses such as the ones below

Leadership and Team Management: Creating and developing teams and leading them *
Diversity, Interculturality and Cultural Intelligence for Remote Leaders Be successful with many diverse groups at the same time. Understand the many strands of diversity and what it takes to take advantage of it
Manager to Leader: Change your personality to that of a leader .
Manager as Coach: Learn how to coach and develop the attitudes that enable you to coach well
Building your Personal Brand: Develop your personal brand based on your Behavioural Profile, strengths and wishes,
Achieving personal success with international teams. Building and running international teams to demonstrate leadership competence
Transformation using Psycho-social Vertical Adult Development and Spiral Dynamics – for experienced leaders

See them all here

We also have many short courses to develop specific skills

29/08/2024 By David Rigby

Generational Diversity and Humour

Rewriting your historical culture in case it is offensive.

I am firmly in the Boomer generation and grew up in the sixties where fewer and fewer topics were taboo. People’s education improved when they were exposed to better information, especially to do with sex and class. In 1962 the Judge in the Lady Chatterley trial inferred that it was OK for educated men to read this book but not for women or servants.
Men got to know that women can be just as rude as men and didn’t need protecting, just wanted to be treated as equals. “not in front of the ladies”

The 1960s

British humour in public, film and TV became much more liberal and the British specialisation of Double Entendre (no British equivalent – nearest is Double Meaning) came to the fore. In the 60s films within the ‘Carry-On’ comedy series and TV programmes such as ‘Are you being served’ (1972-1985) were experts at exploiting this. Radio such as ‘Round the Horne/Beyond our Ken’ (1958-1968), broadcast Sunday lunchtimes, used implicitly gay characters even though being gay was illegal. The rudeness was never explicit though. Men dressed as women and vice versa was common even on the radio.
There were other TV programmes which were racially offensive and others which helped the ‘native’ British get familiar with people whose backgrounds were different. The legendary visionary ‘’Till death us do part’ held up the racists to ridicule for those who dared to watch.

The older generations in the 1960s

But how accepting of this liberty were the older generations of that time? Again in the 1960s “Up Pompeii “, full women’s stereotypes and inuendo. was a very successful vehicle for 1940s comedian Frankie Howerd. My mother insisted that I watched it at a neighbour’s house in case my grandmother, who lived with us, got offended. Perhaps my mother was afraid my grandmother would enjoy it too much. After all there were all the double entendre songs sung in the music halls of the 1910s-1930s and before.

*Beyond our Ken & Round The Horne BBBC Radio 1958-1968*

*Little Britain BBC Radio 2000 BBC TV 2003-2006*

Swearing on TV

During a discussion on censorship, The critic Kenneth Tynan became the first person to say “ f**k” on British television in 1965. After that there was always discussions about how many f**ks you could have in a radio or TV broadcast. British political comedy “The thick of it”(2005-2012) wins my prize as to just how many times it’s possible to say f**k in a programme in order to be authentic.

Changes in the new century

Then things began to change. Things which were deemed funny in the 1960s became offensive in the 2000s and it is increasing .
Does this mean that the GenZ, Millennials who are now controlling the game are failing to see the fun?

Fear of offending

For example Little Britain (2003-2006) – the TV series which pointed the mirror at British society has been taken off the air. A theatre has banned a stage version of a BBC sitcom ‘are you being served’ partly based on the writers’ experiences of a former department store in Paignton after it was considered ‘demeaning to women and outdated’ (but only in Torquay). Apparently irrelevant that had been successful in many other (less) provincial towns.

Returning to the Victorian Era?

Does this mean we are returning to
• The Victorians chopping off Penises on statue
• The genitals of Christ being painted over (very badly) in the Sistine Chapel
• Books being re-engineered and censored

Or are we being censored by the Zuckerberg’s and Musk’s to only publish that which is acceptable in certain parts of America?
The genres which you can make fun of are shrinking all the time, so the only answer is to make fun of all of them .

Personal Experience

Recently I posted an extremely witty but rude joke on Facebook which required knowledge about James Bond books. I got castigated because it apparently offended about Trans people. If it wasn’t very clever I wouldn’t have posted it. However, the point is, why should I specifically be aware of sensitivities of trans-people and not for other groups? My trans friends make better and ruder jokes than I do, and so do my black friends and my gay friends .

So I shall continue making jokes about all, and if the GenZs and Millennials don’t like it – then tough.

