Latest News

Subscribe now to receive news and information on our latest programmes and services.

Email

FAQs

Here is a selection of some of the most frequently asked questions together with Merriweather responses. If you would like to know more… please call us!

"We are already stretched and under resourced, and in addition we have now been asked to now lead other parts of the business in addition without getting any additional resources/headcount – I am worried that this will throw us off track just as we were starting to make some progress – any suggestions as to what I can do?"

READ OUR SOLUTION

"I feel as though I am having to drag my team with me – how can I get a team of inspired and accountable leaders – who volunteer to deliver what is required and then actually do it?"

READ OUR SOLUTION

"My team all seem very busy – but I am not convinced they are doing what I want them to do – they seem to be busy doing what they want to do and levels of activity seems to be their measure of success not results?"

READ OUR SOLUTION

"I have recently taken over a team which has failed to deliver its numbers for 3 years – I know this is an opportunity for me to succeed – what have other leaders done to achieve success in my situation?"

READ OUR SOLUTION

"How do other successful leaders structure their vision and communicate it in a way that their teams will understand and be able to buy-in to, cascade the message and deliver success?"

READ OUR SOLUTION

"Have you got a quick, proven yet simple way for me and my team to get feedback on our effectiveness as leaders?"

READ OUR SOLUTION

"Some of my colleagues seem to sail through the organisation getting a promotion every couple of years – what can I do to get the same career advancement?"

READ OUR SOLUTION

"My team and I am are struggling to enjoy coming to work – there is a lot of tension in meetings – people are not looking forward to our meetings – they are blaming too much work load on why they haven’t delivered what they said they would – how can I make my team a fun place to work and become famous for delivering what we said we would? How can I retain my staff – I know many are looking around for other opportunities."

READ OUR SOLUTION

"Our leadership meetings are just dreadful, they are boring and a waste of time - no actions come from them, no fun, no good ideas being put forward let alone challenges for me – It’s no wonder we are struggling to do our numbers – how can I make our meetings more exciting?"

READ OUR SOLUTION

"Facts and figures - How much time is wasted in normal organisations through a lack of clarity. Teams and individuals who do not have clarity, clarity around the role they are fulfilling and the outputs that are required from them, lack of clarity from above?"

READ OUR SOLUTION

"How can I be less boring or even recognised as inspirational when I present? Can you help me become an inspirational speaker? This is clearly part of the equipment I will need to enjoy a successful career – what can I do to become outstanding?"

READ OUR SOLUTION

"What do other successful leaders use to measure the degree to which their team members are leading their teams effectively? How can I ascertain to what extent they are inspired and being well lead?"

READ OUR SOLUTION

"Have you got / What do other successful / During your 15 years of working with successful leaders and teams what is the single most valuable piece of advice you would offer to help my team work together more effectively?"

READ OUR SOLUTION

Solution 1

This is simple – you just need an inspired team full of exemplary leaders... let me explain:

This is of course the “CEOs” greatest trick - keep applying the pressure until they crack - there is nearly always more room for improvement, especially when you accept that 30% of an employees time is wasted in a normal organisation due to a lack of clarity. Our experience is that that this challenge is a two way problem - the CEO is right to challenge however the managers need to be able to quantify what they are doing in order to provide any sort of helpful push back and this is where the problems lie - we are typically struggling to be able to quantify what we are doing hence the CEO always wins. What we want is a scenario where we can say “yes I am happy to do that however can you advise which of these other activities you want me to stop doing to free up the time?"

 

We advise and support our clients to do the following and it takes a few months to achieve:

• Ensure your team are clear on what is expected today - ensure they are being exemplary leaders with their teams – ensure your teams are being well lead and well managed. If we accept the fact that at least 30% of time is wasted due to a lack of clarity we can see why it’s a very attractive policy for the ‘CEO’ to just demand more. The only way to stop this pain and simultaneously stand out as an outstanding leader and probably advance your career as a result is to have a well lead team in place.
• Commit to your team being clear on the plan, where you are going, what is expected of them and what they can expect from you. We recommend our 7Qs approach... this helps the audience to receive the message and when well told with stories makes it easier for the audience to re tell and share with others – which is part of the buy in you are looking for
• When your team have demonstrated they understood what you said you can then ask them to decide together what the short term Thematic goal needs to be and get actions to deliver this into a 90 day dashboard, ensure they include some ‘softer’ actions around people/team and leadership.
• Can you get your team to commit to undertaking a 360° Leadership survey once now and once again in a few months time – you need to find ways to get their focus onto their approach to leadership - having this survey to consider is one very effective way of achieving this change
• After approx 3 - 6 months we typically find that teams can improve their productivity by up to at least 30% but generally much more which will enable you to do more, knowing exactly where the limits are.
• If you are already in this high performing position it is simple there are 2 simple options:

1. Work more hours – alienate your hard working and high performing team which may encourage people to leave
2. Stop doing something you are currently doing – inspire them further with your Leadership – they will very probably redouble their efforts anyway when they feel your leadership/support/love.

