As organizations continue to look for ways to optimize productivity and performance, there has been a shift in focus towards how to encourage employee engagement and increased collaboration in the workplace.  One of the tools beginning to play a key role in this is enterprise social networks.

A key benefit of enterprise social networks is that it enables direct sharing of knowledge and best practice to create a culture of learning and excellence within organizations.  It allows employees to draw on previously untapped resources to improve their performance organically, as well as helping them align more easily with company strategy.  It also enables greater integration and exchange within and between departments and teams, as well as allowing teams to connect and engage remotely in real time.

Tips for getting started

Here are a few things to keep in mind, to help you ensure you create a social media platform that your employees will actually use:

• Choose software that fits the needs of your organization
• Get your employees involved in the planning and roll-out process
• Trial run it to test for glitches before launching it
• Provide training and education for employees on how to use it
• Build trust by ensuring the CEO and executives are using it from the start
• Make it easily accessible for a variety of technologies.

For more tips on how to successfully adopt a social media platform in your organization, read about how SAS did it here.

Has your company adopted enterprise social media, and if so, what effects are you seeing within your organization?

Our study of The Future of Work is already producing some interesting and useful insights and we’re starting to see areas where leaders and organizations can definitely improve.

How do I get involved?

To date, many influential and forward-thinking people in leading organizations have taken part as they view the study as a valuable benchmarking opportunity and a source of ideas that can feed into their planning processes. If you’d like to participate, there are 3 ways to get involved:

• An online survey
• Face-to-face interviews with managers in large organizations
• Face-to-face interviews with C-Suite/Executive Leaders

In return for doing a face-to-face interview we’re offering a free copy of the full report and a presentation to contributors and their teams. We will publish the report in April 2013. Please contact us to learn more.

Make a difference…

You may be wondering how a study can really predict the future of work. I’d like to quote from Gareth Morgan’s ground-breaking book Images of Organization that was published pre-worldwideweb in 1986:

“In the longer term, it is possible to see organizations becoming synonymous with their information systems, since microprocessing facilities create the possibility of organizing without having an organization in physical terms. This new technology creates a capacity for decentralizing the nature and control of work, allowing white-collar workers engaged in related tasks to work in remote locations while being linked on a continuous basis through on-line information networks which maintain a fully integrated system. Many organizations of the future may have no fixed location, with members interacting through personal computers and audiovisual devices to create a network of exchange and interrelated activity, perhaps with remote-controlled robots performing physical work.”

Imagine, 25 years from now telling your children or grand children how you contributed to the Future of Work…

“Open to me, so that I may open
Provide me your inspiration
So that I might see mine”
- Rumi

Poor or average performing teams cost organizations billions every year and this doesn’t have to be the case. What makes the difference between a poor and high performing team is successful collaboration?

For teams to be consistently high performing, it’s important that there is a culture of collaboration within the organization.  This can take time, energy and money to create but it ultimately pays off in terms of ROI.  It’s also important that the organization’s leadership is on board and that the leaders themselves are role models of collaboration.

Collaboration literally means ‘to work together’. You can think of collaborative teams along two dimensions: relationship and task. Whether leading or participating in a team you need the ability to balance these two factors, for your teams to be able to collaborate effectively and achieve high performance. Another way to think of this is being able to balance your Social & Emotional Intelligence skills with your Project Management skills.

Making it possible
Three conditions must be satisfied for people to collaborate effectively:

1.     They must want to collaborate
2.     They must have the skills to collaborate
3.     They must be given the opportunity to collaborate

Challenges
You can use the term ‘team’ to refer to your immediate colleagues in your department. However, today teams are frequently formed to solve large organization-wide problems and implement solutions. Introducing a new IT system often involves a team of hundreds of people working together for an extended period of time. Sometimes, you form a large team for a one-off event such as a Trade Fair. The same principles apply.

Today, many teams share these characteristics:

·      Large
·      Virtual
·      Diverse
·      Specialized

What to do

Here are 7 ways to ensure collaboration and high performance:

1.     Invest time up front in building relationships to build generative teams.
Traditional approaches, such as kick-off team-building workshops, are still essential. However, team members must also have the skills to build, maintain and regain rapport. Deep rapport is the bedrock of trust and trust is essential for virtual teams to function. To build deep rapport means working at the level of values, beliefs, identity and purpose as all behavior flows from this. So, ensure that your kick-off team building includes at least a day devoted to alignment on these dimensions. Research by change expert, Robert Dilts, has demonstrated that a generative team of 20 can out-perform an average team of 600!

2.     Teach team members negotiation and influencing skills.
Each member should be able to present his/her ideas or suggestions in a way that preserves the relationship amongst team members, whilst getting things done. Skills such as rapport and being able to create a 3^rd Point are valuable in this regard.

