Richard Maun

Author: moderncareers

  • Successful Contracting #2 …Make Contact

    Make contact wth your partner and you too could contract to go down the pub tonight!
    Make contact with your partner and you too could contract to go down the pub tonight!

    A phrase which isn’t mine, but which I wish was is ‘Contact Before Contract’. My TA chum Trudi says this to remind us that we’re dealing with people and that they need to ‘enter the room’ before we hit them with the task of agreeing contractual terms. (This applies to all agreements, even if it’s just to agree what time to be back from the pub).

    Now, what I mean here is that although we may be physically present, our minds may be elsewhere. We come bowling in to a meeting with our heads full of diary dates and priorities, kids’ homework requirements, a lengthy to do list and the nagging feeling that we’ve forgotten something important. Like taking the chicken out of the freezer to defrost for dinner.

    Because our heads are buzzing we need to be allowed to settle into our current environment and focus on the person whom we’re meeting with. This is why it’s really important to give people contact-making time. Meetings that start NOW just jar. People can feel flustered as their mind is still processing their previous conversation and as a result they won’t be thinking clearly about the task in hand.

    You only have to watch The Apprentice, on BBC1, to see this in action. Normally bright and thoughtful people get pounced on and make terrible snap decisions because they’re given no time to settle into the space and warm up their thinking.

    When we make contact with people we also warm to them and that helps to build connections at a deeper layer. This is a cornerstone of trust, which has to be present for any contracting work to be successful. If we chat, we relax and we forge little bonds that mean we want to stay put and complete the discussion.

    It’s like when we walk into a swimming pool. We test the water a bit with our toes whilst we are chatting to our partner. At one level we are talking, but at another we are noticing if the water is hot or cold. If it’s cold we will tend to break off the conversation and exit for a warm shower! We tend to trust our toes!!

    Making contact is easy and the trick is to think of it as productive work, and not just idle chit-chat. Three ways to allow people to settle in are:

    1) Find out about them. Asking questions to find out about how they are, what they’ve been up to, what they did at the weekend are all known as ‘unconditional strokes’. (See my previous strokes blog). These little units of recognition are about us and not directly about our work, so make us feel warm because the other person is interested in us.

    2) Allow enough time. How much is enough? I’ve found that 5-10 mins for every hour of planned meeting works well. Machine-gun style management is pointless and might look efficient, but just gets people riled. Build in some chat time in your meetings and you will tend to get better thinking outcomes from your teams.

    3) Notice commonality. When the other party says something about a subject you are interested in then comment on it and let them know you like it too. This ‘noticing’ forges little bonds between people and helps to make strangers feel more like friends.

    The message for the week ahead is to allow yourself time to be interested in the other person. A few minutes of making contact at the head of a conversation can be the biggest deciding factor as to the outcome…it could decide whether you get to go down the pub, or not!

    The Promo Video…have you seen Brian yet?

    Los Penguin Productions have posted the  Job Hunting Blues video on YouTube so please click through and enjoy it. It features Brian, our resident stunt man and he was great to work with, a real pro. Do you like his boots? And he was very happy to be able to read his own special, little copy of the book Job Hunting 3.0. If you know someone who is looking for work then please point them at Amazon where they can read reviews and order a copy of the big book.

    This week: Would you find a friend for me please?

    If you know someone who would be interested in this blog post please forward it to them, or ReTweet it, or let them know they can subscribe to regular emails via the box on the homepage. Many thanks.

    Next Week

    Is the third part of our trilogy on Contracting. Tune in next Monday, to complete the set!

  • Successful Contracting #1 …Find the Stinky Fish

    Ignore what's on the sofa... It's what's down the back that really matters.
    Ignore what's on the sofa… It's what's down the back that really matters.

    Are you looking for a job? Or working as a coach? Or about to agree with your partner what you will be doing over Christmas? (Too in-law, or not to in-law, as Hamlet famously said)…

    Clear contracting can help us in all of these diverse situations and by a ‘contract’ I’m referring to a mutual agreement. Transactional Analysis, a subject close to my heart, is often described as a ‘contracted psychotherapy’ and puts clear contracting the heart of the client-consultant relationship. It has much to say on the subject and what follows is based on the work of Berne, Hay and English.

    When we’re offered a job we need to agree expectations and terms, if we’re coaching someone we shouldn’t be working if there’s no contract and if we don’t sit down and talk things through with our partner then Christmas can be a disaster.

    So, I have 5 Top Tips to offer this week, which we can all use to make sure we have really robust contracts with people. Here they are:

    1) Name your frustrations, concerns, likes, or dislikes. Doing this gives people permission to name theirs. We all have them, so we may as well get them on the table, where we can see them, poke them and include them in our thinking. These are the ‘fish’ in the title and we will come back to them later on.

    2) Think about the issue of competency. Are you competent do the work? Is the other person competent to take part? I recently had pass an opportunity on to a colleague because a client wanted me to run a workshop that I wasn’t fully competent to do. What was the point in doing 60% of a job, when my colleague could work to 100% of the client’s needs?

    3) Talk about contracting. It’s a word that needs to be in our everyday language. We use the word a good deal at home; not to be smug, but because we lead busy lives and need to agree diaries, kids pick-up times, food requirements and so on. It saves a lot of heartache and grumpiness later, so why not make it part of your lexicon?

    4) The success of the contract is determined at the psychological level. This is a posh way of saying that if you agree to something that you really don’t want to do then you’ll probably either not do it, or will make such a fuss that a row breaks out and the work fails. The first top tip says ‘name your frustrations’ because of this. If you talk about what’s inside you can deal with it and I’d rather have a harder talk now and a better Christmas, than the other way round…

    5) Check understanding. I think a lack of clear understanding causes more rows than anything else. For example, a chum told me that last Christmas she invited her sister over for lunch, to arrive ‘around 2 o’clock’. The sister rolled up at a whisker before 3, without bothering to telephone ahead to let them know where she was. Was she late? Should she have called? Well, all roads lead back to the contract and the need to make sure people are clear. Who do you need to check things with to make sure you’re both clear for your Christmas dinner?

    Lots of people think that ‘contracting’ is all about discussing and agreeing the obvious things, such as time/date/place, but the really smart people do this and go the extra distance to talk about their fears, or worries, or limitations in order to add them into the mix.

    I call these things ‘stinking fish’ because they’re like having a kipper down the back of the sofa. You know it’s there. You can smell it. You might ignore it, but the smell persists…The only thing you can do is to reach for it, pull it out and deal with it.

    So, what do you have to deal with this week, in order to achieve a really good contract with someone? Who do you need to sit down with to re-visit an existing agreement? What fish lurk down the back of your psychic-sofa?

    We all have fish, so smile, pluck them out and talk about them. That’s the real secret of successful contracting.

    Oh Yes, That Promo Video…have you seen it yet?

    Los Penguin Productions have posted the  Job Hunting Blues video on YouTube so please click through and enjoy it. It features Brian, our resident stunt man and he was great to work with, a real pro. Do you like his boots? And he was very happy to be able to read his own special, little copy of the book Job Hunting 3.0. If you know someone who is looking for work then please point them at Amazon where they can read reviews and order a copy of the big book.

    This week: Would you find a friend for me please?

    If you know someone who would be interested in this blog post please forward it to them, or ReTweet it, or let them know they can subscribe to regular emails via the box on the homepage. Many thanks.

    Next Week

    …we will consider one thing that can really smooth the process of contracting. I like doing it…