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Does every HR team need a hamster?

April 18, 2013 by Elva

TI hamsterCould a new and unexpected opportunity bring happiness to the team and responsibility and personal development for one member of the team?

My children have been on at me to buy them a pet. In the end as every strong and in control parent does, I capitulated.  But rather than feel it was weakness on my part I took the purchase of a pet as a prime development opportunity.  This was not the original intention but it was interesting to see how this development opportunity evolved.

Having given in and said that my children could get a pet I made it their choice. A list of just what was involved was laid down and the consequences of not delivering against these basic requirements was made clear; cleaning of the cage, playing and general looking after, food, water.  If these tasks were not delivered then the pet would be returned to the pet shop.

Now having understood what exactly was involved in the care of a pet just one of my sons decided to take on the responsibility.  The whole family visited the pet shop together but the voice and the power was just with the son who had taken on the new job.  He seemed to get taller and fill more space as he was made the owner of the decision as to which pet was chosen and which accessories.  He took a bit of a leap into the unknown as we all got in the car and he had to hold his pet and be responsible for it. And then rather bizarrely to match his new found voice he began to demonstrate some leadership qualities.

He is given stickers for ensuring the pet tasks all get completed and his brother can earn stars for helping out. He gets a feel of being in charge whilst allocating jobs to his brother. Sadly he took on rather an autocratic style and completely demotivated his brother who ran away. “He’s gone” he wailed much to my amusement.

“Well, you have to make it fun for him and maybe let him do the jobs in his own way” I advised my son. A hard lesson for any of us to heed, even the most experienced of leaders.

Our new hamster has provided hours of fun and amusement for the family and has been a great opportunity for the boys to learn about influence, responsibility, communication, teamwork, leadership and even empathy.  Now I am really glad I succumbed to parental weakness.  Or am I just glad I can post rationalise!

Anyhow, there is a good chance that there is a hamster opportunity for your department offering growth for the individual and happiness for the team. Good examples might be the team social secretary or the FolderMaster in charge of ensuring the Shared drive has a meaningful indexing system.

Are there more roles that could motivate your team in this way and act as an opportunity beyond the day to day?

Take a look – 7 tips for HR to enable transformational change

Posted in Opinion, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment »

What might Margaret Thatcher’s legacy be for future female leaders?

April 9, 2013 by alicen2013

Margaret Thatcher

Source:number10.gov.uk

The passing of Margaret Thatcher evokes all types of emotions especially amongst those of us who were teenage girls in the 80s.   Absorbing all of the TV and radio coverage of her tenure as PM raises a mixture of memories – responses to the music, fashions, events and a reminder of the wonder we experienced at having our first female Prime Minister.  No longer could we repeat our infant school dream of being the UK’s first female PM.  We had been pipped to the post.

Her death and the subsequent review of her legacy is particularly poignant when we consider all of the recent coverage of Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean in” and Marissa Mayer’s ruling about home working for Yahoo workers.  Both women became the subject of intense media scrutiny which centred on their gender and ability to fight their ground and publicly make unpopular statements fromLean in executive positions.  Now for those teenage girls of the 80’s, Sandberg and Mayer are our contemporaries.  These are women at the top of their game working in the still predominantly male environments of the business board room.  And yet the times of Mayer and Sandberg feel like a world away from those of Baroness Thatcher.

So from the 1979 to 2013 what has changed?  Lady Virginia Bottomley is quoted in Guardian online as saying Margaret Thatcher “transformed opportunities for women simply through her personal example, splendidly undertaking a hugely demanding role that no female had previously secured.”  But we recently blogged the view of Hilary Thomas on the subject of women in public office (partner KPMG and former First Women Awards winner).  In her opinion quite the reverse has happened over the last 20 years.

Condoleezza Rice

Source:Biography.com

Now of course we cannot blame Lady Thatcher for the lack of follow-up by career minded and ambitious women.   But why when women have held the top roles in business and public life is gender still a discussion point so many years later?  Is it simply that some women at the top are embracing their role but not acting as role models or paving the way for others to follow?  Broadcaster Jenni Murray says that Margaret Thatcher did absolutely nothing for women.  Diane Abbott MP highlights that Margaret Thatcher promoted fewer women MPs than her male predecessors.    Sheryl Sandberg’s book “Lean in” makes it clear that successful female leaders are rarely liked.  The website for the book includes a number of blogs from successful women such as Alicia Keyes and Jennifer Aaker.  One of these women is a politician who we might imagine Mrs Thatcher would have rather admired – Condoleezza Rice.   She says that “If you spend all of your time thinking about how you are viewed, you will lose your ability to be effective. Walk in, embrace your job and do what you’re supposed to do”.

