The risks and responsiblities of personal development

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Every now and then someone launches a new 'personal development' product that is based on providing people with a fairly profound (usually physical) experience, and then getting them to relate it to the ways in which they go through life. On one of the forums that I lead, someone posted an item about one such product. This is my response...

I am very uncomfortable with the use of activities like this as a means of personal development. My concerns revolve around four aspects;

Firstly, I think it takes a considerable leap of faith/imagination to relate what someone experiences in diving, climbing, swimming, parascending, walking on hot coals, horse riding, mountain biking, or whatever, to the day-to-day realities of their work.

Let's take a simple case - Fred is mildly claustrophobic but he goes along with the idea of a diving experience for personal development. He does it, and inevitably he comes face to face with his fear. He has unconsciously evolved a career in IT operations and works late shifts, both of which have the advantage that they mean he has less contact with other people. He knows he doesn't like confined spaces, but he hasn't related this to a general avoidance of, or polarisation in, human relationships. His personal development is limited by this working pattern and the avoidant behaviour. His claustrophobia may well have some relationship to these things, but will he be able to relate it to his career limiting behaviours?

Secondly, the facilitators of these events are rarely, if ever, trained, skilled, and experienced, in dealing with the transition that the individual is experiencing when they perform the activity.

I witnessed a perfect example of this twice this week at mass training events. Because of the nature of the sessions, it was conceivable that the (self selected) participants could be put into a position where they had to confront the unresolved grief of the loss of an infant. The main facilitator of the event recognised this possibility, and chose two of her team of co-facilitators to be ready to help such a person. The recommended action was to remove them from the room and 'talk to them'. Now, her own lack of experience in this field was highlighted by her choice of those people - two more emotionally controlled individuals it would be hard to find. They were selected because they were women, not because of any counselling skills or specialist experience in working with grieving.

Going back to Fred... He may not even remember that, as a young child, his older brother (whom he revered) smothered him in his bedding one day when they were playing and then made fun of him for crying. Nor may he remember his mother's dismissive attitude that simply told the two of them to make up and stop being so rough. OK, provided that he is accompanied by an older male instructor, the personal development experience might be the perfect opportunity to explore his responses to such authority figures, and relate that to his claustrophobic defence mechanism, but will the instructor be capable of facilitating such a profound process of personal development?

I'm afraid that my experience has been that many of the individuals who feel called to offer this kind of process, benefitted from it themselves at some stage and then assume that others will too. They do not have the necessary training, skills, or experience to understand, let alone manage, the responses that they provoke.

Related to this is my third concern... It constantly amazes me that HR professionals, will allocate a senior player in their organisation to a 'coach' expecting them to work on the individual's attitudes which are impacting on their performance at work, without any consideration of the coach's credentials to do so. This needn't be negative as performance coaching of high flyers is just as much about working with their attitudes.

Let's suppose that the 'experience' works, and Fred confronts his claustrophobia, is able to expose his anger towards his brother (subsequently projected onto all male authority figures) and returns to work incapable of continuing in his role because his coping strategies have been abruptly dismantled without new ones being developed. Shouldn't he expect the person facilitating his experience to have suitable psychological safeguards in place to protect him and his livelihood? I think he should and I think a court would too.

Finally, we have to remember that, in a corporate setting, where many of these experiences have been peddled in the past, the self-selection or voluntary participation criteria may be compromised - and often were. Peer pressure, or direct orders, may lead to someone enrolling that didn't really want to be there. The individuals may be exposing aspects of themselves, to their peers, that those people should have no reason to know about in order for the individual to do their job. And related to this, what about the person who has an unseen disability and so cannot participate? Do we have the right to exclude them from the team-building or personal development activity? I would argue not, and in both situations, I would say that this is creating a good case for constructive dismissal.

I saw a simple example of this in my own career a few years ago. So called, high flyers, were sent on a four day management development programme by the company. On the third evening, the facilitators suggested that the group of participants might take responsibility for organising some entertainment. Some kind of impromptu cabaret was put together. One of the people was a guitarist and he decided to perform songs. He got up on stage, played a couple of numbers and then chose to play something 'romantic'. He directed his gaze towards one member of the group, as professional singers might often do, as if he was singing to her. After less than a verse she ran from the room screaming and was so traumatized that she couldn't complete the final day of the course. In the long-term, had she remained with the company, this would have had a serious impact on her career. It transpired that, as a teenager, she had been raped by a singer in a band who had 'eyed' her from the stage.

Setting up personal development initiatives of all kinds exposes people to transformation that they don't necessarily expect but we need to be absolutely sure that we are equipped to deal with the consequences of these things before we do so.

