The Adaptas 7-Steps to Learning: #3 FUN – Learning is about having FUN!

Updated July 28th 2023

People always learn faster and better when they are having fun and are being creative.
Change can occur only when the brain is in the mood: Change is enhanced by behaviour and circumstances. Learning occurs with focused attention and is inhibited by an intentional refusal to accept new experiences.

You know how when we were children, we played all the time? We learnt through playing. But then the education system kind of squashed that out of us, because we were told to sit still and listen.

And into adulthood, fun is often missing from approaches taken to learning and development.

Of course, fun and creativity is experienced differently by all of us, so be cautious not to make assumptions here! Our experience of fun can also change based on experiences we find ourselves in and the people we are surrounded by.

The brain is a social organ innately designed to learn through shared experiences. Brains grow best in this context of interactive discovery and through the co-creation of stories that shape and support memories of what is being learned. Evidence from the field of neuroscience shows us that we require positive social interaction and nurturance in order to learn.

Dorothy Billington, author of In ‘Life is an Attitude: How to Grow Forever Better’, has run studies on why some men and women continue to grow as long as they live — while others do not. For example, she has studied English-as-Second-Language classes for new immigrants, and comments that “In classes where students feel safe, where lessons are focused on current language needs, where students are asked for input on what helps them most to learn, where students are actively involved in interesting and fun exercises, where there’s lots of laughter and congeniality, students of all ages and backgrounds learn English fast and well. In classes where students are made to feel inadequate and threatened, little is learned.”

She comments, ‘these findings support the thinking of Malcolm Knowles (The Adult Learner: A Neglected Species, 1986), recognized as the father of adult learning; his trailblazing work underlies many of our most effective adult education programs. He reminded us that in optimal adult learning programs, where adults learn best, both students and faculty also have fun, for it is exhilarating to REALLY learn.’

My own experience is that a safe, trusting environment will support people to get in the mood and find themselves having fun when they least expect it.

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The Adaptas 7-Steps to Learning: #2 MOTIVATION | The Power of Knowing ‘WHY’

Updated July 28th 2023

MOTIVATION – For change, we need to be clear on our ‘Why?’
We recently published the 1st of our 7-Steps to Learning. We received a great response to our IMAGINATION blog, where we explained that ‘neurons that fire together, wire together’, so to continue as promised, outlined below is the 2nd Step – MOTIVATION.

MOTIVATION is a key factor in brain plasticity: It can be looked at as a cycle where thoughts influence behaviours and behaviours then drive performance; an inner drive to behave or act in a certain manner. It is the driving force that causes the change from desire to trying to achieve in life. If you are going to commit to making changes in your life, then it requires dedication and practice to create lasting change. Understand your motivation and you’ll understand the process that arouses, sustains and regulates your behaviour.

In Step 5, you will see that repetition is the key to making stronger connections. Repetition will only occur if people are motivated. People need to see a personal need, or a reason for them in making the change. For change, we need to be clear on our ‘Why?’.

People must think about two things in answering this question. Emotionally, what we can gain, by creating this new behaviour, and what do we stand to lose by not creating it? Performance impacts thoughts.

Our role as educators and learning leaders is to help people to become aware of what is not working for them or where the gaps exist, why they want and need to change (emotionally and logically) and where that will take them in their life and career. If someone does not want to learn, no change will take place.

The question then is, what is stopping them from wanting to learn? I refer back to point Step1: Have they been given the opportunity or given themselves the opportunity to IMAGINE & dream big?!

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The Adaptas 7-Steps to Learning: #1 IMAGINE

Updated July 27th 2023

Have you ever considered yourself and your learners as potential addicts?

Have you ever heard of the neurotransmitter Dopamine? Dopamine is a chemical released when people are doing something they enjoy. Dopamine consolidates new circuits and causes addiction.
Addiction is a plastic change in the brain.

