How does responsibility affect your staff?

Your staff that take on too much responsibility need to be refocused and those that seem to duck and dive around it, need to learn to be more responsible.

You will have, in your staff compliment, at least one person who seems to never get their work done by 5pm, who readily takes on new tasks, who will help out others while their work falls behind, who will seem stressed almost all of the time and might even be heading for burnout.

These people are what we call ‘hyper-responsible' and sometimes, as managers, you unwittingly fuel this fire.

When you have an important document you need to get out or a client who needs to be contacted, there is a strong chance that you ask this ‘hyper-responsible' person to help you out.

You do this because you know that they will get the job done. What you should be doing is helping them avoid these additional tasks because you are reinforcing their sense of responsibility which can create burnout.

Burnout is when your usual coping mechanisms start to fail.

To Do

1. Refocus this person back to what is important.
2. Help them to identify where they are taking on unnecessary responsibility.
3. Encourage them to evaluate new responsibilities before agreeing to them.
4. Reinforce that saying ‘no' sometimes is acceptable.
5. Stop asking them to perform extra tasks.
6. Look for staff who seem to ask others for help often and engage them in additional responsibilities.
7. Develop your team holistically by developing responsibility in those who lack it and helping the hyper-responsible staff to refocus.

These are 2 very different concepts within the realm of recognition.

Some of us need more acceptance than acknowledgement while others prefer it the other way around. If your need for recognition is not as well managed as it could be then you might find yourself craving feedback in your preferred format more than is probably necessary.

If you need acknowledgment then you need people to look at what you have achieved and respond about that achievement. You need people to acknowledge what you have done. This applies to everyone from children in pre-school all the way through adulthood.

If you need acceptance then when you take your achievements to someone, whether it is your spouse, friend, boss or parents then what you are looking for is for them to recognise that you have done well and that they ‘accept’ you.

This is an important distinction for a manager because when you are managing your team you need to know what their needs are. This knowledge helps you to motivate each individual correctly and it helps you to encourage them to manage any excess need for with or the 2 forms of personal recognition.

1. Identify which is the 2 personal recognition options the person is looking for.
2. Acknowledgement: “I am pleased/impressed/happy with the work that you have done on this project”
3. Acceptance: “The work that you have done on this project makes me pleased/impressed/happy with you.”
4. Never be automatic in your praise.
5. Everyone needs both, we just respond better to a little more of what we really need.

 

When we attend a learning programme, we arrive hoping that what we learn will be interesting and will help us to perform our functions more effectively. If we are lucky, our staff also hope for this.

As a manager, we can influence the learning and the application back in the workplace through a couple of simple techniques and interactions.

There are 5 specific interactions you could engage in with your employees so that you receive the maximum amount of return for the days that they are out of the work place.

Step 1 - Understand the learning

You need to have a clear understanding of the knowledge and skills that your staff will be exposed to on the training, specifically the purpose of the training, the specific areas that will be covered and the expectations that the learning has of the learner.

Step 2 - Engage in a pre-discussion

Start the interaction by entering into a one-on-one discussion with your staff member in order to engage them on the topic, prepare them for the learning and establish expectations for application of learning.

Step 3 - Conduct a post-course discussion

When your staff member has completed the training, this is the most important discussion you will have with them. Establish their interpretation of what they have learnt and use that to embed expectations.

Step 4 - Set out the Action Plan

From your post-course discussion you will be able to identify together what the immediate development opportunities are. By setting out an action plan you will be able to set in motion the application of learning.

Step 5 - Implement the Action Plan

As a manager you will need some critical coaching skills to be able to coach for improved performance. Implementation of the coaching action plan is set over a number of formal sessions and dotted with informal coaching to enhance the individual's abilities.

For more information on this 5 step process, send an email to lauren@ctd.co.za

The use of PowerPoint has changed from being a useful tool into ‘Death by PowerPoint'. The main reason is that, while it is a very useful presentation tool, in its standard template form it has been overused and even abused.

Here are some quick tips to help you use PowerPoint to support your presentation and some new ideas that will show you off rather than over shadow you.

 

1. Content

• Too much is bad. When you catch your audience reading your slides then you have too much content. As soon as they are focused on your slides they are not focused on you and what you are saying. Your audience will assume that your slide show is important because you have gone to the trouble to produce it, so if you have lots of information and long sentences on a slide they will read it all. If they are reading then they are not listening, not good.
• Too little. Minimal is the aim of the game these days but make sure that what you have on your slides supports what you are saying. It should get your audience hooked and interested to listen more. See the article PowerPoint – what it should look like.
• Moving text is bad. More often than not it is distracting and all too often we think we have set the timing just right but it never works. You'll end up waiting longer to make your point as you wait for the swivel or the fly-by to end.
• Reading your points is bad. Never use statements in your slides that you can't say in another way during your presentation. Don't leave your audience thinking that they could have read your presentation and skipped you out.
• Font size is important. If you are using text then make sure your headings are between 36 and 44. Set them up so that they are easily read as headings and don't use too many headings on one slide. Your points should be between 24 and 32, bigger is better because then everyone can read it and it stops you from putting too much on one slide.

2. Setup

• Repeat your last slide about 3 times. This is a great tip to ensure that if you accidentally move past your last slide it doesn't end your presentation and take you back to the programme.
• Have a simple last slide. By having a clean slide at the end you can have this up while you take questions if you need to. This helps to keep your audience focused because there is still something going on. Turning off your presentation signals the end and if you want questions you'll be hard pressed to get people to want to stay.
• Play around with the features beforehand. There are many features in PowerPoint that can help you to use your slides more efficiently during your presentation.
• Turn the pointer off. After the slide show has started press Ctrl-H, to bring it back press A.
• Go to any slide at any time, immediately. Get to know your slide numbers or print a collapsed version, then to go to any slide just hit that slides number and press enter.
• A black screen. This is useful when you want your audience to focus on you. To get a solid black screen, press B on your keyboard (to go back to your presentation, press B again). To get a solid white screen, press W (to get your slide back, press W again).

