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Platinum and diamonds

I just bought my wife an Eternity Ring. (Technically it’s a semi-eternity ring because the diamonds only go half way around.) It’s wonderful how nice and polite people are in shops when you say you want to spend a lot of money on platinum and diamonds. 🙂

Eternity ring - not my wife's but like it! 😉

Why platinum? Because our wedding rings are platinum, that’s why. But what’s important is that platinum is a lot more expensive than gold.

Why?

Because it’s a lot less common than gold.

What’s this got to do soft skills? Cialdini’s six principles of influence include one called ‘Scarcity’, that’s what. On this list it’s number six.

Let’s take an example, which will make things a bit more obvious, I hope. Because people want things more if they can’t have it (why do you think sales “must end this weekend”? Or why do you suppose there are limited editions of cars, collectors cards or… well almost anything!). A lot of our work is done in-house for what we call our internal client: this internal client is responsible for selling places on our courses to the workforce where they work. Often this ‘internal client’ is one of the company’s HR team.

Instead of sending and email around everyone in Workplace X saying ‘There are are 18 places on the training place next month about MBTI, the Myers Briggs Type Indicator” our internal client says “There are only 18 place on the training place next month.”

The difference is critical.

By implying that there’s not much of me to go around, it makes people want us more… 🙂

The only hard part to using this technique is finding a way to describe what you’ve got as relatively rare. For example, when you email us, one of the things we might mention is that we’re currently totally booked up for the next two months.

Oh yes, something else… A moral point!

You have to be ethical. We won’t be telling you that if it’s not true. It is. It’s just that we decide to to say it… 😉

As an aside, saying how busy we are not only hits the mark in term of Cialdini’s ‘scarcity’ tool, it is also a good example of another of his principles, that of ‘social proof’. After all, if lots of other people are using our training, it implies it’s good.

The trick for using it in your working environment is to find people that the person you’re talking to regards as peers and agree with you. Something like “After all, it’s what they’re doing on the day shift now, have been for months!”

Again, be ethical: it has to be true!

Teacher Stress!

… can get pretty bad, can’t it. So bad in fact that this week’s TES (Times Education Supplement) is running an article headlined ‘Why do so many teachers kill themselves?’. Fortunately stress is not that bad for many teachers…

…but it’s still pretty horrific!

The stats are awful and the case-studies about stressed-up, suicidal teachers are shocking: if you want to read the shape and scale of the problem, you can read it here. What I want to concentrate on here is why teacher’s stress is a special case, why most of the stress tools available to the rest of us don’t work for teachers and what strategy might be a good one for dealing with stress in schools.

Cards on the table first – I’m married to a teacher and I’ve done lots of work with teachers over the last seven years (suffering stress and not) but the only actual teaching job I’ve done was many years ago in a girl’s private school, teaching sixth-formers statistics… (insert your own joke here!)

I believe the main problem (stress-related that is) that plague teachers stem from the lack of control teachers have over their own jobs.

What do I mean?

Success is measured against criteria that change frequently and are largely not related to things that can be controlled by the teacher – grades are a function of many things, not just teaching, such as the pupils themselves, obviously. Pressure without control is a recipe for stress.

Furthermore, the ‘tyranny of the bell’ means that each high-pressure performance is done to someone else’s timing. There’s no time to for a teacher to take stock and regroup: nor can work be re-scheduled or taken slowly if you’re feeling down. The pupils in front of you can’t allow that, and the classroom timetable pins teachers to a schedule without the flexiblity that the rest of us take for granted to the point we don’t even think about it.

Teaching combines the pressures of management with the strictness of factory-floor work. When was the last time ‘normal’ people couldn’t decide their own holiday dates? Again, a stress-recipe!

Then… teaching strips away some of the best anti-stress support techniques that we take for granted – being a teacher is, essentially, a solo activity in that there’s no time in the classroom for banter and supportive conversations. As a teacher you’ve got a tiger by the tail and you can’t let go. ‘Normal’ people use support at work as a defense against stress.

In short, teachers have trouble finding time to ‘sharpen the ax’.