I imagine this is something that women with an eye on the top jobs will need to consider.  Would they be happy to work successfully without being liked?  Does this choice really need to be made?  Media and commentator discussion of Baroness Thatcher’s working life would indicate that Sheryl Sandberg’s view is correct.  Is Thatcher’s legacy therefore that women today have a better insight to the lonely place that leadership might take you to and a clearer understanding of whether they are willing to pay the price of likeability?  Ironically one of the prominent female leaders who might have asked herself this very question is Cristina Kirchner, President of Argentina.

Take a look at our gender differences whitepaper – The differences between men and women as leaders

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Lessons from life – should talent managers use the carrot or the stick?

April 3, 2013 by alicen2013

Carrot and stick

Source: Teachunderground.blogspot

I noticed a teacher walk past my 8 year old boy at school yesterday.   The teacher said “tuck your shirt in” and walked on.  My boy, the one who almost never does things he is told unless incentivised or given a choice, simply tucked his shirt in!  The wonder of this behaviour took a while to sink in….  Why did that instruction work and our requests don’t?  What would happen if my son hadn’t done as he was told?  Well the school rule is clear – if a pupil has to be told twice to do something by a teacher with no result the pupil is given a “warning”.  There is a weekly distribution of mini chocolate bars to all pupils except those who have been given a “warning”.  What are the consequences when he ignores our instructions?  We ask more crossly?  We give up in disgust?  We despair?  And you can probably guess how well that works!

So how can we apply this thinking in our day to day lives in HR?  We all know it is really hard to get people to do the things you need them to do.  Especially if there is a power issue, a lack of respect, different values and agendas, no clear control – the list is endless.  HR normally have some of all of these going on!   So if there is something important – like spotting and investing in leadership talent for the company as a whole – what is your carrot to your line managers?  And what is your stick?

The talent management carrot

Your carrot could be ideas along the lines of:
• You could assign more of your training budget to those departments who identify and nurture more potential?
• You could give an award to the managers nominated as being “developer of the year”
• You could acknowledge the best managers at a high profile meeting
• Or something else they would consider good…….?

The talent management stick

Your stick could be:
• You could remove development resource and support from those departments not playing the talent management game?
• You could only offer high potentials to those departments fully participating?
• You could downgrade the resource you assign to those departments not participating at this strategic level?
• Or take something else away they value

I would love to hear any ideas you have that could work as carrot or stick in HR.  Please do comment below.

The key to both carrots and sticks is that they have to be connected with things valued and wanted by the people concerned.  There has to be a degree of pain involved for them in their non-compliance.   And you have to be strong, fair and consistent in holding this position – and only then can you make the demand of a manager or a department and walk by with the certainty that it will be done.

Elva Ainsworth

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Are we surprised there are so few women in public decision-making in Britain?

March 27, 2013 by alicen2013

According to Hilary Thomas (partner KPMG and former First Women Awards winner) who spoke recently to The Huffington Post about the dearth of women in politics and public office “the only direction we have moved over the past two decades is backwards”.   In the autumn of 2012 Public Appointments Commissioner Sir David Normington said it was “not good enough” that taxpayer-funded roles were still going “so overwhelmingly to male candidates”. In his view it is imperative to the “effectiveness of public service and governance in England and Wales” that more women hold jobs at the top of the civil service.

Lin Homer’s “catastrophic failure”

Lin Homer from Guardian

Lin Homer courtesy Guardian

But then earlier this week Lin Homer was vilified in the press for the work she did when Head of the UK Border Agency (UKBA), a role she quit in 2010.   MPs have accused her of a “catastrophic failure” in leadership during this period.    The criticisms were brought to light by the Home Affairs Select Committee who hammered the final nail with the suggestion that the Committee had “little confidence” in Lin Homer’s “ability to run Revenue and Customs”.   Ms Homer, one of the UK’s most senior civil servants was appointed to the role of chief executive and permanent secretary at HMRC in January last year and prior to that she was the top civil servant at the Department of Transport.  There appears to be an issue with the criticisms in that Lin Homer has not been at the UKBA for over two years.  The person in charge now is a man called Rob Whiteman.  She claims herself that several of the most indicting figures used by the Home Affairs Committee to demonstrate her failure in leadership cover a period at least 18 months after she had left the Border Agency.