Imagine for a moment, if you could turn all the people you are looking to develop into ‘learning addicts’. They are so addicted to learning, they cannot wait to apply everything they have learnt so that they can come back and learn more. The impact of the “learnings” would then ripple across the organisation, affecting the bottom line, as your training budgets would expand twofold, threefold and more. Wouldn’t that be something? From my perspective, we should be looking to turn everyone into addicts who enjoy learning and thus consolidate new neural pathways, which in turn leave people wanting more. We all know how challenging it can be to change an existing habit.

I recently spoke at The 2014 Learning Technologies Conference in London. Following that talk, they asked me to write an article for their Inside Learning & Technologies & Skills Magazine which was published this June. In this speech I outlined 7-Steps or areas that need to be considered and applied in learning to make it addictive, to enable people to learn and for neural changes to take place in the brain that have lasting impact. Over the coming months I am going to outline these 7-STEPS here. They all overlap as you will see:

1) IMAGINE

Neurons that fire together wire together: The brain strengthens connections between things that happen in real time and predictions of possible outcomes. The brain blends what happens and the predictions together. The expected outcome and the reality of the outcome; the brain weaves its own explanation of reality that is the basis of new skills. Therefore, people need to get clear on what the benefits of changing their behaviour will be. We need to help people think bigger for themselves. My experience of many approaches to working with changing people’s behaviour, is that the time is just not put into this. We’ve got to allow people to dream, to IMAGINE and to see all the possible outcomes. Otherwise, there is very little chance they will commit.

We look forward to sending you the 2nd-Step in this 7-Step process. We are currently delivering an interactive workshop to teams and groups in organisations to actively assist them in applying these 7-Steps. Get in touch if you’d like us to talk you through what we can do for your organisation.

The Necessity of Learning and Embracing Change

Updated July 27th 2023

Do you know what the workplace of the future will look like?
I don’t, but I do however know one thing, it will be very different to the workplaces we see nowadays.

Many would argue that more changes have taken place in the world of how we work in the past 5-10 years than had in the previous 100 years. There is new technology, new approaches to management & new roles in the workplace than ever could have been imagined in the past.

I was present at a talk Bob Savage, MD and Vice President of EMC Ireland, gave at a recent conference (National Stakeholders Conference on Science Education).

EMC Ireland in Cork is their largest manufacturing site outside the US, spanning 600,000 square feet, with 28 business functions and 44 nationalities on site speaking 26 languages. Bob leads this Centre of Excellence’s team of highly skilled people serving the global market. Bob said, “the ability to build relationships with customers, to relate to others, is one of the differentiators for employees and companies of the future. Another differentiator is a culture which encourages people to have an openness and ability to transform their skills, with a compulsion towards life-long learning”. Many people don’t see their job as a place to learn. However, in another interview Bob did last year, he was asked what he looked for in people working for EMC. He said, “The ICT area is a fast moving environment and people need to be able to handle and embrace change.” He also mentioned that he looks for a team of dynamic players and career minded people with integrity and passion who think outside the box.

Therefore, the more responsibility we take to learn within and outside the workplace, the better our chances for success are. If you have read previous articles we have written, you will know that we see one big happy connection between learning, change and relating to others. In my mind, learning in the workplace is best looked at with a sense of wonder. The wonder at the extent of endless possibilities that could be explored when we are open to change and willing to challenge how things have always been done.

What’s more, this is further charged with more possibilities because everything we learn at work about embracing change and relating to others and ourselves, can feed into our personal lives, creating even more positive relationships with our family and friends for example. John Henry Newman once said, “To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.” And well, if Bob and I agree with him, then he must be right 😉

Did Curiosity Kill The Cat?

Updated July 27th 2023

Do you remember how to be curious?

If you spend any time with children you will be used to questions, about EVERYTHING!

My friends daughter asked her the other day ‘when trees get cut down do they hurt?’. It’s a valid question, which, depending on your philosophical or spiritual beliefs, we don’t actually know the answer to.

You’d rarely hear an adult asking a question like this for fear of seeming stupid. Young children don’t care about feeling stupid. They are curious.

I asked a client recently to ‘be curious’ about an issue he was having with his team. He replied with, what does the word ‘curious’ mean? When he asked, I immediately wondered; have we all forgotten how to be curious?!

