Posts Tagged ‘business etiquette’

The Christmas Card Project

Sunday, December 16th, 2012

With Christmas almost here, and our cards nearly all out in the mail, I thought it would be nice to tell you about our Christmas Card Project, which has been going now for the past eight years.

In 2005, we decided to play our part in encouraging young artists and designers by helping to bring their work to a wider audience.

So, we envisaged a “virtual gallery”, in which Christmas cards, which seemed to be becoming a dying ritual, would be treated like artwork, and sent out every year with a different young artist’s work. The result would then become a virtual exhibition. In the long artistic tradition of limited edition prints, where only a certain number of prints of a particular design are ever made, and each one is personally numbered in pencil, we made this our model.

The first artist we chose was a recently graduated art student, Laura Amos (now working mainly in photography), whose work we discovered at the Graduate Exhibition of Adelaide College of the Arts. I was blown away by her huge black and white abstract painting which dominated the exhibition and had in spades what every gallery curator looks for: wall presence. When Laura agreed to provide an art piece for the cards, she was given a free choice of subject matter, but when I told her of my family tradition of collecting nutcrackers every Christmas, she chose the Nutcracker theme, and we have stuck to it every year since.

The idea is simple: Find a young artist who interests us, vary the style and medium every year, print a limited number of cards and send them out to as wide an audience of family, friends, clients and associates as we can.

The brief is simple too: The cards must be black and white, they must not be “schmaltzy” or sentimental, and they must be an interpretation of the The Nutcracker story by ETA Hoffmann, which was made famous by the Tchaikovsky Ballet of the same name.

Every card is hand numbered and handmade, and every card features the artist’s signature and their biography on the back cover.

Last year we upped the ante by asking a street artist to paint a black and white mural on a wall. It was a hard act to follow!

But this year we think we’ve upped it even more. This year’s artist is Emily Seidel, who has a particular passion for fabric, and her design, based on wood prints of the 1800’s has been painstakingly hand printed on fabric, in a process that has been through three separate printing stages. All up, I estimate that each handmade card has been touched 8 times in different stages of production including by the artist, the printer, and the card designer who is responsible for putting it all together. And this doesn’t include the hand written message!

When we have 10 designs, we plan to hold an actual exhibition of the cards.

In a world where Christmas can often become a tacky, material event of excess or greed, and where most Christmas greetings are now sent electronically, we hope that by holding this building mini exhibition of work, thought and hope that the young artists bring, and that our friends and colleagues can touch, keep and collect, we are keeping alive some of the original meaning of Christmas, which is a story of hope and sharing.

We wish all our clients, friends, associates and partners, in Australia and across the world, a very Happy Christmas, and a wonderful and prosperous 2013!

 

Stephen Kohl, Lynette Jensen and the other directors & staff at Genesys Australia

 

 

Bio for Emily Seidel

 

Emily Seidel lives in Sydney and has had an interest in design, art and fabric since she was very young. With a particular eye for pattern, shape, line and unusual texture, she brings a wide Australian cultural experience of living in various country and city locations to her work, which seems to be also underpinned by the aesthetic of her German ancestry.

We asked Emily to design our 2012 Nutcracker Christmas card because we like her interesting design eye and her feel for fabric, and we were interested to see how an artist drawn to texture, with a German heritage, would interpret the German Christmas fairytale The Nutcracker by ETA Hoffmann, which was made famous by the Tchaikovsky ballet of the same name.

We are delighted by the result. Emily’s dark, mysterious and layered design is inspired not only by The Nutcracker tale, but also by European woodcuts from the 1800’s. The design, through its layers, mixed media and texture, evokes feelings and dream-like images of deep European winters when families were closed in and longing for the return of the sun, and told each other stories like The Nutcracker to bide their time and express their fear of darkness, while they waited patiently for the return of spring.

This is the underlying historical origin of Christmas – a winter’s tale, and a story of hope.

Lynette Jensen

Related posts:

St. Nicholas & The Christmas Season

Lynette Jensen is a director and co-founder of Genesys Australia and is committed to helping people achieve work-life balance through good job fit. In addition to contributing to this blog, she also writes regularly for HR Daily Community and Dynamic Business Magazine. Her articles have been re-published in India & the United Kingdom.

