Training & Coaching News from Smart Coaching Training

11/06/2018 By Isla Baliszewska

When is a team not a team?

A team is essentially a group of people working together. Forming one can have challenges and a Team Wheel can help you build a great team. But first, let’s explore more the concept of a team, and an effective team.

What does not make a collection of disparate individuals a team? Possibly when…

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]They work in the same room

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]They are married, or in the same family

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]They work for the same boss or company

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]They live in or work in the same country or ethnic group.

What does make a team? It is when:

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]The group members are striving for the same objective/goal/ purpose

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Every member is working for the glory or benefit of the group not for their own individual gain

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Outside the team they are perceived as a team, and the praise and brickbats go to the whole team, not just the individuals

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Within the team, egos are subsumed and everyone helps everyone else for the greater good.

What makes some teams perform better than others?

If you want fast but questionable results build your team with identical views and ways of thinking – they will learn nothing from each other except to confirm prejudices

To get far better outcomes, have a team as diverse and different as possible. Draw from all backgrounds, skills, talents, abilities, have a mix of people and competencies to encourage innovation and positivity and to get optimum results.

The best. truly effective teams:

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Consist of individuals who think and communicate in different ways

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Allow freedom of interaction and sharing of ideas

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Are inclusive, trustful, open and collaborative

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Encourage individual and group growth

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Share a common purpose.

So how do you get the best thinking and communicating from your team?

Everyone is different: some people are more logical, others more emotional, some are more introvert, others more extravert. With these possible four combinations, and C-me Behavioural Preference Profiling Team Wheels, we use the language of colours to grow individual and group awareness and create more profitable interactions:

Red

Yellow

Blue

Green

All people have communication preferences in all four categories but one colour usually stands out. An individual C-me report will give you a chart which something looks like this:

The chart shows your preferences in two contexts, one where you usually operate on a day to day basis, and the other which would be your default under pressure or when you are not adapting to a context.

To make it easy to see how well your team is balanced we can develop a Team Wheel which shows how a team is balanced and can help identify weaknesses to be rectified during the next round of recruitment. Each person’s place on the wheel is charted highlighting where strengths are and where there may be potential skills gaps.

Great communication within a team is when:

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Everyone can learn a lot more by actively listening to what an individual has to say rather than always thinking about how they are going to impress. Learning how to properly communicate in groups, whether to use written, spoken word, video, social media, email, knowing someone else’s preferences can grab or hold someone’s attention and lead to a productive communication experience.

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]All individuals have preferences in both the way they like to receive communication and the way they like to give it. If you want to communicate effectively – i.e. be understood – then one way of addressing this is to communicate with your colleague in the way they prefer to be communicated with. So for example. forget your preference for barking orders with no information, but instead recognise that others may prefer an ordered communication with lots of detail.

The C-me Team Wheel can give a good indication as to the pairs who will have the most difficulty communicating, allowing understanding of potential clashes and making it possible to explore ways to surmount these, using new found skills and different ways of interacting can give profoundly positive results

For more information about getting a Team Wheel to create your best team, email [email protected]

14/05/2018 By Isla Baliszewska

Punishment vs Positive Reinforcement: Can punishment help deliver a better way forward?

A few observations offered by David Rigby on the merits of different ways to get things right….

There appears to be a rise in the use of the word and deed of ‘punishment’ throughout the media and also in everyday life.

In the UK, the British Government together with France and the USA have ‘punished’ Syria for allegedly using chemical weapons. Ignoring history, when Saddam Hussein from Iraq, was waged war on for having chemical weapons for which no evidence was ever found, punishment is all around us. Children get punished for minor misdemeanours. A friend punished his dog by locking him up. Mobs punish anyone who isn’t like them. A well known President threatens punishment in every utterance and his fans love it while the rest of the world despairs. Fortunately he doesn’t deliver.

In the old days, when administering the cane, the school teacher might say “this is hurting me more that it’s hurting you”. Better that neither the teacher nor the student is hurt by not punishing at all. Instead, positive reinforcement – praising the good – is, or at least used to be, the way forward.

How does this affect each of us in our everyday lives?

All our behavioural profiles from C-me Behavioural Colour Profiling contain a section on “blind spots”. These are facets about ourselves that we perhaps know, but always chose to ignore, rather than acknowledge or fix. With politicians no amount of facts will sway the opinion they want to peddle. But with ourselves – do we really want to believe our own hype? Or do we want to improve ourselves? Punishing ourselves for eating the extra piece of cake with a two hour spinning class? What does that achieve? Eat more cake!

Positive reinforcement is a technique where we, or a coach, will identify things we have done well or achieved. And will express praise in positive language. A bad coach may use negative language to try to say the same things – “Do not give up now” etc, putting the idea of ‘giving up’ into the coachee’s head, when the goal should be to keep the positive uppermost. Recently in a young offenders institution in London ‘tough love’ was replaced by the reward of chocolate and cakes leading to a fall of 80% in assaults on staff in a year. The all round improvement in morale meant the inmates became more social with each other and much less destructive.

So here are some great options:

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””] Face up to your blind spots

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””] Praise yourself for fixing them rather than punish yourself for having them

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””] And perhaps influence others to do the same.

David Rigby

29/03/2018 By Isla Baliszewska

Transform your Mindset to Transform your Results

The view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life. It can determine whether you become the person you want to be and whether you commit to and accomplish the things you value.

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better?

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them?

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow?

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you?

“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them”

Epictetus

We are creatures of habit, driven by impulses to self-protect, to run away from woolly mammoths. Over the years, our learned behaviours become ingrained and our mindset becomes set in patterns. Renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck illustrates this with a simple idea that makes all the difference – Fixed and Growth Mindsets.

