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 😉
Educators need to put more focus on developing a child’s Emotional Intelligence, giving them the skills to assist them while in school, as well as to prepare them for the adult world.
These skills include communication and coping skills as well as helping them to build their confidence.
I remember when I was 11 years old sitting in class, and someone spotted a pool of liquid on the floor under the chair of another girl in my class.
It was class time, there was no liquid to drink and she had not split anything, if you get my drift. Everyone in the class started pointing and laughing. This young girl was humiliated. Her reaction was a mixture of fear, anger and sadness.
This girl was generally being treated badly by her classmates. She was excluded from everything in the playground, was being passed cruel notes, calling her a ‘freak’ and was generally having a terrible time of it. On reflection, her accent would have been perceived as different to the rest of us, because she had spent the first few years of her life in a different country. I think, most likely, that she was singled out based on this.
This type of exclusion and bullying is also not uncommon in the workplace, when children become adults.
Call me weird, but I remember at that time in school thinking it was strange how they didn’t teach us how to protect ourselves, how to understand our emotions, how to be confident, how to make friends.
Einstein is said to have written ‘Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school’.
Good point! How much specific information do you remember from your time at school? Or maybe I should be asking, how relevant is any of it to your life now?
Often those who have been bullied in school, see that pattern re-emerging later in life. Alternatively they become the bully themselves. Much of the behavior in the workplace echoes exactly what happened in school. What’s worse is that it takes only one person to be the bully, or one person to be negative or one person to be in resistance. Eventually many people in the organisation will be living from a similar mindset. We’ve all heard of the herd or mob mentality.
In my humble opinion, educators need to think about giving children and teenagers the skills to assist them while children in school, as well as to prepare them for the adult world. These skills include communication and coping skills as well as helping them to build their confidence.
Many of the skills needed are very different to the skills that you or I ever would have thought we needed back when we were school age, until we became adults and realized the world can be a tough place, where we often don’t feel heard, or we feel blamed, or attacked for doing the wrong thing, or for just not being in the ‘IN’ crowd.
As we can’t turn back time and revisit our school days (phew!) we need to be given or seek out the opportunity to develop our emotional intelligence, our positive intelligence, and to question our patterns of behavior as adults. Otherwise the same issues just repeat themselves over and over again.
The damage to individuals, teams and organisations is sometimes not possible to turn back. We are not children anymore, but if you can put your hand on your heart and tell me you are not repeating any behavioural patterns from your childhood, you deserve a medal!
You probably already know that our damaging or destructive habits (for example in how we treat our bodies, in how we communicate with others) are linked with deep fears, which developed in the early years of our lives.
A few examples:
1) If a child is made to feel they are not good enough, they often stop making any effort to please and then in adulthood this might show up as lacking in motivation. Alternatively, it may develop into a need to over-achieve in their career to the detriment of other areas in life.
2) If as a child, we have been told that life is difficult, then we start filtering for examples of this and as adults we expect life to be difficult and so everything becomes an overwhelming challenge.
3) Often people who have been emotionally abused as children, then over-eat to protect themselves as adults.
Powerful techniques are often required to break limiting beliefs & destructive habits, which most of us have about ourselves, but which express themselves in a whole range of ways.
Erika Brodnock, is here again to share how she conquered her challenge in forming new habits…
Erika: I was determined not to give up on my quest to see the pictures in my mind, in order to visualise the version of me I wanted to exist. I asked everyone I could what to do to see more clearly and refused to pretend I could see when I couldn’t (to the despair of many a trainer)!
Two things worked for me. Firstly, I was advised to use EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) and ‘tap’ on the fact that I couldn’t see and all of the frustration that accompanied that. EFT is like acupuncture without needles and involves tapping on the same meridian points needles are inserted into for acupuncture. The results are similar to those of acupuncture too. Energy blockages clear and energy is once again able to flow, providing relief from aches, pains, long-term ailments, stress and much more.
The work I did with EFT was profound and lead to an understanding that as a child I had witnessed something dangerous, but I had not seen it. I then unconsciously blamed myself for not seeing and had carried this anger and fear in to adulthood . While I carried that anger with myself I shut down my capacity to see. My eyesight quickly physically deteriorated and while I believe I managed to fix that by having laser eye surgery in my early twenties, my ability to ‘see’ was still impaired.
Letting go of the associated anger saw me become able to picture a small white box in the pitch black I saw every time I closed my eyes.
The second step was the process of using my strongest sense (sound for me) to talk myself through the picture that I wanted to create. So I would say ‘I can see the sea’ and the sea would appear. I would then say ‘I can see me’, describe what I was wearing, how I looked inside my head until the picture appeared exactly as I wished it to be.
If your strongest sense is feeling, then feeling your way to the picture with various sensations has worked effectively for clients of mine too.
As with every learned skill, practice made perfect, and the more I spoke the pictures into my mind’s eye, the quicker they began to appear. After a few months I was able to close my eyes and see a picture as I wanted it to appear. without needing to spend 10 minutes talking to myself to get it there. Now I’m proud to say at the coaching and staff training courses I deliver that I can visualise with ease, and have the tools to help anyone who needs to see what’s right before their very eyes.
For more information on EFT, you can visit www.karismakidz.co.uk where I’ve taken to teaching these essential skills to children at the earliest possible age.
Imagine if you could implement this type of teaching into staff training, regardless of the topic being covered and get everyone to commit to this every day with reference to the habit they are trying to change or the new thing they are learning in the staff training. Imagine the speed of progress? These are just examples of one small technique we now teach individuals and groups we work with at adaptas™ to speed up the neural connections for real and long-lasting change.
Erika Brodnock is one of our associates at Adaptas™. Erika is an energy psychologist, specialising in cutting-edge techniques that embrace Quantum Physics, Epigenetics, Noetic Science and Energy. She is qualifed as an EFT Master Practitioner and Trainer (AAMET), NLP Master Practitioner and Coach (ABNLP), Matrix Reimprinting Practitioner, Psych –K advanced facilitator and is an accredited Heartmath provider of workshops and training. She is also the CEO and Founder of The Centre for Positive Children Ltd.