Indictment of leadership abilities

The Guardian newspaper described the words of the Home Affairs Committee as “one of the most severe attacks by a Commons committee on a named Whitehall senior civil servant”.  The harshness and personal nature of the initial criticisms directed at Lin Homer were indeed shocking.  It is clear from the article in the Guardian that this level of personal criticism is highly unusual.     The words of the Committee have totally damned Ms Homer’s leadership abilities and her management potential.  And yet her current boss Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury David Gauke describes her as “a highly effective chief executive and the right person to lead HMRC”.

Lack of talent management in the civil service

Now it’s not to say that there is no accuracy to some of the claims made about Ms Homer’s management and leadership skills but one has to wonder whether had Ms Homer been a man would we have heard such strong and personal statements made by a Parliamentary committee?  In the Daily Mail online a senior Whitehall official is quoted as saying “The civil service does not do talent management properly”.  Now this could well be an inew wordcloudssue that it is worth the Select Committee investigating further. These roles at the top of the Civil Service carry considerable responsibility and it is possible that leadership development and training do not form a large part of the succession or high performers development plan in the Civil Service.  The unnamed Whitehall official asks “If someone has a terrible track record of delivery, should they really be being promoted?”  But one thing is clear from all of the articles covering this story, this department and its predecessor the Border and Immigration Agency have been poorly managed for a long time.  Does this not make it even more important that the top personnel are supported as much as possible rather thn vilified.  The Select Committee’s report is highly critical of the slow pace at which a backlog of 320,000 immigration cases is being cleared.   In a three month period last year it was reduced by just 3430 cases – a decrease of just 1%.  But this is during the period when Rob Whiteman was in charge.  How does he feel right now about his performance?  How will his development plan look over the coming year following this very public “upset”.  How many private companies would permit their top personnel to be so publicly vilified without supporting them in some way?

Accusations

In her defence Ms Homer claimed that the accusations were “inaccurate and unfair” as several of the statistics used were relevant to a period 18 months after her departure from the Agency.  Now I can’t help but feel that a man might have made a much stronger and more media friendly statement of defense but we can’t hold her lack of media savvy against her.  But surely we would expect those rallying to her defence would shout a bit louder about the praise that has been attached to Ms Homer in her current role?  The Government has responded to the report with a decision to scrap the UKBA.  Is this not a better approach in the first place - to look at the structure of the organisation and its plan for success rather then slam individuals?  Should we not hope for better protection of individuals and their personal record when clearly the organisation itself is so much at fault?  Or are we hoping for too much?

Take a look – 7 tips for HR to enable transformational change

Posted in Opinion, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment »

Who has the bigger listening deficit – men or women?

March 6, 2013 by ainsworld

Shine Consulting just published an interesting blog all about how leaders can improve their listening skills. In particular they said that 1 in 4 leaders have a ‘listening deficit’ according to (unattributed) research on 360 feedbacks.

Well, we live and breathe 360 degree feedback, and recently published a comprehensive piece of research looking at leadership, in particular at how men and women differ as leaders and managers. So we thought we’d have a closer look at the question of listening…

Listening is about more than just listening.

Our standard leadership 360 feedback model Inspiring Leader includes one question directly about listening:

“Demonstrates effective listening”

Our research found that this question falls within a cluster of behaviours that we call Respect & Empathy. This is important, because although listening is a skill that you can improve with effort and attention, it demonstrates that it’s part of a broader competency all around your ability to genuinely connect with others. Here is the full set of behaviours that are closely linked to listening:

Behaviours linked with “Demonstrates effective listening”
Causes Consequences
Shows respect for others

Can see both sides of an argument

Shows care and empathy for others

Is tolerant of others

Treats everyone fairly

 Works well with other people

Develops positive relationships with colleagues

Notices how others are feeling

 

You would be very unusual if you could get better at listening without also improving other linked behaviours such as empathising with others, showing respect for your co-workers, and treating people fairly. Fundamentally the way people close that listening deficit gap is by genuinely caring about other people and what they’re thinking – good listening is not just a set of skills, it’s a whole outlook. And the net result will be positive relationships with your colleagues and effective work.

