How to think more positively about yourself and others

I used to have very negative beliefs about myself. My Mum was a worrier and always anxious about everything. In fact if she was not worrying she was worried that there was nothing to worry about.

I learnt this behaviour – my head was my head and I was used to it – it was depressing and energy sapping but I did not know any different because that was all I was used to.

This blog is going to tell you how I learnt to be more positive and what you can do to be a more positive thinker too.

Well about 16 years ago I was going through a very bad patch at work and had got myself into a negative downward spiral. I just couldn’t face standing up in front of groups and had lost my confidence to design and deliver training courses that made a difference to people.

So what I did was approach a consultancy whose work I valued to see if I could work for them. Predictably I did not perform well but at the time I was also given some valuable feedback which was ‘ you are very good but you take a long time to warm up’. I knew straightaway the value of this feedback since it mirrored my experience when running courses. And then I heard the following words popping out of my mouth. “will you be my mentor’ and to my complete and utter surprise the guy agreed to help me.

We met on 3 occasions over a 6 month period and during the second session he mentioned that I had a lot of negative beliefs about myself. And suggested an approach to become more positive which I used I have used consistently ever since.

 Basically he said that most people have negative beliefs about themselves, which then negatively influence their internal thoughts. Which then go on to interrupt their performance when they are in the situation or with the person that they have negative beliefs around. This then goes on to confirm and reinforce the negative belief that they held in the first place.

When he first told me about the approach I went around this cycle many times and found that I did indeed have very negative beliefs about myself and lacked confidence in a wide range of situations. In fact I felt that my negative beliefs piggy-backed on each other and were like a ball of knotted string that all knitted together. Which I had to gradually, unravel one by one.

One important thing I realised was that I was not creating these negative internal reactions but instead shining a light on them. They were always there working away under the surface. When I did this exercise I became aware of what I was up against and why I felt so negative about myself.

An example of this approach might be the belief that a person does not like you.

Which then leads on to the internal reaction like

• What’s the point I tried before
• I can’t be bothered
• They spend time with other people but can’t wait to get me out the door
• They never smile at me or make positive comments about me
• The other’s are their favourites.

When you believe this stuff about yourself, it no surprise that you are withdrawn and preoccupied with your thoughts and looking for clues to reinforce your belief that they do not like you. In other words you don’t truly engage and therefore almost create and confirm the negative beliefs and the outcomes that you fear.

The good news about this approach is that you can almost reprogramme yourself to think differently, just by selecting a more positive belief for example they ‘like me’ or if you can’t quite manage that, how about, ‘they are neutral towards me’.? The interesting thing about this approach is that if you go around this cycle you will begin to feel more positive about yourself and the other person or situation even though nothing else has changed. After a while you start to get some better results and that serves to reinforce your more positive results.

Anyway I used this approach to help myself become more positive and then started to notice how people on my courses like the assertiveness course also clearly felt negative about their experience. At first I thought this was to be expected on a course like this and then I began to notice this pattern of thinking on the management courses too and then amongst my more senior executive coaching clients. In other words lots of people have negative beliefs about themselves but it just is not something that we tend to talk about.

Now I believe that changing negative beliefs is the precurser to learning new skills and I will not even try to teach the skills until people are ready to believe that the skills will work or more importantly that they will work for them.

The interesting thing about this is that I did not realise I had negative beliefs before someone pointed this out to me nor did I believe that my thinking pattern could be changed.

So if after reading this you think that you might have some negative beliefs, first of all you are not alone and secondly there is a way of reprogramming your thought processes to become more positive.

It worked for me, it worked for thousands of my clients and if you take the time and trouble to shine a light on your negative beliefs and select some more positive ones it will work for you.

If you would like to know more about the ideas presented in this blog you might be interested to read my books called the People Skills Revolution and the People Skills Revolution Handbook which is a step by step and cumulative guide to developing sophisticated people skills including assertiveness, influencing, negotiation, taking a stand and finally making peace. Both book are available on Amazon and directly from the publisher at Global Professional Publishing. 

Please note this blog is copyright and cannot be reproduced in any forms whatsoever without my prior permission. 

 

 

 

 

The Making of a Peace Maker

Although I blogged this 3 years ago – I think in the current climate it is worth publishing again. This is how real peace makers behave…..

pamelamilne

Although I blogged this 3 years ago – I think in the current climate it is worth publishing again. This is how real peace makers behave…..

In the People Skills Revolution Handbook I include an interview with a CEO, who I had heard about through the grapevine, who I believed was working at the level of peace maker within his business environment. This interview illustrates a number of factors about the making of the peace maker, which are worth highlighting.

The CEO agreed that his people skills development followed the continuum of interpersonal skills approach even if he had no awareness of an underlying process.  More specifically:-

• He was prepared to adapt his approach according to the situation.
• If what he was doing was not working he tried something different. This is the same approach as the arch manipulator but combined with his highly principled approach the same strategy becomes…

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‘What you told me saved my marriage’

‘What you told me saved my marriage’

A few years ago I was running a management development programme and at the end of the six month course one of the participants told me that he thought I had saved his marriage. Obviously curious I asked him what I had done to achieve this and he told me that a communication model that I had shared with him had changed his life. Apparently it had enabled him to understand his wife’s behaviour for the first time and that they were now getting along a lot better.

Although I don’t often get this feedback I can totally understand why he might have felt that because so many disagreements occur because we don’t understand why people behave and react the way they do – especially when it is very different from our own ways of behaving.

The approach I told him about is based on the work of the psychologist Carl Jung who having worked with thousands and thousands of people in his career noticed patterns in the way that they communicated. In 1921 he published a book called ‘Psychological Types’ in which he identified four dominant communication styles.

These styles were intuitor, thinker, feeler and sensor.

In my book the People Skills Revolution I go into depth about what the four types mean and the impact that they can have on relationships but if you are not getting on with someone in a paired relationship, or a friend or work colleague the chances are that there is a conflict between both of your styles.

Briefly an intuitor likes ideas, is creative, plans for the future and gets bored easily.

A thinker likes organisation, detail, logic and rational thinking whereas a feeler works on their ‘gut reactions’, tunes into atmospheres and puts people at the centre of their decision making. The last category is the sensor, who is action orientated, makes apparently ‘snap’ decisions and often think that the rest of us are a bit slow.

All of the styles have their strengths and the world would not be like it is today without all of them being present. Intuitors envision the world, thinkers organise it, feelers take people into account and sensors inspire us to act. We are all a blend of each of the styles but the problem arises when one of the styles dominate our personality particularly if another person is dominant in a style which is not one of our favoured styles.

So what can this mean in terms of couple relationships?

Well it can mean that your partner just talks about plans for the future and never gets around to putting any of them in to action.

It could mean that your partner is rarely spontaneous and has to organise every aspect of their lives. It could also mean that they love to chat to people rather than getting on with the job and can be apparently ‘over sensitive’ about things that don’t seem to matter to you. Whereas the ‘action orientation’ of the sensor might discount the ideas of the intuitor, be annoyed by the need to research, generate information and organise displayed by the thinker and completely flummoxed by the emotional reactions of the feeler.

And when people are essentially very different for us although opposites as we have seen most definitely do attract – after a while what you found cute and cuddly just becomes irritating and annoying.

So how might these different styles show up in real relationships situations?

Well suppose you plan to buy a new washing machine. At their most extreme….

The intuitor wants new different, innovative and exciting with all the whistles and bells regardless of cost.

