Are you really listening?

“Sorry, what did you say? I was just distracted.”

I’m sure we’ve all heard that one before and I’d love to see a show of hands for everyone who’s said that to someone else. Well, shame on us!

Listening is one of the most important skills you can have. It helps you to obtain and understand information. How well you listen will have a huge impact on the quality of your relationships with others and will affect how well you perform in your job.

Given the amount of listening we do, you would think we'd be good at it but many of us really aren’t. In fact, most of us remember only about 25-50% of what we hear in conversation.

So what if the bits we’re missing just happen to be really important? Clearly, developing better listening skills is something we could all benefit from. You’ll be able to develop better client and team relationships, with fewer misunderstandings and a higher level of service and engagement. You’ll also be able to plan more effectively so your projects don’t go over-budget and your team-members still want to work with you at the end of it.

That said, we don’t just become better listeners overnight. Think of a golfer – A golfer doesn’t develop a new swing just by deciding to. He practises it every day until he’s happy with it. Every time he practises or goes out on the course, he has the self-awareness to consider his swing before he takes it. This is what he needs to do in order to develop and maintain his new swing and this is exactly what we need to do in order to develop and maintain active listening skills.

So how do we practise active listening? 

What we’re trying to do is move from hearing to actually understanding and this often takes a conscious effort. You have to listen intently to what the speaker is saying and shut out any other background distractions. You've also got to curb the desire to form those counter arguments whilst the speaker is still in flow. If not, you’ll simply end up thinking about what you want to say rather than listening to what they are saying. A friend of mine often asks the question, “Are you really listening or just reloading?”

Clearly, making active listening a habit will take practice but we have to start somewhere so here are a few tips to get you going:

Acknowledge – How does the speaker know you’re listening? Because you tell them, of course. Ok, so it’s a bit strange to verbally tell them that you’re listening but they’ll be picking up on our other forms of communication too. Yes, body language! Sit forward, look at them, smile and avoid the temptation to check out the pretty waitress/waiter. By now, they’re starting to get the picture that you’re listening.

Respond – Try “nod, flash, grunt” to let them know you’re engaged. Nod your head at the appropriate times, flash your teeth (i.e. a smile) and make an appropriate noise/sound. Note that grunting like a pig will demonstrate engagement only in very rare conversations.

Recap – What better way to confirm your understanding and to let the speaker know that you are really taking in their conversation than to paraphrase or précis back to them what they’ve just told you. Follow this up with a question about what they’ve just told you and you’re on your way to really engaging with them and understanding their perspective.

Avoid the counter argument – So often we feel the need to butt in with a counter argument. Well how do we even know it’s a counter argument if we haven’t listened to their point first? Try to understand their point even if you don't end up agreeing with it.

Active listening is a skill that takes time and a deliberate effort to develop but will in almost all cases lead to a better level of communication and understanding. Off you go, it's in your hands (or should that be ears?).

Thanks for listening – I’m ready for the counter argument now….. comments please!

Poisoning my productivity

I was working in London the other day and then catching up with friends there in the evening. When I say I was working, I had a breakfast meeting with a client followed by a two hour career mentoring session with one of my long-standing mentees. This left me a whole bunch of free time in the middle of the day; pretty much from 11:30am until 6pm when the evening drinks with friends would commence. Always in search of productivity and not wanting this free time to go to waste, I happily popped into one of the many wifi-connected cafés that abound the city, ordered myself an orange-mocha-Frappuccino (for all you Zoolander fans out there) and cracked on with my work. Ok, so I tried to crack on with my work but the fact is, I kept getting interrupted.

• The waitress asking if everything was ok. Did I want anything else? How about some cake?
• My phone ringing. Yet another blame and claim call-centre!
• One of my favourite tunes playing (Mr Jones by the Counting Crows)
• The chap who wanted to know if I’d finished with my newspaper
• Aston Martin DB9 driving past – I wasn’t even looking but it caught my eye and I was dreaming after that.

