Ok so I have to write a follow on to the blog about Leaders Leading Learning and the guys at Auto & Truck Tyres.  I was running a two day course with them – first day on Saturday and then two weeks later the second day, again on Saturday.  Yep they blew me away this time with where they’ve taken the learning.

At Avo we have found that the work done by Eric Berne on Transactional Analysis makes for a very useful concept that can dramatically shift how you deal with the people around you.  Whether they are customers, peers, direct reports, a spouse, a friend or your kids, understanding this stuff, your Parent Adult and Child ego states, helps you manage yourself and improves the quality of your relationships with those people.  Your ego states are at play every time you interact with someone.  So we introduce the concept, keep it simple and have a lot of fun with it on a course.

Interestingly, it is one of the rare concepts where I have consistently experienced incredible shifts in behaviour with people.   In a few cases I’ve worked with guys who have lived their whole adult lives as husband, father and manager in a Parent ego state.  They knew no alternative. Exposing them to TA almost came as a physical blow to them.  In a feedback session once a man told me that he’d had his first real ‘Adult’ conversation with his daughter, who was 21.  Another told me he made his wife a cup of coffee and took it to her in bed for the first time in his married life: he must have been 55 at least.  Yet another told me how, while holding back his fear and intimidation, he managed to get his boss to come back to adult … but it took him 2 days.

So I introduced the concept at ATT two weeks ago and was back on Saturday to complete the course.  I didn’t get it straight away. It took a while, and only sank in when I was presented with a T-shirt: everyone else was wearing the same shirt.  The other director, Nic, not to be outdone by Rob, had printed T-shirts for every one with ‘Think Adult’ emblazoned across the front in pink (because it’s a soft skill and Steven likes pink).  The leaders had again led the learning in front of their management team.  They’ve taken the concept and started making it part of their culture.  The feedback from the previous Saturday was lovely: they’ve shifted the quality of their conversations – ‘Adult’ leads to respect.

Will the learning stick in their organisation?, Yes. Why? Because their leaders are 100% behind it.  Again Rob was able to have enough courage tell everyone where he went wrong and how he exploded in ‘Child’ (because he was not at his desk where he could see his ‘Adult’ sign) during a conversation he had with the bank the previous week.  Then he reflected on how during that same conversation he had managed to shift his Parent/Child and regain his Adult ego state 3 times.  Think his management team will take this on, be open to the learning?  I have no doubt.

I  have been training for a long time, and courses run in very different ways, mostly as a result of the individuals attending, their perception of training and the culture of their organisation.  I feel privileged to have worked with you at A&TT.  You took the learning and made it work for yourselves, you were open and challenging and you brought the fun with you.  It is a comment on your leaders, on yourselves and your own leadership style and the exceptional culture you have created.  I can take the learning so far but you have to take it further. We have sown the Avo seed; you must nurture it and reap the rewards in the future.

Thanks Rob, Nic and all of you at A&TT. The experience with you was memorable for me.

We know a lot of the culture of an organisation is driven by the leadership.  We also know that the success of training interventions is impacted hugely when the leader is involved.  It could be the manager of the team all the way through to the CEO of the company.  Unfortunately often management is looking for a quick fix, they throw some training at their team (or the problem) and then carry on as they were before with the “hope-like-hell-it-worked” illusion that everything will be different.  And the resultant disillusionment follows a while later when there does not seem to be much shift in their people.  One thing Avo knows for sure is that the success of the training is directly proportional to the involvement and commitment of the leader of the group.
 

I was very lucky to see this happening before my eyes the other day - how the open, transparent attitude and manner of the leaders directly influenced the group in the moment.  I was working with the leadership group of Auto & Truck Tyres on Saturday (yes they all come to training on Saturday).  It was brilliant, both Rob and Nic (2 of the directors), strong driver personalities, were completely open about their weaknesses, mistakes and aggressive attitudes during crises at work.  As I raised the concepts during the training and they saw where they had gone wrong, they immediately told the whole group, all the managers that report to them.  We laughed, bantered and I ripped them off.  But the example they set was astounding: here is the CEO telling everyone what his major downfall is.  Immediately he told his PA to make him signs to put on his desk so that every single time people come talk to him he’ll remember to think about the concepts so that he’ll manage himself better!
 

What did they teach their managers?  We all have weaknesses and we all have strengths. It’s ok to talk about our weaknesses and we don’t have to hide them away: we can practice getting better, we can laugh at ourselves, we can be transparent, we can be open, we can support one another.
 

