Author Archives: Michelle

  1. TRUST – the reality of this Company/Personal ‘Value’

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    When was the last time someone betrayed your trust?  I bet you remember it clearly.  You will have experienced a series of emotions – first of all hurt then maybe anger, shock, frustration, annoyance at having trusted in the first place or maybe even pity that the person/organization was put in that position in the first place due to unforeseen circumstances. Whatever the emotional reaction there will have been some change in behaviour, however minute.  As a result you may have decided –

    • Never to trust that person/organization again
    • Seek revenge or retaliate in some way
    • Carry on but tread carefully
    • Tell everyone you know this person/organization can’t be trusted in an attempt to protect your circle of employees, friends etc.

    Outcome vs Value

    So what happened?  In his excellent article of 23rd March 2023 Payton Shand advocates that Trust should be an outcome not a value.  He argues that everything the company/person does should be geared towards building trust.  Trusting without first testing the water would appear to be rather foolish and can catch us out.

    It’s probably true to say that we formulate our approach to trust based on our own perception of it – “I wouldn’t do it so don’t expect anyone else to” which can be open to mis-interpretation and mis-understanding.

    Often trust is broken when a more important value comes into play.  We see this in governments all the time in the form of broken manifestos and in companies when profit is threatened.

    Organisational values

    Companies often pride themselves in including ‘Trust’ or ‘Trustworthiness’ in their company values but what does it actually mean?  The question to ask is ‘if I was to walk round your organization and see everyone behaving in a trustworthy manner, what would that look like?’  Trust me to do what exactly?

    • Get to work on time?
    • Meet deadlines and targets?
    • Not to overspend on budget?
    • Be kind and considerate to my colleagues?
    • Always own up when something goes wrong?
    • Keep my word?
    • Keep the office surroundings tidy?
    • Call out inappropriate behaviour?

    Trustworthiness will very definitely mean different things to different people and will almost certainly be called out when another value takes over.  Define it clearly and make it an outcome not a value!

     

    Pat Hutchinson, Quadrant 1 International Ltd  pat@quadrant1.com

  2. Harrison Assessments – The Perfect Partner for NLP!

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    The aspect of NLP I love most is its ethos of treating everyone as an individual – no boxes, no labels no norms!   Such freedom to develop excellence!

    As the owner of Quadrant 1 International I have integrated NLP into my leadership and management trainings and executive coaching in large national and international organisations for the past 23 years working with companies such as Associated British Foods, Network Rail, Specsavers, B & Q, Dunelm, Farmcare Ltd, The co-operative Society, XPO Logistics, Wincanton, as well as running open NLP Practitioner and Master Practitioner programmes.  I am also the author of ‘How to Sell with NLP’ and co-author of Brilliant NLP, The Brilliant NLP Workbook and How to Be Confident with NLP all published by Pearson Education.

    Why Harrison is different

    I first came across Harrison Assessments as a coaching tool about 17 years ago, having been introduced to it by a highly respected colleague. To my surprise I found that, unlike some other assessments, it fits well into the NLP ethos of individuality working with behavioural preferences rather than personality.

    Harrison is an assessment that is easy to understand, highly accurate and based on 30+ years of research by Dr Dan Harrison, into what makes people successful in their work.  He discovered two basic principles –

    • People who enjoy 75% of what they do are more likely to be successful and attract other successful people to them – hence enjoyment theory.
    • That two seemingly paradoxical traits can work together to create success and flexibility – hence paradox theory.

    Dr Harrison realised that that these two principles had much more relevance to working success than personality alone.   Imagine a workplace of fulfilled engaged people, attracting other fulfilled engaged people and creating a creative, productive culture.

    Objective not Subjective

    A 20-minute online SmartQuestionnaire™ gathers invididual’s responses objectively, not subjectively, to provide highly accurate data across behavioural traits, competencies and preferences: ‘BEHAVIOURAL DNA’.

