On this particular day, I was struck by the clear and pristine beauty of Middleton Beach, while just across the peninsula, much of our South Australian coast is struggling under a toxic algal bloom.
It got me thinking about the different workplace cultures I encounter through my coaching work. Some are clear, positive, and energising, with a healthy, forward rhythm like the Middleton’s waves. Others feel murky, stagnant, and even unsafe, much like parts of our Gulf at the moment.

So, what can you do if you’re a leader trying to make a positive impact within a toxic workplace?

1. Reset expectations around behaviour and accountability:
   Be clear about what good looks like. Involve your people in defining the standards and hold everyone, including leaders, accountable.
2. Model the behaviours you want to see:
   Demonstrate respect, openness, and integrity. Have the courage to call out toxic behaviours, even when they appear in your peers or those above you.
3. Ramp up your self-care:
   Toxic environments can take a toll. Prioritise exercise, rest, and positive social connections outside of work. Without strong self-care, it’s easy to become part of the problem.
4. Focus on what you can influence:
   Change what you can, accept what you can’t, and stay clear about the difference. Influence grows from clarity, not frustration.
5. Know when to move on:
   If the culture has reached a point of no return, look outward. Find your own “patch of coast” – the environment that allows you to thrive and lead in alignment with your values. Sometimes, it’s just across the peninsula.

Even in toxic waters, renewal is possible. But it starts with courageous leadership and a clear commitment to creating safer, healthier currents.

Jo Saies

pbperformance.com.au

Expertunity is an evidence-based framework which addresses this gap by identifying the unique competencies that enable specialists to thrive and to add maximum value to their company regardless of their technical domain. The framework incorporates a unique Expertship competency model and a range of developmental programs and strategies targeted specifically at Subject Matter Experts as distinct from people leaders.

Mastering Expertship programs have been run successfully over a number of years in Australia, New Zealand and globally, with program evaluation results showing both participant and organisational benefits including

• Technical experts adding far more value to their organisation
• Retention of top technical talent
• Avoidance of single-point-of failure expertise gaps
• Re-energising long-term technical employees
• Re-engagement of demotivated or cynical technical experts.

In March this year my colleagues and I delivered the first 5 day Mastering Expertship program for technical experts here in Adelaide. The program was extremely successful, receiving a net promotor score (NPS) of 78. Participants included scientists, HR experts, IT specialists, engineers and planners. Feedback from both participants and line managers of the experts has been so positive we have planned a second Mastering Expertship program to be run face to face in Adelaide in October.

The program will be facilitated by two experienced local facilitators, myself Jo Saies and Wendy Taylor.  We would be looking at a program of 12-16 participants with a minimum of 2 per agency, and wanting to confirm participant names by early August.

Attached is a brief overview of the Mastering Expertship program and a guide to selecting participants.

Would you be interested in finding out more?

If this is something worth exploring further as a development option for your subject matter experts please book a 30 minute call to provide some more context and answer and questions.

Thanks for your interest in Expertship

Jo

Jo Saies

pbperformance.com.au

Emotional intelligence is not about stifling or hiding emotions, always being positive, or needing to be more emotional.  It’s about using emotion productively –  recognising, understanding and working with emotions in ourselves and others, so we can

• Interact more effectively
• deal with disagreement constructively
• pro-actively handle stress and change
• read and navigate the dynamics of an organisational or team culture
• manage through complexity and make difficult decisions
• show up authentically
• build and maintain trust.

All of these behaviours help us to increase our performance and achieve more positive results. There is indeed strong evidence that high levels of emotional intelligence in the workplace can lead to:

• Better physical and mental health
• Improved workplace relationships
• Coping better with high demands and stress
• Increased levels of engagement and discretionary effort
• Reductions in employee turnover and absenteeism
• Prevention of psychological injury
• Increased creativity and innovation
• More effective leadership.