3.     Ensure team members have the Emotional Intelligence skills to relate to others, respect diverse thinking styles and other’s working preferences.
Here, a knowledge of Systems Thinking and Meta Programs is useful. For example, a major source of conflict is when team members unknowingly mismatch each other’s styles. For example, knowing how to navigate the spectrum from Big Picture to Detail or vice versa are essential. Understanding what motivates colleagues is equally important.

4.     Start with specifying Well-Formed Outcomes and then create clear roles and responsibilities.
Collaborative Project Management has evolved with some useful distinctions from traditional project management. Research by London Business School Professor, Lynda Gratton, found that large teams operating in ambiguous contexts perform much better when roles are clearly defined. One of her examples was a television network team of about one hundred people successfully producing live coverage of the Football World Cup.

5.     Ensure that, at least, team leaders have coaching and mentoring skills.
Preferably, all team members should know how coaching works. Coaching and mentoring are often confused and here is one way to distinguish the two. In Coaching, to move forward the coach has the questions and the person needing help has the answers. In Mentoring, to move forward the person needing help has the questions and the mentor has the answers. Coaching creates empowerment. Mentoring can sometimes create dependency.

6.     Model Collaborative behavior.  When you have high performing teams it’s important to model how they think and behave so that this learning can be transferred to other teams in your organization in the form of coaching, training materials and workshops. A main benefit of this approach is that any training is 100% tailored to your culture and highly cost-effective. Therefore, buy-in will be higher, what works well in your culture will be preserved and you get a tangible return on your investment.

7.     Make use of collaborative tools to build communities.
Many of these exist in the realm of the Social Web and there are service providers who offer in-house collaborative online tools that can be tailored to your needs. With flatter structures, how we interact is becoming increasingly social, and building online communities is essential to collaboration. As teams are formed and disbanded, people often need to maintain their internal networks and learning, which can be leveraged for future projects.

*This article was featured in our newsletter “Performance Matters”, February 2013
You can subscribe to our newsletter here. 

During interviews for our research into ‘how we’ll work in the future’, the need to have influencing skills and the ability to build trust is coming up time and time again. Key drivers of this are flatter organization structures, remote working, virtual teams and the need to collaborate across continents and time-zones.
Influencing skills can be used for

• convincing someone of your ideas,
• getting support for a project,
• selling a product or service,
• negotiating a contract
• or simply asking for a promotion or an upgrade at an airport or a hotel!

The following 10 skills are the basis for mastering the art of persuasion:

1. Have a well-formed outcome. 
An outcome is more than an objective. Your outcome for your communication with another person should satisfy the well-formed conditions. Otherwise, it will not produce your desired results. It should be ecological and come from a positive ‘win-win’ intention. Without a well-formed outcome people may get the sense that you’re trying to manipulate them.
 
2. Build and maintain rapport. 
With the recent discovery of mirror neurons, neuroscientists have proven that we are naturally inclined towards being in rapport with other people. Deep rapport is the basis of trust. However, rapport is not a thing, it’s a process. Getting rapport can be quite easy. However, when someone wants to disagree with you they will break rapport. Being able to gain, maintain and regain rapport becomes a pre-requisite for any communication. It is essential when you want to influence another person in any context.

3. Develop sensory acuity. 
Noticing what’s going on and making fine distinctions during communication is the basis of your ability to gain, maintain and regain rapport. Without sensory acuity your ability to influence is left completely to chance. Advanced sensory acuity allows you to calibrate another person’s state or mood and this is very important for knowing what to say or do next. During any interaction, Master Communicators are easily able to notice such things as: changes in skin tone or color, breathing patterns, specific gestures, posture, changes in voice tone, timbre, tempo, what representational system another person is using, eye patterns that indicate how someone is processing internally, and much more…

4. Be flexible with your response. 
Sensory acuity will give you valuable feedback on the effectiveness of your communication. Flexibility will enable you to achieve your outcome. It is said that only a fool will carry on doing something that is not working and expect a different result! Applying Ashby’s law of requisite variety, the person with the greatest flexibility of behavior will have the most influence in any situation.

5. Recognize Meta Programs conversationally. 
Meta Programs are based on the work of Carl Jung.  We have deep filters that demonstrate our preferences for getting things done and self-motivation. It’s useful to be aware of Meta Programs.  When people with opposite Meta Programs interact there is potential for conflict. There are 20 Meta Programs. If you’re familiar with the MBTI profiling tool then you’ll recognize 4 of these. However, you’ll be missing the other 16 distinctions. If you want to influence another person it is important to be aware of their Meta Program preferences.