Please click on heading to leave a comment. More posts below.

The Currency of Relationships

Friday, August 24th, 2012

Our Managing Director and Chief Psychologist, Stephen Kohl, believes that since the Global Financial Crisis, people have been demanding more genuine engagement and service in business.

In the boom climate prior to late 2009, companies and organisations were prepared to spend much more on out-sourced services like recruitment, training, conferences and “extras”. Following the GFC, things have been leaner and meaner, as organisations have learnt to cut costs by bringing many things we had previously paid others to provide, in-house. And even though the Australian economy has improved, we seem to have got used to this, just like Australian householders have got used to building savings.

At the same time this has been going on, there has been a burgeoning of social media and internet networking, to the extent that these have been increasingly integrated into most companies’ marketing and business strategies.

The result is that people expect much more from their business relationships. We expect real relationships. The GFC forced us to conserve and maximize our spending, and we’ve grown used to only paying for excellent quality, service and value. Post GFC we expect more. And through social media and other traditional advertising and networking, there is no shortage of individual consultants and companies vying for our attention and business connection.

So how do we differentiate? What can we do to stand out from the crowd, and forge real relationships with our clients, potential clients, connections and associates?

The answer is clear: be genuine and provide real and friendly, authentic service. Make genuine human connection.

In his article, It’s More Important to be Kind than Clever in Harvard Business Review this week, Fast Company magazine co-founder Bill Taylor, writes that small acts of genuine human kindness and engagement are the most powerful form of connection, and can be accidentally the most powerful marketing tool we have. Why? Because we are all people, and we all respond to genuine interaction. It makes us feel good, feel trust and it stands out in a world that can seem to be dominated by cynical self-serving and arrogance. All of us want to do business with people we can trust.

To illustrate his point, Taylor recounts the story of an American food franchise, which received huge publicity as a result of a simple and genuine act of kindness by the management and staff of one of their outlets. Though they only produced their clam chowder on Fridays, when a dying grandmother craved the soup on a different day, they made it just for her. This small act of kindness was repaid by thousands of “likes” on Facebook, where the grandmother’s daughter and grandson posted their gratitude.

It’s word-of-mouth advertising on a grand scale, and anyone in business knows that word-of-mouth recommendation is our most powerful tool. But to be powerful, it has to be genuine.  You really have to mean it. To be good at what you do is to want to share your knowledge and service with other people, and everyone responds to honest enthusiasm and care. In her most recent post, Penelope Trunk says, Networking means making real friends.

Acts of kindness make us feel better about ourselves and the world, and this is enough reward. But if we are in business for the long-term, relationships are far more important than quick deals. Good service and kindness should be the basis of everything we provide, because the real currency of business is people.

 

Lynette Jensen

Lynette Jensen is a director and co-founder of Genesys Australia and is committed to helping people achieve work-life balance through good job fit. In addition to contributing to this blog, she also writes regularly for HR Daily Community and Dynamic Business Magazine. Her articles have been re-published in India & the United Kingdom.

Please click on heading to leave a comment. More posts below.

NB: We are an independent workplace psychology practice. All views expressed here are our own and are the opinions of Stephen Kohl and his associates, which do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher and developer of GeneSys assessments, Psytech International.

Building Real Relationships

Thursday, October 6th, 2011

Yesterday I met Adelaide recruiter Nicole Underwood. I met her because I’d read her blogs and had responded to an underlying sense of genuineness, humanity and enthusiasm that I recognized in her writing. Nicole came to visit us in our Adelaide rooms where we sat and looked over Rymill Park drinking coffee and talking about life, recruiting, HR, and starting over. The important thing though, is that we found that the intention to be genuine and authentic, and the medium of writing, can bring people together.

Nicole has recently left Entree Recruitment which she helped to found with Mark Hender over 10 years ago. She left a company thriving, and which she can feel satisfied that she built with her own vision, hard work and innovation. Her philosophy for work and life, which comes through strongly in her conversation, is that she cares about people, and believes that looking after them, either when they are her team or her clients is the way to build satisfaction, relationships and success.