In previous blog posts, we have extensively discussed the influential role of visualisation in acquiring new skills and cultivating beneficial habits while replacing old ones. Many accomplished individuals now employ techniques long embraced by successful athletes to enhance performance, motivation, and focus. However, it’s essential to acknowledge that not everyone possesses a natural talent for visualisation, making the process of creating lasting, meaningful change in both personal life and the workplace more demanding for some individuals than others.
As far back as 1932, Bartlett (One of the 1st psychologists to relate memory performance to peoples learning strategies) found that he could classify his research participants on the basis of their informal comments as ‘visualisers’ who claimed to rely mainly upon visual imagery in remembering, or as ‘vocalisers’, who claimed to rely mainly upon language cues rather than mental images. Vocalisers tended to be less confident in their recall. Bartlett regarded this distinction between ‘visualisers’ and ‘vocalisers’ to reflect a relatively stable characteristic of individuals or in other words a dimension of cognitive style.
One of our associates, Erika Brodnock, is here to share the challenges she had in making the changes she wanted because of this distinction that Bartlett noticed so long ago…
Erika: Our conscious, subconscious and super conscious minds are constantly working together to keep us acting in a way we know to be true to ourselves. This understanding is the first step toward lasting change – getting an awareness of who we are, what we do, our needs, triggers and the person we want to become will enable us to make even the changes we believed were impossible.
The awareness of who we are now, what we do, our needs and our triggers are important, as with this awareness we can self correct and make more conscious decisions to think, do and be ‘better’. But these elements collectively are only 1 tenth as important as the ability to see the person we want to become.
According to Dr Steve Peters, author of ‘The Chimp Paradox’ and trainer to top Olympic athletes; the unconscious mind is at least 5 times the strength of the conscious mind. Peters also asserts that the unconscious does not process things logically with words and numbers. The language of our unconscious mind is sight, smell, sound, taste and feeling. Being completely sensory, the most effective mode of communication is seeing you as the person you wish to become and the things you will think do and be at that time. Hearing the sounds you will hear, feeling the way you will feel and tasting what you will taste will strengthen this communication further…
But what if you’re like I was, and whenever you close your eyes all you see is darkness (with a hint of red if there is a light source in the room)… I remember sitting in many a coaching, training and staff training course, as others described all the wonderful things they could see in their minds eye and feeling a familiar block of envy sinking from my chest to the pit of my stomach. I could see nothing, it didn’t matter how many times someone told me “We can all see, your pictures are just moving too fast” or whatever else it was they decided to say to console me. I still couldn’t see anything and the more I tried the less I saw…
Join me in coming weeks for the step-by-step account of what I did to access my visualisation skills.
Erika Brodnock is one of our associates at Adaptas™. Erika is an energy psychologist, specialising in cutting-edge techniques that embrace Quantum Physics, Epigenetics, Noetic Science and Energy. She qualifed as an EFT Master Practitioner and Trainer (AAMET), NLP Master Practitioner and Coach (ABNLP), Matrix Reimprinting Practitioner, Psych –K advanced facilitator and is an accredited Heartmath provider of workshops and training. She is also the CEO and Founder of The Centre for Positive Children Ltd.
A few little changes to our daily routine can make a big difference in helping our resilience and stress levels.
To listen to a recent radio interview, where Dr. Celine Mullins discusses resilience, and much more, with Mary Darby Byrne, Dublin South 93.9 Fm, click here: Everyday Resilience
(see interview timings below and/or read text of interview below if you prefer to read than to listen).
Interview Timings:
0 -.39: Introduction
.39 – 1.35: Introduction to programme on Resilience
1.36 – 3.47: How did adaptas™ come about?
3.48 – 5.24: Common things that hold people back
5.25 – 6.35: Depression
6.36 – 9.16: Resilience and the brain
9.20 – 13.38: Communication in the workplace
13.42 – 20.00: Being content in one’s job
20.01 – 25.12: Finding what you love doing and tips on being resilient regardless.
25.58 – 32.42: Where did the name adaptas™ come from, and how everyone can responsibility for their life.
Transcribed Audio:
Mary Darby Byrne: Hello and welcome to the brain train Mary Darby Byrne and today’s guest in the studio is Celine Mullins, welcome.
Dr. Celine Mullins: Hi Mary
Mary: You work on training and inspiring change.
Celine: Yes we worked with organizations and with individuals and groups around getting people to take responsibility and get awareness around the things that are holding them back and the things that might be holding them back in having a relationships that they’d like to have, with having the success that they’d like to have and getting rid of, of the things that are in the way of actually moving them forward.
Celine: Yes, we have a number of programs and everyday resilience is around kind of getting a lot of techniques into your day, every day that will actually make you feel happier, will actually get some control over what’s happening in your brain, the kinds of thoughts that your having, where your focus is going. Really, really easy techniques that you bring into every single day from the moment you wake up until the moment you go to sleep. And so getting these things and every day, because there’s a lot of people in the moment in a states of frustration, very unhappy, very stuck with everything that’s been going in the economy and you know there’s been a lot of change taking place recently and all these different techniques bring control over what’s happening in the mind and make people feel much more resilient, can actually make people feel happier, stronger and more able to deal with the moment-to-moment things that happen around us.
Mary: Okay so, what inspired you to set up adaptas in the first place?
Celine: Well my background is I’m a psychologist and I’m also an actress and a producer. Really I wanted to bring all of those things together, because I could see the strength of what I was learning as an actor and producer, bringing all those things together with the psychology and also coaching, and I have studied various other things as well. So I bring everything together and have a looked for the best ways of moving people forward, and for myself personally there’s a lot of moments in my life where I felt very, very stuck and when I started studying all of these things, say with the psychology it made me much more aware of what was going on in my own brain, and my body and where I could actually make changes myself, around the kinds of thoughts I was having, say negative thought patterns, etc and then with the acting believe it or not I used to be a very, very shy little girl and when I started acting, it totally brought me out of myself, gave me this new found confidence and suddenly I was, I was almost like I kind of went from you know the cocoon to the butterfly within a few years of starting drama and I just always could see the strength in both of this things and bringing them together, I always wanted to work with other people, to help other people and I wanted to find a way that I could work with people and so also having studied the coaching and various other areas I looked for the best techniques to help people change quickly, rather than having to be say in therapy for 5-6 years, which is sometimes what happens. Sometimes people can have very negative experiences as children which set them up badly for life and even people who’ve had very happy childhoods, there’s all sorts of things that go on; all the habits, the patterns, the biases that we develop as children are what stick with us for the rest of our lives and often the patterns we’ve developed as children although, they worked for us when we were children when we reach adulthood they’re no longer working, but we’re still in those patterns and so it’s trying to get people’s awareness around this patterns, these biases, these habits and helping them change them.
