The 8 situational building blocks for motivation

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Posted on 13th February 2012 by Andy Britnell in motivation

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8 building blocks to motivationMotivation doesn’t just happen. It’s the leader’s responsibility to put in place the building blocks for high performance. There are 8 situational factors that need to be put in place and are key to getting it right.

1. Have high expectations

If you expect someone to do badly, they probably will. If your expectations are high, but not overtly unrealistic or demanding, you will get much more out of people. High expectations are essential for the challenge part of the High Challenge and High Support model.

2. Create goal focus and clarity

This is where being explicit comes into the equation. There is a direct correlation between motivation and the clarity of a goal. If a goal is in any way fuzzy or if it doesn’t feel of value, motivation, even if it was there at the beginning, will fade quickly. This situation can be more stressful than a high challenge goal that is crystal clear.

3. Build realistic self esteem

Make sure there is some kind of early success and celebrate and build on it. Reinforce confidence.

4. Reinforce good performance

As we have clearly stated before ‘Catch someone doing something right’ and encourage them to repeat the same by giving constant positive feedback.

5. Make the performance level attainable

If people think or feel the task or goal is too difficult or impossible to achieve, or the effort required outweighs the perceived reward, their motivation will be low. It is better to create a series of smaller steps and reinforce performance at each stage with rewards or consequences appropriate for each individual.

6. Work to ‘Meta” goals

Create an organisation where people want to belong with a shared vision and common purpose. Support them in developing themselves, not though narrow task skills but through reaching higher goals of personal mastery and creating their own success. This will engage people’s energies and appeal to their inner intrinsic motivation.

7. Provide high support

A necessary complement to high challenge but also a way in which your relationship with the people you lead is valued and you’re seen as an ally.

8. Apply situational leadership

Flex your style to meet the different needs of each individual in your team depending on their level of development.

So that’s our list of factors that help motivation to flourish. What would you add to the list?

The Cool Blue Manager

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Posted on 23rd January 2012 by Andy Britnell in Insights Discovery Colour Energies

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Insights Discovery Cool Blue Manager With personality there is no right or wrong, but with leadership there definitely is a right way! Understand this way, and how your personality colours your leadership style, then you begin to make a significant difference. It is one more reason why we start all our Leading & Developing High Performance training with the Insights Discovery model.

In previous blogs you have had a glimpse of the Fiery Red manager, the Sunshine Yellow manager and the Earth Green manager. Now here comes the Cool Blue manager.

What is Cool Blue energy?

This colour preference is characterised by the following adjectives:

• Cautious
• Precise
• Deliberate
• Questioning
• Formal

These managers are detached and can take a logical, objective look at data, analysing it to make sure everything is correct. Stability and order rule, and they have a detached single-minded ability to do what is right and ethical. They also prefer formal lines of reporting.

When dealing with this type of manager you need to know that they want to see evidence and will not take anything on hearsay. For something important, it is best to send an e-mail with all the information to give the manager time to analyse rather than expecting a hasty response. Their mantra is “Give me details!”.

It is best to get your expenses done, your appraisal forms completed and your paperwork in order as you will be measured on the quality of your systems, filing and ability to present things in a logical order, rather than for being a wonderful person!

In fact they will categorically fail to see just how wonderful you are, until these basic administrative things are in place.

What I appreciate about this energy

When you see this energy in action, it is so cool! The Cool Blue manager’s ability to stay detached and not get involved in the emotion of a situation can help defuse things and allow logic and truth to emerge. They are diligent and consistent. Interactions with you will be one-to-one and low key and, because their thinking goes on inside their head instead of being blurted out, they remain composed even in a crisis, quietly going about getting things done.

When Cool Blue energy gets in the way

These very strengths, if over used can be devoid of emotion. When there’s a lot of work to be done they would prefer to come into the office, go straight to their desk and get on, failing to see the need to walk round and say “good morning”, or even be nice. To the staff member this can seem stuffy, lacking any kind of warmth or humanity – you can literally feel ‘out in the cold’.

This manager under pressure seems more:

• Suspicious
• Reserved
• Rigid
• Indecisive
• Nit-picky

Cool Blue energy and L&DHP

With awareness this leader will be your rock and guide, explicitly stating what needs to be done and how. Their sound rationale and logic mean their assessments are thoughtful and correct, ensuring you stay on track towards the goal. They are more inclined towards support than challenge believing no-one can possibly do such a good job as them, which can keep them locked in the transactional stages of leadership, and poor at delegation.

