This week in the every Tuesday Club Aleen Bayard talks about how to make your business resilient. 

There’s an old saying “when the going gets tough, the tough get going”.  That’s quite inspirational as a cliché.   But how do you actually put that into practice in your business?  The best way is to develop individual and institutional resiliency. 

Resiliency is not a word we often use, but it’s actually what’s called for in a difficult market.  And the most important quality of being resilient is being realistic versus being optimistic.  It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have hope and be positive with your workforce.  But it’s more important to get through a difficult market when you’re being absolutely realistic, and you understand what’s happening in your business.

Here are some leadership questions you might want to think about when you are determining how you can develop more resiliency. 

1.     Do you have a good sense of reality?

2.     What truths are you denying about your business?

3.     Are your assumptions based on the past or do you have a good sense of the future?

4.     What opportunities exist in this scenario?

That’s another important part about being resilient, being opportunistic.

People often confuse brute strength with resiliency.  It’s kind of like the difference between being a boxer and being a gymnast.  The boxer uses brute strength, the gymnast is much more flexible.  In this market place, you want to be more like the gymnast.

If you haven’t taken the opportunity to sign up to the Every Tuesday Club with MBE (Management & Business Education), then do so today by going to www.buseducation.com.

This week Aleen Bayard and Steven talk to you about training.  Once upon a time training, was all about covering up your weaknesses – remedial work to fix what you’re not so good at.

Now that’s really changed, one of the things we’ve come to recognise is that focusing on strengths is far more effective than trying to fix somebody.  In the end it’s not just about what the organisation needs, but to get the most out of your individuals and teams you need to think what they’re already good at. 

For example, some people are good at strategy, other people are good at hands-on, some people are more thoughtful, other people are more action oriented.  You can imagine the conflict if you try and put somebody who’s very thoughtful in the beginning of a project.  They’re just not suited for that. 

It’s a matter of looking at the personal attributes of the people in your team, the strengths they have, and looking at the organisational requirements. 

Competencies are not just about skills that you learn.  It’s also about what a person’s like in their behaviour.  If you ask someone what their strengths are in your team, they might tell you.  Then you’ve got a platform to move on with.  If they don’t know, as a manager you need to help them figure that out, that’s part of being a good career planner.

1.     For each individual in your team, identify their:

·                     Personal attributes

·                     Strengths and skills

2.     Identify the requirements of the organisation and team and compare with the above.

3.     Ask team members what their strengths are – if they don’t know create a process to help them identify their own strengths.

Let me know how you get on this week.

If you haven’t taken the opportunity to sign up to the Every Tuesday Club with MBE (Management & Business Education), then do so today by going to www.buseducation.com.

This week Aleen Bayard and Steven talk about coaching.

It’s a very popular mechanism right now for organisations’ to hire coaches to develop their leaders.  But not everyone can afford to do that.

Self coaching is something that’s really worth while looking into.  It doesn’t take a lot of time or resources, but it has some really good benefits that it can achieve.

One of the things people often say about learning and development is it doesn’t really have immediate impact.  And self coaching is a way of achieving that.

One way to begin is to get some feedback from people you work with about a particular skill you would like to develop.  Perhaps listening, working with team members, collaborating, and find out what you can be doing better by getting some feedback from your colleagues.

Self awareness is an important thing that comes out of the coaching, and in a way some people don’t feel very confident about getting that sort of feedback.  So the self element means you can control how much you talk about, what feedback you get and what you do with it.  Which I think allows people to take that leap of faith to jump into doing this.

And in fact so much of coaching just requires a commitment by a certain date.  So the self coaching would be just putting some discipline in.  So if you want to become a better listener, let your network know that’s something you’re working on and you want to improve it in the two or three weeks.

All you need to do is pick a pen:

1.     Write down one or two things you would like to improve on

2.     Give yourself a timeframe for improvement

3.     Advise your colleagues or network of your intentions

4.     Check back with others or yourself within a set period. 

Let me know this week how you have got on with your own self coaching.

If you haven’t taken the opportunity to sign up to the Every Tuesday Club with MBE (Management & Business Education), then do so today by going to www.buseducation.com.