One of the most common things we are approached to help clients with is improving workplace culture. Culture seems to be one of those elusive things that often gets put in the ‘too difficult’ box to tackle. But at DICE, we see culture simply as how people behave when no-one is watching, and if you don’t like the current culture, you can change it.

Firstly, if you haven’t set parameters for what the expected behaviours are that you want to see then don’t be surprised if you end up disappointed. Having a strong set of values that set out the guiding behaviours you want to achieve in your business is the first step towards driving your culture, but they must be lived – not just words on a wall or on your website.

This is one of the most rewarding pieces of work that we do with clients, particularly those organisations who have never articulated their values before. We work with your senior leadership team in the first instance asking questions like:

• What are the best things about working here?
• What are your competitors most envious of?
• If your organisation was a person, how would you describe them?

Probing into these questions helps us to tease out what your organisation’s personality is and what makes you unique. Once we have this in a raw format the key is then to chat to other employees and get their input – asking them what they think. Does it resonate with them, or is it a million miles apart from how it feels to work there day in and out?

We don’t usually find there’s a huge gap in thinking, but it is a great way of engaging people into the process because ultimately it is everyone living and breathing these values which will embed them, so they become ‘how you do things around here’.

The key is to bring them to life and embed them into everyday behaviours, getting people engaged in the process. How do you do this? Well obviously, you get in touch with us to help you! But if you’re not up for that just yet, here are five ways to do it:

1. Bring them to life – words on their own can be mis-interpreted. Leaders need to role-model the behaviours that they want to see in others. Get creative in how you explain the ‘why’ behind each value. Make sure employees ‘see’ the values visually displayed (on computer monitors, posters, website, Intranets, etc), but also that they ‘feel’ the values in the way they are treated.
2. Ensure that as well as commercially driven employee objectives, every employee has an objective which directly links back to how they behave according to your values. This then becomes an ongoing discussion during monthly 1-1 meetings to pick up any behaviours that aren’t in-keeping, and also to reward and recognise when they are displaying the company values.
3. Use employee briefings to remind people of the values, and spotlight behaviour from people which is in alignment with values. Use your monthly/quarterly employee briefings to celebrate and recognise great behaviours from people that is in-line with your values. If you have an employee recognition scheme, link it directly to your values,
4. Theme your employee engagement activity around a different company value each month or quarter. For instance, if one of your values is ‘entrepreneurial’ consider running an all-staff competition to come up with the most entrepreneurial ideas to improve the organisation.
5. Start before they even join. Part of your recruitment process should be to test alignment with your company values. Clearly this needs to be an inclusive process, but it is an important part of testing whether there is a cultural fit for the individual and you as the employer.  

Improving workplace culture is a key component of our DICE Team Spirit package. Get in touch to find out more about how we can help you.

On the first Friday in March every year it is ‘Employee Appreciation Day’. In our eyes, employees should be celebrated and shown appreciation every day of the year and it shouldn’t need a special day to commemorate it (much like Valentine’s Day shouldn’t be the only day we show love to our nearest and dearest!).

But just for a moment imagine a job where your work isn’t appreciated, your effort goes unnoticed, and you could be replaced instantly. Not exactly a place you’d want to stay for long. As a leader, this isn’t the type of environment you want to develop or sustain. So how do you show your employees that you value them – not just on Employee Appreciation Day – but everyday?

When you are a people leader, a significant part of your role is about making time for people. This used to be known as ‘leadership by walking about’ but nowadays you don’t have to physically walk about to do it. Use the channels of communication you have available – and don’t ignore the obvious!

Contrary to popular belief, for employees to feel valued, it isn’t all just about money and benefits. It’s about showing you genuinely care about them as an individual.

Here are a few simple ideas to get you started…

1. Say hello when you see them and get to know their names.
2. Remember birthdays and work anniversaries.
3. Write a handwritten note or card to say thank you when they’ve done a great job.
4. Ask about their holidays – what they have planned, where they have been, etc.
5. Genuinely be curious about what makes them tick – find out what their interests are outside of work and ask them about it from time to time.