After a grand total of one hour in the café, I’d managed to switch on my computer, respond to a few non-urgent and fairly unimportant (sorry if one of them was yours…) emails. That really wasn’t the “productivity” I was after. I was confused. Each interruption had only been a few seconds or minutes at most. How could I have done so little in one whole hour? Then I realised that each distraction was an unwanted stimulus:

• The waitress’s question got me thinking about cake, how much I like the stuff and what my favourite cakes were. 5 minutes down.

• The phone call got me annoyed and thinking about the cost to businesses and taxpayers from the raft of speculative claims that get driven by these claims companies, all purporting to be helpful and “on your side”. That then started me thinking about all the poor people who get taken in by phone and email scams every day. Another 10 minutes down (and blood-pressure up!).

• The great music cast me back to buying the Counting Crows’ first album, “August and Everything After”. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember if it was 1993 or 1994. I did remember that I’d bought it on cassette from a record store in Leeds and didn’t listen to anything else for at least a week. An irrelevant trip down memory lane and another 15 minutes gone but at least my blood pressure was back down.

• The interruption about my newspaper was pretty short but the most distracting thing of all. I said no but suggested the chap borrow it and give it back to me when he’d finished as I would read it more and do the crosswords on my journey home. You’d think that I’d be about to say that this was only a 30 second distraction but oh no no no no no, it was way more. I spent the next 15 minutes on edge as he took my newspaper apart and spread it across the table. Throw in a coffee spill over the sports pages and the blood-pressure was rising again. How I could get so worked up, I simply don’t know but watching someone abuse my newspaper was compelling and all-consuming. Finally I dragged myself away and got back to my “work”. Five minutes later and he was done, he handed my paper back, we exchanged a few pleasantries and he left. Another 20 minutes gone, never to be recovered.

I realised that the reason I was getting worked up was that I was getting nothing done. I didn't even know what I wanted to get done anymore so brought up my to-do-list:

• Renew business insurance
• Put together proposal on retention initiatives for top ten accounting firm
• Design career analysis tool for my mentoring group
• Review new leadership exercises and learning interventions
• Aston Martin DB9

What? That wasn’t on my to-do list. Ah, but it was passing by… and it was beautiful… still is beautiful… and how much does one cost?... but they do cost a lot to run… and aren’t great for the environment… and SNAP OUT OF IT!

I looked at my watch. I’d been in there for nearly an hour and had done nothing productive. The very fact that I’d been unproductive was causing me to be stressed. The one saving grace was that I'd learnt something. I'd learnt that interruption and distraction are like poisons to our productivity.  After a little more musing, I worked that my productivity in inextricably linked to my ability to stay focussed. With that in mind, the remedy to the poison of interruption comes in the form of three magic pills:

Find somewhere quiet – it goes without saying that noise is a distraction. Try somewhere like a library, or book a meeting room in your offices when you really need to get something done. Make sure there aren't too many people around and don't invite conversation.

Turn your Blackberry/iPhone onto airplane mode (or even better, turn it off!) – This goes for email too and internet too. Just turn it off! You don’t need to know that you’ve got a new message? How did we cope before email? Did we sit by the post box, waiting for the mail man to arrive so that we could respond straight away to whatever dropped in?

Give yourself a task list and a time-limit - and go to the loo before you kick it off.

In following all that, I can usually look forward to at least a couple of interruption-free hours in which to get my best work done.

As for that particular day, I went to a bar that I knew (from experience) had appalling service and no wifi. I merrily tucked myself away in an exceedingly quiet corner for three hours of solid, uninterrupted and uber-productive work. After three hours of time well used my stress levels and blood pressure were back to normal levels and I was ready for guilt-free beers with my mates. Bliss!

If any of you have any top tips on productivity, please feel free to share them here or post to our Facebook site at http://www.facebook.com/BlueprintTalent

Chris Helm is a Director and co-founder of Blueprint Talent, a specialist organisational development, talent management and training consultancy.

Feel free to keep up with all the Blueprint chat on Twitter: @cjhelm or @BlueprintTalent

Family, drinks and networking...

