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Making the Work Flow!

Even with the increased uptake of AI and other forms of technology, it's still the quality of conversations and relationships that will determine how effective we and our teams are in delivering high quality work. Most people intuitively know this, and some have these conversations well and deliver great work. However, many people who work with others struggle with this for a range of reasons. If you find that your work stalls, there are missed time-lines or the quality of work isn't what you would like, chances are this approach will help.

In this video, I share my take on a simple and powerful framework that makes these conversations visible - so that we can have the right conversations at the right time. This approach was originally developed by Dr Fernando Flores and Chauncey Bell many years ago, and clients I work with still find it very useful.

I hope you find it helpful.

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Generating a consistent flow of work

One of the challenges is for professionals, consultants and advisors is that while they know they need to having regular conversations with potential clients, they often don't. There are a range of reasons for this, but often it is because professionals don't enjoy it.

The video below highlights 3 things that high performing professionals do to have a consistent and sustainable workflow. I hope you enjoy.

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Anticipating the Waves: How Professional Teams Can Stay Relevant

This article picks up from our January discussion on Riding the Waves: How Teams Can Navigate Change and Create Value, a framework that helps teams stay relevant, committed, and effective. We explored three key activities: taking stock, committing, and coordinating—using surfing as a metaphor to illustrate these principles.

Let’s now go deeper into the first activity—taking stock.

Seasoned surfers don’t just wait for waves to hit them; they paddle into position in advance, reading the conditions and adjusting as they go. In teams that provide services, this means recognising where client priorities are heading, where new risks and opportunities lie, and where your team/firm’s expertise can add the most value. The most valuable teams are those who don’t just answer today’s questions but help clients see what’s coming next.

You can do this in three ways:

1. Sharing Your Perspective

Clients often focus on their own way of doing things and may not see broader shifts that can impact them. Consultants and advisors get a broader view, and one of the most valuable things you can do is offer perspectives to clients on industry or market developments that are likely to impact them in the future. This isn’t about pushing an agenda—it’s about helping clients anticipate what’s coming, making sense of change, and understanding risks and opportunities they might otherwise miss.

For example, an engineering firm working with property developers could bring insights about new regulatory changes or emerging technologies in sustainable design. If a client is planning a large-scale development, these insights could help them future-proof their project. When you take the initiative to share perspectives like this, you’re not just responding to change—you’re helping your clients stay ahead of it.

The more you do this, the more valuable your perspective becomes. Each conversation gives you new insights, helping you refine your thinking and spot patterns. Over time, you develop a sharper instinct for what really matters to clients—what’s coming down the pipeline that they haven’t yet seen.

2. Listening for Explicit Needs

Many professionals already do this well—understanding what work is coming up, what projects clients are planning, and what problems they need solved. Good client relationships are built on these conversations, ensuring you’re positioned to offer help when needed. Teams and firms that do this well don’t just wait for a tender or an RFP—they stay close enough to clients to spot opportunities early and provide value before competitors do. And they do the research to better understand what their client is concerned about and how they might be able to support them.

3. Listening for Deeper Concerns

This is where the best teams separate themselves from the rest. The work that everyone knows about—the RFPs, the tenders, the obvious projects—is already competitive. The best professionals listen deeper, tuning into the concerns, frustrations, and inefficiencies that clients haven’t yet articulated—but that shape their decisions.

Think of this like spotting a wave on the horizon before anyone else. It’s not yet obvious, but by the time it reaches the crowd, you’re already on it.

For example, a legal team advising a major infrastructure project might initially be asked to handlecontract negotiations. That’s the explicit need. But through deeper conversations, they uncover that the client is frustrated by constant project delays due to misalignment between contractors. The real concern isn’t just legal risk—it’s how to improve coordination across multiple stakeholders.

Instead of just doing the contracts, the legal team anticipates the larger challenge and proposes a new approach: embedding legal and risk advisory earlier in project planning to proactively address these coordination issues. This positions them not just as legal experts, but as strategic partners shaping how the project unfolds.

In other situations, with existing clients, it's important to be asking for their perspective on their experience of working with you, to bring to the surface what clients might be feeling or saying when you're not there, that shape their future buying decisions. Do this in a matter of fact way, without being needy, and when you say that you want to keep improving the value you provide, and listen well, it's incredible what you learn and how much this helps, even if there is a short-term sting.

There’s an obvious but often overlooked factor in all of this: how you show up matters. You can read about the importance of moods and these conversations in a previous post, Moods and Business Development, some thoughts for Professionals.

So, what can teams to do enhance this process?

Invite other team members who may not know the client to the conversations, to listen and share their perspectives. Having different people in those conversations creates a different energy, which can result in new ideas and possibilities. This requires confidence in your own relationship with the client.

Compare notes and look for patterns. This can result in the seeds of new offerings and also a great way for the team to learn.

Over time, your team builds a sharper instinct for what’s shifting and where the risks and opportunities lie.

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Riding the Waves: How Teams Can Navigate Change and Create Value

Image generated by Dall-E

In this first article of 2025, amidst the rapid changes we’re experiencing, we aim to share some thoughts for teams about how to stay relevant, thrive and prepare for what's coming. Our hope is to offer practical insights and foster good moods that suit the times.

As a friend recently observed, change is always happening, but right now it feels as though someone’s dropped a brick on the accelerator pedal. Election outcomes worldwide and the transformative impacts of AI signal significant shifts ahead. While it may be tempting to retreat or ignore these changes, now is not the time to bury our heads in the sand.