When you show your employees you think about them, they will feel respected and will be more likely to go the extra mile when needed to. This is known in Human Resources as ‘discretionary effort’, i.e., it is at the employee’s discretion as to whether they do it or not.

Leadership is all about people and it is the little things that can make a huge difference. Our work is all about creating organisations where people thrive. They can show up as their true selves, do great work that they enjoy and are motivated by, and ultimately feel a sense of belonging.

If this is an area of your business you need some help with, get in touch. Our expertise is in creating high performing workplace cultures where employees are engaged and feel valued. Because organisations that value their people are the ones that ultimately succeed.

We come across many different business buzzwords and the one that continuously pops up, particularly since the pandemic, is Psychological Safety and the need to create a culture of psychological safety. So, what does that look like in a business?

Psychological safety at work refers to the ability to express yourself without fear of repercussions for your self-image, position, or job. It can be characterised as a shared understanding that the team, or organisation, is a safe place to take calculated risks.

In simple terms, it is about creating an environment where people feel comfortable showing up as themselves and sharing their thoughts and opinions on things. It is about people feeling safe to admit a mistake when something goes wrong, rather than hide or look to others for blame.

Leaders need to set the tone by encouraging supportive and open discussions. This might take time if it is a shift in how you have always done things. Employees can feel reluctant to speak their minds for fear of being excluded or reprimanded. In this case, leaders need to work harder to empower people to share their ideas and approaches, which over time will lead to greater growth, creativity, and innovation.

A two-year study conducted by Google on team performance revealed that the highest-performing teams had one thing in common, which was psychological safety. The teams conducted mild risk-taking, they had true openness between people and an innovative approach.

If employees feel psychologically safe, they will be comfortable exchanging information and asking questions, as well as providing and receiving feedback. There will be no fear of harassment or being bullied since the culture of psychological safety at work will encourage the free sharing of knowledge and opinion.

Here are our top tips for creating a culture of psychological safety:

1. Know people on a personal level

A psychologically safe workplace begins with a feeling of belonging. Connecting with your employees is not just talking about work or checking on a specific project’s progress, it is also about checking in with each other.

2. Never blame, always explain

If an employee makes a mistake, explain why it is wrong and make sure that they understand why they are wrong but never blame them. Transparent communication will produce better results than simply blaming employees for their faults.

3. Seek and be open to feedback

Make sure that employees feel safe in voicing their opinions to you and that you are open to listening to feedback, whether it is positive or negative.

4. Give praise and recognition where it is due

Recognise and appreciate people when they have done a good job. This helps to engender a sense of pride which will drive people to perform to the best of their abilities in the future. A ‘thank you’ and ‘well done’ goes a long way.

Promoting psychological safety at work is not just letting employees voice their thoughts, it is also nurturing a culture in which mistakes are owned, corrected, and learned from. Leaders foster a trusting environment where everyone at any and all levels is encouraged to share ideas that help the organisation go faster.

If you need any support with improving the culture of psychological safety in your organisation, we can help. Get in touch to find out more.

When we work with clients, we refer to various leadership theories, methodologies, and models to bring things to life. One of the biggest ‘aha moments’ we get with clients is when we share Stephen Karpman’s Drama Triangle with them. This is a psychology model used frequently by therapists in relationship counseling, but it is also very powerful in helping to build stronger team relationships at the top table.

The model helps people to realise that they are responsible for their own lives and happiness. That whatever they are currently blaming on others, they are in fact responsible for causing.

Imagine a triangle with each side being a role – the three roles are Victim, Villain, and Rescuer. We tend to have a favourite starting position which we can adopt as our default life position and from this position we then attract people who play complementary roles. Although we can also fall into playing different roles with different people (sub-ordinates, managers, family members, etc).