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

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Working behind the scenes, supporting leaders as they achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

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Writing (and speaking) made easy - Part 3 - The Sales Model

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The model is actually quite straightforward - it needs to be, because the skilled user of it has to remember it and, in the course of a conversation, for instance, be ready to shift from one stage to another, when they pick up signals from their audience that they have got the message of a particular step.

The same model is used to structure selling conversations, the writing of articles, press releases, presentations, blog entries, brochures, flyers, and even just letters. You can also use it to plan workshops, communication campaigns, advertising programmes, and lots more - literally anything that involves 'selling' through words is best communicated this way.

Before you start anything, it is important to spend time defining precisely what you are looking for from the sales activity. "Having had this conversation, I will have been successful if... I have an agreement to a further meeting." "By the end of the presentation, I need to be able to walk up to anyone in the room and for them to know exactly what the service is that I am offering." "I expect any visitor to the website to leave me their contact details and want me to call them." It can be tough to define but it is a vital step.

The selling process is broken down into five steps, remembered by the acronym, AICDC.

ATTENTION

A simple one liner or a short paragraph, that grabs the attention of the reader/listener. It can be provocative, informative, questioning, challenging, but it HAS to grab their attention. It shouldn't lie, distort the truth, embellish, or mislead - any of those will annoy the reader when they find out.

INTEREST

This is the step that builds curiousity. It should contain enough information to make the reader/listener want to know more, but also feel that they now know more than they did before. It sounds a tough balance but it's easy when you realise that lots of people don't know when to shut up! Many people in a selling situation, try to flood their listener with far too much information - the important thing is pick up the signals that they are curious, then to stop yourself and move on to the next step. Easier when you are speaking directly with someone, harder with a large audience, and may involve some experimentation with the printed word. As a rule of thumb, this is going to be about 30% of your material - maximum. (If your material calls for loads of information, then distil the essentials for this step and provide the rest as handouts, an appendix, a data sheet, or some other medium for the person to refer to later - but don't you dare then skip the rest of the steps until they have done so!)

CONVICTION

This is where we try to build a sense of relevance to our audience. We take some of the features or information that we have alluded to in the interest step and show how it relates to the audience. This isn't an excuse to keep the information giving interest building going on for longer! "When we spoke the other day, you said..., well our data suggests..." "I guess that one of the challenges you face is..., well..." "If we look at the figures for your home area..." "It must be tough managing that kind of problem, this could be the answer...". Again, this is a maximum of 30% of your material/time/slides/words etc.

DESIRE

So, we move on to building the emotional connections. There's rarely any need to refer to your own product, service, or whatever it is that you are trying to 'sell'. In this phase, you are concentrating on helping the person experience what it will FEEL like to have your help, or sometimes, what it might FEEL like NOT to do so. "It would be a huge relief to know that..." "The sense of control that you feel having ... is really reassuring" "I don't know how you cope at the moment."

CLOSE

Once you have a sense that they can see how good it would feel to 'buy' from you, then it is time to 'close the sale'. I know this will sound awfully corny to some folks who don't think of themselves as sales-people, but it really is vital. "Let's fix an appointment when we can get together." "When would be a good time for me to ring on Tuesday with the initial results?" "Give me your card, and I will send our terms through."

There's so many different ways of closing, that there could be a separate essay on those alone, but the important thing is that entering this process you had an idea of the outcome you were looking for and the close should achieve exactly that - not a half-baked intermediate step, but the actual outcome that you wanted.

And that, as they say, is that. Remember that there were two earlier parts:

Writing (and speaking) made easy - Part 2 - Writing and Public Speaking are both creative forms of selling
Writing (and speaking) made easy - Part 1 - The pervasive nature of selling

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

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Working behind the scenes, supporting leaders as they achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

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Writing (and speaking) made easy - Part 2 - Writing and Public Speaking are both creative forms of selling

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You might have noticed that I do quite a lot of writing and public speaking. I actually enjoy both enormously, which helps. When I was 16, I had to sit a set of exams known then as 'O' levels. Typically we did 10 or so subjects, before specialising in the following year. English as it was taught at that time was divided into two parts - English Language and English Literature.

I never could get my head around English Literature. Don't get me wrong, I love reading... there's always a dozen books on the go at any one time, and I love the excitement of both fiction and non-fiction. But I could never understand why we had to dissect everything we read and project onto the author all our own meanings and interpretations, when we knew that they had actually just been starving, living in a garret, with a girlfriend who was pregnant, and a mistress whose husband was mysteriously powerful and they were desperately scribbling to get the money to get away from it all! Not surprisingly, when it came to the exam I scraped through with the lowest pass mark.