    5 ways Harrison differs from other assessments and why it fits so well with NLP

    1. No judgements, no labels, no boxes. Simply a unique picture of an individual’s behavioural preferences at that time
    2. This individuality fits with the NLP Pre-Supposition of “Respect others’ maps of the world” – who is to say who is right, and who is wrong? We get to work with usefulness alone.
    3. No two data sets are the same – completely bespoke to each individual; “you will never meet your double!”
    4. Developing paradoxical behavioural patterns can help to develop flexibility – “the person with the most flexibility controls the system”
    5. It offers a starting point to identify areas to offer NLP change methodology according to what may bring most benefit to the individual at the time

     

    If you would like to try the Assessment please email pat@quadrant1.com or call 07768 922244 if you would like to know more about adding Harrison Assessments to your NLP coaching toolkit. You can also leave us your details and we will contact you.

  3. What do you do with your time?

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    I often get asked to run time management courses.  Managing time should be easy – write a list of things to do and get on and do them.  So what gets in the way?

    Take a look at this Paradox graph –

    image of the overview page of a Paradox Harrison Assessment report for the avatar Andrew Jones showing the 12 Paradox graphs

    Harrison Assessment Paradox report

     

    The Harrison Assessment Paradox report explores 12 paradoxical pairs of behaviours, or behaviours which can appear as seemingly opposite. Each of the Paradox graphs has 4 quadrants which demonstrate the potential effects of the balance between the two behaviours.

    Every individual will have their own unique set of Paradox patterns; this is a sample report, against an avatar named Andrew Jones. His patterns are indicated by the red dots with the shading around, and the hurricanes, which demonstrate behaviour under stress.

    Look at the 12 graphs in the report and the 4 quadrants of each graph…

    Ask yourself what do people in each quadrant spend their time doing?

    Here are just a few examples –

    Insightful Curiosity

    (top left)

    High Open Reflective, low Certain – people spend their time going round the loop of asking for more opinions/ideas before forming an opinion.  This can appear fluffy and indecisive.  The opposite, however, may have an equally detrimental effect – people who are sure of their ideas and don’t engage with other viewpoints often spend time mopping up the mess.

    Instinctive Logic

    (top middle)

    High Analytics low Intuitive – someone with this pattern may spend inordinate amounts of time collecting data even when a similar task has been completed before.

    Opportunity Management

    (top right)

    High Analyses Pitfalls low Risking – people get bogged down with all the things that could go wrong, stay in their comfort zone and may spend their time using old methodologies rather than risk a new one.  The opposite ie, high Risking low Analyses Pitfalls – can result in more time spent unpicking when things go wrong.

     Self-Actualisation

    (2nd row left)

    High Self-Acceptance low Self Improvement – these people can spend time defending and justifying their  own point of view from those who query it.  The opposite – Low Self-Acceptance high Self improvement – these people can spend time beating themselves up for all the things that went wrong/could have gone better and are unlikely to recognize their achievements.

    Combination patterns

    If you look at each of these combinations of paradoxical traits in turn its not difficult to see how people spend their time.  Individual Paradoxes can also interrelate between each other to create further patterns of behaviour.

    One pattern which is particularly significant is a combination of high Warmth and Empathy (Coaching Mindset paradox) and high Helpful (Equity Mindset paradox). These people spend so much time looking after others, doing their jobs for them etc they often put their own jobs second.  They also invariably end up with no time to consider strategic planning in the Opportunity Management paradox (top right).

     

    If you would like to know more about the Harrison Paradox approach and how patterns can help or hinder success do get in touch. pat@quadrant1.com

    Pat Hutchinson, Quadrant 1 International Ltd

  4. Harrison Assessments wins Silver award

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    The Brandon Hall Group Excellence in Technology Awards

    Harrison Assessments wins Brandon Hall Group Silver award for excellence in the Best Advance in Technology for the Remote Workforce

    Harrison Assessments wins Silver

    Harrison Assessments are proud to have been acknowledged with a coveted Brandon Hall Silver Award for excellence in the Best Advance in Technology for the Remote Workforce category.

    We are honored to be recognized for our Remote Work Behavioral Competencies which reveal key behaviors needed for remote workers and leaders who manage remote workers to be successful. This advanced functionality provides real-time data that enables targeted development on both a group and individual level for a personalized approach to development.