Very often the role people most relate to is Rescuer. A Rescuer loves to help others and ‘rescue’ the day. Because of this they often attract Victims because they are people who love to be rescued! On the outside, it looks as though Rescuers are in the best position to be on the triangle, but this isn’t true – the drama triangle keeps us in a state of dependency and doesn’t encourage people to be empowered to make their own decisions or stand on their own two feet.

The Villain might be one of those people in the office who never see the positive in anything or they are quick to point out the one thing you haven’t done rather than praise you for the several things you have completed. The Villain loves to look for others to blame and is likely to see the Victim as useless – in the way a parent might chastise a child for not being able to do something quickly enough.

All of the roles on the triangle are fundamentally masks that we wear to cover up our inherent feeling of ‘not enough-ness’. The solution is not to move to a different position on the triangle but to move off it altogether.

There is an imbalance of power when we are in the drama triangle and that is because deep down the Rescuer believes they know better than the Victim and doesn’t believe they are able to do things for themselves or to as good a level as they can do things. They aren’t treating them like an adult. Consciously or subconsciously, they believe they are ‘above’ them.

At its very core, the Rescuer is trying to feel good about themselves by stepping in and ‘helping’ others. They inherently believe they are better or know more than the Victim and are looking for some form of praise or recognition. But what happens more often than not is that the recognition doesn’t come in the way the Rescuer hoped, and they end up feeling overwhelmed with all of the work they have on because they are doing everything for everyone, and then eventually a switch occurs, and the Rescuer moves into playing the role of the Victim. The Villain can also quickly switch to the role of the Victim – feelings of ‘poor little me’ when people resist or complain about their actions.

Both the Rescuer and the Villain are in a ‘one-up’ position because they see themselves as superior to the Victim and get their sense of purpose or feelings of ‘okay-ness’ by keeping the Victim in their place. The Victim is often driven by feelings of fear – fear of what might happen if they are ‘found out’ or if they get things wrong.

Whilst we might have positions on the triangle, we find ourselves fulfilling more often than others, we are all capable of switching between each of the roles on a daily or even momentary basis within a conversation. The good news is that being aware of the drama triangle and the different roles we might be falling into the trap of playing is half the battle to avoiding it.

David Emerald wrote a book called The Power of TED* (*The Empowerment Dynamic) which offers powerful alternatives to the Victim, Villain, and Rescuer. The alternatives increase choice and really are about switching each reactive role into its assertive and adult proactive choice.

In The Empowerment Dynamic, the Victim becomes Creator. You don’t allow yourself to be dragged into the Victim mindset, you know you are the Creator of your own reality and that you have a choice. Rather than feeling helpless, you make an assertive choice to remain hopeful, inspired, and energised and take responsibility for the choices you make.

The Villain becomes Challenger. We need to trust that people are inherently capable of making their own decisions and rather than criticising or becoming frustrated we can remain confident that with the right amount of challenge and support, the person will take the required action to improve and grow. It’s fine to hold people accountable but not make them feel dominated.

The Rescuer becomes Coach. This involves empowering people and trusting in their abilities. Rather than thriving on being needed, you learn to get the same sense of achievement from helping people to take action and learn for themselves.   When used effectively, the shift from the drama triangle to the empowerment dynamic can lead to immense shifts within an organisation. Self-responsibility becomes the norm and people catch themselves before rescuing others. It’s a very powerful leadership tool – if you’re interested in finding out more about how we can help your team’s effectiveness, get in touch.

Becoming a good leader of people takes much more than obtaining the position and taking on a title. To be a leader you must have followers, and for people to follow you it requires an investment in the relationship you have built with them, what you have done for them, and what you have helped the company to achieve.

Intensifying the issue is that many organisations fail to provide formal leadership training to their managers – often putting people into leadership roles who have never been taught how to lead, manage, and motivate others.

That leaves people to flounder and so often we find people reaching out to us to ask for advice on what books they can read on leadership, or what podcasts we would recommend they listen to. Of course, there are hundreds of books, podcasts, and other materials you can consume on leadership, but nothing beats formal training.