In our industry, recruiters can sometimes have a reputation for being hard-nosed and abrupt, whether deservedly or not. Nicole’s attitude goes a long way to show that this isn’t always the case and doesn’t have to be. Especially since the GFC, recruitment is changing and recruiters seem to have found more and more that they are being asked to show evidence of the value of the services they provide.

Having an attitude of building good, firm, genuine relationships is an example of someone understanding the real value of service and care. You would want to employ the services of someone who you think means it, who’ll listen to you and your needs, who’ll make and retain good long-term relationships and who makes people feel good and secure in their company.

Whether in business, or life, people want to have relationships and feel connected to other people. It’s the way we are made. Our species is gregarious, and we thrive in groups. Recruitment, and every other business is no different. It takes time and effort to build strong, genuine relationships with people, but the effort pays off over the long term. It pays off in trust, respect and ultimately success.

It was a delight to meet Nicole yesterday, and it will be a pleasure to watch her build her next business. The fact that we connected via social networking and  Jo Knox’s idea to build an HR Daily Community of bloggers shows that in work and life, people recognize and respond to genuine connection. It’s what it means to be human. Thanks Jo, and thanks Nicole.

Lynette Jensen

Lynette Jensen is a director and co-founder of Genesys Australia and is committed to helping people achieve work-life balance through good job fit. In addition to contributing to this blog, she also writes regularly for HR Daily Community and Dynamic Business Magazine. Her articles have been re-published in India & the United Kingdom.

Please click on heading to leave a comment. More posts below.

Related Posts:

Art Imitates Lfe, Life Imitates LinkedIn: Online Citizenship

Leadership and Good Manners

Murder in the Village: Teamwork & Community

NB: We are an independent workplace psychology practice. All views expressed here are our own and are the opinions of Stephen Kohl & his associates, which do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher and developer of GeneSys assessments, Psytech International.

Psychopaths at Work

Tuesday, August 30th, 2011

For all our recruitment tests and practices in HR, the problem of psychopaths in the workplace remains a problem that’s hard to solve.

Everyone has worked with a psychopath. I’m a lay-person, so I use the term in it’s popular sense, but I’m on their case. Sometimes they are the obvious bullies in the office, sometimes they are your boss, and sometimes they are someone not apparently in charge, but who has everyone running around after them and who manipulates and wreaks havoc on the whole group by subtle disempowerment.

I’ve known a few. The first one was my boss, and he nearly destroyed my health and my career.

Sometimes, psychopaths are so effective at getting their way and destroying everyone around them, that the only way you can detect them is by noticing the destruction around them. Like a Black Hole in the universe, which you can only detect from the glow around it as light gets sucked in, you can tell if there’s an office psychopath around because everything in the office will be going wrong somehow: team spirit will be low, team work and cooperation will have disintegrated, group optimism and company or department vision will have disappeared, everyone will be tense and guarded and resentful, and nobody will really know why. And most likely, the psychopath will be undetected, and worse, they might be the only person that everyone thinks they can trust.

It’s scary.

I’ve been reading the website of one of the more recent psychopaths in my life. Having totally destroyed the morale of the people he worked with, having repeatedly covered up monthly losses by making charismatic and extravagant promises to the people above him and blaming other people, having (in this day and age!) indulged in outrageous and blatant sexist, harassing and upsetting behaviour with his junior staff, having offended clients with his use of bad language and other inappropriate and crass behaviours, he is now the CEO of a company.

I can see how he got there. He got there through deceit, using other people and destroying lives, reputations and health.

His website looks pretty good. In fact, I recognize some of my own words and ideas there. According to his bio, at the company where he used to work, and where he was finally let go because they just couldn’t afford the losses he kept making, he now claims he made huge profits. Not only that, but the bio is misleadingly worded to give the impression he was much higher in the organization than he actually was. From the bio, you get the impression this guy was actually in charge of the whole Australasian operation. You’d think his former employer would make him change it. The website shows he’s even got some of his ex-victims working for him. How does he get away with it? Because it’s the way psychopaths work, that’s how.