Let’s turn our attention to preparing teams for what's ahead, using an unexpected yet fitting detour—surfing*.

Many people find joy in walking along the beach, swimming, or catching waves. The ocean, and surfing in particular, provides a compelling metaphor for business and teams.

When you surf, the first step is to take stock. You assess the conditions to anticipate the waves that are coming. You can only catch the waves that are there. Similarly, in business, the concerns of your current and potential clients, along with emerging threats and opportunities, are the waves on the horizon. No matter how compelling your offer seems to you, it must align with what clients’ value and need. Consider Kodak’s infamous failure to adapt to the shift toward digital photography as a cautionary tale.

Once you identify a wave worth catching, you need to commit fully. Half-hearted paddling won’t get you there. In business, this means teams must have a clear and stated purpose and align on goals, that ultimately create value for clients and stakeholders. Committing is different to agreeing. Reflect on teams you’ve observed or been part of where individuals prioritised their own needs over the collective purpose, or had competing or conflicting priorities. Such dynamics often result in untapped potential, wasted effort and friction.

The third essential practice is coordination. Surfers adjust their posture and movements in response to the wave’s changes. And sometimes they wipe out. Similarly, businesses encounter unexpected events and challenges. Great teams cultivate the skills and conversations necessary to make and fulfil commitments, change tack as circumstances change, and rebuild trust when conflicts or setbacks arise.

These three practices form a strong foundation for effective business planning and for cultivating high-value creating teams**:

Taking stock – Making assessments about what lies ahead.

Committing – Aligning the team’s purpose and goals.

Coordinating – Engaging in conversations to get work done and reset when needed.

Like surfing, these are learnable and masterable skills.

If you’d like to know more, we’ve attached a guide in the body of the email called "Designing your Offer: A Tool for Teams Wanting to Reset or Grow", explaining how these ideas work in practice.

If this metaphor resonates and you’d like to spark new thinking within your team, we’re offering free one-hour workshops in the first quarter of 2025. The workshops will explore these themes and how to better ride the waves that are coming in 2025.

To schedule a session, email mark@openroadconsulting.com.au or message Mark at 0409 527 729, requesting a free surfing workshop. We’ll get in touch to arrange a time.

* The idea for using surfing as a metaphor stems from a 2013 report by the National Council for Innovation and Competitiveness in Chile, chaired by Dr. Fernando Flores. Titled “Strategic Orientations for Innovation: Surfing Towards the Future,” the report eloquently captures the parallels between surfing and navigating change. It states, “Surfing embodies the ability to navigate uncertainty, adapt to ever-changing conditions, and harness the energy of waves to move forward. It reflects the spirit of innovation: balancing preparation with improvisation, skill with intuition, and ambition with respect for the environment.” The thinking in this article and guide was inspired by Dr Fernando Flores, Chauncey Bell and their students, and have been tried and tested with clients for 10 years.

** The phrase "High-Value Creating Teams" is used by Professor Peter Hawkins (author of Leadership Team Coaching and many books on effective teams), as an alternative to high performing teams. We like the phrase "high-value creating" because that's what we believe teams are about - creating value for others.

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Moods and Business Development: Some thoughts for Professionals

Photo by Jeremy Bishop 

Mike*, a consultant under pressure to secure new business for his team, found himself in a swirl of moods. His bosses’ frustration left him anxious and resigned, doubting his ability to succeed: What’s the point? It won’t work anyway. He was right. His efforts weren’t working as well as he’d hoped. Over time, Mike worked with a coach to help him articulate his firm’s value proposition and to prepare well for client conversations. But what made the biggest difference to Mike was becoming more aware of his moods and cultivating better ones for business development.

Cultivating constructive moods is essential for success in business development. While some seem naturally able to embody good moods, many find it challenging. And yet, there is little training or awareness to help us notice, let alone cultivate, the moods that serve us best. While there is growing awareness of moods that contribute to depression and anxiety, there is less understanding of how our everyday moods at work shape our experiences and influence how we show up to others, and what we can do about them.

The Quiet Power of Moods Moods quietly but noticeably shape our professional and personal lives. Moods often arise from our opinions/perspectives and influence decisions, interactions, and actions in ways we may not fully grasp. Unlike emotions—temporary or fleeting responses to specific moments—moods linger. Moods can be likened to the unseen currents that steer the flow of a river, while emotions are the ripples left by a single stone. The challenge with our moods is that they are often invisible to us - but often not to others.

Our moods have the power to reveal what matters to us, and becoming more aware of our moods can be a source of wisdom and insight. Overdoing this though can send us down rabbit holes and result in unhelpful rumination. The skill is being able to distinguish between the two.

The Moods of Business Development In business development, our moods—and those of others—are ever-present companions. A mood of resentment might lead us to approach business development conversations half-heartedly, whereas a mood of over-confidence may tempt us to believe no effort is required at all. Arrogance might have us not ask questions of a client or to talk down to them. Anxiety, hesitancy, or skepticism—whether in ourselves or others—can quietly erode the foundation of trust and possibility.

For Mike, the turning point was noticing how his mood of resignation had infiltrated his interactions with his clients. At other times, the pressure he was experiencing was being translated to becoming pushy with clients to get work quickly, which was turning clients off. By reconnecting with what mattered for him at work – and how he wanted to show up to clients and his team – he realised he had lost his focus on connecting with clients as people and helping them to solve their problems, and that he had taken his talented and committed team for granted. Mike decided to shift his mood and outlook. With the help of a coach, he developed more confidence (a conviction in his and his team’s ability to help clients) and curiosity (a genuine interest in learning about his clients’ needs) – deliberately and intentionally. He still felt worried and resigned at times, but he developed his skill for noticing these moods and finding ways to acknowledge these and reset when he needed to.