Our leadership programme is accredited for Continuous Professional Development (CPD), and we cover a huge range of subject areas, such as change management, motivating people at scale through employee engagement, presentation, and communication skills. But if you aren’t fortunate enough to work for an organisation that will invest in developing your leadership skills, here are our top tips to help you on your self-learning journey:

• Work on your mindset – the key difference when you go from a technical role to a leadership position is that you no longer achieve results alone. You need to think and act with the mindset of delivering through others.
• Make sure you have face-to-face contact with your team members regularly. These one-to-one discussions help you to connect with people, getting to know what they are motivated by and how you as their leader can help them achieve more.
• Bring people together as a team and ask questions of each other. You’re not there to tell the team what to do all of the time – help to uncover and discover what they think they can do.
• Create a culture of continuous feedback. Give and seek feedback regularly to encourage honest conversations and an ethos of always seeking to improve. A simple question such as ‘what would have made this even better?’ is great to get the conversation flowing.
• Manage your own time and energy. Understanding yourself as a leader is crucial to your own effectiveness. When do you perform at your best? Are you communicating what you need from the team to be successful? When you are the leader you will have many more pulls on your time so it is down to you to conserve your energy and set the right boundaries.
• Make it safe for people to make mistakes and learn from them. This is called psychological safety – rather than blaming people, take radical self-responsibility for learning from things when they go wrong.
• Create more leaders. Your job as a leader is to create more leaders. Encourage and support your team members to grow and develop themselves. We can never develop enough leaders!

Our final piece of advice would be to seek out someone who is further ahead of you to act as a mentor. Even if it is just one conversation over a coffee – ask them what they found helpful when they were starting out on their leadership journey, and what tips they would share with you.

If you would like to know more about our leadership development training, get in touch – we would love to help!

One important aspect of leadership is authority— exert too much and people feel like they are being treated like a child, but if you do not project enough authority, it can come across as lacking confidence.

Managers have to strike the right balance between leading and directing the work that needs to be done whilst giving freedom and flexibility so that employees feel they have autonomy within their roles. So as a people manager, how do you strike that balance? The answer lies in how you communicate with your team members and remember there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach.

Good communication skills are beneficial for everyone at work, however as you progress into leadership roles, more specific skills and awareness is needed to help address diverse personalities and often more complicated messaging associated with things like organisational change.

Whenever we communicate, we are doing so consciously and unconsciously from our own identities, perceptions and biases about ourselves and those we are communicating with. We can easily forget this and just assume that communication is a direct exchange of information from one person to another. But how you communicate is highly nuanced by these things, as is how the recipient receives the message. They will have their own cultural, social, psychological, and emotional factors at play. All of this makes communication a messy leadership concept!

For example, we have all known the motivation-zapping feeling of being patronised or treated like a child. Or perhaps as a leader, it can sometimes feel like you are managing a group of disruptive school children rather than a team of responsible adults.

But there is a way to reduce the messiness which can lead to more productive and effective communication exchanges by managing and modifying our own behaviour. This is a concept called Transactional Analysis or TA. Dr Eric Berne famously wrote a book called ‘Games People Play’ where he defined three ‘ego states’ which he defined as a system of feelings accompanied by a related set of behaviour patterns.’ The three ego states are Parent, Adult and Child, and he recognised that everyone has all three of these states available to them, but which state we are in during an interaction can depend on different factors.

These factors could be how we have been conditioned to act or react from childhood, any past traumas which now cause us to act in a certain way during interactions or situations, how the other person we are interacting with is treating us, and what ego state they are in when speaking to us.

The child state can show up in two different ways – a free child that is creative, spontaneous and playful, or the adaptive child, which conforms to please and be liked but then can also be rebellious when faced with something they don’t like. The child state is built on reinforcements from childhood – maybe you were someone who did as they were told and followed the rules, or maybe you were the youngest sibling of the family who was carefree and always got away with things – you get the idea!

