Listen to this, if you can.

Why don’t they teach children how to listen in school?

After all, they teach them how to write, how to read, how to count, and  how to present information.  Yet there are no lessons in listening.

The reason could be because formal teaching methods developed from an approach based on requiring the student to sit silently and absorbing information because this is the most efficient way to communicate from one person to a classroom full.  In other words, formal teaching is a broadcast medium. In the same way as we absorb information from the radio, were there is no possibility of a two-way dialogue.  In school, listening simply requires using ones ears to take in information.  It doesn’t mean to understand the person talking; it doesn’t mean taking into account their body language or intonation.  It doesn’t mean asking for clarification or checking for meaning.  All that is required with this approach to learning is to process words.

In the 19^th century schoolroom, when a child was told to listen it meant something very different to what we think of as listening today – active listening – but this difference has not been acknowledged or recognised.  “Listen to me” means “be quiet, I’m talking”, not, “understand and appreciate what I am saying and the meaning behind it.”

We have not recognised that what we mean by listening in the 21^st century, differs from what was meant by listening in the 19^th century.  Listening has evolved, but we have not evolved our method of teaching children to master this skill.

In the 19^th century listening was not a skill to be developed, it was naturally within the capability of anyone with a working pair of ears and a brain sufficiently developed to act upon the instructions or data it was receiving through those ears.

Children are now encouraged to explore the world in a much more active way: learning by experience, using kinaesthetics and questioning as well as the traditional listening and watching methods.   They therefore need to widen their capabilities of interpretation.  There is much more subtlety in the way information is made available and when they question people as part of the learning process they need to be able to interpret the answers they are given.  Language and communication is far less literal these days and so much of meaning is communicated other than through words. Listening requires more than the ability to use the ears.   It also requires use of the eyes, the heart and focused attention.

In the workplace many leaders fail to listen effectively; to be empathic and sensitive to the needs of those around them so that they may be able to support them.  Many managers simply don’t know how to listen to someone and let them know they have been heard.

This is partly because we are told (I use the word “told” deliberately) to deal in solutions, not problems.  Problems are to be  solved, minimised.  They are not to be accepted, lived with, acknowledged. We don’t dwell with problems, we don’t familiarise ourselves with them so we can truly understand their nature.  We glimpse them and then we remove them.

I think pace has something to do with this.  We don’t give enough time to truly listen to someone.  To let them really explore what it is that is troubling them.  We’re too busy so we try to give them solutions or encourage them to “cut to the chase”.  The chase isn’t the important bit.  It’s the process before the chase that is important.  Our stories are swiftly heading to “Once upon a time, the end”.  We’re losing the important stuff.  And that means that as individuals we don’t attend to what is troubling us, because we look weak if we do.  We ignore those worries, we sweep them under the carpet.

But it’s not just that.

It’s also because we simply don’t know how to do it.  If we teach our children to listen – properly listen so that they understand – then maybe the next generation will grow into a more patient, compassionate, understanding, tolerant, accepting people than we are.  And not just with others, but with themselves as well.

Why the Cadbury takeover is not so sweet

Look, there are many, many people in the world who have a far more sophisticated understanding of the machinations of big business than I have.  Still, I want to just make a small contribution to the debate from an angle I think is often overlooked.

I don’t much worry about who owns businesses. I don’t care if a company that was started from humble beginings in an East End market and grows to be one of the countries best loved brands then gets munched up by some American ogre or is carefully enveloped by a faceless, personality-free Scandinavian conglomerate. I do, however, worry about this thing called “shareholder value”.

Will Hutton has written about whether these mega-takovers really do deliver value after servicing all the debt that is required to fund the purchase.  He also talks in the article about culture clashes and the likelihood that the Cadbury’s staff and, more importantly, deep seated values, will be destroyed as Kraft bulldozes its way into their prize in order to extract as much short term return as possible so as to sate the screaming-infant like demands of those lenders and shareholders.

This is the significant point.  I said I don’t much care about what happens to companies. Like all living organisms they do what they do in order to survive. If they make a bad decision they must deal with it in whatever way seems best.  I have a faith in the self-regulatory nature of the market, to a point.

The thing I find myself more and more concerned with is the way shareholders demand short-term profit at the expense of sustained development.  Every year the company must report an improvement on the previous year and the share price must increase and/or dividends that outperform interest rates must be paid .

Managers know this and do whatever they can to deliver such results, and of course their bonuses depend on it.

What gets lost in all of this?  Not simply the values and culture of a business.  This isn’t just a case of nostalgia for a time, not so long gone, when companies saw themselves as providing a service to the community, society, the nation.  Organisations that were loved and trusted institutions.  Organisations that had something human about them.  It’s about what society has become.  Society is all about ME, NOW.  What my friend Aboodi Shabi  calls “The problem of Entitlement”. We feel we are entitled to whatever we want, immediately.  That goes for organisations too.  They no longer put customers before managers and shareholders.  Decisions are made not for the sake of all stakeholders, only the few that own and control it.

There’s a fairly new profession out there called “Customer Service”.  Why?  Because companies don’t care about their customers anymore so they employ teams of people to tell us how much they care.  In the past everybody who worked in a company delivered customer service.  Everybody cared about the customer.  In those days there would be just one or two people who took care of the trickle of complaints that were received every week, not an entire department.

This culture is crippling.  When companies perform badly the last thing that is needed is for value to be taken out of them to pay off the senior management with bonuses and the shareholders with dividends by selling off the assets or making staff redundant in order to temporarily inflate the cash balance.