According to Wiki, “Curiosity killed the cat” is a proverb used to warn of the dangers of unnecessary investigation or experimentation. Sometimes I think this proverb infiltrates our brains as we move towards and into adulthood, and that we take it way too literally, fearing that we might get squashed on the road like our childhood cat, and in doing so, we block ourselves from being curious!

Do you remember how to be curious? Many of us forget ‘being curious’ ever existed! Do we lose our curiosity because it becomes less important to be curious? Are opportunities for curiosity being taken away from us at an early age? I often wonder, is this because of the experience the world provides us with i.e. the structure of education? Do we lose our curiosity once we are embedded in education? Or is it too important as adults to ‘appear’ like we know everything?

After this conversation with my client, I asked some trusted friends about their own curiosity. Many of them believe they lost their ability to be ‘stupidly’ curious when they were approximately 11 and 12 years of age, and more worrying they’ve noticed that their children are losing their propensity to be curious a lot younger.

Curiosity, innovation, critical thinking and problem-solving skills are all closely linked, and are becoming more and more important for every employee to have in their briefcase. In our work at Adaptas™, and also many of the projects we work on with PhathomHQ (www. phathomhq.com- optimising human potential in actively exploring and understanding innovation, problem-solving, critical thinking, and creativity through highly relevant work-related challenges), we find that when people are given the opportunity to be curious, they come looking for permission to really ask big questions, to move out of their comfort zone, and to try things out. In essence, they turn into children looking for permission from us, to be allowed to be curious! Is it just me, or does anyone else see the irony in this?!

Einstein said ‘Logic will get you from A to B, imagination will take you everywhere’.

I recently also asked a friend to tell me what other words she thought of when I said curiosity. She said ‘enquiry’ ‘nosiness’ ‘busy-body’. When I go myself on a word association with curiosity, I think of ‘imagination’ and ‘playfulness’. Interesting the difference in associations we make to words and where our behaviour goes based on this association.

How does curiosity look/sound/feel to you?

It’s also important to note that a less frequently seen rejoinder to “curiosity killed the cat” is “but, satisfaction brought it back”. Hmmm, what can we learn from this?

The Power Of The Domino Effect in Organisations

Updated July 27th 2023

I was in Heathrow airport recently. I had just joined a fairly long queue to go through security to make a connection flight, when the man beside me gently alerted a passing staff member and asked “Excuse me, has the fast track through security been removed?”. The staff member responded defensively, and in an accusatory, bordering on angry tone “there were two escalators, you should have taken the other one!”. The man innocently responded “I wasn’t told”. The staff member looked at him, shrugged her shoulder in a ‘not my problem!’ fashion and marched off. The customer was left stunned! He had asked a valid question in a friendly manner and he might as well have been spat on.

From an observers viewpoint, this staff member treated the customer with disdain and disrespect. He looked embarrassed. Everyone in the queue who had been bored of queuing and had watched the interaction appeared to be likewise feeling embarrassed for or with him, with all of us looking at each other, wondering ‘what just happened there?’, ‘what’s her problem?’ or maybe ‘what’s wrong with queueing with us?’.

Now, this staff member might have been on the defense because she was sick to the back teeth of being asked this same question, or because a customer had previously been angry at her about the same situation, or perhaps she was just generally having a bad afternoon.

Either way she seemed to be making some sort of assumption, and living in a reactive mode in that moment. She had possibly assumed that this customer was going to be cranky or have some sort of problem; that he might in fact take out on her. The thing is, in her reaction, she turned a fairly content yet curious customer who simply wondered if there was a way to avoid a long queue (who wouldn’t?), into an irritated customer, who then took his irritation out on her colleagues as he moved through security. I watched, and I can tell you there was no more ‘Mr. nice mannerly guy’.

I see this and hear of this all the time in organisations. It’s like a domino effect until one of us takes action not to pass the blame, irritation, frustration or anger on. Are you taking responsibility and action to break the domino effect that cascades through organisations? If you can take responsibility for your own tendency to pass on the blame, or to put your own frustration and irritation onto other people, it will result in a large improvement in your general wellbeing, communication with others, and effective leadership skills! If you can get a few others to also take responsibility to be where “the book stops”, you will then work in a nicer and more successful space. Sometimes it’s that simple!