Mary: What’s what would be a common denominator you see in people, or is there?
Celine: One of the biggest things for me is a lack of awareness for people around what their habits and patterns and their biases are and how this things impact on how they feel about themselves, and how they impact on other people and how their affecting their relationships. So their family relationships, their relationships with her friends and relationships in work and so that’s one of the main things for me is helping people become more aware of the things that are getting in the way of themselves and their relationships, and so it’s back to, you know the negative thought patterns and even positive thought patterns, you know it’s all these thoughts that keep going on in your head and your repeating them over and over and over again and they might not necessarily be the right ones to actually get you to where you need to be. A thing I’ve noticed I guess in the last couple of years, in Ireland we’ve always in Ireland had a predisposition towards you know, ‘oh! Sure you know tomorrow or whatever sure it’s grand, everything’s grand’. But in the last couple of years I think it just got worse. The rates of suicide have gone up, the amount of people on antidepressants has gone up. Obviously people are feeling quite beat down and again around awareness, people have to take individual responsibility for actually making changes themselves. You can’t expect a government or a bank or church or whatever to actually make the changes to your life, you’ve actually got to take responsibility and make changes every single day yourself, if you want your life to be the way you’d like it to be.
Mary: But It’s like, I think I find it strange when people go to, if they’re feeling depressed they go to a doctor to get a tablet, as opposed to trying to find out where the depression is coming on. That’s what I have found. The strangest thing is why don’t you do detective work on yourself, find the source of it and let it go.
Celine: The thing is a lot of people think that, well first of all they don’t have the tools to go and do the detective work. Secondly they don’t have the, well we haven’t been taught in school or college or by our parents a lot of the time how to identify the tools or the techniques to even ask ourselves the questions on, on what we should be doing differently. You know in school we learned geography, history, English, all brilliant stuff, but how useful is that for us in our everyday lives as adults in actually having positive relationships. The thing is that the happiest people in the world are people you live in communities with close-knit relationships, and if we’re going through our lives not having close relationships, it’s very, very difficult for us to be happy, to be content and to be resilient.
Mary: So tell me, your everyday resilience, these are just little techniques, as such. So this is like building a Muscle.
Celine: Yes, yes the thing is that what we’ve realised over the last couple of decades with the brain is that the brain is plastic. So you can change what’s happening in the brain, you can change the neural pathways. So if you imagine you’re walking down a road and there are all sorts of paths going everywhere and you’ve got a load of brambles in the way, and all these brambles are the upbringing that you’ve had, the relationships that you’ve had as a child, the and the biases, the patterns, the habits, all those things that have been created, I mean you know, even as teenagers and adults the relationships that you’ve had, the experiences that you’ve had in, in work etc. the experiences that you’ve had in the school. All this things that impact on how you feel about yourself how you think about yourself, and if you can imagine that there’s certain things that you can do for yourself every day, where, basically you can clear those brambles, that are in the way and you can create new pathways going in different directions. So the brain can actually, just, I won’t get too technical, but just with the neurons, basically you can actually get neurons firing in different ways, if you actually train the brain. And it’s interesting that your programme is called the brain train, because it’s so true, you can actually re-create those pathways in your brain and you can create new beliefs about yourself, new patters, new habits. So if we can actually take the time. People first of all don’t realize that we can do this, so it’s only beginning now to get out to the mass populous that actually the brain is malleable. Because up until a few decades ago scientists believed, that whatever way the brain has developed as a child, that’s the what you’re stuck with for the rest of your life. But actually that’s not the case. Does that make sense?
Mary: It’s a bit like a hard disk that you can wipe and re-program as such because you’ve out grown that particular program.
Celine: It’s not hard wired. So you can replace all the negative thought patterns and all the negative habits with positive ones, or ones that are better for you. It takes a little bit of work, you’ve got to put in the little bit of work every single day. But as I say there’s a lot of little techniques that you can implement very single day and after a certain amount of time those new patterns are formed.
Mary: They just kick in automatically.
Celine could you also do training in offices, you go out to schools, you travel around, but you where saying here and just in your brochure you say that70% of problems in organizations are due to poor communication. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, because one of the things I have discovered, is it wouldn’t occur to one person to pass this information on to that one. Or you have a communications board and people won’t even look at it.
So what do you, go in with a stun gun or something? What’s your approach?
Celine: I mean it’s just back again to bringing awareness to people around the fact that they aren’t communicating information. You know, I’m working with a lot of organisations who, a lot of staff within them say “I don’t know what’s going on half of the time”, “I don’t know what’s going on at the top”, “I don’t know what decisions are being made”, “sometimes I don’t know what decisions are until two weeks later and I heard it from somebody else rather than from the person who should have told me”, and I think a lot of the time it’s just, it’s back to, you know, we’ve got so much information coming at us every day, so much information coming at us from the thoughts that are going on in our mind. It’s so difficult to keep up with all information, you know with all the ads all around us, the flashing lights, the traffic lights etc. and so again the brain has shortcuts and these shortcuts it creates to be able to manoeuvre to help you manoeuvre through the world without being an insane mass with all this information coming towards you!
And so the thing is that, as individuals we’ve all created different shortcuts and so, we often forget, we have assumption around communicating the information. So I might assume that, ‘oh you know you don’t need to know that’ or ‘you’ll find out when you need to’ or ‘someone will tell you’ or ‘I’m just too busy doing what I need to do here to be going and having a chat with people’. Everybody’s very, very busy in their daily life at work. So, again it’s just around bringing people’s awareness to: ‘how am I communication this information?’, ‘Am I actually letting people know around me know?’, ‘Am I talking to my colleagues?’, ‘Am I talking to my customers and what do people need to know?’ It’s the assumptions we make, we make assumptions all the time, that people don’t need to get this information or that it will be communicated. And so a lot of the work that we do with organisations is around getting people clear themselves on how they communicate, because of those assumptions that we make, such as ‘If I looks at a person this way, they’ll know that means this, that, and the other’. But that’s not always the case.
