According to the Guardian one in four major UK universities are reducing staff and budgets to manage deficits. We think it might be more than that. We actually think it might be all of them. It’s causing a lot of disquiet.

For many years we have supported Higher Education organisations to build capability in their teams, in order to be better able to respond to change in an increasingly complex world.

UK Universities Under Pressure

However the sector as a whole is now grappling with significant financial pressure due to rising costs, capped tuition fees, and a drop in numbers of international students. There has never been this kind of pressure before and HE has never had to be as accountable as it is now.

In response to these complex problems, institutions are having to change and adapt in new and deeper ways than they are used to.

And as HE institutions attempt to navigate these challenges and shift and adapt, HE people are having to interact with each other differently.

Why Change is So Challenging

As members of our HELP peer group who’re striving to drive change can attest, change efforts often struggle. Because, regardless of how big and radical or small and incremental, change is usually difficult and messy.

As an example, one project we ran at a London university to bring in distributed leading was really successful, but the university itself was in complete turmoil and many of those we worked with left or were made redundant afterwards.

The Hidden Barriers to Successful Change in HE

And I was chatting to someone who’d worked as a change manager for years at several organisations – for most of the projects that he worked on, the change either hadn’t happened due to what could be described as internal resistance or “tactical inertia”, or it had all been reversed when a new CEO was hired.

This is not uncommon.

Why Traditional Approaches to Change Don’t Work

In 2020, research and insight agency, Gartner reported that 50% of change initiatives fail, because of lack of leadership alignment, poor communication, employee resistance, and inadequate follow-through.

The trouble is that most change initiatives in universities seem to follow the same pattern: they’re top down, directive and focus on introducing new policies, new processes or new structures without taking into account or addressing the stuff that’s below the waterline – the underlying group dynamics that slow down change initiatives.

The reality is that most people don’t like being told to change.

The Harvard Business Review (2022) suggests that success rates of change programmes can be improved by good leadership, communication, and adaptability.

The Limits of Training Programmes

So how do you build capability in staff and your organisation to ensure change programmes are successful?

The solution used to be training. You sent individuals on a course to learn how to be good leaders but then it was realised that when they returned to work, they rarely applied what they had learned.

Partly because in real life they encounter a double whammy of complex people dynamics and volatile and uncertain conditions.

And partly because, we believe, the focus on training individuals is unhelpful.

The Power of Teams Over Individuals

We know from experience that effective teams really make a difference, more than individuals.

Which is why we believe organisations should be thinking about coaching people in teams, because teams are the unit of most effective change.

In fact research shows that teams are the most adequate framework for enabling collective learning.

While there is a growing recognition that groups and teams are a useful building block, HE organisations have tended not to train groups, which has led to a skills gap in helping teams to be more effective.

As a result the challenge for lots of organisations is that they haven’t addressed the stuff that’s below the waterline, things such as beliefs, feelings, values and identity – the very things that are threatened by change.

This is particularly important in leadership teams.

Leadership Isn’t a Role — It’s a Dynamic

Leaders have an organisational role of coordinating and holding the space, facilitating and removing blocks, arbitrating around priorities, and making decisions about the way organisations work.

But really effective leaders don’t ‘do’ any of these things, they emerge out of a leadership group’s dynamic and their conversations. When it’s really working, everyone is contributing.

When it’s not working, people don’t trust each other, don’t listen or don’t feel safe to speak up if they disagree and things can become toxic, which makes change programmes less effective.

How Team Coaching Helps Universities Navigate Change

One way to address this is to employ group or team coaching. The practice of team coaching helps to address the underlying factors that hold people back, as it can:

• turn conflict in teams into useful energy to get productive work done
• unblock teams that are struggling with decision-making
• support problem-solving and increase engagement
• increase confidence to explore beliefs, values and identity to bring in difference safely

Why Universities Need Internal Team Coaching Capabilities

At ThenSomehow we have been providing team coaching to the higher educational sector for many years. We’re seeing more demand for this kind of support as organisations struggle with the need to empower and organise people from the bottom upwards.

Many of the people we work with immediately apply the skills and learning in their day to day work. They use what they learn to make a difference straight away. They become better managers, colleagues, coaches or mentors.

It’s only a short leap to think about how these people could apply what they have learned to help other colleagues, and become effective team coaches themselves.

It seems like an obvious opportunity for organisations – to train their own people to support groups themselves.

And we’d like to help the people-side of universities to do that.

Our New Team Coaching Programme for HE Institutions

So we are announcing a new offer: Team coaching training programmes for OD professionals and managers working in HE.

As part of this we would like to build an active community of practice linking together people trying to do this sort of work across institutions.

We have developed a proven curriculum that we have applied over and over. We can build and iterate on this to really help a group of people share their skills and build an internal team coaching capability.

The Benefits for Your Institution

• Better functioning teams throughout an organisation.
• Reduced friction around change.
• Better ability for central OD and HR departments to service Faculty and School needs.
• Reduced reliance on external support.
• It is cost effective and builds a long lasting internal capability.

Join Our HE Team Coaching Programme

Get in touch here if you’re interested in leadership and team coaching for your organisation.

At ThenSomehow we help universities and other HE organisations build emotional literacy, increase empathy, and help you see the world differently, giving you practical tools to shift the stuff that’s stuck.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help your organisation develop leaders and perform better, get in touch here.

The post Navigating HE’s biggest challenges: a smarter approach to change appeared first on ThenSomehow.

The Iceberg Model is a compelling framework which uses the metaphor of an iceberg to show how the things that people do are supported by deeper, often unseen, values and beliefs. It is a valuable tool for grasping the complexities of workplace interactions, emphasising the importance of looking beyond the surface to understand the underlying layers that shape the way people behave the way they do.

Originally developed by anthropologist Edward Hall in 1976 in relation to a nation’s culture, the Iceberg model has since been applied to culture in organisations.

Why implicit beliefs and values are important in the workplace

We often pretend that everything in the workplace is about results, actions, decisions – but building a cohesive team and getting things to run smoothly is much easier if you are willing to pay attention to what is going on below the waterline. Feelings, attitudes, needs, identity – are equally if not more important than the things you are usually expected to pay attention to.

And yet in most workplaces, we rarely talk about these things and instead focus on being ‘professional’.

However it makes sense to be aware of the human side of things at work – especially during a time of change or a reorganisation, because if you have empathy for people’s feelings and needs, and recognise the threat to their identity and security that a change can introduce, you can support them through a challenging period more effectively.

Why empathy is important in organisations

Empathy means being able to understand and relate to someone else’s view of the world without judgement and from their point of view.

As a leader, manager and as a colleague, empathy is useful as it can help you to:

• Recognise when your team members are upset, stressed or frustrated.
• Respond to their needs appropriately, and
• Avoid making things worse by failing to respect and acknowledge their reality, and instead help them by being curious about what is going on for them.

Intentionally pausing to ask yourself what might be going on for other people, and even better asking them the question is a great way to develop this skill.

Use the Iceberg Model to build empathy

The iceberg model is a simple diagram of the human experience.

Like icebergs, what we see and know of others is generally just the tip of what is going on for people.

In the workplace, the explicit, above-the-waterline things commonly include:

• Results – the ability to achieve common goals. What your team accomplishes, not just the tasks they’re doing,
• Actions and decisions – the tasks and steps that need to be taken to achieve specific objectives or outcomes,
• Behaviours – observable actions, gestures, rituals, and customs that people engage in on a daily basis,
• Relationships – multifaceted interpersonal connections and rapport built between colleagues that promote trust, collaboration, and a positive team dynamic, or not,
• Communication – the exchange of information, ideas, and feedback among team members to achieve shared goals and foster collaboration.

These are easy to see.

What lies below the waterline?

What is harder to see in others is what is hidden, i.e. the implicit things that are below the surface.

This includes conscious and unconscious thoughts, feelings, attitudes, fears and assumptions which we aren’t aware of and don’t usually know much about, and in some cases neither might they!