If the leadership is open to learning, it’s the example they set for their people. And so a culture of growing and development is set up.  If they can’t, the learning will be academic and left up to the individual.
 

Kudos to you and your team at ATT!

One of the icons that we have chosen which describe for us those things that will make our business as success is ‘Building a Better South Africa’.  We need to focus on the macro picture and believe that we can make a difference.
We, especially us at Avo, all work hard at taking a positive approach to what can sometimes seem a bit of a negative and futile outlook for our country. But every now and again, if you open yourself to it and look around, you’ll notice those small things happening around you that are worth celebrating.

Like last week: I was sitting working quietly at my computer when I noticed one of these events unfolding outside on the patio. I took a photo for you.

Out came Clayton and Donald, Clay with his Avo-work and Donald with his homework.  This is one of Clay’s favourite take-a-break spaces.  Clay lights up and Donald opens his homework.  Donald belongs to Evelyn, who is on our ’AirTafficControl’ team -  one of those people who make stuff happen for us trainers. And ’stuff’ can be just about anything. 

Donald, with a little coaxing from Clayton, starts to do his reading: he is in grade one and learning in a second language.  So I watched with a little smile on my face as this young man with his calm and caring manner coached Donald with his reading.  He helped him when he got stuck, praised when he got it right and just enjoyed the story that Donald was reading him.  Clay has taken on just a very small part of growing this country.  It’s only 15 min in his day but it will have a lifetime impact on Donald.  

So if you want to be an Avo or you want to understand who we are then ask Clayton.  Good on you Clay, thanks for the picture - every small contribution makes a difference and the reminder – that we are in the business of growing people in South Africa.

I’ve been working with a really phenomenal bunch of people from Group Risk at one of the big 5 banks in South Africa.

What a privilege.

I’ve gained so much insight into myself and other people during this time. What we do at Avo is about self and the other person, try looking at any course we run and you’ll find it revolves around that dynamic. So how privileged am I to be constantly working on myself while I’m working with others?

So to my point; I have a pretty equal combination of analytical and very steady behaviour in my personality profile and by far the majority of people coming from Group Risk are analytical - their behaviour fits the analyst personality profile very closely.

Just last week a group came along on our Persuasive Conversations course, and every single one of them were very strongly analytical. Many people misunderstand the analyst type person. An old stereotype of this group of people was that they didn’t have much of a personality. Analysts know this is not true but I sometimes get the feeling other people are not always so sure. Later research indicates that they may be some of the most complicated personalities to be found.

On this series of courses I have experienced this complexity and have been through the widest possible range of emotions and experiences that you could think of. We’ve had so much fun but at the same time have had some incredibly serious, deep discussions. There has been laughing and joking mixed with thinking (lots of it), discussing, explaining, wondrous stories, debate… about senior managers, exploring family relationships and the minds of teenagers, some tears (yes some of my own as well), challenges, challenging situations brought to the table, worries, solutions, ideas and learning.

Yes, every single programme makes my mind spin, at some point I usually consciously feel myself thinking how great it is to be alive, enthusiastic and stimulated with the people around me. When engaging with people and attempting to work out how to connect with them be aware that you don’t box the analyst too rigidly, they have incredible depth and bring massive value.

I’ve been re-exposed to the word “rigour”. I didn’t really think I would use it to describe a space that Avo or I would be training in, you know we do the ‘soft’ skills, but the last three courses I’ve been running with have been … rigorous (even though its still the soft stuff).

Yep that’s it … rigorous. And I guess the rigour-ness came in the debate, the discussion and the questioning. Not the material, not the concepts, not the exercises but the interaction. So for me its been a ‘wonderful’ challenge, a ‘fantastic’ experience and ‘exciting’ growth. The nice optimistic adjectives are in italics because when you are in the middle of holding the debate and hearing the arguments it feels very hard, … rigorous.
We are rolling out a country wide change intervention with one of our favourite clients (need to withhold name for now) and they are absolutely fantastic. For them it’s a serious change, hence the rigour of the arguments and debate.

I’m the facilitator and I know they are learning and unlearning a lot, but I’m learning just as much if not more than them.

What people? And what skill? Let me paint you a picture: They are strong, smart, driven, fast, efficient, energetic, focused, enthusiastic, engaging, fun and funny, witty, quick thinking, quick to argue, quick to challenge … rigorous … and on top of their game.