Mary: It would make perfect sense that basically you have to have a little meeting in the morning, just to talk about what the plan is today. Because really it brings me back to school, when we had a timetable. You know you had forty minutes per class, forty minutes per class, of math’s or whatever and that structure worked very well.
Celine: It did yeah
Mary: So really in a way something like that in the workplace or in your life as such.
Celine: Yeah, well some of the most successful organisations, they have team meetings every single morning. Now a lot of people say ‘meetings, we don’t have time for meeting’s!’. However meetings can literally be 5 minutes long. All you have to do is ask ‘what’s working well for you this week?’ and then ‘Are there any issues?’ and then if there are any issues you can take them out of that meeting, and sort them out with the people involved. Five minutes for everybody to get-together, looking at what’s working well?, what’s not working so well?, what do we need to do here?, rather that people needing to get stuck sitting there for an hour with everybody having to be have involved when they don’t need to be. The top organisations in the world have little team huddles.
Mary: But it would make sense: here’s the plan for today, what’s on the agenda for today?
Everybody would know what going on, and then you can, move forward
Celine: And any updates, you know this is where sales are at and this is what’s been done in marketing, tor his is what needs to be created here.
Mary: What do you think are some of the improvements that you’ve seen in people who’ve applied your methods?
Celine: You know, again it would be very much around people becoming aware of the things that they do that are negatively impacting on themselves and on others. And once they get this awareness then we help them with, how can you improve this and what daily changes do you need to make? So it’s that awareness and learning the behaviors that will match it. We’re not talking about changing people into something that they are not. It’s just finding the best version of them, the best version of how they can operate in order for them to be more successful in what they’re doing and to be more content in what they’re doing so that they get the end of every day going thinking, ‘yes, I’m happy with what I’m doing’.
Mary: And do you find people end up taking a different career path as a result?
Celine: It happens, because sometimes people will realise ‘actually this is not where I need to be, this is not getting me where I need to, or where I want to be’ and it’s tough at the moment in this country and I think in a lot of places in the world, because people feel like they can’t go and look at another career or another job, because they’re not necessarily out there. It is very frustrating for me to see, people in a job, where they have to be everyday where they don’t like what they’re doing, where they are frustrated or they are angry and then they’re taking that anger one way or another on the work that they do and the people that they work with and also the people that they live with. There’s a lot of people who are falling out with friends, relationships breaking up left, right and center, because people are so frustrated. And the thing is if you’re not clear on why you’re doing something, you’re never going to be content, you are never going to be productive. We were talking earlier about people getting older and putting on a lot of weight, aging very quickly. A lot of this is down to people not doing what they enjoy doing everyday. Even if you’re in a job that’s not making you happy, at least find things in the evenings and weekends to do, with friends or with family. Make sure that if you love going for a run, really work that in to your day. Because that is going to serve you no end, it gives you a break, it clears your mind and also it helps the aging process as well. I’m going off in a tangent here but it help to keep you intact and it keeps, getting back to the neural pathways, it keeps your brain fresher, if you’re out doing the things that you enjoy.
Mary: Well it makes perfect sense. It was interesting was reading a book called the “Magic of thinking big”. I can’t think of the writers name at the moment, but he was saying in America, one of the execs, when he was picking, their top sales people he only picked the ones were happily married. He picked only the ones who were happily married and who do things with their family, because he said at the time they may be on the same par with their sales, but the guy who isn’t happy and doesn’t plan his weekend with his family and his kids and himself, is going to get bored and not be happy. So then he is coming to work, and is not performing well, whereas the other guy is constantly working and putting time into his family and is happy, is going to grow. He was saying, this is what this particular guy did which makes perfect sense.
Celine: Actually I know a couple who are both 60 yrs old recently, who both lost their jobs. They have worked, 12 hours a day, six days a week, never taking a holiday. All the money that they have was buying ‘stuff’. This ‘stuff’ is just sitting there, this ‘stuff’ is not getting used. They’ve lost their jobs and they don’t know what to do now. They haven’t developed any hobbies. They’re life has just been work. What’s the point? Yes, we have to work to survive. Don’t live to work, enjoy your life.
What’s that book, ‘On your deathbed, the five disappointment that most people have on their deathbed’. Something like that!
I can’t remember the main five. But one of biggest, what’s the word I’m looking for, disappointments was that they worked: I worked too hard work, too much, I didn’t spend enough time with my friends and family. I have this conversation with a lot with people, who are very goal oriented, achievement oriented, they really want to be a success and they say “well you know that’s what makes me happy; I work, I work, I work”. Really? You know if you’re on your deathbed are you going to look back going, yeah, I wasn’t born just to do this.
Mary: I remember, Richard Branson was being interviewed by Gay Byrne, I think on the late, late show at the time and Gay was saying to Richard, he said “you are doing so much, how do you have time, how do you have time for this interview?” and Richard said,” It’s quite simple I employ dynamic people, and I pay dynamic wages, which frees me up to do interviews like this and to live,” And then Gay asked him a few time, and Richard said, “but Gay, I pay dynamic people and I pay dynamic wages and if the people stop being dynamic, they move on’. And he said that is one of the keys! So he has all these people who love doing what they do, they get paid well, they got respected and that is that.
Celine: Richard Branson is a really good example of somebody who’s recognised what he is good at, and he spends his time doing what he is good at. He gets all the other people in and as you say, to do the things that his not good actually and that he doesn’t enjoy. He loves talking to people, he loves having new experiences and that’s what he spends his time doing and look how well it has worked for him.
Mary: What about of people doing volunteer work, and maybe just helping them, you know if they want to get out of a job or do something different?