As Mike got better at working with his own moods, he also began to “read the room” with his clients, noticing moods they were in too. He recognised that some were eager to engage, while others were guarded, perhaps sceptical of his motives. Meeting scepticism with empathy, Mike acknowledged their concerns, even naming them: I understand that some consultants have made big promises and fallen short. My focus is to build trust and help, and you decide if you want to take it further. This awareness and honesty opened doors, transforming transactional moments into relationships built on trust.

Nurturing Moods That Serve Us and Others In a world where anxiety and resentment seem increasingly pervasive, cultivating constructive moods is both a challenge and a necessity. Beyond the basics of exercise, rest, meditation and connection, here are four steps to intentionally improve your mood:

Check the mood you are in, periodically (without becoming too focused on yourself): Pause and reflect and name your moods, because naming brings awareness and can reduce a mood’s hold on you. Eg. you might be feeling very confident about an upcoming pitch. If you can't name it exactly just try and describe the feeling.

Investigate the moods’ impact: While being confident is important in a pitch, being very confident can result in complacency. One way to check the appropriateness of a mood for a situation is to see what opinions or assumptions are behind the mood and check for their validity by looking for evidence. If a client said they are "looking forward to receiving a proposal", that alone doesn't justify being very confident.

Choose what other moods or qualities would be important for the situation. In the example above, being more humble and curious might provide a greater connection and understanding of what's important for the client and increase the chances of a successful pitch. In more general business development situations, consider how you want to and need to show up to your clients, and what qualities bring out your best. Your values and the values of your firm can be an important guide here, too. Set an intention to embody one or two of these qualities, all the while being responsive and skilful to what happens in the conversation. When you falter, reflect, reset, and return.

Forget about yourself and start helping your clients. When you think about your clients concerns and help them, just doing this tends to put us in a better mood.

By attuning to our moods with curiosity and self-compassion, we can navigate the currents of business and life with greater grace, skill and connection, and be our best more often.

*Mike’s story is fictional but drawn on many real-life examples

Additional Resources:

This a big topic of which I have barely scratched the surface. Below are some additional resources that you may find interesting and useful.

An excellent book on moods and learning by Gloria Flores.

Leadership as Masterpiece Creation by Charles Spinosa, Matthew Hancocks and Haridimos Tsoukas – lots in here about developing courage

An excellent program on mindfulness with Mark Molony and Laura Bartels - https://www.mindfullifeprogram.org/programs/mindfulness-immersion-semester-2025/

A highly regarded introductory workshop on Ontological Coaching, which explores moods in greater depth and nuance. https://www.ontologicalcoaching.com.au/coachingworkshop

Why Moods Matter in Business, by Alan Sieler https://www.ontologicalcoaching.com.au/post/why-moods-matter-in-business

Excellent Programs where moods (and other related skills) are explored in depth - https://pluralisticnetworks.com/

The Control Myth by Chris Chittenden - https://livinginthequestion.au/the-control-myth/

Great resources for coaches in working with clients from Karen White - https://store.thehumanconnection.co.za/shop-coaching-tools/#emotionalmastery

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Making Offers to Bring About Meaningful Change

Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash

A common theme that comes up in coaching is people wanting to be more influential in their role. Influence is more than authority: it’s about having an impact across the organisation, resulting in meaningful change.

Take Simone, for example. She was technically skilled and well-regarded within her team, but was frustrated that her ideas weren’t gaining traction at more senior levels. She would share her views at executive level meetings only to feel dismissed or ignored. Simone wanted her work to matter and felt concerned that recurring issues in the business could be solved if only her and her team’s insights were acknowledged.

In her coaching session, Simone shared her frustrations and her growing resignation and resentment, and it was evident how much she cared about the business. Her coach introduced the idea that influence can be fostered by first establishing relationships, understanding the needs and concerns of others, and then putting forward proposals (or offers) that align. This approach was in contrast to Simone’s initial method of presenting her ideas directly, without deeper engagement and without a collective appreciation of the problem.

Simone began setting aside time to get to know her colleagues better, exploring their perspectives on the issues and considering the impacts from clients’, stakeholders’ and senior management’s viewpoints. These discussions helped Simone, her team and her colleagues gain a more comprehensive understanding of the problem, the unspoken concerns and what solutions might work. Simone was also more conscious of her mood – and was more intentional about being curious, and in having resolve. This helped her to ride the ups and downs that are always part of these conversations. When Simone was ready to share her ideas, she presented three proposals for potential improvement to the Executive team, inviting feedback and collaboration from her colleagues. Each of the three offerings set out what tasks and outcomes she and her team would be responsible for and what she would need from others to make them work.

Ultimately, they agreed to trial one of her proposals as a starting point, a decision reached collectively. By including others in the solution-building process, she found they were far more receptive and willing to act. As time went on, Simone noticed that this approach—engaging through dialogue, rather than being directive or informative—led to a smoother, more aligned path to action. The influence she achieved felt more natural, grounded in a shared understanding and mutual respect.