Mind the gender gap

There’s one other perspective we looked at: Gender differences. From our previous research we know that Respect & Empathy is an area where women consistently score higher than men. And we have found that this is just as true for Effective Listening itself. This should be no surprise if you understand that effective listening is simply one aspect of relating to and empathising with others. This is shown most clearly by how often people are rated as excellent (rated 5 on our 5-point scale):

Listening graph

On average, men are not as good at listening as women – there are significantly more women who are excellent at this than men, and this pattern is exactly mirrored in ‘poor’ ratings too, where more men than women are rated as bad at listening. And this is probably because men are generally not as empathetic and focused on relationships. That’s just how they are.

Interestingly, women don’t actually recognise that in themselves – on average women are less likely to consider themselves as excellent at listening than men are.

Of course there are lots of men who are great listeners, and lots of women who are terrible listeners. But on average women are better listeners than men. So if you want to learn to be a better listener, pay attention to what your female colleagues are doing right, and tell them what a good listener they are too because they might not realise it!

Take a look at our gender differences whitepaper – The differences between men and women as leaders

Mark Ainsworth

Posted in Opinion, Research, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 2 Comments »

What can neuroscience teach HR?

February 21, 2013 by Elva

Baroness Susan Greenfield

Tempted by a chance to hear eminent neuroscientist Baroness Susan Greenfield speak, I found myself in Oxford on a beautiful spring-like day earlier this week.   The talk was arranged by St Hilda’s, Baroness Susan’s old college.  The headline for the event was “The Challenges of 21st Century Women” and I came along with Alex, my daughter, who is here doing a PhD in biophysics.  Baroness Susan was very much “at home” speaking about a topic close to her heart.   Given she was director of the Royal Institution until 2010 and is perhaps Britain’s most well-known neuroscientist, she centred her talk on the challenges women have as scientists.

A review of recent studies and key neuroscientific points showed clearly that women’s brains operate somewhat differently from men’s.   There is no evidence that this has a direct impact on our abilities to perform at work as academics or as leaders.   Currently however there are significant and worrying cultural and prejudicial judgements being made.   Research published in 2012 in PNAS found that despite efforts to recruit and retain more women, a stark gender disparity persists within academic science (C.A.Moss-Racusin, J.F. Dovidio, V.L. Brescoll, M.J. Graham, J. Handelsman ) gender judgements that were made both by men and women alike.  Academic careers in some sciences these days start with 50:50 gender split but the women virtually disappear as you approach the level of Professorship.  Just this month Zaha Hadid was quoted in the Telegraph as saying that whilst the number of architecture students is split 50:50 male: female, only just over 20% of qualified architects are women.  UK leaders are still most likely to be white, male and middle-aged.  Research demonstrates that communication styles differ if you compare men with women – in terms of eye contact, nodding, arguing points, speaking for status as against collaboration amongst other elements.  These points are supported by Talent Innovations analysis of gender differences in our 360 degree feedback data “Gender differences in 360 degree feedback” and also McKinsey’s excellent research “Women Matter” .

Baroness Susan’s view is that we need to tackle this complex problem from every angle.  My view is that we need to bring consciousness to the prejudice that is held deeply within us all from a long-held cultural position and past.  We need to start believing in ourselves and our power to lead – our way. We need to support each other and to find inspiring mentors who will believe in us, even more than we do so ourselves.  We need to collaborate and take a stand for the feminine approach and to find men who are willing to partner us in this quest.

Baroness Susan agreed with me that we cannot win the current “game” of society, academia and business.  My view is that we need to play our game, our way and strategically and unwaveringly play to change the game at the same time, globally.  I was sharing this view rather passionately with my daughter afterwards when she asked if this was why I had chosen her gender-ambiguous name Alex.  I confessed that it was – I wanted her to be able to choose. So, here’s the dilemma…when she completes her CV to apply for her first job in her chosen science career- should she be Alexandra or Alex? I am rather relieved that decision will be hers!…..But what does this say to HR teams working in architecture or science based organisations?  How are we to support women in to leadership in these careers?  Or is it already happening?

Elva Ainsworth

Posted in Opinion | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment »

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