Standard Chartered's business case for focusing on employee strengths

According to Debbie Whitaker, Standard Chartered's Head of Sustainability, 'everyone has talents that we wish to leverage'.


This is a bold statement, considering Standard Chartered is a bank with over 60,000 employees in 56 countries. Their reasons for focusing on talent are fourfold:

i) greater growth potential
ii) better people performance
iii) increased employee engagement and
iv) attracting and retaining talent.

Many big organisations are sceptical of applying Strengths at work, yet Standard Chartered's experience shows that it can make sound business sense.

A strengths-based approach to management has been operating in the organisation for the past 7 years, using Gallup's StrengthsFinder tool. Whitaker describes a strength as the combination of talent, skill and knowledge, which motivation can transform into world-class performance. In her words, given equal skills and knowledge, talent is what differentiates superior performance from the rest.

So what does Standard Chartered actually do differently to other organisations? Well StrengthsFinder wasn't designed for recruitment purposes, but it can be used to ensure good role fit and that's exactly what has contributed to Standard Chartered's success.The essentials for a salesperson, for example, are good product knowledge and to be able to negotiate and close a deal. But if the salesperson has the additional talents of competitiveness and building rapport with customers, they can become a world-class performer. Not only does Standard Chartered look for specific skills and knowledge, they take innate talents into account too.

It has to be said that there are several definitions of a strength, and the one used here is based on Gallup's research. The VIA-IS or CAPP definitions are different; as always you need to be clear what you are trying to measure.

Standard Chartered also focuses on building employee engagement, and like Royal & SunAlliance which we featured here, they take volunteering seriously, offering two days paid leave for staff to contribute to voluntary organisations.

What the Standard Chartered story shows is that focusing on strengths can make a big difference to the business and to the people who work there. And applying Positive Psychology at work shouldn't be something you do in addition to everything else. Look at your existing people-related processes (e.g. recruitment, development, coaching, mentoring and so on) and see how a strengths-approach would make a positive contribution.

Positive Psychology Coaching and Flow

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to attend a Performance Coaching Masterclass with Myles Downey, organised by the Academy of Executive Coaching in London. Downey founded the School of Coaching in 1997 and has recently acquired 100% ownership. His book, Effective Coaching: Lessons from the Coach's Coach, has been in my Top 3 since I started coaching and has been a crucial influence on my own approach ; in it he presents a compelling argument for non-directive coaching, in which the key role of the coach is to facilitate the coachee's (or client's or player's)

1) awareness, through actively noticing, and
2) responsibility, by allowing them to actively follow their own interest, make their own choices and decisions.

Awareness and responsibility are essential components of engagement and developing intrinsic motivation, and are therefore crucial to coaching effectiveness and success. Anyone working in business change management and transformation knows that change cannot occur effectively without them.

At the Masterclass, Downey performed two demonstrations, one in which he coached someone to catch a tennis ball one-handed. 'What's that got to do with business coaching?' you might ask. Well, it was a visible and powerful demonstration of what sports psychologist and coach Tim Gallwey referred to as The Inner Game, which is simply

Potential - Interference = Performance.

By getting the coachee to notice and focus their attention on the ball and how it is in flight, interference (in the form of fear, doubt, lack of confidence about ability etc) is removed and the coachee enters a flow state, in which they are more creative, insightful, relaxed, intuitive and objective. Rather than worry about dropping the ball and trying too hard to catch it, the coachee's focus is temporarily placed outside themselves, resulting in visibly improved performance.

With his emphasis on strengths and developing potential I would describe Downey as a true Positive Psychology coach. If you want to understand more about the role of Positive Psychology in coaching read Effective Coaching ; just be aware that the book was first published in 1999, before the term 'Positive Psychology' really came into regular use. Your coaching practice will be re-energised as a result.

Designing Your Happiness At Work

Stefan Sagmeister, Austrian-born graphic designer, shares his thoughts on the subjects of design and happiness . His insights are very personal (such as his list of breathtaking moments), however, there are many themes here which everyone can relate to - such as doing work which really matters to you, being able to immerse yourself in work without being interrupted and enjoying the end results of a completed project.

Please do watch this clip, it's only 15 minutes long, and contains some fascinating insight into the theory and practice of happiness. Plus it's always inspiring to hear someone talk with passion and humour about their work.

Any well-being practitioners or academics reading will instantly spot that what Sagmeister talks about supports theories like self-determination , intrinsic motivation , flow ,competence, autonomy, relatedness and so on.

I liked his lists too, there were some real snippets of wisdom in 'Things I have learned in my life so far'. In fact he has used some of them in his designs, for example, Being Not Truthful Works Against Me and Complaining is Silly: Either Act or Forget. I'll summarise them for you in a future post.

Thanks to Neil for sending this clip to me.

Goals, Happiness and the Peak of Achievement

At the Lancaster University Alumni meeting on Thursday night I had the pleasure of hearing Sir Chris Bonington speak about one of his expeditions to the summit of Mount Everest in the mid 80’s, in a presentation called the Peak of Achievement.

What was fascinating (apart from the photos of the first Apple ‘laptop’) was his certainty that in any expedition the journey (and in this case, the teamwork) is just as important as the destination. Businesses would perform a whole lot better if they realised this, he said.

How right he is. Many people we coach start with the perspective that “I’ll be happy with my job/life/self when XYZ happens”. Happiness is therefore seen as something to be achieved in the future which is conditional on completing a specific goal. Happiness is something that you can achieve in the future, and having some goals in work and life is crucial to personal growth, however the mistake often made is to focus so much on the reaching the goal in the future that you forget about the present.

You can also be happy now, in the moment. So remember that it’s the process you are following now that is as important to your happiness and self-development as the achievement itself, be that getting a new job, being promoted, losing weight or climbing Mount Everest.

