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One of the basic premises of psychotherapy is the words we hear and experience cause us harm or otherwise, and are key to positive ways forward.  It is their positive use that can bring about change and our future development and success.  It is this principle that drives my desire to use positive praise with children, colleagues and learners throughout all my work.  And it probably does yours too.

In a work culture of always minimising risk, seeking continuous improvement and addressing urgent issues, we can often apply our time disproportionately to the negatives, when positive approaches are by far the best way of achieving our aims.  But it can be difficult without a determined effort to embed such practice and maintain the high levels needed for maximum effect. That said, it is a basic element of all our work – line management included.  In the workplace it can be the single most important and effective motivator you have.

Positive praise costs nothing but time and a little effort.  I hope this article will recharge your positive praise batteries!  Because, be honest, most of us are now thinking that we could do better with colleagues, team members and/or those we supervise.  We may fall short because we can be too busy, otherwise preoccupied, or we may even struggle to identify positives from various situations and scenarios. Some of us just aren’t used to being in such positive environments either, whether this was our experience at home during childhood, at school or in previous jobs.  If you have low self-esteem yourself or you feel embarrassed about giving praise, you will find it more difficult to give and receive it.  I have worked with people who are very hungry for praise and no amount ever seems enough for them.  On the flip-side, some people might actually be deeply suspicious that you are after something in return.  Well, you are, happiness and motivation and job satisfaction. That’s all!

There are some basic principles, questions and guidelines that help me to ensure I practice what I preach:

• People who feel they are noticed, appreciated and respected are more motivated than those that don’t.
• Science tells us that when we hear something we like, a burst of dopamine is released in our brains. It’s a neurotransmitter related to feelings of well-being and joy.
• As a manager or leader, be more available. Walk around, share break times with colleagues, talk and listen more.
• Don’t let anyone get the impression that something or someone else is more important than them at that very moment.
• Do it often. Praise three times more than you criticise or identify areas for improvement. That’s called the Losada Ratio.
• Match your method to the individual or team. Some will love the attention, profile or a bit of fuss, others not so much, so a quiet word, text or email will do wonders!
• Are some team members more likely to get praise? Why is this?  Who is missing out? Is your team culture the right one?

Remember these simple ideas, and use them as much as you can.  You will find the results are transformational, and will support your whole team to behave in the same ways.  Which means you will have created a culture of praise that could last for a considerable time, and one that will carry on when you are not there.  Try it.

Now we are tentatively thinking about coming out of lock down, how will we look back at our time spent?  I urge you not to look at it through a lens of judgement and disappointment.  What we thought we might do could be very different to the reality.  It is a tough set of circumstances.  Hopefully one we will not have to repeat.

So what if you haven’t put those shelves up, or lapsed in your fitness regime?  Perhaps you’ve not learned Spanish, knitting or Creole cooking.  Who cares?  Congratulations if you have and if you’ve watched old classic movies, re-read a favourite book, or binged (let’s reclaim that word as a positive) on boxsets courtesy of Netflix.  But how has it affected your work – whether you have continued to work in your usual workplace, or through this working from home lark?

A period like this, and one that will continue in some form or another will be difficult. It will extend in different ways for different people, such as those who may lose their job, or be asked to shield for longer.  Our personal lives, routines, behaviours, work and social lives will all be changed.

But reflecting on things so far, it does reveal our instincts and behaviour patterns.  Working from home, I think a lot of people have come to learn, is not an easy option.  And it has been compounded by restrictions of lock down.  And how will it change once we start to return to work in different ways, perhaps in different teams and with new tasks to be responsible for.  I am particularly interested in our concepts of time and how we use it.  “They are invisible lines that separate the participants in a relationship and allow them to take responsibility for their lives and to meet their obligations.  Your boundaries are how you keep yourself physically and emotionally safe”. Talking Therapy (2015)

Here, I am thinking about common ways we waste time, or make our own choices.  As is said, no judgement here, just things to think and reflect upon.