Manage Your Time And Have A Life

Updated July 27th 2023

Does this look like a lady who manages her time wisely?

Somehow for years I associated good time management with being a boring sort of person, lacking adventure and spontaneity. I even had a picture in my head of a prim and proper man waiting for a train and just as it pulled into the station, he’d glance at his watch and approach the platform. However, nowadays I’m firmly convinced of the vast benefits associated with it.

First step: Find your value behind this commitment
Finding your motivation to internally commit to good time management is key to your success at it. You need to see what values you have that are congruent with adopting this behaviour. Having a look at some of the advantages listed below could help you with this.

Be less stressed and in the flow
A focused mind
Less procrastination
Achieving your goals
Better finances
Greater self esteem and confidence
Better relationships with others
Less guilt/stress due to respecting other people’s time
Increase your productivity
Feelings of accomplishment
Enjoy and appreciate your leisure off without worrying
….And all without taking yourself too seriously because that is a serious matter!

80% of your productivity is down to 20% of your efforts
The 80/20 principle refers to the phenomenon where 80% of your productivity is brought about by 20% of your efforts. Being successful isn’t just about working smarter or harder; it’s about working smarter on the right things. The key is to focus your energy on producing the 80% of everything you do – which is also the 80% that matters.

The best time managers spend more time planning and training staff to take on delegated tasks than in a flurry of email and phone answering activism.

Some questions to ask yourself:
What is the best use of my time and energy this week?
Will doing this make a difference in the next 6 months?

The Key is Planning
With planning you can get a lot more done, more effectively and in less time. Because of this, I now find myself putting aside time each Sunday to plan my week. I begin by sourcing a piece of foolscap and creating headings which sum up the main areas of my life:

1) Family
2) Friends
3) Career/Work
4) Health
5) Significant other
6) Finances
7) Spirituality
8) Physical environment
9) Fun & relaxation 🙂

Then come the bullet points
Under each heading, I list what I would like to get done this week as it relates to each area. For example, if you would like to make more money, under the heading of finances you could write, ‘time for creative brainstorming around sourcing better leads’ and under health, ‘less burgers and more green veg’. Then with seven days to play with, you slot each ‘to do’ into a day and time. For example, go to that vegetable shop around the corner on Monday evening on my way back from work.

WARNING: Prioritisation
If your goals have taken steroids, I advise highlighting the most important ones to take precedence in your diary. We don’t want Mrs Doyle from Father Ted creeping her ugly head so there is no need to mend the roof, build a shed and organise a rock concert in one week.

With the Sunday best approach (above) however you can seriously give this theory a Father Jack kick up the backside. This is because, using this tried and tested approach, it quickly points out when you are on the wrong track.

Now you have time for a life
You cannot sustain the same output endlessly without rest and fun. Not only that but what’s the point in living life without having a life? So while you are scheduling enough time for bedtime, I urge you to put to bed the idea that work defines you or without you, things will fall apart. Apart from the fun part of being able to live a bit, when you get a rest and have fun, the brain performs better. Better still, inject fun into your work and success will come more easily to you anyway.

How to Bore Friends and Lose Employees

Updated July 26th 2023

Only a select few can successfully “talk at” others, relying on their charm and storytelling prowess to captivate their audience. However, the majority of us lack such innate abilities, yet we often find ourselves constantly talking at others instead of engaging in meaningful conversations by asking questions and actively listening. True active listening means dedicating genuine attention, not merely waiting for the other person to pause so that we can interject with our own thoughts. Regrettably, this skill of truly listening eludes many of us.

Not knowing how to listen is doing massive damage in organisations: “Not being really listened to by my manager/s” is one of the most common complaints we hear from the people and teams we work with. This is no trite matter. The extent of this is losing people to absenteeism, and more long-term losing them forever to other organisations. When it takes on average 25,000 euro to recruit and train a new person, it is quite incredible to think that we are losing this money spent over something as humanly basic as listening, don’t you think?’