What these companies need is for the leaders to focus on building the business and creating a solid financial base upon which it can go forward.  It needs cash to be retained and for the shareholders to be told they can’t have a payout this year because the business hasn’t earned them one.  It needs the share price to reflect the true value of the business, not to be artificially inflated by the cash that has been realised from the sale of key assets.  It needs a system where companies are nurtured by their managers and employees rather than raped by their owners and competitors.

It needs a different attitude to investment.  An attitude that does not demand a 5 times return for venture capitalists in half as many years thus requiring a strategy that may be totally at odds with a realistic plan for long term, healthy growth.

It needs an attitude that does not pander to institutional investors who push for a company to be sold in order to deliver a windfall that will then be re-invested in the next windfall potential simply in order to pump up the value of the pension fund they manage, because in the end, those pensioners will only be eating their own flesh: it’s their livelihoods and happy working lives that are destroyed in order to bolster those pension funds.  Their own pension funds! Except that a great chunk of THEIR money has been taken away by the pension funds to pay for the fund managers’ bonuses.

I’d like to see companies with the goal of being the best at what they do, of delivering real value to their customers and employees and not their shareholders and the fund managers who manipulate them.

Salary Negotiation: MAD numbers

So you’ve reached the end of the interview process, and with any luck you’ve managed to do so without disclosing your salary hopes (I’ll talk about how to do that some other time). You’ve been made an offer but it’s not right. Time to negotiate.

There’s plenty to say about how to negotiate a salary but for now I just want to cover one aspect. the three numbers you need to be clear on before you start talking turkey.

These are your Minimum, Acceptable and Desired figures.

The Minimum is your walk away point. If you can’t get the package to this point, you are simply not going to take the job. This figure is arrived at through hard calculation and softer feelings. The hard calculation bit is simply the minimum amount you need to live on. The softer stuff has to do with self-esteem. You don’t want to work for an amount that you know does not respect your capability and market worth. Together these will give you the Minimum. If you are offered this amount, and everything else is acceptable, you’re going to accept the offer because it’s the best you can do. Be sure it is, and that you are not going to resent it later.

The Acceptable figure is the package value that you would have assessed as about right – you would expect an employer to offer something around this figure. It doesn’t excite you and it doesn’t show great enthusiasm for you on the part of the employer, but it’s not an insult. If this is the opening offer, see it as that, and something to negotiate from. Here’s where you can talk about the added value you offer; what makes you an above average candidate. tell them that this is an acceptable salary for an average candidate, but you have more to offer, and draw their attention to some of your relevant achievements to drive your point home. After all, you really want them to pay you…

…your Desired figure. This is the amount that is at the top end of the realistic range and is for the best candidates. When they ask you for your salary expectations this is the number you’ll give them (when the time is right). If you think you’re in a particularly strong position, you might even ask for more in the first instance so that you end up somewhere around this number.

Never ever disclose your minimum, walk away point number, keep the conversation around your desired figure, and when it comes to ranges, give one that is half way between your acceptable and desired as the low end of the range, with the desired figure 2/3 of the way between the lower and upper ends of the range. So, for example, if your acceptable figure is £50,000 p.a, and your desired figure is £62,000, the range should be something like £56,000 to £65,000.

They won’t laugh at you, but if they do just ask them politely to suggest a figure they think is reasonable. They will be concerned not to be laughed at themselves, and are likely to offer you a pleasing sum.

Not snowed in and not snowed under

More than once in recent days (that’s how I know this isn’t a one-off phenomenon) career coaching clients in job transition have told me that there seems little point in proactive job searching such as networking because business hasn’t really kicked off yet, the weather is keeping them at home, people are not engaging, everything is quiet, etc, etc.

Excuses excuses.

All this tells me that now is the ideal time to network.  Think of it the other way.  People are at work and things are quiet.  People aren’t going to meetings so they’re in the office rather than on the road.  They’re available and not as busy as they might be, they may even crave meeting someone new for a chat.

Some of those people you want to talk to may also be in more of a future-focused frame of mind,  and therefore  interested in a conversation that gets them to think about how their industry is going to look over the next few months and what those implications might be for their company.

Networking conversations like this are often beneficial not just for you, the researcher, but for the advisor as well.

So if you are thinking that there’s no point in making that call because everyone is snowed in, think again.  They may just not be snowed under with work.

Dye your hair if you want a job.

I recently saw an ad on the TV for JustforMen hair colour.  I can’t find it on Youtube so I’ll describe it.  The ad shows a guy who is worried about not succeeding in a job interview so he dyes his hair with this anti-grey product and hey presto! he gets the job.

There’s an even more dreadful one that was being broadcast in the USA that features a guy who is unemployed but can’t afford to send his kid to college…until he dyes his hair and gets a job to pay the tuition fees!

If only…

Visit the company website and there is a page offering tips for a successful job interview.  The tips are not unreasonable, although inevitably an oversimplification -  “just do it” suggestions.  Here’s the second tip:

According to the Just For Men Haircolour “Strategies for Job Success” survey, more than 77 percent of career consultants agree that in today’s economy, looking younger gives men a competitive edge in the job market and workplace. Don’t let gray hair limit your opportunities in getting your dream job. It’s one feature that easily can be changed, and Just For Men Haircolor is a great way for men to get rid of their gray with natural-looking results.

That survey sounds distinctly dodgy doesn’t it?  I mean, you can imagine how the questions might have been asked can’t you?

I used to be an expert.  Now the male grooming products people have taken my wisdom away.  So I’ll be spending the next few weeks looking for a new career. But first I’d better dye my hair.

Contender for worst ad of 2009?