Learning the lessons.

Recently I attended a course on interview techniques and how to recruit the best people. The course discussed the process from defining the job role through the advertising, interviewing and selecting the best candidate. It was mostly common sense but with a conscious effort to be both consistent and objective. To ensure that each candidate is treated in the same way and that the judgements about them are measured as and recorded in as repeatable a fashion as possible.

All the lessons were good solid lessons that put a sound structure around the recruitment activity. What surprised me when I started to put the course into practice was a source of extra learning that I hadn't expected.

Part of the method for developing the open questions for the interviews themselves was to identify the key competencies required for the roles to be recruited for. Focus was also given to the organisational values for the company as a whole. What caught me by surprise was the fact that in eliciting answers from candidates my own views were thrown into sharp relief. I was prompted to consider how I would respond to the questions and what activities during my career demonstrated the organisational values. Some of the answers the candidates gave also provided a new perspective on some current areas of concern.

Overall it has demonstrated to me that there are all manner of opportunities for learning if only you keep your eyes open.

Don't put off stakeholder management.

Working in a corporate world that allows the easy forwarding of e-mails there are few communications that don't get spread wider than originally intended. We all see e-mails that weren't originally written for us and these can often give a perspective that we hadn't truly appreciated.

An e-mail was forwarded to me this week that gave a clear indication that a stakeholder, with whom I needed to positively engage, was not happy about the state of the project. It was also reasonably clear to me that the fact I had positioned myself within the project was having the unsettling affect I had anticipated. That's the rub.

I had known that wanting to get involved in an existing project could make people feel uncomfortable. What I hadn't considered was a plan for that ingress. If I had thought through my intentions I might have got closer to the stakeholder before making it known that I wished to play a key role in the project.

In essence I think the learning point is to consider the effects of your actions on those they will impact at all levels of the organisation. Once considered form a plan of action. Keeping people on-side is the key to success and it can be as simple as a quick face to face conversation to maintian that positive communication or explain your motivation.

Above all; don't put it off!

Why the Inner Robot.

Having decided to write the blog as a form of learning diary and to sharpen my written communication I was faced with the naming conundrum. The decision coincided with my reading 'Assertiveness' by Terry Gillen (here). The book describes the sub-conscious as 'the inner robot' and the technique of consciously controlling your reactions to situations as taming this 'inner robot'. It leads into an explanation of the stages of learning that progress to a state of unconscious competence that seems relevant to all professional development activities. As such it seemed an appropriate starting point

For me it also served to underline the requirement to apply techniques learnt in management training activities in order to ensure they become an embedded behaviour. This requires a considerable investment and given that there are many opportunities to learn new management techniques it is clear that some method of prioritising these opportunities is required. Another thing that is becoming clear to me is that there is a lot to learn and plenty of information to assimilate. The challenge becomes identifying where to focus and how to ensure continued commitment.

For me this blog will be a barometer of that commitment.