• Constant interruptions: have you relished being constantly interrupted by family at home, friends on Skype or colleagues’ emails and ‘phone calls?
• Indecision: have you been consumed by a mire of indecision, or used new arrangements or new attitudes to deadlines to fuel your need not to decide?
• Meetings: have you filled your days with online meetings and calls to avoid getting the necessary and un-enjoyable things done?
• Changing priorities or lack of objectives: have you not identified what the new priorities are? Have you struggled to let go of the previous goals?  Are you rudderless in your direction because of the uncertainty about what may happen next?
• Personal lack of organisation: Has the new routine caused you to be less organised that usual? Without familiar structure to the day, week or month, does every day feel the same?  Are you struggling to recall what day it is?  Do the weekends feel just like weekdays?  Are the boundaries between work and home blurred to such an extent they are indefinable?
• Management of self: pyjama days are natural, expected and okay. They really are.  But is this everyday?  Getting dressed for work is one way to separate work from life.  One to think about.
• Ineffective delegation: well, you might not have anyone to delegate to at the moment or are painfully aware of the pressure that colleagues are under personally and professionally. Or are you holding onto things you don’t want to let go of?
• Attempting to do too much: we all want to do our bit to help others and many are felling guilt about being able to continue to work, or having more opportunities than others, and/or being safe and healthy. We might actually be enjoying lock down, yet very aware that others are not.  These can all fuel our motivations to do too much.  Is work so uncertain in the future we are attempting to demonstrate our work and commitment so much that it is damaging us?
• Butterflying and fire-fighting: these are signs of lack of direction. When we enjoy the freedom of flitting from one task to the other without purpose or a plan.  Or we relish getting involved in an emergency or drama more important than our core tasks – the perfect avoidance excuse.
• Socialising: spending so much time at home does run the risk of distorting the boundaries between our work self and our home self. Even though we are in lock down, getting involved in family life (children, partners, parents, flatmates), chatting over the neighbour’s fence, accepting personal calls, all represent a constant barrage of distraction opportunities.
• In and out of comfort zones: one thing that occurs to be is the loneliness and isolation in lock down and the reduced ability, despite technology, to work collaboratively in teams. To thrash our ideas and plans, and share tasks and roles that play to our strengths.  We are being asked to work out of all our comfort zones and preferred working styles.  This directly impacts on our work and home happiness.

What has lock down told you about your relationship with time?

Once banished to the margins of business management and leadership, equalities and diversity policies have now moved from a niche to a central role of any leader, Chief Executive Officer, or politician and other roles.

We’ve come a long way from the days of the wave of legislation in the seventies; I’m thinking of things like the Sex Discrimination Act (1975), the Race Relations Act (1976) and Equal Pay Act (1970).  We have travelled far in the forty years since then with more nuanced legislation continuing to keep apace with social attitudes, which have also changed considerably. However, where conflict, uncertainty, fear and tension remains in society and the workplace, equalities issues, discrimination and prejudice will never be far behind.

Some recent events in the business and political worlds are useful examples of how such issues are now central to the work of all leaders; that equality and diversity is an essential part of every leaders’ tool-kit.  In the past, I’ve noticed how a bank published its approach to diversity and inclusion; how a gay CEO of a national airline spoke about the importance of being yourself at work.  And how an advertising agency chair was criticised for views about gender bias in the advertising industry, and an MP quoted as suggesting male childcarers ‘may be paedophiles’.  These examples demonstrate the benefits of being an aware and equalities focused leader, and the pitfalls of perhaps getting the message wrong.

In modern times, what has exposed many outdated and discriminatory views is the advent of social media, where public messages are not sanctioned or sanitised by corporate PR or policy teams, and people have access to methods to directly share in an unedited instant their own unaware views or conscious and unconscious prejudices.  Equalities is a journey, and people can make mistakes as their awareness develops and challenges the views and beliefs society and the media makes such a powerful job at entrenching in all of us.

Mistakes are fine to some extent, as long as we learn from them.  Mistakes can lead to lack of career opportunities, sackings or suspensions, a public message you are out of touch, and greater distance from the customer or service user.  They can cause share prices to plummet as well.

For early years, we must continue to place great emphasis on equipping everyone to be  confident anti-discriminatory practitioners (uniquely still a requirement of the Children Act 2004 on all our delivery).  We are also tasked with promoting British Values throughout all our work, and meeting the Prevent Duty (to identify individuals who may be at risk of being radicalised).  Many things that many other professional roles could learn from and support.

The gains are that children can be supported to feel safe and confident, and reach their full potential; we can attract and retain a diverse and happy workforce, with open and honest communications and thinking; and become close to parents and families, customers or service users and better understand their needs.  And in doing so, climates are created that achieve trust and safety.  The essential foundation required to achieve real change.

Never has equality and diversity awareness and training mattered most, especially as we are in an era where tolerance ensures everyone is respected and included, yet held to account for prejudice, hate-crimes and extremism.  Regular training is key, as is reflecting on ourselves, and the views of others – including our shared and real lived experiences.  What’s also important is teams, organisations and businesses create cultures where equalities can thrive in centralised culture of respect.  That’s the role of a good equalities leader.  Of any leader.

Most of us think we are good listeners.  We are aware of the importance of eye contact, about nodding our heads, and about making encouraging noises.  But how conscious are we about the ways in which we ask our questions in day-to-day practice?