You may be thinking to yourself that the people who say they are not being listened to are just playing the victim, but we see it with our own eyes all the time. People think they are listening to others, but in actual fact they are not!

Research in neuroscience (Spunt, 2013), indicates the presence of two large-scale systems in the human brain that play a major role in successful listening: the putative mirror neuron system, which likely facilitates the relatively automatic perception of the how of speech (i.e., how it is being said); and the so-called mentalizing system, which likely underlies our ability to actively reach conclusions about the why (i.e., why it is being said) of speech behavior. The dynamic interaction of mirroring and mentalizing processes may be pivotal for successful listening and social interaction more generally. Often managers are more focused on the tasks that must be achieved, thinking about their next meeting or worrying about something they can do nothing about, than fully engaging these systems.

Neuroscience has confirmed what we have always known, that there is an important difference between hearing and listening. Neuroscientist Seth Horowitz: “While it might take you a full second to notice something out of the corner of your eye, turn your head toward it, recognise it and respond to it, the same reaction to a new or sudden sound happens at least 10 times as fast.” Horowitz says hearing has evolved as a more essential tool for survival than sight. So we have no excuse. We have the hardware , we just don’t have the focus and we don’t take the time.

However, we humans are not totally at fault. Some would argue that the technological age we live in, where we are constantly looking at screens (computers, iPads, texting on phones) is etching away at our ability to listen. Horowitz says ‘The modern world of sound—and more often, noise—is being overrun by digital distraction and information overload’.

Many managers wonder why their teams aren’t as productive as they might be. In our experience, we see time and time again that when managing performance, as with much of the interacting we do in life, people often “wait to speak” rather than listening attentively and actively. Yet listening tunes our brain to the patterns of our environment faster than any other sense, and paying attention to the nonvisual parts of our world feeds into everything. Our reactions to what we hear are less processed and more instinctive than our reactions to what we see.’ Horowitz describes the auditory sense as the human “alarm system” that operates constantly, even while asleep.

If we truly listen, we can tune into what might be holding a team member back, that small nudge that someone needs to help push them over the finishing line. Ask questions, and listen to the variation in people’s words, and their tone of voice NOW instead of waiting until they are shouting for attention or worse still, they’ve left the building, and you’ll never hear their voice again!

The Funniest and Most Enjoyable Thing About Charisma Is…

Updated July 26th 2023

I have managers coming to me for coaching quite regularly, telling me they want to develop their charisma, so that they will be in the running for a position opening up for VP, director or partner. They seem to think there is a potion I can give to them that will make their charisma magically grow.

Oh how wonderful it would be if I could create this potion. We could all swallow it and become as charismatic and as influential as JFK, Oprah, Obama, Princess Diana, Gandhi, Reagan, Clinton (insert your favorite here). Love them or hate them, they’ve got charisma! And like all of us, none of them are, or were perfect!

Can you think of a charismatic person you know or have met? What was it about them that made them charismatic in your opinion? Did they talk endlessly about themselves with unbridled enthusiasm and confidence? Or was it a two-way conversation where they engaged by asking questions, showing genuine interest in your responses, and spoke about themselves only when they had information, a fact, a story, or an experience that could be of assistance or interest to you?

(If you don’t want to read this article but would like to see 2 new jokes I learnt today, skip to the end)

What most people in search of charisma don’t realise is that research shows us that charismatic people are those that display not only confidence, but consideration and empathy. They are people who offer social support to others, and are trustworthy. In organisations, they are the people who have close interaction and exchange with the people on their teams, and who build strong social networks.

Charisma and Leadership are often seen going hand in hand. Have you heard of transformational leadership? Transformational leaders are those leaders able to inspire their followers to accomplish great things i.e. to move their followers to a high level of performance by affective and inspirational engagement through idealised influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualised consideration. To do this, they are required to be mindful of the needs and motivations of others, facilitate complex interactions in group dynamics and steer their employees forward in the course of their managerial/decision-making responsibilities.

