Monthly Archives: July 2018

On previous blogs, we have looked at why we have conflict in the workplace, what is happening with the brain when we have conflict and last time, how to 'cage the chimp' in a conflict situation.  As a supervisor, manager or leader you will experience conflict at some stage in your life, it is inevitable. I would suggest if your a manager and never experienced it then you have probably (if you're honest) been avoiding it.   Ok some essentials to get you going when dealing with conflict as a manager:

Don’t lose your temper with team members– being aggressive never works, you may think you are winning, but it’s a long-term loss. Lead by example.

Don’t persist with impossible people– make sure you deal with them (it’s your role) If part of a group divide (split up).

Don’t ignore tensions in your team– burying your head in the sand doesn’t mean it has gone away.  The quicker you deal with it, the better the outcome will be.

Tell the truth about how you see a situation – critical to be

One of the many reasons people come to train with us is to learn what they can do better when delivering training and very often a bonus of finding out they are also actually doing things right too.  One of the most significant realisations I experience from people though is just how much their training practice is embedded as a habit and that breaking that habit to improve will be their biggest challenge!

I’ve talked in previous blogs about just how valuable feedback is to improve and also how important it is to deliver it in the right way.  I love to give feedback that makes people realise not only what they are doing, but also what they are capable of.  In one of my last courses, one of the delegates commented to me that she knew that she would often be the person who did all the talking and that she had suddenly realised how detrimental that was to what she was trying to achieve.  As we discussed together, this was because her perception of what she had to do to achieve the

When we do make decisions, (some of us find making decisions easier than others, and I have recently written a blog on this, see here) what direction do you go? Some of us, when faced with a decision, make the decisions in a lot more empathetic way; the choices are based much more about the person. Others make the decisions in a much more objective way, more task focused. It is interesting watching people make decisions and the reaction on the receiver’s face when there are opposites. Remember there is no right way, it is a balance.

If there is a difference with this preference between the decider and the receiver this may create problems in motivation. The problem with just being objective and task-focused is that it may appear cold and tough because it is about the task first. You usually find this preference may not show much appreciation initially; they may usually respond to negative comments better, with no issue and no bad feelings because it is about the task.

The other preference

On our last management blog regarding conflict, we discussed the importance of caging the chimp and the fact that in a conflict situation it can make things worse.   Today we are going to look at some beneficial techniques to calm the chimp down.  Remember the chimp or to use its correct name, the Amygdala is an essential part of our brain.  If we didn’t have it then we would probably not be here, it’s just not very effective as a manager or when dealing with conflict.

As I have suggested, I have been in many situations where the chimp has been active, in fact, if I am honest I made it a habit.  So much so that I didn’t recognise when it is being used.  It was as natural to me as breathing in and out, I didn’t think about it.   The following techniques are not just ‘one-time’ techniques; they have to be used again and again so they become habits themselves.  Of course, they will be positive habits.

Ask empowering questions to yourself – simple questions such as “Why are

Columbia v England (England won 4-3 on penalties) It may be short-lived or maybe not but a fantastic result, and as a coach, I find myself reflecting on what may have taken place over the last few months in that game.  As the penalties were happening, I was in my hotel room at Heathrow preparing for an in-house coaching skills day for managers. The tension I felt, along with the stress, you would have thought I was an expecting father pacing around the room.

As this was happening, I was continuing to text my husband and son talking about the mental strength required and the amount of practise that would have taken place in the run-up to that situation. That game was a battle with the brain, not the body.

Have you ever really thought what that moment would feel like? I said to my husband via text, that match would be like gold dust with the amount of learning that took place. The experience gained in that game would have been phenomenal and what the team would have taken from it would

In my last blog, I talked about a recent poor training experience someone had when the trainer handled questions poorly and how it completely disengaged the person who was meant to be there learning. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the only poor practice that was going on that day; here is part 2:

It’s always critical to remember the reason that training has been organised; the organisation requires an improvement in behaviour, skill and knowledge to make a change.  If the training is being delivered by a trainer in a face to face environment, the behaviour of the trainer is critical to ensure that learning takes place in the very best environment they can foster.  The majority of trainers are there to pass on the learning to make the changes because they (normally) have the skills to do so having been experienced in that field but sometimes there is a vital line that is crossed when perhaps an ego comes into play!  In the recent experience I was given there were statements from the

Unless you are challenged how do you know what you don’t know? Coaching is fantastic for challenging and encouraging coachees to think differently. When you think in a different way you learn something new.

Our brains don’t always like change; they are happy to stay in one place, stay in our own personal comfort zone. It takes an input from a coach to guide in a different direction so that the coachee can learn more. Coaching is an excellent place for this to happen, in fact, a perfect place for this to happen. A coach provides the space for the awareness in a coachee to grow and for this to happen.

A coach has to park their outside life and judgements to one side, to be in the room to listen to the coachee. We as human beings are entirely ignorant with our views on life, a lot of this is because “we don’t know what we don’t know” Our opinions, bias and judgements are based on our world, which is very small in comparison to the broader world.

I enjoy watching the light switch in a coachee