Celine: Two points on that. I think I’ve been very lucky and also I’ve made some decisions in my life around marrying what I work at and my hobbies and the things that I love doing. I managed to bring, as I was saying earlier, the acting with the psychology together and also the producing. I say I’ve been lucky and also that I’ve made decisions because I guess I’ve been lucky enough, I managed to recognise, that I love doing those things and the benefits of those things and the marrying of them all. And, I have a lot of conversations with people who are working in jobs, who don’t like their jobs but haven’t recognized what they would like to be doing instead, or even what their hobbies are. And, so for people who don’t recognize what they would like to be spending their time on, I would say, go out and try lots of different things. Write a list of all the things that you’d like to do. Would you like to go, do a parachute jump? Would you like to learn how to tango dance? Would you like to be able to do thirty laps without stopping? Whatever it is, would you like to learn to sing? Recognize those things and start actually looking for ways to bring those things into your life. So even for something like a parachute jump, there are ways to get to do a parachute jump by helping a charity out, and so volunteering your time to help some sort of group or charity out is a brilliant thing, because you’re ticking boxes for yourself. You are getting to learn new things and you’re getting to help other people out, and as you work, and you volunteer your time helping other people, you also start recognizing how lucky you are, and what you have that maybe those people don’t have. One of the biggest things for keeping yourself feeling content and resilient is actually being grateful for and recognizing the things that you are grateful for. One of the things I do every single morning and every single evening is I tell myself three things that I’m grateful for. Every morning its ‘I’m grateful that I have legs, because I can get out of bed, I can go about my business because I have legs’. If I didn’t have legs, some people don’t, some people can’t use their legs, how lucky am I that I can?!, and so this is one of the things that I’m grateful for. That very thing..reminding myself that every day it, it feeds into the rest of my day and once I’ve identified those things that I’m grateful for. Like this morning I started making a list in my head before I got out of bed about the things that I’m grateful for and there were about eight of them that came into my mind immediately. Now if something was to happen to me later today. You know as in a car crash or something and I have got my brain in a positive state of mind, from knowing that I’m grateful, that’s going to bring me through whatever happens later today. I will be able to bring myself consciously back to the things that I’m grateful for. Okay, maybe I do lose my legs, but I still have those seven other things that I thought of this morning, and that will bring me through to the next day. What’s really interesting is that people who go through something really Harrowing or something really amazing, you know like win the lottery or something like that. Somebody who loses both the power in their body or wins the lottery or gets that massive promotion at work or whatever. You have a few days or a few weeks or a few months or even a few minutes of a high or a low, but eventually everybody comes back to the state that they started out. So if I’m reminding myself what I’m grateful off every morning, then I’m already at a higher state of being than if I hadn’t. So whatever happens to me this afternoon, if I’ve managed to get myself into that state every morning, I’m going to be way better off because whatever happens to me, if I go way down, I’m going to come back into that state, does that makes sense?
Mary: That makes perfect sense, which links into your everyday resilience, which is building your muscle and if you keep building that, that makes perfect sense.
Celine: You need to do it every day.
Mary: Well you get up every day!
Celine: How much effort is it to think a few of those thoughts ever day?
Mary: Yeah one, two, three things, gosh that what’s what I do have.
Celine: Another thing that’s brilliant actually is, when you wake up in the morning make yourself smile. The brain doesn’t know the difference between a real smile and false smile, so if you make yourself smile, you are getting yourself into a happier state getting out of bed and that will carry you through, and regardless again if anything happens this afternoon or tomorrow, just make yourself smile. It will be much easier to react to whatever that thing is.
Mary: If you have just joined us, today’s guest in the studio is Celine Mullins and Celine is from adaptas and we are here talking about basically, Everyday Resilience. How to change your old ways of thinking, to bring in a new way of thinking, to help you move forward basically and there are different ways of doing that and also getting hobbies, doing volunteer work. So Celine if people want to contact you, if they want to get in contact with you, if they want you to go into their business, or their school, would you call out your website and your number for people please?
Celine: Sure yeah it’s www.adaptastraining.com and if anyone want to e-mail us its info@adaptastraining.com.
Mary :OK, and where did you get the name Adaptas from?
Celine: Adaptas is a Spanish word and obviously, it means to adapt. What I love about it is, a Spanish friend of mine, when I asked what she thought of it, as a name, she said it means, ‘get on with it ‘and I think that’s a really good thing, because, you know it’s back to what I was saying about when you wake up in the morning, it’s all about getting on with it, it’s all about choosing how you want to live your life, how you want to react to things. You know because so many people are so stuck right now and if you don’t take control of your own thoughts and your own reactions to things, and take responsibility, then you are going to remain stuck. We are so lucky, because as a species we have these incredible brains, we can change, we can adapt to whatever’s going on we adapt to our environment. We can choose how we adapt to that environment and I guess for me, it really only hit me even though I’ve studied psychology and coaching and everything. It was about four years ago that I really recognised “hang on, every single thing that happens to me, it comes back to me. It’s not somebody else’s fault that I had an argument with them, or we had an argument. It’s not somebody else’s fault that something didn’t go the way I planned. It’s my fault. I have to take responsibility and, and if I take responsibility, everyday is easier. I have much more control over what happens to me and, and what doesn’t happen to me.
Mary: So if somebody wants to start to change things and improve their life, what advice, or where would they go? What would you recommend? A starting point for people? Besides going to you!
Celine: You know, as a say I just think, look at what is working for you and what isn’t. Are you achieving the things that you want to? are you having relationships you want to? are you taking the time to learn the things that you want to? Learning new things is really, really important for keeping the brain young and there’s been a huge amount of research that’s been done on the memory. Memory skills can be improved through learning new things. So they’ve taken people who were in their 60s, 70s and 80s (years old) and got them to learn new technical things. Learning a new language or learning a musical instrument or learning how to use a technical computer program, it can actually rewinds the memory ability back to when it you were 20 or 30 yrs old. So if you are constantly learning things through your life, you are going to keep your brain younger and therefore you are going to be able to respond to things better. You’re going to be able to adapt to whatever comes your way, and so, I would, I guess say, that’s the biggest piece of advice; to make sure that you’re doing the things that you enjoy doing, and keep challenging yourself, keep asking ‘what can I do every day or eat every week?’ or you know whatever amount of time you have, because it will keep you young, will keep you alive, keep you fresh and also. You know the things I was saying earlier and obviously there’s still loads more techniques, but do things like reminding yourself what you are grateful for and then even at the end of every day, (again because I know that a lot of people are feeling very stuck right now, because of the situation and their recession etc) think about the things that you’ve achieve that day, ask yourself ‘what did I achieve today.’ ‘Well I smiled at a stranger in the street and they smiled back and you know that made me feel happy’, or ‘I managed to drink two more glasses of water instead of coffee or beer or whatever…just recognizing those little things you’re doing for yourself every day.