Note: This article is based upon British history as I was there. In other places it may have been different. David Rigby is an expert on Interculturality and Diversity including Generational Diversity and believes that your historical culture should not have to be re-written or removed to avoid offending different generations or nations.

Smart Coaching & Training works with 20 associates, in four continents speaking 12 languages and raised and working in a wide range of cultures. See our associates here.

We have changed and considerably expanded the web pages concerning Diversity. Take a look Take a look at our page on Generational Diversity

29/07/2024 By David Rigby

Are safe spaces retrograde steps from the promise of Diversity?

For many years women fought and won to belong to men-only clubs and societies .
For many years black people fought and won to belong to white only clubs and societies .
In the UK in the 90s white people went to the gospel churches because the singing was better .
And now they want female/black only spaces . Is that a retrograde step ?
Until recently I thought it was .

What is a safe space?

.A ‘safe space’ is a place that provides a physically and emotionally safe environment for a person or group of people, especially a place where people can freely express themselves without fear of prejudice, negative judgment, etc.: a safe space for single mothers to share their experiences.

It’s like going to a brainstorming meeting and the boss is there saying “don’t mind me “ but you suspect everything you say will be held against you , if you have a different view. So better the boss is not there.

Diversity is great providing you don’t disagree with the view put forward by the boss, whether the boss is old white straight male or young black lesbian .

Recently in London a play has been performed where for certain nights they wanted a black only (or is that a non-white) audience as typically the audience don’t want to behave as a typical middle class white audience might expect.

*Mahmoud Assy on Intersectionality at LGBT+@Work Madrid*. Mahmoud Assy is an STC Associate

*Participants at LGBT+@Work conference IE university Madrid*

*Female only event upcoming in Valencia / Jessica Breitenfeld (second left) is an SCT Associate*

In the USA many Universities have marketed courses aimed at black females only and have been challenged to by the courts

Challenging Women Only Groups

I have challenged many women’s groups to justify why they don’t want men there. And they complain about mansplaining, and about not being able to be themselves is men are present. Equally men have complained about not wanting women present for the same reasons- but that is not equality.

I recently went to a LGBT+@Work conference at IE University in Madrid. It was a joyous and professional event. There was a great variety of attendees and it was a safe space and everyone was comfortable enough to be themselves.

The same, of course, could be said about attending a Christian Mothers event – where if you want your biases confirmed then they will be.

Safe Spaces

So, I changed my mind, though to me the female only or black only events are probably more interesting than the white male macho events where most people still dare not be themselves for fear of not being white or macho enough.

Smart Coaching & Training works with 20 associates, in four continents speaking 12 languages and raised and working in a wide range of cultures. See our associates here.

We have changed and considerably expanded the web pages concerning Diversity. Take a look

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Having a cognitively diverse team gets the best results

Who Needs To Make Money?

Holistic approach to recruitment

FREE EVENT 23rd November 2024

DISCulturally Decoding Human Behaviour with Clair Aghassipour – see below to get tickets

How do you go about this?.

Profiling Tools

Don’t believe all the stereotyping by Interculturalists

All about Human Behaviour

Smart Coaching & Training works with 27 associates, in four continents speaking 12 languages and raised and working in a wide range of cultures. See our associates here.

Change Days Barcelona, Valencia Digital Summit, Professional Speakers Association – Grow Convention Barcelona

Presentation Skills

Levels of participation

Professional Speakers Association (Spain) – Grow Convention Barcelona 9 November 2024

Smart Coaching & Training works with 28 associates, in four continents speaking 14 languages and raised and working in a wide range of cultures. See our associates here.

Speaking

“Do you want to develop a leader or do you want a course?”

Who Needs Leadership?

Leaders are at different stages of development

Leading starts with leading yourself

The stereotype of a leader

The marginalised leader

It depends on the roles of those you are leading

Leading is different from Management

Western Wisdom

Smart Coaching & Training works with 20 associates, in four continents speaking 12 languages and raised and working in a wide range of cultures. See our associates here.

Leadership Development

Conventional Leadership Training

Rewriting your historical culture in case it is offensive.

The 1960s

The older generations in the 1960s

Swearing on TV

Changes in the new century

Fear of offending

Returning to the Victorian Era?

Personal Experience

Smart Coaching & Training works with 20 associates, in four continents speaking 12 languages and raised and working in a wide range of cultures. See our associates here.

What is a safe space?

Safe Spaces

Smart Coaching & Training works with 20 associates, in four continents speaking 12 languages and raised and working in a wide range of cultures. See our associates here.

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