So how do we build emotional intelligence? A good place to start is working on our self-awareness to get better at recognising emotion, in the moment,  in ourselves and others. To build self-awareness, practice paying attention to these four things:

1. Emotion is a biological reaction, and is first triggered in the body, so we can start to notice emotion by being aware of physiological changes or body sensations – are we holding our breath, where do we feel tightness, how intense is that tightness, how far does it extend, how long does it last?
2. Next tune in to our self-talk – what are we thinking, what words and phrases are we saying to ourselves that give us a clue as to how we’re feeling?
3. Notice what we’re saying – listen to our language, the labels we are assigning, and to the tone and volume of our voice
4. Pay attention to our behaviour – both what we’re doing, and what we feel like doing.

When identifying emotions in others we don’t have the benefit of knowing directly about their body sensations or their self-talk (although we could ask them). But in addition to what they’re saying and doing, we also have the benefit of observing facial expression and body language to help us recognise and label an emotional experience. A shift in the person’s energy can also be a clue that they have experienced an emotional reaction.

Awareness in the moment alerts us to the presence of an emotion in ourselves and others. Having a comprehensive mental dictionary of emotions gives us the capacity to label that experience. We can then use that information to make a choice about how to respond more productively.

For example, when we recognise emotion in ourselves we’re able to regulate the way we express that emotion, shift our emotional state to one that is more productive and incorporate information from our feelings, together with facts and other information, into decisions.  When we recognise emotion in others, we can acknowledge the emotion with empathy, assist them where necessary to regulate how they are expressing the emotion, and use a broader range of  information to help us respond appropriately.

Emotional Intelligence skills can be learnt, by focusing on key behaviours you want to change and practising new responses over time. Like any behaviour change, it can be hard going to get started, but begin by recognising the value to you and the people around you in terms of improved performance and relationships. Then through self-awareness, feedback from others and observation of impact you will start to embed emotional intelligence for a thriving future.

Jo Saies

pbperformance.com.au

Making changes in my life often reminds me of the magnets. Sometimes a change feels effortless, and just sticks as soon as I take steps towards it. But more often than not I  feel like I’m in between the two wrong-way-around magnets, pushing up against something that I know I want, but not being able to move forward no matter how hard I try.

Many people come to coaching describing themselves as stuck  –  either they’re not able to make a change in a specific behaviour, or they just a describe a general sense of stuckness in work or life. Common scenarios are

• I’m stuck in a job I feel miserable in
• I’m overwhelmed but I have no control over the things overwhelming me
• I’m desperate to stop (habit x) but can’t seem to make any shifts
• My whole life is stuck in a rut.

Being stuck is a signal that the change we want or need to make is not so much about simple behaviours, but more about identifying and shifting some deeply held core beliefs that are driving those behaviours. Our core beliefs are like a computer’s operating system, and our behaviours are like the applications we use to get things done. Sometimes we can’t improve the application without downloading a whole new operating system. That takes self reflection, hard work and some discomfort, and is often where coaching can have the maximum impact.

If you’re stuck, here’s five steps to take – it’s my ABCDE of getting unstuck. If you’re leading or managing a staff member who seems stuck, you could work through these steps with them in a coaching conversation.

A: Acknowledge you’re stuck – what is the challenge you want to move forward on but don’t seem to be able to?

Eg I want to be able to delegate more….

B: Be honest – how are you not doing the thing you want to move towards? What are you doing instead?

Eg I don’t take time to coach my staff on new projects or tasks; it’s quicker and easier to do things myself….

C: Claim the Rewards – how do you benefit, or what do you gain from this approach?

Eg things always get done; tasks are done they way I want them to be done; I’m confident they’re done to a good standard; I feel good because my expertise is recognised and needed; I avoid feeling bad or being criticised for mistakes or poor work being done…

D: Discover the Downsides – what price are you paying for not following through on changing this approach?

Eg I’m overwhelmed with work; our team is not achieving our goals; I feel like I’m failing and others are judging me for that; my team members feel disempowered…

E: Equalise – Weigh up the short-term rewards and benefits (C) against the longer term downsides (D); What price are you paying for the rewards?