Research finds that transformational leaders are regarded as charismatic. These leaders do the following:
• Display consideration and empathy
• Possess mature moral development
• Have close interaction and exchange with their people
• Build strong social networks within their organisations
• Offer social support to the individuals and teams they manage

Effective leaders are transformational and charismatic. Those who display traits listed above exhibit high standards of performance and ethics and are deeply trusted and respected by their followers. Because of that people identify with and want to emulate them. Would you like people to identify with and emulate you?

Interestingly, a meta-analysis of trust and effective leadership has shown that when leaders are perceived as trustworthy, this translates into perceived organizational trustworthiness and results in positive employee and organizational outcomes (Dirks & Ferrin, 2002) such as higher organisational citizenship behaviors (Krosgaard, Brodt, & Whitener, 2002).

By the way, charisma isn’t the same thing as confidence, but appearing confident can make you more charismatic because your confidence will put others at ease and inspire faith in your abilities. If people see you as a confident person, they will naturally want to be around you.

There is no magic potion, funny that!. Charisma is not about being an extrovert or about pretending to care about other people. It’s about genuinely liking other people. The emotional component of that is really hard to fake! But when you have it, other people feel important. Furthermore, if you don’t have it now but are willing to start practicing the true traits of charismatic people, you will even end up enjoying yourself more, regardless of who you are with!

Some charismatic people tell jokes!

Two snowmen are standing in a field. One says to the other: “Funny, I smell carrots too”.

That didn’t make you laugh…Ok try this:

A magician was driving down the road, then he turned into a drive way…

Ah I give up…

Can You REALLY Afford To Be An Ineffective Manager?

Updated July 26th 2023

We were working with approximately one hundred middle managers recently on the topic of employee engagement and performance management, and it hit me, how the very basics, the building blocks of optimising people’s potential are often ignored, even in the most high functioning of organisations (this is a multinational organisation).

The organisation in question exudes a wonderfully positive vibe, fostering a sense of camaraderie among its employees. It stands as an exemplary model of a goal-oriented organisation that, like any other, prioritises targets and the bottom line, yet remains firmly committed to upholding values of integrity and treating its members like family.

By the way, were you aware that interactions with coworkers and supervisors exert the most significant influence on emotions in the workplace? The positive emotional bond shared between colleagues might be the crucial factor in maintaining employee well-being at work. Many individuals express that the only ones who truly comprehend their daily job challenges are their coworkers, rather than their own families.

Did you also know that the effects of the things we often don’t like doing in the workplace, can be mitigated by feelings of solidarity in the workplace (Karabanow, 1999). This solidarity includes respect for others, feelings of belonging and family (all working towards a common goal) and an element of fun.

Anyway, back to the point…whilst working with this particular group, we realised that even in this highly functioning (e.g. positive relationships, family feel) organisation, there were signs that many opportunities for growth were being missed, solely because individuals were not prioritising substantial time for performance appraisals and were not conducting them optimally. Other tasks and meetings, leading to repetitive diary changes meant that often appraisals were months and months apart, and often when they actually happened, were being rushed, and managers were not engaging. These managers were not asking powerful questions, or truly listening to responses. All in all, they were not taking the time to practice good coaching skills at the level necessary.

In conversation with the managers during our sessions together, most agreed that realistically they just have not been in the habit of prioritising these meetings, and that they could in reality make time to do so.

I estimated that each of these managers have 3-4 people on their immediate team. Approximately 75% of them admitted that they were not prioritising appraisals with the individuals on their team, meaning new skills development in many cases were getting pushed out by approximately one year. This organisation had a revenue of almost 500 million in 2011, a profit increase of approximately 10% on 2010…pretty impressive for the times we are in, don’t you think?

My question is, how much greater could this impressive profit increase have been if managers at every level really engaged their colleagues and hence made them feel even more valued, motivated and moving forward, (and kept the organisation thriving well into the future, guaranteeing everyone’s jobs remain intact) to the extent they could be?

If you can do the maths, let me know, it’s not my strongest point 😉

Why do managers go through leadership training and not improve?