Mary: It’s just a little isn’t it? Just tweaking you don’t have to have the full monty all in one day.
Celine: That’s the thing. A lot of us think, and I used to think this as well, ‘oh if I really want to do the things, that I want to do, I’m gonna have to make massive changes in my life!’ But, actually it’s just a few.
Mary: It’s a little bit very day, isn’t it because otherwise you get overwhelmed,
Celine: And if you manage to do those things for a few days and then you fall of the wagon and you forget to do them, that’s fine just get right back on. If you’re trying to get fitter, and you’re doing exercise everyday and then three days into it, something else comes up and you don’t get to do it, don’t beat yourself up, do it again. Because you’re going to be strengthening the neural connections, you’re going to be learning the new thing, you are going to be keeping yourself happier and healthier, more alive and vibrant.
Mary: And tell me, what do you think is the biggest, if you can answer this, what was the biggest wake up or awareness that you got when you have been going into these different companies and working with these people?
Celine: Oh yeah, that’s another thing that I love about my work, is that I get to work with different individuals and groups every day, and I am constantly learning new things about myself. It’s very funny, because the word expert, I kind of don’t really like the word expert because, I don’t think we are really ever experts in anything. There’s always so much to learn and every group I work with, I learn new things about myself. The day that I don’t think I’m learning something new about myself or other people or communication or relationships, is the day I would stop doing what I’m doing. You know because life is for learning and it really makes me sad when I meet people who don’t value learning or don’t recognize the value of learning. Because life is very short. We don’t know what’s going to happen next. We don’t know what’s going to happen in two hours time. It could be over you soon so you might as well make the most of it.
Mary: Yeah I, I suppose maybe some people have the old, school was dreadful, so they don’t want to, and maybe they associate learning with that. But you know, if they went into college and you know it’s pretty good or I’m not doing that anymore. I suppose you can unplug.
Celine: There’s a lot to be said for, I mean we could get stuck on “oh! That was terrible”, “and this was terrible” but what you want to do? Move forward going “ah nah everything is rubbish” or do you wanna go “hey, let’s get on with it!”.
Mary: Ok, well speaking of getting on, call out your website and your number again for people
Celine: Ok sure, its www.adaptastraining.com and the e-mail is info@adaptastraining.com
Mary: Celine Mullins, thank you so much for coming in today. It’s been really enjoyable.
I think I can safely say, that for most of us, most of the time, when we endeavour to do the 21 days, to cut out the unwanted or adopt the new healthier behaviour, we generally give up as quickly as we started! Never mind 21 days, we usually stop after just a few days. It is so difficult for us to change a habit, and even the most committed, focused and disciplined of us struggle.
For those of you who are about to embark on a change of habit I have some harsh news for you. It actually takes on average 66 days for new behaviours to become unchangingly automatic. Worse than that, research shows that it can take some people up to 245 days to change a habit!
The good news is that change is possible, when you know how! Recent discoveries in neuroscience have made some amazing discoveries about the ability to learn, change and adapt.
Ever heard the saying ‘“neurons that fire together, wire together”? This refers to the fact that we have cells called neurons within our brains and nervous systems, that are responsible for everything we do. Neurons link up with each other and form strong bonds based on your experiences, emotions, thoughts, interactions with your environment, etc.
Think of it like this; ever hear a piece of music and it reminds you of a certain time in your life, certain person/people, certain clothes, smells, sensations etc? This happens because there was some bit of neuronal wiring, that when the music activated one area of your brain, there was a cascade of electrical impulses to the surrounding neurons. Due to proximity of the neurons, the memories were triggered.
The term ‘brain plasticity’, refers to the lifelong ability of the brain to re-organize neural pathways based on new experiences. We can actually re-wire our brain by choosing what we expose ourselves to. And therefore, habits are possible to break.
Tune in next week if you’d like to learn how to change habits. But before you do that have a think about this; when we think of habits, we think of smoking, couch hogging (i.e. not exercising), eating unhealthily, gambling, checking and re-checking emails or social media pages, to name a few. If you are one of the lucky ones who has none of these vices, do you think you might have other habits that are not serving you well?
For example, how about not recognising the efforts of your colleagues, or not responding to phonecalls, or not implementing the step-by-step instructions you learnt at that staff training you attended?
In last week’s blog, I talked about how the brain has been shaped by evolution to adapt and readapt to an everchanging world (Cozolino & Sprokay, 2006). The thing is, that when things become too comfortable the brain gets lazy.
In one of my favourite books ever ‘The Brain That Changes Itself’, Norman Doidge, states that the way to stave off memory loss into old age is to keep learning new things ‘learning new physical activities that require concentration, solving challenging puzzles, or making a career change that requires that you master new skills and materials.” i.e you have to want to learn and grow, you have to actively make an effort to do so. You have to want to find new things to learn and then focus on these if you want to hold off old-age memory loss.
Likewise, it is also true that you have to want to find other ways of being, to avoid accepting mediocrity and habitual behaviours.
If you send a child to piano lessons and they don’t like learning the piano, it is highly unlikely that they will learn anything past what they are being set by their teachers for exams. On the other hand, if a child has begged to be able to attend piano lessons, and they really want to learn, then they will want to be great, and they will want to learn to play every song they hear on the radio. And this knowledge will remain with them for years to come, perhaps their whole lives, because they have a passion for learning and they are having fun!
Experts and researchers (e.g. Cozolino & Sprokay, Caine & Caine, and those listed above) all over the world insist that brains grow best in the context of interactive discovery and through co-creation of stories that shape and support memories of what is being learned.
Our focus at Adaptas™, when designing and delivering staff training, is to encourage people to learn new things about themselves, through real active experience and sharing of this experience.
How can you find ways for yourself and your colleagues to want to learn so that everyone will actually learn when attending staff training? How can you make it attractive to learn?