Psychopaths have a way of charming people. Psychopaths tell us what they think we want to hear. Psychopaths have a sense of over-entitlement. They manipulate us and destroy our reputations behind our backs. They divide and rule.

The most powerful weapon a psychopath has though, is their total lack of shame, and this is what makes them different from everyone else. The rest of us care what other people think of us, most of us want to genuinely cooperate, and most of us would be embarrassed if we behaved outrageously in public. Not the psychopath. Because of this, they are able to lie and cheat to great effect.

In tandem with their lack of shame is their other secret weapon: they are really great actors. Though they have no remorse, they can pretend. They are very good at mimicking normal (and even empathetic) human behaviour. They don’t feel it, but they copy it. They are very convincing and can be very charming. While if you stand up to a psychopath they’ll eventually yell, scream and in extreme cases even kill you, they don’t usually need to because they’re so adept at manipulating through charming deceit.

The psych tests we apply in HR to job candidates and staff development are not clinical tools and should not be. They won’t pick up a psychopath. In any event, psychopathy, or sociopathy as it’s now called, is a Personality Disorder, not a mental illness as such, and is extremely hard to detect even in a clinical setting (they’re charming right, and they even know what a clinician wants to hear).

If you gave an Emotional Intelligence test to a psychopath, they’d probably blitz it. Some psychologists even argue that giving EI information to a psychopath is like giving them a loaded gun. It gives them more ammunition to use against the rest of us by teaching them how to be even more charming and apparently agreeable.

So what can you do about an office psychopath? Start to look for the human and organizational fall-out around them. And don’t kid yourself that you are immune to their charm and stories.

The only way to slay a psychopath is with rationality. Insist on evidence and measurable outcomes, not their promises and stories. If everything seems to be awry in your team, and you don’t know why, then you’ve most likely got a psychopath in your midst.

Lynette Jensen

Lynette Jensen is a director and co-founder of Genesys Australia and is committed to helping people achieve work-life balance through good job fit. In addition to contributing to this blog, she also writes regularly for HR Daily Community and Dynamic Business Magazine. Her articles have been re-published in India & the United Kingdom.

Please click on heading to leave a comment. More posts below.

* This is a personal view and does not necessarily represent the opinion, belief or policy of the company. This is a lay-person’s view and the example in this post should not be construed to be a real person, and examples of behaviour cited here are illustrations of typical behaviour patterns. More posts below.

Related posts:

Murder in the Village: Team-work & Community

Leadership & Good Manners

NB: We are an independent workplace psychology practice. All views expressed here are our own and are the opinions of Stephen Kohl & his associates, which do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher and developer of GeneSys assessments, Psytech International.

Art Imitates Life, Life Imitates LinkedIn: Online Citizenship

Thursday, July 14th, 2011

Most of us in business or other organisations belong to LinkedIn, and many of us participate in discussion groups related to our fields and areas of specialisation and interest. Furthermore, marketing and promotions professionals these days tell us that it is extremely important to have an online presence and profile, and though there are other alternatives like Brazen Careerist, LinkedIn is the professional social networking standard.

Accordingly, like most people I know, I belong to many LinkedIn groups, which in my case cover areas like organisational psychology, psychometrics, creativity, arts, advertising and HR. Like most people, I subscribe to a few good professional blogs, and through these come upon many links to other blogs and articles. It’s an expanding world, and I’m both personally and professionally grateful to be exposed daily to so much information and food for thought.

I have always been interested in many different areas, and so my professional interests and reading reflect this.  Lately, because I’ve started to notice some patterns in myself and others, I’ve begun to realise that my online life is very similar to my real life.

Online, the contacts I collect seem to be like my friends and associates in real life: they are interesting, varied, creative, mostly outspoken, confident, leaders and thought influencers, and from many walks of life and professional areas. The things they say to me are starting to be like things people in real life say to me.