How to Keep your New Year Resolutions

If you still haven't broken your New Year Resolutions yet [ :-) ... of course you haven't, just teasing...] you might be interested in taking part in some scientific research which is being undertaken at University of Hertfordshire in the UK.

It was reported in the Guardian on Friday 30th December ("Psychologists seek key to successful new year resolutions") that Richard Wiseman, a professor of psychology at the University, is hoping to get around 10,000 people to take part in this on-line experiment. The point of the research is to find out what are the best ways of motivating people to keep to their resolutions.

So, even if you don't succeed, you'll still be providing some useful input to the research! If you want to take part, simply log on to newyearscience.co.uk.

Comfort zones

I caught part of The Choir (BBC2 9pm) on Monday night (11/12/06) - in a nutshell, 160-odd kids from Northolt High School (total roll about 1300) in West London audition to join The Phoenix Choir, to enter an international choral competition, the World Choir Games which will take place in China.

Like many choirs, the girls outnumber the boys; they don't have enough Tenors and Basses to balance the Altos and the Sopranos so the conductor, Gareth Malone (who usually conducts the London Symphony Orchestra's Community Choir and Youth Choir), tries to rustle up more interest, but he gets only six new names from asking everyone he sees in the playground.

So he asks the school's music teacher where he's likely to find some hidden talent; she is dismissive - according to her it would be highly unlikely to find any , in all the schools 1300 pupils. Richard is disappointed but not a man to be beaten (well, there wouldn't be a programme if he couldn't find enough singers...) finally, he ventures with some trepidation into the sixth form common room. He coaxes and cajoles several young men into being auditioned. One or two of these 16-18 year olds are pretty confident about their abilities, but in a self-effacing kind of way; surprisingly, most are pretty modest and lacking in confidence - in fact Gareth comments on how much more arrogant he was at their age.

Thankfully though, the school music teacher is mistaken - it's obvious from the auditions that there is a whole host of latent talent at Northolt School, talent which is just waiting to be recognized. Let's hope other teachers don't write off their pupils quite so quickly.

Having got 39 kids in total, these must be whittled down to 25, and 4 reserves to meet the competition rules. It is heartbreaking to see the disappointment of those kids who don't get through the second audition; you have to hope that they have a loving parent /family /friend /teacher to help them pick up the pieces afterwards.

Having spent a few months practising after school, one of the first major tests for the newly formed Phoenix choir is to sing in front of a live audience. These kids are absolutely terrified at the prospect, and even more so when they discover that their first live audience is to be the dreaded Year 11s; the fear that this induces is palpable. But, give them credit, they do their warm up and breathing exercises and give one of their best performances of Vivaldi's Gloria to date. And to give the Year 11s credit too, they soon stop giggling and snickering, they really listen, and give the choir a fantastic round of applause at the end.

What brought a real smile to my face though was the visible increase in the confidence of the kids in the choir when they finish this performance; they seem to have grown a couple of inches in the space of five minutes. They're relieved it's over, yes, but they have just done something they never thought they'd be able to do, they pulled it off, survived and feel more confident as a result. So here I think is an important lesson for all of us - in a nutshell if you want to gain confidence, you have to get out of your comfort zone. The results will be well worth it I promise you.

Watch next week's episode to see how they get on at the World Choir Games.

Visualizing your goals

Of course I'm an avid supporter of the Open University - I did my MBA at their Business School in the late 90's and have worked closely with them ever since. So I was delighted to read in the Independent yesterday (5 Dec 2006) that they are partnering the Trades Union Congress to provide a 10 per cent discount on entry-level university courses for TUC' members, all 6.4 million of them.

This is a fantastic opportunity to start your own personal development. Of course, balancing work life and studying can be pretty tough (I'd rather not be reminded of that now so you'll have to ask Jenny) especially if you also want to have some time for a social / family life, however, it also seems to be true that there is rarely any gain without pain (I wonder who really said that). Incidentally, one of the ways I got through my studies was to think 'If other people can do it, so can I'.

So, how can you motivate yourself to get started on what could in all likelihood be a life changing course of action? (....There are some truths to "Educating Rita").

A top tip, tried and tested by many of our coaching clients, is to visualise the outcome . Visualisation isn't a new technique, you probably do it frequently already although you may not be very aware that you do it. So for example if I ask you to think about what you had for breakfast this morning, or who your best friend was at school, the chances are that you'll remember this by creating a picture in your head.

So how can you visualise your goal? Well, you can do this in a number of ways: in your head by relaxing and mentally creating a picture of your outcome, you can get out your kid's crayons/felt tips/paints and start drawing, you can use the whiteboard or a flipchart in an empty meeting room, or put those magazines to good use by cutting out the photos which appeal to your senses and make a collage out of them.

Choose whichever method which appeals to you, put aside a good 45 minutes and as you're going through this creative exercise, ask yourself the following questions:

1. What it is that I want? Think about this in as much detail as you can.

Then imagine yourself having achieved this goal. Ask yourself:

2. When and where have I achieved this goal, and who is with me?

3. What has changed in my life as a result of achieving this goal?

4. What is my experience of having achieved this goal?

5. What has achieving this goal got me?

If you have plenty of time to spare, just go with the flow; you'll be surprised what springs from your imagination once you give it a free rein.

Once you're happy with the image you've created, spend 10-15 minutes reflecting on it. In our future blogs we'll explore practical ways to use visualisations to achieve goals.

Whichever visualisation technique you use, it will help you see and experience the goal for real, and create a very powerful motivator which is 100% personal to you. We've had lots of positive comments from clients who have tried visualisation, and whose personal images stay with them. We'd like to hear how you get on with it!