So I was out last Thursday night having a drink with my Dad’s cousin’s son (he’s called David by the way). David is in his mid-40’s and in my own 32 and a bit years on the planet, I don’t recall ever meeting him. Not strange really, given he grew up near Glasgow and I was born and raised in sunny Yorkshire. Confused as to why we were out for a drink? I was too but let me give you the context.

Back in May, when my Dad was at his cousin’s 80th birthday up in Stirling, he was chatting away with his cousin’s son, David and made one of those throwaway statements of “Ah, you say you live in London and work in financial services. You really should catch up with my son Chris (that’ll be me!), he’s in London too and used to be in financial services”. So there was me cursing my Dad for promising away one of my precious evenings to a semi-relative who I’d never met before and would possibly never see again when I thought, “What the heck, it can’t hurt” and gave him a call.

Over a few Japanese beers and a drop of Italian wine, we nattered about everything from Prudential’s failed bid for AIA to alpine climbing, tendonitis, top bar snacks and retro sweets. Anyway, it turns out we had loads in common and it was a pleasant meeting indeed. In fact, one that we’ll probably repeat in the near future, not least because he picked up the tab and I’m banking on a Scotsman not to forget that.

So where am I going with all of this? Well, that was exactly what I was thinking, beer in hand and contemplating the sausage roll or pasty that I was going to buy on the way home when I realised that I was quite simply networking. Nothing more, nothing less; simply networking. Oh yes, the “N” word. But how was I networking when I hadn’t actually told him anything about my business? I hadn’t mentioned the great leadership programmes we’d just designed or the new career resource centre that we’re building or the free mentoring network we run for young accountants in London or………. So how was this actually networking? Simple, I was building a relationship; something that most of us do a lot of the time without even realising it. Eventually, we did ask each other about our respective businesses and had an interesting chat about the current economic times and the challenges ahead but that’s not what either of us will remember the other for and that’s not why we’ll follow up and catch up again.

My Dad is a canny old dog really but he is nothing if not an exceptional networker. He had clearly seen the benefit of this meeting from the start (even through his sixty-odd year old, whisky-clouded eyes) and had made it happen. To be fair, my Dad has always taught me that networking has nothing to do with selling but having started my professional career as an auditor in a big 4 accountancy firm there were many who begged to differ. The big accountancy firms are far more savvy than that nowadays (and I’m sure they always were and that I just got the wrong impression from the wrong people) and in fact, their partners are probably some of the best networkers in the business. They understand that networking is all to do with building relationships and, credit to my old man, that’s what he always taught me. I don’t need to tell everybody in the world about my business. I could do but why should I expect them to listen? They don’t know me and unless they do, there’s no way they’re going to be interested in anything I have to say. Sales is a really tough game and generally best left to experts. There’s a reason people have to sell and that’s normally because there is a lack of willing buyers (says a lot about the product…). At best, it normally results in one-off purchases rather than enduring relationships so let’s leave that to the car-dealers and mobile-phone shops for now and talk about networking.

I’m going to keep this really simple because it’s only my view and I’d rather invite comment than try to create a rulebook. Here goes!

It’s not about who you know, it’s about who knows you – That means all you LinkedIn collectors out there should be sure you’re actually engaging with the people you “add” to our network. It’s not a popularity contest based on numbers of votes/friends/adds; it’s your chance to engage with others on a professional level.

Avoid the “So, what do you do?” question – Engage with the person and not simply their job. You’ll find this creates far more to talk about and way more reasons to follow up in the future. Similarly, let people know what makes you tick rather than telling them about the ins and outs of your day job and what “service lines” your company has. Double dull!

A favour pays for itself – An old colleague of mine from my accounting days introduced my business to the training team at the corporate finance house he works with now and in return, I’m helping a good friend of his to career plan and arranging introductions to other useful contacts on my side.

Know, like and trust – Rather than selling, why not create a buying environment? I buy from people or brands that I know, like and trust. Just start at the beginning and go from there.

Understand referrers and make life easy for them – Create a situation where it is easy for people to recommend you and make sure they represent you properly. Think carefully what you want to be known for and make sure that’s how people describe you. Never underestimate the power of a PA or secretary. They have the most contact with the senior people in any organisation (probably more than their own families!) and carry a good deal of influence.