More importantly though, I’ve started to realise that the virtual, online professional world needs to maintain standards and etiquette, just like in the real world. Just as I do in real life, I seem to spend a lot of my time being on guard for and smoothing over potential conflicts. The online world of professional social net-working is a place where all cultures come together and connect instantly, where the nuance of the written word is often difficult to understand and subtleties are sometimes misunderstood, and the different time zones across the world make the time of day an ingredient in the way we communicate and what we say.

Online, even in the professional sphere of LinkedIn (as opposed to Facebook for instance) there are bullies, cranks, show-offs, posers, extraverts, introverts, casual people, funny people, serious people, formal people and many, many others. Just like real life. In real life though, you can look someone in the eye and hear the tone in their voice and judge their body language.

So I’m beginning to think that we need to proactively think of ourselves as online citizens, with responsibilities to be civil and not too dominating in discussions but to have something to say and keep discussions going, aware and empathetic of differences like race and culture, and to be particularly careful to try to pick up verbal nuance and humour, and not to over-react to apparent slights but to publicly object to online dominance, bullying or impoliteness.

A year or so ago my sons made a short film called Art Imitates Life, Life Imitates Facebook for Kino, Sydney. It should come as no surprise to me to find that the same principle applies to LinkedIn.

Lynette Jensen

Lynette Jensen is a director and co-founder of Genesys Australia and is committed to helping people achieve work-life balance through good job fit. In addition to contributing to this blog, she also writes regularly for HR Daily Community and Dynamic Business Magazine. Her articles have been re-published in India & the United Kingdom.

Please click on the heading above to leave a comment or to share. More posts below.

NB: We are an independent workplace psychology practice. All views expressed here are our own and are the opinions of Stephen Kohl & his associates, which do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher and developer of GeneSys assessments, Psytech International.

More Cheating on Psych Tests

Saturday, June 11th, 2011

There has been an interesting discussion lately on a Psychometrics Linked In Group. The discussion was begun by Prue Laurence, Director at Psylutions, a workplace psychology consultancy in Melbourne where they are currently conducting a survey about cheating in workplace psychometric tests and people’s attitudes to psych testing.

Cheating on psych tests is a subject that comes up a lot, and I have fairly recently written about it myself.

In general, I would say that there’s very little point in even attempting to cheat, not because I make a moral judgement, but because potential employees just don’t know what an employer might be looking for. There’s a common perception that every employer is looking for extravert personalities, and put simply, that’s just wrong. There’s also a perception that extraverts are somehow “better” than introverts and that’s just silly. (For an explanation, please read my previous post, link above).

But Prue’s call for subjects to do her survey has engendered a discussion that has begun to develop the idea of cheating in a much deeper way, and to consider the phenomenon of psych tests and the way they can be used and abused from a different perspective.

One of the commenters, a UK Director of a Human Resources and Business consultancy, related the story of a group of young graduates gathering together to complete online unsupervised ability tests for their friends. He says, “…There seems to be no shame in this (they see it) as a fair way of outwitting the tedious, repetitious and time-consuming automated selection processes so many businesses put in the way of bright graduates applying for jobs.”

I think this is really sad. Psychometric tests, or any other form of employee selection should never be used to get in the way of anyone applying for jobs, or getting them. All our staff selection processes, including psych tests, should be used to get the clearest picture possible of not only who will be the best person for the job, but also whether the job is the best fit for the applicant. It’s a two-way street, and all our selection processes should be applied well, carefully and humanely, in order to achieve the best decision possible, and the best outcome for everyone.

The idea of a conveyor belt, one-size-fits-all, psychometric testing (most especially ability testing!) also really concerns me. You would hope that ability tests would be carefully conducted, and the idea that we are becoming a society where we are so concerned with churning through processes for expedience, rather than doing things well and carefully, is frankly repugnant. If tests are conducted coldly and blithely, then can we be surprised that people might treat them blithely? Psych tests most certainly can be used for screening, but that doesn’t mean we should forget that candidates are people, or that we should do it cruelly, coldly, or cynically.

But another comment in the discussion is even more concerning. The Director of a Leadership and Human Resources and Development consultancy in the USA says, “Have you ever applied for a job online lately? … No feedback, no contact, no personal touch … No real opportunity to tell your story…”.