You try and keep up with this bunch in a day, even if you are the facilitator, wow …! And so back to my word, yep, Rigorous. I know that much of the nuts and bolts of this massive change rests on the shoulders of these guys and as one of them said yesterday, “the success is in our hands boys”. With this kind of talent in a company I have absolutely no doubt that they will succeed and stay an international leader in their field.
For those of you that continuously made the following statements … you know who you are!
“I just wanna ask One question” (for the 24^th time)
“There are pockets of excellence in our funnel of excellence”
“No guys – lets look at the Bigger Picture here”
“I need to stand up …uugh … I just want to say …”

I’ve had a quiet revolution in myself. It happens every now and again when you discover stuff about yourself that you didn’t know or had forgotten or was not seeing clearly I’m really happy with the work I do.

Sometimes when you lose sight of why you do the work you do, why you chose it, why you enjoy it, it becomes a millstone round your neck. And then sometimes you have the opportunity to be shown why you’re in this game. I had the opportunity to work with WBHO over the last two months. For those of you that don’t know it’s a large construction company.

In August I had the opportunity to train some of their level 3 engineers. They were on an intense two week academy that WBHO had set up for them. These guys are generally in charge of running a construction site. They work in a tough environment with a wide range of people from different race groups and cultures, with different languages and vastly different education levels. They talk straight, very straight, you call a spade a f-king shovel and you don’t pull the punches, that’s a waste of time. When someone makes a mistake coaching is straight you f-ked up, now get it f-king right or I’ll f-king kill you and so everyone knows exactly where they stand and what to do. And then along I come, feeling slightly apprehensive that my work on Empathy, Emotional Intelligence and Transactional Analysis is not going to go down very well amongst a group of straight talking engineers.

Well what a great experience. These guys are amazing. We did work on Personalities, on Parent Adult Child, on Listening, Empathy and Assertiveness. We discussed Negotiation, Conflict and dealing with Cultural Fluency. Every time I connected with them my paradigm of engineers and the construction industry was challenged. Every time we connected we had fun, we laughed and we got serious. AND every time they took what we were discussing to heart, looking for ways to implement the knowledge and skill at work, at home and with one another. My experience with conferences or academy type learning programmes is that they’re about playing - team building and drinking, oh and training is for recovering. Well these guys would not stop working that is and it blew me away. They devoured every thing I threw at them and I was only a small part of their programme. And so I finished on an absolute high feeling fantastic about what I do.

Over this small time while connecting with Marileen, who managed the academy, to deciding what to include and what would be most valuable, to dealing with the guys on the programme I began to get a super feeling about WBHO. Then some of the other Avos who connected with them started saying the same thing. Whenever one of us connected with the WBHO team it was a memorable experience. That starts to tell you something about their culture: they are just damn nice people. That was August. I should have blogged all this then. I got busy, back to back with more training and so you think I’m writing about it now cause I’ve got time no I don’t but I’ve got to tell you I just connected with them again this weekend in a completely different division and it’s the same!

Jules and I went to Swaziland to do two talks on Saturday to all the guys that manage the Plant (aah-ha me speak ‘constructionish’.) They provide all the big trucks, graders, excavators etc to the different working sites around the country and around Africa. Yes we had the same experience. The guys were even more straight than the engineers mentioned in previous paragraphs, but just as warm, friendly, interested and enthusiastic about our messages. So to Marileen, thanks for your faith in us, and to Bill and Rob, thanks for taking us on to do that work with your guys. But it’s not just thanks for the work, you have a culture that has impacted all the Avo’s that met with you.

I thank you for helping me with my quiet revolution. Because of you, I remembered how much I love what I do.

Hi all, thought i would drop you a note. I got here safe and sound, experiencing the Palacina, a beautiful, old colonial style hotel. Great people and lovely food. The guys from Enterprise IG have been wonderful, thanks Jodi, Cindy and Tendai, they are doing a Brand Activation of which I’m doing the first session - Sussing Personalities.

So tomorrow we start at 7:30 with Sussing Personalities. We are using it to introduce change - my angle is understand self, understand others and then begin changing the way you manage your people simply because you understand them better. You can approach people differently to get the most out of them and help them enjoy their work better. So we’ll see how it goes. I’m looking forward to speaking to a non South African group and intrigued to see how they respond to the personalities learning.