The key to the this is now how you present your story and findings to the stakeholders who don't want you to stop doing the things you believe you need to, so having the accountability dashboards to demonstrate what you and your team are doing is very helpful as this level of insight is unusual and hard to ignore and argue with.

 

So the way to overcome the challenge of how to do more with less is to lead an inspired team who are clear on their and their colleagues priorities and understand that if you need to reprioritise that’s ok because you are so efficient you will know what to stop doing in order to find the additional time.

 

Of course there is always further productivity efficiencies to be achieved our experience is that the way this is done is critical. If people are made to feel valued and significant they will do more happily – so it’s our job as leaders to provide this environment for our people. We must either accept that we don’t know what our people are doing so we can ask them to do more or commit to leading them and inspiring them to come to work each day to focus upon doing what needs to be done to achieve the required results. We can then show them how valued and significant they are by showing them we see what they are doing and recognise that we need to make some adjustments before we ask for more. A motivated and inspired person can deliver 100% more than the demotivated because the demotivated person is doing nothing or worse they are taking other people/teams/projects backwards.

Back to Top >

Solution 2

There is only one way we recommend to build an accountable and high performing team of leaders because we have done it hundreds of times over the past 15 years:

• Be focussed on being an exemplary leader
• Inspire and encourage others to do the same
• Provide absolute clarity
• Take the necessary steps to achieve buy in
• Hold regular and exciting meetings
• Hold people accountable to perform to agreed upon standards
• Make it enjoyable for everyone
• Make sure your people feel valued and significant

All this is very, very simple yet very hard to achieve and rare. Many of the successful leaders we work with have achieve a great team of “willing and accountable volunteers” with our help by following a simple process regularly

1. Take the time out to consider your own leadership
2. Commit to holding regular quarterly leadership meetings (2 days offsite every quarter)
3. Make these the most relevant and exciting meetings possible (Hire Merriweather to lead them)
4. Provide absolute clarity to the team  (we recommend the 7Qs approach) as it makes it easier for the audience to receive and re transmit
5. Allow the team the time to speak and be heard
6. Allow the team to decide what the priorities are
7. Make your team a fun and inclusive place to be where everyone is respected, feelings are respected, time is respected – honesty is expected and where people are not permitted to remain in the team if they fail to do what they said they would –  We believe that introducing a simple way of working known as REG is hard to beat. REG stands for Respect Empathy and Genuineness and in the 10 minutes it takes to quickly understand what these words mean to the team we can all immediately benefit from it – by showing our colleagues either a RED or GREEN REG Card when they forget to uphold the agreed upon standards of behaviour – this is a serious but fun way of encouraging the behaviours we want from our peers, superiors and subordinates. So when the boss reappears from the break 5 mins late we can card them, when someone interrupts, doesn’t listen, only listens to interrupt, takes a call, plays with the phone etc etc we can simply call out this undesirable behaviour – and most importantly the team enforce these agreed upon standards not just the leader (see the REG Cards) if you want some let us know we can send you the hand out and the cards for your whole organisation – it works!!!!)
8. Get SMART and ambitious actions in to a 90 day dashboard – both business and soft people/team/leadership deliverables
9. Through these effective (facilitated) regular meetings your team will grow together and start to unite and achieve more with the ever improving alignment
10. It simply requires the leaders to become more focussed upon and committed to more exemplary leadership. See these 30 statements in the self assessment survey which show what we mean by leadership – note, it doesn’t ask how well you do this it simply asks how often do you do this? Get your team to undertake this survey twice – once now and again in a few months and make the findings and their actions to improve it or maintain it part of your conversation at your regular 1:1s
11. Once team members are allowed to own the vision as their own they will do so much more, getting this buy in is the key. They way to do this is in our experience regular, repetitive, compelling and relevant messaging at meetings where people are ‘forced ‘ to be present with phones off. Meetings where the leader has prepared how to deliver the message not just made 100 slides. Meetings where the team want to come because they feel valued, informed, significant, meetings where they achieve and find solutions to their business challenges and leave with many of their challenges resolved and have enjoyed helping their colleagues resolve their challenges too.

Back to Top >

Solution 3

All too common a situation for struggling businesses or teams who have been leaderless for some time and then a new leader is appointed and also in M & A and acquisition times...”let’s appear busy” – here is what we have supported many of our clients to do which has brought some outstanding results:

• Step back and appreciate the very normal scenario you are now responsible for
• What you are witnessing are motivated people who want to please  - yet are unclear on the direction or approach to take to find success – they just need some leadership
• Bare in mind most people are in this situation to some degree – most people are trying to succeed in spite of poor leadership above them
• Decide that your team will not be able to fit the normal criteria of at least 30% of time wasted due to a lack of clarity. Normally the closer one gets to head office, the higher this figure is - commit to ensuring your team have clarity
• This means firstly you working out where you want them to go, what you expect of them and repeatedly and consistently sharing this with them and equipping them to do the same to other stakeholders (a simple structure we recommend is the 7Qs) this helps the audience receive the message and re transmit it onwards
• Don’t worry about discovering what they are doing  - you will never get to the bottom of this and gives people the opportunity to feel attacked (because they have been busted or made to look stupid when in fact they were simply lacking experience or leadership – neither is their fault)  - instead decide and commit to inspiring them to consider what they will now start doing
• Provide clarity on the 12 -18 month plans and ask the team to decide what the most important thing to achieve in the next 90 days is (Use Merriweather strategic and tactical planning workshop to consider and capture your plan)
• Get some actions from everyone and add some of your own to everyone and include some ‘softer’ people/team/leadership actions too and then get their focus on having to come back in front of their colleagues in 90 days time and declare either RED or GREEN
• We find that typically on a quarterly cycle the ‘accountability dashboards achieve 50% at the first attempt – 70 % at the second and then after 6 months scores of between 80 – 90% become the norm
• You now have  a team who are doing what they need to do to achieve success – why worry about what else they might be doing as well

Back to Top >

Solution 4

• Be honest - this requires no training or practise – yet this is what people want most of all from their leader
• Think about everyone from your teams perspective to ensure you can address them as individuals – you have a ‘buy-in’ challenge – they will want to believe and follow you but they will believe that things are in the way – it’s your job to overcome these imaginary barriers which will prevent or slow them down in coming with you
• Go to work focussed on being a great coach and give them hope and confidence to have a go
• Do you have time to move some of them on, and re hire and hit targets? Unlikely in most cases – commit to growing and developing them it will probably be your best bet – if you can inspire them to perform again – they were probably very motivated when they joined this company – it’s your job to get them back to where they were
• You must focus your energies on inspiring them by sharing your vision – you need to be consistent and repetitive in your approach – they will need to hear this about 5 to 10 times before they start to believe it – if you keep it consistent and vivid with some personal analogies and stories it will make it easier for others to share/emulate and tell others.
• Enjoy watching your team grow in confidence and be patient this will take 3-6 months - there is probably a large (negative) legacy which you will need to overcome
• Provide absolute clarity and be honest – let them know what you expect of them and make it clear if this ambitious exciting and challenging journey is not for them – that’s fine you will do all you can to help them move on and find other challenges to pursue
• Hold regular structured meetings – where you all debate and agree upon the short term priorities and set into dashboard actions and timelines to achieve it
• Give your team the time to be heard (to vent their frustrations) then draw the line and move on
• Show them how it will be different – a team where you value each other and trust each other – a team where you do what you say you will do and everyone holds everyone else accountable for this approach
• Celebrate some small quick wins – unite the team around some small quick wins
• Let them get the benefit of your experience through you being a great coach and advocate for them – don’t do their jobs for them
• Quickly identify the ‘Mood Hoovers’ in your team and offer them additional love and support to find their way forwards
• Move the focus to them as leaders – inspire them to come to work focussed on their leadership and having some fun trying to become more exemplary leaders (get them to undertake a 360° survey  - once now and once again in 4 months time) let this form the basis of your 1:1 meetings
• Recognise and reward and measure the things you really want to see (More exemplary leadership, accountability, great team work)
• Hold people accountable and call out the behaviours you do not want to see at your team meetings –
• Focus upon short term (90 day) goals and actions both in tasks and leadership behaviours
• Show some vulnerability to them –it will accelerate the time it takes them to trust you

Back to Top >

Solution 5

Successful leaders learn to use a simple and effective structure and approach to ensure that their team has a clear view of what needs to be achieved, why it is important and what success will look like.

 

Part of the success is about repetition, avoid the need to feel as though you need to say something new every time you see them. If they know what you are about to say before you say it, that is a pretty good guide to the fact that they have clarity!!

 

Secondly, get them to feedback to you what they heard – then you can be sure of what they heard.

When they are telling your story, you have critical mass and the rate of change will accelerate.

 

Answer and share with you team regularly, and expect them to do the same the answers to the following ‘7Qs of Clarity’.

Bring to life the 7Qs in your world:

1. What are we trying to achieve?
2. What will success look like?
3. Why is this important to the business?
4. What are the consequences of not achieving it?
5. How will success for the team be measured?
6. What can you expect from me?
7. What do I expect from you?

In providing your team with the answers to these questions you are giving them the best possible chance of success

The third part of the success is taking the time to fully consider the answers to these 7Qs, we spend alot of time with Leaders helping them to work out, capture and breath life into their vision. Make it memorable, share with them what’s in it for them, share it well and most of your team will probably come with you.

Back to Top >

Solution 6

Yes – we have yet to find a more effective model than the one below. Get colleagues to provide you with their feedback to the following 30 questions, and compare this to your own self assessment scores.

 

Time and time again we realise how most of the challenges we are facing are simply addressed through focussing upon executing more and more these 30 actions.