The thinker will investigate every washing machine on the market, every price range, read all the reviews, research all the shops and still decide to ‘go home and think about it’.

The feeler will read the reviews to see what others have said, will often feel the product if they can and will find a salesperson they like to sell the machine to them.

Whereas the sensor can walk into a shop, or online and select the machine, choose the supplier, negotiate the price and get it delivered the same day in one sitting.

You can see that if each of these dominant styles acts independently there is no problem but if a thinker lives with a sensor they may find their thoughts and actions are continually being discounted. Equally the sensor may feel that the thinker is continually trying to hold them back.

If a thinker lives with a feeler the thinker may just go into planning and organizing mode rather than listen to the thoughts, preferences and yes feelings of the feeler – even about a washing machine!

Equally an intuitor likes to day dream a bit and get some of their needs met for new, original, innovative and different and can feel very constrained by the thinker who wants to organise them and the sensor who wants them to ‘spring into action’.

So what do you do when you realise that your partner is very different from you?

Well understanding the different way that people communicate does in itself make a big difference. They are not being awkward or difficult – they are just different from you. Awareness itself creates change.

Once you understand that, you can learn to listen to their ideas, plans and emotions and find ways to help them structure their thoughts so that you can hear them more easily. You can also realise that a thinker will often never consider that they have enough information and will always ask another question however well you have prepared your case – they are not being difficult it’s just the way they are. You can also help a feeler to work out why they feel emotional and identify the reason or behaviour behind the feelings to enable them to be more specific about what is at the root of their issues. And finally if you want to get a sensor to listen just say the top three things that they need to hear in order to help make their decision or take action.

So you can see that although it was not my intention to save a marriage that day that I can completely understand how it could have happened.

Please note this blog is copyright (2017) and cannot be reproduced in part or whole in any form whatsoever without the prior permission of Pamela Milne

How to write a report – explained in 1692 words

How to write a report – explained in 1692 words

My first experience of helping someone to write reports was when I was working for an international drugs company. I was asked speak to a Doctor in Chemistry who was finding writing reports completely mystifying. She had gone on  scientific report writing courses, undertaken courses on-line, done management report writing courses and read loads of books on the subject. She was also staying up until the early hours of the morning to try to do her reports which were then heavily criticised by her superiors. Far from improving  she was getting much worse and had lost all confidence in her ability to express herself in writing. And in that particular organisation if you could not write reports you would not get promoted. So she was getting more and more frustrated.

After a very short period of time talking to her I realised what the problem was – every time she got criticised she wrote more and more and in the process got further away from the target that she was trying to hit – without having any idea where the target was.

After about 40 minutes I managed to sort the problem for her. I asked her what the headings were for a typical scientific report and she told me what the headings were – clearly they were very predictable since she rattled them off so easily. I then said to her ‘ok what information is relevant to this heading?’ and she told me what it was and I wrote it down and then in effect she had written the report. She was doing what a lot of people do and was over complicating the task. She could not believe that it could be so easy. After following my suggestions, about 6 months later I heard that she had got her promotion.

The next time I was asked to help people with report writing was when I was running six month management courses which included writing a report and doing a presentation at the end of the programme. At the start of the programme I realised that they were likely to be very scared of doing these two things particularly if they had not written a report or presented before. So I spent a lot of time reassuring them during the first module that I would provide them with all the support required to get them through the programme and that whilst they would be doing the work, I would be with them every step of the way. In the 15 years that I ran the programme only one person did not finish the presentation but even she had written up her project and done a very good job.

The main reason I believe that people feel so nervous about writing reports is that the education system so poorly prepares people for the world of work and most people leave school or university believing that they cannot write because they have been constantly criticised, although at no time did these establishments tell people how to write.

Some people booked annual leave to enable them to have time to do the project but what I said to the people on the course was ‘I will give you a structure with some questions in it and providing you have done the work, if you answer the questions the report will write itself’. As a result instead of taking days and sometimes weeks to write up their project, I believed that the vast bulk of it could be written in half an hour.

Wouldn’t your life be transformed if you could write what you needed to write in 30 minutes and hit the target so that the reader completely understood the message you wanted to convey AND it answered the questions they wanted answered?

I have used this method for many years now and in fact it was also this approach that I used to write my book ‘The People Skills Revolution’. This book provides answers to your questions about what makes people tick and why they behave the way they do. Based on a model I call the ‘Continuum of Interpersonal skills’ it tells you how to adapt your style in order to be more assertive, increase your ability to influence, how to negotiate effectively, step in to become a conciliator, take a stand for what you believe in and finally how to make peace. All this is achieved by using a very ‘tight’ writing style which provides step by step approaches for all these people skills. Because I was so focused at the beginning where I was heading and the book had a clear beginning, middle and end I was able to write the whole book in 4 months.

Now I have told you about the approach I want to share the project report writing template with you which I used with my course participants successfully for all those years. Obviously if you are writing a management report or a scientific report the headings will change but I believe the basic structure and idea can be applied to many situations where you have to communicate factual information.

HOW TO WRITE UP YOUR PROJECT

The structure outlined below is a guide to how to layout your project, it is meant to give you ideas not be a straightjacket

PROJECT TITLE

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

• Why did you write the project
• What attracted you to the particular topic that you chose
• What made the project worthwhile to undertake

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

• What was your overall aim for the project – state this simply in one or two sentences – lay it out in bold typing so that the reader can see it at a glance.

• List the objectives out in bullet points – the objectives should cover the steps you will need to take to achieve your aim.
• An objective should be something that you can ‘tick off’ as completed not something vague ‘like to improve communication’.

METHODOLOGY (OR WHAT HAPPENED COMPARED TO WHAT YOU EXPECTED TO HAPPEN)

• This is where you describe how you went about your project
• What particularly methods did you use, for example
• Meetings with management or your mentor to discuss your approach
• Meetings with staff to discuss the problem
• Meetings with staff to find a solution
• Meetings with staff to present a solution
• Interviews with individual staff
• Questionnaires
• A pilot study to test a new idea or procedure
• What were your timescales and what obstacles did you experience.
• How many people were involved in the project – how many did you intend to talk to
• (Put any copies of questionnaires or interview structures in the appendix and refer to them in this section)

RESULTS

• How many people did you involve in your project compared to your expectations
• Following on from your methodology – what did you find when you discussed the problem or issue with others
• What evidence do you have to support your claims
• How receptive where they to change
• How receptive was the problem to a solution
• Were the outcomes what you expected

It is useful here to outline any statistics or figures you have to support your argument (Detailed results should be included in an appendix and referred to in this section)

RECOMMENDATIONS

• Having undertaken your study what recommendations would your project suggest for the future
• What recommendations would you make to a senior manager about applying the knowledge you have learnt to other situations
• What implications does your project have for additional funding or resources in the future
• Would it be worthwhile for you or others to research the topic in more depth
• What areas of your project still need to be tackled

PROJECT REVEW

• What aspects of the project went well – what aspects did not go so well and why
• What did you learn about the subject after undertaking this project
• What did you learn about yourself in undertaking the project
• What would you do differently next time

APPENDIX

• The appendix should include all relevant information that the reader may need to refer to, but which are not central to your argument, this may include:-

• Plans
• Diagrams
• Questionnaires
• Detailed results
• Interview structures etc

What you will find as you start to answer the questions is that more and more relevant information will come into your head and you can add it under the appropriate sections as the content of your report starts to build up.