    Dr Dan Harrison, CEO.

    Proud to be associated

    As Managing Partner for Harrison Assessments UK, I am again proud to be associated with the winning of this prestigious award.  Harrison Assessment Talent Solutions offers a one stop, highly accurate approach to talent solutions based on what makes people successful in the workplace and this recognition is so valuable.

    Previous accolades

    In 2022 Brandon Hall Group, the leader in Empowering, Recognizing, and Certifying Excellence in HCM, announced that Harrison Assessments was certified as a Smartchoice® Preferred Solution Provider, confirming that Harrison Assessments delivers the most accurate and effective assessment tools in the industry.

    In 2014, Harrison Assessments achieved the Silver Award in the category for Best Advance in Succession Management Technology and Tools in the Future of Work Awards for it’s work on Assessment Based Recruiting Campaign Management.

    Know more

    You can read the full recent Silver Award press release here and you can read our previous post on Remote Working Analytics here.

    If you would like to know more about how this unique approach to talent solutions can support your organisation do get in touch.

     

    Pat Hutchinson, Quadrant 1 International Ltd  pat@quadrant1.com

  5. Is that meeting really necessary?

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    Making Your Meetings Matter - CareerPlug

    Several years ago I worked with an organisation who called their UK sales reps into a meeting every Monday morning to report on the previous week.  There were at least 30 and each one had to contribute.  They were allowed to take their laptops into the meeting so the practice was for each rep to continue working whilst waiting for their turn to speak.  Effectively no-one except the Sales Director was actually listening to each presentation.  Add up the cost of all these salaries, the travel costs and the cost of lost time potentially speaking with customers and this was an extremely expensive exercise.

    Of course, things have changed now – the pandemic has probably been responsible for the explosion in on-line meetings which of course are less time consuming and require less travel.  Commendable for all sorts of reasons.  So why is it I still hear of people switching off the camera, carrying on with emails, eating their breakfast and, in one case, going to take a bath while the meeting is in progress?

    Regular meetings usually lose their flavour after a while and become a chore.  I’ve even heard people say ‘Crikey we’ve got XYZ meeting coming up – what are we going to talk about?’  What a complete waste of everyone’s time!

    Making Meetings Valuable

    The best way to evaluate your proposed meeting is to use the Alignment model as follows –

    Purpose

    What is this meeting for? What do you want people to DO as a result?  If it is just information dumping then send them a report, a spec, product release notes or something else – don’t waste their time in a meeting with all the associated costs.

    Identity/Role

    Who needs to be there and what role are they playing – facilitator, action taker, expert, learner, explorer.  If people don’t have a role to play don’t invite them – they will thank you for it!  Equally if you get invited to a meeting where you have no perceived role then have the courage to ask if its necessary for you to be there and what role you will be expected to play.

    Values/Beliefs

    Is this meeting important and, if so, what is important about it and to whom?  What do you believe about the outcomes?  Are they positive beliefs or negative?  If negative can you reframe them into something positive and look for the possibilities so that you don’t arrive at the meeting as a ‘naysayer’?

    Capability

    If the stated outcomes for the meeting are agreed upon do you and the organisation have the capability to carry them through?  If not what’s missing and how are you going to fill the gap?  Do you have the resources to do so?

    Behaviour

    If you achieve this outcome what behavioural changes would you expect to see in the organisation or team?  Are these acceptable and do they add value to the organisation?

    Environment

    How would achieving this outcome impacted not only your immediate environment,  but that of the team, the organisation and even possibly the community?

    Taking these few simple steps before setting up a meeting will help you to –

    • Stay focused
    • Maintain employee engagement
    • Cut costs
    • Achieve outcomes
    • Free up time

    Happy meeting!

    > > DOWNLOAD A FREE PDF OF THE Q1 MEETINGS ALIGNMENT MODEL < <

    Pat Hutchinson, Quadrant 1 International Ltd  pat@quadrant1.com

    PS – When you try this approach, please do write to me and let me know of your successes!  I look forward to hearing from you.

Quadrant 1 International