Thought for the week: Moods are contagious.

If you don’t believe me, try locking yourself in a room with a load of miserable people for a few hours. See if this prompts a burning desire to skip, whoop with joy and / or turn cartwheels.  I’m guessing…no.

If you’re a manager, staff motivation is not hard to achieve, but it starts with you – not them.

Some people radiate natural positive energy; just standing next to them makes you feel warm and sunny. Others seem to exist solely to drain the life out of you (you know who they are).
The majority, however, just float around in the middle – pulled one way or the other, depending on who they’re most influenced by.

As a manager, your mood sets the tone for your team. It’s like a little invisible thermostat. When you’re up – they’re up. And when you’re down - they’re down. (I feel the need to sing the Grand Old Duke of York now but luckily for you, this is not an audio podcast). Now, where was I?

Oh yes…Most managers we meet have no idea how much their moods impact on those they manage. But, take it from me - you have so much POWER!

Still don’t believe me?  Try this:

Storm into your office tomorrow morning without speaking to anyone. (Don’t forget to slam your door).  Then peak out and you’ll see the worried glances passing between your staff, you’ll hear the chatter subside and an uneasy silence descend.

Warning - If this is your normal way of entering the office you may not notice any difference. The team will have already begun cowering, when you pulled into the car-park.

Why am I telling you this? Because you want to know how to increase your team’s output, right?

I guarantee that if you walk into any business, you’ll get a very good idea of how effective the manager is …by how happy the staff are.

Leadership is about getting people to do what you want them to do, because they want to do it. People will only consistently ‘go the extra mile’ for you if they want to – and who wants to do that for someone who will just moan that they didn’t do it in under 4 minutes?

So..if you want to improve your staff motivation – get happy. No, not fixed grin fake happy (they’ll see through that); genuinely happy.

Need some help? Then put the mirror down. You can practice your winning smile later. Instead, book a Staff Motivation session with us – and we’ll have you and your team doing cartwheels in no time. Metaphorically speaking of course.

If you feel more like a referee than a manager most days, the chances are that your team has not yet found a way to pool their resources and use their differences to best effect.

Myers Briggs Personality Type is a popular psychological profiling tool that can be used to help people understand how they impact on each other. It explores how different people are energised, how they take in information, make decisions and organise their lives. For example:

• Some people like to throw ideas around out loud while others prefer to figure things out quietly on their own.
• Some need to collect lots of information before they’ll act while others will just go with their hunches.
• Some base their decisions on feelings and values while others deal in logic and principles.
• And some like to plan and organise while others wait till the very last minute to deliver.

Myers Briggs is based on the theory that there are 16 unique personality types. It doesn’t seek to put people in boxes or explain everything about a person’s behaviour. What it will do, though, is help your people understand and appreciate their differences, reduce conflict and get your team working together for the common good of your company.

Think Training & Development specialise in delivering Myers Briggs training to organisations to improve their teamwork, retention and most importantly, their productivity.

Using a series of light-hearted exercises to help people discover their own and their colleagues’ personality types, Think has brought unity to hundreds of teams across the world since they opened for business in 2003.

Gavin Aubrey and Wendie Michie, directors of Think and licensed Myers Briggs practitioners, offer fast–paced, pragmatic and hugely energising sessions in this fascinating subject which are 100% focused on getting you the results you want.

If your team could use a little Think love, you can find them at http://www.thinktd.co.uk

Tel: 01225 479756
Email: info@thinktd.co.uk

This one looks at:

• How people prefer to make decisions –Logic and objectivity or values and relationships?
• How people live their lives – Planned and organised or spontaneous and adaptable?

It will give you some clues as to:

• Why some people want to be recognised for their achievements while others need to be appreciated for their efforts.
• Why some people love to start things off…while others love to finish them!

If you’d like to know more about your personality type or those of your team members, check out our Myers Briggs courses, run by qualified Myers Briggs practitioners. Special Offers apply.

Last week, I did some training with a group of schoolteachers… on the terminology used in financial services.