These include things such as:

• Values – underlying beliefs and principles that define what is considered necessary, worthwhile, and desirable,
• Beliefs – accepted truths or convictions that people hold, including religious, moral, and philosophical,
• Feelings and intuitions – the emotional responses and gut instincts that influence how individuals perceive situations, make decisions, and interact with others,
• Attitudes and assumptions – unconscious, taken-for-granted aspects,
• Unwritten rules – unspoken subtle guidelines that govern social rules and the acceptable ways to navigate various situations,
• Needs – requirements essential for well-being and fulfilment,
• Fears – uncomfortable emotions aroused by impending danger, whether the threat is real or imagined,
• Identity – an individual’s mental image of themselves that provides meaning, direction, and a sense of self-control,
• Self-worth – the value you give to your life and achievements.

The famous thing about icebergs is that 90% of their mass is hidden below the waterline. That’s significant in organisational contexts too.

Using the iceberg model to understand a new manager’s struggles

For example, if someone’s identity – the way they see themselves – is that of an academic with a fair amount of autonomy and quite a lot of freedom to manage their time and their interests, when they are promoted to head of department with managerial responsibilities, you might expect that they would be delighted. You might think that they saw this as an important next step in their career and that they had been selected for their suitability to the role.

A little while later when people start complaining about them, you might start to question their capability, shake your head sadly at the inevitability of underperforming academic leadership.

Of course something very different might have been going on for them. Maybe they didn’t ask for this role, but they were the last to step back when the call for volunteers was placed. “It’s my turn,” they may have thought. “I will be a good colleague and step up. I’m sure I will be supported with a Head of School to report to and lots of colleagues who have done it before to help. There is some training on offer too. Plus everyone seems to know what they are doing – it will be fine. I can finish my book over the summer break.”

Instead they receive a steady flow of colleagues bringing their complaints, problems, and legitimate needs, and they experience a corresponding loss of freedom to do the research and teaching prep they really wanted to do. It turned out to be a lot more challenging than they expected!

I don’t just mean from a time-management point of view. It might raise all sorts of internal questions about who they are: “was this a terrible mistake? Will my academic reputation ever recover?

“Will I miss out on promotion because I just can’t get to write those last two chapters?

“Do my colleagues respect me, because they certainly don’t seem interested in helping?

“Can everyone see just how much of an imposter I feel? Why has no one ever taught me how to do this?

“Why do I have to sort out the family holiday / put up the shelves / take my mother to the hospital on top of all this?

“It’s all my fault.. It’s not my fault…”

How might someone behave with all that going on?

They might become crabby, overly directive, or prone to spontaneous tears. They might freeze, paralysed by fears of failure, of losing their job, their career. They might lose all their confidence and find themselves isolated, alone and increasingly alarmed.

On the other hand, of course, they might discover a clear sense of purpose and direction. They might discover a natural aptitude, feel their confidence bloom and become brilliant at being a manager.

Though in the latter case I would bet it is probably preceded by the former angst. It will be a roller coaster however it pans out. All too often we see people in this situation with very limited support and certainly not set up to succeed.

And whatever someone from the outside concludes, there are always a lot of hidden things beneath the surface that are driving the behaviours that you can see.

If you are interacting with this person, it’d be good to have an appreciation of this, to be open to their perspectives and be curious about what is actually going on.

If Faculty managers started with the below the waterline stuff from the off, they would probably design the way they recruit, onboard and support new Heads of Departments differently.

The Iceberg model – how to use it

At ThenSomehow we present the Iceberg model at the start of workshops to set the scene for why relationships and relational aspects are so important in the workplace, why they can go awry so easily and why they can then become so hard to deal with.

What we explore with groups is how to go below the waterline, so that they can build a better understanding of what is going on.

Because the more you pay attention, the richer the picture becomes.

So at one level the Iceberg model is a checklist you can use to make sure you are thinking about the right kinds of things. It definitely helps to be thinking about this stuff, but you cannot know for sure.

Unless you ask them.

Using the iceberg model with groups

The iceberg model is a useful prompt for a better kind of conversation. It’s a way into what might otherwise be an awkward conversation. It is especially powerful when you have that conversation as a group.

That way everyone gets to hear from others and you can build a shared understanding of what is going on; with all the nuanced differences. You all get to appreciate the needs and fears of the group. You discover what you have in common and where you differ. You listen and share, you build trust, you make meaning together, you can all respect that. You all get to feel heard and not alone and empowered to respond, not just react, to what’s happening around you.

If you are in a leadership role, it’s not a tool you can use to get ‘leverage’ or ‘influence’ and manipulate the people around you: to control them in any predictable way.

Instead it’s more about holding a space for building shared understanding so you can align around shared needs.

Creating spaces like that is one way you can help people rethink who they are in an uncertain and evolving environment. The iceberg metaphor is a helpful way to enable others into that conversation. That is, I think, truly important work for leaders, managers and colleagues to be doing together.

How we used the iceberg model with a client group

We have been working with a client group that is a blend of professional services people and academics from a UK university. Some in the group are in senior leadership roles, others are mid-grade and one is a lower grade. It is a really interesting mix.

The aim of the group is to explore a new paradigm for leading the particular HE school they work at. This is being done in a very transparent and open way.

In one Action Learning Set the most senior person was describing a situation that everybody in the group had empathy with: a difficult colleague who had been creating some low level toxicity, and who they were avoiding as a result.

The wisdom and advice that came from the group was incredibly useful for this senior person, yet it came from people who were the most junior.

Several of them shared how they shy away from conflict, and how it’s easier to avoid difficult people.

“But what might be driving that behaviour?” others asked. “What are the anxieties or the fears that are driving them?”

“Are there ways that you might support that person so that you diffuse some of the negative behaviours, because you found a way for them to reframe their identity, for example?” asked one junior person, who had fully understood the iceberg model.

It was a really interesting way of putting it because ignoring it won’t go away. And continuing to do the same thing isn’t going to work either.

“We can never grow to become great business leaders until we actively strive to embrace the behaviours and attitudes that feel most uncomfortable to us.”
Charles Hampden-Turner

Keeping an open mind reduces emotional reactions

Keeping an open mind allows you to move beyond snap judgments and consider alternative explanations for people’s behaviour. This can transform your emotional reaction and create opportunities to engage more constructively.
For instance, if one of your team members misses a deadline, your initial reaction might be frustration, thinking they’re lazy or uncommitted. But what if there’s another reason?

• They may be dealing with a family emergency.
• They might be stuck on a task but unsure how to ask for help.
• Or perhaps they did send the work, but it landed in your spam folder. (It’s worth checking!)

The goal isn’t to guess the exact cause but to remain open to the possibilities. By reframing the situation, you can reduce the intensity of your emotional response. This helps you stay composed, manage your reactions, and approach the issue with a mindset geared toward problem-solving rather than blame.

The Iceberg Model supports this process by encouraging you to look beyond the surface – the missed deadline – and consider what unseen factors might be at play.

Using the iceberg model in your team

To lead and manage effectively, it’s essential to understand what’s driving your team members’ behaviours. The Iceberg Model offers a framework to explore these underlying factors — implicit beliefs, values, and past experiences — that are shaping their actions.

Here are some ways to delve beneath the waterline:

• Open Conversations: Create a space for team members to share their thoughts and feelings about a specific issue. Ask open-ended questions and listen actively to uncover hidden concerns or motivations.
• Core Values Exploration: Discuss what matters most to your team members. If someone has a concern or reaction to something that happened, pause to explore what feelings, assumptions or beliefs might be driving that reaction. Understanding how our beliefs and values can differ helps illuminate why others respond to situations in different ways.
• Reflecting on Past Experiences: Acknowledge how previous challenges, successes, or relationships might influence our responses and behaviour. A great way to practice this regularly is to run retro’s during and at the end of projects to reflect on how people are experiencing working together (we are specifically not talking about the project tasks in these moments).

For example, a team member might hesitate to speak up in meetings because of cultural norms or past experiences where they were dismissed. Another might seem overly cautious around leadership because of a difficult relationship with a previous boss.

By using the Iceberg Model, you can approach situations with curiosity and empathy, recognising that behaviours often stem from complex, unseen influences. This broader perspective can not only help you lead more effectively but can also build trust and strengthen your team’s culture.

At ThenSomehow we help universities and other HE organisations build emotional literacy, increase empathy, and help you see the world differently, giving you practical tools to shift the stuff that’s stuck.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help your organisation develop leaders and perform better, get in touch here.

