Tag: HR

Barely Visible

I’ve been umming and ahhing about writing a post like this for a while, and I’ve never been sure how to start it, until I checked into a client office earlier in the week. It’s common place for the front desk to take a photo of guests for ID purposes, and the pic above is the ID photo that was on my pass. I expect and hope the one stored on the system looks clearer (otherwise what’s the point right?) and this odd picture tipped me into writing about the facilitation and consulting parts of my job.

Put very simply, I think a key indicator of a facilitator’s best work is when they are hardly noticed. I helped to run an event recently and afterwards one of the guests, Ian, came up to me and said, ‘I loved the way you facilitated today for us, it felt like it was all about us and unlike most facilitators, you didn’t try and insert yourself into the day at all. It wasn’t about you.’ Ian’s feedback is very kind, I appreciate it very much, and as a facilitator I’m disappointed that he felt this experience we shared was not normal.

The same goes for consultancy. The art of a great consultant (and I’m not one yet – though I’m trying and striving every day to be the best I can and to improve), is largely to show genuine interest and curiosity and belief in people, and awaken these things in others too with as light a touch as you can possibly manage. I find it helpful to ask myself and people I work with questions like, ‘What’s the least I can do today to make a positive impact?’ I believe Busyness is a curse, and yet there’s no substitute for effectiveness, which takes quiet practice, determination and hard work.

From my experience in corporate life this approach is also very tricky. A typical organisational hierarchy begets a certain amount of pressure to ‘make an impact’ and often this is interpreted as how much more impactful (is that a word?) you are when compared to your peers.Without care it can end up as a bit of a slugfest, and I don’t think a battle of egos is particularly helpful. Think about the best people you work with and for, and the chances are there’s something barely visible about them too. They’re thinking about you and them and how that interaction can deliver something useful for you, for the customer, for them too.

The weirdest bit about all of this is overcoming the natural uncertainty that if you come and go, somewhat ghost like, people won’t remember you. And if they don’t remember you, how can they ask you to do other things with them, how can they recommend you? It feels counter intuitive, and for sure there is a danger of taking this philosophy too far. I gave a talk for the CIPD at one of their conferences earlier in the year and omitted to tell the audience who I am and what I do. I’ve been ribbed about it ever since, quite right too. Barely visible and invisible are two completely different things.

You might like to think about what’s the least you can do today to make a positive impact? I hope so, and I hope to see you again, barely, very soon.

 

Disconnected

So a transition through Newark airport which was supposed to take two hours ended up taking twelve. Sure there was some bad weather involved but eventually our flight went from delayed to cancelled because of a broken seat. Seriously – that’s what we were told. Here are the lowlights of my United Airlines experience.

Inconsistency

As the flight delays lengthened so the story changed. ‘Your connecting flight is on its way’ became ‘Your connecting flight has not left Cleveland yet’ became ‘Your connecting flight is on its way’ and so it went on. Delay times shifted and so did the story. Six hours after the flight was supposed to depart we were finally given the news that the flight was cancelled.

I was surprised and a little angry that the airline staff kept feeding us these inconsistent lines and was left wondering what kind of workplace culture means that a) it’s OK to mess customers about like this and b) no staff seemed willing to question the garbage they were being asked to share with us.

No Ownership

A couple of fellow passengers were speaking with the boarding gate staff and looking for assistance to help fix broken travel arrangements caused by the long delay. ‘I have no authority to deal with that, you need to speak to my supervisor’ was the broken record reply. ‘Where is your supervisor?’ asked the passengers, ‘Round at Customer Services’, came the reply. I followed my fellow passengers out of curiosity and they put their question to the Customer Service desk and got this answer, ‘I have no authority to deal with that, you need to speak to my supervisor’. The conversation stalled and United Airlines were saved by the bell as we were finally asked to board.

When Dave Carroll wrote United Breaks Guitars, the song emerged out of Carroll’s frustration at United’s ability to react beyond what was effectively ‘I have no authority to deal with that, you need to speak to my supervisor’.

On the basis of what I experienced, nothing’s changed. There appears to be no engagement between customer services and HR – and in a round about way I suppose I should be grateful as United gave me a great story to start my talk on rehumanising the workplace with at Ohio SHRM. When mistakes happen, you get a chance to see the real version of the company you’re dealing with. How they react and respond when the shit hits the fan says a lot about how a company treats its people and its customers. Ultimately what really bothers me about this story is that United Airlines think it is OK to put people in the customer service line of fire with no proper training and no power to sort even basic things out for the customer.

Ordinarily Outstanding

I was part of a fascinating conversation yesterday which came together under the banner of The Petersham Project. There’ll be more about that later, for now I want to retell a story I recalled about a guy I worked with named Trevor.

Trevor supported a lot of sales teams when I worked for BT. Sales people aren’t known for delivering reports on time, keeping sales databases up to date, doing performance reviews etc etc, but I tried to help Trevor by being timely and accurate and in return he was enormously helpful to me, and many others.

Trevor delivered his work in an understated manner, I talked with him about this often and he would say ‘I’m just doing my job’. And he is right and he is one of the best examples of someone just doing their job that I’ve ever seen. Reminders from Trevor would be timely and friendly. Mistakes would be corrected and pointed out to you nicely, so you might not do it again next time. Simple, ordinary stuff, done in a thoroughly outstanding way. Trevor’s behaviour stood out also because the prevailing atmosphere was largely toxic. At times (not always I hasten to add)  we had people in positions of power behaving tyranically and often that transmitted through the organisation resulting in people seeming to take pleasure in others misfortunes. I may come back to this toxicity another time, for now I just thought it was important to help contextualise Trevor and the fact he chose to work in the wonderful way he did.

At the end of one year, Trevor was recognised for his efforts with an Outstanding appraisal. In BT we had five appraisal grades: Outstanding, Very Good, Good, Generally Satisfactory, and Needs Improvement. Outstanding and Needs Improvement were like hen’s teeth, really rare. In terms of trying to measure performance, the company had become great at aiming for mediocrity, and of course it’s easier to manage folk if they’re all ‘doing OK’, right? Interestingly, after being in receipt of an Outstanding, Trevor spoke with me a few times about feeling pressure to ‘up his game’. He didn’t want to, and as someone who worked with him I didn’t need him to either, Trevor’s work was spot on. This approach seemed to be getting him down.

I’ve not seen or spoken with Trevor for over three years now, but his behaviour has made a lasting impression on me. So too has the rather slavish way that he was then expected to up his already outstanding game. We don’t all want to be rock stars, so why is there a constant drive and pressure on our people to behave that way?