The parent has two states too – a critical and controlling parent and a nurturing parent. Berne believed that our experiences during our first five years of life contributed to the parent ego state – the thinking patterns and behaviours parents and other authority figures taught us. The critical parent disapproves in a harsh and possibly aggressive way, whereas the nurturing parent tries to take over a situation in more of a rescuing way, trying to soothe others which can be very inappropriate when talking to other adults rather than children.

Interacting with someone from the state of child or parent mode is often a default or unconscious reaction that is used, and it takes conscious awareness to be able to bring ourselves back into adult mode and interact from that place instead.

TA believes that adult to adult communication leads to the most effective and healthy communication and improve our relationships with others. The adult state interacts with people and its environment in the here and now, not from past conditioning or how other people have told them to be. This state is more open, more rational, and less quick to make harsh judgments on a situation or person. When communication takes place from the adult state, we are more likely to be respectful, make compromises, listen fully to others, and have more healthy social interactions.

Whenever we interact with others, transactions take place between our different ego states. Here’s an example of a conversation between a manager and an employee and their different ego states outlined in brackets:

Manager: What time is the train due (Adult)

Employee: It’s five minutes late (Adult)

Manager: That’s just typical! (Critical Parent)

Employee: Yes, they always seem to be late, and they never give any warning (Critical Parent)

Manager: Whilst we have some time I need to let you know that I checked over your report and it is full of spelling mistakes, you should have run the spell-check (Critical Parent)

Employee: Oh, I am sorry, it won’t happen again (Adaptive Child)

Manager: I can hear the train arriving (Adult)

Employee: That’s good, we won’t be too late (Adult)

Manager: Let me help you with your suitcase (Nurturing Child)

Employee: Oh thank you so much! (Free Child)

Manager: Oh wow they’re upgrading us to first class (Free Child)

Employee: Fantastic! (Free Child)

Staying in Adult/Adult state as a people leader requires both immense self-awareness as well as an understanding and awareness of the people you are leading. Transactional Analysis is just one of the many methodologies we teach on our leadership programme and support our clients with. Get in touch to find out more.

How many of you made New Year’s Resolutions this year? And how many of you have broken them? The fact is that change is much harder to achieve than we most often think. Ultimately making changes can be tough!

Did you know there is a formula for change? There are four key areas balanced on two sides. On the left-hand side, we have two factors – Dissatisfaction with today, i.e., how unhappy we are with the way things currently are – this is the current state. That, multiplied with the vision for the future, or the story you want to create, is your first number for the formula.

Current state/Dissatisfaction with today

High dissatisfaction with your current state, multiplied by a clear vision and story for the future can create the urgency to make changes. But dissatisfaction needs to be sufficiently high to make this happen.

When you have high dissatisfaction, you can address change by changing your state. How unhappy you are – really – is going to impact on how ready, willing, and able you are to make a change. The thing is that as humans we put up with a lot – better the devil you know. The question you need to ask yourself is how unhappy are you with where you are at right now?

What we most often find when people are trying to make a change and not doing it is that they are either just too comfy with what is happening today, therefore they don’t really want to change. Because if we are highly unhappy with where we are today and we like the idea of something different happening in the future, we will be ready to make a change. Ultimately it is about galvanising the things about today that make you unhappy and the things you want for the future.

Vision for the future/the story

What do you want your future to be like? What is the story you are telling yourself – remember the BE, DO, HAVE model from previous blogs? Do you have a compelling vision for the future that can become possible if you make the changes you are considering?

If there is an exciting vision for the future and every day you get focused on it, you are far more likely to make the changes.

In a business context this looks like being willing to let go of things that keep you playing in your comfort zone. Whether it is delegating more, saying no to things, managing your time more effectively – fundamentally the dissatisfaction with today has to be multiplied with the vision for the future.

Next steps/strategy

Now you need to consider what is your strategy/action plan to make it happen? Let’s use a common one of weight loss, do you have a clear diet plan? Are you making a commitment for a certain amount of exercise per week? Have you joined a gym? Do you have an accountability partner to help you stay on track? If you don’t have a strategy, you aren’t setting yourself up to succeed.