Finally, clean up your act – Social media is so prevalent in business now that the first thing that many people will do when they hear about you is check your Google, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn profiles. Be careful that they represent the sides of you that you want people to see.

Ok, that’s all from me for now. Feel free to shout back with your own top tips or any amusing networking stories you may have. You never know, you might just engage with someone and build meaningful relationships along the way.

Yours as always,

Chris Helm

Skills trainer, company director, food-lover, amateur wedding planner (most definitely not for hire) and really bad golfer....

chrishelm@blueprint-talent.co.uk
www.twitter.com/cjhelm

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The Big Blueprint Work/Life Balance Survey

Ok, so this is the moment you've all been waiting for! Many thanks to all of you who took the time to fill out the survey and give us your feedback on what work/life balance really means to you. It has been a pleasure reading through all your comments and there are some great thoughts in there for all of us to take forward. Here are a few of the main headlines:


Demographics
83 respondents in total (44 male, 39 female)
Average age of respondent = 30 years
91% of respondents from England
54% of respondents from within the Greater London area


Satisfaction
Average satisfaction with role of 6.5 out of 10, although 26% of you gave a role satisfaction level of less than 6!
Average satisfaction with employer of 6.2 out of 10 - Three of you out there gave your employer 10 out of 10 so great news for you.


Attitude to work/life balance
It is no surprise that 96% of respondents believe that work/life balance is highly important. That said, only 43% of people were happy with their current balance. Over half of you responded that you wanted to improve your work/life balance but many of (39%) admitted to feeling that you would have to sacrifice it in order to advance your career. That makes it all the more important to have a career plan, know where you are going and know what you are achieving by making those sacrifices.


69% of you accepted responsibility for managing your own work/life balance. However, 29% believe that maintaining/providing a good work/life balance is the responsibility of an employer. When asked how their employer could increase each respondent's level of satisfaction, many people replied that they wanted more money or a "better package".


A summary of other interesting responses were that employers should:

• Recognise that staff are individuals. Suggestion that managers and business owners should make an effort to flex their style of management and motivation to suit the individual employees.
• Help employees to develop a longer term career focus rather than focussing on the short-term in their own organisation.
• Give more support and understanding of the roles performed by the staff.
• Deliver constant on-the-job feedback and encouragement. Saying thanks helps too!
• Provide more flexibility in terms of working hours and location.
• Have an open feedback culture.
• Show appreciation for creative thinking rather than focussing on process and form-filling.

It is clear that there are a lot of ways in which employers can help make work/life balance better for their employees aside from simply upping their salary but it appears from your feedback that many are still omitting to do so. With 74% of you indicating that an employer who cares about work/life balance is a huge selling point for you, it is a surprise that they aren't doing more. Much of the feedback indicates things having worsened along with the economic climate and evidence suggests that people are beginning to vote with their feet as job markets ease up a little. Indeed, nearly 50% of you said that you would consider changing employer to get a better work/life balance. This surely makes it an issue that employers will ignore at their peril. That said, a majority of respondents did indicate that they were willing to accept responsibility for their own work/life balance. Here's a snapshot of some of the handy hints that you gave for helping to get a better work/life balance:

• Taking longer holidays rather than lots of short breaks.
• Cutting back to part-time and starting a family.
• Prioritising children and family.
• Moving closer to work and cutting out commuting time.
• Changing careers to find something that they "love" and experiencing a feeling of excitement about going to work.
• Moving to a four-day working week.
• Not accepting any meetings after 4pm so that you can be ready to leave the office at 5:30.
• Keeping a good track/list of your workload so that you are in a position to say "no" (or request more assistance) when asked to take on more.
• Saying "no" to face-time and focussing on outputs (work completed) rather than inputs (hours put in).
• Making "unbreakable" plans outside work.
• Going to the gym at lunchtime.
• Not responding to emails when at home or on holiday.

From this, it's clear to see that much of this is in our control. Although not all of these measures will be applicable to everyone, there's hopefully something new in there that you can add to your toolkit and make some additional improvements.