 

It may surprise you to hear that over the years of people completing these surveys the most common area where we all come up short and need to do more is simply “ seeking feedback upon how our actions affect other people’s performance” which really is quite ironic!

 

We will all benefit from changing this normal situation and break with tradition, ask how we are doing? Our advice is to do this every quarter, with your team and if you really want to drive change publish everyone’s results every quarter and watch the improvements happen.

 

Leadership Survey

The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership are competencies that are essential in getting extraordinary things done in organisations.  When leaders are at their personal best they are practicing the Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership.  To assess your personal leadership take a couple of minutes to score yourself against the below statements.

 

The rating scale runs from:
1 - Almost Never
2 - Rarely
3 - Seldom
4 - Once In A While
5 - Occasionally
6 - Sometimes
7 - Fairly Often
8 - Usually
9 - Very Frequently
10 - Almost Always

 

Model The Way

Leaders establish principles concerning the way people should be treated and the way goals should be pursued.  They create standards of excellence and then set an example for others to follow.

Statement	Self Assessment
I set a personal example of what I expect of others.
I spend time and energy making certain that people I work with adhere to the principles and standards we have agreed on.
I follow through on the promises and commitments that I make.
I ask for feedback on how my actions affect others people’s performance.
I build consensus around a common set of values for running our organisation.
I am clear about my philosophy of leadership.
TOTAL

 

Inspire A Shared Vision

Leaders passionately believe that they can make a difference.  They envision the future, creating an ideal and unique image of what can then happen – breathing life into their visions and getting people to see exciting possibilities for the future.

Statement	Self Assessment
I talk about future trends that will influence how our work gets done.
I describe a compelling image of what our future could be like.
I appeal to others to share an exciting dream of the future.
I show others how their long term interests can be realised by enlisting in a common vision.
I paint the “big picture” of what we aspire to accomplish.
I speak with genuine conviction about the higher meaning and purpose of our work.
TOTAL

 

Challenge The Process

Leaders search for opportunities to change the current state of affairs – looking for innovative ways to improve the organisation.

Statement	Self Assessment
I seek out challenging opportunities that test my own skills and abilities.
I challenge people to try out new and innovative ways to do their work.
I search outside the normal boundaries of my organisation for innovative ways to improve what we do.
I ask “What can we learn?” when things don’t go as expected.
I make certain that we set achievable goals, make concrete plans, and establish measureable milestones for the projects and programmes we work on.
I experiment and take risks even when there is a chance of failure.
TOTAL

 

Enable Others To Act

Leaders foster collaboration and build spirited teams; actively involving others.

Statement	Self Assessment
I develop cooperative relationships among the people I work with.
I actively listen to diverse points of view.
I treat others with dignity and respect.
I support the decisions that people make on their own.
I give people a great deal of freedom and choice in deciding how to do their work.
I ensure that people grow in their jobs by learning new skills and developing themselves.
TOTAL

 

Encourage The Heart

Accomplishing extraordinary things in organisations is not easy.  To keep hope and determination alive, leaders recognise contributions that individuals make.  Leaders celebrate success.

Statement	Self Assessment
I praise people for a job well done.
I make a point to let people know about my confidence in their abilities.
I make sure that people are creatively rewarded for their contributions to the success of our projects.
I publicly recognise people who exemplify commitment to shared values.
I find ways to celebrate accomplishments.
I give the members of the team lots of appreciation and support for their contributions.
TOTAL

Back to Top >

Solution 7

Many of our clients have achieved a swift rise to the top of the Company and this is how:

• They certainly don’t focus on  it (Career advancement)  – almost the opposite - they focus upon delivering in the current role yet let it be known that they will be looking for their next new greater leadership challenge soon when they have achieve the current one
• They all share one common approach – they all prioritise leadership over task. The leaders whom I have seen rise more rapidly and stay at the top for as long as they choose are those who have decided to focus n more exemplary Leadership.
• Let me explain what I mean by more exemplary Leadership - take a look at the 30 actions listed in this self assessment survey. Note it doesn’t say how well do you do something it is simply saying how often you do these 30 actions.
• So coming to work focusing on these areas seems to be the essential component of career advancement - let me explain

There comes a time in every managers career when they realise 2 things - they can’t do this on their own and they need to stop doing their teams jobs as it’s a) not helping b) they need to now start doing what they have been hired to do - LEAD

Because the stats surrounding Leadership are so poor (30 % wasted through lack of clarity, 75% of projects fail to deliver on time or on budget, 80% of people who leave their teams do so because of poor leadership above) it is not surprising that to be outstanding in this leadership space is not hard - it’s just rare, uncommon, abnormal.

How many people are speaking highly about the results your team have achieved? How many people appear to be inspired, energised and focussed. How many teams do you know where you can ask any one of them what they are doing and what they are trying to achieve and you get a consistent, compelling business focussed answer? Well not many – try the elevator pitch technique and you will see what I mean – ask them three simple questions  1) What is your team trying to achieve? 2) What will success look like? 3) How will success be measured?
Imagine the surprise you would receive if you did receive a clear concise and compelling answer to these questions....it would be unusual.

