Smart skills vs survivor thinking
Don’t be defensive minded; use smart thinking to underpin your career success. In this article we highlight five essential skills which can help you to stay on the front foot.
In a tough job market employees have a clear choice. One of these choices is to keep their heads down, work hard and hope they don’t get noticed. This ‘survivor’ mentality is a common tendency in a recession but for employers it’s bad news. People who are acting out of survival are defensive minded, they are timid, they miss opportunities.
The other way that people can choose to behave in tough times is to look for ways to work smarter. This way of working is characterised by a much greater focus on the future, on being bold and on bringing energy and creativity to new initiatives. Not surprisingly people who act from this mindset are much more engaging, will be far more employable and much more likely to deliver much better business results.
So what is it that makes some people work smart and others hunker down? Of course attitude plays a big part in how people respond to the world but on its own, attitude isn’t enough; leading edge thinking skills are also a key ingredient for people who want ongoing success. And that is our mission at Illumine – to help people who want a better job, who want to deliver better results, who want to set themselves apart. And in the rest of this article I want to look at some of these winning skills that can help you, your team and your organisation set itself up to succeed.
Thinking skill 1: Develop your creative mindset
You simply have to develop your creativity if you want to be distinctive and successful. In the present day world of work, working creatively means looking at issues and trying to see beyond the problems to what opportunities might also be available. It also means working innovatively, both on your own and with others, and it means being able to solve problems using creative thinking approaches.
One of the core tools that we believe complements all of the above and which we include on almost all of our programmes is Mind Mapping. We do this because Mind Mapping helps people to access all the information and knowledge they need, because it helps them to see the big picture and plan for the future and because it facilitates a more creative decision making process.
The most practical way to learn how to Mind Map® is on one of our courses and workshops. Before that you may want to start thinking about how you might apply this tool with challenges your team is facing, with projects you are on and with presentations you have to make. Of course on our training we’ll introduce you to many of the ways you can use Mind mapping as an essential thinking tool, and we don’t think that smart working gets much more practical and productive than this.
(Read more about Mind Mapping at http://www.illumine.co.uk/assimilate/mindmapping.html)
Thinking skill 2: Learn how to eliminate overload
If you are beleaguered by constant streams of information and data, then you simply have to find ways to tackle this ‘infoglut’. But how do you work smarter with information? It’s not so difficult and here are the four essential skills that you need to work on.
Develop your assessment skills. You need a ruthless way of assessing what you’ve been sent so that you can either ditch it, delegate it or take action on it. Learn how to make an initial evaluation by looking for the big picture, noting the ground the document is covering and assessing its value to you or others. Your job in your assessment mode is to get a sense of what the big ideas are in any document and decide whether they have any relevance for you.
Deepen your understanding. The assessment aspect of working smarter with information can probably rid you of 90% of the material you get sent. But what about the rest? Skills like skimming and scanning can identify information or knowledge that is particularly interesting and allow you to focus not on the whole document but on the specific pieces which you need to read and digest.
Speed-read the rest. Once you have identified the key papers, reports or documents that you need for your job or career, then you need the skills of speed-reading. Don’t think that speed-reading equates with any deterioration of understanding. The opposite is true. With speed-reading there’s no back tracking, you pick up fast on the logic of the argument and there is far less room for interruptions. In this sense it’s a brilliant way of getting to the heart of any document in the shortest time.
Capture your knowledge. Finally use Mind Mapping to help you capture and code the key knowledge that you’ve mined so successfully, making it memorable and easy to access for later recall.
(Read more at www.illumine.co.uk/assimilate.html)
Thinking skill 3: Think on your feet
What managers and leaders have to do more than ever when times are tough is engage their colleagues, their clients and their teams more powerfully.
An example of a leader who recently demonstrated this ability to reach out and talk more persuasively was David Cameron at his first party conference. Instead of standing behind his lectern and delivering a well-honed script he went off-piste, came to the front of the stage and spoke to his audience without notes. His reason? He recognised that he needed to get rid of the obstacles that stood between him and his party so that he might become more visible, more spontaneous and more inspiring.
So how can you achieve a similar result in your meetings and presentations? In essence you need to:
- Find the right theme for your audience.
- Structure your talk so that it delivers that theme persuasively.
- Monitor and adapt to listeners’ reactions as you speak.
This approach makes engagement very straightforward. The structure allows you to be persuasive. It ensures that you impose order on the mass of information you have at your disposal and it allows you to get your proposition across by focusing only on those issues that matter most.
(Read more at www.illumine.co.uk/communicate/verbal-communication.html)
Thinking skill 4: Cut through the bull
Did you know that only 10-15% of what people write in their proposals, reports, letters, emails and brochures ever gets read. Why so little? Well unfortunately jargon, gobbledegook and just plain bad English often gets in the way of the best intentions.
We know that it doesn’t have to be this way and our simple three step programme, Writing Dynamics, helps people both work out much faster what message their audience needs to hear and also ensures that the quality of their writing is transformed.
So what do you need to learn and practise to be a smart writer? Here, in outline, are the three steps that this one day programme can help you with:
- Planning. Professional writers spend more than twice the amount of time in planning compared to non-professional writers. Why? Because it helps them gather their ideas and information and because it helps stimulate creative thinking. It also encourages the writer to consider the needs of his or her audience.
- The quick draft. The drafting stage of writing should take only about 25% of your time because you know in advance what you are going to say and what structure to follow. But, in addition to saving time, this ability to complete a quick draft is hugely helpful for people who need to bring more flow and energy to their writing.
- Editing. Once you have drafted your document then you are ready for the most important step of all – editing. Invariably this means cutting down on your text. You may think that you have a thousand important things to say but the effectiveness of your communication is measured not by what you know, but by what your reader takes in and understands. Editors know this and that is why they are so ruthless with their red pen!
(Read more at www.illumine.co.uk/communicate/written-communication.html)
Thinking skill 5: Build consensus fast
Poor decision-making is killing us. What is needed in today’s world is a way of teams making decisions where the solutions proposed are acceptable and owned by everyone concerned. This way of working is called consensus decision-making. It’s a way of empowering people, a way of mining the collective intelligence of a group and a way of reaching the best decision a team or group can make.
This is a process that needs to be facilitated by a manager or a trainer who understands that high performing groups operate from a basis of security, openness, trust and mutual support. It requires the facilitator to help the team develop a future, a vision or a goal around which they are united. It also requires them to garner the commitment from the team to hear everyone’s perspectives in order to build team ownership of whatever decision is made.
This is a smart skill indeed. The facilitator or manager working with this approach has to ensure that everyone understands what problem they are trying to resolve. The facilitator needs to ensure that everyone contributes their ideas, knowledge, insights and questions so that every issue is explored. They have to find a balance between the drive people bring, taking the group forward at pace to reach consensus without restricting the space needed for people to feel able to express their ideas and opinions.
This may seem like a lot for a facilitator or a manager to be thinking about – but like any new skill it can be learned and the benefits are extraordinary. Not only are the best decisions reached but by using this approach you help a team to work with pace and purpose.
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Mind Map® and Mind Maps® are trademarks of the Buzan Organisation.
Tags: Creativity and Innovation, Engage your listeners, Engagement and Motivation, Facilitation Skills, Information Overload, NYE 2008 - Developing & Motivating People, Retraining/New skills, Written Communication