Further, he says that he has built and used tests for many years, but finds himself “…embarrassed by what passes for professional practice these days” And tellingly, he says, “ We say people are our most valuable resource but then treat them like cattle being led to the slaughter.”

I say it’s a call to arms! It doesn’t have to be this way, and shouldn’t be.

All of us who are involved in Human Resources, staff selection and development, recruiting, and test development and delivery need to be constantly aware that we are in the business of dealing with people’s lives. If we don’t treat people well and fairly, then we can’t expect them to treat our processes well and fairly.

You don’t need to cheat on psych tests. Lets make sure we deliver psych tests and our other processes so well, that we’re not cheating on candidates.

For all of us, our job and work life is one of the most important things we have in life. We need to keep remembering that.

Lynette Jensen

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* This is a personal view and does not necessarily represent the opinion, belief or policy of the company. More posts below.

 

Zen & the Art of Timeliness

Thursday, April 7th, 2011

Shortly after I started this blog last year, as a result of my outrage about bad manners in the workplace (Leadership and Good Manners), I googled to see if there was anyone else out there thinking about manners and etiquette in business. It turns out there are lots of people, and one the articles I came upon was, No you are not ‘running late’ you are rude and stupid by high profile, straight-talking and eminently sensible Firebrand recruiter Greg Savage, on his beautifully named blog, The Savage Truth.

The article was posted on 7th June 2010, and to date has attracted an astonishing 107 comments, with very polarised views, and many of them astoundingly vitriolic.

Who would have thought that the subject of lateness would ignite passionate debate and uncover such heatedly conflicting responses?

Greg’s article is clever, honest and funny, and addresses the frustration I’m sure most of us have experienced when people are late for appointments and meetings, and worse, don’t even seem to think this is a problem. While there are all sorts of reasons for lateness (circumstances, psychology, culture, lack of time management skills etc), and all have us have been late from time to time, and should expect some degree of tolerance and understanding for this occasionally, an underlying attitude that being on time doesn’t matter is just wrong, because everything you do sends a clear message.

You are your brand. Everything you do, and everything about the way you present yourself, affects the way you are perceived.

Psychology* tells us that people are judging everything about us, all the time. And whether we like it or not, think it’s “fair” or not, the sooner we learn that everything sends a message, the more control over our lives we are going to have.

So what does lateness say about you? Some of the commenters (“commentators” doesn’t quite work here) on Greg’s blog say they think lateness should be respected as a personal behaviour style, some say lateness should be excused if you have children, and some say that lateness is cultural and should therefore not be “judged” (implied racism, I gather).

If you are chronically and/or unapologetically late, and you are trying to make it in the business world or the workplace generally, lateness will not be seen as a positive personal attribute. Lateness is insulting to the person who is waiting for you – it tells them you don’t think their time is as important as yours, and that you don’t respect them. Lateness is an indicator that you are a bad time manager and disorganised at a very basic incompetence level. Lateness tells people you are selfish, and maybe lazy or indolent (could you not get out of bed in time, like the rest of us?). Lateness says you are stressed and not in control. Lateness, in a cultural context (personal or otherwise) says you don’t fit into an organisational culture. In short, lateness is unprofessional.

None of this sounds great for your reputation or personal, not to mention corporate, brand! I’d say the sooner you “get it”, the better.

So if you are chronically late, how do you change it?

I’m an expert on this because I grew up in a family where chronic lateness was the norm, and I had to work really hard to overcome it in myself.

The first thing I realised was that I was much more relaxed when I was on time. The second thing I worked out was that you just have to get organised (in quite a small way really) and work out how long things will take. You need to work out a realistic (as opposed to hopeful!) estimation of how much time all the steps, like driving across the city, putting on your make-up, getting in the lift and to the coffee shop, are likely to take, then factor in reasonable time for the unforeseen like traffic jams or fractious kids. Thirdly, you have to realise that lateness is rude and selfish and that your word is your bond. If you say you are going to do something, try to do it, every time, and that includes turning up when you say you will. And lastly (for now), forgive yourself if you are SOMETIMES late, despite all your best efforts, and expect other people to forgive you too, SOMETIMES. All you can do is the best you can do, and now you have changed your ways, you should rarely be late.

