Intrapreneurial Leaders: Build Trust, Performance & Revenues with Talent Dynamics

Una Doyle — Sat, 12 May 2012 09:21:51 +0000

After this 1-hr complimentary live webinar you will:

Know the 4 keys that create typical increases in revenues/savings of £100k+ per team in only 6-18 months (this is the commercial acumen that could keep you off the layoff lists)
Identify how to get the attention and resources you need for your team
Know how to get your team genuinely excited about their work and raise morale (no Ra Ra, I promise!)
Recognise the often unknown underlying reason why so many people get stressed and burned out at work
Know how to identify the best job environment for you to achieve massive career success
Know how to rapidly increase your and your team’s performance, sustain it and scale it successfully

This webinar is being hosted by Una Doyle, Intrapreneur Coach.

Una is an accredited Talent Dynamics Performance Consultant and an international award-winning speaker, trainer, coach and consultant.

Una has worked with well-known organisations such as Argos, Asda, Yorkshire Forward, local authorities and Kodak from a one-to-one basis to groups as large as 2,000. She has appeared on local and national TV and radio, written for trade magazines and is currently a contributor to the Discuss HR blog.

Results-focused, she is passionate about learning and has studied and gained experience in leadership, teamwork, change management, employee engagement, communications and entrepreneurialism. Una has incorporated this experience, reasearch and learning with her expertise in Talent Dynamics into coaching and development programmes that make a massive difference to personal and bottom line results.

Register Now!

Not attended a webinar before?

You can listen in on your computer and ask questions online, or share your views and questions by dialling in by telephone (USA number) or Skype. You don’t have to download any special software and you can also listen in from an iPhone or Android phone. You can participate as much or as little as you like.

Share and Enjoy:Print RSS email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn FriendFeed Digg StumbleUpon del.icio.us Yahoo! Buzz Google Bookmarks Add to favorites Google Buzz Live Orkut Ping.fm Posterous Reddit Technorati Tumblr

Is an Always On Approach Helping or Hindering You?

Una Doyle — Wed, 09 May 2012 11:38:53 +0000

According to this Real Business article, “Gone are the notions of “office” and “working day”. Research shows that the “always on” approach is having a positive effect on people’s work and personal lives.”

What are your thoughts? I’m hearing from leaders and managers that they feel under intense pressure to perform and often feel they have to work many hours to do everything they want to do (of course the ones who work with me learn how to achieve (and more!) their objectives with less stress and have more time for themselves, family, etc).

At the same time I like to work flexibly, at the moment I’m doing some consultancy on some different change programmes as well as working with my other clients doing coaching and workshops. My iphone is a big boost for keeping in touch in those downtime moments.

I’d love to hear your views. I suspect that for some Talent Dynamics profiles this approach is invasive, whereas others will welcome it with open arms… I wonder who the research was done with?!

JC Penny Firing Lots of Managers – Are You in the Line of Fire?

Una Doyle — Fri, 04 May 2012 10:13:53 +0000

Do Intrapreneurial Leaders Better Avoid Layoffs?

Like many organisations JC Penny is making big layoffs with its managers.

What I found interesting in this Business Insider article is the reference to how appraisal results don’t actually appear to be the factor in the source’s case as to how was laid off and who wasn’t.

Here’s how it went down, according to one assistant manager who was laid off Monday:

“One hundred store managers across the country were quietly laid off two days before they announced the home office reductions and the call center closing. The rest, phase two, happened Monday. They said it was done purely on year-end appraisal ratings, but someone in my store got a higher rating than I did (and was laid off anyway), and also they changed what the ratings stood for this year, and eliminated performance improvement documentation, so that they did not have to wait longer to do this. If my name or even state comes out I will lose my severance.”

So what is making the difference and what can you do to maximise your chances of staying with your organisation?

The way I see it the key is value. How much value are you really adding to the organisation? Particularly in these times, those that not only add value but can easily demonstrate how they add value are the ones that get to stay on and help the organisation to survive and then thrive…

Looks to me like maybe this is what happened with JC Penney!

