I am contacting organisation or consultants involved with business change teams, who may be interested to participate in my doctoral research study. This investigates how the effectiveness of business change team leadership might be improved.

The study will capture data from 100 business change teams (approximately 400 respondents) in 40 to 50 UK organisations across various sectors. Data collection has commenced and will continue during the next 3 to 4 months.

The research will use a questionnaire and a specially-designed diagnostic tool to test two questions:

1) Can business change team effectiveness be improved if the team leaders adopt specific types of leadership behaviours?

2) Does the combination of team leaders’ personal values influence the types of leadership behaviours adopted by the team?

The objective is to identify specific team leadership behaviours likely to generate high levels of business change team performance, and highlight the personal values most likely to underpin these desirable behaviours.

Participating businesses will receive an individual assessment for each business change team surveyed (within two weeks of their survey). There is no limit to the number of teams individual businesses may put forward, providing they meet the study criteria. Businesses which nominate multiple teams will be able to make comparisons between teams. Once the study is completed, all participating businesses will be able to compare their team assessments against the overall sample.

If you would like to discuss this survey further, please call the researcher, Howard Adams, 07778 411610, or email howard(at)haaltd.co.uk.

Attending a Pecha Kucha event in Barcelona, where the audience was mostly in their twenties or thirties, I was struck by a number of thoughts:

• Generation Y (born during the eighties and nineties) is a generation that wants to change the world. The presenters at the Pecha Kucha event  strove to change people’s minds or present a different perspective from the ‘norm’. This is not unlike the era of the sixties, when ‘the flower power’ movement brought about massive changes in how the young were perceived.  Now, instead of(or to supplement) the message of ‘peace’, the calling cry is to ‘save the planet’.  Generation Y is one that sincerely wants to see action taken to improve the world for all its inhabitants. And Generation Z (those born after 1995) is likely to continue feeling this way. This implies that learning professionals will need to include such topics as an integral part of their teaching. Tasks and activities will be more motivating if they in some way relate to environmental or social issues.
• Gen Y, and to an even greater extent, Gen Z, is collaborative and open-minded, butterfly-like in their concentration. The Pecha Kucha presentations consisted of a maximum of 20 slides set on a timing of 20 seconds each (ie: a little over 6 minutes for the whole presentation). It is still the case today that most management teaching takes place in fixed-seating classrooms, with an audience watching (and perhaps listening) to the person on the stage for somewhere between 90 and 120 minutes. This again has to change if the participants’ attention is to be maintained – learning professionals will have to find ways to present key concepts in less than 15 minutes and then move on to other activities or tasks – learning has to be in bite-size chunks, and with much group work, discussion and inter-personal interaction.
• Gen Y is willing to spend a great deal of time and effort on creating and maintaining their networks, and they are far more confident of approaching others than previous generations. At the Pecha Kucha event, I was struck by how easily the participants interacted with each other. Web 2.0 social technologies have enabled people to make contact with others across distance, language and time barriers – it is no longer the case that people make friends merely with their peer group at school or university. On the contrary, many of the 300+ million members of Facebook use the platform to generate their primary friendship group. And the number of topics and subjects discussed on social websites is mind-boggling in its diversity. The implications are that group or team projects should be designed to include people from outside the learning group itself. Course and programmes that include participants separated by time, distance and nationality are much more likely to attract the attention of the learners and motivate them to complete the project or activity. Rather than trying to curb interaction with externals, teachers should leverage the power of social networking, including allowing students to get in contact with other experts in the field.

How do you think learning professionals need to adapt their teaching methodology and content?

The United Nations Conference on Climate Change will be streamed into Second Life between 7th and 20th December.

You can attend live sessions and ask questions of the speakers by going to the Oneclimate Island in Second Life.

There is a Copenhagen Expo at: 350 Pavilion, OneWorld Meetings (168, 91, 23), and the sessions will be streamed into the arena here: OneWorld Meeting Island, OneWorld Meetings (203, 152, 24)

If you haven't yet ventured into Second Life yet, this would be a great time to do so!

What you need to do to enter Second Life:

1) Set up an account and avatar at www.secondlife.com

2) Download the client software. Install it

3) You will be offered a range of potential 'entry points' into the virtual world. A good one to choose is: Beta Business Park, since they often have people there to assist you.

4) And then you can go search for the OneWorld Meetings Island and teleport there

If you have any difficulties or queries, please feel free to contact me: jan.kingsley@aspel.org

Here is a video I came across recently, which affected me deeply. Nick Vujicic faces more difficulties than can be imagined, and yet, as a presenter, he must be one of the most powerful ever seen ....

A very warm welcome to the ASPEL blog! This may be used for a variety of purposes, covering different areas, and we'll see how it develops ...

I've recently been talking to a friend of mine about the difficulties of using case studies on People Management courses. There are a number of problems involved, especially with a group from the same company, where confidentiality might be issue. And using made-up case studies or role plays allows the participants to hide behind a 'persona', behaving in ways which they would never actually dream of doing in 'real-life'. Many is the time I have been deceived by someone on a training programme, thinking them to have very poor inter-personal skills, only to hear later from their staff that they are excellent managers. Or, even worse, the other way round! I long ago stopped providing feedback on participants based solely on their classroom performance, however much line managers asked me for it.

The use of case studies keeps the discussion objective, the facilitator in control, and the participants not having to really expose themselves. However, this distancing also means that participants avoid emotional entanglement and are protected from any real insight and hence performance improvement.

So, how best to help people practice the skills they need to manage others effectively? Here is an approach which entails a degree of risk, but which potentially has far greater positive impact:

The whole group listens to one of the members explaining a difficult issue that s/he is facing. The person is allowed as much time as s/he needs to explore this issue. The other participants are only allowed to ask questions to elicit more information and to help the speaker explore further. They are not allowed to comment or judge in any other way. Periods of silence and reflection are welcome. Only when the person feels that s/he has exhausted the exploration may the others be invited to say what they think, give advice or suggest actions. Part of the facilitator’s role is to ensure that people do not rush to conclusions or make false assumptions.

The interest generated by a real personal struggle means that boredom is not an issue - everyone is involved in active listening.

This approach has several benefits: firstly, there is no doubt at all in anyone's mind as to the 'reality' and importance of the situation being discussed. Secondly - and this can come as  a revelation to both speaker and listeners - the fact that the speaker has the time to thoroughly explore the issue means that the 'problem' is often not what the person originally thought it was. This can help others re-examine their own challenges. Thirdly, the person who presented the problem can go back to work and actually make positive progress on the issue.

This approach is common to all effective mentoring and coaching processes. But how often is it used in a group situation?