Simone’s experience illustrates that true influence is rarely achieved through authority alone or sharing ideas or points of view. Instead, it’s built on two essential elements of trusted relationships and the ability to make timely offers that genuinely resonate with others. By taking the time to understand and include others, leaders can create solutions with “everyone’s fingerprints,” leading to outcomes that feel less forced and face less resistance. When people feel understood and included, they are more willing to embrace new ideas, making change a shared journey rather than a one-sided push. While this is an example of working with people inside the one organisation, making offers is also a crucial skill in business development conversations with external clients.

This article is fictional but the principles have been applied by clients in hundreds of occasions over the last 15 years. The principles come from Speech Act Theory that were developed for business by Dr Fernando Flores and Chauncey Bell (also known as Commitments Based Management), among others, and in Ontological Coaching by Alan Sieler.

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Common BD Traps for Partners/Directors

Being a Partner/Director/Principal in a Professional Services business involves keeping many balls in the air. Hitting budgets, generating work, keeping clients happy, navigating the politics and leading teams are not easy. Below are three common BD-related traps that I see people fall into and that keep people stuck, especially when relatively new in these roles, and some ways of getting out of them. Of course, everyone is different. What is a trap for one person may not be for another. These traps can also apply to Managers in businesses who need to deliver services across their organisation.

The Confidence Trap

The Confidence Trap is thinking that you need to always feel confident in order to have good conversations with clients. Many people have imposter syndrome, particularly when new in a role. This can be problematic if it stops us having conversations with clients or if it turns our focus too much on ourselves in those conversations. A useful way to move past this is to acknowledge these feelings (which will come and go, and are often false alarms and not helpful), and make an accurate assessment of your competence: remind yourself that you (and your firm) have the competence to deliver what clients need. Once you have accepted this, your job is to forget about yourself, and focus on helping your clients – even if you don’t feel confident all the time or with every client. The maxim - "feeling like doing something is not a requirement for doing it" - applies here.

The Knowledge Trap

This trap, which I sometimes call the ego trap, goes something like “I have all the knowledge and know what clients have to do”. This can very subtlety but noticeably create distance between you and your potential clients. This is an understandable trap for some, given the emphasis that is placed on knowledge in our training and education. What this perspective misses are the nuances of a client’s problems and the importance of building trust and connections with clients. If we feel that we shouldn’t have to do B.D, we do it begrudgingly or if we aren’t asking enough questions that have us connect with and understand potential clients, then you may be in the knowledge trap . Our job is not to say what we know, but rather, to help clients identify the source of the problem and use our relationship with them, our experience and knowledge to help them solve it.

The Perfectionist Trap

This is another understandable but ineffective trap. We build our identities and careers by doing things to a high standard and want to ensure that we are doing the highest quality work. This helps keep clients satisfied, enhances our reputation and drives continuous improvement. However, it becomes a trap when we become overly focused on being ‘all-knowing’ and forget that we need to take people with us, and in doing so, dismiss the contributions of others. Focusing too much on perfection can produce fear of making mistakes and impact on the wellbeing, confidence and productivity of others. A healthier approach is to commit to high quality work, but to also think about what’s most helpful for the client. Perhaps a phone call followed up by a short email might be more useful than a PowerPoint deck or a 20 page report. In judging whether work is high quality, we are basing that on certain standards. Often those standards are applicable and need to be maintained. In those cases, it’s important to articulate those standards when delegating work, and offer support to help your people to deliver to them, which includes having the conversation in a mood that gives confidence to others. In other situations, there might be different ways of doing things - our way may not be the only way. Loosening our grip on perfection also saves time, builds confidence and competence in others, and paves the way for new ways of doing things.

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Seeing Beyond Labels

While coaching a leader, Jennifer, I found myself in a conversation with her and her boss, the CEO.

Each coaching engagement begins and ends with a triad meeting—myself, the coachee, and their sponsor. These meetings are like bookends, ensuring our goals are clear, our intentions aligned, and the coachee is supported from all sides.

During our initial meeting, the CEO shared his perspective that Jennifer could do with a spark, and communicate more enthusiastically, without really seeing his role in that. Jennifer, with quiet courage, shared concerns she hadn’t previously expressed. This honest exchange brought to light issues that had lingered beneath the surface.

Our work together wasn’t about turning Jennifer into someone she wasn’t. Instead, it was helping her discover why her work mattered—both to herself, her stakeholders and her team– and to communicate in a more effective way. It was also about helping the CEO see the value of his support in bringing out her best.

Jennifer and the CEO began meeting more regularly and talking more openly, which led to a mutual sense of support and trust. Jennifer, once reticent, began to stand taller. Her voice—though quiet—carried weight. The CEO learned to be more honest without triggering defensiveness from her.

The CEO’s comment in the initial meeting, was well-intended. Yet, it revealed a common trap—believing that a person’s behaviour is untouched by the ebb and flow of relationships and environments. While it's on us to be aware and improve how we interact with others, our success and the success of others is also influenced by how we are treated and supported by those around us.

Note: the main parts of this story are based on common themes from different engagements. Other aspects of the story have been changed to maintain confidentiality.

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Bringing Curiosity to Client Relationships

Welcome to On the Road.

In this article below we draw on the inspiration from one of our clients who reshaped a relationship through a different kind of dialogue. Our belief is rooted in the profound impact of conversations: they define our successes as individuals and teams. The outcomes from these interactions, whether with clients or among ourselves, hinges on the nuances of mood, beliefs, and the values we bring forth. They form the bedrock of trust.