As well as knowing your subject, good Communication Skills are paramount when you are training, developing or coaching others. There are many aspects to this, but here is one simple example.

When I asked which terminology they particularly wanted to discuss, a lady put up her hand and said that she couldn’t quite see how ‘Market Value Reductions’ worked. (There is something strangely satisfying about having teachers put up their hands to ask you a question….but I digress.)

The point is, she said that she couldn’t SEE how this process worked. The reason she couldn’t see it was because no-one had ever SHOWN it to her. She is a highly intelligent lady and sure, it had been explained to her before, but hearing something is not the same as seeing it. And she needed to SEE it.

So I drew it for her, on a flipchart. And she understood it instantly.

The words people use to convey their thoughts, ideas, experiences and questions give massive clues as to how they are thinking.

If you don’t notice these clues, the responses you give will not always hit the mark. Sometimes, you might as well be speaking a different language. This can lead to confusion, frustration, errors and even  conflict.

Learning how to spot key words and then respond accordingly can vastly improve the quality of your communication with others. It’s not hard to do – we can teach you the basics and then it just takes a bit of practice.

Improving your Communication Skills will allow you to perform better as a manager, leader, coach, interviewer or public speaker.

Check out our Special Offers to book a free Communication Skills session , listen to our Effective Communication Skills Podcast for more information or Contact Us to see how we can help.

This one looks at how people prefer to take in information – high level or highly detailed?

It will give you some clues as to why some people see the wood first…while others see the trees.

If you’d like to know more about your personality type or those of your team members, check out our Myers Briggs courses, run by qualified Myers Briggs practitioners. Special Offers apply.

Last week, I  was on urban safari. In the manner of David Attenborough, I have been observing the behaviours of a fledgling ENFP in its natural habitat as it prepares to migrate to sunnier climes for the summer.

Ok… so I’ve just been to stay with my little brother in London for a few days, before he goes off travelling, but it got me thinking…

ENFP is one of sixteen personality types used in the renowned Myers Briggs personality type model. All 16 personality types have their own unique preferences and blind-spots. This explains, to some extent, why we get on so well with some people, while others infuriate or baffle us.

For example, if you were going to take 6 months off work to go travelling, do the following appear reasonable to you or do they have you reaching for the Prozac?

•    Decide at the last minute you are going to Thailand, having spent the previous 3 months talking about Australia.
•    Travel with as many friends as possible, aim to make as many more as you can when you get there and resolve to provide daily Facebook updates to the 500 friends at home that couldn’t come.
•    Do no research on the country you are visiting on the basis that you’ll just go with the flow when you get there.
•    Discover that you need a visa the week before you are going. Do nothing about this for a few days and then make a mad dash to the Thai Consulate the day before you fly.
•    Consider paying for the flight of a friend who could not otherwise afford to come with you.
•    Book no accommodation for when you arrive – hey, Bangkok is a big place and you arrive early in the day – how hard can it be to find a place to stay?
•    Pack on the day you are leaving (probably forgetting essentials like shorts or sun cream, which won’t matter as you can buy those things at the airport or when you arrive).

The above is a summary of how my ENFP brother has approached his trip.

ENFPs are immense fun to be around. Preferring to live their lives in a spontaneous, go with the flow way, they are outgoing, gregarious and creative individuals. Full of big plans for the future, they brush over the detail of how they’re going to get there and often change their minds before they do. Their decisions are often based on the people they care about most.

In the workplace, ENFPs bring infectious, creative energy to a team. They might not work in a methodical way but their relaxed, visionary approach coupled with their loyalty and adaptability can be a real asset.

Our Myers Briggs courses help you understand your own personality type and those of your team members. We’ll show you how to use this information to unify your team and get the best results from the people you manage.

Check out our Special Offers to book a free demonstration of this fascinating subject, listen to our series of Myers Briggs Podcasts for more information or Contact Us to see how we can help.

Oh, and if you want to go with my brother, meet him in the bar at Heathrow on Tuesday at 2.00pm.

This one looks at how people are energised – through internal or external stimuli.

It will give you some clues as to why some people dive in and act before they think things through while others think carefully before they act.