All of this means that the tools that work in the ‘normal’ world can’t be (readily) applied in schools. Taking time off, for example, to prevent longer-term damage isn’t an option…

So what anti-stress options for teachers have we got left?

Basically, if tactical tools are out of the window, we’re left with strategic ones. We need to develop emotional resilience rather than coping mechanisms. It’s difficult to put things like this in a blog because, by definition, a blog is more suited to tools, tips and techniques rather than long term tool and superficiality won’t help anyone…

All I can suggest is that it’s really important that teachers – before they begin to suffer from stress! – develop and strong, flexible and robust self-concept… something that’s internally orientated rather than being dependent on external validation. By the time the symptoms of stress start to show, it’s an uphill battle for a teacher.

That’s easier said than done, I know – but there are anti-stress tools that can be taught. (I know, I teach ’em!). I have to ask though, why more INSET isn’t given over to dealing with stress amongst teachers, given how big the problem is…!

In the meantime, I’ll outline a useful anti-stress tool that’s suitable for teachers in the next post about stress amongst teachers.

You may want to know a bit about our stress INSET for teachers

MBTI in jobs with people – introversion is a good thing, honest!

I’m an introvert. And so are many of my friends… and that’s despite the fact that our jobs are (basically) about being with people, talking to people, and working with people. No wonder I’m knackered by the end of the day.

It’s something I’m often asked about, particularly by people trying to get with grips with MBTI for the first time:

You can’t be an introvert – all you ever do is work with groups of strangers!

That’s a misunderstanding of the meaning of ‘introvert’ in the Jungian sense – in the sense that MBTI uses it. I can act like an extravert – it’s just that it drains me to do so, whereas I know trainers who’re extraverts who come out of a day’s training absolutely buzzing with energy. After all, they’ve made 12 new friends in the day! 🙂

And I can tell you, speaking as an introvert, that being one is something of a liability because of that – but in another sense it’s an advantage. The advantage is that I’m less ‘bothered’ by the audience/groups responses as I work with them, explaining things and exploring things.

It’s not that I don’t care about them – it’s just that I’m less instinctively ‘swingy’ about things. As an introvert I’m more likely to ‘stick to my guns’. If a things are going well with lots of interaction I don’t so easily get carried away and if they’re not going so well I don’t so easily get brought down.

It makes being an introvert a pretty handy tool for working with people.

(PS: the advantages of being an extravert coming later! 🙂 )

Time Management – deadtime tools

We ran a half day workshop session recently on Time Management – and many of the usual issues came up… There’s no magic bullet and it’s about self discipline… any system for time management works better than no system so stop prevaricating and pick one…Pomodoro, JDI, whatever feels right for you is more right for you than random nothingness! 🙂

StopWatch

But one slightly unusual question did make its way to the top of the pile: how do I best use my downtime? The answer is, of course, that you don’t. Downtime is downtime for a reason and if you try and work for too long without downtime you’ll become inefficient and your work will be more and more error-prone.

The reason is simple – downtime is not the same as ‘dead time’ and the real question should be ‘How do I use my dead time?”.

Dead time is time when you’ve got enough energy (or whatever) to be productive but some logistical problem is stopping you. It might be that your laptop battery has died so you can’t access the local cafe’s wifi or it might be that your phone has no signal on the train you’re on or… you get the idea. The issue is simply a logistical one, whatever the cause of the problem.

First things first – check whether you aren’t confusing downtime with deadtime. It might be simply better to stop, rest and take downtime. In fact, if you don’t you might end up with your ‘doing-time’ being so unproductive it becomes deadtime!

Given that deadtime is 99% of the time a logistical issue, the solutions lie in simply being organised enough to keep on top of your logistics. I can’t promise these ideas will make every single moment of deadtime massively productive, but they work for me…