In my role as a business development coach, I often witness professionals engaging in business development through technical and rapport building discussions. These interactions sometimes blossom into collaborations. Yet, there are instances when these efforts fall short, leaving professionals uncertain about the relationship’s trajectory and next steps. Often, they resort to more meetings or presentations, or quietly let the connection fade. The unspoken question lingers: does the client truly have a need for our services, and can we serve them effectively?

But what if there exists a way to converse honestly with clients, paving a path towards collaboration without seeming pushy?

Take the case of Jack, a seasoned advisor who diligently presented to Sarah, a potential client, over two years. While feedback was positive, these efforts did not translate into new projects, leaving Jack frustrated and uncertain about sustaining their rapport. Jack, known for his rapport-building skills, had yet to broach the crucial topics—whether Sarah's company engaged external advisors and if they were open to doing so.

During a coaching session, I encouraged Jack to address these questions head-on, despite the perceived taboo. Reluctantly, he agreed to inquire, and shifted his mood from frustration and some anxiousness to curiosity and confidence to be of service. Approaching Sarah after a presentation, he candidly asked about her experience with external advisors, explaining his interest in exploring mutual needs rather than assuming a fit. This simple act transformed their dynamic. Sarah, appreciating Jack’s sincerity, shared her current advisor relationship and what she valued most.

This honest exchange marked a turning point. Jack, now feeling empowered, calmly expressed his firm’s capabilities, offering an alternative if ever needed, all while respecting Sarah’s perspective. Uncomfortable initially, Jack found relief and pride in the authenticity of their conversation. Weeks later, Sarah reached out with a $250K project, followed by another worth $200K the next month—a testament to the pivotal shift in their relationship.

In the rush of advising, many professionals (including internal service providers to other parts of the business) forget the power of asking. Yet, it is through a service orientation of listening and understanding that true client needs are uncovered, paving the way for meaningful assistance.

Mark Raymond

PS - We are excited to share updates on our enhanced offerings:

BD coaching

Leadership coaching

Leadership team coaching/facilitation

Conflict resolution

Visit our website for more details. Contact us to discuss your needs—we're here to help.

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Accountability and Care - An Unlikely Coupling

At my first meeting with a client recently, he talked about how difficult it was to get some members of his team to perform at the required level. He wasn’t sharing this view with his team, so he felt like he wasn’t being straight with them. He was becoming frustrated with himself and his team. Mistakes that he once might have accepted were causing him more irritation and making him miss the many positive contributions his team were making. The flow on effect was that his team was sensing his irritation and not feeling appreciated. He cared deeply about his team, which was causing him to feel conflicted about holding them to account.

His story is a familiar one. Many leaders find it difficult to instil a culture of accountability and care. Both are critical for team success and engagement.

Accountability and care might seem like an odd coupling, but  there is a growing desire in organisations to genuinely care for people (even more so in the pandemic) and to also hold people to account for their performance.

How can you build a culture where you have both care and accountability?

The answer lies in the world’s most overlooked and obvious aspect of organisations and leadership. Organisations at their essence, are comprised of people who make and deliver promises. When you order a takeaway coffee, you are involved in an exchange of value – money (which the café values) for a coffee (which you value). When one of your team members agrees to do a task, you are also involved in an exchange – salary and support from the company in exchange for successful completion of the task. These exchanges are promises. These exchanges happen thousands of times a day in your organisation – sometimes they go well and other times they don’t.

In my experience, most people in organisations focus on the task that has to be done, the report that has to be written, the piece of machinery that needs to be fixed. But most of the issues lie in the communication between people that initiates and completes the task and more generally in expectations and concerns that are left unsaid, resulting in promises being broken and needs being unmet.

Bob Anderson, in the book Mastering Leadership:

“When we step into positions of leadership, we make a whole set of promises we may not know we are making. The promises are profound and come in the form of high, often unspoken expectations. Understanding, managing and living up to these promises defines our leadership.”

I would go one step further – organisations and governments survive or die based on whether people believe that they will deliver on their promises.

In my experience, improving the quality of conversations to make and manage promises (including tasks, learning, career and purpose) is key building a culture of accountability,  care and mutual trust.  

In the case of my client above, he became skilful in four key conversations to make and manage promises with this team. He listened to his team about what they needed and they did the same. It wasn’t one way. As a result, he got to spend Saturdays with his kids as better conversations with his team resulted in him needing to do less, and his team feeling more appreciated and trusted. He proved for himself that you can have both accountability and care in a team.

Article written by Mark Raymond

If you would like to learn more about this approach, this seminar may interest you.

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/delivering-on-your-promise-tickets-126012808703

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Minimising Conflict in a Remote World

Working from home presents all kinds of new challenges, as well as opportunities. We might get more work done, with fewer meetings and less time spent chatting with colleagues. But it can be really difficult if you’re used to working closely with team members, sharing ideas, debriefing and being a positive, encouraging presence for each other throughout the day. 

In our pre-COVID 19 world, I conducted mediations whereby people sometimes didn’t work closely together – they worked remotely, or in different offices, or on different days of the week. The two main reasons for conflict were poor communication; and a lack of role clarity. Now that most people are no longer working closely together, good communication and role clarity at work are essential, particularly when our daily worlds have shrunk and there is so much uncertainty in our lives.

Maintaining communication

These days, with social isolation, in most workplaces it’s become impossible to communicate face to face. Communication is harder when we can’t read body language and facial expressions. It’s more likely we'll misinterpret what someone says when we can’t see them. It’s also harder to pick up on other people’s moods and reactions to what we say (or don’t say).