If you’d like to know more about your personality type or those of your team members, check out our Myers Briggs courses, run by qualified Myers Briggs practitioners. Special Offers apply.

A friend returned to work after a week’s holiday on Monday, to find some of her staff staging a mini rebellion. They gave her a list of demands. I gave her some tips on conflict management.

“Give and take”, I said.

“But they’re the conflict. And I’m the management!”, she wailed.

If she hadn’t been joking, I wouldn’t have bet on peace breaking out in her office, any time soon.  What these people wanted wasn’t hard to achieve. The interesting thing here was that the conflict had arisen as a result of one key personality difference. The different parties’ perception of what was ‘fair’.

For her – ‘fair’ meant dealing with people as individuals.  For them ‘fair’ meant dealing with everyone in the same way.

* Thus, when she agreed different working hours for one individual who needed flexibility for personal reasons – the rest of the team saw this as unfair, whereas she saw it as a reasonable adjustment, given the person’s circumstances.

* When she took some of her team to a coffee shop for a meeting – she felt this would provide a more relaxed environment to get to know them better. They thought it unfair that other staff got to meet in the office, where you didn’t have to worry about who else might be listening.

* When she allowed staff members to use the internet or their mobile phone on occasion, during the working day, she thought she giving them a bit of freedom. As long as the work got done (which it did) what did it matter? They thought it unfair that she did not police this and wanted rules to ensure no-one abused the privilege, even though no-one ever had.

As a manager, when you’re grappling with the big stuff, it’s easy to view these sorts of issues as a distraction; petty and unimportant.

They’re not. And if they’re not resolved, they become big issues in themselves; Attrition, absenteeism, reduced productivity.  None of which helps when you’re trying to run an efficient business.

There are many things you can do to prevent, head off or resolve conflicts at work.

Check out our Conflict Management Courses for more information. Or Contact Us for a chat and we’ll meet you for a coffee in Starbucks. Or your office. Whichever you prefer.

Your company is not doing as well as it could. Your people need some direction; some motivation. And you’re the person to deliver it. If only you knew how.

You need some help, so you book yourself on to an expensive Leadership Training Course.

You enter the second rate hotel where the event is being held and a name sticker is slapped on to your lapel. You check out who else is on the course but there is no-one from your particular industry. You’re given a big, shiny manual that is mostly full of blank pages for you to make notes, although, to be fair, it’s peppered periodically with mysterious acronyms to help you remember how to be a captain of industry.

Then, best of all, you get to learn how to lead from the front from a guy who has never been out of the classroom long enough to know where the front is. You spend the rest of the day pondering the potential risks of death by PowerPoint and the journey home removing bits of glue from your suit where your name sticker has been.

You return to work to find your sales figures are down, your marketing team has gone AWOL and Sally from accounts is in your office, crying because her husband has left her.

You hurriedly leaf through your new manual to help you, but all you can see are unfathomable graphs and the Christmas shopping list you wrote while one of the other delegates was asking an interminably long and irrelevant question…

It may not surprise you to learn that Think Training & Development Ltd does not run open, generic Leadership Training courses. Their trainers do not deal in ‘ideal world’ theory, nor do they issue glossy manuals that are destined to gather dust on your office shelf.

Think comes to you. You do not go to them. They might not be the most conventional of corporate trainers, but they’ll immerse themselves in your world to understand your particular company’s challenges. Their Leadership Training is practical, energising and tailored to your people. And they get results.

In short – they’re a bit like the A-Team… except they don’t carry guns and they do accept payment.

If you think you could use their help, you’ll find them at www.thinktd.co.uk.

Gavin Aubrey and Wendie Michie
Think Training & Development Ltd
Unit 8, Widbrook Marina
Bradford-on-Avon
Wiltshire
BA15 1UD

Tel: 01225 479756
Email: info@thinktd.co.uk

If you have something important to do such as a presentation or a big meeting, there are some really easy actions you can take to get yourself in the right frame of mind to succeed. Listen to this podcast to find out more… Or take a look at our page on advanced presentation skills.