When was the last time you thought about the types of questions you ask, and how people answer them?  Here I explore these issues and identify some practice issues.

We all need all sorts of information to do our jobs.  And we need this information from colleagues, users, and customers throughout the day.  Some of it is day-to-day detail and factual.  Some of it is more significant and can have truly powerful results.  This is because we are also interested in feedback, feelings, behaviour and identifying needs and wants that can be met by identifying and responding to individuals.

Questioning is invaluable in anyone’s work tool-box.  Information sharing is all our goal, and it often starts and continues and concludes with questions.  Things like ‘how are you?’, ‘can you tell me more?’ and ‘is that OK?’   Matching the correct question to the right situation is a measure of the skilled communicator. Get it wrong, and they may give you the wrong answer, the answer they think you want, or something that tells you nothing at all.  Think for a moment, how many types of questions can you think of?  Now read on, because I have suggested some here.  However, there are many more:

• Open questions – these provide wonderful opportunities for people to open up and give lots of details uncontrolled or uninfluenced by you. They can take you in all sorts of surprising directions.  “Tell me what you think about…”
• Leading questions – these are usually used when the questioner already thinks they know the answer, and assume they will be correct in their assumption. Or when the questioner only wants one answer.  “Do you have any problems with your boss?”
• Closed questions – these usually receive short answers with no detail, such as yes or no. They rely heavily on the motivation of the answerer to put the effort into talking and giving a more detailed reply beyond a one-word reply.  Often asked when the questioner is disinterested or controlling.  “Do you agree with me this is the best way?”
• Multiple questions – a single question that upon further focus contains three or more questions in one. These can confuse the answerer and they rarely deliver answers to all the questions asked.  What a waste!  “What did you think about the meeting, and do you think she did a good job, and what needs to happen next?”
• Extension questions – these give you an opportunity to ask more, or encourage the person to open up further. “What else do you think?”
• Reflective questions – these use parts of the answer or previous statement and rephrase it to extend the conversation, this can encourage more reflective detail and clarifications. “I was interested when you said that things could be better, can you tell me more?”

Why not have a think about your questioning techniques and use the prompts above to do some invaluable peer observation?  Ask your colleagues for feedback!  Using open and extending and reflective questions of course.  One thing is for sure, make sure you devote equally as much attention to listening to the answer.  Was that useful?

Meetings are one of those essential things of management.  Early on in my career I was fascinated by them, enjoyed them, studied and analysed them, and even looked forward to them.  Fast forward 30 years and I am less enthusiastic.  For me, a successful meeting is one that a) is needed, b) time and cost efficient, and c) makes decisions or progress.

There are lots of different types of meetings, I am thinking of things like: team meetings (information sharing and consultative), focus group meetings (problem solving or opinion gathering), progress meetings (checking how things are going against a clear plan), one-to-one meetings (often private and personal, or focused on the individual or relationship), workout meetings (to sort things out), reporting meetings (sharing information and holding people to account), team building meetings (supporting a teams’ stages of development), and impromptu meetings (unplanned ones that take you by surprise).  There are many more.

All of these different types of meetings present their own unique challenges.  I do have some words of advice to make them as successful as possible.

• Make sure everyone knows the aim and purpose of meetings.
• Support people to understand what is expected of them.
• Always ask, is a meeting needed? Be bold enough to postpone if not.  Think, how much is this meeting costing, the answer may shock you.
• Think about the stage of development your team is in (Tuckman 1965). How should you approach the meeting so it meets the team’s needs and helps performance?  For example, if the team is storming, I would recommend a coaching style.  Pre-meeting discussions would help as well.  You don’t want everyone to be air their raw grievances in public.
• Be prepared. Read the minutes or notes in advance, share a timed agenda or a set of goals.
• Don’t always wait for things to be done in meetings, work in-between them as well.
• Meetings are not opportunities to show off; if you want to do that join the theatre.
• You should not aim to hijack people or take people by surprise; instead have pre- or post-meeting conversations to set out what you need. Enable people to be prepared.  Not only will you be more likely to get what you want, things will most likely be quicker.  People may respect you more as well.
• Remember there are always people who will be first to talk and be active; and others will carefully think and reflect, they will want to speak later or at the end. Make sure you give everyone their preferred opportunity.
• Be timely, carefully estimate the time needed (for each item and for the whole meeting) so people can better plan their diaries, and don’t be afraid to finish before the stated end. There are limits to people’s concentration spans.  Only in exceptional circumstances should you overrun.  People have other things to do and places to be.
• Circulate brief notes, agreed actions, and/or important points as soon as you can afterwards. So often these arrive just before the next meeting, that helps no one.

Then we all have a chance to ensure meetings are positive and enjoyable, and we can manage them rather than them managing us.