The post The Iceberg Model: how it helps to understand organisational culture appeared first on ThenSomehow.

The continual feedback from departments about their culture was, “We’ve got this locally, but we’re really bemused by what’s going on elsewhere in the network.”

A networked approach to culture change

In a similar piece of work at another institution, we found extraordinarily vehement resistance to change within one faculty, because the requirement to adopt a uniform approach felt like a threat to their identity and completely ignored the fact that they had a unique situation. They did a lot of work with external partners, requiring a different approach, but there was no recognition from the top that something else was needed for them.

In our work with large organisations like universities, we come across these kinds of situations fairly often. In more than one institution we have been struck by how the strength of identity and sense of belonging diminishes as you move away from the local team. The further away someone is from the central administrative hub, the looser their feeling of affiliation to the organisation as a whole.

The effect is that people in universities often feel siloed, and individual departments and faculties feel disconnected from each other

We’ve come to the conclusion that it might be better to think of a university as a network of distinct and differing communities each with its own unique identity and ways of doing things, rather than a single entity.

This way of thinking could shift the approach to change in any organisation.

Changing the view, changes the change programme

When thinking about making a change or ‘transforming’ an organisation, how often is the starting point an unspoken assumption that it is a single entity? If you started with a different view instead – that you are dealing with individual but connected groups, how might that change how you approach the challenge?

Most of us tend to be drawn to solutions that can be applied across the board, but what if that approach is starting from the wrong place?

The idea of a harmonised uniform process that flows smoothly across all departments so that errors are reduced, data is easy to collate and anyone can step in to help because it’s all the same, is tremendously attractive.

The problem though, is that clean, simple, uniform solutions are often not flexible enough to accommodate the inevitable exceptions.

When the universal solution doesn’t fit

To give an example from another area of our work, one department manager revealed with exasperation that at least 40% of their programmes were ‘non standard’ requiring manual workarounds every time a member of staff interacted with the programme software.

That is a huge amount of wasted effort every day.

So when faced with the requirement to implement a uniform approach that will not work, a team is likely to be highly stressed by the request – especially when no one at the top seems interested that the standard solution does not fit.

Perhaps that is why there is so often discomfort around top-down change programmes – because ‘non standard deviations’ are not recognised or accommodated.

Why consistency is better than uniformity

As someone from one university pointed out, there’s a difference between consistency and uniformity.

The idea of consistency is interesting. Rather than a uniform set of actions, it might mean thinking about underlying principles and values, and the required outcomes. If those are clear might it be okay for local adaptation that works in each specific context?

How we’re changing to a networked model at Then Somehow

We’ve been so struck by this ‘network of communities’ way of thinking that we have taken it on as an experiment of our own: we’re now trying to reframe the way we work together at Then Somehow.

Until recently we have been organised as a ‘hub and spoke’ (just like ‘the centre’ in a university), with the founder in the middle and everyone separately connecting with them.

That has felt constraining and that we’re missing out somehow. So a few weeks ago at our team away day we talked about what we could do to create more of an interconnected ‘point-to-point’ network, and what might we do differently.

Meeting and thinking like this has been a really interesting experiment in the way that we work and is already leading to good outcomes.

There’s a whole bunch of unspoken assumptions that we have started to subvert a little bit which is making space for creativity and other interesting things to emerge.

Notably a few people have been making a point of hanging out together, and developing new possibilities to work with each other.

It’s early days but we’re very curious to see what happens next.

The Power of Networked Thinking

What strikes us most about this is the untapped power of these networks when you apply this kind of thinking.

And we’re very curious about what happens when you reimagine organisations as networks of communities. Rather than trying to make everything uniform, could you let people solve problems locally? What if you design processes or platforms that encourage people to link up with each other?

How might that transform the way people engage with change? If you start with the assumption that an organisation is a coherent consistent whole, you approach change in a certain way. If you see it as a network of communities, it might completely shift the way you think about it.

Of course some change projects are born of crisis, driven by the compelling need to save money quickly. In a crisis you often crave the fastest, cleanest simplest path possible. Seeing an organisation as a single uniform controllable and biddable thing is attractive and reassuring. In a crisis you need urgency and compliance, and you might design a process according to those needs rather than the needs of the people you want to make the changes.

In truth those people also recognise the need to save money, and their jobs. They also want to protect the mission of their institutions: the thing that gives them their sense of purpose. And they are best placed to find the solutions that can make that possible.

The very moment you crave uniformity and compliance might be the moment you need to let go of them. The more you dig under the skin of any large institution, the more people will explain to you why they’re different. Maybe they are not wrong. We know from our work with institutions that there are ways you can distribute leadership, and trust people to solve problems in adaptive and non-uniform but consistent, and creative, ways.

Whilst the challenges across an organisation are fundamentally universal and shared, and broadly speaking the solutions are the same, the way you might go about achieving the solutions could be different. Or there might be special flavours that you can apply in one place that you can’t in another.

So how could you equip people, give them the time and allow them to solve a problem locally? And do that in a way that isn’t so at odds with everybody else that it becomes impossible to integrate.

What this means for people who are attempting to bring about change is to encourage them to see any community or organisation as a group of diverse individuals, to talk to them and hear their points of view, and to facilitate conversations where other people can hear these points of view too.

Because then the group as a whole has the information that it needs to change its future.

We’d love to know what you think about this – does any of it resonate or inspire, or would you like to challenge it? Get in touch and let us know.

At Then Somehow we help universities and other organisations build emotional literacy, increase empathy, and help you see the world differently, giving you practical tools to shift the stuff that’s stuck.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help your organisation develop leaders and perform better, get in touch here.

The post Why your organisation is really a network of communities appeared first on ThenSomehow.

Trauma in organisations can show up in many guises. It can appear following a clumsy restructure, or through the long shadow cast by an unchallenged bully, or perhaps due to the loss of a colleague through illness.

These kinds of things, and others, can have a significant impact on individuals and groups. If they are not acknowledged people can feel disrespected and diminished, and triggered into passionate reactions. And it doesn’t just affect motivation. The rage and indignation people feel can limit their capacity, as they have less space to deal with tasks or solve problems.

The narratives of frustration that commonly emerge are often self limiting too: whole groups can feel victimised and rally around that identity. This group identity is powerful and can feel enormously supportive for those affected. Meanwhile those outside the group or who are perceived to threaten it (and that identity) can experience fierce resistance and challenge. These patterns, once established, can endure for years.

It makes sense then to pay attention to the human side of things – and the things that go on ‘below the waterline’ – especially during a reorganisation, after all 70% of change programmes fail due to employee resistance and lack of management support.

Understanding the Impact of Trauma on Organisational Change

As an example, we have been working with one institution who went through a seismic shift after a drop in numbers of international students. The leadership team was poorly equipped to deal with the resulting financial crisis and pushed through a reorganisation – downsizing the workforce, rationalising courses – to make the numbers add up, but they underestimated the harm that this caused the workforce. A failure to listen and include people led to a belief that it was all happening behind closed doors and people felt powerless to defend themselves.

As a result, a lot of tension bubbled up throughout the whole institution. Staff at all levels felt disempowered and devalued, as a consequence they could behave aggressively and unpredictably, lashing out in any direction. There was a lot of dissatisfaction, and low trust. Others at all levels were frightened to speak up or stand out on any topic, scared of making themselves a target.

You could understand, if not condone these behaviours. In truth the reorganisation was pushed through in ways that were more damaging than they needed to be. People felt they had not been listened to. They felt excluded and marginalised, their very identity threatened: they felt powerless. And then they found a way to regain that lost agency through (non physical) violence. Which reinforced an unhelpful cycle. All parties became entrenched and less open to dialogue, and everyone experienced it in ways that were detrimental.

And there will be medium to long term repercussions. There is a lot of work to do to rebuild trust.

The Long-Term Effects of Organisational Trauma

Another of our clients experienced a similar trauma, but for different reasons. They had a comparable financial crunch, but leadership turned it around and got the organisation into a strong position. They are hiring and building teams again after a period of cutting everything.

But after a decade-long cycle of running out of money and cutting jobs every few years, some people have spent 10-years in an extended period of uncertainty, lurching from feeling at risk of redundancy and then being told their jobs are safe, and back again.