What's in the way?
For all of our top tips, the general feel seems to be that we still have a number of barriers in the way. The main barriers seemed to be:

• Unreasonable expectations by employers.
• Unreasonable expectations by clients.
• Lack of alternative employment opportunities so lack of bargaining power.
• Deadline-driven, client-service roles.
• Lack of competent people to delegate to.
• Lack of training and understanding of how to develop management skills.
• Disorganised colleagues & bosses.
• Face-time culture and opinions of superiors.
• Poor planning and management of project work.
• Having "multiple masters" who each try to give you a full workload and don't understand you have a diverse range of commitments.

So we all have barriers. The question is, do you let them stop you and turn away or do you start thinking about how to knock them down? We'd all like to think we'd do the latter but the truth is that some of the barriers can seem almost insurmountable at times and we all need a helping hand. With this in mind, Blueprint are going to do their bit. We'll be writing a series of blogs over the coming weeks and months aimed at helping you to knock down your work/life balance barriers.


If you're super-keen to start developing the right career direction, why not sign up to one of our full-day Career Development Workshops. The 11 September workshop is full up but we're already taking bookings for Saturday 20th November in Central London. The price is normally £170 plus VAT but sign up before 10 September and you'll get it for £135 plus VAT. For an order form or for more information, please email info@blueprint-talent.co.uk


As always, your comments and input are much appreciated so please feel free to leave a note on our blogs or drop Rupert and me a line directly on:


chrishelm@blueprint-talent.co.uk
www.twitter.com/cjhelm


rupertlee@blueprint-talent.co.uk
www.twitter.com/rupert_lee


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How do you tell your boss NO?!

You’ve just been assigned a new project by your boss and you’re not sure when you’ll find the time to do it. Now is the time to think about saying no to your boss.
Firstly you need to consider if you are able to say no by analysing what your current work and life situation is. Below are a number of questions to help you decide what your course of action should be.

Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Decide to Say No to Your Boss

• Am I already working on several important assignments that leave me no time for this one?
• Can I delegate some of my other work to make room for this assignment?
• Can I put some of my other assignments on hold while I work on this one?
• Will taking on this assignment cause harm to my other work?
• Do I lack the necessary skills to complete this assignment?
• Am I the only person who can successfully complete this assignment?

Bad Reasons To Say No to Your Boss

Turning down an assignment from your boss is not something you should do on a whim. While the reasons listed here may seem important to you, they probably aren't good enough for your boss.

• The project looks too difficult.
• It isn't part of my job description.
• I'm in the middle of planning my wedding and can't focus on anything right now.

Good Reasons to Say No to Your Boss

Though you should give an assignment careful consideration before you turn it down, if your boss is fairly reasonable, he or she should be able to understand these reasons.

• There simply aren't enough hours in a day to work on it, even if I get to work early and stay late.
• My other work will suffer if I take on this assignment.
• I don't have the necessary skills to complete this project and I will not be able to attain them in time.

How to Say No to Your Boss

If you decide to turn down an assignment, be prepared to offer a good reason for doing so. You will have to explain your reasons thoroughly so your boss realises you considered the situation carefully. Give your boss ample warning so he or she has enough time to assign the work to someone else or can help you delegate some of your other projects to one of your co-workers so you can work on this one.

• If your reason for saying no to your boss is that you don't have enough time to work on the project, prepare a list of the other projects on which you're working. If he didn't delegate the other assignments to you, he may not even be aware of them. If he did assign the other projects, he may want you to work on the new one instead.
• If you think your other work will suffer if you take on another assignment, explain that to your boss. They will appreciate your honesty and your dedication to your other projects.
• If you don't have the necessary skills to complete this assignment, admit this to your boss. It would be worse to pretend you can do something you can't. Ask them if future assignments will require this skill. If the answer is "yes," let them know you will work to attain it.