AND if it does not fit under one of these headings ( or something very like them) is the information you are considering including really necessary?

Taking this idea a stage further when I did my Master’s Degree in Change Agent Skills and Strategies I realised something  interesting about writing my assignments. What we found was that each of the four Tutors had different expectations and therefore some people were getting high marks from some of the Tutors but not others. This was very frustrating until I realised that to get good marks you had to understand the expectations of the person who is marking the report. As a result of learning this I was able to get consistently high scores for my assignments ‘across the board’, so much so that my fellow students started to ask how I was doing this.

On a final note, I was once talking to a Head of Training and Development who was complaining about how long it took him to write reports. At the end of conversation I asked him how much time he spent reading anyone else’s report. I will never forget his answer which was ‘not very much because I am spending so much time writing my own’.

What a report needs to do is convey the appropriate message in the right amount of words – anything else and the reader just loses the will to live. In contrast a succinct clearly written report will be very much appreciated by its target audience.

I hope that if you are struggling with writing reports that these words have been helpful to you.

Please remember that this blog is copyright and cannot be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without my prior written permission and an appropriate credit.

To find out more information about the continuum of interpersonal skills model and the step by step approaches to developing sophisticated people skills, read the People Skills Revolution which is available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

© Pamela Milne, Solutionsunlimited.co.uk  2015

Mindfulness (in 1548 words)

What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is an ancient Eastern practice that is increasingly being introduced into the West due to its effectiveness in promoting positive mental health.

It helps us to avoid dissipating our energy by dwelling on the past or worrying about the future by focusing on the present. We practice mindfulness by maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations and the surrounding environment.

According to Jon Kabat Zinn, Professor of Medicine at the University of Massachusetts and founder of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society, Mindfulness is the ability to pay attention on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally and is achieved by becoming more mindful (or aware) through practising a range of meditation exercises.Ironically time spent being mindful helps you to become less stressed and more productive. This practise is not affiliated to any religion.

Although the training is not easy – it is simple

When using mindfulness, you gradually will come to realise that although you can’t stop unsettling thoughts from arising in your mind, you can stop them from feeding off each other.

The aim of Mindfulness is not to clear your mind of all thoughts rather it is about training your attention

The Science Bit ….

Because we live in the West we need to understand how Mindfulness works…

According to Professor Mark Williams* for many years it was assumed that we all have an emotional thermostat which determines how happy we are in life.

It was always assumed that there was a set-point to which we always return. This emotional set point was presumed to be encoded in our genes or became set in stone during childhood. This would help to explain why lottery winners often within a short period of time, manage to get rid of their winnings and return to their original life before the win – even when the life was one of sadness and penury.

This viewpoint was shattered by Professors Richard Davidson and Jon Kabat-Zinn who discovered that mindfulness training allowed people to escape the gravitational pull of their emotional set-point.

Mindfulness – the inner world

In our inward lives, the mind has a tendency to ‘chatter’ and to focus on the negative. This chatter includes judging everything, comparing the way things are with the way you want them to be and striving to make things different to how they actually are. These negative thoughts then ‘piggy back’ on other negative thoughts until you find yourself in a vicious negative thinking cycle.

In one study a group of biotech workers were taught Mindfulness meditation over a period of eight weeks.

Not only did they become happier, less anxious, more energised and more engaged with their work but also maintained this perspective when exposed to slow, depressing music and memories from the past that made them feel sad. Although this does not sound that radical or permanent it is in fact these kind of small stimuli that can take us back to dwelling on bad memories or experiences.

This study suggests that Mindfulness has extremely deep-seated positive effects on the brain. Further studies have shown that as people continue to meditate over years, these positive changes alter the structure of the brain itself. Eight weeks also appears to be the critical length of time that it takes to begin the process of permanently altering the construction of the brain.

Mindfulness – the outer world

In our outward lives mindlessness (or lack of awareness) manifests as operating on autopilot rather than focusing on our actions.

Some examples of when we operate on auto pilot might be:

• When you driven somewhere and don’t remember how you got there
• Eaten a packet of biscuits without noticing
• Walked into a room and don’t know why you are there

Autopilot has benefits since it means that we are not constantly learning new habits. The drawback of this mindlessness is that we can literally ‘sleep walk’ through our lives and multi-task until we burn out.

To find out more about how mindless we can be in our daily lives, Matt Killingsworth, a researcher from the University of Harvard contacted 15,000 people during the day on their phones at random times to rate, their current happiness level, what activity they were involved at the time and whether or not their mind was wandering from the activity.

The study found that the average person spends 47% of their time in a state of mindlessness. The most significant factor was not what they were doing but whether they were being mindful and focused on the present moment. These people were significantly happier than people whose mind wandered away from the experience

Mindfulness in organisations

According to Professor Mark Williams of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre:

‘There is increasing evidence for its use in health, education, prisons and workplaces’.

Mindfulness is recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence in tandem with Cognitive Behaviour Therapy as a way to prevent the recurrence of illness for people with multiple bouts of depression. It is also a central approach in the NHS’s Health and Well Being Strategy for its staff.

An established approach to improve awareness (or develop the attention ‘muscle’) is to learn and practise a range of increasingly focused meditation exercises. These exercises involve observation without criticism, during a range of ‘tried and tested’ mindfulness techniques, which vary in intensity.

I don’t believe that anyone would claim to be completely mindful since we all have a tendency to allow our mind to wander but in practicing the techniques the awareness of our mind becomes cultivated and our consciousness unfolds and deepens over time.

Some benefits you could expect from developing Mindfulness

If you start to practice Mindfulness some benefits you could expect to gain include:

• Feeling more relaxed and centred
• Being able to deal with life’s challenges in a more calm and logical manner
• Improved concentration, memory and creativity
• Feeling more confident and in control
• Experiencing a better quality of sleep
• Having greater kindness and compassion towards yourself and others
• Being ‘easier to be around’

Mindfulness and you

We confuse the mind’s thoughts with reality and we identify ourselves far too closely with our minds.

Mindfulness is a discipline to start noticing all these thoughts and gently bringing your focus back to your breath. The key is to find an approach, which works for you and to practice the techniques regularly by setting aside a few minutes each day to integrate your practice into your daily life. It is also important to realise that it is a way of being rather than a good idea or a clever technique

There has been an explosion of ‘Mindfulness’ in the media over the last 10 years and the internet is full of millions of resources, courses and mindful colouring, much of it free. Ironically this only serves to confuse the issue. However there are in fact a number of ‘core’ practices that crop up time and time again and can be considered to be central tools of the Mindfulness approach. These are:

• Autopilot
• Breath and body
• Body scan
• Mindful movement
• Mindful listening
• Mindful silence

What to expect when you meditate 

First of all your attention will wander away from the breath. Thoughts, images, plans, or daydreams may come up. Mind wandering is not a mistake – it is simply what a mind does. When you notice that your awareness is no longer on your breath – congratulate yourself since you have already ‘woken up’ enough to know it. Acknowledge where the mind has wandered to then gently bring your attention back to your sensation in your abdomen.

When the mind wanders again – as it will – simply note where the mind has been then gently bring your attention back to your breath. This can be very difficult as you may find it frustrating that the mind seems so disobedient. Notice any resistance to letting go or a continuing wish to engage with your thoughts

Each time this happens just bring it back to where it should be, regard repeated wanderings of the mind as opportunities to nurture greater patience within yourself. The intention is simply to be aware of your experience in each moment.