Well I would suggest, firstly, recognize the importance of learning for the longevity of your memory (reading Norman Doidge’s book will inspire you, I promise!). Secondly, think back to when you were a child, and you like making up stories and playing games and generally using your imagination…this is how we learnt as children, and believe it or not, this is how we learn as adults…learning needs to be engaging, fun and full of imagining the possibilities!
Let us know if you and your colleagues are ready to play, and in doing so learn, grow and keep your brain fresh and alive!
Empathy is an emotional and thinking muscle that becomes stronger the more we use it. Here are a few practical tips to consider. You can use them during communication skills training, or share them with your colleagues to lend them a hand!
• Listen – truly listen to people. Listen with your ears, eyes and heart. Pay attention to others’ body language, to their tone of voice, to the hidden emotions behind what they are saying to you, and to the context.
• Don’t interrupt people. Don’t dismiss their concerns offhand. Don’t rush to give advice. Don’t change the subject. Allow people to have their moment.
• Tune in to non-verbal communication. This is the way that people often communicate what they think or feel, even when their verbal communication says something quite different.
• Embrace the “93% rule” in your communication. According to a renowned study by Professor Emeritus, Albert Mehrabian of UCLA, when expressing emotions and attitudes, the words we use only contribute to 7% of the overall message received by people. The remaining 93% is conveyed through our tone of voice and body language. Therefore, it’s crucial to take the time to grasp how we present ourselves while communicating our feelings and attitudes to others.
• Make an effort to learn and use people’s name. Also remember the names of people’s spouse and children so that you can refer to them by name.
• Be fully present when you are with people. Don’t check your email, look at your watch or take phone calls when a direct report drops into your office to talk to you. Put yourself in their shoes. How would you feel if someone did that to you?
• Smile at people. This will also boost your own self-esteem and your immune system!
• Encourage people, particularly the quiet ones, when they speak up in meetings. A simple thing like an attentive nod can boost people’s confidence.
• Give genuine recognition and praise. Pay attention to what people are doing and catch them doing the right things. When you give praise, spend a little effort to make your genuine words memorable: “You are an asset to this team because..”; “This was pure genius”; “I would have missed this if you hadn’t picked it up.”
• Take a personal interest in people. Show people that you care, and genuine curiosity about their lives. Ask them questions about their hobbies, their challenges, their families, their aspirations.
Extensive research consistently demonstrates a direct correlation between empathy and business success and profitability. Numerous studies have linked empathy to increased sales, superior performance among top managers in product development teams, and overall enhanced organisational performance. Consequently, companies are now actively seeking new recruits who exhibit healthy levels of empathy. Although empathy may be considered a soft and abstract skill in an individual’s repertoire, its impact can yield tangible, concrete results. Naturally empathetic individuals, adept at fostering positive connections with others, utilise empathy to build trust and establish strong bonds. Conversely, a lack of empathy often leads to organisational bullying, employee and team distress, and difficulties in selling and retaining clients.
Can empathy be developed in employees to increase sales and improve teamwork? Well, I have good news and bad news for you. The good news is that it is indeed possible to teach someone to be empathetic. However, the bad news is that the process requires their willingness to learn, as it demands dedicated practice and commitment to master effectively.
Many individuals find the requirement to be empathetic deeply uncomfortable, but for the majority, it is a skill that can be acquired and developed with time. Of course, some people may lack the capacity to experience empathy due to adverse early-life experiences and insecure attachment to primary caregivers, or due to certain brain and genetic disorders. However, for most people, cultivating empathy is entirely feasible. The benefits of nurturing empathy are significant: as you practice it, your relationships improve, and you develop a desire to continue honing this skill. Empathizing with others’ perspectives enables smoother conflict resolution, reducing the likelihood of disputes. Considering the immense advantages, is prioritising the development of empathy in staff training worth it? We think so!
When we see other people getting hurt, our brain responds in a characteristic way. The same neural circuits that process first-hand experiences of pain are also activated by images of pain in others. This phenomenon can be described as empathy – the ability to share and understand another person’s feelings. For instance, if I accidentally slam a door, hurting my finger, I wince in pain. Similarly, my colleague, who witnesses the incident, experiences distress on seeing my discomfort.
But there is more to human empathy than merely sharing another creature’s pain. Neuroscientists Jean Decety and Philip L. Jackson argue that human empathy requires several components (Decety and Jackson, 2004). Apart from experiencing shared feelings, an empathic person should also possess the ability to:
• A sense of self-awareness and the ability to distinguish one’s own feelings from the feelings of others: When my colleague sees me wince, she feels my pain. But does she understand the source of her discomfort? If my colleague lacks self-reflection, she might not recognize that I am the one in real trouble.
• Having the capacity to regulate one’s own emotional reactions is crucial. Observing someone else’s distress can be unsettling, and if empathy solely involved “sharing feelings,” empathetic individuals might tend to distance themselves from those in distress, so as not to experience such negative emotions. However, to demonstrate empathic concern or sympathy, my friend must be able to manage her own responses to my pain, showing understanding and support instead.
• Considering another person’s perspective is essential in understanding their emotions and experiences. For instance, while I enjoy attending conferences and events overseas, my colleague has had a fear of flying since childhood. Now, suppose we discover that both of us are required to attend an event abroad that involves flying. To comprehend how my colleague feels upon hearing about this necessity, given her role’s requirements, it becomes crucial for me to empathize and grasp her viewpoint. Without such understanding, it could be challenging for me to recognize and relate to her feelings accurately.
Several other factors also influence the likelihood of people demonstrating empathy, such as:
• Being on familiar terms with the person
• Recognising similarities between themselves and the person
• Having personally experienced the circumstances of the individual
Our willingness to show empathic concern is ruled by our moral, societal and political beliefs. Who deserves our empathic concern? Societies offer different answers to this question. Very often, the answers are about who’s considered “one of us.” A recent survey of preindustrial societies found that people who feel strong loyalty to their own social group are more willing to consider violence against outsiders. (Cohen et al 2006).
What implications does this have in multicultural workplaces and societies? Much of the time, we give less time and attention to others based on them belonging to another group, race, gender. The frightening thing is, that we are often not aware that we are doing this. Therefore it is essential that as part of every organisation’s staff training, awareness is brought to everyone’s own biases, and beliefs, so that we consciously treat everyone equally and fairly.
