Jobs for the Boys

May 18, 2013Leave a comment

Gettting An Interview (c) R Dennison 2013

Last month I wrote about Ben Drew’s Each One Teach One initiative. This is a charitable trust which intends to Fund inspiring projects to help young people to build their skills and in turn improve their lives and link up youth provision, so their journey makes more sense.

It seems to me these organisational goals make a lot of sense, for young people on the starting blocks and ready to compete.

As the BBC’s Panorama programme ‘Jobs for the Boys’ showed recently there are some young people for whom the challenge is getting to the start line in the first place.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006t14n

The programme, which was presented by ex-Arsenal footballer Sol Campbell, looked at the disproportionately high impact of unemployment on young black men. Apparently the rate of unemployment for young black men is roughly twice that of their white counterparts.

This sounds like there is an extra bit of thinking involved in asking young black men the three classic goal-related questions:

– What do you want to achieve?

– When do you want to achieve it?

– What is the first step in that direction?

The extra question, to explore in some depth, could be: What challenges could you face in reaching your goal?

Those challenges could be internal (self -esteem related) or external (trying to succeed in a harsh employment climate). Either way, if the goal is ‘to be successful at a job interview’ then there may be challenges ahead.

One key ingredient could be culturally informed action and support, to foster the sense of self-esteem of young black men, where that is the principle barrier to success.

Certainly the Department for Work and Pensions and their partners working directly with unemployed people have their work cut out addressing this issue.

Good luck as well to organisations like the Black Training and Enterprise Group (www.bteg.co.uk ). This non-profit, led by Jeremy Crook, is active in addressing the backdrop, against which disadvantage arises.

Fingers crossed that in a decade young black men will be much less likely to be unemployed. With the successful intervention of positively motivated groups and individuals they may just be achieving their goals more easily.

Another Thought About Bullying

May 11, 2013Leave a comment

A Glass Broken (c) R Dennison 2013

I posted on the subject of bullying recently and co-incidentally the Guardian has just featured the topic too. Their timely illustration (of the impact of workplace bullying) appears in the work advice section. A reader’s letter recounts the difficulties linked to working with someone whose behaviour sometimes involves bullying.

Most people would recognise that typically the atmosphere in the workplace can combine both positives (interesting tasks) and negatives (challenging people). Most people accept that sometimes their job can seem like the proverbial half-empty glass.

The Guardian’s advice-seeker has spent time trying to talk to a supervisor who can tackle the bullying issue. The supervisor hasn’t grasped the situation successfully. For the correspondent their glass is not half empty. It is actually broken.

Reading between the lines the correspondent seems to have a narrow set of options. Option one, they put up with the situation (more unhappiness for them and for the bully). Option two, they start looking actively for other jobs they could be doing.

There is a crying need, I think, for coaching support to be made available to managers on this topic. Bullying makes workplaces unproductive, creates stress and wastes time. Managerial support would equip supervisors with the empathy, people skills and confidence to sense bullying is occurring, intervene firmly to end it and leave a climate of zero-tolerance afterward. Hopefully this kind of learning is going to become commonplace in future and bully-friendly environments a thing of the past.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/work-blog/2013/may/10/how-deal-with-nightmarish-colleague

Two Wheels Good – Four Wheels Better

May 10, 2013Leave a comment

Inspiration (c) R Dennison 2013

Having noted that Sir Alex has now announced his retirement from Manchester United, I should point Sir Chris Hoy beat him to the retirement arena by a few days. However Sir Chris, at 37 years of age, is actually changing gears in career terms.