Make this the case in your team – and your ambassadors, your personal ambassadors will be out there personally endorsing you to anyone who will listen. An inspired team is one who are clear upon a small set of essential information ( 19 boxes see below ) – it is these teams who get outstanding results, get motivated, get the leader the recognition they deserve – the alternative is often a leader who is busy making their people look good at the expense of growing a team of leaders who make the leader and the whole team look god. Commit to being a more exemplary leader  - drive this behaviour and focus through your team – it is highly unlikely that a) your team won’t achieve outstanding results b) you wont to recognised c) the manner in which you lead your team to success will help your leaders to rely on you when the next big ‘challenge’ arrives...who can fix this???? Oh I know....It will be your name on the list to sort out the next challenge.

 

Back to Top >

Solution 8

This is all too normal don’t worry you are not alone!! Give our process and approach a good go for 4 – 6 months and you will find yourself leading an inspired team of people, a team which everyone wants to join and no one wants to leave.

 

The facts are stark yet easy to interpret – Most normal teams waste at least 30% of their time through a lack of clarity, 75% of projects fail to deliver on time and on budget, 75% of M and A fail to add significant shareholder value and 80% of people who leave their org/team do so because of poor leadership above. So fear not you are not alone you are quite normal. However these sad statistics (which actually everyone knows) are a very poor indictment of us as leaders – it’s us as failing Leaders who are causing these stats to be true.

 

Leaders are generally failing to lead, inspire and motivate their teams , particularly in times of change, not through what they are doing but through what they are failing to do.

 

Let me explain how we have helped many leaders from all around the world and from many varied cultures unite and inspire their teams making their team a place people want to join and not leave – a place where people enjoy coming to work focussed on getting the right work done to deliver the required results, what we at Merriweather call an inspired team.

 

Take a look at these 2 triangles one says normal the other abnormal – it’s time to focus on becoming abnormal as normal does not look good to me.

The whole piece starts with trust – if we can get together and get to know each other a little better, have non work conversations then we can start to accelerate the journey to having sufficient trust to work effectively together. The problem lies in the fire fighting nature of failing teams or lack of confidence in admitting and discussing openly the reality of where we are.

In the absence of trust we cannot have meaningful conversations, we struggle to have exciting meetings we have silos and fear and reprisal – we have teams competing against each other not focussed on the external world, not focussed on delighting your customers.

 

So the way in which many leaders have overcome these challenges with our support is as follows.

It starts with the 7 simple questions:

1. What are we trying to achieve?
2. What will success look like?
3. Why is this important to the business?
4. What are the consequences of not achieving it?
5. How will success for the team be measured?
6. What can you expect from me?
7. What do I expect from you?

We take a leader away from the normal day at work and help them to consider and capture the answers to this – this becomes the basis of the business plan – we then prepare the leader to share this with their team in a very inspirational manner.

 

The team are informed that they are being invited to a series of 2 day quarterly business meetings which are designed and proven to help them improve their Business – deliver their results, resolve their business challenges

 

At the beginning of the first meeting and the second and third and so on the Leader takes approx 30 mins to share their business plan using the 7 questions as the structure, they also show the team some of the key milestones using the Q8 slides – all delivered simply with personal stories as this is about painting a picture of where they want the team to get to, where they want the team to aim for – they are bringing to life the journey, giving a road map – this is about the future – don’t waste time trying to repair the past – you don’t have time – you need to focus on exciting your people about the future and giving them reasons to come with you.

 

In over 15 years of using this methodology it is rare that the majority of the team don’t want to come – its generally in our experience that most do want to and a few have major challenges which they will need help to overcome (negative legacy of poor treatment) or indeed you may need to move them on if they can’t get out of the way of change – but generally this is unusual we normally find when this approach is followed people will buy in over 0 - 5 months regardless. We often find ourselves with some teams thinking   “Oh wow this is the one he/she will never change"...but I am continually amazed at how they almost always do...if you follow the process.

 

So once the team have heard you bring to life the destination (7Qs) you need to ensure that  they really did understand what you meant – the only real way to achieve this is to have them speak to you about it – you need to rapidly get to the point where you are confident that they understood what you meant.

 

Armed with this clarity the team, possibly for the first, can have a great conversation about their business as they all have an increasingly complete and consistent picture.

 

For this to work they need a leader who is honest, a leader who has decided that no matter how failing they were yesterday as a leader they are committed to becoming more exemplary in their leadership. By leadership we mean doing these 30 things most of the time – We encourage all our clients to undertake this 360° leadership survey regularly – initially it serves to let the team vent their frustrations and it allows the leader to demonstrate some vulnerability and work on improving things  - it brings the right conversation to the fore with the leader as the subject but of course it is for everyone’s benefit and they know it!! You won’t have to wait long for one of your team to ask if they can all do this 360° survey with their teams – it’s their idea now you are not imposing it on them. However when they do suggest it make sure the deal is that they undertake it twice, once now and again in 3 – 4  months time and use the findings as a basis for your conversations at your regular 1:1s.