That creates trauma that has a lasting impact.

One effect is that while the new hires are coming in with enthusiasm, belief and confidence, they’re encountering a group of jaded, traumatised colleagues who do not share the excitement, and who actually mistrust everything because in their experience, new initiatives always fade into disappointment and loss.

In addition, the directive behaviours of the leadership team which were so necessary during the turnaround, are no longer a good fit. People who feel motivated to own their challenges find themselves pulled up and needing permission to act, creating the risk they will be as discouraged as those who survived the reorganisation.

Part of the issue is that there is no real acknowledgement that half the workforce are in a traumatised state – which shows up as people being slow to respond, wilfully resistant and deeply sceptical of new people.

No one is talking about it, and it’s not factored into how they’re planning changes. There isn’t a trauma-informed leadership approach.

Some of the new people are really sensitive to this, but the leadership team aren’t (and their expectations for the pace of change may be too high). So while some see the need to go steadily and regain trust, others are pushing hard and achieving the opposite.

Overcoming Resistance with a Trauma-Informed Approach

In a trauma-informed leadership approach, leaders and organisations work with the trauma to overcome the resistance that otherwise emerges in reaction. This doesn’t mean changing the outcome of decisions or the work that needs doing, it’s about how you do it.

For leaders this means:

• Recognising you have a choice to lead differently
• Being aware of what has gone on before
• Acknowledging that these things have happened
• Taking care to communicate in a way that generates psychological safety
• Demonstrating that you are listening, by making people feel heard
• Designing work to give people agency – in the way decisions are made and the way they are deployed.

Avoiding Common Pitfalls in Trauma-Informed Leadership

This is important work, but it is really common for people to overlook a key part of it.

We worked with one leader who badly misstepped when they arrived after a reorganisation. They had joined with excitement, enthusiasm and clarity, and said, “I know you’ve had a horrible time, but this is the turning point, let’s focus on the future, we can rebuild this.”

However their team didn’t appreciate the forced positivity, “We’re still having a terrible time! We haven’t overcome it and pretending everything is okay is not helping,” they said (to each other, but not to their new boss).

The new leader quickly lost trust and has been on the back foot ever since. It doesn’t matter what they say now, the team interprets it in a negative way – they want to blame somebody for the harm they have experienced for all those years, and it’s their new boss. This is difficult – and it’s not understood by the new leader’s peer group or their own boss, and it’s not something they can easily fix on their own. It takes a lot of work to rebuild trust.

Key Practices for Trauma-Informed Leadership

The process of understanding the context, empathising with people’s experience of a situation, and working through it – crucially – with them, is a way to start to change and release the trauma.

If you’re interested, our approach to trauma-informed leadership is to use our core toolkit for this: to help leaders respond differently by supporting them to rethink how they engage as leaders.

The support we offer is practical, emotionally informed and applied – at the core it is about experimentation, feedback and iteration.

This is not traditional training for leaders, instead it includes:

• Practising listening and talking to each other using various tools
• Applying the process to yourselves so you become a stronger team
• Helping you design how you will lead the change you want to see and taking a different approach. This means having conversations with people and involving them in how to get there.
• Helping you see your role as a convener and permission provider – learning from who you are.
• Moving from ‘we need to prioritise communicating information in scalable efficient ways’, to ‘we need to prioritise communicating information in psychologically safe ways.’

The Role of Communication in Trauma-Informed Leadership

If you don’t adopt an approach like this, you will continue to come up against trauma and inertia, and will traumatise people even more.

Does this resonate with your organisation? We’d love to hear from you.

At Then Somehow we help universities and other organisations build emotional literacy, increase empathy, and help you see the world differently, giving you practical tools to shift the stuff that’s stuck.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help your organisation develop leaders and perform better, get in touch here.

The post Trauma-informed leadership: why you need to listen before implementing change appeared first on ThenSomehow.

You’re not alone. We’re about to do a piece of work with a university in response to their frustration over clunky, time consuming processes. The challenge has been that everyone is just too busy to fix them.

When admin processes don’t work

Not having time to fix stuff that takes up all your time because it doesn’t work properly is more than a little bit ironic. Lots of organisations tell us they have this challenge and find it hard to do anything about it.

In a university these problems could be anything from administering enrollment, managing an extenuating circumstances request, or collecting and maintaining student data.

It’s quite common for these to need manual intervention because different bits of software don’t talk to each other. Unfortunately transferring data from one to the other is time consuming and can introduce errors.

Clients often say, “We need to fix this so we don’t find ourselves in the same situation next year.”

Yet when everyone is really busy, it’s hard to find time to fix anything. In a year’s time the organisation is in exactly the same place and everyone is just as frustrated.

Do you have a problem like this?

Why interim staff are not a real solution

Many institutions feel forced to solve these kinds of issues by bringing in external staff on interim contracts to deliver the fix that everyone else is too busy to do.

If the aim of the project is to deploy a new piece of software to solve, say, a pressing enrolment issue, there’ll be a working group formed to provide input but who are too busy to do the work or who don’t have the technical skills. The actual delivery team will be made up of specialist interim contractors. Once their work is completed, the software users will receive training on how to use it.

The expectation is that the new system will have a transformational impact, but often even the commissioning team can be too busy to test it after it is built. And none of the users will have learned anything about how to specify what they need, or how to design the service so that it meets their customer’s needs, or how to collaborate with other parts of the organisation who might also be affected.

The coup de grace is that hiring interim staff on short-term contracts is really expensive. They don’t have the institutional knowledge which introduces some risk, and having done the work, they leave and the university is not much better off.

The original problem might be solved but the organisation’s capability hasn’t been increased.

As an example we have one client looking at data analytics as part of a programme of change management and project delivery. Their entire team was made up of interim staff on 12- to 18- month contracts because they needed to get the project going and didn’t have the people internally, “I couldn’t wait to hire people because it would take too long and we needed to experiment and work out how it was going to work,” they said.

A programme designed to help you to solve the staffing problem internally

Wouldn’t it be great if, instead of spending money like this on interim contractors, you funded your own people to solve these problems, especially as often the answers to design issues are already in the room. The best solutions need the thinking from the people who are intimately involved with the problem after all.

So the programme we’ve been discussing is this: take colleagues away from their usual role – with the freedom not to do their day job – and give them the time to fix the problem, with some help.

Their day jobs will be backfilled from within the organisation, or from less expensive temporary contractors, and we’ll put a wrapper of support around participants that includes project management, soft skills training and technical skills training for specific aspects of the project.

They’ll be supported to work in collaboration, and form networks as a part of solving the problem.

In this way, at the end of the project the university will have:

• solved the problem they needed fixing
• a group of people who are better connected within the organisation
• a group who have learned a range of skills they can deploy in other contexts
• individuals who are more confident and more able to affect change
• people who have increased their career mobility.

It would be cheaper than hiring specialist interim contractors and you’d end up with an organisation that was better equipped and more mobile. Wouldn’t that be great?

Empowering your team to build lasting capability

From our point of view, this is an exciting vision – of capability development combined with project delivery.

It requires a combination of technical skills training (which we don’t offer), with soft skills training and coalitions facilitation (which we do) that would include things like:

• Working smarter to learn how to make time for important work
• How to influence with authority
• How to lead from the middle (distributed leadership)
• How to form coalitions and make them work
• How to manage expectations and manage up

This is different to the way that institutions usually fix things, and is the kind of work we really love doing – because it empowers people to create value and builds lasting capability in an organisation.

If you were to consider such an applied programme, how would you design it? What are the projects that lend themselves to this kind of intervention and what would the support curriculum need to look like?

We’d love to hear from you.

At Then Somehow we help universities and other organisations build emotional literacy, increase empathy, and help you see the world differently, giving you practical tools to shift the stuff that’s stuck.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help your organisation develop leaders and perform better, get in touch here.

The post Are you burning cash on interim staff and still not getting where you want to be? appeared first on ThenSomehow.

As a manager in an organisation, awkward, difficult conversations are inevitable, but they don’t have to be a minefield.

Regardless of whether you need to hold a colleague accountable for something they did or didn’t do, tell your boss that their request is no longer possible, or confront a team member about their disrespectful behaviour, with the right approach you can successfully navigate them without feeling stressed, anxious or uncomfortable.