The key thing to remember for the Cool Blue manager is that they need to consider their peoples’ emotional welfare, recognising that not everyone can take such a detached and clinical approach. It is important to recognise that everything cannot be fixed by a system and that sometimes people just need a hug! When they do this, Cool Blue managers shine as leaders.

Do you recognise the Cool Blue manager? We would love to hear your comments.

You may also be interested in reading about:

The Fiery Red Manager

The Sunshine Yellow Manager

The Earth Green Manager

Your beliefs affect you and those you lead

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Posted on 1st December 2010 by Andy Britnell in High Challenge High Support |High Performance |Leading and Developing

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Testimonial for Leading & Developing High PerformanceThere is a famous bit of research which put belief about a person’s competence to the test. In this test one group of teachers were told that they would be teaching top performing students, the other group were told they would be teaching those who were below par.

What the teachers did not know was that the groups were switched. The result was that the students who were considered low performers actually did better than those who were formerly high performing. So how did this happen?

Beliefs filter our perception and therefore drive our behaviours. If we believe someone has a certain identity then we treat that person accordingly. With the belief that they could, the students did well; with a belief they couldn’t they performed poorly.

So how does this relate to Leading & Developing High Performance? If we are to produce and develop high performance we have to believe that all our charges are potentially brilliant. That can be a hard pill to swallow for some.

Especially for the mindset of high challenge and high support, it is vital to understand our beliefs about human potential. This is why we use a diagnostic questionnaire to indicate whether you have a tendency to operate with more challenge or more support and how well you combine them.

The high challenge/high support approach needs both challenge and support in powerful and equal combination. It also determines if you are consistently ‘mixing it up’ because if you operate from high challenge and then swap to high support (or vice versa) that can confuse the people you lead and be seen as inconsistent.

The result shows where you are starting from and determines how you need to re-aligh your thinking so that it concentrates on the combined use of high support and high challenge. Most people find this powerful and equal use of the Leading & Developing High Performance mindset reassuring, as it fits well with their own intuitive feeling of what is required.

Developing this mindset will revolutionalise your management and leadership capabilities.

‘Mobilising’ the troops – the second step

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Posted on 16th August 2010 by Andy Britnell in 4 step process |Leading and Developing

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The second step of the 4-step process in Leading & Developing High Performance is the ‘Mobilising’ stage. We outlined the first stage of ‘Visioning’ in a previous post. Here we explore the next crucial step to guide your team to optimum performance.

So your team know where they are going through you sharing the vision and you have done your homework in observing and analysing your team and how it performs – now what do you do?

Before moving into the third step of ‘Developing’ there is a need to reinforce your vision and set the standards by which the team are going to play the game, You need to get them clear on the direction and expected behaviour time and time again to prevent misunderstanding and difficulty at a future date.

You need to prepare the ground so your troops land ready to take action and move forward. The approach is not heavy handed but more of a light touch using the principle of high challenge and high support and expecting the best from the individuals in the team to enable them to contribute in the best way they can.

So in essence the mobilising stage is about confirming your destination. outlining the standards required, confirming operational procedures and aligning and connecting people to the vision.

This results in the people being on your side, willing to develop and improve performance and actively seeking to take on ownership and personal responsibility for what they do and doing what is right to achieve the goal you have set.

What’s your preference? High Challenge or High Support?

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Posted on 11th May 2010 by Andy Britnell in High Challenge High Support

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Personality profiles - what is your psychological preference?One of the guiding principles in Leading & Developing High Performance is that of High Challenge and High Support. Have a look at Ali Stewart’s video for an explanation.

However we recognise that this concept creates a challenge in itself due to our unique psychological preferences. Some people value challenge while other people value support. Since many people follow the creed that what is good for me is good for others, they will often have a preference for using one style more than another.

Once engrained into someone’s habitual unconscious behaviour a preference or overuse of either style becomes a weakness. Too much challenge creates stress and poor performance in a team, too much support creates inertia and inaction as the team becomes too comfortable.

This is the reason for the use of personality profiles in the introduction to a Leading & Developing High Performance programme. It helps people to understand what their preference might be, understand strengths and weaknesses and identify where they might need development to maintain a high support and high challenge mind-set.

They will also realise that what is good for them is not necessarily good for others and that their preferred behaviour might be counterproductive. A focus on each individual and their need for different approaches, different motivations and reward and recognition requires the manager to have behavioural flexibility.

There are also diagnostic tools available to determine the preference towards challenge or support in their management style. These help managers to understand how they can achieve the delicate but powerful balance of high support and high challenge required to lead their team to outstanding performance.

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