Luckily most workplaces have access to online visual communication tools such as Zoom and Skype. For group meetings, it’s important to keep our messages simple and clear.  Don’t assume silence means people agree with what you are saying. Give everyone a chance to be heard. When people feel isolated working from home, it’s even more important to check in with every person on the call.

In these times it is often easy to communicate with people you have a better relationship with. What often falls by the wayside is talking to people you don’t get along with - it’s important to find ways to keep these communication lines open too.

Role Clarity

Most workplaces and industries have faced dramatic upheaval, and while role titles may be the same, what people actually do has changed. People need to understand how changes will affect them and what’s expected of them in this new environment. In some cases, it can increase engagement of staff and improve ideas about what works best as we go through this transition. In addition, given the amount of uncertainty, aspects of people’s roles may be unclear, and people need to be able to work in an environment of less certainty than before.  

The best way to maintain healthy work relationships and support one another when working from home is to stay in touch; and to be as clear as possible about roles and expectations of each person’s job. And be mindful that everyone is doing it really tough.

Article by Jill Murphy. Jill is a Director at Open Road Consulting and helps clients minimise and respond to conflict, including advising clients on work practices and in conducting mediations and investigations.

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How to Interrupt the Infinity of Tasks

Sarah was slammed. Task lists were flooding her inbox, she was almost nodding off at meetings and felt herself falling into a hopeless mood.

As a division head in a Government agency, Sarah reported she was too busy managing day-to-day tasks to lead or think strategically. The most efficient response she could muster as the work poured in was to try and get it done.

A beleaguered, pseudo-mechanical response to the piling up of work is all too common, and results in untold loss to an organisation and those within it. Unable to keep pace with competing demands, people fall into a mood of defeat. Important work does not get done. Tasks which may have loss their relevance or become obsolete are performed out of habit. People consider their work done once a task is complete, whether or not the customer has a chance to declare satisfaction.

Orchestrating work and tasks within an organisation can be a source of saitisfaction, frustration or waste. But effective orchestration is only possible by navigating the present. Conversations that put work in context, calibrate promises, build trust and engagement and address emerging breakdowns are vitally important, and require much if not more time than completing tasks that seem to comprise our work.

I find that most people see their work as completing a series of tasks, akin to working in a production line. For those of us who - whether as contractors or as members of an organisation - provide services to clients, tasks are only a portion of our work. Instead of competing tasks, what we actually do is make an fulfil promises. 

Promises can be defined as agreements between people comprised of three essential elements:

1. A customer - external or internal - who makes a request or accepts an offer.

2. A provider - who makes an offer or commits to complete the task.

3. “Conditions of satisfaction”, or expectations of what will be delivered.

Promises are exchanges. A builder can’t build a house without payment, access to the building site and viable plans. Leaders make a whole set of promises they may not realise they are making, as staff often have expectations that are not spoken aloud: to be competent, fair, supportive, ethical. These unarticulated expectations also apply to service providers when providing services to customers.

After our initial diagnosis, Sarah went to work by talking to her team about the kinds of promises she and her team should prioritise. They identified many tasks that were being done for historical reasons that weren’t providing a lot of value : reports no-one was reading, meetings that no longer needed attending, and tasks that others in the organisation that were better equipped to complete. Sarah and her team had conversations with stakeholders to test their assumptions and reached agreements to reduce some of their work., which saved them as much as a full day every week. They made requests to internal customers to internal customers that allowed them to do their work more efficiently. With more time and greater autonomy, Sarah and her team made time to listen to customers on a more regular basis, review issues as a team, and make more valuable offers that dealt with important issues for their stakeholders. As a result of having more time to reflect and reshuffle priorities, Sarah and her team became more skilful in listening to customers, making effective requests, keeping each other in the loop about how promises were progressing, and practicing accountability conversations when promises weren’t kept. Slowly but surely, the team built a culture of high performance, accountability, trust and mutual support. In my estimation and hers, Sarah and her team did more valuable work. Sarah was also able to lead more effectively by observing work as promises and acquiring the linguistic skills to make and manage those promises.

The success of any organisation or any person is determined by the quality of promises that they make and deliver to their people and customers. I believe that by understanding work as a sequence of promises we can contribute greater value to one another and to our organisations, minimise friction in our relationships, build our identities, and benefit from increased energy and purpose.

Article by Mark Raymond and Michele Gazolo

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Cultivating Moods for Effective Leadership

Much is written on leadership, most in the form of hazy instructions. Have passion. Be an example. Don’t speak too much. Empower your staff. Eat last.

While these maxims have suggestive power, they fail to capture a formative aspect of leadership: mood. From working with teams, I’d say a person’s ability to observe his or her own mood is the linchpin of leadership, especially when dealing with change. Mood is catchy. Like a bad song that gets stuck in your head, a mood can be hard to shake. Soon everyone around you is humming the same tune.

Here are some moods that can destroy creativity, engagement and autonomy in staff.

Frustration – frustration shows up for leaders when their teams won’t meet standards, deadlines, or commit to what they are asked to do. Over time, frustration curdles into resentment, anger and a sense of victimisation – which diminish one’s effectiveness as a leader. This mood signals a diminution of power.

Control – we tend to put people on a tight rein when we feel anxious about leading a project or team. Trying to control people conveys the stifling message: “Do it my way as I don’t trust you to do it yours.” When people feel like they are being monitored, they are unlikely to take risks or learn. Seeking control telegraphs a leader’s anxiety and inhibits a team’s performance.