It may be tempting to dodge these chats, but sweeping problems under the rug is far from a solution. Surprisingly, a significant 70% of employees tend to avoid these tough talks, leading to simmering issues within teams.

Difficult conversations with your boss or colleague may be a bleak prospect, but putting it off and ignoring problems hoping they will resolve themselves can make matters worse.

For instance, not telling someone about a delay might escalate into larger issues later. Keeping quiet about concerns can lead to project failures, and unchecked disrespectful behaviour can disrupt team dynamics, turning into unhealthy conflict that can have a bigger impact on your team’s performance.

Why Difficult Conversations Matter. A real life example

Consider this real-life scenario where a new manager we were supporting in a large organisation faced passive-aggressive behaviour from a senior member in their team. This team member had been passed over for promotion and was not happy: they questioned every suggestion and proposal to the point of destruction, exhausting everybody on the team.

Instead of confronting the issue, the manager tolerated the behaviour which led to unproductive conduct: the person concerned continued to sabotage everything, holding the team back and keeping everyone stuck.

We advised the manager to tell this person in a clear and respectful way that their behaviour was not okay and had to stop. They needed to say that it was affecting them, the work and everyone else too.

Unfortunately they initially didn’t feel able to – instead adopting a ‘do nothing’ strategy, something that is more common than you might think.

A fear of conflict will see people putting up with a great deal. Fierce Conversations found that the number one response to coping with toxic employees is to ignore them, with almost half hoping the issue will magically disappear.

According to a survey by Vitalsmarts the most common difficult conversations that people tend to put off, range from dealing with rude behaviour to challenging faulty proposals and addressing incompetent colleagues.

This “do nothing” approach might seem like an easy way out but it’s far from effective. The postponed conversations result in a negative atmosphere at work where people ruminate, complain, and engage in unnecessary work, all because they’re avoiding the core issue.

Moreover, there’s a significant financial impact, with each delayed conversation estimated to cost anywhere from $100 to $5,000.

Regardless of how delicate the issue or how grim the news, the most effective approach is to address it head on and engage in a conversation with the individual involved, no matter how challenging it may seem.

In our example above, the manager finally took the initiative and calmly explained to their colleague the impact it was having on them personally. The response was dramatic. There was an apology followed by a frank and open conversation. The person’s behaviour improved, though ultimately they made the decision to leave as their frustration was with the organisation rather than with the manager.

Often embracing the conflict leads to good things. So remember, if you are faced with similar situations, think what is the best that could happen rather than the worst.

How to Navigate Tough Conversations with Your Team

Mastering difficult conversations is a crucial skill for managers in any organisation. Practice is key; the more you do it, the more confident and adept you become at having the conversation with respect and honesty, which will always lead to better outcomes.

Try this 5-step framework – it will help you get better at tough talks and as you practise, your confidence will grow.

Step-by-Step Framework for Handling Challenging Discussions:

1. Face the situation head on
2. Empathise with the other person
3. Use an I-Statement
4. Use the FONT tool
5. Respond in a different way

Here is more information about each of these steps, with examples of how to use all the above at the end:

Step 1: Confront the Issue Directly

Talking about a sensitive subject can be an anxiety inducing prospect, but avoiding it only prolongs the issue. You may be worried that the other person will be defensive or won’t listen, or that they’ll be angry and aggressive. They might do any or all of these things but if you don’t try, you won’t make any progress at all. You’ll just be stuck in a difficult situation.

And you’ll probably find that it’s not nearly as bad as you imagined.

Step 2: Practice Empathy Before Engaging

There are many reasons why someone is behaving in a particular way. If they are delivering poor work, they may be struggling but be unable to ask for help. If they are not motivated, they could have issues at home. If they are being rude they may be feeling wronged by the way they’ve been treated.

Try empathising with their situation before you start talking. As their manager, your aim should be to support them while addressing their behaviour.

Step 3: Communicate Using ‘I’ Statements

Express your feelings clearly using an “I” Statement to tell the other person how you are feeling in a clear, effective and truthful manner.

“I” Statements are a powerful way to help you express your point to someone else without causing them to feel defensive or aggressive, which allows them to respond rather than react.

The way to do this is to structure what you say in this way: “I feel X when you do Y, and [how their behaviour affects you].” For instance, say, “I feel upset when you say things like that, and this is affecting our working relationship.”

This approach fosters genuine dialogue by focusing on the consequences of behaviour rather than blaming the person.

If instead you start the conversation with the other person’s actions, or say “you make me really angry when you do X,” you’re blaming them and giving them the message that they are the problem.

NB Be careful not to turn an I-Statement into a ‘blaming-you-statement-pretending-to-be-an I-Statement. Eg “I feel that you are passive-aggressive,” is not an “I” Statement.

Step 4: Understand the FONT Tool to Improve Conversations

FONT (Feelings, Observations, Needs, Thoughts) is a way to decode a conversation so that you understand what’s really going on for people.

Despite their importance, most people don’t bring their wants and feelings into the workplace. However you’ll find it harder to resolve an awkward conversation and increase your chances of receiving a defensive response if you attempt to handle it without discussing their needs and feelings.

FONT is a way to become more aware of what is going on, both for yourself and what you are sensing from the other person. The four categories will help you break the conversation down.

For example, I might be observing your body language and notice that you’re being defensive. I might think, “This is going to end really badly. We’re going to start shouting and she may storm out.”

With that information, I could stop trying to tell you something, and instead ask a question: “I noticed that you raised your voice when you said that. What’s going on for you? How are you feeling?”

The ultimate aim of FONT is to increase your awareness of what the other person is feeling, and to bring that into the conversation. If you can do that, you are more likely to have a much more valuable conversation.

If you just stick to actions, decisions, communication and results (ie the bit above the waterline in the iceberg model, you’ll have limited leverage to change anything.

The first time you try using FONT, you may find you’re really good at working out the thoughts and observations parts, but not so good at recognising feelings or needs.

The more you practise, the more you’re able to do it on the fly.

The five core emotions
To help you identify what people are feeling, this is a helpful shortcut to use alongside FONT, the five core emotions:

• MAD (Angry)
• SAD
• GLAD
• HURT
• SCARED

If you can find a way for the person to tell you how they’re feeling, for example they might say, “I’m feeling both angry and anxious (scared),” then you might be able to empathise with them and work together to find a solution.

If their needs include being acknowledged, and a sense of feeling valued, look for opportunities to recognise them and point out their positive traits to make them feel more appreciated.

There are two ways to work with FONT:

i. In the moment
Use it to guide the conversation towards the true issue at hand. This frequently leads to a really liberating conversation. It takes practice, however your attempt won’t necessarily fail, even if it doesn’t work out the first time.

ii. Reflecting after the fact
To better understand what happened, go back over the conversation and replay it using FONT. What did you notice? What was going through your mind? What might they have been thinking? What emotions might they have had? Which needs might be motivating them?

Even if the situation fails in the moment, taking some time to reflect on what you could have done differently will help you next time, since you’ll be more prepared and be able to try something new.

Being able to say to someone, “I can see you are getting upset,” and asking, “How are you feeling?” can help to resolve the situation. If they are able to be truthful about what they’re feeling, you can say, “Okay, let’s talk about what you need.”

Step 5: Respond with the opposite

This is an approach that’s helpful if someone is either very emotional or bombards you with facts:

• When faced with facts, respond with emotions.
• If they are very emotional, point to the facts.

Imagine an awkward conversation with a colleague who’s delivered a poor piece of work. They might start listing all of the reasons why it’s not their fault. Using facts and figures to build their case. In doing that, they’re being defensive and it will be hard to move the conversation forward. If you respond with how you feel, you can shift that dynamic. Breaking down barriers in a difficult conversation opens up possibilities for transformation.

Or perhaps the opposite happens and they start crying or become really angry. A way to respond is to, firstly, empathise with their feelings, then bring in some facts to try and get back into a conversation.

This is a useful approach if you find yourself stuck because it’s easy to remember.