6. Identify values conversationally. 
Our behavior is heavily influenced by our values. Put simply these are deep-seated criteria that are important to us. Our values provide up-front motivation and post-event evaluation. Mis-matching another person’s values breaks rapport, and can destroy trust and lead to conflict. When personal values are not satisfied this creates a dramatic drop in motivation and performance. It will also be a major cause of resistance to change.

7. Identify decision-making strategies. 
We have personal strategies for doing everything in our lives. Most of these are outside of our conscious awareness. If you want to influence another person you will want to know how they make their best decisions. You’ll also need to be aware of both their convincer and their re-assurance strategies.

8. Use perceptual positions. 
Being able to take different perspectives on a situation is a valuable pre-requisite to any communication or negotiation. There are 4 perceptual positions: 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th position. Each position allows you to gain a unique perspective on a situation.  They also increase your flexibility.

9. Use frames. 
All behavior takes place in a context and we can say that all meaning is therefore context dependent. A context essentially provides a frame around any event or situation. Having the ability to pre-frame and re-frame is both a way to deal with objections and to open up more possibilities in any communication.

10. Develop questioning & listening skills. 
Questions are like spotlights because they shed light on things that another person may not yet be aware of. Asking questions enables us to elicit important information about other people such as their Meta Program preferences, Decision-making strategies and Values. Knowing which question to ask to get the response you require is as much art as it is science. To know what question to ask you must listen very carefully to how another person represents their world. A well-timed and appropriate question can transform a conversation.

Applying these skills
Although these skills can be used formally in sales or negotiations they are also essential to building strong teams, whether in the Board Room or on the shop floor. When all team members share these skills they are able to unlock increased levels of creativity and productivity. They improve understanding and respect amongst team members and having these skills means people can disagree in a constructive, rather than destructive, way to produce generative results. In short, they lead to increased levels of performance!

*This article was featured in our newsletter “Performance Matters”, March 2013
You can subscribe to our newsletter here. 

“Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.” ~ Chinese Proverb

“How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

Everyone has some stress in their lives. But very few people have the skills to deal with it. And, it’s not taught in school!

Apparently, an astonishing 50% of the reasons why people go to the doctor are stress-related.

We seem to hear daily of someone who has just taken medical leave because of a burnout or extreme stress. You may even be experiencing some of the symptoms yourself.

There is an un-useful myth that stress is somehow good for you! People actually believe that they can’t do something unless they’re stressed. They think they might lose their edge. If it is so good for you why is stress the biggest cause of workplace illness?

Stress and burnout impact both individual, team and organisation performance. That’s why we’re running a series of short events entitled “Stress Down Evenings” to help you become more aware of how stress impacts your and your teams performance and to equip you with the tools and skills to deal with it.

Interested? Register here.

Download this e-book and discover 7 Ways to Ensure Collaboration and High Performance.

During interviews for our research into ‘how we’ll work in the future’, the need to have influencing skills and the ability to build trust came up time and time again. Key drivers of this are flatter organization structures, remote working, virtual teams and the need to collaborate across continents and time-zones.

Influencing skills can be used for:

Convincing someone of your ideas
Getting support for a project
Selling a product or service oNegotiating a contract
Simply asking for a promotion or an upgrade at an airport or a hotel.

Download this publication and discover 10 Skills for Mastering the Art of Persuasion.

Successful people, whether in the fields of sport, music, business, the arts, the sciences, have the ability to stretch themselves further, to learn more and develop their skills. The simple exercises in this publication will stretch you and when you’ve done them you’ll realize that it was worth the effort!

Download your Free Executive Summary of the report: Exploring the Future of Work.

The full report is the culmination of 7 months research involving 359 professionals from around the globe including in-depth interviews with 25 mid-to-senior level leaders from Europe, Asia and the Americas.

It presents key trends emerging in the workplace, how many organizations are responding to these changes and what skills employees and leaders need to have to be successful going forward.

Of relevance to all Leaders, there are specific items of interest to HR and Communications professionals.

You can get your copy of the full report here

Last night saw the launch of our report ¨The Future of Work¨.  This is the culmination of 7 months of research involving 334 professionals from around the globe.  We also carried out in-depth interviews with 25 mid-to-senior level leaders from Europe, Asia and the Americas. 

The report presents the key trends emerging in the workplace, how organizations are responding to these changes and what skills employees and leaders need to be successful going forward.

We´ll be blogging on some of the key findings of the report in the coming weeks.  In the meantime, get in touch with us to get your own copy of the report.

We all know that many forces are currently altering our personal and work lives: globalization, technology, demography and generational shifts, societal changes, the depletion of energy resources and climate change. Technology alone is having had a massive impact on how we do basic daily things and is reshaping the dynamic of the way we work.