Certainty — People who exude certainty are often promoted to leadership. These people seem confident no matter what is happening around them. When the problem is clear, such unwavering confidence is helpful. In complex times, however, certainty is a flawed strategy. Certainty conveys: “I know best.” A leader who clings to her own certainty won’t receive the gift of candor from her team because they suspect they won’t be listened to.

Conversely, I have come to observe there are certain moods that act as a tonic to a team, lifting their spirits and motivating them to be the best they can. Recently, I had the opportunity to observe a masterful coach displaying these moods, and to notice the effect it had on his team’s performance.

My son’s basketball team were playing against a strong opponent, and in the first quarter they were 16—4 down. At the quarter-time huddle, the coach issued some instructions. What stood out to me were not the instructions, but the demeanor, mood and energy in which he spoke. Instead of frustration, control, panic or anger, the coach embodied a mood of calm and optimism that they could win the game. His team responded and got closer as the game went on, winning with only a second left in the game.

As a skilled leader, this coach operated from a mood that gave him the best chance of seeing the game and engaging the players to their best advantage. This wasn’t an accident. He’d developed the skill of cultivating a mood that produced victories.

For leaders, being skilled in the technical aspects of an organisation is necessary but insufficient. Real leadership happens when we act with skill in a changing landscape that includes people, moods and contingencies. In the case of my son’s basketball coach, knowledge of tactics was important, but it can only take a team so far. It was the coach’s belief, trust in the players and confidence that lit up the team and helped them win.

Moods are often characterised as good or bad, which limits one’s capacity to understand and shift their mood. By understanding more about moods and detecting them, leaders can be more intentional in creating the mood in themselves and their team that will get results, promote well-being and empower the team.

By Mark Raymond and Michele Gazzolo

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Coordination Waste: Zero to Hero

Recently, I consulted on a project that didn’t go so well. We de-briefed, and the process resulted in defensiveness and blame. This low mood prevailed until an unearthly question from the back of the room woke us up: “Where was the coordination waste when you were working together on this project?”*

We sat up in our chairs. Could this futuristic term be a new scapegoat?

Our team began to explore coordination waste from the perspective of missing and ineffective conversations, without the defensiveness and blame. The de-brief revealed lost time and increased frustration as consequences of not having conversations to plan, poor decisions arising from a lack of consultation, a mood of over-confidence, and a general lack of candour. When we doubled down on these areas, the performance and morale of our team dramatically improved.

“Coordination waste” appears in many guises. Here are some you may find familiar:

1. You feel you are doing everything and falling behind

2. Someone is doing the work you already did

3. Poor performance and bad behaviours are tolerated

4. You miss deadlines and overrun budgets

5. Your work is happening on auto-pilot

6. You are not listening to your people or customers

7. Meetings are never ending

8. People avoid candour

9. People resist change or don’t see a need until there is a crisis

10. People have lost motivation or are burnt out

The cost of this waste is significant and eats away at relationships, service delivery, motivation and profitability. But when people begin to tackle this form of waste, they discover that the culprit and the cure are housed in language that is used in conversation - how we speak and listen to one another. Vagueness in language produces poor coordination; insincerity in language produces mistrust; lack of rigour in language can lead to duplication of work; and lack of commitment in language invites lacklustre performance.

Beneath the metrics of any business dwells the real phenomenon: how people relate to one another, and to their individual and collective work. A telling indicator of the health of a business is the willingness of people to put aside their personal stories and examine the phenomenon of waste. Over time, they develop skills and practices to anticipate and intercept waste before it happens or design in order to avert it entirely. In this way, I have seen people and organisations transformed.

Mark Raymond and Michele Gazzolo

*We acknowledge Chauncey Bell for inventing the term “coordination waste”, the waste that arises out of how people coordinate (listen, speak and act) with one another

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Sexual Harassment - when the penny drops

Figures just released by the Australian Human Rights Commission in relation to sexual harassment in the workplace are truly sobering. Its fourth national survey on sexual harassment in the workplace shows that one in three workers in Australia said they had been sexually harassed at work over the last five years – compared with one in five from the 2012 survey and one in ten in 2003. In 2018, 39% of Australian women and 26% of Australian men said they have been sexually harassed at work. Most of the perpetrators were men.

The #MeToo movement has raised awareness and understanding of sexual harassment in the workplace. For perpetrators, there is sure to be a growing realisation their behaviour could be called out at any time. Hiding behind or blaming the industry or organisational culture is no longer possible. It just makes them look weak and out of touch with community expectations. Indeed, the recent response by some members of the Liberal Party to Julia Banks and other women who have claimed they’ve been bullied and harassed has been rightly criticised by both sides of politics.

However, another consequence of the recent spotlight on sexual harassment is that with increased awareness comes an increased anxiety about being accused of sexual harassment. Many men (and women) are confused not just about what sexual harassment is, but also what is now acceptable to say or do in the workplace.

As an investigator, I have interviewed people accused of sexual harassment who don’t understand how their behaviour could amount to sexual harassment. Examples of behaviour that may be sexual harassment include:

·     Sexually suggestive comments or jokes

·     Intrusive questions about your private life or physical appearance

·     Inappropriate staring or leering

·     Unwelcome hugging, kissing or cornering or other types of inappropriate physical contact

·     Sexually explicit text messages, images, phone calls or emails

Often the best way to understand sexual harassment is to understand the potential impact the behaviour could have on someone and how it might make that person feel. The #MeToo campaign has thousands of accounts of people talking about the impact of sexual harassment. Sometimes reading or hearing from people who have experienced sexual harassment aids understanding. Given the figures released yesterday about the high numbers in Australia, there are lots of experiences and stories we can learn from. Training courses that offer more in-depth understanding of sexual harassment can also be invaluable.