Take some time with this process, and be kind to yourself – the way you’ve been doing things has served you well until now. Your protective beliefs have kept you safe and secure, so acknowledge this, and at the same time acknowledge that getting unstuck means downloading a new operating system to support you to respond more effectively in a more complex environment.

If you need support in getting unstuck, please get in touch to talk about whether coaching is the right tool for you.

Jo Saies

pbperformance.com.au

But no news is good news, right? Surely if our performance wasn’t up to standard, or we were behaving inappropriately, someone would tell us??? Unfortunately, No! In the hazardous landscape of performance feedback, no news can all too often signal very bad news.

There’s many reasons why we don’t give feedback when it’s needed. Here’s some you might recognise:

• You expect (hope) the performance or behaviour will just improve over time
• You don’t trust your own judgement – you may think you’re being over-sensitive in your reaction, or too harsh in your judgement
• You give them the benefit of the doubt, believing the incident was a one-off
• You’re fearful of the other person’s reaction – will they be angry, embarrassed or upset?
• You just want to preserve the relationship
• It’s not your job to give feedback – you’re the CEO, or just a supervisor/colleague – someone else should tell them
• They should know they need to improve!

So, in the face of all these compelling arguments, it’s possible that an under-performing or disruptive employee can carry on for a very long time, blissfully ignorant of any underlying concerns, until there’s a crisis or it’s too late.

As an employee, it’s in your interests, and in the interests of your organisation, to avert this scenario. Here are some suggestions:

• Demonstrate a genuine interest in and openness to feedback right from the outset
• Take responsibility for setting up meetings with your manager to define and review changing expectations – your job description outlines broad functions, but may not capture current context or priorities, so review these with your manager when you start and at regular intervals
• Document the scope of your work, agreed priorities and what will be looked at to gauge your progress and performance – you don’t need a formal performance management system or template in place to do this – have the conversation and write down what you agree so everyone is clear
• Proactively seek feedback – ask for examples of your strengths (what you do well) and areas for development (what you could do differently, more of or less of)
• Ask if general feedback could be more specific – let them know if will be more helpful to you if they can provide a specific example of when they noticed a strength or an area for development
• Seek feedback from a range of sources – peers, direct reports, clients and stakeholders can all provide a valuable perspective – after all, your manager only sees a small part of the whole you, and should not be expected to be the sole judge of your performance
• If you’re working on changing a specific behaviour see if you can enlist a trusted friend, colleague or manager to help you to become aware of when you’re doing or not doing the desired behaviour – feedback in the moment will be most helpful
• Listen and try to understand the feedback, even if it’s negative – see if there’s something you can take from it before challenging, remembering we all see the world differently
• Acknowledge the value of all respectful feedback that’s given with positive intent, even if you don’t agree with it – this builds trust and opens the door for future conversations.

Whilst it can be challenging to give corrective feedback, it also takes courage, trust and a commitment to personal growth to proactively seek and act on feedback. You may feel vulnerable and exposed, but within a trusting and respectful culture, it can also be incredibly empowering and a rich opportunity for development. You might even learn something you wish someone had told you years ago.

Jo Saies

pbperformance.com.au

Why does this matter? High work engagement is linked to higher productivity and improved organisational performance. Gallup’s 2018 survey found a rate of only 34% engagement, and these figures have been pretty consistent since we’ve been measuring it. That’s a pretty grim and costly scenario for both workers and organisations. Imagine if your fancy new iphone only worked properly 34% of the time!

At its heart engagement is about the relationship between the employee and the employer, and like any healthy, productive and sustainable relationship, I believe that both the worker and the organisation have a responsibility to understand, manage and build engagement.

As a worker:

• Reconnect with why you do what you do – what was the reason you got into this work, why was that important, what do you need to do to re-kindle that purpose?
• Set yourself some goals for development – can you take on a new project, learn a new skill, stretch yourself in some way so you feel like your continuing to grow and learn?
• Get connected – if you’re becoming disengaged, chances are you feel isolated or unsupported, so who can you ask for help, who can you collaborate with, what can you do to build stronger relationships with your team, your clients, your external stakeholders or even those outside of work?
• Monitor your engagement, if your commitment, energy or interest drops for more than a short period of time, get some support from your manager, your EAP or an external coach.