Updated July 24 2023

On reading the 14th CIPD Learning and Talent Development Annual Survey 2012, I was delighted to see an emphasis on the need for new approaches to learning!

According to the survey, ‘nearly three-quarters of organisations see a deficit in management and leadership skills’. This means that despite years of management training and development, much of the skill base of managers remains unimproved. This survey indicates that senior managers are perceived, as much as line managers, to be lacking in management and leadership skills.

The report states that ‘Learning & talent development practitioners have a big role in using their insights on leadership and behaviour in making sure those leaders are developed properly’, and that ‘a lot of this activity is going to require a step-up in our awareness of a new and emerging evidence base from the sciences about how people think, act and behave.’

The report states that familiar models such as Myers Briggs, Kolb, and Honey and Mumford which have been used to generate insight on how people learn and develop are too familiar, and that the challenges we face now require different insights and a refreshed evidence base.

Yippee!! That’s what we at Adaptas™ have been arguing!! Yes, of course all of these theorists and measurements have their place in people development, but as the survey states ‘there is a low awareness of the emerging evidence base from neuroscience, cognitive research and areas like economics which could transform the way we think’. Yes, for most organisations and for most training providers there is a lack of awareness of all the new findings and the power of the brain. However, Adaptas™ combines approaches taken from these areas and which are monumentally important for adult learning and for organisational change!

The report states, ‘Understanding neuroscience issues such as how the brain codes, captures and cleans knowledge and memory, helps us to know much more about how to pace and develop our learning interventions.’

Agreed! The reason so many managers and leaders, who have gone through staff training are still not effective, is because the trainings they have received have not been cutting edge. They have not taken into account what we now know about the human brain! Are you ready to be one of the organisations who actually sees a change when your managers go through training? If so, get in touch with us….

Note: The 14th CIPD Learning and Talent Development Annual Survey 2012 was researched and developed by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (www.CIPD.co.uk) with Cornerstone OnDemand

What Makes A Great Leader?

Updated July 24th 2023

I asked a friend of mine about an old boss of his the other day, and what it was that he admired about him. He said that his old boss, let’s call him John, was a brilliant leader and salesman, that he was liked by everyone, that everyone would go out of their way to assist him in building his business and not one single person from factory floor to board of directors had a bad thing to say about him. On asking my friend what it was about this man, that had everyone liking him and wanting to support and collaborate with him, the answer my friend gave was not John’s ability to anticipate what was coming next, say for example, in a competitive market, or to make decisions quickly, or to think critically. The answer my friend gave was plainly and simply, that John was always interested in other people. It always mattered to John how other people were doing, what was going on for them in their lives, what they needed in the way of support with their current role.

Surprising?

Consider this, the ability to anticipate, to think critically and to take decisive action are of the utmost importance for a leader and an organisation to be successful. Nevertheless, being an effective leader is equally about getting the right people to work with and collaborate with to build and sustain the vision and the plan. Finding and keeping the right people depends on building relationships with those people, and building successful relationships depends on the ability to understand peoples’ needs. We can only understand another persons needs if we have an ability to be empathic. In other words, understanding an individual, a group and a markets needs depends on an ability to put ourselves in their shoes and at least try to understand their perspective of the world, regardless of our differing experience, beliefs, attitudes and values.

Empathy as a term is thrown around a lot as something that we should all ideally develop to be effective in our relationships, as leaders, as colleagues, as friends, spouses, parents etc. Nevertheless, by many it is still viewed as one of those things over there in the corner that is a soft skill, and as leaders, how much time do we actually have to develop our soft skills as part of our staff training plan? It is also viewed as being the opposite to the concepts of decision-making etc that leaders need to have.

Consider this though, as globalisation increases, and the world becomes a smaller place, as borders collapse, and businesses expand into different cultures, the success of an organization depends more and more on building effective relationships.

Is it time to be more like John, in our ability as leaders to harness empathy within our organisation, and hence to have a real impact so that everyone can share the success, or should we turn our back on developing this skill and get left behind?…only you can decide.

The Adaptas 7-Steps to Learning: #3 FUN – Learning is about having FUN!