A Fixed Mindset

With a Fixed Mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. If they have a lot, they’re all set, but if they don’t… If you have only a certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality, and a certain moral character, well then you’d better prove that you have a healthy dose of them. People with this mindset also believe that talent alone creates success – without effort. Effort is seen as fruitless if they don’t ‘get it’ then it suggests that they lack the intelligence. Challenges are avoided, as to fail suggests that they ‘lack the intelligence’ required. Getting things wrong and receiving feedback is also seen as negative if it reveals limitations.

A Growth Mindset

With a Growth Mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work – brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience essential for great accomplishment. People with this mindset understand that no one has ever accomplished great things – not Mozart, Darwin, or Michael Jordan – without years of passionate practice and learning. Do people with this mindset believe that anyone can be anything, that anyone with proper motivation or education can become Einstein or Beethoven? No, but they believe that a person’s true potential is unknowable.

Virtually all great people have these qualities. Intelligence can be developed. We can embrace challenges and believe that we can improve at a task. We can see effort as a worthwhile path to mastery. We can see that getting things wrong and receiving feedback is positive and guides further improvement.

A ‘Teacher’s Mindset’

When we are learning, the mindset of our ‘teacher’ (or trainer or tutor or whoever is giving us new knowledge) can influence how that teacher perceives our performance. Fixed Mindset teachers might see those that struggle or fail to understand an aspect of the learning process as not being sufficiently bright or talented or motivated. Growth Mindset teachers see struggling students as a challenge, learners in need of guidance and feedback on how to improve. And of course once the Fixed Mindset teacher has labelled you, the learner, that label sticks and you are reluctant to challenge it.

How to get the Growth Mindset

The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the Growth Mindset. Scientists tell us that people have more capacity for life-long learning and brain development than they ever thought. Personally, the older I get the more new things I learn, the more new things I try!

To paraphrase French psychologist Alfred Binet “You may not have started out the smartest but you could end up the smartest”.

Have a go……………

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Be curious, keep learning

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Keep trying – you get the results you want through effort and repetition

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Know that you own your mindset – if you want to change it, you can

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Do things differently – surprisingly you’ll likely get a different result

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Recognise that the process is as important as the result

[i type=”icon-ok” color=”icon-blue” bg=””]Practice always speaking in the positive – add ‘at the moment’ or ‘yet’ – you’ll get the mastery in time.

David Rigby

05/02/2018 By Isla Baliszewska

5 Hot Tips for Overcoming Obstacles & your Inner Critic

It’s all about mindset

What you say when you talk to yourself [Shad Helmsetter’s best-selling book]

Why you give the imposter syndrome permission control your life

Whether you are prepared to act ‘as it’ – even ‘fake it till you make it’

How much you indulge your gremlins, those inner critics.

Susan Jeffers wrote a whole book on ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway’.

FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real.

It is essentially about the choices we make. What if you choose to replace fear with another, stronger emotional driver; that of core confidence? Choosing to be controlled by your inner critic is very exhausting and destructive, as is the Imposter Syndrome. Experiment using Appreciative Inquiry’s approach, which is so simple and might need practice: appreciate what is working well and what could work even better – which circumvents anything negative.

Consider carefully when you say yes to your inner critic what it is that you are saying no to. And consider when you say no to your inner critic what is is that you are saying yes to. Ask yourself what is the pay off?

“I’d wake up in the morning before going off to a shoot and think, I can’t do this; I’m a fraud.” – Kate Winslet, Academy Award-winning actress

“I have written eleven books, but each time I think, ‘Uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.” – Maya Angelou, Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet and author

“I am always looking over my shoulder, wondering if I measure up.” – Sonia Sotomayor, first Hispanic U.S. Supreme Court Justice

What if, whenever an obstacle appears or arrives in your life, instead of getting despondent, being stopped, letting it get bigger and bigger, feeling it’s not fair or giving up you made different choices?

What if Google Translate interpreted ‘obstacle’ as a challenge to be solved? How might that approach influence your mindset? What inspired solutions might emerge?

5 Hot Tips (with thanks to Abraham)

1. Tell a better-feeling story about the things that are important to you.

2. Don’t write your story like a factual documentary, weighing all the pros and cons of your experience

3. Instead tell the uplifting, fanciful, magical story of the wonder of your own life

4. Watch what happens as you make different choices

It’ll feel like magic as your life begins to transform right before your eyes!

“Whatever you think you can you can and whatever you think you can’t you make that happen.” Henry Ford shone this spotlight on the power of your thinking to create your reality.

What will you choose?

Halina Jaroszewska Jan 2018

05/02/2018 By Isla Baliszewska

Careering from Career to Career

Recently, I met one of my clients, whom, two years ago, I encouraged to ‘swim in a different pool’ (according to her testimonial). She is very happy in her new role. She says, as a career coach I gave her the courage to change. But first she needed to decide what she wanted to do

How did she do it?
How would you do it?

For many people they get their first job by chance, by who they knew, by their qualifications or education subjects.

So career decisions are fixed when you start specialising at school. Some of us have the courage to change over the years. Or maybe every job move is based on doing the same thing, just getting more money or in a different place. This is how promotions shift people from doing to managing – many don’t like it but put up with it.

Read the full article

When is a team not a team?

Punishment vs Positive Reinforcement: Can punishment help deliver a better way forward?

Transform your Mindset to Transform your Results

5 Hot Tips for Overcoming Obstacles & your Inner Critic

It’s all about mindset

Careering from Career to Career

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