Mindful life, mindful work

In my spare time I practice yoga. I by no means claim that I’m an expert at it. I certainly can’t stick my foot behind my head or anything like that (I’ve only ever seen pictures of people doing that). I don’t think you can ever be an expert at yoga. The philosophy of yoga is the continual practice, like life really, we’re continually practicing, learning and making adjustments.

For me, yoga is about taking time out of a busy life to just focus. I’ve done more conventional forms of yoga before, but these days I practice Bikram yoga. That’s the one that you get all hot and sweaty in a room with like 20+ other people. When I tell people I do this they ask me if I’m mad. Why would you want to go into a room that hot for 90 minutes and sweat? Isn’t that really unpleasant?

Some parts of life are unpleasant too. But what Bikram teaches is that if you can survive and focus in the yoga room for 90 minutes, anything outside of the room is a piece of cake (and you burn enough kilojoules that you can have a piece of cake without guilt – a pleasant side effect). For me that 90 minutes is both a challenge and a relaxation. Yoga is not just about the postures.

I’m reading a book at the moment that is written by a yoga practitioner, Donna Farhi. The book is called ‘Bringing Yoga to Life’. It’s not airy-fairy, which I like. I think the whole book has lessons that can be translated into the workplace, but I’ll discuss one chapter from it for now. Chapter 5 talks about slowing down, “when we overwork, when we try and fit too many things into an already congested schedule, when we rush from place to place, we lose track of what is important”.

Now I’m guilty of trying to shove too much into a busy life, but I’m practicing. But I also, and often, hear from managers who tell me they have no time to do things, they don’t have time to do their job, no time to talk to their staff, no time to read a book or stop and think. You don’t need to be a yogi (or even a wannabe yogi) to practice slowing down. Will slowing down mean you get less done? Maybe. But taking regular time to reflect gives you opportunities to consider what is important. It’s basic time management really, focus on what is most important and gets the most results – you need time to think about what these are.

I often talk to managers about taking time out to reflect as part of their leadership development. There is a great book on this called ‘The Mindful Leader’ by Michael Carroll that draws on Buddhist principles in a leadership development context. Like yoga, leadership is all about practice, self-awareness and reflection. I do an exercise with leaders on self-reflection, which, the first time I did it, I thought they were all going to tell me I was barmy. But they went along. They simply sat, with their eyes closed on a pillow for 5 minutes while listening to some peaceful music. The first time I did this one of the participants jumped up at the end of the 5 minutes and starting writing things down – ideas had just come to her in that quiet space. The second time I did it most of the participants said they wished it was longer – they didn’t usually get time to sit quietly and it was nice.

It is easy to say we don’t have time to sit quietly, to relax, to meditate, to think, but it’s important, we just need to practice. We may never become experts at slowing down, but the simple act of considering what is important in our lives and our work is the first step, we just need to keep practicing, learning and making adjustments. Because the focus that comes as a result is worth it.

Learning by discovery

My ideas for my blog seem to come at the last minute. This week I was struggling for an idea, mostly because I was slightly distracted: checking every 5mins to see if my thesis result has been published; surfing modcloth.com (an awesome clothing website, think Zooey Deschanel); and, looking at Mac accessories to pimp out my home office. Oh yeah, and working of course. My inspiration for this blog came from a webinar I attended today that used analogies from angry birds, Farmville and Facebook to discuss performance reviews.

If I’m ever going to be accused of product worship, it’s going to be because I think Sonar6 is just awesome (they’re the guys that organized the webinar). Their product is cool and so is the way they approach performance reviews. However, its not the way they approached performance reviews that struck me, because that is already my mantra (read my other blogs).

They used a phrase, ‘learning by discovery’. I’m pretty sure they were using this term in the context of system design. Sonar6 is a performance review application that is designed in a way that training is not necessary (usually). People can discover how to use it. However, ‘learning by discovery’ has other implications for me, similar to, but outside of, the context in which Sonar6 was using it.

‘Learning by discovery’, to me, means the design of learning systems that are self-intuitive. It has much wider scope than classroom learning. It could be e-learning systems, where participants are guided through the learning experience. It could be the use of social media to gather information. It could be learning through experience. I’ve already blogged about some of the articles by Charles Jennings and the 70/20/10 model, ‘learning by discovery’ sits in the same context.

‘Learning by discovery’ is an individual and self-motivated experience. It is not as straight forward as slapping a workshop into a business to facilitate learning. It is about shaping individuals to embark on their own learning journey. It is about developing learning through an organic process. The underlying business culture needs to underpin this. This is more difficult to articulate, deliver and measure than traditional learning and development. How do we facilitate this kind of culture?

We need to think more out of the box then traditional learning and development. There is a lot of buzz about e-learning being the new fangled thing in learning design, however, ‘learning by discovery’ is such an interesting and relatively untapped avenue.

A review of 'Tribes' by Seth Godin

I was sorting out some of the books on my book shelf at work this week and had put a couple aside on my desk to take home. My colleague, the brilliant copy-writer Tanja Gardner, remarked on walking past my desk that I was reading Seth Godin. My response was more “huh?’ rather than “oh yeah, Seth Godin”. Apparently he’s quite big in the blogging world. So I have quite obviously been hiding under a blogging rock. I had started reading this book some time ago and never actually finished it. So I set myself a mission this week, to finish the book and write a blog review about it. So here goes.