Three examples of difficult situations and how to deal with them

These are examples where difficult conversations might become dysfunctional, and where people can easily become defensive:

1. There is a restructure and jobs are at risk
2. Someone is not doing their job properly
3. A colleague is being offensive

i. People are at risk of redundancy during a restructure

If you have to restructure your team, some people’s jobs may have to be cut. People often come into those conversations with a lot of anxiety. The minute you tell them what is happening, they will be worrying about money.

Their anxiety could be unwarranted, because they may be at less risk than they think. But because they’re nervous, they may become antagonistic or aggressive. They might, for example, threaten to bring in a union rep.

What to do? Use FONT to find out what is going on for them and to reflect on what they fundamentally need.

For example, you might notice that they’re agitated, that their voice is raised and they’re being aggressive. You might be feeling nervous yourself – it is never nice to pass on this kind of news – and you might start being defensive. If the conversation spins out of control, our best advice is to stop, identify what you’re observing, and ask what they are feeling.

If they tell you they are angry after all the work they have done, calm them down by talking about what the options are. There might be options to redeploy them or a number of other roles and opportunities they could consider applying for.

Communicate what the scale of the risk is: “Even though there will not be enough posts left after the restructure, some people on the team want to leave anyway. So actually, you’re a lot less at risk than you realise. Maybe this is an opportunity, because in the new posts there are more opportunities for development. You could expect to get a pay rise.”

If their original reaction to the news was: “I am so angry because of the way this was communicated.” Their need is for an apology and a recognition of the harm that’s been done.

By addressing that need, you can move the conversation to a different place.

ii. “You are not doing your job properly, you need to improve”

Someone you are managing is performing badly. You arrange a conversation with them to discuss the situation.

You have a ‘you need to improve’ conversation but there is a thought at the back of your mind that, “this is all going to end in a formal performance management process.”

You know that’s a challenging and uncomfortable process for the person concerned and likely your relationship with them will be destroyed in the process. They’ll end up leaving anyway which may be what you really wanted, but they’re miserable and you’re miserable.

Just the thought of that could cause the conversation to be a clumsy one. However it’s avoidable if you can intervene early enough.

If you’re able to talk to them early, use The Three Key Questions to help them understand what you need and how they’re measuring up:

• Do they know what’s expected of them?
• Do they know how they’re doing? and
• Do they know where they’re heading?

In that conversation you have to be really clear about what is expected of them. Then you can monitor how they are doing, and you can identify what help they might need to do it. They’ll (hopefully) improve and you’re more likely to avoid the whole performance management process.

Win-win.

iii. A member of staff is being offensive

Sharon has made a complaint about Annie. You’ve only heard Sharon’s side of the story and you’d like to know what happened from Annie’s point of view. In this case, FONT can help you figure out what actually happened and come up with some choices for how to respond.

Annie says: “Sharon left her dirty coffee cup on the side in the kitchen. It seems a small thing but I just lost it. I shouted at her and I might have called her a rude name, because I always do the washing up – no one else does it and no one ever says thank you.”

As her manager you might say: “I’m noticing that as you talk about it your voice is raised. It seems that you’re still angry and upset about it. How’re you feeling right now?”
Annie: “Sorry. I was just so angry.”
You: “What do you need?”
Annie: “I need to not be the only person who cares about this stuff.”

You: “Did you know that Sharon had put her things in the dishwasher but it was full she had to reorganise it. Some bits didn’t fit back in so she put them on the side and put the dishwasher on, intending to come back later and finish it.”

Annie: “Oh … I didn’t know that. I’ll apologise and try not to react in future.”

You: “Thank you, that sounds good.”

Key Tools to Improve Your Conversations

Difficult conversations can be daunting but there are strategies for making them better. Having read this, we hope you have more of a grasp on how to handle them, plus a couple of useful tools that you can try. With experience, difficult conversations will become easier, leading to more productive dialogues and better results.

At Then Somehow we help universities and other organisations build emotional literacy, increase empathy, and help you see the world differently, giving you practical tools to shift the stuff that’s stuck.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help your organisation develop leaders and perform better, get in touch here.

The post Difficult conversations: how to master them with confidence. A guide for managers. appeared first on ThenSomehow.

As a manager, you may spend a fair bit of time trying to make sure everyone gets along and steering people clear of fights and confrontation, with the aim that your team be as effective as possible.

Why ‘fight’ is hard to avoid in teams

Conflict in teams is hard to avoid because workplaces create conflict by their very nature. Decisions have to be taken that may not have 100% agreement, projects don’t always run smoothly, people get promoted or passed over. There are always trade-offs to be made and people’s feelings are affected by all sorts of things. Not to mention that when groups of people work together, they will sometimes interrupt each other, complain, and be spiky. Human beings can easily rub each other up the wrong way!

Psychologist and business strategist Liane Davey says, “The question is whether conflict can be discussed in a healthy way that you can get through, or whether it goes underground and festers like a root fire that smoulders for months or even years.”

Lifting the lid on conflict

Whilst you may be afraid that if you lift the lid on Pandora’s box, people will get hurt and collaboration will be impossible, actually fights are more valuable to your team than you think. (We’re not talking about punchups here.) And strange as it may seem, heated arguments can indicate that a team is making progress.

“All great relationships, the ones that last over time, require productive conflict in order to grow.”
Patrick Lencioni

Recently we’ve been working with a couple of newly formed teams from different institutions. They do different kinds of work at different levels of seniority. One has been set up from scratch to support a new strategy. The other is from an established unit, but was recently restructured and has a new team lead and newly promoted deputies.

These teams are doing very different work but they both have something in common. They are both going through the same stages of evolution on their way to being high performing teams – which is one that’s really good at making decisions, getting things done and, crucially, making space to reflect.

To be a high performing team can take a while and takes work.

Stages of team development

In the early stages of a team, when everyone is being a bit coy and polite, when people hold back from saying what they really think and feel as they size each other up, people behave with caution and civility.

The group development models made famous by researchers such as Tuckman, Agazarian and Wheelan describe this as the forming or flight stage.

The models show – and we see this playing out – even after a few weeks or months when groups have got to know each other better, they often still shy away from conflict or direct disagreement.

But then the cracks start to appear. Undisclosed frustrations about progress with projects, perceived slights or even seemingly innocuous things like the way meetings are always task focussed, start to bubble up and break out in fights and other ways that people find alarming.

Whilst some team members get stuck in, others decide to ‘withdraw’. Perhaps no one shows any interest in their area, or they are regularly interrupted or sidelined. They might complain that no one listens to them, but probably not to the people involved.

These behaviours indicate the team has moved on from forming to the storming or fight stage.

Fight is a precursor to better collaboration

Both of these stages of a team – forming and storming – are really normal. And are actually precursors to better collaboration and higher performance, because before those can happen, the team needs to resolve how to best work with one another more effectively. Once resolved people know where they stand, and what the boundaries are. There is trust, respect and confidence that they can deal with the tricky stuff that comes up.

Getting to this, it turns out, is really hard.

Before then conflict can come about through things we think of as ‘below the waterline’. Your anger for example, might be triggered by something seemingly banal – say a comment about you using the photocopier too much. How do you bring that up in a professional context without sounding like an idiot? Yet your anger is real, the emotional flooding just as debilitating and distracting, as if something far more serious was happening. And not dealing with it or the myriad of equivalents has consequences.

Perhaps this is something you are experiencing, or you have in the past?

The problem is that most of us feel ill-equipped to deal with the fight or conflict. So we shy away from it. Paper over it. Yet time and again research has shown that groups do better when they can move through these phases of development, otherwise they get stuck there.

Being in a team stuck between forming and storming is exhausting and demoralising. Work still gets done, but probably no one is having a good time. And what’s achieved is only ever a fraction of the potential. Being stuck in that place drives people to leave, or to burnout.

In our work with newly formed groups, we reassure them that it’s inevitable for people working together to experience these flight/fight situations.

Forewarned is forearmed. Knowing which stage you are in can help you think about your ability to change things, and your own responses.

That’s usually where we focus our work.

A tool for working with conflict

To help teams with this, we’ve been using a tool called Shield, a process that helps you firstly identify what triggers you, and then work through your feelings and responses so that you can reach a new way of being together.
Working with the tool builds trust because it requires a little bit of vulnerability and risk taking. You have to admit that you get triggered. You are encouraged to work together to understand what’s really driving your response.

