Joining the Dots
Over the past ten years we have worked with individuals, teams and organisations to help people join the dots between their thoughts, feelings, actions and words - and thus unlock a higher level of individual and team performance.
Here we offer some illustrations of actual interventions which we have enacted in order to tackle specific issues, and the results of those interventions. Names have been changed to protect identities.
1. Stress in the Workplace
Mary was suffering stress as a result of her fears that she could not perform well enough in her new job. She was not sleeping at night, getting into arguments with her husband and feeling tense and unwell throughout the working day. This manifested itself in forgetfulness, inability to focus, and uncharacteristic emotional outbursts. Her condition was not recognised by her colleagues or managers, who put down her behaviour to 'being in a bad mood'. It took just ten minutes of one-to-one communication with Mary, in a coffee break, to identify the origination point of her erratic behaviour and thus be able to provide an immediately effective solution. Paracetamol, days off work or a good sleep would not, in themselves, have helped Mary or her company in the long term. However our solution, presented at the right time, alleviated Mary's stress completely and permanently. The next day she came to work and advised that she had slept properly for the first time in weeks. What did we do? We applied the principals of our Understanding People workshop to Mary in her work.
2. Making a Speech
Tom was required to make a speech to an audience of people ‘above’ him in the company. He had written a speech with great care and had practised it at home and before his partner several times. He felt anxious that it was not working in the way it should and he enlisted our help. We spent one 60-minute session with Tom in which we helped him to clear his mind surrounding the task, his suitability for it and the real purpose of his action. By the end of the session Tom was no longer requiring his ‘script’ and was phrasing and delivering the message with inspiring spontaneity and great presence. What did we do? We showed Tom how to approach his speech using material from our Effective Presentations workshop.
3. Part-time to Full-time
Induction training for call centre tele-sales staff began with Katie involved as a trainee part-time worker. The other seven trainees were all training for full time tele-sales jobs. The training programme was structured according to our Streamline Training model. Within four days of the start of training Katie was making noises about wanting to change to a full-time role as she felt she was already part of a strong team doing a worthwhile job in an enjoyable environment. This was unheard of in this call centre, where staff were traditionally more likely to leave before training was finished than ask to do more work at the end of it.
4. Releasing Tension
The clearest sign that an actor does not understand their role is tension in the body and/or voice. It is as if their conscious mind is fighting to keep on the right course in the face of subconcious confusion and conflict. Perhaps the left side of the brain is fighting it's more creative right side and determinedly dominating for fear of what imagination might bring? So the actor clings to logical, memorised sequences of words or moves as if these somehow matter. There is little natural flow of energy or momentum in their performance; there is little imagination. By asking the right questions at the right times, our techniques expose half-baked thinking and misconceptions. The resultant gap in understanding is swiftly filled by the body's own idea of what matters and - you know what! - maybe it's intuition from the right hemisphere of the brain... the body invariably knows best.
5. Absenteeism (one cause)
A team leader reported that an individual in his team - Kerry - had been off work through 'illness' more than seemed right. The team leader had his suspicions that she was, in fact, taking time off work when she was not 'ill'. Kerry's absence from work had occured on four seperate days prior to a full week of absence that had drawn the team leader's attention. In a one-to-one with Kerry we established the real reason for her absence which was, indeed, not due to illness but unmanaged stress. Following our intervention Kerry's attendance record was transformed and she had no further days off work in the following three months through which she was monitored. What's more, Kerry and the team leader were both in agreement that had our intervention been available earlier, the need for any absence would have been eliminated. What did we do? We got to the bottom of Kerry's real reason for absence and, from there, showed Kerry how to manage her stress better in the workplace.