Structurally speaking the book is written very much like a blog. It’s a whole lot of little stories, descriptions and anecdotes loosely woven together, with no standard intro, body, conclusion, or chapters to it. But it’s rather fitting considering the context of the book, challenging the status quo, and is by no means hard or lengthy to read.

The book centers on leadership with the encouragement to break new ground and to innovate. It is about inciting a movement that challenges how things are done, and doing what others say is impossible.  It bought to mind a poem my grandfather used to have stuck to the wall in his office, a poem that has been ingrained in my head for years now. One of the verses goes like this:

Somebody said that it couldn't be done
but he with a chuckle replied,

That "maybe it couldn't,"

But he would be one
who wouldn't say so till he'd tried.

So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
on his face,

If he worried he hid it.

He started to sing as he tackled the thing


That couldn't be done, and he did it.

I value this philosophy. A project that has been one of the highlights of my career so far, a management training program aligned to NZQA unit standards was met with a lot of “you can’t do that”, “it’s impossible” comments early on. My response was “bugger you lot” and I went ahead and did it anyway. It was a great success in the end, well received by participants and my peers. Proves the point really.

‘Tribes’ appeals to me as a learning and development specialist. In my interpretation of the book, innovative movements are created through a vision, connections and no-limits. I see parallels with learning and development in the sense that the face of learning is changing. Learning is no longer about a trainer in a classroom dictating information. It is the sharing of a vision, and mutual collaboration of ideas, the breaking of new ground and learning better ways of doing things. Learning is not static, and the way we learn is not either. ‘Tribes’ illustrates a mantra for breaking the traditional L&D mold.

Seth’s final request in this book is to spread the word. So here is me spreading the word. “Life is too short to be mediocre”. If there is even a shred in you that wants to be something more than mediocre then read this book, because you’re a leader, and we need you.

Performance conversations: the way to learn

A thought has been congealing in my mind lately that performance conversations and learning are interrelated. By performance conversations, I don’t just mean those ‘pain in the bum’ formal processes. I’ll term those ‘performance reviews’ from here on in. By performance conversations, I mean continual and regular conversations between a manager and an employee about their progress and ongoing development. I can’t stress enough that these conversations are often glossed over for ‘more important’ operational concerns. But these conversations are integral to ongoing employee development and ultimately performance. Therefore managers play a crucial role in ongoing learning and development.

Much of the reading I have been doing recently points to trends in learning and development towards more ‘on the job’ learning, as opposed to workshop/classroom training. Case in point, the approach of Charles Jennings who discusses the 70/20/10 reference model. To summarize, the 70/20/10 model refers to 70% of learning occurring through experience, 20% through other people and 10% through structured courses and programmes.

I enjoyed the articles I read by Charles Jennings, firstly, because of his writing style. He uses Alice in Wonderland quotes to help explain key concepts. My hen’s party recently involved a mad hatter’s tea party, so I found the reference to Alice in an L&D context amusing and engaging. However, at the same time, his writing is professional and well justified. My little blog is put to shame, but I want to keep practicing so that one day my writing is as eloquent. Secondly, Much of Charles’s approach centers on leadership (I tend to use the terms ‘leadership’ and ‘management’ interchangeably sometimes and that’s because I believe management should contain an element of leadership) as integral participants and facilitators of learning and development. If you’d like to read the full articles you can find them at www.internettimealliance.com

Of course, if you’ve read my blog before, you’ll already know that I’m a big supporter of the ownership of HR functions (and that includes L&D) being held by management.  Their role is to facilitate opportunities for learning and development, either through their contribution to the company culture or providing opportunities for self-directed learning.

I love the concept of the 70/20/10 model. Experiential learning is how skills are applied in the work place, skills that ultimately lead to performance improvements. To be quite blunt, training sessions, classroom sessions, and workshops don’t achieve much aside from time out of the office, unless they are backed up by robust opportunities for application.

But how do you change or influence ingrained leadership styles that are still holding on to traditional models of learning and development? Those that pass it over to the L&D specialist to come up with a quick fix that requires the leader/manager to be hands off. One way is to leverage off performance conversations and this is not just the realm of the formal ‘performance review’. 

Why do you avoid performance reviews?

This week’s blog is a little shorter because I’m moving house and my priorities are temporarily readjusted. Which is ironic because the topic I’m going to discuss is often brushed aside for other priorities. But, don’t worry; I am going to give this topic the justice it deserves in further blogs.

Performance reviews are those quarterly, bi-annual, or quarterly discussions a manager and employee have about how the employee is tracking against their objectives and/or competencies. However, having conversations about performance is one of those things that managers are reluctant to do. You whack an ‘enforced’ formal review in there and the perception of an onerous process intensifies. The reality is that no one gets enthusiastic about doing them; they are often left to the very last possible minute and then done very reluctantly.

If you’re having performance conversations regularly then the formal review process should not be so onerous. You’re really just recapping on stuff that you’ve already talked about and recording it. They shouldn’t be difficult or time consuming, maybe 15-20mins long. That’s in an ideal world.

I once did a ‘formal’ performance review in 5mins, but that was because I was having regular conversations with that person about their performance, or in this case it was under performance. Quite frankly, the experience put me off ever wanting to manage someone again. No one likes to have difficult conversations week after week, let alone once a year or once a quarter.

So it’s not uncommon to avoid or procrastinate the formal performance review. I’d like to hear from both sides of the fence, from both employees and managers. Why do you avoid or procrastinate doing performance reviews? Or, if you're enthusiastic about performance reviews, why?