A kindle – mine has a cover with a built in light so no matter where I am, I’ve always got something useful to read. If you’re traveling with it a lot, I turn of my wifi connection to save on the battery life. The life’s fine but if I’m away for a week, every little helps.
A laptop – I’m meeting someone for a coffee/meeting in a cafe; I’m ten minutes early – where do you think I’m writing this!? Again, battery life can be an issue, but my Macbook lasts for ages. I make a point of charging it while I’m packing, if I’m going away, so that I know it’s fully charged as I leave the house – a simple trick but one that’s saved my a lots hour or two over the last few weeks as I travel up and down the country by train.
iTunesU (and podcasts) – subscribe and they’re on your phone. Pack headphones and you’ve got the possibility of a lecture from some of the world’s leading experts in your ear as you’re sitting on a buss! If you’re not familiar with iTunesU, it’s hidden at the back of the iStore but it’s a massively useful resource of some amazing material (and some dross too, of course!). Take a while to check it out and you’ll see what I mean. By the way, comfy headphones are a must if you’re trying to understand tricky stuff! 🙂
Your phone – personally mine’s an iPhone but whatever you’re using, learn how to use it! You don’t need a notepad an pencil with you any more to jot down those moments of genius you have! There are plenty of apps that will record your voice so you can just talk to it, set the time and have it speak your notes back to you when you’re in the office. No excuses for not capturing your bright idea!
A good diary set-up – pretty much anyone with a busy job/lifestyle can benefit from a good calendar app on their phone and I’ve taken this one step further by syncing mine with the calendar on my laptop and my office computer; there are plenty of ways to do this, but personally I use Google Calendar for extra backup. What’s more, with a few tweaks of the settings, friends and staff can see when I’m busy, when I’m free and book me in… only those few I trust, of course!
Training shoes and a skipping rope – okay this is an odd one, I admit, but when I’m traveling this all I need to make my hotel into a gym for half an hour. (I don’t skip in m room – I find somewhere quite outside to do this). Other people run, but I’m too lazy! I’m also experimenting with a yoga DVD to pop into my laptop for that time between waking up and going down for the hotel breakfast…… but I can’t tell you how well that’s working, yet.
In-car radio thingy – now I have to confess I don’t know exactly what to call this little gadget. It sits in my car and broadcasts to a very short range radio signal (a metre or so) which I’ve tuned one of the stations of my in-car radio to… By attaching my an MP3 player (in my case my trusty iPhone) to this gadget, I can listen to my iPhone in the car. Books, lectures, podcasts and just plain ol’ music. The beauty of this, of course, is that I don’t need headphones, so I stay legal and safe!

So there you go – a quick run through a few of the ways I’m combatting my deadtime. Your mileage will vary of course, and they won’t all be useful to you, but a couple of ‘em might be.

Let me know… … and if you’ve got any useful tips yourself, let me know that, too!

Presentation special kit time

It’s only just a week away…. our big Bamboo and Oak delivery day for South Lakeland – and that makes it kit-testing time! 🙂

With a big venue like this the projector will have to be a long way from the screen, obviously, to get a big enough image for everyone to see easily, even at the back. From our point of view, however, we want our laptop on the screen so we can see what’s coming up and be able to control things better.

That means the projector and the laptop will be a long way apart. Hmmmm… the solution? Our new 25 metre VGA cable. The only downside is the weight! 😉

Bamboo and Oak, by the way, is our large scale presentation on coping with pressure and stress and being resilient – when it feels like the world is out to get you. Last time out we got feedback like “Sell the Renault and buy yourselves that Porsche!”. Roll on next Friday!

Stress vs Pressure

Stress isn’t pressure. That’s a simple fact, true by definition – but it’s not how people perceive stress.

The definition we use is this: stress is pressure you can’t cope with. In other words, no matter how much pressure you’re under, it’s not stress if you (feel that you) can cope. What that means is that there’s no such thing (in this sense) as a ‘high stress job’. You can have a high pressure job, sure, but if you can handle it, it’s not stressful.

Brain surgery is high pressure, yet I’ve never met a stressed brain surgeon. Why? Because they are confident they can do what they do. That means it’s ‘just’ pressure.

On the other hand, if you don’t think you can cope, it’s stress, no matter how little pressure you’re under, objectively.

What does that mean in practice? Well for starters it means we can stop telling ourselves we’ve got a high stress job… because that builds expectation of getting stressed.

And what do expectations do, all too often? Become self-fulfilling prophesies, that’s what!