Wide Circle decided to investigate the impact of these forces on organizations for our `Future of Work´ report. We found the key factors currently influencing the workplace include: change as the new norm, the evolution in how we`re working together and the changing nature of leadership in the 21st century.

According to participants, a lot still needs to be done by most organizations before they are really ready to adapt to the changing climate. Taking steps to address this is seen as crucial if companies are to remain competitive and have motivated employees capable of maintaining high performance.

Where does your organization fit above?

Our `Future of Work´ report found that the evolution of communication tools in the last decade is having a major impact on organizations.  One area where this is really being felt is how we collaborate in the workplace.

The main trends here include: the virtualization of work, the increased adoption of flexwork policies, and the generation shift.  However, 90% of professionals agree that the way we collaborate today needs to improve and evolve to adjust to the changed environment.

What do you think?

As we outlined in our previous posts on the future of work, the world of work is evolving rapidly. Leaders are facing a wide range of complex new challenges, and to respond to these effectively, they need to grow their existing skill set.

Senior leaders need to be more aware of the challenges their people are facing in this new dynamic world of work. This requires them to engage more in regular dialogue with colleagues at all levels.

To be successful today and going forward, those in positions of authority need to refine their ability to lead change, leverage diversity, connect with multiple generations, and support the ongoing growth and development of their employees. They also need to be talented communicators who can empathize with diverse stakeholders, unite them towards a compelling vision and motivate them to excel. Above all, they need to learn to control less and trust more.

NLP is the study of subjective experience. It enables you to:

• Run your brain for peak performance
• Learn, change and communicate more effectively
• Teach & coach others to do the same

NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming) is a powerful technology that when used ecologically literally enables you to transform your life: you get more freedom, balance and choice. You have more fun!

Download this free e-book and find out more now!

Why not? would be one way to answer this question. Here are 3 more good reasons:

1. On a personal level, most people want to be able to do things well and feel good about themselves afterwards. When you feel good about yourself and what you do somehow you tend to perform even better thus reinforcing the cycle. So, it’s good for your health!

2. You get more done. When you focus on things that are important to you, your motivation grows and your energy increases. High levels of motivation and increased energy lead to even better performances and better results.

3. On an organisational level, high performing individuals and teams are the lifeblood of innovation, growth and success.

What other reasons can you think of?

As a leader you are normally responsible for both your own and your people’s performance. Here are 3 things to consider when setting performance targets and key performance indicators (KPIs):

To be successful at anything:

1. The person must want to do it

2. They must have the skills to do it

3. They must be given the chance to do it

If performance in your organisation varies a lot, then you may want to assess it against these 3 criteria. If one of them is currently missing then it’s likely that performance will not be as good as it could be. Now, you know where to start…

You may be considering a career move to becoming an Independent Professional or you may recently have taken that step. This is one of the fastest growing segments of the labour market in the 27 EU member states.

In this short e-book we present you with 3 mistakes you can avoid making when starting out as an Independent Professional. There are no doubt many more potential mistakes you can make and we sincerely hope that you don’t make them. However, we’ve found these to be 3 of the most important ones to avoid at the outset.

If you’re already a practicing Independent Professional then this will provide food for thought.

The answer to this is probably, NO!

But do you want to solve a problem, achieve better results or learn something new? Do you want your teams to have less conflict, to perform better or to deliver projects on time and on budget?

Of course you do!

Coaching is a process and an incredibly effective way to support people getting from A to B. You only have to look at top sportspeople to see how it can do this. But, and I use “but” selectively, it may not be the only tool you need to improve performance. As Maslow famously pointed out: If you only have a hammer you tend to treat each problem as though it’s a nail… Coaching has become one of the most overused terms in business in recent years and it is frequently misunderstood.

Focus on results

So, my advice is to stop looking for coaching and start thinking in terms of results and outcomes. What is the problem you want to solve and what do you want instead?

Then, work with professionals who can give you an in-depth and highly accurate diagnosis of where you are so you can formulate where you want to be in a meaningful way. Ensure that those professionals have a complete tool box to support you in getting there. Coaching should probably be in there but not always on its own… It’s rarely that simple!

There’s an old Irish story about the tourist who got lost in the Irish countryside and stopped to ask a local farmer the way to Dublin airport. After scratching his head for a few moments the farmer replied: “If I were you I wouldn’t start from here!”

Get meaningful insights

Find out more about how to ensure that you’re starting in the right place. Harrison Assessments Talent Solutions (HATS) provides insights that other tools can only dream of. It’s like having a compass so you always know where you are relative to where you want to be.

Test out Harrison Assessments Talent Diagnostics for FREE today and you’ll find that you can make better people investment decisions in the future.

We’re currently recruiting Harrison consultants. Learn more…