As a manager

• Take a real interest in your staff – care about them as people, find out what drives them, and look for ways that work can meet their needs as well as well as the needs of the organisation
• Help your staff to grow – teach them, mentor them, help them identify and achieve learning and development goals that give them a sense of progress
• Give constant feedback – reinforce what they’re doing well, recognise improvement, acknowledge accomplishment, celebrate success
• Aim to make yourself redundant – maybe not literally, but figuratively! If your staff have the skills, motivation, tools and confidence to do the work that’s needed, they’re more satisfied and you’re now free to focus on the bigger picture
• Learn to coach – using a coaching style of leadership rather than an authoritative, coercive or telling style empowers staff to try, to experiment, to learn by doing, to take responsibility, to be accountable and to drive their own success

And if you’re part of the leadership team

• Your people management policies, processes and systems must be robust – that means the way the organisation recruits, employs, supports, develops, rewards, manages, and exits your people must be fair, transparent, aligned to organisational strategy and grounded in contemporary best practice
• Devote the time and resources needed to develop your managers to be outstanding people leaders
• Ensure employees have a voice – how do they give feedback, input ideas, get involved, raise concerns and be part of the growth and success of the organisation?
• Shine a light on organisational integrity – this is about organisational reputation and credibility; it’s how you’re perceived internally by your staff, and externally by your clients, your stakeholders and the public; and its foundation rests in the values and behaviours of the senior leaders and the culture they create.

I’m not sure we need large and complicated engagement surveys any more – I think we know enough to be able to identify disengagement when we see it, and to do what’s needed to turn it around. HR might take responsibility for driving the initiatives, but it’s the buy-in from the leadership team, the managers and the staff across the organisation that will drive the success of an organisational engagement strategy. What part will you play?

Jo Saies

pbperformance.com.au

Workers who don’t trust their managers are often angry or scared or both. They’re angry about perceived injustice or bad treatment, and scared of unpredictable behaviour and being disadvantaged. And when people are scared – in a constant state of flight or flight – they respond in exactly the same way as if they were in actual physical danger. The higher functioning, thinking brain gets hijacked, and our focus of attention narrows; creativity shuts down; problem solving is diminished; and we lose our ability to look at issues strategically. Not surprisingly, our performance suffers.

As a manager, if you want high performing staff, consider these four foundations of trust:

Be honest

• Admit when you’ve made a mistake and make amends, rather than trying to cover up the mistake or blaming others
• Accept responsibility for your actions, even if they have unintended negative ramifications, rather than trying to pretend you didn’t do something
• Don’t pretend you did something when you didn’t, in order to promote your own status
• Don’t pretend you didn’t do something when you did, in order to protect your own reputation.

Act fairly

• Don’t treat some team members more favourably than others, even if you like them more or get on better with them
• Don’t change how you respond to the same issue, depending on who raises it  – if you have a good reason for behaving differently and it could appear unfair, explain your reasoning
• Don’t keep changing your mind about something  – If you have a good reason for changing a decision, make sure you explain why.

Consider everyone’s needs

• Get to know your team members – use regular one on one informal conversations to understand their motivations and fears
• You can’t please all of the people all of the time, but you should at least consider everyone’s needs, especially around the big issues that will significantly impact on them
• Communicate your understanding of staff needs and how you’ve considered them in your decisions and actions
• Keep people safe – physically and psychologically.

Show integrity

• Mean what you say
• Say what you mean
• Keep your word
• Don’t breach confidences
• Be clear about your values and act in accordance with them.

It might be tempting to be a little bit dishonest, unfair or selfish in order to solve a tricky issue, get your way or preserve your reputation. But just like your mother always knew when you were lying, your team members have highly attuned trust barometers, so you can be sure they’ll figure it out. And once trust is eroded between a manager and their staff, it’s very very difficult to restore.