As best you can, use the sensations in your body and breath as anchors to gently reconnect with the here and now each time you notice that your mind has wandered. Over time if you keep on practising you will begin to ‘see’ your thought stream in action. You might find it helpful to silently give your thoughts names like – ‘here’s thinking’, ‘here’s worrying’, ‘here’s planning’ before returning your awareness back to your breath

In doing this you have taken your first step towards greater awareness.

From my own experience the moment you calm your ‘inner’ life you start to create ‘new grooves’ in your brain and reduce the constant negativity, which can live there. Once the inner world is calmed the outer world almost automatically calms too

You will notice that things that used to stress you no longer do and things that are stressful you take more in your stride. You will also become ‘easier to be around’

* Mindfulness – Finding Peace in a Frantic World, Mark Williams and Danny Penman

With thanks to Jo Grant and Stella Pitman for permission to use their photographs in this blog

Please note that this article is Copyright and cannot be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any way without prior permission of the author.

Open the door to influence

As an executive coach, for the past 12 years I have been assisting clients to get different outcomes by using a very predictable and successful stage-by-stage model. I have called this approach ‘The cycle of influence’. After learning these skills people often achieve immediate results, after trying unsuccessfully to get things done for them by other people for many months or even years.

Being self-employed, I first developed this approach when doing some ‘warm calling’. In the past, before I had established my professional reputation, I had to do marketing which involved ringing people up to get them interested in the services I provide. Over the years I found that this is easier if you have a reason to call or a previous relationship – even if it was a long time ago.

Through the grapevine, I heard that a centre director I knew 10 years previously was still in post. Since his organisation was a major purchaser of training and development, I decided to send him a brochure and marketing letter and to follow it up with a phone call.

When I rang, he took my call (which, by the way, is always a buying signal). We had a pleasant enough conversation. We talked about whether they used consultants and how much they were paid, and he promised to call me sometime. As I put the phone down, I just knew he would not call me back and felt I had managed to change a partially open door into a closed one. I wondered what had gone wrong and realised that although I had met the guy a long time ago, I had not made any attempt to build any rapport or to find out what had happened over the intervening years. So I rang him back. Clearly, he was surprised to hear from me. I said, ‘I did not just ring you up to find out if you wanted any external consultants. I wanted to chat to you, because if you are still in business after 10 years, you must be doing something right.’

At this point he started talking and continued enthusiastically for the next 20 minutes. He told me how his centre was the only regional training centre left in the country, how he had to raise £2 million each year just to keep the doors open, how he had brokered an innovative Master’s degree with the local university and developed a team undertaking leading-edge consultancy work. I listened and did not interrupt. When he had finished, he asked me what I had been up to.

Then I was able to tell him that I had worked for a prestigious multinational drug company, undertaken a Master’s degree in Change Agent Strategies and set up my own successful consultancy, assisting organisations, people and teams with their change agendas. As I established my credibility (or why he should listen to me), he did not interrupt me. When I had finished, he simply said, ‘Why don’t you come andsee me?’. I had achieved my goal without even trying.

What I got out of that interaction was a model for influencing people, which achieves results and improves relationships between people. The model is incredibly simple. We follow the steps very naturally with people we like and feel comfortable with. For new contacts or people we do not like, it is a bit more difficult and we need to consider more consciously how we approach them.

Just think about it for a minute. You are extremely busy, and someone you like approaches you to do a favour for them. What is your response? Then someone you are not keen on or do not know asks you to do some work for them. What isyour response? I assume you will say something to the person you like along the lines of, ‘Well, I am incredibly busy, but since it is you, I will see what I can do’. If you have time, you will move their work up the priority list. For the person you do not know or do not have a good relationship with, you are much more likely to say, ‘I am busy, so leave it there. I am doing it in order and will get around to it when I can’.

It is a well-known adage that ‘people do things for people‘. So if you want things to be done for you, move away from the idea that it is your role that dictates who does what for you and when. You must get to know the people you want to influence, and then present your request at a time and a pace that matches your relationship.

As a result of talking to the centre manager, I developed a step by step approach to influencing. This involves building rapport, establishing your credibility (or why they should listen to you), making your request and finally thanking them for their assistance.

To find out more information about the influencing model and other step by step approaches to developing sophisticated people skills, read the People Skills Revolution.

Pamela E Milne is Director of Solutions Unlimited and is author of the People Skills Revolution published by Global Professional Publishing  which enables you to develop all the skills required to achieve your goals.

This blog is copyright and cannot be reproduced in any form without the express permission in writing from the author 

Understanding the drama triangle

Based on the concept of Transactional Analysis devised by Eric Berne in the 1960’s and outlined in his book Games People Play, this therapeutic approach looks at human interaction in terms of parent, adult, child states. In this book Berne suggests that we play games to get our needs for attention met, when we are unable to get them met in an authentic and straightforward manner.

 Games People Play identified over 30 games but some of the most popular and descriptive ones are

• Addict
• Alcoholic
• Ain’t it Awful
• Blemish
• Debtor
• Kick me
• If it weren’t for you
• I was only trying to help you
• Look how hard I’ve tried
• Now I’ve got you son of a bitch
• See what you made me do
• Why don’t you – yes, but
• Wooden leg

All of us play games at some level. Each of the games involves the players taking up a starting position of persecutor, rescuer or victim. Berne suggested that everyone who plays a game will switch to every other position in the game so that the person playing victim in one round will eventually play rescuer or then persecutor in later rounds.

Games are played outside of our awareness. It is almost as though we are wearing an invisible ‘T’ shirt with persecutor, rescuer or victim on it. This slogan can be subconsciously read by others and lets them know our preferred start position and enables us to find the player who will take on the corresponding role in our game without us realising that we are doing this.

The definition of a persecutor is someone who seems like a critical or controlling parent – An aggressor who acts out the unconscious slogan  ‘I can make you feel bad’

The definition of a rescuer is someone who seems like a nurturing parent – An apparently nice and helpful person, who acts out the unconscious slogan ‘I can make you feel good’

A person is rescuing when he or she is

1. Doing something they don’t want to do
2. Doing something they have not been asked to do
3. Is doing more than 50% of the work
4. Is not asking for what he/she wants

The definition of a victim is someone who seems like a helpless or adapted child – An apparently hopeless and powerless person who gives his or her power to others, who acts out the unconscious slogan ‘you can make me feel good or bad’

 Both Persecutor and Rescuer positions are played from the ‘one up’, or ‘I am positive, you are negative’ position.

The victim position is played from the ‘one down’ or ‘I negative, you positive’ position.

The basic structure of a game is

• Identification of a victim (either for the persecutor or the rescuer)
• A hook (a way of hooking the unsuspecting mark)
• A switch (when one of the game players – victim, persecutor or rescuer changes the direction of the transaction)
• Confusion – when the players can’t understand how they got to this position and have an ‘old familiar feeling that they have been there before’
• Return to original position – all parties feel uncomfortable in the switch position and move back to original positions where the game starts again.

All of us play games and all of us play from a preferred starting position. Games can be fairly innocuous or for people with a tendency to play more dangerous games can escalate into murder or warfare.