 

Part of the journey you are on is about making your team and they making their people feel engaged, valued, respected, informed.

Get your team to report back (anonymously) where they are now and ask them to bring their teams scores (anonymously) to the next meeting – these simple 5 questions in the Merriweather engagement survey are all you need

• I am clear on my priorities
• It is fun to be in this team
• We have exciting and effective meetings
• My Manager makes me feel significant and respected
• I can see opportunities for career growth in this team

The results of this survey will provide a common focus for the team a shared challenge – hopefully a challenge you will be able to enjoy starting to resolve together, and of course it immediately improves which gives you all a quick win and people immediately start to feel and look/act better. All that was needed was for the people to feel valued – to be asked – involved allowed to share their frustrations.

 

You are now in a place where you have regular meetings – your team are clear on the journey ahead and what is expected of them – they are seeing a leader who is clearly trying hard to be more exemplary – your team are also giving a lot more time/thought to their approach to leadership and everyone is feeling more valued.

 

A few more things are required – most importantly the team needs you to take the lead in holding people accountable – no ifs but or maybes. A great way of achieving this state of an accountable team is as follows: Each quarter after you have delivered the picture of where the team is going we then have a conversation to come up with the most important thing for the team to achieve in the next 90 days. SMART and ambitious actions are then entered into a dashboard for each and everyone –most are the individuals suggestions however you will add a couple more also – probably on the ‘softer’ targets around people/team/Leadership. The team then reconvene 3 months later and are required ( and reminded regularly along the way) that when they do come together they will have to review this dashboard with simply RED or GREEN – absolutely no room for ....the dog ate my home work!

 

In our experience the first time the team do this you may achieve 50% success, 3 months later possibly 60/70% then following this most teams will repeatedly deliver in excess of 80% of the dashboard – the team become proud of what they do – they are becoming abnormal – outstanding....a team people want to join.

 

The other activity for the leader for focus upon beyond holding everyone accountable is to make themselves available to be a great coach. Sharing your experience appropriately – being available for a short chat – you develop relationships with your people so they feel comfortable just checking things with you. If you are permanently in meetings you are not available for your team members -  - if you want to be an exemplary leader and a great coach you need to be available for your people when they need you not when you can fit them in – make time to lead.

 

One final point but possibly the most important – introduce REG into your team:

 

Make your team a fun and inclusive place to be where everyone is respected, feelings are respected, time is respected – honesty is expected and where people are not permitted to remain in the team if they fail to do what they said they would –  We believe that introducing a simple way of working known as REG is hard to beat. REG stands for Respect Empathy and Genuineness and in the 10 minutes it takes to quickly understand what these words mean to the team we can all immediately benefit from it – by showing our colleagues either  a RED or GREEN REG Card when they forget to uphold the agreed upon standards of behaviour – this is a serious but fun way of encouraging the behaviours we want from our peers, superiors and subordinates.

 

So when the boss reappears from the break 5 mins late we can card them, when someone interrupts, doesn’t listen, only listens to interrupt, takes a call, plays with the phone etc etc we can simply call out this undesirable behaviour – and most importantly the team enforces these agreed upon standards not just the leader (see the REG Cards in resources section below) if you want some REG cards, let us know we can send you the hand out and the cards for your whole organisation – it works!!!!

Back to Top >

Solution 9

I am always pleased to hear that someone wants to address this all too common symptom of poor leadership, failing and struggling teams and business or simply address the wasted opportunities going by.

 

The meetings we support our clients in become without questions the most exciting meetings they attend – the most relevant and hopefully the most enjoyable and useful too – meetings the team look forward to and rely upon to get the help, support and advice ( from their loving critics team members)  they need to do the job – step one publish well in advance the dates for team’s quarterly meetings for the year  - treat them with respect - make them appear important!!

 

So here are some of the things we see many successful leaders do to achieve outstanding meetings:

• Engage a Merriweather Business Coach and put your team through a Merriweather Business Improvement Programme
• Fully consider what needs to be achieved -
• Invite all the people you need to be involved in the conversations
• Publish well in advance a clear yet flexible agenda showing the outputs that will be achieved (at Merriweather Business Improvement meetings the agendas are generally very similar) – basically get clarity on where you are going from the leader, check that the team understood what was said and then work out what’s in the way and spend our time addressing these challenges with the teams diverse experience inputting as appropriate some personal, team and leadership development.
• Ensure that there is time and a process for everyone to be heard
• Encourage all speakers to be brief, prepared and inspirational – lose the slides please! (please consider reading the self help “ how to be a more inspirational speaker”)
• Allow sufficient time for questions and facilitate the conversations to the desired conclusions – keep them on track!!
• Get the team to establish together “the single most important thing to achieve each quarter” and for them to call out their actions to deliver it into the teams dashboard
• Get the team in the habit of meeting quarterly and reviewing the dashboard – can you achieve more than 90%?
• Make the rules very clear for meeting  - I highly recommend REG to you to ensure inspirational and effective meeting:
  Make your meetings more effective and inclusive, where everyone is respected, feelings are respected, time is respected – honesty is expected and where people are not permitted to remain in the team if they fail to do what they said they would –  We believe that introducing a simple way of working known as REG is hard to beat. REG stands for Respect Empathy and Genuineness and in the 10 minutes it takes to quickly understand what these words mean to the team we can all immediately benefit from it – by showing our colleagues either  a RED or GREEN REG Card when they forget to uphold the agreed upon standards of behaviour – this is a serious but fun way of encouraging the behaviours we want from our peers, superiors and subordinates. So when the boss reappears from the break 5 mins late we can card them, when someone interrupts, doesn’t listen, only listens to interrupt, takes a call, plays with the phone etc etc we can simply call out this undesirable behaviour – and most importantly the team enforce these agreed upon standards not just the leader (see the REG cards) if you want some let us know we can send you the hand out and the cards for your whole organisation – it works!)
• Make time in the breaks for calls and emails so that you can demand everyone’s full attention in the meeting room

However these are all symptoms – if you and your team can become more focused more often (hopefully with some help from Merriweather) on becoming more exemplary leaders then these symptoms will be addressed naturally – so can I suggest you take a look at these 30 statements in the leadership survey and encourage you to get all your team to increase the frequency with which you do these 30 things – note it doesn’t say how well do you do it – it simply ask how often.

And remember one simple thing – people want to have fun!

Back to Top >

Solution 10

30% of an individual’s time is wasted in a normal organisation due to a lack of clarity, surprisingly when asked most people believe that the number is higher than this in their own organisation. We believe it increases the closer you get to head office.

Further statistics which amplify the impact of poor leadership include:

• 75% of M & A activity fails to add any significant share holder value
• 80% of people who leave an organisation, cite the reason as being poor leadership above.

Back to Top >

Solution 11

We all recognise that the skill of engaging an audience will take you a long way in Business. We have coached hundreds of leaders to become more inspirational speakers – the following provides an insight of what we believe we all need to focus upon to become more inspirational speakers.

 

Every day millions of people around the world make a presentation. Yet most of us who have been to meetings know that very few of those people are truly great. At each meeting there is usually only one person who stands out head and shoulders above the rest as someone who really connects with us in the audience. The truth is, most presenters are just plain average – and quite a few are simply dreadful. So, how can you move from being ‘average’ to being fantastic?

 

Every one of us has the ability to be a truly great speaker. There is nothing particularly special about the people who stand out as brilliant. However, the average speaker is usually holding themselves back, doing things, which prevent them from being good.

At every ‘Inspirational Speaker Coaching’ program we spend some time debating what makes a great speaker. This inevitably leads to a discussion of what the bad speakers do wrong. Having kept a record of what these sessions considered we have been able to produce a definitive list of what to do to make your presentations great.

 

The overwhelming conclusion of all these discussions is: content is not important. Of the hundreds of people who have debated what makes a great speaker not a single person has mentioned the value of the content. Your audiences are likely to think in just the same way. They are NOT interested in what you are saying, but the way you are saying it. If you say it well, that appears to make the content interesting. But what this means is, if you concentrate your planning and preparation on content, you are likely only to be average.

The most important factor for great speakers according to our discussions is that they make a personal connection to every member of the audience. This means lots of eye contact, liberal use of the words ‘I' and ‘you, and that everything you deliver is done from the audience's perspective. This means you need to know a great deal about your audience in advance so you can do this.

 

The connection you make between yourself and your audience seems to be enhanced by the widespread use of examples. Our discussions at ‘Inspirational Speaker Coaching’ programs show that your audience expects you to ‘show' rather than ‘tell'. In other words, you don't need to give them ‘messages' and ‘content'; instead you need to give them lots of examples and they will work out the message for themselves.

 

A further element of this aspect of being a great speaker is that these examples should always include you. Your audience wants to know about your thoughts, your feelings and your opinions. They want to share your experiences. If all you deliver is content, this does not help your audience. They could get your content from a book, a web site or some other non-human contact. The fact that you are presenting to them means your audience wants to hear from you personally.

Your audience also wants you to be a living person. They don't want to hear from a statue. In other words you need to be active. The discussions held at our ‘Inspirational Speaker Coaching’ programs show time and time again that speakers who move are the ones who gain the most attention. If you think about this, it is quite understandable.

In social situations we are active – we use gestures, we move our bodies and change posture. To avoid doing so when presenting makes you look abnormal and this serves to disconnect you. There is also a big advantage to moving – it helps reduce nerves when speaking.