English Language, on the other hand, fascinated me - I couldn't handle the fancy terminology of nouns, adjectives, verbs, and so on, but I loved the incredibly inexpensive way of being creative. Give me a pen (a real one with ink in it) and several sheets of paper, and I could be lost for hours. My English Language exam wasn't without a little trauma - the exam question was to write an essay on a practical joke that misfired. I remember writing a story, in the first person, about an incident at school where a bucket of water was placed above a door and fell onto someone as they came through. The punchline went "Christ, you've bloody killed him!" And in a short paragraph at the end I described the probation sentence that we had all received.

The exam finished, and I went out to the school bus, I sat alone, I began to shake, I began to get worried, by the time I got home I was in a right state. As an adult, I'd have had a drink to settle my nerves, but of course I couldn't just do that as a kid. I don't think I explained to my parents why I wanted to disappear into my room that night - I really thought I had goofed! I even thought that I'd get into trouble for what I'd written, though I soon rationalised that one away. You can imagine the relief a few weeks later when the results came through and I'd got a top grade!

With hindsight, I'd actually applied the selling model that I'm about to share with you. As you'll see below.

After a rather upsetting experience at junior school, where one teacher used me to get at another in our annual performance of song and dance (I was "Harry Hawk" in the song "Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all"), I took a distinctly back seat when it came to the performing arts!

We had the occasional balloon debate at secondary school, where I rarely got to even try my parachute, and I remember a school trip where a large group of us were stranded on a Scottish island overnight and kept each other entertained by speaking for 2 minutes on a subject of anyone else's choosing - my exposition on "the contents of an empty crisp packet" proved so memorable that someone in Australia even remembered it over 30 years later!

It wasn't until my PhD that I really got to experience that transformational moment, where we have so completely screwed up that we vow 'never again'. I was given the chance to speak at an academic conference. I completely misjudged the audience, gave a poorly prepared presentation, tried to tell them FAR too much, got mangled in my own notes and so on. I knew it was happening, but could I stop myself?

There's more to speaking than delivering - you need to know what you are going to say, in what order, and what you want the audience to do as a result of hearing you. There are far too many speakers who don't know the answer to all three parts before they open their mouths. And that is where selling comes in again - we are trying to influence someone so that they do what we want them to do.

The selling model is great, because it provides a structure, based on a simple understanding of the psychology of decision making that you can then apply to both your writing and your speaking.

So let's think for a moment about what goes on when someone decides to do something...

There are three 'qualities' that need to be met. To be persuaded someone has to have a CURIOSITY about something. If I am not curious then I will stick to what I have always done. Curiosity is an incredibly under-acknowledged professional attitude. People who have curiosity are nice people to work with. People who express an interest in you (who are curious about your story) are the people you like and will develop friendships with. Leaders who show a genuine interest in the people they work with are the ones who people will follow despite enormous personal risk and discomfort. Curiosity keeps rigidity of thinking at bay, it brings a freshness to our experience of the world. In a funny way, curiousity keeps people young - at least in their minds if not their bodies.

The second quality is RELEVANCE. There's a reason why charities that support children and animals are more popular than others. Growing up is a tough process - it involves a lot of experiments and many failures and, while we may forget most if not all of these, we can't help but experience growing up as a time of vulnerability - a time when we depended on others to help us. Most adults can therefore empathise with others who are vulnerable. If you want to win someone over tug on their vulnerability. These charities become relevant to almost everyone. Anything that we 'sell' needs to have relevance to the other person. Some will be a direct match to their need, others will satisfy a hidden psychological connection, but they always need to be relevant.

Assuming that we have somehow fascinated the other person, or the audience, and that we have convinced them that whatever we are selling them is relevant to them, we still need to do one thing to get them to go along with it...

That third quality is EMOTION. People often say they want something. They may even devote hours to studying it. The step that is missing though is a real desire to change from what they do at the moment. Ask any weight-loss specialist, and they will say that people often know all about their diet and what they need to do to lose weight, it is simply that they haven't really got excited about being lighter.

So the selling model that I'm about to explain has to (and does) address all three - it raises curiosity, it highlights relevance and it excites the passions.

Time to go on to part three...

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

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Working behind the scenes, supporting leaders as they achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

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Writing (and speaking) made easy - Part 1 - The Pervasive Nature of Selling

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It's funny how coincidences happen. In the last few days, I've been in conversation with three different clusters of people all of whom were trying to do similar things - they either had to prepare a document for publication, deliver a speech, or start blogging.

Are they the same thing? Well, although there are obvious differences, to my way of thinking they are almost identical - they are each trying to sell something. They have an idea and they want others to be interested in it.