In 1968 Stephen Karpman further developed the concept of game theory in an article called ‘Script Drama Analysis’ by introducing the idea of the Drama Triangle. In this article Karpman published a simple and illuminating diagram to illustrate how games unfold. From time to time I send this model to clients to help them understand and disengage from the dynamics of difficult and repeating situations they may find themselves in. I particularly like this model because you do not have to understand a great deal about transactional analysis to understand the behaviour it is describing. It seems to have an innate wisdom about it that most people seem to grasp straightaway.

The Karpman’s Drama Triangle diagrama illustrates a triangle with Persecutor, Victim and Rescuer at each of the corners. When the game is in progress a victim can move to persecutor and and a rescuer can move to persecutor then back to their original places. The shifts in position, occur when the games are being played.

Transactional Analysis itself is a complete study of human behaviour which can be very useful to help interpret our own actions and the actions of others. However I have found that when I explain the drama triangle to my clients they intuitively seem to understand the underlying principle behind the approach and can use it to make different choices about their behaviour.

The drama triangle – practical examples

Here is example, which starts from the persecutor position. A person who is persecuting picks an adult or child who has a tendency to act like a victim and niggles them and niggles them in very low key and subtle ways (the hook) until the victim has had enough and very obviously turns into a persecutor (switch). The persecutor then acts like a victim (switch) and invites   sympathy from third parties and looks gloatingly at the previous victim implying ‘Now I’ve got you son of a bitch’. Very soon both parties will move back into their preferred role and if nothing changes the game will start again.

I once worked in a department where the secretary controlled the department. You could not get a paper clip without having her permission. She also took it in turns to persecute people in the department and to my shame I did not defend colleagues when they were in her trajectory. Nor did they defend me when it was my time to play victim in the game. What she did was to do small criticisms which none of us challenged until one day the cumulative effect of insults and put downs became too much and we when it was our turn to be in the game, exploded – moving from victim to persucutor. When the boss asked us what was the problem all of the reasons for our eruptions, sounded so trivial that we looked stupid. This left the secretary able to look at us as if to say ‘see what I have to put up with they just get angry over nothing’ – moving from persecutor to victim.

A few days later the game would usually start again but this time involving someone else. It was as if we were continually acting out the game ‘now I have got you, you son of a bitch’.

The effect of this situation was that the department was in constant drama with mature adults walking on egg shells and reduced to the status of quivering wrecks. At this point I came across the concept of the drama triangle. When I moved into an observer position I could see the game unfold. I began to spot the ‘hooks’ and know when my personal buttons where being pressed. Although it took a considerable amount of self-control, I learnt not to react when provoked. On one occasion I even remember sitting on my hands and counting to ten to avoid getting caught up in the game. What was fascinating for me after this event was that the other members of the department also learnt to disengage from the dynamic with the result that the secretary became a much more equal and involved member of the team.

I hope that the simple example, from my own experience will assist you to understand the drama triangle as it is played out.

Here is another example.

I can do CV’s for people and used to enjoy offering to do them for people without them asking (rescuing). I used to sell the idea to them (the hook) and then put a lot of work into them. When I completed and sent them to people, sometimes I did not hear from them, even a thank you. I would then often find out that they had used them to significantly improve their salary or get a better job.

I began to feel very resentful (the switch) to those people and criticised their lack of consideration (victim). If I had raised it with them it is possible that they would have tried to rescue me by apologising and trying to make me feel better. In this instance I would be playing ‘look how hard I’ve tried’ or if they had persecuted me and I would be playing ‘I was only trying to help you’.

Alternatively I could have moved positions to persecutor and play the ‘After all I have done for you’ card

Rather than move back into the rescuer position, in fact I learnt not to rescue in future with regard to CV’s and stepped off the triangle.

Games create chaos, conflict, excitement and of course drama. They also serve to reinforce negative life positions or scripts and you see how they fit in with the negative thoughts processes that we covered in the chapter on Changing Negative Beliefs.

An effective step by step approach to stepping out of the drama triangle is outlined in the People Skills Revolution Handbook which was published on the 15th April 2013 and is available from Amazon.

Please note that this article is Copyright and cannot be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any way without prior permission of the author.

HOW TO STOP PLAYING THE GAME – What to do if you find yourself in a Drama Triangle

HOW TO STOP PLAYING THE GAME -What to do if you find yourself in a Drama Triangle

Conflict is likely to emerge when clear roles, boundaries and structures are either not present or disappear. Where there is conflict the drama triangle is not far away whether be it at work, between friends, in the family or on the world stage.

Based on the concept of Transactional Analysis devised by Eric Berne in the 1960’s and outlined in his book Games People Play, the approach looks at human interaction in terms of Parent, Adult, Child states and suggest that we play games to get our needs for attention met.

Berne identified over 30 games but some of the most popular and descriptive ones are

• Alcoholic
• Addict
• Ain’t it Awful
• Blemish
• Debtor
• Kick me
• If it weren’t for you
• I was only trying to help you
• Look how hard I’ve tried
• Now I’ve got you son of a bitch
• See what you made me do
• Wooden leg

In 1968 Stephen Karpman further developed the concept of game theory by introducing the idea of the Drama Triangle and suggesting that when people pay games they operate from one of three positions Persecutor ( Critical or Controlling Parent) Rescuer (Nurturing Parent) and Victim ( Helpless of Adapted Child)

The Persecutor  – An Aggressor with the unconscious slogan  ‘I can make you feel bad’

The Rescuers – An apparently nice and helpful person with the unconscious slogan ‘ I can make you feel good’

Both Persecutor and Rescuer positions are played from the ‘One up’ or I’m ok you’re not ok’ position.

A person is rescuing when he or she is

• Doing something they don’t want to do
• Doing something they have not been asked to do
• Is doing more than 50% of the work
• Is not asking for what he/she wants

The Victim – An apparently helpless, hopeless and powerless person who gives his or her power to others with the unconscious slogan ‘you can make me feel good or bad’

All of us play games and all of us play from a preferred starting position. Games can be fairly innocuous or for people with a tendency to play more dangerous games can escalate into murder.

THE DRAMA TRIANGLE

 

A SIMPLE WAY TO EXPLORE THE GAMES YOU MAY PLAY

 

What is it that happens over and over again?

 

How does it start?

 

Then what happens?

 

What happens next?

 

How does it end?

 

How do you feel when it ends

How may others feel when it ends?

HOW TO STOP PLAYING THE GAME

Getting out of a game can be difficult since the more you fight to get out of it the more you may dig yourself deeper. This guide should help you to give up this destructive and non productive pattern.

Step One

First of all we need to be aware that we are in a dysfunctional triangle and recognise our tendency to be here. We must also feel dissatisfied enough about the situation for it to be worthwhile to provoke a change and risk temporary discomfort in ourselves and the other players.

Step Two

We need to put some distance between ourselves and the situation in order to clearly identify the role each player is playing – this is called the observer or meta- position

Step Three

Mentally analyse the situation by using a number of possible strategies ie humour, search for positive intentions behind behaviours, realising that both are caught in the game, realising that you are no better or worse than anybody else.

Step Four

Disengage – notice the hook and do nothing. Step out of the drama. Respond from your adult – make different decisions/choices. Allow people to sort out there own problems. Stop trying to blame others and take responsibility for yourself and no one else.