Enabling people to examine their own beliefs, biases, attitudes and how these might be blocking relationships and productivity is a very important aspect of all our staff training. See some of our Open Courses for examples.
Frequently, there exists a disconnect between the content and delivery of staff training and development programs. The focus is often on the theoretical “what” aspects, rather than the practical “how” elements that should be emphasized. This raises a crucial question: How can trainees truly grasp new knowledge if they are not provided with the necessary tools and guidance to effectively apply the concepts covered in the training room?
The ancient Chinese philosopher, Confucius stated, “tell me and I will forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I will understand.”
For staff training and development to be effective, one must identify the most critical skills to teach, and then allow learners to use the skills under realistic usage conditions. Staff training must be so compelling as to absorb participants in its realism in a way that engages more than the intellect. It must be practical so that participants may actively use it. It must be relevant to the complexities of the work life of participants, and most importantly, it must provide a memorable, lasting experience.
Many approaches to staff training and development do not address what is difficult about applying the knowledge or skills in the right ways. They make it difficult to remember or use the information appropriately once the training is over. Most of what we really know how to do we learn by ‘doing’, so any training must involve ‘doing’!
For example, when it comes to learning how to effectively communicate, a person could read every book ever published telling them how to be a good communicator. However communication is only necessary when another person is involved. Therefore, all the books in the world or classroom learning where someone imparts theories and models on how to communicate is never going to be effective in teaching somebody to sell or influence customers, or how to work effectively in a team. Furthermore, we all operate from a place of habits and patterns, most of which are learnt early in life, and which no longer serve us. Most of us are unaware of these patterns and how many of the patterns are effecting how we interact with everyone; family, friends, colleagues, and customers etc. Sitting in a room, talking about how it should all be done will not bring our awareness to these patterns of behaviour.
Staff training and development should be enjoyable but it should also have a significant impact on the learners and give them simulated experiences they can rely on when they need to deploy them in real life.
This is why Adaptas™ have brought the most experiential learning and deep reaching techniques together to create effective Interactive Training Services, which create new habits and patterns in communication. Experiential learning engages the learner at a more personal level by addressing the needs and wants of the individual, even when learning as one of a group. By developing people as individuals, rather than simply transferring arbitrary capabilities, we develop people’s confidence, self-esteem, personal strengths, and crucially a rounded sense of purpose and fulfillment, which fundamentally improve attitude, life-balance and emotional well-being. These immensely important outcomes are just as important for sustainable productive work as the essential skills and knowledge typically represented in conventional education and work-related training.
In our view, the purpose of staff training and development, is to make staff significantly happier and more productive, to increase profits as customers return over and over, and to improve staff retention so, less budget is spent on recruitment and training of new recruits. Did you know that to hire one new person costs approximately the equivalent of one year of their annual salary? Something to consider!
At Adaptas™, we aim to save each organisation we work with money and time by making everyone more effective at what they do. Our objective is to ensure the value we bring to your organisation is, by a significant margin, larger than costs associated. For this reason we insist on agreeing at an early stage, the desired results and how to measure them. Adaptas™ in association with RPCM (www.consultrpcm.com) will bring experience and ideas to ensure the measurement agreed is appropriate for all.
Contact us to discuss how we can address your staff training and development needs.
After being invited to provide a psychologist’s perspective on empathy at a business event last year, I began to reflect on something that I had previously taken for granted. I realised that the concept of empathy is becoming increasingly relevant in the business world, yet there are still many individuals who either overlook its importance or lack the knowledge of how to cultivate empathy with their colleagues and clients. Exploring this topic in depth would require multiple blog posts, but for now, I encourage you to contemplate both your own and your colleagues’ capacity for empathy. Do you truly grasp the essence of empathy?
Empathy can be formally defined as the aptitude to recognise and comprehend the circumstances, emotions, and motivations of others. It entails our ability to acknowledge and understand the worries and concerns that others may have. Empathy can be described as “putting yourself in the other person’s shoes” or “viewing situations from someone else’s perspective.”
There are now numerous studies that link empathy to business results, making it no longer a touchy feely topic to discuss in business. At its core, empathy is the oil that keeps relationships running smoothly. Studies correlate empathy with increased sales, with the performance of the best managers of product development teams and with enhanced performance in an increasingly diverse workforce. When it comes to staff training and client retention or customer service training courses, an understanding and development of empathy is imperative. If you are interested in reading into this topic further all the studies mentioned can be viewed here (http://www.eiconsortium.org/).
Empathy allows us to create bonds of trust, it gives us insights into what others may be feeling or thinking; it helps us understand how or why others are reacting to situations, it sharpens our “people acumen” and informs our decisions.
Bestselling author, Daniel Pink (A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age) predicts that power will reside with those who have strong right-brain (interpersonal) qualities such as inventiveness, empathy, and meaning. He cites three forces that are causing this change: Abundance, Asia and Automation. “Abundance” refers to our increasing demand for products or services that are aesthetically pleasing; “Asia” refers to the growing trend of outsourcing; “Automation” is self-explanatory. In order to compete in the new economy market, Pink suggests six areas that are vital to our success. One of which is Empathy; the ability to imagine yourself in someone else’s position, to imagine what they are feeling, to understand what makes people tick, to create relationships and to be caring of others: All of which is very difficult to outsource or automate, and yet is increasingly important to business.
Dr. Daniel Goleman isolates three reasons why empathy is so important in business today: the increasing use of teams, (which he refers to as “cauldrons of bubbling emotions”), the rapid pace of globalization (with cross cultural communication easily leading to misunderstandings) and the growing need to retain talent. “Leaders with empathy,” states Goleman, “do more than sympathize with people around them: they use their knowledge to improve their companies in subtle, but important ways.” This doesn’t mean that they agree with everyone’s view or try to please everybody. Rather, they “thoughtfully consider employees’ feelings – along with other factors – in the process of making intelligent decisions.”
We recently developed some trademarked processes which we use in our staff training and in particular our customer service training courses take “putting yourself in the other person’s shoes” to a whole new level. Let’s have a chat to see how you and your team can work out who’s shoe it is anyway!!.