If you think about it, almost all the interactions we have at work are somehow or other involved in selling - we're selling an expectation of a level of performance, a way of doing something, the desire to do it in the first place, and so on. In every case, we want someone else to do something and they don't have to do so, and therein lies the sale. Some will be easy, some will be hard, but all involve selling of some kind.

A WARNING ABOUT MODELS OF ANY SORT

Businesses are steeped in processes. They have procedures for this, procedures for that, rules, dictats, systems, and so on. Some people kid themselves that they invented this, that, or the other, methodology and then go on to make it out to be their intellectual property (IP). Of course, some such claims are legitimate - somewhere I used to have a copy of the patent application for putting bubbles in chocolate bars - now that IS a neat bit of IP. Sadly, though I reckon that many of these approaches are actually nothing more than one person's attempt to appear clever.

A long time ago, I worked for a guy who figured he had invented the definitive approach to organisational change. Don't get me wrong - he knew his stuff - he could quote all the original authors and so on - but he produced a simple six step diagram and by repeating it to himself so many times, he began to believe that he had invented the new sliced bread. One of his favourite quotes was from Alvin Toffler - that "change is the only constant". He could rattle it off with a wonderful dramatic emphasis. One day, he was working through his standard pitch when a business leader stopped him and said, "Mr R, thank you, but your model simply takes us from one state of stasis to another, that's not what anyone needs - as you said; 'change is the only constant' - I suggest that you rethink your model and come back when you've tried out the new version somewhere else."

Over lunch a few months ago, I demonstrated to one prospective consultant that I too could create a super-model to describe group dynamics - their field. Let's try it as I type...

We'll think of a topic... With COP15 on the horizon, let's try something to do with climate adaptation - I know.. a model for the collection and validation of research data will do.

HEALTH WARNING - PLEASE DON'T TAKE THIS TOO SERIOUSLY - IT IS AN ILLUSTRATION

We begin with a sexy acronym - a short word that anyone can relate to, albeit in different ways. Let's try STOOL. Nice word, conveys images of Val Doonican to some, milking parlours to others.

Problem solving methodologies have been around since pre-civilisation, and although they differ a little, most have two phases - a divergent one and a convergent one. This is just a simple case of problem solving and decision making, so let's try diverging and converging steps in our STOOL model...

We begin with something nice and big - a SURVEY, which generates lots of information, though it's not easy to relate the different strands, because they are in different languages, from different sources, and different disciplines. So we have to TRANSLATE the data. It is critical to get new opinions whenever we do anything otherwise we are in danger of missing something, so we need to take our newly translated findings and make them OPEN so others can comment. Collecting their feedback we ORGANISE both the old and the new data and then we produce a report about it - we LITERATE. There you go, we have a STOOL model for the collection and validation of climate adaptation data.

Of course, we then have to sell that model to the world's scientists, academics, and politicians. But first, we'll say it over and over to ourselves until we are convinced that it is 'robust' and then we'll slap a little TM or (C) on it so others will think it is more profound than it really was.

Now, I'm sure that you and I would never be so stupid as to think that this model had any potential what-so-ever, however there are a lot of folks out there who do exactly the same thing as I have just done, and then they sell that model. Having the idea is only a tiny part of the journey to success - the toughest bit is in the selling!

END OF SILLY MODEL BUILDING ILLUSTRATION AND EXPLANATION OF WHY I APPEARED TO DIGRESS

Now, I am very fortunate, because donkey's years ago, I was offered the chance to attend a course. It was one of a series, delivered by one of the most successful management and leadership training institutions around - with a track record that stretched back to the 1920s. They taught lots of topics within their portfolio, but the consistent theme in them all was that getting anything done involved people relating to one another and specifically, getting someone else to do something that you wanted them to do.

They too had a model. It was exactly the same kind of thing as I have illustrated just now, with exactly the same health warnings. But they knew that. They weren't so silly as to think that the secret lay in the model; they knew that the difference lay in the relationship between people. It was in the application of the model rather than the words themselves.

Their model was just a way of helping us structure our approach to influencing the other person.

I'm about to share that model with you, because I happen to find it incredibly useful, but I don't want you to forget that it is still only a model.

Time to go on to part two...

I am happy to comment, or deliver keynote sessions, on any of the topics that I post about.
For media and speaking enquiries, please call me, Graham Wilson, on 07785 222380.

Best wishes

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Working behind the scenes, supporting leaders as they achieve things they never dreamt they could
t 07785 222380 | grahamwilson.org - inter-faith.net - thefutureofwork.org - corporate-alumni.info

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