Step Five

If appropriate share your observations with the other players

 

 

Identifying the Arch Manipulator

When working with clients who understood the nature of games and had excellent interpersonal skills a few of them came across people whose behaviour they just could not deal with. These people who we labeled ‘arch manipulators’ could create chaos where none had existed before, set one party against another when before they got on just fine and generally throw the organisation and its employees into disarray. It was difficult to see why they did this and we probably never did fathom the reason for their actions. It could be to appear more intelligent than they were, it could be to hide a perceived weakness, it could be motivated by a need to control. It could also be to hide some wrong doing by diverting attention away from the scene of the action by creating a smokescreen.

What ever the reason, the impact of these characters on the organisations they popped up in was the same. They took energy and resources away from doing the job in hand and meeting the business objectives. Instead people became obsessed with defending their actions, recovering from unjustified attacks, creating an audit trail and talking about their experiences with colleagues.

It is clear from the feedback I have received from the People Skills Revolution, that readers found this chapter particularly helpful. It was also apparent that they often went straight to this chapter since they had suffered from bullying behaviour in the past. Many people wrote to me to tell me that they wished that they had access to this information earlier on in their working and personal lives.

Despite this feedback I still maintain that the number of people who are arch manipulators in the true sense of the word is tiny. I hope that the blog on the drama triangle will contribute another perspective and assist people to make different choices. I think the people we identified as arch manipulators combined the tactics of the game ‘Now I have got you, you son of a bitch’ with highly developed skills of manipulation, which they use to their own ends in an extremely destructive manner.  So they can be charming one minute and highly volatile the next. They can also present very different faces to different people, which reinforces the sense of confusion.

Whilst games are played outside of peoples’ awareness, I have a feeling that arch manipulators are quite conscious of their behaviour and have learnt the skills of manipulation in the same way as I am encouraging you to learn the skills of influence. They use a unique blend of aggression and manipulation to treat people like pawns in their own personal chess game.

If  you have enjoyed reading this article your might also like the following blog called ‘How to recognise an arch manipulator’ which is an extract from my book the People Skills Revolution.

https://pamelamilne.wordpress.com/2016/07/29/how-to-recognise-an-arch-manipulator/

If you have come across a possible Arch Manipulator in your work or personal life, the People Skills Revolution and the People Skills Revolution Handbook will provide you with 38 possible strategems that will help you identify what your particular arch manipulator does in order to destabilise the environment and will also give you a step-by-step approach to defuse their impact at work or at home.

Please note: The information contained in this blog is copyright and cannot be reproduced in any form whatsoever without the prior permission of the author who can be contacted through her website at solutionsunlimited.co.uK.

How to excel during a Competency Based Interview

How to excel during a Competency Based Interview

This is my fifth blog on how to be successful at that all important job interview. In the previous blogs I told you how to come across as confident and in control during the interview process using a standard approach to interviews that most employers would use.

However interviews are such a notoriously poor indicator of future success in the job that recruiters are constantly seeking more effectively methods to select the right candidate for the role.

One of these different approaches is competency-based recruitment. Personally I like this approach because it is based on the idea that ‘if you have done it before you can do it again’.

So rather than ask you to talk about yourself and sell yourself into the role, which I am sure you can see benefits those who ‘can talk a good talk’, it asks the interviewee to talk about their previous experience around a number of key areas.

The only problem with this approach is that it can come across as very direct and can feel a bit like the ‘Spanish Inquisition’ so I prefer to select a blend of the two approaches just to soften the style a little.

But in this blog I will just focus on competency based recruitment. The good news is that if you prepare for one style of interviewing it will also stand you in good stead for the other style.

The first thing to realise is that competency based recruitment starts well before the interview. When an organisation makes the decision that there is a vacancy to fill, the recruiter will decide what skills the successful applicant has to have to be able to do the role successfully.  Each organisation will have a separate library of competencies for this purpose but I have included a set that I use to demonstrate the process in the photo to the right.

The idea is look at the job vacancy and to decide what areas the applicant needs to be competent in to do the job successfully. Someone who knows what the job involves usually selects about 6 competencies, which then become the basis on which all decisions are made about the applicants throughout the entire recruitment process.

Just to bring this idea to life, these might be the competencies selected for a shop assistant, a project manager in the building industry, an advertising executive and political lobbyist. It would of course be assumed and confirmed that the applicant has the necessary professional qualifications to do the job as part of the recruitment process.

Competencies

Shop assistant

• Efficiency
• Spoken communication
• Customer sensitivity
• Persuasiveness
• Need to achieve
• Initiative

Project Manager in the Building Industry

• Action tendency
• Delegation
• Planning and organisation
• Detail handling
• Problem solving
• Tenacity

Advertising Executive

• Presenting
• Business awareness
• Creative thinking
• Customer sensitivity
• Spoken communication
• Persuasiveness

Political Lobbyist

• Political awareness
• Persuasiveness
• Action tendency
• Detail handling
• Problem analysis
• Risk taking

As you can see the selections regarding the competencies are not magic they are just the decisions that the recruiter made at the time about the perceived skills required to do the job successfully.

These competencies will then be used in the advertisements for the position, or to instruct employment agencies. The recruiter will then use the evidence provided to decide if the presenting candidates are competent when compiling a short list.

It is worth mentioning here that it tends to be larger commercial organisations, Public Sector bodies, Central Government and Local Government who use this approach and usually train their recruiters in the techniques. One of the reasons for this is that all candidates are asked the same questions so that it is considered as a much more ‘equal opportunity’ approach.

It is an approach which is also believed to favour the people who can do the job over those who are just able to perform well at interviews. Having said that it does require preparation to be comfortable and effective during a competency based interview so where is the equality when only those who know about the process can perform well within it? For this reason I think it can be very difficult for someone who does not already work in the organisation or an organisation like it to get a job using this approach. Unless, of course, you know how to prepare for and perform well in this type of interview.

It is very likely that an organisation using competency based recruitment will have indicated that they will be using this approach right from the very beginning and it will be built into the early selection process as well as the interview. So once you have decided to apply for a position you should start to collect evidence from your experience to demonstrate that you have that skill.

Each of the interview questions will relate to one of the competencies that they are looking for usually without actually saying what the competency is. The interviewer selects the questions from a range of ‘trigger’ questions to create the interview framework.These questions are intended to start the conversation off.

The interviewer is then trained to investigate and probe your answers more fully. It is very difficult to lie in this type of interview because you will be asked very detailed additional questions about your experience.

Just to give you some idea of what the ‘trigger’ questions might be lets go back to the competencies identified for the four random jobs I mentioned earlier in the blog. These  were shop assistant, project manager in a building company, advertising executive and political lobbyist. Each question will start off with a request for you to give an example of a particular competence. Your role here is to give an example, which is real, ended with positive results, can be probed further and demonstrates that you are competent in the particular area being questioned.

Shop Assistant

• Efficiency – Can you give me an example of when you have changed a system or process to improve the efficiency of the systems? What was the outcome?
• Spoken communication – Can you give me an example of when you have used your communication skills to make things better for a customer?
• Customer sensitivity – Can you give me an example of when you have taken action to improve the experience for the customer?
• Persuasiveness – Can you give me an example of when you made a sale because you were persistent with the customer?
• Need to achieve – Sales is all about targets and achieving goals can you give me an example of a day when you were particularly pleased with the results of your efforts.
• Initiative – Can you give me an example when you did something out of the ordinary either for the customer or for the company and tell me what happened?