When I was at school a long, long time ago I was never exposed to the great variety of jobs that one can do out there. You could be a doctor, teacher, lawyer or if you did biology a Marine Biologist, wow! Don’t laugh I seriously considered the Marine Biology thing. So after doing a botany honors degree here I am facilitating people on how to communicate, ya go figure (ok it’s a medium length story) And then I met these guys from Standard Bank (no, no, no they are not ‘Bankers’) on a course we did together. I had no idea, they are forensic investigators working for the bank and they are incredible - CSI here we come. Some of the guys are ex-police, some have law backgrounds and others financial sector experience. And they deal with fraud issues around the banking environment.

You can’t believe the passion they have about their work and solving crime. It’s reassuring to know there are all sorts of people out there working to make South Africa a better place solving crime, helping people that have been caught in a crime web and when necessary working with the police. And boy, did I also learn stuff about getting into someone’s head with your common old communication skills. We had a fantastic course, spent most of our time discussing scenarios, problems or difficult situations and learning from every single experience they raised.

To you guys, thanks for being out there and thanks for sharing your experiences with us to help all our learning on the programme.

Here are some of their comments at the end of the programme.

Rana: Profound learning about personality types which one can use in every life situation

Judy Joseph: I found the course very enlightening and insightful with a wealth of applicable knowledge

Ernst: Great, teaches you to start thinking when conversing with others.

Andre: Good food for body & soul

Kervin: It was a great learning course for me and I am going to implement and use this stuff

Rhian: The course made me reflect on how I personality interact with others, in situations, where I need to, persuade, it made me reflect on my career standing & gave guidance - I.T.O improving my technique to max out come!!!

Shaquille: The course was good and very interactive. The facilitator is accommodative and allows everyone in the room to participate

Kenny: This course helped me to pause and consider all the little things that happen in a conversation that we tend to take for in a difficult situation.

Aidan: I have enjoyed the content, structure & presentation

To succeed you need to out compete, out strategize, out plan and even out scheme your competitors. And if you don’t you are ‘Trumped On’ or ‘have been trumped’ or basically ‘You’re FIRED’. Funny though your ‘competitors’ happen to be your colleagues, mangers, leaders, team members and so on.

Donald Trump, the wise business man that he is, is educating us on how to succeed in business. Don’t trust anyone, If you have to work as a team then cover your back at all times - your team members may just knife you, if you fail try and blame someone else, if your team fails get rid of the weakest person, keep your team divided so that you can conquer, set your leader up for failure so that you can take their place, look for the weaknesses in your colleagues, remember them and exploit them in the future.

Amazing, if you want to climb the corporate ladder then ‘The Apprentice’ shows us all a great picture of what to do and how to be, to succeed.

Perhaps I’m naive, I mean its only reality TV and we all know that the situation is quite false, hey??? Perhaps many folk who watch it think this is what business is (perhaps it is). Well I’m boycotting the programme because I’m beginning to think that we need to find a different way to succeed in our business ventures.

So am I too idealistic if I ask whether people could uncover one another’s strengths instead of exploit their weaknesses; allow the weaker person to find a place where they can succeed instead of chucking them out; trust your colleagues instead of watching their every movement; take responsibility instead of blaming everything and everybody else; learn from failures and communicate them rather than hide them; learn from your leaders and colleagues, work with them and allow them to shine rather than trying to undermine or out-maneuver them?

Am I too idealistic if I ask whether individuals, departments, divisions, businesses or organizations collaborate rather than compete?

Perhaps I am or perhaps only 50% (or there abouts) of you think I am.

Who am I and what makes me Me!!

I am probably one of the more serious (and older) types in the company, the quiet analytical person sitting studiously in front of my computer and forgetting to talk to anybody when I’m on a roll. I’m quite structured in my thinking, precise in my way and probably a little dogmatic.

But, don’t be completely deceived: I also have a fun, mischievous and theatrical streak in me, my ‘Spider Man’ alter ego which certainly comes out when facilitating, coaching or speaking at conferences.

I have always believed that I’m not a good communicator, always found it difficult to connect with people and am always a little apprehensive about starting a conversation - every time I’m speaking to someone it’s like, what do I say? And what can I talk about? So I have a vested interest in training and consulting in these skills and I really enjoy helping others learn how to do this stuff.

I’ve struggled with the confidence to connect with people, start conversations, make cold calls or to start selling. I’ve grappled with my confidence when talking to 300 people from a stage and so I understand how it feels to other people who battle with these things. For only a very few does it come naturally, for others like me the skills are learnt, I know the pain and I know the steps you need to take and it’s for these reasons that I can really make a difference and get fulfillment out of what I do.