Staff who trust you will accept your decisions even if they don’t agree with them, will look for ways to support you and will go the extra mile for you and the team. Staff who don’t trust you, even a little bit, will devote their energy to fighting to protect themselves rather than doing their job. They’ll withdraw discretionary effort and may even actively sabotage your decisions. Acting at all times with honesty, fairness, consideration and integrity often takes a great deal of courage, but Managers who make the effort to develop and maintain trust within their staff will reap the rewards of happy, loyal, high performing teams.

Staff and managers trying to re-establish trust within their team will benefit from personalised, confidential coaching to identify and implement positive changes. Call or email me to discuss coaching rates and availability.

Jo Saies

pbperformance.com.au

There’s no doubt that our top athletes are blessed with unique physical abilities, but these natural gifts are enhanced by a bunch of other factors which every single one of us, no matter what our circumstances, can tap into in order to be our Personal Best.

Build on strengths
Athletes recognise early on what they are good at, and work hard to develop their talent in that field. Everyone has strengths, but sometimes they’re hidden. What are your strengths? What are you good at? What energises you and makes you feel alive and strong, and how can you nurture this strength in your work or life?

Practice
Being the best in the world doesn’t come easily to any athlete, despite what it looks like from the outside. Athletes develop their talent over a life-time of hard work and dedication, often practicing one very specific skill for hours on end.  Psychologists believe it takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve world-class performance in any domain. (That’s 4 hours/day, 6 days/week over 10 years for those interested!) And not just any practice – the hardest, most concentrated and deliberate practice possible. What are you doing to practice and nurture your talents and skills? You may not be aiming for 10,000 hours, but are you finding the time and opportunities to develop and improve yourself? And is your development focused, goal oriented and purposeful?

Mental focus
When training and competing, athletes have an extraordinary ability to focus their mental attention very narrowly on the task at hand. They’re not distracted by external factors such as spectators or weather conditions, or by their own internal thoughts and judgements. Whilst they’re subject to a huge range of emotional reactions, often within a short period of time (for example fear, pride, frustration, excitement and despair), they’ve learnt strategies for managing their emotions so they can stay focused on their performance. If, like most of us, you find that you are easily distracted, or that your emotions detract from your own performance or negatively affect those around you, then seek out ways to improve your mental focus. Sport psychology books and articles are a great place to start, or talk to a coach or psychologist about strategies that are right for you.

Get a coach
All sportspeople, regardless of their ability and level of competition, use a coach to help them set goals, overcome obstacles, maintain motivation, hone their skills, develop the right mindset and improve their performance. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t seek out the support of an appropriately skilled and objective coach to help us achieve our best in all areas of our life. If you want to be your personal best, you need to be able to monitor, manage and improve your own attitudes and behaviours, and a coach helps you develop the insight, motivation and skills to do this.

If you or your employees want to achieve a world-class performance in some area of your life, please email me for a confidential discussion about how coaching or a motivational presentation can help.  

Jo Saies

pbperformance.com.au

It makes sense then, that we enter positions of leadership (and by that I mean positions of influence, not just positions with defined authority), with a suppressed or even non-existent sense of curiosity. Our job at this stage is to keep not only ourselves, but others – our family, our staff, our community, our team – safe, and a little curiosity can be a dangerous thing. Evolutionarily, exploring unknown territory can get you killed, and if our basic needs are being met, why risk it? Better to stick with what we know and stay alive.Here are three scenarios in which leaders might benefit from a greater sense of curiosity.

1. Be curious with your people
Leaders often feel their job is to give people advice or solve problems. After all, isn’t that why you got the job – to fix things, help others or find solutions? When people come to us with a question, a problem or a challenge, it’s tempting to jump in with a quick response. But in our haste to get things done, if we don’t take time to understand the challenge and explore unknown ground, we can end up providing well intentioned solutions to the wrong problem. Instead of seeing ourselves as expert advice givers, how would things change if we worked with our staff from the perspective of curiosity? Curiosity allows us to ask questions instead of giving answers, and curiosity allows the other person to think, reflect, and potentially find their own solution.