Project Manager in the Building Industry

• Action tendency – Can you give me an example when you took action when other people were holding back?
• Delegation – In your current job can you give me an example of a large task some of which you delegated to your subordinates. Which parts did you decide to delegate and which parts did you decide to focus on yourself?
• Planning and organisation – In your current job can you give me an example of how you schedule your time to ensure that both small and large  projects are completed
• Detail handling – We all get bored sometimes with the detail of a task or job. Can you describe a situation when this has happened to you and how you coped with this?
• Problem solving – Can you describe a situation when you discovered an unexpected problem and tell me what you did about this?
• Tenacity –  Can you give me an example of when you have achieved an objective through sheer persistence. What happened?

Advertising Executive

• Presenting – Describe a presentation you have made in the past of which you are particularly proud. Why was it good and how did you prepare for it?
• Business awareness –  What methods do you employ in  your current job for keeping up to date with economic trends/government policy/customer needs?
• Creative thinking – Can you tell me about an occasion when you solved a problem with an unconventional solution.
• Customer sensitivity – You must have faced conflicts of interests in your current role. Can you think of an example of a conflict between customer needs and commercial necessities? What did you do about it?
• Spoken communication – What is the most complex idea you have been required to explain to an individual? How did you go about it?
• Persuasiveness – What is the best idea you have sold to your boss?

Political Lobbyist

• Political awareness – Can you give me an example where you have been able to influence key decision makers within your organisation?
• Persuasiveness – Tell me about your toughest selling experience
• Action tendency – Have you ever had to galvanise your colleagues/subordinates into action? How did you achieve this?
• Detail handling – Can you give me an example of when you have needed to keep track of the detail in your current job?
• Problem analysis – Can you give me an example of the most significant piece of research you have undertaken to date and what this suggested in terms of recommendations.
• Risk taking – In your current job can you give me an example when you took a risk and how you calculated the balance between the risks and benefits of your action? What happened?

These are just examples of some possible competency based questions you might be asked to help you to prepare for the interview. In the actual interview of course they might ask different ‘trigger’ questions to explore a particular skill.

One of the concerns that applicants have when asked about a relevant work experience is that they will either say too much and ramble or not say enough to demonstrate the skill.  In a previous blog I have mentioned the use of the STAR approach to sharing your skills which I think is worth restating here.

Using this technique you would describe the Situation you were involved in, then explain the Task you undertook in relation to this situation. Then describe the Action you took in relation to the situation and finally you would describe the Result of the action. The idea is to keep your example focused, short, descriptive and positive.

When using this approach interviewers are trained to probe the answers you provide to ensure that the example you are giving is genuine and that you were actively involved in the experience. They are then asked to score the evidence as

• (+) positive – evidence of the competence provided
• (-)  negative – negative evidence provided against the competence.
• (/) no evidence – if no evidence is provided the interviewer depending on the situation then may continue to probe until either positive or negative evidence is provided.

Please be aware that the examples do not have to be huge – they just have to be appropriate for the job and level of job that you are going for.

Once you are aware that competency-based selection might be used in the recruitment process it is a good idea to prepare your examples to evidence your competence. As I have said in my blog ‘Get that job’, the good news is that whether you are interviewed using the competency based approach or a more traditional interview format, the preparation for both styles is the same ie to work out what they want and provide them with evidence that you are the person that they are looking for.

I hope that this blog has been of interest to you and wish you every success in your job search.

You might also want to refer to other blogs in the series on interviews.

These are:

‘Get that job’ – How to impress at the interview            https://pamelamilne.wordpress.com/2016/08/16/get-that-job-how-to-impress-at-the-interview/

‘How to answer those pesky job interview questions’ https://pamelamilne.wordpress.com/2016/08/16/how-to-answer-those-pesky-job-interview-questions-the-life-book-for-work/

‘Why do you want this job? How to answer this question at the interview’ https://pamelamilne.wordpress.com/2016/08/22/why-do-you-want-this-job-how-to-answer-this-question-in-the-interview-a-life-book-for-work/

‘Will you fit in? How to put the interviewer at their ease’ https://pamelamilne.wordpress.com/category/interview-techniques/

 

With thanks to Jo Grant for permission to use her photographs

Please note that this article is Copyright and cannot be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any way without prior permission of the author.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Will you fit in? How to put the interviewer at their ease

Will You Fit In?   (How to put the interviewer at their ease)

Technically speaking you should enable the interviewer to be comfortable with you throughout the interview process. However this section of the interview is crucial in helping the interviewer to decide if you will ‘fit in’ into the role, team and organisation.

In the first three blogs in the series I gave you an overview of what the kind of questions you are likely to be asked, how to answer those pesky ‘Can you do the job questions?’ and the very difficult to answer successfully ‘Why do you want this job? questions.

At every stage of the interview I have encouraged you to answer all the questions you may be asked in a reassuringly, honest and positive manner.

As I have mentioned in previous blogs there is absolutely no guarantee that any of the questions I have talked about will be asked since interviews can be such random processes. However by undertaking the necessary preparation and learning to answer the questions positively you will be able to get yourself in the right frame of mind to come across as professional, organised and ready to take on the responsibilities of the role.

When the interviewer has decided that you can do the job and that you want the job they are likely to move into the ‘will you fit in?’ type of questions. Although there are some standard questions, which will probably be asked – this is often the section where the most peculiar questions may ‘pop up’ as the interviewer tries to get a sense of the person you are and what makes you tick.

Although a trained and skilled interviewer would ask the same questions to all the candidates to ensure equality and consistency, the good news is that if the interviewer was not at all interested in you for the job they would tend to keep this section of the interview quite short and snappy. So lots of challenging questions in this part of the interview may actually be a positive sign.

Some common ‘will you fit in?’ questions are:

• What are your ambitions (or long term goals?)?
•  How would your manager describe you?
•  Do you think you might be over qualified or too mature for this position?
•  What kind of salary are you looking for?
•  How would you describe your management style?
•  What do you like doing outside of work?
•  Do you have any questions for us?

I will now suggest ways to positively and professionally answer all these questions.

What are your ambitions (or long term goals?)?

You may think this question is about your ambitions but it isn’t. It is really ‘if we appoint you will you stay?

Recruitment is expensive and no recruiter wants to go back into the market again very shortly after they have appointed someone. Constantly having to recruit new staff also reflects badly on the appointing manager.

The question is tricky because you want to indicate that you really want the job but you don’t want to come across as lacking ambition. So the best way to answer this question is to say something like:

‘My main priority would be to get this job and to do it to the best of my ability and become an effective member of the team (or manager or whatever the role is) and then when I have made a useful contribution and proved what I can do, I hope that opportunities to progress will emerge within the organisation.’

How would your manager describe you?

Whatever the relationship you have with your manager the best way to answer this question is to imagine what positive things they might say ( even if you had to  ‘pull teeth’ to get them to say it!). Then pick the skills and qualities that are most relevant to the job on offer. Again keep these qualities focused on ‘hard’ skills like ‘they get the job done’ or ‘they can be relied on to resolve issues that come up without reference to me’ and ‘they are good at managing change and they always have a strategy’. If you say things like ‘they would say I am a good person’ or ‘they say that I have a great deal of integrity’ although these are laudable qualities if they wanted to ask you any further questions about them it would be very difficult to evidence your answers.

Although it might be tempting at this point to say something humorous, humour is a very personal taste so unless you are completely sure that the interviewer is on the same wavelength (which would be a risky assumption), I would suggest you focus on tangible things that you can talk further about if asked. Glib or quirky answers will prevent you from using yet another opportunity to present your skills, abilities and experience in a slightly different way.