Rupert Lee

Rupert is a director and co-founder of Blueprint Talent Limited a firm that works with individuals and organisations to develop high performance careers and businesses.

info@blueprint-talent.co.uk
http://www.blueprint-talent.co.uk/

The Magnificent Seven of Leadership

Whether you believe people can develop into leaders or are simply born that way, it is clear that there are certain characteristics and qualities that are essential to being a good one. We explore below some of the key qualities possessed by leaders:

Honesty & integrity – If we are to follow someone, there has to be a strong bond of trust there. Without trust, teams cannot function; and without the team, there is no leader. Treat others with the respect that you would wish for yourself and you’ll be off to a good start.

Energy & enthusiasm – This is often referred to as dynamism. People thrive on energy and a great leader will give much of his own energy and enthusiasm to the team. This in turn gives the team that added boost.

Confidence & assertiveness – A good leader is never afraid to make their point and stand up for their beliefs. This does not come at the expense of consultation, however. Strong leaders will also be sure that all relevant considerations are taken into account and people’s viewpoints are given a fair hearing.

Decisive – The best leaders make decisions and know why. Where others get bogged down with detail, the leaders will quickly understand the important issues and make their decisions based on this. This should not be confused with being rash or hasty; the leader simply understands when there is a need to make a decision in order to make things happen.

Composed & collected – When the pressure starts to build, no cracks will appear in our leader’s demeanour. Strong leaders do not burden their team with their own fears and problems; they simply remain calm and focussed on the goal.

Forward looking – The best leaders aren’t just thinking about the “now”, they’re also thinking about the “next”. These leaders are constantly building, developing and investing in their teams so that they become stronger and better together. Great leaders will be able to inspire people with their future “vision” and develop longer term buy-in from those around them.

Recognise & reward – True leaders do not seek glory for themselves but for all of those who help them to achieve their common goals. Real leaders will share the praise and reward amongst those who deserve it and will never seek to take credit for the actions of others.

These characteristics are the foundations of all good leaders. Some qualities may be naturally more prevalent than others but all can be built and strengthened. Whether it comes easily to you or not, work diligently to develop and embed these traits and you will continue to develop as a leader.

Enjoyed this blog? Have any stories about great leaders that you’ve encountered in your life? Be sure to let us know by commenting here or through the following channels:

Email: chrishelm@blueprint-talent.co.uk

Facebook: www.facebook.com/BlueprintTalent

Twitter: www.twitter.com/BlueprintTalent

Chris Helm is a career development expert and management trainer. After a successful career as a Chartered Accountant, Chris now works with individuals and organisations to help them identify and develop the skills they need to succeed.

Top 5 tips for getting things done

Ever feel like you’re getting nothing done? Try Chris’ top 5 tips for how to be more productive:

1) Get up early
Let’s face it, mornings are the best time to get things done and when we get things done, we feel a whole lot less stressed. The earlier we get to work, the more we get to access this magical period of productivity. You’ll also benefit from a quicker and less stressful commute too. Bonus all round!

2) Take on the most important tasks first
Whilst you’re more switched-on, why don’t you pick up the most important task so you give your best work effort to the things that matter the most. Remember not to confuse urgency with importance. Too many people start their days with things that aren’t important and find they end up demotivated and dissatisfied by lunchtime. Do yourself a favour and do something important. The benefits? Satisfaction, productivity, motivation..... need I say more?

3) Don’t multitask
Multitasking takes the focus away from everything that you’re doing. Stick to one task and complete it to the highest possible standard. That way you’ll be guaranteed of doing it properly. If you’re having trouble finishing it off, persevere or ask for help but make sure it gets done before you start tackling more things

4) Stop getting interrupted
If you need to really get into the zone, get rid of any unnecessary distractions. Turn off your phone, put up the “do not disturb” sign, let people know you’re unavailable and get cracking with what you need to do.

5) Delegate
If you’ve got a secretary/assistant/junior, use them! Think how much you can achieve with two of you working on things. If you think you’ve got no-one to help, have a look around and even get a bit creative. You’ll be amazed what you come up with.

If you have any comments on this blog-post, please fire away as we'd be delighted to hear from you. Don't be shy!

Chris Helm is a Director and co-founder of Blueprint Talent, a specialist career development and talent management company.