Now, while this might just sound like fixing a problem for other people’s benefit, and a lot of hard work (and you’re a nice, casual, laid-back kinda person, right?) the amazing thing is that there are huge personal and professional benefits for you.

If people can depend on you, you will get respect. If you have respect, you will have more influence, and this will show up in every facet of your life, not least your professional life. If you are not always anxious because you are running late, or having to make excuses and being on the back foot all the time, you will be able to concentrate on the job at hand, and this means you’ll have more focus, time and energy for the real things that deserve your attention.

And from my own experience, an extraordinary thing happens: you start to get into a Zen-like love for perfect timing. Time takes on a water-like fluidness and serenity, and when this happens, you have a real sense of personal control and satisfaction. Who knew?

Lynette Jensen

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* This is a personal view and does not necessarily represent the opinion, belief or policy of the company. More posts below.

*Psychology is primarily a discipline that gathers statistics based on people’s behaviour and responses, and subsequently works out what’s “normal” culturally and personally, which is to say how people are and how they think and behave.

Leadership & Good Manners

Thursday, November 4th, 2010

 

An email I received out of the blue recently from a person I’ve never met left me reeling for a couple of days, and started me thinking about manners in the modern workplace. With all the promotion of leadership courses and discussions about leadership strategies and characteristics these days, I realised we never hear mention any more of manners. And yet, if there’s one thing I’ve always noticed about leaders, it’s that they are always polite and gracious.

Manners are the small social rules and conventions that hold us all together. They “oil the cogs” of all our relationships and keep things running smoothly in organisations, families and personal relationships. My recent experience got me thinking about the characteristics of leadership, like good manners, that we should all, and probably do, recognise, but that are not “sold” or commonly taught anymore, most certainly not as part of a quick-fix package or course on the internet. A leader, and anyone else, should know that good manners stop unpleasantness and misunderstanding from happening, and bad manners get in the way of things running smoothly, and are therefore costly, both in human and financial terms.

It seems to me that “Leadership” is a bit like “Emotional Intelligence” (or poetry or art or charisma) in that we all recognise it, but it’s very hard to define. And, like Emotional Intelligence, Leadership seems be subject to fashion. When I was a school student, teachers were always talking about whether we had “leadership qualities” or not, but when I was a teacher myself, the prevailing wisdom frowned on anything thought to be anti-egalitarian. Now, in the workplace at least, the pendulum has swung again, and “Leadership” seems to be a hot (and lucrative) topic. But even if, as human beings, we can all recognise leadership, can we really define it simply, or market it?

I think perhaps we should go back to our deeper, more personal, psychological understanding of how we recognise, and indeed follow, leaders, so that we can learn valuable lessons from them, rather than thinking we can package a simple formula and sell it (complete with coloured circular charts – I’ve googled!). Furthermore, it’s probably a good idea to learn to recognise a leader, rather than following some jumped up “wannabe” who yells loudest, and who’ll lead us over a cliff in a crisis.

Understanding leadership is like understanding anything, its complex, subtle, sometimes subjective, and requires good observation and thinking. Developing leadership requires time and wisdom. One of our clients recently said that she’s noticed that real leaders are always calm in a crisis. I have noticed that real leaders are unpretentious, gracious and polite. What else does a good leader really have? : usually charisma, charm, often patience, and they inspire confidence and respect (and there are lots of other characteristics).

The point is, that leaders, by definition, have to have characteristics that make people want to follow them. In other words, their characteristics and conduct give them influence. I’m very sure that none of us want to follow impolite people who make us angry, insulted and incensed. So on a personal, and a business level, it doesn’t make any sense to have bad manners.

I think the conclusion might be, if we want to get to first base as a leader, we’ll have to begin with good manners!

Lynette Jensen

*This is a personal view and does not necessarily represent the opinion, beliefs or policy of the company