There are a number of free tutorials you can take online that will help you to set up your presentation. But remember these key points:

• Just because it is new to you doesn't mean it is new to your audience.
• Make sure that your slide show has a purpose.
• Make sure that your slide show supports you rather than you supporting it.
• Be careful of standard Clipart and Word Art, it has all been done before.
• Create a show that strengthens your strengths and supports your weaknesses.
• If you are great at telling stories then use some slides that kick start a story and highlights' the points.
• If you are new at presentations then use your slides as your prompt and to give you flow.
• If you're not creative ask for help. Even a financial presentation can be exciting if you use the right visuals and the right combination of elements.

 

Free online guides to PowerPoint

http://presentationsoft.about.com/

http://presentationsoft.about.com/od/powerpoint101/a/begin_guide.htm

http://www.abanet.org/lpm/lpt/articles/slc08051.html

 

"Simplicity means the achievement of maximum effect with minimum means."
- Dr. Koichi Kawana

Visually, your slides are important to ensure that your audience sees what you want them to see. From colour, to pictures, everything can be important and can change how your audience interacts with your message.

1. More can be expressed with less.
2. Never use more (colour) when less will do.
3. Omit useless details to expose the essence.
4. Careful use of light-dark is important for creating clarity and contrast.
5. Use colour with a clear purpose and informed intention.
6. Clear contrast, visual suggestion, and subtlety can exist harmoniously in one composition.
7. In all things: balance, clarity, harmony, simplicity.
8. What looks easy is hard (but worth it).

1. Colour

Using colour is a science and an art and something that masters study for years, but here are some pieces of wisdom that could help you to create a great colour balance so that your message is loud and clear.

Secret Tip – Change your slide to grayscale and see if it packs the same punch. Contracts is very important in highlighting what you want to stand out, in this example below you can see how in colour it all seems bright and contrasting, but in grayscale the colours are not that different.

Applying the lessons to the common slide

Below are two different designs of the same simple bar chart. If we remove the hues by changing the slides to grayscale we can then see the luminance values and the contrast — or lack of contrast — between light and dark areas of the slide.

ABOVE The first "colorful" slide is not only a bit unpleasant to look at, it's not clear what part of the chart is emphasized. If we change it to grayscale, the bars for USA and UK look almost the same. For those with some form of colorblindness, it may be unclear which bar is being emphasized, if any. In such a simple chart this may not be a big problem, but for more complex charts this lack of clarity will be an issue.

ABOVE The orange used in the first slide clearly emphasizes the top bar. When turned to grayscale, the difference in value still makes it clear which bar was emphasized (although the bottom three have more contrast, the top bar is clearly different). Again, with such a simple chart, it may not seem like the biggest thing in the world to get right. But it all matters. And for more complex information graphics, it is essential that we use light and dark effectively.

Exerpt taken from http://www.presentationzen.com/

2. Pictures

Think visually about ideas you want to present. One key way to do this is to start paying attention to the words or phrases that you use to describe your ideas. If you hear words or phrases that describe relationships, such as “when this… then …”, “subordinate”, or “component parts”, you should be thinking diagram. If you are telling a story, describing a place or event, or referring to a person, use a photograph. The same goes for graphs, charts and screen shots. It is not easy at first, but once you start paying attention, you will start to see the visual potential in many ideas.

People remember pictures so find artwork that tells a story all by itself which will allow you to lead into your story.

An Inconvenient Truth – did you see the PowerPoint Presentation Al Gore used?

Lesson: Visuals Rule

One thing you will notice as you watch Al Gore's presentation is that most of his slides have no text on them, they are visuals. There is a mix of photographs, diagrams, data graphs and added video clips in the movie. When he does use a slide with text on it, there is very little text compared to the typical text overloaded corporate presentation slide. And many of his visuals, especially the graphs, use motion to make the point clear.

 

Lesson: Direct the Audience to Your Point

When you watch Mr. Gore present in the movie, he has a small screen close by that he will use to point to a part of the image to focus the audience's attention on the key point of the visual. He also sometimes walks over to the large screen and motions towards a part of the visual. In both cases he is demonstrating that a visual by itself is not sufficient to make your point. You must direct the attention of the audience to the specific part of the visual that illustrates the point you are making. You can do it physically like Mr. Gore does, but a sometimes even more effective technique is to build callout boxes or arrows on the slide that have the same effect of directing attention to a certain spot. A common technique used by many presenters is to use a laser pointer. This is a bad idea. It is almost impossible for many people to see the small red dot on a large screen and when they do find it, you won't be able to keep it steady and it will be annoyingly jiggling around while you speak. Build callouts on visuals to emphasize the points for your audience.

For more about what Al Gore does in his presentation take a look at this article .

 

"The designer must adhere to the concept of miegakure since Japanese believe that in expressing the whole the interest of the viewer is lost." — Dr. Koichi Kawana

 

It can be easier to learn what we should do when we know what we shouldn't be doing.

1. Overloading our audience with too much information
   
2. Using a slide for every part of our presentation
   
3. Doing a data dump
   
4. Not telling a story
   
5. Not helping the audience remember the points
   
6. Having too many, or too few, slides
   
7. Not being slick and crisp enough

Here are some things to keep in mind:

1. Clean and simple communication
   
2. Tell a story and inspire action
   
3. Increase their ability to remember
   
4. Prompt conversation