As well as moving to be natural, our discussions show that great speakers are interactive. They ask questions, they involve the audience and essentially they treat the presentation as a conversation. This helps boost the connection between themselves and the audience. That's because for the audience the interactivity appears normal, whereas being spoken at for a great length of time does not.

 

Another important aspect of making your presentation appear normal is that your audience expects you to deliver your material without any prompts. Conversations do not need notes! Hence your presentation will benefit from appearing normal if you do not use notes or any prompts of any kind – including bullet points on slides. Discussions at our ‘Inspirational Speaker Coaching’ programs show time and time again audiences do not like presenters who use notes, prompt cards, bullet point slides or any other form of memory jogger. Audiences expect presenters to know their stuff.

Great presenters never use notes.

 

An extension of the lack of notes concept is that great speakers talk from the heart. They are passionate about their subject and they are emotional. The dispassionate, business-like presenter is one of the most disliked, according to our discussions. What this means is that you should talk less about your subject and much more about your experiences as this will help boost your passion.

 

Our Inspirational Speaker Coaching’ programs also reveal that audiences want to have fun. They want to see you enjoying yourself and they want to have a laugh. This does not mean you need to tell jokes, but it does mean your audience expects you to be light. Even for serious subjects it seems that audiences expect some kind of lightness. They want humour and they want you to smile. Straight faced, dry speakers are particularly disliked by audiences.

 

One final aspect revealed by the discussions at our Inspirational Speaker Coaching’ programs is that everyone in your audience expects the speaker to motivate them. This does not mean you need to be a motivational speaker. Rather what it means is that your audience is expecting you to tell them what to do. Your audience does not expect a speaker simply to deliver information – they can get that from a book or a web site. Instead great speakers give audiences some action to take.

All of these discussion points suggest that those speakers who treat their presentation as a conversation – who just have a chat with the audience – are the ones marked out as truly great. People who give presentations by delivering content are seen as boring and uninteresting. This also means their messages are not conveyed, so they may as well not be presenting in the first place.

 

One final thing; our discussions show that audiences simply detest the use of computerized slides. They just want to hear from you. Truly great speakers therefore do one other vital thing – they switch off the projector!

Back to Top >

Solution 12

A great question and one which we as Leaders are generally all very poor in seeking feedback around is – how am I doing?

What we recommend because we have seen it work with huge effect leading to a dramatic improvement in Employee engagement is the following simple 5 questions being asked regularly and answered anonymously – and the results published.

 

One particular team we work with was experiencing staff attrition at over 20%, through the introduction of the regular and anonymous survey the leaders of these teams became focussed on improving their leadership skills, staff attrition continues to fall in this organisation and is now well below the market rate.

 

Leaders foster collaboration and build spirited teams, actively involving others. Collaboration is the skill that enables teams to function effectively. Creating a climate where people are involved and feel important is at the heart of strengthening others.

To encourage the leadership team to focus more on their people and improve employee satisfaction ask the team members to anonymously provide the following feedback:

 

Statement	Self Assessment
It is fun to be with this Team
My manager makes me feel valued & significant
I can see opportunities for my career growth
I am clear on my priorities
We have exciting & effective meetings in my Team
Total

 

The rating scale runs from:
1 - Almost Never
2 - Rarely
3 - Seldom
4 - Once In A While
5 - Occasionally
6 - Sometimes
7 - Fairly Often
8 - Usually
9 - Very Frequently
10 - Almost Always

Back to Top >

Solution 13

Take the time to lead effectively

A very simple answer to a huge question - Make 'REG' a key member of your team.

R espect

E mpathy

G enuineness

Invest the time up front to build a team who recognise the value of a common approach. REG provides a behavioural framework or Team Charter that enables team members to treat each other in a respectful, empathetic and genuine way and paves the way for working together effectively.  If you can achieve this with your team you have a cornerstone upon which to build the foundation of trust that is vital to success.  Providing people with feedback is vital to a team’s success and REG enables you to do that: RED when you are not seeing respect, empathy or genuineness and GREEN when you find people doing it right.  Human nature tends to focus on the RED, but the more you use the GREEN, the more likely you are to build trust through having a respectful, empathetic and genuine team.

If you see it: call it!

RESPECT

• Convey to people that they are valued, significant and important
• Active listening: Listening to understand, not listening to interrupt

EMPATHY

• See the world through others’ eyes: we are all different – we need to work out how to ‘live’ in each others’ eyes
• Seek first to understand and then be understood
• Be sensitive to others’ feelings

GENUINENESS

• Share feelings and experiences
• Offer & accept genuine apologies & feedback without hesitation: move on
• Ensure verbal and non-verbal behavior match: don’t say yes when you mean no
• Make it business not personal

Using these principles as part of your approach to working effectively together as a team, will enable you & your team to make its choice to Lead, Follow, Change or Get Out of the Way more effectively, and remain focused upon achieving your team’s required Business results

 

 

Back to Top >