One way to enhance the value you add is to understand how to get you and your team(s) in flow.

Attend this free webinar to find out more about that.

Intrapreneurial Leaders: Build Trust & Performance with Talent Dynamics

FREE Webinar – Intrapreneurial Leaders: Build Trust & Performance with Talent Dynamics

Una Doyle — Fri, 04 May 2012 10:12:04 +0000

Intrapreneurial Leaders: Book your place now

This is a complimentary live webinar for leaders, managers and directors of teams who want to develop themselves and their teams to be more intrapreneurial while building more trust with each other and customers. It will share some of the latest thinking on building trust and performance, followed by a discussion.

This has a massive affect on performance and the positive side effect of increasing morale and motivation. Leaders and managers who get their teams into flow will typically add 6-figures to revenues/savings per team. What could that do for your career?

Tuesday, May 8 at 7:00-8:00 PM BST

Register Now!

You can listen in on your computer and ask questions online, or share your views and questions by dialling in by telephone (USA number) or skype. (You may also download the ipad/iphone/android apps to participate in the webinar, look for MeetingBurner.)

Take Action on International Day of Trust

Una Doyle — Thu, 03 May 2012 08:07:13 +0000

Today is the International Day of Trust and I wanted to share some thoughts for those of you who are wondering how in a practical sense you can build more trust with your teams and clients.

Stephen Covey in his seminal book ‘Speed of Trust’, talks about three ways to build trust; credibility, character and competence. I think these are great things to look at and definitely very important.

However, what that doesn’t address is how much value are you adding in your role? How much value is your team adding to your organisation? How much value is your organisation adding to its customers?

Let’s define what I mean by value. I’m not talking about ‘added value’ a phrase that is much bandied about but often may in fact offer the customer distractions. What I’m talking about is what actually gives benefit and helps people to get in flow.

A simple example would be that you structure your team so that instead of many people doing many things, you have each person focusing on their area of their primary strengths and associated strategies. For example: Jonny does the project management and keeps everybody to a
strict timetable. Jane goes out and engages the board and other teams in your project so that you get the support and resources that you need. Tom structures the deals with your suppliers so that everybody is focused on achieving the end result, not nit picking over details. Alison created the strategy and the policies to get the project off the ground, based on the customer feedback gleaned from Ted, which he instigated because of what he heard in his day to day interactions.

Each helps the other to get into flow because they each deliver value to each other that leverages the team to a whole new level of performance. Without Ted’s purely customer-focused perspective (Trader), Alison’s (Creator) strategies may take the project off course in her creative excitement in getting to innovate. Without Jane (Star) to shine a light on the project it may never get off the ground. Without Tom’s instincts for a win-win deal your supplier focuses on more profitable customers and/or your organisation doesn’t get the result it wants. Without Jonny’s knack for scheduling and resourcing you’re left embarrassed month after month at the board table by a lack of progress and silly and very avoidable mistakes.*

Sounds simple doesn’t it? It always isn’t in practice as many organisations structure their job roles and teams in ways that take people out of flow. It’s up to you as their manager to ensure that the projects you’re working on support the primary organisation’s strategies and – this is the more challenging bit – ensure your team doesn’t get pulled out of flow, either in terms of the projects they’re working on and how they work together.

In discovering how to add true value, you also get to understand how to be a true intrapreneur.

Take Action
In honour of the International Day of Trust I’d like to offer you an insight as to how you can build both trust and flow in your teams and with your customers on this complimentary webinar:

Register Now!

Take action and register now, who knows what difference that could make when you get to this day 2013!

Reaping The Rewards After Restructuring, Redeployment And Redundancy

Una Doyle — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 13:02:36 +0000

For some people it must seem like a merry-go-round when they experience the upheaval of round after round of restructuring, redeployment and redundancies. Every few years the company is turned upside down and yet often doesn’t seem to gain the benefits.

This must cause a lot of confusion to those in charge. They do their best to streamline the organisation, to cut costs and to introduce better ways of working. Why is it that their efforts often don’t seem to work as well as they would like?