By using this tool (and others like it) to have more open conversations about what is going on, groups can get through the flight and fight stages more easily and with less psychological damage. The tool doesn’t fix things, but it is a way of practising a different way of communicating. And practice makes better.

For example, say you’re in a meeting and someone says or does something – it triggers you and suddenly you feel really uncomfortable. Maybe nobody listened to a word you said, or others were arguing and it all got really tense. Worse, this happens every time you have a meeting.

Working with Shield

Shield is a neat way to help you explore your responses so they don’t control you, and you don’t get stuck there. It has seven steps that you work though on your own and then with a peer, before swapping notes in your group:

1. The trigger
   Get clear on what it is that sets you off.

 

2. Thoughts
   What thoughts come up when you’re triggered? There’s normally a cascade of them, a mix of self-doubt and frustration such as: “I hate this,” or “They think I’m useless”.

 

3. Emotions
   Can you identify the associated feelings? Often it’s anger, perhaps tinged with sadness and fear.

 

4. Behaviours
   When you feel like that, do you become snippy or passive aggressive? Do you withdraw completely and shut down? Do you pretend everything is okay?

 

5. Consequences
   There are consequences to being snippy or ‘checking out’: others may react by being snippy back, or if you withdraw then neither you nor the group can explore your perspective. Either way it becomes a dissatisfying experience.

 

6. Needs
   If your behaviour has consequences, you can work to stop them happening by first understanding your need. An example might be your need to “feel valued and respected by my colleagues and when people don’t listen to me, I don’t feel either of those things, which is why I get so triggered.”

 

7. Support
   What would help you in these scenarios? You could take a deep breath and choose to manage your response. What might help even more is if other people notice you’re not speaking or are being snippy, and they say, “Steve, you’re being quiet (or aggressive). Are you alright?” Then you can have an honest conversation about what is happening.

Partly the Shield exercise is about getting to know each other’s triggers and default responses, and partly it’s about recognising that those default responses are typical of ‘fight’ stage behaviours.

Without this awareness, if in a moment of conflict you respond in your default dysfunctional ways – ie you get aggressive, interrupt people, withdraw or complain – none of those will move the group on to collaborate better. In fact those responses probably trigger others around you in dysfunctional ways too.

However if you can recognise that you’re triggering each other into negative feedback loops, then you can do something about it. Knowing you are at the fight stage helps you get through it.

In a team, it’s all about how you interact with each other. The way people are with you plays a huge part in defining how you feel about yourself and your work. That means even if your team is not high performing, you can still interact in ways that are constructive and useful.

The question is how do you develop a shared language for talking about the things that frustrate you. Because if you can do that, you can get to real collaboration faster.

If you are experiencing these kinds of issues in your team and you’d like more information on Shield, or help with using it, please get in touch.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help your organisation develop leaders and perform better, get in touch here.

The post The scary truth is: every team needs to fight appeared first on ThenSomehow.

Join us as we explore a carefully curated list of tools, exercises and methods to help modern managers lead more effectively, enhance collaboration and work smarter not harder.

From delegation to communication, meetings to mindset, these tools can help you foster a culture of growth, empowerment, and performance within your team and organisation.

Let’s embark on this journey to discover how simple practices can amplify your effectiveness and revolutionise the way you lead and manage.
 

Productivity tips for managers

1. 6 Productivity tips that work and last, including how to do email better.
There’s plenty of productivity advice out there, and you’ve probably tried a lot of it – but how much of it actually sticks? These 6 proven productivity tips have worked for our clients and will help you work smarter, not harder.
Read the 6 tips here.

2. How to prioritise using the Impact Effort Matrix.
The Impact Effort Matrix is a simple tool that helps you and your team identify what matters most. It’s a quick way to align priorities and create clarity.
Learn how to use it here.

Protecting your time

3. Too many meetings? Here’s 8 ways to cut down.
Meetings, meetings, meetings. They’re endless and affect your work and your productivity. Here’s how to free up your time for the work you want to focus on instead.
Discover the 8 ways here.

4. Are interruptions breaking your day? Here’s what to do.
Interruptions are a reality of organisational life. We know that interruptions are one of the biggest challenges managers face. Here are 4 proven tactics to help you stay focused, set boundaries, and protect your time.
4 simple things you can do to overcome interruptions.

Managing and empowering your team

5. Get better at delegating. Here’s how.
Delegation is a skill every manager needs. Use the CPORT checklist to delegate more effectively and avoid common pitfalls.
Learn how to use CPORT here.

6. Three powerful questions that build staff engagement.
These 3 questions can reveal powerful insights about your team’s engagement and motivation. Your team should be able to answer them. If they can’t, then money may be the only sense they have of where they’re at, and your organisation could be at risk.
Discover the 3 questions are here.

Improving communication makes you a more effective manager

7. How to make sure people hear what you say.
Do people actually listen to and understand what you say? Research suggests not so much. Ensure your communication lands by using the Replay tool, it helps people actively listen and retain key messages.
Discover Replay here.

8. 4 tools for better conversations with your team.
Despite how much time you spend in meetings, or how many plans you make, it can still be really hard to make anything happen. Better conversations lead to better action. Here are 4 tools to make team discussions more productive and impactful.
Explore the 4 tools here.

9. Stop avoiding difficult conversations.
Having a difficult conversation can be one of the most powerful things you can do in the workplace. If you can’t have difficult conversations, it can hamper your organisation’s ability to grow. Wen done well, they can unlock trust, clarity, and progress.
Learn how to do them better here.

10. Getting to the feedback that actually makes a difference.
Giving and receiving staff feedback can be challenging but it is key to development and growth. Discover a tool that makes feedback conversations more effective and meaningful.
Read how to do it here.

Essential tools for building mindset, agency and performance

11. Circles of Influence. A tool that shows why you have more power than you think.
Help your team focus on what they can control using the Circles of Influence exercise developed by management guru, Stephen Covey.
Download a free Circles of Influence worksheet here.

12. Make the boat go faster. Boost your team’s performance.
Inspired by Olympic gold medalist Ben Hunt-Davis, Make the Boat Go Faster is a way to identify what’s holding your team back, and how to overcome that.
Learn how toimprove your team’s performance here.
 

Final thoughts on being an effective manager: lead smarter, not harder

By adopting the strategies, insights, and tools outlined here, you’ll be equipped to navigate the complexities of leadership, with confidence.

Remember, being an effective manager is not just about optimizing processes and achieving targets; it’s about fostering a culture of growth, empowerment, and collaboration.

As you continue to refine your skills, never underestimate the impact of empathy, continuous learning, and adaptability. Embrace the challenges, celebrate the victories, and keep pushing the boundaries of your leadership capabilities. The road ahead is rich with possibilities, and the tools we have outlined here will help to steer your team and organisation towards a future of sustained success.

How Then Somehow Can Help You

At Then Somehow we help managers in organisations build emotional literacy, increase empathy, and help you see the world differently, giving you practical tools to shift the stuff that’s stuck.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help your organisation perform better, get in touch here.

The post How to be a more effective manager: 12 top tips and tools for modern leaders appeared first on ThenSomehow.

The people affected can struggle to understand the reason for the change. They frequently feel that “leadership isn’t listening to us.” Equally, the people leading the change are often confused and frustrated by the vocal and passionate resistance they experience.

Frustrations and emotions run high. Communication is poor. Tempers rise.

People are very easily triggered, and because no one does anything differently this pattern keeps being repeated.

Institutions reorganise for many reasons. Sometimes they are compelled to do so by changing markets, reforms to regulatory landscapes, or financial pressures requiring a different approach to programme and service delivery. At other times, a reorganisation is needed as organisations evolve and grow. It can be a painful process and research from the corporate world has shown that 80 percent of reorganisations fail to deliver improvements that were hoped for. Whilst some are successful, one thing is definite: organisational change is disruptive, transforming roles and leading to a variety of reactions from the people involved as they navigate the change.

In one case, when we brought together the people who were affected by a change, they spent most of the sessions complaining about how awful this thing was that was being forced on them and that no one was listening to them.

After working to de-escalate their anger, using tools such as I Statements, FONT and Circles of Influence, by the end they were saying things like, “Oh actually, we’ve got more power here than we realised. I just assumed we had no choice and no control. It is up to us to shape this.” Which was great.

