How to have a thriving and flourishing team in turbulent times

A small number of greenfly don't do much damage, it's once they take hold that sap is drained from the plants and they eventually succumb and then wither and die.

It's the same with negativity and blame - it may start off in small numbers but if not treated can take hold and drain all the creativity, enthusiasm and proaction out of organisations. What are you doing to spot treat occurrences of negativity and blame to stop it becoming how things are done around here? I started using gardening as a metaphor for our lives in the mid 90s and love revisiting it each year for Chelsea Flower Show. The show might have gone virtual but we can still learn much from this bountiful metaphor. If you'd like to dig a little deeper, turn over a new leaf or have a few seeds sown why not join us on Tuesday 19th May for a webinar looking at insight we can take when the beast from the east has just swept through our gardens and applying it to our working lives at the moment. I promise there will be plenty of opportunity for germination and digging over of ideas.

You'll also find more about the Landscaping Your Life process over in my LYL blog too. You can also sign up for my Landscaping Your Life ezine and newsletter here.

Would your team win gold at Chelsea?

I love watching the RHS Chelsea Flower Show – it’s the time of year when I yearn for greener fingers – or perhaps it’s just more time to use them.

The pride, passion and enthusiasm for all things horticulture is conveyed in the many TV programmes as they interview the winners, runners up, and anyone involved in this wonderful show. 

Tears, laughter and relief mix as they finally receive the feedback on all their efforts.

Yesterday it was announced that the M&G Garden designed by James Basson won the prestigious Best Show Garden 2017. (The above video is the making of the garden based on a quarry in Malta - here's a tour of the finished garden). 

Every year hearing their stories has me considering what is needed in order to even get to Chelsea never mind win gold or even best show garden. For me it includes:

• Commitment & passion for what they do
• Effective Team work
• Great design, planning & creativity – often having taken a year or more to do
• Attention to detail
• Timely implementation – they have 3 weeks on site to get the gardens ready for judging on the Sunday (brought forward a day this year), followed by a week of visitors
• Spot on plant selection & quality – with weather significantly impacting what’s at its best for that one short week
• Careful and loving planting
• Meticulous plant care and maintenance

The project success has much to do with all the things I've listed - failure on any one of these and they might have failed. As head gardener and designer for the project James Basson will have been responsible for ensuring it all worked perfectly.

For whatever you're head gardener of - could you say the same?

Would your effort on tending to those in your team enable them to win you a best in class? Do you have the passion? How much planning have you done? Are you attending to every detail? Are you giving it, and them the care they need? and would you delight in their success?

What seeds do you need to sow today for your team to win best in show later in the year?

Alison Smith

The Purchasing Coach

Unlocking potential using unconventional tools

Another Chelsea inspired post this week was entitled Benefiting from the fruits of your labours, I also wrote a LinkedIn post about learning from Chelsea in order to bust some moulds, shift perceptions and expand comfort zones whether in Procurement or more broadly.

Enablers for effective team working

I facilitated a session with a team last week that explored the many aspects of effective team working. Much of the content covered has been covered in blogs over recent years, and so I share here an index of those blogs.

• Unconscious incompetence through to unconscious competence
• Standing in the shoes of other team members - such a great tool for providing insight when struggling with understanding how to deal with others. Something I've even asked Tim Peake, UK astronaut, to do from the International Space Station - stand in the shoes of the Earth and provide advice to its inhabitants.
• What motivates others in your team
• We see others through our own lenses - we had such a great debate on this subject, and it perhaps also links to There's 3 versions of any story - your's, theirs, and the truth and the map is not the territory. Hard to remember and yet so valuable when we do.
• The subtleties of influencing

• Communication styles
• We treat people as we like to be treated - not as they would like to be treated
• Having a chocolate moment - based on an exercise I often use with groups
• How our values impact our relationship with others
• Looking for the worse in people  - which links to other blogs on Don't spend time with miserable mackerels and 5:1 positive to negative interactions
• Developing relationship trust
• We also touched on "I don't do soft fluffy stuff" and the case for soft skills.

As ever I'm reflecting on topics covered I'd like to write future blogs on:

• Problem reversal - a great technique for problem solving.
• Bolton and Bolton's people styles

Do also see recent indexes of blogs sharing the enablers for Category Management and Supplier Management. Again arising from recent workshops I've facilitated directly with clients, or via other procurement consultancies.

Alison Smith

Inspiring change inside and out (more here on why that's important)

Team development events

Long gone are the days when team development days were simply about everyone having a good time and getting to know each other better. Often there are other business objectives that also need to be met when everyone is together in the same place at the same time.

I've facilitated a number of sessions with a variety of objectives and share here examples of these to give you a sense of the variety of format and style if I'm involved in facilitating a session for you.

• Resolving difficult relationships with internal stakeholders -  mix of training, group work, role play, discussion and use of frameworks for change coaching process.
• Strategy development with board of management - use of landscaping your life process to identify mission, vision and strategy moving forward.
• How to successfully establish a team with individuals from 2 organisations and 4 locations as part of organisational merger - use of NLP training, establishing working parties and giving responsibility to the teams for different aspects of the development of a cohesive team.    
• Inspiring action towards achieving annual objectives - use of individual input and jigsaw puzzle to embed specific goals and establish commitment of whole team to their achievement.
• Midyear review of progress against targets - use of metaphor for all presentations from teams and individuals to provide basis for creative communication and engagement.

A session facilitated by me is certainly more likely to include a walk on the beach as it is sitting in a conference room in a hotel. Although without understanding your objectives, it's difficult to definitively state what would work best for you and your team at this time to meet those objectives.
If you'd like to do something different in order to get a different outcome and take team performance to the next level please do get in touch.

Alison Smith
Inspiring change inside and out

alison@thepurchasingcoach.co.uk +44 (0)7770 538159