Perhaps these changes would work better if talent were at the centre of strategy. If you take somebody who isn’t as highly productive in one area of the organisation there is no guarantee that that they will do better in another. How can you tell if you will ruin somebody’s high-performance by tweaking their responsibilities? How can you tell who to keep and who to let go?

Think of the public sector, most have faced extreme cuts in funding and it looks set to continue. Like many organisations in recent years they are faced with having to deliver more, with less and less resources.

It is simply not possible to do this by cutting costs alone. In my opinion it requires a change of thinking, yet provides an opportunity to come out of this downturn with a much better and stronger organisation.

When it comes to redeployment, moving people around like pieces on a chessboard may allow you to keep a few pieces in the short term but can cost the game in the longer term. Like any game of chess, a good strategy and thinking ahead will help all concerned.

For employees being redeployed, getting to understand how to get into and stay in flow can be very enlightening and really change their attitudes about their situation. If there is a suitable position then it’s clear to everybody why they are suited – and perhaps were not suited to previous posts!

If there are no suitable positions within the organisation they may wish to go and be in flow somewhere else. Where you do have high performers being redeployed then you can ensure that they are not placed somewhere that will take them out of flow and they can continue to add value.

I talked recently with a HR professional that is being ‘restructured’ into a new role, which they are very clear doesn’t suit their strengths. Their boss isn’t listening and they are concerned that their good performance will suffer as result of this change.

What would really help is for there to be more exploration about the roles within the new structure where as a team, they discuss where they each add the most value to each other and other teams.

This is itself is very powerful. The more an organisation can help its staff to be in the right roles with the right accountabilities, then the more they get to keep staff where they can be in flow and really add value. Not only is this likely to reduce the stress of everybody involved, it’s also likely to reduce the cost of redundancies.

In addition, you can watch productivity soar, even with people who may have struggled in the past.

Plus there is another benefit in that people who are working in flow are likely to be more motivated and feel better about themselves. This can really help to reduce resistance to change and help to keep the workforce more flexible and change ready.

If regular restructuring is happening because teams are initiating it to stay in and accelerate flow and better serve their customers then that’s great. A very different story from the ‘well that didn’t work, let’s try this’ approach that I suspect is all too prevalent in many organisations…

Top Tips for Giving Negative Feedback

Una Doyle — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 09:32:51 +0000

Giving Negative Feedback

A Modern intrapreneur will always look at the reality of a situation, including when somebody is not performing. I came across this article and thought it would be useful as there’s some great advice in there: 5 Tips for giving positive Negative Feedback

Negative Feedback and Flow

The one thing it doesn’t mention of course is checking whether somebody is in or out of flow regarding what it is that they are being criticised on…

This can be a sticking point with a lot of leaders and managers in appraisals and performance reviews and impacts on team performance in a number of ways:

You can’t make a silk purse out of a cows ear – there’s no point trying to make someone into something they’re not.
When people aren’t adding value and they don’t know how to, they often get defensive. (Discovering how to get into flow often dissipates that defensiveness as team members realise that it’s not personal, it’s about where they add the most value instead of if they’re good or not.)
When you know whether somebody could be adding great value and be in flow in a certain job role, yet they’re not performing then that narrows the areas to focus on to uncover the root of poor performance. Is it training or attitude? Do they not have the right tools for the job?

However, if they’re not working to their strengths and using the right strategies for their success you could fix all the things in the world and it might not make that much difference, except for the time and other resources that you wasted in the meantime! Be careful that this isn’t just a tactic to avoid having a difficult conversation.

While these conversations may be challenging at first, they’re actually the best thing you could do for you and your team in the long run – as long as it’s done in the right way of course. A key motto I learnt with Talent Dynamics to remember is,

“It’s not about being right, it’s about getting it right!”

Talent Dynamics Video

Una Doyle — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 16:10:37 +0000

I’ve had a few people recently say that they really wished I’d been with them in a meeting where they would like to recommend the work I do! They could tell that there were underlying problems that would be addressed if the managers and teams in question were in their flow and working together as intrapreneurs.