As the Daily Telegraph coverage confirms Sir Chris is leaving the world of cycling to pursue a goal in the world of motor sport, courtesy of the SR1 circuit for novice drivers. Speaking about the inspiration to pursue this new challenge, he has said:

“I love cars, I love racing bikes, I’ve still got that competitive instinct even though I’ve retired from racing bikes, and I’ve driven on circuits for a number of years now, just on track days, so to combine the two and to have a little bit of fun… it’s just a great chance for me,”

It is great too that he has identified what is important – competition plus fun – and transferred the same confidence he brought to the velodrome to the racing circuit. That calculation suggests that his goal is clear, and the steps he will be taking to move toward what he wants are equally certain. I would put money on him being successful in his new field too, given time.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/motoringvideo/10034436/Sir-Chris-Hoys-debut-season-in-motorsport.html

Sir Alex Knows What He Wants

May 10, 2013Leave a comment

Alex Ferguson (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sir Alex Ferguson is clear about what he wants in his retirement. He sounds like a man who understands what is really important about taking this decision at this time. He sounds at peace with his life as a result. In his statement he says:

“The decision to retire is one that I have thought a great deal about and one that I have not taken lightly. It is the right time. It was important to me to leave an organisation in the strongest possible shape and I believe I have done so…I am delighted to take on the roles of both director and ambassador for the club. With these activities, along with my many other interests, I am looking forward to the future”.

I like that he is looking forward to the next chapter of his life. Good luck to him.

Taking An Opportunity To Be Creative

May 2, 2013Leave a comment

Thanks for dropping by. As you might have spotted there seems to be a problem with some of the pictures I have selected to illustrate previous posts. Some of them disappear and reappear after they have been posted. I’m not sure why this issue has arisen now. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

On the up side, I am going to be more creative and that means taking the opportunity to generate more illustrations and photographs myself. That should make the blog even more distinctive. So, do keep visiting and enjoying the posts.

Bullying – No Joke

May 1, 2013May 2, 2013Leave a comment

Just Say No

Even if it has never been an issue for you, it is probably obvious that bullying is not funny at all. The BBC reports on one factor possibly contributing to playground harassment, apparently University of Keele research suggests it is linked to the use of humour.

Correspondent Sean Coughlan reports the University’s Dr Claire Fox’s comments that:

“Children who use humour to make fun of themselves are at more risk of being bullied”

It is as if self-defeating jokes send a signal to the would-be school bully that their potential target is self-effacing and underneath that, vulnerable.

I wonder how many teachers (or managers in the workplace) rise promptly to the challenge of tackling this sensitive area ?

As a start a coach might ask about the wording of any mission statement that the school or workspace has regarding the zero tolerance for bullying. Beyond that, there are a few additional coaching questions that spring to mind:

What resources does a leader possess to promote the confidence and self-esteem of the people around her ?

How comfortable is she with planning what to say in a conversation with the perceived aggressor, making it clear their behaviour is no laughing matter?

What approach has she outlined to support the person targeted, without over-doing her show of concern?

Once the person in charge recognises the sensitivities in the situation, tackling bullying and then raising confidence becomes possible. It might be uncomfortable to open up the issues when they are still raw, but having a clear goal to work towards is the starting point in each case.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22354326

How to: Deal with bullying in the workplace (reed.co.uk)

Each One Teach One

April 28, 2013Leave a comment

Plan B aka Ben Drew (Photo credit: Beacon Radio)

If you achieve your life’s ambition (through hard work) you might choose to sit back and enjoy the trappings of success, once you earn them. Kudos to Ben Drew (aka the musician / film maker Plan B) for choosing to do more than count his cash but to support others, so they too can become successful.

His charitable trust Each One Teach One – www.eoto.org.uk – has developed out of an idea previously explored in a TED presentation. It has two stated aims, to:

Fund inspiring projects to help young people to build their skills and in turn improve their lives.
Link up youth provision to strengthen the sector and help the journey make more sense to young people.

The coverage in the Guardian newspaper explains the trust will operate in East London initially and aims to provide disadvantaged 14 to 25 year olds with a ‘University of alternative learning’. It will also provide the support, mentoring and counselling that they may have missed out on due to their family, community, or academic situations.

I think this is an inspiring idea. There are plenty of young people who are motivated to do something with their lives, but who have not enough confidence to articulate their goals or make life plans. The EOTO model could provide the extra support they need to answer the 3 basic goal setting questions:

What is it that I want to achieve in my life?
When do I want this experience this achievement?
What is my first step to start heading in that direction?