Even if you have a strategy, most people find that this alone isn’t enough to overcome the resistance to change. Without force of being really dissatisfied with today or having a clear vision of the future change does not occur.

Next steps are all about taking the steps to make the change. Make sure they are positive, know that they will change on a regular basis, be prepared to change your course of direction to take account of things you hadn’t seen coming. In a nutshell, change only occurs when dissatisfaction, vision and next steps are dialled up.

Resistance to change/the story

You need to work out what is stopping you from making the change. What are the things that are causing you resistance to change? Are you happy in your comfort zone? Do you really want to change? Are the odds stacked against you really or are you making excuses? This is where a coach can help you to push you through the stories you are telling yourself and uncover the real resistance to change!

Ultimately with this formula if you take the dissatisfaction with today, the vision for the future, plus next steps, and those three factors are greater than your resistance to change, change will happen. If they are less than your resistance to change, nothing will happen.

How much do you really want to change?

Take a moment and apply the change formula to any aspect of your work/home life that you have been considering changing. Give each aspect of the formula a number on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest. What do you notice? Do you need some help working out what it is that is causing your resistance to change? That’s where we can help. Either through one-to-one coaching or mentoring, or a combination of the two, we are here to help you get to where you want to. Get in touch with us for a free and confidential chat about your business.

As a strategy for SME business owners, growing your own pipeline of talent is a good one. If people can see there are clear paths for progression accompanied by strong personal development plans, you are well on the way to retaining your talent.

When it comes to your people leaders, it is important to be intentional about what you want to achieve. Start with the end in mind and work backwards. As a senior leader yourself, what experience, education and knowledge do you have that you can impart? What will help people get there quicker?

As we have said before, most individuals progress from doing something on the front line into line management. Unfortunately, being good at your current job does not necessarily mean you are going to be able to be a good people manager and leader. Individuals with no leadership training, experience or skills who are moved into roles managing others are most likely to cause you longer term issues – short term gain can lead to long term pain of people feeling de-motivated, lacking direction and support.

There really shouldn’t be any ‘sink or swim’ when it comes to people’s careers. Instead, you should be teaching your employees to swim based on proper training alongside support and coaching from within your organisation. If you are a small business, teach more of your employees to swim before they ever step into the pool (ok I think we have laboured this analogy now) by giving them leadership development before they become line managers. As Richard Branson said: “Train people well enough so they can leave. Treat them well enough so they don’t want to.”

We call these people ‘future leaders’ and when we have worked with clients to develop their future leaders before they step into line management roles, we always find that performance in their current role improves. Why? Because they begin to think and act like leaders. We help them to understand what people need from a line manager, how to motivate people, how their own feelings and beliefs impact their ability, and so much more. 

The saying goes that great leaders are built, not born. Promoting from within your organisation is a powerful, positive signal. But not everyone is set out to be a leader. Here are some of the attributes we have seen that lead to great people managers:

1. Empathy: Do they consider other people’s opinions and viewpoints? Managers must understand the views of others, show good emotional intelligence, and avoid a one-size-fits-all management approach.
2. Attention to detail: Do they produce quality work on their own or do you have to push them to maintain your desired standard? Managers set the bar, so be sure it’s a bar you’ll be happy with.
3. Organised: Do they stay on top of their own work well enough you think they can do it for others? A disorganised manager will have a disorganised team.
4. Leading: Have you seen them successfully take charge of a group before to tackle a problem? This shows they may have an interest in managing and the team is more likely to accept them as a leader.
5. Growth mindset: Do they demonstrate an interest in growth and learning? People management is a steep learning curve which they have to be interested in working on. If they are someone who sees solutions to problems, this is a good sign they are someone with a growth mindset.

Our leadership development programme is CPD accredited and can be delivered flexibly to suit the needs of your organisation. Get in touch to find out more.

Many SME businesses look to promote from within their company, which is great for employee motivation as well as succession planning. However, when it comes to promoting people into line management roles, it is important they are given the right tools to be able to succeed in their role.