However, not being experts, they didn’t feel 100% comfortable explaining more about Talent Dynamics, understandably enough. So I remembered this video of a presentation I did last year that gives an overview of what Talent Dynamics is and a little on the 8 Talent Dynamics Profiles. I trust it is helpful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF_7cl0kWUQ

?hd=1

Note: I did tailor it to the audience that was more of a SME crowd, I’ll add more videos here on different types of business and leadership challenges in mid to large organisations.

Could Becoming Intrapreneurs Make a Difference to Women Leaders?

Una Doyle — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 08:47:15 +0000

An International Women’s Day Special for women leaders

I was very interested to read some of the statistics below on weareequals.org* as part of International Women’s Day. Let me say before anyone gets riled up that I am not advocating that women leaders take over the world (fun experiment though that may be!), just that we have more balanced leadership. If Talent Dynamics has taught me one thing, it’s to truly appreciate the value our differences of all types bring to business (and life!).

No women – even Oprah with her TV show, production company, the book club and web phenomenon – is in the top 10 on Forbes Rich List
Almost half of women managers in customer facing jobs like restaurants, shops and salons gave up being managers after becoming mothers so they could find part-time work – of course they ended up being paid less.
96% of executive directors of the UK’s Top 100 Companies are men
In the UK the full-time gender wage gap is 15.5%. This is like men being paid for a full year while women effectively work for free after 2 November. And it gets worse the higher up the tree you go… Women in the city get paid a third less than men.
Only 16 of the world’s 188 directly elected leaders are women. In fact, Rwanda, Angola, East Timor and Macedonia have a more representative parliament than the UK.
Female-led councils in India have 62% more drinking water projects than male-led councils. Also, women leaders often invest a lot more in areas that impact on health and education.

Pssst… read to the end of this article for a special offer for women leaders that results in some effective giving…

Why does this happen?

Many women leaders will miss out on promotion and training because of gender discrimination – often so subtle that men would be surprised they were doing it – and because they often shoulder the bulk of family commitments. My coaching experience also shows me that some women are their own worst enemy in terms of lacking self-esteem and/or not speaking up enough about their achievements.

Men have been in charge of politics, religion, trade unions, the film industry, the art world, etc for centuries. It is going to take time before we see a world with an equal balance of male and female leaders and decision makers.

Why should you care?

Women’s higher earnings and bargaining power translate into more investment in children’s education, health and nutrition and this means economic growth in the long-term. What’s good for women leaders is good for their country and their children too.

According to research in Women Lead The Way by Linda Tarr-Whelan a critical mass of 30% women leaders is required in any company or institution for real change to take place in the decisions being made. This is where a more balanced leadership – both men and women leaders – are likely to avoid the types of decisions that lead to the financial crisis and that support benefits such as:

Higher financial performance and better bottom lines
Increased opportunities for women to go higher on the career ladder
Improved policies for women and families
A fresh perspective and a willingness to find new answers to problems old and new

What could you do about it?

While there are many things you could do such as join women’s groups, campaigning, networking or even getting into politics, I see that for those women leaders in business there are great benefits in becoming more intrapreneurial.

Most people think intrapreneurship is all about innovation and creating new products and divisions, so they don’t always think of themselves as intrapreneurs – especially women leaders. Intrapreneurship is more than innovation – innovation is only one way to add value to an organisation. The leaders and managers who are most successful often have high levels of business acumen and are very clear about how they and their team(s) add value to their organisation. They take ownership for the organisation’s growth and success and can demonstrate the valuable financial impact they make. This is what I call being a modern intrapreneur.

Modern intrapreneurs are in flow because they and their team are using the strategies that suit their individual strengths so truly effective teamwork is a reality, not just a dream. A deep practical understanding of the two key ways to add value and then leverage it effectively to easily add at least hundreds of thousands to the bottom line. Being in flow as women leaders means that you get to have less stress, more fun and more time because you are no longer struggling to paddle upstream.