Stress and consequences of mistakes

Don’t stress the big consequences

Sometimes it’s the little things that stress us. As they say in some circles: “It’s not the elephants that get you stressed, it’s the ants!”. We’ve all made trivial mistakes and got away with them (God knows I have). We’ve almost all also made big mistakes and got away with them. (Again, God knows I have!)

I’m pretty sure that we’ve all also made big mistakes and not got away with it – these things stress me but in a sense I don’t mind getting hauled over the coals for that kind of thing… because if I’ve made a big mistake I deserve to face the consequences.

The times I get annoyed though, are the times when I make a tiny mistake and I don’t get away with it – the mistake may have been trivial but the consequences snowball out of proportion, somehow taking on a life of their own.

Putting a stamp on an envelope that doesn’t have enough value to cover the cost of postage is a trivial mistake. If the envelop is addressed to the Inland Revenue and contains your VAT return (in the UK) the chances are also that it’s trivial because the envelop will just travel second class.

But…… if you’ve already left it close to the deadline and you now miss that same deadline, your trivial mistake can have significant consequences.

And in terms of managing our stress, this is a problem.

We beat ourselves up because of the wrong things.

Looking around me in the various places where I get called in to consult and support stressed staff I notice time and time again that people are orientated around the effects of actions, not the actions themselves.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that no one should worry about the consequences of mistakes – just that only worrying about the consequences of mistakes is nothing more than a stress-inducer. Sure there are times when the effects of a mistake are so serious that we’re bound (rightly) to get stressed by them but as a long term stress-survival tactic that’s not a good place to be.

What we should, self evidently, be looking to minimise at a personal, stress-carrying level, is the number of mistakes we make. After all, the consequences of those errors are largely out of our hands. The mistakes themselves are something that we, by definition, can control.

Think of other people as ‘multipliers’. They can be greater than one or less than one but they can only apply to a mistake you make. If you don’t make a mistake, their multiplier can’t work. Multiply zero by anything and you get zero, after all!

If I make a small mistake with a big multiplier because of other people’s actions, the consequences are serious. (Usually we don’t need to get stressed because other people’s multipliers are less than one: one (mistake) times nought point two (the other person barely cares about your mistake) only gives you a total score of zero point two!.

Can you easily(!) control other people’s multipliers? I doubt it. That means the biggest portion of the consequences of mistakes is unchangable from your perspective. Is there any point in getting stressed about that? No.

Can you change the number of mistakes you make? Yes. Is there any point in getting stressed about that? Well no, not really, just try and improve! But if you must stress about something, stress about your own mistakes, not other people’s reactions.

Let’s take a personal example.

I made a mistake when I read, recently, the cooking instructions on a ready-meal. As a result the food was going to be ten minutes late. Had my wife had ten minutes spare in her timetable for the evening that wouldn’t have been a problem at all. As it was, my wife (who’s generally a saint) had real problems finding time to eat her meal before she had to leave the house once more.

Okay, okay, I shouldn’t have had the meal ready ten minutes late, but that was, in and of itself, a trivial mistake. The stress only arose because of other people’s responses (my wife having booked her day so tightly that she didn’t have ten minutes spare to wait for food).

How stressed should I have got? As stressed as I would because a meal was ten minutes late? Or as stressed as I would have got if my wife didn’t have time to eat?

Stress training

While we might not be sure about everything, we can be fairly sure about why one of our other more popular training courses is asked for though – our stress management training courses are obviously just what a lot of organisations need at the moment, with restructuring and cuts making a lot of staff very stressed indeed.

MBTI training – step 2

Our MBTI training is in huge demand at the moment, with MBTI step 2 being particularly popular – if only we knew why!

While step one (the traditional MBTI that everyone know, giving the four letter description) is a fantastic tool, the Step 2 assessment gives a greater and more subtle understanding of your personality. We’ve been using it a lot in FE and HE at the moment, where it’s been, as always, fantastically useful and popular.

Online training update…

Our online training packages have been available for organisational clients for a while now and we’re very please to announce that they will soon be available to everyone. We hope to be live with them in April, 2012! Watch this space.

We’re beta testing them right now, so if you want a sneak preview of the first three courses, drop us a line. All we ask in return for a month’s access is some positive feedback and comments.

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