Do you think you might be over qualified or too mature for this position?

This question could come in a variety of guises – are you too tall, too short, too young, too inexperienced etc for the role? Although this sounds like a negative question, it actually isn’t. It means that they ARE considering you but that they do have some concerns about your ability to work with the current team because you might be too something or other. It is highly unlikely that they would ask you this question unless you had a chance to get the job – otherwise why would they bother to ask it?

So your role here is mega, super-drive, ultra confident reassurance. Here you need to leave the interviewer in no doubt whatsoever that not only that you can do the job but that you will be able to over come any perceived obstacles there may be, to doing it well.

It is worth noting here that many of these type of questions might infringe employment law, particularly the ones to do with your physical attributes and abilities and in fact age. However this will not stop them from often being asked, particularly by untrained or inexperienced interviewers.

Here you have a choice. You can either ‘get on your high horse’, claiming that the question is illegal or you can answer positively and reassuringly and decide later if you feel the question was inappropriate enough to decline the job if it is offered to you.

What kind of salary are you looking for?

The first thing to say is that you should never state a figure for the salary you are looking for in the interview. Your bargaining power will increase significantly once they have decided you are the best candidate for the job, the only one they want to have work for them and want to offer you the job

So how do you answer the salary question if it is asked in an interview? The simple answer is that you need to be vague and talk in terms of ranges. It is probable that the company have given some idea of the salary either in an advert, through an agency or through informal inquiries before you applied. When you put in your application there will be an assumption that the salary on offer is more or less in line with what you are likely to accept. Having said that in most roles there is some opportunity to negotiate – even in public sector appointments.

The best way to approach the issue of salary is to do your homework beforehand. Research the industry salary norms and look at advertisements for similar jobs to identify a range of salaries for the role making sure of course that the figure mentioned by the recruiting organisation is within that range. Then knock the bottom of the range out of the picture. You are left with a salary range that presumably would be acceptable to you. So when asked ‘what kind of salary are you looking for? you should say something like this:-

‘I understand that the salary range for this type of role is between x and y and I would be looking for something towards the top of that range to reflect my skills and experience.’

Essentially this kind of statement helps you to ‘park’ the issue until later and helps them to note that this is a subject that they will have to come back to when they decide to make you an offer.

As I have mentioned your bargaining power shoots up when they have decided that you are the right (and only) person for the job. Talking about money before they have made the decision just makes you come across as self interested and they may prefer another candidate over someone who is too concerned about what they will earn when they join the organisation.

Although I would suggest a salary uplift of around 10% on what they are initially offering is often possible, it is worth saying here that negotiation of any kind, including salary negotiation is a factor of how much ‘cheek’ you have and how desperate the organisation is to appoint. I have coached someone who managed to increase their salary by 260% just by having an unusual skill set, performing well at the interview for position in a financial organisation which had a key role to fill and appying to a company which had an enormous amounts of money at their disposal.  

How would you describe your management style?

There are two elements to answering this question. The first is to be aware of what your management style is and to be able to describe and evidence it succinctly. Generally speaking it is better to have a participative style that brings out the best in people and encourages the development of staff.  If you are going to ‘own’ this style it is a good idea to have examples of when it has been successful in your previous roles.

The second element is to be aware of the management style and culture of the organisation with the role to fill. If you are going for a job with Google or Apple you would expect a very informal style whilst if you go for a job in the prison service or a factory for example you would anticipate a more authoritarian style.

As well as the interviewer deciding whether you will fit into organisation or team, if you want to be comfortable in the role yourself you have to decide if there is a good cultural fit between you and the organisation you are applying to work for.

What do you like doing outside of work?

There are at least two ways this question could be used by an interviewer. The first is to identify similarity between the interviewer and the interviewee. For example if they both play golf, go cycling, belong to the same church organisation or are members of the same exclusive club the chances are that they will feel an affinity with each other which will create a degree of comfort between them.

I once observed an interview for a job in a merchant bank in the UK. It was basically a chat between an ex army officer and someone he used to go to university with who was interviewing him for the job.

When the ex-army officer admitted that he knew nothing about merchant banking, the interviewer who was clearly going to appoint him anyway said

‘oh don’t worry about that – it’s not that difficult you will soon pick it up’ .

Most of us are not that lucky so it is good to have an interest that would be interesting to the person asking the questions. Ideally it should be something that you can tell a story about and show passion for. Personally I would keep off religious activities unless you are absolutely sure that the interviewer has the same interests as you do. It could work in your favour but there is also a risk that it would not give you any advantage and might even be detrimental.

The other way that the ‘what are your interests outside work?’ question can be used (and I have used it myself in this way on many occasions) is when the interviewer despite all their best efforts cannot get the interviewee to ‘open up’.

This usually happens when the interviewee is young and not very confident in the interview process and the interviewer suspects that there is more energy and enthusiasm in them than they showed when answering the main questions.

Quite often this is the case and then it is up to the interviewer to decide if this additional insight provides any new information on which to base their decision.

Do you have any questions for us?

Obviously this is the last question that you will be asked. Although you should have a question ready to ask it is important to realise in many cases the interviewer is just being polite when they ask you this question. They are more than likely ready to move on to the next candidate and the last thing they want is an interrogation by the person they are interviewing.

Some questions can inadvertently reveal more about the interviewee than they intended for example:

‘Why is this position open?’ – can come across as challenging and too inquisitive (even though it might actually be quite a sensible question in many circumstances)

‘What kind of support will I have in the role?’ – can come across as if they will need or expect a lot of support.

‘What freedom would I have in determining my work objectives, deadlines and methods of working?’ – can come across as ‘I might as well tell you now that I am a bit of a maverick and difficult to manage’.

Nor do they want to go into the ‘ins and outs’ of the terms and conditions, training opportunities, salary expectations, annual leave, parking permits or any other issues of real interest to you. These type of questions are pretty much guaranteed to make the interviewer feel uncomfortable.

The interviewer asks the question out of politeness and you are expected to ask a question out of politeness in return.

So I would suggest that you ask one forward thinking question, which might encourage the interviewer to visualise you in the role. This may also provide you with some useful information, which might give you the opportunity to make a quick positive statement on your ability and enthusiasm to rise to the challenge for example:

• What would be the key result areas of the job in the first six months?
• What would you like done differently by the next person who fills the post?
• We have talked about the challenges of the role, which of these would you regard as the main priority in the first three months

Some people say that the job interview is two-way decision but really all the power is in the control of the interviewer not the interviewee. The only decision you can make is whether you take the job after it is offered to you.

In my next blog I am going to talk about competency based interviews which is an approach often used by multi national companies and public sector organisations who want to be seen to be equal opportunities employers and ensure that they train their staff in the techniques.

It is useful to know about both techniques in order to prepare successfully for the interview. The good news is that what ever style is used the preparation will be the same.

I hope that this blog which is part four in a series of blogs, which outlines how to ‘Get that Job’ has been useful to you.

If you want to an overview of the interview process and your role within it you might find the ‘Get that Job’ blog helpful.

If you want to know how to answer the ‘Can you do the job?’ questions you might find the ‘How to answer those pesky interview questions’ blog interesting.

If you want to know how to ‘sell’ yourself at the interview you might want to read the ‘Why do you want this job?’ blog.

Part five of the ‘Get that Job’ series of blogs will focus on the competency-based interviews.

With thanks to Stella Pitman and Jo Grant for permission to use their photographs.

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