As a female leader imagine the difference all this would make to your career – and your home life! Imagine being so clear on the value that you and your team(s) bring to the organisation (financially as well as otherwise) that you can highlight your accomplishments without bragging. Imagine the increase in earnings and benefits that you could achieve. Imagine the increased influence you could have and what you could then do with that influence for you, your organisation’s employees, your community and other women…

An International Women’s Day Special Offer for women leaders

A starting point in all this is to firstly know and understand your own Talent Dynamics profile so that you can pinpoint the strategies best suited to your particular blend of strengths. So in honour of International Women’s Day and to support the progress of women leaders, I’d like to offer you a discounted strategy session that includes your Talent Dynamics profile.

In addition to getting a £197 session for only £150, I’m going to donate £50 for each of these sessions to The Hunger Project or charity of your choice.

(I particularly like The Hunger Project as it teaches people – often women – how to help themselves instead of depending on aid.) During the month of March I’ll do 10 of these special sessions, so that would be £500 to charity.

To access this offer simply email me una[at]unadoyle.com with ‘IWD offer’ in the subject line or call me on 07766 917890. As long as you book and pay (via PayPal) in March you can take the session in March, April or May. Be quick though! I’d hate for you to miss out! And more importantly, I’d hate for the people in your life to miss out on the impact of the changes you could make as a result…

* Source: http://www.weareequals.org/downloads/booklet.pdf

PS I won’t discriminate against men who would like to take up this offer as you’ve bothered to read this article and obviously care enough that I know that this session will also positively impact the women you encounter at work and in your personal life too.

You never listen! Why ignoring your team in Decision Making could land you in trouble…

Una Doyle — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 13:12:09 +0000

Are ignoring others when decision making?

Not Listening When decision making?

Have you ever felt that your boss didn’t listen to you, or has your team ever accused you of not listening to them in decision making?

Research now demonstrates that this indeed can be the case (see http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1903943) and that there are several significant factors as to why leaders may not listen:

Increased power
Overconfidence
Repeating what worked in the past

The research showed that the more power a manager had the less likely they were to take advice from others. Probably part of what got them promoted in the first place is the fact that they were decisive and got things done, right? The whole team wasn’t promoted after all, they were.

Decision Making Overconfidence Led to Poor Results

However this experience could lead to them becoming overconfident about their decision making. The researchers found that even when making decisions in area where they had little or no expertise, some leaders would go ahead anyway because they overestimated the value of their general decision-making experience.

The study showed this often generated poor and inaccurate results compared to the leaders and managers who consulted others.

What is the impact of all this? Firstly, not listening to and taking advice from your team is likely to land you in trouble because you probably won’t achieve the same level of outcomes.

Secondly, how engaged is your team likely to be implementing decisions that they had no input in? Not very! Trust me that will impact on how your decision making and strategies are implemented.

Learn to Be Vulnerable

From a Talent Dynamics perspective, different profiles can really add value especially when it comes to more complex decisions and strategies.

A big problem in leaders looking to make decisions on their own is that they’re not benefiting from other’s different perspectives, let alone specific expertise that they may lack.

A key lesson for all is that many of the best leaders like to surround themselves with people who will challenge them and sometimes even change their mind. They don’t see this as a weakness. They know that power doesn’t really come from being a know-all. It comes from getting the best results. As we say at Talent Dynamics:

“It’s not about being right, it’s about getting it right!”

For instance:

An Accumulator can add great insight to a Creator about what could go wrong on a project.
A Star can help a Mechanic to engage others regarding their new and improved systems.
A Trader can help a Star to launch that new product at the right time and right price.
A Lord can help improve cash flow to provide the resources for further growth. (In fact, one of our Performance Consultants capitalised on their Lord team member to recover AUS $100k of outstanding debt in one only one month!)

People have been talking “team” for generations. How many are really living it though in a way that actually creates and accelerates Trust and Flow? And if you are, then you won’t mind asking your team how you could utilise their advice even more…