They were still angry, but now they had some agency, which helped them to engage in a different way.

When we talked to people higher up, they said, “We did consult and we are listening. We keep saying, ‘You are free to design your own solution.’ It’s not true that we just tell them what to do.”

In many instances, from where we are standing it appears that people struggle to feel heard and understood, are quick to blame each other and are confused as to how to behave differently.

All sides make assumptions about what is happening and base their responses on those assumptions. They all believe everyone thinks the same as them.

What happens in organisations

This reminds me of that story about the blindfolded scientists who are touching an elephant. One is touching the tail and thinks it is a rope. Another is touching a tusk and thinks it is a spear. Another is touching a leg and thinks it is a tree. They all think they are touching something different. None of them can see that they’re holding a part of a whole.

This is a useful metaphor for what happens in organisations, where people make the mistake of believing that everyone else shares the same viewpoint, and fail to recognise other people’s points of view. If everyone could pool their knowledge they might have a clearer view of what is really going on, as other people do have different views to us. That is not surprising. They have different roles. They’re sitting in different parts of the organisation. In terms of power, they’re experiencing different things. Their whole context is utterly different and even if you do agree on one or two things, you are still holding a very different perspective.

Why listening is important

In most organisations people don’t have enough time – or don’t make the time – to make sure they are listening to other perspectives. Then some people don’t speak up because they believe they are not going to be heard. Other voices get louder – indignant even – because they are trying really hard to make sure they are heard. Leaders get swept along thinking that everyone is on the same page and run into difficulties later because it turns out that some people are not actually as committed as they thought they were, because they hadn’t done enough work to include them.

A common refrain we hear from leaders is, “I feel really confused and frustrated, because we did talk to people. We set up meetings where they could contribute. Yet they are all saying that they weren’t heard. Truth is I didn’t really notice that they hadn’t said things.”

If you’re in a position of power, do you need to do more to make sure other people in your team feel heard? What could you do?

The reality is that even leadership teams don’t work in this way. They are often too busy focusing on tasks, and not thinking about raising concerns, or creating space to challenge and discuss.

And sometimes progress can be achingly slow: in our work with clients we can spend a whole afternoon just getting to a point where we’ve clarified that there’s stuff people agree on but there’s also quite a lot of difference.

The solution? Practise bringing people together and try to acknowledge what’s going on for everyone. Be patient, and in those spaces people can discover that they do have things in common and that they may have a lot more power to influence good outcomes than they realise.

This is a really important aspect of our work.

If any of this resonates, or if you’re taking steps to create supportive environments to ensure people feel heard and bring out difference, we’d love to hear how you’re getting on.

At Then Somehow we help universities and institutions build emotional literacy, increase empathy, and help you see the world differently, giving you practical tools to shift the stuff that’s stuck.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help your organisation perform better, get in touch here, or if you’re looking for 360 feedback review for individuals – have a look at our new 360 service: AdviceSheet.

The post Organisational restructuring is hard. Listening makes it less painful appeared first on ThenSomehow.

You likely have heard of a 360 degree review for individuals – where an employee receives feedback on how they’re doing from their managers, peers and reports. It gives them a rounded view that helps them identify where they can develop and grow. Putting a whole organisation under a similar 360 spotlight generates really helpful information about culture that can help an organisation develop. We call this cultural conversations.

How Organisation-Level 360 Feedback Works

We’ve run several cultural conversations recently. The first for a faculty at a university that was planning a reorganisation and did not want to introduce yet another round of changes without giving some consideration to culture. Especially as it knew there were some issues.

In this case we co-designed a survey with a staff group and used the results to develop a framework for conversations (not interviews!) with a representative selection of staff. The aim: to more deeply understand what people’s experiences of the culture was.

What We Discovered

We discovered a lot about cultural conversations through this process:

1. The quality and behaviours of the leadership team have a hugely enabling or disabling impact on everybody.

2. It’s common to find that leadership is having a better time than everybody else, and because they’re happy, they assume everyone else is having a good time too – when they might not be.

3. A survey is really helpful for gathering data, but even when there are open free-text questions, the data doesn’t give enough qualitative detail for clients to make decisions about what to do. However, when the stories from the in-person conversations are combined with survey data, it creates a really powerful lever.

4. The conversations are cathartic for people. Just being able to tell somebody about your experience seems to go a long way to alleviating the frustration or the dissatisfaction with the way things work. Not that it’s always bad. Just being able to acknowledge it and be heard seems to be important.

In this client’s case, the upshot was that the culture at the university is better than most. However there were things that really weren’t good enough including a high incidence of bullying.

Seeing it in black and white and hearing the stories and examples overlaid on the data, created a compelling story that gave the client’s leadership and their working group a lever to incentivise people to do something about it.

Leadership’s Impact on Culture

Some very senior people were demanding and aggressive in their style with junior staff. In more than one department, people felt bullied and harassed. When things weren’t going right it was a psychologically unsafe place to be.

Our client knew some bullying was happening. We discovered the scale and breadth of it was a lot higher than they had realised. Some people were working really long hours, lived in fear and felt miserable but were frightened to call it out. Others not directly affected were aware of it but felt powerless to help.

Not everybody was a bully but a few people’s behaviour cast a very long shadow, and it stemmed from a long history of the way people at the top behaved.

Outcomes and Actions

What was helpful here was to contrast cultures from other departments where things were different.

As a result we were able to describe the toxic behaviours and identify their systemic causes. For example because universities are hierarchical there are often status gaps between established academics and early career researchers. This makes it hard for junior staff to challenge behaviours.

We did some further cultural conversations work and surfaced the ideas people had to make it better and what they’d like to see happen. This is now leading to a staff-led steering group and work streams that are resourced with a project manager.

They’re giving responsibility for the change design and delivery to staff, while making the leadership accountable for making sure it happens. This is an interesting way to subvert the hierarchy.

Protecting a Healthy Culture During Rapid Growth

We’re doing a cultural conversations project for a very different kind of organisation where the culture is good. The brief here was, “help us understand what we’re doing well so that we don’t lose it as we grow, because we’re anticipating a period of growth. We might double in size and we think that our culture might be at risk.”

Using the same approach, we found that broadly their culture is really good. But there are some cracks: the problems they were worried about appearing in the future were already here.

It was good timing because they were at the beginning of this growth period, but if they did not address it, you could see the direction they might end up going in.

Emerging Cracks in a Growing Organisation

For example, this organisation is excellent at induction and have off-the-scale engagement levels, but they’ve grown so rapidly there are gaps and blindspots:

• It is a remote-first organisation. There are some people who feel isolated and without senior champions. They don’t have the experience or the authority to influence effectively and they’re often asked to present at a level they don’t feel comfortable with.
• Some new hires caused issues for people who’d been passed over for promotion.
• People buy into the cool things the organisation does, but it’s not clear to staff what all their component activities add up to. That ambiguity cascaded down from the top: we heard about a junior staff member who’d been charged with measuring something every day, but they had literally no idea why. Without that knowledge, it made their work meaningless and no one was aware of what clues they might be missing.
• Leadership were not very clear about their strategy and how they should focus. Which meant everyone did too much work, leading to resentful and tired people working really hard and not succeeding.

We were able to make a series of practical recommendations to them including that they need to:

• build the organisation’s confidence around difficult conversations,
• get clear about what their expectations of leadership are,
• think harder about supporting career development, and
• get a lot clearer about the relationship between their vision and their strategy.

Recognising these blind spots created the opportunity to do something about it. Involving people in the discovery and in the design of interventions is an effective way of helping to shape a new culture.

Want to Explore Cultural Conversations in Your Organisation?

Cultural conversations are a powerful way to understand the culture in your organisation. If you’ve got problems, it’s really important to understand where they’re coming from and if you think everything is okay, that might be the time you need to check.

How ThenSomehow Can Help

If you’d like help with issues like this, at Then Somehow we help you build emotional literacy, increase empathy, and help you see the world differently, giving you practical tools to shift the stuff that’s stuck.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help your organisation perform better, get in touch here, or if you’re looking for 360 feedback review for individuals – have a look at our new 360 service: AdviceSheet.

The post Cultural Conversations: 360 feedback for organisations appeared first on ThenSomehow.