I have conducted mediations whereby one person wants to tell the other that their behaviour was inappropriate.  Mediation can be helpful if one person is concerned that the conversation might go badly.  Here is an example of a common scenario: during mediation, a woman , call her Mary, names a range of behaviours that make her uncomfortable, such as subtle pressure from him (let’s call him Pete)  to go for lunch, his ‘casually intimate’ demeanour with her; and the way he stands close to her and sometimes touches her on the back or arm.

Two things strike me about these conversations. One, Peter is surprised by Mary’s comments (but not completely shocked); the other, it is only when Mary starts to talk about how it affects her that the penny drops for him. Mary said she felt uncomfortable when he touched her and complimented her and she felt disrespected by his lack of professionalism toward her. She said she felt pressured to always seem happy to see him and available to talk whenever he wanted, but inside she felt anxious and stressed in his presence. When Pete asked why she hadn’t said anything, she said she didn’t want him to think she was over-reacting and was worried it would affect their work relationship.

Pete said he had no idea that his behaviour could be construed as sexual harassment. But I think he forgot something crucially important – none of his behaviours was ever welcomed or encouraged by Mary; and if that was the case, there was a very good chance she would be offended and uncomfortable by it.

Sometimes it can be hard to explain a set of behaviours and how it makes you feel. But to understand what sexual harassment is, I believe it helps to talk about it. And in talking about it, and requesting those behaviours to stop, we are helping to educate others in the workforce about how to treat colleagues and staff with respect.

The role of leaders in organisations is important in creating an environment where these conversations can be had, so we all understand what sexual harassment is and why it cannot be excused or ignored. Every time it is raised and described, we can reach a higher level of understanding of sexual harassment, so everyone can feel safe and respected at work.

Jill Murphy, Co-Founder of Open Road Consulting, conducts mediation, workplace reviews and investigations. Contact jill@openroadconsulting.com.au

https://www.humanrights.gov.au/news/stories/everyone-s-business-2018-sexual-harassment-survey

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Non-verbal Communication - Credible and Approachable

Whether we like it or not, all of us are in the communication business. And how well we communicate with others has a big impact on the results we achieve - eg. generating new clients, getting a promotion, getting a good outcome in a meeting etc.

One aspect of our communication has an especially big impact - non-verbals. One study claims that 93% of what people pay attention to is our voice tone and body language. While I’m skeptical of the 93%, our non-verbal presence can have a big impact. I’ve known this for a long time and have worked with clients in developing what we might call non-verbal presence, and one of the concerns I hear from people is how to do this in a way that is authentic and not manipulative. 

A few months ago I attended a seminar by Michael Grinder, who has been researching, teaching and writing about non-verbal communication for more than 30 years. One of the principles I learnt from Michael I liked a lot and it has been useful with clients. 

Michael describes two common non-verbal styles and associated concerns. One style he calls “credible”, with a concern for demonstrating credibility to others, by sharing what we know. He might communicate in this style by speaking slowly, with pauses, by using hand gestures to emphasise key points, and have an an upright or leaning back posture. When we hear a pilot giving us an update about the flight they will often speak in a “credible” style, which reassures us. 

The style that Michael refers to is “approachable”. Someone communicating in an approachable style will be concerned with demonstrating approachability and connecting personally to others. People communicating in this style will often speak more quickly, use nods and mmm’s that encourage others to speak, and might have a posture that leans forward. When we have an encounter with a flight attendant they will often communicate in this style.

The issue is that if we have a dominant approachable style, and we are having a conversation with someone who has a dominant credible style, they may see us as lacking credibility. And vice versa, if we have a credible style we may be seen as over-bearing and poor listeners by those who have a preferred approachable style. The trick is to notice our preferred style and become skilful in communicating in both styles depending on the situation.

At one level, this may all seem trivial and superficial. But our non-verbals, AKA, our bodies, are part of part of us, which impact our perception, our thinking and our emotions. When we shift our body and how we carry ourselves, we shift how we move in the world, how we feel about ourselves and what we think is possible. Paying attention to our posture and body not only sends signals to others, even more importantly I would argue, it sends signals to us.

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The Problem with Metrics

Many organisations are increasingly using standardised metrics to make assessments of progress and performance. Metrics certainly have their place and can be very useful in making assessments of performance, but we would be wise to be mindful of the pitfalls. Assessing performance on metrics alone can often delude is into a false sense of clarity and certainty. This was the topic on one of my favourite podasts called econtalk, hosted by Rus Roberts, an economist and research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. 

The podcasts explores the following issues:

* that many of our roles are becoming increasingly complex and nuanced and our organisations have multi-layered purposes.  As a consequence much of our important work is not measurable in standardised ways

* how do we know we are measuring the right kinds of activities

* using metrics to make assessments can be very useful, but using metrics only to reward or punish people in organisations often has unintended consequences. For example, rewarding hospitals based on average times it took to admit patients resulted in hospitals keeping ambulances waiting

* the need to make the role of judgement more pronounced in assessing and rewarding performance

Link to the podcast below

http://www.econtalk.org/jerry-muller-on-the-tyranny-of-metrics/