2. Be curious with your team
One of the key benefits of teamwork is being able to capitalise on the combined wisdom of each of the team members. In effective teams the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. How much more effective could your team be in solving deep, complex problems, if you could support them to remain curious with each other? What new insights might the team uncover, what  richer understanding might you reach, and what intractable problems might you solve if, instead of ‘that won’t work’, ‘that’s too risky’, ‘that’s not my patch’ or ‘we’ve tried that before’ we coached our teams to keep asking each other ‘how could that work’, ‘what can we try’, ‘how can we build on each other’s knowledge’ , ‘how do these different perspectives go together’, ‘what other ideas are there’, ‘who else can contribute’ and ‘where could we start’?

3. Be curious with yourself
When we experience negative thoughts, feelings or sensations, we’re often quick to judge ourselves. It’s the classic one-two combination punch. We feel something like disappointment about a particular outcome, then we start feeling anger or blame at ourselves for not being good enough. Our inner critic, alive and thriving in most of us, kicks in, and we’re off judging and critiquing ourselves. How would things change if, instead of judging our initial feeling of disappointment, we were simply curious about that feeling – noting it, naming it, experiencing the feeling for what it is, and allowing it to be? How would the feeling change in intensity or impact, how would our reaction to it be different, and how might that lead to a different result? Acknowledging negative feelings and examining them with interest, much like a curious scientist, can diffuse the impact of that feeling, and can be a circuit breaker to prevent the inner critic taking hold.and spiralling you into negativity.

So I’m suggesting that curiosity can help us expand our perspective, our knowledge, our skills and our experience. It helps us to navigate complexity and ambiguity, and is therefore a key enabler of leadership effectiveness. How can you strengthen your curiosity to better manage your own reactions, capitalise on the strength of your team and empower your staff so you can work together to achieve more than you thought possible? Curiosity is the difference between knowing and discovering. Curiosity keeps judgment at bay and encourages consideration and inclusion. So what do you need to do to let your curiosity run wild?

Jo

PB Performance

Fascinating new research from Kim Cameron and others has shown that a leader’s capacity to positively energise relationships and networks within their organisation has four times more impact on their performance than their position in the hierarchy or their perceived level of influence. Positive energisers perform better themselves, and also enhance the work of others they’re connected with, which improves organisational performance.

How’s the energy in your team – mostly positive or negative? Now for a bit of self-reflection – are you a positive energiser, or do you drag people down with your negativity, tendency to dominate or your focus on problems and faults?

Imagine the impact on engagement and performance if we could teach everyone in our organisation, especially our leaders, the behaviours associated with being a positive energiser. Here’s a few suggestions:

• Give people your full attention
• Listen carefully
• Don’t interrupt
• Contribute actively and meaningfully to conversations
• Share the airtime, don’t dominate
• Show concern for others
• Help others to feel included
• Willingly assist others – and also accept help
• Don’t wallow in problems, look for solutions
• Use humour and fun appropriately
• Be reliable and trustworthy
• Show enthusiasm for what you’re doing (even when you don’t feel it)
• Express gratitude
• Smile

Teams with more positively energising leaders produce significantly more levels of job satisfaction, engagement, well-being, innovation, cohesion and performance.  Leader behaviours which increase positive relational energy, in addition to those above, include:

• Create a positive vision for the future
• Convey a sense of hope
• Value others
• Acknowledge progress
• Celebrate positive outcomes
• Emphasise and build on employee strengths
• Look for positive energisers when recruiting

You don’t have to be a social butterfly or an extrovert to be a positive energiser. All of us can learn these behaviours. Observe the positive energisers in your workplace – which behaviours do you notice them doing most often? What could you do more or less of? Pick just one of these behaviours and see if you can focus on it for the next month. Relational energy is such an untapped resource with the potential for huge pay-offs in terms of engagement and performance.

PB Performance