COLUMN - Spotlight On Change
Develop resilience and optimism
According to Martyn Newman, an Australian psychologist, optimism in the face of adversity is one of the greatest success factors of today’s leaders. A certain degree of resilience is required to ensure an individual or team does not become disheartened. When negatives do strike, and they will, as a team, brainstorm the positives that exist behind this situation that currently seems like a defeat. If this proves to be difficult, facilitate a DeBono ‘6 Thinking Hats’ thinking session that will provide guidelines in how to consider situations from all angles.
Introduce a task for every leader, once a week
Any team wishing to evolve perhaps is stuck as they don’t know what they don’t know. Why not challenge a different department leader each week to present a short YouTube Video that they discover, explain its relevance to this team’s development, and explore what could be done for this team to instil this mind set. If nothing else, it will nurture curiosity, expand knowledge and heighten awareness. However at its best, it will provoke thought into what could be done to embed that change, renewal or adaptation into the current situation.
Introduce a ‘so hard’ capture tool
All leaders are invited to keep a ‘so hard’ logbook with the purpose of simply jotting down any point of time a frustration hits. It may be that a report is too hard to produce at the same time as the end of month schedules, it may be a way to monitor the effectiveness of a task when I depend on others or even how to do the appraisal process.
At a particular time, perhaps after a month of capturing frustrations, gather to air these frustrations and collectively ask the question to each and every frustration: ‘why does it have to be so difficult’?
An example of a change this process brought was when one leader recently said that appraisals are just so hard to get done all in the one month.
When the question ‘why does it have to be so difficult’ was asked, the ensuing discussion resulted in an agreement that appraisals would be just as effective if done on the anniversary of an employee’s start date, which then could align to staggered increments as well (if they were a part of the appraisal process).
Teams are teams wherever in the world they exist, in the workplace, on the sports field or even in the community. Teams can choose to maintain the status quo reaping only that which they know or challenge the status quo moving into the arenas of improvement, growth and change.
Having said that, I cannot think of one football team that isn’t seeking higher scores week on week – are you?
Debbie Nicol, the managing director of Dubai-based business consultancy and learning organization ‘business en motion’, working with strategic change, leadership and organizational development, assisting businesses and leaders to move ahead.
http://www.businessenmotion.com