A common scenario we see is that someone who is good at a technical job – say Sales – gets promoted and is now heading up the Sales division. Let’s call them Sam. The business owner (let’s call them Taylor) thinks it’s happy days – Sam is great at selling so now the Sales team will be flying because Sam is in charge. But Sam doesn’t know the first thing about line management, other than what they have experienced from Taylor and that has been pretty much an approach of ‘just sell more’. Sam is responsible for three Sales Executives who all have unique approaches and are motivated by very different things. Sam’s approach of ‘just sell more’ isn’t inspiring any of them and due to their different personalities, the team members are clashing regularly. Quickly the dynamic in the team becomes untenable and two out of the three hand their notice in to go to a competitor. Taylor is fed up with Sam and Sam is feeling deflated and under-valued. He is also looking to leave at the earliest opportunity.

Sound familiar? Ok, so this story might be far-fetched, but we know there are elements of truth in here because we see it time and again! So, what do you need to do to set your line managers up for success? Of course, we would say invest in developing their leadership skills – ensure they are trained and know how to lead, manage, and motivate people. If for some reason that isn’t possible, we recommend you focus on supporting them in four key areas.

1. Setting a vision for their team

Good people managers will be able to think of the bigger picture for their team, setting a vision for where they want to be and then working out the action steps to help them get there.

2. Developing people

Whilst motivating and challenging people to improve themselves and deliver for the organisation is important, it is also crucial for line managers to be thinking about developing the people in their team. Looking at skills analysis and having open conversations about what an individual’s aspirations are.

3. Role modelling the values

Your organisation’s values are at the heart of everything your people do. It’s how they show up, the behaviours they display with each other and with your customers or clients. You want your line managers to role model these values so that their team members can follow suit.

4. Teach them how to coach

If empowerment is a quality you want to instil in your business, it is a good idea to teach your line managers how to coach others. Coaching requires specific communication skills as well as acquiring the art of delegation without dictation! Turn your managers and leaders into coaches and you will unlock greater accountability and innovation.

All of these areas and a lot more are covered in our CPD accredited leadership development programme. Get in touch to find out more.

Empathy has always been an important leadership quality but following the pandemic it has become an essential skill in driving business results.

A global study by Qualtrics found 42% of people have experienced a decline in mental health since 2020. With significant upturns in people experiencing stress, anxiety and feeling emotionally exhausted. The way we work has been turned upside down and the boundaries that once existed between home and work have been blurred.

Great leadership requires a mix of all kinds of skills to create the right conditions for employee engagement and performance, however empathy might have been considered less important than some other skills prior to the pandemic. Not to be confused with sympathy, empathy is about identifying with others, understanding their feelings and then taking appropriate supportive action.

Now employees expect higher degrees of compassion and emotional support. As we go through tough times, struggle with burnout, or find it challenging to find happiness at work, empathy is a powerful antidote and can contribute to positive experiences for individuals and teams.

So how can you bring more empathy into your leadership? Here are our top tips:

1. Ask open questions and listen with eyes as well as ears

Being in the same room with someone and observing them has always been a powerful way to recognise when someone is struggling. However, if you are leading from home, it makes observing harder. This means leaders must really listen and observe body language. Asking open questions such as ‘tell me more’ during coaching conversations.

2. Recognise individual’s needs

Think back to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and use this as a guide to address what individuals actually need from you as a leader. In the workplace, the most basic professional needs include:

• Financial compensation for providing the essentials
• Having enough work to stay busy and engaged
• Creating a sense of belonging and community
• Showing appreciation for work ethic and effort

3. Suspend judgment

Judgment is our own perception of something or someone. As humans we are inherently judgmental, but when trying to understand and empathise with others, it is important to try and suspend your own judgment of a person and situation. To practice empathy, we don’t need to see the person from our context or perspective, but their perspective only.

Research suggests that employees with empathic managers are more innovative and engaged in their work than employees with less empathic managers. If you need any support developing your managers leadership skills, we can help. Get in touch to find out about our leadership development programmes.