Will this model solve all of the problems of disadvantaged youths in society? Is Mr Drew right on all counts? Probably not, but an effort like EOTO could make a significant difference to those motivated to engage with it and keep pushing forward.

Those who scoff at efforts to change will still be wasting their time hanging around in their communities – or getting into trouble and caught up in the criminal justice system. Who knows, even those youths may come to realise they too can set goals and change their situation, if they want to.

Rapper, hit film-maker … now Plan B turns to helping marginalised youths (guardian.co.uk)

Mind Your Language

April 27, 2013Leave a comment

Logo of the British newspaper The Guardian (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Maybe it is just me. I can think of many issues in the corporate world that might be worthy of ridicule. I wouldn’t poke fun at language that potentially helps bring thousands of people together into one culture across several different sites, and perhaps different time zones.

Sometimes though language can obscure meaning, or be quite passive-aggressive when it is used strategically (I’m thinking of some of the Public Relations flavoured speech of the character Stewart Pearson, in Armando Iannucci’s comedy The Thick of It).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2010/nov/01/stewart-pearson-thick-of-it

Anyway, here is the list of scorn-worthy corporate buzz words , proposed by Steven Poole in the Guardian newspaper this week (provoking more than 1800 below the line comments):

– Going Forward

– Drill Down

– Action

– End Of Play

– Deliver

– Issues

– Leverage

– Stakeholders

– Competencies

– Sunset

None of these is out and out offensive to my mind (as long as they are not strung together thoughtlessly in the same Bull S$!t Bingo-worthy sentence).

Mind you, if I was coaching someone who had ‘issues’ with an option they wanted to take I might have to stop and check what exactly that meant for them. Otherwise the list is fairly innocuous.

Luckily ‘Kicking This Into The Long Grass’ and ‘Low Hanging Fruit’ don’t feature in the top ten, as those do sound too jargon-like, even for me.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/apr/25/top-10-worst-management-speak

Strong Foundations

April 27, 20131 Comment

James Dyson (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As you may recognise there is a theme of ‘confidence’ running through many of the posts this year. That’s not a surprise, as I happen to think we all benefit from confidence, which stems from receiving empathic and effective parenting as young people .

It is certainly easy to recognise the quality of stick-to-it-ness that confident people and groups have. As confidence coach Pam Lidford says, deficits in this area only show up when there is a temporary loss of the ability to ‘take calculated risks’. Pam’s site is well worth a look by the way www.PamLidford.com

In the context of confidence I blogged about G4S last year. In hindsight the organisation was over-confident that their standard recruitment system could deliver exceptional results in hiring Olympic security staff before the 2012 Games.

I also mentioned Sir James Dyson, who displayed the appropriate level of confidence in knowing that his revolutionary vacuum cleaner design would, eventually, work.

I recently considered how the young mobile phone app designer, Nick D’Aloisio, has the right amount of it to have successfully created and sold on Summly before the age of 20.

So it is no surprise to note that University of Warwick research relates to confidence, in the context of the effects of overprotective parenting. The research is based on the characteristics of children who are bullied and the BBC coverage notes Prof Dieter Wolke saying:

“Parenting that includes clear rules about behaviour while being supportive and emotionally warm is most likely to prevent victimisation.”

I wonder if more coaching for parents is a partial solution. If parents can be supported in encouraging their children to grow into confident young people (who feel adequately nurtured and emotionally secure) they may be less likely to grow up as bullies, or as those who face bullying. Who knows, less anti social behaviour and aggression might result too.

An added pay off down the road would be a more resilient generation, better equipped to deal with the challenges that get thrown at them later in life. If a fraction of that was the case it would be a good result simply from coaching interventions.

The BBC’s coverage of the story follows:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22294974

Experience Your Life

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Category: Uncategorized

Jobs for the Boys

Another Thought About Bullying

Two Wheels Good – Four Wheels Better

Sir Alex Knows What He Wants

Taking An Opportunity To Be Creative

Bullying – No Joke

Each One Teach One

Mind Your Language

Strong Foundations

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